President Donald Trump only plans to admit 7,500 refugees into the country in 2026, and that includes mostly white Afrikaners fleeing South Africa.
Refugee groups are shocked and dismayed by the move, which reverses the huge numbers of refugees admitted under former President Joe Biden.
Just over 100,000 refugees were admitted to the U.S. in fiscal 2024, the latest year figures were available.
The number of refugees admitted has varied widely in recent years, but the 7,500 figure is historically low.
"For more than four decades, the U.S. refugee program has been a lifeline for families fleeing war, persecution, and repression," Krish O’Mara Vignarajah said. "At a time of crisis in countries ranging from Afghanistan to Venezuela to Sudan and beyond, concentrating the vast majority of admissions on one group undermines the program’s purpose as well as its credibility."
Vignarajah leads one of several groups paid by the federal government to resettle refugees in American communities, so of course she would be unhappy with the limits.
“Since the U.S. Refugee Program was created in 1980, it has admitted over two million people fleeing ethnic cleansing and other horrors,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an advocate at the American Immigration Council, said. “Now it will be used as a pathway for White immigration. What a downfall for a crown jewel of America’s international humanitarian programs.”
Refugees are typically given transportation into the country, and unlike illegal or other immigrants, they are eligible for all entitlement and aid programs.
"Admission numbers will primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa, pursuant to Executive Order 14204, and other victims of illegal or unjust criminal discrimination in their respective homelands… [The order] mandates that the refugees receive the most stringent identification verification of any class of aliens seeking admission or entry to the United States," the Trump directive expected tomorrow reads.
Vice President JD Vance commented on the damage refugees can do to a community when a large number are settled there.
Because of the amount of government benefits they can get and their willingness to live in crowded conditions, they drive up rent prices so that citizens in the community are priced out, he said.
“That completely destroys the ability of Americans to live the American dream, and that’s what those open border policies did,” Vance added.
The presence of the refugees along with illegal immigrants also drives down wages for jobs in the area and puts citizens out of work, because the refugees are willing to work for less.
Trump is trying to reverse this damage by cutting off most illegal immigration and limiting refugees in a way consistent with his America-first policy focus.
President Donald Trump met with China's President Xi Jinping on Wednesday in South Korea, and he called the meeting "friendly" and agreeable.
Trump said that Xi "agreed to almost everything" during their two hours face-to-face, and in return, he agreed to lower tariffs on the world's most populous nation.
"On a scale from zero to 10, with 10 being the best, I would say the meeting was a 12," he told reporters who were traveling with him on the flight back to Washington.
"It was an outstanding group of decisions I think that was made. A lot of decisions were made too, there wasn't too much left out there," Trump said.
When Xi agreed to work toward decreasing the amount of fentanyl coming into the U.S. from China, Trump lowered the tariffs on Chinese goods from 57% to 47%.
"I believe he's going to work very hard to stop the death that's coming in," Trump said.
In another positive development, China agreed to end its pause on purchasing soybeans from the U.S. The pause caused problems for farmers.
China also agreed to a one-year pause on its limits in exporting rare minerals, which led to the U.S. loosening some of its own export restrictions.
"President Xi is a great leader of a great country, and I think we're going to have a fantastic relationship for a long period of time," Trump said at the start of the meeting.
Of course, Xi is a communist dictator, not a great leader, but Trump was buttering him up to get what he wanted, so that's okay.
The pair hadn't met in person for six years, but they have spoken on the phone three times and exchanged several letters since Trump took office for the second time.
"China and the U.S. should be partners and friends. This is what history has taught us and what reality demands," Xi said through an interpreter.
They also talked about China buying oil from the U.S. (Alaska), but they skipped over several more controversial topics.
They didn't talk about Taiwan, TikTok, or China buying Russian oil, but hey, it's a good first step toward lowering tensions.
The White House on Tuesday fired all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, a federal agency that, among other duties, would oversee the ballroom being built after the demolishing of the East Wing last week.
