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A Florida man who voted for Donald Trump and supports his immigration crackdown was charged with making threats against the White House and federal agents because his Colombian fiancée was facing delays in getting a visa.

Tristen Elijah Giroux had been calling U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to complain about the visa process and became impatient when he was unable to reach a live service representative. A criminal complaint shows that his frustration boiled over into violent threats on the recorded line, reported The Independent.

“I’m gonna burn down the White House,” Giroux said on the recording, according to the affidavit. “I’m gonna go choke out every ICE member I see. Kill them all.”

The 30-year-old Giroux had called USCIS on Oct. 24, in the midst of a government shutdown, from his mobile phone, which the FBI identified after the Department of Homeland Security forwarded an electronic tip about his threats, and he admitted to agents that he had trouble navigating the system's interactive voice recognition system.

“He explained that he called USCIS to try to resolve an issue he was having with his upcoming marriage between him and his paramour, a Colombian national, for whom Giroux was seeking a K1 visa,” the affidavit states. “Giroux had sent in the documents regarding their intended marriage, but USCIS had sent them back without explanation. Giroux explained to me that he was running out of time to get the paperwork squared away and was extremely frustrated that he was unable to get a hold of an actual representative and kept getting routed to the automated system.”

The man confessed to investigators that he'd made threats against ICE agents and the White House in an effort to draw attention to his fiancée's issues, which he said eventually happened, according to the affidavit.

“Giroux advised that he did eventually speak with a representative, who was helpful, and he was able to get the situation straightened out,” the affidavit states.

He insisted that he “had no intention of harming anyone,” and told agents “how stupid it was that he had said those things and that he regretted it.”

“Giroux said that he is a supporter of President Trump,” the affidavit added. “Giroux said he has seen the ICE protests on the social media platform TikTok, and that they disgust him because he is supportive of ICE’s efforts. Giroux explained that he is trying to handle the immigration of his paramour in the right way, and it is so difficult, while in the meantime, people are entering the country illegally.”

He was arrested Oct. 27 and charged with one count of transmitting a threat to kill in interstate commerce. He was released from custody later that day on a personal recognizance bond.

If convicted, Giroux faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

A communications director working for the North Carolina Republican Party threatened a reporter, according to a new ProPublica report.

In a report about a North Carolina Supreme Court judge using "his perch" as "an instrument of political power," it was revealed that political leaders were eager to defend him.

Judge Paul Newby, who won his 2020 race, "supported changes to judicial oversight, watering it down and bringing it under his court’s control, making himself and his fellow justices less publicly accountable," the report said.

However, ProPublica's report recounted efforts by its reporters to secure details not only from the judge but also from his allies. At one point, the site requested an in-person interview while at an event. The reporter was "escorted out of a judicial conference to avoid questions."

The court's communications and media team also refused to respond. Still, the site "interviewed over 70 people who know him professionally or personally, including former North Carolina justices and judges, lawmakers, longtime friends and family members."

When the site reached out to Newby's daughter, the Republican Party stepped in personally.

"The North Carolina Republican Party’s communications director, Matt Mercer, responded," the report continued. Newby's daughter is the state party's finance director.

ProPublica was accused of waging a “jihad” against the “NC Republicans.” He refused to dignify questions with "any comments whatsoever.”

It then took a darker turn.

“I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump Administration and I’m sure they would be interested in this matter. I would strongly suggest dropping this story," Mercer threatened in an email to ProPublica with emphasis on the word "strongly."

The reporters didn't drop the story, and it appeared on the site on Thursday.

Newby isn't up for reelection until 2028.

Democratic governors are quietly sharing worries that President Donald Trump intends to disrupt next year's congressional elections, according to a political insider.

The president told U.S. troops this week that he was prepared to send "more than the National Guard" into American cities as he escalates a confrontation with Democratic-led local governments, and MSNBC's John Heilemann told "Morning Joe" that high-ranking officials are growing concerned about whether free and fair elections would take place in 2026.

"Trump has essentially taken the attitude and pursued policies in line with the attitude of, 'I'm the president, I can do whatever I want," Heilemann said. "You know, we've talked for years about the expanding purview of executive power in America, but Trump is so far at the extreme of that. This is clearly one of the largest areas where that's the case."

"You know, when Trump decided to nationalize the National Guard, to federalize the National Guard in California, in Los Angeles, the first of these moves, it was the first time that a president had overridden the wishes of a governor of a state since back in the civil rights era, when troops were federalized to try to integrate some of the schools in Alabama and other states in the South. So there is a not in our lifetimes precedent for this, and Trump has not just done it once, but is now doing it pretty much everywhere."

Those aggressive moves against Democratic-led states and cities have provoked some dark fears among the president's political opponents, Heilemann said.

"That is raising the specter you're talking about, which is, in the medium term, is this part of a strategy to try to steal, effectively, or at least put your thumb very, very firmly on the scale of the 2026 midterm elections, but also with the normalization project," Heilemann said. "We're not even a year in, and we've had multiple cities where we've seen this happen.

"In the course of the next three years, is the longer term objective to get to a place where troops on American streets have become so normalized that not only have the 2026 midterms been affected, but that the 2028 presidential election could be affected, with Trump basically saying, 'The whole country is in a state of emergency and I'm going to declare martial law and not have the 2028 presidential election.'"

