A presidential commission with zero Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, or nonreligious members is racing to publish a "religious liberty" report, and a federal court may be the only thing standing between that document and permanent policy cover.

Update—June 11, 2026: The preliminary injunction hearing was not postponed again past its rescheduled June 4, 2026, date, and the Southern District of New York held a follow-up telephone conference with the parties on June 8. As of June 9, the court docket reflects no ruling on the motion and lists the case as ongoing, and there is no public confirmation that the commission's final report has been released. The decision will be tracked on the (https://clearinghouse.net/case/47804/). Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse docket.*

A preliminary injunction hearing was originally scheduled for May 28, 2026, in the Southern District of New York and rescheduled to June 4, 2026. On one side: a multifaith coalition arguing that Trump's Religious Liberty Commission violated federal transparency and balance law. On the other: an administration that waited until the night before a court deadline to release documents it had been hiding for months.

The commission, created by executive order on May 1, 2025, stacked with conservative Christian allies and scheduled to run through July 4, 2026, abruptly announced in March 2026 that it was wrapping up early and holding its final hearing. No reason was offered. But a federal lawsuit had been filed two months prior, and the timing wasn't subtle.

Whether that court issues a ruling before the final report drops and what that ruling says will determine whether this commission's output enters permanent circulation as the official conclusions of a "Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty," or gets labeled as what the plaintiffs say it actually is: the product of an unlawfully constituted body.

The stakes extend well beyond any injunction order.

What Is the Religious Liberty Commission?

President Trump established the Religious Liberty Commission by Executive Order 14291 on May 1, 2025. The commission is housed within the Department of Justice and tasked with identifying "threats to religious liberty" in the United States, then producing a final report with policy recommendations for the White House Faith Office and the Domestic Policy Council.

The appointed chair is Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. Former HUD Secretary Ben Carson serves as vice chair. The Attorney General, HUD Secretary, and White House Domestic Policy Assistant are all ex officio members, giving the commission direct connections to three federal agencies best positioned to act immediately on its recommendations.

The commission's term was set to expire on July 4, 2026. The White House specifically flagged the Semiquincentennial date as symbolic in its fact sheet.

Between June 2025 and April 2026, the commission held seven formal hearings, all at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.—DOJ Religious Liberty Commission. Then, in March 2026, roughly three months before its July 4, 2026, charter expiration, it announced it was wrapping up early and holding its final hearing.

No official explanation was given.

Presidential advisory commissions like this one have real consequences. Their reports are cited in executive orders, attached to federal regulatory filings, and invoked in DOJ litigation as evidence of expert-informed policy. The Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 (FACA) was enacted specifically to prevent advisory bodies from becoming captured instruments; it requires transparency, public access to documents, and, critically, fair balance in membership that reflects diverse viewpoints.

The Religious Liberty Commission is the most direct challenge to those guardrails in a generation.

Who's on It and Who's Conspicuously Not

Of the 13 official commissioners, 12 are Christian and one is an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik of Congregation Shearith Israel. No Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, or nonreligious American sits on the commission's voting body.

The commission has three advisory boards—religious leaders, lay leaders, and legal experts—that include a small number of non-Christian members. Advisory board members have no vote over the final report.

Consider who is voting:

Eric Metaxas, a conservative media figure, called Islam a "death cult" and wrote that Islam is "incompatible with American values" and is "NOT a religion" in February 2025—Media Matters for America, May 2025.

Franklin Graham, President and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, has described Islam as "evil" and "a religion of war," called for closing America to Muslim immigration, and opposed Duke University allowing a Friday call to prayer—BJC; CAIR.

Ryan T. Anderson, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, opposes same-sex marriage and gender-affirming care. EPPC has documented organizational connections to Project 2025, where it serves on the advisory board—EPPC.

Kelly Shackelford, President and CEO of First Liberty Institute, serves as the commission's built-in legal advocate. First Liberty represents clients in religious liberty cases expected to be cited in the commission's final report—First Liberty Institute. He is both advising the commission and preparing to use its output in litigation.

Paula White-Cain, Trump's White House Faith Office liaison, provides a direct channel from the commission to the Oval Office.

The commission also briefly included Carrie Prejean Boller until Dan Patrick ousted her in February 2026 after she used a hearing on antisemitism to defend a commentator promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories and quoted scripture attributing Jesus's death to Jews. She challenged Patrick's authority to remove her, asserting only Trump could do so—NBC News, February 2026; JTA, February 2026.

There is also Sameerah Munshi, the only Muslim woman in any formal role connected to the commission. She had accepted a seat on the advisory board "hesitantly," in her own words, because she believed someone needed to remain "a voice of reason" for American Muslims inside a body that would shape federal religious liberty policy.

She watched the antisemitism hearing. She watched the Boller removal. She resigned in March 2026, posting her resignation statement:

Her experience is not incidental to this story. It is the story. The commission did not include her. It used her. When she refused to continue, it lost even the pretense of representation—Newsweek, March 2026; JTA, March 13, 2026.

"Religious liberty means religious liberty for everyone, not just one faith community. By stacking this Religious Liberty Commission with a narrow set of voices and hiding the commission's work from the public eye, the Trump administration is evading the transparency and balance that federal law requires." — Ria Chakrabarty, Senior Policy Director, Hindus for Human Rights, February 2026

Pew Research Center data shows 1.2% of U.S. adults identify as Muslim, 1.1% as Buddhist, and 0.9% as Hindu, which is tens of millions of Americans. None sit on this commission. And according to ISPU's 2025 survey, 63% of Muslim Americans report experiencing religious discrimination, the highest rate of any religious group surveyed.

A body with zero representation from the communities most likely to face government-sanctioned discrimination is advising the president on how to protect religious liberty. That is not a balance problem. It is a design feature.

Why the Rush? The Report and the Lawsuit

On February 9, 2026, a multifaith coalition filed suit in the Southern District of New York: *Interfaith Alliance v. Trump*, 1:26-cv-01075. Plaintiffs include Interfaith Alliance, Muslims for Progressive Values, SALDEF (Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund), and Hindus for Human Rights. Legal representation comes from Democracy Forward and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

The complaint alleges two FACA violations. First: the commission represents only conservative Judeo-Christian perspectives, while FACA requires advisory bodies to reflect diverse viewpoints. Second: the commission failed to post meeting transcripts publicly, agendas, hearing summaries, or witness testimony, all documents the law requires to be disclosed.

Six weeks after the lawsuit was filed, the commission announced it was wrapping up. On March 16, 2026, it set its final hearing for April 13. No reason was offered for the early conclusion—Democracy Forward, April 2, 2026.

At that final hearing, Commission Chair Dan Patrick delivered the line that has since been quoted in every major outlet covering this story:

Then, on the night before a court-imposed litigation deadline in early May 2026, the government filed a notice with the SDNY that it had finally posted the previously withheld transcripts, hearing summaries, and meeting minutes. Democracy Forward called the release "a resounding concession by the government."

The pattern is legible: refuse to post documents, announce an abrupt early conclusion once sued, and release documents only under court deadline pressure. This is what an administration looks like when it knows its process cannot survive scrutiny.

The plaintiffs are seeking three things: a declaration that the commission violated FACA, an order requiring publication of all documents, and a requirement that any published report be labeled as coming from an unlawfully constituted commission. Even a denial of the full injunction leaves that labeling demand on the table as an accountability tool.

"As a Muslim American organization, we have seen firsthand how elevating a singular religion above others leads to the oppression and possible persecution of minority faiths." — Ani Zonneveld, President and Founder, Muslims for Progressive Values, February 9, 2026

What the Report Will Be Used For

Presidential commission reports do not carry the force of law. They carry something more durable: official government imprimatur. Reports like this get cited in executive orders, attached to regulatory filings, and invoked in DOJ litigation as evidence of an expert-informed policy basis. Once published, this one has no expiration date.

At the April 13 final hearing, commissioners presented their wish list for the report. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer / Religion News Service and Religion News Service, reported proposals include:

• DOJ intervention on behalf of Amish parents fighting New York vaccine requirements and Catholic nuns challenging requirements to accommodate hospice patients' gender identities

• Expanded religious expression in public schools mirroring the Department of Education's February 5, 2026, guidance on prayer in public schools, issued without public notice while commission hearings on the same topic were ongoing

These are not fringe asks. Similar bills advancing religious organizations' immunity from accountability have been proposed or advanced in Arizona, South Carolina, and Montana, aligned with the commission's philosophy, and have been flagged by the ACLU as part of a broader national pattern.

The Supreme Court helped too. Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin and Mahmoud v. Taylor both produced religious liberty victories in 2025, creating favorable litigation terrain for the commission's proposed exemptions.

By the time the final report lands, a coordinated infrastructure of federal guidance, state legislation, and favorable Supreme Court precedent will already be in place. The report is not the beginning of this agenda. It is the ratification document.

What It Means

The commission's name does a lot of heavy lifting. "Religious liberty" sounds universal. The commission is not.

Twelve of 13 voting commissioners are Christian. None represent the 100 million Americans who are Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, nonreligious, or belong to faiths not represented in a Judeo-Christian frame. The plaintiffs' complaint on file in federal court alleges that all 13 commissioners collectively affirm the United States was founded as a "Judeo-Christian nation" which is a historically contested and legally consequential claim.

What's been built is a body with a direct pipeline to the White House and DOJ, producing a report on religious freedom for all Americans that was written by representatives of one religious tradition, insulated from public scrutiny, and rushed to completion once a federal lawsuit threatened to expose what the process actually looked like.

The Federal Advisory Committee Act exists precisely to prevent this. Whether the Southern District of New York enforces it is now one of the most consequential religious liberty questions of this moment, and "religious liberty" here means liberty for every American this commission was never designed to represent.

Share

What's Next

SDNY ruling on the preliminary injunction. The preliminary injunction hearing was scheduled for May 28, 2026, and rescheduled to June 4, 2026, which proceeded without further postponement; the court held a telephone conference with the parties on June 8, and as of June 9, 2026, no ruling had been issued. A ruling blocking the report's publication would be immediate and consequential. A denial would accelerate the report's release and make the labeling demand by requiring the report to identify itself as coming from an unlawfully constituted body, which is the central remaining ask. Track the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse docket for updates.

Publication of the final report. The commission announced publication on or around May 1, 2026; as of early June, it had not publicly appeared. When it drops, watch which federal agencies cite it in rule-making filings within 60 days. DOJ, the Department of Education, and HHS are the most likely early adopters.

Commission extension past July 4, 2026. Trump retains authority to extend the commission by executive order past its semiquincentennial expiration date. If he does this, particularly after a court ruling, it signals the administration intends to use this body as a continuing governance tool, not a one-time advisory commission.

State-level immunity bills. Watch for floor votes in Arizona, South Carolina, and Montana this summer. Any legislation citing the commission's report as a factual basis would demonstrate the downstream infrastructure functioning exactly as designed.

What You Can Do

Follow the lawsuit in real time. Americans United for Separation of Church and State maintains a dedicated tracking hub at au.org/religious-liberty-commission with case filings, action alerts, and ongoing developments. The full docket is publicly available at the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse.

Contact your senators and representatives now, before the report lands. Find your senators and representatives. A report circulated as official government findings carries more political weight the longer it sits unchallenged. Congressional oversight hearings are one check that does not require a court ruling.

Support the organizations on the front lines. Democracy Forward, Americans United, Interfaith Alliance, and Hindus for Human Rights are litigating and organizing simultaneously. Their work is the mechanism by which the FACA law actually gets enforced.

Watch your state legislature. Bills advancing blanket religious immunity for organizations have been proposed in Arizona, South Carolina, and Montana in alignment with the commission's philosophy. If you live in those states, this is your most immediate action point.

Share

Leave a comment

Methods & Verification: This article draws on primary government sources — including Executive Order 14291 (Federal Register), White House fact sheets, DOJ commissioner listings, and the full complaint filed in Interfaith Alliance v. Trump (SDNY 1:26-cv-01075) — along with Democracy Forward press releases, Americans United case filings, and original reporting from Religion News Service, Philadelphia Inquirer, JTA, NBC News, and Newsweek. All quotes are sourced to their original publication with full attribution. Commission composition data was verified against the DOJ's official commissioner listing and confirmed in the federal complaint. The SDNY preliminary injunction ruling was pending as of publication.

Sources

• Wild Hunt — Pagan and non-Christian community perspectives on the lawsuit, February 2026

• Berkley Center, Georgetown University — academic analysis of representation concerns and First Amendment implications

• Americans United case page — full case filings and litigation updates

• Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Study, 2023–24 — religious demographics cited in membership analysis

Florida's HB 1471 was sold to the press as a religious law ban, but the statute's real teeth are a state-level domestic terrorism designation machine that could target any group the governor decides to call an enemy.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 1471 on April 6, 2026, and the press coverage did exactly what his office intended: it led with "Sharia ban." That framing was a gift, and the media accepted it. Buried inside the same statute, past the religious law provision that legal scholars call largely redundant, is new state-level infrastructure for designating domestic organizations as terrorist entities, stripping them of all public funding, and hitting anyone who "knowingly" supports them with up to 30 years in prison. No prior court review is required. No definition of "promotion." The law takes effect July 1. You have 22 days.

What HB 1471 Actually Says (Past the Headline)

The official title of HB 1471 is "Systems of Law and Terrorist Organizations." Two legally distinct regimes, packaged into one bill.

The foreign law provision does what it sounds like: it bars Florida courts from applying religious or foreign law that violates constitutional rights. DeSantis called it "the most robust action against Sharia law of any state in the country." That's the line that ran in the headlines. What the headlines didn't report: according to the Brennan Center for Justice, proponents of foreign law bans have never cited a single documented instance of a U.S. court applying Islamic law in a manner that violated an American's constitutional rights. The "Sharia ban" solves a problem that does not exist.

Seven states had already enacted foreign law bans before Florida: Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama, and South Dakota. None of them paired the provision with a domestic terrorism designation apparatus. Florida's HB 1471 is categorically different from every version that came before it, and the difference is what matters.

The enrolled statute, available in full at the Florida Senate, creates a new domestic terrorist organization designation framework with no clear precedent anywhere in state law. The Sharia provision is the headline. The terrorism clause is the story.

The Domestic Terrorism Clause Nobody's Talking About

Here is what the designation machinery actually looks like under HB 1471.

Florida's Chief of Domestic Security, housed within the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, may recommend an organization for terrorist designation. That recommendation goes to the Governor and three Cabinet members, who have seven days to approve or reject it. Five people. Seven days. No public comment. No independent judicial review before the designation takes effect.

The law defines "terrorist activity" as acts intended to "intimidate" a civilian population or "influence the policy of a government by intimidation." Neither term is defined in the statute. The ACLU of Florida identifies the same vocabulary problem with "promotion" and "affiliation," two words the law uses repeatedly without defining either, creating what the ACLU calls "arbitrary enforcement risk."

"HB 1471 is a dangerous expansion of government power that threatens all of our fundamental civil liberties. Government officials could use this legislation to go after groups in Florida with the consequential, stigmatizing designation of 'domestic terrorist' without clear standards or adequate due process protections."

— ACLU of Florida, press statement on HB 1471

Once a designation is approved, the consequences are immediate and sweeping. State funding and contracts are frozen. Organizational assets become exposed to seizure. Anyone who "knowingly" provides or conspires to provide "material support" to a designated organization faces a first-degree felony, punishable by up to 30 years in prison. The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL) notes that the penalty is harsher than many federal equivalents.

Students at schools found to have "terrorist affiliations" are expelled and stripped of all financial aid, scholarships, in-state tuition classification, fee waivers, and tuition assistance.

Tyler Coward, Lead Counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, put it plainly in Reason (April 8, 2026): "Although the government can prohibit material support for foreign terrorist organizations, mere advocacy in support of these organizations remains protected by the First Amendment."

The Florida House bill analysis from February 2026, written by committee staff, not opponents, documented constitutional concerns about First Amendment and due process vulnerabilities. The bill passed the House 81-26 anyway.

CAIR-Florida's Legal Challenge and What the Injunction Means

This law did not emerge from nowhere. It is the second act of a campaign that began December 8, 2025, when DeSantis signed Executive Order 25-244, designating CAIR-Florida and the Muslim Brotherhood as "foreign terrorist organizations" and directing every state and local agency in Florida to deny them contracts, employment, funding, and benefits. CAIR-Florida, the SPLC, the Muslim Legal Fund of America, and the firm Akeel & Valentine sued immediately.

On March 4, 2026, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker blocked the executive order. His words were unsparing: the First Amendment bars the governor from "continuing a troubling trend of using an executive office to make a political statement at the expense of others' constitutional rights." Scott McCoy, the SPLC's deputy legal director, called it "a decisive victory for the Constitution and for the principle that no governor can place themselves above the law." (CAIR/SPLC press release, March 4, 2026)

DeSantis's response was not to accept the loss. He converted his preferred authority into statute. He signed HB 1471 on April 6, exactly 33 days after the court blocked his executive order. Then, on April 20, he appealed to the 11th Circuit. Oral argument was held on May 14, 2026. As of publication, the 11th Circuit has not ruled.

Three things about the legal situation that every reader needs to understand:

First: The preliminary injunction covers the December 2025 executive order. It does not cover HB 1471. The statute is a separate legal instrument that takes effect July 1 regardless of what the 11th Circuit does with the executive order appeal.

Second: CAIR-Florida has pledged to challenge any designation made under HB 1471 and told CBS News it was "ready to sue again."

Third: The damage happens before the gavel falls. After DeSantis signed his executive order in December 2025, a Florida production company withdrew from an active podcast agreement with CAIR-National. Not because of new information. Because the governor had called them terrorists. Contractors sought legal guidance. Partners paused relationships. The executive order operated for nearly three months before a court stopped it. Three months of operational disruption, fundraising suppression, and contractor flight, all before any judicial ruling on the merits.

HB 1471 codifies the same designation authority. Litigation timelines do not begin on the effective date. The window between July 1 and any court injunction is when the law's real function operates, not in the courtroom, but in the conference rooms of every organization, funder, and contractor in Florida calculating whether doing business with a designated group is worth the risk of a 30-year felony.

Hiba Rahim, Executive Director of CAIR-Florida, was direct: "We have already been unjustly targeted—most notably when Governor DeSantis falsely labeled CAIR as terrorists without lawful authority or evidence." (CAIR-Florida press statement, April 7, 2026)

Who Is Actually Targeted and Who Should Be Worried

The Muslim community, CAIR-Florida, the state's approximately 22 Islamic private schools, and pro-Palestinian campus organizations are the most immediately and concretely at risk. Two Tampa-area Islamic schools, Hifz Academy and Bayaan Academy, have already faced Cabinet scrutiny over their state voucher funding, despite no evidence that either teaches Sharia law. Together, those two schools have received more than $18 million in voucher scholarships over the past decade, per Florida Phoenix. Under HB 1471's "terrorist affiliation" clause, every one of those scholarships is at risk if any associated organization is designated under the statute.

The law's language does not stop at Muslim communities.

"Intimidating" a civilian population or "influencing government policy by intimidation" describes conduct common to many confrontational but constitutionally protected advocacy tactics: environmental direct-action campaigns, racial justice demonstrations, reproductive rights sit-ins, and pro-Palestinian rallies. The Charity & Security Network has documented that the law's vague standards give state officials broad discretion to target groups engaged in religious, charitable, and social justice work, "without notice, clear standards, independent and meaningful oversight, or basic due process."

