Horrific abuse of civil rights. ICE is trying to scare people. People have legal right to protest and to follow / record ICE gang thugs. The ICE gang thugs have no authority to arrect citizens as they do not have police powers. Again are we a free people, do we have rights anymore? Hugs
I am tired of the gaslighting and lies. Blatantly claiming to be following the court’s orders when they clearly are not and giving the middle finger to the courts. Are we a nation of laws or are we now a nation ruled by corrupt gang thugs who as one person in the DOJ said “tell the court to fuck itself”. Where has the Republican Party of law and order gone? When the Democrats are in charge the Republicans sue all the time to block things. Look how many times Biden was blocked by the courts in lawsuits filed by Republicans. How would they have reacted if Biden’s administration just ignored the courts like tRump’s admin is doing? Are we at a crisis point yet? Hugs
Sheer scale of the lawsuits threatens to clog the judicial system
About 700 Justice Department attorneys deployed to represent the government in immigration cases
Hundreds of judges around the country have ruled more than 4,400 times since October that President Donald Trump’s administration is detaining immigrants unlawfully, a Reuters review of court records found.
The decisions amount to a sweeping legal rebuke of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Yet the administration has continued jailing people indefinitely even after courts ruled the policy was illegal.
“It is appalling that the Government insists that this Court should redefine or completely disregard the current law as it is clearly written,” U.S. District Judge Thomas Johnston of West Virginia, an appointee of President George W. Bush, wrote last week, ordering the release of a Venezuelan detainee in the state.
Most of the rulings center on the Trump administration’s departure from a nearly three-decade-old interpretation of federal law that immigrants already living in the United States could be released on bond while they pursue their cases in immigration court.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the administration is “working to lawfully deliver on President Trump’s mandate to enforce federal immigration law.”
SOARING NUMBER OF IMMIGRANT DETAINEES
Under Trump, the number of people in ICE detention reached about 68,000 this month, up about 75% from when Trump took office last year.
A conservative appeals court in New Orleans last week gave the Trump administration a victory in its drive to lock up more immigrants. Just because prior administrations did not fully utilize the law to detain people “does not mean they lacked the authority to do more,” U.S. Circuit Judge Edith Jones wrote in a decision reversing rulings that led to the release of two Mexican men. Both remain free, their lawyer said.
Other appeals courts are set to take up the issue in the coming weeks.
Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said the increase in lawsuits came as “no surprise” – “especially after many activist judges have attempted to thwart President Trump from fulfilling the American people’s mandate for mass deportations.”
The department did not respond to more specific questions about the cases and data findings in this story.
With few other legal paths to freedom, immigrant detainees have filed more than 20,200 federal lawsuits demanding their release since Trump took office, a Reuters review of court dockets found, underscoring the sweeping impact of Trump’s policy change.
In at least 4,421 cases, more than 400 federal judges ruled since the beginning of October that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is holding people illegally as it carries out its mass-deportation campaign, Reuters found.
A chart showing the number of habeas challenges to immigration detention by month
Other cases are pending, have been dismissed because the detainee was released, or were transferred to another judicial district, which would force immigrants to file a new case. Reuters was unable to determine how many cases were moved or re-filed.
Joseph Thomas, an 18-year-old high school student from Venezuela, was arrested during a traffic stop in Wisconsin in late December, while riding with his father, Elias Thomas, on his Walmart delivery route.
The men are asylum seekers who entered the United States in August 2023. Both are authorized to work, their lawyer, Carrie Peltier, said. Peltier said they were stopped for “driving while brown.”
Within a month, judges ordered the release of father and son.
Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz – also a Bush appointee – ruled that Joseph had been detained illegally and ordered his immediate release. In his ruling, he said Joseph was not subject to mandatory detention, and called out a “lack of any evidence that ICE had a warrant when it detained Joseph while he was a passenger in his father’s car.”
U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud, a Trump appointee, ruled that Joseph’s father Elias was eligible for a bond hearing.
