A federal judge in Tennessee has dismissed the criminal indictment against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, ruling that the government failed to overcome the appearance that it prosecuted him because he successfully challenged his wrongful removal to El Salvador.
In a 31-page written ruling, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. granted Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss the indictment on vindictive-prosecution grounds. The indictment had charged Abrego Garcia with conspiring to transport undocumented immigrants between 2016 and 2025, and with transporting undocumented immigrants during a November 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee.
The ruling does not decide whether Abrego Garcia committed the conduct alleged in the indictment. Nor does it hold that the government lacked evidence. The judge’s concern was different: whether the government brought the criminal case for a constitutionally improper reason after Abrego Garcia’s lawsuit forced the executive branch to confront its obligation to return him to the United States.
A fuirther distinction is central to understanding the ruling. Judge Crenshaw did not find what lawyers call “actual vindictiveness,” which usually requires direct proof that prosecutors acted to punish a defendant for exercising legal rights. Instead, he found that the objective facts created a presumption of vindictiveness — and that the government failed to rebut that presumption.
The opinion turns on a sequence of events. Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador in March 2025 because of what the government later described as an “administrative error.” He challenged that removal in federal court. The district court, the Fourth Circuit, and then the Supreme Court all required the executive branch to facilitate his return. Days after the Supreme Court affirmed that obligation, Homeland Security reopened a previously closed investigation into a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop. Within weeks, the Justice Department had built a criminal case and obtained an indictment.
That is the core of the ruling. The judge concluded that, absent Abrego Garcia’s successful lawsuit challenging his removal, the government would not have brought this prosecution. The opinion is therefore not just about the sufficiency of the evidence in a human-smuggling case. It is about whether the government used a criminal indictment to solve the political and legal problem created by an unlawful deportation.
It’s an important ruling. Following is a deeper look at what the judge found, and why, based on a close reading of the full 31 page ruling.
The Timeline Was the Case
Judge Crenshaw opened the opinion with a warning from former Attorney General Robert Jackson about the danger of prosecutors who “pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.” Crenshaw then added: “That is the situation here.”
The facts that drove him to that conclusion are mostly chronological.
The underlying traffic stop happened on November 30, 2022. Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle in Tennessee that was registered to Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, a man in Texas who had previously been convicted of aiding and abetting the illegal transportation of aliens. HSI-Baltimore opened an investigation in December 2022.
Then the case sat.
More than two years later, on March 15, 2025, the government removed Abrego Garcia to El Salvador. On March 24, he challenged that removal in federal court in Maryland. On April 1, HSI-Baltimore closed the investigation into the 2022 traffic stop, stating that investigators had “accomplished all goals for this case” and that “no further investigative efforts” would be attributed to it.
That closure mattered. It showed that, at that point, the government’s posture was: remove Abrego Garcia, do not prosecute him.
Then the courts intervened.
On April 4, Judge Paula Xinis ordered the executive branch to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. On April 7, the Fourth Circuit denied a stay. On April 10, the Supreme Court affirmed that the government had to “facilitate” his return. That same day, Judge Xinis clarified that the executive branch had to take “all available steps” to facilitate his return “as soon as possible.” The next day, she found that the government had made “no meaningful effort to comply” and ordered daily reports.
Six days later, on April 17, HSI-Baltimore reopened the closed investigation. The next day, DHS issued a press release about the 2022 traffic stop. Three days later, the Tennessee Star published an article about the stop. Soon after, investigators began interviewing Hernandez-Reyes, who became the government’s key witness against Abrego Garcia. By May 21, Abrego Garcia had been indicted.
The judge did not treat this as coincidence. He viewed the reopening of the closed investigation as the point at which the case became tainted.
That does not mean he found that every later investigative step was fabricated or improper in isolation. His point was more structural. Once the government reopened the case in response to Abrego Garcia’s court victory, evidence gathered through that reopening could not be used to explain away the retaliatory taint. It was the product of the tainted decision.
This is the opinion’s basic logic: the government was under court order to bring Abrego Garcia back; almost immediately, it revived a dormant criminal matter; it then used that revived matter to indict him and bring him back in a posture that recast the story from unlawful deportation to criminal prosecution.
The Government’s “New Evidence” Argument Did Not Solve the Problem
The government’s first major answer was that the reopened investigation produced new evidence. That evidence included witness statements, phone data, license-plate reader data, and corroboration from other sources.
Judge Crenshaw rejected that argument, but not because he thought the evidence was necessarily irrelevant. He rejected it because it did not answer the constitutional question.
Some of the evidence was not new in any meaningful sense. The Tennessee traffic stop happened in 2022. The body-camera video existed in 2022. The Tennessee Highway Patrol report existed in 2022. The fact that the vehicle was registered to Hernandez-Reyes was known at the time. If the government wanted to build a federal human-smuggling case from that stop, the judge reasoned, it could have pursued that evidence long before April 2025.
The more important issue was Hernandez-Reyes.
The government treated Hernandez-Reyes’ cooperation as new evidence that justified the indictment. The judge saw it differently. Hernandez-Reyes became available because the government reopened the investigation after Abrego Garcia’s lawsuit succeeded. By the time then-Acting U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire became involved, HSI had already identified and interviewed Hernandez-Reyes twice, including once under a proffer agreement.
Crenshaw’s sharpest formulation was that McGuire did not discover Hernandez-Reyes; Main Justice official Aakash Singh “delivered him.”
That line matters because it exposes the flaw in the government’s theory. The government was arguing, in effect: we indicted because we found evidence. The judge’s response was: you found the evidence because you reopened the investigation for a retaliatory reason.
Later corroboration did not cure the problem either. McGuire began drafting a charging document on April 29, before HSI-Nashville had even formally opened its own investigation on May 2. Some of the later evidence, including additional witness interviews and license-plate reader data, came after the charging process was already underway.
