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President Trump canceled the signing of a landmark bipartisan housing bill and said he wouldn’t approve it until Congress passed his proof-of-citizenship voting bill, turning the cost of a home into a bargaining chip for a restrictive elections agenda.

On Thursday the Supreme Court handed the administration two immigration wins, clearing the way to end Temporary Protected Status for more than 350,000 Haitians and several thousand Syrians and reviving a policy that lets border officials turn away asylum seekers. And the Senate’s historic Iran war-powers rebuke on Tuesday was followed, less than two days later, by a walk-back after the president pressured the Republicans who crossed him.

Three separate federal judges blocked major pieces of the drive to put federal control over elections, including a permanent ban on the proof-of-citizenship order and a ruling voiding the plan to route mail ballots only to a federally approved voter list.

Voters in New York City delivered a progressive sweep that unseated two sitting members of Congress. And tomorrow, on June 27, organizers in Washington and communities across the country mark the run-up to the nation’s 250th with a day of action built around the history this anniversary is being used to erase.

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Trump held housing relief hostage to force a vote on the SAVE America Act

Congress passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act with rare bipartisan force, 85 to 5 in the Senate and 358 to 32 in the House, one of the most far-reaching housing reform bills in decades. It would limit large institutional investors from buying up single-family homes, ease construction rules to expand supply, and update outdated federal housing programs. Trump was scheduled to sign at the Capitol on Wednesday, then canceled about an hour before the ceremony, posting that he would not act until lawmakers passed the SAVE America Act.

Once the housing bill formally gets presented to him, it becomes law without a signature after ten days, Sundays excluded, as long as Congress stays in session and he doesn’t veto it, and Speaker Mike Johnson said Trump will ultimately sign it.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who co-led the bill, said the president’s policies have driven costs up and holding the relief back shows indifference to the squeeze on American families.

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The Supreme Court cleared the way to end protected status for Haitians and Syrians

In a 6 to 3 ruling along ideological lines on Thursday, the Court held that the law governing Temporary Protected Status bars judges from reviewing the Homeland Security secretary’s decision to end it.

The decision lets the administration strip protection from more than 350,000 Haitians and several thousand Syrians who have lived and worked in the country legally, some for more than a decade, and advocates warned that the same reasoning now endangers the roughly 1.3 million people covered by TPS designations for more than a dozen countries. The State Department warns Americans against traveling to either Haiti or Syria, citing violence and instability.

In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan pointed to Trump’s own statements about Haitians, which she called “so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print.” Hours earlier the Court handed the administration a second immigration win, restoring its authority to turn away asylum seekers at overburdened crossings on the southern border. Krish O’Mara Vignarajah of Global Refuge noted that roughly a third of the affected Haitians work in health care, as caregivers, nurses, and doctors, which is part of why the protections once drew bipartisan support.

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Congress rebuked Trump on Iran, then walked it back two days later

On Tuesday the Senate adopted a resolution directing the president to remove U.S. forces from hostilities with Iran, 50 to 48, the first time a war-powers measure cleared both chambers of Congress.

Four Republicans, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul, joined nearly every Democrat, while Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman was the lone Democrat opposed. The measure was a concurrent resolution, which means it never goes to the president’s desk and carries no force of law.

The following night the Senate blocked a separate, binding resolution led by Sen. Tim Kaine from advancing, 50 to 47, after the president spent the day leaning on the Republicans who had defied him.

Trump called Cassidy a “lunatic” in a closed-door lunch and by evening Cassidy voted no and Paul voted present, leaving only Collins and Murkowski. The rebuke and the retreat read best together, together they map how far congressional pressure reaches and the place it still gives way.

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Albania’s “Flamingo Revolution” kept the streets full over a Trump-family resort

For more than three weeks, demonstrators across Albania have rallied against a multibillion-dollar luxury resort linked to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, planned for the island of Sazan and the protected Vjosa-Narta lagoon, one of the Mediterranean’s largest flamingo habitats. Protesters carry pink flamingo cutouts, which gave the movement its name, and what began as an environmental fight has grown into a broader revolt against corruption and the government of Prime Minister Edi Rama, drawing thousands and, by some local counts, tens of thousands into the capital.

The objection organizers keep returning to is not just the wildlife or the coastline but the secrecy, the permits and public consultations that residents say never happened before the bulldozers arrived. It’s a question that carries well past the Adriatic, about who gets to decide the future of a shared place, the people who live there or the powerful few who can afford to buy in.

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The Good News:

Three federal judges drew hard lines around the effort to take federal control of elections, and they did it inside a single week.

On Monday, Judge Sparkle Sooknanan in Washington blocked the use of a revamped immigration database, stitched together from Social Security numbers and citizenship data that advocates called unreliable, to scrub state voter rolls.

On Wednesday, Judge Denise Casper in Boston permanently barred the proof-of-citizenship registration order, writing that the Constitution gives the president no specific power over elections.

And on Thursday, Judge Indira Talwani voided the core of the March mail-voting order, the one that would have used the Postal Service to limit mail-ballot delivery to a federally approved voter list and would have built that national list in the first place.

Roughly two dozen states joined these suits, and the guardrails held this week because people went to court and made them hold.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s endorsed slate swept the city’s congressional primaries, unseating two sitting House members.

Brad Lander defeated Rep. Dan Goldman, Darializa Avila Chevalier edged five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat in one of the biggest New York upsets in years, and Claire Valdez won the open Brooklyn and Queens seat.

In the suburbs, Cait Conley took the Democratic primary in the battleground 17th District and will challenge Rep. Mike Lawler in November.

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Tomorrow (Saturday 6/27) is All of U.S. 250:

A national day of action on June 27 built by a coalition that includes 50501 and the Women’s March.

As the country approaches its 250th anniversary, the organizers reject a sanitized “Freedom 250” telling of the founding and march instead for the fuller history, the part where people had to fight, organize, and bleed for decades to make the founding’s promises reach them.

There’s a main mobilization in Washington and local actions in communities across the country, along with a companion project called Letters to America for anyone who can’t march but wants their words on the record.

Find an event at allofus250.org!

Catch up on this week’s posts

Why Disability Rights Advocates Are Alarmed by the DOJ’s Olmstead Memo

All of U.S. 250, June 27th National Day of Action

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TL;DR

On June 18, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel released an opinion arguing that federal disability law doesn’t require states to serve disabled people in the most integrated setting appropriate, the principle that has helped millions fight to live at home and in their communities instead of being unnecessarily institutionalized. It is not a law, not a court ruling, nor does it erase anyone’s rights overnight. But the memo admits its reading is out of step with how courts have understood the law for nearly 30 years, and disability-law experts warn the federal government may pull back from enforcing those protections.

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Four days before its 27th birthday, somebody tried to gut the most important disability-rights ruling in American history.

On June 18, 2026, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel published a memo arguing that neither the Americans with Disabilities Act nor Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act requires states to provide community-based care instead of institutionalization. Four days later, on June 22, the Supreme Court decision it targets, Olmstead v. L.C., turned 27.

You may have already seen people online telling you to calm down. It’s not a law. It’s not an executive order.

And sure, they’re right about that.

But they’re missing the entire point and why it’s alarming.

What the memo says

The opinion, written by Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lanora Pettit, makes a narrow-sounding legal argument with enormous consequences. It says that Olmstead held only one thing: a state can’t institutionalize someone without justification. What it didn’t do, the memo argues, is require states to actually provide the home-and-community-based services that let disabled people avoid institutions in the first place.

The government is now arguing that the law forbids locking you away for no reason, but doesn’t require it to fund the support that keeps you out.

For nearly three decades after Olmstead, that requirement, known as the “integration mandate,” helped turn a right on paper into a life in the real world.

Why Olmstead makes a big difference

Olmstead began with two women, Lois Curtis and Elaine Wilson, held in a Georgia state hospital even after professionals agreed they could live in the community with support. In 1999, the Supreme Court held that unjustified institutional isolation of disabled people can be discrimination under the ADA.

Many in the disability community consider it their Brown v. Board of Education, the case that said segregation is the harm.

This came with conditions: community placement has to be appropriate, the person can’t oppose it, and it has to be reasonable given a state’s resources. But it established something foundational.

Why “just an opinion” misses the entire point

An OLC opinion doesn’t have the force of law, and it can’t overturn a Supreme Court case. Courts are still bound by Olmstead, the ADA, and Section 504 which is all true.

But OLC opinions exist to tell the executive branch how to interpret and enforce the law. And the memo is remarkably honest about how far it’s reaching by conceding its own view: “out of step with the common understanding of that decision within the federal courts.”

The opinion says HHS and DOJ can rescind the integration-mandate regulations themselves, and a footnote says DOJ should also rescind its related guidance if it does. The threat isn’t only what a court might rule someday.

It’s what federal agencies may simply stop enforcing now, and disability-law experts warn the Justice Department is poised to pull back from defending Olmstead, the exact protection that has pushed states away from institutions for 27 years.

The danger moves slow, so be aware!

This is how rights usually go aware. Through quiet memos, withdrawn enforcement, and budget math that most people never read.

A state trims home-care hours, and the federal government decides not to step in.
A waiver waitlist gets longer.
A personal-care aide is cut.
A family is told there’s funding for a facility, but not for the support that would let their mother stay in her own home.

A right nobody in power will enforce is a right in name only, and disabled people already face the steepest barriers to enforcing rights themselves.

Two things make this more dangerous than just the memo.

First, the money. Last year’s reconciliation law, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is estimated to cut federal Medicaid spending by $911 billion over a decade, roughly 14%. Medicaid covers nearly two-thirds of all home-care spending in the country, and over half of Medicaid spending finances care for people ages 65 and older and people with disabilities, the groups most likely to use home care. The last time the federal government cut Medicaid on this scale, states responded by serving fewer people and trimming benefits and provider pay. Facing these cuts, states will be under pressure to trim again, and this memo could give them legal and political cover to weaken community-based care.

Second, the courts. In January 2026, Texas and eight other states renewed their challenge to Section 504 and the integration mandate in Texas v. Kennedy, with the remaining states now arguing the mandate is unconstitutional. Striking that rule would not directly erase Olmstead or the ADA, but the DOJ memo lands in the middle of that fight, pointing the federal government’s legal reasoning in the same direction as the states trying to weaken the mandate.

In the days after the memo, the organized disability-rights world responded with force. AAPD, the ACLU, DREDF, The Arc, the Bazelon Center, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, the National Health Law Program, and the Consortium for Constituents with Disabilities, the main coalition of national disability organizations, all condemned the opinion as a serious threat to community living.

The irony: on average, institutional care costs Medicaid far more per person than community-based care, $54,462 per user versus $17,298 in 2023. This is more about control than saving any money.

What home-and-community-based services are:

“Home and community-based services,” or HCBS, is the Medicaid category that covers care delivered outside an institution: Personal care attendants, home health aides, supported employment, day programs, respite for family caregivers, and the Section 1915(c) waivers that fund most of it.

The people who rely on it are older adults, people with physical disabilities, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and people with mental illness who need help with daily activities like bathing, dressing, eating, managing medication, and getting to work.

In 2023, 8.4 million Medicaid long-term-care users received HCBS, compared with 1.5 million in institutional settings.

The integration mandate is the legal lever that pushes states to fund the first column instead of defaulting to the second. Weaken federal enforcement of that mandate, and a state can lawfully cap waiver slots, freeze eligibility, or cut personal-care hours, and route people into nursing facilities or institutions instead.

Without the mandate behind it, HCBS becomes optional, and “optional” is usually when a service gets cut.

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What you can do:

Not everyone can do everything but anyone can do something.

• Call your representatives. Tell them you want Olmstead and the integration mandate protected, and community-based care funded.

• Share this with the people in your community. If you know someone who relies on Medicaid home care, who works as a caregiver, or who loves a disabled person, send this to them directly. This story spreads person to person, not algorithm to feed.

• Back the people already fighting this. The Arc, AAPD, and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law have been fighting for rights for decades and are leading the response now.

• Watch Texas v. Kennedy. This is where the legal battle goes next.

Do you or someone you love rely on home or community-based care? What would it mean to lose it?

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Olmstead is still the law and disabled people still have rights.

A memo can still be a threat, especially when the government writes one telling itself it no longer has to defend you.

We refuse fascism, kings, and dictators.

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Sources

• DOJ Office of Legal Counsel opinion (June 18, 2026)

• Olmstead v. L.C., 527 U.S. 581 (1999)

• CBS News on the memo

• STAT on the memo

• CMS / Medicaid.gov LTSS Rebalancing Brief, 2023 (HCBS users and per-user costs)

• KFF: Medicaid Home Care in 2025 and the $911B Medicaid cut

• DREDF: Protect 504 and Texas v. Kennedy

• Statements from The Arc, AAPD, ACLU, Disability Rights California, and the wider disability community

• National Health Law Program. Texas and Eight Other States Renew Attack on Section 504: https://healthlaw.org/news/texas-and-eight-other-states-renew-attack-on-section-504-and-the-right-of-disabled-people-to-live-in-their-communities/

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Today is Juneteenth.

On June 19, 1865, Union troops reached Galveston, Texas, and enforced what the Emancipation Proclamation had declared more than two years earlier, that the enslaved people of Texas were free.

For enslaved people in Texas, freedom had existed on paper for more than two years before federal troops made it enforceable on the ground, and slavery would not be abolished across the rest of the country until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified that December. Closing even that first gap took soldiers, organizers, and the refusal of Black communities to accept a promise deferred.

That distance between a right being declared and a right being honored is the oldest current in American democracy, and Juneteenth marks the day it finally narrowed.

We honor the generations of Black Americans who turned a withheld promise into freedom, and who have led nearly every movement for a fuller democracy since.

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TLDR

On Tuesday, the Justice Department indicted 15 people tied to Direct Action Minnesota and built its announcement around the group’s alleged “antifa ties.” In Senatobia, Mississippi, a police officer killed 1 year old Kohen Wiley after responding to an alleged Walmart shoplifting call over diapers. And Human Rights Watch released a 180 page report finding that Operation Metro Surge terrorized Minnesota communities, with two unlawful killings, racial profiling, and roughly 4,000 detentions, most of people with no criminal record.

A federal judge ordered ICE to release Wisconsin mosque leader Salah Sarsour on a substantial free speech claim. Another judge let states keep challenging Trump’s mail voting order ahead of the midterms. And in Georgia, organizers and Democrats forced Republican leaders to abandon a redistricting push aimed at the 2028 maps.

DOJ Charges 15 People in Minnesota and Frames Them as “Antifa-Tied”

On Tuesday, federal prosecutors announced an eight count indictment against 15 members and associates of Direct Action Minnesota, a Minneapolis based group.

The Justice Department described the group as having “Antifa ties” and listed charges including conspiracy to impede a federal officer, interstate actions such as following, and destruction of government property. Those are allegations. They are also, at this stage, again, just allegations, and the indictment itself notes that every defendant is presumed innocent.

The concern here is the government wrapped these charges in a broad political narrative, one that risks treating protest activity, social media posts, encrypted communication, anti-ICE organizing, and political association as evidence of something larger than what has been proven.

According to PBS NewsHour’s carry of the Associated Press wire, U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen said the defendants coordinated to block arrests and deportations during the state’s immigration crackdown, and he characterized the two groups involved as “antifa.” At the press conference, Rosen displayed Facebook and Instagram posts and a video that his office said showed intent to commit violence. Civil rights advocates and local officials, including Minneapolis City Council member Jason Chavez and civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, argued the case risks criminalizing constitutionally protected dissent.

The First Amendment protects dissent, protest, harsh criticism of the government, and the right to organize against federal policy.

A government can prosecute specific alleged conduct without treating a political label as a shortcut for guilt, and history is full of governments that began by promising to go after “extremists” and then expanded the definition to organizers, journalists, students, religious leaders, and immigrants.

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Minnesota Was Already Warning Us: HRW Documents a “Manufactured Crisis”

The week, Human Rights Watch released a 180 page report on Operation Metro Surge, the federal immigration crackdown that hit Minnesota between December 2025 and March 2026. Drawing on more than 130 interviews, the report documents two unlawful killings, repeated use of excessive force, racial profiling, unlawful detentions, and abusive detention conditions, along with the quieter harm that followed when people stopped leaving home for work, school, and medical care.

For months, Minnesota communities have been sounding this alarm. Families demanded answers, organizers documented abuses, and neighbors protected one another while federal power moved through the Twin Cities with fear built into the strategy.

Human Rights Watch found that ICE detained roughly 4,000 immigrants during the surge, more than 75 percent of whom had no U.S. criminal convictions, and it called for accountability at the highest levels of government.

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Kohen Wiley Should Still Be Alive

Kohen Wiley was one year old.

He was killed in Senatobia, Mississippi, about 40 miles south of Memphis, after police responded to an alleged shoplifting call at a Walmart on Sunday afternoon. According to the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, officers encountered two adults allegedly “fleeing” the store with a child, tried to stop the vehicle, and opened fired when the driver, the bureau says, “drove toward them”. Kohen was killed and an adult was critically wounded.

His mother, Vellesiya Wiley, disputes that account.

Through civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the family, she says she was trying to show officers there was a baby in the car, and the family denies that any shoplifting took place.

A witness reported seeing a woman leave the store carrying a single box of diapers.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is leading the inquiry, the officer who fired has been placed on administrative leave, and state officials say body camera and store surveillance footage will not be released until the investigation concludes. Action News 5 reported that MBI officer-involved-shooting records list Senatobia sergeant Hunter Foster among the people involved in the incident, though the report was too heavily redacted to confirm him as the officer who fired, and city officials have not publicly confirmed his role.

A baby should not be dead over an alleged shoplifting call.

Even if every item had been unpaid for, none of that comes close to the worth of a child’s life.

