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A federal court kept immigration enforcement from 8 houses of worship, the first deportees arrived in Liberia under a new third-country deportation agreement and newly released emails show coordination between ICE and Iranian officials.

Disney and ABC sued the FCC, Rhode Island paused the expansion of automated plate readers while communities continue to push back against Flock and heavy surveillance.

Monday

Trump’s approval fell to 33%

A Reuters poll released on Monday found that Trump’s approval rating fell to 33%, the lowest yet of his presidency. And it showed Republicans losing ground on key issues they have traditionally led for years. Their advantage over Democrats on immigration narrowed to just 2 points, compared with 26 percentage points this past January.

The Supreme Court rejected Trump’s E. Jean Carroll appeal

The Supreme Court declined on Monday to reconsider Trump’s appeal of the $5 million verdict awarded to E. Jean Carroll

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A Wisconsin officer, sentenced for misusing Flock

A Wisconsin officer was sentenced on Monday after investigators said he used Flock to search vehicles connected to a former romantic partner for non-law-enforcement reasons. Cristian Morales received three years of probation as part of a withheld sentence.

The Trump administration paused a controversial Big Bend border project

The Trump administration temporarily halted border-security construction inside Big Bend National Park on Monday following protests, lawsuits and bipartisan criticism.

Crews had begun clearing land for roads and other border infrastructure. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott said construction would remain paused while he visited the area and spoke with stakeholders.

On Monday, we also shared an article on 12 things most people don’t know about Flock. (Click here to read)

We went over vehicle data and how it can be searched across multiple jurisdictions, documented cases of officer misuse, connections to immigration enforcement, and a variety of tools people can use to investigate Flock.

Tuesday

A federal appeals court restricted immigration enforcement at places of worship

A three judge panel of the Fourth Circuit upheld an order limiting federal immigration enforcement at eight houses of worship affiliated with Quaker, Sikh and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship groups.

The court concluded that the groups were likely to succeed in their argument that the Trump administration’s policy violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Rhode Island paused new license plate readers

Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee called for a statewide pause on installing and activating new automated license plate readers and ordered a 60-day review of the technology.

The review will examine statewide standards involving privacy, data use, transparency and how information is shared.

Existing cameras are not being removed.

Disney and ABC sued Trump’s FCC

Disney and ABC sued the Federal Communications Commission Tuesday to stop an early review of the broadcast licenses for eight ABC-owned television stations.

Disney said that the government is trying to punish the network over its programming and editorial decisions.

Reuters reported that this is the first time in more than 50 years that a major television broadcaster has been ordered into early license-renewal process.

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Tuesday night we also learned that Angie Nixon won the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Florida and is headed to the November election. Congrats Angie!

Wednesday

69% of Americans say Trump’s businesses influence his decisions

A new Reuters poll found that 69% of Americans believe Trump uses his private business interests to influence his decisions as president.

Even half of the Republicans surveyed said his business interests influence his presidential decision making.

The poll also found that 63% of Americans said it was inappropriate for Trump and his family to profit from cryptocurrency ventures while he is president.

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On Wednesday, we also shared an article: five postcard campaigns currently looking for volunteers ahead of the November midterms. (Click here to read)

Thursday

The first deportees arrived in Liberia

The United States sent its first group of deportees to Liberia on Thursday under an agreement allowing the country to accept as many as 1,200 people being deported from the United States.

The first group included 20 people, many of who are not Liberian citizens.

This is part of the Trump administration’s expanding use of third country deportations, people are being sent to countries other than their own.

Newly released emails revealed ICE’s channel with Iran

Emails released this week show that ICE officials communicated with Iranian officials while arranging deportation flights that returned more than 100 Iranians in late 2025 and early 2026.

The records prove that discussions involving passenger lists and last-minute changes, and the AP reported that someone even appeared to have been deported mistakenly. What became public this week is the record showing how they were arranged.

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Flock Backlash Grows

This week is the National Week of Action Against ALPRs, running August 16 - 22. Communities across the country are organizing protests, taking city council actions, hosting teach-ins and other events against automated license plate readers like Flock.

The Guardian reported Thursday that at least 56 communities have rejected or canceled Flock contracts in 2026.

Some cities that leave Flock are replacing it with ALPR technology from other companies, including Axon, rather than ending mass vehicle surveillance.

And another example of potential abuse surfaced this week in Massachusetts: The town of Stow removed its Flock cameras after an officer was accused of using Flock and other law-enforcement databases to obtain information about someone he knew without a legitimate law-enforcement reason.

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Want to Know More About What Flock Is Doing in Your Community?

Reading about Flock is one thing but finding out what’s happening in your own city is where changes get made and how you give power back to your community.

This week at 50501.co, we published a new step by step guide for investigating your local Flock system. The guide will walk you through how to find local cameras, check retention and sharing rules, look for logs, request public records, track contracts, and turn what you find into something your community can work with. Your community just needs one person to shine a light on what is going on, your community could be waiting on you to do this.

How to Investigate Flock Guide

And at the end of the blog post, there’s even a printable Flock Investigation Checklist you can save, print, fill out, and share with organizers, local groups, or anyone else who wants to investigate their Flock systems.

You don’t need to be a researcher, or privacy expert to investigate this, anyone can do it! You just need to know where to look.

Start investigating your local Flock system, click here.

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Have more news from this week that you think people should know about? Let us know in the comments!

We read all of the comments. Your tips help find stories, developments, and issues we might miss or haven’t seen yet.

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Linktree to Postcard Campaigns

Voter files record if someone participated in an election, not specifically who they voted for.

Participation data is enough information for organizations to create lists of everyone in a county who voted in 2024 and skipped 2022.

Here are 5 Postcard Projects that you can help with

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Postcards to Swing States Campaign

Progressive Turnout Project will mail you postcards with a voter list and message you options that they’ve tested. You have to supply your own stamps and handwriting.

They’re running get-out-the-vote cards for key states and House districts, and a separate boosting campaign aimed towards Texas and Alaska, which both have Senate races this fall.

Their volunteers have written more than 108 million cards since 2020. Their FAQ is helpful if you’re interested in learning more about their campaign before signing up.

Your Vote Counts More Campaign

Signs of Justice gives you voters in swing states who voted in the last election and skipped the midterm.

This Postcard campaign is community-funded, so you’re buying a kit instead of getting it for free.

Field Team 6 Campaign

Field Team 6 has cards with a QR code that takes you straight to registration. You can use your own postcards or buy theirs. Their motto is “Register Democrats. Save the World,” which tells you what you need to know about who they want to win in the upcoming Midterm.

Activate America Campaign

If you want to pick the race, this is a great campaign to look into.
Activate America runs rotating campaigns and lets you choose from what’s currently live, then it sends the addresses and the script(s) for that contest. You provide the cards and the postage.

Postcards to Voters Campaign

Postcards to Voters works in small batches, so you can request a small handful if you choose. You have to be approved as a volunteer first, once you download addresses they want the cards in the mail asap, so try to get them on a day you believe you’ll be committed to sit down and write.

This campaign also rotates through campaigns around the year so when November’s midterm is over, they’ll still be going!

***We are adding another great campaign recently brought to our attention:

Cartoons for Democracy!

Cartoons for Democracy send postcards that use art and satire meant to hold someone’s attention. Their Postcard kits include the postcards, instructions and voter addresses. Most of the message is already printed, so volunteers just hand-address the card and add a short personal sentence. 10/10 for Creativity!

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**Helpful tip: Don’t waste a Forever stamp if your card qualifies for postcard postage.

You can use one, however, you’ll be paying 82 pennies instead of 65, (and across 50 cards that’s $8.50 you could spend on more cards...)

Have you done this before and have another Postcard campaign you’d recommend? Let us know about it in the comments!

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We Have 76 more days from today (8/19/26)

The postcard campaigns are on our Linktree in a collection near the top so you don’t have to search and bookmark 5 different websites.

Linktree to Postcard Campaigns

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1. They’re not speed cameras

Flock’s plate readers don’t measure speed and can’t issue citations.

You can read about Speed Cameras and their laser technology to detect your speed by clicking here. Flock are not currently red-light cameras so nobody should be mailing you a $200 fine.

2. They read and track more than your plate

Flock tracks your plate, along with the make, model and color, plus the time and location of where you go.

Flock says that the plate readers don’t use facial recognition to identify drivers or passenger. Senator Ron Wyden’s office stated in its letter to the Flock company that agencies can search the database by more than just the plate number, they can search by make, model, and even bumper sticker(s).

3. There are more than 120,000 of them, in 49 states

Flock covers thousands of law-enforcement agencies, and Flock says that the cameras are in over 6,000 communities.

There are billions of vehicle scans stored each month. Alaska is the only state without them.

4. The ACLU says less than 1% of what they scan reaches a crime

ALPRs operate as population-scale collection systems rather than targeted surveillance tools. If fewer than 1% of scans are associated with crime or wrongdoing, more than 99% of the records involve vehicles with no identified connection to criminal activity.

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5. Your city’s data can be searched by departments you’ve probably never even heard of

Flock’s National Lookup allows participating law-enforcement agencies to search data collected by participating agencies across jurisdictional lines.

Flock told Sen. Ron Wyden’s office in 2025 that 75% of its law-enforcement customers were enrolled in the National Lookup.

In 2026, CT Insider reviewed Flocks audit records from several Connecticut towns and found thousands of out-of-state searches tied to immigration enforcement, including searches labeled “ICE,” “ICE Assist,” and “immigration.”

6. The newly added 7 day rule doesn’t automatically apply to your city in all cases

CEO Garrett Langley, Flock’s CEO, announced on August 13 that the retention period drops from thirty days to seven but also wrote, “Existing customers will keep their current, democratically approved retention periods.”

So if your town has a current contract, then you keep whatever you have for now which could be 30 days or more until your city or town decides to change it.

7. Flock has an ICE hotlist

Agencies can subscribe their cameras to FBI hotlists organized by topic, and one of them is “Immigration Violator.”

EFF investigator Dave Maass published this article-(click here to read) after a records campaign that includes Stolen Vehicle, Missing Person, Gang or Suspected Terrorist... and Immigration Violator and according to the NCIC operator manual is populated exclusively by ICE.

8. Some Flock alerts trace to warrants ICE issued

The FBI’s Immigration Violator includes plates associated with administrative-warrants issued by ICE agents, not judges.

Created within the executive branch and don’t carry the same authority as a warrant signed by a judge. Participating Flock cameras can compare passing plates against the federal hotlist and alert your local law enforcement when there’s a match.

9. Flock searches have been used in connection with protests

EFF went over ten months of nationwide Flock records and discovered hundreds of protest related searches by many different agencies.

The records have included searches connected to our major protests such as the February 2025 protests, the April Hands Off protests, and the June and October No Kings protests.

10. Officers have typed “hehehe” as their search reason

Flock required officers to enter a reason before searching

In September, officers at a Oregon police department entered “investigation” into a field 111 times and entered “hehehe” twenty times. The Register-Guard reported those were Medford PD searches of Eugene’s data.

Flock’s recently announced August 13, to require a case code instead of just text. MIT Technology Review pointed out last week that since Flock doesn’t verify case numbers against anything, officers can get around the new requirement roughly as easily as they got around the old one.

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11. A police department in California found 71% of its felony alerts had the wrong plate

Roseville, California reviewed 1,427 Flock alerts for vehicles identified as stolen or connected to felony crimes, in 71% of the alerts, it misread license plates.

Flock said that Roseville’s results were because some cameras used old hardware and mounted higher and farther from traffic than recommended.

A bad alert can have serious consequences, one Roseville driver was falsely flagged at least six times because the system repeatedly read a 9 as an 8 on his plate. Police encountered the error often enough that a dispatch supervisor began to recognize his plate.

12. Cities can now block outside immigration searches

Flock’s new “offense filter” lets agencies restrict what other departments are allowed to search their Flock camera data for.

The Flock company says a city could continue allowing searches for stolen cars, missing people and violent crimes while still blocking immigration-enforcement searches.

Find out if your local police department uses Flock

Search your city or agency in the Atlas of Surveillance, this will show you law-enforcement surveillance across the country. Next, check DeFlock, this is an open-source-crowdsourced map of ALPR Flock cameras.

Look up if your local agency uses Flock

Look for the department’s Flock Transparency Portal

Eyes on Flock indexes Flock transparency portals. Depending on if your local agency publicly publishes, the portals can show you the camera count, data-retention policies, sharing relationships/connections, search activity and permitted or prohibited use.

Search Flock Portals

You can search your plate on “Have I Been Flocked”

Have I been Flocked is an independent database built from publicly obtained Flock logs and lets you search a plate to see if it appears in audit records.

Check to see if you have been Flocked

If you want to view records that your department doesn’t publish publicly, you can file a public records request.

EFF published a specific template for requesting records about the NCIC Immigration Violator hotlist. You can send requests directly to your police department or use MuckRock to file and track requests. DeFlock also has a useful public-records guide with examples of ALPR requests

The ACLU’s Get the Flock Out Toolkit walks you through identifying ALPR, researching local programs and challenging or restricting them through the local government.

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Once you know what your city is doing, take the findings to your city council.

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Monday

Columbus spent hours confronting its Flock camera problem

Columbus residents and city officials spent around six hours on Monday debating the city’s use of Flock Safety cameras.

Council members questioned Columbus Police Chief Elaine Bryant and other public safety officials and residents about privacy, data sharing, and if the city should keep using the technology at all.

A recent audit found that Columbus Flock network had been searched 15,577 times for reasons that could have involved immigration enforcement.

The audit found searches from the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Border Patrol, other federal agencies, and law enforcement departments that participate in ICE’s 287g program. Under that program, ICE gives participating state and local officers more federal immigration enforcement powers.

Flock allows thousands of law enforcement agencies to search and share license plate data across jurisdictions and a camera that your local police department bought to investigate stolen cars can become part of a larger system that other departments search from somewhere else.

