So let me get this straight: people were FIRED from their jobs and doxxed for quoting Charlie Kirk’s own words to his supporters, but TPUSA is literally cosplaying his murder and that’s acceptable?
These conservatives have been groomed. They are so unaware of how they have been groomed.
Charlie died in vain for vanity. TPUSA have moved on and are using a recreated crime scene for selfies. It’s embarrassing.
This is not true. The construction industry has crashed in Florida. No workers so nothing being built. Half crews means nothing built. The work is far to hard for most people. Hugs
In his first year back in office, Mr. Trump has unabashedly adopted the trappings of royalty just as he has asserted virtually unbridled power to transform American government and society to his liking. In both pageantry and policy, Mr. Trump has established a new, more audacious version of the imperial presidency that goes far beyond even the one associated with Richard M. Nixon, for whom the term was popularized half a century ago.
Trump is expected to announce plans to build a new, large warship that Trump is calling a “battleship” and is part of his larger vision to create a “Golden Fleet” that includes as many as 50 support ships, according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized comment publicly.
Bigotry / Hate / Racism / DEI Misinformation / White Supremacy
A same-sex female couple in Pennsylvania is suffering through a “Kafkaesque nightmare” after one of the women was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when she showed up for a regularly scheduled immigration check-in.
ICE agents detained her and shipped her to a detention center in California.
Xiomara Suarez, 28, arrived in the U.S. in 2022 seeking asylum after fleeing Peru, where she was stalked and endured a violent sexual assault based on her sexual orientation. In a sworn declaration to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials reviewed by Advocate, Suarez said Peruvian police refused to acknowledge her complaints or offer protection, and she feared for her life.
Suarez was admitted to the U.S. on “parole” as her request for permanent status was processed.
In February, Suarez married her then-girlfriend, Grazi Chiosque, 29, an American citizen. The couple hoped to adjust Suarez’s immigration status and smooth the way for her to obtain a green card. They filed the required documents in May.
Before that request was processed, however, Suarez was swept up in a wave of detentions by ICE at courthouses targeting immigrants scheduled for hearings — only to be arrested and shipped to detention centers despite their legal non-criminal status.
Suarez was now one of them.
Chiosque says her wife is enduring degrading and isolating conditions at the Adelanto ICE detention facility in Southern California, where she’s been detained since September.
“There’s mold in the food,” Chiosque said. “You don’t have any privacy.”
“She was put into shackles,” Suarez’s wife added. “She told me that crying because it really made her feel like she did something that was wrong, and she didn’t.”
Far from expediting Suarez’s immigration status, the couple’s decision to marry may have only complicated Suarez’s legal claim.
Earlier this month, she was scheduled for back-to-back appearances with government officials. The first was with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to adjudicate her spousal petition. The second was before an immigration judge related to her detention and status in the country.
Chiosque flew from Pennsylvania to help Suarez through the process.
At the first appointment, a supervisor with Citizenship and Immigration Services told Chiosque, referring to her wife, “USCIS does not have jurisdiction because she’s detained.”
“The immigration judge would have to adjudicate on both,” Chiosque was told.
But at that hearing, the explanation flipped, Chiosque said.
“‘No, I don’t have jurisdiction on the I-130,” the judge told Suarez, referring to her spousal petition. “There’s nothing I can do.”
“If USCIS does not want to give you an interview,” he added, “contact your congressman.”
The couple had hoped their marriage claim would help expedite Suarez’s permanent residency. Now it was keeping her behind bars.
“USCIS says it’s not them because she’s detained. And the judge says it’s not them, it’s USCIS,” Chiosque said.
Suarez was returned to detention. Her next immigration hearing is scheduled for January 28.
The couple’s legal limbo is indicative of a broader, and intentional, pattern by ICE and the Trump administration, said Álvaro M. Huerta, director of litigation and advocacy at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
“This administration is separating and trapping families like Xiomara and Grazielli in a Kafkaesque nightmare, with the clear intention of making life so unbearable that they abandon all hope,” Huerta said. “It’s not only a policy failure, but also a betrayal of LGBTQ immigrant families who deserve dignity, safety, and the chance to thrive.”
“It feels like we’re begging,” said Chiosque, whose wife sits in detention a continent away.
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
Can’t air anything that might upset the dear cult leader right? All broadcast corporate media must please the dictator to make a profit, or pay the dictator tribute. What a waste. Again if a democrat had tried this republicans would have howled every few minutes on their paid media arms of their party. Not a peep out of the democratic party about it? Hugs
60 Minutes postponed a segment on the maximum security prison in El Salvador that President Donald Trump sent suspected gangsters and illegal immigrants to, only a few hours before the report was set to air on Sunday.
