Democrat News

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Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg slammed former Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus for claiming that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a wrongly deported Maryland man, was a known member of MS-13.

During a Sunday panel discussion on ABC, Priebus attacked Hogg for opposing some incumbent members of his own party in primary races.

“I mean, unfortunately, David, I’d have you removed from the party, because I think, number one, I think you’re sincere,” Priebus told Hogg. “I think you’re right. The Democrats are a complete mess.”

“You’re traveling to El Salvador for MS-13 gang members. But here’s the point,” he continued. “I’m looking at someone, my vice chair at the RNC, taking $20 million for another effort. It’s $20 million out of the DNC’s pocket. You can’t be on the board of the fishing and forest company and on Greenpeace at the same time.”

“Let me push back against that,” Hogg replied. “This was not an MS-13 gang member, and you damn well know that.”

“Oh, come on!” Priebus exclaimed.

“He was not,” Hogg stated.

“Okay, so keep defending this guy,” the former RNC chair said. “You’re just digging your own hole.”

“This was wrong,” Hogg said of President Donald Trump’s deportation effort. “In America, we have due process, and we are a land of law and order. We are a land of law and order.”

“And this administration is repeatedly showing time and time again they do not care about what the Supreme Court says, they do not care about the rule of law, and you cannot defend sending people to another country,” he added.

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There’s probably nothing nefarious going on when your chyron refers to Kyiv, Russia and no one notices for over 30 minutes, right?

I guess Fox News has to keep up this conceit that Russia is a “Christian nation” and not a bunch of bloodthirsty cunts who massacred Ukrainian churchgoers on Palm Sunday in Sumy only a week before, right?

Source: Daily Wrap

During a broadcast lasting several hours of the Easter service at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, attended by Vladimir Putin, Fox News simultaneously aired the service from Kyiv, which was incorrectly described as “Russian.” Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is demanding an apology.

The American television station, Fox News, made an error in the captions during the Easter liturgy broadcast from Kyiv, incorrectly stating that the capital of Ukraine is part of Russia.

The station aired three broadcasts simultaneously. On the main screen, viewers could see the celebrations in Moscow, attended by the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin. On two smaller screens to the right, the celebrations from the capital of Ukraine and the Vatican were shown.

For over 30 minutes, the caption under the broadcast from Kyiv inaccurately read: “Kyiv, Russia.”

Only after 30 minutes did the station’s staff realise the mistake and correct the caption to the accurate one.

“Praising the Russian dictator and promoting pro-Russian narratives is nothing new for Fox News, but last night’s designation of Kyiv as a city in Russia is a new low. Amid outrage across social media, Ukraine’s MFA demands an apology,” added Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security.

Is it possible for Fox News to get to a new low when they’re already at the bottom, but Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communication called it that.

Praising the Russian dictator and promoting pro-Russian narratives is nothing new for Fox News, but last night’s designation of Kyiv as a city in Russia is a new low.

Amid outrage across social media, Ukraine’s MFA demands an apology. pic.twitter.com/Z2AEwB3x0T

— SPRAVDI — Stratcom Centre (@StratcomCentre) April 20, 2025

🤡 Meanwhile, Fox News claims that Kyiv is Russia and broadcasts “Patriarch Kirill”. pic.twitter.com/vNjrp18DFN

— Saint Javelin (@saintjavelin) April 20, 2025

Putin’s “Easter ceasefire” was nothing but a charade—a show for MAGA audiences who took the bait. Fox News aired an Easter Mass from Russia (accidentally portraying Kyiv as part of it), and MAGA influencers quickly began blaming Zelenskyy for everything.

It was all done by… pic.twitter.com/k10pEQkDaa

— Pekka Kallioniemi (@P_Kallioniemi) April 20, 2025

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For some unknown reason (well, besides the fact that she’s nuts), Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) thought it was a good idea to post this video to Twitter last night. It wasn’t.

Source: AS.com

“Some unhinged lunatic, a man, wearing daisy dukes, at a makeup store, got in my face today,” said Nancy Mace, the congresswoman from South Carolina, next to a post on X.

“Dems are nuts,” she continued, “So I went off – and I won’t be backing down.”

Now this wasn’t her response to someone else posting on the social media platform, formerly Twitter. This was her own contribution, suggesting she was somewhat proud of what went down.

As you can observe from the video, the initial question about town halls blew up into a swearing contest, with little imagination thrown into the mix.

Not everyone agreed it was a good look…

Mace’s tweet.

