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The Most Significant Accomplishments of Trump’s First 100 Days

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Since Franklin D. Roosevelt ushered in the New Deal in 1933 in just three months, historians have measured a president’s success or failure by its first 100 days. As we reach President Trump’s 100th day in office, the 47th president’s second administration has taken a whirlwind of decisive actions to protect life, end artificial support for extreme transgender ideology, uphold religious liberty, secure America’s southern border, restore national sovereignty, and return to a traditional America First foreign policy fostering peace and prosperity.

President Trump’s second first-100-days in office have been “all about one thing: promises made and promises kept. And we have pages and pages and pages of those promises being kept already in just 100 days,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) told “This Week on Capitol Hill” host Tony Perkins ahead of this week’s milestone.

Here are some of the president’s most significant accomplishments since his recent return to the Oval Office.

Abortion: Protecting Pro-Life Rights

President Trump began protecting pro-life advocates’ unalienable right to freedom of speech, reversing his predecessor’s weaponization of government against pro-life Christians, and stopping pro-life taxpayers from financing abortion on day one. By the afternoon of January 20 — inauguration day — a Biden-era government website promoting abortion, ReproductiveRights.gov, had gone offline.

On January 23, Trump kept a campaign promise he had made at the 2023 Pray Vote Stand Summit by signing the pardon of 23 pro-life advocates jailed by the Biden-Harris administration. “This is a great honor to sign this,” said the president as he held the pardon aloft in the Oval Office.

The Biden-Harris Justice Department imprisoned many of those nearly two dozen pro-life advocates under a novel legal theory that accused them of violating both the Federal Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. From this time forward, the Justice Department will only press charges under the FACE Act if the allegation results in “death, serious bodily harm, or serious property damage,” announced the Trump administration in a January 24 memo. “Cases not presenting significant aggravating factors can adequately be addressed under state or local law.”

Trump also protected U.S. taxpayers from funding foreign abortions and many abortions in the United States. A January 24 presidential memorandum reinstated his 2017 Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance (PLGHA), which assures U.S. taxpayers shall not be forced to pay any foreign organization that commits, refers, or advocates for abortion. The action also aims “to ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars do not fund organizations or programs that support or participate in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”

The same day, Trump signed an executive order “Enforcing the Hyde Amendment,” which assures the nearly five-decade-old policy embraced by President Jimmy Carter will be respected for the next four years. Although a younger Joe Biden voted for the Hyde Amendment — which safeguards taxpayer funds from footing the bill for most abortions through Medicaid — the White House detailed how the Biden-Harris administration subsequently undermined this longstanding norm by compelling taxpayers to underwrite “abortion-related travel expenses,” while “the Department of Veterans Affairs allowed hospitals to provide abortions, and the Department of Health and Human Services paid for abortions for illegal immigrants.”

Additionally, in March the Trump administration held up tens of millions of dollars in Planned Parenthood funding over allegations the nation’s largest abortion business adopted so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies that violated federal civil rights laws. Leakers have said this may presage a larger administration initiative to defund Planned Parenthood, which received $699.3 million in taxpayer funding and carried out 392,712 abortions in its 2022-2023 fiscal year.

The Trump administration’s pro-life actions should prove popular. Three out of four Americans (73%) oppose taxpayer-funded abortions overseas, and nearly six out of 10 of Americans (57%) oppose using federal funds for abortions at home, according to a Marist poll released in January.

Symbolically, Vice President J.D. Vance delivered a speech in person at the 2025 March for Life, and Trump sent a recorded message to the annual pro-life gathering. In his first administration, Trump became the first sitting president to speak to the March for Life in the flesh.

Extreme Transgender Ideology

President Trump has opposed extreme gender ideology from day one, protecting children from transgender hormone injections or surgeries, sheltering battered women and female prisoners from men who say they identify as female, and maintaining fairness in women’s sports.

On his first day in office, Trump signed the executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which said the federal government recognizes only two sexes, based in observable biological reality, from the moment of fertilization. “‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell,” says the order. “‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”

Eight days later, the president’s executive order “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” ended taxpayer funding for transgender procedures involving minors, allows those subjected to such experimental medical interventions to sue, and may lead to the prosecution of those who carry out transgender surgeries. The predatory transgender industry’s “maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex … will be a stain on our [n]ation’s history, and it must end,” the order declared.

Trump underscored this in a March 4 address to a joint session of Congress, when he told American youth directly, “Our message to every child in America is that you are perfect exactly the way God made you.”

Trump made it official policy that the military’s emphasis on winning wars and lethality is “inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria. This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex” in his January 27 executive order “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” on January 27. The order reverses President Biden’s order opening the military to those who openly identify as transgender but grandfathers in those who have been “stable” for at least 36 months. The executive order stated that identifying as transgender prevents people from living an “honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

On February 5, Trump announced his administration would prosecute Title IX violations by schools or universities that force female students or athletes “to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.” Allowing males to compete in women’s sports is “demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls,” stated the executive order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” He also cut off student loan forgiveness for LGBTQ activists in a March 7 executive order, “Restoring Public Service Loan Forgiveness.”

The Trump administration has steadfastly implemented these orders against intransigent blue states such as Maine, led by Governor Janet Mills (D). On April 7, the Trump administration notified Maine officials that it would withhold all non-essential funding from the state Department of Corrections after it placed a 6’1” man who confessed to murdering both his parents (and his dog) in a women’s correctional facility. The Biden administration, by contrast, forced women to share prison cells with trans-identified male offenders and filed lawsuits against states that refused to go along with his orders. By January, 15% of all inmates in female correctional facilities were men.

On April 11, the Education Department announced it was moving to cut off all K-12 funding to the state of Maine for flouting federal law, cutting off prison funding. Similarly, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins held up USDA funding for “administrative and technological functions” in Maine schools that forced girls to change in front of, or compete against, boys.

Th White House released a theologically rich and inspiring statement celebrating Holy Week. One year earlier, then-President Joe Biden placed the weight of his bully pulpit behind a campaign needling Americans to celebrate the “Transgender Day of Visibility,” which also fell on Easter Sunday. Biden’s transgender proclamation ran nearly seven times as long as his Easter statement.

Trump press aides have said they do not respond to questions from reporters who put their personal pronouns in their biographies or social media profiles.

Restoring Religious Liberty

President Trump has established religious liberty departments within Cabinet agencies and recently hosted a conference on the violation of Christians’ rights. The administration has pointedly denounced violations of religious liberty and free speech rights by U.S. allies in Europe. Vice President J.D. Vance told the Munich Security Conference in February that the continent’s “backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious [believers], in particular, in the crosshairs.” Days later, police handcuffed a 74-year-old grandmother for silently offering to talk to mothers outside an abortion facility. They charged her with violating Scotland’s Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Act, which carries a potential fine ranging from £10,000 ($12,600 U.S.) to an unlimited amount.

Securing the Border

On the president’s signature issue, Trump swiftly returned order to the U.S. border by reinstating the Remain in Mexico policy, ending the policy of catch-and-release, designating criminal syndicates such as Tren de Aragua and MS-13 as foreign terrorist organizations or criminal enterprises, and using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport illegal immigrants. He also signed the Laken Riley Act into law and turned the CBP One app from importing to exporting illegal immigrants. He has deported 135,000 illegal immigrants to date.

His policies have proven effective. “Illegal border crossings dropped precipitously. In March, U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement said 7,181 people were apprehended nationwide between border crossings — a 14% decrease from February and a 95% drop from March 2024,” reported the Associated Press. As Trump told Congress, “The media and our friends in the Democrat Party kept saying we needed new legislation. ‘We must have legislation to secure the border.’ But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.”

National Sovereignty

President Trump has restored national sovereignty by withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO), effectively scuttling any chance the global body had of seeing significant progress on the WHO Pandemic Agreement. “WHO proved itself to be a corrupt organization run by the Chinese Communist Party and global leftists,” Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told “Washington Watch” earlier this month. “President Trump is acting boldly, swiftly, and decisively.” WHO reported a $2.5 billion budget shortfall shortly after Trump’s announcement.

The 47th president also promptly withheld U.S. taxpayer funds from the World Trade Organization (WTO), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

The February 4 directive also ordered the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations to “conduct a review of [Ameria’s] membership in UNESCO,” the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. President Ronald Reagan exited the organization in 1984, but George W. Bush rejoined in 2003. Trump then withdrew again in 2018, but the Biden administration reversed that decision in 2023.

On February 6, Trump issued an executive order titled “Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court,” rebuffing the ICC for investigating U.S. personnel “without a legitimate basis” and for “issuing baseless arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant” for committing war crimes in Israel’s response to the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack by Hamas.

Moving to Abolish the Department of Education and Hold the Federal Bureaucracy Accountable

In what may prove to be President Trump’s most consequential action, he has taken the first steps to abolish the Department of Education. On March 11, the Trump administration fired half of the Department of Education’s staffers. Although the DOE has spent more than $3 trillion since its formation by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, U.S. reading scores in 2023 were “not significantly different from the average score in 1971,” according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The action fulfills a campaign promise made in a July 2023 online video and repeated at the 2023 Pray Vote Stand Summit to “move everything back to the states.”

The same order directs the secretary of Education to assure all public schools abide by the “requirement that any program or activity receiving Federal assistance terminate illegal discrimination obscured under the label ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or similar terms and programs promoting gender ideology.”

