At Its Best, LGBTQ Pride Is an Abolitionist Uprising — and a Dance Party

Faced with transphobia and repression, people imprisoned in Washington State are still finding ways to celebrate Pride.

By Jaime Sauceda , Ye Qing J. , Erica R. Meiners , 

Truthout/TheAppeal

PublishedJune 30, 2026

Men Against Sexism member Ed Mead walks with his lover, Danny Atteberry, through the Intensive Security Unit at Walla Walla State Penitentiary in the late 1970s during the one hour a day when they were allowed out of their cells. (Photo by Ethan Hoffman. Courtesy of the Washington Prison History Project and UW Bothell Digital Collections. CC BY-NC. )

This June, a Pride celebration organized by Alliances, a multi-generational and multiracial group of incarcerated queer and trans people, was held inside Washington State’s largest prison.

Yet behind the skits and the celebration of queer joy expressed at the June 3 Pride event inside the Twin Rivers Unit at the Monroe Correctional Complex, the continued punishment of trans women and queer people “for their own protection” was not far from the minds of the event’s participants. A core group of about 10 people within Alliances made this celebration possible, with the support of other (often overlapping) inside networks, like the Black Prisoners’ Caucus.

Amid all the parades, poppers, and parties that arrive in June, remembering the origins of queer liberation movements — open rebellion against police and resistance to other forms of carceral repression — gets harder and harder.

Yet as everyday life for queer people in the U.S. — particularly those who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), or young — is criminalized, Alliances’ event within the Monroe Correctional Complex offered a potent beacon: We need to be organizing for anti-carceral worlds, and have queer dance parties.

Across the U.S. a patchwork of laws attempts to erase transgender lives and regulate all bodies through the familiar weapon of criminalization. From bathroom access to passports and other identifying documentation, gender is increasingly narrowed. Proposed legislation will restrict other core rights including parenting. Even in “blue” cities and states, hospitals and universities have preemptively curtailed support for gender-affirming care, and supportive medical professionals, parents/caregivers, and educators now face fines and prison terms and loss of licensure and prosecution. Beyond the potentially lethal impacts on transgender lives, these new forms of the old practice of “eugenics policymaking,” according to an interview with historian Jules Gill-Peterson, aim to police all lives.

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If the Trump administration forces me to transfer to a men’s prison, I question whether I will make it out alive. By E.M. , Truthout September 29, 2025

Incarcerated queer folks, particularly those who are BIPOC and transgender, are at the front lines of these attacks. “This is a pattern that a queer incarcerated person is well familiar with,” an Alliances member told Truthout. “The simple expression of our identity is incomprehensible to a system that necessitates the categorization and regulating of our bodies.”


“The simple expression of our identity is incomprehensible to a system that necessitates the categorization and regulating of our bodies.”

And yet the struggle for decarceration and our survival needs queer joy, as Alliances and other networks of systems-impacted queers identify. The indomitable Miss Major, who died in October 2025 after a lifetime of riotous abolitionist organizing, stated in a 2023 interview with the The Guardian: “I know the world I would like to live in. It’s in my head, but I try my best to live it now.”


Behind the Pride



On day one, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14168, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” mandating transphobia across federal agencies. Yet change is often slow in bureaucracies. On June 17, 2026, a federal judge temporarily halted one of the impacts of this executive order and required the Bureau of Prisons to continue to offer hormones, following an earlier ruling freezing any transfer of trans women in the federal system to prisons for men. Incarcerated trans women in the federal system are panicked. “The battle I’m in right now is for my very existence,” as E.M. outlines in her 2025 Keeley Schenwar Memorial Prize-winning essay.

In Washington, a state policy passed in 2020 that permits some trans women who apply to serve their sentence at a women’s prison is under pressure from the federal government and anti-trans advocacy networks. In 2024, Amber Kim, a former member of Alliances, was transferred from a women’s prison, Washington Corrections Center for Women, to the Monroe Correctional Complex, because of a “504” infraction, or “consensual sexual contact.” The Monroe Correctional Complex is officially a men’s prison, but most people in Alliances drop the gender marker as they believe this prison houses the highest number of incarcerated queer and trans people in Washington State. While a 504 infraction is not uncommon at Washington Corrections Center for Women, Kim — despite her stellar prison record — was punished more severely than others. She is reportedly the first woman to be moved in Washington from a women’s prison into a men’s prison.

Myths of sexual harm by trans women are a potent tool in the right’s attempts to regulate gender and to ban trans women from bathrooms, sports, and women’s prisons. Multiple studies, including ones conducted by the federal government, document that guards are key perpetrators of sexual and other forms of harm, particularly in prisons for women, and simultaneously, one federal study found that incarcerated transgender people are the prime targets. But any state claims to protect incarcerated people from sexual violence is always less than hollow: The never fully implemented and usually ineffective Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) of 2003 is in the process of being gutted from 2025 federal funding cuts to the National PREA Resource Center.

In 2026, the right-wing advocacy organization Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), which propels attacks against trans folks in sports, initiated a campaign to collect testimony from incarcerated cisgender women in support of a lawsuit against Washington State for allegedly failing to protect cisgender women. The Department of Justice has also launched an investigation, effectively indefinitely pausing the movement of any trans women into women’s prisons in Washington.

The Washington Department of Corrections claims that Amber Kim’s placement in solitary confinement is her choice and for her protection from the general imprisoned population. But if the slim possibility of safety is only through solitary confinement — a familiar and often lethal experience for many gender-nonconforming and queer folks inside prisons — this is neither a choice nor protection. Beyond Kim, whose case waits before the Washington Supreme Court, Alliances members report that at least two other trans women affiliated with their group are currently held in solitary confinement “for their own protection” at the Monroe Correctional Complex.

Alliances members report that the Twin Rivers Unit is often referred to by incarcerated people as one of the safest places in the Washington prison system. While not a prison for women, the Twin Rivers Unit is designated for people made more vulnerable by the state’s prison system: people with sexual offense charges; people who’ve dropped their gang affiliations; and queer and transgender people. Yet with a capacity for 795 people, not everyone who is eligible, or able to apply, gets to be at Twin Rivers Unit.


DIY Fighting Futures



Alliances is neither the first nor the only network of queer people inside a prison organizing for joy and resistance.

Out of necessity, queer organizing has always been anti-carceral.

Out of necessity, queer organizing has always been anti-carceral. To fight sexual violence at the prison, Ed Mead — imprisoned at Walla Walla Prison in Washington from 1976-1983 for organizing with the George Jackson Brigade — started Men Against Sexism, which taught self-defense, smuggled in weapons, and established “safe cells” for incoming queer/trans prisoners: “We were some tough faggots,” Mead reports.

