U.S.-Funded News Organizations Defy Trump and Continue Reporting

Multiple U.S.-funded news organizations worldwide continue to operate in the face of cuts and purges from the Trump administration.

Last week, President Trump signed an executive order to destroy the U.S. Agency for Global Media. The next day, virtually the entire staff at Voice of America was fired, as they are considered federal employees. But other international broadcasters funded by the United States operate as nonprofits that rely on federal grants—and they’re fighting back.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks are all continuing reporting while they prepare for legal challenges to Trump’s order, which they believe is “unlawful.”

“Our pro bono legal team is prepared to take all necessary steps to ensure that RFE/RL continues its Congressionally authorized mission,” wrote Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty board chair Lisa Curtis on LinkedIn.

She continued:

Here are four reasons it’s illegal for USAGM to deny appropriated funds to RFE/RL.

1. It violates the statute governing RFE/RL.

2. It violates Congressional appropriations laws.

3. It violates the U.S. Constitution. The Appropriations Clause and the Take Care Clause of the Constitution, and the Impoundment Control Act, cannot be ignored. Justice Kavanaugh agrees and said so in his Aiken County decision in 2013.

4. Finally the grant termination itself is unlawful.

Leaders of the outlets said programming is set to continue until further notice.

Americans are begging Democrats to put up a resistance to the Trump administration as MAGA strips the federal government for parts.

The party was put to task by a concerned parent who spoke to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries during a Healthcare Education Project discussion Monday afternoon.* The woman said she thought Jeffries was “doing a great job” but argued that the liberal party’s continued inaction as a whole in the face of sweeping Medicaid cuts would end many American lives.

“I know you need to engage a lot more people,” the woman said. “My son recently had a transplant in January.… Because of that, he needs to take his anti-rejection medication every day in order to survive for the rest of his life.”

“If these Medicaid cuts go through—to give tax breaks to billionaires that really don’t need it—my son is basically sentenced to die, because he will not be able to afford the medication for anti-rejection,” she continued. “And like him, there are many, many others in the same situation.”

“So we need you to engage the others, to fight hard, to go as low as you have to just like the Republicans do, and fight for ours,” she added.

In response, Jeffries likened the current struggle to the Civil Rights era, and agreed that Democrats “have to show up with the same level of strength, resilience, and courage” as their historic heroes.

“The odds were stacked against us in 2017 that we could save the Affordable Care Act, but together, we did,” he said. “And as long as we show up, stand up, and speak out with the same level of energy, courage, and strength, we’re going to save Medicaid, stop them from enacting this cut, and protect the health care of the American people.”

Still, Jeffries’s efforts have only stretched so far. All but one House Democrat voted against the Republican budget resolution last week. Yet despite vehemently opposing the measure over the last several weeks, Jeffries ultimately defended Senator Chuck Schumer’s leadership on Tuesday after the Senate minority leader pushed his caucus to vote for it.

Jeffries told reporters that he still believes Schumer should lead Democrats in the upper chamber. The comments followed a moment last week in which Jeffries dodged a question on Schumer’s future.

Constituents in Arizona similarly torched Democratic Senators Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego at a town hall on Monday, urging the politicos to “get in the mud” with Republicans.

“We can do better, and we should do better. We owe it to every Arizonan,” Gallego said, before telling his constituents that they should instead pile the pressure on Republican lawmakers.

Republicans have pitched an $880 billion cut to Medicaid in order to pay for an extension to Trump’s 2017 tax plan, which will overwhelmingly benefit corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit.

Medicaid insures more than 70 million Americans. The popular social program, established in 1965 under President Lyndon B. Johnson, represents nearly $1 out of every $5 spent on health care in the U.S. It pays for more than 41 percent of births in America, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, and is the largest financier of nursing home care in the country, according to HuffPost.

* This story originally misstated the time of day Jeffries made his comments.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is suddenly bristling at Donald Trump’s threats against federal judges. 

In a rare public statement on Tuesday, Roberts said, “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”  

Roberts was likely referencing Trump, Elon Musk, and other right-wing personalities who have threatened judges ruling against the administration. It seems to be an about-face from the Supreme Court’s rulings expanding presidential authority, which Roberts has voted in support of as one of the court’s six conservatives. Roberts, along with that conservative majority, voted to give the presidency near-total immunity in July in a ruling concerning federal charges against Trump. 

In a Truth Social post Tuesday, Trump called U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, who blocked Trump’s use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to justify deportation flights, “a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama.”

“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” Trump’s post concluded. 

It’s not the first time Trump has threatened a judge as president. Last month, he said that a judge temporarily blocking his cuts to biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health was “a very serious violation,” saying that “maybe we have to look at the judges.”

