A Good Reason To Question The Propriety Of Capital Punishment

Because these things happen all the time: laws that are wrong, and poor investigative practices with witnesses.

Can Penn & Teller Magically Get SCOTUS To Consider Wrongful Conviction Appeal?

Charles Flores has been on Texas’s death row for over two decades for a crime the state knows he didn’t commit.

Charles Don Flores has sat on Texas’s death row for 27 years for the murder of Elizabeth “Betty” Black in 1998, during the commission of a robbery. The problem is, he did not kill Elizabeth “Betty” Black. That’s not just conjecture or me believing in someone’s innocence; even the state of Texas does not claim that he killed her. The man who actually did kill her was also sent to prison for the crime and was released over a decade ago, but Flores was sentenced to the death penalty for supposedly participating in the crime. Texas, you see, has a law called the “law of parties” that holds every participant in a crime responsible for everything that happened during its commission. So, for instance, if you drive the getaway car and your accomplice kills someone during the commission of a robbery, you are held equally responsible, even if you didn’t even know it happened.

There was no physical evidence, no DNA connecting Flores to Black’s murder. There is, in fact, no evidence whatsoever beyond his identification by a single neighbor who didn’t pick him out of two photo line-ups and initially said both men she saw where white with an average build and long hair, while Flores, clearly Latino, was a bigger guy with short hair.

So why is he there again? Because that neighbor, Jill Barganier, was later “hypnotized” by a cop who had never hypnotized anyone before. A cop who hinted, repeatedly, at the suspect having short or shaved hair, who told her she would continue to remember even more things about the robbery after the hypnosis. By the time she made it to court — after she had seen Flores’s picture on TV and in the news on many occasions — she was able to point to him in court as the accomplice of the the man who killed Betty Black.

There’s a lot that’s wrong with this case, obviously, but the hypnosis part is what caught the attention of magicians Penn & Teller, who recently submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court asking them to consider Flores’s case. Why? Because, they say, what the officer did is no different than what they do in their Vegas show every night.

“I am bringing this to you with the utmost humility,” Penn Gilette told The New York Times. “I am carny trash. I am uneducated. If you want to say I have a position of expertise, it is that I have lied to people onstage and gotten them to believe it. And I think I could do what that police officer did.”

The brief reads:

Despite the fact that Mrs. Barganier described the passenger in the car she saw at the scene of the crime as a white man with long hair, she was fed repeated suggestions by law enforcement that the passenger had “neatly trimmed” or “short, shaved” hair; she was told by the officer-hypnotist that she would remember more after the hypnosis session; and months later— after photos of Mr. Flores appeared in the press and she saw him seated at the defense table at trial— suddenly she identified him as the passenger. It is of little surprise that she was confident in her in-court identification when she saw this now-familiar face and believed she had produced it from her memory: That is exactly what the officer told her would happen. But it was not real. Some of the same cognitive techniques Penn & Teller use on stage to trick audience members’ memory and alter their perception explain how the investigative hypnosis session induced Mrs. Barganier to abandon all previous descriptions of the suspect and instead point to Mr. Flores.

On the tape, the officer keeps telling her that her memory is like a videotape that she can rewind and fast-forward at will. And it’s very tempting to believe that. It’s very tempting and comforting to believe that our brains are always recording whether we are aware of it or not and that, with the help of something like hypnosis, we can access those recordings. Certainly no one wants to believe that someone can more or less just jump into your brain and make you believe you saw things you didn’t see.

Our minds have a tendency to fill in the gaps if we don’t remember everything that happened in a particular situation, they explain, and memory retrieval process distorts memories — things they take advantage of as magicians.

By manipulating an audience’s memory—both in its formation and its recall—Penn & Teller get the audience to convince themselves that things have happened when, in reality, those things never occurred. That is all well and good for purposes of entertainment. But the same suggestion-based memory manipulation was also on display in the investigative hypnosis of Mrs. Barganier. And the officer-hypnotist left her believing that new things that came to mind later were true “memories” she could testify about, not merely things her brain subsequently filled in.

They can tell you exactly how he did it, as well.

The suggestion inherent in the investigative hypnosis of Mrs. Barganier is obvious: The officer/hypnotist asked her multiple questions about whether either suspect had short, shaved, neatly cut, or trimmed hair—even as Mrs. Barganier reiterated that both had long, wavy hair. The officer then showed Mrs. Barganier a photo lineup in which every photo was of a Hispanic male with short hair. Mrs. Barganier again did not identify Mr. Flores from that photo lineup. But she then also saw his photo in news coverage of the case prior to trial. Combined with the assurances of the officer-hypnotist that she would remember more as time went on, she was primed to “remember” Mr. Flores at trial. And she was particularly primed to do so because she was understandably motivated to assist police in finding the person who had committed a violent murder next door to her home. Pet. 6. Moreover, Mrs. Barganier’s certainty that her belated, in-court identification of Mr. Flores was correct (“over 100%” positive, as she testified), is not surprising. As Penn & Teller have observed, it is “very difficult for the audience to contradict the ideas that they themselves have constructed.”