After the audit, Mayor Andrew Ginther ordered Columbus police to stop statewide sharing of the city’s Flock data. Police already restricted broader nationwide sharing.

Earlier this month, we looked at communities across the country cutting ties with Flock and challenging license plate surveillance.

Would you feel comfortable knowing Flock cameras are tracking you?

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Tuesday

Trump left reporters on the decoy plane

This happened July 8, but we learned the details this week. Trump was preparing to leave the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, when the Secret Service received information about a possible missile attack. A source briefed on the situation told Reuters that the Secret Service considered the threat credible and imminent.

Security officials didn’t have much time to respond.

Trump quickly boarded Air Force One while officials secretly moved him and a small group of aides through an airport catering truck and transferred them to a small C 32A government aircraft. So, Air Force One left Turkey separately.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House staff, and the traveling press corps remained aboard.

Most of the people on the plane didn’t know Trump left them.

Reuters reporters who were aboard said officials ordered the press to close their window shades during the flight. They knew the request was unusual, and didn’t know they were traveling on what effectively was, a decoy plane.

When reporters later asked Trump why they were told to close the shades, he joked:

“But if I go, you go. Right?” Except Trump didn’t go with them.

Trump wanted the Justice Department to take another look at the Reflecting Pool

Trump’s White House asked the Justice Department to examine if prosecutors could bring new charges connected to alleged vandalism at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

The Justice Department already prosecuted former Olympic canoeist David Hearn over damage to the pool liner. However, prosecutors dropped Hearn’s case after reviewing that evidence.

The Justice Department concluded that rushed and flawed renovation work caused problems with the liner, not vandalism.

Trump repeatedly blamed vandals for the damage and even after new evidence emerged, he criticized the decision to drop the case and urged U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro to reconsider it.

The White House pushed the Justice Department to revisit a prosecution after the department’s evidence undercut Trump’s public explanation of his theory.

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Wednesday

We learned that progressives scored a big win in Minnesota primaries

Peggy Flanagan defeated Rep. Angie Craig for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Official Minnesota results show Flanagan won 59.01 percent of the vote to Craig’s 39.39 percent. AP called it another major victory for the party’s progressive wing. Flanagan ran with support from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, called for dismantling ICE, rejected corporate PAC money, and said she would reject money from AIPAC.

DSA’s marquee candidate Francesca Hong came within a few thousand votes of becoming the Democratic nominee for governor, but Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley narrowly defeated her. Her platform included abolishing ICE, taxing billionaires, and temporarily stopping new data centers. Trump took a big loss here: Minnesota Republicans rejected his endorsed candidate Mike Lindell for governor and nominated state House Speaker Lisa Demuth instead.

ICE plans on spending up to 20 million dollars on shock gloves

We shared a full article going over this on Wednesday that you can read by clicking here.

DHS published an acquisition forecast stating that ICE has a new requirement to purchase the shock gloves.

The name stands for ‘Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter.’

The gloves are like tactical gloves until an officer activates its electric-shock mode. The officer has to make direct skin-to-skin contact, and then the gloves will deliver a painful electrical stimulus intended to gain compliance.

DHS estimates the contract at $10 million to $20 million and that ICE intends to issue the device to officers and agents in Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement and Removal Operations.

The manual guide says the shock gloves shouldn’t be used against vulnerable groups, including children, pregnant people, the elderly, and those with severe disabilities and it also warns against using the device just because someone is verbally defiant or as punishment.

A pending lawsuit alleges that a 43 year old died when officers at a Kentucky jail shocked him 27 times with shock-gloves and another 13 times with a Taser in 2024.

That 2024 investigation found two shock-glove activations that lasted 45 seconds and 99 seconds while the manufacturer recommends a maximum activation of 15 seconds.

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Thursday

After many months of backlash, Flock is making adjustments

Flock made new changes to their rules governing its license plate readers. Flock says it will reduce its standard retention period from 30 days down to 7 days.

Flock will start requiring law enforcement to use an auditing feature designed to identify abnormal searches and officers will additionally have to connect searches to codes from their records management systems, tying the search to a specific case.

Flock will now give cities and police departments more control over the types of investigations outside-agencies can conduct using the data, so a city can block outside searches tied to immigration enforcement.

More than 50 agencies or jurisdictions have canceled, suspended, rejected, or deactivated Flock systems since the beginning of 2026 🎉

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Friday

Operation Puppet Master

Court documents filed on Thursday reveal a federal operation that targeted progressive organizations, labor unions, and groups protesting the immigration crackdown in Minnesota.

Federal officials are calling it Operation Puppet Master.

The documents became public through a criminal case involving 15 people. The Justice Department charged 15 defendants in June with crimes that include conspiracy to impede federal officers, assault, threats, stalking, and destruction of government property.

These are allegations and the defendants haven’t been convicted.

Department of Homeland Security officers entered meetings in churches, schools, and parks while working undercover. Agents also monitored activist chat groups and used plate numbers to identify people who attended gatherings.

One Homeland Security page titled “The Conspiracy” listed 18 organizations, ranging from a Minneapolis bicycle repair collective to the AFL-CIO.

At a January 31 meeting in Minneapolis, an undercover Homeland Security officer listened as Sunrise Movement supporters discussed sit-ins, de-escalation, safety-marshals, and even having a police liaison at events.

The officer’s report said the group focused on peaceful protests.

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Some Good News!

Look at what happened in Columbus this week

Residents and city officials spent six hours questioning police and a Flock representative about privacy, immigration enforcement, and who should have access to the city’s license plate data. Public comments favored removing the cameras and city Council member Emmanuel Remy said “everything is on the table” as Columbus decides if it will renew its Flock contract in December.

More than 50 agencies or jurisdictions have now canceled, suspended, rejected, or deactivated Flock systems since the beginning of 2026, according to a tracker cited by the AP. Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation to restrict FLOCK, while civil liberties groups and communities across the country have raised alarms about immigration enforcement, warrantless tracking, and police using the system for personal searches.

Flock responded on Thursday with some major policy changes. The company is going to cut its standard data retention period from 30 days to 7 days. Police will have to connect searches to specific case-codes and Flock will also require an auditing system designed to detect unusual searches and temporarily lock users out while departments investigate them. Cities will also gain more control over the types of investigations outside agencies can conduct with their data, including the ability to restrict searches related to immigration enforcement.

A year ago, most people never even heard of Flock and now city councils are holding hours long hearings about the cameras. Lawmakers from both parties are questioning it and communities are uniting to canceling contracts.

If your community uses these FLOCK cameras, you have the power to raise your voice. Your city decides to buy them or not and if they plan to renew their contracts. Visit out Linktree for Anti-FLOCK action!

Upcoming Actions:

Visit our Linktree for current boycotts, training calls, and more:

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Q & A

Has ICE already bought the electric shock gloves?

No contract award appears in the public procurement record. DHS lists the shock gloves as a new ICE requirement with an estimated value of $10 million - $20 million and an anticipated award later in fiscal year 2026. Click here to read our latest post on the shock gloves.

Did ICE search Columbus Flock cameras 15,577 times?

A Columbus audit showed that up to 15,577 searches could have been related to immigration enforcement, however, it was never proven that searches were from ICE.

Did Flock ban immigration enforcement searches?

No it didn’t. Flock lets customers restrict which offense categories outside agencies can use when searching data. A local agency can use that feature to block outside immigration related searches.

Did Trump ride in a catering truck this week?

No, the Washington Post revealed the operation this week, Reuters confirmed additional details.

Did Minnesota records prove that groups under surveillance committed crimes?

No. Prosecutors charged 15 people with crimes related to interference with immigration enforcement. The released records show us that federal surveillance extended to a broader group of organizations and meetings, including gatherings where people discussed peaceful protest.

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If federal agents attended a peaceful organizing meeting in your community undercover, would that make you less likely to attend the next one or more determined to show up?

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DHS is planning a $10 million to $20 million ICE contract for electric-shock gloves. What could go wrong?

This past Monday on August 10, the Department of Homeland Security posted and published a procurement forecast saying that ICE has a new requirement to purchase the CTG-5 G.L.O.V.E., Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter. DHS is saying that it is “Conductive Distraction and De-escalation Device” and would be given to ICE agents in Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement and Removal Operations.

What will the glove do?

According to Compliant Technologies, the company that makes it, the CTG5 can be activated in 1 second using a switch on the glove. The manufacturer shows a voltage of 324 to 362 volts.

Current, pulse duration, where it’s applied, how long it’s being used for and the current health of the person being subjected to it is all important.

The company says that the gloves are designed to create painful distraction rather than the prolonged neuromuscular incapacitation associated with some other electrical weapons. Associated Press reporting describes the effect as a painful stimulus delivered through direct contact with the skin.

The gloves user manual says that no more than two gloves should be applied to one person at a time and sets a 15-second activation limit for one category of use and the manual also warns: “any use of force, including CD3 deployment, may cause or contribute to death or serious injury.”

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ICE have been involved in multiple fatal shootings with a reputation for abusing power. Reuters documents distinctions in its review of fatal shootings by federal immigration agents.

The ACLU reviewed more than 1,200 immigration-enforcement incidents from 8 states during 2025 and classified more than 400 as involving misconduct. The review documents hundreds of incidents involving pushing, tackling, pinning people, chemical irritants, racial profiling and other conduct.

What happens when thousands of shock gloves are handed to ICE after repeated, documented abuse of power?

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A firearm is noticeable, or a baton is easily seen and has to be reached for. Those actions are obviously visible and easy to catch on video. The CTG5 glove is already on the officer’s hand and relatively hidden.

The glove manufacturer advertises the G.L.O.V.E. as an “invisible partner” and that the CTG5 can be switched on in 1 second.

Consider what this looks like during an ICE arrest:

Someone is surrounded by ICE officers and frightened. They might not understand what’s happening and they might speak limited English. They might be crying, panicking, or tensing up or instinctively pulling an arm away when they are grabbed. An officer is already holding them… And with another use-of-force weapon, witnesses may see the officer reach for something. With this device, the transition from holding someone to electrically shocking someone could occur through a switch on a glove already holding that person. Misuse will be less obvious and harder to catch.

ICE still has unresolved problems with transparency

Especially when we look at ICE’s current body camera system.

ICE is expanding body cameras, which provide evidence when force is used. However, its policy gives the agency broad discretion over what we get to see. ICE’s policy says footage of shootings and other incidents causing death or serious injury will be promptly released only after the agency determines that doing so is in its “best interests.”

Q & A

Are ICE agents currently wearing the gloves?

At this time, there’s no evidence that the shock gloves have been given to ICE agents.

Does 362 volts mean these gloves can kill someone?

The manufacturer says the device is non lethal and uses short electrical pulses BUT its safety documentation says that any use of force involving this technology may cause or contribute to death or serious injury.

Isn’t an electric glove better than an officer shooting someone?

Potentially, and this is the strongest argument in favor of the gloves. But we all know how ICE moves at this point and are highly skeptical if this will actually have any positive outcome. AP news interviewed an expert who sees potential benefits while acknowledging the possibility of misuse.

Can an agent shock someone just because they are arguing or refusing to cooperate?

The manufacturer’s guide says the gloves shouldn’t be used as punishment because someone is verbally defiant or belligerent.

Will there be a record every time an officer uses the glove?

The gloves have “Event Recording Capability” as a feature with stored information. Regardless, it’s up to ICE if they decide to share the recordings with the public.

Has ICE bought $20 million worth of gloves already?

Not yet. The DHS document lists an estimated contract range of $10 million to $20 million and describes the acquisition as a “New Requirement.” AP reports that the potential purchase could involve thousands of devices. Click here for the official DHS statement.

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Sources

Department of Homeland Security | CTG-5 G.L.O.V.E. Acquisition Forecast

Compliant Technologies | G4/G5 G.L.O.V.E. User Manual

Associated Press | ICE plans to give officers gloves that deliver electric shocks

Reuters | Death rate in ICE detention more than doubles

ACLU | Review of more than 1,200 immigration-enforcement incidents

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Community Spotlight: Dripping Springs, Texas

Shoutout to Dripping Springs, Texas, where people were back on the corner this weekend with signs, flags, and letting their voices be heard! ✨ Local organizers are starting to show up with their communities every Saturday across the country!

This is what decentralized organizing can look like and why it’s needed. Local organizers can hold monthly, daily, or weekly rallies, recurring actions, marches, meetings, or whatever makes sense with your community. If nothing is currently happening locally, that can also be a great reason to start something.

Every community is different, but opportunity is everywhere. You just have to look for it.

Local action grows through consistency. Two or three people can become five or six, and before long, dozens of community members will be showing up regularly. This is how a support network becomes strong, through relationships and a consistent routine.

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Tiny Billboards ($$$) in Your Wallet

Here’s a creative idea you can engage in next time you have a pen and cash: “Tiny billboards”!

By adding pro-democracy messages, people have shared examples to us ranging from “Vote Blue” and “Free Speech” to messages about ICE, Trump, democracy, and the election. One community member said they took the idea on a cross-country road trip and intentionally spent their marked money along the way, while others said they’ve been doing different versions of this for years.

Is writing on money legal? Generally, yes. Federal law prohibits mutilating or defacing U.S. currency with the intent to make it unfit to be reissued. Writing a message on a bill doesn’t violate that law, provided the bill remains usable. Make sure to keep bills usable, never alter their denomination or obscure identifying information like the serial number and do not write on the bill to promote a business or as an advertisement.

Cape Cod Covering 3 Overpasses!

The Cape Cod community shared photos with us from a Cape Cod action where organizers took their message directly to passing traffic. On a busy changeover day, they covered three overpasses with signs reading “America Is Not for Sale” and “End the Trump Grifting.” The drivers response was overwhelmingly positive, with plenty of visible support and, according to the organizers, only one single person shouting “Communist.” 😂

Local groups are finding more simple and visible ways to get loud for democracy.
A few signs, an overpass, and a committed group of people can put a message in front of thousands of drivers and visitors moving through the town/city.

