Democrat Politics

Can you think of two people you would rather see in a cat fight than President Donald Trump and head Federalist Society goblin Leonard Leo? No, you cannot. 

Trump has apparently soured on Leo, at least according to the lengthy screed he posted on Truth Social Thursday night. 

“I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges. I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real ‘sleazebag’ named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions,” he wrote.

Well, he’s not wrong about the “sleazebag” part. 

Trump is furious because one of his own judicial picks was part of the three-judge panel that threw out his ridiculous “Liberation Day” tariffs. But Trump isn’t capable of admitting he made a poor choice in nominating Timothy Reif to the U.S. Court of International Trade in 2018, so it must be someone else’s fault. 

But there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that Reif was a Leo pick. The Court of International Trade has not really been a hotbed of controversy, and nominations are usually not contentious, which was the case with Reif, who was confirmed via voice vote. In fact, the Wall Street Journal made sure that the first thing it reported about Reif was that he was a Democrat who worked in the Obama administration, because conservatives have to spin Reif as a wild-eyed Trump hater. 

Leonard Leo is seen speaking at the 2017 National Lawyers Convention.

What this is really about is that Trump can’t comprehend one of his nominees ruling against him. He treats judicial nominations like a mob boss, expecting perpetual favors for his largesse, so when that doesn’t happen, he’s equal parts confused and outraged. So now he’s going after Leo. 

Leo isn’t being drawn in because he’s not a toddler like Trump, but he did throw some subtle shade in his official statement. 

“There’s more work to be done, for sure, but the Federal Judiciary is better than it’s ever been in modern history, and that will be President Trump’s most important legacy,” he wrote.

Of course, it’s really more Leo’s legacy than it is Trump’s, and somewhere deep in his sad, shriveled soul, Trump knows that—which is probably partially why he’s so mad. 

It’s Leo, not Trump, who worked for decades to get a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. It’s Leo, not Trump, who deftly shepherded decades of attacks on abortion until he got that conservative majority to overturn Roe v. Wade. It’s Leo, not Trump, who is Justice Clarence Thomas’ best buddy, going all the way back to Thomas’ confirmation hearings in 1991. It’s Leo, not Trump, who got to hang out with billionaire Harlan Crow while he showered gifts on Thomas, resulting in the weirdest photo-realistic painting ever. It’s Leo, not Trump, who actually has the respect of the legal establishment—not that it’s warranted.

But one way that Leo is very much like Trump is that he’s a dark money machine who landed what is probably the biggest political donation ever: $1.6 billion from Barre Seid, an incredibly rich conservative. That makes Elon Musk’s donations to Trump look small-time, though Musk did get the reward of tearing down the federal government. 

So it looks like Leo and the Federalist Society will not be picking Trump’s judges for him this time around. Unfortunately, this means we’ll get people with all of the vicious ideology but none of the judicial experience. Leo is a sleazebag and an amoral monster who would happily put everyone under his thumb, but at least he knew some lawyers with actual relevant experience. Without Leo, it’s just going to be an endless parade of nominees like Emil Bove. 

Unfortunately, after White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told CNN Friday that the Trump administration won’t be using the Federalist Society for vetting this time around, a cold realization settled in: If Leo isn’t picking the judges, Miller probably is. Can’t wait for a raft of groypers from Liberty University to get lifetime appointments. 

One thing Trump may not have taken into account when picking this fight is that if there is one person in the country who wields enough behind-the-scenes power to hurt Trump, it’s Leo. 

Leo has built his network carefully over about four decades, and he knows—and has funded—nearly everyone. If Trump’s judicial picks owe loyalty to anyone, it’s Leo. 

Who can say where this spat will end up, given that Leo doesn’t seem to be bending the knee to Trump. But one thing is for certain: When the worst people in the world fight each other, we all win—if only because we get to watch.

Campaign Action

On Friday, The New York Times published a bombshell report detailing co-President Elon Musk’s drug abuse, saying the malevolent billionaire used psychedelic mushrooms, ecstasy, Adderall, and so much ketamine that it was negatively impacting his bladder.

But President Donald Trump has embraced and celebrated Musk, despite the drug abuse, allowing him to take a sledgehammer to the federal government’s functions while at the same time promoting Musk’s personal business ventures.

