May 26, 1647 The first person in America was executed for the crime of witchcraft. Alse Young was arrested, tried in Windsor, Connecticut, and hanged at Meeting House Square in Hartford, the site of what is now the Old State House. There is no further record of Young’s trial or the specifics of the charge — only that she was a woman, as 80% of those executed for witchcraft were. The Salem witch trials would not begin for another 45 years. Some 300 years later the U.S. experienced another “witch hunt” as Senator Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee pursued communists. Arthur Miller makes this comparison in his famous play “The Crucible.” Read more about the play “The Crucible” The Guardian
May 26, 1937 United Auto Workers organizers and Ford Service Department men clashed in a violent confrontation on the Miller Road Overpass outside Gate 4 of the Ford River Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan. It became known as “The Battle of the Overpass.” Henry Ford announced: “We’ll never recognize the United Automobile Workers Union or any other union.” Though General Motors and Chrysler signed collective bargaining agreements with the UAW in 1937, Ford held out until 1942. More background and photos Read more T The Ford Servicemen (goons) approach Walter Reuther and Richard Frankensteen, third and second from right, and the other unionists. UAW official Richard Frankensteen being beaten by Ford goons
May 26, 1946 A patent was filed in the U.S. for the H-Bomb, the hydrogen, or fusion-based, nuclear explosive device.
May 26, 1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono (along with her 5-year-old daughter Kyoko) held their second Bed-in for Peace at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, Quebec. A late-night rendition of “Give Peace a Chance,” recorded in the hotel room with their visitors singing and accompanying, reached No.14 on the Billboard pop music charts. John and Yoko meet cartoonist Al Capp in their hotel room
May 26, 1972 The Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty was signed by U.S. and U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics which included Russia and 15 other republics). The two countries agreed not to build defensive missile systems and thus to limit escalation of the nuclear arms race. It was reasoned that if either side deployed defensive missiles, the other would be forced to respond by increasing the number, explosive yield or effectiveness of their offensive nuclear weapons and delivery systems to maintain the balance of nuclear deterrence. Research and development of defensive systems was allowed under the ABM treaty, the U.S. having spent about $100 billion in the 20 years before the treaty was abrogated by President George W. Bush in the first months of his presidency.
May 26, 1991 20,000 Israeli Jews and Palestinians participated in a peace rally in Israel’s capital, Tel Aviv.
Dictator Donald wants everyone afraid and confused at all times. Verily, God says fuck that.
There is a better story I want to share.
Harvard just announced free online courses for every US citizen. Topics include basic government, the Constitution, and how to recognize a dictatorship.
Now that is how you defeat tyranny. Not with fear, or panic, but with knowledge. With clarity. With truth. And with stories of hope.
The fight is far from over. But we are not alone.
We will not go quietly. We will not forget. We will fight like hell. And we will win.
Everyday’s a good day to do that!Jeff Tiedrich included this in his substack today about the President’s grad speech at West Point. I also linked that below this snippet, if anyone’s interested in that. It’s TMI for me today, but very good; I read his most days. Meanwhile, back to the Army news: -A
Ronald Reagan was even involved in this largely-forgotten tradition.
By Dan Tracer Friday, June 21, 2024 · Updated on June 22, 2024
Long before RuPaul’s Drag Race, Drag Queen Story Hour, or any one of the countless drag shows gracing the stages of LGBTQ+ bars around the world, there was another popular spot for performative gender-bending: U.S. military bases in the 1940s.
During World War II, the military embraced drag shows as a unique form of entertainment and a morale-boosting activity. These officially sanctioned events featured all-male performances with soldiers often dressing in women’s attire. According to author Allan Bérubé, GIs staged these shows everywhere from makeshift platforms to grand theater stages, incorporating popular female impersonation routines of the day.
Due to the official segregation of the armed forces, service-member theater productions had no option but to cast men in female roles.
One of the most iconic productions of the era, “This is the Army,” was initially a Broadway musical designed to raise funds for troops. It later became a sensation as a 1943 film starring Ronald Reagan, 37 years before he was elected President of the United States. These shows not only provided soldiers with much-needed diversion during the stresses of conflict but also served as a safe haven for gay service members, as explained by Joe E. Jeffreys, a drag historian and professor at New York University’s New School. (snip; a little MORE with video)
==========================
elderly golfer’s brain goes fuckity-bye in batshit West Point speech by Jeff Tiedrich
Donny can’t be bothered to act like a human being Read on Substack
As Gwen Stefani said, “This shit is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. Read on Substack
If you’re the president of the United States and you want to do a lot of corrupt bullshit, the first thing you do is hire corrupt people who will support your corrupt bullshit.