The truly appalling thing about all of this is that the state of Texas actually knows that they are right about hypnosis being junk science. Just a few years ago, the state banned investigative hypnosis from being submitted as evidence in court. Of course, that was well after Flores was convicted and it had been used in over 1,800 trials over the course of four decades. In 2013, the state also enacted a “junk science” law, allowing for individuals to appeal for a new trial if the forensic science used to convict them has been found, upon further study, to be bullshit. This includes “evidence” like bite mark analysis, fiber analysis, bloodstain pattern analysis and 911 call analysis (one of the scariest ones, in my opinion, given that people have such wildly varying reactions in any kind of emergency).

It has not been going well.

Yet, Texas is fighting against Flores’s appeal and still hopes it will get to execute him. Because it’s Texas, and they really, really like executing people there.

There is a lot that is frustrating about our criminal justice system, but somewhere near the top is definitely the stubborn refusal of many involved with it to correct things when they’ve made a mistake. We see it over and over again, and it’s bad enough when it happens with someone serving any kind of sentence, especially a long one, but it’s unconscionable when we’re talking about the death penalty. There are no take-backs with the death penalty, and nothing anyone, even a magician, can fix once someone is dead.

Looking At This Week With Joyce Vance

(I’d say Josh Johnson called it on Kash Patel last week!)

The Week Ahead

Joyce Vance

We seem doomed to another week of war news. On Sunday, Trump announced on Truth Social that the U.S. military seized an Iranian-flagged ship that he said tried to run the U.S. blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. Marines boarded the cargo ship Touska after it was disabled. Trump posted that the USS Spruance “gave them fair warning to stop,” but that “The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engineroom.”

But what’s happening with the president as he conducts his war is now completely out of bounds. This morning, just after 8 a.m., he had a long rambling post on Truth Social that concluded, “if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!”

Notice how Trump speaks in the language of an all-powerful businessman, a CEO without a board to tell him what to do. He is sending “My Representatives” to Pakistan and “if they (Iran) don’t take the DEAL,” he’ll do “what has to be done.” It’s crazy on steroids, and well past the point where even his own party should be giving him a pass. The president of the United States is threatening to bomb civilian targets and devastate a civilian population. War crimes, plain and simple.

All of this from the candidate who, in November of 2024, in the closing days of his campaign for the White House, said that “If Kamala wins, only death and destruction await because she is the candidate of endless wars. I am the candidate of peace.”

Every accusation is a confession. And the Truth Social posts happened after Trump called NATO and our allies “absolutely useless” at a Turning Point USA event Friday night. If you’re exhausted, and honestly, at this point, who isn’t, take a deep breath, plan for a little extra fellowship with friends (more on my plans at the end), and remind yourself that we cannot afford to put our heads in the sand and that the effort to overwhelm us in intentional—that’s how authoritarians do it. It’s a good week to talk with people about what’s going on, to encourage them to stop and think, and then to make sure they’re registered to vote.

The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Mike Waltz, was on ABC’s “This Week,” Sunday morning, and he chimed right in with the president. Host John Karl asked if Trump was prepared to go back to “full-on war” and Waltz responded, “all options are on the table. We could take that infrastructure out relatively easily. The Iranian air defenses have been absolutely decimated.”

He continued, without being prompted, “And just to get ahead of a lot of the critics and hand-wringing, throwing out irresponsible terms like ‘war crimes’, attacking, destroying infrastructure that has clearly and historically been used for dual military purposes is not a war crime.”

Then Waltz did it again on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where volunteering to Kristen Welker, who hadn’t asked about it, that the U.S. could still target civilian infrastructure in Iran if a ceasefire deal wasn’t reached, again claiming that wouldn’t amount to war crimes. “We have a long history of taking down bridges, power plants and other infrastructure that is powering Iran’s military,” Waltz said, as though that somehow made it acceptable. “In the laws of land warfare and the rules of engagement, any type of infrastructure that is co-mingled is absolutely a legitimate target.” He reiterated on CBS, appearing on “Face the Nation,” that because the IRGC is running bridges and power plants, they are “legitimate military targets,” again rejecting the notions that bombing them would be “some type of war crime.”

So bombing civilian targets seems to be top of mind for the president and one of his key spokespeople on these issues, which should concern all of us.

Waltz is a former Army Special Forces Officer, decorated for his bravery. He graduated from Virginia Military Academy, according to his bio from his time in Congress, but he is not a lawyer. Apparently, concerns about launching attacks against civilian populations didn’t stick. Waltz was Trump’s first National Security Advisor this term, but he resigned following Signalgate after serving for just 101 days. (Tonight’s trivia: That’s the second shortest tenure of any NSA. Mike Flynn, who was Trump’s first NSA in 2017, resigned after just 24 days, two Scaramuccis, and was ultimately convicted of lying to the FBI before Trump pardoned him.) Trump nominated Waltz to serve as the U.N. Ambassador the same day he stepped down.

Today, the United States struck yet another vessel in the Caribbean. Three people were killed. The U.S. Southern Command account on Twitter said they were narco-terrorists. These attacks used to be shocking. Now, they barely garner notice. As of the last strike, four days ago, Reuters reported the death toll was “over 170.” Three people were killed in that strike last Wednesday, as well.

Also appearing on the Sunday shows, FBI Director Kash Patel said he would file a defamation case on Monday against The Atlantic, which reported last week, in a story headlined, “The FBI Director Is MIA,” that Patel’s colleagues are “alarmed” by “episodes of excessive drinking and unexplained absences.” Two dozen people interviewed for the story “described Patel’s tenure as a management failure and his personal behavior as a national-security vulnerability.”

