Dems fear a gop legal blitz

Some more news items I want to share. These are only small quotes there is much more to each story if you follow the links

Trump’s Attack on ActBlue’s “Dark Money” Was Backed by Elon Musk’s Dark Money

Trump’s Attack on ActBlue’s “Dark Money” Was Backed by Elon Musk’s Dark Money

The billionaire helped fund an effort to gin up fraud claims against the Democratic donation platform.

Trump’s claim that he can order the Justice Department to investigate a fundraising platform used by his political foes based on vague allegations is part of his ongoing effort to use the government’s powers to target political enemies. It’s not a particularly realistic accusation—the fact sheet claims it’s targeting “straw donor” schemes, in which one person donates on behalf of another. Given the fairly strict limitations on campaign contributions, any straw donor scheme that wants to inject any noticeable amount of money into an electoral system that had $15.5 billion run through it is a great deal of tedious, high-risk work for a scammer.

On the other hand, in the post-Citizens United era, there are plenty of ways to inject unaccounted-for money—even, theoretically, foreign money—into the election. Super-PACs can accept unlimited donations from fairly easy-to-obscure sources, for instance, which makes the idea of anyone using a small-dollar conduit like ActBlue (or the GOP equivalent WinRed) fairly silly.

And notably, the funding for some of Trump’s “data” on an alleged ActBlue “fraud” seems to have come from just such a source: a super-PAC bankrolled by Elon Musk.

Last year, an opaque group called the Fair Election Fund began promising to pay “whistleblowers” who cited election fraud “with payment from our $5 million fund.” That never panned out, but the same organization found more success with a claim that 60,000 people who were named as small-dollar donors in the Biden-Harris campaign’s July Federal Election Commission report did not recall making the contribution when contacted by the Fair Election Fund.

As Mother Jones reported last year, the Fair Election Fund appears to have generated this finding by blasting out ominous-sounding texts and emails telling ActBlue donors that their donations had been “flagged,” then tallying people who responded—accurately or not—by checking a box saying they did not recall making the contribution.

More at the link above


Israel carrying out ‘live-streamed genocide’ in Gaza, Amnesty says

Amnesty accuses US President Donald Trump of committing a ‘multiplicity of assaults’ on human rights.

Israel is perpetrating a “live-streamed genocide” in Gaza, committing illegal acts with the “specific intent” of wiping out Palestinians, Amnesty International has said.

Israeli forces in Gaza have violated the United Nations Genocide Convention with acts that include “causing serious bodily or mental harm to civilians” and “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction”, the human rights organisation said in its annual report released on Monday.

Israeli air strikes have also frequently hit civilians who were following evacuation orders, while its forces continued to “arbitrarily detain and, in some cases, forcibly disappear Palestinians”, the rights group said.


DOGE has made a big impact on Washington. But government spending is up.

Elon Musk and his shadowy “tech support” team have ripped through Washington, reshaping the government and culling the federal workforce with astonishing speed and scope.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/29/doge-impact-washington-spending-100days-00316587

Nearly a quarter of a million workers have or are expected to leave their federal jobs. That includes more than 112,000 federal workers who have opted into the deferred resignation program, according to a POLITICO analysis of previous reporting and conversations with administration officials. It also includes some 121,000 workers across agencies who have been fired, according to a CNN analysis.

DOGE has hollowed out or shut down 11 federal agencies and says it has terminated more than 8,500 contracts and 10,000 grants. It has wiped out foreign aid and volunteerism in the U.S., slashed education spending and made sweeping changes to the way the government makes procurements, hires contractors and shares data.

DOGE, after promising $2 trillion in savings, now says it has saved the government $160 billion. But even these reported savings, so far, have not led to any meaningful decline in total government spending this year, according to the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model, which tracks weekly Treasury data.

In fact, the government has actually been spending more compared to this time last year, the model found.

