A prominent Senate Democrat is blasting President Donald Trump’s new refugee policy, calling it “racist” and “truly vile.”

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) pointed to a New York Times article that reported the president’s “proposals would transform a program aimed at helping the most vulnerable people in the world into one that gives preference to mostly white people who say they are being persecuted.”

“We began formally accepting refugees in the aftermath of WWII,” wrote Senator Murphy, who serves on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Since then, we’ve provided lifesaving shelter for millions displaced by persecution and war, many targeted for their faith. In modern times, President Reagan saved the most refugees, admitting around 210,000.”

He explained that this new proposal would “drastically slash the numbers of refugees admitted.”

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“But it gets worse,” he said. “The new policy reportedly will effectively allow only white foreigners to qualify. If you’re not white, you get turned away. It’s unreal – like we’re back in Jim Crow days.”

“How is he going to do this?” Murphy asked. “Reporting suggests Trump will give almost all of the refugee slots to white South African Afrikaners who he says are facing a genocide. But that’s made up – there’s zero reason to give preference to Afrikaners.”

According to The Washington Post, Trump’s “plan to overhaul the U.S. refugee resettlement process, including a drastic reduction in overall annual admissions, coincides with a concerted effort to prepare thousands of White South Africans to relocate to the United States through the system.”

“If the administration succeeds,” the Post reported, “almost all people admitted to the U.S. as refugees — as many as 7,000 from a maximum potential pool of 7,500 — could be Afrikaners, a group not traditionally eligible for the program but one that President Donald Trump says has been tyrannized by South Africa’s Black majority.”

Strikingly, Murphy adds, the “other group Trump is prioritizing? Members of the German political party AfD, who the White House says are being ‘targeted’ for their views. This is a neo-Nazi party that defended the SS. You think I’m making this up? I’m not.”

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AfD, or Alternative for Germany, is a growing far-right nationalist political party.

Germany’s “main intelligence service has labelled some branches of the AfD as extremist groups and placed several of its leaders under surveillance,” TIME magazine reported earlier this year. “In the European Parliament, an alliance of right-wing groups expelled the party last spring for being too radical. One AfD official had suggested the Nazi SS were ‘not all criminals.’ Another has called the Holocaust a mere speck of ‘bird s–‘ on the glorious sweep of German history.”

Murphy, continuing with his warning, wrote, “Trump and the white nationalists that surround him aren’t even hiding their racist aims any longer. This proposal is a gross betrayal of the refugee program’s intent and will be an indelible stain on America’s reputation. We won’t easily recover from this.”

Promoting Senator Murphy’s remarks, Dr. Craig Spencer, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, warned: “This isn’t *just* racism.”

“It’s eugenics,” he charged. “Look further back, before WWII, to the 1924 Johnson Reed Act that slashed immigration into the U.S. Pushed by eugenicists, it prioritized resettling white immigrants from Northern and Western Europe.”

“Eugenics,” Spencer added, “also explains why members of the AfD—an extremist party whose leaders frequently use Nazi slogans—are reportedly prioritized for refugee slots in this administration’s plans.”

READ MORE: ‘Civic Emergency’: Why Trump’s $230 Million DOJ Payout Push Raises New Red Flags

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The New York Times’ bombshell report that President Donald Trump is seeking a $230 million payout from the U.S. Department of Justice as compensation for the DOJ’s investigations into him could be even worse than first reported.

According to The New Republic‘s Greg Sargent, in an interview with U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, the payout could be made confidentially — at least at first.

Congressman Raskin — who sees this as a “civic emergency” — and Judiciary Democrats are investigating the Trump demand.

“Our reading is that, even though this is a private settlement, it doesn’t have to be disclosed anywhere until there is an accounting of where all the money has gone at the end of the year,” Raskin told Sargent.

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But according to Raskin, the “domestic Emoluments Clause says the president may not receive any compensation at all from the U.S. government or the states beyond his official salary.”

“This means he cannot be ordering government officials to write checks to the president.”

“Are we going to have presidents from here on in just shaking down the Department of Justice or other parts of the U.S. government for money to put in their pockets?” Raskin asked.

Trump has acknowledged that ultimately he would likely be the one making the final decision on whether to pay himself the $230 million — although his former personal attorney, Todd Blanche, now the Deputy Attorney General, would be among those also involved in the determination.

Sargent alleges that “for Trump to continue seeking these payments as president is even more wildly corrupt. The conflict-of-interest issues involved in Blanche making this decision are obvious. This is probably unconstitutional, too.”

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He adds, “It’s hard to fathom how bad this is,” and explains that Trump “sought damages from DOJ from the Russia investigation,” and “in 2024, Trump sought damages related to the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago.”

Raskin says he wants the internal communications between Trump and the DOJ, including any with Blanche.

“We want the entire paper trail,” Raskin told Sargent. “We’re looking for any correspondence, memoranda, or records of conversations between the White House and the Department of Justice. If we had subpoena power, we would be going after that.”

Democrats would need the House majority to obtain subpoena power.

“It goes without saying that anybody in the Trump administration who violates the law is now expecting a pardon from Donald Trump,” Raskin told Sargent, while not specifically mentioning Blanche. “If you want the protection of the president, you need to comply with his every wish.”

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Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is praising President Donald Trump’s highly controversial 90,000-square-foot ballroom, which requires demolition of part or most of the East Wing of the White House.

Johnson, who often has boasted of being a constitutional lawyer, says that as an “amateur historian” he thinks the Trump addition is the “greatest” improvement to the White House in history.

“This whole dust up about the White House, just by way of quick review — ’cause I’m an amateur historian — you’ll understand,” Johnson told reporters on Wednesday. “The White House has been renovated many times over the years, you understand? I mean, it was built between 1792 and 1800, right?”

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“The British burned it down, practically, in 1814, and then they rebuilt it in the early 1820s, and ever since, like, we’ve had many presidents, renovate, and add things to the White House,” the Speaker said. “Teddy Roosevelt built the whole West Wing. Um, who was it? FDR, Taft, I think, added the Oval Office. FDR made additions.”

“I mean, Truman put the — ripped everything up to put a bowling alley in. FDR had added the swimming pool, I think. Barack Obama added a basketball court.”

“President Trump’s gonna add the greatest improvement to the White House in the history of the building,” Johnson declared, “since it was originally constructed in 1800. The ballroom is gonna be glorious.”

The Speaker said that if Democrats win back the White House they will “get to use it, too.”

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“This is for the American people, and he’s using private funds to do it,” Johnson added. “How in the world could they oppose that? The only reason, the only logical reason, is because they have Trump Derangement Syndrome, and that’s what explains a lot of this, too.”

Some Democrats and legal experts have raised legal and ethical concerns.

.@SpeakerJohnson: “The White House has been renovated many times…President Trump’s going to add the greatest improvement to the White House in the history of the building…The ballroom is going to be glorious. It’s gonna be used for everybody. And by the way, hey, Democrats,… pic.twitter.com/8eDm5OKZh7

— CSPAN (@cspan) October 22, 2025

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