Well, well, well. If it isn’t the system of checks and balances. We’ve missed you, buddy!
Long story somewhat short: ICE has been terrible for years, but it’s been much worse under Trump. During Trump’s first regime (~2016-2020), ICE got rocked by a court decision that prevented it from engaging in traffic stops just so it could arrest people for looking vaguely Mexican.
That settlement — secured with the assistance of the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) — was enacted in 2022 during the brief period between Trump Oval Office interloping.
Interlopement or not, it’s still the law of the land in Illinois. And that’s not playing well with Trump’s recent federal invasion of the Chicago area — one spearheaded by Nazi cosplayer Gregory Bovino, last seen violating the law much further south as the commander of a California-based Border Patrol unit.
Bovino chose to violate court orders so often during his short stint in Chicago, he’s been sent elsewhere by the Trump administration. It’s definitely not a sign of disapproval. It’s a vote of confidence that says the presidency will keep changing tables every time it loses a hand to the federal courts.
The Nava consent decree that forbids ICE from doing what it’s been doing in Chicago since before Trump re-grooved his ass marks in the chair behind the Resolute Desk.
And that means a lot of stops, arrests, and ensuing detentions are illegal. And because they’re illegal, people must be freed. The administration continues to act like there’s nothing in the law that prevents it from jailing people who present no flight risk or threat to public safety. That’s definitely not the law of the land and it’s definitely not the law in Seventh Circuit, which has already received notice of the administration’s appeal.
For now, however, that means a lot of people rounded up during Trump’s invasion of Chicago and ICE operations in the area preceding the anti-Democratic Party surge d/b/a “immigration enforcement” will no longer be imprisoned.
District Judge Jeffrey Cummings on Wednesday afternoon ordered the release of at least 313 people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement between June and early October.
[…]
Cummings has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to immediately release 13 detainees held in Texas, Missouri and other states that both the government and plaintiffs agree were detained in violation of the Castañon Nava settlement that prohibits warrantless immigration arrest in Illinois.
The order [PDF] itself doesn’t limit itself to 13 people, much less the 313 people stated by this Axios article. It says the government must take a look at more than twice this number and provide some sort of evidence as to why this other 300+ should continue to be detained.
To this end, by 12:00 p.m. CST on November 14, 2025, with respect to the subset of 615 individuals discussed on the record, defendants shall provide the Court with their names and specify which of the individuals in this group have been identified by defendants as posing a “high public safety risk” if they were released.
That deadline has come and gone. And the only thing the administration has done is file motions asking for this order to be stayed until this case can be heard by the Seventh Circuit Appeals Court. It has offered nothing in defense of those arrests and continued detentions of people it’s unlikely to be able to prove must be indefinitely detained despite being arrested in violation of the Nava Agreement (2022). But it’s apparently hoping the court that didn’t feel Gregory Bovino should be forced to respect the law will have much to say about the consent decree violations it engaged in while Bovino was still running the show in Chicago.
The Trump administration has been ramping up its rhetoric against Venezuela since Day 1. Efforts to arrest up to 3,000 migrants a day focused on Venezuelans, many of whom had fled to the United States seeking a land with actual freedom.
Those who weren’t simply locked up in ICE’s many forever prisons were sent to places even worse than the autocratic government they had fled. Many Venezuelans were branded Tren de Aragua gang members by faulty databases, fired cops, and a collective of bigots willing to push Trump’s xenophobic agenda.
That meant many alleged gang members were sent off to be tortured by the corrupt El Salvadoran government while imprisoned in the country’s infamous CECOT. The few people who managed to fight back against the Trump regime were soon faced with options even less palatable than an indefinite stay in El Savador’s CECOT hellhole.
The Trump administration simply can’t find enough people to arrest to satisfy ghoulish racist/Trump advisor (but I repeat myself) Stephen Miller’s desire to eject one million brown people from this country by EOB 12/31/2025. Now, it’s decided it can bump those bigoted numbers up by simply murdering people in boats seen heading north from Venezuela.
The Trump administration has constantly engaged in war rhetoric to defend its actions. First, it claimed the mere existence of foreign gangs justified its mass deportation efforts. More recently, it’s claiming the mere existence of an international drug trade is all the justification it needs to engage in extrajudicial killings.
To date, the Trump administration — headed up by hard-drinking, OpSec-ignoring, leader-in-name-only Pete Hegeseth — has murdered the occupants of at least 17 boats in international waters. As has been the case almost always with Trump 2.0, the administration acted first and bodged together legal justifications later.
It’s unlikely these legal justifications will hold up in court — at least any court that isn’t 5/9ths wholly subservient to Donald Trump. But, for now, no court has stopped the administration from doing what it wants, which means it continues to kill people it openly admits it doesn’t have the evidence to bring criminal charges against. Instead, it continues to angrily tap the “King Trump” signs it has placed around the Oval Office, daring anyone in the government to try to rein in the Executive Branch.
The narrative is this: drug trade is roughly equal to terrorist attacks that justify violent military responses. Bringing drugs to purchasers and middle men is nothing more than an act of war. Therefore, killing people just because is nothing more than the US defending itself against an undeclared war perpetrated by… I guess… uncut fentanyl?
Unlike the Trump administration, the US press is actually putting people on the ground and talking to those directly affected by its new War on Boats. Venezuela isn’t a safe place to visit, much less leave. And yet, the Associated Press has managed to talk to people in that country who are now seeing people they know being straight up murdered to satisfy the GOP’s racist blood lust.
In dozens of interviews in villages on Venezuela’s breathtaking northeastern coast, from which some of the boats departed, residents and relatives said the dead men had indeed been running drugs but were not narco-terrorists or leaders of a cartel or gang.
