This is an important story even though it is an older one. This shows how the rights constant badgering companies and using the idea of protecting the children, calling those who understand at LGBTQ+ children like to see themselves represented in an accepting world. This shows how the rights not stop attacks on the rights of minorities over the last 6 years are working to erode the expectancy, tolerance, and the representation of these minorities. The haters on the right are loud and very vocal, they give their opinion nonstop using incorrect misleading studies or lies. We need to be just as loud and in your face to fight back. Democrats need to start / return to defending the LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people. The democrats shrank back and hid letting the republicans loudly lie and misinform people. The republicans spend 215 million attacking trans people in the presidential election. Kamala Harris did not fight back, did not call out the adverts misinformation and lies, did not spend money attacking those ads. She gave one lame response when directly asked about the trans ad attacks. She minimized them and barely pushed back. But notice it is an openly Christian character not one of the other religions. Hugs
The Win or Lose series is Pixar’s first-ever original long-form animated series. It follows the Pickles, a co-ed middle school softball team, throughout the week as they prepare for their upcoming championship game.
Each episode focuses on a different character and their life off the field, including “the insecure kids, their helicopter parents” and “even a lovesick umpire.” It premiered on Disney+ on February 19, 2025.
In the debut episode, the character of Laurie is introduced, and is openly Christian. This character begins her scene with the words, “heavenly father” and there is an angel cutout in her bedroom.”
A spokesperson for Disney confirmed that the story arc was removed and provided the following statement to Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter: “When it comes to animated content for a younger audience, we recognize that many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline.”
This is the first openly Christian character to feature in a Disney film since 2007’s Bridge to Terabithia. The film features young adolescent children Jesse Aarons (played by Josh Hutcherson) and Leslie Burke (played by AnnaSophia Robb) , who in one scene attend church together, and discuss religion on the way home.
Trump and his allies have often been critical of Disney and what they describe as its “woke” policies. In a May 2023 social media post, Trump branded the entertainment juggernaut a “woke and disgusting shadow of its former self,” criticizing its move toward diverse casting in some of its recent movie remakes.
Following raging culture wars over such issues as LGBTQ+ rights and diversity, equity and inclusion, Disney appears to be tempering its approach towards inclusion.
An exclusive poll for Newsweek conducted by Redfield and Wilton Strategies in July found that 34 percent of viewers disapproved of Disney’s attempt to add more LGBTQ+ topics to its content.
Since returning to office, Trump has signed an order that rolled back transgender rights, emphasizing the importance of the issue to his agenda in his second term. Trump’s executive order declared that the federal government would recognize only two sexes: male and female.
What People Are Saying
Mark Mitchell of Rasmussen Reports on X: “Openly gay out. Openly Christian in!”
One social media user on X: “Again f*** Disney for removing the trans storyline from WIN OR LOSE, but so far it’s a great show.”
Another social media user on X: “Another week, another two incredible Win or Lose episodes. The way they show both the kid’s and parent’s struggles and perspectives is top-notch. The animation, the story, the voice acting, the music… it’s all PERFECT. The team behind this show is just brilliant.”
What’s Next
Episodes of Win or Lose are being released each week up until March 12.
A second season of the show has not yet been announced.
The two quotes from the article I added just below what I am writing give away the Fundamentalist Christian republican’s goal, which is to make those people they disagree with, that they hate, disappear from society. Their goal by taking LGBTQ+ media out of schools is to make it appear that all kids are straight and cis. No one can be different from them or their beliefs. Everyone must walk lockstep with them, their way is the only way people can live. Holy dictators. Their goal is to erase anyone different from them from the public view, from society. We must not let them do that. Hugs
A controlled production of “knowledge” maintains the marginality of other groups, and it denies exposure to multiple perspectives.
The institutionalization of a hegemonic norm functions to legitimize what can be said, who has the authority to speak and be heard, and what is authorized as the truth.
Former President Donald Trump speaks about border security at a rally at Million Air, a private airplane terminal at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Friday October 25, 2024.
“When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.”-Adrienne Rich
The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could possibly perpetuate the “psychic disequilibrium” that Adrienne Rich laments.
Trump’s Department of Education called the suggestion that rightwingers are trying to ban book a “hoax.”