The CBS program had been planning to air the segment titled “Inside CECOT,” referring to El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo.
Here is the brief editor’s note that 60 Minutes posted to X about the report getting bumped:
“The broadcast lineup for tonight’s edition of 60 Minutes has been updated. Our report ‘Inside CECOT’ will air in a future broadcast.”
The CBS News website also yanked its teaser clip of the report down from its website. Here is what that page looks like now:
A CBS News spokesperson toldPuck reporter Dylan Byers that its editorial team “determined it needed additional reporting.”
The segment was being reported by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi and produced by Oriana Zill de Granados.
Paramount Skydance, the parent company of CBS, shared the following teaser for the report on Friday:
Earlier this year, the Trump administration deported hundreds of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, a country most had no ties to, claiming they were terrorists. This move sparked an ongoing legal battle, and nine months later the U.S. government still has not released the names of all those deported and placed in CECOT, one of El Salvador’s harshest prisons.
It added Alfonsi would be speaking to “some of the now released deportees, who describe the brutal and torturous conditions they endured inside CECOT.”
CECOT has been described by outlets like ABC News as a “mega-prison.” It opened in 2023 as part of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s push to arrest and imprison more gang members. Inmates taunted a handful of Democratic and Republican lawmakers when they toured CECOT in May.
Is tRump a controlled asset or just a useful old idiot, does it matter. He is giving Putin everything he every wanted. The fact is he has decided to be Putin in the west while he lets Russia and China divide up Europe and the Asia. Hugs
The White House in Washington DC, USA. Illustrative image via Wikimedia Commons.
The United States has removed sanctions from several foreign companies previously accused of supplying equipment to Russia, including items linked to its defense and military-industrial sectors.
The changes were published on the US Treasury Department’s website on December 18, without any explanation for the move.
Cyprus-based investment firm and its owner delisted
Among the firms removed is Cyprus-based Veles International Limited and its owner, Dmytro Buhaienko. While the company is tied to an investment group based in Moscow, US sanctions remain in place against its Russian legal entities.
Veles was originally sanctioned in 2023 for operating in Russia’s financial sector and working with wealthy Russian private individuals.
Dubai and Turkish firms linked to military exports also dropped
Other companies taken off the sanctions list include Dubai-based 365 Days Freight Services FZCO and Türkiye’s Etasis, both of which had been linked to exports of restricted equipment used for military purposes in Russia.
When 365 Days was originally sanctioned in November 2023, the Treasury said the company “specializes in moving high-value goods and computer components” and “has shipped high-priority goods, including machines for the reception, conversion, and transmission of data, to Russia.”
Finnish supplier of optoelectronic equipment removed
The Treasury also lifted restrictions on Finland’s Hi-Tech Koneisto and its director, Yevheniia Dremova. The company had supplied optoelectronic and laboratory equipment to Russian firms already under sanctions.
CPS Proses Kontrol Urunleri, a Turkish company, had previously been sanctioned for sending German- and US-made machine tools to a Russian defense contractor. While the company itself is no longer under US sanctions, the Russian contractor it supplied remains restricted.
US authorities did not indicate whether the removals reflect changes in compliance, enforcement priorities, or broader sanctions policy toward Russia.
The delistings come as White House negotiators have met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to push a US deal to end the war in Ukraine, and days after the Treasury extended authorization for Lukoil-branded gas stations outside Russia to continue operating.
Commentary: The masking of ICE agents is indefensible
Amy Dru Stanley and Craig Becker, Chicago Tribune on Published in Op Eds
Last month, a federal judge observed that masked figures were creating terror on American streets — not criminals but agents of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. “Law enforcement in the United States has usually been performed in the open,” wrote Judge William G. Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee to the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts.
“Images of plain-clothed, masked federal agents — faceless agents of the federal government — snatching a non-violent person off the streets” have created “fear in citizens and non-citizens alike.”
We’ve all seen the arrests in our neighborhoods and felt that fear. We’ve watched the raids unfold on the news: on the streets, on college campuses, in workplaces, in homes, outside courtrooms, in Home Depot parking lots. ICE agents wearing masks, violently detaining people, holding them captive, disappearing the suspects.
And we’ve heard the explanation that masking protects the ICE agents. “If you expose them,” President Donald Trump has said, “you put them in great danger, tremendous danger.”
But that rationale is indefensible, as it would apply to every public official and employee involved in the criminal justice system, all of whom face the threat of retaliatory violence. Moreover, severe penalties exist for attacking or intimidating law enforcement officers. Surely a judge who sentences convicted criminals to prison is as much at risk as ICE agents, yet the notion is absurd that judges should be anonymous or allowed to mask their faces in the courtroom.