Trump even plans to celebrate Musk on Friday afternoon, as Musk prepares to leave his role as an unelected bureaucrat to focus on his ailing business empire.

Related | 7 of Elon Musk’s worst co-president moments as he exits White House

“I am having a Press Conference tomorrow at 1:30 P.M. EST, with Elon Musk, at the Oval Office. This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way. Elon is terrific! See you tomorrow at the White House,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social—an event that will most likely be even more highly watched now that the Times’ report dropped and reporters will want to know about Musk’s drug use.

While Trump has embraced the drug-using Musk—despite his erratic behavior and sloppy work that has endangered lives and livelihoods—he has at the same time tried to punish low-income drug users by trying to strip them of their Medicaid and unemployment insurance.

During his first term in office, Trump wanted to allow states to deny people Medicaid coverage if they were illegal drug users. 

He also wanted to allow states to drug test people who lost their jobs in order to deny them unemployment insurance—a policy the ACLU opposed because it likely violates Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights to unreasonable government searches if there is no reason to suspect someone is a drug user.

Now in his second term, Trump is trying to slash funding for drug treatment and overdose prevention.

His administration has canceled $11.4 billion in “COVID-era funding for grants linked to addiction, mental health and other programs,” NPR reported in March, cutting research on drug addiction as well as government employees working to help provide treatment and resources to drug users.

In fact, Trump’s administration slashed hundreds of jobs from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration—which seeks to prevent substance abuse and provide treatment to help drug users recover—and folded the organization into the new Administration for a Healthy America.

Trump has so decimated SAMHSA that Democratic senators say it will impact how many people can receive treatment.

“Downsizing SAMHSA into a new ‘division’, dismantling its functions, and firing over half its workforce puts at risk the lives of the 58.7 million Americans who experience a mental health condition and 48.5 million of those who are impacted by a substance use disorder,” Democratic Sens. Alex Padilla of California, Tina Smith of Minnesota, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont wrote in a news release denouncing the cuts. 

Meanwhile, in Trump’s 2026 budget request, he also proposed cutting $56 million in funding for a program that teaches first responders how to use Narcan—a lifesaving drug that can reverse drug overdose effects. And his administration is also eschewing other harm reduction efforts—like providing fentanyl test strips—in favor of 12-step programs to help drug users, which experts say will lead to more overdoses.

“Programs that provide overdose prevention education and distribute naloxone are also one of the best ways to build trust with people who use drugs. Providers can connect them to treatment and get naloxone in their hands,” the Drug Policy Alliance said in an April news release warning of the impacts of Trump’s proposed budget cuts. “These lifesaving resources are all at risk with Trump’s federal funding cuts. Without these services, we could see a sharp reversal of the progress we’ve made in preventing overdose deaths.”

Ultimately, the fact that Trump is fine with Musk’s drug use while at the same time trying to punish low-income drug users can likely be boiled down to one thing: Musk has been useful to Trump, bankrolling his campaign to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars that helped Trump win and take his lucrative grift to the White House. Meanwhile, low-income drug abusers are not useful for him.

Campaign Action

On Thursday evening, President Donald Trump tapped another far-right extremist for a key post in his administration, nominating former right-wing podcast host Paul Ingrassia to lead the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

“Paul is a highly respected attorney, writer, and Constitutional Scholar, who has done a tremendous job serving as my White House Liaison for Homeland Security,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Paul holds degrees from both Cornell Law School and Fordham University, where he majored in Mathematics and Economics, graduating near the top of his class. Congratulations Paul!”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth prepares to give a television interview outside the White House on March 21.

These days, it seems the only way to land a spot in Trump’s Cabinet is to be a billionaire, an election denier, a Fox News alum, one of his personal defense lawyers, or a podcaster. Just look at the cast: Pete Hegseth (Fox News), Jeanine Pirro (Fox News), Pam Bondi (Fox News), Dan Bongino (Fox News and podcaster), Sean Duffy (Fox News). Trump watches Fox and other right-wing channels like they’re a job-application reel—then gives these people real power.

And when he’s not recruiting from his favorite cable channel, he’s filling top posts with sycophants who lack qualifications but never question his authority. Enter Ingrassia.

