Former DHS head Kristi Noem got permanently sidelined for being unable to do two impossible things at once: be the anti-migrant hardliner Trump appointed her to be and massage the message when shit went sideways. Two murders in less than a month in Minneapolis may have made plenty of administration figures secretly happy, but once the narrative spun out of their control, it was clear a head needed to roll.

Say hello to Markwayne Mullin. Mullin was yet another Trump loyalist, albeit one that promised a kinder, gentler approach to the bigoted targeting of anyone who didn’t look white enough to belong in this country.

During his confirmation hearings in March. Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin told senators: “My goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every single day.”

Well, that’s not going to look good on the next employee review. While immigration officers did manage to keep murders to a minimum after Mullin took office, ICE is back to being the lead story every single day.

July 9, 2026:

Federal immigration agents who killed a man during a traffic stop in Houston on Tuesday had been searching for a different person, according to a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman.

The victim of that shooting was Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant who had lived and worked in the United States for 35 years. According to his family, Araujo was still actively trying to obtain permanent residence and/or citizenship.

And let’s not pretend — as the DHS would have us do with its statement — that it’s okay to kill people who are the targets of immigration arrests. The DHS may have (kind of) admitted fault here, but only in the context that any killing of someone actually targeted by ICE, etc. is fair game when it comes to instant death penalties. Most of the people ICE targets have no violent criminal record, which means federal officers are routinely boxing in vehicles, smashing windows, and violently accosting people suspected of a civil violation. It’s not like this is happening to people who are overdue on their property taxes. I mean, yet.

This isn’t helpful either, and fewer journalists should be willing to publish whatever happens to fall out of the government’s mouth moments after it has summarily executed someone:

When agents tried to stop the vehicle, the encounter quickly escalated, and an agent shot Mr. Araujo in the abdomen. He died at a hospital hours later.

Homeland security officials said Mr. Araujo had tried to use his vehicle as a weapon, though no video or other evidence for that claim has emerged.

The encounter was escalated the moment ICE officers decided to treat suspected civil violations like a felony stop. The government escalated. The reaction officers received was entirely expected from an innocent person who was suddenly surrounded by masked people with guns.

But video not recorded by ICE officers (who were all supposed to be wearing body cameras at this time) pokes a lot of holes in the government’s self-serving theory:

I don’t know what Araujo thought was happening, but in the videos it looks like a couple of unmarked crossovers aggressively pursuing a vehicle with no lights on or any other indication the vehicles contain law enforcement officers. (See 1:20-1:25 of the video where the ICE vehicle cuts through a parking lot.)

Either way, it ended with officers killing Araujo, then the government going on to smear the person they’d just killed:

The Houston incident, following one of the latest deadly shootings by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, mirrors countless routine police encounters that happen daily across the country as officers find suspected drug paraphernalia and seek court orders to seize and test it for illegal substances.

In this instance, however, the search warrant, shielded from public view when initially filed, was inexplicably unsealed and made public the next day. Justice Department veterans told CNN they can’t remember a time when information that could be critical to a case was made publicly available while a criminal investigation was still underway.

A bit more on the “illegal substances:”

The still-unidentified substances were allegedly found on the dashboard and floor of a van driven by Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Houston man ICE tried to pull over last week on suspicion of being in the country unlawfully.

First and fucking foremost, these were immigration officers who had the wrong person. Second, this chase wasn’t initiated because officers saw some possible illicit substances on the dashboard. This was only discovered after Araujo had already been killed. Third, the government has yet to deliver lab results on the substances, which means they could have been anything. Considering they were found on the dashboard (those recovered from the floor probably fell off the dashboard), it’s hard to believe Araujo was just driving around with drugs right out there in plain sight. And, once again, this ain’t the Philippines. You can’t just kill people because they have drugs on them.

This was nothing but a cheap attempt to somehow justify a killing after the fact. But it didn’t end with a shitty smear campaign. The other people in the van were apparently subjected to intimidation tactics by ICE officers following the shooting:

They were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the encounter, and we haven’t heard from them publicly about what happened.

Now, in another potentially dark turn in the saga, those three men are under pressure from immigration officials to agree to self-deport, Juan Proaño, a representative for the families and CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, claimed in an interview with The New Republic.

Araujo had no criminal record, ran his own business, and was on his way to a job with his passengers when he was chased, shot, and killed. And while the government has admitted it misidentified the person officers killed, it still hasn’t explained why it’s okay to engage in these tactics against people only suspected of violating immigration law. It also hasn’t offered any information about the person officers were seeking, which means the real target was another harmless migrant and not the “worst of worst” we keep hearing about every time the DHS is asked to defend its actions.

As I noted earlier, this is only one of two killings to happen this month. Another killing happened in Maine roughly a week later. Since we’re already more than 1,000 words into this one, I’ll dig deep into that killing in another post. But I will leave you with this, which not only shows the kind of people ICE is willing to hire to keep the deportation mill running, but also the kind of people who are innately attracted to ICE:

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot a Colombian man in Maine this week is an Army veteran who has struggled with serious mental health issues since early childhood and never should have been given a badge and gun to patrol American streets, several of his close relatives told The Associated Press.

David Brouillette has a history of terrifying and violent behavior, according to those relatives. They accuse him of attacking women in his life over the years, and one shared a voicemail with the AP from last winter in which he told her that he thought someone should slit her throat.

This is the real reason ICE officers want to wear masks. It’s also the real reason ICE wants officers to wear masks. These officers are the real threat to public safety, but the less we know about them, the more ICE can publicly pretend it’s nothing but top-notch, well-trained officers regularly engaging in excessive force.

The Trump administration continues to pretend migrants don’t have due process rights. It does this despite racking up nearly 10,000 rulings to the contrary — losing in roughly 90% of the petitions brought by ICE detainees.

