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Post by DHS ghouls celebrating Alligator Alcatraz
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Designed To Enact Suffering

Plunging to new lows of "cartoonish cruelty" in our fascist reality show, MAGA just voted for our "most deeply immoral piece of legislation," depriving millions of food and health care as their fuehrer celebrated the launch of a scorched-swamp, mosquito-infested concentration camp - "Let's feed people to alligators!" - to detain millions more for overlooking the paperwork in their search for a better life. And there's merch! Fact: "Snakes in the Everglades got nothin' on the vermin in our government."

The Senate's barely-there approval - fuck Shady Vance - of Trump's heinous 900-page bill represents the largest transfer of wealth to the rich in U.S. history along with the largest cut to Medicaid and food assistance, all in the obscene name of (partly) funding a $975 billion tax break for the already richest 1%. The bill, "a tipping point between normality and fascism," also pours over $170.7 billion into "a campaign of extermination against immigrants that evokes the greatest human rights atrocities of the past," funding the hiring of vastly more Nazi thugs to terrorize, humiliate and put in cages millions of brown people who do much of this country's work.

It will kick about 16 million people off health insurance by cutting over $1 trillion from Medicaid, because who needs health insurance. It will throw millions of poor families, veterans, the elderly and disabled off SNAP by cutting $285 billion in food assistance, because who needs food. It will cut funding to rural hospitals, nursing homes, student loans, wind and solar energy - electric bills will soar 30% - costing millions of jobs and adding almost $4 trillion to the national debt, to be paid by our children and grandchildren, one of many excellent reasons it's said to be the most unpopular legislation since passage of the economically disastrous Embargo Act of 1807.

Bernie Sanders calls it, "The most dangerous piece of legislation in the modern history of our country.” Decrying the GOP's "obsession" with stripping people of health care, Maine Sen. Angus King calls it "disgusting..I have never seen a bill this irresponsible, regressive and downright cruel." To longtime Sen. Chris Murphy, it's "the most deeply immoral piece of legislation I have ever voted on in my entire time in Congress." Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said passage of a bill "cooked up in back rooms, cloaked in fake numbers (that) loots our country (for) the least deserving people you could imagine feels (like) a crime scene...When I first got here, this chamber filled me with awe and wonderment. Today, I feel disgust.”

The bill is so bad the GOP delayed cuts to Medicaid until after the mid-terms, and had to bribe its own members with perks to pass it; Alaska's Lisa Murkowski won the  I Got Mine, Jack award by getting exemptions for her state and then complaining about how bad the bill is. To many, even worse than its craven kowtowing to oligarchs is its grotesque billions bestowed on a brutal, unprecedented white nationalist drive to dehumanize, criminalize and rip apart millions of families deemed undesirable by the color of their skin - and, eventually, likely their political persuasions - by making ICE, America's SS, the highest-funded law enforcement agency in a now-barbaric federal government.

The bill boosts the ranks of roaming Nazi henchmen by nearly 50%, with $8 billion slated to hire 10,000 more over five years (with signing bonuses!). ICE detention will get $45 billion more, a staggering 365% increase; "removal" gets $14.4 billion, a 500% surge; enforcement (see henchmen) almost $30 billion, up threefold, but we definitely can't afford to feed hungry kids. Billions more will build new camps, ramp up flights, double beds to 100,000, and round up more (hungry) terrified kids to meet a goal of 3,000 arrests a day. Of those, despite the absurd, enduring claim of targeting "the worst" violent criminals, maybe 8% have committed crimes; even ICE data shows over 93% are guiltless of anything but crossing the border.

The rabid stalking of migrants has given Republicans "license to be as openly racist as possible." Moving on from pet-eating Haitians, Scott Bessent sneered New York is turning into "Caracas on the Hudson"; on an image of its new mayor Zohran Mamdani eating with his hands, Texas' Brandon Gill, who's evidently never met a burger, sniped, "Civilized people in America don't eat like this - go back to the Third World"; and Trump already threatened to arrest "communist" Mamdani, blathering, "A lot of people are saying he’s here illegally." (Not.) Witless Tommy Tuberville called the residents of sanctuary cities "inner-city rats" we should "send back home"; Paul Krugman, home-grown but Jewish with a bi-racial wife: "We’re all rats now."

