A Murder, Indeed!

As The Crow Poops

SCOTUS answers the caw of racism

In a 6-3 decision on Wednesday, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district, ruling it an unconstitutional gerrymander. Immediately, Louisiana conservatives started redrawing the state’s congressional districts, without any of them being majority Black. Now, election maps from local school districts to state legislatures to Congress will be redrawn to undermine minority representation.

Louisiana is now planning to postpone the state’s May 16 primary, in which many people have already voted, so it can redraw the congressional maps. And just announced early this evening, Alabama and Tennessee will also be redrawing their congressional maps before the midterms. They won’t be the last.

Don’t be surprised if Republicans don’t create a red sweep of congressional districts across the South on Election Day.

The Voting Rights Act was created to prohibit discrimination in American voting and was signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. The act ended things like literacy tests for minorities before they could be allowed to vote. It increased voter turnout among black Americans. According to the National Archives, around 250,000 new Black voters registered to vote by the end of 1965. Nine out of 13 Southern states had more than 50 percent of African Americans registered to vote by the end of 1966. What the Supreme Court did on Wednesday was to encourage discrimination in American voting.

The conservative Supreme Court has been chipping away at the Voting Rights Act for years. The court issued a ruling in 2013 that killed federal oversight of voting rules in nine states, and led to over 1,000 closings of voting precincts, mostly in Black districts. Studies years later show that it increased the racial turnout gap, translating to hundreds of thousands of uncast ballots by voters of color in the 2022 election. Remember the 2013 ruling the next time you hear a MAGAt brag about Trump sweeping all of the swing states in 2024.

In 2021, the court ruled that fears of election fraud could justify new election rules without evidence that any fraud had occurred in the past, or that new rules created by Republicans in the aftermath of Donald Trump losing the 2020 election would make elections safer.

Now the court has ruled that the majority-minority congressional districts created with the intent of ensuring minority voters could elect candidates of their choice were unconstitutional. This will lead to states like Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, and South Carolina, etc, having congressional delegations without any Black members.

Samuel Alito wrote the conservative court’s majority decision and said that the gerrymandered district that gave the state its second Black congressional representative was unconstitutional. The six conservatives say that this congressional district was discriminating.

The Civil Rights Act required Southern states with a history of voter discrimination to obtain federal approval before making changes to their voting laws. Now, that’s gone. Yeehaw states will now be free to discriminate in their elections without the burden of the federal government stopping them.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act outlaws any voting practice that creates hurdles to voters “on account of race or color.” Technically, that provision has not been eliminated, but as Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent, it leaves the provision “all but a dead letter.” She said the bar to show intentional discrimination is “an almost insurmountable barrier for challenges to any voting rights issues to prove discrimination.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton called the high court’s decision a “bullet in the heart of the voting rights movement, and said in a statement, “The Supreme Court has not just weakened a law, it has humiliated and dismantled the life’s work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and every man and woman who marched, bled, and died for Black Americans to have an equal voice at the ballot box.” It’s like the Roberts Court has just burned down the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Cliff Albright, a co-founder of the group Black Voters Matter, said Wednesday’s ruling “means that you have entire communities that can go without having representation. It is literally throwing us back to the Jim Crow era unapologetically, and that’s not exaggeration.”

Kareem Crayton, vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Washington office, said the court’s steady work to erode the Voting Rights Act, culminating in Wednesday’s decision, amounted to “burying it without the funeral.”

Maria Teresa Kumar, president of Voto Latino, said the decision will allow more aggressive “cracking and packing” of populations to dilute their votes, “not just in congressional districts but also in state legislatures, county commissions, school boards, and city councils.”

Marc Morial, National Urban League president and CEO, said, “This decision is a continuation of a frontal assault on the gains of the Civil Rights Movement that began in 1954 with the Brown versus Board of Education decision.

Sophia Lin Lakin, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project pointedout that a loss of representation, especially in state legislatures and Congress, will translate into minority communities losing a voice on issues that matter to them, such as healthcare, education and needed public works upgrades, and said, “States can now point to partisan objectives to justify maps that strip voters of color of representation, and federal courts will have little basis to intervene.”

