As the legal battle over President Donald Trump's deployment of the California National Guard in Los Angeles continues today in a federal appeals court in San Francisco. And a weekend that saw millions of people turn out in cities nationwide for the 'No Kings' protest, including many immigrant rights supporters, Trump is doubling down on expanding deportations.
In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, Trump called on federal agencies, "ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.
And which states did the president target in his tirade? Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York - sanctuary cities he called, "the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens," he rants."These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and..." I'll spare you the rest, but it's nothing we haven't heard before. Trump has been playing that tune since coming down the elevator at Trump Tower in New York City in 2015.
What does the "largest Mass Deportation Program in History" look like? According to Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and main architect of Trump's immigration policies, it is at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first five months of Trump's second term.
So, it's about meeting quotas, and not about targeting violent criminals.
Trump has called himself "the president of law and order." Which, as I understand it, he enforces the laws of the land. Ensures that the rules and regulations established by the government are obeyed and followed by all. Right?
But it was just last week that Trump posted on Truth Social that he heard from the hotel, agriculture, and leisure industries that his “very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long-time workers away from them” and promised that changes would be made.
CNN reports that Tatum King, an official with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, wrote to regional leaders that same day, telling them to halt investigations of the agriculture industry, including meatpackers, as well as of restaurants and hotels.
The president is juggling a highly combustible combination of political pressures and policy problems, as the White House’s efforts to ramp up deportations spark anger from GOP allies, farmers, and ranchers in the nation’s agricultural areas, which overwhelmingly voted for Trump and yet heavily rely on foreign workers for their food supply, reports Politico.
So, Trump is "the president of law and order" on illegal immigration when it is in his political interest, which is, of course, why he's targeting sanctuary cities, and toning it down in rural areas.
California Governor Gavin Newsom responded to Trump's threats to send federal immigration agents to sanctuary cities via X: "His plan is clear: Incite violence and chaos in blue states, have an excuse to militarize our cities, demonize his opponents, keep breaking the law and consolidate power. It's illegal and we will not let it stand."
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker called the idea “ill-conceived.” NBC Chicago reports Pritzker said, “We do know ICE is coming once again in force to cities across the country, so we expect to see them in Chicago. I don’t know exactly how big the force will be, but I do know he has used other law enforcement along with ICE to carry out his ill-conceived mission to go after people who frankly are paying taxes and they’re law-abiding and they’ve been here for many, many years."
Despite assertions from the Trump administration, enforcement actions haven't primarily targeted individuals with criminal backgrounds. Data from NBC News reveals that among the over 51,000 migrants in ICE detention, fewer than 30% have criminal convictions. In February, nearly half of those deported by the U.S. had no criminal charges or convictions, and more than half of the individuals currently held in the U.S. are also without any charges or convictions.
Being in the United States without legal status is a civil infraction, not a criminal one, according to the American Immigration Council.
Trump's approval rating on immigration is plunging, polling shows. Newsweek reports that pollster G Elliott Morris' tracker shows that Trump's net approval rating on immigration has fallen by almost 7 points since June 8, when it stood at +5.4 points. It now stands at -1.3 points. This represents the fastest decline in his rating since the dip after press coverage of Kilmar Abrego Garcia peaked in April.
The president credits his return to the White House mainly to his promises to curb illegal immigration. However, internal tensions between business-oriented Republicans and immigration hardliners, who aim to target all undocumented immigrants, could jeopardize his position and the GOP's chances in the midterm elections.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.