Some Things To Watch, From Joyce Vance

The Week Ahead

March 15, 2026

Joyce Vance Mar 15, 2026

It’s another week full of legal proceedings. And a little politics, too.

Tuesday: Maduro and Flores hearing

The U.S.-ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured by U.S. forces on January 3 at their Caracas home. They were arrested pursuant to an indictment federal prosecutors had obtained and taken to the U.S. to face those charges. Both pled guilty and are currently detained pending trial. The superseding indictment can be found here. We discussed it at length here.

There was supposed to be a status conference on the case this Tuesday. But the government wrote the Judge, Alvin Hellerstein in the Southern District of New York, requesting a “brief continuance.” The stated reason was to permit discovery to proceed before the parties returned to court, a reasonable request given the likely amount of evidence the government will be turning over to the defense and the time it takes to review it with defendants who remain in custody.

But the government has been busy on the case already, opposing the defendants’ efforts to use Venezuelan government monies to fund their defense. Prosecutors say Maduro is not the legitimate leader of Venezuela and hasn’t been considered by the U.S. to be so for several years. Madura and Flores’ lawyers argue the laws and traditions of the country permit it to fund their defense. A Venezuelan official has said they are prepared to do so.

The defendants argue that their inability to access certain third-party funds to pay for their legal fees violates their Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to due process and effective assistance of counsel. The parties have filed their briefs, and Judge Hellerstein is expected to consider the legal fees dispute during the March 26 hearing.

Tuesday: Illinois Primary

Illinois voters head to the polls Tuesday to choose their Democratic and Republican nominees for the open Senate seat being vacated by Dick Durbin, who is retiring after almost three decades. Two members of the House, Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly, have thrown their hats into the ring, leaving their seats up for grabs. Three additional Illinois representatives are retiring: Danny Davis, Jan Schakowsky, and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia.

That means the Illinois delegation will look different, possibly younger, heading into 2027, and we will have new names to learn. Kamala Harris won the state with 54.8% of the vote in 2024, and it’s unlikely Democrats will lose any seats. In Kelly’s district, former representative Jesse Jackson Jr, who pled guilty to misusing campaign funds in 2013 and was sentenced to 30 months in prison (he served a little under two years), is trying to make a comeback, but he is one of 10 Democrats running for the seat. Jackson, who represented the district for over 20 years before going to prison, is up by double digits in two polls.

Everyone expects Governor JB Pritzker to handily win reelection. But as a potential 2028 presidential contender, there will be heavy scrutiny of how he handles himself during the campaign and how well he performs and leads the Democratic ticket. So there’s a lot to see here.

Under Illinois law, only poll workers and poll watchers can be at the polls on election day, and other people may not mill around outside as voters go about their business. Nonetheless, there have been concerns that ICE might show up to intimidate people. But DHS’s Assistant Secretary for Election Integrity, Heather Honey, issued a statement in late February, saying “Any suggestion that ICE is going to be present at polling places is simply disinformation.” She committed that there would “be no ICE presence at polling locations” during a call with voting officials from across the country.

That makes sense and I’m inclined to believe it. But only because doing it now would trigger legal challenges that would likely be decided against the administration. If they’re going to do this, we’ll likely see it for the first time when voters go to the polls in November.

Wednesday: Fulton County.

As you may recall from our earlier discussion, Judge J.P. Boulee sent the Justice Department and Fulton County to mediation in the case filed by the latter over the government’s seizure of voting records. Wednesday is the date by which the parties must let the Judge know whether they’ve been able to resolve the matter voluntarily. If mediation failed, it will be up to the Judge to decide whether the records are due to be returned, which they almost certainly are (the government gets to keep copies), but the administration could face some messy, revelatory testimony in court if the County goes into the unusual decision to have a U.S. Attorney from Missouri take over the matter, rather than the local U.S. Attorney.

The Rest of the Mess

Pam Bondi wants to deprive state bar associations of their ability to consider ethics challenges to federal prosecutors’ behavior.

DOJ has posted a proposed new regulation in the Federal Register that would prohibit state bars from proceeding while DOJ is conducting an internal review. Nothing in the rule would preclude DOJ from engaging in endless delay and short-circuiting state investigations.