Kim (right) spends time with Leomy, his “inside lady” and a member of Men Against Sexism, a club popular with gay and transgender prisoners, at Walla Walla State Penitentiary in the late 1970s. (Photo by Ethan Hoffman. Courtesy of the Washington Prison History Project and UW Bothell Digital Collections. CC BY-NC. )

In the 1960s and ’70s, local gay newsletters in Chicago routinely reported on police’s “stop and ask” anti-queer entrapment tactics, printed descriptions and names of officers involved in raids of queer bars, and published legal and organizing resources, including “Your Rights if Arrested.” In 2012, the youth-led New York City group FIERCE initiated a successful campaign against the police’s routine practice of charging BIPOC youth in possession of condoms with “intent to commit sex work.” And the list of queer networks that envision and build the abolitionist world we need goes on.

Alliances members’ acts of resistance rarely make the history books. One riotous example shared by members: When a trans woman heard that guards denied the girls bras, she found a sunny spot in the middle of the yard and took her top off. “The entire yard froze,” an Alliances member told Truthout. “When guards rushed over and told her to cover up, she pointed out that plenty of men went shirtless, and if DOC [Department of Corrections] didn’t recognize her as a woman, then she didn’t see why she should cover up either. Immediately the lieutenant is called, emails amongst administration are sent, and the clothing room ordered bras for trans women.”

Building on these DIY legacies, across the planet, from Chicago’s abolitionist Pushing Envelopes to the decarceration project in Melbourne Beyond Bricks and Bars, vibrant queer-led grassroots organizing persists. Often armed with nothing, these networks write and visit other queers inside, support people after release, organize to ensure people are not pushed into jails and prisons, coordinate campaigns for people’s release, follow the leadership of incarcerated queer/trans folks on challenging prison conditions, find affirming and free legal supports, and demand and build queer lives that don’t rely on prisons and policing. And always along the way: laugh, sparkle, and fucking dance.


Queer people, inside and outside, continue to find ingenious ways to resist, even when the stakes are life and death.

At this June’s Pride celebration, Alliances members racked up a few joyous wins. Dancing is strictly forbidden, but a member of the prison’s Black Prisoners’ Caucus — which attends and supports this Pride — initiated the electric slide line dance with guests and incarcerated folks, creating a mini dance party. Denied wigs, Alliances members used feathers as adornments. Dresses are also banned, but an Indigenous member of Alliances successfully proposed a showcase of Black, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Latine dances so folks could wear their cultural regalia in part expressly to circumvent this rule.

As an Alliances member reports to Truthout: “[Department of Corrections] responds with new regulations each year, but a reactionary system that attempts to understand a qu33r person’s body will always be a step behind.” Take that prison censors.

Queer people, inside and outside, continue to find ingenious ways to resist, even when the stakes are life and death. Together, we are fighting for our full queer lives. We will have “bread for all, and roses too,” and we will dance.



This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Jaime Sauceda
Jaime Sauceda (they/them), currently incarcerated at Monroe Correctional Complex in Washington State, was arrested young and has spent the last 12 years organizing in queer and Latine spaces. From downtown Seattle to a maximum security prison, they have gained experience advocating in very different cultures. Jaime is soon to transfer to a reentry-transitional prison and looks forward to being released to their siblings and husband.

Ye Qing J.
Ye Qing J. is an organizer, writer, and artist whose work is informed by walking alongside people who’ve been left behind — because they/we are the ones who know best how to upend systemic violence. They’ve written for QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, performed at ARTS at King Street Station, and made zines with ACLU WA and Look2Justice. Ye Qing brings tenacity, curiosity, and care to everything they touch. Their dad taught them how to sharpen a cleaver on the bottom of fine China, and Ye Qing has basically been doing the same ever since. Drop a line at controlledchaosconsulting@gmail.com.

Erica R. Meiners
Erica R. Meiners is a Chicago-based educator and writer who co-authored Abolition. Feminism. Now. (Haymarket Press 2021) with Angela Davis, Gina Dent, and Beth Richie. Erica is also a co-editor of the new collection How to End Family Policing: From Outrage to Action.

Minnesota Activists Prepare to Defend Anti-ICE Protesters From Federal Charges

Critics say the indictments against 15 people aim to intimidate and silence dissent against the Trump administration.

By Ibrahim Hirsi , 

Truthout

July 1, 2026

Demonstrators march during the nationwide "Stop ICE Terror" rally through downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 20, 2026.ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP via Getty Images

Minnesota activists and scholars are decrying the recent federal indictment of 15 people who took part in demonstrations against the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities metro region earlier this year.

The indictment accuses the protesters of surveilling federal agents, disrupting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations, and training people on how to delay or prevent arrests, among other allegations. It also alleges that the defendants are members of antifa-linked groups like the Black Cat Worker’s Collective, which prosecutors describe as an organization committed to “militant class struggle” and “revolution.” According to the indictment, “militant class struggle” includes activities such as “digital campaigning, community organizing, and physical confrontation.”

The defendants include a college professor, a union carpenter, a health care worker, a special education teacher, union members, and community organizers.

Civil rights attorney and activist Nekima Levy Armstrong told Truthout that the defendants are being targeted for exercising their constitutional rights to protest and assemble. She called the charges “farcical” and part of “a familiar pattern where the federal government is hell-bent on punishing protesters and those who speak out against the authoritarianism and fascism of the Trump administration.”

The defendants include a college professor, a union carpenter, a health care worker, a special education teacher, union members, and community organizers.

Armstrong herself faces a separate federal charge stemming from an anti-ICE protest inside a church during a Sunday service in January. The Department of Justice, which called the protest a violation of religious freedom, has charged her and more than three dozen others for allegedly carrying out a “coordinated takeover-style attack” on Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. However, video clips of the event appear to show activists peacefully chanting “Justice for Renee Good” and “ICE Out” as they protested what they viewed as a glaring contradiction: One of the church’s pastors, David Easterwood, was both preaching the Gospel and allegedly serving as acting director of a local ICE field office.

Others who were charged along with Armstrong include local journalist Georgia Fort and former CNN journalist Don Lemon, both of whom were at the church covering the protest.

But in recent weeks, federal prosecutors have dismissed or reduced dozens of charges against indicted protesters. At least 15 cases have been dropped entirely, while others — including that of Isabel “Isa” Lopez — have been downgraded from felonies to misdemeanors. Last week, attorneys for Armstrong and 32 other co-defendants asked a federal judge to dismiss charges tied to the church demonstration, arguing that the indictment does not “allege a single fact that any defendant used physical force against another person, issued a threat of violence to anyone, or fully blocked ingress to or egress from the church, as is required by the charged statutes.”

David Schultz, a political science professor at Hamline University in Minnesota, told Truthout that the charges against the 15 anti-ICE protesters reflect what he sees as a broader campaign against Donald Trump’s political opponents. The charges, Schultz said in an email, resemble the Trump administration’s allegations against prominent national leaders, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and former FBI Director James Comey.