“This raises an issue of statutory interpretation that courts in this District have repeatedly considered and rejected, and it will be rejected here as well,” Tostrud wrote in his order.
Joseph is now taking classes online, afraid to return to school.
LANDSLIDE OF LAWSUITS
Habeas corpus – Latin for “you shall have the body” – emerged in the English courts in the 1300s and is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. It provides a legal recourse for people the government has detained unlawfully.
Reuters counted habeas lawsuits by gathering the dockets of every publicly filed federal court case over more than two decades from Westlaw, a legal research tool that is a division of Thomson Reuters.
The records, combined with other court filings, offer the most comprehensive view to date of the scale of lawsuits moving through the U.S. justice system and of the defeats for the administration.
Within the span of a few days in January, lawyers filed habeas petitions for Liam Conejo, a five-year-old Ecuadorean boy detained in the driveway of his Minnesota home; a Ukrainian man with a valid temporary humanitarian status who was detained on his way to work as a cable technician; a Salvadoran man married to a U.S. citizen and father of a 3-year-old autistic child who is also a U.S. citizen; an Eritrean hospital worker with refugee status who was arrested after letting agents into his apartment complex and a Venezuelan man who was arrested after dropping off his daughter at school.
None had criminal records.
DIVERTED LAWYERS, VIOLATED ORDERS
The rush of lawsuits is forcing the U.S. Justice Department offices to divert attorneys who would normally prosecute criminal cases to respond to habeas cases.
Using court dockets, Reuters found more than 700 Justice Department attorneys representing the government in immigration cases. Five of the attorneys each appeared on the dockets of more than 1,000 habeas cases.
Partly as a result of that legal logjam, judges have found that the government has left people locked up even after judges ordered their release.
In a court order, issued last month in Minnesota, Schiltz said the government had violated 96 orders in 76 cases. The U.S. Attorney there, Daniel Rosen, said in a filing, two days later that the cases had created an “enormous burden” for government attorneys.
Similarly, U.S. District Judge Nusrat Choudhury, an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden in New York, wrote this month that ICE violated two “clear and unambiguous orders” by flying a man to New Mexico for detention while falsely claiming he was in New Jersey and could be brought to a court hearing.
A Justice Department spokesperson, Natalie Baldassarre, said the administration “is complying with court orders and fully enforcing federal immigration law.”
“If rogue judges followed the law in adjudicating cases and respected the government’s obligation to properly prepare cases, there wouldn’t be an ‘overwhelming’ habeas caseload or concern over DHS following orders,” she said.
LEGAL HURDLES
In New York, advocates have waited outside immigration court to connect detained immigrants with lawyers who can file same-day habeas claims – blocking their rapid transfer to a detention center in another state.
On January 16, U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken issued an emergency ruling for an Ecuadorean man who was detained at his court hearing, barring the government from moving him out of New York. On January 30, U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter, who like Oetken was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, ordered his immediate release.
Still, many immigrants aren’t able to seek that relief. Some aren’t aware that they can file a habeas case. Others can’t find affordable lawyers.
Judy Rall, the U.S. citizen wife of a Venezuelan detainee who has spent almost a year at the Bluebonnet detention center in Texas, said she was quoted upwards of $5,000 to file a habeas petition, which she could not afford. She and her husband have a pending immigration case based on their marriage, but the government has declined to release him while the case is being adjudicated. He has no criminal record, but the government has alleged, without providing evidence, that he has links to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
This month, her lawyer offered to take on the habeas case for free.
“Our home burnt down, and I had told them I needed him to come help,” she said. “I assume that is the reason.”
Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Kristina Cooke in San Francisco and Brad Heath in Washington, D.C.; additional reporting by Brad Brooks in Minneapolis; Editing by Craig Timberg and Suzanne Goldenberg
circa 1925: Portrait of American-born singer and dancer Josephine Baker (1906 – 1975) lying on a tiger rug in a silk evening gown and diamond earrings. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
When most people think of history’s American spies, they imagine a sleuthy white man, tracking troop movements, planting bugs and obtaining secrets under the radar of the enemy. What’s rarely imagined, let alone taught, is the role Black Americans played in espionage from the Revolutionary War through modern times.