"That is the fear of a lot of people in the progressive camp, that this is where it's going," he added, "and I don't mean just wild-eyed progressives, I mean a lot of Democratic governors are already starting to whisper that and say that to reporters, that that's where they think this is really headed over the course of the next three years."

Host Jonathan Lemire said he's been hearing the same concerns in his own reporting.

"That sentiment is out there, a terrifying one, and one that will be worth obviously keeping an eye on in the months and years ahead," Lemire said.

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Progressive Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh spoke out against President Donald Trump's administration for prosecuting her after she participated in a protest against an immigration raid in her home state of Illinois.

The indictment, which was filed on Oct. 23, accuses Abughazaleh of one count of conspiracy and one count of forcibly impeding an officer. Abughazaleh told NBC News that she plans to self-surrender to authorities next Wednesday and described the incident as "political prosecution."

Abughazaleh joined Jon Lovett, a former Obama administration staffer, on a new episode of the "Pod Save America" podcast on Thursday, and further discussed the prosecution.

"It's scary. It's surreal, and it's also totally expected," she said. "This is what this administration does. They go after people who disagree with them, and this case is an attempt to criminalize protest, to criminalize freedom of speech, and to criminalize freedom of association."

"This is what authoritarians do," she added. "They try to find any excuse to punish their political enemies, to punish populations they deem as enemies. We've seen that a lot in how ICE is functioning."

Abughazaleh noted that the Trump administration has admitted to catching very few criminals during its immigration raids. She suggested that reveals something more sinister about the raids.

"That is one of the best examples to show that this has never been about crime," she said. "This has never even been about immigration. This is about securing and cementing power for the Trump administration."

Former Republican Tim Miller, who hosts a podcast for the conservative anti-Trump news outlet The Bulwark, discussed with MSNBC host and former Republican Nicolle Wallace that the GOP is stiffing its own voters with slashes to food stamp benefits.

"I know food stamps is like a 90s era right-wing racist smear, but SNAP, which is sort of the new EBT — this is food assistance. [It] knows no partisan affiliation. If anything, it disproportionately benefits households in Trump voting counties and districts," said Wallace. "And it feeds a whole lot of kids who don't have any responsibility for any of the political decisions that adults make."

Miller noted that the GOP's rhetoric has clearly shifted from the days of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Mitt Romney (R-UT).

"But the policies are harmful to them. And this ... the expiration of SNAP — or the fact that they're not going to continue funding SNAP during this shutdown, beginning this weekend, I think is the most acute example of this, where, you know, if the party had fully switched to being a multiracial, multiethnic, working class party like they pay lip service to, this would be an emergency right now," said Miller.

The situation would involve Republican lawmakers fearful "our own voters are literally going to go hungry beginning this weekend. You know, we need to serve to service them. And meanwhile, Donald Trump's in China or in Korea getting a, you know, Burger King happy meal crown from the head of South Korea. And Congress isn't even in session, right? Like they're not doing anything."

He called it a catastrophe and a tragedy if the problem isn't fixed in the coming days.

"But it's also a very stark demonstration of just how this kind of MAGA populism is a lot of lip service and not a lot of action," Miller continued. "And you're seeing it in real time also in the states where, you know, in Colorado, Jared Polis and some other states, governors, mostly Democratic governors, are working to try to patch this right now. And in some of the red states, it's not going to get patched."

A longtime former employee at one of President Donald Trump's golf clubs was mistakenly deported to Mexico, The New York Times reported — sending U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement into a mad scramble to correct the error and bring him home.

"Alejandro Juarez stepped off a plane in Texas and stood on a bridge over the Rio Grande, staring at the same border that he had crossed illegally from Mexico 22 years earlier," reported Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Hamed Aleaziz. "As U.S. immigration officials unshackled restraints bound to his arms and legs, Mr. Juarez, 39, pleaded with them. He told them he was never given a chance to contest his deportation in front of an immigration judge after being detained in New York City five days before."

As it turned out, the Department of Homeland Security had mistakenly put him on a deportation flight instead of sending him to a detention facility in Arizona ahead of his immigration hearing, to which he was entitled.

"Their actions probably violated federal immigration laws, which entitle most immigrants facing deportation to a hearing before a judge — a hearing Mr. Juarez never had," said the report. "ICE officials raced to decipher his whereabouts, exchanging bewildered emails and contacting detention facilities to pinpoint his location, according to internal ICE documents obtained by The New York Times. It is unclear how many other immigrants like Mr. Juarez have been erroneously removed, in part because ICE has not in the past tracked such cases."

Juarez "had worked for more than a decade at a Trump Organization golf club in New York," noted the report, and suddenly found himself expelled from the United States.

Similar administrative mistakes have happened on other occasions, most notably with Salvadoran migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported from his family in Maryland to the infamous CECOT megaprison in his home country, despite a court order prohibiting his removal there. After months of denying they had jurisdiction to repatriate him, the Trump administration finally did so, but then immediately hit him with flimsy gang charges, and started shopping around for any other country that would accept him, including several in Africa.