Detained children line up in the cafeteria at the Karnes County Residential Center in Karnes City, Texas, on 10 September 2014. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP
The Trump administration is trying to end a cornerstone immigration policy that requires the government to provide basic rights and protections to child immigrants in its custody.
The protections, which are drawn from a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, limit the amount of time children can be detained by immigration officials. It also requires the government to provide children in its custody with adequate food, water and clean clothes.
The administration’s move to terminate the Flores agreement was long anticipated. In a court motion filed Thursday, the justice department argued that the Flores agreement should be “completely” terminated, claiming it has incentivized unauthorized border crossings and “prevented the federal government from effectively detaining and removing families”.
Donald Trump also tried to end these protections during his first term, making very similar arguments.
Ice arrests at immigration courts across the US stirring panic: ‘It’s terrifying’
Read more
The move to end protections follows a slew of actions by the Trump administration that target children, including restarting the practice of locking up children along with their parents in family detention. Immigration advocacy groups have alleged in a class-action lawsuit filed earlier this month that unaccompanied children are languishing in government facilities after the administration unveiled policies making it exceedingly difficult for family members in the US to take custody of them. The president and lawmakers have also sought to cut off unaccompanied children’s access to legal services and make it harder for families in detention to seek legal aid.
“Eviscerating the rudimentary protections that these children have is unconscionable,” said Mishan Wroe, senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law. “At this very moment, babies and toddlers are being detained in family detention, and children all over the country are being detained and separated from their families unnecessarily.”
The effort to suspend the Flores agreement “bears the Trump administration’s hallmark disregard for the rule of law – and for the wellbeing of toddlers who have done no wrong”, said Faisal al-Juburi of the Texas-based legal non-profit Raices. “This administration would rather enrich private prison contractors with the $45bn earmarked for immigrant detention facilities in the House’s depraved spending bill than to uphold basic humanitarian protections for babies.”
The Trump administration in 2019 asked a judge to dissolve the Flores Settlement Agreement, but its motion was struck down. During the Biden administration, a federal judge agreed to partially lift oversight protections at the Department of Health and Human Services, but the agreement is still in place at the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies.
“Children who seek refuge in our country should be met with open arms – not imprisonment, deprivation and abuse,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.
The settlement is named for Jenny Flores, a 15-year-old girl who fled civil war in El Salvador and was part of a class-action lawsuit alleging widespread mistreatment of children in custody in the 1980s.
Since the settlement agreement was reached in 1997, lawyers and advocates have successfully sued the government several times to end the mistreatment of immigrant children. In 2018, attorneys sued after discovering unaccompanied children had been administered psychotropic medication without informed consent.
In 2024, a court found that CBP had breached the agreement when it detained children and families at open-air detention sites at the US southern border without adequate access to sanitation, medical care, food, water or blankets. In some cases, children were forced to seek refuge in portable toilets from the searing heat and bitter cold.
Of course, Donald Trump doesn’t take weather forecasting seriously. He thinks you can move a hurricane with a Sharpie. Or, he thinks only he can move a hurricane with a Sharpie, because everyone’s supposed to listen to the Almighty Trump, even hurricanes.
Naturally, the National Weather Service isn’t going to be spared from DOGE cuts. Who cares if we’re only about two weeks from hurricane season? Last season, there were 18 named storms, 11 hurricanes, and five major hurricanes. It was the first since 2019 to feature multiple Category 5 storms. Hurricane season 2024 also closed the most Waffle Houses (I made that up, but it’s a thing).
And it’s tornado season, bringing 42 deaths to Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia over the weekend. Would there have been as many deaths if there hadn’t been cuts to our weather systems? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service (NWS) are crucial for the nation’s emergency-response system. Hurricanes are easier to track, but tornadoes don’t give much time at all to prepare. And now, the offices that track them are understaffed because of Trump and Elon (an unelected billionaire bureaucrat).
