United States | News & Politics

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31803359

Brett Wilkins Jun 16, 2025

Flight-tracking websites showed dozens of Air Force aerial refueling planes departing from military bases in the United States and heading to Europe on Sunday, fueling speculation of direct U.S. involvement in the widening Israeli-Iranian war.

Military-focused news sites reported that around 30 U.S. Air Force KC-135R and KC-46A tankers were identified by flight-tracking software in what The Times of Israelcalled an "unprecedented mass deployment" to Europe.

By Jennifer Medina
Reporting from Los Angeles
June 15, 2025

[with videos]

"One agent soon twisted Jason Brian Gavidia’s arm and pressed him against a black metal fence outside the lot where he runs an auto body shop in Montebello, a working-class suburb east of the Los Angeles city limits. Another officer then asked him an unusual question to prove whether he was a U.S. citizen or an undocumented #immigrant.

“What hospital were you born at?” the Border Patrol agent asked.

Mr. Gavidia, 29, was born only a short drive from where they were standing.... He did not know the hospital’s name. “I was born here,” he shouted at the agent, adding, “I’m an American, bro!”"

https://archive.ph/dBqBO

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31810747

Julius Constantine Motal
Sat 14 Jun 2025 19.58 EDT

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/31809408

Los Angeles is home to the country’s largest population of undocumented immigrants. So when President Trump’s immigration raids arrived, many expected trouble.

By Miriam Jordan, Soumya Karlamangla, Shawn Hubler, Emily Baumgaertner Nunn, Orlando Mayorquín, and Matt Stevens

Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington

Published June 14, 2025 Updated June 16, 2025, 10:14 p.m. ET

"But on June 6, as [ICE] agents swarmed the premises, dozens of employees at the warehouse and at a second facility nearby fled their workstations, ducking between shelves and inside boxes. [...] One of the workers, Tomas [...], who has three U.S.-born, college-educated children and has lived in Los Angeles for three decades, texted his son Carlos at around 10 a.m. [...] When Carlos arrived at the downtown warehouse a few minutes later, [he] was already gone. Carlos stood in disbelief as his father’s co-workers were hauled away and their loved ones screamed, cried and bid them goodbye."

https://archive.ph/wip/wtpwL

The nearly 5,000 soldiers in Los Angeles detained one man, briefly. Was that worth $134 million and a constitutional crisis?

Donald Trump has launched a mobile phone service and $499 gold smartphone, the latest monetization of his presidency by a family business empire now run by his sons.

The Trump Organization unveiled Trump Mobile on Monday with a $47.45 monthly plan – both the service name and price referencing Trump as the 47th president. The company will also sell a gold-cased “T1” smartphone in September etched with the American flag.

The venture will be headed by his sons Donald Jr and Eric Trump, who took over the company after Trump transitioned to his second presidency. The mobile service joins Trump-branded watches, sneakers and Bibles as products capitalizing on his political brand, with the Trump sons indicating that more is to come.

WASHINGTON — On Saturday, President Donald Trump held a hideously expensive military parade in Washington, D.C., on his birthday. Trump and his top officials stood on a stage at the National Mall behind two tanks, before two large digital American flags. Military bands and troops, some on horses, some in vehicles, some in tanks, others in Howitzers, marched in the streets. So did a few robot dogs. An army parachute team jumped down. Helicopters flew over. Drones flew by. There were many, many tanks.

The spectacle was billed as honoring the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday — and planners put in admirable effort to sell this fiction, with processions designed to honor key times in American military history. In reality, the event was just one part of the Trump administration’s vast, billion-dollar government effort to make the leader feel good about himself.

The massive search for the man suspected of shooting two Minnesota lawmakers, one fatally, concluded on Sunday evening when he was arrested by police, officials confirmed.

Vance Boelter, 57, was arrested near his farm in Green Isle, Minnesota. He was booked into Hennepin County Jail at about 1 a.m. on Monday, according to online records.

While it’s true no president or political leader has ever used social media quite as prolifically as Donald Trump, no recent secretary of defense has ever weaponized X or any other platform, quite like former Fox & Friends weekend host, Pete Hegseth.

Hegseth is actively reshaping the Pentagon in his own image since taking over, prompting a social media policy that has taken a dramatic turn towards supporting Hegseth’s every move and public appearance.

Part of that has been the resurrection of the Pentagon’s so-called “rapid response team”. Originally the name of a public relations brainchild of former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld to combat what he saw as Iraq war disinformation, the new team seems to have a similar mandate according to its X account: “Fighting Fake News!”

Rachel Leingang in Minneapolis, Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles and Melissa Hellmann in Philadelphia
Sat 14 Jun 2025 18.45 EDT

"No Kings organizers estimated the day’s events have so far drawn millions of people, with some hundreds still under way in all 50 states and to some cities abroad. These included over 200,000 in New York and over 100,000 in Philadelphia, plus some small towns with sizable crowds for their populations, including the town of Pentwater, Michigan, which saw 400 people join the protest in their 800-person town, the No Kings coalition said."

A small office building in San Francisco’s South of Market became the scene early Saturday of a hastily organized protest against the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation policies as activists scrambled to block the federal government from detaining more immigrants.

About 200 protesters began marching outside 478 Tehama St. at 7 a.m. after immigrants received texts Friday ordering them to check in with officials this weekend.

Activists had anticipated that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has an office at the address, would try to detain immigrants who showed up. As many as 25 immigrants including families arrived by about 11 a.m., but the office appeared closed and no one had entered or left. Instead, activists met with the immigrants outside and connected them with lawyers.

The action came ahead of the No Kings Day march and rally in San Francisco and nationwide amid a push by President Donald Trump to deport immigrants in the U.S. illegally and a growing and sometimes unruly opposition movement.

Many of the protesters had departed by 11 a.m., but organizers said they would stay because the ICE text messages had told immigrants to come during business hours Saturday or Sunday.

[Mission Action immigrant advocacy group organizer Sanika] Mahajan said the immigrants face a predicament. If they don’t show up to check in with immigration officials, they could face deportation for not following necessary steps in their cases. If they do show up, they could be detained and deported by ICE, she said.

Several immigrants who arrived Saturday morning said they are part of an ICE program that allows them to live at home as their cases are processed. ICE says about 7.6 million immigrants are in the program, known as Alternatives to Detention or the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, as of October.

According to news reports, ICE has been using text messages to alert participants in the program that they must come to an agency location. The practice has picked up in recent weeks as the administration pushed to increase arrests and deportations. The actions have spread fear and apprehension throughout immigrant communities.

LOS ANGELES, June 13 (Reuters) - U.S. Marines deployed to Los Angeles made their first detention of a civilian on Friday, part of a rare use of military force to support domestic police and coming ahead of national protests over President Donald Trump's military parade in Washington.

The detention of the man, a U.S. Army veteran and an immigrant who obtained U.S. citizenship, punctuated a series of highly unusual events that have appealed to Trump supporters but outraged other Americans who are demonstrating discontent in the streets.

A parade in Washington, D.C., commemorating the 250th anniversary of the armed services and coinciding with the birthday of President Donald Trump, kicked off Saturday with a grand showing of the military's power throughout the National Mall.

Eighty-four military vehicles, including 28 Abrams tanks, 6,700 marching soldiers and other military presentations, were all on tap for the celebration, which also happened to fall on Trump's 79th birthday.

ABC News observed some people in the crowd wearing MAGA hats and others burst into singing "Happy Birthday," as the parade was about to begin. The parade started a half hour early -- at 6 p.m. -- due to weather.