"This is not just about CAIR. This expanded and deeply-flawed framework can attack any organization that dares to dissent. As Floridians, together, we'll watch how this unprecedented law is enforced, and whether it is used or abused."

— Hiba Rahim, Executive Director, CAIR-Florida, Florida Phoenix, April 7, 2026

For students, the exposure is more direct. DeSantis directed Florida's State University System to deactivate all Students for Justice in Palestine chapters statewide in 2023, though several universities refused to comply, citing constitutional concerns. HB 1471 codifies a mechanism, mandatory expulsion plus total financial aid revocation, that can reach any student who "promotes" a designated organization. The University of Miami Race & Social Justice Review put it plainly: "A student who chants 'free Palestine,' posts on social media in solidarity with a group later designated under HB 1471, or attends a campus rally does not thereby endorse 'extralegal violence.' Yet, the statute's broad language can easily cover this conduct."

Stanford law professor Shirin Sinnar told Salon (April 17, 2026) what makes this different from anything that has come before: "It is unprecedented for a state to claim the authority to designate terrorist organizations. You don't want localities or states getting into the business of designating their enemies or their political adversaries or the people they disagree with as terrorists."

Florida and Indiana are the only two states to have enacted state-level terrorism designation laws for domestic organizations. Model legislation tends to spread. The ICNL is tracking which states may be next.

What It Means

HB 1471 is not a Sharia story. It is a state-level authoritarian infrastructure story, and the Muslim community is the proof of concept.

The foreign law provision is largely redundant. The Constitution, including the First, Due Process, and Equal Protection clauses, already provides courts with the tools to reject any application of foreign or religious law that violates constitutional rights. The "Sharia ban" is the wrapper. The domestic terrorism designation apparatus is the payload.

What DeSantis has built is a mechanism to impose costs on political adversaries before any court acts. The designation doesn't have to survive judicial review to cause months of organizational disruption: cancelled contracts, frozen funding, staff departures, and funder flight. The executive order proved the model. The statute scales it and insulates it from the kind of rapid executive reversal that courts can sometimes impose.

The ACLU of Florida has warned that HB 1471 is "a dangerous expansion of government power that threatens all of our fundamental civil liberties" — that government officials "could use this legislation to go after groups in Florida with the consequential, stigmatizing designation of 'domestic terrorist' without clear standards or adequate due process protections." (ACLU of Florida)

The chilling effect is documented and intentional. That's the point.

What's Next

July 1, 2026, is the HB 1471, effective date. The statute takes effect regardless of the 11th Circuit's ruling on the executive order appeal. Whether CAIR-Florida or any other organization is designated on or shortly after July 1 will determine the law's immediate real-world impact.

11th Circuit ruling—CAIR v. DeSantis. Oral argument was held on May 14, 2026. No ruling has been issued as of publication. If the 11th Circuit upholds Judge Walker's injunction, it reinforces the constitutional barriers to state-level designation of civil rights organizations. If it reverses, it signals that state executives can impose terrorist labels on civil rights groups without adequate due process and makes HB 1471's July 1 activation significantly more dangerous. Track coverage at Florida Phoenix and WUSF.

Islamic school voucher reviews. Cabinet scrutiny of Hifz Academy and Bayaan Academy predates HB 1471's effective date. Once the designation machinery activates, the affiliation clause threatens voucher funding for all 22 of Florida's Islamic private schools. Watch for any Cabinet action on voucher eligibility post-July 1st. Per WLRN/NPR, approximately 22 Islamic private schools operate in Florida.

National spread. ICNL is documenting which states are next. Their tracker is updated in real time at icnl.org. Florida was the first to build a fully independent state-level terrorism designation apparatus. It will not be the last.

What You Can Do

- Support CAIR-Florida's legal defense. The organization challenging this law in court needs resources to sustain litigation. Donate directly at cairflorida.org.

- Take action through the ACLU of Florida. The ACLU has an active advocacy page where you can contact Florida legislators and track the legal fight. action.aclu.org/send-message/fl-stop-political-targeting

- Know your organization's exposure. If you work with or fund any Florida-based advocacy organization, nonprofit, or civil society group, understand what "material support" means under HB 1471's language before July 1. The law's vagueness is not an accident. It is the mechanism of intimidation.

- Track the 11th Circuit ruling. The appellate decision on the executive order will be the clearest signal of where courts are heading on state-level terrorism designation. Follow Florida Phoenix's CAIR coverage for real-time updates.

- Tell the full story. Most coverage of HB 1471 has led with the Sharia angle. The terrorism designation clause is the story. Share it.

Share

Methods & Verification: All major factual claims—the designation chain structure, the 30-year felony penalty, the July 1 effective date, the injunction date, and the 11th Circuit appeal timeline—are confirmed by at least two independent sources, including primary legal documents (enrolled statute, bill analysis, Governor's press release), federal court records, and reporting from Florida Phoenix, WUSF, Salon, and Reason. The podcast cancellation is documented in the federal court complaint and cited in Judge Walker's injunction order. The $18 million voucher figure comes from Florida Phoenix's reporting on the specific schools named by the Florida Cabinet. Quotes are attributed to named individuals with full source citation; no anonymous sources are used.

Sources

• JURIST News: "Florida allows state designation of domestic terrorist organizations" — April 2026, international legal news perspective

• FlaglerLive: "Florida Cabinet Questions Voucher Dollars Going to Muslim Schools, But Not Christian Schools" — Cabinet selective scrutiny of Muslim vs. Christian private schools

• Stanford Law: "Red State Governors Are Designating Civil Rights Groups as Terrorists" — academic context on national pattern

• Florida Senate Bill Summary (2026) — legislative summary of HB 1471

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Senate Republicans just voted to debate a $72 billion blank check for ICE and CBP with no oversight provisions, no annual review, and no reckoning for two American citizens already killed by federal agents this year.

The Senate voted 53-46 on June 3 to open debate on a $72 billion immigration enforcement package, strictly along party lines. The vote-a-rama is coming the night of June 4. If that passes, the House could vote Friday.

Once signed, this money is locked in through fiscal year 2029. No annual review. No congressional reporting requirements. No facility inspection rights. No spending directives.

Democrats spent months demanding accountability provisions as the price of DHS funding: body cameras, judicial warrant requirements, independent investigations of agent-caused deaths. Every single reform was rejected. The bill that emerged contains none of them.

This isn't a border security investment with some paperwork gaps. It is a structural accountability void, engineered deliberately, presented as fiscal policy.

What's Actually in the $72 Billion DHS Reconciliation Bill

The top-line figure is $72 billion. The Congressional Budget Office projects the real cost at approximately $94 billion once financing costs are included.

Here is what that money buys, per Roll Call's analysis of the bill text:

• $38.2 billion for ICE: $30.73 billion for hiring, training, deportation transportation, IT systems, and 287(g) local law enforcement partnerships; $7.45 billion for Homeland Security Investigations

• $26+ billion for CBP: $22.6 billion for Border Patrol and agency personnel, $3.45 billion for surveillance technology including artificial intelligence and machine learning systems

• $10 billion for detention expansion: targeted at building toward a 50,000-bed baseline, even as the system already houses more than 70,000 people

All of it available as a lump sum through 2029. No annual review. No reprogramming restrictions.

This is not the first major enforcement package.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed in July 2025, delivered $170.7 billion for immigration enforcement, including $75 billion for ICE over four years and a roughly 400% increase in ICE's annual detention budget compared to the prior year. The Brennan Center for Justice described the combined packages as representing a buildup of domestic law enforcement without precedent in peacetime American history.

The money is already flowing. ICE is converting commercial warehouses into detention facilities under what it calls a "Detention Re-engineering Initiative." The ACLU documented ICE paying $102.4 million for a Maryland warehouse appraised at $76.8 million, $87 million for a Pennsylvania warehouse, and $122.8 million for an 826,780-square-foot facility near El Paso. If the full expansion proceeds, simultaneous detention capacity would reach 96,600 people.

"Long-term detention and surveillance contracts, rapid hiring increases for enforcement, and new monetary incentives for reprioritizing law enforcement on immigration will create a deportation-industrial complex — an enforcement machine with financial and political constituencies that will outlast this administration."

— Brennan Center for Justice, 2026

Nearly 90 percent of people in ICE custody are held in facilities run by for-profit firms, according to the Brennan Center. GEO Group reported $254 million in profit in its most recent year, a roughly 700% increase over 2024, driven by ICE detention contracts, per Common Dreams. CoreCivic reported $116.5 million in 2025 profits, a nearly 70% year-over-year increase, per NOTUS.

The 287(g) program deputizes local police as immigration enforcement. The ACLU documented ICE expanding those local law enforcement partnerships from 135 contracts in December 2024 to at least 1,712 contracts across 40 states by April 2026. The reconciliation bill funds between $1.4 billion and $2 billion annually for those partnerships, turning local police departments into immigration enforcement arms in communities that never voted for that role.

Zero Accountability: What Got Left Out

The federal appropriations process has oversight mechanisms built in as standard infrastructure: annual review cycles, facility inspection rights, spending directives, and reporting mandates. These are not extras. They are the baseline conditions under which federal agencies spend public money.

Budget reconciliation is a financing mechanism, not an authorization bill. Choosing reconciliation over appropriations strips those mechanisms out. That choice was deliberate.

The American Immigration Council made the accountability void explicit: since February 14, Democrats demanded warrant requirements, professional law enforcement standards, body camera mandates, and independent death investigations as the price of DHS funding. Every reform was rejected. The bill contains none of those provisions.

"Because these funds are provided through reconciliation — and not the regular appropriations process — they do not include directives about how the funds must be used, which prevents members of Congress from conducting meaningful oversight."

— American Immigration Council, June 2026

The Congressional Budget Office flagged the problem in understated agency language: "There is considerable uncertainty over the pace of spending given the lack of guardrails on when the money can be spent," per the CBO's May 2026 cost estimate.

The accountability void extends into how ICE trains the agents it's now hiring at record speed. ICE lowered its recruit age from 21 to 18, waived the 37-year-old hiring cap, and slashed the training academy from 22 weeks to 47 days. The number was reportedly chosen because Trump is the 47th president, per CNN's February 2026 analysis and Detroit News reporting. Brookings Institution scholars Gabriel Sanchez and Rashawn Ray documented that ICE's expansion has structurally outpaced any accountability mechanism.

ICE met its legally required 48-hour death notice deadline in only 15 of 49 cases since January 2025. The agency that can't meet its own reporting requirements is about to receive $38 billion with no reporting requirements attached.

Two U.S. Citizens Dead, No Reckoning in the Bill

Renée Nicole Good, 37, was shot by ICE deportation officer Jonathan Ross on January 7 in Minneapolis's Central neighborhood during a mass enforcement operation called Operation Metro Surge. The Intercept identified the shooter the following day. An autopsy commissioned by her family found she was shot in the head. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said during a CNN interview that federal authorities claimed her vehicle was used as a weapon, a characterization disputed by local officials and video evidence.

Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, a licensed intensive care nurse employed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, was shot and killed by CBP officers Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez on January 24 while observing protests that followed Good's killing. He wasn't marching. He was watching. ProPublica identified both agents by name on February 1 after examining government records, a disclosure the federal government had not made.

The initial White House account described Pretti as threatening agents with a weapon. An internal government assessment obtained by NPR made no mention of Pretti attacking or threatening officers with a weapon.

Minnesota, Hennepin County, and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension filed suit on March 24 against the DOJ and DHS, alleging the defendants were withholding investigative evidence about both killings and the separate shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis, documented by ProPublica and the Minnesota Reformer. The federal government handed over evidence in Good's case on May 6, only after court compulsion. As of April 10, NPR confirmed that a federal accountability mechanism "remains elusive."

"The ICE shooting investigations are a 'Complete Aberration.'"

— The Marshall Project, characterizing legal experts' assessment, January 2026

The $72 billion reconciliation bill contains no provision requiring a federal investigation of either killing. No use-of-force standard. No body camera mandate. No independent review process.

ICE fired at people nine times across five states and D.C. between September 2025 and January 2026, before the Minneapolis killings, per the American Immigration Council. At least 17 people died in ICE custody in the first four months of 2026 alone, a rate of roughly one per week, per Democracy Now. The fiscal year 2026 death toll, counting from October 2025, has already surpassed the FY 2004 record, according to CBS News.

Children in ICE detention increased tenfold since the start of Trump's second term, reaching over 6,200, per The Marshall Project.

The bill that passed a procedural vote today does not acknowledge that any of these people existed.

The Parliamentarian Ruling and What Happens Next

In mid-May 2026, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled that several provisions in the bill violated the Byrd rule, the Senate's internal guardrail against using reconciliation to pass substantive policy changes that don't directly affect the federal budget. The struck provisions included the core Border Patrol funding architecture, a provision on unaccompanied migrant children screening, and $2.5 billion in DHS block appropriations that conflicted with the Flores Settlement Agreement protecting detained children, per The Hill. Senate Democrats, including Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Merkley's office, characterized the ruling as a major setback.

Republicans described the revisions as "technical fixes." The parliamentarian also struck approximately $1 billion for Secret Service presidential ballroom security, per NBC News.

Here is what the parliamentarian ruling did not do: it did not add oversight. It did not add body cameras. It did not add warrant requirements. It did not require a single death investigation. The accountability void is not a Byrd rule question. It was never in the bill to begin with.

The $72 billion core survived. The money flows. The oversight doesn't exist.

The Flores Settlement conflict remains an active legal dispute. The Ninth Circuit is scheduled to hear arguments in June 2026 on the government's attempt to terminate the Settlement, even as the reconciliation bill continues to fund detention expansion that experts argue violates Flores protections for children.

What It Means

This is not a temporary surge. The Brennan Center documented the design explicitly: long-term contracts, hired enforcement personnel, private detention infrastructure, and local law enforcement partnerships all create constituencies that will outlast this administration. An agency with a blank check becomes politically impossible to defund, because the financial interests defending that check are bipartisan, local, and durable.

Taken together, the $170.7 billion One Big Beautiful Bill Act plus this $72 billion package represent the largest peacetime domestic law enforcement investment in American history. It funds an agency that records a death in its custody roughly once a week, kills U.S. citizens and then withholds evidence, trains recruits for 47 days, and met fewer than one-third of its own legal reporting deadlines in the last year.

The choice of reconciliation over appropriations is not a procedural accident. It is the mechanism that makes accountability optional. And it is working exactly as designed.

What's Next

June 4, 2026: Senate vote-a-rama: Following up to 20 hours of debate, Democrats will force Republicans to vote on explicit accountability amendments: body cameras, warrant requirements, independent death investigations. Every vote is on public record. Watch how Murkowski (R-AK), Collins (R-ME), and Paul (R-KY) vote, the only three Republicans who have broken with their caucus on ICE-related votes in 2026.

June 5–6, 2026: House floor vote: Speaker Johnson has targeted Friday. If the House passes an identical text, the bill goes to Trump. If the House text differs, watch for a conference process or a House take-it-or-leave-it vote on the Senate version, per ABC News.

June 2026: Ninth Circuit, Flores Settlement arguments: The court hears arguments on the government's attempt to terminate the Flores Settlement Agreement. The outcome determines whether the reconciliation bill's detention funding faces legal constraints protecting detained children.

Ongoing: ICE custody death count: The fiscal year 2026 death toll has already passed the FY 2004 record. Detention capacity is expanding toward 96,600 simultaneous beds. ICE met its 48-hour death reporting deadline in only 15 of 49 cases since January 2025, meaning the real numbers are likely worse than what's publicly reported.

Once this bill is signed, these funds are locked in through fiscal year 2029. There is no annual appropriations lever to adjust course.

What You Can Do

The vote-a-rama is the last window. The American Immigration Council's action page has direct contact tools for the Senate.

Three senators have demonstrated they will break with the Republican caucus on ICE funding votes:

• Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK): 202-224-6665

• Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME): 202-224-2523

• Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY): 202-224-4343

The ask is specific, not abstract opposition to enforcement funding, but four concrete provisions that every other federal law enforcement agency operates under: body cameras, judicial warrant requirements for arrests in sensitive locations, mandatory independent investigations of agent-caused deaths, and annual reporting to Congress on detention conditions and use-of-force incidents.

If you are in a district with a Republican House member, Friday is the House vote target. Call before Friday morning. Use the Congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121 to reach any member's office.

The ACLU's immigration action center tracks ongoing litigation including the Flores Settlement case and the Minnesota state lawsuit. Follow the Brennan Center's immigration enforcement reporting for post-passage accountability tracking.

Leave a comment

Methods & Verification: This article draws on primary source documents including the Congressional Budget Office's May 4, 2026 cost estimate, the Senate parliamentarian's advisory published through the Senate Budget Committee's ranking member, and ICE's official death reporting database. All key claims are corroborated by at least two independent sources — investigative outlets including ProPublica, NPR, The Intercept, and The Marshall Project alongside policy analysis from the American Immigration Council, Brennan Center for Justice, ACLU, and Brookings Institution. As of publication on June 3, 2026, the vote-a-rama has not yet occurred; final amendment outcomes and passage votes will be reported separately.

Share

Sources

• KFF: Deaths and Health Care Issues in ICE Detention Centers Under the Second Trump Administration

• House Oversight Democrats: Minnesota Oversight Report

• PBS NewsHour: Democrats demand ICE reforms — body cameras, warrants, judicial oversight

• POGO: ICE, Inc. — Top Companies Profiting from Trump's Crackdown

Eight to nine million people. 3,300 rallies. All 50 states. The No Kings protest on March 28, 2026, was the largest single-day demonstration in American history by any measure you want to use.

The number is real. And it is not the story.

The story is the question that every large protest movement eventually has to answer: what happens to those eight million people tomorrow?

Harvard political scientist Erica Chenoweth has spent decades studying what makes nonviolent resistance campaigns succeed or fail, analyzing 323 campaigns from 1900 to 2006. Her finding is that nonviolent campaigns succeeded in their objectives 53% of the time, compared to 26% for violent resistance. The decisive variables were not turnout numbers. They were tactical variations, such as boycotts, legal campaigns, and electoral organizing working alongside street protests, and sustained coalition breadth between mobilization days.

The No Kings movement has demonstrated geographic breadth. It has not yet demonstrated the local organizational infrastructure that separates transformative movements from memorable ones.

The next 30 days will tell us whether it can.

The 3.5% Rule—And Where the Movement Actually Stands

The 50501 Movement, which co-anchors No Kings alongside Indivisible, invokes a specific threshold on its website: the 3.5% rule. Chenoweth’s dataset shows that when a nonviolent campaign engages roughly 3.5% of a country’s population, it has historically never failed to produce significant political change.

For the United States, that is approximately 12 million people.

No Kings 3 drew 8–9 million. That is roughly 2.6 to 2.7% of the U.S. population, which is not at the threshold. More precisely, it reaches the threshold only if the people who showed up Saturday participate again, and in something other than a march.

