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.
These ‘girly’ men aren’t police. They’re playing dress up. So cute.