Anti-masking bills have been introduced in Congress — including the “No Secret Police Act” and “No Anonymity in Immigration Enforcement Act”— but the measures have no chance of enactment under GOP control. Recently, Chicago and California banned masked arrests, but the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has stated: “We will NOT comply.”
What is needed is for the courts to act — to declare masked arrests unconstitutional, as unreasonable seizures barred by the Fourth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that “reasonableness depends on not only when a seizure is made, but also how it is carried out.” Guarantees exist against seizures without probable cause or warrants, and the court has found that law enforcement agents violate the Fourth Amendment if they seize someone with unreasonable force or execute a warrant to search someone’s home without first knocking and announcing their presence. Such protections, essential in a democracy, should be extended to bar the carrying out of masked arrests. That ban is necessary to identify bad actors, and reduce the risk of harm and thereby uphold constitutional guarantees against unreasonable seizures and interference with freedom of expression.
ICE use of masks has spread more than fear. It has led to criminal impersonation: men pretending to be ICE agents carrying out kidnappings and sexual assaults. But threats to liberty and security lie in masked ICE policing itself — that faceless agents will use excessive force on immigrants or retaliate against witnesses who protest their raids by exercising free speech rights, and that no redress for the wrongs can be sought because the ICE agents can’t be identified. That masked men can act with impunity, as in authoritarian regimes.
Aggressive recruitment of new ICE agents, who are deployed with little training, heightens the risks of the masked raids. As the crackdown spreads — with the White House demanding 3,000 arrests by ICE a day— so, too, is protest against the masking. “More raids means more unidentified federal law enforcement intimidating and in some cases terrorizing our communities,” states the American Civil Liberties Union, noting the difficulty of distinguishing ICE arrests from kidnappings.
Masking also presents dangers for the ICE agents, who may be mistaken for imposters. Obscuring identity has long been a tactic used in certain undercover operations. But as former ICE official Scott Shuchart warned about the masked arrests, there is now “a kind of vigilante problem where people either don’t know, or at least aren’t sure, that these officers who are dressed up like bank robbers are actually law enforcement officers.” In such circumstances, violent self-defense might result.
Judicial prohibition of masked arrests is supported by trends toward greater transparency in policing nationwide. “In evaluating the reasonableness of police procedures under the Fourth Amendment,” the Supreme Court has, by its own account, “looked to prevailing rules in individual jurisdictions.” ICE agents’ masking is sharply discordant with rules requiring local police to wear badges and nameplates and barring them from preventing the public from reading the information. The increasing use of body-worn cameras similarly serves police accountability.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, however, assaults on ICE agents are up by more than 1,000% this year and masking has been informally tolerated to prevent doxxing, harassment and violence. Meanwhile, the U.S. Justice Department has begun to prosecute people who follow agents or publicize their addresses. Yet ICE has issued no policy requiring mask use to protect agents — nor any official guidelines on masking at all. Appearing on Fox News in July, the acting ICE director, Todd Lyons, equivocated. “I’m not a fan of the masks,” he said. “I think we could do better, but we need to protect our agents and officers.”
The unreasonableness of masked arrests is highlighted by state legislation outlawing the wearing of disguises by private individuals on public property. It reflects the understanding that masking promotes lawlessness — and as the Supreme Court has recognized, “Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen.”
Currently, some 22 states have anti-masking rules on the books, as do many local governments, rules now being enforced to suppress peaceful dissent rather than criminal activity. In extreme instances, felony charges have been threatened against masked students protesting the war in Gaza. No doubt the repressive use of the restrictions will broaden. Last June, Trump posted on social media: “From now on, MASKS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to be worn at protests. What do these people have to hide, and why???”
Anti-masking rules governing private conduct are almost a century old, with most originating in efforts to quell the terrors of the Ku Klux Klan. With much to hide, the Klan has attacked anti-masking laws in the very terms now used by ICE to defend masked arrests: “Members wear their masks to protect their anonymity,” the Klan has argued, “because of the harassment, threats of violence, violence.”
The depth of community protest against ICE agents’ masking may well be rooted in historical memory of faceless Klansmen riding through the night, seizing their captives. As Judge Young warned recently, “Masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police.”
We should not do so now.
____
Amy Dru Stanley is a history professor at the University of Chicago. Craig Becker is a lawyer with Democracy Defenders Fund.
Greg OwenDecember 21, 2025, 5:00 pm ESTShutterstock
Scottie's Playtime 