In practice, state bar associations have routinely deferred to DOJ to conduct internal ethics proceedings before they act against a Justice Department lawyer. But that was under the old rules, where DOJ took ethics seriously. And as a practical matter, state bars, not Pam Bondi or Donald Trump, decide whether to give a specific lawyer a license to practice law in their state, so it’s difficult to see how the government has a legal leg to stand on here. It would be like Donald Trump deciding who can be a barber in Oklahoma or a cosmetologist in Arizona.

There is a 30-day comment period for the proposed regulations that will close on April 6. Comments will be public. Expect a wide variety of members of the legal profession to weigh in against the administration’s transparent effort to prevent state bar action against DOJ officials who are in ethical trouble. Congress made it clear in a law called the McDade Amendment that government attorneys “shall be subject to State laws and rules … governing attorneys in each State where such attorney engages in that attorney’s duties, to the same extent and in the same manner as other attorneys in that State.” The measure was passed in 1998 amid concerns about overzealous prosecutors. Pennsylvania Republican Representative Joseph McDade (R-PA) championed the measure after he was acquitted on bribery and racketeering charges.

The SAVE Act heads to the Senate for a vote this week.

We’ve been talking about it for months. This appears to be the week the Senate will vote on the SAVE Act. It has already passed in the House. In our conversation at Big Tent last week, Marc Elias opined it would not pass. The Senate would have to abandon the filibuster rule to get it across the finish line. That would be a last-ditch measure that Republican Senators have long argued against, but some seemed to waffle on the issue last week.

Trump tried to get Republican Senators to abandon the filibuster last November. He made that pitch with visiting Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at his side. Orban heads what he has called an “illiberal democracy” in that country. It was quite an image.

The issue last year was the pending government shutdown. Trump called on Senate Republicans to scrap the filibuster rule and allow simple majority votes to prevail on that issue and for most other legislation. They declined, even though, or perhaps because, Trump promised his party that if they did, the GOP would “never lose the midterms and we will never lose a general election” for the foreseeable future. It will be interesting to see if that pitch reemerges this week as Trump tries to pass a measure designed to suppress Democratic votes in the upcoming election.

Senators on both sides of the aisle have long understood the power that honoring the filibuster gives both sides; it’s a form of mutually assured retention of power. But Texas Senator John Cornyn, long a proponent of the filibuster, put out an op ed in the New York Post arguing that the SAVE America Act is more important than it is.

“For many years, I believed that if the US Senate scrapped the filibuster, Texas and our nation would stand to lose more than we would gain … My fellow conservatives and I have proudly used the 60-vote threshold to protect the country from all sorts of bad ideas and dangerous policies. But when the reality on the ground changes, leaders must take stock and adapt…Today, Democrats are weaponizing the Senate’s rules to block the SAVE America Act, defund the Department of Homeland Security and hurt the American people — all to spite President Donald Trump.”

It was quite a reversal of long-held principles in service of Trump from the Texas Republican, who is facing an uphill battle to hold onto his Senate seat. He faced a primary challenge from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Neither candidate reached the 50% threshold necessary for an outright win, so there will be a runoff, which is scheduled for May 26, although there have been whispers of a voluntary resolution. How we are about to find out if other Republican senators want to hold onto any of their institutional power or are willing to throw it away on Trump and a law that has strong arguments against its constitutionality.

Finally, Julie Le, the former government lawyer in Minneapolis who we met in this piece, when she begged a judge to hold her in contempt so she could get a good night’s sleep, has launched a Congressional campaign website. “This job sucks,” she told the judge. Now, it appears she might be looking for a new one, since she was ultimately removed after her outburst in court.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

A bunch of The Majority Report Clips on different subjects.