“The pattern is to use the machinery of government to intimidate individuals, even when the legal basis for the investigations appears weak or nonexistent … The objective is often less about obtaining convictions than about intimidation and harassment.”

“The pattern is to use the machinery of government to intimidate individuals, even when the legal basis for the investigations appears weak or nonexistent,” Schultz said. “The objective is often less about obtaining convictions than about intimidation and harassment.”

JaNaé Bates Imari, executive director of Faith in Minnesota, a faith-based political grassroots organizing group, echoed Schultz’s sentiment, noting that the indictment was indeed aimed at intimidating protesters whose only crime was peacefully confronting immigration agents who, in the nation’s largest crackdown, pursued immigrants and refugees — including naturalized citizens and permanent residents — across the city.

The defendants, Imari told Truthout, have been criminalized for “blowing whistles and showing up when their neighbors are being kidnapped, and for writing down license plates of people who are doing the kidnapping.”

Imari’s Faith in Minnesota is one of 50 organizations — including religious, labor, and other groups — that issued a statement condemning the indictment of the protesters. “When self-serving politicians are losing, they lie, lash out and attempt political repression,” the statement reads in part. “They will do whatever it takes to seize and hold power, including trying to silence our voices and keep us from voting.”

Similar organizations, affiliate groups, and individual supporters have already taken steps to defend the indicted protesters in various ways. People have turned out in large numbers at defendants’ court appearances to show solidarity. Legal organizations, including the Minnesota chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, have provided legal representation. Thousands of individuals have so far raised over $342,000 in legal funds.


People have turned out in large numbers at defendants’ court appearances to show solidarity. Thousands of individuals have so far raised over $342,000 in legal funds.

The cases in Minnesota come amid a broader national pattern of ICE protest prosecutions. Recently, federal judges sentenced eight activists for participating in an anti-ICE noise demonstration in Texas. Prosecutors claimed that the protesters had links to antifa, which the Trump administration labeled as a domestic terrorist group. One of them, Benjamin Song, who was convicted of firing shots and injuring a police officer during the protest, received a 100-year prison sentence. Song argued that he acted to prevent police brutality and pointed out in a statement that while he opposed fascism, he was not a member of an antifa group because antifa is not an actual organization. The others received sentences ranging from 30 to 70 years.

In Minnesota, the indictment of the 15 anti-ICE protesters mainly revolves around digital communications and planning related to organizing demonstrations; it does not accuse the defendants of causing physical harm to agents. “Peaceful protest is protected by the First Amendment, and discussions about how to organize and conduct those protests are likewise protected,” Schultz said. “Those activities generally fall squarely within the rights of free speech and assembly.”

Whatever the case, Minnesotans continue to exercise their rights to protest and assemble despite the federal government’s crackdown on protesters in the state and across the country.

This became clear, Armstrong said, at the initial court appearance for the defendants. Supporters filled the largest courtroom in St. Paul to capacity, she said, with many more waiting outside. “So, it just shows that people are resilient, that people see what is going on in these attempts to silence our voices and to intimidate us,” Armstrong added. “They are refusing to capitulate to Donald Trump, even knowing that there may be consequences at the hands of this president and his administration.”

This is not the first time that a U.S. government — local, state, or federal — has used its power to pursue dissent. In recent years, pro-Palestinian and Black Lives Matter protesters on college campuses and in the streets have faced harsh punishment at the hands of law enforcement and the courts, reflecting a pattern seen throughout U.S. history.

“Historically, conspiracy charges have frequently been used against progressive organizations and movements in the United States,” Schultz said. “Labor unions, socialists, and members of the Communist Party were all, at various times, prosecuted under conspiracy theories in efforts to suppress their political activities. Over time, the courts repeatedly recognized that much of this conduct constituted protected speech and protected political association under the First Amendment.”

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Ibrahim Hirsi
Ibrahim Hirsi is a Minneapolis-based journalist and historian covering immigration, politics, and racial justice. His work has appeared in The Nation, Dissent, MinnPost, and elsewhere.

Armed With New Slush Fund, ‘Lawless and Rogue’ ICE Arrests 10,000+ in Just Five Days

Those arrested in the recent surge include a 56-year-old Catholic nun from Nigeria.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrive to confront protesters outside the Delaney Hall detention facility on June 11, 2026 in Newark, New Jersey.
(Photo by Andres Kudacki/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Jul 02, 2026
C0MMON DREAMS

Ordered by the Trump White House to aggressively increase arrest rates, federal immigration officials have reportedly detained more than 10,000 people in just the last five days, intensifying fear in communities across the United States.

The New York Times, which was first to report the new detention figures late Wednesday, noted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials were “told that 2,000 arrests a day was the new standard for enforcement.” The agency, flush with cash following President Donald Trump’s signing of a reconciliation package containing another $70 billion for immigration enforcement, has been instructed to assign 80% of its officers to “arrest operations,” according to the Times.



‘Major Escalation’: Trump Prosecutor Invokes NSPM-7 While Unveiling Charges Against 15 ICE Protesters



‘Criminalizing Dissent’: Alarm Grows Over Extreme Prison Terms for Texas ICE Protesters

The Trump administration claims to be targeting the “worst of the worst,” but available data shows that the percentage of people arrested by ICE despite having no criminal convictions has tended to rise during the agency’s mass detention efforts. On Sunday, ICE briefly detained a 56-year-old nun from Nigeria as she walked to church in McAllen, Texas.

“The geniuses at ICE just arrested a Catholic nun, who practices as a nurse, as she was walking to church,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) wrote in response to Sister Leticia Ugboaja’s detention. “Our Republican colleagues think they need even more money. Had enough?”

The Times reported that immigration attorneys across the US “have been on alert” as ICE arrests surge, though much more quietly than earlier blitzes in Minneapolis—where federal immigration agents killed two US citizens—and other major cities, where groups of armed and masked officers roamed the streets and menaced neighborhoods.

“Cindy Blandon, an immigration attorney in Miami, said that one of her clients, a Nicaraguan father of two children, had an immigration court hearing set for 2027, but was arrested by ICE on Monday during a routine check-in,” the Times reported. “And in Utah, Ysabel Lonazco, an immigration attorney, has noticed an uptick as well... One of her clients, Arturo, a 48-year-old Mexican man, was arrested in Salt Lake City on his way to a soccer game on Sunday, according to his wife, Veronica. She said the arrest had shattered their family.”

ICE also appears to be ignoring a federal judge’s order last week curtailing arrests at immigration courthouses. According to The Intercept:
On Thursday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested an Ecuadorian man at a court at 26 Federal Plaza and a man from the Dominican Republic at another court at 290 Broadway, both in Lower Manhattan. The arrests continued on Monday, when ICE agents detained a third man, originally from Guatemala, at 290 Broadway.