To Crenshaw, that meant the later evidence confirmed a decision already in motion rather than objectively explaining why the government changed course. The relevant shift was not simply from “less evidence” to “more evidence.” It was from “remove and do not prosecute” to “prosecute and do not remove.” The government never adequately explained that shift.
Main Justice Was Running the Case
The second major government argument was that McGuire independently decided to prosecute Abrego Garcia based on the evidence.
Crenshaw did not accept that.
This is one of the most important parts of the opinion because it moves the case beyond timing alone. The judge found that Main Justice, through Aakash Singh, was closely involved in the prosecution from the beginning.
Singh was an Associate Deputy Attorney General in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. He reported to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. On April 27, the same day HSI-Nashville first contacted McGuire about the traffic stop, Singh emailed McGuire and other U.S. Attorneys requesting time to discuss Hernandez-Reyes. According to the judge, this was the first time McGuire had heard of Hernandez-Reyes.
The next morning, an HSI official sent the Tennessee Highway Patrol report directly to Singh. McGuire was not copied. Soon after, Singh was asking how close the team was to charging, whether they had a sense of potential charges, and whether they could prepare a draft complaint. McGuire responded by saying the case was his “highest priority” and that he wanted “the high command looped in.”
Those are not the judge’s only data points. On May 17, as the indictment approached, a Justice Department task force official told Singh that the team was on track to present the indictment on May 21 and asked whether anything had changed on that timeline. Singh responded: “Let’s keep close hold until we get clearance.”
The government tried to interpret that narrowly, arguing that any “clearance” related only to whether the indictment would be sealed. Crenshaw rejected that as self-serving. He read the exchange as evidence that Main Justice retained control over the charging process “down to the finish line.”
That finding became even more significant because of Blanche’s public statement. According to the opinion, Blanche said the government began “investigating” Abrego Garcia after a Maryland judge “questioned” the deportation decision. Blanche did not testify at the evidentiary hearing, so that statement went unrebutted.
This is how the judge connected the dots: Blanche’s statement tied the reopened investigation to Abrego Garcia’s successful lawsuit; Singh’s hands-on role tied Main Justice to the indictment; and the indictment then allowed the executive branch to return Abrego Garcia to the United States under criminal process rather than simply comply with Judge Xinis’s order.
The government wanted the court to focus on McGuire’s subjective belief that the evidence supported prosecution. Crenshaw said that was not enough. The legal question was not whether McGuire personally believed Abrego Garcia had committed a crime. It was whether objective facts rebutted the presumption that the case had been brought for a retaliatory reason.
The Internal Warning Was Hard to Ignore
The opinion also places weight on an internal warning from within the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Ben Schrader, then the Criminal Division Chief in the Middle District of Tennessee, prepared a memorandum recommending against charging Abrego Garcia. He asked that the memo be sent to relevant officials in Washington. McGuire acknowledged that vindictive prosecution concerns were “in the water” and that Schrader had specifically raised them.
McGuire proceeded anyway. Schrader resigned the day of the indictment, effective immediately.
Crenshaw did not hold that Schrader’s warning or resignation alone proved vindictiveness. But he clearly treated the episode as important. It showed that the concern was not merely a litigation strategy developed after the fact by defense lawyers. Someone inside the office saw the problem before indictment and recommended against proceeding.
The government’s post-hearing brief did not meaningfully address Schrader’s recommendation. Crenshaw found that omission telling. In the conclusion of the opinion, he wrote that what the government chose not to address was as important as what it did. It barely addressed Blanche. It mentioned the Supreme Court ruling only once, in a footnote. It framed Singh mostly as a passive recipient of updates. And it did not address Schrader’s recommendation against charging at all.
That failure went to the heart of the ruling. Once the court found a presumption of vindictiveness, the government had the burden to rebut it with objective, nonretaliatory explanations. The judge’s view was that the government largely failed to engage the evidence that created the presumption in the first place.
The Actual Evidence
This ruling is not about the factual evidence. But there is, in fact, substantial factual evidence that is not being widely reported. Most of this evidence was developed by the government after they originall dropped the case.
The 2022 traffic-stop materials — the THP report, body-camera video, and registration showing the car was tied to Hernandez-Reyes, a previously convicted trafficker. The judge’s key point was that all of this existed in 2022 and could have been pursued then.
Hernandez-Reyes’ cooperation — after the case was reopened in April 2025, HSI-Birmingham interviewed Hernandez-Reyes. He said he knew Abrego Garcia, wanted “a lawyer and some paper” in exchange for helping, and later stated under a proffer that he had hired Abrego to transport undocumented immigrants. According to Hernandez-Reyes, Abrego transported six to eight people per trip, roughly 600 people per year, and was paid $1,300, $1,500, or $1,700 per trip — allegedly totaling $90,000 to $96,000 per year.
Corroborating evidence developed after reopening — the government also pointed to phone data, license-plate reader data, additional witnesses, and interviews with another cooperating witness, CC-2, who allegedly corroborated Hernandez-Reyes. But Crenshaw found much of this came after the tainted reopening and, in some cases, after McGuire had already begun drafting charging documents.
What the Ruling Means
The government will appeal the ruling. But whatever happens on appeal, Judge Crenshaw’s opinion is an unusually detailed account of how a criminal prosecution can become constitutionally suspect even when the government has evidence.
It turns on sequence, motive, and institutional power.
The executive branch removed Abrego Garcia. Courts ordered the executive branch to facilitate his return. The government then revived a closed criminal investigation, publicly emphasized the old traffic stop, developed a cooperating witness, involved Main Justice closely in the charging process, pushed past an internal warning, and returned Abrego Garcia only after obtaining an indictment.
