OUTRAGE #1: DELANEY HALL — AMERICA’S SHAME IN NEWARK
They’re starving themselves to be heard. That’s where we are.
Over 300 immigrants locked inside Delaney Hall — a thousand-bed private detention center in Newark run by the GEO Group, one of the most profitable prison corporations in America — launched a hunger and labor strike to protest conditions that detainees, advocates, and eventually members of Congress described as inhumane: rotten food, no air conditioning, medical neglect, and total isolation from the outside world.
New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill showed up on Memorial Day — Memorial Day — to try to get inside and see what was happening. She was turned away at the door. State Health Department inspectors were blocked from conducting a full inspection. When members of Congress tried, they were met with a standoff. Rep. Adriano Espaillat eventually got in with a court order and emerged confirming what DHS had spent days publicly denying: there is absolutely a hunger strike, and detainees who participated were being retaliated against.
Outside, the scene deteriorated all week. ICE agents in tactical gear pepper-sprayed protesters and journalists, charged at crowds, and threw people onto the pavement. The administration’s response? Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin went on social media to call the governor and senators staging a “political stunt” and insisted there was “NO hunger strike at Delaney Hall.” Border czar Tom Homan vowed the strikers would face consequences.
The official DHS line was that Delaney Hall holds “the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.” What Congressman Espaillat and others found inside was a different story — people demanding food that wasn’t rotten, air they could breathe, and medical care that wasn’t being denied.
This is a private prison company making money off human misery, protected by a federal government willing to deny reality on camera. The Governor of New Jersey can’t get in. Health inspectors can’t get in. But the stock price of GEO Group is just fine.
OUTRAGE #2: THE $1.8 BILLION SLUSH FUND FOR INSURRECTIONISTS
Let’s be very clear about what happened here, because the name they gave it — “Anti-Weaponization Fund” — is designed to make your eyes glaze over.
Donald Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the executive branch he himself controls. His private attorneys then settled it. Out of that settlement, the Justice Department created a nearly $1.8 billion fund — drawn from the federal Judgment Fund, which is taxpayer money normally used to pay court judgments against the government — that would be administered by five commissioners Trump could fire at will, with almost no public oversight, to pay out to people who claim they were “wrongly investigated” by prior administrations.
Who’s in line? Jan. 6 insurrectionists. The Proud Boys — who are suing for $100 million. MAGA activists, allies, and by the language of the fund, potentially Trump’s own family. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer put it plainly: the fund would funnel money to “MAGA billionaires, cop-beating Jan. 6 insurrectionists, and his own family.”
Thirty-five retired federal judges wrote that the entire settlement was a product of “collusion” and “fraud on the Court.” A federal judge in Virginia temporarily blocked it. Capitol Police officers sued to stop it. Even Senate Republicans — who never say no to anything — balked, holding up a border security funding vote because of it.
By week’s end, the administration signaled it was backing off. They called it a “distraction.” Just like that. A $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded gift to the people who attacked the Capitol, unveiled and abandoned in the span of two weeks, and we’re supposed to move on.
The audacity of the con is the whole point.
OUTRAGE #3: PAM BONDI SAYS SHE HAD NO IDEA ABOUT THE EPSTEIN FILES
Pam Bondi — the woman Trump appointed Attorney General specifically to handle the Jeffery Epstein files — sat before the House Oversight Committee in closed-door testimony and told Congress she had no real authority over the release of those files.
Not her. Wasn’t her. She was just the Attorney General.
She pointed the finger at her successor, Acting AG Todd Blanche — Trump’s former personal criminal defense attorney — claiming he was the one running “the entire investigation” and deciding which documents got released and which didn’t. Congressman Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the committee, reported that Bondi essentially told the committee that Blanche controlled everything.
So let’s follow this. Trump promised the Epstein files would be released. Bondi was confirmed as AG and promised the same. The files were not fully released. Bondi is now gone, replaced by Blanche — the man who defended Trump in his criminal trials — and Bondi’s story is that she didn’t really have the power to do anything about it anyway.
