The Evening Blues - 6-26-26
Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features Chicago blues slide guitarist Hound Dog Taylor. Enjoy!
Hound Dog Taylor - Shake Your Money Maker
“Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.”
-- Terry Pratchett
News and Opinion
Caitlin Johnstone: Some Guy Broke Into My House
Some guy broke into my house and set up residence in the study room. He says his great-grandparents used to live in this house and now he won’t leave.
My family and I tried to kick him out but he got very violent. He brings in his friends and they help beat us up if we ever try to make him leave.
They keep saying I hate the guy because of his religion. I don’t even care about his religion, I just don’t like sharing my house with some random outsider who broke in here out of nowhere and took my stuff.
“The poor guy just wants one room to call his own,” his friends say in his defense. “You and your family have all the surrounding rooms in the house, and yet you have a problem with the guy having sovereignty over ONE room? That’s kind of bigoted and evil.”
He keeps throwing stuff at me and my family if we get too close to his door, saying we make him feel afraid. His friends say it’s understandable because his room is surrounded by enemies who hate him just for existing, but we don’t hate him for existing, we hate him because he forcibly inserted himself into our home and keeps throwing stuff at us.
And what’s weird is whenever I explain my situation to normal people they completely understand where I’m coming from and agree the guy is being a dick, but if I talk to the police or the local paper they always side with the guy. Almost everyone in town hates this guy now because of how he’s been acting, but everyone in power does everything they can to protect him. It’s like there’s a total disconnect between the authorities and the will of the public on this particular issue.
It’s having a nastier and nastier effect on the community at large all across town. The police have been showing up to arrest anyone who says they think the guy’s being an asshole. The paper keeps printing these obnoxious lies telling everyone that me and my family are the real criminals and the guy is actually sweet and awesome. It’s really unfair.
Things have been so tense and hostile ever since this guy showed up. I honestly think it would be better if he’d never moved in here at all, but whenever I say that his friends try to get me in trouble and claim I want to exterminate the guy.
It’s a real mess, man.
That guy sucks.
COL. Doug Macgregor : Judgment Day for Trump's War. Does he Know He Lost?
White House seeks extra funds for Iran war as part of $87.6bn request
The White House has requested that Congress approve $87.6bn in new funding, much of which would go towards the costs of Donald Trump’s war with Iran, but a top Democrat has signaled the party will not support paying for an unpopular conflict that lawmakers never authorized. The Trump administration’s supplemental funding request released on Wednesday comes amid a logjam in the US Congress sparked by the president’s demand that the Senate pass a measure to impose sweeping new restrictions on voting nationwide.
The standoff intensified this week, when Trump refused to sign a major housing bill approved with bipartisan majorities until the voting bill advances, after previously linking its passage to renewal of a key foreign surveillance law.
In a letter outlining the Iran war funding request, the director of the White House office of management and budget, Russell Vought, wrote that $67.1bn of the funds would be used to cover costs related to the conflict with Iran, and would include $21bn for munitions procurement and the defense industrial base. The request also contains $1.4bn to respond to the outbreak of Ebola in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and $11.1bn for US farmers, who have been struggling with economic shocks related to the Trump administration’s tariff regime, as well as prices for fertilizer and diesel driven higher by the conflict with Iran.
The latest funding request comes on top of Trump’s proposed $1.5tn budget for the Pentagon, its largest in decades. While appropriators in the Senate and House of Representatives have advanced legislation to authorize $1.15tn of those funds, the White House’s request that the remaining $350bn be approved in a party-line measure has been met with skepticism from senior Republicans.
Democratic lawmakers have also scorned the idea of paying for the war with Iran, which Trump initiated in February alongside Israel without first requesting Congress’s permission. Surveys have shown the conflict is unpopular with the public, with a Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week finding that just a quarter of Americans believe the United States has emerged stronger from the conflict.
Iran's Drones STRIKE Cargo Ship in Hormuz, Trump in DENIAL | Patrick Henningsen
Massie moves to strike $3.3B in Israel military aid from the budget
The House Rules Committee has advanced an amendment by Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to strip $3.3 billion in funding for the Israel Defense Forces from the federal budget.
That means that as early as Thursday, every member of the House will have to vote on the proposal. Constituents will have the opportunity to see if their member will vote to end U.S. funding for Israel, or continue it.
The funds targeted would come out of the National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs Appropriations Act (NSRP), the bill that funds the State Department, international development assistance, and global organizations.
