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    How the 2020 George Floyd Protests Are Haunting Democrats in 2025

    No longer demanding cuts to police budgets or straining to show solidarity with protesters, Democrats are taking a far more cautious approach.Five years ago, as grief and anger over George Floyd’s murder ignited national protests, top Democrats joined the demonstrations, called for cutting police budgets and, in a ham-fisted effort at solidarity, even knelt in kente cloth at the Capitol.Now, as President Trump spoils for a fight by sending unwanted troops to Los Angeles to stamp out protests and help with immigration raids, Democrats scarred by recent elections have a starkly different message for demonstrators:Don’t play into his hands.Five years after the 2020 racial justice movement prompted a wave of cultural changes and then an enduring political backlash, many Democrats are signaling that they now recognize how skillful Republicans can be in using scenes of unrest — whether limited or widespread, accurate or not — to cast liberal lawmakers as tolerant of lawlessness.Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lead fellow Democrats in moment of silence for George Floyd in 2020.Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times“Many of the 2020 protests played out in ways that Democrats did not see and they did not foresee,” said former Senator Doug Jones of Alabama, a Democrat who lost his re-election bid that year. At the time, he said, some did not grasp that “once you got to a certain critical mass of protesters, that some bad things were going to happen.”“I think they do now,” said Mr. Jones, who stressed that Mr. Trump was needlessly escalating tensions. “I also think that they appreciate the fact that any violence is one, is uncalled-for, it needs to be prosecuted. But it’s also playing into the narrative of Donald Trump.”So far, the demonstrations now — relatively small, scattered and generally peaceful — bear little resemblance to the mass protests of 2020, which in some cases devolved into destructive riots.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Defense Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia Ask Judge to Release Him Pretrial

    The request came as lawyers in Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia’s separate civil case were poised to ask a different judge to hold the Trump administration in contempt for sidestepping one of her orders.Defense lawyers for Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran immigrant who was recently brought back to the United States to face a federal indictment after being wrongfully deported to a prison in El Salvador, said in court papers on Wednesday that he should remain free from custody as he awaits trial.The papers, filed in Federal District Court in Nashville, amounted to the opening salvo of efforts by the defense lawyers to challenge the charges that were filed last week against Mr. Abrego Garcia.“With no legal process whatsoever, the United States government illegally detained and deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia and shipped him to the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT) in El Salvador, one of the most violent, inhumane prisons in the world,” the lawyers wrote.“The government now asks this court to detain him further,” they went on, asking Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr., who is handling the criminal case, to deny the request. Judge Crenshaw is set to hold a hearing on Friday to arraign Mr. Abrego Garcia and to hear arguments about whether to detain him before the trial.Mr. Abrego Garcia, a metalworker who was living in Maryland when he was arrested on March 12 and summarily deported three days later to El Salvador, had for weeks been trying through lawyers representing him in a separate civil case to enforce a court order instructing the Trump administration to take active measures toward securing his freedom.But after the administration repeatedly sought to sidestep and delay complying with that order, the Justice Department abruptly changed course. Top department officials announced on Friday that Mr. Abrego Garcia had been brought back to the United States to stand trial on charges of taking part in a yearslong conspiracy to smuggle thousands of undocumented immigrants across the country as a member of the violent street gang MS-13.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Detention and Deportation As Seen Through a Family Group Chat

    <!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–> Livan (teammate) Feb. 15 8:55 AM 7:07 PM <!–> [–><!–>Carlos knew he fit the profile of a “criminal alien” the Trump administration had pledged to target. Not long after coming to the United States from Venezuela, he had been convicted of fraud. But he had served […] More

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    Thousands of Protesters March Through Downtown Chicago

    The demonstrators carried signs denouncing federal immigration officials.Demonstrators in Chicago gathered at Federal Plaza and took to the streets to protest immigration raids.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesProtesters by the thousands marched through Chicago on Tuesday, stopping traffic in the downtown Loop and chanting anti-Trump slogans as they denounced immigration raids in Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities.Marchers, by turns upbeat and defiant, waved Mexican flags and held signs denouncing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and President Trump, reading “ICE Out of Chicago,” “One mustache away from fascism” and “Immigrants make America great.”They were also joined by protesters supporting Palestinians, wearing kaffiyehs and calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.“From Palestine to Mexico, these border walls have got to go,” the marchers chanted.In Chicago, a city with a sizable immigrant population, tensions have been high in predominantly Latino neighborhoods over arrests of undocumented people. In communities like Pilsen, a heavily Mexican neighborhood, some residents have been afraid to go to work or go shopping, worried that they will be detained by federal immigration agents.On Tuesday, Chicago police officers monitored the protests from the sidelines while clearing parts of downtown to allow marchers to pass. On some streets, motorists honked their horns in support and residents of high-rises took pictures from their balconies. Some protesters streamed onto DuSable Lake Shore Drive in the early evening.Cheryl Thomas, 26, said that she had joined the march “because of the injustices being perpetrated against brown and Black people.”“They are basically being kidnapped,” she said, adding that she doesn’t know if the march will make a difference. “Doing nothing sure won’t change anything.”The marchers tried to reach Trump International Hotel & Tower, a gleaming skyscraper along the Chicago River, but the police department blocked the way with officers and large trucks in the street.The demonstration in Chicago, a predominantly left-leaning city of 2.7 million, was far larger than the regular protests in the city in opposition to the Trump administration since January. For months, groups denouncing President Trump’s policies have held protests downtown, often joined by Democratic elected officials.“This is cruelty with intent,” Representative Chuy Garcia of Chicago, a Democrat, said at a separate protest this week. More

