Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon added a new line to his office’s emergency planning list this year, one that now sits next to severe weather, bomb threats and power outages. “This time, we’re adding to that list of hazards: we’re adding the possibility that the federal government might do something that directly or indirectly affects the election negatively,” Simon, a member of the state’s Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, told ABC News at the National Association of Secretaries of State summer conference in Rapid City, South Dakota, last Tuesday.

Simon was not alone. Secretaries of state from both parties, gathered in South Dakota for what is usually a quiet annual meeting, told ABC News they are now scenario-planning for federal interference in the elections that will decide control of the House and Senate this November. States are constitutionally responsible for running elections. Whether the federal government tries to override that responsibility this fall has moved, for several of these officials, from a hypothetical to a working assumption.

Trump Sets the Stage From the East Room

The conference in Rapid City coincided, by chance, with a primetime address President Donald Trump delivered from the White House on July 16. He announced he had declassified a trove of documents that he said proved “the largest compromise of election data in history,” accusing China of the “illicit acquisition of 220 million U.S. voter files” through a unit built to target American elections, according to Roll Call. He warned of “rogue bureaucrats” and called the U.S. election system “so broken and so vulnerable that no one can defend it.” At no point did he connect any of it to a foreign actor actually changing a vote.

House Intelligence Committee ranking member Jim Himes told MS Now the speech was laying groundwork. “He was setting the basis for him to turn around at midnight on Election Day and say, ‘I warned you,’” Himes said, sketching a scenario in which Trump could deploy “federal officers from the Department of Homeland Security to seven states” to seize ballot boxes over unfounded fraud claims. “That is the moment in which American democracy dies,” he said. Rep. Joseph D. Morelle, ranking member of the House Administration Committee, told C-SPAN he heard a president preparing to “sow so much confusion” that he could later “claim extraordinary powers.”

A Case the Evidence Doesn’t Support

The documents Trump released do not appear to support the case he built around them. ABC News reported the heavily redacted files don’t back up his claims, and a related ABC News report found the declassified documents themselves say U.S. election systems “would be difficult to manipulate.” Trump also did not mention a March 2021 National Intelligence Council report that contradicted, with “high confidence,” many of the same claims, per Roll Call.

The same week, Trump and DHS sent letters to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, and Nevada, claiming that an internal review had found 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote across the four states combined. “There’s no foundation to it,” Stephen Maynard Caliendo, a political science professor at North Central College, told PBS affiliate WTTW. “Up to 250,000 voters could be one voter, and it’s a federal crime to register to vote or to try to cast a vote if you’re not a U.S. citizen, if you’re not eligible to vote. It’s very rare. It doesn’t happen very often.”

Trump’s Fraud Claims Are Older Than This Cycle

Trump has mentioned election fraud 544 times since returning to office in January 2025, and 3,062 times since launching his first presidential bid in 2015, an average of 1.3 times a day this year, according to data from Roll Call’s Factbase. Of the 132 U.S. races at every level of government where Factbase found him raising fraud claims, one race is missing: the 2018 ballot-harvesting scheme run by North Carolina operative McCrae Dowless, the one instance a bipartisan elections board actually found and unanimously confirmed, which cost Republican Mark Harris his seat.

The week before his speech, the White House removed the three remaining members of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission, a move some state officials told ABC News added unnecessary instability to the running of the election. Downballot, Arizona Republicans just nominated a slate of 2020 election deniers, Andy Biggs for governor, Warren Petersen for attorney general and Alexander Kolodin for secretary of state, to the three offices that will run the state’s elections beyond this cycle, including its 2028 presidential vote, MS Now reported. And Republican officials, from the White House to Capitol Hill, have been selling Trump’s voter ID push, the SAVE America Act, by comparing it to needing a photo ID for Olive Garden’s pasta pass, a comparison MS Now’s Steve Benen noted ignores that the bill also requires proof of citizenship, something Olive Garden does not.

The Agency Built to Stop Election Interference Is Gone

Trump said in his speech the country “must take urgent action” against foreign interference. But the agency built for that purpose has been hollowed out since he returned to office, MS Now reported. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, created during Trump’s first term, lost more than 100 workers to DOGE firings, while over 600 more were placed on leave, reassigned, or took buyouts. The administration proposed a 17% budget cut, roughly $500 million, and a staff reduction of nearly 30%. CISA also halted funding for the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which gave local governments free security training and threat monitoring.

State officials told MS Now they are no longer getting the threat briefings they once received routinely. “They’re flying blind,” said a former senior national security official who served during Trump’s first administration and was granted anonymity to discuss the matter. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said states will get resources only if they hand over voter rolls to a federal database, called SAVE, that a judge recently found unlawful in its current form over concerns it could wrongly flag eligible voters. “We’re not trying to change the outcome,” Mullin said. Cait Conley, who served as senior adviser to CISA’s director under President Biden and is now running for Congress in New York as a Democrat, drew a straight line between the cuts and the speech. “If Donald Trump were truly concerned about election security, he would not have fired hundreds of federal workers whose jobs were to secure our elections,” she said.

Plan B, Plan C, and a Paper Ballot Backup

West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner, a Republican who has criticized the administration’s pursuit of private voter data, told ABC News his office has a fallback for nearly any scenario. “If it’s determined that we can’t use a tabulator, for example, we’re prepared to get those ballots counted by hand,” he said. New Hampshire’s David Scanlan, also a Republican, said his state has been told federal election monitors will be present at its upcoming primaries. “We welcome observers. It’s a public process,” he said. “What we don’t want is federal interference in the actual election process itself.”

Connecticut Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas, a Democrat, described the planning process itself. “Election officials are constantly preparing for the unknown. It’s what we do, so we’re always scenario planning from the most mundane to the most extreme situations,” she said. “This administration, for better or worse, is just giving us more to plan for.”

If Homeland Security Comes for the Ballots

Campaign Legal Center, a voting rights group that has sued the administration over several of its election actions, argues the pattern adds up to something larger than any single move: an attempt to seize personal voter data, purge voter rolls, gerrymander maps and, eventually, deny results the administration doesn’t like. The group notes that no president has the constitutional power to cancel or postpone a federal election, and that authority over elections rests with the states and Congress. Sen. Maria Cantwell recounted asking a home-state election official what he would do if Homeland Security tried to block mail ballots. “He says, ‘I don’t give a damn if I have to Uber them. I’m getting the voters their ballots,’” Cantwell said.

Confidence in Elections Splits Right Down the Middle

Roughly 4 in 10 Americans say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the people who run elections in their state, a higher share than say the same about the Supreme Court, Congress or the executive branch, according to a Marquette University Law School poll conducted in June. That confidence splits sharply by party, 53% of Democrats versus 29% of Republicans. A separate YouGov-Economist poll found 28% of Americans still believe the 2020 election was rigged, including half of Republicans and 66% of Republicans who identify with the MAGA movement. Trump made his speech less than four months before the midterms despite a Washington Post-Ipsos poll, released the same morning, showing 37% of Americans approve of his job performance, and 61% disapprove.

Too Big to Rig

Earlier that same Thursday, hours before the primetime address, a reporter pressed White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at a briefing on why the administration was investigating supposed fraud in elections Republicans lost but not examining the 2024 race Trump won. Leavitt smiled and answered with a phrase her boss made famous. “Because it was too big to rig,” she said. “... There was a massive amount of votes for this president. That’s why he’s in the Oval Office right now.”

On Thursday, July 16, an email was sent to FBI field offices around the country. It was not, by any means, an announcement of a policy shift. It asked agents to compile a list of their open investigations into assaults on federal officers so that those cases could be handed off, according to emails reviewed by CBS News. A second email, sent that same day to Homeland Security Investigations agents in one field office, made the destination clear: HSI, the investigative arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, would now be the one deciding whether its own officers had been attacked before they opened fire.

The New York Times first reported the change on July 19. CBS News independently reviewed emails confirming the shift. The FBI would indeed step back from investigating claims that ICE agents had been assaulted, including in cases where those claims preceded a shooting. The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security both denied it, in nearly identical language, on the same afternoon.

What the FBI Was Actually Investigating

Reading the fine print is crucial here because it explains why career law enforcement officials found the change alarming. Federal law makes it a felony, punishable by up to eight years in prison, to “forcibly assault, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates or interferes” with a federal officer. For the past year, per Common Dreams, the Trump administration has pushed prosecutors to bring that charge as often as possible, arguing that any physical contact with an agent qualifies. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told CNN in May that it is “abhorrent to ever, ever touch a law enforcement officer,” and that his office would prosecute accordingly.

The FBI has historically been the agency that determined whether those assault claims held up. Several of the fatal shootings under scrutiny this year have involved both kinds of inquiry at once, with DHS alleging its agents were assaulted just before they opened fire. An assault investigation and a civil rights investigation, in other words, have often run through the same evidence. Under the new guidance, HSI takes the assault claim instead. HSI does not have jurisdiction over civil rights violations, and it is not built to process an officer-involved shooting: no dedicated ballistics unit, no standard forensic pipeline for these cases, no history of large-scale witness canvassing. HSI’s usual caseload runs to human trafficking, cybercrime and art smuggling.

“The fox is guarding the hen house,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, in a post cited by Common Dreams. For his part, journalist Sam Stein said the guidance amounted to “pure impunity for ICE to do horrible things.”

A Denial That Doesn’t Match the Paper Trail

DHS and the Justice Department answered the reporting with a joint statement, posted on X and repeated to every outlet that asked. “The relationship between DHS and DOJ in investigating assault on federal officer cases has not changed, and the FBI will continue to investigate in accordance with agency policy,” the statement read. “This administration has been clear: anyone who assaults law enforcement will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Similarly, a Justice Department official said Monday morning that the FBI was unaware of any such guidance being sent to field offices. Later that same evening, CBS News reviewed a second email, this one addressed to HSI agents, confirming the shift was already underway. Multiple sources told CBS that the directive had gone out the previous Thursday and was reiterated on Monday, even after DOJ and DHS issued denials.

Two ICE Killings in Six Days

The timing is loud. On July 7, an ICE agent in an unmarked car shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old construction worker, as he picked up his crew in Houston’s Magnolia Park neighborhood. DHS said he had rammed an agent’s vehicle and refused commands. His family disputed that account and said he had no way of knowing the unmarked car following him belonged to federal agents. Six days later, in Biddeford, Maine, an ICE agent shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian national, during a traffic stop that witnesses described as chaotic, carried out by agents in an unmarked vehicle. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Sen. Angus King that the agent had acted after his vehicle was “weaponized” against pursuing officers. Neither agent was wearing a body camera, despite a February 2026 announcement from then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem that the agency would deploy them, following two earlier killings in Minneapolis.

Those two deaths brought the total number of people killed in encounters with federal immigration officers since the start of the second Trump administration to at least ten, according to the Associated Press. Deaths in ICE custody, a separate count, have reached 52 in the administration’s first 500 days, a rate Human Rights Watch says has repeatedly surpassed the worst single month of the last decade, May 2020.

Why the FBI Was Ever in the Room

The pattern predates Houston and Biddeford. In January, an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good, a U.S. citizen, in Minneapolis. DHS said she had tried to hit the agent with her vehicle. Local officials and witnesses disputed it. That same month, an agent shot and killed Alex Pretti, also a U.S. citizen, in the same city. Officials said he had threatened agents, a claim Reuters reported was contradicted by video evidence. In October, agents shot Chicago-area resident Marimar Martinez five times after accusing her of ramming their vehicles; she survived, the charges against her were dropped, and bodycam footage undercut the government’s account.

When HSI was initially tasked with leading the investigation into Pretti’s death, with the FBI in a supporting role, current and former federal law enforcement officials raised questions about the decision, CBS News reported.

When the Justice Department Leans the Other Way

The Minneapolis cases also show what happens when the Justice Department leans the other way. Federal prosecutors were pressured to treat the Good investigation as a straightforward assault case rather than a civil rights matter, a decision that prompted several prosecutors and an FBI agent to resign. A New York Times investigation cited by Common Dreams found the administration has filed assault charges against more than 550 people accused of attacking federal immigration officers. Of the roughly 400 cases resolved so far, nearly half ended in charges being thrown out or withdrawn, or in acquittals.

