update - USSC strikes down CO's conversion therapy ban 8 - 1

Trump ally used ICE to deport mother of his child: report


Former modeling agent and longtime ally to President Donald Trump, Paolo Zampolli asked a top ICE official for help "to settle a personal score" and have the mother of his child deported during a custody battle, according to The New York Times.

Zampolli, a now presidential special envoy, introduced Trump to the president's now wife Melania.



He found out that his Brazilian ex-girlfriend, Amanda Ungaro, had arrested on charges of fraud at her work and in custody at a Miami jail — and last year talked to a top official at ICE, David Venturella, to see if she could be placed in ICE detention, citing that she was in the country illegally, The Times reported.

The two had been going through a custody battle over their teenage son and "now he saw an opportunity" to try and get him back, Friday's report stated.


A source familiar with Zampolli's communications and records acquired by The Times revealed that Ungaro was picked up from a Miami jail by ICE agents before she could make bail and later deported. Although this could have happened without her ex-boyfriend's involvement, it raises questions about how members of the Trump administration have used the federal government during Trump's second term to pursue personal vendettas.



Zampolli denied to The Times that he sought special favors or that he had requested federal officials take Ungaro into custody.

The Department of Homeland Security told The Times that Ungaro was detained and deported over an expired visa after being charged with fraud.

“Any suggestion that she was arrested and removed for political reasons or favors is FALSE,” the DHS statement said.

Zampolli has often bragged about his loyalty to the Trumps, and has known the president for more than 30 years. He even recruited Melania, a former model, from Slovenia. Zampolli also had ties to the late financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

"In the city’s modeling scene, Mr. Zampolli also intersected with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who would later be accused of sexually abusing hundreds of girls and young women," according to The Times. "The men once discussed buying a modeling agency together, and Mr. Zampolli’s name appears several times in the millions of Epstein documents recently released by the Justice Department.



"In one 2011 email, Mr. Epstein warned an Emirati businessman: 'Be careful, zampoli is trouble. Lots.' He added, 'He sells stories to the press.'"

Zampolli has denied having a close friendship with Epstein. He added that his name was not included as frequently as other people, such as professors, celebrities or monarchs.

“At least I was included, because if you’re not on the list, you’re a loser, right?” Zampolli told The Times.

Catwhiskers said:

That’s terrible. Imagine deporting someone who is both an illegal alien and a criminal.

Click to expand...

It's more a question of the guy's motives to take the kid away from her.

Judges keep finding ICE failed to prove arrested migrants were threats


The Trump administration keeps losing court challenges regarding its mass immigration arrests.

In recent months, federal judges have ruled more than 7,000 times that Immigration and Customs Enforcement illegally arrested people without giving them the chance to prove they could safely remain in their communities while their immigration cases played out, a Politico analysis found.



In many of these cases the Trump administration didn’t offer a counterargument when migrants challenged their detentions.

Instead, administration lawyers have been regularly agreeing to bond hearings or the full release of migrants right away, citing a lack of legal opinions or relevant documentation they could use to support the original detentions, the analysis found.

The Independent has contacted the Justice Department and ICE for comment.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has pursued a campaign of mass immigration arrests and detention.

As of early February, according to the most recent government figures, more than 68,000 people were in ICE detention, most of whom lacked a prior criminal conviction.

Many have been in detention for prolonged periods of time based on the administration’s legal theory that most arrested immigrants aren’t eligible for bond hearings, even as cases can take years to move through the system.



This has prompted a wave of emergency habeas corpus challenges, where federal officials must justify before a judge why they are still holding someone in detention.

Between January and mid-February of this year, there were between 300 and 400 such petitions every day, a Politico analysis found.



The Trump administration has used a legal theory to argue nearly all arrested immigrants are not eligible for bond, which has prompted a wave of emergency appeals (AFP/Getty)
Trump administration officials have spoken openly in court of being overwhelmed.

One DOJ lawyer in Minnesota made headlines by telling a judge, “This job sucks.”

Hundreds of federal judges have rejected the Trump administration bond policy, though regional appeals courts have issued contrasting opinions on the practice.



The legal uncertainty comes as the Trump administration is at a moment of apparent realignment in its wider immigration strategy.

Its aggressive, military-style push into Minnesota ended in disaster, with two U.S. citizens shot dead by federal agents and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem getting ousted earlier this month in the ensuing uproar.

Since the administration announced last month it was drawing down the Minnesota campaign, it has not launched another big-city operation such as the ones that hit mostly Democratic jurisdictions including Chicago and Los Angeles last year.



