US US Politics General 2 - Discussion of President Trump and other politicians

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Should be a wild four years.

Helpful links for those who need them:

Current members of the House of Representatives
https://www.house.gov/representatives

Current members of the Senate
https://www.senate.gov/senators/

Current members of the US Supreme Court
https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx

Members of the Trump Administration
https://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/

 

[clipartfan92]

Oh no, poor CHIRLA.

Death threats, vandalism, investigations: L.A. immigrant rights groups in the fight of their lives
Los Angeles Times (archive.ph)
By Rachel Uranga
2025-06-12 10:00:20GMT

Spoiler

Attorneys and immigrant rights organizations denounce the Trump administration’s policies at Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights headquarters in Los Angeles in April. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“No firmes nada,” a union organizer shouted into a bullhorn as he stood atop the flatbed of a truck outside Ambience Apparel, doling out battlefield legal advice not to sign anything. “You have a right to a lawyer. You are not alone.”

Advocates and lawyers had arrived at the downtown store minutes after tips began to pop off at the hotline set up by the Los Angeles Rapid Response Network, a coalition of 300 volunteers and 23 labor unions and immigrant rights and social justice groups that was organized last year to respond to enforcement.

They joined protesters and tearful family members jostling around a plate glass window to catch glimpses of federal officials arresting immigrants inside the clothing retailer on Friday, in what would become a flashpoint that would put Los Angeles at the center of President Trump’s aggressive immigration policy.


Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles (CHIRLA), speaks in April. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

“They were really coming in with a military style mindset,” said Angelica Salas, a veteran advocate and director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. That morning she went to another location where union leader David Huerta had been arrested.

Although she had never seen any sweeps like it in scale and aggression, she said advocates were prepared. “It’s a very well-organized community. That’s why coming into L.A. is so important for this Trump administration, because what they want to do is they want to break us.”

The coalition of advocates is in a fight for their lives, as the administration undermines its funding while escalating detention and deportation of the people they are meant to help. Many have been doing the work for decades, but the anti-immigrant vitriol has reached a pitch that has them unnerved like never before.

Salas said her office has received death threats. Two weeks ago, vandals threw bricks through the front office window, smashing a few items inside. Workers have reported threatening calls.

“It’s always been hard, and it’s always been, what I would say, controversial,” she said. “But this is at a different level.”

The newest fear — one she never would have thought possible in the past — was that the federal government would start prosecuting them for simply doing their jobs and trying to uphold the right to due process.

On Friday federal officials arrested Huerta, the president of Service Employees International Union California, on suspicion of interfering with federal officers. The union is part of the rapid response network. The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, Bill Essayli, seemed to suggest on Sunday that other union officials and organizers would be investigated.


Union leader David Huerta speaks outside the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building after his release from federal custody on Monday. (Brittny Mejia / Los Angeles Times)

“We saw union activists and organizers be involved in these efforts to resist our operations,” he told local television station KCAL. “We’ve got lots of video online and both surveillance videos. We have FBI teams working around the clock. We will identify you. We’ll find you and we’ll come get you.”

Salas said they are doing nothing illegal. But she takes the threats seriously.

“What they want to do is shut us up and not to be able to expose what’s happening to the human beings that are impacted by this,” she said.

Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, put it more bluntly.

“When federal elected officials are pondering the arrest of our governor, obviously, all of us who are doing this work are concerned,” she said, referring to an offhanded comment Trump made about arresting Gov. Gavin Newsom.

GOP leaders across the country are ramping up their attacks on the organizations, arguing that they are funding the violent agitators with state and federal grant money.


Led by CHIRLA, community members hold a vigil to defend immigrant rights in Los Angeles in January, a day after President Trump was inaugurated. (Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

“The LA Riots are taxpayer funded,” Assemblyman Carl DeMaio (R-San Diego), wrote on X on Monday.

Two Republican Congress members announced Wednesday that they would lead committee investigations of 200 nongovernmental organizations, including CHIRLA, “that were involved in providing services or support to inadmissible aliens during the Biden-Harris administration’s historic border crisis.” And Josh Hawley, a Missouri senator who chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, threatened an investigation solely into CHIRLA, saying that it was “bankrolling” civil unrest.