The case arose from conflicts between those in favor of teaching LGBTQ+ topics in schools and those who believe in so-called parents’ rights on religious grounds when it comes to the education of their children. The case stems from some parents’ concerns about a policy sanctioned by the Montgomery County Board of Education requiring new elementary school storybooks covering LGBTQ+ topics that could be read in class.
One of the contested books is titled “Pride Puppy!” and is about a puppy who gets lost in the crowd during an LGBTQ+ Pride parade.
When the policy first passed, parents could opt their children out of the curriculum, but later, the board reversed that part. In this demographically diverse school district, some Christian and Muslim parents, in particular, objected. I wonder, though, whether they think parents should be allowed to opt their children out of reading age-appropriate stories about Jewish or Asian people, for example.
This case harkens back to one of the earlier curricular programs created in 1991 by the New York City Board of Education. The Children of the Rainbow Curriculum was introduced to first-grade teachers to “assist with teaching about multicultural social issues.” The board developed the program to counter the increase in hate crimes directed against members of marginalized communities.
The curriculum contained 443 pages of suggested readings, activities, and other lectures, all designed to help teachers promote academic and social skills while teaching about diversity.
Unfortunately, the section on families that covered LGBTQ+ people incited enormous criticism. Some opponents argued that it promoted sex and sodomy to kids.
The battle gained significant publicity, and the New York City Department of Education ultimately voted against accepting the entire Children of the Rainbow Curriculum.
And the moments of psychic disequilibrium continued.
Surplus Repression & Anti-Knowing
Of course, parents and other adults have the inherent responsibility of protecting young people from harming themselves and being harmed by others and of teaching them how to live and function in society within our ever-changing global community.
In Freudian terms, we must develop a balance between the individual’s unrestrained instinctual drives and that person’s restraints (repression) on these drives in the service of maintaining society (civilization) and sustaining the life of the individual.
Nonetheless, we must establish a line demarcating protection from control, teaching from oppression, and minimal and fundamental repression from what Herbert Marcuse terms “surplus repression” (that which goes over and beyond what is necessary for the protection of the individual and the smooth functioning of society and enters into the realm of domination, control, and oppression).
Authorizing the “truth”
When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school
It’s a wonder I can think at all
And though my lack of education hasn’t hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall.
Paul Simon laments in his song “Kodachrome” that his education consisted of neutralizing, meaningless content. “Everything looks worse in black and white,” he sang of the whitewashing of his lessons.
Metaphorically, most schools teach only in black and white, whereas most students want the array of colors Paul Simon wished for: “Those nice bright colors: the greens of summers, makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah.”
Unfortunately, Simon’s educational system took his Kodachrome away: the camera film that captured the full spectrum of the rainbow from the brightest reds, oranges, and yellows, to the darkest blues and browns and deepest purples.
Schools across the nation are attempting to function amidst increased book banning and control of course content by state legislatures under the false flag of “parental rights.” It’s all part of the current tide of right-wing takeovers of educational systems.
People on the political right transform terms like “woke” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” into hate-filled and frightening epithets. In the process, they have driven us away from the underlying purpose of education.
The term “education” is derived from two Latin roots: “e,” meaning “out of,” and “ducere,” meaning “to lead” or “to draw.”
In its original translation and intent, education includes the process of drawing knowledge out of the student or leading the student toward knowledge. This is in contrast to the placing or depositing information into what some educators perceive as the students’ waiting and docile minds, or what the Brazilian philosopher and educator Paulo Reglus Neves Freire termed “the banking system of education.”
Surrounding forces – religion, parenting, schooling, and other types of socialization – often inhibit the maintenance of critical thinking facilities in young and old alike.
Let us take, for example, the Biblical warning in Genesis 2: 16-17, related to the story of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden: “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’”
The apples on that tree represent knowledge. When eaten, this “forbidden fruit” unlocks levels of knowing that can more than overturn the apple cart. But more importantly, it can give the knower a full-color spectrum of the workings of the world. We are encouraged, nonetheless, to think only in the black and white determined by those in power.
Figures like the biblical Eve and Greek Pandora, women, are blamed for the downfall of “man.” In fact, they were strong women who refused to be trapped under the thumbs of the patriarchy.
Additionally, the ancient Greek legend of Prometheus casts a cautionary tale on the gifting of knowledge. The chief of the gods, Zeus, punished him for offering mortals the best of the sections from a slaughtered cow while giving the gods the remaining fat and bones.
