Anti-vaccine activist and current Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has worked hard to villainize infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, even writing a conspiracy-laden book lambasting the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

But a year into the job as the country's top health official, Kennedy—who has no background in medicine, science, or public health—still holds less sway with Americans than the esteemed physician-scientist.

In a nationally representative survey conducted in February by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, 54 percent of respondents said they had confidence in Fauci, while only 38 percent had confidence in Kennedy. Breaking those supporters down further, 25 percent of respondents said they were "very confident" in Fauci, while only 9 percent said the same for Kennedy.

Credit: Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania, 2026

Overall, the survey found a clear divide between the confidence in Kennedy and other Trump administration officials and that of career scientists and medical associations.

Among federal agencies, 67 percent said they had confidence in career scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health. But only 43 percent said they had confidence in the leaders of those agencies.

"The public is differentiating the trustworthiness of career scientists in the CDC, NIH, and FDA from that of the leaders of those agencies and recalling substantially higher confidence in the guidance that former director Fauci provided than that offered by Secretary Kennedy or Dr. Oz," Ken Winneg, APPC’s managing director of survey research, said in a statement.

Overall confidence in federal agencies was also lower than that for medical associations. Sixty-two percent of respondents were confident in the FDA and NIH generally, while 60 percent were confident in the CDC. In contrast, the American Heart Association earned confidence from 82 percent of respondents, while the American Academy of Pediatrics earned confidence from 77 percent, and the American Medical Association earned confidence from 73 percent.

"Trust is the foundation of effective health care and public health," AMA CEO John Whyte said in a statement. "In a challenging information environment, patients need clear, evidence-based guidance they can rely on... The AMA is dedicated to helping patients cut through the clutter and elevate the valid over the viral. Accurate, trustworthy information saves lives."

In a statement to Ars Technica, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, Andrew Nixon, said the decline in trust in US public health began before the current Trump administration. "Secretary Kennedy was brought in to restore credibility through transparency, gold standard science, and accountability. HHS is focused on rebuilding public confidence by ensuring that decisions are driven by rigorous evidence."

The survey also found that trust in federal agencies—the CDC, NIH, and FDA—has declined during this administration, falling from 67 percent overall in February 2025 to 60–62 percent in February 2026.

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For whatever reason, I’m perpetually fascinated by Volkswagen’s long history of prototypes and concept cars that, while fascinating, never quite managed to make the leap into reality. And by “reality,” I suppose I mean “mass production.” I mean, sure, they exist in reality, as we all do, but they’re often just one-offs or built in very limited numbers. But then again, each of us is a sort of one-off, aren’t we? Even twins. So maybe that’s part of the fascination, though I don’t really think so. I think mostly I just like interesting and strangely wonderful cars, and the particular VW concept I want to talk about today is just that: the Volkswagen EcoRacer Concept.

The EcoRacer was very much a product of its particular time, which was 2005, a period when Volkswagen was heavily invested in diesel engines and eager to find ways to make diesels more exciting and appealing to mainstream car buyers, who often still felt diesels were slow, smoky things that were better suited to big rig trucks than passenger cars. Volkswagen was clearly willing to do a lot to make diesels drive better and be more fun and appealing, and as a result they took big swings like making fun diesel concept cars like the EcoRacer and, much more famously, designing elaborate software and hardware methods to cheat diesel emissions testing, which blew up spectacularly with the whole Dieselgate scandal that came to light around 2015.

The Dieselgate scandal cost Volkswagen plenty, both monetarily and reputation-wise, and also pretty effectively put an end to VW’s passenger car diesel plans, which meant that any fun diesel concept cars were dumped into that same coffin. But, before that happened, they did manage to do some fun diesel things, like this car, a mid-engined diesel sports car with modular, changeable bodywork. Watch:

The EcoRacer, despite its somewhat dumb, first-thing-that-came-to-mind name, was an extremely cool and appealing little car. First publicly shown at the 2005 Tokyo Auto Show, the EcoRacer featured a 1.5-liter inline-four TDI engine making 136 horsepower – which sounds low today, but remember, this is a diesel – and 184 pound-feet (250 Nm) of torque at a pretty low 1900 RPM. It could get to 60 in a respectable 6.3 seconds and managed to do all this while getting 70 mpg!

