Donald Trump and maga Republicans must end the ICE terror they are a masked group of demonic thugs

 Evil and cruelty are the Trumpzi brand.

Echo opinion published in the Lewiston Maine Sun Journal:

Maine must continue to fight for the faceless and forgotten targeted by ICE | Opinion:  If we don’t, aren’t we complicit❓

Majorities of Americans disapprove of ICE and say the agency mistreats our citizens and immigrants.

The high rate of disapproval about ICE may stem in part from concerns about the agency's tactics. Half (52%) of Americans say that ICE's tactics are too forceful. Only 26% say that its tactics are about right and 11% say that they are not forceful enough.

Majorities of both Democrats (86%) and Independents (60%) say that ICE's tactics are too forceful. But only 12% of Republicans think ICE is too forceful; 52% say ICE's tactics are about right. Those who think ICE's tactics are not forceful enough are in the minority in all three groups: 1% of Democrats, 8% of Independents, and 24% of Republicans.

About half of Americans support protests against ICE: Americans are more likely to somewhat or strongly approve than disapprove of protests against ICE actions (48% vs. 39%). Majorities of Democrats (76%) and Independents (55%) approve of protests against ICE actions, with small shares disapproving (12% of Democrats and 28% of Independents). Most Republicans disapprove of anti-ICE protests (76%, compared to 13% who approve).

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must stop evil ICE raids against innocent hard working immigrants

Echo report published in The CAP Times a Wisconsin newspaper by Erin McGroarty:

ICE arrests Madison nanny in Milwaukee: ‘Like losing another member of our family’- Trumpziism cruelty 😨😥❗

A Madison family is in shock after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (evil👿 ICE) agents arrested their nanny of two and half years in Milwaukee last week, the latest local residents to feel the effects of cruel

 Donald Trump’s continued immigration crackdown.

Linsey Callejo and her husband, Alfonso, said they hired Dailin Pacheco in February 2023, because they wanted to make sure their daughter, Constance, was cared for by a Spanish-speaking nanny. Alfonso is a native Spanish speaker and the couple believe it’s important to preserve his language for their daughter.

“Dailin has just been a wonderful nanny for Constance. They have so much fun together, and she's just so patient and kind and caring,” Callejo said. “And (Constance’s) Spanish has really blossomed since.”

Pacheco, who  is 27 years old, is more than just a nanny for Constance, now 3 years old, but a support for Callejo. 

She and her husband  recently went through a difficult time.

“Now it feels like we’re losing another member of our family,” Callejo said of Pacheco, her voice cracking with emotion.

Pacheco and her husband, Diego Ugarte, arrived in the United States from Venezuela in November 2021. They crossed the Southern border into Texas, filed for asylum and were released into the United States with an I-220A immigration form. The form is commonly referred to as “release under orders of recognizance,” meaning an immigrant is allowed to enter into the United States as long as they follow certain rules and procedures including appearing for all immigration court hearings and annual check-ins with immigration officials — one of which Pacheco and her husband were attending in Milwaukee last week.

They had received work authorization and Social Security numbers, paid taxes and followed all the rules, Callejo said.

Last Thursday, Pacheco and Ugarte, 31, went to Milwaukee for an annual check-in with immigration officials required of all immigrants with pending asylum requests. Typically these meetings involve a standard review of information related to the asylum case like contact information and residential address, but instead ICE agents arrested the couple and the two were separated.

“We knew that she had the meeting (in Milwaukee). And of course, we were all a little anxious, given the current environment for immigrants,” Callejo said. “But she wanted to go to the meeting because we thought, you know, surely not going to the meeting would be worse than going.”

Pacheco’s arrest at the asylum meeting is part of a larger trend nationwide in which immigrants who are told to follow certain annual procedures are arrested at mandatory check-ins. Critics say it penalizes migrants who are trying to follow the rules.

In June, a Cuban asylum seeker living in McFarland was arrested at a court hearing in Miami, Florida under similar circumstances. He was later released.

