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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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. Atler 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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 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) ‘We’ve Found Our Voice’: Many in Twin Cities Emerge With a Sense of Power
Two months after federal agents began operations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, residents say they have found strength in uniting as a community.
By Sabrina Tavernise, Reporting from the Twin Cities, Feb. 10, 2026
Dozens of people hold messages for Renee Good on sticks during a public day of memorial and mourning on Saturday in Minneapolis. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
In the month since Renee Good was shot and killed on Portland Avenue, life at the impromptu street-side memorial to her memory has taken on a gentle rhythm. Well-wishers walk quietly around its circumference, reading the signs, looking at the artwork and laying down bouquets. Caretakers come too, chipping away ice with hammers and sweeping up old flowers to make room for the new.
On Saturday, Sandy Zaic, a 59-year-old teacher, came with two friends to pay her respects.
“It’s very overwhelming,” she said, looking at a blue painting of Ms. Good and holding a bouquet of yellow flowers.
In four days of interviews in Minneapolis and St. Paul, people reflected on the two months since the federal immigration operation began. Almost everybody interviewed in the heavily Democratic region opposed the federal presence. Some also worried that protesters would destroy property; many had not attended any of the protests.
But almost all of those interviewed said they had learned a lot about each other in the past two months, as the Twin Cities have been confronted by an immigration sweep that, by the government’s own account, has been the largest in the nation. Along the way, not only was Ms. Good killed, but a nurse, Alex Pretti, was too. Federal agents also arrested a 5-year-old boy, Liam Ramos, whose picture in a bunny hat became a symbol for many of all that had gone wrong.
They learned that they are willing to be outdoors for hours on one of the coldest days of the past 25 years to march in protest. They learned they will deliver food to complete strangers after long days at work, so families who need meals don’t have to risk a trip to the store, where immigration agents may be waiting.
And they learned that these efforts bring a new sense of their own power, that they have come together, made themselves heard and, if they have not prevailed against what they see as unjust federal action in their cities, then at least they have held their ground.
“I’m super proud to be a Minnesotan,” said Ms. Zaic, who lives in the suburbs and delivers food to families in the Columbia Heights school district, where Liam Ramos went to school. “I’m proud to watch all these people stand up for what they know is right.”
Not all Minnesotans disagree with the deportations. Republicans nationally still tell pollsters they support President Trump’s actions on immigration, and Republicans in Minnesota do not appear to be any different. But a small but growing minority of Republicans nationwide say the enforcement tactics have gone too far.
Minnesota has experienced mass protests before, most notably in 2020 when George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer less than a mile from where Ms. Good was shot. But the two situations are not alike, multiple people said in interviews. The Floyd killing was an argument that the state was having with itself over the nature of policing. It divided people, while the killings of Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti have had a unifying effect.
“This is something different,” said Craig Wilson, 54, a landscape architect who helped organize a candlelight vigil for Ms. Good on Saturday evening, and was standing in the cold with his two dogs, Harper and Huck, both whippets in jackets. “This is the federal government. This is an invasion.”
He added: “We feel like we have a common purpose.”
The federal sweeps began almost two months ago, but since Mr. Pretti’s death on Jan. 24, the dynamic appears to be shifting.
The Department of Homeland Security has pulled 700 of its 3,000 agents from the streets, and Tom Homan, Mr. Trump’s border czar, was sent to Minnesota to strike a more conciliatory tone. In an interview on Friday with KSTP, a television station in the Twin Cities, Mr. Homan said one of the first things he did after arriving was to have more oversight of federal agents and “to hold anybody who acts out of policy, hold them accountable.” He said that several agents are under investigation and no longer part of the operation in Minnesota.
Immigration agents have continued to circle neighborhoods, driving their vehicles in the south and the north ends of the city, and residents who have taken it upon themselves to watch them continued to follow them. Photographers from The Times who spent the past week monitoring the streets said they still saw many ICE vehicles, but fewer arrests and confrontations.
“It feels like an ebb, but at any moment someone else could get killed and it will just pick up again,” said Jeremy Stadelman, 42, a local government worker who was out walking his dog on Thursday. “We are on pins and needles. But we are also very resilient people.”
He said the people opposing ICE may have “won the propaganda battle, but the changes are pretty superficial.”
Many people interviewed said they did not believe the government had changed its tactics. But as the government continued to defend its actions in a federal courtroom in Minneapolis on Friday, it found a Trump-appointed judge pushing back.
A legal group called Democracy Forward was arguing that detainees were not given access to lawyers inside the Whipple Federal Building, where many of those arrested are being taken.
“OK, so I weigh this, against this,” said U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brasel, picking up a stack of papers filed by the plaintiffs and then the slim government response, and looking at the government lawyer. “And that’s a tough sell, right?”
Judge Brasel said she would rule on Thursday.
Saturday marked one month since Ms. Good was killed. Her partner, Becca Good, spoke for the first time, through a spokeswoman, at a memorial that began with a Native American ceremony in snowy Powderhorn Park. A large crowd stood in the cold for several hours, many wearing an item of sparkly clothing as the invitation had instructed. One man wore a crown of green tinsel. A little girl wore a pink armband with sequins.
Some people interviewed compared the last few weeks in the Twin Cities with the first few weeks after 9/11.
“There’s something really heartwarming about looking a complete stranger in the eye and saying, ‘I’m here for you,’” said Nebiyu Meseret, 28, a business administrator.
Lindsey Gruttadaurio, 62, an insurance claims adjuster, had never been to a protest before. A centrist Democrat, she grew up in a military family, and often disagrees with progressives. But watching the ICE raids on the news motivated her, so on Jan. 23, she bundled up and went.
She immediately felt comfortable.
“It’s like a Lutheran potluck — just go and you’ll be fine,” she said.
“It was thrilling. There was a lot of cussing. It was fantastic, actually.”
The thrill, she said, came from being together with all those people and the power in that.
“We’ve found our voice and it’s never going away now.”
Owen Deneen, a nurse who was walking downtown in hospital scrubs at lunchtime on Friday, said it was as if “a natural disaster happened and it’s neighbor helping neighbor.”
He and his wife also went to the Jan. 23 protest, also his first. He said he felt “a mix of anger and resolution” during the demonstration.
When the couple broke away from the crowd to walk back toward their car, he said the temperature felt like it dropped by 15 degrees. They looked at each other and realized that it was because they had left “the closeness” of the crowd.
“It’s much colder when you’re alone,” he said.
David Guttenfelder Jamie Kelter Davis
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2) Trump’s Threats to Cuba’s Oil Suppliers Put Mexico in a Bind
The longstanding alliance between Cuba and Mexico is under mounting pressure from the United States, forcing President Claudia Sheinbaum into a precarious balancing act.
