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Armed With New Slush Fund, ‘Lawless and Rogue’ ICE Arrests 10,000+ in Just Five Days

Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Those arrested in the recent surge include a 56-year-old Catholic nun from Nigeria.

Ordered by the Trump White House to aggressively increase arrest rates, federal immigration officials have reportedly detained more than 10,000 people in just the last five days, intensifying fear in communities across the United States.

The New York Times, which was first to report the new detention figures late Wednesday, noted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials were “told that 2,000 arrests a day was the new standard for enforcement.” The agency, flush with cash following President Donald Trump’s signing of a reconciliation package containing another $70 billion for immigration enforcement, has been instructed to assign 80% of its officers to “arrest operations,” according to the Times.

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The Trump administration claims to be targeting the “worst of the worst,” but available data shows that the percentage of people arrested by ICE despite having no criminal convictions has tended to rise during the agency’s mass detention efforts. On Sunday, ICE briefly detained a 56-year-old nun from Nigeria as she walked to church in McAllen, Texas.

“The geniuses at ICE just arrested a Catholic nun, who practices as a nurse, as she was walking to church,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) wrote in response to Sister Leticia Ugboaja’s detention. “Our Republican colleagues think they need even more money. Had enough?”

The Times reported that immigration attorneys across the US “have been on alert” as ICE arrests surge, though much more quietly than earlier blitzes in Minneapolis—where federal immigration agents killed two US citizens—and other major cities, where groups of armed and masked officers roamed the streets and menaced neighborhoods.

“Cindy Blandon, an immigration attorney in Miami, said that one of her clients, a Nicaraguan father of two children, had an immigration court hearing set for 2027, but was arrested by ICE on Monday during a routine check-in,” the Times reported. “And in Utah, Ysabel Lonazco, an immigration attorney, has noticed an uptick as well… One of her clients, Arturo, a 48-year-old Mexican man, was arrested in Salt Lake City on his way to a soccer game on Sunday, according to his wife, Veronica. She said the arrest had shattered their family.”

ICE also appears to be ignoring a federal judge’s order last week curtailing arrests at immigration courthouses. According to The Intercept:

On Thursday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested an Ecuadorian man at a court at 26 Federal Plaza and a man from the Dominican Republic at another court at 290 Broadway, both in Lower Manhattan. The arrests continued on Monday, when ICE agents detained a third man, originally from Guatemala, at 290 Broadway.
In legal filings challenging the detentions of the men taken Thursday, advocates with the nonprofit Make the Road New York accused ICE of not only violating their clients’ right to due process, but also of brazenly flouting a federal court order.

Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, told The Intercept that “we’re witnessing ICE, yet again, operate in a lawless and rogue fashion and not following court orders.”

“We’re supposedly a nation under the rule of law, and our judicial branch has said that this agency must stop engaging in this lawless behavior, and they continue to do so,” said Awawdeh.

ICE is currently headed by Acting Director David Venturella, a former private prison executive. A record number of people have died in ICE custody under the second Trump administration.

Last week, Trump announced that he intends to nominate former Oklahoma state trooper Lance Schroyer to lead ICE in a permanent capacity.

Marcos Charles, the head of ICE’s deportation wing, cheered the recent arrest surge in an email to agency personnel earlier this week. On Saturday, ICE officers arrested 2,400 people.

“I want to personally thank each of you for your extraordinary efforts this past weekend,” Charles wrote, according to the Times. “Through your dedication, professionalism, and unwavering commitment to our mission, enforcement and removal operations achieved remarkable operational results.”

Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Orcas discuss rotting brain, front Orca says disinhibition and swearing are typical and common symptoms

Post author:dizzy
Post published:4 July 2026
Post category:Donald Trump Fascism human rights violations Neo-liberalism new authoritarianism plutocracy politics the filthy rich
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‘Brazen Crypto Corruption’ Helps Trump Pocket $2.2 Billion During First Year Back in Office

Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and others ring the Nasdaq opening bell on August 13, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

One expert who has studied presidential wealth called Trump’s windfall “completely unprecedented” in American history

Annual financial disclosures released Tuesday reveal that US President Donald Trump pocketed at least $2.2 billion—more than half of it from his family’s crypto grift—during his first year back in the White House, a windfall that experts say is without precedent in American history.

The disclosure report shows that Trump pulled in $635 million in royalties from Celebration Coins, an entity linked to the president’s meme coin. The president also disclosed around $527 million in proceeds from token sales by World Liberty Financial, the Trump family crypto venture spearheaded by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.

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“It is completely unprecedented,” Megan Gorman, a tax attorney who has studied the history of presidential wealth, told The New York Times of the president’s windfall.

Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement that “Trump’s obscene income is driven by various cryptocurrency schemes, leveraging his political position to exploit a scam-driven industry that he once said was nothing more than a racket.”