At just 30 years old, Ingrassia is wildly unqualified to lead an agency responsible for protecting federal whistleblowers and enforcing the Hatch Act, a law designed to keep partisan politics out of the federal workforce. Sure, he’s currently a White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, but running the U.S. Office of Special Counsel is a different beast entirely.

That office has already been under siege since Trump returned to power. In February, he fired then-head Hampton Dellinger. Dellinger sued to keep his job, but a federal appeals court sided with the administration in March.

It’s no mystery why Trump wanted Dellinger—whom former President Joe Biden appointed—gone. During Trump’s first term, the office investigated his aides for violating the Hatch Act and found that 13 of them had illegally used their positions to campaign for his reelection. In other words, the office embarrassed Trump, and now he’s making sure that won’t happen again.

Ingrassia, a far-right Trump loyalist, is just the man for that job. And his record makes clear where his loyalties lie.

A police officer escorts Andrew Tate, left, handcuffed, from the Court of Appeal in Bucharest, Romania, in March 2024.

He was part of the legal team representing Andrew Tate—the far-right influencer charged with rape and human trafficking—in a defamation case in Florida. According to the BBC, Ingrassia also acted as Tate’s publicist and helped book him on Tucker Carlson’s show. On social media, Ingrassia has called Tate “an extraordinary human being” who offered “a dying West some hope for renewal.” And in July 2023, Ingrassia described Tate as “the embodiment of the ancient ideal of excellence.”

That’s not all. Ingrassia is also an apologist for Nick Fuentes, an infamous white nationalist and antisemite. Ingrassia once published a Substack post titled “Free Nick Fuentes” and wrote on X that “dissident voices” like Fuentes should have a place in the conservative movement.

Ingrassia also co-hosted a podcast called “Right on Point,” and in December 2020, one of its social media accounts called on Trump to “declare martial law and secure his re-election”—while spreading the lie that Trump won the 2020 election.

So yes, putting someone like him in an ethics watchdog role isn’t just disturbing—it’s dangerous.

After Trump’s post, Ingrassia wrote on X that, as head of the office, he’d “make every effort to restore competence and integrity to the Executive Branch,” with a focus on “eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse” and “revitaliz[ing]” Hatch Act enforcement.

Obviously, that’s hard to take seriously. The Hatch Act has already been trampled by Trump and his allies, especially during his first term. Trump didn’t face consequences then, and with Ingrassia in charge, he certainly won’t now.

Trump is stacking his Cabinet with extremists and trolls. And we’ll all pay the price.

Campaign Action

In one of the most jaw-dropping examples of how morally bankrupt the GOP is, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa dismissed a constituent’s fears that cuts to Medicaid in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” will lead poor people to lose health insurance and die.

“Well, we all are going to die,” Ernst said at a Friday morning town hall in Iowa, after she grew angry that a constituent told her that “people will die” due to the legislation’s Medicaid cuts. 

x

x
YouTube Video

Attendees at Ernst’s town hall shouted that Ernst was a “liar” when she said she agrees with House Republican plans to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, which experts say are costly to implement, don’t work, and lead eligible people to lose their coverage thanks to paperwork errors.

“We know the House has their provisions for Medicaid, and I actually agree with most of their provisions,” Ernst said of the House’s bill. “Everyone says that Medicaid is being cut, people are going to see their benefits cut—that’s not true.”

x

x
YouTube Video

Ernst’s contemptuous comment to her constituents was quickly condemned by Democrats, who can now use this on-video moment in campaign ads amid her 2026 reelection campaign.

“What does Joni Ernst say to Medicaid cuts that will harm mothers and children, farmers and teachers, Iowans from Clinton to Council Bluffs? ‘Well, we’re all going to die,’” Iowa Democratic state Sen. Zach Wahls said in a post on X.

“​​Not giving a shit that your constituents will die just to give more money to druggie billionaires like Elon. That’s the Republican Party,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in a post on X, which featured Ernst’s ‘We all are going to die’ comment.

Ernst was the latest GOP lawmaker to be met by angry voters at town halls since the House passed Donald Trump’s budget last week. The budget is expected to lead millions of people to lose their Medicaid and food stamp benefits, all to just partially offset the cost of tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the richest few.

Fellow Iowa Republican Ashley Hinson, one of Iowa’s four members of the U.S. House, was also shouted down by her constituents at a town hall earlier this week for voting for the House GOP tax bill. 