The commissioners were appointed by former President Joe Biden to advise on architectural projects on public land in D.C., and their terms were set to expire in 2028.
President Donald Trump said he will replace them with new members more "aligned" with his policies and goals.
“We are preparing to appoint a new slate of members to the commission that are more aligned with President Trump’s America First Policies,” a White House official said in a statement.
Besides the ballroom, which will be financed by private donors and not with taxpayer dollars, Trump also plans to build an archway close to the entrance of D.C. across from Arlington National Cemetery.
The commission began in 1910, but its scope has grown since then.
Critics of the East Wing's demolition have said that Trump didn't get proper permits for the project, but the White House said it wasn't required to get approval from the National Capital Planning Commission because it didn't involve new, vertical construction.
The NCPC is now full of Trump allies anyway, so there won't be opposition when the plans for the ballroom are submitted.
Trump has fired and ousted a number of board members and administrators since taking office, one of his strategies to overhaul the deep state that so strongly opposed him during his first term.
So far, he has largely gotten away with it, since the president is given some latitude over firing federal workers at various agencies.
When these commissioners and board members are working with Trump and not against him, it's far easier to get things done and Trump can spend his energy elsewhere, like battling Congress to get his legislative priorities passed.
Trump may have started a trend that will continue, with each successive president from the opposite political party cleaning house after the transfer of power.
While some argue that the deep state provides stability during times when power transitions, there's no reason why term limits wouldn't benefit these positions as much as they do the presidency.
Such housecleanings would help government better reflect the will of the people at a given moment in history, and may help move things along faster than has happened in recent years.
The FBI announced on Monday that they had arrested 29-year-old Tyler Maxon Avalos, an alleged Minnesota anarchist who went by the nickname "Wacko," on October 16 after he posted a hit on U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi using the social media platform TikTok.
The post featured an image of Bondi with a red sniper dot on her forehead with the caption, "“WANTED: Pam Bondi / REWARD: 45,000 ‘ DEAD OR ALIVE / (PREFERABLY DEAD)."
Avalos added under the photo, "Cough cough. When they don’t serve us, then what?”
His TikTok account had a link to “An Anarchist FAQ book,” according to authorities.
Avalos also has a long rap sheet, including a stalking conviction in 2022 and a domestic battery conviction in Florida in 2016, when Bondi was state attorney general there.
The specific charge Avalos faces from the feds is interstate transmission of a threat to injure another person.
The investigation into Avalos started on October 9 when a user from Detroit "submitted a report to the FBI National Threat Operations Center" about his TikTok profile, including the pic of Bondi with a sniper dot.
The tipster also flagged the suspect's TikTok feed. TikTok, Google and Comcast helped the FBI track Avalos down.
Avalos's profile contained an anarchy symbol.
According to the court affidavit, anarchism "advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies and voluntary free associations."
When Avalos appeared in court Wednesday morning, he waived his right to a preliminary hearing.
He was released on his own recognizance but ordered to wear a GPS monitor.
That means a man who said online that he wanted to reward someone if they killed a member of the President of the United States's cabinet is out on the street again.
I will definitely sleep better knowing that, said no one ever. So glad our court system is taking this threat seriously.
President Donald Trump told reporters on Saturday that he won't meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin again until he knows they can make a deal to end the war in Ukraine, according to the New York Post.
“We’re going to have to know that we’re going to make a deal,” Trump said from Air Force One.
“I’m not going to be wasting my time. I’ve always had a great relationship with [Putin], but this has been very disappointing.”
Trump made it clear that he didn't think it would take as long as it has to end the fighting in Ukraine--something he said during the campaign he would do on "day one" of his return to office.
“I thought [the Hamas-Israel cease-fire deal] would have been more difficult than Russia and Ukraine, but it didn’t work out that way,” he said.
The comments followed an announcement last week that after a phone call between Trump and Putin, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead the U.S. delegation in talks with counterparts in Russia.
