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Opinion | The Reporters

Fox Host Defends Trump Tanking the Stock Market: ‘I Don’t Really Care About My 401(k)’

Fox News’ The Five co-host Jeanine Pirro declared bluntly that she didn’t “really care” about her 401(k) on Thursday after the stock market nosedived in response to President Donald Trump’s new tariffs.

During a debate about Trump’s controversial tariffs, and their economic effect in the United States, Pirro declared:

When President Trump first started going after Canada and Mexico, everybody was like, “Oh my gosh, they’re our neighbors, they’re wonderful people, why are we doing this? We love the Canadians.” Well, the truth is China is making cars in Mexico and Canada and not paying a tariff on them and selling them in the United States while they are putting a tariff on our cars. Look, you are going to tariff my goods, but I’m going to lay down and let you roll all over me and sell your stuff with virtually no tariff on it? Enough. And this is what Donald Trump ran on and he’s delivering.

The Fox News co-host then said, “And you know what? I don’t really care about my 401(k) today. You know why? Not that I can afford it, not that it isn’t important, not that I’m not at a point in my life where I should be worried about my 401(k), because I am, but this is what I believe. I believe in this man.”

She explained, “I believe that what we are seeing now with his bringing in a trillion dollars in business and manufacturing, and companies moving back to the United States, and seeing what we saw during Covid when we couldn’t– we had all those supply chain problems, we couldn’t get medicine in this country, other countries were prioritizing themselves before they were sending stuff to us, it’s about time we recognized we’ve got to have manufacturing in this country, and we need to bring them to the table.”

Pirro concluded, “And Donald Trump is the only one who can do it because he’s got the biggest consumer base in the world, he’s not afraid of anybody.”

The Dow went down by 2.7% on Thursday after Trump unveiled new “reciprocal tariffs” on dozens of countries and territories, including uninhabited islands .

Watch above via Fox News.

The post Fox Host Defends Trump Tanking the Stock Market: ‘I Don’t Really Care About My 401(k)’ first appeared on Mediaite .

Saquon Barkley shouts out Ivanka Trump, Kushner brothers after having ‘amazing time’ at summit

Saquon Barkley already got to hang with members of the Trump family before meeting President Donald Trump later this month.

Barkley is the star running back of the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles, who took home their second Lombardi Trophy in February.

The Birds were invited to the White House shortly after their 40-22 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs, and they will visit April 28.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

Before that, Barkley attended the J.P. Morgan Tech 100 Summit, which Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, attended with husband Jared Kushner, their son Theodore and Jared’s brother, Joshua.

“Had an amazing time at the J.P. Morgan tech 100 summit! Want to give a shoutout to Madhu for having me out. Want to also give a shoutout to everyone who made it amazing,” Barkley posted on X.

Barkley included four photos from the event in the post, one of which included him speaking on a panel with Tom Brady and another with Trump and Theodore.

Barkley also signed Theodore’s ball, “A future star!”

Earlier this year, Ivanka was paid a visit by Tua Tagovailoa and Braxton Berrios .

The Eagles’ invite to the White House was somewhat controversial. There had been online rumors the team would turn down an invitation, just as it did seven years ago.

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However, Karoline Leavitt said the team “enthusiastically accepted” this year.

Head coach Nick Sirianni said earlier this week  he was “really excited” for the opportunity.

“I’m really excited to go, yeah. What an honor. What an honor to be able to go to the White House. Teams that have been able to win championships have been doing that for a long time, and I’m really honored to go and really excited to go,” Sirianni said this week .

The Florida Panthers recently visited the president to celebrate their Stanley Cup victory last summer, and the Los Angeles Dodgers will be visiting Sunday after defeating the New York Yankees in the World Series in October.

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X , and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter .

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Trump Says Conspiracy Theorist Laura Loomer ‘Makes Recommendations’ and ‘Sometimes I Listen to Those’

President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force on Thursday that he often listens to advice from far-right activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer.

Trump denied reports Loomer played a role in his administration’s decision to fire three National Security Council staffers after she laid out grievances against them.

Loomer was present during a Wednesday Oval Office meeting along with National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. Per numerous reports, Loomer accused the officials who were let go of being “neocons.”

