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      Democrats are embracing the risky politics of a government shutdown to rein in president, activists say

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      For months, as Donald Trump has used the levers of the US federal government to consolidate power, silence dissent and punish his political enemies, Democrats have been bombarded with a single demand: do something. Last week, they did.In a rare display of unity, out-of-power Democrats embraced the risky politics of a government shutdown – their boldest effort yet to rein in a president whom many Americans and constitutional scholars now view as a threat to US democracy.“It’s not a fight for fighting’s sake,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, one of the outside groups closely coordinating with Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill. “This is a battle about Donald Trump’s attacks on the constitution and him seizing the power over all spending from Congress – and whether Congress is going to let him get away with that.”Washington is bracing for what could be an extended government shutdown, which officially began at 12.01am on Wednesday. Last week, Senate Democrats repeatedly blocked a Republican funding measure to reopen the government, as the parties traded blame and each side insisted they would not bend to the other’s demands.Democrats are pressing for an array of healthcare-centered priorities, including the extension of tax credits for Affordable Care Act plans set to expire at the end of the year. The White House and Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, have refused to include any healthcare concessions as part of a deal to reopen the government, though some GOP lawmakers are open to extending the ACA subsidies.Democrats, with little leverage and deep skepticism that Republicans will honor any future deal, view the shutdown as their only option to force the issue.But the Trump administration is working to make the closures as painful as possible for Democrats, who Republicans accuse of trying to “sabotage” the president’s agenda.Trump has called the shutdown an “unprecedented opportunity” to dismantle federal programs and what he called “Democrat agencies”. In a sharp break from precedent, the Trump administration is readying plans to permanently layoffs of federal workers while it takes punitive action against Democratic-led states. Several government departments have posted partisan and potentially illegal messages saying their operations are curtailed due to “the Radical Left Democrat shutdown”. In the Senate, the majority leader John Thune has said he plans to hold more votes on a plan to reopen the government this week.But Democrats say the stakes are too high – and the greater risk is capitulating to the president.“Remember, right now, our healthcare system is broken. Right now, we’re the only major country on Earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people,” the senator Bernie Sanders said in a video with progressive New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, explaining the Democrats’ opposition to the Republican funding bill. “And these guys want to make it even worse. We’re not going to let that happen.”Progressive activists who have been sharply critical of the party’s congressional leaders, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, are now praising them for continuing to “hold the line on healthcare”.“What our members see is Democrats willing to stand up and fight,” said Joel Payne, a spokesperson for MoveOn, which is part of a coalition of progressive groups flooding Democrats with calls to hold fast in shutdown negotiations.Payne said healthcare was Democrats’ “north star” – the party’s strongest issue with voters and one that has helped propel them to victory in the past. If Democrats are successful, he added, the showdown over healthcare could serve as a blueprint for safeguarding other rights under attack by the administration.House Republicans did not need Democrats to pass their short-term spending bill last month, which would fund the government mostly at current levels through 21 November. But in the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 majority, they need Democratic support to clear the 60-vote threshold required to advance most legislation.So far, only three members of the Senate Democratic caucus have broken ranks: John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Angus King, an independent of Maine.In the House, Maine congressman Jared Golden, was only House Democrat to back the Republican funding bill when it passed the House last month. In a statement last week, Golden said the shutdown was the “result of hardball politics” driven by the demands of “far-left groups” eager to show their opposition to Trump.Early polling suggests voters are more inclined to blame Trump and Republicans than Democrats for the federal shutdown. A Washington Post poll released on Thursday found that, by a 17-percentage-point margin, Americans blame Republicans for the shutdown. Independents overwhelmingly sided with Democrats, the survey found.Yet there were signs public opinion could shift as more Americans face the ripple effects of government-wide closures. In several polls, a significant share of voters said they held both parties equally responsible or were unsure of whom to blame.The call for Democrats to take a harder line against Trump has been building for months. Across the country, progressive activists, disaffected Republicans and voters outraged by the administration’s actions have packed town halls, marched in protests and launched campaigns of their own – sending a clear message to Democrats: step up, or step aside.“Everybody wants a fighter,” said Lanae Erickson, senior vice-president at the centrist thinktank Third Way that is often at odds with the party’s left flank.Erickson said the focus on healthcare – an issue that unifies the party’s diverse coalition and falls squarely in the “Venn diagram of things voters care about” – was both good politics and good policy.“The ACA subsidies are a real ask,” she said. “If Democrats got that, it would be a way to declare victory in this moment.”Democrats feel confident going to battle over healthcare. A Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) poll showed that 78% of Americans support extending the credits, which disproportionately benefit Republican-held congressional districts.Without action, insurance premiums for millions of Americans could double next year, according to an analysis by KFF. Democrats have also sought to reverse Medicaid cuts included in Trump’s marquee tax-and-immigration package, which the nonpartisan congressional budget office projects will leave 10 million more Americans uninsured over the next decade.Republicans have countered by falsely claiming Democrats forced a shutdown to provide free health benefits to undocumented immigrants. The White House has taunted Democrats with a deepfake video of Schumer and Jeffries, wearing a sombrero and fake mustache that has been widely denounced as racist. Vance laughed off the criticism, calling the video “funny”.Democrats like Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, fired back with memes and taunts of their own. In one tweet, Newsom’s press team posted an AI generated image of Trump in a towering wig and an 18th-century gown: TRUMP “MARIE ANTOINETTE” SAYS, “NO HEALTH CARE FOR YOU PEASANTS, BUT A BALLROOM FOR THE QUEEN!”Democrats are betting that the shutdown strategy can help shift momentum heading into next year’s midterm elections. By wielding their most powerful legislative tool, party leaders aim to rebuild trust with their disillusioned base – a group whose frustration has dragged Democratic approval ratings to decade lows and hurt fundraising.Many Democrats argue that their best hope of restraining Trump is to regain the House in 2026, and that the most straightforward path to doing so is to focus on kitchen-table issues like healthcare.Some Democratic strategists warn that by focusing primarily on healthcare, the party risks downplaying what many view as Trump’s authoritarian lurch – reducing it to just another policy showdown in Washington’s partisan budget battles.Anat Shenker-Osorio, a Democratic strategist and communications researcher, believes a sharper message – such as “we will not fund fascism” or “no dollars for dictatorship” – would help cut through the noise and clarify the stakes.“In order for people to fight this regime, they have to understand it as a regime hellbent on taking our freedoms,” she said.As part of their demands, Democrats are also pushing for ways to curtail Trump’s ability to rescind funding already approved by Congress, as he has done with foreign aid programs and public broadcasting. An alternative short-term funding bill offered by Democrats included provisions that would make it harder for the president to undermine Congress’s funding power.Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible and a leading voice on the left pushing Democrats to fight harder against what he calls the Trump “regime”, said he was encouraged to see the party’s leadership sharpen its tactics. Though Levin shares the view that the stakes are far bigger than a healthcare policy dispute, he believes Democrats’ demands, if met, could “constrain the regime in some meaningful ways”.Indivisible is helping to coordinate a second wave of No Kings rallies across the country to protest what organizers described as Trump’s “authoritarian power grab”. The day of action, planned for 18 October, will be another opportunity to mobilize Americans and, Levin hopes, to celebrate Democrats for their resolve.“I hope what we will not be doing is criticizing them for having surrendered again,” he said. “So the play is to win.” More