Judge Crenshaw’s conclusion was that this was not enough to rebut the appearance that the prosecution was brought because Abrego Garcia had successfully exercised his rights.
Near the end of the opinion, the judge returned to Robert Jackson’s warning about prosecutors who select a person and then search for an offense. “The evidence before this Court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power,” Crenshaw wrote.
That is why this ruling matters beyond Abrego Garcia. The court did not merely find that the government made a litigation mistake. It found that the machinery of criminal prosecution had been used to answer a political and legal embarrassment.
And in a constitutional system, that is supposed to be the line. On appeal, we will see if it holds.
It’s been awhile since we went deep into the weeds on a legal ruling, but I felt it was warranted in this case as we’ve been following it for more than a year now. The judge’s ruling is a great pleasure to read and absorb — excellent clarity of thought on display. I enjoyed working through it. Thanks for your support to the work — it matters, and I appreciate it.
London mayor Sadiq Khan. Credit: Noah Vickers/Local Democracy Reporting Service
City Hall has blocked a £50million contract between the Met Police and US tech company Palantir over a “clear and serious breach” of procurement rules.
Scotland Yard had been in talks about using Palantir’s artificial intelligence technology to automate intelligence analysis in criminal investigations, The Guardian reported in April.
The company, founded by tech magnate Peter Thiel, a prominent donor to US President Donald Trump, holds contracts with other UK public sector bodies.
The Metropolitan Police said the decision to stop the deal going ahead prevents it from using technology already available to the NHS, the Ministry of Defence and other police forces.
It also argued that bringing in such technology is “crucial” at a time when a financial shortfall means it faces reducing the workforce.
“Palantir does not reflect the values of our city,” said Allin-Khan. “We must maintain public trust and ensure that any tech partnerships truly serve the safety and rights of Londoners.”
Lewis said: “Other mayors and police and crime commissioners should take note and keep Palantir out of policing.”
But Peter Kyle, the business secretary, said Palantir could do things “no one else does around the world at the moment, and that’s something that I am really taken with”.
Kyle, who is among Labour ministers who have been lobbied by Palantir, according to records of ministerial meetings, called on the London mayor to “come out and explain” his “big decision”.
Scotland Yard appointed Palantir initially on a separate deal worth less than £500,000, which meant it did not have to be scrutinised by the mayor. That deal was to use AI to detect rogue officers by scanning to see how they might be abusing rosters and other systems.
The body that represents rank and file officers, the Metropolitan Police Federation, described it as a “big brother” system and criticised the “unchecked use of a controversial AI provider to spy on every single one of our colleagues”.
As Trump eyes Greenland, former aide pushes for billion-dollar AI data center in Arctic Island — Here’s all we know
Aiming to reach 300 MW operation by mid-2027 and expand to 1.5 GW by 2028-end, the Greenland AI data centre is being positioned as the solution to world’s artificial intelligence expansion related power requirements.
These Billionaires Bet Big On Greenland—After Trump Took Interest
ByMartina Di Licosa,Reporter. Martina Di Licosa is a reporter covering consumer businessesFollow AuthorJan 09, 2026, 06:30am ESTJan 21, 2026, 03:09pm EST
Denmark’s claim is unimpeachable. In the 1951 Defense of Greenland Agreement with Denmark, the US unambiguously recognizes ‘the sovereignty of the Kingdom of Denmark’ over Greenland.
Landry, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the semiautonomous Arctic island, was strolling through the capital city of Nuuk on Sunday when one resident gave him the finger, the newspaper reported. But that wasn’t the worst indignity he suffered, apparently.
“After he offered some MAGA hats to Greenlandic children, several shook their heads,” the Times wrote.
There were other signs that Landry’s diplomatic visit wasn’t fully connecting.
The state leader even resorted to trying to win over youngsters with the promise of baked goods.
“If you come to Louisiana and you come to the governor’s mansion, [you can have] all the chocolate chip cookies you can eat,” he said in another clip making the rounds.
The First Person to Reach The North Pole Was a Black Man
Matthew Henson, an African American explorer who was born in Charles County Maryland on August 8, 1866, was the first person in history to reach the North Pole.
At a young age, he was orphaned and lived with his aunt in Washington DC. However, he quit school in order to be a sailor. At the age of 12, he joined Captain Child’s crew on the merchant ship Katie Hinds traveling around the world for six years. He became an expert at charting and navigating.
At age of 20, Henson was discovered by an explorer named Robert E. Peary, who was impressed with the breadth of his geographical knowledge and experience. As a result, Peary invited Henson to join him for an expedition designed to investigate the feasibility of a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through Nicaragua. After that expedition, Henson and Peary undertook seven more expeditions with the goal of becoming the first to reach the North Pole, which was Peary’s dream.
Because of how difficult the mission was, they failed six times. Nevertheless, this didn’t stop them from planning the seventh expedition. For it, Henson taught himself how to build sleds, how to master a team of dogs, and how to speak the Inuit language. Henson invested many hours of study to make the corresponding calculations.
All of the hard work and planning paid off because, on April 6, 1909, Matthew Henson arrived at the North Pole and planted the American flag. He arrived 45 minutes ahead of Peary whose progress was a lot slower because he lost several toes to frostbite.
Sadly, it wasn’t until more than 30 years later in 1945 that Henson received the Navy Medal from Congress, and it wasn’t until 1961 that a plaque was erected in his honor at the State House at Annapolis, Maryland.
Henson died in the Bronx, New York City on March 9, 1955, at the age of 88. In 1988, his remains were moved to Arlington National Cemetery, where he was buried with full honors next to his friend, Robert Peary.
