Same As Here In The USA

We each and all have to be diligent with checking what we post before we post it, because this is real, and it’s in many places.

Russian Fake News Generator

Snippet from BBC:

A secret Russian-funded network is attempting to disrupt upcoming democratic elections in an eastern European state, the BBC has found.

Using an undercover reporter, we discovered the network promised to pay participants if they posted pro-Russian propaganda and fake news undermining Moldova’s pro-EU ruling party ahead of the country’s 28 September parliamentary ballot.

Participants were paid to find supporters of Moldova’s pro-Russia opposition to secretly record – and also to carry out a so-called poll. This was done in the name of a non-existent organisation, making it illegal. The results of this selective sampling, an organiser from the network suggested, could lay the groundwork to question the outcome of the election.

The results of the so-called poll, suggesting the ruling party will lose, have already been published online. (snip-go read it)

Colin Kaepernick Still Out There Being A Good Person

Tell-It Report: Colin Kaepernick to Fund Independent Autopsy For Trey Reed by Michael Harriot

The Delta State University student was found hanging from a tree on campus on Sept. 15. Read on Substack

In Gullah Geechee communities, a “tell-it” was a designated lookout, community warning system and the most trusted source for news and information. The Tell-It Report is ContrabandCamp’s weekly roundup of the Black stories that deserve more attention — from politics to entertainment.

Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp will fund the independent autopsy for Demartravion “Trey” Reed, who was found hanging from a tree in Mississippi. The state medical examiner has ruled his death a suicide.

The Black unemployment rate has increased by 1.5% in the last three months.

The Justice Department has quietly scrubbed from its website a study that shows that right-wing extremists have killed more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group.

Read the full stories below:

Colin Kaepernick will fund Trey Reed’s autopsy after officials initially called it suicide

Activist and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick is funding an independent autopsy for Demartravion “Trey” Reed, the 21-year-old Delta State student who was found hanging from a tree on the Cleveland, Miss., campus on Sept. 15.

The Cleveland Police Department released a statement on Sept. 18 stating that the initial autopsy, conducted by the Mississippi State Medical Examiner’s Office, ruled Reed’s death a suicide. Days prior, Delta State’s Director of Public Safety Mike Peeler said that there was no evidence of foul play. Reed’s family challenged their findings and is demanding answers.

On Friday, Ben Crump announced that Kaepernick’s “Know Your Rights Camp Autopsy Initiative” would be covering the cost of a secondary autopsy.

“Trey’s death evoked the collective memory of a community that has suffered a historic wound over many, many years and many, many deaths,” Crump said in a press release. “Peace will come only by getting to the truth. We thank Colin Kaepernick for supporting this grieving family and the cause of justice and truth.”

The statement read that the family will initiate the process once Reed’s body is released by the state medical examiner.

Reed’s body was found hanging on the Mississippi university’s campus, where nearly half of the student body is Black. The case evoked memories of the violent history of the Jim Crow South.

Mississippi Department of Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said he “condemn[s] the rumors circulating regarding his death.”

“We are getting mixed information. We are hearing everything on the media. We just want answers and truth because he was a young man I really loved,” Reed’s uncle, Jerry Reed, told Fox 13.

Family attorney Vanessa J. Jones told the local outlet prior to his death that Reed had spent time happy and with his family.

“He was here with his family. He was joyful and loving as ever. That is what he is being remembered for,” Jones said. “When he went back to Delta State University, he was his joyful self. So, the question is, ‘What happened?’”

Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson is demanding a federal investigation.

“We must leave no stone unturned in the search for answers,” the Mississippi representative said. “While the details of this case are still emerging, we cannot ignore Mississippi’s painful history of lynching and racial violence against African Americans.”

Black unemployment continues to surge

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the Black unemployment rate has hit record highs since October 2021, according to the Associated Press.

In the last three months, the unemployment rate for Black Americans has gone up by 1.5% to 7.5%—twice that of the rate for white Americans—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Bloomberg calls this “a rare development outside of recessions.” Researchers have attributed the spike to a slower labor market affecting Black employees first, as well as the president’s efforts to shrink the federal workforce.

