Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was brutally called out Tuesday after she claimed the United States was not deporting its own citizens.

During a hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Representative Lauren Underwood of Illinois asked Noem if she believed that the U.S. government had the authority to deport American citizens.

“No, and we are not deporting U.S. citizens,” Noem said.

“OK great, I’m so happy to hear that you do not believe that the law gives you that authority, because the federal government has no authority under U.S. laws to deport any American citizen,” Underwood said. “And as I know everyone viewing this hearing today knows that several American citizens have been deported to date.”

“No, they haven’t. That is not true,” Noem replied.

“Secretary Noem, that was not a question,” Underwood said.

Last month, the Trump administration deported three American children to Honduras, alongside their immigrant mothers. Attorneys for the mothers have said that they wanted their children to remain in the U.S., but authorities have said the opposite. Border czar Tom Homan insisted that the children hadn’t technically been deported, and that the mothers had made a “parental decision” to remain with their children.

“If we didn’t do it the story today would be, ‘Trump administration separating families again,’” Homan said. “No, we’re keeping families together.”

While the official number of deportees who are actually American citizens is unknown, The Washington Post documented at least 12 instances in which U.S. citizens had been swept up in Trump’s immigration crackdown. A DHS spokesperson told the outlet, “We don’t have data to provide you on the deportation of U.S. citizens because we don’t deport U.S. citizens.”

Crucially, as the Trump administration continues to conduct deportations while denying due process to detainees, it’s likely the number of U.S. citizens wrongly removed will only continue to rise.

Underwood also asked Noem if she believed that the Constitution guaranteed due process to everyone in America. Noem repeatedly refused to give a “yes” or “no” answer.

“Ma’m, I am trying to ascertain your understanding of the law as it applies to your department, and you as its leader should be able to give us a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, because judge after judge has ruled that the law is not being followed,” Underwood said.

The Trump administration has continued to fight judges, flouting a Supreme Court ruling requiring the government to allow detainees “to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.” As a result of Donald Trump’s mounting threats against the judiciary, at least 11 federal judges and their families have been threatened and harassed since they ruled against Trump on issues of deportations, federal funding, and his war on “wokeness.”

Trump has instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into the legality of deporting prisoners who are U.S. citizens to foreign prisons, as he did with 238 Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador in March. He even said he’d help fund the construction of new prisons overseas. Even though Trump’s scheme to outsource the incarceration of American prisoners has absolutely no basis in U.S. law, Bondi refused to give answers about the (il)legality of the idea.

The Supreme Court is allowing Trump to temporarily move forward with his ban on transgender people serving in the military. The court’s three liberal Justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—all dissented, according to the brief order.

Trump’s ban “generally disqualifies from military service individuals who have gender dysphoria or have undergone medical interventions for gender dysphoria,” according to Solicitor General D. John Sauer.

Trans people are a hindrance to “military effectiveness and lethality,” Sauer wrote in a filing to the high court’s justices.

Litigation over the constitutionality of the ban is still ongoing. A Bush-appointed judge in a lower court blocked Trump’s executive order banning transgender troops in the military, which he signed on his first day in office.

Judge Benjamin Settle in Washington issued a nationwide injunction in March, ruling there’s “no claim and no evidence that [plaintiff] is now, or ever was, a detriment to her unit’s cohesion, or to the military’s lethality or readiness, or that she is mentally or physically unable to continue her service.”

Trump’s ban—and the claims that trans people are worse at operating lethal machinery simply because they are trans—is nonsensical. This is purely a culture-war item, a bone to throw at a base that’s been obsessed with transgender people for years now.

This story has been updated.

Senator Thom Tillis is likely just tanked Trump’s nominee for U.S. Attorney to the District of Columbia.

Tillis is opposing Trump’s pick, Ed Martin—who has been described as a “far-right election denier” and a “conspiracy theorist”—on the grounds of his legal and political support for January 6 insurrectionists.

“Mr. Martin did a good job of explaining the one area that I think he’s probably right, that there were some people that were over-prosecuted, but there were some [200 to 300 of them] that should have never gotten a pardon,” Tillis told reporters Tuesday, adding that he met Martin the night before.

“If Mr. Martin were being put forth as a U.S. attorney for any district except the district where January 6 happened, the protest happened, I’d probably support him, but not in this district.…........

© New Republic