The phone call was supposed to be a precursor to a face-to-face meeting between Putin and Trump, but that plan fell apart because Putin rejected a key part of the plan put forward by Trump: ending the war with the current battle lines in place.
That would mean that Russia keeps control of Crimea, but only holds parts of other areas where fighting has raged, including the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
Russia has claimed all of these regions and seeks to annex them all.
Indeed, Putin has spent hundreds of billions of dollars and likely over one million Russian lives to accomplish his goal, and no doubt it would be humiliating for him to end the fighting without accomplishing everything he set out to do.
On the other hand, though, the U.S. and other allies have determined that letting Ukraine fall to Russia is not in the world's best interest.
Putin could realistically say that he has been fighting not just Ukraine, but the entire Western world in the war.
It may yet come to that, since the U.S. is now preparing to give Patriot missiles to Ukraine to stave off the Russian aggression. Trump is also putting new sanctions on Russia's two biggest oil producers, hoping to starve the Russian war machine further.
“There’s a lot of hatred between the two, between [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky and Putin,” Trump told the press corps. “There’s tremendous hatred.”
Virginia Giuffre's posthumous memoir has dropped more bombshell allegations about the late billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein and his child trafficking operation.
Giuffre, who passed away earlier this year, has been leading the charge in exposing Epstein's sordid empire and has been responsible for the outing of Britain's Prince Andrew as a pedophile.
Giuffre made shockwaves when she accused Prince Andrew of raping her when she was only 17. She had been trafficked by Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, to powerful figures, many of whom have remained unnamed.
Her book, titled "Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice," chronicles her meetings with many powerful figures, including former President Bill Clinton and President Donald Trump.
She did not accuse either of wrongdoing, but nonetheless, the meeting reinforces already known connections between Clinton and Epstein, who were close. Epstein and Trump were also connected but became estranged in 2004.
Giuffre's collision course with Epstein began when her father got her a job at Mar-a-Lago, where he worked as a maintenance worker. This brought her into contact with high society, as Trump often used the location as a meeting place for the business world's powerful leaders, which included Epstein.
Trump plays a minimal role in Giuffre's story, but things took a turn when she met Ghislaine Maxwell in 2000, and that began a tragic tale that ultimately culminated in Giuffre's death in April of this year at just 41 years old.
Giuffre wrote, "It couldn’t have been more than a few days before my dad said he wanted to introduce me to Mr. Trump himself. They weren’t friends, exactly. But Dad worked hard, and Trump liked that—I’d seen photos of them posing together, shaking hands. Trump couldn’t have been friendlier, telling me it was fantastic that I was there. 'Do you like kids?' he asked. 'Do you babysit at all?' He explained that he owned several houses next to the resort that he lent to friends, many of whom had children that needed tending."
However, it was Maxwell who recruited Giuffre as a masseuse despite her lack of experience, and that led to her traveling with Giuffre and Epstein around the world.
Of course, this led to Giuffre being asked for sexual favors by Maxwell and Epstein for the wealthy and powerful people that they would meet with. Giuffre was young and taken advantage of but her admiration of Epstein and Maxwell quickly deteriorated.
Giuffre wrote, "This was a man who displayed framed photographs of himself with the Dalai Lama, with the pope, and with members of the British royal family. A photo in his Palm Beach house showed Epstein posing behind the podium of the White House briefing room. This was a man who’d had former president Bill Clinton over for dinner (I was at the table that night) and who’d hosted Al and Tipper Gore as well (again, I was there)."
Later in her book, Giuffre detailed being handed over to an unnamed but supposedly famous Prime Minister by Epstein. She claims she was brutally raped by him on Epstein's private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2002.
When she begged not to be given back to the unnamed Prime Minister, who she says laughed at her and choked her, Epstein told her that it was simply part of the job.
Giuffre is just one of dozens of Epstein's victims, and the fact that Epstein and his associates went unpunished for so long is a crime. Epstein would die by suicide before being convicted in court and Maxwell did eventually get convicted, but all of their associates are still out there free men.