Five former NWS directors from both Democratic and Republican administrations wrote an open letter on May 2, stating, “Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life.”
Climate scientist Daniel Swain said, “The net result is going to be massive economic harm. As we break these things, eventually it will become painfully and unignorably obvious what we’ve broken and how important it was. And it’s going to be unbelievably expensive in the scramble to try and get it back—and we might not be able to get it back.”
After the NWS’s first wave of firings and early retirements under the Trump regime, staffing at the service’s 122 field offices across the country has dropped to a 19 percent vacancy rate. Fifty-two offices are now considered “critically understaffed,” meaning a shortage of more than 20 percent. Some branches are down by more than 40 percent. The good news is that the budget for White House Sharpies has gone up.
There has also been huge reductions and cancellations of weather balloon launches, which are supposed to happen twice a day at every forecast office across the country. According to reports, they’re being saved for Trump’s birthday parade on June 14, which also explains the nation’s shortage of cakes and hot dogs (joke, but the parade is real). (snip-MORE, along these lines that should be read.)
Donald Trump set another trap for a foreign leader in the Oval Office. This time, it didn’t go like the trap set for President Volodymyr Zelensky (where Trump and JD harangued him for not surrendering to Putin), but more like the trap he set for a reporter, claiming a doctored pic of Abrigo Garcia with MS-13 labeled on his fingers was real.
This time, Donald Trump was trying to lecture South African President Cyril Ramaphosa about White genocide in his nation. This would be like me going to New York City and lecturing the locals that C.H.U.D.s are real.
I could tell them that I saw a documentary hosted by John Goodman on HBO back in the 80s proving that Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers are living in their sewers, leaping out at the right opportunities to grab old ladies while they’re walking their dogs for a late-night snack. The reason you’re not hearing about the C.H.U.D.s is that the liberal media and the Deep State are working together to hide it until you and your Schnauzer or C.H.U.D. meat. Why should they think they know NYC better than I do, because they actually live there? Hmph!
Did you know that last April, C.H.U.D.s ate 27,687 human beings, three Schnauzers, two poodles, and one of those skinny hairless cats that nobody is sure is an actual cat? I haven’t actually researched or verified these numbers, but someone on the internet said it’s true (that was me). And, most of those eaten were White people, because White people are the most persecuted segment of civilization in world history.
That has to be true because people like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, Tucker Carlson, and crazy old White guys wearing MAGA caps on the city bus keep warning us about the Great Replacement theory, where White people are being replaced by Mexicans and other people with suspicious skin tones. It has to be true because I saw another documentary, this one hosted by Mel Brooks, showing a Black man screaming, “Where all the White women at?”
I’m telling ya, White people can’t catch a break anymore, especially the White billionaire president (sic). Just this week, he was forced to listen to a Black man in the Oval Office refuse to be browbeaten to agree with his conspiracy theory. What next? Is someone going to park a Venezuelan food truck in front of the White House on what was White Lives Matter Plaza (there’s one near L’enfant station and it’s amazeballs)?
Ramaphosa was sitting next to Trump, engaging in fake pleasantries, talking about golf and other assorted bullshit, knowing he was sitting in a trap. Fortunately for the South African prez, the trap springer is a moron (person, woman, man, camera, TV). Ramaphosa said “listening to the stories” of South Africans would help Trump better understand the bullshit he was talking about, except Trump doesn’t listen. But then, Trump had the lights dimmed (It’s a trap!), as a MAGAt aide turned on the TV and played a video of South African opposition politicians singing apartheid-era songs about shooting Boers, a term that refers to farmers or Afrikaners (the term for White South Africans). The video was several years old.
Drone footage showed supposed Afrikaner graves marked by white crosses. Then Trump whipped out newspaper clippings (probably all from Breitbart) about recent killings in South Africa, muttering, “Death, death, death, horrible death.” My gosh. It sounds like there might be an agenda here.