See also detailed description of the dangerous journey to the North Ple at:
Matthew Henson’s great-granddaughter Aviaq Henson worked with the Greenlandic postal service on the release of this 2009 stamp commemorating the centennial of the African American explorer’s discovery of the North Pole, alongside Commander Robert Peary. Stamp image courtesy POST Greenland. Background photo by Norbert Eisele-Hein/JAI/Corbis
As Trump seems to be winning tax payers money into his coffers, maybe he feels he is ‘top of the world’ which the character in the famous crime movie shouted:
James Cagney in White HeatWhite Heat (1949), directed by Raoul Walsh, starred James Cagney in one of his most combustible roles, as gangster Cody Jarrett. The film features the iconic line, “Top of the world, Ma!”
White HeatJames Cagney (left) and Edmond O’Brien in White Heat (1949), directed by Raoul Walsh.
Cody Jarrett (played by Cagney) is a cold-blooded killer who has an uncomfortable oedipal relationship with his domineering mother (Margaret Wycherly). When Jarrett learns of her murder while he is in prison, he virtually wrecks the mess hall in a fit of uncontrolled rage. Soon after, he and several other inmates—one of whom is actually an undercover agent (Edmond O’Brien)—escape from prison. After Jarrett’s gang decides to rob a chemical factory, the agent alerts the police to their plans. In the ensuing gunfight, Jarrett becomes cornered atop an oil-refinery tank. He screams, “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” as he unloads his gun into the tank, and he dies in the resulting inferno
ByNathan Goldman,Contributor. Nathan Goldman is a tax prof. at NC State Univ.Follow Author
May 20, 2026, 03:36am EDT
Like any other taxpayer, the United States President must file their tax return and pay taxes on their income. However, the outcome of Trump’s recently settled lawsuit may put that into question for Trump and his family. According to CNBC, the lawsuit settlement contains a provision that Trump and his family’s past tax returns cannot be prosecuted, meaning that whatever was paid cannot be challenged by the IRS. This provision puts a select few people in a rare category of individuals who are immune to taxation.
Donors to the president’s campaign are also not barred from applying for taxpayer money from the newly created fund open to people who claim to be victims of government “weaponization,” Blanche said Tuesday.
“Anybody in this country is eligible to apply if they believe they were victims,” he told the Senate Appropriations Committee as he seeks to justify a Justice Department budget that slashes funding for domestic violence survivors.
……………
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche hasn’t ruled out January 6 rioters and Donald Trump’s donors from receiving taxpayer funds from what critics have called a $1.7 billion ‘slush fund’ for the president’s allies (Getty Images)
Blanche would not say whether a rioter pardoned by Trump who was later found guilty of five counts related to sex crimes against children would be eligible for a payout.
“You can’t tell us today that this individual would not be eligible for a payout from this fund,” Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen told him.
“I find that obscene,” he said.
Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, is overseeing the nation’s top law enforcement agency after the president ousted Pam Bondi following her 14 months on the job. The DOJ announced the fund on Monday as part of a settlement after Trump abandoned his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS.
“The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” Blanche said Monday.
The fund opens a “lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress,” he said.
A five-member commission — with members appointed by Blanche — will manage the fund.
Trump told reporters on Monday that who gets paid will be “dependent on a committee” made up of “very talented people, very highly respected people.”
The administration’s announcement offered few details about how the fund would disburse money to eligible victims, or who would even be eligible.
But the list of recipients will remain “confidential,” Blanche told senators Tuesday.
The proposal has alarmed critics and watchdog groups who fear the Trump administration is effectively handing American taxpayers’ dollars to the president’s allies after an unprecedented series of pardons and commutations for his supporters.
“The record is crystal clear. You are still acting as the president’s personal lawyer,” Van Hollen told Blanche Tuesday. “It’s hard to justify giving you any funds.”
Extract from Michael Sellers, Substack, May 28, 2026, after 35 former judges want the case reopened stating deceit of court:
That is the whole legal issue in one sentence.
Was there a real case?
Was there a real settlement?
Or was the court used in a way that allowed the collusive creation of a $1.776B slush fund that could never have been created through legislation or any other legitimate way. Not to mention the immunity for Trump and his family.
The Rule 60 theory
The procedural tool the former judges invoke is Rule 60 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
That matters because the case was dismissed voluntarily. Under Rule 41, a plaintiff can often dismiss a case before the defendant files an answer or motion for summary judgment. In many cases, that ends the matter automatically.
But Rule 60 allows courts to set aside judgments or orders in certain circumstances, including fraud, misrepresentation, misconduct, voidness, or extraordinary circumstances. It also preserves a court’s authority to address “fraud on the court.”
The former judges’ filing relies on that authority. Their theory is that the dismissal should be reopened not because outsiders dislike the settlement, but because the court may have been deprived of material information before the case disappeared.
That is an important distinction.
They are not saying, “Judge, review this settlement because it is politically offensive.”
They are saying, “Judge, you were already examining whether this was a real case. Then the parties dismissed the case without disclosing the settlement. Then DOJ announced the settlement and used the dismissed case as the basis for a $1.776 billion fund. You should reopen the matter to determine whether the judicial process was manipulated.”
That is a much stronger and more court-centered argument.
It puts the injury not only on taxpayers, Congress, or Trump’s political opponents. It puts the injury on the court itself.
The Article III problem
The deepest issue is constitutional.
Article III limits federal courts to actual cases and controversies. This is not a technical rule. It is one of the boundaries that keeps federal judges from becoming instruments of political convenience.
Courts cannot decide abstract questions. They cannot bless prearranged outcomes. They cannot preside over sham disputes in which both sides are, in substance, aligned.
That is why the posture of Trump’s IRS suit was so unusual from the beginning. Trump brought the case in his personal capacity, but as president he also sits at the top of the executive branch whose agencies he sued. DOJ, meanwhile, is supposed to represent the United States — not the personal financial or political interests of the president.
