Miles Taylor explains how in tRump’s first term he was shocked to find the president had checks on his authority / power. Once he heard about the insurrection act he kept talking as if it gave him total power and control over the US, the kind of power he has always craved person power to rule by decree like in his personal business. Hugs
This is about the post Ali sent me the link to and I then posted. This is where I first heard it. I love when Sam shares the news. He says that being terrorism as anyone who holds anti-Christian, anti traditional family values (read LGBTQ+), anti capitalism, anti ICE, anti American exceptionalism sediments. If you have any of those ideas or feeling you are a terrorist according to Stephen Miller and Russell Vought. Hugs
Caller witnessed ICE arrest a US citizen. He also told a police officer and the cop did nothing. They stopped the guy because he looked Hispanic. Racial profiling which Kavanaugh originally said was OK but now says it is not when it is already too late. Racism on steroids. One guy handed them his wallet to prove his citizenship but the ICE gang thugs just threw it away. They make a bonus for each body so they don’t care if a person is a citizen or not. Hugs
I am sorry but ICE and DHS / FBI are on a mission to ethnically cleanse the US of non-white people. They feel it is OK to do anything to accomplish that. They are like religious fanatics in that way. Anything for their deity or god, and in this case their god is white supremacy. Nothing may be allowed to come between their goal of a white only US. Just as fanatical Christian hate groups want to cleanse the US of the LGBTQ+ and other religious groups so only their religion is the one people see or can use, the ICE white supremacist only want white people in the US and they want those white people to be obedient to authority, especially the white woman. At this point they will do anything including murder people to get what they desire. If we do not stop them now we will be stuck fighting them in every city and blue state in the US. Notice the claim by the government … does it sound familiar? Hugs
… the federal agency had claimed that two men were inside a van that officials said tried to ram ICE vehicles and run over agents during a Dec. 24 operation in Glen Burnie.
Department of Homeland Security officials have changed their account of last month’s shooting involving ICE agents in Glen Burnie. (U.S. Department of Homeland Security via X)
Department of Homeland Security officials changed their account of last month’s shooting involving ICE agents in Glen Burnie, a day after Anne Arundel County police disagreed with the federal government’s original version of events, according to a Baltimore Banner report.
Until Friday, the federal agency had claimed that two men were inside a van that officials said tried to ram ICE vehicles and run over agents during a Dec. 24 operation in Glen Burnie. Agents opened fire on the van and wounded its driver, identified as Tiago Alexandre Sousa-Martins, an immigrant from Portugal whose U.S. visa expired in 2009. The second man, Salomon Antonio Serrano-Esquivel of El Salvador, was also injured.
However, on Thursday, Anne Arundel County police said Serrano-Esquivel was not in the van during the incident. According to police, he was already in custody in an ICE vehicle.
Following the release of the new details by police, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin walked back the agency’s claims that Serrano-Esquivel was in the passenger’s seat of Sousa-Martin’s van, according to a statement obtained by the Banner.
Find out what’s happening in Glen Burniefor free with the latest updates from Patch.
On Friday, McLaughlin also said that Serrano-Esquivel was in ICE custody and was injured when Sousa-Martins rammed the ICE vehicle he was in.
According to federal authorities, ICE officers were conducting a targeted operation in Glen Burnie on Christmas Eve when they approached the van driven by Sousa-Martins. Federal officials claimed Sousa-Martins was told to turn off the engine; however, officials said he refused and tried to flee, ramming his van into several federal vehicles and attempting to run officers over.
The officers fired their weapons and hit Sousa-Martins, who crashed the van, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s statement.
The new version of events provided by both federal and local authorities echoed an account given to The Banner shortly after the shooting by an attorney who visited Serrano-Esquivel at the hospital.
Alex Major told the Banner that Serrano-Esquivel, a landscape worker, was pulled over by federal agents along with a family member in Southern Maryland and taken into custody Wednesday morning, hours before he was accused of riding in the van that rammed ICE officers.
A bystander’s video reviewed by The Banner also showed a white van following a crash. Agents removed one man from the vehicle and took him away on a stretcher. In the video, there was no sign of a second man inside the van.