A sure way to tell someone is corrupt is by offering them a bribe. If they accept the bribe, then they’re good to go because they’re up to no good. Years later, when you need a corrupt Attorney General to vouch that accepting a $400 million plane from Qatar isn’t corrupt, Pam Bondi will tell the public it’s not corrupt, even though it is.
And then, when you need your spokesgoon to say something super ridiculous to defend you over selling access to the Oval Office, you hire Karoline Leavitt. Leavitt said it was OK for Trump to be at his golf club, hosting the top buyers of his crypto because he was off the clock, attending in his “personal time,” as though he’s just a guess. Get the fuck out of here.
The White House claims that Trump’s assets are in a “blind trust” managed by his two idiot kids, Sniffy Jr. and Eric. (snip-MORE, and it’s good!)
Republican bill cuts food aid for elderly, low-income, & disabled Americans by Ann Telnaes
and increased funding for their own version of Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program Read on Substack
May 25, 1774 A group of African slaves in Massachusetts Bay colony petitioned the British royal governor for freedom as their natural right: “. . . we have in common with all other men a natural right to our freedoms without Being depriv’d of them by our fellow men as we are a freeborn Pepel [people] and have never forfeited this Blessing by aney compact or agreement whatever.”
May 25, 1925 John T. Scopes was indicted for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. Scopes, a football coach and substitute high school biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, agreed to be arrested and put on trial for teaching evolution. He was challenging the legitimacy of a four-day-old state law barring Darwin’s theory from the public school curriculum. The Scopes “Monkey Trial” ACLU
May 25, 1948 Garry Davis, formerly a member of the U.S. military, renounced his American citizenship to become a Citizen of the World. Davis continued to promote “world citizenship” for over 50 years; 400,000 have, at one time or another, joined the movement. watch trailer “THE WORLD IS MY COUNTRY” Read more about Garry Davis NY Times
May 25, 1963 Leaders of 32 African nations met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to set up the Organization of African Unity (OAU), giving them a united voice for the first time in the continent’s history. The primary aim of the OAU was to end European colonial control in the countries where it still existed at the time: Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), South Africa, Mozambique and Angola. OAU flag Read more
May 25, 1986 An estimated 7 million Americans participated in Hands Across America, forming a line across the country from Los Angeles to New York to raise public awareness of the issues of hunger and homelessness in the U.S. Participants paid ten dollars [almost $20 in 2009] to reserve their place in line; the proceeds were donated to local charities to feed the hungry and help the homeless.
May 25, 2003 Four activists, members of the Catholic Worker movement and known as “Riverside Ploughshares,” were arrested for pouring blood and hammering on the USS Philippine Sea’s Tomahawk cruise missile hatches. The ship was visiting New York City for the annual “Fleet Week.” “With hammers we have initiated the process of disarming this battle ship, of transforming this carrier of mass destruction into a vessel for peace…” pouring blood and hammering.. Details of the Riverside Ploughshares action
“I am most grateful that…I was born long enough ago to have known people who lived in the ancient way before everything started to change.” –Mourning Dove
Maybe it was because she was born in a canoe on Idaho’s Kootenai River. Or because she was multiracial. Or because she went to a convent school to learn English as a ten-year-old. Whatever the reason, Christine Quintasket, whose Salish language name was Hum-ishu-ma (Mourning Dove in English, which she adopted as her literary name as an adult), wrote stories about the hostility white people had toward Native Americans and the confusion they suffered when educated in white schools.
Born around 1884 to Sinixt/Colville Lucy Stukin of the upper Columbia River and Okanagan/Irish Joseph Quintasket of British Columbia, the future writer grew up speaking the Salishan dialect in her mother’s home near Kettle Falls, Washington, according to her autobiography. Mourning Dove’s grandmother taught her the traditional customs of Columbia Plateau natives. Teequalt, an older woman who lived with the family, introduced her to tribal spirituality, and Jimmy Ryan, an adopted white orphan, taught her to read English through dime novels.
As a young girl, Mourning Dove remembered sitting by a campfire and listening to the animated voice of a tribal storyteller imitating an animal. “We thought of this as all fun and play, barely aware that tale-telling and impersonations were part of our primitive education,” she recalled decades later.