Nominees for important government positions, and Director of the FBI is among the highest because of access to national security information, are heavily vetted before they take office. But as with so many other norms in the time of Trump, Patel’s questionable personal choices have continued to come to light since he took office. The report says that Patel is “drinking so heavily that meetings need to be rescheduled and his security detail has trouble waking him up. Among the report’s most chilling revelations, “Current and former officials told me that they have long worried about what would happen in the event of a domestic terrorist attack while Patel is in office, and they said that their apprehension has increased significantly in the weeks since Trump launched his military campaign against Iran. ‘That’s what keeps me up at night,’ one official said.”

Screen grab of Patel “celebrating” with the U.S. Men’s Hockey team after their Olympic victory.

This morning, Fox host Maria Bartiromo asked Patel, “So you’re gonna sue them?” “Absolutely,” he responded. “It’s coming tomorrow.” He added that it would be for defamation.

I’m looking forward to discovery. Especially the part where Patel is deposed, under oath. Expect the lawsuit, which he probably has to file to look tough for the audience of one, to be dismissed before it gets that far. Patel would face questioning about his drinking and other misconduct while in office. And he would be exposed to penalties of perjury.

The Atlantic’s report concludes with this story: “Patel has publicly proclaimed that the FBI needs to demonstrate that it is ‘fierce,’ and officials I spoke with said that he is fixated on that image in private as well.” So what is he doing about that? Apparently, Patel “recently expressed frustration with the look of FBI merchandise, complaining that it isn’t intimidating enough.” The Atlantic explains that “Officials have grown accustomed to such behavior, and they have learned to roll their eyes at it. But they said that the absurdity masks real concerns about what Patel’s leadership has meant for an institution that the country relies on for national security and the safety of its citizens. ‘Part of me is glad he’s wasting his time on bullshit, because it’s less dangerous for rule of law, for the American public,’ one official told me, ‘but it also means we don’t have a real functioning FBI director.’”

It’s likely that Patel has little support inside of the building, and that could mean this is just one of many stories that get launched in an effort to ease him out before it’s too late. When the “that” in “That’s what keeps me up at night,” is the Director of the FBI, not a foreign terrorist or criminal threat, then it’s highly likely the career folks, and maybe even some of the politicos, want a “real functioning FBI director” in place.

I started out by saying we’re entering this week already exhausted and it’s important to keep taking care of ourselves. My plan this week involves spending time in person with my #SistersInLaw cohosts Kimberly Atkins Stohr, Barb McQuade, and Jill Will-Banks, when we do the podcast live in Denver on April 23rd. If you’re in Denver, I hope I’ll see you there! If you’re in Atlanta, we’ll be live there on May 3. There is nothing as important as being with the people that we love right now.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Monday, Back To It!

Enjoy a couple of political ones that are good, and uplifting. First, Sen. Prof. Warren tells us a bit about Zach Wahls:

Next, well, you can see it’s gonna be nice before you even tap Play. But tap Play!

So, We Three Post A Great Deal Of

stuff here on Playtime, day to day; lots of material from which to listen, choose, skim, read in full, watch. Today is Sunday. I frequently take the day to get my emails cleared and read the stuff I haven’t gotten to through the week. Sunday is the day a new Lit Hub email comes, and today I indulged myself by opening it before many other things, including last week’s Lit Hub. I did that because I admire Mae West; also I tend to use the F-word a lot inside my home and inside my head. Today’s Lit Hub covers each of these subjects along with its usual variety. If you likeand/or use the F-word, and/or are interested in the etymology of the F-word, you should read the Lit Hub story you can see by clicking this sentence. And now, here is the bit of info of interest about Mae West. We may all be aware that she was so much more than the caricature we tend to receive; she was an ally of LGBTQ+, a playwright, and more. This short bit has some links to her work. Enjoy!

Monstrosity Plucked From Garbage Can: On Mae West’s early career as a controversial playwright.

Walker Caplan April 20, 2021

Mae West is an icon: literally, a representative symbol. In the popular imagination, Mae West stands in for a certain type of seduction—blonde, campy, one-liner-heavy. But though West is best known for her distinctive performances, she was also a controversial playwright; before West established the acting persona that would stick in the public’s minds for a century, she was offending critics and facing jail time for shows that she called “comedy-dramas of life,” illuminating elements of life yet to be popularized onstage.

West’s plays The Drag and The Pleasure Man brought a type of communal gay camp onstage that at turns scandalized and excited a largely straight audience. And back in 1926, before Diamond Lil, her play-turned-movie about a good-natured prostitute, launched West to bona fide stardom, she wrote and performed another play—SEX—which would lay the groundwork for the plot of Diamond Lil but polarized audiences in a way Diamond Lil never did.

In SEX, West starred as a prostitute named Margy Lamont. The plot is winding, complicated, and not the point; viewer response was created by the first two acts, where the audience saw Margy working in a brothel and then in a nightclub. Critics were universally horrified by SEX. The New Yorker described the script as “street sweepings”; the New York Herald Tribune said that “never in a long experience of theatre-going have we met with a set of characters so depraved”; the slightly more provocative New York Daily Mirror titled their review “SEX an Offensive Play, Monstrosity Plucked From Garbage Can, Destined to Sewer.”