It used a seven-speed direct-shift (DSG) transmission and only weighed about 1875 pounds. It was a little mid-engined oil-burning rocket, and at the time it was suggested that Porsche was supporting the concept as a way to perhaps make a reborn VW-Porsche 914, though to be fair, I’ve only found one source that reported that, appealing an idea as it may be.

Design-wise, the EcoRacer always stood out to me as something that looked very, well, un-Volkswagen, especially the front end. Spanish designer Cesar Muntada designed the car, and it’s got that VW-Audi 1990s to early-2000s lithe, lean tautness about it, but there’s something about the front end that really feels like something other than a Volkswagen to me.

This isn’t a slight; I think it’s a great-looking car, and that wide, smiling grille and angled quad headlamps work really well in this context, and integrate well with the car as a whole. I think it’s strongest in profile, with that Kamm-like squared off tail, which sort of gives it a shooting brake even if it isn’t one:

There’s also what seems to be T-top panels that can be removed, or, as is shown here, at least hinged for easier ingress into the low car:

But this is sort of deceptive, because the EcoRacer was a modular design, and that entire rear – what is that, a fairing? – can be removed, leaving a roadster-type body with a roll bar, and the windshield itself can be swapped for a speedster-style cut-down windshield that’s perfect for keeping the wind out of your knuckles’ eyes:

For whatever reason, I have yet to find pictures of the EcoRacer with the roof and rear fairing off and the taller windshield installed, which strikes me as a bit odd, since you would think that would be one of the most popular ways to configure the car, as it’s the most conventional roadster-type setup.

Unlike the exterior, the interior does feel quite recognizably VW/Audi, reminding me of the first-gen Audi TT interior, but with a more pill-shaped design motif instead of pure circles, if that makes sense. VW interiors of this era tended to look and feel fantastic, and this seems no exception. I also appreciate the low, dash-mounted rear-view mirror, which is a bit of a retro touch.

Around the back, those C-shaped LED taillights do sort of predict future automotive design, and that bold, large rear wheel arch is pretty striking, too, making a nice, muscular-looking haunch.

I mean, I think it’s a wildly appealing package overall, and the idea that a little sports car like this could have potentially delivered 70 mpg as well is just an incredible thought, a thought that also inevitably reminds us that because of VW’s diesel-based crimes and missteps, anything like this will very likely never happen.

VW and Audi once did so much to promote diesels as an efficient, eco-friendly alternative to spark-ignition gasoline cars, and that included working very hard to earn a sporting, exciting reputation for diesels – remember Audi’s diesel Le Mans cars?

The EcoRacer was part of this overall plan, this glamming-up of diesels, and for a good long while, it was working. The complete destruction of not just concept cars like the EcoRacer, but the entire concept of making diesels more appealing to mainstream buyers, says more about the destructive aftermath of Dieselgate than anything else, really.

It’s a shame. A world with fun 70 mpg modular-bodied roadsters could have been a pretty fun place.

Top graphic image: Volkswagen

The post Thanks To Dieselgate, Volkswagen’s 70 MPG Mid-Engined Sports Car Was Doomed appeared first on The Autopian.

If you spent as much time looking at sales data from last year as I did, you’d probably recognize something peculiar: Minivans are surging in popularity right now. Once a mainstay in suburban driveways across America, the minivan segment has, in recent decades, shrunk to a fraction of its peak, its sales siphoned off by the ever-versatile SUV and crossover segments. Now, though, minivans are making a bit of a comeback.