“In doing so, he’s ripping off investors—to the tune of billions—who want to get in on the game with him, or think that buying his crypto products is an innocent means to show their support,” said Weissman. “Most troubling, Trump’s personal profit interest has now aligned him with the crypto industry, paving the way for dangerous legislation that will facilitate mass rip-offs and even threaten financial system stability.”

Trump’s massive profits from an industry he’s tasked with regulating represent what the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center (CLC) described as an “unprecedented” conflict of interest, notwithstanding the White House’s laughable claim that “neither the president nor his family has ever engaged—or will ever engage—in conflicts of interest.”

“We have never seen a president have direct conflicts of interest with his financial holdings and the policies he supports, and it’s another example why we need widespread ethics reform now,” Kedric Payne, CLC’s senior director of ethics, told The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal noted that, in addition to crypto profits, “Trump reported $4.7 million in income last year from Trump-branded watches, as well as $1.9 million in royalties from his ‘Save America’ book.”

“Multimillion-dollar licensing deals linked to real-estate developers stretched from Romania to India to across the Middle East. A $6,484-a-month pension from the Screen Actors Guild continued paying out,” the newspaper observed.

The disclosures also include tens of million dollars in legal settlements stemming from Trump’s lawsuits against major companies, including ABC, CBS, and Meta.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said Tuesday that lawmakers must add language to the upper chamber’s crypto legislation that prevents “the president, vice president, senior administration officials, members of Congress, and their families from profiting off the crypto industry.”

“If it does not,” the senator warned, “it will only turbocharge Donald Trump’s brazen crypto corruption.”

Article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Post author:dizzy
Post published:4 July 2026
Post category:Donald Trump Fascism Neo-liberalism new authoritarianism
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‘Yeah, That’s Illegal’: USPS Chief Says States Won’t Receive Mail Ballots Unless They Hand Voter Rolls to Trump

Article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Absentee ballots are prepared to be mailed at the Wake County Board of Elections on September 17, 2024 in Raleigh, North Carolina.
(Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)

“You’re making a decision that people cannot vote by mail. That’s unacceptable,” said US Sen. Gary Peters.

Postmaster General David Steiner drew the ire of Democratic senators and voting rights advocates on Wednesday when he said that the US Postal Service would not deliver mail-in ballots in states that do not hand their voter files to the Trump administration.

During a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the panels ranking member, asked Steiner if USPS would deliver ballots in a state whose government had refused the Trump administration’s request for access to its absentee voter list.

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“Under our proposed regulation, no,” Steiner replied. “We would tell the state that we need the manifest.”

Peters responded by accusing USPS of creating a rule that “coerces” states into handing their voter files to the federal government even though they are under no legal obligation to do so.

“You’re making a decision that people cannot vote by mail,” Peters said. “That’s unacceptable.”

PETERS: Yes or no, if a state refuses to turn their absentee voter list to the federal government, will the Postal Service still mail their ballots under this proposed rule?

POSTMASTER GENERAL STEINER: No.

PETERS: So the proposed rule basically coerces states to hand over their… pic.twitter.com/5bnJb5Atnr
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 24, 2026

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) also sparred with Steiner during the hearing, informing the postmaster general that USPS had absolutely no role to play in determining how states conduct their elections.

“You run the Postal Service, you deliver the mail,” Blumenthal said. “You don’t review ballots or registration. Nobody said you should… This proposed rule is bogus.”

Blumenthal demanded Steiner commit to deliver all mail-in ballots to voters in his state regardless of whether it complied with the Trump administration’s demands, but the postmaster general said he would not make such a commitment.

“Our proposed rule is subject to litigation,” Steiner told him. “We’ll see how that all turns out.”

“Well, I guess we will see,” Blumenthal replied, “but it will probably be in court.”

The Founding Fathers didn’t envision USPS reviewing voting ballots or registration. Trump’s Postmaster General refuses to commit to deliver mail-in-ballots without fulfilling Trump’s new bogus, sham review. pic.twitter.com/V3jiBMyGOY
— Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) June 24, 2026

Some observers reacted with shock to Steiner’s willingness to go along with Trump’s latest election-rigging scheme, which they said was patently unconstitutional.

“Yeah, that’s illegal,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “The Post Office can’t refuse to deliver mail to try and get policy concessions.”

“We have a Postmaster General who should not be in any position of trust or influence,” commented political scientist Norman Ornstein, “a disgraceful traitor to American values.”

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker signaled his state would challenge the proposed USPS rule.

“Illinois expanded vote-by-mail because we believe voting should be easier, not harder,” Pritzker wrote. “Now, Trump’s handpicked Postmaster General is threatening to withhold mail ballots unless states turn over voter rolls. That’s not election security. It’s voter suppression.”

Political scientist Robert E. Kelly argued that Trump’s attack on mail-in voting was a “deeply malign gimmick which makes it so hard to accommodate MAGA within the US political order.”