Hundreds of US women charged with pregnancy-related crimes since fall of Roe

Sorry this article is so old. I have dozens more older than this in open tabs with the hope of one day being able to get what I think is important news out to those who may have missed it at the time. Here is the southern states patriarchy punishing women for not bringing forth a well formed offspring of a male who bred them. That is the way this reads to me. The woman means nothing, just the fetus, zygote, the failed issue of a man must be the fault of a woman. Think of this being promoted as prolife while they are willing to torture live females for a few cells in the human body that act parasitic. Remember no man is required to give any part of his body to another even his own dying child. Tht is the law. But a woman, a female is required to give her body over entirely and all actions of her life entirely to that male inserted parasitic entity that will drain her life force and can cause life long medical problems. It tells you exactly how these male law makers and their Christian supports see women. Hugs

article is more than 5 months old

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/30/pregnancy-us-women-crimes-study#:~:text=According%20to%20a%20report%20by%20Pregnancy%20Justice%2C,cases%2C%20law%20enforcement%20charged%20women%20with%20homicide

Hundreds of US women charged with pregnancy-related crimes since fall of Roe

Study finds prosecutors targeting low-income women mainly in US south – and figure likely to be an undercount

Abortion rights supporters protest outside the supreme court in Washington in June last year. Photograph: Aashish Kiphayet/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

In the first two years after the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, prosecutors in 16 states charged more than 400 people with pregnancy-related crimes, new research released on Tuesday found.

Of the 412 cases tracked by Pregnancy Justice, the vast majority took place in the US south, targeted low-income women and involved allegations that women broke laws against child abuse, endangerment or neglect, according to the research, which was compiled by the reproductive justice group. About 300 prosecutions took place in Alabama and Oklahoma. In 16 cases, law enforcement charged women with homicide.

Because there is no national database of US arrest or court records, the group believes the tally is likely to be an undercount. In a report released in September 2024, Pregnancy Justice said it had recorded 210 pregnancy-related prosecutions in the first year after Roe fell – the highest number ever recorded at that time. Pregnancy Justice is now devoting more resources to unearthing records of pregnancy-related prosecutions, so the group can’t say for sure whether these prosecutions are on the rise post-Roe or whether they are simply tracking them more closely.

Louisiana issues warrant for California doctor accused of mailing abortion pills

Read more

Nearly 400 of the cases included in the new report involved allegations of substance use during pregnancy. In an example described to the Guardian, after one woman gave birth, the hospital tested her umbilical cords for drugs. When the test came back positive for marijuana, the woman was arrested for felony child neglect, even though she had a medical marijuana card.

The laws used in most of these prosecutions, Pregnancy Justice pointed out, are typically meant to protect children, not fetuses. By prosecuting pregnant women under them, the group says, states are cementing the legal doctrine of “fetal personhood”, which seeks to grant embryos and fetuses full legal rights and protections – sometimes at the cost of the rights of the woman carrying them. Alabama and Oklahoma are both hubs for the growing fetal personhood movement.

“That is the ultimate goal of the anti-abortion movement,” said Dana Sussman, the senior vice-president at Pregnancy Justice, which scoured court and police records to find the cases. “It wasn’t just to overturn Roe. It is to establish full personhood, full rights for embryos and fetuses.”

Sussman said a number of women have faced criminal consequences for taking substances that were legal or prescribed to them. For that reason, Donald Trump’s claim last week that pregnant women who take Tylenol may give their children autism, raised alarms. Scientific research does not support this claim.

“It’s a perfect storm of all of the things that we work on: stigmatizing pregnant people for not being perfect pregnant people, blaming them for their perceived failures, and relying on misinformation and junk science to create a panic when there shouldn’t be one or isn’t one – while also increasing surveillance in the police state to monitor and potentially criminalize people when they don’t meet these impossible ideals,” Sussman said.

Only 31 of the cases documented by Pregnancy Justice included a stillbirth or miscarriage, while almost 300 of the cases led to a live birth.

A woman whose case was included in the Pregnancy Justice report reportedly didn’t realize she was pregnant until she started to feel intense pain in her stomach. The woman, a new immigrant to the US, suspected that she had food poisoning and decided to drive herself to the hospital.

Before she could get in the car, however, the woman started to give birth. She ultimately delivered what police records listed as a stillbirth. Pregnancy Justice did not factcheck the cases in the report and could not say whether the fetus was past 20 weeks of pregnancy, after which the term stillbirth is used. After police found the remains, the woman was charged with abuse of a corpse.

Abortion pill providers targeted by new Texas law refuse ‘anticipatory obedience’

Read more

The report indicates there are far more cases of miscarriage criminalization than have made national headlines. In one widely covered case in late 2023, police charged an Ohio woman with felony abuse of a corpse after she miscarried into a toilet. In another, earlier this year, a Georgia woman who had been found bleeding and unconscious after a miscarriage faced one count of concealing the death of another person, and one count of throwing away or abandonment of a dead body. The charges against both women were ultimately dropped.