Responses were mostly the same as this one. “What’s wrong with Nancy Mace?” I might ask the same of her voters who keep sending this mentally ill woman to Congress.

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Sen. Eric Schmitt has introduced a bill to make Easter Monday a federal holiday since those poor oppressed Christians don’t have enough federal holidays already. His rational for it is really something:

“Recently, I proudly introduced a bill to establish Easter Monday as a federal holiday in the United States. Despite only two-thirds of Americans identifying as Christian, more than 80% of Americans celebrate Easter each year,” Sen. Schmitt said. “The current lack of a federal Easter Holiday significantly limits Americans’ ability to celebrate with friends, family, and church communities.”

[…]

“I am honored to be leading this charge to not only bring increased economic opportunity for our communities, but to establish a much-needed holiday for millions of Americans to celebrate the defining moment of the faith that shaped our civilization,” Schmitt continued.

Schmitt said the new holiday would be pro-family, allowing many to celebrate the holiday more easily together. An Easter Monday could also extend the weekend’s $15 billion travel impact with an additional $1 billion or more.

Lastly, Schmitt said the bill would help bridge a gap in the federal holidays, which currently exists between Presidents and Memorial Day.

Yes, I’m sure that it’s almost impossible for people to celebrate Easter Sunday at church with their family. WTAF!

Of course, the unspoken part of this is that the Republicans aren’t going to put a hit on businesses by forcing them to pay their employees for yet another holiday, so to make up for it, they’ll just go ahead and take Martin Luther King, Jr Day off the holiday calendar. It’s just a DEI holiday anyway, right?

However, being the helpful kind of guy that I am, I would suggest that if Schmitt really wanted a holiday between Presidents Day and Memorial Day, he should just make Workers Memorial Day a major federal holiday. It’s already a minor federal holiday, so there’s no need to create a new holiday.. It wouldn’t be challenged because it doesn’t violate the separation of church and state. And it’s every April 28th, so it’s consistently between Presidents Day and Memorial Day as well as keeps with the theme of those two days by remembering great Americans.

Unfortunately, it is a good idea, and thus the Republicans would never go along with it.

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The Supreme Court issued a late-night ruling this weekend, halting deportations, for now, under the Alien Enemies Act.

The Supreme Court in the early hours of Saturday told the Trump administration not to take any action to deport Venezuelan men based in Texas it alleges are gang members.

The court did not grant or deny an application filed by lawyers for the detainees, but effectively hit pause on the case, which affects people currently held within the jurisdiction of the Northern District of Texas.

“The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court,” the brief order said.

Two conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, disagreed with the Supreme Court decision, the order noted.

Mark Joseph Stern at Slate discussed why the ruling was extraordinary:

There are three remarkable aspects of the court’s decision. First, it acted with startling speed—so quickly, in fact, that it published the order before Alito could finish writing his dissent; he was forced to note only that a “statement” would “follow.” It is a major breach of protocol for the Supreme Court to publish an order or opinion before a dissenting justice finishes writing their opinion, one that reflects the profound urgency of the situation. Relatedly, awkward phrasing in court’s order may imply that Alito—who first received the plaintiffs’ request—failed to refer it to the full court, as is custom, compelling the other justices to rip the case away from him. No matter what, exactly, happened behind the scenes, it’s clear that a majority would not let Alito hold up speedy action. It also acted before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit had a chance to step in, and before the Department of Justice had an opportunity to respond to the plaintiffs. These highly abnormal moves also reveal a desire to act fast.

Second, it is plain as day that the Supreme Court simply did not trust the Trump administration’s claims that it would not deport migrants over the weekend without due process. If the court did believe these representations, it would not have acted in such a rapid and dramatic fashion; it could have waited for the lower courts to sort through the matter, confident no one would face irreparable harm in the meantime. The majority’s decision to wade in straightaway points to a skepticism that the Justice Department was telling the truth. It’s damning, too, that the majority did not even wait for DOJ to file a brief with the court before acting. The only plausible explanation for the court’s order is that a majority feared the government would whisk away the migrants to El Salvador if it did not intervene immediately. That fear is well-grounded, since we now have substantial evidence that the government lied to a federal judge last month to thwart a court order stopping deportation flights.

Finally, and perhaps most obviously, it’s critical that only Thomas and Alito noted their dissents. When the court takes emergency action, justices don’t have to note their votes, but they usually do; we can probably assume that this order was 7–2. That would mean that Chief Justice John Roberts—along Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—joined this rebuke to the Trump administration. Until now, all of these justices have, to varying degrees, treated the president with kid gloves, handing him a series of narrow wins on procedural grounds that avoided direct collision between the branches. That accommodation came to an abrupt stop on Saturday.

