Trump

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) is warning the White House that "most House Republicans don’t have an appetite for extending enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies," jeopardizing President Donald Trump's healthcare push.

Johnson's warning, the WSJ reports, shows "how hard it will be politically to stave off sharp increases in healthcare costs next year for many Americans."

"The message from Johnson, in a phone call with administration officials, came as President Trump’s advisers were drafting a healthcare plan that extended the subsidies for two years," they report.

Johnson's warning, they write, "underscores the hurdles facing any deal in coming weeks."

The enhanced ACA subsidies — the Democrats' major point of contention during the government shutdown — expire at the end of the year, affecting more than 20 million people who benefit from the tax credits.

"Many Republicans objected to the taxpayer-funded subsidies continuing to go toward funding healthcare plans that cover abortions, a red line for many GOP lawmakers, said people familiar with the objections," the WSJ explains.

The "emerging White House plan," they write, "would extend the subsidies temporarily, while imposing income caps for ACA enrollees to qualify, as well as measures to crack down on healthcare fraud, according to people familiar with the matter."

While the White House proposal is not yet finalized, Johnson has already said that enhanced ACA subsidies would be a tough sell in the House.

“What we have said is, if there was going to be an extension of that, it would need massive reforms,” including income caps and other changes, he said on Fox News earlier this month.

Extending the subsidies for two years would win praise from centrist Democrats like Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), who said, “If the reports are true and the president is considering coming to the table in good faith, I believe we can find a path forward that can earn broad bipartisan support in Congress."

For now, the WSJ reports, Johnson is treading in difficult waters.

"Johnson must balance the cries from Republicans in competitive districts who are demanding an extension of the subsidies against many members’ deeply held opposition to the subsidies paid under the ACA," they write.

Alex Jones, the far-right conspiracy theorist and host of InfoWars, appears to have been given considerable insider information pertaining to President Donald Trump's campaign of legal revenge against his perceived enemies, based on a new analysis from The Bulwark, which called the situation "deeply troubling."

The efforts to bring lawsuits against prominent Democrats and opponents of the president, including former FBI head James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, have been ongoing for the past few months but have hit numerous snags in recent days. Among them, ABC News reported that the Department of Justice and the FBI are investigating whether the heads of the investigative efforts, Ed Martin and Bill Pulte, “enlisted individuals outside the Department of Justice to probe allegations of mortgage fraud." MS Now also reported that a federal grand jury is reviewing allegations that the two “illegally shared sensitive grand jury information with unauthorized people.”

Little is known about which individuals Martin and Pulte may have divulged sensitive legal information to, but an analysis of past posts and comments from Jones by the Bulwark suggests that he may have been one of them. As far back as August, just a few weeks prior to the indictment against Comey, Jones shared a video to X in which he claimed to have had long talks with “high-level DOJ sources” and was “authorized to tell you basically everything they told me except a few things,” mentioning grand jury investigations into James and Special Counsel Jack Smith, among other things.

“There are a whole bunch of grand juries open and I know where and a lot more,” Jones said in the August 23 post. “And I can tell you Trump is cracking the whip and pushing through the DOJ, any of the bureaucrats that are trying to block this and [Trump] is in daily communication with the patriots in there."

A day later, on August 24, Jones shared another video with the caption "MEGA-BOMBSHELL EXCLUSIVE!!!” in which he claimed to have had a 45-minute-long conversation with Martin specifically. Martin has a history with Jones, appearing on InfoWars several times over the years.

“I’ve known Ed [for] twenty-five years and he’s one of the most stalwart, trustworthy people, everybody knows that,” Jones said. “He [Martin] has full discretion from the president to say whatever he wants, he decided to tell me."

Jones claimed that Martin had shared his strategy for pursuing prosecutions against top Democrats, including "about twenty" things that were "over-the-top, bombshell important.”

“They’ve got grand juries open in Virginia, Missouri, New York, and a bunch of other states,” Jones said. “And I don’t mean just one per state... I can tell you that there’s process crimes all over the place in this. So when you see people indicted for process crimes, that’s not because they’re limiting it, that’s to get them in the bear trap, and then to get them to roll over. They’re gonna get ’em any way they can."

While Jones named several figures who have since faced indictments, he also mentioned Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson as another target, citing allegations that he incited city residents against ICE officers. Later, on September 14, Jones shared a photo of himself with Martin with the included caption, “The Deep State is in DEEP S---!”

Assuming Jones is telling the truth, what else did Martin tell Jones about his investigations into top Democrats?" the Bulwark's analysis concluded. "We do not know. We do know that the relationship between Martin and Jones is deeply troubling, given Martin’s roles inside the DOJ. It shows that Martin is pursuing an extreme, sensationalist agenda—not justice."

Although he says President Donald Trump is "well on his way to becoming the most corrupt president in American history, Thomas B. Edsall writes in the New York Times that despite that, he is likely to escape criminal prosecution after leaving office.