Nine cases discovered by Pregnancy Justice involved allegations that women had considered abortions, such as ordering abortion pills or looking for information about abortion online. Only one woman in those cases was charged with violating a criminal abortion ban, likely because it is legal in most states to “self-manage” one’s own abortion. US abortion bans tend to penalize providers and people who help abortion patients, not the patients themselves.

In 2025, lawmakers in at least 12 states – including Alabama and Oklahoma – introduced legislation that would treat fetuses as people, which would leave women who have abortions vulnerable to being charged with homicide. In several of those states, that charge would carry the death penalty.

“What our work has proven is that, unfortunately, anything is possible when it comes to policing pregnancy,” Sussman said.

The Good News About Sonny Burton From DPA-

I’m copy-pasting it from my email.

Amazing news! We were in the middle of of a zoom press conference about the Gas Suffocation aspect of the planned execution of Sonny Burton in Alabama on Thursday when a reporter put into the chat:

“Did you see that Governor Ivey just commuted Burton’s sentence?”

And with that, the news was broken. Governor Ivey heard YOUR messages, received YOUR petitions, read the articles YOU sent, heard YOU ringing her phone off the hook, heard us tolling our bell outside her house…. and she acted. Amen! THANK YOU!

Once again, this proves, sometimes, our united efforts work!

Congratulations to Sonny and his legal team, his family, and to all who had a hand in creating this moment!

Governor Ivey has declared that “All Life is Precious,” which is why we made sure to bring along our 4×10 foot banner to the 24-hour vigil we helped coordinate in front of her house a few weeks ago. The banner could not be missed from any street-facing window of the Governor’s mansion. We know with certainty that the Governor was there…. NOW we know that she heard our message!

The other good news is that now we don’t have to drive all the way to Alabama. In fact, we had planned to go to Texas fiirst to toll the bell outside the prison in Huntsville at the execution of Cedrick Ricks on Wednesday, which is still on. Without our planned return through Alabama, making such a long drive makes less sense.

As you know, everything we do to support local activists working to halt executions is another expense. It’s not just the costs of being on the road that we must cover, but also the overhead…

The four full time staff and our media consultant who do the behind-the-scenes work.
The costs of the tools and services we use to communicate our message to the world.
The price of existing as an organization that shows up to oppose every execution.
(snip-donation request. You can get there from the page of any of these links.)

Thank you. Yours in the Struggle,

–abe

PS: New execution dates are being set regularly. Click here to oppose every upcoming execution.

“The Goal Is Torture”

This caller is a well know immegration lawyer who calls in often. There has been a long running joke about the buttons on Sam’s shirts so ignore that part. The lawyer talks about what ICE is doing to help the detained people and he describes how horrific the conditions are. The goal is to make it so horrific these people will self-deport willingly. But the government is doing everything possible to hurt and harm the immigrants and detained people because of hate and bigotry of ICE and the white supremacists in the US government. Hugs

US immigration authorities arrest Spanish-language news reporter in Tennessee

Her real crime was exercising her 1st amendment right to report negatively on ICE and the higher crime of doing it in spanish a language I would say most ICE couldn’t understand. She committed no crime and remember what DHS, Tom Lyons, Stephen Miller, and Bovino keep telling us they are only going after the worst of the worst criminals. Again look at my first sentence to see her worst of the worst crime. It is flat out racism and genocide of brown people in and name of creating a white ethnostate with an entrenched apartheid system. These people say they want people to come here legally but she is here legally. Hugs

https://apnews.com/article/reporter-arrested-immigration-nashville-5b3869f74a84023fd430f09d5515fdc0

Updated 11:58 PM EDT, March 6, 2026

A reporter for a Spanish-language news outlet in Tennessee who has been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was not shown any warrant when she was arrested this week, according to court documents filed by her attorney.

Estefany Rodriguez Florez, a reporter for Nashville Noticias who has done stories critical of ICE, was arrested Wednesday during a traffic stop, according to documents filed in federal court in Nashville. Her lawyer called for her immediate release, but ICE has asked a judge to deny the request.

