Tag Archives: united states

Raw Story: Ex-prosecutor demands full probe after ‘heart attack’ death in ICE custody

Posted on by
Reply

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance wants an immediate and full congressional investigation into the latest death of a detainee in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration.

The detainee, a 75-year-old Cuban national named Isidro Perez, was reported to Congress by ICE officials, with news on the incident saying that “the death appears to have been caused by a heart attack.”

That explanation didn’t suffice for Vance.

“‘Appears’ is doing a lot of heavy, lifting here given what we know about how other detainees, including a woman who lost her baby in ICE detention have experienced,” wrote Vance. “Especially with ICE trying to prevent Congress from oversight, there should be a full investigation into this.”

Ex-prosecutor demands full probe after ‘heart attack’ death in ICE custody

https://www.rawstory.com/ice-2672503459

India Today: Trump’s ‘shut shop, go back home’ threat invites a dare from Elon Musk

Posted on by
Reply

The US President’s fiery post came as Elon Musk renewed his criticism of Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful bill’ and promised to launch a new political outfit if it was passed.

Cat fight!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

US President Donald Trump claimed that Elon Musk received “more subsidies than any human being in history” and without it, he might have to close shop and head back home to South Africa as the feud between the duo escalated over the tax bill.

Trump also suggested that DOGE, the cost-cutting department that the Tesla CEO headed, should have a look at Musk’s government subsidies and contracts. The US President’s fiery post came as Musk renewed his criticism of Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful bill’ and promised to launch a new political outfit if it was passed.

lt’s a dog-eat-dog (or perhaps DOGE-eat-DOGE) world!

Trump’s ‘shut shop, go back home’ threat invites a dare from Elon Musk
The US President’s fiery post came as Elon Musk renewed his criticism of Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful bill’ and promised to launch a new political outfit if it was passed.

https://www.indiatoday.in/world/us-news/story/probably-have-to-close-shop-head-back-home-to-south-africa-trumps-searing-attack-on-elon-musk-over-tax-bill-2748751-2025-07-01

Mirror: US territory fears military pawn status after decoy role in Iranian attack

Posted on by
Reply

Guam’s senator and former Guam delegate have shared their fears of the federal government violating Guam’s right to transparency following the US strikes on Iran

Concerns are rising among Guam supporters who suspect the island has become a chess piece for the U.S. military, following Guam’s involvement in a ploy aimed at Iranian nuclear targets. The Pentagon disclosed that B-2 bombers were sent to Guam to distract from classified flights en route to Iran over the Atlantic Ocean.

Guam Senator Chris Barnett has voiced fears about the island’s participation in this strategic ruse, suggesting potential adverse implications both regionally and globally.

“Dragging Guam into the U.S. military’s deception tactics—without consultation, transparency, or regard for the people of Guam and those who serve in uniform—is ‘unacceptable,'” Barnett said.

…

While Barnett affirmed the “United States’ right to defend itself and protect its interests,” he criticized Guam’s role in Operation Midnight Hammer, stating it was “not about defense; it was about deception.”

Barnett highlighted that the people of Guam have long served the nation “honourably for generations.” He said: “We should not be used without consent or even acknowledgment.”

He criticized the exploitation of Guam as a strategic decoy, saying it “sends the wrong message to our allies, that Guam is expendable; to our adversaries, that we are divided; and to our own people, that we are invisible.” He proclaimed: “Guam deserves better.”

Guam Senator blasts Pentagon for ‘unacceptable’ decoy plan in Iranian strike
Guam’s senator and former Guam delegate have shared their fears of the federal government violating Guam’s right to transparency following the US strikes on Iran

https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/territory-fears-military-pawn-status-1236537

Raw Story: Travesty’: Ex-presidents issue rare rebuke of Trump as major agency axed

Posted on by
Reply

Obama:

A pair of former U.S. presidents issued a rare rebuke of President Donald Trump on Monday in a farewell meeting to former employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Former president Barack Obama called Trump’s decision to shutter the agency “a travesty.” He also credited the agency with both saving lives and creating economic growth across the globe.

Bush:

Former president George W. Bush chided Trump for gutting a program within USAID known as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which he credited with saving 25 million lives across the world.

“You’ve showed the great strength of America through your work — and that is your good heart,’’ Bush said in a pre-recorded message. “Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you.”

Our resident fascist:

Trump has raged against USAID since the day he took office for his second term. One of the first executive orders Trump signed described U.S. foreign aid offices as being “not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values.”

He then sent Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to investigate USAID’s spending and recommend ways to reduce the agency’s financial prowess. Musk described USAID as “a criminal organization” and “a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.”