After federal agents killed two protesters in Minneapolis earlier this year, the Trump administration has refrained from launching any new mass urban immigration crackdowns, though it continues to make arrests at a high clip (AFP via Getty Images)
Detentions also declined at a notorious family detention facility in Dilley, Texas, that was the subject of multiple high-profile cases where some families with young children alleged they faced mistreatment behind bars.

The number of families booked into the facility fell by more than 75 percent in February, ProPublica found.


Sen. Markwayne Mullin, the administration’s choice to replace Noem, has suggested his Department of Homeland Security would be less boundary-pushing than that of his predecessor.

“My goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every single day. My goal is for people to understand we’re out there, we’re protecting them,” Mullin testified before the Senate on Wednesday.

The administration hasn’t stopped making arrests, though.



Sen. Markwayne Mullin, the Trump administration’s pick to replace ousted Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, has said he wants his DHS to be less controversial (AP)
Immigration officers have arrested more than 1,000 people per day on average this year, according to a New York Times data review, nearly double the rate at roughly the same point last year.

Immigration advocates warn the slowdown in mass operations may only be a blip.

“In the deeper, more conservative states, what they’re doing is going in and opening up these massive detention facilities,” Rekha Sharma-Crawford, a Missouri-based attorney and second vice president at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told The Independent earlier this week. “That’s some writing on the wall that says they are only intent on increasing the number of people that they want to detain.”

DHS officials claim Trump knew about Noem’s $200 million ad campaign


Department of Homeland Security officials have claimed that President Donald Trump knew about Kristi Noem’s $200 million ad campaign, which contributed to her dismissal earlier this month, according to a new report.

The controversial commercials began hitting the airwaves early last year, with one featuring Noem on horseback near Mount Rushmore, warning illegal immigrants to stay away. They ranked among the costliest government advertising blitzes in history, raising eyebrows across the aisle.



When Trump fired Noem from DHS on March 5, an unnamed senior administration official told NBC News that the pricey ad campaign was a key factor — alongside her handling of the Minnesota immigration crackdown and alleged feuds with other agencies.

The president himself said he was unaware of the vast sums that were spent, telling the outlet: “I wasn’t thrilled with it. I spent less money than that to become president. I didn’t know about it.”

Noem, however, disputed this account, telling lawmakers during congressional hearings ahead of her firing that the 79-year-old billionaire president was fully briefed on her department’s promotional offensive.

Now, multiple people have come forward to back up the ousted DHS leader, who has been tapped to serve as the special envoy to the Shield of the Americas, a new initiative focused on hemispheric security.



Unnamed sources close to the administration told The Daily Beast that Trump had been briefed on the DHS ads and was deeply involved in them — directly contradicting his own account.

One said that the president “knew about the campaign and wanted it to happen.”

“The big question we are all asking is where did that money go?” a senior DHS official told the outlet.

“We would be happy to have a full audit on this tomorrow, going into every single penny of the award, including where it went,” the official added. “Everyone at DHS is happy to turn over our taxes and bank records — but only the White House can agree to that — will they want to?”

Contracts for the campaign were reportedly delivered to a hand-picked cluster of companies with ties to Noem and a top adviser.

One of the firms, Safe America Media, was awarded at least $16 million for the campaign, according to The Associated Press. It was established by Mike McElwain, a GOP operative, just days before the lucrative contract was doled out.



McElwain’s long-standing business partner, Pat McCarthy, has connections to several of the president’s close aides, The Daily Beast reported.

According to the outlet, the White House, in February 2025, ordered that Safe America Media “be considered” for the DHS ad campaign — and later approved the firm once selected.

When asked for comment, a White House spokesperson told the outlet: “Contracts are awarded by individual agencies. The White House has no involvement in an agency’s contract decisions.”


The Independent has reached out to DHS and the White House for comment and attempted to reach Noem.

Noem’s own messaging on the advertisements has been consistent over time.

In a recently resurfaced interview from February 2025, she claimed the multi-million dollar campaign was Trump’s own idea.


Noem said the president told her: “I want you to do those [ads] for the border. I want you to do those everywhere, not just in the United States, but I want them around the world.”

“And I said, ‘Well, sir, do you want to be in those ads?’” Noem said. “He said ‘nope, nope. I want you to do them.’”

Since her departure from DHS, the former South Dakota governor has not publicly pushed back against the administration. But, an unnamed official told The Daily Caller that she felt “thrown under the bus.”

