President Donald Trump is making it easier for states to ensure that only U.S. citizens vote in federal elections - changes that are certain to inflame Democrats, who have consistently attacked efforts to stop voter fraud.
New changes to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) program will allow states to confirm immigration status using Social Security numbers rather than a Department of Homeland Security identifying number, which most state and local agencies do not collect.
SAVE is the federal government's system for looking up immigration and citizenship status.
The system, which is administered by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), is used by federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal agencies to verify eligibility for certain public benefits and licenses, including driver's licenses and voter eligibility.
Under Trump, the DHS is working with USCIS and DOGE to optimize the SAVE system and ensure a "single, reliable source for verifying immigration status and U.S. citizenship nationwide."
“For years, states have pleaded for tools to help identify and stop aliens from hijacking our elections,” said USCIS Spokesman Matthew Tragesser.
“Under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Noem, USCIS is moving quickly to eliminate voter fraud. We expect further improvements soon and remain committed to restoring trust in American elections," Tragesser added.
In addition to Social Security lookups, USCIS will begin allowing state and local governments to submit more than one case at a time.
States can also submit requests free of charge for the first time, giving officials another incentive to ensure the integrity of their voter rolls.
Democrats have dismissed non-citizen voting as a negligible problem, and they generally oppose efforts to stop it from happening, claiming that new restrictions will cause eligible voters to be disenfranchised.
But without reliable ways of tracking non-citizens, it's difficult to have confidence in the integrity of elections.
Concerns about illegal voting have only increased after a historic influx of unlawful aliens during the Biden administration. Trump and his allies have accused Democrats of undermining election standards in order to encourage voter fraud, including by non-citizens.
Democrats have vehemently opposed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE), which requires proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.
Improvements to USCIS' SAVE system will help states maintain accurate voter rolls, but the only way to fully protect elections is to enhance voting requirements through Congress.
President Trump made the president of South Africa squirm with evidence of "white genocide" in his country during a fiery clash in the Oval Office.
It was the most dramatic example yet of Trump's advocacy on behalf of white Afrikaners who have faced hateful rhetoric, discriminatory policies and, some say, state-sanctioned killings under the country's post-apartheid government.
"Death, death, death," Trump said as he flipped through news clippings on farm murders.
Trump even had the lights dimmed down as he played a video montage of political leaders using anti-white rhetoric.
The clips featured Julius Malema, an opposition party leader infamous for his chants of "Kill the Boer." The Boers, another term for Afrikaners, are the descendants of Dutch, German, and Huguenot settlers who arrived in South Africa in the 17th century.
While he denied Trump's claims that white farmers face persecution, President Cyril Ramaphosa defended a new land reform law, which allows private property to be confiscated without compensation. Ramaphosa conceded the law is meant to "deal with the past," a reference to the apartheid era of white minority rule.
"Your government also has the right to expropriate land for public use," Ramaphosa said.
"And you're doing that," Trump shot back.
"You're taking people's land away from them," Trump said. "And those people in many cases are being executed. They're being executed, and they happen to be white, and most of them happen to be farmers," Trump said.
Trump is not the only one taking issue with Ramaphosa's land policies. The Democratic Alliance, which his part of Ramaphosa's coalition, has said the expropriation law violates property rights, and they are challenging it in court.
Ramaphosa insisted that South Africa respects property rights, even as he conceded that crime in rural areas remains a serious problem for people of different races.
"There is criminality in our country. People who do get killed, unfortunately, through criminal activity are not only white people, majority of them are black people," Ramaphosa said.
At one point, Trump asked Ramaphosa why he had not arrested Julius Malema for inciting violence. Ramaphosa dismissed Malema, whose Economic Freedom Fighters party is the fourth largest in South Africa, as a fringe opposition figure.
"That is not government policy. We have a multiparty democracy in South Africa that allows people to express themselves," he said.
Trump disagreed, saying, "That's not a small party. That was a stadium that holds 100,000 people, and I hardly saw an empty seat."
The Supreme Court of South Africa has ruled that Malema's anti-Boer chant, which is rooted in the struggle against apartheid, is not hate speech.
Trump suggested that Afrikaners are facing a form of reverse discrimination, stating, "This is sort of the opposite of apartheid. What's happening now is never reported. Nobody knows about it."