“Credible reporting now suggests that your organization has provided logistical support and financial resources to individuals engaged in these disruptive actions,” he wrote in a letter to CHIRLA that he posted on X, but that Salas said she had not received. “Let me be clear: bankrolling civil unrest is not protected speech. It is aiding and abetting criminal conduct. Accordingly, you must immediately cease and desist any further involvement in the organization, funding, or promotion of these unlawful activities,” Hawley wrote.

CHIRLA was founded in 1986 by a Catholic priest after President Reagan signed a landmark law that gave wide amnesty to immigrants but made hiring undocumented people illegal. Over the decades, the group has been funded by the state and federal government to organize citizenship programs. California has also provided funding for legal services for recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and other immigrants.

The organization has deep political and philanthropic ties in a region. And many in those circles have immigrant roots or came to political consciousness during the 1990s when anti-immigrant sentiment roiled the state.

Miguel Santana, president and chief executive of the California Community Foundation and the son of undocumented parents, said although his $2.3-billion charitable organization isn’t part of the response network, it is helping in other ways.

“We have mobilized resources to provide legal representation, to assist families on the front line, and we are encouraging other funders to act boldly and join us in this work,” he said at a news conference Wednesday.

Shortly after the raid began Friday — before the tear gas and tactical vehicles came to quell the unrest — the rapid response members arrived. Among their first task was to begin collecting information on who might be detained from those who knew them.

Family members who got word of the raid had already been gathering outside — a daughter whose father has been in the country for more than 20 years, the wife of an accountant at the company who stood in the parking lot teary-eyed, worried about what her children’s future would look like.

Armed with a list of names, lawyers for the group began filing requests to see those detained. By nightfall, families were in line, with at least four lawyers from the network, at the Metropolitan Detention Center.

Inside, they were crowded into the hallways, waiting to see loved ones among the 200 detainees being held in crowded basement facilities, said Elaina Jung Hee Vermeulen, a lawyer and Skadden fellow at California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice.

Vermeulen said it became clear to her early on that she would not be able to meet with most of the people on her list. After hours of waiting, a detention officer allowed her to meet with one client, a father of three who had been in the United States for decades.

“He is the sole breadwinner and they have a young baby,” she said. “Bearing witness to what happened was so traumatic and even in a best scenario if the family is reunited it leaves deep scars that last generations. Families are now in a greater place of precarity.”

Salas said the coalition found at least one individual picked up in the sweep who said they were asked to sign deportation documents and told that if they didn’t, they would be fined $5,000.

Already, local immigrant rights groups had been overwhelmed. Since Trump took office, he has sought to eliminate much of the funding directed to groups that provide legal orientation to families of children and people with mental disabilities in detention centers. And he signed a series of executive orders and pushed policies that made it harder for immigrants to maintain their legal status.

In April, Toczylowski, co-founder of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said she had to lay off 30 members of her staff of 205.

“It’s clear from the funding being cut beforehand that their hope is that lawyers will not be able to hold them accountable,” she said. “Due process is inconvenient to their plans for mass deportation.”

In May, federal agents began arresting immigrants after their court hearings, or during routine immigration check-ins. Advocacy groups had been sending lawyers to the immigration courts to offer advice to the families of detainees — most of whom were following a judge’s order in hopes of staying in the United States. Whereas defendants in criminal court have a right to free counsel, no such right exists in immigration court. Now the nonprofits are scrambling to figure out how to pay for the attorneys to go there.


Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, talks to reporters outside St. Anthony’s Croatian Catholic Church in Los Angeles in 2023. (Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

Toczylowski’s organization is representing a gay Venezuelan makeup artist whom the Trump administration removed to a prison in El Salvador, after dismissing his asylum case.

“We are working as hard as we can and trying to harness the many volunteers and community advocates that are hoping to help us do that, but it is no small task to be having to do more with less, to be having to face bigger threats with a team that is smaller than what we had because of the federal budget cuts,” she said.