Total spending rose by 6.3 percent, or $156 billion since Trump took office, compared to the first four months of 2024, said Kent Smetters, a Wharton professor who directs the model. Even when accounting for inflation, the federal government has still added $81.2 billion more spending to its books compared to the same period last year, he added.

Some more news articles I wanted to post but never found time. Hugs

Navy chaplain accused of violating Constitution for encouraging soldiers to ‘lead like Jesus’

https://www.christianpost.com/news/navy-chaplain-accused-of-violating-constitution-for-encouraging-soldiers-to-lead-like-jesus.html


Greenland ‘Freedom City’? Rich donors push Trump for a tech hub up north

https://www.aol.com/greenland-freedom-city-rich-donors-100326241.html


ICE Deletes Post About Stopping ‘Illegal Ideas’ From Crossing Border

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) quickly deleted a social media post Thursday that claimed that its mission is not just to keep out illegal immigrants, money, and products, but “ideas” as well.

https://www.newsweek.com/ice-illegal-ideas-border-security-social-media-post-2058217


US DOGE Service Agreement With Department of Labor Shows $1.3 Million Fee—and Details Its Mission

The unsigned agreement between the US DOGE Service and the Department of Labor provides significant insight into DOGE’s work with federal agencies.

https://www.wired.com/story/department-of-labor-doge-usds-payment/


State tells employees to report on one another for ‘anti-Christian bias’

“It’s very ‘Handmaid’s Tale’-esque,” one official said.

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Justice Dept. skirts judge’s deadline on plans to return wrongly deported man

A government lawyer argued that a Friday deadline was not enough time to detail steps for the return of Kilmar Abrego García, who was sent to a Salvadoran mega-prison despite another judge’s protection order.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/04/11/kilmar-abrego-garcia-el-salvador-deported-case/


DHS revokes parole for hundreds of thousands who entered via the CBP One app

The move could leave over 900,000 immigrants vulnerable to deportation — unless they self-deport, DHS said.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/08/dhs-parole-revoked-app-00007326


Ghana lawmakers reintroduce controversial, cruel and regressive anti-LGBTQ+ legislation

https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/03/04/ghana-lgbtq-bill-reintroduction/


This far-right organization is behind five state bills to overturn gay marriage

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

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


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

 

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

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


Story by Kelly Rissman
 • 23h

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Independent is the world’s most free-thinking news brand, providing global news, commentary and analysis for the independently-minded. We have grown a huge, global readership of independently minded individuals, who value our trusted voice and commitment to positive change. Our mission, making change happen, has never been as important as it is today.

U.S. Born Citizen Arrested By ICE

A 20 year old man who is a US citizen with a Hispanic sounding name has twice been arrested and ordered held by ICE.  The first time he was released as he sowed the judge his birth certificate and his social security card.  The second time he was ordered held for 48 hours for pickup by ICE for an immigration hearing even after the judge seen and vouched for his birth certificate.  The prosecutor claimed the court had no jurisdiction now that ICE had a detaining order on him.  I don’t think that is legally correct as blue states have said they won’t honor those orders.  But the point is it has happened twice now, and if the US doesn’t grant due process people like him could be detained and removed to El Salvador where the tRump people claim they can’t get people back from.  We can get our people from Russia, North Korea, and China but we can’t from tiny El Salvador.  Hugs

 

How authoritarians use public education to control the “truth”

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/01/how-authoritarians-use-public-education-to-control-the-truth/

The two quotes from the article I added just below what I am writing give away the Fundamentalist Christian republican’s goal, which is to make those people they disagree with, that they hate, disappear from society.  Their goal by taking LGBTQ+ media out of schools is to make it appear that all kids are straight and cis.  No one can be different from them or their beliefs.  Everyone must walk lockstep with them, their way is the only way people can live.  Holy dictators.  Their goal is to erase anyone different from them from the public view, from society.  We must not let them do that.  Hugs

The institutionalization of a hegemonic norm functions to legitimize what can be said, who has the authority to speak and be heard, and what is authorized as the truth.