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      Kristi Noem calls Chicago a ‘war zone’ after federal agents shoot woman

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      Kristi Noem, Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, called Chicago “a war zone” on Sunday after federal agents shot a woman and the governor of Illinois accused the administration of fueling the crisis rather than resolving it.Speaking on Fox News Sunday morning, Noem took aim at the city’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, who has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s Ice raids and deployment of the national guard in Illinois, a measure he called “unhinged and unhealthy”.“It’s wrong, there should be consequences for that and for leaders that stand up and knowingly lie about the situation on the ground,” Noem said. “His city is a war zone and he’s lying so that criminals can go in there and destroy people’s lives.”Noem’s remarks followed Trump’s authorization to deploy 300 members of the Illinois national guard to Chicago, with orders to protect federal officers and property. The move came just weeks after national guard troops were sent to Washington, where the president federalized the city’s police force in what he described as a “crackdown” on crime, a pattern now extending to a string of other US cities. “We’re going to be doing Chicago probably next,” Trump had said at the time.Noem defended the administration’s course of action, insisting on Fox that residents supported the government intervention. “They understand that where we have gone we have made it much more free,” she said. “People are much safer, we have got a thousand criminals that are off the streets of Chicago, just because we’ve been there.”Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper on Sunday, the Democratic Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, accused the administration of fueling the crisis rather than resolving it. “They are the ones who are making it a war zone,” he said.“They need to get out of Chicago. If they’re not going to focus on the worst of the worst, which is what the president said they are going to do, they need to get the heck out.”Border patrol agents on Saturday shot and injured a woman while firing at someone who tried to run them over. The woman who was shot was a US citizen and was armed with a semi-automatic weapon, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said, noting that the woman was accused in a US Customs and Border Protection intelligence bulletin last week of doxing agents.Pritzker also condemned the deployment in a post on X on Saturday, writing: “The Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will.” Pritzker called the decision “absolutely outrageous and un-American,” and added that it had been made “against our will”. More

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      Trump sets sights on liberal mega-donor George Soros: ‘A chilling message to other donors’

