The Bay Area Demo Legal Collab and friends are hosting a Grand Jury education and training event. Join us for a political history of how Grand Juries are used for political repression, hear from Grand Jury resisters and learn how to plan for repression for yourself and your community.
In the Bay Area there have been recent FBI visits, Grand Jury subpoenas and investigations into our political movements. If you are contacted by the feds or other law enforcement agencies you should exercise your rights and reach out to legal support:
· You do not have to open your door or let FBI or other agents into your home without a warrant.
· You have the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney: you do not have to talk to FBI or other agents or answer their questions. It can be dangerous to do so. Say, "I do not want to answer questions without my lawyer. Please slip your card under the door and my lawyer will call you."
· For legal help, call the Bay Area Federal Defense Line, 415-285-1041 and someone will return your call within 48 hours.
The Bay Area Federal Defense line can help connect you to a lawyer if you are contacted by agents related to progressive political activism. It is sponsored by the Bay Area Demo Legal Support Collaborative- a joint effort of Legal Solidarity Bay Area, NLG-SF, Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, Anti-Repression Committee, and Oaklaw.
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We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here. |
| World Federation of Trade Unions |
We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here.
Statement from the World Federation of Trade Unions:
Ports For Peace – Jobs With Dignity
Following the Third International Meeting of Mediterranean and European Dockworkers’ and Port Workers’ Unions, held in Istanbul in May 2026, the participating unions have launched a common international day of action on 30 October 2026.
The meeting focused on the struggle against wars, genocide and military aggression, while also addressing the challenges facing dockworkers and port workers, including wages, working conditions, automation projects, and occupational health and safety.
The participating organizations, CGT Ports and Docks (France), ENEDEP (Greece), LAB (Basque Country), Liman-İş (Turkey), ODT (Morocco), and USB (Italy), representing workers in more than 40 Mediterranean and European ports, are calling on dockworkers and port workers to mobilize together on 30 October 2026.
This mobilization is based on the Istanbul Declaration, adopted unanimously by the participating organizations and now fully endorsed by ORSA Porti of Gioia Tauro (Italy), which has joined our international network.
The declaration sets out the following demands:
· An immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people and recognition of an independent Palestinian state, recognized by the international community, within the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
· An end to the US-Israeli wars of aggression in the West Asia and against Iran, and full solidarity with the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela and Sudan, alongside support for the right of all peoples to resist occupation and to self-determination.
· Ports must not be used for the transport of arms, ammunition, military equipment or troops destined for war zones.
· They must not become military bases for NATO, the United States or the European Union, nor serve as tools for shipowners and monopoly groups.
· No to the war economy, government rearmament plans, and the project of militarization of ports and strategic infrastructure from EU. Public resources must be used to meet people’s social needs, not to finance war.
· Collective agreements must guarantee real wage increases, secure employment, reduced working hours, and fair pension provisions.
· Technological progress, mechanization, automation and artificial intelligence must not be used to eliminate jobs or undermine workers’ rights. Dockworkers and port workers say NO to automation.
On October 30, all actions will be united as part of a common international struggle to stop wars, genocide and the militarization of ports at a very critical moment in history, while defending workers’ rights and better working conditions. Each union will decide the most appropriate form of mobilization according to its national circumstances, starting from strike action and from a shared commitment to prevent the loading of death and destruction.
The signatory trade unions of the Istanbul Declaration call on ALL dockworkers’ and port workers’ unions to join this international mobilization. We are ready to meet with organized groups of dockworkers and port workers from any other ports interested in becoming part of this common struggle.
CGT FNPD France – ENEDEP Greece – LAB Basque Country – LIMAN-IS Turkey – ODT Maroc – ORSA Porti Italy – USB Italy
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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VIDEO:
What Cubans Really Think About Trump
By Jeff Seal, May 28, 2026
Mr. Seal is a comedian and a visual journalist.
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Petition to Force Amazon to Cut ICE Contracts!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
Amazon Labor Union
Over 600,000 messages have already been sent directly to Amazon board members demanding one thing: Amazon must stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE and DHS rely on the data infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services. Their campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon.
But workers and communities have real power when we act collectively. That’s why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine. Help us reach 1 million messages and force Amazon to act by signing our petition with The Labor Force today:
Tell Amazon: End contracts with ICE!
On Cyber Monday 2025, Amazon workers rallied outside of Amazon’s NYC headquarters to demand that Amazon stop fueling mass deportations through Amazon Web Services’ contracts with ICE and DHS.
ICE cannot operate without corporate backing; its campaign against immigrants and those who stand with them depends on the logistical, financial, and political support of companies like Amazon. Mega-corporations may appear untouchable, but they are not. Anti-authoritarian movements have long understood that repression is sustained by a network of institutional enablers and when those enablers are disrupted, state violence weakens. Workers and communities have real power when they act collectively. That is why we must expose Amazon’s role in the deportation machine.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its most commonly used cloud platform. DHS and ICE cannot wage their attack on immigrants without the critical data infrastructure that Amazon Web Services provide, allowing the agencies to collect, analyze, and store the massive amounts of data they need to do their dirty work. Without the power of AWS, ICE would not be able to track and target people at its current scale.
ICE and DHS use Amazon Web Services to collect and store massive amounts of purchased data on immigrants and their friends and family–everything from biometric data, DMV data, cellphone records, and more. And through its contracts with Palantir, DHS is able to scour regional, local, state, and federal databases and analyze and store this data on AWS. All of this information is ultimately used to target immigrants and other members of our communities.
No corporation should profit from oppression and abuse. Yet Amazon is raking in tens of millions of dollars to fuel DHS and ICE, while grossly exploiting its own workers. Can you sign our petition today, demanding that Amazon stop fueling deportations by ending its contracts with DHS and ICE, now?
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-amazon-end-contracts-with-ice/?source=group-amazon-labor-union&referrer=group-amazon-labor-
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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Alter Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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 Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity CampaignAn appeal for financial supportMay 12, 2026 Dear Friends of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, It has been more than two years since Boris Kagarlitsky began serving the five-year sentence meted out to him by a Russian military court as a way of silencing and punishing him for his opposition to Putin’s war on Ukraine. With a multitude of longstanding friends and colleagues throughout the world, Boris is one of the best-known victims of the steadily escalating political repression in Russia. He has borne the gross injustice of his incarceration with characteristic courage, determination and defiance. But there is no denying that Putin’s gulag takes a toll on even the most valiant spirits. The Boris Kagarlitsky Solidarity Campaign has worked continuously these last two years to draw attention to Boris’s plight, and by extension to that of other prisoners unjustly condemned for protesting the ongoing war that has already cost upwards of half a million lives and vastly more maimed, according to estimates. We have sought, through a variety of activities, to bring pressure to bear on the Russian authorities to free Boris. The many people involved in the Campaign are happy to volunteer their time. However, we rely on the generosity of the Campaign’s supporters to cover the periodic expenses we incur. We recently reached out for help to defray costs associated with the participation of Boris’ daughter and tireless advocate for Russian political prisoners, Kseniia Kagarlitskya, in the international antifascist conference in Porto Alegre at the end of March. That trip was a great success. It allowed Kseniia and Mikhail Lobanov, Russian mathematician, political activist, and former associate professor at Moscow State University, to introduce the thousands of conference-goers from Brazil and across the world to the grim realities confronting Russian political dissidents. The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Committee has many plans in store for the coming months and especially the fall, including a virtual conference devoted to the global manifestations of political repression. We are appealing to you for a little financial help to carry out our projects and support the day-to-day ongoing work of the committee. We would be deeply appreciative of any assistance you can provide. Because the members of the Campaign coordinating committee are scattered across Europe, North America and beyond, it has been a little complicated to set up a campaign bank account, although we are making progress on that front. For the time being we are asking that you send any contributions you can manage directly to our de facto treasurer Suzi Weissman who is located in Los Angeles, California. The details of her account are: Bank: Wells Fargo Swift/Bic: PNBPUS6L Account holder: Susan Claudia Weissman Account number: 0657205076 International wire transfers: WFBIUS6S wise.com personal account: @susanclaudiaw We thank you in anticipation of any contribution you can make to help keep the Campaign running. Yours in solidarity, Dick Nichols Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) Trump’s Lust for Vengeance Is Turning Into a Farce
By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist, Aug. 19, 2026
Al Drago for The New York Times
The principal aim of President Trump’s second term is revenge.
