November 15, 2025, 11:00 A.M. - 3:00 P.M.
Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Church
1924 Cedar Street at Bonita
Berkeley, California
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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
Beloved tenured History professor and Socialist Horizon member Tom Alter was summarily fired on September 10th by Texas State University President Kelly Damphousse for expressing his views in a virtual conference unrelated to the university. This action cannot stand. Socialist Horizon calls on people everywhere to join us and demand that Professor Alter be reinstated to his tenured position.
President Damphousse fired Dr. Tom Alter based solely on a video published online by an extreme rightwing provocateur who infiltrated and secretly video-recorded segments of a virtual socialist conference with the intention of publishing information to slander and attack conference participants. In videos posted on their website, this person declares that they are a proud fascist, who tries to monetize exposure of the left as an “anti-communist cult leader”. This grifter publicly exhorts followers to embrace fascist ideology and take action, is an antisemite that states that Jewish people ‘chose to die in the Holocaust’, is a self-declared racist and xenophobe, a homophobe and a transphobe that spews hate speech throughout their platform that is solely designed to inflame and incite.
After the fascist’s ‘exposure video’ reached President Damphousse, he summarily fired Dr. Alter, a tenured professor, without questioning or investigating the content, without considering its authenticity or validity, without any form of due process, and violating existing state law and campus policy which requires a formal due process procedure.
Alter spoke against this cruel and unjust system and argued in favor of replacing it with socialism, and he advocated organizing politically to achieve this. Alter’s political views reflect those of nearly half of the total US population. Almost half now oppose capitalism and 40% favor socialism over capitalism. Alter’s views are far from subversive, they reflect the mainstream. It is a just cause that more and more people are joining, one people believe to be worth fighting for, and represents a change in thinking that is scaring the bigots, fascists, and capitalists.
It is in fact the fascist infiltrator who incites violence against oppressed people, and in this case, directly against Alter. It is Alter’s employer Texas State University that inflicted violence: stripping Alter of his job, refusing him any due process, casting him and his family into the uncertainty of unemployment and making them a target for the extreme right, while slamming the door shut on his free speech and academic freedom. Alter’s First Amendment right to speak, guaranteed by the Constitution, has been violated, as has his academic freedom– a protected right developed by his national faculty union, the American Association of University Professors.
We call on President Damphousse to stop this flagrant attack on constitutionally-protected free speech, to undo this wrongful termination, and to immediately reinstate Dr. Tom Alter to his teaching position.
The termination of Dr. Alter is a serious attack that upends his livelihood, his professional and academic career, and sets a very dangerous precedent. President Damphousse’s actions appear to be in accordance with the far-right politics of Texas politicians Greg Abbot and Ted Cruz, as well as being in-line with that of Donald Trump who has used the office of the presidency to wage war on his political opponents.
Damphousse’s actions align with Trump and the far right forces trying to impose and enforce an authoritarian regime that wants to silence critics, crush political dissent, and attack anyone they perceive to be oppositional to their project. Even more threatening, Damphousse’s actions strengthen the power and influence of fascists and enable the most violent and reactionary groups to also attack and take action against anyone they deem to be part of the left.
It is Trump who inflicts violence against millions through his authoritarian political attacks that target people of Color, women, transpeople, immigrants and refugees, people with disabilities, impoverished and unhoused people, and the working class as a whole . It is the far right and the fascists who are building movements to harm innocent and vulnerable people. It is this capitalist system that Alter spoke against that inflicts mass violence condemning billions to hunger, poverty and war while a handful accumulates ever growing obscene amounts of wealth that is stolen from the rest of us.
Alter is being attacked because he is telling a truth that many people in the United States believe today: that capitalism is ruining their lives and that socialism is a better system. If Dr. Tom Alter can be fired for expressing his personal beliefs and principles, then people everywhere are in danger. If he can be fired for expressing a point of view at a conference, away from his work and in his daily private life, then none of us are safe.
His case must draw support from people of all sectors of society: workers, teachers, nurses, students—anyone and everyone who upholds the value of free speech. As the great anti-slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglass once said, “The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only when there is power to make that law respected”.
We call on everyone to join us in building the broadest possible solidarity campaign to win this decisive battle.
The attacks on Dr. Tom Alter and socialist politics will not intimidate Socialist Horizon. We will defend our comrade and we will continue fighting for the very cause he is being attacked for: justice, freedom, and equality. We will also continue building the organization that it will take to win it.
Dr. Tom Alter is not only a beloved faculty member at Texas State but also an advisor to several student organizations. He is the author of a celebrated history of socialism in the American South, Toward a Cooperative Commonwealth: The Transplanted Roots of Farmer-Labor Radicalism in Texas (University of Illinois Press). He is also the father of two children. Socialist Horizon demands that Texas State University immediately restore Tom Alter’s position as Associate Professor of History.
Socialist Horizon also calls on all organizations and individuals that defend the basic democratic right to free speech and reject fascism and authoritarianism, and all socialists in particular, to join this fight. This is an attack on all of us. We need to confront it with the broadest unitary campaign for Alter’s immediate reinstatement, in defense of free speech and against fascism.
This is an attack on all of us. We need to confront it with the broadest unitary campaign for Alter’s immediate reinstatement, in defense of free speech and against fascism.
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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Stop Cop City Bay Area
Did you know about a proposed $47 million regional police training facility in San Pablo—designed for departments across the Bay Area?
We are Stop Cop City Bay Area (Tours & Teach-Ins), a QT+ Black-led grassroots collective raising awareness about this project. This would be the city’s second police training facility, built without voter approval and financed through a $32 million, 30-year loan.
We’re organizing to repurpose the facility into a community resource hub and youth center. To build people power, we’re taking this conversation on the road—visiting Bay Area campuses, classrooms, cafes, and community spaces via our Fall 2025 Tour.
We’d love to collaborate with you and/or co-create an event. Here’s what we offer:
Guest Speaker Presentations—5-minute visits (team meetings, classrooms, co-ops, etc.), panels, or deep dives into:
· the facility’s origins & regional impacts
· finding your role in activism
· reimagining the floorplan (micro-workshops)
· and more
· Interactive Art & Vendor/Tabling Pop-Ups — free zines, stickers, and live linocut printing with hand-carved stamps + artivism.