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      Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, said “everything is on the table” and left it there. But Donald Trump threw discretion to the wind and was far more specific about his choice of enemy to go after.“If you look at Soros, he’s at the top of everything,” the US president said.The gathering with reporters took place in the Oval Office last month as Trump ordered a crackdown on “leftwing terrorism” and threatened to investigate and prosecute those who financially support it.There is no evidence linking George Soros, a 95-year-old billionaire who has supported democratic causes around the world, or Reid Hoffman, who helped start PayPal and the networking site LinkedIn, to terrorism. But both are top donors to the Democratic party. And both were named by Trump as potential participants in a vast conspiracy to finance violent protesters against the government.It is no coincidence, critics say, that the president is intensifying his attacks on Soros little more than a year before the midterm elections for Congress. The billionaire has reportedly contributed more than $170m to help Democrats during the 2022 midterm cycle. A justice department investigation could deter both Soros and other would-be donors in 2026.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Anyone who contributes to the Democrats can expect Soros treatment if they’re giving a large amount of money. We’ve seen Trump quite skillfully using intimidation and threats to bring prominent law firms, major universities and others to their knees. This is another effort to cower opposition. The point here is to make it harder for Democrats to raise money.”Soros has long been a go-to bogeyman for the right. He was born to a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, in 1930 and emigrated to London after surviving the Nazi occupation of his home country. He moved to New York and, in 1970, founded Soros Fund Management, which grew into one of the most successful hedge funds in history. In 1992, he was dubbed the “man who broke the Bank of England” after short-selling $10bn worth of British pounds during the UK’s currency crisis.View image in fullscreenSoros began philanthropic work in the late 1970s, funding scholarships for Black South Africans under apartheid. In the 1980s, he provided support to dissidents and pro-democracy groups in communist eastern Europe. This work evolved into the Open Society Foundations (OSF), now one of the biggest funders of groups that support human rights, government transparency, public health and education in more than a hundred countries.Soros has donated more than $32bn to the OSF but in 2023 handed over its stewardship to his son Alex, who this summer married Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton and herself the target of rightwing conspiracy theories. Within the US, the OSF has supported groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Equal Justice Initiative, Indivisible, MoveOn, Planned Parenthood, the National Immigration Law Center and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.Patrick Gaspard, who was president of the OSF from 2017 to 2020, coinciding with Trump’s first term, said: “It’s hard to believe but at one point George’s work had bipartisan support. Republican senators and Congress members would meet with George Soros regularly, openly. They would tout his work in helping to bring down the iron curtain and help instill democracy in western Europe. They were proud to have the association.”That changed in 2004, when, disenchanted by the Iraq war, Soros emerged as a major backer of Democratic candidate John Kerry during his unsuccessful presidential campaign against George W Bush. He has since been a major donor to Democrats, giving $125m to one liberal Super Pac in 2021, according to the campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets.Republicans have megadonors of their own, including Miriam Adelson, Charles Koch, Timothy Mellon and Elon Musk, whose donation of more than $270m to Trump’s presidential campaign dwarfed Soros’s input. Even so, Soros’s influence has made him a frequent target of criticism and conspiracy theories, especially from rightwing groups and authoritarian governments.Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congresswoman from Georgia, posted on the X social media platform in 2023: “No other person has undermined our democracy more than George Soros. Why is [he] still allowed to maintain his citizenship?”The critiques often play on antisemitic tropes. Emily Tamkin, author of The Influence of Soros, said: “You couldn’t imagine a more perfect cartoon villain than Soros because he’s a foreigner, he works in finance, he lives in New York and, I would say most saliently, he’s Jewish, which means that you can have all sorts of stereotypes and conspiracies take hold without ever saying the word ‘Jewish’.”When Trump ally Viktor Orbán of Hungary was running for re-election in 2018, he targeted Soros with antisemitic dog whistles, saying: “We are fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world.”View image in fullscreenTamkin added: “This idea of the rootless cosmopolitan or the greedy New Yorker obsessed with money. ‘Globalist’ is one you’re hearing a lot. I don’t ever need to say the word ‘Jew’ for antisemitic synapses to light up, which helps these conspiracies travel extremely effectively. That’s exactly what we’re seeing now in the United States and we should be clear about that.”Soros has long been considered a villain by Trump and his conservative base. In August, the president said without evidence that Soros and his son should be charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or Rico, because of their alleged support for violent protests.Last month, the New York Times reported that the justice department has directed prosecutors to consider possible charges against the Open Society Foundations. Soros’s office sent a letter to “friends and colleagues” stating: “Allegations that George or OSF are in any way engaged in unlawful activity or in fomenting or promoting violence are 100% false.”Then, in the wake of charges against former FBI director James Comey, came Trump’s remarks in the Oval Office, suggesting that Soros and Hoffman could be prosecuted for sponsoring “professional anarchists and agitators”. There is no evidence to support these claims.Gaspard is not surprised that Trump is once again seeking to demonise George and Alex Soros. “Everyone knows – you can set your clock to it – that when the midterm elections come, when the presidential elections come, that family is going to be involved in some fashion in politics with capital ‘D’ Democrats,” he said.“Trump and those around him are interested in making the name toxic, the investments toxic, and to then find ways to destabilise what should be a source of strength for progressives and the centre left. Then this thing happens where the work of the philanthropy gets conflated with the rights of the individual to participate in American politics and to invest in national politics. That conflation is dangerous.”The move against Soros comes as Republicans face an uphill battle in next year’s midterms, when the party that holds the White House traditionally suffers losses. The jobs market is showing significant signs of weakening, consumer prices remain stubbornly high and this week the federal government shut down.But Trump has already intervened to protect his allies in Congress by pushing for the redrawing of congressional district maps, seeking to purge voter rolls, taking aim at mail-in voting and ordering the justice department to investigate ActBlue, the Democrats’ prime fundraising tool. The assault on Soros could be aimed at choking off money from bigger donors.Rick Wilson, a cofounder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Right now Trump’s in a lot of trouble across the board politically: the job situation is terrible, the economy is crashing out, the Epstein files are still dividing the party. All these things have led to a moment where they need some bait and they need some distraction out there.“Soros is a great target for that and I’m sure it’s also trying to send a chilling message to any other Democratic donor that they should watch out or he’ll go after them. If they don’t avoid transgressing against Trump, they’ll be in the same spot that Soros finds himself in.”Wilson, a former Republican strategist, added: “It’s absolutely about scaring people and freaking people out and causing fear and suppressing free speech. They do not want people to fund campaigns or Super Pacs or organisations that oppose Trump or Trumpism or their movement and so they’re going to seek to punish people and scare them off.” More

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      Blue states should come together to declare an emergency. Here’s how | Thomas Geoghegan