“The president is, I believe, fighting for you and fighting for me,” Hinson said at the town hall, and the crowd responded with intense booing. 

Republican Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska

And Rep. Mike Flood from neighboring Nebraska was also met by angry voters who demanded answers for why he’d vote for a bill that stripped benefits from low-income Americans.

“I voted for it in sync with almost the entire Republican conference,” Flood said at the town hall. “Because at the end of the day I have to focus on the things that matter and it celebrates the country that we love and continent that we love.”

The anger Republicans are facing from voting for the “One Big Beautiful Bill” is a sign Republicans could pay a political price in the 2026 midterm elections.

Polling shows voters do not support cutting Medicaid and food stamps in order to pay for tax cuts. 

And Democrats plan to hammer GOP lawmakers for voting for the legislation. 

“It’s a vote that every single vulnerable House Republican will come to regret next year,” the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which helps elect Democrats to the House, wrote in a May 22 memo.

Campaign Action

Grab your red hat and put on your best Republican makeup: MAGA has officially become its own dating culture.

Trump-loving conservatives are donning their best wares and proudly bonding over never becoming, or marrying, “beta males cucks.” Which, hey, for a demographic of men who were struggling to attract women due to their outright terrifying political views on women’s rights, maybe this somehow translates to good news, after all.

And some of the eligible singles lining up even have names of notoriety, including longtime activist and election denier CJ Pearson. 

“It’s never been a better time to date as a conservative,” he told the New York Post. 

According to Pearson, women want to be with a man who is a “provider and who they feel safe around.” Which is, apparently, exclusive to men with right-leaning political views who don’t have “pronouns in [their] bio.”

And while, for a bit, men were seemingly drowning in loneliness on the right, more women have picked up their trad-wife aspirations and joined the dating pool. And according to Raquel Debono, founder of Make America Hot Again, “hotness is a bipartisan issue.”

Daniel Penny, a Marine Corps veteran who killed Jordan Neely in a chokehold in 2023.

Apparently it’s hot to be acquitted in the 2023 killing of Jordan Neely, considering Daniel Penny was one of Debono’s star guests at her “MAHA” event in New York City last week. 

“There was a couple in the bathroom who were doing something highly inappropriate at my last party. It was getting hot and heavy in there,” Debono proudly told the New York Post. 

Another star guest was Jan. 6 insurrectionist Isabella DeLuca, who is mortified to be single and childless at the ripe age of 25. 

“Friends my age feel behind,” she told the Post, adding that she knows “getting married and having a family” will make her feel “fulfilled.”

“I don’t want to spend the duration of my 20s partying and quote-unquote living my life to come into my 30s and realize I made a mistake,” DeLuca said.

Of course, everyone deserves a shot at true love and at building a safe, supportive family. And while men seemed to be driving away every chance at achieving that with their disturbing obsession with calling women “cunts” and men “cucks,” that seems to be changing. 

Instead, Republican singles can meet at $400 yacht parties, surely to discuss a mutual admiration for President Donald Trump—despite, well, everything. 

May the odds be ever in their favor.

Campaign Action

The Supreme Court on Friday again cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip temporary legal protections from hundreds of thousands of immigrants, pushing the total number of people who could be newly exposed to deportation to nearly 1 million.

The justices lifted a lower-court order that kept humanitarian parole protections in place for more than 500,000 migrants from four countries: Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The court has also allowed the administration to revoke temporary legal status from about 350,000 Venezuelan migrants in another case.

Republican President Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail to deport millions of people, and in office has sought to dismantle Biden administration polices that created ways for migrants to live legally in the U.S.

Trump amplified false rumors that Haitian immigrants in Ohio with legal status under the humanitarian parole program were abducting and eating pets during his only debate with President Joe Biden, according to court documents.

His administration filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court after a federal judge in Boston blocked the administration’s push to end the program.

Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson wrote in dissent that the effect of the court’s order is “to have the lives of half a million migrants unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal claims.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined the dissent.

Jackson echoed what U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote in ruling that ending the legal protections early would leave people with a stark choice: flee the country or risk losing everything. Talwani, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, found that revocations of parole can be done, but on a case-by-case basis.

