The article doesn’t quite answer the headline’s question, so I will: Why are they prosecuting non-violent protesters? Because cops are cops, so local cops support ICE, and prosecutors are virtually always on the cops’ side. There is no-one in government who actually believes you have a right to peacefully protest, unless you luck into a judge who still has a soul.

Full text: The Trump administration scheduled a Friday flight to bring a deported college student back from Honduras after a judge ordered her return, but she declined to board the plane after U.S. authorities said they may detain and deport her again.

Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a freshman at Babson College in Massachusetts, had been deported to a country she left when she was 8, after being detained at Boston’s Logan International Airport while traveling to spend Thanksgiving with her family in Texas.

The 20-year-old was flown to Honduras on November 22 despite a Massachusetts judge’s order the prior day barring her from being deported or transferred out of the state for 72 hours. A government lawyer later apologized for what he called a “mistake.”

Boston-based U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns on February 13 ordered President Donald Trump’s administration to rectify the error it made during its immigration crackdown by Friday by facilitating her return.

Lopez Belloza told reporters she had been excited to learn on Thursday the administration had arranged for a flight to take her home.

“Hours later, that excitement turned into a nightmare,” Lopez Belloza said.

She said a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer misled her by repeatedly telling her on Thursday that if she boarded the plane, she would be released upon landing in the United States.

“I believed him for a second,” she said. “I pictured stepping off of the plane and finally being free.”

Yet in court filings on Thursday afternoon, the administration said it planned to move to deport her again once she arrived. It said it had the authority to detain her if she took the ICE flight from Honduras to Texas because she was already subject to a final order of removal, which was issued when she was 11.

“I won’t mince words,” Lopez Belloza said during a virtual press conference. “I am angry. I am sad.”

Todd Pomerleau, Lopez Belloza’s lawyer, accused the administration of “gamesmanship” and vowed to continue her legal fight.

“I’m not stopping until she’s back here, but she’s not coming back in handcuffs,” he said.

In a court filing later on Friday, the administration said Lopez Belloza failed to appear for a pre-arranged meeting to assist with her departure and did not board the scheduled flight after previously agreeing to come to an airport in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

A spokesperson for U.S. Attorney Leah Foley, whose office has been fighting Lopez Belloza’s legal challenge, in a statement said the ICE-arranged flight was intended to restore the “status quo.”

“The status quo that existed prior to her removal was that she was subject to a final order of removal and as the government argued throughout this case, ICE has statutory authority to detain an individual to effectuate such removal,” the spokesperson, Christina Sterling, said.

They’re lying. Same as Trump & the Republicans, ICE, CBP, DHS, and the entire immigration Gestapo are always lying.

Excerpt: Several high-ranking federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figures who worked to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election pressed the president to declare a national emergency to take over this year’s midterms.

According to videos, photos and social media posts reviewed by ProPublica, the meeting’s participants included Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer charged with re-investigating the 2020 election, and Heather Honey, the Department of Homeland Security official in charge of election integrity. The event was convened by Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and attended by Cleta Mitchell, who directs the Election Integrity Network, a group that has spread false claims about election fraud and noncitizen voting.

Election experts say that the meeting reflects an intensifying push to persuade Trump to take unprecedented actions to affect the vote in November. Courts have largely blocked his efforts to reshape elections through an executive order, and legislation has stalled in Congress that would mandate strict voter ID requirements across the country.

Full text: Scouting America, the organization formerly known as the Boy Scouts, will make several concessions to the Pentagon — including getting rid of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and limiting participation to those joining in their biological gender — to retain its longtime relationship with the U.S. military, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday.

In exchange, the group for now will be able to keep its name and girls will still be able to join. However, Hegseth said that Scouting America will remain under a Defense Department review.

“Ideally, I believe the Boy Scouts should go back to being the Boy Scouts, as originally founded, a group that develops boys into men. Maybe someday,” Hegseth said in a social media post announcing the agreement.
Hegseth had used the threat of pulling all military support from the group — including kicking Scout troops off military bases — to force it to make changes that better align with his personal views and those of the Trump administration.

The organization has long been an important recruiting pipeline for the military services and a means for military personnel serving overseas to find support for their children. In a statement, Scouting America said the arrangement it has reached with the Pentagon will strengthen those ties by “waiving registration fees for military families, launching a new merit badge focused on military service and veterans, and reinforcing our commitment to Scouting’s foundational ideas: leadership, character, duty to God, duty to country and service.”

Me again: It’s worth stressing that last bit, if you don’t already know: Boy Scouts has long funneled its members toward military enlistment, and received substantial federal funding to do so.

Scouting America says transgender kids are still welcome after Pete Hegseth claimed they weren’t

Nothing could possibly go wrong, though. I’m sure the USA will mop things up within a few days, same as we did in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The older I get, the more bullshit wars like this I’ve seen, the more predictable it all becomes, and the less I particularly give a damn about US casualties.

Ah, the silver lining to Trump’s war…

Foreign companies and investors can own ‘American’ companies, housing, real estate, etc, but immigrants can’t buy a car without “proof of legal status.”

Patel faces backlash after partying with Nancy Guthrie’s captors

I’m uncertain of the distinction — is this mass manslaughter, or mass murder?

These scientists have already been vetted for security, but now Trump’s pod people are simply saying foreign = scary. That’s about as deep as Republican thinking goes.

Excerpt: Under U.S. commodity trading laws, making trades based on death and war are illegal, since those kinds of bets create a financial reward for violence, human suffering and geopolitical instability.

Excerpt: Why isn’t every company in America doing this?

Great question! You should ask them.