Rodriguez, a Colombian citizen, entered the U.S lawfully and has been living in the country for the past five years, court records filed by her lawyer show. She has a valid work permit, and she has applied for political asylum and legal status through her husband, who is a U.S. citizen.

Rodriguez has said she left Colombia after receiving death threats for her coverage of crime in the region, according to a statement from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. The association said it “denounces immigration tactics that detain journalists and any efforts to interfere with news coverage of immigration enforcement.”

Rodriguez was with her husband in a marked Nashville Noticias vehicle when it was surrounded by several other vehicles and she was taken to a detention center, the news outlet said in a statement.

A court filing Friday by a lawyer for ICE said an arrest warrant had been issued for Rodriguez on Monday and her visa authorizing her to stay in the U.S. had expired. The filing said her arrest and detention “are not in violation of any laws or regulations.” ICE spokesperson Melissa Egan said Rodriguez was arrested during a “targeted enforcement operation” and she will remain in custody as her case proceeds through court.

Court documents filed by Rodriguez’s lawyer said that her attorney, Joel Coxander, spoke to an ICE agent who indicated that there was no arrest warrant for her at the time of her arrest. When she was arrested, Rodriguez was only shown an immigration document telling her to appear before ICE, according to the documents.

Rodriguez’s lawyer said in court documents that ICE had twice rescheduled a meeting with Rodriguez on her case, first because the office was closed during a winter storm and the second time because an agent couldn’t find her appointment in the system.

A new meeting was then set for March 17.

Rodriguez joined Nashville Noticias in 2022, covering social, family, health, police and immigration issues, the news outlet’s statement said.

“She needs to reunite with her young daughter and husband to continue her legal process within the framework permitted by law,” the statement said.

___

This story has been corrected to show the reporter’s second surname is Florez, not Flores as her attorneys initially said in a court filing.

Trump’s ICE Is Quietly Stockpiling Weaponry—and It Should Alarm Us All

This report is terrifying. This country doesn’t have money to feed or give healthcare to the people, but we can spend billions arming and militarizing a secret masked unrestrained force with the power to detain, restrain, and kill the public with no consequence. The report explains how in other cases these groups take on a power and lawlessness of their own. They are the Taliban of the US. How soon until they show up with military vehicles not just in our cities but at our places to vote? What do ICE and border patrol need with high powered rifles, military armaments, and ar-15 style weapons for anyway, they are arresting the easy low hanging fruit from court rooms and hearings, school teachers, and kids. Plus remember they have ramped up public survaence, facial recognition, and databases on everyone. Hugs

https://newrepublic.substack.com/p/trumps-ice-is-quietly-stockpiling

In addition to staffing up at a furious rate, ICE and CPB are acquiring a vast cache of weapons from private contractors, new data reveals. This will not end well—or anytime soon.

Greg Sargent and The New Republic

Feb 26, 2026

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

The “forever wars” abroad and the global war on terror after the September 11 attacks left behind a long trail of failure, disillusionment, and death—but they also funneled huge sums of taxpayer money to companies that supplied the equipment that made all that destruction possible. That resulted in windfalls for GOP-connected companies, and fueled a massive public-private bureaucracy that grew harder to rein in as it metastasized to monstrous proportions.

Something like this is happening again in a different theater of operations: Donald Trump’s campaign of violent mass deportations. It’s becoming its own forever war: It could drag on for years or decades without success. It’s producing misguided military occupations of restive local populations. It has launched a huge arms buildup. And it also has what might be termed its very own war profiteers.

To wit: A handful of private companies that manufacture weaponry and ammunition have already inked very lucrative contracts with the Department of Homeland Security, which will provide it with enormous stockpiles of military-style equipment, some to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, according to data from Senator Adam Schiff’s office, which is probing DHS contracts.

The pileup of all that equipment hints at a major long-term problem. Just as we saw in the long aftermath of September 11, this new and evolving MAGA terror bureaucracy will expand in grotesque ways. It too will grow less constrained as it amasses more troops—and more firepower.

A harrowing glimpse of this future lies in a new report by Schiff that has gotten surprisingly little notice: It finds that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection have formally approved contracts for at least a whopping $144 million in weapons, ammunition, and other accessories during Trump’s first year. The analysis—based on government contracting data—documents at least a fourfold increase for ICE and a doubling for CBP, relative to 2024, concluding that this will “build a heavily-armed domestic police force.”

