Opinion
Climate
Economy
Politics
Rights & Justice
War & Peace
Liam Tadeo and his dad Victor Martinez Nieto
Further

The Worst of The Worst

Well damn, we sure feel safer knowing ICE pulled 5-year-old Liam Tadeo and his construction worker dad Victor off Austin's streets on their way to a soccer game before Liam could start kindergarten the next day; also that they were held at a family concentration camp, ICE refused to let Liam's mother take him, and both father and son will "self-deport" to not further sully our pristine white shores. Question: How do these sick fucks sleep at night?

Thanks to the obscene $200 billion-plus gifted to DHS and ICE by their evil overlords, arrests of undocumented or at least unwanted immigrants surged to nearly 50,000 largely innocent people in July, a 15% spike from a month earlier and the regime's highest monthly arrest total to date. So yes, the sadists are still at it, just more quietly than when a psychotic Noem and Bovino were blasting out histrionic videos of daredevil agents dropping from helicopters onto apartment rooftops to grab terrified families - images reportedly, inexplicably "provoking a lot of ordinary people." Wusses, all.

Many recent arrests come during "traffic stops," increasingly with the help of partnering state and local law enforcement lured by "generous financial incentives," especially in Texas and Florida; ICE is also arresting more Haitians whose protections have been stripped away. Among those detained are over 6,200 kids, 10 times more than during Biden's tenure, despite ongoing, fantastical DHS claims they're going after the "worst of the worst" murderers, drug traffickers, sex offenders - and despite ghastly data showing up to 85% of ICE thugs themselves have sex offenses on their records, most against children. New data, like old data, also shows less than a quarter of those arrested have any criminal convictions.

Elsewhere, ICE abuses go on apace. A sailor aboard the troubled USS Lincoln said ICE has taken his father, who had a work permit, into custody. “Having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation’s laws,” said a DHS statement "in the same support-our-troops spirit Trump is so famous for." In an interview, the mother, father and sister of Alex Pretti family said no officials have come forward in the last seven months to retract or apologize for the "disgusting" claims of "assassin" and "domestic terrorist" they made about Alex - "We still hear those words about our child,” said his mother Susan - nor have any criminal charges been filed against his killers.

Meanwhile, J.D. Vance just came to Maine to spew racist lies, flaunt his "trademark absence of charisma," and claim, "If you bring in millions and millions of illegal aliens and give them houses that ought to go by right to American citizens, it's going to increase the cost of housing for everybody else." He also dismissed ICE's killing of Colombian Johan Durán Guerrero, who had a social security card, two jobs, a wife and a three-year-old daughter. Worried residents, he said, should "have a little bit of perspective" to ensure "that poison stops coming into our country." Troy Jackson called J.D. "a dirtbag": "I mean, he had a life." As to Susan Collins, who declined to regret giving ICE "$70 billion more to pull this shit off": "I’m sick of your ‘concerns.’"

And on Aug. 16, brave ICE thugs stopped five-year-old Liam Tadeo - their second small Liam like the bunny-hat-wearing Liam Ramos in Minnesota - and his father Victor Martinez Nieto on their way to play soccer. Without bothering with the nicety of pretending it was a legit traffic stop, they asked Victor, originally from Mexico, if he had legal status. Candidly, he said no; in 2025, he'd been arrested by ICE, "voluntarily" left, then "criminally" reentered the U.S. to (horrors) be with his wife and son. Heart-rending video soon surfaced of Liam crying beside his father and trying to hold one of his hands, cuffed behind him, as Victor tried to console his tearful son, talking to him as they walked. It was the day before Liam was set to start kindergarten.

They were both taken to the for-profit Dilley concentration camp, which rights groups have repeatedly accused of medical neglect, poor living conditions and abuse. According to Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, their family's attorney, Victor begged ICE to release Liam to his mother Maria, also not a legal citizen, at home, or another member of the family. ICE refused, though DHS proudly, routinely declaims ICE "will place the children with a safe person the parent designates," like how they also contend Dilley is "retrofitted for families, with access to teachers, classrooms, and curriculum booklets...generously funded by the U.S. taxpayer." Instead, they had Victor sign papers in English he didn't fully understand, and booked both father and son.