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      Trump is all about political theatre, or circus, and it often seems that even in resisting him, as decent citizens must do, we become part of the circus too. We are like the extras who splutter while he thrills the base by violating some heretofore inviolate human norm. So the show goes on. But why not put on our own show, our own form of political theatre, that leaves Trump out – or at least has a different focus?We could consider the kind of political theatre that Americans created from 1768 to 1776 to resist Britain’s growing crackdown. Instead of employing their creaky legislative bodies, they opted for new forms of resistance, non-importation committees, even a first continental congress with no apparent legitimacy or precedent.However weak, those acts of political theater led to formal independence. After the war, American leaders held a convention – nominally to amend the Articles of Confederation with a unanimous vote by every state. Instead, the framers worked in secret, replaced the articles altogether, and changed the process for amending the new constitution to a three quarters vote.The Trump presidency is a colossal setback to that constitution and its norms, but it is also an opportunity to change those norms for the better. Like the founders, we should create a limited, invitation-only body – an embryonic constitutional convention – that the anti-Trump blue states exclusively set up for themselves, limit to themselves, and control.The constitution already provides some authority for doing so.These selected states are meeting to propose an interstate compact by and between themselves, in the spirit if not the letter of the compacts that the constitution’s article I, section 10, clause 3 describes, and for them to submit formally to Congress to adopt as federal law. Of course this will never happen in this case, as Congress, in its current broken form, is incapable of anything like a new constitution, embryonic or not.But the point is to put forward a prototype for a new type of American government, for a post-Trump country, that carries forward part of the existing institutional framework that is worth preserving, alongside radical change in response to Trump.So for example, let us say that New York, California, Massachusetts and Illinois declare a national emergency. The governors invite a select number of similar-minded anti-Trump states to send delegates selected either by the people or the legislature. The delegates’ job would be to draw up an inter-state compact, a declaration of rights of citizens and obligations of the participating governments. The compact would divide the funding of those obligations between the states and the federal government, if it were somehow adopted by Congress. It would create mandates that the federal government would fund – just for those states and any other that thereafter decide to join the compact.That compact might begin with a preamble in which We the People of these several states recognize not just our rights but our obligations to treat each other with dignity. The preamble would recognize our obligations to ensure all have adequate food, social security, access to healthcare, and meaningful work for protection in a time of technological change. It should be explicit about the dangers of AI and a warming planet. It should insist on the federal role in medical research and scientifically based public health to ensure that we live better and longer lives.And then there should follow a specific list of abuses by the Trump administration, acts of cruelty, that should be punished and redressed, and abuses by the supreme court, such as Citizens United, that should be voided by states adopting the compact.At the outset, the states should also invite DC and Puerto Rico to participate as states on the same footing and sign on to the compact.Then comes the hardest part – money. The compact would set out the specific programs that the state should fund and those that the federal government should fund – at least for the states that enter the compact. The document would not only be a constitution for the ages, but a budget document for the next fiscal year. It should include a restoration of funding for Medicaid, and reduction of premiums for other forms of healthcare.Finally, the compact should include a call to Texas, Florida, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, and every other non-signatory state to join as well, even if they were not originally invited.Whatever may be said against such a compact, it would push Trump off stage and show a certain norm-breaking nerve from a status-quo left. It would give the blue states credit for their own little smashing of the pottery. All the better if the other states do not show. In the early American acts of resistance, only some colonies showed up, and the constitution took effect despite some states staying out altogether. In creating a new constitutional prototype, we may think more clearly, or at least draw it up more freely, if other states were not around.The colonists in the period from 1768 to 1776, and the Framers in 1787, acted outside the law, with no clear process as to how the documents should be adopted or amended. It is time for We the People to declare abuses as serious as those set out by Thomas Jefferson and others in the Declaration of Independence. The idea of a compact may be dismissed as political theatre, but acts of political theater can turn into the real thing.What’s giving me hope nowMy hope is all the talent coming off the bench right now – all those who were once political bystanders and are now tracking Ice agents. Long ago, one of my teachers, the late Sam Beer, urged us to be brave. He said: “You have more friends than you know.”

      Thomas Geoghegan is a lawyer and author of Which Side Are You On? (1991) and The History of Democracy Has Yet to be Written (2022) More

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      How two blond suburban moms gave Democrats an answer to the rightwing media ecosystem