Former President Donald Trump speaks about border security at a rally at Million Air, a private airplane terminal at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Friday October 25, 2024.

Former President Donald Trump speaks about border security at a rally at Million Air, a private airplane terminal at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Friday October 25, 2024.

“When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.” -Adrienne Rich

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could possibly perpetuate the “psychic disequilibrium” that Adrienne Rich laments.

The case arose from conflicts between those in favor of teaching LGBTQ+ topics in schools and those who believe in so-called parents’ rights on religious grounds when it comes to the education of their children. The case stems from some parents’ concerns about a policy sanctioned by the Montgomery County Board of Education requiring new elementary school storybooks covering LGBTQ+ topics that could be read in class.

One of the contested books is titled “Pride Puppy!” and is about a puppy who gets lost in the crowd during an LGBTQ+ Pride parade.

When the policy first passed, parents could opt their children out of the curriculum, but later, the board reversed that part. In this demographically diverse school district, some Christian and Muslim parents, in particular, objected. I wonder, though, whether they think parents should be allowed to opt their children out of reading age-appropriate stories about Jewish or Asian people, for example.

This case harkens back to one of the earlier curricular programs created in 1991 by the New York City Board of Education. The Children of the Rainbow Curriculum was introduced to first-grade teachers to “assist with teaching about multicultural social issues.” The board developed the program to counter the increase in hate crimes directed against members of marginalized communities.

The curriculum contained 443 pages of suggested readings, activities, and other lectures, all designed to help teachers promote academic and social skills while teaching about diversity.

Unfortunately, the section on families that covered LGBTQ+ people incited enormous criticism. Some opponents argued that it promoted sex and sodomy to kids.

The battle gained significant publicity, and the New York City Department of Education ultimately voted against accepting the entire Children of the Rainbow Curriculum.

And the moments of psychic disequilibrium continued.

Surplus Repression & Anti-Knowing

Of course, parents and other adults have the inherent responsibility of protecting young people from harming themselves and being harmed by others and of teaching them how to live and function in society within our ever-changing global community.

In Freudian terms, we must develop a balance between the individual’s unrestrained instinctual drives and that person’s restraints (repression) on these drives in the service of maintaining society (civilization) and sustaining the life of the individual.

Nonetheless, we must establish a line demarcating protection from control, teaching from oppression, and minimal and fundamental repression from what Herbert Marcuse terms “surplus repression” (that which goes over and beyond what is necessary for the protection of the individual and the smooth functioning of society and enters into the realm of domination, control, and oppression).

Authorizing the “truth”

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school
It’s a wonder I can think at all
And though my lack of education hasn’t hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall.

Paul Simon laments in his song “Kodachrome” that his education consisted of neutralizing, meaningless content. “Everything looks worse in black and white,” he sang of the whitewashing of his lessons.

Metaphorically, most schools teach only in black and white, whereas most students want the array of colors Paul Simon wished for: “Those nice bright colors: the greens of summers, makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah.”

Unfortunately, Simon’s educational system took his Kodachrome away: the camera film that captured the full spectrum of the rainbow from the brightest reds, oranges, and yellows, to the darkest blues and browns and deepest purples.

Schools across the nation are attempting to function amidst increased book banning and control of course content by state legislatures under the false flag of “parental rights.” It’s all part of the current tide of right-wing takeovers of educational systems.

People on the political right transform terms like “woke” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” into hate-filled and frightening epithets. In the process, they have driven us away from the underlying purpose of education.

The term “education” is derived from two Latin roots: “e,” meaning “out of,” and “ducere,” meaning “to lead” or “to draw.”

In its original translation and intent, education includes the process of drawing knowledge out of the student or leading the student toward knowledge. This is in contrast to the placing or depositing information into what some educators perceive as the students’ waiting and docile minds, or what the Brazilian philosopher and educator Paulo Reglus Neves Freire termed “the banking system of education.”