After an infuriated Zeus took back fire from humanity, Prometheus stole and returned it to mortals, thus turning the darkness from the spectrum of black and white to technicolor once again.
For Prometheus’ crime of returning light and knowledge to humankind, Zeus had Prometheus chained to the Caucasus Mountains and sent an eagle to eat his immortal liver every day, which grew back every night.
Literature and cinema likewise warn of the horrific and often fatal risks of challenging the limitations placed by the powerful on the accumulation of knowledge.
The first film in the “Planet of the Apes” franchise, released in 1968, can be understood as a recreation of the legend of Prometheus. A U.S.-based crew crash land their space vehicle on a strange planet in the distant future amounting to nearly 2000 years advancement on Earth, as they traveled at the speed of light.
The crew, led by Taylor – the Prometheus character – discover that the planet is ruled by a species of apes who possess what to the Earthlings appear as human-like qualities, including speech, high reasoning, and cultural artifacts such as museums, medicine, constructed homes, a judicial system, and written religious and governing scrolls.
A community of humans on this planet, on the other hand, lacks the facility of speech and operates on an animal-like intellectual level. The apes hunt, enslave, and murder humans to keep them from invading their gardens and stealing food and to use them in medical and psychological experiments.
Taylor rebels and protests his treatment by challenging the hierarchical ranking of apes over humans. Two apes listen to Taylor and befriend him, Zira and Cornelius, and they eventually come to believe that what they have been socialized to accept as factual was somehow manipulated and falsified.
Blond-furred Dr. Zaius (Zeus), Minister of Science and Chief Defender of the Faith, knows the truth regarding the origins of his species and the rise and fall of humans through industrialization and the power of the atom, which terminated life as it had been once known. His primary objective has been to keep the fire of “knowledge” away from his ape community and humans.
He attempts to destroy any artifacts and other remnants of pre-nuclear holocaust human society to keep alive the myth of perennial simian superiority. Knowledge, therefore, represents overturning the proverbial apple cart, undermining origin myths, and challenging hierarchal positionings.
These genesis/origin stories are examples of the concept of “hegemony,” a term coined by social theorist Antonio Gramsci to describe the ways in which the dominant group successfully disseminates dominant social realities and social visions in a manner accepted as common sense and part of the natural order.
This controlled production of “knowledge” maintains the marginality of other groups, and it denies exposure to multiple perspectives.
The institutionalization of a hegemonic norm functions to legitimize what can be said, who has the authority to speak and be heard, and what is authorized as the truth.
This was certainly the case in Nazi Germany. In 1933, Nazi stormtroopers invaded, ransacked, and closed The Institute for Sexual Sciences in Berlin, founded by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish and homosexual sexuality researcher. The Institute conducted early sexuality research and was a precursor of the Indiana-based Kinsey Institute in the United States.
Storm troopers carried away and torched over 10,000 volumes of books and research documents calling the Institute “an international center of the white-slave trade” and “an unparalleled breading ground of dirt and filth.”
Soon thereafter, Nazis and conservative university students throughout Germany invaded Jewish organizations and libraries, confiscating books they deemed “un-German.”
The German Student Association (Deutsche Studentenschaft) declared a national “Action against the Un-German Spirit.” On May 10, 1933, students and Nazi leaders across Germany set ablaze over 25,000 volumes. Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, fired up the Berlin crowd of over 40,000 sympathizers by declaring, “No to decadence and moral corruption. Yes to decency and morality in family and state.”
In 2018, we witnessed anti-LGBTQ+ Christian crusader Paul Dorr check out four LGBTQ+-inclusive children’s books from the Orange City, Iowa Public Library and burn them in a 27-minute October 2018 video diatribe on Facebook. – Dorr is the founder of Rescue the Perishing, a group “contending against moral evil to advance the Kingdom of Christ.”
The books in question were Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan; Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress, by Christine Baldacchino; This Day In June, by Gayle E. Pitman; and Families, Families, Families!, by Suzanne and Max Lang.
In his video rant, Dorr argued that Two Boys Kissing was “designed to get 12-to-13-year-old boys to start having homosexual sex together.”
The fight for all the colors
To build off of Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famed poem:
First they came for Leaves of Grass, and I did not speak out — Because I was not gay.