Trump’s executive orders and actions have also rooted out racially discriminatory policies branded under the label “diversity, equity, and inclusion” — which often include LGBTQ indoctrination — from federal agencies and sought to thwart bureaucrats who simply maintained DEI policies and offices under different names. Meanwhile, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has exposed federal waste, fraud, and abuse, and sought to make the vast federal workforce responsive to the will of the American people.

In less than 100 days, President Donald J. Trump has “accomplished more than most politicians and presidents accomplish in an entire lifetime,” Speaker Johnson told Perkins.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

DHS Spox Touts ‘Major Success’ In Florida After Nabbing Nearly 800 Illegals In 4 Days

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Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin described the arrest records of some illegal immigrants arrested by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of “a large-scale operation” during a Saturday evening appearance on Fox News.

Federal, state and local law enforcement carried out Operation Tidal Wave in Florida, arresting nearly 800 illegal immigrants during the four-day operation, according to a post on X by Fox News reporter Bill Melugin. McLaughlin said the sweep was a “preview” of additional operations.

“This was a major success, it was a large-scale operation. And to your point, this is a preview of what is to come throughout the nation,” McLaughlin said. “We have partnerships under 287(g) authorities that Secretary [of Homeland Security Kristi] Noem signed, and this empowers state and local law enforcement to actually be able to use their enforcement authority to carry out immigration enforcement.”

WATCH:

Section 287(g) was enacted in 1996 and allows ICE to delegate certain functions to state and local law enforcement agencies, according to ICE’s website.

“What that means is they can actually make arrests and clean up our streets get these criminal aliens off our streets,” McLaughlin said. “So, like you said, almost 800 aliens including MS-13 gang members, convicted murderers, rapists, all of these people are now off of our streets who otherwise have been acting with impunity and terrorizing U.S. communities. You are going to be seeing this throughout the country, and I think that Americans are going to be really thrilled with the results under this administration in the next 100 days.”

Ramon Ciro Castaneda (Department of Homeland Security)

Among the illegal immigrants arrested were Ramon Ciro Castaneda and Carlos Perez-Perez, members of the Venezuelan prison Tren de Aragua (TdA) and each under a “Final Order of Removal,” according to summaries provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation by the Department of Homeland Security.

“This success and massive operation is a window into what is to come throughout the country for the next 100 days of the Trump administration,” McLaughlin told the DCNF when reached for comment. “Our state and local law enforcement are heroes as we execute on the president’s mandate to secure the border, remove illegal aliens and make America safe.”

Carlos Perez-Perez (Department of Homeland Security)

President Donald Trump issued multiple executive orders to address border security and illegal immigration upon taking office Jan. 20, including designating Mexican drug cartels, TdA and the Salvadoran gang MS-13 as foreign terrorist organizations, while invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed up the deportation of members of the two gangs on March 15.

McLaughlin also commented on the Friday arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan on obstruction charges after she allegedly misdirected ICE agents seeking to arrest an illegal immigrant who had a hearing before her on April 18 before escorting the illegal immigrant out through a back door.

“This is just beyond the pale. I mean, take the Wisconsin judge. The fact she let this individual this illegal alien. American people should know the charges against him more. Strangulation, suffocation, battery, other domestic abuse charges. This is no innocent guy,” McLaughlin said. “As far as the New Mexico case it went beyond just harboring this member of Tren de Aragua.”

“The wife and that judge went so far as to destroy evidence including two photos on this criminal illegal alien’s phone that showed decapitated individuals, he was sending that around,” McLaughlin continued. “They went so far as to take a hammer and destroy this phone so that police couldn’t access this. We are going continue to go after these activist judges, especially in such egregious cases like this.”

AUTHOR

Harold Hutchison

Reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

‘Unprecedented and Legally Questionable’: SCOTUS Issues Controversial Halt to Trump’s Deportations

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Controversy over President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda is still ongoing, this time boiling over at the level of the U.S. Supreme Court. Early Saturday — at 1:00 a.m. EST, in fact — the Supreme Court issued an order temporarily halting the president’s deportation of Venezuelan nationals affiliated with the Tren de Aragua (TdA) foreign terrorist organization under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) of 1798. The unsigned order stated that the Trump administration “is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court.”

The case in question involves several Venezuelan nationals, identified by law enforcement as TdA members or affiliates, who previously filed an Administrative Procedure Act (APA) complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asking that their imminent deportations be halted. Judge James Boasberg quickly issued an ex parte temporary restraining order (TRO) barring the Trump administration from carrying out deportations under the AEA. However, the Supreme Court vacated that TRO earlier this month, agreeing with the Trump administration that the proper venue for the detained Venezuelans’ complaint was a habeas corpus court in the district where they were detained, in Texas, not an APA complaint lodged in Washington, D.C.

Attorneys for the Venezuelans subsequently filed a class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Wednesday, seeking writs of habeas corpus for all Venezuelans detained and slated for deportations under the AEA. Trump administration representatives assured the court that the TRO being sought on behalf of the Venezuelans was unnecessary as no deportation flights were scheduled imminently and all detainees would be given at least 24 hours’ notice prior to deportation, during which time habeas petitions could be filed. Judge James Wesley Hendrix, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, did not issue a TRO, nor did the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, prompting the Venezuelans’ lawyers to seek an emergency injunction from the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court’s order was issued quickly, without providing the Trump administration a chance to respond or even allowing dissenting Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas time to draft a dissenting statement, although the Supreme Court did say that it would welcome a response from the administration and Alito did publish a scathing dissent on Sunday. In that dissent, Alito began by arguing that the Supreme Court likely lacked jurisdiction: the Supreme Court only had jurisdiction, he said, if the appellate court did, and the appellate court only had jurisdiction if the district court denied injunctive relief; however, both lower courts only failed to issue a TRO, not a preliminary injunction, and did not outright deny issuing a TRO. “The denial of a true TRO is not appealable, and here, it is not clear that the applicants’ TRO request was actually denied,” Alito wrote, concluding that the Supreme Court therefore lacked jurisdiction to issue its order.

“When this Court rushed to enter its order, the Court of Appeals was considering the issue of emergency relief, and we were informed that a decision would be forthcoming. This Court, however, refused to wait,” Alito continued, noting that the Supreme Court’s own rules prohibit the judicial authority from issuing injunctive relief unless the petition for relief has made its way properly through the lower courts. Alito also observed, “The only papers before this Court were those submitted by the applicants. The Court had not ordered or received a response by the Government regarding either the applicants’ factual allegations or any of the legal issues presented by the application.” He added, “And the Court did not have the benefit of a Government response filed in any of the lower courts either.”

Alito further pointed out that the Supreme Court had issued a class-wide order, even though “the District Court never certified a class, and this Court has never held that class relief may be sought in a habeas proceeding.” The justice wrote that “literally in the middle of the night,” the Supreme Court “issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order.”

He continued, “I refused to join the Court’s order because we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate.” Alito concluded by stating that both the executive and judicial branches of government “have an obligation to follow the law.” He stated that the Trump administration must abide by the Supreme Court’s previous order regarding deportations under the AEA and the Supreme Court “should follow established procedures.”

U.S. Solicitor General Dean John Sauer also wrote a response to the Supreme Court’s order, which he filed on Monday. He argued that the Supreme Court should not have issued its order, noting that it is “a court of review, not first view.” Sauer continued, “Yet the application insists on judicial review in reverse. It calls for this Court to be the first to resolve due-process challenges to the adequacy of notice that designated enemy aliens receive, on behalf of a putative class that no court below has certified, on a nonexistent record.”

Referring to how quickly the Venezuelans’ lawyers moved through the court system, rapidly appealing the mere failure to issue TROs within a narrow and arbitrary timeframe and not allowing for a record to be accumulated before any court, Sauer continued, “Under these highly irregular circumstances, applicants can hardly establish a clear and indisputable entitlement to the extraordinary relief they seek. The application should be denied on that basis alone.”

Furthermore, the argument proffered by the Venezuelans’ attorneys is weak, Sauer argued, specifically referring to the claim that detainees will be imminently deported without being given any notice or opportunity to file habeas claims. “But applicants ignore that the government has provided advance notice to AEA detainees (including the named petitioners) prior to commencing AEA removals. Detainees receiving such notices have had adequate time to file habeas claims — indeed, the putative class representatives and others have filed such claims,” Sauer wrote. He continued, “And the government has agreed not to remove pursuant the AEA those AEA detainees who do file habeas claims (including the putative class representatives).” He called on the Supreme Court to “dissolve its current administrative stay and allow the lower courts to address the relevant legal and factual questions in the first instance — including the development of a proper factual record.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, Chris Gacek, an attorney and the senior fellow for Regulatory Affairs at Family Research Council, observed that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is involved in representing the detained Venezuelans, “threatened” to filed habeas petitions in every federal district court in the U.S. in order to “create some sort of massive disruption or something.”

