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The Dark Side of 8 U.S. states

The Dark Side of 8 U.S. states

Yahoo06-03-2025

While the United States is often celebrated for its opportunities and freedoms, every state has its share of challenges and darker aspects.
From systemic racism to political corruption, these states have skeletons in their closets that defy their postcard-perfect reputations. Let's do a deep dive and pull back that curtain:
California's reputation as the Golden State is overshadowed by a severe and escalating homelessness crisis. Over 187,084 people currently live on its streets, with the unhoused population growing by 5,600 in just the past year.
While the state achieved reductions in veteran and chronic homelessness in 2024, the overall 3% year-over-year increase highlights persistent systemic challenges. Skyrocketing rents in prior years forced many residents into vehicles or RVs, and 66% of California's homeless population remains unsheltered—the highest unsheltered rate nationwide.
Even with recent rent declines in cities like San Diego County (-7%) and Oakland (-9.1%), financial precarity persists. Many Californians are one missed paycheck away from losing housing, reflecting the acute pressure of the state's affordability crisis.
The Sunshine State has a dark secret—after homicides rose 14.7% in 2020, Florida saw law enforcement agencies largely stop reporting crime statistics to the FBI during the 2021 transition to a new system. Only 0.3% of agencies submitted data that year.
By 2022, just 8% of police agencies provided statistics, rendering recent crime claims unverifiable. Florida's data issues persisted into 2023, with major agencies like Miami PD still failing to report.
Why this is happening: Florida lacks a state law mandating crime data reporting to the FDLE or FBI. Participation is voluntary, leading to widespread non-compliance—a problem compounded by underfunded police IT systems.
The Land of Lincoln is experiencing a mass exodus. High taxes, political corruption, and rising crime rates are driving residents away in droves. Cities like Chicago, with its notorious violent crime problem, contribute to the state's declining appeal for both families and businesses.
This Midwestern state has seen more corrupt governors than most people have had hot meals. Since 1960, a whopping four Illinois governors have been sent to prison on corruption charges. Rod Blagojevich (impeached for soliciting bribes for Obama's Senate seat) is the most infamous.
The Keystone State is home to some of America's most notoriously haunted locations. Places like Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia and Pennhurst Asylum are renowned for their dark histories and reported paranormal activity. These sites serve as eerie reminders of past institutional abuses and societal neglect.
Even the state's political foundations aren't spared this spectral presence. While Philadelphia's Independence Hall birthed American democracy, modern efforts to ban 'dark money' from politics have sparked debates about whether transparency laws protect voters or haunt free speech. A far cry from Franklin's Enlightenment ideals, these clashes add a quieter, more insidious layer to Pennsylvania's shadows.
Ohio's reputation as a quintessential Midwestern is challenged by the legend of Helltown, an abandoned area within Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The area's mythology blends Cold War-era suspicions about government actions – originally stemming from documented 1970s property seizures for park development – with supernatural folklore.
While the location's physical decay (abandoned structures, vegetation-choked roads, and boarded homes from mass evacuations) creates visceral eeriness, most tales unravel when examined. The church allegedly displaying Satanic symbols actually featured conventional Gothic Revival architecture, its inverted crosses being standard medieval-inspired motifs rather than occult signs.
Similarly, a frequently cited 'haunted' school bus was merely derelict municipal property left behind. Claims of clandestine government activities directly contradict archival records showing the park's establishment through standard eminent domain procedures.
These narratives gained momentum through late 20th-century teen folklore and internet-era amplification, transforming prosaic urban abandonment into a modern mythos. The site's atmospheric decay continues to invite speculative interpretations, fueling our collective fascination with the unexplained.
The NYPD might be 'New York's Finest,' but they've got a long history of being anything but. From the 'Buddy Boys' corruption case in 1986 (where Brooklyn cops stole drugs, resold them, and extorted dealers) to the Central Park jogger case (coerced false confessions from Black/Latino teens in a 1989 rape case), the department has faced numerous instances of misconduct and corruption.
There was also the 30th Precinct Corruption case of 1994, where 33 officers in Harlem stole drugs and cash from dealers, selling them from the precinct itself.
Beyond the Central Park Five, cases like the 1985 torture of Mark Davidson with a stun gun and the 1984 fatal shooting of Eleanor Bumpurs (a mentally ill Black woman) highlight systemic brutality and procedural failures. It's enough to make you wonder if 'Law & Order' is more fiction than we thought.
Everything's bigger in Texas, including its history of racial violence. The Texas Rangers, long celebrated as heroes, have a disturbing past of brutality against people of color.
Rangers systematically displaced Comanche and Cherokee tribes in the 19th century, seizing acres of ancestral land. In 1918, they were involved in the Porvenir massacre, where 15 unarmed Tejano men and boys were executed.
Scholars estimate that the Rangers killed 300–5,000 Mexican Americans between 1910 and 1920. In 2020, Austin's police union headquarters removed its 'Ranger Hall' plaque after protests exposed its genocidal origins.
During the 1940s, Michigan was plagued by systemic corruption, bribery, and even assassination. A grand corruption investigation implicated members of both major political parties, spanning at least three cities: Lansing, Jackson, and Albion.
The most shocking incident was the mysterious 1945 assassination of State Senator Warren G. Hooper, which was linked to the infamous Purple Gang — a purportedly organized crime syndicate that allegedly orchestrated the hit from prison through collusion with corrupt officials. Talk about a political thriller come to life!
Read the original article on GEEKSPIN. Affiliate links on GEEKSPIN may earn us and our partners a commission.