Those numbers sit uneasily next to the government’s own language. Officials have repeatedly described federal agents as targets of sustained violence to justify enforcement tactics and, in Houston and Biddeford, the shootings themselves. Removing the FBI from assault investigations means the agency most likely to gather evidence undercutting that narrative, as it did with Pretti, Good and Martinez, is no longer positioned to do so as a matter of course.

What Happens Now to Houston and Biddeford

The Justice Department, the FBI and DHS did not respond to questions from CBS News about how the policy shift might affect the investigations already open in Texas and Maine. In Houston, the Harris County District Attorney’s office said federal authorities are “exclusively handling all aspects” of the case, with the FBI’s field office there previously confirming it was investigating the alleged assault on an agent, separate from the shooting itself. In Maine, the state attorney general’s office said it was investigating alongside the FBI, and the agent involved, later identified by relatives as David Brouillette, was placed on administrative leave. Under the new guidance, the assault claims underlying both agencies’ official accounts, the claims that Salgado Araujo tried to run over an officer and that Durán Guerrero’s vehicle was “weaponized” against agents, would fall to HSI to examine.

After concerns were raised inside federal law enforcement over HSI’s initial role in the Pretti case, the FBI and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division were ordered to take the lead instead. That investigation is still open.

Four days before the United States turns 250, the Supreme Court reaffirmed one of the most foundational promises the country ever made.

In a 6-3 decision on Tuesday, the court ruled that the Constitution guarantees automatic birthright citizenship to virtually all children born in the United States, striking down the executive order President Trump signed on the first day of his second term, according to NPR. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, and his closing line was worth reading slowly.

“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community,” Roberts wrote. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”

This is a genuine constitutional victory. And it is complicated.

The 14th Amendment Has Meant This for More Than 150 Years

The Trump administration staked its argument on four words: “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Those words appear in the 14th Amendment, and the administration argued they should exclude children born to parents without permanent legal status. People “domiciled elsewhere, and only temporarily present in the United States, owe primary allegiance to their parents’ home countries, not the United States,” the administration argued, according to the BBC.

Roberts’ opinion rejected that reading entirely, pointing to the court’s landmark 1898 ruling in the case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Wong Kim Ark was born in San Francisco in 1873 to Chinese immigrant parents who ran a business there. When he tried to return to the United States in 1895 after visiting his family in China, the government denied him entry on the grounds that he was not a citizen. He challenged that denial and won in the Supreme Court. That precedent held so firmly that even during World War II, when Japanese Americans were held in internment camps, children born in those camps were automatically granted citizenship.

The ACLU’s Cecillia Wang, herself a birthright citizen born to Chinese parents, argued the case before the court. “In America, we do not punish children for the sins of their fathers, but instead we wipe the slate clean,” she said, according to NPR. “When you’re born in this country, we’re all American, all the same.”

Three Justices Voted to Make Newborn Babies Stateless

The 6-3 breakdown matters. Five justices joined Roberts’ constitutional ruling. A sixth, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, agreed the executive order was unlawful but on statutory grounds, finding it violated federal legislation enacted in the 1950s rather than the Constitution itself. That distinction is significant: had the ruling rested on Kavanaugh’s narrower reasoning alone, a simple act of Congress could have achieved what the executive order could not.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the lead dissent, a 91-page argument that the 14th Amendment was only ever meant to apply to formerly enslaved people and their descendants, an interpretation that aligns with Trump’s own stated position, according to NPR. Justice Neil Gorsuch joined Thomas’s dissent. Justice Samuel Alito wrote separately.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson answered Thomas directly. “Despite his longstanding endorsement of a colorblind society, Justice Thomas now surprisingly suggests that the citizenship clause was a race-conscious remedial measure relating only to freed slaves,” she wrote, according to NPR.

Lynn Tramonte, Executive Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, explained the weight of that dissent. “It is terrifying to know that three U.S. Supreme Court Justices voted to make society’s most vulnerable people — babies — stateless or second-class citizens, simply because of who their parents are,” she said in a statement.

Trump Lost the Case. The Fight Is Not Over.

Within hours of the ruling, Trump posted on Truth Social, calling the decision “too bad for our Country” and urging Congress to pass legislation achieving the same result as his now-defunct order, according to NBC News. “Congress should start TODAY,” he wrote.

That path faces substantial obstacles. Republicans hold 53 Senate seats, but passing legislation would require 60 votes under current filibuster rules, according to NBC News. A constitutional amendment would require two-thirds of both chambers of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, noted in a post on X shortly after the ruling.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called the decision “one of the most destructive and outrageous decisions in the long history of the Supreme Court,” according to NBC News. Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri announced he would introduce a constitutional amendment modeled on the defeated executive order.

The legislative path is, for the moment, closed. But this administration has shown that when one door is locked, it looks for windows.

The Same Week, the Court Left 1.3 Million TPS Holders Exposed

This is where the victory becomes impossible to celebrate without qualification.

In the same week the court upheld birthright citizenship, it also ruled in Trump v. Miot and Mullin v. Doe that federal courts cannot review the termination of Temporary Protected Status, clearing the path for the administration to strip protections from roughly 1.3 million people, according to Communities United for Status and Protection, known as CUSP.

That number includes the parents of some of the very children whose citizenship was secured on Tuesday.

“A family can be told in the same week that its child belongs here and that its mother does not,” CUSP said in a statement. “That is not a contradiction the law should ever produce — and it is the clearest proof that these fights were never separate.”

Carolyn Tran, Executive Director of CUSP, was direct: “Birthright, TPS, DACA — one fight, same families, one demand: citizenship now.”

This week also marks the 14th anniversary of DACA, according to CUSP. The program remains under sustained pressure from the same administration that just lost on birthright citizenship.

Four Days Before the 250th Anniversary, the Court Remembered What America Is Supposed to Be

Approximately 38 million second-generation Americans, people born in the United States to at least one immigrant parent, are part of the fabric of this country, according to HOPE, a nonprofit focused on Latina leadership. Tuesday’s ruling secured the foundation beneath all of them.

Democratic representatives Adriano Espaillat, Yvette Clarke, and Grace Meng, who chair the Congressional Hispanic, Black, and Asian Pacific American caucuses, tied the ruling directly to the anniversary. “As we approach the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, we stand united in rejecting Trump’s dangerous and exclusionary vision of America,” they said in a joint statement.

Janet Murguía, President and CEO of UnidosUS, the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights organization, framed it in constitutional terms. “No presidential pen can outweigh the heart of our constitution,” she said in a statement.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani echoed the sentiment. “This should never have been in doubt,” he said. “The federal administration sought to rewrite one of the clearest guarantees in our Constitution in an effort to decide who belongs in this country and who does not. Today, the Court rejected that effort.”

They are right to celebrate. And they are right to keep fighting.

This article was originally published on wearemitu.com.

What is the role of a government? So many decades have passed since Venezuela last had a democratic government with even a shred of humanity that what happened in the last 72 hours stands as the latest and most devastating example of the paradox of being Venezuelan.

At least 920 people died, and more than 4,500 were injured after the most powerful earthquake to strike Venezuela since 1900, when a magnitude 7.7 quake hit the country. More than 50,000 people are missing, though the government had not confirmed that figure as of this writing.

Inside the Magnitude 7.5 Earthquake That Hit Venezuela on June 24

Last Wednesday, June 24, at 6 p.m. local time, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Venezuela. It arrived just 39 seconds after a magnitude 7.2 foreshock. The epicenter was in the municipality of Veroes, in the state of Yaracuy, in northern Venezuela.

June 24 is a national holiday in Venezuela, marking the Battle of Carabobo. Many businesses were closed, and thousands of people were on vacation. Dozens of buildings taller than seven stories collapsed completely. And many others were damaged, including the country’s main international airport, where part of the terminal ceiling collapsed and the runway split.

Why Venezuela Sits on Some of the Most Dangerous Fault Lines in the Region

For decades, scientists and presidents knew Venezuela lies near the boundary of two tectonic plates, the Caribbean Plate and the South American Plate. Both plates are constantly trying to slide past one another. Sometimes they lock together, building up energy that eventually has to be released. That movement created a system of fault lines that converge in northern Venezuela. This raises the odds of a large magnitude earthquake.

These are the Boconó Fault, which runs from Táchira to the Caribbean, the El Pilar Fault, which mainly crosses the northeastern state of Sucre, and the San Sebastián Fault, which runs offshore near Venezuela’s Cordillera de la Costa mountain range. Although its entire course is underwater, the San Sebastián Fault runs almost parallel to the country’s central coastline, about 10 kilometers from Caracas, which makes earthquakes a common occurrence in the capital.

That concentration of faults explains the high seismicity of Venezuelan territory, especially in the north. In the Andean region of Mérida, for example, the Venezuelan Foundation for Seismological Research, known as Funvisis, detects dozens of small earthquakes every day. The government-affiliated agency recorded more than 130 significant seismic events between 1530 and 2004. And the true number is likely higher because the monitoring station network was much smaller until the start of this century. Funvisis recorded 1,274 tremors as of June 25, some of them in eastern Colombia.

Venezuela Has Survived Devastating Earthquakes Before

Venezuela has a recorded history of these events. The 1900 earthquake, a magnitude 7.7, remains the most powerful ever recorded in the country. The 1929 earthquake also triggered a tsunami. And historians still dispute its death toll, with some estimates putting it above 1,000. The 1967 earthquake left between 225 and 300 dead and thousands injured.

The Earthquake Venezuela Saw Coming and Never Prepared For

Mexico did not wait for a second warning. After the 1985 Mexico City earthquake killed an estimated 10,000 people, largely because of buildings constructed without enforced seismic standards, the government rewrote its building codes in 1987, then again in 2004 and 2022. It also built SASMEX, the world’s first public earthquake early warning system, specifically so that the next major quake would not catch the country by surprise again. When a comparable earthquake struck Mexico City in September 2017, it killed 369 people. Nearly every building that collapsed that day had been built before 1985 or had been built in violation of the code that followed.

Chile followed the same logic. Its seismic building codes have been enforced since 1972 and tightened repeatedly after major earthquakes. Most recently, following the 2010 Maule earthquake. That code is why a magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile, one of the strongest ever recorded, killed around 500 people. Meanwhile, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Haiti, with weaker shaking but no comparable codes, killed more than 200,000.

Venezuela did not need a warning. It already had one.

And it even responded to it once. The San Sebastián Fault runs roughly 10 kilometers from Caracas. That’s why the 1967 Caracas earthquake, magnitude 6.6, killed an estimated 225 to 300 people. And exposed the same structural weaknesses that engineers are citing today. The government adopted its first seismic building code that same year, later formalized as the COVENIN 1756 standard in 1982. But enforcement never kept pace with the rules on paper.

Less than 25 percent of construction in Venezuela complies with seismic standards today, according to structural engineer Elena Oliver Saiz. Caracas itself sits on a deep alluvial basin that amplifies shaking, a geological fact known long before June 2026. The Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela, the government housing program launched under Hugo Chávez in 2011 that claims to have delivered more than a million homes, is now facing scrutiny over the quality of construction of those same units. Mexico and Chile treated a known risk as a mandate to keep building differently. Venezuela treated it as a box checked once and never reopened.

The gap widened again in the response window that matters most.

The first 72 hours after an earthquake are crucial. It’s when survival rates for people trapped under rubble fall from roughly 90 percent at 24 hours to 20 to 30 percent by 72 hours. Mexico and Chile both mobilized the military, civil protection, and trained urban search-and-rescue teams within hours of their respective earthquakes. Venezuela’s emergency alert system did not function during the June 24 earthquakes, according to residents and on-the-ground reporting. Search and rescue operations were hampered by shortages of heavy equipment, spare parts, and diesel fuel needed to run the machinery that existed. Ambulances were scarce, hospitals were quickly overwhelmed, and residents in several neighborhoods reported seeing no government rescue workers at all on the disaster’s first day, leaving civilians to dig through collapsed buildings with their bare hands.