Joyce Vance discussed the ruling and what may be coming with Katie Phang on MSNBC this Saturday:

PHANG: And as we mentioned at the top of the show in an overnight decision, the United States Supreme Court took a pause on the deportation of foreign nationals from the United States pursuant to convicted felon Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.

The one paragraph order saying “The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court.”

Now that 7-2 decision shocking many as the majority did include Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, and get this, Brett Kavanaugh.

Alito and Thomas, to no one’s surprise, dissented from the court’s order, maybe because they’re busy planning their lavish and luxury summer vacation plans via private jet and super yachts. […]

Let’s start with that 1 a.m. ruling. I’m happy to see the SCOTU works at 10 a.m. on a Friday night, but it’s a temporary pause number one, number 2, Joyce, it only pertains to the putative class of detainees.

Explain to our viewers what that means when it’s just a putative class of detainees.

VANCE: Right, it’s such a confusing situation.

There’s been an effort by the ACLU, which represents many of these detainees, to certify a class so that rather than going person by person to seek relief, they can do it all in one big grouping.

The Supreme Court put a little bit of a monkey wrench into that when they ordered that these had to be individualized habeas cases, and that’s why there’s this back and forth with the ACLU trying to play whack a mole, going to court literally in every district where they get wind that something is amiss, which is what happened yesterday when they learned that ICE appeared to be putting detainees together, so that they could deport them from the Bluebonnet facility in Texas, in a different district in Texas from the one district where a judge had Entered an injunction prohibiting further deportations.

In a way, the Supreme Court’s chickens are coming home to roost here. They’re having to deal with these midnight petitions, because instead of a nationwide ban on these deportations while they decide the extent of the Alien Enemies Act and whether the government can use it for these deportations, they’re now having to do it in all 94 federal districts.

PHANG: Joyce, what happens though with the fact that the Fifth Circuit, which is the appellate federal appellate circuit between SCOTUS and this district court in Texas, the 5th Circuit with a panel of three and a procurum actually said we don’t have subject matter jurisdiction, and so they didn’t give a stay themselves to the plaintiffs that are kind of fighting it out in the district court in front of that judge.

VANCE: Well, that’s right, and this will be fought in a number of different forms. The ACLU has indicated that they intend to bring in essence try to certify a class in each of the 94 federal districts.

So there’s this possibility of different rulings in different places. Ultimately, the Supreme Court will have to decide the Alien Enemies Act issue for once and for all, but until then we’re going to see a variety of different procedural motions in different circuits in different district courts, and it’s something of a mess while people’s lives and futures are at stake.

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Despite the outward defiance, there is no doubt the public pressure is having its intended effect on the Trump administration over its stupid and court-defying refusal to return Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S. after admitting it made a mistake in deporting him to El Salvador.

In fact, I’m smelling a bit of panic in the White House, especially as Golfer-in-Chief and Musk/Miller Puppet Trump is sliding in the polls. On Friday evening, we learned that Abrego Garcia was moved out of El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison and moved to a lower-security detention facility. That was after Sen. Chris Van Hollen went to El Salvador and refused to take no for an answer about meeting with the prisoner.

It’s no surprise, though, that Trump is so triggered by his own administration’s bungling that he has resorted to just making s**t up.

Via Mediaite:

On Friday, Trump posted a message on his Truth Social platform with an image purporting to be Abrego Garcia’s left hand. It features tattoos on his fingers that government officials previously described: a marijuana leaf, a smiley face, a cross, and a skull. But in the image Trump is holding, “MS-13” is now spelled across the knuckles.

…

However, Matt Novak of Gizmodo pointed out on BlueSky that a photo of Abrego Garcia with Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) from Thursday clearly shows the deportee’s left hand. The characters “MS-13” are nowhere to be found.

Mediaite brought the receipts:

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An evening show last week at the Hollywood Improv comedy club included poop jokes, a song about young people being too woke and a raunchy impression of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

There were no quips about President Trump’s international tariffs, even from a comedian who had just posted a lengthy podcast episode about the on-again-off-again executive orders that have led to a global trade war and, many fear, could trigger a recession.

To get your fill of trade-related chuckles these days, there’s a much more reliable, if unexpected, source: the official Facebook page of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C.