It must have been tough for Ramaphosa to sit still when Trump said White genocide is “sort of the opposite of apartheid.” Read the room, Grandpa.
Trump got distracted when he called NBC reporter Peter Alexander a “jerk” for asking why he accepted a $400 million plane from Qatar.
Trump said rhetorically, “Why did a country give an airplane to the United States Air Force? So they could help us out, because we need an Air Force One. That’s what that idiot talks about, after viewing a thing where thousands of people are dead,” that Trump had made up. He’s so touchy when called out for taking a bribe.
Seizing the moment and embarrassing Trump, Ramaphosa said, “I’m sorry I don’t have a plane to give you.” Not realizing that Ramaphosa basically said, “I’m sorry, I don’t have a bribe for you,” Trump said, “I wish you did. I would take it. If your country offered the United States Air Force a plane, I would take it.”
Trump is an idiot.
There is no White genocide. It’s a lie that racist Elon Musk (who was in the room with Trump and Ramaphosa) has been pushing for years. (snip-again, MORE along the same lines; it ought to be read.)
“Straight up through the sky above this road right now, The galaxies of the Cygnus A cluster Are colliding with each other in a massive swarm Of interpenetrating and exploding catastrophes.” by Worriedman
Pattiann Rogers is one of the great modern poets. She writes about nature in a completely relatable way that you can learn from and admire.
Cardinal! State bird of seven different states – the most of any bird. Meadowlarks come in second with six different states. (This feels like the kind of information old people share….)
Lilac! The good old fashioned kind.
The fragrance is amazing. In a day or two they’ll be fully open. A week after that they’ll be gone.
I went out to the barn to visit some friends
Never gets old!
(snip-little vid of Barncat greeting Worriedman. Just click through above to see it; I couldn’t embed it.)
She’s so pretty!
She’s been working on this for years-
Juice! You can’t hide, Juice…
I am frequently found taking pictures of flowers in the rain.
Ninebark – Two different varieties
A goose among the ragwort –
That’s all I’ve got room for – Thanks for dropping by!
May 23, 1838 U.S. General Winfield Scott began the forced removal of the Cherokee Indians from North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, and their detention in forts built for that purpose. He was implementing the Treaty of New Echota, signed by a few members of the tribe relinquishing their lands for a payment of $5 million, under orders from President Martin VanBuren. 16,000 Cherokee were then driven on foot to “Indian Territory” (what is now Oklahoma). Of those who set out on the forced march known as the “The Trail of Tears,” nearly one-quarter died along the way or as a result of the relocation. Detailed history of the Trail of Tears Cherokee letter protesting the Treaty of New Echota from Chief John Ross
May 23, 1982 10,000 marched in London protesting British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Falklands War. The Falklands are islands off the coast of Argentina (known there as the Malvinas), and Great Britain was fighting to maintain colonial control over them, which they originally claimed in 1833. an anti-war demonstration in Argentina
May 23, 1982 400,000 demonstrated for peace and disarmament in Tokyo, Japan.
May 23, 1992 Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, which had inherited strategic nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union, ratified the START I treaty and joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear states. Through the Lisbon Protocol, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine became parties to START I as legal successors to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The breakup of the Soviet Union delayed START’s entry into force nearly three-and-a-half years. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I)
May 23, 1997 Khatami in 2009 Iranians elected a new president, Mohammad Khatami, with 70% of the vote, over hard-liners in the ruling Muslim clergy. Khatami won largely due to young people and women, who voted for him because he promised to improve the status of women and respond to the demands of the younger generation in Iran. Political situation in Iran before and after Khatami’s election Khatami today
May 23, 2003 Congress passed a third major tax cut proposed by President George W. Bush in his first two years in office: $330 billion. The budget deficit in the following year was the largest ever and a record percentage of the Gross Domestic Product.