By James Wagner, Reporting from Mexico City, Feb. 10, 2026
President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico now must juggle two competing priorities: honoring long‑standing ties to Havana while navigating an essential but increasingly strained relationship with Washington. Luis Antonio Rojas for The New York Times
When President Trump declared a “national emergency” last month, accusing Cuba of harboring Russian spies and “welcoming” enemies like Iran and Hamas, it came with a warning: Countries that sell or provide oil to the Caribbean nation could be subject to high tariffs.
The threat seemed to be directed at Mexico, one of the few countries still delivering oil to Cuba. Earlier this month, he even said that he had specifically asked President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico to cut off its supply.
Mexico and Cuba’s long alliance — rooted in economic and cultural cooperation and a shared wariness of U.S. intervention — survived and even deepened after the Cuban Revolution, when Mexico preserved ties with Havana even as much of the region aligned with Washington.
Ms. Sheinbaum now faces a fraught balancing act: upholding her country’s historical alliance with Havana, while managing its vital yet increasingly tense relationship with the United States.
The Sheinbaum administration has been careful not to provoke Mr. Trump, who has strained Mexico’s economy with tariffs and threats of military action to stop fentanyl from crossing the border. He has also threatened to withdraw from the free trade deal with Canada and Mexico, the U.S.’s largest trading partner.
Ms. Sheinbaum has largely held to her country’s commitment to Cuba, a Communist country, where people are struggling with surging food costs, constant blackouts, a lack of critical medicine and dwindling fuel. But Mexico has not sent any oil to Cuba since early last month.
“No one can ignore the situation that the Cuban people are currently experiencing because of the sanctions that the United States is imposing in a very unfair manner,” she said during a news conference on Monday. She added that Mexico had deployed two Navy ships carrying more than 814 tons of humanitarian aid — mostly staple foods and hygiene supplies — to Cuba.
Cuba, whose main oil provider was Venezuela, has faced chronic fuel shortages for years, but the situation has become far more severe since last month, when President Trump took control of Venezuela’s oil supply. He halted deliveries to Cuba, which now only has a fraction of the oil it needs.
Mexico had been sending about 22,000 barrels a day, but that figure dropped to about 7,000 toward the end of 2025 — which was still far less than Venezuela was sending, according to Jorge Piñon, a University of Texas oil expert who tracks the shipments closely. The last delivery from Mexico arrived in early January, he said, days after President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela was captured by U.S. forces.
To navigate the crisis, Ms. Sheinbaum has tried to distinguish between commercial contracts between Mexico’s state-owned oil company Pemex and the Cuban government, and humanitarian aid, which she insists must continue. She has also called for a diplomatic talks between Mexico and the United States, and has offered her country as a mediator for discussions between Washington and Havana.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba said on Thursday that his government was open to negotiations with the United States. Mr. Trump has warned that Cuba should strike a deal, which he has not elaborated on, “before it is too late.”
With the taps effectively running dry, Ms. Sheinbaum seems focused on keeping Mexico’s historical loyalty alive.
Hers is the only Latin American country that has consistently opposed the U.S. economic embargo of Cuba since it began more than 60 years ago, even as the tenor of the relationship between Mexico and Cuba has varied under different presidents.
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, two key figures of the Cuban Revolution, first met while in exile in Mexico City in 1955, and began planning a guerrilla war that would sweep the island and change the course of Latin American history. They followed in the footsteps of José Martí, a Cuban national hero who lived in Mexico before returning to his land, where he died in 1895 fighting for independence from Spain.
The Cuban Revolution was also an inspiration for anti-government movements in Mexico in the 1960s, said Rafael Rojas, a Cuban historian at the College of Mexico.
He said that Morena, the leftist governing party of Ms. Sheinbaum, has “a nostalgic, very sentimental view of Cuba.” To a significant part of the party’s leadership and base, he added, “Cuba appears as a victim of the empire and must be helped.”
Mexico has long been a refuge and transit point for Cubans, especially since the United States ended its policy in 2017 of allowing Cubans who arrived without visas to stay, and as the island’s economic crisis has deepened in recent years.
After Cuban leftists planned their revolution in Mexico in the 1950s, Manuel Antonio de Varona, founded an anti-Castro movement in Mexico City in 1960. Generations earlier, during the Mexican Revolution, Mexican figures fled to Cuba.
Since the revolutionaries took control of Cuba in 1959, Mexico has proved useful as a negotiator between the United States and Cuba, said Ricardo Pascoe, the former Mexican ambassador to Cuba under the conservative president Vicente Fox in the early 2000s.
During parts of the Cold War, Mr. Pascoe said, Washington kept tabs on Cubans through intelligence shared by Mexico, but Mexico also was Cuba’s gateway to the rest of the world. And though past right-wing Mexican presidents did not share Cuba’s political or economic policies, Mexico maintained friendly diplomatic ties and trade partnerships.
Under the Morena party — founded by Ms. Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who built closer ties with Mr. Díaz-Canel of Cuba — Mr. Pascoe said that the Mexican government has become more ideologically aligned with Cuba.
“That has placed Mexico and the president of Mexico in a very complicated position,” he said. “Because Mexico’s economy continues to depend on its relationship with the United States yet it wants to have a privileged political relationship with a recognized adversary of the United States.”
Ricardo Monreal, who leads the Morena legislators in the lower house of congress, said there is a conservative sentiment in Mexico that does not agree with the country’s current relationship with Cuba. But he insisted that Mexico “cannot accept” a policy that affects essentials such as food and energy.
“I feel that this is the worst crisis in Cuba’s modern history because of the pressure of the blockade and the strangulation it is suffering at the hands of the United States,” he said. “We cannot assume a position of contempt or indifference toward what Cuba is suffering.”
Miriam Castillo, Frances Robles and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting.
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3) Canadian Airlines Cancel Flights as Cuba Runs Out of Jet Fuel
The Trump administration’s crackdown on oil shipments to Cuba is beginning to wreak havoc on the Caribbean island’s travel industry.
By Frances Robles, Reporting from Florida, Published Feb. 9, 2026, Updated Feb. 10, 2026
Jose Marti International Airport in Havana last year. Yamil Lage/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Disruptions to Cuba’s travel industry began this week after the government notified airlines that it would run out of aviation fuel, part of a crippling energy crisis triggered by the Trump administration’s strict measures, which have largely cut off the communist country’s access to foreign oil.
Air Canada announced that, starting Monday, it had suspended its 16 flights per week to four Cuban cities.
WestJet Group, which operates WestJet, Sunwing Vacations, WestJet Vacations and Vacances WestJet Quebec, said it had begun an “orderly wind down” of its operations in Cuba in order to lessen the strain local resources.
Both airlines said they would send empty jets to Cuba from Montreal and Toronto to bring back roughly 3,000 Canadians currently visiting the island.
Before the pandemic, at least 1 million Canadians visited Cuba each year, according to the Canada foreign ministry.
Canada has been a top source of tourists to Cuba. and the loss of Canadian tourists will be a hard hit to an already struggling industry.