While the Fifth Circuit continues to play coy about the 14th Amendment’s existence, the rest of nation’s courts have resoundingly made it clear that detainees are owed a bond hearing, rather than simply be expected to ride out an indefinite detention with zero options until the administration finds some random country to dump them in.

With ICE and a compliant DOJ doing everything they can to prevent detainees from filing habeus corpus motions — using methods ranging from shuffling detainees from state to state to deny them standing to multiple purges of DOJ attorneys who aren’t sufficiently loyal to Trump — lots of judges aren’t actually seeing the entirety of the administration’s illegal actions. The administration is “flooding the zone” to create a “fog of war” in a way that’s as inelegant and brutish as my mixed metaphor.

But the administration can’t stop acts of God from exposing what ICE and the DOJ would have preferred remained hidden. Brush fires in Miami-Dade County forced the evacuation of an ICE detention facility. And that let a judge handling cases in that jurisdiction see clearly exactly how many times the administration had flouted direct court orders.

[The fires] opened a can of worms in federal court after a federal judge was notified that 47 of those detainees were shipped outside the Southern District of Florida in direct violation of court orders. When Miami-based Judge Michael Moore was alerted to the 47 violations, he ordered a deeper look into how often ICE had violated similar court orders in recent months.

The answer alarmed him, and prompted him to respond with force in a hearing on Thursday morning.

Attorneys at the Department of Justice alerted Moore that an estimated 116 detainees have recently been removed from South Florida in direct violation of court orders, a significant increase from the original 47 number. Some of those violations were never reported to the court until Moore started asking.

While Judge Moore understood the fires might mean moving detained migrants to other locations, the government was supposed to inform the court if it attempted to move people with pending petitions out of the court’s jurisdiction. This never happened. And it was happening even before wildfires created this crisis. According to the judge, the DOJ and ICE had done this previously, including one case where the judge wasn’t informed of a relocation until the date of the hearing, which was weeks after the court had told the government to bring this migrant to a bond hearing.

Moore’s takedown of the administration occurred before a packed house of observers, including dozens of interns and federal court clerks. And Moore lit them up:

“I don’t want you to hide behind the brushfire, because there are cases that didn’t have to do with the brushfire,” Moore told ICE and DOJ attorneys. “There have been a number of transfers over the previous months that had nothing to do with the brushfires.”

He noted that some detainees not only had been moved to other states, but some have been “removed from the United States” in direct violation of court orders.

The law is settled (at least for the moment) in this circuit. The Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court ruled two months ago that the government had to provide bond hearings to all detained migrants — something that has always been the case prior to this administration’s refusal to respect the Constitution.

This is how the administration wants to play it, which meant the judge had minimal patience for the DOJ lawyer caught up in the middle of this mess.

Matthew Feely, the DOJ attorney on the case, apologized for the court order violations and said the Southern District of Florida’s office has been overwhelmed with habeus corpus petitions, stemming from the Department of Homeland Security’s stance that it does not have to offer bond hearing to immigrant detainees. 

[…]

In 2022, there were only 23 habeus corpus petitions filed in the district, he said. In 2023 there were 31. But between June of 2025 and July 10, 2026, there were about 1,800 petitions filed.

At the same time, Feely said the amount of attorneys handling civil cases in the Southern District of Florida has plummeted by 40% since last year.

“We’re struggling here, your honor,” said Feely, while adding that the DOJ is trying to hire to fill the vacant positions.

“I’m sympathetic, but it looks like a crisis of your own making,” responded Moore, who was appointed to the court by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. “If you didn’t advance these legal theories you would not be getting sued.”

There it is. This administration does not follow court precedent. It does not respect the Constitution. It makes up its own rules that are completely unsupported by case law. Then it fires everyone who won’t assist the administration with its dirty work. 1,800 petitions in a single federal district, being handled by a DOJ office that has seen 40% of its workforce resign or get fired for refusing to play by Trump’s rules. And as court orders continue to pile up, the administration still refuses to comply with them.

It’s an unmitigated good that this played out in the open. The problem that hasn’t been addressed is how you rein in a rogue regime that deliberately ignores a co-equal branch of the government. Courts need to start considering their options, including this one:

In cases where federal marshals fail to act to enforce court orders (or contempt of court findings), courts can turn to state and local law enforcement agencies.

Federal judges have the authority to deputize state law enforcement officers to carry out federal court orders, particularly in cases of contempt or defiance by federal officials. State attorneys general, governors, and local sheriffs can be called upon to enforce judicial rulings.

The usual stuff isn’t working. Extreme measures are needed. The question is whether anyone in the court system — or in state law enforcement — has the will to get this done.

Record law enforcement officers whenever you can. Sure, they’ll hate it, but it helps all the people they seek to do harm to.

Last summer, recordings and other evidence undercut a lot of the administration’s attempts to convert First Amendment activity into criminal charges. Prosecutors who dropped cases after watching recordings or talking directly to the government’s witnesses noted a plethora of “untruthful statements” or “material misrepresentations.”

Six months later, the losing streak created by unforced (but deliberate) “errors” continued. Federal immigration officers just couldn’t stop lying, forcing DOJ prosecutors to voluntarily dismiss a bunch of felony assault cases that were completely reliant on statements made by officers who were later shown to be lying.

Here’s another case that’s hit a dead end because an ICE officer lied and an ICE supervisor decided to pass on these lies to a federal prosecutor. (h/t Aaron Reichlin-Melnick)

A Venezuelan man arrested by ICE was hit with a slew of escalating charges, most of which have vanished now that the truth is involved.

Gabriel Hurtado-Cariaco, 31, was referred to by DHS as a “criminal illegal alien” and a “known Tren de Aragua terrorist.” The agency said he “violently attacked an ICE agent” by slamming her head into the ground and attempting to choke her to death. At a preliminary hearing, a Homeland Security agent and a federal prosecutor said Hurtado-Cariaco received “special forces-type training” in the Venezuelan military and may have been involved in “killing people, hurting people, [and] committing human rights violations.”