Shalela Dowdy, an Alabama resident who was a plaintiff in a lawsuit that resulted in the creation of a new Alabama district in 2023, said, “Putting it in the hands of the states on this level is dangerous. There’s just been a history of the states not doing the right thing based off their state population.”

Stupid and racist, conservatives, like Gary McCoy and Margolis & Cox, love to claim that rules and laws that create black congressional districts, and the Civil Rights Act itself, are racist. But what they are doing is eliminating black representation while creating more for whites.

The Supreme Court has once again taken our nation backward. And again, this is the fault of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell, who broke every rule and norm they could to pack the court with their troglodytes, even by stealing appointments from Democratic presidents. This court has actually taken away rights from Americans, like the guarantee of a woman’s right to choose.

And again, the court is doing everything it can to make it much more difficult to defeat Republicans.

Republicans love to claim that they’re the party that passed the Voting Rights Act. While not technically true, it could not have passed without Republican support. But now, the Republican Party is the one to kill the Voting Rights Act.

Donald Trump’s legacy will not be ballrooms, arches, his face on coins, passports, and his name on federal structures; it will be creating the court that killed democracy.

Crows: My Neighbourhood is full of crows. While you do find them in cornfields, they are also an urban bird. They also have the ability to mimic, like a parrot or a mynah. They are extremely intelligent. I like them. My friend and cartooning colleague Chris Britt creates paintings of crows. I texted him once to tell him that I just saw a murder outside my house. On some days, I have very large and loud murders. (snip-MORE)

Our Tax Dollars At Work-

Two pieces here:

Hack

He sells bullshit by the seashore

Clay Jones

As you know, by now, Todd, Blanche, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer and current acting Attorney General, is a political hack.

If you had read that someone was going to prison in another country for posting an image of seashells that spelled out 8647, you would think that it was from an authoritarian state. If this were North Korea, would James Comey be put to death by anti-aircraft fire?

Pam Bondi, Blanche’s predecessor, was fired for what many believe was for being too slow to prosecute Donald Trump’s enemies. She had already indicted James Comey once before, which was basically laughed out of court, and never had even the slightest possibility of ever going to trial.

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Post-Megabill Drop in SNAP Participation Is Steepest in Decades

Participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) fell by more than 3 million people (8 percent) nationwide between July 2025 and January 2026. The drop followed the enactment of H.R.1, the Republican megabill that made unprecedented cuts to the program. SNAP typically expands to meet need and then shrinks when economic conditions improve. It took over three years for the caseload to drop by over 3 million people (or 7 percent) between its peak in December 2012 and February 2016, during the recovery following the Great Recession.

But economic conditions haven’t been improving as the number of people receiving SNAP has plummeted in recent months, representing the sharpest decline in decades. The last time there was such a steep decrease in participation in such a short period of time (other than temporary spikes following natural disasters) was nearly three decades ago, after Congress enacted very deep cuts to SNAP (then the Food Stamp Program) in 1996. SNAP participation dropped by 9.4 percent (2.2 million people) in the six months between March and September 1997.

SNAP participation has fallen in every state and in some, the drop is particularly alarming. (snip-MORE)

Sen. Grassley Missed The Memo-

🚨 HOT MIC: Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was caught asking staff during questioning of Trump judicial nominees: “What would be wrong if they said Biden won?” Multiple people in the room heard it. GOP staffers were reportedly panicking, according to sources familiar.

[image or embed]— MeidasTouch (@meidastouch.com) April 29, 2026 at 5:15 PM

Good News From Colorado!

New Colorado Conversion Therapy Ban With Clever Mechanism Close To Passing

The bill uses a private right of action, a tactic previously used by Republicans to target abortion providers.

