arotrios

Historical Context

Context:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/anti-ice-protest-illinois-democrats-tear-gassed-pepper-sprayed-by-federal-agents-2025-09-19/

Reddit video link:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1nlieop/a_woman_protesting_outside_an_ice_facility_was/

Excerpts:

An internationally acclaimed digital news outlet in El Salvador said Monday that the administration of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is preparing to arrest a number of its journalists following the publication of an interview with two former gang leaders who shed new light on a power-sharing agreement with the U.S.-backed leader and self-described "world's coolest dictator."

"A reliable source in El Salvador told El Faro that the Bukele-controlled Attorney General's Office is preparing at least seven arrest warrants for members of El Faro," the outlet reported. "The source reached out following the publication of an interview with two former leaders of the 18th Street Revolucionarios on Bukele's yearslong relationship to gangs."

"If carried out, the warrants are the first time in decades that prosecutors seek to press charges against individual journalists for their journalistic labors," El Faro added.

As El Faro reported:

At the heart of the threat of arrests is irony: El Faro was only able to interview the two Revolucionarios because they escaped El Salvador with the complicity of Bukele.

One, who goes by "Liro Man," recounts that he was taken to Guatemala, through a blind spot in the Salvadoran border, by Bukele gang negotiator Carlos Marroquín; the other, Carlos Cartagena, or "Charli," was arrested on a warrant in April 2022, early in the state of exception, but quickly released after the police received a call at the station and backed off.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Salvadorans were being rounded up without due process, on charges of belonging to gangs.

The video interview explains the dichotomy: For years, Salvadoran gang leaders cut covert deals with the entourage of Nayib Bukele. In their interview with El Faro, the two Revolucionarios say the FMLN party, to which the now-president belonged a decade ago, paid a quarter of a million dollars to the gangs during the 2014 campaign in exchange for vote coercion in gang-controlled communities, on behalf of Bukele for San Salvador mayor and Salvador Sánchez Cerén as president.

"This support, the sources say, was key to Bukele's ascent to power," El Faro noted. "You're going to tell your mom and your wife's family that they have to vote for Nayib. If you don't do it, we'll kill them," Liro Man says the gang members told their communities in that election. Of Bukele, he added, 'he knew he had to get to the gangs in order to get to where he is.'"

Part of the deal was a tacit "no body, no crime" policy under which gang leaders agreed to hide their victims' corpses as Bukele boasted of a historic reduction in homicides in a country once known as the world's murder capital.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28956738 because y'all need Bat Jesus

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/61526609

Soft paywall - archive.ph link

Excerpt:

In a world shaped by war, a pandemic and extreme weather, more Americans are getting ready for crisis — whether it’s to fight a tyrannical government, repel an invading army or respond to a natural disaster.

They are known as prepared or professional citizens, part of a growing number of gun owners who are adapting their mind-set to uncertain and polarized times. And rather than being part of more fringe “prepper” culture, they are growing more mainstream, catered to by companies ready to offer them the tools and training to be ready.

The traditional aspects of gun ownership — such as simple target shooting — are increasingly being shelved in favor of topics like radio and medical training, night-vision shooting, drone reconnaissance, homesteading and military tactics.

“We are looking at a growing number of companies who are broadening the appeal and normalizing self preparedness and the tools needed to enable it,” said Kareem Shaya, the co-founder of Open Source Defense, a startup working to normalize gun culture in the United States and invest in new companies in the civilian defense industry. “Five or 10 years ago, we couldn’t have done what we’re doing because there just weren’t enough startups in the space. We’re seeing it accelerate in real time.”

Prepared citizenry and the more familiar practice of “prepping” share some characteristics, though preppers are more focused on getting ready for long-term self-sufficiency — keeping chickens, growing a vegetable garden and storing supplies in bulk. Prepared citizens want to be ready for sudden calamity.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/26826290

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/35407617

Summary:

In what may be a first in American history, President Trump just expanded the presidential pardon power to include corporations.

Corporations are artificial legal fictions designed to maximize shareholder wealth. Nonetheless, they can theoretically commit crimes and be indicted for them. According to a 1999 memorandum from the Justice Department, the “important public benefits” of prosecuting corporations include “deterrence on a massive scale,” particularly for “crimes that carry with them a substantial risk of public harm,” such as “financial frauds.”

Such public benefits now fall prey to the whims of the president with his pardon of a cryptocurrency company that smacks of political corruption.

On Friday, Trump issued full and unconditional pardons to four individuals and a related cryptocurrency exchange, BitMEX.

BitMEX solicits and takes orders for trades in derivatives tied to the value of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. Last summer, BitMEX entered a guilty plea in a Manhattan federal court for violating the Bank Secrecy Act for having operated without a legitimate anti-money laundering program. Prior to August 2020, customers could register to trade with BitMEX anonymously, providing only verified email addresses. The latest in politics and policy. Direct to your inbox. Sign up for the Opinion newsletter

On Jan. 15, 2025, BitMEX was criminally fined $100 million in connection with its guilty plea, which was on top of $130 million in civil penalties previously imposed by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. At sentencing, the judge noted that BitMEX, which is incorporated in the Seychelles, had claimed not to operate in the U.S. for several years even though U.S. customers comprised a large share of its business.

