Notices by Chuck Darwin (cdarwin@c.im)

A United States senator forced to the floor and handcuffed by federal agents for interrupting a news conference.
A mayor taken into custody by masked officials in military-style fatigues.
A political candidate pushed against a wall and handcuffed in a dispute at an immigration courthouse.
A government crackdown is extending to the political opposition.
“This is executive authority, especially in the Department of Homeland Security, running out of control,” said Senator Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat. “Do the members of Congress need security details to defend themselves from the executive branch? God, I hope not.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/us/politics/democrats-arrested-lander-padilla-trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Mastodon updates its terms to prohibit AI model training

https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/17/mastodon-updates-its-terms-to-prohibit-ai-model-training/

The Rapid Response Network of Kern is a collaborative of local organizations, community leaders, and immigrant rights advocates supporting our immigrant communities.

The Rapid Response Network of Kern was established in February of 2018 to respond to the needs and challenges of our immigrant communities who are targeted by increased immigration enforcement activities.

Call our hotline to receive rapid help against ICE, including in person support, legal help, grocery delivery, and accompaniment to ICE check-ins.

https://www.rapidresponsekern.com/who-we-are/

Cynthia Santiago, an attorney in Southern California, won her high school presidential class race the same year Stephen Miller,
the current White House Deputy Chief of Staff,
lost the class speaker race.

More than 20 years later, Santiago is trying to fight Miller’s mass deportation efforts.

Santiago, the daughter of immigrants, has been working to defend immigrants’ rights since 2012.

But having gone to school with Miller, watching his rise to prominence in President Donald Trump’s world, and the actions of the administration he is a senior member of, worried her.

“I was very concerned about where his thoughts were going, his views on immigration and the immigrant communities, his views against diversity in the United States,” Santiago told The Daily Beast.

Miller, largely credited as the architect of Trump’s immigration policies during his first administration,
has seemingly always abided by right-wing ideals and anti-immigration policies.

Recalling the day she won her class election at Santa Monica High School, Santiago said that Miller was “booed” off stage for giving an incendiary speech about picking up trash

A video of the moment, posted online years ago, shows Miller on stage asking his fellow students,
“Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash,
when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/stephen-miller-deportation-high-school-classmate-b2768997.html

If you want to know why a Democratic Senator and Representative in Minnesota were shot...
It might have something to do with the fact that their deaths would end the Democratic majorities in both chambers.

Elizabeth Warren Calls for DHS Secretary Noem’s Resignation Following Padilla Incident

“The Trump administration is trying to undermine free speech in this country,”
Warren said during an interview.
https://truthout.org/articles/warren-calls-for-dhs-secretary-noems-resignation-following-padilla-incident/

Top adviser to supreme leader dies in hospital following Israeli attack

Ali Shamkhani, Iran’s top adviser to its supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei,
has died in the hospital a day after Israel launched airstrikes across the country.
Shamkhani had previously served as Iran’s top national security official for a decade and had represented Iran in the China-facilitated rapprochement talks with Saudi Arabia
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2025/jun/14/israel-and-iran-exchange-missile-strikes-with-explosions-heard-in-tel-aviv-jerusalem-and-tehran-live?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The dollar sank to its lowest level in more than three years on Thursday
and the FTSE 100 closed at a record high as Donald Trump’s latest trade threats and the weakening economy appeared to bring forward interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.

Foreign exchange traders sold the dollar in favour of the yen and the euro,
which both climbed by about 1% against the US currency to leave it almost 10% down on its value against a basket of currencies since the beginning of the year.
In London, the FTSE 100 ended the day at 8,884 points, above the previous closing high of 8,871 points set on 3 March this year, as investors looked for alternatives to US company shares.

Analysts said there was little appetite to buy dollars at a time when recent data showed the jobs market weakening and while erratic White House policies clouded the outlook for the US economy.