Erin Reed

On Monday, the Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee passed HB26-1322, a bill that creates a private civil right of action allowing survivors of conversion therapy to sue the practitioners who subjected them to it. The bill, which has no statute of limitations for such claims, would likely make the practice of conversion therapy financially prohibitive in the state. It comes in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 8-1 decision last month in Chiles v. Salazar, which found that Colorado’s 2019 ban on conversion therapy unconstitutional—effectively legalizing the discredited practice nationwide. The new bill has one final legislative hurdle to clear—the full Colorado Senate—before heading to Governor Jared Polis’s desk, though the governor has so far offered only lukewarm signals about whether he will sign it, saying he is “hopeful there is still time to construct a framework he could support.”

The bill targets what it calls “sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts”—defined as “any practice by a licensed mental health professional that seeks to direct a patient toward a predetermined sexual orientation or gender identity outcome, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of a particular sex or gender, regardless of the sexual orientation or gender identity the patient is directed toward.” The inclusion of “eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions” is notable—conversion therapists have long used this framework to argue disingenuously that they are not trying to change a person’s sexual orientation, merely helping them manage unwanted feelings. The bill explicitly carves out any counseling or therapy that “provides acceptance, support, and understanding of a patient” or “facilitates a patient’s coping, social support, and identity exploration and development”—meaning therapists who support a patient’s own process of self-discovery, without steering them toward a predetermined outcome, would face no liability.

The bill uses a novel legal mechanism to target conversion therapy—a private right of action. Rather than the government banning conversion therapy outright, which is what the Supreme Court struck down in Chiles, the bill instead allows survivors to sue their practitioners directly, stating that “a person who suffered an injury as a result of sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts may bring a civil action for damages” against their conversion therapist. It also states that a lawsuit to recover damages can be commenced “at any time without limitation,” making its statute of limitations effectively endless. The mechanism may be insulated from the constitutional problem the Supreme Court identified in Chiles because the government is not restricting speech—instead, private citizens are seeking civil remedies for harm they suffered, the same way a patient can sue a doctor for malpractice. As Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School, told Erin in the Morning after the Chiles ruling, “While the Supreme Court decision limits the abilities of states to regulate conversion therapy through professional standards, they did not limit the ability for states to protect LGBTQ youth from these abusive practices through tort or malpractice law.”

If the mechanism sounds familiar, it is because Republicans pioneered it to get around Supreme Court rulings they didn’t like—most famously in Texas’s SB 8, the 2021 abortion “bounty hunter” law. That law banned abortion after six weeks not through government enforcement but by allowing any private citizen to sue anyone who performed or aided an abortion for $10,000 in damages. The legal trick was simple: when abortion providers tried to challenge SB 8 in court, they couldn’t get an injunction because there was no government official to enjoin. Courts found that you can’t sue “the state” to block a law that only private citizens enforce. The Supreme Court effectively let SB 8 stand, and the strategy worked—abortion access in Texas collapsed virtually overnight even while Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land. Kansas used the same model in SB 244, which allows anyone to sue a transgender person for using a restroom that doesn’t match their assigned sex at birth. Now, Colorado Democrats are exploiting the same constitutional loophole in the opposite direction—using private civil enforcement to deter a harmful practice that the Supreme Court says the government cannot directly ban.

It is important to note that some have raised concerns the bill could be weaponized against gender-affirming therapists—with anti-trans groups arguing that helping a trans youth transition constitutes its own form of “conversion therapy.” But the bill contains multiple layers of protection against such misuse. Its carveouts explicitly shield counseling that provides “acceptance, support, and understanding of a patient.” The bill also has protections in its causation standard. To establish that conversion therapy caused harm, a court must weigh “the nature, duration, and intensity” of the efforts, “the age and vulnerability of the plaintiff at the time,” “the relationship between the plaintiff and the mental health professional,” and “expert testimony regarding the general psychological effects of sexual orientation or gender identity change efforts.” It is unlikely that judges will consider anti-trans activists to be considered medical “experts” on this topic.

LGBTQ+ organizations, activists, and Democratic lawmakers in the state have supported the bill’s passage. “This decision only reinforces the urgent need for state-level protections,” said One Colorado, the state’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. “[HB 1322] provides a pathway for accountability, allowing survivors to seek justice against those who administer this harmful practice. We remain committed to ensuring that those responsible for such profound damage are held accountable.” Rep. Karen McCormick, a Democrat from Longmont, was blunt about the bill’s intent: “The purpose of this bill is seriously to send a chilling effect to any licensed professional therapist who may think about bringing that practice back.”