The Oval Office exchange comes after Trump canceled foreign aid to South Africa while opening America's doors to white refugees fleeing persecution there.
Ramaphosa has called a group of 59 Afrikaners who accepted Trump's asylum offer "cowards" who are abandoning a responsibility to right the wrongs of apartheid.
The Supreme Court has ordered Maine's Democratic legislature to restore the voting rights of a Republican member who was punished for defending girls' sports.
Republican state legislator Laurel Libby was barred from speaking or voting on the House floor over a viral Facebook post.
"This is a victory not just for my constituents, but for the Constitution itself. The Supreme Court has affirmed what should never have been in question — that no state legislature has the power to silence an elected official simply for speaking truthfully about issues that matter," Libby said in a statement.
"This decision restores the voice of 9,000 Mainers who were wrongly silenced. I am grateful for the Court’s action, and I am ready to get back to work representing the people of House District 90."
The Supreme Court's 7-2 ruling came with no explanation, which is typical when the court rules on emergencies. Sonia Sotomayor would have denied the application for relief, and Ketanji Brown Jackson authored a brief dissent.
Jackson argued that the case does not qualify as a true emergency, but she acknowledged that it "raises many difficult questions" that could be resolved in Libby's favor eventually.
Two lower courts had ruled against Libby before she went to the Supreme Court and asked the justices to let her participate in the current legislative session, which ends in June. The Supreme Court's ruling allows her to vote again while a legal battle continues in the First Circuit Court of Appeals.
The controversy arose in February after Libby, a mom of five kids including three girls, shared a Facebook message criticizing the inclusion of males in girls' sports. The post included the name and photo of a male student who won a girls' high school pole vault competition.
Democrats accused Libby of endangering the student to advance an agenda, and she was censured for conduct "reprehensible and in direct violation of our code of ethics." Libby was blocked from voting until she apologized.
Libby then sued Democratic House Speaker Ryan Fecteau to restore her voting rights, saying the legislature had disenfranchised her 9,000 constituents by preventing her from speaking on a matter of public concern. She said the male student's name and face had already been widely publicized, and Democrats were retaliating against her for advocating on behalf of girls in the state.
Maine's stubborn transgender advocacy has led to clashes between Governor Janet Mills (D) and President Trump, who confronted Mills during a meeting of governors at the White House earlier this year. Trump's administration has sued Maine for violating Title IX, a civil rights law that bars sex-based discrimination.
The transgender issue has been cited as an example of cultural overreach by Democrats, who have struggled to find their footing since Trump's stunning re-election last year.
Indeed, some Democrats have begun to distance themselves from a cause that is now widely seen as detrimental to the party.
Rather than have an open debate, Democrats in Maine are clinging to their dogmas and silencing dissent - or at least trying to, anyway.
Malia Obama has been accused of stealing a scene from an indie filmmaker in her new Nike commercial.
The commercial, which depicts two black girls playing patty cake on some front steps, is "shockingly similar" to a scene in the short film Grace, says director Natalie Jasmine Harris.
Harris told Business Insider that Obama used the same techniques and camera angles to duplicate the scene in Grace.
"It’s not about the game. It’s about the cinematic tools used to depict it,” Harris told Business Insider.
While acknowledging that plagiarism can sometimes be fuzzy, Harris shared a side-by-side comparison to prove her point.
“I know art often overlaps, but moments like this hit hard when you’ve poured your heart into telling stories with care and barely get the recognition you deserve," she wrote on X.
"If brands want a certain look, why not hire from the source instead of for name recognition."
Been sitting with this for a while. My Sundance short film GRACE (shot brilliantly by Tehillah de Castro) was made with deep love and care. The social cut of the new @Nike commercial directed by Malia Obama (who was also at Sundance my year) feels shockingly similar to my work… pic.twitter.com/iy2N2krpQN
— Natalie Jasmine Harris (@nataliejharris) May 6, 2025
Obama and Harris met at the Sundance Film Festival last year, where Grace was screened.
According to Harris, Obama's commercial is part of a bigger problem with nepotism in the film industry rewarding derivative or uninspired artists.
“It speaks to a larger issue of brands not supporting independent artists and opting for folks who already have name recognition, which doesn’t breed innovative films or original storytelling,” said Harris.