I love Erin’s posts and reporting. The attack on trans rights and health was planned and coordinated by religious conservatives who felt they lost the culture war on gay acceptance and same sex marriage so they decided to jump quickly on the trans issue with lots of money. Their first attempt failed because they went after the idea of trans people itself. So then they changed to the old “protect the children” play book with the entire focus on protecting little cis girls but they never mention the trans boys that cis boys need to be protected from. See how patristical it is? It is all about males needing to protect the little womans. They don’t care about trans kids, they don’t care about female sports. It is about not letting trans kids transition with puberty blockers and the correct hormones as then the kids will grow up as they are fitting the societal view of what men and women look like. That scares the straight cis male religious guys because they are terrified they will be attracted to a trans woman. Imagine the horror if trans people moved freely in society not raising any question of their gender because they conformed to how society sees each gender. That sounds like a grand thing to me, but it terrifies these fanatical religious grifters that want to control how everyone lives to please their god. They make up untrue and scary what ifs, what if a man uses the letting trans people use the bathroom of their gender ID to go into a girls … notice they phrase it girls not womans because that make people more protective from the start, and they harm a little girl, your little girl? Well nothing stops a man from doing that now! Predators don’t need permission and won’t wait for it. And that has happened where a straight cis male dragged a little girl into the male bathroom and raped her while his friend watched. There was a famous court case on it. Look it up if you want. Want to know what has not happened, a trans woman going into the female’s bathroom and assaulting a female. Sorry. The right has tried hard to make one happen, but each claim of a trans person in a locker room or bathroom acting inappropriate has been debunked and disproven. This is all a made up scandal and crisis by people who can not accept the society progressing beyond the old traditional binary they grew up with and they think their holy books claim must be as their god insists on it. Weird how it is always how their god insists on what they already believe or promote. Handy that. So many people can not move past the idea that if it dangles you MUST be a boy regardless of how you feel and if it is an inny you must be a girl regardless of anything else idea. They can not seem to grasp personal feelings, needs, or medial science. Hugs
The bill would establish the Affirming Health Care Trust Fund, administered by the State Treasurer, to support clinics and providers outside the reach of federal funding threats.
Vermont Bill Would Create State Trust Fund For Private Trans Youth Care Clinics As Trump Threatens Hospital Funding
The bill would establish the Affirming Health Care Trust Fund, administered by the State Treasurer, to support clinics and providers outside the reach of federal funding threats.
Erin In The Morning is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.
Across the United States, gender-affirming care has come under sustained attack in Republican-led states and from the Trump administration. For transgender youth, those attacks have been especially severe, with roughly half of U.S. states now banning such care outright. At the federal level, the administration has waged an intense pressure campaign against hospitals, threatening funding and prompting many systems to drop their care programs altogether. That campaign has now escalated further, with the federal government moving to threaten hospitals’ entire Medicaid and Medicare funding if they continue providing transgender youth care. In response, some states and cities are beginning to fight back by establishing their own funding mechanisms for trans healthcare. The latest example comes from Vermont, where lawmakers have introduced a bill to create a trust fund for gender-affirming care designed to be entirely insulated from federal funding threats.
H.576, introduced by Representatives Daisy Berbeco, Tiffany Bluemle, and Troy Headrick, would establish the Affirming Health Care Trust Fund. Administered by the State Treasurer, the fund would provide direct monetary support to healthcare providers and nonprofits offering gender-affirming care in Vermont. It would cover costs for patients who would otherwise go without treatment, fund the establishment of Vermont-based clinics, and pay for malpractice and liability insurance for clinicians who continue offering care. The bill is part of an increasing movement towards private clinics as a mechanism to survive federal threats.
The bill also includes provisions designed to protect patient information from both federal pressure and out-of-state threats, going further than the recent “refuge” or “shield” laws passed in several blue states to protect transgender youth care. It explicitly bars the board and other state actors from disclosing patient-identifiable data, the identities of providers, or the identities of award recipients to the federal government. This is a significant protection given the wave of abusive legislation and attempts to subpoena transgender healthcare records nationwide. While federal preemption may ultimately be litigated, these provisions give clinics a stronger legal footing to resist such demands—particularly as similar subpoenas have been repeatedly quashed in recent court cases.