Her ruling came in mid-April, shortly before permits were due to be canceled. An appeals court refused to lift her order.

The Supreme Court’s order is not a final ruling, but it means the protections will not be in place while the case proceeds. It now returns to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

The Justice Department argues that the protections were always meant to be temporary, and the Department of Homeland Security has the power to revoke them without court interference. The administration says Biden granted the parole en masse, and the law doesn’t require ending it on an individual basis.

Taking on each case individually would be a “gargantuan task,” and slow the government’s efforts to press for their removal, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued.

Biden used humanitarian parole more than any other president, employing a special presidential authority in effect since 1952.

Beneficiaries included the 532,000 people who have come to the United States with financial sponsors since late 2022, leaving home countries fraught with “instability, dangers and deprivations,” as attorneys for the migrants said. They had to fly to the U.S. at their own expense and have a financial sponsor to qualify for the designation, which lasts for two years.

The Trump administration’s decision was the first-ever mass revocation of humanitarian parole, attorneys for the migrants said. They called the Trump administration’s moves “the largest mass illegalization event in modern American history.”

The case is the latest in a string of emergency appeals the administration has made to the Supreme Court, many of them related to immigration.

The court has sided against Trump in other cases, including slowing his efforts to swiftly deport Venezuelans accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador under an 18th century wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act.

Campaign Action

The Department of Justice is a joke. And why wouldn’t it be? Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the DOJ no longer does the work of justice. Instead, it does the work of grievance, staffed by unqualified true believers. 

To be fair, it’s not just that the lawyers in President Donald Trump and Bondi’s orbit are unqualified. They’re also completely unhinged, driven by a toxic brew of bigotry and resentment. How else would we get the spectacle of the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, explaining to the Wall Street Journal that her method for finding civil rights complaints is to wake up at 6 AM to troll X for discrimination claims—many of them about universities?

Does it even need to be said that this is not how the Civil Rights Division typically handles complaints? 

Complaints about schools were historically handled by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, but as the Trump administration chips away at that department, it seems to have shifted complaints—at least those involving colleges and universities—to Dhillon.

Harmeet Dhillon, head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, finds civil rights complaints by scrolling through the social media platform X.

If you’d like to see what a normal government report about civil rights complaints looks like, here’s the Education Department’s report from the Biden era. It covers the number of complaints received and resolved, compliance reviews undertaken by the division, types of complaints most commonly received, policies and fact sheets for each major category of discrimination complaints, illustrative cases, government staffing levels, and more. 

But, hey, Dhillon has X. So what does she do after her early morning scan of a social media site overrun by bots and white supremacists? After compiling “a list of new horrors,” she “text[s] her deputies, and we assign cases, and we get cranking.” 

So the work of the Civil Rights Division is now governed by randos on X, and Dhillon picks and chooses which 280-character screed warrants the full might of a DOJ investigation, and then orders her deputies to … what? DM the X account to get more information? Treat the post itself as a complaint and open an investigation into a college right then and there? 

At least Dhillon has a lot of free time for this, given that the DOJ has killed police reform consent agreements, eliminated the right to bring disparate impact complaints—which are the bulk of civil rights complaints—and is generally not pursuing voting rights cases unless the end result would be fewer people voting. 

The true purpose of Dhillon’s job, in her own words, is that “we don’t just slow down the woke. We take up the cause to achieve the executive branch’s goals.”

But the Trump administration isn’t content with stopping at the DOJ; it’s also going to stuff the judiciary with the hackiest of hacks, and it doesn’t want the pesky American Bar Association to point out their lack of qualifications, per Bondi’s letter to the ABA, which was provided in an exclusive preview to Fox News.

Let’s stop there for a minute. This is not how the government works. Bondi’s letter to the ABA is an official piece of government communication, not something to be dangled in front of servile media outlets as an “exclusive.” 

As of Thursday afternoon, several hours after the breathless Fox News piece, there’s still no announcement on the DOJ website, nor an official copy of the letter. But you can find the letter in full over on X, posted by former Trump criminal defense attorney/current unqualified high-level DOJ appointee Todd Blanche.

So the only way to learn about big changes at the DOJ is to wait for an announcement to pop up on the absolute worst social media platform. A totally normal way to run the government. 

