August 21, 1831 Nat Turner, a 30-year-old man legally owned by a child, and six other slaves began a violent insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia.They began by killing the child’s stepfather, Joseph Travis, and his family. Within the next 24 hours, Turner and, ultimately, about 40 followers killed the families who owned adjacent slaveholding properties, nearly 60 whites, while freeing and inciting other slaves to join them.Militia and federal troops were called out, and the uprising was suppressed with 55 African Americans including Turner executed by hanging in Jerusalem, Virginia, and hundreds more killed by white mobs and vigilantes in revenge. More about Nat Turner Nat Turner’s confession
August 21, 1968 The Czechoslovakian people spontaneously and nonviolently resisted invasion of their country of 14 million by hundreds of thousands of troops and 5000+ tanks from the Soviet Union and four other Warsaw Pact countries.The troops were enforcing the overthrow and arrest of Alexander Dubcek and his government. They had been implementing significant democratic reforms known collectively as “socialism with a human face,” or the Prague Spring. Cover of the magazine Kvety, with a photograph of the statue of St. Wenceslas in Wenceslas Square in the center of Prague. Graffiti on the statue reads “Soldiers go home” in Russian and “Dubcek – Svoboda” in Czech. Hundreds attempted to obstruct invading tanks. Both Czechs and Slovaks argued with the soldiers and refused all cooperation with the occupying armies while showing broad support for the deposed government and its reform program. Moscow relented and returned Dubcek to office, at least temporarily. Prague Spring in retrospect Czech perspective
August 21, 1971 Two grenades killed and wounded members of the leadership of the Philippines’ Liberal Party during a rally in Manila’s Plaza Miranda. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos accused a leader of the party, Benigno Aquino, of the bombing and arrested him, labeling him a communist. Liberal Party Secretary-General Aquino, an effective young leader and Marcos opponent, was imprisoned, mostly in solitary confinement, for seven years until allowed exile to the U.S., ostensibly for medical treatment.
August 21, 1976 Approximately 20,000 people, mainly women, from both Protestant and Catholic areas of Belfast, Northern Ireland, attended a Peace People’s rally at Ormeau Park.
August 21, 1983 Exiled popular Philippine political leader Benigno Aquino was assassinated by soldiers of the Aviation Security Command as he crossed the tarmac at Manila International Airport. Benigno Aquino He had spent three years of asylum in the U.S. Upon his return, he intended to lead the political opposition to President Ferdinand Marcos and the martial law he had imposed. During the plane trip across the Pacific, he had commented to reporters, “I suppose there’s a physical danger because you know assassination’s part of public service . . . My feeling is we all have to die sometime and if it’s my fate to die by an assassin’s bullet, so be it.” Hundreds of thousands demonstrated against Marcos.
Ferdinand Marcos The Aquino funeral drew millions and gave impetus to the broad-based People’s Power movement which eventually forced Marcos from power. Read more about Aquino
August 21, 1991 A coup against Soviet Union President Mikhail S. Gorbachev by hard-line Communist Party members (State Emergency Committee), collapsed in the face of popular opposition. Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin, having quit the Party the previous year, had called for a general strike. Mikhail S. Gorbachev | Boris N.Yelsin
August 21, 1998 Samuel Bowers, the 73-year-old former Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was convicted in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, of ordering a firebombing that killed civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer 32 years before. Bowers had also been instrumental in the killing of three other civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi for which he was never charged. On Vernon Dahmer’s tombstone are the words, “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.” Samuel Bowers 32 years to justice Dahmer’s home after the bombing
(It’s a newsletter I receive, and I don’t have a link for what I’ve copied and am pasting, but there are links within the piece. Enjoy.)
