Untitled

Madeline Peltz at Number Two Pencil:

In front of an image of the flag raised by daredevil couple Angela Nikolau and Ivan Kuznetsov during their climb to the top of the Empire State Building, edited to read “Repeal The 19th,” Kristan Hawkins urged right-wing influencers to stop advocating for taking away women’s rights to vote. “This is an argument that isn’t going anywhere,” she said. “All it does is make a lot of women who might think about voting for Republicans not want to vote for Republicans.” In the caption, she wrote, “I’ll keep my right to vote, thank you.” That is no longer a popular opinion on Kristan’s corner of the right-wing internet anymore. Her comments section was immediately flooded with people telling her that repealing the 19th Amendment and taking away a woman’s right to vote is the civil rights issue of our time. Out of a thousand comments, the overwhelming majority of them that I reviewed were in favor of repealing the 19th. “It’s the one of the biggest death blows to the nuclear family,” one read. Another declared, “There is no future for a nation in which unmarried, unlanded women are allowed to direct policy.”

Dale Partridge, a far-right pastor and leading voice online calling for women to lose their right to vote, also jumped in. He essentially said that a civil war is coming, and so-called “household voting,” where only a husband can vote on behalf of his entire family, will be a frontline issue in this conflict. Notably, a number of these comments pointed out that if women couldn’t vote, it would be a lot easier to completely abolish abortion. This is ironic because it is both true and Kristan’s entire public platform.

[...] Multiple speakers at Turning Point USA’s Women’s Leadership Summit in June, including Alex Clark and up-and-coming anti-feminist influencer Savanna Faith Stone, are advocates for “household voting.” Attendees at the event told the press they agreed with the women on stage.

Oliver Willis at Daily Kos:

The Trump administration is reportedly trying to rally the rest of the world to help it in its fight against “antifa” activists, but the world isn’t answering the dubious call. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has circulated an invitation for foreign ministers of more than 60 countries to meet with him to strategize against the purported “resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism.” The list included most European nations, larger Latin American countries and several Asian states, including India, Indonesia and Singapore. But the Post says it has been told by some foreign and domestic officials that they are concerned that the meeting is a cover to squelch domestic dissent against President Donald Trump while they see far more of a threat from right-wing movements. The loosely connected “antifa” (anti-fascist) movement has come to prominence in recent years as a direct rebuke to Trump, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement, which has embraced fascist rhetoric, policies, and even violence. The right’s open support of divisive concepts like racism, sexism, homophobia, and other bigoted notions has caused some activists to support a more strident response, which has included direct confrontation and occasional violence. If the administration were successful in linking “antifa” to international terror, it could allow increased surveillance of Americans based on tenuous claims that they are a member of “antifa,” which has been used as a catchall phrase by Trump and others in the Republican Party for the left.

[...] Even more troubling, the Trump administration’s push to link “antifa” to international terrorism is coming from counterterrorism czar Sebastian Gorka. Gorka is a longtime Trump cheerleader and former conservative media figure with a history of promoting extremism. He is a former Fox News contributor who was a member of a Hungarian group designated as Nazi-allied by the U.S. government during World War II. Gorka previously complained about the Department of Homeland Security warning about violence from the extremist right-wing sovereign citizen movement and was fired from the FBI for Islamophobic rhetoric.

[...] In his second term, officials like former Attorney General Pam Bondi argued that protests against Trump donor and ally Elon Musk were an organized operation from the far left and that the Department of Justice would be “coming after” protesters.

Alyssa Oursler at The Guardian on the Minneapolis 15 arrests (07.10.2026):

Days after pleading not guilty to conspiracy charges, Emmett Doyle took the stage at a dive bar in Minneapolis, and performed an Irish protest ballad. “And you dare to call me a terrorist, while you look down your gun,” he sang during his set. The tune has particular resonance now that Doyle, a musician and carpenter who the US government claims is an “antifa” domestic terrorist, awaits trial for protesting. “That song has been a source of inspiration for me, in finding courage to face this ordeal,” he said. Doyle is one of 15 Minneapolis protesters the federal government recently charged with conspiracy for resisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations earlier this year. The group known as the “Minnesota 15” is primarily linked through Direct Action MN, a loose group of Twin Cities residents that provided community defense during the ICE surge.