Most of the nine men were crewing such craft for the first or second time, making at least $500 per trip, residents and relatives said. They were laborers, a fisherman, a motorcycle taxi driver. Two were low-level career criminals. One was a well-known local crime boss who contracted out his smuggling services to traffickers.
Now, most Trump fans will immediately point to this as evidence that the administration is right about the people it’s killing in international waters. But even the most charitable readings of administration statements will prove this wrong. Trump and Hegseth have continually portrayed the people they’ve killed as “narco-terrorists” with ties to the upper levels of international drug cartels. The reality — at least for a small portion of the people murdered by our government — is that these are people just trying to make a little bit of money to make their lives back in Venezuela a little less miserable.
The US government has killed at least 66 people this way. And that includes people who just happen to have operable boats at a time when that’s really all that’s needed to put your in the cross hairs of the next military drone strike.
One of the people killed in a boat strike was Robert Sanchez, who was just a fisherman trying to make a living and, hopefully, obtain a better boat to increase his success chances while out in open waters. But because he went fishing off the coat of Venezuela, he was determined eligible for death from above:
Sánchez had just finished offloading a day’s catch last month when he told his mother he would be taking a short trip and would see her in a couple of days. They had no idea where he was going.
After seeing clips on social media that mentioned his death, relatives broke the news to his mother, but not until after ensuring she had taken her blood pressure medication. Sánchez’s youngest son, a third grader, could not accept for days that his father was gone. He kept asking adults if his father could have survived the explosion, noting he might still be at sea.
No, the adults told the boy. His father was gone.
Even if we decide — for the sake of argument — that everyone killed by boat strikes was a person in a boat carrying drugs to another destination, that still doesn’t excuse the administration’s actions. Sure, there’s been a “War on Drugs” ever since Richard Nixon deputized a drug-addled Elvis Presley, but that war has always been carried out using the USA’s accepted rules of engagement. While due process might be a bit of joke — what with the reliance on plea bargains and sting operations that are pretty much just entrapment — it was at least considered something worthy of lip service, if nothing else.
Now, it’s just the US government sinking boats and killing people and pretending this is all OK because… well… the Trump administration says it’s OK. But if you’re OK with this, you’re pretty much going to be OK with any expansion of extrajudicial killings of alleged drug traffickers. If there’s no significant push back, the administration will move these efforts inland, much like it has with its “border security” actions. CBP and Border Patrol officers are now wandering the streets of cities far removed from this nation’s southern border. It’s only a matter of time before this administration decides that the quasi-legal stuff it does in non-US territory is what needs to happen on US city streets.
At that point, your belated objections will mean nothing. The time to protest is now. Waiting until you have to step over the bodies of your fellow US residents to express your displeasure with this administration will be far too little and far too late.
Last year, we wrote about Donald Trump’s bullshit lawsuit against Iowa pollster Ann Selzer for releasing surprising polls right before the 2024 election suggesting that Kamala Harris might actually beat Donald Trump in Iowa. The polls turned out to be wrong—as polls sometimes are—and Trump decided this was grounds for a lawsuit. That case continues with a bunch of nonsense legal gamesmanship.
But Trump’s lawsuit wasn’t the only one. A separate “class action” lawsuit was filed against Selzer and the Des Moines Register by Dennis Donnelly, a random Des Moines Register subscriber who claimed the poll constituted “fraud,” “professional malpractice,” and—even more ridiculously—”interference with the right to vote.” It was basically a copycat lawsuit of Trump’s to try to put more pressure on Selzer and the Des Moines Register.
Polls, like nearly all speech, are protected by the First Amendment. To get past that rather large hurdle, a plaintiff would need to show the poll was somehow both false and made with “actual malice”—not that it was mean-spirited, but that Selzer basically knew it was “false” when she published it.
That’s a problem when the “expression” in question is a poll based on data Selzer actually collected. It’s an opinion derived from methodology, not a factual claim that can be “false.”
Finding actual malice requires Donnelly to plausibly allege Defendants sacrificed decades of work in cultivating this reputation for accuracy by “knowingly or recklessly” manufacturing a poll they knew was incorrect in pursuit of an unclear goal. See ECF No. 36 at 33. With no factual allegations to support such an assertion and mere conclusory statements, Donnelly asserts only a bare legal conclusion accompanied by actual malice buzzwords that Defendants acted knowingly or recklessly. This is insufficient to meet the plausibility standard….
The court’s response to the “fraudulent misrepresentation” claim is even more brutal:
No false representation was made. Defendants conducted a poll using a particular methodology which yielded results that later turned out to be different from the event the poll sought to measure. The results of an opinion poll are not an actionable false representation merely because the anticipated results differ from what eventually occurred…. Donnelly, and all other readers, knew how the poll was conducted because the poll results were accompanied by a thorough discussion of methodology…. Donnelly does not claim the disclosed methodology was not followed, that results were falsified, or that Defendants altered the poll in some other way which did not reflect the publicly disclosed methodology. Defendants told readers exactly what they did and how they did it. Therefore, no false representation was made.
The court then highlights the absurdity of Donnelly’s position by applying his own logic to the polls he cited favorably:
Donnelly cites to several other polls which had then-candidate Trump ahead by between seven and nine points…. The actual margin of the election was thirteen points…. Donnelly cites these other polls favorably, yet, by his definition of misrepresentation, every single one of these polls cited also “was all wrong.” … These polls were not fraudulently misrepresenting the state of the race, they merely used different methodologies in an attempt to best capture a snapshot of a dynamic race. … Donnelly fails to cite to any authority finding an opinion poll of a future event constitutes a false factual assertion.