Given that context, as well as the numerous TROs and nationwide injunctions issued against the Trump administration, Gacek commented that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts “cares a great deal about the integrity of the courts, within the framework of being an institutionalist. But Donald Trump is not the greatest threat to the courts, this is, this mayhem that these judges are creating — not necessarily the Supreme Court here, but all of these activist cases.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

SCOTUS Presses Pause On Trump’s Tren De Aragua Deportations

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The Supreme Court temporarily halted the Trump administration’s efforts to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport members of a violent prison gang early Saturday morning.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had been turned back by two judges prior to the Supreme Court’s emergency injunction, with associate justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissenting from the ruling, Fox News reported. The ACLU had also gone before United States District Judge James Boasberg of the District of Columbia, who held a Friday evening hearing on the matter.

President Donald Trump issued several executive orders to address illegal immigration and border security upon taking office Jan. 20, including designating Mexican drug cartels, the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) and the El Salvadoran prison gang MS-13 as foreign terrorist organizations. Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed up the deportation of TdA gang members on March 15.

Boasberg issued a March 15 injunction ordering the Trump administration to turn two planes carrying members of TdA to El Salvador around. Boasberg has since threatened to hold the Trump administration in contempt of court for not turning the planes around.

The Supreme Court overturned Boasberg’s orders in a 5-4 decision issued April 7, saying Boasberg lacked the authority to issue the injunction, but one of the new challenges came from Texas, where the gang members are being detained pending their deportation. The court also ruled Trump had the power to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport gang members.

The Border Patrol encountered millions of illegal immigrants during the Biden administration, according to figures released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced Feb. 25 that only 200 illegal immigrants were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border, the lowest single-day total in 15 years.

AUTHOR

Harold Hutchison

Reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

‘Restore the Constitutional Balance’: Trump Admin. Asks SCOTUS to Halt Unlawful Court Orders

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Another day, another federal court halting President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda. On Tuesday, Judge Araceli Martinez Olguin of the U.S. District Court for Northern California issued a preliminary injunction preventing the president from ending federal funds going to immigration lawyers. In February, the Trump administration froze approximately $200 million in grants to the Acacia Center for Justice, a group of immigration lawyers providing free services to unaccompanied migrant children (UAC). The Acacia Center for Justice subsequently sued to unfreeze the funding.

In issuing her preliminary injunction unfreezing the funds, the Mexican-born, Biden-appointed Olguin reasoned that the funding freeze would do “irreparable harm” to the Acacia Center for Justice and “imped[e] their ability to provide the direct legal representation of unaccompanied children in immigration proceedings.” She wrote, “The Court additionally finds that the continued funding of legal representation for unaccompanied children promotes efficiency and fairness within the immigration system.”

According to a report from The Daily Signal, the number of UACs crossing the U.S. southern border has reached record lows under the Trump administration. U.S. Border Patrol encountered fewer than 650 UACs at the border last month, down 97% from the record monthly high of 18,716 UACs seen under the Biden administration. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed, “March was the lowest number of unaccompanied children arriving at our southern border in recorded history.” The news comes as the Trump administration broke its own record for lowest number of monthly illegal border crossings in U.S. history, down from 8,326 in February to 7,181 last month.

Olguin’s is simply the latest in a series of mostly district court-issued injunctions or temporary restraining orders (TROs) impeding the president’s agenda. One of the most controversial of these cases centers on the president’s use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) of 1798 to carry out mass arrests and deportations of Venezuelan nationals affiliated with the foreign terrorist organization Tren de Aragua (TdA). Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia previously issued a sweeping TRO barring the president from invoking the AEA to deport TdA members. The Trump administration has contested Boasberg’s order and subsequent ruling, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld Boasberg’s TRO last week, simply demanding that it be amended so that it does not enjoin the president himself, only his deputies and administration officials.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a request last week with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to vacate Boasberg’s order or, at the very least, issue an administrative stay, effectively restraining Boasberg’s TRO. “This case presents fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country — the President, through Article II, or the Judiciary, through TROs. The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the President. The republic cannot afford a different choice,” wrote Acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah Harris in petitioning the court to intervene. She recounted that Boasberg issued his sweeping TRO ex parte, without affording the Trump administration an opportunity to present arguments in defense of its actions. “That decision cries out for this Court’s intervention,” Harris wrote.

“Most fundamentally, respondents cannot obtain relief because they brought the wrong claims in the wrong court,” she added, arguing that the five deported Venezuelans who claimed to have no affiliation with TdA — despite the investigations and conclusions of law enforcement officers — should have filed a habeas corpus complaint in a federal court in Texas, instead of an Administrative Procedure Act (APA) complaint in a court in Washington, D.C. The acting solicitor general also addressed the appellate court’s refusal to grant a stay of Boasberg’s TRO, noting that appellate judges claimed that the Trump administration would “immediately resume” deportations if the TRO were stayed, without allowing the Venezuelans involved in the case a chance to file a habeas petition. “But respondents have already had almost two weeks in which to file habeas petitions in Texas. Having opted against the path the law provides, respondents cannot demand that their removal be enjoined until they pursue habeas anew,” Harris concluded.

The president himself, with Harris’s assistance, filed an additional argument before the Supreme Court regarding the same case, urging the justices — one-third of whom Trump appointed in his first term — to vacate Boasberg’s order and issue an administrative stay. The president’s counsel wrote, “This case is not about whether TdA members subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act get judicial review; they obviously do. Rather … the pressing issues right now are ‘procedural issues’ about where and how detainees should challenge their designations as enemy aliens. Those issues call for this Court’s resolution now.” Harris continued, on behalf of the president, “Otherwise, the wrong court (D.D.C.) is deciding the wrong issues (APA claims, not habeas) through the wrong device (a grossly improper class action), while the wrong remedy remains in place (a nationwide, classwide injunction).”

“If allowed to stand, those basic defects will require vacating whatever merits determinations the district court ultimately makes about the Alien Enemies Act,” the president’s counsel added. The argument continued, “[B]y insisting on proceeding with APA claims in the District of Columbia — not individual habeas proceedings in the Southern District of Texas — respondents are depriving the proper forum of the chance to flesh out the scope of habeas review and to start resolving individual challenges in an orderly way.” Harris added, “By persisting with an unlawful class action, respondents also inflict accumulating harms on absent class members, who risk being estopped from pressing habeas claims by virtue of being part of this class action.”

The president’s argument concluded, “A single district court cannot broadly disable the President from discharging his most fundamental duties, regardless of the order’s label, and irrespective of its duration. This Court should vacate this TRO, halt the tide of injunctions, and restore the constitutional balance.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Trump Eyes Sanctions on Immigration Lawyers as Deportation ‘Due Process’ Conflict Escalates

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President Donald Trump and his administration are continuing their crackdown against illegal immigration, despite the hurdles presented by left-wing activists and restrictive court rulings. Over the weekend, the president ordered U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to impose various sanctions against attorneys and law firms which use unethical means to manipulate immigration courts.

In his memo to Bondi and Noem, the president wrote, “Lawyers and law firms that engage in actions that violate the laws of the United States or rules governing attorney conduct must be efficiently and effectively held accountable. Accountability is especially important when misconduct by lawyers and law firms threatens our national security, homeland security, public safety, or election integrity.” Pointing to the pervasive corruption plaguing immigration courts, he continued:

“The immigration system — where rampant fraud and meritless claims have supplanted the constitutional and lawful bases upon which the President exercises core powers under Article II of the United States Constitution — is likewise replete with examples of unscrupulous behavior by attorneys and law firms. For instance, the immigration bar, and powerful Big Law pro bono practices, frequently coach clients to conceal their past or lie about their circumstances when asserting their asylum claims, all in an attempt to circumvent immigration policies enacted to protect our national security and deceive the immigration authorities and courts into granting them undeserved relief. Gathering the necessary information to refute these fraudulent claims imposes an enormous burden on the Federal Government. And this fraud in turn undermines the integrity of our immigration laws and the legal profession more broadly — to say nothing of the undeniable, tragic consequences of the resulting mass illegal immigration, whether in terms of heinous crimes against innocent victims like Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, or Rachel Morin, or the enormous drain on taxpayer resources intended for Americans.”

The president wrote, “To address these concerns, I hereby direct the Attorney General to seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation against the United States or in matters before executive departments and agencies of the United States.” He also demanded that Bondi and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ):

“take all appropriate action to refer for disciplinary action any attorney whose conduct in Federal court or before any component of the Federal Government appears to violate professional conduct rules, including rules governing meritorious claims and contentions, and particularly in cases that implicate national security, homeland security, public safety, or election integrity. In complying with this directive, the Attorney General shall consider the ethical duties that law partners have when supervising junior attorneys, including imputing the ethical misconduct of junior attorneys to partners or the law firm when appropriate.”

Examples of punitive measures the president named include revoking security clearances held by attorneys or cancelling government contracts with individual attorneys or law firms. The president also instructed Bondi to review litigation against the federal government over the last eight years and identify instances of “misconduct that may warrant additional action, such as filing frivolous litigation or engaging in fraudulent practices…” He concluded, “Law firms and individual attorneys have a great power, and obligation, to serve the rule of law, justice, and order. The Attorney General, alongside the Counsel to the President, shall report to the President periodically on improvements by firms to capture this hopeful vision.”

