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MAGA precursors: Indiana KKK in the 1920s
Further

Garbage: Racist Shits 'R Us

Improbably, the White-Nationalist-In-Chief still plunges to lower, ranker, more nakedly racist depths as he tries to deflect from his failings, lies, naps and crimes. The fake Peace President’s ugly apogee, topping murders at sea, banning migrants “non-compatible with Western Civilization,” siccing ICE dogs on innocents et al: His vicious invective against Somalis as “garbage” while his Stepford bigots stand silent before it all, complicity unbound. Ferris Bueller's hapless teacher: "Anyone? Anyone?"

Obviously the mild cluelessness of blank students facing Ben Stein's teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off pales before the toxic spectacle of a blithering, execrable fascist stirring up gutter-level hatred as he spews "possibly the most openly racist shit any US president has ever been caught saying." The dissonance of the furious bigotry erupting from an alleged national leader - its vitriol, animus, beyond-the-pale crudeness, the eerie silence into which it falls - also prompts a jarring, queasy sense of, "what the fuck is wrong with this picture?" even as it comes from a ghastly human whose most longstanding, foundational tenet is brutish racism (plus greed), going back to his KKK father, his deadly hatred for the Central Park Five, his snarling claim all Mexicans are criminals and rapists.

In his ongoing "shitification of American politics," there's always, obviously much more. There's blithering, gaslighting, verbal incontinence: "Affordability is a con job, a hoax started by Democrats." Self-serving grandiosity: "The Ukraine war never would have happened if I'd been president." Outlandish fantasy: "They're finding money in our country now they never knew existed. The other day - $30 billion. Where did it come from? I said, 'Why don't you check the tariffs shelf?' They call back: Sir, you're right.'" (America: "Of all the things that didn’t happen, this didn’t happen the most.") Cult worship: The National Park Service has removed MLK Jr. Day and Juneteenth from their free admission days, replacing them with Dear Leader's birthday; he'll be 12 next year.

In further Stalinesque self-glorification - and in the first time a living (sort of) president (ditto) named a building for himself while in office - months after DOGE tried to illegally seize control of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a non-profit think tank for international conflict resolution, the building has re-emerged with massive silver letters as the Donald J. Trump U.S Institute of Peace. A White House spokesbot, lauding straight-faced the what is it now 38? wars he's ended, declared, "Congratulations, world!" The world, noting the Orwellian renaming of an institute created in 1984, helpfully if hopelessly pointed out that Orwell's dark masterwork "was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual," but here we are.

Other atrocities proliferate. The report Trump’s military occupation of U.S. cities has cost over $473 million - from $270 million in D.C and $172 million in L.A. to $13 million in Chicago - even as he cut more than $1 trillion from vital domestic services. The fact that both of the DOJ's wildly unqualified, illegally appointed partisan hacks/pretend acting U.S. attorneys Alina Habba and Lindsey Halligan still claim to hold their non-existent positions. The fact that, after boasting about rolling back food stamps and her "gratitude and joy for this work," USDA Sec. Brooke Rollins is still "hellbent on people going hungry" in blue states. Passage of Texas' racist redistricting coup - "Let's talk about cowardice" - and the White House's icky Daddy's Home holidays meme.

And everything "no stupid rules of engagement" dunk-tank clown Pete Hegseth does: The Signalgate report that his massive security leak "risked endangering U.S. military personnel," which he somehow turned into, “Total exoneration." His slimy, shifting narratives - the Pentagon has no idea who's on board vs. they're all on a secret list of military targets - for 48 minutes of murderous video showing "what it looks like when the full force of the United States military is turned on two guys clinging to a tiny piece of wood and about to go under," aka, "a shooting gallery with helpless targets" which is clearly either a war crime or murder - plain and simple,” both impeachable, though Megyn Kelly would've preferred "they lose a limb and bleed out a little."

Still, with sinking polls, rising prices, Epstein lurking, a tragic D.C shooting to open the floodgates and billions for ICE's jackbooted thugs, the splenetic racism from a presidential bully pulpit is paramount, a timeless scapegoating ploy now at "absolutely unique" levels of depravity. "It all started with Barack Hussein Obama," he raved, before attacking Somalis who have "nothing" to do with the shooting or anything else. America will "go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage," "They have destroyed our country," "Ilhan Omar is "garbage," "her friends are garbage," Somalia "is just people walking around killing each other," "they come from hell and do nothing but bitch," "their country stinks," "we don’t want them," "Minnesota is a hellhole right now," ”Let them go back to where they came from." And, evil one, may you too. Oh please.

His on-camera racistmania was dutifully lapped up, first by the obsequious (seated) members of his creepy circle jerk, then by the obsequious (standing) minions - blinding white, stiffly smiling, hands clutched, tongues tied - performatively gathered for his "supine authoritarian MAGA messaging...a barely coded cry of 'Everybody into the pool!' for a supporting cast of racist demagogues." One by one, they obeyed. J.D. banged on the table to lay the blame where it belonged: "Why did homes get so unaffordable? Because we had 20 million illegal aliens taking homes that ought by right to go to American citizens." Marco Rubio, in some insane optics - try watching without sound - feverishly genuflected to the peace president, sitting next to him, dozing off.

ICE Barbie thanked him for having "kept the hurricanes away" and "saved hundreds of millions of lives with the cocaine you’ve blown up in the Caribbean"; she urged a travel ban on "every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies" - but not those getting free jets - who "slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch benefits (from) AMERICANS. We don't want them." Whew. She flamboyantly echoes both Stephen Goebbel's Nazi rhetoric and Trump's calls for stripping citizenship, blocking all refugees - except sad white Afrikaners - from a vague list of “third world countries,” aka brown and black, "non-compatible with Western Civilization" - an illegal move that def turns the racism up to 11. Manifesting "cultishness off the charts," Press Barbie celebrated all this as "amazing" and "epic."

For Minnesota's Somali community of up to 80,000, the largest in the country, it is "extraordinarily harmful." Already tense in the wake of an alleged $250 million fraud scandal involving federal nutrition aid and two non-profits - both run by white people but involving dozens of Somalis - pressure from the new racist surge feels "inescapable...The volcano has erupted." Though many are U.S. citizens, and Minneapolis' police chief has told officers they'll be fired if they don't stop illegal force by ICE goons, people are afraid to go to work, to school, to Friday prayers, especially in Somali-dense areas like "Little Mogadishu" and the Karmel Mall. "We know authoritarianism," said a Somali city council member, and with it the potency of racism and nativism. After Haitians eating pets, he said, "It's just the next iteration."

Meanwhile, ugly ripples ooze from Trump's rhetoric. ICE thugs keep thugging, though most of their victims have no criminal record and some are U.S. citizens. They've sicced dogs on people, resulting in horrific injuries and reviving MAGA's sick "good old days." They have a cruel new plan dubbed "Operation Irish Goodbye" to arrest those already self-deporting, and they're canceling citizenship ceremonies for people from the "wrong" countries. A 2025 blood-and-soil US National Security Strategy touts great replacement theory, warns Europe it faces "civilizational erasure" by migrants of color, supports their fascist groups, rejects our allies for Russia, imagines a "Crusader-style reconquest (of) Europe by the white right." He just trashed a "decaying" Europe with "weak" leaders, 'cause brown people. A Wisconsin worker was fired and went viral for calling a Somali couple "niggers"; fellow racists raised $100,000 for her, echoing "garbage" slurs.

Despite outrage about his murders at sea, Dunk-tank Pete killed four more brown people, bragged about it, insisted Trump can kill "as he sees fit" and gave a speech with ominous shock-and-awe echoes declariring "narco-terrorists are the al-Qaida of our hemisphere (and) we will keep killing them." Then the most petty, hateful person on the planet - spite-revoking a pardon?! - giddily accepted a hideous, made-up, Happy Meal, savagely mocked FIFA Peace Prize and medal - the “Trump dance! the Village People! - to appease his no-Nobel ego because "if you show up with a tchotchke (and) give it to the three-year-old in the Oval Office, he will (be) happy." Gavin Newsom got the Kennedy Center Peace Prize: “AUDIENCE WAS AMAZING (CHAIRS NOT GREAT)...CROWD WENT WILD."The View gave out medals too: "You get a medal! And you get a medal!" Okay, all medaled up. Now can he go home?