Minivan sales in North America are up 20% year-over-year, with the majority of the brands that sell minivans seeing double-digit percentage increases in deliveries. Suddenly, minivans are hot again. What gives?

Curious to know more about the segment-wide spike in demand, I asked every automaker that makes a minivan why they thought their minivan was succeeding. The answers I got highlight two demographics, younger families and empty-nesters, choosing vans instead of crossovers more than they did in the past. In addition to that, one automaker told me that minivans are being used more and more by “gig economy” workers who need a multipurpose vehicle to work multiple jobs.

Normal People Are Starting To Realize How Great Minivans Are

Not counting Volkswagen, which saw sales of its ID.Buzz increase from 1,162 units to 6,140 units in 2025, Kia was the biggest winner in terms of sales percentage gain in 2025. It sold 71,917 Carnivals last year, versus just 49,726 units in 2024. That’s an increase of 44.6%. The company told me the van’s SUV-like appearance and available hybrid powertrain were big reasons for the jump. The people buying Carnivals have trended younger, dropping by two years in age versus 2024. It’s also seen an increase in male buyers by 66%.

Mainly, it seems like new families are finally figuring out just how much more useful a minivan can be over a traditional crossover, at least according to Chrysler, whose Pacifica and Voyager saw a combined 5.4% increase in sales, and accounted for over a fourth of the entire segment’s sales in 2025:

We’re seeing more and more “millennials” entering the parenting phase of their lives, and they are considering minivans at a higher level than ever before.

Honda echoed that observation. The Japanese automaker, which saw a 10.5% increase in Odyssey sales last year, is seeing that millennials are more often turning to vans not only because of their versatility, but also because of their pricing:

Odyssey is also America’s #1 minivan with millennials because it offers younger families an unmatched combination of top-class interior space, family‑friendly features and value. The Odyssey’s powerful V6 engine, smooth ride quality, fun-to-drive personality and reputation for long‑term dependability also continue to make it a go‑to choice for families.

Affordability is another key factor in Odyssey’s popularity. The average transaction price for Odyssey last year was $43.3K, which is below the average new‑vehicle transaction price in the U.S. ($45,778). For families balancing budgets, that value proposition — more space, more features and lower cost than the average new vehicle — is a meaningful driver of demand.

Toyota, another goliath in the minivan space, saw a massive 35.2% incrase in sales of its Sienna, from 75,037 units in 2024 to 101,486 units last year. Like Kia, Toyota attributes the van’s success to its hybrid powertrain, but also points to its available all-wheel drive as a big selling point.

Like the automakers above, Toyota told me in its statement that Sienna buyers are mainly younger families. But, interestingly, another demographic makes up a good chunk of sales: Empty nesters. These are older parents whose kids have since moved out of the house and who, theoretically, wouldn’t need such a big vehicle to go about their daily lives.

The reasons for this, as Toyota points out, are all the same reasons that I’d own a minivan, even as a person with no kids at all. They’re just so damn useful for so many different things, without being nearly as compromised as a pickup truck or even a full-size SUV. From Toyota:

Sienna buyers are mainly younger families and empty nesters who value comfort, reliability, and flexibility. The vehicle’s spacious cabin and innovative features meet the needs of modern, diverse families, which may also include extended relatives and pets.

Toyota isn’t the only company that has acknowledged this demographic shift. Chrysler is seeing it as well, telling me that it’s seeing more Gen X- and Boomer-aged shoppers now go for minivans and use them to roadtrip and shuttle around grandkids.

Minivans > Pickup Trucks

It’s not just families and road-trippers who are increasingly turning to minivans. Drivers who use their vehicles for work are, more than before, realizing that a minivan makes for an excellent utility vehicle, at least according to Chrysler:

There is also higher consideration from “gig economy” workers, such as Amazon delivery workers, GrubHub delivery workers and even construction workers, who like that you can fit a sheet of plywood in the rear of the Pacifica with the Stow ‘N Go seats folded flat.