Axios reported three people were dismissed when Loomer said they “slipped through” a vetting process to ensure no George W. Bush-era Republicans ended up working for Trump.

The New York Times reported , “Ms. Loomer walked into the White House with a sheaf of papers, which amounted to a mass of opposition research attacking the character and loyalty of numerous N.S.C. officials, two of the people said. She proceeded to excoriate them in front of their boss, the national security adviser Michael Waltz, who was also in the meeting.”

Aboard Air Force One, Trump confirmed some staffers had been fired. He denied Loomer had anything to do with the firings during a conversation with numerous reporters.

“Yeah, so Laura Loomer is a very good patriot,” Trump said when asked about the meeting. “She’s a very strong person and I saw her yesterday for a little while she has – she makes recommendations of things and people, and sometimes I listen to those recommendations like I do with everybody. I listen to everybody and then I make a decision. But I saw her yesterday she was at the ceremony. She’s – she’ll always have something to say – usually very constructive.”

Trump said Loomer made some job recommendations but denied he fired anyone on her behalf.

“She recommended certain people for jobs,” Trump said. “Well, she’ll recommend [firings] too, but yesterday she recommended some people for jobs.”

Trump was also asked who Loomer had recommended for White House jobs.

“Well, I don’t want to say that,” he replied. “But she’s recommended some good people over the years. She’s been in the party a long time, she’s done a good job.”

Watch above via Fox News.

The post Trump Says Conspiracy Theorist Laura Loomer ‘Makes Recommendations’ and ‘Sometimes I Listen to Those’ first appeared on Mediaite .

Report: Joe Biden needed fluorescent tape on floor to know where to walk

Joe Biden addresses America on Monday, Aug. 1, 2022. (Video screenshot)

Joe Biden addresses America on Monday, Aug. 1, 2022. (Video screenshot)
Joe Biden addresses America on Monday, Aug. 1, 2022.

The fact that Joe Biden was declining mentally was no secret to anyone who saw him walking or talking or interacting with people during the last part of his presidency.

After all, he already had been described by a special counsel who gave him a pass for violating federal law regarding government documents as a senior citizen with a failing memory.

But just how bad it got will surprise many: He “needed fluorescent tape fixed to the carpet to show him where to walk at events.”

That’s according to a report assembled by the Daily Mail.

“That way the octogenarian would know where to go without having someone to guide him,” it explained.

And when he was preparing for his now infamous debate with Donald Trump, he “seemed to think he was ‘President of NATO’ rather than the United States.”

The report cites several books, probably at least four, that are being prepared about his term in the White House.

In a book planned by author Chris Whipple, Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff for two years and adviser for the 2024 campaign, talked about preparing for the debate that ended Biden’s career.

“We sat around the table. [Biden] had answers on cards, and he was just extremely exhausted. And I was struck by how out of touch with American politics he was. He was just very, very focused on his interactions with NATO leaders. He just became very enraptured with being the head of NATO.”

Whipple noted Klain “wondered half-seriously if Biden thought he was president of NATO instead of the U.S.”

The tape was needed in New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s house so that Biden “wouldn’t get lost” after the debate, the report said.

Tape on stages to mark locations is routine for politicians, but “Biden needed the trail of bright markings to serve as ‘colorful bread crumbs [that] showed the leader of the free world where to walk,’” it explained.

Authors Jonathan Allen and Arnie Parnes have another planned book, and explained Biden would know “to look for that.”

His verbal and mental flubs already are legend, with a book detailing the multitudes, including when he told an audience member to stand up and let others see him, even though the person was in a wheelchair.

He also called, during news conferences, for dead people to be noticed.

Further, Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf have yet another book coming out, and though Biden gave no interviews to the writers, more details are expected to be revealed.

Klain told Whipple that during preparations for the debate, Biden lasted only 45 minutes during a scheduled 90-minute mock debate, and didn’t seem to grasp the topics.

The second mock debate ended even more quickly: “I’m just too tired to continue and I’m afraid of losing my voice here and I feel bad. I just need some sleep. I’ll be fine tomorrow,” Biden said.

Prominent Democrats defended Biden’s capabilities up to the point of the debate and for a few, even after.

In a report at Fox News, Biden campaign aide Ashley Allison charged she felt “lied to” over what she had been told about Biden’s status.