Enslaved and free Black men and women slipped into rooms they weren’t meant to enter, cozied up to marks who underestimated them and quietly ran intelligence networks that relied on invisibility in plain sight. Here are Black spies whose intelligence work shaped history.
Mary Elizabeth Bowser
Screenshot: YouTube “Mary Elizabeth Bowser: Unsung Heroes of the Civil War | Ancestral Finding Postcard”
Dubbed the “baddest bitch in history” by Comedy Central, Bowser became known as one of the Union’s most daring Civil War spies. Literate and underestimated, Bowser worked as an undercover agent from inside the Confederacy’s most vulnerable locations — Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s home, according to African American Registry.
Masking her intelligence by pretending to be bat sh*t crazy, “Crazy Bet,” as she was known, used a rumored photographic memory to collect important military information and pass it on to Ulysses S. Grant.
James Armistead Lafayette
Fascimile of the Marquis de Lafayette’s original certificate commending James Armistead for his revolutionary war service, 1784. From the New York Public Library. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images).
James Armistead Lafayette was born enslaved but became a master of deception during the American Revolution. According to America’s Army Museum, he disguised himself as a runaway, infiltrated British camps, delivered key intelligence to the Marquis de Lafayette and fed false information to the enemy. His double agent work was crucial at Yorktown in 1781.
With Marquis de Lafayette’s support, he later won his freedom and dropped his enslaver’s name.
Josephine Baker
circa 1925: Portrait of American-born singer and dancer Josephine Baker (1906 – 1975) lying on a tiger rug in a silk evening gown and diamond earrings. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Josephine Baker was a known boundary-breaking dancer, singer and international icon, but few knew she was also a World War II spy for the French Resistance. Though she spied on behalf of France rather than the U.S., Baker belongs in this conversation about Black espionage.
At the height of her fame, Baker used her celebrity to move through elite European society and collect information on Nazi Germany and other Axis powers, according to History.com. Baker hid intelligence in invisible ink on sheet music and pinned notes inside her clothing, later explaining, “nobody would think I was a spy.”
Her bravery earned her France’s highest military honors.
Debra Evans Smith
Screenshot: YouTube
While working in Records Management, Debra Evans Smith attended the FBI Academy after gaining nine pounds to meet the minimum weight requirement.
When only one percent of Black women were spies, Smith was drawn to counterintelligence. She volunteered for surveillance, learned Russian, and spent four years handling Russian counterintelligence in Los Angeles, conducting interviews and investigations in the language, according to the FBI. For her, the work was never about individual cases—it was about serving the country.
If you’ve never heard of Abraham Gallaway, that’s no accident. According to historian Dr. David Cecelski, Gallaway may have been the most important Southern war hero, but his legacy was erased when North Carolina rewrote its own history in the late 1800s, depicting enslaved people as “docile.” Gallaway’s story did not fit their narrative.
Born enslaved in 1837 near Wilmington, N.C., he escaped at 19. Gallaway became a “master spy” for the Union Army during the Civil War, providing military intelligence from within the South and establishing a spy network. He also became a state senator, according to 6 ABC. Today, his story is preserved at the North Carolina Museum of History.
Mary Louvestre
Mary Louvestre (sometimes spelled Touvestre) was a free Black woman who would not take no for an answer. Working as a seamstress in Virginia, she stole documents about troop movements and walked to deliver them to Union officials in Washington, D.C. When officers brushed her off, hesitating to meet with her, she kept going back until they listened.
Darrell M. Blocker
Darrell M. Blocker spent 32 years in U.S. intelligence, retiring in 2018 as the most senior Black officer in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations and earning the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal. A second-generation intelligence professional, Blocker’s work took him to dangerous territory in places like Iran and North Korea, according to the International Spy Museum.
Having lived in 10 foreign countries, he has held titles including Deputy Director of the Counterterrorism Center and managed the CIA’s Ebola response.