"Even though Trump has defied the law and the Constitution more egregiously in his second term than he did in his first, most legal experts agree that he will face few, if any, of the kind of prosecutions he was confronted with after grudgingly leaving office in 2021," Edsall writes.

There is one exception, he notes, but even that one is "far from probable," and that is the "Trump family’s involvement in the cybercurrency business through its 60 percent ownership of World Liberty Financial."

World Liberty, Edsall explains, has "made profits exceeding hundreds of millions from investments by men who have been granted pardons and by corporations that have benefited from the halt or suspension of regulatory investigations by the Trump administration."

Trump has said that he turned over all operations of his family business to his sons Eric and Donald Jr., and while the president's "culpability in the case of his family’s crypto business may seem crystal clear to some, legal experts contend that the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has so muddied the law that prosecutors would face many hurdles — perhaps insurmountable — trying to bring a case against him," he writes.

During his four years out of office, Trump was charged with over 80 criminal counts in four separate criminal proceedings, Edsall notes, but he owes his current "insulation from potential prosecution to the 2024 Supreme Court decision" that afforded him "absolute immunity" from criminal prosecution for actions that fall under what they deemed official acts of his presidency.

Philip Lacovara, former counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor and deputy solicitor general, tells Edsall that because of that decision, "there is virtually no chance that Trump will face criminal prosecution."

"The Supreme Court’s Trump immunity decision last year provides Trump (and any future presidential felons) with a get-out-of-jail-free card for committing federal felonies, and it would be impossible, as a practical matter, for a post-Trump prosecutor to pursue those misdeeds through the criminal process," Lacovara says.

And while Edsall notes there are "too many" actions to put into one column that would render Trump worthy of more criminal investigations, he points out two specific examples that could warrant investigation.

Trump's "abuse of the law" in his relentless retaliatory pursuit against his perceived enemies is one, but "any public official considering an inquiry into the Trump administration risks his or her career and a possible sentence to prison," Edsell writes.

Trump's family crypto venture is another one that evokes, among other things, money laundering and wire fraud, but, again there are issues.

Jack Balkin, a law professor at Yale, described some of the difficulties in bringing a criminal case involving Trump’s World Liberty Financialsays that "If you are asking whether Trump could be held criminally liable for making regulatory decisions that create a conflict of interest, this is likely covered by the immunity created in Trump v. United States."

"The very murkiness of the laws governing presidential criminality and misconduct creates a cloud that can only work to Trump’s advantage," Edsall writes.

Trump, he says, is a "renegade president," that Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy says "is uninhibited by any decent sense of self-restraint. It will push as far as circumstances allow. If it believes that it can get away with killing people on the high seas without the restraints of domestic or international law, it will continue to do so — law be damned. One has to acknowledge the audacity of the Trump administration."

Edsall says that while none of this is surprising, it is still appalling.

"The very fact that this nefarious, ethically vacant man — a man who wears his venality on his sleeve — could twice win the presidency and in all likelihood retire with billions in ill-gotten gains suggests that America is dangerously close to falling into a political sinkhole," he says.

Foreign Affairs writer Jonathan A. Czin writes that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has played President Donald Trump and is now reaping the rewards.

Although "Trump promised to unleash an economic fusillade on China after his return to the presidency, Beijing has enjoyed a remarkably strong year of diplomacy," Czin writes.

Trump escalated the trade war with China, imposing broad tariffs that were met with swift retaliation from Beijing. Negotiations in November resulted in a temporary truce, including some tariff reductions, but the overall trade conflict continues.

China, Czin notes, has not yielded in the face of Trump's threats. In fact, they have seemingly benefited from them instead.

"After spending much of the year simply reacting to U.S. policies, Beijing went on the offensive, imposing an expansive export control regime on the supply chains for rare-earth elements just weeks before the meeting with Trump," he writes.

"And although the Trump administration has exhorted Beijing to make sweeping structural reforms to its economy, Xi has doubled down on his techno-industrial economic ambitions for China’s next five-year plan—a plan that according to analysts, could exacerbate global trade imbalances by expanding China’s share of global manufacturing even further," he explains.

The trade war escalated in early 2025 with new tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, primarily under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), on a wide range of goods, with China retaliating in kind.

"Whereas most countries targeted by Trump’s tariffs have rushed to the negotiating table, China has instead dug in," Czin notes. "China has gained, not suffered, from this obduracy."

Trump's bluster with China, Czin writes, has been an abject failure for the United States.

"By every measure, China is diplomatically, strategically, and technologically better off than it was a year ago. In contrast, the Trump administration’s strategy, which has lurched from attempts to clobber China economically through tariffs to attempts to mollify China through serial concessions, has achieved little," he says.

"The United States seems less able to either reassure or deter China; Chinese officials have learned that the Trump administration, for all its bluster, will not follow through on its promises or its threats," he adds.

China's control over the processing of nearly 90 percent of the world's rare earth minerals (essential for everything from smartphones to military hardware) has been a significant point of leverage.

The U.S. and China are also engaged in a technology race, with both sides imposing export controls.