Although the amendment is unlikely to pass, it will require members of Congress to decide if they want to be seen as advocating for a continuation of the U.S.-Israel relationship, or a new approach. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted, only 16% of Americans support unconditional aid to Israel.
US, Lebanon & Israel Sign Deal /Lt Col Daniel Davis
Iran rejects UN-backed plan to free ships trapped in strait of Hormuz
Iran has rejected UN-backed plans for the mass evacuation of ships through the strait of Hormuz, creating a new threat to the free passage of commercial ships through the strait. The proposal, backed by Oman, was potentially the first phase of a broader Omani proposal to consult on setting up a new management of the strait based on voluntary fees and modelled on the Malacca and Singapore strait mechanism.
The intervention showed that Oman and Iran’s visions for the strait may differ, although they were consulting each other to try to align their plans. Iran’s intervention also damaged efforts led by Saudi Arabia to convene a conference to normalise relations between the Gulf states and Iran in a new proposed non-aggression pact.
The strait has proved to be Iran’s key negotiating lever and it does not want to weaken that lever while bargaining is still under way on lifting US sanctions, asset relief and the future of its nuclear programme. The speaker of Iran’s parliament and its chief negotiator, Mohammad Ghalibaf, said the chokepoint would not return to the status it had prior to 28 February, the date of the first combined US-Israeli attack on Iran. “Everyone should know that the administration of the strait of Hormuz will never go back to the way it was before the war,” Ghalibaf said.
Lebanon, along with the strait, has emerged as a stumbling block for US-Iran talks, which are meant to lead to a permanent peace after 60 days of talks. Iran has demanded that Israeli troops withdraw from southern Lebanon, where they occupy more than 600 sq km of land. Israeli and Lebanese officials denied on Thursday that there had been any Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon, pushing back on a statement from a US official who said Israel had called back some troops in a gesture of goodwill towards the Lebanese government.
In recent weeks, Lebanon and Israel have been discussing a phased withdrawal of Israeli troops. The Lebanese army would take control of the vacated areas to prevent Hezbollah from re-entering them and also to destroy any facilities belonging to the armed group. An Israeli government spokesperson, David Mencer, said on Thursday that any “redeployment” of the Israeli military in southern Lebanon would come only after Hezbollah was disarmed. A day earlier, Israel’s defence minister had said Israel would not withdraw from Lebanon. Israel’s bombing of Lebanon has repeatedly proved an obstacle to US-Iran talks, with a flare-up in fighting last week prompting Iran to threaten the closure of the strait.
Larry Johnson & Pepe Escobar: Did Pakistan’s Tech disrupt Kill Chain in Iran?
Israeli forces arrest Palestinian ‘doctor of the poor’
Israeli forces on Sunday arrested a prominent 71-year-old Palestinian physician known as the “doctor of the poor” in a pre-dawn raid on his home in the occupied West Bank, prompting widespread condemnation. Dr Mazen Al-Rantisi, a physician widely known for providing care to low-income Palestinians, was arrested in the al-Tira neighbourhood of Ramallah.
He was later taken to the police station in the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, where he is believed to be under interrogation by the Special Investigations Unit. Israeli authorities have not said why he was detained or where he is currently being held. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the arrest is believed to be connected to Al-Rantisi’s position as chair of the Union of Health Work Committees, a Palestinian non-profit founded in 1985 that operates clinics serving thousands of patients each year, particularly in rural communities with limited access to healthcare.
The organisation was declared an “unlawful association” by the Israeli military in 2020 under emergency regulations dating back to the British Mandate for Palestine. Two years later, Israeli forces shut its headquarters in Al-Bireh. Despite those measures, the group remains legally registered with the Palestinian Authority’s interior ministry.
News of Al-Rantisi’s detention spread rapidly across the occupied West Bank, with an outpouring of support on social media. Former patients, activists and local leaders described him as a figure whose work reached far beyond the consulting room. Many recalled that he frequently waived consultation fees, supplied medicines to families unable to afford them and distributed donated prescriptions to vulnerable patients. For years, they said, his clinic served not only as a medical practice but also as a place of refuge for some of the poorest members of Palestinian society.
“The arrest of Dr Al-Rantisi is another alarming escalation in Israel’s crackdown on Palestinian civil society,” Naji Abbas, the director of the Prisoners and Detainees department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) told the Guardian. “By detaining a respected physician and the head of a leading Palestinian health organisation, the Israeli authorities are further blurring the line between legitimate security measures and the criminalisation of essential civil and humanitarian work.”