The site has been rapidly manufacturing memes and sarcastic captions to capitalize — unrestrained by any tariffs — on a hot international export, namely jokes at the expense of the United States and its tariff-loving president.

One meme shows a red MAGA hat on a store shelf bearing a “Made in China” tag. The $50 price is crossed out, replaced by a tariff-inflated cost of $77.

Another cartoon — labeled “The Art of the Deal,” after Trump’s 1987 book — shows a pair of gambler’s hands. One with the word “tariffs” on its suit sleeve draws from a deck of cards bearing percentages. The Embassy’s caption: “But… the cards are made in #China. #Tariffwar.”

In Canada, the premier of Manitoba, Wab Kinew, signed a decree in an oversized folder and held it up with his signature, à la Trump. “This order,” he said, “it’s a wonderful order. It’s a beautiful order. This order is pulling American booze off the liquor mart shelves.”

And on Norfolk Island — a remote rock in the Pacific Ocean with about 2,000 residents and essentially no exports to the U.S. — a children’s book author memed a baffled-looking tropical wrasse fish. The caption: “When you find out Norfolk Island exports are getting hit with a 29% tariff … guess that’s one way to leave a fish floundering.”

There are many ways world leaders, businesses and consumers are grappling with the growing threat of a global trade war, but perhaps the easiest — and, for some, the most therapeutic — is to rely on dark humor.

Joking about Trump’s frenetic rollout of tariffs has become a common response to the altogether serious issue of an economic fight started by the president that has upended markets, led to boycotts of American-made goods and travel to the U.S., and sparked fears of a recession.

Some of the humor has a barbed, geopolitical aim in a war for the world’s hearts and minds — see the Chinese government’s fusillade of memes — but political scientists say that, for many people, humor is a natural response to stressful times.

Patrick Giamario, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and author of the book “Laughter as Politics: Critical Theory in an Age of Hilarity,” said humor is an important part of the modern political process — and, for many, an attempt to make sense of events that feel overwhelming.

“The fact that we’re laughing so much now is a sort of sign of how broken things are,” Giamario said. “We laugh when things stop making sense.”

In addition to global angst, the levies have spawned: References to Trump as a “domestic tariffist.” Videos generated by artificial intelligence that show obese Americans toiling in garment factories. And lots of memes about over-taxed penguins angry about Trump’s tariffs, which targeted a few barren, uninhabited subantarctic islands.

“Poor old penguins, I don’t know what they did to Trump,” Australian trade minister Don Farrell quipped to the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “But, look, I think it’s an indication … that this was a rushed process.”

Australian Trade and Tourism Minister Don Farrell, left, arrives for a meeting with Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao, right, in Beijing, May 12, 2023.

(Michael Godfrey / Associated Press)

Trump’s tariffs have kept much of the world’s collective heads on a swivel. When he announced them, he said they would bring “jobs and factories … roaring back into our country” — despite skepticism from economists across the political spectrum.

On April 2 — which Trump dubbed “Liberation Day” — he announced a baseline tariff of 10% on imported goods from all foreign countries. He also announced higher rates, which he called “reciprocal tariffs,” for countries he said were unfairly taxing American goods. Financial markets plunged.

A week later, Trump changed course, saying he would pause the so-called reciprocal tariffs for 90 days while leaving the universal 10% tariff in place. He wrote on his Truth Social account: “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well.” Markets surged.

Meanwhile, Trump escalated his standoff with China, hiking levies on Chinese imports — except, he later said, on electronics such as smartphones and laptops — to 145%.

Beijing retaliated by raising its levies on U.S. goods to 125%. The trade war was joined by a meme war.

Many of the Chinese memes portray American workers as unprepared for the kinds of jobs that bring products to their homes at cheaper prices.

During a press briefing last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about Chinese officials sharing AI-generated videos depicting Trump, Vice President JD Vance and billionaire Elon Musk working in factories.

“I have seen the videos,” Leavitt said. “I’m not sure who made the videos or if we can verify the authenticity. But whoever made it clearly does not see the potential of the American worker, the American workforce.”

Screenshots of Leavitt herself being trolled by a Chinese diplomat who accused her of wearing a Chinese-made dress in the White House briefing room also have gone viral.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, April 15, 2025, in Washington.

(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

“Accusing China is business. Buying China is life,” Zhang Zhisheng, China’s consul general in Denpasar, Indonesia, posted on X. “The beautiful lace on the dress was recognized by an employee of a Chinese company as its product.”

