The Dictatorship
Mother of Karoline Leavitt’s nephew tells of ‘no civilization’ in ICE detention
Bruna Ferreira, the mother of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew, spent 26 days in an ICE detention center. Six days after her releaseFerreira spoke to MS NOW’s Antonia Hylton about the experience.
“I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it with my own two eyes, if I didn’t hear it with my own two ears,” she said. “It’s not civil.”
While being held at an ICE detention center in a southern Louisiana, she shared the space with pregnant women and women who had been seeking medical attention for weeks, Ferreira said. “The only thing that I can think of is I’m so lucky that I’m healthy,” she said.
Inside, the detention center was freezing, and she and other detainees were only allowed outside for brief periods. “It’s just inhumane. It’s cruel. I can’t understand how people don’t see that this is a problem, especially because I’ve been a law-abiding citizen my entire life,” Ferreira said.
The 33-year-old was arrested by federal agents in Massachusetts on Nov. 12 while driving to pick her son up from school.
Ferreira’s attorney, Todd Pomerleau, told MS NOW that she was barricaded by masked and armed agents in five vehicles who surrounded her car and repeatedly asked, “Are you Bruna?”
Ferreira said that at first, she didn’t believe the Leavitt family was involved in her arrest. Now, she’s not so sure.
Ferreira said that at first, she didn’t believe the Leavitt family was involved in her arrest. Now, she’s not so sure. “It wasn’t an accident. How would they know her name, if it’s a random traffic stop?” Pomperleau said.
“The more that I look at all of the coincidences, you know, like how they knew that I was leaving to pick up Michael from school, how they knew my address,” Ferreira told Hylton. “How can someone know where I am, exactly where I’m going? You know, it just doesn’t make any sense.”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson called Ferreira “a criminal illegal alien” in a statement to MS NOW last Tuesday, adding that in 1999 she overstayed a tourist visa that required her to leave.
The statement claimed that a “Biden-appointed judge” granted Ferreira bond and that her deportation proceedings will continue, adding, “She will have periodic mandatory check-ins with ICE law enforcement to ensure she is abiding by the terms of her release.”
Ferreira told MS NOW that she came into the country legally on a visa from Brazil at just 6 years old to live with her parents. In 2012, she received temporary Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status under the Obama-era program that allows undocumented young people to receive temporary relief from deportation and to work. Since then, Ferreira said she has been working towards obtaining full legal citizenship.
DHS also alleged that in addition to violating immigration laws, Ferreira had a “previous arrest for battery.”
Pomerleau told MS NOW that the department is referring to an incident when 16-year-old Ferreira got into a fight with another girl outside a Dunkin Donuts. She received a summons to juvenile court over the incident, but the case was dismissed and she was never arrested.
In Massachusetts, such cases are protected by privacy laws and include confidential proceedings, Pomerleau said. He told MS NOW that he believes the incident must have been leaked to DHS, as the records are not accessible to the public. “As a lawyer, I can’t even access these records,” Pomerleau said.
“They’re claiming she’s a criminal, yet she’s never been arrested for anything other than this illegal, unconstitutional arrest on November the 12,” Pomerleau said.
Ferreira said that she still doesn’t feel free since her release from the nearly monthlong detention, telling MS NOW that “even when I’m back at home and I’m sleeping, I still feel like, you know, it’s not real, that I’m still in there.”
“It’s exhausting,” she added.
Ferreira said that she believes the American immigration system is impossible even for those who seek to follow its guidelines as precisely as possible.
“The system is broken. You know, if they ask you to do something, you do it; and then if you don’t, you know — you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It’s very hard to understand what they want from you,” Ferreira said.
Ferreira said she still has not seen her 11-year-old son. She shares custody of the boy with his father, Michael Leavitt, who is her ex-fiance and the press secretary’s brother. “I have been able to FaceTime him, but I have not been able to do what I had envisioned, which was go and surprise him and give him a hug,” Ferreira said.
Kyla Guilfoil
Kyla Guilfoil is a news associate for NBC News.
Antonia Hylton is co-anchor of “The Weekend: Primetime” and an award-winning correspondent for MS NOW.