While it’s pretty depressing to hear that people increasingly need to work multiple “gig” jobs while using their own personal vehicles for transport purposes, the use case highlights just how flexible a minivan can be. For one vehicle to be able to haul a mountain of packages during the day, switch to food delivery at night, then shuttle seven kids to school the next morning, all while driving like a normal car and getting reasonable fuel economy, is a tall ask. But for a minivan, it’s all in a day’s work.

As for construction use, a minivan makes a lot of sense, too. The Ford Transit and Ram Promaster are angled for commercial use, but they’re more expensive and less efficient. The ancient Chevy Express is only about $1,000 more expensive than a base Voyager, but it sure as hell doesn’t have Stow ‘N Go fold-flat seats. For a truly do-it-all vehicle, you’d be hard-pressed to find something as all-encompassing as a minivan, provided you don’t do any off-roading. And the demographics from these automakers prove it.

If I can put my speculation cap on for a second, it’s also possible that the minivan is becoming popular simply because people don’t want to drive what their parents drove. It’s the same sort of theory posited by the fall of the minivan and station wagon in the first place—who wants to be seen driving around in a type of car their parents drive? The difference now is that the average parent car is currently a crossover, not a minivan. The new families buying cars now all grew up in SUVs and crossovers, which means they want something different. The fact that minivans are also more useful is certainly the main reason for this drive in sales, but the simple fact that minivans aren’t crossovers could be a bonus for some buyers.

No matter the reason, I’m glad the minivan is making a comeback. It’s the best body style for a large swath of the population, and for a while, it seems like most people forgot just how useful they could be. Now, though, it feels like a new minivan renaissance is upon us. This time, I hope it lasts forever.

Top graphic images: Toyota; Kia; Chrysler; Honda

The post Minivans Are Popular Again For A Few Normal Reasons And One Reason That’s Kind Of Depressing appeared first on The Autopian.

When it comes to driving on ice and hardpack snow, nothing comes close to the control of studded tires. Hundreds of little spikes literally bite into the frozen surface like steel teeth, ensuring absolutely huge traction. Unfortunately, those same studs that are a game-changer on ice can make life miserable on dry pavement. Not only do they reduce ride comfort, but they can wail like a banshee and are downright rough on asphalt and concrete surfaces. So rough that some jurisdictions ban their use.

In a perfect world, the ideal solution to this dilemma would be tires with studs that can deploy or retract on command. Think James Bond’s Aston Martin V8 in The Living Daylights or the Mach 5 in Speed Racer. Maybe more the former than the latter, but still. While push-button studs haven’t become reality yet, the winter tire engineers at Nokian have cooked up the next best thing: Studs that automatically deploy and retract.

Needless to say, this has been in the works for ages. Some 80 years after inventing the winter tire in 1934, Nokian unveiled a concept tire with retractable studs that seemed like pure science fiction. Well, it took about twelve years of research and development, but the production equivalent is finally here, known as the Nokian Hakkapeliitta 01.

The way the Hakkapeliitta 01 works sounds simple, but it’s actually genius. As tires roll down the road, the amount of friction generated on a given surface heats it up. For an extreme example, think about racing drivers weaving to heat up their tires before a restart. Because clear asphalt offers substantially more friction than ice, a tire rolling along asphalt should warm up quicker than a tire on ice. This principle is key because the studs in the Hakkapeliitta 01 deploy not based on ambient temperature, but based on tire temperature.

If the tire is cold, the two different styles of studs—one type placed near the center rib of the tire for straight-line traction and one type placed near the shoulders for cornering traction—extend from the tread to bite through frozen surfaces. If the tire warms up, those studs hide back up inside the tread again. Even if it sounds like the studs might deploy overnight in cold conditions, they should quickly settle back into the tread on dry pavement, tucked away in reserve in case they’re needed.