Vice President JD Vance has also criticized judicial checks on the Trump presidency, claiming that “[j]udges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” 

Roberts may suddenly be realizing that all of these right-wing attacks on judges not only undermine judicial authority in the U.S., but also amount to a constitutional crisis. But he, and the rest of the Supreme Court’s conservatives bear responsibility for protecting Trump from legal action, allowing him to be elected a second time with increased, nearly unchecked power. 

This story has been updated.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer provided a limp defense Tuesday for why he should keep his seat despite receiving immense backlash from his own party after he voted in support of the Republicans’ destructive budget bill last week.

Not only did Schumer vote in support of the legislation, which all but one House Democrat had not deigned to endorse, he instructed other members of his party to do so as well. In the end, nine Democratic senators lent their imprimatur to the bill.

Schumer’s support for a bill that will allow Donald Trump to keep steering the government until September has elicited strong outrage from Democratic lawmakers and voters alike, who began sounding calls for him to be replaced.

During an appearance on CBS Tuesday, Schumer was asked what he would say to voters who were demanding he depart his seat, and his response was simple.… Perhaps too simple.

“I am the best leader for the Senate,” Schumer said.

“I am the best at winning Senate seats,” he added, pointing to the results of the 2020 elections at the end of Trump’s first disastrous term, when Democrats won four Senate seats and only lost one.

Unfortunately for Schumer, the goodwill from that success has since waned. It’s 2025, and in the last election, his party didn’t just lose four seats in the Senate—they also lost the White House.

Still, Schumer insisted that he was not going anywhere. “We’re moving forward, Hakeem and I have a plan,” he said, referring to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

“There is a real contrast between the parties. The Republican Party, now particularly in office, is the party of rich oligarchs who wanna really screw every average American so they can get tax cuts for the rich,” Schumer said, before outlining his plan for a “Day of Action on Medicaid” Tuesday that involved Democrats going to Medicaid centers and telling people about all they stood to lose from Trump’s cuts.

Schumer insisted that if Democrats simply kept up the “relentless fighting,” Trump’s popularity and “effectiveness” would decline.

But while Schumer’s version of “relentless fighting” seemed to involve Democrats doing direct outreach to voters, the disgraced lawmaker recently postponed his book tour citing concerns about his security amid the ongoing backlash to his lackluster leadership.

On Saturday, Donald Trump held a candlelight dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, with tech oligarch Elon Musk in tow, where guests were asked to spend $1 million per seat.

Wired reports that this dinner did not appear on the president’s official schedule, unlike a similar candlelight dinner two weeks earlier where guests were also asked to donate $1 million each. That dinner’s invitation had a “MAGA INC.” header with a note reading “Donald J. Trump is appearing at this event only as a special guest speaker and is not asking for funds or donations.”

The donations for that dinner ostensibly went to Make America Great Again Inc., a super PAC that supported Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Not much is known about Saturday’s dinner, although Instagram reels posted by different guests showed that Musk attended with Shivon Zilis, the mother of four of his 14 known children, and an executive at his company Neuralink. Trump also sat next to Musk at Saturday’s dinner.

Also taking place over the weekend in nearby Palm Beach, Florida, was the Palm Event, an annual motorsports celebration. As a result, several expensive cars appeared at Mar-a-Lago on the night of the dinner, including a Rolls Royce, a Bugatti, and a Lamborghini, among other luxury vehicles. It’s an ostentatious show of wealth for an administration claiming to be reducing fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal government.

Trump holding fundraising dinners only two months into his presidency is historically unusual. Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, told Wired that he “can’t recall a sitting president in the first weeks of his administration asking for millions of dollars in fundraising.

“The concern is less about fundraising and more about access and influence. People hoping to get favorable treatment view it in their interest to donate money to Trump,” Moynihan said.

Why wasn’t this dinner on the White House’s schedule? Perhaps Trump didn’t like the attention given to the previous one, or there was something else going on. Mar-a-Lago is the site of many of Trump’s ethically questionable actions, including one-on-one meetings with business leaders who are willing to pay him $5 million for the privilege. Perhaps Trump wants his moneymaking schemes to get as little attention as possible.

Some of the men that Trump illegally deported to a mega prison in El Salvador are regular civilians and not murderous Tren de Aragua gang members as Trump continues to insist. 

On Saturday, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport over 200 Venezuelans on the grounds that they were Tren de Aragua gang members. A federal judge ordered the planes to turn around and return to the United States, but the Trump administration claimed that the judge’s written order came too late, wrongly suggesting that a verbal and written federal order hold different weight.

“These are criminals, many many criminals … murderers, drug dealers at the highest level, drug lords. People from mental institutions. That’s an invasion,” Trump said in reference to the deportees. 

In reality, immigration officials appear to be simply detaining any Latino men with tattoos.  

“The men sent to do hard labor in a Salvadoran prison with no due process include: A tattoo artist seeking asylum who entered legally, a teen who got a tattoo in Dallas because he thought it looked cool, a 26-year-old whose tattoos his wife says are unrelated to a gang,” the American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote on X. 

“Our [Immigrant Defenders Law Center] client fled Venezuela last year & came to US to seek asylum. He has a strong claim. He was detained upon entry because ICE alleged his tattoos are gang related. They are absolutely not,” immigration lawyer Lindsay Toczylowski wrote on Bluesky. “Our client worked in the arts in Venezuela. He is LGBTQ. His tattoos are benign. But ICE submitted photos of his tattoos as evidence he is Tren de Aragua. His @ImmDef attorney planned to present evidence he is not. But never got the chance because our client has been disappeared.” 

Aguilera Agüero, one of the people detained and deported, has a tattoo that reads “Real until death” in Spanish, a line from Puerto Rican reggaeton star and Trump supporter Anuel AA. Agüero’s family denies all ties to Tren de Aragua. 

“People have started identifying some of the 238 Venezuelan migrants deported to Bukele’s torture dungeons by the U.S. fascist regime. The brother of one of them posted that his relative is a barber with no criminal record and no links to any criminal organisations,” another account wrote on X. 

We’re at the point where Trump is proudly ignoring the checks and balance systems to carry out these racist and indiscriminate deportations, forcing innocent men into absolute danger in Bukele’s Salvadoran prison system.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has detained a prominent immigration advocate in Colorado.

Agents stopped Jeanette Vizguerra Monday in the parking lot of a Target where she works. Her daughter told NBC 9NEWS that she is being detained at an ICE facility on Oakland Street in Aurora, Colorado. Her family has not been in communication with her since about 3 p.m. Monday.

“Jeanette Vizguerra is a mother and pillar in her community,” Colorado Senator Michael Bennet posted on X Tuesday. “I am deeply concerned about ICE’s actions to detain her without any due process, like a deportation order. ICE should ensure Jeanette has legal counsel and immediately release her.”

Vizguerra spent years fighting her own deportation. She was charged with a misdemeanor in 2009 for driving without a license, after which authorities discovered she was undocumented and attempted to remove her from the country. But Vizguerra drew national attention for thwarting those efforts by taking refuge in a church, which has historically been considered a “sensitive location” inaccessible by ICE.

She proceeded to reside in the church for three years, and eventually created a network of local churches to house immigrants in similar need, called the Metro Denver Sanctuary Coalition.

Vizguerra was again scheduled for deportation in 2017 but once more took refuge in a church. She was granted a stay of deportation by the Biden administration in 2021.

The longtime activist arrived from Mexico City without proper documentation in 1997. Since then, she has struggled to find a pathway to citizenship, lacking the paperwork needed to apply for permanent residency.

ICE policy prohibits agents from accessing schools, hospitals, and religious sites such as churches, mosques, and synagogues, as well as public demonstrations and religious ceremonies such as funerals and weddings. But Donald Trump revoked that ordinance mere hours after his inauguration, leaving practically no shelter for immigrants that the Trump administration deems deserving of shoving out.

Trump has based his anti-immigrant rhetoric on the falsehood that the people who have entered the U.S. are murderers and rapists, and that they are a drain on the country’s economy and government resources as unemployed migrants struggle to obtain work and housing. In reality, undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born citizens. And in 2022, approximately 4.5 percent of the workforce was undocumented, contributing to some $75.6 billion in total taxes, according to the American Immigration Council.

Vizguerra, however, saw the writing on the wall.

“Whatever place. I don’t care if it’s a hospital, I don’t care if it’s a school, I don’t care if it’s a church.… I don’t care if some people have 40, 50 years here,” she told CBS News Colorado in January. “Everybody is at risk.”

That has proved truer than ever just two months into Trump’s second term. So far, the administration has deported immigrants of all stripes. It has removed individuals who’ve lived and worked in the country for decades, individuals who are married to U.S. citizens, and individuals in the process of renewing their visas. It has also revoked permanent resident status from people who have dared to speak out against the Trump agenda.

Donald Trump called Tuesday for a federal judge to be impeached, after the president was accused of defying a court order barring his massive deportations.

Trump attacked Judge James Boasberg, who issued a written order Sunday temporarily barring the White House from deporting noncitizens currently in custody. The president had invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport hundreds of individuals the government claims are Venezuelan gang members without due process.

Boasberg had also verbally ordered that two planes already in the air turn around and come back to the States. The flights instead continued to their destination in El Salvador—potentially marking the first instance that Trump’s White House has openly defied a federal court order.