Lincoln-Goldfinch says Maria is "desperate and distraught, separated from her child and worrying about his well-being." Back at their home, "It feels like when you go to someone’s house after a sudden death, and there’s a wake or a gathering. Everybody is just stunned." Maria released a statement: "Liam was supposed to start kindergarten this week. Instead he is (in) detention. He should be in school, playing soccer, and at home with his family." Saturday, CNN aired emotional video of her talking by phone to her five-year-old. “I love you so much and I miss you so much, my love,” she tearfully told Liam in Spanish. “Don’t despair, my love, okay?” Lacking options, Liam timidly responds, "Okay." One furious, horrified online comment: "Anyone!!??!!"

This week, Austin's KUT News reported Victor has decided to be deported to Mexico along with his son, rather than risk Liam being separated from him and placed in a dystopian regime's custody as an "unaccompanied migrant child.” Said Lincoln-Goldfinch, "His family did what any family would do: Agree." As Maria reportedly struggles to find a way to re-unite with her family - "My son is only five years old" - Americans fume about "sadistic barbarians harming humanity every single day." "How sick can these people be? I used to think merciless psychopathic villains were only found in movies and fiction," said one. Also, "America has concentration camps. I. Hate. It. Here." and, "That poor little boy, That poor family. I am so tired."

Meanwhile, Texas' Dem lawmakers have called for Liam to be released and for Dilley to be shut down. "I just sat with Liam's mother as she found out what it means to have your child held hostage by ICE. It was horrifying," wrote Rep. Greg Casar, who charged Liam's arrest showed Trump uses children “as bait and leverage to fuel his mass deportation machine.” "Liam should be starting kindergarten this week, and instead he's sitting in a trailer prison." Rep. Joaquin Castro said ICE denied his request to visit Liam at Dilley in what he called "shady stuff," and he vowed to return; he also cited human rights violations, privacy concerns, and untenable phone, video call and e-mail strictures: “I’m telling y’all, ICE is getting worse."

Because this is ghoul-filled America in 2026, Liam's aunt Patricia Resendiz has begun a Gofundme to help with legal expenses and her sister Maria's household costs, as Victor was the sole provider. "If we manage to get Liam and his dad to go free, Liam will also need psychological support, as the detention has left him traumatized. These funds will be to mitigate all aspects of child detention," she wrote. "The detention of Liam and my brother-in-law was cruel. They are not criminals - they were simply on their way to a soccer match. Liam is a beautiful, intelligent, and big-hearted little boy. My sister is devastated, as are we. Liam was detained right in front of my son, his cousin. My son told me that ICE agents said to Liam, 'You can't escape.'"

We feel safer already.

SEE ALL
Waterfall on Baranof Island, Tongass National Forest,
News

Conservationists Say Trump Gutting of Roadless Rule Is Corporate Giveaway, Not Wildfire Prevention

The Trump administration is moving to reverse a decades-old rule that protected 45 million acres of forest lands from logging and construction, in what the Center for Biological Diversity called the "largest evisceration of public lands protection in American history."

On Tuesday, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that the US Forest Service had filed a proposed rule to fully rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, enacted under former President Bill Clinton, which had prevented road building and commercial logging on about 30% of all national forest land.

Rollins described the "roadless rule" as a barrier to government wildfire prevention efforts. "Across the country, we’ve watched preventable conditions—overgrown stands, insect outbreaks, and disease—turn healthy landscapes into tinderboxes,” she said. "For too long, outdated restrictions have kept tens of millions of forested acres off-limits to the very treatments that improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk to our communities."

But conservation groups argue that the administration's reversal of the roadless rule has little to do with wildfire prevention and everything to do with opening up protected lands to logging interests and other extractive industries, which have long pushed for the rule to be weakened.

Increasing logging on federal lands has been a major goal of Trump's second term, and repealing the roadless rule is part of that effort. An executive order signed in March 2025 calling for the "immediate expansion" of timber production said that federal policies had made the country unable to "fully exploit our domestic timber supply."