Though Russian airlines said their flights would continue as usual, Interfax, the Russian wire service, said a Rossiya Airlines flight Monday was canceled, but the empty plane was flown to Cuba to pick up Russian tourists.
According to the Association of Tour Operators of Russia, there may currently be between 4,200 and 4,700 tourists traveling on package tours from Russia in Cuba.
The lack of jet fuel was the first major blow to Cuba’s economy since President Trump announced on Jan. 29 that he was taking additional steps to stop the flow of oil to Cuba. Mr. Trump, claiming without providing evidence that Cuba harbored terrorist groups, said he would impose tariffs on any nation that provided Cuba with oil. The move largely affected Mexico, which had been one of the few remaining sources of oil for the island.
Cuba had long relied on Venezuela for a majority of its fuel needs. But after the Jan. 3 U.S. attack on Venezuela that ousted its president, the Trump administration took control over Venezuela’s oil industry and stopped shipments to Cuba.
The measure is widely seen as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to exacerbate Cuba’s economic free fall and prolonged blackouts and force an end to the country’s 66-year-old communist revolution.
Cuba produces about 40 percent of the oil it needs, but experts say that is not enough to keep the country functioning. They predict that Cuba will likely run out of reserves by the end of March.
Cuba does not keep much reserves of jet fuel, so it was not surprising that it ran out of that first, said Jorge Piñón, an expert on Cuba energy issues at the University of Texas.
“This only impacts long-haul flights; the flights from Miami historically come with enough fuel to go back and forth,” Mr. Piñón said. “If we don’t see a smoke stack from an oil tanker arriving somewhere in Cuba during the second half of March, we’re in bad shape.”
Long haul flights to Cuba would probably have to schedule refueling stops in other countries, possibly in the Dominican Republic, he said.
American Airlines, which operates 11 daily flights from Miami to Cuba, said its planes could travel with enough fuel for the return flight.
Air Canada said that the planes bringing back Canadians in the coming days would fly in with extra fuel to Cuba and then make stops as necessary to refuel on the return journey. WestJet said it would fly to Cuba with enough fuel for the return trip.
Other airlines, including Iberia, announced changes to their cancellation policies to allow passengers more flexibility to leave Cuba. Air Europa said it would stop in Santo Domingo to refuel.
News of the jet fuel crisis was first reported by the Spanish news agency EFE, citing a NOTAM notification, a telecommunications message used by aviation authorities to alert pilots and airlines to immediate issues or hazards.
Cuba’s vice prime minister told Cuban state television that fuel resources would be redirected to essential services.
In a news conference last week, Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel insisted that Cuba is not and will not be a failed state.
“I am not an idealist. I know we are going to live through difficult times; we have before,” he said. “But we will overcome them together.”
Local state-run Cuban media outlets published news of a series of austerity measures.
Cimex, Cuba’s state-owned conglomerate, announced Saturday that it had suspended gasoline sales in Cuba’s local currency, as well as diesel sales in U.S. dollars.
Banks will operate on shorter schedules, and some hospitals canceled elective surgeries. Some nurses would be assigned to work near their homes, because they probably would not be able to make it to work because of the fuel shortage, the Tribuna newspaper reported.
Tourists were beginning to be transferred to other hotels so that Cuba would save energy by having fewer partially filled hotels, Canadian media reported.
Fabio Nina, a vice president of Air Century, a Dominican airline that flies to Cuba six times a week, said Cuban aviation authorities told him they could find fuel for his 50-seat jet this week but were less confident about next week.
“Eventually, if they don’t sort things out with Washington, they are going to run out of fuel completely,” Mr. Nina said. “Right now we don’t know what’s going to happen after this week. It’s a crazy, crazy, crazy situation.”
Reporting was contributed by David C. Adams in Miami, Niraj Chokshi in New York and Valerie Hopkins in Berlin.
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4) Donald Trump, Pagan King
By Leighton Woodhouse, Feb. 11, 2026
Mr. Woodhouse is a documentary filmmaker and the author of the newsletter Social Studies.
Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada recently described the world that President Trump is dragging us into with this aphorism: “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
The quote comes from Thucydides’ fictionalized account of a negotiation between Athens and the rulers of the island of Melos, in the Peloponnesian War. The Melians, who were no match for the Athenians, wished to remain neutral. They complained that Athens’s demand that they submit to its rule was unjust. The Athenians responded that matters of justice exist only between equals. Between those who are strong and those who are weak there is only force.
The dialogue is famous for its stark portrayal of the dictates of political realism. The world is not guided by ideals and values, it demonstrates. It is brokered only by power.
The Trump administration has adopted this philosophy as its own. In a recent interview with Jake Tapper, Stephen Miller said, “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”
To sympathetic ears, Mr. Miller sounded refreshingly unsentimental and cleareyed. But the “niceties” he disparaged aren’t just some naïve fantasy. They are the values of Christianity, the faith the Trump administration purports to defend and uphold.
After defeating Melos in a siege, Athens slaughtered the island’s men and enslaved its women and children. Such was the nature of the ancient world, a world that was, to borrow Mr. Miller’s words, devoid of “niceties” and “governed by power.”
In his book “Dominion,” the historian Tom Holland describes how it wasn’t until Christianity came along that Western civilization derived the popular conception that the weak and the vanquished had any inherent moral value at all. Telling an ancient Greek or a pre-Christian Roman that their treatment of slaves was morally wrong would have inspired not argument but bewilderment, as if you had told them they were evil for the way they treated their kitchen utensils. These pagans generally believed that their gods favored the strong and were indifferent to the weak.
Christianity upended these assumptions. Christianity took the Jewish God, who cared for the weak and knew the difference between good and evil, and made his message universal. It taught that all humans are God’s creation. To oppress any person, even a slave, is an offense before him. Even more than that: the weak are closer to God than the rich and the powerful.
This moral instinct is so ubiquitous today that we barely recognize it as Judeo-Christian, or even as religious. Adherents of the world’s other great religions have largely integrated it into their ethical frameworks even if this tenet is not central to their faith. It is the basis for the American Declaration of Independence and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As Mr. Holland noted, even anti-Christian revolutionaries, from the Jacobins to the Communists, owe their secular claims of human equality to Christianity; indeed, they are the most radical expressions of it.
That’s not to pretend that those lofty principles have effectively restrained great powers. Mr. Carney is correct that international law has always been, in part, a lie. International norms haven’t stopped the U.S. military from carrying out atrocities all over the world. Christian morality didn’t prevent medieval kings and the Catholic Church from massacring civilians, persecuting Jews and committing genocides in the New World. The American founders, so proud of their Christian piety, betrayed their religion in the most profound way: many of them owned slaves.
Unlike the pagans of antiquity, however, those rulers had to answer to charges of hypocrisy, which corroded their credibility in a way that the Athenians never had to contend with. Purportedly Christian great powers could do what they wanted to, just as the Athenians declared. But unlike the ancients, they did so at a cost to their political legitimacy.