The president’s order to the attorney general and Homeland Security secretary comes as numerous federal courts have restricted the Trump administration’s executive actions, including efforts to deport known criminals and members of foreign terrorist organizations. In a recent controversial move, U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg demanded that the Trump administration halt the deportation of members of the Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang, which has been formally classified as a foreign terrorist organization, and ordered that planes deporting at least 250 TdA members be returned to the U.S. Boasberg’s court order prompted calls for impeachment from the president and even a rare public comment from U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

Notably, Boasberg’s court order blocked the president from invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a law which allows the president to forcibly remove noncitizens from enemy countries during times of war or invasion. While some have claimed that use of the over-200-year-old law violates the due process of illegal immigrants, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Trump’s top immigration advisor, has vocally defended the president’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, as have other administration officials.

In an interview Sunday, border czar and former head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Tom Homan rejected claims that the Trump administration is violating the law and insisted that use of the Alien Enemies Act is just “using the laws on the books. We’re not making this up.” When questioned about the “due process” afforded to deported TDA members, Homan angrily pointed to the violence committed by TdA and other illegal immigrants. “Where is Laken Riley’s due process? Where are all these young women killed and raped by members of the TdA? Where was their due process? The young woman on the subway, where is her due process?” he asked. He continued, “The bottom line is, that plane was full of people designated as terrorists, number one. Number two, every Venezuelan migrant on that flight was a TdA member based on numerous criminal investigations, on intelligence reports, and a lot of work by ICE officers.” The border czar added, “They were given due process according to the laws on the books.”

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz also defended the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act on Sunday. “President Trump has determined that this group is acting as a terrorist organization. It is terrorizing our communities through attacks, torture, rape and the most awful of situations for those communities, number one,” Waltz stated.

He continued, “Number two, the Alien [Enemies] Act fully applies because we have also determined that this group is acting as a proxy of the [Venezuelan president Nicolas] Maduro regime. TDA is acting as a proxy of the Maduro regime. This is how the Alien [Enemies] Act applies. And we cannot have district judges interfering with the commander in chief’s actions to take care of — in the way he deems necessary — a terrorist organization.”

The president’s National Security Adviser accused Maduro, whom the first Trump administration labelled a dictator, of “deliberately emptying his prisons in a proxy manner to influence and attack the United States,” adding, “President Trump is taking decisive action to rid our communities of these gangs that are operating in a paramilitary fashion…”

Some, however, have anticipated that courts may require the use of due process even in cases involving TdA and other foreign terrorist organizations. Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Sunday explained, “There are some big legal questions here. On the one hand, The Bill of Rights applies to everyone, to persons. The Bill of Rights doesn’t specifically designate citizens. It’s anyone in the United States, The Bill of Rights applies to.” He continued, “On the other end, The Alien and Enemies act says you don’t get much process. The president can declare that you are somehow a problem for foreign policy and opposed to our foreign policy you can be deported.”

“Ultimately, this goes to the court,” the senator admitted, adding, “I think the courts will rule there has to be [due] process.” He continued, “I think there’s going to be a process afforded by the courts for representation before you are deported in most cases. I don’t know about the ones under the Alien Enemies Act. I’m not sure anybody knows that.” Paul predicted, “I think it goes to the Supreme Court and there are arguments to be made on both sides.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Analysis: Trump Admin Besieged by Record Number of Injunctions from Partisan Courts

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘Meteoric Rise’: How A Fishing Trip And A Phone Call Made Tom Homan ‘Border Czar’

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Tom Homan was shaking hands with colleagues around President Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security in Jan. 2017, just days before President Donald Trump was set to take office for the first time. It was Homan’s retirement party, celebrating his more than 30 years of working in immigration enforcement.

But in the middle of saying goodbye to his colleagues, his chief of staff called. It was an emergency, she said. Amid packed-up boxes in his office, Homan took one more call.

On the line was Trump’s incoming Secretary of Homeland Security, John Kelly.

“I remember him saying, I know it was bad timing, but the president-elect wanted me to stay and run [ICE],” Homan told the Daily Caller.

Homan took the weekend to think about it. He had already accepted a retirement job in the private sector. He needed to talk to his family.

“Monday morning, I called [Kelly] and said I want to come back,” Homan said.

It didn’t end up being the only time Homan would come out of retirement for President Trump. Eight years later, he would end his retirement again to become the infamous border czar. He didn’t even have to think about it the second time.

“Tom’s answered the call every time in the past,” Bob Wallis, a former ICE special agent in charge and Homan’s long time mentor, told the Caller. “It didn’t surprise me when I saw that he was asked to take this very challenging, very challenging position.”

Just days after defeating Kamala Harris, Trump quickly started staffing up his White House. His first pick was Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Tom Homan was the next name on the list. Trump announced that Homan would serve as his “border czar,” a title Republicans mockingly called Vice President Kamala Harris under the Biden administration.

“I think I was the first person he called outside of Susie. He called me on a Friday night and asked me if I felt ready to come back. And I told him I was,” Homan told the Caller.

Coming out of government retirement to take the job was a no-brainer, Homan said, because of the immense border crisis left behind by the Biden administration.

Homan’s role as border czar is a White House job and thus did not require Congressional approval; Homan was clear when Trump offered him a job that he no longer wanted to oversee an agency.

“He asked me what I wanted to do, I said ‘run the border.’ So he gave me the border czar job. Told me to secure the border and run the deportation operation,” Homan told the Caller.

Homan hit the ground running. The 2024 U.S. fiscal year was the second worst in history for illegal immigration, so Homan spent the time between the election and inauguration making plans on how the federal government would execute Trump’s agenda.

By February, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed that the administration had marked the lowest single-day apprehension of illegal crossings in over 15 years, with 200 migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border on Feb. 22. 

Homan’s work is a part of what his long-time mentor Bob Wallis calls a “meteoric rise.” Homan has become a hero to the GOP, as social media users and pundits alike create memes and photos celebrating him and the work he is doing on the border crisis.

The border czar’s climb has been years in the making. Homan has worked for six presidents. He started his government career as a border patrol agent under President Ronald Reagan and served in both Bush administrations, and under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Obama honored Homan’s career with the highest civil service award, the Presidential Rank Award, in 2015 for his work deporting illegal immigrants. He was known as the “deporter-in-chief” under the Democratic president.

“I tell people all the time that my job is to work within the framework provided to me by the administration,” Homan told the Caller.

Homan’s journey to becoming the border czar begins in Upstate New York in the mid-1980s. Living in West Carthage, New York, Homan was working as a police officer, just as his grandfather and father once did. All six of his siblings went into public service, becoming either a police officer, firefighter or a nurse.

One day, he and his colleagues went fishing on the St. Lawrence river — a place he went to often as a kid — which in some areas makes up a significant chunk of the New York-Canadian border.

“We ran into a border patrol agent that was docking on Dallas Bay. And I’ve always seen border patrol on that route but didn’t know what they did … when we sat there to talk, he told me what he did,” Homan told the Caller.

A few months later in 1984, Homan took the Border Patrol test and was hired on as an agent.

Homan later transitioned to become an investigator with what was then Immigration and Naturalization Services (its functions have since been split between USCIS, CBP, and ICE). That is where he met Wallis, who he worked under in the Office of Investigations.

In 2003, Wallis and Homan got called to an assignment in Victoria, Texas. More than a dozen migrants had died from suffocation in the back of a truck as they attempted to sneak across the border. The duo found a deceased father and his young son, still wrapped in an embrace, in the truck trailer.

“I was standing next to Tom Homan when he saw that child,” Wallis told the Caller. “I have two daughters, young daughters. At the time, he had a son, and I saw how he reacted to that.”

“You could tell he was just thinking about how it must have been towards the end of that little boy’s life,” Wallis recalled.

“At that moment, I said, this guy’s all in. He’s all in. He’s going to find out why this happened, who was involved, and he’s going to bring him to justice. Now, that’s a cop’s cop,” Wallis added.

Under Obama, Homan rose to be the executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations for ICE. That was the job that was the most impactful in Homan’s eventual appointment to border czar, Wallis explained. It wasn’t easy, and Homan weighed the pros and cons of taking the position with his mentor. Wallis told the Caller that working in immigration enforcement requires one to be fully committed in a way that often impacts family life, especially due to the high volume of travel. But it can also be a fulfilling role and a great career opportunity.

“This is something that’s going to stay with you and allow you to flourish after your career is long over,” Wallis remembers telling Homan.

Homan took the job. He was tasked with carrying out the president’s “prosecutorial discretion” policy, which called on ICE to focus on its efforts on illegal immigrants who were criminals or national security threats. He was also asked to manage the 2014 unaccompanied minor crisis, when a surge of tens of thousands of children crossed the southern border without any parents or guardians.

“We’re sons and daughters. We are family people too. It’s not like we go to work, we take our heart out of our chest and hang it out on our wall … I’ve seen a lot of terrible things in my career,” Homan reflected.

Obama was sharply criticized for placing the children in detention facilities, a decision that was brought up again in response to Trump allegedly putting “kids in cages” during his first term in office. Homan maintains the approach was the best way to keep the nearly 70,000 unaccompanied minors safe and healthy.

“Under [DHS Secretary] Jeh Johnson, when we had a family crisis, we built family residential centers — the so-called ‘cages,’” Homan remembered. “But they weren’t cages at all.”

“We had chain link fence dividers to keep adults away from unrelated children … we had these fences we put up to keep adults away from children who were raped,” he explained. “We built family residential centers. We helped families long enough for those residents to see a judge.”

