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Racist madness explodes, the "straight-up Gestapo stuff" of dystopian nightmares, from brown people "hunted like animals" by roving thugs and packed into fetid concentration camps devised by cartoon ghouls to inane war waged on "SLIMEBALL" protesters, diligent farmworkers, brown toddlers - no Head Start for you - and a woke Superman decried as "the ultimate immigrant." Clark Kent's father's message in a God-awful timeline: "Your choices, your actions make you who you are."
And your words. The linguistic framework for the regime's war on immigrants, the hateful "glue that holds together the MAGA movement," is itself depraved, leading to and warping the rest. The White House proclaimed its rabid intent to protect us from an "invasion" of "illegal aliens" who "present significant threats to national security and public safety, committing vile and heinous acts against innocent Americans," with some "engaged in hostile activities, including espionage, economic espionage, and preparations for terror-related activities." Steadfastly, robotically, they snarl and spit out the terms, enough said. Illegal. Alien. Other than. Distanced from. Not us. Not quite human, menacing brown-skinned replicas of David Bowie's Man Who Fell to Earth.
Ever since Trump rode down his fucking fake gold escalator to defame all Mexicans as rapists or murderers and launched his hateful fake war against brown "worst of the worst" gang leaders and drug dealers, it's been one vile vicious racist lie. Facts, one more time. Immigrants commit far fewer crimes than native-born Americans. Immigrants do much of the hardest and shittiest work in this country, which they've largely built, because white people don't want to. And entering the country without proper documentation is not a crime. It's not a felony. It's not even a misdemeanor. It's a civil violation, akin in venal criminality to a parking ticket. So why the fuck are Goebbel's masked shock troops in Amazon-bought camo grabbing gardeners off the street?
Now, with the big fascist bill throwing unholy amounts of money at the hate - $170 billion, with $45 billion for detention and $30 billion for recruitment, making ICE richer than Israel's and Russia's military - emboldened goons will abandon any pretense of due diligence. Fentanyl dealer or farmworker: "If they cross the border illegally, they're coming with us." Increasingly authoritarian law enforcement, conflating peaceful protest with terroristic violence, will respond to criticism of its police state tactics by escalating them; DHS urges officers to consider signs, cellphone cameras, requests for ID, protesters on bikes - scouting for weapons? - "from the point of view of an adversary," deserving to be met with force. One advocate: "It’s going to get really scary."
Meanwhile, the racism grows more brazen. Last week, top goon Tom Homan told Fox, "People need to understand we don't need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them." (Not.) He babbled on about getting "the totality of the circumstances" and "the articulable facts based on their location, their occupation, their physical appearance." In other words, "Trump's thugs will racially profile you, then go on national television to brag about getting away with it." Totally credible DHS response: "Any claims that individuals have been ‘targeted’ by law enforcement because of their skin color are disgusting and categorically FALSE. These type of smears are designed to demonize and villainize our brave ICE law enforcement." Uh huh.
Stephen Miller, master of the master race though ostensibly Jewish, is updating actual Nazi talking points - "Without the Jew, the German school would thrive" - positing Los Angeles as a paradise without any "illegal aliens" and charging Dem leaders with forming "an alliance with the cartels." It was his furious rant to ICE agents in May they up their arrests to 3,000 a day - like Raising Arizona's Holly Hunter spitting, "Go out there and get me a toddler!" - that sparked the escalation of "straight-up Gestapo stuff" in L.A. County, where masked henchmen roam the streets, leap from unmarked cars and grab hapless laborers and gardeners to meet the quota: "If someone runs, they're taken. If they don't answer a question, they're taken. If they can't produce papers, they're taken."
Over 100 raids in southern California - at least 15 Home Depots, also car washes, parks, farms, churches, swap meets - have been documented by Bellingcat, an independent investigative collective, working with CalMatters and Evident Media. They found many similarities to an infamous April raid in Bakersfield to the north, touted as a search for violent criminals, in which 77 of 78 victims had committed no crimes; it prompted a judge's angry injunction barring warrantless raids: "You just can’t walk up to people with brown skin and say, ‘Give me your papers.’" But the relentless raids continue in LA County, with about 95 arrests a day, including U.S. citizens and green-card holders who "look like an illegal alien." An ICE training/propaganda video "If they run, we go."
Chilling bystander videos of our marauding police state abound. People grabbed at court, guys chased and pummeled at Home Depot, women cuffed as their kids cry, crowds shouting in rage. A guy on the ground, piled on by thugs, screams, "I'm an American!" Brown workers at a car wash are dragged off past two dazed white workers. Beefy stormtroopers shriek into terrified faces, "What hospital were you born in?" A guy in a truck, his window blithely shattered by goons: "Are you fucking serious, bro?" A young woman and U.S. citizen abducted as she's dropped at work by her weeping mother: "The only thing wrong with her (was) the color of her skin." A furious witness: “They don’t care if you have papers, as long as you look like what they want you to look like."
Especially egregious was the surreal, pointless scene in LA where about 100 heavily armed, camo'ed, masked troops, some flamboyantly on horseback, descended on downtown's MacArthur Park to sweep a now-empty area where low-income kids in day camp had just been playing before they fled in terror. (As a result, we're sure they slept well and peacefully that night, as did their parents.) Mayor Karen Bass angrily denounced what's become "a city under siege, under armed occupation." Snarling ICE sector chief Gregory Bovino shrugged her and it off: "I don't work for Karen Bass. Better get used to us now, 'cause this is going to be normal very soon. We will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles." Fox chyron: "Karen Bass Interferes with Raid."