The “professional malpractice” claim fares no better. The court compares it to suing a weather forecaster for an incorrect prediction and walks through the parade of absurdities that would follow:
Donnelly’s claim also fails because political opinion polls are predictive and inherently uncertain. Defendants here carried out a randomized survey and published the results along with a full explanation of the poll methodology. Donnelly’s novel attempt to impose liability for news prediction is similar to Brandt v. Weather Channel, Inc. in which a plaintiff sought to hold a news channel liable for an inaccurate weather forecast…. That court noted “to impose such a duty would be to chill the well established first amendment rights of the broadcasters.” Id. at 1346. The court in Brandt further observed the litany of absurd suits which could follow from imposing such a duty, such as construction workers suing when they pour concrete in reliance on a weather report forecasting no rain or commuters suing when they are stuck in traffic and late to work because the news reported there would be light traffic. Id. Finding for Donnelly here would permit similar absurdity. The Court declines to permit such absurdity and finds Defendants owed no such duty to Donnelly.
This ruling doesn’t just dismiss Donnelly’s lawsuit—it preemptively demolishes every argument Trump is using in his own case. As Jacob Sullum at Reason points out, Trump’s lawsuit is even weaker than Donnelly’s already pathetically weak case:
If anything, Trump’s fraud claims are even less plausible than Donnelly’s. Donnelly, who sued on behalf of all Des Moines Register subscribers, actually has a commercial relationship with the newspaper. Trump, by contrast, does not seem to have any such connection with the Register or Selzer. But both lawsuits suffer from the same basic problem: Because they treat misleading journalism as actionable fraud, they amount to thinly veiled assaults on freedom of the press.
Of course, these lawsuits were never really about having plausible claims. These lawsuits exist to send a message: publish anything that favors a political opponent of Donald Trump, and he and his MAGA allies will bury you in litigation. It doesn’t matter if the cases are frivolous. The process is the punishment, and the threat of more lawsuits is the deterrent. That’s not a legal strategy—it’s a censorship campaign dressed up in legal paperwork.
Gregory Bovino’s star will continue to rise. Admitting you lied to a court no longer matters when the entire administration does it on a daily basis. All that matters is that you serve the fascist cause. And the Border Patrol commander sent to handle things in Chicago certainly has the right look for the job.
Between the alt-right hairdo and the wave the looks a lot like a Nazi salute, the guy who used to patrol the southern border in California is now the face of Trump’s federal invasion of Chicago, Illinois. The arrival of federal officers and federal troops has been greeted with protests, public statements, and lawsuits.
Bovino hasn’t actually been sued personally, but as the commander of the collective of bigots engaged in hunting down non-whites and removing them from the country, Bovino is definitely the source of the rights violations currently being litigated.
Bovino prides himself on answering to no one and perpetrating as much violence as possible against those who oppose him. He put his face out there willingly and seems to welcome as much press attention as possible, even as he continues to be the worst version of himself.
His actions have already gained the attention of a federal judge. The unprovoked violence engaged in by federal officers has already been hit with a federal injunction. And Bovino himself was one of the first to violate the court order, captured on camera tossing tear gas into a crowd of protesters despite not doing any of things he was supposed to do before throwing around crowd control munitions: issuing dispersal orders, giving people time to disperse, etc. When caught, he claimed someone had hit him in the head with a rock and suggested the presiding judge had no business telling him what to do since she herself hadn’t been hit in the head with a rock.
“Mr. Bovino and the Department of Homeland Security claimed that he had been hit by a rock in the head before throwing the tear gas, but video evidence disproves this. And he ultimately admitted he was not hit until after he threw the tear gas,” Ellis said Thursday.
The injunction granted by Judge Ellis on Thursday extends temporary restrictions that she issued last month. Judge Ellis ordered federal agents to wear body cameras, give at least two audible warnings before using riot control weapons, and to use those weapons only to “preserve life or prevent catastrophic outcomes.”
She said the restrictions were necessary because immigration agents in Chicago had pointed guns at civilians who were not presenting a physical threat, used pepper spray, deployed tear gas and shot pepper balls.
“I see little reason for the use of force that the federal agents are currently using,” Judge Ellis, who was nominated to the federal bench by President Barack Obama, said in a ruling from the bench. She added: “The use of force shocks the conscience.”
Her new order [PDF] says Bovino only part of larger problem — one that takes the form of pretty much every bully and bigot that currently serve as part of Trump’s mass deportation machine:
Plaintiffs have also presented evidence that makes clear that senior officials have encouraged and endorsed federal agents’ targeting of non-violent individuals exercising their First Amendment rights. For example, Defendant Noem has instructed federal agents to “go hard” and “hammer” individuals for “the way they are talking, speaking, who they’re affiliated with.” Defendant Bovino followed this up by informing federal agents that a “free speech zone” outside of the Broadview Detention Center is “now going to be a ‘free arrest zone.’” He later stated in an interview: “If someone strays into a pepper ball, then that’s on them. Don’t protest, and don’t trespass.” And during his deposition, he confirmed that he believed federal agents’ uses of force throughout Operation Midway Blitz were “more than exemplary.”
That much makes it clear the administration (in whatever form) will lie about the dangers it faces just so it can continue to amp up its own violence and violent rhetoric. You know who else does that? Bullying children, which is pretty much the entirety of the anti-migrant workforce, as Lisa Needham notes in her rundown of this year’s deportation efforts:
The federal government keeps painting a front-facing, meme-driven picture of ICE, one where they are impossibly tough and skilled, and they get to crack heads because it is so violent out there. But when they are forced to tell the truth in court, their injuries are comically minor, the kind of thing you wouldn’t even go home from work for.
