United States | News & Politics

Longtime farmworker organizer Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents this week in what many believe to be retaliation for his organizing. Juarez was pulled over while driving his wife to work. ICE agents shattered Juarez’s window and dragged him out of the vehicle for exercising his right to remain silent, his brother said.

Juarez helped form Familias Unidas por la Justicia, an independent farmworker union that emerged out of a 2013 work stoppage by berry workers in Washington state. He himself began working as a berry picker at 14, and has fought for the rights of farmworkers since, advocates say.

1. Attend a vigil or action.
2. Make phone calls demanding the release of Alfredo Juarez and other politically targeted detainees.

Washington Attorney General's office: 360-753-6200 Washington State Governor’s office: 360-902-4111 Representative Rick Larson: (425) 252-3188 Senator Patty Murray: (253) 572-3636 Senator Maria Cantwell: (253) 572-2281

3. Donate.

Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on some of its largest trading partners on Wednesday, upending decades of US trade policy and threatening to unleash a global trade war on what he has dubbed “liberation day”.

“This is one of the most important days, in my opinion, in American history,” Trump said, speaking on the White House lawn. For decades America had been “looted, pillaged and raped” by its trading partners, he said. “In many cases, the friend is worse than the foe.”

Trump said he intends to impose “reciprocal tariffs” on foreign imports, charging US trading partners the same duties imposed by the country of origin on the same goods. Among other examples, Trump criticized European bans on imported chicken, Canada’s tariffs on dairy, and Japan’s levies on rice.

Trump said the US would charge half of the fees he feels trading partners unfairly impose on the US because the US people are “very kind”.

April 2 (Reuters) - Wall Street is bracing for Tesla (TSLA.O) to report a drop in first-quarter vehicle deliveries on Wednesday, but analysts and investors cannot agree on how bad the decline would be.

An average of 15 analysts who lowered their forecasts in the past 30 days expect deliveries to drop 3.7%, according to Visible Alpha, but some analysts and investors termed it conservative and predicted as much as 12% slide.

Recent actions by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Massachusetts, coupled with policy changes spearheaded by Democratic Governor Maura Healey, underscore the deepening collaboration of Democratic Party leaders with the Trump administration’s fascistic immigration agenda. While claiming opposition to Trump’s policies,

Democrats have aligned themselves with measures that scapegoat migrants and undermine the democratic rights of the working class. Between March 18 and March 23, ICE conducted a major enforcement operation across Massachusetts, arresting 370 individuals. The agency claimed to target “dangerous alien offenders,” including alleged members of transnational gangs like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua. In fact, the operation swept up individuals with minor offenses or tenuous connections to criminal activity, further criminalizing undocumented immigrants.

Local radio station WBUR reported that civil rights activists dispute how ICE characterized its operation and quoted Neenah Estrella-Lune of East Boston, who said it was likely that many of the people apprehended have only minor criminal records.

“The overwhelming majority of the people are not criminals in that way,” she said. “They’re people who, at worst, they overstay their visa and—Oh, God forbid, they’re painting people’s homes.”

Booker: "I confess that I have been imperfect. I confess that I've been inadequate to the moment. I've confess that the Democratic Party has made terrible mistakes that gave a lane to this demagogue. I confess we all must look in the mirror and say 'we will do better.'"

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3llrmvwhri62r

The World Socialist Web Site spoke recently with a United States Postal Service (USPS) letter carrier about the effects of the consolidation of a former facility into a new Sorting and Delivery Center (S&DC). The consolidation of offices into larger S&DCs has accelerated under the Delivering for America (DFA) initiative, now in its fourth year, which is aimed at consolidating operations into large Amazon-style automated facilities, wiping out tens of thousands of jobs.

According to the Save the Post Office website, as of last year, more than 3,300 postal delivery routes from 200 spoke offices had been consolidated into 60 S&DCs, a process which appears to be accelerating.

WSWS: What kinds of changes were introduced with Deliver for America?

LC: Now a new machine has been added, the SDUS, which increases the speed but has lowered the efficiency. Packages not only are more likely to end up in the wrong gurney, but they also sort big [within weight and dimension limits of the machine] and small packages together.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27682168

Summary:

The Trump administration inadvertently revealed on Monday that it is attempting to trap Venezuelan migrants in a catch-22 that would effectively block them from challenging their deportation and detention in an El Salvador prison. In a court filing, the government acknowledged that it had deported at least one migrant to El Salvador due to an “administrative error”—but argued that the individual had no right to contest his imprisonment because he is in the custody of a “foreign sovereign.”

This argument confirms what’s been clear for weeks: The government intends to treat the prison as a black site where migrants have no constitutional rights whatsoever and may be subject to any treatment whatsoever—including indefinite detention, forced labor, torture, or death.

But Monday’s filing illustrates another, more subtle problem that the Justice Department probably did not intend to admit: The government is trying to shunt migrants’ legal claims through a channel that is doomed to end in failure.

It seeks to ensnare these migrants in a Kafkaesque trap from which there may be no lawful escape. And it is trying to sell this subterfuge to the federal judiciary as a legitimate opportunity for due process if any migrants have plausible objections to their treatment.