A portrait of Harriet Tubman, African-American abolitionist and a Union spy during the American Civil War, circa 1870. (Photo by HB Lindsey/Underwood Archives/Getty Images)
Harriet Tubman was more than the Underground Railroad’s “Moses.” She made power moves in the Union Army, using her reputation to recruit Black scouts. Tubman gathered intel no one else could. According to Brandeis University, she became the first woman to lead a U.S. military raid in 1863, which freed 750 people and sealed her acumen as a true strategist.
George E. Hocker, Jr.
YouTube: “2025 Mary’s Woods MLK Jr Celebration”
George E. Hocker, Jr., a Washington, D.C. native, joined the CIA in 1957 while studying at Howard University. Working as a file clerk to fund his education, he stopped short of aspirations to work as a spy because CIA leaders told him Black people were not intelligent enough or able to “blend in.”
He believed them … until the 1963 March on Washington inspired him to pursue his dream despite racism. During the Cold War, Hocker gathered intelligence in Africa and later went to Latin America, risking his life on dangerous assignments. Hoker never lost sight of the fight at home, stating, “While I was fighting for my country’s interests abroad, my fellow Black Americans were facing war zones of their own at home,” as quoted in Newsweek.
Robert Smalls
Robert Smalls, 1887. African-American politician, publisher, businessman and maritime pilot. Born into slavery, he escaped, and commandeered and piloted a Confederate transport ship which became a Union warship. His example and persuasion helped convince President Abraham Lincoln to accept African-American soldiers into the Union Army. From “Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising” by William J. Simmons. Creator: Unknown. (Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images)
Born into slavery in 1839 in Beaufort, South Carolina, Robert Smalls rose to become a skilled pilot on the Confederate transport CSS Planter by his early twenties. In a bold act of courage in 1862, he seized the ship, picked up his family, and navigated past Confederate forts under the guise of a captain, delivering the vessel safely to Union forces. Smalls went on to become the first African American to command a U.S. naval vessel, and after the war, he purchased his former enslaver’s house, reclaiming a space that had once symbolized his bondage.
Seriously; if you read through these stories, both are part of the work of rightwing organizations operating in every state to get their missions accomplished. No state is safe from this sort of thing; people really need to keep their eyes on ALL of their legislators. Some of these groups even write ordinances and lobby county/municipal/local governing bodies.
TOPEKA — Melissa Sabin spoke officially on behalf of Little Lobbyists Kansas and personally in the name of her son, Logan, against a Kansas Senate bill aggressively expanding the state’s process of verifying eligibility for Medicaid, SNAP and other public assistance programs.
She was among dozens of organizations or individuals supplying opposition testimony Wednesday on Senate Bill 363. It would impose new state application and reporting requirements, some exceeding federal mandates, for programs serving children, elderly people, poor people, pregnant women and people with disabilities.
On Tuesday, the Senate Committee on Government Efficiency, or COGE, heard from the lone proponent of the bill — a conservative Florida organization that has sought for more than a decade to slash participation in Kansas public assistance programs.
“I oppose this bill because it creates an expensive, inefficient and legally questionable administrative structure that will predictably result in eligible Kansans — especially children — losing access to health care and food assistance,” Sabin said. “SB 363 does not improve program integrity or efficiency. It instead builds layers of red tape that state agencies are not equipped to manage or that federal law does not permit.”
Sabin, state outreach manager of Little Lobbyists, said the bill was inaccurately touted by its advocates as a means of improving accountability in terms of serving 325,000 Kansans taking part in Medicaid and 188,000 enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Sabin said requiring determinations of eligibility to be repeated monthly or quarterly would lead to additional paperwork errors, missed notices or administrative delays rather than documentation of alleged fraud or abuse.
She said a proposal for recipients of Medicaid to have eligibility reassessed every three months, rather than at 12-month intervals, could violate federal regulations. In terms of her son, she said the bill would compel the state to reconsider four times each year whether Logan, born with a genetic disorder characterized by intellectual disabilities, was eligible despite lack of change in his medical diagnosis.
