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A newly uncovered memo from the Department of Homeland Security reportedly reveals that President Donald Trump is diverting manpower from securing U.S. borders and ports to help him achieve his goals of mass deportation. HuffPost reported on Tuesday that the memo shows that roughly 2,000 officers and agents have been diverted to provide more manpower for deportation operations. By doing so, the administration makes it easier for traffickers to smuggle illicit materials, such as fentanyl, through ports of entry. Gil Kerlikowske, who headed up U.S. Customs and Border Protection under former President Barack Obama, told the outlet, “The ports of entry―that’s where the fentanyl comes in.” He added, “If you’ve taken 800 agents off of the ports of entry, that can cause a significant problem.” Data from 2018 to 2024 showed that most of those apprehended for smuggling fentanyl into the U.S. did so through lawful ports of entry. About 4 in 5 apprehended smugglers through the U.S.-Mexico border were U.S. citizens as well. This stands in contrast to Republican leaders who have blamed this problem on migrants. A Trump supporter holds a “Secure our Border” at a rally in Aurora, Colorado. Wonder how this memo would make them feel … Trump repeatedly campaigned on the promise that he would crack down on fentanyl trafficking, but drug overdose deaths have been steadily falling since late 2023, when Joe Biden was president. Another problem with diverting resources from port operations is that those officers are generally not trained to handle immigration enforcement. Agencies like ICE have generated a torrent of headlines involving abuse and manhandling of both migrants and citizens, including children—and many of those incidents involve officials whose primary job is enforcement. The Trump administration has set up a system ripe for abuse. It has used deportation procedures to send migrants to facilities like El Salvador’s brutal CECOT prison. Detainees at those facilities have revealed scenes they compared to a “horror movie,” including repeated beatings and denial of basic medical treatment. The memo reportedly reveals another dysfunctional link in the immigration system being put in place under the Trump administration, one which could easily lead to more crime and increased danger for Americans and their families.

President Donald Trump announced late on Tuesday that he and Japan reached a trade agreement, which will slap a 15% tariff on Japanese imports in exchange for Japan investing $550 billion in the U.S. The so-called deal is another shit sandwich for Americans, especially U.S. car manufacturers. That’s because Japanese cars imported into the U.S. will face a 15% tariff rate—lower than the 25% tariff American car companies currently face for imported auto parts. And that 15% rate is less than the shocking 25% tariff Trump had threatened against Japan if a deal wasn’t struck. That’s why Japanese car stocks rose on Wednesday, with Toyota up about 13%. “Toyota is up +8% on the news of a 15% tariff. Why? It’s simple,” Spencer Hakimian, founder of  the hedge fund Tolou Capital Management, wrote in a post on X. “Ford, GM, Tesla, and all the other American manufacturers are going to be paying 50% more for their steel, 50% more for their copper, 25% more for their Canadian production, 25% more for their Mexican production, and 55% on their Chinese production. Toyota only has to pay 15% more and they’re done with all the shenanigans. Ford has to pay much more than that. A lot more in fact.  The General Motors logo is seen on the company’s headquarters in Detroit, in April 2024. “We’ve given a Japanese car company an advantage over American car companies. All in hope of bringing auto jobs back to America,” he added. The American Automotive Policy Council—which represents General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis—said on Wednesday that the Japanese trade agreement is a “bad deal for U.S. industry and U.S. auto workers.” American automakers have already said Trump’s tariffs have dealt a massive blow to their companies. General Motors reported Tuesday that it lost $1 billion from April to June ,attributing the losses to Trump’s tariffs. And Stellantis, which manufactures American brands like Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge, said it lost a whopping $2.7 billion in the first half of 2025 because of Trump’s trade levies. But Trump’s trade policy is not hurting just automakers. Goldman Sachs on Tuesday said that U.S. economic growth will slow in 2025 because of Trump’s tariffs. The bank’s chief economist, Jan Hatzius, wrote in a memo to clients that the tariffs “will eat into real income, at a time when consumer spending trends already look shaky.” Hatzius added that consumer spending appears to have slowed in the first half of the year, which he said “rarely happens outside of recession.” Indeed, prices are on the rise for American consumers for everything from beef and chocolate to household products sold on retail giant Amazon. Meanwhile, the Aug. 1 deadline Trump put on other countries to make trade deals is rapidly approaching. And if deals aren’t reached, tariffs will soar to 30% for imports from major American trading partners, including Mexico and the European Union. And if the deals are as crappy as the one just announced with Japan, Americans are in for a world of hurt.

GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is no longer facing reelection, is standing strong in his conviction that the Trump administration should release the long-promised Epstein files. “Release the damn files,” he told Axios’ Stef Kight on Wednesday. “One of two things is true … the promise to release the files during the campaign was either overplayed and we got a nothing burger—if the files get released—or it’s something really disturbing, and that’s actually even a more compelling reason to release it.” President Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein, who was charged with sex trafficking in 2019. Tillis also called the administration’s excuses “nonsense,” noting that sensitive materials are routinely released with redactions.  “That’s sort of a fake—or a bad—reason for trying to stop something that you don’t want to happen,” he said, adding a warning to fellow Republicans who are seeking reelection not to underestimate the staying power of this scandal.  “If anybody thinks that this is going to go away because the House left a day earlier or something, that’s going to be like those zombies in ‘The Walking Dead,’” Tillis said. “Every time you think you’ve killed it, another one’s just going to come running out of the closet after you. This is going to be an issue all the way through next year’s election.” YouTube Video Democrats have justifiably seized on Trump and other GOP lawmakers’ disturbing refusal to release the Epstein files, and Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow has successfully incorporated it into her campaign for fellow Democratic Sen. Gary Peters’ seat.  Tillis has been willing to take—mostly toothless—shots at the Trump administration on his way out the door. But at this point, any meaningful criticism of President Donald Trump from the right has some worth.

Tina Peters simply will not go away. The onetime clerk for Mesa County, Colorado, is currently incarcerated while appealing her 2024 conviction for helming a massive election security breach. Peters remains a steadfast warrior for Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen, but she can’t keep pursuing her mission while sitting in a Colorado jail. The problem for Peters is that her conviction was in state court, so while she remains a true believer in the Big Lie, Trump can’t wave a wand and pardon her.  But she’s not going to stop trying.  Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen led to an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. On Tuesday, Peters asked a federal magistrate to let her out of jail on bond while she pursues her state appeal. Peters had already requested that the Colorado Court of Appeals release her on bond, and after they ruled against her, she filed a federal habeas petition. Peters is desperate to wedge this case into federal court somehow so that Trump can make it go away.  Now, you might be agog at the notion that a federal magistrate can just roll into a state court case and functionally overrule the Colorado Court of Appeals, and guess what? The federal magistrate was equally perplexed, because federal magistrates have no authority to intervene in a state case. Indeed, Chief Magistrate Judge Scott Varholak said, “I don’t think petitioner has cited a single case in the history of the United States where a federal court granted an appeal bond in a state case.” Varholak was just as baffled about how things would work logistically if he were to grant the bond.  “What if petitioner violates the bond?” the magistrate said. “Does the state revoke bond? Do I revoke bond?” Hey, it was worth a shot.  Trump is already in Peters’ corner. In May, he directed the Department of Justice to secure her release. On Truth Social, Trump called Peters an “innocent Political Prisoner” and said that she was being “horribly and unjustly punished in the form of Cruel and Unusual Punishment.” Also, she is a hostage who is being imprisoned by Democrats for “political reasons.” Like Peters, her attorney, Peter Ticktin, is absolutely full-on MAGA. He wrote a fawning book about Trump, detailing their time together in high school at a military academy. He’s also one of Trump’s endless series of personal attorneys, having represented him in his suit against Hillary Clinton and James Comey. Ticktin is also a pal of Ed Martin, the Department of Justice’s very shady pardon attorney, and personally delivered 11 applications to Martin.  Related | Why Trump can’t quit Ed Martin Ticktin’s argument to the federal magistrate was essentially that Peters shouldn’t be in jail with actual criminals, because she is not one. Instead, she’s being imprisoned for her speech.  “In this particular case, we have a person in prison because of a fear that she’s a danger to society because of what she might say,” he claimed. Buddy, she’s in prison because she was convicted by a jury of her peers for giving a Big Lie conspiracy theorist rando complete access to election machines and allowing him to copy the hard drives, which later popped up on election conspiracy sites. This is a crime, period.  But wait! What about her mattress? Yes, part of Ticktin’s plea to the federal magistrate was that Peters is sleeping on a hard, thin mattress. During her sentencing hearing, Peters bemoaned the fact that she would not be able to get her special magnetic mattress if she were sent to prison.  Meanwhile, the Trump administration is laser-focused on screwing with elections in Colorado in retaliation for the state’s prosecution of Peters. She is a martyr for the election denial cause, so how dare the state imprison her! Peters is Trump writ small—a person who believes that she is on a mission and is therefore entitled to do whatever she wants to prove the 2020 election was stolen, and refuses to admit there are consequences for her actions. No wonder she’s trying to get this to the federal courts so Trump can do her a solid. Her failure to do so should be a slam dunk because it’s unprecedented to have the federal government intervene in a state criminal court case. But this administration doesn’t believe in federalism, so it will keep trying to find a way to free Peters—rules and laws be damned.  