Thus do we have once-vibrant Hispanic communities from New York to L.A. now largely shut down, with frightened residents carrying passports to the corner store, keeping their kids inside until dark, or not venturing out at all for fear of abduction by masked gangs. Farmworkers across the country, up to 80% foreign-born and perhaps half undocumented, are also staying home: "If they show up to work, they don’t know if they will ever see their family again." In California, which grows much of our fruit and vegetables, those crops can go bad in one day as farmers struggle to harvest what they've grown. Experts say that many, already barely breaking even, will likely fold.

Meanwhile, ICE's daily atrocities - and the ensuing trauma - go on apace. A 75-year-old Cuban man here for 60 years died in custody, the 13th death this year; Tom Homan shrugged: "People die in ICE custody." Jacked-up stormtroopers assaulted workers at Home Depot and a woman selling tacos, tossing tear gas as they peeled away. They arrested the wrong mother of two as her kids tried to stop them. In Texas, they detained a preschool teacher with her three-year-old outside a courtroom. In L.A., they took a Honduran mother at a hearing with two children, one a six-year-old with leukemia; they've been held in Texas for weeks, the sick boy getting sicker, and she's filed the first lawsuit challenging the carnage.

And so, because it's still not enough cruelty for these ghouls, to Alligator Auschwitz, a steamy, "sadistic one-stop deportation shop" of tents filled with cages of bunk beds soon thronged with humans in a predator-replete swamp, a "concentration camp without the culpability of execution chambers" pitilessly "designed to enact suffering,” and help sick racists feel good about their whiteness. Set on a disused "shit-hole airstrip" in Florida's vast Everglades, the "bloodcurdlingly-monikered," built-in-8-days "Alligator Alcatraz” is surrounded by swampland brimming with alligators and Burmese pythons in a flood-prone, bug-plagued area where summer temps routinely top 100 degrees, rendering it "a calculatedly provocative celebration of the dystopian."

Tents in an environmentally treasured nature preserve often hit by floods, tropical storms and hurricanes at a time the regime has decimated the agency that warns about those events, operated by a likewise-decimated FEMA and commanded by haphazardly- deputized, wildly ill-qualified members of the National Guard serving as "deportation judges" - what could possibly go wrong? Set to cost almost half a billion dollars a year - but no, we really can't afford to feed hungry children - the barbed-wire re-invention of World War ll Japanese Internment Camps, with a fresh touch of El Salvador's CECOT, evidently fulfills Republicans' most fervent wet dream: To feed immigrants to animals.

On Tuesday, touring this "beyond horrifying" showcase of ruthlessness - initial intake 1,000, ultimately 5,000 - the cartoon villains who created it proudly paraded in: Nazi Barbie, Stephen Goebbels, Ron DeFascist and Trump with a botched make-up line that made him look like The Joker. He delightedly handed the floor to "our superstar," the sociopathic Miller, who praised the use of "novel legal and diplomatic tools," along with building death camps and letting ICE goons rampage through terrorized communities, to "deliver on a 50-year hope and dream of the American people to secure the border," at least on the repulsive planet he inhabits, and we wish he'd go back to.

On her foul planet, replicating her photo-op before CECOT's shaved-head detainees in her illegal $50,000 Rolex, ICE Barbie is still somehow celebrating her imaginary "going after murderers and rapists and traffickers." Tuesday she even added an alleged cannibal they'd put on a plane home who "started to eat himself," arguing he was "the kind of deranged individuals on our streets (that) we're trying to get out of our country because they are so deranged, they don't belong here." Hmm. Ever hard-core, she's also busy menacing one patriot for a nifty ICE Block app: "This sure looks like obstruction of justice - if you obstruct our brave law enforcement, we will hunt you down."

Just before her visit, her "reptile-run Gestapo" shared an AI-generated Alligator Alcatraz image featuring smirking alligators in ICE caps; Noem giddily posted, "Coming soon!" Americans recoiled. "Have you ever wondered what it would have looked like if Hitler's SS had social media?" asked one. Many suggested putting the people who built the atrocity in it; others decried MAGA's dehumanized trolling about concentration camps: "History is repeating - just with better branding." One: "Posting memes that boast about the manner in which people will die if they try to escape the undoubtedly inhumane conditions that will become the norm in a facility (gives) major "Alligator Auschwitz" vibes."