The Dictatorship
Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.22.26: Why Trump backed both Republicans in a key S.C. race
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* In South Carolina’s gubernatorial raceDonald Trump endorsed Lt. Gov. Pam Evette last month. Last week, however, ahead of this week’s primary runoff election in the race, the president published an online item telling voters that “you can’t go wrong” with either Evette or state Attorney General Alan Wilson.
If this sounds at all familiar, it’s because Trump has done this before. Around this time two years ago, for example, he endorsed both Republicans running in a congressional primary in Arizona. And two years before that, he endorsed two leading contenders in a Senate primary in Missouri.
Only the president can say for sure why he ended up endorsing Evette and Wilson in the South Carolina race, though it’s worth emphasizing for context that GOP primary voters have already ignored his direction into two gubernatorial primaries this month, and it stands to reason that he hoped to avoid a third.
* We’re one day away from a variety of notable racesincluding but not limited to South Carolina’s gubernatorial race. There are also some congressional primaries in a handful of statesincluding Maryland, New York and Utah.
* In took a while, but the ballots have been tallied under Maine’s ranked-choice systemand we now know that Democrat Hannah Pingree, the former state House speaker, will face off against Republican Bobby Charles, who worked at the State Department during the Bush-Cheney era.
* As for Maine’s closely watched congressional racestate Auditor Matt Dunlap won the Democratic nomination in the battleground 2nd District, defeating state Sen. Joe Baldacci, who enjoyed the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Dunlap will run in the fall against a familiar figure: former Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who had moved to Florida a few years ago, but who returned to run for Congress.
* In California’s congressional special electiontwo Democratic candidates — state Sen. Aisha Wahab and Melissa Hernandez, a Bay Area Rapid Transit director — have advanced to an Aug. 18 special general election. The winner will fill the vacancy left by disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who resigned in April.
* In a new commercial shared first with MS NOWDemocrat James Talarico has launched his campaign’s first multimillion-dollar ad buy in Texas’ gubernatorial race. In the 30-second spot, Talarico focuses on affordability and the cost of living. The state lawmaker will face scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the fall.
* And in New Jersey, Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr.who has been missing from Capitol Hill since early March, will reportedly return to work on June 30according to a statement from his spokesperson. Neither Kean nor his office have offered any public information about why he has been away.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
The Dictatorship
Trump tries dual endorsement in South Carolina as his pick for governor flounders in polls
After President Donald Trump’s pick for governor in Iowa lost in the Republican primary earlier this month, the president argued that he “would have endorsed the other person” if he had “the proper information.”
Trump is taking no chances in the South Carolina gubernatorial primary. Over the weekend he rescinded his exclusive endorsement of Pamela Evette, the lieutenant governor, announcing instead that he would support both Evette and her runoff opponent, Alan Wilson, the state’s attorney general.
The move put Evette’s political future in jeopardy: Even before Trump’s dual endorsement, she trailed in limited public polling and was seen by political observers in South Carolina as a weak candidate with little to show besides the president’s coveted endorsement.
“Her chief distinction from Alan Wilson was that Trump endorsed her,” said Dr. Dubose Kapeluck, a professor of political science at the Citadel Military College of South Carolina.
Trump’s dual endorsement “was a kiss of death,” he told MS NOW.
Evette, who moved to South Carolina from Ohio to found a successful payroll and HR company in 2000, has been lieutenant governor since 2019, serving under Gov. Henry McMaster, who is term-limited.
In office, she has pursued meaningful but little-celebrated policies, like a key tort reform bill, according to Gil Gatch, a Republican member of the South Carolina state House and an Evette supporter.
But voters could be forgiven for knowing little about Evette besides the fact that Trump endorsed her, which he did just days before the June 9 primary. Visitors to her campaign website are greeted with a full-screen message labeling Evette as “Trump-endorsed.” The first line in her X bio states the same. Pro-Evette television ads are quick to tout the endorsement.
An accomplishment like tort reform, while noted on Evette’s website, “maybe could have been something that was highlighted more heavily,” Gatch told MS NOW.
