Exposing a domestic terror conspiracy has been a major priority of top Trump administration officials, who have gone to extraordinary lengths to find evidence that people who protest against them are agents of organized antifa cells in the pay of shadowy transnational figures.

But as a new lawsuit from ICE shooting victim Renee Good’s family lays out persuasively and in blistering detail, the real conspiracy was right in front of their eyes the whole time.

That’s because they were the conspirators.

The civil suit alleges that 17 people – starting with Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who killed Good, and Stephen Miller, the White House goblin who masterminded the whole operation – violated laws passed in 1871 to protect Black people from the Ku Klux Klan.

Their conduct, the suit says, was “in furtherance of a carefully planned, coordinated effort between senior federal officials and private actors to make two ethnic communities in Minnesota – Minnesotans of Somali and Hispanic descent and origin – the object of aggression and abduction, and to silence, by intimidation, arrest, and violence, the neighbors and allies of those targeted communities who observed, documented, and warned of that campaign.”

Why invoke the KKK Act? Because, the suit says, Congress enacted it “to address precisely this scenario: the acts of individuals who ride the public roads with their faces covered, to strip a despised group of the equal protection of the laws, and conspiracies to accomplish the same.”

And there certainly are some similarities.

“Nothing about this resembled legitimate or lawful immigration enforcement,” the suit says. “The Twin Cities were occupied by three to four thousand masked, armed, camouflaged federal agents who roved the streets stopping people because of how they looked. They wore masks and mismatched vests, displayed no names or badge numbers, refused to identify themselves, drove unmarked cars with switched, missing, or falsified license plates, and demanded that United States citizens prove they were not, in the agents’ words, illegal.”

(Good’s family also filed a separate lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which allows individuals to sue the U.S. government in federal court for personal injury, death or property damage.)

The Klan Act suit identifies the conspirators as Ross, Miller, former DHS secretary Kristi Noem, her enforcer Corey Lewandowski, border “czar” Tom Homan, former ICE director Todd Lyons, former Border Patrol hothead Gregory Bovino, and 10 unidentified federal agents.

The suit says other conspirators, though not named as defendants, include right-wing influencers Nick Shirley, Chris Rufo, and Ben Bergquam, and two companies: Palantir Technologies and Clearview AI.

They Really Hate Protesters

The objective of the conspiracy wasn’t just to terrorize and demonize immigrants; it was also to terrorize and demonize protesters and observers. “Suppression of observation was a core part of the conspiracy,” the suit says. “Renee was stopped and targeted for engaging in constitutionally protected observation of immigration enforcement.”

Indeed, the suit says Ross was using his phone to film Good before he shot her “to create social media content of violent encounters between agents and people protesting or monitoring the agents’ activity.”

Shortly after the killing, Trump officials began claiming that Good had tried to kill ICE officers with her vehicle in an act of domestic terrorism. They blamed “sanctuary politicians” for “creating an environment that encourages rampant assaults on law enforcement.” The suit notes that ICE agents soon began using Good’s death as a threat to dissuade other protesters.

Meanwhile, a “high-ranking White House official” shut state police out of the investigation. “Senior FBI officials, including the Director, instructed agents to stop investigating the killing over concerns that pursuing a civil rights investigation would undermine the President’s claims that Renee had tried to kill an officer, and pressured prosecutors to investigate [her wife] Becca instead.”

The suit identifies Miller as “the conspirator who converted the President’s stated animus into the operation’s daily orders” – which included sending agents “to the areas of Minneapolis where observers and protesters had gathered, in order to force confrontations with them.”

Days after Ross killed Good, DHS reposted a clip of Miller declaring: “To all ICE officers: You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties and anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony.”

The suit also incorporates quotes attributed to senior DHS officials who told the Daily Mail that Miller told agents to “engage these protesters” and said they “need to be vanquished by any force necessary.” Miller, according to one quoted official, was “the architect of Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s deaths.”

Compare and Contrast

By contrast, let’s look at some of the conspiracies the government has been chasing, sometimes to absurd lengths.

Also in Minnesota, 15 anti-ICE protesters are facing federal conspiracy charges that are based on their use of traditional community organizing tactics (plus they dented a van.).

As I wrote just last month, that was the best DOJ could do after a months-long DHS spying campaign ambitiously called “Operation Puppet Master.” Undercover agents were sent into Minnesota churches and schools to surveil protest meetings. They stalked and profiled attendees and subpoenaed vast amounts of record from unions and political organizations that some of the protesters belonged to.

It’s so outrageous that conservative and libertarian groups filed a friend-of-the-court brief likening the government’s conduct to the McCarthy era. “Backed by the machinery of federal investigative and prosecutorial powers, the Trump administration has…. set out to dictate orthodoxy and suppress dissent,” the brief reads. “The scale of the government’s assault on free expression has not been seen since the Second Red Scare.” (The First Red Scare dates back to World War I.)

And consider the DOJ stupidity involved in the ongoing conspiracy case against 36 people who marched into a St. Paul church in January to hold a peaceful protest. Two independent journalists who went along to cover it, Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, also face charges.

As I wrote in January, the charges were vindictive and bizarre, and the inclusion of the journalists made them a prima facie violation of the First Amendment. As I wrote in May, a scandalized magistrate judge denied the prosecution’s ridiculous request for search warrants demanding detailed information on Lemon’s YouTube subscribers. And then, as I wrote last month, DHS then did an end run around the judge, using an obscure statute applying to customs regulations that didn’t require a judge’s signature. They got tons of information, but apparently none of it showed what they wanted. There have been sooo many motions to dismiss.

Then there’s the epic collapse of the case – yes, a conspiracy case – against the so-called “Broadview Six” in Chicago. The “Exonerated Six,” as I call them, exposed spectacular misconduct by the U.S. Attorney’s Office there. Judge April Perry is now investigating a possible cover-up by DOJ, the Six want a copy of communications from Washington about the case, and they may even get Perry to appoint a special prosecutor.

DOJ has won one conspiracy case, somehow persuading two credulous Texas judges that eight anti-ICE protesters there were in fact member of a “Texas antifa cell.” A cop was shot -- but several of the people sentenced to decades in prison were not remotely involved in the shooting, and one wasn’t even at the protest. That can’t stand (right?)

So what’s behind DOJ’s push here?

Well, it’s obvious. They are under orders from the White House (i.e. Miller channeling Trump) to apply Trump’s (i.e. Miller’s) Sept. 2025 presidential directive – called the NSPM-7-- that authorized the FBI to sidestep First Amendment protections in pursuit of “domestic terrorists” – like the mythical antifa.

You think maybe I’m overstating things?

Well, on Tuesday, California Sen. Alex Padilla released an FBI whistleblower's complaint – and his own letter to DOJ – alleging that Trump personally directed the FBI to criminally investigate protesters. This apparently came right after he watched a LULAC video of residents using a megaphone to warn their neighbors of ICE’s presence and remind them of their rights. The FBI then opened investigations of peaceful, legal protests – violating the Constitution – because orders.

Speaking of Bullshit Prosecutions

You may recall that last October, 30-year-old Chicago resident Marimar Martinez was charged with felony assault and accused of being a “domestic terrorist”– after a Border Patrol agent shot her five times because she was following his car around.

Charges were dropped once the defense got hold of text messages showing the agent bragging about his shooting skills.

Well, now Martinez is suing under the Tort Claims Act. Her legal team even created an animated forensic reconstruction of the shooting, which shows agent Charles Exum’s five shots, including one fired through her rear passenger window.

And lawyers for David Hearn have sent a letter asking inspectors general at DOJ and Interior to look into why their client was arrested and indicted for vandalizing the Reflecting Pool when he obviously didn’t. The answer, of course, is that federal officials were trying to curry favor with Trump, who was insanely insisting that it was vandalism – not his own shoddy contractors – who damaged the landmark. (He’s still saying that!)

The Week in the Courts

• Hundreds of district court judges and nine out of 11 judicial circuit panels have found the Trump administration’s “mandatory detention” rule flatly in violation of the Due Process Clause, but the Supreme Court will have the final say this session. The policy, which is causing untold suffering to immigrants and their families, denies detainees the chance to seek release on bond, even if they have lived in the U.S. a long time and have strong roots in the community.

• DOJ is now 0-26 after a federal judge denied its effort to obtain Georgia’s unredacted voter list.

• In an unexpected ruling, a federal judge in Florida concluded that a 40-year-old federal statute that the Trump administration has used to prosecute noncitizen voting violates the Constitution. Judge David S. Leibowitz noted that “Until very recently, no federal court has been presented with the following question about that statute: Did Congress have Constitutional authority to enact it?” He found the answer pretty obvious: nope. “Congress does not have the constitutional power to enact this statute,” he wrote. That power “is reserved for the States, and limits Congress.”

• A pro-immigration coalition filed a lawsuit challenging two recent policy changes that make getting a green card more fraught for immigrants already in the United States. They would be required to depart the United States and initiate the green-card process from abroad, or risk denial of their applications. The lawsuit charges violations of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Administrative Procedures Act, and the Due Process Clause.

End Notes

• Mark your calendars! NO KINGS: VOTE EARLY is on Saturday, October 17. It’s not a march, it’s “the next step of reclaiming our power after a year of mass mobilizations…. It’s a day of nonpartisan voter participation, being in community with each other, and making sure every eligible voter has a plan, knows their options, and is ready to make their voice count.”

• From the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley, a major new report: “Architecture of Cruelty: Third Country Removal Agreements and the Second Trump Administration.” It’s “the first major analysis of the removal arrangements that have allowed this system to function, one riddled with violations of both domestic and international human rights protections.” Includes a timeline and an archive of agreements between the U.S. and third countries.

• From the American Prospect: “The City That Brought Down an ICE Airline; In Chicago, progressive alderpeople held up a contract until a private equity firm was forced to dispatch Omni Air International, protecting thousands of immigrants from deportation.”

• From Gambit, in New Orleans: “Shrouded in secrecy’: Louisiana’s new ICE facility raises more questions than answers,” about protests against a proposed new detention facility for children in Alexandria, La., whose airport is the main hub of all ICE deportation flights inside the U.S. and around the world.

• From NBC News: “How the shooting death of a Houston father is igniting Latino politics in Texas,” about a community demanding justice for the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo by an ICE agent.

• From the Kansas Reflector: “Trump’s immigration sweeps leave southwest Kansas communities looking for way forward.” The result? “Restaurants closed, motel managers cancelled reservations and the area’s large beef processing facilities shortened or called off shifts last week as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers rushed in and immigrant employees didn’t show up for work.”

On the last Sunday of September, the Catholic Church observes the World Day of Migrants and Refugees. This past Sunday, many members of the clergy in the United States decried the moral abomination of Donald Trump’s ongoing persecution of immigrants. And one, in particular, called for people of conscience to act.

Maybe I’m just all worked up about the topic, but I can’t remember the last speech that I found as powerful and stirring as the homily Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, the archbishop of Washington, delivered at a Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington. (You can read it here or watch it here.)

I think you will forgive me for quoting it at such length.

First, he established the essential moral underpinnings:

For us as Americans two great legacies form the call that falls upon us regarding the immigrant and the stranger in our midst.

The first of these is a religious call that comes from today’s first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy. Moses calls the people of Israel to remember that they had been slaves in Egypt, strangers in the land, homeless, victimized and outcasts. Moses instructs Israel to always keep this history at the forefront of their consciousness and let it fashion their most fundamental attitudes and actions toward the stranger and the alien, the orphan and the widow who might seek a home among the people of God…. This mandate suffuses the spirituality of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and the moral traditions of virtually every faith in the United States.

The second legacy that we as Americans enjoy is a reverence for immigration, which has built us up into the great nation that we love so deeply. It was not people of great wealth who came to our shores, but the poor and the dispossessed, those seeking freedom from oppression and opportunities to build new lives in this new land. In the words emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty, Emma Lazarus wrote that Lady Liberty cries out “with silent lips, Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free… Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.” There was a time when these words brought tears to every American. Now they are shunned, riddled with conditions, or ignored altogether because they remind us of what we have become.

Then he despaired not only about the suffering of immigrants, but the callousness of the American people

In the past 18 months our nation has cast aside both the spiritual and moral tradition of the Book of Deuteronomy and the centerpiece of American culture that our love of immigration and immigrants constitutes. They have been replaced by suspicion, division, cruelty and violence.

For the last year and a half, the people of the United States have witnessed the suffering of the undocumented in our midst, purposely and strategically magnified by our government, and for the most part, we have simply passed on by. …

We saw their suffering and the injustice of it, but we just crossed to the other side of the road and passed on by.

When the expansiveness of the net of deportation began to touch us more intimately, ensnaring mothers and fathers and children and families whom we knew, fellow parishioners and coworkers who exemplify all of the best qualities that our nation is so desperately searching for, we were deeply troubled. But in the end we told ourselves that I cannot save them alone. And emotionally we crossed to the other side of the road and passed on by.

And then he called for action to make it stop:

Jesus weeps all across our nation for the children who have been arrested, detained, transported to far-off centers with terrible living conditions, and cut off from their families.

For us as a nation we can pass by no more. We must stop, recognize the evil that is being carried out in our name, and fight every dimension of it. We must seek to convert our political representatives from tolerating this evil or replace them. We must shed our identities as priests and Levites and become like the Good Samaritan who recognized no boundaries in rescuing the victim by the side of the road. We must recognize that in abandoning the words of Deuteronomy and the Statue of Liberty we are losing our soul as a nation. And we must constantly see before us the families that are being broken apart, the fear that consumes the undocumented communities, the children who are in pain. We must act now and act together. For Jesus weeps, and he will continue to weep until we go to the side of the road, lift up the victim, embrace him and make his pain our own.

Wow, huh? Are you fired up?

More Critical Mass

In Miami, Archbishop Thomas Wenski spoke of our obligations to immigrants:

We are called to welcome, protect, promote, and integrate the new strangers at our own doors, just as we once hoped to be welcomed.

To welcome means letting go of fear-driven rhetoric and making space in our communities and our pews for the stranger.

To protect means standing as a shield for the vulnerable who arrive with nothing-no rights, no language, and no allies.

To promote means lifting up their human dignity, sharing their stories, and recognizing the immense gifts they bring rather than seeing them as a burden.

To integrate means tearing down the walls we build in our societies and replacing them with bridges of true belonging.

In St. Louis, Catholic clergy joined other faith leaders and immigrant rights groups to march in honor of two former local residents who were murdered after one was deported to his native Guatemala.

Glendy Marisol González de la Cruz and Nixon Giovanni Pérez Paz were found bound, gagged and executed in a Guatemalan sugarcane field shortly after Paz was deported and de la Cruz returned to the country to be with him. Their 14-month-old daughter was alive and crying next to her mother’s body.

Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski said in a statement:

Glendy and Nixon’s children are now orphans who face an even more uncertain future without their parents. The family was a beloved member of our archdiocesan community; their children received their first sacraments in our parishes, and they actively participated in charitable activities. Their story is tragic, and, sadly, it is also far too common.

And he, too, urged action:

As people of faith, we call upon our leaders to end the program of indiscriminate detention and mass deportation and establish a path to legal status for those currently without documentation. We ask that undocumented children living in the United States and adults who were brought by their parents to this country as children be provided a means of attaining citizenship. We pray that avenues be provided so mixed-status families who have long contributed to our communities and our country can remain together.

In Overland, right outside St. Louis, dozens marched in memory of their murdered former neighbors. Anthony Brannon, an Overland resident, told a reporter with TV station First Alert 4: “A traffic stop led to that chain of events that led to that tragedy. And for it to happen here in my hometown, I’ve been here 30 years. It really strikes hard.”

In San Diego, several thousand people packed Balboa Park in San Diego to mark the day. The San Diego Union-Tribune wrote that it “evoked vibes of a 1960s peace march,” with the crowd singing along to Bob Dylan and Beatles songs, and carrying signs saying “Child of God, child of immigrants” and “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

The Union-Tribune reported:

The crowd began the procession singing “We Shall Overcome.” An Aztec drummer in the back of a Ford pickup and a troupe of Aztec dancers led the front, followed by dozens of clergy and thousands of others. The crowd filled the street and spanned city blocks as they walked up and down Fifth and Sixth Avenues, next to the park.

Arrests by San Diego’s ICE division recently reached a new monthly high. In July, more than 1,900 people were detained.

Court Watch

• A federal judge in Washington vacated a FEMA rule that called for 20% of a state’s counterterrorism funds to be withheld if the state did not conform its election administration to Trump standards. Judge Amir H. Ali wrote that election conditions “are not reasonably related to the explicit statutory purpose of the funding.” He explained that “the court does not question that this may be a laudable goal, but it is not a counterterrorism goal.”

• A New York federal judge has issued a permanent injunction — unfortunately limited to the ICE holding facility in New York City’s Federal Plaza — ordering an end to the confinement of detainees “in overcrowded, squalid, and degrading rooms for excessive periods of time.” Judge Lewis A. Kaplan wrote that the conditions there were “inhumane and unconstitutional.”

• Democratic Party leaders filed a lawsuit in Washington to block any deployment of ICE and other federal agents at the polls this November. The plaintiffs argue that “dispatching armed federal agents to the polls — or even threatening to do so — is forbidden by federal law.”

• A federal judge in Maryland held DHS in contempt of court for deporting a man to El Salvador in violation of three court orders. Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher also ordered the government to return him.

• There’s a stunning new development in the tale of DOJ misconduct during the failed prosecution of the “Broadview Six” anti-ICE protesters in Chicago. Sheri Mecklenburg, the prosecutor who was found to have engaged in misconduct before the grand jury, now says U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros himself “personally directed” her to pursue felony charges over her objections. The former defendants, who have good reason to think their prosecution was politically motivated, want Judge April Perry to order Boutros to turn over any communications between Chicago and DOJ in Washington. They also want a special counsel to investigate and potentially prosecute the prosecution for criminal contempt. Oral arguments are tomorrow!

So Many Protests

Clergy leaders of different faiths are leading an eight-day, 96-mile pilgrimage from the Mohave Desert to downtown Los Angeles demanding the shutdown of ICE detention facilities. The goal is “to draw attention and cry out for immediate action to end the deplorable conditions and deaths at the detention centers throughout California and across the country.”

An ICE surge in southwest Kansas has led to a slew of protests in the region — as well as complaints from the beef industry because of the many arrests at slaughterhouses. There were protests in Great Bend and several in Dodge City, including one outside the National Beef plant and another on Wyatt Earp Boulevard.

“Incredibly proud of my community,” one redditor wrote on the fourth straight day of protests in Dodge City. “Families have been torn apart right in front of children, and now we’ve seen what happens when we leave our decisions up to someone else by leaving power on the table,” the person wrote. “People are getting registered to vote. They’re angry.” There was also an ACLU rally in Wichita. And there’s more coming.

In Buffalo, N.Y., the Evict ICE campaign has been holding demonstrations outside a downtown building every week, calling on the building’s owner not to renew ICE’s lease. On Saturday, eight protesters were arrested for civil disobedience.

Multiple protests continue in Austin, Texas, over ICE’s shooting on Sept. 20 of a Venezuelan man. A Sunday protest drew about 160 people to the site of the shooting.

A spike in immigration enforcement in the Bismarck, N.D., area prompted a protest Friday in front of the federal building where protesters held signs with messages such as “Am I next or are you?”

So Desperate to Make a Case

I’ve written before about the lengths to which Trump’s government will go to find any excuse to throw anti-ICE protesters in jail. The Chicago Reader has a great story about how “authorities tapped into a network of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) and surveillance cameras operated by Chicagoland police while trying — ultimately unsuccessfully — to prosecute Marimar Martinez and Anthony Ruiz for interfering with immigration agents last year, according to court records.”

You may recall the case: Martinez and Ruiz had been following the agents around Chicago when Border Patrol agent Charles Exum swerved into Martinez’s car, then fired five shots into her. Federal prosecutors filed felony assault charges against her and Ruiz – NOT against the guy who shot her. (Sound familiar?) All their many lies unraveled under scrutiny, and a federal judge dismissed the case against Martinez and Ruiz last November.

End Notes

• From the Washington Post: “Secretive group’s latest anti-Trump artwork placed in D.C. — and Greenland.” This time: Playable satirical video game consoles.

• Tomorrow (Thursday, Oct. 1) from No Kings: A virtual Election Protection 201 class.

• Get ready for the May Day Strong “Corporate Defection Week of Action” from October 3 to 11. “We’re calling on corporations, their CEOs, and local businesses to use their influence to defend free and democratic elections.”

• And the next No Kings Day, a Nationwide Early Voting Day of Action is on October 17.

The Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign is in full force right now. The accompanying outrages, cruelty, incompetence, and extraordinary waste of money are on display every week.

Consider this past one:

• In Austin, Texas, an ICE agent shot and wounded Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, 28, a Venezuelan immigrant who was on a Door Dash delivery. ICE agents rammed his car, then shot him through his passenger side door (see video.) Garces Perez was then denied proper medical care. Furious neighborhood residents gather at the scene of the shooting in a large, spontaneous protest that ended after troopers used pepper balls to disperse them. The protests expand. Local authorities are demanding information and have launched their own investigation.

• In Evanston, Illinois, ICE agents bloodied and briefly detained a local man, a U.S. citizen, after they say they mistook him for someone they were looking for. The victim reported injuries to his “head, neck and teeth.” This video shows ICE agents grabbing and shoving the man to the ground; this video shows the man lying in the street, and the ICE agents driving away.

• In Grand Rapids, Michigan, a man is dead after crashing his car while fleeing ICE on Sunday. Mario David Coronado Juarez, a married father of three, was on his way to his construction job. His family is demanding an investigation. Rep. Hillary Scholten, a Democrat who represents Grand Rapids, wrote on social media that “No one should lose their life in a traffic stop. My office has sent a letter to ICE demanding answers.” ICE officials briefly banned traffic stops in July, but Trump furiously overrode them, writing that the traffic stop is “one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools,” and asserting that “The Radical Left Dumocrats[sic] would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch.”

• Many immigrants in detention are now being disappeared. The Associated Press reported on Monday that ICE “has stopped publicly revealing where it is holding thousands of detainees who are subject to final deportation orders, an unannounced move that has made it far more difficult for lawyers and relatives to find them.”

• ICE’s policy of sending immigrants to third countries – where they know no one and are often kept in indefinite custody – is becoming more of an issue. It’s about time, considering how the practice is cruel, unlawful and prone to human rights violations. Case in point: The plight of Ahmed Soliman, 31, an Egyptian man who has lived in Phoenix, Arizona, since he was four years old, and who feared being tortured in Egypt because he is gay. ICE sent him to Equatorial Guinea, one of the most repressive dictatorships in the world, that has a long record of torture. He and others are being held prisoner in a hotel. The New York Times, picking up on dogged reporting from the Arizona Star, called attention to his plight, and to a video showing Soliman and another man being “hooded, bound, beaten with guns and shoved down a flight of stairs.” The Washington Post reported on Monday that a key to these deportations is that the Trump administration has “authorized or pledged at least $410 million to facilitate agreements with 31 countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America, as of the end of June.” Maybe more people will start talking about this issue now?

• ICE has “signed five construction contracts worth up to a combined $7.3 billion to expand immigration detention at government-owned sites in New York, Texas, Arizona, Florida, and California,” reports Project Salt Box. This is part of ICE’s abandonment of it plans to buy and convert massive warehouses, which faced significant pushback from protesters and local officials. Now ICE is building new and expanded facilities on land the government already controls in order to vastly increase their capacity to detain human beings in inhumane conditions.

Meanwhile, DHS’s culture of cowboy cruelty continues to fester, with leaders voicing no regrets of any kind for anything they’ve done. This gets expressed every day on the social media site formerly known as Twitter.

For instance, after Rep. Greg Casar, the firebrand congressman who represents part of Austin, said at a press conference that “we will all be more safe when ICE gets the hell out of Austin,” DHS responded:

No amount of smears and false narratives will slow down ICE from doing its job by removing dangerous illegal aliens from our communities. Sanctuary politicians may continue to shamelessly protect illegal aliens, but the Trump Administration will remain focused on protecting the American people. If ICE were not in Texas, these illegal alien predators, murderers, and traffickers would still be free to harm more Americans.

Here Come the Democrats

Polls show Democrats in good position to take the House and maybe the Senate in November, leading to the important question: What will they do to rein ICE in? Or maybe even more importantly: What can they do?

Some are campaigning on a platform that calls for abolishing ICE entirely. But even if they take the Senate, that’s not something they’ll be able to do as long as Trump has veto power.

So what will their goals be? What will their demands be? Is anything non-negotiable?

