Tristan Snell: The ICE Man Cometh
Trump’s Gestapo is here. It operates throughout the country. It can suddenly arrest anyone, with no crime alleged, and deport them for permanent imprisonment overseas. Will anyone stop this?
Last year, I did a series called Decoding Project 2025 — and one of the most jarring Trumpian proposals was, from my point of view, the planned degradation of the existing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into an immigration Gestapo to detain undocumented immigrants and deport them without any legal due process.
I was wrong.
It turns out ICE is not a Gestapo for undocumented immigrants.
It is a general Gestapo — a secret national police force not just for undocumented immigrants but for any immigrants, even legal ones with documents, even permanent residents (green card holders), and if Trump has his way, soon, even U.S. citizens.
(Tristan Snell more…)
Georgia Recorder: U.S.-born man from Georgia held for ICE under Florida’s new anti-immigration law
Florida judge says she was obliged to ignore his documented proof.
Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, a 20-year-old U.S. citizen, was being held in the Leon County Jail Thursday, charged with illegally entering Florida as an “unauthorized alien” — even as a supporter waved his U.S. birth certificate in court.
(Georgia Recorder more…)
CNN: Mid-commute traffic stop left US citizen detained under an ICE order. Then, a Florida judge verified his US birth certificate
A US-born man initially charged with being an “unauthorized alien” in Florida has been released after spending the night in jail on a 48-hour hold requested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid the Trump administration’s broad deportation crackdown.
Above the Law: Marco Rubio Claims He Can Kick Lawful Permanent Residents Out Of The US On The Basis Of Their ‘Expected Beliefs;’ Immigration Judge Says ‘Sounds Good’
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NBC: Sen. Chris Van Hollen meets with Kilmar Abrego Garcia as Trump fights to keep him in El Salvador
The Trump administration has said Abrego Garcia was mistakenly deported. El Salvador’s president said he will remain in custody “now that he’s been confirmed healthy.”
(NBC more…)WTOP: Lawyer: Document labeling Abrego Garcia as a gang member written by fired Prince George’s Co. officer
USA Today: Abrego Garcia pulled over in 2022 with 8 others at Tennessee traffic stop
The Trump administration has painted a wrongly deported Maryland man as a human trafficker. Homeland Security says local authorities raised that suspicion during a Tennessee traffic stop.
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“Kilmar worked in construction and sometimes transported groups of workers between job sites, so it’s entirely plausible he would have been pulled over while driving with others in the vehicle,” Jennifer Vasquez Sura said. “He was not charged with any crime or cited for any wrongdoing.”
(USA Today more…)
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Daily Beast: Reagan-Appointed Judge Goes Nuclear on Trump’s ‘Shocking’ Behavior
(Daily Beast more…)NPR: Court denies White House appeal of ‘shocking’ Abrego Garcia deportation case
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – April 17, 2025
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We have been in a similar moment of shifting coalitions before.In the 1850s, elite southern enslavers organized to take over the government and create an oligarchy that would make enslavement national. Northerners hadn’t been paying a great deal of attention to southern leaders’ slow accumulation of power and were shocked when Congress bowed to them and in 1854 passed a law that overturned the Missouri Compromise that had kept slavery out of the West. The establishment of slavery in the West would mean new slave states there would work with the southern slave states to outvote the North in Congress, and it would only be a question of time until they made slavery national. Soon, the Slave Power would own the country.
Northerners of all parties who disagreed with each other over issues of immigration, finance, and internal improvements—and even over the institution of slavery—came together to stand against the end of American democracy.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Thom Hartmann: Will Trump’s Corruption Be the Fatal Flaw That Even MAGA Can’t Defend?
Every bribe has a receipt. Every payoff leaves a trail. Is the cult finally cracking?
Want to take down Trump? Demonstrate how corrupt he and his oligarch buddies are.I’ve spent a good chunk of my adult life doing international relief work for a nonprofit based out of Europe. From the mass slaughter in Darfur to the famine following the Civil War in Uganda to deeply impoverished rural Russia and Southeast Asia to hunt clubs in Colombia where young men shoot “feral” children for sport, I’ve seen horrors few can even imagine, much less would want to live through.
The one consistent and defining characteristic of the countries where I’ve lived and worked is the corruption.
(Thom Hartmann more…)
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Daily: Democrats Need To Stay Focused On The Economy
While the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a crime that deserves attention and public pressure, Democrats have Trump on the ropes on the economy and can’t let up.
(Daily more…)
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Adam Kinzinger: Ukraine is Winning. So Why is Donald Trump Trying to Help Russia?
America Is quickly becoming the people we read about, and hated, in high school history.