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    700 Marines Are Deploying to LA Protests to Join Federal Response

    The Pentagon mobilized 700 Marines and 2,000 more National Guard troops even as the president said the situation was “under control.” Gov. Gavin Newsom condemned the escalating response.The Pentagon significantly escalated the federal response to the immigration enforcement protests in Los Angeles on Monday, mobilizing a battalion of 700 Marines and doubling the number of California National Guard troops in what officials described as a limited mission to protect federal property and agents, even as President Trump described the situation as “very well under control.”Earlier Monday, Mr. Trump labeled the demonstrators “insurrectionists,” but he stopped short of saying he would invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which would allow him to call up the military to intervene directly in putting down the protests.In an announcement, the Pentagon did not make clear why it would need an additional 2,000 National Guard troops. But more worrying to state and city officials, legal experts and Democrats in Congress was the use of active-duty Marines. By tradition and law, American military troops are supposed to be used inside the United States only in the rarest and most extreme situations.The mystery was deepened by the fact that the president said the unrest was calming down thanks to his decision to federalize the California National Guard and send its troops into the streets, over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom. On Monday evening, the state filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s move and calling president’s actions illegal.In a statement on Monday night, Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman, said the decision to send the additional National Guard troops was made “at the order of the president.”The mixed messages — Mr. Trump’s flexing of additional military power in response to the protests, even while claiming early success — came after several days in which the president and his allies have appeared to relish the immigration standoff with local and state officials.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A Tricky Balance for L.A. Law Enforcement During Immigration Protests

    Local agencies have tried to make clear that they are not involved in civil immigration enforcement, but that when protests turn violent, they will intervene.Los Angeles law enforcement agencies have responded to demonstrations over federal immigration raids this weekend, but they have also tried to make clear that they themselves were not carrying out immigration sweeps.That has required a careful balance. And local law enforcement officials such as the Los Angeles County sheriff, Robert Luna, know that many of the residents they serve, as well as their own colleagues, have family histories like those of the people being targeted by President Trump’s immigration raids.Sheriff Luna grew up in an unincorporated part of East Los Angeles that was patrolled by the department he is now in charge of. And so for him, the whole situation “does hit home.”“I come from an immigrant family,” Sheriff Luna said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “I have a lot of family members who migrated here. Some of them legally, some of them illegally.”He said that he firmly believed that undocumented immigrants who commit serious or violent crimes should be put through the criminal justice system and be deported if eligible. But, he added: “The majority of our immigrants do not fit that category. They are our cooks, our gardeners, our nannies, our hotel workers. That’s what my mom and dad did.”The standoffs over the immigration raids have created difficult optics for local law enforcement agencies whose officers and deputies have clashed with protesters and have at times deployed flash-bang grenades, projectiles and other crowd-control measures.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Are Millennials ‘Childless’ or ‘Child Free’?

    More from our inbox:America, a Beacon No More? Dadu ShinTo the Editor:“Why Do Millennials Dread Having Babies?,” by Michal Leibowitz (Opinion guest essay, June 1), left me sad, impatient and energetically questioning her conclusion.Sad to read that she and others in their 20s and 30s are so fearful of having children. Impatient with her portrait of a mental health culture that seems to her to encourage people to live in a world limited by parental abuse and inadequacy. And energetically questioning her conclusion that such a culture is causing childlessness.Young people I know are indeed hesitant about having children, but almost exclusively for the reasons Ms. Leibowitz touches on in the beginning of her piece, but does not return to in her analysis. Some worry about their ability to support children financially, and many are deeply concerned about our country’s appetite for authoritarianism and the kind of future that climate change will bring.It is critical to the psychotherapeutic enterprise to recognize the influences — especially the traumas — that have shaped our feelings and behavior. But responsible therapists also do everything possible to help patients and clients loosen the hold of damaging childhood experience, and wrest from its pain the strength and wisdom to live mindfully and hopefully in the present.Most of the people I’ve worked with on this issue over 50 years — including women who as children suffered horrendous physical abuse — have said that their therapeutic experience made them far more comfortable with having children. Friends who have worked with other therapists say the same. Some do worry whether they will do a better job than their parents, but just about all welcome the opportunity and the challenge.James S. GordonWashingtonThe writer is a psychiatrist and the author of “Transforming Trauma: The Path to Hope and Healing.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More