I am an older gay guy in a long-term wonderful relationship. My spouse and I are in our 36th year together. I love politics and news. I enjoy civil discussions and have no taboo subjects. My pronouns are he / him / his and my email is Scottiestoybox@gmail.com
This is selective persecution which is illegal. So if this ever goes to court he will have the charges dismissed. In the meantime the hate party cult of tRump just made him a front runner for the mayoral election. Hugs.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested for allegedly trespassing at an ICE facility in New Jersey on Friday afternoon, authorities said.
“The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon,” Alina Habba, the Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, posted on X.
Baraka was taken to an ICE field office at 620 Frelinghuysen Ave. in Newark, according to his office. The charges have not been announced.
“We are actively monitoring and will provide more details as they become available,” his representatives said.
Witnesses said the arrest came after Baraka attempted to join a scheduled tour of the facility with three members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation, Reps. Robert Menendez, LaMonica McIver, and Bonnie Watson Coleman.
When federal officials blocked his entry, a heated argument broke out, according to Viri Martinez, an activist with the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice. It continued even after Baraka returned to the public side of the gates.
In video of the altercation shared with The Associated Press, a federal official in a jacket with the logo of the Homeland Security Investigations can be heard telling Baraka he could not join a tour of the facility because “you are not a congress member.”
Baraka then left the secure area, rejoining protesters on the public side of the gate. Video showed him speaking through the gate to a man in a suit, who said: “They’re talking about coming back to arrest you.”
“I’m not on their property. They can’t come out on the street and arrest me,” Baraka replied.
Minutes later several ICE agents, some wearing face coverings, surrounded him and others on the public side. As protesters cried out, “Shame,” Baraka was dragged back through the security gate in handcuffs.
“The ICE personnel came out aggressively to arrest him and grab him,” said Julie Moreno, a New Jersey state captain of American Families United. “It didn’t make any sense why they chose that moment to grab him while he was outside the gates.”
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that as a bus of detainees was entering the detention center, “a group of protestors, including two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility.”
Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin was quoted in the statement as calling it “beyond a bizarre political stunt” and saying it put agents’ and detainees’ safety at risk.
“Members of Congress are not above the law and cannot illegally break into detention facilities. Had these members requested a tour, we would have facilitated a tour of the facility,” McLaughlin said.
The department said the facility has the proper permits and inspections have been cleared.
The Newark mayor was visiting Delaney Hall to conduct oversight after the building was turned into an ICE facility.
Delany Hall was leased for $63 million annually from a private prison group known as The GEO Group. The city of Newark is suing for more inspections, claiming ICE has not indicated how many detainees it has in the building – which can only house 1,000 people.
Baraka said on Monday that the issues at Delany Hall go beyond the lack of safety inspections and proper permits.
This is a developing story please check back for updates.
Dominique Jack is a digital content producer from Brooklyn with more than five years of experience covering news. She joined PIX11 in 2024. More of her work can be found here.
–Associated press material was used in this report.
People shop in a supermarket in New York City on Feb. 20, 2025.
Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images
The Department of Agriculture is demanding states hand over personal data of food assistance recipients — including Social Security numbers, addresses and, in at least one state, citizenship status, according to emails shared with NPR by an official who was not allowed to speak publicly.
The sweeping and unprecedented request comes as the Trump administration ramps up the collection and consolidation of Americans’ sensitive data, and as that data has been used to make misleading claims about people in the U.S. illegally accessing public benefits and committing fraud, and to build a greater capacity to deport them.
The emails obtained by NPR also show the nationwide directive regarding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, follows a request by federal auditors for information that included citizenship data but not other data typically used to verify financial eligibility for the program.
The latest data demands are “absolutely alarming,” and “reckless” and likely violate the Privacy Act and other statutes, said John Davisson, senior counsel and director of litigation at the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center. He and other advocates warn the data could be used to enable deportation and mass surveillance efforts and would do little to address improper payments.
“It is an unprecedented extension of the administration’s campaign to consolidate personal data,” Davisson said.
USDA’s unusual data request
SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, is a federal program. Each state administers the program and enrolls participants based on eligibility determined by Congress. While the USDA and its Office of Inspector General can audit state SNAP programs, participants’ personal data typically remains under the state’s control.