The only thing true here is that Hurtado was once a member of the Venezuela military. But he deserted, fled to the US, and filed an asylum claim. He was paroled into the US in 2024 and, since then, had been steadily working as a delivery driver.

The arrest of Hurtado didn’t look great. Two ICE officers tried (and failed) to subdue him. He managed to escape custody, but was arrested successfully shortly after he fled the scene of the first attempted detention.

Perhaps the (attempted) arresting officer was too embarrassed to tell the truth. But the lies he told had serious consequences.

The initial narrative of what happened during Hurtado-Cariaco’s arrest was provided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Craig Allrich. Allrich, who was not at the scene of the arrest, penned the affidavit that would be used to secure a criminal complaint against Hurtado-Cariaco.

The first complaint actually told the truth. It simply said that Hurtado had resisted arrest. But that apparently wasn’t good enough for Allrich and/or the officer who failed to subdue Hurtado during his first encounter with him. Things got worse for Hurtado in a hurry.

It was in the amended complaint that Allrich laid out how Hurtado-Cariaco allegedly attempted to murder the female ICE officer, referred to as “Victim 1” throughout the document. 

[…]

[A]s the two agents struggled to detain Hurtado-Cariaco, he was “able to get control of Victim 1 and place [her] in a chokehold.” Allrich said the male agent gave repeated commands to Hurtado-Cariaco to release the chokehold, but he “chose to continue choking Victim 1 rather than simply fleeing the scene.”

This assertion was a lie. Two recordings made by bystanders who witnessed the attempted arrest made it clear Hurtado had definitely resisted arrest, but at no point did he pin down the female ICE officer, nor did he ever place her in a chokehold.

At no point in either video is Hurtado-Cariaco seen choking the female agent. Instead, the videos show agents placing Hurtado-Cariaco into a chokehold on two separate occasions as he attempts to break free.

Hurtado’s federal public defender, Richard McWilliams, says federal prosecutors sat on these recordings and refused to remove the attempted murder charge despite having evidence proving otherwise. US Attorney Lesley Woods says this isn’t true, claiming the public defender refused to turn over the recordings he had obtained.

But Woods’ claims are difficult to believe, especially when prosecutors waited months to rewrite the indictment, excising the bogus attempted murder charge just so that they could replace it something nearly as damaging.

By November, prosecutors filed a superseding indictment, which abandoned the attempted murder charge and replaced it with another serious felony – providing material support to a terrorist organization.

According to prosecutors, the mere existence of a tattoo — one that doesn’t actually demonstrate a connection to Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua — was enough to hit Hurtado with terrorism charges.

(And that charge is only possible because the Trump administration unilaterally declared this gang to be foreign terrorist organization — something it only did in an attempt to legalize its unconstitutional detain-and-deport program.)

None of this bullshit impressed the judge handling Hurtado’s criminal case.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Robert Rossiter said at the sentencing that the allegations made in the initial complaint were “at worst a misrepresentation and at best complete negligence.” Though Rossiter said there is “no doubt” that Hurtado-Cariaco committed the offense that he pleaded guilty to by fleeing the officers and struggling with them, he found the law enforcement reports “embellished” and “troubling.”

That’s a polite way of saying either the ICE officer at the scene lied or that the ICE supervisor who prepared the affidavit didn’t care whether or not he was being lied to.

And the judge isn’t happy with the government’s last ditch attempt to stick Hurtado with a lengthy sentence by belatedly adding some terrorism charges to the mix. As it stands now, Hurtado’s guilty plea to resisting arrest nets him a 14-month sentence, most of which he has already served because he’s been in jail since his arrest last June.

“To refer to him as a terrorist, attempted murderer, that he had put a chokehold on these victims… It’s just not borne out by the evidence,” Rossiter said. “And it’s troubling.”

If you can’t do your job without lying, you can’t be trusted to hold that position. If the administration can’t find enough people to arrest and deport without having to make up stories about murder or terrorism, then it needs to restrain itself to the promise that has always been empty: go after the worst of the worst. These lies were caught. Dozens or hundreds of others will go undetected.

Given what we know about the people “leading” this country and these agencies, I firmly believe they’d lie even if they didn’t have to. That’s just the kind of people they are. And the foot soldiers willingly serving this rolling atrocity of an administration need to be filmed whenever possible, because it’s the only way to keep them honest.

This is probably nothing more than another data point in a deluge, but it’s worth pointing out because it’s instructive.

Cops are using a whole lot of surveillance tech these days. Flock Safety has been especially aggressive in pursuing the law enforcement market, offering cops access to a nationwide network of cameras, including many owned and operated by private citizens.

Flock — and its law enforcement partners — have generated a lot of negative press over the last couple of years. Some of this is due to cops abusing their access and/or performing searches for federal agencies that aren’t allowed to directly access Flock’s database. Some of this is due to Flock itself, which has seen the negative press and largely chosen to ignore it.

But now Flock has real problems. Federal legislators are demanding answers to uncomfortable questions. And dozens of cities are attempting to rid themselves of Flock cameras following public outcry and/or evidence of abuse by those with access.

In San Francisco, it’s a blend of both. And the answers/excuses made by Flock and the SFPD make it clear law enforcement agencies cannot be trusted with the tech they now have easy access to.

“During a routine compliance audit in May, SFPD officials found that the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) had queried SFPD’s Flock network on behalf of federal and out-of-state agencies. There were 299 improper inquiries over approximately one year, which accounts for 0.005% of inquiries over that period,” the release states.

Each of these searches performed on behalf of federal agencies broke state law. To its credit, the SFPD pulled the plug on access following the results of this audit. And while that’s the sort of response we’d like to see from more law enforcement agencies, the statements issued by those involved (SFPD, Flock) make it clear the only way to prevent abuse is to never allow cops to have access to this tech in the first place.

Here’s what Flock Safety had to say about the audit results:

A Flock spokesperson in February said the company had disabled its national lookup feature for all California agencies and is confident its privacy protections comply with state law, local policy and community expectations.