In an enraged rant on Truth Social, the president escalated his attacks on the federal judiciary by demanding that Boasberg be impeached, and in classic Trump fashion, he also managed to make it about President Barack Obama.

“This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President—He didn’t WIN the popular VOTE (by a lot!), he didn’t WIN ALL SEVEN SWING STATES, he didn’t WIN 2,750 to 525 Counties, HE DIDN’T WIN ANYTHING!” Trump wrote.

“I WON FOR MANY REASONS, IN AN OVERWHELMING MANDATE, BUT FIGHTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MAY HAVE BEEN THE NUMBER ONE REASON FOR THIS HISTORIC VICTORY. I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do,” Trump wrote. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed Monday that the administration had complied with the judge’s order and that there was a difference between a judge’s written and verbal order. She also claimed that she was “not aware” of the president using any language about impeaching judges.

The world’s richest man thinks it’s unfair that people aren’t as interested in his products due to his far-right political views.

Elon Musk took to the social media platform he owns Monday night to vent about his alleged mistreatment.

“My companies make great products that people love and I’ve never physically hurt anyone,” Musk posted. “So why the hate and violence against me?”

But Musk had his own answer in mind.

“Because I am a deadly threat to the woke mind parasite and the humans it controls,” the Sieg heil!–waving billionaire wrote.

Tesla shares continued to tumble on Monday as one of its Chinese competitors, BYD, unveiled a system that could charge electric vehicles for a range of 249 miles in just five minutes.

Tesla comprises the majority of Musk’s net worth—but the carmaker’s ongoing eight-week slump is largely due to a global brand boycott.

Company stock is down by 50 percent so far this year, and analysts have faulted Musk’s reputational shift for the automaker’s financial woes.

Tesla historically attracted a more liberal consumer base with its electric vehicles, but since Musk went “dark MAGA,” that same base has soured on the tech billionaire and his products. That’s proven especially true in some of Europe’s stronger economies, such as Germany, which has seen sales in the country fall by more than 70 percent over the last two months, reported Bloomberg. Sales in China—where Tesla has two major factories—have similarly plummeted, falling by 49 percent in February.

Last week, the automaker’s stock had its worst day since 2020, as its Musk-induced problems coincided with historic market volatility under Donald Trump’s new tariff plans.

Board members, executives, and major investors in Tesla are jumping ship. Four top officers at the company have unloaded more than $100 million in stock since last month, reported ABC News. They include James Murdoch, the estranged son of right-wing media magnate Rupert Murdoch, and Elon Musk’s brother Kimbal Musk, the latter of whom shed $27 million, according to an SEC filing.

Even Tesla bulls are slowing down on the electric car manufacturer. Mizuho Securities managing director and senior analyst Vijay Rakesh cut his firm’s price target for Tesla by $85 per share, according to Barron’s. In a statement, Rakesh pointed to Musk’s polarizing persona and his influence in “geopolitics” as two reasons for the downturn.

“We believe Tesla’s sales woes are the result of a deterioration in geopolitics, brand perception (US/EU), share loss due to stronger competition (China), and softer-than-expected demand for the Model Y refresh,” wrote the analyst.

But despite Musk’s insistence on playing the victim, the multibillionaire still has the president on his side: Defying federal regulations, Trump used the White House last week as a backdrop for what was practically a Tesla commercial.

Several Tesla vehicles were parked in the White House driveway as Trump, joined by Musk and his son, answered reporters’ questions about his sudden affinity for the electric vehicle.

Tech oligarch Elon Musk has extended his influence over the White House even further: His Starlink internet service has been made accessible across the White House campus.

Trump administration officials say Musk donated the service, and that it was vetted by the Office of the White House Counsel’s lawyer handling ethics issues. But according to former White House officials from the Biden administration, tech donations need to go through approval from the chief information officers at the White House and the General Services Administration.

The Starlink system is routed through a White House data center with existing fiber cables miles away from Washington, D.C., unlike normal Starlink setups, which involve rectangular terminals that receive internet signals from SpaceX satellites orbiting arth.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Starlink was set up “to improve Wi-Fi connectivity on the complex.” Other administration staff told The New York Times that some parts of the White House complex could not get cell service, with Wi-Fi networks handling too much traffic at times.

There are a few problems with having the world’s richest man donate internet service to the White House: namely, the numerous conflicts of interest and ethics issues. Musk already collects billions of dollars through his government contracts, and controls Starlink. If White House employees are using the internet service, he could have access to their data. There are also questions as to how secure Starlink’s network is.

Starlink has also been set up at the GSA, an agency used as a base for Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. And it has contracts with many other government agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, usually to provide internet access in remote locations and in emergency situations. The fact that it’s now being used at one of the most important U.S. federal buildings raises questions about whether Musk has an ulterior motive—and what that may be.