Lawyers from her organization were at the downtown detention center over the weekend and learned of one family with a 3-year-old child who had been there for days.

“They were only given Lays Chips and animal crackers and milk for two days before being transferred” to a family detention center in Texas, she said.

Hundreds of immigrants have been arrested and detained in Los Angeles since Thursday, and lawyers have been frustrated by the lack of access to them. Toczylowski’s team spent full days at the federal detention facilities in Adelanto, Calif., where some of those arrested are being held, but was able to see only four people as of Tuesday. Officials at the detention center denied entrance to several Democratic Congress members who sought to do oversight visits on Sunday, she said.

“This alarming lack of transparency and lack of allowing congressional members and lawyers to have access to people who are being detained really begs the question, what are they afraid of us seeing?” she asked.

The Trump administration is not letting up. On Wednesday, tips about raids continued to pour in to the hotline as enforcement actions continued. Salas said her organization fielded more than 3,000 calls in the last week.

Members of the coalition say they cannot become demoralized and give up.

“While the protests were raging downtown and they were raiding car washes in West L.A., there were calls happening from all sectors of the immigrant rights movement and others coming together to figure out, how do we do this,” Toczylowski said.

In Los Angeles County, 1 in 3 residents were born elsewhere and 1 in 4 children live in families with mixed legal statuses.

“These are people who you know were working, who had kids in school, and who were just ripped out of our communities. And I think that it feels like a real attack on our city,” Salas said. “They’re testing California. They’re testing our city.”

Opinion: How Trump is bypassing Los Angeles’s sanctuary city hurdles
The Washington Post (archive.ph)
By Marc A. Thiessen
2025-06-11 22:51:47GMT

Spoiler

Bilal “Bill” Essayli, U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, at a news conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday. (Aude Guerrucci/Reuters)

While the media has focused on President Donald Trump’s deployment of the California National Guard to quell immigration riots in Los Angeles, there is a much more significant aspect of his crackdown on sanctuary cities and states. The Trump administration has found an innovative way to neutralize California’s sanctuary policies, forcing local officials to hand over illegal migrants for deportation despite state and local sanctuary laws and policies that bar them from doing so.

California law enforcement officials can refuse to cooperate with “ICE detainers,” requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to transfer illegal migrants held in local jails to federal immigration officials. That is because ICE detainers are nonbinding and can be disregarded by the local agency.

But Bill Essayli, Trump’s recently appointed U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, has come up with a way to compel California’s cooperation. Local officials can “ignore detainers, but they can’t ignore [federal criminal] warrants,” he told me in an interview.

So, in his first weeks in office, Essayli launched Operation Guardian Angel, a federal task force that is scanning criminal databases every day to identify illegal migrants arrested in the Los Angeles area, and then checking their fingerprints against immigration records to see whether they have previously been deported. If they have, Essayli charges them with illegal reentry, a federal crime, and obtains an arrest warrant from a federal judge, which cannot be ignored by sanctuary jurisdictions.

The operation has been underway for less than a month, but already California is being forced to hand over dozens of illegal migrants to ICE each week. Fox News’s Bill Melugin reported on one of the first ICE detentions under Operation Guardian Angel of a previously deported illegal migrant, who had just been arrested in a robbery in the sanctuary jurisdiction of Los Angeles. Once the concept is proven there, the Justice Department can deploy Operation Guardian Angel across California — and then nationwide. “It could be done in every sanctuary city,” Essayli told me. “Every jurisdiction has access to these databases, and everyone who’s booked in a jail has to be fingerprinted.”

His pioneering effort will save lives. Indeed, if Operation Guardian Angel had been in place 10 years ago, Kate Steinle might still be alive today. In 2015, the young California woman was shot in the back on a San Francisco pier by an illegal migrant, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, who was free because the city refused to honor an ICE detainer. Zarate had been deported five times and thus could easily have been charged with the federal crime of illegal reentry, which would have compelled San Francisco to hand him over to ICE.