All this happens passively, no electronics required. Nokian’s pretty coy about the precise technical details, but the essential component appears to be the proprietary material the studs mount to. Since the Hakkapeliitta 01 doesn’t require any sort of electronic mechanism to deploy or retract its studs, you can sort of just throw them on anything. Plus, if you quickly hit a patch of ice while running on mostly bare asphalt, loads of little sipes, a winter rubber compound, and the confidence of that three-peak mountain snowflake rating means they should offer just as much confidence as a studless winter tire in that particular scenario. Of course, I haven’t personally tested them yet, but I have spent my own money on Nokian tires in the past and found them well worth it—and I’m extraordinarily picky about rubber.

What was once the tire tech of fantasy is now pretty much real, and it’s coming to North America this autumn. Unfortunately, studded tires remain profoundly illegal in my neck of the woods, so I won’t be able to throw a set on my 335i and report back, but you can bet I’m watching the Hakkapeliitta 01 closely.

Top graphic images: MGM/UA; Nokian Tyres

The post Winter Tires With James-Bond-Style Retractable Studs Are Now Real And You Can Buy A Set This Fall appeared first on The Autopian.

NBC News reported last week what avgeeks and ICE watchers have been talking about for months: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been flying around on a recently acquired luxury Boeing 737. DHS told NBC the jet, which is worth an estimated $70 million and comes with a queen bed, showers, a kitchen, and four flat-screen TVs, would serve a “dual purpose” for Cabinet-level official travel and deportations.

Obviously, this is bullshit – flight data shows it has never done anything resembling a deportation – but the situation is actually so much worse than this one 737. Over the last four months, Noem’s DHS has acquired at least nine new airplanes, with another on the way. Of those, half appear to be luxury jets.

The latest, a 2016 Gulfstream 650, popped onto my radar (pun intended) on Feb. 20, flying from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to Nashville and back, registered to DHS. A day earlier, it had been registered to Valkyrie Aviation Holdings Group, part of a shadowy network of shell companies connected to MAGA-aligned former State Department officials. Together, these companies have gotten more than a billion dollars in DHS contracts in a matter of months.

This story will put together reporting from Vanity Fair, Mother Jones, The War Zone, and The Washington Post, along with new information and my own reporting, to reveal the full scale of DHS's fleet expansion.

Last August, DHS boasted that “Noem personally reviews and approves any contract above $100,000.” Like the stockpiling of weapons and fast-tracked warehouse purchases all over the country, the rapid acquisition of these aircraft shows that Noem’s DHS is swimming in cash and out of control.

DHS did not respond to a detailed list of questions about the facts in this story, or to follow-up queries.

OpMed

But first, a little back story.

William A. Walters III ran the State Department’s Operational Medicine directorate from its inception during the Obama years through the first Trump administration. Also called “OpMed,” the team was essentially a medevac unit that arose from the ashes of Benghazi. Walters, a former Army surgeon, stayed on when Biden came in, and in May 2021, Vanity Fair wrote a glowing piece describing how his team used their emergency logistics skills and sheer bravado to deliver the COVID-19 vaccine to embassies all over the world, even when it ruffled diplomatic feathers.

Three months after the first story, the magazine published a bizarre follow-up. Walters had abruptly quit OpMed after the new Secretary of State decided to scrap an expansion promised by his predecessor. What’s more, Walters claimed – with little evidence – that the US’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan was a direct result of that decision.

Many OpMed staffers appear to have followed Walters’ out the door, including his deputy, Taundria Cappel. Over the next few years, Walters and Cappel started at least a dozen companies, all registered to the same Arlington, VA, office building. All of the companies also had mythological names: Soteria Solutions, Atlas Management Services, Salus Worldwide Solutions.

Somewhere in there, Walters seems to have gone full MAGA. In November 2024, a few weeks after the election, he accepted a “Patriot Award” at a Mar-a-Lago gala attended by the former president president-elect.

