Peace & Justice History for 4/27

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryapril.htm#april27

At Least She’s Getting Due Process.

Aiding and Abetting by Clay Jones

Trump’s goons are helping him destroy America Read on Substack

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested by the FBI and charged with obstructing an immigration arrest operation. This is a further step away from democracy and toward fascism.

FBI Director (sic) bug-eyed hatchet man Kash Patel announced the arrest on TwitterX, accusing her of “intentionally misdirecting” federal agents as they sought to detain an immigrant who was set to appear for an unrelated proceeding last week. Announcing this on social media makes it clear that this is political and is meant to set an example for other judges.

The regime has been publicly attacking judges who are delaying or halting Trump’s fascist moves, like deporting legal residents and canceling student visas. One GOP representative has even filed legislation to impeach judges who go against Trump. Kash Patel, another Trump appointee not qualified for his position, was more than happy to send thugs to arrest a judge.

This is another court fight that Trump should lose, and even be thrown out.

Attorney General (sic) and MAGA hack Pam Bondi said, “These judges think they’re above the law. They are not. We will come after you and prosecute you. We will find you.” She also called judges “deranged.”

Stephen “Baby Goebbels” Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, said on social media, “No. One. Is. Above. The. Law,” which is ironic coming from a guy who works for a felon.

While these fascist idiots are tweeting and yammering about arresting a judge, the judge can’t comment about it at all because the judicial code of conduct restricts judges from commenting on pending or impending matters in any court.

I expect that the regime will cut out the bullshit reasons and excuses and soon start arresting judges on the charges of “obstructing Trump.”

Creative note: I drew this cartoon, then drew a local cartoon for the Advance. It’s not 6:40 p.m. and I haven’t eaten yet. That means this is all the blog you’re getting today. Clay tired. I’m off the clock until tomorrow, so if you email me anything today, I’m not replying until Sunday.

Music note: I’m still feeling Chicago, so I listened to the Blues Brothers.

Drawn in 30 seconds: (snip-go see!)

2-year-old U.S. citizen apparently deported ‘with no meaningful process,’ judge says

Check out this article from USA TODAY:

2-year-old U.S. citizen apparently deported ‘with no meaningful process,’ judge says

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/26/judge-ice-deported-two-year-old/83293111007/

Best Wishes and Hugs,
Scottie

Kennedy Center’s events scheduled for LGBTQ+ pride celebration canceled, organizers say

https://apnews.com/article/world-pride-kennedy-center-trump-lgbtq-69fbf0ca20c2f9c36f49f8311f8bf1b6

The Kennedy Center is seen Aug. 13, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

By ASHRAF KHALIL

Updated 7:47 PM EDT, April 25, 2025

Organizers and the Kennedy Center have canceled a week’s worth of events celebrating LGBTQ+ rights for this summer’s World Pride festival in Washington, D.C., amid a shift in priorities and the ousting of leadership at one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions.

Multiple artists and producers involved in the center’s Tapestry of Pride schedule, which had been planned for June 5 to 8, told The Associated Press that their events had been quietly canceled or moved to other venues. And in the wake of the cancellations, Washington’s Capital Pride Alliance has disassociated itself from the Kennedy Center.

“We are a resilient community, and we have found other avenues to celebrate,” said June Crenshaw, deputy director of the alliance. “We are finding another path to the celebration … but the fact that we have to maneuver in this way is disappointing.”

The Kennedy Center’s website still lists Tapestry of Pride on its website with a general description and a link to the World Pride site. There are no other details.

The Kennedy Center did not respond to a request from the AP for comment.

The move comes on the heels of massive changes at the Kennedy Center, with President Donald Trump firing both the president and chairman in early February. Trump replaced most of the board with loyalists, who then elected him the new Kennedy Center chairman.

The World Pride event, held every two years, starts in just under a month — running from May 17 through June 8 with performances and celebrations planned across the capital city. But Trump administration policies on transgender rights and comments about Kennedy Center drag performances have sparked concern about what kind of reception attendees will receive.

“I know that D.C. as a community will be very excited to be hosting World Pride, but I know the community is a little bit different than the government,” said Michael Roest, founder and director of the International Pride Orchestra, which had its June 5 performance at the Kennedy Center abruptly canceled within days of Trump’s takeover.

Roest told the AP he was in the final stages of planning the Kennedy Center performance after months of emails and Zoom calls. He was waiting on a final contract when Trump posted on social media Feb. 7 of the leadership changes and his intention to transform the Kennedy Center’s programming.

Immediately the Kennedy Center became nonresponsive, Roest said. On Feb. 12, he said, he received a one-sentence email from a Kennedy Center staffer stating, “We are no longer able to advance your contract at this time.”

“They went from very eager to host to nothing,” he said. “We have not since heard a word from anybody at the Kennedy Center, but that’s not going to stop us.”

In the wake of the cancellation, Roest said he managed to move the International Pride Orchestra performance to the Strathmore theater in nearby Bethesda, Maryland.