Trump isn’t the first president to be unhappy about the ABA ranking a judicial nominee as unqualified. President George W. Bush iced out the ABA, barring the group from receiving future names of nominees before they were submitted to the Senate. 

And Trump’s anger at the ABA goes back to his first term, when the organization deemed 10 of his nominees unqualified. This made Trump so sad that he posted a National Review op-ed on an official government website about how his nominees were too qualified, so there. 

Now in his second term, Trump is gearing up to choose the most unqualified partisans as judges, so he can’t have the ABA hanging about saying bad things like “they have no trial experience” or “they said queer people should be driven out of public life.” 

Trump simply isn’t interested in hearing why his criminal defense attorney and DOJ bully Emil Bove isn’t qualified to be a judge. 

This time around, the Trump administration also won’t be directing judicial nominees to provide waivers that would allow the ABA to access information about them. Terrific. The one thing Trump’s nomination process needs is less transparency. Wouldn’t want the public to know that Trump is transforming the judiciary into a handmaiden to power, only existing to help him achieve his terrible goals. Best to keep that all under his hat.

Campaign Action

The VP campaigned on mass removals aboard aircraft that’s now shipping out immigrants as part of ICE Air

by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy, Arizona Mirror

After Donald Trump tapped him as his running mate, J.D. Vance crisscrossed the country and gave speech after speech in which he, like Trump, demonized immigrants and promised to mount a mass deportation effort if elected.

The Boeing 737 that he used to travel around the nation is now being used to deport immigrants. Records show that it has made at least 16 flights to Central and South American countries to deport immigrants this year.

An Arizona Mirror analysis of publicly available data and records obtained by the University of Washington through Freedom of Information Act requests confirms that the 22-year-old jet is part of the fleet of planes known as “ICE Air” that swiftly shuttles immigrants out of the United States. ICE Air consists of multiple charter airlines and other private aviation companies around the country who are contracted to move immigrant detainees inside and out of the country.

Even before the plane was emblazoned with the Trump campaign logo in July 2024, it had been used at least four times to transport immigrant detainees during an earlier stint on the ICE Air fleet.            

Data analyzed by the Mirror and confirmed by University of Washington Center for Human Rights researcher Phil Neff show that the aircraft flew four ICE Air missions in April and May of 2018.

Those four missions consisted of three removal flights to El Salvador and Guatemala, in which deportees were shipped off to those countries. The fourth was a transfer flight, in which detainees were moved from one ICE facility to another. 

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field officer.

During those four missions in 2018, the aircraft carried between 456 to 504 passengers, according to ICE passenger data.

And records from 2020 detail 35 flights from known ICE hubs to Central and South American countries.

For example, on March 6, 2020, the aircraft took off from the Alexandria Airport in Louisiana, where ICE has a staging facility operated by private contractor GEO Group. It then landed at the José Joaquín de Olmedo International Airport in Guayaquil, Ecuador, before returning to Alexandria.

Earlier this year, that same airport was where military planes deported migrants.

Data on flights after 2018 is more difficult to confirm. ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began redacting identifying information of the aircraft used in the deportation process, making it more difficult to see the movements of individual planes, though it is still possible in some cases. Civil rights groups have been fighting for records about the program, while the agency regularly slow-walks records releases.

“Our experience in general with FOIAs — not just with the Department of Homeland Security, but especially with the Department of Homeland Security — is you should expect to have to sue to get information and for us that process involves getting approval from the highest level of the university,” Neff told the Mirror. “So, we have had to be very selective in the case in which we have had to do that.”

Just five months after Trump and Vance won the election, the aircraft flew between multiple airports known for ICE Air activity before heading to an airport in Honduras known for deportation flights, then coming to rest at Mesa Gateway Airport.

It is not clear if Trump or Vance were aware of the aircraft’s history prior to it becoming part of their campaign. A spokesperson for the White House directed the Mirror to the Department of Homeland Security and Vance’s office. Vance and DHS did not respond.

From ferrying travelers to deportees

The aircraft, N917XA, has a long and interesting history.

It started its life in the fleet of the now defunct Air Berlin before transferring to Orenair, another ill-fated airline based in Russia, until it was acquired by Swift Air.

Swift Air was a subcontractor for ICE and has previously conducted flights out of Mesa Gateway Airport, one of ICE’s major airport hubs. Flight history shows the plane has made multiple flights to and from Mesa Gateway to other ICE airport hubs, as well as to Central and South American countries.