· Collaborations with Classrooms — project partnerships, research integration, or creative assignments.
· Film Screenings + Discussion — e.g., Power (Yance Ford, 2024) or Riotsville, U.S.A. (Sierra Pettengill, 2022), or a film of your choice.
👉 If you’re interested in hosting a stop, open to co-creating something else, or curious about the intersections of our work: simply reply to this email or visit: stopcopcitybayarea.com/tour
Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to connecting.
In solidarity,
Stop Cop City Bay Area
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Dear Organization Coordinator
I hope this message finds you well. I’m reaching out to invite your organization to consider co-sponsoring a regional proposal to implement Free Public Transit throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
This initiative directly supports low-income families, working people, seniors, youth, and others who rely on public transportation. It would eliminate fare barriers while helping to address climate justice, congestion, and air pollution—issues that disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities.
We believe your organization’s mission and values align strongly with this proposal. We are seeking endorsements, co-sponsorship, and coalition-building with groups that advocate for economic and racial equity.
I would love the opportunity to share a brief proposal or speak further if you're interested. Please let me know if there’s a staff member or program director I should connect with.
A description of our proposal is below:
sharethemoneyinstitute@gmail.com
Opinion: San Francisco Bay Area Should Provide Free Public Transportation
The San Francisco Bay Area is beautiful, with fantastic weather, food, diversity and culture. We’re also internationally famous for our progressiveness, creativity, and innovation.
I believe the next amazing world-leading feature we can add to our cornucopia of attractions is Free Public Transportation. Imagine how wonderful it would be if Muni, BART, Caltrain, AC Transit, SamTrans, SF Bay Ferries, and all the other transportation services were absolutely free?
Providing this convenience would deliver enormous, varied benefits to the 7.6 million SF Bay Area residents, and would make us a lovable destination for tourists.
This goal - Free Public Transportation - is ambitious, but it isn’t impossible, or even original. Truth is, many people world-wide already enjoy free rides in their smart municipalities.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is promoting free transit, with a plan that’s gained the endorsement of economists from Chile, United Kingdom, Greece, and the USA.
The entire nation of Luxembourg has offered free public transportation to both its citizens and visitors since 2020. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, has given free transit to its residents since 2013. In France, thirty-five cities provide free public transportation. Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, offers free rides to seniors, disabled, and students. In Maricá (Brazil) – the entire municipal bus system is free. Delhi (India) – offers free metro and bus travel for women. Madrid & Barcelona (Spain) offer free (or heavily discounted) passes to youth and seniors.
Even in the USA, free public transit is already here. Kansas City, Missouri, has enjoyed a free bus system free since 2020. Olympia, Washington, has fully fare-free intercity transit. Missoula, Montana, is free for all riders. Columbia, South Carolina, has free buses, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has enjoyed free transit for over a decade. Ithaca, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin, offer free transit to students.
But if the San Francisco Bay Area offered free transit, we’d be the LARGEST municipality in the world to offer universal Free Transit to everyone, resident and visitor alike. (Population of Luxembourg is 666,430. Kansas City 510,704. Population of San Francisco Bay Area is 7.6 million in the nine-county area)
Providing free transit would be tremendously beneficial to millions of people, for three major reasons:
1. Combat Climate Change - increased public ridership would reduce harmful CO2 fossil fuel emissions. Estimates from Kansas City and Tallinn Estonia’s suggest an increase in ridership of 15 percent. Another estimate from a pilot project in New York City suggests a ridership increase of 30 percent. These increases in people taking public transportation instead of driving their own cars indicates a total reduction of 5.4 - 10.8 tons of emissions would be eliminated, leading to better air quality, improved public health, and long-term climate gains.
2. Reduce Traffic Congestion & Parking Difficulty - Estimates suggest public transit would decrease traffic congestion in dense urban areas and choke points like the Bay Bridge by up to 15 percent. Car ownership would also be reduced. Traffic in San Francisco is the second-slowest in the USA (NYC is #1) and getting worse every year. Parking costs in San Francisco are also the second-worst in the USA (NYC #1), and again, it is continually getting worse.
3. Promote Social Equity - Free transit removes a financial cost that hits low-income residents hard. Transportation is the second-biggest expense after housing for many Americans. In the Bay Area, a monthly Clipper pass can cost $86–$98 per system, and much more for multi-agency commuters. For people living paycheck-to-paycheck, this is a significant cost. People of color, immigrants, youth, seniors, and people with disabilities rely more heavily on public transit. 55–70% of frequent transit riders in the Bay Area are from low-to moderate-income households, but these riders usually pay more per mile of transit than wealthy drivers. Free fares equalize access regardless of income or geography.
Free transit would help people 1) take jobs they couldn’t otherwise afford to commute to, thus improving the economy, 2) Stay in school without worrying about bus fare, 3) Get to appointments, child care, or grocery stores without skipping meals to afford transit.
To conclude: Free Public Transit should be seen as a civil rights and economic justice intervention.
The Cost? How can San Francisco Bay Area pay for Free Transit throughout our large region?
ShareTheMoney.Institute estimates the cost as $1.5 billion annually. This sum can acquired via multiple strategies. Corvallis, Oregon, has had free public bus service since 2011, paid for by a $3.63 monthly fee added to each utility bill. Missoula, Montana, funds their fare-free Mountain Line transit system, via a property tax mill levy. Madison, Wisconsin’s transit is supported by general fund revenues, state and federal grants, and partnerships/sponsorships from local businesses and organizations.
Ideally, we’d like the funds to be obtained from the 37 local billionaires who, combined, have an approximate wealth of $885 billion. The $1.5 billion for free transit is only 0.17% of the local billionaire's wealth. Sponsorship from the ultra-wealthy would be ideal. Billionaires can view the “fair transit donation” they are asked to contribute not as punishment or an “envy tax”, but as their investment to create a municipality that is better for everyone, themselves included. They can pride themselves on instigating a world-leading, legacy-defining reform that will etch their names in history as leaders of a bold utopian reform.
Our motto: “we want to move freely around our beautiful bay”
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Hank Pellissier - Share The Money Institute
Reverend Gregory Stevens - Unitarian Universalist EcoSocialist Network
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*  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 authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest. Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitskyhttps://freeboris.infoThe petition is also available on Change.org *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
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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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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
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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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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1) Who Were the 2,000 Palestinians Freed by Israel?