It wasn’t that there had never been sex or representations of sex workers on Broadway before; but critics found SEX reminiscent of burlesque (stigmatized at the time), as well as uncomfortably realistic in its treatment of sex work and class. As Marybeth Hamilton puts it in “SEX, The Drag, and 1920s Broadway,” “Margy was . . . an ill-paid sex-worker who traded her body on the streets. West made that fact unmistakable. As West embodied her, Margy was palpably from the lower orders . . . Margy is bitterly conscious of herself as a member of the oppressed class, and the grimness and harshness of her manner are reflected in the world she inhabits.” Imagine Mae West’s characteristic delivery without the irony: that was Margy Lamont. Understandably (though not correctly), people were scandalized.

As usually happens when people freak out about a piece of art, ticket sales went up. Then, on February 9, 1927, SEX was raided by the acting mayor, and West spent $14,000 to bail herself and her fellow actors out of jail. As she refused to shut down the show, West was sentenced to ten days in jail for “corrupting the morals of youth.” She was released two days early for good behavior, and the jail time essentially operated as a publicity stunt, launching her in the media as a “bad girl” of theater.

West capitalized on the publicity of SEX and took it as an opportunity to retool her persona, creating Diamond Lil. West plays a sex worker in Diamond Lil as well, but this time, it was funny. Lil was constantly making jokes, and West played her with a veil of irony, so an audience could interpret all of the raunchiness as satire. Plus, the specter of class was never mentioned, making it easier to swallow for middle-class audiences. West called Lil “a little spicy, but not too raw”; this was the beginning of the West performances we know today. I’m grateful for West’s fame, and her later work; but I’m glad we know what was lost in translation.

A Little Decent News

then, well, the last story not at all.

Montana Supreme Court Rules Its Constitution Entirely Protects Trans Citizens In Landmark Ruling

The ruling will have enormous impacts for transgender residents in the state.

Erin Reed

On Monday, the Montana Supreme Court issued a landmark 5-2 ruling declaring that “transgender discrimination is, by its very nature, sex discrimination,” and that transgender people constitute a suspect class under the state’s equal protection clause. The ruling in Kalarchik v. State of Montana blocks a definition-of-sex law and related state policies that stripped all legal recognition from transgender people and barred them from obtaining accurate birth certificates and driver’s licenses. The decision rests on Montana’s constitution, whose Equal Protection and Individual Dignity clause has been repeatedly interpreted to protect transgender people—and which the court made clear provides far greater protection than the federal constitution. Justices have now issued the clearest declaration ever that transgender people in the state will have enhanced protections of their rights, grounding the ruling in equal protection, sex discrimination, and privacy—principles with broad applicability in a state that has become a major battleground for anti-trans legislation and resistance to it. (snip-MORE)

Colorado Supreme Court May Force Children’s Hospital To Resume Trans Youth Care

Several justices seemed to support the families of trans youth on the question of whether to force Colorado Children’s Hospital to discontinue capitulating to the Trump administration.

Erin Reed

On Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court heard oral arguments over whether Children’s Hospital Colorado can be forced to resume gender-affirming care for transgender youth. The hospital was one of roughly 40 across the country that capitulated to Trump administration threats and shuttered their trans youth care programs. However, the hospital’s position has grown increasingly untenable, as hospitals in states like Minnesota and California have begun reversing course and as the Trump administration has suffered mounting losses in federal courts—including an Oregon ruling that vacated the very declaration the hospital cited as justification for halting care. Hearing arguments on Tuesday, several justices appeared skeptical of the hospital’s rationale, questioning whether Colorado’s civil rights protections for transgender people—among the strongest in the nation—can simply be overridden by federal threats that do not constitute law. (snip-MORE)

They served their prison time. Then came deportation.

Apr 15, 2026 Candice Norwood

This story was originally reported by Candice Norwood of The 19th. Meet Candice and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

JJ had a five-year plan to turn his life around.

After being released from prison in 2022, he completed an 18-month job training program with the Los Angeles-based organization Homeboy Industries and began working as a cook for the group’s onsite cafe. He enrolled in two different community college programs to study business administration and culinary arts. He volunteered with groups to help other trans Latinx and formerly incarcerated people get back on their feet. By the time he reached the five-year anniversary of his release date, JJ hoped he would have saved enough to buy a house with his sister.

He also wanted to travel more, and last April, JJ went to Thailand with his mom, sister and a friend. It was his first time outside the United States since he and his parents entered the country without legal documentation when he was a toddler. They later obtained permanent resident status, and his sister was born in the United States.

“I always told myself, the moment I was able to come home, and if God permitted me to get my life together, that I would like to travel with my family,” JJ told The 19th. “Being able to give that to both my sister and my mom — even if I knew that this would be the end result, for me to get deported — I would do it all over again, just to see them happy.”

JJ, who asked for The 19th to withhold his last name for privacy, was not particularly concerned when returning to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and going through the standard post-flight motions. He waited in line for customs, showed his passport and green card, and got his fingerprints taken. But then, the customs officer made a phone call and escorted JJ away from his loved ones.

The weeks that followed felt like a different kind of prison: five days in LAX sleeping on the floor and living off of vending machine food, he said. Then it was five months in Eloy Detention Center in Arizona, where it came down to two options: JJ could do a “voluntary” departure to Mexico, or he could challenge his case in court and risk staying in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) indefinitely. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to The 19th’s request for comment by the time of publication.

The choice was clear for JJ, he said, even if that meant returning to a country he hasn’t known since age 2. “I’ve been here since September, and I’m barely learning how to maneuver around. My Spanish is horrible,” he said recently from Mexico. “People notice that I’m not from here because of the way I speak.”