In legal filings challenging the detentions of the men taken Thursday, advocates with the nonprofit Make the Road New York accused ICE of not only violating their clients’ right to due process, but also of brazenly flouting a federal court order.


Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, told The Intercept that “we’re witnessing ICE, yet again, operate in a lawless and rogue fashion and not following court orders.”

“We’re supposedly a nation under the rule of law, and our judicial branch has said that this agency must stop engaging in this lawless behavior, and they continue to do so,” said Awawdeh.

ICE is currently headed by Acting Director David Venturella, a former private prison executive. A record number of people have died in ICE custody under the second Trump administration.

Last week, Trump announced that he intends to nominate former Oklahoma state trooper Lance Schroyer to lead ICE in a permanent capacity.

Marcos Charles, the head of ICE’s deportation wing, cheered the recent arrest surge in an email to agency personnel earlier this week. On Saturday, ICE officers arrested 2,400 people.

“I want to personally thank each of you for your extraordinary efforts this past weekend,” Charles wrote, according to the Times. “Through your dedication, professionalism, and unwavering commitment to our mission, enforcement and removal operations achieved remarkable operational results.”

Trump Aide Floats Barring Pregnant Visitors After Birthright Citizenship Ruling

Another MAGA ally has called for forced sterilization of all noncitizen visitors traveling to the US.

By Chris Walker ,

Truthout

July 1, 2026

STEPHEN MILLER

Deputy White House Chief of Staff 


In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday to preserve birthright citizenship rights outlined in the 14th Amendment, White House advisor Stephen Miller suggested that the Trump administration may consider barring pregnant tourists or immigrants from entering the U.S. at all.

Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security to President Donald Trump, spoke to Fox News’s Jesse Watters hours after the ruling was rendered

“You have to now think very carefully about who you let into your country, even on a temporary basis,” Miller said in response to a question on how the U.S. can “crack down” on so-called “birth tourism.”

Miller claimed on the program that pregnant women are coming to the U.S., having children, and leaving their children in the U.S. while they return to their countries, supposedly so they can collect welfare checks from their child. After being prompted by Watters, Miller indicated that the administration is considering banning pregnant women from visiting the U.S.

“There’s a lot of things we’re going to have to take a hard look at,” Miller said.

The administration has already taken steps to, at the very least, increase scrutiny of pregnant people traveling to the U.S., as the Department of Justice (DOJ) has reportedly directed federal prosecutors to prioritize the supposed problem of birth tourism.

The DOJ “will zealously protect the sanctity of ​United States citizenship by investigating and prosecuting those who fraudulently exploit our immigration system,” a memo from the department stated.

Birth tourism — the practice of purposely traveling to another country to give birth so your child can secure citizenship — is considered rare in the U.S. The very concept feeds into the xenophobic “great replacement theory” frequently peddled by far right individuals like Miller — that immigrants or nonwhite individuals are part of a conspiracy to “replace” white people in the U.S.

One highly contested estimate on birth tourism claims that around 26,000 children are born annually in the U.S. as a result of the practice. Even if that figure is accurate, it would amount to fewer than 1 percent of all births in the country.

Shortly after the Supreme Court ruled to overturn Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, the president demanded that Congress take up the matter instead.

“We can easily make it up in Congress through Legislation, with the support of the President, that has now been determined during this process,” Trump claimed in a Truth Social post. “No long and unwieldy Constitutional Amendment is necessary!”

Based on the findings of the majority opinion of the Supreme Court case, it’s highly unlikely that the court would find a law passed by Congress on birthright citizenship acceptable or constitutional. Of the six justices who ruled against Trump’s executive order, only Brett Kavanaugh suggested that Congress potentially has the authority to pass legislation on birthright citizenship. The remaining five justices who ruled against the order indicated they did so based on the clear reading and intent of the 14th Amendment, not current U.S. code.

Meanwhile, MAGA influencers are pushing additional extreme policy changes in the wake of the ruling. Sean Davis, CEO of the right-wing news outlet The Federalist, said there are “several ways forward” to deal with the court’s decision.

Among them, Davis called for “nullification” from the states, wherein they “just stop issuing” birth certificates to children suspected of being born to non-citizens. Davis also called for the Trump administration to “pack the court” in order to relitigate the matter, and to “deny entry to all pregnant foreigners.”

Disturbingly, Davis also called for the “sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry” in response to the court’s actions — a policy that echoes the eugenics policies of Nazi Germany, which sterilized over 400,000 Germans in the name of a “pure” Aryan race.

And if those plans don’t work? “Dissolution of the Union,” Davis said.

Political observers have warned that despite the Supreme Court ruling to preserve birthright citizenship rights, Trump and his MAGA allies and advisers are unlikely to let go of the issue.

“The birthright issue is not going away. … Like Roe, this will be their fight for a generation. And if the Democrats just say ‘we won’ and ignore it, like Roe, the Republicans will eventually win,” The Nation’s Elie Mystal said.

MS NOW's Chris Hayes unmasks MAGA's new 'obsession' after major Supreme Court loss

Matthew Chapman
July 1, 2026
RAW STORY

President Trump, right, speaking with Chief Justice John Roberts after the president delivered his State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 30. Photo: jonathan ernst/Reuters

No sooner did the Supreme Court strike down President Donald Trump's executive order abolishing birthright citizenship, than MAGA politicians and pundits suddenly developed a fixation with "birth tourism" — the idea, grossly exaggerated, that there are thousands of women coming to America eight or nine months pregnant, intending to give birth and get American citizenship for their child.

But there's a cynical logic at the heart of why they suddenly pivoted to this issue, MS NOW's Chris Hayes pointed out on Wednesday.

"The Supreme Court decided narrowly yesterday, way too narrowly, that the 14th Amendment of the Constitution means what it plainly says: if you're born in this country, you are a citizen of this country, you are American. That's it. No ifs, ands, or buts," said Hayes. In response, he said, there has been a "bizarre, histrionic freakout on the right about the great scourge of — wait for it, wait for it — pregnant women racing to the U.S. to have babies."



Hayes played a number of clips, including acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin discussing the matter, and White House strategist Stephen Miller even entertaining the idea of a ban on foreign pregnant women entering the country on Fox News.

"They have fully invented a moral panic about birth tourism, something that's just not happening in large numbers, especially not in our post-Dobbs maternal mortality rate world that eclipses that of every other peer nation," said Hayes.

Nonetheless, he continued, the reason behind the fixation, and why even Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito harped about it in his "very weird, strange, actually morally repellent dissent yesterday," is that "they can't talk about the broader thing they want to do ... they want to talk about these edge cases."

Their actual goal, as laid out clearly in the overturned executive order, is to "selectively strip American citizenship from literally tens of millions of people in this country, tens of millions," said Hayes. "Your friends and your family members and your neighbors and your doctors and your nurses and the guy that serves you coffee, right? To redefine what it is to be American. That's what they're after."

