Author: sauer@technologists.com

curated citations to news sources

SCOTUSblog: Supreme Court sides with Trump administration on nationwide injunctions in birthright citizenship case

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The Trump administration will also likely continue to be barred from enforcing the order – which will not go into effect for 30 days – against the individual pregnant plaintiffs who had challenged it. But the court’s opinion, by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, left open the prospect of additional litigation in the lower courts about how much more the injunctions should be narrowed, as well as the possibility of class action litigation to challenge the order on behalf of groups of plaintiffs who were not part of the litigation before the court but would be affected by the order.
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Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, in an opinion that she read from the bench – a signal of her strong disagreement with the majority’s ruling. She stated that the majority had ruled that, “absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief. That holding renders constitutional guarantees meaningful in name only for any individuals who are not parties to a lawsuit.”
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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson filed a separate dissent in which she contended that the majority’s “decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law.”
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Sarah Jones: Pam Bondi Can’t Explain What Exactly She’s Doing to Ensure Our Safety

AG Pam Bondi expressed disbelief when told that ICE agents are wearing masks and she also doesn’t seem to believe that moving counterterrorism officials to immigration is endangering us.
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“I’m deeply concerned that the lack of identification during these activities is dangerous, both to the public as well as to the officers themselves,” Senator Peters said in a hearing on Capitol Hill. “The public risk being harmed by individuals pretending to be immigration enforcement, which has already happened. We’ve seen that happen, and these officers also risk being injured by individuals who think they’re basically being kidnapped or attacked by some unknown assailant.”

Peters tied this endangerment of the public to the broader lack of focus on national security under Trump, “So my question for you, Attorney General Bondi, is given the number of DOJ employees currently conducting immigration enforcement activities in support of DHS, how are you going to ensure that the safety of the public and the officers if they continue to not follow required protocol to identify themselves as law enforcement?”

Bondi pivoted to the officers’ concerns about being doxxed and threatened, which seems to suggest that she knows masking is happening, but then said she was unaware of it happening, but then agreed to look into the issue of ensuring proper identification.
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404 Media: Flock Removes States From National Lookup Tool After ICE and Abortion Searches Revealed

Flock, the automatic license plate reader (ALPR) company with a presence in thousands of communities across the U.S., has stopped agencies across the country from searching cameras inside Illinois, California, and Virginia, 404 Media has learned. The dramatic moves come after 404 Media revealed local police departments were repeatedly performing lookups around the country on behalf of ICE, a Texas officer searched cameras nationwide for a woman who self-administered an abortion, and lawmakers recently signed a new law in Virginia. Ordinarily Flock allows agencies to opt into a national lookup database, where agencies in one state can access data collected in another, as long as they also share their own data. This practice violates multiple state laws which bar the sharing of ALPR data out of state or it being accessed for immigration or healthcare purposes.
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The  Substack Post: Standing up for free speech, even at the border

Earlier this month, Alistair Kitchen—a writer based in Melbourne—was detained, interrogated, and sent back to Australia by U.S. border agents, evidently in response to articles he had published on Substack.

Kitchen, a former Columbia University student, had written firsthand accounts of the student protests that took place last year.

“Look, we both know why you are here,” a border agent at Los Angeles International Airport told Kitchen, according to his account of the incident for The New Yorker. “It’s because of what you wrote online about the protests at Columbia University.”

Border agents questioned him about his views on the Israel-Palestine conflict, combed through his phone, and pressed him about the details of his intended visit. He was held in a windowless holding room for hours, alongside other detainees, before eventually being put on a flight back to Melbourne.
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KTLA5: Masked men in U.S. Border Patrol vests take Santa Ana father after repeatedly hitting him

In a graphic video that has since gone viral on social media, about seven or more masked men wearing U.S. Border Patrol vests are seen violently detaining a father in Santa Ana before forcing him into the back of an unmarked car on Saturday.

The violent incident sparked protests in the following hours, and an online fundraiser was started through GoFundMe, where family members identified the victim as Tustin resident Narciso Barranco, a father to three sons who are all U.S. Marines.

One of his sons, 25-year-old Alejandro Barranco, told KTLA that his father was pepper-sprayed in addition to repeatedly being punched in the face during his detention. According to Alejandro, Narciso was picked up by alleged federal immigration officers while he was working as a landscaper at the IHOP on Edinger Avenue and Ritchey Street.
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Al Jazeera: Satellite images show damage from US strikes on Iran’s Fordow nuclear site

The US struck Iran’s Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear sites, escalating tensions with Iran.