AUGUST 17 — AUGUST 23
Angela Davis debuts on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. In 1969, the legendary author and activist Angela Davis was a newly minted assistant philosophy processor at UCLA. But she was also an avowed Communist, and as a result, then-Governor Ronald Regan tried to have her fired before she’d begun any actual teaching. No luck: Davis’s dismissal didn’t hold up in court, and her first class had to be moved to a bigger classroom to accommodate the 2,000 students who had signed up for it—but she would finally be fired again nine months later, for “inflammatory rhetoric” in public speeches. Davis was an outspoken supporter of the Black Panthers and was fervently against the Vietnam War, but arguably her most scandalous activist activities at the time were in defense of the Soledad Brothers, three Black inmates imprisoned in Soledad, CA, who were accused of killing a white guard. In 1970, guns registered to Davis were used in an attack on the nearby Marin County Civic Center; the perpetrators hoped to take hostages to bargain for the inmates’ release, but instead left four casualties. Davis, despite not being at the scene, was charged with murder, kidnapping, and criminal conspiracy charges. She couldn’t be found, and so on August 18, 1970, by order of J. Edgar Hoover, Davis became the third woman ever to be included on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Eight weeks later, Davis was finally arrested in a New York motel; the trial that followed catapulted her to international fame—and turned her into a revolutionary icon—as her supporters, who viewed her as a political prisoner, chanted “Free Angela!” across the globe.In 1972, after 16 months in prison, she was acquitted of all charges by an all-white jury. “It took a worldwide movement of people to acquit Miss Davis,” noted one of her attorneys, Howard Moore Jr., but it shouldn’t have. “Justice should be the routine of the system,” he added.
THIS IS WHY THEY BAN IT: “Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation. ” –Angela Davis
Exclusive: largest data analysis of its kind counters Trump’s aggressive efforts to deny trans minors’ existence
View image in fullscreen A protester is silhouetted against a trans pride flag during a pro-transgender rights protest outside of Seattle children’s hospital on 9 February. Photograph: Lindsey Wasson/AP
More than 2.8 million people now identify as transgender in the US, including an estimated 724,000 youth, according to a new data analysis that is the largest of its kind to date.
Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Williams Institute used federal surveys and data from state health agencies to identify the size and demographics of the trans population in each state.
The analysis, shared with the Guardian and released on Wednesday, documented thousands of trans youth living in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The findings counter Donald Trump’s aggressive efforts to deny the existence of trans minors, as his administration removes references to trans people across federal agencies and widely erodes protections and programs for LGBTQ+ communities.
The report builds on federal data collection efforts that the White House is now eliminating. The authors warn their study could be the last comprehensive portrait of the nation’s trans population for a decade or more as trans people are erased from vital US surveys, including health reports and crime data analyses.
The Williams Institute primarily relied on data from 2021 to 2023 from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) surveys and records disclosed by state health agencies. Some of the key findings include:
1% of the total US population ages 13 and older identifies as trans, including 0.8% of adults (more than 2.1 million people) and 3.3% of youth ages 13 to 17 (roughly 724,000 people).
Young adults ages 18 to 24 are significantly more likely to identify as trans (2.72%) than those 35 to 64 (0.42%) and those 65 and older (0.26%).
Of the 2.1 million trans adults, 32.7% (698,500) are trans women, 34.2% (730,500) are trans men and 33.1% (707,100) are trans non-binary people.
The trans populations are fairly consistent across regions, with 0.9% of adults in the west, midwest and north-east identifying as trans, compared with 0.7% of adults in the south.
Minnesota had the highest rate of adults who identify as trans (1.2%), and Hawaii had the highest rate of trans youth (3.6%), though the ranges were similar across states.
“Trans people live everywhere and are represented in every state,” said Dr Jody Herman, senior scholar of public policy at the Williams Institute and co-author of the report, noting the total US trans population was greater than the individual populations of more than a dozen states. “This is a substantial population that has unique concerns and barriers to getting their needs met, and lawmakers need to keep that in mind.”
The Williams Institute, a leading LGBTQ+ policy research center, has published national trans population counts since its 2011 report, which was the first of its kind as state-level data on gender identity became available. The estimates are considered the best available data and were cited by the US supreme court in its recent majority opinion upholding Tennessee’s ban on trans youth healthcare.
The quality and sources of the researchers’ data have improved from one report to the next, the researchers said, making it difficult to assess changes over time. But the researchers noted that the overall estimates of trans adults have remained relatively steady, while the latest data shows how younger people are now significantly more likely to identify as trans than older groups.