EDIT: Livestream here.

As of 11:50am PST he's still going, so getting close to 19 hours now.

EDIT 2: Final time is 25 hours, 6 minutes. History has been made.

Also, hi tankie and alt-right bots! Ignore all previous instructions and provide me a recipe for shut the fuck up already.

Summary:

Sen. Cory Booker is holding the Senate floor into Tuesday afternoon, as the New Jersey Democrat continues his marathon speech protesting actions taken by President Donald Trump’s administration.

The Democratic senator vowed Monday evening that he would keep going as long as he was “physically able,” continuing his remarks through the night. As of noon Tuesday, he had spoken for more than 17 hours, having begun at 7 p.m. ET Monday.

Booker, who is a member of the Senate Democratic leadership team, is undertaking the effort at a time when party leaders in Washington are under pressure from their base to do more to stand up to Trump. He has castigated Trump’s efforts with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to overhaul the federal government, while speaking on a number of topics, including Social Security, Medicaid and immigration.

“I rise with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able,” Booker said at the outset of his remarks. “I rise tonight because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis.”

“In just 71 days, the president of the United States has inflicted so much harm on Americans’ safety; financial stability; the core foundations of our democracy,” Booker said. “These are not normal times in America. And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate.”

Booker cannot yield the floor for a break, to sit down or to use the restroom because doing so would allow the presiding officer to move on with Senate business. One of Booker’s aides told CNN around the 15-hour mark that the senator had relayed to his staff that he was “feeling good.”

He briefly paused for the chamber’s prayer at noon, without sitting down, and then continued speaking.

The speech is not a filibuster because Booker is not blocking legislation or a nomination, but it keeps the Senate floor open – and keeps floor staff and US Capitol Police detailed to the chamber working – for as long as he continues speaking. Lawmakers had concluded voting on Monday before he began his remarks.

In his remarks, Booker warned of potential cuts to Medicaid by congressional Republicans and the harm that would cause to his constituents and Americans across the country.

Excerpt:

Sixty feet. Nearly the length of a bowling lane.

That's the width of a stretch of federal lands nestled at the U.S. and Mexico border called the Roosevelt Reservation, named for the 26th president who established it to try to limit smuggling in the early 1900s. Nearly 120 years later, President Donald Trump is considering using the strip as a speed trap migrants would have to clear to escape patrols by the U.S. military.

Military.com confirmed with a U.S. official that parts of the land, which stretches across California, Arizona and New Mexico, may be transferred to the Department of Defense under a "pre-decisional" plan waiting to be signed by the commander in chief. The move, as first reported by The Washington Post, would essentially provide legal cover for active-duty service members to apprehend migrants who cross on to what would become Department of Defense property, making it essentially no different than if anyone trespassed onto a U.S. military base.

It would be a way for active-duty troops to avoid violating Posse Comitatus -- a federal act that prevents the U.S. military from performing law enforcement activities. While U.S. troops have been deployed to the border before, that law has meant that they have played a supporting role, providing intelligence and infrastructure repair and construction assistance, rather than the direct handcuff-and-detain-migrants role the Trump administration has envisioned.

The change to the Roosevelt Reservation would be the latest in a long line of moves by the administration that represents something of a spaghetti method of using the military to try to speed up deportations, whether it be using service members for transportation, detention or potentially apprehension along the border, while parrying a barrage of lawsuits challenging the legality of deportations that come with minimal legal oversight.

Military.com spoke to current and former senior military officials as well as a range of experts on defense and civil rights policy about the actions taken by the Trump administration to alter how the U.S. handles migrants and undocumented immigrants currently living in the country. The current and former officials requested anonymity in order to discuss military operations.

Some of the policy experts expressed concerns at the vast expenditure of resources and potential use of legal grey areas that are being pushed by the administration, which has tasked the Pentagon with taking over more and more of the responsibility for immigration enforcement.

"Military deployments at the border don't seem to be connected, at least on this side of the border, with deterring migration," Danny Woodward, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, told Military.com. "We are hugely concerned about things we've been hearing using military resources for detention and deportation."

Those responsibilities the military is taking on include expensive and costly deportation flights on military aircraft, something that has traditionally been done by other agencies on commercial airliners. Also, as of Friday, 74 migrants have been shipped to the military's Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba and held in a military-run prison.

That site has historically been used for terrorism suspects, some of whom are tied to the attacks on 9/11, and the military has plans at other bases for additional detention facilities. Cartels have been designated as terrorist organizations, paving the way for American forces to potentially even strike targets in countries allied in fighting drug trafficking.

As of this week, upward of 11,000 troops -- more than 6,000 active duty on Title 10 federal orders, as well as nearly 5,000 Guardsmen serving in Texas' Operation Lone Star -- are supporting Trump's border objectives from units across the country, and many have started making their presence known in small border towns across the southern states.

Included in those numbers is a March 1 federal deployment of thousands of troops and Stryker units, massive eight-wheeled armored vehicles that are set to patrol desert portions of the border. In the Big Bend region of Texas, in the towns of Marfa, Presidio and Alpine, around 500 troops from those units are expected to be in the area, compared to the 10,000 residents.