There'll Be Hormuz Tolls, Not Going Back the Way it Used to Be /Prof Seyed Marandi
Vance Says Iran Agreed To Establish a Direct Line Between the IRGC and the US Military
Vice President JD Vance has said that during talks in Switzerland, Iranian officials agreed to establish a direct line of communication between Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the US military.
Vance told Sohrab Ahmari, the US editor for UnHerd, that one of the things the US wanted to “come out” of the talks with was a “channel on the Iranian side” for reducing conflict.
“Which we did. They were like, ‘OK, fine, we’ll send somebody from the IRGC to go hang out in Doha with somebody from CENTCOM,’ and that’s how we’re going to settle a lot of these disputes,” the US vice president said during an interview conducted aboard Air Force Two on the flight home from Switzerland.
Flare-ups between the US and Iran remain possible, as the US hasn’t reduced its forces in the region and there appear to be differences between the two sides’ views on the situation in the Strait of Hormuz. A direct communication channel between the two militaries, if implemented, could help de-escalate tensions after any flare-up to prevent the region from plunging back into full-scale war.
INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern - Weekly Wrap 26-June
Civil rights groups squared off against the Trump administration in a New York federal court on Wednesday, with the former seeking to compel the release of a secret Department of Justice memo being used to justify illegal bombings of alleged narco-trafficking boats and the latter claiming executive privilege in a bid to avert the document’s disclosure.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and then reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force against them. Last July, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued a classified opinion providing the legal rationale for the strikes, which international law experts around the world contend are illegal acts of murder and possibly war crimes or even crimes against humanity.
The ACLU, New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) argued in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York that the Trump administration cannot conceal its legal justification for boat strikes from the American people while repeatedly referring to it.
“People across the country, politicians across the aisle, and the families of victims have been demanding answers as to how our government is justifying the cold-blooded murder of civilians,” ACLU National Security Project staff attorney Jeffrey Stein said in a statement. “The Trump administration has murdered over 210 civilians with no sound legal or moral basis. At a minimum, the administration must disclose to the American people why it thinks this killing spree is lawful.”
The DOJ, which is seeking a summary judgment, claimed that the memo contains classified and highly sensitive information that, if disclosed, would compromise intelligence operations and sources. DOJ attorneys argued that executive privilege shields the memo from disclosure.
“Wouldn’t that be true of any OLC memo?f” US District Judge Paul Engelmayer countered, according to Courthouse News Service. “Is it the government’s position that any presidential communications privilege cannot be waived?”
Stein asserted that the boat strikes are being carried out “on the basis of secret law” that “has no place in a democratic society” and dismissed the government’s claim as “contrary to the foundational presidential communications privileges” in Freedom of Information Act cases.
CCR legal director Baher Azmy accused the Trump administration of “displacing the fundamental mandates of international law with the phony wartime rhetoric of a basic autocrat.”
“If the OLC opinion seeks to dress up the obvious illegality of these serial homicides in legalese in order to provide cover, the public needs to see this analysis and ultimately hold accountable all those who facilitate murder in the United States’ name,” he added.
CCR said that the OLC memo “supposedly validates the ongoing strikes as lawful acts in an alleged ‘armed conflict’ with unspecified ‘drug cartels.’”
“Reportedly, the memo also purports to immunize personnel who authorized or took part in these unlawful strikes from future criminal prosecution for what would otherwise simply be homicides,” the group added.
As CCR said Wednesday:
Contrary to the government’s public assertions, the US is not, and could not be, in an armed conflict with Latin American drug cartels. Under international law, an armed conflict between a state and a nonstate actor exists only if the nonstate actor is an “organized armed group” that is structured and disciplined like regular armed forces and is engaged in “protracted armed violence” against the state. There is no plausible argument that any drug cartel satisfies this test vis-à-vis the United States.
Even if the OLC does release the memo, it doesn’t mean that its arguments are actually legal under international law. OLC lawyers have notoriously written opinions that affirm the purported legality of their administration’s policies, from John Yoo positing during former President George W. Bush’s War on Terror that detainee abuse only crossed the threshold of torture when the pain inflicted upon the victim was equal to “organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death,” to the Obama-era OLC determining that the president could order the extrajudicial assassination of US citizens under certain circumstances.
Since last September, US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has publicly disclosed 66 strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean that it has claimed—without providing evidence—were involved in “narco-trafficking operations.” The bombings have killed 215 people and left around a dozen survivors, according to a strike tracker published by The Intercept. In the first of the attacks, a special operations commander ordered a second strike that killed two survivors, reportedly on orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “kill everybody.”
