#civil-liberties

#civil-liberties

Portlanders deploying inflatable animal costumes, a brass band, mass ukulele renditions of "This Land Is Your Land," naked bike rides, and other tactics in their ICE protests are undermining the Trump administration's lurid claims that Portland, Oregon, is a "war-torn" city under siege by a violent left. It's hard to portray someone dancing in an inflatable frog or chicken costume as a terrorist.

On Tuesday, the state department announced it was systematically identifying visa holders who celebrated the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk, declaring in a social media statement that the United States has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans. The visa cancellations represent an escalating government-wide campaign to suppress criticism of Kirk, who was killed last month. The administration cut visas for nationals from Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Germany and Paraguay.

Civil service officials last week attempted to quell the second uproar of the year from private sector digital ID app providers in a behind-closed-doors meeting, while this week (Monday 13 October) new technology secretary Liz Kendall attempted to face down MPs from all parties in a House of Commons debate as they expressed their concerns and protestations at the plans.

ICE wants YOU to betray your fellow-HUMANS. Join ICE today and receive UP TO a $50,000 signing bonus, which YOU can spend on anything YOU want-like a LAWYER when you're eventually TRIED at THE HAGUE. ICE wants YOU to forget that YOU and nearly everyone YOU have ever KNOWN are descended from IMMIGRANTS. We also want YOU to ignore the FACT that the FIRST LADY worked in the U.S. before ever getting a WORK VISA.

"The general counsels of the CIA and ODNI wield extraordinary influence, and they do so entirely in secret, shaping policies on surveillance, detention, interrogation and other highly consequential national security matters," they wrote in the letter sent Friday and addressed to the top Republican and Democratic leaders on the Senate and House intelligence committees. "Moreover, they are the ones primarily responsible for determining the boundaries of what these agencies may lawfully do."

Because our First Amendment, our constitutional rights are under attack all across the country. And I don't think that we or any other Americans should take it sitting down. We have to fight. And if we fight together in solidarity, we can win. Democracy has to be political, it has to be economic and it has to be in the bedroom. And it has to include everybody, and that hasn't been the case always in the past.

As President Donald Trump prepares to further unleash a rapidly expanding surveillance state against the administration's critics, recent legal struggles from activists who document and protest Trump's mass deportation campaign may be a preview of what's to come as part of a broader effort to silence dissent. Trump made headlines on September 22 with an executive order declaring "Antifa," short for anti-fascist, a domestic terrorist organization.

Now, the government is seeking to convince a New York appeals court that the tool, a habeas corpus petition, should be generally off-limits in such cases, arguing that it runs afoul of American immigration law. If the U.S. argument is successful, noncitizens detained by the administration and placed in immigration proceedings could lose one of the most dependable methods of challenging their detention.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump told U.S. military leaders to prepare to engage in domestic missions, saying the military would likely be targeting the "enemy from within" - a phrase Trump has used in the past to refer to progressives and left-leaning groups. The nation's top military heads gathered at Marine Corps Base Quantico, about 30 miles south of Washington D.C.

No one wants masked officers roaming their communities and kidnapping people with impunity,

When MQ-9 Predator drones flew over anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles this summer, it was the first time they had been dispatched to monitor demonstrations on U.S. soil since 2020, and their use reflects a change in how the government is choosing to deploy the aircraft once reserved for surveilling the border and war zones.

What are you supposed to call it when masked and uniformed federal police show up at a political rally for an opposition politician? Or when the president essentially declares martial law in the capital city? Or, for that matter, when the executive is trying to enforce its cultural policy on a nation's universities and museums? And what else to call it when the administration is trying to cook the unemployment numbers to hide a struggling economic picture?

Walk down the street and you're likelyto be recorded by one of thousandsof security cameras, some belongingto the New York Police Department,others just connected or available to the department's databases. Drive into the city and traffic cameraswill automatically photograph your car, capturing your vehicle's license plate, make, model, color, distinctive markings and even passengers. Post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or TikTok and the N.Y.P.D. can scrape and store your messages, capturing your thoughts, plans, political statements and friend groups.

The mural, believed to comment on the UK's crackdown on the group Palestine Action, was removed just days after its unveiling in London. Anonymous street artist Banksy's mural showing a judge hitting a protester with a gavel has been removed from the wall of a court building in London two days after it was revealed, in what appeared to be a response to a crackdown on protests in solidarity with the Palestine Action campaign group.

Britain's Metropolitan Police arrested 857 peoplefor "showing support" for Palestine Action, an activist group thatthe government designated under the Terrorism Act in July. In doing so, the government made it a crime to wear an item of clothing, or display or carry something that might "arouse reasonable suspicion" that one is a member or supporter of the group. The penalty is prison time, a fine, or both.

It was the city's first major organized protest since President Donald Trump declared a state of emergency and unleashed federal troops onto its streets. Banners waved and voices rose in unison at the "We Are All D.C." march, a massive show of resistance led by a coalition that included Free DC, defenders of local self-rule, Democracy Forward, and the American Civil Liberties Union. Their message was clear: the federal occupation of the capital must end.

Thousands of protesters marched across Washington, D.C., on Saturday in one of the largest demonstrations against President Donald Trump's federal takeover of policing in the nation's capital. Behind a bright red banner reading END THE D.C. OCCUPATION in English and Spanish, protesters marched over two miles from Meridian Hill Park to Freedom Plaza near the White House to rail against the fourth week of National Guard troops and federal agents patrolling D.C.'s streets.

Federal grand juries return indictments in the overwhelming majority of cases, about 99.9 percent, according to the best estimates. The prosecution controls every aspect of the proceedings, while the defendant has no opportunity to object or present their case; there's a reason lawyers joke that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich. It is historic, and quite possibly unprecedented, for federal prosecutors to face so many rebukes in such a short span of time.

A 35-year-old former U.S. Army sergeant, Bajun "Baji" Mavalwalla II, faces up to six years in prison for protesting against ICE deportations in what legal experts are calling a test case for the Trump administration's attempts to criminalize and punish dissent. Mavalwalla was arrested and charged with "conspiracy to impede or injure officers" after he was identified in a video taken at the protest and shared on Instagram.