October 4–October 10, 2025

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THIS WEEK IN…

STATE VIOLENCE

Immigration raids have been carried out daily across the country for months, with numerous incidents of ICE agents using excessive force against both citizens and non-citizens. What unfolded over the last week in Chicago, however, represented a significant escalation by the Trump administration as military-style operations spilled into residential neighborhoods. While images of heavily armed personnel detaining individuals and transporting them in unmarked vehicles have become distressingly routine, the deployment of armed troops, over the objections of state and local leaders, to intimidate and terrorize entire communities, and the militarized tactics being employed, mark a new and dark chapter in this administration’s war on the American public and American democracy.

An ICE raid conducted last week on an apartment complex in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago, a predominantly Black community, left a trail of destruction. According to eyewitnesses, agents in full tactical gear rappelled down from helicopters onto the roof of that apartment building, knocked down doors, dragged families out in the middle of the night and even zip-tied small children. Cindy Hernandez examined the incident and spoke with some of the residents and Daniel Knowles analyzes What a Chicago immigration raid says about Trumpism.

Historian Garrett Graff on how “ICE crosses another big, important line” with this raid on an entire apartment building.

Agents fired so much tear gas that even people who were not protesting got sick when they left their homes, reports Samantha Michaels: ICE Is Hounding Chicago Area Locals With Excessive Chemical Munitions.

Kelly Hayes examines how Trump is is normalizing attacks on blue cities in an effort to overpower hubs of democratic resistance: Trump Is Releasing the Full Force of Federal Police on Chicago.

ICE agent sprayed protester
A masked ICE agent sprayed David Black, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, directly in the face during protests outside the ICE processing facility in Broadview, Illinois. Photo by Ashlee Rezin of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Last Saturday, Border Patrol officials shot and wounded 30-year-old Chicago resident Marimar Martinez, who they claim rammed her car into a federal law-enforcement vehicle during a protest at Brighton Park. But as David Struett and Kade Heather report, Body-camera video appears to contradict the government’s claim: Attorney for woman shot by Border Patrol claims agent said, ‘Do something b—-‘ before shooting.

Federal agents violating individuals’ constitutional rights and using increasingly violent tactics have been on shocking display these past few days. Here are just a few examples:

…IN OTHER NEWS

The Trump administration has dismissed concerns about the environmental and economic impacts of climate change. Funding for climate research has been slashed, and terms like “sustainable,” “emissions,” and “green” have been scrubbed from official communication. The president even appears personally offended by the look of wind turbines. 

The administration’s environmental policies will have negative economic consequences.As The Guardian’s OLIVER MILMAN writes,  Trump’s hatred for renewables means the US is falling behind the rest of the world”.

An AP investigation by MATTHEW BROWN and MEAD GRUVER describes the administration’s push to open public lands to coal, oil, and gas drilling both outdated and uneconomic. Their article “Trump is reviving large sales of coal from public lands. Will anyone want it?” shows that the “fair market value of 167 million tons of federal coal next to the Spring Creek mine was just over $126,000. That is less than one-tenth of a penny per ton, a fraction of what coal brought in its heyday”.

Despite these rollbacks, Oregon and several other states are fast-tracking renewable energy projects before federal tax credits expire, countering what many see as regressive national energy policies. MONICA SAMAYOA reports that Oregon [is] to accelerate siting of renewable energy projects to beat Trump’s incentive deadline. Oregon governor Tina Kotek signed an executive order prioritizing the approval and construction of such projects before access to tax credits expires.

Oregon joins Colorado, Maine, and California in countering the administration’s regressive energy policies.

September 13–September 19, 2025

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THIS WEEK IN…

FREE SPEECH CRACKDOWN

The fallout of the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk is a coordinated campaign by administration officials and right-wing figures to vilify everyone perceived as liberal or left of center as a danger to the country.  

It has led to the doxxing, firing, or suspension of teachers, private sector workers, government workers, journalists and even famous late-night hosts. After years of complaints from the right about “cancel culture” from the left, conservatives, including many members of Congress, are now threatening and punishing those who have criticized Kirk’s rhetoric after his death. 

Brendan Carr, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, expressing his Trump loyalty by wearing a bust pin of the president. One of the authors of Project 2025, Carr criticized comments late night host Jimmy Kimmel made about the shooting of Charlie Kirk. As a consequence, ABC removed Kimmel’s show from its channels “indefinitely” (Photo X )

The administration’s use of a violent crime as a justification to suppress domestic political dissent, curtail free expression, and crack down on political opposition in an attempt to consolidate power not only raises serious concerns but violates the First Amendment.

Zack Beauchamp calls the campaign to police speech The third Red Scare. The right’s new assault on free speech isn’t cancel culture. It’s worse.

Em Luetkemeyer looks at a campaign to identify and punish those who mocked or spoke out against Kirk after his death 

Pen America on how Charlie Kirk’s Murder Spurs McCarthy-Esque Crackdown On Free Expression

“The First Amendment is really hard for everyone the first few times they encounter it. Everyone likes it on paper. Everyone struggles with it in practice. It’s much tougher when the speech you have to tolerate is something you really, really dislike,” says Adam Goldstein, a vice president at the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression in this article about Republican’s wavering support for free speech

David Graham shows the The Irony of Using Charlie Kirk’s Murder to Silence Debate. The conservative activist couldn’t have risen to prominence without robust free speech

Spencer Ackerman looks at how the Trump administration is using The War on Terror Template for the Post-Charlie Kirk Crackdown

David Roth on how private citizens and businesses are targeted in this campaign and how the “bombast and frantic bullying is doing real and unjust damage in actual people’s lives” in his article The United States of Snitches

In an attempt to blame “the left” for the assassination, Republicans have engaged in a campaign of lies to rewrite Kirk’s work and rhetoric as Aaron Regunberg writes in his piece The Right’s Scary Quick Campaign to Exploit Charlie Kirk’s Death. Republicans are organizing around the idea that fiction is reality—and too many liberals are playing along.

And Ta-Nehesi Coates on how pundits and politicians are whitewashing Charlie Kirks’s record: Charlie Kirk, Redeemed: A Political Class Finds Its Lost Cause

The wholesale defamation of everything and everyone liberally inclined or left of center as the source of violence, the attacks on conservative politicians, and the murder of Charlie Kirk, does not reflect reality.  A study by the National Institute of Justice found that “white supremacist and far-right violence ‘ continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism’ in the United States.”  The study’s finding were featured on the website of the Department of Justice until recently, and has since been deleted, Emanuel Maiberg writes in 404media.  

…In Other News

In addition to trying to sanitize Charlie Kirk’s legacy, the Trump administration is attempting to rewrite history and ignoring ugly chapters of American history. According to the Washington Post, the National Park Service had been ordered to stop using the photo of a formerly enslaved man whose back is heavily scarred by whippings in its displays. The 1863 photo of a man named Peter, known as the “Scourged Back” image, has long been used to show the horrors of slavery. 


An 1863 photograph entitled “Scourged Back,” depicts an enslaved man named Peter with prominent whip scars.
    McPherson and Oliver circa 1863
“Unbound” by artist Harmonia Rosales in front of King’s Chapel

In contrast, the congregation of King’s Chapel, a historic site on the Freedom Trail, which is a walking tour through downtown Boston leading to more than a dozen sites of significance to the American revolution and later historic events, decided to confront the church’s history.  Visitors to the site will now see an over 4 meter tall statue of a black woman in a white dress, releasing birds from a cage.  The statue “Unbound” is to honor the 219 people who were enslaved by the church’s forebears.