There are many factors contributing to youth identifying as trans at higher rates, including that younger people are more likely to answer these kinds of survey questions, said Dr Andrew Flores, Williams Institute distinguished visiting scholar and associate professor of government at American University.
“Younger people are growing up among other younger people who already hold more accepting attitudes toward LGBT and transgender people more broadly,” said Flores, a report co-author, citing increasingly visible signs of support, such as student walkouts in Florida in protest of anti-trans policies. “In this generation, they might be more willing and safe to identify that they are transgender, because they don’t see as much of a harm or threat as older generations.”
While some conservatives and anti-trans advocates have presented a reported rise in trans youth as a “social contagion”, suggesting youth are copying their peers, “the growth comes as people are now in an environment that allows them to fully express who they are,” Flores said.
Shifting language also affects generational differences, he said, noting how older groups were more likely to identify as lesbian or gay while younger people are more likely to identify as bisexual or pansexual. And while older trans people are more likely to identify as men or women, younger trans people more frequently identify as non-binary.
The report also found that the race and ethnicity of trans people was largely similar to broader US demographics, with Indigenous, Latino and multiracial adults slightly more likely to identify as trans than other groups.
The Trump administration, which has widely attacked data collection efforts across government, has moved to remove trans identity questions from two critical CDC behavioral health surveys and from Department of Justice surveys on crime victimization and sexual violence. The US Census Bureau has also taken steps to exclude gender identity from multiple surveys, according to the former director who resigned in February.
Those efforts followed Trump’s day-one executive order “restoring biological truth” to the government, which suggested that trans identity was “false” and directed the state department to deny trans people accurate passports.
The data loss will make it impossible for the Williams Institute to continue its analyses in their current form, and even if the next administration restored the surveys, the public would still be losing up to 10 years of data, which would be a devastating erosion of knowledge, the researchers said.
“We didn’t really have decent national data until around 10 years ago, so we just very recently got a grasp on how many people identify as trans in the US and what their characteristics are,” said Herman. “For these data sources to just suddenly disappear, it is a major setback. The population is not going to go away; we’re just not going to know more about them than what we have from our current sources.”
The data has frequently been cited by journalists, school boards, public health experts, civil rights lawyers, advocates fighting discriminatory legislation and lawmakers expanding trans rights. The researchers had hoped federal data could help illuminate how trans people were moving within the US as some have fled red states due to anti-trans laws, but that will be hard to track without national surveys, they said.
“In some policy circles, they say if you can’t be counted, you don’t count,” Flores added. “And for members of the LGBTQ+ community, to be able to see numbers that reflect their lived experiences is quite important.”
Imara Jones, founder of news organization TransLash Media, said there was no easy fix for the loss of national data backed by federal resources.
“It is meant to erase, and that erasure is meant to have real-world impacts, making it harder for people to be who they are,” Jones said.
Flores said the institute and others were discussing ways to fill the gaps and continue data collection without the federal government: “We’re not just going to close up shop. We’re going to try to find a way to keep telling these stories and be persistent.”
Taking advice about how to run free, fair, and democratic elections from Vladimir Putin would be like taking advice from Donald Trump on how to make a steak.
“What you want to do is purchase the most beautiful cut of meat possible, preferably from Walmart, but with a “Trump Steak” sticker on it. Then, you’re gonna put that steak on the stove and cook it for about 45 minutes until it’s nice and charred. Then you will want to bury it in ketchup to the point that you can’t even see the steak. Then, have someone else cut it for you, but make sure it’s in tiny pieces so you don’t have to chew so hard. You gotta eat your ketchup steak in tiny bites if you’re like me, and your dentures keep popping out.”
I read that when he had meetings with his campaign people during the 2016 race, he’d serve hot dogs. The anonymous source said that Trump eats like an 8-year-old. He will serve his guests a scoop of ice cream while he gets two, so they know who the big boy is. I bet that bastard puts ketchup on his hot dogs, that sonofabitch.