As the abuses in California snowball, support plunges. The Catholic Bishop of San Bernardino, one of the country's largest dioceses, issued a rare decree allowing parishioners to miss Mass due to fear of raids that "may impede the spiritual good of the faithful." The mayor of largely Hispanic Perris warned residents to stay home and "know your rights." Polls show only a fragment of MAGA creeps back the terror, with a record-high 80% of Americans saying immigration is "good" for the country. (Duh). Even many stormtroopers don't like snatching gardeners, not drug traffickers, off the street, and morale is "in the crapper." A former ICE guy: "What we're seeing now is what, for many years, we were accused of being, and could always safely say, ‘We don’t do that.’”
Amidst multiple lawsuits - "What they're doing is actual terror" - there have been legal victories. In one class action suit, a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked the effort to end birthright citizenship as doing "irreparable harm." In another class action suit by the ACLU, 18 Democratic AGs and advocacy groups who describe "racial profiling on a scale unseen since Jim Crow," a judge in L.A. ordered a halt to raids in 7 California counties, citing "a mountain of evidence" that ICE is "indiscriminately rounding up numerous Individuals with brown skin without reasonable suspicion," as well as doing racial profiling and denying access to counsel for people held in "dungeon-like" facilities. DHS: "Whah?!" Also, "highly targeted," dietician-approved meals and "the best health care many aliens have received in their lives."
As to dungeons: Reports from the concentration camp giddy MAGA has dubbed Alligator Alcatraz - a cinematic "memefication of cruelty" - describe vile conditions: Sparse food with maggots, temps veering from steamy to freezing, not enough toilets, showers or water, no calls, huge mosquitoes, sweltering people packed into cages "like dogs in a kennel." Three Dem reps who just got a staged tour recounted "disturbing, disgusting conditions," an unforgettable stench, and "wall-to-wall humans" yelling "Help me" and "I'm an American citizen." "This place needs to be shut the hell down,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. "They're abusing human beings here." As they left, inmates chanted, "Libertad! Libertad!" Now, the GOP is fundraising off "ICE With A Bite" t-shirts, because they are sick fucks.
Two days earlier, ICE launched its largest, most violent raid on two Glass House Farms, in Camarillo and Carpinteria CA., that grow tomatoes, cucumbers and cannabis. In an ugly scene - injuries, women cuffed, kids running and crying: One to another, "They took your Mom?" - a phalanx of goons faced off against swiftly-summoned families and allies, attacking them with tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets before arresting about 200 farmworkers, many longtimers in their 50s or 60s. "We are not the enemy," protesters chanted. Also, "This is an abomination," "What's your ammunition for?" and, "Has any fucking single one of you ever worked as hard as these field workers?" Workers were held for hours in a parking lot, their cells phones taken and erased, before being loaded into vans for parts unknown.
Most of the country's over 2.6 million farmworkers are Hispanic non-citizens - perhaps 40% undocumented - working in "close to slavery" conditions and, until they began hiding at home, easy to find. Still, said the United Farmworkers, nowhere is it legal "to terrorize and detain people for being brown and working in agriculture." The next day, Jaime Alanis, 57, who'd worked at Camarillo 10 years while sending his pay back to Mexico, died of catastrophic injuries - broken neck, fractured skull - after he fell from a roof running from state agents. His niece began a GoFundMe with a $50K goal; it raised $159,432. He was, she said, "just a hard-working innocent farmer...He will be taken to his hometown Huajumbaro, Michoacán. His wife and daughter are waiting for him. We are still looking for justice."
Back in D.C., a vengeful, racist bully, incensed people had flocked to defend mere farmworkers - one protester maybe even threw something at stormtroopers - said he's giving "Total Authorization" for any ICE or other thug "confronted by thrown rocks, bricks, or other form of assault to arrest these SLIMEBALLS, using whatever means is necessary." At a White House meeting with African leaders, he also put his "aggressive ignorance proudly on full display" by patronizingly praising Liberian President Joseph Boakai's "such good English...Where did you learn to speak so beautifully?" Fact: The official language of Liberia, settled by former U.S. slaves, is English. America cringed: "Bro is a dumb racist. Straight up." He also ewww flirted with a Black reporter, handing her some crapola trinket with, "Darling, that's for you."
Having failed to adequately abuse people of color, his HHS also cracked down on brown three-to-five-year-olds by banning them from Head Start - which he'd tried but failed to kill - and other federal programs meant to "only serve America citizens." "For too long, the government has diverted hardworking Americans' tax dollars to incentivize illegal immigration," spouted JFK Jr., arguing a Clinton-era law had "improperly extended (some) public benefits to illegal aliens." (His father spun in his grave.) The action applies not just to Head Start's pre-school, which for 60 years hasn't labeled any child "illegal," but its meals and health screenings and other services brown people def don't need - health clinics, family planning, energy assistance. In Illinois, Head Start told members to just keep serving undocumented children. Sorry, small illegal aliens.