The good ole days revisited: High school student at 1963 Birmingham protest Make America Great Again: Birmingham high school student being assaulted at 1963 civil rights protestPhoto by Bill Hudson

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Protest Against Michigan Data Center
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230+ Environmental Groups Call On Congress to Impose Moratorium on New AI Data Centers

Environmental and economic justice advocates alike have been sounding the alarm for months regarding the Trump administration's push to built massive data centers to support artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency in communities across the United States—regardless of local opposition—and on Monday Congress heard from a coalition of more than 200 groups demanding action to stop what they called "one of the biggest environmental and social threats of our generation."

Led by Food and Water Watch (FWW), which originally demanded a moratorium on new AI data centers in October, more than 230 organizations have signed a letter warning that thus far, Congress has failed to take action to stop the rapid expansion despite the fact that "the harms of data center growth are increasingly well-established, and they are massive."

The national and state groups, including Greenpeace USA, Oil Change International, and the Nebraska-based Save Rural America, pointed to a number of harms associated with the expansion of data centers in places including rural Michigan, Wisconsin, and northern Virginia.

They warned that pushing the build-out onto communities—many of which have protested the approval of the centers to no avail—will lead to:

  • Enormous electricity consumption, with a tripling of data centers in the next five years projected to result in the facilities consuming as much electricity as about 30 million households;
  • Unsustainable water consumption, with those data centers requiring the amount of water normally used by 18.5 million households, just for cooling the computer servers;
  • The worsening of the climate emergency, with 56% of the energy used to power data centers sourced from planet-heating fossil fuels;
  • Surging electricity costs for people living in the vicinity of energy-sucking data centers; and
  • Skyrocketing job losses as half of all entry-level white-collar jobs are projected to become obsolete due to the growth of AI and companies' investments in the technology, even as corporations report they're not seeing a significant positive impact on their bottom lines.

"The rapid, largely unregulated rise of data centers to fuel the AI and crypto frenzy is disrupting communities across the country and threatening Americans’ economic, environmental, climate, and water security," the groups told Congress. "We urge you to join our call for a national moratorium on new data centers until adequate regulations can be enacted to fully protect our communities, our families, our environment, and our health from the runaway damage this industry is already inflicting."

The groups noted that electricity costs have risen 21.3% since 2021, a rate that "drastically" outpaces inflation, driven by the "rapid build-out of data centers."

As CNBC reported last month, residential utility bills rose 6% in August compared with last summer, and though price increases can be due to a host of reasons, electricity prices rose "much faster than the national average" this year in states with high concentrations of data centers. Consumers in Virginia paid 13% more, while those in Illinois paid 16% more and people in Ohio saw their costs go up 12%.

Emily Wurth, managing director of organizing at FWW, told the Guardian that rising utility costs are driving much of the grassroots action against data centers in places like Wisconsin—where a woman was violently dragged out of a community meeting by police last week after speaking out against plans for a new facility in her town—and Tucson, Arizona, where residents successfully pushed the City Council this year to block a data center project linked to Amazon.

“I’ve been amazed by the groundswell of grassroots, bipartisan opposition to this, in all types of communities across the US,” Wurth told the Guardian. “Everyone is affected by this, the opposition has been across the political spectrum. A lot of people don’t see the benefits coming from AI and feel they will be paying for it with their energy bills and water... We’ve seen outrageous utility price rises across the country and we are going to lean into this. Prices are going up across the board and this is something Americans really do care about.”

Data center projects worth a total of $64 billion have been blocked or delayed in states including Texas, Oregon, and Tennessee, and Reuters reported last week that a sizable portion of the opposition is coming from parts of the country that heavily supported President Donald Trump in last year's election.

Hundreds of people attended a recent meeting in Montour County, Pennsylvania, where Trump won by 20 points last year, raising alarm over plans to rezone 1,300 acres for Talen Energy to build a data center.

While raising prices for households that are already coping with high grocery and healthcare bills, the unregulated growth in AI data centers is also expected to add up to 44 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in just the next five years—the equivalent of putting 10 million new fossil fuel-powered cars on the road at a time when planetary heating has already been linked to recent US weather disasters like Hurricane Helene and deadly heatwaves.

The groups appealed to Congress as Trump said he plans to sign an executive order preempting state-level AI regulations, saying that states, "many of them bad actors," should not be "involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS.”

Republicans in Congress have also recently suggested they could try to ban state-level AI regulations in the National Defense Authorization Act.