Chenoweth’s research is specific about what “something else” means. The Civil Rights Movement, the domestic template that every resistance movement invokes, was not built on marches. It ran on the NAACP’s decades-long legal strategy, the Black church network’s physical infrastructure, HBCU student networks that produced trained organizers, and the economic boycotts such as Montgomery and Greensboro that created material leverage over power, not just moral pressure.

The marches were visible. The organizational infrastructure beneath them was the movement.

Two-Thirds of No Kings Is in Places Like Red Oak, Iowa

Two-thirds of No Kings 3 RSVPs came from outside major urban centers, including conservative-leaning states. Washington Post, March 28, 2026

Almost half of NoKings events took place in GOP strongholds.

Jenny Horner organized a rally in a small, conservative farming community called Red Oak, Iowa. She expected at least 50 people. In Highlands Ranch, Colorado, one of the Denver metro area’s most reliably Republican suburbs, local Democrats staged a protest in their own backyard. These are not outliers in No Kings 3. They are the majority.

This geographic reach is the movement’s most significant achievement and its sharpest organizational challenge.

Urban progressive enclaves have existing infrastructure: Indivisible chapters, union halls, and community organizing networks. Red Oak, Iowa, does not. Stateline, which has examined the infrastructure question more closely than most national outlets, put it plainly: “Democrats and other progressives are good at mobilizing people for large-scale protests, but they’ve been less successful than conservatives in recent years at building the kind of local infrastructure needed to effect sweeping policy changes.” Stateline, March 26, 2026

The Tea Party’s durability after 2010 came from building local chapter infrastructure in exactly these non-urban areas. This was achieved through school board campaigns, county party restructuring, and town halls in districts where the base was energized but unorganized. The No Kings movement is attempting to build the equivalent from the left in real time.

Whether it can do that in communities where progressive organizational density is thin is the central question the April meetings will start to answer.

What Indivisible Is Actually Building

The national organizations know the gap is real. On March 31, No Kings organizers are holding a national community call on “what comes next.” On April 3, over 3,000 local hosts will convene “What’s Next” organizing meetings across more than 80 events.

These aren’t debriefs. They’re the beginning of something harder.

Leah Greenberg, co-director of Indivisible, has publicly named what the movement is asking participants to commit to: ICE watch, monitoring and documenting enforcement actions in their own communities; mutual aid for immigrant families facing displacement; advocacy against the Iran war; and voter registration. Multiple outlets, March 2026

Four distinct organizational tracks. Different skill sets, different networks, different ongoing time commitments. Designed specifically to diversify tactics beyond protest days. This tactical variation is what Chenoweth’s research identifies as one of the key predictors of movement success.

This is a harder ask than showing up for a march. It’s a weekly ask. It requires a local meeting place, a local organizer, and a local contact list. The question isn’t whether Indivisible has a theory of change; it does. The question is whether 3,000 April meeting hosts in communities like Red Oak have the organizational support to actually stand up those tracks or whether the meetings produce enthusiasm and no structure.

After the 2017 Women’s March, Indivisible launched more than 3,800 local groups in weeks. Those groups generated the town hall accountability pressure that blocked the first several attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Many of those chapters dissolved by 2021. The “What’s Next” model being deployed now is, in part, an attempt to build organizational nodes that outlast a single legislative session.

Minneapolis: When Accountability Has a Name

The No Kings 3 flagship event was in Minneapolis. Not by accident.

Minnesota is where the movement’s most specific accountability demand lives. On January 7, 2026, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renée Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman, during an immigration enforcement operation. On January 24, Customs and Border Protection officers shot and killed Alex Pretti, also 37 and an ICU nurse, while he was protesting the enforcement operation that had killed Good two weeks before. A third person, Julio Sosa-Celis, was shot and wounded in a related incident.

Two hundred thousand people gathered at the Minnesota State Capitol on March 28. Bruce Springsteen performed “Streets of Minneapolis,” a song he wrote about Good and Pretti. Governor Tim Walz stood at the steps and said, “We demand justice for Renee Good and Alex Pretti. We demand justice for every single person who was hurt or traumatized.” - The Minnesota Star Tribune, March 28, 2026

The federal government’s response has been to block accountability at every stage.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News Sunday that the DOJ would not open a criminal investigation into the agent who shot Renée Good, claiming it was unnecessary because “everybody can watch the videos and see that [Ross] got attacked with a car.” Minnesota officials dispute that account.

The DOJ opened a federal civil rights investigation into Alex Pretti’s killing in January. It declined to open one for Renée Good. - ProPublica

On March 24, four days before the march, the state of Minnesota, Hennepin County, and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension sued the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. The allegation is that the federal government is withholding investigative evidence in all three shootings to shield the agents involved. ProPublica; NPR, January 30, 2026; CBC News

The Minneapolis thread gives the No Kings movement something that most protest movements don’t have: named victims, a specific government agency, a legal process in a state court, and a governor willing to sue the federal government for access to the evidence. Successful resistance movements have always been anchored in specific accountability demands. This is the movement’s specific demand.

What It Means: The Organizational Audit

Apply Chenoweth’s criteria as a framework, and here is where the movement stands:

Turnout breadth: Strong. 8–9 million, all 50 states, two-thirds outside major urban centers. Approaching, but not at, the 3.5% threshold.

Tactical variation: In construction. The April organizing meetings are designed to launch ICE Watch, mutual aid, voter registration, and advocacy tracks alongside protest. Whether they succeed is the April test.

Local organizational infrastructure: Unproven in the places that matter most. The national organizations (Indivisible, 50501, and MoveOn) exist and have capacity. The local infrastructure in non-urban conservative-area communities does not yet exist in forms that can absorb and sustain new participants at scale.

Specific accountability demand: present and legally actionable. The Minnesota lawsuit is the movement’s sharpest point of contact with institutional power.

The Civil Rights Movement comparison is everywhere right now and almost always misapplied. What made the Civil Rights Movement succeed was not the Selma march. It was what happened in the months between the marches: the boycott organizers who kept Montgomery’s Black community unified for 381 days, the legal team building the cases that reached the Supreme Court, the SNCC organizers training students in direct action discipline, and the church networks maintaining social cohesion under state pressure.

The No Kings movement has the marches. The question over the next 30 days is whether it is also building on what happened between them.

What’s Next

March 31 (TODAY): No Kings national community call. Watch for specific commitments, public organizing toolkits, and indications of whether the April meeting structure will produce measurable conversion goals.

April 3: “What’s Next” organizing meetings at 3,000+ locations. First real conversion test: what do participants commit to? Are ICE watch networks and voter registration drives actually being launched at the local level?

April 8–11: National Action Network convention. Civil rights leaders will address voting rights rollbacks and economic impacts on communities of color. Watch for resolutions and campaign launches that can channel No Kings momentum into specific legislative fights.

April 20: FISA Section 702 reauthorization deadline. A bipartisan bill (Lee/Wyden/Davidson/Lofgren) would require warrants for data broker purchases ICE currently uses to sidestep Fourth Amendment protections. Hard deadline. Specific ask. A decision-maker with a voting record. This is the kind of time-pegged policy fight that converts protest participants into sustained civic actors. Contact your senator before this date via the EFF’s action tool: Electronic Frontier Foundation .

Minnesota accountability track: Watch for any court-ordered evidence disclosure in the Minnesota v. DOJ/DHS lawsuit. A ruling either way will reactivate the Good/Pretti accountability narrative at a national level.

Share Resist and Rise

Call to Action

Find a “What’s Next” organizing meeting near you at nokings.org—80+ events, all 50 states, starting April 3.

If you showed up Saturday, this is the meeting that determines whether that day produced something more than a number.

The movement’s theory of change depends on what you do this week.

Leave a comment

Methods & Verification

All factual claims were cross-checked against primary sources, published reporting, and organizational records. Turnout figures (8–9 million; 3,300+ events) were confirmed across the Washington Post, NPR, ABC News, Britannica, and Wikipedia’s aggregated sourcing—all citing independent primary sources. The Minnesota lawsuit was confirmed by ProPublica, NPR, CBC, PBS, and Detroit News. Chenoweth’s 3.5% rule and 53%/26% success rates were confirmed via Harvard Kennedy School published research. Leah Greenberg quote sourced from multiple outlets reporting the same statement. Geographic composition data (two-thirds outside major urban centers) confirmed by the Washington Post, Stateline, and NPR.

Forty-eight hours ago, the United States launched a coordinated military assault on Iran. The Pentagon branded it Operation Epic Fury. That name tells you everything about this administration’s priorities: branding over legality, spectacle over strategy, and force over diplomacy.

President Trump didn’t go to Congress. He didn’t seek UN Security Council authorization. He posted on TruthSocial at 2:00 AM and sent B-2 bombers carrying 2,000-pound guided bombs into a sovereign nation. Three American service members are dead. Five more are seriously wounded. And in Minab, a city in southern Iran that most Americans couldn’t find on a map, Iranian authorities report at least 165 people were killed when a missile struck their elementary school during a class change. Most of the dead were girls between the ages of seven and twelve.

The Law Is Not Ambiguous

Let’s dispense with the spin and talk about what actually happened, because the legal framework here is not a matter of interpretation. It’s a matter of reading.

Article I of the United States Constitution gives Congress, and only Congress, the power to declare war. Not the president. Not the Gang of Eight, who received a courtesy phone call minutes before the first Tomahawk missiles hit Tehran. Congress. The institution was designed specifically to prevent one person from dragging the country into war on a whim.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 was written in blood. The blood of Americans sent to expand a war in Southeast Asia that Congress never authorized. It requires the president to consult Congress “in every possible instance” before deploying forces and limits any unauthorized engagement to 60 days. Trump consulted no one. He briefed a handful of congressional leaders in what legal experts describe as a procedural fig leaf, one that satisfies neither the letter nor the spirit of the law.

Neither applies here.

Iran did not attack the United States. No armed assault preceded these strikes. No imminent threat has been publicly demonstrated with evidence that would survive scrutiny in any court or international body. The administration’s own intelligence agencies undercut the urgency narrative. The Defense Intelligence Agency’s May 2025 missile threat assessment placed Iran’s long-range missile capability at 2035. Not next Saturday. Not next month. Nine years from now.

The European Council on Foreign Relations called them “an illegal war of choice.” Chatham House said Trump is “making the use of force the new normal” and “casting aside international law.” A bipartisan coalition (Senator Tim Kaine with Senator Rand Paul, Representative Thomas Massie with Representative Ro Khanna) has introduced emergency war powers resolutions demanding explicit congressional authorization for any continued hostilities.

When Rand Paul and Tim Kaine are on the same side of an issue, something has gone very wrong.

Don’t Let the Flag Cloud Your Judgment

Here is where I need every reader to set aside the reflex trained into us since September 12, 2001. The reflex that says criticizing military action during a “crisis” is unpatriotic.

That reflex is a tool. It’s been used on us before. It’s being used on us now.

Twenty-three years ago, we were told Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We were told the threat was imminent, that the intelligence was rock-solid, and that anyone questioning it was giving comfort to the enemy. Colin Powell held up a vial at the United Nations. The New York Times ran Judith Miller’s stories as front-page gospel.

None of it was true.

The Iraq War killed over 4,400 American service members. It wounded tens of thousands more, many of whom are still fighting for adequate VA care in 2026. It killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. It cost trillions. It destabilized the Middle East for a generation. And after all of that, after the commission reports and the congressional hearings and the mea culpas, we promised ourselves, Never again.

Every one of those post-Iraq guardrails has been dismantled. The parallels between then and now aren’t subtle. They’re screaming.

In 2003, intelligence was cherry-picked and manipulated to fit a predetermined narrative. In 2026, it’s actually worse: the intelligence assessments actively contradict the administration’s public claims. They’re bombing anyway.

Trump envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News that Iran was “probably a week away” from weapons-grade material. Nuclear policy experts told PolitiFact that claim was exaggerated and misleading. Trump himself announced that the U.S. military had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities. That statement directly contradicts his own White House’s November 2025 document, which described the damage as “significantly degraded.” There is a meaningful difference between those two phrases, and this administration knows it. Three unnamed American intelligence officials told the New York Times that the president exaggerated the immediacy of the threat.

This isn’t an intelligence failure. It’s intelligence being overridden. Dressed up in patriotic language and sold to a public conditioned to confuse skepticism with disloyalty.

Al Jazeera’s analysis documented the strategy: keep the threat “vague enough to justify perpetual military pressure.” The administration is sidelining its own agencies’ nuanced assessments to maintain a narrative that crumbles under the slightest scrutiny. It’s the Iraq playbook with the serial numbers filed off.

We’re falling for it again.

Waving a flag while your government lies to you isn’t patriotism. It’s complicity. Real patriotism is demanding evidence before we send people to die.

What Happens to Those Who Speak Up

So what is the cost, in Trump’s America, of saying what I just said?

Ask Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and legal permanent resident, arrested for participating in peaceful campus protests. Ask Don Lemon, the former CNN journalist, arrested while covering anti-ICE demonstrations. Ask the approximately 2,000 international students and scholars who had their visas revoked for expressing views the administration found inconvenient. Ask the philosophy professor with a green card who told reporters she’d scaled back her activism after watching the government’s deportation machinery target people who looked like her, thought like her, and spoke like her.

Read that again. A federal judge used the word terrorizing to describe what the United States government is doing to its own residents for exercising their First Amendment rights.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has instructed its agents to “capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, and protestors,” compiling it all into a federal surveillance database. The National Guard and U.S. Marines have been deployed to domestic protests. Not for public safety. To create the appearance of a national security threat where none exists.

Protect Democracy maintains a running tracker of retaliatory arrests, prosecutions, and investigations under this administration. The names include former FBI Director James Comey, four-star General John Kelly, and a sitting federal judge. If they’ll go after a decorated Marine general and the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, ask yourself, what makes you think they won’t come for you?

The American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) assessment is not alarmist. It’s descriptive: “By punishing political enemies and stifling protest and dissent, a second Trump administration would break many of the checks and balances on the executive branch and undermine the foundations of a functioning democracy.”

That’s not a warning about what might happen. It describes what is happening. Right now.

We’re Burning 125 Years of Bridges

The diplomatic wreckage of Operation Epic Fury may prove more destructive than the bombs themselves.

America’s closest European allies (the United Kingdom, France, and Germany) issued a joint statement emphasizing that their forces “did not participate” in the strikes and that they were “neither warned nor involved.” French President Emmanuel Macron called the operation “an outbreak of war” carrying “serious consequences for international peace and security.” NATO heightened its missile defense posture. Not to support the operation. To protect member states from its consequences.

Let that register.

Britain, France, and Germany, allies who stood with us after 9/11 who fought alongside us in Afghanistan, are publicly running from an American military operation. NATO is defending against the fallout of our actions, not supporting them.

The polling quantifies the collapse. According to major international surveys, U.S. favorability in the United Kingdom has fallen to 41%, the lowest on record. France: 31%, matching the nadir of the Iraq War. Germany: 26%. At home, 52% of Americans say our global standing has worsened. And 91% believe maintaining alliances is essential to effective foreign policy, a position this administration ignores with every unilateral strike.

The deeper damage should concern every diplomat, negotiator, and nation considering engagement with the United States. Six weeks before Epic Fury, the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro during what had been presented as diplomatic engagement. The Stimson Center’s analysis is devastating: “Adversaries will be less likely to engage in diplomacy with the United States.” When you abduct one head of state under cover of negotiations and bomb another after mediated talks, American diplomacy stops looking like diplomacy. It starts looking like a trap.

The message to every nation considering engagement with the United States is unmistakable: our word means nothing. Our treaties mean nothing. Our negotiations are reconnaissance operations for regime change.

The Stimson Center’s assessment of the military strategy is equally damning: “What bombing campaigns have reliably produced across a century is not rebellion but solidarity, with populations closing ranks against external aggressors even when they despise their leaders.” Air strikes alone have never toppled a government. Iran will emerge “battered but not broken, a costly example of American hubris and the limits of airpower.”

We didn’t just bomb Iran. We bombed what remained of America’s credibility as a partner, a negotiator, and a nation of laws.

What You Can Do

This isn’t over. Congress is preparing war powers votes. The courts are still functioning. Your voice still matters. For now.

Call your senators and representatives. Demand they support the Kaine-Paul war powers resolution requiring explicit congressional authorization for any continued military action against Iran. The Capitol switchboard: (202) 224-3121.

Support the organizations on the front lines. The ACLU, Human Rights First, Protect Democracy, and the Center for International Policy are doing the work our government should be doing.

Refuse the narrative. When someone tells you opposing this war is unpatriotic, tell them the most patriotic act an American can perform is holding their government to the Constitution. That’s not an opinion. It’s the premise the country was built on.

Know your rights. If you protest, if you speak out, document everything and know the law. The National Lawyers Guild and the ACLU provide legal observer resources and know-your-rights guides.

Don’t look away. According to Iranian authorities, a missile hit a school full of girls in Minab. In our name. With our tax dollars. With our bombs. That demands a reckoning, not a rally, not a flag-draped press conference, not a TruthSocial post at 2 AM.

The Constitution doesn’t have a “but we’re scared” clause. International law doesn’t have a “but they might do something someday” exemption. A war launched without legal authority isn’t a war. It’s a crime committed by a government against both its targets and its own people.

We said never again after Iraq. Twenty-three years later, here we are.

Did we mean it?

Leave a comment

Share

Sources:

Chatham House: Trump making use of force the new normal

The Intercept: Trump’s Iran Attack Was Illegal, Former Military Officials Allege

CNN: Legal Experts Are Skeptical Iran Strikes Are Legal

ECFR: An Illegal War of Choice

The Conversation: Neither Preemptive Nor Legal

TIME: Legal Authority Expert Analysis

PBS: Fact-Checking Trump’s Statements on Iran

PolitiFact: Trump Launches Strikes with Unproven Statements

NPR: Strikes Launched Without Congressional Approval

NPR: Khamenei Killed in Strikes

Al Jazeera: Iran War Script Echoes Iraq Playbook

Washington Post: European Allies Stress They Didn’t Join

Stimson Center: What Epic Fury Signals to the World

Atlantic Council: What’s Next After the Iran Strikes

Just Security: Article 51 Letter Analysis

Constitution Center: Presidential War Authority

Protect Democracy: Retaliatory Action Tracker

ACLU: Trump on Surveillance, Protest, and Free Speech

Human Rights First: Campaign to Silence Dissent

Ipsos: America’s Reputation Drops Across the World

The Hill: Majority Say US Standing Has Deteriorated

Al Jazeera: Minab School Airstrike Death Toll

Air & Space Forces: 3 Americans Killed in Operation

UN News: Guterres: Strikes Squandered Diplomacy

This article is part of Resist and Rise’s ongoing coverage of the Trump administration’s illegal military operations. Subscribe at resistandrise.blue for investigative journalism that respects the law, even when our government won’t.

Somewhere in Atlanta, a new government facility is spinning up AI tools to retroactively review the social media accounts of people the United States already approved for entry. In Vermont and California, ICE is hiring contractors to monitor social media posts around the clock: eight billion per day, in over a hundred languages. And in immigration offices across the country, applicants are being told to set every social media account to “public” so federal officers can scroll through their posts, their likes, their comments, and their connections.

This is what “extreme vetting” looks like in practice.

The infrastructure being built today will not stay pointed at immigrants.

