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Sign up for the app that has the Trump administration in a tizzy
There’s an app out there that Trump administration officials hate so much that, according to them, even reporting on it is a crime.
So I’m reporting on it. And you should download it. And you should tell your friends and neighbors to download it, too.
It’s called ICEBlock. It’s a clever app that lets people report ICE sightings, then warns any people who are nearby. You can download it on your iPhone here or here. It’s available in 14 languages.
“When I saw what was happening in this country, I wanted to do something to fight back,” ICEBlock developer Joshua Aaron told CNN. (Here’s the story in Spanish; here’s the video.)
Aaron said he sees parallels between Trump’s deportation efforts and Nazi Germany. “We’re literally watching history repeat itself,” he told CNN, “and so I thought ‘What if there was an early warning system?’”
The app, which is modeled after the popular Waze traffic app, allows users to anonymously add a pin on a map showing where they have spotted immigration enforcement activity and post optional notes. Other users within a five-mile radius then receive a push alert notifying them of the sighting.
“Imagine if you’re walking down the street and a notification comes up on your device and says ‘ICE has been spotted four blocks ahead.’ Instead of continuing down that path, you can turn left, or turn around, and avoid the situation altogether,” Aaron told CNN.
“The app was designed to report, not obstruct,” he added.
But Trump and his aides have responded to news about the app with fury, hyperbole, and threats. They’re so inflamed, in fact, that they’re conflating the app and CNN’s reporting on the app, calling for CNN to be investigated and prosecuted.
“Advertising an app that basically paints a target on federal law enforcement officers’ backs is sickening,” ICE acting director Todd Lyons said in a statement Monday. “CNN is willfully endangering the lives of officers who put their lives on the line every day and enabling dangerous criminal aliens to evade U.S. law.”
On Tuesday morning, during a visit to their new detention camp in the Everglades, Trump and Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem both indicated that CNN should be prosecuted.
“We’re working with the Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them for that,” Noem said, “because what they’re doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities, operations. We’re going to actually go after them and prosecute them, with the partnership of [Attorney General] Pam [Bondi] if we can because what they’re doing legally is illegal.”
Trump chimed in: “And they may be prosecuted also for having given false reports on the attack in Iran.” He was presumably referring to CNN’s accurate reporting of an intelligence assessment that indicated that US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program.
Why are they so angry? Because they’re terrified of public reaction. They know that ordinary folks get very upset when their neighbors are being kidnapped.
That’s why federal law enforcement officials try to get in and out quickly. That’s why they wear masks and refuse to identify themselves. They don’t want people to know what is going on and they sure don’t want a crowd of people standing in their way.
CNN responded appropriately, saying: “This is an app that is publicly available to any iPhone user who wants to download it. There is nothing illegal about reporting the existence of this or any other app, nor does such reporting constitute promotion or other endorsement of the app by CNN."
And Aaron didn’t seem too distraught about the reaction, posting on social media: “Always nice when the acting ICE Director issues a statement about something you’re doing. 😂😂😂”
Indeed, although the app has been out since April, all the publicity has shot it to the top of the charts -- No. 1 in social media app downloads, according to Apple.
Download it! But keep in mind, there may already be local networks where you live that are warning residents about raids. So also make sure to contact an immigration group near you.
Small Beautiful Protests
There should have been thousands of people massing outside the Capitol yelling “shame” as the Senate headed toward passage of Trump’s cataclysmic “big beautiful” budget bill.
But I guess there’s only so much protest energy to go around.
Instead, and to their great credit, two groups put their bodies on the line: disability rights advocates last Wednesday, and religious leaders on Monday.
The local NBC station reported that 34 people were arrested on Wednesday after protesting inside a Senate office building. They included advocates and people who depend on Medicaid for their health care coverage, several of them in wheelchairs.
"I mean, this is about humanity. The reality is that when you consider almost half of births in the United States are covered by Medicaid, when you think about the number of Americans who without their insulin, without their heart medication, they would simply die -- then, what this is about is keeping people alive," said Analilia Mejia, co-director of the Center for Popular Democracy.
Activist preachers William Barber and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove described Monday’s events in their newsletter:
It was a hot summer day in Washington, DC as we held a funeral procession for the 51,000 people who will die next year if the healthcare cuts that Senators are still debating in Trump’s Big Ugly Bill become law. There were no tents to shade weary souls. Nevertheless, hundreds came to cry out against a bill that will kill, and 38 moral witnesses were arrested for praying in the Capitol rotunda and blocking the street in front of the Capitol to pray for a miracle to save lives.
