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#CivilRights

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@ProPublica It appears the only differences between the far right (for individual absolutes) and far left (for state absolutes), is the preference of a hand. The language of hands, is an intentional distortion ground on spurious opposites as opposed to real opposition; of fascist cults to democratic rights. Simply put rights versus cults. Or civil rights versus fascist cults. Their interests are diametrically opposed, as cults are ground on the inequality and injustice of interests, while rights ground the equality and justice of interests. #FarRight #FarLeft #CivilRights #FascistCults

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Yesterday, I spent a little time on this account writing about the Trump regime, Project Esther, and the fascist American right's plan to use anti-terrorism laws to crush their political opposition. Unfortunately, I ran out of room to say everything I wanted to say so last night I expanded my thoughts over on NIDC and did the sourcing legwork.

ninaillingworth.com/2025/05/27

Nina-Bytes: Trump’s COINTELPRO Looms Into Focus

"This then brings us to the ominous reality so very few observers in the media seem to be grasping, namely that targeting the anti-genocide, pro-Palestine movement is merely the tip of the fascist spear in the Trump regime’s war on dissent and political opposition. The rhetoric, suppression techniques, and legal arguments that are being deployed against foreign anti-genocide student protestors as we speak are easy to replicate while targeting more or less the entire oppositional left in America, including milquetoast NGOs, aid groups, and likely even “liberal” political organizations like the Democratic Party. The broad and extremely vague nature of our terrorism laws leaves room for the Trump regime to label almost anyone a member of a terrorist organization, and define material support for that organization in any way they please. The authors of Project Esther are very clear that they consider opposition to capitalism, or the American state as embodied by the Trump administration, to be valid targets for those designations. If anti-genocide protest is “materially supporting Hamas,” then funding migrant support work is probably “materially supporting narco-terrorist gangs,” and speaking out against the US government can be “materially supporting” any group of “bad guys” around the globe that do the same. The possibilities for targeted, legalized repression are quite literally endless."

Nina Illingworth Dot Com | "When the revolution is for everyone, everyone will be for the revolution" · Nina-Bytes: Trump’s COINTELPRO Looms Into Focus | on NIDCAs Trump faces more public opposition to his fascist agenda, the regime is increasingly turning to the Heritage Foundation's "Project Esther" to crush dissent.
#Fascism#Trump#USPol
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One of the peculiar aspects of analyzing America's descent into overt fascism during the second Trump administration is the way frustration with liberal orthodoxy surrounding the effectiveness of "rules and norms" in curtailing governmental abuses of power, and the blatantly unlawful behavior the regime regularly engages in, have worked to tamp down criticism of all the awful things this administration does that are merely morally wrong, while still being entirely legal. Of course it is completely rational to ask why Trump's predecessors in government considered relying on tradition and "norms" to prevent abuses of executive branch power a viable plan in the first place, but that doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't criticize the regime for doing objectively fascist cracker bullshit to punish "enemies" of the white American Volk just because it's not strictly illegal. Take for example ICE's recent habit of occupying courtrooms with immigration agents, and coordinating with government lawyers to allow the detainment and expedited deportation of otherwise law-abiding migrants, effectively without due process.

theintercept.com/2025/05/21/ic

ICE Agents Are Camped Outside Immigration Courts to Make Arrests

"Reports began circulating on social media on Tuesday that ICE had begun efforts to get cases dismissed that had been pending for less than two years so that the agency could immediately apprehend immigrants and force them into an expedited removal process — effectively side-stepping the typical immigration court process.

“They’re moving to end those cases so they can move forward with a more aggressive form of deportation without the requirement to see a judge or request asylum,” Mackler said. “They’re basically circumventing due process.”

Although it's not clearly explained in this article, what's going on here is that the Trump regime has revived a 2019 policy that allows them to fast track deportations for migrants who can't prove they've been in the United States for loner than two years. This has then been combined with an ICE guidance issued in January that allows agents to conduct operations near courthouses “discreetly,” and active complicity by government attorneys, to create a cruel but effective trap. Migrants, even potential asylum seekers, can show up in court for their immigration cases, watch the government dismiss the charges, and then be detained for expedited deportation by masked Gestapo goons lounging around in the courtroom hallways for that purpose. Or, they can choose to skip the hearing, which will allow for immediate ICE detention and an automatic deportation order. Either way, the Trump regime gets to deport migrants without anything even resembling due process. Furthermore, just in case you think I'm being uncharitable and this is all just an unhappy accident caused by the interaction of shortsighted policy decisions, recent reporting in The Guardian indicates that this police state bullshit is entirely intentional on the part of the US Government.

