United States | News & Politics

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43359786

A federal judge in Minnesota held a Trump administration attorney in civil contempt for “flagrant disobedience of court orders” in the case of a noncitizen swept up in the immigration crackdown there earlier this year.

The contempt finding by US District Judge Laura Provinzino on Wednesday appears to mark the first time a federal attorney has faced court-ordered sanctions during Donald Trump’s second term.

It comes as judges in the Twin Cities and elsewhere have grown increasingly impatient with the administration’s repeated violations of court orders, particularly in fast-moving immigration cases.

GEO Group and CoreCivic face competition as the agency looks to dramatically reduce the number of immigrant jails by shifting to massive warehouses

What's going on is that people are rejecting most of the warehouse-to-concentration-camp conversions, so they're going to pick a few really huge ones to do, and pick locations where they can overcome local opposition.

Stephen Prager
Feb 19, 2026

Fouad Isadi, an Iranian professor with knowledge of the government’s inner workings, told Scahill last month that in the event of a large-scale strike by Trump, the military was planning a retaliatory strike aimed at killing at least 500 US soldiers.

“We could see the Iranians really hit hard in a way that blows the Americans away on a psychological level and that Trump hasn’t had to deal with before,” Scahill said on Thursday. “I assume that President Trump’s response would be even more enraged and even more brutal than anything one could imagine.”

Brett Wilkins
Feb 19, 2026

The New Brunswick, New Jersey City Council voted Wednesday to cancel plans to construct an artificial intelligence data center and instead build a new public park where the 27,000-square foot facility would have gone.

Artificial intelligence data centers—which house the servers and other infrastructure needed to train and power AI models—have major environmental and climate impacts, as they consume massive amounts of electricity and water, as well as rare earth metals and other resources.

According to New Brunswick Patch, hundreds of people packed into Wednesday evening’s city hall meeting to voice concerns that the proposed data center would send their electricity and water bills skyrocketing, and that the facility would harm the environment.

The Trump administration ordered a Michigan plant to stay open just days before it was set to retire. Now, ratepayers are likely to foot the bill.

In a Feb. 16 statement, the LAPD states it’s unlawful for minors under 18 to be in public places, streets, or amusement spots during school hours. Exceptions include emergencies or being with a parent. The department cited state education code requiring that children between the ages of 6 and 18 “must attend a full-time public day school for the full designated day.”

[…]

A day later, Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, condemned the walkouts in a post on X, saying, “The only thing they will accomplish is ensuring violent agitators will be criminally prosecuted, juveniles included.” Essayli also posted photos of youth he said were sought in connection with a “violent attack on [Federal Protective Service] at our downtown Los Angeles property.”

It’s an absolutely wild misuse of the criminal justice system to target children exercising their constitutional rights after having their community, friends, and possibly family members terrorized or kidnapped by federal agents. I can’t imagine making those kinds of statements and not immediately wanting to crawl in a hole and die of shame.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a memo Wednesday stating that federal immigration agents should arrest refugees who have not yet obtained a green card and detain them indefinitely for rescreening — a policy shift that upends decades of protections

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Welcome to the resistance.

The real question is whether cops are willing to enforce this — in most places they've refused to arrest ICE or Border Patrol for on-duty actions except in cases of nepotism.

Lacking federal help, Hennepin prosecutor expresses confidence in state evidence from deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7693060

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/29138

The number of people who have faced criminal charges related to their pregnancies has soared since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and now, a sheriff's office in South Carolina is investigating a fetus found at a water treatment plant.

The Sumter County Sheriff's Office announced Friday that deputies were called to the plant on Edgehill Road after workers found the fetus, which was sent to the Medical University of South Carolina, according to The State. County Coroner Robbie Baker said that "it was a small fetus. Probably not more than 6 inches long. It was somewhat developed."

Baker shared the findings from the autopsy on Monday: The fetus was just 13-15 weeks, male, and showed no signs of trauma. ABC News 4 reported that he also said this was being ruled a stillborn death—even though a stillbirth is generally defined as a pregnancy loss after 20 weeks, and a loss before that is a miscarriage.

The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division is "testing tissue samples to determine the race and locate the mother," according to WIS News 10. "The coroner said the race could not be immediately determined due to how long the fetus had been sitting in sewer chemicals."

