Tag: Civil Rights & Free Speech
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ICE Brings Batons to Suburbs
We are now watching where they go next. Friday night in Frederick, Maryland, federal immigration agents drove onto a sidewalk where community observers were standing and chanting. City Council President César Díaz says people had to move or risk getting run over. He says Council Vice President Katie Nash was nearly struck, and that he…
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Armed Man Rushes Candidate
Political violence does not have to succeed to erode a democracy. It needs only become ever more ordinary. On Sunday, an armed man rushed toward Amy Acton, the Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio, as she campaigned at the Canfield Fair. Police say 38-year-old Patrick Havas pushed through the crowd toward Acton, knocking people down…
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Trump’s $5 Billion Threat
Authoritarianism does not always only silence the critic. Sometimes it teaches everyone else to lower their voice. Tuesday, President Donald Trump threatened to sue the Center for American Progress for five billion dollars over research it published about his deployment of the National Guard to American cities. The report found that violent crime was already…
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Trump Kennedy Center Demolition?
In other words: give him his marble, or lose the building. Monday, Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge that the Kennedy Center may have to be torn down, making their argument in a brief defending Donald Trump’s name on the building. In Beatty versus Trump, Congresswoman Joyce Beatty is suing to stop the board…
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Trump Haitian Arrests
One may well ask, what kind of dignity and respect are we exhibiting as a quarter of this city’s residents now fear to move about? On Wednesday, the mayor of Springfield, Ohio confirmed that federal agents are arresting Haitian immigrants in his city. Roughly 15,000 Haitians live in Springfield — about a quarter of the…
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ICE Shock Gloves
New tech being deployed to make the compliance state more efficient. What could go wrong? On August 10, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to spend up to twenty million dollars on electric shock gloves for ICE officers. The device, called the Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter or G.L.O.V.E., is made by Compliant Technologies…
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Trump vs Nursing Home Voters
The administration is systematically making it harder and harder to hold it to account at the ballot box, targeting one vulnerable population after another. On July 20, the Trump administration threw out the federal rules that told nursing homes to help their residents vote. Two million Americans live in long-term care. Since 2020, federal memos…
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Children In Court Alone
Children, detained and alone, facing the government of the United States. This is what deporting the so-called worst of the worst looks like. On Friday, the Trump administration awarded a no-bid $158 million contract for legal services to unaccompanied immigrant children. It went to a group called Our Rescue. Multiple women have sued its founder…
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Building a Permanent Guard in DC
Our national capital has what appears to be a permanent occupying force. One year ago today, armed National Guard troops began patrolling the streets of Washington, DC. Donald Trump declared a crime emergency and moved to take over the city’s police. Courts pared that back but the troops stayed. Today there are 4,600 of them,…
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Trump Anti-Birthright Orders
We are one changed mind away from reopening the question of who is born a citizen. The administration seems intent on doing so. On Thursday, Donald Trump signed two executive orders seeking again to restrict birthright citizenship. Five weeks ago, on June 30, the Supreme Court struck down his first attempt to do so. Trump…
Notes To My Future Self 