Kristi Noem

Parts of the MAGA movement are unhappy with President Trump’s migration strategy. The administration has softened its policy on deportations following a public uproar over the ICE killings in January, it is said. The focus has been on removing only the most violent offenders. “The truth is the first year was not a year of mass deportation,” says Mike Howell of the Mass Deportation Coalition. “A conscious decision was made to go after the worst first, which was, we’ll call it a deviation, from the central campaign promise of mass deportations.” Such criticisms miss the point. The Trump administration has tackled the worst offenders to shore up support for its wider migration crackdown. And that crackdown has been wildly successful.

You’re not fired! One of the defining aspects of the second Trump administration so far has been the unwillingness of the Commander-in-Chief to oust senior officials who generate unwanted headlines. "Never bend, never break" is the mantra, and that means always refusing to dance to the media’s tune. War Secretary Pete Hegseth, as Americano readers will know, has survived various painful episodes, partly because Donald Trump enjoys him not backing down.In recent days, at least three significant Trumpworld figures have been embarrassed in ways which would, under any other president, have cost them their jobs.

So much for Minnesota nice, the phrase that Midwesterners like to use to describe their calm dispositions. Three gunshots – fired pointblank in the gelid snows of Minneapolis by a federal immigration officer at Renee Nicole Good, a thirty-seven-year-old white woman and American citizen – have plunged the North Star State into renewed political turmoil. The fatal shooting took place only a few blocks from where George Floyd was killed in May 2020. In responding to the tragedy, President Trump proceeded on his favorite premise: the best defense is a good offense.

Washington, DC President Trump had balls on the brain on Friday. At an unannounced stop at the People's Museum by the White House – where he was checking out the newly refurbished gift shop –  he laid down the gauntlet to DC Mayor Muriel Bowser. “I think the mayor has to get on the ball, because we have a situation, and she’s a nice woman, but I tell you what she’s got to get on the ball,” the President told the press. “I don’t want to see phony numbers.” We are now in the 12th day of Trump’s federal takeover of law and order in the capital. In that time, 719 arrests have been made, 36 of them illegal aliens, according to the White House. Next, the President headed over to the Kennedy Center to inspect the ongoing reconstruction efforts.

Diplomatic heads are still spinning following Donald Trump’s extraordinary Oval Office press conference with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa yesterday. The media has taken to using the word “ambush” to describe the way Trump sprung his evidence on Ramaphosa to make the point that white South Africans are being violently persecuted. The scene turned into gemors, as they say in Afrikaans, or chaos, and reminded many observers of the wild meeting between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky in the same room back in February. Ramaphosa had wanted to perform the usual niceties, flanked by a delegation including three white South African golfers, Elon Musk, some of his officials, his minister for agriculture John Henry Steenhuisen and the luxury goods billionaire Johann Rupert.

The Real ID moment is here, the Y2K panic of 2025. Today is the deadline to update your driver’s license, leading to frantic predictions of something no one alive has ever seen before – long lines at the DMV. Will the center hold, or will the need to have a digitally embossed star on a piece of plastic finally bring the Republic down once and for all? I predict a quiet day. The fact is, though you now need a Real ID, you technically don’t need one today, unless you do. People must now deploy these enhanced IDs any time they’re entering a federal building, which most people don’t do on the reg, or a nuclear-power plant, which most people never do, and, most significantly in the lives of the general public, if they’re trying to get through airport security.

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling lifting the order blocking the deportation of accused members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a significant legal victory for the Trump administration. More importantly, it's also a policy vindication for those within this White House whose approach to government upon their return to Washington was to do everything, everywhere, all at once. The legal victory itself was hailed by every prominent member of the President's deportation team, with Attorney General Pam Bondi announcing she’d redouble her efforts, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declaring that all those here illegally must “LEAVE NOW” and Stephen Miller practically ebullient in his interview last night with Sean Hannity.

The Senate may be filled with octogenarians, but it defied the odds this week with a marathon “vote-a-rama” that lasted almost ten hours — just in time to set it up on a collision course with the Republican-led House across the Capitol.Despite the stated preference of President Donald Trump for “one big, beautiful bill” for reconciliation, the Senate pushed through a giant reconciliation bill, which will be smaller than whatever the House seems poised to pass. The Senate’s version tackles one of Trump’s top priorities, border security, while punting votes on other Trump measures, like extending his namesake 2017 tax cuts, to later.