[…]

In response to the San Francisco audit, Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel told KTVU that the searches were not a result of a software malfunction, platform issue, unauthorized access, or any failure of the Flock system.

Without more information, it’s impossible to tell whether the first statement issued by Flock (in response to a lawsuit) is true. It could be that feds asked the SFPD to perform local searches, which would lend credence to Flock’s initial statement. The fact that 299 potentially illegal searches took place over the last year doesn’t generate a whole lot of confidence in either the supply or demand side of the Flock equation.

The second statement makes things a bit more clear: this wasn’t SFPD officers going outside of any limitations imposed by Flock or the department itself. Instead, they broke the law by running searches they most likely knew violated state regulations. In other words, this wasn’t Flock enabling lawlessness. This was cops working within the system to violate the law.

The implication gets even stronger now that the SFPD has issued its own statement. This appears to have been officers breaking the law, rather than the law being (accidentally or otherwise) bypassed because the software wasn’t configured correctly.

The San Francisco Police Department identified the activity through a routine audit of its own Flock network and took immediate action, Lewbel noted. 

He added that no out-of-state or federal agencies had direct access to SFPD’s Flock system or any California Flock system. 

The first sentence means something. The second sentence, however, is meaningless. The limitations placed on access by Flock and SFPD policies were circumvented to perform exactly the sort of searches they were meant to prevent. This audit could have come back completely clean if SFPD officers hadn’t decided to break the rules.

And even if 299 illegal searches are only “0.005%” of the total number of searches, that doesn’t mean the other 99.995% of searches were justified. Most people assume ALPR databases are only accessed when a license plate generates a hit due to prior placement on a watch list. That’s an false impression that’s been perpetrated for years by law enforcement, which constantly claims these are used to track down car thieves, kidnappers, bank robbers, and other dangerous criminals.

But when audits are only looking for searches that route around parameters, they don’t see all the searches being made by cops who are bored or are tracking their exes or trying to hunt down women who are doing nothing more than seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies. The “0.005% of searches” assertion is likely misleading as well. Plaintiffs suing the state over its ALPR use alleged more than 1.6 million illegal searches during the same time period across the state. Not only that, but the number of total searches is likely inflated by those triggered by the system itself, which involve minimal interaction by officers utilizing the ALPR network.

On one hand, if we decide Flock is actually telling the truth this time, the blame lies with the officers who choose to break the rules and the law. On the other hand, if Flock’s representation of the facts is inaccurate, it only means cops who knew what the law was chose to break it simply because they easily could. Neither of these scenarios add up to the SFPD being trustworthy. And splitting the difference just means we can’t trust the SFPD’s camera provider either.

Florida Republicans’ bigoted little piece of speech policing — the former “Stop WOKE Act” — has already been terminated multiple times by federal courts. Two lawsuits with two sets of plaintiffs have generated the same results: a ruling declaring the law unconstitutional and an injunction blocking the state from enforcing it.

The law aims to directly regulate speech in classrooms, allowing the government to punish teachers and administrators from engaging in any speech the Florida GOP doesn’t agree with. In practice, this means eliminating discussions about racism, equitable treatment, or anything related to LGBTQ+ issues.

The two lawsuits have generated some pretty stark paragraphs from presiding judges. Both take their cues from pop culture. Noting the cognitive dissonance of state lawmaking, the court said this in 2022:

In the popular television series Stranger Things, the “upside down” describes a parallel dimension containing a distorted version of our world. See Stranger Things (Netflix 2022). Recently, Florida has seemed like a First Amendment upside down. Normally, the First Amendment bars the state from burdening speech, while private actors may burden speech freely. But in Florida, the First Amendment apparently bars private actors from burdening speech, while the state may burden speech freely. 

The same court said this when the second lawsuit against the Stop WOKE law crossed its desk:

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,” and the powers in charge of Florida’s public university system have declared the State has unfettered authority to muzzle its professors in the name of “freedom.” To confront certain viewpoints that offend the powers that be, the State of Florida passed the so-called “Stop W.O.K.E.” Act in 2022—redubbed (in line with the State’s doublespeak) the “Individual Freedom Act.” The law officially bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints. Defendants argue that, under this Act, professors enjoy “academic freedom” so long as they express only those viewpoints of which the State approves. This is positively dystopian.

The state appealed both decisions. The Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court upheld the injunction in March 2023. The state continued to assault the court with motions to undo this injunction, prompting the Eleventh Circuit to issue this additional order:

The Clerk is DIRECTED to treat any motion for reconsideration of this order as a non-emergency matter.

Forced to wait its turn, Ron DeSantis and his MAGA buddies have had to wait more than three years just to find out they still won’t be able to enforce this blatantly unconstitutional law. The state’s lawyers will read the whole thing looking for ways to argue this differently if (or when) the US Supreme Court decides to hear their appeal.

But anyone wanting to know how this turns out for Florida’s public service bigots won’t have to dip too far into the 85-page ruling. By the middle of the fourth page, you’ll know what you need to know. From the decision [PDF]:

When several groups of professors challenged Florida’s new restrictions, the State cast about for an existing case or doctrine that could support its speech ban in the university setting. Finding none, it tried to marry public-employee speech cases with government speech doctrine, resulting in a new rule: if the government pays a professor’s salary, it has total control over her classroom speech.

That is not a blessed union. Florida’s salary-for-speech rule is a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in the very places the State’s own statutes recognize as centers of inquiry—classrooms where students are trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth. This new rule also runs headlong into the Supreme Court’s repeated, if imprecise, endorsements of academic freedom. If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it.

The injunction stays in place, presumably forever. While there are certainly some members of the Supreme Court who would love to tie their precedent and ethics into knots just to block speech they personally don’t like, this doesn’t appear to be the case they’d choose since it would likely generate precedent that might work against the bigots in the Supreme Court when they go to bat for bigots in the White House.