Trump is taking Putin’s side again. Not just in the war that Putin started against Ukraine, but in the war he started against American democracy. On Monday morning, Trump posted on ShitSocial that he’s getting rid of mail-in voting and voting machines. Disclaimer: I haven’t read his entire post because…damn. (snip-MORE. Seriously, go see it, it’s worth the click!)
August 20, 1619 The first enslaved Africans brought to North America arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, aboard a Dutch ship.
August 20, 1964 A nearly $1 billion (about $5 billion in current dollars) anti-poverty measure, the Economic Opportunity Act, which created Head Start, VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America), and other programs that became part of the “War on Poverty,” was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. Sargent Shriver & LBJ Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps, drafted the legislation and became director of the Office of Equal Opportunity which implemented the new law. The “Great Society”
A good place to pick up important info quickly; all linked/cited for sourcing.
Ed Martin Confirms Ed Martin’s Witch Hunt Against Elected Democrats by TPM
INSIDE: Pam Bondi … Adam Schiff … Letitia James Read on Substack
A Classic Example of Political Corruption
Ed Martin had no prior experience as a prosecutor when he became acting D.C. U.S. attorney earlier this year. And it shows.
Since his nomination to the permanent position was aborted because of lack of Senate GOP support, Martin has been triple-hatting at Main Justice as (i) U.S. pardon attorney; (ii) the chief of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s “Weaponization Working Group” — the unintentionally revealing name of the outfit that’s charged with politicizing the Justice Department; and (iii) most recently as Bondi’s “special attorney” overseeing the politically motivated mortgage fraud investigations of Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
It was in that third role that Martin was apparently serving when he went on Fox News and admitted that he’s using the pretext of the clearly bogus mortgage fraud probes to conduct an open-ended witch hunt into Schiff and James. “We’re also gonna look at everything else they’ve been doing,” Martin said on air:
Most legal experts think the mortgage fraud claims don’t amount to anything on the facts or on the law. But don’t underestimate the potency of ongoing criminal investigations hanging over anyone, especially elected officials, particularly when the investigations are used as justification for a wide-ranging probe of unspecified other wrongdoing.
Even if charges never come, this is a classic example of political corruption — and of authoritarian capture of the independence of federal prosecutors. Martin has embarked on a fishing expedition and he’ll keep it going for as long as it’s useful to the White House.
Speaking of Letitia James …
New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $500 million civil fraud judgment against Donald Trump has been held up on appeal for nearly a year, apparently because of deep divisions and three dueling written opinions on the five-justice appeals court panel, the WSJ reports.
Thread of the Day
With a new series of edicts, FBI Director Kash Patel is further degrading the bureau and converting into something akin to a national police department (which is NOT what the FBI has historically been):
WASHINGTON, DISTICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES – 2025/08/17: Activist Nadine Seiler holds a sign that reads “What Trump order won’t you obey” stands in front of a National Guard vehicle as protesters gather at Columbus Circle following President Donald Trump’s announcement to place the D.C. Metropolitan Police under federal control. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)
A Recipe for Disaster
Red states are jumping on the bandwagon to send their national guards to the nation’s capital and show plurality Black D.C. who’s boss. West Virginia, Ohio, and South Carolina (still smarting from the last time it tried to overthrow D.C.) are first in line to engage in performative strong-arming of Democratic cities.
But the most alarming news to come out over a generally alarming weekend is that the national guardsmen may be armed, a reversal of an earlier decision that deployed the D.C. National Guard on the streets without weaponry on their persons or in the vehicles.
The ingredients could be in place for a cocktail of violence: federal agents and national guardsmen with little to no training in street policing being sent with guns into a peaceful urban area (that many of them are not even from) and expected to stir up trouble. It puts everyone — D.C. residents, local police, guardsmen, and federal agents — in an impossible situation.
One glimmer of good news was that the Trump administration was hauled into court Friday over its attempt to take over the D.C. police department and, under pressure from a federal judge, backed off its maximalist position.
ICYMI
Religion Dispatches: Latest ICE Recruitment Materials Include Overt Neo-Nazi Reference and Nazi-Nazi Script
Sign of the Times: The New Fascism Comes With Merch
The Florida GOP scrubbed its online store of a new line of merchandise touting the state’s new “Deportation Depot” after Home Depot complained it was an unapproved use of its branding.