The visit came exactly a year after SCOTUS declared Trump above the law. Standing before cages in a dumb Gulf of America cap, the eternal victim sneered "Biden wanted me in here, that son of a bitch," but "it didn't work out that way." He called Noem "elegant" and "an unbelievable horse person" (umm) before happily noting "they have a lot of cops in the form of alligators" to "keep people where they’re supposed to be." He praised his grotesque cohorts - “It’s really government working together, I'm proud of them" - made zigzag moves with his pudgy hands - "We’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator" - and opined, "A little controversial, but I couldn’t care less.”

A dead-eyed, servile DeSantis outlined the task - "intake, process, then deport" - and hailed the camp about to hold human beings who did nothing wrong: "This is as secure as it gets." He added, “This is a model, but we need other states to step up." Meanwhile, his state's party of zombies is so into it they're selling depraved merch - t-shirts, drink cozies - for "Florida’s gator-guarded prison for illegal aliens...It's a one-way ticket to regret." One appalled observer: "That's some Idi Amin stuff right there." Much like Trump on Fox, extolling his latest grotesquerie and airily explaining on potential migrant escapes, "They'll just get eaten by wildlife. I guess that's the concept."

There's more. Amidst performative acts of political intimidation, he's mused, "We also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time...many born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here too" - maybe including Musk: "We'll have to take a look." He's selling $249 perfume, "a rallying cry in a bottle...They're all about winning, strength and success." He's musing about nationwide alligator-themed camps: "They might morph into a system where you're going to keep it for a long time,” citing facilities to "handle (some) of the most vicious people on the planet." Observers: "Consider the Alligator Alcatraz gear on sale (before) deciding who are the most vicious people on the planet."

And he's losing what's left of his putrid mind. Asked about a timeline for detainees, he raved: "In Florida? I'm going to spend a lot. This is my home state. I love it." He "fixed up the little Oval Office, I make it - it's like a diamond," he has "a nice little cottage to stay at," he pays lots of fictional taxes, everyone in New York is leaving. "I'll be here as much as I can," he ended. "Very nice question." Lawrence O'Donnell on "the banality of their cruelty," the "utter emptiness of his mind," notably on the virtually ignored day USAID ends, with its expected millions of deaths, its "worldwide campaign of cruelty in their name." Others: "But her emails. I didn't like her laugh. Biden was too old." Now here we are: "A more loathsome fuck never walked the earth."

And on Wednesday, Alligator Alcatraz already began flooding.

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House to Take Up GOP Megabill Serving 'Oil Company CEOs, Hedge Fund Donors, and Climate Deniers'

After U.S. Senate Republicans on Tuesday sent President Donald Trump's so-called "Big Beautiful Bill" back to the House of Representatives, defenders of the planet sounded the alarm on several provisions that remain in the massive budget reconciliation package.

"This is a vote that will live in infamy," said Greenpeace USA deputy climate program director John Noël after Vice President JD Vance broke a tie to advance the legislation. "This bill is what happens when a major political party, in the grips of a personality cult, teams up with oil company CEOs, hedge fund donors, and climate deniers. All you need to do is look at who benefits from actively undercutting the clean energy industry that is creating tens of thousands of jobs across political geographies."

"The megabill isn't about reform—it's about rewarding the superrich and doling out fossil fuel industry handouts, all while dismantling the social safety nets on which millions depend for stability," Noël added. "It is a bet against the future."

Although Sen. Mike Lee's (R-Utah) provision to force the sale of public lands as well as a proposed excise tax on wind and solar projects were removed, other controversial policies survived, including required onshore and offshore fossil fuel lease sales, mandates for timber harvesting, the recision of various Inflation Reduction Act funding, an end to a moratorium on new coal leasing, and attacks on clean energy.

"Make no mistake, while the Senate did not include a punitive new excise tax on wind and solar projects, the bill is still devastating for the clean energy transition," warned Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) president Gretchen Goldman. "The bill would spike energy costs, threaten energy reliability, and strand hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy and transportation investments along with the tens of thousands of domestic jobs that come with them. The provisions attacking clean energy and clean transportation are not about the budget, but rather Congress using the budget bill to boost fossil fuels by crushing these booming new industries."

 

Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous declared that "today, Senate Republicans advanced the most anti-environment, anti-job, and anti-American bill in history."