“If this budget passes, it will unleash years of needless suffering on our nation’s most vulnerable—preying on those with the least and undermining the dignity of hardworking, low-wage Americans," Barber told the local ABC news station. "We must not—and will not—stop praying and advocating against this deadly and unjust bill."
As USA Today reported, protesters carried caskets covered with statistics of how many people would lose Medicaid and SNAP in each state if the bill passes.
Most were religious leaders in full vestments, representing Catholics, Episcopalians, United Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Jews, Muslims and the United Church of Christ. Other protesters included small children, people in wheelchairs and people with signs explaining why they need Medicaid….
The Rev. Cindy Kohlmann, 51, of Wilmington, Delaware, of the Presbyterian USA Church said she thinks Congress' spending bill is immoral. One in five people in her community relies on Medicaid, she said.
"This is exactly the wrong way to be the country that leads the world. We need to lift from the bottom so everybody rises and this bill is meant to kill our neighbors," Kohlmann said.
Protesting “Alligator Alcatraz”
Protesters came out on Saturday and Tuesday against the new immigrant detention center Florida is building in the Everglades.
On Saturday, environmental activists accused the state of rushing the project without a thorough environmental review and warned of long-term harm to the Everglades ecosystem, local10.com reported. “They’re building something that is devastating to us from a humanitarian standpoint, from a moral injury standpoint, and from an environmental standpoint it’s just incredibly sad,” one protestor told the TV station.
On Tuesday, hundreds of protesters lined the highway as Trump came to visit, carrying signs that said “No ICE in Paradise,” “Defund Fascism,” and “Temporary Prison = Permanent Damage.”
Protesting “Detention Alley”
They call it “Detention Center Alley” – an archipelago of 14 remote immigration detention facilities located in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
The Louisiana facilities are particularly notorious. And hundreds of service, care and hospitality workers and other protestors converged Monday outside two of them, the Acadiana Advocate reported.
The protest, organized by the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, took aim at President Donald Trump's continued efforts to detain and deport those in the country illegally and without proper documentation.
The union is calling for the immediate release of immigrant workers who it claims are unjustly detained in the remote Louisiana complexes in Basile and Jena, both of which have landed the state in the center of the national immigration debate. Jena has been at the forefront of that discourse since it was the facility where Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil was held for more than three months before his June 20 release.
On Tuesday, more than 300 people marched and rallied in Lafayette Square Park in New Orleans demanding an end to ICE raids, Nola.com reported.
It’s all part of a program called the “Justice Journey,” and led by the SEIU in conjunction with the ACLU and NAACP, Adrian Carrasquillo writes for the Bulwark.
“The Justice Journey culminates a dream I’ve been having of ‘How do I make people care?’ This is so horrible! Why don’t people care?” Nora Ahmed, the legal director for the ACLU in Louisiana, told Carrasquillo.
“The Justice Journey is more than bus rides. It’s a declaration from workers everywhere—not just immigrant workers, not just workers of color, but all workers—that we’re not going to sit idly by while the administration assaults us with terroristic raids,” SEIU President April Verrett told Carrasquillo.
A Blow From the Supreme Court
The most successful acts of resistance to the Trump regime have been by federal district court judges, who in many cases have issued nationwide injunctions blocking Trump’s unconstitutional actions and orders.
That’s why the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to limit the power of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions is such a blow.
Trump immediately vowed to aggressively challenge many of the blocks against his top priorities, from immigration to education.
The ruling was, as Brennan Center for Justice president Michael Waldman put it in his newsletter, “as great a gift to executive overreach as last summer’s ruling on presidential immunity.”
And yet, Brennan writes, “On the other hand, alternative avenues to obtain nationwide relief from illegal conduct remain.”
For instance, the plaintiffs in the case that prompted the ruling – a lawsuit in Maryland to block Trump’s attempt to ban birthright citizenship—have already asked the judge who issued the universal injunction to treat the case as a class action suit.
"I think in terms of the scope of the relief that we'll ultimately get, there is no difference," William Powell, one of the lawyers for the Maryland plaintiffs, told Reuters. "We're going to be able to get protection through the class action for everyone in the country whose baby could potentially be covered by the executive order, assuming we succeed."