Surrounding forces – religion, parenting, schooling, and other types of socialization – often inhibit the maintenance of critical thinking facilities in young and old alike.

Let us take, for example, the Biblical warning in Genesis 2: 16-17, related to the story of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden: “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’”

The apples on that tree represent knowledge. When eaten, this “forbidden fruit” unlocks levels of knowing that can more than overturn the apple cart. But more importantly, it can give the knower a full-color spectrum of the workings of the world. We are encouraged, nonetheless, to think only in the black and white determined by those in power.

Figures like the biblical Eve and Greek Pandora, women, are blamed for the downfall of “man.” In fact, they were strong women who refused to be trapped under the thumbs of the patriarchy.

Additionally, the ancient Greek legend of Prometheus casts a cautionary tale on the gifting of knowledge. The chief of the gods, Zeus, punished him for offering mortals the best of the sections from a slaughtered cow while giving the gods the remaining fat and bones.

After an infuriated Zeus took back fire from humanity, Prometheus stole and returned it to mortals, thus turning the darkness from the spectrum of black and white to technicolor once again.

For Prometheus’ crime of returning light and knowledge to humankind, Zeus had Prometheus chained to the Caucasus Mountains and sent an eagle to eat his immortal liver every day, which grew back every night.

Literature and cinema likewise warn of the horrific and often fatal risks of challenging the limitations placed by the powerful on the accumulation of knowledge.

The first film in the “Planet of the Apes” franchise, released in 1968, can be understood as a recreation of the legend of Prometheus. A U.S.-based crew crash land their space vehicle on a strange planet in the distant future amounting to nearly 2000 years advancement on Earth, as they traveled at the speed of light.

The crew, led by Taylor – the Prometheus character – discover that the planet is ruled by a species of apes who possess what to the Earthlings appear as human-like qualities, including speech, high reasoning, and cultural artifacts such as museums, medicine, constructed homes, a judicial system, and written religious and governing scrolls.

A community of humans on this planet, on the other hand, lacks the facility of speech and operates on an animal-like intellectual level. The apes hunt, enslave, and murder humans to keep them from invading their gardens and stealing food and to use them in medical and psychological experiments.

Taylor rebels and protests his treatment by challenging the hierarchical ranking of apes over humans. Two apes listen to Taylor and befriend him, Zira and Cornelius, and they eventually come to believe that what they have been socialized to accept as factual was somehow manipulated and falsified.

Blond-furred Dr. Zaius (Zeus), Minister of Science and Chief Defender of the Faith, knows the truth regarding the origins of his species and the rise and fall of humans through industrialization and the power of the atom, which terminated life as it had been once known. His primary objective has been to keep the fire of “knowledge” away from his ape community and humans.

He attempts to destroy any artifacts and other remnants of pre-nuclear holocaust human society to keep alive the myth of perennial simian superiority. Knowledge, therefore, represents overturning the proverbial apple cart, undermining origin myths, and challenging hierarchal positionings.

These genesis/origin stories are examples of the concept of “hegemony,” a term coined by social theorist Antonio Gramsci to describe the ways in which the dominant group successfully disseminates dominant social realities and social visions in a manner accepted as common sense and part of the natural order.

This controlled production of “knowledge” maintains the marginality of other groups, and it denies exposure to multiple perspectives.

The institutionalization of a hegemonic norm functions to legitimize what can be said, who has the authority to speak and be heard, and what is authorized as the truth.

This was certainly the case in Nazi Germany. In 1933, Nazi stormtroopers invaded, ransacked, and closed The Institute for Sexual Sciences in Berlin, founded by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish and homosexual sexuality researcher. The Institute conducted early sexuality research and was a precursor of the Indiana-based Kinsey Institute in the United States.