Op-Ed

Birthright Ruling Won’t Halt Trump’s War on Immigrants — Only Organizing Will

Sustained resistance in the form of walkouts, shutdowns, and strikes is our best way to defeat anti-immigrant policies.

By Justin Akers Chacón ,

Truthout

July 1, 2026

\

Demonstrators rally in support of birthright citizenship outside the Supreme Court as Donald Trump attends oral arguments in Washington, D.C., on April 1, 2026.Kent Nishimura / AFP via Getty Images

On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled against President Donald Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented people born inside the United States. In a 6-3 decision, which included Trump-picked, right-wing justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, the majority upheld that birthright citizenship was guaranteed under the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment. The other Trump appointee, Neil Gorsuch, sided with the minority.

This is the third court ruling in U.S. history that has affirmed birthright citizenship in some way against challenges from white nationalists. The 1898 ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, reaffirmed that the U.S.-born children of noncitizen Chinese parents were citizens. In the 1982 Plyler v. Doe case, the Court again fended off another challenge by Texas public school officials who tried to remove undocumented schoolchildren from the rolls. They claimed that undocumented people were “foreign nationals” and therefore not “guaranteed equal protection of the law” since they were not under “U.S. jurisdiction.” The court rejected their claim and again re-affirmed birthright citizenship.

The failed claim that noncitizen people are not covered by constitutional protections because they are not under “U.S. jurisdiction” is the same line of argument Trump pursued during his first term. The difference this time is that Trump was banking on a majority right-wing Supreme Court — three of whom he appointed — to pass it based on loyalty to Trump himself, as much as on ideological grounds.

Trump’s strategy was based on a plan to radically reshape the federal judiciary and install a solidly MAGA-aligned core of judges that could enable his administration to push through reactionary policy shifts by validating his authoritarian “rule-through-executive-order” method. During his first term, Trump named 234 judicial nominees to seats on the most critical benches across the country, including 54 who “reshaped the ideological makeup of federal appeals courts and three who drove a generational shift in the highest court in the land.”

Into his second term, Trump is poised to potentially appoint 300 more federal judges as part of his effort to refashion the judiciary into a compliant and enabling force. This will set the stage for ending birthright citizenship under more favorable conditions. The defeat of his effort is attributable not to the public opposition from Democrats, who remain tacit and on the sidelines of the issue, but from within the ranks of the Republican Party itself.

The Trump regime’s attack on migrants, refugees, and undocumented people has been the central political strategy of the MAGA movement to activate and mobilize white nationalism, to tear down the existing legal architecture of past civil rights gains, and to weaponize the state to attack political opponents and repress popular resistance. Anti-immigration politics and campaigns have become dominant in U.S. politics as a result of surging white nationalist politics that have entered into the mainstream, most recently with the effort to dismantle birthright citizenship.

Trump first announced his crusade to end birthright citizenship during his first presidential primary campaign. During his first term, Trump claimed he was in the process of drafting an executive order to declare the end birthright citizenship through presidential decree. However, the order was never issued, as mass opposition to his policies weakened his administration and he failed to follow through with his major anti-immigrant initiatives. For instance, when Trump forced a shutdown of the federal government in early 2019 to force Democrats to fund his plan to expand the border wall, President of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA Sara Nelson threatened to organize a general strike of airline workers to close airports across the country. Trump folded.

Nevertheless, he was given a second opportunity to revive these initiatives in his second term.


Surge in White Nationalism Targeting Immigrants


The overturning of birthright citizenship has been a goal of the far right within the state since the advent of the so-called “war on terror” after 9/11 and the full-spectrum authoritarian turn against immigrants. Then-President George W. Bush and a Republican-controlled Congress oversaw the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2003, and further initiated a now more than two-decades’ long bipartisan buildup of the world’s largest anti-immigrant state-repressive apparatus engineered into policy through hundreds of restrictive and punitive laws and executive orders passed through the federal and state governments.

State policy facilitated a surge in white nationalist and far right political movements against immigrants across the U.S. Gun-toting Minutemen groups organized “migrant hunts” at the Mexican border, in immigrant neighborhoods, and at sites where day laborers congregate to look for work; anti-immigrant think tanks such as NumbersUSA, the Center for Immigration Studies, and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, as well as political action committees like “Americans Against Illegal Immigration” sprang to life, bombarding the public with racist and xenophobic propaganda, and political opportunists of all partisan stripes hitched their wagons to the anti-immigrant crusade.

21st-Century Attempts to End Birthright Citizenship

Far right and openly racist agitator and opportunist Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) led an effort in Congress to organize the growing core of anti-immigrant Republicans into an anti-immigrant congressional caucus deceptively named the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus. The caucus’s goal was to promote racist and xenophobic politics, push restrictive and punitive laws to criminalize undocumented workers, and turn public opinion against immigrants. In its founding document, for instance, the group declared: “With the events of September 11th, in the second session of the 107th Congress, the caucus continued to establish and emphasize the link between open borders, unregulated immigration and the potential for terrorism.”

Their efforts culminated in a push through the Republican Party to platform the goal of ending birthright citizenship.

Ultimately, they met fierce resistance from the mass immigrant rights movement that developed and spread across the country in 2006 — which effectively blunted the far right campaign and enabled the Democrats to take back Congress and then the presidency by 2008 with the promise of granting citizenship to the undocumented. Yet, once in power, President Barack Obama and the new Democratic majority in Congress walked back their pledge and followed the Republican playbook in building up the immigrant state repressive apparatus — significantly increasing funding for ICE and Border Patrol, and ramping up detention and deportation. While Obama created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals through executive order before leaving office, it excluded most undocumented people, reinforced the “good immigrant/bad immigrant” narrative of who deserves citizenship, and was rescinded for new applicants by Trump once in office.

Joe Biden was also elected in 2020 making the same campaign promise for legalization, only to again shift to anti-immigration once in power. For example, Biden maintained Trump’s invocation of the Title 42 health provision of the Public Health Service Act of 1944, which allowed U.S. authorities to expel migrants at the border without allowing them to seek asylum based on the racist notion that they “spread disease.”

In both cases, the failures of the Democratic Party resulted in Trump, who capitalized on the demoralization of the Democratic Party base. Trump went on to build the whole “MAGA” brand by deploying the most venal, hateful, cruel, and deadly measures against immigrants, while building up the state repressive forces against immigrants to an unprecedented level.

Upon taking office for his second term on January 20, 2025, one of his first acts was to issue Executive Order 14160, officially titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” which aimed to stop recognizing these U.S.-born children as citizens — ending birthright citizenship. This is a core policy objective of Project 2025, which is the far right playbook that Trump has followed page-by-page during his second term.

