Former FBI director James Comey sparked controversy with a deleted Instagram image resembling gang slang for killing President Trump, prompting White House condemnation and Secret Service alerts. Simultaneously, the administration granted refugee status to 59 white South Africans fleeing land seizure laws, drawing sharp criticism from President Ramaphosa and Democrats. The Supreme Court debated nationwide injunctions against ending birthright citizenship, while Sean Diddy Combs faced cross-examination regarding sex trafficking allegations. Finally, Vice President JD Vance will attend Pope Leo XIV's inauguration despite the pontiff's past immigration critiques, highlighting a complex week of legal, diplomatic, and cultural tensions. [Automatically generated summary]
White South Africans Granted Refugee Status00:09:36
Good morning, everyone.
I'm Megan Kelly.
It's Friday, May 16th, 2025, and this is your AM update.
A disturbing Instagram post from former FBI director James Comey, seemingly aimed at President Trump, sets off a firestorm.
The president is making a special exception for a group of 59 white South Africans.
Outrage from Democrats and the media after the Trump administration grants refugee status to a group it says is facing racial persecution in South Africa.
The practical problem is that there are 680 district court judges.
Sometimes they're wrong.
The Supreme Court takes up sweeping questions about judicial power and President Trump's challenge to birthright citizenship.
And cross-examination begins on the star witness in the Diddy trial.
All that and more coming up in just a moment on your AM update.
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Former FBI director and longtime Trump critic James Comey on Thursday posting, then deleting, a bizarre photo to his Instagram account.
Seashells arranged to resemble the numbers 86, 47.
In gang slang, 86 means to get rid of or kill someone.
47, of course, an apparent reference to President Trump, the 47th president.
Director Comey captioned the image, cool shell formation on my beach walk.
Donald Trump Jr. posting, quote, just James Comey casually calling for my dad to be murdered.
This is who the Dem media worships, demented.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich posting on X, quote, while President Trump is currently on an international trip to the Middle East, the former FBI director puts out what can clearly be interpreted as a hit on the sitting president of the United States, a message etched in the sand.
This is deeply concerning to all of us and is being taken seriously.
About three hours later, Mr. Comey deleting the offending post, uploading a new one that reads, quote, I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw on a beachwalk, which I assumed were a political message.
I didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.
It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind, so I took the post down.
Some of Mr. Comey's defenders say 86 is just restaurant slaying for canceling something or getting rid of something.
Yeah, that too implies murder.
In any event, the former FBI director is certainly aware of commonly known gang terminology and the elevated threat environment surrounding President Trump, who has survived at least two assassination attempts.
FBI Director Kash Patel writing on X, quote, We are aware of the recent social media post by former FBI Director James Comey directed at President Trump.
We are in communication with the Secret Service and Director Curran.
Primary jurisdiction is with the Secret Service on these matters, and we, the FBI, will provide all necessary support.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard with an unsparing view of this behavior on Fox News with Jesse Waters last night.
Any other person with the position of influence that he has, people who take very seriously what a guy of his stature, his experience, and what the propaganda media has built him up to be, I'm very concerned for the president's life.
We've already seen assassination attempts.
I'm very concerned for his life.
And James Comey, in my view, should be held accountable and put behind bars for this.
We will continue to monitor the story, reporting the latest on Monday.
South African President Cyril Ramafosa criticizing the white South Africans who left his country seeking refuge in the U.S. President Ramafosa saying, quote, we don't run away from our problems.
We must stay here and solve our problems.
When you run away, you're a coward.
And that's a real cowardly act.
On Monday, the Trump administration welcoming 59 refugees from South Africa, saying they're facing discrimination in their home country.
The arrivals fast-tracked following a February executive order granting refugee status to Afrikaners, citing racial persecution and land seizures there.
President Ramafosa signing the Expropriation Act of 2024.
It's a controversial law allowing the government to seize land in some cases without compensation to the owner when it's equitable and in the public interest.
The law defines public interest as, quote, the nation's commitment to land reform and to reforms to bring about equitable access to all South Africa's natural resources in order to redress the results of past discriminatory laws or practices.
Supporters of the law say it's a step toward long overdue land reform following the apartheid legacy.
Critics call it abject racial discrimination, warning of a dangerous encroachment on property rights.
President Trump's executive order granting refugee status to white South African Afrikaners, framing them as victims of racial persecution by their own government.
That government, the Afrikan Congress, issuing a statement saying these are not refugees fleeing persecution, but are fleeing justice, equality, and accountability for historic privilege.