Reports of the more than 319,000 Black women who’ve become unemployed at the top of the year became an early indicator of the overall economic decline of Black communities. Their unemployment rate spiked from 5.1% in March to 6.7% in August.

“The most vulnerable people tend to get laid off first, and unfortunately, that tends to be Black Americans, and that’s something that is very disturbing in and of itself,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at accounting firm KPMG US, told CNN.

Experts note that these numbers can indicate looming economic troubles for the entire country. Employers added an average of 29,000 jobs each month over the past three months. That’s a drastic decline from the 209,000 average over the same time period in 2024, Bloomberg reports.

White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the outlet that Trump predicts that recent tax cuts and immigrant deportations will add jobs for Black Americans.

“President Trump is implementing the same America First economic agenda that delivered historic job and wage growth — including record-low Black unemployment rates — in his first term,” she said. “The passage of the Working Families Tax Cuts will unleash economic growth through tax reform, deregulation, and incentives for job creation in the private sector that will benefit all Americans.”

Alexsis Rodgers, political director at the Black to the Future Action Fund, told the AP that this is a “new era.”

“There are people who obviously believed his promises, that Trump was going to do something about the cost of eggs, the cost of housing,” she said. “They’ve seen the focus instead is on ICE raids and downsizing the government.”

The DOJ quietly removed a study showing that right-wing extremists have the biggest hand in domestic terrorism

The Department of Justice recently removed a study from its website showing that far-right extremists have killed more Americans than any other domestic terrorist group, according to The Hill.

The study, titled What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism, stated that “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.” Jason Paladino first reported that the study had been scrubbed from the National Institute for Justice’s online library on Sept. 12.

The removal occurred just days after Charlie Kirk’s assassination at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10. In the wake of his death, Trump said, “The radical left causes tremendous violence,” he said, claiming “they seem to do it in a bigger way” than groups on the right.

However, there has been little evidence to suggest that Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old lead suspect in Kirk’s killing, identifies as a leftist or that his actions were motivated by political ideology. There’s more of an indication that Robinson and Kirk had been among similar circles of internet culture, according to The New Yorker.

The study, which can still be accessed via the Wayback Machine, used data from the National Institute of Justice. It found that far-right extremists “committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives.” The authors also state, “In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”

Similarly, ContrabandCamp’s Michael Harriot showed that political violence is much more likely to come from the right than the left.

The NIJ study points directly to online chat forums as a source that reinforces their beliefs on gun rights, conspiracy theories, hate-based views and more. “Users grew more ideological and radical as other users reinforced their ideas and connected their ideas to those from other forums,” the study reads.

ICYMI

“Dreamgirls” is returning to Broadway in fall 2026.
Duke University’s School of Medicine shuttered its graduate student support and DEI programming without informing the students and faculty.
The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating leads after 15-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez was found dead in singer d4vid’s car.
A community advisory board blocks the Jay-Z-backed Caesar’s Palace Casino proposed in Times Square.

I Learn More From “Them” Every Time I Take a Little Time To Browse There-

Leslie Feinberg Changed Transmasc History. Here Are 7 of Hir Quotes to Live By

From Stone Butch Blues to Drag King Dreams, Feinberg left a lasting imprint on the trans liberation movement.

By Quispe López August 29, 2025

“Remember me as a revolutionary communist” were beloved author, labor organizer, and trans liberation fighter Leslie Feinberg’s final words on November 15, 2014.

Best known for hir seminal 1993 novel Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg forever changed the way we thought about transgender life in the United States. In the semi-autobiographical work, readers follow Jess Goldberg, a working class Jewish butch lesbian, as they navigate the hardships of being gender-nonconforming in a transphobic world, transition, passing, and trying to find queer community through it all. It is a novel so attuned to transmasculine experience that Stone Butch Blues to this day remains a shorthand and point of connection for many trans men, nonbinary people, and trans lesbians broadly.