According to police, in February an illegal migrant in the Los Angeles area named José Cristian Saravia-Sánchez shot and killed a 48-year-old father of two who interrupted him attempting to steal a neighbor’s catalytic converter. Saravia-Sánchez had been arrested 11 times between June 2022 and August 2024, but Essayli says local law enforcement was prevented by state law from complying with an ICE detainer. Saravia-Sánchez was deported in 2013, so had Operation Guardian Angel been in effect, local police could have been forced to turn him over to ICE — and two Inglewood boys might still have their father.

Stories such as this are why, Essayli said, most local sheriffs who have had their hands tied by sanctuary policies want to cooperate with ICE. “We briefed the sheriffs. A lot of the sheriffs were excited. They were like, ‘We’ve been waiting for this.’” Others, he said, were incredulous when presented with their first federal arrest warrants. “They looked like they’re having a heart attack,” he said. “A lot of them were like, ‘Well, what are these?’ I said: ‘It’s a warrant. You deal with warrants every day. There’s nothing different about this.’”

So far, he has faced no resistance from local law enforcement, Essayli said. He cautions that anyone interfering with the federal warrants will face serious consequences. I asked him what can be done if the illegal migrants found in criminal databases have not been previously deported. They could be charged with other federal crimes, Essayli said. “If they have a firearm, it could be possession of a firearm. If they have a drug offense, we can hit them with a drug offense. If they have fraud, we can charge fraud. There’s a lot of charges we can take federally other than illegal reentry.”

But gathering evidence for these crimes takes time, during which the suspects could be released. Charging migrants with illegal reentry is the fastest way to obtain a federal warrant. “It’s a very simple case. You’re here, you’ve clearly committed an offense because you’re not supposed to be here,” he says.

Essayli says that the politicians behind California’s sanctuary policies are not only putting the lives of American citizens at risk but also making things worse for the illegal migrants they are purporting to protect. “If they had just complied or honored our ICE detainers, a lot of these people would just be processed administratively,” he said. But by forcing him to get federal criminal warrants, “they are causing these illegal aliens to potentially have to serve prison time before their deportation.”

This much is certain: The riots will be contained, and order will soon be restored to Los Angeles’s streets. But Operation Guardian Angel is coming to a sanctuary city near you.

Gov. JB Pritzker set to testify before congressional committee about sanctuary states amid immigration turmoil
Chicago Tribune (archive.ph)
By Daniel C. Vock and Rick Pearson
2025-06-12 11:45:55GMT

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has said he plans to use a U.S. House committee hearing Thursday to educate Republican lawmakers on how the state’s so-called sanctuary policies have helped create safer communities.

But spiraling events triggered by the Trump administration’s recent forceful immigration enforcement tactics, including in Los Angeles and Chicago, could turn a politically contentious debate far more combative.

Beginning at 9 a.m. Chicago time Thursday, Pritzker will appear alongside fellow Democratic governors Kathy Hochul of New York and Tim Walz of Minnesota, who was last year’s unsuccessful vice presidential nominee, in a long-planned hearing before the Republican-controlled House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

“Governors, including those joining me today, have had to shoulder the consequences of a broken immigration system for years,” Pritzker is expected to say in his opening remarks, a copy of which was provided to the Tribune. “The absence of leadership at the federal level by both Democrats and Republicans, and the deliberate actions of leaders in border states, created an untenable situation for Illinois and other states.”

The governors’ testimony comes as the GOP lawmakers who head the committee, underscoring a key Trump talking point, have repeatedly tried to link immigration to violent crime and have faulted Democratic officials for limiting the ways state and local police can carry out immigration enforcement. The same Oversight Committee held a March hearing with big-city mayors, including Brandon Johnson of Chicago, to argue the same point.

But after much hype, the Republicans failed to make a splash with the mayors’ hearing, as city officials largely avoided efforts to be drawn into partisan fights. The mayors insisted that sanctuary laws improved public safety, not jeopardized it.

Pritzker seems to be following the mayors’ example in trying to sidestep major controversies while also blaming Congress for its inability over decades to pass an overhaul of the country’s immigration laws that would allow longtime immigrants without documentation to gain legal status and to help businesses find workers they need.

