Browsed by
Category: Politics

DHS has become the Department of Deportation and made America more dangerous for children

DHS has become the Department of Deportation and made America more dangerous for children

The New York Times reports: The Department of Homeland Security has diverted thousands of federal agents from their normal duties to focus on arresting undocumented immigrants, undermining a wide range of law enforcement operations in response to mounting pressure from President Trump, a New York Times investigation has found. Homeland security agents investigating sexual crimes against children, for instance, have been redeployed to the immigrant crackdown for weeks at a time, hampering their pursuit of child predators. A national security…

Read More Read More

Chicago pushback against immigration crackdown now serves as a model for other cities

Chicago pushback against immigration crackdown now serves as a model for other cities

The Associated Press reports: Baltazar Enriquez starts most mornings with street patrols, leaving his home in Chicago’s Little Village on foot or by car to find immigration agents that have repeatedly targeted his largely Mexican neighborhood. Wearing an orange whistle around his neck, the activist broadcasts his plans on Facebook. “We don’t know if they’re going to come back. All we know is we’ve got to get ready,” he tells thousands of followers. “Give us any tips if you see…

Read More Read More

Chicago-area mayor says Border Patrol terrorized his city. Here’s how to fight back, Charlotte

Chicago-area mayor says Border Patrol terrorized his city. Here’s how to fight back, Charlotte

Daniel Biss, mayor of Evanston, Illinois, writes: When federal agents came to my city of Evanston on Halloween this year, it was scary — and not in a fun way. That morning, we received reports of ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in our neighborhoods. Helicopters circled overhead. CBP Commander Greg Bovino himself was in town—suggesting this “operation” was more about a made-for-TV spectacle than any legitimate public safety goal. Then, after a traffic collision apparently caused deliberately…

Read More Read More

Faith leaders violently arrested at Broadview ICE facility protest

Faith leaders violently arrested at Broadview ICE facility protest

Religion News Service reports: In video recorded on Friday (Nov. 14) outside the embattled U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Illinois, the Rev. Michael Woolf stands alongside fellow protesters, fiddling awkwardly with his backpack as faith leaders and other protesters chant slogans at a line of police officers. A moment later, one officer can be seen walking forward, grabbing Woolf by the wrist and yanking. Demonstrators attempted to hold on to Woolf, who was wearing a clerical collar,…

Read More Read More

Are Israeli-backed human trafficking networks transferring people out of Gaza?

Are Israeli-backed human trafficking networks transferring people out of Gaza?

  A journey of suffering”. That’s how a Palestinian man described his transfer from Gaza, through Israel and Kenya, to South Africa. A journey so desperate that Palestinians paid thousands of dollars to leave their homes without knowing where they were going. A journey forced by more than two years of Israel’s genocide. In February, Israel and the US proposed forcibly removing Palestinians from Gaza. But Arab states rejected calls to take them in and rights groups labelled it ethnic…

Read More Read More

Students deserve to be told the truth about American history

Students deserve to be told the truth about American history

Clint Smith writes: “Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Thomas Jefferson,” I said to a group of about 70 middle schoolers in Memphis. Hands shot up across the auditorium. “What do we know about him?” I asked. “He was the president!” one said. “He had funny hair!” said another. “He wrote the Constitution?” one remarked, half-asking, half-asserting. I responded to each of their comments: “Yes, he was our country’s third president.” “That’s actually how many men wore their hair…

Read More Read More

As Dershowitz claims Epstein wasn’t a pedophile, Marjorie Taylor Greene pushes back against Trump

As Dershowitz claims Epstein wasn’t a pedophile, Marjorie Taylor Greene pushes back against Trump

The Daily Beast reports: Emeritus Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz entered the latest public spat around the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his friendship with President Donald Trump by arguing that Epstein wasn’t all that bad. Speaking with Chris Cuomo on NewsNation on Friday, Dershowitz thought it prudent to clarify the nature of Epstein’s crimes. “The predecessor on your show described Epstein as a convicted pedophile,” Dershowitz complained to Cuomo. “[Epstein] pleaded guilty to one count of having sex…

Read More Read More

Latino U.S. citizens targeted through racial profiling by federal immigration agents in Chicago

Latino U.S. citizens targeted through racial profiling by federal immigration agents in Chicago

Chicago Tribune reports: When a masked man grabbed Ernesto Diaz’s left shoulder and slammed him against a vehicle, he thought he was being robbed. Diaz, 23, had been walking down Archer Avenue on the Southwest Side in late September, heading toward the CTA Orange Line for a trip downtown. Earbuds in, he was listening to music and said he barely registered the vehicle that pulled up near him. That was until he felt the pain in his shoulder. Diaz felt…

Read More Read More

As ICE escalates its tactics, are federal agents truly ‘untouchable’ in the eyes of the law?

