United States | News & Politics

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6440808

In September, the United States Supreme Court paused a temporary restraining order intended to stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from terrorizing Los Angeles with roving patrols, giving ICE the green light to target people because of the color of their skin or the language they speak.

But even while the restraining order was in effect starting in July, ICE never stopped targeting day labor centers in Los Angeles. On August 8, masked men in tactical gear surrounded the Van Nuys Community Job Center, and pointed weapons at my coworkers and me. When I asked to see a warrant, I was met with cold stares and a Border Patrol agent wielding a teargas canister.

I am the executive director of the Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California or IDEPSCA), the largest operator of day labor (jornalero) centers in California. We run five of the seven city-contracted day labor centers in Los Angeles, including the Van Nuys Community Job Center. The City of Los Angeles funds these official day labor centers to provide direct services to day laborers, including know-your-rights trainings, health and immunization clinics, housing support, and language classes, and contracts with nonprofit organizations like IDEPSCA to operate the centers. Our day labor centers are overseen and paid for by the city, and several of our sites are on city-owned or state-owned property.

ICE has raided our day labor sites at least 14 times since June.

Just days before the raid, Mayor Karen Bass hailed a 9th circuit ruling upholding the temporary restraining order against ICE as “a great day for Los Angeles” and said that she hoped fear among immigrant communities in our city would subside.

It didn’t feel like a great day for Los Angeles when we looked down the barrels of guns pointed at us by federal agents in our workplace.

While my coworkers and I were held at gunpoint, I felt fear and rage, but not surprise. This was the 6th time ICE raided the Van Nuys Community Job Center in under three months. Just three hours earlier, my staff witnessed the same Border Patrol agents kidnap seven day laborers from the parking lot in front of the center. Over the course of that same week, three day labor centers we operate next to Home Depots were raided a total of four times.

Without the restraining order, things will only get worse. Our entire city is on edge now that ICE is receiving billions more in funding to kidnap and disappear our immigrant neighbors, thanks to congress. ICE’s budget for fiscal year 2026, which began on October 1st, is a whopping $18.7 billion.

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6440713

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani released a campaign ad this week honoring transgender trailblazers in the city and vowing to make New York City a sanctuary for trans people.

The ad marks a notable departure from the Democratic Party’s current tone on trans rights. Since the party’s 2024 presidential loss to Donald Trump, strategists have increasingly peddled the myth that support for transgender people is a liability for candidates — a notion that Mamdani appears to reject.

In the campaign ad, Mamdani sits behind a large desk near the Christopher Street Pier, where many Black and Latinx unhoused LGBTQ people sought refuge in the 1970s after being pushed to the margins of the city. In the background of the ad is the song “It’s Okay to Cry” by legendary transgender artist SOPHIE.

Mamdani tells the story of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, trans activists who led the Stonewall Inn uprisings of 1969 and laid the foundation for the city’s first Pride celebration. The Christopher Street pier is “a place of immense contradictions,” he says— just like New York City itself.

“It’s where outsiders found belonging, and it’s also where Marsha P. Johnson’s body was found, the victim of a suspected murder no one was ever prosecuted for,” he says.

As a result of the “cruelty” Rivera faced, Mamadani says, she developed a substance use problem and often faced homelessness. But despite these challenges, Rivera continued her fight for trans liberation, even when many in the mainstream gay rights movement at the time sought to exclude trans people.

Citing Rivera and Johnson’s struggle for equality and recognition, Mamdani says, “We can chart a clear path forward that makes our city inclusive.”

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6450409

Since the killing of far-right activist Charlie Kirk last month, Vice President JD Vance has led the charge among right-wing politicians who have railed against “left-wing extremists” and what he has claimed is a “network” of advocacy groups that foment and perpetrate violence—suggesting the “rhetoric” of progressives who are critical of President Donald Trump and his allies is akin to violence.

But confronted with racist, antisemitic messages and jokes aboutremoved that were sent in a group chat by members of the group Leaders of Young Republicans on Wednesday, the vice president dismissed the outrage that has ensued over the chats as “pearl clutching” over the actions of “young boys.”

The “young boys” who sent messages that explicitly praised Adolf Hitler, lauded Republicans who they believe support slavery, and said their political foes should go to “the gas chamber,” were between the ages of 24-35.

“The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys,” Vance said on The Charlie Kirk Show. “They tell edgy, offensive jokes. That’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke—telling a very offensive, stupid joke—is cause to ruin their lives.”

Since the messages were leaked, some of the Young Republicans who took part in the group chat have stepped down from their jobs—which they held, in some cases, with state lawmakers and the New York state court system. One member, Vermont state Sen. Samuel Douglass, who was the only elected official in the chat and made a racist remark about South Asian people, has faced calls to resign.

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The U.S. admiral who leads U.S. military forces in Latin America will step down at the end of this year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Thursday, in a surprise move that comes amid escalating tensions with Venezuela.

Alvin Holsey only took over the U.S. military's Southern Command late last year for a position that normally lasts three years. A source told Reuters that there had been tension between him and Hegseth and questions about whether he would be fired in the days leading up to the announcement.

Social media has a rumor he refused orders to do military action against Venezuela

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Israel’s advocates fear that its conduct of the war has cost it the support of an entire generation of U.S. voters.

By David M. Halbfinger Oct. 12, 2025

The war in Gaza may finally be ending, after two years of bloodshed and destruction. But among the damage that has been done is a series of devastating blows to Israel’s relationship with the citizens of its most important and most stalwart ally, the United States.

Israel’s reputation in the United States is in tatters, and not only on college campuses or among progressives. For the first time since it began asking Americans about their sympathies in 1998, a New York Times poll last month found that slightly more voters sided with the Palestinians than with Israelis.

https://archive.ph/IQyCK

You get what you voted for.

https://archive.is/20251016104343/https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/16/politics/kfile-graham-platner-maine-senate-candidate-deleted-reddit-posts

Nota Baloyi, a South African who spoke to The Intercept on Wednesday, had his visa revoked for tweeting that Kirk “won’t be remembered as a hero. He was used to astroturf a movement of white nationalist trailer trash!”

Nota Baloyi, a South African who spoke to The Intercept on Wednesday, had his visa revoked for tweeting that Kirk “won’t be remembered as a hero. He was used to astroturf a movement of white nationalist trailer trash!”

Last Friday he received a brief email notification from the U.S. consular office revoking his visa. The message made no reference to his social media activity.

https://californiaglobe.com/fr/president-trump-recommends-surge-of-federal-agents-into-san-francisco-to-combat-crime/

This is nice, some small hope in the chaos.

Beautiful to see the unity here amongst reporters from different companies.

Sources tell MeidasTouch the White House will shut down portions of the I-5 for Vice President JD Vance’s Marine Corps spectacle during No Kings Protests, triggering chaos, gridlock, and outrage as troops go unpaid during the shutdown.

Fox confirms the Vance parade at Camp Pendelton

LA Times confirms a live fire exercise shooting over the 5

Timing suggests they are really scared of the No Kings rallies.

‘For 150 years-plus they’ve wanted to have a ballroom and it never happened because they’ve never had a real estate person,’ Trump said Wednesday night

"You're just a number to them."

“The narrative that immigration enforcement is going after gang members in this country is a lie,” says one expert.

If we don’t organize and take action in the streets, says Mark Bray, “we’re going to end up somewhere really bad.”