A previous inspector general report listed the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway airport as the operational headquarters for ICE Air.

Swift Air rebranded as iAero Airways in 2019, but went bankrupt in 2024. Eastern Air Express acquired much of iAero’s assets, including N917XA, in April 2024. Three months later, it was unveiled as Vance’s campaign jet. Eastern Air Express has also taken over the ICE Air contracts that iAero held.

The company also has connections to the Trump world.

From 1989 to 1992, Trump owned an airline company called “Trump Shuttle,” which he purchased after meeting the Eastern Air Express CEO at a party. But the endeavor, like so many of Trump’s businesses, was financially doomed and failed.

ICE Air activities heat up in Arizona

ICE Air operations in Arizona are beginning to ramp up as well, with Avelo Airlines starting to make deportation flights out of Mesa Gateway this month, amid financial woes and market competition.

Contracts to conduct deportation flights are lucrative for the companies involved. The Project on Government Oversight has reported that CSI Aviation, whose corporate director was a “fake elector” in New Mexico for Trump, was awarded a no-bid contract to the tune of $128 million.

Neff said he wasn’t surprised to learn that the aircraft which had been used for deportations had been utilized by the Trump campaign, although he did say there was an “irony to it.”

During their research, Neff said they found that some of the contractors would often boast about how they could turn aircraft around from passenger style to luxury style on short notice, even finding aircraft that had previously been used for deportations later being used to shuttle professional sports teams or musicians around the country.

Immigrant advocates have been critical of the flights and say they raise a number of human rights and civil rights issues. Neff said those concerns are only being exacerbated by the Trump administration’s push to speed up deportations.

“I think it is really impossible to overstate or understand the true scope of human impacts of a deportation program on this scale,” Neff said.

During their initial research, which covered flights between 2010 and 2020, Neff said they found a “significant portion” of the passengers being deported still had ongoing cases that had not worked their way through the courts. The Trump administration has recently been defending its use of the Alien Enemies Act, the 1798 law that was last used during World War II to intern Japanese Americans, to do rapid deportations.

Once on the planes, immigrants are shackled at their feet and hands for the duration of the flight. In testimony in a class action lawsuit against the United States, where passengers were shackled for 23 hours sitting on the tarmac, some soiled themselves as they were denied access to the bathroom.

Abuse on ICE Air flights have been reported going back to 2016, when some passengers were left bloodied after being beaten and placed in body-bag style restraints. In some cases, deaths and miscarriages have been reported on ICE Air flights.

And transparency about the flights is getting worse, Neff noted. 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers use a chain to restrain a detained person.

While the first round of data obtained by researchers contained information such as flight destinations, flight costs and the tail numbers of aircraft, the government redacted that information from future releases.

While public flight history data is available to researchers, those researchers are working overtime to help track these flights.

“It is 8 or 10 hours, 7 days a week. It is a significant amount of time,” immigration activist Tom Cartwright, who has been voluntarily tracking ICE flights since Trump’s first term, told the Mirror.

During that time, Cartwright has noticed that tracking the aircraft has gotten considerably more difficult, as federal agencies have sought to stymie watchdogs from monitoring the program by removing their aircraft from flight-tracking services.

But Cartwright and others have still found other ways to keep a watchful eye on the program.

“The transparency has gotten worse over time and worse under the (second) Trump administration,” Cartwright said, adding that taxpayers deserve to know how their money is being spent. “To send some of these flights with relatively few people on them at a million dollars a flight seems pretty ridiculous, to be honest.”

The coming weeks and months are likely to keep Cartwright busy, as deportation flights have been ramping up. In the last couple of weeks, Cartwright said he has noticed flights have “accelerated quite a bit,” and he said is anticipating May to be a record-breaking month for total flights.

Cartwright said his work is important because it sends a message to those on the flights — and those their deportation left behind in America.

“The people on the planes deserve the dignity of someone giving a damn,” he said. “All these people on these planes, they have mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles. They deserve the dignity of someone understanding that they are being sent away to somewhere that, in some cases, they haven’t seen in years or somewhere that is dangerous or where they won’t be able to support their family.”

Campaign Action

A cartoon by Clay Jones.