Then they came for Stone Butch Blues, and I did not speak out — Because I was not a transgender person.
Then they came for Critical Race Theory and Beloved, and I did not speak out — Because I was not Black.
Then they came for Maus, and I did not speak out — Because I am a Christian and not a Jew.
Then they came for books representing my experiences and identities — and there was no one left to speak out for me.
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So what happened to the idea of the right just wanting immigrants to come here legally. Right? All they wanted was to get the illegals and criminals out. But these are people who came here the legal way and are working, living their lives as good members of the communities. No see to the current white supremacists the crime was brown people coming to the US at all. They want a white majority in charge with others second class or lower people. tRump once asked why no one from the Scandinavian countries immigrate to the US. The reason tRump wants them is they are white. But their country is doing so much better than ours and rated so much higher on the happiness index so why would they. The only ones who want to come here are from countries the US has made worse, ruined, and allowed for dictators or drug lords to take over. Hugs
The move could leave over 900,000 immigrants vulnerable to deportation — unless they self-deport, DHS said.
“Under federal law, Secretary [Kristi] Noem — in support of the president — has full authority to revoke parole,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told POLITICO in a statement. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
The Trump administration is revoking parole status for immigrants who entered the U.S. via the Biden-era CBP One app, in a push to get immigrants to voluntarily leave the country.
“Under federal law, Secretary [Kristi] Noem — in support of the president — has full authority to revoke parole. Canceling these paroles is a promise kept to the American people to secure our borders and protect national security,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told POLITICO in a statement.
Some immigrants began receiving formal email notices from the DHS on Tuesday stating that the department would be using its discretionary authority to revoke parole. The move could leave over 900,000 immigrants vulnerable to deportation.
The CBP One app, launched in January 2023, was one of the Biden administration’s key efforts to control illegal immigration, by organizing appointments at different ports of entry along the southern border for immigrants seeking asylum. The parole designation protected immigrants from deportation and also issued work authorizations for up to two years.
The Trump administration quickly suspended the app’s appointment system and rebranded it as CBP Home — with a built-in function for immigrants to report their intention to leave the U.S.
“Formal termination notices have been issued, and affected aliens are urged to voluntarily self-deport using the CBP Home App,” the DHS spokesperson said. “Those who refuse will be found, removed, and permanently barred from reentry.”
The parolees designated under United for Ukraine — which provided legal status for Ukrainians affected by the war — and Operation Allies Welcome — which resettled Afghans following the U.S. exit from Afghanistan — will not be affected, DHS added.
You know this is what the fundamentalist religious right wants to do this here. This is one of the reasons the maga right loves Russia and Putin, he hates who they hate. He wants a straight cisgender stereotypical white society the same as they do. Hugs
Russia’s Interior Ministry has plans for a sweeping electronic database of LGBTQ+ people in the country, Meduza, an independent Russian news outlet, revealed this week.
Citing anonymous sources at the Interior Ministry, the outlet reported that the Orwellian plan has been in discussion since last year after Russia’s Supreme Court outlawed the so-called “international LGBT movement” as an “extremist organization” at the urging of President Vladimir Putin.
Raids and arrests at LGBTQ+ clubs have become commonplace across the country.
The database will be a “large-scale” system to track members of the LGBTQ+ community at large, according to sources.
The plans were corroborated by Dmitry Chukreyev, an official with the Civic Chamber of Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth largest city. He said police have been keeping informal lists of LGBTQ+ individuals since the Supreme Court ruling was announced.
In 2024, police conducted at least 42 raids on LGBTQ+-friendly venues across Russia, according to an investigation by independent news outlet Current Time and human rights organization Sphere. Beatings, forced confinement, and sadistic humiliations based on sexual and gender identities are regular features of the sweeps.
Russian officials and state-aligned media regularly describe Russia’s LGBTQ+ community as a network of “paramilitary groups” calling for an “open gender war,” who engage in “dehumanization” and “devil worship,” the outlet reports. Officials and media credit security forces’ actions with “suppressing” anti-state activity.
The raids, in addition to intimidating the queer community at large and forcing the closure of several venues, have provided security officials with information that would supply an electronic LGBTQ+ registry.