The Trump administration and its allies in the industry have issued warnings to communities that oppose the construction of AI data centers, with the White House's AI Action Plan demanding the fast-tracking of permits for building the facilities and former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) lobbying for the industry and recently telling local officials in Chandler, Arizona that "federal preemption is coming" and they must approve plans for a 20,000-square foot data center in the city.

A Morning Consult poll taken last month found that public support for the centers is falling as rapidly as companies try to take over rural and suburban communities with new data centers. More than 40% said they supported a ban on the construction of new facilities, up from 37% just a month prior.

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Secretaries Rollins And Kennedy Make Agriculture And Health Announcement
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Skeptics Warn of Greenwashing as Trump Admin Launches Regenerative Agriculture Pilot

The announcement of the US Department of Agriculture's $700 million Farmers First Regenerative Agriculture Pilot was met with some skepticism on Wednesday, given other recent moves that conflict with the Trump administration's promises to "Make America Healthy Again."

Regenerative agriculture is an approach to farming and ranching that goes beyond sustainability, aiming to improve soil, water, and air quality; boost biodiversity; produce nutrient-dense food; and even help mitigate the climate emergency by storing carbon. Its practices include agroforestry, conservation buffers, cover cropping, holistically managed grazing, limiting pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, and no-till farming.

US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced the pilot alongside Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the controversial man behind the MAHA movement. She said that "we will deliver this support through existing programs our farmers already know and already trust."

Angela Huffman, president and co-founder of the group Farm Action, a longtime advocate of regenerative farming, welcomed the pilot, noting that "done right, this investment will help farmers lower their input costs, break free from the export-driven commodity overproduction treadmill, and move toward healthier, more resilient, and more profitable farming systems."

Stephanie Feldstein, population and sustainability director at the Center for Biological Diversity, was far more critical of the initiative, warning that "farmers trying to do the right thing for our environment need all the support they can get, but without clear standards, this ill-defined pilot program isn't enough."

"Regenerative agriculture needs to be more than just buzzwords Big Ag uses to greenwash business as usual," said Feldstein. "While the Trump administration promises money for sustainable practices, it continues to cut conservation staff, support the pesticide industry, roll back environmental laws, and play trade war games that hurt farmers and our food system."

As Spectrum News reported Wednesday:

The USDA regenerative agriculture pilot program flows from a Make America Healthy Again Commission report released in September that included more than 120 initiatives to address chronic childhood disease. One of the report's key focus areas was to remove harmful chemicals from the food supply.

On Wednesday, Kennedy said the report promised farmers an "off ramp" to transition away from chemical fertilizers "to a model that emphasizes soil health, and with soil health comes nutrient density... and a transition to a much healthier America for our children."

When the second MAHA report was released in September, some environmental and public health advocates blasted the commission for echoing "the pesticide industry's talking points," while Alexandra Dunn, CEO of the trade group CropLife America, celebrated that "we were heard" by the Trump administration.

The administration has also come under fire for constantly serving the fossil fuel industry; installing an ex-lobbyist, Kyle Kunkler, in a key role at the Environmental Protection Agency and nominating another, Douglas Troutman, for an EPA post; embracing herbicides including atrazine and dicamba as well as "forver chemical" pesticides; and urging the US Supreme Court to shield Bayer, which bought Monsanto, from lawsuits alleging that glyphosate-based Roundup causes cancer.

As Sarah Starman, senior food and agriculture campaigner at Friends of the Earth, highlighted Wednesday, the Trump administration has also been criticized for cutting billions of dollars in funding previously allocated to promoting regenerative agriculture and firing staff at the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The pilot, Starman said, "is a step in the right direction, and we applaud the intent. But it will only be effective if USDA reverses the past year of massive cuts to on-the-ground conservation staff. Regenerative agriculture requires whole-farm, science-based planning, and right now the agency lacks the army of specialists needed to help farmers design and implement those plans."

"In addition, phasing out harmful agrochemicals—the synthetic pesticides and fertilizers that harm human health and degrade soil health—must be at the center of any regenerative program," she stressed. "The new initiative's incentives for integrated pest management fall far short of what is needed to help farmers get off the pesticide treadmill and spur a transition to a truly regenerative food system."

"The initiative must be updated to include specific, measurable incentives for deep reductions in agrochemical use if it is to deliver truly healthy, resilient soils and promote human health," she added. "Finally, going forward, all major farm subsidies should carry strong conservation compliance requirements so that every public dollar supporting agriculture also supports soil health, water quality, and climate resilience on every acre."