Conversion therapy is a discredited practice broadly decried by every major American medical organization. The APA concluded in a 2009 systematic review that the practice is “unlikely to be successful and involves risk of harm, including depression, suicidality, and anxiety,” and called for its total elimination. The United Nations has deemed conversion therapy a form of torture. A 2020 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that LGBTQ+ youth subjected to conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to report attempting suicide. For transgender people specifically, conversion therapy often takes the form of so-called “gender exploratory therapy,” a rebranded approach that seeks to convince trans youth they are not actually transgender, keeping transition just out of reach by tricking trans youth that it might be offered if they jump through endless hoops while intending to deny it the entire way.

The bill now heads to the full Colorado Senate for a floor vote, where Democrats hold a 23-12 majority and passage is expected. Coloradans who support the bill can contact their state senator through the Colorado General Assembly’s legislator lookup tool. If the Senate passes the bill, it will go to Governor Polis, whose signature remains the final and most uncertain step. Polis, the first openly gay governor elected in the United States, signed the original 2019 conversion therapy ban and has called the practice “a scam and a waste of people’s hard-earned money”—but his office has stopped short of committing to sign this bill, saying only that he is “hopeful there is still time to construct a framework he could support.” What changes, if any, the governor is seeking remain unclear. The bill includes a safety clause that would make it take effect on July 1, 2026, and would exempt it from voter referendum. If signed, Colorado would become the first state in the country to use a private right of action to combat conversion therapy in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling.

House passes bill that would enshrine LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections in state law

Some good news for a change. An attempt to stop the ever increasing discrimination and white supremacy push by haters, bigots, and racists. The idea of white only communities had long been something of the past only now with constant push from racists making a come back at the same time as the SCOTUS is on a break neck pace to roll back minorities civil rights while enshrining Christian white privilege over the rights of any other group into laws. I have heard repeatedly the phrase “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” however that says nothing about fairness or equality. I don’t understand the hate, bigotry, or racism or why a majority party in the US, along with the majority of the SCOTUS appointed by such people endorse those harmful feelings / ideas but I know we must resist and fight against them as was done in the past. We can not let big moneied instrests fuel the destruction of what the US could be, a progressive country where the government works for the entire public and minorities have equality, tolerance, and acceptance under law in a society where people are free to think what they wish or have a faith that harms no one but can not use those thoughts / ideas to harass or cause harm to others. Hugs

https://www.cityandstatepa.com/policy/2026/04/house-passes-bill-would-enshrine-lgbtq-nondiscrimination-protections-state-law/413184/

Tuesday’s vote is the latest attempt to advance LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections in Pennsylvania.

A Pride flag flies at the Pennsylvania Capitol. Wikimedia Commons

By Justin Sweitzer

Managing editor, City & State Pennsylvania

April 28, 2026 05:48 PM ET

Lawmakers in the Pennsylvania House passed legislation on Tuesday that would add the commonwealth to the growing list of states that have enshrined nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ individuals into state law – a vote that came despite Republican concerns that the bill would jeopardize fairness in women’s sports and infringe upon religious liberties.

The House voted 101-100 on Tuesday to pass House Bill 2103, which would make it unlawful under the state’s Human Relations Act for someone to be denied housing, employment or access to public accommodations based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The legislation sparked a contentious debate on the House floor over whether the nondiscrimination protections are written in a way that would allow transgender women to access women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, and that would also infringe upon religious liberties.

Proponents of the bill argued that the legislation is ultimately about fairness and the protection of LGBTQ Pennsylvanians from discrimination.

“Today, at its core, is about fairness – the right to exist as your full self without fear that you’ll lose your job or your apartment,” said Democratic state Rep. Jessica Benham, who said she has experienced discrimination firsthand as a queer woman. “I believe that Pennsylvania is better when it’s fairer, and I know that most Pennsylvanians believe that, too.”