Tensions extend beyond trade. In a November phone call with Trump, Xi pressed the issue of Taiwan, stating its return to China was an "integral part of the post-war international order".

U.S. intelligence agencies have also raised concerns about Chinese infiltration of U.S. critical infrastructure, such as power grids and water systems.

But despite all the tensions, China seems to have prevailed, Czin writes.

"Beijing has weathered Washington’s escalatory onslaught. The White House now risks finding itself in the worst of all possible worlds, with a confused China policy that ensures friction but lacks a disciplined approach to competition, a negotiating partner in Beijing that has conceded little while steering Trump back to the status quo ante, and a year of theatrics that has produced no tangible gain for the United States," he explains.

The current trade truce between the U.S. and China is also dubious, Czin writes.

"The latest trade truce, in which China postponed its own expansive export controls, set a pernicious precedent by vitiating the Biden administration’s tenet that export controls are off-limits in negotiations with Beijing because they are meant to safeguard U.S. national security," he explains, adding that Trump has also pulled back his support for Taiwan.

As a result, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te has canceled "a planned transit through the United States and offering scant moral support as Beijing has continued its pressure campaign," he writes.

Trump's obsession with trade has "has led it to sweep other, thornier points of diplomatic contention under the rug," including strategic issues, Czin notes.

"Indeed, the second Trump administration appears content to let Beijing off the hook rather than hold it accountable—as long as Washington can claim it has made a splashy deal, regardless of how shallow, narrow, or fragile that deal might be," he says.

The Trump administration’s decision to defer enforcement of a U.S. law mandating the sale or ban of TikTok and "instead include its fate in trade negotiations further enhanced Beijing’s position, giving China a bargaining chip it could trade away at little cost to its own interests," Czin writes.

The TikTok situation played right into China's strategy, he writes.

"The TikTok case reflects Beijing’s diplomatic tactic with the second Trump administration: whittling down the scope of the discussions from the major strategic issues at the heart of U.S.-Chinese relations to relatively narrow commercial issues ancillary to the competition but of outsize importance to the Trump administration and its key constituencies," he explains.

China's pledge to buy soybeans from the U.S. is another failure for Trump, he writes.

"By narrowly construing discussions with Washington as commercial negotiations, China ensnares U.S. policymakers in a game of whack-a-mole in which Washington, distracted from addressing the major concerns about China’s economic policy," he explains.

Unlike Trump, he writes, Xi remains focused and is aware of Trump's "hunger for a deal."

"Xi’s objective is to keep Trump invested in his game of whack-a-mole," he explains. "The Trump administration, with its maladroit attempts at diplomacy and erratic shifts in policy, might appear ill equipped to pursue a détente with China."

And although Czin says the U.S. still has some points of leverage against China, Xi has made remarkable gains in playing Trump.

" A year into the second Trump administration, it has made startling progress," he writes.

On the night of Oct. 8, a man named Delmar Gomez drove to pick up his younger brother from a mechanic’s shop on Lamar Avenue. He never came home.

On the return trip, law enforcement officers with the Memphis Safe Task Force pulled over his 2011 Toyota Tundra pickup and arrested the brothers on immigration charges.

The Guatemalan brothers — both longtime Memphians — are known in national Pentecostal Christian circles as well-traveled worship singers, performing at churches from New York to Florida.

They were moved from one immigration detention center to another, finally arriving at a lockup in Louisiana, more than 300 miles from Memphis. The younger brother, Eber Gomez, a 30-year-old with no known criminal record, was soon deported, leaving behind a wife and two young children in Memphis.

Delmar Gomez, a 38-year-old husband and father of four U.S. citizen children, is still holding on. Though he had only minor motor vehicle violations on his record, he’s spent more than 40 days in an immigration detention as he heads into a hearing Tuesday that could result in his deportation.

Not only did the Trump administration lock up the brothers, the government published a news release with false information portraying Delmar Gomez as one of 11 “worst of the worst” immigrant criminals in Memphis.

The allegations deeply upset his wife, Sandra Perez.

“I want people to know that all of the charges that they’re accusing him of now are false, that none of that is true,” she told the Institute for Public Service Reporting in a Spanish-language interview. “He’s a person who is very respectful, honest, very hardworking. He is a good person.”

The news release included the false claim that Delmar Gomez had been arrested on an aggravated assault charge. The claim was re-published on at least one local TV station’s website.

In a second version of the news release, the Trump administration published Delmar Gomez’s mug shot and misidentified him as “Miguel Torres, a criminal illegal alien from Mexico arrested for selling synthetic narcotics, vehicle theft, traffic offense and drug possession.” The same caption also appears under another man’s photo.

Weeks later, the government has not corrected the misidentification, or explained how it happened, even after a reporter repeatedly asked about it.

The situation reflects broader issues. The Trump administration is conducting a massive immigration crackdown in Memphis and across the country, spending billions of dollars to arrest, detain and deport people, using stories of criminal immigrants as justification for harsh treatment.