The political makeup of South Carolina nearly guarantees the next governor will be whoever emerges on Tuesday between Evette and Wilson. They survived a crowded primary field on June 9, and nearly every challenger who fell short of the runoff publicly endorsed the attorney general.
“She’s just not a good candidate,” Josh Kimbrell, a state senator who failed to make the runoff and has since said he’d back Wilson, said of Evette.
“She kind of assumed this was a coronation, and that was never going to go over that well,” he added.
Even some pro-Trump voters were confused by the president’s initial endorsement of Evette, whom he called “a good friend, fighter, and WINNER” in a social media post in May.
“I have no clue why Trump would endorse Pamela Evette,” Leland Lemmons, a 30-year-old Trump supporter told MS NOW as he exited a polling site in the Greenville suburb of Easley on June 9.
“She’s served, you know, a decent time. I just haven’t seen much fruition of what she’s done in office,” he added.
In a post on Truth Social Friday announcing his dual endorsement, Trump wrote, “I can’t hurt one of them by only Endorsing the other, so, therefore, I am going to Endorse, for Governor of South Carolina, both Pam Evette and Alan Wilson!”
In a subsequent statement on X, Evette said, “I was proud to come in first as [Trump’s] endorsed candidate for Governor on June 9th. Looking forward to doing it again on June 23rd.”
After The Washington Post foreshadowed the dual endorsement last Tuesday, allies of Evette were quick to denounce the possibility.
“I would guess that’s fake news,” Suzanne Pucci, a member of Evette’s finance committee, told MS NOW of the chance Trump would also endorse Wilson. “She’s probably not real worried about it.”
Another close ally and supporter told MS NOW at the time the report was “a total, fabricated lie.”
“[Trump] is invested in Pamela Evette because she invested in him. He’s a loyal guy. That kind of stuff is important to him,” added the supporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“With or without Trump, I think she is going to win,” they said.
On Thursday, a senior campaign aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, brushed off the idea of a dual endorsement, telling MS NOW in a statement, “Pamela Evette has earned the complete and total endorsement of President Trump. She is the only Trump-endorsed candidate in this race and we look forward to delivering a big win for the president on Tuesday.”
Roughly 24 hours later, Trump retracted the exclusive endorsement.
Will McDuffie is a reporter for MS NOW.
As last week’s G7 summit in France got underway, a reporter asked Donald Trump whether his purported deal with Iran was final. “No, it’s not final,” the president replied. Later that day — during a visit to Versaillesof all places — he signed the framework anyway.
But moments after signing his name to the memorandum of understanding, Trump offered an unsubtle hint about what he was thinking at the time. Amid applause from those around him, the American president pointed down and then up while saying“Oil down, stocks up.”
In other words, Trump’s focus had nothing to do with natural security and everything to do with the economy. What’s more, the four-word phrase was part of a larger and underappreciated pattern. The Washington Post reported:
In the more than 100 days since President Donald Trump launched a war with Iran, he has offered a shifting list of reasons for why he started the conflict. But in explaining his push for peace, he named a priority much closer to home: protecting the stock market.
“I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Alpine spa town of Évian-les-Bains, France, after the Group of Seven summit.
As the summit wrapped up, the Republican similarly said“I’ve studied presidents, some good, some bad, some great. Not too many are great and some really bad. … And the one president I did not want to be was the late, great Herbert Hoover. I didn’t want that and who knows what would have happened.”
He pushed the same point in an interview with Axios, which was released over the weekend.
“If I went further, the stock market would be much lower,” the president said. “Now think of this: I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover.”
The comments came days after Trump similarly argued“The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people.”
Whether the president fully appreciates the implications of his own rhetoric, this string of comments doesn’t just shed light on his motivations for accepting a defeat, it also suggests he saw his failed policy in Iran as pushing the global economy toward a dangerous cliff.
In other words, based on Trump’s own comments, the war he started was poised to create an “economic catastrophe,” which he was desperate to avoid — and which led him to accept a framework that empowered Iran to get what it wanted in exchange for effectively no concessions at all.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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