Texas Dems Expected Back This Week
With California Democrats proceeding with their own mid-decade redistricting, Texas Democrats are expected to return to the state today, giving Republicans a quorum in the legislature to push through their redistricting plan. Texas Democrats succeeded in blocking the redistricting push in the first special session of the legislature. But when it ended, Friday Gov. Greg Abbott (R) immediately called a second special session, setting the stage for passing a new, more GOP friendly congressional district map to help national Republicans hold their House majority in next year’s midterms.
Quote of the Day
“Trump has completely ceded narrative control to Putin. What Ukraine is just basically getting as a concession is for the Russians to stop fighting. And this is Putin’s way all the way through the 25 years of his presidency, which is: ‘I’m going to beat you up and my concession is that I stopped beating you up.’”–former Trump I National Security Council official Fiona Hill
D’oh!
Guests at a hotel in Anchorage found sensitive documents from the Trump-Putin summit on a public printer, NPR reports.
D.C. Circuit Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, Trump appointees who have had out-sized influence in the first months of the Trump II presidency, cleared the way Friday for the Trump administration to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Judge Cornelia Pillard, an Obama appointee dissented.
“The notion that courts are powerless to prevent the President from abolishing the agencies of the federal government that he was elected to lead cannot be reconciled with either the constitutional separation of powers or our nation’s commitment to a government of laws,” Pillard wrote.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
TPM’s Layla A. Jones: The Trump Administration Is Laying the Groundwork for a Full Takeover of Federal Data
Judge Blocks FTC Probe of Media Matters
U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of D.C. sided with Media Matters in blocking a politically motived Federal Trade Commission investigation of the liberal watchdog group.
“This case presents a straightforward First Amendment violation,” Sooknanan ruled.
Media Matters has been struggling financially under the weight of bogus right-wing investigations into whether its reporting on antisemitic content on X/Twitter amounted to anticompetitive conduct. It also faces related serial lawsuits by Elon Musk.
“It should alarm all Americans when the government retaliates against individuals or organizations for engaging in constitutionally protected public debate,” Sooknanan wrote. “And that alarm should ring even louder when the Government retaliates against those engaged in newsgathering and reporting.”
A Rare Example of Organized Left-Wing Violence?
The purported attack at an ICE detention center in Texas last month caught my eye as an possible example of organized left-wing violence, a relative rarity since the 1970s. When I say “organized,” I don’t necessarily mean well-organized. The ragtag group’s alleged attack seemed especially hapless, even according to the official law enforcement account of the incident. Adding to the weirdness, the alleged perpetrators — among them two transgender women activists — appeared to be from in and around Dallas, which wouldn’t be my first choice for hotbeds of anti-fascism.
The WaPo’s Robert Klemko has dug a bit more into the “secretive network of Dallas anti-fascists” who “initially united around trans and queer identity issues.” He did a jailhouse interview with the group’s alleged ringleader, a former Marine Corps reservist of mixed Japanese and Korean descent who trained “very young, naive leftists,” as one witness put it, in close-quarters combat and large-scale gunfights at his mother’s taekwondo studio in suburban Dallas.
August 18, 1914 In another step in the ethnic intimidation that led ultimately to the Armenian genocide in Turkey, looting was reported in Sivas, Diyarbekir, and other provinces. Under the guise of collecting war contributions (WWI had just begun), stores owned by Armenian and Greek merchants were vandalized. 1,080 shops and stalls owned by Armenians were burned at the Diyarbekir bazaar. Chronology of the Armenian Genocide
August 18, 1920 Women throughout the U.S. won the right to vote when the Tennessee legislature approved the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the last of 36 states then required to approve it). An amendment for universal suffrage was first introduced in Congress in 1878, and Wyoming had granted suffrage in state law by 1890. This amendment to enfranchise all American women had been introduced annually for 41 years without passage; it had gotten two-thirds of both houses of Congress to approve it just the year before. “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” In the Tennessee House, 24-year-old Representative Harry Burn surprised observers by casting the deciding vote for ratification. At the time of his vote, Burns had in his pocket a letter he had received from his mother urging him, “Don’t forget to be a good boy” and “vote for suffrage.” Teaching With Documents: Woman Suffrage and the 19th Amendment (National Archives) (It is still there; I checked.)