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The White House Is Delighted With Events in Los Angeles
The White House Is Delighted With Events in Los Angeles

Atlantic

time29 minutes ago

  • Atlantic

The White House Is Delighted With Events in Los Angeles

The last time President Donald Trump tried to send military forces into American streets to put down civil unrest, in June 2020, Pete Hegseth was positioned outside the White House with a Kevlar helmet and riot shield. Major Hegseth's mobilization as part of a District of Columbia National Guard unit summoned to restore order in the nation's capital, where protests had erupted following the police murder of George Floyd, occurred as Pentagon leaders scrambled to avert what they feared could be a confrontation between active-duty U.S. forces and their fellow Americans. Today, Hegseth is second only to the president in directing the administration's use of the National Guard and active-duty Marines to respond to unrest over immigration raids in Los Angeles. And this time, the military's civilian leadership isn't acting as a brake on Trump's impulse to escalate the confrontation. The Hegseth-led Pentagon is an accelerant. The administration's decision to federalize 4,000 California National Guard forces, contrary to Governor Gavin Newsom's wishes, and to dispatch 700 active-duty Marines to the Los Angeles area, marks a break with decades of tradition under which presidents have limited their use of the military on American soil. If there are any internal misgivings about busting through yet another democratic norm, they haven't surfaced publicly. Indeed, officials at the White House told us they are satisfied with the way the L.A. confrontation has unfolded. They believe that it highlights their focus on immigration and law and order, and places Democrats on the wrong side of both. One widely circulated photo—showing a masked protester standing in front of a burning car, waving a Mexican flag—has been embraced by Trump supporters as a distillation of the conflict: a president unafraid to use force to defend an American city from those he deems foreign invaders. 'We couldn't have scripted this better,' said a senior White House aide granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations. 'It's like the 2024 election never ended: Trump is strong while Democrats are weak and defending the indefensible.' Democrats, of course, take a different view, and say the administration's actions have only risked triggering further violence. Retired officers who study how the armed forces have been used in democracies told us they share those concerns. They point to the damage that Trump's orders could do to the military's relationship with the citizens it serves. 'We should be very careful, cautious, and even reluctant to use the military inside our country,' Bradley Bowman, a former Army officer who heads the defense program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, told us. Conor Friedersdorf: Averting a worst-case scenario in Los Angeles State and local authorities typically use law-enforcement personnel as a first response to civil disturbances or riots, followed by National Guard forces if needed. Retired Major General Randy Manner, who served as acting vice chief of the National Guard Bureau during the Obama administration, said the federalizing of California Guard forces—putting them under presidential rather than state control, a move allowed with certain limits—pulls those service members away from their civilian jobs and makes it harder to complete planned training or exercises. 'Basically, the risk does not justify the investment of these forces, and it will negatively impact on readiness,' Manner told us. Retired officers we spoke with also drew a distinction between the involvement of National Guard and active-duty forces. Whereas National Guard troops assist citizens after natural disasters and have the advantage of knowing the communities they serve, active-duty forces are primarily trained to 'see the enemy and neutralize the enemy,' said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'When you're dealing with U.S. citizens, no matter what they're doing, that's not the right mindset.' 