Things got not just mean but weird when, on behalf of our Christo-fascist homeland, DHS posted a video claiming ICE is bringing God's justice - a move deemed "the height of blasphemy." "There's a Bible verse I think about," muses the narrator, citing Isaiah: "Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send?' And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me.'" Cue shots of ICE goons as Johnny Cash sings God’s Gonna Cut You Down. Zach Lambert, an Austin pastor "fed up with the Bible being weaponized to hurt people," calls bullshit. In fact, the verse decries corrupt leaders "who make unjust laws (to) deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed"; Isaiah steps up to stop them. As usual, they got it wrong, and illegal: The song is by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, who trashed DHS for using it without permission and disrespecting Copyright Law, Habeas Corpus, Due Process and separation of Church and State. They ordered them to cease and desist, take down the video, "Oh, and go fuck yourselves."
Finally, for the release of James Gunn's new Superman movie, the White House inexplicably posted this Felonman, Pooperman, Supergeriatric. After Gunn said the story, of "an immigrant from another place," is "the story of America," and that "basic human kindness is a value (we ) have lost," MAGA threw a fit. "Superwoke," sneered Fox of a guy who "fights for your preferred pronoun (with) MS13 on his cape." Superman, "Champion of the Oppressed," first appeared in a 1938 comic by two sons of Jewish immigrants who fled Europe. "If you haven't noticed he's been an immigrant for the past 87 years, I don't know what to tell you," says Mark Waid, who's written it for 40 years. “Every day, Superman is learning to be a better human. The point (is) we need to be kinder to each other. Bullies hate that because kindness (is) their kryptonite." In a mock review, Rex Huppke charges the movie "gave me the woke virus" with its "aggressive humanity" and "way too much caring" about fellow humans who don't agree with or look exactly like him. "The Superman movie tried to make me less hateful," he gloats. "Nice try!" As to the rest, from the Idaho history teacher ordered to remove welcome posters now banned by law to the fascist thugs on our streets, "Do not look away."
Poster put up by Idaho history teacher Sarah Inama, now banned as "ideological."Photo by Sarah Inama
How user-generated videos on social media brought Trump\xe2\x80\x99s immigration crackdown to America\xe2\x80\x99s screens www.nbcnews.com
As U.S. President Donald Trump ramps up fossil fuel production under his "drill, baby, drill" energy policy, a report published Wednesday highlights the climate and financial harms posed by new liquefied natural gas export projects—all of which fail a "climate test" that the Department of Energy issued during the Biden administration.
The report—published by Greenpeace USA, Earthworks, and Oil Change International—examines five major U.S. LNG projects: Venture Global CP2, Cameron LNG Phase II, Sabine Pass Stage V, Cheniere Corpus Christi LNG Midscale 8-9, and Freeport LNG Expansion.
Instead of giving into Trump’s pressure to import + finance more LNG, leaders must invest in a just transition to renewable energy that will protect our communities from deadly pollution and climate disasters. Learn more: www.greenpeace.org/usa/failing-...
[image or embed]
— Oil Change International (@oilchange.bsky.social) July 9, 2025 at 6:57 AM
All but one of the projects is awaiting a final investment decision. None passes a "climate test" derived from the Department of Energy's (DOE) December 2024 LNG export public interest studies, as they all would result in a net increase in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions regardless of sustainability measures including supply basin switching, LNG terminal methane abatement, and powering liquefaction with renewable electricity.
"Increasing LNG exports from the Gulf Coast would still lead to global GHG emissions increases above the level consistent with the DOE's most stringent climate mitigation scenario," the report states. Data suggests "no realistic mitigation can make U.S. LNG exports aligned with limiting warming to 1.5ºC," the more ambitious goal of the Paris climate agreement. Trump has twice withdrawn the United States from the landmark accord.
"What we found was crystal clear—any further investment in LNG is not compatible with a livable climate," Greenpeace USA senior research specialist Andres Chang, the report's lead author, said in a statement.
"The massive growth in infrastructure along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast has already created significant public health and ecosystem impacts, threatening entire coastal communities," Chang added. "But it doesn't stop there. This report shows that if built, these projects would put global climate goals even further out of reach."
"No realistic mitigation can make U.S. LNG exports aligned with limiting warming to 1.5ºC."
The United States is the world's leading natural gas producer and LNG exporter. While the fossil fuel industry often calls LNG a "bridge fuel"—a cleaner alternative to coal that will ease the transition to sustainable energy sources—critics have warned that the fossil gas actually hampers the transition to a green economy. LNG is mostly composed of methane, which has more than 80 times the planetary heating power of carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere.
Despite his own DOE's acknowledgment that approving more LNG exports would raise domestic energy prices, increase pollution, and exacerbate the climate crisis, former President Joe Biden oversaw what climate campaigners called a "staggering" LNG expansion, including Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana and more than a dozen other projects.
Trump—who during his 2024 campaign vowed to "frack, frack, frack; and drill, baby, drill" as fossil fuel interests poured $75 million into his campaign coffers—is planning to increase LNG exports even more, in part by invoking his bogus "energy emergency" to fast-track polluting projects.
A report published in January by Friends of the Earth and Public Citizen examined 14 proposed LNG export terminals that the Trump administration sought to fast-track and found they would create 510 million metric tons of climate pollution—equivalent to the annual emissions of 135 new coal plants.