Trump is consumed by this lust for revenge. It defined the first moments of his second term. “Within hours of taking the presidential oath,” my news-side colleagues Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan report in “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump,” the president “stripped protective details” from Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, “and others he had viewed as disloyal, including former national security adviser John Bolton, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Defense Secretary Mark Esper.”
Revenge against the aides and officials who restrained Trump’s worst impulses. Revenge against the bureaucrats and “deep state” agents who challenged his lawbreaking. Revenge against the prosecutors who pursued cases against him and against the judges who ruled in their favor. Revenge against the few Republicans who voted for his impeachment and conviction and against those who abandoned him after Jan. 6. And last, revenge against the American people, for rejecting him in 2020 and dealing a grievous blow to his ego.
Revenge shapes the president’s priorities, drives his actions and structures the decisions of his government. Nowhere is this more apparent than when Trump turns the weight of the federal government against those Americans who defy his will.
Take Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. He was supposed to disappear — unlawfully shipped to a foreign dungeon and left to languish as part of the administration’s draconian deportation program. But with the help of his family, lawyers and lawmakers, Abrego Garcia fought back.
Not only did he successfully challenge his removal and captivity, but he also won a unanimous decision from the Supreme Court, which ordered the federal government to facilitate his return to the United States. Soon after, the Department of Justice announced his criminal indictment, and he was imprisoned, again.
He fought this, too. In May, a judge dismissed the criminal case against him.
The Ahab-like tenacity of the White House in its pursuit of Abrego Garcia might make sense if he were some criminal mastermind — a danger to the public order. He wasn’t. He was just an ordinary person, a working member of his community who happened to be an easy target for the president’s deportation machine.
He was supposed to be an example — a warning to immigrants, legal or otherwise, to leave the country or suffer the consequences. By challenging the administration and winning in court, Abrego Garcia threatened the president’s program. He stood as a symbol of defiance in the face of Trump’s despotic abuse of power. This is why the Trump administration wouldn’t let up. As an unnamed White House adviser told Rolling Stone last year, “The last thing you want to do here is contribute to a domino effect of decisions where suddenly you’re admitting you’re wrong about everything.”
Trump tried to crush Abrego Garcia, and when he couldn’t, he made it the priority of his government to punish him for his resistance. This was less policymaking than obsession. And it should be said that Trump has still not given up; his Department of Justice has asked an appeals court to reinstate the criminal charges against Abrego Garcia.
Abrego Garcia is not alone. Trump has, for most of the summer, been pursuing a vendetta against David Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist. Hearn was accused of vandalizing the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial, which is in a state of disrepair in the wake of the president’s attempted renovations.
Several months ago, Trump announced a plan to paint the floor of the pool blue, to match his vision of the National Mall. He handed a no-bid contract to a Virginia-based company, which proceeded to try to waterproof and paint the pool. Once that was finished, Trump drove his presidential motorcade down the empty pool in a show of triumph. Soon after, the pool was filled — and the trouble began.
The blue paint trapped heat, the heat spurred algae growth, and in short order the Reflecting Pool had turned green. There was nothing the White House could do about it. Misapplication of the new coating, meanwhile, had caused the floor to peel; chunks of it floated to the surface.
Unable to take responsibility for his own mistakes and failures, Trump blamed unnamed saboteurs and appears to have ordered the Department of Justice to press charges against them. Enter Hearn, who was accused of pulling off a piece of the pool’s liner. He was indicted by a grand jury on a federal vandalism charge and arrested.
But there was no evidence Hearn had done anything wrong. Instead, the problems at the pool were the product of poor work and quality control. Even the Department of Justice was forced to admit that the damage was the result of a “flawed installation.”
The U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro, dropped the charges. Trump was furious. “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I don’t know what she was thinking?” He wants a prosecution. He wants revenge.
Trump is hardly the first powerful person to abuse the law enforcement powers of the federal government to pursue narrow interests and petty grievances. Richard Nixon infamously turned both the F.B.I. and the I.R.S. against his political enemies. J. Edgar Hoover, as director of the F.B.I., used his authority to wage what amounted to a personal crusade against the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whom he viewed as a dangerous subversive.
The story of the Trump administration is, as always, one of continuity with the worst parts of our past. And yet that continuity exists alongside novelty.
Both Nixon and Hoover cloaked their abuses of power in the language of necessity and national interest. They paid lip service to the rules and norms of constitutional government even as they treated them as obstacles to their own power. Committed to vice, they nonetheless feigned tribute to virtue.
Trump does no such thing. He does not see himself as a man in possession of an office, heading a government, so much as he sees himself as the government. The state is an extension of his person. He is the king, and it is one of his two bodies.
There is no observable national interest at work in the crusades against Abrego Garcia or Hearn. These are personal crusades, shaped entirely by Trump’s grievances, his desire for revenge, his insatiable need to soothe his own psychic wounds.
There are, to be sure, true believers within this administration, from the executive power fanatic Russell Vought to the far-right nativist Stephen Miller. But the man at the top has no such ambitions. He is there only for himself. The principal aim of his government as he sees it is his own glorification — a desperate quest to never lose face and to pursue vengeance against anyone who might undermine his sense of self.
Hence Trump’s failed war with Iran — a military failure and disastrous strategic mistake. There is no apparent plan to end the conflict, only the futile efforts of a president desperate to shed the stench of defeat. That is what the false negotiations and endless missile strikes are all about: a way to try to end the war without having lost it. Peace with honor, this time as something closer to farce.
The danger, of course, is what happens if there is no way out. What if Trump is truly stuck, fully caught in a trap of his own making?
With the terrible power of the United States at his fingertips, it is frightening to contemplate what he might do to save his fragile sense of self. He has already tried to wreck the country in pursuit of revenge against all those who challenge his ego and authority. There’s no reason to think that he won’t try to wreck the world in pursuit of the same.
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2) Status Defines Friendship for Too Many Americans
By Christine Emba, Aug. 19, 2026
Ms. Emba is a contributing Opinion writer and serves on the board of the American Institute for Boys and Men.
Andrew Kung
Why do I feel like I’m being sold friends?
Join a “modern social club,” one ad beckons. “Turn strangers into friends” via curated dinner parties at trendy restaurants. A luxury condo building flogs its “community clubhouse” as an exciting amenity, while yet another social start-up informs me, rather ominously, that “we find your people.”
It’s possible that my feeds are too well primed: the algorithms can tell that I’m in my 30s, living in a city known for its transience, and that I frequently search for data on and read stories about our changing social lives. But the sheer number of these ads suggests that the need for friendship is widespread enough that an industry is forming around it.
There are the run clubs and exercise “cults.” On Instagram, I was seduced by a vibey post reminiscing about the pre-cellphone era of house parties. After I swiped through a carousel of nostalgia-inducing pictures, I was invited to just that kind of gathering — for a fee.
The loneliness epidemic has been well publicized, from the last surgeon general’s repeated warnings to musings in major media outlets. And the loneliness market has boomed: Venture capital firms are investing in “social and relational health”; technologists are selling companions and chatbots as cures for isolation; politicians and philanthropists have adopted “belonging” as a buzzword.
Even though I’d still love to make new friends, I’m lucky to already be embedded in a tight-knit group dating back to college. And these for-profit solutions all seem pitched at those who need them the least — socializing positioned as a luxury good. If isolation really is a societywide crisis, we need societywide solutions — and an understanding of who has been left out most acutely from what friendship promises.
In pursuit of that aim, the researchers Sam Pressler, a fellow at the University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy, and Soren Duggan, a communications strategist and Army veteran with a background in human intelligence collection, produced a report this spring titled “Nobody to Call,” based on a series of 30 in-depth, qualitative interviews with men ranging from their mid-20s to their mid-40s without college degrees. They hoped to add texture to the conversation on loneliness by seeking out those who they believe are struggling the most. We’ve all experienced social atrophy, Mr. Pressler told me, but for men without degrees the bottom has fallen out.
College completion rates have risen over the decades for both men and women, but a growing proportion of those who aren’t graduating are men. As of 2021, men made up around 43 percent of four-year-college enrollees, down from approximately 57 percent in 1970. “As the college degree has increasingly become the great sorting function in American life,” Pressler and Duggan write, “men without degrees have increasingly found themselves sorted out.” We tend to talk about the loneliness crisis in terms of gender, but class, as derived from educational status, is the factor too touchy — or too invisible — to acknowledge.
Less than half of Americans hold bachelor’s degrees, but those without are less likely to have places to gather (parks, libraries, even coffee shops), are less likely to join civic groups or social clubs and report having far fewer close friends or people to turn to for social support. The four-year degree isn’t just an economic signal; it’s become a lifestyle determinant.
In the “Nobody to Call” case studies and interview transcripts, men without college degrees described social drift that turns into a social cliff: Graduating from high school meant the loss of an accessible infrastructure for connection, and with it a whittling down of peer groups, and no new structure — college, the military, a union, churches or civic groups — to take its place.
And while higher education is often discussed in terms of its economic value, its relational value is strangely overlooked. The multiyear college experience brings together groups of peers who transition into adulthood together, often forming lasting bonds in the process and connecting to mentors and institutions along the way.
The majority of the men Pressler and Duggan interviewed were almost completely disconnected; of the 30, almost half reported having no close friends, and six reported having only one. In one of many poignant lines from the report, one interviewee noted bluntly: “I don’t have anybody that I feel like I matter to.”
Friendships, purpose and opportunity are built over time, through institutions and shared settings. For many men, unstable work — transient gig jobs, uncontrollable schedules — allows only for the creation of tenuous, easily breakable ties. A lack of money, time and affordable places to gather adds to a lack of confidence and social know-how, making new relationships harder to form or sustain. As one interviewee put it: “It is not community when you exclude people that don’t have them jobs like you, the money like you or even look like you.”
Most of the men interviewed as part of “Nobody to Call” seemed to deeply want to connect and contribute to their broader communities (contrary to the common public narrative of nihilistic, misogynistic loners actively contributing to a “male loneliness crisis”), but material barriers, compounding into psychological ones, often kept them from doing so.
Many admitted that although they wanted to build community and make friends, they had little sense of where to start. “I don’t know how to just go out in the wild and pick up friends. People don’t do as many in-person things as they used to many years ago.”
But there are examples of civic leaders making it easier. For instance, as part of the 2026 FIFA World Cup celebrations, New York City’s office of the mayor opened five public soccer pitches around the city for overnight pickup games — an initiative called NYC Open Play. It was free, available at nontraditional hours and staffed to encourage connection; thousands joined to play.
There are other brass-tacks policy changes that could help: ending just-in-time scheduling, providing more job support and protections for gig workers and putting in place better leave policies that might allow space for the development of one’s civic life. But a major issue is simply being seen and understood — not as statistics or caricatures, but as members of a shared community.
America is overdue for a reckoning with how we have made college the main rite of passage to cultural life while letting others atrophy. Potential solutions to this could be anything from more support for apprenticeships and vocational programs — ones that impart the sense of belonging that can be achieved only through the shared pursuit of excellence — to the dream of a national service corps that pools young people together across economic lines.
Like many of America’s most pressing social crises, the loneliness epidemic is divided by class. The “loneliness industry” seeks to capitalize on the crisis of social isolation via paid solutions like those hawked to me online, but friendship as a pay-to-play luxury will continue to leave broad swaths of Americans out.
If loneliness really is a public health crisis, it’s the responsibility of government and institutions, not just the market, to begin offering solutions. Connection is, or at least should be, a public good.
There are almost no "third spaces" left that allow for unrestricted gathering that do not require you buy something. Parks and the library are about it, and where I live that is where folks whom are homeless hang out, so it deters others who don't want to be hassled for cash. College isn't the divider here: plenty of young adults make friends in first jobs, finding roommates, volunteering, etc here without paying college tuition. The overwhelming loneliness of life is compounded not by educational opportunities, but electronics, lack of community, and the fact that it costs minimum $40 for one person to leave the house for anything anymore. You don't meet folks hanging out in your own living room.
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3) The ‘Crack Spread’ Is Going to Make Your Life Unpleasant
By Skip York, Aug. 19, 2026
Mr. York is a fellow in energy and global oil at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute.
Aleksey Kondratyev for The New York Times
When President Trump announces yet another potential peace agreement with Iran, crude oil prices fall, and Americans make the mistake of thinking that gas and diesel prices will follow. But crude oil isn’t the right barometer of your pain at the pump. By the end of July, crude oil prices had fallen about 25 percent from their April peak, while gasoline prices dropped only about 9 percent after peaking at around $4.50 a gallon in May.
With prospects for peace fading again, both gas and diesel resumed their upward path, with gas at $4.07, while diesel reached $5.47 nationally.
Focusing on the price of crude is misleading, a bit like following the price of wheat when it’s bread that you’re actually buying. The gauge to watch is what’s called the crack spread — the difference between the cost of a barrel of crude and the prices of the refined products made from it. If you want to drill down, it’s often referred to as the 3-2-1 spread, which calculates prices when three barrels of crude are refined into two barrels of gasoline and one barrel of diesel, a typical ratio. (Cracking is the process of breaking large hydrocarbon molecules into smaller ones, which is what a refinery does.)
When crude oil prices fall faster than gas and diesel prices, the crack spread widens. This disconnect is known as the “rocket and feather” effect, in which retail gasoline prices escalate quickly as crude oil prices rise, but drift down slowly when prices start to fall. When wholesale prices of gasoline spike, service station owners raise prices quickly because they know their future gas deliveries will be more expensive. They might also notice that competitors are raising prices and act accordingly, as nobody wants to sell today’s fuel at yesterday’s price and forego the profits.