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Small Acts Can Make a Big Difference

One of our 50501 members recently shared how they spent a Saturday evening by writing a few letters. One of the letters to hold an elected official accountable (Rand Paul) and the other, offering support and gratitude to someone they felt deserved to hear it (Dr. Fauci). It’s a small action, but it’s something almost anyone can do from home.

You can:

• Write a postcard

• Call your senator

• Email your governor

• Thank an organizer or someone speaking up

• Contact an official about an issue you care about

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Do you have a favorite podcast? Here is what some of our 50501 community members recommend:

A recent post in our FB group asked “What podcasts do you listen to for information and encouragement?”, We want to share a few of the favorites and to see if Substack (you!) has any more recommendations to leave us in the comments.

is the most recommended by our community so far, receiving by the strongest response and several additional mentions throughout the thread. is another favorite, along with @Rachel Maddow. Our community also gave a lot of love to What’s the Plan, hosted by ’s Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin, and with , which came up a handful of times. More popular recommendations includes Sisters-In-Law, Secular Talk with , , and @Pod Save America.

What are your top 3 podcasts?
(Bonus points if you link or tag them!)

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50501.CO ✨NEW✨

Monday:

The Trump administration wants the names of families on cash assistance

24 states sued to stop the Trump administration from handing over immigration authorities personal records of families enrolled in Temporary Assistance for Families in need.

TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) provides for $16 billion a year in 50 states plus several other states and territories. This money can be used to assist families and individuals with things like food, rent, child care, and even emergency housing assistance.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said that the Trump Administration is exploiting a program intended to keep children fed to fuel the government’s surveillance of its citizens. Administration officials argue that verifying citizenship and the immigration status of program recipients is necessary and that collecting the information from states is part of that process.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said that this administration is exploiting this program which is built to keep children fed, to fuel the governments surveillance effort, however, the agency says it needs the data to confirm that states are verifying citizenship and immigration status.

5 federal workers sue over care their insurance used to cover

A class action filed in federal court in Washington DC argues that taking gender-affirming care out of federal employee health plans is sex discrimination via Title VII of the Civil Rights Act

Carriers in the Federal Employees Health Benefits and Postal Service Health Benefits programs may now deny the identical procedure when it’s used for gender transition. A July study from UCLA’s Williams Institute estimated that between 39,400 and 57,800 transgender people are covered by federal employee health plans.

New York lost the mask rule and kept a bigger one

A federal judge blocked New York from requiring ICE agents to uncover their faces and show identification, then refused to block the state law ending local police cooperation with ICE.

The District Judge Mae D’Agostino judge acknowledged that New York officials may have legitimate concerns about the dangers posed by masked, unidentified agents however, she still blocked the provisions, ruling that a state can’t regulate how federal officers carry out their duties.

And on Monday we published a guide to the fastest-growing local fight in the country, you can read it here:

People are Cutting Down Flock Cameras and Cities Are Cutting the Contracts

Between August 2021 and May 2026, communities in 28 states ended at least 82 Flock surveillance contracts, and 39 of those happened in the first five months of this year.

The post walks through what the cameras document and the documented cases of officers using plate data to track women they were involved with. You can read the full guide by clicking here.

Tuesday:

Trump vowed to free speech. Judges in 75 cases ruled he stifled it.

Reuters found that judges ruled against the administration on First Amendment grounds in 75 of the 93 cases where those arguments were raised. Under Biden, judges heard 27 such cases and ruled against him in 13.

The rulings cover retaliation against law firms, restrictions on journalists, funding cuts aimed at universities, actions against pro-Palestinian students and faculty, and excessive force at protests.

Ten of the decisions came from judges appointed by Republican presidents. Reagan appointee William Young, ruling in September that the administration illegally detained, deported, and revoked visas of foreign students and faculty over their advocacy, wrote that the president’s failure to grasp that the government can’t punish speech he dislikes is itself a threat to everyone’s speech.

Some of the rulings are preliminary.

The administration appealed about two thirds of them, and in 15 of the 75 it persuaded an appeals court to pause or overturn the decision, including the reversals that returned Columbia activists Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi to detention on jurisdictional grounds without any ruling on the merits.

Nearly eight months of a tube through the nose

A Guardian investigation of court records found at least 10 cases in which ICE sought to subject detained hunger strikers to involuntary medical procedures. At least three, and possibly five, were force-fed.

A Kurdish asylum seeker held at the Port Isabel Service Processing Center in Los Fresnos, Texas was force fed for nearly eight months, with the filings ending when he was deported, and another person at the same facility endured six months of it. Another man was force-fed eight days into his strike and officials were feeding him twice a day by the time a facility doctor filed a declaration calling it medically necessary.

This process involves guards restraining a person while medical staff push a tube through the nose and into the stomach and pump in liquid nutrition. Human rights organizations have widely classified force-feeding competent hunger strikers as torture.

Wednesday:

More than 50 military spouses and parents detained

An Associated Press investigation identified 52 parents and spouses of active-duty service members detained since Trump returned to office. At least 6 were deported, 1 self-deported, and 8 were still in federal custody when AP published this article.

For decades, bipartisan consensus shielded troops families from deportation.

A policy implemented in April 2025 states that military service doesn’t exempt anyone from immigration consequences. DHS doesn’t track these, so AP built the count from thousands of federal court records compiled by Habeas Dockets, existing coverage, and direct verification with families and attorneys, and says the number is likely much higher. DHS responded that at least seven of those detained had been removed from the country before, at least eight had removal orders, and at least two had drunk-driving or drug convictions.

Air Force Tech. Sgt. Wendy Gbeve was standing beside her father, Luis Alberto Ramirez Zavala, when immigration officials arrested him at a USCIS interview in Missouri about his pending application. He was deported to Mexico two weeks later, and she says ICE has never told the family why it happened so fast.

Army Staff Sgt. Alexis Jaramillo is on administrative leave caring for his 5-year-old stepson after his wife Maisa Lopes Eliaser was detained at a USCIS office in Alabama. Officials asked him and the boy to step out of the room, and the next time they saw her was inside a detention facility.

Under Trumps administration, the average wait for military parole in-place has more than doubled.

The Marine Corps stopped advertising their enlistment to protect immigrant relatives, however, Army and National Guard recruiters continue to promote it, including an Army recruiter post in July about helping enlistees protect the parents who sacrificed for them.

Army Specialist Romero Ralios spent roughly 9 months on the southern border supporting Customs and Border Protection before his father, a Guatemalan with no criminal record was recently detained. “It was karma. I should’ve known,” Ralios told AP. “All those families I broke. I have regrets.”

On Wednesday we shared an article about this weeks primary polls:

Tuesday Delivered Big Wins for People Power

AIPAC’s PAC spent a record-breaking $30.6 million dollars in Michigan’s Senate primary and its candidate still finished in second, Missouri buried two Republican backed amendments by roughly 80 and 83 percent, and Kansas voters rejected an elected supreme court about 61 to 39.
You can read the full article by clicking here!

Thursday:

Birthright Citizenship: Thirty seven days after losing. Trump signed two more orders

Trump signed 2 executive orders targeting birthright citizenship. One of them expands the categories of people the administration considers ineligible and the other seeks to ban what it is calling, birth tourism.

The Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 in Trump v. Barbara that his first-day 2025 order was unlawful and out of step with the Fourteenth Amendment on June 30. Trump called the decision “very unfortunate” and that the administration is “making adjustments.”

1,666 complaints & Seven investigations

The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility received 1,666 misconduct complaints in 2025, the most recorded since 2005.

OPR (Office of Professional Responsibility) went from 29 to 16 employees and its director was fired with no current replacement. The inspector general’s office lost 99 employees since the end of the Biden administration.

There’s been a disturbing pattern and reoccurrence of errors in the first Comey prosecution, and last month Judge Kathleen Williams accusing senior officials including acting Attorney General Todd Blanche of reaching a settlement in Trump’s suit against the IRS.

A journalist asked a judge to throw out charges for doing her job

Attorneys for Twin Cities journalist Georgia Fort asked a federal judge on Thursday to dismiss the charges against her over her coverage of an anti-ICE protest at a St. Paul church, arguing the indictment violates her First Amendment rights.

Fort was indicted alongside former CNN host Don Lemon and dozens of protesters on charges of conspiring against the right of religious freedom at a place of worship. Her attorneys argue that nowhere in the 19-page indictment is there a single allegation that any defendant used physical force, threatened violence, or blocked the church entrance, which the charged statutes require.

They reject the government’s claims that Fort chanted with protesters and used her camera as a weapon, and say her role was to observe and document.

Magistrate Judge John Docherty refused to sign search warrants for Fort’s and Lemon’s YouTube accounts twice, finding they didn’t comply with the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, the government eventually withdrew them.

At a July hearing, a government attorney acknowledged a mischaracterization in an affidavit while maintaining the case had probable cause, and Judge Doug Micko partially granted Fort’s request for grand jury testimony and exhibits. Nothing has been dismissed and the allegations still have to be tested in court.

Mitch McConnell: Fifty-six days, 51 missed votes, & two photographs

Sen. Mitch McConnell has allegedly been discharged from the rehabilitation center and will recover at home.

But he still hasn’t been seen in public since June 11...

Dispatch audio obtained by ABC and NBC show that an Advanced Life Support ambulance dispatched to McConnell’s home at 8:36am on June 14. A medic reporting CPR in progress at 8:42 and a dispatcher confirming a cardiac arrest response at 8:43. This audio was never publicly addressed by his office.

It took until July 12 for McConnell to say anything, he said that he had fallen, was briefly unconscious, and that he dealt with a mild case of pneumonia, and that he didn’t have any broken bones, suffered a concussion, had a heart attack or stroke, or any tumors or hemorrhages.

The Office of the Attending Physician later said his regimen included multiple physical therapy sessions a day and that his childhood polio remains a significant factor in his mobility. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear wrote to him asking for an update and his office released two still photographs from the hospital, and still no video or audio.

Trump ally Laura Loomer claimed, without evidence, that McConnell was brain dead, then claimed, again without evidence, that the released photos were doctored, and versions of the theory that he had died and it was being concealed have circulated widely since.

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Friday:

ICE will release body camera footage when ICE feels like it

ICE says every field officer nationwide will have a body camera by the end of September.

Its policy says video of shootings and encounters where officers cause death or serious injury gets released promptly only after the agency determines that doing so “is in the best interests of the agency.”

Officers must turn the cameras on during routine enforcement, including arrests, search warrants, and emergency responses, and at least one member of every arrest team will be required to wear one.

When an officer kills someone, the recording then goes to a committee of ICE officials and ICE lawyers and they will decide if you see it or not.

If the ICE director finds that “specific and compelling circumstances” justify withholding a video, the director can block or indefinitely delay its release, even footage that gets released will have officers faces, names, and badge numbers redacted.

ICE spent $30.9 million in July on body camera equipment, the spending started one day after an ICE officer fatally shot a 25-year-old motorist in Maine, days after another ICE officer shot and killed a Houston homebuilder on his way to work and neither of the shootings were recorded on a body camera.

ICE arrested and sent over 43,000 people into detention in July, the highest monthly total of Trump’s second term, according to agency detention data provided to Congress and reviewed by the Washington Post. The Post found ICE averaging around 1,432 arrests a day through July 12 and 1,450 a day from July 13 through the end of the month. And the pace didn’t slow down after the Houston shooting on July 7 or the Maine shooting on July 13. More than 238,000 people were sent into detention in the first seven months of 2026.

CBS News has reported more than 46,000 July book-ins using a broader measure that counts everyone booked into ICE detention, including people first arrested by other agencies such as Customs and Border Protection. The Post figure counts people arrested by ICE and sent into detention.

And Here’s Another Dancing Todd Video For Your Friday!

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TL;DR

Voters in Michigan, Kansas, Missouri and Washington went to the polls yesterday (Tuesday 8/5/26)

In Michigan, progressive physician Abdul El-Sayed defeated establishment-backed Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democratic Senate primary after AIPAC’s affiliated super PAC spent a record $30.6 million supporting Stevens or opposing him. 🎉 A Detroit state representative unseated a sitting member of Congress. In Missouri, voters rejected two Republican-backed constitutional amendments, including one that would have required citizen-led constitutional amendments to win in all eight congressional districts, but the night was not a complete sweep: Rep. Wesley Bell, backed by AIPAC-aligned spending, defeated former Rep. Cori Bush. Kansas voters rejected direct elections for their state Supreme Court, about 61% to 39%.. In Washington’s most competitive House district, Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Republican state Sen. John Braun both advanced to November. Results remain unofficial until each state certifies them.

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Quick Summary & Results:

Michigan

• Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic Senate primary. He will be running against Republican Mike Rogers this November in the Midterms

• Jocelyn Benson won the Democratic nomination for governor. She will face Republican Rep. John James this Novemeber

• Donavan McKinney defeated Rep. Shri Thanedar in the 13th District

• William Lawrence won the Democratic primary in the battleground 7th District

• Rashida Tlaib easily won renomination in the 12th District

Kansas

• Voters rejected the constitutional amendment to directly elect state Supreme Court justices, about 61% to 39%

• Cindy Holscher won the Democratic nomination for governor and will face Republican Ty Masterson this November

• Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton won the Democratic Senate primary and will challenge Republican Sen. Roger Marshall in November in the Midterms

Missouri

• Amendment 4, which would have imposed a district-by-district requirement on citizen-led constitutional amendments, it failed with more than 80% voting no

• Amendment 5, which would have begun phasing out the individual income tax based on revenue growth triggers, failed with about 83% voting no

• Rep. Wesley Bell defeated former Rep. Cori Bush

Washington

• Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Republican state Sen. John Braun advanced from the top-two primary in the 3rd District

• Washington will continue counting mail ballots, so their final percentages and primary vote margin will change before certification

$30.6 Million AIPAC Money

AIPAC’s affiliated super PAC, the United Democracy Project, spent more than $30.6 million supporting Haley Stevens or opposing Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary.