Democratic state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, the prime sponsor of the Fairness Act in the state House, said bills seeking to enshrine nondiscrimination protections into state law have been routinely introduced because LGBTQ Pennsylvanians have been experiencing discrimination firsthand.

“If you want to understand why we’ve offered this bill, why it has been offered and reintroduced for 20-plus years, it is because Pennsylvanians are experiencing this discrimination and they want it to end,” he said. “Pennsylvanians are recognizing that they don’t have full access to their God-given inalienable right to be treated with dignity and respect – to have full access to this American Dream.”

According to the Human Rights Campaign, 23 states currently have laws on the books that prohibit housing and employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, while 22 states have laws that outlaw discrimination pertaining to public accommodations.

Republican lawmakers feared that the definitions included in the bill are too broad and that they could infringe upon religious beliefs.

Many of the arguments against the bill centered on the definition of public accommodations and whether that definition would extend to bathrooms and locker rooms in schools, as well as to girls’ sports teams. “The definition of gender identity or expression … most definitely means that if you identify as a female, you get to get on a female sports field,” said GOP state Rep. Craig Williams. “If the whole point here is to protect people in special classes, we just denigrated all young women.”

“This bill shifts power away from elected representatives and places it in the hands of judges who will decide over time how far these definitions reach,” state Rep. Charity Grimm Krupa said in remarks on the House floor. “And while that plays out, it will not be large institutions that carry the burden, it will be the small business owners, it will be the faith-based organizations, it will be the individuals, people of faith, forced to choose between their beliefs and the threat of litigation.”

“We’ve heard these arguments before,” noted GOP state Rep. Scott Barger. “They may be subtle, they may be emotional, but we reject them because we know that what you’re really doing is weaponizing degeneracy against our faith communities.”

Benham, in response to Barger, said: “As a queer woman, I know what it’s like to experience discrimination, to be told I’m ‘less than,’ that I’m a degenerate, that I am perverse – and treated like that too … I believe that both the right to be free from discrimination and to practice one’s religion can coexist.”

Democrats noted that the bill includes protections for religious liberty, stating that nothing in the bill shall be interpreted to require an individual or religious entity “to engage in conduct that constitutes a substantial burden on the free exercise of religion.”

Despite passing in previous legislative sessions with bipartisan support, the legislation was approved along party lines on Tuesday, with one Democrat, state Rep. Frank Burns, joining Republicans in opposing the bill.

Prior to being amended with the nondiscrimination language on Monday, the original version of HB 2103 sought to prohibit the development of white nationalist communities and housing developments by not allowing private clubs and members-only organizations to discriminate based on race or other protected classes.

The bill’s prime sponsor, Democratic state Rep. Ben Waxman, said he introduced the bill after an organization called Return to the Land created a “whites only community” in Arkansas, with plans to build additional locations.

Waxman said Tuesday that the amended version of his bill “further protects people all over this Commonwealth.”

“I’m so thrilled that it’s a part of my bill,” he said.

White Supremacy? Black Farmers in Historic Miss. Town Are Suddenly Losing Their Jobs to White South Africans

With the SCOTUS overturning the usefulness of the voting rights act to protect minority voters and the push by Project 2025 to make the US an apartheid nation of white male dominated society non-whites across the entire US are suffering. Ice is targeting even citizens who are nonwhite. The white supremacists are so worried that they won’t be a powerful majority in the near future that they are doing everything possible to cement the dominance of the white people, specifically white males. It is like these white men are afraid that women and non-white people will treat them the way the white supremacists treat minorities now. Hugs

https://www.theroot.com/white-supremacy-black-farmers-in-historic-miss-town-a-2000102144

Thanks to U.S. visa programs, white South Africans are taking jobs from Black residents in Mississippi—and making more money.

By

Angela Wilson

Published

April 28, 2026

Farmers working at agricultural field

The change didn’t happen overnight in one historic Southern town, but it felt like it. It started with fewer farm engines turning over at dawn and a sudden, sharp decline in local Black farmers’ payrolls in Mound Bayou, Mississippi, as white men with thick accents were tapped to work the local fields, earning significantly higher wages than the residents they replaced.

