BREAKING: The creator of the ICEBlock app — which tracks ICE agents in real time — dares Donald Trump to arrest him.

“Come after me. Demonize me all you want. I’m not backing down.”

🔥 The challenge has been thrown.

NOTHING will happen because no grand jury would ever indict him for using his first amendment rights.

A newlywed bride from Texas who was released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody on Thursday has said she was treated like "cattle" during her detention.

Ward Sakeik, a 22-year-old stateless Palestinian woman married to a U.S. citizen, spoke publicly for the first time since she was detained at a Miami airport in February upon returning from a honeymoon and held in ICE custody for 140 days.

Following her return from the U.S. Virgin Islands with husband Taahir Shaikh, "I was put in a gray tracksuit and shackles immediately," Sakeik told a press conference held in Dallas-Fort Worth.

"I was handcuffed for 16 hours without any water or food on the bus. I was moved around like cattle," she added.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to break from a leader who governs with cruelty, contempt, and corruption, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created equal, endowed with inherent dignity and unalienable rights—among these are life, liberty, equality, and the pursuit of justice.
That to secure these rights, governments derive their power from the consent of the governed. When a leader becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right and duty of the people to refuse allegiance and to stand united in the defense of their freedoms.

The current holder of high office has shown himself to be unfit to lead a free and just society.

* He disrespects women, mocking survivors of violence and stripping away their rights.

* He fuels racism and white supremacy, scapegoating communities of color and denying their equality.

* He assaults free speech, attacking the press, punishing dissent, and spreading disinformation.

* He exploits public office for private gain, enriching himself and the billionaire class while abandoning the poor and working people.

* He undermines justice, ignores the rule of law, and places himself above accountability.

* He disregards science, endangering lives in times of crisis and sacrificing the planet for profit.

* He fans division and incites violence to maintain power, wielding fear as a weapon against the people.

Time and again, we have protested peacefully, spoken truthfully, and appealed to our shared humanity. We have been met with indifference, hostility, and violence. A leader who governs through hatred and greed is unfit to govern at all.

Therefore, we, the people of conscience and conviction, do solemnly declare our independence from this tyrant and all he represents.

We withdraw our consent.

We refuse to be complicit in cruelty.

We reject the abuse of power for personal gain.

We stand for dignity, truth, equality, and justice for all people.

With firm reliance on each other and unwavering hope in our collective strength,

We pledge to resist oppression in all its forms,

To uphold the rights of the vulnerable,

And to build a future grounded in compassion, courage, and shared humanity.

Let this declaration be both a breaking and a beginning.

But after Murkowski cast the deciding vote, she did something unexpected. In fact, she took two unexpected steps.

First, the Alaskan trashed the reconciliation package shortly after voting for it, which was every bit as odd as it sounds. “Do I like this bill? No,” she told NBC News. The senator added, by way of social media: “[L]et’s not kid ourselves. ... While we have worked to improve the present bill for Alaska, it is not good enough for the rest of our nation — and we all know it.”

Second, Murkowski effectively asked the Republican-led House not to pass the bill she had just voted for. “My sincere hope is that this is not the final product,” she wrote online. “This bill needs more work across chambers and is not ready for the president’s desk. We need to work together to get this right.”

That came on the heels of related comments the GOP senator made to reporters on Capitol Hill. “We do not have a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination. My hope is that the House is going to look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet.”

Not only did House Republican leaders ignore Murkowski’s appeals, they never even considered the possibility. Politico reported:

House GOP holdouts who wanted a last-minute rewrite of President Donald Trump’s megabill never had a chance, Majority Leader Steve Scalise said in an interview Thursday. ‘For a long time, there were members that really thought there was a chance the bill was going to get opened up again to amendment,’ the Louisiana Republican said as the House neared a final vote on the bill. ‘It became clear from the president’s meeting at the White House to further conversations later that, for all the back and forth, you know, the bill’s closed, there’s going to be no more amendments to the bill.’

And that, of course, makes Murkowski’s decision look even worse.....