Callejo was traveling the morning of the arrest but Pacheco called Callejo’s husband, Alfonso, to tell the couple she had been arrested.

“She called my husband Thursday morning, and said ‘They're not letting me go. They're going to place me under arrest,’” Callejo said. “And she was just so scared and didn't know what to do.”

After the call, Callejo said, Pacheco’s phone was confiscated.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are guilty of waging political war against American citizens - Trump evil memes are revolting!

New York Times report by Jenny Gross: Trump posted an AI fake video on social media that showed him wearing a crown and flying a jet labeled “King Trump” that dumps brown liquid on protesters.

The short video, shared on Donald Trump’s Truth Social account late Saturday, was posted on the same day that protesters participated in a daylong mass demonstration, known as “No Kings,” against the evil 👿Trump administration.

Echo Letter to the Editor published in the Los Angeles Times: Donald Trump’s crass AI-generated video only shows how immature we’ve become- (Maine Writer: Just think about how aptly descriptive "artificial intelligence" is, a literal description about Donald Trump❗)

• Readers condemn Trump’s AI-generated video showing him dropping excrement on protesters as emblematic of governmental immaturity and descent into cruelty.
• One letter writer warns that the country is lost if 81% of Republicans approve of administration tactics she characterizes as authoritarian.

To the editor: It seems that adults with the mindsets of 12-year-old video game players are running our country (“Trump’s AI poop post caps a week of MAGA indifference to Hitler jokes,” Oct. 21). They have the keys to the candy store (and nuclear weapons).

As a collective, we are descending into a puerile atmosphere of immaturity, with leaders making jokes about other people’s misfortunes and sharing videos that show excrement 💩dropped on 7 million ➕ plus, peaceful protesters. If 81% of Republicans think the Trump administration is doing a good job and agree with the use of cruelty to conduct government business, then we are lost as a country.

As a 74-year-old pissed-off grandma, I will continue to fight against this descent into cruelty and authoritarianism.

From Jane Demian, in Los Angeles California

..

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are enabling an illegal federal takeover calling for "war" on American citizens

Meanwhile, endless wars in Isreal, Gaza and Ukraine wage on when Donald Trump falsely claimed he could end them all "on day one".  So, here we are on September 8th, at day 231 into the Trump autoracy and our nation is at war with Donald Trump.  His public opinion polls are tanking but his cruelty continues.

Armed troops at the Washington Monument❓ This is not normal❗

Wake up America❗⏰Your front yard has been militarized. Yet residents and visitors there hardly pay the troops any mind.

Not what Washington is supposed to look like.

(Kent Nishimura / Getty Images)

Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times by Jackie Calmes*

It’s the (not-normal) normalization of excessive federal force under Donald Trump, just seven months into his autocratic reign.

America’s Front Yard is what the National Park Service calls the National Mall, the grassy expanse that knits together the neighborhood that’s home to the U.S. Capitol and the iconic monuments to Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt; veterans of World War II, Vietnam and Korea; and Martin Luther King Jr.

For decades I jogged here (one morning literally running into Jimmy Carter, long gone from the White House). I introduced friends and family to the Mall’s delights and the museums that open onto it. 

I attended festivals, concerts and Fourth of July fireworks displays. On a gorgeous, sunny Labor Day this year, I returned. And for the first time, I saw armed, camo-clad soldiers among the tourists.

As I left the World War II memorial, five soldiers emerged nearby, marching in single-line formation to join about two dozen more beside three vans under trees near the Reflecting Pool. At the pool’s opposite end, nearer the Lincoln Memorial, another dozen soldiers milled. Tourists mostly ignored the shows of force, except for the two park policemen on horseback along separate sides of the Reflecting Pool. Tourists wanted photos with them.

As I approached the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, five more soldiers circled a statue dedicated to women who served in Vietnam. The men studied the sculpted figures and read the inscriptions — just like tourists.

“They’re bored,” a park ranger told me. “They’d rather be home with their families.”