George W. Bush felt obliged to sell his invasion of Iraq in part on the righteous Christian premise that it would liberate oppressed Iraqis from Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. After the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the United States cast their mujahedeen adversaries not just as tools for U.S. foreign policy goals but as “freedom fighters.” American leaders, unlike Vikings or Spartans, had to make a moral case for the exercise of our power. It wasn’t enough to simply say that we, as the strong, can do what it is in our interest to do. We had to couch it all, however unconvincingly, in a framework that made it palatable to the Christian conscience. This may not have determined the shape of American foreign and domestic policy, but it was the impossibility of making that case that ultimately contributed to the end of slavery, and of European imperialism and American segregation. The moral framework mattered.
That is the world we are leaving behind. By brazenly jacking Venezuela for its oil and threatening to acquire Greenland against its will, the U.S. is acting as the ancient Greeks, the ancient Persians and the Germanic tribes conducted themselves: brutishly, without shame or apology. And the abdication of Christian values is already shaping the conduct of our government toward its citizens, as in Minneapolis, where immigration agents have killed two protesters. The Trump administration appears unconstrained not only by the limits imposed by the Constitution but by the standards of an average American’s conscience. Federal agents’ treatment of both immigrants and U.S. citizens in Minneapolis is the reflection of a government that has abandoned the moral instinct that it is wrong for the powerful to abuse the weak.
JD Vance never tires of pointing out that America is a philosophically Christian nation, and that Christianity is under attack from his political enemies. Such statements get big applause from the Trump-loving crowds he panders to. But the administration he serves in is doing more than any antifa foot soldier to dismantle that philosophy as the fundamental basis of our government’s political legitimacy. To the people leading this administration, Thucydides’ famous aphorism isn’t just an acknowledgment of reality. It is the image of the world they wish to make.
Leighton Woodhouse is an independent journalist, documentary filmmaker and author of the Substack Social Studies.
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5) We Have to Look Right in the Face of What We Have Become
By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist, Feb. 11, 2026
Paola Chapdelaine for The New York Times
On Oct. 4, Marimar Martinez, a teacher’s assistant at a Montessori school, was driving in Chicago when she observed federal immigration agents on patrol. She had begun to honk her horn to warn her neighbors about their presence when she collided with a Border Patrol vehicle. Moments later, the agent in the vehicle, Charles Exum, fired multiple shots into Martinez’s car, hitting her again and again. (Later, Exum would brag to colleagues that he had “fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes.”)
Prosecutors for the government charged Martinez with assaulting a federal officer and accused her of trying to ram Exum with her car. The Department of Homeland Security described her actions as domestic terrorism, a charge the agency would repeat after the death of Renee Good in January at the hands of another immigration agent.
The government’s case unraveled, however, when it became clear that its story did not fit the evidence — evidence that officials with Customs and Border Protection tried to hide. The government dropped its case against Martinez a month later, and on Friday a federal judge authorized the release of the body camera footage so that the public could see the incident for itself.
Recently, Martinez joined with other Americans brutalized by federal immigration agents to tell their stories to a forum of congressional Democrats led by Representative Robert Garcia of California and Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the top Democrats on the House Oversight Committee and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Garcia and Blumenthal convened the event to collect testimony on — and highlight — “the violent tactics and disproportionate use of force by agents of the Department of Homeland Security.”
The people who testified spoke to the terror of their confrontations with masked, armed and often trigger-happy federal agents. “I will never forget the fear, and having to quickly duck my head as the shots were fired at the passenger side of the car. Any one of those bullets could have killed me or two people I love,” said Martin Daniel Rascon, who was stopped by agents who broke the windows of the vehicle he was in and began firing when the driver, frightened, tried to escape.
If democracy rests on mutual recognition, on our capacity to see one another as full and equal persons, then the power to speak and be heard lies at the foundation of democratic life. It is when we speak — when we argue, appeal, explain and testify — that we put into practice our belief in the ability of others to understand, reason and empathize. Or as Thomas Jefferson remarked in 1824, “In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.”
Thus far, growing public opposition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection has been a function of the power of the image — of videos of shootings and abuse — but the testimony of Martinez, Rascon and others should remind us of the power of words and personal experience to also move the public. Crucially, there is the power inherent in giving victims of wrongdoing a chance to tell their stories, not as one perspective among many but as part of the official record.
Two examples of this dynamic stand out in American history.
In 1871, Congress convened the Joint Select Committee to Inquire Into the Conditions of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States, better known as the Klan hearings, on account of its focus: vigilante violence against the formerly enslaved. The committee, the historian Kidada E. Williams writes in “I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction,” “traveled to hot spots of southern disorder, where they solicited testimony from officeholders, voters, accused participants and their victims.” Overall, the hearings “yielded 13 volumes of firsthand testimonies, including from Black victims.” Hundreds of Black men and women spoke of terror, intimidation, wanton killings and sexual violence. “African Americans,” Williams writes, “told their stories of world-unraveling violence and asked federal officials and their fellow citizens to respect their rights.”
A little more than a century later, in 1980, Congress established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, an official federal investigation into the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. The commission held 20 days of hearings in cities across the country and heard testimony from more than 750 witnesses, many of them on the West Coast, including “evacuees, former government officials, public figures, interested citizens and historians.” The evacuees, or rather victims, spoke in their testimony to deep feelings of injustice and a powerful sense that the federal government had robbed them of their dignity. “We took whatever we could carry,” said one person interned as a child. “So much we left behind, but the most valuable thing I lost was my freedom.” Victims also spoke about conditions in the camps that should sound familiar to anyone who has read recent accounts about ICE detention facilities. “The garbage cans were overflowing, human excreta was found next to the doors of the cabins and the drainage boxes into which dishwater and kitchen waste was to be placed were filthy beyond description.”
The public attention associated with the Klan hearings helped suppress anti-Black vigilante violence in the South, but only for a time. Ultimately, the hearings did not produce the kind of legislation or federal effort that would have secured the promise of equal citizenship for the formerly enslaved. The more recent commission and hearings on Japanese internment, on the other hand, did lead to congressional action, and in 1988 President Ronald Reagan signed a law that acknowledged and apologized for the injustice of internment, which gave reparations to surviving internees or their heirs.
In her book, Williams observes:
Societies experiencing atrocities struggle to put a stop to and then meaningfully address them. Perpetrators want to advance their aims to the end and propagate baseless lies to do it. Victims want violence to stop, and they want justice. A small cadre of observers believes in justice and accountability. The rest, especially those who are safe from being targeted, and atrocities’ passive beneficiaries, simply want to move on and wipe the historical slate clean.
This was true of the violence suffered by Black Americans during Reconstruction. It has been true, in fact, for all manner of violence either committed or sanctioned by the federal government. But while the odds are somewhat against a serious reckoning with the brutality and wrongdoing of Trump’s mass deportation effort, it does not have to be true of the atrocities of ICE and the Border Patrol. If it is, it is because we made it so.