Division in the Republican Party

The split within the Trump-aligned ranks in the Supreme Court that have emerged in the ruling on birthright citizenship can be attributed to larger divides emerging within the Republican Party on the question of immigration. The dominant Trump wing of far right, neo-fascist, and reactionary white nationalist forces now in control of the party and state have pursued more extreme and punitive measures to try to detain and expel a large share of the immigrant population from the country.

This has produced tensions within the sectors of the capitalist class that want and need to maintain access to a large pool of undocumented labor, albeit one still criminalized and without citizenship, making it harder to form or join unions, and therefore more vulnerable and exploitable. These opposing views of “how far to go” in the pursuit of anti-immigrant policies before harming the interests of capitalism itself are now coming out into the open. This tension is revealing itself in how more representatives within the minority wing of the Republican party, that directly administer the political interests of capital first, are pushing back against what they consider the impacts of Trump’s policies that have become detrimental to the capitalist class. Ending birthright citizenship would undoubtedly have a seismic impact on the capitalist economy. More workers without status would leave the country, and fewer would migrate into a caste-like existence in the U.S. as permanent laborers without any rights. The U.S. capitalist class does not appear willing to risk such a drastic loss in profit.

Building an Immigrant Rights Movement to Stop Trump

Despite the opposition from the minority wing within his own party, Donald Trump and his MAGA movement will not give up on the matter and will likely shift strategy to again pursue the effort to end birthright citizenship. For example, while the measure didn’t pass this time around, right-wing Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch stated that “they did not see birthright citizenship as a constitutional right for certain groups,” potentially foreshadowing another approach that Trump could take. Trump himself declared he would “go to Congress next” to find a way to end birthright citizenship.

For Trump to retreat, there would need to be an opposition that is able to counter his narratives and demonstrate power on a meaningful scale. The leadership of the Democratic Party has shown that it is not that opposition. Even as we approach the midterm elections, the Democratic Party has not unified around an alternative program or plan to challenge anti-immigrant policy.

The main force of opposition to Trump’s war has to come from the organized working class resisting the attacks by ICE around the country. For example, the mass resistance of people from Minneapolis to “Operation Metro Surge” in early 2026 developed into neighborhood defense groups against ICE raids and kidnappings, and culminated in a mass strike on January 23 that shut down large parts of the economy, ultimately forcing a retreat and withdrawal of the ICE surge. Building protest movements, anti-ICE defense committees, workplace and neighborhood support networks, and mutual aid campaigns, and by organizing working-class power into sustained political movements that include walkouts, shutdowns, and strikes are the only way that we can beat back and weaken Trumpism and bring an end to his reign of terror against immigrants.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Justin Akers Chacón
Justin Akers Chacón is an educator, activist and writer in the San Diego-Tijuana border region. His recent works include The Border Crossed Us: The Case for Opening the US-Mexico Border (Haymarket Books, 2021) and No One is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the US-Mexico Border (with Mike Davis, Haymarket Books, 2nd edition, 2018).

Fact-checking Trump's birthright citizenship claims

Issued on: 01/07/2026 - 

Cover image: TRUTH OR FAKE © FRANCE 24

04:34 min From the show

The US Supreme Court has dealt a major blow to President Donald Trump's bid to end birthright citizenship, ruling that children born in the US are citizens under the Constitution regardless of their parents' immigration status. The decision also casts fresh scrutiny on Trump's repeated claims about the policy, including that the US is the only country with birthright citizenship and that it's driving widespread abuse.

Tuesday's ruling rejects Trump's executive order, signed on the first day of his second term, which sought to deny automatic citizenship to babies born to parents who are in the US unlawfully or temporarily. The court found that such children are "citizens at birth" under the 14th Amendment.

The decision is a significant blow to an immigration policy that has been central to Trump's second-term agenda. For years, Trump and senior members of his administration have denounced birthright citizenship, describing it as unconstitutional and claiming it is widely exploited by undocumented immigrants.

Vice President JD Vance last year called birthright citizenship "the dumbest immigration policy in the world", while White House adviser Stephen Miller described it on X as "the most preposterous of all constitutional abominations".

However, several of the administration's broader claims about birthright citizenship are not supported by the available evidence.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the United States is "the only country" that grants citizenship based on birthplace, which is false.

While many countries do not offer unrestricted birthright citizenship, dozens still do. According to data compiled by the Pew Research Center, at least 32 countries – predominantly across North and South America – automatically grant citizenship to nearly everyone born within their borders, including Canada, Mexico and Argentina. Around 50 others provide more limited forms of birthright citizenship, often based on a parent's citizenship or ancestry.

Trump has also repeatedly argued that birthright citizenship encourages "birth tourism": the practice of deliberately travelling to the US to give birth so a child acquires American citizenship. Following the Supreme Court ruling, he revived the claim in a Truth Social post, sarcastically congratulating Chinese President Xi Jinping on what he called a "birthright win" after previously alleging that wealthy families from China travel to the US specifically for this purpose.

The true scale of "birth tourism" remains difficult to measure. No federal agency tracks births linked to the practice, making reliable national estimates scarce. One of the most widely cited estimates, published in 2020 by the Center for Immigration Studies, suggested that between 20,000 and 26,000 babies were born annually to women who travelled to the US primarily to obtain citizenship for their children. That represents well under 1 percent of the 3.61 million births recorded in the United States that year.

Despite the SCOTUS ruling, the Trump administration says it will intensify its crackdown on alleged "birth tourism" schemes, directing prosecutors to pursue investigations into businesses and individuals accused of facilitating the practice.

Vedika Bahl puts Trump's birthright claims under the microscope in Truth or Fake.

Dismissals of Unfair Labor Practice Charges Have Surged Under Trump

A new report has found that the NLRB has been far more likely to dismiss charges of unfair labor practices under Trump.

By Shireen Akram-Boshar , 

Truthout

PublishedJuly 1, 2026

Protestors demonstrate during a May Day Workers Unite! march in Los Angeles, California, on May 1, 2025. Patrick T. Fallon / AFP

Anew report by the Center for American Progress has found that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has been far more likely to dismiss workers’ and unions’ charges of unfair labor practices since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.

According to research by the Center for American Progress, which analyzed over 40,000 cases brought before the NLRB, the agency dismissed 34.7 percent of unfair labor practice charges by unions between January 1, 2025 and April 29, 2026 – a 14.2 percent increase from 2024. In the same period, the NLRB also dismissed 67.4 percent of charges filed by workers against their employers, a 10.7 percent increase.

On the other hand, workers who filed charges against their unions were only 0.5 percent less likely to have their charges dismissed, indicating a shift in favor of employers.

The report, published on July 1, states that the Trump administration has changed procedures to make it easier for charges against employers to be dismissed. The report also says that the administration has let staffing levels flounder at NLRB offices that investigate unfair labor practices.