That’s because Feinberg saw writing as a tool to break down the rigidity of previous understandings of transition. Instead, zie pushed for an expansive view of the term “transgender” — one that left space for the “gender outlaws” of the world who have existed beyond binary Western conceptions of gender since the beginning of time.

To say Feinberg permanently altered the fabric of the trans liberation movement would be an understatement. But to understand hir legacy and work, you need to know who zie was in life. Born September 1, 1949 and raised in Buffalo, New York, Feinberg grew up in a working-class Jewish family and was employed in factories at a young age. It’s through hir labor organizing alongside other butch lesbians and transmasculine people of the time that Feinberg became connected to broader liberation movements like Palestinian solidarity, the anti-racist movement, and transgender rights.

Feinberg’s work underscored the complexity of gender for many trans people, and zie didn’t shy away from trying to get cis people to understand. Following the breakout success of Stone Butch Blues, Feinberg went on to be one of the most visible trans organizers of the 1990s, appearing on popular television programs like The Joan Rivers Show to speak about realities of trans life. Zie went on to write several books on trans life and liberation, such as Drag King Dreams, Transgender Warriors: Making History From Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman, and Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue. As a proud member of the Workers of the World Party, Feinberg emphasized how our struggles for freedom — whether it be gender, race, or class — are all intrinsically linked. Hir legacy insists that in order to free ourselves, we must understand that we are all fighting forms of injustice attached to the same chimera of oppression.

As we celebrate Feinberg’s birthday and Labor Day on September 1, it is a natural time to reflect on hir legacy, work, and contributions to trans people’s collective liberation. Below, we’ve compiled a non-comprehensive list of salient quotes from speeches, books, and articles Feinberg crafted during hir life.

“If you don’t name an oppression, you can’t fight it, you can’t organize around it. We want our own voices to be heard.” — The Joan Rivers Show

A 1993 episode of The Joan Rivers Show about trans people featured Leslie Feinberg alongside famed playwright Kate Bornstein and actor David Harrison. Rivers interviewed each of her guests on their experiences with gender, often asking invasive questions about “the surgery” and what people put down on forms and identity documents. But Feinberg took it as the ultimate opportunity to humanize trans people on national television, cutting through the sensationalizing to share the realities of life outside the Western gender binary. Feinberg even went so far as to point out the existence of gender variant people in cultures all over the world prior to colonization, such as Two-Spirit people — a radical thought for the daytime television audience of the 1990s.

“Understanding the amount of persecution and harassment we have in this society is gonna strengthen the fights from affirmative action to pay equity for all of us,” zie said.

Even when Rivers facetiously dug in with questions about why Feinberg didn’t conform to one gender or another, zie flipped the question and asked why the system existed at all. Rather than spouting off theory, Feinberg made the contradiction tangible by speaking on hir own lived experiences as a nonbinary butch. The whole episode is worth viewing in full.

“But very quickly I discovered that passing didn’t just mean slipping below the surface, it meant being buried alive.” — Stone Butch Blues

Feinberg’s seminal novel wasn’t just a reflection on being a trans in a transphobic society; the semi-biographical work offered a nuanced portrayal of the intersection of butch identity and nonbinary transness. Jess Goldberg, Stone Butch Blues’ protagonist, is forced to pass as a man for safety due to the dangers of being an openly gender non-conforming person in the 1950s and ’60s. But Jess is left feeling entirely isolated . A departure from the “born in the wrong body” narrative of transness, Feinberg instead paints a picture of being forced into a box for safety — and the subsequent loss of community that going stealth can present.

“I was still me on the inside, trapped in there with all my wounds and fears. But I was no longer me on the outside,” Jess reflects in the novel.

“I’m not saying we’ll live to see some sort of paradise. But just fighting for change makes you stronger. Not hoping for anything will kill you for sure.” — Stone Butch Blues

While Stone Butch Blues grapples with heavy themes like the loss of community, transphobia, and social isolation, it ends on a note of hope for our protagonist. In addition to highlighting the harsh realities of being trans, Feinberg always stood steadfast in our need to find strength in each other in the face of it. At the nadir of their isolation after moving to New York City, Jess meets Ruth, a trans woman who reminds them that the only way to survive in the face of transphobia is to rely on each other.