Under the cease-fire deal, Israel released 250 Palestinians serving long sentences for violent attacks. More than 1,700 others had been detained in Gaza and held without charge.
By Vivian Yee and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad reported from Haifa, Israel, Oct. 24, 2025
Palestinian prisoners arriving at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, this month after being released from Israeli detention. Saher Alghorra for The New York Times
At the center of the Gaza cease-fire was an exchange. Hamas freed all the living hostages still in Gaza and agreed to hand over all remains of former captives, while Israel released nearly 2,000 imprisoned Palestinians.
Much of the focus was on the 250 freed Palestinians who had been convicted of involvement in violent attacks. But most of those released were Gaza residents detained by Israel during the two-year war without charges or a trial. Israel’s military said the Gazans were detained during searches for militants.
The number of Palestinians in Israeli prisons has more than doubled since the Gaza war began with the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. It had surpassed 11,000 before the cease-fire took hold this month, according to HaMoked, an Israeli rights group. About 9,000 Palestinians remained in Israeli custody after the swap.
Over the course of the war, Israeli forces detained several thousand men, women and children from Gaza at checkpoints, homes, shelters, hospitals and even at aid distribution points. Israel routinely held them incommunicado for long periods, rights groups and Palestinians say, a practice that U.N. officials have called a form of forced disappearance.
Israel detained thousands more Palestinians in the occupied West Bank during the war, saying it was targeting militants.
Israeli and international rights groups and the United Nations have said that Israel has systematically violated detainees’ rights by holding them without charge, in secrecy and in degrading conditions. More than 75 have died in Israeli custody since the war began, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society.
Israel says the imprisoned Palestinians are treated in accordance with international standards.
Here’s a breakdown of the Palestinians who were released recently.
Those Sentenced for Violent Attacks
Of the 1,968 Palestinians released, 250 were serving long sentences after being convicted of involvement in violent attacks on Israelis. The majority were serving life sentences.
Eight returned to Gaza and 88 to the West Bank or East Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society. Israel deported 154 of them because it says it did not want people to rally around them as heroes or leaders fighting against Israeli occupation.
One of the 250 freed was Ali Abdel Latif Mustafa Sais from the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. He was serving a life sentence after his arrest in October 2005, according to Israel’s justice ministry.
Mr. Sais was a member of the militant group Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is linked to the Fatah, the Palestinian faction that dominates the West Bank, according to Israeli prosecutors, who accused him of helping to plan an attempted suicide bombing inside Israel. He denied involvement in any militant activity.
Public celebrations broke out when he returned to Jenin.
Those who were deported were sent to Egypt, where they are staying in a Cairo hotel under guard for what an official Palestinian commission that oversees prisoner affairs said was their protection.
They do not yet have passports, the commission said, and it is not clear whether they will ultimately be moved to other countries.
One of the deportees was Imad Qawasmeh, a native of the West Bank city of Hebron. Israel described him in a court filing as a Hamas commander.
He pleaded guilty in a plea deal, and was serving 16 life sentences after being convicted of directing a double suicide bombing on a bus in the Israeli city of Beersheba in August 2004 that killed 16 Israelis, Israel’s foreign ministry said.
Another exiled former prisoner was Basem Khandaqji, a writer from the West Bank city of Nablus. He was sentenced to three life terms for what Israeli prosecutors said was his role in a 2004 suicide bombing at an outdoor market in Tel Aviv that killed three Israelis and injured 53.
The attack was claimed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an armed Palestinian group, his publisher said, and he denied the charges.
Mr. Khandaqji became a prominent literary figure in prison, writing several novels and poetry collections, according to his publisher.
He won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, which has been called the Arab world’s equivalent of the Booker Prize, in 2024 for his novel “A Mask, the Color of the Sky.”
Gazans Detained During the War
The vast majority of Palestinians released, 1,718, were detained in Gaza during the course of the war.
Israel says all were suspected of involvement with militant activity. They were classified as “unlawful combatants,” which rights groups said stripped them of almost all due process and rights to a fair trial under Israeli law.
Palestinian critics questioned Israel’s motives, noting that many never faced any formal charges in Israeli courts. They have argued that Israel held at least some of the detainees as bargaining chips for the anticipated future exchanges with Hamas for the hostages.
Some were arrested at checkpoints set up by Israeli forces along the routes the military had told Gazans to use to flee combat areas. The Israeli military arrested other detainees during military operations.
Hundreds of medical workers were arrested, many after Israeli troops surrounded and attacked hospitals, according to rights groups.
Dr. Ahmed Muhanna, the director of Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, was detained in December 2023 when Israeli forces besieged the hospital for nearly two weeks, according to ActionAid, an aid group supporting the hospital. He was released this month after 22 months in custody.
His colleague, Dr. Adnan Ahmad Albursh, was also detained in December 2023. He died in Israeli custody, Palestinian officials and rights groups later said.
People Who Died in Detention
As the number of detainees in Israeli custody climbed during the war, so did accusations of abuse. At least 78 detained Palestinians have died during the war, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society. The Israeli military has acknowledged that some of its detainees have died.
An investigation by The New York Times in 2024 found that Palestinian civilians had been held at an army base in demeaning conditions, unable to plead their cases to a judge or to see their lawyers for months. Some legal experts said these conditions violated international law.
Palestinian detainees from Gaza have been stripped, beaten, interrogated and held incommunicado for weeks, according to detainees or their relatives interviewed by The Times.
The Israeli military has denied that “systematic abuse” took place at the base and said the accusations were “inaccurate or completely unfounded.”
The most recent Palestinian to die in Israeli detention was Ahmad Hatem Mohammed Khdeirat, 22, from the West Bank town of al-Dhahiriya. He died on Oct. 7 this year in an Israeli hospital, according to Palestinian prisoner advocacy groups, which claimed that medical neglect by the Israeli authorities led to his death.
The Israeli military and prison authority did not respond to requests for comment on his death.
Mr. Khdeirat, who had diabetes, was arrested in May 2024 and held without charge under a measure known in Israel as administrative detention that is widely used against Palestinians.
