Recap of this week in the revolution: Mexico sends rescuers to TX and CA wants to ban ICE masks. Supreme Court gives McMahon OK to dismantle DoE while Trump regime uses DoE agency to attack George Mason U. ICE strips legal rights from immigrants and harasses courthouse volunteers. Join the resistance by signing up for One Million Rising and Fight Back with Friends.
The Good...
"They are sending rescue teams to rescue our children while we are rounding up Mexican people and all other Latino people and putting them in concentration camps. Pregnant Latina women, some of them citizens, many of them legal residents, green card holders, visa holders, student visa holders, people who have already...[been] approved for asylum...
"While we put Latino people in cages, rip them away from their small children, take Latino children out of foster care and send them to concentration camps, while we disappear innocent Latino people to...death camps in countries they're not from and have never been to, sending them into prisons they'll maybe never get out of...while we're doing this, they're sending rescue teams to rescue our...children.
"FEEL what I'm saying. Don't just hear it. Feel it."
Two men dressed up as soldiers carry weapons of war through a Los Angeles neighborhood on June 12. Their faces are masked to hide their identity, which only reveals their cowardice.
Senate Bill 627 would prohibit law enforcement (at all levels) from engaging in masking to conceal their identity. The bill was passed by a legislative committee this week, but still has several additional steps to go before it can potentially become law.
Proponents of the bill, like Jon Pedigo, a Catholic priest who directs the People Acting in Community Together (PACT) community group, note that, "the point is cruelty; the point is terror, and we are going to call it for what it is."
Opponents claim that the masks protect their agents' safety from those who oppose their work. These agents are walking around our residential streets wearing body armor and carrying military-grade weapons of war, intentionally sowing fear in the general population everywhere they go, and they have the audacity to say they feel unsafe! Their hypocrisy is only rivaled by their cowardice.
Most Americans (54%) feel that the actions being taken by ICE agents go too far, including 49% of Republicans, who are the only supporters of the Trump regime that is behind this infestation. When 93% of the detainees captured by ICE agents have no violent convictions, and 65% have no convictions at all, maybe these agents should be afraid for their safety. Anyone who snatches people off the streets and locks them up in concentration camps around the country and around the world without a trial, a conviction, or legal sentencing should absolutely fear for their safety in this country.
The Bad...
Image by Gage Skidmore from Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
In March, Donny 2-Dolls issued an executive order to begin massive layoffs in the Department of Education. The order was blocked by the courts until this week, when a Supreme Court ruling gave the Trump regime the green light to proceed with the mass firings.
Linda McMahon was appointed by the regime to be Secretary of Education for the sole purpose of destroying the department. Right-wing extremists like the Heritage Foundation have been trying to eliminate the Department of Education since it was founded. It turns out that having a strong public education system with federal oversight makes it harder for extremist groups to indoctrinate children into their ideologies. Education has always been the enemy of extremism, oppression, totalitarianism, and indoctrination. So it comes as no surprise that the Trump regime wants to dismantle it.
The Trump regime has apparently decided to oust George Mason University President Gregory Washington. Washington was "perplexed" when he received a notice earlier this month from the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) stating that the university was under investigation for antisemitism. George Mason has not seen the types of disruptions from protests as other universities, and leaders, including Washington, have taken extensive steps to enforce rules on protests and to improve relationships with the Jewish community. The university was one of the first to implement safety and well-being plans related to protests and demonstrations, has not seen a campus-wide demonstration related to Gaza in more than a year, and has seen a dramatic decrease in reports of bias over the past year.
But when the Trump regime locks on to a target, nothing as irrelevant as the truth is going to stop their assault. This week, OCR launched a second investigation, this time alleging that the university illegally considers race in its hiring and promotion practices. Again, George Mason University, the most racially diverse public research university in Virginia, has complied with all federal and state mandates targeting DEI initiatives. The university has repurposed its DEI office to focus on compliance and community, has cut staff, and has eliminated diversity training in order to comply with these ridiculous and unpopular new laws.