The bill comes as families scramble to locate alternatives to hospital systems that are abandoning them. With more than 20 hospitals closing their doors to transgender youth care out of fear and preemptive compliance with the Trump administration, many families have been forced to seek alternatives. Just this week, major hospital systems across Colorado, for example, have stopped providing care. Groups like the Trans Youth Emergency Project say they have the capacity to refer displaced patients to private clinics, and in many places those clinics do exist and are absorbing demand. But as hospital-based programs continue to shut down and demand rises, those private providers will need sustained support—and more clinics will need to be created. Bills like this are a targeted way to do exactly that.
If this bill passes, Vermont would be the latest state to protect care in this way—but it would not be the only one. Massachusetts passed a similar measure last year, allocating $1 million toward transgender youth care clinics, though that funding has already come under criticism as insufficient to meet statewide need in the wake of major clinic closures. In New York City, newly elected mayor Zohran Mamdani has pledged $65 million for transgender healthcare. If that funding is realized, it would position New York City as a major hub for private clinics capable of absorbing demand created by hospital closures across the country. This strategy could prove to be a critical backstop for private providers that are already emerging—and that are likely to come under increasing strain in the years ahead.
The bill allows funding from state appropriations, private donations, grants, and—importantly—federal funds under a future administration that is protective of transgender healthcare. It would take effect immediately upon passage, with the board required to convene by August 1, 2026. There are still hurdles ahead: the bill must advance through committee, pass both chambers, and ultimately receive meaningful funding to function as intended. But its introduction alone signals something important. At a moment when hospitals are retreating and families are being forced into crisis planning, Vermont lawmakers are putting forward a concrete framework to protect access to care rather than surrender it. For Vermonters who want to see their state take a clear stand, residents can find and contact their legislators through the Vermont General Assembly website to make clear where they stand on protecting transgender healthcare.
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🌿This note has struck a chord and gotten some attention, so I just wanted to say that anyone who wants to share from this note, please feel free, in any way you like :)🌿
Last week, I wrote to my Senator, Angus King, asking him to please focus on three priorities in the new year: 1) Stop foreign invasions 2) Release the Epstein files 3) Restore ACA subsidies.
Senator King wrote me back, because he’s actually really good about answering constituent correspondence. And one of the things he said is that he is increasingly concerned with the “growing gulf between the left and right and the shrinking middle.”
I see this argument a lot, actually, from all these avowed “centrists.” And I will tell you, it pisses me off. It’s an entire mischaracterization of this moment in history.
This is what I wrote:
Senator King,
Thank for your recent response. One of the concerns that you expressed was regarding the “growing gulf between the left and right and the shrinking middle.”
I want to re-frame this, because it’s a mischaracterization.
When we talk about political ideology, the center of the spectrum in the United States is meant to be the Constitution and the rule of law. That is the standard, the baseline, the bare minimum of agreement against which the full right-to-left spectrum of policy negotiations and compromises must ultimately be tested. (emphasis mine)
The gulf that has developed today is not about polarization. The left and right are not migrating further apart. The right has launched off the edge of the chart into violent authoritarianism. There is no corresponding leftward lurch towards social revolution.
The overwhelming and growing public reaction, these thousands and millions of protestors flooding the phones and taking to the streets to demand that the law and the Constitution be followed – we ARE the center!
I tried to explain this to Congressman Jared Golden, too. He really, really wants me to be a far-left activist extremist. But I’m just a wife and a mom living in a cabin in the Maine woods. We chop firewood for heat, we harvest maple syrup tree by tree, our kids work on local shellfish farms. We are deeply ordinary.
But our most basic and fundamental civil rights and liberties are increasingly under assault. If an ICE agent doesn’t like the way I follow their instructions, they will shoot me in the face, call me a f****** b****, and the President will say that according to his own morality in his own mind, that was legal and I deserved it.
As I asked Jared months ago, just how far right do you have to travel to start believing that asking elected officials to follow the Constitution and the rule of law is Progressive Activism?
