Trump Posts Racist Late-Night Rant as Airport Crisis Worsens

Republican says airport crisis is all Trump's fault, Bannon spills beans about ICE's plans for midterms, Pentagon defies federal judge

Good morning.

Trump posted a 2 a.m. Truth Social rant about immigrants and the SAVE Act while airport security lines stretched to six hours and TSA workers prepared to miss a second paycheck. A Republican senator went on television and confirmed Trump personally killed the deal that would have paid TSA workers by the end of this week. ICE’s border czar admitted on Fox News that agents deployed to airports are making arrests. The Pentagon announced it is moving reporters out of the building and into an external annex after a federal judge ruled its press restrictions unconstitutional. And through all of it, the architecture of surveillance, media control, and authoritarian consolidation is being assembled piece by piece while the country watches airport chaos and Iran cease-fire posts.

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Trump Was Up at 2 AM Ranting About Immigrants While Airports Collapsed

At just before 2 AM Tuesday, the President of the United States posted on Truth Social about immigrants and the SAVE Act. “Democrats are desperate to keep illegals, no matter how bad or dangerous they may be, in the Country,” he wrote. “They want them to VOTE! That’s why they are fighting so hard to neutralize ICE.”

The SAVE Act, which Trump has made a centerpiece of his shutdown fight, would require proof of citizenship to register to vote, largely eliminate mail-in ballots, ban transgender women from women’s sports, and prohibit gender-affirming care for minors. It has no path to the 60 votes it needs to clear the Senate. Every Democrat has said they will vote against it. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has told Trump directly that the votes are not there and there is no appetite to eliminate the filibuster to pass it.

The voter fraud problem the SAVE Act is designed to solve is, by the data, essentially nonexistent. Michigan found 15 instances of non-citizens voting in the 2024 presidential election, out of more than 5.7 million ballots cast. Georgia identified 20 non-citizens registered to vote out of 8.2 million registered voters during a 2024 audit. Trump has staked his shutdown fight, his airport crisis, and his 2 a.m. posting schedule on a problem that represents 0.00028 percent of votes cast.

At a roundtable in Memphis on Monday, he told Republicans not to worry about going home for Easter. “Make this one for Jesus,” he said.

A Republican Senator Just Confirmed Trump Chose the Chaos

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana went on Fox News on Monday and said what most of the major networks have been reluctant to say plainly. He and Senator Ted Cruz had developed a two-step plan to reopen DHS, pay TSA workers by the end of the week, and handle ICE funding separately through reconciliation where Republican votes alone would be sufficient. They brought it to Trump. Trump said no.

“No deals with the Democrats,” Kennedy quoted the president as saying. “It would have worked. We could have had TSA paid by the end of the week.”

This confirmation comes after sources revealed that Senate Majority Leader Thune brought Trump a similar proposal on Sunday, an “everything but ICE” funding package that would have resolved the crisis immediately. Trump rejected that too. His condition for any deal is that Democrats also pass the SAVE Act, a bill that cannot pass the Senate.

The consequences are mounting. More than 3,450 TSA officers, nearly 12 percent of the workforce, did not show up for work on Sunday. More than 400 have quit since the shutdown began in mid-February. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson told passengers to arrive four hours early on Monday. Airports have disabled their security wait-time trackers because the lines have grown too long to quantify. More than 100 airport leaders and the heads of the two biggest airport trade groups warned Congress on Monday that the situation is causing serious and worsening disruption.

TSA workers are set to miss a second paycheck on March 27th. The president was offered the solution twice. He said no both times. A member of his own party confirmed it on camera.

ICE Is Making Arrests at Airports. Bannon Called It a “Test Run” for the Midterms.

Border czar Tom Homan appeared on Fox News Monday night and filled in the picture of what ICE agents are actually doing at the nation’s airports. It is not assisting with screening. It is arrests.

“We’re going to arrest criminals going through this airport,” Homan said. “We’re going to look for human trafficking, sex trafficking, money smuggling.” He confirmed that hundreds of ICE agents had been deployed to 14 airports in New York, Atlanta, Houston, and other cities.

Images from the airports told a different story about the operational reality. A viral photo from Atlanta showed an ICE officer standing behind a TSA agent, looking at her screen as she checked a passenger’s ID. Reuters photographers captured agents standing in groups, not assisting with screening at all. Hartsfield-Jackson, JFK, and Newark Liberty all disabled their security wait-time trackers because the lines became too long to measure.

