The Godmother and the Podium: GovBrief #311

In 2014, Bruna Ferreira asked Karoline Leavitt to be godmother to her newborn son. Ferreira was 22. Karoline was 16. Ferreira chose her son’s teenage aunt over her own sister.

Now Leavitt is the White House Press Secretary while the government calls Ferreira a criminal. Investigations show she has no criminal record. She’s in an ICE detention center in Louisiana while her 11-year-old son, who didn’t see her during Thanksgiving, now faces Christmas without her.

The Trump administration deported Any Lucía López Belloza in violation of a court order. She talked to reporters. Two weeks later, ICE agents chased her father into his backyard, forced open the gate, and sat outside for two hours without knocking on the door.

The Trump administration is negotiating through intermediaries to fly 55 Iranians home through Egypt and Kuwait because we don’t have diplomatic relations with Tehran. All that machinery for 55 people. It was never about efficiency. It’s about making examples.

NYC Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani isn’t even sworn in yet and he’s already telling residents, including 3 million foreign-born New Yorkers, how to refuse to comply with ICE. The rules are simple: know your rights, film everything, demand the warrant, and say nothing.

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Today's Quote

What do you mean you’re not familiar with the facts and circumstances of the pardon? It’s been well reported all across the country. He is the former president of Honduras. He was convicted of conspiring to bring in 400 tons of cocaine into the United States, also guns and other materials. It’s been front page news across the country. Aren’t you curious about that?

George Stephanopoulos, interviewing Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), on December 7, 2025, about Trump’s pardon of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez.