Tuesday, August 05, 2025
The Snapshot
Tuesday, August 5, 2025. Chump is shocked to learn that We The People don't roll over, we fight back to save democracy.
Americans are overwhelmingly skeptical of Donald Trump's handling of information related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. In a new UMass Amherst national poll, 70 percent of respondents said Trump is not handling the Epstein case well, while only 18 percent said he is.
Among respondents who were aware of Epstein, the deceased billionaire and convicted sex offender, 63 percent agreed that the Trump administration "is hiding important information" about the case. Of those who said the administration is hiding information, a staggering 81 percent blamed Trump for it. Others in Trump's orbit also received blame, including Attorney General Pam Bondi (59 percent), FBI Director Kash Patel (49 percent), and House Speaker Mike Johnson (47 percent). Just 16 percent blamed Democrats in Congress.
The president's overall approval rating also took a dive to 38 percent, down six points since April.
This new data seems to back up reports that Trump has lost significant ground with his MAGA base over the Epstein issue. He came to power in part because his followers believed he would root out corruption and the deep state. But as news continues to break about his years-long friendship with Epstein amid reports that Trump is named multiple times in the files, the president's credibility is fading. Fifty-nine percent of poll respondents aware of Epstein said they believe he and Trump were "once good friends."
Trump isn't helping himself either. He complained last week that Epstein "stole" one of his victims from her job at Trump's Mar-a-Lago property. And the Bureau of Prisons under Trump recently transferred Epstein's longtime partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, to a lower-security facility after she met with Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche. Her move to a less strict prison has drawn scrutiny, considering Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.
Lawrence O'Donnell brought the receipts last night on MSNBC explaining what Maxwell had done, how she was a pedophile, how she was a sex trafficker, how she preyed on young girls -- you know, what she was convicted of in a US court of law and sentenced to 20 years in prison for.
Josh Fiallo (THE DAILY BEAST) notes Chump's moved Maxwell from an actual prison to Club Fed:
Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell is enjoying cushy new digs at a prison camp that has no cell blocks or guard towers but does offer a full gym, yoga classes, and a “puppy program.”
Maxwell, 63, was quietly transferred last week from a prison in Florida to a minimum-security camp in Bryan, Texas. Oversight at her new facility is so lax, it partially relies on the honor system to keep inmates from—quite literally—walking off its wall-free campus, as three women did in 2017.
Federal Prison Camp, Bryan has been nicknamed “Club Fed,” as its inmates have access to an outdoor running track, music programs, intramural competitions, social and cultural events, and activities like table tennis, prison consultant Michael Santos says.
At the facility, Maxwell will be permitted to buy mascara ($13.10), eyeliner ($1.70), concealer ($7.75), powder ($17), lip gloss ($3.40), makeup wipes ($9.25), and, the priciest luxury available, L’Oréal Revita anti-aging cream ($26.00), according to a comissary list obtained by the Daily Beast. Inmates are allowed to spend $360 a month there.
We all know Maxwell is not American, right? So while Chump works overtime to make life better for Maxwell -- an exploiter of women -- he works just as hard to destroy the lives of immigrants who have come to this country and worked hard to make a life for themselves and their families.
He can do that because he has no core, no belief system. Donald Chump has no religion. I also tend to doubt the faith of grown women who try to draw attention to their cleavage with crosses so I dismiss Pam Bondi and Karoline Leavitt's attempts to promote themselves as alleged Christians. But does no in the administration grasp religion?
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senators Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) raised the alarm on the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) recent usage of Predator drones and aerial surveillance against peaceful protesters in Los Angeles. This surveillance is a clear threat to the protesters’ privacy and their constitutional rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.
In their letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, the Senators likened DHS’ aerial surveillance to authoritarian regimes controlling dissent and warned of the risks of using this technology to target communities of color. They noted that DHS did not give any justification for its use of the drones, nor any details about what information was collected or how it was used.
On June 8, during the Los Angeles protests, DHS deployed Predator drones with high resolution cameras capable of identifying individuals in a crowd to fly over protests in Paramount and Los Angeles. The Senators blasted DHS’ usage of the footage to create a dramatic video posted June 10 to X with the caption “WATCH: DHS drone footage of LA rioters. This is not calm. This is not peaceful. California politicians must call off their rioting mob.”
“Even if the technology were perfectly accurate, this form of surveillance could have a chilling effect on constitutionally protected rights, particularly freedom of assembly and speech. Protesters may fear that showing up at a rally could result in DHS or other government entities logging their names into a government database, sharing records with law enforcement, or even subjecting them to reprisal,” wrote the Senators. “That fear is not theoretical. Authoritarian regimes already use facial recognition to track down dissidents. But even in democratic societies, such tools can disproportionately target and harm communities of color, intensifying existing biases in law enforcement and eroding trust in public institutions.”
“The publication of these videos appears to be a violation of the Department’s own requirement limiting the disclosure of video collected on an aircraft to authorized personnel with an authorized purpose,” continued the Senators. “Americans could easily understand the publication of this video as an implicit threat to reveal the identities of protesters, instilling fear in any members of the public who seek to exercise their constitutionally protected rights to speech and assembly.”
Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) also signed the letter.
The lawmakers requested responses by August 21, 2025, to questions including:
- What cameras, radar, or other surveillance equipment were equipped on the Predator drones that flew over Paramount and Los Angeles during the June protests?
- Did DHS officials identify any individuals based on information collected by the unmanned aircraft that surveilled the California protests, including in combination with other information or with the assistance of facial recognition technology?
- Which agencies and officials requested support from the Predator drones, when was the request made, and when and by whom were they approved?
- What data privacy protocols are currently used to govern information captured by aerial surveillance at U.S. protests?
- How are DHS staff with access to aerial surveillance data trained on data management protocols?
- What was the approval process for publishing videos taken by the Predator drones of the protests in Los Angeles on X?
- Has DHS deployed manned or unmanned aircraft systems to photograph, record, or otherwise monitor other protests since January 20, 2025?
Senator Padilla has been outspoken in criticizing Trump’s unprecedented militarization with the deployment of National Guard troops and active-duty U.S. Marines to respond to overwhelmingly peaceful protests in Los Angeles. Earlier this month, Padilla placed a hold on Trump’s nominee to serve as vice chief of the National Guard Bureau, Lieutenant General Thomas Carden, until the Trump Administration releases all remaining U.S. military forces from their unjustified deployment to Los Angeles. He also recently introduced the VISIBLE Act to require immigration enforcement officers to display clearly visible identification during public-facing enforcement actions. Last month, he led the entire Senate Democratic Caucus in demanding that President Trump immediately withdraw all military forces from Los Angeles and cease all threats to deploy the National Guard or active-duty service members to American cities.
Full text of the letter is available here and below:
Dear Secretary Noem,
In the face of peaceful protests against the Trump administration all across the country — through the public’s exercise of its constitutionally protected rights to assemble and express its views — the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has responded with surveillance and intimidation. For example, DHS deployed at least two Predator drones over the recent protests in Los Angeles, published the collected footage online, and called for local officials to crack down on protestors. This Big Brotherism invades Americans’ privacy and chills the exercise of their constitutional rights. We are writing to request more information on DHS’s use of aerial surveillance at recent protests and to urge DHS to respect the public’s privacy and the First Amendment.
DHS has disclosed little about its use of Predator drones to surveil protests across the country. On June 8, 2025, flight watchers noticed aircraft without a callsign circling protests in Paramount, California, and downtown Los Angeles for hours. By listening to Air Traffic Control transmission, these observers determined that the aircraft were Predator drones. DHS later confirmed that it had deployed the drones to support “federal law enforcement partners in the Greater Los Angeles area, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” but denied that it was “engaged in surveillance of First Amendment activities.” But DHS has provided no explanation of who specifically requested the support of Predator drones in Paramount and Los Angeles, why that support was needed, what information was collected, or whether drones were deployed during other protests. In other words, DHS is keeping the public in the dark on the important question whether it is conducting aerial surveillance during protests and infringing on Americans’ First Amendment rights.
Although extraordinary circumstances could justify drone flights over protests, these flights also raise serious concerns about individual privacy and may be intended to intimidate the public and chill free speech rights. As was the case with the Predator drones in Los Angeles, unmanned aircraft are often equipped with high-resolution cameras that can capture images and video of individual protesters within a crowd. DHS could then attempt to use facial recognition technologies to identify those individuals. Facial recognition technologies have known limitations — including reduced accuracy when images are low quality, blurry, obscured, or taken from the side or in poor light — creating serious risks of false identification.
Even if the technology were perfectly accurate, this form of surveillance could have a chilling effect on constitutionally protected rights, particularly freedom of assembly and speech. Protesters may fear that showing up at a rally could result in DHS or other government entities logging their names into a government database, sharing records with law enforcement, or even subjecting them to reprisal. That fear is not theoretical. Authoritarian regimes already use facial recognition to track down dissidents. But even in democratic societies, such tools can disproportionately target and harm communities of color, intensifying existing biases in law enforcement and eroding trust in public institutions.
DHS’s own best practices recognize that the use of drones to monitor protests and the retention or publication of images of individuals who are engaged in protest can harm constitutionally protected rights. In particular, in 2013, DHS conducted a privacy impact assessment (PIA) covering the Predator B drone. In that PIA, the Department acknowledged that images and video taken from these drones potentially include images of individuals that can be associated with personally identifiable information. To address the privacy risks with unmanned aircraft, the PIA explained that “the video or other data collected from [Customs and Border Protection] aircraft may only be accessed by authorized personnel with an authorized need to know, and the CBP-held video or other data is controlled through chains of custody and stored in secure locations until it is destroyed.” While this data may be used to support “other DHS components” or “federal law enforcement agencies,” the PIA emphasizes that “each request for information follows a standard process and is reviewed and considered in terms of the requesting agencies’ authorities to receive the sought after information, CBP’s own authority to lend assistance, and CBP’s ability to integrate the information collection into its mission.” Although DHS updated this PIA in 2018 and 2024 to cover tethered and small unmanned aircraft systems, the relevant section and privacy analysis on the Predator drone has not changed.
But DHS appears to have ignored these requirements in Los Angeles. On June 10, the Department posted a video to X — collected from a drone — overlayed with a dramatic soundtrack and a caption stating “WATCH: DHS drone footage of LA rioters. This is not calm. This is not peaceful. California politicians must call off their rioting mob.”8 The publication of these videos appears to be a violation of the Department’s own requirement limiting the disclosure of video collected on an aircraft to authorized personnel with an authorized purpose. Americans could easily understand the publication of this video as an implicit threat to reveal the identities of protesters, instilling fear in any members of the public who seek to exercise their constitutionally protected rights to speech and assembly.
Given the serious dangers to individual privacy and free expression from the aerial surveillance of protesters, we request written responses to the following questions by August 21, 2025.
1. What cameras, radar, or other surveillance equipment were equipped on the Predator drones that flew over Paramount and Los Angeles during the June protests?
a. Did the drones collect any information on individual protesters?
b. If so, what information did the drones collect?
c. What has DHS done with this information?
2. Did DHS officials identify any individuals based on information collected by the unmanned aircraft that surveilled the California protests, including in combination with other information or with the assistance of facial recognition technology?
a. If so, how many individuals were identified at the California protests?
b. Why did DHS seek to identify individual protesters?
c. Did DHS provide records of the identities of individual protesters to any other agencies or third parties?
d. How long does DHS intend to maintain records of the identities of individuals at these protests?
e. Is DHS creating a database of individuals identified at these protests?
3. Which agencies and officials requested support from the Predator drones, when was the request made, and when and by whom were they approved? Please provide all documents related to the request and approval of these flights.
4. What data privacy protocols are currently used to govern information captured by aerial surveillance at U.S. protests?
a. Does DHS still follow the 2013 privacy impact assessment?
b. If so, how does the aerial surveillance of the Paramount and Los Angeles protests comport with it? If not, why not?
5. How are DHS staff with access to aerial surveillance data trained on data management protocols?
6. What was the approval process for publishing videos taken by the Predator drones of the protests in Los Angeles on X? Please provide all documents related to the decision to publish this video.
7. Has DHS deployed manned or unmanned aircraft systems to photograph, record, or otherwise monitor other protests since January 20, 2025? If so, for each such deployment, please provide:
a. the date and location of the deployment;
b. the original request from the state, local, or national agency for this support;
c. all approval documentation;
d. the kinds of manned or unmanned aircraft used;
e. all monitoring equipment on the flights; and
f. whether any individuals were identifiable, and if so,
(i) how many were identified,
(ii) for what purposes,
(iii) whether that data was provided to any other agencies or third parties,
(iv) how long DHS intends to maintain the identities of individual protesters, and
(v) whether DHS is creating a database of protesters identified at these protests.
Thank you for your attention to this important issue.
Sincerely,
###
Let's note this from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's office:
Whitehouse’s Medicare and Social Security Fair Share Act would make Social Security solvent forever without shrinking benefits
Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) slammed comments made by the Trump administration’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessentcalling the administration’s tax-deferred investment accounts a “backdoor for privatizing Social Security.”
“Secretary Bessent’s comments are the latest Trump administration attack on Social Security. Social Security is a sacred trust that hardworking Rhode Islanders paid into through their whole careers, but Republicans continue to be obsessed with handing seniors’ money off to private equity sleazeballs,” said Whitehouse, a founding member of the Expand Social Security Caucus. “Here’s how you fix Social Security and protect seniors’ benefits forever: you have the wealthy start paying their full fair share into the system.”
Whitehouse’s Medicare and Social Security Fair Share Act would protect the solvency of Social Security and Medicare for the foreseeable future by requiring the nation’s highest earners to contribute a fairer share of their income into the system. Whitehouse also cosponsored the Social Security Fairness Act, which was signed into law by President Biden in January. The legislation eliminated two policies that reduced Social Security benefits for public service employees.
Over 230,000 Rhode Islanders receive Social Security benefits.
Mike covered the topic last night in "They're coming after Social Security when they're not trying to rescue Pedophile Maxwell."
The following sites updated:
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River Tiber: Tiny Desk Concert3 hours ago
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Loni Anderson8 hours ago
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Not a Meryl fan8 hours ago
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Trying to decipher crazy8 hours ago
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Weekend Box Office8 hours ago
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Trump is Getting Desperate1 day ago
Monday, August 04, 2025
The Snapshot
Convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell secured a secret prison transfer after the Bureau of Prisons waived a rule designated to punish sex offenders.
Maxwell, alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein‘s accomplice, has spent the last three years serving a 20-year sentence at a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida. She was transferred to a lower-security federal prison camp closer to her family in Bryan, Texas, last week after she reportedly spent two days speaking with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche about her connections to Epstein.
A federal prison camp is a minimum-security facility with dorm-like housing, meeting the Bureau of Prisons’ lowest security-level designation. Low-level security prisons are a step up from prison camps.
A prison consultant told Dilanian he had “never seen this done before for a sex offender,” Dilanian wrote on X.
The Bureau of Prisons, which confirmed Maxwell’s move last week, did not respond to immediate requests for comment, including whether it waived the policy for Maxwell. Maxwell’s attorney also did not respond to an immediate request for comment.
One of the four women who say they were “groomed” for sex by Ghislaine Maxwell testified Wednesday that the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein took her to meet Donald Trump when she was just 14.
Testifying at Maxwell’s trial in New York City, the woman, who is being identified by the pseudonym Jane, said on cross-examination that she met the future president in the 1990s at Mar-a-Lago, his resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
By all accounts, Mar-a-Lago is a luxury resort, and its owner, the current President of the United States, claims the spa is one of the finest in the world. Several girls indicated they were recruited at Mar-a-Lago. President Trump discussed several young girls Epstein “stole” from the spa.
“I have a great spa, one of the best spas in the world in Mar-a-Lago," said Trump. "And people were taken out of the spa. Hired by him. In other words, gone. And other people would come and complain, this guy is taking people from the spa. I didn’t know that. And then when I heard about it, I told him, I said, listen, we don’t want you taking our people, whether it was spa or not spa. I don’t want him taking people. And he was fine. And then not too long after that, he did it again. And I said — out of here.”
Exactly what jobs were young girls performing with little enough supervision to get picked up by child abusers? The State of Florida requires a licensed massage therapist (LMT) to be 18 or older to get a license after 500 hours of approved education or an apprenticeship. The girls Epstein recruited had no massage experience, nor were they old enough to be masseuses. My daughter is an LMT and has worked in several spas, including a luxury spa in Orlando. No underage girls were running around performing any tasks. What jobs were they working at Mar-a-Lago?
Young girls can’t be expected to have the experience and skills to provide the quality of service expected at a “world-class spa.” They must have been there for another reason.
What did Donald Trump think Jeffrey Epstein was hiring his girls away to do?
When Epstein was allegedly hiring Trump’s staff away. What did Trump imagine Epstein wanted them to do? Epstein didn’t own a hotel or a spa. Trump knew Epstein liked them young. What did he think Epstein was asking them to do? The first victim to testify in Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial alleged that Jeffrey Epstein took her to Mar-a-Lago when she was 14 years old to meet Donald Trump. What did Trump know and when did he know it?
Paul Davidson (USA TODAY) reported Friday:
U.S. employers added a disappointing 73,000 jobs in July as payroll growth slowed amid President Donald Trump's sweeping import tariffs, intensifying immigration crackdown and massive federal layoffs.
Even more concerning: Job gains for May and June were revised down by a whopping 258,000, portraying a much weaker labor market than believed in late spring and early summer and raising the odds the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in September.
And with the truth out there and Chump exposed, the Convicted Felon responded by firing the person in charge of compiling the statistics. Robert McCoy (THE NEW REPUBLIC) notes:
Trump on Friday proved that fears about the president manipulating official data in his favor are founded, as he fired Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, due to a disappointing July jobs report.
The bureau’s report, released earlier in the day, showed a marked slowdown in job growth. It also revised previous months’ gains downward, shaving nearly 260,000 jobs off May’s and June’s report. Reacting to the news, Trump adviser Steve Bannon suggested appointing “a MAGA Republican that President Trump knows and trusts” to head the BLS.
Our paranoid liar and convicted felon Donald Chump. At CNN this morning, David Goldman explains:
“In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” Trump said in a message on Truth Social Friday.
As a result, he fired Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Established in 1884, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is an independently operated body within the US Department of Labor. The Labor Secretary, a member of the president’s cabinet, has oversight of the BLS, but it is run by a Senate-appointed commissioner.
The BLS collects data on a number of key economic concerns and produces critical reports on a regular basis. Those include data on prices, inflation, productivity, spending, pay, workplace injuries, employment and unemployment.
More than 2,000 people work for the BLS, including a number of professional economists and survey takers who regularly contact businesses and employees. The economists analyze the data and produce reports for the public and the government.
The BLS collects jobs data in two separate surveys. The first is done in part with old-fashioned door knocking. Survey takers go home to home throughout the country asking people for their employment status and their demographic information.
A second survey, known as the Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey, is collected from thousands of businesses and government agencies using a variety of methods: via telephone, internet surveys, and – for large corporations – through an automated data transfer. By law, participation in the CES survey is voluntary, but state laws in New Mexico, Oregon and South Carolina require businesses to produce data for the survey. A law in Puerto Rico also requires the territory’s businesses to submit data to the BLS.
CES survey respondents submit monthly employment, hours, and earnings data for all paid workers to the BLS from their payroll records. The data is collected for the pay period that includes the 12th of the month.
Stephen Collinson (CNN) notes how bad this is for the country, our economy and our international standing:
When authoritarianism encroaches, apologists often present a strongman’s power grabs as rational — even imperative for the national good.
Top Trump administration aides followed that playbook on Sunday, justifying the president’s abrupt firing of the government’s top labor official in charge of employment statistics over jobs numbers that dented his proclamation of a new “golden age.”
But the ouster of Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, taken alongside President Donald Trump’s concurrent bid to destroy the independence of the Federal Reserve, threatens the US economy’s reputation as a bulwark of stability and integrity that has undergirded generations of prosperity.
Such political interference might bolster Trump’s ever-growing power. But it could backfire by eroding the trust of investors, companies and organizations that depend on accurate and truthful statistics on the economy’s health to make major decisions that can impact the lives of millions of people. Even the Federal Reserve uses it to decide on monetary policy.
And when countries don’t firewall official data, they risk ending up like Argentina or Greece, where the invention of rosy statistics masked economic malaise and sparked financial crises. Or China, where fantastical official figures designed to bolster the regime’s credibility fostered corruption — and benefited the US by comparison.
It's a White House of Liars with the Convicted Felon having recruited liars to serve in the administration. And cuck of the country Stephen Miller thinks he can pull a Pam Bondi and get away with it. Bondi went on FOX "NEWS" in February bragging about the Epstein client list she had on her desk and was going to release just as soon as she vetted it. Remember? Then she found Donald Chump's name in the paper work over and over, warned him in May and at the start of last month (July 6th) announced there was nothing to release.
Anna Betts (GUARDIAN) reports:
In a new court filing, attorneys for the Trump administration denied the existence of a daily quota for immigration arrests, despite reports and prior statements from White House officials about pursuing a goal of at least 3,000 deportations or deportation arrests per day.
In May, reports from both the Guardian and Axios revealed that during a meeting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) leaders on 21 May, the White House adviser Stephen Miller and the Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, demanded that immigration agents seek to arrest 3,000 people per day.
Following that report, Miller appeared on Fox News in late May and stated that “under President Trump’s leadership, we are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for Ice every day.”
He added that Trump “is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every day”.
However, in a court filing on Friday, lawyers representing the US justice department said that the Department of Homeland Security had confirmed that “neither Ice leadership nor its field offices have been directed to meet any numerical quota or target for arrests, detentions, removals, field encounters, or any other operational activities that Ice or its components undertake in the course of enforcing federal immigration law.”
Yam Perera-Nunez was expected in Highlands County Court Thursday morning but he was nowhere to be seen. That’s because Perera-Nunez – who faces deportation — is in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at “Alligator Alcatraz,” Florida’s, and the country’s, newest immigration detention facility.
Attorney David R. Paz Jr. represented Perera in court Thursday morning. He told Circuit Court Judge David Ward that his client was being held in Alligator Alcatraz. He also filed an ICE document that indicated Perera-Nunez, a Cuban national, was in custody at the Collier County facility.
It marks the first time in Highlands County that a defendant was diverted to the controversial facility before a court hearing.
[. . .]
On June 9, the Florida Highway Patrol chased Perera-Nunez – who was behind the wheel of a black Dodge Ram pickup truck as it hit speeds of 110 mph on State Road 70 – into Highlands County. Perera-Nunez allegedly failed to slow down, even in construction zones. A FHP trooper, Z.T. Forbes, kept on Perera-Nunez, even as the driver turned right on Old State Road 8 and headed south at high speed. It took Forbes two pit maneuvers to send the pickup off the road and into a tree. According to Forbes, Perera-Nunez was taken to the hospital, then to Highlands County Jail.
He's a Cuban immigrant. I'm going to say it again This is a Republican president and Republicans control both houses of Congress. One of the GOP's most loyal voting groups over the last decades have been Cuban Americans. And this is how the political party pays them back?
People are tired of the terror. They turned out over the weekend in LA. KABC reports, "Hundreds of teachers marched through downtown Los Angeles Saturday to call on LAUSD to do more to protect students from immigration raids. Educators marched a quarter of a mile through downtown to LAUSD headquarters. They chanted 'ICE out of L.A.' and 'immigrants are welcome here'."
Brandon Kingdollar (NORTH CAROLINA NEWS-LINE) reports:
As residents rally to alert neighbors to immigration agents around the city, Durham City Council member Javiera Caballero warned Saturday that anyone could be arrested off the street and detained.
Speaking to an audience of around 70 at a “State of Durham” town hall held in the Durham County Main Library, Caballero said the massive boost in funding given to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the recent congressional megabill would only embolden the agency to abduct noncitizens and citizens alike.
“Once that money really hits, what’s going to happen to our community is actually quite terrifying. And so when I say we’re going to have to put our bodies on the line, it’s not hyperbole,” Caballero said. “They will disappear folks, they will kidnap folks, and it’s not just going to be folks who, quote, shouldn’t be here.”
Though the discussion, moderated by organizers with Kids Voting Durham and a journalist from INDY Week, ranged from housing and transit to education and crime, the presence of ICE and other ways the city might be targeted by immigration enforcement proved a recurring source of anxiety among audience members.
Caballero said she was proud of the city for mustering an “amazing community response” to ICE agents spotted at the Durham County Courthouse, apparently seeking to detain a man ahead of his initial court appearance. Their presence became widely known through immigrant advocacy group Siembra NC’s “ICE Watch” program, which trains spotters who monitor their communities for ICE amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts.
People are fighting back because it's wrong and it's getting worse. At THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT, Patricia Lopez observes:
Mandatory detention is the newest and potentially most powerful weapon in the White House’s arsenal for turbo-charging deportations. Once arrested, immigrants without legal status will, with few exceptions, be held in custody until they are deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That means they are no longer eligible, as in the past, to post bond at a hearing and have an immigration judge decide their fate. ICE alone will be the decider.
That threatens to transform temporary detention centers into long-term prisons — and to strip immigrants of the constitutional rights that are due to every person in the U.S., regardless of legal status.
Acting ICE Director Todd M. Lyons wrote in a July memo obtained by the Washington Post that immigrants should be detained “for the duration of their removal proceedings,” a process that can stretch out for months, or even years, given judicial backlogs. That could affect millions of immigrants.
It is an aggressive move from an agency that is becoming increasingly reckless in its handling of immigrants. The policy is already expected to draw a court challenge questioning the constitutionality of sidestepping judges.
Edwin Viera (FINGER LAKEs) reports:
Research shows U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement is not targeting immigrants with criminal records during mass arrests and deportations are negatively affecting New York State’s economy.
The Immigration Research Initiative’s new report found when arrests rose from January to May this year, many of those detained lacked a criminal record.
Chloe East, associate professor of economics at the University of Colorado and the report’s co-author, said while President Donald Trump campaigned on deporting immigrants who commit heinous crimes, they do not make up the bulk of who is being arrested.
“The majority who are currently impacted have no criminal conviction,” East explained. “Instead, the only potential violation they have is a civil violation of not complying with immigration law.”
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research-focused nonprofit, supported the findings with data showing more than 70% of people detained had no criminal record. TRAC’s research included data showing immigrants arrested during past mass deportations had at least minor criminal convictions.
Yet lives are being destroyed every day by this nonsense. By this nonsense and by this hate.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
ICYMI: Senator Murray Presses VA Secretary Nominee Doug Collins on Preserving Access to Lifesaving Abortion Care at Collins’ Nomination Hearing
Washington, DC – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former Chair of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, issued the following statement in response to the Trump administration’s move today to revoke women veterans’ ability to receive abortion care through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) when their pregnancy is putting their health at risk, or is the result of rape or incest. Senator Murray pressed VA Secretary Doug Collins at his nomination hearing in January on whether he would eliminate access to abortion care at VA for veterans who are victims of rape, to which he refused to give a straight answer.
Today, VA issued a proposed rule revoking the Biden administration’s final rule on Reproductive Health Services, issued March 4th, 2024, that allowed VA to provide abortion care to veterans in very limited circumstances—when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, or if the life or health of the pregnant veteran would be endangered if the pregnancy were carried to term—and allowed VA to offer comprehensive, evidence-based pregnancy counseling that includes information about abortion services.
The Trump administration’s new reproductive health policy means that VA will return to a near-total ban on abortion with only an exception for care when “a physician certifies that the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term,” with no exceptions for the health of the veteran or for rape/incest. VA providers will also be gagged from even discussing abortion with their veteran patients—even in life-threatening situations. There are approximately 300,000 women veterans of reproductive age who are enrolled in VA health care, and VA estimates that over 155,000 of them live in states that have enacted abortion bans or restrictions.
“Trump and Secretary Collins are ripping away necessary health care from pregnant veterans whose lives and health are in danger, or who were raped—it’s unspeakably cruel and a grotesque assault on women who have put their lives on the line to keep us safe.
“Donald Trump insisted time and again on the campaign trail that he supported exceptions for rape and incest—now he’s going after exactly those exceptions with this move to axe the incredibly limited abortion services VA provides for women veterans in desperate situations.
“The bottom line is, Republicans don’t care if your health is in danger, if you’re a veteran, or if you’ve been raped—they want abortion outlawed everywhere, in every circumstance, for everyone. This administration has shown nothing but callous disregard for veterans’ lives, their health care, and their livelihoods—especially when those veterans happen to be women.”
Senator Murray was the first woman to join the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee (SVAC) and the first woman to chair the Committee—and advocating for women veterans and their access to reproductive health care has been a longtime focus for Senator Murray. Senator Murray called on VA to provide abortion care to veterans early in the Biden administration, and she applauded the Biden administration’s announcement later in the year that would begin to provide abortion care for veterans and their eligible dependents to protect the health and life of the individual and in cases of rape or incest. Murray helped lead the charge in calling out Republicans for their attacks on, and attempts to undo, this limited and commonsense policy. Senator Murray also leads the Veteran Families Health Services Act, comprehensive legislation that would expand fertility treatments—including IVF—and family-building services for servicemembers and veterans who are unable to conceive without assistance, and she has sought unanimous consent to pass the legislation on multiple occasions. She recently introduced new legislation with Senator Duckworth to help cover IVF costs for servicemembers and military families. Last March, Murray applauded VA’s move to expand IVF services to eligible unmarried veterans and eligible veterans in same-sex marriages, and allowing veterans to use donated gametes in IVF services.
Senator Murray is also a longtime leader in the fight to protect and expand access to reproductive health care and abortion rights, and she has led Congressional efforts to fight back after the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Murray has introduced more than a dozen pieces of legislation to protect reproductive rights from further attacks, protect providers, and help ensure women get the care they need; Murray has led efforts to push for passage of these bills on the floor multiple times. Last January, on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Murray led her colleagues in hosting a “State of Abortion Rights” briefing with women who have suffered firsthand from Republican abortion bans, and last June, she chaired a HELP Committee hearing titled “The Assault on Women’s Freedoms: How Abortion Bans Have Created a Health Care Nightmare Across America.” Murray helped lead efforts to force Republicans on the record on votes to protect access to contraception and access to IVF (twice), and she led her colleagues in raising the alarm about the threat a second Trump administration would pose to reproductive rights and abortion access in every state, as outlined in Project 2025. At a forum Senator Murray held this year on the anniversary of the Dobbs decision, Senator Murray spoke about Republicans’ plan to institute a backdoor nationwide abortion ban.
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Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Caring and Compassionate Chump" went up Friday. The following sites updated:
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