Earlier this week, several Democratic lawmakers referred Noem to the Department of Justice for a perjury investigation, claiming that she “misled” Congress about the ads in a “brazen” bid to avoid accountability.

The Independent has always had a global perspective. Built on a firm foundation of superb international reporting and analysis, The Independent now enjoys a reach that was inconceivable when it was launched as an upstart player in the British news industry. For the first time since the end of the Second World War, and across the world, pluralism, reason, a progressive and humanitarian agenda, and internationalism – Independent values – are under threat. Yet we, The Independent, continue to grow.

Trump administration to pay French company $1B to walk away from US offshore wind leases


PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The Trump administration will pay $1 billion to a French company to walk away from two U.S. offshore wind leases as the administration ramps up its campaign against offshore wind and other renewable energy.

TotalEnergies has agreed to what's essentially a refund of its leases for projects off the coasts of North Carolina and New York, and will invest the money in fossil fuel projects instead, the Department of Interior announced Monday.



FILE - Wind turbine components sit at New London State Pier, April 16, 2025, in New London, Conn. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)© The Associated Press
President Donald Trump's administration has tried to halt offshore wind construction, but federal judges repeatedly overturned those orders.

The Interior Department hailed the “innovative agreement” with the French energy giant and said, “the American people will no longer pay for ideological subsidies that benefited only the unreliable and costly offshore wind industry.″



Environmental groups denounced the deal as an alternate way to block wind projects, with one group calling it a “billion-dollar bribe” to kill clean energy.

“After losing again and again in court on his illegal stop-work orders, Trump has found another way to strangle offshore wind: pay them to walk away,” said Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action.

In his second term, Trump has gone all in on fossil fuels, which he says will lower costs for families, increase reliability and help the U.S. maintain global leadership in artificial intelligence.

TotalEnergies had already paused its two projects after Trump was elected.

The company pledged to not develop any new offshore wind projects in the United States. CEO Patrick Pouyanné said in a statement that TotalEnegeries renounced offshore wind development in the United States in exchange for the reimbursement of the lease fees, “considering that the development of offshore wind projects is not in the country’s interest.”



Pouyanné said the refunded lease fees will finance the construction of a liquefied natural gas plant in Texas and the development of its oil and gas activities, calling it a “more efficient use of capital” in the U.S.

After it makes those investments, TotalEnergies will be reimbursed, up to the amount paid in lease purchases for offshore wind, according to the DOI.

“We welcome TotalEnergies’ commitment to developing projects that produce dependable, affordable power to lower Americans’ monthly bills,'' Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said Trump was “using a pay-not-to-play scheme” to pressure the French company not to build offshore wind, calling it “an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars.” Hochul said she remains committed to moving forward with an “all-of-the-above approach” that includes renewables, nuclear power and other energy sources.



The Biden administration sought to ramp up offshore wind as a climate change solution. Trump began reversing U.S. energy policies his first day in office with executive orders aimed at boosting oil, gas and coal. Globally the offshore wind market is growing, with China leading the world in new installations.

The Interior Department halted construction on five major East Coast offshore wind projects days before Christmas, citing national security concerns. Developers and states sued, and federal judges allowed all five projects to resume construction, essentially concluding that the government did not show the risk was so imminent that construction must halt.

On Monday, one of the wind farms targeted by the administration, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, started delivering power to the grid for Virginia. The developer, Richmond-based Dominion Energy, announced the milestone.


Ted Kelly, clean energy director at the Environmental Defense Fund, called the proposed deal “an outrageous misuse of taxpayer dollars to prevent Americans from having clean, affordable power exactly when they need it most.”

East Coast states are building offshore wind because it boosts affordable electricity supply on the grid, even as natural gas prices are rising, Kelly said.

TotalEnergies purchased a lease for its Carolina Long Bay project in 2022 for about $133,000. It aimed to generate more than 1 gigawatt there, enough to power about 300,000 homes. It purchased the lease off New York and New Jersey, also in 2022, for $795,000. This was planned as a larger project, with the potential to generate 3 gigawatts of clean energy to power nearly one million homes.

___

Daly reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York, contributed to this report.


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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage re

Judge appoints new US attorney for New Jersey after Habba, other officials were disqualified


A veteran federal prosecutor was appointed Monday as U.S. attorney for New Jersey, ending a dispute between the judiciary and President Donald Trump over control of the office that included the disqualifications of the administration's previous picks for the position.

A U.S. District Court judge issued a one-sentence order naming Robert Frazer as the top federal prosecutor in the state — the result of an agreement between federal judges and the U.S. Department of Justice.