So, which is it? Well, it really is both.
When DHS’s goons are a roving band of masked armed men, they’re tough as hell. And why not? They spend their days arresting schoolteachers and tear-gassing kids from a safe distance away. They’re pretty impervious to harm. That said, they also are little babies, because they don’t believe there should be any consequences for their actions, and even the smallest harm they suffer is an outrage, something they simply can’t comprehend.
And that’s completely expected. It’s an administration filled with some of the most childish people ever to hold high-level government positions. They’ve modeled themselves after Trump’s infantile belligerence and they’ve been rewarded handsomely for prostrating themselves in front of a man who is the embodiment of the phrase “lowest common denominator.” You’d never give a toddler the power to deprive people of their lives or freedoms. And yet, here we are, overrun by toddlers with lots of power and ambition but deliberately unwilling to grow up, even when there’s an entire nation at stake.
For all its talk about trimming down government spending, an untold amount of money has been blown just to keep one person from getting one over on the Trump administration.
That man would be Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He became the poster boy for the regime’s bigotry when he fought back against his sudden deportation to El Salvador’s most infamous prison.
Abrego Garcia is Salvadoran. He fled that country and sought asylum in the United States. There were reasons he didn’t want to be sent back there. Not that the Trump administration cared. It just wanted him out and was willing to send him to a torture prison run by a self-admitted dictator. The administration made a lot of questionable claims about Garcia’s supposed MS-13 gang activity to justify flying him out to a receptive hellhole.
Abrego Garcia fought back. And he has proven to be a constant embarrassment for a government overrun by mouth-breathing bullies. Garcia managed to get un-ejected from the country, exposing multiple lies told by the government while doing so. For that, he was punished further. The administration brought him back just so it could throw him in an American prison, claiming he was involved in all sorts of hideous crimes.
A court reasonably found that this was vindictive prosecution. It also ordered Abrego Garcia’s release. But the government fought back with an absurd (and hideous) trial tax: Garcia could either plead guilty to the (pun intentional?) trumped-up charges or get hurled into a war-torn country where human rights are nearly nonexistent.
The Trump administration has moved to dissolve the ban on Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s removal so that it can proceed with his deportation to Liberia.
In a series of filings overnight, government attorneys said that the Salvadoran native’s claim of fear of torture or persecution in the African nation was denied after he was interviewed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services last week.
The attorneys for the Department of Justice argued that the preliminary injunction blocking Abrego Garcia’s removal to Liberia should be dissolved because the government received assurances from the government of the West African country that he will not be persecuted or tortured.
Yep, that’s how it’s going in the purported Land of the Free that has spent the past few days stroking itself off in celebration of Veterans Day. American troops, who have done everything they can to prevent foreign countries from becoming what the Trump administration desires to be, are being celebrated for protecting the freedoms this regime considers to be mere privileges.
And let’s all enjoy a long disgusted LOL at the government’s assertions. Liberia’s government is corrupt AF and any assurances it might make about some rando should not be trusted. And, again, if the real reason (as stated multiple times by the administration) is to remove this “dangerous criminal” from the US, what’s wrong with sending him to Costa Rica? The government has already said it will take custody of Abrego Garcia, and it would be another “win” for the administration to add another person to its “self-deportation” column.
But we all know what’s really happening here. The Trump administration wants to punish Abrego Garcia for making them look bad. And sending him to a country he’s agreed to go to doesn’t do that. They need him to feel endangered to make it clear to others who might stand up to having their own civil liberties and rights violated, that they, too, may face similar risks. Abrego Garcia spoke out against the injustices the Trump administration rained down upon him, and for that he must pay.
This constant hate-on is considered a feature, not a bug, by the so-called representatives of the Free World. It’s abhorrent and it should be a constant stain on their legislative histories. Unfortunately, there are no adults with any semblance of a conscience left in the GOP, so we’ll get what we get for as long as people who stroke themselves off to the National Anthem continue to believe this nation’s path to greatness involves destroying everyone’s humanity, including their own.
We’ll see where this goes from here, but for the moment, this order [PDF], issued by federal judge Karin Immergut still stands:
For the above reasons, this Court concludes that Plaintiffs have demonstrated that Defendants violated 10 U.S.C. § 12406 and the Tenth Amendment and satisfy the requirements for a permanent injunction. Therefore, this Court PERMANENTLY ENJOINS Defendants Pete Hegseth, the U.S. Department of Defense, Kristi Noem, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from […] federalizing and deploying members of the National Guard in Oregon
This has already happened once. And, for reasons that went mostly unexplained by two of three judges ruling in favor of the administration, a stay was issued that allowed it to continue exploring its martial law options in a city Trump has already admitted he might have been lied to about in terms of civil unrest.
The judges blocking the injunction basically said we have to trust the government, even when it’s obviously lying to us — something pointed out in the sharp dissent written by the third judge in the case (Susan Graber). Her dissent noted that most of the protest involved people wearing inflatable animal costumes (and, memorably, nothing at all). It also noted the absolute dearth of calls from law enforcement for backup when dealing with Portland’s (non-threatening) protesters. Her dissent also pointed out how none of this could possibly add up to the clear and present danger the administration has used to justify the deployment of National Guard troops.
Judge Immergut makes many of the same points: there’s no real threat, the protests have been almost exclusively peaceful, and the government has lied so often it should not be granted judicial deference. The 106-page order practically dares the Ninth Circuit to again ignore the facts on the ground when it is inevitably appealed by the federal government.