The appeals court has already blocked the other part of the law — the clauses attempting to regulate speech in private workplaces by forbidding mandatory meetings that promoted views the GOP doesn’t agree with. The last ditch attempt to claim the government can regulate speech in college classrooms doesn’t fare any better, even if it’s not quite as clear cut in terms of constitutional violations as telling private companies what they can and can’t say.

Claiming that all speech by government employees is “government speech” is a non-starter. The state couldn’t find precedent to support its novel take on the First Amendment. And the few odds and ends it threw at the judicial wall in hopes of seeing something stick failed as well.

More credibly, the State explains that it also seeks to protect its “most cherished ideals.” But that justification fails, too. Though the government has plenty of ways to promote its own viewpoint, puppeteering every university professor in the state is not one of them.

The court spends 50 pages dismantling each and every one of the state’s arguments, citation by citation. There can be no doubt the law is unconstitutional, not that it matters to the state, which has already announced it will be appealing the ruling. But this is censorship that can’t even be bothered to pretend it’s anything but the very thing it claims it is opposed to. “Individual Freedom Act” (as it was renamed), my ass.

Florida seeks to strip public university professors—and by extension their students—of the ability to fully engage with ideas that are, for better or for worse, very popular in some academic circles. The State asks us to consider its rules a means of targeting discrimination. But hearing an idea you disagree with is not discrimination; it is an opportunity to come up with a better idea, or maybe even change your mind.

There’s a dissent that runs nearly as long as the opinion. Written by Judge Barbara Lagoa (someone with a history of anti-trans rulings), it’s 30+ pages of wasted time. To paraphrase: none of these plaintiffs should have been granted standing, much less relief and also: [bunch of Justice Alito quotes].

Doesn’t really matter, since it’s the dissent but I guarantee if anyone’s going to start polling for an en banc rehearing, it’s going by Judge Lagoa.

Suck it, DeSantis. Until that happens (if it ever will), your stupid hateful law is as dead as the eyes of your sycophants.

Well, it was fun while it lasted. And even while it still (theoretically) lasts, it’s really nothing more than the Fifth Circuit saying rights can violated, but only for 90 days at a time.

Earlier this month, the Fifth Circuit managed to deliver a very un-Fifth Circuit decision, finding in favor of rights and against the Trump administration’s war on migrants. As almost every court has recognized for decades, people residing in the United States — even illegally — have constitutional rights. The Fifth Circuit has long been one of the exceptions to this rule.

The administration chose to ignore this because doing would slow its horrific roll towards an eventual evacuation of everyone who wasn’t white enough for this administration to recognize as Americans. To justify ignoring long-held constitutional rights, the administration first invoked the Alien Enemies Act (best known for our atrocities against Japanese migrants and residents during World War II). Then it pretended that anyone who had been in the country for weeks, years, or decades should be treated the same as anyone apprehended while illegally crossing the border.

The Fifth Circuit couldn’t bring itself to rule that migrants arrested long after they’ve crossed the border have access to their due process rights on day one of their apprehension. Instead, it decided (without really explaining why) these rights don’t actually kick in until someone has been in custody for more than 90 days.

That meant nothing would really change. People arrested by ICE and other DHS components all over the nation would be hastily relocated to the Fifth Circuit (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi) ASAP to prevent them from challenging their detention for 90 days. Presumably, the administration hoped to have most of these detainees deported long before they were allowed to invoke their constitutional rights.

Apparently, 90 days of denying rights isn’t long enough. It looks as though enough judges in the Fifth Circuit think these rights should never be available to migrants. Less than a month after handing down its decision, the Fifth Circuit has declared it will be taking another pass at this.

A majority of the circuit judges in regular active service and not disqualified having voted in favor, on the Court’s own motion, to rehear this case en banc,

IT IS ORDERED that this cause shall be reheard by the court en banc with oral argument on a date hereafter to be fixed. The Clerk will specify a briefing schedule for the filing of supplemental briefs. Pursuant to 5th Circuit Rule 41.3, the panel opinion in this case dated July 02, 2026, is VACATED.

So, we’re now back to the Fifth Circuit status quo. The government can ignore constitutional rights on day one and continue ignoring them until they’ve ejected migrants into whatever war-torn human rights hellhole will have them.

Sure, there’s a very slim (I’d say “nonexistent”) chance the petitioners for rehearing think the Fifth Circuit screwed up by giving the administration a 90-day head start on ignoring constitutional rights. But come on. We’re talking about the Fifth Circuit here.

The most likely reason for this rehearing action is that a lot of Fifth Circuit judges think the Trump administration shouldn’t have to recognize the rights of migrants ever, which is why they want to take another stab at setting precedent that would cover some of the DHS’s largest detention facilities.

The best case scenario would appear to be the circuit upholding its previous ruling, with its (unconstitutional) 90-day 14th Amendment snooze button. The worst case scenario is the entire panel agrees with this hideous, racist administration and says anyone in the country without documentation should be treated like someone caught in the act of crossing the border illegally. I’m not holding my breath for a positive outcome. I need that breath for stuff that’s actually feasible and foreseeable.

Donald Trump believes that being elected president means he should never be challenged, never be asked to justify his actions, and never be given less than absolute loyalty and deference. He also clearly believes the office is there to serve him, rather than there for him to serve the public. He’s going to make bank from his position of power and anyone who doesn’t like it can keep their feelings to themselves.

Kash Patel — Trump’s appointee to head the FBI — seems to feel the same way about his job. It’s not exactly the same as Trump. He might get richer due to this position, but he clearly believes it’s there to help him pursue his dreams — dreams that appear to be the equivalent of those of a B-list celebrity. He wants backstage access, bottle service, a jet-setting lifestyle, and absolute loyalty. And, like Trump, for everyone to just shut up about it.