An employee at a Siberian queer establishment told Meduza, “Security forces copied the entire database from the computer where we keep track of reservations,” obtaining information about hundreds of clients. Fingerprints and mouth swabs were collected from visitors during a raid the Eden club in Chelyabinsk, and employees and patrons at the Orenburg club Pose were forced to state their registered residential address on camera.
At a house party raided by security forces in Leningrad Oblast, guests were forced to surrender their passports and unlock their phones; if someone refused, the others were subjected to collective punishment and forced to squat.
According to human rights activists, such raids are also aimed at exposing LGBTQ+ government officials. The organizer of one queer-friendly event in the Urals region revealed police who raided the venue hoped to “catch deputies [officeholders] and other significant individuals” at the event.
While security forces continue to collect data in ever-more sadistic operations, progress on a full-scale LGBTQ+ registry has been hampered by Putin’s other current obsession: the expansion of Greater Russia through his war on Ukraine. Forces assigned to that conflict are draining the ranks of police who would otherwise be hunting down members of the “international LGBT movement.”
But the raids continue to produce results.
One sweep at a restaurant and club in Gorno-Altaysk last year yielded data on 80 patrons and staff alone, an employee said.
“We know all of you now,” security forces repeated as the raid dragged on.
The reason they are doing this is clear. They want to make sure that no one can afford to fight their deportation order in the courts. Think of it is you were required to pay that money daily how long could you afford to do so? Hugs
Trump turns to rarely used 1996 law to fine and potentially seize migrant assets
Administration calls on migrants to “self deport and leave the country now”
Memo obtained by Reuters says implementing fines would require system overhaul
WASHINGTON, April 8 – The Trump administration plans to fine migrants under deportation orders up to $998 a day if they fail to leave the United States and to seize their property if they do not pay, according to documents reviewed by Reuters.
The fines stem from a 1996 law, opens new tab that was enforced for the first time in 2018, during President Donald Trump’s first term in office. The Trump administration plans to apply the penalties retroactively for up to five years, which could result in fines of more than $1 million, a senior Trump official said, requesting anonymity to discuss non-public plans.
The Trump administration is also considering seizing the property of immigrants who do not pay the fines, according to government emails reviewed by Reuters.
In response to questions from Reuters, U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that immigrants in the U.S. illegally should use a mobile app formerly known as CBP One – rebranded as CBP Home under Trump – to “self deport and leave the country now.”
“If they don’t, they will face the consequences,” McLaughlin said. “This includes a fine of $998 per day for every day that the illegal alien overstayed their final deportation order.”
Emails reviewed by Reuters show the White House has pressed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to handle the issue of penalties, property seizures for migrants who don’t pay, and the sale of their assets.
The Department of Justice’s civil asset forfeiture division could be another option for the seizures, one email said.
President Donald Trump kicked off a sweeping immigration crackdown after taking office in January, testing the bounds of U.S. law to increase arrests and deportations. The planned fines target the roughly 1.4 million migrants who have been ordered removed by an immigration judge.
WHITE HOUSE PRESSURE
Trump invoked the 1996 law during his first term to levy fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars against nine migrants seeking sanctuary in churches. The administration withdrew the penalties, but then proceeded with smaller fines of about $60,000 per person against at least four of the migrants, according to court records.
President Joe Biden stopped issuing the fines and rescinded, opens new tab related policies when he took office in 2021.
Scott Shuchart, a top ICE policy official under Biden, said migrants and their supporters could challenge the fines in court but that the threat alone could have a chilling effect.
“Their point isn’t really to enforce the law, it’s to project fear in communities,” he said.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The proposed asset seizures against the migrants who fail to comply with final deportation orders could impact U.S. citizens or permanent residents in their households.
The immigration advocacy group FWD.us estimates that some 10 million migrants with no legal status or temporary protections are living with U.S. citizens or permanent residents in what are known as “mixed status households.”
The steep fines could hit lower-income immigrants. An analysis of 2019 Census data by the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute found 26% of households with unauthorized immigrants had incomes below the federal poverty line.
Trump has said people with final deportation orders should be a priority for removal although many have families, jobs and established ties in the U.S.
The White House National Security Council and Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy, have been pressing CBP to administer the fines and handle seizures, a CBP official wrote in a March 31 email reviewed by Reuters.
But a CBP memo a day later, also reviewed by Reuters, argued for ICE to take on the task instead. The memo said that CBP’s systems do not currently support this type of immigration fine and that upgrading it could lead to significant costs and implementation delays.