“Certainly, I’m not there to lecture to (Republican lawmakers),” Pritzker told reporters last week. “I’m there to take questions from them and respond to them.”

“There may be members on that committee who are simply there for a dog-and-pony show, who simply want to grandstand in front of the cameras. I hope not. That’s inappropriate,” he said. “I’m going there on a serious matter to give them my views about how we’re managing through a problem that’s been created for the states by the federal government.”

Pritzker’s comments came before Trump ordered National Guard troops and Marines to Southern California in recent days — over the objection of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, which has sued the Trump administration over the moves. The military forces are tasked with supporting federal agents in immigration enforcement.

Closer to home for Pritzker, immigrants and advocates have rallied against the Chicago Police Department, denouncing officers’ alleged cooperation with federal agents who detained at least 20 immigrants last week on the Near South Side.

The governor said he thinks Chicago police “followed the law.” But several Latino members of the Chicago City Council have called for an investigation. Sanctuary policies allow police to cooperate in criminal investigations of immigrants but not in immigration enforcement actions, which are civil violations.

“Thursday’s hearing is a high-stakes moment to defend our values and push back on the Trump administration’s war on immigrants,” U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” Garcia, a Chicago Democrat, said in an emailed statement. “I trust Governor Pritzker will stand firm, asserting that sanctuary policies keep families safe, build trust, and reflect who we are.”

“With L.A. still reeling from military-style raids and subsequent military deployments, this hearing is a chance to show the country that Illinois won’t be bullied into abandoning its immigrant communities,” Garcia added.

Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University who studies civil rights and constitutional law, said Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in California and comments suggesting Newsom should be arrested likely means Pritzker and the other Democratic governors will face a far different dynamic on Capitol Hill than the big-city mayors did a few months ago.

“The sea change in the political dynamics over (the weekend) puts this on a very different footing,” he said. “We’re just in a wildly different place now, especially once the National Guard starts getting called and lawsuits begin, and arrests are made at a very wide scale.”

“The inclination to be more aggressive in that environment and to be a little more adamant in taking positions might be part of the political calculus for some of the governors in a way that it wasn’t for the mayors,” Kreis added.

All the governors slated to appear Thursday face political pressure to stake out bold positions, he noted, as Pritzker publicly toys with the idea of a 2028 presidential run and Walz already has a national profile because of his vice presidential candidacy.

As Trump took control of National Guard troops against the wishes of Newsom, Pritzker and other Democratic governors blasted the move as an “alarming abuse of power.”

Trump’s National Guard order isn’t limited to California, although that’s the only place where it’s been used so far. Newsom has said the guard isn’t needed.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, Illinois’ senior senator, added his voice Monday to the growing chorus of outraged Democrats.

“What is clear is that President Trump manipulated these protests as an excuse to politicize the military and divert resources from pressing national security and disaster relief responsibilities,” Durbin said.

Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioned why the Trump administration responded so forcefully to protests in Southern California, just months after Trump pardoned nearly 1,500 people who took part in the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol that sought to overturn Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss. Many of those protesters assaulted police officers.

“It appears FBI Director (Kash) Patel’s comment (that) if you, ‘hit a cop, you’re going to jail,’ only applies to people who President Trump doesn’t agree with,” Durbin said in a speech on the Senate floor.

Pritzker preparing in D.C.​

Pritzker arrived in Washington on Monday to prepare for his Oversight Committee testimony. It will be a constraining format for the billionaire governor because congressional hearings are designed to maximize attention for members of Congress, not their witnesses.

The Oversight Committee, in particular, is a contentious forum with partisan firebrands from both sides of the aisle competing for attention. There is no specific piece of legislation being considered by the lawmakers at the hearing.

Pritzker spokesman Matt Hill said in a statement that the two-term Democratic governor will “discuss his track record on public safety and the implementation of bipartisan state laws.”

“Despite the rhetoric of Republicans in Congress, Gov. Pritzker will share facts about how this bipartisan public safety law is fully compliant with federal law and ensures law enforcement can focus on doing their jobs well,” Hill said.

