FBI arrests alleged MS-13 leader with help of Mexican government
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(MEXICO) — The FBI extradited an alleged senior leader of the MS-13 gang who was on the agency’s “10 most wanted” list with the help of the Mexican government, FBI Director Kash Patel said Tuesday.
Patel said Mexican authorities arrested Francisco Javier Roman-Bardales — who Patel said is believed to be a “key senior leader” of the gang. Roman-Bardales is being extradited to the United States, Patel added.
Patel touted the arrest as a “major victory.”
“He was arrested in Mexico and is being transported within the U.S. as we speak, where he will face American justice,” Patel wrote in a post on X. “This is a major victory both for our law enforcement partners and for a safer America.”
Roman-Bardales, 47, has been charged with several offenses for “his alleged role in ordering numerous acts of violence against civilians and rival gang members, as well as his role in drug distribution and extortion schemes in the United States and El Salvador,” the FBI said.
A federal arrest warrant was issued for Roman-Bardales in a New York court in 2022 after he was charged with conspiracy to provide and conceal material support and resources to terrorists; narco-terrorism conspiracy; racketeering conspiracy; and alien smuggling conspiracy.
Mexican authorities got intelligence that Roman-Bardales was in Baxtla, Mexico. Mexican law enforcement was deployed to the area, where Roman-Bardales was identified and arrested, the FBI said.
Patel thanked Mexican partners for their help in bringing Roman-Bardales to the U.S.
“This crucial step enhances the safety of communities across America,” Patel said.
The arrest comes as President Donald Trump and his administration target gangs such as MS-13.
He discussed his efforts during his address to a joint session of Congress last month, mentioning the deaths of Jocelyn Nungaray — who was killed by two undocumented men from Venezuela — and Laken Riley — who was killed by an undocumented immigrant.
“All three savages charged with Jocelyn and Laken’s murders were members of the Venezuelan prison gang — the toughest gang, they say, in the world — known as Tren de Aragua. Two weeks ago, I officially designated this gang, along with MS-13 and the bloodthirsty Mexican drug cartels, as foreign terrorist organizations. They are now officially in the same category as ISIS, and that’s not good for them,” Trump said in his joint address to Congress.
Also, Trump’s administration is working to deport gang members from the U.S. Over the weekend, the Trump administration handed over more than 200 alleged gang members — including two top members of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang — to El Salvadoran authorities. The move has raised questions as to whether the deportations could be in violation of a federal judge’s order temporarily blocking the removal of Venezuelans pursuant to the administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Six weeks into his presidency, Donald Trump addressed Congress and the nation Tuesday evening, laying out his goals for the next four years.
ABC News, along with PolitiFact, live fact-checked Trump’s speech statements that were exaggerated, needed more context or were false.
TRUMP CLAIM: Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control—and we are working hard to get it back down.
FACT-CHECK: Lacking context.
Though egg prices did increase under President Joe Biden, they have recently surged under Trump too — and that’s because of bird flu, which has led to the deaths of 136 million birds since 2022, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.
While the price of eggs was consistently rising due to inflation under Biden’s administration, the first significant price hike occurred in 2022, when bird flu began infecting flocks of birds in the U.S. Egg prices rose from $1.93 per dozen to $4.82 per dozen over the course of just that one year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The prices moderated again, back down to the $2-$3 range during the rest of Biden’s presidency — but have shot back up to a record-high $4.95 this January, again due to bird flu.
-ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett
TRUMP CLAIM: Trump won a mandate in the election
FACT-CHECK: This is in the eye of the beholder.
Trump’s victory was clear, but by historical standards, it was no landslide.
Trump has reason to celebrate winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote. In fact, he became only the second Republican to win the popular vote since 1988, after George W. Bush in his 2004 reelection win. Trump won each of the seven battleground states that political analysts said would decide the election.
In addition, the vast majority of U.S. counties saw their margins shift in Trump’s direction, both in places where Republicans historically do well and places where Democrats generally have an edge.On the other hand, Trump’s margins of victory — both in raw votes and in percentages — were small by historical standards, even for the past quarter century, when close elections have been the rule, including the 2000 Florida recount election and Trump’s previous two races in 2016 and 2020.
Trump’s victory also came without a big boost for down-ballot Republicans. Republicans lost a little ground in the House, which was already narrowly divided, and while Republicans flipped the Senate, Democrats won four Senate races in key battleground states even as former Vice President Kamala Harris was losing those states to Trump.
-PolitiFact’s Aaron Sharockman
TRUMP CLAIM: “We ended the last administration’s insane electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto workers and companies from economic destruction.”
