I would like people to compare the “tough guy” speech given by the ICE person about removing child molesters and kidnappers, rescuing children from forced labor, the worst criminals, murders, making mom and pop safe with the four crimes they mentioned that of the dozens and dozens arrested were accused of. One guy was charged with fentanyl distribution, one was charged with trespass, a third was charged with driving without a license and refusing to show identification. Wow mom and pop are so much safer now that the worst of the worst are in detention with no due process. Let’s be clear, they are going after legal immigrants, they are going after those following the rules, they are showing up at places where these people are working and looking for work because the goal is to remove all the brown people. It is that simple, it is a white supremacy thing driven by racist like Stephen Miller who hates Spanish speaking people and those with brown skin. They held a US citizen veteran for three days with no due process and no explanation. Take a guess of his skin color? Brown? Great guess and correct. These gang thugs are not trying to make the US safer for anyone, they are determined to make it whiter. At the 5:21 mark ICE thugs abruptly stop their car in the middle of the street and with guns and tasers ready while masked and in no uniform they rush a woman who is a well known activist who has been openly filming them for weeks. This is an attempt to cause fear and stop people from viewing and reporting their actions. This is such a 1930s Hitler’s Germany moment in the US. And Vaush talks about how the nation if flooded with guns and these masked people with no uniforms rushing at people could be shot by people in reasonable fear for their lives as Roger also has been saying. Hugs
July 20, 1967 The first Black Power conference was held in Newark, New Jersey, calling on black people in the U.S. “to unite, to recognize their heritage and to build a sense of community.” Read more
July 20, 1971 The first labor contract in the history of the federal government was signed by postal worker unions and the newly re-organized U.S. Postal Service. This contract was made possible by the postal strike of March 1970, in which 200,000 postal workers walked off the job, defying federal law. Prior to that, postal worker salaries started at $6,200 a year, and many postal workers were eligible for food stamps. The strike was not organized by a national union; it started when rank-and-file workers walked off the job in New York City and it spread to other parts of the country. The strike led to federal legislation that allowed postal unions to negotiate a contract with postal management (previously, postal salaries were set by Congress), with provisions for arbitration if no agreement were reached.Since that time, postal unions have successfully negotiated or arbitrated wages and benefits that provide a secure standard of living for their members. Read about the history of the APWU (American Postal Workers Union)
July 19, 1848 The first Women’s Rights Convention in the U.S. was held at Seneca Falls, New York. Its “Declaration of Sentiments” launched the movement of women to be included in the constitution.The Declaration used as a model the U.S. Declaration of Independence, demanding that the rights of women as individuals be acknowledged and respected by society. It was signed by sixty-eight women and thirty-two men. The impetus came from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, both of whom had been excluded, along with all the other female American delegates, from the World Anti-Slavery Convention (London, 1840) because of their sex. Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist leader attended the convention and supported the resolution for women’s suffrage. When suffrage finally became a reality in 1920, seventy-two years after this first organized demand in 1848, only one signer of the Seneca Falls Declaration, Charlotte Woodward, then a young worker in a glove manufactory, had lived long enough to cast her first ballot. The Seneca Falls Convention and the Early Suffrage Movement The Declaration of Sentiments
July 19, 1958 Several black teenagers, members of the local NAACP chapter (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), entered downtown Wichita’s Dockum Drug Store (then the largest drugstore chain in Kansas) and sat down at the lunch counter. Wichita sit-in sculpture The store refused to serve them because of their race. They returned at least twice a week for the next several weeks. They sat quietly all afternoon, creating no disturbance, but refused to leave without being served. Though the police once chased them away, they were breaking no law, only asking to make a purchase, a violation of store policy. This was the first instance of a sit-in to protest segregationist policies. Less than a month later, a white man around 40 walked in and looked at those sitting in for several minutes. Then he looked at the store manager, and said, “Serve them. I’m losing too much money.” That man was the owner of the Dockum drug store chain. That day the lawyer for the local NAACP branch called the store’s state offices, and was told by the chain’s vice president that “he had instructed all of his managers, clerks, etc. (statewide), to serve all people without regard to race, creed or color.”
July 19, 1974 Martha Tranquill of Sacramento, California, was sentenced to nine months’ prison time for refusing to pay her federal taxes as a protest against the Vietnam War.
July 19, 1993 President Bill Clinton announced regulations to implement his “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding gays in the military, saying that the armed services should put an end to “witch hunts.” The policy was developed by General Colin Powell, then Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and eventually summarized as “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue, don’t harass.”