Venezuela’s earthquake struck a country still reeling from what analysts have called the largest peacetime economic collapse recorded between 1970 and 2015, a contraction driven by years of government mismanagement, corruption, and hyperinflation. Mexico and Chile spent decades after their worst earthquakes investing in the systems built to prevent the next disaster from becoming a catastrophe. Venezuela spent those same decades hollowing out the state that was supposed to build them.

How Venezuela’s Earthquake Response Fell Apart in the Golden 72 Hours

During those same 72 hours, also known as the golden hours because they represent the critical window for finding survivors under rubble, officials blocked aid shipments from reaching distribution points and did not arrive in La Guaira until residents had already organized their own response, driven partly by the government’s absence and partly by widespread distrust. Several Venezuelans drew a contrast with how quickly the government typically floods the streets with security forces during political unrest, noting that not a single official appeared in the earthquake zone during the first 24 hours.

A Transition Government Already Accused of Losing Track of Millions in Aid

All of this unfolded nearly six months after a U.S. military operation resulted in the capture of former president Nicolás Maduro and the installation of Delcy Rodríguez as interim president. In the months since, as part of what has been described as a collaboration arrangement between the Venezuelan government and the Trump administration, the country’s track record on accountability has already come under question. In May, the Venezuelan Medical Federation reported that 71 tons of medicines and medical supplies the United States had sent as humanitarian aid earlier in the year had never reached hospitals, according to the federation’s president, Douglas León Natera, who said medical staff in multiple states had not received the shipments despite official announcements that they had been delivered.

That same month, the United States completed the removal of roughly 13.5 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from a Cold War-era research reactor in Venezuela, an operation Venezuela’s own foreign minister said had taken on new urgency after Maduro’s capture. Political rhetoric from both the Venezuelan government and Washington had also promised the release of political prisoners and an end to repression. Neither has happened.

The World Sent Rescue Teams to Venezuela. Its Government Barely Did

Other countries moved quickly to help. El Salvador was among the first to respond, sending 300 rescue workers and paramedics along with 50 tons of medicine and supplies. France deployed a team of 85 search-and-rescue specialists, and Spain sent a plane carrying government search-and-rescue teams. Mexico sent a federal team of military rescuers and medical personnel, according to President Claudia Sheinbaum, with more aid available if needed, and Colombia sent more than 60 rescuers along with 12 tons of humanitarian aid. Argentina offered assistance as well, joining several other Latin American nations in pledging support.

How Venezuelans Showed Up for Each Other When Their Government Didn’t

On the ground, most Venezuelans showed that when their country suffers, unity outlasts the moral, ideological, and structural damage the regime has caused. Some people looted stores and the ruins of collapsed buildings, but most mobilized to help. While government officials demanded payment in dollars to let families view the bodies of relatives at the morgue, ordinary people organized online. They are building websites to help reunite families and relay distress messages from survivors still waiting to be rescued.

Even though experts say the odds of finding more survivors are now very low, people have not stopped trying. To the point that the road connecting Caracas and La Guaira became gridlocked, with no government leadership to help coordinate the effort until it was far too late.

What Comes Next for a Country Whose Regime Has Left It to Rebuild Itself

At this point, the government’s response has amounted to little more than a show staged in coordination with the United States. It proves once again that two things can be true about Venezuela at the same time: a country shattered by a violent and corrupt regime can be brought to its knees, and it can still rise to help its own people and stand up to corrupt authorities, demonstrating the courage that defines its people.

The question that remains is what happens next. A country already torn apart, still in the hands of the same regime, has to find a way to move forward. Who will rebuild it, and whose interests will that rebuilding actually serve?

If it sounds like authoritarianism in motion, that’s because it is. Immigrants are being systematically squeezed out of the economy through bureaucratic means. Ballots are being seized. Fascists gathered openly while major newsrooms looked away. And far-right candidates are winning elections across Latin America. Here’s what’s happening as the midterms approach.

Stephen Miller’s quiet war on immigrants

The Trump administration has stopped talking about raids. Instead, it’s using the federal bureaucracy like a vise. According to The New York Times, officials have methodically pulled every lever possible to cut immigrants—documented and undocumented—from jobs, health care, housing, financial services, and tax credits. A woman with legal work status was fired from her airport job because the administration determined that her visa category no longer qualifies as “authorized residency.” Asylum seekers are about to lose work permits. Undocumented immigrants are being pushed out of community health clinics. American-born children of undocumented parents just lost access to the child tax credit. The goal is not just to deport people; it’s to make living in the United States economically impossible. So far, more than 116,000 people have voluntarily left. Many more are hiding.

The ballot seizures have already begun.

In January, FBI agents raided Fulton County, Georgia, and seized ballots from 2020. In March, the DOJ demanded ballots from Arizona, and in April, it demanded them from Michigan. In March, a California sheriff obtained warrants to seize 600,000 ballots from a redistricting election. According to WIRED, election experts are alarmed. The seizures cite past election fraud claims that have already been investigated, debunked, and dismissed. The warrants were obtained on the basis of problematic evidence and faulty assertions. But what’s more chilling is the precedent: if the courts fail to scrutinize these requests, the administration could begin seizing ballots during or immediately after elections—the one moment when federal seizures would have only one possible purpose: interference. “There is just no legitimate rationale for interfering while there is an active vote tally,” one election law expert said.

The remigration summit and the missing headline.

Two days ago, the former head of U.S. Border Patrol attended a summit in Portugal alongside Europe’s leading fascists. They called it the “Remigration Summit 2026.” The speakers included an Austrian extremist famous for promoting the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, a Belgian politician convicted of Holocaust denial, and the founder of a Swiss neo-Nazi group. A New York Young Republican Club leader was there, too. They gave Nazi salutes and talked about ethnic cleansing. And according to The Redoubt, no major English-language news outlet covered it. The American press—captured by right-wing ownership, cowed by litigation threats, or simply indifferent—has decided that when Republicans do fascism, it’s not news. Only when Democrats disappoint does the headline appear.

The far-right is winning across Latin America.

Colombia held its presidential election on Sunday. A far-right lawyer and Trump admirer named Abelardo de la Espriella won the first round with 43.7 percent of the vote, shocking most analysts who had him trailing. He will face off against a left-wing senator in a June runoff. Meanwhile, in Mexico, President Claudia Sheinbaum is escalating her rhetoric against the United States, accusing far-right sectors of orchestrating attacks on her government. She’s not entirely wrong, though. The pattern across Latin America is now unmistakable: Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Honduras, and now Colombia are trending in this direction. Mexico and Brazil remain the region’s last remaining governments. The momentum is all in one direction.

One more thing to keep in mind this week.

Congress is quietly advancing a bill that would bind the U.S. and Israeli militaries closer than ever, integrating their weapons industries and defense technologies. It appears as a routine provision in the annual defense bill. But what it actually does is embed Israel into America’s military supply chain so deeply that, as one former State Department official put it, “it’s impossible to root it out.” When one government’s military becomes dependent on another’s technologies, leverage flows in unpredictable directions. The bill has bipartisan support. It will likely pass.

That is where we are. Immigrants pushed underground, elections are being rehearsed for seizure, fascists are mainstreaming themselves, while the press looks away. And a hemisphere tilting rightward while America deepens its military dependence on a country waging war under genocide allegations.

Donald Trump reached an agreement with the IRS that “forever” prevents the federal government from “prosecuting or pursuing” any tax claims against the president, his family members, and his companies.

Trump’s former criminal defense attorney and now acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, signed the document and appointed a five-member board to manage payments from a $1.776 billion fund to beneficiaries whose identities will remain secret. Blanche publicly stated that Trump and his family are ineligible for these payments, but he has not ruled out payments to the president’s donors and allies.

In other words, Trump sued his own government, demanding that he not be prosecuted for his well-known tax fraud, that he be compensated with billions of dollars, and that he be protected forever from any further scrutiny of his tax returns.

Trump filed the lawsuit over the leak to the press of some of his tax return documents that exposed the tax fraud his organization and family have committed for decades. It’s no wonder he has refused for so long to voluntarily hand over his tax returns.

Now, the fund approved by his own government can literally go to anyone. Some claim it could go to the January 6 insurrectionists. Others will most likely remain anonymous. For his part, Trump can remove the commissioners from the attorney general’s board, and, as The Guardian explained, reports on the attorney general’s administration must be confidential under the agreement.

This Is the Dictator’s Playbook

And as perverse as the ploy sounds, it is not new. In fact, it is, once again, part of the dictator’s playbook.

Even if Vladimir Putin releases his tax returns, we can trust those figures about as much as we can trust the results of his “democratic” elections. His own regime (and Russia’s historical structure since the Bolshevik Revolution) has been, as autocracies tend to be, opaque.

However, in most autocracies, there is a national tax administration process. The economic system of dictatorships eliminates the middle class, dividing the population between the 1% and the rest. Often, the former are members of the government or direct beneficiaries of it. And the president? Well, I don’t think it ever occurred to anyone that someone like Fidel Castro or Hugo Chávez Frías ever paid taxes.

“The deal that Trump extracted from the government he leads is really a spectacular demonstration of the fact that there really are two sets of tax rules, one for those at the top, and another for the rest of us,” according to Steve Wamhoff, federal policy director with the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan tax policy group.

“Trump and his officials view themselves as untethered from the tax laws that apply to ordinary Americans,” he told The Independent.

America’s Constitutional Guardrails (In Theory)

However, the United States is not (yet) a dictatorship. In fact, its constitutional structure was designed to be bulletproof, preventing what we are seeing unfold in real time. That is why the Trump vs. IRS scheme appears, at first glance, to be just another tantrum by the celebrity-turned-president. What it really is, on the contrary, is the cementing of a regime that puts in writing that “no one criticizes me.”

“Trump’s dirty deal has crossed the line into illegality,” according to Robert Weissman and Lisa Gilbert, co-presidents of the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

“If Acting AG Todd Blanche tries to effectuate this settlement by directing the IRS to end audits underway or not to conduct audits it would normally undertake, both he and Donald Trump will be violating the law and putting IRS officers at risk,” they said.

Who Else Gets the Money?

In Trump’s rhetoric, convoluted by his team to confuse the public, the money will go to his supporters, “persecuted” by Democratic administrations.

Trump said the victims of “weaponization” under the Obama and Biden administrations — an apparent reference to his allies who were investigated in connection with his 2016 and 2020 campaigns and the attack on the Capitol — were “destroyed, they went to jail, their families were ruined, they committed suicide.”

“We’re reimbursing those people for their legal fees and for their costs, and for anybody involved,” he said. “It was the most violent thing I’ve ever seen in politics.”

Blanche has not ruled out millions of taxpayer dollars going to people who assaulted law enforcement officers during the Capitol attack on January 6, 2021. The first lawsuit against the “weaponization” fund came from two law enforcement officers who were beaten and bloodied by a mob of Trump’s supporters that day.

The 14th Amendment Problem

Trump’s IRS lawsuit was a “Potemkin lawsuit, a sham brought about only so that it could be settled,” according to the complaint filed by Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges.

The administration is also accused of violating the 14th Amendment’s clause prohibiting the government from paying debts and other obligations “incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States” by effectively creating a roundabout payment system for aggrieved rioters.

“The fund’s mere existence sends a clear and chilling message: those who enact violence in President Trump’s name will not just avoid punishment,” according to the lawsuit, “they will be rewarded with riches.”

Meanwhile? The president can continue to pocket money, directly or indirectly, through illegal means, without anyone being able to hold him accountable.

1934? Is that you?

While the world is distracted by the senseless war in Iran, the Hantavirus, and the slow decline of the last Western empire, something was brewing here on the continent.

A series of recordings leaked by investigative journalists in Honduras and the Spanish news platform Canal Red have revealed the behind-the-scenes plan of the United States and Israel. It is a campaign to promote their interests in Honduras and destabilize left-wing governments in Latin America, according to Middle East Eye.

And yes, this may sound like “nothing new” to some, especially given the United States’ history of political interventionism on the continent. However, the investigation, led by anonymous Honduran journalists, reveals a macabre plan that goes beyond even the most dystopian of imaginations.

The investigators had access to 37 leaked voice notes from WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram that, according to what’s now called “Hondurasgate,” have been authenticated through forensic analysis. They were recorded between January and April 2026. The website that published the 37 recordings, making them available in their entirety, explains that each file was analyzed using the Phonexia Voice Inspector protocol, a forensic suite from the Czech company of the same name, founded in 2006 and used in more than 60 countries by intelligence agencies, law enforcement, banks, and media outlets.