'This is not Fallujah,' Bowman added. 'This is Los Angeles.' Juliette Kayyem: Trump's gross misuse of the National Guard This morning, Hegseth made his first congressional appearance since his bruising confirmation process, appearing before a House committee. His tone with Democrats was at times combative. When Representative Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat, asked the defense secretary what the cost of the California deployment would be, he declined to provide a figure and instead pivoted to criticism of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for the state's response to the violence that followed Floyd's killing in 2020. (Military officials said later they expected the Los Angeles deployment, as envisioned, to cost roughly $134 million.) 'If you've got millions of illegals, you don't know where they're coming from, they're waving flags from foreign countries and assaulting police officers, that's a problem,' Hegseth told lawmakers. Trump, for his part, told reporters that anyone who tries to protest at the Saturday parade celebrating the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army will 'be met with very big force.' He also said that he wouldn't hesitate to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would permit him to employ the military for law enforcement or to suppress a rebellion, if he believed that circumstances required. Speaking to troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina later in the day, the president promised to stop the 'anarchy' in California. ' We will liberate Los Angeles and make it free, clean, and safe again,' he said. 'We will not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy.' Some Republicans have privately expressed worry that Trump may overplay a winning hand. Even in the West Wing, two people we spoke with tried to downplay the incendiary rhetoric from Trump and Hegseth. They stressed that, to this point, National Guard forces have been in a defensive posture, protecting federal buildings. Although they believe that Trump has the political advantage at the moment, they acknowledged there would be real risks if U.S. troops got involved in violence. 'We don't know who would get blamed but no one wins if that happens,' one senior aide told us. 'No one wants to see that.' Hegseth's support for using active-duty troops in Los Angeles stands in contrast to what his predecessor did in 2020. At that time, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, along with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, scrambled to block Trump's desire to employ active-duty forces against the demonstrators protesting racial violence. The president had mused about shooting protesters in the legs, Esper wrote later. To satisfy his boss while also avoiding a dangerous confrontation, the defense chief called active-duty forces from Fort Bragg to Northern Virginia but sought to keep them out of the fray. Tom Nichols: Trump is using the National Guard as bait In his 2024 book The War on Warrior s, Hegseth described how his experience as a D.C. Guardsman in 2020 crystallized his views about the divide between military personnel and what he saw as the degenerate protesters who were lobbing bricks and bottles of urine at the citizen soldiers. When the D.C. Guard was again summoned seven months later, to help secure the 2021 inauguration following the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Hegseth was told to stand down because fellow Guardsmen suspected that one of his tattoos was a sign of extremism. (Hegseth has maintained it is part of his Christian faith.) Hegseth was angered by his exclusion and resigned from the Guard. That experience remains with him as he attempts to reshape the military, and its role in society, in line with Trump's worldview. As he has written: 'My trust for this Army is irrevocably broken.'

Biden admin evacuated 55 Afghans on terror watchlist to US during botched withdrawal: DOJ watchdog
Biden admin evacuated 55 Afghans on terror watchlist to US during botched withdrawal: DOJ watchdog

New York Post

time30 minutes ago

  • New York Post

Biden admin evacuated 55 Afghans on terror watchlist to US during botched withdrawal: DOJ watchdog

US officials encountered 55 Afghan evacuees on the terrorist watchlist after the Biden administration's chaotic 2021 withdrawal from the Middle Eastern country, according to a Justice Department inspector general report. The report, released Tuesday, confirmed longstanding suspicions from Republican lawmakers that the Biden administration failed to properly vet US-bound refugees as the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan. 'I've sounded the alarm about the need to thoroughly vet Afghan evacuee applicants since August 2021,' Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement, reacting to the DOJ IG report. 'The Biden-Harris administration, my Democrat colleagues in Congress and many in the media were quick to dismiss glaring red flags that a nonpartisan national security analysis now confirms.' 3 Grassley charged that the Biden administration endangered the lives of Americans by allowing improperly vetted Afghan refugees into the US. AP The FBI's Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) identified 55 Afghans that were either already on the terrorist watchlist and made it to a US port of entry or were added to the database during the evacuation and resettlement process, the report found. Of those, at least 21 were added to the terror list after they had already entered the US. After investigations, the FBI eventually removed 46 evacuees from the watchlist, determining that they posed no threat to the homeland. However, nine remained in the terror database as of July 2024 and eight were in the US. 'As if it wasn't already obvious, the Biden-Harris administration endangered American lives by allowing suspected terrorists to enter the United States and roam free for years,' Grassley argued, noting that his 'oversight of this matter will continue.' Roughly 90,000 Afghans were allowed entry into the US and became eligible for Special immigrant Visas under the Biden administration's Operation Allies Refuge (OAR) and Operation Allies Welcome (OAW) programs, which provided the foreign nationals immigration processing and resettlement support. 'According to the FBI, the need to immediately evacuate Afghans overtook the normal processes required to determine whether individuals attempting to enter the United States pose a threat to national security, which increased the risk that bad actors could try to exploit the expedited evacuation,' the DOJ IG report stated. Despite the 55 individuals flagged, the DOJ inspector general determined that overall 'each of the responsible elements of the FBI effectively communicated and addressed any potential national security risks identified.' 3 The Biden administration hastily evacuated tens of thousands of Afghans as the country fell to the Taliban in 2021. AFP via Getty Images 3 As of July 2024, eight Afghans on the FBI's terror watchlist were still in the United States. AP Last October, the DOJ charged an Afghan national brought into the US during the chaotic withdrawal with plotting an ISIS-inspired Election Day terror attack. Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, was living in Oklahoma City on a Special Immigrant Visa as he took steps to stockpile AK-47 rifles and ammunition to carry out an attack on US soil 'in the name of ISIS,' according to the Justice Department. Tawhedi entered the US on Sept. 9, 2021, just weeks after the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan and the last US troops departed from the war-torn nation. Tawhedi was charged with conspiring and attempting to provide material support to ISIS and is currently awaiting trial.

O.C. politicians denounce ICE raids as the National Guard deploys in Santa Ana
O.C. politicians denounce ICE raids as the National Guard deploys in Santa Ana