We are not far left extremists becoming increasingly polarized. We are masses of Americans asking for adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law. We are asking for the bare minimum.
The center is not supposed to be negotiated ever rightward into fascist dictatorship. The center is supposed to be uncompromisingly anchored in the Constitution and the rule of law. This is supposed to be the line of absolute principle.
That is why I am disappointed every single time you vote with the regime. It’s not because I’m polarized. It’s because you’re negotiating with people who don’t believe in the center at all. You are negotiating with terrorists.
What you are witnessing today is not a shrinking middle. The center is actually growing in a rising tide. Millions of Americans are suddenly deadly aware that every Constitutional right that they thought was firmly enshrined is threatened by one single group of far-right, power-hungry, violent rogue extremists.
So if the center is really what you stand for, I have good news for you. Now is your time! The center is the largest it has ever been! Millions of dead-center Americans are as awake, as alert, as active as they have been in a generation. We are demanding the absolute center of political ideologies, and the bare minimum of governance – the restoration of Constitutional democracy. So join us! But understand this about the center. It is not the place for compromise.
Snip-please go read the rest at Annie’s (I didn’t leave a lot out here, so that won’t take long;) and then quickly but thoughtfully join people who are working hard to retain our democracy, and fix the holes. Not doing anything is really simply asking for these very bad things to continue, and history has shown how that ends. Thank you!
MINNEAPOLIS — From high school students to elected officials, residents in Minnesota are pushing back against the growing deployment of federal immigration officers in their neighborhoods, leading to days of confrontations and protests.
Resident Neph Sudduth stopped to choke back tears as she witnessed immigration officers roaming around her neighborhood, just a few blocks from the site where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good last week, and clashing with protesters.
“They will hurt you for real! They will hurt you for real!” she shouted at anti-ICE demonstrators, urging them to move away from the officers’ vehicles. Just then, an immigration officer rolled down his window, extended his arm and sprayed a protester point-blank in the face with a chemical agent.
“How dare they come back to this neighborhood,” Sudduth told NBC News. “How forgone you have to be morally to come back here and stand up and do that with your faces covered?”
ICE agents detain a woman after pulling her from a car Tuesday in Minneapolis.Stephen Maturen / Getty Images
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday that she planned to send more agents to Minnesota this week to quell protesters and continue to enforce immigration policies. President Donald Trump defended the Minnesota operation Tuesday, saying, “We have taken out killers, rapists and drug dealers, people from mental institutions that came in illegally.” ICE has posted on social media about the arrests of people accused of sex crimes and who they allege are in the country illegally.
Cary Wang, a medic who is part of 50/51, a nonpartisan grassroots group, provided medical help Tuesday to several people who were affected by chemical agents deployed by immigration officers.
“I think it’s part of their strategy to intimidate and show that they’re immune to any type of repercussions,” Wang said. “The fact that they’re ramping up their enforcement officers — that they’re bringing more here when they already know it’s a volatile situation — it just doesn’t seem that they’re looking for things to cool down. It looks like they’re actually trying to escalate things.”
The highly charged confrontations between protesters and immigration enforcement have been captured in various clips on social media, including posts showing agents asking people at an electric vehicle charging station if they are citizens and another in which protesters curse and scream as an agent appears to kneel on a man’s neck as officers arrest him.
The videos and images contribute to a picture of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations as they fan out across the country, triggering pushback from residents in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Charlotte, North Carolina.
In Minneapolis on Tuesday, resistance to the presence of federal agents was represented by the smell of tear gas, which lingered in the air of a neighborhood following a clash between community members and immigration officers who said they were conducting an operation in the area.
Residents and witnesses told NBC News they came out with whistles to alert others about the operation and act as observers while others began protesting. That’s when, they say, officers began deploying pepper spray and throwing tear gas canisters, which were still on the ground Tuesday afternoon.
ICE agents detain an observer Tuesday after they arrested two people from a residence in Minneapolis.Stephen Maturen / Getty Images
Sam Luhmann, who saw the incident, said he spotted a large number of armed immigration officers in the area “pounding on doors” and arresting a few people.
Then, “they started tackling protesters” and deployed what he believed to be tear gas and pepper balls, Luhmann told NBC News. “It seemed like a war.”