“I think I hadn’t been around the president before that debate, and I worked for Joe Biden. And if the people around him knew that he was not capable, it is unacceptable to me that they allowed him to go onto that stage. I deserve better as a voter, not even as a Democrat, as a voter and as an American, I do.”

 

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‘MythBusters’ star Adam Savage explores longevity and life hacks: ‘There’s no magic secret’

Former “MythBusters” star Adam Savage is exploring the science of longevity, asking how lifestyle choices, stress and even sleep affect how long we live.

Savage, now a YouTube creator and head of the channel Tested, has partnered with health technology company Medtronic to engage in discussions about longevity. While not a researcher himself, he has taken a deep dive into scientific insights from experts and reflected on his own experiences.

“Longevity has always been a fascination for me,” Savage told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview. 

“I mean, who doesn’t want to know how to live better and maybe even longer? But the real question is what actually works?” 

HUMANOID ROBOT STUNS WITH PERFECT SIDE-FLIP ACROBATICS

He credits his “MythBusters” experience with fueling his passion for scientific exploration

“Making that show legitimized the practice of science and engineering to me,” Savage said. “It made me realize how much of our world can be tested, questioned and improved through experimentation.”

Through his discussions with people on the street for Medtronic, Savage has uncovered key lifestyle factors affecting longevity. He noted a cultural shift in what we consider to be old age, highlighting that people today consider themselves “young-ish” for longer. 

Savage also pointed to Blue Zones, regions known for long life expectancy, but questioned whether longevity there stems simply from location or cultural practices.

“We assume people in these areas live longer because of where they are, but what if it’s really just the way they live? That’s the part that fascinates me,” he said. 

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“There’s no magic secret. It’s a mix of daily habits — what you eat, how you move, how you interact with your community, how you handle stress. All those things matter.”

Savage has taken a personal interest in testing different longevity strategies in his own life. He spoke candidly with Fox News Digital about his journey with intermittent fasting, which helped him lose 25 pounds and eliminate sleep apnea. 

“It’s crazy how much of a difference it made,” he said. “I didn’t just lose weight. I felt sharper, I slept better and I stopped snoring. It was like flipping a switch on my health.”

He also reflected on his past smoking habits and what it took to quit. 

“I had to admit I wasn’t smoking for enjoyment,” Savage said. “I was just doing it out of habit. Once I realized that, it was easy to quit.”

On alcohol, Savage dismissed the idea of a universal approach, arguing that studies conflict. While he personally cut back, he emphasized that people shouldn’t feel guilty about their lifestyle choices. 

“I’m a big believer in not feeling guilty about the things that you do to the core, whether it’s smoking, whether it’s watching something dumb or puzzling for 100 hours at a time,” he said. “I don’t care about any of those. We all do these things to sort of bring relaxation and down regulate. I just think that alcohol is an especially poor down regulator in the final analysis.”

Beyond lifestyle choices, medical advancements are playing an increasingly critical role in extending both lifespan and “healthspan,” the years we live without serious disease. Medtronic, which focuses on healthcare technology globally, has developed medical devices designed to manage chronic conditions, improve heart health and advance minimally invasive surgeries.

According to Medtronic, as people live longer, the focus is shifting toward enhancing not just lifespan but quality of life. The company’s latest innovations include artificial intelligence -driven healthcare monitoring, robotic-assisted surgeries and advanced pacemakers, all aimed at improving long-term health outcomes. Savage also spoke about the psychological aspects of aging, emphasizing that mindset and community play a significant role in longevity. 

Medtronic claims the first person to live to 150 may already have been born. When asked if there is an upper limit to human life, Savage replied, “I think right now 150 is a very realistic target to be shooting for and to be discussing.

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“That’s really what science foreshadowing is,” added Savage. “It’s about asking these questions and seeing, ‘OK, what numbers are unrealistic.’ I think 40 years ago, 150 would have seemed radically unrealistic. Today it seems more realistic, and I think it’s entirely reasonable that, let’s say, by 2040, we may all have a different cultural answer to that question.”

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MUSK FLOPS IN WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT RACE: LIBERAL JUDGE ELECTED BY LARGE MARGIN

And they say Disney’s live action remake of Snow White is a flop.