I and most Washingtonians (8 out of 10, according to a mid-August poll for the Washington Post) also would rather have them home with their families, wherever home is. Six states headed by Republican governors, ever-eager to please Trump, have sent hundreds of National Guard troops to supplement those from blue Washington, who, unlike in the states where governors hold sway, are under the president’s direct command.

Heading to a restroom on my way to the Tidal Basin and Jefferson Memorial, I passed three hulking black SUVs. Despite their darkened windows, I could vaguely make out men inside. Only the vehicles’ license plates identified them: “DHS,” Department of Homeland Security, the tip of Trump’s antimigrant spear. Perhaps these secret agents were awaiting a dispatcher’s call to nab another Latino delivery driver or raid another restaurant’s kitchen to drive up the numbers for Trump’s immigration crackdown.

What you see out in the open — 2,200 uniformed soldiers and additional federal agents patrolling the nation’s capital — is bad enough. It’s what you don’t see, or can’t identify, that’s more disturbing in the land of the free. Like masked agents in unmarked cars stopping and searching residents without evident reason, as videos on social media regularly capture.

Either way, Trump’s takeover of the District of Columbia using National Guard troops and federal agents from the DHS, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and from the FBI and other agencies — together with his threats to Chicago, Baltimore and other cities — amount to “creating a national police force with the Trump as its chief,” as a federal judge proclaimed this week in ruling against troops acting as cops in Los Angeles.
“Why is the National Guard still around❓” an exasperated Senior District Judge Charles R. Breyer (brother of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer) demanded last month during a trial in the L.A. case. “What is the threat today? What was the threat yesterday or two weeks ago that allowed it? I’m trying to see whether there are any limits, any limits to the use of a federal force.”

Those were my questions in Washington as well, during my Labor Day stroll and a drive through downtown and various higher-crime neighborhoods.

That same day, Trump boasted on social media that, three weeks into his policing of the nation’s capital, Washington is “NOW A CRIME FREE ZONE.” Yet he’s vowed to keep boots on the ground beyond a legal 30-day limit next week, which would require Congress’ assent.

The fact is that Washington, like any city, still has crime, though the rate was at a 30-year low before Trump’s executive order Aug. 11 citing a nonexistent “crime emergency,” and it’s fallen more since then, as Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser has acknowledged. The issue isn’t whether there is crime that needs to be policed. It’s who does the policing. In America, that’s historically been the states and local jurisdictions — unless, as federal law requires, they prove incapable of doing so. Which they haven’t.

If more police is an answer to crime, as Bowser and most mayors of either party would agree, then Trump should quit cutting federal funding — Washington is short a full $1 billion in this fiscal year — and instead do what former President Clinton did amid high crime in the mid-1990s: increase money to states and cities to hire more local cops. That helped in Clinton’s time, if not so much as he liked to claim.

What’s worse is that Trump’s bid to take charge in U.S. cities extends mostly to states led by Democrats, despite high or higher crime in red state cities including Memphis, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Jackson and Birmingham. Sending red-state troops to police unfamiliar blue cities can only exacerbate polarization. So does a president who spurs on those troops and agents by denigrating U.S. cities as “unsafe and dirty and disgusting” (Washington), “hell holes” (Chicago and Baltimore) and “terrible” (L.A.).

This is not normal, not in America’s front yard or anywhere else in this nation. Nor will it ultimately be accepted, as Trump takeovers spread and protests expand with them. I fear this is just what the Great Divider wants: an (evil💀👿)excuse to dispatch even more troops- just because he can.

*Jackie Calmes is an opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times in Washington, D.C.

Donald Trump and Bible Thumping Republican hypocrites must protect immigrant children from ICE family separations

When deportations leave immigrant children parentless

Echo editorial published in the Boston Globe, by the Editorial Board🙏 : Horrible situation❗ Ways for undocumented parents to prepare for the worst. Trump cruelty

During 23 days in June, amid news of increased arrests by federal immigration authorities, staff at the Brazilian-American Center in Framingham helped 73 families fill out affidavits indicating who they would like to care for their child if they could not. 