That’s why his tenure is more notable for lie detector tests, libel lawsuits, and ridiculous denials than for anything that might be considered an actual accomplishment. And that’s why he’s managed to go far enough that even some GOP members are getting sick of his bullshit.

FBI Director Kash Patel has been demanding special perks from bureau employees during his taxpayer-funded travels throughout the country, including helicopter tours and jet ski excursions, according to whistleblower accounts given to Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary committees and obtained exclusively by MS NOW.

[…]

But the Democrats are not alone in their concerns about Patel’s use of public resources; MS NOW has also viewed a letter to Patel from Republican Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley written in May demanding that Patel turn over information about his flights on FBI aircraft and about the FBI’s purchase of BMW vehicles, which was first reported in December by MS NOW.

“For each trip where you used an FBI aircraft for personal travel, have you reimbursed the FBI as required by law?  If yes, please provide the records,” the Grassley letter says.

Of course, the FBI PR office denies any of this is true, despite all the documentation indicating otherwise. While there may actually be a cost savings (believe it or not) by switching to BMWs, the rest of this can’t be explained away as something that saves taxpayers money or makes Patel a better FBI director.

FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson claims this is all above board, saying Patel has reimbursed the government for all personal expenses. But if that’s true, it seems unlikely congressional oversight would be asking questions about it.

As for the Republicans upset about Patel’s behavior and tendency to treat the FBI director position as a lifestyle accessory, they simply can’t seem to engage in oversight without taking swipes at Democratic leadership for [re-reads reports] raising the same goddamn questions.

In a post on X after this story was published, Sen. Grassley said, “I see Dems r riding my coattails & suddenly showing interest in doing oversight of FBI aircraft. Where was that energy w Wray&other directors???” he wrote, referring to former FBI director Christopher Wray, who served under both President Trump during his first term and President Biden.

“My oversight is the same no matter the admin UNLIKE Dems who only seem interested in oversight when it benefits them politically,” he added.

lolwut?

I’m no fan of Christopher Wray, but no one ever suggested he was blowing taxpayer cash on personal trips to exotic locations. And no one ever even hinted that he might be the wrong person for the job due to an inability to remain reliably sober, much less ever caught on camera chugging booze with sports teams in their lockers after a victory.

And there certainly was nothing that sounded like this when Wray was running the FBI’s anti-encryption efforts:

The Democrats said they have been told that Patel “demoted personnel in Brussels because they failed to ensure you were adequately entertained, stoking fear among rank-and-file agents that they must provide your demanded perks or face termination. Concerns and strains prompted by the prioritization of your personal entertainment on international trips may have led to the resignation of the head of the FBI’s international operations this year.”

Not that anyone is going to get Patel to admit to any of these things. He may have to attend congressional hearings in the future, but everything we’ve seen so far from this administration strongly suggests tough questions will be met with open hostility, flat-out refusals to provide answers, and plenty of stupid assertions from the person under the congressional microscope.

That’s not to say this is a completely futile effort. It calls more attention to Patel’s antics and apparent disregard for his position and his duties. It keeps his carelessness in the public eye. Thanks to the source of the criticism, it makes it far more difficult for the FBI to pretend none of this is happening. Hopefully, there will be a reckoning. And hopefully this will happen long before Donald Trump leaves office.

This is pointless escalation, but pointless escalation is this administration’s brand.

We already know ICE officers have gone out of their way to aim their phones at protesters and others who try to derail their masked kidnapping squads. And we know — thanks to public records and leaked documents — ICE has access to facial recognition tech that makes it much easier for officers to identify protesters and harass/intimidate them for engaging in their First Amendment rights.

So, it’s hardly a surprise that ICE has upped the intimidation ante. What’s surprising about this is that ICE has mobilized its own propaganda/intimidation force that (just barely) attempts to disguise itself as something else. This has been noticed elsewhere — at least in terms of ICE officers wielding professional-grade video cameras to document arrests, etc. — but this is apparently the first time ICE has decided to pretend its masked camera people are members of the “media.”

This is happening in Danbury, Connecticut, where ICE has recently intensified its evil for exactly the reasons you’d expect: Kamala Harris carried the state in the last election, the state has sued the administration multiple times, and state legislators have been pushing Yale to fight back against Trump’s politically-motivated extortion attempts.

Here are the broader details on this insult to American ideals, as reported by the Connecticut Mirror:

ICE has had camera crews accompany them on enforcement operations in other states, promoting its deportation efforts on social media. Some of the videos are similar in style to footage from the reality TV show “COPS,” and some include embedded far-right media outlets and influencers. But according to The Washington Post, ICE has used misleading footage, “muddying the reality of events in viral clips.”

The Danbury cameraman was recorded by members of Greater Danbury Area Unites for Immigrants, standing near a crowd by a state courthouse. A person is crying off camera, mentioning to ICE agents the person they apprehended had a heart condition. The agents soon get into their cars and leave, the cameraman pointing the camera at the crowd as the agents drive away.

That might seem about as innocuous as this version of ICE gets, but the devils are in the details. Here’s more from Dan Haar, reporting for the Connecticut Insider.

The woman from Ridgefield, part of a group observing and documenting ICE operations, rushed to Danbury on a June day, like so many times before in the 18 months of the second Trump administration.

This time, on June 4, she saw a different scene. ICE had more vehicles along Moss Avenue near the courthouse and a more open, less furtive presence. “Brazen,” she called it.  

“There is a gentleman running furiously up the road towards my vehicle and there was about four or five agents chasing him,” the woman, a U.S. citizen who requested anonymity for fear of retribution by the government. “He had a look of fear, or like terror on his face.”

And she saw something else. Arriving in vehicles with the ICE agents, then working alongside the agents on the streets, a couple of men with professional video equipment wore black vests marked “MEDIA” in large, white, capital letters. 

This isn’t just something saw and told others about. This was captured on video (albeit without sound).

This is a dude dressed like lots of ICE officers — kevlar vest, face mask, and something that could be charitably called “tactical pants.” Except this vest says “MEDIA,” rather than ICE or ERO or DHS or nothing at all.