With that in mind, any serious push to account for the actions of this government — to abolish the president’s private army, restructure immigration enforcement and punish anyone responsible for wrongdoing — must include recompense and repair for its victims. And looking ahead to a Democratic-led House, Senate or both, the first step in that journey must be more of the kind of public investigation and testimony we’ve already seen in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago and wherever else the administration has made its mark. The American people need to know the full story of what has been done in our name. And the people we’ve wronged deserve their chance to speak and be heard.
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6) Don Lemon Hires Federal Prosecutor Who Quit Over Immigration Crackdown
Facing charges over his role at a church protest, Mr. Lemon, a journalist, retained a veteran litigator who recently resigned from the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota.
By Ernesto Londoño, Reporting from Minneapolis, Published Feb. 10, 2026, Updated Feb. 11, 2026
Journalist Don Lemon outside federal court in Los Angeles last month. Credit...Mario Tama/Getty Images
The federal prosecution of the journalist Don Lemon took an unlikely turn on Tuesday.
Facing charges over his presence at a church protest challenging the immigration crackdown in Minnesota, Mr. Lemon has hired as one of his defense lawyers a veteran criminal litigator who, until just weeks ago, was helping lead the prosecutor’s office that has charged Mr. Lemon with felonies.
Joseph H. Thompson, a former senior federal prosecutor who resigned from the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota in mid-January over the Justice Department’s handling of the immigration operation, has joined Mr. Lemon’s defense team, according to a court filing.
Mr. Thompson’s appointment is the latest plot twist in a high-profile case that has been anomalous from the start. By representing the most prominent of nine defendants charged in the church protest case, Mr. Thompson will face off against a department that employed him for nearly 17 years. Mr. Thompson will work alongside Mr. Lemon’s lead defense lawyer, Abbe Lowell.
The government’s investigation began after Mr. Lemon, a former CNN anchor who now works as an independent journalist producing content for a YouTube show, accompanied protesters who disrupted the Sunday morning service at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., on Jan. 18. Demonstrators targeted the church because one of its pastors, David Easterwood, is a senior official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the state. Mr. Easterwood was not at the service.
Mr. Lemon, 59, met with protest organizers at the parking lot of a grocery store, followed them into the church and live streamed as they chanted “ICE out!” and “Hands up, don’t shoot!”
In a video of the protest Mr. Lemon posted on social media, he is seen interviewing worshipers as well as protesters inside the church, at one point saying, “We are not part of the activists, but we’re here reporting on them.”
That night, Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, issued a statement calling Mr. Lemon’s role in the protest “pseudojournalism” that was not protected under the First Amendment.
Days later, a federal magistrate judge signed arrest warrants for three of the protesters but declined to sign off on warrants for the arrest of Mr. Lemon and four other people. The chief federal judge in Minnesota, Patrick J. Schiltz, agreed with the magistrate judge, saying the government had not produced evidence that Mr. Lemon had broken the law.
Senior Justice Department officials took the unusual step of appealing Judge Schiltz’s refusal to sign off on Mr. Lemon’s arrest by asking an appeals court to do so, calling the possibility of future protests during church services a “national security emergency.” The appeals court declined that request.
Late last month, a federal grand jury indicted Mr. Lemon along with another independent journalist, Georgia Fort, and seven other individuals who attended the demonstration.
The nine defendants are charged with conspiring to violate religious freedoms at a house of worship, and with injuring, intimidating and interfering with the exercise of religious freedoms at a place of worship. Both charges are felonies under a 1994 law passed mainly to protect abortion clinics from violence.
Attorney General Pam Bondi called Mr. Lemon’s conduct unlawful, referring to the demonstration as a “riot” that terrified congregants. After Nekima Levy Armstrong, one of the protest organizers, was arrested late last month, the White House posted a photo of her arrest that was manipulated to make Ms. Levy Armstrong, who is Black, appear to have darker skin, and to falsely portray her as disheveled and crying.
According to the indictment, Mr. Lemon “stood in close proximity” to a pastor during the protest “in an attempt to oppress and intimidate him.” At one point, it adds, Mr. Lemon “caused the pastor’s hand to graze” his. The indictment says Mr. Lemon and the demonstrators did not immediately leave the church at the request of its leaders.
Mr. Lemon, who has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s deportation push, has called the charges against him “an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and a transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration.”
The aggressiveness with which the Justice Department has pursued the church protest case has unsettled career prosecutors, according to several people familiar with events at the U.S. attorney’s office in recent days. Several of them, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, have noted that the indictment does not include the names of any career prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota as would be common in a civil rights criminal case.
Mr. Thompson, who had been the second in command at the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota, resigned on Jan. 13 along with several colleagues after clashing with leaders at the Justice Department over its handling of the investigation into the killing of a Minneapolis woman, Renee Good, by an ICE agent.
Mr. Thompson and other career prosecutors sought to investigate the legality of the shooting of Ms. Good. But senior department leaders overruled him and instead sought to investigate Ms. Good’s partner, examining her possible links to groups protesting ICE operations in the state.
Mr. Thompson, who kept a low profile since resigning, this week started a law firm with Harry Jacobs, a fellow former federal prosecutor who also resigned in protest.
Mr. Thompson’s move to represent a defendant prosecuted by his former office reflects the wider tumult at the Justice Department, which has seen an exodus of career prosecutors as they said they found themselves pressured to investigate and prosecute President Trump’s perceived enemies.
Other surprising partnerships have emerged. Last year, Rascoe Dean, the deputy chief of the criminal division at the U.S. attorney’s office in Nashville, joined the legal team representing Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran immigrant who has come to symbolize Mr. Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.
Alan Feuer and Seamus Hughes contributed reporting.
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7) The Minnesota surge led to thousands of arrests, tense protests and three shootings.
By Ernesto Londoño, Mitch Smith and Pooja Salhotra
The Trump administration said on Thursday that it was ending its deployment of immigration agents to Minnesota, unwinding an aggressive operation that has stretched for more than two months despite loud opposition from residents and local officials.
Tom Homan, the White House border czar, said “a significant drawdown has already been underway this week, and will continue to the next week.”
Mr. Homan said he had made arrangements for immigration agents to have more access to undocumented inmates at county jails in Minnesota and had productive conversations with state officials. He did not immediately provide details of agreements reached with Minnesota officials.
“As a result of our efforts here, Minnesota is now less of a sanctuary state for criminals,” Mr. Homan said.
For many Minnesotans who had watched the federal government exert its will on their state — wielding law enforcement power and physical force at a scale that had no modern precedent in the United States — Mr. Homan’s announcement signaled a welcome shift. Still, news of a drawdown was greeted with skepticism.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Elliott Payne, the president of the Minneapolis City Council.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who described the operation as “an unprecedented federal invasion in all aspects of life,” said he was “cautiously optimistic” after the announcement by Mr. Homan.
“They left us with deep damage, generational trauma,” he said. “They left us with economic ruin in some cases.”