Mourning Dove’s indigenous education ended in 1894 when she went to the Sacred Heart School at the Goodwin Catholic Mission near Kettle Falls. When her mother died in 1902, the writer returned home to care for her younger siblings. After her father remarried in 1904, she moved to Great Falls, Montana to attend the Fort Shaw Industrial Indian School. In 1908 Mourning Dove sorrowfully watched the last roundup of America’s wild bison herd as the Old West faded. “One magnificent fellow fought like a lion as they tried to crowd his wonderful shaggy head into a box car,” she told an interviewer. She later incorporated the roundup in her writing. (snip-MORE, not too long to read, and it’s really interesting!)
A U.S.-born citizen who was wrestled into the dirt, handcuffed and detained in a vehicle as part of an immigration raid had a REAL ID on him that was dismissed as fake, the man’s cousin said Friday.
Video of the arrest, aired by Noticias Telemundo, showed authorities grabbing Leonardo Garcia Venegas, 25, while at a job site in Foley, Alabama, on Wednesday and bending his arms behind him. Someone off-camera can be heard yelling, “He’s a citizen.”
Garcia told Noticias Telemundo that authorities took his ID from his wallet and told him it was fake before handcuffing him. REAL ID is the identification U.S. citizens are required by law to have in order to travel through airports and enter federal buildings. It is considered a higher security form of identification.
“Apparently a REAL ID is not valid anymore. He has a REAL ID,” his cousin Shelah Venegas said. “We all made sure we have the REAL ID and went through the protocols the administration is asking for. … He has his REAL ID and then they see him and I guess because his English isn’t fluent and/or because he’s brown it’s fake, it’s not real.”
Garcia had told Noticias Telemundo that “they grabbed me real bad” and the handcuffs were placed “very hard” on him.
Garcia said he was released from the vehicle where he was held after he gave the arresting officials his Social Security number, which showed he is a U.S. citizen.
The arrest has left Garcia, who was born in Florida, shaken, particularly because the officers also arrested and detained his brother, who is not in the country legally, Venegas said. She added that Garcia lived with his brother. Their parents are from Mexico.
Leonardo Garcia Venegas.Telemundo
“He was actually pretty sore when he got back,” Venegas said of Garcia. “He said his arms were hurting and his hands. His wrists, you could see where he had all the marks from the handcuffs. … The way they put him on the ground, his knees also were hurting.”
She said they have been trying to find a lawyer but local ones have told them that it is nearly impossible to sue a federal agent. It is not clear from the video whether the authorities were federal immigration agents or local law enforcement carrying out enforcement duties.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement to NBC News that Garcia interfered with an arrest during a targeted worksite operation.
“He physically got in between agents and the subject they were attempting to arrest and refused to comply with numerous verbal commands,” said Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary. “Anyone who actively obstructs law enforcement in the performance of their sworn duties, including U.S. citizens, will of course face consequences which include arrest.”
The response did not address the dismissal of Garcia’s identification.
Garcia denied that he interrupted an arrest. He told NBC News that he was trying to take out his phone when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent took it and threw it to the ground and then an agent began grabbing him.
Venegas said Garcia’s brother has signed deportation papers because the family didn’t want him detained “forever” as they’ve seen happen to another family member, who was held for months in a Louisiana detention center.
“It’s inhumane, what they are doing to our people. They are treating them as if they were murderers,” she said.
Venegas said the immigration arrests are creating repercussions among Hispanics, even among U.S. citizens.
“It’s about race now. It’s not about whether you are here legally or not,” she said.
Her family owns a fairly large contracting company, she said, “and a lot of the people that work with us are not working. … They are refusing to go to work. They said they are not going to go until this stuff calms down.”
Venegas added that the majority of her family is self-employed and “we do the same thing every other citizen does.”
“It’s just insane we can’t be different, the color that we are. We contribute to this country the same way every other citizen does with their taxes,” she said. “But we have to be the ones that every time we go to work, we are going to be scared that we’re going to get discriminated.”
“I think about my family,” she said. “Even though a lot of them are citizens, I think about how we all work in the same area in construction and they can’t sit out there because they could literally get harassed or attacked the way my cousin did.”
ICE wrestled Alabama worker to the ground & detain him for hours—he is a U.S. citizen.
Young man was begging & shouting, "I am a U.S. citizen"—but that didn't stop ICE agents from dragging him off to a detention center.
Kansas Department for Children and Families denied a request by the federal government for access to personal data of a food assistance program. (Submitted)
TOPEKA — State officials have denied a federal request to disclose personal information of Kansans using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
On May 6, the Kansas Department for Children and Families received a letter from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that demanded “unfettered access to comprehensive data from all State programs that receive federal funding.” DCF spokeswoman Erin LaRow shared a copy of that letter and other communications in response to an inquiry from Kansas Reflector.