Deceased Prisoners Who Were Returned
Under the terms of the cease-fire agreement, Israel committed to releasing the bodies of 15 deceased Palestinian prisoners in exchange for every deceased Israeli hostage returned by Hamas.
Israel has returned the bodies of almost 200 deceased Palestinians so far.
Many of the bodies handed over to Gaza bore signs of traumatic injuries, and all were unidentified except for a number assigned by Israel, according to Dr. Ahmed Dheir, a senior forensic specialist at Nasser Hospital.
The Israeli military said the deceased Palestinians had been combatants during the fighting in Gaza, an assertion that The New York Times could not independently verify.
Reporting was contributed by Adam Rasgon, Johnatan Reiss, Fatima AbdulKarim and Rania Khaled.
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2) How to Make Sense of the Federal Forces on the Streets
By Bora Erden, Oct. 24, 2025
F.B.I., D.E.A., Secret Service
With the Border Patrol marching through Chicago and the National Guard patrolling Memphis, the variety of federal forces deployed to support President Trump’s mass deportation campaign and anticrime efforts continues to expand.
Often, it can be difficult for the public to tell them apart, or to understand what powers each agency has. Here is a guide to how these forces are operating, including alongside local law enforcement.
Who they are
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is the primary immigration law enforcement agency in the country, and its officers wear a variety of uniforms and identifiers.
ICE is made up of two main branches. The officers of Enforcement and Removal Operations typically handle arrests and deportations. In the past, Homeland Security Investigations focused on transnational crimes, but Mr. Trump has called on its officers to make other arrests in the field.
Confusion over immigration officers’ relationship to other law enforcement is not new. In 2020, community organizations in California sued ICE, claiming officers misrepresented themselves as the police during immigration operations. The lawsuit was settled in August and mandated that officers clearly identify themselves as ICE on their clothing.
Elsewhere, ICE officers may operate in plain clothes with no or minimal identification but are supposed to identify themselves during arrests.
One case involving a Turkish doctoral student sparked outrage when footage surfaced of plainclothes agents confronting her on the street outside Boston in March.
Still other ICE officers may appear in full military-style fatigues, like the agency’s Special Response Teams, who are trained for high-risk operations. Since the anti-ICE summer protests in Los Angeles, they have also been guarding ICE facilities and making some street arrests.
Customs and Border Protection is charged with law enforcement at the border, but Mr. Trump has deployed its agents nationwide to arrest immigrants. Within 100 miles of the border, they have greater authority than local law enforcement to conduct certain searches.
Like ICE officers, their uniforms vary.
After protests mounted over his immigration crackdown, Mr. Trump sent National Guard troops to Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., citing a need to protect immigration agents and federal property. He also has called upon the National Guard to work alongside the local police in Memphis and Washington, D.C.
Local officials in most of these cities, which are led by Democrats, have strongly objected to the deployments, saying Mr. Trump is misusing the Guard, a part-time military force that most often is called upon during natural disasters, wars or civil unrest.
What they are doing
Where the president’s deportation and crime-prevention campaigns intersect, the lines have blurred, and all types of law enforcement share overlapping roles.
While immigration enforcement is the purview of ICE and Border Patrol, other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security and in the Justice Department have increasingly taken on this work.
ICE often conducts raids on residences, and the agency has revived workplace raids, a practice largely suspended under the previous administration. Officers more often now stop people on the street, sometimes detaining U.S. citizens. ICE and Border Patrol agents also make arrests at courthouse immigration hearings, a practice legal groups say violates due process protections.
In many places, the local police work directly with Homeland Security to arrest immigrants, or to detain them until immigration officers arrive.
In Washington, at least eight federal agencies were part of Mr. Trump’s efforts to take control of law enforcement. The local police helped immigration officers identify targets during stops for minor infractions, and immigration officers helped with arrests for nonimmigration crimes.
In cities where the administration says its immigration enforcement is at risk, the National Guard and federal forces have worked side by side to secure federal buildings and to confront protesters.
The working relationship between the various law enforcement agencies is not always clear. The Chicago police were exposed to tear gas when federal agents tried to disperse a crowd in the city without warning this month. Homeland Security officials said the Chicago police did not respond to the scene of a car crash and shooting that involved federal agents, an account local officials dispute.
Concerns about tactics
The deployment of militarized forces to major cities has drawn intense criticism from some residents, local leaders, and advocates for immigrants and civil liberties, who say the federal presence does more to stoke fear than to promote public safety.
Of particular concern is that many federal forces are increasingly hiding their faces with masks and other coverings during street operations.
“To witness a loved one, a neighbor, or community member being arrested before your very eyes by masked, unidentified men, is terrifying,” said Priscilla Olivarez, a senior policy attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
There is no federal law requiring immigration agents to reveal their faces or personal identities. A Homeland Security spokeswoman said agents wear masks to protect themselves from personal attacks, and that they clearly identify themselves as law enforcement even when masked.
Local law enforcement agencies often have stricter rules about identification. In Chicago, police officers may not wear face coverings, and in New York City, Seattle, Miami, and Washington, D.C., officers must prominently display their names and badge numbers on their uniforms.
In September, California passed legislation banning federal immigration officers from concealing their faces. Homeland Security called the law unconstitutional and said officers would not abide by it.
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3) Can ICE Stop People Solely Based on Their Race?
For decades, federal officers have had to rely on more than race or ethnicity to stop and question someone over citizenship. That is now being tested.
By Jazmine Ulloa, Oct. 24, 2025
U.S. Border Patrol agents took a man into custody outside a train station earlier this month in Chicago. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
Again and again in Chicago and elsewhere in recent weeks, masked federal agents have accosted people who appear to be Latino, and have confronted them with questions about their immigration status.
Targeting people for immigration enforcement based on race or ethnicity alone was forbidden by the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous decision 50 years ago. After all, it’s impossible to determine the immigration statuses of people simply by looking at them. So for decades, agents seeking to question people about their citizenship were supposed to rely on more than just appearance.
But as President Trump has intensified his mass deportation campaign, roving patrols that have targeted predominantly Latino communities have become a key part of the administration’s playbook. And whether the tactics are legal appears to be an open question, one likely to be decided by the Supreme Court.