In the second Trump administration, people with JJ’s background — a formerly incarcerated trans immigrant — have three targets on their backs, and the power of the federal government aimed at them. Trump has repeatedly stated that ICE, under his administration, will detain and deport “the worst of the worst,” particularly people who have committed crimes. A combination of anti-trans, anti-immigrant and tough-on-crime messaging by the White House depicts a country under siege.

To carry out its mass deportation mission, the administration has ramped up partnerships with local law enforcement and correctional facilities that allow the federal government to take custody of people held in prisons who have already served their sentences. Even in states like California, which limit local law enforcement partnerships with ICE, federal law defines a broad list of criminal offenses that can make a noncitizen deportable, even if that person secured legal status like JJ.

The result is a system of “double punishment,” a prison-to-ICE pipeline that advocates told The 19th can be particularly detrimental for trans people.

We just see trauma compounded on trauma compounded on trauma.”Lynly Egyes

Trans migrants often face rejection from family, abuse, job insecurity or homelessness as a result of their identity, which increases their risk of criminalization, advocates say. In ICE custody, they may be denied health care access, face sexual violence and be deported to countries that are hostile to their identity. Even for those who attempt to rebuild their lives after serving prison terms, “ICE could use that years later to target them, pull them into immigration detention and have them deported,” said Lynly Egyes, the legal director at the Transgender Law Center.

“We just see trauma compounded on trauma compounded on trauma,” Egyes said. “When trans people are shuffled between systems such as prison into ICE custody, it completely strips them of any opportunity for freedom and connection with their loved ones and community.”

It took three attempts for Nataly Marinero to secure parole from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. It ultimately happened in 2023, and he was released after nearly 18 years of incarceration. The state’s parole approval rate was about 34 percent at the time.

During this process, the parole board assesses an incarcerated person’s behavior and activities while in custody and considers whether they will be a threat to the general public. The board considers a range of factors, including signs of remorse, past criminal history, age and plans for the future, according to the California department of corrections website. While in prison, Marinero took substance abuse courses, worked on getting his high school diploma, had a job as a clerk in the prison kitchen. He had not received a write up, an infraction in prison, in years, he said. Each of these factors help to build a stronger case for release.

Immediately after leaving prison, Marinero joined a reentry program in Los Angeles called A New Way of Life, where he received housing, a job and connections to other opportunities to help him transition to life outside.

Life felt good.

“Freedom — just to think about it makes me want to cry,” the 40-year-old told The 19th. “That’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Marinero, who came to the United States without authorization at 17, was aware that ICE had put a “hold” on him at the beginning of his incarceration more than a decade ago. ICE “holds” are requests asking jails or prisons to hold someone after incarceration so that they can be transferred to immigration custody.

“When you get to prison, your counselor would tell you when you have an ICE hold,” said Laura Hernandez, executive director of the California-based advocacy group Freedom for Immigrants.

“If you have an inkling that you may have an ICE hold, you tend to check every so often,” she added. “But sometimes ICE holds aren’t placed on anyone until right before they’re getting ready to be released. So people have to check like the entire time they’re inside.”

Whether the agency follows through on picking up immigrants with ICE holds on their accounts is largely a toss up. In Marinero’s case, he was allowed to be released from prison; he was allowed to join a reentry program and to live his life for two years without being arrested by ICE.

In January 2025, he received a call from a woman who said she was his parole officer. This struck Marinero as odd, because this was a different officer from the man he had previously spoken with. The woman demanded Marinero come to the front of his reentry home, he said. When he obeyed, ICE agents were waiting outside and took Marinero into custody.

His legal advocates at the California Coalition of Women Prisoners, who also serve trans people, moved quickly to assess whether Marinero could make an asylum claim as he was moved from an ICE holding facility to detention centers in California and Louisiana over the course of two months. Ultimately, his legal team was unable to file an asylum claim before his deportation. In April 2025, Marinero was placed in handcuffs and loaded onto a plane. He was back in El Salvador, a place he fled as a teenager and one of the most dangerous countries for trans people in Latin America.

Partnerships between federal immigration authorities, local law enforcement and state prisons have existed for three decades.

In 1996, fears about crime led to a wave of laws — including the 1994 crime bill — with more severe punishments and a historic expansion of law enforcement. President Bill Clinton signed into law two bills that created pathways to speed up the deportation of noncitizens with criminal records and broadened the list of crimes considered aggravated felonies. These crimes could range from murder and sexual assault to shoplifting and forgery. As a result, any noncitizens, including green card holders, with an aggravated felony record became eligible for deportation.

“It especially hit lawful permanent residents,” said Juliet Stumpf, the Edmund O. Belsheim professor of law chair at Lewis & Clark Law School, whose research centers on what’s referred to as “crimmigration.”

“We used to see lawful permanent residents as being able to remain in the country if they committed a crime,” she added. “But now, we’ve added a whole other level of penalty, for lawful permanent residents especially, because they’re the ones that are going to be most vulnerable to deportation based on those grounds.”

One of the 1996 laws also laid the groundwork for the 287(g) program, which can essentially turn local and state law enforcement into an arm of immigration enforcement. These 287(g) agreements fall into one of three categories, one being the “Jail Enforcement Model,” designed to identify noncitizens held in local jails or state prisons who can be transferred to immigration custody.