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      View image in fullscreenWhen Donald Trump scheduled a press conference after a weekend in which rumors about his health swirled, two women in red-state Oklahoma launched a livestream for their more than 1 million followers on YouTube to speculate about the condition of “Cankles McTacoTits”, shortened to Canks “for expediency and spite”.It was fitting for the profanity-laced, straight talking liberal podcast I’ve Had It that quipped, after interviewing Barack Obama, that the former president has “big dick energy”.Jennifer Welch and Angie “Pumps” Sullivan have risen up the podcast charts, buoyed by Democrats looking to commiserate and find their party’s answer to the bro-filled atmosphere that helped propel Trump’s victory in 2024.In Oklahoma City, in the upstairs of Welch’s design studio, the self-described “two middle-aged women in the buckle of the bible belt trying to stand up for democracy” pivot between recording their podcast – in early September, that meant interviewing the mayor of Los Angeles, promoting their new co-authored book, and catching up on life like the old friends they are. Welch tells Sullivan to get that vape out of her mouth. They talk about their kids, the ones who originally brought them together in the trenches of motherhood years ago.This purple city in a deep red state is an unlikely spot for a rising voice on the left in new media. But as the left grapples for its counter to the rightwing media ecosystem, the two blonde suburban moms – who admit they look “Fox-coded” – offer one inroad. Across all platforms, they have several million followers, including 1.3m on YouTube and nearly 1m on Instagram. On the weekly Apple podcast charts in early October, they ranked as the second-most listened to among society and culture shows. On YouTube’s charts, their news show, IHIP news, ranked 18th among podcasts. They regularly chart as one of the fastest-growing podcasts.“Everyone always talking about we need to find the Joe Rogan of the left when they’re right here!” Gibson Johns, a podcaster and pop culture aficionado wrote on X with a photo of Welch and Sullivan.Trying to find a singular Joe Rogan on the left is the wrong question, Welch said. It’s “too myopic” – the left isn’t devout to a leader, like the right is to Trump. “The left needs to have a very large, diverse tent.” Their “cult,” as they often call their community, brings in “some of the gays, some of these white ladies that are getting radicalized”. They see other liberal podcasts as allies, with the more people consuming liberal media, whoever it is, the better.“Liberals have hobbies,” said the 51-year-old Welch. “Our whole identity isn’t hating conservatives … the Republican party presents the enemy, and they can just feast on it.”The show launched in 2022 as an entertainment podcast, drawing followers who remembered their Bravo reality TV show. Its first episode, “Toddlers are Assholes,” focused on how toddlers are, well, assholes. They went viral for their funny rants soon after, but quickly blended politics into the show. Their political content caught the eyes of big-name Democrats, and they snagged guests including Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece, in 2023, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in early 2024, then Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, Gavin Newsom and Bernie Sanders.They’re quick with salty language and nicknames. Trump looked “puffed up like a bubble tick”. JD Vance is “Lil Smokey,” a shorter version of “Smokey Eye Failed Drag Queen”. Childish people are “titty babies”.View image in fullscreen“You want to go low, we’re gonna go lower,” Welch said. “The integrity politics of being perfect as a liberal needs to stop, and we need to bully the shit out of these guys, because they respond to it.”Their language and commentary elicits pushback and vitriol from liberals at times, said Sullivan, who is 55. But, Welch added, while they don’t want to punch down, they are “still going to play a brand of fuck-you politics”, something she wishes elected Democrats would do more often.Their pivot from entertainment to politics happened naturally. Welch is a lifelong Democrat and atheist who grew up defending her beliefs in Oklahoma. For Sullivan, a former Republican who shed religion in recent years, the supreme court’s Dobbs decision, overturning the right to an abortion across the US, made her “so fucking mad at white women”.In early episodes, listeners wrote in to tell them to stay out of politics and use fewer swear words. The president of a company they partnered with to sell ads told them not to talk about politics. In turn, they started talking about politics more and more. They dropped the “dead weight” of people who only came for entertainment, Welch said.“And it turns out, when you believe in something and you defend it vigorously, some people are going to dislike you for your beliefs, and that’s fine, but the people who like you, that turns into love, and you create a community,” she said.••Welch’s first child and Sullivan’s second child were each other’s first best friends. They wanted to be together all the time, so Welch and Sullivan were together all the time while their husbands were “crazier than shithouse rats”. Welch’s husband, who Sullivan met in law school, was battling addiction, while Sullivan’s husband was frequenting sex workers and spending through their money. They’d pile into Sullivan’s three-row white suburban and cart the kids to gymnastics or pizza buffets.Welch became Sullivan’s “lifeline,” Sullivan said, “like the only person on the planet that I could trust with what was going on with me, so that made her safe no matter what.”Sullivan described their bond in their book Life is a Lazy Susan of Shit Sandwiches: “The reason Jennifer and I banter so well is that we’ve been through a lot together. We have an Olympic-sized pool of combined tears, but there’s also been a lot of laughter.“We’ve traded in Jen’s porch for the podcast studio these days, and we’ve both quit smoking, but it’s basically the same idea: we talk through everything, even the scary stuff.”Religion at times stood between them, when Sullivan was still religious and right-leaning. At lunch, over chips and queso, Sullivan asked Welch: “Religion didn’t always come up with us, did it?” Welch responded: “You were always trying to get me to go to Bible study.” Sullivan described a “gradual evolution” away from her faith, which she told Welch about in 2020. “You could have knocked me over with a feather,” Welch said of the big reveal.Now, their podcast often includes laments against the conservative Christians seeking to use their religion to govern. “Once you get out of it, you become more turned off by it,” Sullivan said. Welch quipped: “She’s gotten worse than me.”Welch and Sullivan’s Bravo show, Sweet Home Oklahoma, ran for two seasons from 2017-2018, which gave them a small but dedicated built-in audience when they launched the podcast. Welch still works as an interior designer on high-end homes, though she’s more selective in what she takes on. Sullivan recently left her job as a divorce attorney because juggling a court schedule and clients with the growing podcast became too much.View image in fullscreenWelch financed the podcast, paying herself back over the course of a year. They use her building as a studio. She bought all the equipment. She didn’t want to be beholden to anyone or feel hesitant to dish out criticisms to whomever she chose. They can say what people are thinking, in terms they choose, because they are “untethered to anybody”.Clips of them taking Democrats to task have gone viral this year, including a heated interview in which Welch went after Rahm Emanuel for abandoning trans people. Emanuel said of Democratic