Elon Musk’s full-court press to defeat a liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court judge bombed — bigtime — and now it’s the Democrats who are singing “Whistle While You Work.”

The polarizing billionaire turned a vote for a Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice into a referendum on him and President Donald Trump. But for once nationalization of a local election wasn’t soley focused on President Donald Trump. Musk spent more than $25 million to try and defeat liberal Susan Crawford and elect Brad Schimel, a former Republican Attorney general and County circuit judge. Musk held a big ra;;u Sunday night. He proclaimed the future of civilization was at stake in the vote. He Musk handed out two $1 million checks to two people connected with Republican causes in a kind of lottery. .

Musk was accused of trying to bribe voters and buy a Supreme Court just as many believe he bought himself the White House and an unprecedented position of power in the Trump administration. Democrats turned his exceedingly high profile and increasing unpopularity into their mantra and the vote became about Musk. Could his money and people he brought in to canvass voters pay off?

It didn’t. NBC News:

Susan Crawford has won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, NBC News projects, allowing liberals to maintain their narrow majority on the battleground state’s highest court — and defying Elon Musk after he spent millions of dollars to oppose her.

Crawford, a Dane County circuit judge who was backed by Democrats, secured a 10-year term on the court over Brad Schimel, a Waukesha County circuit judge and a former Republican attorney general. As the first major battleground state election of President Donald Trump’s second term, the technically nonpartisan contest drew national attention and became the most expensive state Supreme Court race in U.S. history.

The outcome is a setback for Trump and his billionaire adviser, Musk. Trump endorsed Schimel in the final stretch of the race, while Musk injected himself into the center of it, spending huge sums of money, visiting Wisconsin days out from Election Day and frequently posting about the race on his X feed. In turn, Democrats and progressive groups made Musk their primary villain, attacking his influence on the race and his efforts to slash federal jobs and the government through the Department of Government Efficiency.

“As a little girl growing up in Chippewa Falls, I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world for justice in Wisconsin,” Crawford told supporters Tuesday night. “And we won.”

In a brief concession speech, Schimel said, “I knew I had to put my all in,” but that “you gotta accept the results.”

And:

Crawford’s victory also means liberals will maintain a 4-3 advantage on the court for at least another year heading into a term when it could decide cases about abortion rights, unions and collective bargaining rights, and congressional maps and redistricting.

Despite the more than $15 million that Musk and groups affiliated with him dropped into the race, Democrats overall held a narrow ad spending advantage, according to AdImpact.

Democratic-aligned groups spent millions of dollars blasting Musk as “trying to buy” Schimel and the election, while Crawford herself repeatedly used Musk as a foil at her campaign events. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin launched a town-hall tour dubbed “People v. Musk,” on which surrogates including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz further bashed Musk and DOGE.

Some also pointed out that Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, sued in Wisconsin this year challenging a state law banning carmakers from owning dealerships. The case could end up before the state Supreme Court.

Democrats also attacked Musk’s offer of $100 to Wisconsin voters to sign a petition to oppose “activist judges.” The Democratic state attorney general, Josh Kaul, also unsuccessfully tried to block Musk from giving $1 million to people to be “spokesmen” for the petition at a rally Sunday.

Conversely, groups on the left largely stayed away from making the race about Trump, who narrowly carried the state in two of the past three presidential elections.

The anti-Musk playbook is one that Democrats could seek to replicate in other elections this year and in the 2026 midterms.

Two key questions:
**Does this mean Trump will begin to reign Musk in and not be joined at the political hip?
**Will such a dramatic failure of Musk’s clout, persuasiveness and money embolden GOP members of Congress who are unhappy with his role?

ID 73215064 ©
Sebast1an | Dreamstime.com

The post MUSK FLOPS IN WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT RACE: LIBERAL JUDGE ELECTED BY LARGE MARGIN appeared first on The Moderate Voice .

Inside ICE Air: Flight Attendants on Deportation Planes Say Disaster Is “Only a Matter of Time”

Inside ICE Air: Flight Attendants on Deportation Planes Say Disaster Is “Only a Matter of Time”

by McKenzie Funk

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Reporting Highlights

  • Unexpected Role: Flight attendants were told they would fly rock bands, sports teams and sun-seekers. Then Global Crossing Airlines started expanding into federal deportation flights.
  • Human Struggles: Some flight attendants said they ignored orders not to interact with detainees. “I’d say ‘hola’ back,” said one flight attendant. “We’re not jerks.”
  • Safety Concerns: Flight attendants received training in how to evacuate passengers but said they weren’t told how to usher out detainees whose hands and legs were bound by shackles.