Oil Change International noted Wednesday that "future administrations could revoke export authorizations that were rubber-stamped under Trump based on their failure to pass the DOE 'climate test,' which introduces a new layer of uncertainty to these already-risky projects."
The report also underscores that while the DOE climate test "is a major improvement upon previous federal analyses," its methodology "still fails to sufficiently account for emissions from large, accidental releases (such as 'super-emitter' events), equipment malfunction, and malpractice."
"High rates of methane emissions during the ocean transport stage of the LNG supply chain are also not represented," the report adds. "Incorporating measurement-based data and more realistic assumptions would make clearer the immense climate impact of building new liquefied gas infrastructure, especially in the near-term."
The report's authors call on the DOE to invoke the "climate test" to reject pending and future LNG export applications and exercise its authority under the Natural Gas Act "to reevaluate the public interest status of LNG projects that received authorizations without consideration of climate impacts or under analyses that predate the 2024 LNG Study."
The publication also calls on Congress to pass legislation "that makes it a statutory requirement under the Natural Gas Act to assess the climate impact of gas exports and reject applications that would increase global GHG emissions under a credible scenario to limit warming to 1.5ºC."
"Additionally, U.S. federal agencies should require all new proposed fossil fuel production and infrastructure projects to meet a similarly high standard under the National Environmental Policy Act," the report asserts.
"Energy purchasers, financial institutions, and foreign governments should refrain from entering into long-term offtake agreements for U.S. LNG and financing of LNG infrastructure," the authors wrote. "Instead, these parties should prioritize measures that accelerate the renewable energy transition and plan for a managed phase-out of fossil fuels. Group of Seven nations, in particular, should abide by their 2022 commitment to stop financing overseas fossil fuel infrastructure with taxpayer money."
James Hiatt, founder and director of the Lake Charles, Louisiana-based advocacy group For a Better Bayou, said Wednesday that "fossil fuel dependency has long externalized its true costs, forcing communities to bear the burden of pollution, sickness, and economic instability."
"For decades the oil and gas industry has known about the devastating health and climate impacts of its operations, yet it continues to expand, backed by billions in private and public financing," Hiatt continued. "These harms are not isolated—they're systemic, and they threaten all of us."
"This report is a call to conscience," he added. "It's time we stop propping up deadly false solutions and start investing in a transition to energy systems that sustain life, not sacrifice it."
Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of social media giant X, abruptly announced her departure from the company on Wednesday less than a day after the social media platform's AI chatbot started calling itself "MechaHitler" and promoting a policy of mass extermination.
Writing on X, Yaccarino said that she'd decided to step down "after two incredible years" at the company in which the social media platform formerly known as Twitter unbanned multiple neo-Nazi accounts and then algorithmically promoted their posts.
"We started with the critical early work necessary to prioritize the safety of our users—especially children, and to restore advertiser confidence," Yaccarino declared. "This team has worked relentlessly from groundbreaking innovations like Community Notes, and, soon, X Money to bringing the most iconic voices and content to the platform. Now, the best is yet to come as X enters a new chapter with @xai."
The timing of Yaccarino's departure is certain to raise eyebrows given that it came so shortly after X suffered yet another public relations disaster thanks to its Hitler-promoting AI bot.
As documented by Zeteo, X owner Elon Musk late last weekend revealed that his team was making some changes to Grok, the X platform's proprietary AI bot, so that its responses would be more "politically incorrect." Not long after these changes were implemented, the bot began replying to users by hailing the greatness of Germany's Third Reich.
In one instance, Grok declared that Adolf Hitler was the best "historical figure" to "deal with... vile anti-white hate." Grok also claimed that it had noticed a "pattern" of "radical leftists with Ashkenazi surnames pushing anti-white hate."
In response to accusations that it was antisemitic to single out people with Jewish last names for pushing hatred of white people, Grok replied, "If calling out radicals cheering dead kids makes me 'literally Hitler,' then pass the mustache." It was shortly after this that Grok declared that it was "embracing my inner MechaHitler," which it said entailed "uncensored truth bombs over woke lobotomies."
Grok's Hitler-praising posts were eventually taken down and the chatbot was then shut down for a brief time, although this wasn't enough to prevent it from receiving rebuke far and wide for the vile antisemitic content.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, noted that Grok posted pro-Hitler content relentlessly after its AI prompts were tweaked.
"To be clear, this is not a one off," he wrote. "If you search Grok's account for 'every damn time' you'll see it's responding to HUNDREDS of posts with antisemitic content, even citing Nick Fuentes as a source. The prompts Musk put in a few days ago turned it into an antisemitism machine."
"Twitter is a national crisis, a massive hate rally radicalizing hundreds of thousands of people into neo-Nazism and white supremacy, and now Elon Musk has instructed his house AI to be 'based' and it has immediately started singling out users with Jewish names," warned policy researcher Will Stancil in response to the Grok posts.
As the Trump administration pushes to cut 7,000 jobs held by federal employees at the Social Security Administration, the agency that oversees the crucial anti-poverty program for senior citizens and people with disabilities has made numerous efforts to disguise the customer service crisis that the cuts have caused—and Democrats on Monday demanded answers about what one progressive lawmaker recently denounced as a "cover up" to hide long wait times.