Mary Robinson (center), former president of Ireland, shares her views on human rights at a Carter Center event in March. From the Center, CEO Paige Alexander (right) participated in the discussion, and Nicole Kruse, VP, Development, moderated.
Human rights pioneer Mary Robinson shares life lessons at Carter Center event
When Mary Robinson began her term in 1990 as the first female president of Ireland, she didn’t let her gender take a back seat to the office. She wanted to convince people that “I would actually do a better job because I was a woman,” she told an audience at The Carter Center in March.
Robinson went on to blaze trails not only in politics but human rights, women’s rights, and climate advocacy. She offered insight on her remarkable life during a public conversation and Q&A with the Carter Center’s Paige Alexander, CEO, and Nicole Kruse, vice president of development, following a screening at the Center of “Mrs. Robinson,” a new biographical documentary.
Robinson has several ties with the Center, including a long friendship with co-founders President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter. She also helped lead the Carter Center’s election observation mission to Myanmar in 2015.
But perhaps her strongest connection to the Center is a shared commitment to bolstering human rights around the world. “The universal values of human rights are indispensable,” Robinson said. “They are as valid today as they ever were, and they are more relevant today than they ever were.”
During her tenure as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002, she traveled to many dangerous places — Chechnya, Kosovo, and Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “I always came back energized because I was meeting people on the ground,” Robinson said.
The world celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights last year and its 50th anniversary while Robinson was high commissioner. The document is as “relevant today as it was in 1948,” she said. “We have learned so much about how, hopefully, to do better in creating more understanding but also embedding it in the cultures of people.”
Despite her belief that “countries go up and countries slide” in their commitment to human rights, she remains optimistic about the future and the young people who will be inheriting the world older generations created.
As a member of the Elders, a group of former world leaders to which President Carter also belonged, Robinson said she has been involved in conversations about climate and energy that span several age groups. “Younger people are insisting at being at the table,” she said. “I’ve had incredible conversations with 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old climate activists.”
The motivation of younger generations will lead to sea change soon, Robinson believes, because they want the world to move faster. “We’re on the cusp of this much healthier clean energy, renewable energy, no-waste circular economy,” she said. Robinson marveled at the difference such innovations will make for people in Africa who have never had electricity.
Although Robinson has spent her career addressing societal ills across the globe, she believes joy and hope can be found anywhere and are essential components for a well-lived life. She once heard her mentor, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, describe himself as a “prisoner of hope.” It made an impression on Robinson. She thought, “what he’s saying is the glass may not be half full. There may be only a tiny bit in the glass. But hope is action. You work with that.”
Forum Participants Provide Perspectives on Human Rights
As a former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and member of the Elders, Mary Robinson has fought for human rights around the world. Similarly, the Carter Center’s Human Rights Program works to advance the rights of protected groups. Last year, the Center hosted the Human Rights Defenders Forum, where activists and scholars came together to learn from and support one another. Below are perspectives from four participants, working on different aspects of a broad human rights agenda.
Colette Pichon Battle Vision and Initiatives Partner, Taproot Earth “One way for us to understand the climate crisis is to understand everybody’s going to be impacted.… The worst part of climate change is not the big hurricanes. It’s not the big storms that you can predict. It’s global temperatures that are going to take out more people than any storm ever could.”
Vincent Warren Executive Director, Center for Constitutional Rights “States talk a lot about their rights, but states don’t have rights. What states have are power. And who has the rights? People have the rights.… What we have to do as human rights defenders is shift power to the people from the state.”
Hossam Bahgat Founder, Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights “Our work can only succeed if we think of ourselves and execute our activities as a movement, not as a group of individual organizations working in individual countries, and not as a group of visionary individuals exercising leadership. To really make change, you need to build.”
Hina Jilani Pakistani Lawyer and Women’s Activist, Member of the Elders “I cannot afford the luxury of either pessimism or cynicism or frustration, so I always have hope. I respect my struggle more than I expect achievement. I believe in my struggle. And because I have that belief, I have hope.”