For example, here’s the judge taking the government down a few notches (and suggesting contempt findings are perhaps just as inevitable as the administration’s routine disregard for legal precedent) for pretending it didn’t have time to comply with the first order while it simultaneously scrambled troops from out-of-state in an attempt to skirt the expected restraining order:
Ordinarily, this Court would be inclined to accept Defendants’ explanation for their violation of the First TRO [temporary restraining order] given that “the first shift” at the Portland ICE facility commenced prior to this Court’s issuance of the First TRO. However, in light of the following facts, this Court is deeply troubled by Defendants’ continued deployment of Oregon National Guardsmen at the Portland ICE facility in violation of the First TRO. In the seven hours that Defendants took to “convey the message” of the First TRO “to people on the ground,” Defendants simultaneously “convey[ed] the message” to the U.S. Army Northern Command to send 200 of the federalized California National Guard personnel in Los Angeles to Portland. In other words, Defendants had time to order and coordinate the transport of federalized California National Guardsmen from Los Angeles to Portland but needed more time to communicate with the Oregon National Guardsmen at the Portland ICE facility.
The dissent to the Ninth Circuit opinion — combined with the administration’s attempt to circumvent the court order blocking deployment of Oregon National Guard troops by sending in a bunch of troops from other states — has resulted in a successful petition for an en banc hearing by Judge Susan Graber. That means the government is far less likely to see its bluster, outright lies, and end around plays entertained by a far more representative group of Ninth Circuit judges.
Furthermore, the alleged “escalation” cited by the Trump administration is simply a lie, as those who’ve been on the ground (Portland Police Bureau officials) have already (credibly, according to the court) testified:
Any riotous activity affecting the Portland ICE building peaked in June and had subsided for months before the President’s September 27, 2025 callout of the National Guard to Oregon. Regarding the nature of the crowd and its behavior, this Court finds the following. First, the size of the crowds decreased dramatically from June to September. Second, the number of officers briefly increased in response to the peak activity in mid-June, but it quickly subsided and remained at a low steady state until September 27, 2025. Third, the crowd was not directed by an organized group. Fourth, members of the crowd were rarely armed. Fifth and finally, the crowd’s shift in focus from the ICE building and the federal personnel in June to counter protester disputes in September demonstrates that much of the activity since mid-June had little to no effect on the ICE building and federal operations.
And these are things that were happening most of time, according to local law enforcement leaders:
From September 19 to September 28, immediately before the National Guard callout, there was “[n]othing much” going on outside the ICE building. Throughout the protests, PPB Commander Schoening testified that protesters wore “inflatable costumes.” Similarly, PPB Assistant Chief Dobson described “folks in costumes” at the ICE Facility, as well as “other almost festive-type events going on down there,” including “dance parties.”
Also: the government — the federal government, that is — can’t seem to stop lying:
To the extent that it lacks corroboration from other sources of evidence, the Court does not find reliable ICE/ERO Field Office Director Wamsley’s characterization of the damage to the Portland ICE Facility, which suggested damage was more extensive than that which is reflected in the rest of the record.
[…]
There is no credible evidence, however, that all the doors and windows of the ICE facility were broken. No other witness described damage to this degree, including Commander W.T., who was at the Portland ICE Facility every other week the entire summer. Additionally, Director Wamsley testified that she did not know whether there would be any photos of this damage or whether there was any documentation of the repair estimates.
It does it all the time, even when it has to know its lies will be exposed:
Furthermore, PPB reporting from June 14 show additional inconsistencies in the federal government’s version of events. PPB Captain Schoening’s activity log documented: “ICE calling saying they are barricaded in the building and fire lit. Difficult to get accurate information from them. What they say is happening is frequently contradicted by video feeds and subsequent activity. Air 1 shows no fire.” Also, shortly after they reported being barricaded, PPB observed an FPS employee exit a door and noted that FPS “ha[d] been using th[at] door regularly for employee ingress/egress. Th[at] door was reported earlier to be barricaded.”
You think that’s bad? Get ready for this one:
FPS [Federal Protective Services] reported a fire to PPB, but the “fire” turned out to be candles lit for a vigil set up by demonstrators.
In fact, most of the “violence” observed by federal officers was either unprovoked attacks by officers against protesters or instigated by Trump fans who rolled up on peaceful protests in hopes of picking a fight.
This Court finds that many reported disturbances at the ICE Facility after July 4 did not involve law enforcement at all. This Court also received evidence regarding disruptive behavior between individuals within the vicinity of the ICE building since June. Specifically, this Court received evidence regarding altercations between protesters and counter-protesters. Based on that evidence, this Court finds the following: Violence between protesters and counter-protesters occurred outside the Portland ICE building from June to September 27, 2025, but had, at most, a minimal effect on federal law enforcement’s protection of the building and federal personnel.
106 pages. Read it all. Lie after lie after lie from the administration and the small team of DOJ lawyers still willing to appease Trump, rather than seek justice:
As related to the time period immediately before the President’s callout of the National Guard, this Court heard testimony from FPS officers that PPB does not respond to their requests and that FPS stopped calling PPB altogether. The Court does not find this testimony to be credible.
[…]
The Court finds that there is no credible evidence that protest activities at the ICE facility created more than a minimal interference with Defendants’ ability to enforce Title 8 immigration laws in Portland. Director Wamsley testified herself that “altercations between protesters” do not “inhibit the execution of federal immigration law.”