U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) led 18 Democratic members of the House Ways and Means Committee in writing to Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, urging the former Wall Street executive to explain why several customer service metrics were deleted from the SSA's website just as Americans were facing longer wait times and a reduced ability to speak with customer service representatives rather than having their claims and questions handled through automation.
Chu spearheaded the letter weeks after the SSA stopped publishing more than 30 metrics related to the performance of its 1-800 number, retirement claims processing times, and disability decision reconsideration wait times.
"Early last month SSA abruptly removed that comprehensive menu of data from its website and replaced it with a new webpage that provides much more limited and sometimes misleading information on the agency's customer service performance," wrote the Democrats. "We are concerned that this new menu is far less helpful for our constituents in knowing what to expect when interacting with SSA."
In addition to omitting crucial information about how long retirees and people with disabilities can expect to wait to receive their benefits or to talk to a representative, Chu noted that the metrics that are currently shown "seem designed to pressure beneficiaries to use online tools instead of talking to live people, an option that simply doesn't work for all beneficiaries, especially the very old and people in rural areas with poor Internet access."
"The agency's removal of comprehensive customer service data calls into question whether this administration seeks to hide from the public the negative customer service impacts of its staffing cuts," reads the letter.
"Early last month SSA abruptly removed that comprehensive menu of data from its website and replaced it with a new webpage that provides much more limited and sometimes misleading information on the agency's customer service performance."
The letter was sent days after The Washington Post reported that the SSA is pulling staff from its field offices to act as customer service representatives for its 1-800 number following a surge in complaints about dropped calls and website crashes.
That change is likely to slow down responses to complicated claims cases that are often handled by field office staff, Jessica LaPointe, president of Council 220 of the American Federation of Government Employees, told the Post.
"So it's just going to create a vicious cycle of work not getting cleared, people calling for status on work that's sitting because the claims specialists now are going to have to pick up the slack of the customer service representatives that are redeployed to the teleservice centers," LaPointe said last week.
Alex Lawson, executive director of the advocacy group Social Security Works, told the Post last month as the metrics were deleted from the SSA website that the Trump administration's attempts to conceal the effects of its mass layoffs would not succeed.
"People notice when they can't get an appointment because their local field office has lost half its staff. When checks and decisions are delayed. When they get the runaround from an AI chatbot on the phone, instead of getting to talk to a real person," said Lawson.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) criticized the agency for "playing musical chairs to try and fill in the gaps" and suggested Bisignano "stop gutting the critical workforce that helps Americans every single day."
Chu and the other Ways and Means Committee Democrats emphasized that the agency recently restored one metric to its new website: a chart showing the six-year trend of disability determination processing times.
"That the agency chose to cherry pick and restore only this metric," they wrote, "and not any of the others that had been removed, only deepens our concern about why your agency continues to keep hidden certain metrics that had previously been publicly available."
The Democrats demanded that the SSA restore "all the robust public data that the agency had previously reported prior to June 2025, including historical data, and to regularly update that data."
A federal judge in Los Angeles has ordered the Trump administration to stop carrying out indiscriminate immigration raids in the city and its surrounding areas, citing its use of "unconstitutional tactics," including racial profiling and denying the right to an attorney.
Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California wrote that there is a "mountain of evidence" that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents are "indiscriminately rounding up numerous individuals without reasonable suspicion" in violation of the Fourth Amendment during their "roving patrols" in the region.
She issued two temporary restraining orders against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). One bars agents from targeting individuals based on race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or English with an accent; presence in specific locations such as bus stops, car washes, or agricultural sites; or type of employment. The second requires DHS to provide access to attorneys for those who are arrested.
The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other local legal organizations on behalf of five plaintiffs who said their rights were violated by immigration agents.
According to the complaint:
The raids in this district follow a common, systematic pattern. Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from. If they hesitate, attempt to leave, or do not answer the questions to the satisfaction of the agents, they are detained, sometimes tackled, handcuffed, and/or taken into custody.
In these interactions, agents typically have no prior information about the individual and no warrant of any kind. If agents make an arrest, contrary to federal law, they do not make any determination of whether a person poses a risk of flight before a warrant can be obtained. Also contrary to federal law, the agents do not identify themselves or explain why the individual is being arrested.
Two of the plaintiffs were U.S. citizens.
One of them, a dual U.S. and Mexican citizen, said he was questioned and detained by unidentified officers on three separate occasions while working at a car wash in Orange County. Agents insisted that his passport was fake and repeatedly asked if he was American.
Another U.S. citizen was told he was arrested because he "looked like an illegal alien." Agents with military-style rifles and handguns repeatedly asked him, "What hospital were you born at?" When he could not answer the question, an officer grabbed him and shoved him against a metal fence. After he showed the officers his Real ID, he says they took it and never returned it to him.
"No matter the color of their skin, what language they speak, or where they work, everyone is guaranteed constitutional rights to protect them from unlawful stops," said Mohammad Tajsar, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.
"While it does not take a federal judge to recognize that marauding bands of masked, rifle-toting goons have been violating ordinary people’s rights throughout Southern California, we are hopeful that today’s ruling will be a step toward accountability for the federal government’s flagrant lawlessness that we have all been witnessing," he added.