This might give people the impression that actual press members are embedded with ICE. But only for a moment. First, as is pointed out in Haar’s column, journalists never identify themselves as “media,” because that term is entirely incorrect:

Technically, anyone wielding the tools of communication is using media, as both Yousman and Crawford pointed out. Media is technology such as video or pen and paper, not a job. 

That, to Crawford, is a hint that these are ICE employees or contractors, not independent news professionals. 

“In war zones, journalists don’t wear jackets that say media. They wear jackets that say press,” she said, arguing that the distinction matters. Using the wrong word shows that these vest signs are not there to do the normal job of protecting members of the working press in dangerous situations. 

Further distancing themselves from real members of any press entity are the actions of the people labeled “media” who trailed behind ICE officers. First, they were masked. Press members might wear masks occasionally, but only if they expect to encounter things like tear gas or pepper spray.

Second — and perhaps most importantly — embedded press members don’t pull this kind of shit:

A video shows him wheeling around to record observers at very close range, who were themselves making videos. In another video shot, he is shown quickly pulling up his mask as he rounds a corner and sees an observer’s camera.

All of this happened in the context of ICE’s general horrificness. What was captured here were the actions of ICE officers staking out a courthouse to make easy arrests of people just trying to adhere to the conditions of their parole, immigration-related or otherwise.

Dan Haar says what needs to be said: this isn’t America. This is something we’ve always considered ourselves to be above, right up until Trump decided to drag us all down with him.

Clearly, government agents, employees or contractors masquerading as members of the working press create confusion and erode the legitimacy of the independent media, while lending credence to government misinformation and propaganda. These are all hallmarks of President Donald Trump as we all know, but it’s still disturbing to see it paraded on the streets so flagrantly.

It’s just not what free countries do, certainly not ones with a constitution that assures freedom of the press. 

Trump is degrading an entire nation. Unfortunately, he has a sizable fan base willing to jack off into the nearest flag while cheering on his authoritarian efforts. This is just ICE being extra fucking shitty because it knows everyone in the administration is similarly supportive of their hostile behavior.

Less than a month ago, Trump secured himself a $400 million plane for free — something he certainly couldn’t have accomplished if he weren’t the president of the United States. It’s no longer a mere appearance of corruption: it’s a 250-foot long luxury plane with 2,500 square feet of tangible corruption. Here are some details on the gift/graft, along with a few choice quotes from its recipient:

On Friday afternoon, Trump toured the luxury Boeing 747 plane that initially stirred controversy. The plane was one of the biggest foreign gifts ever received by the U.S. government and raised legal and ethical questions after Qatar offered to replace the presidential jet last year. Trump said last May he’d be “stupid” not to accept the offer. Industry groups originally said the plane could be worth approximately $400 million.

[…]

“This plane was transformed into a flying White House at a level of luxury that nobody’s ever seen before, probably even almost outside of an airplane,” Trump said. 

[…]

“It was time for a change. … Everything was designed good. It was my taste,” Trump said saying that he approved the new color scheme, which reflects the American flag.

Obviously, Trump is a fan. But the problem with this particular “free” Qatari-made Air Force One — well, one of several problems — is that is isn’t as secure as the original Air Force One, which was acquired a bit more honestly using only US tax dollars and perhaps a handful of no-bid contracts. The New York Times noted this in its report, after Trump flew the Qatar version to Turkey, but had to exit the country aboard the old Air Force One.

The new Air Force One, which President Trump flew on earlier this week to Turkey, lacks the same defensive countermeasures that were security features of the old model, including its advanced antimissile capabilities, according to multiple officials who have been briefed on how the jet was retrofitted.

Experts say the absence of those capabilities on the Boeing 747-8 aircraft, which was donated by Qatar, creates potential risk in using the jet abroad, a dynamic underscored by the abrupt decision on Wednesday for Mr. Trump to leave Turkey on the old Air Force One at the urging of the Secret Service.

There’s a metaphor in here somewhere, one that might point out that the corruption-adjacent Air Force One is as unfit for its job as the man who took possession of it on behalf of a nation that never asked for it.

While that reporting was definitely going to generate some Truth Social rants and official statements containing phrases like “fake news” or “failing New York Times,” pretty much no one expected it to generate subpoenas. But that’s the reality we now live in as the Trump administration lurches through the second year of its second term.

The Trump administration issued subpoenas on Friday to several journalists for The New York Times, after the news outlet reported this week on security concerns involving President Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One.

The subpoenas — which seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday — were an extraordinary escalation in President Trump’s efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations.

In some cases, the subpoenas were delivered by federal agents who showed up at reporters’ homes.

This isn’t America, I hear you say. But it kind of is, isn’t it? This is Trump’s version of America and the only thing that separates it from actions taken by other autocracies is that these reporters were only accosted by armed officers, rather than directly disappeared. Baby steps. Give Trump another year or so and maybe we can eliminate the relative niceties of merely threatening and intimidating journalists who publish articles the administration doesn’t like.

This follows other actions taken by this administration, like the search of Washington Post reporter’s house earlier this year as the FBI (allegedly) engaged in what what presumably an internal leak investigation. This looks like more of the same — the administration trying to force journalists to give up their sources so they can punish whistleblowers and leakers.

This was also something Trump was angry enough about that he actually managed to get FBI director Kash Patel out of bed/out of the nearest nightclub/sobered up enough to pull an all-nighter at [checks reporting] the White House?

The White House directed Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, to oversee a leak investigation into reporting by The New York Times about security issues with the new Air Force One, leading to a flurry of subpoenas to several Times reporters Friday night, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

Mr. Patel scuttled a planned trip to Chicago and spent roughly eight hours at the White House on Friday, running the investigation from there rather than F.B.I. headquarters — a major departure from historical practice.