What Changed: Executive Order 14161 and the Scope of the Dragnet

Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14161 on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025. The order directed all federal agencies to “enhance screening and vetting” of foreign nationals, language vague enough to justify almost anything. What followed was the most expansive social media surveillance regime ever deployed against immigrants in this country.

Here is what happened in the twelve months since:

March 2025: DHS published a Federal Register notice requiring social media identifier disclosure on nine immigration forms, covering visa applicants, green card applicants, asylum seekers, and citizenship applicants.

June 2025: The State Department mandated social media screening for all F-1 students, J-1 exchange visitors, and their dependents. Every applicant must set all social media accounts to “public.”

September 2025: USCIS announced it would begin collecting social media identifiers on applications for naturalization, adjustment of status, asylum, and refugee classification.

December 2025: USCIS established a new Vetting Center in Atlanta, leveraging AI and classified intelligence to conduct reviews of all immigration applications, including retroactive reviews of previously approved cases. That same month, social media screening expanded to cover all H-1B workers and their H-4 dependents.

January 2026: USCIS launched Operation PARRIS in Minnesota, targeting approximately 5,600 refugees for retroactive background checks and reinterviews.

This is not a pilot program. It is not a narrow counter-terrorism measure. Fourteen million visa applicants were already subject to social media collection annually as of 2019. The current expansion covers virtually every immigration pathway into the country.

Share Resist and Rise

How the Surveillance Machine Actually Works

The system operates in layers. Each one feeds into permanent government databases.

Layer 1: Mandatory Disclosure

Every applicant in the H-1B, H-4, F, M, and J visa categories is now required to set all social media profiles to “public” and list every username, handle, or screen name on their DS-160 application. Failing to disclose an account, even an inactive one, may be treated as misrepresentation, potentially barring the applicant from future immigration benefits. Permanently.

Layer 2: AI-Powered Screening

Consular officers and USCIS adjudicators review public posts, comments, photos, and affiliations across X/Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and LinkedIn. According to immigration law firms tracking the policy, officers are directed to look for “hostile attitudes” toward the United States, a history of “political activism,” content construed as “pro-socialist or communist,” and support for Palestine, flagged as a “hot button” under the current administration.

Read that again. Political activism is now officially a risk indicator for immigration benefits. Not violence. Not threats. Activism.

Layer 3: Monitoring That Never Ends

USCIS’s Continuous Immigration Vetting program is being expanded to cover the entire duration of an immigration benefit, until the individual becomes a naturalized U.S. citizen. The Atlanta Vetting Center will combine classified and unclassified screening with AI analytics to conduct retroactive reviews of already-approved applications. The government can reopen your case years after approval.

The Tools in the Arsenal

ICE has invested tens of millions in surveillance technology to make this work:

Zignal Labs: A $5.7 million contract for a platform that ingests over eight billion social media posts per day in more than 100 languages, using machine learning and computer vision to extract metadata, geolocation, faces, and social connections.

Babel X: Links social media profiles and location data to an individual’s Social Security number.

Clearview AI: A facial recognition contract worth $9.2 million.

Paragon Solutions: A $2 million cellphone hacking tool that can remotely access location data, messages, and photographs.

Palantir Immigration OS: Automates mass surveillance and risk assessments of non-U.S. citizens.

ICE plans to hire at least 28 contracted workers for 24/7 social media surveillance teams at facilities in Vermont and California, with operations expected to begin as early as May 2026. After supplemental appropriations, ICE’s budget has ballooned to $28.7 billion, nearly triple FY24 levels.

This is not vetting. This is an industrial surveillance operation.

The Constitutional Crisis No One Wants to Name

The First Amendment protects the right to speak, associate, and petition the government. Those rights apply to all persons on U.S. soil, not just citizens. But what does that protection mean when exercising it can cost you your visa, your green card, or your shot at citizenship?

The chilling effect is not theoretical. It is documented. And it is deliberate.

Immigration attorneys across the country are now advising clients to self-censor their social media activity. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has explicitly warned that immigration benefits applicants will have to choose between potentially forgoing key benefits or self-censoring to avoid government scrutiny. Applicants may avoid speaking out on social media about American foreign policy or expressing views about other political topics that may be considered controversial (EFF, June 2025).

Government retaliation against protected speech is already happening.

Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student, green card holder, and husband of an American citizen, was arrested by ICE on March 8, 2025, for his role in pro-Palestinian campus protests. The Trump administration invoked a rarely used provision allowing deportation of non-citizens whose “presence or activities” compromise a “compelling U.S. foreign policy interest.” That determination was made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, based on Khalil’s speech.

On February 2, 2026, the ACLU filed a federal motion to quash a DHS administrative subpoena seeking Google subscriber records for a man whose only “offense” was sending an email to a DHS attorney urging “common sense and decency” in an Afghan asylum seeker’s case.

DHS issued the subpoena four hours after receiving the email.

Four hours. That is how long it takes the federal government to retaliate against protected speech in 2026.

The State Department’s “Catch and Revoke” program uses AI to scan tens of thousands of student visa holders’ social media for evidence of alleged terrorist sympathies, particularly related to pro-Palestinian advocacy. Critics have documented that many targeted individuals never expressed support for Hamas; they were involved in anti-war protests or calls for university divestment (EFF, April 2025). Approximately 300 visas have been revoked under the program, with over 6,000 student visas revoked overall by August 2025.

Why This Won’t Stay Limited to Immigrants

If you are a U.S. citizen reading this and thinking “this doesn’t affect me,” it already does.

When DHS reviews an immigrant’s social media, it necessarily captures the speech, associations, and communications of every U.S. citizen who interacts with that immigrant online. The National Immigration Law Center has documented that DHS is “collecting information on immigrants’ and citizens’ social media use and making it part of their permanent records.” The EFF confirmed the current system “widens the government’s social media surveillance dragnet to include not only travelers, visa applicants, and visa holders, but also their U.S. citizen contacts.”

Your comments. Your likes. Your conversations with immigrant friends and family. All of it swept into permanent government databases.

The historical pattern here is unmistakable. The PATRIOT Act was sold as targeting foreign terrorists. Within years, the FBI was conducting physical searches and wiretaps on American citizens without proving probable cause. The NSA’s PRISM program targeted foreign communications but swept up millions of Americans’ data. In 2021 alone, the FBI conducted up to 3.4 million warrantless searches of Americans’ communications using Section 702 of FISA, a law built to target foreigners overseas.

The Brennan Center for Justice published an expert brief in November 2025 warning that ICE surveillance tools are being positioned to target not just immigrants but “political dissenters, protesters, and critics.” The federal government “openly says it will use its supercharged spy capabilities to target people who oppose ICE’s actions, labeled as ‘domestic terrorists’ by the administration, including anti-ICE protesters and anyone who allegedly funds them.”

Zignal Labs, Babel X, ShadowDragon, Clearview AI, and Paragon: these tools do not distinguish between citizens and non-citizens. They analyze all publicly available social media posts, map all social connections, and can be deployed against any target. ICE agents are already using smartphones loaded with facial recognition technology to photograph people they encounter in daily operations, including U.S. citizens, running the images through recognition software in real time.

The surveillance infrastructure built for “the other” always becomes the surveillance infrastructure deployed against everyone. That is not a warning. It is a historical fact.

What It Means

This is not a policy disagreement. This is the construction of a permanent ideological screening machine funded by $75 billion in appropriations over four years.

DHS’s own pilot programs in 2016 found social media monitoring was “largely ineffective” in identifying threats to public safety or national security. What the programs were designed to focus on, according to FOIA records, were Muslim communities. Not terrorists. Not security threats. Just Muslims being Muslim online.

They built it anyway. They are expanding it. And they are spending billions to make it permanent.

The question is not whether this system will be turned on American citizens. The question is how long before that fact becomes impossible to deny.

What’s Next

Watch for these developments in the coming months:

USCIS Vetting Center full operationalization: The Atlanta facility’s AI-powered retroactive reviews could expand beyond Operation PARRIS to additional states and populations at any time.

ICE 24/7 surveillance teams going live (target: May 2026): The contracted teams in Vermont and California will create permanent around-the-clock social media monitoring capacity. Their deployment scope will signal whether this tool is being aimed beyond immigration enforcement.

Federal court rulings on surveillance challenges: The ACLU’s Doe v. DHS case challenging retaliatory subpoenas, U.H.A. v. Bondi challenging Operation PARRIS and the Knight Institute’s challenge to “Catch and Revoke” could establish critical precedents on whether the government can use immigration powers to punish protected speech. Key rulings are expected throughout 2026.

What You Can Do

If you are an immigrant or visa holder:

Audit your social media now. Review all posts, likes, comments, and reposts. Make sure your online presence is consistent with your immigration petition details. Consult an immigration attorney before any filing if your social media includes political content.

Disclose everything. Never omit a social media account from your application, even if inactive. Omission can be treated as misrepresentation.

Build extra time into your schedule. Expanded vetting is causing significant processing delays across all visa categories.

If you are a U.S. citizen:

Know that your interactions with immigrants are being monitored and may become part of permanent government records.

Support the organizations fighting back. The ACLU has launched a survey collecting stories from people affected by social media surveillance. The Brennan Center, EFF, and Knight First Amendment Institute are leading litigation efforts.

Contact your representatives. Demand oversight of DHS social media surveillance programs. Ask why billions are being spent on a system the government’s own research found largely ineffective.

Leave a comment

Methods & Verification: This article draws on primary government sources (executive orders, Federal Register notices, USCIS press releases, State Department announcements), legal analysis from immigration law firms (Fisher Phillips, Seyfarth Shaw, Duane Morris, Gibney Anthony & Flaherty), investigative journalism (NPR, NBC News, Axios, TIME, Truthout, VTDigger), and analysis from civil liberties organizations (ACLU, Brennan Center, EFF, Knight First Amendment Institute, Amnesty International, NILC, EPIC). Key claims were cross-referenced across multiple independent sources. DHS pilot program ineffectiveness findings were documented by the Brennan Center through FOIA-obtained records.

Sources

· Brennan Center for Justice, “Social Media Surveillance by the U.S. Government”

· EPIC v. ICE: Location and Social Media Surveillance

· Amnesty International, “USA: Global Tech Made by Palantir and Babel Street Pose Surveillance Threats”, August 2025

· Borderless Magazine, “ICE Social Media Surveillance”, January 2026

Georgetown Law, “ICE Violating First Amendment by Targeting Immigrant Rights Advocates”

You walked to the corner store last Tuesday. You didn’t cross a border, attend a protest, or break a single law. But if you live within a few blocks of a neighborhood that ICE has targeted, your phone’s location was captured, logged, and stored by a surveillance tool called Webloc. This is all without a warrant, without your knowledge, and without any legal obligation to tell you it happened.

This isn’t hypothetical. This is the surveillance infrastructure your government has already built. And it is pointed at everyone.

Your Phone Is Already in the Net

Every smartphone in America continuously broadcasts location data through GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular connections. Thousands of apps, including your weather widget, your fitness tracker, and that game you downloaded and forgot about. They all harvest this data and sell it to brokers who aggregate it into databases containing billions of daily signals.

ICE has been purchasing this commercially available location data since at least 2017, bypassing warrant requirements that would apply if agents obtained the same information directly from your phone carrier.

The scale is staggering. Venntel, a subsidiary of Gravy Analytics that has sold raw location data to ICE, CBP, and the FBI, processes well over 17 billion signals from approximately one billion mobile devices daily, according to an FTC complaint filed in December 2024. The FTC found that Gravy Analytics and Venntel had “unlawfully” sold sensitive location data tracking consumers to medical facilities, places of worship, and political events.

The FTC finalized an order in January 2025 prohibiting these companies from selling sensitive location data. The broader commercial data market remains largely unregulated. The pipeline is still flowing.

Then, in January 2026, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published a detailed analysis warning that “ICE is going on a surveillance shopping spree,” with a fiscal year 2025 budget of $28.7 billion. That’s roughly ten times the agency’s total surveillance expenditures over the prior thirteen years.

Ten times. In a single budget cycle.

The Washington Post reported in February 2026 that federal immigration officers are “newly equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance technologies” after legislation transformed ICE into “the country’s most highly funded law enforcement agency,” with purchases including “biometric trackers, mobile phone location databases, spyware, and drones.”

The $5 Million Digital Fence

So what exactly did ICE buy?

The tool is called Webloc. It is a geofencing surveillance module within a broader platform called Tangles, both products of Cobwebs Technologies, an Israeli surveillance firm. They merged into Nebraska-based PenLink in July 2023, when both companies were acquired by private equity firm Spire Capital in a $200 million deal. Since 2021, ICE has spent over $5 million on surveillance tools made by Cobwebs/PenLink.

In September 2025, 404 Media obtained documents showing exactly how it works. Webloc lets agents draw virtual perimeters, geofences, around any geographic area. A single city block. A church parking lot. A school zone. An entire neighborhood.

The tool then identifies every mobile phone present within that zone, tracks those devices and their owners over time, and follows them from workplaces to homes.

No warrant. No probable cause. No individualized suspicion of any kind.

An internal ICE legal analysis shared with 404 Media concluded that commercial location data acquired through Webloc “can be queried without a warrant.” The agency’s own lawyers signed off.

Tangles, the social media surveillance component, makes it worse. According to the EFF, it scrapes data from the open web, deep web, and dark web, building dossiers. This is done by linking together a person’s posting history, location data, social graph, and photos, including those of friends and family.

Webloc and Tangles don’t operate in isolation. They are pieces of a much larger surveillance machine.

ICE has activated a $2 million contract with Paragon Solutions for Graphite spyware, which can remotely hack into any phone and access encrypted applications. The agency signed an $11 million contract with Cellebrite. They provide devices that crack locked phones and automatically sort through texts, messages, hidden photos, and location history. Palantir has been awarded a $30 million contract through 2027 to build ImmigrationOS, an AI platform designed to “track immigrants’ movements” using data from multiple government sources. Including, according to Fortune, Medicaid records covering nearly 80 million patients.

Nathan Freed Wessler, Deputy Director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told IT Magazine, “This is a very dangerous tool in the hands of an out-of-control agency. This granular location information paints a detailed picture of who we are, where we go, and who we spend time with.”

The Legal Loophole That Makes It All Possible

Here is the constitutional shell game that makes this “legal.”

In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in Carpenter v. United States that the government needs a warrant to access seven or more days of historical cell-site location information from phone carriers. The decision was hailed as a landmark privacy victory. Chief Justice Roberts recognized that such data reveals “the privacies of life.”

But the ruling contained a critical gap. It addressed only the government’s power to compel companies to disclose data. Not its ability to purchase data that companies voluntarily sell through the commercial marketplace.

Federal agencies have driven a truck through that gap.

Share

The Columbia Law Review published a detailed analysis calling this practice “laundering data.” A blatant constitutional end-run around Carpenter’s protections. The Center for Democracy and Technology documented how the Electronic Communications Privacy Act prohibits phone and internet providers from giving sensitive customer information to government agencies without a court order. But this places no restrictions on those same companies selling the data to brokers or on brokers selling it to the government.

The Brennan Center for Justice framed it this way: “Government agencies are relying heavily on data purchases to sidestep the Fourth Amendment’s central safeguard against abusive policing: the requirement that police obtain a warrant from a judge before invading a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

Translation: If the government can’t legally take your location data, it simply buys it on the open market. Same data. Same invasion of privacy. Different checkout counter.

The legislative fix is the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act. The bill passed the House in April 2024 on a bipartisan 219-199 vote. It would have prohibited intelligence agencies and law enforcement from purchasing Americans’ data without a warrant.

The Senate never voted on it. The bill died with the 118th Congress. It has not been reintroduced.

The Trump administration’s CFPB then withdrew its proposed rule on “Protecting Americans from Harmful Data Broker Practices” in May 2025. The regulation would have treated data brokers as consumer reporting agencies with accuracy standards and safeguards against misuse.

Every guardrail that might have stopped this has been removed, defunded, or allowed to expire. What a coincidence.

The Dragnet Catches Everyone

The word “dragnet” isn’t hyperbole. It’s the conclusion of a two-year investigation.

Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology used hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests to produce “American Dragnet: Data-Driven Deportation in the 21st Century.” Their findings, originally published in 2022 and re-released in May 2025 with a new foreword reflecting on the current political context, are devastating:

· ICE has scanned the driver’s license photos of 1 in 3 U.S. adults.

· ICE has access to the driver’s license data of 3 in 4 U.S. adults.

· ICE tracks the movements of drivers in cities home to 3 in 4 U.S. adults.

· ICE can locate 3 in 4 adults through their utility records.

Annual surveillance spending grew fivefold between 2008 and 2021 alone. Up from $70 million to $400 million per year, according to Georgetown’s research. That was before the $28.7 billion budget.

In a dense city, even a narrow geofence captures everyone. As the Harvard Law Review documented, anyone working at a bank, visiting a psychiatrist next door, worshipping at a church on the neighboring block, or simply walking past on the sidewalk gets swept up.

We know what this looks like in practice.

In 2019, a Florida man named Zachary McCoy received a notice from Google informing him that police had requested his account information in connection with a burglary. McCoy had nothing to do with the crime. His only connection: a fitness app showed him biking past the burglarized home during the approximate time of the crime. To clear his name, McCoy hired a lawyer and fought a legal battle that forced his family to dip into their savings.

In Arizona, Jorge Molina was arrested and held in jail for six days after location data falsely tied him to a murder. He had a solid alibi.

Those cases involved geofence warrants. At least the geofence warrants required police to go before a judge. ICE’s Webloc requires no warrant at all.

The surveillance is now explicitly targeting political expression. In Slate’s February 2026 investigation, a Maine woman filming ICE officers in Portland was told by an agent, “Because we have a nice little database, and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”

DHS publicly denies such a database exists. DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin issued an official statement: “There is NO database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS.”

But according to the same Slate investigation, agents were instructed to “capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc.”

So there is no database. They are just capturing all the data you would put into a database. Totally different.

The ACLU filed Doe v. DHS on February 2, 2026, to quash a DHS administrative subpoena that sought Google subscriber records about a man who had sent a single email criticizing a DHS attorney’s handling of an Afghan asylum case. Four hours after “Jon Doe” sent his email, DHS issued a subpoena to Google seeking his private information. The Washington Post reported that the volume of DHS administrative subpoenas under the current administration is “well into the thousands, if not tens of thousands.”

Four hours. One critical email. A government subpoena to unmask you.

What It Means

This is not an immigration story. Or rather, it isn’t only an immigration story.

ICE has assembled the most comprehensive domestic surveillance apparatus in American history. Its tools don’t distinguish between citizens and non-citizens, between suspects and bystanders, or between someone attending a protest and someone buying milk across the street.

The technology captures everyone in the zone. The legal loophole permits it. The legislative fixes are dead. The regulatory guardrails have been withdrawn. A coalition of over 500 civil and human rights organizations has written to Congress calling the expanding apparatus a “surveillance panopticon.”

When the government can track every phone in a neighborhood without ever going before a judge, the Fourth Amendment isn’t a protection. It’s a suggestion.

What’s Next

ACLU’s Doe v. DHS case: Filed February 2, 2026. A federal court ruling on whether the government can use surveillance powers to retaliate against constitutionally protected criticism could set a significant precedent. Watch for a ruling in spring or summer 2026. Follow the ACLU.