At the time of Trump’s first term, his administration ushered in a high — at that time — of about 150 active 287(g) agreements of all types. In the last 15 months, that figure has increased tenfold. As of April 10, ICE has signed 1,645 agreements across 39 states and two U.S. territories, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security. That dataset indicates that 10 percent of these agreements, 171 total, fall under the Jail Enforcement Model.

One contributor to this growth is likely financial incentives built into Trump’s expansive 2025 so-called One Big Beautiful tax bill, said Karen Pita Loor, director of the criminal law clinical program at Boston University.

“Historically, 287(g) agreements were not financially profitable for these counties, localities, whatever jurisdictions. They weren’t making them money,” Loor said. “The bill created really attractive financial incentives that make 287(g) agreements much more profitable.” These benefits to local law enforcement agencies can include salary reimbursements, $7,500 for equipment and $100,000 for new vehicles.

Some states, like California, where JJ and Marinero lived, have laws limiting collaborations between local and federal law enforcement. But even in those jurisdictions, the more forgiving immigration policies often do not extend to migrants with criminal records.

Prior to Trump’s return to office, JJ and Marinero, who served their prison time and were on a path to rehabilitation, might have gone unnoticed by ICE, advocates said.

Now, for Marinero, “I feel like going back to the same time when I was younger,” he said. “I can’t dress the way I want to dress. I can’t be who I want to be. It’s kind of killing my self-esteem.”

I just want to be free.”Nataly Marinero

Growing up in El Salvador, Marinero did not have a specific word to describe how he felt about his gender. He just knew that people called him a girl, but he felt like a boy and preferred loose fitting shirts and pants rather than dresses. Marinero’s religious family treated his self-expression like a curse that needed to be healed, he said. They told him he would go to hell if he didn’t change. People called him a “marimacha,” a slur for a lesbian or masculine girl. He was also repeatedly targeted for sexual violence.

“It was so bad that I wanted to try to kill myself so many times,” Marinero said. “I just want to be free.” When his uncle offered to connect him with a group who could get him into the United States, Marinero jumped at the chance.

Being back in El Salvador 23 years later, Marinero mostly works and stays at home. He doesn’t have friends, he said, though he recently found a boxing gym that is helping to relieve stress. In Mexico, JJ said he also keeps to himself and isn’t open with people about his trans identity. He said it helps that he “blends in” as a man and doesn’t get many questions or weird looks.

Next March will mark five years since JJ left prison. The five-year plan he mapped out for himself has changed quite a bit, but he hasn’t lost all hope.

“I feel like I just came out of being in prison all over again, and I have to start all over again,” he said. “Just getting back on my feet; that’s really my fifth-year goal now.”

Some Toons From Clay Jones

Rocky Penis

At what point does Donald Trump say that he never knew RFK Junior?

Clay Jones

You know about RFK Jr. hiding the body of a dead bear cub in Central Park. You heard about him cutting off a whale’s head and tying it to the roof of his car. Now, get ready to hear about RFK Junior and the raccoon penis.

What?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the worst US health secretary in our nation’s history, once cut the penis off a road-killed raccoon on the side of I-684 while his children waited in his car. I don’t know if this was during his cocaine addiction. (snip-MORE)

Hate Tax

Why should the United Daughters of the Confederacy and other organizations celebrating racist traitors be tax-exempt anyway?

Clay Jones

On Monday, Virginia’s Governor, Abigail Spanberger, signed into law a bill that eliminates tax exemptions for organizations connected to the Confederacy. Most people were not aware that these organizations were exempt from paying taxes, or that they were even still around.

The bill, passed by the House and Senate in the General Assembly, specifically removes the Virginia division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Stonewall Jackson Memorial, the Virginia division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, along with other groups, from the state’s list of organizations that are exempt from state property taxes. (snip-MORE)

Arc de Butt

The Arc’s got back

Clay Jones

The Commission of Fine Arts is scheduled on Thursday to consider Donald Trump’s plan to build a 250-foot arch on the other side of the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial. This huge sculpture will be at the foot of Arlington National Cemetery. Unfortunately, the Commission of Fine Arts is stacked with Trump appointees.

The original plans for this monument were for it to be 76 feet tall to symbolize the year of America’s founding, which, in case you were educated in a red state, was in 1776. Soon after, Trump insisted that it be taller than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris (he must’ve been standing next to Emmanuel Macron at the urinals), which stands roughly 164 feet tall. Eventually, Trump decided that the arch should rise to 250 feet, to celebrate America’s 250 years, making it what is believed to be the tallest triumphal arch in any of the world’s capital cities. (snip-MORE)

Earth Month

It is Earth Month, and I’ve only posted a single acknowledgement of that, so far. Meanwhile, Ten Bears has us, with a full post of links regarding how things are, what needs to be done, and importantly, what we can still do.

Saturn Save Our Only Planet Day … !

A P.S.A. About A.I., Brought To Us By KS A.G. Kris Kobach

Really! Look.

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach’s PSA meekly counters utopian AI promises

Eric Thomas

Whether you are watching the Super Bowl on TV, scrolling make-up tutorials on Instagram or listening to a technology podcast, you are being fed advertising for artificial intelligence.

The commercials are everywhere. And they promise the world.

Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, the companies that build AI have deployed advertising to recruit us as loyal users of their astronomically expensive software. Persuade us now, and perhaps we will be loyal customers later.