This was the largest amount AIPAC’s political operation has ever invested in a single race. Federal Election Commission records also showed that other outside groups supporting Stevens and spent more than $50 million altogether. However, Abdul El-Sayed still won. 🎉

The Associated Press called the race Wednesday morning with El-Sayed leading by 14,893 votes, under one percentage point, out of more than 1.5 million ballots.

The AIPAC-funded ads focused on manufacturing and featured old footage of Barack Obama praising Stevens work on the auto industry rescue. Sure, Obama said those things back in 2018, when she was running for the House. He didn’t endorse Stevens in this Senate primary.

Former Rep. Andy Levin, who lost to Stevens in a 2022 primary after redistricting said: “AIPAC never runs on AIPAC. They never even talk about Israel and Palestine.”

Stevens didn’t personally “receive $30 million from AIPAC.” However, United Democracy Project and other outside groups made independent expenditures supporting her or attacking El-Sayed. Those groups are legally prohibited from coordinating those expenditures with a candidate’s campaign.

Stevens conceded Wednesday morning and pledged her support to El-Sayed for November and Sen. Gary Peters, who had endorsed Stevens in the primary, called on Democrats to rally around El-Sayed. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer congratulated him and emphasized party unity, although she didn’t issue the same kind of explicit endorsement. State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who suspended her campaign in July but remained on the ballot, gave El-Sayed her “full endorsement and support” shortly after 2 a.m., hours before the Associated Press officially called the race.

AIPAC will keep opposing Abdul El-Sayed:
After El-Sayed won, AIPAC announced that it plans to oppose him again in November, when he faces Republican Mike Rogers.

The most money AIPAC has ever spent on one race. The candidate it backed still finished second.

Detroit

State Rep. Donavan McKinney defeated Rep. Shri Thanedar, 51.9% to 48.1%, a margin of nearly 4,200 votes out of about 112,000. The results remain unofficial until certification, but all precincts have reported. (Michigan Public)

The money story here is actually kind of funny when you think about it. Thanedar is a wealthy businessman who has poured millions of his own money into his political campaigns. Federal campaign-finance records through July 15 showed him with just over $5 million in cash on hand. McKinney had about $143,000.

Thanedar had the endorsement of House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and support from AIPAC PAC, which had raised approximately $155,000 for his reelection campaigns since 2023. McKinney had Michigan’s organized labor movement, the Michigan Chronicle, Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, and former Rep. Brenda Lawrence. (FEC & Michigan Chronicle)

McKinney, a democratic socialist endorsed by DSA, is now heavily favored in November. The Cook Political Report rates the district Solid Democratic. If elected, he would restore Black representation to Detroit’s congressional delegation, which the city lost after Thanedar won the seat in 2022. 🎉 Before that, Detroit had been represented by a Black member of Congress for nearly 70 years.

McKinney said afterward that the campaign had shown how “the poorest district in the state can come together to defeat the richest lobbies and multimillionaires.”

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The Seventh

William Lawrence, a community organizer who co-founded the Sunrise Movement, won the Democratic primary in Michigan’s 7th District by double digits. He received roughly 43% of the vote, defeating two more moderate, establishment-aligned opponents: former U.S. Ambassador Bridget Brink and former Navy SEAL and Obama military aide Matt Maasdam.

Lawrence will face Republican Rep. Tom Barrett in November in a district the Cook Political Report rates a toss-up. Trump carried it by about one point in 2024, and Barrett won his first term with just over 50% of the vote.

Lawrence campaigned on Medicare for All, stronger labor rights, taxing billionaires and corporations, and perhaps most importantly for communities across the district, demanding the end of unchecked construction of massive AI data centers, which became a central part of his campaign and helped him win strongly in Mason, where a new data center has been proposed.

Missouri said no twice, and it wasn’t close

Republican lawmakers referred two major constitutional amendments to voters, and Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe placed them on the August primary ballot. Both got torched. 🔥

Amendment 4 would have required citizen led constitutional amendment to win a majority in every one of Missouri’s eight congressional districts, not just a statewide majority. Based on 2024 turnout, the Missouri Independent reported that as few as roughly 5% of all votes cast statewide, concentrated in one district, could have potentially blocked an amendment supported by statewide majority.

Missourians have used citizen-led constitutional amendments to legalize medical and recreational marijuana, expand Medicaid, legalize sports betting and restore abortion rights. Amendment 4 would have made wins like those dramatically more difficult and, based on past election results, would have blocked every citizen-led constitutional amendment approved in Missouri since 2020. It lost with about 80% voting no.

Amendment 5 would have required lawmakers to phase out Missouri’s individual income tax based on revenue growth triggers. It also would have authorized lawmakers to expand sales and use taxes and weakened existing constitutional limits on taxing goods and services. It lost with about 83% voting no.

Two other Missouri amendments passed.
Amendment 1 renews an existing 0.1% sales tax supporting state parks and soil and water conservation, it’s a renewal, not a new tax.
Amendment 2 requires all charter counties, including Jackson County, to elect their county assessors and comply with state training requirements.

Kansas and the Court

About 61% of Kansas voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have abolished the state’s Supreme Court Nominating Commission and replaced the current selection system with direct elections for six-year terms.

Kansas Republicans hold supermajorities in both legislative chambers and placed the amendment on the August primary ballot, when turnout is typically lower and the electorate generally leans more Republican. Unaffiliated voters could still vote on the amendment, but they had no partisan primary of their own drawing them to the polls. It was the same strategy used for the August 2022 abortion amendment and Kansans rejected that one too.

Republican lawmakers and conservative groups have spent years attacking the court over decisions protecting abortion rights and requiring the Legislature to meet its constitutional school-funding obligations. After voters refused to remove abortion protections directly in 2022, Republicans pursued a different route by changing how the justices are selected.

Retired Justice Carol Beier said: “The Kansas Supreme Court must remain fair and impartial for every citizen. It cannot and will not be bought to give a few an unfair advantage.”

Kansas has now rejected two Republican backed attempts to weaken that protection. Both were placed on August primary ballots and both failed.

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Washington uses a top-two primary in which every candidate appears on the same ballot, regardless of party.

In the 3rd District, Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Republican state Sen. John Braun have both been projected to advance from a nine-candidate field.

Early returns showed Gluesenkamp Perez and Braun nearly tied for first place, but both were comfortably ahead of the rest of the field and secured places in November.

Trump endorsed Braun in April and called Gluesenkamp Perez a “true Radical Left Extremist”, an unusual description for a Democrat who has repeatedly broken with her party and ranked among the House Democrats most likely to vote with Republicans.

Washington conducts its elections almost entirely by mail, so the totals will continue changing. Counties are scheduled to certify the primary on August 18, followed by state certification on August 21, the November matchup has been projected.

Reminder!!

• Check your registration at vote.org, and check your household’s too because purges DO happen.

• Look up who’s on your next ballot. Check the School board, county commission, assessor, everyone. Learn about them and what they stand for to help be a community voice.

• Read the Missouri results and the Kansas results

  ---

Other? Share it to us in the comments:
& If you’re in any of these 4 states, did you vote Tuesday?

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Sources

CBS News: Gluesenkamp Perez and Braun advance in Washington’s 3rd

Axios Detroit: McKinney wins the 13th District primary

Al Jazeera: How much has AIPAC spent against Abdul El-Sayed

Common Dreams: AIPAC’s 2026 spending tops $100 million

Missouri Independent: Voters reject income tax phaseout and initiative petition changes

CBS Detroit: AIPAC spends nearly $30M in the Michigan Senate primary

Michigan Advance: McKinney unseats Thanedar

Bridge Michigan: Michigan congressional primary results

KCUR: Guide to Missouri’s four August 2026 amendments

Kansas Reflector: Voters reject judicial selection amendment by wide margin

KSN: Cindy Holscher wins the Democratic primary for governor

MyNorthwest: Gluesenkamp Perez edges Braun by 263 votes

AP via WTOP: Tlaib wins the Democratic nomination in Michigan’s 12th

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You’ve already driven past one

You can it’s a Flock camera from the black pole, small rectangular box and a solar panel bolted at the top, they usually sit at intersections.

It takes pictures of your car and logs the plate, along with the make, model and color. It uses AI and other smart features to remember the dent in your bumper or the sticker in your back window… it then filed that into a interconnected nationwide network that thousands of agencies can search.

The Institute for Justice has now documented at least 28 cases nationwide of officers allegedly abusing license plate reader data to track romantic interests such as current partners, exes, and in one Florida case a stranger a deputy met on a TV set and later pulled over.

A Milwaukee officer looked up the location of the woman he was dating 124 times, and her ex another 55 times, according to the criminal complaint. A Richmond County, Georgia deputy allegedly searched one woman’s plate 1,639 times.

On top of that, most of these cases were not caught by internal audits, For example, the Milwaukee case surfaced because the victim looked up their own plate on a public site built from Flock’s own audit data and found odd activity.

Between August 2021 and May 2026, communities in 28 states terminated at least 82 reported Flock contracts.

39 of those happened in 5 months:

• Redmond, Washington, voted 7–0 on July 21, 2026, to terminate its Flock Safety contract and end the city’s automated license plate reader program.

• Monroe County, Indiana, voted 2–0 to end its Flock contract about a year early and agreed to pay approximately $3,000 to remove six cameras. Commissioner Jody Madeira called it “$3,000 well spent.”

• Bandera, Texas, population roughly 900, saw its first installed Flock camera sawed down two days later. A second camera was installed on a sturdier city-owned pole, but after months of public opposition, the council voted 3–2 in May to terminate the grant-funded program.

Meanwhile, hundreds of new contracts were signed this year.

CNN found constitutional conservatives outside Houston and progressives in Massachusetts arriving at the same conclusion from opposite directions.

About the cameras… on the ground

Across the country, Flock cameras are being cut, painted, and toppled.

People accused of destroying or damaging Flock cameras are facing serious felony charges and thousands of dollars worth in damage claims.

One man in Suffolk-Virginia, faces 25 charges for allegedly damaging 13 Flock cameras which is 13 destruction-of-property counts, 6 petit-larceny counts and 6 counts of possessing burglary items.

There’s also a strategic reason to keep the focus on the contracts rather than the poles: A damaged camera can be replaced but a canceled contract can’t.

What you can do to DeFlock your community

Look up your town on DeFlock’s crowdsourced camera map and check ALPR.watch, which tracks which local government meetings have ALPR on the agenda. Then send this to someone who drives more than you do.

You can Email your city manager and police office to ask: “does our department use ALPRs, and which outside agencies can search our data”?

The ACLU’s Get the Flock Out toolkit has the records request templates and a model oversight ordinance ready to send.

Find your contract’s Flock expiration date and add the date to your calendar so you can attend a local meeting before the date with search logs. This organizing has helped produce at least 82 reported contract terminations.

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Are these cameras legal?
Yes, for now. A federal judge upheld Norfolk, Virginia’s 176-camera network in January. The residents who sued, backed by the Institute for Justice, are appealing, and IJ has a separate class action going in San Jose. Kentucky capped retention at 90 days effective July 15, Washington’s governor signed its Driver Privacy Act, Maine has restricted ALPRs for years, and Colorado’s warrant bill died on the Senate floor in April after law enforcement pushback.

Is cutting a Flock Camera down illegal?
Yes. Prosecutors are charging destruction to Flock Cameras as felony criminal mischief or destruction of property, damage claims run into the thousands per camera.

How do I find out if my town has them?
DeFlock maps them nationwide.
Ban Flock Cameras tracks state-by-state status, and Who Approved This tracks contracts, dollar amounts, and renewal dates.

Can I find out if an officer searched my plate?
You can, sometimes. The website: HaveIBeenFlocked collects audit data from the governments that publish it. That is exactly how the Milwaukee case broke open.

Does canceling actually remove the cameras?
No, not automatically. It can take weeks… Eugene OR, found a camera had switched back on without authorization.

My police chief says our data is protected. Is it?
Ask for the complete search and audit logs, outside-agency access records, hotlist records, and current sharing settings, not just the summary.

They told us it solves crimes. What do I say back?
Say that’s not the concern. Monroe County’s commissioner said the technology had a role, then voted to end it anyway. A tool can help an investigation and still collect too much information, give too many people access or create risks that outweigh its benefits.

Our council will not budge
Framingham took many months, Pittsboro started in February and won in May, Bloomington needed a council resolution and a full report to get them to budge. Every one of these communities started with residents who were told no.

What is the Flock pole nearest you, and has anyone in your town asked the council about it yet?

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ICE forced medical treatment on a hunger striker. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to let it limit who gets a mail ballot, and Trump told the Senate to skip its August break for a voting bill that continues to fail. Trump also let a Supreme Court deadline lapse, two Republican senators stalled his attorney general nominee, and the Senate went on record against a Maxwell pardon.

Monday

Trump came at voting from two directions

The administration asked the Supreme Court to let it enforce Trump’s mail voting order. Trump also demanded the Senate cancel its August break for the SAVE America Act.

The order directs Homeland Security to compile state citizenship lists and requires Postal Service rules limiting mail ballots to voters on them. Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., successfully challenged the restrictions, and the First Circuit declined to revive them.

On Monday we shared an article regarding recent ICE impersonators:

ICE Impersonators Forced an Oregon Driver Into an SUV

On July 17, two men in tactical vests marked “POLICE,” with one of them carrying a rifle who pulled a driver over near Woodburn. They said they were ICE, and forced the driver into an unmarked SUV.

A third man inside assaulted the driver, the driver was then released twenty minutes later and hospitalized. Federal agencies confirmed the three were not ICE. Claims spread online (from changed/edited records) that the victim was a woman who was sexually assaulted, You can read the full article by clicking here.

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Tuesday

ICE confirmed forced medical treatment of a hunger striker

A budget filing from ICE’s Health Service Corps, surfaced by the Guardian, says one detained hunger striker was “subject to force feeding, hydration, or forced urinary catheterization, or involuntary blood draws.”