Congressional Democratic leaders – Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries – have called for Congress to enact guardrails. There are 10 of them. They include:

• Targeted Enforcement

• No Masks

• Require ID

• Stop Racial Profiling

• Uphold Use of Force Standards

Democrats these days propose bills mostly for messaging. But presumably, some of them will be on the agenda after January. Possibilities include:

Rep. Sylvia Garcia’s “American Dream and Promise Act,” which would provide a legal pathway toward citizenship for Dreamers – undocumented immigrants who arrived here as children – as well as for many recipients of Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure, which is similar to TPS.

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s “Make ICE Pay Act,” which would redirect nearly $140 billion in ICE and Border Patrol funding towards local recovery efforts in states affected by ICE and CBP surges and named operations.

Rep. Yassamin Ansari’s “Drain ICE Act,” which would rescind and repeal $75 billion in funding for ICE and mandate reporting requirements about detainees in immigration detention facilities.

Sen. Cory Booker and Reps LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez’s “Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act,” which would end mandatory detention, the detention of families, and the use of private, for-profit detention facilities.

Sens. Edward J. Markey, Jeff Merkley, Ron Wyden, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s “ICE Out of Our Faces Act,” which would ban ICE and Border Patrol from acquiring and using facial recognition technology and other biometric identification systems, and would require the deletion of previously collected data.

There are many others, I’m sure. We certainly need acts that:

• Stop new construction of detention facilities.

• End third-world deportations and bring deported immigrants back.

• Extend Temporary Protected Status for people whose home countries remain too dangerous to go back to.

Defending the Kennedy Center

The Washington Post reports: “Thousands of supporters of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts gathered Friday as the sun set over the Potomac, surrounded as much of the building as they could, linked arms and chanted: ‘Hands off! Hands off!’”

CNN has color and context.

Broadview Redux

The ICE facility in Broadview, outside Chicago, was a flashpoint for protest during last year’s Operation Midway Blitz.

Since then, Block Club Chicago reported, protester have shown up every Saturday. This particular Saturday marked one year since the first violent clash between agents and demonstrators. (Block Club Chicago is a wonderful nonprofit news website that covers the city’s diverse neighborhoods.)

The regular protesters were surprised to see how many agents were gathered in the facility’s gated parking lot, which is normally pretty empty on weekends.

The agents, it turns out, were having a barbecue.

And every so often, they’d take a break, open the gates, yell at the protesters and shoot them with pepper spray.

“Broadview ICE agents continued to open and close the gate and taunting us,” protestor Jennifer Almodovar told NBC Chicago.

Finally a “large group of agents left the parking lot and sprayed at least 10 protesters with high-powered mace,” Block Club Chicago reported.

Two protesters were taken to the hospital. The Coalition Against Broadview ICE Facility is calling for a federal investigation.

And speaking of Broadview, the Chicago Tribune reports that the federal judge in the case of the “Broadview Six” protesters – who maybe ought to be called the “Wildly Exonerated Six” at this point – has called for oral arguments on October 1 about whether to order further inquiry into prosecutorial misconduct and appoint a special counsel to investigate potential contempt charges.

The six protesters believe their prosecution was politically motivated amid pressure from Washington to make an example of them, and that the evidence is now being covered up. They’ve asked Judge April Perry to order the Chicago U.S. attorney’s office to turn over any communications with officials in Washington about the case.

Stay tuned.

The Week in the Courts

• A tremendous ruling from a 9th Circuit appellate panel on one of the most cruel and inhumane Trump rules, as the judges declared that “Noncitizens who arrive illegally and are found away from the border well after arrival are protected from arbitrary detention in violation of the Due Process Clause.” That means they should have the opportunity to get released on bond, instead of detained indefinitely. The panel joined literally hundreds of district court judges -- and became the 10 straight appellate panel to declare Trump’s “mandatory detention” rule totally unconstitutional. “The Framers, committed to guarding against arbitrary detention, included numerous provisions in our Constitution to protect against unlawful restraint—the Fifth Amendment’s due process guarantee, the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive bail, and the Suspension Clause’s assurance of access to the writ of habeas corpus,” the court wrote. “Concern about arbitrary detention is not a vestige of a bygone era. Since the founding, constitutional protections limiting the government’s authority over physical confinement have expanded, not diminished.” Now it’s off to the Supreme Court.

• A panel of the D.C. Circuit appellate court denied an emergency request from the Trump administration to let it end hormone therapy and other accommodations for transgender inmates. The panel voted, by a 2-1 vote, to let stand a lower court’s preliminary injunction blocking a new Bureau of Prisons rule. The lower court found that the new rule, issued to comply with a Trump executive order, was “arbitrary and capricious based, in part, on the lack of a reasoned explanation.”

• A federal judge in Alabama temporarily blocked DHS from conducting warrantless immigration raids on Alabama construction sites, rounding up, and then indiscriminately detaining people. Judge Jeffrey Beaverstock wrote that “senior immigration officials” trying to meet Trump administration quotas “have asserted that the Administration has unlimited power to enforce immigration laws.” But, he wrote, the Fourth Amendment does not permit officers “to detain individuals without reasonable suspicion that they are violating any laws.”

The U.S. House voted to end the war in Iran late last night, for a third time.

“The American people have made abundantly clear they do not support this war,” Rep. Gregory W. Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said during the floor debate.

“This Congress has not authorized a war with Iran. And yet this administration has kept our troops in harm’s way, without a declaration of war, without an authorization from Congress, and without any plan for how to win or end the war,” Meeks added.

“Tonight, Congress did its job under the Constitution and said enough is enough,” Rep. Seth Moulton said after his war powers resolution passed by a 220-204 vote, with a record seven Republicans joining all the Democrats.

“People at home are hurting because of skyrocketing costs, and our troops’ lives are in danger in a war that never should have happened,” Moulton said. “We will keep the pressure up until Trump folds.”

Meeks is right that this is not a close call for the American people. A stunning three out of four respondents in a recent poll said they disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling the war.

But it is notable that the House action came in the absence of any sort of large-scale public antiwar protests.

There were a smattering of small protests in the days after the war began, a little over six months ago. Dozens of military veterans and their families committed civil disobedience on Capitol Hill in April. Unitarian and Presbyterian leaders have expressed opposition, along with the Quakers, of course. The third “No Kings” Day in April brought out some “No Wars” chants as well.

But you can’t say there’s been much of an antiwar movement in this country.

Jeremy Varon, a historian at the New School for Social Research and the author of a book on antiwar organizing against the War on Terror, said in a recent interview with the Waging Nonviolence website that Trump seems to get that a large number of U.S. casualties would trigger much greater opposition.

“My fear is that low-intensity conflicts, like in Iran, may grow routine and become background noise in American political life that never quite rile the public to demand their end,” Varon said. “The trick for Trump is to continue waging war without prohibitive costs that would trigger widespread outrage among a disapproving but disaffected public.”

But the war might be a big factor in the midterm elections, Varon said. “Dissatisfaction with the war is one of a number of grievances with Trump -- along with the public corruption, inattention to issues of affordability, vanity projects, et cetera. If Republicans get routed, public opinion experts will have to sift through the data to find out how important the war has been.”

A couple weeks after Trump’s unprovoked attack, Eric Blanc, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, speculated in The Nation about why there had not been more protests.

Among his hypotheses was that “Americans Feel Powerless” and that “Trump Is Doing So Many Horrible Things.” Those sound right to me.

Then again, another hypothesis was “People Are Hoping the War Ends Quickly.”

Failed Prosecutions of Protesters Get Quantified

Kudos to the Associated Press and reporters Jaimie Ding and Claire Rush for their article “DOJ went after protesters for felony assault, but juries, judges were unconvinced, AP analysis finds”.

Their number-crunching concluded that DOJ “failed to secure felony convictions against most of the 102 protesters arrested in four major cities last year on charges of assaulting federal authorities -- a record far below the norm in federal assault prosecutions.”

For instance, “All of the dozen cases that made it to trial, mostly in Los Angeles, ended in acquittal, mistrial or dismissal,” they wrote.

But the AP was way too meek in its payload paragraph:

The dismal record has raised questions about rushed investigations and aggressive charging tactics by prosecutors under pressure to show the Trump administration is cracking down on people who assault law enforcement.

That’s pretty bad, but it’s also terribly understated. As readers of Head Up News well know, DOJ keeps on losing these cases because ICE agents lied, the juries knew it, and even the prosecutors knew it.

Under pressure from Washington to intimidate protesters and find evidence of imaginary antifa conspiracies, federal agents have killed, framed, and surveilled innocent people, and federal prosecutors have violated their core principles. That’s what the AP should have said.

In Washington, Federal Agents Are Arresting Black Men for Minor Offenses

The Washington Post profiled Robert Meyers, a member of a watch group in Washington, D.C., that goes around town monitoring what federal agents taking part in Trump’s “D.C. Safe & Beautiful Task Force” are really up to.

It’s a feature article, with a soft-focus headline – “He worked at NASA. Now he tails federal law enforcement on D.C. streets” – but the story Meyers tells makes for disturbing news.

What his group has seen is that the initial flood of ICE and CBP agents last year has made way for FBI and DEA officers, among others. And most of the people the group sees arrested these days are Black men.

Indeed, the Post analyzed arrests during the first year of the federal takeover and found that more than 90 percent were of Black people.

“Meyers and other rapid responders say that the vast majority of those they have witnessed are for low-level misdemeanors, such as driving with expired tags, improperly turning right at a red light or smoking a joint in public,” the Post reported.

“HSI is supposed to be doing child sex trafficking cases, right?” one group member asked the reporters. If they are arresting people for open containers, she said, “the priorities are not straight.”

Another interesting aspect of this is that unlike the National Guard members who have been deployed onto Washington streets, federal agents can make arrests. The media has almost exclusively been paying attention to the National Guard, which does basically nothing. It’s these guys who are on the hunt.

Some news organization has a solid follow-up or two in their future.

The Week in the Courts

What a week it was!

The biggest news, of course, was that the Supreme Court blocked a new Trump rule that would have put the U.S. Postal Service in charge of who gets to vote by mail, which would have caused chaos and mass disenfranchisement.

Very disturbingly, three justices – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh – indicated they thought the move was just fine. (Kavanaugh just thought it was too rushed.)

That came after two district-court opinions and one appellate-court opinion, all of which made it clear this wasn’t a close call. (People who say the Supreme Court was taking a bold stand against Trump are grading on a serious curve .)

I wrote about the first district-court opinion last week.

On Thursday, a unanimous panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeals also rejected the mail-in ballot rule, noting that the Elections Clause of the Constitution assigns the regulation of elections “to the States and Congress, and not to an executive agency, such as the Postal Service, acting without congressional authorization.”

The court wrote that the rule would “likely result in the disenfranchisement of millions of voters across the country while providing minimal -- if any -- gains in combating voter fraud.”

What voter fraud? You might well ask. The court didn’t mince words, writing: “there is no record evidence of past fraud or a likelihood of impending fraud related to the November 3 election.”

Then on Sunday, D.C. District Court Judge Carl Nichols ruled that key portions of the new plan “exceed any conception of the outer bounds” of authorities granted to the Postal Service. He noted that “Plaintiffs have proffered substantial (and essentially uncontested) evidence that it will be close to impossible for at least some States to design and reprint Rule-compliant envelopes.” He offered a reminder that the public has a “strong interest in exercising the fundamental political right to vote.” And he mocked DOJ’s attempt to consider regulations for the mailing of cremated remains and replica explosives as a precedent.

In other court news:

• The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals became the ninth straight appellate court to reject the Trump-era policy of detaining immigrants without bond even when they have long-term ties to the country and present no danger or flight risk. The court wrote that federal laws and regulations clearly require noncitizens like the two immigrant plaintiffs in the case to “be provided a bond hearing and be eligible for release pending removal.” The 2-1 decision stated that “If we were to agree with the Government’s construction, we would need to conclude that, in passing IIRIRA [the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act] thirty years ago, Congress intended to direct the single largest mass detention of human beings in our nation’s history.” Two appellate courts have sided with the government. So now it’s up to the Supreme Court.

• A panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals vacated a district judge’s criminal conviction of a Mexican man for illegally entering the United States because prosecutors withheld evidence that some of the Border Patrol agents who testified as witnesses took part in a Facebook group that shared jokes about migrant deaths and racist and sexist slurs.

• A federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the Trump administration from using a “loyalty question” on federal civil service job applications, calling it “unconstitutional conduct”. The question asked applicants to discuss the significance of one or two Trump initiatives and say how they would implement them. Judge George A. O’Toole, Jr., wrote that the Civil Service Reform Act (one of several post-Nixon reforms) “expressly prohibits employment decisions made on the basis of an employee or candidate’s ‘political affiliation’” and that applicants “would likely suffer First Amendments harms.”

• A federal judge in D.C. blocked Trump from putting his name on the Kennedy Center in any way. “Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” wrote Christopher R. Cooper. (Trump then called Cooper names, closed the center down, and vowed to block any reconstruction until some court overruled Cooper’s decision.)

• A federal judge in California ordered DHS to find some way to make amends for its arbitrary and capricious decision to cut Federal Emergency Management Agency staff by 50%. Judge Susan Illston wrote that new staffing levels appeared to be “pulled from thin air,” then applied unreasonably, and in the absence of any “reasoned decisionmaking” about the consequences. She also penalized DHS leaders for intentionally deleting Signal messages relevant to the litigation.

• A federal judge in Massachusetts blocked a DHS rule that would have drastically capped the length of visas for international visitors studying or teaching at U.S. colleges and universities and for members of the foreign press. The current system admits these nonimmigrants for the duration of their educational programs, or the duration of their journalistic assignments. Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV wrote that it has resulted “in groundbreaking research in science, medicine, and technology, substantial economic growth, and a host of other benefits, often on a vast scale.” The new cap would be four years for students and 240 days for journalists. Staying longer would require DHS approval, which is “based on limited and vague criteria, and with no possibility of appeal,” Saylor wrote. That would create incredible uncertainty among would-be international students, he wrote. He added that “it is not difficult to imagine how that system might be abused to punish those whose viewpoints or research are disfavored by the officials making the decision — or, indeed, punish disfavored institutions.”

• A federal judge in D.C. blocked DHS from taking any further action against David Streever, a New York man who sent a nasty email to ICE acting director Todd Lyons in January, calling him a monstrous human being, likening him to a Nazi, and warning him – accurately, it turned out -- that Trump would turn on him. ICE responded to the email by sending agents to the man’s home and giving him a “WARNING NOTICE” that threatened him with prosecution if he did not “discontinue” his criticism of ICE. Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled that Streever was engaged in protected speech under the First Amendment. “Americans have long voiced their displeasure with their government,” Contreras wrote. “The Declaration of Independence itself is a list of grievances between Americans and the British government. And Americans have not always indulged in the elevated prose of the Declaration.”

• New York and 21 other states are suing to block a new DHS rule that would give immigration officials discretion to deny entry or legal permanent residency to immigrants if they use or are deemed likely to need any kind of public benefits such as Medicaid or even school lunches and state-subsidized health insurance. New York City and five other locales filed a similar suit.

• Latino civil rights organizations, Common Cause and Denver filed a lawsuit to proactively ban DHS from sending armed federal agents to polling places on Nov. 3. “The specter of armed officers at polling places threatens the freedom of this upcoming election,” they wrote. “U.S. citizens may reasonably fear interactions with ICE. According to available reporting, in recent years, ICE has unlawfully detained more than 170 U.S. citizens. American citizens peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights have been shot and killed by ICE. And ICE agents frequently stop and question citizens — sometimes detaining them for days — based on racial profiling.”

Must Click

• From the Washington Post: “The new threat election officials fear: Trump’s federal government”.

• From New Jersy 101.5 radio: “Atlantic City Immigrant Group Demands Apology After 6 Arrested at Protests.”

• From Nieman Lab: “The Trump administration killed Climate.gov. A new website is resurrecting it”.

• From the Guardian: “Trump asked Americans to help him whitewash national parks. They revolted instead”.

• From the Boston Globe: “This anti-Trump brigade delivers its message to motorists from on high.”

• From Protect Democracy: “What does it take to make a U-turn from authoritarianism?”

• From the ACLU: “ACLU Know Your Federal Voting Rights: A Training with Black Voters Matter”, Wednesday, Sept. 16 at 8 PM ET/5 PM PT.

• From the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, a new report, “The Global State of Democracy 2026,” which has a devastating – but all true – section on how the US “is experiencing a period of marked democratic decline” mostly due to Trump’s “executive aggrandizement.”

There is, at long last, something concrete anyone and everyone can do to resist Donald Trump.

OK not quite yet, but very soon.

• You can learn the rules about registering to vote and casting a ballot in your state.

• You can vote early.

• You can make sure your friends, neighbors, and low-information voters in your community know what to do – and vote early.

Trump is pursuing a wide variety of ways to restrict voting in November, hoping to rig the elections in favor of Republicans. Marc Elias, writing on his invaluable Democracy Docket website, provides an excellent summary.

And the seemingly endless court fights over Trump’s tactics have left some election officials and voters uncertain about how everything will turn out.

Indeed, a key part of Trump’s strategy is to create chaos and confusion and sow doubt so that he can try to challenge election results he doesn’t like – and potentially try to justify seizing ballots from Democratic precincts, which would effectively invalidate them.

Lawyers from pro-democracy groups are litigating like mad, as I’ve chronicled here over the last several months (including today, see below). They’re also gearing up for court fights on Election Day.

So given all the uncertainty, the more people who vote early the better.

That’s why the next major No Kings event will be a Nationwide Early Voting Day of Action on October 17. There’s a kickoff call tomorrow (Thursday) from 8-9 p.m. EDT.

No Kings coalition partner Public Citizen describes it as “a day of coordinated, nonpartisan action across the country to drive early voting.”

Maybe you left the earlier No Kings events feeling inspired and energized – but didn’t know what to do next? That won’t be an issue this time around. Public Citizen explains:

This No Kings activation will look very different: community events will vary from block parties to rallies to walks to the polls. Each one will be working toward a common goal: making sure every eligible voter has a plan to vote early (where possible), knows their options for how to vote, and is ready to make their voice count by casting their ballot.

Encouraging early voting is also at the heart of the “100 days 1,000 marches” voter-mobilization initiative organized by Bishop William J. Barber II and his Repairers of the Breach organization.

“If your state has early voting: march to the polls, nonviolent and nonpartisan, on day one – and keep marching as much as possible through November 3,” the website says.

Barber says he is aiming to mobilize millions of low wage infrequent voters, “particularly in the South and battleground states, utilizing peer-to-peer text messaging, grassroots phone banking, door-to-door canvassing and more in addition to the marches to the polls.”

“In the last election, 90 million people didn’t vote while the majority in Congress was decided by just 7,000 votes,” Barber said at a news conference in August. “We don’t need to march on Washington right now. All of our money, energy and effort needs to be marching, walking, running and riding to the polls. We must meet this constant and visible attempt to suppress the vote with the most massive voter mobilization we have seen in recent history.”

Almost Everyone Can Vote Early

Here’s a map from the National Conference of State Legislatures showing that there are early voting options in 47 states. Alabama, Mississippi, and New Hampshire are the only three states that have no explicit early voting options – although eligible voters can request and cast absentee ballots.

As the Brennan Center explains, early voting can consist of:

• In-person early voting, in which a voter casts a ballot at a polling place ahead of Election Day

• In-person absentee voting, through which a voter completes an absentee ballot in a polling place or election office before Election Day

• Mail voting, through which a voter receives a ballot by mail and returns it by mail, ballot drop box, or at an election office.

Another wonderful thing you can do is sign up to be a poll worker. The Power the Polls group serves as a national clearinghouse. Or you can use the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s Poll Worker Recruitment Lookup Tool.

How Much Will Democrats Resist if They Win?

Well, that’s an excellent question.

What can a majority-Democratic Congress practically achieve, given that Trump will retain his veto power and has a history of ignoring congressional budgets and subpoenas?

Nobody’s been asking. Which is why I wrote an opinion piece for MS NOW last week, urging people to start thinking about an aggressive yet pragmatic agenda – one that Democrats, if they flip one or both chambers of Congress, can actually deliver.

“By and large, to enact major legislation, Democrats will have to negotiate with Trump. How do they intend to do that, and what are their top priorities for those negotiations?” I asked.

“What, if anything, is non-negotiable?” I asked (I offered some possibilities). “What are Democrats willing or able to use as leverage?”

I hope to be getting answers to these questions through reporting in the coming months, in some forum. If you have any thoughts, or know someone I should talk to, get in touch.

ICE Agents Beat Up Protesters in Maryland

ICE agents violently attacked protesters in Frederick, Md., on Friday night, after some in a crowd of over 100 people chanted and linked arms, blocking agents from a house they had apparently been staking out.

Video shows agents swinging batons, one of them repeatedly striking a man on the ground.

WBAL-TV reported that protesters suffered cuts and bruises, with some requiring hospitalization.

ICE was “beating people with batons, kicking them, punching them, throwing people on the ground,” Tatiana Santos, who is with Indivisible Frederick Forward, told WBAL.

“It felt like they were just terrorizing people. You don’t get brutal with people. It’s inhumane,” Soolah Kemp told Maryland Matters.

WUSA-TV reported that local Rep. April McClain Delaney is calling for a full investigation.

ICE agents had apparently been active in the neighborhood for several days. “The past week has been crazy. Everybody has been terrified,” one resident told WUSA. “ICE agents started coming in around Monday morning. They were terrifying, wearing masks, pulling down their windows, putting the headlights on for the cars passing by.”

One Bluesky poster described an ICE “siege” of the neighborhood. “Locals rallied. They stood watch as kids got on the bus and were dropped off. They helped escort at-risk neighbors to their jobs and kept track of where ICE had posted up,” the poster said.

“Community members set up on corners in that area, holding signs such as ‘La Migra Esta Aqui’ and ‘No ICE in Our Community’.”

Friday night’s activities apparently began innocently enough: “We then started to have a dance party, bopping around half-heartedly to Madonna’s ‘Vogue’ in front of the house that was now clearly the target.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson refused to answer questions from journalists, but said in a statement that “Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, if you break the law, you will face the consequences.”

In other protest news:

• The CT Mirror reports: “More than a thousand people took to the streets in Danbury on Wednesday night to protest recent immigration arrests that have stunned the community.” There have been more than 100 recent arrests across Connecticut, more than half of them in Danbury, including arrests at school bus stops. I wrote last week about strong objections from the community.

• The Colorado Sun reports: “Students from more than 200 Colorado schools streamed out of classrooms Friday afternoon with angry pleas for federal immigration agents to halt raids targeting their classmates, neighbors, coworkers and community members.” Some of the students assaulted a counter-protester.

• Over 100 people gathered Saturday to protest an apparent ICE surge in Indianapolis, WFYI public media reports.

• In Vermont, WCAX-TV reports that several local clergy members were arrested during a protest at a DHS building in the town of Williston on Friday morning. They blockaded the doors inside the building, refusing to leave and calling for an end to ICE operations there.

The Week in the Courts

• In June, Massachusetts District Judge Indira Talwani declared that Trump’s executive order letting the U.S. Postal service decide whose ballots to deliver was unconstitutional. She was overturned by the Supreme Court on the grounds that her order was premature because the USPS hadn’t yet promulgated a final rule when the suit was filed. Then came the final rule. Now, this past week, Talwani again blocked the new rules from taking effect in time for the midterm elections, writing that Trump’s idea “threatens disenfranchisement of millions of United States citizens who seek to vote by mail.” And now Trump has again appealed to the Supreme Court.

• The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a Trump administration request to pause a lower court ruling that blocked the use of the Systematic Alien Verification Entitlements (SAVE) database for mass voter purges ahead of the midterm elections. “The public interest does not favor interim restoration of a system the government has not made a strong showing it may lawfully operate,” the court wrote. Trump has now appealed that to the Supreme Court as well.

• First, the Missouri Supreme Court threw out the new gerrymandered congressional map that state Republicans had designed specifically to squeeze out a Black Democrats, ruling that redistricting was automatically suspended by a citizen petition demanding a statewide vote. Trump’s appeal to the Supreme Court was summarily rejected. So it was back to the old map. But then federal District Judge Stephen R. Clark, in a different case, ordered the state to use the new map because it had already been used for primary voting. And the Missouri Supreme Court is threatening to hold the secretary of state in contempt for not honoring its order. It’s chaos.

• The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court order preventing the IRS from disclosing massive amounts of sensitive personal data to ICE. “After the Watergate scandal exposed executive branch abuses of U.S. taxpayers’ information to harass the Administration’s enemies, Congress enacted a prohibition against the Internal Revenue Service sharing tax return information with any other federal agency unless the requesting agency meets stringent conditions,” the court wrote. It also called one of the government’s counter-arguments “weak sauce.”