“As I look at them, each one, they are so beautiful and so strong they seem larger than life to me. But they’re not. They are real people. Flawed, like me. No heroic proportions. Just human.” — Drag King Dreams

Another work of fiction, Feinberg’s 2006 political novel Drag King Dreams follows Max Rabinowitz, a trans man who is suddenly catapulted back into social justice spaces by a tragedy after losing his joy for organizing.

The novel often invokes real-life trans figures such as Marsha P. Johnson to shore up its core thesis that all of our struggles for liberation are delicately interconnected. We might all be flawed, and it can be hard to work together at times, but when it counts, we need to put aside our differences and fight. At the culmination of the novel, Max realizes that you don’t need to be perfect to be a good comrade and make a difference.

“Maybe this is what legends are made of — real lives lifted up in retrospect to mythic proportions,” Feinberg writes.

“One banner particularly haunted me: it read ‘Stop the War Against Black America,’ which made me realize it wasn’t just distant wars that needed opposing.” — Transgender Warriors: Making History From Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman

Feinberg always emphasized the interconnected nature of all forms of oppression in hir work. Zie underwood that, rather than fighting in individual silos, it’s imperative to understand the ways that suppressive societal forces work in tandem. In hir 1996 historical reflection on transness, Transgender Warriors: Making History From Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman, Feinberg speaks about an experience they had at a protest for Palestinian liberation that opened their eyes to the symbiotic relationship between white supremacy, colonialism both abroad and domestically, and trans liberation.

“When our lives are suppressed, everyone is denied an understanding of the rich diversity of sex and gender expression and experience that exist in human society.” — Transgender Warriors: Making History From Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman

By outlining the history of gender variance all over the world, Feinberg reminds readers that trans people are nothing new; we have always been here. Often, we were even revered.

“We have not always been forced to pass, to go underground, in order to work and live. We have a right to live openly and proudly,” Feinberg writes.

“No one’s sex reassignment or fluidity of gender threatens your right to self-identify and self-expression. On the contrary, our struggle bolsters your right to your identity. My right to be me is tied with a thousand threads to your right to be you.” — Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue

In this collection of speeches published in 1998, Feinberg reminds us that trans liberation has always been connected to the fight for cisgender gay, lesbian, and bisexual rights. Historically, and even to date, trans people have faced pushback from some cisgender people in the community who believe that the fight for trans rights will invalidate their own struggles. A constant advocate for solidarity between movements, Feinberg always asserted that without trans rights, there would be no gay rights.

Good Info Here-Care To Prepare

Every Recent Move That’s Been Made in the New Fight to Overturn Gay Marriage

The Supreme Court is expected to decide this fall whether they will formally take up a case that is asking them to reverse their decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.

By Nico DiAlesandro and Hope Pisoni, Uncloseted Media September 19, 2025

In the U.S. today, there are over 800,000 married gay couples. And 67% of Americans say they support marriage equality, including 50% of Republicans.

Despite this, many of the groups that fought to prevent the Obergefell ruling are now ramping up their ongoing fight to overturn it.

If Obergefell were overturned, it could become illegal for gay couples to marry in the 32 states that still have bans on the books. As the Supreme Court mulls over whether or not to take a case asking them to overturn the historic ruling, we’ve documented every step that has been taken in the past five years to threaten gay marriage in the U.S.

Oct. 5, 2020

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) rejects a petition to hear former Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis’ appeal in Ermold v. Davis, a case brought by a same-sex couple after Davis denied them a marriage license in 2015. Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, writes that the Obergefell ruling has “ruinous consequences for religious liberty” and that it “enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots.” They express their desire to see Obergefell overturned, writing that SCOTUS “has created a problem that only it can fix.”

The following day, Liberty Counsel, a Christian legal group and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)-designated hate group, announces their intent to file a petition with the Supreme Court to “address Obergefell” after Davis’ case moves to a trial court.