Democracy Forward has been at the forefront of many of the legal battles against Trump, and its president, Skye Perryman, remains determined. She wrote in an email to supporters:
The president wants you to believe that this decision has given his administration the greenlight to undermine the dozens of nationwide injunctions that have been won by Democracy Forward and other partners on behalf of people and communities across the country.
Let me be clear: It does not.
There is no question that today’s decision was a disappointment for all who are looking to the U.S. Supreme Court to protect the Constitution’s checks and balances against an executive branch that, on the first day of taking office, sought to eliminate the Constitution’s express protection for citizens of this nation.
But while disappointing – and yet another obstacle to the ability of the American people to swiftly protect their Constitutional rights – the Supreme Court limited its decision and a number of pathways remain for individuals to obtain relief from the courts. All that to say: This feels big and it is devastating and disappointing, but despite the president’s boasting, the ruling will not change our ability to go to court and secure orders to protect the rights of people, at least right now. In fact, we are inspired by partners who have already filed a class action in the birthright matter to protect people.
Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck writes that cases filed by state governments as well as class action lawsuits may take up the slack, in particular because “complete” relief for a state that wins a case – still required by the Supreme Court -- may effectively lead to a nationwide injunction.
Imagine, for instance, if the executive order goes into effect in, say, Texas (which is not one of the plaintiffs), but not in New Jersey (which is). New Jersey has pretty good arguments that the injunction has to cover babies born in Texas, or else it will be harmed both with respect to having to have different rules depending upon where babies are born and a concern that babies born in New Jersey will lose benefits (and maybe even face deportation) if they ever enter Texas. If a district court buys those arguments, then we could quickly see another universal injunction blocking the executive order—now with the analysis that the Supreme Court has held is necessary.
Ed Whelan, a conservative attorney, wrote for the National Review that “the ruling is probably going to accomplish much less than many people celebrating it realize.”
Then again, nobody knows for sure how this will play out.
Lawsuit News
The court orders and lawsuits keep coming.
A federal court blocked the Trump administration’s move to cut short temporary protected status designation for hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the United States, preventing their removal. New York Eastern District Judge Brian M. Cogan, ruled that Homeland Security’s Noem “does not have statutory or inherent authority” to end the immigration protections.
A 4th Circuit panel declined to stay a lower court’s permanent injunction voiding Trump's removal of Consumer Product Safety commissioners — so they remain reinstated.
A coalition of cities, public health professionals, and small business advocates filed a lawsuit to block a new rule that threatens to gut the Affordable Care Act and strip millions of their health care.
Democracy Forward filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of State for unlawfully withholding public records related to their use of generative Artificial Intelligence(to carry out major federal policies.
An Empty Chair in Wichita
Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost and Sen. Chris Murphy have been teaming up to hold town hall meetings and take open-mic questions from constituents in districts where local Republican representatives refuse to.
Their latest event was in Wichita on Sunday – although Murphy had to attend virtually, because of the votes on the budget bill.
Wichita Eagle opinion editor Dion Lefler reported from the scene:
The highlight of Sunday’s congressional town hall meeting at Wichita State University came when a Florida congressman said “Hey, Congressman Estes, I’m here with just a few of your constituents, and they have a question for you”: “WHERE ARE YOU?”
That shouted answer was the joined voices of approximately 1,200 constituents of U.S. Rep. Ron Estes, who gathered at WSU’s Hughes Metropolitan Complex for a town hall meeting — like the ones Estes doesn’t do.
Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost, who asked the question, held up his cell phone to record the moment and promised to send it to Estes as a message.
That’s a “huge” turnout for a Wichita event, Lefler wrote. Here’s some video.
A New Resistance Hero
Zohran Mamdani, who handily won the Democratic nomination for Mayor of New York City, campaigned on a decidedly anti-Trump platform and is now the chief target of Trump’s race-baiting, vitriolic, and addled attacks.
Trump has accused Mamdani of being an illegal immigrant and has threatened to arrest him if he interferes with immigration raids. “As President of the United States, I’m not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York,” he posted on Truth Social. “Rest assured, I hold all the levers, and have all the cards. I’ll save New York City.”
Mamdani responded on social media: “The President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp and deported. Not because I have broken any law but because I will refuse to let ICE terrorize our city.”
He continued: “His statements don’t just represent an attack on our democracy but an attempt to send a message to every New Yorker who refuses to hide in the shadows: if you speak up, they will come for you. We will not accept this intimidation.”