• A Maryland federal judge has blocked Trump’s latest attempt to limit birthright citizenship. U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman wrote that Trump’s executive order targeting so-called birth tourism “is almost certainly unconstitutional as applied to the certified class for the simple reason that the Supreme Court in Barbara already decided that the children in the class are citizens at birth.” She wrote: “No Presidential Executive Order can undo what the Supreme Court has done.”

• The Department of Justice indicted ICE agent Christian Castro for lying to investigators after a video disproved his viral story about being brutally attacked by an immigrant wielding a snow shovel and a broom in Minneapolis in February. But the more telling fact is that Castro was not indicted on a much more serious criminal civil rights charge -- deprivation of rights under color of law -- for shooting through a closed front door and injuring one of the people inside. Local AUSA Matthew Evans told lawyers for the victims that he was blocked from seeking those charges by senior Justice officials. So the massive cover-up of ICE crimes continues. And poor Evans was fired and possibly faces obstruction of justice charges for leaking the truth.

Welcome to the Resistance

MS NOW’s Jen Psaki welcomes MapQuest to the resistance, for not changing Lake Ontario’s name on its maps, like Apple and Google did.

The outrageous lengths that Donald Trump’s law-enforcement lackeys will go to in order to find evidence that peaceful anti-ICE protesters are, in fact, organized antifa terrorists, cannot be overstated.

I wrote last week about what some folks on the right – on the right! – are concerned is turning into a new Red Scare. The news broke August 13 that over the winter, the Department of Homeland Security sent undercover agents into Minnesota churches and schools to spy on protest meetings, then stalked and profiled attendees, and subpoenaed vast amounts of record from unions and political organizations that some of the protesters belonged to. “Operation Puppet Master” was aimed at uncovering the “organized network of conspirators … who are providing material support to violent opportunists and agitators.”

But it ended up finding basically nothing. Trump’s Justice Department filed trumped-up conspiracy charges against 15 people, mostly for engaging in traditional community organizing tactics. (OK, one of them dented a van.)

Now comes another over-the-top abuse of the law by our law enforcers, in another ludicrous ongoing case – this one against 36 people who marched into a St. Paul church in January to hold a peaceful protest and the two journalists, Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, who went along to cover it.

I wrote in January that the charges were a prima facie violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press. The charges were, bizzarely, based on a law created to prosecute people who blocked access to abortion clinics. And the whole thing was an exercise in Trumpian vindictiveness. DOJ “Civil Rights” chief Harmeet Dhillon announced early on that she would pursue Lemon “to the ends of the earth,” and the White House’s official X account gloated over his arrest, posting a picture of Lemon with a chains emoji.

You may recall, as I wrote in May, that newly unsealed documents at the time showed that a magistrate judge had denied prosecution requests in February for five separate search warrants, including for detailed information on Lemon’s YouTube subscribers. The judge basically laughed the bumbling DOJ team out of court, writing: “None of the five applications establish probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime will be found in the places to be searched, all of the warrant applications improperly refer the Court to material outside the search warrant application itself, and all of the warrant applications seek sealing without, however, a motion to seal or a proposed order being supplied to the Court.”

So what now? Well, presumably under enormous political pressure, the DOJ legal team headed by notoriously incompetent lickspittle Robert J. Keenan, decided not to give up. They got DHS involved. And as The Guardian was the first to report, DHS demanded Google turn over the YouTube information -- this time using a method that didn’t require a judge’s signature.

What method was that? The summons cited 19 USC 1509, an obscure statute that gives DHS power to inspect records to assure compliance with customs regulations.

Customs regulations! Like duties, fees and taxes on imports and exports.

And according to one of the many motions to dismiss that defendants filed on Monday, DHS sent out 92 of those summonses. 92! And DHS doesn’t even have jurisdiction to investigate ostensible civil rights crimes to start with.

The summonses went to telecommunications companies, airlines, social-media and internet platforms, a state employment agency, and even the Hertz rental car company.

As a result of one summons, T-Mobile turned over the details of more than 10,000 of Fort’s calls and texts over a six-month period – and was forbidden from letting Fort know.

It’s inconceivable to me that this case will ever come to trial. But I must say that I hope it doesn’t end before we get to see the transcripts of the grand jury presentation that led to the indictments. The federal judge in charge, Laura Provinzino, ordered the prosecution to turn those over on Aug. 18, for her inspection.

I’m expecting a repeat of what happened when a Chicago federal judge reviewed transcripts of the proceedings that resulted in the indictment of the “Broadview Six” anti-ICE protesters there. That judge found stunning prosecutorial misconduct, and made the transcripts public, after which the prosecution collapsed. And defense attorneys have asked the judge to appoint special counsel to investigate the U.S. Attorney’s office and demand to see its communications from Washington.

I’d love to see how far up the chain of command the fingerprints go.

At the risk of ending this section with a downer, I do need to remind you that Trump’s prosecutors do have one horrific success under their belt. They managed to persuade two conservative federal judges in Texas that eight anti-ICE protesters there were conspirators in an antifa terror plot. The eight were sentenced to a combined 450 years in prison. One defendant shot a police officer outside the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. But several of the people sentenced to decades in prison were not remotely involved in the shooting, and one defendant, who wasn’t even at the protest, was sentenced to 30 years.

The abuse of power is a deadly serious issue.

But the Protests Continue

• In Indiana, there were more than 60 protests over the weekend over inhumane conditions for detainees being held by ICE at the Miami Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison just north of Kokomo, that’s nicknamed the “Speedway Slammer” by Trump administration officials. The protest message: “End ICE Detention at Miami Correctional.”

• Residents in Danbury, Conn., have reacted with shock and protests to the recent ICE surge there, with more than 50 people arrested in a week. That included an operation on the first day of school at a school bus stop in front of a large elementary school, as children were getting off the bus and parents were dropping them off. Danbury Mayor Robert Alves said ICE knows it cannot conduct operations on school grounds, so positioned themselves across the street, as well as outside daycare centers in the city. More than 60 businesses closed down today to take part in a “Day Without an Immigrant” protest, and there’s another rally early this evening.

• In Memphis, residents came out to protest after ICE agents, reportedly with a search warrant to investigate gambling and drug activity, swept into the El Corralón nightclub after midnight on Sunday and rounded up 121 people, in what was likely the largest immigration raid Memphis as ever seen. Later that day, protesters gathered nearby with signs saying “NO TRUMP/NO ICE.” The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition put out a statement: “When we say this administration is trying to reshape our nation in their narrow white nationalist vision, this is what it looks like: disappearing our families, neighbors, friends, and co-workers in the night with no regard for the devastation they leave behind.”

• Protesters packed a board meeting in central Louisiana, opposing a plan to detain immigrant families and children at the site of a former military base in Alexandria.

• Protesters gathered outside a hotel in Fort Myers, Fla., where a large number of ICE agents were seen checking in. They noted a recent spike in federal immigration enforcement and said there is growing community anger over aggressive profiling and surveillance.

• Apparently some residents in the city of Bryan, in east-central Texas, didn’t take kindly to an ICE operation there on Saturday morning. According to a press release from the Brazos County Sheriff’s Office, ICE agents called 911, reporting that several individuals were following them, “driving recklessly, disobeying traffic signals, and attempting to block them from continuing to drive.”

• At Yale, over a hundred students, faculty members, and alumni defied the university’s protest rules to hold an unauthorized demonstration urging leaders not to sign any kind of deal with the Trump administration over DEI. There are sketchy reports that such a deal is in the works. The demonstration was scheduled as counter-programming to a mandatory event for first-year students titled “The University and Democracy.” “We thought that it was quite ironic that the university was going to be lecturing in a very sterile environment to the first years who are just entering this campus about what democracy looks like … and so we wanted to offer an alternative vision of what democracy can look like on college campuses,” said Yale student Isabel Montos, who spoke to reporters after the demonstration.

The March on Washington 2026

Thousands of people participated in the 2026 “Defend the Vote” March on Washington on Friday at the Lincoln Memorial, organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III.

It was 63 years to the day after Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps there and spoke of his dream.

“Tragically, that dream of a more just and equitable society has never been under greater threat than it is right now,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of the speakers.

Sanders continued:

Today we have a president who along with the Supreme Court members he appointed is carrying out the most significant assault on voting rights since segregation targeting virtually every aspect of the electoral system.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said:

Just as it was then, our ability to win depends on our ability to vote. Republicans know this. That is why the Supreme Court’s decision to weaken the Voting Rights Act matters so much -- because they know that when Black Americans exercise their full political power, we unlock progress for all of America.

And that is what they are trying to hold back. But there is a tide rising in this country, brothers and sisters. They can put they can put obstacles in our path, but they cannot turn us back around. And this November, the first of many tides is coming… And it is coming to fulfill the promise that hundreds of thousands of heroes carried to these grounds six decades ago. It is now our turn to summon that collective genius, to look beyond the limits of this one moment and to see further, to demand more, and to organize toward the future we know is possible. The tide is coming and this time we intend to win it all.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said:

These are challenging times in this country right now. We have a hater in the White House, a reckless and costly war of choice raging in the Middle East, a Supreme Court that’s out of control. Black unemployment is up. Black home ownership is down. And Black political representation is under assault with Jim Crow-like tactics all throughout the South. Challenging times. Wickedness in high places.

Here’s video of the entire event, and photo galleries from the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and Washington City Paper.

Horrors for Haitians

In Ohio, faith leaders are sounding the alarm that “Springfield is under siege.” The city welcomed some 10,000 Haitian refugees after they received Temporary Protected Status starting in 2010. Here legally, the refugees worked, raised families, built businesses. Now that Trump has ended their legal status, many are being deported to a country beset by gang violence and political instability. Many more are being fitted with ankle monitors, in anticipation of future sweeps.

“We are here in 2026 and they are shackled,” local NAACP President Denise Williams told the Springfield News-Sun. “Unshackle Springfield. Unshackle Springfield. Unshackle Springfield. We are not in the 1900s; we are not going back to slavery, and this is what it looks like.”

A rally to “Unshackle Springfield” brought hundreds of people into the streets on Sunday, with organizers issuing three demands for ICE: remove ankle monitors from Haitian residents, release Pastors Joubert Adrien and Juil Demano, who were detained last week, and end the racial stigmatization of Springfield’s Haitian and Black communities.

The Religion News Service reported that “During the weekend, hundreds of volunteers — Baptists, Unitarian Universalists, Mennonites, Quakers and others — packed food boxes for Haitians in hiding, held phone drives asking elected officials to release the pastors and stood outside Haitian churches on Sunday morning to advocate for Haitians’ right to worship without fear.”

Springfield community leaders and advocates on Tuesday renewed their demand for an end to the ankle monitors after the suicide of 20-year-old student Pierre Damas Bel, who friends and family say was driven to despair by the device’s stigma. “Pierre died as a result of policy. And it’s our immigration policy that took his life,” Pastor Carl Ruby of the Central Christian Church in Springfield said at a news conference.

The Week in the Courts

• A federal judge in California ruled that the Trump administration clearly violated the First Amendment when it decided to revoke visas and arrest, detain, and deport noncitizens because they expressed opinions the government wants to suppress. “In March 2025, that retaliation was directed at those engaged in pro-Palestine and anti-Israel speech,” Judge Noël Wise wrote. “In September 2025, caught in the government’s net were people critical of Charlie Kirk. In May 2026, it potentially included ‘weighing in on a peace deal that’s being negotiated’ in Iran regarding the Strait of Hormuz. Tomorrow, or perhaps even today, targets may include anyone in the United States who exercises their freedom of speech to simply express opinions the government does not like.” He concluded: “This downward spiral is antithetical to our Constitution that recognizes our right to speak freely. Here you can simultaneously hate the content of a person’s speech and love the country that cherishes the freedom to allow it.”

• A bipartisan coalition of 204 former federal and state judges has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, backing Chief Judge James E. Boasberg’s continued attempt to investigate whether the Trump administration willfully violated his court order by continuing deportation flights to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. A divided panel of judges on the appellate court ordered Boasberg to stop in April. The full bench will hear the case later this month.

• The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s effort to interfere in the 2026 midterms by ordering the use of an unreliable, centralized database to create lists of “citizens” in every state for determining who can and cannot vote. That would “imperil millions of Americans’ privacy and voting rights,” EPIC argues.

Resistance Crop Art!

I did not know this, but one way Minnesotans express themselves is through crop art – yes, art made from local crops – which is displayed at the Minnesota State Fair’s annual crop art exhibition and competition.

This year, resistance to ICE was the dominant theme. “Humans look to art to process experience, both collective and personal, the full spectrum from joy to trauma,” a state fair officials told MPR News. “We celebrate that here. There is a broad survey of what’s on the hearts and minds of Minnesota artists today.”

The rules limit artists to the use of “seeds, stems, heads or panicles, and fruiting bodies or structures” of crop plants grown in Minnesota — from alfalfa to sunflowers.

Please enjoy this marvelous photo gallery from MPR News, and this collection of “Crop Art Tributes to the Minnesota Resistance”. Here are a few highlights:

On Friday, 63 years after the 1963 March on Washington, thousands of people will once again gather on the National Mall, hoping to “bend this country toward its better self.”

With less than 10 weeks until the Nov. 3 midterm elections, this year’s central theme is particularly timely: Defend the vote.

“We stand on the same ground because the work is not finished,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton who, along with Martin Luther King III, is leading the march. “The right to vote, the very foundation of our power, is being chipped away in statehouse after statehouse. When the vote is weakened, every other right grows fragile with it. That is why we march. That is what we mean when we say Defend the Vote.”

Speakers will include Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, along with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger.

“Everyone, whether you call yourself progressive or moderate, understands that voting rights is imperative,” Sharpton said. “You can’t decide which wing you’re on if the bird is not allowed to get off the ground. A bird can’t flap its left wing or its right wing if the body is held down. And the body of voting rights is being held down.”

The march is partly in response to the gerrymandered election maps Republicans in several states, mostly in the South, redrew earlier this year after a 6-3 Supreme Court decision gutted the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The effective disenfranchising of most of those states’ Black voters represented a wrenching reversal of 60 years of racial progress — a revival of the Jim Crow era when Black people had no political power, no matter their number.

The march also comes as the Trump administration continues to pursue any number of avenues to reduce Democratic voting in the Nov. 3 election.

The most immediate battle is over mail-in voting, which Trump is trying to curtail by having the U.S. Postal Service deliver only those mail-in ballots sent by voters who appear on the administration’s approved list of eligible citizens.

The measure is caught up in the courts (see below). But the Supreme Court ruling last week, in which the six zealous right-wingers in the majority refused to nip the obviously illegal move in the bud, is a green light for Trump to make other moves to rig the midterms.

As civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill wrote in her newsletter:

This decision is yet another instance in which this Court demonstrates that it will credit take any action made by this President with legitimacy, no matter how compelling the evidence to the contrary. This is potentially catastrophic in the context of elections.

The march is not just about voting rights. In addition, the organizers say:

• We march to defend civil rights, because attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion are attempts to roll back access, opportunity, and representation.

• We march for economic justice, because too many families are still fighting for fair wages, affordable housing, equal opportunity, and a fair chance to build wealth.

You can sign up to go the march here (or just show up).

The Third Red Scare

Conservative and libertarian groups are taking up the cause of the 15 Minnesotans who face trumped-up conspiracy charges based mostly on traditional community organizing tactics.

Those lame charges were all that came out of a massive months-long DHS spying campaign on ordinary Minnesotans who gathered over the winter to resist the federal immigration agents terrorizing their communities. According to DHS documents turned over in discovery, the agency sent undercover agents to infiltrate citizen groups engaged in First Amendment-protected speech in churches, schools and parks — ostensibly to expose “an organized network of conspirators operating through online and in person who are providing material support to violent opportunists and agitators.”

DHS also obtained financial records for nonprofits and labor unions, none of whom were accused of any crimes.

Now the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the Society for the Rule of Law, and the Cato Institute have filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the conspiracy case, supporting the defendants’ request for yet more discovery.

“Backed by the machinery of federal investigative and prosecutorial powers, the Trump administration has…. set out to dictate orthodoxy and suppress dissent,” the brief reads. “The scale of the government’s assault on free expression has not been seen since the Second Red Scare.” (The First Red Scare came after World War I, the second after World War II and featured Sen. Joseph McCarthy.)

The groups draw a bead on Trump’s September 2025 National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7, which classified “anti-fascism” as “domestic terrorism,” potentially criminalizing views including “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

The brief argues that NSPM-7 “animates the prosecution in this case and is a directive designed to chill participation in protest activity, quell dissent, and silence critics of Trump administration policies under the guise of combatting terrorism.”

Maybe you’ll start reading and hearing more about this scandal now (like I’ve been asking for since Aug. 12).

As Rachel Levinson-Waldman, the director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, posted on social media:

This blockbuster story about DHS’s and DOJ’s joint investigation of individuals and orgs who committed no crimes should be getting ALL the attention. With a functional legislative branch, it would be kicking off a major Congressional investigation as well.

NPR, to its credit, covered the dragnet on Monday, interviewing Steve Sylvester, the outraged interim pastor of the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Roseville, Minn., where undercover DHS agent infiltrated a meeting of ICE protesters, captured license plates, and compiled dossiers with their names, addresses and information about their families and jobs.

“It feels weird. It feels like I’m living in 1950s Eastern Europe,” Sylvester told NPR. “I don’t know that it feels frightening or daunting. It just feels completely out of place and inappropriate.”

Talking Points Memo reporter Josh Kovensky looked through more DHS documents released by the defense on Tuesday and found that DHS surveilled people at a makeshift memorial to Alex Pretti, and that one undercover agent attended a meeting where an unnamed group was voting on it policy platforms and voted to get rid of jails because it was the “most extreme” position.

As Kovensky reported: “Throughout the transcripts, agents repeatedly asked whether activists and organizers that the undercover agents met with expressed interest in violence. Across the board, the agents said that they found no evidence of threats or intent to commit violence.”

Alex Pretti’s Family Speaks

Seven months after their son, VA nurse Alex Pretti, was shot and killed in Minneapolis by federal immigration agents he was video recording, his family sat down with ABC News’s Good Morning America co-anchor George Stephanopoulos and told him they want accountability. Pretti was helping a woman who had fallen down when he was swarmed by agents.

“I was not shocked that he helped somebody,” Alex’s mother, Susan Pretti, said. “My shock is that he was murdered. And no one has given us the complete truth or anyone has been held accountable. And it’s been 7 months!”

“They murdered our child,” she said. “People need to be held responsible when they murder people in this country. Period… And the case just what disappears? No!”

“There was more effort in vilifying him than pursuing justice,” said his father, Michael Pretti. “We want justice. We want accountability for the people that did this to Alex.”

Administration officials, including Stephen Miller and Trump himself at various times accused Alex Pretti of being a “terrorist” and an “agitator.”

“They don’t care,” said the father “They do what they want. How are you supposed to trust a government after that?”

“I expect an apology,” said the mom. “Why shouldn’t be we get one?... For what they said.”

In all previous administrations, a controversial law-enforcement shooting like Pretti’s would get aggressively investigated by the FBI and prosecutors in the criminal section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Trump administration officials instead blocked both federal and state investigations, then claimed that DOJ had opened a civil rights investigation. But there is no evidence of one.

Talking to ABC, Pretti’s parents said they found out their son had been shot while watching the news on TV. “That’s how we found out, watching it on TV. Watching our son be shot ten times on TV,” Michael Pretti said.

“In the back,” Susan Pretti, Alex’s mother, added.

“What did he do to deserve to be murdered?” his mother asked. “To be left cold, on the ground, dead, my child? What did he do?”

Outrageous Conduct

Eyes on Ice described how ICE officers attacked Sisi Rose, a regular protester outside the Sacramento ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations office on Monday — a confrontation caught on video here, here, and here. One video shows an ICE agent shooting pepper spray at close range directly into Rose’s mouth. When she spat out the irritant, officers arrested her for assault. They also tased her, tackled her to the ground, and held her down. She was taken to the hospital in respiratory distress, and with a metal taser probe embedded into the bone of her wrist.

WUSA showed video of a Washington, D.C., man filming an apparent ICE arrest in his neighborhood on Sunday — then being knocked down and arrested by a Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officer. The man told WUSA he was filming because he believed that documenting the operation could help keep the neighborhood safe. He spent Sunday night in jail, although he said charges of obstructing justice and resisting arrest were dropped on Monday. “I was told by the government… that MPD was not working with ICE to do these type of task forces and these raids,” he said. “I’m very disappointed to find out with my own eyes and my own experience that that is exactly what is happening.” Brad Johnson, a local journalist, identified the police officer involved.

This Week in the Courts

• Democratic groups are seeking a new injunction to block Trump’s executive order calling for the U.S. Postal Service to toss mail-in ballots from people not on a federal registry. The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a previous injunction, saying it was “unripe” because the USPS hadn’t filed a final rule yet. But the USPS has now issued a final rule, so the groups are again arguing that “the Ballot Mail Rule is flagrantly unlawful.” Why? “The Constitution assigns primary responsibility for election administration not to USPS, or even the President, but to the States, and ultimate oversight to Congress — and Congress has enacted nothing to empower USPS or the President to interfere with States’ decisions about who should receive a mail ballot or how mail-ballot envelopes should be designed.”

• A federal judge in New York struck down the Trump administration’s blanket ban on the processing of immigrant visas for people from 75 countries. Judge Jeannette A. Vargas wrote that “In many ways, this is not a challenging case.” Federal law “categorically prohibits the issuance of immigrant visas based upon the nationality of the applicant,” she wrote.

• A federal judge in Ohio blocked a new Ohio law that required voter registration applicants at the bureau of motor vehicles to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote at the same time. Judge Solomon Oliver Jr., wrote that the Ohio law “violates Section 5 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) by imposing a proof-of-citizenship requirement that exceeds the federal standard, which allows only the minimum information necessary to determine voter eligibility.”

• The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a Trump administration request to pause a lower court order requiring immediate improvements at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, California. “The district court found that Plaintiffs are subject to punitive conditions, including a lack of consistent access to potable water and adequate medical care,” the appellate panel found. “Although the Government asserts that any harm from such conditions was caused by GEO Group (“GEO”), the private company the Government contracts with to operate Adelanto, the Government is directly responsible for placing and keeping Plaintiffs in Adelanto.”

• The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a vacated criminal conviction cannot render a noncitizen inadmissible under the Immigration and Nationality Act, rejecting a long-time rule set by DOJ’s Board of Immigration Appeals. Irony alert: This was a pro-immigrant decision based on the Supreme Court’s regressive 2024 ruling that the judiciary should no longer defer to agencies’ interpretations of federal statutes (“destroying the administrative state.”

• The Democratic National Committee sued the Department of Justice, demanding records “concerning any planned seizure of ballots, voting machines, and other voting system components.”

• A federal judge in Florida ordered the release of a Colombian man, arrested for opening a beer inside a convenience store, who ICE portrayed to an immigration court judge as a recent arrival, with no pending application for relief, who had left the U.S. during a prior stay. The thing is that the man, Jorge Eliecer Madera Reyes, had actually lived in the U.S. since 2019, had never left, and had applied for asylum. Even after Madera Reyes appealed, and ICE admitted its mistakes, the judge in the case, Stuart Siegel, kept citing the false facts. Judge Sheri Polster Chapell wrote that “The government’s decision to double-down on its mistake, despite clear evidence and tacit acknowledgement that it was a mistake, is arbitrary” and violated the man’s Fifth Amendment liberty rights.

• A federal judge in Maryland ordered the return from Mexico of a Mexican man who was deported even after receiving a protection order from an immigration judge because, having testified against Mexican cartels in federal court, he would likely face torture. Citing a Mexican government assurance to the State Department that he would not be harmed, ICE terminated his protection and sent him off. But Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher wrote that “There is an immense public interest in ensuring that persons who risk their personal safety to assist the government in prosecuting wrongdoing are not placed in harm’s way by the very entity they assisted.”

Must Reads

• The Nautilus science magazine has published a marvelous article by Adam Piore titled “The Resistance Is Here.” It’s about the government-funded scientists who didn’t plan to be activists but ended up founding Stand Up for Science, which now counts thousands of members and has held scores of protests across the United States. Highly recommended.

• The American Immigration Council has released an “Immigration Response Playbook”: a “structured, searchable resource to help local and state governments document, share, and deploy policies that protect immigrant communities from federal enforcement overreach.”

