Karen Lunch

Good morning. The President of the United States was in the middle of the most serious child sex trafficking ring of the last quarter century.

He is referenced not a dozen times in the case files. Not 100 times. Not 1,000 times. He’s referenced 38,000 times.

Just a quick update from the Twin Cities. (Please forgive the unsolicited message). THINGS ARE NOT BETTER IN MINNEAPOLIS. The media is mostly moving on, Trump is focused on other stuff, BUT NOTHING HAS CHANGED ON THE GROUND. More than 2,000 DHS thugs continue to roam the streets, abducting people 24/7, assaulting legal observers with impunity, and routinely denying 1st, 4th, and 5th amendment rights. Drones and helicopters are overhead every day. Hundreds and hundreds of terrified families have not left their homes since mid-December ... relying on the community to bring them food and help with rent and other necessities. (Those people are NOT violent drug cartel sex offending murderers, as DHS would tell you. Most are legal residents or citizens.) If anything, things have just become more stressful and intractable (think trench warfare as a suitable metaphor): The resistance is better organized and numerous, but DHS has become more clever and better at disguise... and the county sheriff's office is increasingly supporting them . Do not let anyone tell you that Homans (the new person in charge of the occupation) is making anything better. Do not let anyone tell you that 700 ICE agents leaving the city has made much of a difference; the remaining force (again, ~2,000) is still larger than the entire city's police force (which is legally unable to do anything). Please call your congressional reps ... especially if there is any chance the administration might listen to them.

A desperate plea sent to me by a Minneapolis resident who's been on the front lines since the beginning of the ICE occupation:

How Minneapolis taught America to fight back Our Minnesotan reporters connect with friends and neighbors back home and find resolute resistance to ICE at every turn.

This is a really incredible episode of @revealnews.org, in part bc reporters @artiscuriskis.bsky.social and Nate Halverson are MN natives. Esp love the postal carrier perspective on what has happened to people on his route revealnews.org/podcast/minn...

The LAPD sent officers to train in Israel. Officials can't explain what they learned The Police Commission’s Office of the Inspector General found that the LAPD lacks a system for tracking employees who train with foreign law enforcement agencies.

As @profharley.bsky.social has said, being a public university professor we can't even use our own funds to buy our students a damn soda. But the LAPD can travel to Israel nine times in the last decade and not have to say who they met with or what they did.

www.latimes.com/california/s...

NSA detected phone call between foreign intelligence and a person close to Trump Whistleblower says that Tulsi Gabbard blocked agency from sharing report and delivered it to White House chief of staff

Is anybody ever gonna take a step back and realize the "Russia Russia Russia" people — derided as lunatic wine moms — were actually underplaying the foreign influence stuff, and the loud people who kept insisting it was all fake are now saying Jeffrey Epstein was kind of a cool guy?

I'm sorry the guy changing the rules on the fly is named what

Toddler hospitalized with respiratory failure was returned to ICE detention without prescribed medication, lawsuit says The 18-month-old was sent back to a South Texas facility after days in intensive care with severe respiratory distress, according to a federal lawsuit.

NEW: A baby held in immigration detention became so sick, she had to be rushed to a hospital in severe respiratory distress.

“She was at the brink of dying,” a lawyer told me.

But the girl didn’t go home after her 10-day hospital stay; instead, ICE put her and her mother back in lock up at Dilley.

Migrant families allege children held by ICE face unsafe and unsanitary conditions Food contaminated with worms and mold. Limited access to clean drinking water. Inadequate medical care. These are a few of the allegations made by migrant families in recent court documents about…

Children detained by ICE are getting food with mold and even WORMS! With little to no medical care to help them once they get sick!

This is unacceptable. That’s why I’m calling for ICE to be dismantled — and I’ll keep voting for DHS to get no funding until that happens.

Trump's Schedule F Rule Finalized A bizarro rule formally justifies politicizing public services

New, from me: Trump finalized his Schedule F policy, allowing him to remove job protections from career civil servants.

The new rule is dishonest and unmoored from reality in its effort to formalize the politicization of the federal government 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/trumps-sch...

When the FBI Arrested Epstein, He Called Kathryn Ruemmler Documents show Ruemmler, now Goldman’s top lawyer, consulted Jeffrey Epstein on a relationship and potential new jobs while delivering legal and media advice.

It is a low bar, but a future administration should strive for better in a White House counsel.

www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

Metry and her husband of 4 years go to DHS to get their I-130 in motion. "Good news" a DHS employee told them, the form to start her naturalization was approved.

DHS employee asks the husband to follow him through a secure door. When it locks behind him, ICE detains his wife to deport her.

Border Patrol agent’s texts after he shot a Chicago woman five times will be released, judge rules The government dropped its case against Marimar Martinez but her lawyers say it has refused to correct the record after calling her a “domestic terrorist.”

The text messages a Border Patrol agent sent to colleagues and family after he shot a Chicago woman five times can be released to the public, a federal judge rules. In messages previously released, the agent had bragged about his marksmanship.

2/ bsky.app/profile/jenn...