Malia Obama dropped her famous last name for her film career, going by Malia Ann. The move was teasingly dismissed by her father, former president Barack Obama, who acknowledged that there is no real way for his two daughters to hide who they are.
The former president insisted his daughters are "stubborn" about making their own way in the world.
“I think our daughters go out of their way to not try to leverage that,” he said of his last name. “The challenge for us is letting us give them any help at all,” Barack said. “I mean they’re very sensitive about this stuff. They’re very stubborn about it.”
Barack Obama visited Poland just days before a pivotal presidential election to push his vision of Europe's future.
Former State Department Official Mike Benz accused Obama and George Soros of trying to "stamp out populism" in Poland, a NATO ally that has largely resisted the woke politics of its Western European neighbors.
“The problem is these folks don’t want to go along with the NATO agenda there. They don’t want endless war. They don’t want endless migration,” Benz told Real America's Voice.
Just days before Poland's presidential election, Obama spoke to a crowd in Poznań. He praised the pro-European Union government led by prime minister Donald Tusk, whose election in 2023 ousted the conservative Law and Justice Party.
Liberal Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, a Tusk ally, edged out conservative historian and Law and Justice candidate Karol Nawrocki in the first round of Poland's presidential election, held Sunday. Both candidates are headed to a pivotal runoff on June 1.
According to Benz, globalists are meddling in Polish politics with a familiar strategy perfected in Romania, where groups tied to George Soros have infiltrated government institutions in the name of "civil society."
"George Soros funded the very first NGO that spawned 1,000 other NGOs in the new Romania post-Cold War,” Benz told host Jack Posobiec. “The USAID, its rule of law program, effectively wrote the Romanian constitution and then wrote all the amendments in order to organize its entire judicial structure."
Benz also pointed to former Obama official Norm Eisen, who is pushing for judicial reforms in Poland. Eisen played a key role in the failed effort to destroy President Trump with lawfare.
"And Norm Eisen is on tape bragging about him pursuing legal action inside of Poland against the Law and Justice Party," Benz said.
While speaking at the Impact Congress in Poznań last week, Obama praised Poland's support of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, calling it an example of Poland's commitment to "democracy."
"When Americans see the incredible generosity shown by Poland to those fleeing war, it gives them hope," he said. "This moment teaches us that progress in democracy, human rights, and all these great efforts cannot be the work of the United States alone."
Indeed, Poland has taken in one million refugees since the conflict began, but support of refugees is falling sharply.
The results of Sunday's election in Poland reflect a nation divided between urban progressives and nationalists who champion Poland's traditional Catholic identity and who are strongly opposed to mass immigration. Polish conservatives have looked to President Trump as an inspiration in the struggle to preserve their country's sovereignty. Indeed, Nawrocki met with Trump in the White House earlier this month.
The liberal Trzaskowski is an advocate of the progressive, LGBT ideology that finds more support in Poland's large cities. In an echo of Warsaw's communist past, he removed crosses from public buildings in the capital last year.
Former President Joe Biden found himself in quite the predicament last week after Axios obtained the recordings from his deposition with Special Counsel Robert Hur regarding the classified documents found at his Delaware home.
The outlet reported that the audio transcript revealed the former president essentially admitted to keeping a certain Afghanistan-related document for "posterity's sake," which to some indicates an admission of guilt.
The now-infamous interview with Hur took place in October of 2023, and at the time, it created great controversy.
During the conversation with Hur, Biden's attorneys were apparently flustered with the aging president's answers, and understandably so.
As the elderly president rambled on during the conversation with Hur, one of Biden's attorneys was quick to interject in what appeared to be an effort to save the president from incriminating himself.
"I just really would like to avoid, for the purpose of a clean record, getting into speculative areas...He does not recall specifically intending to keep this memo after he left the vice presidency," attorney Bob Bauer said at the time.
What really messed Biden up is that at first, he claimed he didn't know how he came into possession of the document.
"Your answer is that you don't know," Bauer told the president at one point.
The president then gave a completely different answer when he was called out about several reports that had indicated otherwise.
Axios noted:
But then deputy special counsel Marc Krickbaum noted that journalists had written about the document, and he asked whether Biden had intended to keep it because of its historical value, prompting Biden to say, "I guess I wanted to hang onto it just for posterity's sake"
A spokesperson for the former president attempted to insist that the audio transcript was simply a repeat of what had already been released in text version last year.