Homeland Security wouldn’t say which procedure was used. Eunice Cho of the ACLU calls the authorizing court orders a rubber stamp, since many detainees have no lawyer to challenge them.

The deadline passed and Trump never filed 🎉

Tuesday was the last day to ask the Supreme Court to rehear its birthright citizenship ruling.

The Court ruled 6 to 3 on June 30 in Trump v. Barbara. A week later Trump posted he would seek a rehearing “IMMEDIATELY.” He had 25 days.

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Wednesday

Epstein survivors carried the files to the Senate, and Blanche’s vote was postponed

Survivors launched the Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Bookmobile on the National Mall and hand delivered files to Senate Judiciary offices. Later that night, Chairman Chuck Grassley postponed Thursday’s vote on Todd Blanche.

The bookmobile will carry all 3.5 million released files to communities through the midterms. (Click here to learn more about the bookmobile and when it will pass through a town near you)

“A vote for Todd Blanche is a vote against justice,” survivor Elizabeth Stein said.

The Senate then agreed by unanimous consent that Maxwell should get no pardon, with no roll call taken, so nobody went on record and nobody objected. Blanche stalled over Senators John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, who want written assurance that the $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund from Trump’s IRS settlement is dead. By Thursday Trump was posting he had “no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name” until January.

How, Exactly, Do You End Up Beefing With Ms. Rachel, of All People?

On Wednesday we shared an article on Ms. Rachel:

Ms. Rachel posted that being against genocide is not controversial and that staying silent about it is. She named no country. The verified State of Israel account replied, “Ms who?”

In June she hosted a press briefing on a UN report finding Israeli forces deliberately targeted Palestinian children, which Israel rejects. She sang outside Delaney Hall with families of detained immigrants, then wheeled 535 packets of letters from children held at Dilley into the Capitol. You can read the full article by clicking here.

Thursday

Two thirds say the Iran war has not been worth fighting

National poll results came out that revealed sixty four percent of Americans say the war with Iran hasn’t been worth fighting, against 33 percent who say it has.

Republican approval of Trumps Iran handling fell from 71 to 61 percent in a month.

At least 18 American service members have died since February.

Forty percent now call gas prices a major stressor, up from 27 percent prewar.

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Some Recent Good News:

Kansas voters kept a safeguard worth thousands of ballots

The Kansas Court of Appeals refused to let Secretary of State Scott Schwab revive a law that would have thrown out mail ballots arriving after Election Day.

Kansas has counted ballots postmarked by Election Day and arriving within three days since 2017. This cushion saved 2,110 ballots in 2024 and 32,000 in 2020, and it holds for the August 4 primary.

Kotek pulled state land out of a proposed Salem data center in Oregon

Governor Tina Kotek ordered Oregon to terminate the sale of roughly 32 acres of state-owned land intended for a proposed data center in southeast Salem.

Kotek said developments of this scale must make sense for natural resources, utility customers, and surrounding communities. This is a win but may not automatically end the entire project there. Kotek has direct influence for the Salem location because it’s state owned land. Other proposed centers sit on private or locally controlled property, where decisions largely run through city land-use rules and permitting.

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Movement Spotlight

Japantown stood strong against a planned ICE facility

Organizers and South Bay officials rallied Wednesday outside the historic Issei Memorial Building against a planned ICE facility near Gilroy.

“Today, unfortunately, it’s too late to just say never again,” said Susan Hayase of San Jose Nikkei Resisters, noting that Japanese Americans resisted inside the World War II camps with strikes and draft resistance. Santa Clara County sued in June.

The ICE facility shows detention space for 150 people.

Trump’s biggest setback this week came from courts, from two departing Republican senators, and from Epstein survivors. The midterms are **95 days away** and will be here before you know it.
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TL;DR

Ms. Rachel posted that being against genocide isn’t controversial and that staying silent about it is. She didn’t even name a country. But then the verified State of Israel account responded, “Ms who?”.

Ms. Rachel recently wheeled 535 packets of detained children’s letters to the Capitol and hosted a press briefing on the UN commission report that Israel deliberately targeted Palestinian children.

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You might not know who Ms. Rachel is.

You might know her by her appearance: the pink shirt, overalls, and headband... If you have parented a toddler in the last five years, she’s bought you at least half an hour of peace and quiet a few times a week.

Ms. Rachel started Songs for Littles on YouTube in 2019 after looking for speech resources for her own son and not finding what she needed which was slow speech, repetition, and sign language.

Millions of subscribers and a Netflix series later, she’s one of the most trusted adults in American childhood.

She also refuses to be a person who only notices some children.

Ms. Rachel has raised more than one million dollars for children in conflict zones including Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan.

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She posted “Why is Ms Rachel controversial?” Her answer was that being against genocide isn’t controversial. Staying silent about it is.

She didn’t tag anyone. She named no country, no leader, or military here. Yet, the verified State of Israel account showed up in her replies with: “Ms who?”

They volunteered themselves because they know what they’re doing.

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On June 23, 2026, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry released a report titled “The essence of childhood has been destroyed.”

It found that Israeli authorities and security forces deliberately targeted Palestinian children, and that this targeting is a key element establishing genocidal intent.

The commission concluded in September 2025 that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. Israel’s government rejects both findings and denies committing genocide.

Days later, Ms. Rachel hosted a press briefing on that report, featuring commission member Chris Sidoti and an emergency physician who had worked in Gaza’s hospitals.

On June 8, she stood outside Delaney Hall, the ICE detention facility in Newark, and sang with the families of people locked inside.

She met a 13-year-old girl whose father, a truck driver who lived here 20 years, was detained in February and missed her birthday. The girl’s younger brother is nonverbal and can’t walk. Ms. Rachel sang to him. He signed more, again and again.

The next day she wheeled a black suitcase into the Capitol in a bubblegum-pink suit, carrying 535 packets of letters and drawings from children held at the Dilley detention center in Texas. Every member of Congress was meant to receive one. Republicans and Democrats both.

One letter, from a 7-year-old boy: “I cry a lot.”

In April 2025, the group StopAntisemitism asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate whether Ms. Rachel was being paid by a foreign party, suggesting it might violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Asked whether it actually had proof, the group’s director said it didn’t. Ms. Rachel called the accusation absurd and patently false.

When critics told her to stay in her lane and sing kids’ songs, she gave the entire answer in one word:

“No.”

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How can you dislike Ms. Rachel?

It’s Ms. Rachel.

Authoritarian systems run on selective empathy. They need you to sort children into the ones who “are important” and the ones who are “collateral”.

Ms. Rachel makes that more challenging for the regime because she keeps pointing at a kid and saying: that is somebody’s child.

What you can do

• Sign the petition to close the Dilley ICE detention center. It surpassed 324,000 signatures in June and now has more than 327,000. Dilley is the facility where the children who created the 535 packets of letters and drawings Ms. Rachel carried to Congress were being detained.

• Subscribe to Ms. Rachel! (Or give her a follow on threads!)

• Call your representative about family detention. Her letters got onto their desks and your call go into their phone logs, offices really count those.

• Share this to help spread awareness, and when someone tells you she should stay in her lane, they’re angry about which children matter.

  ---

How do you feel about Ms. Rachel speaking out?

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Sources

• OHCHR | Commission of Inquiry press release, June 23, 2026

• UN News | Commission finds deliberate targeting of Palestinian children

• Al Jazeera | September 2025 genocide determination and June 2026 findings

• CNN | Israel rejects the findings

• Truthout | Ms. Rachel press briefing

• NBC New York | Delaney Hall visit

• Colorado Springs Gazette | 535 packets, Dilley letters, Capitol Hill

• Washington Post | Ms. Rachel visits Capitol Hill

• The Hill | StopAntisemitism letter to AG Bondi

• Mediaite | Group provided no public evidence for the allegation

• Variety | More than $1 million raised for children in conflict zones

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TL;DR:

On Friday, July 17, two men, one armed with what Oregon State Police confirm to be a rifle, pull over a driver on a rural Oregon highway identifying themselves as ICE. The two armed men force the driver into an unmarked SUV where a third individual awaits and assaults the man. 20 minutes later the men release the driver and flee the scene on foot. Federal Agencies confirm the three men were not federal officers. Keep reading for the full story.

A driver on Oregon Highway 211 near the 5 mile post (just east of Woodburn) was pulled over by two men in a blue or gray SUV with no license plates.

The men were wearing boots, baseball caps, face coverings, green long-sleeve shirts and had on their tactical vests with “POLICE” written in large white letters on the front of the vests. Each of the men had on a badge that read “Police”.

One of them was carrying what the OSP officer described as a rifle.

They said they were ICE and said the driver was being detained.

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What Oregon State Police confirmed

The driver was pulled from his car and searched.

He was then put in the back seat of the suspects’ SUV. A third person remained in the SUV the entire time, acting as a guard. The guard assaulted the driver while he was being held in the SUV. The driver was released by the suspects twenty minutes later. The driver then went to the hospital for injuries sustained during the assault.

After some hours at the hospital for injuries to his face, he was discharged and when he returned to his vehicle he received a number of texts on his phone from 971-502-5548. They appeared to be from a law firm representing him regarding the earlier events.

There is no explanation for why the sender of these texts would know that the victim needed a lawyer. OSP contacted federal agencies, and they confirmed that the men were not federal police officers. The FBI is currently investigating the incident.

The sexual-assault allegation

As the story was spreading posts started identifying the victim as a woman who had been sexually assaulted by the third person in the SUV who acted as a guard. OregonLive reported earlier that there was more specific language in the account of the incident that had been ‘scrubbed’ from the police release.

However, the publicly available evidence doesn’t confirm the sexual nature of the assault or the gender of the victim. The assault was reportedly carried out by the third person in the SUV, described by the police as the “guard” or “watch” but in both releases of the information from OSP, the assault is described without elaboration as to what the assault was.

OSP hasn’t revealed specifics about the assault but both releases have described the assault to be perpetrated by the third individual acting as guard to the victim.

There might be information that’s not released in order to protect the victim and or to allow the agency to continue an active investigation but none has been given to the public as to why certain information is not being released.

The disguise

This is a typical way that ICE operate. Covered faces, a fake “POLICE” sign with no department listed, an unmarked SUV, a visible gun. And, for good measure, a completely unverifiable set of demands on the driver to comply immediately.

Oregon saw this coming

Oregon passed House Bill 4138, the Law Enforcement Accountability and Visibility Act, which took effect on March 31st.

The legislation has two main provisions: first, law enforcement must “wear clothing that visibly displays their name and identifying number as well as the name of their employing agency,” and, second, an agency as a whole may cover their faces in the course of their work for 180 days after which time no individual officer may do so.

On May 27, the City Council there passed an ordinance, “Right to Know Who’s Policing You”, which requires police to investigate individuals detaining or stopping members of public for reasons unknown to them who do not display proper credentials. As reported by the Oregonian, City Councilor Sameer Kanal made clear that this ordinance wouldn’t unmask federal agents in Portland, because the City of Portland is already locked in a court of law with feds regarding their use of masks in this city.

How can the government demand immediate obedience when the public has no reliable way to verify who is hiding behind the mask?

This could happen to anyone.

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Sources

Woodburn Independent | OSP release, July 24

KOIN | Suspects impersonated ICE, assaulted victim

KGW | OSP and FBI investigating

KEZI | Full OSP verification guidance

Oregon Legislature | House Bill 4138 (LEAVA)

OPB | Portland approves mask and ID policy

Willamette Week | Council passes mask ban 8-4

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Monday

Good Trouble was everywhere

Good Trouble Lives On weekend of action of July 17-19 saw over 600 communities around the country hold nonviolent, nonpartisan actions of service and learning to honor the life and work of Congressman John Lewis.

The Transformative Justice Coalition and other partners organized Good Trouble Lives On around the theme of Teach, Reach, Preach.

Friday night held teach-ins, vigils and voter education activities. Saturday and Sunday were filled with voter registration activities and community gatherings including gatherings at congregations where clergy taught about voting rights and the moral obligation to participate in our democracy and protect it.

A federal judge threw out the RNC’s demand for New Jersey voter data

US District Court Judge Georgette Castner threw out a lawsuit brought by the Republican National Committee to force the State of New Jersey to hand over sensitive information regarding all of its voters.

In her opinion, the RNC had failed to allege “concrete plans for how it intends to use the specific records” sought in the lawsuit. Castner observed that her court’s situation was “strikingly similar” to that of a Pennsylvania case that had been recently rejected by the Third Circuit and therefore she was dismissing the RNC’s lawsuit as well.

The court dismissed the case because the RNC didn’t show a concrete injury or adequately explained how it planned to use the records.

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Tuesday

Tens of thousands of immigrants kept the right to work

Boston U.S. District Court Judge Nathaniel Gorton granted a temporary restraining order (“TRO”) that blocks the Trump administration from yanking work authorization from tens of thousands of asylum seekers and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders scheduled to expire this summer under new retroactive terms of their status.

Gorton didn’t rule on the new asylum application fee that USCIS is charging, he ruled that the severe consequences of not paying the fee, i.e. the rejection of an application, the termination of a work authorization, and the initiation of removal proceedings against an individual, are potentially severe and thus warrant a temporary injunction to be decided by August 5. The judge is a George H.W. Bush appointee, so let’s not go down that partisan road here. People who go through the proper process to earn a living in this country should be able to continue to do so until their case is fully heard.

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Wednesday

ICE has 56 excessive force complaints and one referral

The House Homeland Security Committee Democrats received a closed door briefing today from ICE officials.

After the briefing the Democrats released some figures that “defy belief.” There are 56 complaints of excessive force lodged against ICE officers, with 32 of them cleared.

One officer was referred for possible disciplinary action and the rest are currently under investigation. That one officer could possibly be disciplined for excessive force out of all of the incidents that have occurred in the last year and a half of surges and deaths of civilians by ICE officers “defies belief” said Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI).