messaging: “The only room we were doing really well was the bathroom, and that’s the smallest room in the house.” Welch reacted with “pure, unadulterated anger,” enraged that Emanuel would throw trans people under the bus. At one point, Emanuel suggested people in red states with harsh anti-trans or anti-gay laws could move somewhere else if they wanted. Welch’s only regret about the interview is that she “didn’t chew his ass out over that”.In a recent episode, she repeatedly asks a Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia whether he will take donations from the pro-Israel AIPac, a clip of which spread widely with the comment “Damn this is intense.” In another, she ran down a list of Democrats who took AIPac money. They regularly call for the party to embrace “moral clarity” on the Gaza war.Other clips in which they bashed Republicans sometimes make it into rightwing media. One rant where Welch said she’s had it with Trump voters who go to Mexican or Chinese restaurants while supporting deportations drew a comment from the White House: “Rich liberal white women love to pretend to be champions of diversity.”When their clips have ended up on rightwing media, they’ve received threats and harassing messages. “We voluntarily get up every day, we choose to do our podcast, so we’re not victims of any of what the commentary in the aftermath is,” Welch said. Comments will focus on their appearances or intellect. But what goes too far, Welch said, is receiving wishes of sexual violence, both against her and her children. She shut down email inquiries to her design firm. She doesn’t read her direct messages anymore.View image in fullscreen“Are my feelings hurt? Do I live in fear? No. Is it helpful for me to read all of this shit? No,” she said.The life of the podcastI’ve Had It gets big-name guests through a combination of the politicians reaching out to pitch them and them seeking out people they want to talk to.Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, joined an episode in September, to talk about her city under federal occupation. At the start of I’ve Had It, the hosts and guest say one thing they’ve “had it” with, and for Bass, it’s false depictions of Los Angeles. At one point, when they refer to Trump as “Canks,” Welch notes, “I know it’s probably beneath you, mayor.” They also play a game called “had it or hit it,” where guests weigh in on what they are cool with or sick of.Welch’s younger son is now in college in Los Angeles, she tells the mayor, and she’ll be there soon to visit. She’d love to meet in person, she says. Bass warmly agrees.In addition to I’ve Had It, their flagship, they do a regular news video series called IHIP News for YouTube. In September,View image in fullscreenWhen rumors of Trump’s demise were rampant, they launched a “Canks Watch”, volleying over how much longer they expected the president to live and how they’d feel once he was gone. “Straight-up elated,” Sullivan said.Tens of thousands tuned in live to hear their banter, and the video netted more than 400,000 views. The president, though, looked pretty normal. “He sounds almost coherent for him,” Sullivan said. “Goddamn it, he’s doing a lot better than I thought,” Welch said.Their podcasts are not really for moderates – in an episode with Zohran Mamdani, the New York City mayoral candidate, where Mamdani talks about his strategy of not browbeating voters who went for Trump, Welch responds with “guilty”.They also run a Patreon and host a livestream with their Patreon subscribers weekly. They thank their “patriots, gay-triots, Black-triots, brown-triots” of about 100 people who sign on for an open Q&A-style conversation about their views on political topics and updates on their lives.Groups of their most ardent fans have met up to go for cocktails before their live shows. During meet-and-greets, they have had young queer people come up to them crying because they stand up strongly for the LGBTQIA+ community. Some have told them they see them as the mothers they wish had.“You go from an 18-year-old marginalized kid all the way to a Boomer, and there’s a unity in the messaging of being irritated about something, petty shit-talking, fighting for what’s right, and not giving a fuck what anybody thinks about it,” Welch said of their supporters.View image in fullscreenAfter one day of recordings, I jump in the car with Sullivan, who has some errands to run. We hit up a vape shop, where she restocks on cartridges and spearmint chapsticks. We then pick up her dogs – two French bulldogs and a Siberian husky, her divorce dog. “I’d much rather have the Siberian husky than the husband. It’s not even a close second,” she said. We chat a bit about her dating life, which sometimes comes up in their podcast, too. “My picker is so bad. Serial killer is the bar, and I continue to fall under it every time.”I then hang out with Welch, going to tennis lessons where she engages in friendly shit-talking with the instructor. Some journalists embed in warzones, she joked, and “we’re about to have a war right here”. She started playing tennis daily to combat long Covid after her doctor recommended a sport that included hand-eye coordination. We pick up her two Frenchies, one of which has his own Instagram page.They both, on separate occasions, refer to the “yin and yang” of their relationship. Sullivan said she will defer to Welch on decisions if they’re on the fence. While it’s hard to be around anybody all the time, she said, they know how to communicate. “We rarely have disagreements,” Sullivan said. “When we do, we’re able to rationally talk about them. So overall, I would say far more positive than negative. But to say, oh, it’s easy, it’s all unicorns and rainbows, no.”Decamping to New YorkThey’ve grown their podcast in a a state that boasts how every county voted for Trump in 2024. Around Oklahoma City, which remains purple, they’re sometimes recognized loudly and proudly, or via whispers from “Democrats in the closet” afraid to outwardly show their politics.View image in fullscreenAt the tennis club recently, an older woman who Welch thought for sure was a Republican squeezed her hand and said “keep doing what you’re doing,” she recounted. “This is anecdotal, but if this is happening to rich white women in Oklahoma City, I can’t help but think that this isn’t happening all over the place,” she said.When Welch talked about these events in the Patreon stream, Sullivan said they gave her hope. But, she added, “I just found hope to be dangerous in these times.”They want to keep expanding the podcast. Welch has become a frequent guest on TV news and commentary shows. The more she appears on these shows, the more requests she gets for others. But, she added, “we’re at an interesting intersection where our YouTube gets as many views as nighttime television does.”Still, the time is right for a big move – Welch is heading to New York City, renting an apartment starting in October and planning to spend most of her time there now that her kids have graduated from high school. Sullivan plans to do the same, looking for an apartment to rent there later this year. The podcast will continue.Welch has always felt like an outsider in Oklahoma as a progressive and an atheist. She’s found community there, building a group of like-minded friends, but still is bothered by the “hypocrisy” she sees among mutual friends who vote against their gay or lesbian friends.She’s giving the New York experiment a year to decide whether it’s a good fit, with no expectations. It’s been a lifelong dream of hers, and she’s able to realize it now.“I’ve always been stuck here, and I’ve always felt like an outsider. I’ve always been harassed and ridiculed for my belief system, and it’s going to be nice to be around people where it’s not a big deal that I’m an atheist.” More