"The transcripts were released by the Biden administration more than a year ago. The audio does nothing but confirm what is already public," spokesperson Kelly Scully said.
Biden's bad week turned worse over the weekend when it was revealed that he has been diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer.
The story is developing, but the latest reports indicated that the cancer has already spread to his bones, which is never a good sign.
President Donald Trump made another appointment that ticked off Democrats, and more specifically, Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
According to the Daily Caller, the president named "San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone to serve on the advisory board of the newly-created Religious Liberty Commission."
Archbishop Cordileone was the one who banned Pelosi, then the House Speaker, from taking Holy Communion, which stirred up plenty of controversy.
Trump created the new Religious Liberty Commission to "vigorously enforce the historic and robust protections for religious liberty enshrined in Federal law."
The newly-appointed archbishop commented on his new position, praising Trump for creating the new commission.
"Religious liberty is a critical issue in our time that needs to be defended and addressed," Cordileone said in a statement. “I am happy to join my brother bishops in providing a Catholic voice on this important topic at a national level."
The statement noted:
On May 1, President Trump signed an Executive Order establishing the Religious Liberty Commission. He designated Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick as chair and Dr. Ben Carson as vice chair, as well as 11 other commission members. On Thursday, May 15, he designated individuals to serve on the three advisory boards comprised of religious leaders, legal experts, and lay advisors, respectively.
Going back to 2022, Cordileone explained why he banned Pelosi from receiving Holy Communion.
"After numerous attempts to speak with Speaker Pelosi to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing, and the danger to her own soul she is risking, I have determined that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion," he said at the time.
The decision sparked plenty of controversy at the time, but many Catholics agreed with the archbishop's decision.
Trump's new commission is meant to battle the uptick in attacks on religious liberty within the United States, which has been much needed for years.
The Daily Caller added:
The commission will be composed of several “educated representatives of various sectors of society” who will report their findings and recommendations to the White House.
Religious liberty has been infringed upon for years under President Joe Biden's watch.
Hopefully, all of those wrongs will soon be righted.
The co-founder of Ben & Jerry's, the famous ice cream company, was dragged out of a Senate committee hearing in handcuffs for protesting the war in Gaza.
Ben Cohen, 74, was charged with crowding, obstructing or incommoding, a misdemeanor offense, after he disrupted Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s opening statement to the Senate health committee. Six other protesters were charged with crimes like assaulting police and resisting arrest.
As he was being escorted out, Cohen criticized Congress for sending weapons to Israel and called for an end to the blockade of Gaza, which has left many Palestinians without food.
“I said that Congress is paying to bomb poor kids in Gaza and paying for it by kicking poor kids off Medicaid in the U.S.," Cohen said. "They need to let food to starving kids."
This is not the first time Cohen has been arrested for protesting. In 2023, he was arrested for protesting in support of Julian Assange.
Cohen and his business partner Jerry Greenfield are known for their progressive activism and support of Vermont Sen. and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in particular.
In 2021, Ben & Jerry's controversially ended sales in the Israel-occupied West Bank, calling business there "inconsistent" with the company's values. The co-founders, who are both Jewish, defended the move in an article for the New York Times.
“As Jewish supporters of the State of Israel, we fundamentally reject the notion that it is antisemitic to question the policies of the State of Israel,” they wrote.
Ben & Jerry's political advocacy has led to clashes with its parent company Unilever, which was recently sued by the ice cream brand over the firing of its chief executive David Stever.
"Ben Cohen takes stances as an activist citizen on issues he finds personally important," Unilever told BBC after Cohen's recent arrest. "These actions are on his own as an individual and not on behalf of Ben & Jerry's or Unilever."
Over 53,000 people, including many children, are believed to have died in Israel's Gaza offensive since the conflict began. In March, Israel imposed a total blockade and relaunched its bombing campaign, ending a brief cease-fire. Israel is currently escalating its airstrikes in an effort to pressure and ultimately destroy Hamas, which continues to hold hostages taken in the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, assault that started the war.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza has become concerning to President Trump, who notably did not stop in Israel on his travel through the Middle East this week, the first major foreign trip of his second term. Trump briefly commented on the blockade in Gaza as he wrapped up his trip on Friday.
