The Trump administration is appealing to its ideological base to fill vacancies at the Department of Homeland Security.  

White House deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller announced to his followers on X Monday night that the office of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services was looking for “homeland defenders” to approve or deny immigration applications.

“Calling all patriots. USCIS is now hiring ‘HOMELAND DEFENDERS,’” Miller wrote. “Your job will be to interview applicants for green cards, work visas and citizenship for approval or denial. Great pay, flexible hours, stay local. Sign up to be a Homeland Defender today!”

It was not immediately clear if “homeland defender” would be a new position at USCIS, or if it would differ in any significant way from the work already done by immigration service officers at the agency. But whether Miller is referring to a new title or an old one, the pay doesn’t seem to be all that he’s chalking it up to be: a batch of new job listings for immigration officers at USCIS describe the starting salary as nearly $35,000. (Job listings for similar roles in other areas of the country pay up to $107,000, according to USCIS’s career website.)

The openings come just weeks before DHS is set to introduce a more rigorous application process for wannabe green card holders. Those changes will go into effect on October 20.

Miller’s coded language paints a vivid picture of exactly who the white nationalist would like to see dictating the demographics of admitted immigrants. The 40-year-old has tasked federal agents with arresting 3,000 undocumented immigrants per day—a quota so astronomical that it has forced the agency to find unconventional subjects of detention, including noncriminal legal residents and even U.S. citizens. The result has been mass, intra-agency dejection: Former employees claim that ICE agents have reportedly never been so miserable.

After sending his state’s National Guard troops to help garden in Washington D.C., Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry is now begging President Donald Trump to deploy more soldiers in his own cities.

In a letter sent to War Secretary Pete Hegseth Monday, Landry urged the Defense Department to deploy 1,000 National Guard troops “to urban centers” throughout Louisiana. “Louisiana currently faces a convergence of elevated violent crime rates in Shreveport, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans coupled with critical personnel shortages within local law enforcement,” Landry wrote.

But in August, Landry approved sending 135 members of the Louisiana National Guard to Washington to assist in Trump’s federal takeover there. After finishing a sweeping crackdown on the city’s poorest, least white areas with high crime rates, service members have since been enlisted to help Trump’s effort to beautify the nation’s capital.

Like many of the Democratic-led cities targeted by Trump’s federal takeovers, Louisiana’s urban centers have majority-Black populations. But unlike those cities, Louisiana actually has a crime problem.

Louisiana’s homicide rate in 2023 was 19.3 per 100,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s more than 300 percent higher than the homicide rate of the most recent site of Trump’s federal law enforcement takeover: Oregon, which had a homicide rate of 4.6 per 100,000 people that same year.

Shreveport, which is in House Speaker Mike Johnson’s district, landed at number 25 on Newsweek’s recent list of the 30 U.S. cities (with at least 100,000 residents) that had the highest number of violent crimes against people. In 2024, Baton Rouge had a murder rate of 36 people per 100,000 and New Orleans had a murder rate of 31 per 100,000. Baton Rouge’s murder rate is twice the rate in Washington. Meanwhile, Portland, Oregon, saw a 51 percent decrease in homicides in the first half of 2025.

While appearing on Fox News Monday night, Landry struck a sycophantic tone. “President Trump has amassed the best Cabinet of public servants and folks who really want to fight crime,” he said.

“Why would you not want your citizens to be safe?”

But Landry’s plea doesn’t detract from the lawlessness of Trump’s campaign to intimidate Democratic-led cities, and concerns that Trump’s sweeping crackdown and cuts to crime prevention programs could undermine already decreasing crime rates.

In a rare gathering Tuesday, top military leaders were summoned from across the globe to be lectured by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about new directives meant to uphold a “warrior ethos” in the military.

An issue on which the former Fox News pundit placed particular emphasis was the supposed crisis of “fat troops.”

“It all starts with physical fitness and appearance,” Hegseth told the seasoned commanders, being sure to pat himself on the back in that regard: “If the Secretary of War can do regular hard P.T. [physical training], so can every member of our joint force.”

“Frankly,” he continued, “it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops. Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon, and leading commands around the country and the world. It’s a bad look. It is bad, and it’s not who we are.”

Secretary Hegseth: "Frankly, it's tiring to look out at combat formations or really any formation and see fat troops. Likewise, it's completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon." pic.twitter.com/iiqXUZA0UY

Reacting to the remarks, some social media users poked fun at the weight of the man at the very top of the armed forces’ chain of command: President Trump. Among them was California Governor Gavin Newsom, who frequently trolls the president online—this time posting an unflattering photo of Trump........

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