Meanwhile, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach — with some help from a nebulous technology group — has sounded an alarm about AI this week, releasing a PSA.

“The reports are very troubling,” he says about threats posed by artificial intelligence.

Over the next few years, our culture will decide whether we are AI skeptics or fanatics. For that reason, the language that is used to sell AI — or steer us away from it — matters. Let’s listen to what is being said about the technology that could define the 21st century.

From Silicon Valley

In their ads, technology companies describe AI as a wonderland: productivity at work, inspired hobbies at home and wellness nirvana at the gym. The word choices would make a spiritual guru proud.

In marketing AI app-building software, Base 44 urges us: “Consider yourself limitless.” It’s also described as “the next thing you can’t live without.” The company uses the language of religious cults swirled with rampant consumerism. “Elite” plans start at $160 per month.

Besides AI, what product from the past 50 years could have generated all of these promises in one commercial? In 78 seconds of advertising, Perplexity offers:

“Get your time back.”
“Access to knowledge is easier than ever.”
“Discover something new every day.”
“Knowledge on-demand anytime anywhere. For anything you wanna know.”

There’s no modesty — just hyperbole.

Judging by their advertising, tech companies agree on AI’s greatest virtue: efficiency.

The YouTube description for a Copilot AI ad claims that “Microsoft 365 Copilot isn’t just a better way of doing the same things. It’s an entirely new way of working.” Press play on the video and watch a layered flurry of chatbot prompts, all written simultaneously and feverishly, including: “Want to get a jump start on your day?” The message envisions AI as hyperactive multichannel problem solving.

Other AI advertising promises are more direct. ChatGPT’s advertisement, “What Codex unlocks,” features a technology CEO who boasts about what AI made possible. You don’t need to understand his jargon to understand the promised efficiency.

“We were able to create a JavaScript runtime in just two weeks,” says Syrus Akbary Nieto. “Without Codex, it would have taken us easily one year.”

For people outside Silicon Valley, ChatGPT’s advertising shows tangible AI efficiencies, such as opening a new restaurant.

“I found the perfect spot,” someone types into the chatbot. “Help me write the business plan.”

In another ad, ChatGPT is the elixir for fixing the family car: “Dad said the truck is ours if we fix it. Help us get it running.”

The pitches implicitly promise success when you combine your ambition with AI’s wisdom — never mind the skills required to cook spaghetti bolognese or handle a wrench.

Elsewhere, two of Google’s recent AI commercials blend family values with problem solving. One commercial considers how to reassure a young boy about moving to a new house.

The ad’s answer: Open the Gemini chatbot and ask it to visualize his new bedroom, complete with the family dog’s bed. The commercial closes with words carrying a double meaning: “It will be whatever we want it to be,” the boy’s mom says. Both the house and the Gemini chatbot, the script suggests, can be family dreams. (snip-MORE, including the ad transcript, and info about the organization behind the ads. It’s good, and not much more to read. I just don’t like lifting other people’s work.)

Some Peace & Justice History for 4/16 & 17:

More from National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee:

War Tax Resistance

What is War Tax Resistance?

War tax resistance means refusing to pay some or all of the federal taxes that pay for war. While you can refuse income tax legally by lowering your taxable income, for many people war tax resistance involves civil disobedience.

In the U.S. war tax resisters refuse to pay some or all of their federal income tax and/or other taxes, like the federal excise tax on local telephone service. Income taxes and excise taxes are destined for the government’s general fund and about half of that money goes for military spending, including weapons of war and weapons of mass destruction.

People take many roads to war tax resistance. Most are motivated by a combination of reasons and actively work for peace in many other ways too. If you consider your motivations this will help you determine your method of resistance.

Refusing to pay federal income taxes is an act of civil disobedience with a long history in the U.S. America’s most well-known war tax resister was Henry David Thoreau, whose refusal to pay his poll tax because of the Mexican-American War earned him an night in jail and the experience that led him to write his influential essay, Civil Disobedience. While those of us who refuse to pay war taxes believe our refusal is just and imperative — and some of us cite international law to back up this belief — the government considers the refusal to pay these taxes to be illegal, and there are potential repercussions through the IRS collection system. For most of us who resist, the dire consequences of voluntarily paying for war are far worse that what the IRS and government can do to us. (snip-MORE)

It Still Makes A Difference

(Personally, at this stage of my life, I’m thinking of tattooing DNR on my forehead and chest. There is no need to rescusitate me now. But, over the years, I’ve watched little to no progress on women’s cardiac treatment; they’re treated as if they’re hysterical, and also by using research on men’s cardiac. Frequently, women’s heart attacks don’t present the way men’s do. Even though women bother to learn about this so they know when to get help, they aren’t able to be treated properly because of lack of knowledge, and, as reported below, disbelieving the women. Anyway, here is this.)

If your heart stopped right now, would a stranger save you? It depends on your sex.

Why women are less likely to receive CPR—and less likely to survive

Kristen Panthagani, MD, PhD

If you’ve been watching The Pitt Season 2, you may have caught one of the most medically important scenes on television this year. (Alert: small spoiler from last week’s episode coming!)

A woman arrives at the ER by ambulance, clutching her chest, complaining of pain. Her EKG comes back looking normal. Doctors are puzzled. Then her heart stops.