Center officials had worked with families where one parent was detained or deported. But, as the Globe has reported, there are also immigrant children whose sole caretaker has been detained or deported by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (aka "Evil ICE"), often leaving the child with family friends or relatives.

“This situation is creating a lot of anxiety and fear,” the center’s executive director, Liliane Costa, told the editorial board. “I’m telling families to be prepared to find someone to take care of the kids just in case.”

Community-based nonprofits and state agencies that interact with such families should look to expand their efforts to help them with these tasks. All workers at the Department of Children and Families who interact with families should be trained in how to help them navigate immigration issues.

There are multiple legal paths parents can use to designate a caregiver for their child, each one giving the caregiver a different authority for a different time period. 

Organizations in Massachusetts have compiled resources, including the forms in multiple languages, to help families determine which path is right for them. It’s important for community organizations that work with immigrants to ensure families are aware of these varying options and are able to fill out the forms.

The American Immigration Council estimates that in Massachusetts, there are 29,400 children who are US citizens and living with at least one undocumented parent. Amid a federal crackdown on immigrants without legal status, parents in those families should be preparing paperwork to have their children placed with a trusted caretaker in case they are swept up in a raid.

Ideally, this will allow for a smooth transition to a trusted caregiver, if a child’s parents are detained, avoiding placement in a foster home. 

Department of Children and Families social workers who interact with these families should respect these affidavits and avoid opening a case unless it’s absolutely necessary.

To its credit, the state has been using its Office for Refugees and Immigrants to help families fill out caregiver affidavit forms, with help from volunteer probate attorneys. A spokesperson for DCF told the editorial board that if the agency comes into contact with a family with an undocumented member, social workers give the family resources to help them develop a family preparedness plan.

In cases where a parent is deported, that parent still maintains parental rights, and the agency will seek to contact the parent, work with them and other relatives on a plan for safe care, and work with federal immigration authorities to arrange visits.

If a child without legal status enters state custody for any reason there are ways DCF can help them. Advocates for children have long lobbied the department to let children be placed with kin even if they lack legal status. As a general rule, kinship placements — where a child lives with a grandparent, aunt or uncle, or other relative — provide children with more stability and better outcomes than placement with strangers.

A department spokesperson said such placements with undocumented relatives are allowed provided the prospective guardian fills out a waiver, receives agency approval, and passes a background check.

But, Claire Valentin, managing director of innovation and advocacy at Children’s Law Center of Massachusetts, said social workers often don’t know they can place a child with undocumented family members. “A lot of the times, folks are being told it’s not possible,” Valentin said. “Training would substantially help so social workers know this possibility exits.”

The Department of Children and Families should also ensure it provides adequate access to immigration attorneys for children who need them. If an undocumented child becomes dependent on the state due to abuse, neglect, or abandonment, they may be eligible for Special Immigrant Juvenile status, which could grant them a path to legal residency. Asylum seekers or refugees may also have paths to permanent residency. (If children don’t have a path to legal status, they may be subject to deportation with their parents.)

There are indications the Trump administration is seeking to limit programs that offer a path to permanent residency. But as long as they exist, DCF should prioritize helping eligible children petition the court for legal status. Currently DCF contracts with two immigration lawyers to manage such cases. But attorneys who work with children told the editorial board the agency has a shortage of providers and not all immigrant children who could benefit from legal representation get it.

The Trump administration is cruelly putting children and families in positions of fear and uncertainty. As long as community organizations and state agencies can take small steps to help these children- YES❗ They should.😢💗 

Speaker Mike Johnson is a Bible thumping hypocrite because he cannot possibly read Scripture while supporting big bad ugly policy

Republicans throw around Bible verses as a diversion to somehow give smoke and mirrors cover to their cruelty attack on the middle class.