“His condition does not fluctuate with paperwork cycles,” his mother said. “His need for skilled care does not disappear because the form is refiled or a verification is resubmitted.”
Sabin’s message of opposition was shared by representatives of Kansas Action for Children, Alliance for a Healthy Kansas, United Methodist Health Ministry Fund, LeadingAge Kansas, El Centro, United Way of Harvey and Marion Counties, Flint Hills Breadbasket, Kansas Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, InterHab, Reach Healthcare Foundation, Kansas Interfaith Action, Kansas Children’s Service League, United Community Services of Johnson County, the Disability Rights Center of Kansas and others.
The Senate bill
Under the Senate bill, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the Kansas Department for Children and Families would be required to establish data-matching systems to automatically share personal information on Kansans with other state agencies. KDHE would have to submit data to the federal government on a monthly basis to determine if Kansans were enrolled in Medicaid in other states.
The bill would direct the Kansas Department of Labor to affirm employment status of beneficiaries, while the Kansas Department of Revenue would reveal details on household income. The Kansas Department of Corrections would track prison inmates who might be ineligible for benefits. The Kansas Lottery would be on alert for anyone winning more than $3,000 because the income bump could compromise eligibility for aid.
As written, the Senate bill would block state agencies from unilaterally requesting approval of exemptions to federal regulations. Instead, the Legislature would have to first endorse the request. The legislation also would block Kansas agencies from accepting as true an applicant’s statements on household size, age or residency — a provision that would require extensive document searches by state employees.
Sen. Cindy Holscher, an Overland Park Democrat running for governor, said she appreciated a recommendation from an opponent of the bill to convene a special committee of the Legislature to develop a better understanding of how Kansans dealt with the process of obtaining SNAP or Medicaid assistance.
Holscher said the House and Senate should do more than accept testimony from the only organization supporting the bill: FGA Action, which operates as an arm of the conservative Florida think tank Foundation for Government Accountability.
FGA was a proponent of the 2015 Kansas law restricting enrollment in SNAP and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Research subsequently showed the state law undercut low-income families in Kansas, made it more difficult to prevent child abuse and contributed to a record surge in the number of Kansas children in foster care.
“We have 40 opponents to this bill who are subject matter experts based in Kansas,” Holscher said. “One proponent with an organization based out of Florida.”
The fiscal note attached to the Senate’s bill indicated state agencies would need to hire about 300 new employees to handle the revised eligibility processes. The Kansas Department of Administration estimated the cost of complying with the law would be $17 million to $18 million annually.
Sen. Doug Shane, R-Louisburg, and Sen. Mike Thompson, R-Shawnee, challenged the fiscal note.
“Quite frankly the fiscal note is, I guess we could say, hogwash,” Shane said. “There are just some pure fallacies.”
Opponents’ perspective
Heather Braum, senior policy adviser for Kansas Action for Children, said the additional layers of government red tape contemplated in the Senate bill would disproportionately harm children. She said the reform was introduced at a time when nearly 20% of Kansas children didn’t know where their next meal would come from and about 50,000 children lacked health insurance.
“Bottom line,” Braum said, “this bill will result in families losing Medicaid and SNAP. Families will be unable to afford their child’s medical care and kids will have less food to eat in their homes.”
Braum urged the Legislature to work toward streamlining the process of applying for aid. She said House and Senate members need a good understanding of how parents, children, pregnant women, people with disabilities and the elderly navigated the Medicaid and SNAP application processes.
Erica Andrade, president and CEO of El Centro, said the state’s plan to spend more on eligibility checks would result in loss of benefits by people qualified to receive aid.
“From El Centro’s perspective,” she said, “the most troubling aspect of SB 363 is that it prioritizes bureaucracy over people.”
The Rev. Jessica Williams, a Merriam Baptist minister with the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice, testified on behalf of Kansas Interfaith Action. She said Interfaith Action opposed federal SNAP and Medicaid reform signed in 2025 by President Donald Trump and likewise objected to SB 363.
