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Category: Law/Crime

Political prosecution of Kat Abughazaleh: ‘Today it’s Kat. Tomorrow it could be any one of us’

Political prosecution of Kat Abughazaleh: ‘Today it’s Kat. Tomorrow it could be any one of us’

I have been charged in a federal indictment sought by the Department of Justice. This political prosecution is an attack on all of our First Amendment rights. I’m not backing down, and we’re going to win. pic.twitter.com/szOSZa1h3z — Kat Abughazaleh (@KatAbughazaleh) October 29, 2025 Evanston Now reports: The indictment charges all six individuals, including an Oak Park trustee, a Democratic committeeperson from Chicago and a Cook County Board candidate, with impeding a federal officer stemming from the Sept. 26 incident….

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ICE wants Texas to become the backbone of a private industrialized deportation machine

ICE wants Texas to become the backbone of a private industrialized deportation machine

Wired reports: US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is exploring plans to launch a privately-run, statewide transportation system in Texas. The agency envisions a nonstop operation, funneling immigrants detained in 254 counties into ICE facilities and staging locations across the state. Early planning documents reviewed by WIRED describe a statewide transport grid designed for steady detainee transfers across Texas, with ICE estimating each trip to average 100 miles. Every county would have its own small, around-the-clock team of contractors collecting immigrants…

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Paul Newby has turned North Carolina’s Supreme Court into an instrument of far-reaching political power

Paul Newby has turned North Carolina’s Supreme Court into an instrument of far-reaching political power

By Doug Bock Clark This story was originally published by ProPublica In early 2023, Paul Newby, the Republican chief justice of North Carolina’s Supreme Court, gave the state and the nation a demonstration of the stunning and overlooked power of his office.  The previous year, the court — then majority Democrat — had outlawed partisan gerrymandering in the swing state. Over Newby’s vehement dissent, it had ordered independent outsiders to redraw electoral maps that the GOP-controlled legislature had crafted to…

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Retired law enforcement officer jailed five weeks for reposting a Facebook meme is freed in Tennessee

Retired law enforcement officer jailed five weeks for reposting a Facebook meme is freed in Tennessee

The Intercept reports: More than a month after he was arrested for sharing a meme on Facebook, 61-year-old Larry Bushart Jr. walked out of the Perry County jail in Linden, Tennessee, on Wednesday, where his wife was waiting to take him home. He wore a weary smile and the same white T-shirt he had on the night he was jailed. A reporter from a local news station, which had previously splashed his mugshot on its website, approached for an interview….

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‘Militarized police force’: Pentagon orders states’ national guards to form ‘quick reaction forces’ for ‘crowd control’

‘Militarized police force’: Pentagon orders states’ national guards to form ‘quick reaction forces’ for ‘crowd control’

The Guardian reports: A top US military official has ordered the national guards of all 50 US states, the District of Columbia and US territories to form “quick reaction forces” trained in “riot control”, including use of batons, body shields, Tasers and pepper spray, according to an internal Pentagon directive reviewed by the Guardian. The memo, signed on 8 October by Maj Gen Ronald Burkett, the director of operations for the Pentagon’s national guard bureau, sets thresholds for the size…

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ICE’s forced face scans to verify citizens is unconstitutional, say lawmakers

ICE’s forced face scans to verify citizens is unconstitutional, say lawmakers

Ars Technica reports: Social media videos have confirmed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers patrolling US streets are actively using facial recognition technology to verify citizenship, 404 Media reported. In one video posted on a Chicago-based Instagram account, a self-described teenager and US citizen tells officers that he has no government ID. After he offers to show his student ID instead, the officer turns to another and asks, “can you do facial?” As…

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ICE agent assaults woman who asked if he’s a good Christian

ICE agent assaults woman who asked if he’s a good Christian

  HuffPost reports: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers forcibly detained a father and his two children in southwest Colorado on Monday while they were on their way to middle school, sparking a mass protest outside the agency’s Durango field office in an effort to get the kids released back to their mom. Video from the protest outside the facility shows masked and unidentified federal officers tear-gassing protesters on Tuesday afternoon as they stood in the street and attempted to…

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FBI says Gabbard counterintelligence push would cause ‘long-lasting damage to the U.S. national security’

FBI says Gabbard counterintelligence push would cause ‘long-lasting damage to the U.S. national security’