There’s no “rebellion” happening here, the judge says, quoting the same law the administration is now abusing on a regular basis. There’s no concerted effort to seize control of federal property. There are no persistent attacks on federal or local law enforcement. There’s no organized group hoping to seize power. This is exactly the sort of thing this particular administration is incapable of handing: a persistent display of opposition that rarely, if ever, engages in the sort of behavior that might justify the deployment of military troops. The protesters are a fly the government can’t swat, whose mere existence is annoying enough the Commander-in-Chief and his immediate underlings have to constantly lie about to salvage their unconstitutional acts. And, despite all of their power, they’re losing this battle. Let’s see if the Ninth Circuit is willing to make this loss permanent.
Earlier this year, I wrote about how ICE had decided to publish a horrifying recruitment video that mixed in footage of ICE raids, including one that got Kristi Noem in some hot water, along with the introduction to the Pokémon animated series, complete with the theme music behind it. The video itself wasn’t terribly surprising. ICE is filled with, and run by, terrible people and their decision to liken illegal immigrants in America to fantasy animals fit only for capture and vicarious battle is simply par for the course. The real surprise for me was that Nintendo, a company I am comfortable labeling as addicted to IP litigation, did absolutely nothing about it.
I can’t stress this point enough: Nintendo attempted to oppose a Costa Rican grocery store’s trademark application for being called “Super Mario Supermarket,” but can’t find enough spine to respond to ICE’s pilfering of its IP with anything other than an acknowledgement that it didn’t authorize its use. Neville Chamberlain would have been proud.
As with anything from this dumpster fire of an administration, failing to slap back at them results only in an increase in bad behavior. Both the White House and DHS appear to be increasing their video game based messaging, now including other game properties as well.
Earlier this week the White House posted an AI-generated image on X featuring President Donald Trump dressed as Master Chief from the Halo series, saluting a US flag (with missing stars) and holding a Covenant energy sword.
This was followed by another post by the official DHS account on X, which showed a screenshot from Halo along with the message “destroy the Flood – join ICE”.
So, unlike in the Pokémon instance, I waited. Not for there to be online outrage about the use of a beloved video game property in order to further the administration’s fascistic goals. I knew that was coming and it showed up right on time. I was waiting for Microsoft’s response to the use of its IP in this manner.
I’m still waiting. As best as I can tell, Microsoft hasn’t said a single freaking word about this whole thing. And, as I said was the case with the earlier Nintendo story, that means that the company either officially or tacitly endorses the use. There is no other potential way to read this. And it is not lost on anyone that Microsoft donated to Trump’s campaign and has all kinds of government contracts with this administration. Their silence, it appears, is designed to keep the money flowing.
Those who worked on the franchise have not been so silent.
Speaking to Game File, Halo co-creator and Master Chief lead designer Marus Lehto said he found the DHS’s ICE recruitment post “absolutely abhorrent”, saying: “It really makes me sick seeing Halo co-opted like this.”
Meanwhile, Jaime Griesemer – one of the chief designers on numerous early Halo games – said he found the post showing Trump as Master Chief amusing, stating that he took it as a compliment because “like anything with cultural capital, it is going to be used by politicians and brands and anyone else looking for relevancy”.
However, Griesemer said he didn’t approve of the DHS / ICE post, saying: “Using Halo imagery in a call to ‘destroy’ people because of their immigration status goes way too far, and ought to offend every Halo fan, regardless of political orientation. I personally find it despicable. The Flood are evil space zombie parasites and are not an allegory to any group of people.”
What those people cannot do is send C&D notices to the government. They can’t get Microsoft’s lawyers involved. They don’t have a legal war chest to throw around, nor the IP rights directly to protect from use by this clown show of a government.
And because of that inaction, the administration has become even more emboldened to do this to others.
Now, journalist Alyssa Mercante has received a statement from DHS saying it had no plans to stop using video games to spread its messaging.
“We will reach people where they are with content they can relate to and understand, whether that be Halo, Pokémon, Lord of the Rings or any other medium,” the statement reads. “DHS remains laser focused on bringing awareness to the flood of crime that criminal illegal aliens have inflicted on our country. We aren’t slowing down.”
Again, these are companies that have been all too happy to throw legal threats and/or lawsuits around for the barest of reasons. Here, however, they are silent.
This administration isn’t content to be normal awful. It insists on being ghastly awful as often as possible.
Not content to eject hundreds of migrants into foreign torture prisons, the administration has decided it’s time to start killing foreign people in boats just because. That’s not me using a worn-out turn of phrase. That was the administration’s official response when it began engaging in extrajudicial killings in international waters. It fired first and issued its justification after.
At first, the theory was that the international drug trade amounted to war-like actions against the US that would justify the violence. But that excuse only works for so long. Limitations on executive power are supposed to force the president to present his case for war to Congress. Trump doesn’t want to do this even though it’s virtually assured GOP legislators would trip over themselves to rubber stamp whatever xenophobic violence the Trump administration wants to engage in.
Department of Defense (DOD) officials told Democratic lawmakers in a brief on the U.S. military’s strikes against boats off the coast of northern South America that the military is not identifying the occupants of the boats before they bomb them.
[…]
On Thursday, Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-California) told CNN that the Pentagon briefed her and other lawmakers on the attacks, informing them that the administration does not “need to positively identify individuals on the vessel to do the strikes.”
The administration attacked the boats — rather than detaining and then prosecuting the people they claimed were drug traffickers — “because they could not satisfy the evidentiary burden” to successfully prosecute them, Jacobs elaborated.
So, it’s pretty much civil asset forfeiture, but with the military killing people rather than merely robbing them of their property. It’s a middle finger to due process that makes it clear this administration would rather kill people than prosecute them, which is going to get even more frightening when it inevitably decides it can bring this undeclared war back home.