The slide came after the US president revived last month’s threat to unilaterally impose country-specific tariff rates within the next two weeks.
“We’re going to be sending letters out in about a week and a half, two weeks, to countries, telling them what the deal is,” Trump told an event in Washington on Wednesday.
Markets were also unsettled by growing speculation that the Federal Reserve would begin to cut the cost of borrowing more quickly than expected after consumer inflation came in lower than expected and producer inflation dropped.
Weaker job hiring was another factor after the four-week average number of initial applications for unemployment support rose by 5,000 to 240,250 in May, the highest since August 2023.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jun/12/dollar-slides-to-three-year-low-after-trump-repeats-tariff-threats?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Vincent Scardina supported Donald Trump’s tough stance on immigration at the ballot box.

But that decision came back to bite the roofing boss when ICE detained a third of his workforce.

The six men, all from Nicaragua, were pulled over in a work truck on May 27 while heading to a job
—and carted off to jail.

According to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office,
deputies helped transport the men to a local detention facility
“for deportation.”

Scardina, who runs a small roofing business in Florida’s Lower Keys, cannot believe it.

“It’s quite a shock.
You get to know these guys,
you become their friends
—not just an employer but a friend,”
he told NBC6, visibly emotional.

Adding to Scardina’s annoyance, the men had valid work permits and pending asylum applications,
according to their attorney Regilucia Smith.

“They are legally here,”
she said. “Valid work permit, not even close to expired… again, no criminal records—not here, not in Nicaragua.”

ICE’s nationwide raids came after White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told immigration officials in May to target anyone in the country illegally, The Wall Street Journal.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-voter-gets-choked-up-after-ice-detains-a-third-of-his-staff/

I’m Brigadier General Shawn Harris.

I served this nation for decades in the US Army and now I’m answering the call to serve again
— this time, to defeat Marjorie Taylor Greene and bring sanity back to Congress.

This week, Donald Trump said has sent U.S. Marines into Los Angeles.

As someone who led troops in combat, I can tell you:
our troops don’t serve to be used as political weapons against Americans.

Marjorie Taylor Greene stood by that reckless idea
— just like she’s stood by every extreme and un-American thing Trump has done.

Enough is enough.

I’m running to restore leadership, protect our freedoms, and fight for working families.

I’ll defend Medicare and Social Security, protect a woman’s right to choose, and put country over chaos.

But I can’t do this without you.
I need 500 Founding Donors to fuel this campaign and send a message that Greene’s extremism ends here.

Will you chip in now and join the fight?

https://shawn4-georgia.org/l/wHREoc

"For Glory's Sake - For Vengeance Sake - War"

The predicate is being laid.
There’s a very easy A to B if, after a day or two or three, you don’t see the violence stop,
you could imagine easily that Trump would use that as a pretext for a much more sweeping assertion of power.

So we are at a very, very dangerous time.

The rhetoric is maximal rhetoric. The deployment is relatively minimal, but I’m worried it’s only a matter of time before the deployment matches the rhetoric

-- David French
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/opinion/los-angeles-protests-trump-marines.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Direct orders from Stephen Miller ignited the Los Angeles protests,
leading to the precarious, highly militarized situation the city is currently facing. 

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Miller, frustrated with ICE’s failure to meet their lofty deportation quota,
held an intense meeting at ICE headquarters  last month and bet his agents that they could go to places like Home Depot or 7-Eleven and start arresting people. 

Miller reportedly engineered the raids that sparked the protests that have engulfed the city in recent days
—likely because he wanted a pretext to send in federal troops.
https://newrepublic.com/post/196363/stephen-miller-los-angeles-protests-ice

One thing Newsom has shown is key to effectively deal with Trump & the MAGA propaganda machine:

You must respond immediately & call out the lies.

You can’t wait until hours/days later, then answer in a press conference, statement, scripted speech.

All Dems should learn from it.

https://bsky.app/profile/ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3lrbmrlg5y22x

"If Trump had been president during Covid, none of this would have happened."

https://bsky.app/profile/mikebradleymke.bsky.social/post/3lrbbqsxyqk2g

Reclaim the U.S. flag 🇺🇸at the #NoKings protests around the nation on ⭐️ Saturday, June 14th
when the fascist spends millions of our hard earned tax dollars for a North Korean style military parade for his birthday!

https://bsky.app/profile/pomurray.bsky.social/post/3lrb6nbrjbs2g

In a laboratory setting, humans have accelerated particles — protons, antiprotons, electrons, and positrons — to incredibly high energies: up to the TeV (trillions of electron-volts) scale.