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks
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Does Swarm of Lobbyists at Governors Summit Help Explain Democrats' Silence on Trump AI Order?

Polls show that a majority of US voters—and especially Democrats—want more robust guardrails on artificial intelligence, but Democratic governors' silence on President Donald Trump's directive banning states from regulating AI has some observers asking if lobbying by the powerful industry is to blame.

Sludge's David Moore and Donald Shaw reported Friday that tech titans including OpenAI and Meta last week sent a small army of lobbyists to meet with attendees of the Democratic Governors Association’s annual meeting, held this year at the swanky Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix.

According to the report, lobbyists and governors—some of whom "are teasing White House bids in 2028 or rumored to be in the mix"—gathered for a closed-door meeting. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore were among those who reportedly met with the lobbyists.

Trump signed an executive order trying to prevent states from regulating AI and following through on the safety laws they enacted, but there was little public pushback from Democratic governors.AI lobbyists descended on the DGA winter meeting last weekend in Phoenix, per a list we obtained:

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— David Moore (@davidrussellmoore.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 11:15 AM

The meeting preceded Trump's Thursday signing of an executive order aimed at limiting states' ability to regulate rapidly evolving AI technology. The order directs the US Department of Justice to establish an AI Litigation Task Force empowered to sue states that enact “onerous and excessive" AI regulation. The edict also threatens to withhold federal funding from states that implement AI regulations that the Trump administration finds objectionable.

Democratic governors have been relatively muted on the order, especially given the overwhelming support for regulation of AI—which many experts say poses threats to humanity that may equal or outweigh its benefits—across the political spectrum.

As Moore and Shaw wrote:

While Democratic governors were silent, their Republican counterparts have been loudly arguing for months against the federal government preempting state AI policies. In June, 17 Republican governors sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune [R-SD] and House Speaker Mike Johnson [R-La.] warning them against preempting their states’ protections on AI use. Over the past couple months, a trio of Republican governors—Spencer Cox (Utah), Ron DeSantis (Fla.), and Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Ark.)—continued to make known their opposition to the Trump administration’s executive order.

Newsom, who many observers believe is eyeing a 2028 White House run, especially disappointed proponents of AI safeguards last year when he vetoed what would have been the nation's strongest AI safety regulations.

It's not just Democratic governors—congressional Democrats have increasingly partnered with an industry expected to soon be worth trillions of dollars. Some Democrats, like Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, are personally invested in AI stocks. The AI industry also made record contributions to political campaigns during the 2024 cycle.

Other Democrats, including some who may have their sights set on higher office—notably Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York—advocate stronger guardrails on AI development.

The public is worried about AI. Regulating AI is winning issue for Democrats but their own party leaders are too complicit with Silicon Valley to use it. www.thenation.com/article/poli...

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— Jeet Heer (@jeetheer.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 7:24 AM

"Voters want the party to get tough on the industry. But Democratic leaders are following the money instead," Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, wrote Friday.

Citing voters' desire for stronger regulation, Heer argued that "Democrats have a tremendous opportunity to use the AI backlash for wedge politics," adding that "it's a way to win back working-class voters who are already disillusioned with the GOP and Trump."

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Mothers Self-Deport To Ecuador With Children After Husbands Deported By ICE
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Trump Deportation Push Continues With TSA-ICE Partnership and Move to Strip Legal Status

As a "chilling" report in the New York Times revealed that the Transportation Security Administration is providing the names of all airline passengers to immigration officials, President Donald Trump's administration on Friday also openly continued its war on immigrants by announcing an end to allowing relatives of citizens or lawful permanent residents to enter the United States while awaiting green cards.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement that it is terminating all categorical family reunification parole programs for immigrants from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras, and "returning parole to a case-by-case basis." An official notice has been prepared for publication in the Federal Register on Monday, and the policy is set to take effect on January 14.

Responding in a statement late Friday, Anwen Hughes, senior director of legal strategy for the refugee programs at Human Rights First, said that "this outrageous decision to pull the rug out from under the thousands of people who came to the US lawfully to reunite with their families is shocking."