I read the “SAVE Act” (the GOP’s new voter suppression bill) so you don’t have to. This is my one page summary. Jesus it’s bad. 1/

YouTube video by Jewish Democratic Council of America It’s Gone Too Far

This is the AD that Fox News REFUSED to run (even though Jewish Democratic Council of America was willing to pay for it to air). Please spread it to your circles here, on FB, X, IG, etc. You can find it via @jewishdems.bsky.social and @jewishdems). www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-EH...

Mamdani announces a new executive order protecting New Yorkers from "abusive immigration enforcement," including requiring ICE to have a judicial warrant to enter NYC property

Mamdani: "I speak of Renee Good, whose final words to the man who murdered her were, 'I'm not mad at you.' I speak of Alex Pretti who died as he lived, caring for the stranger. ICE shot him bc he did something they could never fathom ... let us offer a new path: one of defiance through compassion."

Update: Judge Alexakis said she is largely granting Marimar Martinez's motion to modify the court protective order around her case, allowing certain materials, incl. multiple texts from the Border Patrol agent who shot her, to be made public.

I hope all 23 Democratic Attorneys General open up simultaneous investigations into Elon's extraordinary lawlessness and depravity.

Jeffrey Epstein allegedly sexually abused girls in the US Virgin Islands through 2018 | CNN Jeffrey Epstein allegedly transported underage girls to his secluded homes in the US Virgin Islands and forced them into sex work from 2001 through 2018, according to a lawsuit filed by the Attorney G...

Jeffrey Epstein did not stop raping children after his 2008 conviction. Jeffrey Epstein did not stop facilitating the rape of children after his 2008 conviction. He kept doing it.

That is the context of people treating him as a normal person after his conviction.

/1

www.cnn.com/2020/01/15/u...

I don’t consider the Bill of Rights “unrealistic.”

Wake up, America: Federal agents were deployed at last year's Prop 50 launch in LA and at polling places across the nation.

Trump is using fear tactics to escape accountability at the ballot box.

this was, by all accounts, one of the absolute best health/public health reporting teams in all of journalism. 8/13 fired

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE Executive Office for Immigration Review 8 CFR Parts 1003, 1208, and 1240 [Docket No. EOIR-26-AB37; Dir. Order No. 02-2026] RIN 1125-AB37 Appellate Procedures for the Board of Immigration Appeals AGENCY: Executive Office for Immigration Review (“EOIR”), Department of Justice. ACTION: Interim final rule; request for comments. SUMMARY: This interim final rule (“IFR”) amends Department of Justice (“Department” or “DOJ”) regulations to streamline administrative appellate review by the Board of Immigration Appeals (“Board” or “BIA”) of decisions by Immigration Judges by making review of such decisions on the merits discretionary, by setting appropriate times for briefing in cases that are reviewed on the merits, and by streamlining other aspects of the appellate process to ensure timely adjudications and avoid adding to the already sizeable backlog at the Board. Additionally, the Department is making various technical and non-substantive changes to its regulations. DATES: Effective date: This IFR is effective [INSERT DATE 30 DAYS AFTER PUBLICATION IN THE FEDERAL REGISTER]

CORRECTION: This rule does not go into effect tomorrow, it goes into effect 30 days after tomorrow.

My apology.

The appeal to the federal circuit court ALSO costs $600. So now anyone who loses in immigration has to pay $1,000 to be automatically denied in nearly every case, and then $600 to seek an emergency stay of their imminent deportation.

AND THIS APPLIES EVEN TO PEOPLE IN DETENTION.

The goal is clear; mass deportations over due process.

An order of removal does not become "final" until the Board of Immigration Appeals denies an appeal. After that, ICE can deport the person unless they file ANOTHER appeal to a federal circuit court AND get an emergency stay.

The IFR will also change the deadline for filing an appeal with the Board from 30 to 10 days, except for cases involving certain asylum applications, as discussed in more detail in Section IV.B of this preamble. And, as explained in Sections IV.C and D of this preamble, the IFR adopts other measures previously adopted by the 2020 Appellate Procedures Final Rule, which were never fully operationalized, to streamline the processes for obtaining the parties’ briefs and assembling the record on appeal.

The Trump admin is ALSO changing the rules so that rather than 30 days to file a Notice of Appeal, people will now only have 10 days (in most cases).

That's just 10 days to find $1,000 and appellate counsel for an appeal the government says it will likely automatically deny!

Thus, rather than require such adjudications, the Department is changing its regulations to provide the Board more flexibility in reviewing appeals. Instead, for appeals taken from decisions issued after this IF becomes effective, as explained in Section IV.A of this preamble, the default will be summary dismissal unless a majority of current Board members vote to consider the appeal on the merits. And such dismissals will occur quickly—within 15 days of filing the appeal—allowing aliens to seek Federal court review expeditiously, rather than potentially waiting for years for a Board decision that in the vast majority of cases would affirm the underlying Immigration Judge decision.

🚨HOLY CRAP. The Trump admin just took a SLEDGEHAMMER to due process, largely eliminating the Board of Immigration Appeals process and MANDATING DISMISSAL of ALL appeals (which cost $1,000 thanks to OBBBA) filed after tomorrow unless a majority of the BIA votes to hear the case.

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

Part 2 of the exchange.