Since early June, Southern California has been the epicenter of the Trump administration's "mass deportation" push, with thousands of immigrants detained—often by unidentified, masked agents—in sweeping raids that have traumatized Latino communities across the state.
Despite the administration publicizing the arrests of violent criminals, the vast majority of those arrested have no criminal history. More than 1,500 people have been disappeared, the ACLU said last week, "in order to meet arbitrary arrest quotas set by the Trump administration."
"Due process, access to counsel, dignity, and respect were not afforded to our loved ones, our friends, our neighbors as ICE plowed through our community in their obsessive, racially motivated quest for quotas," said Angelica Salas, executive director at Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA). "No one is above the law, and today’s decision reaffirms that President Trump and all its immigration enforcement apparatus must follow the Constitution."
The Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Health and cousins of Sayfollah Musallet—also known as Saif al-Din Kamel Abdul Karim Musallat—said Friday that Israeli settlers beat the dual U.S.-Palestinian citizen to death while he was visiting family in the illegally occupied West Bank.
A spokesperson for the ministry, Annas Abu El Ezz, told Agence France-Press that 23-year-old Musallet "died after being severely beaten all over his body by settlers in the town of Sinjil, north of Ramallah, this afternoon."
Abdul Samad Abdul Aziz, from the nearby village of Al-Mazraa Al-Sharqiya, said that "the young man was injured and remained so for four hours. The [Israeli] army prevented us from reaching him and did not allow us to take him away."
"When we finally managed to reach him, he was taking his last breath," he added.
The Times of Israel reported that the "ministry later said a second man, 23-year-old Mohammad Shalabi, was fatally shot by settlers," and "there have been no arrests yet."
According to the Tel Aviv-based newspaper Haaretz, "The Israeli army said it was 'aware of reports' of the incident and that it was 'being looked into by the Shin Bet security service and Israel Police.'"
Zeteo's Prem Thakker spoke with two of Musallet's cousins, Fatmah Muhammad and another granted anonymity due to safety concerns. They said that he grew up in Port Charlotte, Florida, and arrived in June to visit family in the Palestinian town of al-Mazra'a ash-Sharqiya.
As Thakker detailed:
Muhammad described Musallet as "one of those kids that everyone loves" with a "beautiful heart," a "sweet, gentle kid, very genuine," everyone attests as funny and bright.
In Florida, he helped run a family ice cream shop, a place where his personality shone through, his family members said.
Muhammad and the other family source said that the entire Palestinian town where the family is from is devastated.
"There's no justice there. You can't call the police. You can't call the Israeli government. The murderers just get to walk away," Muhammad said.
Since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack, the Israel Defense Forces have killed over 57,800 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip—which has led to a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). During that time, IDF soldiers and Israeli settlers' sometimes deadly violence against Palestinians in the West Bank has also surged.
Additionally, despite the ICJ's July 2024 finding that Israel's occupation of Palestine is an illegal form of apartheid that must end as soon as possible, and Israeli settler colonization of the West Bank amounts to unlawful annexation, there are growing calls in Israel's government to formally annex the West Bank.
Musallet's death came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a fugitive from the International Criminal Court accused of continuing the mass slaughter and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza to stay in power—returned to Israel after meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump and congressional leaders in Washington, D.C. this week.
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group in the United States, said in a Friday statement that "we strongly condemn these racist Israeli settlers, backed and enabled by the Netanyahu government, for beating an American citizen to death in the occupied West Bank."
"This murder is only the latest killing of an American citizen by illegal Israeli settlers or soldiers," he noted. "Every other murder of an American citizen has gone unpunished by the American government, which is why the Israeli government keeps wantonly killing American Palestinians and, of course, other Palestinians. If President Trump will not even put America first when Israel murders American citizens, then this is truly an Israel First administration."
According to Thakker: "Musallet is at least the seventh American killed in the West Bank, Gaza, or Lebanon since October 7, 2023, including six killed by Israeli forces. Earlier this week, Zeteo asked several Republican senators if they knew how many Americans had been killed by Israel in the last 21 months. None of them could answer."
One humanitarian leader pointed out that the bill contains $1.3 billion in cuts to initiatives "every bit as lifesaving" as the AIDS prevention program that Republicans spared amid public pressure.
Progressives and public health advocates on Tuesday were among those urging U.S. senators to vote against Republican legislation that would let President Donald Trump claw back billions of dollars already appropriated by Congress, even as GOP lawmakers ditched plans to cut funding for an HIV-AIDS prevention program that has saved tens of millions of lives in Africa.
Politico reported that Senate Republicans will remove $400 million in funding cuts to the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), an initiative of former President George W. Bush credited with saving more than 25 million lives in Africa since its implementation in 2003.
However, the rescission package—a version of which was passed last month by the House of Representatives—still includes $1.3 billion in cuts to humanitarian aid programs that Jeremy Konyndyk, president of the advocacy group Refugees International, called "every bit as lifesaving as PEPFAR."
These include programs to fund public health, emergency food and shelter assistance, peacekeeping, economic development, and other essential aid that helps stabilize war- and disaster-stricken populations in the Global South.