"Yet again, this administration is taking extraordinary measures to delegalize as many people as possible, even when they have done everything the US government has asked of them," she continued. "The government did this in March when they announced their intent to take away lawful status from hundreds of thousands of humanitarian parole beneficiaries; they are doing it now with more than 10,000 people who came lawfully to reunite with their families; they are taking their attacks on birthright citizenship to the Supreme Court; and they are escalating their threats to delegalize untold numbers of others without notice."

"This outrageous decision to pull the rug out from under the thousands of people who came to the US lawfully to reunite with their families is shocking."

Guerline Jozef, executive director of the grassroots group Haitian Bridge Alliance, said in a Saturday statement: "Let's be clear: This is not about security. This is about an administration using racist, nativist scare tactics to dismantle lawful family reunification and terrorize Black and Brown immigrants."

"Family reunification parole was created to keep families together and provide a safe, legal pathway while people waited for visas that the US government itself told them would take years," Jozef noted. "Now those same families—many of them Haitian—are being punished for trusting the system. It is state violence, it is anti-Black, and it is an unacceptable betrayal of basic human dignity."

Lawyers behind a class action lawsuit against DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and other key administration leaders over the March policy—Svitlana Doe v. Noem—plan to also challenge the new move.

"Those who entered under the family reunification program should contact their immigration attorney immediately to better understand their options, as those options may change on December 15," warned Esther Sung, legal director at Justice Action Center, which represented plaintiffs in the earlier case.

"The legal team in Svitlana Doe v. Noem will also alert the court as soon as possible to ensure that our clients and class members are not unlawfully harmed by this move," Sung said. "Today's news is devastating for families across the country, but we will continue to fight alongside all immigrants and their families who are unjustly targeted by this callous administration."

Ending family reunification parole won't make us safer, it will only tear families apart. Our immigration policies should be fair and humane. This is just cruel.www.uscis.gov/newsroom/ale...

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— Rep. Linda Sánchez (@replindasanchez.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 2:36 PM

Meanwhile, as the Times reported Friday, in March, TSA began sending the names of all air travelers to another DHS agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which "can then match the list against its own database of people subject to deportation and send agents to the airport to detain those people."

"It's unclear how many arrests have been made as a result of the collaboration," the newspaper detailed. "But documents obtained by the New York Times show that it led to the arrest of Any Lucía López Belloza, the college student picked up at Boston Logan Airport on November 20 and deported to Honduras two days later. A former ICE official said 75% of instances in that official's region where names were flagged by the program yielded arrests."

In López Belloza's case, she tried to board her plane, but her ticket didn't work. The 19-year-old—who said she didn't know about a previous deportation order—was sent to customer service, where she was met by agents with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), another DHS agency playing a key role in Trump's sweeping and violent crackdown on immigrants.

Like the new attack on family reunification, the Times reporting sparked a wave of condemnation. David Kaye, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, said on social media, "Make sure people you know who need this information have this information."

Jonathan Cohn, political director for the group Progressive Mass, declared that "the Trump administration wants to make flying unsafe: unsafe because of surveillance, unsafe because of understaffed air traffic controllers, and unsafe because of gutted consumer protections."

Eva Galperin, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's director of cybersecurity, pointed to the constitutional protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, saying, "I'm not a lawyer, but I feel like the Fourth Amendment has something to say about this."

Immigration Agents Are Using Air Passenger Data for Deportation EffortThe Transportation Security Administration is providing passenger lists to ICE to identify and detain travelers subject to deportation orders.www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/u... obvi lawlessly…Prosecute all of them…

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— Sarah Szalavitz💡 (@dearsarah.bsky.social) December 12, 2025 at 4:14 PM

Amid protests over Trump's broader deportation push and the president's plunging approval rating on immigration, unnamed DHS sources confirmed Friday that CBP teams "under Commander Gregory Bovino will change tactics," according to NewsNation. "Instead of sweeping raids like those that have taken place at locations including Home Depot, agents will now be narrowing their focus to specific targets, such as illegal immigrants convicted of heinous crimes."

NewNation's reporting came just days after DHS published a database on ICE arrestees that led Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, to conclude that the department "is implicitly admitting that less than 5% of the people it arrests are people they believe are 'the worst of the worst.'"

This article has been updated with comment from Haitian Bridge Alliance.

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A group photo of all 18 ICC judges
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ICC Judges 'Wiped Out Economically and Socially' by US Sanctions—But Remain Resolute

International Criminal Court judges remain steadfast in their pursuit of justice—including for victims of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza—even as they suffer from devastating US sanctions, some of the affected jurists said in recent interviews.