Relatives of people killed in previous US boat bombings, as well as officials in Venezuela and Colombia, have said that numerous victims were fishers who were not involved in the illicit drug trade. In January, relatives of two Trinidadian fishers killed in the strikes filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit in Massachusetts.
NYCLU staff attorney Ify Chikezie said Wednesday that “the public deserves to know how the Trump administration is rubber-stamping the killing of civilians.”
“By claiming that these attacks are legal while refusing to provide any evidence or rationale, President Trump shows once again his disdain for basic transparency, human rights, and the rule of law,” Chikezie added. “The court must step in and order the administration to release these documents immediately.”
Zelensky Again Threatens Belarus; Kharkov Crumbles Threat To Kiev Grows; Lavrov Rubio Bury Anchorage
Some excerpts from an interesting read:
Should European members of Nato be rearming in the face of the Russian threat? And if not, I ask Carlo Rovelli, why not? The Italian theoretical physicist seems a good person to answer these questions since his timely new book, 85 Seconds to Midnight, is subtitled A Physicist’s Argument against Rearmament. Rovelli, 70, brown eyed, genial, with enviably luxuriant grey locks, removes his glasses before answering. “The idea of the Russian military being a threat to Europe is ridiculous. Russia can’t even get to Kyiv! A few years ago, Russia had 4% of the world’s military spending and Nato had 40%.”
At the same time, though, Russia has more than 4,000 nuclear warheads, making it the planet’s biggest stockpiler. “So we cannot take Russia down,” says Rovelli, “because it would react.” Of the three nuclear superpowers – Russia, US and China – only China has resolved not to be a first-use nuclear state. Russia, like the US, reserves the right to respond to conventional attacks with nuclear strikes.
The real problem, Rovelli suggests, is mutual fear. “We are trapped in a lack of reciprocal trust. We sleepwalk through these patterns of everybody becoming more armed, more aggressive.” He cites what happened a few weeks ago in St Petersburg. “With Nato weapons, Ukrainians bombed St Petersburg and they tried to bomb Moscow. So a country with nuclear weapons is being ‘bombed’ by the British. Not the British pushing the button, but the bombs come from Britain, as well as from Germany and France, with less from the US.” Why was this so frightening for Rovelli? “It’s the first time a [superpower] with nuclear weapons has been actually bombed. There was a situation in which if you have nuclear weapons, you don’t get invaded. You don’t get bombed. No more.”
Rovelli believes this Russian aggression has caused a whirlwind of fears and clamours for rearmament in western Europe. “You have the French government saying French people should be ready again to sacrifice their children; the British government saying we should be ready for war because it might happen; the German government saying all this anti-war sentiment in schools is not good and we should change education, make war more acceptable. This is motivated by the idea that Russia is invading Europe. It’s nonsense.” But isn’t it sometimes right to be fearful? Indeed, isn’t the lesson of the second world war that western European countries should have rearmed sooner to counter a demagogue bent on expansion? “I think everybody should read Mein Kampf,” he replies, referring to Adolf Hitler’s 1925 autobiography and manifesto. “Mein Kampf does not say, ‘We are German, we are the strongest, we are going to run the world, we are great, we are white, we are Aryans, whatever.’ It says, ‘We are weak. And the only way we have to survive is to become stronger and overcome the others.’ So what fuelled the violence of nazism was fear.”
The title of Rovelli’s book comes from the 2026 edition of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that set the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest we’ve ever been to nuclear catastrophe. For Rovelli, the stupidity of our leaders has increased that risk. He thinks that everybody – from Trump, Putin and Netanyahu to the leaders of Nato and Iran – lacks the good sense shown by Khrushchev, Kennedy, Gorbachev and Reagan each of whom, he believes, helped pull humanity back from Armageddon. As we finish, Rovelli asks me: “What politician has the courage to say, ‘Rather than making my own country stronger, I want to make humankind better’?’” Perhaps it’s not just my shortcomings but the nature of humanity’s plight in 2026 that no one comes to mind.
Anya Parampil : Death in Venezuela; Trickery in Colombia
California billionaire tax will appear on ballot after deadline for deal passes
California voters will get to decide in November whether billionaires should pay a one-time 5% tax, after a deadline passed on Thursday for its backers to withdraw the measure. The so-called billionaire tax is among the highest-profile ballot efforts in the US this year taking aim at rising wealth disparities, and is set to be one of the state’s most contentious ballot initiatives. It has already spurred tech moguls to pour millions of dollars into attempts to stop the proposal.