Lawsuits challenging the administration’s sweeps in Los Angeles and elsewhere are making their way through the courts. The outcomes could redefine the limits on the discretion officers have to stop, question and detain people over their immigration statuses and how much race and ethnicity can play into those decisions.
“We are in nebulous land,” said Mark Fleming, a lawyer at the National Immigrant Justice Center, which is representing plaintiffs in Chicago. “We have never seen this type of enforcement on the streets ever.”
Last month, in an emergency ruling in the Los Angeles suit, the Supreme Court said federal agents there could question people about their immigration statuses based solely on factors such as race or ethnicity or another spoken language or accented English.
The decision isn’t final, as it overturned the temporary prohibition imposed by a federal judge on officers while she hears arguments on the case. But like many of the justices’ emergency decisions since the start of the new administration, the ruling appeared to signal substantial deference to the executive branch under President Trump and the possibility that the court would ultimately side with him should it ultimately issue an opinion on the case.
It is one of four legal challenges nationwide aiming to curb the warrantless arrests and traffic stops that have become a defining element of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
But even as the lawyers mounting the challenges are hoping to affirm constitutional limits on such immigration stops and apprehensions, experts warn that the lawsuits could end up further emboldening officers to use race or ethnicity in immigration enforcement.
Thomas Coffin was part of the government legal team in the case that led to the 1975 Supreme Court ruling that race could not be the sole factor in immigration stops. Though he and his colleagues lost the case, Mr. Coffin, now 80, said the decision and others had established crucial rights to privacy. But whether they govern the federal agents conducting sweeps on American streets today is, he said, “the $64,000 question.”
During the mass deportation campaign, Latinos have been stopped while driving gardening and landscaping trucks. They have been questioned and detained at bus stops and street corners where laborers gather to wait for work. They have been rounded up at farms, carwashes and construction sites.
José Escobar Molina, 47, who had a temporary form of legal status for immigrants from El Salvador, said he was walking up to his work truck outside his apartment building in Washington, D.C., in August when he was confronted by agents, according to the lawsuit filed in Washington. Without asking for his name, identification or immigration status, the agents handcuffed him and drove him to a holding facility in Virginia, where he was forced to spend the night, he said in a declaration filed in court. When he was released a day later, an ICE agent apologized to him three times for the ordeal, Mr. Escobar Molina said.
In Chicago, where ICE tactics have escalated in recent weeks, lawyers say they have identified dozens of arrests that have violated a 2022 consent decree that covered six Midwestern states. The order — stemming from a 2018 class-action lawsuit that immigrant and civil rights groups filed against the first Trump administration on behalf of five immigrants — restricted federal immigration agents from apprehending and holding people without a warrant.
In court filings, government lawyers have asserted that federal agents are trained in the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures,” and that they should not be hobbled in their efforts to target unauthorized immigrants.
Civil and immigrant rights groups have said the dragnets in different cities have violated the Constitution: Federal agents routinely approach people with brown skin or whom they perceive to be Latinos or immigrants. The agents ask who the people are and where they are from. If people refuse to answer or attempt to leave, they are held or handcuffed and sometimes subdued.
In the Los Angeles case, the lead plaintiff is a man named Pedro Vasquez Perdomo, one of several day laborers arrested at bus stops over the summer. Lawyers for the laborers say that federal agents are stopping Latino workers en masse without having reasonable suspicion, or being able to articulate a legal basis for believing that the people being questioned are in the country illegally.
The legal challenges in Chicago and Washington, D.C., say federal officers are detaining and arresting people without meeting an even higher legal standard of having “probable cause” to suspect that a person is in the country illegally.
A fourth class-action case challenging both stops and arrests was filed in Mobile, Ala., on behalf of Leonardo Garcia Venegas, a Latino construction worker and U.S. citizen born in Florida who was held by immigration officials on two occasions this year.
The judge in the Los Angeles case issued an injunction, prohibiting federal agents in that part of California from conducting stops based on perceived race or ethnicity, or other factors, such as spoken Spanish or accented English.
But after an emergency appeal by the Trump administration, the Supreme Court reversed the judge in Los Angeles. In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said the injunction would “substantially hamper” efforts to enforce immigration laws in the Los Angeles area. He wrote that agents needed to be able to rely on their training and experience in “determining whether reasonable suspicion exists.”
In a dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that the court’s decision eroded freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” she said.
Before the Vasquez Perdomo decision, the court’s most influential ruling on immigration stops involved an American named Felix Humberto Brignoni-Ponce.
On an evening in March 1973, Border Patrol agents who were staked out on an interstate highway between San Diego and Los Angeles stopped Mr. Brignoni-Ponce’s car because its occupants appeared to the agents to be of Mexican descent.
Upon discovering that two passengers did not have legal status, the federal agents arrested everyone and charged Mr. Brignoni-Ponce, a Marine Corps veteran and U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican ancestry, with knowingly transporting undocumented immigrants. But in a ruling two years later, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision throwing out the conviction, finding that officers could rely on “Mexican appearance” as a factor — but not the sole factor — in deciding to stop and question people about their citizenship.
To some critics of racial profiling, the decision seemed like a victory. But the ruling came to be seen by some experts as enabling racial profiling by allowing “Mexican appearance” to be a factor at all.
“Since race can be one factor, in the exercise of discretion, it can become the dominant factor in an immigration stop,” said Kevin R. Johnson, the former dean of the School of Law at the University of California, Davis. “So it’s not surprising that for years you’ve heard the Latino community complaining not unreasonably that immigration stops are based on race.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
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4) U.S. Military Kills Six People in Latest Boat Strike in the Caribbean
The Trump administration has acknowledged 10 strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats from South America, which have killed 43 people.
By Charlie Savage and Eric Schmitt, Reporting from Washington, Oct. 24, 2025
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, shown Monday, announced Friday that six people were killed by the U.S. military in a strike on a vessel in the Caribbean Sea. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
The U.S. military killed six people on a boat suspected of smuggling drugs from South America, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday, as the Trump administration’s lethal and legally disputed campaign continued to escalate.
The latest attack raises the death toll from the Trump administration’s campaign on suspected drug boats to 43 in 10 known strikes — eight in the Caribbean and two more this week in the eastern Pacific.