The memo anticipated CBP would need at least 1,000 new paralegal specialists, up from the current staffing of 313.
The start date for the fines remained unclear. DHS did not comment on Miller’s involvement or the technical aspects of implementing the penalties.
Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Mary Milliken and Suzanne Goldenberg
The tRump admin has dehumanized the immigrant population to the point that they feel they can deny them due process. Stop and think about it. Anyone not white citizen or not, legal or not, can be taken and disappeared. What is to stop them from snatching a US citizen they want gone? Think of the police being able to be judge, jury, and if they decide to be the executioner. Pulled over by a cop for driving too fast, he just takes you from your car, arrests you, transports you to jail where you stay for as long as they want, maybe forever. ICE is taking these people and sending them to a prison that no one has ever been released from. Homan said “I’ve talked to the highest level at ICE and they’ve reassured me several times: Everyone that was removed under the Alien Enemies Act was a gang member and a terrorist,” Homan said. But we know that is not true. Several that were removed were not gang members nor terrorist. These ICE and administration people want to just declare someone is something and that is the end of it. But that is what due process is for, to find the truth and protect the innocent. Plus due process and rights extend to anyone on US soil, not just white people or citizens. Hugs
Tom Homan talks with reporters on the West Wing driveway on March 17. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Immigration agents are the “principal” deciders on whether a detainee is linked to a gang and should be deported immediately, border czar Tom Homan told Axios in an exclusive interview.
If agents determine the answer is yes, Homan said, the Trump administration believes that detainee’s rights to due process are limited.
Not so fast, the Supreme Court said late Monday. The court signaled that detainees designated as “enemies” of the U.S. could be deported, but should have some way to challenge their removal.
Driving the news: Homan’s comments to Axios came on a day when the Supreme Court began to sort out how far President Trump can go in his aggressive push to deport immigrants the administration sees as threats to the U.S.
In a separate decision, Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked a lower court’s order that the U.S. return a Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, whom the administration admits was mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador.
Garcia, a Salvadoran who had been in the U.S. since 2011 and was here legally, was among those swept up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in raids last month that officials say targeted alleged gang members and criminals.
Many of those arrested were men like Garcia who say they weren’t in gangs or wanted for crimes, civil rights advocates and other critics say. Garcia’s case has become a much-watched test of the White House’s zealous push for deportations.
Zoom in: Homan declined to comment on Garcia’s case. But he told Axios that Trump is simply “using the laws on the books” to quickly deport unauthorized and potentially dangerous immigrants under the rarely used Alien Enemies Act.
“People who are enemies of the United States don’t have the same level [of] due process [as in] the normal process,” Homan said.
“People keep saying they have no criminal history,” he added. “I’ve been doing law enforcement since 1984. Many gang members don’t have criminal history. It’s more than criminal history.”
Homan said ICE conducts “deep dive” investigations into detainees being considered for removal, looking at their social media posts, criminal records, immigration records and information from confidential informants and surveillance.
“ICE is the principal arbiter” in weighing whether such factors warrant deportation, Homan said. “There’s a Homeland Security task force and a lot of agents involved. … But it starts with ICE.”
The administrationclaims Garcia is a member of MS-13, a transnational gang that U.S. officials have designated as a terrorist organization.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinia in Maryland said Trump’s team made a “grievous error” deporting Garcia, and that evidence indicating he’s a gang member “consisted of nothing more than his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie.”
Between the lines: Homan said agents use several factors in determining membership in a designated terrorist gang such as MS-13 or the Venezuelan-based Tren de Aragua.
He said those factors include, but aren’t limited to, tattoos or religious emblems: “It can be one factor or up to 20 factors … It’s a case-by-case analysis.”
Agents’ decisions for identifying gang members are made using a rubric with an eight-point threshold for removal, according to a court document.
In the case of Tren de Aragua, a tattoo “denoting membership/loyalty to TDA” would count four points toward a removal action, according to the document. If a person admits being a gang member, that alone would be enough for removal from the U.S.
“I’ve talked to the highest level at ICE and they’ve reassured me several times: Everyone that was removed under the Alien Enemies Act was a gang member and a terrorist,” Homan said.
The other side: “Just the word of an ICE officer should not suffice as the final word that someone is covered by the Alien Enemies Act,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.
Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council, said it was “wild” that the administration would seek to ignore due process for accused immigrants.
She noted that when the Alien Enemies Act was used against people of Japanese, German and Italian descent during World War II, there was a hearing process for the accused.
The bills author said the bill was “designed to restrict government’s ability to burden anyone’s religious freedom.” What they really mean is it would allow a religious person the right to hurt others, to be a jerk, to be an asshole to other people. It is a bill to enshrine the right of someone to disregard the rights and equal treatment of those the don’t like. Anytime one of these hate bills come up just replace the LGBTQ+ with the word black, or Jewish, or even white males and see if it still sounds like a good idea. Hugs
latest push in a long-running effort from right-wing policy groups to “vilify people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
“They’re trying to elevate so-called ‘religious liberty’ above all other civil rights and claim that someone’s religious belief allows them to dominate the laws, the policies, the practices of the government and the rest of society,” Dickson said.
Arkansas ACLU Executive Director Holly Dickson testifies at the Capitol.
A bill allowing for discrimination against LGBTQ Arkansans in housing, employment, education and other areas passed out of committee Tuesday and will be heard next by the full Arkansas House of Representatives.
Rep. Robin Lundstrum (R-Springdale), the bill’s lead sponsor and a longtime crusader against LGBTQ rights, said it’s “designed to restrict government’s ability to burden anyone’s religious freedom.”
The bill would “prohibit the government from discriminating against certain individuals and organizations because of their beliefs regarding marriage or what it means to be female or male.”
“It helps protect religious organizations, places of worship, religious schools and religious ministries from government discrimination,” Lundstrum said, adding that it would protect a cake maker or wedding venue or anyone “asked to solemnize a marriage that they do not agree with.”
The bill would shield state government employees from being reprimanded in any way for engaging “in expressive conduct based upon or in a manner consistent with a belief about biological sex or marriage,” both at work and off the clock.
The state would not be able to do anything disciplinary to an employee making homophobic or transphobic social media posts, for example.
The full scope and implications of the bill aren’t clear, but Kaymo O’Connell, a transgender student from Little Rock, told lawmakers this bill clears the way for people to discriminate when making employment decisions.
Other critics of the bill, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, say the bill is poorly written, allows and encourages discrimination against LGBTQ Arkansans and violates multiple federal laws and protections.
Holly Dickson, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas, said the bill is the latest push in a long-running effort from right-wing policy groups to “vilify people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
“They’re trying to elevate so-called ‘religious liberty’ above all other civil rights and claim that someone’s religious belief allows them to dominate the laws, the policies, the practices of the government and the rest of society,” Dickson said.
HB1615 is supported by the First Liberty Institute, a national right-wing extremist group, and the Arkansas Justice Institute, the legal branch of local right-wing extremist group the Arkansas Family Council.
Lundstrum was joined by legal representatives from both groups in committee today.
“Whether or not this bill passes it has already harmed Arkansans because, yet again, we are saying some people are worthy and other people are unwelcome,” Dickson said.
Rep. Nicole Clowney (D-Fayetteville), who voted against the bill, noted that it’s a clear case of unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.
John Oliver discusses why trans athletes seem to be at the center of U.S. politics right now, the nuances around competition and safety, where the conversation could be headed, and what The Rock would do in a barre class.
Try that in a small town Marisa from The Handbasket ICE disappeared a mother and 3 children. Neighbors of Trump’s Border Czar said hell no.
Principal Jaime Cook describes one of the third graders in her northern New York school as particularly rambunctious. In a phone call with me Saturday evening, she says this particular student loves to sing and loves to dance. But last week this child was handcuffed and taken by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), along with other family members—two of whom are high school-aged kids. While they all remain jailed in Texas, classmates leave cards on the student’s desk and hang a welcome home banner they hope will be seen.
As people across the country assembled Saturday to tell the Trump regime to keep their “Hands off!”, a protest in the tiny town of Sackets Harbor, NY caught my eye. While this one was certainly related to the larger theme of the day, the impetus was much more specific: A worker on a local dairy farm who had no criminal record and was awaiting legal immigration proceedings was disappeared late last month by ICE along with her three children. Agents were executing a search warrant for an unrelated suspected criminal who lived on the same block, and somehow the family was swept up and whisked away to Texas. And around 1,000 people came together this weekend to rally for their safe return and to send a message that this won’t be tolerated there—or anywhere.