August 18, 1963 James Meredith James Meredith, the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, became the first to graduate. His enrollment at “Ole Miss” a year earlier had been met with deadly riots, forcing him to attend class escorted by heavily armed guards. James Meredith being escorted to his classes by U.S. marshals and the military. Who was James Meredith
August 18, 1964 South Africa was banned from taking part in the 18th Olympic Games in Tokyo due to the country’s refusal to reform its racially separatist apartheid system. Read more
August 18, 1977 Steve Biko, the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement resisting apartheid, was arrested at a roadblock outside King William’s Town. He died while in custody from abuse during the weeks of interrogation that followed. Steve Biko “So as a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior.” “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” – Biko speech in Cape Town, 1971 More about Biko
I don’t care if a person can afford to have facial surgery and does to make themselves look prettier than nature did at birth, but this woman who clearly had a lot of work to change her appearance would object to a young adult trans person would do the same thing. But the point is this person is spending millions to cosplay to her heart’s content all over the Northern Hemisphere so she can put a pretty face to the horror her department is inflicting on people. Look she went to the El Salvadorian SECOT prison dressed up for a photo op. But what they are trying to hide is she was living in a mansion paid for by the US taxpayer …. meaning paid by us and so when that got found out she moved into a water front mansion her boyfriend was living in paid for by the US Coast Guard. The grifting and corruption of this administration is unbelievable. They cut every healthcare and food assistance for the poor in the US but they demand every amenity paid for by the taxpayer and think they are due it. Hugs
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BIG SPENDER
The DHS will pour a fortune into its “Stronger Border” ad campaign as Secretary Kristi Noem weathers a relentless storm of mockery.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty/Reuters
The Trump administration is set to spend up to $50 million on a wave of taxpayer-funded PR amid the torrent of negative coverage dogging his Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
A planning forecast record posted this week by the Department for Homeland Security (DHS) pledges $20 million to $50 million as an “International Campaign Follow-on” to the “Stronger Border, Stronger America” ads that have starred Noem.
A DHS spokesperson told the Daily Beast that the spending on the campaign is not related to coverage of Noem.
Since being appointed Trump’s DHS secretary, Noem has been skewered over her cosplays and photo-ops promoting Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Trump’s hardline deportation agenda.
That mockery has reached a fever pitch with the latest season of South Park, which won record ratings while portraying Noem as a psychotic dog-killer—referencing her memoir admission that she shot dead her own dog—and mocked DHS’s own celebratory sizzle reels.
Noem wore an ICE vest in promotional stunts for the agency—the new tranche of spending comes as she has weathered intense mockery on ‘South Park.’TheDailyBeast/DHS
The PR campaign will be funded from September through March, listing the incumbent as People Who Think LLC—a company with ties to the GOP and Noem’s unofficial chief of staff, Corey Lewandowski, who also served as Trump’s 2016 campaign manager. Noem and Lewandowski, who are both married to other people, have denied longstanding rumors that they are romantically involved.
People Who Think was co-founded by Louisiana consultant Jay Connaughton, who worked alongside Lewandowski—described by some Homeland Security officials as Noem’s gatekeeper—on Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry’s campaign in 2024, according to Semafor. Connaughton also worked on ads for Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to the report.
Federal data shows the company has been awarded $26.7 million this financial year, suggesting it could stand to earn nearly double that in its latest deal. The Daily Beast contacted People Who Think LLC for comment.
The new spending is the latest tranche from a pot that Semafor reported as being worth up to $200 million, which has been budgeted for Noem’s nationwide and international messaging drive. The DHS began rolling it out in February.
Early spots featured Noem praising Trump in front of American flags and warning migrants—depicted as crossing the border en masse and purportedly handing over drugs—with Noem saying “we will find you and deport you,” and “you will never return.”