There were two separate shootings in the past week, in Maine and in Houston, that resulted in the deaths of two people. Since Immigration and Customs Enforcement began increasing the number of deportations of immigrants living in the US without legal permission in 2025, there have been a rise in deaths in immigration encounters.

Thompson said he had expected more answers from Wednesday’s hearing but found himself with more questions. Most fundamentally, Thompson said, is who investigates complaints of excessive force by immigration officers. Sometimes the FBI does. Sometimes it’s Homeland Security Investigations. Officials gave inconsistent answers about which agency investigates officers use of force.

The two shootings of people in cars that triggered the new policy of stopping cars only when there is no alternative and using lights and sirens before approaching the car had been conveyed to officers orally, and had not been reduced to a written directive.

The suspension of most vehicle stops, announced after the shooting in Maine, had been reversed the next day by the President’s statement that he wanted officers to continue stopping cars to check for immigrants.

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Thursday

Twenty five states sued rather than trade elections for disaster money

Twenty five states and the District of Columbia sued the federal government over FEMA and DHS policies to condition billions of dollars in disaster and homeland security grants on changes to voting and immigration laws.

Twenty five states and the District of Columbia filed a federal lawsuit in a Rhode Island court challenging the conditions imposed by the federal government on billions of dollars in funding each year for disaster relief and homeland security grants.

Under the conditions imposed by FEMA and DHS, the states must convert to paper ballot systems, conduct manual audits of their voting systems, reconcile their voter registration lists, and verify the citizenship of every registered voter in their databases.

In addition, the states must assist DHS in enforcing immigration laws and DHS can withdraw all grants at will.

The lawsuit challenges conditions attached to several FEMA and DHS grant programs. As noted above, states that refuse to comply with Trump’s demands risk losing at least 20% of their HSGP funding and that’s because HSGP funds are intended to help states and localities prepare for and respond to a wide range of threats, including cyber attacks and terrorism.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said that the Trump administration is “unlawfully withholding billions in critical funding” from states that refuse to give in to the administration’s election and immigration demands.

A federal panel let Tennessee split Memphis three ways

A panel of three judges yesterday declined to block the new congressional district map for Tennessee’s upcoming August 6 primary elections.

The map splits the majority Black population of Memphis into three different districts, including one currently held by Democrat Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), who announced his retirement from the House of Representatives after the new maps were passed by the state legislature.

The three-judge panel that will hear the lawsuit challenging the new congressional district maps drawn by the Republican majority in the Tennessee state legislature consists of two Trump appointees and one Obama appointee.

The two sides presented their arguments and the panel expressed skepticism towards the plaintiffs’ claims that the maps as drawn will dilute the voting power of Black citizens in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The case follows the Supreme Court’s April decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which struck down Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

Tennessee is among eight Republican-led states that have redrawn congressional districts since last year.

Amber Sherman, a Memphis voter and plaintiff, called the ruling painful and said, “When our voting power is diluted, our neighborhoods have a harder time making their voices heard on the issues that shape our daily lives.”

Good Trouble Lives On Official Weekend of Action and Press Releases

Democracy Docket Federal Judge Dismisses RNC Voter-Roll Lawsuit in New Jersey

Reuters Judge Temporarily Blocks the Administration From Stripping Immigrants of Work Permits

Associated Press ICE Discloses 56 Excessive-Force Complaints and One Disciplinary Referral

Democracy Docket Legal Challenge to Trump’s Mail-Voting Order Can Continue

The Guardian States Sue Over Election and Immigration Conditions Attached to FEMA Funding

Associated Press Federal Judges Allow Tennessee’s New Congressional Map

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ICE runs on private airlines, tech companies, local police, contractors, and public cooperation, and each of those is a place where you can push back. In January 2026, Avelo Airlines dropped its ICE deportation flights and closed its Arizona base after months of protests. Below you’ll find 7 ways to push back. You don’t have to do all 7 but the more you can do, the better.

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Fighting back is more than a big No Kings march

No Kings protests and other big gatherings help bring attention to what’s going on, but it’s not the only way, and not everyone can safely march. Many people have disabilities, swing/night shifts, caregiving duties, or immigration worries of their own, and that’s okay, there is a lot to do and many ways to fight back.

ICE rents planes, uses software, and leans on local police. ICE also counts on the belief that their system is too strong and complicated for us to challenge it.

1. Pressure the companies that fly for ICE

ICE doesn’t own planes, it pays private airlines to fly people to detention and deportation.

One of them, GlobalX, flew more than half of ICE’s deportation flights in 2024 and 2025. GlobalX also flies commercial clients like college sports teams, so it has customers and a reputation to protect.

Do this: Pick a group that hires an ICE-linked airline by clicking here and try to reach out to them, ask: Will you stop booking airlines that operates ICE deportation flights? And also ask who chooses the airline and when the contract ends. Keep the pressure on those who sign the contracts. Look up which carriers fly for ICE at ICE Flight Monitor.

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2. Do your Local Police work with ICE?

287-g (a program) lets ICE deputize your local police and sheriffs to act as immigration agents. This program has expanded with 135 program agreements at the start of 2025 to more than 2,100 by July 2026, (this month). These deals are signed by local officials and voted in your local public meetings.

Do this to help fight back: You can search the ICE 287g list for law enforcement involved with the program. If your area is on it, email your sheriff, mayor, and council and say: Will you end this agreement? What’s the process to withdraw?! Then try to set a weekly reminder to scan the local meeting agendas for words like “ICE,” or “287g,” and be sure to speak up before the vote.

3. Look up the Public Records

Most people don’t realize they can do this. You can look up public records without being a journalist or reporter. You can view government invoices, agreements, and emails which are often public under records laws. Following the records can show you and your community how much local officials are working with ICE.

Do this: You can file a narrow records request with an agency: Copy and use this: Under the applicable public-records law, I request ALL contracts, agreements, and invoices between ‘insert agency here’ and ICE or DHS from January 1, 2025 to today. Please send them electronically, and give me an estimate if fees will top $25. There are free tools like MuckRock that walk you through this process. You can turn what you get back into a timeline/summary to share or that a local reporter can use.

4. Tech Companies Powering ICE

In January of 2026, the EFF reported that ICE uses a Palantir tool that maps targets and scores/records their likely addresses, pulling from Medicaid and other records. Palantir disputes it. Either way, these companies have employees and shoppers who are being affected by this kind of surveillance.

Do this to help fight back: If you work in tech, own stock, attend a school, or belong to a union or professional group, ask: Does my employer, school, or city hold a contract with ICE or an ICE data vendor? Then push for something specific, like a worker letter, student resolution, or a promise not to renew the contract. Skip “boycott everything.” and aim at one contract. The EFF report is a good place to start. You can also learn more about FLOCK cameras by clicking here

5. Help Rapid Response from Home

Trained volunteers respond in-person when ICE shows up, but Rapid Response groups need people behind the scenes too. They need help answering phones, checking and verifying reports, translating, and reaching out to lawyers.

Do this: Join a group that already exists instead of starting your own alert page. (But if your community doesn’t have one yet, definitely get one going!) Contact a local immigrant-rights or rapid-response network and ask what remote help they need, like hotline shifts, translation, or graphics/flyers. The United We Dream MigraWatch hotline can direct you to local groups. You can also learn how to report safely from our guide, ICE Vehicles Don’t Look Like ICE Vehicles Anymore.

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6. Get “know your rights” cards out to people

The Immigrant Legal Resource Center makes Free Red Cards, in more than fifty languages, these help explain rights in a simple and easy to understand way.

Do this: Download and print Red Cards, then hand them out, mail them to a trusted local group, or pay for a batch to be printed. The cards are always free, so ignore any account charging for them. While you are at it, share vetted legal help and remind people of three things: a notary is not a lawyer, a comment online is not legal advice, and no one should pay an unlicensed “consultant.”

7. Support Affected Families

One detention can drain a family very fast with legal fees, bond, rent, missed paychecks, and long drives to a detention center.

Do this to help fight back: you can set up a small monthly donation to a local bail or bond fund and look for clear local leadership with a secure donation page. You can also help by spending money at immigrant owned businesses when fear of being kidnapped by ICE keeps their regular customers away.

The people ICE targets are the ones who pay the price if something goes wrong. When you’re not sure about something, ask an immigrant-led group what they need, and take the boring (but necessary!) job.

These are only 7 ways to fight back. Help our community by sharing more ideas in the comments:

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Sources/Reading

Avelo Airlines ending ICE deportation flights and closing its Mesa base | CNBC

ICE Flight Monitor | Human Rights First

GlobalX ICE flight records, reporting by The Guardian; NCAA charter estimate, De-ICE These Flights campaign | Democracy Now

287(g) program, models, and participating agencies, ICE | ILRC national map

Palantir enforcement-targeting tool report | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Reporting ICE activity safely

MigraWatch hotline United We Dream

Free printable Red Cards Immigrant Legal Resource Center

LinkTree

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On Friday evening, as the light faded over one of Brea, California’s busiest intersections, community members lit candles at the corner of Imperial Highway and State College Boulevard. So far, they’ve stood at that corner every Monday for more than a year. They stood with handmade signs, candlelight, and music, one small point of light at the start of a very big weekend.

From July 17 through 19, more than 600 communities gathered for Good Trouble Lives On, the sixth annual national weekend of nonviolent, nonpartisan action honoring Congressman John Lewis. Organizers built the weekend around three things, Teach, Reach, Preach, and centered this year’s actions on voter registration, civic education, and faith-based organizing. It was a weekend spent building people and relationships that will defend the vote this coming November and beyond.

The weekend was built to outlast the weekend

Organizers with the Transformative Justice Coalition and partners structured all three days around Teach, Reach, Preach. Friday was for teach-ins, vigils, and voter education. Saturday was for reaching people directly through registration drives and community gatherings. Sunday brought work into congregations, where clergy connected voting rights to moral responsibility.

Every official event carried a commitment to nonviolence, de-escalation, and lawful conduct. That discipline is the same discipline John Lewis practiced, and it’s what keeps our people safe

In New York, Friday brought a march and a dance party

In New York, Friday’s action began at Foley Square in Manhattan, where a coalition including the New York Immigration Coalition, Hands Off NYC, the Workers Circle, and partners held a rally and march defending Black voting power and immigrant New Yorkers, with a march toward Cadman Plaza and an outdoor dance party with Public Service NYC.

Lean into joy. This movement never asked anyone to choose between resistance and celebration and we really need both, and New York brought both.

In Santa Barbara, hundreds of people became more than a crowd

By 11 a.m. Saturday, nearly 300 people lined Cabrillo Boulevard near Stearns Wharf, the Santa Barbara Independent reported. Volunteers in yellow vests waved at honking drivers. Local groups recruited newcomers into postcard writing, phone banking, and text banking.

One affiliated group, Commit to Democracy, said its volunteers sent more than five million text messages during the last general election.

And in the places the cameras rarely go

In Fultondale, Alabama, high school students, artists, and faith leaders gathered at St. Luke A.M.E. Church on Sunday. In Huntsville, organizers described disrupting the system with joy. In Lynchburg, Virginia, the Lynchburg Voters League held its second annual Good Trouble weekend. In Chicago, a candlelight vigil near Buckingham Fountain opened a weekend of registration events across the city.

Some gatherings were large. Some filled a church or a single street corner. Every one of them makes a difference. Thank you to everyone who showed up or shared to help get the word out.

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Why this year carries extra weight

This weekend took on new urgency amid a broader assault on voting rights, including the Supreme Court’s April decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which sharply narrowed how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act can be used to challenge racial vote dilution in redistricting. Justice Elena Kagan warned in dissent that the decision renders Section 2 “all but a dead letter.” And according to the Brennan Center, at least 9 states enacted 12 restrictive voting laws this year, and nine of those laws are slated to be in effect for the November midterms.

None of this is inevitable, and more than 600 communities just spent three days proving it.

Every registration table, teach-in, congregation that took up the cause this weekend is a barrier answered with a person who now knows how to get through it.

What this weekend built

• A college senior is building a campus organization that didn’t exist a month ago.

• Congregations across the country preached democracy from the pulpit.

• Strangers picked up lyric sheets and sang together.

• Newcomers signed up for their first phone bank.

• People who were frightened on Wednesday stood shoulder to shoulder with neighbors by Saturday.

Don’t let the weekend end here

• Check your voter registration, especially if you’ve moved, changed your name, or skipped recent elections. If you hit a problem or a question, the nonpartisan Election Protection hotline is 866-OUR-VOTE.

• Become dependable somewhere. Join a local group doing voter outreach and claim a recurring piece of the work: a phone bank shift or a registration table.

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  Sent in and written by Erika Berg, Click here to read: John Lewis | A Tribute

  

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Did you show up for Good Trouble? How did it go?

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This week, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. A 52-year-old husband, father of three sons and construction-business owner, was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Houston’s Magnolia Park on July 7 while driving his crew to a job site. He was not the person agents were looking for. The Harris County medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.

Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero. A 25-year-old father of a 3-year-old girl, shot and killed by an ICE agent in Biddeford, Maine, on July 13. He was also not the target either. The agents involved were not wearing body cameras.

Then yesterday morning, a third name we still don’t know of a 28-year-old man in St. Augustine, Florida, one of four people who ran when ICE and Homeland Security Investigations agents confronted their parked car at a gas station. He was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer as he fled across State Road 16. Authorities have not released his name, and it happened the same day the administration told ICE to pause most vehicle stops.

Three deaths from ICE enforcement encounters in one week.

This weekend, from Friday, July 17, through Sunday, July 19, communities across the country are taking action. They’re honoring John Lewis, defending voting rights and demanding an end to an agency whose operations keep leaving people dead.

What is happening this weekend

Six years after the death of Congressman John Lewis, the Good Trouble Lives On national weekend of action runs Friday through Sunday under the theme “Teach! Reach! Preach!”

Friday is Teach: teach-ins, civic education, and community discussions.
Saturday is Reach: rallies, marches, voter registration, and outreach, with actions planned nationwide.
Sunday is Preach: interfaith services centered on civic responsibility and voting rights.

