EU Staff Is Now Using Burner Phones to Evade Trump (2025)

The European Commission is issuing burner phones to officials traveling to the United States amid fears of espionage in Trump’s America.

It’s the kind of security measure typically saved for trips to China or the Ukraine, where the fear of IT surveillance is high. But three European Commissioners will test out burner phones and basic laptops at International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington next week, sources told the Financial Times.

The move from the European Commission, the primary executive arm of the European Union, marks a new era of American-European relations, which have all but dissipated since Donald Trump took office in January. Last month, he slapped Europe with 20 percent tariffs, which he later reduced to 10 percent for 90 days. He has falsely claimed the EU was formed solely to “create a unified force against” the United States, he abandoned Ukraine in the face of Russia, and he threatened to withdraw American security guarantees to the continent altogether—single-handedly dismantling an alliance that has shaped the global order since Word War II, and simultaneously embracing Vladimir Putin’s alliance.

“The transatlantic alliance is over,” an EU official told the Financial Times.

The Commission did not confirm the issuing of burner phones to the Financial Times, but it did say that all EU officials traveling to the U.S. were told to turn off their phones and hide them in “special sleeves” at the border amid a rise in phone seizures from border agents in recent weeks. A number of tourists and visiting academics have been turned away for having criticism of the White House on their phone.

Donald Trump’s administration has a new excuse for violating an order from the Supreme Court to return a man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

In a seven-page filing Sunday, lawyers for the Department of Justice argued that the federal courts did not have the authority to order the executive branch to “conduct foreign relations” with another country, by facilitating the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a father in Maryland who was deported to El Salvador despite having received a protective order prohibiting his removal there.

The lawyers argued that the department could not be compelled to actually “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia because “reading ‘facilitate’ as requiring something more than domestic measures would not only flout the Supreme Court’s order but also violate the separation of powers. The federal courts have no authority to direct the Executive Branch to conduct foreign relations.”

Instead, the Justice Department was choosing to understand “facilitate” as “taking all available steps to remove any domestic obstacles that would otherwise impede the alien’s ability to return here.”

The government argued that the court could not compel it to make demands of El Salvador’s government, dispatch U.S. personnel, or send aircraft into foreign airspace.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis had ordered the government to report “what it can” about its ongoing efforts to return Abrego Garcia, and ordered the government to provide daily updates about its progress. In a separate filing, the government confirmed that Abrego Garcia was “alive and secure,” but in its filing Sunday, it argued it could not be compelled to report information on the case.

The government claimed Xinis’s request was “particularly inappropriate given that such discovery could interfere with ongoing diplomatic discussions—particularly in the context of President [Nayib] Bukele’s ongoing trip to the United States.”

Bukele, who struck a $6 million deal with Trump to house alleged gang members the U.S. government wishes to deport, arrived in the U.S. Sunday, according to the filing.

The White House is trying to use semantics to dodge the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling that it has to help return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States from El Salvador.

At a press conference Friday, Newsmax’s Mike Carter asked press secretary Karoline Leavitt about Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s coming visit to the White House on Monday and whether Trump wanted Bukele to bring Abrego Garcia with him. Leavitt’s response was not encouraging.

“The Supreme Court made their ruling last night very clear that it’s the administration’s responsibility to facilitate the return, not to effectuate the return,” Leavitt replied.

It’s true that the high court ruled the Trump administration must abide by a lower court ruling to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia. But focusing on this language ignores the bigger point that both courts ruled against the administration.

The government was barred from returning Abrego Garcia to his native El Salvador due to his life being in danger from gangs, before ICE chose to deport him anyway. Administration officials continue to insist that Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 gang member but failed to provide any evidence to that effect, as earlier court rulings had found. Abrego Garcia does not have a criminal record and is married to a U.S. citizen and the father of a child with autism.

Five more major law firms have succumbed to President Donald Trump’s punitive threats as he continues his blatantly illegal intimidation of legal professionals.

Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Allen Overy Shearman Sterling US LLP, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, and Latham & Watkins LLP will provide pro bono services of at least $500 million, Trump boasted in a Truth Social post Friday afternoon. In a separate post, Trump revealed another $100 million deal with Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP.

The firms will provide services to causes “President Trump and the Law Firms both support and agree to work on, including in the following areas: Assisting Veterans and other Public Servants, including, among others, members of the Military, Gold Star families, Law Enforcement, and First Responders; ensuring fairness in our Justice System; and combatting Antisemitism,” Trump wrote, adding that the firms will not engage in “illegal” diversity, equity, and inclusion practices either.

“The Law Firms will take on a wide range of pro bono matters that represent the full political spectrum, including Conservative ideals,” the post continues. In other words, the law firms will aid the Trump administration’s volatile attack on free speech, civil liberties, and the Constitution—for free.

“Concurrent with these agreements, the EEOC has withdrawn the March 17, 2025 letters to the Law Firms, and will not pursue any claims related to those issues,” Trump noted, referring to his intimidation of the firms.

The announcements come as part of Trump’s widespread attack on law firms, punishing themfor filing lawsuits he disagrees with or hiring attorneys he doesn’t like. He’s issued executive orders penalizing some of the country’s top law firms, many of which have bent to the president’s will—including Wilkie Farr & Gallagher, the law firm of former second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

The total amount of free services pledged by law firms has now reached more than $900 million, a concerning statistic not only for other law firms but for the rule of law itself.

The Department of Justice offered a flimsy excuse Friday for why it couldn’t comply with an order to present plans to return the Maryland father wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

The Supreme Court upheld an order from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis Thursday night directing the DOJ to deliver plans to the court by 9:30 a.m Friday morning “to facilitate and effectuate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Lawyers for the DOJ asked to have the hearing delayed to provide time to “evaluate” the Supreme Court’s order. When the clock elapsed on the government’s deadline, lawyers for Abrego Garcia argued that the DOJ had no excuse for being unprepared because it already had been under order to deliver their plans before Chief Justice John Roberts issued a stay on the order on Monday. Xinis granted the government’s request for an extension, which then elapsed again.

Finally, in a brief two-page filing Friday, lawyers for the government claimed that the court had set an “impractical” deadline and that they had been provided “insufficient” time to draw up plans.

The lawyers claimed that they didn’t fully understand Xinis’s order (“The Court has not yet clarified what it means to ‘facilitate’ or ‘effectuate’ the return,”) and that their perfect compliance with Roberts’s stay had prevented them from doing their homework.

The Supreme Court had instructed Xinis to clarify “the intended scope of the term ‘effectuate’” and warned that it “may exceed the District Court’s authority.” But the high court ruled that Xinis had “properly” ordered the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return.

In its insistence not to share its plan going forward, the government completely ignored Xinis’s request to share “what it can concerning the steps it has taken” prior to the order, according to Kyle Cheney, Politico’s senior legal correspondent.

“Defendants are not in a position where they ‘can’ share any information requested by the Court. That is the reality,” the government’s lawyers wrote in its filing, arguing that the order had come in too late in the evening Thursday.