DHS funding fight in Congress: Senate Democrats stripped the DHS spending bill from a broader package in early February 2026 to force negotiations on ICE and CBP reform. Whether the final bill includes any surveillance restrictions will determine the near-term trajectory of ICE’s surveillance expansion.

Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act: Passed the House with bipartisan support in April 2024 but died in the Senate. Whether it gets reintroduced in the 119th Congress remains unknown. Track at Congress.gov.

What You Can Do

Protect your phone right now:

Disable your advertising ID. This is the single most impactful step. On iOS: Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking > Disable “Allow Apps to Request to Track.” On Android: Settings > Privacy > Ads > Delete advertising ID. The EFF notes this “will make it substantially harder for advertisers and data brokers to track and profile you.”

Audit your app location permissions. Remove location access from any app that doesn’t absolutely require it. Set essential apps to “While Using” instead of “Always.”

Use a VPN. It encrypts your internet traffic and masks IP-based location data.

If you are in California, use the DROP platform created by the DELETE Act to request data broker deletion. Enforcement begins August 1, 2026.

If you are not in California, manually opt out of data brokers using the guide at stateofsurveillance.org, covering 85+ known brokers.

Demand systemic change:

• Call your representatives and demand reintroduction of the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act.

• Support the Fight for the Future congressional letter calling for a complete moratorium on ICE surveillance technology purchases.

• Support organizations fighting this: ACLU, EFF, Brennan Center for Justice, Georgetown Center on Privacy and Technology, Fight for the Future.

Your phone is broadcasting your location right now. Nothing stops ICE from purchasing that data without a warrant. Individual protection matters, but only collective action closes the loophole.

Methods & Verification: This article synthesizes reporting and analysis from 404 Media (original documents), the Washington Post, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU (litigation filings and policy analysis), Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology (two-year FOIA-based investigation), the Brennan Center for Justice, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Columbia Law Review, FTC enforcement records, and Slate. All claims were cross-referenced across at least two independent sources. Dollar figures, statistics, and legal citations were verified against primary documents, court filings, and government records.

Sources

Georgetown Law, “American Dragnet: Data-Driven Deportation in the 21st Century"—Two-year FOIA-based investigation, 2022, re-released May 2025

americandragnet.org—Full report and data visualization

Brennan Center, “Closing the Data Broker Loophole” —Legal framework analysis

CDT, “Legal Loopholes and Data for Dollars"—ECPA legal framework analysis

NBC News, DHS cellphone location data purchases—July 2022

ConsumerAffairs, ICE surveillance spending—January 2026

Common Dreams, “Coalition Urges Congress to Block All Funding for ICE ‘Surveillance Panopticon’” —2026

The Deportation Panopticon—November 2025

I’m going to tell you about Silverio Villegas González. He was 38 years old. On the morning of September 12, 2025, he dropped his two sons at school outside Chicago, then headed to work. ICE agents pulled him over in Franklin Park. They said he dragged an officer with his car. They shot him dead.

That’s what this year has been. That’s who we’ve lost.

Forty-four people are dead since Trump expanded immigration enforcement last June. We know their names. Federal agents shot four people dead in street operations, drove two more to flee to their deaths, wounded at least five, and presided over thirty-seven deaths in detention—including one now ruled a homicide by the El Paso County Medical Examiner (Washington Post).

Congress more than doubled ICE’s budget (Reuters). Not one agent has been charged.

I’m writing this for you because you’re not going to look away. You’re going to read these names. And then you’re going to figure out what to do about it.

The Street Killings

Silverio

The bodycam footage told a different story than the one DHS gave us.

The “severely injured” ICE agent? He called his wounds “nothing major” (NBC News). No video shows the shooting. No video shows the alleged dragging. The ICE agents weren’t wearing body cameras.

His attorney said Villegas González had no criminal record (CBS News Chicago). His family called him “a hardworking, respectful man who loved his family.”

Illinois lawmakers demanded an Inspector General investigation (Rep. García Press Release). They’re still waiting. So is his family.

Keith

New Year’s Eve 2025. Keith Porter Jr., 43, was at his apartment complex in Northridge, LA. A Black father of two. A member of Black Lives Matter–LA. He was firing a gun in the air to mark the holiday (LA Times)—common enough in neighborhoods across the city on that night.

An off-duty ICE agent living in the complex shot him dead. DHS said the agent responded to an “active shooter.” Friends say Keith threatened no one (LA Times).

Here’s what we learned later: court filings showed the agent had been accused of child abuse and racist remarks about Black people and immigrants (LA Times). There’s no video of the shooting.

Fifty people came to the vigil (LA Times). His family said this: “The ache will never go away” (The Guardian).

I believe them.

Renee

January 7, 2026. Renee Nicole Good, 37, sat in her maroon Honda Pilot during “Operation Metro Surge” in Minneapolis. 2,000 officers surged into the city (CNN).

Video shows an agent yanking at her door. She tried to drive away. Agent Jonathan Ross fired three times at point-blank range (CNN).

DHS said she “weaponized her vehicle.” Mayor Jacob Frey watched the video and called it false (NBC News). Renee wasn’t a target of anything. She wasn’t suspected of any crime. The attorney general called her “a compassionate neighbor trying to be a legal observer” (NPR).

Her wife said it plainly: “We had whistles. They had guns” (AP News).

That’s the whole thing, isn’t it? Whistles. Guns.

Alex

Two days ago. January 24, 2026. Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, saw a woman pushed by federal officers in Minneapolis. He went to help (NBC News).

He was a nurse. That’s what nurses do.

An altercation followed. A Border Patrol officer shot him dead.

The White House called him a “would-be assassin” (The Independent). Minneapolis Police confirmed he was licensed to carry (ABC7 Chicago). Four eyewitness videos contradicted the official account (NBC News).

Alex was an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA (AP News). He saved lives. The union called his death “devastating” (PBS NewsHour).

The governor activated the National Guard. The city requested a restraining order (CNN).

The killing hasn’t stopped.

The Ones Who Survived

Not everyone shot by immigration agents has died. I want you to know these names too.

Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen, was shot five times by CBP agent Charles Exum in Chicago on October 4, 2025 (CNN). She survived. The government charged her with assaulting federal officers—then a judge dismissed all charges after texts showed Exum bragging, “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes” (NBC News).

Read that again. He bragged.

Carlitos Ricardo Parias, 44, known as “Richard LA” to 130,000+ TikTok followers, was shot in the elbow in Los Angeles on October 21, 2025 (The Independent). He was famous for filming ICE arrests. A city councilman called him “a fearless citizen journalist” (NBC News).

In Portland on January 8, agents shot and wounded Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras and Luis David Nico Moncada in a hospital parking lot (USA Today). In Minneapolis on January 15, Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis was shot in the leg (NPR).

Federal agents have shot 12 people since September (NBC News). Three of four drivers charged after being shot had their cases thrown out (USA Today).

The official story keeps falling apart. The violence doesn’t.

If you want to support Resist and Rise but aren’t quite ready to commit to a subscription, please consider buying me a cup of my favorite beverage:

Buy Me a Coffee

Dying Inside

The street killings get the headlines. The custody deaths are quieter, steadier, more relentless.

Thirty-one people died in ICE detention in 2025, the deadliest year in two decades (The Guardian). Six more in the first 25 days of 2026 (Wikipedia). December was the deadliest month on record.

One of those deaths has been ruled a homicide.

Geraldo

January 3, 2026. Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, a Cuban immigrant, was in segregation at Camp East Montana, a tent facility at Fort Bliss in El Paso. ICE said he died of “medical distress” (ICE News Release).

A fellow detainee told The Washington Post he watched guards choke Lunas Campos (Washington Post). The man said, “No puedo respirar”—I can’t breathe—over and over.

On January 21, the medical examiner ruled it a homicide. Asphyxia from neck and chest compression. Petechiae in his eyelids and neck—textbook strangulation (The Guardian; LA Times).

DHS insists he died during a “suicide attempt” while “violently resisting” (The Independent). The medical examiner disagrees.

No one has been charged.

The Tent Camp

Camp East Montana opened in August. Three people have died there since.

Francisco Gaspar-Andres, 48 (Guatemala)—December 3, 2025. ICE said liver and kidney failure. His widow disputes it (USA Today).

Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55 (Cuba)—January 3, 2026. Homicide.

Victor Manuel Diaz, 36 (Nicaragua)—January 14, 2026. ICE said “presumed suicide.” His family disputes it (NBC News; The Guardian). Victor had been arrested in Minneapolis on January 6 (CBS News).

Emergency logs show 90 calls from the facility between August and December: chest pain, seizures, suicide attempts, trouble breathing (El Paso Times). Human rights groups want it shut down (Border Report).

The Count

Let me give you some of the names from 2026:

Parady La, 46, (Cambodia), died from drug withdrawal. His family says he begged for water and didn’t get it (Wikipedia).

Heber Sanchaz Domínguez, 34, (Mexico), was found hanging after six days inside (CBS News).

Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, 42, (Honduras), heart failure (ICE).

Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, 68, (Honduras), heart-related (ICE).

And from 2025: Chaofeng Ge, 32 (China), was found hanging after five days in custody. Santos Reyes-Banegas, 42 (Honduras), dead of liver failure after less than 18 hours. Serawit Gezahegn Dejene, 45 (Ethiopia), applying for asylum, possible lymphoma. Norlan Guzman-Fuentes and Miguel Angel Garcia-Hernandez, both shot by a sniper attacking the Dallas ICE facility (NBC News; The Guardian).

By mid-December, ICE held 68,440 people, 75% with no criminal conviction (The Guardian). By mid-January, 73,000, the highest in the agency’s 23-year history (CBS News).

What Congress Did

Here’s the part where I tell you it got worse.

$30 billion for ICE arrests and deportations, more than double last year (Reuters). $45 billion for detention, expanding capacity to 100,000 beds. $46.6 billion for the wall. $4.1 billion to hire more Border Patrol.

Passed 220–207. Seven Democrats said yes (NBC News).

No conditions on detention standards. No body camera rules. No use-of-force limits. No oversight hearings on the deaths.

The administration gutted the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Eliminated the Immigration Detention Ombudsman (NBC News).

They killed the mechanisms meant to stop exactly this.

What’s Still Possible

I could end this piece in despair. The numbers are horrific. The mechanisms of accountability have been dismantled. Congress has funded more of this, not less.

But you’re still reading. And that matters.

Courts have found “a mountain of evidence” of Fourth Amendment violations (Common Dreams). Plaintiffs describe “brazen, midday kidnappings” and “dungeon-like” conditions (CalMatters). Judges have issued restraining orders. None of it has stopped the killing, but it’s created a record, and records matter. Records become indictments. Records become history.

Here’s what to watch:

Charges for the Lunas Campos homicide. The medical examiner ruled it a homicide. Will anyone be prosecuted?

Minneapolis federal court. The city requested a restraining order halting operations. If granted, it sets a precedent.

Democratic oversight hearings. Members have called for them. Whether they happen depends on pressure.

Class actions in LA and DC. These cases are building. A permanent injunction would be historic.

At this pace, 2026 will be deadlier than 2025. But pace isn’t destiny. Pace is a challenge.

Possible is sometimes all you need to stay in the fight.

What You Can Do

You know 44 names now. Silverio Villegas González. Keith Porter Jr. Renee Nicole Good. Alex Jeffrey Pretti. Geraldo Lunas Campos. Parady La. Heber Sanchaz Domínguez. And 36 more.

What do you owe them?

Call your representative. Demand oversight hearings on ICE custody deaths and agent shootings. Demand body cameras. Demand conditions on detention funding. Demand prosecution for Geraldo Lunas Campos’s killing.

Find your rep: house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

If your state has sanctuary policies, defend them. If it doesn’t, fight for them. If ICE operates where you live, document it. If you see an arrest, record it—safely, streaming to the cloud.

They are counting on you to be exhausted. They are counting on you to believe there’s no way out.

My job (our job) is to rip that belief to shreds.

Possible keeps people moving. Possible keeps people dangerous to systems that want them exhausted.

Don’t look away.

Leave a comment

Methods & Verification

All claims were cross-checked against primary sources, official ICE disclosures, court records, and independent journalism. The Lunas Campos homicide ruling confirmed by the El Paso County Medical Examiner and independently reported by The Washington Post, The Guardian, and LA Times. Custody death counts are verified against ICE’s Detainee Death Reporting and Wikipedia’s sourced compilation. Every named victim appears in at least two independent sources.

Sources

Primary Sources Cited (Inline)

ABC7 Chicago: “Chicago leaders, protesters react after Illinois-born nurse killed by federal agents in Minneapolis”

AP News: “Wife of Minnesota woman killed in ICE shooting: ‘We had whistles. They had guns’”

AP News: “The man killed by a US Border Patrol officer in Minneapolis was an ICU nurse, family says”

Border Report: “Groups demand immediate closure of Camp East Montana following 3rd in-custody death”

CalMatters: “LA immigration raids lawsuit”

CBS News: “Man arrested by ICE in Minneapolis dies while under federal agency’s custody in Texas”

CBS News: “DHS confirms Mexican citizen’s death in ICE custody in Georgia”

CBS News Chicago: “Undocumented father killed by ICE agent in Franklin Park shooting had no criminal background, lawyer says”

CNN: “What we know about ICE’s fatal shooting of a US citizen in Minneapolis”

CNN: “911 transcripts, incident reports and videos show how an ICE agent shot a mother of 3 at ‘point blank range’”

CNN: “Text messages and a moved SUV: How the government’s case against a Chicago woman shot by a Border Patrol agent fell apart”

CNN: “January 24, 2026—Fatal shooting of Minneapolis man”

Common Dreams: “LA Court Finds ‘Mountain of Evidence’ of ICE Profiling”

El Paso Times: “Exclusive: 911 calls from migrant detention center highlight dire conditions”

ICE: “Detainee Death Reporting”

LA Times: “Man killed by off-duty ICE agent in Northridge identified by community”

LA Times: “‘Active shooter’ or ICE agent’s victim? What happened in L.A. New Year’s Eve killing?”

LA Times: “ICE agent believed responsible for L.A. killing accused of child abuse, racism in court filings”

LA Times: “Emotional vigil held for man killed by off-duty ICE agent on New Year’s Eve”

LA Times: “ICE says a Cuban man died during a suicide attempt. A witness says a guard fatally choked him”

NBC News: “Bodycam videos show ICE agents’ initial reactions to fatal Chicago shooting”

NBC News: “After fatal ICE shooting, DHS and Minnesota officials share contrasting accounts”

NBC News: “Trump’s DHS has shot 12 people during immigration enforcement operations since September”

NBC News: “Live Updates: Alex Pretti shot and killed by Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis”

NBC News: “Judge dismisses charges against Chicago woman shot by Border Patrol”

NBC News: “Shooting by federal officer wounds immigrant and U.S. marshal in Los Angeles”

NBC News: “DHS names detainee victims of shooting at Dallas ICE facility”

NBC News: “Third immigrant detainee at facility in El Paso has died, ICE says”

NBC News: “Demands grow for ICE accountability”

NBC News: “House passes sprawling spending package; Democrats split on ICE funding”

NPR: “Democratic leaders respond to fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis”

NPR: “DHS: ICE officers in Minneapolis shoot Venezuelan man in the leg”

PBS NewsHour: “Man shot and killed by federal officers in Minnesota was an ICU nurse, his parents say”

Rep. Jesús García: “Press Release: Call for DHS IG Investigation”

Reuters: “How Republican spending bill supercharges immigration enforcement”

The Guardian: “2025 was ICE’s deadliest year in two decades. Here are the 32 people who died in custody”

The Guardian: “Death of man at ICE camp could be investigated as homicide after examiner’s report”

The Guardian: “Second man dies at Texas ICE detention facility in two weeks”

The Guardian: “Family of man killed by off-duty ICE agent in LA demands charges”

The Independent: “Richard LA: TikTok star hit by bullet during ICE operation in LA”

The Independent: “ICE shooting latest: Victim of Minneapolis shooting named as ICU nurse”

The Independent: “Medical examiner set to rule ICE detention death a homicide”

USA Today: “Feds ID 2 people shot by Border Patrol agents in Portland, Oregon”

USA Today: “Minneapolis, Chicago, LA: How shootings by federal agents fit pattern”

USA Today: “She survived ICE custody; her husband died during detention”

Washington Post: “Medical examiner likely to classify death of ICE detainee as homicide”

Wikipedia: “List of deaths in ICE detention”

Additional Background Sources

Forbes: “Authorities Identify Venezuelan Migrant Shot In Minneapolis By Federal Law Enforcement”

Hindustan Times: “Franklin Park ICE shooting: Who was Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez?”

Notus: “2025 Fiscal Year Among the Deadliest in ICE History for Detained Migrants”

The Trace: “How Many People Have Been Shot in ICE Raids?”

Wikipedia: “List of shootings by U.S. immigration agents in the second Trump administration”

Updated as deaths are reported.

The Stakes

On the morning of January 7, 2026, an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good on a residential street in south Minneapolis, less than a mile from where George Floyd died in 2020.

Good was a U.S. citizen. She was not the target of the immigration operation. Witness Trevor Heitkamp, who recorded the incident, said she was “going no more than 5 miles an hour” when multiple shots were fired. (Sahan Journal, January 7, 2026)

Within hours, Mayor Jacob Frey delivered a message to ICE that no American mayor has ever uttered at a press conference: “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”

Minneapolis didn’t wait for politicians to act. The community had been preparing for months, building rapid-response networks, training legal observers, and establishing encrypted communication channels. Now, as the Trump administration’s “largest immigration operation ever” unfolds, that infrastructure faces its real-time test.

This is what organized community defense looks like. It’s a playbook other cities will need.

What’s Happening Right Now

The Scale of Operation Metro Surge

The Department of Homeland Security has deployed more than 2,000 federal agents to the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area in what ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons calls “the largest immigration enforcement operation ever.” (PBS NewsHour, January 6, 2026)

The stated justification: fraud investigations linked to the “Feeding Our Future” scandal, a COVID-era nutrition program abuse case. Immigration advocates and local officials say the operation has devolved into something broader and more troubling.

“Days like today, there are areas of Minneapolis right now that are basically, for lack of a better word, under siege,” said Miguel Hernandez, an organizer with the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC). (Sahan Journal, January 5, 2026)

The administration doesn’t mention this context: According to Census Bureau data, 58% of Somali Minnesotans were born in the United States. Of those born abroad, 87% are naturalized U.S. citizens. A community of Americans is being targeted based on ethnicity, not immigration status.

(TRAC Reports, November 2025)

So much for the “worst of the worst.”

The January 7 Shooting and Its Aftermath

The shooting that killed Renee Nicole Good occurred on a residential block where community organizing has surged since 2020. Multiple witnesses told Sahan Journal they saw Good’s vehicle stopped in the street when federal agents approached.

A man who witnessed the shooting shouted at ICE that he was a doctor and asked to perform first aid. “The ICE agents told him to back up and stay on the sidewalk,” Heitkamp reported. (Sahan Journal, January 7, 2026)

Video of the incident, obtained by The Intercept, shows a federal law enforcement agent shooting multiple rounds into the vehicle as the driver appeared to be trying to drive away slowly. (The Intercept, January 7, 2026)

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem called Good’s actions “an act of domestic terrorism.” Mayor Frey called that claim “bullshit.”