She said the legislation weaponized the bureaucracy to dismantle the Medicaid and SNAP safety nets. She said paperwork traps embedded in the bill were “certainly counter to God’s law.”
“In my faith tradition we regularly pray the only prayer that Jesus taught, which says, ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ ” Williams said. “This prayer is not an abstract nicety, but a concrete demand for survival and an indictment of unjust systems which withhold food from families.”
TOPEKA — Local government leaders want more details about how to enforce a “bathroom bill” passed by the Legislature that some city officials say could cost taxpayers “millions of dollars.”
Senate Bill 244, which is awaiting Gov. Laura Kelly’s signature, forces people to use facilities matching their biological sex at birth in government buildings.
Kelly has a 10-day deadline once receiving a bill to veto it. That deadline is Friday for SB 244, a spokesperson said. Kelly is expected to veto the bill, which passed both chambers with veto-proof majorities.
The bill says local governing bodies should take reasonable steps to ensure people use restrooms, locker rooms and other private spaces tied to their biological sex at birth, said Jay Hall, deputy director and general counsel for the Kansas Association of Counties.
The phrase that concerns Hall is “every reasonable step.”
“That’s really where our questions start,” he said. “What’s the expectation of local governments, and how are they supposed to handle the enforcement? That’s not something that we know at this point.”
Spencer Duncan, Topeka mayor and government affairs director for the League of Kansas Municipalities, said his organization is exploring what the bill means for its members. Initial determinations of changing signage and other steps could cost millions of dollars, some city leaders told him.
Duncan expressed frustration with the process that eliminated opportunity for public input when SB 244 was passed out of committee. The bill, originally House Bill 2426, addressed gender markers on driver’s licenses and birth certificates, which would stop the state’s practice of allowing transgender individuals to change their sex on those documents and would roll back markers that were previously changed.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee added the bathroom portion of the bill and then amended SB 244 by overwriting it with HB 2426, a process called “gut and go.” That allowed the Senate, which had already approved the unrelated version of SB 244, to concur with changes rather than hold hearings on the bill.
The only public hearing was in the House Judiciary Committee regarding gender markers — which received opposition from more than 200 people. During floor debate in the House, Democratic legislators spent more than five hours trying to add amendments that were repeatedly defeated. The bill passed along party lines, with one Republican, Emporia Rep. Mark Schreiber, voting against it.
The process meant no fiscal note was put on the bill for the bathroom portion, which concerned Democrats during the House debate and also worried Duncan and Hall.
OK MS Now has like 35 or 40 of these clips. They are difficult to stomach, but I am going to post a couple. MS Now posted clips of her attacking every democrat who had time at the hearings, so if you want to see the questions asked and her outright disrespect and trashing of the entire system in her performance for tRump all with the republicans on the committee’s approval. I sincerely hope the republicans remember how they acted when the democrats take power this fall and I hope democrats reamin strong enough to pay back the republicans in kind. Hugs
If you watch only one watch this one below. It has all the worst interactions. She acted like a spoiled bratty Karen. She came ready to accuse the democratic congress people of crimes instead of answering questions. She is a bitter entitled woman. Hugs
The conditions are on purpose to make people so miserable they give up their rights to asylum or any cases they have going. The ICE people / US government are already violating the rights of the people they kidnap off the streets. These are as bad as any concentration camp and the US government denies it all. When Democrats take power / authority back we need to investigate and punish all involved. The government flat out lies and gaslights the public as if they think nothing will ever be found out. Hugs
Hello everyone. I am looking for a meme / cartoon story I had a few years ago and can’t find again. It is of a kid going out in the morning with a sign hanging from their neck down to their chest. The sign said something like I am good and I am happy. Then through the day every insult and attack on the kid tore pieces of the sign off so when the kid got home the sign was destroyed being just a bit of what they started out with. I really want to find it again but every search I try to do fails to give me what I am looking for. Thanks. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 