• The Center for American Progress is out with a new report titled “The Trump Administration Is Interfering in the 2026 Midterm Elections To Entrench the Imperial Presidency.” It explains that “Based on the discredited myth of widespread election fraud, the administration’s multipronged plan includes 15 interlocking tactics designed to make it harder for eligible Americans to exercise their right to vote.”

• The New York Times reports that GEO, the private prison company, “donated more than $1.4 million to President Trump’s political operation last month after his administration awarded contracts that could pay the company $165 million a year to house immigrants awaiting deportation.”

At their best, editorials in local newspapers reflect the deepest feelings of the communities they serve.

I was particularly struck by a recent editorial that was jointly authored by the editorial boards of the Houston Chronicle and the Portland Press Herald in Maine.

In both communities, of course, federal agents recently shot and killed two innocent, admirable immigrants on their way to work: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Maine.

“[W]e find ourselves speaking in a united voice about the violence and chaos that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has brought to our respective corners of the country,” the editorial boards wrote.

But, they noted, “Outrage over these killings shouldn’t be limited to Houston and Maine. All of the United States now faces an out-of-control federal immigration agency that acts as if it can kill without accountability.”

And they raised burning questions for which citizens and journalists alike are looking for answers.

What is ICE’s current use-of-force policy? What training do agents undergo? Why are agents targeting people who don’t have deportation orders? Why is the release of future body camera footage being left to the “discretion” of an agency that was uninterested in using them? What will it take to hold agents accountable for recklessly, needlessly and cruelly spilling blood in American streets?

They called on their congressional delegations to hold public hearings and force DHS and ICE to answer those questions. And they asked three more:

Where are the arrests? Where is the trial? Where is the justice?

‘The Resistance Is Dead’? I Don’t Think So

Here’s a new moronic meme being passed around by Washington pundits today in the wake of the Florida’s Democratic Senate primary, where progressive candidate Angie Nixon beat Alex Vindman, the more establishment former national security official who was a star witness in the first Trump impeachment trial.

The anti-Trump resistance is passé, these pundits write, because Vindman allegedly relied on an anti-Trump message and was walloped by a democratic socialist.

The gang at the Cook Political Report suggests that there are actually three data points:

Seven years ago, Democratic Reps. Diana DeGette and Dan Goldman and National Security Council officer Alexander Vindman played high-profile roles in the impeachment of President Donald Trump. This cycle, Democratic voters rejected all three in favor of more progressive candidates who pledged to fight not just against Trump, but to disrupt what they believe to be the nation’s corrupt political and economic systems.

OK. But the message, they somehow conclude, is that “just showing ‘fight’” to Trump and MAGA is no longer “enough to satisfy a Democratic electorate looking for structural change.”

Similarly, the inside-the-Beltway publication NOTUS writes that “This election and others like it have shown that relying solely on an anti-Trump message may no longer be a viable winning strategy.”

And the lightweight, right-wing media operation that now operates under the once-venerated Newsweek brand, asserts the following “truth”: “the old Trump Resistance politics is dead.”

This is complete crap, of course. The core of the resistance is not a bunch of centrist Democrats. In fact, it is the upstart progressives – the “fighters” – who represent resistance values.

They are the ones who have captured the enthusiasm of voters both by vigorously decrying Trump and by offering a vision of a more dramatically reconstructed post-Trump America.

New Yorker Gets Sprayed, Sues

New York State passed a law in May called the Bivens Act, which closes the accountability gap that currently shields federal officers from federal legal liability for constitutional violations.

The new law lets New Yorkers sue federal officers in state court for money damages when the officers have violated their constitutional rights.

And now the first such lawsuit has been filed, based on an incident that was captured on viral video.

Linda Wolff, a foul-mouthed 72-year-old personal wardrobe consultant, was shooting video and yelling insults at ICE agents and others on an upper Manhattan street corner on Sept. 30 when an ICE agent pepper-sprayed her in the face.

Observers had gathered when they heard that an ICE van with a flat tire was being loaded on a tow truck.

The long version of the video shows the sequence of events. Wolff is yelling at the ICE agents. Then Wolff and the tow-truck driver start trading obscenities. Then the ICE agent – wearing an “ICE POLICE” bulletproof vest, a gaiter over his face, and a camouflage baseball cap with “Pray for Contact” on the front – struts over. As he’s moving toward her, he tells Wolff to “back up” and summarily fires the can of pepper spray – which he’d been shaking as soon as he got out of his car – right at her head.

After New York police officers showed up, one officer told the agent and his partner, who were sitting in an SUV, “I need both your names, just in case.” The pepper-sprayer responded “Nah we don’t have to,” and drove off, even as the NYPD officer is saying “You cannot leave me with ... hey!”

At a press conference about ICE overreach, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani commended Wolff “for her courage” in “standing up on behalf of her fellow New Yorkers.”

New York Governor Kathy Hochul hailed Wolff for bringing the case. “What happened to her is exactly why we passed a law giving people the right to sue ICE,” Hochul said. “Because no one has to tolerate this. Because ICE agents don’t get a chance to trample on your rights with impunity. Because here in New York, power never justifies abuse. And no one – no one – is above the law.”

This Is Going to Be Good

The Minnesota federal judge deciding the fate of the 38 people – including two journalists – who face scorched-earth conspiracy charges for a peaceful anti-ICE protest at a church has demanded that the politically-motivated Trump Justice Department prosecutors turn over every bit of material related to the grand jury presentation that led to the indictments.

Judge Laura Provinzino’s order says the materials are “necessary” for her to determine how to proceed. Defendants – in particular Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, two independent journalist who covered the protest – have filed numerous motions to dismiss, alleging vindictive prosecution and gross misrepresentations to the grand jury.

Grand jury material is generally super-secret. But all this comes at a moment when the DOJ has earned great suspicion. Not only do they no longer deserve “the presumption of regularity; prosecutions of Trump foes should be considered presumptively unjust.

One example of why came when a Chicago federal judge reviewed transcripts of the proceedings that resulted in the indictment of the “Broadview Six” anti-ICE protesters there. That judge found stunning prosecutorial misconduct: the grand jurors were effectively railroaded into supporting trumped-up charges. The prosecution collapsed after the judge released the transcripts to the public.

Relatedly, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 45 news and media organizations has filed an amicus brief calling for the dismissal, on First Amendment grounds, of the charges against the journalists. “Nothing in past prosecutorial misadventures, at either the state or federal level, captures the extreme government overcharging in this case,” the brief asserts.

That’s why we should all be eager to see those grand jury transcripts ourselves.

Big Week in the Courts

• The federal case against 15 Minnesotans who face scurrilous conspiracy charges based mostly on traditional community organizing tactics has spawned the extraordinary public release of secret DHS document exposing a truly massive spying campaign against ordinary Minnesotans who gathered over the winter to resist the federal immigration agents terrorizing their communities. The new documents reveal that DHS’s “Operation Puppet Master” sent undercover agents to infiltrate citizen groups engaged in First Amendment-protected speech in churches, schools and parks – all in order to determine the breadth of a nonexistent conspiracy that they believed involved groups including the AFL-CIO, a Service Employees Union local, the Minnesota chapter of 50501, and a bike shop called the Grease Pit. Amazing stuff.

• The 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed a lower court decision, putting the kibosh on a South Carolina law that would have only allowed voters to use absentee ballots if they are over the age of 65 (with a few minor exceptions). States generally get to set rules for such things as absentee voting, the court wrote, but “the Constitution forbids restricting access to that voting method based on any prohibited ground, including age.”

• A federal judge in Rhode Island vacated a new Trump requirement that would have forced the recipients of HHS and HUD grants to certify that they were not engaged in promoting gender ideology; diversity, equity, and inclusion; elective abortions; and antidiscrimination. The decision came in a case brought by non-profit organizations that receive federal grant money to provide services to survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, as well as unhoused people. The groups said they couldn’t agree to those restrictions – which emerged from a series of Trump executive orders – and remain true to their missions. Judge Melissa R. DuBose ruled that the agencies’ explanation for the new requirements – in effect “because Trump said so” (my language) – did not the meet the legal requirement for there to be “a rational connection between the facts, the agency’s rationale, and the ultimate decision.”

• The Justice Department’s Civil Right Division is now 0 for 23 in district court when it comes to demanding unredacted voter registration rolls from election officials. Judges in Nevada and Minnesota were the latest to join the party. Meanwhile, the full Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rehear DOJ’s request for Michigan’s rolls, which had already been rejected by a district court and an appeals court panel.

• A federal judge in Boston dismissed DOJ’s “antisemitism” lawsuit against Harvard University. Judge Richard G. Stearns mocked one of DOJ’s several losing arguments: that dismissal would doom further enforcement of the federal prohibition of discrimination based on race, color or national origin. DOJ had argued that when it threatened future defendants with defunding their grants, the defendants would just stop the prohibited action. Stearns wrote that “Even in the Government’s fevered forewarning of potential havoc, it concedes that its own hypothetical result is a positive, if roughly achieved, outcome.”

• Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued Texas Governor Greg Abbott to compel extradition of an ICE agent charged with shooting and wounding a man and then lying about it. Christian Castro, who shot his gun through a house’s front door, made headlines during ICE’s occupation of Minneapolis when he claimed he had been beaten with a broom handle and a snow shovel.

Who’s the Worst of the Worst?

Trump administration immigration enforcement is ostensibly – but not really – targeted at “the worst of the worst.”

A group called the Ohio Immigrant Alliance has turned that phrase against its creators in a new report titled “The Worst of the Worst: 152 Sexually and Physically Abusive ICE and Border Agents.” An accompanying spreadsheet names each agent, details their crimes, and provides sources.

The vast majority (86%) were charged with or convicted of sex offenses, and most of those were specifically against children. In fact, sex crimes against children made up a majority (78, or 51%) of the total. The worst of the worst.

Sherrilyn Ifill, the civil rights leader and democracy warrior, is greatly alarmed by the confirmation of Trump’s personal lawyer Todd Blanche as attorney general, which she sees as “the surest and most devastating signal that the rule of law has collapsed in this country.”

Specifically, she writes, it “announces the beginning of an accelerated and frightening program of smothering dissent.”

The weaponization of the Department of Justice against protesters, journalists, and opposition figures now “has the sanction of a majority of the Senate,” she writes.

And she is issuing a (nonviolent) call to arms:

We have a very limited window to fight this. Whatever non-violent tools of resistance we have left must be deployed - boycotts, protests, litigation, general strikes, demonstrations. We must shame those who are prepared to sit on the sidelines or worse abet this madness. Corporations (who have shockingly even allowed Trump to nationalize percentages of their companies - the great fear they all claimed they had of the left) must be called out. What media we have left must be pushed to take up their proper role of informing the citizenry about the stakes of this moment. Faith institutions have begun to rouse themselves, but their actions must intensify.

She calls for a significant increase in outreach — “door-to-door, in churches, in community meetings, on street corners” — to help “ordinary Americans… understand the consequences of this latest outrage for their own lives.”

Similarly, Democracy Forward president Skye Perryman was talking recently about a substantial expansion of collective action. “The suggestion of massive boycotts, massive work stoppages — we may be at the place where that is going to be needed in this country,” Perryman said in a Zeteo interview:

Resistance organizers have long said that the next step in the resistance will involve. noncooperation tactics such as boycotts, walk-outs, sick-outs, sit-ins, strikes, and refusal to obey orders.

But how do we get from here to there? And when? I’ve been asking the same question for more than a year. It’s been five months since the last No Kings rally, and while there’s a really impressive amount of quiet organizing going on, where does that lead?

May Day was a trial run for a general strike -- “a structure test for the strength of the movement,” as Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, put it. And it was disappointing.

The next several months, of course, have another urgency. As Ifill writes:

[N]othing we do will matter unless we are able to mobilize massive turnout in the midterm elections. If this election does not give Democrats the power to hit the emergency brake in January, this country will be in freefall. And if the Democrats get that power and hesitate to use it, this country will be lost.

Haitians in Limbo Get Community Support

Some 330,00 Haitian immigrants who were living legally in the United States under the temporary protected status (TPS) program officially lost that status last week.

The Springfield News-Sun in Ohio reports that over 500 people gathered outside the Blue Ash ICE office before 7 a.m. for a second Sunday in a row to show support for Haitians who were called to report for immigration check-ins.

ICE officials, as I wrote last week, only allowed the immigrants to leave shackled to bulky black ankle monitors. “It’s pretty much just a constant reminder of the fact that they’re being treated like criminals when they’ve done nothing wrong,” Kelly Sheehy, director of development and communications for Ignite Peace, one of the rally’s organizers, told the News-Sun

Monsanto Maler, who traveled from Springfield for his check-in, collapsed to the ground crying after he left with a monitor on his ankle. Faith leaders prayed with immigrants and offered communion.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that “Dozens of Haitians, allies, and supporters rallied in Center City on Thursday, demanding that Pennsylvania’s U.S. senators help restore temporary protected status (TPS) for thousands now in danger of being deported to the shattered Caribbean nation.”

The Inquirer notes that “Community leaders fear mass family separation, as Haitian nationals have married U.S. citizens and are raising American-born children.”

NY1 reported on a rally by healthcare workers outside Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn. Public Advocate Jumaane Williams urged New Yorkers to be vigilant but nonviolent. “Get your whistle. We want to make ICE as uncomfortable as possible, and make it as difficult as possible for them to do their job,” he said.

Deadly Delaney Hall

The New Jersey Monitor reports that “Democratic lawmakers met in a Morristown church Tuesday to repeat calls to shut down Newark immigration jail Delaney Hall and raise alarms about medical care for detainees held there.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was there. “Three deaths at Delaney Hall -- completely and totally unacceptable. Fifty-five deaths in ICE custody since the beginning of Donald Trump’s time in office, over the last 17 months or so,” said Jeffries. “That means one death in ICE custody every six days. That is not America.”

New Jersey’s attorney general Jennifer Davenport has launched a civil rights investigation into conditions at Delaney, where two deaths came within a two-week period.

Edwin Jovanny Lopez Cornejo, a 39-year-old Salvadorian who was held there after he was arrested by federal immigration agents in June died on August 3. His mother told the Monitor Cornejo was supposed to be taking daily medication for diabetes and high blood pressure, which he was not receiving at the jail.

Another Delaney detainee died in late July -- but ICE did not publicly disclose the death. Rep. Rob Menendez told the Jersey Vindicator that he was told the man had a seizure during intake. The Vindicator reported that “EMS workers arrived about 30 minutes later and took the person to University Hospital in Newark, where the detainee died shortly afterward.”

Menendez, outraged, said that ICE said it did not publicly report the death because the agency had granted the man a “discretionary release” and therefore he “was technically no longer in ICE custody.”

They could do that because, as the N.J. Spotlight reported, the Trump administration in June cast aside a key Biden-era rule that required ICE to report to Congress and investigate the deaths of any former detainees within 30 days of release. “The policy was designed to thwart the agency from releasing seriously ill individuals in an attempt to avoid legal responsibility for them,” the Spotlight reported. “ICE called the reversal ‘common sense.’”

In D.C., One Year of Occupation

FreeDC marked Tuesday as the one-year anniversary of “hostile military occupation”:

Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, wrote in The Hill that Trump wants “to keep troops here through Jan. 20, 2029, at an estimated cost of $1.4 billion beyond the money already spent.”

Nunn wrote that “The duration of the deployment might be what’s most concerning. No true emergency can be predicted to remain in place for another two-and-a-half years. If there was any doubt before, it’s now clear that the deployment was never meant to be a quick response to an immediate crisis.”

So what’s the point? Nunn pegged it:

It is designed to normalize something that should never be normal in this country: the use of the military as a domestic police force. It would be a small step from National Guard forces assisting in the arrest of people who dip their hands in the reflecting pool to guard members policing protests. And if Trump were to try to illegally block Congress’s certification of the 2028 presidential election — this time using military force, rather than exhorting an angry mob — there would be thousands of troops already arrayed within a short distance of the U.S. Capitol.

Resistance Hero

Carolina Molina, a suburban Virginia counselor who works with immigration lawyers, stood her ground Monday after a masked ICE agent pointed a gun at her through her car window.

Molina posted shocking videos on her Instagram page, where she goes by tinyandstrongthings. The first one showed the furious agent threatening her and insisting “you almost ran us over”.

Molina responded: “You are full of shit” and “I got dashcam!” She refused to move. “I ain’t scared of y’all,” she said.

The dashcam video shows she was not close to the ICE agents when she drove by and called them a hoe. Then she turned around and called them “a fucking bitch.” That’s when an ICE SUV cut her off and agents surrounded her.

Molina told WUSA9 that she wants accountability and does not regret what she said to the agents. “I know my laws. I’m an American citizen. I have the right. I have my First Amendment rights. I can say what I want, and I don’t feel like I should have a gun pointed to my head because you didn’t like being called a hoe,” she said.

And just in case you couldn’t distrust DHS any more, they’re compounding the lie.

DHS told News4 that “an anti-ICE agitator… attempted to harm officers by weaponizing her vehicle against them -- all in an attempt to help illegal aliens get away.”

It added: “Fearing for their safety, ICE officers conducted a vehicle stop of the driver. Necessary background information of the driver was taken and she could face criminal prosecution as a result of her actions.”

There is no bottom.

Or as Molina put in on Instagram, “They’re full of shit.”

This Week in the Courts

• A federal judge in Massachusetts has expanded her injunction against Trump’s executive order attempting to seize control of mail-in voting to cover the whole country. Dueling appellate court decisions, however, mean the future of the order is up to the Supreme Court.

• A Washington, D.C. judge has brought the DOJ’s record to 0 for 21 in its attempts to demand unredacted voter registration rolls from election officials. As Democracy Docket reports, a DOJ lawyer insisted to Judge Kymberly Evanson that all the other courts got it wrong. She disagreed.

• A federal judge in Texas released Guatemalan national Faustino Pablo Pablo from ICE detention after what TPM’s Morning Memo describes as “a surreal nine-month journey through the worst of the Trumpian immigration system compounded by highly misleading representations — if not outright lies — by the administration in court.”

• A Washington, D.C. superior court judge ordered the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to pay musician Charles Redd at least $252,479 in legal fees after he dismissed the center’s lawsuit against Redd for backing out of a free concert last year in protest of Trump adding his name to the institution.

• A Rhode Island federal judge has ordered the Department of Housing and Urban Development to vacate its most recent attempt to shift federal funding away from permanent housing for people who were experiencing homelessness. Advocates said HUD’s moves would have pushed nearly 200,000 Americans into homelessness.

• The Trump Department of Labor, in a settlement agreement filed in federal court, has agreed to rescind its efforts to shutter 99 Job Corps centers nationwide. D.C. District Court Judge Dabney L. Friedrich blocked the closings last year for likely violating provisions of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. The department will also pay $50,000 in legal fees to Public Citizen, which represented the plaintiff students.

• The Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation have filed a federal lawsuit against Trump for “charging $100,000 per month for advance access to his official government announcements on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns.” They call the scheme “extraordinary, corrupt, and unconstitutional.”

• Independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort have both filed motions asking a Minnesota federal judge to throw out their ridiculous criminal conspiracy indictments for covering a protest in Minneapolis. They filed several other motions to dismiss as well. You can find them all in the public docket. DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has thus far responded only by complaining that one of Fort’s motions had too many words.

• Former federal prosecutor Will Rosenzweig filed suit against the DOJ for firing him for a blog he published as a private citizen before he entered government service. As the New York Times reports, Rosenzweig “joined a growing list of former prosecutors and federal agents who have gone to court in an effort to fight back against the widespread purge of law enforcement officials deemed to be disloyal to the president.”

• Reuters has identified 75 federal-judge rulings finding that Trump’s government infringed on First-Amendment rights including freedoms of speech, religion, and the press. “The unprecedented pushback on constitutional grounds has included repeated ‌findings that the administration chilled or squelched the speech of citizens and groups opposing the Republican’s agenda,” the news service reported.

This Week’s Must Reads

• From The Nation: “One Woman’s Message From the Hell of ICE Detention.” Maryam Tahmasebi and her husband and son have been locked up for months. “We need your help,” she writes. “We are in tremendous pain and have been trapped in an unendurable, unending nightmare. I want my son to have a normal life, not spend his days in this awful detention center in Dilley. No child deserves this. No human deserves this.”

• From the New York Times: “‘Shame!’: An ICE Facility Roils a Tiny Town, With a House Seat in Play” about tiny Hudson, Colo., which was mostly known as a speed trap until ICE announced it was coming, setting off months of protests.

• An opinion column from author Donna Cameron in the Seattle Times: “In politics, maybe ‘resist’ isn’t enough. It’s time to press forward”. “I am not the resistance,” she writes. Trump “and the sycophantic zealots he surrounds himself with are the true resistance.”

“We are now at the mercy of God and anything can happen to anyone almost, now, any time,” Vilés Dorsainvil, who runs the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, Ohio, told the Springfield News-Sun this morning.

Some 330,00 Haitian immigrants who were living legally in the United States under the temporary protected status (TPS) program officially lost that status this morning.

The Trump administration announced in November that it would revoke TPS for Haitians. The move was stayed earlier this year by Washington, D.C., federal judge Ana C. Reyes, who found that it was motivated at least in part by the Trump administration’s obvious racial animus. But her order was reversed in June by the Supreme Court. And Reyes today officially lifted the stay.

It’s not yet clear how DHS will proceed – specifically whether it will begin mass deportation of people who over time have made their homes here, sending them to a country the U.S. State Department has declared unsafe for travel. That would be as cruel and disruptive as anything DHS has done before.

What’s also not clear is how ordinary Americans will respond, particularly in the seven states where Haitian TPS recipients live and work. Will they protest? Will they defend their neighbors?

One of those states is Ohio, which 45,000 Haitians with TPS status call home, including at least 15,000 in Springfield alone.

And judging from what happened in Ohio last week in response to a new ICE policy forcing local Haitian immigrants to wear ankle monitors reminiscent of slave shackles, the response could be intense.

Last Week in Ohio

Starting last week, Haitian immigrants being summoned to the Cincinnati ICE field office in Blue Ash, Ohio, were only allowed to leave with bulky black boxes chained to their lower legs. They were also instructed not to travel anywhere outside a 75-mile radius from their homes.

Many Ohio residents, full of outrage and revulsion, gathered outside that facility early Sunday morning, lining the roads, singing, and carrying signs. “Hundreds of Ohioans, all the way down the block over there, snaking all the way across here, at 7:50 a.m. in the morning,” MS Now’s Alex Tabet reported in a video.

When immigrants arrived for their appointments, protesters waved and shouted support and encouragement, as seen in this video.

“We are witnessing how fearful they are, and there is so much anxiety going on,” Dorsainvil told MS Now. “Specifically, they’re very much ashamed of the ankle monitors on their feet... When they get home, they are ashamed to show that to their kids because they’re not criminals.”

“This reminds me of slavery,” Deborah Thompson, a retired minister attending the protest, told Tabet. “Historically, slaves were shackled. This is shackling. This is modern-day shackling. And when I saw the ankle bracelets, I thought ‘this is how slaves felt’.”

But, she said, “Our community cares, and we see people as neighbors and not as enemies…. People are showing up and saying to the world – and saying to Donald Trump – ‘We’re not the America you’re trying to create. We are an America that loves our neighbors and loves people and cares about people no matter where you come from, no matter your color, no matter your accent. We are a people that care.’”

“I came to bear witness to the great wrong that’s being done to people who came here for a better life and had the rug pulled out from under them,” protester Bethany Rogers of Cincinnati told WVXU. “It doesn’t make humanitarian sense. It doesn’t make economic sense. It’s purely for ideology.”

An observer from out of state noted on Threads:

The ankle monitors being forced on Haitian refugees and other immigrants aren’t just about tracking people. They’re highly visible to draw attention, create stigma, and publicly label the person wearing one as someone to fear or treat differently.

History has already shown us what happens when governments require marginalized groups to carry visible markers that separate them from everyone else.

Immigration attorney Carolyn Marks, who accompanied two Haitian clients to appointments with ICE on Sunday, told the Washington Post that the broad use of the monitors is definitely new. “In the past, they have been used with people who have criminal records or had missed court hearings or an order of deportation,” Marks said. “But all these people had been and are complying with the law.”

Elsewhere in Ohio

Last week in Springfield, faith leaders including the Rev. Carl Ruby gathered to implore DHS to exercise humanity, WXVU reported.

“We’re here to respectfully ask Homeland Security and ICE to do what President Trump has repeatedly promised, and that’s focus only on the worst of the worst and that we support efforts to keep our border secure,” Ruby said. “We support efforts to deport people who are violent offenders so long as it is done humanely. But we are asking them not to come to Springfield and deport folks here.”