"This shortsighted plan will put lives at risk, endanger our growing economy, and raise electricity rates on families and small businesses," he said. "The proposal expands drilling on public lands and in the Arctic, guts cost-cutting clean energy investments and the thousands of stable jobs they've created, and includes massive giveaways to corporate polluters and the very wealthiest Americans."

Jealous celebrated that public outrage led to the federal land sales and excise tax provisions getting axed, but added that "even with those important changes, a terrible bill is still a terrible bill, and this proposal fails the American people in every measure."

Margie Alt, director of the Climate Action Campaign, also highlighted how the legislation—if signed into law—will benefit rich individuals and corporations while causing working-class Americans to lose their jobs and pay higher energy bills.

"The Senate has turned its back on our clean energy future, raising our utility bills while mortgaging our health and environment to deliver massive tax breaks for billionaires," Alt said. She warned of job losses and increased climate pollution, meaning "kids will struggle with asthma and other respiratory problems. And, more people will suffer from devastating extreme weather catastrophes."

Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, similarly said that "with spiking power demand and rising bills, we need more clean, affordable American energy, but Senate Republicans just voted to kill jobs and deliver the largest utility bill increase in U.S. history."

"Every senator who voted for this bill chose tax cuts for the wealthiest over the rest of our health, pocketbooks, public lands and waters, and a safe climate," Bapna argued. "This is like Robin Hood in reverse. The very rich will get richer and the rest of us will have to pay the price."

After 27 hours, Republicans passed their Big Ugly Bill—a catastrophic assault on health care, food, and climate.They chose Trump and billionaires over families and our future.This fight isn't over. Now it’s the House’s turn to stop it.We can't agonize—we must organize.

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— Senator Ed Markey (@markey.senate.gov) July 1, 2025 at 1:22 PM


The bill not only "will race us toward climate catastrophe" while giving tax breaks to the wealthy, said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the watchdog Public Citizen, it also "steals assistance from vulnerable Americans, the bill would supercharge Trump's barbaric mass deportation policy, and throw an extra $150 billion at Pentagon contractors."

"Any member of Congress with a conscience knows that this bill must not become law," she added. "It's time for the House to stand up to President Trump and vote against it."

The GOP-controlled House had already passed a version of the megabill before every Senate Republican but Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Rand Paul (Ky.), and Thom Tillis (N.C.) advanced the latest edition on Tuesday. Now, the lower chamber's leaders plan to take up the new version in hopes of sending it to Trump's desk by his July 4 deadline.

"House members got it wrong the first time but have another chance now to do their jobs," said Goldman of UCS. "They must reject this bill, voting with their constituents in mind, not simply to avoid the ire of the president."

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Congressional Report Shows 'Workers Lose, Very Wealthiest Win' Under GOP Plans

As U.S. President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress pursue a package that would give tax breaks to the wealthy by gutting programs for the working class, Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee released a Tuesday report detailing how that so-called Big Beautiful Bill and the administration's tariffs would negative impact the "typical firefighter, teacher, or truck driver."

"Families across the country were already struggling because of high prices, and President Trump is increasing costs even more while giving the very wealthiest more tax breaks," said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), the panel's ranking member, in a statement. "This new analysis shows the ways in which those who make up the backbone of our country—firefighters, teachers, truck drivers, and others—will all face higher costs because of President Trump's plans, while the top 0.1% of earners get a massive windfall."

Specifically, according to the two-page report, the top 1% of income earners would see an estimated benefit of $32,450 next year, which soars to $348,500 for the top 0.1%. Meanwhile, the report shows a range of $250-710 in annual losses for various workers, including healthcare professionals, housekeepers, police officers, and retail employees.

For workers facing losses on the higher end of that range, that money could feed a family of two adults and two children for a few weeks, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data from April, which put the weekly cost of groceries at $229.40.

  

The Joint Economic Committee report on the GOP plans—which the panel's Democrats summarized by saying "middle-class workers lose, very wealthiest win"—is based on multiple nonpartisan sources, including the Congressional Budget Office.

Republicans in the House of Representatives passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last month, and the budget reconciliation package is now before the GOP-controlled Senate, where right-wing lawmakers are pushing various tax changes and bigger cuts to funding for Medicaid, a federal healthcare program for low-income people.

New polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that large shares of U.S. adults—including about two-thirds of Democrats and nearly that many Independents—think the government spends "too little" on Medicaid and food assistance programs.