When the alleged item is diapers, the dispute is about the cost of survival in a country where diapers, groceries, housing, and medicine keep climbing while property keeps getting treated as sacred. A politics that calls itself pro-life while accepting the death of a one year old in the name of law and order has no ground left to stand on. Kohen’s family deserves the footage, the public deserves the truth, and no store’s inventory should ever weigh more than a child’s life.

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A Federal Judge Ordered ICE to Release Salah Sarsour

On Thursday, a federal judge ordered ICE to release Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and Wisconsin’s largest mosque, after finding he had raised a substantial claim that he was targeted for his speech in support of Palestinian rights. Sarsour, a legal permanent resident who has lived in the United States for roughly 32 years, was taken into custody in late March. By his own account, he spent 80 days in detention before the ruling.

The government argued that foreign policy concerns justified detaining him and that he didn’t hold the same First Amendment rights as a citizen.

U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon rejected both arguments, writing that people who enter the country lawfully carry the same constitutional rights as everyone else and that the mere invocation of foreign relations concerns does not automatically override the First Amendment.

Hanlon also questioned why the government suddenly treated Sarsour as a threat after more than three decades of legal residency.

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The Mail Ballot Fight Moves Forward

On Thursday, a federal judge in Boston let Democratic led states and pro-voting groups keep challenging Trump’s mail voting executive order as it applies to the 2026 midterms.

The order, signed in March, would direct federal agencies to build voter eligibility lists and instruct the Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to voters verified against them.

The challenge was brought by attorneys general from 22 states and Washington, D.C., along with the governor of Pennsylvania, and by a coalition of voting rights groups led by the League of Women Voters.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee, rejected the administration’s bid to dismiss the lawsuits entirely and found that the challenge to the order’s effect on the November 3 election is ripe for review. She dismissed the claims aimed at future elections as too speculative for now, and she didn’t rule on the merits, only that the plaintiffs have standing to proceed.

Mail voting is how many older voters, disabled voters, rural voters, students, military families, caregivers, and working people take part in democracy.

When mail voting narrows, access narrows, and the people closest to the margins are usually the first pushed out. The legal challenges and ballot access decisions that shape the 2026 elections are happening already, and democracy is defended in every one of those fights, not only on Election Day.

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The Good News:

Georgia Organizers Forced a Redistricting Pause

On Wednesday, hours before a special session was set to begin, Republican legislative leaders rejected Gov. Brian Kemp’s call to redraw the state’s maps, after weeks of pressure and a Capitol full of demonstrators chanting “Black voters matter.”

Kemp had not asked lawmakers to redraw the maps for this November’s midterms. He wanted them to draw new congressional boundaries for the 2028 cycle and to revisit their own legislative districts, a move that would have made Georgia the first state to apply the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais to its own legislature. That ruling weakened a core protection of the Voting Rights Act, and advocates warned Georgia could use it to dilute Black political power. House Speaker Jon Burns informed Kemp by letter that lawmakers would not take up redistricting at all during the session.

Democracy Docket reported that Republicans backed off because Democrats, civil rights groups, and pro-voting advocates turned the planned session into a public showdown, with Sen. Raphael Warnock calling the plan a betrayal.

Republicans pointedly didn’t rule out returning to redistricting later. Sometimes a win is stopping something bad from moving forward, and sometimes it’s buying time and forcing lawmakers to realize they can’t just rewrite rules without public input.

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Senatobia, Mississippi. Sunday, June 14, 2026. 2:05 PM.

A witness outside the Walmart on U.S. Highway 51 in Senatobia, Mississippi says she saw two women walk out of the store. One was carrying a single box of diapers. One was carrying an infant.

She watched officers approach. She watched the car pull away. She then watched law enforcement chase the vehicle on foot through the parking lot.

Then she heard gunshots.

The occupants drove to a nearby hospital. Kohen Kartier Wiley, one year old, was pronounced dead.

TL;DR

On June 14, 2026, a police officer fired into a vehicle during a Walmart shoplifting response in Senatobia, Mississippi, killing 1-year-old Kohen Kartier Wiley and critically injuring another adult in the vehicle. The officer hasn’t been publicly identified. As of recent reporting, no charges have been announced against anyone. Investigators say the body camera footage won’t be released until their investigation concludes. When the community gathered outside the Walmart to demand answers, law enforcement deployed tear gas. The family has retained civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Van Turner. Kohen’s mother has now spoken publicly for the first time, saying she raised her son up to show officers he was in the car before the shots were fired.

What We Know

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation says officers from the Senatobia Police Department and Tate County Sheriff’s Office responded to a reported shoplifting call at the Walmart on U.S. 51 shortly after 2 PM.

The bureau’s preliminary statement which it notes is subject to change, says officers encountered “two subjects and a juvenile child” entering a vehicle, that when officers tried to stop it the driver “moved toward them and nearly struck one”, and that an officer then fired.

The state’s preliminary statement says officers encountered two adults and a juvenile child before the shooting... Mississippi Free Press notes that this language appears to place Kohen’s presence within officers’ awareness before the weapon was discharged.

The vehicle drove to a nearby hospital and Kohen was pronounced dead.

The other adult in the car, described by Kohen’s mother as a friend, and by some other family members as his aunt, was critically injured. Kohen’s mother was physically unharmed.

No officers were seriously injured.

The officer who fired has still not been publicly named.

Three days after a baby was killed, Senatobia has not told the public who pulled the trigger.

On Tuesday night, the city confirmed the officer was placed on administrative leave.

For transparency, a name is circulating... Community advocate Marquell Bridges, the same person quoted by the Associated Press in other parts of this story, identified the officer on Facebook as Hunter, listing a LinkedIn profile showing a Patrol Sergeant at the Senatobia Police Department by that name.

Bridges also alleges that a fellow officer filed a complaint against Foster for using racial slurs in the precinct just days before the shooting. Authorities have not confirmed this identification, and we are not publishing it as established fact. But the public shouldn’t have to rely on social media to find out who used lethal force against a car with a baby inside. Release the name.

Mississippi Department of Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said five agents are working the case, reviewing body camera video, dash camera footage, and Walmart’s surveillance footage. He stated the evidence won’t be released until the investigation concludes, citing the need to interview witnesses “without the threat of intimidation.” That process can take months. No timeline was given.

As of the latest reporting, no charges have been announced against anyone who was in that car. The Walmart temporarily closed in the aftermath of the shooting and protests, and reopened Wednesday morning.

What the Family Says

The family says no shoplifting happened.

Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, has now spoken publicly for the first time. In a video released Wednesday, she says she and her son and a friend were leaving the Walmart together when officers stopped her friend. Vellesiya says she kept walking toward the car because the situation “had nothing to do with me.” Her friend then got into the car and they began to back out.

That’s when Vellesiya says she saw officers coming toward the car with guns drawn.

“I raised my baby up trying to show them that he was in the car,” she said. She says her friend was driving toward the other side of the parking lot, away from officers, not toward them. “By the time I sat my baby down, it was like three to four shots. One of the shots hit him in his ribcage.”

Vellesiya also says her friend was buying diapers and the purchase is likely captured on the store’s self-checkout cameras. She has not been charged with any crime.

Two accounts, One video.
Release it.

The MBI says the driver moved toward officers, nearly striking one, before the shooting.

Kohen’s mother says the car was moving toward the other side of the lot, away from officers, when she looked up and saw guns drawn. She says the officers were on the right side of the car, the car was driving toward the left. She raised her baby to show them he was inside. Three to four shots were fired anyway.

Both accounts are now on record. Body camera footage, dash camera footage, and Walmart surveillance video would answer this question…

None of it has been released.

Civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Van Turner, representing the family, said in a statement: Kohen’s mother had not been charged with any crime, and she was trying to communicate to officers that there was a baby in the car before they fired.

“They fired anyway,” Crump said.

Attorney Van Turner, speaking exclusively to local media, asked the question the family and community are now waiting to have answered: “We want to see the body cam footage from the officers. We also want to see the footage from Walmart, and the family is just wondering why the officer dispatched his service gun, knowing that there was a child in the car.”

Community advocate Marquell Bridges added: “She was skipping and playing with her child, Kohen, to the car moments earlier, not fleeing a theft.”

Kohen’s grandfather, Carlos Haynes, told reporters: “My grandson gone. I just want justice.”

His great-grandmother, Carolyn Stokes, described what the family received in the aftermath: “All we know is that a car was shot up and a 1-year-old baby was killed, and then nobody tells us anything, like we’re not anybody.”

His grandmother, Licole Wiley, the sister of the critically injured woman, put it: “Policeman shot, opened fire in a public setting, over allegedly some Pampers.

Let’s Talk About Those Diapers

Whether shoplifting actually occurred has not been officially confirmed.

The family denies it. Vellesiya says her friend was buying the diapers and that the purchase is likely captured on self-checkout cameras. No shoplifting charges have been filed against anyone. Even Commissioner Tindell told a reporter it would be up to local law enforcement to determine whether the allegation was credible. The Walmart surveillance footage would settle this question in minutes. It has not been released.

But here is what we need to say, clearly, whether or not the allegation turns out to be true:

If someone tried to take a box of diapers because she couldn’t afford them, that’s not a criminal to be feared. That’s a parent trying to care for a baby.

A 1-year-old dying because of what started as a complaint about diapers does not become less outrageous if the diapers were unpaid for. It becomes more so, because it means the state would be responding to poverty with lethal force.

Mississippi is one of the poorest states in the nation, with the U.S. Census Bureau reporting a 2024 poverty rate of 17.8%, among the highest in the country. Its child poverty numbers are even more devastating. Census data showed Mississippi had one of the nation’s highest child poverty rates in 2021 at 27.7%, and the 2024 Mississippi KIDS COUNT Factbook counted 189,000 children, 28% of Mississippi’s children, living in poverty, ranking the state 50th on that indicator. Black children are disproportionately harmed. America’s Health Rankings, using Census ACS data, puts Mississippi’s Black child poverty rate at 41.7%, compared with 12.9% for white children.

Diapers routinely cost families about $80 to $100 or more per month per baby roughly $960 to $1,200 a year, and for families already living close to the edge, that’s not a small expense. The poorest 20% of Americans who buy diapers spend nearly 14% of their after-tax income on them.

And the pressure hasn’t stopped.

In 2025, AP reported that Procter & Gamble planned price increases on about a quarter of its U.S. products in part because of tariff costs, while Reuters reported that Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Huggies, still expected about $170 million in tariff-related costs for the year.

You can’t buy diapers with SNAP.

You can’t buy them with WIC.

They are treated as nonfood necessities, even though a baby can’t stay clean, dry, or healthy without them.

Nationally, the latest NDBN Diaper Check 2026 found that 40% of U.S. households with young children under age 4 in diapers report diaper insecurity, including 62% of low-income households. Black and Hispanic families are hit especially hard: the same report found diaper insecurity among 63% of Black households and 49% of Hispanic households, compared with 33% of white households.

Less than two months before Kohen Wiley was killed, Mississippi’s Legislature had already chosen not to remove the state’s diaper tax. A Mississippi Today Ideas essay by public health advocate Chelesa Presley noted that Mississippi families still pay a 7% sales tax on diapers, even as the state moved to reduce the grocery tax from 7% to 5%. The Mississippi Department of Revenue confirmed that grocery-tax reduction began July 1, 2025. Meanwhile, Magnolia Tribune reported that lawmakers debated adding diapers to Mississippi’s Second Amendment sales-tax holiday, but the diaper language was stripped while items like firearms, accessories, archery equipment, and ammunition remained tax-free for two days.

A diaper is not a luxury. A baby does not wait. And in Mississippi, one of the highest-poverty states in the country, the state still takes its cut every time a parent buys one.

This is to put the cruelty of this moment into perspective.

We’re living in an economy where families are struggling to afford basic necessities like diapers, where parents can’t use food assistance to buy them, and where a reported shoplifting call involving diapers at Walmart, a corporation that reported more than $462 billion in U.S. net sales in fiscal year 2025, ended with a 1-year-old child dead. Stealing is not the answer, and Kohen’s family says no shoplifting happened, but what kind of country are we becoming when an alleged property crime tied to caring for a baby can escalate into police gunfire in a parking lot? What kind of economy makes diapers feel out of reach, and what kind of justice system answers poverty with bullets?

This Has Happened Before...
At This Same Walmart!

This is not the first time the Senatobia Police Department has faced scrutiny at this location.

Last year, at the same Walmart, the department came under fire after a woman named Breshari Faulkner had a Taser drawn on her and was taken to the ground after officers claimed she’d illegally parked in a handicapped space.

Faulkner said she had just dropped off her grandmother and had a valid handicap placard. Body camera footage of the incident was later released by the department.

“Senatobia Police Department get away with too much stuff,” Carolyn Stokes said. “I hear about it all the time. It’s in the news all the time.”

The department’s Sunday statement said it is “committed to full transparency.”

But again, the department has still not released the video…

For those who want to make their voices heard, the Senatobia Police Department’s publicly listed non-emergency number is 662-562-5643. The City of Senatobia directory also lists Police Chief Harold Vanderford at hvanderford@cityofsenatobiams.gov, and the city’s general contact email as contact@cityofsenatobiams.gov. If you reach out, do it peacefully and respectfully: ask for the release of the body-camera footage, dash-camera footage, Walmart surveillance video, and the name of the officer who fired.

Kohen Wiley’s death is being framed in some coverage as an isolated tragedy, something investigators will sort out in time, something to wait on.

This is what democratic failure looks like at the local level.

Not just in federal executive orders or congressional votes. In parking lots. In traffic stops. In the front seat of a silver sedan at a Walmart in Mississippi, on a Sunday afternoon.

State power used with lethal force in response to an alleged property crime. Evidence held by the agencies whose conduct is under scrutiny. The public asked to be patient. And when a grieving community took to the streets to demand basic answers, they were met with tear gas.

More than 200 people gathered in downtown Senatobia on Tuesday to demand answers for Kohen Wiley.

According to Mississippi Free Press, protesters moved along Front Street while police snipers watched from rooftops above vintage storefronts, including buildings that housed a soda shop and a pharmacy. Later that evening, protesters gathered outside the Walmart where Kohen was killed, and Action News 5 reported that law enforcement deployed tear gas in the parking lot.

A baby is killed during a shoplifting response. Three to four shots are fired. The community gathers. The state’s answer, again, is force.

Shooting into a moving vehicle is one of the most dangerous and heavily scrutinized uses of force in policing.

The Department of Justice’s use-of-force policy for federal law enforcement says deadly force may not be used solely to stop a fleeing suspect, and that firearms may not be discharged solely to disable a moving vehicle. The policy says officers may fire at a moving vehicle only if someone inside is threatening deadly force by means other than the vehicle, or if the vehicle is being operated in a way that threatens death or serious physical injury and no other objectively reasonable means of defense appears to exist, including moving out of the vehicle’s path.

The Police Executive Research Forum, a national policing policy organization, goes further in its recommended best practices, urging agencies to prohibit shooting at or from a moving vehicle unless someone inside is using or threatening deadly force by means other than the vehicle itself, with a narrow exception for apparent vehicle-based mass-casualty attacks. DOJ policy is binding on DOJ federal officers, and PERF guidance is not binding law, but both show how seriously national policing standards treat the danger of firing into moving vehicles.

What the Senatobia Police Department’s own policy says, and whether it was followed has not been disclosed. That disclosure belongs on the list of what the public needs.

This was a response to a reported shoplifting call. Mississippi Free Press reported that officers were responding to an allegation involving a box of diapers, while family members have denied that any shoplifting took place. The Guardian also reported that police were responding to a claim that someone attempted to steal diapers, that witnesses have disputed the official account, and that Kohen’s family is demanding the release of body-camera footage and Walmart surveillance video.

There is a name for a system where police power over life and death is exercised in response to alleged property crimes, where crucial evidence is withheld while agencies ask the public to wait, and where grieving communities are met with tear gas for demanding accountability. It isn’t democracy.

What We Need

The minimum floor here isn’t justice. It’s transparency. And it shouldn’t require a court order.

• Release the body camera footage, the dash camera footage, and the Walmart surveillance video with independent oversight, not filtered through the agency under scrutiny

• Publicly identify the officer who fired

• Confirm whether anyone in the vehicle was charged with any crime, and if not, say so clearly

• State how many shots were fired and where Kohen was located in the car relative to each one

• Disclose the department’s use-of-force policy for shooting at moving vehicles and whether it was followed

• Commit to an independent review that isn’t run on the timeline of the institutions being questioned

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation has said it will send its findings to the attorney general’s office. That process needs to be soon, genuinely independent, and resistant to the quiet pressure that makes these cases disappear.

What You Can Do Right Now

If you’re following this story: Share it. The most important thing in accountability cases is sustained public attention. The news cycle will try to move on.

If you’re in Mississippi: Attend public meetings in Senatobia and Tate County. Make visible that your community is watching the MBI’s timeline and the Mississippi Attorney General response.

If you’re outside Mississippi: This story doesn’t stay in Mississippi, the same force, and silence shows up everywhere. Use whatever platform you have to amplify what his family is asking for. Transparency and honesty.

If you’re organizing: This belongs in your teach-ins, speeches, signs. This will keep happening until communities make it too uncomfortable for them to ignore.

What questions do you still have about this case? What are you seeing in your community? If you’re in Mississippi and watching this unfold, we especially want to hear from you:

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Congress handed ICE and Border Patrol nearly $70 billion. Another man died at a Louisiana detention center that federal inspectors had already flagged. Advocates say women inside Delaney Hall joined a hunger and labor strike now in its third week. A major surveillance law was pushed to the brink of a historic lapse. And a Senate committee tried to erase 45 million acres of forest protections inside a wildfire bill.