A meeting in the Oval Office turned sour after President Donald Trump ambushed South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa with claims of a “white genocide.” But one white man standing in the back of the room stood up to Trump, and though the world might not recognize him, he continues to play a vital role in mending the countries’ shaky relationship.
Growing tensions between the two countries began after Trump’s reelection. That’s when the president cut off trade to South Africa and recently gave 59 white South Africans— better known as Afrikaners— refugee status, as we previously reported. Trump falsely argued the Afrikaners were being targeted based on their race, but in fact the amount of Black murders in the country drastically outweigh that of white killings.
The issue comes down to South Africa’s immigration and crime problems. Ramaphosa came to Washington, D.C. in hopes of refocusing his relationship with America and also get Trump’s help tackling crime.
He even brought famous guests with him to cool off the temperature in the room: Two well-known golfers and— most importantly— the second richest man in South Africa. Johann Peter Rupert is one of 22 billionaires on the entire continent of Africa and one of only seven billionaires in South Africa, according to Forbes’ 2025 report.
The 74-year-old is an international business mogul, so his appearance with Ramaphosa holds more weight than you can imagine.
Rupert got real with Trump after President Ramaphosa’s attempt to refocus the conversation to technological and trade needs was disregarded. While the president perpetuated claims that Afrikaners— the most privileged ethnic group in South Africa— are being targeted, Rupert echoed Ramaphosa’s words saying, “We have too many deaths, but it’s across the board.” The billionaire continued, “It’s not only white farmers… We need technological help.”
Experts told PBS that although white farmers have been murdered in South Africa, those killings account for less than one percent of the total 27,000 annual nationwide report— most of them being murders of native, Black South Africans. “The idea of a ‘white genocide’ taking place in South Africa is completely false,” said Gareth Newham, head of a justice and violence prevention program at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa.
Rupert even added that he’s building cottages for his grandchildren, but despite his wealth and his status as an Afrikaner, he doesn’t feel unsafe. “I often go to bed without locking the door,” he said. The 74-year-old even tried to level with Trump and Vice President JD Vance saying South Africa’s immigration and gang issues are more pressing than the fake genocide Trump continues to claim. (snip-news video on the page)
Inside the White House Meeting
What the public saw was only the meeting before the two leaders got together in a private discussion. But according to New York Times reporter, Jon Elligon, who was in the Oval Office during the media blitz, the pre-meeting not going as planned could lead to further tensions.
“The [pre]meeting essentially turned into an ambush of the South African president,” Elligon said. “It was very tense and it broke down quickly.” According to him, if there’s any hope of patching the relationship between the two countries, “a lot of it is going to depend on whether the South African delegation can successfully get Trump to not focus on the Afrikaner issue anymore.”
1. Terrifying news for transgender people across the United States. In a late night development, the House Spending Bill was amended to ban transgender coverage for transgender ADULTS on medicaid!A manager's amendment removed the words "for minors."Subscribe to support my journalism.
I am certain that we will not hear about deficits and debt ever again from Republicans who are about to vote for a bill that adds more debt to a country’s balance sheet than any piece of legislation in the history of the human race.
Hello all. I don’t really have anything to share this week earth-shaking, but I thought I’d tell you about my week and a couple of my coworkers. I think we get so caught up in the waking nightmare that we see on the news each day that we forget to look at the life that just keeps on going on.
First, we have young Anthony. Anthony (Never “Tony”!) came to us recently out of prison. He had nothing but a string of disappointments and a fervent hope to somehow restart his life. He was so proud of each of his accomplishments that I was grinning like his daddy all proud for him! Of course, the first thing he got himself was a baby.
I shook my head wondering how he could manage to dig his hole deeper, but he loves that baby so much. In time, he bought a car that wasn’t worth the cost of the license plate, but he was walking with a pushed out chest – until it quite literally fell apart on him. But he bought a truck, and he looked upon life like a mountain climber, grinning at each up-hill stride – until his grandfather died this week and this grown man-child cried in my arms.