The arrest and detention of the Guatemalan singing brothers illustrates the sharp contrast between the administration’s rhetoric — that it’s arresting hard-core criminals — and the reality on the ground in Memphis and across the country: that it’s mostly arresting immigrants with minor criminal records or no criminal record at all.

As of this month, 74% of immigrants in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention had no criminal convictions, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Many of those who were convicted committed only minor offenses, such as traffic violations.

Detailed numbers for Memphis are not available. The top state prosecutor in the Memphis area, Steve Mulroy, told The Institute in October that immigration arrests account for about 20% of total task force arrests, and most of the immigrants have no criminal history other than unlawful presence in the United States.

Delmar Gomez’s wife Sandra acknowledges her husband entered the country illegally in January 2005, more than 20 years ago. He was 17 at the time.

Sandra said Delmar was unable to gain legal immigration status, but has lived a clean life.

Delmar Gomez’s attorney, Skye Austin with advocacy group Latino Memphis, said she is aware of the federal government’s news release that included the false information.

“When I was first made aware of it, my immediate thought was, ‘Do people think that all Hispanics look alike?’ ” Austin said. “Do people think that it is OK to mix up names and faces and histories?”

There is no evidence that Gomez was ever accused of aggravated assault, drug dealing, vehicle theft or any other major crime, she said.

The Institute for Public Service Reporting conducted its own independent records search and was unable to locate any such criminal charges against Delmar Gomez.

Austin said Gomez’s entire criminal history consists of six traffic tickets issued over a period of nearly two decades, from 2006 to this spring. The tickets were for violations such as driving without a license and without insurance — both misdemeanors, and an Atlanta ticket for driving too fast for conditions and a related driving charge. The most recent ticket came this March, when he was cited for following too closely and driving with an expired tag, she said, adding that prosecutors dropped those charges.

“I think that people should view this as unjust and that this is the opposite of the narrative that we’ve seen where criminals are being taken into detention,” she said. “Because my client’s not a criminal. He is an everyday hard worker just trying to provide for his family.”

From work and singing to detention

Delmar Gomez’s wife Sandra spoke in an interview in the kitchen of her family’s East Memphis home, which is decorated with a poster depicting the Ten Commandments.

She said she learned of the arrests when Eber Gomez called her on the way back from the mechanic’s shop, when the two brothers were in Delmar’s truck. Delmar was driving, but Eber blamed himself for what happened, she said, because if hadn’t needed the ride, Delmar wouldn’t have gone on the errand at all.

“He just told me ‘I’m sorry, it’s my fault that they stopped us.’” she said. “And I told him ‘It’s not true.’

He said ‘Yes it is. Listen.’ And I heard them (law enforcement officers) talking in English.”

“‘Now we can’t do anything,’ he told me. That’s all he said.”

Sandra Perez is a stay-at-home mother to four children who range in age from 17 to three. Delmar Gomez is the family’s primary breadwinner and earns money mainly by mowing yards. He has a lineup of about 60 houses, and he and his father typically mow about 30 yards one week, then about 30 more the next, his wife said.

He’s also a lead vocalist for a Christian band called Agrupacion Vision Emanuel, or Vision of Emanuel Group, which has produced studio recordings and professionally edited music videos.

In the band’s music videos, Delmar Gomez stands in front of as many as 15 musicians, singing passionately at scenic locations including Shelby Farms, the Overton Park shell, and near the “Memphis” sign on Mud Island. One of the videos has been watched more than 400,000 times.

His younger brother Eber Gomez has worked as a roofer and sang with a different touring band called Adoradores de Cristo Memphis, which means “Christ Worshipers of Memphis.”

The two bands have traveled as far away as Chicago, Florida, Alabama, New York and Atlanta to perform at weddings, church anniversaries and other Pentecostal church events, family members said.

Delmar Gomez’s band doesn’t treat these performances as a money-making endeavor, his wife said.

“They don’t charge. They go for faith. If the brothers (at the other churches) want, they give them an offering for their expenses, and if they don’t, they cover their own expenses,” his wife said. “They go for love of the work of God.”

Amid a surge of well over 1,000 federal agents and state troopers in Memphis, community groups say law enforcement officers are arresting and detaining immigrants every day here, often in traffic stops.

The Memphis Safe Task Force has released little information about the immigration arrests. In a statement early this month, the task force said it had made 319 immigration arrests in October.

That’s about 17% of about 1,900 total arrests.

As of November 17, the task force arrest total had risen to 2,790 arrests, Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Ryan Guay said in an email to The Institute.

He did not say how many of these were immigration arrests, referring questions to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not respond.

Delmar Gomez was taken to an ICE office near the airport, then an immigration prison in Mason, Tennessee, then a lockup in Alabama, and finally to a big ICE prison in Jena, Louisiana, his wife said.

She said she wants one thing. “That they let him go,” she said through tears. “That he can be with my family and with me, because he’s been a good person. To be together as a family and work on the things of God, that’s been our desire.

“We’re a very decent family, and it’s unfair what they’re accusing him of.”