A federal judge indefinitely blocked Trump’s $1.8 billion payout fund. Another judge refused to pause the order stripping his name from the Kennedy Center. Brad Lander walked out of a Manhattan courthouse acquitted. And the man who assassinated Melissa Hortman pleaded guilty, days before the one-year anniversary of her death.

ICE Just Got Nearly $70 Billion, Signed Into Law

On Tuesday, the House passed the Secure America Act by a vote of 214 to 212, with no Democratic votes. The Senate had cleared it 52 to 47 the week before. Trump signed it Wednesday.

The package funds ICE and Border Patrol through the end of Trump’s term. It includes about $38 billion for ICE, roughly $26 billion for Border Patrol and border technology, and $5 billion in discretionary money for the Homeland Security Secretary to spend as he sees fit. This comes on top of last year’s law, which provided about $75 billion for ICE over four years and made it the most heavily funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.

Remember how we got here…… After federal agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Democrats refused to fund these agencies without reforms: limits on detaining citizens, mask requirements, body cameras, training standards. That standoff produced the longest partial DHS shutdown in history. Republicans ended it not by negotiating reforms but by using budget reconciliation to pass the money on party lines, with none of the accountability measures attached.

So the agency accused of courthouse arrests, masked operations, family separations, and a record-breaking string of deaths in custody now has guaranteed funding through 2029, and Congress gave itself no new tools to restrain it.

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Mamuka Artmeladze Should Still Be Here

Mamuka Artmeladze was 43 years old, from the country of Georgia. He had been detained for nearly four months at Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana when staff found him unresponsive on the night of June 4. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital less than an hour later. His cause of death is pending an autopsy.

He had no criminal record. Like most of the more than 1,500 men held at Winn, he was detained purely on immigration grounds, picked up in February during an operation targeting commercial vehicle drivers in Alabama.

According to an ABC News analysis, Artmeladze is the 50th person to die in ICE detention during this administration, and the 19th this year alone. Outside of the pandemic, the first 14 months of this term represent the deadliest period for the federal detention system in recent memory.

His was also the second death at Winn in under two months. Federal inspectors had already documented unsanitary conditions, medical care failures, and excessive force at the facility before either man died. The warnings came first. The deaths came after. That sequence is the story.

And here is the part that should alarm everyone: last week, ICE quietly ended the policy requiring it to report deaths of people who die within 30 days of release from custody. A person who is detained, neglected, and released in crisis will simply vanish from the public record. The deaths will not stop. We will just see fewer of them.

The agency receiving billions more is the same agency making its own death toll harder to count.

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Inside Delaney Hall, Women Have Joined the Strike

The hunger and labor strike at Delaney Hall in Newark is now in its third week, and it is growing.

On May 22, an estimated 300 people detained at the GEO Group-run facility stopped eating and stopped working, citing medical neglect, spoiled food, lack of sanitation, denial of bond, and coercion to sign deportation documents, according to Human Rights Watch. This week, dozens of detained women joined them. Among their demands, advocates say, is that the facility fire a guard accused of sexually assaulting at least 10 detained women.

The response from inside has been retaliation, with most of the original hunger strikers transferred to other ICE jails in recent days. Moving people doesn’t resolve their allegations, it scatters the witnesses.

But the pressure from outside keeps building. New Jersey’s attorney general sued GEO Group to force health inspectors into the building. The governor toured the facility. More than 80 people have been arrested at solidarity protests outside. Lawmakers from two states have demanded access. Some of the most vulnerable detainees have been released, including an 18-year-old high school senior who spent nearly two months inside. And this week, the Jersey City Council voted unanimously to divest from Citizens Bank over its financing of GEO Group and CoreCivic.

DHS continues to deny that a hunger strike is happening at all. Read that denial next to the lawsuits, the transfers, the congressional visits, and the testimony of families, then decide for yourself which account holds up.

Delaney Hall is no longer invisible, and that happened because people inside risked their bodies and people outside refused to look away.

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Surveillance Powers Hit Their First-Ever Lapse Tonight

At midnight tonight, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act expires, the first lapse in the program’s nearly 18-year history. On Thursday, the House failed to pass even a three-week extension, falling well short on a 198 to 218 vote, and three separate attempts in the Senate also failed before lawmakers left town.

Section 702 lets the government collect communications of foreigners abroad without a warrant. The problem civil liberties groups have warned about for years is that Americans get swept up whenever they communicate with those targets, and agencies have repeatedly searched that data without warrants, including queries on protesters, journalists, and lawmakers.

What broke the renewal this time was not the privacy fight alone. Trump installed Bill Pulte, a loyalist with no intelligence background known for targeting Trump critics with mortgage fraud investigations, as acting Director of National Intelligence. Democrats refused to hand a warrantless surveillance tool to an administration that had just put that person in charge of it.

Collection will likely continue for now under existing court certifications, so the lapse is a legal gray zone rather than a shutdown. But Congress has now put on the record that this much power requires this much trust, and the trust is not there. When renewal talks resume, the demand should be reform with warrant requirements, not a clean rubber stamp.

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A Wildfire Bill Became a Trojan Horse for Public Lands

On Wednesday, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, chaired by Mike Lee, voted 11 to 9 along party lines to advance the Wildfire Prevention Act with a last-minute amendment attached: a full statutory repeal of the 2001 Roadless Rule.

The amendment was filed late Tuesday night. There was no hearing. By Wednesday morning it was done, and a bill that began as bipartisan wildfire legislation now carries language that Environment America says would strip protections from 45 million acres of wild national forest land. Ranking member Martin Heinrich called the result a trojan horse, and that is the accurate word for it.

For 25 years, the Roadless Rule has barred new road construction and large-scale development in the last undeveloped stretches of our national forests, including 4 million acres in Oregon and Washington, per OPB. These lands protect drinking water, wildlife habitat, and the kind of backcountry that belongs to everyone. And the wildfire framing does not survive contact with the evidence: the rule already allows prescribed burns and thinning, and most research finds that roads increase fire frequency, because people start most fires and roads bring people.

The bill still needs the full Senate, which means there is still time. If lawmakers want to erase a 25-year-old conservation policy, they should have to do it in daylight, with hearings and votes the public can see, not through a midnight rider on a bill named for preventing fires.

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Courts Declined a National Shield for Trans Patients’ Records

On Thursday, a federal judge in Maryland declined to certify a nationwide class action that would have barred the Justice Department from pressuring hospitals across the country to hand over the medical records of transgender minors. Eleven families had sought the order after DOJ sent subpoenas to more than 20 major medical systems demanding records of patients who received gender-affirming care.

The ruling stings, but the fuller picture matters. The same judge quashed DOJ’s subpoena to Children’s National Hospital in January, calling it a fishing expedition with no purpose other than to intimidate and harass. Courts in Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Colorado have thrown out similar subpoenas, and to date no reported federal decision has ruled in the government’s favor on these demands.

The legal record protecting medical privacy keeps growing. It just has to be built brick by brick, which makes supporting the legal organizations doing that work, like GLAD Law, all the more concrete a way to help.

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The Man Who Killed Melissa Hortman Pleaded Guilty

On Thursday, Vance Boelter pleaded guilty in federal court to six charges, including murder and stalking, for the June 14, 2025 attacks that killed former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and seriously wounded State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. He came to their doors disguised as a police officer. Investigators found a list of dozens more names in his vehicle.

Under the plea agreement, he will serve two consecutive life terms plus 40 years, with no death penalty. He still faces state charges. The Hoffman family’s statement said what no sentence can fix: “There is no justice for Mark and Melissa Hortman.”

Sunday marks one year since that morning.

We include this story in every form it takes because political violence is the end state of dehumanization, and dehumanization is the daily language of authoritarian politics. We can be angry, organized, loud, and relentless. We can sue, strike, boycott, document, vote, and refuse to comply with injustice. What we can’t do is let violence become an answer, ours or anyone’s. A democracy where public service carries a death sentence is not a democracy for long, and the people working to crush this movement would like nothing more than an excuse to paint every protester as a threat. We will not hand them one.

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The Good News:

Brad Lander Was Acquitted

A federal judge found Brad Lander not guilty of obstruction Thursday, ending the case from his September arrest at 26 Federal Plaza, where he and roughly 75 others were detained while trying to inspect the conditions in ICE’s 10th-floor holding cells. He turned down a plea deal and demanded trial. The prosecution’s closing argument literally cited him singing “We Shall Not Be Moved.” The judge’s response: the government failed to prove its case.

The $1.8 Billion Payout Fund Is Indefinitely Blocked

This morning, Judge Leonie Brinkema issued a preliminary injunction indefinitely blocking the administration’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, the pool of taxpayer money that emerged from Trump’s settlement of his own lawsuit against the IRS and that could compensate his allies, including January 6 defendants, as victims of government “weaponization.”

Trump’s Name Is Still Coming Off the Kennedy Center

Last month, a federal judge ruled that Congress named the Kennedy Center and only Congress can rename it, ordered Trump’s name removed by today, and blocked the planned two-year closure of the building. This week, with the deadline looming, the Trump-appointed board voted to fight the order, and the judge refused to pause it, writing that the public is rarely served by letting the government keep breaking the law.

The Wins From Last Week Are Holding

Two victories we covered in our last briefing remain in force and deserve a status check.. The appeals court order blocking the Pentagon from discharging the transgender service members who sued is still standing, with the court on record that the policy appears driven by the bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group. And the House’s Iran war powers resolution, passed 215 to 208, now sits with the Senate, which has already advanced its own version.

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Movement Spotlight: Portland OR Answers With Joy for The Make America Fair

Sunday, June 14, carries heavy history. It’s the day Melissa and Mark Hortman were killed one year ago. It’s also a No Kings anniversary, marking one of the largest coordinated protest days in American history.

Here is how is spending it, by hosting The Make America Fair at Laurelhurst Park, a community fair with carnival games, food, music, teach-ins, tabling organizations, volunteer sign-ups, and a food drive for families affected by ICE. We wrote about why this makes a difference in Portland Is Teaching Democracy With Carnival Games.

Resource of the Week: ICE Activity by State

This week we published ICE Activity by State, a 50-state public-interest severity tracker. It’s not an official database. It is a editorial tool built from recent verified reporting on arrests, raids, 287(g) agreements, detention conditions, deaths, lawsuits, and local controversy, rated 1 to 5 for every state.

A few national numbers from the tracker that put this week in context: 60,311 people were in ICE detention as of early April per TRAC at Syracuse University, 70.8 percent of them with no criminal conviction at all. At least 19 people have died in custody this year. And AP’s analysis found ICE arrests dropped nearly 12 percent nationwide in the weeks after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, when the whole country was watching. Public attention does not fix the system, but it can change how the system behaves, and that is the entire reason to know what is happening where you live.

If your state’s rating looks wrong, too high, too low, or incomplete, help us fix it. Drop credible local reporting in the comments and we will fold verified corrections into the next edition.

What to Watch For

The Roadless Rule repeal heads to the full Senate, where it can still be stripped out. The FISA 702 fight resumes when Congress returns in 12 days, with reformers holding more leverage than they have had in years. Judge Brinkema’s one-week deadline for a sworn statement on the payout fund lands next Friday. The Kennedy Center appeal proceeds. The Senate’s Iran war powers resolution awaits a final vote. And early voting in New York’s congressional primaries begins Saturday, with the June 23 election ahead.

What’s one thing happening that you notice, good or bad, that the rest of the country should know about or should be staying on top of? Tell us in the comments.

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At least 19 people have died in ICE custody so far this year.

Some died inside detention centers already under scrutiny and some were found unresponsive.

Now, ICE has narrowed its own death-reporting policy, making abuse and detention harder for us to all see.

If you think your state is one of the quiet ones, find it below. It probably isn’t.

TL;DR

ICE enforcement is no longer concentrated in border states or big coastal cities.
It’s operating in all 50 states, at very different intensities, through different tactics. Some states are seeing mass operations and deaths in custody and others are seeing fewer arrests but deep local police cooperation through 287(g) agreements, courthouse arrests, or families taken in cases that barely make the news. We built a state-by-state severity check-in, an editorial tracker based on recent public reporting, not an official government ranking, so you can see what’s happening where you live, and where your loved ones live.

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This is a public-interest severity tracker, not an official database.

ICE doesn’t publish a simple state-by-state dashboard.
Reporting quality varies wildly between states.
Some states have heavy enforcement that’s barely visible publicly while others have lower volume but cases that deserve national attention.

Each rating from 1 to 5 weighs five things from recent reporting:

1. Arrest and detention volume relative to population

2. Major operations like raids, surges, and multi-agency actions

3. Local cooperation: 287(g) agreements that turn local police and jails into immigration enforcement

4. Detention conditions: deaths, medical neglect, and lawsuits

5. Public attention: protests, litigation, and statewide controversy

   ---

Here’s the scale we are using:

1/5 ICE Activity: Low
2/5 ICE Activity: Watch
3/5 ICE Activity: Elevated
4/5 ICE Activity: High
5/5 ICE Activity: Severe

Multiple signals at once is how we move a state up the scale.

Last checked: June 11, 2026.

Nationally…

60,311 is how many people were in ICE detention as of April 4, 2026, according to TRAC at Syracuse University. That’s down from a record peak of 70,766 on January 24, the highest number ever recorded in ICE’s public data, but still higher than any detention population before this administration.

70.8% is the share of those detainees with no criminal conviction at all, per the same TRAC data. Many of the rest were convicted only of minor offenses, including traffic violations.

At least 19 is how many people have died in ICE custody so far in 2026. ICE had reported 18 deaths in the first five months of the year. Then Mamuka Artmeladze, a 43-year-old man from Georgia, died on June 4 at Winn Correctional Center in Louisiana, becoming the 19th person to die in ICE custody this year.

Nearly 12% is how much ICE arrests dropped nationwide in the weeks after federal agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, according to AP analysis of enforcement data. When the country watches, enforcement can change. That’s a huge reason to know what’s happening in your state. We keep us safe.

Find your state. Then find the states where your family and friends live.

Alabama: 4/5 ICE Activity. Alabama has a significant arrest footprint despite limited national attention. Prison Policy Initiative’s ICE arrest tracker showed Alabama with 1,338 ICE arrests from Jan. 20 to May 20, 2025 and 2,064 from May 21 to Oct. 15, 2025, with a relatively high arrest rate in the second period. Local reporting has also documented collateral arrests, including children.

Alaska: 3/5 ICE Activity. Lower volume, serious cases. Alaska Public reported at least 47 ICE arrests in Alaska in 2026 as of late April, including a pregnant woman, and Alaska Beacon reported on a Soldotna mother and children detained and deported in a case that drew state lawmaker scrutiny. With no federal detention facility in-state, detainees are held in Alaska jails before transfer out of state.

Arizona: 4/5 ICE Activity. A high-alert state. Arizona Luminaria reported that ICE arrests in Arizona more than tripled in FY2025, rising from about 149 per month before Trump to 513 per month, and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said DHS planned to convert a 418,000-square-foot warehouse in Surprise into an immigration processing and detention facility for 1,500 detainees.

Arkansas: 4/5 ICE Activity. Arkansas stands out for local cooperation. AP reported that Benton County’s jail helped produce more than 450 ICE arrests in under 10 months, largely through 287(g), and Arkansas law now requires sheriffs to cooperate with ICE through jail-based or warrant-service programs.

California: 5/5 ICE Activity. Still one of the highest-visibility states. Recent reporting has focused on Southern California raids, HSI raids on the homes of VC Defensa ICE-watch activists in Ventura County, and questions about whether enforcement will occur around World Cup events in Los Angeles.

Colorado: 4/5 ICE Activity. Colorado Sun reported sharply rising ICE arrests under Trump, and Colorado Newsline reported that arrests from January through October 2025 ran more than four times the same period in 2024. State lawmakers have responded with bills targeting masked federal enforcement tactics.

Connecticut: 4/5 ICE Activity. Recent attention centers on courthouse enforcement. CT Insider reported on a June 2026 targeted ICE operation near the Danbury courthouse, with state officials criticizing the lack of advance notice and raising concerns about enforcement at court.

Delaware: 3/5 ICE Activity. Lower-visibility, still rising. Prison Policy Initiative’s tracker showed Delaware climbing from 142 arrests in the first 2025 tracking period to 295 in the second. Delaware has also banned local 287(g) agreements with ICE.

Florida: 5/5 ICE Activity. One of the most severe states in the country. AP reported nearly 39,000 immigrants arrested in Florida from Jan. 20, 2025 to March 11, 2026, more than triple the prior comparable period, with state and local agencies playing a major role through Florida’s expansive 287(g) participation.

Georgia: 5/5 ICE Activity. High on both detention volume and workplace enforcement. TRAC ranks Georgia among the top ICE detention states in FY2026, and the Hyundai-area workplace raid became one of the most prominent enforcement stories of the year, with roughly 475 people detained.

Hawaii: 3/5 ICE Activity. Lower volume, sharp increase. Civil Beat reported that Hawaii ICE arrests and detentions in 2025 far exceeded 2024, with arrests increasingly happening at ICE offices and state civil courthouses into 2026.

Idaho: 4/5 ICE Activity. Rated high because of the La Catedral racetrack raid. The ACLU reported that roughly 400 people, including U.S. citizens and children, were detained during a large multi-agency operation at a family event in Wilder, Idaho, and has filed suit over the raid.

Illinois: 4/5 ICE Activity. Major litigation and ongoing controversy. National Immigrant Justice Center reported that a federal judge in Chicago ordered ICE to release hundreds of people detained in likely violation of a consent decree, and Capitol News Illinois reported on later court orders involving warrantless arrests.

Indiana: 3/5 ICE Activity. Arrests surged with less public attention than neighboring Illinois. WTHR reported that ICE arrested close to 1,400 people in Indiana during the first six months of Trump’s second term.