Mr. Hegseth said in post on social media that the strike had taken place overnight in international waters in the Caribbean Sea. He added that the vessel was “operated by” Tren de Aragua, one of several Latin American criminal groups that the administration has designated as a terrorist organization.
The defense secretary offered no evidence to support his claim but cited “our intelligence.” As with statements about previous strikes, his message contained a grainy, 20-second video clip of a boat bobbing in the water, then disappearing in an explosion.
“If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat Al-Queda,” Mr. Hegseth wrote, misspelling Al Qaeda. “Day or NIGHT, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down, and kill you.”
A broad range of outside legal specialists have said that President Trump and Mr. Hegseth have been giving illegal orders to the military because it is forbidden under domestic and international law to deliberately target civilians who are not directly participating in hostilities — even if they are suspected criminals.
The United States has traditionally addressed maritime drug smuggling by using the Coast Guard, sometimes assisted by the Navy, intercept boats. If suspicions proved accurate, it would arrest their crews. In the same way, the police arrest people who are suspected of being drug dealers; it would be a crime to instead summarily kill them in the street.
The penalty for being convicted of drug trafficking is prison time, not execution.
The Trump administration has asserted that the attacks are lawful — and are not murder — because Mr. Trump has “determined” that drug trafficking by cartels constitute an armed attack on the United States and that the country is engaged in a formal armed conflict with the cartels, so boat crews can be targeted as “combatants.”
But the administration has not provided a legal theory in public or to Congress to explain how it is legitimate for Mr. Trump to bridge the conceptual gulf between drug trafficking and the kind of armed attacks that can create a legal state of armed conflict. Nor has it explained how crewing a boat carrying an illicit consumer product can make someone a lawful target as a combatant.
In the absence of a legal argument, the administration has made a policy argument. It has said it is in favor of using military force against suspected drug runners because tens of thousands of American drug users die from overdoses each year. Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that each boat the U.S. military destroys saves 25,000 lives.
About 80,000 American drug users died from overdoses last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number is down from 110,000 in 2023 but higher than it was a decade ago.
The rise in overdose deaths in recent years was caused by fentanyl, which comes from labs in Mexico. The boats that the U.S. military attacked were coming from South America, which produces cocaine.
Since returning to office in January, Mr. Trump has designated a series of Latin American drug cartels and criminal gangs, including Tren de Aragua, as terrorist organizations. Mr. Hegseth has repeatedly compared them to Al Qaeda.
Congress authorized an armed conflict with Al Qaeda after it attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001; lawmakers have not authorized a war on unrelated other terrorist groups. The designations are also disputed since by definition, terrorists are motivated by ideological or religious goals, while cartels seek illicit profits.
The law that empowers the executive branch to designate a group as a foreign terrorist organization permits freezing its assets and also makes it a crime to provide support to that group. What it does not do is authorize the summary killing of people suspected of being members of the group.
Mr. Hegseth’s description of the 10th attack as targeting a boat associated with Tren de Aragua refocused the operation on Venezuela. Mr. Trump described the first strike, on Sept. 2, as killing 11 people he accused of having been members of that gang. The second strike, on Sept. 15, killed three people he said were from Venezuela.
But President Gustavo Petro of Colombia said one of the people killed on Sept. 15 was a Colombian fisherman and accused the United States of murder. For subsequent strikes, the administration largely did not identify a nationality or membership of the targets in a particular organization.
In a fourth strike, on Oct. 3, the U.S. military killed four men who Mr. Petro later said were Colombian citizens. The sixth strike, on a semi-submersible vessel, killed two people but had two survivors, one of whom was repatriated to Colombia.
The seventh strike, on Oct. 17, killed three men the administration accused of smuggling drugs for the National Liberation Army, a Marxist rebel group in Colombia known as the E.L.N., which the State Department designated as terrorists in 1997. The eighth and ninth strikes were in the eastern Pacific, off the coast of Colombia.
In the buildup to the boat strikes operation as well as in its opening phase, the Trump administration largely focused on Venezuela and its authoritarian leader, President Nicolás Maduro, who has been indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges. The administration has called him illegitimate and portrayed him as the head of a drug cartel.
The Trump administration is also considering options for land strikes in Venezuela and trying to use force to remove Mr. Maduro. Proponents of a regime-change operation include Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe.
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5) Trump Official Warns California Against Arresting Federal Agents
Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche told top California leaders that they would be prosecuted if they arrested federal agents performing immigration raids.
By John Yoon, Oct. 24, 2025
Federal law enforcement officers confronted protesters who tried to block the entrance to Coast Guard Island in Alameda, Calif. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Thursday threatened to prosecute California officials who support arresting federal immigration agents, sharpening the standoff between the Trump administration and local leaders.
Mr. Blanche conveyed the warning in a letter a day after several officials in San Francisco, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, and Brooke Jenkins, the city’s district attorney, said that they might seek to arrest federal agents who break California law during immigration raids.
The suggestion, Ms. Jenkins said, came from seeing agents confronting people in Los Angeles and Chicago. While she did not envision police officers handcuffing federal agents on city streets, she said she would use video footage to identify agents using excessive force and ask a judge for arrest warrants.
Their idea would be to prosecute immigration agents who overstep their authority, for example by using excessive force, state officials said. But the ability of states to arrest federal officers is without much legal precedent.
Mr. Blanche said in the letter that arresting federal agents performing their duties would violate federal laws against impeding enforcement operations. He posted the letter on social media, addressing it to Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, as well as Ms. Pelosi and Ms. Jenkins.
He also said that the Constitution’s supremacy clause prevents federal officers from being held on a state criminal charge if the alleged crime occurred while the officer was performing federal duties.
“The Department of Justice will investigate and prosecute any state or local official who violates these federal statutes,” he wrote, “or directs or conspires with others to violate them.”
He concluded that “federal agents and officers will continue to enforce federal law and will not be deterred by the threat of arrest by California authorities.”
The Trump administration had said on Wednesday that it was sending U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents to Alameda, Calif., to prepare for an operation in the San Francisco Bay Area. President Trump on Thursday called off the crackdown in the city, though it was unclear what that meant for the rest of the Bay Area.
Mr. Trump has sent federal agents and troops to other cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis, Portland, Ore., and Washington, D.C., saying the deployments will curb crime and illegal immigration. Critics have said that he is using them to punish Democratic-led cities and spread fear in immigrant communities.