State officials announced last week that the California Billionaire Tax Act had reached enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, but the elections process allowed the coalition backing the tax until 5pm on Thursday to decide whether to move forward with it.
Negotiations this week between the unions behind the effort and Governor Gavin Newsom failed to reach a deal by the cutoff, with California’s secretary of state subsequently confirming the tax proposal would go to voters. To get on the November ballot, backers of a measure must first gain a certain threshold of signatures from California residents in support of the initiative.
The ballot proposal was put forward by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), which has argued it would fund the state’s healthcare, education and food assistance programs. Newsom and billionaire-backed groups opposing the tax allege that it would drive business out of California and harm the economy.
The billionaire tax has grown in prominence throughout the year as proponents gained over 1.55m signatures by April alone, more than double the requirement for getting on the ballot – something organizers say is testament to its popularity.
Supreme court strikes down restrictive Hawaii gun law in major second amendment decision
The US supreme court struck down a restrictive gun law in the state of Hawaii that bans people from carrying guns in certain public spaces and on private property without the permission of the property’s owner. The decision was made in a 6-3 vote, with Justice Samuel Alito offering the majority opinion – backed by the other members of the court’s rightwing supermajority – and Ketanji Brown Jackson writing the dissent.
The closely watched case considered the Hawaii law’s compliance with the second amendment of the US constitution, which established the right of individuals to bear arms. “This regime hobbles what the second amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives,” wrote Alito. “We hold that the law is unconstitutional.”
At issue was a 2023 state law that barred carrying a firearm on private property without the owner’s approval and created a list of more than a dozen “sensitive places” where guns cannot be carried, such as beaches and restaurants that serve alcohol.
The decision leaves state laws that block guns at some sensitive places like churches or government buildings intact. Other places like a shopping mall or grocery store must post a notice barring visitors from carrying firearms.
Supreme court conservatives accused of advancing ‘white-supremacist agenda’
Lawmakers and immigration advocacy groups on Thursday sharply denounced two US supreme court rulings that allowed the Trump administration to strip certain immigration protections and fundamentally reshape the asylum system. Dozens of groups, advocates and members of Congress called the court’s decisions “disastrous” and “cruel”, while the Trump administration, Republican lawmakers and anti-immigrant groups celebrated the rulings.
“Today, Trump’s loyalists in the supreme court have joined forces with him to deny immigrants’ internationally recognized human rights and advance an authoritarian, white-supremacist agenda at home,” said the Illinois congresswoman Delia Ramirez, a Democrat. “The supreme court’s decisions put more than 350,000 TPS holders at risk of deportation and countless more asylum seekers’ lives in danger.”
One of Thursday’s rulings from the supreme court stripped away temporary protected status (TPS) from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians, who were living and working legally in the US and were protected from deportation. The TPS policy allows immigrants from specific countries to live and work in the US without the threat of deportation, due to violent or unstable conditions in their countries.
Despite the state department currently warning against traveling to Haiti or Syria, citing violence, Haitians and Syrians in the US on TPS are now vulnerable to deportation, even if they have applications for other forms of immigration status in progress. “Simply put, the supreme court’s ruling will directly result in thousands of innocent people dying violent, needless deaths,” said attorneys Geoff Pipoly and Andy Tauber in a statement, who represented Haitians before the supreme court in the TPS case. “This decision will endanger Haitian TPS holders who fled their homeland in pursuit of what generations of immigrants yearned for when they made the painful decision to leave all they have known: to live in safety.”
In a 6-3 decision, where the conservative majority on the nine-judge bench prevailed, the supreme court ruled that US government officials can turn back asylum seekers at the southern border – allowing officials to physically and indefinitely block people from requesting asylum in the US. The court ruled that US border officials do not have to accept any asylum claims from migrants who have not actually reached US soil.
ICE Agents Push Poll Worker to Delete Post Calling for Charges Against Renee Good Killer
A poll worker in Syracuse, New York said she was left unsettled after a pair of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up at her polling place to tell her to delete Instagram content calling for the indictment of the agent who shot Renee Good in January.
The worker, Paigelynne Gonyea, was in the middle of her shift during Tuesday’s elections in New York when she received a phone message from someone who identified himself as Dave Brody, a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security.
He said agents “were just by” her apartment and had spoken to her husband about a post in which she “doxxed an ICE agent back in January.”