In June2025, when the US Department of Agriculture first announced plans to rescind the roadless rule, it said that increasing timber production would be one of the benefits. The USDA said the rule hurt “jobs and economic development” and that repealing it aligned with Trump's goal to eliminate "barriers that hamper American business and innovation."

Earthjustice has argued that, contrary to what the administration says, repealing the roadless rule will actually lead to more wildfires, not fewer.

It points to findings from the Forest Service that 9 in 10 wildfires are caused by human activity, including throwing cigarettes out of windows, leaving campfires abandoned, and driving cars on grassy areas, causing them to ignite.

A peer-reviewed study published in January in the journal Fire Ecology by researchers with the Wilderness Society found that fires are about four times as likely to start near a road as in roadless forests.

Another study by the Forest Service in 2020, during the first Trump administration, examined two decades of data and found that roadless forests actually received more fuel-reduction treatments per square kilometer than areas elsewhere in the National Forest System.

"Speculation that eliminating road prohibitions would improve forest health is not supported by nearly 20 years of monitoring data," the study concluded.

Josh Hicks, director of conservation campaigns at the Wilderness Society, said Tuesday, "Opening our backcountry forests to more roads and development, and therefore more ignitions, is... not a wildfire solution, and never will be."

While doing little to curb the recent increases in wildfires exacerbated by climate change, conservationists argue that repealing the roadless rule will pose other harms to communities and wildlife across the country.

“Roadless forests supply clean drinking water for tens of millions of Americans, are home to irreplaceable wildlife, and store enormous amounts of carbon,” said Gabrielle Berthel, forest advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Repealing the Roadless Area Conservation Rule would allow for the fragmentation of some of the last intact forest ecosystems in the country, with irreversible consequences for the communities that rely on these forests and the people who seek out these special places for recreation."

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) noted that these forests serve as habitats for numerous threatened species that risk being disrupted, including American wolverines, Canada lynx, grizzly bears, and northern spotted owls.

Randi Spivak, the public lands policy director at the CBD, emphasized that "these are some of the last truly wild forests left in the country... Once you start bulldozing roads for commercial logging and industrial development, there’s no getting them back."

More than 625,000 public comments have been submitted to the Forest Service since plans to rescind the roadless rule were announced last June. The USDA will accept public comments on the proposal until September 21, after which the administration is expected to move toward a final rule later this year.

SEE ALL
'I've Never Seen This': Massive Collapse in Support for AI Data Centers Captured in New Poll
News

'I've Never Seen This': Massive Collapse in Support for AI Data Centers Captured in New Poll

A poll released on Thursday shows a massive collapse in support for building artificial intelligence data centers among Republican, Democratic, and independent voters.

The poll, which was conducted by Embold Research and published by Heatmap Pro, shows that 75% of Americans now oppose building AI data centers in their area, including 61% registering strong opposition.

Just one year before, 42% of Americans said they opposed AI data centers in their areas, compared with 43% who expressed support.

The collapse in support has also been uniform across all demographics, the pollsters found.

"If you can think of a cohort of Americans, there’s a good chance they wouldn’t welcome a data center in their area," explained Heatmap executive editor Robinson Meyer. "The shift against the facilities is represented across age, gender, income, partisan ID, and the rural-urban divide. Data centers are 43 points underwater with Republicans, 65 points underwater with independents, and 75 points underwater with Democrats."

Meyer further described the drop in support for data centers as "a swift, massive shift in US public opinion on a scale that I wouldn’t have once thought possible."

Other observers expressed similar shock over how quickly US voters have turned against data centers, which President Donald Trump on Wednesday touted as a great source of jobs, even though the facilities employ very few people relative to their size once completed.

"I don’t think I’ve ever seen public opinion shift this quickly on an issue," wrote Adam Carlson, founding partner at Zenith Polls.

Justin Slaughter, vice president of regulatory affairs at venture capital firm Paradigm, expressed astonishment at how quickly Americans' views on AI data centers had fallen in just the span of a year.