“No one thought to use the mail as a partisan weapon,” Kelly wrote. “The laws and norms around mail are poorly known, because no one ever thought to try this gambit before. But now, because Trump insists on politicizing the bureaucracy, this whole thing will go to court just months before the election.”

Article by Brad Reed republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Post author:dizzy
Post published:4 July 2026
Post category:Donald Trump Fascism human rights violations Neo-liberalism new authoritarianism plutocracy politics
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Israeli army confirms authenticity of image showing Palestinian detainee abused in Gaza

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Israeli soldiers carrying rifles patrol a street during a raid on Balata Refugee Camp in Nablus, West Bank, Palestine, on June 18, 2026. [Nedal Eshtayah – Anadolu Agency]

The Israeli army on Thursday confirmed the authenticity of a widely circulated image showing a Palestinian detainee being abused by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, Anadolu reports.

The image shows the detainee lying face down, blindfolded and bound with wire, with an iron rod strapped to his back.

The image sparked widespread criticism on social media and renewed calls from human rights advocates for an independent investigation into the treatment of Palestinian detainees in Israeli custody.

The confirmation came in a statement carried by Israel’s Army Radio, which quoted an unnamed military spokesperson after the image circulated widely on social media.

Blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his back, a widely circulated image of a Palestinian detainer from Gaza is being described as a stark depiction of violations against Palestinian prisoners.

The young Palestinian young is seen blindfolded and restrained with plastic… pic.twitter.com/TXmrSAYbI0
— The New Arab (@The_NewArab) July 3, 2026

“The army confirms that the footage published on Palestinian networks over the past 24 hours, showing a man from Gaza handcuffed, tied to a bed, blindfolded, and with a rod tied to his back, is real footage that occurred in the Gaza Strip,” the spokesperson said.

Army Radio published the image but provided no details about where or when the incident occurred.

The image renewed attention to the harsh detention conditions and abuse of Palestinian detainees held by Israel.

According to Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups, about 9,500 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons, where detainees face torture, starvation, and medical neglect that have resulted in the deaths of dozens of prisoners.

Israel has waged a genocidal war on Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 73,000 Palestinians and injuring more than 173,000, according to Palestinian figures, while widespread destruction has affected about 90% of the enclave’s civilian infrastructure.

READ: Israeli army disperses protest in southern West Bank, injures, arrests Palestinians

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel's genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism "without qualification". Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/ — Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/

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Post author:dizzy
Post published:3 July 2026
Post category:Benjamin Netanyahu crap pretend Labour Donald Trump Fascism genocide human rights violations Israel Keir Starmer Labour Party Neo-liberalism new authoritarianism Palestine plutocracy politics Zionism
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‘Beginning of a New Phase’: Hottest June Ever Recorded for World’s Oceans

Article by Jon Queally republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

(Photo by Richard Pasquarella on Unsplash)

“With ocean temperatures at these levels and El Niño on the horizon, we are likely to see more temperature records fall in the coming months.”

A new report released Wednesday shows that surface temperatures of the world’s oceans hit a record for June, sparking fresh warnings of grave “consequences for weather patterns, global climate and marine ecosystems” across the globe.

The analysis by the European Union’s Copernicus Marine Service, and confirmed by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), finds that “record global sea surface temperatures” of 21.0° Celsius (69.8° Fahrenheit) in June of 2026 beat the previous record in the same month broken in 2023 and again in 2024.

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C3S director Carlo Buontempo warned that the “current conditions” of the oceans “could indicate the beginning of a new phase, leading, once more, to uncharted territory.”

“With ocean temperatures at these levels and El Niño on the horizon, we are likely to see more temperature records fall in the coming months,” Buontempo warned. “That Copernicus Marine data reaches the same conclusion through independent methods speaks to the strength of European science—and to why open, robust data matters now more than ever.”

According to a statement from Copernicus, warmer oceans have wide-ranging impacts on natural systems and human infrastructure, noting that “higher ocean temperatures keep the atmosphere warm for longer, provide extra energy to storms and increase evaporation, thus enhancing the potential for extreme precipitation and flooding. Ocean warming also contributes to sea level rise and ice melt, and stresses marine ecosystems.”

With the onset of a new El Niño cycle—which tends to trigger more pronounced weather events worldwide—the continued increase of ocean temperatures is a serious concern of scientists.

Wednesday’s report on ocean temperatures also arrives as record-breaking heat waves hit both Europe and North America, offering more evidence of the perils of an ever-hotter world that is being pushed to the brink by the burning of fossil fuels and the failure of governments worldwide to finally act against the fossil fuel industry that is driving the crisis.

Surging ocean surface temperatures are “not unexpected,” Michael Meredith, an ocean scientist at the British Antarctic Survey, told CNN in response to the Copernicus report. “But the pace of warming we are now seeing is alarming.”

Article by Jon Queally republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).