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, whose department is investigating alongside the FBI and Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, offered a stark assessment: “In any professional law enforcement agency in the country, I think they would tell you it’s obviously very concerning whenever there’s a shooting into a vehicle of someone who’s not armed.”

Why Minneapolis Was Ready

The rapid-response infrastructure deployed this week didn’t appear overnight. Organizers built it on networks established during the 2020 uprising following George Floyd’s murder—then deliberately adapted it for immigration enforcement.

The Legal Observer Network

Since early 2025, MIRAC and the Immigrant Defense Network have trained “constitutional observers”—community members who respond to ICE activity, document enforcement actions, and ensure targeted individuals know their rights.

The Immigrant Defense Network has received over 1,000 inquiries from Minnesotans who want to volunteer as constitutional observers. Immigration advocacy groups are expanding training to more than 35 counties across the state. (Sahan Journal, January 5, 2026)

The November 18, 2025, raid at Bro-Tex Inc. in St. Paul showed what this infrastructure can accomplish. Constitutional observers arrived at the facility within 12 minutes of the initial alert. “For many, we became the most reliable source of information,” said Edwin Torres DeSantiago of the Immigrant Defense Network. “We were sharing even with local agencies because we were on the ground.”

Encrypted Communications Infrastructure

A network of encrypted Signal chat groups powers Minneapolis’s rapid response, some restarted daily for security, involving hundreds of participants across Minnesota.

“It’s evolved into quick snatch-and-grabs,” Hernandez explained. “So how do we grab that information now in a rapid way where it’s still factual? Because all that information does a lot of things.” (Star Tribune, December 2025)

When observers document enforcement, that information flows immediately to legal partners who use it to build defense cases.

The Border Czar’s Inadvertent Validation

Tom Homan, the administration’s Border Czar, has complained publicly that Minneapolis’s organizing makes enforcement difficult. “Sanctuary cities are making it very difficult to arrest the criminals,” Homan said in January 2025, singling out Chicago’s Know Your Rights education as teaching people “how to escape arrest.”

He meant it as criticism. Organizers take it as proof the strategy works.

The Community Defense Playbook

What Minneapolis built is replicable. The core components:

Know Your Rights Fundamentals

Every rapid-response network starts with rights education. Key principles:

Rapid Response Protocol

The infrastructure requires:

· A 24-hour hotline for reporting sightings

· Encrypted communications (Signal groups, restarted regularly)

· Trained legal observers who understand documentation protocols

· A legal subgroup with attorneys on standby

· Coordination protocols with local officials when possible

Documentation and Observer Tactics

When documenting ICE activity, use the S.A.L.U.T.E. format:

Legal teams need this structured information to build cases.

The Constitutional Fight

The ACLU of Minnesota filed a federal lawsuit on December 17, 2025, documenting a pattern of constitutional violations by ICE agents during Operation Metro Surge.

The lawsuit names six plaintiffs, all U.S. citizens or legal observers, who were detained, pepper-sprayed, threatened, or assaulted by federal agents while exercising their First Amendment rights.

The lawsuit argues that arresting or retaliating against people who are protesting ICE violates the First Amendment; that detaining protesters violates the Fourth Amendment; and that immigration officials unlawfully conspired to violate protesters’ and observers’ rights. (Minnesota Reformer, December 17, 2025)

The documented allegations:

Abdikadir Abdi Noor, a 45-year-old Somali American who has been a U.S. citizen for two decades, was tackled and detained for four hours on December 15 after encouraging community members to know their rights during an ICE operation at Karmel Mall. According to the lawsuit, an agent examining Noor’s passport made disparaging comments about Somalis. He was released without charges or paperwork. (Sahan Journal, December 17, 2025)

Susan Tincher, 55, was tackled within 15 seconds of arriving at a reported ICE operation. Her only action: standing on a public sidewalk and asking, “Are you ICE?” According to the lawsuit, federal officers cut her bra off, removed her boots and cut the laces, and cut her wedding ring from her finger.

Eight days later, no charges have been filed against Tincher.

The ACLU intends to seek a temporary restraining order that would require ICE to halt these practices immediately.

What It Means

For Minneapolis

The shooting of Renee Nicole Good represents the most extreme consequence of federal agents operating without local coordination or accountability. This is not an aberration—it is the logical endpoint of militarized immigration enforcement deployed against civilian populations.

The infrastructure Minneapolis built offers a model for constraining this enforcement through organized observation, documentation, and legal pressure. Today’s events also reveal the risks: when communities stand up, the state may respond with violence.

For Other Cities

Operation Metro Surge is a test run. The tactics refined in Minneapolis—encrypted communications, rapid observer deployment, and legal pressure campaigns—will be needed in every city where ICE escalates.

The question is whether those cities will be ready.

Minneapolis had years to build. Most cities won’t have that luxury.

What’s Next

ACLU Lawsuit Developments (January-February 2026)

Watch for preliminary injunction hearings and potential temporary restraining orders. A federal judge’s ruling could establish binding precedent for observer rights during immigration enforcement nationwide.

FBI/Minnesota BCA Investigation (Timeline: Months)

The investigation into the January 7 shooting will determine whether the ICE agent’s use of force was justified. Watch for investigative findings and potential grand jury proceedings.

Governor Walz National Guard Decision (Timeline: Days-Weeks)

Walz announced he issued a “warning order” to prepare National Guard deployment. Any actual deployment would represent an extraordinary escalation, a Democratic governor deploying state troops in response to federal immigration enforcement.

Federal Court Actions in Other Jurisdictions (Ongoing)

Chicago’s federal injunction limiting ICE force against protesters was overturned on appeal. Similar cases are pending in other circuits. A circuit split could bring these issues to the Supreme Court.

Call to Action

If you’re in Minneapolis:

· Join the constitutional observer network: MIRAC trainings are ongoing across the state

· Report ICE sightings to Monarca Rapid Response: 612-441-2881

· Download the ACLU Mobile Justice app for secure documentation

If you’re building infrastructure in your city:

· Access the CLINIC Rapid Response Toolkit for a comprehensive guide to building your own network

· Review ACLU Know Your Rights materials in multiple languages

Everyone:

· Support independent journalism covering immigration enforcement: Sahan Journal, Minnesota Reformer, and The Intercept are doing essential work

· Share this playbook with organizers in your community

Methods & Verification

All factual claims were cross-checked against primary sources, including court filings (ACLU of Minnesota v. Noem, Case 0:25-cv-04669), TRAC Immigration detention statistics, Census Bureau American Community Survey data, and contemporary reporting from Sahan Journal, Star Tribune, Minnesota Reformer, The Intercept, and PBS NewsHour. Quotes were verified against original reporting with full attribution. Witness accounts were corroborated across multiple independent interviews conducted by different news organizations.

This story will be updated as developments warrant. Subscribe to Resist and Rise for ongoing coverage as Minneapolis responds and as other cities prepare.

Leave a comment

The Holiday News Dump

At 12:01 AM Eastern yesterday, January 1, 2026, as champagne corks popped across the country, the Trump administration’s expanded travel ban took effect. The December 16 proclamation, signed exactly 15 days before implementation, doubled the number of banned countries from 19 to 39 and removed critical exemptions for immediate family members of U.S. citizens.

You probably didn’t see it in your news feed. Neither did most Americans. That wasn’t an accident.

The timing follows a documented pattern. The original “Muslim ban” of January 27, 2017, was issued on a Friday evening, creating chaos at airports nationwide before advocacy groups could mobilize. The December proclamation exploited an even more effective shield: the holiday news cycle. Congressional oversight is dormant. Newsrooms are running skeleton crews. Media attention diffused by year-end retrospectives.

The result? The most sweeping expansion of immigration restrictions in nearly a decade slipped into effect with barely a headline. The mainstream media’s near-total silence amounts to complicity by omission.

What Changed Yesterday

From 19 to 39 Countries: The Full Expansion

The December proclamation continues the full suspension of entry for nationals of 19 countries, adding seven more: Burkina Faso, Laos, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Syria, plus individuals traveling on Palestinian Authority documents.

Twenty additional countries face “partial suspension,” barring immigrant visas and suspending visitor, student, and exchange visas. The full ban covers nearly all nonimmigrant categories typically encountered in higher education and business: B visitors, F and M students, J exchange visitors, and H-1B and O-1 workers.

Twenty-six of the 54 nations on the African continent are now banned from travel to the United States. Nearly half a continent. Human rights organizations immediately flagged the geographic concentration as racially motivated.

The Removed Exemptions That Matter Most

The expansion isn’t just about more countries. It’s about what’s been taken away.

Compared to the June proclamation, the December version removes categorical exceptions for immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, adoptions, and Afghan Special Immigrant Visas.

For 60 years, since the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 replaced the discriminatory national-origins quota system, family reunification has been a cornerstone of U.S. immigration policy. Under the June ban, U.S. citizens could still sponsor their spouses, parents, and children under 21 from banned countries through the immediate relative visa category.

That’s over.

These families must now seek case-by-case “national interest” waivers—a discretionary process with no clear application pathway and historically low approval rates. This echoes historical patterns of targeting immigrant communities that should alarm anyone familiar with America’s darker chapters.

The Trump administration’s justification, from the proclamation itself: “Familial ties can serve… as unique vectors for fraudulent, criminal, or even terrorist activity.”

The Human Cost: Families Torn Apart

Wisconsin’s Hmong Community Feels the Blow

Bee Van Her still remembers fleeing Laos with his family in 1975 after the Vietnam War. Now Executive Director of the Hmong American Center in Wausau, Wisconsin, he watches the travel ban tear apart the community he helped build.

Wisconsin is home to more than 70,000 Hmong people. Many have relatives still in Laos, people they visit for Hmong New Year celebrations, funerals, and family gatherings. With Laos now on the full suspension list, those connections face indefinite severance.

The ban hits especially hard for the approximately 200 Hmong-Lao veterans still living in Wisconsin, allies who fought alongside U.S. forces during the Secret War and have spent 50 years seeking recognition as American veterans.

Afghan Allies Betrayed—Again

The December proclamation eliminates the categorical exemption for Afghan Special Immigrant Visas. The betrayal cuts to the core of America’s broken promises.

Congress created Afghan SIVs to provide a pathway to safety for Afghans who risked their lives working alongside U.S. military and diplomatic personnel during America’s 20-year war. These interpreters, translators, and support staff often faced Taliban death threats specifically because of their service to the United States.

Now they’re subject to the same ban as nationals from countries the administration claims pose security threats despite being among the most thoroughly vetted individuals in the entire U.S. immigration system.

An estimated 150,000+ Afghan SIV applicants and their family members remained in the pipeline as of November 2025, many still in Afghanistan or third countries, awaiting processing that has now been frozen. As enforcement mechanisms expand, including the Palantir-powered ImmigrationOS system and the broader deportation surveillance apparatus, these allies face not just bureaucratic limbo but active danger.

The Diplomatic Fallout: Retaliation Has Begun

The ban isn’t just affecting individuals. It’s fracturing international relationships.

Mali and Burkina Faso announced reciprocal visa bans on U.S. citizens within days of the December proclamation. Both governments emphasized that the new measures apply “equivalent visa measures” and cited “the principle of reciprocity.”

These are the first such countermeasures since the travel ban policy began in 2017. The African Union, representing 55 member states, issued a formal statement expressing concern about the “potential negative impact” on educational exchanges, commercial engagement, and diplomatic relations built over decades.

The World Cup Paradox

The United States, Canada, and Mexico will co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup—the largest sporting event in the world. Haiti, Iran, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire have all qualified. Their fans are now banned from attending.

B-2 tourist visas, the category fans would need to enter the U.S., are prohibited for nationals of all four countries.

The proclamation exempts “athletes, coaches, support staff, and immediate relatives traveling for the World Cup.” It does not exempt fans. Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire supporters who don’t already have valid U.S. visas cannot obtain them. National teams may compete before empty supporter sections.

Haiti qualified for the World Cup for the first time in over 50 years. Most fans from the island will not be able to watch their team play in the United States. The Trump administration recently ordered an end to Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians, meaning 340,000 Haitians currently living in the country will lose legal protection and work authorization by February 3, 2026.

The administration is hosting the world while telling much of the world they’re not welcome.

The Constitutional Question

Secretary Noem’s rhetoric may have handed legal challengers a gift.

On December 1, 2025, Noem posted, on X: “I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”

Immigration law experts immediately flagged the statement.

In Trump v. Hawaii (2018), the Supreme Court upheld the travel ban 5-4, deferring to executive national security determinations. But documented “animus” in official statements could distinguish future legal challenges. The question is whether any court will have the courage to act.

What It Means

This isn’t just about immigration policy. It’s about who America claims to be.

For 60 years, the principle that “families belong together” has been codified in immigration law. The December proclamation breaks that commitment not just for strangers, but for the immediate family members of American citizens.

The administration argues this prevents “familial ties” from becoming security threats. The real message is simpler: some families don’t count. Some connections don’t matter. Some people, based on where they were born, are presumptively dangerous.

The processing freeze at USCIS compounds the damage. In late November 2025, USCIS implemented a blanket pause on the adjudication of all immigration benefits for foreign nationals subject to the travel ban, immigrant and nonimmigrant worker petitions, green card applications, and even citizenship oath ceremonies.

People who followed every rule, filed every form, and waited years in line are now frozen in bureaucratic limbo.

What’s Next

• 180-Day Review Period (~June 15, 2026): The proclamation mandates periodic review of whether restrictions should be continued, modified, or terminated. Watch for countries removed or added.

• World Cup Visa Crisis (March–May 2026): As FIFA finalizes logistics and ticket holders from banned countries face visa impossibility, expect diplomatic pressure and potential emergency exemptions.

• Legal Challenges (January–February 2026): Immigration advocacy organizations are assessing the December proclamation for constitutional vulnerabilities. Monitor federal court dockets in the Ninth Circuit and D.C. Circuit for emergency filings.

• Additional Retaliatory Actions: Watch for further African nations implementing reciprocal measures, collective African Union action, and impacts on U.S. business interests across the continent.

What You Can Do

Know Your Rights

If you or someone you know is affected, consult these resources immediately:

• IRAP Legal Information—Multi-language guides on recent U.S. policy changes

• American Immigration Council Analysis

• NAFSA Regulatory Information

• Stop AAPI Hate Know Your Rights

• Asian Law Caucus FAQ

National Advocacy Organizations

These organizations are providing direct support and fighting back:

• International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP)—Free legal services for refugees and displaced people

• AfghanEvac—Supporting Afghan allies with evacuation and resettlement

• No One Left Behind—Advocacy for Afghan and Iraqi SIV Holders

• Human Rights First—Legal advocacy and policy analysis

• American Immigration Council—Research and litigation

• ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project—Constitutional challenges and legal defense

• CAIR National—Legal assistance and community support

• National Immigration Law Center—Legal advocacy and policy analysis

• Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI)—Advocacy for Black immigrants

Florida-Specific Resources

For affected community members in Florida:

• Americans for Immigrant Justice (AI Justice)—Miami-based nonprofit law firm serving 145,000+ individuals from 160 countries

• Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC)—Statewide grassroots movement for immigrant rights

• Florida RAISE Alliance—Rapid Response Alliance for Immigrant Safety and Empowerment

• Florida Justice for Our Neighbors—Free immigration legal services for low-income immigrants

• Catholic Legal Services Archdiocese of Miami—Immigration legal aid

• FIRC (Florida Immigrant Rights Center)—Deportation defense in the Florida Panhandle, South Georgia, and South Alabama

• WeCount!—South Florida immigrant worker organization

• Keys Immigrant Coalition—Monroe County immigration advocacy and support

• AFSC Florida—Immigration legal services and Know Your Rights education

• Immigration Advocates Network Directory for Florida—Comprehensive list of Florida legal service providers

Support the Movement

Community resistance is building. Learn how grassroots organizing is challenging these policies and find ways to contribute to the fight.

Contact Your Representatives

Demand congressional oversight. The December 16 announcement received virtually no congressional scrutiny during the holiday recess. Your representatives need to hear that this matters, especially before the 180-day review deadline.

Share This Information

Most Americans have no idea this happened yesterday. The mainstream media failed to cover it. Share this article with someone who needs to understand what just took effect.

⚡ BREAKING: Niger Joins Retaliatory Bans

Updated January 2, 2026

As this article goes to publication, Niger has implemented reciprocal visa bans on U.S. citizens, joining Mali and Burkina Faso in the escalating diplomatic fallout.

Three African nations have now closed their doors to Americans in direct response to Trump’s travel ban, an unprecedented level of retaliation that signals a fundamental shift in U.S.-Africa relations.

The pattern is accelerating. What began as a unilateral U.S. policy is triggering a cascade of reciprocal restrictions that could affect American travelers, businesses, diplomats, and NGO workers across the Sahel region.

We will continue monitoring developments and update as additional nations respond.

Leave a comment

Methods & Verification

All factual claims were cross-checked against primary government sources (Presidential Proclamation 10998, CRS Insight IN12631, State Department alerts), contemporaneous news reporting from multiple outlets, and analysis from credentialed immigration policy organizations. Quotes were verified against original sources or confirmed through at least two independent news reports. Statistical data on affected visas and countries were corroborated between government sources and independent analysis from the American Immigration Council and NAFSA.

If you enjoyed this post and want to support Resist and Rise, I can always enjoy a good cup of coffee.

Buy Me A Coffee

Subscribe to Resist and Rise for continued coverage as this policy evolves. The courts may act. Communities will organize. And we’ll be here documenting every step.

When the mainstream media goes silent, independent journalism becomes essential.

North Carolina will legally erase transgender people from official recognition that day. Tennessee will start requiring marked driver’s licenses for non-citizens—a scarlet letter for the surveillance age. California will forbid federal agents from hiding behind ski masks during immigration raids.

None of this is coincidental. These 47 new state laws represent the largest single-day implementation of civil rights policy changes since the post-Dobbs wave of 2022.

Red states deliberately timed these laws for Trump’s second year in office. Blue states scrambled to erect defensive walls before federal preemption could arrive. These new red state laws are part of what was previously reported here in the Resist and Rise series on Christian Nationalism see:

Caught between them: families like Page Clements’. Already packing boxes for states that will still acknowledge they exist.

Buy Me a Coffee

The Trans Refugee Crisis Is Already Here

Page Clements came out as transgender in 2021. She didn’t expect Kansas would force her to leave.

But each year brought new bills targeting trans people. An English teacher at her high school, Shawnee Mission North, publicly sued the district, railing against “gender ideology.” The walls kept closing in.

When Kansas passed its ban on gender-affirming care in 2025, Page made a decision most teenagers shouldn’t have to face. She finished high school early. Moved to Minnesota alone.

She’s not an outlier. She’s the new normal.

The Human Rights Campaign puts the numbers starkly: 40.1% of transgender youth aged 13-17 now live in the 27 states that have banned gender-affirming care. That’s roughly 120,400 kids. Human Rights Watch documented families shelling out $4,500 every six months just for medications when they’re forced to travel out of state. Insurance routinely refuses to cover it.

