Given the stunning level of illegality and disregard for civil rights the Trump regime has deployed in its fascist war on student protestors who oppose a US-backed genocide in Gaza, would it surprise you at all to learn that the Department of Homeland Security probably lied their asses off to get the warrant they used to search two student dorm rooms for activists they'd targeted for illegal deportations?

https://theintercept.com/2025/03/28/ice-warrants-columbia-students-gaza-protests/

Ice Got Warrants Under “False Pretenses,” Claims Columbia Student Targeted Over Gaza Protests

"Earlier this month, while hunting for Columbia University students to deport over their ties to Gaza protests, the Trump administration convinced a federal judge to sign off on search warrants for two students’ dorm rooms — then raided the residences with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

As details about the warrants have emerged, however, so have allegations that federal agents misled the court and secured the warrants under “false pretenses,” as one of the students whose room was searched, Yunseo Chung, claimed in a lawsuit challenging her deportation.

The warrants were predicated on probable cause that Columbia was “harboring” students who were in the country illegally, court filings indicate. Chung, however, is a lawful permanent resident, notwithstanding the Trump administration’s efforts to deport her based on her arrest and citation at a Gaza sit-in. She has lived in the U.S. since she was 7 years old.

“The idea that they went before a federal magistrate judge and said, ‘We have to search Ms. Chung’s residence for evidence of Columbia harboring her’ — that shows they’re willing to lie to a judge,” said Nathan Yaffe, an immigration attorney."

This story isn't particularly complicated; DHS told a judge they needed search warrants because Colombia was "harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus" specifically to find two students it knew had legal status to be in the country. Of course Trump's warpig lapdog Marco Rubio is arguing that the student(s) were "illegal" because he unilaterally revoked their student visas/green cards, but actually he can't legally do that and since the government hasn't brought the matter before an immigration judge, the targets of the warrant were straight up ineligible for the crime the warrant was seeking to find evidence for or suspects for an arrest.

Speaking of cowardice, complicity, and paving the road for fascism, let us not forget that the Trump regime's enabling of an ongoing genocide by Israel in Gaza, their fascist kidnapping spree against student protestors, and their quest to control American universities under the guise of "fighting antisemitism" are built on the back of policies, and in particular ideological justifications, provided by a Democratic Party that picked supporting genocide, hunting down migrants, and building out a police state over winning "the most important election in American history."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/26/universities-columbia-trump

Don’t just blame Trump – Democrats paved the way for this campus crackdown

"For instance, the reason Trump could plausibly refer to Gaza a “demolition site” is because, for more than a year prior to his re-election, his Democratic predecessor (urged on by Schumer and others) supplied unlimited weapons to Israel to carry out a campaign of destruction that has few modern equivalents – a campaign that was not just restricted to Gaza, but also extended to the West Bank, Iran, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria. Biden’s planned successor, Kamala Harris, and her surrogates repeatedly stressed to voters that these policies would continue largely unchanged under her watch.

Even before Trump had a chance to weigh in, Joe Biden immediately characterized the protests at Columbia as “antisemitic” and declared that “order must prevail” on college campuses. Democratic lawmakers put aggressive pressure on the former Columbia University president Minouche Shafik to crush the protests. She ultimately did so with the assistance of New York City’s Democratic mayor, Eric Adams (who justified his clampdown via evidence-free statements that the protests were driven primarily by “outside agitators”). Trump celebrated the pictures and videos of students getting roughed up by the NYPDand, upon Trump’s reclaiming the White House, the justice department interceded on behalf of Adams – making his criminal investigation go away in apparent exchange for the mayor adopting a more aggressive posture on immigration – a move that critics claim is a quid pro quo.

In a similar vein, it was Biden who enshrined the IHRA definition of antisemitism into federal guidance, despite the definition’s author repeatedly describing it as a “travesty” to use this definition to regulate speech and behavior. Building on Biden’s introduction, Trump is poised to sign a bill that would implement this same definition into federal anti-discrimination law – and in the meantime, he’s insisting Columbia and other schools adopt this definition in their own codes of conduct. NYU and Harvard have already taken this step, overriding concerns by civil rights and civil liberties organizations – from the ACLU, to Fire and the AAUP, to Israeli civil rights groups – who stressed that IHRA’s definition is extremely vague and provides strong leeway for institutional stakeholders to censor most critical discussion of Israel, Zionism or Judaism more broadly, by Jews and non-Jews alike."

Look, you can criticize me for playing "the blame game" all you like, but every goddamn thing Trump is doing surrounding the US-backed genocide in Gaza, including the domestic installation of fascist ideological policing, was and is facilitated by a Biden administration that was warned all of this - from Trump winning, to deploying War on Terror logic repression on anti-genocide protesters - was on the table if they didn't change course. If you want to know why only fourteen Democrats signed a letter decrying the fascist abduction of Mahmoud Khalil, and only thirty-four Democrat lawmakers signed the letter demanding the release of Rumeysa Ozturk (whose only "crime" appears to be have been writing an op-ed calling for her University to divest from Israel and condemn a genocide) you don't have to look any further than a mainstream Democratic Party leadership class that's fat on AIPAC donations and happily told you student protestors were violent antisemites who endorsed terrorist organizations, demanded colleges take action to suppress the protests, and justified a brutal police crackdown on... college kids who don't want their government to facilitate a genocide. It's kind of hard to criticize all that fascism when your donors love it and you directly made the arguments Trump is using to conduct it, after all.

@ai6yr "Up to 4 month’s worth of rain may fall in less than a week across part of the central United States, threatening major flooding and endangering lives and property." What a great time to gut #FEMA, eh? Geesh!

New Noem plan leaves FEMA on the chopping block

The Homeland Security secretary expressed support for eliminating long-term disaster recovery efforts under the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/26/noem-fema-restructure-eliminate-grants-00250610
#1000yearstorm #extremeflooding
#rainfall #flood #extremeweather #USPol #KristNoem #DHS

From OPB:

https://www.opb.org/article/2025/04/02/oregon-other-states-say-trump-freeze-fema-aid-violates-court-order/

The article cites $129m in funds held by #DHS and Secretary Noem, but it is really a lot higher because obligations are held up as well, not just the request for funds. The total is closer to $200m at this point...