July 19, 2000 A federal administrative law judge ordered white supremacist Ryan Wilson to pay $1.1 million in damages to fair housing advocate Bonnie Jouhari and her daughter, Dani. The decision stemmed from threats made against Jouhari by Wilson and his Philadelphia neo-Nazi group, ALPA HQ.
Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the Republican Party’s top inquisitors in Congress, is expected to be deposed Friday about allegations that he failed to protect the wrestlers he once coached at Ohio State University from a sexual predator, four plaintiffs in lawsuits against the university told NBC News.
Jordan, who was the assistant wrestling coach at the university from 1986 to 1994 before he got into politics, has repeatedly and publicly denied any knowledge that the team’s doctor, Richard Strauss, was preying on the athletes.
It will be the first time Jordan has be questioned under oath by lawyers representing hundreds of former OSU students, both athletes and nonathletes, who are suing the school for damages in federal court in the Southern District of Ohio. Jordan is not a defendant, but he is referred to in some of the lawsuits alleging he was aware of the abuse.
Jordan, the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, is known for his combative questioning of witnesses and for avoiding suit jackets during it.
Reached for comment, Jordan spokesperson Russell Dye released a variation of the statement Jordan’s team has been using since July 2018, when three former OSU wrestlers told NBC News that Jordan was lying when he claimed he did not know that Strauss molested them under the guise of giving physical examinations. (snip-a bit MORE)
The Young GOPer Behind “Alligator Alcatraz” Is the Dark Future of MAGA
James Uthmeier is the real brains behind this notorious migrant detention camp in the Everglades. The more barbarities that emerge, the brighter his star will no doubt shine.
The other day, Stephen Miller went on Fox News and offered a plea that got surprisingly little attention given its highly toxic and unnerving implications. Miller urged politicians in GOP-run states to build their own versions of “Alligator Alcatraz,” the state-run immigration detention facility that officials just opened in the Florida Everglades.
“We want every governor of a red state, and if you are watching tonight: pick up the phone, call DHS, work with us to build facilities in your state,” Miller said, in a reference to the Department of Homeland Security. Critically, Miller added, such states could then work with the federal government by supplying much-needed detention beds, helping President Trump “get the illegals out.”
Keep all that in mind as we introduce you to one James Uthmeier.
Uthmeier, the attorney general of Florida and a longtime ally of Governor Ron DeSantis, is widely described in the state as the brains behind “Alligator Alcatraz.” Peter Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics, sums him up this way: “In Uthmeier, DeSantis found his own Stephen Miller.”
Uthmeier is indeed a homegrown Florida version of Miller: Only 37 years old, he brings great precociousness to the jailing of migrants. Like Miller, he is obscure and little-known relative to the influence he’s amassing. Also like Miller, he is fluent in MAGA’s reliance on the spectacle of inhumanity and barbarism.
“You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter,” Uthmeier said of “Alligator Alcatraz” in a slick video he recently narrated about the complex, which featured heavy-metal guitar riffs right out of a combat-cosplay video game. “People get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”
Any migrant who dares escape just might get devoured alive by an animal—one animal eating another. Dehumanization is so thrilling!
The real-world “Alligator Alcatraz” is already gaining notoriety for its very real cruelties. After Democratic lawmakers visited over the weekend, they sharply denounced the scenes they’d witnessed of migrants packed into cages under inhumane conditions. Meanwhile, detainees and family members have sounded alarms about worm-infested food and blistering heat. And the Miami Heraldreports that an unnervingly large percentage of the detainees lack criminal convictions.
But Uthmeier is getting feted on Fox News and other right wing media for this new experiment in spite of such notorieties—or perhaps because of them. There’s good reason to think more red state politicians will seek to create their own versions of “Alligator Alcatraz” or get in on this action in other ways—and that more young Republican politicians will see it as a path to MAGA renown and glory.
For one thing, the money is now there. Buried in the big budget bill that Trump recently signed is a little-noticed provision that immigration advocates increasingly fear could fund more complexes like this one. It makes $3.5 billion available to “eligible states” and their agencies for numerous immigration-related purposes, including the “temporary detention of aliens.”
When Miller told GOP politicians to follow Uthmeier by collaborating with federal officials to develop new versions of “Alligator Alcatraz,” he was probably talking about this slush fund. State officials can try to tap into it for building out such facilities. “For Republican states across the country that want to copy the ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ model, this bill will give them that money,” immigration analyst Austin Kocher tells me.
What’s more, red state politicians are paying attention. Fox News contacted numerous gubernatorial offices to ask if they intend to take up Miller’s invitation. The responses were positive, with many eagerly touting plans for detention complexes. While it’s unclear if these will resemble “Alligator Alcatraz,” the underlying impulse is clear: Many red states want to expand state-run detention efforts. And again: The money is there.
