Trump Secretary Has Dystopian Idea to Involve Military in Immigration |
The political party that has historically pitched itself as a proponent of “states’ rights” is now advocating for a mass federal seizure of state land.
Speaking with Newsmax on Friday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum suggested that the next course of action to curb immigration across the southern U.S. border should involve transferring “strips” of California to the federal government.
“We have an opportunity to take a strip of land right along the border, transfer it to the military for a three-year period. Which then, if someone crosses into our country and steps on that, they’re stepping on a military installation,” Burgum said. “That gives our troops that are down there working to secure that border more authorities about detaining people. If they step on that land, it helps to improve the security.”
It’s an escalation of a plan that the White House enacted earlier this year, when it took a 60-foot-wide strip of federal land across three states and turned the entire region into a “military installation.” Doing so effectively allowed Donald Trump to sidestep the Posse Comitatus Act, circumventing Congress to wield the military for border control.
The military base designation was supposed to expand the troops’ authority, granting them the ability to “temporarily detain trespassers” and to “conduct cursory searches of trespassers … to ensure the safety of U.S. service members and Department of Defense (DoD) property.”
But even that effort was unsuccessful. In May, a federal judge dismissed charges against nearly 100 immigrants that the administration claimed had entered the “national defense” zone, determining that the government had failed to prove the immigrants were aware they were entering a restricted military area.
Seizing land in California could prove to be an even bigger catastrophe. In the same interview, Burgum—the former governor of North Dakota—suggested that the best location to usurp state land would be “near the Pacific,” on the basis that the region is “an area of high traffic.”
Not even Fox Business can pretend like President Donald Trump isn’t wrecking the economy.
Fox Business anchors Lauren Simonetti and Stuart Varney reported Friday that a University of Michigan survey found that an index of consumer sentiment had sunk even further since mid-December.
There had been a “surprise drop” in consumer sentiment to 52.9 percent confidence in the economy, Simonetti said. That’s down from 53.3 percent just slightly earlier this month, CNBC reported separately.
“Consumers are just worried about the price of things and long-run inflation expectations as well,” Simonetti added.
“But with rather these dull numbers, the market seems to like it. Perhaps implying that we’ll get more Fed rate cuts,” Varney noted.
“The weakness, I think, is attractive. Bad news is actually good news for the market, maybe.”
While it may be good for the market in the short term, consumer confidence is an accurate means of understanding the current economic situation and consumers’ willingness to spend, borrow, or invest. It can take several months before low consumer confidence is fully realized.
In December 2024, before Trump ever imposed his slate of disastrous economic policies, such as tariff wars and mass deportations, Michigan’s consumer sentiment index had been 74 percent, indicating a nearly 30 percent plummet year over year.
And it gets worse.
The survey’s rating of the “current economic conditions” was only 50.4 percent, down from 51.1 in November. CNBC reported that this was “a new all-time low” for the study going all the way back to the 1970s. In December, the rating had been 75.1, showing a nearly 33 percent drop year over year.
A livestream of a bearded man who goes by “Real Matt Money” inexplicably took over the White House home page on Thursday night, leading the public to ask if the page had been hacked or if the Trump administration was getting financial advice from a self-described “shepherd for individual investors.”
As Bloomberg reported, the livestream appeared and disappeared on the White House website in about an hour.
Real Money Matt seemed to be just as surprised as the rest of us.
“If I had known I would be live for the WORLD to see, I likely would have had a different message than personal finance,” he wrote Friday on X. “Let me meet the @POTUS.”
The video stream appeared to show a YouTuber, who describes himself as "a shepherd for individual investors." Read more: bloom.bg/490FS9D 📷️: whitehouse.gov
[image or embed]
While Matt took it in stride, the randomness of his live appearance on the White House website does lend itself to questions regarding just how serious the Trump administration is about security, especially since it brought us the Signalgate scandal just one month in.
The White House has yet to publicly comment.
The more details that emerge about Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, the clearer it is that the two shared a wildly unconventional—and creepy—relationship.
Hours after The New York Times reported Thursday that Epstein and Trump bonded over “trophy hunting,” investigative reporter Nicholas Confessore told MS NOW that Epstein frequently allowed his friends and associates to listen in on private phone calls where he and Trump shared details of their “sexual conquests.”
“So we spoke to several former assistants and employees of Jeffrey Epstein’s,” Confessore said. “And he had a habit of putting Donald Trump and other famous friends on the phone. It was partly a power play and partly a way that he groomed people. ‘See how........