Voters have a responsibility to reject the big bad ugly tax cuts for the rich.  Keep up the pressure by reminding the public about just how cruel, immoral and destructive the tax cuts for the rich are to our nation's health care and to the many thousands of people who will lose their jobs as a result of Republican selfish crash and burn the middle class for the purpose of giving the wealthy and super wealthy more money.  Ecclesiastes 5:10: "Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income."

Echo opinion letters published in the Seattle Times in Washington state:

Of course, tax breaks for the wealthy will come immediately, as will the end of electric-car and green-home credits.

Don’t be fooled by cuts to Medicaid that don’t phase in until after the midterms — too many GOP members of Congress know this could hurt their reelection bids. So let’s thank those who voted against this terrible bill that brings America closer to feudalism, and remind the ones who voted for it that they have until the midterms to change the terrible future this bill will bring.

We can vote accordingly, rewarding those who fought against it and ousting those who voted for it, our ultimate power in democracy!

From Willie Dickerson, in Snohomish a Seattle suberb

The selfish servility of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and other Republican senators goes beyond the “my state first” excuse for supporting President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful “Bull.” Trump has declared and demonstrated he will ignore the mandates of legislation, break the law and violate the Constitution by refusing to spend money appropriated by Congress and even claw back by rescission funds already contracted if he personally dislikes their purpose.

Promises to Murkowski for Medicaid, like all Trump promises, are meaningless. If you sell your soul to the devil, at least you should expect something in return.

From William R. Phillips, in Edmonds, in Snohomish County, Washington

Donald Trump and MAGA extremists burdened their own voter base with the unfair stigma of being Medicaid beneficiaries

To the editor of the Los Angeles Times: What I find weird about Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins’ assertion that migrant laborers can simply be replaced by automation and Medicaid recipients is not just the underlying cruelty expressed toward both hardworking immigrant laborers and Medicaid recipients, nor is it the shocking ignorance (“Trump official suggests Medicaid recipients, automation can replace immigrant workers. California farmers disagree,” July 9).

What I find unusual is the apparent assumption by Donald Trump and his “brain trust” that “able-bodied adults on Medicaid” are all people outside of his very base. From a purely political perspective, it’s the only way I can make sense of Rollins’ proposal. I hate to be the bearer of bad news to Trump’s team, but according to current statistics, the largest group of Medicaid recipients in the U.S. are white non-Hispanics (estimated to be 39.6% of all recipients). A majority 55% of white voters cast ballots for Trump in the 2024 election. This means that of Medicaid recipients, who are registered voters, it’s not unreasonable to assume that a large portion are Trump voters. 😔😖😓

Trump and his administration’s seeming indifference to subjecting Medicaid recipients who may happen to be GOP voters to the type of contempt and cruelty they normally reserve for immigrants and people of color tells me that they (as is often the case) might not have considered the consequences of their proposals on their own voters. And in this case, it seems to me that this particular lack of judgment is like a rogue torpedo fired by the Trump administration that is headed right back at the GOP. It will be interesting to see how this affects the midterm elections.  (Maine Writer post script....assuming there are "mid term elections"....scary what Trump might do to call them off by creating some mythical situation.)

From Matthew Singerman, in Newbury Park, California

Think Fascism in the context of red hats: Putin, Mussolini and Trumpziism

Opinion essay echo published in The Washington Post by George Will:  

Maine Writer-  While reading this excellent opinion editorial, written to explain Fascism in Italy and now evident in Russia, just take a second look at the information and change the name Mussolini to Trumpilini. Other than the description Will makes referencing  Mussolini's short stature, the profiles are eerily similar. 

"So, it is well to understand fascism’s founder, who 100, years ago this October orchestrated the March on Rome (he arrived there by railroad sleeper car) that propelled him into power at the age of 39, the youngest ruler in the world at that time. The destroyer of Italy’s parliamentary democracy has a political descendant occupying the Kremlin today," George Will. 