Storm troopers carried away and torched over 10,000 volumes of books and research documents calling the Institute “an international center of the white-slave trade” and “an unparalleled breading ground of dirt and filth.”

Soon thereafter, Nazis and conservative university students throughout Germany invaded Jewish organizations and libraries, confiscating books they deemed “un-German.”

The German Student Association (Deutsche Studentenschaft) declared a national “Action against the Un-German Spirit.” On May 10, 1933, students and Nazi leaders across Germany set ablaze over 25,000 volumes. Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, fired up the Berlin crowd of over 40,000 sympathizers by declaring, “No to decadence and moral corruption. Yes to decency and morality in family and state.”

In 2018, we witnessed anti-LGBTQ+ Christian crusader Paul Dorr check out four LGBTQ+-inclusive children’s books from the Orange City, Iowa Public Library and burn them in a 27-minute October 2018 video diatribe on Facebook. – Dorr is the founder of Rescue the Perishing, a group “contending against moral evil to advance the Kingdom of Christ.”

The books in question were Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan; Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress, by Christine Baldacchino; This Day In June, by Gayle E. Pitman; and Families, Families, Families!, by Suzanne and Max Lang.

In his video rant, Dorr argued that Two Boys Kissing was “designed to get 12-to-13-year-old boys to start having homosexual sex together.”

The fight for all the colors

To build off of Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famed poem:

First they came for Leaves of Grass, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not gay.

Then they came for Stone Butch Blues, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a transgender person.

Then they came for Critical Race Theory and Beloved, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not Black.

Then they came for Maus, and I did not speak out —
Because I am a Christian and not a Jew.

Then they came for books representing my experiences and identities —
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.

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Trump administration concedes Maryland father from El Salvador was mistakenly deported and sent to mega prison

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-administration-concedes-maryland-father-from-el-salvador-was-mistakenly-deported-and-sent-to-mega-prison/ar-AA1C2Ovi

This is horrific.  They finally admit that without due process they are grabbing anyone brown and anyone Muslim even if they are here legally having a visa or green card and sending them as quickly as they can to a notorious horrific prison in El Salvador.  They claimed they were all gang members and they did not care if they were or were not.    The point was a Steven Miller Shock and Awe cause fear in anyone brown or Muslim.  He is a hard core white supremacists.  But the worst part is they know he is not the only one and they are refusing to bring him or any others back.  Refusing a judges orders.  

The administration argued that it cannot bring back Abrego Garcia because he’s in Salvadoran custody and knocked down concerns that he’s likely to be tortured or killed in CECOT.

=================================================================

Salvadoran prison guards stand next to alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the MS-13 gang recently deported by the US government to be imprisoned in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) prison, as part of an agreement with the Salvadoran government, in Tecoluca, El Salvador, in this handout image obtained March 31, 2025.© Secretaria de Prensa de la Presidencia/Handout/via Reuters
 

The Trump administration conceded in a court filing Monday that it mistakenly deported a Maryland father to El Salvador “because of an administrative error” and argued it could not return him because he’s now in Salvadoran custody.

The filing stems from a lawsuit over the removal of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who in 2019 was granted protected status by an immigration judge, prohibiting the federal government from sending him to El Salvador.

 

The filing, first reported by The Atlantic, appears to mark the first time the administration has admitted an error related to its recent deportation flights to El Salvador, which are now at the center of a fraught legal battle.

“On March 15, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” the Trump administration filing states.

Abrego Garcia, who attorneys say fled gang violence in El Salvador more than a decade ago, had been identified by his wife in a photo of detainees entering intake at El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison CECOT.

Prior to his removal, he had been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in mid-March “due to his prominent role in MS-13,” according to a court declaration from a senior ICE official. His attorneys say he’s not a member of nor has any ties to the MS-13 gang.