Mass deportation campaign

The federal government generally has treated unlawful presence in the United States as a civil violation, not a crime. Under prior presidents, including Republican George W. Bush and Democrats such as Barack Obama and Joe Biden, it’s unlikely people like the Guatemalan singers would ever have been detained.

The background: Businesses wanted a low-cost, reliable workforce. Congress didn’t want to increase legal immigration.

The federal government found a solution: quietly tolerate illegal immigration. Consequently, the government usually enforced immigration law only at the border.

But in non-border areas like Memphis, the federal government rarely bothered to expel unauthorized immigrants, unless the immigrants committed crimes. Unauthorized immigrants like Delmar Gomez could live normal lives – working and raising families, but they often had no way to gain legal status.

The Trump administration has thrown out the practice of non-enforcement and is arresting people who have allegedly committed civil immigration violations, but have no other criminal history. It is also arresting some people who have legal immigration papers, and has even arrested and detained U.S. citizens, most of them of Hispanic origin.

The October 20 news release involving Delmar Gomez demonstrates how Trump’s government is also publishing false information about specific immigrants in Memphis and across the nation.

It’s part of a broader pattern by President Trump and his administration of portraying immigrants as dangerous and evil. Trump famously launched his first presidential campaign in 2015 by calling Mexicans “rapists” and claimed in a presidential debate last year that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating other people’s cats and dogs.

Today, the administration sometimes labels immigrants as “terrorists” as justification for deporting them.

In high-profile cases, including a big raid on an apartment building in Chicago, nonprofit news outlet ProPublica has found that those claims were frequently false — that the so-called “terrorists” are often ordinary immigrants with no criminal records.

In fact, multiple studies from the Cato Institute, the U.S. Department of Justice and other researchers have concluded that immigrants are less likely than U.S. citizens to commit crimes — even if the immigrants are in the country illegally.

The Institute contacted the White House for comment for this story. Spokeswoman Abigail Jackson responded by criticizing the reporter.

“Violent criminal illegal aliens who murder, rape, and assault innocent American citizens deserve to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. It’s despicable for any so-called journalist to try and compare these monsters with law-abiding immigrants. This is why no one trusts the media.”

News release includes unverifiable claims

Memphis TV station Action News 5, which had originally re-published the government’s false aggravated assault claim about Delmar Gomez, has since broadcast a follow-up story saying there’s no evidence to support it.

Not only does the government’s October 20 news release include false information about Delmar Gomez, it also includes unverifiable information about at least four other men arrested in the Memphis area.

For instance, the news release says a man named Jardi Caal Requena was arrested “for domestic violence and for making a physical threat.” A reporter with The Institute found no criminal records for anyone with this name in local or federal courts.

The news release claims that a man named Simeon Sosa-Camargo had been convicted of “smuggling aliens into the U.S.”

Federal records show that a man with the same name was convicted in Texas for at least three cases of entering and re-entering the U.S. illegally.

But The Institute found no record that he was ever convicted of human smuggling.

The news release says a man named Wilmer Flores Godoy was convicted of “illegal alien in possession of a firearm and arrested for larceny.” A man named Wilmer Flores was arrested on a felony domestic violence charge in the Memphis area in 2024, and the case was dismissed in October.

But a reporter found no local or federal court records related to gun possession or larceny.

Delmar Gomez is misidentified in the news release as Miguel Torres, a man from Mexico whom the feds accused of drug dealing, vehicle theft, traffic offense and drug possession.

A search for the real Miguel Torres turned up little – the name is common, with hundreds of criminal cases against people with that name in the nationwide federal court system.

But a reporter found no records that matched those allegations for Torres in the Shelby County criminal court system or in federal courts for the western district of Tennessee.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to written questions about the Delmar Gomez case and the other men mentioned in the Oct. 20 news release.

Younger brother accepts deportation

The father of the two brothers, Ramiro Gomez, told a reporter he originally had eight children. One of them, Jaime Gomez, was a heavy drinker who was found dead in the Mississippi River several years ago, he said.

By contrast, he said arrested sons Delmar and Eber are clean-living family men. “What I want is for my sons to come back. My grandchildren need them,” he said.

Days after that interview, on Oct. 30, the younger brother, Eber, accepted deportation back to Guatemala, according to an online system that allows people to search immigration court hearings by an identifying number. He arrived back in Guatemala on Saturday, Nov. 8, his father said.

Ramiro Gomez said he had spoken with his son briefly by phone from Guatemala, but he didn’t have a chance to talk with him about why he accepted deportation.

However, the Trump administration has made it extremely difficult for detained immigrants to win release on bond. Instead, detained immigrants are forced to fight their deportation cases from behind bars.

Critics say that by denying bond, the government is using the hardship of imprisonment to grind down immigrants’ will and ability to fight and pressure them to sign paperwork accepting deportation.

Ramiro Gomez said the deportation has caused severe hardship for his son’s wife and their two children. “She’s still at home and paying rent and food for the children.”