Since the immigration crackdown began late last year, federal agents have said that they arrested more than 4,000 people in Minnesota and have shot three, including two American citizens who were killed. Protesters have trailed federal officers through the Twin Cities, blowing whistles to alert people to their presence, and immigration agents have often responded with anger and force. The Democrats who run Minnesota have referred to the operation as an illegal occupation, while Republicans in Washington have accused local officials of obstruction and opened criminal investigations.
About 3,000 agents flooded into the state, outnumbering the police forces in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and their fatal shootings of Renee Good, a mother of three, and Alex Pretti, an intensive-care nurse, set off protests across the country. The Trump administration rushed to cast Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti as domestic terrorists, persisting even when their claims were called into question by videos. Also last month, an agent shot and wounded a Venezuelan man who officials said was in the country illegally and had resisted arrest.
Bipartisan concern about the killing of Mr. Pretti, who was shot Jan. 24, led to something of a tone shift. Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander who had been leading the crackdown, was removed and Mr. Homan was dispatched to Minnesota, where he struck a conciliatory tone.
On Thursday, Mr. Homan thanked by name some of the Minnesota officials who have been singled out for criticism by others in the Trump administration.
“We’ve seen a big change here in the last couple weeks,” Mr. Homan said. “And it’s all good changes.”
Even as officials began meeting behind closed doors, the Trump administration and Minnesota’s leaders remained at odds over policies that limit cooperation on immigration enforcement. Though Minnesota does not have sweeping statewide “sanctuary” measures for immigrants, federal officials have complained about limited access to immigrants held in county jails and about municipal limits on cooperation in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
The Trump administration has repeatedly defended its work in Minnesota as a necessary response to that limited cooperation, as well as to widespread fraud in state welfare programs. State and city leaders filed a lawsuit claiming the operation was an unconstitutional violation of state sovereignty but failed to convince a judge to grant an injunction.
From the beginning of the deployment, residents in the heavily Democratic Twin Cities formed neighborhood chat groups and started informal patrols to monitor and sometimes confront immigration agents. Federal officials said those protesters had often crossed the line into obstruction or violence, and several of them were charged with federal crimes. Activists accused federal officials of systematically using threats, tear gas and physical force against nonviolent protesters and of squelching First Amendment rights. A federal judge briefly imposed restrictions on agents’ actions toward protesters last month, but her ruling was blocked by an appellate court.
The practical effect of Thursday’s announcement remained somewhat unclear. Mr. Homan said last week that he was pulling about 700 agents out of the state. But in the days that followed, many residents and local officials said that immigration agents still seemed to be all around and that the region still seemed to be enmeshed in the crackdown. Mr. Homan said on Thursday that the president had agreed with the decision to wind down the Minnesota operation. Mr. Homan said “a small footprint of personnel” would remain in Minnesota, while most agents would be sent back to their home bases or to other locations.
Mr. Homan claimed that the Minnesota operation had been a success, and that the drawdown should not be seen as a sign of the administration changing its stance on immigration enforcement.
“President Trump made a promise of mass deportation, and that’s what this country is going to get,” Mr. Homan said.
Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis celebrated the end of immigration crackdown and praised how residents had responded. He said the immigration operation had been “catastrophic” for Minneapolis families and businesses.
“They thought they could break us, but a love for our neighbors and a resolve to endure can outlast an occupation,” Mr. Frey said in a statement.
The operation in Minnesota followed surges of immigration agents last year to cities including Los Angeles and Chicago, also Democratic-led places whose leaders have been at odds with the president.
Mr. Homan’s announcement on Thursday signaled a shift in strategy and messaging. When federal officials wound down their aggressive operations in Los Angeles and Chicago last year, the administration made no formal announcement that agents were leaving town, leaving local and state officials in the dark about their intentions.
Julie Bosman contributed reporting.
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8) Judge Ends Deportation Case for Mexican Father of 3 U.S. Marines
The arrest of Narciso Barranco, who was detained by federal agents while landscaping outside an IHOP in Southern California last June, garnered national attention.
By Miriam Jordan, Feb. 12, 2026
Miriam Jordan reported on the detention of the Mexican landscaper last year.
Narciso Barranco, center, and his wife, Martha, at a church in Tustin, Calif., in August. Credit...Peyton Fulford for The New York Times
An immigration judge has terminated the deportation case against an undocumented father of three U.S. Marines who was detained by federal agents last year while landscaping in Southern California, paving the way for him to seek legal permanent residency in the United States.
Last June, Narciso Barranco was clearing weeds outside an IHOP restaurant in Santa Ana, Calif., when immigration agents approached him from behind, pinned him to the ground and handcuffed him. Mr. Barranco, a 49-year-old Mexican national who has lived in the United States for three decades, was then transferred to a detention center and placed in deportation proceedings. He was released on a $3,000 bond in mid-July and fitted with an ankle monitor.
At the time, the Department of Homeland Security defended the agents’ aggressive arrest, saying the agents had felt threatened by Mr. Barranco and accusing him of having raised his weed trimmer at them. The D.H.S. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the immigration judge’s ruling
The episode garnered national attention last year, and Mr. Barranco became a symbol of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. The Trump administration had launched a large immigration enforcement operation in the Los Angeles area in June, touching off a wave of intense protests and clashes between residents and federal law enforcement officers.
In her order terminating the deportation case, signed on Jan. 28, Judge Kristin S. Piepmeier said that Mr. Barranco had provided evidence that he was the father of three American sons in the military, rendering him eligible to obtain lawful status. Immigration officers have since removed Mr. Barranco’s ankle monitor, and his check-ins have been discontinued, Mr. Barranco told The New York Times.
“I think the American people would agree that no one like Narciso Barranco, who raised three U.S. citizen Marines and has no criminal record deserved the treatment he received,” Lisa Ramirez, Mr. Barranco’s lawyer, said shortly after the ruling.
Ms. Ramirez has helped him apply for Parole in Place, a program that shields undocumented parents of U.S. military personnel from deportation and provides them an expedited pathway to permanent residency. Once that petition is approved, Mr. Barranco will receive a work permit.
But Mr. Barranco said that he would not feel secure until the approval of his residency status. He said he had been limiting his outings to attending Sunday Mass.
“This was a victory, and I am happy for it,“ Mr. Barranco said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “But I am still afraid that I could be grabbed.”
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9) Columbia Protester in ICE Custody for Nearly a Year Suffers Seizure
Leqaa Kordia, 33, of New Jersey, was hospitalized after hitting her head at a Texas detention center, her lawyer said. She was initially arrested during a 2024 protest at Columbia University.