Even though it probably feels it owes no one any explanation for its actions, the Trump administration is still trying to find some way to sell the system of checks and balances on its offshore murder program. Some form of justification is needed for these extrajudicial murders. And the administration’s latest legal theory is both sickening and astounding. Realizing that referencing “hostilities” might put time limits on boat strikes, the Trump DOJ continues to revise its take on war powers, which has led to this bit of galaxy brain rationalization:
A top Justice Department lawyer has told lawmakers that the Trump administration can continue its lethal strikes against alleged drug traffickers in Latin America — and is not bound by a decades-old law requiring Congress to give approval for ongoing hostilities.
The key word here is “hostilities.” The administration must seek approval from Congress for “sustained” actions against a foreign enemy. The War Powers Act was passed in response to President Nixon’s undeclared war on Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Nixon justified military action in Cambodia by claiming the country was harboring Vietcong combatants.
That law sets a 60-day time limit on actions like these and it has been routinely ignored by the Executive Branch. President Obama blew it off to engage in an undeclared war in Libya, while Trump did the same thing during his first term to engage in sustained air strikes in both Yemen and Syria.
The second Trump administration is now blowing off the War Powers Act to prevent it from at least temporarily halting boat strikes in the Caribbean and those that are now taking place in the Pacific Ocean. Here’s how the Office of Legal Counsel — via T. Elliot Gaiser — is seeking to circumvent the long-codified 60-day limit:
Gaiser said the administration did not believe the strikes met the definition of hostilities under the law and did not intend to seek an extension of the deadline nor Congress’s approval of ongoing action, according to three people familiar with the matter, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
In other words, because boat strike murder victims are not firing back at US troops or engaged in any attacks on US military personnel/bases, they are not engaged in “hostilities.” If these strikes aren’t a response to “hostilities,” there should be no time limit on them. And that is some insanely dangerous bullshit.
“What they’re saying is anytime the president uses drones or any standoff weapon against someone who cannot shoot back, it’s not hostilities‚” said Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser to the State Department who is now a senior adviser for the U.S. program at the International Crisis Group. “It’s a wild claim of executive authority.”
Yeah, it is. It’s pedantry in service of straight up murder. The Defense Department has admitted it’s killing people because it can’t secure a criminal conviction. The administration is continuing to pretend that the mere existence of an international drug market justifies drone strikes on boats in international waters. And now it’s going even further, threatening land wars (but without actually declaring war) in Columbia, Venezuela, and for some fucking reason, Nigeria.
We have the same people who see Orwell’s 1984 as a blueprint making it clear they believe Mr. Kurtz is the real hero of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. And as if this wasn’t dystopian enough, the administration is using NSA-esque contact chaining to kill people simply because they might be acquainted with someone (allegedly) in the drug trade:
“What they told us is they have to show a connection to a designated terrorist organization or their affiliate, and as long as they can show that connection, they believe they are authorized to strike,” Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-California) said in an interview.
But such connections could be as much as “three hops away” from a known drug trafficker, Jacobs told reporters after the briefing.
Under this theory, if you know or are acquainted with anyone who purchases/uses illicit drugs, you’re probably just two hops away from a “known drug trafficker.” You’ll only be three hops away if there are enough small-time middlemen involved that haven’t previously been arrested on drug charges. Three hops in the United States would make most of the population a “justifiable” target for an extrajudicial drone strike. Just because it’s happening to non-citizens in international waters doesn’t change the math. It just makes it easier for most Americans to stomach and much easier for the bigots in power to sell to the bigots in their voting bloc.
This news should be far more heartening than it is. In any normal version of the United States, it might have been. The administration’s willingness to perpetrate immoral and illegal evil on a daily basis has outpaced efforts by citizens and the judicial branch to stem the tide.
Still, maybe this is hopeful? I mean, if mandatory detention of people suspected of immigration violations is this obviously (and almost unanimously) illegal, doesn’t that mean it eventually has to end?
More than 100 federal judges have now ruled at least 200 times that the Trump administration’s effort to systematically detain immigrants facing possible deportation appeared to violate their rights or was just flatly illegal, according to a POLITICO review.
The rulings come from judges appointed by every president since Ronald Reagan, including 12 appointed by President Donald Trump. One of those appointees took the bench just last month.
Any ruling against Trump and his policies receives the same response: “activist” judges are ruining America and probably love crime. That some of these “activist” judges were appointed by Trump tends to go ignored by the loudmouths engaged in PR work for the nation’s leading producer of unlawful bullshit.
And that’s the case here as well.
“President Trump and Secretary Noem are now enforcing this law as it was actually written to keep America safe,” said Tricia McLaughlin, who predicted appellate courts would side with the administration.
The Justice Department echoed DHS, saying “President Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda is a top national security priority that this Department of Justice will continue to vigorously defend whenever challenged in court.”
But mandatory detention of migrants isn’t something that’s ever been considered legal, much less normal. People accused of criminal acts (rather than the civil violations most immigration offenses are) are generally able to avail themselves of their due process rights, as well as being able to return home until their cases are presented to the court.
That’s not what’s happening to migrants under Trump. Nearly everyone picked up by ICE, CBP, or any number of federal officers now expected to concentrate on civil violations rather than actual crime gets sent to a detention center, reversing three decades of immigration enforcement practice that allowed migrants without prior criminal records or who had longstanding ties to this country to remain free until their cases were called. It’s even worse than that now: ICE is using the same policy revision to deny detained migrants access to legal assistance or to ask judges to release them on bond.
This stems from the administration’s willful misreading of prior policies and previous case law. It applies the term “applicants for admission” (who can be detained until cases are heard) to any migrant its roving goon squads come across, even if they’ve already been in this nation for years and/or are already engaged in asylum requests or nationalization efforts. That’s why the DHS and DOJ are dismissing pending immigration violation hearings: to convert those seeking to remain in this country into indefinite detainees… and then into deportees to whatever country the US government feels like sending them to.