Iowa: 4/5 ICE Activity. Notable for “Operation ICE Wall” litigation involving immigrant truck drivers picked up by Iowa State Patrol and ICE along Interstate 80. Iowa Capital Dispatch reported that lawsuits have raised concerns about the legality of detentions tied to the joint operation.

Kansas: 4/5 ICE Activity. Elevated by 287(g) expansion. Nebraska Public Media reported on ICE partnerships spreading across the Midwest, including Kansas, and Prison Policy Initiative’s tracker showed high levels of ICE arrests concentrated in states that cooperate with the federal enforcement push.

Kentucky: 4/5 ICE Activity. Heavy jail-based detention. Kentucky Lantern reported that county jails were holding 1,079 people for ICE as of April 2026.

Louisiana: 5/5 ICE Activity. One of the most serious detention states. TRAC lists Louisiana among the top ICE detention states in FY2026, and AP reported that Mamuka Artmeladze’s June 2026 death at Winn Correctional Center was the second ICE detainee death there in under two months, at a facility where inspections had already flagged serious problems.

Maine: 4/5 ICE Activity. One of the most striking recent spikes anywhere. Maine Public reported that ICE arrested 190 people in five days in late January 2026, and that about 80% had neither a criminal conviction nor a pending charge.

Maryland: 4/5 ICE Activity. Tied to the D.C. region surge. The Daily Record reported nearly 20,000 ICE arrests across D.C., Maryland, and Virginia from January 2025 through March 2026, and The Washington Post reported that Maryland passed emergency legislation banning local 287(g) agreements.

Massachusetts: 5/5 ICE Activity. Large-scale operations. WBUR reported more than 7,030 ICE arrests in Massachusetts under Trump, nearly five times the prior comparable period, and ICE said its “Patriot 2.0” operation alone produced more than 1,400 arrests.

Michigan: 4/5 ICE Activity. Rising arrests and detention expansion. Bridge Michigan reported 2,349 ICE arrests in Michigan from January through October 2025, nearly triple the same period in 2024, alongside reporting on detention expansion and sustained protests.

Minnesota: 5/5 ICE Activity. Minnesota remains a severe state because Operation Metro Surge affected thousands of people and drew national scrutiny. Minnesota Reformer reported that more than 3,700 immigrants were arrested during the operation. Axios reported that a UC San Diego survey found widespread encounters with ICE or Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Federal officers also shot three people during the operation and killed two U.S. citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, while Minnesota has sued the federal government for access to evidence in those shootings. This entry is about the full human toll of the surge: immigrants arrested, families harmed, communities disrupted, and civilians killed.

Mississippi: 3/5 ICE Activity. Less statewide visibility, meaningful activity. Prison Policy Initiative’s tracker showed Mississippi with 738 arrests in the first 2025 period and 945 in the second, while Mississippi Today reported on enforcement activity around Ridgeland that sent fear through immigrant communities.

Missouri: 4/5 ICE Activity. Detention capacity and conditions are the issue. KCTV5 reported that ICE detentions surged as policy shifted, and The Telegraph reported that Rep. Nikki Budzinski raised concerns after touring the Ste. Genevieve County Detention Center, including medical care, water access, sleeping arrangements, and the treatment of pregnant detainees.

Montana: 3/5 ICE Activity. Lower volume, unusual local response. Montana Free Press reported on an immigration arrest in rural Froid that prompted neighbors in a conservative town to rally around a detained longtime mechanic.

Nebraska: 3/5 ICE Activity. Moderate, driven by 287(g) growth. Nebraska Public Media reported that the Nebraska State Patrol assigned trained troopers to question suspected undocumented people and make immigration arrests under 287(g).

Nevada: 4/5 ICE Activity. Sharp increase. Nevada Current reported ICE arrests “skyrocketed” in the state, while The Nevada Independent reported a rising share of arrests involving people with no criminal conviction.

New Hampshire: 4/5 ICE Activity. The New England outlier on local police involvement. NHPR reported 429 ICE arrests since January 2025, including 51 made by local agencies, and said New Hampshire is the only New England state where local law enforcement has signed agreements with ICE.

New Jersey: 5/5 ICE Activity. 🚨 Delaney Hall has made New Jersey one of the most closely watched states in the country right now. ICE describes Delaney Hall as a 1,000-bed immigration detention facility in Newark. The Guardian reported that at least 300 detainees engaged in a hunger and labor strike over alleged inhumane conditions, including spoiled food, inadequate medical care, abuse by guards, and poor living conditions. New Jersey Monitor reported on detainees launching hunger and labor strikes over conditions behind bars, and The Guardian also reported on families describing distress over medical neglect and harsh conditions. Protests outside Delaney Hall have led to dozens of arrests, making it one of the clearest national flashpoints in the current immigration detention crisis.

New Mexico: 3/5 ICE Activity. Arrests rose sharply, but the state pushed back. Source New Mexico reported more than 1,800 ICE arrests in New Mexico in the first 10 months of 2025, compared with about 240 in 2024, while the state passed the Immigrant Safety Act limiting local involvement in deportation systems.

New York: 5/5 ICE Activity. Courthouse and federal-building enforcement, 26 Federal Plaza, and open conflict with federal officials keep New York in the severe tier. The Guardian reported that Tom Homan threatened to send “more ICE agents than you’ve ever seen” to New York City after a state law limiting local cooperation. The Guardian also reported that a federal judge barred ICE arrests at or near several Manhattan immigration courthouses except under limited circumstances.

North Carolina: 4/5 ICE Activity. NC Newsline reported that ICE arrested more than 3,300 people across North Carolina during Trump’s first nine months back in office, with hundreds of arrests tied to sheriff cooperation through 287(g).

North Dakota: 3/5 ICE Activity. Lower volume, rising detention. North Dakota Monitor reported the number of people detained by ICE increased more than 75% from January 2025 to January 2026.

Ohio: 4/5 ICE Activity. Ohio Immigrant Alliance reported that 7,756 people were detained for ICE in Ohio between January 2025 and March 2026, with fewer than 5% convicted of a violent offense.

Oklahoma: 4/5 ICE Activity. Highway enforcement and 287(g). ICE reported that a three-day operation with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol led to 120 arrests, including 91 commercial driver’s license holders, and Prison Policy Initiative’s tracker showed Oklahoma among the higher per-capita arrest states.

Oregon: 4/5 ICE Activity. The Willamette Valley has seen waves of coordinated arrests, The Guardian reported on court testimony about ICE arrest quotas and surveillance tactics in Oregon, and AP reported that a federal judge barred warrantless ICE arrests in Oregon unless there is probable cause someone is likely to flee.

Pennsylvania: 4/5 ICE Activity. Arrest growth plus detention systems. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported ICE arrests in Pennsylvania more than tripled in January 2026 to 802, with nearly 60% having no criminal record. Moshannon Valley has also drawn scrutiny, with Rep. Summer Lee calling for closure after reports of hunger strike retaliation and poor conditions.

Rhode Island: 3/5 ICE Activity. Lower volume, visible courthouse concerns. Rhode Island Current reported on ICE agents watching courthouses and arrests outside traffic court, and courthouse-related incidents have heightened fear around immigration enforcement in the state.

South Carolina: 4/5 ICE Activity. AP reported that a fake-ID investigation led to 48 immigrant workers being detained by ICE and six people being indicted in South Carolina.

South Dakota: 3/5 ICE Activity. Expanded state cooperation. Dakota News Now reported expanded 287(g) training for state troopers, and South Dakota Searchlight reported that the South Dakota National Guard helped ICE deport 664 people.

Tennessee: 4/5 ICE Activity. Visible enforcement, high per-capita concern, and press-freedom issues. Reuters reported ICE arrested Nashville journalist Estefany Rodriguez Flores, while WSMV reported on unmarked-vehicle detentions across Middle Tennessee.

Texas: 5/5 ICE Activity. TRAC lists Texas as the top ICE detention state in FY2026, and Reuters reported that federal auditors flagged the Camp East Montana detention center for missing records, medical failures, wasteful spending, and serious concerns around detainee deaths.

Utah: 4/5 ICE Activity. High per-capita rate plus courthouse controversy. Prison Policy Initiative’s tracker showed Utah among the higher per-capita arrest states, and DOJ announced charges against two former Utah court clerks accused of helping people evade ICE arrest.

Vermont: 2/5 ICE Activity. Low volume, however Vermont Public’s special investigation found ICE arrested 54 immigrants in Vermont between the January 2025 inauguration and March 10, 2026, with nearly half having no criminal record or pending charges, and documented agents running plate checks outside apartment buildings with no public-safety purpose. Then on March 11 VTDigger reported that a South Burlington ICE operation drew widespread criticism after agents stormed a home and took into custody someone they were not seeking.

Virginia: 4/5 ICE Activity. Part of the D.C. region surge of nearly 20,000 arrests, and VPM reported that 7,344 people were booked at the Rappahannock Regional Jail under a federal immigration enforcement designation from January 2025 to early April 2026.

Washington: 4/5 ICE Activity. Washington State Standard reported ICE arrested more than 2,100 people in Washington between October and early March, and KING5 reported rising arrests across the Yakima Valley.

West Virginia: 4/5 ICE Activity. Operation Country Roads: ICE and DHS promoted 650 arrests in a two-week operation, while ACLU-West Virginia’s review of DHS data found 593 arrests inside the state, with some arrests apparently mislabeled from Pennsylvania. The review also found that three out of four people arrested in West Virginia had no criminal record.

Wisconsin: 4/5 ICE Activity. Wisconsin Watch reported on shifting ICE arrest patterns statewide and nearly 100 collateral arrests since January 2025, while Wisconsin Watch also reported on the Manitowoc arrests and the confusion families faced after rapid transfers.

Wyoming: 4/5 ICE Activity. Small numbers, high cooperation. WyoFile reported that seven counties, four towns, and the Wyoming Highway Patrol have official ICE partnerships, and WyoFile later reported on Laramie County sheriff’s deputies making more immigration arrests under 287(g).

The highest-alert tier

5/5 ICE Activity: Severe
California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Texas

4/5 ICE Activity: High
Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

What you can do with this

If you’re in a high-alert state with 4/5 ICE Activity or higher: Connect with your local rapid-response network before you need it. The United We Dream MigraWatch Hotline is the national reporting line, and the NNIRR hotline directory lists state and regional numbers. Save the number in your phone today.

If you’re in a quieter state: Your job is vigilance, not relief. Vermont was “quiet” until March 11. Learn the staging patterns from our ICE vehicles guide, and know the warrant rule: an administrative warrant doesn’t authorize forced entry into a home. Only a judge-signed judicial warrant generally does. The ACLU’s one-page guide is the cleanest print-and-save version.

If you can’t do either: Share this tracker with one person who lives in a state with 4/5 ICE Activity or higher. The nearly 12% drop after Minneapolis suggests that attention is not a bystander activity.

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🗣️ This tracker gets better when you help us maintain and update it!!

You collectively know your states better than any newsroom or journalist does.

We can only go off what we see with news articles currently available online or by word of mouth.

So tell us in the comments: What’s the rating where you live? Too high, too low? What’s happening in your county?

Comment local reporting links. We’ll fold verified corrections and new developments into the next edition!

ICE activity moves fast, and we will post updated trackers to try to keep up with it all, with your help of course:

Leave a comment

Sources

National data

TRAC | Immigration Detention Quick Facts

AP | ICE will no longer report deaths of detainees who have recently been released from custody

AP | ICE arrests drop nearly 12% after Minneapolis killings and immigration shake-up

Prison Policy Initiative | ICE arrest tracker

Additional key state reporting

ICE | ICE expands detention capacity with Delaney Hall facility in New Jersey

Stateline | Migrants detained at ICE facilities launch hunger strikes to protest conditions

The Guardian | Delaney Hall hunger strikes are a hallmark of resistance in detention

New Jersey Monitor | Newark migrant jail detainees launch hunger, labor strike over conditions behind bars

Vermont Public | Special Report: How ICE operates in Vermont

Minnesota Reformer | More than 3,700 immigrants arrested during Operation Metro Surge

PBS/AP | Minnesota sues to obtain evidence in shootings by federal officers during ICE surge

Reuters | ICE agent arrested in Texas for Minneapolis shooting

WBUR | More than 7,030 ICE arrests in Massachusetts so far under Trump

NC Newsline | ICE arrested more than 3,300 people across North Carolina

Ohio Immigrant Alliance | Nearly 8,000 Ohioans detained for ICE in Trump’s first 15 months

Washington State Standard | Latest ICE data shows surge in immigration arrests in Washington

ACLU West Virginia | The ICE in West Virginia Report

Know your rights

ACLU | If ICE Agents Show Up At Your Door PDF

Immigrant Defense Project | Home Raid Booklet

United We Dream | MigraWatch Hotline

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TL;DR

This Sunday, June 14, is throwing a civic fair called “Make America Fair” which includes games, prizes, food, teach-ins including a Lady Liberty version of the classic game Operation.

Decades of learning research say that people engage more, remember more, and come back more when learning is social, hands-on, and low-pressure and the biggest gains go to the people who knew the least when they walked in.

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Those in Portland Oregon:
Laurelhurst Park 1 - 5pm, this Sunday.

A kid leans over a giant board painted to look like the Statue of Liberty. Tweezers in hand, tongue between teeth, trying to lift out a tiny piece before the buzzer screams:

It’s Operation. You played it as a kid.

Except this version is called Code Blue: Lady Liberty and while that kid is laughing, the entire family is learning the difference between what a city council controls and what a governor controls.

And nobody in that tent feels like they’re in a civics class!

Most people don’t skip activism because they don’t care:

We see the wild and crazy headlines. Many of us feel the dread. And then comes the internal questions: Who do I even call? What’s my role? What if I say the wrong thing? What if I show up and don’t know a soul?

Overwhelm is what authoritarianism counts on. They want us frozen in place, convinced the work belongs to someone more expert and knowing, than them.

A game takes a giant, abstract fear and shrinks it down to a small thing you can actually do.

“Understand local power” becomes match the problem to the person who can fix it. “Learn your rights” becomes toss the ring, hear the answer. “Know the warning signs” becomes spot the red flag on the bingo card.

Why play works and it’s not because it’s cute

There’s real science under this:

A boring lecture rarely delivers all three to the audience, but a fair can deliver them in twenty minutes!

The civic-education nonprofit iCivics, founded by the late Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, built its entire model on this.
Let people do democracy, play the lawyer, the county supervisor, the candidate instead of just reading about it.

You learn how power works by reaching out and touching it, even in a simplified, playful version first.

The most important finding for a movement like ours

Organizers and educators: Tape this finding to your wall:

When researchers tested a civic-engagement game called vMOBilize on college students, a study run through the Harvard Kennedy School and published in the Journal of Political Science Education players became measurably more likely to register to vote, follow the news, and engage politically.

But the effect wasn’t evenly spread…

The biggest gains went to the students who started out knowing the least and caring the least!

We don’t grow by preaching to people already showing up.

We grow by reaching the worried, the curious, the burned-out, the never-done-this-before.

A good game is built precisely for the person standing at the edge wondering if there’s room for them.

Joy can teach what a flyer never could

A flyer tells you what to do.
Games & learning through play let you practice it and practice is what sticks.

Researchers at Harvard’s Project Zero describe genuine learning-through-play as joyful, meaningful, hands-on, social, and iterative.
You try, you miss, you try again, no shame attached.
And no, this is not a kids-only formula… It’s how anyone learns something intimidating for the first time.

The Make America Fair will have incredible ways to practice just this:

• A ring toss that’s a know-your-rights drill.

• A matching game that’s a lesson in who holds which lever of power.

• A scenario card that’s de-escalation training.

• A spin-the-wheel that’s really your first practice call to an elected official.

• And more!

Because of this, people will leave with a little more knowledge, a little more confidence, and one concrete thing they now know how to do.

Why joy is a strategy

Anger gets people off the couch once. It rarely gets them to come back.

What brings people back is belonging… laughter, music, neighbors, the memory of a good afternoon. Again, authoritarian politics works by making us all feel isolated, exhausted, and small. A park full of people teaching each other how democracy works does the exact opposite, and it does it in public.

A movement people actually enjoy returning to is a movement that’s still here next year.

What this looks like in practice

If you’re in Portland this Sunday: come to the fair. Bring a friend, your family, a skeptical relative. Play some games. Talk to the booth-tables. Leave with an action item!

If you organize anywhere else:

Use this! Don’t only plan rallies, plan entry points. Don’t only announce that democracy is in danger, give people something to do the moment they arrive. Turn a workshop into a game and watch who stays.

If you can’t be there at all: share this post. You don’t have to be an expert to belong here. Spreading awareness is incredibly helpful. You could be the reason this post lands in front of someone trying to find ideas for their next rally:

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The most influential thing at Laurelhurst Park on Sunday won’t be a speech.

It’ll be a kid laughing at a buzzer and a grown-up beside them, quietly realizing that defending this country is something you can learn, that it can feel like community instead of homework, and that the first step was never as big as the fear made it look.

Sometimes the way forward starts with a game and sometimes that game teaches someone how to fight for the country they love.

What is one civic or activist concept you would turn into a game, and how would people play it? *Bonus points if you give it a clever name!

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Further Reading & Sources

• No Kings / 50501 Portland event details, volunteer sign-up, and how to support the fair: linktr.ee/Nokingsportland | PDX Make America Fair

• iCivics civic learning through games: icivics.org

• Harvard Kennedy School vMOBilize: Gamifying Civic Learning and Political Engagement (Young, Baum & Prettyman): hks.harvard.edu

• Harvard Project Zero Pedagogy of Play / learning through play: pz.harvard.edu

During arguments over Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom project, a federal appeals judge pressed the Department of Justice on how far its legal theory really goes.