Nov. 5, 2020

Nevada overturns an 18-year-old ban on same-sex marriage, making it the first state to enshrine gay couples’ right to marry in their constitution. Nevadans vote 62% in favor of the reversal.

“It feels good that we let the voters decide,” Equality Nevada President Chris Davin told NBC News. “The people said this, not judges or lawmakers. This was direct democracy—it’s how everything should be,” he said, adding that the LGBTQ community wants something concrete to protect same-sex marriage in case “the federal level ever revokes it—which is what a lot of folks are worried about with the new Supreme Court.”

June 17, 2021

SCOTUS rules in favor of Catholic Social Services (CSS), which sued the city of Philadelphia for ending its foster-care placement contract with CSS because of their refusal to certify same-sex couples as foster parents. The ruling, which states that Philadelphia’s termination of CSS’s contract violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, provides a carve-out to Obergefell.

June 24, 2022

Roe v. Wade is overturned. In a concurring opinion with the majority, Thomas sets his eyes on Obergefell and Lawrence v. Texas—a ruling that in essence legalized gay sex. He writes that the Court should reconsider those cases since they used similar arguments to Roe v. Wade.

“[W]e should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous.’”

Despite Thomas’ opinion, the majority explicitly states that “[n]othing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

Dec. 13, 2022

President Joe Biden signs the Respect For Marriage Act into law. This solidifies federal and interstate recognition of same-sex marriages even if Obergefell is overturned. The law is a backstop to the attacks on same-sex marriage.

Dec. 19, 2022

In a response to the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act, SPLC-designated anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) says that “the chances of the Supreme Court overturning Obergefell are (unfortunately) slim to none.”

June 30, 2023

SCOTUS rules 6-3 that Colorado cannot force a website designer, who is represented by ADF, to create wedding websites for same-sex couples. The Court says doing so would violate the designer’s First Amendment right to free speech because her work is considered creative expression. This decision narrows how public-accommodation laws apply and creates another carve-out for Obergefell to be overturned.

Sept. 13, 2023

After a court ruling holds Kim Davis liable for damages to gay couples who she refused to sign marriage licenses for, Liberty Counsel discusses the potential to appeal the case up to the Supreme Court and use it to argue for Obergefell to be overturned.

July 8, 2024

The GOP’s national party platform, Make America Great Again!, drops explicit anti-Obergefell language from its plank. Despite this, the fight to overturn same-sex marriage continues to heat up.

Jan. 22, 2025

Tennessee lawmakers introduce a bill that would allow for “covenant marriages,” an explicitly religious form of marriage license that can only be given to a man and a woman and does not allow for divorce in most circumstances. Covenant marriages already exist in Arizona, Arkansas and Louisiana. Oklahoma, Texas and Missouri have recently introduced similar bills.

Jan. 27, 2025

Idaho’s House of Representatives passes a resolution calling on the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell. The resolution was drafted by MassResistance, a far right group that wrote a book called “The Health Hazards of Homosexuality” and that has 24 chapters around the world. One of their newest chapters is in Kenya, where the group says it holds trainings for youth to “resist the LGBT agenda” in schools.

The Idaho resolution would go on to create a domino effect. Lawmakers in Michigan, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota introduce similar measures in their states asking SCOTUS to overturn Obergefell.

Republican Rep. Josh Schriver, who introduced the resolution in Michigan, had previously posted to X: “Make gay marriage illegal again. This is not remotely controversial, nor extreme.”

June 10, 2025

At the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), a national meeting of more than 10,000 church representatives from America’s largest Protestant denomination, the convention’s resolutions committee introduces a resolution calling on lawmakers and SCOTUS to overturn laws and court rulings, “including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God’s design for marriage and family.”

SBC delegates overwhelmingly vote in favor of a gay marriage ban as well as the reversal of Obergefell.