Too many GOP lawmakers somehow convinced themselves that the party’s megabill had real merit and would deliver great results. Murkowski, however, knew better — and she chose to advance it anyway. History will not be kind.

documenting specific elements of the Senate-backed legislation that the caucus found offensive. Politico reported soon after:

Rep. Andy Harris, chair of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, said he was opposed to the Senate-passed version of the GOP megabill and called on Trump to order senators back to town for further negotiations. ... Harris told reporters he did not expect the votes on the rule to succeed until it’s brought back closer to the House version.

The Freedom Caucus chair added, “There’s a little work left to be done, but if the president calls the Senate back in town, we should be able to do it.”...

But as striking as it was to see the Freedom Caucus fall in line, just as important was the familiarity of the circumstances.

In January, House Freedom Caucus members said they were prepared to derail Johnson’s bid for a second term with the gavel, and then they caved.

In March, House Freedom Caucus members said they were opposed to a stopgap spending measure (known as a continuing resolution, or CR) needed to prevent a shutdown, and then they caved.

In April, House Freedom Caucus members slammed their party’s budget resolution, and then caved.

In May, House Freedom Caucus members railed against their party’s reconciliation package, and then they caved.

And in July, House Freedom Caucus members condemned the Senate’s version of the GOP megabill, and then caved.
As a recent Washington Post analysis summarized:

Each threat from leaders of the House Freedom Caucus ended with the same result: capitulation. After caving on each round of threats, these far-right conservatives vowed that the next time would be different — if their demands were not met precisely as they sought. This collection of several dozen Republicans, after a decade of rabble-rousing that helped push aside three other speakers, has yet to fully buck Johnson ... on any major initiative this year.

That was published in early April. Three months later, it’s still accurate.....

That, however, was before Trump became president and started telling them to roll over. In 2025, the attack dogs have become obedient lapdogs, whose barks are worse than their bites.

Former President Joe Biden criticized the passage of President Trump's spending bill on X.

"The Republican budget bill is not only reckless -- it's cruel. It slashes Medicaid and takes away health care from millions of Americans. It closes rural hospitals and cuts food assistance for our veterans and seniors," Biden wrote. "It jacks up energy bills. And it could trigger deep cuts to Medicare while driving up the deficit by $4 trillion. All of this to give a massive tax break to billionaires. Working people deserve better."

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to take up the hot-button issue of whether transgender girls and women are allowed to participate in sports on girls’ and women’s teams.

The court’s decision to consider the matter sets up the possibility of two big rulings against transgender people two terms in a row, following last month’s 6-3 ruling in the Skrmetti case, in which the Republican-appointed supermajority upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. It takes four justices to grant review of an appeal.

Like the Skrmetti case, the court’s forthcoming decision in the sports-related appeals has national implications. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, 27 states have banned transgender youth from playing school sports since 2020.

“Many of these bans allow for invasive forms of sex testing that put all female student athletes at risk and open the door for any school official or adult to question and harass young women,” the ACLU said.....

With the high court’s decision to take the appeal, it’s now one of several on the court’s docket so far next term backed by ADF. The justices add appeals to the docket on a rolling basis and typically hear arguments in two-week sessions from October through April.

Opposing review in a brief last year, ACLU lawyers, who also represented the transgender side in the Skrmetti case, urged the justices to at least wait to decide what to do with this sports case until Skrmetti was decided.

“To the extent that there are unresolved issues in the context of athletics following Skrmetti, there will be plenty of future vehicles for this Court to resolve those issues on a complete record and with further development of the issues in the lower courts,” they wrote to the justices, who nonetheless chose this case as a vehicle.

In the West Virginia case, state officials said the appeals court “took on an exceptionally important issue — and got most every step exceptionally wrong.” They asked the justices to “grant review to ensure that women’s sports are preserved and protected.” Opposing review in a brief last year, ACLU lawyers similarly referenced the then-pending Skrmetti case. And like in the Idaho case, they raised procedural reasons not to take the West Virginia case, but the justices nonetheless took this one up as well.