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6) U.K. Labour Party Suffers Crushing Defeat in Former Stronghold
The governing party placed a distant third in a special election for a district of Wales it has dominated for a century. Plaid Cymru, a center-left Welsh nationalist party, won.
By Lizzie Dearden, Reporting from London, Oct. 24, 2025
Lindsay Whittle of the nationalist party Plaid Cymru celebrating after being declared the winner of a Welsh Parliament special election in Caerphilly early on Friday. Credit...Andrew Matthews/PA Images, via Getty Images
A center-left Welsh nationalist candidate defeated the governing Labour Party and Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform U.K. in a Welsh Parliament special election on Thursday that has been closely watched as a potential bellwether of major upheaval in wider elections next year.
Plaid Cymru, a party that supports Welsh independence from Britain, had been vying with Reform U.K. in polls leading up to Thursday’s vote in Caerphilly — for decades a Labour Party stronghold — amid poor approval ratings for both Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government and its main opposition, the center-right Conservatives.
Its candidate, Lindsay Whittle, was elected with 47 percent of the vote. Reform U.K.’s candidate was second on 36 percent, despite a high-profile campaign joined by Mr. Farage, which he had said could be the start of “spectacular” victories for the party in other parts of Wales. Labour’s candidate placed third, with 11 percent.
The election was seen as the latest bruising test for Mr. Starmer’s Labour government, which has had remarkably low approval ratings for a party that won a landslide victory in July 2024, while Reform U.K. has surged in the polls.
Labour, long the dominant force in Welsh politics, had held the Caerphilly Welsh Parliament seat since its creation in 1999, and has won there in every British general election for more than 100 years, but it faced an uphill battle amid attacks on its local and national record by opposition candidates.
While Reform U.K. has been advancing on the right, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party have been trying to capitalize on the center and left, and in Wales, Plaid Cymru is presenting itself as a “fresh start.”
In Caerphilly, Plaid Cymru urged voters to back it in order to “stop Reform,” with campaign material that read “Labour can’t win!” and displayed tight pre-election poll results between the two parties.
Wales has historically been a dependable stronghold for Labour, particularly the region that includes Caerphilly, north of Cardiff. The prosperity of towns and villages in the area, known as the South Wales Valleys, was blighted by coal mine closures in the decades following World War II, and the more recent decline of heavy industry. Labour drew support as the party for workers, with backing from large trade unions.
But its local political dominance became a challenge for its candidate, Richard Tunnicliffe, during the Caerphilly election campaign. He was accused of hypocrisy for campaigning to prevent library closures planned by the local Labour-run council after previously agreeing with them.
Opposition parties, however, used the campaign to attack the local and the national governments on a range of issues, particularly the economy and immigration.
Mr. Farage visited Caerphilly twice as the election approached, giving a news conference on Sept. 12 in which he said his party would “throw everything” at the campaign and claimed that a Reform U.K. victory would be a prelude to “something quite spectacular” in the wider Welsh Parliament elections next year.
The party’s support appeared to suffer little from revelations that its former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, had accepted bribes to make pro-Russian statements in the European Parliament.
Reform U.K. won a special election in northwestern England in May, for a seat in the U.K. Parliament, and made significant gains in that month’s English local elections, which experts said marked the start of a new era of multiparty politics in Britain.
Thursday’s special election was called after Hefin Wyn David, a Labour politician who was first elected to represent Caerphilly in the Welsh Parliament in 2016, died in August.
Known as the Senedd in Welsh, the Welsh Parliament opened in 1999 as part of a program of devolution within the United Kingdom spearheaded by Tony Blair’s Labour government, which also created the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly.
It operates separately from the Westminster Parliament and can make laws on matters specific to Wales, such as health, education, housing, transport and farming. The special election on Thursday filled only the Caerphilly seat, one of 60 in the Parliament. The Parliament will expand to 96 seats after an election in May next year.
Plaid Cymru’s leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth, hailed the Caerphilly result as a “historic” victory, which he said was the beginning of a political “reset” in Wales that will see the formerly dominant parties of Labour and the Conservatives fade into insignificance.
“It’s happening globally, it’s happening here in Wales, where the old guard is gone,” he said in a statement. Reform U.K. and Plaid Cymru, he said, would offer voters a “choice of two different futures.”
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7) Two People Shot at Protest Site Outside Coast Guard Base in California
Coast Guard police fired rounds at a moving van that accelerated toward the base in reverse and did not follow commands to stop, the authorities say.
By Soumya Karlamangla, Reporting from San Francisco, Oct. 24, 2025
Police officers examine a U-Haul truck at the entrance to Coast Guard Base Alameda early Friday. Credit...Noah Berger/Associated Press
Coast Guard police shot two people on Thursday night outside a base in Alameda, Calif., where protests against a planned federal immigration raid had drawn more than 200 people earlier in the day.
Around 10 p.m. on Thursday, Coast Guard security spotted a U-Haul truck driver operating the vehicle erratically and trying to ram into the base, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
The driver ignored multiple commands from officers and began to drive in reverse directly toward them at a high speed, the department said. Coast Guard security personnel then fired several rounds at the truck.
The driver was shot in the stomach, and a bystander was struck by a bullet fragment. Both are expected to survive, according to D.H.S.
No Coast Guard personnel were injured.
Earlier in the day, protesters blocked the only road leading into Coast Guard Island. The Trump administration said this week that the island in Alameda would be a gathering spot for federal agents from U.S. Customs and Border Protection for an immigration enforcement operation in the Bay Area.
By midmorning Thursday, President Trump announced that he had called off the federal surge for San Francisco after being convinced by tech executives that the city was reducing its crime problem. The demonstration shrunk as the day wore on, and the California Highway Patrol pushed the crowd back to ensure one lane of access to the base.
Laura Cheifetz, a local pastor who attended Thursday’s protests but was not there on Thursday night, said she worried that the incident with the driver could trigger a broader law enforcement crackdown. She said that she and other activists believed the driver was an outside provocateur.
“I looked at the chats and everybody’s like, ‘Oh yeah, we have no idea who this is,’” she said. “We’re worried they’re going to raise the temperature to where our peaceful protesters get caught up in the middle and it makes things worse for our community members who are already afraid and already suffering.”