This is also extremely unusual. As it appears everyone in the White House has forgotten, the FBI and DOJ are not weapons to be used for politically motivated revenge. They are not foot-soldiers that serve the president. Both are supposed to maintain a certain level of independence, which makes it easy to avoid any appearances of impropriety. But those firewalls have been deliberately destroyed by an administration that not only doesn’t care if this looks shady as shit, but wants to make sure everyone in America — especially the administration’s many enemies — knows this is exactly as shady as it appears.

Things are only going to get worse from here. I can say that with confidence because nothing at all has gotten any better since Trump retook the White House. This administration won’t be happy until it has destroyed all the ideals the United States once stood for. The millions of MAGA faithful who spent Biden’s four years complaining they were being censored are now watching actual censorship being put into action. And, of course, they’re unwilling to speak up because… well, you know: “they came for the fake news and I said nothing, because I was an election denier, etc. etc.”

ICE has already been operating like a paramilitary kidnapping squad. Officers roam through neighborhoods, stake out hardware store parking lots, and even occasionally enjoy some ethnic food just so they can raid the source of hospitality later.

It’s nasty, disturbing, and definitely doesn’t resemble any of the things that have made America great. Now, the rot has spread. It’s not enough for ICE to engage in daylight snatchings on the regular. Now, its internal oversight office has abandoned any pretense of keeping ICE in line. In fact, it has completely gone in the opposite direction, turning this wing of ICE into another set of secret police, as this report from Wired makes clear:

Voting was already underway when the ICE agents arrived at a polling site in Syracuse, New York, during the state’s primaries in June. The agents were there to see Paigelynne Gonyea, a poll worker who says they were concerned about an Instagram post she had supposedly made in January “doxing” an ICE agent. The only post she could find was one she had made crediting the Minnesota Star Tribune for identifying Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good during the federal incursion in Minneapolis this winter, and calling for his indictment.

The agents at the poll site asked Gonyea to sign a warning notice that said it was unlawful to “threaten to assault, kidnap and/or murder” federal officials or their immediate family members in an effort to impede that federal official’s work. The form also requested that she remove her post “and/or discontinue” her behavior.

“My signature would have been an admission of guilt,” Gonyea says. “I refused to sign it.”

That’s just one person who’s been subjected to the OPR’s decision to stop investigating allegations against ICE officers to focus on allegations of external “threats” to ICE officers. There are more. Many more.

OPR was behind at least one of the flurry of administrative subpoenas sent to tech companies in recent months in an effort to unmask online critics.

[…]

In a court declaration filed in April, an ICE official said that between January 2025 and March 2026, OPR investigated 131 cases involving “incidents of doxing and threats directed towards ICE employees nationwide.”

That’s fucked up. This is definitely not what the Office of Professional Responsibility is supposed to be doing. According to the ICE OPR itself, its purview is limited to investigating ICE.

The ICE Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) upholds the agency’s professional standards through a multi-disciplinary approach of security, inspections and investigations to promote organizational health, integrity, and accountability across the agency. OPR promotes organizational integrity by vigilantly managing ICE’s security programs, conducting independent reviews of ICE programs and operations, and impartially investigating allegations of employee and contractor misconduct.

To promote integrity, mitigate risk and uphold the agency’s professional standards, the OPR-led Integrity Coordination Center receives and assesses information it receives and refers any allegations of employee misconduct to appropriate offices for investigation, if necessary. This process ensures that allegations of criminal or administrative misconduct against ICE personnel are properly assessed and thoroughly investigated. OPR’s role permits the agency to focus on its larger mission of promoting homeland security and public safety.

Nothing in this says the OPR is investigating ICE critics. Nothing in this even minimally suggests the OPR’s directives can be expanded to cover external investigations of US citizens over social media posts, etc.

You have to scroll down the page a bit and expand a few things before you find ICE OPR’s justifications for being America’s ICE-focused Gestapo:

OPR protects the agency by detecting, preventing, mitigating and investigating internal and external threats against the agency, ICE senior leaders and ICE headquarters facilities by managing the ICE Insider Threat Program and counterintelligence functions involving ICE personnel. 

This is new language, specific to Trump’s version of ICE. It wasn’t there last year. There’s nothing in this December 2018 OIG report on ICE OPR operations that says anything at all about “detecting, preventing, mitigating and investigating external threats.” There’s nothing in this 2008 OPR directive that says anything more than that the OPR is tasked with investigating allegations against ICE officers or personnel handling its detention facilities.

So, it’s reasonable to believe this language was added shortly after (March 2026) the OPR was rerouted to hunt down ICE critics, rather than focus on what must be thousands of complaints about ICE officers and/or detention facilities.

And despite these efforts apparently being well underway by April 2026, acting ICE director Todd Lyons made sure he didn’t bring up that part of OPR’s operations up when publicly testifying before Congress.

In written testimony for an April hearing with the House Appropriations Committee, which helps set the budget for DHS, Lyons touted OPR’s work inspecting detention facilities, vetting job applicants, and overseeing the agency’s 287(g) program, but didn’t mention the office’s work investigating online posters. ICE did not respond to questions about why Lyons didn’t discuss that work.

First off, the OPR should not be doing this, full stop. There are plenty of federal law enforcement resources available to be utilized in the rare case where an actual threat exists. Second, the OPR has never done this prior to being run by this administration. Third, this rerouting of OPR’s resources makes it clear the administration is more interested in punishing critics (First Amendment be damned) than engaging in any minimal oversight of ICE’s activities.

And this is bad news for the nation, obviously. If this OPR can be turned into literal speech police, the same can be expected from any other law enforcement agency with an in-house OPR. That’s tyranny. That’s fascism. That’s an entire administration treating Trump like a king and 325 million Americans subjects. It’s not only unacceptable, it’s antithetical to everything America once stood for. And all of this news arrives shortly Trump presided over the Republic’s wake on July 4th. We had a good run, but it’s probably time to stop pretending we don’t have a second King George that needs to be shown the door.