Then we have Zack. Zack had gotten himself mixed in with someone I’d wished he hadn’t. Despite being a young 18-year old, I couldn’t tell him what to do. He’d need to learn these lessons like we all do, one heart-ache at a time, and that has come true for him.
He finally realized that particular someone that he put so much faith in and followed around like a puppy was not the person he made people believe him to be: he wasn’t particularly cool, wasn’t hip, wasn’t wise, – just mostly a middle-aged negative minded overgrown juvenile delinquent – and Zack finally saw who was behind the image. Now he eats his lunch alone and works his machine with his head down. I can see he’s lonely, so I check in on him a couple times a day, sad that he’s feeling that pain but proud that he’s realized the truth.
Too many times I’ve focused on those things that went wrong, losing myself in criticism and frustration. I’d miss these little moments in some misguided hope that I could bring perfection to the shift, to the business, and somehow it would all be right in the end.
But life is messy and so much of that mess is my own. People fail, frustratingly so, but they also succeed. I wish I was wise enough to focus solely on those good moments and walk through the dark valleys with that sunshine in my eyes. Those two young men had their own share of mistakes this week, one of them quite costly, but I had an opportunity today to see a peek behind the curtains and the life not always for public consumption and it reminded me that there is a whole lot to life.
President Cyril Ramaphosa meets with President Trump in the Oval Office on May 21. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
In a shocking moment during President Trump‘s meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday, Trump requested that videos be displayed purporting to show evidence of violence against white people in the country.
The big picture: Trump, who cut all foreign assistance to South Africa, has embraced the false accusations of genocide against white South Africans as justification for granting them refugee status in the U.S.
A South African court in February dismissed claims of a “white genocide” asnot real.
Driving the news: In a stunning scene reminiscent of the Oval Office showdown with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump asked for the lights to be dimmed before playing the videos.
While Trump watched the video, Ramaphosa looked away, appearing uncomfortable.
At one point, speaking over the video, Trump said the screen was displaying “burial sites.” Ramaphosa inquired where the scene was located, adding, “This I’ve never seen.”
Later on, Trump paged through articles from the “last few days” while repeating, “death, death, death.”
Catch up quick: In the question that preceded the video display, a reporter asked Trump what it would take for him to be convinced there was no genocide in South Africa — an inquiry Ramaphosa answered.
“It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans,” Ramaphosa said.
Trump jumped in, saying there were “thousands of stories” and “documentaries.”
“It has to be responded to,” he said before the footage began.
Context: The video played in the Oval Office featured the voice of Julius Malema, a firebrand politician and leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, who was ejected from Parliament.
Ramaphosa clarified that the utterances in the footage were not “government policy,” saying, “We have a multiparty democracy in South Africa that allows people to express themselves.”
South Africa’s Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen — who is white — reiterated Ramaphosa’s point, emphasizing that the two people in the video are opposition leaders. He said his party, the Democratic Alliance, chose to join forces with Ramaphosa’s “to keep those people out of power.”
Trump interjected, “You do allow them to take land … and then when they take the land, they kill the white farmer, and when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them.”
South Africa recently passed the Expropriation Act, which allows the government to take some land and redistribute it as part of a long-running effort to lessen the racial and economic disparities created by apartheid.
Ramaphosa acknowledged there is “criminality” in the country — but said the majority of people killed have been Black people.
Trump claimed the “farmers are not Black” and said, without evidence, that people were being killed “in large numbers” and were decapitated. He repeatedly lashed out at reporters, saying, “The fake news in this country doesn’t talk about that.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Mary Robinson (center), former president of Ireland, shares her views on human rights at a Carter Center event in March. From the Center, CEO Paige Alexander (right) participated in the discussion, and Nicole Kruse, VP, Development, moderated.
Scottie's Playtime 