The earlier House amicus brief put the problem directly, arguing that while Trump is president, “the collusion between the parties has eliminated any justiciable case or controversy.”
The former judges now take that concern and link it to the settlement.
If the lawsuit was non-adversarial, then the settlement may not be a true compromise of litigation. It may be a government benefit conferred through the appearance of litigation.
That would matter for several reasons.
It would matter to the court, because the court may have been asked to process a case that was not constitutionally proper.
It would matter to Congress, because the settlement appears to create a massive fund outside normal appropriations.
It would matter to taxpayers, because public money would be paid out through a mechanism whose legal foundation depends on the validity of the settlement.
And it would matter to the rule of law, because the president and his administration cannot create legal authority simply by staging a lawsuit and then settling it.
People Are Calling 911—Only to End Up in ICE’s Clutches
Local law enforcement agencies are cooperating with Donald Trump.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Under President Donald Trump’s strict immigration policies, immigrants who call 911 are being detained, and those who are too afraid to call are dying as a result.
In December, Axel Sanchez Toledo was violently arrested by police officers after he called 911 to request a welfare check on his 4-year-old daughter after hearing she’d fallen sick while staying with his ex-girlfriend, The Marshall Project reported Monday.
Sanchez Toledo greeted two officers from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office with his girlfriend and their infant son. One of the officers took Sanchez Toledo’s ID and retreated back to the patrol car. When he returned, he accused Sanchez Toledo of being undocumented, and said he was being detained for ICE.
Police body camera footage obtained by The Marshall Project showed Sanchez Toledo take off running. The two deputies pursued him, shocking him with a Taser, and kicking and tackling him while his girlfriend sobbed. As Sanchez Toledo was pinned to the ground, he moaned: “Please, guys, I’m not a criminal,” insisting he had documentation. (His lawyer confirmed to The Marshall Project that he had a pending asylum case.) “I don’t want to go,” he begged.
“Too fucking bad now!” one deputy screamed.
Sanchez Toledo was charged with resisting arrest. Those charges were dropped on April 29. He currently remains in ICE custody.
The officers who arrested Sanchez Toledo were part of the sheriff’s office 287(g) Task Force, through an agreement that grants state and local law enforcement to operate with federal immigration powers in return for reimbursements and other incentives.
Of the 1,500 officers at the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, only 150 are deputized to make immigration arrests. But between September 2025 and March, they have been responsible for arresting 60 immigrants per month, the highest arrest rate in the state, and have received almost $1 million for their work, according to The Marshall Project. More than 1,100 law enforcement agencies across the country have signed 287(g) agreements.
These bleeding boundaries between state and local enforcement, combined with Trump’s sweeping deportation efforts, are actively putting people in danger.
The family of a Virginia woman who died after she was allegedly assaulted by her partner are claiming the woman was afraid to report her domestic abuse to the police over concerns she’d be detained over her immigration status, according to NBC Washington. The Tahirih Justice Center, a nonprofit that supports immigrants fleeing gender-based violence, told the outlet that 76 percent of its clients were afraid to go to the police.
Law enforcement’s collaboration with federal immigration enforcement has eroded many immigrants’ sense of safety and their reliance on the police. In another story, one asylum-seeker told The Washington Post she’d been contacted by a man who assaulted her at a previous job. But since immigration agents had raided her workplace and started sweeping up neighbors, she said she wouldn’t consider calling law enforcement if anything happened to her.
President Donald Trump purchased shares of AI software company Palantir Technologies weeks before publicly endorsing the stock on his Truth Social platform, according to financial disclosure records released this week by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.
The documents show Trump made between $247,008 and $630,000 worth of Palantir purchases during the first quarter of 2026. In March alone, he made at least seven separate purchases of the stock totaling as much as $530,000.
The following month, Trump praised Palantir on Truth Social by name and ticker symbol as shares were experiencing their worst week in more than a year, a stretch during which the software selloff accelerated amid the Iran war and famed short-seller Michael Burry had taken aim at the company.
“Palantir Technologies (PLTR) has proven to have great war fighting capabilities and equipment,” Trump wrote on the platform at the time. “Just ask our enemies!!!”
The OGE filings also show Trump sold as much as $5 million worth of Palantir on Feb. 10, with several additional sales of the stock made over roughly the following two weeks.
He bought up to $5 million of stock in Dell Technologies ($DELL) on February 10th. It has risen 96% since then.
He bought stock in Intel ($INTC) on March 2nd. It has risen 150% since then.
Several disclosed trades occurred before later administration actions, trade negotiations, or corporate developments tied to AI, defense, crypto, and brokerage markets.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time Trump has actively traded individual stock while in office.
Nvidia purchases were made before CEO Jensen Huang joined Trump’s China trip, where AI chip exports and semiconductor policy were expected to be discussed.
Robinhood purchases happened while investors are paying attention close to the administration-backed Trump Accounts program, where Robinhood is serving as brokerage and initial trustee.
Palantir, GE Aerospace, Boeing, and other defense-linked purchases happened while there is heightened defense-sector focus tied to the Iran conflict and expanding Pentagon procurement plans.
Coinbase and Robinhood trades also stand out as the administration advances crypto and retail-investing policy initiatives.
Intel, SanDisk, Dell, and other semiconductor or AI-infrastructure names were made ahead of renewed U.S.-China trade negotiations and AI supply-chain announcements.
The CIA used a car bomb to kill a mid-level cartel leader in Mexico’s capital, insiders claim. The US foreign intelligence agency is pursuing clandestine operations as part of president Donald Trump’s war on so-called ‘narco-terrorists’. In reality, the operations are about extending US control over the Americas.