If they do come, Ruby told the Ohio Capital Journal, “We will encourage people to protest peacefully. There are many who are willing to place themselves between ICE and people who are targets for detainment and deportation.”

Ruby also told the outlet that he and his colleagues have been working for the past 18 months to build “a very large coalition of faith leaders not only here in Springfield, but across the state of Ohio and across the nation who will stand with us if we have anything like what took place in Minneapolis.”

Meanwhile, in somewhat related news, an Ohio airport has become a flashpoint for protesters. As the Akron Beacon Journal reported:

Two flights likely filled with immigrants being deported lifted off from Akron-Canton Airport Saturday morning even as about 200 protesters stood outside the airport entrance calling for an end to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Here are some photos and video.

The Beacon Journal has put a spotlight on the airport with some serious investigative journalism that found it “has become a major hub for an airline charter company that conducts immigrant transportation and deportations.” It reported:

More than 130 chartered Boeing 737 flights operated by Eastern Air Express have landed at Akron-Canton since April 20, sometimes to pick up people in restraints who have disembarked from a prison bus or unmarked vans….

From a vantage point on West Airport Drive and looking beyond a chain link fence, one can see mostly Black and brown detainees who appear to be cuffed and shackled disembarking from buses and vans, checked by guards and then instructed to climb the stairs to the plane, one at a time.

And it’s not just immigration that has Ohioans riled up. The Beacon Journal also noted the activities of two other grassroots groups in the state.

Members of the pro-democracy Ohio District 14 Partners have held protests 73 weeks in a row in Mentor, a suburban community about 25 miles east of Cleveland, with between 40 and 80 people consistently showing up for the events, the paper reported.

And within the last month, the Burning River Brigade in Northeast Ohio has:

• Rallied outside a Cuyahoga County GOP fundraiser featuring Sen. Jon Husted and U.S. Rep. Max Miller. The brigade held pictures of President Donald Trump and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and a giant sign that read “Pedophile protector party picnic” with an arrow pointing to the entrance of the GOP gathering.

• Traveled to Washington, D.C., and held up a sign that said “State of Warmooze is now closed” in front of a Reflecting Pool full of algae.

• Went viral for holding a sign reading “Someday a mortician gets to super glue his lips shut” over a Cleveland freeway overpass alongside a picture of Trump and Epstein.

The Trump Administration v. Protesters

It’s becoming clearer every day that the Trump administration is going to use every tool at its disposal to undermine the resistance.

Mother Jones reported on how what’s become known as the Prairieland case “became the Justice Department’s proving ground for its new war on antifa.” In July 2025 one protester outside a detention center in Prairieland, Texas shot a police officer. But some of the protesters who had nothing to do with the shooting were charged and convicted on federal terrorism and conspiracy charges and received draconian, decades-long sentences.

“Prosecutors spun up an elaborate tale of a Texas ‘Antifa Cell’ engaged in a campaign of terror,” the magazine reported. “Conspiracy charges can be an exceptionally powerful tool, enabling prosecutors to win convictions against defendants who were only marginally involved in alleged crimes. And as anti-ICE protests ramped up, the Trump administration began seeing conspiracies everywhere.”

The Guardian also wrote recently about Erik Davis, a professor of Buddhist studies, who “was one of thousands of Minnesotans who had rallied earlier this year when the Trump administration launched an aggressive crackdown on immigrants in the Twin Cities.” Davis now faces six years in prison on conspiracy charges:

In its 94-page indictment, the government has argued that Direct Action Minnesota, the loose coalition of organizers that Davis was connected with, conspired to obstruct federal law enforcement and had “ties” to “antifa”. The prosecution follows a pattern seen in other cases against demonstrators this year, with the government highlighting the comments and actions of some activists in the coalition to paint all 15 defendants as agitators pursuing violence against ICE…

“It’s petty revenge,” Davis said. “They’re trying to portray being part of a community as an illegal conspiratorial act.”

NPR reported on the growing use of conspiracy charges against protesters, particularly conspiracy to impede or injure officer. NPR found that “since President Trump took office last year, the Justice Department has charged more than three dozen people in at least 10 cases” using that statute. “All of them involve people protesting federal immigration enforcement. The government has also indicted nearly 50 people on conspiracy charges in Michigan, Texas and Minnesota using different legal statutes.”

The takeaway: “The rise in conspiracy charges has caused some legal experts to worry that the federal government is stretching the bounds of the law to sweep up political activists who oppose the Trump administration’s deportation agenda.”

The article’s kicker:

Katie Schwartzmann, legal counsel with the organization Protect Democracy, says more indictments against protesters could be coming.

“It’s important to see these indictments and the use of this law for what it is, which is an attempt to scare Americans,” Schwartzmann says. “But also, Americans should not be afraid to organize peaceful resistance in this moment. Those acts of ordinary people organizing and working together have been the most important force for justice in the history of our country.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that “ICE has deployed a round-the-clock digital dragnet to scour the public internet” to “surface everything from potential threats to agents to activities that could disrupt ICE’s operations”:

The program has ensnared U.S. citizens and activist groups that alert community members about ICE activity. Contractors prepare daily reports and dossiers on threat actors, identifying the poster’s name, location, date of birth, workplace, Social Security number, vehicle registration and criminal history when possible.

To unmask anonymous online critics, DHS has sent hundreds of subpoenas to social-media companies, according to people familiar with the matter. Its agents have tracked down Americans at work and on the road, asking them to sign letters acknowledging their online speech about ICE “may” be a crime.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is part of the Organization of American States, held a hearing on Tuesday on the Trump administration’s violent suppression of protests against federal immigration policies.

“As Donald Trump attacks the courts, weaponizes the Department of Justice, and targets attorneys who challenge his administration, we have been forced to seek justice beyond our borders,” two of the people who requested the hearing wrote in The Guardian.

One of the speakers at the hearing was the Rev. David Black, who described getting shot in the head with pepper balls last year after inviting masked ICE agents, stationed on the roof of a Chicago detention center, to repent. He testified:

The Trump administration’s method is recognizable because it is consistent with the consolidation of power by other authoritarian regimes to stigmatize migrants, to label their defenders extremists, to punish dissent, and to privilege compliant religion above prophetic religions. In the name of God, I pray that this commission will name what is happening for what it is: state violence used to suppress religious expression, peaceful assembly, and dissent.

The Week in the Courts

• The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency to issue $20 billion dollars of climate grants that it improperly terminated. The ruling will replenish the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the Biden-era “green bank” that provides money to nonprofits to support low-cost loans and investments for renewable energy projects across the country.

• A federal judge in Maryland temporarily blocked a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services policy banning non-governmental organizations from providing voter registration assistance during naturalization ceremonies. Judge Adam B. Abelson cited administration invocations of the “replacement theory” – such as Vice President JD Vance’s accusation in 2022 that Democrats are encouraging an “invasion” of immigrants to “bring a large number of new voters to replace the voters we already have” – as evidence that the ban “was motivated by discriminatory intent.”

• The Trump DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is now 0 and 20 in its lawsuits demanding that states turn over their unredacted voter rolls. Read Democracy Docket for the details.

• A federal judge in Washington, D.C, overseeing the last of the prosecutions seeking to hold accountable those responsible for the events of January 6, 2021, “reluctantly” granted the Trump DOJ’s request to erase the seditious conspiracy conviction of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes. Judge Amit P. Mehta wrote that “Today’s epilogue diminishes the gravity of that day, denigrates the work of the prosecutors and law enforcement officers who secured these convictions, and excuses criminal acts that caused a centuries-long pillar of our democracy – the peaceful transfer of presidential power – to buckle.”

• A federal judge in California overseeing a major lawsuit over alleged racial profiling by federal agents during their violent surge in the Los Angeles area last summer is holding DHS in civil contempt for “undue delay” in turning over communications from cell phones used by those agents. Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong imposed a $500 per day fine on DHS until it complies. The January order to turn over the records “was clear – and Defendants have had months to comply,” she wrote. “The clear and convincing evidence shows that Defendants have acted intentionally and not in good faith.”

• 25 states filed suit in the Court of International Trade over Trump’s new tariffs, calling them “a pretext for imposing the same sweeping tariffs the administration has repeatedly tried and failed to enact.” The suit points out that “For more than a year and a half, the President has unilaterally imposed tariffs without legal authority to do so” and argues that “The Administration’s third attempt to impose worldwide tariffs – now through Section 301 of the Trade Act – is equally unlawful.”

Must Click

• Mother Jones writes about Sherman Austin: “This Programmer Wants to Use Your Phone to Fight ICE”.

• WTOP News reports: “Clergy, civic groups hold SAVE Act protest and get-out-the-vote rally in DC”. Members of Repairers of the Breach were also arrested following a demonstration inside the Hart Senate office building.

• The Columbia Journalism Review writes about El Grito Media, a small, young, digital-first newsroom stood up by the League of Latin American Citizens (LULAC), whose short videos “cover a range of subjects affecting the Latino community, from immigration and law enforcement to mental health and childcare.” Here’s one report on federal agents using a new slur – “tonk” – to describe targets of immigration operations.

• Protect Democracy exposes “What a year in D.C. has cost the National Guard” – and it’s not just money. “Trump’s deployment is quietly unraveling the Guard’s core mission.”

A panel of House Democrats on Friday vowed to investigate the multiple fatal shootings by ICE agents as soon as they regain control of the chamber.

The Democrats were holding a field hearing in Houston, where they heard testimony about the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a longtime local resident and Mexican national who was shot dead by an ICE agent while on his way to work on July 7.

“In January, new leadership will happen in the halls of Congress,” said Rep. Christian Menefee, a Houston Democrat. “And I know that every single person sitting up on this stage right now will be in full throated support of an investigation.”

Directing his comments to two of Salgado Araujo sons, who delivered a moving statement about their father, Menefee said “Thank you for your courage. And we will make sure justice happens when we take back the halls of Congress.”

Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, also a Houston Democrat, called out the “utter failure of this Republican controlled Congress that has not only failed to address -- it has refused to address -- the abuses that this White House is directing in terms of immigration enforcement operations.”

She continued: “And it has done nothing – nothing – when innocent people in this country have been killed at the hands of federal immigration agents this year and during this term.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking member of the homeland security committee, called for accountability. “Over the years, the Committee on Homeland Security has conducted oversight on countless issues,” he said, “but none have been more urgent than Americans and immigrants alike being locked up, assaulted, shot, and even killed by the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE and CBP.”

The ACLU’s Immigration Reform Agenda

The ACLU is holding an “ICE Abuse Teach-in” via Zoom tomorrow (Thursday) at 8 p.m. ET, following up on its recent report, “Agents of Chaos and Cruelty,” which documents widespread civil rights violations carried out by immigration agents in 2025.

The report ends with a series of recommendations for Congress – essentially an agenda for 2029, given that none of them would survive a Trump veto. They include:

• Remove the immigration agencies from the Department of Homeland Security, which is too vast to allow for effective congressional oversight or internal agency accountability.

• Establish a new cabinet-level Immigration Management Agency oriented toward service — with a mission to keep families together, support American communities and meet the needs of the American workforce.

• Enact legislation that provides a pathway to citizenship for millions of long-standing residents, who are American in every way but on paper. Replace the threat of violent “enforcement” with fair, dignified, and efficient processing and clear rules to qualify for termination of removal proceedings and legal status, including citizenship.

• Dismantle the national deportation policing force in light of the extensive record of serious constitutional violations described in this report and ongoing litigation.

Anti-ICE Protests Across the Country

Saturday was a National Day of Action for Salgado Araujo, Johan Sebastian Guerrero – who was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Maine on July 13 – and others who have been killed by ICE.

Organizers said there were more than 300 vigils across the country.

Hundreds of people marched through downtown Los Angeles, ABC7 reported. “The march ended with a vigil at Olvera Street, where volunteers carried dozens of empty, cardboard coffins through the heart of the city. Organizers said each coffin represented a life lost during ICE enforcement or while in immigration custody.”

Fifty demonstrators gathered in Pasadena, the Los Angeles Times reported. “They wore fliers around their necks, hung with yellow thread, bearing the smiling faces and names of some of the 75 people who have died since January 2025. ‘Killed by ICE’ was printed above a photo of each person.”

Hundreds of demonstrators marched through downtown Chicago, the Chicago Tribune reported, some of them carrying “cardboard monarch butterflies, a colorful symbol associated with the migration journeys of immigrants and refugees.”

Protesters in Charlotte, N.C., mourned ICE victims and condemned an ICE detention center set to open in Hertford County, about 280 miles north of Charlotte along the Virginia border, the Charlotte Observer reported.

In Houston, Saturday’s vigil was preceded by an economic boycott on Friday and a rally called “Shut It Down for Lorenzo.” KHOU reported that more than 50 businesses across Houston’s East End closed for the day.

There were other anti-ICE protests as well.

KTVB reported that in Twin Falls, Idaho, dozens of community members protested against ICE-related flights departing from the Twin Falls Airport.

VTDigger reported that 13 protesters were arrested in Williston, Vermont, on Friday, for blocking access to ICE’s National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center. Organizers call the center ICE’s “national spy center, where surveillance of Americans is orchestrated.”

And two Massachusetts teachers are marching the length of Cape Cod to protest conditions ICE detainees at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, the Plymouth Independent reported.

The Week in the Courts

• Lawyers are not giving up their fight against the revocation of Temporary Protected Status for migrants from several different countries. As CNN reports: “A month after the Supreme Court curtailed lower courts’ ability to block the Trump administration from revoking temporary deportation protections, fresh efforts to halt the government’s plans for the Syrian national and thousands of others fleeing war and natural disasters are heating up around the country.” The Washington Post has more.

• Dueling appellate court decisions have left the future of Trump’s attempt to seize control of mail-in voting in limbo. The Boston-based First Circuit on Saturday agreed with a district court ruling that Trump’s order is unconstitutional and that the lawsuit is timely because of “the inescapable legal requirements and impending deadlines that States currently face in facilitating mail-in and absentee balloting for immediately upcoming elections.” On Tuesday, however, the D.C. Circuit grudgingly agreed with the government that “while Plaintiffs have identified a number of serious questions concerning the lawfulness of proposed actions if implemented on the threshold of the upcoming federal election, this case likely is unripe for review in its present posture.” After the first ruling, Trump asked the Supreme Court to weigh in.

• Here’s a doozy. A judge in Oregon slammed DOJ for seeking revenge against Portland for its arrest of a conservative influencer. DOJ had demanded Portland turn over a slew of internal documents. Judge Michael H. Simon wrote that “the Court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the United States has brought this motion in bad faith and with unclean hands.” Among the smoking guns: a tweet by assistant attorney general for civil rights Harmeet Dhillon -- “Portland: It’s FO time. Buckle up.” – which Simon wrote “exhibits all the hallmarks of a threat and attempted intimidation.”

• The DOJ is now 0 and 17 in its attempts to force states to turn over their unredacted voter rolls. Judge Claria Horn Boom dismissed DOJ’s lawsuit against the Kentucky Board of Elections, noting that “In considering a nearly identical factual predicate, the Sixth Circuit squarely resolved these issues in favor of the Defendants.”

• Another politicized prosecution is at an end: The Justice Department has moved to dismiss charges against Dennis Huerta, the California labor leader who was arrested a year ago as he participated in a peaceful anti-ICE demonstration. Huerta was initially charged with a felony count of conspiring to impede an officer, when in fact he was assaulted by ICE agents, requiring his hospitalization. (Marcy Wheeler has a great dissection of the case and its undoing.)

• Venezuelan men who the Trump administration sent to a notorious terrorism prison in El Salvador have sued the airline companies that flew them there. The companies “knowingly rendered over 230 Venezuelan migrants to confinement in inhumane conditions and torture,” the suit says. They “rushed to provide transportation services essential to the scheme’s success” even as a judge was enjoining it. “But for Defendants’ actions, the Administration’s unlawful plot would not have succeeded.”

• Attorneys general from 25 states and Washington, D.C., have filed suit against the Trump administration’s “unprecedented campaign to leverage the billions of dollars in federal funding that they administer to coerce States into adopting the Administration’s preferred policies” regarding voting and immigration.

• Attorneys for David Hearn, the Olympian canoeist charged with felony destruction of property after he touched some of the peeling liner of Trump’s botched Reflecting Pool, are requesting to review the full transcript from the grand jury proceedings. They suspect – with good reason – that the grand jury “was misled in a manner that substantially influenced the decision to indict and prejudiced Mr. Hearn.”

• Privacy rights advocates have filed a lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of violating the Privacy Act and the First Amendment by unlawfully surveilling people who peacefully observe and document federal immigration enforcement. “Beginning sometime in 2025,” the lawsuit says, “DHS deployed a dragnet of drones, body cams, face-scanning apps, license-plate scanners, and camera phones to, as one memo instructed, ‘capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.’”

Getting Ready for the Midterms

Indivisible is kicking off its “Hands Off Our Vote” program with a national call tomorrow (Thursday) at 8 p.m. ET. The mission is “to ensure all eligible voters get to cast their ballot, and that those ballots get counted.” They promise to “pull back the curtain on our strategy and theory of change, and walk through how you can step up to protect the vote no matter where you live.”

Democracy Forward has kicked off its “100 Days of Action” for people who want to do something “to effectively oppose threats to the elections and to strengthen our communities and our democracy.”

And Anna Dorman and Aaron Baird write for Protect Democracy:

On the second Sunday in April of this year, some 50,000 Hungarians — about one out of every 200 people in the country — spent the day inside polling stations, watching votes get counted. They weren’t election officials; they were volunteers who signed up, took the training, and sat through the count because their movement asked them to and they said yes.

That night, Viktor Orbán conceded.

Of course, the monitors didn’t beat him by themselves. They were among the most visible components of a strategy months in the making in which nearly everyone had a job. For context, for the United States to match that effort per capita, it would take about 1.7 million people, including you.

Over the last several months, I’ve grown increasingly interested in what a resistance governing agenda would look like – first in Congress, if Democrats win one or both chambers in November, and then across all three branches, if Trumpism is rejected by the voters in 2028.

So I’m thinking about adding a new focus to this newsletter: examining what those two agendas might look like, by aggregating and analyzing the latest ideas smart people have proposed.

From what I’ve seen so far, there are some emerging themes:

Starting in 2027, a Democratic Congress should open a slew of investigations into a wide range of conduct by this administration that has been essentially criminal, including Trump’s personal corruption, corporate bribery, politically-motivated prosecutions, civil rights violations against immigrants and protesters, and inhumane conditions in immigration detention centers. It should seriously consider impeachment.

Democratic majority leaders should also establish some red-line demands that must be met in order to win their support for necessary legislation. Those could include such things as an end to impoundment, reining in ICE, releasing immigrants on bond, reversing safety-net cuts, honoring congressional subpoenas, firing certain people, and ending the war against Iran.

The 2029 resistance agenda is of course much broader. There are high-level goals such as reconstructing a functional and ethical federal government, establishing new limits on executive power, prosecuting crimes committed by the Trump administration, resuming civil-rights enforcement, passing new restrictions on campaign financing, adopting a humane immigration policy, breaking up the Department of Homeland Security, and abolishing ICE.

There are even higher-level goals, such as restoring the rule of law, ensuring fair elections, working to create a true multiracial democracy, addressing climate change and income inequality, and regulating new technologies like AI and cryptocurrency.

And there is a powerful argument that very little of this is possible without structural congressional reform and dramatic changes to the makeup of the Supreme Court.

Plus, there are hundreds – maybe thousands – of thing Trump broke that must not just be fixed, but reconstructed – and a few that he built or gilded, that must be torn down.

My goal is to explore these ideas and many others in the coming months. (Does that sound good? What have I left out? Let me know.)

I’ll start now.

The Latest Thoughts on De-Trumpification

Under current law, state and local law enforcement officials can (with some difficulty) be sued for constitutional violations. But there is no similar legal authority that applies to federal officers, effectively giving them immunity from civil actions. Democrats have proposed legislation that would allow individuals the right to sue federal law enforcement officers and agencies in civil court for violations of their rights.

Radley Balko, the independent journalist who is my go-to source on all matters related to criminal justice, has called passage of such a law critically important. But as he writes in his must-read newsletter, that’s not enough. He wants Congress to pass a law that would allow individuals “to sue the supervisors and political appointees whose policies, priorities, and personnel decisions are responsible for these violations.”

Expanding on his New York Times opinion piece on the topic, he writes that “there needs to be some deterrent.”

At the very least, Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, Markwayne Mullin, Kristi Noem, and the other Trump II officials whose policies have caused unnecessary death should be writing checks to the families of Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Joan Sebastian Guerrero, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez — among others — for the rest of their lives.

Of course as long as Trump is president, he would veto such a law. But, Balko writes:

Assuming the Democrats retake Congress, I think it’s important to pass these laws quickly to send a message to Trump officials and federal immigration cops that culpability is coming. They need to know that they do not have carte blanche to continue inflicting pain and violence for the next two years. It would make clear to everyone responsible for the cruelty and deaths we’ve seen that we are one presidential signature away from imposing lifelong financial accountability on whoever’s policies, instructions, and bullets produce the next Alex Pretti or Joan Sebastian Guerrero.

Protect Democracy is out with a new report advocating for states’ U.S. House delegations to be selected through “proportional representation” rather than single-member districts. It’s fairer, and it would end the warped incentives to redistrict and gerrymander before every congressional election.

As Protect Democracy staffers Grant Tudor, Cyrena Kokolis, and Farbod Faraji explain in a blog post:

Single-member districts are uniquely vulnerable to manipulation. Gerrymandering works by exploiting a common feature of them known as “wasted votes.” When a candidate wins with 60% of the vote, the 40% cast for other candidates doesn’t help to elect anyone; those votes are considered “wasted.” So, too, are the 10% the prevailing candidate earned beyond what was needed to win. Gerrymanderers are essentially engineers of this waste, designing districts to maximize the opposition’s wasted votes and minimize their own.

By contrast, they write:

In a five-seat district, a party that wins 40% of the vote receives two seats, and another that wins 60% receives three…

Recall that a party that wins 40% of the vote in a single-member district wins nothing (lots of waste). But in a five-seat district, that same party wins two seats: instead of being wasted, nearly all of the votes contribute to representation.

Simultaneously, more than 500 scholars — including democracy, voting rights, and redistricting experts — released an open letter calling on Congress to adopt proportional representation. They write:

The requirement to use single-member districts was passed by statute in 1967. Congress has the authority to change it, bringing its electoral system into the 21st century. There should be little doubt that the single-member district system is failing to deliver fair and representative outcomes.

Emile Ayoub writes for the Brennan Center, where he is a senior counsel, that Congress must create new safeguards around the collection, integration, and misuse of people’s data. He writes that

[T]he Trump administration has ushered in a sea change in data consolidation, undermining privacy protections in its reported attempt to build a centralized database of government data. Many of these data troves have been funneled into DHS. And DHS is integrating some of that information with the voluminous personal data generated daily from our phones and online interactions, which the government can buy from data brokers. This data reveals some of the most intimate details of our lives, from religious affiliation to political preferences and more.

Ayoub writes that this kind of data integration makes it much easier for the Trump administration to monitor and target protesters, ramp up mass deportation, and target non-U.S. citizens based on their viewpoints.

He urges Congress to “close the data broker loophole, which government agencies exploit to obtain personal information from commercial entities without a court order,” and strengthen federal privacy laws including the Privacy Act.

Former CIA analyst Julia Curlee writes for Lawfare about “How the White House Broke the NSC and How to Fix It.” In 2025, Trump purged the National Security Council of most of its staff, breaking “the interagency coordination system that has managed U.S. national security since 1947,” and resulting in “serious miscalculations, from ill-conceived tariffs to the catastrophic planning failures in the run-up to the war with Iran.” Her proposal:

Post-Trump, she writes:

Staffing must return to the historical range of 100-200 policy professionals. Beyond headcount, the new NSC leadership will need to set clear expectations: broad policy options, objective analysis, and protection against retaliation for dissent….

Whatever the final mix of reforms, Congress and a new administration will need to ensure that a functional NSC is helping the president make good decisions, not shielding him from hard truths. Far from being the “enemies within,” career detailees are the institutional memory that tells a senior director which agencies need to be in the room, which classified programs can contribute, and which allied governments will need to be consulted for a policy to succeed.

Cerin Lindgrensavage, a counsel at Protect Democracy, and David A. Supe, a law professors at Georgetown University, write in The Hill that Congress needs to take action to stop Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought from cutting the budget of federal programs that Congress has funded. They write:

Members of Congress concerned about preserving the constitutional Separation of Powers should warn Vought and agency officials to reverse these lawless actions or else face consequences. If that fails, criminal referrals to the Department of Justice are possible — if not now then during the first years of the next presidential administration, within the five-year statute of limitations.