The New York Times reports: The F.B.I. informed Congress last week that it “strongly” opposed a proposal to make the Office of the Director of National Intelligence the lead counterintelligence agency for the federal government, bringing into public view a rift among top national security officials. The disclosure, made in a pointed and unusual letter obtained by The New York Times, underscored the broader concern at other agencies, including the F.B.I., over a House bill that would empower Tulsi Gabbard,…

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Judge rules LA’s top federal prosecutor, Bill Essayli, was illegally appointed

Judge rules LA’s top federal prosecutor, Bill Essayli, was illegally appointed

Politico reports: The Justice Department’s top prosecutor in Los Angeles has been illegally serving in the role since July, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. Bill Essayli, Trump’s pick in April to temporarily lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, should have departed the post by July 31 under a 120-day limit imposed by federal law, U.S. District Judge J. Michael Seabright concluded. An unusual maneuver by Attorney General Pam Bondi to extend Essayli’s tenure into 2026…

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Trump’s plan to subvert the 2026 midterms is already under way

Trump’s plan to subvert the 2026 midterms is already under way

David A. Graham writes: Imagine for a moment that it’s late on Election Day, November 3, 2026. Republicans have kept their majority in the Senate, but too many House races are still uncalled to tell who has won that chamber. Control seems like it will come down to two districts in Maricopa County, Arizona. ICE agents and National Guardsmen have been deployed there since that summer, ostensibly in response to criminal immigrants, though crime has been dropping for several years….

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Judge Michael Luttig: Only the American people have the power to stop Trump

Judge Michael Luttig: Only the American people have the power to stop Trump

Judge J. Michael Luttig writes: Donald Trump is clearly willing to subvert an election in order to hold on to the power he so craves, and he is now fully enabled to undermine national elections. No one can prevent him from remaining president of the United States for a constitutionally prohibited third term—except the American people, in whom ultimate power resides under the Constitution of the United States. On July 4, 1776, nearly 250 years ago, America freed itself forever…

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Judge orders Bovino not to terrorize children on Halloween and orders him to report to her court daily

Judge orders Bovino not to terrorize children on Halloween and orders him to report to her court daily

Chicago Sun-Times reports: U.S. Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino appeared at Chicago’s Dirksen Federal Courthouse on Tuesday for a preliminary injunction hearing as part of an ongoing lawsuit over the feds’ treatment of protesters during the ongoing immigration blitz. Bovino agreed to return to U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis courtroom every weekday at 6 p.m. to give her updates until a Nov. 5 preliminary hearing on the case. Mayor Brandon Johnson called U.S. Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino a “barbaric…

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ICE’s hiring surge is already a disaster

ICE’s hiring surge is already a disaster

Garrett Graff writes: [I]t turns out, if you’re hiring for a pariah agency using nakedly fascist and racist messaging and recruiting for a job where you get to be jeered by your neighbors and are so hated that you literally refuse to show your face, and trying to attract people who will get excited to cos-play as a Navy SEAL in full tactical gear to dress up like you’re taking Fallujah while facing down people in inflatable frog costumes and…

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Border Patrol’s Bovino seen as role model for ICE following leadership purge

Border Patrol’s Bovino seen as role model for ICE following leadership purge

Washington Examiner reports: The Trump administration has begun to purge Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in offices in five major U.S. cities and fill some of those top posts with senior Border Patrol agents who will take over interior immigration enforcement in those regions, according to five sources familiar with the plans. ICE leaders in Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and San Diego were relieved of their jobs and moved to other posts within the federal agency last Friday, the…

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The peril of a White House that flaunts its contempt for the law

The peril of a White House that flaunts its contempt for the law

Charlie Savage writes: Since he returned to office nine months ago, President Trump has sought to expand executive power across numerous fronts. But his claim that he can lawfully order the military to summarily kill people accused of smuggling drugs on boats off the coast of South America stands apart. A broad range of specialists in laws governing the use of lethal force have called Mr. Trump’s orders to the military patently illegal. They say the premeditated extrajudicial killings have…

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This county was the ‘model’ for local police carrying out immigration raids. It ended in civil rights violations

This county was the ‘model’ for local police carrying out immigration raids. It ended in civil rights violations

By Rafael Carranza, Arizona Luminaria This story was originally published by ProPublica Manuel Nieto Jr. and his sister had just pulled into a gas station to buy cigarettes and Gatorade when he noticed a sheriff’s deputy standing over two Latino men on the ground. Their north Phoenix neighborhood was on alert. Sheriff’s deputies had been targeting day-labor centers in the area and making traffic stops — arresting people who couldn’t prove their immigration status. They had one thing in common:…

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