In March, the USDA’s Office of Inspector General notified California, Florida, New York and Texas of inspections of their SNAP programs to see if the states were improperly using administrative funds to pay out benefits, the emails show.
That ultimately led to a request for detailed sensitive data — including citizenship status and addresses — of all SNAP participants in the previous year from at least one of the states.
A sign outside of a grocery store welcomes those on food assistance in a Brooklyn neighborhood that has a large immigrant and elderly population on Oct. 16, 2023 in New York City.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
An April 2 update the state received from the OIG’s office added a new objective: performing analytics on participant data to “evaluate its quality and integrity.” Yet the watchdog ultimately declined to request participants’ employment status or income — which are key for determining financial eligibility for food assistance and detecting possible fraud.
Instead, the request prioritized other data fields, including name, date of birth, address, contact information, Social Security number, citizenship status and information about household members, the emails show.
At an initial joint video conference, the states learned the inspections had been requested by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, according to an official who attended the meeting but was not authorized to discuss the matter. Trump fired existing inspectors general across the federal government when he took office, including at the USDA where a new permanent leader of the office has yet to be confirmed.
Earlier this week, the USDA escalated its quest for data further.
In a May 6 letter to all states, an adviser for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services said the federal agency would be seeking personally identifiable information for SNAP applicants and recipients, including, but not limited to, “names, dates of birth, personal addresses used, and Social Security numbers” going back to Jan. 1, 2020. USDA did not answer NPR’s questions about the full extent of personal data it was requesting.
The letter said USDA is asking private contractors that process SNAP payments for states to turn over that data, and will use it to “ensure program integrity, including by verifying the eligibility of benefit recipients.” The directive comes as Republican lawmakers in Congress are proposing deep cuts to the food assistance program that would reduce the number of people who participate in it.
DOGE’s role
The May 6 letter cited President Donald Trump’s March 20 executive order, “Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos,” which calls on agencies to ensure the federal government “has unfettered access to comprehensive data from all state programs that receive federal funding “including from “third-party databases” in order to identify fraud and overpayments.
Fidelity Information Services, a vendor used by some states to process electronic bank transfer transactions for SNAP programs, told its state partners the day before USDA’s letter to states that the agency and its DOGE team contacted them in connection to the executive order, and that “no proprietary, confidential, or personally identifiable information” was shared, according to emails obtained by NPR.
A customer shops for eggs at a grocery store on March 12, 2025 in Chicago.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
“FIS values its close working relationship with both USDA and its state partners and is committed to supporting efforts to improve program efficiency and reduce fraud,” reads a statement the company provided to NPR. “As agreed with the USDA and in compliance with federal regulation, FIS has notified States of the USDA’s request and is working with both to determine the most efficient manner to respond with the requested information.”
Wired, the Washington Post and CNN have reported that DOGE is also combining sensitive data from across agencies, including Social Security Administration, Department of Homeland Security and the Internal Revenue Service, to create a data tool that can help the federal government track and arrest immigrants they want to remove.
More than a dozen federal lawsuits allege DOGE staffers have been illegally granted permission to view databases with personal and financial information the government maintains, and multiple federal judges have expressed concern about what information DOGE has accessed and why. Late last month, DHS announced a DOGE-led overhaul of its Systematic Alien Verification Entitlements (SAVE) database, making the system free for state and local governments to use and promising a “single, reliable source for verifying non-citizen status nationwide.”
Davisson, the privacy attorney, said the SNAP data being requested could be used to make exaggerated allegations of fraud, and that combining the information with other DOGE-obtained data could be used for immigration enforcement efforts.
“What they’re building is a surveillance weapon and it can be put to all sorts of adverse uses in the future,” said Davisson.
NPR asked the USDA if the agency would be following protocols outlined in the Privacy Act, such as publishing a privacy assessment and System of Records Notice for the new dataset. An unnamed spokesperson using a USDA press email account told NPR the agency’s general counsel is determining whether that is required.
“All personally identifiable information will comply with all privacy laws and regulations and will follow responsible data handling requirements,” the email said.