Every person who was named in those files, every powerful man with something to hide, should be feeling very comfortable right now. The woman in charge says she wasn’t really in charge. The man now in charge is the president’s personal lawyer. The files remain under wraps.
This isn’t incompetence. This is the system working exactly as designed — for exactly the people it was designed to protect.
OUTRAGE #4: TRUMP ON THE IRAN PEACE TALKS — “VERY BORING”
Iran was halting peace negotiations. The ceasefire was in danger. Iranian state media reported that Tehran was considering ending the truce entirely, citing Israel’s ongoing attacks in Lebanon.
A reporter asked President Trump about it.
He said he hadn’t heard from Iran. Later, on CNBC, he said the talks had “started to get very boring” and that he “did not care” if they were over.
This is the man holding the fate of a war his own administration started — U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran in February killed Supreme Leader Khamenei and ignited a regional conflict that has cost thousands of lives and helped spike global energy prices — and his public posture when the ceasefire is on the line is that the diplomacy is boring him.
The UN Security Council, minus the United States, called for Israel to stop escalating in Lebanon. Trump said he’d talked to Hezbollah through intermediaries. He said he’d talked to Netanyahu and they’d agreed to a ceasefire — Netanyahu then immediately threatened to strike Beirut if Hezbollah didn’t stand down. The Middle East is a lit fuse and the President of the United States is on financial television saying the peace talks are not entertaining enough for him.
History will have a lot to say about all of this. For now: a war this administration started, a peace it can’t be bothered to maintain, and a president who finds the whole thing tedious.
OUTRAGE #5: TRUMP TO NETANYAHU — “YOU’D BE IN PRISON IF IT WEREN’T FOR ME”
Axios reported this week, attributed to two U.S. officials, that Donald Trump called Benjamin Netanyahu and erupted at him over Israel’s escalating attacks in Lebanon, with one official summarizing the call this way:
“You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”
Let that breathe for a moment.
The President of the United States, to the Prime Minister of Israel, during an active regional war, while ceasefire negotiations are collapsing. This is the special relationship. This is the America First foreign policy. This is the man who said he’d bring peace to the Middle East in 24 hours.
And the dark punchline is that Trump isn’t entirely wrong. Netanyahu is, in fact, on trial for corruption in Israel. The war in Lebanon is, in fact, causing global outrage. Israel’s international standing is, in fact, at historic lows. Trump is screaming the truth at a man whose recklessness is threatening to drag the United States back into active conflict — and then going on CNBC to say the peace talks are boring.
Meanwhile Netanyahu responded to the call by publicly threatening to bomb Beirut.
These are the adults in the room. These are the men with their fingers on everything.
OUTRAGE #6: TRUMP DECLARES HIMSELF BIGGER THAN ELVIS AT AMERICA’S BIRTHDAY PARTY
America is turning 250 this summer. There are concerts planned — Freedom 250, a series of celebrations supposedly honoring the nation’s history. And yet.
Bret Michaels. The Commodores. Martina McBride. They pulled out. They said they were misled about what the event was actually about. Flo Rida’s people didn’t respond to press requests. The artists left, one by one, because what was sold to them as a celebration of America had become something else entirely — a celebration of one man, in the way that everything eventually becomes a celebration of one man.
Trump’s response was to call the departing artists “third-rate” on social media and announce that he himself might replace their performances by delivering a “major speech.” He then posted this, and we are quoting directly:
He described himself as “the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime.”
Elvis in his prime.
America is 250 years old. It survived a civil war, two world wars, a Great Depression, assassinations, Watergate, and 9/11. And the man who inserted himself into its birthday celebration — who tried to rename the Kennedy Center after himself, who turned the 4th of July into a personal rally — is now publicly claiming he’s a bigger draw than Elvis Presley.
The artists who left weren’t making a political statement. They were just trying to get out of a situation that had nothing to do with America and everything to do with one man’s need to be the center of every room, every stage, every moment, even the ones that don’t belong to him.
Especially those.