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      Why Trump’s speech to US military top brass was such a disaster | Sidney Blumenthal

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      No dictator or would-be dictator on day one has ever assembled before him in one room the entire senior officer corps of his armed forces in order to have them belittled as failures and humiliated for their slovenly personal appearance, while degrading whole classes serving in the army, navy and air force degraded as inferior and unworthy. No dictator has ever pleaded for generals and admirals to applaud his remarks, followed by deafening silence.Donald Trump is used to entering to the din of a mob jazzed up with YMCA. “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” Trump said when he addressed the country’s highest-ranking military leaders at the Marine Corps Base Quantico on Tuesday. “Don’t laugh. Don’t know if you’re allowed to do that.” He was trying to force some tittering, an old lounge act gag to rouse a dead audience. “You know what? Just have a good time.” The comedian who felt his routine was bombing before he even began sought to relax the room. Then Trump instinctively replaced the ingratiating gestures with threats. “If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future.”Trump’s syllogism perfectly encapsulated his psychology of victimhood and politics of retribution. If you do not bend the knee to him, he is personally wounded. Your failure to worship him must be punished. Your slight of his majesty condemns you to ruin.Trump cannot grasp that the silence of the commanders during his unprecedented address to them demonstrated their highest duty. Their discipline showed fidelity to uphold their oath to the constitution. By their stillness they presented themselves as models for the rest of the officer corps and the troops. They are not loyal to Trump or any cult of personality, but to his constitutional role. They were being used as a backdrop for a campaign-like rally, but they were resistant to serving as partisan players.Trump’s inability to understand their stolidity in the face of his provocations showed his incomprehension not only of the military but the presidency under the law. When he took offense at their stoney silence his rebuke disclosed that he saw them merely as his pawns. They were to his mind no different from his personal attorneys he had installed at the Department of Justice to do his bidding, including the suppression of the Epstein files.Trump had come on an urgent mission for them to carry out. He was there to tell the military chiefs they were to be his unquestioning agents for the greatest reversal of military strategy since the “war on terror” –a new war to be waged against his perceived political opponents at home in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the domestic deployment of the US military as a police force.All the senior generals in all the world had been gathered for the unprecedented event at the Marine Corps Base Quantico on the order of secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth. They had no inkling for what momentous occasion they were being summoned. They dared not speculate that Hegseth brought them to be his captive audience for his self-referential vanity Ted talk attempting to rehabilitate his image and assert his authority. That would have seemed too stupid for words.But the commanders could have gotten more than a hint that they were being rounded up for the latest episode of It Can’t Happen Here, by reading Trump’s executive order of 22 September, Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization, an “organization” that does not exist. This was followed by a National Security Presidential Memorandum No 7 on 25 September citing the murder of Charlie Kirk and a series of disparate events as pretexts: “This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns … ”According to NSPM-7, a new “national strategy” would be implemented against an ideology of “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” Jimmy Kimmel was not mentioned.These vapors were not a description of an ideology so much as a hodgepodge of Maga shibboleths. If there were any ideology expressed it was an inchoate fascism based on a repressive impulse that conjured up an all-purpose enemy called “Antifa”. Any sense of irony, of course, was completely missing. In fact, January 6 was the last attempt to overthrow the US government, incited by Donald Trump. The leadership of Trump as a paragon of “traditional American views on family, religion, and morality” defies satire and only underscores the recurrent demand for the release of the Epstein files.The theatrical presentation at Quantico began with Hegseth darting back and forth on the stage. He was a motivational speaker as a drill sergeant with a book to hawk – and a warm-up act for the headliner. Observing him was like seeing the negative of a photograph. The darkest parts were reflections of his own grievances at the criticism and censure provoked by his past behavior.The former national guard major said he had been been “deemed an extremist”; he was flagged as a possible “insider threat” by fellow officers. (Hegseth has denied that he is an extremist). Despite numerous accounts of his alcoholism, he told Megyn Kelly in an interview: “I never had a drinking problem,” but then reportedly promised a senator that he would “not touch alcohol while I have this position”. Hegseth was accused of sexual assault in 2017, and settled a lawsuit brought by the woman who had accused him. (The settlement terms were confidential. Hegseth has said the allegations were false).As a Fox News host, Hegseth had been a prominent advocate for pardoning or granting clemency to service members accused or convicted of war crimes. Hegseth described them as “warriors” rather than “war criminals”. “If he committed premeditated murder, then I did as well … Put us all in jail,” he said about one of them. Hegseth voiced support for members of his own unit in Iraq killing three unarmed detainees who were told to run and then shot. Once Hegseth was confirmed, he purged the top-rank judge advocate general. He’s pushing a plan to send many of the rest to work in immigration courts.Hegseth said that the military should not “fight with stupid rules of engagement”, his long-time complaint against rules designed to protect civilians and enforce military law against war crimes.Now, in his speech, Hegseth declared he was clearing away “the debris”. He encouraged loosening regulations aimed at preventing forbidden violence within the armed forces. He announced the “overhauling” of the inspector general and whistleblower complaint process, which would undermine legal protections and shield violent or reckless offenders from accountability. He would, he said, impose discriminatory measures of “gender-neutral” or “male level” physical standards for combat roles, stating: “If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it.” (In 2023, more than 17% of the military force was composed of women, with thousands in combat roles.)Hegseth swaggered in front of the commanders, barking obscenities – “Fafo”, or Fuck Around and Find Out. “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship. No more division, distraction or gender delusions. No more debris. As I’ve said before and will say again, we are done with that shit.”The generals sat expressionless at his vulgarity that could be charged under the Uniform Military Code of Justice as a violation against indecent language that “neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline”.According to Pete, it was the flabby generals who needed to work out like Pete. “It’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country and the world. It’s a bad look,” he said. “No more beardos.” That means you, Gen Grant.Hegseth, at last, was seemingly getting his revenge for being tagged as an “insider threat”. He shouted: “No more side-tracking careers, no more walking on eggshells.” He accused the brass of harming the military by evaluating the mental stability of officers: “We’ve weeded out so-called toxic leaders under the guise of double-blind psychology assessments, promoting risk-averse, go-along-to-get-along conformists instead.” Then he plugged his book: “You might say we’re ending the war on warriors. I heard someone wrote a book about that.” The title of his book was The War on Warriors.Not once did Hegseth mention “Russia” or “Ukraine”. He made not the slightest reference to Russia’s huge missile attacks bombarding Ukraine, Russia’s drones over Romania, Estonia and Denmark, the tensions over US wavering within the western alliance, or utter anything that might be construed as a strategic thought.After his menacing speech, Hegseth made way for Donald Trump. Trump displayed his usual contempt for the military by baiting them with an array of partisan barbs to which they remained rigidly motionless. He slipped into a whirlpool of self-celebration followed by anxiety. There were bits about the “Gulf of America”, calling Joe “the autopen” and watching the 1950s TV series Victory At Sea, before Trump came to his worry of falling down stairs. “Every day, the guy is falling downstairs,” Trump said about Biden. “We can’t have it. I’m very careful. You know, when I walk downstairs,like, I’m on stairs, like these stairs, I’m very – I walk very slowly.” He could not contain his envy of Barack Obama. “So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs. I’ve never seen it. Da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop. He’d go down the stairs. Wouldn’t hold on. I said, it’s great. I don’t want to do it.”In the middle of his stream of consciousness, he dropped his new mission for the military against the “enemy from within”, with major American cities as the “training grounds … the ones that are run by the radical-left Democrats … And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within.” Silence.The next day, 1 October, in Memphis, Hegseth appeared as a member of a posse with attorney general Pam Bondi and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to speak before a rally of Ice agents and federal marshals in anticipation of the arrival of a contingent of national guard troops. Miller delivered his imitation of Patton. “The gangbangers that you deal with – they think they’re ruthless? They have no idea how ruthless we are. They think they’re tough? They have no idea how tough we are. They think they’re hardcore? We are so much more hardcore than they are.” Miller, not any mere general, gave the order. “You are unleashed.”You could tell Stephen Miller embodied the new “warrior ethos”. No beard. Shaved head, too. And lawless.