As for Trump's tariffs, they remain in effect, for now, thanks to a recent federal appellate court decision, but oral arguments are scheduled for this summer. On Tuesday, a pair of toy companies asked the U.S. Supreme Court—which has a right-wing majority that includes three Trump appointees—to weigh in on whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) empowers the president to impose such tariffs.

In a filing to the high court, lawyers for Learning Resources and hand2mind wrote that "in light of the tariffs' massive impact on virtually every business and consumer across the nation, and the unremitting whiplash caused by the unfettered tariffing power the president claims, challenges to the IEEPA tariffs cannot await the normal appellate process (even on an expedited timeline)."

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 Tlaib (D-Mich.) speaks out against proposed Medicaid cuts
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'Yes, You Are,' Tlaib Tells Lawmaker Who Said Republicans Aren't 'Little Bitches' Doing Trump's Bidding

Progressive Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib on Wednesday clapped back at one of her Republican colleagues who suggested that the GOP effort to pass the so-called Big Beautiful Bill this week isn't in response to a directive from U.S. President Donald Trump, who has set a July 4 deadline.

“The president of the United States didn't give us an assignment. We're not a bunch of little bitches around here, OK? I'm a member of Congress. I represent almost 800,000 Wisconsinites," Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) told journalists near the back entrance to the House of Representatives chamber, according to Punchbowl News' Kenzie Nguyen.

Responding to Van Orden's claims on the social media platform X, Tlaib (D-Mich.) simply said, "Yes, he did, and yes, you are."

The Michigan Democrat also released a video explaining to constituents why she is voting "hell no" on the package, which would cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and strip an estimated 17 million Americans of their health insurance over the next decade while giving trillions of dollars in tax breaks to the ultrarich and corporations.

Tlaib wasn't the only House Democrat to notice the Republican's remarks. A fellow Wisconsinite, Congressman Mark Pocan, asked his followers on X, "Do you think Derrick Van Orden is right... that Congress is not a bunch of 'little bitches'?"

According to Politico's Samuel Benson and Mike DeBonis, Van Orden's comment came in the context of confirming he would vote for the budget reconciliation package, despite some critiques. The congressman reportedly said: "So this bill will pass. Am I happy about everything? No, but there's a difference between compromise and capitulation. We're not capitulating. We're compromising."

His remarks to reporters, and the backlash, came as the House considered a version of the megabill passed by the Senate on Tuesday, with help from Vice President JD Vance. GOP leaders in the lower chamber are struggling to get it past a procedural hurdle due to opposition from Republican fiscal hawks—plus all Democrats, who oppose steep cuts to the social safety net.

To protest the Republican effort to send the bill to Trump's desk by Independence Day, House Democrats on Wednesday formed a procedural conga line offering an amendment that would block cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.

Multiple Democrats also took to the House floor to rail against the package, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who declared that "this bill is a deal with the devil. It explodes our national debt, it militarizes our entire economy, and it strips away healthcare and basic dignity of the American people. For what? To give Elon Musk a tax break and billionaires the greedy taking of our nation. We cannot stand for it, and we will not support it."

"You should be ashamed," Ocasio-Cortez told the chamber's Republicans.

As Common Dreams reported earlier Wednesday, progressives outside of Congress are also working to block the bill. Advocacy organizations, including Indivisible, are urging Americans to call and email House Republicans and pressure them to oppose the package. The phone number for the House switchboard is 202-224-3121.

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President Trump Speaks On Recent Supreme Court Rulings At The White House
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'All Are Now Vulnerable': Legal Scholars Alarmed as DOJ Begins Push to Denaturalize Citizens

As the Trump administration has begun the push to strip citizenship from foreign-born Americans, legal scholars and advocates are calling it a dangerous step toward using citizenship as a political weapon.

On June 11, the U.S. Department of Justice issued an internal memo written by Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate calling on DOJ attorneys to pursue "civil denaturalization" of foreign-born U.S. citizens.

"The Civil Division shall prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence," the memo said, adding that it should be among the division's top five priorities.

It suggested a wide variety of citizens who could be targeted for denaturalization. This includes perpetrators of violent offenses like "torture, war crimes, or other human rights violations." But it also targets much broader groups of people such as those "who pose a potential danger to national security" or those who "acquired naturalization through government corruption, fraud, or material misrepresentations."