Mexican authorities have maintained extreme secrecy around the explosion, but multiple sources tell CNN that the attack was a targeted assassination, facilitated by CIA operations officers. An explosive device had been hidden inside the vehicle, the State of Mexico’s Attorney General told CNN.
Sowing chaos in Mexico
The US outlet quoted several figures familiar with the operation. They contradicted the official CIA response.
The lethality of their operations has been seriously ramped up. It’s a significant expansion of the kind of thing the CIA has been willing to do inside Mexico.
A former CIA officer said the US was trying to sow chaos through unattributable actions:
They definitely wanted this incident to create the question in everyone’s mind of, ‘Who did this?’
We have been living in anarchic war for many months in Sinaloa. But attacks like this, if confirmed, in an area near the country’s capital, well, I have never heard of anything similar.
In February, the killing of a senior cartel boss Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes led to widespread fighting across several Mexican states. Mexican security forces reportedly pulled the trigger, but CIA intelligence supported the operation. Here is the Canaryreport on that mission.
Conflating drug trafficking and terrorism
The US has increasingly tried to frame drug trafficking in the same category as terrorism. The new US counter-terrorism strategy reaffirms this:
Last year, I rightfully designated the deadly cartels as terrorist organizations, and began using the strength and power of the U.S. military to stop and destroy their operations.
This approach was also used to justify the 3 January attack on Venezuela. That action saw president Nicolas Maduro kidnapped and taken to New York for trial. The same narrative is still being used to justify illegal drones strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. To date, 193 people have been killed at sea since September 2025.
The US justice department classified the Cartel De Los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) alongside ISIS and Al-Qaeda in November. 43 days later, the US has effectively admitted the organisation does not exist – at least not as a cartel in any conventional sense.
The fact is, Cartel De Los Soles was always shorthand for high-level government corruption in Venezuela. It’s use goes back to the 1990s. The ‘suns’ refer to a rank insignia worn by grifting senior military officials. Which means the US classified a slang term in the same category as actual terror groups.
In reality, the Trump administration is aggressively pursuing hemispheric control. One writer has described this as building a ‘homeland empire’.
Trump’s homeland empire
Trump’s plan is driven by US decline, but also the increasing synergy between law enforcement, military and intelligence aims. This process is powered by the fascistic impulses of the US war on terror.
Historian Nikhil Pal Singh warned in a recent piece for Equator:
familiar analytical frameworks which rely on the distinction between foreign and domestic realms, normality and legality, policing and war, cannot provide the ‘world picture’ we need to grasp what’s happening here.
Instead, Trump:
conflates immigrants, drugs and free trade as sources of weakness coming from outside, “poisoning the blood of our country”.
the archaic geopolitics of a settler empire to the modern legal frameworks devised by his liberal predecessors.
US operations in South America are continuing under the name ‘Operation Total Extermination’. Canada, Cuba and Greenland have all been threatened with intervention or annexation. If not for the disastrous Iran war, Trump might already have acted. US rhetoric about continental politics has centred on drugs. But scratch the surface and you’ll find the same old colonial ambitions.
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Twice this week, U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed interest in turning Venezuela into his country’s 51st state. The latest came via a Truth Social post Tuesday with a map showing the South American country filled with the U.S. flag.
Previous statements doubting Venezuela’s sovereignty over the past 25 years have been met with immediate derision from senior government officials, including the president. The ruling party even organized demonstrations in the capital, Caracas, as recently as Jan. 3, hours after then-President Nicolás Maduro was captured by the U.S., that included chants of “Gringo go home.” This time around, however, the government has mostly kept quiet, save for a brief statement to reporters Monday from acting President Delcy Rodríguez.
The approach demonstrates the balance Rodríguez must strike between external and internal politics following the January U.S. military attack in Caracas. The Trump administration has since implemented a phased plan to try to turn around the crisis-wrecked country and has forced Rodríguez’s political movement, Chavismo, to abandon the anti-U.S. sentiment that long accompanied its teachings.
“This is probably the most public and sharp manifestation of the government’s transactional, self-survival approach above everything else right now, above even that sort of basic tenet of Chavismo,” said Christopher Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at the London-based Chatham House think tank. “It’s better that they hold their tongue, not offend the U.S. right now. Why overreact to a ridiculous claim by Donald Trump?”
A drone strike has sparked a fire on the perimeter of the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), raising new concerns over a potential new regional escalation amid a fragile ceasefire between Iran and the United States.
Authorities in Abu Dhabi said the blaze broke out at an electrical generator outside the plant’s inner perimeter in the Al Dhafra region on Sunday. No injuries were reported, and officials said radiation levels remained normal.
Diesel generators at nuclear plants serve as emergency backup power sources to ensure the operation of critical systems, such as reactor cooling, during power outages. They help maintain safety and prevent accidents by providing power until the main power source is restored. aggpower.com mtu-solutions.com
So this seems to be a warning that this was a precise targeting which, if push comes to shove, destruction of backup up power may occur leading to nuclear meltdown of the plant.
Any country with nuclear power stations must surely run this risk in conflict situations where current military drones can now be so accurately aimed.
So I asked, how many countries have nuclear power plants?
Answer:
Nuclear power plants operate in 31 countries around the world. These countries generate about a tenth of the world’s electricity from nuclear energy. World Nuclear Association Wikipedia
Here is an extract from a historical list of nuclear power plants hit by Russia:
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Ukraine: Current status of nuclear power installations
Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Ukraine. Image: Ralf 1969, Wikimedia Commons
Last updated: 24 April 2026
Over four years after the war in Ukraine began, the NEA continues to collect information from verifiable and reliable sources to support its members’ efforts to maintain an understanding of the state of nuclear safety and radiological protection in that country. The OECD has continued to further broaden, deepen and strengthen its engagement and co-operation with Ukraine. The NEA, in partnership with the United Kingdom, has launched an NEA-Ukraine Visiting Experts Programme, which has brought Ukrainian nuclear energy experts to the Agency.