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

The deportation flight was in the air over Mexico when chaos erupted in the back of the plane, the flight attendant recalled. A little girl had collapsed. She had a high fever and was taking ragged, frantic breaths.

The flight attendant, a young woman who went by the nickname Lala, said she grabbed the plane’s emergency oxygen bottle and rushed past rows of migrants chained at the wrists and ankles to reach the girl and her parents.

By then, Lala was accustomed to the hard realities of working charter flights for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She’d learned to obey instructions not to look the passengers in the eyes, not to greet them or ask about their well-being. But until the girl collapsed, Lala had managed to escape an emergency.

Lala worked for Global Crossing Airlines, the dominant player in the loose network of deportation contractors known as ICE Air. GlobalX, as the charter company is also called, is lately in the news. Two weeks ago, it helped the Trump administration fly hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador despite a federal court order blocking the deportations, triggering a showdown that experts fear could become a full-blown constitutional crisis.

In interviews with ProPublica, Lala and six other current and former GlobalX flight attendants provided a window into a part of the deportation process that is rarely seen and little understood. For migrants who have spent months or years trying to reach this country and live here, it is the last act, the final bit of America they may experience.

All but one of the flight attendants requested anonymity or asked that only a nickname be used, fearing retribution or black marks as they looked for new jobs in an insular industry.

Because ICE, GlobalX and other charter carriers did not respond to questions after being provided with detailed lists of this story’s findings, the flight attendants’ individual accounts are hard to verify. But their stories are consistent with one another. They are also generally consistent with what has been said about ICE Air in legal filings , news accounts , academic research and publicly released copies of the ICE Air Operations Handbook .

That morning over Mexico, Lala said, the girl’s oxygen saturation level was 70% — perilously low compared with a healthy person’s 95% or higher. Her temperature was 102.3 degrees. The flight had a nurse on contract who worked alongside its security guards. But beyond giving the girl Tylenol, the nurse left the situation in Lala’s hands, she recalled.

Lala broke the rule about talking to detainees. The parents told Lala their daughter had a history of asthma. The mom, who Lala said had epilepsy, seemed on the verge of her own medical crisis.

Lala placed the oxygen mask on the girl’s face. The nurse removed her socks to keep her from further overheating. Lala counted down the minutes, praying for the girl to keep breathing.

The stories shared by ICE Air flight attendants paint a different picture of deportations from the one presented to the public, especially under President Donald Trump. On social media, the White House has depicted a military operation carried out with ruthless efficiency, using Air Force C-17s, ICE agents in tactical vests and soldiers in camo.

The reality is that 85% of the administration’s “removal” flights — 254 flights as of March 21, according to the advocacy group Witness at the Border — have been on charter planes. Military flights have now all but ceased . While there are ICE officers and hired security guards on the charters, the crew members on board are civilians, ordinary people swept up in something most didn’t knowingly sign up for.

When the flight attendants joined GlobalX, it was a startup with big plans. It sold investors and new hires alike on a vision of VIP clients, including musicians and sports teams, and luxury destinations, especially in the Caribbean. “You can’t beat the eXperience,” read a company tagline.

But as the airline grew, more and more of its planes were filled with migrants in chains. Some flight attendants were livid about it.

Last year, an anonymous GlobalX employee sent an all-caps, all-staff screed that ricocheted around the startup. “WHERE IS THE COMPANY GOING?” the email asked. “YOU SIGNED A 5 YEAR CONTRACT WITH ICE? … WHAT HAPPENED TO THIS BECOMING A PRESTIGE CHARTER AIRLINE?”

One flight attendant said he kept waiting for the sports teams his new bosses had talked about as he flew deportation routes. “You know, the NFL charters, the NBA charters, whatever the hockey one is …” he said.

A second said his planes’ air conditioning kept breaking — an experience consistent with at least two publicly reported onboard incidents — and their lavatories kept breaking, something another flight attendant reported as well. But the planes kept flying. “They made us flush with water bottles,” he said.