 

“Abrego-Garcia was not on the initial manifest of the Title 8 flight to be removed to El Salvador,” Robert Cerna, an acting ICE field office director, said in his declaration, referring to federal immigration law. “Rather, he was an alternate. As others were removed from the flight for various reasons, he moved up the list and was assigned to the flight. The manifest did not indicate that Abrego-Garcia should not be removed.”

“Through administrative error, Abrego-Garcia was removed from the United States to El Salvador. This was an oversight, and the removal was carried out in good faith based on the existence of a final order of removal and Abrego-Garcia’s purported membership in MS-13,” the declaration reads.

The administration argued that it cannot bring back Abrego Garcia because he’s in Salvadoran custody and knocked down concerns that he’s likely to be tortured or killed in CECOT.

—————————————————————————————————————

Another link to this story is here.  This article has more information and is slightly longer.   It expands what the tRump government lawyers told the judge even thought the farmer had legal asylum they won’t bring him back with more detail than the story above.  Hugs

Trump admin. admits it wrongly deported Maryland dad from El Salvador

“The heavy interest in the President’s primacy in foreign affairs outweigh the interests on the Plaintiffs’ side of the scale. Although the Defendants recognize the financial and emotional hardships to Abrego Garcia’s family,  the public interest in not returning a member of a violent criminal gang to the United States outweighs those individual interests,” the filing continues.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/trump-admin-admits-it-wrongly-deported-maryland-dad-from-el-salvador/ar-AA1C3WtD

Some news items I wanted to post that got lost in the short time I have to share stuff.

These four articles come from March 17 / 18th and I really wish I could have posted them then.   Hugs


How many eggs can you send? U.S. asks countries to help lower soaring prices

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-many-eggs-can-you-send-us-asks-countries-help-lower-soaring-prices-2025-03-14/

The above is the tRump admin trying to get other countries with higher standards in their food to send us their eggs to protect tRump from the soaring prices.

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Hungary To Use Facial Recognition Against LGBTQs

Hungary To Use Facial Recognition Against LGBTQs

This scares me because the fundamentalist and white cis straight male supremacists will demand it be used here.  First on trans people to protect the children then expand it to the entire LGBTQ+ as they have been doing everything else they tried to use against trans kids / people. 


Famed Navajo Code Talkers Axed From Pentagon Sites

Famed Navajo Code Talkers Axed From Pentagon Sites

Yes I know that these were restored.  But now tRump is demanding Vance who is on the board of the Smithson and the National Zoo to remove all illegal (purge) references to race, gender, the LGBTQ+ and so much more.  He is demanding a national landmark the US government doesn’t control to toe the fundamentalist straight cis white supremacy Christians agenda to deny anything but them into history or society.  We really are seeing a complete take over of society and we must do all we can to prevent the rollback of all rights and equality of anyone not white straight cis Christian males.  This is horrifyingly scary.  Because these hate groups have learned if they can control information, control education, control what is considered good or bad by their standards they can force the youngest people in the country to voice that belief and grow up to enforce it.  It is what theocratic Islamic nations do.  Are we now a nation taken over by theocratic Christian fundamentalist demanding a change in even the constitution to force everyone to follow their god and their rules?  Please kill me first. 


Kentucky Republicans Overturn Ex-Gay Torture Ban

Kentucky Republicans Overturn Ex-Gay Torture Ban

Every accredited organization except those directly driven by fundamentalist religiously motivated agree this is simply torture.  The religious just simply refuse to believe sexual orientation is not a choice and no one wants to be like that no matter what has to be done to change it.  Including electroshock therapy to the genitals.   Think of yourself, gay straight, or any other orientation.  If you are cis and straight, how much conversion therapy would it take to make you believe you were gay / lesbian and desire that.  How could who you are attracted to be changed.  That all comes from the idea that it is a mental illness and a sickness that needs to be cured.  Which the majority of medical organizations reject, agreeing it is an inborn part of a fetus development.  Plus if you could change a sexual orientation … look at my childhood.  I was forced to please sexually both males and females.  But the only rapes that totally crashed me in the military was the one by a woman with more rank than me who demanded I have sex with her … four times.  The last time I was so upset and humiliated that I ran nude up the stairs of the housing unit for higher enlisted and pounded on my soon to be E-7’s door.  I was sobbing incoherently.  I have been raped all my life and was able to stand that.  Why did what this woman force me to do reduced me to that state?  Because it was against my very nature of who I was.  I was having same sex relations with another young guy and loving it.  What she was forcing me to do was against everything I felt inside.  That is what the people of these gay conversions want to do. 