One point Pritzker is expected to highlight to committee Republicans is that Illinois’ TRUST Act — which bans state law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities who lack a judicially issued criminal warrant — was signed into law by a Republican, Pritzker’s predecessor, Gov. Bruce Rauner.

“The Illinois TRUST Act, bipartisan legislation that was signed into law by my Republican predecessor…is fully compliant with federal law,” Pritzker’s opening remarks state. “We want our law enforcement officers focusing on their actual jobs while empowering all members of the public — regardless of immigration status — to feel comfortable calling law enforcement to seek help, report crimes, and cooperate in investigations.”

Pritzker retained and is personally paying the Washington, D.C., law firm Covington & Burling to help prepare him for the hearing. It is one of the firms Trump has sought to sanction for its involvement in previous legal cases against him.

Dana Remus, who conducted the vetting of Pritzker as a potential vice presidential candidate to unsuccessful Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, is among the legal team assisting Pritzker, according to people close to Pritzker.

Republicans plan to paint the prominent governors as weak on public safety.

“The Trump administration is taking decisive action to deport criminal illegal aliens from our nation but reckless sanctuary states like Illinois, Minnesota and New York are actively seeking to obstruct federal immigration enforcement,” U.S. Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement last week.

“The governors of these states must explain why they are prioritizing the protection of criminal illegal aliens over the safety of U.S. citizens, and they must be held accountable,” he added.

Republican pressure mounts​

Congressional Republicans have joined the Trump administration in trying to put pressure on sanctuary cities and states in recent months, often by withholding federal support for other services.

Last week, House Republicans passed a bill to remove Small Business Administration offices from sanctuary cities, including Chicago, Boston, Denver and New York. The proposal would support an initiative by SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler in March to relocate the regional offices in six cities, including Chicago.

In April, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent a memo implying grant money to Illinois and other sanctuary jurisdictions — or those that, like Illinois, allow unauthorized immigrants to drive legally — could be at risk.

Maria Castaneda, a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Transportation, said the state wasn’t changing its policies in response to the memo.

And in February, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi attempted to block federal law enforcement grants for Chicago and other sanctuary jurisdictions, although a federal judge in California ruled those actions unconstitutional in April.

“They are absolutely trying to bully (states and cities),” said Debu Gandhi, senior director of immigration policy for the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington. “This overreach will override local control. Withholding community funding from Americans is not an effective way to improve public safety.”

Laurence Benenson, vice president of policy and advocacy for the National Immigration Forum, said there are legal limits to the repercussions the federal government can impose on states for not falling into line with the administration’s priorities. The Supreme Court, for example, has said financial penalties can’t be so severe that they are akin to a “gun to the head” of states for not complying, Benenson explained.

And it’s Congress — not the executive branch — that has to set the priorities.

“If they’re retroactively saying, ‘We’re adding all these conditions to this funding you’re already receiving,’ that’s another thing they’re going to be challenged on legally,” Benenson said.

Raising the stakes​

Since returning to office, Trump has prioritized immigration enforcement with provocative actions, some of which judges have ruled illegal.

That includes deporting people to a prison in El Salvador without first holding legal hearings, detaining pro-Palestinian protesters and threatening to block all foreign students from Harvard University.

The administration has used plainclothes officers using unmarked vehicles and not wearing badges or agency identification to detain people suspected of immigration violations. Agents have taken people into custody after court hearings and at check-ins with caseworkers.

Gandhi said such actions undermine efforts to provide for public safety.

“What we’ve seen is recklessness and cruelty, not the promised actions that make Americans safer,” he said. “Immigrants are being targeted for their speech. International students who have not violated the law are having their legal status placed in jeopardy. People are being deported to a notorious foreign prison in a third country with no due process.”

Kreis, the law professor from Georgia State, said the Trump administration’s tactics have intensified the protests. But once federal agents are in danger, he said, local police are likely to move to protect them.