Fraud and abuse with SNAP benefits are rare
After Trump issued an executive order in February aimed at ensuring immigrants without legal status are not receiving federal benefits, Agriculture Secretary Rollins made combatting alleged mispayments to ineligible immigrants a focus.
“The days in which taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize illegal immigration are over,” Rollins said in a February press release.
Most of the improper payments in 2022 were due to unintentional mistakes by state workers or households, rather than intentional fraud, according to an analysis of the data by the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
Only 50% of eligible noncitizens (which includes refugees and green card holders) and 59% of eligible children living with noncitizen adults participated in SNAP in 2022, according to a USDA report. Overall, advocates said participation among those who are entitled to receive this benefit is low due to fears that it may have a negative impact on immigration proceedings.
A sign alerting customers about SNAP food stamps benefits is displayed in a Brooklyn grocery store on Dec. 5, 2019 in New York City.
Scott Heins/Getty Images
Even though immigrants without legal status are not eligible to receive SNAP or other federal benefits, SNAP data does include the names and addresses of people who could be subject to deportation now or in the future, or who share a household with people who could be.
Some legal immigrants who receive SNAP benefits may lose their legal status in the future given that the administration is trying to reverse Biden-era immigration programs that granted hundreds of thousands of people the ability to live and work in the U.S.
For years, advocates and state agencies have tried to reassure immigrant families that it is safe for them to sign up for assistance if they met the eligibility requirements.
“People seeking services need to know that their information will be used only to administer the program — and won’t put them or their family members at risk,” said Tanya Broder, an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center.
“But the federal government’s demand for ‘unfettered’ access to sensitive data across multiple agencies, and its aggressive pursuit of immigrants, raise serious privacy concerns and the potential that information will be weaponized against people who would go hungry without assistance.”
On an FAQ page to sign up for food assistance from California, the site currently says the state will not report applicants’ immigration status to authorities and information is used only to determine eligibility.
“Authorities cannot use this information to deport you unless there is a criminal violation,” the state website says.
New York’s website says: “Applying for or receiving SNAP will not affect your ability to remain in the United States.”
Advocates NPR spoke with said it is important for SNAP participants to understand that it is not yet known at this point how states will handle the USDA’s pending data requests.
Esther Reyes with Protecting Immigrant Families, a coalition of 700 groups across the country that help eligible immigrants access services, is urging states to check with their congressional delegations about whether the data requests are legal before responding.
As for people who may feel fearful about enrolling in SNAP given concerns over data, Reyes said, “We really encourage families and communities to talk to enrollment workers and the people that they trust before acting on that fear.”
NPR’s Ximena Bustillo contributed reporting.
Have information you want to share about SNAP, DOGE access to government databases and immigration? Reach out to these authors through encrypted communication on Signal. Stephen Fowler is at stphnfwlr.25, Jude Joffe-Block is at JudeJB.10 and Ximena Bustillo is at ximenabustillo.77. Please use a nonwork device.
Correction May 9, 2025
An earlier version of this story misspelled John Davisson’s name.
Trump fires back after critics and even MAGA loyalists erupted over $400M ‘flying palace’
Trump confirmed his intention of accepting the controversial gift in a fiery Truth Social post on Sunday night.
We got up and before breakfast we went to Home Depot to get the decking we needed for the small bathroom rebuild. Going Sunday morning at 7:30 and the roads were empty and the store almost was. It only took us an hour and I was home in time for the Sunday news shows. Ron made us waffles which I have been wanting for a while. But my stomach is so small now I could only eat one. I did have real maple syrup on it as that is what I grew up eating and love. But as my blood sugar was so low this morning at 82 I did not take any fast acting insulin which I am to do before a meal depending on blood sugar.