The administration is arguing that courts can’t stop construction of the ballroom, even though the East Wing has already been demolished and the project is being challenged for moving forward without congressional approval.

DOJ attorney Yaakov Roth told the D.C. Circuit that the courts have “no role” in weighing the project and that it would have been improper to block it at any point.

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According to the Associated Press, Judge Patricia Millett raised a hypothetical:

What if the government bulldozed the Statue of Liberty?

What if it bulldozed the White House itself?

Would descendants of immigrants who came through Ellis Island, or descendants of enslaved people who built the White House, have legal standing to challenge that destruction after the fact?

Roth agreed that, under the government’s theory, they would not.

The story is that the Department of Justice defended a legal theory so sweeping that, when a judge asked whether the government could bulldoze the Statue of Liberty and leave people without a court remedy after the fact, the government did not clearly say, “Of course the courts could stop that.”

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The Statue of Liberty Hypothetical

Some people will try to dismiss this as just a hypothetical, but hypotheticals are how courts test legal arguments.

Judges ask extreme questions because extreme questions reveal whether a legal theory has limits.

This one revealed something very important: the DOJ’s position appears to have very few meaningful limits once the executive branch has already acted.

This Case Is About Power

The administration wants to continue building a 90,000-square-foot ballroom where the White House East Wing used to stand.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued after the East Wing was demolished, arguing that the administration moved forward without congressional authorization.

A lower court blocked above-ground construction while allowing underground bunker and security-related work to continue, which matters because the government keeps invoking national security as a reason courts should stay out.

Nobody is arguing that the White House should be left unsecured.

It’s really if “security” can be used as a blanket excuse to bypass Congress, demolish part of the White House complex, and then tell courts they are powerless to review what happened.

Reuters reported that Judge Millett asked the DOJ attorney whether “complete lawlessness by the government” could still be stopped by the courts under the administration’s theory. Roth answered, “On these theories, I think that’s right.”

That is the line that connects the ballroom to the Statue of Liberty.

If courts can’t stop “complete lawlessness” once the government has moved quickly enough, then the incentive for any future president is obvious: act first, make the harm irreversible, and argue later that no one has standing.

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“Too Late” Can’t Be a Legal Strategy

If no one has standing, no court gets to decide whether the government broke the law. An unlawful act can become effectively untouchable because no one is allowed to challenge it.

That is why this argument is so dangerous…

If the government bulldozed the Statue of Liberty (or the White House), the injury would not just be aesthetic. It would be historical, cultural, national, and democratic. It would be a wound to the public’s shared inheritance. Yet DOJ’s theory, as tested by the court, suggested that even people with direct ancestral ties to Ellis Island might still be told they can’t sue after the fact.

The executive branch doesn’t own the White House.

It does not own the Statue of Liberty. It doesn’t own the country’s public history. These places belong to the American people, and the Constitution does not give one president a wrecking ball and a stopwatch.

The Department of Justice is supposed to defend the Constitution. In this case, it defended a theory of executive power that should make every American ask a very simple question: If the courts can’t stop the government from bulldozing the Statue of Liberty after the fact, what exactly is left of checks and balances?

Should courts be able to stop executive action when public landmarks or federal property are at risk, or should Congress be the only remedy after the damage has already begun?

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Monday, June 1

In Denver, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from taking the first major step toward dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Boulder-based climate and weather lab that employs roughly 830 people. Senior U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson issued a preliminary injunction stopping the transfer of NCAR’s supercomputing center to the University of Wyoming, and his opinion found the move was likely retaliation against Colorado tied to the president’s public dispute with Governor Jared Polis. The injunction holds while the broader case proceeds, and the judge signaled the administration is likely to lose it.

Separately, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled 2 to 1 that the Pentagon’s policy barring transgender people from military service is likely unconstitutional and, in the majority’s words, appears driven by the bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group. As ABC News reported, the ruling blocks the expulsion of the current service members who sued, though it leaves the administration free to keep barring new transgender recruits while the case continues, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signaled an appeal to the Supreme Court. The protection is real but narrow, and the fight is not over.

Tuesday, June 2

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told a House Appropriations subcommittee that the Justice Department would not move forward with its proposed anti-weaponization fund, the roughly $1.8 billion pool (officially $1.776 billion) that grew out of the settlement of the president’s lawsuit against the IRS and that critics in both parties had described as a slush fund to compensate Trump allies, potentially including January 6 defendants. Pressed on whether the department would ever revive it, Blanche answered “Correct,” and said plainly that the department was not moving forward. The reversal followed weeks of bipartisan backlash that had stalled unrelated immigration funding, and it stands as one of the clearer examples this year of sustained public and congressional pressure changing an administration decision.

Wednesday, June 3

For the first time, the House passed a war powers resolution aimed at the Iran war. The vote was 215 to 208, with four Republicans, Thomas Massie, Brian Fitzpatrick, Tom Barrett, and Warren Davidson, joining every Democrat. The measure directs the president to end U.S. hostilities with Iran absent congressional authorization. It is a concurrent resolution, so its legal force is disputed and it now moves to the Senate, but it puts the chamber on record after months in which similar efforts had been blocked or had failed on tie votes. The constitutional point underneath it is straightforward: the power to take the country into sustained war belongs to Congress, not to a single office.

The same evening, at a White House Rose Garden dinner, the president said he would nominate Blanche to be permanent attorney general, with the formal nomination to follow Thursday. Blanche, the president’s former personal defense lawyer, has led the department in an acting capacity since Pam Bondi’s firing in April, and during that time he secured an indictment of former FBI Director James Comey and rolled out the anti-weaponization fund. The nomination requires Senate confirmation, and the same Republicans whose support he now needs were among those most angered by the fund. The concern raised by critics is less about his past clients and more about whether the department’s priorities now track the president’s personal interests.

On the same day Blanche’s department was retreating from the fund, the president undercut that retreat. Asked whether he might revive it later, he told reporters he would have to ask the lawyers and called the fund a beautiful thing, according to The Hill’s account of the week. That is why the fund is best described as wounded rather than buried.

A federal court also let a major LGBTQ case move forward. U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Boston rejected the Justice Department’s argument that 16 states and the District of Columbia lacked standing to challenge its directives on gender-affirming care, finding instead that the orders amounted to an effort to reinterpret federal law in order to intimidate and harass providers. The lawsuit, which targets executive and DOJ directives that have prompted subpoenas to hospitals and clinics, can now proceed.

Abroad, Israel and Lebanon announced a U.S.-brokered ceasefire framework after a fourth round of direct talks in Washington, contingent on a complete halt to Hezbollah fire and the creation of pilot zones controlled by the Lebanese armed forces. The framework was announced even as cross-border strikes continued, and Israel’s defense minister said his military would keep operating in southern Lebanon for now. This is an attempt at de-escalation, not a settled peace.

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Thursday, June 4

The House broke with the president on foreign policy a second time. Members passed a Ukraine aid and Russia sanctions package 226 to 195, forcing it to the floor over Republican leaders’ objections through a discharge petition. Eighteen Republicans joined nearly all Democrats in support. The bill provides more than $1 billion in security and reconstruction aid, makes up to $8 billion available in defense loans, and imposes new sanctions on Russia’s energy and financial sectors. PBS NewsHour described it as the House’s second major foreign policy break with the president in a single week. Its odds in the Senate are steep, and its sponsors acknowledge it is partly intended to pressure that chamber to act.

Hezbollah rejected the ceasefire framework announced the day before, with its leader insisting that any truce begin with a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory, and fighting continued. Diplomats are scheduled to meet again the week of June 22.

Trump announced nearly $700 million in support for the coal industry, invoking the Defense Production Act. The package directs about $425 million to upgrade 13 existing coal plants across ten states, nearly $200 million in Energy Department grants toward two new plants in Alaska and West Virginia and a restart in Maryland, and $75 million toward a coal export terminal in Oakland, California. The administration framed it as energy security and lower costs. It lands the same week a court had to intervene to protect one of the country’s leading climate research institutions, a contrast worth keeping in view.

The Kennedy Center began complying with last week’s court ruling. Its general counsel directed staff to remove the president’s name from signage, letterhead, and materials by June 12, after U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled on May 29 that the board lacked authority to rename the institution and also blocked its planned two-year closure. The center said it is evaluating its legal options. Public institutions are governed by rules that don’t bend to a single person, which is the principle the ruling restored.

Thursday also brought a marathon Senate session on the immigration-enforcement bill. Senators rejected multiple attempts to permanently bar the anti-weaponization fund. The amendment from Minority Leader Chuck Schumer failed 49 to 50, with three Republicans, Susan Collins, Dan Sullivan, and Jon Husted, crossing to support it. A separate effort to redirect the fund toward Capitol officers injured on January 6 also failed, as did an amendment to block construction of the White House ballroom, though nearly half a dozen Republicans voted with Democrats on the ballroom question.

Friday, June 5

Shortly before 5 a.m., the Senate passed the roughly $70 billion immigration-enforcement package 52 to 47, funding ICE and Border Patrol through the end of the president’s term. Republicans used the budget reconciliation process to bypass a filibuster, and Senator Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican to vote no. The bill carries no guardrails on the anti-weaponization fund and no money for the White House ballroom, the security funding for which Republicans had earlier scrapped. It now heads to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson plans to take it up next week. The funding had been delayed for months after Democrats demanded policy changes following fatal shootings of protesters by federal agents earlier this year.

What to Watch

The Iran war powers resolution moves to the Senate, which advanced its own version last month. The Ukraine bill faces a difficult path in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes and the president’s signature. The $70 billion immigration package now goes to the House for an expected vote next week. The anti-weaponization fund is officially abandoned by the Justice Department, but the president has declined to rule out reviving it, so the underlying litigation still matters. Blanche’s confirmation will test how much the fund cost him with Senate Republicans, and at least one Democrat has already said no. The Kennedy Center faces a June 12 deadline to remove the president’s name while it weighs an appeal, part of a broader reshaping of Washington’s public spaces that also includes new spending at the Lincoln Memorial.

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The Wins This Week 🎉

There were real ones, and they are worth naming plainly even where the larger fights continue.

• The House put itself on record against the Iran war for the first time, a symbolic but genuine rebuke that now pressures the Senate.

• The House passed Ukraine aid and Russia sanctions over its own leadership and the president, with 18 Republicans crossing.

• The Justice Department was forced to abandon the anti-weaponization fund after bipartisan backlash, even though it has not been permanently barred and the president has not ruled out reviving it.

• A federal court protected NCAR, one of the country’s major climate research centers, from being broken up.

• An appeals court blocked the immediate removal of transgender service members who have already met every standard of service.

• A federal judge cleared the way for 16 states and D.C. to keep challenging the administration’s pressure campaign against gender-affirming care providers.

• The Kennedy Center began restoring its rightful name after a court found the rebrand unlawful.

The thread connecting these is that organized, sustained pressure, in courtrooms and in congressional offices, changed outcomes this week. The wins are partial, and the immigration bill that cleared the Senate this morning is a reminder that pressure is not yet winning everywhere. But partial wins are still wins, and they accumulate.

Three of this week’s fights now move to chambers where your voice carries weight: the Iran war powers resolution and the Ukraine package head to the Senate, and the immigration-enforcement bill heads to the House. If you have time for one call to your representatives this week, which fight would you prioritize?

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TLDR (Article Summary)

On Sunday, June 14, 2026, Trump’s 80th birthday, the No Kings coalition isn’t calling for a single mass march.
Instead, the Committee for the First Amendment is hosting Rise Up, Sing Out, a 90-minute concert streamed live from New York City, with local watch parties in living rooms and community centers across the country.

No Kings and Indivisible are partnering to turn one night of music into something unique and in support of community building.

Right now, workers are bolting together a steel cage on the South Lawn of the White House.

For a UFC fight night…

On June 14th, Trump’s plan is cage fighting on the lawn of the people’s house, broadcast as spectacle.

On that same night, in thousands of living rooms, union halls, and community centers, people who’ve never met are going to sit down together, watch a concert, and figure out what they’re going to do next.

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So what’s actually happening on June 14th?

Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert for the First Amendment, hosted by the Committee for the First Amendment.

Here are the confirmed details:

• When: Sunday, June 14, 2026, 7:30 PM ET

• Where: Live from The Town Hall in New York City and streamed everywhere

• How long: 90 minutes

• The lineup (so far): Rufus Wainwright, Bette Midler, Patti Smith, Sasha Allen, Joy Reid, Julia Roberts, Lily Gladstone, Peppermint, Wilson Cruz, Jenn Colella, Broadway Inspirational Voices, and Jane Fonda with more names still to come

• The cost: Watching is free. However, in-person tickets are available, and all proceeds go to the Committee for the First Amendment.

The actual event is you and the people near you, gathered to watch it together at a public watch party, a private one in someone’s home, or on your own couch with the link shared to three friends.

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Why this night, and why this way

June 14th has been claimed, again and again, as a stage for Trump to celebrate himself. A military parade one year, cage fighting on the South Lawn the next, all timed to his birthday.

Organizers across the country are offering a different narrative for that night.

Instead of one performance of dominance, Rise Up, Sing Out puts the spotlight on the freedoms that belong to everyone: speech, press, religion, assembly, protest, and expression. As the country approaches its 250th anniversary, the framing is blunt, we get to decide what that anniversary means.

Strongman politics and a cage on the lawn?

Or people, power, and the rights that protect them?

The next 250 starts with those who show up.

This isn’t another mass street march

Let’s clear up the biggest misunderstanding, because it’s the one filling the comments in many places.

June 14th is not being organized as a single giant protest in the streets like previous No Kings events. It’s not a downgrade, it’s just a different strategy.

We know the coalition can fill the streets. The last three No Kings mobilizations proved it with roughly 2,100 locations in June 2025, 2,700 in October, and 3,300 this past March.

A march shows the country how many of us there are. A march does not, by itself, leave behind a phone tree, Signal thread, ride-share list, or a neighbor you can call when ICE shows up on your block.

& Indivisible describes that the goal of this event is to build hyper-local infrastructure/systems that communities need to defend themselves.

And if your town is marching anyway? Good!

We’ve heard from some of you who are already planning a march or rally for June 14th, so let’s be warm and clear about this: please do!

Peaceful protest, assembly, and expression are your rights, full stop… protected by the First Amendment, and no community should feel waved off from lawful, nonviolent action that fits its own needs, capacity, and safety planning. If marching is what your neighbors are called to do, that’s exactly the kind of local initiative this movement runs on.

The only thing we’re clarifying is the national framing: as of now, No Kings and Indivisible are not calling for a single, nationally coordinated mass march on June 14th. The official national effort is Rise Up, Sing Out, a day built around local watch parties, gatherings, art, food, and connection.

Both things can be true at once.

Your town can march, and the national call can be about building community. Those aren’t in conflict, they’re the same instinct pointed in two directions: people refusing to sit this one out.

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A few more things June 14th is not

It’s not just a New York concert. The stage is in NYC, but the night is national. Watch parties are being organized in all 50 states, and you can find one or host one yourself.

It’s not a call for confrontation. Like every 50501, No Kings, and action, this is grounded in nonviolence. De-escalate, stay lawful, no weapons. A singalong in a community center is, by design, about as far from a brawl as you can get.

It’s not a night to watch alone and move on. If you tune in solo, share the stream, fizzle out by Monday, and nothing changes, the night didn’t do its job. We need more people and communities connected on June 15th than on June 13th!

Where No Kings and Indivisible come in

The Committee for the First Amendment, a coalition of artists and cultural figures launched in October 2025 by Jane Fonda and more than 550 entertainment-industry signers, produces and hosts the concert. It deliberately echoes the original Committee for the First Amendment, the artists who stood up against government blacklisting during the McCarthy era.

No Kings and Indivisible are the organizing force around it.

They’re the ones turning a livestream into thousands of local gatherings, and turning those gatherings into something that outlasts the night. Indivisible’s whole model is built on local groups, because a group can build and hold power in ways no individual scrolling can.

The concert hands our community members inspiration and the local groups and organizers gives them an actionable way to use it.

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How to get involved

1. Find your event. Go to NoKings.org to find a June 14th watch party near you or sign up to host one. Hosting can be as simple as a TV, some folding chairs, and a sign-up sheet.

2. Bring one person. Like always, this is the most overlooked, highest-impact thing you can do. A neighbor, sibling, coworker… We grow one “Join me!” at a time.

3. Connect with a local group, and stay. Search your city or county plus “50501,” “No Kings,” “indivisible,” “mutual aid,” or “immigrant rights.” Follow them. Show up to the next thing too, not just this one.

4. Can’t go out? You still count. Watch the stream and share it. Text the link to three people. Post an explanation of what June 14th is about for us.

Questions & Answers

What time does it start? 7:30 PM ET on Sunday, June 14, 2026. The concert runs about 90 minutes.

Do I have to be in New York? No. The concert streams live, and the real action is the watch parties happening nationwide. You can join one, host one, or watch from home.

How do I find an event near me? Go to NoKings.org and use the event finder. You can also sign up there to host your own watch party.

What if there’s nothing near me? Then you’re exactly the person to host one. A living room, a few neighbors, and the livestream is all it takes. Or watch from home and share the stream widely.

Is this connected to Indivisible and No Kings? Yes. The Committee for the First Amendment produces the concert. No Kings and Indivisible are partnering to build local organizing around it, and 50501 communities are part of that broader ecosystem.

Is it peaceful? Yes. Every 50501, No Kings, and Indivisible action is grounded in nonviolence. De-escalation, lawful participation, and no weapons.

Does it cost money? Watching is free.
*In-person tickets are sold separately, with proceeds supporting the Committee for the First Amendment.