Antonio Scurati’s “documentary novel” about Benito Mussolini, “M: Son of the Century,” was published in Italy in 2018, has received Italy’s premier literary award, and has been translated for publication in 46 countries. It is a long — 761-page — exploration of il Duce’s mind and of this: Fascism does not merely condone violence, it is violence. Set in Italy’s agony, 1919-1924, the novel bludgeons readers with depictions of the beatings and killings that made Italy resemble a nation without a state.

Benito Mussolini born July 29, 1883, Predappio, Italy—died April 28, 1945, near Dongo. He was first of the 20th century European fascist dictators.

Mussolini’s roving bands of Blackshirts, “bursting with appetites,” wielded clubs with precision, “bashing both sides of the mouth, both mandibular joints, in order to fracture the jaws.” And there was “the castor oil routine”: “You seize a diehard socialist, ram a funnel down his throat, and force him to drink a quart of laxative. Then you tie him to the hood of a car and drive him through town ...”

Mussolini and the Blackshirts (think red hats!)

Three days after denouncing a massacre by his followers, Mussolini “proclaimed a general amnesty for politically motivated blood crimes committed for ‘national ends.’” This “master of exhaustion” came to power promising to tame his violent followers but instead indulged their addiction to “carefree ferocity.”

Mussolini, the anti-Enlightenment embodied, was a fervent socialist until he became a fervent fascist, a transformation from one anti-individualism to another. Scurati’s Mussolini muses:

“All people [are] shaken to their inner-most core by an irresistible desire to submit to a strong man and, at the same time, to hold sway over the defenseless. They are ready to kiss the shoes of any new master as long as they too are given someone to trample on.”

Mussolini was an unimposing 5 feet 6 inches tall — 2 inches shorter than Adolf Hitler, 2 inches taller than Francisco Franco — but was fascism: pure energy in search of occasions for aggression. As a fascist, he had no precursors; he was, however, a precursor of the performative masculinity of the bare-chested, judo-practicing, stallion-riding Vladimir Putin.

An essay in the Economist establishes that Putinism is fascism: a simmering stew of grievances and resentments (about post-Soviet diminishment) expressed in the rhetoric of victimhood. Putin’s regime relies on violence wielded by the state and by state-tolerated assault brigades akin to Mussolini’s militias. Mussolini’s cult of personality was bound up with restoring the grandeur that was the Roman Empire — or at least tormenting Ethiopia. The cult of Putin the strong man promises the restoration of a supposed golden age that ended with the Soviet Union’s ignominious collapse.

As in Mussolini’s Italy, there is in Putin’s Russia what the Economist calls a “culture of cruelty” where “domestic abuse is no longer a crime” and “nearly 30% of Russians say torture should be allowed.”

As the Economist notes, Alexander Yakovlev, a democratic reformer who worked under Mikhail Gorbachev, warned us in the late 1990s: “The danger of fascism in Russia is real because, since 1917, we have become used to living in a criminal world with a criminal state in charge. Banditry, sanctified by ideology — this wording suits both communists and fascists.”

The fascist aesthetic of redemptive, regenerative violence serves the fascist philosophy of national purification through the “self-detoxification of society” (Putin’s phrase). So, genocide, understood to encompass the erasure of an entire people’s cultural identity, flows inexorably from fascism. Andrew Stuttaford, writing for National Review, notes that Russians are not only destroying Ukraine’s cultural signifiers (churches, monuments, etc.), they are forcibly relocating to Russia more than “a million Ukrainians … among them hundreds of thousands of children, including, reportedly, orphans — some young enough to forget their identity and their language.”

“The engine of fascism,” the Economist says, “does not have a reverse gear. … It will seek to expand both geographically and into people’s private lives.” As Mussolini, the first fascist, said: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

Putin’s regime encourages the public to show support for the Ukraine war by displaying the “Z”* sign, which the Economist calls a “half-swastika.” Fascism might flourish more in this century than it did in the previous one.

*Since mid-March 2022, the "Z" began to be used by the Russian government as a pro-war propaganda motif.