Dr. Robby, played by Noah Wyle, figures out what happened: the paramedics placed her EKG leads too low on her chest, and far too low to get an accurate reading, missing her heart attack. Later, he confronts the paramedics directly. They felt uncomfortable moving her breasts to place the leads correctly. He turns to his staff and asks: “Shall we put it to a vote? Ladies in the room—show of hands—death with modesty, or life with brief nudity?”

The vote from the women is clear: they want to live.

It’s a fictional scene (and in real life, public chastisement is certainly not the way to correct medical staff), but it highlights a very real problem we see every day.

Women are less likely to receive bystander CPR.

If someone collapsed at a restaurant, would you start CPR? It turns out that for many people, the answer depends on the sex of the person who collapsed: women are less likely than men to receive CPR from a bystander (a nonmedical professional who is nearby) in public, and they are less likely to receive defibrillation (shocks that can restart the heart).

A Duke University study of more than 309,000 cardiac arrests found that women who had a cardiac arrest in public were 14% less likely to receive bystander CPR than men. This is true around the world, too.

And women are less likely to survive. Chest compressions and shocks in those first few minutes are critical, and bystander CPR can double to triple the chance of survival.

Why are women less likely to receive CPR? The same reasons The Pitt depicted.

Researchers have asked the public why they think this happens, and the answers are striking:

Concerns about touching a woman’s chest to provide compressions.
Concerns about accusations of sexual assault.
Fear of causing injury to women, in part due to perceptions they are more frail.
Gender stereotypes that women are emotional or overreactive to symptoms.
Misperceptions that women are unlikely to experience true cardiac arrest.

While these fears may be common, actual cases of lawsuits against bystanders performing CPR are not—and Good Samaritan laws protect individuals genuinely trying to help in medical emergencies.

A 2020 review of CPR lawsuits in the U.S. found the vast majority of lawsuits were related to withholding CPR (not providing it). Lawsuits alleging harm from CPR were extremely rare (only 3 out of 170 cases), and all took place in medical facilities (not bystander CPR). The review found zero cases where a layperson was found liable for harm by providing CPR.

When should CPR be provided?

If someone is unresponsive and not breathing (or only gasping), start CPR. The basics are simple, and anyone can do it. Here’s a quick refresher:

Call 911 immediately (or have someone else call while you start CPR).
Push hard and fast in the center of the chest: press 2 inches deep to the beat of “Stayin’ Alive” (or any other song with a beat of 100-120 per minute). Let the chest return to its normal position between each compression.
Don’t stop until emergency services arrive. CPR is a WORKOUT. If you get tired (which is normal), try to switch out with someone.
Use an automated external defibrillator (AED) as soon as one is available. Follow the voice prompts, it walks you through where to place the pads and when a shock is needed.

Common questions and misconceptions about CPR

(Note: this is for the general public, if you are health care provider, different guidance will apply.)

Do I need to check a pulse? Nope! It turns out most people are pretty bad at this. Instead, if someone is not responsive and not breathing (or only gasping), assume their heart has stopped and start compressions.
Do I need to provide rescue breaths (mouth-to-mouth)? If it’s a teen or adult, for most cases the answer is no. Chest compressions alone (“hands only CPR”) can be just as effective. While rescue breaths are important in cases of drowning, suspected overdose, and for children, in most other situations chest compressions alone is enough!
Do I need to remove clothing to start chest compressions? Nope! The priority is starting compressions as soon as possible. If you find something they are wearing is getting in the way, then don’t hesitate to remove it, but otherwise you can do compressions on top of clothing.
Do I need to remove clothing to use the defibrillator (AED)? Yes—the pads for a defibrillator should be placed directly on the skin. Place them where the stickers show they should go, and reposition or remove any clothing that is in the way. (This may include a bra!) Metal in bras is not an issue for shocks—you can leave it on as long as it’s not in the way of the pads.
What if we’re in public and other people might feel awkward from exposure of a woman’s chest? Do it anyway. Remember, the alternative is letting the woman die. Other people’s potential opinions or discomfort should not be weighed as more important than a woman’s life.
What if they appear frail and I might injure them? Start compressions anyway. You can’t get more injured than dead—which is what a cardiac arrest is. Broken ribs are common in CPR (for both male and female patients), but people can heal from those. They can’t heal from a heart that stops beating and isn’t restarted.
If I haven’t taken a CPR course, should I still provide CPR? Yes! Any chest compressions—even imperfect ones—are far better than no compressions. If you’d like to take a course, find one at redcross.org or heart.org.

Bottom line

Women are less likely to receive CPR, less likely to be defibrillated, and less likely to survive cardiac arrest. The first few minutes after a cardiac arrest are the most critical, and CPR from someone like you significantly improves chance of survival. If someone isn’t responding and isn’t breathing, start chest compressions. Even if it’s a woman.

Love, KP

Thank you to Dr. Sarah Perman, emergency physician and cardiac arrest researcher, for reviewing this post!

Kristen Panthagani, MD, PhD, is completing a combined emergency medicine residency and research fellowship focusing on health literacy and communication. In her free time, she is a contributing writer for Your Local Epidemiologist and creator of the newsletters You Can Know Things and The Public Health Roundup. Views expressed belong to KP, not her employer.

Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is founded and operated by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD—an epidemiologist, wife, and mom of two little girls. YLE reaches over 450,000 people in over 132 countries with one goal: “Translate” the ever-evolving public health science so that people will be well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. This newsletter is free to everyone, thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members. (snip)