June 12, 2025

Liberty Counsel releases a statement titled “Obergefell ‘Marriage’ Opinion Must Be Overturned.” The group’s founder and chairman, Mathew Staver, says:

“The U.S. Constitution provides no foundation for ‘same-sex marriage.’ Obergefell was wrongly decided whereby the Court created a right that is nowhere to be found in the text. We will petition the U.S. Supreme Court because Kim Davis’ case underscores why the High Court should overturn Obergefell v. Hodges. Obergefell threatens the religious liberty of Americans who believe that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.”

June 23, 2025

ADF publishes an article titled “Despite 10 Years of Obergefell, Kids Still Need a Mother and Father.” The article outwardly condemns gay marriage as bad for children, marking the group’s most explicit statement of opposition to the ruling in years. Weeks later, the group’s vice president of appellate advocacy publishes an essay arguing a similar premise.

July 24, 2025

Kim Davis files a petition asking SCOTUS to revisit and overturn Obergefell, saying the case was wrongfully decided. The petition will need just four votes from the justices to be heard by the Court.

Aug. 15, 2025

On a podcast, Hillary Clinton expresses her concern that Obergefell will be overturned:

“American voters, and to some extent the American media, don’t understand how many years the Republicans have been working in order to get us to this point. … It took 50 years to overturn Roe v. Wade. … The Supreme Court will hear a case about gay marriage; my prediction is they will do to gay marriage what they did to abortion—they will send it back to the states. … Anybody in a committed relationship out there in the LGBTQ community, you ought to consider getting married because I don’t think they’ll undo existing marriages, but I fear they will undo the national right.”

Sept. 7, 2025

In an interview with CBS News, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett argues SCOTUS rulings should not be based on “opinion polls” and that the Court should not be imposing its own values on the American people.

Fall 2025

In fall 2025, SCOTUS is expected to decide whether or not it will revisit Obergefell. If it grants a review, oral arguments will likely be heard in spring 2026 with a decision by late June 2026, during Pride Month.

Fox Host Goes Full PSYCHO

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade apologized Sunday for his “extremely callous” remark suggesting mentally ill homeless people should be executed.

Kash Patel lies and is pilloried for tRump.

It Is International Day Of Peace

FWIW.

The right’s inflamtory rhetoric and blaming the left for inciting political violence on the left clips From The Majority Report

Hacks star Hannah Einbinder ended her Emmys speech with choice words for Donald Trump’s secret police force and some solidarity with the people of Palestine.

About The Arrested In NYC-

These Are the 15 New York Officials ICE and NYPD Arrested in Manhattan

More than a dozen elected officials were arrested in or around 26 Federal Plaza in New York City, where ICE detains people in what courts have ruled are unsanitary conditions.

Police arrested more than a dozen New York state and city elected officials Thursday at 26 Federal Plaza, the Manhattan immigration court and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office, many as they pressed to gain access to the building’s 10th-floor lockup, where recent court rulings—including a temporary restraining order—directed ICE not to cram immigrants into overcrowded, unsanitary conditions.

The lawmakers and other officials, arrested around 3:45 pm local time, say they were “attempting to conduct oversight” following claims that people appearing for court hearings were being confined for hours or days without proper food, medical care, or contact with attorneys.

A spokesperson for New York City comptroller Brad Lander’s office told WIRED by phone that Lander and 10 other elected officials were denied access and then arrested while “engaged in an action on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, where ICE inhumanely detains thousands of immigrant New Yorkers.” Lander was previously arrested at the same facility in June while accompanying a migrant man whom ICE targeted with arrest.

A joint press release issued by New York officials in the aftermath lists the electeds among those arrested:

NYC comptroller Brad Lander
State senator Julia Salazar
State senator Jabari Brisport
State senator Gustavo Rivera
Assembly member Robert Carroll
Assembly member Emily Gallagher
Assembly member Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas
Assembly member Marcela Mitaynes
Assembly member Claire Valdez
Assembly member Tony Simone
Assembly member Steven Raga
Public advocate Jumaane Williams
Assembly member Phara Souffrant-Forrest
Council member Sandy Nurse
Council member Tiffany Caban

At least some officials, according to Lander’s office, had been released at the time of writing. The final four on the list were arrested outside the facility, reportedly by the New York City Police Department. Dozens of New Yorkers who had gathered, holding signs and chanting “ICE out of NY,” were also arrested, officials said. A follow-up demonstration was planned for 6 pm ET at Foley Square, a longtime rallying point for immigrant rights protests in the heart of Manhattan’s Civic Center neighborhood.