But the flight attendants were most concerned about their inability to treat their passengers humanely — and to keep them safe. (In 2021, an ICE spokesperson told the publication Capital & Main that the agency “follows best practices when it comes to the security, safety and welfare of the individuals returned to their countries of origin.”)

They worried about what would happen in an emergency. Could they really get over a hundred chained passengers off the plane in time?

“They never taught us anything regarding the immigration flights,” one said. “They didn’t tell us these people were going to be shackled, wrists to fucking ankles.”

“We have never gotten a clear answer on what we do in an ICE Air evacuation,” another said. “They will not give us an answer.”

“It’s only a matter of time,” a third said, before a deportation flight ends in disaster.

Lala didn’t think she had a chance at a flight attendant job. She hadn’t, in truth, remembered applying to GlobalX until a recruiter called to say the startup was coming to her city. “But I guess I did apply through LinkedIn?” she said. She’d been working an office job — long hours, little flexibility — and was looking for something new.

The job interviews were held at a resort hotel. The room was packed with dozens of aspirants when Lala showed up. After the first round, only about 20 were asked to stay. She couldn’t believe she was one of them. After the second round came a job offer: $26 an hour plus a daily expense allowance. Soon Lala got a uniform: a blue cardigan, a white polo shirt and an eye-catching scarf in cyan and light green.

For part of her Federal Aviation Administration-mandated four-week training, her class stayed in a motel with a pool at the edge of Miami International Airport. Just across the street, on the fourth floor of a concrete-clad office building ringed by palm trees, was GlobalX’s headquarters.

“In the beginning, we were told that because it’s a charter, it’s only gonna be elites, celebrities,” Lala said. “Everybody was really excited.”

But flying was not going to be all glitz. The real reason for having flight attendants is safety. GlobalX was certified by the FAA as a Part 121 scheduled air carrier, the same as United or Delta, and it and its crew members were subject to the same strict standards.

“We’re there to evacuate you,” one recruit told ProPublica. “Yes, we make good drinks, but we evacuate you.”

Lala’s class practiced water landings in the pool at the nearby Pan Am Flight Academy. They practiced door drills — yelling out commands, shoving open heavy exit doors — in a replica Airbus A320 cabin. They learned CPR and how to put out fires. They took written and physical tests, and if they didn’t score at least 90%, they had to retake them.

They were reminded, over and over, that their job was a vocation, one with a professional code: No matter who the passengers were, flight attendants were in charge of the cabin, responsible for safety in the air.

Lala’s official “airman” certificate arrived from the FAA a few weeks after training was done. She was cleared to fly, ready to see the world.

But what she would see wasn’t what she signed up for. The company was growing beyond glamorous charters. GlobalX was moving into the deportation business.

Her bosses delivered the news casually, she recalled: “It was like, ‘Oh yeah, we got a government contract.’”

The new graduates were offered a single posting: Harlingen, Texas. Deportation flights were five days a week, sometimes late into the night. Lala went to Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia and, for refueling, Panama.

A standard flight had more than a dozen private security guards — contractors working for the firm Akima — along with a single ICE officer, two nurses, and a hundred or more detainees. (Akima did not respond to a request for comment.) The guards were in charge of delivering food and water to the detainees and taking them to the lavatories. This left the flight attendants, whose presence was required by the FAA, with little to do.

“Arm and disarm doors, that was our duty,” Lala said.

The flights had their own set of rules, which the crew members said they learned from a company policy manual or from chief flight attendants. Don’t talk to the detainees. Don’t feed them. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t walk down the aisles without a guard escorting you. Don’t sit in aisle seats, where detainees could get close to you. Don’t wear your company-issued scarf because of “safety concerns that a detainee might grab it and use it against us,” Lala said.

“You don’t do nothing,” said a member of another GlobalX class. “Just sit down in your seats and be quiet.” If a detainee looked at him, he was supposed to look out the window.

A rare public statement from the company about life aboard ICE Air came in a 2023 earnings call with GlobalX founder and then-CEO Ed Wegel, when he discussed the company’s work for federal agencies like ICE. GlobalX employees “essentially don’t do much on the airplane,” Wegel said. “Our flight attendants are there in case of an emergency. The passengers are monitored by guards that are placed on board the airplane by one of those agencies.”