But cosmic rays, also including protons, electrons, and other atomic nuclei, are produced up to far greater energies, at the PeV (quadrillions of electron-volts) scale and beyond.

These very high energy cosmic rays are produced somewhere in our own galaxy:
in natural, astrophysical particle accelerators.

Here’s how the Universe makes the highest-energy particles of all.

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/astronomers-highest-energy-particles/

Little more than a year ago,
Kristi Noem’s political prospects appeared to be in freefall.

The then South Dakota governor was criss-crossing the country on an ill-fated book tour,
widely seen, at least initially, as an audition to be Donald Trump’s running mate.
Instead, Noem found herself on the defensive – a position Trump never likes to be in – after revealing in her memoir that she had shot the family’s “untrainable” hunting dog,
a 14-month-old wirehair pointer named Cricket.

Even in Trumpworld, where controversy can be a form of currency,
the disclosure shocked.
In the weeks that followed, she faded from contention and the breathless veepstakes rumor mill moved on.
By the time Trump selected JD Vance as his vice-presidential nominee, Noem’s path forward on the national stage was unclear.

But a year is a lifetime in politics, the saying goes.
It is even more true today, in Trump’s warp-speed Washington,
where Noem now leads the sprawling department at the heart of the president’s hardline vision to carry out the largest deportation campaign in American history.

Since assuming office as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in January,
Noem has played a starring role in the
second Trump administration,

executing the White House’s immigration agenda with fierce loyalty, Trumpian defiance
and a made-for-TV approach that supporters have hailed as a full-throttle push to “Make America Safe Again”

-- and critics have condemned as theatrical posturing with cruel – and possibly unlawful – consequences

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/07/kristi-noem-trump-secretary-homeland-security

On Monday, scores of scientists at the National Institutes of Health sent their Trump-appointed leader a letter titled the "Bethesda Declaration"
challenging “policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe.”

It says: “We dissent.”

In a capital where insiders often insist on anonymity to say such things publicly,
92 NIH researchers, program directors, branch chiefs and scientific review officers
put their signatures on the letter
— and their careers on the line.

An additional 250 of their colleagues across the agency endorsed the declaration without using their names.
https://apnews.com/article/nih-letter-bethesda-declaration-bhattacharya-89724aee201f3e99fc1159adcbf9ac94

“I’ve just seen pictures of my two daughters on a curb in downtown Los Angeles in handcuffs [with] the LAPD,”
Pasadena City Council member Rick Cole said at the rally.

“So I’m going to be figuring out where they are so I can go bail them out.”

Protests against federal immigration raids continued to rage Sunday after Trump ordered the National Guard to Southern California.

Mejia, Cole’s boss, is an outspoken critic of the Los Angeles Police Department.

On Friday, Mejia voiced concerns about the presence of LAPD officers “within the vicinity of ICE raids.”

Mejia said he has asked for the department to turn over information about the financial impact of the raids on police resources.

L.A. declared itself a “sanctuary” city last year, and Police Chief Jim McDonnell has repeatedly said that the LAPD is not involved in
“civil immigration enforcement,”
pointing to a decades-old policy.

“LAPD’s presence raises serious questions about whether we are abiding by our City’s mandate as a Sanctuary City and is a cause for concern and confusion regarding LAPD’s role,” Mejia said in a statement on social media.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-09/jurado-staffer-arrested-at-downtown-protest-placed-on-unpaid-leave

9 JUNE 2025

America STOP THIS PLEASE

This young girl, her mom
Dragged off by ICE
Not a criminal

Thousands & thousands are going through this all over our Country

Think if this was your family

https://bsky.app/profile/patti3333.bsky.social/post/3lr7pj2cvyc2e