Ramesh Srinivasan, founder of the University of California Digital Cultures Lab, said it is clearly strategic for the typically staid Chinese government to turn to memes and internet jokes to communicate its stance on the trade war, which is that it “is ridiculous and unnecessary.”

“They’re presenting it in a much more innocuous and funny way, and that’s very, very intelligent,” Srinivasan said. “It’s a sign of the times.”

Donald Trump Jr. takes photos with supporters after a town hall meeting Monday, March 17, 2025, in Oconomowoc, Wis.

(Jeffrey Phelps / Associated Press)

Trump and his acolytes, of course, are veterans of the meme wars (his son and advisor, Donald Trump Jr., lists “Meme Wars General” in his Instagram bio). The president’s meme-filled X, née Twitter, account helped launch his political career, as did his crude-but-catchy nicknames for his opponents: Crooked Hillary Clinton, Sleepy Joe Biden and Little Marco [now Secretary of State] Rubio, among others.

Srinivasan said Trump, the former reality television star, has long been skilled at using dark humor to his advantage, especially online, where he is “this kind of hybrid troll-meme person.”

Traditional Russian wooden dolls called Matryoshka depicting China’s President Xi Jinping, President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are displayed for sale at a souvenir shop in St. Petersburg, Russia.

(Dmitri Lovetsky / Associated Press)

On the internet, the tariff jokes keep coming.

One widely-shared POV — internet lingo for “point of view” — video on TikTok shows a grumpy toddler striding officiously through an empty office. The caption: “POV: Me on my way to HR yet again for nicknaming my co-worker ‘Tariff’ for costing the company more than they’re worth.”

On YouTube, Penguins International, an apolitical conservation nonprofit dedicated to studying and protecting penguins, couldn’t resist getting in on the fun.

After Heard Island and the McDonald Islands — Australian territories where lots of penguins and no humans live — were listed on Trump’s tariffs list, Penguins International announced an online Protest March of the Penguins.

“Waddle we want? No tariffs!” read one digital protest sign.

“Beaks up!” read another.

On Wednesday, the Colorado-based organization posted a YouTube video of the birds’ annual migratory trek across the ice to their breeding grounds. As they squawked and brayed, a narrator said: “This year, they march in protest. They are peaceful. They are flightless. But they are certainly not voiceless.”

“We wanted to take an unusual current event and make light of it and stir up some support for some penguins that are endangered and threatened to go extinct,” David Schutt, executive director of Penguins International, said in an interview. Before the tariff announcement, he added, “most people didn’t know about the islands that these penguins are on.”

James Austin Johnson as President Trump, left, and Andrew Dismukes as Howard Lutnick during the “Saturday Night Live” skit “Trump Tariff Cold Open” on April 5, 2025.

(Will Heath / Getty Images)

During an Easter-themed “Saturday Night Live” skit this month, Trump, played by James Austin Johnson, said: “Many people are even calling me the Messiah, because of the mess I, uh, made out of the economy — all because of my beautiful tariffs. So beautiful. They were working so well that I had to stop them.”

On her “Good for You” podcast on April 13, comedian Whitney Cummings joked about Trump’s stated motive of using tariffs to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., where workers — especially young ones who prefer remote work — don’t want them.

“I have nieces who are Gen Z,” Cummings said. “They’re not going to work in a factory. They won’t even work at the Cheesecake Factory because that would mean they would have a boss.”

Whitney Cummings at Hollywood Improv.

(Troy Conrad)

American manufacturing largely moved overseas, she continued, because “no one in America believes they should be working for some corporation who treats workers badly. They want to be the head of the corporation who treats workers badly.”

Two nights later, Cummings did a stand-up set at the Hollywood Improv, performing on a stage that has hosted comedy legends such as Robin Williams, Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy.

Cummings made some mildly political jokes — including one about growing more conservative after having a child and trading in her electric car for a gas model because gas stations are the only places where it’s socially acceptable to leave a small child alone in a vehicle.

But during her short set, she stayed away from tariffs — which are, perhaps, funnier on the internet.

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Former Los Angeles Councilmember Kevin de León is facing an $18,750 ethics fine for voting on city council decisions in which he had a financial interest and for failing to disclose income.

De León has admitted to four counts of “making or participating in a decision in which a financial interest is held” and one count of failing to disclose income, according to a report prepared by the enforcement arm of the L.A. City Ethics Commission.

The ethics report says that in 2020-21 De León voted on three city council issues that benefited the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and one that helped USC — all decisions that were made less than a year after he received more than $500 income from each. According to state law, elected officials must disclose each source of gross income of $500 or more received in the 12 months before taking office.