Gonyea said the agents were referring to a post she made on January 8, 2026, the day after an ICE agent shot and killed Good, a 37-year-old mother and US citizen, in Minneapolis. The post contained an image of the masked agent, who had at that point been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune.
“The ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in broad daylight has been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune,” the post read. “I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted!”
Gonyea said she could not leave her job working the polls to speak with the agents, so she told them to come to her polling place. “They knew I was a poll site worker and still came in,” she said.
Referencing what happened to Good, she said she refused to meet with the agents outside alone.
“I’ve seen the news, especially in Minnesota,” she said. “And I didn’t want anything to happen to me at all.”
Video of the encounter, shot by another employee, shows the two agents entering the polling site at Central Library on Salina Street.
The agents handed Gonyea a form letter that read, “YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW.”
The form, which Gonyea posted, said ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) had identified a post on Gonyea’s account that it believed “may constitute a violation” of federal law.
The notice informed her that “it is unlawful to threaten to assault, kidnap, and/or murder a federal official” and that “knowingly making restricted personal information about a covered person, or their immediate family member, publicly available with the intent to threaten, intimidate, or incite the commission of a crime” was also illegal. It said violating these laws could subject her to state and federal prosecution.
The letter directed her to “promptly remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior.” It warned her that receipt of the notice “will be taken into consideration, should you continue to be involved in any criminal activities described above.”
Gonyea told Syracuse.com that the agents presented her with copies of her social media posts and her driver’s license and that “they tried to scare me into signing” the document “while I was working.”
She refused to sign the notice despite continued pressure from the agents.
Gonyea was emphatic that her post—which only repeated publicly reported information—did not violate the law.
“I didn’t dox his personal information, such as address, phone number,” she said, adding that she would not remove the post.
Gonyea has discussed the case with the New York Board of Elections and the attorney general’s civil rights office, and she said she has contacted US Rep. John Mannion (D-NY), Syracuse Mayor Sharon Owens, and the New York Civil Liberties Union.
She has created a GoFundMe page to pay for potential legal expenses.
“For ICE to come to me over a social media post just feels very 1984 to me,” Gonyea said. “They definitely should have known better to not go into a polling place, even if I said it was OK.”
In a post on her GoFundMe page, Gonyea described the incident as a “pretty unsettling run-in.”
“It’s the kind of situation that makes you stop and think about free speech and how far government authority can go. Honestly, it shook me, and I don’t think it’s something that should just be brushed off,” she said. “It just doesn’t sit right with me.”
Dustin Czarny, the election commissioner for Onondaga County, emphasized that federal law only allows specific people to enter polling places during elections—including poll workers, elections inspectors, voters eligible to vote at the site, and someone a voter brought to assist them in voting
Federal law specifies that it is unlawful for anyone in federal service to send “troops or armed men” to places where elections are held.
“There’s no role for law enforcement officials to be inside a polling place unless they are responding to an emergency of some kind,” Czarny said. “There is no indication of that here.”
Despite this, Trump administration officials have indicated a desire to send ICE agents to polling places on election day during the 2026 midterms.
Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in February that her department had been “proactive to make sure we have the right people voting” in elections. In March, then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche asked at a conservative political conference, “Why is there objection to sending ICE officers to polling places?” adding, “Illegals can’t vote. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Trump refused to rule out the possibility when asked about it by reporters in May, saying he’d “do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections.”
ICE agents entered a polling place to intimidate a worker about her social media posts. Wouldn't you quit before you carried out an order to do this? pic.twitter.com/1gUT8uwum5
— David J. Bier (@David_J_Bier) June 25, 2026
Critics of ICE have described agents’ demands for Gonyea to remove political speech as a worrying new frontier for the agency’s encroachments on civil liberties.
“ICE agents entered a polling place to intimidate a worker about her social media posts,” said David J. Bier, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute. “Wouldn’t you quit before you carried out an order to do this?”
“Americans refuse to be intimidated by these government criminals who hate the Constitution,” he added. “Normal people want accountability, not impunity for killing Americans unnecessarily.”
“But it’s not enough for ICE to disagree; they need to stamp out dissent,” he said. “I know they monitor my social media. You should know that they’re monitoring yours too.”