(Adam Kinzinger more…)
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Anchorage Daily News: ‘We are all afraid’: Speaking to Alaska nonprofit leaders, Murkowski gets candid on upheaval in federal government
(Anchorage Daily News more…)NY Times: A Startling Admission From a G.O.P. Senator: ‘We Are All Afraid’
Lisa Murkowski, a longtime senator from Alaska and an independent voice in an increasingly tribal party, has been the rare Republican on Capitol Hill willing to criticize President Trump’s actions.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, the moderate Alaska Republican who has routinely broken with her party to criticize President Trump, has made a startling admission about the reality of serving in public office at a time when an unbound leader in the Oval Office is bent on retribution against his political foes.
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Closer to the Edge: Private force, public cowards, what really happened in Coeur d’Alene
Six Men Charged. One Sheriff Exposed. And the GOP’s Thirst for Authoritarianism on Full Display.
On February 22, 2025, in a public high school auditorium in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, a woman was dragged — literally — from her seat and thrown out of a Republican town hall meeting. Her crime? Asking questions the sheriff didn’t want to answer. Her punishment? Physical violence, false imprisonment, and humiliation. The perpetrators? A group of unlicensed private security contractors posing as authority figures, now facing criminal charges. And the man who gave the signal? Sheriff Bob Norris.
(Closer to the Edge more…)
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WSJ: The Lesson of Trump vs. Powell
Their dispute is a reminder that monetary policy can’t make up for economic policy errors like tariffs.
President Trump’s tariff war isn’t going well, with market ructions and evidence of a slowing economy. So it was probably inevitable that Mr. Trump would demand that the Federal Reserve ride to his rescue by cutting interest rates. The President took to social media Thursday morning to blast Fed Chairman Jerome Powell with his familiar nuance.“Jerome Powell of the Fed, who is always TOO LATE AND WRONG, yesterday issued a report which was another, and typical, complete ‘mess!’ Oil prices are down, groceries (even eggs!) are down, and the USA is getting RICH ON TARIFFS,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Too Late should have lowered Interest Rates, like the ECB [European Central Bank], long ago, but he should certainly lower them now. Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!”
Mr. Trump was reacting to Mr. Powell’s remarks Wednesday that the President’s tariffs complicate the Fed’s job of maintaining stable prices with low unemployment. “The level of the tariff increases announced so far is significantly larger than anticipated. The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth,” Mr. Powell told the Economic Club of Chicago.
The problem for Mr. Trump is that Mr. Powell spoke the truth. Tariffs are a tax, which means higher prices for tariffed goods. Mr. Trump has imposed a minimum tariff on the world of 10%, which is roughly four times the previous average U.S. tariff rate of 2.4%.
(WSJ more…)
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WP: Immigrants prove they are alive, forcing Social Security to undo death label
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The reversals come after the Department of Homeland Security and Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service pushed to incorrectly label roughly 6,100 mostly Latino immigrants as dead in a bid to pressure the immigrants to leave the country. The administration overrode the objections of senior Social Security staff to labeling the immigrants as dead — a move that current and former top officials at the agency warned was illegal because it violates privacy laws and involves the purposeful falsification of government records.
(WP more…)
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NPR: Trump’s Forest Service cuts have people in tinder dry New Mexico on edge
(NPR more…)
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Verge: Covid․gov now points to a ‘lab leak’ conspiracy website
(Verge more…)April 10 covid.gov WayBack Machine archived version
April 12 covidtests.gov WayBack Machine archived version
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NY Times: Trump Official Asked I.R.S. About Audit of ‘High-Profile Friend of the President’
A Treasury Department official wrote to the I.R.S. that Mike Lindell, the pillow entrepreneur, was “concerned he may have been inappropriately targeted.”
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Ken Klippenstein: Trump Admin Orders Social Media Review on Gaza
Visitors to the U.S. from all but 43 countries subject to vetting of posts since 2007
(Ken Klippenstein more…)
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Eric Reinhart: The Trump regime is now using US Attorneys to intimidate academic journals by sending them letters demanding they explain how they ensure ‘viewpoint diversity.’
[CHEST – American College of Chest Physicians]
(Eric Reinhart more…)CNN: Ex-January 6 prosecutors urge attorney disciplinary board to investigate Trump’s controversial pick to be DC’s top prosecutor
Request for Disciplinary Investigation of Edward Robert Martin, Jr.
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Closer to the Edge: The toilet testament of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr
When a Man With a Worm in His Skull Declares War on Autistic Children, Believe Him.
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Crooks & Liars: Sen. Warren: Tariff Authority Vote Will Be Crack In The Wall
“Here they are in the box, they want to be a Republican. That is the damn box you put yourself in. But you’re going to have to make a decision. Is it bow down to Trump? Or is it stand up for the American people?” the senator said.
(Crooks & Liars more…)
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