Anti-Trump protesters gather nationwide in ‘Hands Off’ rallies as president golfs in Florida: Live updates

Glenn Thompson’s cardboard cutout took some real abuse on Saturday, as a room full of Pennsylvania Democrats let out their frustrations.

A few other members of the state’s congressional delegation might be thankful that his likeness was the only one on display.

Thompson, on his fourth term in the House of Representatives, is just one of dozens of Republican lawmakers who have scaled back public events or avoided them completely amid nationwide outrage from Americans set to see steep cuts to funding for programs in their communities and their own personal safety nets under a Trump 2.0 agenda. Town hall events have become raucous gatherings where Republicans like Victoria Spartz, Chuck Edwards and others have been forced to confront angry voters demanding Congress take action to stop Elon Musk’s DOGE firing spree affecting the Social Security Administration, USAID and other agencies.

John Bowden has the story.

The Department of Justice is seeking an 87-month sentence for former New York Republican Rep. George Santos after he pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft last August.

“Santos’ history and characteristics are troubling in the extreme. Santos is a pathological liar and fraudster,” states the 26-page sentencing memo from the department. “For years, Santos manufactured and promoted a fictionalized biography, one that depicted himself as a highly educated, independently wealthy, successful businessman, all premised on a heap of lies.”

Santos was elected in the 2022 midterms when he flipped a Democratic district covering parts of Long Island and Queens.

His life story, however, was quickly found to be largely fabricated. His claims that he worked at top firms on Wall Street and had attended a particular college were debunked, and the financing of his campaign raised questions.

Santos was expelled from Congress in December 2023, after only 11 months as a representative. He was only the sixth member to be expelled; the other five were members of the confederacy.

In its sweeping deportation campaign against Venezuelan immigrants, the Trump administration has repeatedly relied on tattoos to determine whether someone is a member of the feared criminal syndicate Tren de Aragua.

But The Independent has found that the U.S. government’s examples of TDA tattoos, created under the Biden administration, include art by artists in the UK and India, who say the tattoos they etched had innocent meanings. One honored the birth of a child, while another appears to commemorate the Aussie rock band AC/DC.

“It is mind-blowing that this is being used as an example of gang tattoos. It makes no sense at all,” the British artist whose clock tattoo appears in a 2024 Department of Homeland Security briefing on “detecting and identifying” TDA members told The Independent. “I have no relationship to Venezuelan gangs, and my art has nothing to do with them.”

Io Dodds has the details.

Millions flocked to the streets across the country in protest of President Donald Trump’s administration’s cuts to health program funding, mass firings of federal workers and steps toward shuttering entire agencies.

“Hands Off” protests, organized by nearly 200 advocacy groups, cropped up in more than 1,000 locations across the U.S. and around the globe Saturday in what became the largest day of collective action since Trump was inaugurated for a second time.

The protests aimed to put a stop to the “most brazen power grab in modern history,” organizers said. Millions — from Los Angeles to London — marched to advocate for civil rights, healthcare, democracy, workers’ rights and LGBTQ+ rights that have been under “assault” by the Trump administration and GOP Congress members, they added.

The Trump administration is arguing that a federal judge didn’t have the authority to order the return of a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, a Saturday filing reveals.

On Friday. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the administration to “facilitate and effectuate” Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. by late Monday night. On Saturday, government lawyers filed an emergency appeal, requesting the court pause the judge’s order.

“A judicial order that forces the Executive to engage with a foreign power in a certain way, let alone compel a certain action by a foreign sovereign, is constitutionally intolerable,” the attorneys wrote in a filing in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The appeals court asked Abrego Garcia’s lawyers to respond to the government’s filing by Sunday afternoon, according to the Associated Press.

The arrest and wrongful removal of a Salvadoran immigrant from the United States was unconstitutional “from the moment he was seized,” a federal judge told lawyers for Donald Trump’s administration on Friday.

“He was apprehended without legal basis … and without due process,” Judge Xinis said.

Alex Woodward has more on the story.

“It’s actually even better than a plan, because it’s a series of random numbers, like the numbers on the computer screen in Severance,” he added. “You have no idea what the hell they mean, but I know what the numbers mean … They mean we’re gonna make America wealthy again. You know you’re gonna check your stock portfolio in a couple days and think ‘I’m almost too wealthy.’”

Loomer’s comments come after Trump fired several members of the National Security Council following a meeting with the conspiracy theorist during which she pressed the president to remove those she deemed disloyal.

The director of the U.S. National Security Agency, Gen. Timothy Haugh, who also heads the US Cyber Command, was dismissed on Thursday, along with NSA deputy director Wendy Noble.