It also calls for "any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue."

Naureen Shah, director of government affairs for the ACLU's Equality Division, told Common Dreams that "it's another devastating attack by the Trump administration on people who they want to cast as not belonging here."

The memo's vague language has Shah and other legal scholars warning that denaturalization could become a tool to deport political opponents, an effort that would be harder for courts to stop following Friday's ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which hamstrung the ability of lower courts to stop illegal actions by the Trump administration using injunctions.

Joyce Vance, a former United States Attorney, who is now a law professor and a legal analyst for MSNBC and NBC, warned Tuesday about the possible implications on her blog Civil Discourse:

"It could be exercising First Amendment rights or encouraging diversity in hiring, now recast as fraud against the United States. Troublesome journalists who are naturalized citizens? Students? University professors? Infectious disease doctors who try to reveal the truth about epidemics? Lawyers?" Vance wrote. "All are now vulnerable to the vagaries of an administration that has shown a preference for deporting people without due process and dealing with questions that come up after the fact and with a dismissive tone."

"Anyone could be prioritized," Shah said. "It's really chilling."

Cassandra Robertson, a law professor at Case Western University, told NPR that it was "especially concerning" that the administration would plan to pursue denaturalization through civil court.

"Civil denaturalization cases provide no right to an attorney, meaning defendants without resources often face the government without representation," she wrote in a 2019 study on the history of denaturalization along with her colleague Irina Manta. "There are no jury trials, with judges making citizenship determinations alone. The burden of proof is 'clear and convincing evidence' rather than the criminal standard of 'beyond a reasonable doubt.' Additionally, there is no statute of limitations, allowing the government to build cases on decades-old evidence that may be incomplete or unreliable."

Robertson said Trump's approach mirrors that undertaken during the McCarthy era, when those deemed "un-American" were stripped of citizenship due to their political views.

"At the height of denaturalization, there were about 22,000 cases a year of denaturalization filed, and this was on a smaller population. It was huge," she said.

The Supreme Court stepped in to reel back denaturalization in 1967, determining that, in Robertson's words, it was "inconsistent with the American form of democracy, because it creates two levels of citizenship." After that, the number of denaturalization cases plummeted to the single digits each year. The Trump administration seems to be hoping to reverse that trend.

Republican politicians have not been shy about calling for their political opponents to be stripped of citizenship. Last week, following Zohran Mamdani's shocking victory in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) called for the Ugandan-born state assemblyman to be stripped of his U.S. citizenship and "deported," referring to him as an "antisemitic, socialist, communist."

Ogles accused Mamdani of failing to disclose his political "affiliations or sympathies" during the process that led him to become a citizen in 2018. He singled out Mamdani's support for the Holy Land Foundation, whose leaders were convicted in a widely criticized "terrorism financing" case in 2008. Notably, the leaders of the group were never accused of directly funding terrorist groups or terrorist acts.

On Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about Ogles' call to deport Mamdani, and she did not shoot down the idea.

"I have not seen those claims, but surely if they are true, it's something that should be investigated," Leavitt said.

It was not the first time Republicans have called to deport leaders in the other party explicitly for their political views.

In June, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier called for the Trump administration to "deport and denaturalize" Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia, after she criticized President Donald Trump's deployment of the military to quash protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Los Angeles.

The Trump administration has already targeted lawful immigrants with deportation purely for their political views. In March, the administration abducted and attempted to deport pro-Palestine student activist Mahmoud Khalil, explicitly because he was a "threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States," similar language to what the DOJ now says is justification for denaturalization. The administration has also attempted to deport others, like Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk, for as little as co-writing an op-ed calling on her university to divest from Israel.

"The way the memo is written, there is no guarantee DOJ will pursue cases against violent criminals," Vance said. "They could just do easy cases to ratchet up numbers, like we're seeing with deportation. Or they could target people who, they view as troublemakers."

There are more than 25 million people in the United States who are naturalized citizens.

"They should not have to live in fear that they'll lose their rights," Shah said.

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New Yorkers Gather To Protest Against War On Iran
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Senate GOP and Fetterman Block Effort to Stop Trump's War on Iran

Nearly all U.S. Senate Republicans and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania on Friday evening blocked a resolution that reiterated Congress' authority to declare war and would have ordered President Donald Trump to stop taking military action against Iran without congressional approval.