So I was doing my blogging and a small bit of laundry and at 1:45 PM after starting the washer I noticed I was sweating everywhere, arms, head, neck, legs, feet. I knew that feeling. I was starting to shake worse than normal for me. I was getting very confused. I staggered to my Pink Place to my blood kit. I was 52. That is very low but I have been lower. I have woken up at 40 before. But this time was different. I got so confused. My head was in a fog. I couldn’t think what to do to. I struggled to the fridge to get cheese which really wouldn’t have helped but my brain was thinking cheese and crackers. As I was struggling to stand and get stuff Ron walked by in the other room. I called out to him and croaked I needed him. He came up the stairs and yelped, he got me to a chair and asked what was wrong. Blood sugar I mumbled, he went to the table next to us and got the tube of sugar tablets, putting one in my hand helping me get it to my mouth. At this point I was losing it, no coordination and no thoughts, just listening and doing. I put the first one in my mouth but just sort of stopped. He raised his voice and told me to chew it, chew the tablet. I did. Then he gave me another one, then one more. I started to clear up. He then demanded I have something, cheese and crackers or flavored Cheese Its.
He told me I was on the verge of going out and he would have had to call for emergency help. He is still shaken. I feel fine but he is worried about what he calls the rebound. But the thing is now that I am clear headed I understand what happened. I was in the bedroom where we have two tubes of the glucose tablets one on each side of our bed. But I was so confused I couldn’t think or function. What is weird about this is I don’t take any other diabetes medications. I only take insulin and that is because when I have my steroid shots it is only insulin that lowers the blood sugar. So I did not expect a crash like this. Anyway, it was scary for me. I have so much more I want to post but I need to take a break for a while. Hugs
Following Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military, Jordan Klepper met with a panel of esteemed service members to discuss the president’s rejection of their qualifications, which stand in stark contrast to Trump’s own bone spur excuses
The scarcity of the President’s Daily Briefings comes as he pursues high-stakes diplomacy with America’s friends and foes.
The low number of briefings this time around is troubling to many in and around the intelligence community, who were already concerned about Trump’s act-first-evaluate-after approach to governing. | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Since President Donald Trump was sworn into office in January, he has sat for just 12 presentations from intelligence officials of the President’s Daily Brief.
That’s a significant drop compared with Trump’s first term in office, according to a POLITICO analysis of his public schedule.
In much of his first term, Trump met with intel officials twice a week for the briefing, which provides the intelligence community’s summary of the most pressing national security challenges facing the nation.
The low number of briefings this time around is troubling to many in and around the intelligence community, who were already concerned about Trump’s act-first-evaluate-after approach to governing.
“It’s sadly clear that President Trump doesn’t value the expertise of and dangerous work performed by our intelligence professionals each and every day, and unfortunately, it leaves the American people increasingly vulnerable to threats we ought to see coming,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement to POLITICO.
The sporadic pace of briefings comes as Trump has been working to broker an end to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine and to jump-start nuclear talks with Iran — all while navigating increasing potential threats from adversaries such as Russia and China.
Each president is different in the manner and pace at which they receive their briefings, and Trump is not entirely out of step with some of his predecessors.
But with Trump, there is added concern as he is known not to read the accompanying briefing document, referred to as “the book,” that is put together by intelligence analysts in a highly labor-intensive process. This document is delivered in hard copy or on a tablet device to the president and his key advisers five days a week.
The briefings from senior intelligence officials are often a chance for the president to hear detailed assessments on global crises and to receive updates on highly classified covert operations overseas — along with blunt facts about the state of the world, regardless of policy implications or the president’s own views.
Trump received just two in-person PDB briefings per month in January, February and March, before settling into a more regular rhythm of once per week in April and May, according to the president’s daily schedule maintained by Faceba.se, a website that collates the president’s statements as well as his public calendar.
PDB presentations are typically tailored toward informing the president as he conducts high-stakes diplomacy, detailing what a foreign government may be thinking and what its intentions are, former intelligence officials said.
“The point of having an $80 billion intelligence service is to inform the president to avert a strategic surprise,” said a former CIA analyst who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.
Trump’s top national security aides and Cabinet officials receive similar intelligence briefings and can ensure that critical information reaches the president’s ears.
Senior administration officials said Trump gets the information he needs through frequent communication with his intelligence chiefs.
“The president is constantly apprised of classified briefings and is regularly in touch with his national security team,” said Davis Ingle, a White House spokesperson. “The entire intelligence community actively informs President Trump in real time about critical national security developments.”
Ingle declined to comment on why Trump has received fewer daily PDB presentations compared to his first term..