Conversely, when station owners see wholesale costs start to fall, they’re not necessarily in a rush to cut prices and sacrifice profit margins — at least until customers start to notice. The result is a retail market that tends to overreact to bad news and only grudgingly responds to good news.
More recently, there’s been an added supply twist tied to Russia. Ukraine’s drone bombing campaign has disabled swaths of Russia’s refining capacity, which could decrease the country’s supply by up to 28 percent from last year.
In the Middle East, the Iran-U.S. conflict not only interrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, but also damaged a number of refineries in the Persian Gulf. Similar to the situation in Russia, refining capacity remains well below prewar levels even as crude production in the region begins to recover. War in Ukraine and the Middle East could end immediately, but damaged refining capacity will take a long time to restore — and there aren’t a lot of new refineries under construction in the rest of the world.
In fact, even if crude production rises, it doesn’t help much when some 9 percent of global refining capacity is offline. Refining capacity is now the bottleneck that is squeezing fuel prices higher worldwide, diesel in particular. Russian and Middle Eastern refineries yield more diesel per barrel than U.S. refineries, which lean toward gasoline, so losing that output hits diesel supplies harder. That’s why diesel prices have fallen less than gasoline since their April peaks.
Another big player that is making waves is China, which is both the world’s largest crude importer and its largest refiner. At the start of the Iran-U.S. conflict, China began cutting crude oil imports, which are now at an eight-year low, drawing on domestic stockpiles to avoid rising prices while freeing up barrels for other refiners. That eased pressure on crude oil prices.
China wasn’t necessarily playing the good guy. While it was limiting imports, China also restricted exports of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. That pulled Chinese barrels out of a global market that badly needed them, tightening supply everywhere else and pushing fuel products’ prices up. This isn’t a temporary market reaction; it is a structural change.
And you’re paying for it. Through July, in our peak driving season, data from the Energy Information Agency indicates that wholesale gasoline and diesel prices are up about 59 percent and 69 percent, respectively, over a year ago. That’s way more than the 36 percent increase in crude oil prices.
The impact goes well beyond your commute and into the broader economy. Diesel is the workhorse of the real economy. Diesel moves goods by truck and rail; it makes harvesting crops possible, and is critical in the construction of homes, buildings and factories. That’s why the U.S. Postal Service has temporarily raised rates for package delivery. Jet fuel prices are expected to be up by about 70 percent this year, increasing airlines’ operating costs, sending fares higher. All of this makes the Fed’s job of moderating inflation more difficult.
The world isn’t running out of oil. It is running out of places to turn that oil into fuel. Which means the price of refined products such as gasoline will remain high. And that could be a far more vexing problem to fix.
Good! I hope oil prices go much higher than they currently are. Oil should be so expensive that it's only used for things that absolutely cannot be made with anything else. Using oil to burn in cars and to make cheap plastic should have been stopped decades ago.
@Frank> I hope oil prices go much higher. The wealthy won't care -- whether the price of gas is $4 or $10 won't make any difference. The wealthy will still keep their houses warm no matter the cost. What you're alluding to is a form of regressive taxation. The people on the fringe who have to drive gas powered cars for work will suffer. They're the ones who will have cold houses in the winter.
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4) Keep Your Eye on ICE
By David Wallace-Wells, Opinion Writer, Aug. 19, 2026
Ibrahim Rayintakath
The resistance looked immediately victorious and momentous: Last January, facing a kind of invasion by federal agents, the liberal citizens of Minneapolis stood their ground. They forced confrontation after confrontation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol officers, eventually routing them from the city and bringing the mass deportation project of the president’s second term to what looked like a humiliating end.
The response was heroic, especially given the purposeful brutality of the campaign, called Operation Metro Surge, which resulted in the killing of two American citizens — and perhaps even more so, given everything we have since learned about the full scale of the surveillance and counterintelligence operation federal agents were running, in real time, against those organizing to stymie them.
The problem is, ICE didn’t really disappear when Operation Metro Surge ended in February, and the project of mass deportation wasn’t shelved when the Border Patrol chief, Greg Bovino, retired and the Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, was later replaced by Markwayne Mullin. In the summer harshly hawkish immigration enforcement began in earnest again, this time a bit more carefully designed to maximize seizures and deportations rather than blood-and-soil spectacle.
By the numbers, the new strategy has worked. ICE arrests hit a new high in July. Deportations are on track to be higher this fiscal year than last one, and removals of people seized inside the country could easily reach new highs. Alligator Alcatraz, as a Florida detention facility was known, closed in June, but the number of immigrants held in detention by ICE has grown by 75 percent since President Trump returned to office in 2025. In 2024, ICE’s operations and support budget was under $10 billion; in 2025, Trump’s signature policy legislation helped allocate more than $70 billion in additional funding to the agency, including $45 billion to expand detention capacity. ICE is now the country’s best-funded law enforcement agency. “We have never seen the detention system anywhere near this scale or size,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council. “And it’s really crucial to understand that this is a decade-plus-long operation as they are planning it.”
The midterms and next presidential election are obvious speed bumps for those plans, given how much the ICE budget has ballooned under Trump and how much political capital would be required to extend that funding. But in terms of arrests, the damage done this summer swells beyond what was done in any single month leading up to Minneapolis. And yet despite the horrifying scale, the mass deportation project has generated much less public outrage in the second year of Trump’s second term, with liberals notching Minneapolis as an incredible victory before turning their attention elsewhere.
When a Maine resident was shot and killed by an ICE officer in July, allegations of the officer’s violent past briefly became a minor national news story, then faded into background noise. There was perhaps even less attention paid to a killing in Houston last month, when ICE officers shot a man driving a construction van on his way to a work site. This year a federal judge reviewing officers’ claims of being attacked by drivers in Chicago wrote that it was “difficult, if not impossible” to believe their stance that vehicular confrontations with protesters had been defensive maneuvers. Since the start of Trump’s second term, at least 10 people have been killed in immigration operations, and dozens more have died in immigration detention.
By February, Trump’s approval on immigration fell 12 percentage points below its peak early in his second term, but it now sits comfortably above his overall approval rating, and he retains the support of a large majority of Republicans on the issue. We don’t see Democrats storming in to protest deportation hearings much anymore, and we don’t even see them spending much time emphasizing the cruel excesses of Trump’s border and immigration policies very much on the campaign trail, either.
This is politics, of course, at least in part. But in the winter, it might have seemed that mass deportation was turning immigration into an issue Democrats might exploit to their advantage, with backlash powering what appeared to be a distaste for ICE and Customs and Border Protection and growing sympathy for immigrants. In fact, those survey numbers have fallen back over the past year, with American support for immigration lower now than it was at a peak in 2025. And the issue has also collapsed in salience since Metro Surge, particularly if you measure it in headlines, cable news segments and social media virality.
In part, the country has grown less outraged because the Department of Homeland Security has strategically recalibrated its approach, jettisoning the shock-and-awe-style sweeps and instead targeting those it knew how to find — at least in part, seemingly, by going after those who had been complying with immigration policies in ways that made them easily traceable by federal authorities. There’s been less emphasis on intimidation of recalcitrant communities and more emphasis on quickly finding and arresting those it knows it can detain and deport. It appears less focused on making ICE sizzle reels lately and, to judge by the relatively paucity of citizen documentation, more effective in tracking and suppressing resistance. Operations have gotten faster and more targeted.