"I’ve NEVER seen this," Slaughter wrote. "Data center opponents are converting supporters not just to neutral but to opposition."

Technologist Ramez Naam, a former computer scientist at Microsoft, described the shift against data centers as "crazy" and asked, "When's the last time political opinions on an issue shifted that fast?"

The social media account for Oil PAC Tracker pointed to several reasons for US voters to distrust the AI industry, including developers forcing local government officials to sign nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) related to data center development and predictions from tech CEOs about the technology putting millions of people out of work.

"Sign secret NDAs, arrest people at city council meetings, surveil, tout job displacement, and raise utility bills and pollution," wrote Oil PAC Tracker, "this is what you expect."

Max Steele, senior director of communications at gun safety advocacy organization Everytown, sarcastically argued that the AI industry's collapse in popularity was an impressive achievement.

"Credit where credit is due," Steele wrote, "the tech sector has managed to unite a deeply divided country at a time of maximal partisanship."

SEE ALL
David Michael Levin
News

Trump DOJ Hires Lawyer Convicted of Election Hacking to Voting Rights Division: Report

An attorney who in 2016 pleaded guilty to illegally hacking state and county election websites in Florida has apparently been hired by the US Department of Justice and took part in a recent DOJ election monitoring operation in Minnesota, according to a report published Friday.

Democracy Docket said it used "publicly available facial recognition reverse image search tools" to analyze "images and video posted online" and concluded that David Michael Levin seems to have joined the DOJ's Civil Rights Division.

Yunior Rivas, a breaking news reporter at the voting rights and elections site, said that hiring Levin "would be among the most troubling examples yet of the department’s Civil Rights Division bringing on lawyers—including the acting chief of the voting section—who have taken extreme steps to undermine fair elections, as it rushes to put together a team to carry out [President Donald] Trump’s anti-voting agenda."

"And Levin’s involvement in election monitoring could offer a hint of the kind of personnel who will staff the operation this fall, when the DOJ has said it will send 1,000 monitors to the polls," Rivas added.

EXCLUSIVE: Ten years ago, David Michael Levin was convicted of hacking into government election websites.Now, he appears to have been hired by the Trump DOJ to...wait for it...monitor elections.

[image or embed]
— Democracy Docket (@democracydocket.com) August 21, 2026 at 10:19 AM

Levin was arrested in May 2016 on three felony counts of "unauthorized access to the Lee County Elections Office website" the previous year "and to the Department of State Division of Elections website" in January 2016. The three felony charges were subsequently downgraded to two misdemeanors, to which Levin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 days in jail served on weekends and two years of probation.

"It was a silly political stunt,” Levin told the presiding judge in his case. “I didn’t think I was going to get in and I did. I’ve never done anything like it before and I’m not going to do anything like it again.”

“That was probably one of the bigger mistakes I’ve made in my life, the way I went about the whole thing,” Levin told the Bradenton Herald during his failed 2021 run for Manatee County School Board on a platform opposing critical race theory and mask mandates during the Covid-19 pandemic. “I made it very political, and it affected my life for a few years.”

According to Democracy Docket, Levin is now apparently working for the DOJ office responsible for enforcing federal voting rights laws. The Civil Rights Division is headed by Harmeet Dhillon, a conspiracy theorist with a troubled history of dabbling in 2020 election denial and working against voting, reproductive, LGBTQ+, and other civil rights.

"The DOJ did not respond to Democracy Docket’s request to confirm Levin’s employment and title," Rivas noted. "And Levin’s name has not appeared in court filings made by the department. The DOJ also did not respond to questions about whether officials were aware of Levin’s conviction for hacking election websites before he apparently joined the department."

As Malcolm Ferguson wrote for The New Republic on Friday:

The Trump administration has made a habit of offering vindication for people who flat out violated election laws in an attempt to stop what they believe was fraud—a lie their president has constantly tried to manifest into existence. Colorado’s Tina Peters, the former Colorado county election clerk found guilty of tampering with voting machines, was hosted at the White House last month. And more broadly... Dhillon has changed the purpose and function of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division entirely.