Some of them think that being gay is a choice because … well when did they decide instead of men they would like to have sex with women?  No they just felt it, but what gay / lesbian people feel is not valid and must be forced to change. The rest of this group feels their interpretations of their view of what their god wants must be enforced on everyone even those that don’t follow their god.  Because it is their god and he must be pleased because their god hates what they hate.  Even if it is not in the bible or they misunderstood it, their hate preacher told them it was so.  They can not let others live their lives, everyone must live by their church dictates.  Why??? Because only that way their god will love them?  I am an atheist that is willing to let religious people believe as they wish as long as they don’t try to force their beliefs on others.   You do you … but why can’t they do the same.  They insist that no one can be different from them and their beliefs.   That is scary just that they think like that and more that they are now running the US government.  

PS.  When James was a newly teen of 13 his parents went to the Florida Keys with a group of us.  They always stayed apart even though they asked to be part of the caravan of RV going.  Well I caused an issue.  His … maybe abusive parents had lots of tattoos and were highly Catholic religious … even had a statue of the mother Mary in the entrance of their home.   Yes the husband ruled the house and told the wife what she would do at all times.  Which included the abuse of the child which is where we came in.  In a year or so after this even the boy started staying at our home because he was not allowed home until the mother was there.  I had seen a young kid come in with a Mohawk.  The boy had his hair shaved on both sides of his head and long in the front and back.  We had already talked to their son at our table because the parents they were trying to force the boy to get Christian tattoos. 

When I spoke up and said there is …. next hair cut … it will look grand on him.  His stepdad exploded and said he wouldn’t ever allow the boy in the house with that and he would hold him down and shave all his hair off.  As anyone can imagine I got triggered, I had been held down and had my hair cut.  I flew up from the table as Ron was grabbing at me and yelled you want him to have tattoos which is against the bible but a simple haircut which can be changed or grow back and has no mentioned in the bible upsets you so much you’re threatening the kid.  I loudly said, “What the fuck is wrong with you”!  They took the boy from our table and left his meal uneaten.  I was furious.  Others who did not know of my childhood tried to calm me down.  The family of the boy left that day from our group at the campground.  Next time the boy came to our home his hair was cut short and the parents never went on another trip with us.  Hugs


FL GOP Advances Ban On City Diversity Initiatives

FL GOP Advances Ban On City Diversity Initiatives

Again an attempt to turn the country into a while male cis straight only nation.  How much clearer can it be.  And all these republicans or most of them are fundamentalist Christians who were funded by their church in a steal run to get elected.   This not what the publican wants.   But these republican fundamentalist groups understand … politicians can force change in public opinion if they support something loud and forcefully enough.  Which is one why Kamala Harris l think lost the election, the democrats refused to respond to the attacks on trans people fearing it would hurt them.  That is how you bring people along to a new understanding.  The republicans are doing it in reverse of what the progressive movement did with government support in the early 2000s.  Now that democrats have retreated only the hard right republicans are getting their voices heard returning the countries view to pre-rights for LGBTQ+ people.  Hugs


 

US Enters Dark New Era Of Human Rights Abuses Under Trump

Did he or didn’t he. Either way is illegal.

Trump Claims He Didn’t Sign Alien Enemies Act

https://x.com/kaitlancollins/status/1903254995526467595

 

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