As many states are redistricting, New Hampshire's GOP has declined a plan to redistrict after the state's GOP governor indicated no support for the idea.
There are numerous redistricting battles going on around the nation right now, and the GOP has made serious gains, with states like Texas and North Carolina adding more seats to Congress.
These redistricting campaigns, in combination with an upcoming landmark Supreme Court decision, could easily hand the GOP control of the House of Representatives for decades.
However, those victories won't extend to New Hampshire as State Senator Dan Innis has dropped his plan to push redistricting after Governor Kelly Ayotte (R) refused to endorse the idea.
While this is a setback for the Trump administration, it's less consequential considering the massive gains that the GOP has made.
New redistricting efforts have been extremely successful in Texas and North Carolina, with many Democrat seats eliminated, ensuring that the days of the narrow GOP majority in the House are over.
Furthermore, the Supreme Court is considering a case that could knock down a section of the Voting Rights Act that essentially required racial quotas in creating districts.
If the Supreme Court strikes that requirement down, it will allow GOP states to eliminate dozens of Democrat seats that exist entirely because of the Voting Rights Act's racial district quota rules.
That one provision has allowed Democrats to hold onto seats in otherwise entirely red states like Alabama and Mississippi. Without the Voting Rights Act's current rules, there will no longer be districts drawn on racial lines and that will be devastating for Democrats.
However, in New Hampshire, Governor Ayotte claimed that since New Hampshire is in the middle of a current redistricting cycle, it made no sense to redistrict again.
Ayotte explained, "When I talk to people in New Hampshire … it’s not on the top of their priority list. They want us to continue to work in the legislature on housing issues, child care, keeping the state the safest in the nation, and just making sure that we have the best quality education for our children."
This is a fairly good argument against redistricting, considering the political implications. Should New Hampshire's GOP party choose to push for redistricting, it will be a months-long political battle with Democrats, and nothing else will get done.
In more GOP-dominated states, redistricting battles are less costly. But the Granite State is no GOP stronghold and some level of cooperation with Democrats is needed to get business done.
However, the implications of this decision will be worth keeping an eye on as the GOP tallies up its gains in the House from other states.
The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the national ban on transgender women competing in female powerlifting is discrimination after a biological male, JayCee Cooper, sued USA Powerlifting in 2021 over being excluded.
“USA Powerlifting’s policy at the time of the decision was to categorically exclude transgender women from competing in the women’s division,” Chief Justice Natalie Hudson wrote for the court.
“Because USA Powerlifting’s facially discriminatory policy provides direct evidence of discriminatory motive, there is no genuine issue of material fact as to whether Cooper’s transgender status actually motivated USA Powerlifting’s decision to prohibit Cooper from competing. We therefore reverse the part of the court of appeals’ decision on this issue,” Hudson continued.
Cooper got a partial win in the suit, but the court also sent the case back to the lower courts to determine whether USA Powerlifting had a “legitimate business purpose” for its policy to exclude biological males from its women's events.
USA Powerlifting President Larry Maile said that the organization “created rules that uphold the principles of fair play” and didn't seek to exclude anyone.
The organization created a division specifically for those claiming to be transgender and nonbinary in 2021.
“Since science shows those who were born biologically male have a profound physical advantage over female-born athletes, our responsibility is to define legitimate categories to fairly place athletes within them,” Maile said.
The organization's attorneys said the decision on Wednesday is a partial win for both sides.
Ansis Viksnins said that USA Powerlifting will get to tell a jury “why excluding a transgender woman from competing in the women’s division was for legitimate reasons, for maintaining fairness in athletics.”
If transgender women, who are biologically male, are allowed to compete against biological females, the males would win every trophy and prize because males have greater muscle mass than females, even males who now identify as females and even those who have taken hormones or had transgender surgeries.
It is only common sense to separate these categories and have a separate division for those who are non-binary or transgender.
Then again, if the "T" part of LGBT had any common sense, they would know you can't just change your gender because you want to.
Transgender women will never have many of the struggles biological women have, including monthly menstruation, pregnancy risks, or anything related to the female reproductive system, which they don't have.