Campaign Action

Progressives are facing plenty of real challenges during Trump 2.0, but losing voters because we sound like academic robots shouldn’t be one of them. The Washington Post just highlighted a growing backlash among Democrats who are fed up with jargon that alienates voters more than it persuades them.

Maybe it’s using the word “oligarchs” instead of rich people. Or referring to “people experiencing food insecurity” rather than Americans going hungry. Or “equity” in place of “equality,” or “justice-involved populations” instead of prisoners.
As Democrats wrestle with who to be in the era of President Donald Trump, a growing group of party members — especially centrists — is reviving the argument that Democrats need to rethink the words they use to talk with the voters whose trust they need to regain.

Progressives have developed a lingo that sounds like utter nonsense to most people. “Privilege” is used to describe those with inherent advantages; “appropriation” frames almost any cultural exchange as theft; the “Land Back” movement unrealistically suggests that stolen lands should be returned to Native people; “LGBTIQCAPGNGFNBA” is an actual acronym; and uttering the phrase “settler colonialism” is guaranteed to spark a fight. Inside activist circles, this language might resonate. Outside of them, it doesn’t just fail to persuade—it actively alienates people. 

Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona isn’t a centrist—but he talks like a human. 

“Some words are just too Ivy League-tested terms,” Gallego told The Washington Post. “I’m going to piss some people off by saying this, but ‘social equity’ — why do we say that? Why don’t we say, ‘We want you to have an even chance’?”

Newly elected Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona speaks on Nov. 5, 2024, in Phoenix.

Gallego and I have agreed on this topic before, when it came to the use of the asinine and self-destructive term “Latinx” as an attempt to create a gender-neutral label for Latinos. 

We make fun of President Donald Trump for speaking at a fourth-grade level, the lowest of the past 15 presidents. But hey, he won despite one of the worst first terms of any president in history. There is something to be said for speaking the language of everyday people and not being sucked into exclusionary language that only plays well inside rarified bubbles. 

“Democrats trip over themselves in an attempt to say exactly the right thing,” a rhetoric professor told The Washington Post. “Republicans maybe aren’t so concerned about saying exactly the right thing, so it may appear more authentic to some voters.”

In 2024, Kamala Harris won Arizona Latinos 55-42 while Ruben Gallego won the demographic 61-37—the exact same margin Biden claimed in 2020.

Harris didn’t even say “Latinx,” but she got tagged with the worst parts of so-called woke culture. Gallego avoided the label, and it worked.

And somehow—somehow—Trump gained Latino votes in 2024 despite constantly insulting them. That’s not their fault. The blame lies with our messaging failure.

Related | What went wrong: Part 1

As noted in The Washington Post article, most politicians avoid that kind of language, and even those who don’t are evolving, like Sen. Bernie Sanders. 

“We have a nation which is now run by a handful of greedy billionaires,” the Vermont lawmaker told a recent Idaho rally. “I used to talk about oligarchy and people say, ‘What is he talking about?’ Everybody knows what I’m talking about tonight.”

But it’s not just politicians who brand a movement: It’s the activists themselves. It’s one thing to use our in-house jargon with each other, but it’s different when we loudly demand that others play along. Now that Latinx is thankfully dead and buried, certain academic Latino activist segments are demanding we use “Latine.” It’s not as dumb as Latinx, but it’s close. 

The vast majority of Latinos are perfectly comfortable with the words “Hispanic” and “Latino.” Similarly, nonpolitical Americans (which means most of them) don’t appreciate being told words don’t mean what they are commonly known to mean. They understand “poor,” while hearing people described as “economically disadvantaged” leaves them confused and annoyed. Same with “homeless” versus “unhoused.” 

I mean, do we really need to say “a person with lived experience” when referring to someone experiencing hardship? Just say, “This guy’s dealing with some shit,” and no one will think we’re weird robots or aliens. The latter will win you votes; the former will lose them.  

Yes, some of these terms seek to avoid stigma and otherwise redress certain injustices embedded in our language, but it’s a distinction that’s lost on most people. The intent is noble, but the outcome is disastrous for those who are supposedly being protected by these linguistic contortions.

This shit’s not hard. Talk like a human—and win more voters.

Related | What Republicans really mean when they say ‘woke’

Campaign Action