A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | What the f-ck is the First Lady Melania Trump Opera House?

PoliticusUSA is 100% supported by readers like you. As other forms of media fall to Trump, we can stay strong if you support us by becoming a subscriber. Subscribe now Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) was one of the first Democrats in leadership to see that there was an opportunity for his party in the MAGA demand of their president to release the Epstein files. Jeffries saw an opening to not only split Trump from his congressional Republican protectors, but also to tie Epstein to the corruption of Trump and the Republican Party. Leader Jeffries was right. He has been able to drive a wedge through Republicans and Trump is floundering. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) was the first to grab the issue in early July, and it was soon embraced by Jeffries, who has unified Democrats and told all of the Democratic committee leadership in the House to keep the Epstein pressure on. Politico reported on the success of the Democratic strategy: The strategy has effectively hijacked the House, derailed Hill Republicans’ agenda and forced Speaker Mike Johnson to send lawmakers packing for an early August recess. That’s not to mention embarrassing Trump in the process and exposing the surprising limits of his sway on a party he’s held in his clutches for the better part of a decade. “We’ve been trying to say Trump is full of shit for years and it hasn’t really stuck, right? But something about this topic is making a healthy portion of MAGA world — particularly folks who are not ideologically aligned with Trump but kind of flirted with him last year when they pulled the lever for him — be like, ‘Yea, he’s definitely full of shit,’” a senior Democratic campaign aide boasted to me. (This aide and others in the story were granted anonymity to speak candidly about dynamics on the Hill.) … “Everyone’s always talking about Trump being ‘Teflon’ — obviously that’s because all Hill Republicans are pretty much a suit of armor for him, right? But in this instance, they’re not,” said a senior Democratic aide discussing the strategy. “And so it exposes him, I think, to more attacks that otherwise would be brushed off — and makes it easier for us to drag his numbers down while creating chaos among the Republicans.” Democrats have been so successful that they forced Speaker Mike Johnson to shut down the House and send everyone home because the Speaker doesn’t want to hold any votes or debate on Epstein. Trump’s power comes from the protection that Republicans in Congress give him, and on this issue, that protection is gone. Trump Described As Furious And Paralyzed Read more

PoliticusUSA is independent news and analysis delivered to you daily. Our readers solely support us, so please consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe now It is a question that often arises when Democrats seek leadership. Someone will ask, Where is Barack Obama? Former President Obama is retired from active politics, which means that, regardless of how chaotic things become, he mostly stays quiet. Obama respects the traditional sideline role of ex-presidents. It takes something extreme to get Obama to engage in current politics at any level beyond campaigning for Democratic candidates, but when Trump accused the former president of masterminding a coup against him and called for the ex-president to be criminally charged, that was enough to get a statement issued by former President Obama’s office. PoliticusUSA is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Obama said through his office, “Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.” The one word that many think defines Trump in all aspects is weak. The calls to arrest Obama are a clear distraction that was targeted at Trump’s base. Racism toward Obama was what launched Trump’s political star in the Republican Party almost a decade and a half ago. It has been argued by some academics that Trump’s 2016 victory was a direct response by a segment of the American population to the election of a black president. The distraction effort involving Obama came after Trump tried to distract with slurs against Native Americans. Trump seems to know that a core part of his base supports him, not because of policies, but due to deep, ugly cultural fault lines and divisions on issues like race and gender. Donald Trump’s choice of distraction reveals who he thinks the MAGA movement is. Trump should have known better than to mess with Barack Obama. The former president knows how to not fuel the fire Trump is attempting to create, while at the same time understanding how to brush Trump off and minimize him in the most ego-damaging way possible. Donald Trump has always had an inferiority complex when it comes to Obama, and the popular ex-president’s brush-off was a blow square to Trump’s fragile ego. What do you think about Obama’s response to Trump? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Leave a comment