The first finding of the investigation was that the recordings appear to indicate that Israeli interests were behind U.S. President Donald Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.

For those who don’t recall, in December of last year, Trump pardoned Hernández, who was serving a 45-year prison sentence following a U.S. federal court conviction on drug trafficking charges.

At the time, many of us questioned the U.S. president’s decision, given that he had campaigned for years against drug trafficking—a stance he used to justify intervention in Venezuela and the bombing of ships in the Caribbean.

Shortly thereafter, Trump endorsed the then-presidential candidate of Palestinian origin, Nasry Asfura, who was running against his centrist opponent Salvador Nasralla, and threatened to cut aid to the country if Asfura lost the election.

The question was, what is Trump’s interest in Honduras? We now know that it was not in the interest of the U.S. administration but of Israel.

What interest does Israel have, then?

Hernández, known as JOH, served as president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022 as a member of the conservative-leaning National Party. Those were years of supposed cooperation with the United States in the fight against drug trafficking. In 2024, he was sentenced in Manhattan to 45 years in prison for associating for more than a decade with drug traffickers who paid him bribes to ensure that more than 400 tons of cocaine reached the northern border of the Rio Grande. According to El País, three years earlier, his brother Juan Antonio Hernández had been sentenced to life in prison for the same crimes. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York had accused JOH of receiving $1 million from Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

According to new leaks from “Hondurasgate,” Trump’s pardon of JOH, days before the elections in Honduras, was not clemency, but rather the initial payment in a larger agreement. In one of the recordings, Hernández explains it directly, though without revealing his interlocutor: “The pardon money didn’t even come from you. It came from a group of rabbis and people who supported Israel.” In another audio recording, he says that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “everything to do” with his release and the negotiations that made it possible.

The investigation into “Hondurasgate,” which includes voice messages from Asfura following private meetings at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, reveals plans to establish a new U.S. military base in Honduras, expand private “economic development” zones, and encourage investment by U.S. artificial intelligence companies.

According to the investigation, Asfura’s election was intended as a transitional step before an alleged plan backed by the United States and Israel to have Hernández take power in the upcoming presidential elections.

In a January 20 voice note, Hernández said that “the prime minister of Israel is going to support us.” He added that “they [the Israelis] had everything to do with my departure and negotiation,” referring to Trump’s pardon.

In a March 14 voice message, Hernández credited the money for his pardon to “a group of rabbis and people who supported Israel.”

The investigation also includes messages from Hernández to the president of the National Congress of Honduras, Tomás Zambrano, in which the former instructed Zambrano to undermine Asfura’s power with Israeli support.

“I sent you the people of Israel; they sent you money. I’m the one doing the lobbying,” the former president said.

The plan extends beyond Honduras.

The investigation also included conversations between Hernández and Asfura about creating a “digital journalism unit” funded by the Honduran government and the U.S.-backed Argentine president, Javier Milei, to launch media attacks against the governments of Colombia and Mexico.

The second installment from the investigators includes a recording of an alleged conversation between Hernández, Asfura, and his vice president, María Antonieta Mejía. The goal would be to undermine the governments of Claudia Sheinbaum and Gustavo Petro.

In the conversation between Hernández and Asfura, the former president tells the Honduran leader that he needs $150,000 to rent an apartment in the United States, where he plans to set up an office for a digital journalism unit. This unit would “publish information about Manuel Zelaya,” who accused Trump of “protecting the plunderer of the state,” referring to Hernández’s pardon last November, and about Xiomara Castro, who served as president until handing power to Asfura. “Someone else here, from the U.S. president’s team, will handle it for me. Well, he’s one of the Republicans who are helping us. They’re going to set up a news site for us.”

Asfura’s response is: “I’m going to transfer it from a friend’s account. Let’s see if they can give it to you in cash, but explain to me, what are we going to do with it, what do we gain?” Hernández replies: “We’re going to set up a cell, Mr. President. From here, from the United States, an information cell, so they can’t track us there in Honduras. It’s going to be like a Latin American news site. I was on a call with President Javier Milei, and it was successful. Very, very, very good, and I think that at this point we can do great things for all of Latin America. There are some cases coming up against Mexico, some cases coming up against Colombia, and, most importantly, against Honduras, against the Zelaya family.”

“Also, I think you need a little more money for yourself. So we’re going to send another $150,000. And that way, you can survive a little longer. “We’re going to take it from INSEP [Secretariat of Infrastructure and Public Services],” Asfura says. On the same topic, in another alleged communication between the former Honduran president and the current vice president, Hernández emphasizes the importance of having that liquidity, “with the support of some Republicans,” to “attack and eradicate the cancer of the left” in Honduras and throughout Latin America.

“I was telling President Asfura that we were able to speak with Javier Milei, and he’s also contributing $350,000. Another great friend of ours from Mexico is also providing support, specifically for the Mexican community. We’re pretty much ready and hoping this moves forward quickly,” Hernández added.

For her part, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, during her morning press conference this Wednesday, said she listened to the audio recordings and reviewed part of the news reports. The Mexican president again sent a message to Isabel Díaz Ayuso, regional premier of Madrid, who is currently on a tour in Mexico as part of an international right-wing network linked to groups in Spain, the United States, and Argentina that spread fake news because “they don’t like Mexican humanism” and “prefer to worship Hernán Cortés.”

“They can set up a smear campaign office against our government in Honduras, using resources from a friendly nation. It won’t affect us, not at all. There may be days of confusion, but if we remain true to our principles, know what we must do within the framework of our Constitution and the laws, and respect sovereignty, no one will be able to undermine the transformation project. It’s that clear,” Sheinbaum stated.

Meanwhile, in September 2025, the U.S. government announced its intention to revoke Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s visa after he joined a pro-Palestine demonstration in New York City and urged U.S. soldiers to “not point their guns at people” and to “disobey Trump’s orders.”

For his part, Argentine President Javier Milei has promoted relations between Israel and Argentina with U.S. support, fostering economic cooperation and announcing plans to move the Argentine embassy to Jerusalem.

Israel has a long history of interventionism in Latin America.

Latin American presidents such as Gustavo Petro, Lula da Silva, and Sheinbaum herself have opposed Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people. However, they have been among the few to speak out in recent years.

In contrast, the region’s right wing has always maintained ties with Israel. As president of Brazil (2019–2022), Jair Bolsonaro expanded security cooperation with the Israeli military and visited the Western Wall alongside Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Argentine President Javier Milei (who calls himself a “fan of Israel”) promised to move Argentina’s embassy to Jerusalem and pledged to maintain his “unwavering commitment to the State of Israel and its people in the fight against Islamic terrorism, for peace and freedom.”

The relationship between Latin America and the Middle East dates back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when waves of Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese immigrants left the crumbling Ottoman Empire and settled in South and Central America. Today, their descendants number in the tens of millions, including approximately 700,000 Palestinians. While this diaspora has strengthened support for Palestine, the region’s solidarity is rooted in more than just ancestry. Latin America has suffered the same tactics of state terrorism that Palestine faces at the hands of regimes armed, trained, and advised by Israel.

Israel proved to be an indispensable ally to the dictatorships and military juntas that ravaged Latin America in the late 20th century. For example, Israel’s oldest ally in the region is Nicaragua, where the ruling Somoza dynasty provided weapons and diplomatic cover to the Haganah (a militia of Zionist settlers) between 1939 and 1948. In return, Israel began selling automatic weapons, tanks, and military aircraft to the autocracy in the 1950s. Inspired by the examples of Algeria and Cuba, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) was founded in 1961 to lead a revolution against the regime.

Similarly, the largest single recipient of Israeli arms in Latin America during the Cold War was Argentina’s fascist military junta. After seizing power in 1976, the regime launched the so-called “Dirty War” against students, intellectuals, trade unionists, human rights activists, journalists, and anyone else suspected of leftist sympathies. Between 1978 and 1983, Israel sold more than $1 billion in military equipment to the junta, during whose rule more than 30,000 people were murdered. Among those kidnapped, tortured, and executed, Argentine Jews were disproportionately represented. Investigations later revealed that the regime murdered 2,000 Argentine Jews, while Tel Aviv’s arms sales to Argentina continued uninterrupted.

And in Guatemala, Israel’s role became evident after the United States suspended military aid in 1977, and Tel Aviv became the government’s primary source of arms and training. General Benedicto Lucas García, later prosecuted for mass killings, stated that “we consider the Israeli soldier to be the best soldier in the world today, and we take him as a model and example.”

So, while the findings of Hondurasgate do not tell a new story, they do show how, in the end, decisions regarding much of Western international policy, both within and outside Latin America, have always been in the hands of Tel Aviv.

The definition of democracy, in the strictest sense, is the granting of the right to have a say to the people. This entails electing their representatives and the opportunity to shape the constitution. It does not, however, mean that voters’ wishes are always carried out, but it does guarantee their right to express those wishes.

That fundamental right is officially at risk in the United States.

In a 6-3 ruling last Wednesday, the Supreme Court significantly restricted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Since the Civil Rights Movement, Section 2 of the law has broadly prohibited voting discrimination based on race. The provision requires the use of race-conscious data in redistricting to protect minorities’ voting power.

However, in a conservative-majority court, the use of race in the redistricting process has been called into question.

The Court’s ruling on Louisiana.

Wednesday’s ruling came in a case involving Louisiana’s redistricting. The case reached the Court after the state created a district that elected its second Black representative to Congress. The Court’s decision held that the map constituted unconstitutional gerrymandering because it took race into account when drawing the lines.

In an opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court’s conservative majority held that the Voting Rights Act provision in question, Section 2, was designed to protect voters from intentional discrimination.

In other words, after achieving a redistricting plan that provided fair representation to a community where one-third of the population is Black, the state is arguing that race cannot be used to determine the representation of its voters, using the argument of civil rights against the community itself.

“It means that you have entire communities that can go without having representation,” said Cliff Albright, a co-founder of the group Black Voters Matter. “It is literally throwing us back to the Jim Crow era unapologetically, and that’s not an exaggeration.”

And it isn’t.

An ‘insurmountable barrier.’

On August 6, 1965, five months after “Bloody Sunday,” when civil rights protesters were brutally attacked in Selma, Alabama, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the legislation known as the Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed a voice for communities of color.

Until then, Republican-majority states had used all sorts of arguments to prevent Black and Brown people from voting and electing their representatives. The new law put provisions in place to prohibit this. One of them, Section 2, is the one the Supreme Court is now challenging.

Justice Elena Kagan, in her dissent, said the requirement to prove intentional discrimination is “an almost insurmountable barrier” for challenges to voting rights issues seeking to prove discrimination.

A dangerously timely ruling.

“We’re witnessing the evisceration of America’s greatest legislative landmark at the hands of a far-right Supreme Court,” said Democratic U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York.

Maria Teresa Kumar, president of Voto Latino, said the decision will allow for more aggressive “cracking and packing” of populations to dilute their votes, “not just in congressional districts but also in state legislatures, county commissions, school boards, and city councils.”

The decision comes at a time when Donald Trump’s administration is facing historically low approval ratings, when a handful of conservatives loyal to the administration are taking over the media, and when constitutional guarantees are at risk.

Many people are calling it a “betrayal” as California plans to share detailed information about driver’s license holders with an outside group. This includes immigrants who do not have legal authorization to live in the U.S.

For over ten years, California and 18 other states have encouraged undocumented people to get driver’s licenses to improve public safety and help the economy. Economists say these laws increase economic activity, add billions in tax revenue, and make communities safer because people without legal status may feel safer reporting crimes.

More than one million people have obtained driver’s licenses in California under Assembly Bill 60, a law passed in 2013. The law prohibits the state from using information obtained during the licensing process to determine a person’s citizenship.

But the multi-state verification system can show if someone is undocumented. A manual obtained by CalMatters says the database will include the last five digits of a person’s Social Security number. If someone does not have one, states can use “99999” as a placeholder.

Civil rights advocates are raising concerns. They say this move “breaks a promise” California made ten years ago when it started giving permits to undocumented immigrants. Now, over a million people could face a higher risk of deportation.