As ICE escalates its tactics, are federal agents truly ‘untouchable’ in the eyes of the law?

CNN analysis: Mere hours after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot a suspect last month – wounding a member of the arrest team in the process – the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles effectively exonerated the agent who opened fire. “PSA: A vehicle is a deadly weapon,” First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli wrote in a social media post. “Using it against law enforcement justifies their use of deadly force in self-defense.” Essayli alleged the man who was…

Read More Read More

Trump likely to face long military commitment and chaos if he ousts Maduro in Venezuela

Trump likely to face long military commitment and chaos if he ousts Maduro in Venezuela

CNN reports: President Donald Trump has said he believes Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s days are numbered, and that land strikes inside Venezuela are possible. Experts say that the US doesn’t currently have the military assets in place to launch a largescale operation to remove Maduro from power, though Trump has approved covert action within Venezuela, CNN has reported. But if Trump did order strikes inside Venezuela aimed at ousting Maduro, he could face serious challenges with fractured opposition elements and…

Read More Read More

Michael Wolff’s questionable explanation for cozying up to Jeffrey Epstein

Michael Wolff’s questionable explanation for cozying up to Jeffrey Epstein

David A. Graham writes: In her classic book The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcolm studied how the author Joe McGinniss buttered up the accused killer Jeffrey MacDonald—formally joining his legal-defense team and sending fawningly supportive letters after his conviction—only to turn around and publish a scathing book portraying him as a sociopath. Observing McGinniss’s approach, Malcolm draws a distinction between the reporting phase, when a journalist courts her subject, and the writing phase, when she betrays them. Many reporters…

Read More Read More

He’s called ‘Little Trump’ and he’s making enemies in the White House

He’s called ‘Little Trump’ and he’s making enemies in the White House

The Wall Street Journal reports: Bill Pulte marched into the Oval Office this summer and delivered one of his signature performances. Pulte, who heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, told the president he had identified leakers who were undermining the administration. He was carrying a “Ghostbusters”-style poster that featured pictures of administration officials and outside allies, outlined by red circles with lines through their faces, according to officials familiar with the meeting. For many in the West Wing, it was…

Read More Read More

The historical significance of the Trump-Epstein scandal: the degradation of humanity

The historical significance of the Trump-Epstein scandal: the degradation of humanity

  In the thicket of daily news, it’s often hard to place events within a broad historical context. Indeed, during periods of rapid change the present can feel like it is perpetually erasing the past. We fixate on the now and the what next? and rather than becoming illuminated, get sucked into a black hole of actions stripped of meaning. For this reason, the perspective of a scholar such as Sean Wilentz, the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American…

Read More Read More

Judges whose careers were all forged in the embers of Watergate have had it with Trump

Judges whose careers were all forged in the embers of Watergate have had it with Trump

Politico reports: When Donald Trump moved on his first day back in office to strip birthright citizenship from children born in the U.S. to some immigrant parents, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour called the newly inaugurated president a threat to the rule of law. Days after Trump mass-pardoned Jan. 6 defendants who attacked the Capitol, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth warned that for the first time in his career, “meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream.” And in September,…

Read More Read More

In the Epstein emails, no one is named more often than Trump himself

In the Epstein emails, no one is named more often than Trump himself

Miami Herald reports: Donald Trump is mentioned in Jeffrey Epstein’s emails over 1,000 times — the most cited person in the tranche released this week by the House Oversight Committee. Despite all the questions the emails have raised about his relationship with Epstein, Trump on Friday continued to fan the flames of the scandal. On his social media platform “Truth Social,” Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate some of the influential figures named in the emails. “I will…

Read More Read More

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene blasts Trump’s Epstein focus

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene blasts Trump’s Epstein focus

Politico reports: Donald Trump says Marjorie Taylor Greene has lost her way. Greene disagrees. The Republican firebrand, once one of the president’s strongest Capitol Hill allies, says it’s the president who is off course. He shouldn’t be trying to stop the release of the Epstein files, when so many of his most ardent followers are struggling to pay the bills. “It’s insanely the wrong direction to go,” Greene told POLITICO. “The five-alarm fire is health care and affordability for Americans….

Read More Read More