It’s eye-opening stuff. One ICE contract is with Geissele Automatics for millions of dollars’ worth of “precision long guns and accessories” to support “armed agents” and other ICE operations, Schiff’s report says. This involves an unknown number of Geissele Border Patrol rifles, the report notes, describing this weapon as an “AR-style rifle with military specifications.” CBP contracted for millions of dollars more in rifles, as well.

ICE and CBP also contracted with Glock for millions of dollars in handguns and accessories, the report says. Taking all these contracts together, the report starkly concludes: “ICE and CBP have together placed orders to purchase thousands of new high-powered lethal weapons at taxpayer expense.”

There’s still more. The report documents ICE and CBP contracts totaling more than $30 million in ammunition and more than $25 million in contracts for the “non-lethal” weapons. That’s not a reassuring description: They include Tasers, pepper spray, and tear gas canisters.

In short, we’re looking at a massive stockpiling of weapons that will be in ICE’s and CBP’s possession for years to come. And someone is supplying all that equipment.

At my request, Schiff’s office analyzed the contracting data it collected to determine which companies are the top ICE and CBP contractors. Here are the results, per a chart provided by Schiff’s staff:

These particular contracts are mostly for small arms (including AR-style rifles), ordnance, ammunition, and related accessories like gun sights and suppressors, Schiff’s office says. A subcategory includes pepper spray, Tasers, tear gas, and other “non-lethal” weaponry.

“These contracts expose how DHS has set in motion a massive surge in spending to put even more dangerous weapons in ICE and CBP’s arsenal,” Schiff told me in an emailed statement. “This misuse of taxpayer dollars to maximally arm federal immigration agents, including those with questionable vetting and insufficient training, must end.”

ICE, of course, has long been an overly militarized agency, including under Democratic presidents. But under Trump this has escalated dramatically. ICE aims to continue vastly expanding its recruiting, fueled by tens of billions in new federal dollars. And under Trump, this bureaucracy is unshackling itself in fresh ways, conducting warrantless arrests, expanding surveillance capacities, and building an archipelago of enormous new prison camps.

In a sense, we’re seeing yet more cancerous growth of the post-September 11 national security bureaucracy, but with a more intensified inward focus. DHS, which was created after September 11, has long had a domestic anti-terror component. But now Trump has supercharged its role as a mass immigrant-expulsion operation that is unleashing violence toward U.S. citizens—and even killing them—while operating with near-total impunity among American populations, which Trump officials openly describe as a good thing.

“It’s the transformation of DHS from an entity that protected the homeland from external threats to one increasingly policing American society,” Donald Moynihan, author of an excellent Substack on state capacity, tells me. With this ramped-up stockpiling, Moynihan says, the endgame will be “filling those warehouses with people and using those guns and that technology to control American cities.”

The war on terror also teaches us that expanding bureaucracies like these only grow harder to control over time. “Trump is building up a well-funded, poorly trained paramilitary force that could easily take on a life of its own,” says Georgetown national security law expert Rosa Brooks. “Once you have a massive moneymaking machine ginned up, it’s hard to reverse course and turn off the spigot.”

The folly and waste of the forever wars, we are endlessly told, enabled Trump to successfully campaign against elites who foolishly sank unlimited blood and treasure into misguided imperial adventures abroad. Yet Trump’s mass deportations constitute their own forever war.

This is not meant glibly: Measured in political years, Trump’s mass expulsions actually will seemingly go on forever. Deporting an estimated 14 million people, if it continues at current rates, will take longer than this Trump term followed by two terms of President JD Vance. The scaled-up prison camps, if they materialize, will seemingly have to be packed for years, constituting an ever-expanding immigrant carceral state.

Meanwhile, just like the forever wars, this fiasco is also birthing its own captive constituencies and internal political momentum. This includes everyone from the private contractors supplying it to the large population of MAGA-adjacent young (and not so young) men signing up for ICE, which writer John Ganz describes as “an employment program for the Trumpenproletarian mob.”

Any entity this hypermaterialized—especially one simultaneously aimed at immigrants—will inevitably attract white nationalists and evolve into a political paramilitary force in thrall to ideologically aligned leaders, as Substacker Brian Beutler explains. This is borne out in ICE recruitment messaging, which explicitly seeks to get recruits invested in the mission of achieving national rejuvenation by employing cleansing ethno-nationalist violence.