Advocates say that after a recent meeting with the California DMV and Governor Newsom’s office, they learned that if the state does not share the data, the Department of Homeland Security might stop accepting California permits and IDs at airports.

All they need is a Social Security number.

CalMatters reported that four advocacy groups at the meeting said the shared information will show if someone has a Social Security number. This could be used to identify people who are in the country without legal status.

The state plans to give the information to the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, a nonprofit run by DMV officials from around the country. The information provided to the association will be incorporated into the group’s interstate verification system and its platform, SPEXS, which allows DMVs and contractors working with them to verify whether someone holds more than one driver’s license issued in their name. Sharing this data allows agencies that issue driver’s licenses to confirm that a person does not hold duplicate licenses in multiple states.

In the future, a database like this could be used for mobile driver’s licenses on iPhones, online age checks for adult content, or even chatbots.

But advocates worry that federal immigration officials might try to get large amounts of this data and use missing Social Security numbers to target people for deportation.

The state, for its part, assures there will be safeguards.

The association told the state it will add security measures to stop mass searches of unauthorized immigrant driver’s license holders and block access by Border Patrol and ICE, according to people at the DMV and the governor’s office briefing. Still, many remain skeptical.

“Once this data is uploaded to AAMVA, it’s out of California’s control, no matter what California wants, no matter what protests we may make,” said Ed Hasbrouck of the San Francisco civil liberties group The Identity Project, who was on the briefing call.

Similarly, in a statement to the Washington Examiner, a spokeswoman for Newsom asserted that claims the data sharing could negatively affect undocumented immigrants “are lies.”

“CalMatters got it wrong. Their reporting hurts vulnerable Californians by manufacturing fear and panic with lies,” the spokeswoman said. “California continues to lead in supporting immigrant families and protecting personal data from federal overreach.”

This warning has been building for a long time.

As the Examiner explained, the news comes at a time when the California DMV has faced months of criticism from both the Trump administration and state officials. Several states are engaging in “systemic noncompliance” with regulations regarding commercial driver’s licenses for non-residents.

California and other DMVs across the country have been “illegally” issuing commercial driver’s licenses that allow truckers to remain on the road and retain that privilege after their legal status or work permits have expired, among other issues, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

In January, the secretary said he would withhold $160 million in federal funds allocated to California after the state refused to revoke 17,000 licenses. In a March update, the California DMV indicated that the government is revoking 13,000 commercial driver’s licenses held by non-residents, effective immediately.

It won’t be cheap

To move forward with sharing data, the California Legislature must approve $55 million for the DMV’s costs. Lawmakers may also need to change the current law, which says Social Security numbers collected by the DMV can only be shared to address unpaid taxes, parking tickets, or child support.

A spokesperson for the governor’s office would not confirm details of the call or respond to the specific concerns raised by advocates.

“California continues to lead in supporting immigrant families and protecting personal data from federal overreach,” the spokesperson, Diana Crofts-Pelayo, wrote in an email. “The state has taken the same approach to protect Californians’ data during the Real ID implementation, while maintaining Real ID compliance for the benefit of all Californians.”

Ian Grossman, executive director of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, told CalMatters that participation in the verification system is voluntary and that only authorized state employees or contractors have access to it, that bulk searches are currently not permitted, and that all searches must include specific information about an individual, such as their name and date of birth.

The state’s past actions do not inspire confidence.

CalMatters reported last year and again this year on cases in which local law enforcement violated state law and shared information collected by automatic license plate readers with ICE or Border Patrol agents.

The DMV and the governor’s office say the association will notify California of requests from any entity other than a participating state, including attempts to subpoena the database for information on California license holders, giving the state the opportunity to challenge the subpoenas or intervene in other requests. But if a subpoena is accompanied by a gag order, the association would be unable to provide such notification.

An agreement between the association and the California DMV obtained by CalMatters states that the association will inform California “if legally permitted” if it receives a subpoena “to release, disclose, discuss, or obtain access to S2S information.”

However, for Tracy Rosenberg, advocacy director at Oakland Privacy, who participated in the call, the questions remain unanswered.

“It’s unclear how extreme the danger people are being put into by this decision, but there’s no doubt we told people with AB 60 licenses this would never happen. But it’s happening, and that’s a direct betrayal,” she said.

A new precedent-setting decision from the Board of Immigration Appeals, an administrative court within the Justice Department, says that having active DACA status is not, by itself, sufficient to terminate deportation proceedings. In other words, the federal government has made it easier to keep Dreamers in removal proceedings even while they still hold the very status that was supposed to shield them from deportation.

NPR reported that the ruling came in the case of Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago and sends her case back to an immigration judge for further review. El País also reported that the decision gives fresh momentum to the deportation of DACA recipients under Trump’s second term.

The ruling does not mean every DACA recipient will be deported tomorrow. It does, however, mean that one of the clearest practical assumptions about DACA has been weakened by the administration’s own court apparatus. NPR reported that the BIA found an immigration judge had erred by terminating Santiago’s case solely because she had active DACA status. This means DACA can still exist on paper while offering less protection in practice. And that is exactly the kind of bureaucratic rollback immigrant advocates have been warning about for months.

As of September 2025, about 505,900 people in the United States had active DACA status, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Mexico accounts for by far the largest share, followed by El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. At the same time, California, Texas, Illinois, Florida, and New York remain the states with the largest DACA populations.

The Santiago case shows exactly how precarious this has become.

According to NPR, Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago’s case drew national attention after she was detained by Customs and Border Protection officers while boarding a domestic flight at the El Paso airport in August. She spent weeks in immigration detention before a federal judge ordered her release, and she has been fighting deportation through the immigration court system ever since.

The BIA ruling does not automatically result in her deportation. Still, it does side with the Department of Homeland Security on the key point that DACA status alone does not justify shutting down removal proceedings. That is the precedent that now reaches far beyond her case.

Over the last year, attorneys for ICE and DHS have increasingly appealed decisions to the BIA, and the board backed government lawyers in 97% of publicly posted cases. Similarly, the board has also made it harder for immigration courts to offer bond in lieu of detention, and easier to deport migrants to countries other than their own. It is operating alongside a proposed regulation that would make immigration appeals harder overall.

That is why Congressmember Delia Ramirez’s warning is bone-chilling.

Speaking to Democracy Now!, Ramirez called the BIA ruling “very concerning” and described it as part of a larger effort to “weaponize the court system” against immigrants. She also pointed to the deeper cruelty of the policy, which is that many DACA recipients have been here since they were toddlers or young teenagers and know no other home but the United States.

DACA recipients were brought here as children, built their lives here, and were told for more than a decade that this temporary protection, while fragile, still meant something. Now the government is using its own administrative courts to drain even that promise of its force.

And if anyone still wants to pretend that active DACA status is functioning like a real shield, the recent case of María de Jesús Estrada Juárez should end that illusion.

The Guardian reported last month that Estrada Juárez, a DACA recipient who had lived in the United States for more than 27 years, was deported to Mexico after being arrested during a green card appointment in Sacramento. A federal judge later ruled that the deportation was unlawful and ordered the government to bring her back.

She described being handcuffed in front of her daughter, deported within 24 hours, and left trying to understand how a system she had tried to follow could turn on her so abruptly.

DACA has always been temporary. It has never provided a path to citizenship or permanent legal status. But that legal fragility is now being used as a weapon.

NPR reported that DHS had already begun urging DACA recipients to self-deport last year. At the same time, the administration has also moved against their access to benefits such as the federal health care marketplace. Newsweek reported that then Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told senators that 261 DACA recipients were arrested and 86 were removed between January and November of last year.

There is another layer to this story, and it is about the courts themselves.

The Washington Post reported this week that the Justice Department has fired more than 100 immigration judges since Trump returned to office and replaced many of them with new hires who often have less immigration law experience and less training.

According to that reporting, asylum grants have plunged, denials have surged, and former judges and legal experts are warning that due process is being eroded in favor of a judiciary more aligned with the administration’s deportation agenda.

And that is the real story here.

Trump does not always need one dramatic announcement to gut an immigration program. The program still exists, technically. But the floor beneath it keeps giving way.

Wasn’t the war “almost over”? Then why do you need automatic military draft registration?

The last time a military draft was in effect in the United States was in February 1973, during the Vietnam War, the most unpopular war in the nation’s history. Around 1.9 million men were selected for military service between 1964 and 1973. For context, 2.8 million were drafted during World War I, and around 10.1 million were drafted during World War II.

Now, “young, eligible men” will be automatically registered for the military draft pool in the U.S. starting in December as part of a measure no one seems to have read in the defense policy bill Congress signed into law late last year.

According to the Selective Service System’s 2024 report, automatic registration is already in place in 46 states and territories. However, the SSS proposed a rule to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs late last month to implement the practice nationwide, according to CNN.

An educated guess would suggest the Trump administration already knew it wanted to be in a world-scale conflict for a long time, or at least until next year.

However, CNN says “the nationwide measure has no connection to the ongoing war with Iran and was passed with bipartisan support months before the current conflict with the country. But the Trump administration has declined to rule out the possibility of putting U.S. troops on the ground, and the war has led to renewed attention on the draft policy.”

That is, if you believe CNN.

On the other hand, according to The New York Times, government officials are bracing for what experts say are “potential confrontations with China or Russia” at a moment when military recruiting “has slumped.”

What happens now?

First, failing to comply with the draft is a felony, which carries various penalties. According to The New York Times, these include up to five years in prison and the inability to receive certain federal benefits, such as government loans.

The logical reasoning is simple: if you are not planning to wage war, you do not really need a larger army, do you? In fact, in decades past, a country used to be proud of not needing an army at all. However, these are quasi-unprecedented times, right?

This, however, does not mean young, able Americans will be drafted. This is just a preemptive move, “just in case.”

As the Times continues, during a March 8 interview on Fox News, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Trump “does not remove options off the table” when asked what she would tell mothers worried about the draft returning.

Leavitt also said at the time that sending ground troops into Iran was not part of the “current plan.” That was over a month ago, and before the U.S. president drew the world to the edge of its seat in a countdown to a possible nuclear conflict.

Others argue that “even if boots were to be put on the ground, it is very unlikely a draft would return. This is because America already has one of the largest militaries in the world, so currently it doesn’t need any soldiers who don’t already want to be there.”

While the president would be required to get approval from Congress to enact a military draft, which was last used during the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, this could be more about “money and ease.”

As reported by ABC News, in 2024, Representative Chrissy Houlahan noted that automatic registration “saves taxpayers significant money and makes it easier for these men to follow the law and register with the Selective Service.”

Does this change if you are an immigrant?

According to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, “Except as otherwise provided in this title, every male citizen of the United States, and every other male person residing in the United States, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, shall be automatically registered under this Act by the Director of the Selective Service System.”

So, in short, and as Michael Grothaus explained in his column for Fast Company, if you are a man in the United States aged 18 to 26, you will be automatically registered for the draft. And this does not just include U.S. citizens. The Selective Service System says that immigrants and dual-national U.S. citizens must register, along with other cohorts.

However, this is no different from what was already required. Currently, all men ages 18 to 26 must register for the draft. The new rules mean the registration will now be automatic across the country.

Airports are now part of the administration’s broader show of force. According to The Washington Post, ICE officers were sent to at least 14 airports in March, officially to help with crowd control, exit lanes, and line management during TSA staffing shortages. They were not supposed to check IDs or screen passengers. However, their presence still raised obvious concerns because, as immigration lawyers told the Post, ICE officers in an airport still carry the same authority they would have in any other public place.

That means this is the practical question travelers need to answer before they leave for the airport: what can they legally do, what can they not do, and how can they protect themselves and their loved ones without making a bad situation worse?

First, know who you may be dealing with

At airports, you may encounter TSA officers, local airport police, ICE officers, Customs and Border Protection officers, or Homeland Security Investigations agents. The ACLU’s airport enforcement guide notes that at the border or ports of entry, you are especially likely to encounter CBP and sometimes HSI, which is part of ICE.