And one of the fascist’s royal suck-ups:

The pressure had its intended impact. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who previously described USAID as an agency with “amazing achievements,” swiftly recommended cutting 83% of programs under the agency’s umbrella.

Travesty’: Ex-presidents issue rare rebuke of Trump as major agency axed

https://www.rawstory.com/usaid-2672503313

Newsweek: Supreme Court to hear JD Vance case

Posted on by
Reply

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a Republican-led challenge to a federal campaign finance law provision that limits how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates. The case, which centers on free speech claims, involves Vice President JD Vance, who was a U.S. Senate candidate in Ohio when the lawsuit was initiated.

The justices took up an appeal from Vance and two Republican committees, contesting a lower court’s decision that upheld the spending limits. The challengers argue the restrictions violate constitutional protections by capping party spending influenced by input from supported candidates.

How dare they deprive the wealthy of their God-given right to purchase election results!

DNC Chair Ken Martin, DSCC Chair Kirsten Gillibrand, and DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene said in a statement: “We refuse to sit on the sidelines as Trump’s DOJ and the Republican Party attempt to throw out longstanding election laws for their own benefit. Republicans know their grassroots support is drying up across the country, and they want to drown out the will of the voters.

Supreme Court to hear JD Vance case
The case, which centers on free speech claims, involves VP Vance, who was a Senate candidate in Ohio when the lawsuit was initiated.

https://www.newsweek.com/supreme-court-jd-vance-campaign-finance-ohio-case-2092657

Guardian: Throwing their bodies on the gears: the Democratic lawmakers showing up to resist Trump

Posted on by
Reply

Republicans may literally own social media platforms, but some Democrats are buying back legitimacy with protests

A flock of Ice agents, some masked, some sporting military-operator fashion for show, smooshed the New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, up against a wall and handcuffed him in the hallway of a federal courthouse in early June, shuffling the mild-mannered politician into an elevator like the Sandman hustling an act off the stage 10 miles north at Harlem’s Apollo Theater.

Like at the Apollo, Lander’s arrest was a show. News reporters and cellphone camera-wielding bystanders crowded the hall to watch the burly federal officers rumple a 55-year-old auditor asking for a warrant.

“I’m not obstructing. I’m standing here in this hallway asking for a judicial warrant,” Lander said. “You don’t have the authority to arrest US citizens.”

“This is an urgent moment for the rule of law in the United States of America and it is important to step up,” Lander told the Guardian after the arrest. “And I think the dividing line for Democrats right now is not between progressives and moderates. It’s between fighters and folders. We have to find nonviolent but insistent ways of standing up for democracy and the rule of law.”

…

“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part,” Mario Savio, a student leader in the free speech movement, a campaign of civil disobedience against restrictive policies on student political activity, said 60 years ago during a campus protest. “You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.”

…

Hannah Dugan, a Wisconsin judge, allowed a man to leave through the back doors of her courtroom, allegedly in response to the presence of immigration officers waiting to arrest him. FBI agents subsequently arrested Dugan in her Milwaukee courtroom on 25 April, charging her with obstruction.

The FBI director, Kash Patel, posted comments about her arrest on X almost immediately, and eventually posted a photograph of her arrest, handcuffed and walking toward a police cruiser, with the comment: “No one is above the law.” Digitally altered photographs of Dugan appearing to be in tears in a mugshot proliferated on social media. Trump himself reposted an image from the Libs of TikTok website of Dugan wearing a Covid-19 mask on the day of her arrest.

Three days later …

It’s long read — best to click on the link below and read the article in its entirety.

Throwing their bodies on the gears: the Democratic lawmakers showing up to resist Trump
Republicans may literally own social media platforms, but some Democrats are buying back legitimacy with protests

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/30/democrats-trump-resistance

USA Today: Vance: Medicaid cuts in Senate tax bill ‘immaterial’ compared to ICE increases

Posted on by
Reply

In a series of social media posts, Vice President JD Vance said the cost of the GOP spending bill, including the effect of the largest cuts to Medicaid in history, are “immaterial” compared to the money he says it will save through expanded funding for immigration enforcement.

“The thing that will bankrupt this country more than any other policy is flooding the country with illegal immigration and then giving those migrants generous benefits. The (bill) fixes this problem. And therefore it must pass,” Vance said in a June 30 post on the social media site X, a few hours before he cast the tie-breaking vote to move the spending bill back to the House.

“Everything else ‒ the (Congressional Budget Office) score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy ‒ is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions,” he said in a second post.

This assumes that “illegal” immigrants contribute nothing to the economy, which is totally false. Removing “illegal” immigrants will cause a net loss of hundreds of billions of dollars for California alone (not to mention other states), and it is on top of that loss that millions of Americans will be losing their health insurance.