Homan retired for the second time in 2018 after serving as Trump’s ICE director. He joined the Heritage Foundation as a fellow and was a contributor on Fox News.

Homan also started a nonprofit, Border 911, focused on informing the public of the benefits of a secure border. According to Dale Wilcox, the chief executive officer of the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) and a longtime colleague of Homan’s, he wouldn’t accept anything greater than a $1 annual salary at his nonprofit. Homan would never himself tell anyone about that act of altruism, Wilcox said, because of his humble nature.

Homan and Wilcox worked together at the IRLI starting in 2020. While there, Homan helped the organization prepare Freedom of Information Act Requests and was their immigration law enforcement expert and spokesperson. Wilcox told the Caller that Homan turned down multiple six figure contracts for his work with the organization.

Traveling together for years, Wilcox had the opportunity to see Homan behind closed doors. He recalled a trip to Israel where they inspected the country’s border policies. The group’s tour guide outfitted their entire party with hats reading “HOMAN” — much to Homan’s embarrassment.

“Everywhere we would go, we couldn’t have a meal without people coming up and asking for a photo, saying something to him, asking for an autograph. He was always very gracious. I never saw him once turn someone away,” Wilcox told the Caller.

Both Wallis and Wilcox raved about Homan’s passion for his work. Today, Homan is often doing emotional TV hits, speaking with great intensity about the border crisis and the cases he is working on. Wallis encouraged people to read Homan’s book to help understand what Homan has seen during his career and how that motivates him to keep going.

“This man is a machine. He is tireless. He lives on energy drinks. Everywhere he would go, we’d have to find him an energy drink … it was mostly Red Bull,” Wilcox said.

Once, while traveling to Florida for an event, Homan began struggling with some back issues.

“His back went out as he was getting out of the car, and they literally had to cut the clothes off the man and take him to the hospital. He refused. I mean, he was already having issues and needed surgery, and he refused. He just kept going. This man’s a machine,” Wilcox asserted.

The administration is already celebrating the early success of Homan’s work as the border czar. Vice President JD Vance took his first trip to the southern border since taking office in early March, flanked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Senior agency officials told the New York Post that, in less than two months, ICE has already yielded a quarter of the 114,000 arrests made in the entire final year of the Biden administration.

But Vance reminded reporters during the trip that there is still work to do. Homan is aware of the monumental task ahead of him and his years of experience will fuel him to finish what he’s started.

“People are asking me, ‘Why are you yelling at members of Congress? Why are you so emotional?’” Homan told the Caller. “Because if they saw what I saw in my career, they would understand that a secure border saves lives.”

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House correspondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

RELATED ARTICLE: Border Patrol Apprehensions Reach Lowest Average In History

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Trump Cuts Off Student Loan Forgiveness to LGBTQ Activists, Open Borders Groups, and Terrorists

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As part of his ongoing efforts to root out federal programs that underwrite left-wing programs at taxpayer expense, President Donald Trump has curbed a program that forgives student loans for those who work for groups that promote illegal immigration, terrorism, anti-American policies, or facilitate “child mutilation” through transgender surgeries.

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), created by the 2007 College Cos tReduction and Access Act signed by President George W. Bush, allows college graduates to write-off their loans if they worked as public servants in the government or a nonprofit organization and made at least 10 years (120 months) of repayments. It also caps those payments at 10% of income above 150% of the poverty line.

But “instead of alleviating worker shortages in necessary occupations, the PSLF Program has misdirected tax dollars into activist organizations that not only fail to serve the public interest, but actually harm our national security and American values” through its “subsidization of illegal activities, including illegal immigration, human smuggling, child trafficking, pervasive damage to public property, and disruption of the public order, which threaten the security and stability of the United States,” says the executive order, which was released on March 7.

The order, entitled “Restoring Public Service Loan Forgiveness,” bars student loan forgiveness to employees of 501(c)3 organizations “whose activities have a substantial illegal purpose.” That list includes those who take part in “child abuse, including the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children or the trafficking of children to so-called transgender sanctuary States for purposes of emancipation from their lawful parents.”

The order also bars “supporting terrorism,” violating federal immigration laws, and “engaging in a pattern of aiding and abetting illegal discrimination” often under the banner of advancing “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI).

Organizations that regularly engage in “trespassing, disorderly conduct, public nuisance, vandalism and obstruction of highways” — such as protests illegally blocking highways and intersections — also lose PSLF eligibility.

“The Biden Administration was accused of using the student loan forgiveness program to pay pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas activists and criminals with taxpayer dollars,” added a White House fact sheet accompanying the order.

Much of the focus will go toward defunding organizations that actively assist illegal immigrants en route to, or residing in, the United States. Scholars at the Center for Immigration Studies discovered that “the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have been mainlining taxpayer funds” to more than 30 faith-based NGOs that offered “cash debit cards, food, clothing, medical treatment, shelter, and even ‘humanitarian transportation’ during 2024 to millions of U.S.-bound immigrants in 17 Latin American nations and Mexico.” Last April alone, the Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Homeland Security doled out $300 million to nonprofits that shelter illegal immigrants through the government’s Shelter and Services Program (SSP), administered by FEMA. “Of those recently awarded grants, 35 are NGOs,” revealed the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) at the time. Illegal immigrants often stayed at four-star hotels at taxpayer expense, even as the Democratic administration claimed FEMA lacked the funds to care for hurricane-struck U.S. citizens.

Republicans have sought to change the tax-exempt status of NGOs that facilitate the illegal flow of drugs and human traffickers across the border. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) recently introduced the Fixing Exemptions for Networks Choosing to Enable Illegal Migration (FENCE) Act (S. 497), which would revoke the tax-exempt status of NGOs that consistently aid illegal immigrants.

“It’s absurd that our federal government has been giving tax exemptions and federal funding to NGOs that have helped facilitate record illegal immigration and carry out the far-left’s agenda, while cloaked as charities,” said Hagerty last month. “President Trump’s executive order requiring a review of federal funding to NGOs will expose this malpractice that has occurred for too long. I’m pleased to introduce this legislation that will augment the President’s work to hold these NGOs accountable by revoking their tax-exempt statuses.”

Conservative Christians cheered the reforms. “In fact, 25 percent of the U.S. workforce are employed in ‘public service’ occupations as currently defined, which can include everything from NPR employees to Planned Parenthood,” noted Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), a pastor who chairs the Education and Workforce Committee. “President Trump is stepping up by preventing these activists from receiving windfalls in forgiveness benefits footed by taxpayers.”

But teachers unions and liberals charged the president with violating the First Amendment by refusing to underwrite left-wing political activism, even if it skirts, or transgresses, the law. “The president claims to be committed to ‘free speech,’ but we’ve quickly discovered that pledge doesn’t apply to higher education and now, PSLF,” griped Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), who helped craft the Biden administration’s public school lockdown policy. “He wants to impose an ideological litmus test antithetical to American values.” Mike Pierce, executive director of the liberal Student Borrower Protection Center, decried the order as “an attack on working families everywhere,” although the evidence suggests the program benefits graduate students and doctors.

“Estimates show that the top one-fifth of households owe $3 in student loan debt for every $1 held by the bottom fifth,” found the Heritage Foundation, which called for the abolition of PSLF. Critics say student loan “forgiveness” is immoral, because it creates perverse incentives and forces those who never went to college to pay for the bad behavior of those who did.

PSLF has had a troubled history since its formation under the second Bush administration. Users said the program had vague criteria, offered bad advice, and ultimately denied 99% of applications to have their remaining student loan debt expunged. The Biden-Harris administration significantly expanded the number of borrowers whose debt was assumed by taxpayers through the controversial program, from 7,000 when he took office to 1,069,000 borrowers representing $78.5 billion in debt when he left.

Members of the Obama-Biden administration publicly declared they had used the PSLF program to have taxpayers foot the bill as they enacted far-left social policies. “I was lucky enough to land my dream job working in President Obama’s White House on the Domestic Policy Council. For nearly the entire second term, I helped push for policies that aimed to bend the arc of the moral universe a little more toward justice — from women’s equality to foster care to LGBTQ rights to criminal justice reform,” boasted Molly Dillon in 2017. “[T]he Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program made it possible for me [to] use my education for a career in public service without the fear of a lifetime of debt.”

By no longer writing off student loan debt, the Trump administration may discourage students from working for left-wing activist groups whose activities further social lawlessness. “If Trump does prohibit some workers from getting student loan forgiveness, there could be larger implications for the impacted nonprofits, with potentially fewer job applicants for open roles at those organizations in the future,” reports Newsweek.

Whatever changes will come, they will not take place immediately. The Federal Student Aid office announced Monday that it was “reviewing” the executive order. “The PSLF Program is not changing today, and borrowers do not need to take any action,” it said.

Some urge caution in changing the criteria of federal programs, because a future left-wing president could deny loan forgiveness to conservative nonprofits, much as the Obama-Biden administration targeted Tea Party groups for heightened IRS scrutiny. “To avoid this corrosive legal ping pong, all student loan borrowers should be treated the same,” wrote Andrew Gillen at the Cato Institute. “Rather than debate about which organizations are eligible for PSLF, we should get rid of PSLF entirely.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Whoopi Goldberg: ‘God Doesn’t Make Mistakes’ … Except on Transgenderism?

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Hispanic Americans Eager for Bold Immigration Reform

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America’s immigration system is broken.