TSA’s role is security screening. ICE’s role is immigration enforcement. CBP’s authority is broader at ports of entry than ICE’s is in an ordinary domestic airport setting. According to the Post, if ICE officers are simply standing in an airport in their capacity as ICE agents, they have the same authority they would have in any public place, not some magical airport superpower.

The biggest thing to understand: there are no ICE-free zones in the airport

The Post reports that ICE can approach travelers anywhere in the airport, not just at the checkpoint. That includes the terminal, the security line, the gate, or a coffee line. The practical advice from immigration attorney Nicole Hallett: stay aware of your surroundings the entire time you are there, not just while going through security.

For undocumented people, the risk is higher. The ACLU’s guide says noncitizens without current legal status should consider the risks of flying, including on domestic flights, and notes that TSA has provided lists of travelers to ICE.

If ICE approaches you, do not run and do not volunteer more than you have to

According to the Post, if an ICE officer approaches you and starts asking questions, the safest immediate move is not to run. Running may escalate the encounter. Instead, you can calmly say that you are exercising your right to remain silent.

For domestic travel, the Post also notes that, by law, you do not have to carry proof that you are a U.S. citizen or lawful resident. That said, if you are a noncitizen with lawful status and fear profiling, carrying documentation may help resolve an encounter more quickly.

The ACLU’s airport rights guide adds an important distinction. U.S. citizens generally only need to answer questions establishing identity and citizenship. Lawful permanent residents usually only need to answer questions establishing identity and permanent residency. Visa holders and visitors face more risk if they refuse to answer questions, especially at the border.

ICE cannot automatically search your phone just because you are in an airport

According to the Post, ICE officers at an airport cannot, without a warrant, search your carry-on, phone, or laptop simply because they are present in the airport. They can conduct only those kinds of searches if they are acting under the authority of the agency that has that search power in that setting, such as TSA at a domestic checkpoint or CBP at a port of entry.

But at the border, the legal terrain gets much worse. The ACLU’s airport guide says customs officers sometimes ask travelers to unlock devices or provide passwords when entering or leaving the United States. U.S. citizens cannot be denied entry for refusing, though refusal may lead to delays or the seizure of a device. Lawful permanent residents should generally not be denied entry, though delays and confiscation can still occur. Visa holders and tourists face a greater risk if they refuse. If an officer confiscates a phone or laptop, the ACLU says to get a receipt.

So protect your devices before you travel

According to The Intercept, there are a few key things to keep in mind regarding digital security, especially for journalists, organizers, immigrants, or anyone carrying sensitive information.

They suggest that before you leave:

1. Use a strong alphanumeric passcode, not Face ID or fingerprint unlock.

2. Turn biometrics off entirely.

3. Power your phone fully down before security. Do not just lock it.

4. Carry a paper boarding pass if possible, so you do not need to power the device back on in line.

5. Log out of apps you do not need.

6. Delete sensitive chats, files, and contacts from the device you are traveling with.

7. If possible, travel with a clean secondary device instead of your primary phone.

The reasoning is: if authorities get access to your device, the safest device is the one that contains as little as possible. The Intercept also warns that if you refuse to unlock a device, you may be delayed, hassled, or have the device confiscated. That does not mean you lose the right to refuse, but you should prepare for the consequences in advance.

TSA still has limits, too

The ACLU’s airport guide makes clear that TSA officers can screen you and your belongings, but they cannot arrest you. They may search bags further, even if the first screening shows nothing suspicious. Still, they may not select you for a personal search or secondary inspection based on religion, race, national origin, gender, ethnicity, or political beliefs.

If you wear a religious head covering, the ACLU says you have the right to wear it through screening. If TSA insists on further screening, you can request that any pat-down or removal happen in a private area and, where relevant, by someone of your gender.

If you are traveling with children, the ACLU notes that children can opt out of an airport scanner, though there is no blanket exemption from pat-downs. Children under 13 may keep shoes, light jackets, and headwear on during screening. If you are carrying breast milk or formula, TSA must allow it in quantities larger than the standard liquid limit, though it may be inspected or tested.

If you are delayed for a long time, say so clearly

The ACLU guide says that if questioning becomes intrusive or improper, you can ask to speak to a supervisor. If you are being detained for an unusually long period, you should ask to contact an attorney or a legal services organization. If an officer tells you that you are under arrest, or it becomes clear they suspect you of a crime, ask for a lawyer before answering more questions. If you want to invoke your right to remain silent, say it out loud.

What families should do before they leave home:

1. Have one folder, physical or digital, with the documents you may need.

2. Memorize or write down at least one emergency phone number.

3. Decide in advance who will be called if someone is detained.

4. Tell your loved ones your flight number, route, and departure and arrival times.

5. If someone in your family is undocumented or has a precarious status, talk honestly about the risk before traveling at all.

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear one of the most consequential immigration cases in years. On paper, it is about whether Donald Trump can use an executive order to end automatic citizenship for some babies born in the United States. In practice, it is about something much larger: whether the Court is willing to reopen one of the country’s most settled constitutional guarantees, and in doing so create a new class of children whose legal status would depend on who their parents are.

Trump’s order, signed on his first day back in office, says children born in the U.S. would no longer automatically be citizens if their parents are undocumented or in the country temporarily, including on student or work visas. Lower courts have uniformly blocked the order from taking effect, and the Supreme Court agreed to take the case before the appeals process had fully played out. A decision is expected by late June or early July.

What the Court is actually being asked to decide

The formal question is whether Trump’s order is consistent with the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, which says that all persons born in the United States and “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens. For more than a century, that clause has been understood to cover nearly everyone born on U.S. soil, with only narrow exceptions such as the children of diplomats and foreign enemies. That understanding was cemented by the Supreme Court’s 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.

The Trump administration is asking the justices to adopt a much narrower reading. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argues that the 14th Amendment was meant to protect freed slaves and their children, not the children of people in the country unlawfully or temporarily, and that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” should be read to require a more complete form of allegiance to the United States. Opponents say that it is an attempt to rewrite settled law by executive order.

That is the clean constitutional fight. But there is a second path the justices could take.

The quieter issue that could decide the whole case

As The Hill points out, the Court does not necessarily have to resolve the full constitutional question tomorrow. Congress codified birthright citizenship in federal law in 1940, and then again in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, using language that closely tracks the 14th Amendment. That gives the justices a narrower off-ramp: they could rule that Trump’s order conflicts with federal statute even if they avoid saying anything sweeping about the Constitution itself.

That point is crucial because this Court, and Chief Justice John Roberts in particular, has sometimes preferred narrower rulings when a broader constitutional one is not strictly necessary. A statutory ruling would still block Trump’s order. It would also let the Court sidestep, at least for now, a frontal collision with more than a century of constitutional understanding.

Of course, that would not end the politics. It would simply move the fight back to Congress, where Republicans have spent years trying to restrict birthright citizenship and where support for that effort has grown, even if the legislation still has not moved.

The administration’s argument is not just aggressive. It is historically loaded.

There is another reason this case feels so ominous. According to The Washington Post, the Trump administration’s Supreme Court brief leans in part on arguments advanced by late-19th-century figures such as Alexander Porter Morse, Francis Wharton, and George D. Collins, men whose campaigns against birthright citizenship were steeped in anti-Black and anti-Chinese racism. Scholars quoted by the Post say the administration is reviving ideas that emerged from efforts to narrow Reconstruction-era citizenship and keep Chinese immigrants and their children outside the national body politic.

That historical backdrop matters because it clarifies what is being presented as a technical dispute about constitutional meaning. The argument Trump is pushing did not emerge from some neutral, long-lost legal tradition. It grew out of an older effort to decide that some people born here still did not belong here.

That does not automatically decide the case. But it tells you something about what kind of history the administration has chosen to elevate, and why so many legal historians hear alarm bells in this brief.

John Eastman is back in the room, even if his name is not on the brief

And then there is the man behind the theory.

According to Politico, John Eastman has been trying to end birthright citizenship for decades. Long before he became nationally known for helping devise Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Eastman was writing op-eds, law review articles, and testimony arguing that the 14th Amendment does not guarantee citizenship to virtually everyone born on U.S. soil. Politico describes him as the longtime intellectual engine behind this effort, even though the administration’s briefs do not openly credit him.

In short, the same lawyer whose legal theories became shorthand for constitutional extremism after 2020 is also the leading evangelist for this one. That does not make the administration’s argument legally impossible on its own. But it does tell you what ideological ecosystem it comes from, and how long this project has been waiting for the right Court and the right presidency to try again.

The babies keep disappearing from the argument

One of the sharpest critiques of this case came from NPR, which noted how rarely the people most directly affected are centered in the debate. According to Bruce Lesley of First Focus on Children, this is “birth” right citizenship. This is about babies. But public argument around the case has focused instead on administrative burdens, historical meaning, political allegiance, and immigration deterrence.

NPR reports that under the current system, babies born in U.S. hospitals are automatically folded into a network of legal and administrative protections: Social Security numbers, Medicaid eligibility, food benefits, and continuity of care. If birthright citizenship were narrowed, every family could be forced into a proof regime that does not currently exist, with the citizenship of newborns depending on documents, parental status, and bureaucratic determinations made at the most vulnerable moment in a child’s life.

Regarding the consequences, NPR notes that around 3.6 million babies are born in the U.S. each year, and that all parents, not just immigrant parents, could face new documentation hurdles if automatic citizenship disappears. Lawyers have also warned of especially chaotic outcomes for babies with unknown fathers, foundlings, children born through surrogacy or assisted reproductive technology, and families whose records are incomplete or destroyed.

In the end, once you make citizenship at birth conditional, you are no longer simply arguing about constitutional text. You are building a bureaucracy of suspicion around newborns.

How many children are actually at stake

Similarly, CBS reports that the Migration Policy Institute and Penn State’s Population Research Institute estimate more than 250,000 babies each year would be affected by Trump’s order. California Attorney General Rob Bonta told CBS that between 20,000 and 24,000 babies in California alone could lose citizenship annually, while states would also lose federal funding tied to children’s eligibility for programs such as Medicaid and CHIP.

And the concern does not stop with future births. Advocates told CBS that if the Court accepts the administration’s reading of the Citizenship Clause, it could invite broader challenges to the citizenship of millions of Americans and fuel even more aggressive efforts to question who belongs. That is why opponents keep stressing that this case is not just about one executive order. It is about whether the Court opens the door to a much wider culture of doubt about citizenship.

Public opinion is split, but not in a simple way

NPR’s latest survey round-up shows the politics here are more complicated than the White House would like. General support for birthright citizenship remains relatively strong when people are asked about it as a constitutional principle, but support drops sharply when poll questions focus specifically on undocumented parents or temporary visitors. The divide is also steeply partisan and racialized: Democrats, younger voters, Black Americans, and Latinos are much more likely to support birthright citizenship, while Republicans, especially white Republicans, are much more likely to oppose it.

That split matters because it helps explain why the administration is pushing so hard on this case. Birthright citizenship is one of those issues where long-settled law collides with a public that is unevenly informed and often responsive to how the question is framed. It is also one of the clearest examples of how immigration politics in the United States works: present a constitutional guarantee as a loophole, describe newborns as incentives, and then ask the Court to do what Congress never quite managed to do.

What tomorrow’s hearing is really about

Tomorrow’s argument is nominally about text, history, and precedent. But the deeper conflict is over what kind of country the Court thinks the 14th Amendment created after the Civil War.

The traditional understanding of birthright citizenship says that if you are born here, you enter the political community here. You are not required to inherit your parents’ legal precarity. You do not begin life having to prove that you belong. That is part of what made the Citizenship Clause so powerful after Dred Scott, and part of why Wong Kim Ark became so central in the first place.

Trump’s order asks the Court to move in the opposite direction. It asks the justices to treat birthplace as insufficient, parental status as decisive, and constitutional bedrock as flexible enough to be narrowed by a president on day one.

We’re starting the week with a contradiction the White House can no longer hide: the spectacle of power is still there, but so are the cracks. From the largest single day of protest in U.S. history to a sudden retreat on Cuba oil and a Pentagon argument that edges toward criminalizing journalism itself, here’s the news we’re watching as the week begins.

The country kept showing up

The third No Kings protest drew more than 8 million people across more than 3,300 events in all 50 states and more than a dozen countries, according to organizers cited by The Guardian. That makes it the largest number of protests in a single day in U.S. history.