What should I do after June 14th? Join the group that hosted your watch party. Follow them. Show up to their next event. One night can become a habit… and can become a community.

If a march shows the country how many of us there are, what’s something your community still needs that only an organized group of neighbors could build?

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Sources

• Rise Up, Sing Out: official event page (date, time, venue, lineup, tickets)

• No Kings | June 14th information & watch parties

• Committee for the First Amendment

• Indivisible

• 50501 Official Site

Help us spread awareness:

✅ Hit the ❤️ at the top or bottom
✅ Share the date with 3 people who keep asking “wait, what’s actually happening on the 14th?”
✅ Join in the comments to boost the algorithm
✅ Subscribe for more

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Delaney Hall

Inside Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed ICE facility in Newark owned and run for profit by the GEO Group, advocates, family members, lawmakers, and detainee letters say roughly 300 people are on a hunger and labor strike.

The Department of Homeland Security denies there is any hunger strike at all.

Members of Congress who toured the facility described what they saw.

Small food portions that, according to CBS New York, contained maggots. Rep. Jerry Nadler said one woman had waited more than a month for a mammogram for a breast lump, and another detainee with colon cancer was going untreated.

Gothamist reported that some people inside had already signed deportation orders or even won their cases and were still being held.

DHS says the core allegations are not true, and that detainees receive three meals a day, clean water, and medical care.

The week was a series of attempts to see past that denial:

On Memorial Day, Gov. Mikie Sherrill was turned away at the door. Sen. Andy Kim said he was pepper-sprayed outside the facility while trying to conduct oversight and de-escalate the situation. By Wednesday, Reps. Adriano Espaillat, Dan Goldman, and Jerry Nadler, joined by Sen. Cory Booker, forced the issue and got inside; Espaillat carried a court order, saying the Constitution protected his right to inspect. DHS said about six demonstrators were arrested, and agents pepper-sprayed protesters over several nights.

On Fox News, border czar Tom Homan said the administration would seek a court order to force-feed the strikers if doctors judged them in danger. It is a difficult thing to threaten against a hunger strike that officials insist is not happening.

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A court blocked Alabama’s congressional map as intentionally discriminatory

A federal panel blocked Alabama from using its Republican-drawn congressional map in November’s midterms, ruling that it intentionally discriminated against Black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution. The judges wrote that they couldn’t require Alabamians to vote under a plan tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.

Worth noting before anyone calls it a partisan ruling: two of the three judges on the panel were appointed by Trump, and the decision was unanimous.

Hours later, South Carolina’s state Senate declined to advance a Trump-backed map that would have dismantled Rep. James Clyburn’s Black-plurality, majority-minority Democratic district.

Alabama is appealing to the Supreme Court, so this is not settled. But coming a week after Louisiana lost a majority-Black district, it showed that the post-Louisiana v. Callais redistricting fight is not moving in only one direction. Voting rights are not only about whether a ballot can be cast. They are about whether that ballot still carries weight after the lines are redrawn, and this week, in two states, that weight held.

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Capitol officers sued to block the $1.776 billion settlement fund

The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” was created as part of a settlement resolving Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. Critics say the structure looks less like accountability and more like a taxpayer-funded political reward system, a concern that has come from some Republicans as well.

This week, the fund drew a direct legal challenge from the people with the most personal stake in it. Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges, officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6, sued to block the fund, arguing it is positioned to reward the very rioters who attacked them, including members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Their complaint leans on the 14th Amendment, which bars paying debts “incurred in aid of insurrection,” and argues that Trump was functionally on both sides of the case that created the fund.

A judge has already paused the fund until at least June 12. Some Jan. 6 defendants and allies may try to seek payouts, but the fund is currently frozen and no claims have been accepted.

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The U.S. struck Iran while calling a deal close

Early this week, the U.S. carried out strikes in southern Iran.

Officials described them as self-defense strikes targeting missile sites and boats allegedly attempting to lay mines near the Strait of Hormuz. Iran said it shot down a U.S. drone.

The strikes came while negotiators worked toward a ceasefire in Qatar. By Friday, the administration was saying a peace deal was “very close,” which Iran wouldn’t confirm.

The White House declared on May 1 that hostilities had “terminated.” Which, they haven’t.

Congress, which holds the constitutional power to declare war, has been repeatedly rejecting, blocking, or delaying War Powers measures since March. A ceasefire would be welcome. A war narrated from press availabilities, with Congress kept at the margins, is not how war powers are supposed to work.

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The reported DOJ probe turned to the funding behind E. Jean Carroll’s case

In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll. In 2024, another ordered him to pay $83.3 million for defaming her.

This week, reporting first suggested Trump’s Justice Department was investigating Carroll. But Reuters later reported that the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office denied opening any criminal investigation into Carroll.

The current reported focus is a nonprofit tied to Democratic donor Reid Hoffman that helped fund Carroll’s lawsuits against Trump.

The reported probe is examining the funding behind her cases, not Carroll personally. The acting attorney general has recused himself, because he personally represented Trump in the Carroll appeals.

A woman won her cases against the president, and now the funding network behind those lawsuits is under scrutiny, in the same pattern as the department’s moves against James Comey and Letitia James.

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A Pentagon contract and climbing prices

The Pentagon awarded Dell a roughly $9.7 billion contract this week, after Trump bought between $1 million and $5 million of Dell stock in February, publicly told people to “go out and buy a Dell,” and those shares later climbed. His holdings are not in a blind trust. Defense officials say the deal followed a competitive process and saves money, watchdogs say the appearance of self-dealing is a problem, and appearance is precisely what conflict-of-interest rules exist to prevent.

CPI inflation rose 3.8% over the 12 months ending in April, its highest in nearly three years, with food up 3.2% over the year.

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What to watch for:

The Anti-Weaponization Fund hearing on June 12, which decides whether the money stays frozen, and whether the rules for who qualifies ever become public.

Alabama’s emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, which could undo this week’s voting-rights ruling before November.

Delaney Hall, and whether state inspectors and members of Congress get full, ongoing access, or whether the official denials simply outlast the news cycle.

The Iran war-powers question, which returns to the House in June, and the talks the administration wants to define before Congress weighs in.

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This week we are running the Friday Briefing a little differently.

We have heard from a lot of you that inboxes are full and the pace of the news is hard to keep up with. So we’re sending fewer emails and using this Friday recap to gather the week in one place. When a single story needs more room, we will still publish a full explainer, and those are linked at the end.

Voter rolls moved to the center of the midterm fight

The Trump administration has now run at least 67 million voter registrations through a Department of Homeland Security verification system known as SAVE, with the stated goal of identifying noncitizens and people who have died, the Associated Press reported.

Tens of thousands have been flagged as potential noncitizens, and far more as potentially deceased.

Sixty-seven million is an enormous file, and the share flagged as potential noncitizens is a tiny fraction of it but a tiny fraction of a huge number is still a lot of individual people, and a flagging error only stays harmless if there’s enough time and a clear enough process to fix it.

In states that give voters just a few weeks to prove eligibility, or that suspend a registration right away, a wrongful flag can turn into a missed election.

The administration also kept losing in court. On Thursday, federal judges in Maine and Wisconsin dismissed Justice Department lawsuits trying to force those states to hand over detailed voter data, including birth dates, addresses, and partial Social Security numbers, the AP reported. Those rulings were the latest in a run of defeats that also includes Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon, and Rhode Island, the DOJ has sued at least 30 states and the District of Columbia for that data and has appealed several of the losses.

One of those earlier rejections came from a Trump-appointed judge in Michigan. The legal problem is not confined to one party’s view of it. The consistent thread across the rulings is that a broad federal demand for sensitive voter-file data is not the same thing as election security.

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A presidential lawsuit became a $1.8 billion payout program

On Monday, the Justice Department announced a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” created as part of a settlement of the lawsuit President Trump filed earlier this year against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. Under the deal, which the DOJ described in its own announcement, Trump, his two adult sons, and the Trump Organization drop the suit and receive a formal apology but no monetary payment.

What has drawn the most concern is how it’s built:

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal defense attorney, established the fund and will handpick the five-member commission that decides who gets paid, and the process is largely shielded from court review, Axios reported.

Eligibility appears broad. Blanche told lawmakers that “anybody can apply,” saying the commission would set the detailed rules later, and he did not rule out payments to people convicted of assaulting police on January 6.

Vice President Vance has separately suggested that figures as different as former Colorado clerk Tina Peters and Hunter Biden could qualify. At least one Jan. 6 defendant has already said publicly that he intends to apply.

That prompted a direct challenge.. Daniel Hodges, a Metropolitan Police officer, and Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police officer both who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 and later testified before Congress about it, sued on Wednesday to block any payouts, describing the fund in their complaint as an illegal slush fund, the AP reported.

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Congress moved on the Iran war, then House leaders pulled the vote

For the first time, a war-powers resolution on the Iran conflict cleared a procedural hurdle in the Senate.

On Tuesday, the chamber voted 50-47 to advance the measure after four Republicans, Rand Paul, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Bill Cassidy, joined Democrats, CBS News reported.

The conflict has now passed the 60-day mark set by the War Powers Resolution without congressional authorization, which is part of why the pressure on Congress has intensified.

The House was expected to take up its own version on Thursday. Instead, Republican leaders delayed the vote into June, after appearing to lack the votes to defeat it, according to the AP.

The measure’s sponsor, Rep. Gregory Meeks, said he believed it would have passed. A similar House resolution had fallen on a tie vote the week before.

The Constitution assigns the power to declare war to Congress, and the 1973 War Powers Resolution exists precisely to keep presidents from waging open-ended conflicts without it, which is part of why a delayed vote reads as its own kind of answer about how leadership expected that vote to go.

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Health and environmental rules keep getting loosened

The EPA moved this week to weaken federal drinking-water protections for PFAS “forever chemicals,” a story we covered in a full article.

The proposal, announced May 18, would keep the existing limits for two of the most-studied compounds, PFOA and PFOS, while giving water systems an extra two years, until 2031, to comply.

It would also rescind the regulatory determinations and related federal drinking-water requirements for four others: PFHxS, PFNA, GenX, and the Hazard Index that governs mixtures of them, lifting the monitoring and treatment obligations tied to those compounds.

According to the EPA, the agency has scheduled a virtual public hearing for July 7 and is accepting written comments through July 20.

Then on Thursday, the administration loosened federal refrigerant rules for grocery stores and air-conditioning companies, easing limits on hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, the AP reported.

Trump presented the change at a White House event as a way to bring down grocery prices.

Industry and environmental critics pushed back, noting that HFCs are potent climate pollutants and that some U.S. companies had already invested in the alternatives the rule was designed to encourage.

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Immigration prosecutions, colliding with the courts

In Chicago, federal prosecutors dropped the charges against the four remaining members of the “Broadview Six,” a group of protesters arrested last fall outside an ICE facility. Charges against the other two had already been dropped earlier this spring.

The dismissal was striking less for the outcome than for the reason behind it. The U.S. Attorney dropped the case with prejudice, meaning it can’t be refiled, after a closed-door hearing in which the judge described apparent misconduct by prosecutors before the grand jury, NPR Illinois reported.

Defense attorneys called it an intentional cover-up, and the judge signaled the prosecutors involved could face sanctions.

ABC7 Chicago reported that the office has yet to win a conviction in any criminal case tied to its Operation Midway Blitz enforcement surge.

The Justice Department swore in its largest class of immigration judges ever, 77 permanent judges and five temporary ones drawn from the military, bringing the bench back to roughly 700 after the administration removed more than 100 judges since Trump returned to office.

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AI is being folded deeper into federal enforcement

HHS announced it will expand its use of artificial intelligence.

ChatGPT among other tools, to review audit reports from all 50 states and from federal grant recipients, including state Medicaid programs and grantees in research and addiction services, the AP reported. Recipients that fail to file required audits, or to resolve flagged problems, could lose funding.

Catching fraud is a legitimate use of government resources. However, the caution is everything surrounding AI as a primary tool.

AI systems produce confident-sounding mistakes and can carry hidden biases, and the administration’s anti-fraud push has so far fallen heavily on Democratic-led states.

Earlier this spring, the administration acknowledged a significant error in data it had used to justify a New York Medicaid fraud investigation, the kind of mistake that becomes difficult to catch once an automated system is making the first pass.

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The symbolism is growing

On Thursday, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts approved the design plan for the 250-foot triumphal arch Trump wants built on Memorial Circle, between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, the AP reported.

The commissioners, all Trump appointees, approved it despite overwhelming public opposition.

Members said they had received more than 600 letters against the project.

The project still needs review by another federal panel before construction can move forward.

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What to watch for:

The Iran war-powers vote was pushed past the Memorial Day recess, so the House question returns in June rather than closing this week.

The voter-data lawsuits keep going against the DOJ, but the department is appealing several and is still running registrations through SAVE, so the broader pressure on state voter files continues even as individual cases fail.

The Anti-Weaponization Fund’s basic terms remain unsettled. Who qualifies, who sits on the commission, and whether payouts will ever be disclosed.

The PFAS rulemaking is open for public comment through July 20, with a virtual hearing on July 7, one of the clearest near-term openings for the public to weigh in directly.

Our Recent Articles

Trump Dropped His IRS Lawsuit. Now There’s a $1.8 Billion Taxpayer Fund. A closer look at the settlement, the new Anti-Weaponization Fund, and the questions that actually matter: who qualifies, who decides, whether Jan. 6 defendants could benefit, and whether the payout list will ever be public.

Trump’s EPA Moved to Weaken Drinking Water Rules. Here’s What It Does. A breakdown of the PFAS rollback: which limits are kept, which are rescinded, how the 2031 deadline extension works, and how to take part in the public-comment window.

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TLDR

PFAS are a family of chemicals so persistent they are called “forever chemicals.”

In April 2024, EPA finalized the first national enforceable drinking water rule for several of them.

Yesterday, on May 18, 2026, the Trump EPA formally proposed two new rules: one would keep the limits for PFOA and PFOS but let eligible water systems apply to extend their compliance deadline from 2029 to 2031, and the other would rescind the limits for PFHxS, PFNA, GenX, and the Hazard Index mixture rule that covers those three plus PFBS.

EPA’s argument is procedural.

Public-health groups argue the rollback runs into the Safe Drinking Water Act’s anti-backsliding provision. Once the proposed rules are published in the Federal Register, the public will have 60 days to comment, and EPA will hold a virtual public hearing on July 7, 2026.

What Happened

Standing alongside HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a PFAS destruction event, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced two proposed rules and nearly $1 billion in new grant funding for small and disadvantaged communities dealing with PFAS contamination.

Here’s what the proposals do:

• They keep the limits for PFOA and PFOS. Both stay at 4 parts per trillion, the lowest level current testing can reliably detect.

• They create an opt-in extension to the compliance deadline. Eligible water systems could apply for up to two additional years, moving their deadline from 2029 to 2031. Systems that do not receive an extension would remain under the original 2029 deadline, and EPA says systems granted extensions must notify the people they serve.

• They rescind the limits for PFHxS, PFNA, and GenX chemicals. Those three had individual limits of 10 parts per trillion under the 2024 rule. Those numbers would go away.

• They rescind the Hazard Index mixture rule. This was the part of the 2024 rule that measured combined exposure to mixtures of PFHxS, PFNA, GenX, and PFBS. The combination measure would go away.

• They open a 60-day public comment period once published in the Federal Register. A virtual public hearing is scheduled for July 7, 2026.

What are PFAS, and why is “forever” the right word?

PFAS stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They’re human-made chemicals built around an extremely strong carbon-fluorine bond. That bond is what makes them useful in nonstick cookware, stain-resistant fabrics, food packaging, firefighting foam, and thousands of industrial processes. It’s also what makes them nearly impossible for the environment to break down.

Once PFAS get into water, soil, or the human body, they stay and they build up over time.

*They’re found in the blood of nearly every American who has been tested.

According to EPA’s own published science, exposure to certain levels of PFAS may be linked to:

• Kidney and testicular cancer

• Reduced immune response, including weaker vaccine effectiveness

• Developmental effects in children, including low birth weight

• Reproductive and hormonal effects

• Liver damage and increased cholesterol

Why “parts per trillion” is the right unit

A part per trillion is one drop in roughly twenty Olympic swimming pools. It might sound like nothing, but it has major consequences.

Drinking water exposure is daily, lifelong, and unavoidable.

Children drink the same water that adults do, but their bodies are smaller. Pregnant and breastfeeding people pass exposure to the next generation. A community living for thirty years near a chemical plant or a former military base doesn’t get one dose, they get tens of thousands of doses.

EPA’s 2024 conclusion was that for PFOA and PFOS specifically, there’s no safe level of exposure. The 4 parts per trillion limit reflects the lowest level technology can reliably detect, not a level science considers safe.

Hazard Index

The Hazard Index is the most important piece of the rollback to understand, because it changes how the government measures exposure in the first place.

People are almost never exposed to one PFAS at a time.

Contaminated water usually contains a mixture of several compounds, each individually below the legal limit but collectively adding up to something more harmful. The 2024 rule used a Hazard Index to look at mixtures of PFHxS, PFNA, GenX, and PFBS together, on the well-established science that combined exposure compounds the risk.

If the proposal is finalized, the current federal drinking water rule would no longer use that Hazard Index mixture calculation for PFHxS, PFNA, GenX, and PFBS. EPA says it may evaluate those chemicals again later, but the current enforceable mixture standard would be removed.

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The Legal Battle

The Safe Drinking Water Act contains what’s called an anti-backsliding provision.

It says that once EPA sets a federal drinking water standard, any revision must “maintain, or provide for greater, protection of the health of persons.”