For decades, politicians have exploited this issue, making empty promises while we pay the price for their inaction. The consequences are devastating.

Deadly fentanyl has poured into our communities, human trafficking has thrived, and hardworking American families — including millions of Hispanic Americans — deal with the fallout of Washington’s failure.

Hispanic Americans understand the importance of both security and fairness when it comes to immigration reform. We have seen firsthand how unchecked illegal immigration strains public services, depresses wages and undermines opportunities in industries where Hispanics are overrepresented, such as construction and manufacturing. We overwhelmingly support policies that protect American jobs, crack down on drug cartels, and restore order at the border.

In recent years, we have witnessed a growing demand for strong leadership on immigration. Hispanics are not a monolithic voting bloc, and the idea that they support blanket amnesty and open borders is false. The results of the 2024 election reflected this reality: nearly half of Hispanic voters supported President Trump, who promised decisive action on immigration enforcement and economic prosperity. This is a clear mandate for bold reform.

The numbers underscore the urgency of the crisis. Over the past four years, more than 10 million illegal crossings have overwhelmed our immigration system. Violent criminals and drug traffickers have taken advantage of this chaos, with fentanyl overdoses claiming the lives of over 110,000 Americans in 2023 alone. Hispanic communities — already disproportionately affected by drug-related violence — have been on the frontlines of this devastation. Addressing this crisis is not just a matter of policy; it is a moral imperative.

While securing the border is essential, we must also recognize the millions of undocumented immigrants who already live and work in the U.S. These individuals are not just statistics; they are neighbors, coworkers, and fellow worshippers. The Republican Party now faces a challenge much like the one Ronald Reagan confronted: upholding the rule of law while addressing the reality of those already here. Reagan sought a solution in his time, yet many of the underlying issues persist to this day.

Republicans now have a rare opportunity to succeed where past efforts fell short by securing the border, restoring order, and enacting real, lasting reform — one that not only strengthens the nation but also provides a just and workable path forward. If met with both strength and compassion, this moment can fix our broken system and win the hearts and votes of Hispanics for generations.

For Hispanic Christians, this issue is deeply personal. Our faith calls us to uphold both justice and mercy. Rooted in biblical teachings, we believe in respecting the law and obeying the governing authorities while recognizing the God-given dignity of every person. We call on lawmakers from both parties to advance solutions that reflect both American values and Christian principles; and we are ready for a seat at the table, where our voices and values can shape policies that honor both our faith and our future.

The immigration debate is a test of leadership. Will we continue down the failed path of open borders and lawlessness, or will we have the courage to pursue policies that protect our families, our economy, and our future? Now is the time to rise to the challenge and demand the reform that our nation so desperately needs.

AUTHOR

Carlos Duran

Carlos Duran is founder and president of the National Hispanic Pastors Alliance, the fastest-growing Hispanic pastors organization in the country, representing thousands of local churches and Christian organizations.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Did the FBI Leak Deportation Raid Plans to a Gang? Border Czar Homan Thinks So

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After an internal leak jeopardized a deportation mission, President Donald Trump’s border czar is alleging that bad actors within the FBI may have been responsible. Border czar and former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) chief Tom Homan confirmed Monday night that he’s closer to identifying the individual who leaked information regarding an ICE raid in Aurora, Colorado to members of the Tren de Aragua (TDA) gang. The raid, carried out last week, initially targeted at least 100 TDA members, but ICE officers ultimately only arrested one, after the leak provided gang members a chance to evade ICE.

“We think it’s coming from inside. And we know the first leak in Aurora is under current investigation. We think we’ve identified that person,” Homan said in a Fox News interview. He explained that leaking information regarding ICE operations is more than just “giving the bad guys a heads-up so they can escape apprehension,” but is actually “putting officers’ lives at risk. It’s only a matter of time before we walk into a place where there’s going to be a bad guy who doesn’t care. He’s going to be sitting in wait to ambush an officer. This is not a game.”

Homan confirmed that “some of the information we’re receiving tends to lead toward the FBI” as the source of the leak. He added, “I talked to the deputy attorney general all this weekend. They’ve opened up a criminal investigation, and they have promised that not only will this person lose their job and lose their pension, they will go to jail.” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi committed to prosecuting the individual responsible for the leak. “If anyone leaks anything, people don’t understand that it jeopardizes the lives of our great men and women in law enforcement,” she said in an interview Sunday. Bondi pledged, “If you leaked it, we will find out who you are, and we will come after you.”

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem also named the famous federal law enforcement agency as a likely culprit after information regarding another ICE raid in Los Angeles was leaked. “The FBI is so corrupt. We will work with any and every agency to stop leaks and prosecute these crooked deep state agents to the fullest extent of the law,” Noem declared.

Shortly after Trump returned to the White House, a planned ICE raid in Chicago had to be rescheduled after information regarding the raid was leaked to The Wall Street Journal. Homan reported Monday that the leaks will not stop deportations. “I’m going to double the manpower in those sanctuary cities,” he warned, adding, “If we can’t get them in their homes, we’ll get them at their place of employment.” The border czar continued, “Sanctuary cities are a sanctuary for criminals, bottom line. So, we’re going to do everything we can to find them. Regardless of what it takes, [we’ve] got a strong president in the White House; he’s giving us all the authority we need. We’re coming.”

According to reports ICE has posted on social media, the agency made over 8,200 arrests from the time Trump returned to office and the end of January. The agency has not yet posted data for the month of February. Although he has explained that deportation numbers may seem low while ICE focuses its efforts on arresting violent illegal immigrants, Homan affirmed late last month that he intends to increase the number of daily arrests and deportations. “We’ve got to do more. We’ve got to open that aperture up, which we’re going to do,” he said at the time, adding, “And we need more deportations, a lot more deportations, and that’s what we are working on.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: Meet The Worst Criminals ICE Arrested This Week … So Far

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

ROOKE: Hidden Deep Inside New Polling Is A Major Warning For Democrats

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New polling suggests that Democrats have a major problem with their voter stronghold, and it’s clear they have no idea how to fix it.

In 2022, legendary Democrat strategist and pollster Stanley Greenberg warned that Democrats were out of touch with middle-class blue-collar workers. He warned that if the party doesn’t change how it approaches these voters, Democrats face losing this vital demographic during election season.

Greenberg’s warnings were prophetic. Blue-collar workers overwhelmingly supported President Donald Trump and Republicans in the 2024 election, which won them the trifecta of political power in Washington, D.C. However, new polling from CBS News shows that Democrats aren’t just bleeding support from blue-collar workers but another demographic they have been courting for decades: Gen Z.

Trump’s new approval ratings show he is more favorable than ever, mainly due to his rising support among Gen Z voters. In the under-30 category, 55 percent of Gen Z voters approved Trump’s first 20 days in office. For decades, Democrats have been pursuing the young vote as a long-term strategy to overwhelm the Boomer vote, which typically skews toward Republicans.

However, the Democrats’ approach to this voter bloc is clearly failing to take root. In fact, they are swinging in the opposite direction, likely due to Trump’s quick action since taking back the White House. Over 60 percent of Gen Z respondents described Trump as “effective,” “focused,” “energetic,” and “tough.”

The polling shows that most Americans overwhelmingly support Trump’s plan to stop and reverse illegal immigration, which Democrats let balloon out of control over the last four years. Over half of Gen Z voters told pollsters that Trump is either focusing on deporting illegal immigrants the right amount or not enough. The majority of these voters want the Democrats’ open border system to end.

They also support his policies on cutting taxes, government spending, and imposing tariffs on foreign countries.

Still, probably the biggest knife to the heart of Democrats is Gen Z’s overwhelming disapproval of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. While 36 percent of young voters believe Trump is focusing too much on ending DEI programs, a whopping 63 percent said he needs to keep going at this speed or go even further to root it out. (ROOKE: Trump’s Simple Questionnaire Reveals Shocking Truth Behind Major Right-Wing Conspiracy)

It’s not a secret that Democrats put a heavy emphasis on promoting DEI as the new American Dream. The party promoted this ideology as our country’s chance to pay reparations for its so-called racist history. But the younger generations are no longer falling for the insidious charade. They’ve watched as colleges and employers used DEI as a cuddle to deny them entry into their world. These programs hurt them in tangible ways, and they resent the party that continues to push them to accept it as gospel.

In order to change their trajectory, Democrats will have to end their relationship with the far-left wing of their party. So far, despite their overwhelming loss in November, it doesn’t seem that Democrats have learned this lesson.

In the party’s recent campaign event to elect a new leader, the candidates blamed the 2024 election loss on racism and misogyny. It couldn’t have been because former Vice President Kamala Harris represented the type of Democrat that wants to continue open border, DEI, and anti-American sentiment. No, her loss had to have been because Americans are racist and hate women.

The only issue that Trump currently struggles with among voters is the everyday costs Americans endure when filling their fridges and gas tanks. This is understandable, considering prices haven’t improved since the November election, and the economy was a top priority for voters in 2024.

However, Americans saw what Trump was able to accomplish under his first administration. He has been in office less than a month, and the expectation is that he will tackle the failing economy with as much gusto as his first four years. If he successfully reduces everyday costs, his approval rating will likely only get higher.