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/m

Ice arrests at immigration courts across the US stirring panic: ‘It’s terrifying’

"Three US immigration officials told the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity that government attorneys were given the order to start dismissing cases when they showed up for work on Monday, and were aware that federal agents would then be able to arrest those individuals when they left the courtroom.

In the case of Serrano in Miami, the request for dismissal was delivered by a government attorney who spoke without identifying herself on the record, the Associated Press reported. She refused to provide her name to the AP and quickly exited the courtroom."

Unfortunately, as far as I know and as I alluded to at the top of this post, this "tactic" to help facilitate an obviously white nationalist mass deportation scheme is completely legal. In fact, as this very article notes the Biden regime was using a similar expedited deportation process to rapidly deport migrants who'd be in the United States for less than two weeks, so in a round about way this is yet another example of America's long embrace of foundationally racist, xenophobic, and nativist immigration policies paving the way for Trump, a would-be fascist dictator, to circumvent the law and US constitution to do white nationalist authoritarian repression. Of course Biden wasn't sending masked goon squads full of Proud Boys with an immigration badge to trap migrants actively *trying* to obey US immigration law, and therein lies the rub. Just because America's long embrace of fascism, white supremacy, and police state repression allows Trump to do something, doesn't mean we have to pretend that he should do that thing, or that it's perfectly fine when he does so. This is fascism, legal or otherwise.

#Fascism #Trump #ICE #DHS #Courts #Migrants #Immigration #USConsitution #Gestapo #CivilRights #DueProcess #Norms #WhiteNationalism #Nativism #PoliceState

The Intercept · ICE Agents Are Camped Outside Immigration Courts to Make Arrests By Akela Lacy

RED ALERT - ENABLING ACT IN CONSIDERATION BY THE SENATE
they slipped something in the budget that effectively removes all funding for federal injunctions, meaning the federal government wouldn't be able to be held accountable for anything, ever. THIS WOULD EFFECTIVELY MAKE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT UNQUESTIONABLE AND END ALL CIVIL RIGHTS. YOUR SENATORS NEED TO HEAR FROM YOU NOW.
#emergency #uspol #civilrights #dosomething #fucknazis #fucktrump #maga #contactyourreps #senate

This borders on #entrapment

Federal #immigration officials #arrested dozens of immigrants following their immigration #court hearings in multiple US cities this week, in operations that advocates said appeared to target people who had been in the country for less than 2 years.

#ICE officers detained migrants at #courthouses in New York City, Phoenix, Los Angeles & Seattle, according to family members, attorneys & news reports.

#law #CivilRights #Trump
reuters.com/world/us/ice-arres

"The Department of Agriculture is demanding states hand over personal data of food assistance recipients — including Social Security numbers, addresses and, in at least one state, citizenship status...

More than a dozen federal lawsuits allege DOGE staffers have been illegally granted permission to view databases with personal and financial information the government maintains, and multiple federal judges have expressed concern about what information DOGE has accessed and why. Late last month, DHS announced a DOGE-led overhaul of its Systematic Alien Verification Entitlements (SAVE) database, making the system free for state and local governments to use and promising a "single, reliable source for verifying non-citizen status nationwide."

"What they're building is a surveillance weapon and it can be put to all sorts of adverse uses in the future"

npr.org/2025/05/09/nx-s1-53899

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This story is a couple of days old, but I want to highlight it briefly because I think it speaks to the stunning myriad of ways the Trump regime is actively looking to claim and consolidate extraordinary, often unconstitutional and blatantly illegal powers in hands of the executive branch; which for now means the Trump administration. Standing before a three judge appellate court, a Department of Justice lawyer argued with a straight face that Attorney General Pam Bondi had the right to revoke anyone's green card, for any reason, even if they've been legally residing in the country for years.

truthout.org/articles/doj-lawy

DOJ Lawyer Argues AG Pam Bondi Can Revoke a Person’s Green Card at Any Time

"During an appellate court hearing last week, a lawyer for the Trump administration argued that Attorney General Pam Bondi has the authority to revoke a person’s green card at any time, for any reason she sees fit — even if they have lived lawfully in the United States for decades.

Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney Lindsay Murphy made the argument before a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday in a case involving Mohammad Qatanani, a Palestinian-born Muslim imam who has lived in New Jersey since the mid-1990s."