Delmar continues to fight deportation

Delmar Gomez remains behind bars in Louisiana. As of today, he’s been locked up for 48 days.

He is scheduled for an individual hearing Tuesday before Immigration Judge Maithe Gonzalez at the lockup in Jena, Louisiana.

Gomez’s attorney Skye Austin will appear via remote link from Memphis and argue for “cancellation of removal” — an immigration judge’s formal ruling that he should not be deported.

Her argument: Delmar Gomez has lived in in the U.S. at least 10 years continuously, and his deportation would harm his four U.S. citizen children. “I also have to prove that he is a person of good moral character and has not been convicted of a crime that would have serious immigration consequences.”

What would she say if an ICE attorney argues that his six traffic tickets for driving without a license, speeding and other violations show bad moral character?

“So, my pushback would be that a number of these traffic violations have been (dropped by prosecutors) or closed, and that my client does everything in his power to pay the fines and make sure that he has nothing pending with the court. He’s not causing any judicial delay or anything of that nature.”

Austin said she’s collected dozens of reference letters to present to the immigration court on her client’s behalf.

“Seven local ministers have written me letters, and that’s on top of again, neighbors, friends, clients of Señor Delmar just wanting to let people know, ‘Hey, this is a good man. I know him personally. I’ve known him for years,’ et cetera, et cetera.”

Most immigrants who go before Judge Gonzalez lose their cases, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

In 2024 and 2025, the judge decided 148 asylum cases and denied about 87% of them, slightly higher than the denial rate of 78% across judges at the Jena immigration court.

“Mommy, where did Papi go?”

Meanwhile, Delmar Gomez’s children are struggling with his absence.

His oldest child, 17-year-old high school senior Nancy Gomez, said her father had only a limited education in Guatemala and is pushing for her to study.

She’s already been accepted to the University of Memphis.

“He always has given me advice on everything that I do and always has been proud of me and everything that I have done. And then I just want to see him again. I feel really something that has been taken away from me that I want back. Every time he came from work, I would hear his truck coming in, but now I haven’t heard that and I just want to hear it again,” she said.

“When the house is quiet and he comes from work, he fills the environment with his laughter. And he always be talking about his day and asks us about our day, how it was. And I just want to see him back. I just miss him a lot.”

As the adults showed a reporter a family album during a recent visit, the youngest child, three-year-old Betuel, spoke up.

“Mommy, where did Papi go?” he said in Spanish, crying.

His mother picked him up, gave him a hug and kissed him.

“He went to sing, my love,” his mother said.

“He’s working?” the boy said.

“Yes, my love.”

As of Monday the news release with the false information identifying the Guatemalan singer as a Mexican drug dealer remains on the official Department of Homeland Security website, uncorrected.

The richest man on earth owns X.

The family of the second-richest man owns Paramount, which owns CBS — and could soon own Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN.

The third-richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The fourth-richest man owns The Washington Post and Amazon MGM Studios.

Another billionaire owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post.

Why are the ultra-rich buying up so much of the media? Vanity may play a part, but there’s a more pragmatic — some might say sinister — reason.

As vast wealth concentrates in the hands of a few, this small group of the ultra-wealthy may rationally fear that a majority of voters could try to confiscate their wealth — through, for example, a wealth tax.

If you’re a multibillionaire, in other words, you might view democracy as a potential threat to your net worth. New York City real estate and oil tycoon John Catsimatidis, whose net worth is estimated at $4.5 billion, donated $2.4 million to support Trump and congressional Republicans in 2024 — nearly twice as much as he gave in 2016. Why? “If you’re a billionaire, you want to stay a billionaire,” Catsimatidis told The Washington Post.

But rather than rely on Republicans, a more reliable means of stopping majorities from targeting your riches might be to control a significant share of the dwindling number of media outlets.

As a media mogul, you can effectively hedge against democracy by suppressing criticism of yourself and other plutocrats and discouraging any attempt to tax away your wealth.

And Trump has been ready to help you. In his second term of office, Trump has brazenly and illegally used the power of the presidency to punish his enemies and reward those who lavish him with praise and profits.

So it wasn’t surprising that the owner of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos — the fourth-richest person — stopped the paper from endorsing Kamala Harris last year, as Trump rose in the polls. Or that, once Trump was elected, Bezos decreed that the Post’s opinion section must support “personal liberties and free markets.” And that he bought a proposed documentary about Melania Trump — for which she is the executive producer — for a whopping $40 million.

Bezos’s moves have led several of the Post’s top editors, journalists, and columnists to resign. Thousands of subscribers have cancelled. But the Post remains the biggest ongoing media presence in America’s capital city.

Bezos is a businessman first and foremost. His highest goal is not to inform the public but to make money. And he knows Trump can wreak havoc on his businesses by imposing unfriendly Federal Communications Commission rulings, or enforcing labor laws against him, or breaking up his companies with antitrust laws, or making it difficult for him to import what he sells.

On the other hand, Trump can also enrich Bezos — through lucrative government contracts or favorable FCC rulings or government subsidies.