“The Department of Justice thanks the district court for working with the Department to appoint Robert Frazer to serve as US Attorney so that once again criminal prosecutions can resume without needless challenge or delay on behalf of the people of New Jersey," the department said in a statement.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann disqualified three Justice Department officials who were sharing authority over the office, saying they were appointed in an illegal power grab by the Trump administration. They replaced Trump's first choice for U.S. attorney, his former personal attorney Alina Habba, whom Brann barred from the job last year because she had stayed too long without Senate confirmation.



FILE - President Donald Trump speaks during a swearing-in for Alina Habba as interim US Attorney General for New Jersey, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, March 28, 2025. (Pool via AP, file)© The Associated Press
The three officials — Philip Lamparello, Jordan Fox and Ari Fontecchio — had been appointed to replace Habba indefinitely, in an unusual move by Attorney General Pam Bondi.

In a court hearing last week, another federal judge in New Jersey ordered the three to answer his questions under oath and threw another government official out of the proceeding in frustration over the Justice Department's chaotic oversight of federal prosecutions in the state.



Habba, who is now a senior adviser at the Justice Department, congratulated Frazer in a social media post Monday, saying “New Jersey deserves a great chief federal law enforcement official who is in line with President Trump's agenda of making this country safe and NJ great!”

Frazer, who had been serving as senior trial counsel in the New Jersey U.S. attorney's office, did not immediately return an email message Monday.

The judiciary and Trump's administration have been odds over the process for selecting U.S. attorneys, who ordinarily must undergo Senate confirmation to stay in their positions.

Judges have ruled, in separate cases, that people installed as the top federal prosecutors for Nevada, Los Angeles and northern New York were all serving unlawfully.

Lindsey Halligan, who pursued indictments against a pair of Trump’s adversaries, left her position as acting U.S. attorney in Virginia after a judge concluded in November that her appointment was unlawful. The judge also ruled that indictments she brought against New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey must be dismissed.



In some instances, judges have exercised their power under the law to appoint U.S. attorneys to oversee prosecutor offices until one of the president’s picks is confirmed by the Senate. The Justice Department has responded by immediately firing those judicial appointees.

___

Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

Dave Collins, The Associated Press

Trump admin begs judge's forgiveness after another flub


The Justice Department is begging a judge to forgive them after they messed up on a whole host of issues.

Democracy Docket, the law firm led by elections lawyer Marc Elias, posted on its website that in the government's ongoing crusade for voter rolls, the DOJ's case in Washington state hit some snags.



First, it appears the secretary of state was never served with the lawsuit.

Eric Neff, the acting chief of the DOJ’s Voting Section, submitted a filing Monday saying that local U.S. attorneys on the ground sent it to the wrong address. Then, when a judge issued an order asking why Washington’s secretary of state still hadn’t been officially served, Neff misunderstood that order and assumed the judge had quietly given him extra time to fix the mistake.

Neff said that it was clearly his mistake and he begged the court for forgiveness.

“The United States acknowledges that it should have filed a motion for extension of time from this Court and requested additional time to serve Defendant,” Neff wrote. “Counsel apologizes to the Court for not having sought a timely extension.”

"Following the Court’s March 10, 2026 Order to Show Cause, out-of-state counsel asked for assistance from attorneys in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington to effectuate service. Due to an unfortunate miscommunication, this resulted in a total of three attempts at service; two via the Attorney General’s email service box and one by personal service at the Office of the Attorney General, two of which were unnecessary," the filing continued.



The filing then begs for forgiveness again.

"The United States apologizes to the Court for failing to acknowledge that service was not effectuated within the 90-day timeframe in response to the Court’s Order to Show Cause. Counsel mistakenly interpreted the Court’s March 10, 2026 Order to Show Cause as allowing the United States until March 17, 2026, to effectuate service. See Declaration of Eric Neff. Counsel apologizes to the Court and did not mean to mislead the Court or imply that service was completed within the 90-day timeframe. The service on March 13, 2026, was admittedly untimely and without good cause."

A plaintiff has 90 days to serve the defendant under the federal rules of civil procedure, Democracy Docket explained. They'd reported the improper service back in December, but Neff evidently didn't see the report.

Typically, when this happens, a judge can dismiss the lawsuit altogether and tell them they can refile it and start over.



The local U.S. attorneys' offices have been having frequent troubles. In one instance, a prosecutor begged the judge to hold her in contempt so she could finally get some sleep.