Several DHS sources told reporters over the weekend that the department was blindsided by Trump’s order. One official’s summary: “I have no idea what we’re doing.”

MAGA architect Steve Bannon offered a different and more candid framing. He described the airport deployment as a “test run” ahead of “ICE’s involvement in the 2026 midterm elections.” Homan did not address that characterization. He did not need to. The deployment of a federal immigration enforcement agency into the nation’s civilian travel infrastructure, with confirmed arrest authority, timed to a political standoff the president is deliberately prolonging, speaks for itself.

The Pentagon Banned Reporters From the Building. A Judge Said That Was Unconstitutional. The Pentagon Is Doing It Anyway.

A federal judge ruled last Friday that Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon press restrictions violated the First Amendment. The policy had allowed the Pentagon to label journalists as security risks and revoke their press credentials if they were deemed threats to national security. Reporters from multiple outlets surrendered their passes rather than comply. They were replaced by administration-friendly figures including Laura Loomer and Mike Lindell.

Judge Paul Friedman of the U.S. District Court for D.C. was unsparing in his ruling. The policy’s “true purpose and practical effect,” he wrote, was “to weed out disfavored journalists” and replace them with “news entities that are willing to publish only stories that are favorable to or spoon-fed by department leadership.” He ordered the Pentagon to immediately restore the press passes of seven journalists.

The Pentagon’s response was to announce a new policy that moves reporters out of the Pentagon entirely and into an external annex, requiring all journalists to be escorted by authorized personnel at all times. The department called this compliance with the court’s order. The journalists whose passes were ordered restored had not received them back as of Monday afternoon. A spokesperson for one of the outlets that filed the lawsuit said plainly: “The new policy does not comply with the judge’s order. It continues to impose unconstitutional restrictions on the press. We will be going back to court.”

Hegseth, a former Fox News weekend host now running the world’s most powerful military, has compared press questions to enemy fire. “Through fake news, through everything,” he told troops. “President Trump and I have your back.”

The Bigger Picture: What All of This Actually Is

Step back from the individual stories for a moment and look at what is being built.

The Pentagon is removing journalists from the building and replacing them with loyalists, in defiance of a federal court order, during an active war. The FCC is threatening to revoke broadcast licenses from networks that cover that war critically. David Ellison is acquiring CNN on top of CBS News, consolidating two of the most influential news operations in the country under one billionaire with direct ties to Trumpworld. Voice of America, mandated by Congress to operate independently, has been handed to a former Newsmax executive. Laura Loomer and Mike Lindell now have Pentagon press passes. The independent journalists who held those passes do not.

At the same time, the FBI admitted under oath this month that it is purchasing the location data of American citizens from commercial data brokers without a warrant, bypassing the Fourth Amendment entirely. Palantir, which received early CIA investment and has spent two decades building surveillance and targeting infrastructure for intelligence agencies and law enforcement, just secured a $10 billion military contract, the largest in its history, cementing its role as the AI backbone of the U.S. government’s operations.

These are not separate stories. They are the components of the same project. Control the information. Monitor the population. Silence the critics. Replace independent journalists with loyalists. Buy the data that tells you where everyone is. Build the AI infrastructure to act on it. And do all of it while the country is distracted by airport lines and cease-fire posts.

This is what the merger of tech and authoritarianism looks like in practice. Not tanks in the street. Licensing threats, data broker purchases, billion-dollar AI contracts, press passes pulled in defiance of court orders, and a border czar on Fox News confirming that federal agents are making arrests at civilian airports while a senator confirms the president chose the chaos on purpose.

The outlets that should be covering this most aggressively are being restructured around the people doing it. That is not a coincidence. It is the point.

A Note From Raw America

Our reporters have been in the room at the most important hearings, including the Gabbard testimony and the intelligence committee sessions that revealed the FBI’s warrantless data purchases. We have brought you exclusive interviews with top generals you cannot find anywhere else. We are joining the Washington D.C. press pool to get the most important conversations directly to you, at the exact moment the Pentagon is trying to expel independent journalists from the building.

CNN is running cover. CBS is being rebuilt by a billionaire. The FCC is threatening anyone who pushes back. The surveillance state is expanding. The press is being pushed out of the Pentagon. And Raw America, one of the few outlets connecting all of these dots without corporate interference, is asking you to make it possible to keep going.

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Good morning, and we will see you tomorrow.

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