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jared golden
Federal Agent Tells Maine ICE Observer She's Going in 'Nice Little Database' for 'Domestic Terrorists'
"Ironically these kinds of threats do more to radicalize opposition to ICE," said one observer.
Jan 23, 2026
A masked federal immigration enforcement agent was caught on camera this week telling a legal observer in Maine that she was being put in a database for purported "domestic terrorists."
At the start of a video that spread across social media on Friday, the masked agent appears to be scanning a license plate number before walking toward the woman recording him.
The woman informs the agent that it's legal for her to record and then asks him why he's trying to gather information on her.
"Because we have a nice little database, and now you're considered a domestic terrorist," the agent responds.
At this point the woman starts laughing incredulously at him.
"For videotaping you?!" she asks him. "Are you crazy?!"
ICE agent in Portland, Maine tells legal observer she is a domestic terrorist for peacefully recording him, adds her to "nice little database" pic.twitter.com/6miHpXUdT7
— Nathan Bernard (@nathanTbernard) January 23, 2026
Democrats on the US House Homeland Security Committee were quick to denounce the actions of the agent on the video.
"Big government Republicans have unleashed a secret police state on peaceful American citizens," they wrote in a social media post. "This should shake every American to their core."
Other critics, however, noted that it isn't just Republicans who have been supporting the right-wing police state. Seven US House Democrats, including Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), voted with the vast majority of Republicans on Thursday to give US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) an additional $10 billion.
"Corporate Democrats are complicit with the full breakdown of our constitutional rights," commented Sunrise Movement.
Greg Krieg, media director at political consulting firm Slingshot Strategies, took particular aim at Golden for shoveling more money to ICE despite documented evidence of agents violating Americans' civil liberties.
"Thank you Jared Golden, special man who understands Maine better than anyone on the planet, for telling us how much people actually like this horseshit," he wrote sarcastically.
Nico Perrino, executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said the agent's behavior crossed a line that should be condemned by Americans of all political persuasions.
"I hope the vast majority of freedom-loving Americans are uncomfortable with the idea," he wrote, "that masked police are now telling people engaged in First Amendment-protected activity that they are 'domestic terrorists' who will be added to a secret government database."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, predicted that federal agents' aggressive taunts against legal observers would backfire politically against the Trump administration.
"Ironically these kinds of threats do more to radicalize opposition to ICE tactics than they do to stop people from recording ICE," he observed.
Isaac Saul, founder of Tangle News, also thought the optics of the Maine video were terrible for Republicans.
"It's hard to overstate how unpopular this crap is with normie Americans," Saul wrote. "On top of the gross civil rights violations, that Trump is letting these goons loose in Maine, a state where Democrats could actually pick up a Senate seat in nine months, it's political malpractice."
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11 House Democrats Help GOP Pass 'Disastrous' Pro-Polluter Permitting Bill
"The SPEED Act protects corporate interests, not the public, and it should be rejected by any senator who claims to stand with the people," said one campaigner.
Dec 18, 2025
Eleven Democrats on Thursday voted with nearly all Republicans in the US House of Representatives to advance a permitting reform bill that climate and frontline organizations warn is a "disastrous" attack on a landmark environmental protection law.
Democratic Reps. Jim Costa (Calif.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Don Davis (NC), Chris Deluzio (Pa.), Lizzie Fletcher (Texas), Jared Golden (Maine), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Adam Gray (Calif.), John Mannion (NY), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), and Marc Veasey (Texas) voted with all Republicans present expect Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) to pass the bill.
The Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act, spearheaded by Golden and House Committee on Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), would amend the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which "is often called the 'Magna Carta' of federal environmental laws."
In a statement after the vote, Food & Water Watch legal director Tarah Heinzen said that "for decades, NEPA has ensured logical decision-making and community involvement when the federal government considers projects that could harm people and the environment. The SPEED Act would eviscerate NEPA's protections."
The group detailed key ways in which the SPEED Act attacks NEPA:
- Drastically limiting NEPA's scope of review: Removes many actions from NEPA review altogether, potentially allowing factory farms and coal plants to build and expand without any environmental review or public input;
- Limiting agency accountability: Creates unreasonably short deadlines to challenge inadequate reviews, and limits courts’ ability to stop unlawful projects; and
- Putting polluter profits above science and the environment: Turns NEPA on its head by requiring agencies to prioritize corporate interests over the public interest and limiting their ability to consider the best science.
"Today's absurd House vote is yet another handout to corporate polluters at the expense of everyday people who have to live with the real-world impacts of toxic pollution from dirty industries like fossil fuels and factory farms," Heinzen argued. "This nonsense must be dead on arrival in the Senate."
Other campaigners also looked to the upper chamber after the vote. Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center, said that "renewable energy and climate advocates in the Senate must hold the line against the SPEED Act's evisceration of our bedrock environmental and community protection law."
Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's US campaign manager, stressed that "our senators must stand up against the SPEED Act's attempts to undermine democratic decision-making, pollute our communities, and threaten our collective future."
For a Better Bayou's James Hiatt similarly said that "the SPEED Act protects corporate interests, not the public, and it should be rejected by any senator who claims to stand with the people."
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright, co-coordinator of Black Alliance for Peace's Climate, Environment, and Militarism Initiative, warned that the bill "represents yet another assault on the health of frontline, Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor white communities that have been designated as sacrifice zones by big polluters who bribe lawmakers with big money to continue a culture of extract, slash, burn, and emit at the expense of oppressed and marginalized peoples."