The campaign is anchored by voting rights, organized by groups including 50501, the Transformative Justice Coalition, Black Voters Matter, Indivisible, and the Declaration for American Democracy coalition, with hundreds of thousands expected to participate

Every Good Trouble event is required to be nonviolent, lawful, and weapons-free.

Good Trouble Lives On is nationally anchored in voting rights, civic education and defending the civil rights John Lewis spent his life fighting for.

But after ICE agents killed Lorenzo and Johan, two fathers who were not even the targets of the operations, and after a third man died fleeing an ICE encounter in Florida the very next day, many communities will also carry demands for ICE accountability and abolition into this weekend’s actions.

These fights are not separate.

The government attacking voting rights is the same government unleashing masked federal agents into our communities, conducting dangerous vehicle stops and defending deadly force before the public has even seen the evidence.

Look at the map.

The national map will tell you something is being planned however, your local organizers tell you where your community is actually meeting up.

A pin on the map might be one volunteer’s listing, the bigger gathering your neighbors are planning might be ten miles away, outside an ICE facility, at a courthouse, in a church parking lot, or on an overpass in the next town over.

Anyone can add an event to a national map without knowing what local coalitions have already decided

Do both:

1. Open the Good Trouble Lives On map and the Mobilize event finder. Search your town, your county, and the nearest city.

2. Then check your local groups, 50501 group, Indivisible chapter, immigrant rights organization, or the community groups you already trust. Ask where the meetup point is.

And if you check everything and the nearest action is still just you? Showing up alone is bravery. One person with a sign on a rural highway reaches hundreds of cars. Some of the most important protests in this movement have started exactly that way. But if you are hoping to stand in a crowd, confirm where the crowd will be before you leave home.

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Maine: you are showing up and we are all watching

Within hours of Johan’s killing, hundreds of people gathered in Biddeford and Portland. About 85 people demonstrated in Bangor, more than 80 gathered in Waterville, and more than 250 protested outside the ICE facility in Scarborough on Tuesday, the largest crowd organizers say that facility has ever seen.

Maine saw that ICE took another life and took to the streets. Within a day of Johan’s killing, the administration directed ICE to suspend most vehicle stops nationwide.

This weekend, Maine communities are folding that grief and fury into Good Trouble actions across the state. Gatherings are being announced quickly and are changing quickly, so check the Good Trouble map alongside the organizations closest to this fight:

• The Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition runs a statewide ICE response hotline at 207-544-9989 and an immigrant resource hub with multilingual know your rights materials.

• Presente! Maine, an immigrant-led organization supporting Maine’s Latino community and helping lead the response to Johan’s killing, is an important source for community-led action announcements.

• The Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project provides free immigration legal help across Maine.

Don’t assume the biggest Maine gathering will be in Biddeford, and don’t assume it won’t be. Check before you go, and check again the morning of

Houston: the movement for Lorenzo is not slowing down

Houston has been in the streets since July 8. Marches through the East End. Vigils on Canal Street where Lorenzo was killed. Over a hundred people outside City Hall this past Saturday demanding an independent investigation, and elected officials from the Harris County DA to members of Congress refusing to let the case disappear.

Houston organizers move fast, and new actions are often announced only days or hours ahead through community networks. For this weekend, watch FIEL Houston, LULAC, Houston area labor unions, and the Good Trouble map, and verify dates carefully. Flyers from the July 8 through 12 actions are still circulating and can be mistaken for new events.

The Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative hotline is 1-833-468-4664 for anyone who needs help locating a detained loved one or finding free legal assistance in Greater Houston

Two more dates for your calendar:

• Wednesday, July 15 at 8 PM ET / 5 PM PT: the national Justice4Lorenzo&Johan: Day of Action and Accountability Movement Call, featuring Lorenzo’s loved ones, case updates, and planning for vigils on or around July 25.

• On and around Saturday, July 25: coordinated community vigils nationwide. More info to come.

  

Support the families directly

Both families have verified fundraisers.

• Justice and Support for Johan Sebastián’s Family: Funds are entrusted to Johan’s sister and will help cover legal expenses, funeral and repatriation costs, and continuing support for his wife and daughter.

• In Loving Memory of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo: Organized by the LULAC Institute to support funeral and legal expenses and provide ongoing help for Lorenzo’s wife and three sons.

Fake fundraisers often pop up after national tragedies.
Share these direct links, not screenshots. We also have the links in our Linktree, by clicking here.

Before you go checklist for this weekend

• Confirm the listing says 2026. Old Good Trouble flyers from last year rank high in search results.

• Confirm the organizer posted the same time and place on a live page or active account.

• Read the ACLU protesters’ rights guide.

• Print a few Know Your Rights red cards to hand out. They’re available in multiple languages and help people clearly invoke their constitutional rights when immigration agents come to their homes, workplaces or communities.

Whatever you can do is enough

If you can march: pick your event, invite others, and show up to an event this weekend.

If you can’t be in a crowd: consider donating to the family funds above, join Wednesday’s movement call from your couch, print red cards for your neighborhood, or share the verified maps and links..

If all you have is your voice: tell people about Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, tell them what happened.

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If you have a protest sign ready or if you have protest sign ideas, share them in the comments to help inspire others.

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To Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, who lived in Houston for more than thirty-five years, built homes for a living and was beginning another morning of work when ICE took his life.

And to Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, who rose early for his wife and little girl and never made it home.

And to the man in St. Augustine whose name we don’t yet know. We will learn your name, and we will say it too.

You should all be alive. We will say your names across this country.

ICE keeps killing, lying, and avoiding any accountability.

Abolish ICE.

Another person was shot and killed this morning in an incident involving ICE near Pool and Hill streets in Biddeford, Maine, according to state officials. Authorities have not released the victim’s name, said who fired, or explained what happened. It came just six days after an ICE agent shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston as he drove his construction crew to a job site.

Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights found that 52 people have died in ICE custody during the first 500 days of this administration. The mortality rate in custody has more than doubled and is nearly four times what it was under the previous administration. Separately, a Guardian review found that 10 people had been fatally shot by ICE or Border Patrol officers during this administration before today’s incident. The Biddeford shooting may raise that number, but authorities have not yet said who fired.

More raids, detention, and more money have not bought accountability, instead they have bought fear, secrecy, and death.

Abolishing ICE means to dismantle an agency that has proven time and time again that it can’t be trusted with this much power.

ICE doesn’t run one office per state. Its Enforcement and Removal Operations division splits the entire country into 25 regional field offices, and each one covers a wide territory, often several states at once.

If your state is not named below, it’s not because ICE is absent. It’s because your state is run out of a regional office headquartered somewhere else. Phoenix oversees Arizona. St. Paul covers Minnesota and the states around it. Every state in the country falls under one of these 25.

Use this only for lawful, peaceful organizing.

Plug into immigrant-led groups in your area, line up legal observers and medics, protect vulnerable neighbors, and always verify a location before announcing anything.

These are also not the only places ICE operates. The agency runs sub-offices, detention centers, processing facilities, and temporary staging sites that may not appear on ICE’s public field-office directory. What this list gives you is ICE’s 25 publicly listed ERO field offices, which oversee enforcement and removal operations across their assigned regions

This list focuses on ICE’s 25 publicly listed ERO regional field offices and its national headquarters. For ICE’s broader directory, including sub-offices, investigative offices, legal offices, and other local facilities, click here.

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ICE regional enforcement offices

Arizona Phoenix Field Office 2035 N. Central Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85004

California Los Angeles Field Office 300 North Los Angeles Street, Room 7631, Los Angeles, CA 90012

San Diego Field Office 880 Front Street, Suite 2242, San Diego, CA 92101

San Francisco Field Office 630 Sansome Street, Room 590, San Francisco, CA 94111

Colorado Denver Field Office 12445 E. Caley Avenue, Centennial, CO 80111

District of Columbia National ICE Headquarters 500 12th Street SW, Washington, DC 20024 (ICE uses 20536 as its government mailing ZIP.)

Florida Miramar Sub Office, Miami Field Office 2805 SW 145th Avenue, Miramar, FL 33027

Georgia Atlanta Field Office 180 Ted Turner Drive SW, Suite 522, Atlanta, GA 30303

Illinois Chicago Field Office 101 W. Ida B. Wells Drive, Suite 4000, Chicago, IL 60605

Louisiana New Orleans Field Office 181 James Drive W, St. Rose, LA 70087

Maryland Baltimore Field Office 31 Hopkins Plaza, 6th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21201

Massachusetts Boston Field Office 1000 District Avenue, Burlington, MA 01803

Michigan Detroit Field Office 985 Michigan Avenue, Suite 207, Detroit, MI 48226

Minnesota St. Paul Field Office 1 Federal Drive, Suite 1601, Fort Snelling, MN 55111

New Jersey Newark Field Office 970 Broad Street, 11th Floor, Newark, NJ 07102

New York Buffalo Field Office 250 Delaware Avenue, 7th Floor, Buffalo, NY 14202

New York City Field Office 26 Federal Plaza, 9th Floor, Suite 9-110, New York, NY 10278

Pennsylvania Philadelphia Field Office 114 North 8th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107

Texas Dallas Field Office 8101 N. Stemmons Freeway, Dallas, TX 75247

El Paso Field Office 11541 Montana Avenue, Suite E, El Paso, TX 79936

Harlingen Field Office 1717 Zoy Street, Harlingen, TX 78552

Houston Field Office 126 Northpoint Drive, Houston, TX 77060

San Antonio Field Office 1777 NE Loop 410, 15th Floor, San Antonio, TX 78217

Utah Salt Lake City Field Office 2975 Decker Lake Drive, Suite 100, West Valley City, UT 84119-6096

Virginia Washington Field Office 14797 Murdock Street, Mail Stop 5216, Chantilly, VA 20598-5216

Washington Seattle Field Office 12500 Tukwila International Boulevard, Seattle, WA 98168

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Justice for Lorenzo: Day of Action & Accountability

Movement Call Wednesday, July 15

Join the Justice for Lorenzo movement call. Hear directly from Lorenzo’s loved ones, get updates on the case, and learn how communities can demand accountability in the weeks ahead.

Justice for Lorenzo: Day of Action & Accountability Movement Call Wednesday, July 15, 8 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. PT Register here

Abolish ICE. Protect our neighbors. Show up peacefully.

For Lorenzo and those killed by ICE, whose name we will continue to say.

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This week began with fireworks smoke still hanging over Washington and ended with the White House removing every commissioner from the Election Assistance Commission, the one federal agency built to help states run elections.

Not only that but an ICE killed a Houston father on his way to work, the Justice Department threatened election officials in every state with criminal prosecution, and the ceasefire with Iran gave way to two nights of strikes.

Courts kept Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center and ordered his payment to E. Jean Carroll released. Hundreds marched in Houston, Mexico moved past diplomatic complaints and toward the courts, and thousands are still standing behind a military officer who chose his oath over his career. Here’s what happened.

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Monday

The 4th of July Smoke & Recap

After the 850,000-firework display over the National Mall, Washington briefly recorded the worst air quality of any major city in the world on Sunday, according to the global monitoring platform IQAir. City officials issued a Code Red air quality alert, warning that the air was unhealthy for seniors, children, and people with medical conditions, after regional forecasters had initially predicted even worse Code Purple conditions. Air quality returned to moderate by Monday morning, but the scale of the pollution, and the fact that internal National Park Service documents showed officials expected it, was becoming clear.

Our Monday article covered what happened in Washington and across the country:

They Launched 850,000 Fireworks | 250 “Celebration” Recap

The Tubman $20 bill is officially dead

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed to Spectrum News on Monday that the administration has abandoned the decade-old plan to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, saying “we are not at present” moving forward. He didn’t give much of a reason. In the same interview, he also said the Treasury is prepared to move quickly on a new $250 bill featuring Trump’s image if Congress approves it, since federal law bars living people from appearing on currency.

Tuesday

ICE killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo on his way to work

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three, was driving his construction crew to a job site Tuesday morning when an ICE officer shot him on Canal Street in Houston’s East End. He lived in the United States for roughly 35 years and was working toward legal status, according to his family. DHS claims he rammed an ICE vehicle and tried to run over an officer. His family disputes that account, and three men detained during the stop told an attorney the agents were never in danger. The officers involved were not wearing any body cameras, and no federal video of the shooting has been released. The Harris County Medical Examiner has since ruled his death a homicide, and U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia says he was not even the target of the operation.

We published a full account of Lorenzo’s story and the growing demand for an independent investigation:

He Was Driving to Work. Another Person, Shot and Killed by ICE.

The Justice Department threatened election officials in every state

Also on Tuesday, the Justice Department sent letters warning election officials they could face criminal prosecution if they knowingly allow noncitizens to remain on voter rolls or cast ballots. A department spokesperson confirmed the letters went to all 50 states and Washington, D.C., and gave officials five days to explain how they will comply. Noncitizen voting is already illegal and studies have repeatedly found it to be rare, and the department has yet to win a single lawsuit seeking access to state voter rolls. Election law experts told Votebeat the letters look less like the start of prosecutions and more like an attempt to pressure and intimidate the people who run elections ahead of November’s midterms.

Wednesday

Trump declared the Iran ceasefire “over”, again

After Iran was accused of attacking three commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, the United States struck more than 80 Iranian targets that night, then launched a second wave of roughly 90 strikes Wednesday. The administration also revoked the sanctions waiver that had allowed Iranian oil sales under the interim deal. Speaking at the NATO summit in Ankara, Trump said he considered the ceasefire “over,” though he suggested negotiations could continue even as he called them a waste of time. Iran retaliated with drone and missile attacks on U.S. military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait, and the renewed fighting raised fears that the conflict could return to a broader war.

Courts handed Trump two setbacks

A federal appeals court ruled that Trump’s name must stay off the Kennedy Center while his administration appeals the order that forced its removal. The three-judge panel found the administration offered no specific facts or evidence for its claim that losing the Trump name would harm the center’s finances.