Democracy Docket's reporting comes amid efforts by Trump—who was impeached for a historic second time for inciting the January 2021 Capitol insurrection and trying to overturn his 2020 loss to former President Joe Biden—to cast doubt on the integrity of the upcoming midterm elections. The Trump administration has also been accused of attempted voter intimidation with a plan to deploy an army of 1,000 law enforcement personnel to polling places to "monitor" midterm voting.

This, amid Republicans' ongoing voter suppression efforts, including attacks on mail-in ballots, and persistent claims of nearly nonexistent voter fraud.

Reporting this week exposed the Trump administration's inability to back up a claim that nearly 16,000 noncitizens were registered to vote in Nevada, with the Department of Homeland Security only able to find 185 such cases—just over 1% of the number claimed.

SEE ALL
Day Of Action Protests Across The Country Criticize Trump And DOGE Policies
News

Al Green Files Impeachment Articles Over Trump Using CBP, ICE as 'Unaccountable Paramilitary Police Forces'

Congressman Al Green on Monday filed articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump over the twice-impeached Republican's violent campaign to round up and deport immigrants, which has killed citizens of various countries, including the United States.

Green, a Texas Democrat who has repeatedly pushed to impeach Trump for a range reasons during his two terms, argued in his new resolution that "our country and the lives of people within it are at risk as President Donald John Trump is a great threat to the United States democratic republic, its Constitution, and democracy."

"He is abusing the powers of the presidency by operating United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as his vicious, quota-driven, unaccountable paramilitary police forces," Green's resolution states, "transgressing with anonymity and secrecy, assaulting people, committing and covering up unjustified killings of civilians (including Renée Good, Alex Pretti, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero) with impunity (acting as judge, jury, prosecutor, and executioner), terrorizing communities, and brazenly and wantonly devolving the United States democratic republic into an authoritarian regime, where unjustified killings and coverups by ICE and CBP are normalized."

Despite agents with ICE and CBP killing Good and Pretti, both US citizens, as part of Trump's anti-immigrant operation in Minnesota's Twin Cities in January, the Republican-controlled Congress passed and the president signed a $70 billion bill for the Department of Homeland Security agencies in June.

Roughly a month later, an ICE agent fatally shot Salgado Araujo, a Mexican man, in Houston, Texas. Less than a week after that, another agent similarly killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, of Colombia, in Biddeford, Maine. Deaths on US streets and in immigrant detention centers have fueled anger and calls for reform—or even abolishing ICE—from the public and some elected Democrats.

The resolution introduced Monday is the first from Trump's second term to mention his anti-immigrant policies. Green—who has served in the House of Representatives for over two decades but is set to leave his seat at the end of this session after losing a May primary—has introduced articles of impeachment three other times since the president's return to power last year. Reps. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) and John Larson (D-Conn.) have separately put forward resolutions during this term.

Green and other Democrats also introduced impeachment articles during Trump's first term. The president was first impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in December 2019, then again after his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. However, Trump—the only president to be impeached twice—was not convicted by the Senate either time.

Polling conducted in March by Lake Research Partners for Free Speech for People (FSFP)—a legal advocacy group behind a campaign to impeach Trump again—found that 52% of US voters support a third impeachment, including 84% of Democrats, 55% of Independents, and 14% of Republicans. Leaders at the organization welcomed Green's new articles on Monday.

"The president of the United States has no authority to wield armed federal agents to intimidate communities, suppress constitutional rights, or consolidate political power on American soil," said FSFP chairman and senior legal adviser. "The framers anticipated this kind of abuse of executive power. They gave Congress the remedy: impeachment."

John Bonifaz, FSFP's president and co-founder, declared that "this is an existential moment for our nation and our democracy. We either have a Constitution, or we don't."

"Donald Trump has already engaged in multiple abuses of power," he stressed. "We call on our elected officials in Congress to carry out the mandate of their oath to protect the Constitution at this critical time by standing up and demanding impeachment proceedings against this lawless president."