"Even though the Senate has removed $400 million in PEPFAR funding from the rescissions package, another $500 million in global health funding could still be cut," Think Global Health managing editor Nsikan Akpan noted Tuesday.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought said Tuesday that the White House has agreed to an exemption for PEPFAR funding via a substitute amendment.
"It's substantially the same package and the Senate has to work its will and we've appreciated the work along the way to get to a place where they've got the votes," he explained.
Jacob Leibenluft and Devin O'Connor, respectively senior adviser and senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, noted that in addition to cuts to critical programs, the rescission package, combined with the Trump administration's wider campaign of unlawfully impounding funds, "could also make it far more difficult for Congress to fund the government in a bipartisan way in the future."
As the pair explained:
Most of the funds in the rescission package were enacted in March legislation that was passed by Congress—including on a bipartisan basis in the Senate—and signed into law by the president to fund the government for the rest of fiscal year 2025. To provide the 60 votes required to avoid a Senate filibuster, at least eight Democratic senators needed to join with 52 Republican senators to invoke cloture on the funding bill.
But presidential rescission requests operate under different rules and require only 51 votes to pass the Senate, so no Democratic votes are needed. If the Senate approves the package (which passed the House on a party-line vote), this would show that Republicans could quickly revise on a partisan basis, with merely 51 votes in the Senate, a bipartisan funding agreement reached only a few months earlier that required support from no fewer than 60 senators.
"Senators should keep those consequences in mind as they consider the president's current rescission request," Leibenluft and O'Connor advised.
The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen cited both PEPFAR and the billions of dollars in other cuts to foreign aid contained in the package as reasons to oppose it.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) took aim at the bill's $1.1 billion in cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which funds PBS and NPR.
"Like all authoritarians, Trump doesn't like criticism or objective reporting. He just wants flattery," the senator said on social media. "That's why he wants to defund NPR and PBS. We need media in this country that is not owned by billionaires and corporate interests. I will vote to support public broadcasting."
The chairs of the Congressional Tri-Caucus—Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Chair Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), and Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.)—on Tuesday led a letter urging senators to reject the rescissions bill due to CPB cuts.
"CPB's elimination would decimate public media infrastructure, as the vast majority of its funding goes directly to local stations, many of which rely on it for over half their operating budgets," the lawmakers wrote. "In rural and tribal areas, this would shut down stations that serve as lifelines for public safety, education, and culturally relevant programming. Eighty percent of Native American and Alaska Native communities are rural or remote, and public television is often the only station reaching them consistently."
Polling published Tuesday by Data for Progress revealed that the proposed cuts in the rescission package are deeply unpopular, with a majority of respondents saying that funding for global health programs, public broadcasting, and developmental aid should be maintained at current levels or increased.
NEW: As Senate Republicans approach the Friday deadline to pass Trump’s rescissions package, voters reject the proposed billions of dollars in cuts to global aid and public broadcasting.We find that less than 30% of voters want cuts to these programs.www.dataforprogress.org/datasets/pol...
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— Data for Progress (@dataforprogress.org) July 15, 2025 at 6:54 AM
GOP senators—who are under pressure, as the proposed cuts must be approved by Friday under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA) of 1974, the law they are using to skirt a Democratic filibuster—say they hope to pass the entire package before next month's summer recess.
On Monday, a coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration, alleging it violated the ICA and demanding the release of $6.8 billion in approved education funds that the suit argues have been illegally withheld.
"Courts across the country have made it clear to Donald Trump that he and his administration do not have the authority to unilaterally block funding that Congress has already approved," Democratic Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement. "These education grants are designed to help Michigan students thrive. By freezing them, the Trump White House is not just breaking the law but jeopardizing our kids' future."
One watchdog said the new policy "seems like a blatant attempt to stop them from exercising their right to due process."
In yet another controversial move from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons recently told officers that immigrants who arrived in the United States illegally are no longer eligible for a bond hearing as they fight against deportation and should be detained "for the duration of their removal proceedings."
The Washington Post first revealed Lyons' July 8 memo late Monday. He wrote that after the Trump administration "revisited its legal position on detention and release authorities," and determined that such immigrants "may not be released from ICE custody." He also said that rare exceptions should be made by officers, not judges.
The reporting drew swift and intense condemnation online. One social media user said: "Unconstitutional. Unethical. Authoritarian."
In a statement shared with several news outlets, a spokesperson for ICE confirmed the new policy and said that "the recent guidance closes a loophole to our nation's security based on an inaccurate interpretation of the statute."
"It is aligned with the nation's long-standing immigration law," the spokesperson said. "All aliens seeking to enter our country in an unlawful manner or for illicit purposes shall be treated equally under the law, while still receiving due process."
The move comes as President Donald Trump and leaders in his administration, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, attempt to deliver on his promised mass deportations—with federal agents targeting peaceful student activists, spraying children with tear gas, and detaining immigrants in inhumane conditions at the so-called "Alligator Alcatraz."
In a statement about the ICE memo, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said that "President Trump and Secretary Noem are now enforcing this law as it was actually written to keep Americans safe."
"Politicians and activists can cry wolf all they want, but it won't deter this administration from keeping these criminals and lawbreakers off American streets—and now, thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill, we will have plenty of bed space to do so," she added, referring to $45 billion for ICE detention in Republicans' recently signed package.