The article goes on to talk about the details of Qatanani's case, which has been ongoing for years and began anew in 2021 in a scenario that to me, sounds a lot like the US government once again enforcing unrealtiy on behalf of Israel, but your mileage may vary and I can't profess to be intimately familiar with the details of Qatanani's life. What's important to take note of here is that a Trump administration that's already asserting that the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio can unilaterally and instantaneously revoke someone's green card without providing justification under dubious foreign policy concern arguments, are now putting forward the legal position that Trump's fascist DoJ pit bull Pam Bondi can do so, just 'cause. It is of course unclear how legally successful this strategy will be overall, given this case is ongoing and the deportations facilitated by Rubio's actions against Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi and others are still mired in legal proceedings.

What we do know however is that the Trump regime is desperately searching for a way to legally revoke green cards quickly and without oversight. Furthermore I think we can surmise from the openly nativist, white nationalist nature of Trump's, or perhaps Stephen Miller's immigration policies, that despite the regime's protestations otherwise, the ongoing "whitening" of America project being conducted under the fascist Trump regime is ultimately designed to target legal immigrants as well; and in sufficient enough quantity as to require no oversight whatsoever. Which to anyone who has studied the history of politically-empowered fascist movements, sounds like a recipe for some type of ethnic cleansing.

Folks, I don't know how to say this any clearer, but I'm convinced these guys are basically the Nazis, like with a capital N. This is a fascist regime, stacked to the brim with actual white nationalists, built around a hyper-racist cult of personality surrounding Donald Trump. In just under fourth months, virtually all of these people have shown a horrifying lack of concern for human life in general while exposing their eliminationist worldviews in a staggering number of ways. The regime may not win in court here, but whether its through the budget reconciliation bill, emergency Supreme Court petitions, or public propaganda disseminated on cable news, they are making it clear that the intention is to consolidate all state power in the executive branch; when that happens to a country being run by fascists, you've got yourself a fascist dictatorship. There is no fucking bottom here, no depth too low for these people to sink to, no power too forbidden for them to try to exert. I can't predict the future, but a reasonable understanding of history says that this sort of shit usually ends in mass graves unless the people living under fascist tyranny do something to stop it.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi holds a press conference at the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C., on May 6, 2025.
Truthout · DOJ Lawyer Argues AG Pam Bondi Can Revoke a Person’s Green Card at Any TimeA ruling in the attorney general’s favor could affect 12 million permanent legal residents currently living in the US.
#Fascism#Trump#Courts
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The #injunction was requested in a lawsuit filed by the Somerville & Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts & the American Federation of #Teachers, along w/other #education groups.

In their lawsuit, the groups said the #layoffs amounted to an #illegal shutdown of the Education Dept. They said it left DoE unable to carry out responsibilities required by #Congress, including duties to support #SpecialEducation, distribute #FinancialAid & enforce #CivilRights laws.

Today in Writing History May 22, 1967: Writer and activist Langston Hughes died. Hughes was a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the early pioneers of Jazz Poetry. During the Civil Rights Movement, from 1942-1962, he wrote a weekly column for the black-owned Chicago Defender. His poetry and fiction depicted the lives and struggles of working-class African Americans. Much of his writing dealt with racism and black pride. Like many black artists and intellectuals of his era, he was attracted to communism as an alternative to the racism and segregation of America. He travelled to the Soviet Union and many of his poems were published in the CPUSA newspaper. He also participated in the movement to free the Scottsboro Boys and supported the Republican cause in Spain. He opposed the U.S. entering World War II and he signed a statement in support of Stalin’s purges.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #blackhistory #racism #lgbtq #CivilRights #Harlem #renaissance #communism #soviet #poetry #writer #BlackMastodon @bookstadon

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In the days before the govt’s error became public, #DHS ofcls discussed trying to portray #KilmarAbregoGarcia as a “leader” of the violent street gang #MS13, even though they could find NO EVIDENCE to support the claim. They considered ways to nullify the original order that barred his #deportation to #ElSalvador. They sought to downplay the danger he might face in one of that country’s most notorious prisons.

#Trump#CoverUp#law
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A mistake had been made. That much was clear.

But when the news reached the #DHS, it set off a dayslong scramble & clashes among ofcls in 3 different agencies over how to deal w/what everyone knew had been an error. As it became clear that keeping it quiet was not an option, DHS ofcls floated a series of ideas to *control the story* that raised alarms among #DOJ lawyers on the case.

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Since Jan, #DOJ’s #CivilRights division has paused probes of alleged #police #abuse, launched its first investigation into whether #LosAngeles violated #gun rights laws, & following #Trump's lead, changed the dept's stance on #transgender rights & probed alleged *#antisemitism* at US #colleges involving pro-#Palestinian #protesters.

The dept also recently ended a decades-old school #desegregation order in #Louisiana that came about in the wake of #SCOTUS#BrownVBoardOfEducation case.