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Famous HBCU Under Fire After Audit Shows $5 Million in Aid Went to Well-Connected Students

In Mound Bayou—about two hours north of Jackson—the town’s soil carries a historic weight that few other places in America can claim. Founded in 1887 by former slaves and dubbed the “Jewel of the Delta,” the largest segregated African American town was a safe haven during the Jim Crow era where residents not only enjoyed independence, they governed themselves.

The town boasted thriving Black-owned businesses, the Taborian Hospital and the Bank of Mound Bayou, the only surviving historic commercial building in the Mississippi Delta.

Then came the newcomers. Under the federal H-2A via program, foreigners are supposed to be a last resort meant to fill seasonal gaps in the American workforce when domestic workers are unavailable. But in Mound Bayou, residents say the last resort has become the first choice. The previous decade relied on a steady stream of Mexican labor, that is until the Trump administration cracked down on immigration.

Between 2024-2025, some 25,000 South Africans have come to work on American farms alone, according to The Clarion-Ledger. Agricultural firms claim a labor shortage justifies the shift, yet for the Black families who have lived and worked the land for centuries, the math doesn’t add up.

Mound Bayou, Mississippi Rogers Morris, far right, grows sweet potatoes, soybeans and vegetables on about 500 acres in Mound Bayou. He hires workers (left to rt) Dora Roberson, Brenda Seals and Charles Montgomery. Small black farms struggle as major portions of federal crop subsidies are given to large industrialized farms. Agricultural towns like Shelby and Mound Bayou suffer from poverty, crime and high unemployment. (Photo by Carol Guzy/The The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Locals condemn the sudden pivot to white South African crews as blatant discrimination and intentional displacement. Some residents allege they have had to train their foreign replacements before being fired.

“I see it around here, I see these guys when I go to Walmart. They are usually wearing short pants and they speak in Afrikaans to each other. It doesn’t make sense to me economically,” Herman Johnson Jr., director of the Mound Bayou Museum of African American Culture and History said, The Clarion-Ledger reported.

He continued: “If you bring people in from another country to work on your farm and you’re paying them more, that means you have more going out from your pocket to them. A lot of things in a racial perspective that white supremacy does doesn’t make economic sense.”

Now, unemployment among Mound Bayou’s residents continues to soar, according to The Clarion-Ledger. While the H-2A program requires employers to prove they cannot find local workers before hiring internationally, critics allege misuse of this system—and they’re taking their complaints to court.

Five Black U.S. farmworkers from Mississippi sued Gregory Carr for allegedly discriminating against them in favor of white foreign workers and costing them thousands of dollars in unpaid wages, the Mississippi Center for Justice (MCJ) announced last May. In the federal lawsuit, they alleged Black farmhands were paid $10 while white South Africans earned more for the same work.

“The intentional underpayment and misclassification of Black farmworkers in favor of white foreign labor not only violates federal law but has become increasingly common in the Mississippi Delta, holding our communities back for generations and perpetuating the historical exploitation faced by Black agricultural workers in our community,” Kimberly Jones Merchant, President and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Justice, said.

The May 2025 lawsuit is the ninth case filed by the Southern Migrant Legal Services (SMLS) and the MCJ challenging alleged discriminatory practices of farmers in Mississippi. The MCJ said previous cases were settled with significant wage recoveries for local workers.

Mound Bayou, Mississippi Rogers Morris grows sweet potatoes, soybeans and vegetables on about 500 acres in Mound Bayou. Small black farms struggle as major portions of federal crop subsidies are given to large industrialized farms. Agricultural towns like Shelby and Mound Bayou suffer from poverty, crime and high unemployment. (Photo by Carol Guzy/The The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“This case shows how the H-2A program can be manipulated to exclude and underpay Black American workers,” said Marion Delaney of SMLS. “Federal protections are only meaningful if we enforce them– and that’s exactly what our clients are demanding through this lawsuit.”