"Rather than speeding up the approval of dirty projects, Congress should increase funding for federal agencies and grassroots organizations accountable to frontline communities to carry out legally defensible and accurate environmental analyses," he continued, pointing to the Environmental Justice for All Act, previously led by the late Democratic Congressmen Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.) and Donald McEachin (Va.).
Mar Zepeda Salazar, legislative director at Climate Justice Alliance, also pointed to that alternative: "The SPEED Act fast-tracks harmful fossil fuel and polluting projects, not the community-led clean energy solutions families and Indigenous peoples across the country have long called for. Instead of pushing the SPEED Act—a bill that would strip away what few legal protections communities still have, weaken safeguards for clean air, land, and water near new industrial development, and sidestep meaningful consultation with federally recognized tribal nations—Congress should be advancing real, community-driven permitting reform."
"Examples include the Environmental Justice for All Act, which lays out meaningful public engagement, strong public health protections, respect for tribal sovereignty and consultation obligations, and serious investments in agencies and staff," she said.
Representatives from the Institute for Policy Studies, Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples, and Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice also spoke out against what David Watkins, director of government affairs for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, condemned as "a sizable holiday gift basket for Big Oil and Gas." He, too, urged the Senate to "reject this retrograde legislation and stand up to the deep-pocketed, polluting industries lobbying for it."
Lauren Pagel, policy director at Earthworks, pointed out that passing the SPEED Act wasn't the only way in which the House on Thursday "chose corporate interests over people, Indigenous Peoples' rights, and our environment." It also passed the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act, which "will remove already-scarce protections for natural resources and sacred cultural sites in US mining law."
"Today's House votes are a step backwards for our nation, but we continue to stand firm for the rights of the people and places on the frontlines of oil, gas, and mining," Pagel said. "Communities and ecosystems shouldn't pay the price while corporations rush to profit off extraction—with a helping hand from our elected officials."
Along with those two pieces of legislation, Public Citizen pointed to the House's approval of the Power Plant Reliability Act and Reliable Power Act earlier this week. David Arkush, director of the consumer advocacy group's Climate Program, said that the bills advancing through Congress "under the guise of 'bipartisan permitting reform' are blatant handouts to the fossil fuel and mining industries."
"We need real action to lower energy bills for American families and combat the climate crisis," Arkush asserted, calling on congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump "to fast-track a buildout of renewable energy, storage, and transmission—an approach that would not just make energy more affordable and sustainable, but create US jobs and bolster competitiveness with China, which is rapidly outpacing the US on the energy technologies of the future."
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Labor Leaders Cheer House Vote to Undo 'Single-Largest Act of Union Busting in American History'
"President Trump betrayed workers," said the head of the AFL-CIO. "Working people delivered a rare bipartisan majority to stop the administration's unprecedented attacks on our freedoms."
Dec 11, 2025
US labor leaders on Thursday celebrated the House of Representatives' bipartisan vote in favor of a bill that would reverse President Donald Trump's attack on the collective bargaining rights of 1 million federal workers.
Trump's sweeping assault on federal workers has included March and August executive orders targeting their rights under the guise of protecting national security. In response, Congressmen Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) spearheaded the fight for the Protect America’s Workforce Act. They recently collected enough signatures to force the 231-195 vote, in which 20 Republicans joined all Democrats present to send the bill to the Senate.
"The right to be heard in one's workplace may appear basic, but it carries great weight—it ensures that the people who serve our nation have a seat at the table when decisions shape their work and their mission," Fitzpatrick said after the vote.
"This bill moves us closer to restoring that fundamental protection for nearly 1 million federal employees, many of them veterans," he added. "I will always fight for our workers, and I call on the Senate to help ensure these protections are fully reinstated."
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) president Liz Shuler joined union leaders in applauding the lower chamber on Thursday and calling on the Senate to follow suit. She said in a statement that "President Trump betrayed workers when he tried to rip away our collective bargaining rights. In these increasingly polarized times, working people delivered a rare bipartisan majority to stop the administration's unprecedented attacks on our freedoms."
"We commend the Republicans and Democrats who stood with workers and voted to reverse the single-largest act of union busting in American history," she continued. "Americans trust unions more than either political party. As we turn to the Senate—where the bill already has bipartisan support—working people are calling on the politicians we elected to stand with us, even if it means standing up to the union-busting boss in the White House."
Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal workers union, similarly praised the members of Congress who "demonstrated their support for the nonpartisan civil service, for the dedicated employees who serve our country with honor and distinction, and for the critical role that collective bargaining has in fostering a safe, protective, and collaborative workplace."
"This vote marks an historic achievement for the House's bipartisan pro-labor majority, courageously led by Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania," he said. "We need to build on this seismic victory in the House and get immediate action in the Senate—and also ensure that any future budget bills similarly protect collective bargaining rights for the largely unseen civil servants who keep our government running."
American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees president Lee Saunders also applauded the House's passage of "a bill that strengthens federal workers' freedoms on the job so they can continue to keep our nation safe, healthy, and strong."
"This bill not only provides workers' critical protections from an administration that has spent the past year relentlessly attacking them," he noted, "but it also ensures that our communities are served by the most qualified public service workers—not just those with the best political connections."
Randy Erwin, the head of the National Federation of Federal Employees, declared that "this is an incredible testament to the strength of federal employees and the longstanding support for their fundamental right to organize and join a union."
"The president cannot unilaterally strip working people of their constitutional freedom of association. In bipartisan fashion, Congress has asserted their authority to hold the president accountable for the biggest attack on workers that this country has ever seen," he added, thanking the House supporters and pledging to work with "senators from both parties to ensure this bill is signed into law."
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