Los Angeles Times

timean hour ago

  • Los Angeles Times

O.C. politicians denounce ICE raids as the National Guard deploys in Santa Ana

Rep. Lou Correa assembled community leaders in front of his 46th District congressional office in Santa Ana to send a message following a series of Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps in the city that stoked fears, spread confusion and spurred angry downtown protests. 'We want to tell America who Santa Ana is [and] what this immigration issue is all about,' Correa, a Democrat, said during a Tuesday morning press conference. 'It's not us versus them. We are all part of the American fabric, part of the American community.' Correa flew to Washington, D.C. on Monday, but immediately boarded a flight back home once he learned of ICE raids carried out in Santa Ana as part of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. By then, the Orange County Rapid Response Network, a coalition that monitors ICE activities, spread the word about immigration authorities arresting workers at locations like a Fountain Valley carwash and outside of a Home Depot in Santa Ana. Based on a Tuesday morning visit to an ICE detention facility in Santa Ana, Correa placed the number of immigrants in custody at 31 and described seeing a couple of detainees still wearing their painter overalls. He noted an accurate count is hard to pin down with multiple federal agencies involved in the enforcement actions. ICE did not respond to a TimesOC request for confirmation of the number of unauthorized immigrants arrested by press deadline. The Orange County sweeps followed ICE activity, raids and protests against them over the weekend in Los Angeles County as the Trump administration has since deployed the California National Guard and U.S. Marines to Southern California. Law enforcement agencies responding to downtown Los Angeles protests arrested 163 people through Monday. In response to news of O.C. immigration sweeps, activists gathered outside of the federal building in Santa Ana on Monday to protest. Federal agents shot pepper balls to disperse people who attempted to block vans from exiting the building. The protest swelled in numbers around Civic Center Plaza in downtown when the Santa Ana Police Department declared an unlawful assembly at about 8:30 p.m. Fireworks exploded near local and federal authorities. Some protesters also hurled rocks, bottles and other projectiles toward law enforcement. Officers shot pepper balls, tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowds. Natalie Garcia, a spokesperson for the Santa Ana Police Department, confirmed that officers arrested 11 people Monday on suspicion of failure to disperse, assault on an officer and vandalism. In Sacramento Tuesday, the California Latino Legislative Caucus held a news conference where Assemblyman Avelino Valencia (D-Anaheim) denounced the ICE raids, as the 68th District he represents includes Santa Ana. 'It really is heartbreaking to witness what is unfolding in our communities across our state,' he said. 'Let me be clear: President Trump is using these raids to intimidate our communities and instill fear.' 'This deportation tactic that the president is implementing is about demonstrating his ability to govern through brute force,' Valencia added. Other Santa Ana elected officials held another press conference in front of the Old Orange County Courthouse on Tuesday afternoon. Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento recalled consoling a woman whose uncle was detained by immigration authorities at a Santa Ana Home Depot while seeking work. 'To the federal administration, we demand that you take your militarized equipment and troops and stop occupying our communities immediately,' he said. 'Yesterday, I personally witnessed the efforts of ICE officers clearly intending to escalate what was a lawful and peaceful demonstration.' In downtown Santa Ana, National Guard troops in beige camouflage with rifles slung on their shoulders blocked vehicle access along 4th Street near the Ronald Reagan Federal Building and Courthouse on Tuesday morning. Correa told TimesOC that it's an 'irony' that National Guard troops are in Santa Ana when, on Jan. 6, 2021, they hadn't been deployed during the pro-Trump Capitol riot in Washington, D.C. as he took cover in the House chamber. Correa called for protests to be peaceful in the non-violent tradition of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the press conference while also deeming the ICE raids to be 'counterproductive.' 'If you've got serious, violent criminals in our community, come get them,' he said. 'But workers that are taking care of our seniors, feeding us, being part of the economic miracle that's called California, let's work on that. We need immigration reform.' Even before Monday's raids, federal agents arrested individuals after their ICE check-in appointments in Santa Ana on June 6. 'It's my understanding that in a lot of cases, they're going before a judge,' Correa told TimesOC. 'Authorities will, essentially, dismiss an order of deportation. [But] before they walk out, they're rearrested and put on an expedited order of deportation.' As the Trump administration deployed 700 active-duty Marines, some of them remain at the Naval Weapons Station in Seal Beach. They have not appeared in Santa Ana as of Tuesday evening. Correa told the press that his community does not need Marines. 'What are we coming to?' he said. 'This is not America.'

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