Liberal Leaders CRASH OUT Over Mamdani's Clean Sweep
US supreme court blocks thousands of lawsuits over Roundup maker’s pesticide warning labels
The US supreme court has found in favor of the former Monsanto company in a ruling that is expected to block thousands of lawsuits filed by people alleging the key ingredient in the weed killer Roundup causes cancer. The decision was made in a 7-2 vote, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh offering the majority opinion and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writing the dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
The case, Monsanto v Durnell, specifically dealt with the question of whether a federal law that gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulatory authority over pesticides preempts state claims that a company failed to warn users of certain product risks when the EPA itself has not required such warnings. “Fifra expressly preempts Durnell’s state-law failure-to-warn claim,” reads the opinion written by Justice Kavanaugh, pointing to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (Fifra).
In her dissenting opinion, Justice Jackson said: “Fifra expressly limits States’ authority to regulate pesticide labels, but it does not eliminate that authority,” adding: “Fifra’s preemption clause does not block state-law claims where the violation of state law is also a violation of Fifra.”
“In accepting Monsanto’s argument and holding that Durnell’s failure-to-warn claim is preempted, the Court misunderstands Fifra’s requirements, misinterprets the scope of Fifra’s preemption, and ultimately leaves Durnell without a remedy for the significant harms he has suffered,” she wrote.
The case at the heart of the decision deals with Monsanto’s glyphosate – a weed-killing chemical used in the popular Roundup brand and numerous other herbicide products sold by the former Monsanto company, which is now owned by Germany’s Bayer. The chemical has been scientifically linked to cancer in multiple studies, and was classified a probable human carcinogen by an arm of the World Health Organization in 2015. Bayer has spent the last decade fighting more than 100,000 lawsuits filed by people who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma they blamed on exposure to the glyphosate weedkillers, and the company has paid out billions of dollars in jury awards and settlements. All of the cases include allegations that the company failed to warn that glyphosate could cause cancer.
City of Paris achieves partial victory over TotalEnergies in climate risks case
A Paris court has ruled that the French oil company TotalEnergies must disclose the climate risks linked to emissions from its oil and gas products and set out plans to address them in a high-stakes case brought by NGOs and the city of Paris. The ruling on Thursday is a partial victory for climate change NGOs seeking to apply France’s 2017 corporate duty of vigilance law to the climate crisis. However, the court stopped short of ordering specific measures such as limiting overseas exploration and production or setting binding emissions reduction targets.
The case is the latest in a growing wave of climate litigation targeting big corporate emitters. The NGOs and TotalEnergies battled at the Paris judicial court over whether environmental risks fall within France’s corporate duty of vigilance law, which was enacted in 2017.
The court said: “Climate-related risks and impacts to which the company may contribute through its activities fall within the scope of the law on the duty of vigilance for parent companies and ordering companies.” The city of Paris hailed the ruling as “a landmark decision in the history of French climate law”. The deputy mayor, Alice Timsit, said: “For the first time, a judge recognises that climate risks do indeed fall under the duty of vigilance owed by large corporations, and no fossil-fuel multinational can evade this responsibility. The city joined this lawsuit because we are experiencing first-hand the impact of climate change on a densely populated, urban metropolis,” Timsit said as France and other European countries bake under a record-breaking heatwave.
TotalEnergies has said it was the victim of “demonisation” by the claimants. Its lawyers argued that climate change would continue even if the company, which accounts for less than 2% of global production, shut its operations.
Rescue teams race to Venezuela amid fears thousands killed in earthquakes
Rescue teams are racing to Venezuela’s shattered northern coast after almost simultaneous earthquakes reduced dozens of buildings to rubble, killing at least 235 people but with thousands more fatalities feared.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said the defence department would help search and rescue teams deploy to the affected region after Venezuela’s main gateway, the Simón Bolívar international airport, near the capital, Caracas, was badly damaged by 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes less than 40 seconds apart, late on Wednesday afternoon.
He said the most immediate need was search and rescue. “They have [lots of] collapsed buildings and so they will need a lot of help in terms of digging through that,” Rubio told reporters, adding that the next 72 “golden” hours were critical.
The coastal area near the international airport, around the cities of La Guaira, Catia La Mar and Caraballeda, appears to have sustained by far the worst damage, with a string of large tower blocks levelled and people desperately hunting for missing loved ones. In some cases families of four or five people have disappeared.
Caracas also sustained severe damage, with several buildings collapsing in the Altamira and Los Palos Grandes neighbourhoods. On Thursday evening the official death toll was raised to 235, with an earlier count putting the number of people missing at 157. The quakes were so strong that they were felt in the Brazilian city of Manaus, in the Amazon, more than 1,000 miles to the south of Caracas, forcing people to flee their homes.