According to the 94-page indictment, the defendants’ charges stem not from one specific incident, but from coordinating with rapid response groups to alert people to ICE agents and organizing blockades at the city’s ICE headquarters. Prosecutors have characterized the group as affiliated with “antifa”, a decentralized group of people against fascism, which the Trump administration named a domestic terror organization last fall.

“These are teachers and nurses and electricians,” said Kelly Peterson, a Minneapolis organizer. “They just have to keep going to work, knowing that they did what 100,000 other people did, and that they got charged for it.” The case is the latest attempt by Trump’s Department of Justice to criminalize resistance. Protesters in Chicago and Spokane, Washington, faced the same charges as the Minnesota 15, with mixed results; the Chicago case was tossed for prosecutorial misconduct, while the Spokane protesters, accused of forming a human wall to block an ICE bus, were convicted and face a maximum of six years in prison. Last month, protesters in Prairieland, Texas, dubbed part of a “north Texas antifa cell” by prosecutors, received sentences ranging from 30 to 100 years – one for simply moving a box of zines.

“This is naked political repression, part of a nationwide trend,” Isaac Sant, the lead defendant in the Minneapolis case, told the Guardian. Legal experts say the Minneapolis case is akin to Prairieland in its use of conspiracy law to target so-called antifa and in turn chill the resistance. But the charges in question are far less severe. Organizers in Minneapolis, meanwhile, have said they are not deterred. “They’re trying to stop us and silence us and scare us,” Treasure Thoreson, one of the Minneapolis defendants, told the Guardian. “I’m not going to let them scare me.”

An expanding dragnet

In January, nearly 4,000 immigration agents flooded the streets of the Twin Cities for Operation Metro Surge, the largest immigration operation in national history. Residents responded quickly, bringing food and essentials to people in hiding and forming neighborhood-level watch groups to track ICE vehicles and alert neighbors to their presence. ICE agents pulled people from cars, forcefully entered homes and repeatedly teargassed observers. Two residents who had been monitoring ICE activity, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were shot and killed by federal agents. No one has been charged for their deaths. Federal conspiracy charges were first brought against Minneapolis organizers in January during the height of Operation Metro Surge. Nine activists and journalists, including the former CNN anchor Don Lemon, were charged with conspiracy to impede religious freedom in connection with a protest at a church where a pastor is a field director for ICE.

[…]

‘We’re still gonna be out there’

Despite the charges, Minneapolis organizers are not backing down. “Any time that you’re involved in a really heightened moment of resistance to a regime like this, you know that there’s a possibility that infiltration is happening,” Doyle said. “You can’t be frozen by that fear.” Increasingly, encrypted messaging apps such as Signal are appearing in protest prosecutions. In the Minnesota 15 case, the prosecution has 15 to 16 terabytes of Signal chats, which have not been made available to the defense. In the Prairieland case, the FBI made copies of messages that had appeared on a defendant’s lock screen even after the app was deleted. Apple has since patched that security bug. Signal should be treated as if it is or could be public information, said organizers who spoke to the Guardian. “You have to assume that it is all being recorded and can all get read back to you in an indictment,” Jonathan, an organizer who asked his last name not be used.

The government maintains its investigative methods are lawful. Whether those powers have become too expansive, however, remains a point of contention. States, even blue ones, have “really sharpened surveillance” in recent years, De Janon said, including under the Biden administration. Tools such as geofencing (a digital boundary to identify who is in an area), social media monitoring, drones, facial recognition, and digital forensics form a broad web of surveillance.

Emmett* Till, but yes! The more you know!

The miscarriage of justice proved a galvanizing point in the Civil Rights Movement. Rod Serling, a 30-year-old rising star in a golden age of dramatic television, watched the events play out in the news. He believed firmly in the burgeoning medium’s power for social justice. “The writer’s role is to be a menacer of the public’s conscience,” Serling later said. “He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism and he must focus the issues of his time.”