Former intelligence officials argued that the PDB sessions are an opportunity for the president to hear from career intelligence officials who are skilled in imparting information regardless of whether it complements or contradicts the president’s foreign policy strategies.
They questioned whether other top advisers or Cabinet officials would be able — or willing — to relay these stark realities to the president.
And the circle of officials receiving the PDB may also be smaller than in Trump’s first term. CNN reported last month that the Trump administration has tightly restricted the number of people who have access to the intelligence report.
Trump’s first term in office was marked by a high turnover in his national security team, a trend that looks set to continue. Last week, Trump ousted his national security adviser Mike Waltz, who had long been on thin ice with other administration officials.
“The advantage of an IC briefer is its somebody who is trained to tell the hard truths to the president,” said Larry Pfeiffer, who served as chief of staff to CIA Director Michael Hayden.
“They are going to be more inclined to provide him with more nuanced information — information that’s not been parsed through a policy perspective,” Pfeiffer said.
Presidents vary in how often they have received in-person briefings. George W. Bush saw briefers from the intelligence community almost every day and preferred hearing directly from analysts, while Obama was a studious reader of the PDB book itself.
Obama received in-person briefings 44 percent of the days he was in office during his first term, according to a 2012 analysis by the conservative research group the Government Accountability Institute, which would equate to multiple briefings a week. He was attacked by the conservative media and former Vice President Dick Cheney for not attending more.
Biden received one to two briefings a week, according to a former U.S. intelligence official familiar with the matter and a former Biden White House official.
But Biden was known to regularly read the PDB briefing book, the former intelligence official said. A former official who served in Biden’s National Security Council said that the president would use the delivery of the book as an opportunity to gather his top national security aides and Cabinet officials to discuss its contents and foreign policy implications.
At the time, intelligence officials found Trump to be more responsive to graphics, maps and a more storified approach to recounting the intelligence, according to interviews with his briefers published in “Getting To Know The President,” a history of intelligence briefings of candidates and presidents-elect, authored by John Helgerson, a former senior CIA official.
Trump had a fraught relationship with the intelligence community during his first term. But the cadence of briefings almost three months into his second term represents a stark drop when compared to his first four years in office, and offers insight into how Trump might prioritize these briefings throughout the next four years.
In the first five weeks following his inauguration in 2017, Trump received an average of 2.5 briefings a week before settling into an average of two briefings a week in the latter half of his presidency, according to a detailed historical account published by the CIA’s own in-house academic research center.
Trump’s briefings during his first term were substantive, the former U.S. intelligence official said, noting that the president listened and was interactive during the presentations.
And during Trump’s first term, Vice President Mike Pence was an “assiduous, six-day-a-week reader,” of the PDB, Helgerson noted in his book.
A second former senior U.S intelligence official stressed that there are other avenues for Trump’s spy chiefs to get information to him, beyond his daily briefing, including standalone memos and articles based on the latest intelligence findings.
“It’s not the be all and end all,” they said, speaking of the PDB. The person also noted, as the White House did, that the president’s top advisers can also serve as a conduit for relaying information to the president.
A person familiar with how Trump takes his PDB briefings said that the president has received standalone briefings on global flashpoints on an ongoing basis separate from the PDB and that it would be incorrect to imply he wasn’t fully briefed. They were granted anonymity to discuss how Trump receives his intelligence.
“He’s calling people all day. If he wants an update on some of these things, he’ll call Ratcliffe, Rubio, Witkoff, Waltz, kind of in an ad-hoc fashion throughout the day, receiving this stuff,” said the person, who spoke before Waltz was removed from his position as national security adviser last week.
Asked for comment about the president’s briefing schedule, National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes said “President Trump has multiple high-level, national security briefings every day. While the scope can range from a comprehensive presentation of global intelligence, to meeting with senior national security officials on an issue of immediate importance, the daily engagement of President Trump is prolific.”
Former intelligence officials argue that the in-person presentations from experienced briefers offer a further opportunity for the president to receive important context on the intelligence delivered, ask questions and relay any requests for additional information back to the intelligence agencies.
That feedback gives the country’s spy agencies an opportunity to learn more about the president’s needs and interests. “We learn too,” said a third former senior U.S. intelligence official.
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