As always, the enduring laws of attentional chaos in the Trump era also play a role. Deportation outrage gave way to worry over the Iran war, among other fights and scandals. But I think normalization is coming from the other direction, too, with liberal complacency setting in as the lame-duck mood spreads through Trumpland.
One aspect of the vibe shift against Trump and Trumpism is that even those most outraged about the president and his path of destruction might now see a light at the end of the tunnel, in the form of dismal approval ratings and the coming midterms and then 2028. For a decade, Trump has been unmistakably the main character in American politics, dictating national attention even when out of power. But over the past few months that, too, has changed, with tensions in the Democratic Party and its contest for future leadership becoming more central preoccupations and the fall elections drawing our attention forward in ways that can serve to minimize the damage of the recent past, almost like a camera obscura casting a miniature image, inverted, against an opposite wall.
Of course, the damage has been absolutely immense — to health care and SNAP, to pollution standards and basic expectations of public integrity, to America’s standing in the world and its role in global energy markets (not to mention its munitions stockpile), to scientific research and public health. And not least, on the border, where a large-scale deportation program is, even though unfolding somewhat offscreen, producing humanitarian outrages that used to pull liberal America’s attention into focus.
ICE is planning to buy electroshock gloves sold with the promise that the jolts will not leave any marks. The Department of Homeland Security is deporting Mexican nationals to Honduras and Guatemala, even though their native country is perfectly willing to accept them, and will be sending more than 1,000 others to countries in Africa, including ones that the State Department considers unsafe, for what seem to be punitive reasons. In August, Maryam Tahmasebi, an Iranian professor of psychology and statistics in Los Angeles, published an open letter in The Nation documenting her experience in a detention center in Texas, where she has spent more than 120 days with her 16-year-old son, separated from her husband. All three were legal permanent residents.
In April, months after the initial deportation surge had subsided, Tahmasebi got a text from her son that his father hadn’t arrived to pick him up from school. Eventually she discovered that her husband was being held at an ICE facility in downtown Los Angeles, and he told her he’d been assured that, whatever bureaucratic tangle he’d gotten caught up in — his mother worked with the Iranian hostage takers before he was born — she and their son were safe. The next day, as she prepared to drive her son to school, their car was surrounded by Department of Homeland Security officers, and the two were handcuffed and sent from Los Angeles to Texas, where they’ve been detained since. “This is bloodline punishment,” she wrote; neither she nor her husband has so much as a traffic ticket. “I will end on this: If this could happen to us, a law-abiding family of two professors and a young boy, it can happen to anyone.”
Stories like these were available in endless scroll a year ago, stoking liberal outrage almost by the day. The sentiment hasn’t grown less true in the meantime, however irregularly we may be clocking it.
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5) Trump Officials Scrap Effort to Recruit Pentagon Lawyers to Represent Migrant Children
The reversal of the plan, which had not been publicly disclosed, comes amid mounting confusion about how the administration is protecting the rights of unaccompanied minors.
By Madeleine Ngo, Reporting from Washington, Aug. 19, 2026
Migrants entered the Paso Del Norte International Bridge for their Customs and Border Protection appointments in early 2025. Paul Ratje for The New York Times
The Trump administration on Wednesday abruptly scrapped a plan to recruit retiring Pentagon lawyers to represent unaccompanied minors in immigration court, a move that would have asked attorneys with little relevant legal experience to help migrant children facing deportation.
The shift deepened confusion about how the federal government planned to fulfill its legal obligation to protect the rights of the more than 20,000 unaccompanied minors with pending immigration cases, who advocates say are uniquely vulnerable amid the administration’s push for mass expulsions.
A federal contract with a network of legal nonprofit groups that had long represented unaccompanied minors ended last month. The Trump administration signed a short-term deal earlier this month with an organization best known for its focus on human trafficking, an arrangement that would provide the children with lawyers. Opponents of the move have noted that the group, Our Rescue, has little experience handling immigration court cases.
The administration had also been developing another stopgap measure. Officials with the Defense Department and the Health and Human Services Department, which is responsible for the welfare of migrant children who have no parent or legal guardian to care for them in the United States, told The New York Times earlier this week that the administration was recruiting Pentagon lawyers who had recently retired or had planned to retire soon to serve as attorneys for the children.
Such an arrangement would have been a departure from the kind of work typically provided by Pentagon lawyers, who have experience on a broad array of matters for the civilian and military branches of the armed services. That includes prosecuting or defending service members in courts-martial, reviewing contracts for new weapons and ensuring troops follow the laws of armed conflict.
By Wednesday afternoon, as The Times sought more information from H.H.S., the department said it was no longer pursuing the idea, which had not been disclosed publicly.
The agency said that for now, it would use short-term contracts to provide migrant children with lawyers in immigration court. It acknowledged that the administration was still seeking to identify a long-term legal service provider.
The department said in a statement that it remained “committed to ensuring all eligible unaccompanied children have legal representation during immigration proceedings.”
While immigrant advocates expressed relief that the plan to tap military lawyers was tossed, they said the patchwork plan to provide legal services could lead to more deportations of migrant children at a time when the Trump administration was trying to accelerate their removal. Court hearings and asylum interviews for many unaccompanied minors have been moved up in recent months, even as questions have swirled about who would represent them, immigration attorneys said.
“Bridge contracts are Band-Aids that are not stopping the wound,” said Michelle Brané, a former Department of Homeland Security official who led the family reunification task force under the Biden administration. “They help for some, but are not enough, and are not a long-term solution.”
The vast majority of unaccompanied minors who entered the United States have since been released to relatives or other sponsors. A much smaller number of children remain in shelters overseen by the Health and Human Services Department. In July, an average of about 1,800 children were in federal custody, according to department data.
Many children arrived at the border without a parent, often fleeing persecution or other hardship in their countries.
Shaina Aber, the executive director of Acacia Center for Justice, which manages a network that has provided migrant children with legal services, said the administration’s current approach left them vulnerable.
“Unaccompanied children need independent, ethically tethered, experienced lawyers who know how to work with them in a child-friendly” way, she said in a statement.
The federal government is required under law to provide legal services to unaccompanied children who are often too young to understand their rights, ranging from presentations about their rights to direct legal representation. That work has typically been contracted out to nonprofits whose lawyers have extensive experience representing and helping migrant children.
The federal government had a multiyear contract with the Acacia Center, an advocacy group that managed a national network of nonprofits that provided representation. The Trump administration has repeatedly tried to halt funding for the groups, and only recently disbursed money it had withheld, following a federal court order.
The Acacia Center contract expired at the end of July. The center said it declined to sign a new contract because the Trump administration wanted it to share “confidential data about our young clients,” including unique identification numbers assigned by the Department of Homeland Security, and information about their immigration cases.
A Health and Human Services Department spokesperson said the administration was not requesting privileged, attorney-client information from the network, and had no intention of providing information it obtained to other government agencies.
The end of the Acacia Center’s contract set off a scramble among the nonprofits that had been providing legal representation. In an effort to prevent thousands of children from immediately losing access to lawyers, many groups have been fund-raising and relying on reserves to continue representing them.
Michael Lukens, the executive director of the Washington-based Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, said his nonprofit was continuing to represent about 850 unaccompanied minors, even though its federal funding had lapsed. Mr. Lukens said his group was able to do so in part because of the funding the administration recently disbursed.