The stockpiling of weapons underscores the point unnervingly. Now that Trump is feinting toward winding down in Minneapolis, what will be done with all that ideologically fired-up ICE manpower—and all that heavy weaponry? Even a relatively benign answer is alarming. It means more operations like the one in Minneapolis, but packaged with a sheen of new constraints that will simply be shrugged off by the force of this machine’s internal momentum—with more horrors awaiting us.

This is a quagmire for Trump, even if he doesn’t know it. Appropriately enough, it has also been created by unprincipled elite folly—only MAGA elites support it, while the American people very much do not. Trump’s approval on immigration, once a foundational political strength, has deteriorated rapidly at moments when ICE dominates our attention. If his forever war continues in its current form—with its bureaucracy metastasizing in unpredictable directions—it will further cripple his presidency. And it’s darkly fitting that it may take down the presidential ambitions of Vance, also a self-proclaimed critic of forever war follies, along with him.

Oregon man sentenced after violent hate crime against gay man

Again Christian fundamentlist rehtoric and constant attacks on LGBTQ+ people by religious leaders lead to the gullible doing actions like this. He knew demons would be there and he needed to be the hero and slay the evil man living in a way that made his god un happy. Every church leader who preaches hate against other communities should be held responsible for the actions of those who listen to their ridiculous, hateful claims and then act on them. Hugs

McGee told detectives they met on Grindr, and that he went to his apartment because he knew “demons would be there,” according to court documents. He also told detectives he intended to “slay” and “get rid of” the victim.

Investigators discovered that McGee planned the attack ahead of time, and including searching the internet for violently homophobic material, purchasing the weapon and searching for how to get away with murder, as well as how to dispose of a body.

https://www.koin.com/news/oregon/oregon-man-sentenced-after-violent-hate-crime-against-gay-man/

An Oregon man was sentenced on Tuesday after he assaulted a man in 2021 due to his sexual orientation.

Daniel McGee, 26, was sentenced to just over 12 years in prison, along with five years of supervised release.

“The right to live safely in one’s community is a fundamental civil right. The District of Oregon remains committed to combating hate crimes and protecting that right for all,” said U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon Scott E. Bradford. “While no conviction can undo the harm caused, we hope this sentence will bring some measure of justice to the victim and our community.”

“Hate crimes impact not just individuals, but entire communities,” added FBI Portland Special Agent in Charge Matt Torres. “The FBI works together with our partners to prevent hate crimes from impacting our communities, and every attack on someone because of who and what they are deserves to be acted on by the full extent of the law.”

McGee made national news in 2021 when he was charged with attacking a man he met on Grindr, a dating app for gay men.

In court documents, prosecutors said he used the screen name “str8 curious” and arranged to meet the man at his apartment. He said he had just turned 18 and wasn’t ready to kiss yet, but wanted to make sure they would be alone.

But when McGee arrived at the apartment, he attacked the man. He struck the victim over the head repeatedly using a small wooden club known as a tire thumper. Multiple callers told emergency dispatchers they could hear someone screaming for help.

When police arrived, they found both men inside the victim’s apartment. The victim had life-threatening injuries, including multiple lacerations to the sides and back of his head, and a large portion of his scalp was missing.

McGee told detectives they met on Grindr, and that he went to his apartment because he knew “demons would be there,” according to court documents. He also told detectives he intended to “slay” and “get rid of” the victim.

Investigators discovered that McGee planned the attack ahead of time, and including searching the internet for violently homophobic material, purchasing the weapon and searching for how to get away with murder, as well as how to dispose of a body.

In November 2021, McGee was charged with a federal hate crime involving an attempt to kill. He pleaded guilty in federal court in Nov. 2025.

GOP Senator blasts Noem: ‘That is why I’ve called for your resignation!’

This is how every hearing in congress of the lying tRump admin officials should go from both sides of the isle. Hugs

ICE Suffers Double Legal Blow Within Hours

https://www.newsweek.com/ice-suffers-double-legal-blow-within-hours-11610938

Mar 03, 2026 at 08:52 AM EST

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) faced a major legal setback as federal judges in New Jersey and Texas criticized the agency over prolonged detentions and repeated violations of court orders.