NEW YORK NEW YORK SEPTEMBER 18 Comptroller Brad Lander joins 11 local elected officials inside lower Manhattans federal...

Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor ICE immediately responded to a request for comment. Reached by phone, a New York Police Department spokesperson declined to comment because “the incident is ongoing.”

Under federal law, members of Congress have explicit authority to inspect immigration detention facilities, including conducting unannounced visits. State and city lawmakers don’t have that authority and must rely on DHS or ICE to approve such requests. The Trump administration has instituted new policies, such as mandating advance notice and designating certain field offices and short-term sites off-limits, that have blocked or delayed congressional oversight visits in recent months.

Federal judges and civil rights groups have zeroed in on the conditions inside 26 Federal Plaza. This summer, a federal court issued a preliminary injunction against the government after allegations surfaced that the facility’s detainees were being crammed into severely overcrowded rooms and made to sleep on bare floors and were denied food, hygiene, and confidential access to their lawyers.

NEW YORK NEW YORK SEPTEMBER 18 Dozens of anti Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters are arrested after...

The problems echo a broader pattern across the US, where watchdogs and courts have flagged overcrowding, poor sanitation, and blocked access to counsel in ICE facilities from Arizona to Louisiana.

Advocates say some of the most jarring overcrowding is happening on 26 Federal Plaza’s 10th floor, where detainees have estimated that between 70 and 90 people have been crammed into rooms measuring roughly 215 square feet. That would leave each person with roughly the space of a doormat—less room than a folded bath towel—in an area no bigger than a studio apartment kitchen.

The arrests came as part of a coordinated action by progressive Democrats, timed to amplify demands for Albany to reconvene and pass the New York for All Act. The bill would bar state and local agencies, including police and sheriffs, from sharing information or resources with ICE, aiming to stop what lawmakers describe as abductions of immigrants at court hearings and check-ins. Along with New York City Council’s proposed Trust Act—which would let people sue if city agencies unlawfully cooperate with ICE—the legislation is essential, Democrats say, to defend due process and prevent local governments from becoming de facto extensions of ICE.

“The criminalization, demonization, and state-sponsored violence against immigrants in this country has reached a fever pitch under this administration. All of us, and especially elected leaders, must do more to protect New Yorkers, regardless of when they arrived,” Assembly member Emily Gallagher, a Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn, said in a statement.

Many elected officials have been arrested while protesting the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics. Among others, in June, Senator Alex Padilla of California was handcuffed after challenging Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem at a Los Angeles press conference, and in May, Newark mayor Ras Baraka was arrested outside a federal detention center during an attempted oversight visit.

In a statement, Yasmine Farhang, executive director of the Immigrant Defense Project, applauded the lawmakers’ actions Thursday, accusing the US government of “egregious abuses of power,” and imploring New York governor Kathy Hochul to use her clemency powers to shield migrants dealing with overlapping punishments from the courts and immigration authorities.

“New York leaders cannot let this cruelty go unchecked,” she said. “The moment to act is NOW.”

Additional reporting by Andrew Couts.

What Always Happens, Explained

Politics / September 19, 2025

Threatening Vulnerable People Is No Way to Mourn Someone Who Was Murdered

Those who had nothing to do with the violence against Charlie Kirk are being menaced—just like always.

Elie Mystal

Charlie Kirk’s suspected murderer was a 22-year-old white guy from Utah, but in the week since he was shot, at least six Historically Black Colleges and Universities have been forced to cancel classes due to bomb threats made against their students and faculty. Columnist Karen Attiah got fired from The Washington Post. Representative Ilhan Omar was nearly censured. Countless Black people have been harassed and, worse, countless immigrants have been threatened with the possibility of deportation, all for insufficiently respecting the life and death of a white supremacist.