Former federal prosecutor Nathan Reilly, writing for Just Security, has some fascinating thoughts about ways to reform the grand jury process to hold the government accountable. As he notes, and I’ve documented here:

Recently, scrutiny of the grand jury and renewed calls to strengthen it as a bulwark against government overreach have grown more intense as courts have determined that federal prosecutors have engaged in misconduct in seeking indictments.

Reilly suggests three changes to Rules 5, 6 and 16 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure:

These proposed reforms would require disclosure of the complete grand jury transcript to the court in every indicted case, give defendants access to the legal instructions delivered to the grand jury, and require prosecutors to confirm on the record that the legal instructions they provided to the grand jurors were legally accurate.

A Big Win for the Resistance

It worked! Months of intense pressure on Citizens Bank from protesters and city governments led the bank to stop financing major private prison operators GEO Group and CoreCivic on Friday.

As the Boston Globe reports: “After enduring months of anti-ICE protests at its bank offices, Citizens Financial Group is parting ways with two for-profit prison operators that oversee detention facilities for the federal immigration enforcement agency.”

The De-ICE Citizens Bank Coalition, in a statement, called the move “an important victory for the people who refused to let a major bank finance human suffering brought on by ICE detention activities of the current federal administration.”

The bank, in its announcement, called the move “a business decision based on changed commercial circumstances” that “does not reflect any change in our view regarding these companies’ business models or operations.” The federal government is purchasing several facilities from the two companies, it said, which “has the effect of reducing the required capital of the companies going forward.”

But the De-ICE group didn’t buy it, saying “the reality is clear: public conscience and community resistance matter and have paid off.”

Vigils for ICE Victims

There will be vigils across the country on Saturday to mourn and demand justice for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastian Guerrero, the two men shot dead by ICE officers earlier this month in Texas and Maine. Find one near you.

The Week in the Courts

• A federal judge in California ordered the government to overhaul conditions at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in the Mojave Desert. U.S. District Judge Sunshine Suzanne Sykes laid out more than two dozen requirements for ICE to meet immediately, including 24-hour access to clean drinking water, “Nutritious and sanitary meals that contain a sufficient number of calories;” access to medical care, and at least four hours of access to the yard. A lawsuit on behalf of detainees had alleged inhumane conditions.

• A federal judge in Minnesota rejected the administration’s effort to force Minnesota to abandon its sanctuary laws. Judge Eric C. Tostrud wrote that the government’s attempts to preempt the state’s laws “violate the anticommandeering doctrine.”

• The Justice Department is now 0 for 16 in its attempts to obtain unredacted state voter rolls. A federal judge in Connecticut, Kari A. Dooley, noted that she had “the benefit of numerous (though non-binding) decisions by sister courts as to many of the issues presented.”

• A federal judge in Boston ruled that the Trump administration’s attempt to justify billions of dollars in funding cuts was based on a misreading of an obscure clause. Judge Indira Talwani sided with the 23 states that argued that the clause in question did not allow agencies to terminate grants based on shifts in priorities made after the grants were awarded.

• A federal judge in Texas barred the deportation of a witness in the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Araujo Salgado by ICE agents on July 7.

• A new legal brief alleges that DHS is violating an agreement it made almost 30 years ago that children may not be held in immigrant prison for more than 20 days unless the facility is nonsecure and licensed. The brief says thousands of immigrant children have been imprisoned at the Dilley detention facility in Texas for as many as 323 days under terrible conditions.

End Notes

• From the Huffington Post: “‘Free Them All!’: Inside The Fight To Close Delaney Hall.”

• From Colorado Public Radio: “GEO employee arrested in shooting of protester outside Aurora ICE facility.”

• From Seacoast Online: “Morning Resistance: Why a York [Maine] group protests Trump policies daily.”

Any hope that the Trump administration might voluntarily reform its brutal and sometimes murderous mass deportation campaign vanished this morning.

Public horror and protest over Trump’s immigration tactics reignited this past week after ICE agents recklessly fired into moving cars and killed two model citizens who happened to be immigrants, in Houston and Maine.

Yesterday, Department of Homeland Security officials responded to the outcry by temporarily banning most traffic stops — the practice that has preceded many of the most grievous attacks on immigrants and protesters.

This was seen by some as a sign that the Trump administration recognized that there was such a thing as “too far” to go to achieve Trump’s goals.

But today, we know better. There is no limit

In a post on Truth Social, Trump enthusiastically countermanded his DHS officials and gave an attaboy to the thugs terrorizing American cities and towns. He wrote that “The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job, one that has to be done.”

He falsely equated undocumented immigrants with criminals, and he wrote that in order to deport them, “we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!”

So the murders will continue. And the protests will continue.

Those protests had dwindled over the last several months as DHS shifted its tactics away from assaulting entire cities at a time to surging agents across the country. But then came two shocking murders.

On July 7, an ICE agent fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, a Mexican national who had lived in the U.S. for decades, as he drove his home-construction crew to a Houston job site. ICE issued its standard cover story – that he had rammed into the agents with his van, leading one of them to shoot in self-defense – but videos from the scene indicated that was a lie.

And on Monday, ICE agents in Biddleford, Maine, shot and killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, 26, a Colombian immigrant who was driving with his partner and 3-year-old daughter. This time, ICE didn’t even try to claim self-defense. It said Guerrero was driving away and the agent fired because he was “fearing for public safety.”

Neither victim should have been pulled over in the first place; agents allegedly mistook them for their intended targets.

In Houston, family and local leaders immediately called for an investigation. The next day, a large crowd attended a vigil honoring Salgado Araujo and flooded the street where he had been killed.

Three days later, on Saturday, hundreds of protesters rallied outside Houston’s City Hall. And yesterday, residents packed City Hall demanding answers from city officials, while protesters again gathered outside.

The Houston Chronicle spotted protests in honor of Salgado Araujo in Los Angeles, Tampa, Detroit, Charlotte, Eugene, Ore., Broadview, Ill.

There have also been vigils and protest in an Austin church, in Dallas, in San Antonio, in Philadelphia, in Durham, N.C., in Santa Cruz, Calif., in Oklahoma City, and in Phoenix.

After Guerero’s killing in Maine, residents of Biddleford, population 22,000, came out of their homes in astonishing numbers. Hundreds mourned in a city park just hours after Guerrero’s death, many of them marching to the local office of Sen. Susan Collins and chanting “Vote her out.” Collins supported legislation to expand funding for ICE.

Protests have continued almost daily in Biddleford and nearby, including a protest yesterday outside an ICE facility in Scarborough, a few miles away.

There was a big protest yesterday in the state’s largest city, Portland, where hundreds demanded that ICE get out of Maine.

Also yesterday, protesters gathered in New York, Washington, D.C., and Boston.

The United Farm Workers posted on social media: “Another killing by ICE, this time in Maine. That’s twice in one week. How can America keep asking immigrant workers to work as usual if they are being shot dead on their way to work? Stop killing us.”

The two homicides brought attention to the nationwide deportation surge that’s been taking place in relative quiet for months — but is apprehending as many as 2,000 immigrants a day, a record number.

David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, explained the dynamics to Marcela García, a Boston Globe columnist.

“It really was a matter of time before this surge happened because they’re bringing on so many new officers,” Bier said. “They have so many new resources to spend. You’re talking about altogether over $100 billion of unspent money.”

Bier told Garcia the increase in arrests is also a product of the White House’s impatience. “Stephen Miller never backed off his agenda,” Bier said, referring to Trump’s deputy chief of staff and the main architect of his mass deportation campaign.

The Week in the Courts

• An infuriated federal judge in Florida ruled that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s grant of immunity to Trump from IRS audits was illegal. “Acquiescing to any such demand is wholly incompatible with the duties of DOJ attorneys,” Judge Kathleen M. Williams wrote. , making it clear that the deal was in no way a legitimate “settlement” of the case she had been hearing, in which Trump sued his own I.R.S. over the leak of his tax information by an agency contractor. “This action was never about a party seeking judicial resolution of a legal issue or a factual dispute,” she wrote. “The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the Parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law.”

• Four more losses for DOJ in its baseless attempts to obtain unredacted copies of statewide voter registration lists! On Friday, a federal judge in New York dismissed DOJ’s lawsuit there, bringing the government’s record to 0-12 in these cases. On Monday, a federal judge in West Virginia also dismissed the lawsuit against his state, making it 0-13. On Tuesday, federal judges in Virginia and New Mexico did the same. Now DOJ is 0-15.

• The chief federal district court judge in Washington, D.C., blocked the Trump administration’s visa limits for noncitizen social media researchers who work on such issues as misinformation, disinformation, and fact checking. “Much of American political debate consists of disagreement over whether a practice is liberty or regulation, safety or suppression, accountability or censorship,” Judge James E. Boasberg wrote. “The First Amendment does not permit officials to resolve that dispute by attaching legal burdens to the side they condemn.”

Must Click

• In the New Yorker, Jonathan Blitzer tells the moving stories of detainees held in Camp East Montana, the West Texas tent complex that is ICE’s largest detention center. He finds that deprivation and dire conditions are part of the design, in order to put maximum pressure on detainees to agree to their own deportations.

• The Guardian writes up a new report and interactive map documenting 412 verified incidents of the misuse of crowd control weapons such as teargas, rubber bullets and pepper spray to control protests outside ICE detention centers or during enforcement operations. The report was created by Physicians for Human Rights and the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

• From the Orlando Sentinel: “Alligator Alcatraz is no more. Tents, cars, signs disappear from airport site.”

• From the Redoubt: “ICE eyes 1,000-bed detention facilities in foreign countries.”

• From News 12 in the Hudson Valley of New York: “Opposition is mounting in the Town of Newburgh over plans for a potential Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.”

• From the Miami Herald: “As work permits for Haitians with TPS expire, South Florida rallies to protect them.” Rallies have also been held in Springfield, Ohio, and Bridgeport, Conn.

• From the Center for American Progress: “The Trump Administration’s $1.7 Billion National Guard Deployments Fail To Reduce Urban Crime.”

• And there are more than 500 “Good Trouble Lives On” events taking place July 17 to 19. The events — named in honor of the late civil rights icon and Rep. John Lewis — are intended to continue the fight for voting rights with nonviolent collective action. Find one near you.

The occupation of Washington, D.C., by National Guard troops is nearly a year old. Donald Trump ordered the deployment of about 2,000 camouflage-uniformed personnel in mid-August 2025, ostensibly to fight crime.

But members of the Guard weren’t sent to high-crime areas. They were scattered across tourist corridors including Union Station, federal buildings, monuments, and other public spaces. Most recently, they’ve been seen chasing tourists away from Trump’s algae-clogged Reflecting Pool.

Their presence has done nothing to reduce violent crime in the city, which was already on the decline.

Instead, the Guard members have primarily served as a show of federal force and as a way of accustoming Americans to the presence of soldiers on their city streets, a dangerous precedent as Trump takes increasingly extreme steps to prevent Democratic victories in the midterm elections.

Trump hugely increased the Guard presence in the city in June to about 5,000. That’s way more than the city’s entire police department, which employs just over 3,000 sworn officers.

Historically, Guard members have been sent to Washington only by red-state governors. But a handful of blue-state governors agreed to send a few hundred of their Guard members to Washington for the summer, specifically to provide security for celebrations of the country’s 250th anniversary of independence – and not for Trump’s open-ended occupation.

That has provided activists with a new opportunity to push back against the Guard’s presence in the city.

Free DC, a popular grassroots organization dedicated to winning self-determination for Washington, sent its members out into the city to see how blue-state Guard members were being deployed. (They produced a handy guide to identifying Guard units by the stylized patches on their left sleeves.)

And they found Michigan Guard members far from the Mall, including this group stationed on a street corner in the Georgetown neighborhood.

On June 29, Free DC called for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to send her troops home immediately.

And on July 7, a powerhouse coalition of civil-society groups sent a letter to Whitmer calling for her to withdraw troops who, “regardless of any assurances you may have received from the administration,… are not being used solely to assist with 250 events.”

The letter revisited the case against the overall deployment:

Governors aligned with the president have sent nearly 5,000 National Guard forces to DC to patrol neighborhoods throughout the city, purportedly for the purpose of controlling street crime, against the will of the people and the local government. As the State of Michigan recognized when it joined an amicus brief in litigation challenging the deployments, this show of military force for the purpose of policing civilians is unprecedented, dangerous, and unlawful. The use of the military to support civilian law enforcement should be a last resort in cases where emergencies have overwhelmed civilian authorities. That is clearly not the case in DC.

And it noted:

Perhaps most worrisome, the addition of Michigan’s Guard forces to the thousands of troops President Trump has already brought to DC threatens to normalize the misuse of the military perpetuated by this administration and allied governors. That normalization poses heightened risks as we move toward the November elections.

The Associated Press reports that Michigan’s deployment is due to continue through Aug. 31. Minnesota is set to withdraw its Guard members on Saturday, earlier than the planned July 23 return.

Washington’s City Paper reports that “Democratic governors Tim Walz (Minnesota), Wes Moore (Maryland), Andy Beshear (Kentucky), and Josh Stein (North Carolina) are removing their guards from D.C.” But I haven’t been able to confirm that.

Getting blue-state Guards out of D.C. doesn’t solve the problem, of course.

Free DC has long called for the entire Guard presence to leave. Its members yelled “Guard go home” and heckled and booed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, and other top administration officials on July 2 when they held an outdoor event honoring Guard troops.

Hegseth, struggling to be heard, lashed out at the protesters. “This background noise this morning is perfect. It’s the sound of ingrates, of ingratitude, of people who are so blinded by ideology they can’t see law and order and common sense in front of them,” he said. You can also watch Miller trying to talk over the noise here.

Another Success for Bystander Video

Nebraska Public Media reports on how initial DHS claims about the arrest of an immigrant were belied by bystander video.

Gabriel Hurtado-Cariaco, a food delivery driver from Venezuela, was detained in Bellevue, Nebraska, last June. A DHS press release said he “violently attacked an ICE agent” by slamming her head into the ground and attempting to choke her to death. But as the article explains, “Under scrutiny, much of the government narrative crumbled.”

Two bystander videos of his arrest showed that he resisted being detained, at times pushing against the two agents who attempted to subdue him, but did not actively attack either of them. Prosecutors admitted that Hurtado-Cariaco had not choked the female officer as previously claimed, chalking it up to a “misperception” from the agent who wrote the affidavit that led to Hurtado-Cariaco’s arrest.

Here is one of the videos.

Originally indicted on charges of attempted murder of a federal officer, Hurtado-Cariaco pled guilty last week to one count of forcibly resisting arrest causing bodily injury. At the sentencing, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Robert Rossiter said that the allegations made in the initial complaint were “at worst a misrepresentation and at best complete negligence.”

It’s no surprise, then, that the family of a Mexican national shot and killed by an ICE agent in Houston on Tuesday is calling for an independent investigation, and the League of United Latin American Citizens is offering a $5,000 reward for information, video or witness testimony.

Last Week in the Courts

• A federal judge in Georgia quashed a subpoena from the Justice Department that would have forced Fulton County to turn over the names and detailed contact information for thousands of employees and volunteers who participated in election day activities in 2020. Judge William Ray wrote that “everyone, whether you support the President or you do not, or whether you believe the 2020 Election was fair or believe that it was not, should be concerned about the DOJ’s ability to utilize the power of the Grand Jury to appropriate your private information without a legitimate purpose.”

• A divided three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s injunction that blocked intelligence agencies from firing 19 career intelligence officers because of their work on diversity issues. “Among the promises of the Fifth Amendment is the requirement that no person be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” Judge Nicole Berner wrote. “This promise of due process has been construed to require federal government agencies to adhere to their own binding regulations.”

• A federal judge in Louisiana ordered the release from ICE custody of a nursing mother who was detained in violation of ICE’s own directive not to detain pregnant, postpartum, or nursing mothers unless there are “exceptional circumstances.” Judge David Joseph scolded government lawyers, who he wrote had “failed to comply with the Court’s invitation to demonstrate that Petitioner’s continued detention comports with the Directive.”

• A second federal judge blocked the U.S. Postal Service from determining who can vote by mail. I wrote last week that Judge Indira Talwani of Massachusetts had ruled that the USPS lacked any authority to do so. Now Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington has ruled that the move would also violate a settlement agreement with the NAACP, in which the USPS promised timely delivery of election mail.

• A federal judge in Florida threw out a defamation lawsuit filed by Trump’s social media company against the Washington Post. As the Post reported, Judge Thomas Barber wrote in a summary docket entry that Trump’s company “failed to present evidence that would allow a jury to find by clear and convincing evidence” that the Post “published the allegedly defamatory statements with actual malice.”

• Public Citizen filed a lawsuit asking a judge to stop the Trump administration’s shocking practice of providing the Iranian government with confidential information from the immigration files of Iranians seeking asylum in the United States. The suite argues: “Disclosing their confidential information to the Iranian Government violates the asylum seekers’ confidentiality rights, endangers their family members and acquaintances who may still be residing in Iran, and puts those who are subject to removal to Iran… at risk of persecution, torture, and death following their arrival in Iran.”

• A New York resident is suing ICE for violating his First Amendment rights after it sent officers to his house with a warning because of an email he sent to former ICE chief Todd Lyons. In the email, David Streever called Lyons “a monstrous human being” who “will never know peace.” The “Warning Notice” from ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility – which is supposed to conduct internal investigations – declared “YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW.”

A Quaker Declaration of Resistance

The American Friends Service Committee has issued a “Declaration of Resistance”.

“The promise of freedom in the United States has always been incomplete, and in this moment, it is under direct and escalating threat,” organizers wrote in their announcement. “We are living through a time of authoritarianism. We see it in the erosion of civil liberties, in policies that target and divide our communities, and in the steady normalization of fear, exclusion, and control. These are not abstract dangers. They are unfolding before our eyes. And yet, this moment also calls something forward in us—a commitment to resist.”

You can sign the declaration here. It consists of three statements:

• Protect. I believe in the inherent dignity of all people. Everyone deserves to have their rights and freedoms respected. I will take action to protect people and communities whose rights are being violated.

• Resist. I will not help the government, law enforcement, or corporate entities violate the rights of others. I will not cooperate, share information, or provide services that will be used to facilitate repression and violence.

• Build. I pledge to join in collective nonviolent protest, mutual aid and community care to prevent the rise of authoritarianism and build a future based on freedom, equality, and justice.

End Notes

• From CNN: “US service member arrested at Capitol after calling for Trump’s impeachment.”

• From CBS Sunday Morning: “The battle over Stars and Stripes.”

• From Kenneth Roth in the Guardian: “Trump is a danger to US democracy. But the resistance is working.”

July Fourth – Independence Day – is the original, organic “No Kings” day. It celebrates the rejection of the tyrannical reign of King George in favor of a government that derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.

And the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence should have been a heck of a party.

But for many of us, it’s impossible to celebrate this anniversary when it’s been coopted by a president who acts like a monarch and keeps being granted more monarchical powers – seemingly every day – by a fanatical Supreme Court and a subservient Congress.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said it clearly this week, in her dissent to the decision by her six extremist colleagues to give Trump absolute power over previously independent regulatory agencies established by Congress.

“The Court,” Sotomayor wrote, “gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.”

Anne Applebaum wrote in the Atlantic that “the Trump administration has destroyed the nation’s 250th-anniversary celebrations,” and that as a result, “Many people who might have participated will not attend, pay attention, or care.”

Paul Starr, writing in the American Prospect, saw a silver lining of sorts:

This is the worst year—and a perfect time—to commemorate the American Revolution. The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence is arriving at a political moment wholly inconsistent with the Declaration itself. Our own leader is a would-be king, responsible for “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object,” namely his own power and glory, which he confuses with the nation’s.

The message Starr took from this moment is that “America still has work to do to make good on its founding promise.” Trump’s “return to rule by proclamation and prerogative, the very thing America’s founders abhorred and tried to prevent through constitutional restraints” makes that work more urgent, he wrote. “This year’s anniversary ought to reawaken that foundational opposition to arbitrary, personal rule, slumbering in the hearts of the president’s supporters.”

November Becomes Even More Important

Winning the House back from supine Republicans in the November midterm elections has been the top priority of the resistance for many months now. But a whole series of destructive (and racist) Supreme Court decisions has made taking the Senate feel more like a necessity as well – if nothing else to prevent Trump from appointing any more extremists to the high court. And polls show that a Democratic takeover is not impossible.

Just in the past week – in addition to its independent agencies decision – the high court has given Trump the authority to deport over 350,000 legal immigrants – most of them Haitian – back to their home country, despite Trump’s obvious racial animus. It allowed Trump to turn back asylum seekers at ports of entry, a violation of domestic and international law. It threw out a law that guarded against the corrupting effect of large campaign contributions flowing through party committees to candidates.

It could barely even bring itself to affirm birthright citizenship, which is explicitly guaranteed by the 14^th Amendment. It barely held that mail-in ballots don’t need to be received by Election Day in order to be counted.

Indeed, expanding the high court to marginalize its six racist, corrupt, and pro-monarchical members is also increasingly seen as an imperative for the next administration.

In the Lower Courts, More Resistance

• A federal appeals court panel rejected the Department of Justice’s attempt to force Michigan to turn over its voter rolls as part of Trump’s effort to disenfranchise as many voters as possible. This comes after district court judges in 11 states had ruled the same way. Judge Andre Mathis wrote that when Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 was enacted, “the government used this power to ensure that everyone who had the right to vote could freely exercise that right. But today, the government invokes Title III for an inverse purpose – to ensure that some people have not voted.”

• It was a federal district court judge in New Hampshire who issued that 11^th ruling against DOJ. Judge Joseph N. Laplante wrote that “DOJ’s demand did not contain a sufficiently stated basis and purpose as required to constitute a valid request, and that “the absence of any basis is independently fatal to the United States’ claim and provides an independent ground for dismissal.”

• A federal judge in Massachusetts voided key sections of Trump’s executive order attempting to seize control of voting from the states. Judge Indira Talwani ruled against a centralized lists of adult citizens, writing that “Congress, consistent with the Constitution, has left that authority to the States alone.” She also ruled against the U.S. Postal Service determining who can vote by mail. “No law enacted by Congress delegates authority to control mail-in voting to USPS,” she wrote.

• Another federal judge in Massachusetts permanently voided the other key sections of that same executive order – the ones requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and disqualifying ballots received after Election Day. Judge Denise Casper wrote that she had seen “no evidence” of widespread illegal voting. By contrast, she found a “substantial risk” that citizens would be disenfranchised.

• A federal judge in Washington once again ruled in favor of the New York Times in its ongoing First Amendment fight against the Department of Defense’s attempts to curtail press coverage at the Pentagon. Judge Paul L. Friedman initially enjoined the Pentagon from enforcing a new policy that banished real journalists from a Pentagon workspace in favor of those “willing to publish only stories that are favorable to or spoon-fed by department leadership.” He later ruled that the Pentagon violated his order when it responded by banishing everyone. He has now ruled against an “escort requirement,” writing that DOD is no longer entitled to a “presumption of regularity” and was illegally retaliating against the Times.

• Two different federal judges struck down a Trump administration rule that would have let the Education Department deny public servants the benefits of a student-loan-forgiveness program if their employers were engaged in such activities as assisting undocumented immigrants, providing gender transition care for minors, or engaging in diversity, equity and inclusion. Judge Myong J. Joun in Massachusetts vacated the rule, calling it “arbitrary and capricious” and in violation of the First Amendment. Judge Amir H. Ali in Washington also vacated the rule, citing some “pretty tortured statutory analysis” by the government.

• A federal judge in New York permanently prohibited the Trump administration from withholding funding for the $16 billion rail tunnel under the Hudson River. Judge Jeannette A. Vargas noted that the Trump administration did “not dispute that the suspension of federal grants flagrantly violates federal law,” but rather argued that the court lacked jurisdiction. She disagreed.

• A federal judge in New Jersey threw out a DOJ lawsuit against four “sanctuary” cities – Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, and Hoboken – for limiting assistance with federal civil immigration enforcement. Judge Evelyn Padin pointed out that the policies in question also existed at the state level and had been previously been upheld by the Third Circuit.

Prairieland Reaction – and Another Draconian Prison Sentence

I wrote last week about how two conservative federal judges in Texas sentenced eight anti-ICE protesters to a combined 450 years in prison – a staggering amount of time. One defendant shot a police officer outside the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. But several of the people sentenced to decades in prison were not remotely involved in the shooting, and one defendant, who wasn’t even at the protest, was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for transporting a box of zines, or political pamphlets.

Federal prosecutors alleged that they were members of an “antifa cell.”