Crenshaw said some other events, including a drag story time and a display of parts of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, would be moved to the World Pride welcome center in Chinatown.

Monica Alford, a veteran arts and culture journalist and event planner, was scheduled to organize an event June 8 as part of Tapestry of Pride, but said she also saw communication abruptly end within days of Trump’s takeover.

Alford has a long history with the Kennedy Center and organized the first-ever drag brunch on the Kennedy Center rooftop in 2024, and said she regarded the institution — and its recent expansion known as The Reach — as “my home base” and “a safe space for the queer community”

She said she was still finalizing the details of her event, which she described as “meant to be family-friendly, just like the drag brunch was family-friendly and classy and sophisticated.”

She said she mourns the loss of the partnership she nurtured with the Kennedy Center.

“We’re doing our community a disservice — not just the queer community but the entire community,” she said.

Roest said he never received an explanation as to why the performance was canceled so late in the planning stages. He said his orchestra would no longer consider performing at the Kennedy Center, and he believes most queer artists would make the same choice.

“There would need to be a very, very public statement of inclusivity from the administration, from that board, for us to consider that,” he said. “Otherwise it is a hostile performance space.”

ASHRAF KHALIL

Khalil writes about local issues in Washington, D.C., for The Associated Press and covers the social safety net around the country.

What was the sin of Sodom?

BLACKPRESSUSA UPDATE COMING SOON – The Smithsonian PURGE: Trump Team Removes Artifacts of Black Resistance

BLACKPRESSUSA UPDATE COMING SOON – The Smithsonian PURGE: Trump Team Removes Artifacts of Black Resistance

The racism in this tRump administration is incredible. They are desperate to remove anything positive done by people who are not white cis straight males. They want nothing that shows women or brown / black people. They want segregation back. They want subservient women who have to do as a male tells them. They are desperate to have a white straight cis male dominated society. The adminstartion is full of white supramcists who believe that teaching the true history, that telling people the truth is “… improper ideology”. Hugs

Attorney Lindsey Halligan is reportedly consulting Vice President JD Vance to “remove improper ideology” from Smithsonian properties. According to a recent Washington Post article, Halligan told Trump the Smithsonian needs “changing,” and he has since ordered her to act.

Critics warn: it’s not just history being erased—it’s identity.

April Ryan

April Ryan

BLACKPRESSUSA UPDATE COMING SOON – The Smithsonian PURGE: Trump Team Removes Artifacts of Black Resistance

Critics warn: it’s not just history being erased—it’s identity.

April Ryan

1960 Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-in display

By April D. Ryan
Washington Bureau Chief

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE – Black Press USA has learned that Trump officials are sending back exhibit items to their rightful owners and dismantling them—starting with the 1960 Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-in exhibit.

“This president is a master of distraction and is destroying what it took 250 years to build. Here’s another distraction in his quest for attention. Another failure of his first 100 days,” said North Carolina Rep. Alma Adams, responding to efforts to physically remove the Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth’s lunch counter exhibit from the National Museum of African American History and Culture—affectionately known as the “Blacksonian.”

The exhibit features portions of the original lunch counter and highlights the story of four Black male students from North Carolina A&T who were brutally attacked after sitting at the whites-only counter Feb. 1, 1960. When denied service, the students refused to leave. Their defiance ignited a wave of lunch counter sit-ins across the South and became a major flashpoint in the Civil Rights Movement.

Adams added, “We are long past the time when you can erase history—anyone’s history. You can take down exhibits, close buildings, take down websites, ban books, and try to change history, but we are long past that point. We will never forget!”

Black Press USA has also obtained a letter from Dr. Amos Brown, long-standing civil rights leader and pastor of Third Baptist Church in San Francisco—also known as the home church of former Vice President Kamala Harris.

The letter notifies Dr. Brown that the museum is returning a Bible and George W. Williams’s History of the Negro Race in America, 1618-1880, one of the first books on racism in the U.S. Black Press USA has obtained emails from April 10 and 15, 2025, confirming the transfer.

The excerpt obtained by Black Press USA reads:

Dear Reverend Brown,
“I wanted to alert you that the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) will be returning your Bible and book we borrowed for our exhibition, Segregation.” (Email to Dr. Amos Brown)

These artifacts have been on display since the museum’s opening in September 2016. Dr. Brown has confirmed he will accept their return.

For Dr. Amos Brown, the artifacts meant something.

“Those two books and the summary of my civil rights activism and my picture right there next to Medgar Evers, John Lewis, and Fred Shuttlesworth in the desegregation of civil rights exhibit… That book [History of the Negro Race in America] inspired me before there were even African studies published. In my home, in that 3rd Street Baptist Church, we studied that book. The Bible—that’s my father’s Bible and the Bible I used in the Civil Rights Movement. When we went on demonstrations, we always had the Bible.”

While civil rights leaders are seeing their history returned behind the scenes, other actors are influencing the future of national memory.

