Trump officials cheer Journalism’s defeat at Kentucky Derby — but may have missed a crucial point
Junior Alvarado atop Sovereignty wins the Kentucky Derby followed by Umberto Rispoli atop Journalism and Flavien Prat atop Baeza during the Kentucky Derby 2025 race at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., on Saturday, May 3, 2025. Mandatory Credit: Albert Cesare/USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Supporters of President Donald Trump on Saturday heralded a win by race horse Sovereignty, who defeated the horse Journalism at this year’s Kentuck Derby.
“In the Trump [a]dministration, sovereignty will always win,” Stephen Miller — a potential pick for Trump’s new national security advisor — wrote on X.
“Sovereignty > journalism,” wrote Trump defense secretary Pete Hegseth. “On the track. And in 2025 America.”
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Logan Hall, digital editor for the conservative site “The Blaze," on Saturday likewise called Journalism’s defeat a “powerful omen.”
“Sovereignty beating Journalism at The Kentucky Derby is just too perfect," Hall wrote.
But as Washington Post reporter Maria Sacchetti points out, those Trump officials may have missed an important detail about the race.
“Sovereignty’s jockey, Junior Alvarado, is an immigrant from Venezuela,” Sacchetti wrote on X.
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The irony, of course, is the Trump administration’s active crackdown on immigrants — especially from Venezuela.
Last week, “Trump's administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to intervene in its bid to strip temporary protected status for more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants, a move that would clear the way for their deportation,” USA Today reports.
The administration’s appeal comes after a federal judge in April declined to “put on hold a federal judge's order that halted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's decision to terminate the temporary legal status previously granted to some Venezuelans,” the report adds.
In it’s appeal to the Supreme Court, Justice Department lawyers lamented, “So long as the order is in effect, [Noem] must permit hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan nationals to remain in the country, notwithstanding her reasoned determination that doing so is 'contrary to the national interest.”
Some users on X called Sacchetti's post dishonest, arguing the Washington Post reporter failed to make a distinction between legal and illegal immigration. But, as PBS News reported, in March, "Immigrants with legal status or no criminal history are being detained and deported" under the president's immigration crackdown.
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