Also of Interest
Here are some articles of interest, some of which defied fair-use abstraction.
Drones and decomposing babies: What's in UN report on Israel's genocide of Palestinian children
Lockheed Martin Gets $35 Billion THAAD Contract as Arms Makers Cash in on Iran War
Italy Tells Iran It Didn’t Support US War, Rejecting Claims from NATO Chief
MPs Want Probe of Illegal UK Arms Shipments to Israel
ICC Judges Sue Trump Over Sanctions
Can Europe Win A War With Russia?
Reflecting pool was cut with ‘sharp knife or razor’, National Park Service says
A Little Night Music
Hound Dog Taylor And The HouseRockers – See Me In The Evening
Hound Dog Taylor – Sitting At Home Alone
Hound Dog Taylor – The Sky Is Crying
Hound Dog Taylor & The House Rockers – Kitchen Sink Boogie
Hound Dog Taylor – Wild About You Baby
Hound Dog Taylor & The House Rockers – It's Allright
Hound Dog Taylor And The HouseRockers – Sadie
Hound Dog Taylor & The House Rockers – The Sun Is Shining
Hound Dog Taylor – Sen-Sa-Shun
Comments
It looks like Trump and Hegseth couldn't wait until the
4th of July to start the fireworks!
The rest of the tweet:
evening humphrey...
i guess trump needs another bloody nose or two before he capitulates.
The Lebanese President chosen by the US and Israel had his
representative sellout Lebanon.
yep...
when i heard the details this afternoon, i figured that the ultimate end of these negotiations for israel and the u.s. is to spark a civil war in lebanon. i guess they might get their wish.
My favorite subject
Katie uses the story as a model for the US. I admit there is something to be said for South Korean resistance to a military coup by Yoon, but this isn't over in South Korea. And the US is still creating instability there. As far as I know, there are still right wing extremists marching around Seoul and outside a vote counting station at the Olympic Park. They are Yoon supporters inspired by the Morse Tan fairytale about Chinese interference in South Korea's recent June 3 elections. They carry US flags along with the Taeguki, Yoon Again signs, Donald Trump photos, "stop the steal" and other US inspired nonsense.
The Yoon coup attempt failed because legislative members, staff and party membership, and activists, were told by democratic party leaders to get over to the legislature in the middle of the night, to stop the military from blocking access to and shutting down the legislative building in the capital.
The impeachment worked because the democratic opposition held a majority in the legislature, and the fact that the Constitutional Court had exclusive jurisdiction over the final impeachment decision.
On the other hand, Yoon's convictions may not get past the Supreme Court which is the top judicial authority, because it is dominated by a Supreme Court Justice who is an arch conservative, and a large conservative majority on the court. There are still demagogues calling for "Yoon Again," and another attack on the constitutional order. Pastor Jeon Gwang-hun, out on bail "because he's ill" is doing this. He brags about his connection to Paula White, Trump's "spiritual advisor." Jeon is currently charged with inciting the violent attack on the Western District Courthouse after they determined that Yoon remain in pretrial confinement while awaiting prosecution at trial.
Edge of Armageddon. Here's a Rashid report about North Korea's nuclear strategy.
Thanks for the EBs Joe!
己所不欲，勿施于人。
evening soryang...
thanks for the update on things in south korea. heh, why does kim jong un need so many nukes? because the forces arrayed against him are evil and they want his territory to launch a war with china.
Right JS
It's pretty simple really. Rashid's title is really a bit of a click bait.
One other dimension I think people don't get when they talk about economic growth of all things in North Korea, is that their conventional military forces as defined in western terms are largely obsolete. I wonder how many planes they could actually maintain in flying status. Same for the ground armor. They're all antiques but for the rocket and missile launchers. His nuclear forces are meant to compensate for this without creating an immense military infrastructure that takes down their whole economy, such as it is. The nuclear deterrent Kim believes allows him to do this.
No salami slicing and "red lines" game. Any decapitation attack aimed at North Korea and you get nuked preemptively. That's their policy.
己所不欲，勿施于人。
Good evening Joe, thanks for the EBs. It looks like
we've made it to another Friday and Iran, while simmering, in, at this moment, only simmering. The Rus may or may not be getting reacy to launch all hell on elenskytown, but that seems to just be a certain fate at an uncertain dte, so whatever.
have a great weekend
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
evening el...
yep, we've made it through another week without the bottom falling out or the top blowing off. woohoo!
have a great weekend!
Jimmy Dore
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981