Every other member of the Democratic Caucus and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) supported holding a final vote on the resolution—which Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, announced last week, before Trump's weekend bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities.

"We commend Sen. Kaine for his steadfast leadership in bringing this resolution, and the U.S. senators who stood on the right side of history today in safeguarding against yet another senseless war."

Citing the U.S. Constitution and the War Powers Resolution of 1973, Kaine's measure states that "the question of whether United States forces should be engaged in hostilities against Iran should be answered following a full briefing to Congress and the American public of the issues at stake, a public debate in Congress, and a congressional vote."

Pointing to various other federal laws, Kaine's resolution "directs the president to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces for hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran or any part of its government or military, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force against Iran."

In a statement after Friday's 47-53 vote, Kaine said that "the Framers of our Constitution gave Congress the power to declare war because they believed that the decision to send our nation's men and women in uniform into harm's way was too big for any one person. The Trump administration's chaotic strategy on Iran confused the American people and created significant risks for service members and their families."

"I am disappointed that many of my colleagues are not willing to stand up and say Congress needs to be part of a decision as important as whether or not the U.S. should send our nation's sons and daughters to fight against Iran," Kaine added. "I will continue to do all I can to keep presidents of any party from starting wars without robust public debate by Congress."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Democrats, was among the lawmakers who spoke in support of Kaine's resolution ahead of the vote. "We do not need another unnecessary and costly war. We have had enough of them," he said on the Senate floor, pointing out that the Vietnam War and the U.S. invasion of Iraq were "based on a series of lies."

"We should not go to war against Iran," Sanders declared. He condemned Trump's recent attack on the Middle Eastern country as "unconstitutional," and argued that "diplomacy is a better path," as demonstrated by the nuclear deal in 2015—which Trump ultimately ditched during his first term.

Sanders also made the case that the U.S. should not be allied with "war criminal" Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who started the bombing of Iran and is wanted by the International Criminal Court for his mass slaughter of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

"Enough is enough," the senator said, noting that the U.S. gives Netanyahu's government billions of dollars in annual military aid. "It is beyond absurd that we continue to finance Israel's wars while neglecting the needs of our own people."

Meanwhile, in response to a question from a BBC reporter on Friday, Trump said that he would "without question, absolutely" consider bombing Iran again if intelligence suggested the country could enrich uranium to a level that concerned him.

After the Senate vote, National Iranian American Council president Jamal Abdi said that the outcome "says more about the makeup of the Senate than it does the merits of the resolution. Regardless, we saw a near majority do the right thing and stand up against war and for democracy, despite a cavalcade of misinformation from war hawks. We will continue to press the case that war with Iran is against U.S. interests and U.S. security, and redouble our work to prevent the conflict from reigniting."

"We commend Sen. Kaine for his steadfast leadership in bringing this resolution, and the U.S. senators who stood on the right side of history today in safeguarding against yet another senseless war," he continued, noting the cease-fire between Israel and Iran that Trump announced earlier this week.

"Though a cease-fire is holding for now, the most certain way to guarantee peace is through an abandonment of war and a bold pursuit of sincere negotiations," Abdi added. "We urge our Members of Congress to change course, and urgently support a return to U.S.—Iran talks and a diplomatic pathway forward for both countries."

We took an oath to defend the Constitution - just like every Senator. Today, Republicans broke that oath. We WILL hold them accountable. (2/2)
— VoteVets (@votevets.org) June 27, 2025 at 7:09 PM

Also responding to the Friday development in a statement, Demand Progress senior policy adviser Cavan Kharrazian asserted that "today's vote sends a powerful message: There is a bipartisan movement to reject more war in the Middle East and prevent us from being unilaterally dragged into war before Congress and the American people can have their say."

"We thank Sen. Kaine for his leadership and Sen. Paul for his principled vote to stand up for the Constitution," Kharrazian said, urging the House of Representatives to pass a similar resolution led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).

Ahead of the Senate's vote, more than 41,000 people nationwide had signed a petition from the progressive group MoveOn Civic Action that calls on Congress to vote for the resolutions in both chambers.

"The current cease-fire is fragile—and the only path to lasting peace is diplomacy, not another cycle of American military escalation," Kharrazian emphasized. "The U.S. must lead with restraint, not repeat the mistakes of endless war."

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