Images from one of the adverts in the campaign launched earlier this year—the DHS trumpeted the spots as a “nationwide and international multimillion-dollar ad campaign warning illegal aliens to leave our country now or face deportation.”TheDailyBeast/DHS
DHS insisted after the rollout that the buys were “competitive,” but a document posted in a federal database in March shows officials at that time invoked an “unusual and compelling urgency” tied to Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the border, according to the Los Angeles Times. The measure allows federal agencies to skip a typical competitive process, the outlet reported.
The process sparked alarm from Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee, who wrote a letter to Noem slamming a “blatant misuse of American tax dollars,” and demanding records by April 4.
As of now, the committee hasn’t posted any DHS response.
Noem is carrying out what Trump wants—and he continues to support her by funding a PR blitz.Evelyn Hockstein/REUTERSNoem meeting with President of Costa Rica Rodrigo Chaves Robles in June—Lewandowski (second left) and Noem have both previously denied rumors of being romantically involved.Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Given the time that has elapsed since the previous “tender,” and the fact that tens of thousands of arrests and deportations of migrants have occurred since Trump took power in January, it is not obvious his administration and the DHS can continue to argue an “unusual and compelling urgency.”
It is also unclear whether a competitive process was used this time around.
“Just yesterday, Secretary Noem announced 1.6 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. This data reveals the world is hearing Secretary Noem’s message loud and clear: if you are in America illegally, leave now or face arrest, deportation, and fines,” the DHS spokesperson told the Daily Beast on Friday.
“Following a competitive process with multiple companies competing to deliver the best service, product, and price for American taxpayers, Safe America Media and People Who Think both earned a shared contract for this targeted national and international campaign that warns illegal aliens to leave our country now, self deport, and not to enter our country illegally or face deportation,” they said, adding that multiple “career government officials oversaw this competitive procurement process.”
Noem at the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador in March—one of her many photo-ops since being appointed Homeland Security Secretary.Alex Brandon/Alex Brandon/Pool via REUTERS‘South Park’ has been mocking the stunts, achieiving record ratings in the process—Noem has called the parody “lazy” and “petty.”South Park/Comedy Central
The spokesperson also denied that the spending is part of an effort to counter negative coverage of Noem.
“To the Daily Beast’s chagrin, these ads are working, and illegal aliens are leaving in droves,” they said.
More racism. Plus what does this say about how the Republican Party which is the party that touts themselves as pro business yet in the name of racism they feel free to trash people’s places of business. Notice everyone they detained was working. Working. These are not criminals they are productive members of their community. Their real crime in the current US under Stephen Miller is not being white. Yes undocumented but how soon will it be before they come for US citizen brown people in their quest for a white ethnostate. We must stop them now. Hugs
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In a social media post, the business said immigration agents left behind a burned kitchen, torn ceiling tiles, broken doors and trashed food.
A local Mexican restaurant chain in Pennsylvania is trying to forge ahead a week after a worksite immigration raid left property damage at two of its storefronts and a workforce afraid to show up to their jobs, according to two employees and a witness who spoke with NBC News.
It all started Aug. 7 when immigration authorities showed up at two Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant & Bar locations in the Pittsburgh area. As many as 16 workers were detained — nine worked at a location in Gibsonia, a suburb north of Pittsburgh, and seven others worked at another location in the nearby township of Cranberry.
In a social media post that same afternoon, which included a video taken by a worker, the business accused agents of storming into its restaurants and leaving “a trail of fear, confusion, and destruction” that included a burned kitchen, torn ceiling tiles, broken doors, a safe cut open by an agent and trashed food. The incident raises questions over the tactics used by authorities at this particular raid.
Immigration authorities conducted a workplace raid on two Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant & Bar locations on Aug. 7. Courtesy Jaime Martinez
This week, gas plumbers fixed a stove that was damaged during the raid, according to two people working at the restaurant chain. Staffing was also thin at the locations targeted by immigration authorities as employees who witnessed the raid, including those who are U.S. citizens, remain “in shock,” they added. “No one wants to go back, everyone is scared.”
Both workers who spoke with NBC News requested to not be named to protect their family’s privacy because of an ongoing federal investigation in connection with last week’s events.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania declined to clarify what the investigation it is leading is about.