President Donald Trump lied to congressional Republicans on Tuesday night, falsely claiming his approval ratings have increased since his administration’s failure to release government files on accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. In reality, Trump’s ratings have tumbled since the scandal heated up last week. “I have the best numbers I’ve ever had,” Trump said during a White House reception for Republicans. “You know, it’s amazing I watch people on television: ‘Well, what about Donald Trump’s polling numbers?’ Yeah, they’re the best numbers I’ve ever had. “And with this made-up hoax they’re talking about, my numbers have gone up 4 and 5 points—they want to do anything to get us off the subject of making America great again, and we’re not going to put up with it,” he continued. YouTube Video It isn’t true. Polling has shown a noticeable Epstein-related dip for Trump and his handling of the story. In 15 of the most recent public opinion polls collected by The New York Times, Trump has a net-negative approval rating in 14 of the polls, with most showing a double-digit disapproval rating on net. Datawrapper Content For instance, in a CBS News/YouGov poll released on Sunday, Trump had his lowest approval rating since being sworn in in January—42%. That is 11 percentage points lower than his rating in early February in that same poll. The same poll also showed significant public disapproval of how Trump has handled the Epstein case. Eighty-nine percent of Americans said the Department of Justice should release all of its information, a stance opposed by Attorney General Pam Bondi. Activists in London put up a poster showing President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, on July 17. An overwhelming majority of independents (83%) and Democrats (92%) were dissatisfied with how the administration has handled the Epstein case. Meanwhile, Republicans were almost evenly split: 50% were satisfied with the administration’s handling of the case, while 49% weren’t. The Trump administration is also over 30 points underwater on its handling of the Epstein investigations, according to an Economist/YouGov poll released on Tuesday. That finding was corroborated by a Quinnipiac University poll released on July 16, in which 63% of voters disapproved of his administration’s handling of the case. Trump’s lie highlights his desperation to blunt criticism on his ties to Epstein and his handling of the case, controversy that has ensnared his presidency for weeks. Congressional Republicans, who shut down Congress instead of facing Epstein-related votes, are also feeling the fallout from the story, while Democrats continue to push for further disclosures. Trump has now resorted to throwing out multiple distractions—conspiracies about former President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for instance—in an attempt to drown out Epstein-related headlines. But it isn’t working, and his approval is nowhere near “the best numbers” he’s ever had.

Please consider supporting PoliticusUSA by becoming a subscriber. Subscribe now When incumbent Republican US Senator Thom Tillis announced that he would not be seeking reelection in 2026, Democrats knew they would have an opportunity to pick up the seat. Party leadership has been recruiting former Gov. Roy Cooper to run, and it is being reported that Cooper will announce his campaign on Monday. PoliticusUSA is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Axios reported: Former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) is preparing to launch his Senate campaign next week, multiple sources told Axios. Cooper is the Democratic Party’s top recruit in 2026, bolstering their chances of flipping a critical seat from Republicans. Cooper, a popular former governor, will instantly become the Democratic favorite to challenge the GOP for the open Senate seat next year. … Cooper and Democrats will now await a decision from Lara Trump, President Trump’s daughter-in-law, who essentially has the right of first refusal on the GOP side. Donald Trump is pushing for his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, to run for the seat, but with Trump’s approval ratings in the dumpster and his presidency sinking more by the day, running Lara Trump against a popular former two-term governor would be a gift to Democrats. The reality is that even if Lara Trump runs, Cooper should be the favorite. The North Carolina Senate seat is essential because if Democrats can flip it, the Republican majority will be lowered to three seats, given the number of 50-50 ties that have been broken by VP JD Vance on everything from nominations to the tax cuts for the rich, gaining one more seat could allow Democrats to join with the Republican moderates to block Trump’s agenda. Elections aren’t won in candidate recruitment, but they can be lost if the party doesn’t have good candidates. Roy Cooper is a very good candidate, and getting a top name to run suggests that Democrats at all levels see 2026 as potentially a very blue year. What do you think about Roy Cooper running for the US Senate in North Carolina? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Leave a comment