FACT-CHECK: Needs context.
There was no electric vehicle mandate put in place by the Biden administration. The Biden Environmental Protection Agency implemented tailpipe emissions standards last March that established an average of allowed emissions across a vehicle manufacturer’s entire fleet of offered vehicles.
The standards would have only impacted cars from model years 2027 to 2032. The standards allowed for a range of useable technologies, including fully electric cars, hybrids and improved internal combustion engines. Trump did sign an executive order on his first day in office to revoke these new standards.
-ABC News’ Kelly Livingston
TRUMP CLAIM: The Paris Climate Accord was costing the U.S. “trillions”
FACT-CHECK: False.
Trump defended his decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, saying the pact was costing the U.S. “trillions of dollars.”
That’s untrue.
The Trump administration defended the decision to withdraw from the climate agreement, in part, based on projections by consultant NERA Economic Consulting. It concluded that restrictions on fossil fuel emissions would result in a higher cost of production, and a higher cost of production would translate into the closure of uncompetitive manufacturing businesses. Those closures, in turn, would mean fewer manufacturing jobs.
The consultant estimated that these losses and their knock-on effects beyond the manufacturing sector would amount to 1.1 million jobs lost by 2025 and 6.5 million by 2040. The loss of jobs results in a corresponding decline in gross domestic product, with a loss of $250 billion by 2025 that accelerates to $3 trillion by 2040.
So the climate agreement wasn’t costing the U.S. trillions of dollars. It hypothetically could.
But even if it did, the study says that the long-term projections did not factor in all of the offsetting job gains and GDP growth associated with a clean tech transition.
-PolitiFact’s Aaron Sharockman
TRUMP CLAIM: Elon Musk found people in the Social Security system as old as 369
FACT-CHECK: This is misleading.
Elon Musk shared a chart on X and said he found millions of people in a Social Security database over the age of 110, including 1 who was in the 360-369 age bracket.
The acting Social Security commissioner said that people older than 100 who do not have a date of death associated with their Social Security record “are not necessarily receiving benefits.” Recent Social Security Administration data shows that about 89,000 people aged 99 and older receive Social Security payments.
Government databases may classify someone as 150 years old for reasons peculiar to the complex Social Security database or because of missing data, but that doesn’t mean that millions of payments are delivered fraudulently to people with implausible ages.
-PolitiFact’s Aaron Sharockman
TRUMP CLAIM: “Gold cards” don’t need congressional approval
FACT-CHECK: Misleading.
Immigration experts say Trump can neither create a new green card program nor shut down an existing one without congressional action.
Trump announced a plan to give people legal permanent residency in the U.S. if they pay $5 million. The so-called “gold card” would be similar to a green card in that it would let people live and work in the U.S. permanently and provide a pathway to citizenship.
Trump has described the program as a way to cut the U.S. deficit and has said it would replace the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program. But he hasn’t provided an official document creating the program.
-PolitiFact’s Aaron Sharockman
TRUMP CLAIM: “Hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud” found by DOGE
FACT-CHECK: This is unverifiable.
This claim is unverifiable because DOGE has yet to release the entirety of its work or specify which cuts have been “fraud” as opposed to “waste.” DOGE has claimed to have saved $106 billion in total savings, not “hundreds of billions” in fraud, and even Elon Musk himself has said they have mostly found “waste” and “mostly not fraud.”
DOGE has claimed it has saved a total of $106 billion in federal money from a “combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.” The figure remains unverifiable and DOGE’s website claims to have posted only 30% of the receipts supporting this total.
Even Musk himself said on Joe Rogan’s podcast last week that most of what DOGE is finding is “waste,” rather than outright fraud. “Only the federal government could get away with this level of waste. It’s mostly waste. It’s mostly not fraud, it’s mostly waste. It’s mostly just ridiculous things happening,” Musk said.
-ABC News’ Soo Rin Kim and Will Steakin
TRUMP CLAIM: There will be a little disturbance for Americans because of tariffs
FACT-CHECK: Lacking context.
The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the tariffs could cost the average household up to $2,000 annually. Cars and car parts are big exports from Canada and Mexico, and tariffs could increase the cost of a new car by over $3,000 per vehicle on top of last year’s average new car price of $44,811, according to JP Morgan Research. Most economists predict that prices, and therefore, inflation will go up, with consumers seeing higher prices for food, gasoline, clothes, shoes, toys and other household items.
-ABC News’ Soo Youn
TRUMP CLAIM: “Not long ago … 1 in 10,000 children had autism. Now it’s 1 in 36. There’s something wrong”
FACT-CHECK: Partially true but lacking context.