To see how hollow that promise is, just look to the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. A native of El Salvador, Abrego Garcia came to the United States in 2011, fleeing gang violence. Although he entered the country without authorization, an immigration judge granted him protected status in 2019, finding that he would likely face persecution if sent back to his home country. Federal law prohibits his removal to El Salvador. The Trump administration targeted him anyway, pulling him over while he was driving with his son, who is 5 years old and intellectually disabled. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents falsely claimed that his “status has changed,” arrested him, and threatened to turn over his son to Child Protective Services if his wife did not arrive within 10 minutes. His wife, a U.S. citizen, was able to appear in time, but ICE refused to provide any information about her husband’s arrest. She did not know where he had been taken until she saw a news photo of alleged Venezuelan gang members in CECOT, a notorious Salvadoran mega-prison, kneeling on the ground, their arms raised above their shaved heads. One man, she realized, was her husband.

Abrego Garcia’s deportation was unambiguously illegal, and his lawyers swiftly filed suit demanding his return. On Monday, the DOJ responded with a bombshell admission: Abrego Garcia did have a right to remain in the U.S. and was shipped off to CECOT only because of an “administrative error.” The DOJ then declared that there was nothing the plaintiff or the government could do to fix this confessed mistake. Abrego Garcia, it wrote, would need to file a writ of habeas corpus, the traditional procedure for challenging unlawful detention. Indeed, it argued, Abrego Garcia’s claims “can proceed only in habeas”—he has no other way to fight his imprisonment. And yet, the department concluded, no federal court can hear his habeas claim, because he is “not in United States custody.” He thus has no remedy whatsoever and must remain in CECOT indefinitely.

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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4496640

Jill Falcon Ramaker couldn’t believe what she was hearing on the video call. All $5 million dollars of her and her colleagues’ food sovereignty grants were frozen. She watched the faces of her colleagues drop.

Ramaker is Turtle Mountain Anishinaabe and the director of Buffalo Nations Food Sovereignty at Montana State University – a program that supports Indigenous foodways in the Rocky Mountains and trains food systems professionals – and is supported by the United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA.

“The funding that we had for training and infrastructure leading to raising our own foods that are healthy and not highly processed and culturally appropriate, has stopped.” Ramaker said. “We don’t have any information on when, or if, it will resume.”

In his first two months in office, President Trump has signed over 100 executive orders, many specifically targeting grants for termination that engage with diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and climate-related projects associated with the Inflation Reduction Act. Climate change destroys the places and practices central to Indigenous peoples in the United States, and is exacerbated by droughts and floods that also affect foods essential to Native cultures. Food sovereignty programs play a crucial role in fighting the effects of climate change by creating access to locally grown fruits, vegetables, and animal products.

“It feels like we’re just getting started in so many ways,” Ramaker said.

Full article

https://archive.ph/Ih0EC

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/23926538

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/60051791

A leaked memo from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Research Service division revealed Sunday that the agency has banned some key language from its vocabulary, including the words “climate” and “vulnerable,” as well as the phrase “safe drinking water.”

Other baffling entries on the memo’s banned language list are “greenhouse gas emissions,” “methane emissions,” “sustainable construction,” “solar energy,” and “geothermal,” as well as “nuclear energy,” “diesel,” “affordable housing,” “prefabricated housing,” “runoff,” “microplastics,” “water pollution,” “soil pollution,” “groundwater pollution,” “sediment remediation,” “water collection,” “water treatment,” “rural water,” and “clean water,” among dozens of others.

Ryan Grim and Sarah Hay Mar 20, 2025

[a very chilling article on how Trump and his underlings are trampling on any semblance of legality]

"The family only discovered that their loved one, Jerce Reyes Barrios, had been renditioned to #ElSalvador when they saw him in viral videos posted by the #Trump administration, in which it celebrated what it said was the mass deportation of violent members of the #Venezuelan gang #TrenDeAragua. "

US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce dodged a question at Monday's briefing about whether naturalised US citizens of Middle Eastern descent might have their citizenships revoked over pro-Palestine speech.

"I'm not going to discuss the nature of the diplomatic or strategic conversations that any department in the government's having," she told reporters.

Asked later about whether she can confirm if pro-Israeli advocacy group Betar has provided the US government with lists of names recommended for deportation, Bruce only said, "Whether it exists or not, I won't confirm," and that the State Department has "broad authority".

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/35368737

On Friday, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles was fired without explanation in an terse email from the White House Presidential Personnel Office shortly after a right-wing activist posted about him on social media, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were concerned about potential retribution.

That followed the White House’s firing last week of a longtime career prosecutor who had been serving as acting U.S. attorney in Memphis, Tennessee.

The terminations marked an escalation of norm-shattering moves that have embroiled the Justice Department in turmoil and have raised alarm over a disregard for civil service protections for career lawyers and the erosion of the agency’s independence from the White House. That one of them was fired on the same day a conservative internet personality called for his removal adds to questions about how outside influences may be helping to shape government personnel decisions.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27640385

I'm not sure if this is the correct community, but I found it interesting/terrifying and was circulating in a local discord. It's made in Tableau.