It’s much the same with the family of Larry Ellison, the second-richest man.

Paramount’s CBS settled Trump’s frivolous $16 million lawsuit against CBS and canceled Stephen Colbert, much to Trump’s delight. Trump loyalist flak Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, then approved an $8 billion merger of Paramount Global, owner of CBS, and Skydance Media.

Larry Ellison’s son, David, became chief executive of the new media giant, Paramount Skydance.

In the run-up to the sale, some top brass at CBS News and its flagship “Sixty Minutes” resigned, presumably because they were pressured by Paramount not to air stories critical of Trump. No matter. Too much money was at stake.

I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president. But that was when CBS News — the home of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite — was independent of the rest of CBS, and when the top management of CBS felt they had independent responsibilities to the American public.

Like Bezos, Larry Ellison is first and foremost a businessman who knows that Trump can help or hinder his businesses. In 2020, he hosted a fundraiser for Trump at his home. According to court records, after the 2020 election, Ellison participated in a phone call to discuss how Trump’s defeat could be contested. In June 2025, he and his firm, Oracle, were co-sponsors of Trump’s military parade in Washington.

After taking charge of CBS, David Ellison promised to gut DEI policies there, put right-wing hack Kenneth R. Weinstein into a new “ombudsman” role, and made anti-“woke” opinion journalist Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News, despite her lack of experience in either broadcasting or newsrooms.

The Guardian reports that Larry Ellison has told Trump that if Paramount gains control of Warner Bros. Discovery — which owns CNN — Paramount will fire CNN hosts whom Trump doesn’t like.

Other billionaire media owners have followed the same trajectory. Despite his sometimes contentious relationship with Trump, Elon Musk has turned X into a cesspool of right-wing propaganda. Rupert Murdoch continues to give Trump all the positive coverage imaginable. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce and owner of Time magazine, has put Trump on the cover.

It is impossible to know the extent to which criticism of Trump and his administration has been chilled by these billionaires, or what fawning coverage has been elicited.

But we can say with some certainty that in an era when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals who have bought up key media, and when a thin-skinned president is willing and able to violate laws and norms to punish or reward, there is a growing danger that the public will not be getting the truth it needs to function in this democracy.

What to do about this? Two important steps:

1. At the least, media outlets should inform their readers about any and all potential conflicts of interest, and media watchdogs and professional associations should ensure they do.

Recently, The Washington Post’s editorial board defended Trump’s razing of the East Wing of the White House to build his giant ballroom, without disclosing that Amazon is a major corporate contributor to the ballroom. The Post’s editorial board also applauded Trump’s Defense Department’s decision to obtain a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors but failed to mention Bezos’s stake in X-energy, a company that’s developing small nuclear reactors. And it criticized Washington, D.C.’s refusal to accept self-driving cars without disclosing that Amazon’s self-driving car company was trying to get into the Washington, D.C. market.

These breaches are inexcusable.

2. A second step — if and when America has a saner government — is for anti-monopoly authorities to block the purchase of a major media outlet by someone with extensive businesses that could pose conflicts of interest.

Acquisition of a media company should be treated differently from the acquisition of, say, a company developing self-driving cars or small nuclear reactors, because of the media’s central role in our democracy.

As The Washington Post’s slogan used to say, democracy dies in darkness. Today, darkness is closing in because a demagogue sits in the Oval Office and so much of America’s wealth and media ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few people easily manipulated by that demagogue.

Robert Reich is a professor at Berkeley and was secretary of labor under Bill Clinton. You can find his writing at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

President Donald Trump was expected to announce as soon as Monday a long-awaited fix for the expiring Obamacare subsidies, to prevent health care premiums from skyrocketing to double and in some cases even triple their current levels, but congressional Republicans reportedly have objected.

Trump was prepared to extend the subsidies for two more years, according to multiple reports including from MS NOW‘s Jake Traylor and Politico.

Traylor had reported that the president would be calling on Congress to send him legislation that would halt the Obamacare premium spikes.

“The announcement is expected to occur at the White House, and is slated to feature remarks from Trump and Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services,” Traylor had reported on Sunday.

Also on Sunday, Politico had reported that “The White House expects to soon unveil a health policy framework that includes a two-year extension of Obamacare subsidies due to expire at the end of next month and new limits on eligibility, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss the unannounced plans.”

Trump has on his Monday schedule a 4 PM Oval Office executive order signing scheduled. It is unclear if that was to be for the extension of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies.

Now, Traylor reports, “White House to delay healthcare proposal after significant congressional backlash.”

“According to two White House officials the announcement has been delayed, with one of those officials citing strong congressional backlash to Trump’s proposed plan. Trump planned to make an announcement as early as Monday proposing a framework to address health care costs which included an extension of Obamacare subsides.”

Monday afternoon, CNBC reported that “Republicans are proposing direct Health Savings Account payments to ACA enrollees rather than extending enhanced premium tax credits.”