SEE ALL
China condemns attacks on Doha
News

After Bessent Comments, China Warns US That It Cannot Sanction Iran Out of Existence

The Trump administration is once again threatening to carry out "regime change" in Iran, this time using what President Donald Trump described as "economic warfare" against the nation rather than military might.

But as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent demands the world play along with efforts to isolate Iran, the second-largest economy, China, is refusing to join the US sanctions campaign.

The Trump administration has failed to use military means to force Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz after it began restricting travel in retaliation for US and Israeli attacks in late February.

On Thursday, Bessent told CNBC that the new approach is to impose the "toughest sanctions in history” on Iran, ramping up a strategy that has inflicted suffering on the Iranian people but failed to force its leaders out of power for nearly 50 years.

Bessent emphasized that it would only work with the help of "all of our allies" carrying out the "greatest coordinated economic isolation in the history of the world."

He made very explicit the goal of ratcheting up pressure on the regime by inflicting pain on the nation's 90 million people, by causing "substantial inflation, both food inflation and ordinary inflation in Iran." He compared the effort to the use of sanctions to strangle the economies of Venezuela and Cuba, which have fueled humanitarian crises in both countries.

Bessent gave an ultimatum that every nation is "either with us or against us," and warned those who refuse to help with the administration's effort to "squash the economy" of Iran that the US would "put its full might and force toward enforcing against you."

He promised that any country that provides a "lifeline" to Iran would itself be sent into "economic oblivion."

Iran responded to the threats by vowing a fearsome retaliation. "With preparedness across land, sea, air, air defense, and cyberspace, Iran's armed forces will respond to the enemy's new threats with crushing, punishing, and devastating responses," said the chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, Maj. Gen. Ali Abdollahi.

Iran's parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf, acknowledged that the impact of further sanctions could indeed be devastating.

"We must make plans to deal with the unjust sanctions so that we can overcome them," he said. "No matter how much military power we have, we won't survive if people are hungry and we don't have financial turnover, economic growth, and national production."

As the US imposes its own blockade on Iran's oil exports, Bessent called on China to "get with the program." China buys about 80% of the oil exported from Iran, and Bessent emphasized that half of China's energy comes from the Persian Gulf.

But Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said during a press conference on Friday that China would not cooperate with efforts to isolate Iran.

"China believes that military means, sanctions, and pressure tactics are not the solution. On the contrary, they will only lead to escalation that serves no one’s interests. We call for efforts to solve disputes through dialogue and negotiation," Lin told an Iranian government broadcaster.

Asked about the potential effects on China's energy imports from Iran, he reiterated, "China opposes illicit unilateral sanctions that lack basis in international law and UN Security Council mandate."

The question now is whether Trump will make good on his administration's threats and retaliate against China. It's likely easier said than done, as an economic war with the US's third-largest trading partner could further exacerbate the economic turmoil Trump is seeking to ameliorate before the midterm elections in November.

Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies, suggested that China would be unlikely to surrender easily in that fight.

"China has a strong interest in preserving Iran under the Islamic Republic and maintaining Tehran’s strategic relationship, and growing dependence, on Beijing," he wrote on social media. "Any economic strategy that assumes China will eventually fall in line with Washington risks being built on a fundamentally flawed premise."

Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is still far below prewar levels, with the daily number of ships passing through in the single digits, according to Reuters.

Crude oil prices are still 30% higher than at the start of the war, while US gas prices are still up by more than a dollar per gallon.

But Trump, seemingly unwilling to admit that his campaign there has been anything less than successful, is continuing to claim that the strait is wide open thanks to US military action.

As Gregory Brew, a senior analyst on Iran and oil policy at the Eurasia Group, explained, this has left the administration's messaging on why exactly it is now pivoting to ruthless economic warfare appear like disjointed doublespeak.

"Bessent and others cannot say what this policy is meant to achieve—reopening the strait—because in the admin's telling, the strait is already open," Brew said. "As a result, this return to maximum pressure feels oddly devoid of purpose. The US is inflicting economic pain, felt mostly by Iran's people, rather than its rulers, for no clear reason."

SEE ALL