Radio host Buck Sexton Tuesday on the Megan Kelly show describing race-based laws targeting South Africa's white minority.
You have explicit quotas in South Africa.
You have, you must have, I think 85% of your company must be black employees or the managerial set must be black.
If you want to get certain loans, you have to actually be black or at least partner with somebody who is black.
There's all of these rules and laws that explicitly disenfranchise the roughly 7% of South Africa that is white.
And the 7% of the country that is white has not only state-sponsored disenfranchisement going on now, but there's also an unwillingness to police and protect particularly these farms that have been the subjects of clearly anti-white violence of the most gruesome and horrific kind.
This small batch of white refugees waving American flags, wearing American flags upon arrival in the U.S., sparking outrage amongst the leftist media commentators.
A dramatic shift in attitudes from the one toward the millions of refugees arriving under the Biden administration, often under false or loose claims of asylum.
Examples here of coverage from ABC, MSNBC, and CNN.
Well, the Trump administration has made it virtually impossible for many refugees to come to the United States, but the president is making a special exception for a group of 59 white South Africans.
So deeply and morally wrongheaded and repulsive.
These are the descendants of the people who created the most diabolical system of white supremacy in human history, apartheid.
So if the Afrikaners don't actually like the land, they can leave that country.
They are.
They're leaving the country.
No, these refugees are coming here.
They can actually leave and go to where their native land is, which is probably Germany.
Are you against them coming here?
Holland?
They are being given special treatment when there is not a genocide happening in South Africa, and they just don't like the law of the land.
Small historical note, Afrikaners descend primarily from Dutch settlers, arriving in South Africa almost 400 years ago, many settling regions that were sparsely populated or uninhabited at the time.
The next G20 conference set for November in Johannesburg, the Washington Post citing anonymous sources reporting the National Security Council has ordered all U.S. agencies and departments to suspend work on that upcoming conference.
In April, Mr. Trump, posting to Truth Social, quote, how could we be expected to go to South Africa for the very important G20 meeting when land confiscation and genocide is the primary topic of conversation?
In recent years, reports of white farmers brutally murdered in rural South Africa, prompting claims that they are being targeted on a racial basis.
Critics accusing the government of turning a blind eye.
On Monday, President Trump again describing white South African farmers as victims of a genocide.
South African officials strongly deny the accusation.
President Rama Foza set to visit the White House next Wednesday.
Coming up, the Supreme Court takes up nationwide injunctions in a case involving Trump's move to end birthright citizenship.
And cross-examination begins on the star witness of the Diddy criminal trial.
Diddy Trial Cross-Examination and Riverbend Ranch00:10:04
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The Supreme Court on Thursday hearing oral arguments in cases where lower courts blocked President Trump's executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship, with the justices focusing on whether a single district judge can issue a nationwide injunction, stopping the full force and effect of a law or an executive order.
U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer's opening argument made the case that judges should only be able to issue rulings that apply to the parties in the case before them.
Since January 20th, district courts have now issued 40 universal injunctions against the federal government, including 35 from the same five judicial districts.
This is a bipartisan problem that has now spanned the last five presidential administrations.
Universal injunctions exceed the judicial power granted in Article 3, which exists only to address the injury to the complaining party.
They transgress the traditional bounds of equitable authority, and they create a host of practical problems.
Such injunctions prevent the percolation of novel and difficult legal questions.
They encourage rampant forum shopping.
They require judges to make rushed, high-stakes, low-information decisions.
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor stepping on Mr. Sauer with a rapid-fire round of questioning, getting called out by the Chief Justice Roberts for her interruptions.
That's rare.
The Solicitor General arguing that if a lot of people are affected by a policy, they should file a class action lawsuit instead of asking one judge to block the policy for the whole nation.
Both the Supreme Court and no lower court can stop an executive from universally from violating that holding, those holdings by this court.
We are not claiming that because we're conceding that there could be an inappropriate case.
Only for us, only when I hear that.
Can I hear the rest of his answer?
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, who has previously written about the court's impending need to address the use of nationwide injunctions, questioning the history of this practice.
General, when were the first universal injunctions used?
We believe that the best reading of that is what you said in Trump Against Hawaii, which is that Wertz in 1963 was really the first universal injunction.
There's a dispute about Perkins against Lucan's oil going back to 1940.
And of course, we point to the court's opinion that reversed that universal injunction issued by the D.C. Circuit and said it's profoundly wrong.
So when the court has considered it and addressed this, it has consistently said you have to limit the remedy to the plaintiffs of appearing in court and complaining of that remedy.
So we survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions.
That's exactly correct.