A Trevor Project survey of 18,000 LGBTQ+ young people found that 39% have considered moving because of state laws. Not thought about it idly. Considered it seriously enough to tell researchers.

This isn’t abstract policy debate. It’s an exodus.

North Carolina’s HB 805, taking effect January 1, makes the state the 18th to legally define sex as only male or female. The law’s preamble doesn’t even try to hide the coordination. It explicitly cites President Trump’s Executive Order 14168, stating that North Carolina “must ensure compliance” to “maintain eligibility for any and all federal funding.”

Translation: Erase trans people from legal existence or lose federal dollars. Your choice.

Get 50% off forever

California Declares War on the Secret Police

Red states are coordinating with federal enforcement. California is building legal infrastructure to fight back.

SB 627 (the “No Secret Police Act”) and SB 805 (the “No Vigilantes Act”) both take effect January 1. They’re the nation’s first attempt to regulate how federal agents behave on state soil, requiring visible identification and banning the ski masks that have become the signature look of ICE raids in immigrant neighborhoods.

Senator Scott Wiener, who authored the bill, was blunter: “As this authoritarian regime seeks to demolish our constitutional rights and engages in a straight-up terror campaign, California is meeting the Trump Administration’s secret police tactics with strength and defiance.” — (Senate District 11 - Sep 20, 2025)

The federal government responded on November 17. Attorney General Pamela Bondi announced the DOJ was suing California. “Law enforcement officers risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe, and they do not deserve to be doxed or harassed simply for carrying out their duties,” she stated.

The lawsuit cites an “8,000% increase” in death threats against immigration agents since intensified enforcement began in 2025. California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office shot back that “the FBI itself has warned that the practice of ICE agents obscuring their identity has led to a rise in copycats committing crimes, threatening public safety, and eroding trust in law enforcement.” — (AP News—Nov 17, 2025)

Tennessee’s Marked Licenses and the Return of “Othering”

Tennessee is taking a different approach. A more personal one.

SB 6002, passed during a special session Governor Bill Lee called earlier this year, requires distinctive marked driver’s licenses for non-citizens starting January 1.

Emily Stotts of Tennessee Justice for Our Neighbors nailed exactly what this does: “I’m not really sure on the purpose behind this, but what it is going to do is signal otherness for those individuals who are not US citizens. I think it’s going to create a lot of confusion and worry.” — (WSMV4—Nov 14, 2024)

But the law goes beyond license markings. It creates a Centralized Immigration Enforcement Division inside the Department of Safety. It establishes criminal penalties, including Class E felony charges, for local officials who adopt “sanctuary policies.”

The message to cities like Nashville is clear: cooperate with federal deportations, or your officials go to prison.

This is what the architecture of enforcement looks like. States volunteering to become force multipliers for federal immigration agencies, with criminal penalties for any local government that refuses to play along.

The Hidden Cost of Fleeing

R.A. asked to be identified only by her initials. She has children to protect.

This Kansas mother faced an impossible choice. Stay put and somehow scrape together money for constant trips to other states so her transgender son could access care. Or uproot everything.

With help from her ex-husband, a close friend, and a GoFundMe page, she moved. Left her job of 12 years. Her hometown of two decades. She told her son they were moving for work.

“I didn’t want him to blame himself for us having to give everything up,” she told KCUR on Dec. 16, 2025.

Her ex-husband, Robert, stayed behind. Now he’s watching the costs of visiting his children pile up. Between small business expenses, child support, and travel, he’s put his house on the market. Human Rights Watch found families that had to re-establish care twice because new state bans kept forcing them to relocate again.

This is what “family values” legislation actually produces. Families scattered across state lines. Parents selling homes just to see their kids. Children carrying the unspoken weight of being the reason their family had to flee.

Blue State Fortification: Minnesota’s Alternative

Not every state is building walls to keep people out. Some are building infrastructure so people can survive once they arrive.

Minnesota’s Paid Family and Medical Leave law launches January 1. Governor Tim Walz signed it back in 2023, and it provides up to 20 weeks of paid leave annually through a state-administered insurance program. Benefits run from 55% to 90% of regular wages, capped at $1,423 per week. The state expects more than 132,000 applications in 2026.

Currently, only 24% of Minnesotans get paid family leave through their employers. The new program extends coverage to nearly all workers, funded by a 0.88% payroll tax split between employers and employees.

Minnesota has also become a destination for transgender families fleeing ban states. Protected gender-affirming care plus genuine worker protections creates something like a life raft in increasingly hostile waters.

California’s Reproductive Rights Shield

California’s AB 260 took effect the moment Governor Newsom signed it in September 2025. It’s designed for a fight that hasn’t quite happened yet: the potential federal revocation of FDA approval for mifepristone.

The law requires state-approved health care plans to keep covering mifepristone regardless of what the FDA decides. A preemptive strike against a potential nationwide medication abortion ban.

The national stakes are higher than they might appear. Most medication abortion services across the country rely on California-based pharmacies to dispense and ship medications. According to Equal Rights Advocates, abortion restrictions cost the U.S. roughly $173 billion per year through lost earnings, increased poverty, and workforce displacement. California’s shield isn’t just protecting Californians.

What It Means: Two Americas, One Deadline

These 47 laws didn’t emerge from random state-level experimentation. They mark the emergence of two Americas with fundamentally incompatible visions of citizenship, identity, and federal power.

Look at the language. Eighteen states have now passed laws defining sex based solely on reproductive characteristics, excluding gender identity entirely. North Carolina’s HB 805 explicitly ties compliance to federal funding. Wyoming, West Virginia, Texas, Georgia, Ohio, and Iowa all passed nearly identical “biological sex” definition laws in 2025 alone. That kind of coordination doesn’t happen accidentally. It suggests reliance on model legislation from groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint.

Blue states are building their own coordinated response. California’s anti-secret-police laws have already inspired similar bills at the federal level and in Tennessee, Michigan, Illinois, New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. Cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, and San Jose are moving in the same direction.

The question nobody can answer yet: how long can states function as escape valves when the federal government controls the funding, the courts, and the enforcement mechanisms?

What’s Next: Four Flashpoints to Watch

DOJ v. California ruling timeline. The federal lawsuit challenging SB 627 and SB 805 could produce a preliminary injunction before January 1. Keep an eye on filings in the Central District of California.

Kansas gender-affirming care lawsuit. Plaintiffs have sued in state court to block Kansas’s ban from fully taking effect. A ruling in the next few weeks will determine whether more families have to relocate or can keep accessing care where they are.

Federal legislation in the Senate. The House passed Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bill criminalizing gender-affirming care for minors on December 17, 2025, by a 216-211 vote. Senate Democrats will likely block it. But the bill establishes legislative precedent for the next attempt.

2026 ballot measures. Missouri Amendment 3, which would ban gender transition procedures for minors, is certified for the 2026 ballot. Eleven additional proposed measures in Colorado, Maine, Washington, Missouri, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, and Virginia could be certified. This is shaping up to be a major electoral battleground.

What You Can Do

If you’re in an affected state: Know your rights. The ACLU’s state-by-state guide tracks which laws apply where you live and what protections remain. For trans healthcare specifically, the Trans Legislation Tracker monitors bills in real-time.

If you’re in a protective state, organizations like Transforming Families in Minnesota and Equality California are helping relocating families with resources, community connections, and direct assistance. They need both donations and volunteers.

Everywhere: Track your state legislators’ votes. These laws passed because state legislatures made them happen, and state elections remain the front line. The Human Rights Campaign and Movement Advancement Project maintain scorecards at hrc.org and lgbtmap.org.

January 1st is 9 days away. The laws are already written. What happens after that depends on whether we watch or build resistance infrastructure that matches their coordination.

Leave a comment

Methods & Verification

Factual claims were cross-checked against primary legislative sources (North Carolina HB 805 via ncleg.gov, California AB 260 and SB 627 via leginfo.legislature.ca.gov, and Tennessee SB 6002 via capitol.tn.gov), official government statements, and organizational reports from the Human Rights Campaign, Human Rights Watch, and the ACLU. Quotes verified against original press releases, official statements, or interview transcripts. Statistics from HRC and the Trevor Project cross-referenced against source reports.

The Counter-Offensive

The numbers are striking. At least six white clergy and one seminarian have declared Democratic runs for Congress in 2026. Another twenty ministers are seriously considering state or local races. Vote Common Good, the nonprofit tracking this movement, counts roughly thirty white clergy running as Democrats nationwide.

That’s not a coincidence. It’s organized.

The Hopefuls

What makes this different from past Democratic outreach to religious voters is that these aren’t secular politicians learning to quote Scripture. These are ordained ministers arguing that Christian nationalism is theological heresy, a corruption of the faith, not an expression of it.

Douglas attended Liberty University. He spent twenty years in evangelical ministry. He founded a church in Harrisburg called The Belong Collective.

Now Justin Douglas is running for Congress as a Democrat.

Douglas is part of something that would have been unthinkable a generation ago: a coordinated movement of white Christian clergy running as Democrats, explicitly framing their campaigns as a faith-based counter-offensive against the religious right.

Doug Pagitt, who runs Vote Common Good, says the surge reflects “a sense of alarm among progressive pastors, who aim to counter President Trump’s agenda and the spread of Christian nationalism.” His organization trains candidates to connect with evangelical and Catholic voters, the very constituencies Democrats have hemorrhaged for decades.

Douglas’s path to Democratic politics tells you something about the fractures within American Christianity.

In 2015, he became lead pastor of The Bridge Church in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania. Which is a congregation affiliated with the Brethren in Christ, an Anabaptist tradition similar to Mennonites. He built a community that emphasized radical welcome. Then, in 2019, the denomination revoked his pastoral license.

His offense: publicly affirming LGBTQ inclusion.

Douglas didn’t walk away from ministry. He took his congregation and started over, founding The Belong Collective, a fully inclusive faith community. Then, in 2023, Run for Something recruited him to run for Dauphin County Commissioner.

Local operatives told him he was making a mistake. He’d centered his campaign on deaths in the county prison—18 people who’d died in custody since 2019. He bought a billboard featuring the death toll. “My name was much smaller than the fact that 18 people had died,” Douglas said. “That was intentional.”

He won by 42 votes. It was the first time Democrats had controlled the Dauphin County Board of Commissioners in over a century.

Now he’s running for Congress against MAGA Scott Perry, a Freedom Caucus member whose phone the FBI seized as part of the January 6th investigation. Douglas’s Liberty University background gives him standing to make an argument secular Democrats can’t: that Christian nationalism betrays Christianity itself.

“I will never legislate my theology,” he says. “My job is to serve everyone and invite everyone to the table.”

Douglas isn’t alone. In Iowa, Sarah Trone Garriott is running for Congress in one of the most competitive House districts in the country. She’s an ordained ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) minister with a master’s from Harvard Divinity School. She’s also the only Iowa Democrat recently to flip two Republican-held state senate seats, including defeating the sitting Senate President in 2022.

In Texas, state representative James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, is running for U.S. Senate. His viral confrontations with Republican colleagues over Christian nationalism made him a progressive star. When he appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast in July and argued, “There’s nothing Christian about Christian nationalism,” Rogan told him he should run for president.

He’s aiming lower, for now. But his candidacy tests whether faith-forward progressive messaging can break through in a state Democrats haven’t won statewide since 1994.

See previous articles from our in-depth series on Christian Nationalism:

Share

Challenges

Here’s what these candidates are up against.

PRRI’s 2024 American Values Atlas, based on more than 22,000 interviews, found that 80-85% of white evangelical voters supported Trump. Among those who attend church weekly, it was 88%. Two-thirds of white evangelicals qualify as Christian nationalism “Adherents” or “Sympathizers.” Sixty percent believe God ordained Trump to win the election. (Resist and Rise, Sep 15, 2025) Defining Christian Nationalism: Not Your Grandparents’ Patriotism

Nearly four in ten Christian nationalism Adherents agree that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.”

But the clergy candidates also face problems inside the Democratic coalition. A May 2025 poll found 75% of Christian voters have little or no trust in the party. Fifty-eight percent see Democrats as actively hostile to Christianity.

Pagitt, the Vote Common Good director, is blunt about it. “The Democratic Party overall, as we’ve learned from experience, has not been overly welcoming and accommodating to religious candidates,” he says. “One of them said, ‘If they’re so needy and dumb that they need us to explain why they should vote for Democrats, we don’t want them.’”

Religiously unaffiliated voters now make up 39% of the Democratic base, the party’s largest “religious” demographic. Candidates who talk openly about faith risk alienating secular progressives. Candidates who don’t cede religious identity entirely to Republicans.

Resist and Rise covers the stories mainstream media misses—from surveillance tech to the fight for democracy. Subscribe for free to get weekly analysis in your inbox.

Get 50% off forever

It’s a two-front war, and these ministers are betting they can fight it.

Then the kicker: “The greatest opponent we have is despair.”

That’s the bet these candidates are making. Not just that they can win elections, but that reclaiming faith for progressive politics requires putting their names on ballots. They are not just critiquing Christian nationalism from the sidelines but offering an alternative vision of what it means to follow Jesus into the public square.

We’ll find out in November 2026 whether the bet pays off.

Know of progressive faith leaders in your community pushing back against Christian nationalism? Reply to this email or leave a comment below. I’m tracking this movement for future coverage.

Leave a comment

SOURCES

Religion News Service, “White Christian clergy running for Congress as Democrats,” December 15, 2025

PRRI, “Christian Nationalism Across All 50 States,” February 4, 2025 (22,000+ interviews)

Change Research/Vote Common Good poll, May 2025 (1,761 Christian voters)

The Keystone, “Progressive pastor flips Dauphin County,” November 14, 2023

Texas Tribune, “James Talarico’s progressive take on Christianity,” September 16, 2025

Iowa Public Radio, “Sarah Trone Garriott announces run,” May 5, 2025

Axios, “’Shocking’ number of white clergy run as Democrats in 2026,” November 9, 2025

Pew Research Center, “Demographic profiles of Trump and Harris voters in 2024,” June 26, 2025

Here’s something that would have sounded absurd a decade ago: the United States has been downgraded to “obstructed” by CIVICUS, the Johannesburg-based alliance that monitors civic freedoms across 198 countries. The announcement came December 9, 2025. It puts America in the same category as Hungary, Brazil, and South Africa—places where civil society technically exists but faces surveillance, harassment, and hostile rhetoric from the government.

Never heard of CIVICUS? Most Americans haven’t. Fewer still expected to see their country flagged by organizations that typically track authoritarianism in distant capitals.

“The backsliding on rule of law and fundamental freedoms in the United States is truly alarming,” said Mandeep Tiwana, CIVICUS Secretary General. “We are witnessing a rapid and systematic attempt to stifle civic freedoms that Americans have come to take for granted.” (TIME, December 10, 2025)

What CIVICUS Actually Measures

CIVICUS rates countries on a five-tier scale: open, narrowed, obstructed, repressed, and closed. The assessments draw from Freedom House data, V-Dem indicators, Reporters Without Borders press freedom scores, and regional civil society partners on the ground.

An “obstructed” rating means civic space is “heavily contested” by authorities who undermine civil society “through the use of illegal surveillance, bureaucratic harassment, and demeaning public statements.” People can still organize peacefully but “remain vulnerable to frequent use of excessive force by law enforcement agencies, including rubber bullets, tear gas, and baton charges.” (Source: Newsweek, December 9, 2025)

This isn’t opinion. It’s based on documented incidents, legal changes, and measurable restrictions on press freedom, assembly, and association.

The global picture is grim. Only 7% of the world’s population now lives in countries with “open” civic space—the lowest since CIVICUS started systematic tracking in 2018. Of the 18 countries with rating changes this year, 15 got worse. Just 3 improved. (Source: CIVICUS Global Findings 2025)

The Evidence Behind the Downgrade

The CIVICUS assessment points to specific, documented patterns. Not abstractions.

Military force against protesters: Authorities “escalated suppression of protesters through military deployments” during anti-ICE demonstrations in Los Angeles this June. The Trump administration federalized California’s National Guard without Governor Newsom’s consent and sent active-duty Marines for crowd control. A federal judge later ruled this violated the Posse Comitatus Act. (Source: CIVICUS Watchlist, July 2025)

Journalists in the crosshairs: Australian journalist Lauren Tomasi was “shot with a rubber bullet while covering anti-ICE protests.” Mario Guevara, a Salvadoran journalist who’d lived legally in the U.S. for 20 years, was arrested while livestreaming a peaceful protest in Georgia. He clearly identified himself as press. Didn’t matter. ICE took custody, held him 108 days after all charges were dropped, and then deported him anyway. The Committee to Protect Journalists counted over 50 incidents of police targeting journalists during the June protests alone. (Source: CIVICUS Watchlist, July 2025)

Student activists detained: The report highlighted Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student at Columbia who helped negotiate during campus protests. ICE arrested him in the lobby of his university-owned apartment, transported him to Louisiana, and detained him using a Cold War-era provision claiming his presence posed “adverse foreign policy consequences.” He was never charged with anything.

Public broadcasting gutted: Congress voted 216-213 in July to rescind $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That’s the first successful rollback of pre-approved CPB funding in nearly sixty years. CIVICUS noted this happened as the administration launched “White House Wire,” a government-run news operation pushing favorable coverage. The contrast isn’t subtle. (Source: CIVICUS Watchlist, July 2025)

“The United States appears to be sliding deeper into the quicksands of authoritarianism.” —Mandeep Tiwana, Secretary General, CIVICUS

Not Just CIVICUS

What makes 2025 different isn’t one downgrade. It’s multiple independent organizations using different methods reaching the same conclusions.

The V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg, which has measured democracy across 202 countries since 1789, now classifies the United States as an “electoral autocracy.” First time ever in their modern assessments. (Source: Wikipedia—Electoral autocracy)

“At the pace at which it is happening, I would say that before the end of the summer, you no longer qualify as a democracy in the United States,” V-Dem Director Staffan I. Lindberg warned back in March. Their 2025 report identified the U.S. as undergoing “the fastest evolving episode of autocratization the USA has been through in modern history.” (Source: Democracy Without Borders, May 2025)

Freedom House has tracked America dropping from 94 to 83 on its 100-point democracy scale since 2010. The decline sped up during Trump’s first term. It hasn’t slowed.

These organizations aren’t coordinating. They’re measuring independently and landing in the same place.

Get 50% off forever

This special offer of 50% off forever will expire on December 31st, 2025.

What It Means

Democratic backsliding doesn’t arrive with tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue. It shows up through accumulated degradations. A journalist was deported. A protest met with military force. Funding for independent media is slashed while state media expands.

Look at Hungary. Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party transformed that country from a post-communist success story to what the European Parliament declared “no longer a full democracy.” Not through a dramatic coup. Through incremental institutional capture over 14 years. CIVICUS now rates Hungary and the United States identically. Both are “obstructed.”

Political scientist Adam Przeworski put it well: “The combination of wealth and a history of peaceful political transitions may foster a false perception of democratic consolidation”—which leads to reduced vigilance and weaker resistance when erosion actually begins. (Source: International IDEA, Global State of Democracy 2025)

The data suggests that vigilance is overdue.