This is a bad development. “Alligator Alcatraz” should not be the model for the future of migrant detention in much of the United States.
Here’s why. The facility is funded and operated by the state of Florida, but the state can use it to detain undocumented people under a federal program that allows ICE to authorize local law enforcement to carry out immigration crackdowns. That puts “Alligator Alcatraz” in a grey area: Local law enforcement agencies are using it to carry out Trump’s immigration detention agenda even as ICE does not run the facility.
Lauren-Brooke Eisen of the Brennan Center, who specializes in criminal justice, points to a toxic combination built into the idea of more versions of this arrangement. ICE detention is subject to federal oversight. But huge influxes of federal money for migrant detention—as in Trump’s new bill—could create new incentives for states to ramp up their own detention efforts. Yet because “Alligator Alcatraz” is a new experiment, she says, it’s unclear what sort of federal oversight future imitation efforts would receive, even if they get some federal money.
“What will access to counsel look like for detainees?” Eisen asks. “What will access to family members look like? It’s difficult to imagine state-run facilities where conditions and due process are prioritized.”
Illustrating the point, when a reporter recently asked ICE for comment on what’s going on inside “Alligator Alcatraz,” ICE said, well, it isn’t their facility. In other words, the federal government is not responsible for what happens inside those walls—even as Miller and Trump call on other states to build more of them.
Which brings us back to Uthmeier and the future of MAGA.
It’s easy to see Uthmeier and his “Alligator Alcatraz” becoming a model for other young Republicans seeking a route into MAGA celebrity. Consider his career trajectory: It’s fairly conventional establishment-Republican stuff. A native of Destin, a small beach city in the deep red Florida panhandle, he earned a law degree from Georgetown and then worked for the Commerce Department in the first Trump administration—and then for the ultra-establishment D.C. law firm Jones Day.
Uthmeier has also made appearances at the conservative Federalist Ssociety, which is as establishment-conservative as it gets. He joined DeSantis’s first administration as a senior legal adviser, and then got appointed as attorney general when the slot was vacated by the appointment of former AG Ashley Moody to now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Senate seat.
All in all, it’s in some ways a conventional path to GOP success. In fact, Uthmeier actually has a track record of criticizing Trump in the past on things like Covid-19 and abortion. But J.D. Vance survived such heresies, and now, in the party that Trump remade, Uthmeier apparently recognizes that “Alligator Alcatraz” is his big ticket. It’s a reminder that in today’s GOP, the MAGA and older-line Republican establishments are bleeding into one another—and that getting attached to such an idea is a path to national MAGA stardom.
Put another way, in the cut-throat world of the MAGA attention economy, association with things like “Alligator Alcatraz” can carry enormous weight. It’s hard for people who don’t swim in MAGA’s rancid information currents to grasp, but when Trump recently toured the facility with DeSantis, it was a huge MAGA propaganda coup for the Florida governor (yes, he apparently still harbors national ambitions).
Indeed, one person who very much noticed this was apparently Uthmeier himself. According to one Florida operative in touch with Uthmeier’s staff, there’s considerable sensitivity in his inner circle over who is getting credit for “Alligator Alcatraz,” with some worrying that Uthmeier isn’t reaping enough of it.
Uthmeier needn’t worry, however. When Trump toured the facility, he said of Uthmeier: “That guy’s got a future.” In this, the MAGA God King himself gave a big boost to Uthmeier’s 2026 electoral bid to keep his appointed AG role, which will be a platform for even higher ambitions. And if more barbarities emerge from “Alligator Alcatraz,” as they surely will, his MAGA future will only get that much brighter.
SCOTUS flunks Separation of Powers again by Ann Telnaes
Supposedly only Congress has the power to abolish the Department of Education Read on Substack
This is the result by the majority Supreme Court’s expansion of presidential power and a Congress who long ago failed to uphold its constitutional oath of office.
Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, is quoted in the Economist that there is “no rhyme or reason” in these rulings other than “enabling lawless behaviour by the Trump administration”. Vladeck has a substack about the U.S. Supreme Court I recommend following.
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Tanks For Nothing by Clay Jones
SCOTUS says Trump can dismantle the Education Department and Grok goes to war Read on Substack
It’s frustrating to watch Trump get everything he wants, from media outlets settling bogus lawsuits, to social media caving into his demands, to FIFA giving him a trophy while making the winners celebrate with a duplicate (he was even caught stealing a medal), to FIFA (again) renting office space in Trump Tower to kiss his ass, to the Supreme Court of the United States allowing him to deport whoever he wants and destroy any federal agency he wants.