EPA has already faced setbacks on this in court. In January 2026, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals denied EPA’s request to summarily vacate four of the six PFAS rules. In March 2026, the same court denied EPA’s follow-up motion to set the litigation aside while the agency wrote a new rule. The court said the legal merits were not clear enough to warrant skipping the process. The court hasn’t issued a final ruling on whether the rollback is lawful.

Who is affected, and how many

The Environmental Working Group, using recent EPA testing data, estimates about 176 million Americans drink tap water with detectable PFAS.

Yes, 176 Million Americans.
That’s more than half the U.S. population.

The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates more than 73 million people are served by systems that have detected PFAS above limits EPA now seeks to rescind or delay.

When EPA finalized the 2024 rule, the agency’s own analysis projected it would, over many years, prevent thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of serious PFAS-attributable illnesses.

Those are EPA’s numbers, not an advocacy group’s.

Every additional year of contaminated water is a year of additional exposure for the people drinking it.

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What EPA says, and what’s true

The EPA’s argument deserves a fair hearing.

There are concerns about cost, small rural water systems struggling to afford treatment upgrades, and whether ratepayers will end up paying for contamination caused by polluters.

The American Water Works Association has warned that compliance costs could be substantially higher than EPA’s original estimates.

Federal rules that get struck down in court provide no protection at all.

What is not right is treating those concerns as reason to remove protections rather than to strengthen the polluter-pays system that would fund cleanup.

PFAS contamination often originates from industrial uses, chemical manufacturing, firefighting foam, and consumer-product supply chains.

Communities didn’t fully create the problem and are often left paying to manage it. Asking them to wait with no guarantee the replacements will be as strong, transfers the risk from the polluters to the people drinking the water.

Five questions to Ponder

1. Will EPA, when it writes replacement rules for the four rescinded standards, propose limits as strong as or stronger than the 2024 versions?

2. How will the anti-backsliding provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act apply if the replacements are weaker, or if they never come?

3. Which water systems will request the extension to 2031, and will affected households be clearly notified?

4. Will the Hazard Index for mixtures return in any form, or will combined-exposure risk go unmeasured?

5. What happens to the nearly $1 billion in new grant funding if utilities are no longer racing to meet a 2029 deadline?

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What you can do once the comment window opens

This is a federal decisions where the public has a formal opportunity to weigh in.

1. Submit a public comment. Once the proposed rules are published in the Federal Register, the public will have 60 days to comment. Comments become part of the official record and EPA is legally required to consider them.

2. Attend the virtual public hearing on July 7, 2026 if you can. It‘s open to the public and will accept oral testimony.

3. Look up your local water system’s Consumer Confidence Report. Public water systems are required to publish annual water-quality reports. Search “[your city or utility name] Consumer Confidence Report” and find out whether PFAS have been detected in your water, and at what levels.

4. Call your senators and your House representative. Ask whether they support keeping all 2024 PFAS standards in place and on the original 2029 compliance timeline. Use 5calls.org for scripts and direct dialing.

5. Talk to people about this. Most people have never even heard the word PFAS. The most powerful think you can do is to help educate the people around you.

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Where this leaves us

The 2024 rule was the first time in American history that the federal government set enforceable limits on these specific chemicals in the water people drink every day.

Once the comment window opens, we will have 60 days to be on the record about whether that is acceptable.

Have you looked up your local water system’s Consumer Confidence Report? If so, what did you find? If not, will you this week?

Just go to Google and search: *your city name, Consumer Confidence Report

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Sources:

EPA Press Release, May 18, 2026
EPA PFAS Drinking Water page
Harvard Environmental & Energy Law Program PFAS Tracke
CNN
NRDC
Environmental Working Group

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TLDR

Trump dropped his $10 billion IRS lawsuit, and DOJ says he will receive an apology but no money. But the settlement created a new $1.776 billion taxpayer-funded “Anti-Weaponization Fund” for people who claim they were politically targeted by the government. The major concern is not whether Trump personally gets a check. It is who qualifies for this money, who decides, whether January 6 defendants could benefit, and whether the public will ever see the full list of payouts.

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What Happened This Morning

Attorneys for President Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization filed notice in federal court in Miami voluntarily dismissing the IRS lawsuit with prejudice. The case is closed and the same claims can’t be refiled. The suit was over the leak of confidential tax information tied to Trump, his sons, the Trump Organization, and other wealthy Americans in 2019 and 2020 by Charles Littlejohn, a former IRS contractor who pleaded guilty in 2023 and is currently serving a five-year federal sentence.

Within hours, the Justice Department announced what was created in exchange.

What we know about the Anti-Weaponization Fund

• Size and source. $1.776 billion, drawn from the federal Judgment Fund, a permanent Treasury account normally used to pay specific court judgments and settlements against the government.

• Stated purpose. To issue formal apologies and monetary relief to people who claim they were harmed by government “weaponization” or “lawfare.” Filing a claim is voluntary, and DOJ says there are no partisan requirements.

• Oversight structure. Five commissioners appointed by the Attorney General, with one chosen in consultation with congressional leadership. The President can remove any member.

• Reporting. Quarterly updates go to the Attorney General, not to the public. The fund can be audited at the Attorney General’s direction.

• The Deadline. DOJ says the fund must stop processing claims in December 2028, just before the end of President Trump’s term. Any unspent money reverts to the federal government.

• Trump’s role. Trump and the other plaintiffs receive a formal apology but no monetary damages. They also agreed to withdraw two other administrative claims totaling $230 million, one tied to the Mar-a-Lago search and one to the Russia investigation.

Trump will not receive a check from this fund.

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Why this is More Than a lawsuit:

Congress holds the power of the purse.

Only Congress can appropriate public money. It keeps the executive branch from spending taxpayer dollars however it chooses, on whomever it favors.

The Judgment Fund is a narrow exception. It lets the government pay specific legal obligations without Congress passing a new spending bill each time. It is a back-end mechanism for settling individual legal claims. This arrangement stretches that system beyond its role: paying judgments and settlements, not standing up a new compensation program with political significance.

What the Justice Department has now done is reach into that system and use it to launch a nearly $2 billion compensation program.
No congressional vote.
No Senate confirmation for the commissioners who will decide who gets paid.
No DOJ-announced requirement that the public receive a list of beneficiaries, award amounts, or decision standards.
The commissioners are picked by the Attorney General. The President can fire them. The reports stay inside the department.

Paul Figley, who spent 32 years in DOJ’s Civil Division and has written extensively on the Judgment Fund, told Axios that this amounts to “creating a government program... without going through Congress and having Congress set it up and fund it.” A group of 93 House Democrats filed an amicus brief calling the arrangement “collusive litigation” and warning that it implicates the separation of powers, the Domestic Emoluments Clause, and the two-year statute of limitations.

Senator Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on Senate Finance, called the move “a stunning act of corruption.” Senator Elizabeth Warren called it “a giant slush fund of taxpayer dollars.”

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The January 6, handled carefully

DOJ has not publicly released eligibility criteria or named beneficiaries.

What is confirmed is that ABC News and TIME reported before today’s announcement that the proposed fund could include people charged in connection with January 6, and Reuters notes that “weaponization” and “lawfare” are terms the President and his allies have used to describe criminal cases, including those arising from the Capitol attack. The Hill reports that several convicted January 6 defendants have pending civil suits. Whether any of them ultimately receive money is not yet known. The question is now on the table.

We Need Answers

1. Who sits on the five-member commission, and what are their qualifications?

2. What standard of evidence will claimants have to meet?

3. Will the names of beneficiaries and the amounts awarded be made public?

4. Is there an appeal process, and if so, who hears it?

5. How will the public know whether anyone connected to January 6 receives compensation?

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Supporting this Newsletter

We are an independent, reader-funded publication. No ads, & No corporate sponsorship. We run on careful reporting, a lot of caffeine, research, and a commitment to giving readers solid ground to stand on. If that feels worth funding, becoming a paid subscriber is how you keep us going here on Substack. Your support is not for content access, it’s to help us research and get information out to as many people as possible. Thanks for reading!

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Sources:

DOJ Office of Public Affairs
ABC News
Axios
CNBC
The Hill
NPR
Washington Post

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On May 15, 2026

The New York Times reported that the Trump administration is considering a $1.7 billion fund to compensate President Donald Trump’s allies and others who say they were harmed by Justice Department investigations during the Biden administration.

BUT… this is still not finalized or approved…

The fund could compensate people in Trump’s orbit who incurred legal costs during federal investigations, and it could potentially extend to some of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The administration has reportedly discussed modeling the program, in part, on past federal settlement funds, with possible payments through the Treasury Department’s Judgment Fund, a standing source of federal money used to pay certain legal judgments and settlements.

A republic depends on the idea that public money is held in trust. The taxes paid by us, we the people, are not the personal purse of a president, a party, or a political movement.

They’re supposed to fund the public business of the country: roads, courts, veterans’ care, disaster relief, schools, safety, and the basic machinery of self-government.

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In the Gilded Age,

reformers challenged the spoils system, in which government jobs and favors were treated as rewards for political loyalty.

After President James A. Garfield was assassinated in 1881 by a disappointed office-seeker, Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act to begin separating public service from personal patronage. It was an imperfect reform, but it rested on a basic principle: government should not be treated as a prize to be distributed among friends.

The Times reports that the fund is connected to Trump’s broader legal claims against the federal government, including a $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service and separate claims against the Justice Department. But the legal posture is unusual because Trump now controls the very executive branch agencies involved in responding to those claims. A federal judge has already questioned whether the IRS lawsuit can proceed when the president effectively controls both sides of the dispute.

The person seeking compensation also controls the government that may decide whether to pay.

Framers didn’t imagine virtue as a sufficient guardrail.

They built a system of divided powers because they knew that ambition, loyalty, and self-interest could distort public office. Courts, Congress, inspectors general, independent prosecutors, civil service protections, and public records laws all developed from the same understanding: power requires oversight.

This reported fund is not JUST about January 6 defendants, or Trump allies, or one lawsuit against the IRS.

but whether the machinery of government can be used to turn grievance into payment. And about whether legal accountability can be recast as victimhood when the people involved are politically useful to those in power and if taxpayers may be asked to finance a story in which the president’s allies are not defendants, targets, witnesses, or subjects of investigation, but injured parties entitled to public compensation.

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None of this means the proposal will become policy… it hasn’t been approved.

The details remain uncertain & this is still developing.

In a democracy, the rule of law is not proved by how the government treats its friends.

It is proved by whether the law can remain steady when powerful people ask it to bend.

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Sources and further reading

The New York Times | “Trump Administration Weighs $1.7 Billion Fund for Allies Investigated Under Biden”

ABC News | “Trump poised to drop IRS suit, launch $1.7B ‘weaponization’ compensation fund for allies: Sources”

U.S. Treasury Department | Judgment Fund background

Cornell Legal Information Institute | 31 U.S. Code § 1304, Judgments, awards, and compromise settlements

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TL;DR:

The Supreme Court temporarily kept access to mifepristone, the abortion pill, in place while the lawsuit continues. Patients can still get it under current FDA rules, including by mail and without an in-person doctor visit. But this is not a final ruling.

The bigger fight is about whether courts and state officials can override FDA drug-safety decisions, which could affect far more than abortion access.

The Supreme Court left access to mifepristone in place this week, blocking lower-court restrictions while the lawsuit continues.

Patients can still obtain the medication through pharmacies or by mail, without an in-person doctor visit.

Mifepristone was first approved by the FDA in 2000.

It’s used with misoprostol for medication abortion, and the FDA says its reviews have not identified new safety concerns when the drug is used as directed.

Louisiana’s lawsuit is trying to roll back FDA rules on how the medication can be prescribed. A federal appeals court had allowed restrictions that would have required in-person visits and stopped mail delivery. The Supreme Court has now paused those restrictions while the case moves forward.

For those trying to follow the legal fight:

1. Access remains in place right now.
   Patients can still obtain mifepristone through the current FDA rules.

2. The lawsuit is not over.
   This was an emergency order, not a final decision on the whole case.

3. The bigger question is unresolved.
   Can courts and state officials override federal drug-safety decisions made by the FDA?

If courts can second-guess the FDA’s scientific judgment because a state objects to how a drug is used, the consequences could extend well beyond abortion. It could change how medication access works in the United States.

A few things are worth holding together at the same time:

• This is good news for access.

• This is not permanent protection.

• The anti-abortion legal strategy is still active.

• The Court could see this issue again.

• Elections still shape the judges, agencies, and laws that decide these fights.

Two justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, dissented. Anti-abortion groups are also continuing to push for new restrictions on mifepristone through the FDA review process.

For now, access remains.

And that is still a win.

For the long term, reproductive freedom still depends on who holds power, who writes the laws, who appoints the judges, and whether ordinary people keep paying attention. Thank you to those who continue to fight for women’s rights.

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MONDAY: All of U.S. 250 Announcement | June 27th National Day of Action

The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence does not belong to one administration, one party, or a carefully edited version of history.

Monday’s post announced All of U.S. 250, a national day of action on Saturday, June 27 organized to defend the full story of America before the country’s semi-quincentennial. The 250th was always going to be politicized.

The anniversary belongs to every generation that fought to make the word “all” mean something closer to all. June 27 is the day we mobilize to say THIS IS OUR COUNTRY.

TUESDAY: Who to Call and Email Today

Tuesday’s action guide gave readers ready-to-use scripts on three urgent fronts:

1. Oppose Kevin Warsh’s confirmation to the Federal Reserve Board. The independence of the Fed has never been more politically vulnerable, and Warsh’s record raises serious concerns about whether he would protect it.

2. Oppose the roughly $72 billion ICE and CBP reconciliation package. Funding enforcement at that scale, with the accountability gaps currently in place, is not a serious immigration policy. It is a blank check.

3. Demand federal voting-rights protections as Tennessee moves to dismantle Black political representation in Memphis.

The Capitol switchboard is (202) 224-3121. The Senate contact page and the House ZIP finder are live.

WEDNESDAY: The Tennessee Retaliation Is a Five-Alarm Warning for Democracy

Republican lawmakers redrew the map. Then they punished the people who objected.

Wednesday’s post took readers inside Tennessee, where Republican lawmakers approved a new congressional map that breaks apart Memphis and Shelby County, dismantling Tennessee’s only majority-Black congressional district. The new map splits Black voters across three majority-white districts and could allow Republicans to hold all nine of Tennessee’s congressional seats after the midterms.

Then came the retaliation:

Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton stripped House Democrats of their standing committee and subcommittee assignments after protests during the special session.

Committees are where bills are debated, amended, delayed, killed, or moved forward. Removing elected representatives from committees doesn’t only punish those lawmakers, it reduces the voice of the voters who sent them there.

THURSDAY: All Roads Lead to the South

Tomorrow is a national mobilization. Here is why the timing matters.

Thursday’s post laid out the case for All Roads Lead to the South, a national voting-rights mobilization led by Black Voters Matter and a coalition of more than 90 civil rights, faith, labor, and community organizations. The anchor events are in Alabama, but the call is national. People across the country are invited to host events, join local solidarity actions, and help carry the message through their own communities.

The Supreme Court’s April 29 decision in Louisiana v. Callais weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as a tool for challenging racially discriminatory congressional maps. Within days, several Republican-controlled states moved to redraw or revisit congressional maps. Tennessee signed a new map. Alabama asked the Supreme Court to revisit a court order requiring a map with two largely Black districts.

South Carolina’s state Senate blocked a redistricting effort this week, but the broader fight continues.

Voting rights are the ground beneath every other issue.

Congress, state legislatures, city councils, school boards, public budgets, civil rights protections, health care, education, labor rights, environmental policy, local representation: every one of them depends on whether voters can choose their representatives, or whether politicians choose their voters.

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The attacks on voting rights are moving quickly. Faster than the courts.

Faster, in some cases, than the press.

We need people who can march, people who can call, people who can share accurate information, people who can host events, people who can help neighbors check their registration, and people who can keep explaining what is happening when the news cycle moves on.

WHAT TO DO THIS WEEKEND

Saturday, May 16: All Roads Lead to the South. Find or host a voting-rights action. Anchor events are in Alabama, solidarity actions are everywhere.

Share Thursday’s post with a local group, faith community, civic club, neighborhood page, or family text thread. The information is only as useful as its reach.

Call your senators and ask them to support federal voting-rights protections, fair redistricting standards, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Mark June 27 on your calendar for All of U.S. 250, the next major national day of action.

And keep paying attention. The point of these attacks is to exhaust us.

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A lot of people are tired, but tired doesn’t mean powerless.

What is helping you stay steady right now?

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You can grow this movement by forwarding this Friday Briefing to someone, dropping a comment to boost the algorithm, or hitting the like or restack button. Every interaction helps more people find us so we can all mobilize, together.

Thanks for reading. See you out there tomorrow.

-Blue

Dancing Todd returns for another Friday Recap because resistance doesn’t have to look like rage to be powerful.

Joy is not a distraction. It is how we keep going without becoming what they want us to be.

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The Voting Rights Act was born from blood, courage, and generations of organizing.

Now, piece by piece, the protections it created are being narrowed just as states are moving to redraw political power.

On April 29, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Louisiana v. Callais. The ruling, decided 6 to 3, significantly weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as a tool for challenging racially discriminatory congressional maps.

For decades, Section 2 has been one of the central federal protections against vote dilution in redistricting. Justice Kagan warned in dissent that the decision “renders Section 2 all but a dead letter.”

Within days, several Republican-controlled states moved to redraw or revisit congressional maps.

Louisiana suspended its U.S. House primaries after more than 100,000 absentee ballots had already been sent out and roughly 42,000 voters had already cast ballots.

Tennessee’s governor called a special session and signed a new map that divides Memphis and dismantles the state’s only majority-Black congressional district.