Trump’s ICE Detention Scam | Katie Blankenship | TMR

This guest is an immigration attorney with expertise in ICE tactics and in ICE detention. She dispels the misunderstanding and the myths created by the tRump administartion. These detentions are civil detentions not criminal and entering the country with out inspection is a class B misdemeanor. Another thing she mentions is the ever-increasing costs for detention which is currently $200 a day per detainee and there are over 70 thousand detainees. She gives a lot of other useful to know information including the brutality in the detention centers. For example they are taking detainees out in the Everglades and forcing them to stand with hands shackled in the hot sun being eaten by misketoes and bugs. They are putting people in “hot boxes” and leaving them there in the hot Florida sun with no water or medical treatment when they are let out. She describes many more examples. Hugs

Katie Blankenship, an immigration attorney from Sanctuary of the South, a grassroots legal services organization that provides critical, affordable legal defense to immigrant families affected by detention, deportation, and abuse, joins Sam to discuss abuses at the Alligator Alcatraz ICE detention center in Florida. To find resources or ways to help those targeted by ICE in your area you can visit Freedom for immigrants, American Immigration Council or visit the ACLU to find your local affiliate.

Let’s talk about how Trump wants you to pay for the ballroom now….

Russian court outlaws top LGBTQ rights group as ‘extremist’

*** Personal note*** I ran out of steam early yesterday. I only went back to bed for an hour in the morning, but by 3:30 pm, between the pain and being so tired I went to bed before 4 pm. I got up about 5:30 am. Hugs

Russia began the campaign against LGBTQ+ people by first targeting trans people as a threat to children. Then once the people got used to that line they claimed that any mention of non-cis non-straight way of living was sexualizing kids and so a threat to them. Mentioning or showing a gay person was equated with showing a kid hardcore porn. Fully nude bodies. It worked in their society. That is the play book the right wing haters / Christian nationalists have used against trans people here. How soon until they try to go the entire way to force the entire country / society to be straight and cis and that Christianity be the national religion enforced by white men who force those around them to follow their personal church doctrines. But what these nut jobs really want and understand is removing all mention and signs of being not cis or straight won’t stop LGBTQ+ people from existing. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, questioning / queer / nonbinary, and all others not straight or cis are born to straight cis parents. What these outstanding moral Christians like Congress person Randy Fine from Florida want is that non-straight and non-cis kids be harassed and assaulted like when he was in school making them afraid to come out or be themselves publicly. In other words these haters want the facade of a straight cis country such as when one of the presidents of Iran said they did not have any gay people in his country ignoring a well know community that was there. They want anyone not like them to be afraid to live their lives in case they are discovered. They think that will please their god. The god who they believe created all people also created the LGBTQ+ ones as well. They think that the all knowing god will not know people are faking it due to fear and that they will be rewarded for causing that fear in the LGBTQ+ community. Very Christian of them. Hugs

https://courthousenews.com/russian-court-outlaws-top-lgbtq-rights-group-as-extremist/

The designation could mean anybody associated with the group risks years behind bars for supporting an extremist organization — akin to terrorism charges under the nation’s criminal code.

Agence France-Presse / April 27, 2026

A gay rights activist wearing a headpiece walks ahead of a squad of gay rights activists, during a traditional May Day rally in St.Petersburg, Russia, Thursday, May 1, 2014. The poster reads : ‘Love is stronger than war!’ (AP Photo, File)

A Russian court on Monday labelled the country’s top LGBTQ rights group as “extremist,” effectively outlawing the organization and paving the way to prosecute its supporters.

Russia has for years targeted LGBTQ organizations but has become even more hostile since launching its full-scale assault of Ukraine in 2022, massively accelerating the country’s hardline conservative turn.

On Monday, a court in St. Petersburg ruled in favor of a case brought by the Russian justice ministry to brand the Russian LGBT Network — a top LGBTQ rights nonprofit — “extremist.”

“The public movement has been designated as an extremist organization, and its activities are banned in Russia,” the court’s press service said on Telegram.