Right now, the game is Trump’s to lose. They not only want him to continue his march through the federal government, ending illegal immigration, DEI, and corrupt spending, but they want more of it. If Republicans continue winning Gen Z votes at the rate they did in 2024, Democrats have little chance when the 2026 midterms roll around.

AUTHOR

Mary Rooke

Commentary and analysis writer. Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here! Follow Mary Rooke on X: @MaryRooke.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Trump Administration Targets Opposition to Deportations

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The Trump administration is preparing to prosecute officials and others for obstructing deportations and putting federal law enforcement agents at risk. President Donald Trump’s border czar, former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) chief Tom Homan, confirmed on Thursday that plans for an immigration raid on Aurora, Colorado had been leaked and vowed to find whoever had leaked the information. An ICE raid originally planned for Wednesday was meant to target members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TDA), who had taken over parts of Aurora, just outside Denver. ICE had planned to arrest over 100 TDA members but, due to the leak, only arrested 30 illegal immigrants, including only one TDA member.

“When we show up at these sites, this is a dangerous job for the men and women of ICE and Border Patrol and all the DOJ agencies,” Homan stated in an interview following the leak. He continued, “To have this type of interference puts our officers at great risk — not only the officers, it puts the aliens at great risk because anything can happen when we take our eyes off the goal here, so we’re addressing it immediately today.” He told the person or persons responsible for the leak, “We’re not going to tolerate it anymore. This is not a game.” Hinting at prosecution, Homan added, “This is not a joke. This is serious business, and they need to stop, or we’re going to prosecute them through the Department of Justice.” He confirmed, “I’m addressing OPSEC today — operational security — and how the leaks are happening. We’ve identified how this operation got leaked, and I’ll deal with that today.”

A number of protestors also harassed ICE officers as they carried out the Aurora raid after Denver Mayor Mike Johnston (D) suggested last year that he might organize protests to obstruct mass deportations. Homan warned city and state officials against interfering with ICE. “For any mayor or governor who doesn’t want public safety threats removed in the communities, I find it hard to believe that, but we’re going to do it with or without them,” he said. The border czar added, “If they’re not going to help, get out of the way. But don’t cross that line. Do not impede our operations. Do not knowingly conceal or harbor illegal aliens because we will seek prosecution.”

That warning has been a recurring theme of Homan’s tenure as border czar: he has previously advised mayors and governors against obstructing deportations, reiterating that prosecutions would ensue. When New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy (D) claimed last week that he was housing an illegal immigrant, for example, Homan pledged to “look into it,” adding, “I will seek prosecution — or the Secretary [of Homeland Security] will seek prosecution. So, maybe he’s bluffing. If he’s not, we’ll deal with that.”

Homan shared Thursday that he is already working with the DOJ on possible prosecutions. “I’m working very close starting this morning with the Department of Justice in — where do they cross the line of impediment? So they may find themselves in a pair of handcuffs soon,” he said regarding those who obstruct ICE operations. Trump’s DOJ has already moved to penalize “sanctuary cities” that refuse to cooperate with the federal government.

Under newly-minted U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, the DOJ has filed a lawsuit against the city of Chicago and state of Illinois, specifically citing city and state ordinances and statutes barring local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE. Currently, measures in place in Chicago and Illinois prohibit state, county, or city law enforcement from investigating or inquiring about the immigration or citizenship status of those accused of crimes, detaining individuals on the basis or suspicion that they may be in the country illegally, or cooperating with ICE officers. The DOJ’s lawsuit argues that such state and local laws are “designed to and in fact interfere with and discriminate against the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law in violation of the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution.”

The lawsuit says that Chicago and Illinois laws “obstruct the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law and … impede consultation and communication between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials that is necessary for federal officials to carry out federal immigration law and keep Americans safe.” The lawsuit continues, “Upon information and belief, the conduct of officials in Chicago and Illinois minimally enforcing — and oftentimes affirmatively thwarting — federal immigration laws over a period of years has resulted in countless criminals being released into Chicago who should have been held for immigration removal from the United States.”

“For too long, leaders in Illinois and Chicago have abused their power by putting the comfort of illegal aliens over the safety and welfare of their own citizens. This ends today,” Bondi said in a statement to the New York Post. She continued, “The Department of Justice will no longer stand by as state and local leaders obstruct federal law enforcement efforts, endangering their citizens and the brave men and women in uniform.” Bondi added, “If you are a leader of a state or local jurisdiction that obstructs or impedes federal law enforcement, you will be next.”

“This lawsuit will put the spotlight on obstruction by state and local officials and their refusal to support the administration and compliance with the law. The law says people who are here illegally are not allowed to stay here, they should be deported. So we want to make sure those impediments are taken away,” a DOJ official said. He continued, “These states and localities advertise themselves as sanctuary jurisdictions. They are inviting people here who are illegal, and they’re promising to protect them from federal law enforcement. That’s inconsistent with federal law, and it’s impeding federal law enforcement efforts…” The official added, that “these laws need to be struck from the books because they’re incentivizing illegal immigration into the country.”

Previously, Homan has discussed the problems posed by “sanctuary cities” like Chicago. “Sanctuary cities are difficult to operate in. … [O]ne agent can arrest one bad guy in jail in 10 minutes. But when they release them back into the community, we’ve got to send a whole team to find him, and some of them don’t want to be found,” he explained. The border czar continued, “And it’s unsafe for the community because you’re putting a public safety threat back into the public, and that’s idiotic to begin with. It makes the job more dangerous for the agent, more dangerous for the alien, more dangerous for the community.” He added, “So, we’ve got to spend a lot of time trying to locate this person, write up an operational plan, and seek to arrest them. It’s not efficient. And so, not only is it difficult, it’s very dangerous.”

Initial deportation efforts in Chicago were personally led by Homan, who arrested illegal migrants who had been convicted of violent or predatory crimes. “This is an example of ‘sanctuary cities,’” Homan said after handcuffing a convicted sex offender and child predator from Thailand. He added, “You got an illegal alien convicted of sex crimes involving children, he’s walking the streets of Chicago.” Referencing Chicago’s “sanctuary” policies and provisions, the border czar continued, “The downfall, the problem with ‘sanctuary cities’ is where you have people like this walking the streets instead of local law enforcement working with federal agents. This is what we’re dealing with.”

Despite the efforts of Democratic leaders, a majority of Americans approve of ICE and the mass deportations spearheaded by Homan. According to an Economist/YouGov poll, 53% of American voters hold a favorable view of ICE as of the beginning of February, while only 37% hold an unfavorable view of the agency. Overall, 28% hold a “very favorable” view of ICE, compared to only 19% who hold a “very unfavorable” view.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Trump’s Attorney General Tackles Cartels, Border, and ‘Weaponization’ of DOJ on Day 1

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Less than two days after being confirmed, the new U.S. attorney general is already moving to end political corruption in the justice system and support the president’s agenda. Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) was confirmed Tuesday night as the new attorney general serving under President Donald Trump. According to a Fox News report, Bondi’s first day as chief of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) included issuing several directives focused on securing the border, enforcing immigration law, and promoting Trump’s policies.

One of Bondi’s first moves as attorney general was to bolster border security and target criminal cartels. According to memos issued by Bondi, the DOJ will expedite the prosecutions of cartel leaders and officers and suspend certain “bureaucratic approvals and reviews” when dealing with cartels. She has also “further empowered and elevated” to the Office of the Attorney General Joint Task Force Vulcan, an interdepartmental group focused on combating the MS-13 gang, and Joint Task Force Alpha, centered on tackling human trafficking, which has burgeoned at the southern border over the past several years. Bondi is also planning to reclassify crimes related to possession of fentanyl-manufacturing equipment, introducing more stringent and severe penalties. The new attorney general declared that the Trump administration intends to “completely eliminate” the cartels.

Bondi’s directives are also aimed to buttress Trump’s immigration agenda, including supporting mass deportations. So far, Bondi has frozen all federal funding for “sanctuary cities” and is launching investigations into governors, mayors, and other executives who are in any way obstructing deportation missions executed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). She has also ordered DOJ officials to begin prosecutions where applicable. Non-government organizations (NGOs) linked to the illegal immigration crisis will also be investigated.

In order to back Trump’s presidential policies with the full force of the justice system, Bondi reminded DOJ attorneys that their responsibilities are not only “aggressively enforcing criminal laws passed by Congress, but also vigorously defending presidential policies and actions on behalf of the United States against legal challenges.” She explained, “The discretion afforded Justice Department attorneys with respect to those responsibilities does not include latitude to substitute their personal political views or judgments for those that prevailed in the election.”

Bondi continued, “When Justice Department attorneys refuse to faithfully carry out their role by, for example, refusing to advance good-faith arguments or declining to sign briefs, it undermines the constitutional order and deprives the President of the benefit of his lawyers.” The attorney general added that “any Justice Department attorney who declines to sign a brief, refuses to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the Trump administration, or otherwise delays or impedes the Justice Department’s mission will be subject to discipline and potentially termination.”

Bondi also announced the creation of a “Weaponization Working Group” to investigate instances of the DOJ and the FBI being weaponized against Americans over the past four years. The group will investigate the politically-motivated prosecutions against Trump, including those carried out by former U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The group will also review January 6 prosecutions, the FBI’s targeting of American Catholics and parents attending school board meetings, and the persecution of pro-life Americans under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.