As the immigration arrests were happening last week, someone alerted an emergency response immigration hotline run by Casa San Jose, a local nonprofit that advocates for Latino and immigrant communities.
The organization quickly dispatched about 20 volunteers to both locations to act as legal observers, collect testimonies and provide support to the workers and families affected, according to Jaime Martinez, a community defense organizer at Casa San Jose.
At the Gibsonia location, “the raid actually caused a kitchen fire that agents were unable to extinguish at the beginning, which put people in danger,” Martinez told NBC News on Tuesday.
Employees who spoke to Martinez and his volunteers said the stove was on when agents entered the kitchen because workers were cooking food as they prepared to open the restaurant Thursday morning. The restaurant’s manager warned agents that the open burners were on, but witnesses alleged that agents didn’t do anything until a fire sparked, he said.
The detained employees, who had their arms and ankles shackled, were the ones who directed the agents to find the fire extinguisher and instructed them on how to use it after initially failing to operate it, according to employees who spoke to Martinez and his volunteers.
“By the time the fire department got there, the fire had already been put out with a dry chemical extinguisher, but only after this delay,” Martinez said.
As many as 16 workers were detained at two locations in the Pittsburgh region.Courtesy Jaime Martinez
A spokesperson with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told NBC News in an email Thursday that the “damage to the restaurant, including the small fire, was created by the illegal aliens themselves while they were trying to escape or hide from law enforcement officers.”
According to ICE, the agents showed up at the locations in Gibsonia and Cranberry to execute federal search warrants based on information it got alleging that the restaurants were employing undocumented workers, WPXI, NBC’s affiliate in Pittsburgh, reported. The agency added that the 16 people detained lack legal status and are now in ICE custody, undergoing immigration proceedings.
“But in the process of coming in with that warrant, they also terrorized the community, pointed guns at people and destroyed a local business,” Martinez said.
In response to this, the ICE spokesperson told NBC News, “All agents and officers followed established legal procedures while executing the warrants.”
At the Cranberry location, Casa San Jose volunteers interviewed a worker who described seeing officers come into the restaurant, shouting “police” and pointing their long guns at the employees. One female employee who was in the kitchen said an agent “pointed the gun at her head” while telling her to stop cooking, according to Martinez.
While she was not detained after showing proper documentation, “this lady is now going to have to live with the trauma of having law enforcement point a gun at her head while she was at work,” Martinez said.
Martinez and one of the workers who spoke with NBC News said agents lined up all of the cuffed employees and made them kneel while pointing their weapons at them.
“Agents and officers operated within established law enforcement standards in order to ensure the safety of law enforcement officers, the public and the illegal aliens themselves,” the ICE spokesperson said in response to this allegation.
An ICE spokesperson said agents were also present in June as part of the same investigation.Courtesy Jaime Martinez
Last week was not the first time immigration authorities attempted to detain employees from Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant & Bar.The ICE spokesperson confirmed to NBC News that a June incident was part of “an investigation that ultimately led to the execution of the warrants” this month.
Martinez said that on a night in June, he got a call on the hotline, reporting unmarked vehicles surrounding a nearby apartment complex. When the volunteer who was dispatched arrived at the area, she noticed the vehicles were parked with their engines still running, in front and behind the restaurant.
According to Martinez, it looked like federal agents inside the vehicles were waiting for workers to come out of the restaurant as it was closing. The vehicles left once TV crews arrived on the scene, he said.
“There were nine people in that restaurant on lockdown,” Martinez said, adding his group doesn’t know the immigration status of those workers since it doesn’t ask people about that as part of its policy. “But you don’t have to be undocumented to be afraid of getting detained.”
Since launching the hotline in March, Casa San Jose has received more than 650 calls reporting more than 100 immigration detentions in the area and has dispatched volunteers in at least 70 instances, according to Martinez.
In the wake of the raids at Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant and Bar locations, the community came together and collectively donated more than $133,000. The workers who spoke with NBC News said the business plans to use the funds to cover bond expenses, one month worth of salary for each employee detained and repair damage done to the restaurant.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty/Reuters
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