By Maria Cramer, Feb. 12, 2026
“Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, has accused Ms. Kordia of being a terrorist sympathizer and government lawyers had said they were investigating funds she sent overseas. Her lawyers have countered in immigration hearings and court documents that she sent $1,000 to help her family in Gaza. Ms. Kordia worked as a server before she was detained. After Ms. Kordia’s detention, an official from the Homeland Security Investigations agency in New Jersey asked the New York Police Department for information about her, saying that she was being investigated in connection with money laundering. The Police Department gave U.S. authorities the record of Ms. Kordia’s 2024 arrest. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement on Wednesday that Ms. Kordia had been ‘found to be providing financial support to individuals living in nations hostile to the U.S.’”
Leqaa Kordia has been held at the Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas, since March 2025. She has not been charged with any crimes. Credit...Eric Lee for The New York Times
A New Jersey woman who was detained by federal immigration agents nearly a year ago suffered a seizure after she fell and hit her head in a Texas detention center, her lawyers and federal officials said on Wednesday.
The woman, Leqaa Kordia, who has been held at the Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, Texas, since March 2025, was brought to a hospital last Friday and remained there for 72 hours before being taken back to the detention center, said Sarah Sherman-Stokes, Ms. Kordia’s immigration lawyer.
Ms. Kordia, 33, arrived in the United States from the West Bank in 2016, moving in with her mother in Paterson, N.J. She was arrested in April 2024, when scores of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered at Columbia University to protest the war in Gaza. She was issued a summons, the case was dismissed and her arrest report was sealed.
But federal officials began investigating Ms. Kordia about a year later.
On March 13, 2025, Ms. Kordia went to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Newark, N.J., after she learned that federal investigators wanted to speak with her.
She was then detained for overstaying her visa and put on a plane to Texas, where she has been held ever since, even though a judge has twice ruled that she is not a threat to the United States and could be released on a $20,000 bond, according to court records and Ms. Sherman-Stokes.
In appealing the judge’s decisions, government lawyers have twice filed a rarely used provision known as an “automatic stay,” which keeps a person detained during the appeals process, Ms. Sherman-Stokes said.
Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, has accused Ms. Kordia of being a terrorist sympathizer and government lawyers had said they were investigating funds she sent overseas.
Her lawyers have countered in immigration hearings and court documents that she sent $1,000 to help her family in Gaza. Ms. Kordia worked as a server before she was detained.
After Ms. Kordia’s detention, an official from the Homeland Security Investigations agency in New Jersey asked the New York Police Department for information about her, saying that she was being investigated in connection with money laundering. The Police Department gave U.S. authorities the record of Ms. Kordia’s 2024 arrest.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement on Wednesday that Ms. Kordia had been “found to be providing financial support to individuals living in nations hostile to the U.S.”
Ms. Kordia has not been charged with any crimes.
“The government has absolutely no evidence of why she should be detained except for the fact that she spoke out for Palestinian liberation,” Ms. Sherman-Stokes said.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday called on the Trump administration to release Ms. Kordia, citing her seizure.
“Leqaa Kordia has spent nearly a year in an ICE prison for exercising her First Amendment rights in NYC & speaking out against the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” he said in a social media post, adding, “This is cruel & unnecessary.”
After her seizure, Ms. Kordia was sent to Texas Health Huguley Hospital in Burleson “out of an abundance of caution to ensure her health and safety,” Ms. McLaughlin said.
“ICE will continue to ensure she receives proper medical care,” she added.
Ms. McLaughlin defended the conditions at the Texas detention center, where she said all detainees had “access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.”
“For many illegal aliens this is the best health care they receive in their entire lives,” she said.
But according to Ms. Kordia’s cousin, Hamzah Abushaban, who visited her two weeks before her hospitalization, Ms. Kordia had lost weight and complained repeatedly of headaches and feeling weak and dizzy.
She had been sleeping poorly in a bunk bed in a large hall with dozens of other detainees and complained that her requests for halal food were being denied, Mr. Abushaban said.
“We’re all sick to our stomachs and extremely worried,” he said.
He said he learned Ms. Kordia had been hospitalized early last Friday after another detainee at the center called him, crying. But Mr. Abushaban said that when he and Ms. Kordia’s lawyers repeatedly called and emailed federal officials, they refused to say which hospital she was in. They ultimately learned of her whereabouts from a reporter, Ms. Sherman-Stokes said.
Ms. Kordia has not been able to see her medical records and does not know what caused the seizure, her lawyer said.
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10) A Very Dangerous Ruling in New Orleans
By David French, Opinion Columnist, Feb. 12, 2026
There are so many twists and turns in the legal battles over immigration and detention that it’s sometimes hard to sort out which rulings are truly significant and which are minor skirmishes in the larger legal battle playing out across the length and breadth of federal courts.
On Friday, however, the stakes were clear. Two judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a ruling that, if allowed to stand, could result in the indefinite detention of millions of immigrants in inhumane, overcrowded facilities scattered across the United States.
Even worse, these indefinite detentions are in civil proceedings, not criminal, meaning that the people under lock and key are not serving prison sentences for criminal offenses. It’s as if we’re throwing people into overcrowded jails for the legal equivalent of failing to pay a credit-card bill or losing a lawsuit — immigration detention as the new debtors’ prison.
Even worse still, we are subjecting human beings to extended confinement in detention facilities that — if human rights groups, detainees and whistle-blowers are to be believed — are often not up to the standards of America’s prisons or jails. They aren’t even up to the standards we set in my regiment for detaining suspected insurgents in Iraq.
Here is how this unfolded. Last year, the Trump administration changed roughly 30 years of bipartisan consensus about the interpretation and interaction of two sections of the 1996 amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act. The effect of the change would sharply increase immigrant detentions in the United States.
The first section, 8 U.S.C. Section 1225, says, “In the case of an alien who is an applicant for admission, if the examining immigration officer determines that an alien seeking admission is not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted, the alien shall be detained.”
An “applicant for admission” under this section is quite broadly defined as “An alien present in the United States who has not been admitted or who arrives in the United States.” In other words, every undocumented alien in America is conceivably an “applicant for admission.”
Crucially, Section 1225 does not contain a provision for posting a bond. A bond is payment of money in exchange for a release from detention and a binding order to show up for future proceedings. In this context, a bond is very much like posting bail in a criminal case. With no bond available, that means you’re stuck in detention until your case is complete — however long that takes.
But the statute doesn’t require detention of every “applicant for admission.” Instead, it says that an “alien seeking admission” shall be detained. So, what is the difference between an “applicant for admission” and an “alien seeking admission”? Is there one?
The second section in question, 8 U.S.C. Section 1226, provides additional context. It says, “On a warrant issued by the Attorney General, an alien may be arrested and detained pending a decision on whether the alien is to be removed from the United States.” This statute, however, permits the attorney general to release the “alien” on a “bond of at least $1,500,” provided, generally, that they are not criminals or terrorists.
How do you harmonize the two statutes? When is an alien required to be detained and when is a bond acceptable?
For roughly 30 years, Republican and Democratic presidents have been in agreement, including during Trump’s first term. Section 1225 applies to people who have crossed the border and are seeking to enter the country. Section 1226 applies to the aliens who are already here. In other words, if you’re crossing the border, you’re not eligible for a bond. If you’re already here, then you are.