As Kylie Cheung wrote Monday at Jessica Valenti's newsletter Abortion, Every Day: "Our immediate questions: Why are pregnancy remains being investigated by law enforcement at all? How can 14-week fetal remains be ruled a 'stillborn death'? And why are state authorities trying to determine the race of these pregnancy remains? This is particularly concerning given that women of color are overrepresented among criminal cases involving pregnancy."

Such probes have become "all too routine," Laura Huss, a senior researcher at If/When/How, told Cheung. "Pregnancy losses aren't crimes... No one should have to live with the fear that their miscarriage or stillbirth could result in cops showing up at their door, which is what investigations and media stories like this create."

The advocacy group Pregnancy Justice said last year that "from June 2022 to June 2024—the first two years after the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade—prosecutors initiated at least 412 cases across the country charging individuals with crimes related to their pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth."

"So what is the point of this investigation, beyond terrorizing women through control and surveillance of their bodies?"

Since Roe's reversal, far-right politicians and anti-choice organizations have ramped up their push for more state and federal restrictions on reproductive freedom. South Carolina groups that fight for such policies—from abortion bans based on gestational age to fetal personhood legislation—are now using the fetus found there to advocate for new state laws.

One proposal would "require the Department of Environmental Services to conduct testing for urinary metabolites in certain wastewater treatment facilities," Fox Carolina reported. Another would prohibit the "mailing, shipping, or prescribing of abortifacients, including from out-of-state sources," as well as "classify committing or attempting to commit an abortion using an abortifacient on a mother as a felony punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment or a fine of up to $100k."

Almost every action after pregnancy loss has come under scrutiny. Many of these laws, like the crime of “concealing a birth,” date back to the 1600s, used to criminalize unwed women who were thought to be more likely to hide & end their pregnancies, fearing intense societal shame and repercussions.

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— Pregnancy Justice (@pregnancyjust.bsky.social) January 29, 2026 at 11:42 AM

Last month, Pregnancy Justice released a report that "maps the matrix of laws and policies that can be used to criminalize postpartum people for how they respond to their own pregnancy loss in every state." Its section on South Carolina says:

Although South Carolina does not have a broad prenatal personhood law, criminal or otherwise, its state Supreme Court establishes broad criminal prenatal personhood with the harmful proposition that criminal statutes apply to "viable fetuses" unless the Legislature expressly says otherwise. A former attorney general also noted his position that prenatal personhood applies broadly to South Carolina's laws. By extension, an attempt to criminalize the "destruction or desecration" or transportation without a permit of viable fetal remains could be made.

Separately, people are also required to report "stillbirth[s] when unattended by a physician."

Pregnancy Justice legal director Karen Thompson told Cheung that criminal charges shouldn't be applicable in the case of the fetus found in South Carolina, whether it was a miscarriage or an abortion, because of the "viability" requirement in state law. She added, "So what is the point of this investigation, beyond terrorizing women through control and surveillance of their bodies?"

The South Carolina investigation follows last week's arrest of a Kentucky couple, Deann and Charles Bennett, after she was taken to a hospital following a reported miscarriage in November 2024. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, they were each charged with reckless homicide, and she also faces charges of abuse of a corpse, concealing the birth of an infant, and tampering with physical evidence.

Reporting on that case last week, Valenti and Cheung pointed out that "right now, all of the available information is coming from cops and law enforcement—so take it all with a grain of salt. Again and again, Abortion, Every Day has found police lying about these arrests, or misrepresenting what really happened. Too often, local media will parrot those facts' uncritically and destroy people's lives in the process."

"Already, Deann and Charles' mugshots have been splashed across Kentucky crime pages," the pair added. "Deann is seen sobbing in hers."

According to Pregnancy Justice's January report: "Although Kentucky's broad prenatal personhood law is enjoined, the state Supreme Court provides that a viable fetus is a human being within the meaning of the penal code. By extension, an attempt to criminalize the nonreporting and disposal of viable fetal remains could be made. Separately, Kentucky has a statute that prohibits 'concealing [a] birth' to 'prevent a determination of whether it was born dead or alive.'"

From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.

Senior officials at the Environmental Protection Agency are expected to announce the move on Friday, according to people briefed on the matter.

Nothing quite like brain damage and forced miscarriages as official policy

A proposed ballot measure to give Democrats more seats for the 2028 and 2030 elections signals that the nation’s gerrymandering fight is likely to persist for years.

No more unilateral disarmament by Democrats