A judge ordered the release of $5.8 million to E. Jean Carroll, the $5 million a jury awarded her in 2023 plus interest, after the Supreme Court declined to hear Trump’s appeal of the verdict finding him liable for sexually abusing and defaming her. Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote that Trump “has been stalling this case for years.” Trump’s lawyers asked an appeals court to pause the payment that same day, and the court refused Wednesday night.

Thursday

Major Jason Watson remains restricted to base

Major Jason Watson is not in confinement, but he remains restricted to Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling and under a gag order preventing him from discussing his case publicly. The Air Force confirmed that no charges have been formally filed as of Thursday, though its investigation remains open. Watson said he understood the consequences he might face when he stood on the Capitol steps and called for Trump’s impeachment and removal.

Our latest update explains where his case stands and how thousands of people are supporting him:

What We Know Now About Major Jason Watson

Mexico is demanding accountability for deaths connected to ICE

Mexico announced Thursday that it will request criminal charges over the deaths of 17 Mexican citizens in ICE custody or during Trump administration immigration operations, including 14 deaths in detention and three during enforcement actions such as the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. The request carries no legal force inside the United States, but President Claudia Sheinbaum said Mexico is choosing to “move beyond diplomatic channels,” and the government will also back civil lawsuits against the private companies that operate detention centers.

Today: Friday

Trump gutted the Election Assistance Commission

The week ends where it began, with elections under pressure.

Trump fired the two Democratic commissioners of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland, by email Thursday afternoon, while its remaining Republican commissioner, Christy McCormick, was allowed to resign. With its fourth seat already vacant since April, the commission now has 0 commissioners. Career staff can keep running existing programs, including disbursing election security grants and certifying voting systems under current standards, but the agency can’t approve new policies, update its guidelines, or take any commissioner-level action without a bipartisan quorum.

The Election Assistance Commission distributes federal election funds, maintains the national voter registration form, and tests and certifies voting systems that states rely on. It resisted Trump’s demand to add a documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement to that form, a demand a federal judge already blocked. The firings came days after the Supreme Court gave presidents broad power to remove leaders of independent agencies, and just months before the midterms. Any replacements must be confirmed by the Senate, which means the agency’s leadership will stay empty for some time to come.

Some Good News

Olivia Rodrigo, who condemned the administration’s use of her music in a deportation video last year, spent this week helping her fans get ready to vote.
She partnered with the nonprofit HeadCount to launch a sweepstakes for VIP tickets to her all-women Daisy Chain Fields festival, and entering means checking your registration status, registering to vote, or exploring election information ahead of the midterms. HeadCount partners with musicians and music events to promote civic participation, and Rodrigo just pointed one of the biggest fanbases in music its way. We need more celebrities to do things like this and to use their platforms for good.

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Movement Spotlight

The spotlight belongs to Houston.

On Wednesday evening, hundreds of people marched down Canal Street in Magnolia Park, chanting “ICE out of Houston” and building a memorial of candles, flowers, and handwritten notes at the spot where Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed.

Local artist Sarah Fisher spent the day painting his portrait.

U.S. Reps. Al Green, Christian Menefee, and Sylvia Garcia joined the crowd to demand a transparent investigation. This neighborhood refuses to let a him become a statistic, and their pressure is part of why multiple investigations are now underway.

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If the dismantling of the EAC worries you, there’s something concrete you can do:

Benjamin Hovland, one of the fired commissioners, said his hope is that more Americans will step up to serve as poll workers in the midterms.

Your county needs them, the training is short, and it is one of the most direct ways to protect the vote in your own community.

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What is one thing your local group is doing this month that other readers could borrow?

Have you ever considered volunteering as a poll worker?

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He stood on the Capitol steps in uniform, held a sign reading “Impeach. Convict. Remove,” and let himself be arrested for it. He said the price was one he was willing to pay.

He is restricted to Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling. He can’t speak to the press. Here is where his case stands and how to stand with him.

Where his case stands

Major Watson is not in confinement, but he’s restricted to Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington, DC. He is under a written order to not speak with the press or post about his case. Major Watson, who stood up so the rest of us would speak louder is, for now, not allowed to speak at all.

DC criminal charges have been declined for prosecution. But the Air Force investigation is open, and his attorney confirms it covers four articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: contempt toward officials, failure to obey an order, conduct unbecoming an officer, and conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline. No charges have been formally filed and no court date is set. If this ends in a court-martial and a conviction, he could face dismissal from the Air Force, forfeiture of pay and benefits, and possible confinement.

His attorney says his position hasn’t wavered. Watson believes the administration’s conduct in Iran violates the Constitution he swore to defend, and he expects this may end in a court-martial and he is ready to meet it.

How to support him

• Consider giving to his official legal defense fund. The Major Jason Watson Legal Trust fund has raised $309,002 toward its $350,000 goal from 7,481 donors.

• Join the organizations carrying his message forward. The Removal Coalition and Defenders Of Our Republic (DOOR on Bluesky).

• Call your representative and senators. Tell them you’re watching how a 17-year officer is treated for peacefully petitioning Congress. The Capitol switchboard is (202) 224-3121.

• Share his story. He is under a gag order. We are not.

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Major Watson said:

“If just a nobody like me can take a stand for our Constitution and our democratic republic, then you can too.”

Prove him right.

For Major Jason Watson, who kept his oath.

Major Watson called himself “just a nobody.”

But he is not a nobody now. Thank you Major Jason Watson!

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We read the filings, track the updates, check the sources, and turn it into something people can understand and use. Paid subscription doesn’t buy secret content. It funds the time it takes to get the public content right.

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TL;DR

On Tuesday morning, an ICE officer shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old father of three, in Houston’s Magnolia Park neighborhood while he was driving workers to a construction job. ICE says he “weaponized his vehicle.”

His family says he lived in Houston for 35 years and would have complied with any lawful stop, and witness photos reviewed by LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens) appear to show a van with no visible damage.

This is at least the eighth death in this administration’s immigration enforcement campaign, and in case after case, video has later contradicted the government’s first story.

And to make matters worse, the three eyewitnesses who were in Lorenzo’s van, including his brother, are now in ICE custody at an undisclosed location, and his family fears they will be deported before they can even testify.

You can sign the petition, support his family, and demand an independent investigation right now. (We have also added these links to our Linktree in our bio for easier access if you can’t find this email/article)

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Picture this: it’s your normal Tuesday morning

It’s 6:50 a.m. and the sun has been up for barely half an hour.

You’re doing what you do every workday, driving your van through the neighborhood, picking up your crew, and heading to work. You’ve completed the same drive for years. You have lived in this city for 35 years and you built a construction business from nothing but hard work and early mornings.

Then unmarked SUVs close in around your van.

And the men inside them are federal agents, but nothing about their vehicles says so. Within minutes, you’re shot.
Your brother is in the van too, and one of your sons will learn what happened on this very street.

That’s the story of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s last morning.

He died on the way to the hospital.

The Department of Homeland Security put out their side of the story within hours.

According to the agency’s statement, officers attempted a vehicle stop as part of a targeted enforcement operation, and Lorenzo rammed an ICE vehicle, refused verbal commands, and “weaponized his vehicle” against an officer, who fired in self-defense.

A statement written by the agency whose officer pulled the trigger.

Notice what the statement does NOT include: ANY evidence.

• No body camera footage has been released.

• No dash camera video.

• No dispatch logs.

• No photos of the damage his van supposedly caused.

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Thirty-five years of 6 a.m. mornings

Lorenzo’s son Ronaldo, a teacher, stood in front of cameras on Wednesday and told the world who his father was.

Ronaldo described his dad as a man of unbreakable routine. He was up before sunrise every day, out the door around 6 a.m., building homes in North Houston. Evenings usually meant sitting the front porch and listening to music with his dog right beside him.

Ronaldo said his father had lived in Houston for 35 years and was working through the legal process to obtain a work permit. On Tuesday morning, Lorenzo picked up three men for work, including his own brother, when agents in unmarked vehicles stopped him.

His son’s answer to ICE’s story was simple: “my father would have complied.”

A man who spent 35 years showing up on time doesn’t wake up one Tuesday and decide to fight the federal government with a work van.

We wrote an entire post about how ICE now hides in plain sight. This is not normal! Armed men in civilian SUVs box in your van, “fleeing law enforcement” and “trying to escape what looks like a carjacking” can be indistinguishable from the driver’s seat.

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Let’s talk about the van.

LULAC leaders reviewed photos and videos taken by witnesses at the scene.

Domingo Garcia, LULAC’s national president, said the images appear to show no visible damage to Lorenzo’s van. His challenge to the government: “If their people are innocent, prove it.”

If a van rammed a law enforcement vehicle hard enough to justify deadly force, the evidence should be sitting in plain view on both bumpers for us all to see.

LULAC has acknowledged it hasn’t seen all the evidence. Neither have we. The people who have the evidence are the same people whose story it would confirm or destroy, and they’re not releasing it.

LULAC is offering a $5,000 reward for footage and information.

The Texas Tribune is collecting tips and video through secure channels. Civil society is having to crowdsource the truth that the federal government is sitting on.

An important note: Lorenzo’s family has asked for privacy and has asked people not to circulate images of his final moments.

The witnesses have disappeared into ICE custody

Three men were in the van with Lorenzo when he was shot, including his own brother.

They saw everything.

They are the closest thing to civilian eyewitnesses of the shooting itself that we know of and ICE detained all three.

According to reporting by The Bulwark, their current whereabouts are unknown, the family and local advocates fear they will be deported before they can give testimony, and ICE didn’t respond when asked where the men are being held.

The only known eyewitnesses to this killing by federal agents are in the custody of the agency that did the killing, at a location that agency will not disclose.

Ronaldo told The Bulwark he hopes those men will get the chance to give statements about what they saw, he believes their accounts will show his father was afraid, not aggressive.

If the witnesses are deported before an independent investigator interviews them, their testimony effectively disappears.

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We have been here before

Lorenzo’s death is at least the eighth during this administration’s immigration enforcement campaign, according to the Associated Press. And in case after case, the government’s first story fell apart the moment video surfaced.

Renee Good. ICE claimed the officer’s life was at risk from her moving vehicle. Video showed she was turning her wheels away from him when he opened fire.

Ruben Ray Martinez. DHS said he intentionally ran over an agent. The released footage doesn’t clearly show the vehicle striking anyone. He was 23.

Marimar Martinez. ICE alleged she tried to ram federal agents in Chicago. Video evidence showed otherwise, and the charges against her were dismissed.

In every fatal case so far: NO officers were charged!

LULAC CEO Juan Proaño told reporters that the federal government handed the public a story about Renee Good that collapsed when video came out, and that Houston is now being handed the SAME STORY in similar words.

And notice the timing. DHS has spent months on an image polish, telling reporters it wants operations to look more restrained and professional, while arrests surged past 10,000 in a single five-day stretch at the end of June.

The day before Lorenzo was killed, border czar Tom Homan acknowledged that about half the people ICE is targeting have no criminal record.

Who is investigating?

The FBI’s Houston field office confirmed it’s leading an investigation into a potential assault on a federal law enforcement officer.

The one killed is their suspect.

The shooting has been handed to the DHS Office of Inspector General, meaning the department that oversees ICE is examining ICE.

Houston police say they weren’t involved and the mayor’s office referred questions to Homeland Security.

Rep. Sylvia Garcia, who represents the neighborhood, is demanding a full and impartial investigation with all footage and communications preserved.

Rep. Christian Menefee, Harris County commissioners, FIEL Houston, and LULAC are all saying that local authorities, including the Houston Police Department and the Harris County District Attorney, need to be doing more.

Magnolia Park is not staying quiet, and neither should you

Within hours of the shooting, neighbors gathered on Canal Street with flowers and candles.

By Tuesday evening, protesters were chanting against ICE in the neighborhood and by Wednesday morning, Lorenzo’s son was at a podium with civil rights leaders, elected officials were on record demanding answers, and a national organization had put a cash reward out for information.

The government wanted this to be a one-day story. We need to get louder!

Here’s how you can help:

Sign LULAC’s petition demanding an independent investigation and the release of all evidence such as body camera footage, surveillance video, and witness statements. As I’m writing this, the petition has a total of 69,090 signatures. Lets show up for Lorenzo and get that over 100,000!

Help his family’s Gofundme if you can, (Currently at $109,554) organized by the LULAC Institute for Lorenzo’s wife and three sons, or share it if you can’t donate to help.

Call your representatives, especially if you live in Texas, and ask…
1) If they support an independent, local investigation into the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
2) If they will demand that ICE disclose the location of the three witnesses in his van and guarantee they’re not deported before giving testimony.

Find your representatives at 5calls.org.

If you’re in Houston or know someone who is. Footage and firsthand accounts are what broke the government’s story in Minneapolis and Chicago. The Texas Tribune is taking tips securely via Signal and WhatsApp, and LULAC’s reward stands.

Help make his name travel further than their press release

His name was Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.
He was 52.
He built homes for other families for 35 years while building a life for his own.
He wanted to see his sons become great people, and then he wanted to sit on his porch with his dog and his music.

The government has a story about him and has not shown us any proof. We have a story about the government’s stories, and ours comes with exposing their track record.

Send this post to the person in your life who says “well, he must have done something.” Ask them, if ICE has the footage that proves their story, why haven’t we seen it?

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Sources

• Texas Tribune | ICE agent fatally shoots migrant in Houston

• Texas Tribune | Son of man killed by ICE agent calls for investigation

• NBC News | Man fatally shot by ICE officer during traffic stop in Houston

• Associated Press | Houston shooting marks at least the 8th fatality in US immigration sweeps

• KPRC 2 Houston | Family demands answers after deadly ICE shooting

• KPRC 2 Houston | Houston leaders, LULAC call for independent investigation

• FOX 26 Houston | Press conference after death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo

• LULAC | Petition demanding a full, transparent investigation

• GoFundMe | In Loving Memory of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo (organized by LULAC Institute)

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