Category: 2025

curated citations to news sources

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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amNY: Comptroller Brad Lander arrested at ICE court hearing

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Lander’s arrest, which amNewYork observed, occurred as the comptroller and his staff walked arm-in-arm with an immigrant whom federal agents — representing ICE, the FBI and the Treasury Department, each of whom wearing masks to conceal their faces — moved to seize after a court hearing. Moments earlier, the immigrant had their case dismissed pending appeal.

As the agents moved to pull Lander away and take the immigrant into custody, the comptroller shouted, “Show me your warrant, show me your badge.”

“I will let go if you show me a judicial warrant,” he repeated. “I would like to see the warrant, and then I will let go.”

Seconds later, one of the officers said, “Take him in.” The agents then forcibly removed Lander, pushed him against the wall and cuffed him.
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Michelle Goldberg: Trump Has Reawakened the Resistance

Before this Saturday’s enormous nationwide No Kings protests, Leah Greenberg, a founder of Indivisible, one of the groups behind the demonstrations, worried that too many people had lost faith in their collective ability to stop Donald Trump from remaking America in his tawdry autocratic image. Her group realized that they needed “to reverse the sense that Trump is inevitable, that he’s going to win,” she told me.

When Trump first took office in 2017, it seemed to much of the country a shocking fluke caused by the democratically dubious Electoral College, and his stunned opponents rose up in furious rejection. …

This time around, there’s less hope and more resignation. …

…The No Kings protests, held on the same day that Trump was hosting a military parade in Washington, were meant to challenge that assumption. They succeeded, with Trump’s help.
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But what really made No Kings feel like a potential turning point was the juxtaposition with Trump’s anemic parade in Washington, which fell on his birthday, though it was ostensibly held to celebrate the Army’s 250 anniversary. Videos showed tanks squeaking down the street in front of viewing stands that were more than half empty. The Wall Street Journal, no left-wing rag, described the crowd as “sparse” and “subdued.” A display that was meant to be bombastic and menacing instead looked pathetic.
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NY Times: How the Minnesota Shootings Suspect Was Caught

A two-day manhunt ended Sunday night as police captured the suspect, Vance Boelter, in a field. No force was used.
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – June 15, 2025

Yesterday began with the horrific news that a gunman had shot two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses in what Minnesota governor Tim Walz said appeared to be a “politically motivated assassination.” State representative Melissa Hortman, who was the top Democrat in the Minnesota House, and her husband, Mark, both died in the attack at their home in Brooklyn Park, a city near Minneapolis. The gunman also shot Democratic Minnesota state senator John Hoffman nine times and his wife, Yvette, eight at their home in Champlin. The hospital reports they are in stable condition after surgery.
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MAGA Republicans are working hard to identify Boelter with what Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) called “Marxism” and Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) called “the extreme left,” but as investigative journalist Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 Nashville notes, public databases show Boelter was in the past a registered Republican. His evangelical religion and his anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion stances reflect MAGA positions. Boelter’s roommate told reporters that Boelter was a “strong” supporter of President Trump.
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While Trump and his loyalists are trying to project an image of invincibility, their actual power seems to be faltering.

Ten years ago tomorrow, on June 16, 2015, Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower to a lobby filled with extras, to announce he was running for president. One reporter called his speech, in which he claimed that Mexico was sending criminals and rapists to the United States, “eccentric.”
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WSJ: A Patriotic Celebration Lays Bare the Fragile Nature of American Unity

Trump’s military parade drew subdued crowd to Washington while hundreds of thousands protested nationwide

AP: Anti-Trump demonstrators crowd streets, parks and plazas across the US. Organizers say millions came

Times of London: Trump military parade met with empty seats amid nationwide protests

Hindustan Times: Trump’s military parade in DC overshadowed by his giant toilet statue, netizens quip ‘The only throne fit for this King’

Trump’s military parade in DC faced torrential rain and protests, overshadowed by a striking eight-foot statue of him on a toilet.
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