Melissa Gira Grant, writing in the New Republic, called the sentences “a national emergency” and wrote “they are also a warning. This is not the last time the Trump administration will try to severely punish dissent. Opposing these sentences could help us stop the next one.”

Kim Wehle writes for Zeteo: “This is part of an increasingly disturbing pattern of the Trump administration criminalizing speech and assembly in the United States. And it should alarm us all.”

Lex McMenamin writes in the Guardian: “The federal government’s focus on the possession of leftwing literature, including zines, and other basic security measures common in our modern era – like owning Faraday bags, meant to block wireless signals to prevent surveillance; using the encrypted messaging app Signal; or dressing in all-black clothing – is alarming to activists.”

David Graham writes for the Atlantic:

The trial and sentences raise uncomfortable questions about protesting, political violence, speech, and equality under the law—especially when compared with the punishments meted out for those who fomented and participated in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and the subsequent clemency granted to them.

Now a ninth person has been sentenced to decades in prison. KERA News reports that Ines Soto was sentenced today to 50 years. He was convicted of “rioting, providing material support to terrorism, conspiracy to use and carry explosives, and the use and carry of explosives — in this case, fireworks.”

Soto was involved in Signal group chats planning what was intended simply to be a noisy demonstration. He and two others “ran the Emma Goldman Book Club, where members shared anarchist and socialist literature in the form of zines or homemade booklets,” KERA reports.

Six other defendants who pled guilty were also sentenced today to as long as 15 years in prison, the Dallas Morning News reports.

Counter-Programming Trump’s Failed Events

Trump’s hilariously underattended “Great American State Fair” on the National Mall has been an incredible flop.

The scene was different at the Next250 “All of US” rally near the White House on Saturday, where the Guardian reports that more than a thousand people gathered as “organizers launched their Declaration of Interdependence, an art installation featuring the collective values they believe should define the next 250 years of America’s story.”

Those are:

• All people are treated with dignity and respect.

• Everybody feels safe in every community.

• Access to clean, green spaces is abundant.

• Every person who works earns a living wage and benefits that allow families work-life balance.

Marissa J. Lang reported for NPR:

It’s really meant to stand in direct contrast to the ways that we’ve seen the Trump administration honor America’s 250. There was that UFC fight on the White House front lawn a couple weeks ago. Right now on the National Mall, there’s blocks and blocks of this Great American State Fair. There have been military flyovers with B-2 bombers soaring over D.C. And what organizers of today’s protest told me is that all of this emphasis on American might and power and nostalgia kind of misses the point that none of this actually gets at American identity in all of its diversity and complexity.

End Notes:

• From the Texas Tribune: “Catholic bishop seeks information on ‘wildly disturbing’ ICE arrest of nun walking to South Texas church.”

• From Democracy Fund president Joe Goldman and Protect Democracy executive director Ian Bassin in the Philadelphia Inquirer: “The Trump Justice Dept. has forfeited the benefit of the doubt. Act accordingly.”

• From the Guardian: “Anti-ICE organizers shift focus to defend democracy from Trump assault.”

• From NPR: “Trump axed a Black history exhibit. Former park rangers are teaching it anyway.”

Day after day, federal district court judges are providing a clarity that is otherwise largely missing from the political discourse – certainly from the mainstream media – about the rampant illegality and unconstitutionality of actions taken by the Trump administration.

After thorough consideration of the cases before them, in carefully reasoned opinions based on facts, these judges are regularly reaching devastating conclusions about Trump’s lawlessness.

Judicial opinions are normally fairly dry recitations of facts and law, but these are blistering and dramatic – riveting, detailed, must-read accounts of how important government decisions are being made arbitrarily and maliciously, often in defiance of the law and the constitution.

These rulings are coming from judges you’ve heard of and judges you haven’t, judges in every part of the country, young judges and old judges, even some Trump-appointed judges.

And it makes sense. Their job is to judge. They are not pundits. They have no bosses to please, no corporate culture they must adapt to, and Trump can’t fire them.

Just by looking at the facts and the law, and reaching the obvious conclusions – simply by being very clear about what is really going on -- they have become heroes of the resistance.

Dismantling a Database

Consider Washington, D.C., federal judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan’s recent opinion ordering the dissolution of a massive new federal voter-verification database.

Plaintiffs, including the League of Women Voters, had sued, arguing that the database illegally consolidated millions of Americans’ sensitive and legally protected personal information and was leading to purges of voters – and criminal investigations -- based on outdated and inaccurate data.

Judge Sooknanan’s opening paragraph was a marvel of clarity and common sense:

This case implicates two fundamental rights that protect Americans from government overreach: the right to privacy and the right to vote. In the past year, several federal agencies have joined forces to create a centralized federal database that contains the private information of United States citizens, including Social Security numbers, citizenship status, and other sensitive data. But decades ago, Congress put protections in place to prevent precisely this type of centralized data bank. And the record in this case shows that the federal agencies that created this database knew that the database violates those statutory protections. The agencies were scrambling to comply with an Executive Order aimed at reshaping federal elections, which directed them to create a system for mass voter verification. So they haphazardly combined and repurposed the private information of millions of Americans, including citizenship data that they knew to be unreliable. Since then, states have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information. All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote. This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.

The judge declared the system “contrary to law, arbitrary and capricious, in excess of statutory authority, and without observance of procedure required by law.”

Quashing Coercion

Or consider how unequivocally Minnesota’s chief federal judge Patrick J. Schiltz quashed subpoenas from the Justice Department that were demanding a broad range of records relating to immigration enforcement from officials in his state.

First, Judge Schiltz laid out the extraordinary history of animus and insults and threats directed by Trump and his administration against “sanctuary” jurisdictions in general – and Minnesota in particular. He recounted Trump’s fury when Minnesota officials filed a lawsuit challenging the extraordinary surge of federal immigration agents into the Twin Cities. He included a link to Trump’s social media post the next day promising the “GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA” that “THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!” He linked to then-deputy attorney general Todd Blanche’s social media post warning Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey that “I’m focused on stopping YOU from your terrorism by whatever means necessary.”

The subpoenas were served less than a week later, and were followed up by a letter from then-attorney general Pam Bondi to Walz to the effect of, as she said on Fox News, “he better support President Trump, the men and women in law enforcement. Because if he doesn’t, we are.”

Judge Schiltz wrote:

Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action -- particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take -- is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use the grand-jury process.

And he then reached the obvious conclusion: that “the subpoenas were issued as part of an unconstitutional effort to coerce Minnesota officials into assisting the federal government with enforcing civil immigration laws and to harass and retaliate against them for failing to do so.”

He wrote that:

On the one hand, the evidence that the challenged subpoenas were issued for unlawful reasons is overwhelming. On the other hand, the Department has struggled-without success-to identify a single plausible investigatory justification for the subpoenas.

And he concluded:

The fact that connections between the information sought in the subpoenas and any possible criminal violation range from extremely weak to nonexistent only adds to the overwhelming evidence that these subpoenas were not issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce, and retaliate.

Ending Courthouse Arrests

Or consider the ruling by Judge P. Casey Pitts, in the Northern District of California, declaring a nationwide block on ICE’s policy of conducting arrests at immigration courthouses. He also ordered ICE to restore the 12-hour limit on detention in short-term holding facilities that it had waived last June. He wrote:

For 80 years, Congress has commanded federal agencies to think before they act. That instruction—codified in the Administrative Procedures Act—does not require an agency to make the choice that a reviewing court might deem preferable. But it demands that an agency at least provide sound reasons for following its chosen course.

And because the record before the Court demonstrates that ICE and EOIR [the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review] failed to provide reasoned explanations for their actions, the Court concludes that each of the challenged policies is arbitrary and capricious in contravention of the APA.

He wrote that the government’s purported rationales were “unconvincing,” and that the decision to remove previous restrictions on civil arrests at immigration courthouses resulted “not from merely unreasoned decisionmaking but a complete lack of decisionmaking.”

The clarity. They lack of hedging. The truth-telling. All so admirable – and rare.

Also in the Courts

• A federal judge in Maryland threw out the Department of Justice’s lawsuit demanding the state turn over its unredacted voter registration list. That brings DOJ’s record to 0-9 out of 31 such lawsuits. Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a Trump appointee, notably rejected a recent opinion published by DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel supporting the government’s argument. “This Court will not interpret the CRA [the Civil Rights Act of 1960] contrary to its text simply because an office of the party advancing that interpretation has adopted it,” she wrote.

• And former judges are making themselves heard, as well. The full D.C. Circuit Court will now decide whether Judge James Boasberg can investigate possible criminal contempt by DOJ and DHS when officials sent 137 Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador in apparent violation of his court order. In April, a three-judge panel including two Trump judges voted 2-1 to block his investigation. The decision to rehear the case en banc came after 174 former federal and state judges filed an amicus brief arguing that the panel ruling was intended to aid the Trump administration, “whose conduct in this case illustrates an intent to push the limits of compliance with court orders.”

And Now for the Bad News

Two conservative federal judges in Texas on Tuesday sentenced eight anti-ICE protesters to a combined 450 years in prison – a simply outrageous amount of time – apparently because, as one of the judges reportedly stated from the bench, “the state wants to send a message to anyone who shares a similar ideology.”

The protest outside the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, on July 4 of last year, turned violent when one protester, Benjamin Song, shot and injured a police officer. But some of the protesters who were given draconian sentences had nothing to do with the shooting.

As the Guardian reports, some of the defendants “were not involved in the planning, arrived separately at the protest, and left when guards at the facility asked them to do so.” Nonetheless, they were found guilty of riot and providing material support to terrorists and sentenced to decades in prison.

One defendant, Daniel Sanchez-Estrada, was not even at the protest. He was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for transporting a box of zines, or political pamphlets, that the prosecution claimed he moved so they wouldn’t incriminate his wife, who attended the protest.

Prosecutors argued the entire group was a “North Texas antifa cell” – and the judges bought it.

Meanwhile in California, a San Diego Superior Court judge sentenced nine anti-Trump protesters to up to two years in jail for their role in a brawl with Trump supporters who were holding a “patriots march” rally three days after pro-Trump mobs stormed the U.S. Capitol. Judge Daniel Goldstein said the defendants were trying to stifle Trump supporters’ First Amendment rights “for the benefit of antifa.”

Resistance Victories

The New York Times reports that “in a major turnabout,” ICE “is planning to offload seven warehouses purchased for more than $700 million by either giving them to other federal agencies or selling them outright.”

That leaves four to go, including one in Surprise, Arizona, where there have been sustained protests. The Arizona Mirror reports that community activists in Surprise are so frustrated by their city council’s refusal to oppose the ICE facility that they are moving to disincorporate the city, placing it “under the control of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which activists believe will be more amenable to local calls to act against the federal plan.”

The New York Times reports: “The Trump administration is abandoning its plan to dismantle a $368 million ocean monitoring system critical to understanding climate change and marine ecosystems, bowing to a bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill.”

Alligator Alcatraz has shut down, bringing to an “ignominious close a $1.2 billion experiment that had once been hailed by Governor Ron DeSantis and President Donald Trump as a model other states should pursue.” That’s from CBS News in Miami.

On MS NOW, Rachel Maddow had a great rundown on Monday of how Trump folds under pressure.

It’s All About November

The ACLU is devoting massive new resources to stop Trump and state lawmakers from interfering in the 2026 midterm elections.

“The ACLU is laser-focused on ensuring that every eligible voter can vote, that ballots are fairly counted, that elections are properly certified, and that the will of voters is respected,” the group says.

The group’s “largest ever volunteer mobilization and training program” includes the training of “10,000 volunteers across the country to monitor polling sites and protect election results in their communities.”

The group will also deploy staff and volunteers to monitor the elections in all 50 states and Washington D.C., with a special focus on six battleground states.

End Notes

• From MS NOW: “Todd Blanche hit with state bar complaint backed by 101 former judges.”

• From the Wall Street Journal: “ABC Launches On-Air Campaign Against FCC Investigations.”

• From the New York Times: “Former NOAA Employees Revive Climate Site Shut by Trump Administration.”

• From NorthJersey.com: “Woman outside Delaney Hall struck by car while waving an American flag.”

• From the New Jersey Globe: “McIver asks appeals court to dismiss federal charges tied to Newark detention center confrontation.”

• From the New York Times: “ICE Protester Says He Was Shackled in Hospital for Days After Agents’ Attack.”

• From the New Republic: “D.C. Hit With Prank Projections Ahead of Trump’s July 4 Celebrations.”

• From the D.C. Media Group: “Team Algae Trolls Trump’s Botched Paint Project At The Reflecting Pool.”

• From MoveOn.org, a petition: “Helping your neighbor is not a crime, and we refuse to be bullied and intimidated into silence and fear. Drop the charges against the Minnesota 15 now!”

The Trump administration took another major step toward criminalizing the resistance on Tuesday when the Justice Department unsealed grave federal criminal charges against 15 people involved in anti-ICE protests during the government’s violent immigration crackdown in Minneapolis this winter.

The 15 were charged with conspiring to impede federal officers, with some facing additional charges such as interstate stalking and assault, based mostly on traditional community organizing tactics around blockades and the tracking of ICE agents. (Well, that and a few dents in an ICE vehicle.)

The “overt acts” of a violent “antifa” conspiracy cited in the indictment mostly consisted of transcripts of group messages on Signal where participants engaged in protected political speech. Homeland Security agents raided the protesters’ homes early Monday morning.

The Justice Department is hardly making a secret of its intent to send a message. Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen announced that the “charges and arrests reflect a broad federal effort to address organized lawless behavior, which seeks to disrupt the execution of federal law, endanger law enforcement, and importantly endanger the very communities that these defendants falsely claim to be protecting.”

But coming amid a slew of other federal prosecutions of protesters (most of which have failed) and after a Trump executive order that redefined opposition to Trump as terrorism, it’s obvious that the real goal is political repression. The Trump administration has resistance activists in its sights and is perverting its law enforcement powers in an attempt to silence them.

Progressive leaders in Minneapolis were quick to condemn the charges. “They represent the latest chapter in a federal operation that has repeatedly divided communities and raised serious questions about civil liberties, transparency and accountability,” Monica Bryon, president of the state teachers union said in statement. She continued:

During Operation Metro Surge, Minnesotans checked on neighbors, helped students, supported families in crisis and delivered food and essential supplies. Those acts of compassion and solidarity are not crimes. They reflect Minnesota values.

Yet while community members face charges, Minnesotans are still waiting for answers and accountability in the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Four Minneapolis City Council members decried the indictment as “an act of political repression meant to intimidate and terrorize the same people who have been caring for our neighbors and keeping our communities safe from violent immigration agents.” They continued:

Trump sent masked secret police to terrorize our community and occupy our city. They were forced out by the overwhelming resistance of neighbors who stared down guns and chemical weapons with nothing but whistles and phones in their hands. Families were torn apart, and our neighbors, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were gunned down in the street for daring to stand in solidarity, and still Minneapolis refused to back down.

Across the world, Minneapolis residents are seen as heroes for the ways we resisted fascism and took care of our neighbors. Our collective bravery and solidarity exposed the true costs of the Trump administration’s fascist playbook. Now, with the tide of public opinion working against Trump, they are turning to legal retaliation to deflect from their massive failure to improve quality of life for working class people. The retaliatory tactics this administration is using today are frightening– but they are a sign of weakness.

Spencer Ackerman, writing in his “Forever Wars” newsletter, has more on how the indictment is “the latest turn of the ratchet in criminalizing resistance to ICE.” And he notes that “Nowhere in the indictment is there even an account of anyone being hurt as the result of any act by anyone accused.”

U.S. Marshals assaulted Twin Cities protesters

Let’s be clear: When it comes to violence at anti-Trump protests, it is almost exclusively the protesters who are the victims, and the federal agents who ought to be prosecuted (and maybe, someday, will be).

As if to illustrate that very point, U.S. Marshals viciously attacked peaceful protesters who had gathered outside the St. Paul federal courthouse where the indictment was unsealed on Tuesday.

You’ve really got to watch this video. It starts with a young woman politely talking to a U.S. Marshal in the open doorway of the courthouse as several dozen protesters chant anti-ICE slogans outside. Then the marshals attack.

They throw aerosol grenades into the crowd, they shoot pepper spray wildly, they viciously throw one protester to the ground.

Pilar Pedraza reported for KSTP TV:

Witnesses tell me that what was going on at the time is that they were holding the doors open, so that you could hear the chants inside the building, when suddenly somebody saw folks putting on gas masks inside the courthouse. And all of a sudden they came out and started spraying a chemical irritant at them.

Pedraza interviewed the woman in the doorway. “I’m shocked. I’m disgusted,” the protester said. “But more than anything, I am not leaving. I know that they tried to scare us and intimidate us and push us away from solidarity. It’s not going to work. We want justice.”

It’s outrageous. But for people to get outraged, they’d have to hear about it first. In this case, coverage was scant and dismissive. As I’ve written in my Press Watch column, news organizations routinely cover up the one-sided nature of the brutality.

Case in point, the Minnesota Star Tribune simply described it as a “brief struggle between U.S. marshals and protesters.”

The AP published some shocking video, but under the anodyne headline: “Protesters clash with US Marshals in St. Paul, Minnesota.”

Crushing dissent is a White House priority

New evidence of how important squelching protest is to the White House emerged on Monday -- buried in a New York Times article based on a new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. The article was primarily about how administration figures including Stephen Miller have sought to abolish habeas corpus – something we knew already.

The real news was that Vice President JD Vance unsuccessfully pushed to invoke the Insurrection Act in January, just days after federal agents killed Alex Pretti.

He wanted to deploy the military to quell the growing public outcry in Minneapolis.

The authors described a senior White House staff meeting where Vance argued that Trump “needed to invoke the Insurrection Act, swiftly, to crush the unrest in Minnesota.” They wrote: “It would be painful in the short term, he said, but the message it would send — that paid agitators could not get away with disrupting ICE operations — would make sure no one tried it again.” (Of course they’re not paid.)

When a federal case falls apart

The spectacularly failed Justice Department prosecution of the “Broadview Six” anti-ICE protesters in Chicago continues to spawn fascinating developments.

The defendants are now asking Judge April M. Perry to appoint a special counsel to “investigate the misconduct of certain individuals from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois and, if the evidence supports it, prosecute such individuals for criminal contempt.”

As I wrote last week, transcripts from the grand jury proceedings that resulted in the indictment revealed jaw-dropping abuse of the process by federal prosecutors.

Indeed, the government is so eager to avoid any further discovery that it has informed the defendants that it will not argue against paying their legal fees – even without knowing how much those fees will be.

And Jamie Raskin, the House Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, is calling for an immediate investigation of U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros. Raskin wrote in a letter to federal and state officials that “Mr. Boutros’s misconduct has done incalculable damage to public confidence in his office, in the Department of Justice, and in the rule of law.”

Yet more intimidation

More than a hundred federal agents last week raided the offices of Ohio Organizing Collaborative — the state’s leading voter registration group — and “fanned out across the state to interview people who have worked with the collaborative and in some cases seized their electronic devices such as phones and laptops,” the Ohio Capital Journal reported.

The intent was obvious.

“I am deeply concerned that this is an effort to use federal law enforcement to intimidate and halt voter registration and organizing efforts,” Rep. Shontel Brown, who represents Cleveland, said in a statement. “This is an unprecedented attack on democracy,” she said. “Unfortunately, this appears to be part of a systematic effort by Trump and Kash Patel’s FBI to attack our elections and perpetuate more myths of voter fraud – all to undermine and challenge any election result that Trump does not agree with. It’s an attack on the People.”

Michael Waldman, the president of the Brennan Center for Justice, called the raids “troubling” and “outrageous.” He wrote:

This gives every indication of being an extraordinary abuse of power. It is part of a strategy that aims to intimidate voters and those who would help them exercise the franchise.…

What will be produced by this massive display of prosecutorial force? Probably not much of anything but — its progenitors likely hope — dread. If citizens are afraid to register to vote, or to help others register, mission accomplished.

In fact, the strategy seems focused not on enforcing the law but fomenting fear.

Delaney Hall update

There’s almost no media coverage anymore of the continued vigil outside the Delaney Hall immigrant detention center in Newark, now in its 26^th day.

Status Coup News, an independent streaming-video outlet, documented more ICE brutality there on Monday night. A small group of protesters were lined up in the parking lot blocking traffic and chanting in support of hunger strikers when dozens of masked and armored federal agents emerged from the gates and attacked them with pepper spray, shoving them, and violently arresting at least one person who appeared peaceful to me.

Something similar happened on Friday night, again via Status Coup News. This time, ICE agents came out in force and immediately deployed pepper spray and pepper balls to push the blockading protesters back.

Meanwhile, there appears to be new activity inside the hall. The Guardian reported last week that nearly 40 women have joined the ongoing hunger and labor strike.

NJ.com cites reports that many of the male strikers have been transferred out of the facility. And it notes that the hunger strikers “are not starving themselves entirely” but rather “are refusing to eat the food provided by the GEO Group, while strictly rationing food they purchase at the Delaney Hall commissary.”

MS NOW’s Antonia Hylton on Tuesday interviewed Marianne Delaney, whose aunt Geraldine is the building’s namesake. It used to be a rehab facility, before the GEO Group turned it into a private detention center.

What would her aunt think about what’s going on now?

“I think Geraldine will be horrified,” Marianne Delaney said. “She was all about recovery and healing and giving people a second chance in life. She saved lives. She spent 50 years working as a pioneer in addiction and alcohol treatment, and she is known and renowned globally for her work.”

She continued: “It was intended as a 250 bed facility, to do good, to save people’s lives. Not to be a warehouse for human despair, which it appears to have turned into.”

Democrats from the House Homeland Security Committee are holding a field hearing in Newark about Delaney Hall this afternoon. In his opening statement, ranking member Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi decried the Trump administration for launching “the most cruel, inhumane, and unlawful immigration policies in modern history.” He continued:

We have all heard the horrific accounts coming out of Delaney Hall—and many of my colleagues here today have witnessed them firsthand. We’ve seen detainees living in inhumane conditions, mistreatment and abuse by staff, and food contaminated with worms and maggots. These are not isolated incidents. These are symptoms of a system collapsing under secrecy, neglect, profiteering, and disregard for human life. Let me be clear: every person detained in this country — regardless of immigration status — is entitled to basic human dignity.

They are entitled to safe and sanitary shelter, necessary medical care, access to legal counsel, and edible food. These are not luxuries. They are the minimum obligations of a government that detains human beings. Facilities like Delaney Hall are required to meet standards of care. What we have seen and heard makes one thing undeniable: those standards are being violated.

A major new resistance figure

Janeese Lewis George, a democratic socialist and ferocious critic of Trump’s interventions in her city, appears to have won the Democratic nomination for mayor of Washington, D.C. (The November general election is a formality in D.C., given the overwhelmingly Democratic electorate.)

She has promised to be much more resistant to Trump than the current mayor, Muriel Bowser. “Complying in advance has never helped a community, especially one under an authoritarian leadership like the one we are currently experiencing in the White House,” Lewis George has said.

Trump last week threatened a federal takeover of the city if Lewis George won.

She responded: “Threatening Home Rule because you do not like how residents vote is an attack on democracy itself.”

So stay tuned.

In the Courts

• A federal judge in Massachusetts ordered the Trump administration to restore information about subjects like slavery and climate change it had removed from displays in national parks. Judge Angel Kelly wrote that “The government’s stewardship of these park sites… carries a responsibility to present history in full rather than in favored fragments. Unfortunately, the Government has disregarded these principles.” She concluded “Not only does this undermine the integrity of the National Parks; it sets a dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization.”

• A federal judge in Maryland struck down Trump administration rules that could have stripped more than a million people of their Affordable Care Act insurance coverage by shrinking sign-up windows and heightening eligibility verification — ostensibly in an effort to reduce fraud. Judge Brendan A. Hurson wrote that “The circular reasoning and conclusory statements offered to justify the policy change are not indicative of reasoned decision-making.”

• A coalition including conservation and historic preservation groups has filed suit seeking to protect West Potomac Park, a popular recreational haven near the Mall, from being turned into a “National Garden of American Heroes” featuring statues of 250 people Trump approves of, starting with Christopher Columbus.

End Notes

• From the Nation: “Raucous Protest Is Coming to the Joyless World Cup.”

• From the Jersey Bee: “Why we’re calling Delaney Hall a ‘concentration camp’.”

• From the Washington Post: “Ms. Rachel goes to Washington, carrying letters from children in ICE custody.”

It’s all about the November election for the next five months, as resistance groups work towards what they hope will be a massive electoral repudiation of Trumpism.