The Trump regime is following its typical playbook in this assault on Washington: File multiple investigations in quick succession, leak reports of the investigations to radical right-wing propagandists to promote false narratives, request mountains of paperwork be turned over in an unreasonably short period of time, and rush the "investigation" towards a predetermined result regardless of any actual findings.
The Ugly...
Image by Bobak Ha'Eri from Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
When someone is convicted of a crime, their trial often comes months or even years after the initial charges. Courts may hold a bail bond hearing to determine whether to offer a conditional release of the defendant from jail until the trial. If approved, the defendant can deposit an agreed-upon sum of money to the court as a promise that they will return for their hearing. When the defendant returns for their trial, the money is returned. If the defendant does not return for the trial, they forfeit the money. This keeps the defendant out of jail until and unless they are convicted and sentenced.
Under new guidance from the Trump regime, anyone snatched up by ICE will be kept detained "for the duration of their removal proceedings." With plenty of new funding for concentration camps approved in the recently-passed budget reconciliation bill, there will be enough space to keep all of these detainees imprisoned until they are eventually deported.
As pointed out earlier, 65% of those detained by ICE have no criminal history at all. We're not talking about violent criminals who endanger American citizens. We're talking about long-time, peaceful residents of the United States. People with lives, families, homes, and jobs. Our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends, our community members, locked up in concentration camps far from their homes with no contact with the outside world, locked up in cages for what could be years of their lives.
This is not only un-American. It is inhuman.
Image by Sarahmirk from Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
The string of abuses perpetrated by ICE agents this year alone has infuriated Americans from all walks of life. Many people have volunteered to help immigrants navigate the path to legal residency through the courts. But the idea of extending a helping hand to those in need (while observing the law) deeply disturbs the kind of person who would willingly work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the American Gestapo, in this day and age.
These volunteers report being obstructed and harassed by ICE agents even though they are not violating any laws or interfering with any ICE operations. Apparently, just the thought that a person could actually care about someone who was born in another country is enough to trigger hostility in the agents. These masked agents, too cowardly to show their faces, will gang up in groups of a dozen or more to try to intimidate three or fewer volunteers, often retired women, trying to escort a scared immigrant to their legal hearing.
Volunteers attend court hearings and collect contact information from the immigrants prior to their hearings so they know who to contact if the immigrant is taken into custody. Volunteers sometimes escort the immigrants to and from the courtroom, leading them past armed and masked agents lining the courthouse hallways.
Stop and think about this...these are immigrants attending court hearings...that means they are actively obeying the laws of our country and having their cases ruled on by judges. The outcome of the hearing should be what determines how they are treated and whether they get to stay in the country or not. But instead, we have lazy immigration agents hanging out in our court houses and plucking up the immigrants who are trying to obey the laws of our country while they harass anyone who shows the slightest bit of human compassion. It requires a very special kind of evil for these agents to carry out such shameful behavior...and an equal evil for anyone, anywhere, to support such outrageous actions on the part of government agents of any kind.
What can you do this week?
The United States of America has fallen to authoritarianism. With every passing day, the Trump regime is consolidating power, becoming bolder, and increasing its attacks on the people of this nation. They are doing this in plain sight: Eliminating hard-won civil rights, militarizing cruel and hate-filled people into state-sponsored agents to terrorize the population, deporting people without justification or due process, weaponizing the court system, and dismantling the institutions of democracy.
We the people do not approve. The question is: What are we going to do about it?
Join "One Million Rising" to learn how we can resist authoritarianism through non-violent, strategic, and coordinated efforts. The people of any nation will always outnumber their government. The only way authoritarianism can exist in a country is if the people of that country are successfully intimidated into cooperation by the authoritarian regime.
One Million Rising is a three-part training program. The first session was held on July 16, 2025. If you missed that session, you can still get caught up by watching the recording here:
