Stephen Miller mocks protesters during deployment of National Guard in DC
Miller, accompanied by JD Vance and Pete Hegseth, visited troops at Union Station, distributing Shake Shack burgers.
Miller addressed the military members, instructing them to ignore the protesters, stating they were not part of the city.
There has been widespread discontent regarding the deployment of troops in cities all over the U.S.
Watch the video in full above.
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Reuters
8 minutes ago
- Reuters
California lawmakers swiftly pass Democrats' congressional redistricting plan
LOS ANGELES, Aug 21 (Reuters) - The California legislature on Thursday approved a redistricting package aimed at giving Democrats five more seats in the U.S. Congress, countering a partisan advantage President Donald Trump hoped to gain from a similar Republican plan to redraw political maps in Texas. California Democrats pushed the three bills through the state Senate and Assembly in a remarkable flurry of fast-track action, ahead of a Friday deadline set for getting the newly drawn districts on the ballot in time for a special election on November 4. Swift passage of the measures marked a decisive victory for Governor Gavin Newsom, who has led the charge in pushing back against what he and fellow Democrats nationally have decried as Trump's attempt at a power grab in the Republican-led state of Texas. Newsom, who enjoys a Democratic super-majority in both houses of the California legislature, ultimately seeks voter support for his plan. If it succeeds, it would neutralize the Trump-backed Texas bill designed to flip five Democratic seats to Republican control in the U.S. House of Representatives. Republicans, including Trump, have openly acknowledged that the Texas effort is about boosting their political clout by helping to preserve the party's slim U.S. House majority in the November 2026 midterm races. That election already is shaping up as closely fought. Democrats have characterized their bid to depart from California's usual independent, bipartisan redistricting process - adopted by voters in 2008 - as a temporary "emergency" strategy to combat what they see as extreme Republican moves to unfairly rig the system. "The decks are stacked against us, so what we need to do is fight back," California Senator Lena Gonzalez, a joint author of the redistricting plan, said as the state Senate opened floor debate on the bill. Democrats say more than 70% of their newly drawn congressional districts were adopted from maps used by the independent commission in formulating the current boundaries. Republican Senator Tony Strickland objected, saying, "These maps were drawn behind closed doors." Within six hours, however, the two houses of the legislature had approved all three measures, voting along party lines to approve each bill in succession and sending it to the other body for its concurrence. Unlike the California initiative, the newly drawn district lines in Texas would go into effect without voter approval, though Democrats have vowed to challenge the plan in court. The Texas measure cleared a major hurdle on Wednesday when the state House of Representatives in Austin adopted it on an 88-52 party-line vote. The Texas Senate is expected to pass the measure next, possibly on Thursday. The two versions of the bill may then need to be reconciled before the legislation goes to Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who has said he will sign it. "Big WIN for the Great State of Texas," Trump said on his Truth Social platform. Democrats and civil rights groups say the new Texas map further dilutes the voting power of Hispanic and Black voters, violating federal law that forbids redrawing political lines on the basis of racial or ethnic discrimination. In pursuing redistricting mid-decade, both sides are breaking with long-observed political custom of generally altering political maps once every 10 years, following the U.S. Census to adjust for population changes. Most Americans believe redrawing congressional lines to maximize political gain, known as gerrymandering, is bad for democracy, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found. Former President Barack Obama weighed in on the issue this week, supporting the Democratic effort as a necessary short-term response to Republican overreach in Texas. But he said he remained uneasy about the long-term consequences of gerrymandering. Consideration of the Texas bill was delayed for two weeks after more than 50 Democratic state House members staged a walkout that denied Republicans the legislative quorum they needed to proceed. Their collective absence sparked extraordinary efforts by Abbott and other Republican leaders to pressure the Democrats to relent, including civil arrest warrants, the imposition of fines and threats to withhold their pay. The Democrats finally returned to Austin on Monday, by which time their legislative boycott had galvanized Democratic leaders in other states, especially California, where Newsom has vowed to "fight fire with fire." "We're going to punch this bully in the mouth, and we're going to win," Newsom told reporters in a video conference call on Wednesday. "This is about the rule of Don versus the rule of law." He was joined on the call by Texas Representative Nicole Collier, one of the leaders of the Austin walkout. "These are the most segregated maps that have been presented in Texas since the 1960s," said Collier, who represents a predominantly non-white Fort Worth state district. The Texas-California clash may be just the start. Other Republican-controlled states -- including Ohio, Florida, Indiana and Missouri -- are moving forward with or considering their own redistricting efforts, as are Democratic-led states such as Maryland and Illinois.
The Guardian
39 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Ice's detention of Atlanta reporter seeks to ‘silence him', ACLU petition says
The ACLU called Immigration and Customs Enforcement's continued detention of Atlanta-area journalist Mario Guevara an act of retaliation for his reporting on immigration raids, according to a federal petition filed on Thursday. Guevara, a Salvadorian immigrant who has been in the United States for more than 20 years, was arrested on 14 June by a police officer in suburban Atlanta while covering the 'No Kings' day protests in a neighborhood with a high density of immigrants. Despite all charges being dropped, Guevara has been in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention in south Georgia for almost two months, the only journalist in the US imprisoned as a consequence of their work today, the ACLU said. Guevara founded MG News, a social media-driven news organization that has become increasingly important to his Spanish-speaking audience for his coverage of Ice activities in metro Atlanta. As he was being arrested, Guevara was livestreaming on Facebook to more than a million followers. 'The government's continuing detention of Mr Guevara on the basis of his journalism is intended to silence him, prevent him from reporting in the future, and retaliate against him for his past speech and reporting, in violation of the first amendment,' the filing in the Brunswick, Georgia, courthouse states. 'The government's continuing detention of Mr Guevara also violates the substantive due process clause of the fifth amendment because it has no legitimate objective and is punitive.' Guevara has no criminal history and has been issued a work permit. An immigration judge administratively closed an order for his deportation a decade ago. The oldest of his two children who are US citizens has sponsored his green card application. After his arrest in June, DeKalb county prosecutors dropped the misdemeanor charges against Guevara almost immediately. The sheriff's office of neighboring Gwinnett county – taking issue with his livestreaming a prostitution arrest a month earlier – filed misdemeanor traffic charges shortly after Guevara's arrest. Gwinnett prosecutors dropped those charges days later. Nonetheless, Guevara is still in the Folkston Ice detention center and faces removal. An immigration judge issued a $7,500 bond for Guevara in June, but immigration enforcement officials appealed that bond decision and it is now on hold with no date set to hear the appeal. The ACLU filing attempts to induce the federal court to intervene. Referring to the bond hearing in June, the ACLU noted that the immigration judge recognized the first amendment implications of his detention. The judge said in his bond order that 'if respondent was acting as a journalist, he is protected by freedom of speech as detailed in the constitution and longstanding, precedential case law', and noted that 'reporting on Ice raids in the community, as respondent has done, is a national concern and many other journalists across the nation are also reporting on this issue'. Immigration enforcement officials have argued in court that Guevara presents a danger to the community because he livestreams, records and publishes law enforcement activities and shares his reporting with the public. The ACLU filing details Guevara's extensive cooperation with law enforcement over the years, and notes that a metro Atlanta law enforcement officer testified on his behalf at the bond hearing. In its filing, the ACLU argues that it is 'highly unusual' for the government to appeal an immigration judge's decision to grant bond when someone has no significant criminal history and presents strong evidence that he's not a danger to the community. 'The government generally reserves bond appeals, and especially stays, for cases involving serious criminal conduct, clear evidence of danger to the community or major flight risk,' the ACLU wrote, adding that the government relies almost exclusively on 'Mr Guevara's reporting as justification for his continued detention'. The ACLU noted that immigration officials presented Guevara's live stream of a Gwinnett county sheriff's office operation in its argument against issuing a bond in July. 'The livestreaming videos that formed the basis for the misdemeanor traffic violations are no longer available on the MG News or Mr Guevara's Facebook pages,' the ACLU filing states. 'Neither Mr Guevara nor an employee of MG News removed these videos from these Facebook pages. Mr Guevara is not aware of how or why the videos were removed.' The petition asks for the court to demand an answer to the petition within three days, for Guevara's bond case to be removed to federal court, for the stay on his bond to be lifted, and for the court to declare that Ice's effort to continue detention violates the first amendment and the due process clause of the fifth amendment.
Telegraph
40 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Amy Hamm was a hard-working nurse. Now she's a case study in Canada's descent into tyranny
Canada used to be known as a bastion of free speech. It's even supposed to be protected as a 'fundamental freedom' under Canadian law. Unfortunately, the reality today is rather different – as the case of nurse Amy Hamm starkly demonstrates. Hamm has been a nurse in British Columbia for 13 years and, as she wrote in an essay for the online magazine Quillette in April 2022, she had 'never had a patient complaint, or otherwise received any type of workplace discipline'. Nevertheless, the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives placed her under investigation. Her supposed offence? Her 'off-duty statements' – specifically social media posts and articles that expressed her perfectly legitimate view that there are only two biological sexes. The fact that she had placed a billboard in September 2020 that contained the simple message 'I [HEART] JK Rowling' also came under scrutiny. Hamm wrote in Quillette that two people had complained to BCCNM that her views made her incapable of 'provid[ing] safe, non-judgemental care to transgender and gender diverse patients'. She was flabbergasted. 'I have worked with countless transgender patients. I am not transphobic by any reasonable or defensible definition of that word. Yet I now could lose my job because activists claim that I am a bigot.' An investigation into Hamm commenced. BCCNM wrote a lengthy report that examined her social media posts, freelance writing and more. Did they find anything egregious? Some might have found some of her posts offensive, but most will have considered them mainstream expressions of gender-critical opinions. But that didn't stop the college from making bizarre interpretations of what she said and wrote. One remark, 'trans activists determined to infiltrate or destroy women-only spaces,' was found to be discriminatory because the disciplinary panel felt it had a 'negative connotation of improper, illegal, aggressive, and destructive conduct'. Another post – is 'there anything more embarrassing than straight people going by they/them, getting a dumb haircut, and calling themselves trans and queer?' – was cited because it 'indirectly disparages transgender people '. Hamm, a single mother of two, wrote in the National Post – where she is a fellow columnist – that some colleagues 'created a public campaign' last year 'to get me fired over my political views – which I only ever expressed outside of work – and shared my exact work location'. She said someone threatened to find her at the hospital and 'beat me to a pulp with a baseball bat'. Many people mobilised to help Hamm. She was aided in her lengthy legal battle by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. JK Rowling gave moral support, tweeting '#IStandWithAmyHamm,' and sent Hamm a handbag last Christmas with a follow-up post: 'fabulous women deserve fabulous bags'. The academic Kathleen Stock testified in Hamm's defence. It was all for naught. The disciplinary panel ruled that Hamm had made 'discriminatory and derogatory statements' about transgender people and that her comments were designed in part to 'elicit fear, contempt and outrage against members of the transgender community'. Hamm was ordered to pay close to 94,000 Canadian dollars in costs and disbursements within two years, and was suspended for one month. What a ridiculous decision. It doesn't matter what you think about Hamm's views on gender identity, or the billboard that praised Rowling. She has the right to express these opinions in a free society, particularly when she is outside work. Free speech isn't a one-way street: it's the defence of ideas that are either objective or objectionable. Intellectual discourse will be severely limited if those who disagree with Hamm believe the right approach is to punish and silence her, rather than debate her. It is shocking that Hamm has been denied her basic right. It is positive, at least, that Hamm's case has drawn attention to the reality of free speech in Canada today. The Conservative Party leader, Pierre Poilievre, has written on social media this week that 'this is authoritarian censorship. We must restore free speech and free thinking in a free country.' Let's hope that's possible, because if an intelligent, thoughtful nurse like Hamm can't express her non-violent, non-hateful opinions outside the workplace, the chill that has descended on Canadian free speech may soon turn into an Ice Age.