It’s unclear where Trump — and Kennedy, who repeats the same stat often — got the 1 in 10,000 number, though he is correct about the current number, which is 1 in 36, and he is correct that autism cases are rising.
In 2000, approximately 1 in 150 children in the U.S. born in 1992 were diagnosed with autism compared with 2020, during which one in 36 children born in 2012 were diagnosed, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Some psychiatrists and autism experts told ABC News it’s important to highlight the rising rates of autism, and that at least Trump and Kennedy are putting a spotlight on it.
“On the bright side, I think it is really important to place an emphasis on these very high rates,” Dr. Karen Pierce, a professor in the department of neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego and co-director of the UCSD Autism Center of Excellence, told ABC News.
-ABC News’ Mary Kekatos
TRUMP CLAIM: Mexican authorities handed over 29 of the biggest cartel leaders because of tariffs imposed on them, “They want to make us happy”
FACT-CHECK: True
Last week, while the Mexican security cabinet and the Mexican economy secretary were in D.C. for bilateral meetings with their U.S. counterparts to negotiate ahead of the possible imposition of U.S. tariffs on Mexico, Mexico announced they were handing over 29 criminals to the U.S.
One of these criminals had been requested by the U.S. for decades, Rafael Caro Quintero. He was wanted for the murder of DEA’s agent Kiki Camarena back in 1985.
While some of these criminals had their extradition suspended by Mexican judges, others had been detained for less than a week without the option to fight back their extradition in Mexico before they were sent to the US.
Although the Mexican government definitely bent some Mexican laws and were highly questioned, they defended the move by saying this was a matter of national security and that they acted within hours after receiving a request from the U.S. government.
Many in Mexico saw the move as a way to please President Trump and convince him to suspend or cancel the U.S. tariffs against Mexico.
-ABC News’ Anne Laurent
TRUMP CLAIM: India charges US auto tariffs higher than 100%, China’s average tariffs on our products is twice what we charge them, and South Korea’s average tariff is four times higher.
FACT-CHECK: False
India has historically imposed high tariffs on imported vehicles with rates as high as 125% but in a bid to improve trade relations with the U.S. they have reduced the highest rates on luxury cars from 150% to 70%. With other surcharges the tariffs still stands above 100% but the Indian government are actively reviewing their import tariffs.
China’s tariffs are actively changing due in part to the tit-for-tat trade war with the Trump Administration.
South Korea’s average tariff rate is around 13.4%. However, the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement signed in 2007 (effective 2012) reduced or eliminated most of the tariffs between the two countries. South Korea claims that as of 2024, the average tariff rate on imports from the U.S. is approximately 0.79% based on the effective tariff rate before duty refunds.
-ABC News’ Karson Yiu
TRUMP CLAIM: The U.S. has “spent perhaps $350 billion” on supporting Ukraine’s defense
FACT-CHECK: False
According to the special inspector general responsible for overseeing the spending related to the war in Ukraine, Congress has appropriated or otherwise made available $182.75 billion for the overall U.S. response to the war since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Of that money, about $119 billion has been for the direct benefit of Ukraine, including approximately $65.9 billion in military assistance.
White House officials have offered various explanations for how the Trump administration has arrived at the significantly higher figure of $350 billion, but most of the arguments rely on dubious logic–such as factoring in inflation–which has no bearing on the actual dollar amount appropriated by Congress.
Trump also said Europe has spent “$100 billion” on supporting Ukraine’s war effort; according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, European countries have spent around $140 billion to back Kyiv, and pledged another roughly $120 billion to the cause.
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge in Maryland is set to consider whether President Donald Trump will be able to redefine the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to exclude the children of undocumented immigrants from birthright citizenship.
U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman has scheduled a 10 a.m. ET hearing on Wednesday to consider a request by five pregnant undocumented women to issue a preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s Day-1 executive order on birthright citizenship.
The women and the two nonprofits filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing that the executive order — which challenged the long-settled interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause — violated the constitution and multiple federal laws.
“If allowed to go into effect, the Executive Order would throw into doubt the citizenship status of thousands of children across the country, including the children of Individual Plaintiffs and Members,” the lawsuit said.
Lawyers for the Department of Justice have claimed that Trump’s executive order attempts to resolve “prior misimpressions” of the Fourteenth Amendment, arguing that birthright citizenship creates a “perverse incentive for illegal immigration.” If permitted, Trump’s executive order would preclude U.S. citizenship from the children of undocumented immigrants or immigrants whose presence in the United States is lawful but temporary.