Because our Ukrainian colleagues are faced with a highly uncertain, ever-changing and very challenging situation it is to be expected that obtaining detailed information on a regular basis may not be possible.
Electricity grid
The electricity grids of Ukraine and Moldova were successfully synchronised with the Continental European Grid on 16 March 2022.
Nuclear power plants
In Ukraine 15 pressurised water reactors of Russian VVER design are operated by the State Enterprise National Nuclear Energy Generating Company “Energoatom” at four plants. These plants operate under nuclear safety regulations implemented by the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine (SNRIU).
16 April 2026: The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) lost connection to the 330 kV Ferosplavna-1 backup power line, resulting in a complete loss of off-site power for more than two hours to the plant. Emergency diesel generators ensured continued cooling and other essential safety functions were maintained until the Ferosplavna-1 line was reconnected.
14 April 2026: The ZNPP lost connection to the same Ferosplavna-1 backup power line for approximately 90 minutes, during which time the plant relied on emergency diesel generators to maintain nuclear safety and security functions during the outage.
24 March 2026: The 750 kV external power line Dniprovska, which provides the electricity needed to ensure continued cooling and other essential safety functions, was disconnected due to military activity.
6 March 2026: The back-up 330kV power line Ferosplavna-1 was reconnected to the ZNPP after repair works were carried out under a local ceasefire brokered by the IAEA.
3 March 2026: The Russian operating entity at the ZNPP announced that IT functions at the plant were to be placed under the jurisdiction of KONSIST-OS, an integrator and IT competence centre of the Electric Power Division of Rosatom.
19 January 2026: The ZNPP’s last remaining back-up 330 kV line, damaged and disconnected as a result of military activity on 2 January, was reconnected. Until its restoration the plant had been entirely dependent on its sole functioning 750 kV line for the electricity it needs to ensure continued cooling and other essential safety functions.
10 February 2025: The ZNPP’s single 330 kV back-up off-site power line was disconnected, reportedly because of military activity.
30 December 2025: Power transmission between the electrical switchyards of the ZNPP and the nearby Zaporizhzhya Thermal Power Plant was restored. The connection is important as it offers a key route for electricity supplied by one of the ZNPP’s two available power lines, a 330 kilovolt (kV) line.
13 December 2025: Both the 750 kV kV external power line Dniprosvska and the 330 kV Ferosplavna-1 backup power line were disconnected, resulting in a complete loss of off-site power for more than two hours to the ZNPP. Emergency diesel generators ensured continued cooling and other essential safety functions were maintained until the external power lines were reconnected.
6 December 2025: The 750 kV external power line Dniprosvska and the back-up external 330 kilovolt (kV) Ferosplavna-1 line supplying the ZNPP were cut at 3:21 local time on 6 December. The electricity required to cool the six reactors in their current cold shutdown state and for other nuclear safety and security functions in ZNPP was provided by on-site emergency diesel generators until external power was restored. The Ferosplavna-1 line was reconnected 29 minutes after power was lost. The Dniprovska main power line was reconnected at 11:13 local time.
Extract from Wajeeh Lion re the attack on Barakah:
The Barakah facility, constructed with South Korean technological assistance, supplies approximately 25% of the UAE’s electricity and is the first commercial nuclear power station on the Arabian Peninsula. The targeting of this facility marks an unprecedented escalation, bringing a nuclear reactor site into the crosshairs of offensive proxy warfare.
While official attribution was withheld, the strike exhibits the hallmarks of Iranian strategic signaling, likely executed by proxy forces such as the Houthi movement or the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. The UAE hosts Israeli Iron Dome missile defense batteries and U.S. Air Force assets, including MQ-4C Triton drones, at the nearby Al Dhafra Air Base. By executing a strike that caused psychological disruption without a mass-casualty radiological catastrophe, the orchestrators demonstrated their capability to penetrate Emirati airspace at will. This action operates as extreme kinetic leverage, designed to fracture the Gulf-U.S. coalition by demonstrating that the global energy supply and sovereign infrastructure of American allies will be held hostage if the blockade continues.
“How US Intelligence and an American Company Feed Israel’s Killing Machine in Gaza“, 12 April 2024
… One of Unit 8200’s newest and most important organizations is the Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Center, which, according to a spokesman, was responsible for developing the AI systems that “transformed the entire concept of targets in the IDF.” Back in 2021, the Israeli military described its 11-day war on Gaza as the world’s first “AI war.” Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza offers a more recent—and devastating—example.
…
Earlier this month saw a continuation of that effort, with the targeting of three well-marked and fully approved aid vehicles belonging to World Central Kitchen, killing their seven occupants and ensuring that the food would never reach those dying of starvation. The targeting was precise—placing missiles dead center in the aid agency’s rooftop logos. Israel, however, said it was simply a mistake, similar to the “mistaken” killing of nearly 200 other aid workers in just a matter of months—more than all the aid workers killed in all the wars in the rest of the world over the last 30 years combined, according to the Aid Worker Security Database.
Such horrendous “mistakes” are hard to understand, considering the enormous amount of advanced targeting AI hardware and software provided to the Israeli miliary and spy agencies—some of it by one American company in particular: Palantir Technologies. “We stand with Israel,” the Denver-based company said in posts on X and LinkedIn. “The board of directors of Palantir will be gathering in Tel Aviv next week for its first meeting of the new year. Our work in the region has never been more vital. And it will continue.” As one of the world’s most advanced data-mining companies, with ties to the CIA, Palantir’s “work” was supplying Israel’s military and intelligence agencies with advanced and powerful targeting capabilities—the precise capabilities that allowed Israel to place three drone-fired missiles into three clearly marked aid vehicles.