Still, he and others warned that those efforts were not sustainable. Some nonprofits said they were trying to transfer cases to pro bono attorneys.
“It’ll be a catastrophe for the children. You will see mass deportations,” Mr. Lukens said. “They’re making it very hard to fight these cases when you have an attorney, let alone without one.”
It is unclear if the roughly 20,000 cases handled by the network will be transferred to the government and its new contractors. Several nonprofits said in interviews that they had not been contacted by the government or its new legal service providers about transferring cases.
The Health and Human Services Department said it was working with other legal service providers, including the nonprofit U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, which is slated to provide unaccompanied children with lawyers through the end of December.
The department also awarded a $158 million contract for legal services to Our Rescue, the nonprofit. The contract has a “base period” of six months, running through early February, according to the department.
The deal has drawn intense scrutiny because the organization does not have extensive experience representing unaccompanied children in court.
Our Rescue said in a statement that it had “decades of experience supporting vulnerable children,” and that it welcomed the responsibility of working with unaccompanied minors to ensure they had access to qualified legal counsel.
The group was founded by Tim Ballard, a former Department of Homeland Security agent who was accused by multiple women of being a sex predator. In several lawsuits, they said that Mr. Ballard preyed on their desire to help trafficking victims, coercing or forcing them into sexual encounters as part of their undercover work, The New York Times reported in 2024. Mr. Ballard has insisted that he did not engage in misconduct. While the courts have dismissed some of the legal claims against Mr. Ballard, multiple lawsuits remain active.
Our Rescue said in a statement that Mr. Ballard was no longer affiliated with the organization, and had not been involved since he left in 2023.
Another potential legal provider identified by the administration ultimately declined to do the work.
The Health and Human Services Department said on Aug. 6 that it intended to award up to $150 million in a no-bid contract to Burke Law Group, a small Texas firm that appeared to have limited immigration law experience and was led by attorneys with ties to President Trump. But this week, the department officially said the firm decided not to apply for the grant.
Marcella Burke, who held top positions at the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency during the first Trump administration, said she explored the possibility of her firm assembling a network of lawyers to provide services to about 700 children. But during discussions with the Health and Human Services Department, she said it “became clear that the government’s proposed structure was not workable.”
“I became involved for one reason: children, some extremely young and facing heartbreaking circumstances,” Ms. Burke said in a statement. “All discussions were preliminary, and I never sought or accepted a grant of any amount.”
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting. Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
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6) How Trump Is Trying to Crush California’s Environmental Policies
At least a half-dozen federal agencies have taken action against the state that has led the nation in environmental protections.
By Maxine Joselow, Reporting from Washington, Aug. 20, 2026
An oil platform seen from Sands Beach next to Coal Oil Point Natural Reserve in Santa Barbara, Calif. Ariana Drehsler for The New York Times
The Trump administration has taken a series of extraordinary steps to attack California’s position as a national leader in environmental protection, enlisting at least a half-dozen federal agencies to undermine the state’s efforts to pivot away from fossil fuels.
The stakes are high. Because of its market muscle as the world’s fourth largest economy, California’s environmental regulations have influenced the manufacturers of automobiles and other consumer goods. And its green policies have spread to some other states in what’s known as the “California effect.”
But President Trump has marshaled the full power of the federal government to clamp down on the state’s climate initiatives. He has been vocal in his contempt for Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat and possible 2028 presidential contender whom he refers to as “Gavin Newscum.”
Mr. Newsom, a loud and pointed critic of Mr. Trump, pledged soon after the 2024 election to insulate California’s environmental policies from a second Trump administration — perhaps making the state an inviting target for a president who has been using government levers to punish perceived enemies.
There are almost too many examples to list.
Mr. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have blocked California from setting its own limits on automobile pollution, which federal law has permitted since the 1970s. The Energy Department has announced $75 million for a new coal export terminal in Oakland, Calif. The Interior Department has paid energy companies to cancel planned wind farms off the coast of California and other blue states. The president ordered a company to restart a pipeline that caused one of the state’s largest oil spills in 2015.
And just last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration signaled it could curb the power of the California Coastal Commission, a state agency that has protected the shoreline from threats like oil spills for more than half a century.
Mr. Trump’s “destructive behavior has grown significantly,” said Jerry Brown, the former four-term Democratic governor of California who made climate change a signature cause. “It’s completely against a traditional Republican doctrine of respecting states’ rights.”
The state has filed a slew of lawsuits to try to undo the administration’s actions.
“Donald Trump attacks California because we are building a future that doesn’t depend on fossil fuels,” Anthony Martinez, a spokesman for Mr. Newsom, said in an email. “This fading industry desperately attempts to tighten its grip on the world economy even as clean energy dominates, growing cheaper and faster to deploy than anything they can offer. Follow the money, and you will find the truth behind his war on California’s climate policies: this is a White House run for Big Oil, by Big Oil.”
Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said the administration was intervening in California because state policies had led to higher energy prices and oil refinery closures, though analysts say market forces have also fueled these trends.
“Governor Newscum has continued carrying out the left’s costly and unpopular green new scam,” Ms. Rogers said in an email. “President Trump is working relentlessly to reverse the damage done by California Democrats and unleash American energy dominance.”
Richard Goldberg, a former senior counselor for the National Energy Dominance Council, which Mr. Trump created last year to coordinate energy policy, said the White House had genuine policy disagreements with California, but it also saw a political advantage in feuding with Mr. Newsom.
“I would say it’s probably a beneficial byproduct that it happens to be Newsom,” Mr. Goldberg said. “But regardless of who the governor is, California has important energy resources that are needed for the country’s national security.”
California’s 840 miles of coastline are one of its most treasured resources, drawing millions of tourists and locals annually and stretching from redwood forests in the north to palm-tree-studded beaches in the south.
In his first term, Mr. Trump largely left the coast alone, with the exception of an unsuccessful attempt to spur offshore oil and gas drilling. This time, his administration has sought to bring not only more oil rigs, but also more pipelines and possibly more rocket launches by SpaceX from a coastal military base.
In November, the Interior Department announced a draft plan to allow new oil drilling in federal waters off California for the first time in roughly four decades. The plan called for up to six oil and gas lease sales in those waters, including in an expanse off Santa Barbara where a 1969 oil spill galvanized the modern environmental movement.
Asked about the proposal at the time, Mr. Newsom rolled his eyes and called it “dead on arrival in California.” He said that the state would “absolutely” challenge the plan in court once it was finalized.
The clash over the coast was just beginning, and an offshore oil pipeline would be the next sticking point.
In March, Mr. Trump ordered the Houston-based company Sable Offshore Corp. to restart its pipeline off Santa Barbara, even though state agencies had denied permits for the project, saying it had failed to fix damage that led to a 2015 oil spill. To justify the move, the president invoked a Cold War-era law that the administration said superseded state regulations.
The law, the Defense Production Act, has typically been used in emergencies like hurricanes and the Covid-19 pandemic. In this case, the administration said the emergency was an energy shortage in California fueled by the war in Iran, which had choked global oil supplies.
Yet the administration has also paid energy companies hundreds of millions of dollars to cancel planned wind farms in the waters off California.
“It really is the definition of hypocrisy to say that we’re in a national energy emergency and we need to empower companies like Sable, but at the same time, we’re paying taxpayer dollars to not do offshore wind projects,” said Alex Katz, the executive director of the Environmental Defense Center, a nonprofit based in Santa Barbara.