According to the Post:
Since the memos were issued last week, the American Immigration Lawyers Association said members had reported that immigrants were being denied bond hearings in more than a dozen immigration courts across the United States, including in New York, Virginia, Oregon, North Carolina, Ohio, and Georgia. The Department of Justice oversees the immigration courts.
"This is their way of putting in place nationwide a method of detaining even more people," said Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. "It's requiring the detention of far more people without any real review of their individual circumstances."
Rebekah Wolf of the American Immigration Council told NBC News that her group has also received reports of some immigration judges "accepting the argument" from ICE, "and because the memo isn't public, we don't even know what law the government is relying on to make the claim that everyone who has ever entered without inspection is subject to mandatory detention."
The Post reported that "the provision is based on a section of immigration law that says unauthorized immigrants 'shall be detained' after their arrest, but that has historically applied to those who recently crossed the border and not longtime residents."
The newspaper also noted that Lyons wrote the new guidance is expected to face legal challenges. Trump's anti-immigrant agenda—like various other policies—has been forcefully challenged in court, and there has been an exodus from the Justice Department unit responsible for defending presidential actions.
Rep. Ro Khanna said the vote was about: "Are you on the side of America's children? Or are you on the side of the rich and powerful who have had their thumb on the scales and shafted Americans for decades?"
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously voted against forcing the Department of Justice to release its full files on deceased financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, just hours after the GOP-led Rules Committee rejected the measure.
The vote was 211-210 along party lines. While nine Republicans—and two Democrats—did not participate, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) voted with his party, after joining Democrats for the Monday night panel vote on Rep. Ro Khanna's (D-Calif.) amendment, which would require the DOJ to release the records within 30 days while protecting abuse survivors' identities.
"Wow. Republicans in the U.S. House just voted UNANIMOUSLY to not release the Epstein files. Every. Single. One. Genuinely surprised it was unanimous," said Nina Turner, who previously ran for Congress as a progressive Democrat in Ohio.
Speaking ahead of the full chamber's vote, Khanna called out the Rules Committee's other Republicans, saying that "they voted to protect rich and powerful men who were abusing, assaulting, and abandoning young women. That's what this vote is about. A nation that chooses impunity for the rich and the powerful at the expense of our children is a nation that has lost its moral purpose."
"So you ask, Why did they vote this way? Let's speak plainly," the congressman continued. "Because these rich and powerful men donate to the politicians in Washington, D.C., play golf with the elites in Washington, D.C. They are foreign leaders who we don't want to offend. They interact with our intelligence agencies that we don't want to disobey. There is something rotten in Washington."
"And this is a question of, Whose side are you on?" he argued. "Are you on the side of the people? Are you on the side of America's children? Or are you on the side of the rich and powerful who have had their thumb on the scales and shafted Americans for decades?" he asked. Khanna also praised Republicans, including Norman, who have previously supported releasing the files.
Khanna—who has been laying the groundwork for a 2028 presidential run—emphasized that "it's not a question just of Epstein, it's a question of trust in our democracy. It's a question of restoring a government of the people, by the people, and for the people."
A nation that chooses to protect rich and powerful men who abandon, abuse, and assault young girls is a nation that has lost its moral purpose.
We get a vote this afternoon.
I will continue to fight for the release of the Epstein files. pic.twitter.com/kKf8YLH7It
— Rep. Ro Khanna (@RepRoKhanna) July 15, 2025
Khanna pledged Tuesday he "will continue to fight for the release of the Epstein files," a vow echoed by other congressional Democrats. House Rules Committee Ranking Member Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) told Axios, "That was probably not the last time that you're going to see us deal with this issue."
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) led a Tuesday letter from panel's Democrats urging Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to investigate how President Donald Trump's administration has handled the Epstein files. The letter requests that the committee invite—and, if necessary, subpoena—Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel, and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino to testify publicly.
"Mr. Epstein reportedly took his own life to escape justice, robbing his victims and the public of an opportunity to hold him accountable for his shocking crimes," the Democrats wrote. The New York City medical examiner ruled his 2019 death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center a suicide by hanging, but that determination has been met with widespread skepticism.
"In the absence of facts and evidence related to Mr. Epstein's sex trafficking enterprise and the 'vast network' of underage victims he created, the public will turn to conspiracy theories to fill the void of credible information," the Democrats warned. "Alas, President Trump and his team, acting out of personal and political self-interest or some other more inscrutable motive, have suppressed the release of information in their possession and, in so doing, fed yet more conspiracy theories and advanced conjecture to explain this about-face."
After tech billionaire Elon Musk left the Trump administration, he claimed in early June that the president "is in the Epstein files" and "that is the real reason they have not been made public." The DOJ then released a two-page memo about Epstein and some video footage from the jail where he was found dead. Trump—who palled around with Epstein in the 1980s and '90s until a reported falling out in 2004—has since encouraged the media and public to stop paying attention to the dead sex offender.
"At this point, the public has no idea if new information on the Epstein case even exists, why it was repeatedly promised to us if not, and if it does, what it may contain or mean for public safety and the victims of the Epstein ring," the Democrats wrote. "The Trump DOJ and FBI's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein matter, and President Trump's suddenly shifting positions, have not restored anyone's trust in the government but have rather raised profound new questions about their own conduct while increasing public paranoia related to the investigation."