Fielding a question about how GlobalX ensures passengers are treated humanely, Wegel continued: “There have been threats made to our crew members, and they’re especially trained to deal with those. But we haven’t seen any mistreatment at all.”

Flight attendants said they had little to do but sit in their jumpseats after delivering the preflight safety briefing in English to the mostly Spanish-speaking passengers. Above 10,000 feet, the two in the rear usually moved to passenger rows near the cockpit, then sat again. Some did crosswords. Others took photos out the window. On a deportation to Guatemala, one saw his first erupting volcano.

Lala had been scared before her first deportation flight, worried that violence might break out. But fear soon gave way to discomfort at how detainees were treated. “Not being able to serve them, not being able to look at them, I didn’t think that was right,” she said.

Some flight attendants, drawn to the profession because they liked taking care of people, couldn’t help but break protocol with passengers. “If they said ‘hola’ or something,” one said, “I’d say ‘hola’ back. We’re not jerks.”

Another recalled taking a planeload of children and their escorts on a domestic transfer from the southern border to an airport in New York. He tried to slip snacks to the kids. “Even the chaperones were like, ‘Don’t give them any food,’” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Where is your humanity?’” (A second flight attendant said that children on a New York flight were fed by their escorts.)

While flight attendants were allowed to interact with the guards, the dynamic was uncomfortable. It came down to a question of who was in charge — and which agency, ICE or the FAA, ultimately held sway. (The FAA declined to comment on this story and directed questions to ICE.)

The guards often asked flight attendants to heat up the food they brought from home. They asked for drinks, for ice. “They treated us like we were their maids,” said Akilah Sisk, a former flight attendant from Texas.

“In their eyes, the detainees are not the passengers,” another flight attendant said. “The passengers are the guards. And we’re there for the guards.”

Some guards thumbed their noses at the FAA safety rules that flight attendants were supposed to enforce while airborne, multiple flight attendants recalled. “One reported me because I asked him to sit down in the last 10 minutes,” Sisk said. “But you’re still on a freaking plane. You gotta listen to our words.”

Flight attendants said that if they told guards to fasten seatbelts during takeoff or stow carry-ons under a seat, they risked getting reported to their bosses at GlobalX, who they said wanted to keep ICE happy. The guards would complain to the in-flight supervisor, Sisk said, and eventually it would get back to the flight attendant.

“We’d get an email from somebody in management: ‘Why are you guys causing problems?’” another flight attendant recalled. “They were more worried about losing the contract than about anything else.”

Nothing bothered flight attendants more than the fact that most of their passengers were in chains. What would happen if a flight had to be evacuated?

Most of the migrants crowding the back seats of ICE Air’s planes have not been, historically , convicted criminals. ICE makes restraints mandatory nonetheless. “Detainees transported by ICE Air aircraft will be fully restrained by the use of handcuffs, waist chains, and leg irons,“ reads an unredacted version of the 2015 ICE Air Operations Handbook, which was obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group.

The handbook allows for other equipment “in special circumstances, i.e., spit masks, mittens, leg braces, cargo straps, humane restraint blanket, etc.” Multiple lawsuits on behalf of African asylum-seekers concern the use of one such item, known as the Wrap , a cross between a straitjacket and a sleeping bag. A flight attendant said detainees restrained in the device are strapped upright in their seats or, if less compliant, lengthwise across a row of seats. Getting “burritoed, I call it,” the person said.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties investigated the asylum-seekers’ complaints and found ICE lacked “sufficient policies” on the Wrap, but how the immigration agency addressed the finding is not publicly known. ICE responded to one lawsuit by saying detainees were not abused; it said another should be dismissed, in part because it was filed in the wrong place. The cases are pending.

Use of the Wrap continues. A video from Seattle’s Boeing Field taken in February shows officers and guards carrying a wrapped migrant into the cabin of a deportation plane.

Neither the ICE Air handbook, nor FAA regulations, nor flight attendant training in Miami explained how to empty a plane full of people whose movements were, by design, so severely hampered. Shackled detainees didn’t even qualify as “able-bodied” enough to sit in exit rows.