What stands out is not only the scale but the geography. Organizers said nearly half of the events took place in traditionally red or battleground states, and more than two-thirds of people who RSVP’d were outside major urban centers. In other words, this was a national warning flare.

The issues pulling people into the street were also tellingly broad: ICE raids, the war in Iran, voting rights threats, trans rights, labor rights, Palestinian solidarity, and the basic question of whether the country is sliding toward something openly authoritarian. In Minnesota, where federal agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti earlier this year, the protest carried the weight of mourning as much as resistance. In New York, the theme was democracy. In Chicago, it was anti-fascism and protection for immigrant and trans communities. Across cities and rural towns alike, the throughline was simple: people are seeing the connections.

That is why the White House response felt so brittle. Dismissing millions of people as participants in “Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions” fell, well, short. It is the language of an administration that knows the backlash is no longer a partisan issue.

Trump blinked on Cuba

After months of trying to choke off fuel to Cuba, Trump said Sunday he would not stop a Russian tanker carrying oil to the island. According to The Washington Post, the Hong Kong-flagged tanker was nearing Cuba with Russian-origin fuel when Trump abruptly said he had “no problem” with a country sending oil there.

This comes after the administration had spent months building an effective fuel blockade meant to weaken the Cuban government. Trump had threatened tariffs on countries that supplied Cuba with oil. He had also already cut off Venezuelan fuel exports to the island. The result, according to the Post, was diesel and gasoline shortages, island-wide blackouts, and the closure of schools and hospitals.

Then, in the now trademarked style of this administration, came the reversal.

On one level, Trump tried to brush it off by claiming Cuba is finished anyway. On the other hand, the climbdown exposed the limit of trying to run a war in Iran, manipulate global energy markets, antagonize Russia, and tighten the screws on Cuba all at once. When your foreign policy is scattershot and overextended, eventually one front gives way.

That is the more interesting part here. The administration wanted the blockade to appear to be a display of dominance. Instead, it ended up looking like another reminder that coercion has consequences, especially when oil prices are already under pressure, and Russia is still willing to test Washington’s nerve.

The Pentagon wants fear to do the censoring

The administration’s assault on the press also kept moving.

According to The Intercept, a federal judge struck down the Pentagon’s restrictions on journalists seeking “unauthorized” information, siding with The New York Times. The Pentagon responded by reissuing essentially the same restrictions with cosmetic changes and pledging an immediate appeal.

The more chilling part is the legal theory underneath it. As The Intercept reported, the Justice Department argued that while journalists may ask authorized Pentagon personnel questions, they can be accused of soliciting a crime if they ask nonpublic information from officials who are not supposed to disclose it. Put plainly, the government is pushing the idea that asking the wrong question to the wrong official could itself be criminal.

For years, administrations have tried to route journalists through official spokespeople and choke off unscripted access. This move, however, goes further. It tries to shift the burden of censorship onto reporters themselves, forcing them to behave as if the government’s internal gag rules are now their legal problem, too.

And January 6 keeps coming back dressed as public service

Meanwhile, in Florida, one of the men most closely associated with the visual humiliation of January 6 is trying to turn notoriety into office.

The Washington Post profiled Adam Johnson, the man photographed carrying Nancy Pelosi’s lectern through the Capitol Rotunda on January 6, 2021. After serving jail time and receiving a presidential pardon, he is now running for a seat on the Board of Commissioners in Manatee County.

The profile is disturbing for reasons that go beyond one race. Johnson has rarely voted, still doubts the 2020 election was fair, and now treats his role in January 6 as both a joke and a brand asset. His campaign logo is a silhouette of him carrying the lectern. He calls that day “a good day.” He says it offers “free marketing.”

And that sums it up. January 6 is no longer something many on the right feel compelled to explain away. It is becoming a credential, a meme, a low-level launching pad into public office. What was once supposed to disqualify someone from democratic life is being folded back into politics as a matter of personality.

And if that sounds familiar, it should. The administration is doing something similar in court this week as it asks the Supreme Court to revisit birthright citizenship using arguments, The Washington Post reports, that rely in part on figures steeped in anti-Black and anti-Chinese racism.

That is the broader story right now. This is not just a government trying to govern badly. It is a government trying to normalize the ugliest parts of its project by laundering them through repetition, legal process, and spectacle.

One more thing to keep in mind this week

We’ll also be publishing a Survival Guide on what travelers need to know about ICE officers at airports, as the administration continues folding immigration enforcement into ordinary public life.

That is where we are. Millions in the streets, a blockade that wobbled, a Pentagon trying to scare reporters out of doing their jobs. And a January 6 meme candidate asking voters to call it all “normal.”

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers have gone without pay for 40 days as a partial government shutdown drags on. TSA is housed under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Senate is in a stalemate over DHS funding, with Democrats demanding accountability for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

As the shutdown drags on, Democrats have attempted 11 times to fund TSA separately, and Republicans have voted against it each time. Republicans have tried to reach a deal, but President Donald Trump demanded that Republican senators keep up the shutdown. There is a lot going on here, so let’s break it down.

President Donald Trump is threatening extraordinary actions to sidestep the Senate

The president is not immune to public perception and pressure. President Trump is known to walk back policies or comments when he sees that they are unpopular. After all, he has made a career of wanting to be liked and caring what people think about him. The mounting pressure to alleviate the long lines and wait times at airports is starting to make President Trump crack.

According to the Associated Press, the president is considering declaring a national emergency to force DHS to pay TSA workers. The move is a desperate attempt to end a partial government shutdown that is hurting the president’s polling numbers.

The president posted to Truth Social that he wants to end the chaos at the airports, and he is prepared to do whatever it takes to end the pain he has caused.

“It’s not an easy thing to do, but I am going to do it!” the president wrote.

Sixty votes are required in order for the funding to pass the Senate; senators are ready to get rid of the filibuster. Republicans need Democrats to cross party lines and vote with them to pass it. But by not negotiating in good faith, Democrats have stood strong on their demands.

Democrats are asking to rein in ICE. Democrats want three things: stricter standards around judicial warrants for arrests, ICE agents wearing body cameras, and banning ICE agents from wearing masks. Recent polling shows that Americans want the agency overhauled. Yet, like always, Republicans don’t want to work for the people.

Democrats have attempted to get the TSA paid to end the airport chaos

Democratic senators have offered 11 times to fully fund TSA, separate from the negotiations to fund DHS. Each time, Republicans have voted against the bills, creating an unnecessarily long partial shutdown. The refusal to vote to fund TSA separately has created more chaos in airports across the country. President Trump deployed ICE agents to airports to help with security, but social media posts show ICE agents hanging around like spectators.

“We can pay TSA workers right here, right now,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who offered that latest attempt to fund TSA. “Republicans are more interested in playing political games and holding the rest of DHS hostage than governing and keeping our communities safe!”

Sen. Merkley first sought unanimous consent to fund TSA directly and independently. However, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) refused. Sen. Moreno then blocked Sen. Merkley’s second attempt to fund all of DHS except for ICE and CBP so TSA workers can get paid and negotiations can continue.

Previously, Democrats and Republicans came to an agreement to fund all of DHS, minus ICE and CBP. Republicans said they could fund ICE later with a reconciliation. This would be along party lines, guaranteeing desired funding for ICE. President Trump told Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) no deal. The decision means that President Trump personally blocked pay for TSA workers.

Even Republicans have blamed President Trump for the prolonged shutdown

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) explained in a recent interview that a deal had been reached to partially fund DHS. The bipartisan deal was seen as a victory within the Senate, but President Trump didn’t like it. Republicans were prepared to accept the deal.

“[W]e would offer a bill for reconciliation where we don’t need any Democratic votes to do whatever we wanted to do with ICE. And that way we’re out of the shutdown, and DHS is back open,” Sen Kennedy said in the interview. “Senator Thune submitted that to President Trump, as is his right. He said no. No deals with the Democrats. It would’ve worked. We could’ve had TSA paid by the end of the week. But the president said no deal.”

Whether or not he meant to, Sen. Kennedy single-handedly disproved that Republican talking point that Democrats are to blame for the TSA chaos. In one interview, he admitted that Democrats were willing to fund TSA, but President Trump wasn’t done with his political theater.

A Mexican teenager died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. Royer Perez-Jimenez, 19, was found unresponsive in a Florida detention facility in the early morning hours of March 16. His death was announced in a press release from ICE dated March 18. The teenager’s death is raising more questions about detention facility conditions. Here’s what we know about Perez-Jimenez’s death and the trend of people dying in ICE custody.

A teenager is dead after being detained by ICE

Royer Perez-Jimenez, a Mexican national, is the youngest person who has died in ICE custody during President Donald Trump’s second term. The teenager was being held at the Glades County Detention Center in Moore Haven, Florida. According to a press release, Perez-Jimenez was found unconscious and unresponsive by a detention officer at 2:34 a.m. in his room. He was declared dead at 2:51 a.m., but an investigation into the death is ongoing.

According to ICE, Perez-Jimenez is presumed to have died from suicide. Perez-Jimenez was arrested on Jan. 21 by the Edgewater Police Department. He was charged with misdemeanor fraud for impersonation and misdemeanor resisting an officer. He was placed into an ICE detainer on Jan. 22 and was transferred to ICE custody on Feb. 21. ICE transported him to the Glades County Detention Center on Feb. 26.

“At intake, Perez was evaluated by medical staff,” reads the press release. “He denied any behavioral health issues or concerns and answered ‘no’ to all suicide screening questions.”

Perez-Jimenez’s death is drawing more attention to poor conditions in Florida immigration detention centers

A report from multiple civil rights and advocacy groups released in January looked specifically at the conditions of the Glades County Detention Center. The report found that the detention center posed a serious risk to people’s health. Along with the misuse of industrial chemical disinfectant, the report found that detainees were at risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. Most troubling, ICE agents regularly used pepper spray as a form of punishment, adding more irritants to the air.

“This is just one of several immigration detention facilities in Florida in recent years in which we’ve seen a troubling disregard for the health of people detained or the surrounding environment,” Dominique Burkhardt, Earthjustice attorney, said in a statement. “The courageous effort by advocates and those detained to expose these conditions is vital in an immigration detention system that would otherwise operate as a black box.”

There have been concerns about the conditions of immigration detention centers for years. Activists have been calling attention to the subpar sleeping accommodations, chemical pollutants, and general unhygienic conditions.

This isn’t the first ICE custody death this year

There have been at least 10 deaths in ICE custody so far in 2026. Others who have died in custody include Victor Manuel Díaz, 36; Heber Sanchez Domínguez, 34; Luis Beltrán Yanez–Cruz, 68; Luis Gustavo Núñez Caceres, 42; Jairo Garcia-Hernandez, 27; Lorth Sim, 59; Mohammad Nazeer Paktiawal, 41; Emanuel Cleeford Damas, 56; Pejman Karshenas Najafabadi, 59; and Alberto Gutiérrez Reyes, 48.

Forty-two people have died in ICE custody so far in President Trump’s second term, a record number. ICE officials have denied the claim. However, ICE detentions have skyrocketed under President Trump’s second term. According to data, the number of people in ICE custody peaked at more than 70,000 in January 2026.

The current federal government has put a lot of focus on mass arrests, detention, and deportations at the expense of people’s lives. Perez-Jimenez is the latest victim, but likely will not be the last of President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The federal government has poured tens of billions into immigration detention, expanded the number of facilities at breakneck speed, and helped entrench private prison companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group even further into the machinery of enforcement.

Behind them sit some of the largest financial firms in the world, holding major stakes, while immigrants with no criminal convictions fill detention beds and deaths in custody rise.

Meanwhile, the same administration escalating this crackdown is also starving farms, trucking, and other sectors of the immigrant labor that keep the economy moving.

Renouncing your United States citizenship isn’t a common thing for people to do. According to data, between 5,000 and 6,000 people renounce their citizenship, and the State Department wants to make it easier. In a recent rule change, the cost of renouncing your U.S. citizenship is now $450. The announcement comes at a time when the federal government has been trying to get rid of birthright citizenship and threatening to strip people of their citizenship.