J.D. Dunce is a f*ck*ng sh*t for brains disgrace. Nobody in Greenland wanted them over for lunch, and I wouldn’t either.

Vance: Medicaid cuts in Senate tax bill ‘immaterial’ compared to ICE increases
Vice President JD Vance said cuts to Medicaid and budget impacts in the Senate tax bill don’t compare to the importance of ICE spending.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/07/01/vance-medicaid-cuts-ice-spending-tax-bill/84429757007

Charlotte Observer: ‘Victory’: DHS Praises SCOTUS Ruling on Deportations

Posted on by
Reply

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled to allow the Trump administration to fast-track deportations to third countries like Sudan without notice or a chance to contest. The 6-3 ruling drew dissent from Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who warned it risks torture or death for deportees.

This is simply inhumane. And it will come back to haunt us big time.

…

Sotomayor wrote, “The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard.”

As some countries have refused deportees, the administration has utilized third-country agreements. Immigrant advocates warned the Supreme Court ruling weakens due process and risks deportees’ safety.

 Sotomayor wrote, “Apparently, the court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in far-flung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a district court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled.”

‘Victory’: DHS Praises SCOTUS Ruling on Deportations
More for You

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/victory-dhs-praises-scotus-ruling-on-deportations/ss-AA1HMtgW

Daily Beast: Florida City Ends ICE Deal Ahead of Trump’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Visit

Posted on by
Reply

Key West, home to the southernmost point in the continental U.S., voted to end its cooperation agreement with ICE.

A Florida city welcomed President Donald Trump to the state Tuesday by making life harder for his ICE goons.

Hours before Trump touched down at Florida’s so-called “Alligator Alcatraz,” city commissioners in Key West voted 6-1 in favor of scrapping an agreement requiring local police to coordinate with federal immigration officials.

The vote “basically invalidated the city’s most recent agreement with ICE,” which was reached in March, reported Local 10.

“People who are seeking political asylum are important members of our community,” Commissioner Samuel Kaufman said, according to WLRN. “We have thousands of them here, by the way. And they deserve the respect that anybody else does.”

Florida’s southernmost city, less than 100 miles from the Cuban coast, is also among its most progressive. Commissioner Donald Lee said that the city’s police chief, Sean Brandenburg, signed the deal to cooperate with ICE because he had a proverbial “gun” to his head from both federal and state officials. The Florida city of Fort Myers has refused to sign an agreement, and its leaders have been threatened with removal from office.

Key West residents went into uproar last month when a beloved local hairstylist, who a city cop stopped as he rode his e-bike to work, was placed in ICE custody and detained for weeks.

Lee Stinton, a Northern Ireland national, holds an employment authorization card and has applied for a green card, according to Keys Weekly. Still, his traffic infraction reportedly warranted the involvement of ICE agents, who allegedly harassed him and tossed him in a detention center in Miami, where a Canadian citizen, 49, and a Cuban national, 75, died in custody within the last week.

…

“The ICE agent that got involved in his traffic stop—and I’m still not sure how that happened, whether he was riding with the police officer or showed up separately—saw the photo of the two of us on Lee’s phone’s lock screen, and assumed I was Haitian,” Davis said. “He asked Lee, ‘Is that your boyfriend? We’ll go find him as well and get two for one.’”

Florida City Ends ICE Deal Ahead of Trump’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ Visit
Key West, home to the southernmost point in the continental U.S., voted to end its cooperation agreement with ICE.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/florida-city-ends-ice-deal-ahead-of-trumps-alligator-alcatraz-visit

ABC News: Department of Justice suing Los Angeles over sanctuary city policy

Posted on by
Reply

The Department of Justice is suing the city of Los Angeles over its sanctuary city policy, alleging it interferes with the enforcement of federal immigration laws, officials announced on Monday.

“The challenged law and policies of the City of Los Angeles obstruct the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law and impede consultation and communication between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials that is necessary for federal officials to carry out federal immigration law and keep Americans safe,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit is targeting Ordinance Number 188441, which prohibits city resources, including personnel, from being used for immigration enforcement. The DOJ is seeking a permanent injunction barring the city from enforcing the ordinance.

Big waste of time and money — the Tenth Amendment (separation of powers) says the federal government can’t hijack state or local governments to do their bidding.

Department of Justice suing Los Angeles over sanctuary city policy
The lawsuit is targeting Ordinance Number 188441, which prohibits city resources, including personnel, from being used for immigration enforcement.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/doj-suing-los-angeles-sanctuary-city-policy/story?id=123348526