The F.B.I. is leading the investigation into the shooting. Cameron Polan, a spokeswoman for the agency’s San Francisco office, said it appeared to be an isolated incident, and provided no further details.
Felicia Mello contributed reporting.
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8) Trump Wants an Easy Win in Venezuela. He Won’t Get One.
By Dennis M. Hogan, Oct. 25, 2025
Mr. Hogan teaches in the history and literature program at Harvard. His research focuses on Central America and the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Playing in Caracas under the gaze of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro. The New York Times
While the large U.S. military force now in the Caribbean is ostensibly there to fight Venezuelan drug traffickers, officials have all but acknowledged that the real goal is to oust Venezuela’s autocratic president, Nicolás Maduro. The military pressure deepened on Friday with the deployment of an American aircraft carrier to the region.
As the Trump administration doubles down on its campaign against Mr. Maduro, officials may very well have in mind Washington’s last overthrow of a Latin American leader, also accused of ties to the narcotics trade, Gen. Manuel Noriega of Panama, in 1989. It was an operation many hailed — wrongly, in some respects — as a quick and easy victory that ousted a repressive strongman and led to his imprisonment for drug trafficking.
The situation in Venezuela is far different, and seeking regime change there could be disastrous for the United States and the region. It is also important to recognize how doing so would fit into a larger pattern of American intervention in Latin America.
To begin with, the contrasts between Panama and Venezuela: Panama is a small country with a population at the time of the invasion of fewer than three million people. It is situated at a strategic choke point on the Central American isthmus and bifurcated by the Panama Canal, which was then still under U.S. control. It was home to the U.S. Southern Command and a permanent U.S. garrison.
Venezuela is a sprawling, geographically diverse country with a population of nearly 30 million. The United States maintains no military installations there, and it is not home to a strategic asset like the Panama Canal, unless you include oil reserves. Venezuela’s neighbors Colombia and Brazil have been at odds with the Trump administration. As policy analysts across the political spectrum have argued, the likeliest outcome of a U.S. invasion that topples Mr. Maduro is a surge in regional instability, and, according to a recent report by the Stimson Center, a worsening of the conditions leading to drug trafficking, conflict and migration.
Intervention in Venezuela falls into the larger framework of how the United States has historically acted in Latin America: exercising the “international police power” of Theodore Roosevelt’s corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. This principle asserts that Washington has the right to interfere in the affairs of Latin American nations — especially those perceived to run afoul of U.S. interests.
U.S. intervention has been a constant in America’s relationship with Latin America even during periods of supposed isolationism or, to put it in Trumpian terms, “America First.” A prime example was in the years after World War I, when Washington largely retreated from European affairs but kept its military active in the hemisphere, staging interventions in Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, among other countries.
The historian Greg Grandin has argued that one interpretation of U.S. involvement in 1980s civil conflicts in Central America was as an attempt by the conservative movement to redeem the failures of the Vietnam War, and, in so doing, renew the nation’s sense of purpose in the fight against Communism. But wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, conducted with U.S. support for right-wing combatants, quickly became morasses, leading to political blowback in the United States and the torture, death and disappearance of thousands of people across the region. Ultimately, the wars also led to large-scale Central American migration to the United States.
Under Ronald Reagan, the United States intervened in those conflicts using overt, covert and illegal means, but, although it trained, equipped and, in some cases, assisted allies in the region, it stopped short of sending troops to fight in the wars directly.
Only in Panama did the United States launch a full-scale invasion with the goal of removing a head of state. That invasion was ordered by Mr. Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush. It was intended to be a swift and overwhelming show of force that would strike a blow against drug trafficking and restore American primacy. It was indeed, in many senses, the anti-Vietnam.
The U.S. military promptly dismantled Panama’s armed forces and toppled Mr. Noriega, leading to the installation of a pro-United States civilian government. American casualties were limited; 23 service members were killed and more than 300 wounded. The operation demonstrated that, in Panama at least, Washington could still strike effectively to achieve its political goals.
Yet the truth was not nearly so neat. In the process, U.S. forces leveled El Chorrillo, a working-class neighborhood that was home to primarily Black and mixed-race Panamanians. The United States documented around 300 Panamanian civilian deaths, but the actual toll of civilian dead remains in dispute; some international organizations estimate hundreds more died, and some Panamanian organizations claim the death toll reached into the thousands. In recent years, the Panamanian government has exhumed and identified victims of the invasion who were buried in mass graves.
While the exact number of casualties may never be established, certain facts are beyond dispute. The destruction of El Chorrillo, where Mr. Noriega’s headquarters was based, displaced thousands of working-class Panamanians, many of whom were forced to shelter in refugee camps. The invasion drew widespread international condemnation, including from the United Nations General Assembly.
Even after the fall of Mr. Noriega, political instability persisted in Panama while crime increased, requiring the continued intervention of the U.S. military to maintain order. Congress approved $420 million in aid to help rebuild Panama, but a later report from the Government Accountability Office found the package was largely ineffectual. Drug trafficking through Panama to the United States did not stop, and may have actually increased.
If Operation Just Cause, as the U.S. invasion of Panama was code-named, was undertaken to redeem the disasters of Vietnam and perhaps even the complications of earlier U.S. involvement in the civil wars in Central America, it is not so difficult to see a possible invasion of Venezuela as an attempt to exorcise U.S. military setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The invasion of Panama and a possible invasion of Venezuela do have some parallels. Like Panama in 1989, Venezuela poses no imminent security threat to the United States, despite what Mr. Trump has said. Mr. Maduro is not uniquely responsible for either migration or the flow of drugs into the United States. Instead, a potential assault on Venezuela would appear to be a pre-emptive war of choice, undertaken in part, as Operation Just Cause was, to satisfy a domestic constituency of the Republican Party, represented by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has long advocated regime change in Venezuela, and distract critics of Mr. Trump’s domestic policies.
U.S. interventions in Latin America, whatever their underlying rationale, visit very real suffering on ordinary people who find themselves in the path of the U.S. military. Even in Panama, where circumstances in 1989 were favorable to America’s aims, the operation was neither bloodless nor painless, nor completely successful. How much more serious will the consequences of such adventurism be in Venezuela?
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