New procedures require documentation to be submitted more quickly, with dismissals sent out if documents are not submitted quickly enough. And, according to the report, most types of priority charges can only be filed against unions, not employers.


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Workers have depended on the NLRB to address unfair labor practices, which include interfering with workers’ right to organize or form a union, or union-busting activities like offering raises on the condition that workers vote against a union.

Teke Wiggin, research director at LaborLab, a workers’ rights watchdog that tracks union-busting activity, told Truthout, “Some unions aren’t even bothering to file ULP [Unfair Labor Practice] charges over illegal union-busting, given the declining capacity and shift in priorities under Trump’s NLRB.”

“Similar capacity issues and bias have also plagued the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS),” he said. “Annual reports filed by anti-union consultants plummeted 40 percent between 2024 and 2025 after steadily increasing the previous four years – pointing towards growing confidence among union-busters that they won’t be held accountable to reporting requirements.”

“The degraded capacity and bias at the NLRB and OLMS have created perfect-storm conditions for union-busting,” Wiggin added.

The Center for American Progress report comes in the wake of Monday’s Supreme Court decision in Trump v. Slaughter, which ruled that the president has the constitutional power to remove heads of independent agencies at will. The decision gives Trump a green light to fire heads of agencies like the NLRB, further weakening the NLRB and the organization’s ability to defend workers.

Indeed, at the start of his second term, Trump replaced NLRB leadership with lawyers who previously represented management. He also fired Gwynne Wilcox, the first Black woman to serve on the board, leaving the NLRB without quorum for nearly a year. While Wilcox has been challenging her firing in court, she is now even less likely to be reappointed — despite a judge calling her firing “blatantly illegal” last year.

This is your brain on MAGAspeak — according to science

A supporter of President Donald Trump in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on August 23, 2023 (Image: Shutterstock)

Matthew Rozsa

June 30, 2026

ALTERNET

A recent study in the scientific journal Current Psychology confirms what many opponents of President Donald Trump long suspected — namely, that demagogic rhetoric such as that promulgated by the Republican president destroys popular faith in democracy.

A group of Dutch, Italian and Spanish researchers determined that “exposure to demagogic discourse increased value threat and reduced political tolerance independent of ideological-matching,” according to a June study in the journal Current Psychology. This means that, when demagogic leaders like Trump went mainstream in those societies, they made it easier for their supporters to rationalize being intolerant of those who disagree with them. At the same time, this conclusion was not without its qualifications.

“Yet, in the U.S., effects on tolerance were moderated by satisfaction with democracy,” the authors wrote. “Ultimately, our research validates warnings about the dangers of demagogic political discourses at a psychological level.”


In their abstract, the authors explained that “rather than mere words, demagogic discourse elicits perceived threat in people that goes against democratic plurality. One can only imagine what, for example, sustained exposure to such discourse across an electoral campaign or a presidential term can do. The first experimental evidence we hereby present on the noxious effects of demagogic discourse compels us to take a more in-depth look at how potentially dangerous words are in this context. Alongside the growth of this kind of discourse, there is also a wave of euphemization by those who use it and those who support them, arguing that, even when foul, words are just words. We have provided some first evidence that this is a crude downplay of the implications of political speech, and that demagogic political discourse contributes to setting the table for potentially antidemocratic confrontation.”

The researchers experimented in three batches on groups of roughly 300 participants, the first collection in Spain and the last two in the United States. In all of the experiments, the researchers asked participants to expose themselves to news articles, political speeches and other forms of polemical rhetoric that to ascertain how such exposure altered their ability to empathize with those who hold differing views. They found that, on a consistent basis, individuals who sincerely internalized those beliefs became less compassionate to anyone who did not share their political views.


“First of all, this seems like a very honest study,” Dr. Henry Abraham, psychiatrist and former professor at Tufts University, told AlterNet. “They don't make wild claims, but they do have statistically meaningful findings, which is why it got published in the first place. And, if I understand the study correctly, it does seem like demagogic language does shape the attitudes of individuals hearing it. And those attitudes shift in a definitely less tolerant direction.”

When it comes to the broader implications for society, Dr. Abraham opined that “these folks are social psychologists, and so they're used to looking at many different variables and seeing how they hang together. This study, by my reading of it, doesn't quite do that. It doesn't look at many possible explanations, like how they drew their sample, whether or not membership in the sample reflected a lot of noise in the form of preexisting political ideas and sensitivities to the questions that were differently distributed between the different groups. That's kind of important.”

He added, “I don't really see in this, in my reading of it, whether people were assigned to their groups randomly or non-randomly. If it was random, that's a real plus. If it was non-random, that would be a source of bias, which could ultimately give you these kinds of results without having great long-term validity. So I hate to be a pain in the — academically — but, you know, this is a complex finding. It seems to be reasonably, thoughtfully done, and it has meaning beyond itself in our greater understanding of how people think. That's saying a lot.”

Previous studies have unpacked how the polarizing rhetoric espoused by Trump on the right and analogous radicals on the left influence widespread perceptions about politics. In April, Futurism analyzed three research papers from the scientific publication Journal of Social and Political Psychology revealed that Trump supporters have been conditioned to reject objective facts when that information contradicts the values with which they have been inculcated by Trump’s political movement.

“While each study is highly complex in their own right, together they reinforce the finding that denial of factual information — Trump’s seedy misdeeds, basically — is a direct response to anxiety caused by cognitive dissonance,” Futurism explained.

Research into the psychology of Trump supporters is a rich field, such as a June study which discovered that right-wingers tend to interpret smiling as an act of dominance more than anti-Trumpers and a May study which revealed that Trump supporters tend to be willing to accept personal hardships as long as they believe that marginalized groups such as Black people, the LGBTQ community and other minorities suffer more than themselves.

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As Heat Wave Spreads Across the US, Data Centers Strain Electrical Grids

“Data centers need the most energy exactly when the grid has the least available to give,” said an AI platform CEO.

By Shireen Akram-Boshar , 

Truthout

July 1, 2026

A sign at the "Mother Earth Vs Big Tech" rally in St. Paul, Minnesota on June 26, 2026. The rally was organized based on a petition advocating for a two-year moratorium on the construction of hyperscaled data centers.Michael Siluk / Universal Images Group

A heat wave is spreading across the U.S. this week that will affect over 250 million people from the Midwest to the East Coast.

Last week, a heat dome covered much of Europe, causing over 1,300 excess deaths. This week, a new heat dome is bringing record-shattering heat to two thirds of the U.S. population, affecting areas that normally do not see such high temperatures.

The heat wave is expected to worsen as the week continues. Heat indexes – or how hot the temperature feels to the body, worsened by high humidity – are expected to reach between 100 and 110 degrees over large parts of the country. On Tuesday, the highest heat index value was 113.6 degrees Fahrenheit in southern Illinois.