Immediately after the talk, Karp traveled to a military headquarters where he signed an upgraded agreement with Israel’s Ministry of Defense. “Both parties have mutually agreed to harness Palantir’s advanced technology in support of war-related missions,” said Executive Vice President Josh Harris.
The project involved selling the ministry an Artificial Intelligence Platform that uses reams of classified intelligence reports to make life-or-death determinations about which targets to attack. In an understatement several years ago, Karp admitted, “Our product is used on occasion to kill people,” the morality of which even he himself occasionally questions. “I have asked myself, ‘If I were younger at college, would I be protesting me?’” Recently, a number of Karp’s employees decided to quit rather than be involved with a company supporting the ongoing genocide in Gaza. And in London’s Soho Square, dozens of pro-Palestine protesters and health workers gathered at Palantir’s UK headquarters to accuse the firm of being “complicit” in war crimes.
Palantir’s AI machines need data for fuel—data in the form of intelligence reports on Palestinians in the occupied territories. And for decades a key and highly secret source of that data for Israel has been the US National Security Agency, according to documents released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. … he told me that “one of the biggest abuses” he saw while at the agency was how the NSA secretly provided Israel with raw, unredacted phone and e-mail communications between Palestinian Americans in the US and their relatives in the occupied territories. Snowden was concerned that as a result of sharing those private conversations with Israel, the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank would be at great risk of being targeted for arrest or worse.
According to the Top Secret/Special Intelligence agreement between the NSA and Israel, “NSA routinely sends ISNU [Israeli SIGINT National Unit] minimized and unminimized raw collection…as part of the SIGINT relationship between the two organizations.” It adds, “Raw SIGINT includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content.”
Now, with Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, critical information from NSA continues to be used by Unit 8200, according to a number of sources, to target tens of thousands of Palestinians for death—often with US-supplied 2,000-pound bombs and other weapons. And it is extremely powerful data-mining software, such as that from Palantir, that helps the IDF to select targets. While the company does not disclose operational details, some indications of the power and speed of its AI can be understood by examining its activities on behalf of another client at war: Ukraine. Palantir is “responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine,” according to Karp. “From the moment the algorithms set to work detecting their targets [i.e., people] until these targets are prosecuted [i.e., killed]—a term of art in the field—no more than two or three minutes elapse,” noted Bruno Macaes, a former senior Portuguese official who was given a tour of Palantir’s London headquarters last year. “In the old world, the process might take six hours.”
The company is currently developing an even more powerful AI targeting system called TITAN (for “Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node”). According to Palantir, TITAN is a “next-generation Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance ground station enabled by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to process data received from Space, High Altitude, Aerial and Terrestrial layers.” Although designed for use by the US Army, it’s possible that the company could test prototypes against Palestinians in Gaza. “How precise and accurate can you know a system is going to be unless it’s already been trained and tested on people?” said Catherine Connolly of the Stop Killer Robot coalition, which includes Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
The most in-depth examination of the connection between AI and the massive numbers of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children slaughtered in Gaza by Israel comes from an investigation recently published by +972 Magazine and Local Call. Although Palantir is not mentioned by name, the AI systems discussed by the journalists appear to fit into the same category. According to the lengthy investigation, Unit 8200 is currently using a system called “Lavender” to target thousands of alleged Hamas fighters. …
The +972 Magazine report details how the Israeli military uses powerful algorithms to sort through enormous volumes of surveillance data—phone, text, and digital——to come up with lengthy kill lists of targets. And adding to that haul would be the data from the NSA intercepts of Palestinians in the United States communicating with their families in Gaza—a process that continued after Snowden left NSA, according to a number of sources.
…
In a letter to their commanders, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the head of the Israeli army, they charged that Israel used the information collected against innocent Palestinians for “political persecution.” And in testimonies and interviews given to the media, they specified that data were gathered on Palestinians’ sexual orientations, infidelities, money problems, family medical conditions and other private matters that could be “used to extort/blackmail the person and turn them into a collaborator” or create divisions in their society.
Several years ago, Brig. Gen. Yossi Sariel, the current director of Unit 8200, published a book outlining a supposedly fictional and far-reaching AI system. But the journalists from +972 and Local Call discovered that the super-powerful target generation machine he wrote about then as fiction actually exists. …
…
Such actions were likely contributing factors in the recent decision by the United Nations Human Rights Council to adopt a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza. …
For years, the United States has had strict regulations on the export of weapon systems to foreign countries because of the lack of accountability once in the users’ possession, and the potential for serious war crimes. Even Palantir CEO Alex Karp has argued that “the power of advanced algorithmic warfare systems is now so great that it equates to having tactical nuclear weapons against an adversary with only conventional ones.” Israel’s indiscriminate killing in Gaza offers the perfect example of why it’s time to also begin far stricter regulation of the export of AI systems, like those developed by Palantir. Systems that, as Karp suggested, are the digital equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction. After all, it’s not just the bomb that kills, but the list that puts you and your family under it.
No one is safe from applications Palantir systems can be deployed against:
ICE Agents Have List of 20 Million People on Their iPhones Thanks to Palantir
What Happened: A senior ICE official said agents are using Palantir Technologies systems to access information on roughly 20 million people directly from their iPhones, dramatically expanding the agency’s ability to locate targets and conduct raids. The comments highlighted how deeply Palantir technology is embedded in Trump’s immigration enforcement system.
Why It Matters: Palantir is helping build a massive surveillance dragnet with no transparency or oversight. Trump’s immigration crackdown is increasingly powered by surveillance capable of rapidly identifying, tracking, and targeting millions of people, and systems like this will expand to everyone.
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