Less than 12 months after receiving income from AIDS Healthcare Foundation, De León participated in three separate city decisions that affected the foundation in which he knew or had reason to know he had a financial interest, the ethics commission report said. But according to the ethics commission report, De León failed to disclose $109,231 in income he had received from the foundation before he took office.

On Nov. 25, 2020, he voted for the foundation’s application for historical designation of the foundation-owned King Edward Hotel. On April 22, 2021, he voted for an item regarding a city lease of the foundation-owned Retan Hotel. On May 4, 2021, he voted again for a city lease of the Retan Hotel.

De León’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but The Times received a statement from a spokesperson for De León: “This matter centers on disclosure — not personal gain. The items in question provided homeless housing during a pandemic and health services to vulnerable Angelenos,” the statement said. “They passed unanimously, and had Councilmember De León been advised that he should recuse himself, he would have done so without hesitation — the outcomes would have been the same.”

USC paid him $155,000 as an independent contractor from July 2019 to June 2020.

Less than 12 months later, De León participated in a city decision that benefited USC, according to the ethics commission. In June 2021, De León voted to approve the Housing and Community Development Consolidated Plan proposed budget, which included a $1-million allocation to the USC Keck School of Medicine.

In March 2020, De León was elected to represent Council District 14 on the L.A. City Council. In May 2020, while still a council member-elect, De León entered into a consulting agreement with the Healthy Housing Foundation, a division of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and began providing services as a strategic policy advisor.

The agreement said that De León was to “advise and strengthen strategy regarding partnerships and policy insights on behalf of HHF’s programs and portfolio,” and “[e]ngage with policymakers and regulators on all areas related to overall strategic goals of HHF,” according to the ethics commission.

De León took office in October 2020. He filed a financial disclosure form the next month, but did not disclose the AIDS Healthcare Foundation or its Healthy Housing Foundation as sources of income. In December 2020, he filed an amended financial form but did not disclose income from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which was “the true source of the income that he received under the consulting agreement,” according to the ethics commission report.

In determining the fine amount, the ethics commission said that De León cooperated with staff and that he has no prior enforcement history. However, the ethics commission noted the violations in this case are serious and that “the violations appear to indicate a pattern of conduct.”

Similar issues were highlighted in a 2023 Times story that found De León helped organized a meeting in summer 2020 with a group of city department heads and high-ranking mayoral staffers to address issues facing the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. At the time, De León had been elected but not yet taken office.

In the months before the meeting, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation was pursuing a lawsuit alleging the city illegally denied funding for an affordable housing project that the foundation was proposing. An email from the mayor’s then-deputy chief of staff to colleagues said De León “wants to engage and come up with a solution.”

Five city officials who attended the briefing or were involved in organizing it told The Times in 2023 they were unaware that De León was employed as a consultant for the foundation at the time — or of the more than $100,000 it was paying him in the six months before his taking office.

Political ethics experts, meanwhile, told The Times that De León’s relationship with the foundation and failure to disclose his financial ties raised a potential conflict-of-interest concern. They believed his actions could have left city staffers with uncertainty about whose interests he was serving — the city’s or his then-employer’s.

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Jason Michael Drown, 40, was arrested by Gilbert Police in Arizona for (alleged!) multiple sex crimes against children. Homeland Security agents uncovered pornographic images of three children that were accessed from Drown’s IP address, according to court documents. In total, Drown is accused of 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. The girls he perved on were between the ages of 8 and 10.

ABC 15 reports:

Court paperwork confirms that Drown is a Customs and Border Patrol agent.

CBP officials released the following statement regarding the arrest:

“On April 8, 2025, at approximately 10:50 a.m., a CBP employee was arrested for state charges related to child pornography by the Gilbert Police Department. The incident is under investigation by the Gilbert Police Department and supported by the DHS Office of Inspector General, and under review by CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

CBP stresses honor and integrity in every aspect of our mission, and the overwhelming majority of CBP employees and officers perform their duties with honor and distinction, working tirelessly every day to keep our country safe. An arrest is merely an allegation. The defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.”

Court paperwork indicates the initial investigation into the case started in November 2024 as a proactive operation to combat child sexual exploitation.

In November, HSI agents were able to download three files they found available from the suspect’s device through his IP address.

More charges may be forthcoming, as police indicate that other devices seized from Drown are still being reviewed. And he will get due process, as guaranteed by the Constitution.