      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump news at a glance: President authorizes sending national guard into Chicago as judge blocks Portland deployment

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      Donald Trump has moved to deploy the national guard to Chicago, the White House confirmed on Saturday, even as a federal judge blocked his administration from deploying troops to Portland, Oregon.White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson confirmed that the president had authorized using Illinois national guard members, citing what she called “ongoing violent riots and lawlessness” that local leaders have not quelled.In Oregon meanwhile, US district judge Karin Immergut concurred with the state’s assertion that Trump deploying federalized national guard troops to Portland would likely inflame rather than calm protests.“Today’s ruling validates what Oregonians already know: justice has been served, and the truth has prevailed,” Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, said after the restraining order was granted. “There is no insurrection in Portland. No threat to national security. No fires, no bombs, no fatalities due to civil unrest.Trump authorizes national guard deployment to Chicago, White House saysDonald Trump has moved to deploy the national guard in another city by authorizing 300 troops to protect federal officers and assets in Chicago, where the government said border patrol agents shot and injured a woman while firing at someone who tried to run them over.The Democratic Illinois governor, JB Pritzker called the move unnecessary and “a manufactured performance – not a serious effort to protect public safety.”Read the full storyJudge blocks Trump administration from deploying national guard to PortlandDonald Trump has suffered a setback to his strategy of dispatching the military to Democrat-led cities he describes as lawless, after a US district judge blocked his administration’s attempt to deploy the national guard to Portland, Oregon.Trump had announced on 27 September that he would deploy troops to Portland, “authorizing Full Force, if necessary”, ignoring pleas from local officials and the state’s congressional delegation. A coalition of 17 mayors in the state had opposed the deployment.Read the full storyWhite House official inadvertently reveals plans to send elite army unit to PortlandA senior White House official accidentally leaked details of plans to send an elite army unit to Portland, in the latest intelligence leak by the Trump administration.Anthony Salisbury, a top deputy to Stephen Miller, the influential White House policy adviser, was observed using Signal in a public place to discuss a plan to deploy the army’s 82nd airborne division to the Democratic-run Oregon city.Read the full storyUS envoys head to Egypt for Gaza ceasefire talks as Trump says ‘we are very close’ to dealDonald Trump’s son-in-law and a senior envoy are heading to Egypt to begin ceasefire negotiations, the White House has said, as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said he hoped to bring all remaining hostages home in the coming days.Read the full storyPete Hegseth fires US navy chief of staffPete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, abruptly fired the navy chief of staff on Friday, removing an aide who had been key to the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the Pentagon.Jon Harrison, who was appointed in January, had been key to broad changes made to the navy’s policy and budgeting offices.Read the full storyJudge halts Trump administration from detaining immigrant children after they turn 18A federal judge has temporarily halted a Trump administration initiative that would have kept immigrant children in custody after their 18th birthdays, preventing their transfer to adult detention centers that advocates said were planned for this weekend.Read the full storyA ‘hostile takeover’: ousted CDC official raises alarm over RFK Jr approach to infectious diseaseRobert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has avoided meetings with top health officials, even as deadly outbreaks unfolded, and pushed to make unprecedented changes to the childhood immunization schedule, according to a recently ousted leader of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Kristi Noem, Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, has said that only Americans should attend next year’s Super Bowl and warned that Ice agents “will be all over” the event.

      A federal judge has concluded that the justice department’s prosecution of Kilmar Ábrego García on human-smuggling charges may be an illegal retaliation after he successfully sued the Trump administration over his deportation to El Salvador.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 3 October 2025. More

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      Judge halts Trump administration from detaining immigrant children after they turn 18

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      A federal judge has temporarily halted a Trump administration initiative that would have kept immigrant children in custody after their 18th birthdays, preventing their transfer to adult detention centers that advocates said were planned for this weekend.On Saturday, US district judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington DC issued a temporary restraining order directing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to stop placing unaccompanied immigrant children into adult detention once they reached legal adulthood, reported the Associated Press.Contreras ruled that automatically detaining these individuals violates an earlier 2021 court order that explicitly prohibited such actions. The ruling adds to a growing list of federal clashes over Trump’s controversial immigration policies, particularly those involving minors.Just a day earlier, it was reported by the Guardian that the Trump administration has plans to offer immigrant children $2,500 to self-deport, with a “one-time resettlement support stipend” given to children in exchange for their voluntary departure.“This policy pressures children to abandon their legal claims and return to a life of fear and danger without ever receiving a fair hearing,” said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition. “The chaos built into this policy will devastate families and communities – and it is targeted to hurt children.”Under federal law, unaccompanied minors are housed in facilities overseen by the office of refugee resettlement, which operates under the Department of Health and Human Services, not Ice.Contreras’s 2021 ruling required that when these children turn 18, they must be released to “the least restrictive setting available”, provided they aren’t considered a danger to themselves or others and aren’t likely to flee. Many are placed with relatives or foster families.Despite the ruling, attorneys representing immigrant youth have also reported receiving alerts that Ice had instructed shelters to stop releasing soon-to-be 18-year-olds, even those with approved release plans, and instead prepare to send them to adult detention, according to the AP.The Trump administration is also facing accusations of reviving the practice of separating families in order to coerce immigrants and asylum seekers to leave the US, as attorneys and former immigration officials have spoken out against the practice.In several cases, officials have retaliated against immigrants who challenged deportation orders by forcibly separating them from their children, a Guardian investigation found. The officials misclassified the children as “unaccompanied minors” before placing them in government-run shelters or foster care.It was also reported earlier this year that Ice officials are actively seeking out unaccompanied immigrant children in operations nationwide with a view to deporting them or pursuing criminal cases against them or adult sponsors sheltering them legally in the US.Over the past several years, the government has imposed stricter screening before releasing children to relatives or sponsors in the US, extending the average time minors spend in custody. That process, which now involves fingerprinting, DNA tests and home visits, has slowed releases considerably.Data released last month also revealed that immigrants with no criminal record are now the largest group held in US immigration detention, surpassing the number of detainees who have been charged with crimes. More