"We’re looking at Gaza. And we’re going to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving," Trump said.
President Trump's pick for Surgeon General endorsed controversial psychedelic therapy in her book, urging others to consider magic mushrooms for personal healing.
A proponent of alternative medicine, Casey Means is a leading influence in the "Make America Healthy Again" movement led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In her 2024 book Good Energy, Casey Means recounted a transformative experience with psilocybin, or magic mushrooms.
“If you feel called, I also encourage you to explore intentional, guided psilocybin therapy,” she wrote. “Strong scientific evidence suggests that this psychedelic therapy can be one of the most meaningful experiences of life for some people, as they have been for me.”
Psilocybin is illegal under federal law, although some Democratic states and cities have taken steps to legalize it. Some cities in Oregon walked back the trend in November, voting to ban the Schedule 1 drug, which has "no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse," according to the federal government.
Despite its serious health risks, some claim psilocybin has legitimate benefits when used in a guided setting. Some veterans have credited the drug with healing their PTSD.
In her book on metabolic health, co-written with her brother Calley, Casey Means refers to psychedelics as "plant medicine" with an almost magical power. She described psilocybin as a "doorway to a different reality that is free from the limiting beliefs of my ego, feelings, and personal history."
"I felt myself as part of an infinite and unbroken series of cosmic nesting dolls of millions of mothers and babies before me from the beginning of life," she wrote.
Means also credited psychedelics with helping her "create space to find love at 35" in her newsletter.
The Stanford graduate dropped out of her medical residency after becoming disillusioned with the health care industry, going on to become a prominent wellness influencer. She became widely known after an appearance on Tucker Carlson's show with her brother Calley Means.
Calley also supports psilocybin, describing his first trip as "the single most meaningful experience of my life," and he invests in companies that are researching psychedelics. He is working as an adviser to Kennedy, who runs the Health and Human Services Department.
Trump withdrew his initial pick for surgeon general, former Fox News medical contributor Janette Nesheiwat, after her resume fell under scrutiny and some Trump supporters criticized her favorable comments about the COVID-19 vaccine.
Means has also faced backlash from some "MAHA" supporters who say she isn't critical enough of vaccines, while others have cited her inactive medical license as a concern. Trump, after nominating her, said he does not know Means personally but hired her on Kennedy's advice.
Her views on psychedelic therapy are likely to come up during her Senate confirmation hearing, which has not been scheduled.
A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled that President Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act is lawful, in a major boost for Trump's mass deportation effort.
The decision from Judge Stephanie Haines, a Trump appointee, offers some reprieve for Trump after a series of legal setbacks that have hobbled his immigration agenda.
Since March, Trump has used the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport alleged gang members in groups like Tren de Aragua, which the administration has designated a terrorist organization.
Trump's rapid deportations have faced resistance from some federal courts on due process grounds. Some judges have also said that Trump's use of wartime powers is inappropriate because Tren de Aragua is not part of a conventional military invasion.
Crucially, Judge Haines rejected the narrow view of other courts. The Alien Enemies Act can be interpreted in a modern context, Haines said, comparing Tren de Aragua to "military detachments or pirates” that threatened the public when the Alien Enemies Act became law in 1798.
The activities of Tren de Aragua meet the definition of "predatory incursion," she said, noting the gang is "bent on destabilizing the United States" and is "flooding the United States with illegal narcotics, which it is using as a 'weapon' against the citizens of the United States."
The judge accepted the Trump administration's conclusion that Tren de Aragua is acting "at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela."
Displaying a sense of humility lacking in some other judges, Haines said deference is owed to Trump's position as commander-in-chief, which allows him to access secret information through intelligence services.
"It would be intolerable that courts, without the relevant information, should review and perhaps nullify actions of the Executive taken on information properly held in secret," Judge Haines said.
Judge Haines relied heavily on Secretary of State Marco Rubio's designation of Tren de Aragua as a terrorist group.
She noted that the ruling is limited to dealing with terrorists and does not apply to whether Trump can use the Alien Enemies Act to target gang members.
While siding with Trump on the legal substance, the judge emphasized that the administration "must provide greater notice to those subject to removal under the AEA than they are currently providing."
She ordered that 21 days of notice be provided to detainees, and they must be given Spanish interpreters if necessary.