President Donald Trump’s obsessive focus on deporting immigrants has led to extreme changes at the Department of Homeland Security and undermined efforts to combat child exploitation and sex trafficking, a new report found.

According to The New York Times, the department has been forced to shift its priorities and sideline other important law enforcement activities to make way for the president’s agenda.

Agents investigating sexual crimes against children have been temporarily reassigned, a national security probe into the Iranian black market slowed and lost momentum, and agents working on sex trafficking issues have been forced to pause their work in order to support the Trump administration’s deportation goals. Even the Coast Guard has been pulled in to aid the deportation work, the Times reported.

The new data that the report is based on comes from previously unseen internal DHS documents, and interviews with more than 60 officials.

People inside the agency spoke of being “berated” by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller for not arresting enough people. Yet the Trump administration’s extensive focus on immigration hasn’t played out the way they might have imagined. Less than 40 percent of people ICE arrests carry criminal convictions, the report says.

The Trump administration’s pressure campaign extended to all parts of the agency.

As of August, there are currently more than 60,000 people being detained by DHS, and the Trump administration has shown no signs of pulling back anytime soon.

While so many government agencies have been gutted, depriving Americans of much needed aid and assistance, DHS has received a hefty funding boost. ICE is expected to grow its staff by 66 percent over the next few years.

Hany Farid, a computer scientist who worked on software that detects child sexual abuse materials and aids law enforcement, told Times reporters that it was heartbreaking. “You can’t say you care about kids when you’re diverting actual resources that are protecting children,” he said.

The internet had a field day this week when the House Oversight Committee released thousands of billionaire child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s emails to the public—including an exchange with his brother Mark that seemingly referred to Donald Trump performing fellatio on someone named “Bubba.”

Now, Mark Epstein has come out to remove a modicum of the mystery surrounding the remark, by revealing who Bubba is not.

In the message in question, from March 2018, Mark Epstein told his brother to ask former Trump adviser Steve Bannon whether Russian President Vladimir Putin “has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba.”

Jeffrey Epstein replied, “and i thought- I had tsuris,” using the Yiddish word for “troubles.”

Because “Bubba” is a nickname for Bill Clinton—who, like Trump, had a relationship with Epstein—social media was awash with jokes and speculation that Mark Epstein was, in jest or not, describing kompromat depicting the current and former presidents.

Mark Epstein issued a statement Saturday, shared online by Business Insider’s Jacob Shamsian, which described the emails as “simply part of a humorous private exchange between two brothers.”

“For the avoidance of doubt, the reference to ‘Bubba’ in this correspondence is not, in any way, a reference to former President Bill Clinton,” the statement continues. “Any attempt to conflate that reference with President Clinton, or to read sweeping implications into them, misrepresents both the purpose and the tone of the original correspondence.”

But while clarifying the unserious nature of the message, the statement leaves the true identity of Bubba unknown.

Senator Bill Cassidy gave a puzzling answer about his role in placing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services.

During a Sunday appearance on Face The Nation, moderator Margaret Brennan asked if Cassidy—a physician whose support of vaccines has put him at odds with Kennedy—regrets his February confirmation vote.

Brennan observed that Cassidy decided to vote for Kennedy after receiving assurance that a key CDC vaccine advisory committee would be maintained “without changes”; Kennedy went on to fire all of its members, anyway, and appoint new ones, including vaccine skeptics, in their place.

In lieu of an answer, Cassidy offered the following gem: “You live life forward. Again, you just do,” he said, going on to quote Matthew 6:34. “Let the day’s own troubles be sufficient for the day.”

The senator continued, “He and I have publicly disagreed on some matters, but I strongly agree with him on others, and so, so that’s how I’ll answer your question.”

“That sounds, um, like yes,” Brennan noted.

Online, social media users mocked Cassidy’s enigmatic comments. “Translation: Yes, but I’ll pretend it’s a philosophical riddle,” wrote one. “Cassidy sounds like a fortune cookie,” posted another.

Before giving his nonanswer, Cassidy noted that “every reporter asks me that.” One would think he’d have a better response by now.

Far-right politician Marjorie Taylor Greene became embroiled in a bitter public fight with President Donald Trump this weekend which led her to receive threats against her........

© New Republic