Attorney Lindsey Halligan is reportedly consulting Vice President JD Vance to “remove improper ideology” from Smithsonian properties. According to a recent Washington Post article, Halligan told Trump the Smithsonian needs “changing,” and he has since ordered her to act.

Halligan stated, “I would say that improper ideology would be weaponizing history. We don’t need to overemphasize the negative to teach people that certain aspects of our nation’s history may have been bad.” That overemphasis, she argued, “just makes us grow further and further apart.”

Emails from April 10 and 152025

New Mexico judge and wife arrested for hiding an alleged Venezuelan gang member in their house

https://www.msn.com/en-us/crime/general/new-mexico-judge-and-wife-arrested-for-hiding-an-alleged-venezuelan-gang-member-in-their-house/ar-AA1DCdVU

These people are not undocumented. They had immigration papers. Plus the Tren de Aragua gang do not have common tattoos nor hand signals. So everything the government claims is again suspect and wrong. I offer the quotes below. They had papers saying this person is not subject to removal but ICE took them anyway. Hugs

“Let me be as crystal clear as possible,” Cano wrote in his resignation, obtained by KOAT. “The very first time I ever heard that the boys could possibly have any association with Tren de Aragua was when I was informed of that by [the] agents on the day of the raid.”

He added that each of the men had immigration paperwork that suggested that they were not subject to removal. “Their papers stated in the upper right-hand corner, ‘This Person is Not Subject to Removal.’ They each had a specific court date regarding their asylum hearing,” Cano stated.

Story by Kelly Rissman

• 23h

Immigration authorities raided a former New Mexico judge’s home, where they accused him of harboring an alleged Tren de Aragua gang member, and took him into custody.

Former Dona Ana County Magistrate Judge Joel Cano, 67, and his wife, Nancy Cano, 68, were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcementx Thursday after a tipster claimed that undocumented migrants associated with the Venezuelan gang were staying at their home. The couple has been charged with tampering with evidence, jail records show.

The investigation began in January 2025 after ICE received an anonymous tip that “an illegal alien from Venezuela and a suspected member of a criminal gang, was residing with other illegal aliens in the United States” at the judge’s home in Las Cruces and was in possession of firearms, according to court filings.

Two search warrants were executed at the Canos’ home on February 28, during which authorities seized four guns and took three immigrants into custody, documents say.

The judge resigned in March after federal authorities accused the couple of housing an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant, Cristhian Ortega-Lopez, at their home.

A former New Mexico judge, Joel Cano, and his wife, Nancy Cano, were arrested after ICE accused them of harboring members of a Venezuelan gang (Dona Ana County Jail)

“Let me be as crystal clear as possible,” Cano wrote in his resignation, obtained by KOAT. “The very first time I ever heard that the boys could possibly have any association with Tren de Aragua was when I was informed of that by [the] agents on the day of the raid.”

He added that each of the men had immigration paperwork that suggested that they were not subject to removal. “Their papers stated in the upper right-hand corner, ‘This Person is Not Subject to Removal.’ They each had a specific court date regarding their asylum hearing,” Cano stated.

He continued: “I have three grandkids that I love dearly. Their ages are 15, 8 and 6. There is no way in the world that I would have allowed my grandkids to have any contact with the boys if I had sensed danger.”

Ortego-Lopez installed a glass door for Nancy Cano in late 2023, according to court documents. He continued doing a few jobs for her in 2024 and after he was evicted from his apartment in April 2024, she offered him a stay in their “casita,” a small house on their property. There, Ortego-Lopez was given access to guns, the filing says.

Ortega-Lopez allegedly posted photos of himself on social media holding guns. Agents also looked at the social media accounts of the other undocumented immigrants staying at the judge’s house that suggests “clear indicators” of association with the Venezuelan gang.

“These indicators included tattoos, clothing apparel and displaying hand gestures,” the government wrote.

Nancy Cano has been accused of witness tampering after she allegedly let Venezuelan gang members live in a ‘casita’ on her property (Dona Ana County Jail)

President Donald Trump’s administration has repeatedly relied on tattoos to identify alleged gang members. ICE has been apparently relying on a scorecard — the “Alien Enemies Act Validation Guide” — to determine whether Venezuelan immigrants are eligible for deportation, ACLU lawyers have said. If migrants reach a score of eight points or higher, they are “validated as members” of the Tren de Aragua gang, the guide states. Tattoos are worth four points.

Last month, the administration sent three planes carrying dozens of Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador after the president invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime law.

The president’s order states that “all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of [Tren de Aragua], are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.” The ACLU sued administration officials over their use of the Alien Enemies Act and a judge issued a temporary restraining order barring the migrants from being deported. Still, the planes flew to El Salvador; the judge this month said he found “probable cause” to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt.

The Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that the Trump administration has the authority to deport migrants under the centuries-old act but also ordered that the government provide detainees an opportunity to contest their removals in court districts nearest to the detention centers where they are being held.

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