“As a liberal who is very much against a lot of what the Trump administration is doing with immigration policy, I can also see a very different scenario where the federal government was trying to enforce some civil rights policy that liberals would love,” he said.

Garcia, the Chicago congressman, said Thursday’s hearing comes as a response to difficulties Trump has faced in pushing key parts of his agenda through Congress and the jolts he has caused in the economy through tariffs and trade policy.

“Trump desperately needs to distract us from his failures,” Garcia said in his statement. “The economy is on the brink of a recession because the world is calling his bluff. We must stand strong against this cruel, authoritarian war that seeks to scapegoat immigrants to cover up the incompetence and corruption of the President and his administration.”

Vock is a freelance reporter based in Washington, D.C. Chicago Tribune’s Jeremy Gorner contributed.

https://twitter.com/GOPoversight/status/1932830203237064833 (archive.ph)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jb5QW8M3t4 (archive.ph)(PreserveTube)

The hearing starts in 10 minutes and will be streamed here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NupsVDX2nec

 

[The Nothingness]

Funny how having a parade for the Army's birthday wasn't an issue when Biden gave the approval (as mediocre as it sounded).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/06/07/army-parade-dc-trump-birthday/
https://ghostarchive.org/archive/qUw6k

On June 12, 2024, a day when Joe Biden was still president, running for reelection, and had every expectation of serving a second term, the U.S. Army filed a permit in the hopes of celebrating its 250th birthday on the National Mall the following year. The event would involve as many as 300 soldiers and civilian personnel. There would be a concert by the U.S. Army Band. Four cannons would be fired. Some 120 chairs would be set up.

 

[MugolEx]

“Beaner Blowout”

This one please.

 

[yt Oliander]

I think that the “LA riots” is too vague a name for the events of the past weekend.

Here are some name ideas.
“Mexican Insurrection”
“Don’t send us back riot”
“Anti-White riot”
“Anti-American riot”
“Criminals over Americans riot”
“Battle for LA”
“Destroy America protest”
“Invasion of LA”
“Beaner Blowout”

Westcoast Wetback War

 

[DumbDude43]

Tell them to pay more:

that's really what it comes down to, and not accepting flimsy excuses

>but we cant find domestic labor for these jobs!
pay more then.
>but we cant afford to do that!
you're a professional businessman, figure it out. cut middle management, short yourself, raise prices, whatever.
>but if we raise prices then we'll lose to foreign competition!
the solution to foreign competition isn't wage dumping, the solution is import tariffs.

 

[Anakin Soywalker]

That's why you always empty the magazine, if (God forbid) you're in a "stand your ground" situation. (Or is that a legal, NRA urban legend?)

Nobody listen to this no guns retard.

 

[SpergioLeonne]

because it serves their purposes.

Whose purposes? Remember you’re defending that China is better at adhering to its principles, not that it’s a superior cold blooded predator. It never states being a superior cold blooded predator as a principle

run a big export surplus to acquire large amounts of foreign currency, then use that foreign currency to expand chinese influence across the globe. that's their approach right now.
is it the best possible strategy? will it keep working forever? maybe, maybe not, only time will tell. but it's the one they have decided on because they think it's their best option.

http://www.npc.gov.cn/zgrdw/englishnpc/Constitution/2007-11/15/content_1372963.htm

Here is the “principles” section of the Chinese constitution as amended in 1982 if you care to check

Article 4 is kino


They’re not even SOCIALIST, because that would require providing some kind of services

 

[Samuel Fuller]

Westcoast Wetback War

De-eurofag it to the correct “West Coast Wetback War” and it’s perfect.

 

[Martys_not_smarty]

Mexicans are an artificial creation of natives, Spain, and a bit of Italian and German. They have no claim. And they were colonizers too, having controlled California for 30 years after Spain fucked off.

On top of that England and Russia were in California especially Russia who used Fort Ross as a spot for their ships to resupply on the way to Alaska. Maybe Putin should flex a little and tell the inbred brazer scum to fuck off and also you forgot the three non indigenous bloodlines found in modern mexicans: the mules, horses and wardogs the spanish brought over that let them rape their heart ripping ancestors after taking all their gold.