Luhmann, 16, of Chicago, drove to Minneapolis with his older brother after Good was fatally shot. He said they wanted to help community members monitor immigration enforcement activity in Minneapolis the same way they did when immigration officers were deployed to Chicago last year under “Operation Midway Blitz.”
Many of the clashes are taking place just blocks from where Good was killed.
Community observers and protesters gathered after immigration officers rear-ended his car, said Christian Molina, 40. Molina told NBC News officers were asking him whether he was in the country legally.
“Luckily, they didn’t hurt me or shoot at me. But what if they did?” said Molina, a U.S. citizen and father of four. He added that he wasn’t doing anything wrong when officers went after him.
“There’s no reason for them to just look at you and try to just chase you.”
DHS did not comment on the incident involving Molina.
The crowd that gathered around Molina was later hit with tear gas and pepper spray.
South of Minneapolis, in Richfield, Border Patrol agents stopped at a Target store Thursday and arrested two U.S. citizens, Democratic state Rep. Michael Howard said.
“Yesterday in Richfield, federal agents, including Greg Bovino, senior commander of US Border Patrol, entered Target without a warrant, physically assaulted, and arrested two Target employees, both who are U.S. citizens. Madness,” Howard wrote in a news release Friday.
Angela Oberfoell, who witnessed the arrests of her co-workers at Target, told NBC News the experience was “traumatic.”
Oberfoell also provided NBC News with a video she recorded of the incident. It shows workers in disbelief and customers confronting Bovino and other Border Patrol agents.
Another video of the second employee arrested showed the moment Border Patrol agents followed the employee as he recorded the agents and yelled “f— you” before the agent tackled the employee to the ground at the store’s entrance.
DHS said of the arrest captured in that video, “This individual was arrested for assaulting federal law enforcement officers under 18 U.S.C 111, assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers.”
Howard said that both of the Target workers have been released but that they “sustained injuries and untold trauma while their rights were trampled for no reason whatsoever.”
“We continue to call on ICE to GET OUT of Minnesota,” he added.
Officials in Minnesota sued the federal government Monday to stop the deployment of thousands of immigration agents to Minnesota.
Shaquille Brewster and Natasha Korecki reported from Minneapolis and Nicole Acevedo from New York.
Shaquille Brewster
Shaquille Brewster is a political reporter for NBC News and MSNBC.
So far, the Justice Department has released only about one percent of the files it has on Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump’s involvement with the serial child molester, and the government’s failure to hold Epstein accountable. It’s the sort of thing Congress should be demanding action on, but the House Oversight Committee was instead planning to spend this week grilling Bill and Hillary Clinton about their long-ago contacts with Epstein, because that would take the spotlight off Trump.
Yesterday, the Clintons sent a scathing four-page letter (New York Times archive link) to committee chair James Comer (R-Kentucky) telling him why they wouldn’t be playing along, arguing that instead of demanding the Justice Department comply with the law requiring release of the Epstein Files, Comer and the Oversight Committee “have prevented progress in discovering the facts about the government’s role.”
You should definitely give the full Clinton letter a read, because it lays out not just why the Clintons won’t go along with Comer’s attempt to shift attention away from Trump and the DOJ’s foot-dragging, but also why this government’s corruption must be resisted wherever possible, from the streets to closed-door hearing rooms. The letter, not from their attorneys but from the Clintons themselves, starts by laying out the unprecedented attacks on the rule of law by Trump’s government, and sums up:
Every person has to decide when they have seen or had enough and are ready to fight for this country, its principles and its people, no matter the consequences.
For us, now is that time.
The letter also notes, again, that Bill Clinton has repeatedly called for the DOJ to release every last bit of information about him from the Epstein Files, which isn’t exactly what somebody trying to hide something would say. As opposed to, let’s say, a president who has fought every single attempt to release everything.
Separately, the Clintons’ attorneys sent Comer a more conventional letter explaining why they consider the committee’s subpoenas “invalid and legally unenforceable,” which may be useful if Comer follows through on his threat to charge the Clintons with contempt of Congress. But the Clintons’ letter, like Comer’s attempt to drag them before the committee for show, is openly and unabashedly political.