The reason for the different treatment is found in the phrase “alien seeking admission.” Dale Ho, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, put it like this: “Someone who enters a movie theater without purchasing a ticket and then proceeds to sit through the first few minutes of a film would not ordinarily then be described as ‘seeking admission’ to the theater.” They’re not “seeking admission.” They are already in.
Or, as the Supreme Court described it in a 2018 case called Jennings v. Rodriguez, “U. S. immigration law authorizes the Government to detain certain aliens seeking admission into the country under §§1225(b)(1) and (b)(2). It also authorizes the government to detain certain aliens already in the country, pending the outcome of removal proceedings under §§1226(a) and (c).”
This distinction makes a great deal of sense. Aliens (the term used in the statute) who are entering the country can be subject to expedited removal, and it makes little sense to release an alien who is set to be deported in days.
But once you’re in the country, perhaps working at a job or supporting a family, the injustice of prolonged detention is obvious — especially since the removal proceeding itself isn’t criminal.
That’s why Republican and Democratic presidents alike have adopted this interpretation of the law — until President Trump’s second term.
The Trump administration now argues that the terms “applicant for admission” and “alien seeking admission” have the same meaning, and thus any applicant for admission must be detained until their legal proceedings are complete.
U.S. District Courts have rejected this argument en masse. As Politico’s Kyle Cheney reported last week, “At least 360 judges rejected the expanded detention strategy — in more than 3,000 cases — while just 27 backed it in about 130 cases.”
But now a divided Fifth Circuit panel has taken the minority view. Judges Edith Jones and Kyle Duncan adopted the administration’s reasoning and would deny access to bond even for otherwise law-abiding immigrants who’ve been living and working in the United States for years.
In this view, Section 1226 — the section that permits bond — becomes much more narrow, applying to a much smaller slice of the immigrant population. If their view is affirmed, then Americans should prepare for the indefinite, mass detention of immigrants on a scale that we can scarcely comprehend.
Judge Dana Douglas dissented. The Congress that passed the relevant portions of the statute, she wrote, “would be surprised to learn it had also required the detention without bond of two million people.”
That’s roughly the number of people who’d entered without inspection living in the United States in 1996, when the laws were passed. Now the number is much larger. The sheer size and scope of the potential detentions boggle the mind.
The administration, however, seems eager to detain as many people as it can. ICE is spending vast sums of money to purchase “mega warehouses” that it’s transforming into detention centers that could potentially hold thousands more people than the largest federal prisons in the United States.
Sadly, the conditions in these detention facilities can be grim. It’s hard to have a clear picture of the conditions, given the tightly controlled access to Trump’s detention facilities, but even so, there is overwhelming evidence that many immigrants are held in terrible, dangerous conditions.
I’d urge you to read my colleague Jamelle Bouie’s chilling Jan. 24 newsletter describing the extraordinary reports of abusive, unsanitary and dangerous conditions at ICE detention facilities.
To take just one example from Jamelle’s newsletter, the American Civil Liberties Union, along with other human rights groups, wrote that detained immigrants at a camp at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, “are held for weeks at a time with no access to the outdoors in cramped, squalid soft-sided tents with 72 people per unit, where toilets and showers flood eating areas with raw sewage.”
In July, Americans for Immigrant Justice, Human Rights Watch and Sanctuary of the South, an immigrant rights group, released a report on conditions in three Florida detention facilities, which said that immigrants are subject to “conditions that flagrantly violate international human rights standards and the United States government’s own immigration detention standards.”
A viral video from an ICE detention facility in Baltimore showed extreme overcrowding, with detainees lying side-by-side, covered only by foil blankets. A whistle-blower who worked at the facility said he “saw people lying in feces. People throwing up, people lying in urine.”
On Monday, The Irish Times reported on the plight of an Irish man named Seamus Culleton, who has been living in the United States for more than 15 years, has a valid work permit and is applying for a Green Card. He was sent to a facility in El Paso, Texas. He said the place is “like a concentration camp, absolute hell.”
Culleton told The Irish Times that “he has been locked in the same large, cold and damp room for four and a half months with more than 70 men” and that “he has been allowed outside for air and exercise fewer than a dozen times in nearly five months.”
This is a small fraction of the reports of dreadful, abusive conditions at ICE facilities across the country. And the Trump administration wants to flood even more people into an already overcrowded and strained system — leaving them without hope of release until an overloaded legal system is finally able to adjudicate their case.
The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution is one sentence long: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” This single sentence is a pillar of the American constitutional commitment to fundamental human rights.
Tragically, there is now considerable evidence that the administration is violating the Eighth Amendment at scale. We don’t deny bail to criminals who aren’t a flight risk, aren’t missing court dates, or who pose no serious danger to their communities. We let them out while they await trial.
Yet the Trump administration wants to take law-abiding, undocumented immigrants, including immigrant families with young children, and toss them into camps until their cases are complete.
Again, I cannot emphasize enough the fact that these detentions are not criminal. There are thousands upon thousands of immigrants facing brutal conditions who’ve been convicted of no crime and haven’t even been accused of a crime beyond their initial alleged illegal entry.
People who overstay their visas aren’t guilty of any crime at all, since their original entry is lawful. Even if immigrants entered illegally, that’s a misdemeanor for a first offense, and we do not imprison people indefinitely in miserable conditions for committing misdemeanors — or at least we didn’t.
But there is a method to the madness. Mass detention and brutal mistreatment send a message to the rest of the world — this is what happens if you’re in the United States without documentation. Even if you’re seeking asylum. Even if you’ve been here for years as a law-abiding, productive member of your community.
Critics of the administration should be clear, however, that disagreeing with its approach to immigration detention and enforcement does not mean endorsing open borders. It does not mean halting deportations of people unlawfully present in the United States.
Previous presidents, both Republican and Democratic, have deported millions of undocumented immigrants without systematically violating their rights. And in a different timeline, Trump could be riding high simply by securing the border and conducting regular deportation proceedings in a way that respects the human rights and dignity of each and every person within our borders — just as the Constitution requires.
But that is not what the administration is doing. It’s procuring a series of detention facilities that are concentration camps in all but name. And now, thanks to a decision by the Fifth Circuit, it possesses new legal support for a campaign of retribution and punishment that should shock the American conscience.
The Trump administration got the ruling it wanted from the Fifth Circuit. It may not fare so well at the Supreme Court. A series of recent Supreme Court decisions has narrowed the executive branch’s ability to reinterpret federal statutes and gives me some degree of hope.
But the court’s view of executive authority is in flux — for one thing, we are still waiting on the outcome of the tariff case — and we cannot confidently predict the outcome. Whatever happens, we cannot be complacent. Unless and until the Supreme Court takes up and decides the case (and overturns the ruling), thousands upon thousands of people will languish, unjustly, in the squalor and filth that is the product of MAGA’s negligence, incompetence and hate.
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