Alabama asked the Supreme Court to lift a court order requiring a map with two largely Black districts, and the Court sent the case back for reconsideration in light of Callais, potentially allowing the state to use a legislature-approved map with only one majority-Black district.

In South Carolina, the House advanced a proposal that could have allowed lawmakers to target the district held by Rep. Jim Clyburn.

The state Senate blocked the effort this week in a 29 to 17 vote, though the fight may not be fully over if lawmakers are called back into session.

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Join us, this Saturday, May 16.

All Roads Lead to the South is a national mobilization for voting rights, led by Black Voters Matter and a coalition of more than 90 civil rights, faith, labor, and community organizations.

The major anchor events are taking place in Alabama, but the call is national: people across the country are being invited to host events, join local solidarity actions, and help move the message through their own communities.

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The day in Alabama begins with a prayer gathering at 9:00 a.m. CT at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, on the same ground where marchers were beaten in 1965 for demanding the right to vote. At 1:00 p.m. CT, a national rally begins at the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery. Solidarity events are being organized across the country.

Rev. Dr. Bernice A. King, CEO of The King Center, is also expected to join the Montgomery event.

May 16 will begin a sustained summer of organizing, including voter mobilization, civic education, economic pressure, legal advocacy, and direct action.

The No Kings coalition, which has organized three national days of action since last year, is joining in solidarity.

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For the 50501 community, the connection is direct.

Every time we talk about protecting democracy, about making sure people’s voices count, about civic power that lives in communities and not just in courtrooms, this is what we are talking about.

Voting rights are not one issue among many. They’re the through which every other issue gets decided.

When maps are drawn to predetermine outcomes, the rest of the democratic process narrows. School board seats, state legislatures, city councils, congressional representation: all of it flows from whether voters can choose their representatives or whether politicians choose their voters.

For older Americans who remember the civil rights movement, this may feel painfully familiar. For younger Americans who were taught that the Voting Rights Act settled the question, this is a reminder that rights carry on because people defend them.

Not everyone can travel to Alabama. Not everyone can march. But everyone reading this can do something concrete before Saturday.

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Find an event near you.

Use the Black Voters Matter Mobilize map to search for All Roads Lead to the South events happening across the country.

Host an event.

If nothing is listed near you, organizers are inviting people to create one through the Black Voters Matter event page.

Forward/Share this post.

Send it to your chapter, your group chat, your faith community, your neighborhood list, your civic club.

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Share a message today.

Something like: “All Roads Lead to the South is happening this Saturday, May 16. Find or host a voting rights action near you.”

The South has always carried more than its share of America’s democratic burden. Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham, the Black Belt: these communities have shown this country again and again that democracy is protected by people who organize, who show up, who register voters, who challenge maps.

All roads lead to the South this weekend because the South is where some of the most immediate attacks on representation are happening.

But the responsibility belongs to all of us.

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On May 7, Republican lawmakers approved a congressional map that breaks apart Memphis and Shelby County, dismantling Tennessee’s only majority-Black congressional district.

The new map splits Black voters in Memphis and Shelby County across three majority-white districts that stretch hundreds of miles into central Tennessee, according to the ACLU’s lawsuit. The result makes it likely that Republicans could hold all nine of Tennessee’s congressional seats after the midterms.

Yesterday, on May 12, Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton stripped House Democrats of their standing committee and subcommittee assignments after protests during the special session.

In his letter to House Democratic Leader Karen Camper, Sexton accused Democratic lawmakers of disrupting the legislative process. He cited interlocking arms, blocking aisles, and the use of prohibited props or noisemakers.

Rep. Justin Pearson, a Democrat from Memphis, said the decision removed “me and every Democrat, and therefore every Black elected official in the state legislature from any committee we served on.” Rep. Justin Jones, Rep. Gabby Salinas, and Rep. Gloria Johnson also confirmed they were removed.

And it may not stop with the House.

Lt. Governor McNally’s spokesperson said McNally is “currently reviewing and considering several possible actions” against those who participated during the special session. Senate Democrats have not yet been affected, but the door is open.

Committees are where bills are shaped, debated, amended, delayed, killed, or moved forward. Removing elected representatives from those committees doesn’t only punish those representatives, it reduces the voice of every voter who sent them there. 24 House districts’ worth of Tennesseans now have less representation in the committee rooms where legislation is made.

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What Tennessee Did

The new congressional map was unveiled only 24 hours before the special session vote.

To make it legally possible, lawmakers first had to repeal a 1972 Tennessee law that prohibited mid-decade redistricting. Gov. Bill Lee signed that repeal about an hour after it cleared the Republican supermajority.

The special session followed pressure from President Trump and came just days after the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais weakened key Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters.

Republicans have defended the map as a partisan redistricting effort rather than a racial one. Republican leaders argued the map was drawn using partisan and population data, not race. Sen. John Stevens, the Senate sponsor of the new map, listed several Democratic-controlled states where district maps were designed for partisan advantage. However, civil-rights groups and Democratic lawmakers argue the practical effect is to split Black voters in Memphis across three majority-white, Republican-leaning districts, and that the stated neutrality does not change the outcome.

The redistricting package also weakened direct voter-notice requirements.

County election officials will no longer be required under state law to directly notify voters by mail when redistricting changes affect their polling-place assignments, though separate funding was included to reimburse counties that choose to send notices.. Making voter self-checking even more important.

Tennessee voters: verify your registration, district, and polling-place information now.

The Secretary of State’s office announced a special qualifying period for U.S. House candidates through noon on May 15, and local reporting says the new districts bring changes for some voters and candidates.

The Retaliation

Sexton’s stated justification was that Democratic lawmakers disrupted the House floor during the special session. His letter cited interlocking arms, blocking aisles, using noisemakers, and allegedly coordinating with protesters.

The context can’t be separated from the punishment.

Democratic lawmakers were protesting a map that civil rights advocates say dilutes Black voting power in Memphis.

Black lawmakers stood in the front of the chamber linking arms in prayer as protesters chanted against the maps.

Protest is being treated differently depending on who is protesting, what they’re protesting, and whose power is being challenged. The same legislature that moved rapidly to reshape representation is now punishing the lawmakers who resisted that reshaping.

Rep. Gabby Salinas of Memphis posted a single message after receiving her removal letter: “I would do it again.”

She also said “It’s interesting that disenfranchising an entire district here in Shelby County carries zero consequences, but speaking out, using your voice, and representing the interest of the people of Tennessee is something that they deemed punishable.”

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The Legal Fight

The NAACP Tennessee State Conference filed an emergency petition on May 7 in Davidson County Chancery Court, arguing that lawmakers violated Tennessee law and the state constitution when they repealed the ban on mid-decade redistricting during a special session whose stated purpose did not include that repeal. The Tennessee Supreme Court has named a three-judge panel to hear the case.

A separate federal lawsuit filed by the Tennessee Democratic Party, Rep. Steve Cohen, several congressional candidates, and voters is also moving forward. The May 20 hearing is now the next major court date. A federal judge will consider whether to temporarily block Tennessee’s new congressional maps, but that hearing comes five days after the May 15 candidate qualifying deadline. That timing is part of the problem plaintiffs are raising: the map was passed deep into the election calendar, after candidates and voters had already begun operating under the previous districts.

On May 11, the ACLU and ACLU of Tennessee filed a third lawsuit in federal court on behalf of three Memphis voters and several community organizations including the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis. The ACLU’s complaint argues the map constitutes intentional racial discrimination and First Amendment retaliation against Black voters for their political expression. The ACLU’s filing also placed the redistricting within a broader pattern of state action targeting Memphis specifically: the 2017 removal of bicentennial funding after the city took down Confederate statues, the expulsion of two Black lawmakers in 2023, a 2026 law authorizing state takeover of Memphis-Shelby County Schools, and another 2026 law giving the state Attorney General power to seek replacement of Shelby County’s elected district attorney.

Public attention keeps pressure on the process and helps voters understand what is happening before the next election deadline.

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Why This Goes Beyond Tennessee

Tennessee is among the first states to enact a new congressional map after the Callais decision, and reporting from AP and Reuters confirms that the ruling has intensified redistricting fights across several states. Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and South Carolina are all engaged in redistricting efforts that follow the same pattern.

At the federal level, the fight moves state by state. Maps get redrawn and communities get split. Courts get asked to intervene. And when lawmakers speak up, they risk being punished for it.

On May 12, the Memphis City Council voted 10-0 to oppose the redistricting plan, saying it dilutes the political voice of Memphis, particularly its Black community, for partisan gain.

What We Can Do

This is a moment for focused civic pressure. Here is what is actionable right now:

For Tennessee readers: Contact Speaker Cameron Sexton (615-741-2343) and Gov. Bill Lee (615-741-2001). Ask that House Democrats be restored to their committee assignments and that the state stop enforcing a map that splits Memphis while litigation is pending.

For Tennessee voters: Check your registration, congressional district, and polling place directly through official election sources. Do not assume your district or polling place stayed the same. The Secretary of State announced a special qualifying period for U.S. House candidates through noon on May 15, and local reporting says the new districts bring changes for some voters and candidates.

For national readers: Support the legal and civil-rights organizations challenging these maps. Follow updates from the ACLU of Tennessee and Democracy Docket. The legal fight is moving fast, and public attention applies pressure.

For everyone: Call your own members of Congress and ask them to support federal voting-rights protections, national anti-gerrymandering standards, and protections against mid-decade map manipulation.

You can find your representatives at 5calls.org or by calling the Congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Share this post & make the calls.

Follow the May 20 hearing. And help Tennessee voters find the information they need before the qualifying deadline closes on Friday:

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What action are you taking this week? What would be the best way to mobilize right now?

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Further Reading / Sources:

Democracy Docket: Tennessee Republicans Strip Democrats from Committees

WSMV: Most TN House Democrats Stripped of Committee Assignments

ACLU: Tennessee Voters Sue to Block Redrawn Congressional Map

Tennessee Lookout: Federal Judge Sets May 20 Hearing

Tennessee Lookout: NAACP Lawsuit and State Response

AP/ABC News: Tennessee Redistricting Splits Memphis Neighbors

The Senate is scheduled to vote today on Kevin Warsh’s nomination to a 14-year term on the Federal Reserve Board, followed by a cloture vote on his nomination to serve as Fed Chair. Senate Republicans are pushing a roughly $72 billion enforcement package through reconciliation, including major new funding for ICE, CBP, and Secret Service security upgrades connected to Trump’s East Wing ballroom project. And last week, Tennessee enacted a new congressional map carving up Memphis’s majority-Black district, becoming the first state to adopt new districts after the Supreme Court undermined a key Voting Rights Act protection.

Today’s Three Calls

Today, we are asking everyone to contact their senators on three issues that are happening right now.

First, tell your senators to oppose Kevin Warsh’s confirmation to the Federal Reserve Board. The Senate is scheduled to vote on his 14-year term as a Fed governor today, with a cloture vote on his Chair nomination to follow.

Second, tell your senators to oppose the $72 billion reconciliation package that would fund ICE, CBP, and security upgrades connected to Trump’s White House ballroom project, all through a process that bypasses the normal 60-vote threshold. Committee markups are expected the week of May 19, which means this week is the best window for pressure.

Third, tell your senators to support federal voting rights legislation and oppose any redistricting effort that eliminates Black representation. Tennessee just carved up Memphis’s majority-Black congressional district in a special session, and other states are preparing to do the same.

The Message For Today:

Protect independent institutions.
Fund people, not enforcement without accountability.
Defend the right of every American to be represented.

Call One: Oppose Kevin Warsh’s Confirmation to the Federal Reserve Board

The Senate voted 49-44 last night to advance Kevin Warsh’s nomination to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. The Senate is scheduled to vote on his 14-year term today, Tuesday, May 12, with a cloture vote on his separate nomination to serve as Fed Chair to follow. Jerome Powell’s term as Chair expires Friday, May 15.

Trump has repeatedly demanded that the Fed cut interest rates. The administration launched a criminal investigation into Powell, reportedly focused on headquarters renovation cost overruns. A federal judge blocked the investigation, calling it a “mere pretext” to pressure the Fed on rates. The DOJ dropped the probe only after Sen. Thom Tillis refused to advance Warsh until they did. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who ended the investigation, said at the time she would restart a criminal investigation “should the facts warrant doing so.”

The Senate Banking Committee advanced Warsh on a party-line vote, 13-11. Sen. Elizabeth Warren called it the first fully partisan committee vote on a Fed Chair nominee in the committee’s history, and warned that confirming Warsh “will bring the president one step closer to completing his illegal attempt to seize control of the Fed.”

The Federal Reserve is supposed to operate independently from political pressure. That independence is what protects the value of your paycheck, your savings, and your retirement. When the president gets to install a loyalist at the Fed after using the DOJ to force out the sitting Chair, that is not business as usual. That is institutional capture.

Sens. John Fetterman and Chris Coons were the only Democrats to vote to advance Warsh.

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Call Two: Oppose the $72 Billion ICE/CBP Reconciliation Package

Senate Republicans released the text of a roughly $72 billion reconciliation package on May 4. The Judiciary Committee’s portion includes $30.7 billion for ICE and $3.5 billion for CBP-related immigration enforcement. The Homeland Security Committee’s portion adds $32.5 billion more for DHS, including CBP personnel, border security, immigration enforcement, and related programs. Committee markups are expected the week of May 19, and the full Senate could take up the package within two weeks after that.

The package also includes $1 billion for the Secret Service for “security adjustments and upgrades” connected to what the legislation calls the “East Wing Modernization Project.” That is the White House ballroom. Trump has said private donations would cover the ballroom itself, but the proposed security upgrades connected to the project would be charged to taxpayers through this package.

Republicans are using reconciliation because Democrats refused to fund ICE and CBP without reforms, especially after multiple reports and investigations involving deadly force by federal immigration officers. Reconciliation lets the Senate pass the bill with 51 votes instead of the usual 60, which means public pressure before committee markup is the best window for influence.

When families ask for help with health care, housing, food, and education, Congress asks how to pay for it. When power wants $72 billion for enforcement and a ballroom, somehow the money appears.

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Call Three: Defend Voting Rights and Black Representation in Tennessee and Nationwide

Last week, Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature enacted a new congressional map that carves up the state’s only majority-Black congressional district, centered in Memphis. The map splits Memphis’s political power across three Republican-leaning districts and gives Republicans a chance to win all nine of Tennessee’s congressional seats in November.

Gov. Bill Lee called a special session amid Trump’s broader push for Republican-led states to redraw maps before the midterms. The legislature convened on May 5, repealed a state law that had prohibited mid-decade redistricting since 1972, drew a new map, and passed it on May 7. Lee signed it into law the same day.

This happened days after the Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which significantly weakened how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can be used to protect voters of color in redistricting cases. For decades, Section 2 has been one of the central tools communities used to challenge maps and election systems that dilute minority voting power. The Court’s ruling gave Republican-led states new grounds to attack majority-Black districts before the midterms.

The NAACP Tennessee State Conference sued in state court on May 7 to block the map. On May 12, three Memphis voters, represented through the ACLU, filed a separate federal lawsuit alleging that the new map discriminates against Black voters.

Tennessee Democratic Rep. London Lamar put it plainly. “You cannot take a majority Black city, fracture its voting power, and then tell us race has nothing to do with it. Racism does not become less racist because it’s called partisan.”

Tennessee is not the end. Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina have also taken steps toward new maps, and Alabama may now be able to eliminate one of its two largely Black congressional districts before the midterms. This is a national pattern, and it requires a national response.

Congress has the power to restore voting-rights protections. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would strengthen federal protections against racial discrimination in voting. Your senators need to hear that this matters today.

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Bonus Call: Protect Medicare from Automatic Cuts

For those who have time for one more call, this is a strong one.

Budget rules known as PAYGO could trigger automatic Medicare payment cuts as a result of the deficit impact from last year’s reconciliation bill, H.R. 1. Unless Congress acts to exempt Medicare, providers could face automatic payment reductions of up to 4%, which would ripple through hospitals, doctors, rural health systems, and patient access. This is a budget process most people never hear about, and it could affect care for millions of seniors if Congress does not act.

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Where to Find Your Lawmakers

Find your senators through the official Senate contact page. The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.

Find your House representative through the official House lookup tool.

You can also use 5calls.org for issue summaries, call scripts, and direct lawmaker contact information. Or text your ZIP code to Resist Bot at 50409 to send letters to your representatives by text message.

Today’s Action:

Make three calls and send one email.

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Reading List

Here are the sources behind today’s post, so you can read further and share with confidence.

Warsh’s Fed Nomination Clears First Senate Vote (Bloomberg, May 11, 2026)

Warsh Moves Closer to Fed Role with Senate Cloture Vote (Roll Call, May 11, 2026)

Trump Fed Pick Kevin Warsh Clears Key Senate Hurdle (CNBC, April 29, 2026)

Ballroom Fight, Warsh Confirmation on the Agenda This Week (Roll Call, May 11, 2026)

Reconciliation Bill Text Would Fund ICE, CBP, Ballroom Security (Roll Call, May 5, 2026)

Congressional Budget Office Score of Reconciliation Legislation (CBO, May 2026)

Senate Republicans Release $72 Billion Reconciliation Bill (National Low Income Housing Coalition, May 2026)

NAACP Sues Tennessee to Block Elimination of Black Voting District (NAACP, May 7, 2026)

Memphis Voters File Federal Lawsuit Against New Congressional Map (WSMV, May 12, 2026)

Tennessee Republicans Pass Map Carving Up Memphis After SCOTUS Guts Voting Rights Act (Tennessee Lookout, May 7, 2026)

NAACP Tennessee Files Lawsuit Challenging Redrawn Map (Tennessee Lookout, May 7, 2026)

Tennessee Redistricting Plan Splits Memphis Neighbors (AP via Washington Times, May 9, 2026)

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