ICE Agents Raid a Church With No Explanation

The arrival of masked federal agents at a church in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Saturday sent some worshippers fleeing into the woods while children sobbed inside, witnesses told The Charlotte Observer. 

The ICE agents, who mobbed a group of church members doing yard work, did not ask any questions or make any attempt to identify themselves before arresting one man. The Observer did not report the name of the church.

The church’s pastor, who told The Observer he did not want to identify himself, said that agents threatened to arrest other church members, and were physically aggressive. “Right now, everybody is scared. Everybody,” he said. “One of these guys with immigration, he say he was going to arrest one of the other guys in the church. He pushed him.”

Fifteen-year-old Miguel Vazquez was one of the people who took off running when federal agents arrived. “I thought, ‘Wait, why am I running? I’m a citizen,’” Vazquez said. 

As some of the men outside fled, the women and children inside the church reportedly cried out of fear that their loved ones had been arrested.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed that the U.S. Border Patrol, which has been favored over Immigration and Customs Enforcement by the Trump administration for its more aggressive law enforcement tactics, made 130 arrests in Charlotte on Saturday and Sunday. The DHS claimed that detainees had criminal records, including a variety of infractions, but they have not released the names or paperwork relating to the arrests.  

As part of its tactlessly named Operation “Charlotte’s Web,” masked agents in paramilitary gear have kidnapped people from a number of public locations in Charlotte, including restaurants, grocery stores, Home Depot parking lots, and now churches. In January, Trump directed ICE to target immigrants in previously protected areas considered “sensitive locations,” including churches, and in April, a federal judge gave him the greenlight.

On Saturday, Charlotte residents took to the streets to protest the presence of federal law enforcement. 

Acting Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator David Richardson abruptly resigned from his post on Monday, according to sources familiar with the situation. His resignation comes after months of being AWOL, particularly during deadly flooding in Texas over Fourth of July weekend.

FEMA employees told The Washington Post that Richardson spent as little time as possible in daily operations meetings and shied away from leadership, even telling his own employees that he expected to be gone by Thanksgiving.

Richardson became acting head of FEMA after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ousted his predecessor, Cameron Hamilton. During his first meeting as the new head of FEMA, Richardson told his employees, “Don’t get in my way … because I will run right over you.”

When flooding hit Texas in July, Richardson was unable to be reached “for hours and hours,” one senior official said. Richardson claimed to be in “constant contact” with FEMA officials but was actually missing from disaster response while on vacation with his two sons. At least 130 people died in the floods.

“Staff say Richardson is basically useless—absent from the office, unreachable in a disaster, and powerless because Secretary Noem has sidelined him,” New Jersey Democratic Representative Frank Pallone Jr. said in September, calling on Richardson to resign. “This level of bureaucratic incompetence from the Trump administration is putting lives at risk when the next natural disaster hits.”

In November, Richardson was muzzled by the Department of Homeland Security, banned from giving interviews or responding to media requests.

President Trump has yet to comment on Richardson’s resignation.

The Trump administration seems to be screwing up its attempt to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey.

On Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick ordered the Department of Justice to turn over all grand jury materials, including minutes and recordings, to Comey’s defense team because he thinks there is merit to Comey’s claim that government misconduct may have tainted legal proceedings.

In his ruling, Fitzpatrick said that an FBI agent who may have had access to attorney-client information, which is privileged, was allowed to testify to the grand jury, which the judge noted was “highly irregular and a radical departure from past DOJ practice.” Also, the judge said that Lindsey Halligan, the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, made two “fundamental misstatements of law” to the grand jury, jeopardizing the case.

Fizpatrick also said he thinks the DOJ is not being transparent on all of the grand jury proceedings because jurors approved a second indictment after rejecting the government’s first one, which does not show up in transcripts. All of this bolsters Comey’s attempt to have the false-statement and obstruction-of-Congress charges against him dismissed and validates his claims that they are politically motivated.

Halligan was chosen by President Trump after her predecessor refused to charge Comey due to a lack of evidence. She has no prosecutorial experience, sent a legal reporter multiple texts about grand jury matters, and is having her appointment legally challenged. With each day, Halligan looks more out of her depth and her attempt to carry out Trump’s baseless case against Comey seems closer to failing.

On Sunday, the Department of Homeland Security posted the latest installment in its running series of outrageous social media posts that seem like they could be cited at the Nuremberg trials. 

“This week, it’s important to dispel a lie that has permeated American political thought for some time. America is not a nation of immigrants,”  said DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary Micah Bock, in a video posted to X. “We are a nation of citizens. And it is because of those citizens that we are an exceptional nation.”

The United States, of course, is a “nation of immigrants.” That’s not a lie. No American citizen, with the exception of Native Americans, has a family history that does not involve some form of immigration to the United States. 

The phrase “a nation of immigrants” was popularized as the title of President John F. Kennedy’s 1958 book that argued the nation was strengthened by the steady flow of immigrants from around the world. Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously called this book a reminder “of our shared dreams, goals, and destiny as a nation,” writing that Americans “must remain mindful that there is much more that unites us than divides us.” 

Bock, on the other hand, insists that immigration system had been “molested and abused by previous administrations without concern for preserving our country’s traditions, customs, or quality of life.” In the text accompanying the video, DHS attempted to refashion the U.S. motto to be a slogan about homogenizing American citizenry. “Our national motto is E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one. One Nation. One Culture. One Shared Heritage,” the post read. 

This is a pretty questionable compression of the history of the “E Pluribus Unum” slogan, which was originally supposed to symbolize the Thirteen Colonies: It makes no claim about a common culture or heritage—language with strong fascist overtones. But this is par for the course for DHS, which seemingly shitposts specifically to excite far-right internet trolls. 

Maryland Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin is facing some backlash for extending party membership to hard-line MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene—once again raising the issue of just how big the Democratic tent should be.

“We are a big tent. We must be a huge, vast tent. I say this is a party that’s got room for Marjorie Taylor Greene if she wants to come over!” Raskin said on Sunday while speaking to a group of Florida Democrats. “We got room for anybody who wants to stand up for the Constitution, and for the Bill of Rights today.… You’re damn right I’m a liberal, the heart of that word is ‘liberty.’ And I’m a progressive because the heart of that word is ‘progress.’ But my favorite thing to call myself today is a conservative, because I wanna conserve the land, the air, the water, the climate system, the Constition.”

Raskin’s comment is certainly eyebrow-raising. Greene has been making headlines in recent weeks due to her surprising break from Trump on Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, his decision to bail out Javier Milei in Argentina, and his insistence that the economy is great and there is no inflation. Just this weekend, Trump called her a “traitor” to the country, leading her to fear for her safety.

But this is also the same woman who has supported Trump on nearly every other issue, spreading racist, antisemitic, and generally unhinged rhetoric that has made her one of the most radical members of Congress.

“Fuck no. Stop trying to rehabilitate terrible people just because they said one bad thing about Trump,” one frustrated X user wrote.

“I’m an admirer of @RepRaskin & I think the Dems should be a ‘big tent’ too BUT as @AdamKinzinger has pointed out, MTG still supports election denial & the Big Lie and, I would add, the ICE cruelty & violence against people, including Americans, of color,” journalist Medhi Hasan said. “Let’s not whitewash her.”