Browsed by
Category: Law/Crime

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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:…

Read More Read More

Federal judge orders Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino appear in her courtroom

Federal judge orders Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino appear in her courtroom

TPM reports: A Chicago federal judge on Friday demanded that CBP commander and federal escalation impresario Greg Bovino appear next week in her courtroom after he was accused of openly violating one of her orders. Attorneys in the case said on Thursday that Bovino had flung a canister of tear gas at a crowd of protestors in Chicago, days after he returned from a two-week absence due to a purported groin injury. They included an image and a link to…

Read More Read More

The risks of letting Trump become paymaster for the military

The risks of letting Trump become paymaster for the military

Don Moynihan writes: President Trump’s personalist presidency is driven by a simple logic: protect friends and punish enemies. The shutdown encapsulates this worldview. Trump is cancelling spending in blue states and cities and firing employees in “Democrat programs.” Even more worrying: he is using the shutdown to woo our military and other armed agents, with the goal of turning them into loyal friends as he pursues “the enemy from within.” Trump says that he can determine if the armed forces…

Read More Read More

The Supreme Court is the last defense against Trump’s military police state. Will the court do its job?

The Supreme Court is the last defense against Trump’s military police state. Will the court do its job?

Claire O. Finkelstein, Brenner M. Fissell, Mitt Regan and Benjamin R. Farley write: The Supreme Court is poised to decide a potentially momentous question for U.S. democracy: can the president unilaterally deploy federal troops on U.S. soil over the objections of state governors? In Trump v. Illinois, the Supreme Court will soon decide whether to issue a stay of a district court’s injunction of the deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago. The government’s brief argues there is “no reason…

Read More Read More

Why democracy is imperiled by corruption as easily as it is by authoritarianism

Why democracy is imperiled by corruption as easily as it is by authoritarianism

Will Freeman writes: President Dina Boluarte this month became the third Peruvian leader to be impeached in five years. With an approval rating hovering around 3 percent, she had become, by some estimates, one of the most loathed elected heads of state in the world. After her ouster, you would think the country would be celebrating. Ms. Boluarte, who was thrust into office in December 2022 after her predecessor was impeached, was widely blamed by Peruvians for failing to prevent…

Read More Read More

Steve Bannon is adamant ‘there’s a plan’ for third Trump term — despite the 22nd Amendment

Steve Bannon is adamant ‘there’s a plan’ for third Trump term — despite the 22nd Amendment

  The Daily Beast reports: Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon openly shared that there are plans to help Donald Trump circumvent the 22nd Amendment and secure a third presidential term. In an interview with The Economist, Bannon told the magazine’s editors, “He’s gonna get a third term, Trump ’28, Trump is gonna be president ’28 so people just ought to get accommodated with that.” When asked by editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes about the 22nd Amendment, Bannon replied, “There’s…

Read More Read More

Bodies wash ashore in Trinidad after U.S. strikes

Bodies wash ashore in Trinidad after U.S. strikes

The New York Times reports: The first body washed ashore on Trinidad’s northeastern coast soon after the United States carried out its first strike in September on a boat in the Caribbean. Villagers said the corpse had burn marks on its face and was missing limbs, as if it had been mangled by an explosion. The tides deposited another corpse on a nearby beach days later, drawing a wake of vultures. Its face was similarly unrecognizable, and its right leg…

Read More Read More

‘He’s not innocent’: GOP senator denounces Trump’s pardon of crypto billionaire CZ

‘He’s not innocent’: GOP senator denounces Trump’s pardon of crypto billionaire CZ

Politico reports: Republican Sen. Thom Tillis condemned President Donald Trump’s move to pardon cryptocurrency mogul Changpeng Zhao on Thursday, saying it sends “a bad signal.” “I don’t like it,” the retiring North Carolina Republican told reporters. “He was convicted. He’s not innocent.” His comments signal that some GOP lawmakers are uneasy with the move to pardon Zhao, who pleaded guilty in November 2023 to money laundering-related charges. Zhao, often known as CZ, founded the crypto exchange Binance, which federal prosecutors…

Read More Read More

The only check-and-balance that actually matters isn’t written in law

The only check-and-balance that actually matters isn’t written in law

Garrett Graff writes: The destruction this week of the East Wing of the White House has been uniquely shocking, a physical manifestation of what Donald Trump is doing to our presidency and our country — the excavators and heavy equipment demolishing a 120-year-old literal piece of American history feels in many ways a microcosm of so many Trump controversies. It came out of left field, with no real warning or public debate, no permissions asked or given, to serve Donald…

Read More Read More

Federal thugs head to San Francisco Bay Area to incite ‘backlash, chaos and violence.’ Don’t be baited

Federal thugs head to San Francisco Bay Area to incite ‘backlash, chaos and violence.’ Don’t be baited

San Francisco Chronicle reports: The Trump administration has dispatched more than 100 federal agents, including from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, to Coast Guard Base Alameda and they will begin to arrive Thursday, according to the U.S. Coast Guard and a source familiar with the operation. The surge of federal agents was seen as a likely precursor to President Donald Trump deploying National Guard troops to San Francisco. In other cities around the nation, the administration has increased immigration enforcement…

Read More Read More

Stephen Miller is directing Trump’s war on drug boats

Stephen Miller is directing Trump’s war on drug boats

Jonathan Blitzer writes: Late this summer, James Story, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela for three years of Donald Trump’s first term and for two of Joe Biden’s, felt that anything was possible in the relationship between Washington and Caracas. It had been six years since the U.S. closed its Embassy in Venezuela, to protest the rule of the Socialist authoritarian Nicolás Maduro. The issue of how to dislodge Maduro’s regime has been an American political conundrum for at…

Read More Read More

Fired Justice Department lawyer blows the whistle on abuses of power at the DOJ

Fired Justice Department lawyer blows the whistle on abuses of power at the DOJ

  60 Minutes reports: Erez Reuveni, a fired Department of Justice lawyer who’s now blowing the whistle, says he witnessed a disregard of due process and for the rule of law at the DOJ. Reuveni previously won commendations for his work and was so effective defending President Trump’s first-term immigration policy that he was promoted quickly in Mr. Trump’s second term. But he says he was put on leave and then fired after refusing to sign a brief in the…

Read More Read More

One target at a time: The logic that helped Israeli liberals commit genocide

One target at a time: The logic that helped Israeli liberals commit genocide

Yuval Abraham writes: A few months after October 7, I enrolled in an introductory course on genocide at the Open University of Israel. The lecturer began the first class by telling us — about 20 Jewish-Israeli students gathered on Zoom — that by the end of the semester we would understand exactly what genocide entails and be able to explain why Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza. In a nutshell, his argument was this: At most, Israel might be…

Read More Read More

From California to Chicago, the Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino is seen making race-based arrests

From California to Chicago, the Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino is seen making race-based arrests

Chicago Sun-Times reports: On the morning of Jan. 7, Jesús Ramírez and other day laborers huddled in a Home Depot parking lot in Bakersfield, California, hoping for work. Suddenly, they were surrounded by U.S. Homeland Security vehicles. One agent demanded Ramírez show his papers. When he pulled out his wallet, the agent “snatched” it and took his ID without asking questions, Ramírez said. “It was clear to me the agents did not know who I was,” Ramírez, 64, said in…

Read More Read More