Temperatures are expected to peak on Thursday and Friday, with cities like Newark, New Jersey, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, expecting actual temperatures of 105 degrees Fahrenheit starting Thursday. Parts of Virginia and North Carolina are expecting four to five consecutive days of 100-degree heat, from Wednesday, July 1 through the July 4 weekend.

Last week, a study from World Weather Attribution found that Europe’s heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” without climate change. Similar findings are expected for this U.S. heat wave.

In France alone, around 1,000 excess deaths were reported during the heat wave last week – hundreds more deaths per day compared with the daily death rate before the heat wave.

Fewer Americans are expected to die from heat in the U.S. than in Europe, largely because the U.S. has far more air conditioning, particularly in homes.

But while air conditioning for households is largely a necessity to deal with the reality of climate change, another source is straining power grids: AI data centers, which have expanded across the U.S. since 2023 in an AI boom and require significant amounts of water, energy, and cooling.

Due to the demands of AI, over 1,500 data centers are currently in development across the U.S. Virginia, which is expected to experience some of the highest temperatures later this week, currently operates over 600 data centers, the highest concentration in the country.

Data centers currently consume roughly 4.5 percent of the total electricity in the U.S., and this number continues to grow. It is expected to reach 10 percent or more by 2030.

Scientists have also found that data centers are creating “heat islands,” warming the temperatures in the areas around them, even over 6 miles away.

Even tech CEOs are admitting a problem. “Extreme heat stresses data centers and the grid they rely on at the same time,” Mishal Thadani, the CEO of AI platform Rhizome, explained to CNBC this week. Cooling already makes up around 40 percent of data centers’ energy use at normal temperatures, and this amount rises as the temperature rises. “Data centers need the most energy exactly when the grid has the least available to give.”

In Europe, the record-breaking heat wave caused power outages that left 68,000 households without electricity on Tuesday night and Wednesday last week.

“Now add facilities that each pull as much power as a hundred thousand homes,” Thadani said.

Regional grid operators in the U.S. have said that they are expecting record electricity demands this week, which also carry risk of blackouts.

Blackouts in turn amplify mortality and morbidity rates, with one 2023 study concluding that blackouts combined with heat wave conditions can “more than double the estimated rate of heat-related mortality.”

As awareness grows around the threats of data centers, more people are opposing them, and campaigns are growing to stop their spread.

Federal Judge Says Anti-Trump Group’s “86-47” Flag Is Protected Political Speech

The judge concluded that the organization intended the numbers to mean Trump “should be removed from office.”

By Chris Walker , 

Truthout

July 1, 2026

A protestors waves a flag that says "86-47" during a rally to support same-sex marriage in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on November 7, 2025.Samuel Corum / Getty Images


A federal judge has placed a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the National Park Service (NPS), restricting the agency from barring an organization opposed to President Donald Trump from displaying an “86-47” flag and other signage during their protests.

Accountability NOW USA, a group that advocates for Trump to be impeached and removed from the White House, has been protesting the president for 24 hours per day, seven days per week, since December. Earlier this year, they started using a flag that had the numbers “86-47” on it.

“86” is commonly understood to mean “get rid of” or “throw out,” especially in the restaurant world. Some interpret the number to mean “kill,” though the organization has said that they are not using the number in that manner. “47” refers to Trump, as he is the 47th president of the United States.

In addition to the flag, Accountability NOW demonstrators have held up signs alleging that Trump is a sexual abuser of children, citing unverified documents released from the Epstein files.

NPS and the Secret Service demanded the signs come down in April, calling them “unprotected obscenity,” and threatening to “impose and enforce permit conditions” to bar Accountability NOW from protesting at the George Meade statue in Washington, D.C., which is on NPS-managed land.


Trump Brags That He “Took the Freedom of Speech Away” From Protesters
Trump bragged about his administration seeking to ban flag burning, which is protected speech. By Sharon Zhang , Truthout  October 9, 2025

The organization filed a request for a TRO on those demands shortly after, while their lawsuit demanding their signage not be restricted continues.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss granted the TRO request, stating that NPS could not restrict the group’s signage and flag use, as it would restrict their free speech rights protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Moss, recognizing the multiple meanings behind “86,” noted that the government failed to prove the organizers were threatening the president’s life, and that NPS claims did not meet the standard allowing for restrictions of speech under a doctrine called “true threat.”

“The uncontroverted evidence demonstrates that Plaintiff [Accountability NOW] lacked any subjective intent to threaten or to harm the President and that it merely sought to use the flag to communicate that ‘Trump shouldn’t be in office,'” Moss recognized, adding:


The question whether ‘8647’ constitutes a true threat cannot be resolved in the abstract, without consideration of context, and, here, the relevant context makes clear that no reasonable observer could have viewed Plaintiff’s display of the flag as a threat to the President’s life or physical safety.

The signs and the flag “might outrage or offend some, but they do not, by any measure, cross the line from protected political speech to unprotected obscenity,” Moss said.

“The principal difficulty with the government’s argument is that the overall and overwhelming message the Plaintiff has conveyed, and hopes to continue to convey, is that President Trump should be removed from office by constitutional means,” Moss wrote in his opinion granting the TRO, concluding that the “86-47” flag “is protected speech.

Accountability NOW members celebrated the ruling.

“We at Accountability NOW are pleased that the Court has upheld our First Amendment right to display signs addressing the President’s alleged sex crimes, as well as our peaceful 8647 flags and artwork, at our 24/7 demonstration,” said organizer Anita Carey. “We will continue to exercise our constitutional right to lawfully and peacefully call for the President’s impeachment, conviction, and removal from office.”

“As the nation celebrates 250 years of independence, this ruling underscores the enduring importance of public dissent in our democracy,” Carey added.

“Again and again, the National Park Service has tried to shut down this speech simply because it is critical of Donald Trump,” said Aditi Shah, staff attorney at ACLU-D.C., who represents the organization in the case. “The definitions of ‘obscenity’ and ‘true threat’ are narrow and for good reason; the government should not have wide latitude to shut down critical speech using ‘obscenity’ and purported ‘threats’ as covers.”

The case has notable parallels to charges the Department of Justice (DOJ) brought against former FBI director James Comey earlier this year.

In 2025, Comey shared an image of seashells on social media arranged to make up the same numbers — “86 47” — before deleting the post when users responded by explaining the number “86” can sometimes mean “kill.”

Prosecutors in that case will likely have to overcome the same “true threat” standard for Comey that NPS failed to demonstrate with Accountability NOW.

“Under First Amendment jurisprudence, a threat may be prosecuted only if it amounts to a ‘true’ threat, which the Supreme Court has defined as a serious expression conveying that a speaker means to commit an act of unlawful violence,” MS NOW legal analyst Barbara McQuade said at the time charges were brought against Comey.