Salus Worldwide Solutions

The next summer, DHS handed a monster contract worth up to $915 million to Salus Worldwide Solutions to provide flights for immigrants wishing to “self-deport.”

The contract was weird for number of reasons, as Dan Friedman and Nick Schwellenbach revealed in Mother Jones. First, it was awarded by DHS’s Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans, not by ICE, which typically manages all immigrant removal flights. Second, at the time the office awarded the contract, it was headed by a former State Department colleague of Walters and Cappel, who, they reported took meetings at Salus’s office. Third, and perhaps most glaring, Walters and Cappel have no aviation industry experience. Sure, they chartered many planes as medical professionals at OpMed, but that does not aviation industry experience make.

ICE’s current flight broker, CSI Aviation – which has its own shady provenance and a $1.5 billion contract – sued, alleging the Salus contract was noncompetitive and improperly awarded. It’s unclear how the case has impacted the fulfillment of the contract; in a joint status report filed Feb. 19, CSI and DHS told the court they had not been able to come to a mutual agreement about how to move forward.

Walters and Cappel did not respond to requests for comment. An attempt to visit their Arlington office was not successful; there was no receptionist in the building lobby, no one came in or out in the hour I spent there, and elevators were only accessible with a key card.

Daedalus Aviation

Next, DHS signed a $140 million contract with Daedalus Aviation to facilitate the purchase of up to six Boeing 737s to start ICE’s own deportation fleet, first reported in mid-December by Marianne LeVine and Jacob Bogage at the Washington Post. Daedalus was headed up by Walters and Cappel, the same people behind Salus, they noted.

Over the Christmas break, a source at Avelo Airlines told me the budget airline had been offered a huge sum for the immediate sale of a handful of its Boeing 737s. The source did not know who the buyers were, but over the next few days, I watched the Federal Aviation Administration’s aircraft registry as five Avelo planes quietly transferred ownership to Daedalus.

I was still pitching this story to outlets in early January when Avelo announced it was getting out of the ICE flight racket. “We won! We stopped Avelo’s ICE flights,” some of the wonderful activists in the boycott movement told me. I did not have the heart to tell them that while their movement certainly played a role in Avelo’s decision to cut bait, these planes would in all likelihood, keep flying shackled people for ICE.

On Jan. 10 and 11, all five planes shed their Avelo callsigns and flew down to Lake Charles, LA – a common stop for planes in need of a new paint job and some remodeling. And what do you know, another Boeing 737 I was familiar with had recently spent time there.

Valkyrie Aviation Holdings Group

Back in mid-December, Joseph Trevithick at the military news site The War Zone (TWZ) did a deep dive on the mysterious 737 that had recently emerged from Lake Charles with a DHS seal, “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” written on the side, and a livery identical to the one Trump had picked in his first term for the new Air Force One, which Biden had subsequently scrapped as too expensive.

New DHS plane 👀 pic.twitter.com/B64S1THp4B

— Grokius Maximus ⚔️ (@alx) December 14, 2025

As avgeeks noted at the time, this tired livery style is just an upside-down version of Trump’s own plane, with an extra gold stripe and clip art-style wavy flag tossed in for good tacky measure. The plane also had a custom registration number: N471US. Might the “47” be an homage to a certain 47th president?

The planes’ then-owner, Valkyrie Aviation Holdings Group, had reserved eight more n-numbers: N472US through N479US, Trevithick noted. He also pointed out the WaPo story about Daedalus and the DHS deportation fleet, but given this 737’s luxury interior, it seemed “ill-suited to conducting deportation flights,” he wrote, and could not say if Daedalus and Valkyrie were related.

But here’s the thing: Valkyrie’s office is just one floor up from the Daedalus office in the same darn building as all of Walters and Cappel’s other ventures. Daedalus also recently posted a job listing for Gulfstream 650 pilots, despite not owning any G650s. But Valkyrie does!