Nine ICC officials are under sanctions imposed in two waves earlier this year by the Trump administration following the Hague-based tribunal's issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation. The tribunal also issued warrants for the arrest of three Hamas officials, all of whom have been killed by Israel during the course of the war.

The sanctioned jurists are: Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan (United Kingdom), Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan (Fiji), Deputy Prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang (Senegal), Judge Solomy Balungi Bossa (Uganda), Judge Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza (Peru), Judge Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini-Gansou (Benin), Judge Beti Hohler (Slovenia), Judge Nicolas Yann Guillou (France), and Judge Kimberly Prost (Canada).

The sanctions followed a February executive order from US President Donald Trump sanctioning Khan and accusing the ICC of “baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel.”

The sanctions—which experts have called an act of criminal obstruction—prevent the targeted ICC officials and their relatives from entering the United States; cut off their access to financial services including banking and credit cards; and prohibit the use of online services like email, shopping, and booking sites.

Fearing steep fines and other punitive measures including possible imprisonment for running afoul of US sanctions by providing “financial, material, or technological support" to targeted individuals, businesses and other entities strictly blacklist sanctioned people—who are typically terrorists, organized crime leaders, and political or military leaders accused of serious human rights crimes.

“Your whole world is restricted,” Prost—who was part of an ICC appellate chamber's unanimous 2020 decision to investigate alleged US war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan—told the Associated Press on Thursday. “I’ve worked all my life in criminal justice, and now I’m on a list with those implicated in terrorism and organized crime."

Ibáñez Carranza said the US sanctions are not deterring her, telling the AP: “In my country, I prosecuted terrorists and drug lords. I will continue my work."

Guillou told Le Monde last week that the sanctions mean he is banned from almost all digital services—including Amazon and PayPal—in a world dominated by US tech giants. This has led to some absurd scenarios, including having a hotel reservation he booked via Expedia in his own country canceled.

"To be under sanctions is like being transported back to the 1990s," he said.

The Trump administration's objective, said Guillou, is "intimidation... permanent fear, and powerlessness."

"European citizens under US sanctions will be wiped out economically and socially within the [European Union]," he added.

Guillou remains defiant in the face of sweeping hardship caused by the sanctions, contending that he is part of a larger struggle for justice as, "empires are hitting back" in response to "three decades of progress in multilateralism."

The US—which, like Israel, is not party to the Rome Statute that governs the ICC—has been at odds with the court for decades. In 2002, Congress passed, and then-President George W. Bush signed, the American Service Members’ Protection Act—also known as the Hague Invasion Act—which authorizes the president to use “all means necessary and appropriate” including military intervention to secure the release of American or allied personnel held by or on behalf of the ICC.

During his first term, Trump sanctioned then-ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and Prosecution Jurisdiction Division Director Phakiso Mochochoko over the Afghan war crimes probe.

The nine jurists sanctioned this year by the US are seeking relief and are calling on European governments to invoke the EU's so-called "Blocking Statute," which is meant to shield officials of the 27-nation bloc from the extraterritorial application of third country laws.

"States parties [to the Rome Statute] face a choice: Continue to capitulate to the bullying of the US, or meet the challenge posed by the sanctions, past and future, and respond appropriately," Jens Iverson, an assistant professor of international law at Leiden University in the Netherlands, wrote last month for OpinioJuris. "Which choice they make will reveal the actual values of the states who as a matter of law are pledged to combat atrocity and impunity."

Ibáñez Carranza told Middle East Eye in a recent interview: "What we are asking are practical measures. What we are asking is action. We need the support of the entire world. But we are in Europe now, and Europe is a powerful structure. The European Union is a powerful structure. They should react as such. They cannot be subordinated to the American policies."

Ibáñez Carranza said that said measures should be taken "to support the court, not only to support the judges, but to support the system... of Rome."

"It's not only the judges" who are affected by the US sanctions, she asserted. "They want to affect the system of Rome, the system of the court, where we deliver justice for... the most defenseless and vulnerable victims... They are the affected ones with this."

"The work of the International Criminal Court is for humanity," Ibáñez Carranza added. "And this is why we are resilient, and this is why we need not only to stand together as judges, but the entire international community."

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