 

[Blackstar]

https://x.com/USAttyEssayli/status/1933158095833964798

https://archive.ph/Gx6pi

 

[innocent jogger]

I think that the “LA riots” is too vague a name for the events of the past weekend.

Here are some name ideas.
“Mexican Insurrection”
“Don’t send us back riot”
“Anti-White riot”
“Anti-American riot”
“Criminals over Americans riot”
“Battle for LA”
“Destroy America protest”
“Invasion of LA”
“Beaner Blowout”

Beaner Blowout 2025 has a nice ring to it.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Coping and seething from the liberal I know personally:

They also are

1. Using a verse from the Old Testament not the New Testament which immediately turns me off when someone tries to do the "I am not a Christian, but here is what your stupid book says, so maybe that will make you do what I want"

2. That verse articulates a common sentiment of HOSPITALITY that existed in the Mediterranean area during the bronze age and was shared by pretty much everyone due to how important trade was. When a foreigner comes to your shores, treat them as honored guest and they will do the same when you go over to their shores. It doesn't mean "give them your house".

 

[ghastlyretard]

Please stop with the beaner blowout. I got real sick yesterday and watched my friojoles especiales and bistek tacos run right through me and into the toilet. I don't want to relive this every time I think about the riots.

 

[he who has thus come/gone]

Do you these protests/riots stop after the weekend since polls show the general public are siding with the president?

Nobody believes polls anymore because almost all of them are fake. And even then, it’s not about the popularity of the actions. You can’t engage a golem in rational debate. Not even a golem’s master can stop it with words when control is lost.

 

[Look--an Alien!]

Tell them to pay more:
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Anyone that hires illegals to work their fields is a nigger. They should read a history book and realize the last time we brought in cheap labor to work the fields, the workers stayed, and they are a blight on western civilization.

 

[SpergioLeonne]

Anyone that hires illegals to work their fields is a nigger. They should read a history book and realize the last time we brought in cheap labor to work the fields, the workers stayed, and they are a blight on western civilization.

Like, you could pay inmates even less than illegals if you had to, but even barring that, agricultural visas and migrant workers are a thing. They stay for the season, earn money, then go home when it’s not the growing season.

The idea that illegals need to reside here is absolute stupid bad faith bullshit

 

[Sandshrew]

From this research paper: https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bjso.12665
I'm not surprised considering Classical Liberals would be considered Conservatives, by Modern Liberal standards.

 

[innocent jogger]

I've been hearing "The Marines are Coming" for almost a week now.

Just like the King of Thrones dragons?

 

[JustSomeDong]

in some places, insurance companies will ask a higher or lower price depending on what model of car you're trying to insure, based on statistical analysis they do which consistently says that certain types of cars are much more likely to end up in accidents than others (the ones popular with young men)

My Mom hasn't driven a car in almost a decade, but you better believe she's on my car insurance. Gimme that old woman discount, bitches! I pay about $300 for full coverage on 3 vehicles.

Without dear ole Mom and her blessed discount for being an older woman, I'd pay almost twice as much. Maybe much more, nowadays. I haven't checked in a few years.

 

[mindlessobserver]

During the Mexican-American war, Alta California had less than 20k people living in it and was taken in a single naval engagement: the Battle of Monterey. The other big acquisition: Nuevo Mexico, was simply walked into with a thousand men. They had so few people actually living in these territories that 20 years prior to the war Mexico had passed a law allowing for foreigners to purchase and settle these lands (Colonization Law of August 18, 1824 ) so it's not at all unlikely that the majority of people living in these areas, just like with Texas, didn't even identify as being Mexican.

It's also important to note that despite being completely devoid of anyone but coyotes and Native Americans, the territory the Mexicans ceded to the USA at the end of the war had been run by them for just 20 years. Before that it was just some vague line on a map written up by the French and Spanish.

The USA by contrast fully settled it, millions of our people live on it, and we've been there for 170 years, 6 times longer then Mexico had the lines on the map with no Mexicans living in it.