A federal judge in New Jersey wrote a withering critique of the agency and the Department of Justice (DOJ) over what he described as widespread violations of court orders in immigration matters. Meanwhile, in Texas, another federal judge ordered that an ICE detainee be given a bond hearing or be released, continuing a string of rulings challenging the agency’s mandatory detention policy.

Newsweek has contacted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for comment.

A Department of Homeland Security agent wearing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement patch and badge at Royalston Square on January 22 in Minneapoli… | Jim Watson – Pool/Getty Images

These back-to-back rulings place ICE’s operations under increased court scrutiny amid ongoing tensions between immigration authorities and federal judges. Courts across the country have increasingly pushed back against what they view as procedural lapses or administrative overreach in detention practices under the Trump administration’s expansion of mandatory detention and mass deportations.

DHS has frequently criticized federal judges whose rulings slowed or blocked deportations, often labeling them as “activist judges.” Trump officials have argued that these judicial interventions interfere with enforcement priorities and complicate efforts to remove individuals quickly, framing the courts as obstacles to the administration’s immigration agenda.

New Jersey Judge Slams ICE Over Repeated Court-Order Violations

New Jersey District Judge Michael Farbiarz issued a strongly worded order pointing to dozens of instances in which ICE and the DOJ failed to comply with judicial directives concerning the detention and transfer of immigration detainees, according to a court filing reviewed by Newsweek.

The case involves Baljinder Kumar, who filed a habeas petition challenging his detention without a bail hearing. A January 26 injunction barred ICE from transferring Kumar out of the district, but the agency moved him to Texas on January 31, per the filings.

Farbiarz noted the scale of the problem, writing in a court opinion that “no-transfer injunctions issued by New Jersey district judges have been recently violated 17 times by the Respondents,” about “three every two weeks.”

The court acknowledged an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which concluded that the transfers “occurred inadvertently due to logistical delays in communicating the court order to the relevant custodians or to administrative oversight of the court order,” and that ICE had “agreed to return the petitioner to the District of New Jersey to regain compliance.”

Court filings showed violations of more than 50 orders over roughly 10 weeks, including cases in which detainees were moved or deported despite explicit court prohibitions.

“The revelation that the Department of Homeland Security violated dozens of judicial orders in New Jersey is shamefully unsurprising. This isn’t just inadvertent or sloppy; the Trump administration has repeatedly flouted judicial orders and attacked the integrity of judges,” ACLU-NJ Executive Director Amol Sinha said in a statement.

Texas Ruling Orders Bond Hearing or Release for ICE Detainee

A federal judge in the Western District of Texas has ordered ICE to either hold a bond hearing or release a Mexican national who has been detained for more than eight months without a final removal order at the Camp East Montana detention facility, according to court filings.

On March 2, Senior U.S. District Judge David C. Guaderrama ruled that Victor Zamudio Sanchez’s continued detention without a hearing violated the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

Guaderrama wrote in court documents, “Respondents, by detaining Petitioner without the opportunity for a custody redetermination hearing, have deprived Petitioner of his procedural due process rights.”

The judge directed that if Sanchez was not released by March 9, ICE must provide a bond hearing before an immigration judge.

At that hearing, the government would be required to prove, “by clear and convincing evidence, the dangerousness or flight risk justifying Petitioner’s continued detention,” according to the filing.

Sanchez, who has lived in the United States for more than two decades, has been held without a meaningful opportunity to challenge his confinement, the court said. Guaderrama emphasized that the prolonged detention, absent any individualized assessment, posed a serious risk of “erroneous deprivation of [Petitioner’s liberty] interest.”

The court found that Sanchez had been caught in a procedural limbo, with ICE failing to issue a timely Notice to Appear and repeatedly denying him a bond hearing. While the agency eventually initiated formal removal proceedings, the judge ruled that Sanchez’s indefinite detention violated the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, ordering ICE either to release him or provide a bond hearing.

The administration has interpreted federal law to allow ICE to hold many noncitizens without bond hearings, applying mandatory detention to people who entered the United States without inspection, even if they have lived in the country for years. This represents a departure from decades of practice, when many detainees could seek release while their cases proceeded.