In what may have been a deliberate throwback, the Clinton letter is in good old-fashioned typewriter text (or a digital recreation of it), not a more obvious laser-printed Times New Roman or Arial, as if to suggest that in contrast to a clumsy Twitter message or a random email blast, the IBM Selectric is an elegant communications device for a more civilized age:
While Comer accepted sworn, written declarations from eight other people the committee subpoenaed, he’s only demanded that the Clintons show up in person to be grilled behind closed doors. But no thanks, they write, we aren’t going to help you create a sideshow that detracts from the administration’s stonewalling on releasing the files:
We have tried to give you the little information that we have. We’ve done so because Mr. Epstein’s crimes were horrific. If the Government didn’t do all it could to investigate and prosecute these crimes, for whatever reason, that should be the focus of your work — to learn why and to prevent that from happening ever again. There is no evidence that you are doing so.
Predictably, Comer is now rattling on about charging Bill Clinton with contempt of Congress for not appearing Tuesday, and Hillary as well, since there was little chance she’d show up for her scheduled deposition today. Anticipating that, they basically tell him in the letter, BRING IT:
Despite everything that needs to be done to help our country, you are on the cusp of bringing Congress to a halt to pursue a rarely used process literally designed to result in our imprisonment. This is not the way out of America’s ills, and we will forcefully defend ourselves.
Indeed, bringing the Republicans’ cruel agenda to a standstill while you work harder to pass a contempt charge against us than you have done on your investigation this past year would be our contribution to fighting the madness.
If that’s the direction Comer goes, the letter warns, get ready, because while they’re still willing to testify in a public hearing, the Clintons will also “defend ourselves in the public arena and ensure this country knows exactly why you are doing so, instead of helping the American people who need this Congress’s work and protection.”
The letter closes with another warning, with a nice jab at MAGA obsessions with the perfectly legal and cromulent use of autopens on official documents, which is fun to read in a letter that looks as if it came from a typewriter. (Are the signatures here digital or handwritten, and does anyone care?)
It’s a hell of a read, and it matters because unlike all the ways Trump and his sycophants have thrown norms (and the law) under the bus, this letter makes clear that the Clintons are defying the subpoenas not out of contempt, but to highlight that the GOP “investigation” is itself a political act aimed at intimidating Trump’s enemies. This isn’t an attempt to escape answering tough questions — they’ll happily do that in the open and in a sworn written statement. It’s civil disobedience, because this is a goddamned emergency.
Rebecca Solnit writes that we need to see more of this from people whose privilege usually protects them. They could testify in private and ride out the political screeching (neither would be at any risk) but they’re instead saying hell no and courting a contempt charge because it would bring attention to Trump’s crimes:
It’s significant that they’ve come out fighting. This is specifically about James Comer’s attempt to force them to testify about all things Epstein, even as this administration covers up for Epstein’s best friend, refuses to release 95% of the Epstein files, etc. What’s striking here is that the Clintons articulate it’s all of a piece with all the other appalling and lawless things the Trumpists are doing. That these supremely status quo/high status people see themselves as under attack in illegitimate ways and are now fighting back with broad accusations matters, not least because it may shake up some other people with high status/status quo positions, including high up in the Democratic Party.
We also wholeheartedly endorse Solnit’s caution that “I don’t really want or need to hear about why you don’t like the Clintons,” because yes, that conversation has been ongoing for 35 years, but this is something new, and because hey, did you notice the whole building is on fire?
Warren was my preferred candidate in 2020. I would vote for her again if she runs. The country needs progressives who understand how hard it is for the average person in the US today. Due to the strangling of wages/ incomes for the majority and the increasing moving of all the countries wealth upward to the top few, people can not survive in this society. Hugs
The video below has horrific clips of ICE assaulting bystanders and protestors. One clip showed the ICE gang thugs breaking down a door and entering a home like they think they are a special forcer unit in Fallujah Iraq. They seem to be acting like street gangs or drug cartel members as they just attack anyone that displeases them. They are not police nor professional but they act as though only they have rights. Hugs