Sign up for Trump’s Return, a newsletter featuring coverage of the second Trump presidency. Imagine you were an elected official who discovered that an old friend had been running a sex-trafficking operation without your knowledge. You’d probably try very hard to make your innocence in the matter clear. You’d demand full transparency and answer any questions about your own involvement straightforwardly. Donald Trump’s behavior regarding the Jeffrey Epstein case is … not that. The latest cycle of frantic evasions began last week, after The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had submitted a suggestive message and drawing to a scrapbook celebrating Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, in 2003. This fact alone added only incrementally to the public understanding of the two men’s friendship. Rather than brush the report off, however, Trump denied authorship. “I never wrote a picture in my life,” he told the Journal—an oddly narrow defense for a man reported to have written “may every day be another wonderful secret” to a criminal whose secret was systematically abusing girls, and one that was instantly falsified by Trump’s well-documented penchant for doodling. On Truth Social, Trump complained that he had asked Rupert Murdoch, the Journal’s owner, to spike the story, and received an encouraging answer, only for the story to run. Under normal circumstances, a president confessing that he tried to kill an incriminating report would amount to a major scandal. But Trump has so deeply internalized his own critique of the media, according to which any organ beyond his control is “fake news,” that he believed the episode reflected badly on Murdoch’s ethics rather than his own. [Helen Lewis: MAGA influencers don’t understand what journalism is] Having failed to prevent the article from being published, Trump shifted into distraction mode. In a transparent attempt to offer his wavering loyalists the scent of fresh meat, Trump began to attack their standby list of enemies. On Friday, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, renewed charges that the Obama administration had ginned up the Russia scandal to damage Trump. None of the facts she provided supported this claim remotely. The entire sleight of hand relied on conflating the question of whether Russia had hacked into voting machines (the Obama administration said publicly and privately it hadn’t) with the very different question of whether Russia had attempted to influence voters by hacking and leaking Democratic emails (which the Obama administration, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and a subsequent bipartisan Senate-committee investigation all concluded it had done). Why did Gabbard suddenly pick this moment to release and misconstrue 2016 intelligence comprising facts that the Obama administration had already acknowledged in public? Trump made the answer perfectly clear when he used a press availability with the president of the Philippines to deflect questions about Epstein into a rant about the need to arrest Obama. “I don’t really follow that too much,” he said of the Epstein matter. “It’s sort of a witch hunt. Just a continuation of the witch hunt. The witch hunt you should be talking about is that they caught President Obama absolutely cold.” Trump has yet to specify why the “witch hunt” he’s been stewing over nonstop for nearly a decade remains fascinating, while the new “witch hunt” he just revealed to the world is too tedious to address. In fact, Trump himself suggested that the two matters were related. He described the Epstein witch hunt as part of a continuous plot that culminated in Joe Biden stealing the 2020 presidential election. (“And by the way, it morphed into the 2020 race. And the 2020 race was rigged.”) You might think that this link would increase Trump’s curiosity about the Epstein matter, given his inexhaustible interest in vindicating his claim to have won in 2020. Not this time! By invoking 2020, Trump managed to make the Epstein conspiracy theory sound more world-historically important—while attaching his protestations of innocence to claims that were hardly settled in his favor. Again, imagine you were in Trump’s position and were completely innocent of any involvement with Epstein’s crimes. You would probably not try to compare the Epstein case to the scandal in which eight of your associates were sentenced to prison, or to the other time when you tried to steal an election and then got impeached. Instead, Trump is leaning into the parallels between the Epstein case and his own long record of criminal associations and proven lies, arguing in essence that the Epstein witch hunt is as fake as the claim that Biden won the 2020 election (i.e., 100 percent real). [Ashley Parker and Jonathan Lemire: Inside the White House’s Epstein strategy] Yesterday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, faced with demands by some Republican members to pass a nonbinding resolution calling for full disclosure of the government’s files relating to the Epstein investigation, announced that he would instead shut down the House for summer recess. Given that Trump had previously been eager to squeeze as many working days out of his narrow legislative majority as he could get, and the impression in Washington that Johnson will not so much as go to the bathroom without Trump’s permission, declaring early recess communicates extreme desperation on the part of the president. Also yesterday, the Trump administration announced that it was releasing thousands of pages of documents relating to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It is difficult to see why this disclosure was suddenly necessary. Trump’s contention that the Epstein scandal is too dull and familiar to be worth discussing seems to be ever so slightly in tension with the notion that the death of King, in 1968, is fresh material. If anything, the disclosure of documents nobody asked to see painfully highlights his unwillingness to disclose the documents everybody is clamoring for. If the police ask to look in your basement for a missing hitchhiker recently spotted in your car, and you offer to let them inspect your desk and closet instead, this will not dispel suspicions about what a basement inspection might