Or at least, it did, for a single day last week, when it flew from Dallas’s Love Field to Dulles, Atlanta, Charleston, and Joint Base Andrews. The next day it was DHS property.

And, as I write this, another one just stepped into the light. Some time in the last few months, it’s hard to tell when, the reserved n-number N472US was also assigned to a G650. This one was registered to a non-mythically themed company – Vigilant Aviation Holdings Group – at a Delaware address frequently used by anonymous shell companies. This plane has spent the last month at Ardmore Municipal Airport in Oklahoma – yet another place airplanes go when they need a refresh.

It appears to have just completed its metamorphosis, flying to Love Field, according to public flight data. DHS is listed as its owner.

C104

So that’s eight planes – the five Avelo 737s, the luxury 737, and the two G650s. We’re still not done! Because last October, during the longest government shutdown in American history, Noem’s DHS announced it was replacing one of the US Coast Guard’s Gulfstream 550s – the ones already designated for DHS and USCG leadership travel – with two Gulfstream 700s.

One of these G550s was, by all accounts, getting a little old, and $50 million had already been budgeted for its replacement. Noem picked a time when her 260,000 employees weren’t receiving paychecks to announce the replacement would be upgraded and doubled. The first of these G7s, which uses the callsign C104, arrived on Jan. 29, according to flight data.

And it looked ... strange.

This is what the airframes in USCG’s fleet usually look like, including the C102 jet Noem had been using:

And this is what the new “Coast Guard” jet looks like, according to flight data and the DHS Flickr feed:

No orange. No light blue. No USCG seal or “Semper Paratus.” Just upside-down Trump.

The second G7 is scheduled for delivery later this year. The USCG did not respond to a request for comment.

The Cost

Ordinarily in my ICE flight reporting, the cost to taxpayers is one of the things I write about the least, because the enormous suffering of the migrants onboard is always so much more important. But seeing as how not one damn deportation has occurred on DHS’s new fleet, let’s get into the public purse.

First, the G7s. We know $50 million had been budgeted for a replacement. The New York Times reports the two upgraded jets will cost $172 million. From where in the USCG budget is that extra $122 million coming? We have no idea! But there’s a Coast Guard member on Reddit whose office hasn't had heat all winter and was just told the funds to fix the HVAC system had dried up, and I don’t think he’s going to be happy about the new jets.

Next, the 737s. Daedalus’s contract to acquire six and stand up an airline was for $140 million. That was always going to be aspirational, but with the luxury 737 alone costing half that, it’s downright impossible. And that doesn’t even factor in the cost of refurbishment or hiring and training the crew they are trying to hire and train. Is that coming from the $915 million Salus contract in the middle of a lawsuit? We have no idea!

DHS tried to convince NBC News that using the luxury 737 for deportations would “sav[e] the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars,” because, “this plane flies at 40 percent cheaper than what the military aircraft flies for ICE deportation flights.” Which, honestly, was a pathetic attempt at the grift.

Military ICE flights are rare, and among the most expensive – some estimates are as high as $28,500 per flight hour. Forty percent off of $28,500 makes $17,000 an hour – still more than CSI Aviation charges for a 737 – $15,865 per flight hour – on its most recent price list. And the latter will fit more passengers.

Lastly, let me say something about where these planes are going. I’ve logged every flight for the USCG jets and the luxury 737 going back to October, and while it is often not possible to know who is using which plane and for what reason, let me just say: Those 17 trips to Noem’s hometown of Watertown, SD, in the last 18 weeks? That was her.

If she misses it so much, perhaps she should go back to stay. Preferably via Greyhound.

Thank you for reading. I am a former Washington Post staff writer, and as far as I know, I’m the only journalist in America covering ICE flights full time. I am committed to keeping this reporting non-paywalled, but if you are able, please sign up for a paid subscription or send me a one-time tip, so I can continue this important work. –Gillian