The hearing was held behind closed doors.

The designation could mean anybody associated with the group risks years behind bars for supporting an extremist organization — akin to terrorism charges under Russia’s criminal code.

Amnesty International in February slammed the justice ministry’s move to seek the label.

“This move reflects a deliberate strategy by the Kremlin to legitimize and weaponize homophobia in its assault on dissent and equality,” said Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia director.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has for years denounced anything that goes against what he calls “traditional family values” as un-Russian and influenced by the West.

In 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court banned what it called the “international social LGBT movement” as an “extremist organisation”.

As part of the crackdown, Russia has in recent years targeted LGBTQ clubs and bars, raiding them and arresting owners.

Courts have also issued fines and short-term jail sentences to people displaying LGBTQ “symbols,” such as clothes, jewelry or posters featuring the rainbow flag.

—

By Agence France-Presse

Open Windows & Clay Jones

Moles and MAGAts

The Trump regime is protecting hate groups

Clay Jones

The Justice Department (DOJ) going after the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is another case where the Trump regime is going after its enemies. An enemy of hate groups, as SPLC is, is an enemy of the Trump regime.

SPLC has now been indicted on 11 counts, but remember where those indictments of James Comey and Letitia James went, straight into the trash. Donald Trump’s DOJ couldn’t obtain an indictment against the guy who threw a sandwich at Border Patrol agents. The DOJ just dropped its bogus case against Jerome Powell.

And remember the person in charge of the Justice Department is Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, who is angling to get the job permanently, or at least until Trump’s next mood swing, and he fires the Attorney General to replace him with Greg Gutfeld.

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Bang Bang Ballroom

The very first thing Donald Trump talked about after the shooting was his stupid illegal ballroom

Clay Jones

I think the mentalist who was scheduled to host last night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner should have received combat pay. Not because of an assassination attempt, but for having to roam through Donald Trump’s empty head.

I don’t believe last night’s assassination attempt was staged or fake. I do believe there was a serious assassination attempt at last night’s WHCD dinner. I don’t want to jump into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. But from what we know at this point, the assassination attempt may not have been on Trump’s life, but maybe just on any cabinet member’s life that the attempted shooter could’ve found, or at least that’s how it sounds from the bits of his manifesto. I have read.

I do believe it was extremely shitty for Donald Trump to use the assassination attempt as an argument for his stupid illegal ballroom that is currently being held up by a court.

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Melania attacks satire and the First Amendment

This opportunistic First Lady doesn’t care.

Ann Telnaes

I’m infuriated by what Melania Trump tweeted today:

As a naturalized citizen and editorial cartoonist who has seen colleagues from around the world targeted, jailed, and even murdered for creating satire, I value our First Amendment. The First Lady, who is also an immigrant, should realize the importance of free speech and a free press but she lives in an entitled world and like her husband, is trying to control the news media to silence her critics. She is undermining the foundations of a democracy and is just as miserable a human being as her husband.

Low Energy Trump

Donald Trump can fall asleep anywhere

Clay Jones

Donald Trump has been falling asleep during meetings lately. He’s fallen asleep during cabinet meetings, and here at the 26-minute mark, you can see that he falls asleep twice during a meeting about healthcare last week.

Tell me that he’s not falling asleep and instead is doing some deep thinking or is meditating. Yeah, I didn’t think so either.

Yesterday, I told you that I do not believe the assassination attempt was fake or staged. It’s not that I don’t believe the goons and the Trump regime would try that. It’s because I don’t believe these idiots could pull it off.

I hate this would-be assassin. First, he ruined my Saturday night. I had planned to clock out and go through at least a couple of the movies on my Netflix watchlist. Instead, I watched CNN all evening. Yeah, I’m a news buff, but I think it’s important to turn off sometimes, which I try to do on Saturdays and Sundays. I mean, I start the mornings with news programs and maybe through the middle of the day. But by late afternoon, I just want to turn all that shit off and not think about politics and, most importantly, not think about Donald Trump. This would-be assassin took my Saturday away from me. (snip-MORE)