Renouncing your U.S. citizenship has never been cheaper

The State Department just dropped the cost of renouncing your U.S. citizenship from $2,350 to $450. That is an 80 percent drop in the financial cost of walking away from your citizenship. It is now back down to the original price it cost in 2010 when the U.S. started to charge citizens to renounce their citizenship. The price increased to $2,350 in 2015 when requests surged due to the changing tax responsibility for U.S. citizens living abroad.

“Many reported spending hundreds or thousands of dollars a year on tax professionals, even when they might have no U.S. tax liabilities,” an official for the State Department said, according to The New York Times. “Some stated that despite being required to comply with U.S. tax laws, they received and/or benefited from few of the services for which their taxes were collected.”

The drop in price is due to unrelenting legal pressure from the Association of Accidental Americans, which is based in France. The organization represents people living abroad who are U.S. citizens simply due to being born in the U.S. The organization filed several lawsuits questioning the constitutionality of the fee. There is a current lawsuit pending that argues that there should be no fee to renounce your citizenship.

“The Association of Accidental Americans welcomes this decision, which acknowledges the necessity of making this fundamental right accessible to all,” Fabien Lehagre, the president of the Association of Accidental Americans, said in a statement. “This victory is the direct result of six years of relentless legal action and advocacy.”

There are implications for anyone who renounces their U.S. citizenship

Renouncing your U.S. citizenship comes with implications. Once someone renounces their citizenship, they lose all rights that are given to citizens. First, people who give up their citizenship lose the right to enter, work, and live in the U.S. In the eyes of the government, once you renounce your citizenship, you are seen as a foreign national. It is seen as a permanent, irrevocable process, so don’t take it lightly.

For high-income individuals, the financial liabilities to renounce their citizenship keep growing. Currently, people who make $2 million+ net worth or $190k+ average annual income tax for 2024/2025 have to pay capital gains taxes on all property they own abroad. This is called an “exit tax.”

People are also required to file a specific tax form as their final tax return for the year they renounce. Renouncing your citizenship doesn’t wipe away tax liability debt. After all, the U.S. government wants to make sure it gets its money.

It is also important not to renounce, if you want, before having citizenship in another country. There is a risk of becoming stateless, which leaves you limited in how you can travel or receive government protection.

Renouncing your citizenship is not an easy process and requires the person to confirm multiple times that they understand the implications. The new fees are effective on April 13.

The 2026 midterms are heating up across the country. Democrats are over-performing and defeating Republicans. The political world is buzzing with new data and polling, shifting the likelihood of races into new territory. This also means that there is a lot of drama starting to show itself in some races.

The recent election results show a shift towards the Democratic Party, and it is putting some seats in danger of flipping away from Republicans. We live in a time, politically, where being an incumbent comes as extra baggage rather than an advantage. It has led to some wild political moves. Here are some of the elections that we are watching after some sudden shifts caused drama.

Montana: Senate Race

The Montana Senate race took a turn on March 4 when Republican incumbent Sen. Steve Daines withdrew from the race three minutes before the filing deadline. He then endorsed Kurt Alme, a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Montana. Many in the political world see right through the façade and call the move a trick to allow Alme to file to run while keeping other candidates out of the race.

By waiting until the last minute and essentially choosing a successor, Sen. Daines is putting his finger on the scale. The maneuver shut out Democrats from mounting a strong challenger in the now open Senate race. Independent candidate Seth Bodnar is capitalizing on the drama Sen. Daines created. Before the announcement, Sen. Daines held a sizable lead, and the story was that Republicans would hold onto the Senate seat.

However, the decision could put the seat into play for the 2026 midterm elections, costing Republicans a seat in the Senate. Inside Elections moved the race from Solid Republican to Likely Republican in the aftermath of Sen. Daines’s sudden retirement. President Donald Trump won Montana in 2024 with 58.4 percent of the vote. Sen. Daines intentionally injected uncertainty into the race with potentially far-reaching consequences.

Alaska: Senate Race

Mary Peltola is giving Democrats hope of a potential flip in the Senate. Peltola is no stranger to defying the odds when it comes to politics in Alaska. She won a special election in 2022 after the Republican incumbent Don Young died. She became the first Native Alaskan and woman elected to represent Alaska in Congress. She also became the first person born in Alaska elected to serve in Congress and the first Democrat elected to Congress in Alaska since 1972.

Polling shows Peltola leading the pack in Alaska’s jungle primary and ranked-choice voting system. Peltola's entering the race moved what would have been a Solid Republican seat to Lean Republican across several organizations tracking elections. She is challenging incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan. A recent survey from The Alaska Current shows that Alaska voters are not happy with Sen. Sullivan’s work in the Senate. The survey reports that 41 percent of Alaska voters think the senator should have another term, while 53 percent believe that he should be replaced.

Iowa: Senate Race

Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa threw the Senate race into chaos long before 2026. During a town hall in 2025, Sen. Ernst was asked about Medicaid cuts that were coming as part of the Big Beautiful Bill that Republicans supported. Her response was, “Well, we are all going to die.” The comment landed as well as you would expect. The backlash was swift and severe, eventually forcing Sen. Ernst to announce her retirement from the Senate, a seat she has held since 2015.

With Sen. Ernst out of the race, national Democrats are hopeful that the right candidate could turn Iowa from a Republican state back to a battleground state. Iowa voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Current polling shows a close race with 3 percent between Republican Ashley Hinson and Democrat Zach Wahls. Wahls is currently leading in the polls for the Iowa Democratic Senate primary. Cook Political Report names the Senate race in Iowa as Likely Republican, showing a shift towards Democrats.

Texas: Senate Race

The Texas Senate race drama has less to do with party affiliation and more to do with unwavering loyalty to the president over country. Democrat James Talarico won the party’s nomination after the primary election on March 3. However, incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton failed to get 50 percent of the vote in the Republican primary, triggering a runoff election.

Where this gets dicey is AG Paxton’s claim that he will drop out of the race if Sen. Cornyn commits to suspending the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act. Sen. Cornyn had previously stated that he would not support suspending the filibuster for the vote, and it has thrown the Republican Party into chaos over the election. Why? Well, President Trump was set to endorse the incumbent, but he is determined to pass the SAVE Act in an attempt to disenfranchise voters ahead of the midterm elections.

AG Paxton’s announcement leaves President Trump unable to endorse one candidate over the other. On the one hand, he could endorse the incumbent to protect the seat. On the other hand, he can endorse a man who said he would drop out of the race if the incumbent changes his thoughts about the filibuster.

Meanwhile, recent polling shows both Sen. Cornyn and AG Paxton trailing Talarico by very slim margins. Talarico leads Sen. Cornyn 44 to 43, and he leads Paxton 47 to 45. Democrats have been trying to flip a Texas Senate seat for a decade, and this could be their best shot in a long time to turn a statewide seat blue.

Texas: 23rd Congressional District

Running from San Antonio to El Paso, Texas’s 23rd Congressional District is one to watch. Rep. Tony Gonzales has represented the district since 2021. However, a political scandal upended his reelection bid after admitting to an affair with a staffer who committed suicide last year. For months, Rep. Gonzales denied the affair, despite text evidence that he engaged in an inappropriate sexual relationship.

After he dropped out, YouTube personality Brandon Herrera, also known as the “AK Guy,” became the Republican candidate. He was quickly endorsed by President Trump. Herrera has a long history of posting Nazi and gun content on social media. Texas’s 23rd Congressional District includes Uvalde, the site of the Robb Elementary School shooting.

Recent polling shows that Democratic challenger Katy Padilla Stout is within striking distance of Herrera in a district that is largely Latino. Stout is polling at 40 percent compared to Herrera’s 42 percent.

Why do these elections matter?

Democrats are capitalizing on disenchanted voters who are moving away from Republicans. Recent special elections show Democrats over-performing in even the most Republican districts with strong support for President Trump in 2024.

On January 31, 2026, Taylor Rehmet pulled off a major upset for Republicans when he flipped Texas’s 9th Senate District for Democrats. The seat had been held by Republicans since 1992, ending a 34-year streak of Republicans representing the district. Rehmet won the district by 14 points, a dramatic swing from the 20-point victory by Republican Kelly Hancock in 2022. The 34-point swing is largely attributed to the shift of Latino voters back towards Democrats following the 2024 presidential election.

Republicans hold a slim majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives that could disappear after the 2026 midterms. Republican leadership has regularly stated that if Democrats control the Senate and the House, it would be an effective stop to President Trump’s agenda. Americans, according to polling, are unhappy with the president’s job. Fifty-five percent of Americans disapprove of President Trump’s job performance, with factors like the economy, the Iran war, and tariffs dragging down his approval rating.

Independent and Latino voters are shifting to the left. In a survey with Latino business owners by Politico, 42 percent said that their economic situation has gotten worse under President Trump. New data shows that 45 percent of Americans now identify as politically independent, the largest number ever recorded. The shift, however, seems to be favoring Democrats leading into the 2026 midterm elections.

For years, Donald Trump and his team have campaigned on the slogan “America First,” claiming that mass deportations of immigrants would lead to “higher wages with better benefits” and a “100% American workforce.” What they did not realize, among many other things, is that immigrants are the backbone of the American workforce.

In 2025 alone, more than 15,000 farms closed in the U.S. According to USDA data released in February 2026, the number of U.S. farms fell to a total of 1.865 million. This is due in part to a severe economic downturn, along with all the other factors the administration has promoted as a hoax: climate change, declining export demand, and, of course, the importance of farmworkers.

Now, according to The New York Times, the agricultural sector is facing a tight labor market as “farmworkers age and fewer new immigrants and younger Americans are willing to toil in the fields.”

Without saying so outright, the administration has admitted in recent months that immigration raids and the crackdown at the border “have exacerbated the issue.” Their solution? Making it cheaper for farmers to hire immigrant farmworkers on temporary visas.

As the Times reported, although many farmers have welcomed the changes made to the H-2A visa program, others are more radical in their opposition. Either way, “the simmering debate underscores how some of the administration’s top goals — reducing immigration, keeping food prices low, and helping American workers — may inevitably conflict.”

And it seems the administration still doesn’t get it

As if the lesson about the importance of immigrants to the country’s economic engine had not sunk in, some 200,000 immigrant truck drivers will now “begin to lose their commercial driver’s licenses as they expire” under a new Trump administration rule that takes effect Monday.

As reported by NPR, the administration’s rationale for tightening the rules is “following several high-profile crashes involving foreign-born drivers.” The policy, aimed at strengthening safety and enforcement, affects asylum seekers, refugees, and DACA recipients.

“To be clear, states are already barred from issuing commercial driver’s licenses to anyone in the U.S. illegally,” NPR added. “Immigrants with temporary legal status do need work authorization from the federal government in order to qualify for a CDL.”

As of early 2026, approximately 200,000 to more than 720,000 truck drivers in the U.S. are immigrants, with estimates often placing the foreign-born workforce at around 18% to 20% of all drivers. However, a new federal rule in March 2026 banning asylum seekers, refugees, and DACA recipients from obtaining or renewing commercial driver’s licenses is directly affecting about 200,000 of these drivers.

Foreign-born drivers are heavily involved in long-haul and regional freight, helping fill labor shortages

The administration’s new rule is expected to exacerbate driver shortages, increase shipping costs, and raise consumer prices.

As the industry relies heavily on foreign-born labor, companies are already reporting immediate difficulties finding drivers for key routes. That translates into increased shipping costs caused by reduced capacity, which are eventually passed on to consumers.

To be more specific, with foreign-born drivers making up a significant portion of the workforce, removing 200,000 drivers is expected to intensify the current labor shortage, which was already estimated at more than 60,000 drivers.

In California, specifically, the regulations are expected to disrupt the transportation economy, with concerns about the potential loss of 61,000 drivers, according to CalMatters.

Finally, the increased scrutiny has caused fear among immigrant drivers, prompting some to avoid certain routes and potentially leading to further supply chain slowdowns.

So what happens when ideology collides with reality?

In the end, as is highly likely, the government will realize that it has no other workforce as efficient and reliable as the immigrant workforce. Will it regret this decision, just as it did with farmworkers, or will it let the economy collapse while searching for another scapegoat that better suits its rhetoric?