“Text, history, and precedent support what common sense compels: the Constitution does not harbor a windfall clause granting American citizenship to, inter alia: the children of those who have circumvented (or outright defied) federal immigration laws,” DOJ lawyers argued.
The executive order has already been put on hold by a federal judge in Seattle, who last month criticized the Department of Justice for attempting to defend what he called a “blatantly unconstitutional” order.
“I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar can state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It boggles my mind,” said U.S. District Judge John Coughenour. “Where were the lawyers when this decision was being made?”
Because Judge Coughenour’s order only blocked the executive order temporarily, Judge Boardman will consider a longer-lasting preliminary injunction of the executive order.
“The hearing that’s coming up is a proceeding that essentially puts a longer pause,” explained Loyola Marymount University professor Justin Levitt. “It’s an order saying, ‘Don’t implement this,’ because the plaintiffs have shown a likelihood that they’ll succeed when we finally get to a final resolution, but many substantive legal claims are effectively decided on preliminary injunctions.”
With Trump vowing to appeal a ruling that finds his executive order unconstitutional, a preliminary injunction — if granted after Wednesday’s hearing — could be his first opportunity to appeal to a higher court.
Members of the Trump administration spent months crafting this executive order with the understanding that it would inevitably be challenged and potentially blocked by lower courts, according to sources familiar with their planning.
The J. Edgar Hoover building, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headquarters/ Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge has ordered that the FBI must release some records related to its investigation of President Donald Trump’s handling of presidential records that have been sought under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
In a memorandum opinion issued Monday, Judge Beryl Howell wrote, “Given the current circumstances and legal landscape—including that President Trump now enjoys absolute and presumptive immunity from criminal liability, the government has dismissed criminal charges against President Trump and … and no pending or even contemplated criminal enforcement action within the applicable statute of limitations on the topics of responsive records is at all likely,” the exemptions the FBI cited to block the release of information no longer apply.
Exactly three years ago, on Feb. 10, 2022, Axios reported that New York Times correspondent Maggie Haberman’s then-upcoming book, “Confidence Man,” included a claim that White House staff “periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging” the presidential toilet.
Trump issued a statement calling the story “another fake story, that I flushed papers and documents down a White House toilet, is categorically untrue and simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book.” (A footnote in Howell’s opinion notes, “In August of 2022, Haberman released photos of notes at the bottom of two toilets, and, according to her sources, one photo was allegedly of a White House toilet while the other toilet was overseas.”)
Eight days later, on Feb. 18, 2022, a letter from the National Archives described how President Trump allegedly brought classified records to his personal residence at Mar-a-Lago after losing the 2020 election.
This kicked off a high-stakes legal fight to return the records to government control and would eventually lead to an FBI search of Trump’s residence. What came next were felony charges and a series of stunning legal and political victories that would propel Trump back into office and make the charges he faced effectively disappear.
But as questions swirled around the February 2022 allegations of mishandling of records by Trump, Bloomberg News reporter Jason Leopold filed a FOIA request for six categories of documents. The first five categories pertained to documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, but the sixth category requested information about any records mentioning “Presidential Records from the Trump White House that were destroyed and … allegedly flushed down the toilet.”
The FBI argued they were exempt from responding to the request about the Mar-a-Lago investigation citing possible harm that could come to a prosecution and issued a so-called “Glomar” response to part six of the request, meaning the FBI would not confirm or deny the existence of records about alleged toilet documents.
The term Glomar is a reference to a secret CIA operation during the Cold War to raise a lost Soviet submarine from the ocean floor — when details of the operation began to leak the government provided a response that neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the operation.
Some of the information from the Mar-a-Lago investigation files was eventually released but the sixth category has remained secret.
The landmark Trump immunity case that held a president is presumptively immune from criminal prosecution for official acts and his election victory which brought a dismissal to the case had the effect of wiping away the constraints that had permitted the FBI to withhold records under FOIA.
Howell writes, “somewhat ironically, the constitutional and procedural safeguards attached to the criminal process include significant confidentiality mechanisms,” but for an immune president, such protections, “may simply be unavailable, as it is here.”
“The FBI’s Glomar response is improper, and the categorical withholding of the responsive records contained within the Mar-a-Lago investigative file is insupportable where, as here, no pending law enforcement proceeding exists, or can be reasonably anticipated, and the Mar-a-Lago investigation has been iced,” Howell writes.
No records were released immediately in the case, but the parties must submit a joint status report in 10 days to propose a schedule to conclude this case. It is unclear if the government will seek an appeal to block any further release.