Charlie Kirk’s suspected murderer was, again, a 22-year-old white guy from Utah who, I’ll bet, does not own either of my books and has most likely never read a single word I have written over my nearly two decades of public life, but this is what my mentions on Elon Musk’s apartheid-curious platform have looked like for a week:

Not that we needed more evidence, but the past week has been Exhibit One that this country hates Black people, and will do everything it can to silence, harass, and even murder us. A white man killed another white man for reasons we still don’t know, with a gun I don’t think he should have had, but Black people are catching death threats. That doesn’t make sense, unless you understand how deeply racist this country is. Black people are being fired from jobs and harassed online for insufficiently venerating a white supremacist, and having the temerity to describe his beliefs in public. It’s as if we’re all being asked to say our name is “Toby” instead of Kunta Kinte while being informed that the beatings will continue until morale improves. The white-led government, and many white employers, white-owned sports leagues, white public intellectuals, and a non-zero number of Black assimilationists and assorted would-be overseers are largely playing along with this racist gaslighting, proving once again that Black people have few, if any, real allies.

Somebody who considers themselves a good-white-ally(™) is just about to type “not all white people” or “also Matt Dowd” or “look at what happened to Jimmy Kimmel” in response to this article, as if I give a shit. What’s happening to white folks is that they’re being made to feel like Black people are made to feel every freaking day. Whenever white people catch a cold, Black people catch the flu, but God forbid I do a bit of triage before handing out chicken soup and Sprite to white folks feeling a bit under the weather these days.

The same thing is happening to the trans community, and the LGBTQ community more broadly, because when Kirk wasn’t railing against Black people, he was trying to stamp the LGBTQ community out of existence.

At this point, I’m supposed to turn and analyze what makes white males violently erupt against vulnerable people who have nothing to do with their problems. I’m supposed to talk about white gun culture and how it inevitably leads to racial and cultural violence. I’m supposed to talk about how Trump and his white supremacist government have given the very worst people in this country permission to carry out violence against any person they don’t like, with the promise of pardons should they undertake violence that pleases him. I know I’m supposed to address these topics, because these are the questions that have been floating around my professional networks for a week.

But even addressing those questions recenters the conversation around white folks and whiteness. It’s asking, “Now why did the monkey throw its poop at that fellow?” before you secure soap and a shower for the person covered in feces. At the moment, I’m just a little too beset by threats against myself and even my mother to think deeply about why white people do this. Analyzing why young white men are so dangerous to me is an intellectual luxury I do not have right now. I’m just trying to survive America for another week.

Luckily, after a fashion, I have some experience with this. This is not the first round of death threats I’ve gotten, and, unless they successfully kill me this time, it won’t be the last. I’ve been a Black man in the public eye for a while now, and you don’t get to be an old public Black person without developing a few coping mechanisms to keep you going. For a lot of people currently under threat, this is their first rodeo. There are, for instance, a number of staffers at The Nation who are for the first time having to live with what I live with every day, since the vice president went after our publication. There are folks who were never on the kind of violent watch lists Kirk created who now find themselves on the wrong end of the online rope.

It is terrifying to be in the eye of violent white folks. You have to take them seriously when they say they want you to come to harm. I cannot promise that you, or I, will survive what they’ll do next, but here are some tips to make it through this current phase of white America.

Stick Together

They cannot kill, fire, or silence all of us. The violent people are predators and if you look at every natural predator on this earth, their first move is always to separate their target from the herd.

People must resist the urge to say some people deserve to be harassed and menaced by the government and the online right, as if to distinguish the people who deserve death threats from those who are “doing it the right way.”

Silence in the face of white supremacy is complicity with white supremacy. If we all resolve to not stay silent, we become a truth-telling hydra. Every time the white wing gets one of us, there should be others ready to take our places. (snip-MORE-excellent information)

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/black-people-threatened-after-assasination