Following an executive order issued by Trump, Bondi will also oversee the dismantling of any diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) office, program, or initiative in the DOJ, especially concerning training and hiring. She insisted that the DOJ and its subsidiaries will implement “fair admission practices” and hire based “solely on merit,” as opposed to identity-based quotas. All DEI programs in the DOJ must be confirmed as eliminated by March 15. Prior to Bondi’s confirmation, FBI whistleblower and former special agent Steve Friend reported that DEI is deeply entrenched in the law enforcement agency, predicting that eliminating it might prove difficult for Bondi and Trump’s pick for FBI Director, Kash Patel.

Additional directives issued by Bondi include establishing a joint task force to investigate Hamas for the attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, and reinstating the use of the federal death penalty, including “re-evaluat[ing] instances of the prior administration electing not to seek the death penalty” and scrapping DOJ policies that are “not sufficiently in line with President Trump’s death penalty executive order.”

Bondi was confirmed in her role as U.S. attorney general by the U.S. Senate in a Tuesday night vote. She was confirmed 54 to 46, with Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa.) crossing the aisle and being the only Democrat to support Trump’s pick. The new AG was sworn in on Wednesday morning by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At the swearing-in ceremony, Trump declared that Bondi is “going to restore fair, equal, and impartial justice and restore the constitutional rule of law in America.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: The shadowy ‘brokers’ helping Mexico’s cartels smuggle fentanyl chemicals from China

RELATED VIDEO: USAID’s DC office building is now being occupied by Customs and Border Protection

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Border Bonanza: Trump Slated to Enact 100 Executive Orders to Tackle Immigration Crisis

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Following his sweeping electoral victory in November, President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly preparing 100 executive orders for his first day in office, mostly centered on securing the nation’s neglected southern border.

In an interview Thursday, Trump ally and Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin (Okla.) discussed the president-elect’s plans. “He says he has almost 100 executive orders that will go a long ways towards securing the border again and also put the energy sector back in play again and actually build a … ‘drill, baby, drill’ process where we can become energy-independent again.” Mullin added, “All that can be done through executive order, but, as he said, it’s not permanent” without congressional support.

Newly-minted GOP Senate Majority Leader John Thune (S.D.) also emphasized that congressional Republicans must deliver on Trump’s agenda. “This past November, the American people gave President Trump and Republicans a mandate. Now the time has come to begin executing on it,” Thune said in a floor speech Wednesday. Noting the incoming Trump administration’s focus on border security, he continued, “One of the most important issues in this last election was the illegal immigration crisis. … For the last four years, the Biden administration’s open-border policies have wreaked havoc in both border communities and those far from the border.”

Republicans in the House are also looking to grant congressional permanence to Trump’s immigration policies. On Thursday, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) introduced a bill to reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy previously employed under Trump’s first administration. The legislation would reverse the Biden administration’s “parole” program and require those seeking or claiming asylum in the U.S. to await their appointed court dates in Mexico, instead of releasing migrants into the U.S.

According to an Axios report, Trump and several of his closest policy advisors met with GOP senators late Wednesday and unveiled roughly 100 planned executive orders, mostly focused on border security and immigration. Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner and Trump’s homeland security advisor and deputy chief of staff for policy, shared that likely executive actions included reinstating Title 42, which allows for the rapid expulsion of illegal immigrants under public health concerns; continuing construction of the border wall, a policy Miller is credited with devising; and utilizing part of the Immigration and Nationality Act to allow state and local law enforcement to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, a key promise of Trump’s successful 2024 campaign.

Trump’s mass deportation plans have consistently garnered widespread support across the nation. Surveys from both April and September of last year found that over half of Americans endorse the mass deportation of illegal immigrants. While some Democratic officials, including mayors and governors, have vowed not to cooperate with ICE to deport illegal immigrants — or, in some cases, have suggested even outright opposing federal deportation efforts — a recent poll found that a supermajority of voters in even deep-blue Democratic stronghold such as Maryland support requiring state and local law enforcement to work with ICE in carrying out deportations. Overall, 76% of Marylanders — including 96% of Republicans, 77% of Independent voters, and even 65% of Democrats — want state and local authorities to cooperate with ICE in deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes.

A number of prominent Democrats have recently shifted their positions on deportations, from full-throated support for “sanctuary cities” to promising to aid ICE. Governors J.B. Pritzker (Ill.) and Jared Polis (Colo.) and mayors like Eric Adams of New York City have abandoned opposition to ICE’s deportation program — Adams has even pledged his support — after initially indicating opposition. Even Governor Kathy Hochul (N.Y.) said that she would be the “first one to call up ICE” to manage deportations in her state.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Washington are all currently considered “sanctuary” states. There are also 157 counties and 45 cities across other states listed as “sanctuary cities” as of this week.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

House Lawmakers Overwhelmingly Pass Legislation To Crack Down On Illegal Migrant Criminals

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The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation Tuesday to require federal immigration authorities to detain illegal migrants who commit theft-related crimes in the United States.

The legislation passed decisively 264-159 with every Republican lawmaker that voted supporting the bill, which would give Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and state governments more authority to curtail illegal immigration. Nearly 160 Democratic lawmakers opposed the bill’s passage.

The bill, known as the Laken Riley Act, is sponsored by Georgia Republican Rep. Mike Collins and seeks to honor the memory of Laken Riley, a University of Georgia nursing student who was murdered by an illegal immigrant while out on a run near her college campus in February 2024.

“An illegal criminal came into my district and killed Laken Riley because our law enforcement did not have the tools to stop him,” Collins told the Daily Caller News Foundation Monday. “Laken fought until her last breath, and so will I until this bill crosses the finish line and lands on the President’s desk.”

Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to make the Laken Riley Act the first bill the House voted on during the 119th Congress signals addressing border security and cracking down on illegal immigration will be a top priority for House Republicans this year.

The Laken Riley Act seeks to address a policy failure regarding ICE and local law enforcement’s failure to detain illegal migrant criminals that commit low-level crimes that became glaringly obvious to lawmakers in the wake of Riley’s murder, Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters during a House GOP press conference Tuesday.

“There are real consequences to policy decisions, and this one was deadly,” Johnson told reporters.”

Riley’s killer, Venezuelan national Jose Antonio Ibarra, had a criminal record in the United States prior to murdering Riley. Ibarra was arrested in October 2022 for allegedly shoplifting at a Walmart in Athens, Georgia, but was ultimately released because the shoplifting charge was a misdemeanor.

If the Laken Riley Act passes the Senate and is signed into law by President-elect Donald Trump, ICE would be required to detain illegal migrants like Ibarra who commit theft-related crimes in the United States, according to the bill text.

“Right now, ICE is unable to detain and deport these illegal criminals who commit these minor level crimes, but the Laken Riley Act will fix this and give ICE and our local law enforcement the tools to get these criminals out of our country and make our communities safer,” Collins said during floor debate on the bill.

“With Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and the party of lawlessness out of the way, the radical left’s mission to enable criminal illegal aliens…at the expense of law-abiding Americans is no longer going to be tolerated,” Republican Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, House Majority whip, said during a House GOP leadership press conference on the Laken Riley Act Tuesday. “The tragic and preventable murder of Laken Riley serves as a stark reminder of the consequences of failed leadership.”

Many House Democratic lawmakers, led by Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, slammed the bill for expanding the number of illegal migrants in the United States that could be required to be detained by ICE, and voiced concern that the bill’s passage would lead to illegal migrants who are wrongly accused of theft-related crimes being detained by federal immigration authorities.

“Their bill [Laken Riley Act] today is an empty and opportunistic measure,”  said during floor debate on the bill. “This is a radical departure from current law, which since 1996 has generally required mandatory detention only for persons who are criminally convicted or who admit to having committed certain serious crimes.”

The Laken Riley Act was notably backed by Riley’s family who believe the bill’s passage will prevent the deaths of additional Americans at the hands of illegal migrants.

“The Laken Riley Act has our full support because it would help save innocent lives and prevent more families from going through the kind of heartbreak we’ve experienced,” Allyson and John Phillips, Laken Riley’s mother and stepfather, told the DCNF. “Laken would have been 23 on January 10th.  There is no greater gift that could be given to her and our country than to continue her legacy by saving lives through this bill.”

“Every single member of Congress should be able to get behind this purely commonsense bill that will make our country and communities safer,” Riley’s mother and stepfather added. “We thank Congressman Mike Collins, Senator Katie Britt, and Senator Ted Budd for continuing to work to honor Laken’s legacy and get this legislation enacted into law.”

Republican Alabama Sen. Katie Britt introduced companion legislation in the Senate Tuesday with every Senate Republican supporting the bill’s passage and Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman signing on as a cosponsor. The Senate is slated to vote on the legislation as early as Friday, a senior GOP aide told the DCNF.

“Congress has an obligation to Laken, her family, and to families in every corner of our country to do everything in our power to help prevent this type of tragedy from occurring again,” Britt told the DCNF. “That’s why it’s imperative we pass the commonsense Laken Riley Act with all due haste.”

Collins originally introduced the Laken Riley Act in the House last Congress following Riley’s murder. The House passed Collins’ legislation in March 2024 with most House Democrats — 170 Democratic lawmakers in total — opposing the legislation.

Former Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did not formally move to take up the legislation, forcing Collins to reintroduce his bill in the 119th Congress, which began Friday.

AUTHOR

Adam Pack

Contributor.

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