It’s time to mark your calendar for these major events:

June 14: Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert for the First Amendment

The No Kings Coalition is behind a star-studded concert and nationwide watch parties intended as counter-programming to Trump’s cage fight obscenity on the South Lawn. Jane Fonda, Bette Midler, Rufus Wainwright, Patti Smith, and many others will headline the main event at the Town Hall in New York City. Watch parties will “create a massive night of localized, relational organizing across the country.”

The organizers explain: “Moving beyond mass street mobilizations, June 14 will serve as a critical opportunity for No Kings supporters to strategize, connect with local organizers, and prepare for the ongoing fights ahead of the midterm elections.”

Find an event near you here. Extremely expensive tickets for the concert in New York can be purchased at riseupsingout.com.

June 17-20: Juneteenth Week of Action

The civil rights leaders behind the All Roads Lead to the South National Day of Action in Alabama last month have announced the first event of what they are calling “Freedom Summer,” in honor of the historic 1964 voter registration and education campaign.

The Juneteenth Week of Action includes events in Atlanta on June 17 and a June 20 rally in Harlem.

June 27: A Nationwide Mobilization for Truth, Equality & Freedom

Ahead of America’s 250^th anniversary, organizers of this mobilization say their goal is “to repair our history rather than erase it, ensuring America lives up to its foundational ideals for all of us.” The day will feature marches, rallies, and protests across the country “to reject the whitewashing of our past and future.”

Find an event near you here. Or host one yourself. Partner organizations include 50501, the Women’s March, and Common Cause.

July 17-19: Good Trouble Lives On Weekend of Action

Adopting the phrase coined by civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis, Good Trouble events will “carry the torch of the civil rights movement by doing what Lewis loved most – organizing, educating, and taking action,” organizers say. Partner organizations include the ACLU, 50501, Public Citizen, and Common Cause. The three calls to action:

• TEACH our community members about the critical fight for our freedom to vote

• REACH out to our neighbors to bring them into this movement

• PREACH to our loved ones about the moral necessity to carry the torch of the civil rights movement

There will be a virtual training session on June 11, “to learn how you can host a voter registration event and support your community in ensuring they can exercise their freedom to vote.” Are you a lawyer? A June 17 training session will focus on “how you as an attorney can help provide legal knowledge and support for one of the nationwide voter registration events in your area.”

August 8: Unite & Rise for Voting Rights

The League of Women Voters and its partners are hosting a nationwide day of civic action in honor of the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“Leagues and partners will lead hundreds of activations across the country centered on increasing voter engagement, turnout, and education, with particular emphasis on young voters and community partnerships,” organizers say. Anchor events will be held in Phoenix, San Francisco, Atlanta, Detroit, and Michigan.

It’s part of the League’s Unite and Rise 8.5: An Initiative to Defend Democracy.

September 15: National Voter Registration Day

Last year, 3,200 local organizations joined forces to help Americans register to vote or update their registration on National Voter Registration Day.

October 3: Power to the People Fest

At his Washington concert last month, Bruce Springsteen announced that his guest guitarist, Tom Morello, would curate a Power to the People Fest at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD, on October 3. The lineup is phenomenal, including Springsteen, the Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews, Joan Baez, Public Enemy, and many more.

Organizers say the event will be “about the power everyday human beings have when they come together — through music, art, community and action — to shape our country and our planet on, and beyond, Election Day.”

In an “immersive space” called Freedom Village, nonprofits and community groups will “highlight ways to get involved through civic engagement, grassroots organizing and mutual aid.”

Portions of the proceeds will be donated to VoteRiders, and HeadCount will help fans register to vote.

Inside and Outside Delaney Hall

The vigil outside Delaney Hall, the immigrant detention center in Newark, is about to enter its third week.

Protesters are once again facing off against ICE agents. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka had sent Newark Police in to de-escalate the situation after ICE agents and New Jersey state troopers repeatedly attacked protesters. But he has now pulled back.

As a result, as AMNY reported, on Friday night ICE agents shot protesters with pepper balls, and a prison employee struck a photographer with their vehicle.

On Monday, N.J. Gov. Mikie Sherrill was finally allowed into the facility. But, she said, “I was not allowed to meet or speak directly with the detainees, which continues to raise serious questions about the real conditions of the facility and the treatment of those held there.”

Ms. Rachel, the beloved children’s YouTube star, paid a visit on Monday. “Met the sweetest children whose hearts are broken,” she posted on Instagram. “They just want their parents home again. I spoke with a 13 year old whose dad is in Delaney. ‘He’s a wonderful father’ she said, tearing up,” she wrote. “It makes no sense that their family has been ripped apart. Why are we traumatizing kids?.. I will always stand with these families.”

The American Friends Service Committee reminds us that inside Delaney Hall, detainees have issued four letters of demands. They are calling for:

• The immediate release of all detained people. They are prioritizing the elderly, pregnant, young people, and those with serious medical conditions—while insisting that all detained individuals deserve to pursue their cases outside of detention.

• Meaningful and fair review of immigration cases and habeas petitions.

• An end to coercive pressure to sign deportation or voluntary departure documents.

• An in-person meeting with Gov. Mikie Sherrill at Delaney Hall so she can observe conditions and hear directly from detained people.

More Vindication for the “Broadview Six”

Transcripts from the grand jury proceedings that resulted in the indictment of the “Broadview Six” anti-ICE protesters in Chicago were released on Tuesday, revealing jaw-dropping misconduct by federal prosecutors.

Many observers had suspected that grand jurors had been railroaded into supporting trumped-up politically-motivated charges.

Wow were they right.

The transcript for the October 9 session shows that Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheri Mecklenburg personally vouched for the credibility of the case and argued the case rather than simply presenting it, two massive violations of grand jury rules. Nevertheless, the grand jury did not indict.

A week later, she came back to try again -- and kicked several people who had expressed skepticism about the case off the grand jury, which is not allowed. (One of them told her “I heard this case like last week and I thought it was a crock of shit then and I still think it is.”)

A week after that, she admitted to having talked to two grand jurors outside the grand jury room, another gross violation of grand jury rules. The jurors finally gave in.

Did this happen because of pressure from the White House? Defense attorneys have filed a motion seeking any communications between Washington and Chicago. So stay tuned.

Last Week in the Courts

• A federal judge in Rhode Island struck down immigration policies that have halted asylum processing, frozen immigration benefits, and targeted immigrants based on nationality. Judge John J. McConnell Jr. assailed “a series of policies that threw the lives of countless immigrants living in the United States into indeterminate legal limbo.” Citing the line that if people want to immigrate to the United States they ought to “follow the law” and “do things the right way,” McConnell wrote that “This case serves as a perfect example of immigrants doing just that.” By contrast, he wrote, the government had done neither. He also slammed DHS for “pretextual concerns of ‘national security’ that mask anti-immigrant sentiments that it is forbidden from letting influence its decision-making.”

• A federal judge in Washington struck down Trump’s move to impose $100,000 fees on employers seeking visas for skilled foreign workers. Judge Leo T. Sorokin said the “payment requirement amounts to a tax, which exceeds the scope of the President’s discretionary authority.”

• A federal judge in Washington struck down an Internal Revenue Service guidance that restricted tax credits for wind and solar projects, finding it “arbitrary and capricious.” Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote that “Defendants failed to articulate a reasoned explanation for this consequential decision.”

• Two members of the publisher’s advisory board for Stars and Stripes, the military’s independent newspaper, have filed suit seeking to block implementation of a U.S. Department of Defense memo that would effectively end the newspaper’s editorial independence.

End Notes

• From Sherilyn Ifill: “The SCOTUS Project to Undo Voting Rights Protections is Nearly Complete.”

• From the Associated Press: “What to know about the growing opposition to Trump family-linked resort in Albania.”

• From the “prophetic preachers” who spoke at “Moral Monday” in Washington: “Truth In A Time Of Lies.”

It will take a massive electoral defeat to put Trumpism fully behind us.

That’s why the fall of Viktor Orban is such a talisman for democracy-loving Americans. Hungarians overwhelmingly threw out their entrenched, corrupt, authoritarian leader in April.

What can we learn from them about how to cleanse the country of ours?

I wrote a bit about this when it happened. My initial takeaway was that if Hungary is a model, then the way to motivate voters across party lines is with a more aggressive, principled, and insurgent pro-democracy agenda than anything the current Democratic leadership is offering right now.

Now M. Gessen, New York Times opinion columnist and my go-to for all things Eastern European, has weighed in with a must-read piece headlined “This Is the Formula That Defeated Orban. It Would Defeat Trump, Too.”

She writes that one lesson of now-Prime Minister Peter Magyar’s success “lies in the scale, reach and relentlessness of his organizing network.“ Magyar had somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 volunteers. The U.S. population is 36 times the size of Hungary’s, so that would equate to at least a million people here.

Another lesson: “Old-fashioned in-person politics can be a powerful antidote to media fearmongering.” Magyar was a relentless campaigner.

Another lesson: “Don’t mince words.” Magyar didn’t just call Orban’s regime “corrupt,” he “called it a mafia state — a fundamentally criminal enterprise.”

Another lesson: Be an outsider. Magyar “was not a member of the old opposition, whose policies had led to the discontent that made Orban’s rise possible and whose timidity had helped perpetuate Orban’s power.”

Another lesson: Voters don’t only care about pocketbook issues. Post-election polling showed that Hungarian voters saw corruption as the most important issue by far, way more than the economy, and also frequently cited “lies,” “fearmongering, war rhetoric,” and “people got fed up.”

Gessen writes:

In other words, Hungarians seemed to see the damage that Orbanism had done to the nation as more important than any harm they felt they had suffered as individuals. They were united by a sense of moral outrage.

Gessen also gives Magyar credit for thinking big:

In his inaugural speech to Parliament, broadcast on giant screens set up around the square, Peter Magyar said that voters had handed him a mandate “not just to change the government, but to change the system. To start over.

So, here’s my takeaway: Hungary tells us the way to beat an authoritarian is with an enormous popular movement led by uncorrupted, charismatic people full of moral outrage and committed to radical reconstruction.

So does that mean the answer lies in a group like Indivisible, rather than the current Democratic party? And in someone like AOC, not someone like Josh Shapiro?

What do you think?

Day 13 in Newark

Protests outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark are in their 13^th day, while an unknown number of immigrants inside remain engaged in a hunger and labor strike to call attention to the facility’s inhumane conditions and the denial of their due process rights.

I wrote last week about how ICE had begun routinely assaulting protesters outside the facility.

In a strange turn of events, New Jersey’s Democratic Governor Mikie Sherrill on Friday sent state police to Delaney to take over from ICE, whose conduct she decried as too aggressive. ICE itself posed a threat to public safety, she said. Exactly right.

But not long after the state troopers arrived on Friday night, they broke out the riot gear and the horses, and took up where ICE had left off, firing tear gas and shooting pepper spray at protesters with little or no provocation.

On Saturday night, troopers – now using flash-bang grenades as well -- aggressively pushed protesters more than half a mile away from the facility. And early on Sunday, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka – an outspoken opponent of Delaney Hall – nevertheless declared a curfew, violating the First Amendment rights of protesters who up until then had been holding a round-the-clock vigil.

Sunday night, when several dozen entirely peaceful protesters refused to leave at nightfall, troopers again responded with violence, shooting at least two people with rubber bullets and arresting 61 people, including at least two credentialed photojournalists.

On Monday, Baraka sent Newark Police officers – notably not in riot gear or on horseback -- to take over from the troopers. Monday and Tuesday nights were calm. The curfew has also been lifted.

Meanwhile, the situation inside Delaney Hall appears unchanged.

Indivisible is hosting a Zoom briefing on “Delaney Hall and Beyond: Showing Up Strategically” Thursday at 8 p.m. ET, “for anyone looking for what to do in this moment to support the strikers and nonviolently take on Trump’s detention and deportation machine.”

This is Very Bad

A federal jury in Spokane, Washington, last week found the “Spokane Three” guilty on felony conspiracy charges for their part in a June 2025 anti-ICE protest.

Felony charges!

Jac Archer, Justice Forral, and Bajun Mavalwalla II were found guilty of “conspiring to impede law enforcement officers or injure property used in the execution of their duties.” They face up to six years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

As the Spokesman-Review reported:

The case widely examined the lines between the First Amendment and when assembly can turn into a crime. Protesters that day had showed up to Spokane’s ICE facility at 411 W. Cataldo Ave. to sit in front of a bus to prevent it from taking a group of immigrants to a federal detention center in Tacoma. The initial group that stationed themselves in front of the bus, including Archer, had intended to remain nonviolent and were prepared to be arrested.

When protesters saw agents attempting to leave out of a parking lot gate, they ran to the gate and stood in front of it. Agents then came outside, walked into the crowd and began pushing and grabbing people, pulling them towards the ground, video footage from the trial showed.

At some point, protesters slashed the tires of the transport vehicles and others linked arms around a red U.S. Customs and Border Patrol van to stop it from leaving.

As Robert Chang, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, told The Guardian: “By this logic, any protest could be a conspiracy.”

Archer’s attorney, Carl Oreskovich, told the Spokesman-Review:

I think it was an extraordinarily aggressive approach to prosecution of protests. And it certainly is going to chill people who want to utilize their First Amendment right to dissent against government actions that they don’t agree with … And it is heartbreaking to see that is the climate of the nation we live in.

By contrast, it’s a dream come true for the fascism-adjacent, like the Manhattan Institute, which as Wired reports is working hard “to classify minor protest-related crimes as ‘civil terrorism.’”

The goal is “to pass state-level legislation reclassifying minor crimes like vandalism, blocking a roadway, or trespassing during a protest as felonies that would carry 18-month prison sentences as punishment,” Wired reports.

This comes “amid a broader Trump administration effort to crack down on leftist organizations, causes, and social movements, while recasting acts of nonviolent civil disobedience as potential crimes.”

MoveOn’s Next Move

MoveOn rolled out its 2026 midterm election strategy last week. The plan is to reach out in particular to people who – for whatever reason -- voted for Joe Biden in 2020 but sat out the 2024 election when Kamala Harris was the Democratic nominee.

A Pew Research Center analysis found that 15 percent of Biden voters – or about 12 million people – did not vote for Harris. MoveOn puts that number at 19 million.

MoveOn is calling those missing voters the “skippers,” and it intends to mobilize tens of thousands of volunteers to find them and win them back. That will entail contacting and persuading skippers directly, as well as volunteering for progressive candidates, and canvassing.

“These are the most important voters for us, and the outcome of the midterms rests on bringing hundreds of thousands of them back into the fold,” MoveOn Executive Director Katie Bethell said.

Warehouse Watch

NBC News reports that DHS is “looking into selling some of the large warehouses that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had purchased earlier this year to serve as mega-detention centers for immigrants.”

DHS officials told NBC that ICE no longer needs the capacity to hold 100,000 immigrants.

ICE is currently detaining as many as 70,000 immigrants on a daily basis.

Project Salt Box reports that DHS paid just over $1 billion for the eleven warehouses it bought this year, and is unlikely to recoup anywhere near as much. “A review of state tax and land records and commercial sales data shows the government paid above the most recent valuation at every one of the sites and above recent market comparables at most of them,” the group reports. “In Socorro, Texas, ICE paid $123 million for a property last valued at about $11 million. In Flowery Branch, Ga., it paid $68 million for a site previously valued at $400,000….” The list goes on.

You’re Being Tracked

A broad coalition of grassroots, civil-rights and press-freedom groups has launched a new campaign called “Solidarity Over Surveillance” to “engage individuals, communities and organizations in the fight against corporate and government-sponsored surveillance.”

Its goals are “to stop data brokers from selling sensitive user information to law enforcement; protect dissent, privacy and anonymity in an age of AI-powered surveillance; empower people to use open-records requests to expose local and state governments’ surveillance partnerships; help mobilize local resistance to the construction of extractive data centers; and challenge the government’s weaponization of domestic-terrorism powers.”

The Past Week in the Courts

• A federal judge in Virginia blocked all activity related to Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund for insurrectionists and other political allies. Plaintiffs represented by Democracy Forward had filed suit against the fund on May 22. The issue is probably moot now that acting attorney general Todd Blanche has said the fund has been scrapped. But you never know.

• A federal judge in Washington prohibited the National Park Service from taking action against a group for displaying an “8647” flag as part of its protest encampment near the National Mall. The ruling by Judge Randolph D. Moss bodes poorly for DOJ’s preposterous indictment of former FBI director James Comey for posting a photo of seashells arranged into the same numbers. “Not every use of the slang phrase ‘86’ constitutes a threat of violence,” Moss wrote. “[T]o the contrary, it is most often used to mean that an item is no longer available or that someone or something should be removed, ejected, or thrown out.” His conclusion: “no reasonable observer could have viewed Plaintiff’s display of the flag as a threat to the President’s life or physical safety.”

• A federal judge in Denver blocked federal officials from breaking up Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research by giving its supercomputing center away. The supercomputing center is a pillar of the nation’s atmospheric research. Judge R. Brooks Jackson agreed that the move was an act of political revenge for Colorado Gov. Jared Polis’s refusal to release from prison Tina Peters, a former county clerk convicted of tampering with voting machines in an attempt to support Trump’s election-rigging conspiracy theories. Ironically, Polis caved and released her last week.

• The ACLU is asking a federal judge in Tennessee to order members of the 31-agency Memphis Safe Task Force to stop retaliating against activists who are monitoring their behavior. The task force, a Trump creation, has been wreaking havoc in Memphis since September. Thousands of federal, state, and local agents aggressively patrol the city, terrorizing immigrants and people of color in particular. The request for an injunction includes declarations from community observers describing pretextual traffic stops, surveillance, bumper-rushing, and false arrests.

End Notes

• From ProPublica: “U.S. Lawmakers Demand Reforms to Immigration Officers’ Use of Tear Gas and Pepper Spray.”

• From In These Times: “How Resisting Trumpism Could Revive the U.S. Labor Movement.”

• In honor of Pride Month, from MoveOn: Buy a “Queer Joy Is Resistance” Unisex Cotton T-Shirt.

Masked federal agents are once again assaulting protesters, this time outside a New Jersey immigration detention facility.

Demonstrators have been holding a round-the-clock vigil for six days outside the Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark in support of immigrants inside who are engaged in a hunger and labor strike over inhumane conditions and violations of their due process rights.

ICE agents on Monday and Tuesday responded with brutality when protesters tried to block their vehicles.

On Monday, Sen. Andy Kim was among those caught in a cloud of pepper spray after he positioned himself between agents and demonstrators in an attempt to de-escalate a face-off. (See this photo from photographer Dakota Santiago, and this one from NJ.com’s Jelani Gibson.)

On Tuesday, agents used pepper spray and tasers against demonstrators. And on Tuesday night, agents viciously shoved protesters, hit them their batons, and pepper-sprayed them in the face. At least two men were thrown to the ground and arrested. Here’s some alarming video. Protesters said one of the arrested men was a medic and a veteran.

Several Democratic officials have visited the protesters to show their support, including Kim, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, and Representatives Rob Menendez and LaMonica McIver. (McIver still faces jumped-up criminal charges for a scrum outside that same facility a year ago.)

The Department of Homeland Security, under the new management of Markwayne Mullin, appears far from chastened. It has responded to the protests with a series of hostile tweets and press releases attacking “New Jersey sanctuary politicians” for “spreading smears about ICE.”

Independent journalist Amanda Moore captured the moment as detainees at Delaney Hall flashed the lights inside the facility and protesters cheered.

And Status Coup News interviewed a 10-year-old whose father is detained inside. “If they’re such big and bad,” she said, pointing at ICE agents, “why don’t they just take theirs masks off?”

Scientists Fight Back

Protect Democracy’s Allie Cashel writes:

Scientists are fighting back. A resistance that began as individual acts of courage is now taking collective shape, and what has emerged over the past several months is beginning to look like the early architecture of a movement.

For instance:

The Federal Workers Alliance for Democracy (FWAD) has built a growing coalition of workers and allies mobilizing the federal workforce to refuse compliance with dangerous and illegal orders, building networks across every federal agency in every state.

After HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the dismissed scientists “formed the Immunization Scientific Advisory Collaborative (ISAC) and published independent, evidence-based evaluations of the reconstituted committee’s proceedings,” Cashel reports.

And graduate students have formed a nationwide coalition called Scientist Network for Advancing Policy (SNAP), which has produced more than 200 op-eds for the students’ hometown newspapers.

The CBC Responds to Redistricting

The Congressional Black Caucus is calling on major corporations across the U.S to oppose redistricting efforts intended to eliminate majority-Black U.S. House districts.

“Five years ago, more than 150 companies publicly declared that democracy and equal access to the ballot were fundamental American values,” the group’s letter to corporate leaders said. “For those companies that previously chose to speak, this moment demands continued courage and consistency.”

Last week, the caucus and the NAACP called for Black athletes to boycott public universities in states that are trying to eliminate districts held by Black lawmakers.

But most of all, the caucus is focused on voter registration and mobilization, Rep. Yvette D. Clarke, the caucus’s chair, told the Washington Post. And in the longer run, they hope to revive the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Last Week in the Courts

• A federal judge in Tennessee dismissed the criminal case against immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, calling it the result of vindictive prosecution. Abrego Garcia is a Maryland father of three whose travails have become a focal point for the anti-immigration movement. Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. concluded Justice Department officials filed the criminal charges as retaliation for Abrego Garcia’s legal victories in his deportation case.

• Two more federal judges — in Maine and Wisconsin — have ruled against the DOJ’s demand that state’s turn over their voter registration rolls. Democracy Docket reports that the latest dismissals bring the DOJ’s record to 0-8. In Maine, Judge Lance Walker wrote that a DOJ lawyer’s argument that this was a routine request from the Civil Rights Division, not intended to create a national voter registration database, was “almost immediately undermined by the issuance of an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to compile a ‘State Citizenship List’ in order to ‘assist in verifying identity and Federal election voter eligibility.’”

• The Southern Poverty Law Center is asking a federal judge in Alabama to dismiss criminal fraud charges it argues were the result of vindictive prosecution. (The brief cites the Abrego Garcia case, above.) Meanwhile, a letter from more than 440 civil and human rights, faith, environmental, nonprofit organizations, and labor unions called the SPLC prosecution “a naked attempt to weaponize the criminal justice system to silence speech and activities this administration dislikes.”

Resistance groups are already fighting Trump’s outrageous new $1.8 billion slush-fund.

• Democracy Forward sued on behalf of a coalition of organizations and individuals who argued they would be harmed by “its implicit endorsement of dangerous conduct.”

• And CREW sued on the grounds that the slush fund “is unlawfully structured to evade transparency laws including the Freedom of Information Act and the Federal Records Act and usurps Congress’s authority to spend taxpayer money.”

A Lemon of a Case

This is what happens when inept MAGA prosecutors pursue a ridiculous case against journalists covering a protest.

Independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort are among 38 people charged with criminal conspiracy for a protest at a St. Paul church this winter.

As MPRNews reports, newly unsealed documents show that “U.S. Magistrate Judge John Docherty denied requests in February for five separate search warrants, including for YouTube information of independent journalists Georgia Fort and Don Lemon.”

Docherty’s ruling is really quite stunning. His conclusion:

Before the Court are five applications for search warrant by Homeland Security Special Agent Timothy Gerber. None of the five applications establish probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime will be found in the places to be searched, all of the warrant applications improperly refer the Court to material outside the search warrant application itself, and all of the warrant applications seek sealing without, however, a motion to seal or a proposed order being supplied to the Court. The applications are all DENIED.

Docherty revealed the prosecution’s absurdly broad and invasive demands:

The warrant seeks “subscriber information in any form kept,” including the names of subscribers, the mailing addresses, residential addresses, business addresses, and email addresses of subscribers, the telephone numbers of subscribers, and the Internet Protocol addresses from which the “Don Lemon Show” was accessed, among other information. There is no attempt made to explain why the compilation by the government of a comprehensive index of subscribers to “The Don Lemon Show” is evidence that a crime was committed.

An Ode to Bruce

The great labor journalist Steven Greenhouse writes in the Guardian:

The Bruce Springsteen concert I went to in Brooklyn last week was unlike any concert I’ve attended in decades. It was far more than a fabulous, joyous concert; it was also an inspiring resistance event.

From the get-go, the Boss made clear that this concert would be part of the anti-Trump resistance. It was a three-hour-long ode to the resistance and a thunderous call to Springsteen fans to step up and do more to fight for democracy and against authoritarianism. In this way, Springsteen is serving as a model for how celebrities can stand up against Trump and fight for what’s right.

Springsteen performs at Nationals Stadium in Washington tonight. I’ll be there!