Last week, the administration opened a new front in its efforts to wrest control of the coast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration held a public hearing in Santa Monica, Calif., to reconsider the power of the California Coastal Commission, which for more than half a century has had the legal authority to review and object to federal actions or projects that affect coastal resources.
Mr. Trump has long complained about the commission, which once tried to stop him from erecting a 70-foot flag on his oceanfront golf course near Los Angeles. Elon Musk, a Trump ally, has also tangled with the agency over increasing the number of SpaceX rocket launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County.
The review could lead to the commission losing federal certification of its programs or federal grants that account for 10 percent of its budget. If the administration succeeds, it could also set a precedent for similar actions in other coastal states.
“There could be an impact on what happens in Oregon if California no longer has this authority,” said Charles Lester, a marine science researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara and a former executive director of the coastal commission.
A Multi-State Fight
Another environmental showdown between California and the Trump administration could also reverberate far beyond the state’s borders, affecting vehicles sold across the country.
This fight dates back to the 1970s, when heavy smog choked Los Angeles. In response, Congress passed the Clean Air Act, which explicitly allowed California to set automobile pollution standards that were stricter than federal rules, as long as the state obtained waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency. The landmark law also allowed other states to adopt California’s standards.
Ever since, the waivers have helped rein in smog-forming pollutants like soot and nitrogen dioxide that can contribute to asthma and lung disease. They have also been a powerful tool for curbing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, the main driver of climate change.
Mr. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have shattered that dynamic.
Last year, Mr. Trump signed a congressional resolution to revoke a waiver that had allowed California to ban sales of new gas cars by 2035. And in June, Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, urged Congress to rescind waivers for four other emissions rules affecting everything from light trucks to lawn mowers.
California has filed multiple lawsuits to maintain its vehicle rules. At a hearing on Wednesday, a Justice Department attorney argued that the state lacked standing to sue over the four additional waivers because Congress hadn’t yet acted on them. A federal judge will soon decide that question.
The outcome of these legal battles could dictate the types of vehicles available at dealerships nationwide, said Casey Katims, the executive director of the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of governors working on climate policy. He noted that 11 other states have pledged to follow California’s lead in banning gas car sales by 2035, representing more than 40 percent of the U.S. vehicle market.
“Attempts to block climate progress in California,” he said, “don’t live just in California.”
Brad Plumer contributed reporting.
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7) Under Trump, Protected Wild Horses Are Going to Slaughter
A legal loophole allows the government to sell mustangs on the cheap, stripping them of protections and clearing their path to destruction.
By Dave Philipps, Visuals by Erin Schaff, Aug. 20, 2026
Reporting from Poteau, Okla., and Wauseon, Ohio
Rescued wild horses at Skydog Ranch and Sanctuary outside Prineville, Ore.
They once had run free through the desert mountains of the West, a multicolored band of 68 wild mustangs that had never been saddled or corralled.
Then the federal government rounded them up with helicopters, as it has with tens of thousands of other mustangs, in an attempt to control wild populations on public lands. The horses were held for years in a feed lot in Idaho while the government tried to find them what it called “loving homes.”
Abruptly this March, the government found a home. Whether it was loving didn’t seem to matter.
The horses were packed into echoing metal trailers and trucked 1,800 miles east to the pens of a hard-luck livestock trader in Ohio named Brandon Jones, who bought them for $25 each.
A day later, two double-decker cattle trucks pulled up at midnight, loaded the mustangs and quickly drove off into the night.
From there the mustangs disappeared. They never appeared at a public auction. The trader won’t say where they went. Wild horse advocates suspect the horses were shipped to slaughter.
But that’s not the government’s concern — it got what it wanted: two more trucks of wild horses off its books.
It wasn’t the first time, or the last. In the past year, the government has shipped the trader one truckload of mustangs after another. And not just him.
An examination of government records by The New York Times found that all over the country the Bureau of Land Management, the agency in charge of protecting wild horses, is quietly selling thousands of horses to buyers like the one in Ohio. Slaughtering wild horses is illegal, but the bureau’s actions create a loophole that enables people to get mustangs on the cheap and then quickly resell them to be exported alive, processed into cuts of meat and sold abroad.
Livestock inspection records show mustangs sold by the government soon ended up on trucks bound for slaughter plants in Canada.
The U.S. government’s sales of wild horses were once rare, but started to rise after President Trump took office. In 2025, they more than doubled to 3,700 horses, according to bureau records.
In that time, the bureau has sent about 500 horses to Mr. Jones. They came from all over the West — the windswept ridges of Cedar Mountain in Utah, the canyons of the Clan Alpine wilderness in Nevada, the high meadows of Twin Peaks, Calif., and the carved red rock hoodoos of Adobe Town, Wyo.
In an interview, Mr. Jones said he was able to resell the horses quickly though he didn’t advertise online or even post a FOR SALE sign at his corral. He would not say where the horses went and denied selling any to slaughter.
The government can spend more than $3,000 to capture a mustang and bring it to market, but sells each for as little as $25. A horse can fetch up to $750 at a slaughter plant. The potential for profit keeps buyers coming.
“There are simple steps the bureau could take to end this, but they are turning a blind eye, and the only ones getting punished for what is going on are the horses,” said Clare Staples, seen in the third photo above.
By selling mustangs at a huge loss, animal welfare organizations say, the agency in charge of protecting wild horses is, instead, subsidizing their destruction.
“The B.L.M. is saying to the public that slaughter is off the table, but they’re doing it in plain sight using a third party,” said Clare Staples, who runs a wild horse sanctuary in Oregon called Skydog Ranch. “There are simple steps the bureau could take to end this, but they are turning a blind eye. And the only ones getting punished for what is going on are the horses.”
The bureau did not respond to questions about its sales or make leaders available for comment. An unattributed statement from the agency said it “remains dedicated to placing animals into good homes, protecting their welfare and upholding its statutory responsibilities on behalf of the American public.”
About 73,000 wild horses roam federal public lands in the West, where they are protected from hunting or capture. For decades, in an attempt to keep the population sustainable, the bureau has rounded up 9,500 on average each year and offered them for adoption. But it finds adopters for only about half.
The rest go into a labyrinth of feedlots and pastures that the bureau calls “the holding system.” The system now stores 58,000 wild horses at an annual cost of $100 million. Caring for them eats up most of the bureau’s $142 million wild horse budget.
Over the years, bureau leaders have floated various lethal proposals for reducing the herds, including using sharp shooters, selling horses directly to slaughterhouses and building a gas chamber. But Congress — aware that the public wants mustangs protected — has barred the bureau from spending any money to kill healthy wild horses.
The recent surge in sales is not the first time the Trump administration has taken actions that indirectly enable horses to be sent to slaughter. During Mr. Trump’s first term, a program that paid people $1,000 to adopt a wild horse had similar results.
Project 2025, a policy paper by the Heritage Foundation that in many ways has acted as a blueprint for the second Trump administration, has argued that the bureau needs to be able cut costs by killing horses and said that Congress “must enact laws permitting the B.L.M. to dispose humanely of these animals.”
There are alternatives to the roundups that have left so many horses in storage. For 20 years, the bureau has had access to inexpensive fertility-control drugs delivered by dart gun. They have been used effectively to control a few wild herds, and the government’s own experts have repeatedly urged the bureau to use them more widely.