“The White House is expected to make an announcement this week addressing efforts to either renew or replace the Affordable Care Act enhanced premium tax credits, according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent,” CNBC added, appearing to make clear any decision has yet to be set in stone.

Bobby Kogan, Senior Director of Federal Budget Policy at American Progress, responded to Traylor’s reporting:

“It’s because congressional Republicans want the enhanced subsidies to expire,” Kogan wrote. “That’s why they didn’t extend them in [the One Big Beautiful Bill Act], and that’s why they kept calling them a ‘December problem’ even though open enrollment [began] on November 1.”

Coming off blowout victories in New York, New Jersey and Virginia earlier this month, Democrats are looking to keep their electoral momentum going with a special election in a deep-red state, according to a new analysis from The Hill, and potentially make President Donald Trump's growing problems in Congress even worse.

Tennessee's 7th congressional district has been vacant since this past summer, when former Rep. Mark Green resigned to accept a job in the private sector. A special election is now underway, with former state Department of General Services Matt Van Epps, a Trump-endorsed Republican, and State Rep. Aftyn Behn, a Democrat, vying to fill the seat. The GOP has handily carried elections in the district over the years, but a heightened media spotlight on the race and a major push from Democrats have seen Van Epps' odds continually erode.

Despite the party's recent success in races elsewhere, the odds are still not quite in the Democrats' favor in Tennessee, but that has not stopped the flow of fundraising dollars to Behn's campaign from groups outside the state. Given that Trump carried the district by 22 points in the 2024 election, The Hill reports that even a 10-point loss for the Democratic candidate would be seen as a major message to the Republican Party at large. This will also be Tennessee's first special election in decades, prompting some Democrats to see it as a golden opportunity, given their past strength in such races.

“This is our first special election in nearly 40 years in Tennessee, so this is really a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us,” Dakota Galban, chair of the Davidson County Democratic Party, said. “They drew these new lines intentionally to rob Democrats of our voice in Congress, so I think that especially motivates Nashville voters."

As Galban noted, the borders of the district have changed since 2018, the last time there was no incumbent in the race to represent it in Congress, with it now including parts of Nashville, an urban area known to vote more for Democrats. Major party surrogates have also been lending their support to Behn's campaign, including former Vice President and 2024 presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

The race is seen as especially important due to the minuscule GOP majority in the House of Representatives, just six seats as of Monday. Any seat gained by Democrats at this stage makes House Speaker Mike Johnson's job of wrangling his party for votes much more difficult, and increases the odds that the majority could flip back to Democrats.

A federal judge dismissed the criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Leticia James after deciding Lindsey Halligan, the interim U.S. Attorney who brought the case, was unlawfully appointed.

Judge Cameron Currie ruled that the appointment of Halligan was invalid, which in turn made the indictment against Comey and James invalid. This ruling is a significant win for Comey and James, though the Justice Department may appeal.

"Both cases are now dismissed without prejudice," writes Politico's senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney on X.

Comey was indicted for false statements and obstruction related to 2020 Senate testimony, while James was indicted on charges of bank fraud and false statements to a financial institution. Both pleaded not guilty.

MSNOW senior legal reporter Lisa Rubin says "This is a dismissal without prejudice, which means that the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia has an important choice before it. There's a federal statute that allows a case that has been time-barred but is dismissed for other reasons to be brought again within a six month period of time."

Rubin explains that if they bring the case against Comey again, "it also means that if they do that they don't get a chance to appeal the ruling with respect to the lawfulness of Halligan's appointment."

And it's not just that Halligan can't remain in her position, Rubin explains.

"It's [also] that Attorney General Pam Bondi and the president can not do this again," she says. "They're not entitled to use this same procedural process, but rather, the district judges of the Eastern District of Virginia under the statute in place are entitled to nominate and choose somebody of their own selection now going forward."

Only after a new US attorney is appointed can they decide whether to bring charges against Comey or James again, Rubin says.

"Again, the US attorney's office, whoever it's going to be led by in the future — its not going to be Halligan, it looks like — will have to make a choice in the Comey case whether to appeal or whether to try and file these charges again and still deal with some of the same motions to dismiss that Comey has also brought," Rubin explains.

"If they were to bring the case again, you'd have to imagine that Comey and his legal team, led by Pat Fitzgerald, would bring those same motions yet again," she adds.

Legal affairs reporter Fallon Gallagher notes that the dismissal isn't a full victory for either team as both teams asked for the cases to be dismissed with prejudice, meaning they can still be brought to trial again.

"This is a procedural victory, it's not a substantive victory," says MSNOW intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian. "So James Comey is no doubt happy this is happening, but assuming the indictment gets refiled with a different US attorney, he's still going to have a legal battle on his hands."

"But it does underscore that Donald Trump has been playing games with the appointments clause in all these cases for a long time and it's finally caught up to him," he adds.

"From the first sentence of the decision, the judge is decrying what has happened as outlandish and pleading for normalcy. This is embarrassing for the administration and surely opens the door for other cases that the court may just rule against," USA Today's DC bureau chief Susan Page says of the ruling.