The USDA letter specified that information to be collected for each SNAP applicant or recipient included name, Social Security number, date of birth, personal address and records to calculate the amount of SNAP benefits participants received over time. It was signed by Gina Brand, senior policy advisor for integrity at USDA’s Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services division.
The requested data would cover the time period from Jan. 1, 2020, to the present, the letter said.
DCF’s SNAP data is held by a third-party database administrator, Fidelity Information Services LLC. That company notified DCF on May 9 that a formal request for Kansas SNAP records had been made from USDA and that because of federal guidance, they were required to disclose that information.
“As such, FIS intends to fully cooperate with the USDA in facilitating its request for information, as required by applicable law and the guidance,” wrote Prashant Gupta, FIS senior vice president. He then asked for DCF’s written consent.
DCF stopped the process in a letter dated May 14, sent by Carla Whiteside Hicks, the DCF director of economic and employment services.
“Please be advised that we do not consent to your providing the USDA the requested information at this time,” Whiteside Hicks told FIS. “As you know, our obligation to maintain these records in confidence is paramount and may only be disclosed to the USDA for specific program-related reasons. At this time, we are unsure as to the reason for the USDA’s request. As such, we are unable to consent to your turning the information over.”
Whiteside Hicks also said DCF will be asking the USDA to contact DCF directly in the future. She asked FIS to turn over any information that they may have already provided to the USDA and to also provide DCF with any written communications the company has received from USDA.
LaRow said DCF is reviewing the request from USDA related to the personally identifiable data of Kansans.
“Security of Kansans’ personal information is paramount to the agency, and we are committed to maintaining confidentiality consistent with state and federal law,” she said.
Detained children line up in the cafeteria at the Karnes County Residential Center in Karnes City, Texas, on 10 September 2014. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP
The Trump administration is trying to end a cornerstone immigration policy that requires the government to provide basic rights and protections to child immigrants in its custody.
The protections, which are drawn from a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, limit the amount of time children can be detained by immigration officials. It also requires the government to provide children in its custody with adequate food, water and clean clothes.
The administration’s move to terminate the Flores agreement was long anticipated. In a court motion filed Thursday, the justice department argued that the Flores agreement should be “completely” terminated, claiming it has incentivized unauthorized border crossings and “prevented the federal government from effectively detaining and removing families”.
Donald Trump also tried to end these protections during his first term, making very similar arguments.
Ice arrests at immigration courts across the US stirring panic: ‘It’s terrifying’
Read more
The move to end protections follows a slew of actions by the Trump administration that target children, including restarting the practice of locking up children along with their parents in family detention. Immigration advocacy groups have alleged in a class-action lawsuit filed earlier this month that unaccompanied children are languishing in government facilities after the administration unveiled policies making it exceedingly difficult for family members in the US to take custody of them. The president and lawmakers have also sought to cut off unaccompanied children’s access to legal services and make it harder for families in detention to seek legal aid.
“Eviscerating the rudimentary protections that these children have is unconscionable,” said Mishan Wroe, senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law. “At this very moment, babies and toddlers are being detained in family detention, and children all over the country are being detained and separated from their families unnecessarily.”
The effort to suspend the Flores agreement “bears the Trump administration’s hallmark disregard for the rule of law – and for the wellbeing of toddlers who have done no wrong”, said Faisal al-Juburi of the Texas-based legal non-profit Raices. “This administration would rather enrich private prison contractors with the $45bn earmarked for immigrant detention facilities in the House’s depraved spending bill than to uphold basic humanitarian protections for babies.”
The Trump administration in 2019 asked a judge to dissolve the Flores Settlement Agreement, but its motion was struck down. During the Biden administration, a federal judge agreed to partially lift oversight protections at the Department of Health and Human Services, but the agreement is still in place at the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies.
“Children who seek refuge in our country should be met with open arms – not imprisonment, deprivation and abuse,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.
The settlement is named for Jenny Flores, a 15-year-old girl who fled civil war in El Salvador and was part of a class-action lawsuit alleging widespread mistreatment of children in custody in the 1980s.
Since the settlement agreement was reached in 1997, lawyers and advocates have successfully sued the government several times to end the mistreatment of immigrant children. In 2018, attorneys sued after discovering unaccompanied children had been administered psychotropic medication without informed consent.
In 2024, a court found that CBP had breached the agreement when it detained children and families at open-air detention sites at the US southern border without adequate access to sanitation, medical care, food, water or blankets. In some cases, children were forced to seek refuge in portable toilets from the searing heat and bitter cold.
T
Scottie's Playtime 