But because the bureau is spending so much on storage, it has little left to make the changes that would save it from storing more.
From wild horses to domestic livestock
Because the bureau has been unable to stop horses from coming into the storage system, it is now focused on getting them out.
While the bureau can’t kill wild horses, it can use a series of bureaucratic maneuvers and financial transactions to transform them on paper into domestic livestock, stripping their legal protections.
Here’s how it works.
First the bureau has to show a wild horse can’t be adopted. It does this by posting hundreds of horses at a time on its online adoption site. After a horse has three one-week listings with no takers, the law permits the government to designate it as unadoptable.
Then it can be put up for sale.
That’s an important legal distinction because a wild horse that is adopted retains its federal protections. One that is sold loses those protections immediately.
A sold horse still can’t be legally killed — at least not yet — because the buyer is required to sign a contract promising not to slaughter the horse or “knowingly” sell it to anyone who intends to resell it for slaughter.
But if the buyer resells to a middleman without asking questions, the buyer is safe from prosecution.
The middleman has not signed a contract with the bureau and is free to legally sell the mustang to slaughter.
The bureau is outspoken that it does not let horses go to slaughter, even through middlemen. But it has a big incentive to get mustangs off its ledgers.
The government estimated that not having to provide years of care for the 3,700 horses it sold in 2025 saved about $56 million.
While quietly selling truckloads of horses to private traders, the bureau plasters its website with photos of loving owners hugging and kissing their mustangs.
“Every wild horse or burro placed into a good home represents a win for the animals, the American taxpayer and our public lands,” the acting division chief of the bureau’s National Wild Horse and Burro Program said in a news release this winter praising the surge in sales. “We’re not only saving millions in taxpayer dollars, we’re also helping ensure our wild herds have the resources they need to thrive.”
Wild horse welfare organizations said the sales undercut the intent of the law.
“The B.L.M. is using sales in a way that was never intended by the law to send young, healthy wild horses into the slaughter pipeline,” said Patricia Miller, the director of American Wild Horse Conservation.
A B.L.M. horse and burro adoption and sale event in Beaumont, Texas.
The Ohio horse trader
Brandon Jones appeared out of nowhere in the wild horse world last spring and quickly became the bureau’s biggest buyer, bureau records show.
He got his start in mustangs after two of his previous livestock auction businesses folded, leaving a string of debts.
On a weekday this spring, a dozen newly arrived mustangs grazed in his pasture near the town of Wauseon, Ohio. Mr. Jones, 35, was working outside his barn in dirt-crusted boots and a worn ball cap.
When approached by a reporter from The Times, he was at times friendly and at times agitated. He spoke for two hours but refused to say specifically what had happened to the horses he purchased from the government, other than to insist that none had gone to slaughter.
He said he sold horses only two or three at a time to good owners. “I’m not dealing with traders,” he said. “I’m dealing with a farmer, come up the road, who wants to buy a horse.”
Shown photos and video of the trucks of horses that left his property at midnight — taken by a local wild horse lover and shared with The Times — he questioned whether it had happened.
“Could have been cattle,” he said.
To buy large numbers of mustangs, Mr. Jones had to get approval from top officials in the bureau. His application stood out.
Nearly all of the other buyers who have qualified over the years have well-established mustang sanctuaries. Not Mr. Jones.
He had no ties to the wild horse world and no history of working with mustangs. The application asked what veterinarian would care for the horses. He listed an office an hour away from his land with a website that says it treats only small animals.
On Facebook, he was friends with a number of livestock dealers, but no wild horse rescues.
For a year his application sat at the bureau with no action. Then, in March 2025, a federal court ordered an end to one of the bureau’s leading ways of offloading horses — the program that paid adopters $1,000 per horse.
A few weeks later, Mr. Jones’s application was approved.
During the interview at his corral, he declined to share sales records showing where the hundreds of horses he received went. Over the course of discussing his business, he did not mention any training or the challenges of finding owners for wild mustangs, but he spoke about five of the region’s slaughter traders, who he knew by name, and the current price of horse meat.
He denied selling mustangs to the traders.
He said it was wrong to see him as a bad guy. By reselling mustangs, he said, he had saved the government millions.
“Shouldn’t I be getting a thank you?” he asked.
Other people all over the country are flipping sale horses at a smaller scale.
In April, the bureau trucked 200 mustangs to a dusty fairground in Poteau, Okla., for a two-day “adoption event.”
“This is a great opportunity to find your next partner and give a good home to a wild horse or burro,” the bureau said on Facebook.
A few people showed up to adopt a companion animal, but most gravitated to mustangs the bureau had already designated “unadoptable” and bought bunches of large horses that could be quickly resold.
There is no official tracking mechanism for these horses, but the bureau brands every horse it captures with a distinctive serial number on its neck, so there are ways to identify where some end up.
The brands of at least 55 of the mustangs sold at the Oklahoma event showed up a few days later in Kansas and Texas, where the horses had been resold to large livestock auctions frequented by slaughter buyers, according to sales records gathered by wild horse protection groups.
The pattern has repeated at more than a dozen events. Wild horse organizations say they have documented more than 250 mustangs that were bought from the bureau and quickly dumped in the past 12 months but said they have most likely missed many more.
The average age of the horses they documented was 5 years.
“It used to be rare that we’d see a mustang at the auctions, and if we did, they were usually old,” said Ms. Staples, from the Skydog Ranch sanctuary. “But now we’re seeing a huge influx, and most of these horses are young — 2 or 3 years old. They are the easiest to train and should be easy to adopt.”
She bought three mustangs at one of the auctions and put them on her Oregon preserve.
“We are only able to save a few,” she said. “Most go to the kill buyers.”
Tracking the sales
There are small clues to what may have happened to the wild horses sold to Mr. Jones.
Four showed up late last fall at an auction in Tennessee frequented by slaughter buyers, and a local mustang trainer alerted the bureau.
The bureau did not pause sales to Mr. Jones after the alert. About a week later, records show, it shipped him 68 more horses
Mr. Jones said the horses in Tennessee were the result of just one bad sale to an irresponsible buyer.
Another clue emerged at the Canadian border.
The United States has no horse slaughter plants. The industry here was shut down in 2011, so horses are now exported to Canada. Until June, when exports were stopped amid concerns over a New World screwworm outbreak, they also went to Mexico.
Mr. Jones lives about an hour from the main Canadian horse export crossing.
For years, Canadian border inspection records show, trailers going through that crossing had no evidence of mustangs.
Last summer, a few weeks after Mr. Jones received a load of 97 mares, export records show that one of the largest exporters of slaughter horses to Canada, an Ohio man named Fred Bauer, shipped two trucks of horses to Canada. Grainy photos of the trailers’ interiors taken by border inspectors show some of the horses had distinctive government wild horse brands.
Mr. Jones denied that his horses went to Canada through the exporter, saying, “I’d never deal with Freddy Bauer. Me and Freddy Bauer don’t get along.”
Reached by phone, Mr. Bauer declined to say whether he had bought mustangs from Mr. Jones. When asked where Mr. Jones’s horses were going, Mr. Bauer said, “We all know what Brandon Jones is. Where do you think they’re going?”
He would not elaborate but added that it would be simple for the authorities to track the horses.
“The government put Brandon Jones in charge of this whole wild horse situation,” he said. “There’s all kinds of records. So they ought to be able to find out what he’s doing if they want to.”
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