NewsNation: Satellite photos: See before and after images of bombing at Iran nuke sites

Wired: What Satellite Images Reveal About the US Bombing of Iran’s Nuclear Sites

The US concentrated its attack on Fordow, an enrichment plant built hundreds of feet underground. Aerial photos give important clues about what damage the “bunker-buster” bombs may have caused.
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Fox News: Senator Alex Padilla slams JD Vance after VP called him ‘Jose’ during a press conference

Padilla argued that Vance’s comment exemplifies how ‘petty and unserious’ the Trump administration is
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Senator Padilla criticized the vice president for not meeting with the families in Los Angeles who have been “terrorized” by the administration’s deportation efforts “to feel what’s really going on, on the ground.”

He then went on to allege that many of the Marines that were sent to Los Angeles to contain the anti-ICE protests are not happy about being there.

“You saw him [JD Vance] shaking hands with Marines — but did he listen to the Marines?” Padilla questioned. “Because we have report after report of the Marines — so many of the Marines themselves that don’t want to be there. That’s not why they enlisted.”

Continuing his criticisms of Vance, he slammed the vice president for not speaking with the “concerned” employers of illegal immigrants who he claims have been speaking out against the administration’s deportations.

“How about this — just take a moment and talk to the Sheriff of Los Angeles County,” he railed. “Talk to the Chief of Police of Los Angeles City and hear from them their frustration for the lack of communication, the lack of coordination — this unnecessary and counterproductive build-up.”
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NY Times: How Trump Treats Black History Differently Than Other Parts of America’s Past

On the occasion of Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the end of slavery, President Trump took a moment to complain that the national holiday even exists.

“Too many non-working holidays in America,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, just hours after his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, made a point of noting that White House staff had shown up to work.

The president’s decision to snub Juneteenth — a day that has been cherished by generations of Black Americans before it was named a federal holiday in 2021 — is part of a pattern of words and actions by Mr. Trump that minimize, ignore or even erase some of the experiences and history of Black people in the United States. Since taking office in January, he has tried to reframe the country’s past involving racism and discrimination by de-emphasizing that history or at times denying that it happened.

Government websites have been scrubbed of hundreds of words, including “injustice” and “oppression.” Federal agencies eliminated or obscured the contributions of Black heroes, from the Tuskegee Airmen who fought in the military, to Harriet Tubman, who guided enslaved people along the Underground Railroad. School libraries were purged of writings by pre-eminent Black authors like Maya Angelou. Mr. Trump has assailed the Smithsonian Institution for what he characterized as “divisive, race-centered ideology” in its exhibits on race. He ordered the renaming of monuments to honor Confederate soldiers who fought to preserve slavery.
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Daily Kos: A Juneteenth reminder of Trump’s love for the slavery-defending Confederacy

Paul Finkelman: Secession, the Confederate Flag, and Slavery

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But what was the cause of secession, and what led Confederates to start the war by attacking Fort Sumter? The answer is found in the speeches of Confederate politicians and in the statements of the four southern secession conventions that published a “Declaration” explaining their actions. These speeches and documents show that the South seceded to protect slavery and insure white supremacy in the South. Just listen to what southern leaders said between December 1860 and March 1861.

In March 1861, after secession but before the Civil War broke out, Alexander H. Stephens, the Confederate vice president and one of the most perceptive and brightest men in the Confederate government, forcefully set out the reasons for secession and the creation of the Confederacy in his famous “Cornerstone Speech.” Here, Stephens tied slavery to race, making clear that the cornerstone of the Confederacy was not merely chattel slavery, but also on the assumption of the racial and ethnic superiority of the ruling class and the utter inferiority and subordination of blacks.

Thus Stephens declared that, “Our new government is founded upon . . . its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery – subordination to the superior race – is his natural and normal condition.”
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Waging Nonviolence: More carnival than warzone — the LA protests aren’t what you’ve heard

If you believe President Trump, you’d think Los Angeles is in ruins. In a speech to the military at Fort Bragg, he referred to recent protests against immigration raids as “a foreign invasion” wielding Molotov cocktails and “concrete bombs” to reduce the City of Angels to “a trash heap with entire neighborhoods under the control of transnational gangs.” Trump used this narrative to justify deploying 2,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles to “liberate Los Angeles.”

Early footage of the protests, especially from Fox News, seemed to support Trump’s summary of the situation. Images of burning cars, graffiti-covered federal buildings, protesters throwing bottles at authorities, and looters breaking into a convenience store went viral online.

But accounts from within the movement paint a different picture. Social media posts show LA protesters using creativity, humor, joy and even patriotism to express their disapproval of Trump’s immigration raids.
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