And in fact, those are very limited, very rare, even in the 1960s.
It really exploded in 2007.
Joe Biden appointee, Justice Katanji Brown Jackson, appearing to support nationwide injunctions, saying they encourage the government to work quickly toward the Supreme Court.
I would think we'd want the system to move as quickly as possible to reach the merits of the issue and maybe have this court decide whether or not the government is entitled to do this under the law.
Wouldn't having universal injunctions actually facilitate that?
It seems to me that when the government is completely enjoined from doing the thing it wants to do, it moves quickly to appeal that, to get it to the Supreme Court, and that's actually what we would want.
Percolation of novel, sensitive constitutional issues is a merit of our system.
It is not a bad feature of the system.
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito appearing to favor limiting the use of nationwide injunctions, questioning New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum, arguing on behalf of a coalition of Democrat states challenging the birthright citizenship order.
The practical problem is that there are 680 district court judges, and they are dedicated and they are scholarly, and I'm not impugning their motives in any way.
But you know, sometimes they're wrong.
And the Court of Appeals gives it the back of the hand.
And then the case comes immediately to us in the context of an emergency application.
And some of us have said, well, we don't think we should do anything in those situations unless it is indisputably clear that the court below was wrong.
The High Court expected to issue a decision by the end of June.
Day four of the Sean Diddy Combs criminal trial in New York.
Federal prosecutors accusing the rapper of, quote, creating a criminal enterprise whose members and associates engaged in and attempted to engage in, among other crimes, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice.
Star witness Cassie Ventura on Thursday taking the stand for the third day, this time for cross-examination.
The defense attempting to portray a complicated yet consensual relationship between Cassie and Combs.
Ms. Ventura telling the defense she loved him for 11 years, believing Mr. Combs truly loved her too.
The defense team presenting an email exchange between the couple from January 2008.
Mr. Combs, quote, it makes me so happy that you would fly to Atlanta just to see me.
I'm a very lucky man.
I love you.
I miss you.
Can't wait to hold you.
Ms. Ventura replying, quote, I'm a very lucky woman.
I miss you so much.
I'd fly wherever you needed me, whenever.
I love you.
The witness saying that was early in the relationship.
Ms. Ventura describing the beginning of the relationship as, quote, very sweet, saying Mr. Combs was a, quote, charismatic big personality that everyone really loved.
The defense presenting a 2009 text from Ms. Ventura referencing the so-called freak offs, the bizarre sex rituals they participated in together.
Quote, the last time was a mistake, but since has made me feel a little dirty and grimy as opposed to sexual and spontaneous.
That's the only reason why I go back and forth in my mind with wanting and not wanting to do it.
Ms. Ventura writing in 2017 to Mr. Combs, quote, I love our freak offs when we both want it.
Ms. Ventura on the stand dismissing the text as quote, just words at that point.
The defense also referencing a 2017 message from Mr. Combs planning an upcoming freak off.
Mr. Combs writing, didn't hear from you, so I just put some plans in motion.
Let me know to stop.
Just let me know if I'm headed in the wrong direction so I can cancel.
The defense aiming to portray the relationship and the sex behavior as consensual.
Cross-examination set to continue today.
Mr. Combs faces up to life in prison if convicted.
On Sunday, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio set to attend Pope Leo XIV's inaugural Mass at the Vatican.
The first American Pope born in Chicago as Robert Prevost, elected last week to head up the Catholic Church and its 1.4 billion Catholics.
As a cardinal, Prevost running a Twitter account that occasionally shared content critical of the Trump administration's immigration policy, calling out JD Vance specifically.
The vice president, an adult Catholic convert, responding last week.
You know, people are asking, is he a conservative or is he a liberal?
Well, he's attacked, you know, President Trump and JD Vance on certain things and hasn't attacked Democrats on other things.
And I guess my response to this is it's very hard to fit a 2,000-year-old institution into the politics of 2025 America.
I try not to do that.
I am a Catholic convert, and so I come at this maybe with a slightly different perspective, but I try not to play the politicization of the Pope game.
I'm sure he's going to say a lot of things that I love.
I'm sure he'll say some things that I disagree with, but I'll continue to pray for him and the church despite it all and through it all.
And that'll be the way that I handle it.
This will be Mr. Vance's second trip to the Vatican since taking office.
He was the last American official to visit with Pope Francis before the late pontiff's passing on Easter Monday.
And that'll do it for your A.M. update.
I'm Megan Kelly.
Join me back here for the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 at Noon East, on youtube.com/slash Megan Kelly, and on all Podcast platforms.
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