Just because you say you're something, doesn't make it true. And if women's sports is forced to lose all common sense, it will be destroyed beyond any repair. That's the bottom line people don't take into account, and they really should.
Threats by leaders in one major crime-plagued U.S. city to sue President Donald Trump over his plan to deploy the National Guard have not gone as expected for them.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that President Donald Trump could deploy hundreds of National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon as part of his plan to fight high levels of violent crime there.
The 2-1 ruling lifted a lower court order that blocked Trump from deploying the troops, but other challenges could make that ruling all but moot.
A second emergency order blocking Trump specifically from deploying any federalized troops to Portland remains in place, and the justices on the 9th Circuit said they couldn't evaluate that order.
Trump has asked the judge who issued that order, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, to dissolve her order in light of the appeals court ruling, but that has not happened so far.
Lawyers for California and Oregon are resisting that move, and asked for the order to remain in place until the 9th Circuit decides whether to have the full appellate court bench deliberate on it.
"The fight is not over," Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek vowed to reporters on Monday. "Until the district court acts on the second TRO, National Guard members from Oregon, or any other state cannot deploy."
Friday should bring more clarity on two fronts.
Immergut has ordered both parties to appear on Friday for a decision on whether to dissolve the emergency order.
In addition, the appeals court has scheduled a hearing to decide whether the full court will hear the appeal of that order.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court may get its chance to weigh in soon, since Trump has asked for an appeal of an order blocking him from deploying troops to Chicago, another city sorely in need of some law and order.
The deployment to Washington, D.C. has correlated with a drop in criminal activity, especially vehicle thefts, which were down 34% in the first 30 days of the deployment.
Trump would like to keep Guard troops deployed in D.C., but there's a case pending related to whether he will be able to do that as well.
At any rate, he's showing he wants to do something to help these high rates of crime, which is more than we can say for the Democrat mayors of these cities.
President Donald Trump's pick for head of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), Paul Ingrassia, withdrew his nomination on Tuesday after Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said he would not support the nominee because of texts he sent to a group chat that became public.
The texts allegedly said that Ingrassia claimed he had a "Nazi streak" and that the holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs.”
"I will be withdrawing myself from Thursday’s [Senate Homeland Security Committee] hearing to lead the Office of Special Counsel because unfortunately I do not have enough Republican votes at this time," he posted on X. "I appreciate the overwhelming support that I have received throughout this process and will continue to serve President Trump and this administration to Make America Great Again!"
Without Scott's support, Ingrassia could not get approved by the committee and get a full confirmation vote by the Senate.
Ingrassia has been the White House liaison to the United States Department of Homeland Security since February 2025, so he's already been inside the administration, influencing policy and working closely with Trump and others at the White House.
The controversy has been known since June, but the way the Senate has been slow-walking Trump's nominees, it hadn't been a well-known issue.
Allegedly, Ingrassia's mother showed up on Capitol Hill in June and tried to defend him to Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Robert Garcia (D-CA), who sent a scathing letter about him to Republicans on the committee.
“Mr. Ingrassia is unfit to serve as special counsel and his nomination is insulting to the American people,” the offensive letter read in part.
Whatever else Ingrassia has said or done, it's just not a good look when your mom shows up to Congress to defend you.
Trump had been making progress in getting his nominees through the confirmation process after Republicans tweaked a few of the rules so that Democrats couldn't continue to slow things down to a snail's pace.
Batches of more than 100 nominees each have been confirmed in one fell swoop over the last few weeks, but any nominees that are controversial or opposed by one or more Republicans, like Ingrassia was, are not included in a batch.
Before Trump took office again in January, most nominees were approved by unanimous consent of the Senate, but that went by the wayside so that Democrats could claim they were trying to preserve Democracy and may never be seen again in Washington.
Eventually, Republicans and Trump got tired of having to spend so much time and effort on each nominee and began demanding the rule changes.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) spearheaded the rule changes in September.