To flight attendants, the restraints seemed at odds with the FAA’s “90-second rule,” a decades-old manufacturing standard that says an aircraft must be built for full evacuation in 90 seconds even with half the exits blocked.

Lala and others said no one told them how to evacuate passengers in chains. “Honestly, I don’t know what we would do,” she said.

The flight attendants are not alone in voicing concerns.

In an interview with ProPublica, Bobby Laurie, an airline safety expert and former flight attendant, called the arrangement on ICE Air flights “disturbing.”

“Part of flight attendant training is locating those passengers who can help you in an evacuation,” Laurie told ProPublica. That would have to be the guards. “But if they have to help you,” who is helping the detainees, Laurie wondered.

According to formal ICE Air incident reports reviewed by Capital & Main , the deportation network had at least six accidents requiring evacuations between 2014 and 2019. In at least two cases, both on a carrier called World Atlantic, the evacuations were led not by flight attendants but by untrained guards. Both took longer than 90 seconds, though not by much: two-and-a-half minutes for the first, “less than 2 minutes” for the next. But in a third case, it took seven minutes for 115 shackled detainees to escape a smoke-filled jet.

In one of the World Atlantic incidents, part of the landing gear broke, a wing caught fire and the smell of burning rubber seeped in, according to investigative records obtained by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights. In an email to ICE Air officials, an agency employee aboard the plane later wrote that flight attendants made no emergency announcements for passengers. The flight attendants simply got themselves out.

The ICE officer, guards and nurse were “confused on what to do and in which direction to exit during distress,” the officer wrote. He said that other than the flight crew, “no one has received any training on emergency evacuation situations.”

The University of Washington’s collection does not include findings or recommendations from ICE based on what happened, and ICE did not say what they were when asked by ProPublica. The National Transportation Safety Board said that after the accident, World Atlantic launched a campaign to reinspect landing gear, gave employees and contractors further training, and revised its procedures for inspections. The airline did not respond to questions from ProPublica.

Other reports obtained by the University of Washington mention fuel spills, loss of cabin air pressure and a “large altercation” on ICE Air after 2019 but no more evacuations, at least as of June 2022. More recent incidents that have been mentioned in the press include an engine fire last summer on World Atlantic and a failed GlobalX air conditioning unit that sent 11 detainees to the hospital with “heat-related injuries.”

The rare guidance some flight attendants said they received on carrying out ICE Air evacuations came during briefings from pilots. What they heard, they said, was chilling and went against their training.

“Just get up and leave,” one recalled a GlobalX pilot telling him. “That’s it. … Save your life first.”

He understood the instructions to mean that evacuating detainees was not a priority, or even the flight attendants’ responsibility. The detainees were in other people’s hands, or in no one’s.

When asked if they got similar guidance from pilots, three flight attendants said they did not, and one did not answer. Two more, like the first, said pilots gave them instructions that they took to mean they shouldn’t help detainees after opening the exit doors.

“That was the normal briefing,” said a flight attendant from Lala’s class. “‘If a fire occurs in the cabin, if we land on water, don’t check on the immigrants. Just make sure that you and the guards and the people that work for the government get off.’”

“It was as if the detainees’ lives were worthless,” said the other.

The day the girl collapsed on Lala’s flight, the pilot turned the plane around and they crossed back into the United States.

The flight landed in Arizona. Paramedics rushed on board and connected the girl to their own oxygen bottle. They began shuttling her off the plane. Her parents tried to join. But the guards stopped the father.

Shocked, Lala approached the ICE officer in charge. “This is not OK!” she yelled. The mom had seizures. The family needed to stay together.

But the officer said it was impossible. Only one parent could go to the hospital. The other, as Lala understood it, “was going to get deported.”

Most of the flight attendants who spoke with ProPublica are now gone from GlobalX. Some left because they found other jobs. Some left even though they hadn’t. Some left because the charter company, as it focused more and more on deportations, shut down the hub in their city.

Lala eventually left because of the little girl and her family, because she couldn’t do the deportation flights anymore. Her GlobalX uniform hung in her closet for a time, a reminder of her career as a flight attendant. Recently, she said, she threw it away.

She never learned whether the little girl lived or died. Lala just watched her mom follow her off the plane, then watched the dad return to his seat.

“I cried after that,” she said. She bought her own ticket home.

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