Congress created the Department of Education by law, and Trump acted to destroy it. He was sued, and a lower federal court paused it. Now, SCOTUS ruled, 6-3 as usual, that Trump can continue to destroy it as the case makes its way through the lower courts. Even if SCOTUS says Trump can’t destroy the department by the time the case returns from the lower courts, it will probably be too late.
It will be like reversing the death penalty after the execution.
These rulings are partisan. When the Biden administration asked SCOTUS to unpause a lower court’s freeze on forgiving student loans, SCOTUS refused. But for Trump, they’re bending over backward. SCOTUS is officially saying, “It’s OK if a Republican does it.”
I thought SCOTUS was on a break. They are, but they figured it was an emergency, so they came back to help Trump destroy education. This shit doesn’t make America great again. They wouldn’t have done this for Biden, nor would they have ruled that Biden is immune from prosecution.
Hmmmm, what else happened yesterday? Oh, yeah. Grok, Elon’s AI product, has been given a $200 million contract with the Defense Department. This came one day after Grok went on an antisemitic rant on Twitter/X. Of course, only Elon could teach a robot to be a Nazi.
It’s bad enough we got Drunky Hegseth leading the department while spilling classified information and pausing arms shipments to Ukraine, and now we’re going to trust Artificial Intelligence.
The Pentagon also gave contracts to Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI. The federal government is hiring robots while the Education people are being dumped.
Did none of these bozos watch The Terminator? At what time does Skynet become self-aware? We’re all doomed. Doooooomed, I tell you. (snip-MORE)
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JUNE 30: People stand outside Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center during the 2024 NYC Pride March on June 30, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)Noam Galai/Getty Images
The Stonewall National Monument website seemingly erased most mentions of bisexuality from its website right before Pride month. This comes after the site erased all mentions of trans people from the same “.gov” earlier this year.
The changes appear to have been made on May 27, according to the website itself, which notes the date that each page was last updated. But they largely went unnoticed until independent journalist Erin Reed reported on them on Thursday in a post on her Substack. As of July 11, the homepage on the website, which is run by the National Parks Service (NPS), reads, “Before the 1960s, almost everything about living authentically as a gay or lesbian person was illegal. The Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969 is a milestone in the quest for civil rights and provided momentum for a movement.”
But a version of the homepage from May 26, accessed via Wayback Machine, reveals a previous version of that same statement: “Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal. The Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969 is a milestone in the quest for LGB civil rights and provided momentum for a movement.”
Similarly, the “history and culture” page on the website was also updated to remove references to bisexuality on May 27. Where an archived version of the page from May 26 uses the acronym “LGB” numerous times, the most recent version of the page says “gay and lesbian,” and even uses the euphemism “the Stonewall community” in one instance. However, the “virtual fence exhibit” page on the website, which was updated on May 13, still uses the “LGB” acronym, as does the education page. (Though only time will tell how long those mentions will stay.)
As previously reported by Them, these changes come after NPS removed most mentions of trans people from the Stonewall National Monument website in February.
In June, the NPS also told activist Steve Love Menendez, who has been installing hundreds of Pride flags at the monument annually since 2017, that he should only install rainbow flags this year, and that they would not be covering the cost of trans or progress Pride flags, as they had done since 2023. (Visitors brought their own trans flags to place at the monument anyway.)
Though it’s unconfirmed whether the Trump administration is directly responsible for these changes, they are in line with the anti-trans executive orders that the President issued earlier this year, which sought to redefine gender as binary and determined at birth on all federal websites, among other anti-DEI efforts.
The letter “T” was also removed from instances of the acronym “LGBTQ+.”
In a statement emailed to Them, Stacy Lentz, the co-founder and CEO of The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative, took care to note that neither the bar itself nor its affiliated charity are associated with NPS. “That said, we find it deeply troubling that any government agency would erase bisexual people from their public-facing materials,” she said. “Stonewall has always welcomed and celebrated the full spectrum of our community — and that will never change.”
Kurt Kelly, owner of the Stonewall Inn, told Them, “The erasure of bisexual people from federal websites is not just a digital oversight — it’s a deliberate act of invisibility that harms an already marginalized part of our LGBTQ+ community.”
“We must unite as a community to always fight to ensure every identity under our rainbow is seen, heard, and protected. Bi visibility matters. Lives depend on it,” he added. “The fact they continue to do this on the Stonewall National Monument website is even more troubling knowing what Stonewall means to our community around the globe. “
Them has reached out to the National Parks Service for comment.
Scottie's Playtime 