Sure, there’s still an argument to be made (albeit in extremely bad faith) that “liberal” judges are going after Trump just because they don’t like Trump. 87 of these judges were appointed by Joe Biden, Barack Obama, or Bill Clinton. But 27 judges appointed by GOP presidents have reached the same conclusions, including 12 appointed by Trump himself.
The ultimate question is whether or not this will ever matter. The Trump administration seems to feel it won’t. It’s not changing its policies and it is certainly aware that a majority of Supreme Court justices are activists who play for the “right” team. All it has to do is keep the appeals process rolling until the Supreme Court takes up the case. If it loses that one, it might be shocked. But it may also be that the clock runs out on this administration before it manages to generate precedent it doesn’t like. It still has more than three years to go. And until the upper levels of the court system step up to shut this down, its presumptively illegal actions will continue uninterrupted.
Nothing survives a purge. Especially not the truth.
The DOJ secured a conviction for Washington state resident Taylor Taranto. According to the DOJ’s May 21, 2025 press release, Taranto had committed several federal crimes, including carrying two guns without a license and engaging in “false information and hoaxes.”
Here are the details:
On June 28, 2023, near National Harbor, Maryland, Taranto broadcast a livestream of himself as he sat behind the wheel of his van. He stated that he had been “working on a detonator” and indicated to his audience that he would drive a car bomb into the National Institute of Standards and Technology. His target was a neutron reactor housed at the NIST campus. He then drove over the Wilson Bridge to Alexandria, Virginia, where he parked his van in the middle of the street and ran away from it, demonstrating to his audience how he would create the appearance of an emergency.
The FBI’s Washington Field Office and the Joint Terrorism Task Force mobilized immediately to find Taranto, alerting regional law enforcement agencies of the potential bomb threat. The following day, the FBI discovered Taranto’s location when he broadcast another livestream that showed him driving around D.C.’s Kalorama neighborhood. Law enforcement officers arrested Taranto at Kalorama and discovered that the bomb threat was a hoax. When law enforcement officers searched his vehicle, they found two firearms, multiple magazines, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Those are the facts. But they’re not all of the facts.
First, “driving around DC’s Kalorama neighborhood” may be factually correct, but the DOJ deliberately refuses to statewho Taranto was targeting.
A federal judge has sentenced a man to time served for making a hoax threat near the D.C. residence of former President Barack Obama two years ago, prompting a massive law enforcement response that included a bomb squad and sniffer dogs.
Second, it ignores who Taylor Taranto is, much like the presiding judge was forced to do thanks to previous actions by Donald Trump:
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols noted that Taranto had no criminal history — partly because the Justice Department had previously moved to dismiss several charges related to Taranto’s participation in the siege on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
But just because Trump gave Taranto (along with pretty much every other participant in the 2021 raid on the Capitol building) clemency doesn’t mean he didn’t do the things he did on that date. You have to be convicted to obtain a pardon. And you have to be accused of criminal acts to secure clemency.
The Trump DOJ would rather no one remember Taranto for who he was on January 6, 2021. It wants everyone to pretend Taranto was just some guy driving around DC who had never previously supported Trump so hard he felt compelled to commit federal crimes two years before he committed these federal crimes.
On January 6, 2021, thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol while a joint session of Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election. Taranto was accused of participating in the riot in Washington, D.C., by entering the U.S. Capitol Building. After the riot, Taranto returned to his home in the State of Washington, where he promoted conspiracy theories about the events of January 6, 2021.
The DOJ has clawed back this memo and replaced it with one that excises this and any other reference to the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol building. In doing so, it severs Taranto from his support for Trump and Trump’s election conspiracy theories. Its official press release does the same thing, removing anything that might suggest former president Obama was the target of Taranto’s malicious acts.
Not only is the administration actively removing the truth from court records, it’s removing the people who put these facts in their sentencing menu. First, the government came for the words. Then it came for the people who said them.
Two federal prosecutors were informed Wednesday that they will be put on leave after filing a legal brief that described the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as being carried out by “thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters,” sources familiar with their removals told ABC News.
The two prosecutors, Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White, were locked out of their government devices and informed Wednesday morning they will be placed on leave, just hours after they filed a sentencing memorandum in the case of Taylor Taranto, the sources said.
The sentencing memo Valdivia and White filed also noted that Taranto appeared to zero in on a home belonging to former President Barack Obama after Trump published “the purported address” of Obama’s home on Truth Social. Taranto re-posted that address and ranted on video and on Telegram about “tunnels” he could use to reach the homes of Obama and others.
The prosecutors ousted by this latest shitty little purge are AUSAs Carlos Valdiva and Samuel White. The judge presiding over Taranto’s case praised them both as they were replaced by other prosecutors who, if they’re smart, are already seeking other employment. Anyone not completely subservient will recognize they can’t possibly serve both justice and the Trump administration. And this administration demands nothing but blind loyalty, so even just trying to do your job competently has the chance of placing your head on the chopping block.
While it’s one thing for an administration to oust anyone it feels stands in the way of its desires, it’s quite another to ask a court to swap out public records for something with a bit less truth in it. But that’s how this administration rolls. Anything that might reflect poorly on it must be removed from the permanent record. The original memo will live on at other sites. But as far as the federal record is concerned, Taylor Taranto never raided the Capitol or rolled up with a bunch of guns and ammo near Barack Obama’s house. He’s just some random guy who did threatening stuff for no particular reason. The Ministry of Truth, of course, will always have his back.