“There was the concern in our little small town that if we speak out too loudly, there might be hateful voices from far away,” Cook tells The Handbasket. She wonders: “Are we gonna become the center of something that becomes really ugly?”
But ultimately she and her staff decided anything less than loud and unwavering support was unacceptable. And as a result, the rest of the country has taken notice.
Photos courtesy of Ginger Storey-Welch
The town of 1,300 people has just one school for all children K-12 where they graduate approximately 40 students each year. It’s an affluent and idyllic-looking town on the shores of Lake Ontario in a county that voted 61% for Trump in 2024. And when protesters marched down the streets in solidarity with their stolen neighbors, they made sure to pass by the home of one community member in particular: Tom Homan, Trump’s Border Czar. Homan grew up nearby and still has his primary residence in Sackets Harbor, presumably splitting time in DC to spearhead Trump’s campaign of terrorizing immigrants.
“This isn’t like a situation where a politician has multiple houses,” Cook told me. “Tom Homan lives in Sackets Harbor. I believe that in the hours when this was unfolding, he was receiving a lot of calls on his personal cell phone.”
In anticipation of Saturday’s march, the Mayor of Sackets Harbor declared a state of emergency. Law enforcement officials from the village police department, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, state police, and state park police were all called to the gathering to remind protesters of what they would face if they put a toe out of line.
Cook has spent the past 10 days worried sick about her students in the 3rd, 10th and 11th grades at her school. Saturday morning she posted a statement on Facebook addressing the situation head on:
Homan has been decidedly less concerned about his neighbors, vocally supporting the actions of immigration officials. He claimed in a local TV news interview on Wednesday that the children and their mother were potential witnesses to the alleged crime and that they had to be detained for questions. And he was sure to make one thing clear: “First of all, the family is not in a jail. They’re in a family residential center, it’s an open air campus.”
These types of arrests—known as “collateral detention”—are becoming more common. “What we have been seeing is ICE at random detaining people who are not the people they’re looking for,” Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, told The Intercept. “They go in allegedly looking for someone else and then they’ll take whoever they can find just so they can meet their quota numbers that Donald Trump has put in place.”
As protesters marched by Homan’s waterfront home on Saturday, a sign on a neighbor’s lawn—a photo of which was shared with me by rally attendee Ginger Storey-Welch—read: “WE NO LONGER HAVE A DIFFERENCE IN POLITICAL OPINION. WE HAVE A DIFFERENCE IN MORALITY.”
Photos courtesy of Ginger Storey-Welch
The contrast between Homan and Cook couldn’t be more stark. Cook says she grew up on welfare and food stamps and says that being “disempowered” and “discarded by the system” has always helped her empathize with people in peril. I tell her that her Facebook statement and comments to a reporter at the protest have people online hailing her as a hero. Then I ask her how she feels about that characterization.
“I think that’s silly,” she says. “I think anybody who’s been a public school teacher knows that people are doing this stuff all day long. And I think that the only reason that people might think that this is out of the ordinary is because educators are so frequently underestimated and their contribution is not seen for what it is.”
Cook is tackling the situation boldly, despite having only been principal in Sackets Harbor for less than one school year. The California native has lived in the area for 15 years and says the community has welcomed her with open arms—which has made it easier to feel empowered to speak up.
“You just gotta put your money where your mouth is and you gotta live by your conscience,” she says, “and you gotta know that your livelihood cannot overpower your conscience.”
The school has been in touch with ICE since the family’s arrest, and Cook says she feels hopeful about the chances of them being home soon. She says one of her teachers who has been the immigration agency’s main point of contact has been waiting for “the call” letting them know the family is free to go, and believes that call is imminent. But even once they’re freed, ICE will do nothing to transport them back to the home from which they were snatched. Fortunately the town has come together to make sure there are people on the ground in Texas waiting to accompany the family when the time hopefully comes.
“They can rally and protest all they want, but I’m not gonna be bullied. I’m not gonna be intimidated,” Homan told the local news prior to Saturday’s rally. Meanwhile, Sackets Harbor 10th graders leave flowers on their jailed classmate’s desk in hopes of a safe return.
Arkansas ACLU Executive Director Holly Dickson testifies at the Capitol.
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