Donald Trump said that undocumented workers are “naturally” better at farm labor than other people, in an interview on CNBC Tuesday.

“These people—you can’t replace them very easily. You know, people that live in the inner city are not doing that work,” Trump said. “These people do it naturally, naturally.”

Trump appeared to acknowledge in the interview that his ruthless mass deportation campaign is hurting farms, which rely on undocumented immigrants as an easily exploitable labor force. He said that he’s planning to release new immigration rules and regulations, claiming, “We’re taking care of our farmers. We can’t let our farmers not have anybody.”

But what about taking care of the workers? No need, as far as Trump is concerned. They’re “naturally” predisposed to backbreaking labor.

“I said … to a farmer the other day, ‘What happens if they get a bad back?’ He said, ‘They don’t get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back they die.’ I said, ‘That’s interesting isn’t it?’” Trump continued.

“These are, in many ways, very special people.”

It is true that undocumented workers often take unwanted, difficult jobs—but that is not due to being “special” but to a lack of options and a vulnerability to exploitation. Trump’s comments traffic in the exact type of centuries-old racist myths that, by advancing the idea that certain races are made to labor and others are made to rule, promote white supremacy.

Trump on undocumented farm workers: "People that live in the inner city are not doing that work. They've tried, we've tried, everybody tried. They don't do it. These people do it naturally. Naturally ... they don't get a bad back, because if they get a bad back, they die." pic.twitter.com/HxXtKtIPLa

This time last year, Donald Trump was swearing through his teeth that he wasn’t affiliated with Project 2025. But little more than half a year into his second administration, the initiative is reportedly already 47 percent complete.

The Project 2025 Tracker, which labels itself as a “comprehensive, community-driven initiative” to follow the implementation of the 900-page far-right manifesto, has counted the progression of 115 “complete” proposals out of the project’s 317 total. Some federal agencies—such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and USAID—have already been entirely reworked according to Project 2025’s goals. Project 2025 had six goals for USAID.

The White House, for which Project 2025 had 13 listed objectives, is currently 92 percent complete, according to the tracker.

Another 64 proposals are currently “in progress,” according to the tracker, including initiatives at the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department, the Energy Department, and the Department of Commerce. They include policies that would require federally funded schools to administer military entrance tests to all students, adding citizenship questions to the census, rescinding elements of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, phasing out federal funding for low-income children in schools, classifying K-12 studies relating to “gender ideology” as sexual offenses, allowing companies to skirt overtime pay, and abolishing the Federal Reserve, among dozens of others.

Trump faced enormous blowback from conservatives last summer after he was accused of being tied in with the Heritage Foundation, the christo-nationalist group that drafted the manifesto. But he managed to change the opinion of American voters by lying repeatedly.

“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in July 2024. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying, and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

Since Inauguration Day, Trump has packed his administration with Project 2025 appointees, including its architect, Russell Vought, whom Trump tapped to run the Office of Management and Budget.

The Department of Justice says it wants to release transcripts of grand jury testimony from Jeffrey Epstein’s and Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal trials. But Maxwell and her legal team, who have been meeting with the Trump administration and are angling for a pardon, filed a response Tuesday opposing the release.

“Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Ghislaine Maxwell is not,” the court filing begins. “Whatever interest the public may have in Epstein, that interest cannot justify a broad intrusion into grand jury secrecy in a case where the defendant is alive, her legal options are viable, and her due process rights remain.”

According to the filing, Trump’s DOJ said that Maxwell could review the transcripts of her trial’s testimony before they were published but “the Court denied that request.” Because of this, the testimony might contain information that could damage Maxwell’s ongoing legal case, and should be kept secret, the filing argues.

Last month, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met with Maxwell in an attempt to gain more information about the Epstein case. Those who are skeptical of Trump’s motives worried that Maxwell might lie to clear his name in exchange for a pardon. The administration is still deciding whether it will release the audio of these meetings.

Maxwell is currently petitioning to appeal her case before the Supreme Court and overturn her conviction, arguing that a non-prosecution agreement Epstein made with federal prosecutors in Florida should apply to her conviction.

A new CNN report reveals that the Trump administration possesses recordings of the Justice Department’s much-scrutinized closed-door meetings with Ghislaine Maxwell.

The recordings, per CNN, are now being transcribed and digitized, and “discussions over potential publication of the transcripts and audio” are ongoing. If the transcript is released,........

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