What’s Next

December 16, 2025: The stay on Judge Charles Breyer’s injunction expires—the one ordering National Guard troops returned to state control. The government’s appeal could set a precedent on military deployment against protesters.

January 2026: Next CIVICUS Monitor update. If the current trajectory holds, a further downgrade to “repressed” becomes possible.

March 2026: V-Dem releases its Democracy Report 2026, the first full quantitative assessment covering the second Trump administration’s first year.

July 4, 2026: America’s 250th anniversary arrives with civic freedoms under international scrutiny. “As the U.S.A. prepares to mark 250 years since the American Revolution, we urge the government to course-correct,” CIVICUS stated. (Source: Truthout, December 2025)

What You Can Do

Understand the methodology. Read the full People Power Under Attack 2025 Report and V-Dem’s Democracy Report. Know what they’re actually measuring.

Document what happens locally. CIVICUS relies on regional civil society partners for ground-level information. When you witness suppression of press freedom, protest, or association in your community, document it. Report it to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker or ICNL’s US Protest Law Tracker.

Support independent journalism. With public broadcasting defunded, independent media infrastructure matters more than ever. Subscribe to local news. Fund nonprofit journalism.

Show up. Democratic backsliding works when citizens self-censor before anything even happens to them. One graduate student told NPR he no longer protests because “the risk is higher.” That anticipatory silence is precisely what authoritarian tactics are designed to produce.

Methods & Verification

All factual claims were cross-checked against primary sources, including the CIVICUS Monitor 2025 report, V-Dem Institute publications, and news coverage from TIME, Newsweek, and Middle East Eye. Quotes were verified against original organizational statements and published interviews. Statistical claims were confirmed against primary data repositories.

Buy Me A Coffee

50% off locks in forever. This offer has been extended until the end of the year. Sign up and pay $25 for a full year. Your 50% discount stays as long as you subscribe.

Get 50% off forever

The surveillance platform powering mass deportation is live. The architect of the policy? He held stock in the company building it.

It sounds clinical on paper. A $30 million government contract for “immigration lifecycle management.” What ImmigrationOS actually is: the algorithmic engine driving the largest mass deportation operation in American history. A system built to identify, track, and target your neighbors in real time.

Palantir Technologies built the platform. It went live in late 2025. ICE wants 3,000 arrests a day, and ImmigrationOS is how they plan to get there. The system hoovers up data from IRS records, Social Security files, passport databases, and license plate readers. Then AI does the sorting. Flags people for removal.

The administration keeps talking about “the worst of the worst.” The numbers tell a different story.

Cato Institute analysis of nonpublic ICE data found that 65 percent of people booked into detention since October 2024 have zero criminal convictions. Only 6.9 percent had violent convictions. That’s the data. The rhetoric doesn’t match.

How ImmigrationOS Powers Mass Deportation

This isn’t Palantir’s first rodeo with ICE. Not even close.

The relationship goes back to 2014, when the Obama administration handed the company a $41 million contract for its Investigative Case Management platform. That contract survived through both parties’ administrations, ballooning to roughly $90 million by 2022.

What’s different now? The April 2025 contract added three capabilities that fundamentally change what ICE can do: predictive targeting of individuals for removal, real-time tracking of “self-deportations,” and streamlined logistics from identification to expulsion.

The contract justification document doesn’t mince words: “Palantir is the only source that can provide the required capabilities and prototype of ImmigrationOS without causing unacceptable delays.”

No competitive bidding. No outside scrutiny. No alternative vendors were even considered.

“In supporting the Trump administration’s deportation apparatus, Palantir is complicit in those human rights and constitutional violations.” — Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat, Policy Adviser, NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights (April 2025)

Follow the Money: The Miller Connection

Here’s the conflict of interest nobody’s talking about.

Stephen Miller designs the policies. He’s the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and the architect of Trump’s immigration crackdown. He also held between $100,001 and $250,000 in Palantir stock while doing it.

Technically, the stock sat in a brokerage account for one of his kids. Doesn’t matter. Federal ethics rules treat holdings for minor children the same as direct ownership.

Don Fox, who used to run the Office of Government Ethics, told the Project on Government Oversight that Miller’s situation “is more than just a bad look—it could easily become a serious ethics issue. If he hasn’t stepped over the line, he’s just on the verge of it.”

Miller finally sold his shares in August 2025. Nine months after taking his White House job. Four months after ICE awarded the ImmigrationOS contract. During that window, Palantir’s stock shot up more than 200 percent, fueled partly by a government contract portfolio that now tops $900 million since Trump took office.

He wasn’t alone. At least 11 other White House officials and DHS appointees owned Palantir stock too, according to POGO’s review of financial disclosures.

When ImmigrationOS Targets the Wrong People

Caroline Dias Goncalves found out the hard way what happens when surveillance infrastructure collides with arrest quotas.

June 5, 2025. She’s 19, a nursing student at the University of Utah, driving through Colorado to see a friend. A sheriff’s deputy pulls her over for following a semi-truck too closely. He asks where she was born. Brazil, she tells him. She’d lived in Utah since she was 7. Had a pending asylum case. No criminal record.

The deputy let her go with a warning. But he’d already shared her information through an encrypted messaging app to a multi-agency group. ICE agents were watching. Minutes later, down the highway, they stopped her again. Arrested her without showing a warrant. Took her to the Aurora detention center.

“The past 15 days have been the hardest of my life,” she said after her release. “I was placed in a system that treated me like I didn’t matter.”

She’s now a plaintiff in an ACLU class-action lawsuit. On November 25, 2025, Federal Judge R. Brooke Jackson ruled that ICE agents in Colorado had “routinely” conducted unlawful warrantless arrests. He ordered them to stop.

“ICE cannot terrify our communities with their haphazard warrantless arrests,” said Tim Macdonald, the ACLU of Colorado’s legal director. “A federal court has now declared that ICE must immediately stop these aggressive and unlawful tactics.”

What It Means: The Deportation-Industrial Complex

Look at where the money’s going. It tells you everything.

The “One Big Beautiful Act” puts $170 billion toward immigration enforcement over four years. That’s more than the yearly budgets of every state and local law enforcement agency in America combined. ICE’s 2025 budget nearly tripled to $28.7 billion, per the Brennan Center’s analysis.

Lauren-Brooke Eisen, Senior Director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, called it what it is: “a deportation-industrial complex—an enforcement machine with financial and political constituencies that will outlast this administration.”

Even some Palantir insiders are sounding alarms. Thirteen former employees published an open letter through NPR warning that the company abandoned its principles: “Government databases are already erasing references to transgender people and gender-affirming care. These injustices could be facilitated by the very software infrastructure we helped build.”

ImmigrationOS: What to Watch

Three things to watch:

The appeal. DHS will challenge Judge Jackson’s Colorado ruling. The Tenth Circuit’s decision could set a national precedent on warrantless arrests. Expect movement in December 2025 or January 2026.

Contract expansion. ImmigrationOS runs through September 2027. Keep an eye on USASpending.gov for scope increases and budget bumps.

Congressional action. Senator Ron Wyden sent Palantir a letter in June 2025 demanding they preserve records. Whether actual hearings happen remains to be seen.

See All Resist and Rise Palantir Articles

What You Can Do

File FOIA requests. Target ImmigrationOS deployment data and Privacy Impact Assessments. ICE hasn’t published any public assessment of the system’s civil liberties implications. That’s a problem.

Connect with rapid response networks. If you witness an ICE arrest, document it.

Know your rights. ICE can’t enter your home without a judicial warrant signed by a judge. United We Dream has Know Your Rights resources in multiple languages.

Call your representatives. Demand oversight of Palantir’s contracts and the conflicts of interest surrounding them.

Methods & Verification

Factual claims were checked against primary sources: federal contract documents on USASpending.gov, court filings from the U.S. District Court of Colorado, and records from POGO, ACLU, and the Brennan Center. Quotes and statistics confirmed through original reporting from NPR and Cato Institute analysis of nonpublic ICE data. All source links verified as accessible as of December 3, 2025.

Resist and Rise publishes twice weekly. Subscribe for investigative reporting on surveillance, civil liberties, and community resistance.

Share Resist and Rise

Sources

1. Cato Institute, “65 Percent of People Taken by ICE Had No Convictions, 93 Percent No Violent Convictions” (June 2025)

2. Brennan Center for Justice, “Big Budget Act Creates a ‘Deportation-Industrial Complex’” (July 2025)

3. ACLU of Colorado, “Federal Judge Prohibits ICE from Making Warrantless Arrests in Colorado” (November 25, 2025)

4. NPR, “Former Palantir workers condemn company’s work with Trump administration” (May 5, 2025)

5. Project on Government Oversight, “Stephen Miller’s Financial Stake in ICE Contractor Palantir” (June 2025)

6. TheDream.US, “Read Statement from Caroline Dias Goncalves Following Release from ICE Detention” (June 2025)

7. NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, “Palantir Is Profiting from Trump’s Ravenous Appetite for Deportations” (April 2025)

8. USASpending.gov, Federal Contract 70CTD022FR0000170

9. The Deportation Panopticon (Nov 2025)

10. Surveillance on Trial: The New Wave of Resistance Against Palantir’s Expanding Empire (Sep 2025)

11. Fighting Back Against Palantir: Organizing Against the Surveillance State (June 2025)

Buy Me A Coffee

A year ago, I launched Resist and Rise with a simple idea: thorough research and clear analysis could help us focus our collective attention on authoritarian overreach. Fifty-five articles later, I’ve learned more than I bargained for—about the forces reshaping America, about what actually resonates with readers, and about what it takes to keep this kind of work going.

This isn’t a victory lap. We’re not winning yet. But documenting, warning, and organizing for twelve months has taught me things worth sharing. And given me a clearer view of what’s coming.

50% off locks in forever. Sign up this weekend and pay half price ($25 for a full year) for as long as you stay subscribed. Offer ends Monday, December 1st, at midnight.

Get 50% off forever

Follow the Ideology

The Christian Nationalism Series

The most important work I did this year was a ten-part investigation into Christian Nationalism. Its history, its strategy, its outsized influence on Project 2025 and the Trump regime. This wasn’t random. Early on, I realized that covering individual outrages without understanding the ideology underneath was pointless—like treating symptoms while the disease spreads.

The series started with basics. What Is Christian Nationalism—and Why It Matters Now laid out the movement’s core tenets and separated it from ordinary religious conservatism. Then I traced the ideology’s roots in From Doctrine of Discovery to Christian Nationalism: America’s Religious Political Roots. Turns out the theological justification for colonialism never disappeared. It evolved.

How the Cold War Shaped America’s Sacred Symbols examined how “under God” in the Pledge and “In God We Trust” on our currency weren’t ancient traditions. They were deliberate mid-century projects to fuse Christianity with American identity. This history matters because it reveals something crucial: what we’re fighting isn’t timeless American values. It’s a specific political project with a traceable origin.

Then the series moved to what’s happening now. Modern Christian Nationalism: How Religious Politics Is Reshaping America documented the movement’s current infrastructure and influence. White Christian Nationalism: Understanding Its Core Connection to Race in America tackled the uncomfortable truth that this movement has always been inseparable from white supremacy. The “Christian” nation its adherents imagine was never meant to include everyone.

Christian Nationalism and Economic Inequality explored how the movement weaponizes faith to dismantle the social safety net. Poverty becomes moral failure. Collective action becomes ungodly. Seven Mountains Strategy Explained decoded the explicit plan to dominate seven spheres of society: government, education, media, arts and entertainment, religion, family, and business.

The final three installments focused on where the rubber meets the road. Flashpoints and Fault Lines: How Christian Nationalism Is Reshaping State Education Laws documented the systematic campaign to inject religious ideology into public schools. Then I pivoted to hope. Christian Nationalism Resistance: Global Movements and Local Action That Works and How Local Organizing Is Defeating Christian Nationalism in Public Schools showed that this movement can be beaten. And is being beaten. When communities organize.

Here’s what I learned: You can’t effectively resist what you don’t understand. Christian Nationalism isn’t a label critics invented—it’s a self-described movement with explicit goals, documented strategies, and identifiable leaders. Every policy fight makes more sense when you understand the theocratic vision driving it. Abortion bans. Book bans. The weaponization of federal agencies. All of it.

Follow the Money and the Data

The Palantir Coverage

If Christian Nationalism provides the ideology, companies like Palantir provide the infrastructure. My coverage of Peter Thiel’s surveillance empire—Surveillance on Trial: The New Wave of Resistance Against Palantir’s Expanding Empire and Fighting Back Against Palantir: Organizing Against the Surveillance State—documented how a single company has become the nervous system of authoritarian enforcement.

Palantir’s software doesn’t just help ICE find people to deport. It integrates data across agencies, building comprehensive profiles that can track anyone. The company’s contracts with defense, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies have made it indispensable to the surveillance state. And there’s almost no oversight.

But the Palantir pieces weren’t just alarm bells. I documented how activists, tech workers, and lawmakers are fighting back. Winning some battles. Divestment campaigns, legislative challenges, grassroots organizing—they’ve shown that even the most entrenched surveillance companies can be pressured.

What I learned: Authoritarian movements need more than ideology. They need tools. Understanding who builds those tools, who funds them, and how they work is essential to resistance. The good news? Corporations, unlike true believers, respond to pressure on their bottom line.

Follow the Power Grabs

Executive Overreach and the Insurrection Act

From FELON47’s First Week Back in Office to Trump Executive Orders: Project 2025 Blueprint Transforms First 100 Days, I tracked the administration’s systematic consolidation of power. The two-part Standing Against Modern Fascism series (Part 2) provided a progress report on resistance efforts.

The National Guard deployments to Chicago, Portland, Memphis, and other cities weren’t random strongman theater. They were test runs for something larger. My coverage of Illinois officials challenging federal military deployment showed that state and local resistance matters, even when it doesn’t immediately succeed in court.

The Insurrection Act looms over all of this. The administration’s willingness to deploy military force against American cities—and to ignore judicial rulings blocking such deployments—represents a fundamental challenge to constitutional governance.

Power grabs happen incrementally, then all at once. Each overstep that goes unchallenged becomes precedent for the next. Documenting these moves in real time—and highlighting the resistance at every level—helps prevent normalization.

Follow the Disenfranchisement

Voting Rights and the SAVE Act

SAVE Act 2025: How New Voter ID Laws Could Restrict Voting Rights examined how legislation framed as election security actually functions as voter suppression. The pattern is consistent. Create barriers that disproportionately affect young voters, voters of color, and low-income voters. Then claim you’re protecting democracy.

This connects directly to the Christian Nationalism series. The movement knows it represents a minority position on most issues. Can’t win majorities fairly? Shrink the electorate to a more favorable composition.

The takeaway: Every policy fight is ultimately about who gets to participate in democracy. Voter suppression isn’t separate from the other issues. It’s the mechanism that makes all the other abuses sustainable.

Covering the Full Spectrum

Beyond these core themes, this year’s coverage ranged widely. Presidential Mental Health: Historical vs Modern Media Coverage examined why we fail to address cognitive fitness in our leaders. Trump’s Tariff Saga and How to Torpedo the Global Economy in One Easy Step tracked the economic chaos of “Liberation Day.” Climate-Smart Parks and Tribal Co-Management offered a model for what constructive governance could look like.

The Dangerous Nomination and The Enemies List Part 1 documented the personnel choices that signal intent. Because in any administration, personnel is policy. And this administration’s personnel choices told us exactly what was coming.

A Note of Gratitude

Building Resist and Rise has been a community effort. I’m particularly grateful to Walter Rhein and his Substack I’d Rather Be Writing for consistently recommending this publication. Most new subscribers have found their way here through Walter’s generous support. That kind of solidarity among independent writers is what makes this ecosystem work.

To everyone who has read, shared, commented, and subscribed over this past year: you’ve made this work sustainable and meaningful. Writing into a void is exhausting. Writing to an engaged community is energizing.

What I’m Watching in Year Two

A year of research and immersion in political analysis has given me a pretty clear picture of where this is heading. Here’s what I expect before the 2026 midterms:

Mass Republican defections and distancing from Trump. The chaos is unsustainable. Self-preservation is a powerful motivator. Watch for Republicans in competitive districts to start creating daylight between themselves and the administration. The defections will start slowly, then accelerate as polling data makes the political cost clear.

The Supreme Court will ultimately rein in executive overreach. Even a conservative court has institutional interests in maintaining judicial authority. The administration’s pattern of ignoring court orders represents a direct challenge to the court’s legitimacy. Expect the justices—including some Trump appointees—to draw lines around executive power that the administration won’t like.

Mike Johnson will lose the House Speakership before the midterms. His razor-thin majority and the Freedom Caucus’s appetite for chaos make his position untenable. Whether through a formal vote or a resignation under pressure, he won’t be holding the gavel when voters go to the polls in November 2026.

The administration will continue ignoring judicial rulings. This is the most dangerous trend to watch. Each time a court order is defied without consequence, constitutional governance erodes further. The question isn’t whether they’ll keep doing it. It’s whether institutions and citizens will impose consequences.

Protests will keep growing and exceed the 3.5% threshold. Research on nonviolent resistance shows that movements involving at least 3.5% of the population in sustained action have never failed to achieve significant change. The NoKings movement and related protests are building toward that threshold. Expect a state of continual resistance that becomes impossible to ignore or suppress.

At least one impeachment before the end of 2026. The accumulating constitutional violations, defiance of court orders, and abuse of power will eventually produce articles of impeachment. Whether it results in removal is another question. But the House will be forced to act.

The Work Continues

A year ago, I wrote that my hope was for Resist and Rise articles to “provoke thought, which will in turn inspire righteous action.” That remains the mission.

We are not powerless. The forces arrayed against democratic governance are formidable, but they are not invincible. They have ideology, infrastructure, and institutional capture. But they don’t have legitimacy, they don’t have majority support, and they don’t have history on their side.

Year two begins now. Together, we will continue to be the persistent opposition.

— James Cruce

November 2025

Share Resist and Rise

Silicon Valley’s surveillance empire built the infrastructure for mass deportations—and made millions while doing it.

When federal agents detained Mahmoud Khalil outside his New York apartment on March 8, 2025, President Trump called it “the first arrest of many to come.” Khalil hadn’t committed a crime. The Columbia University graduate student, a permanent U.S. resident, had spoken at campus protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza. Within weeks, at least nine more foreign students who’d participated in protests lost their visas. Rights groups warn that Palantir’s Immigration OS has the capacity to monitor social media, visa records, protest attendance, and association networks. However, no court filings have confirmed its use in identifying Khalil or other students.

This wasn’t traditional policing. It was algorithmic targeting. And it’s operational nationwide.

In April 2025, ICE gave Palantir a $30 million contract for ImmigrationOS, a platform that doesn’t just help agents find people they’re already looking for. It uses AI to predict who should be targets based on behavioral patterns, social connections, and database interactions. By October, ICE had paid Palantir an additional $51 million for the system that’s fundamentally changed immigration enforcement from reactive case management to predictive policing.

Every Government Interaction Is Now Surveillance

Here’s what makes ImmigrationOS different from traditional databases: data fusion. When someone renews a driver’s license, the system cross-references that interaction with utility records, tax filings, employment history, school enrollments, and social connections. ICE doesn’t just search individual databases anymore. Palantir’s platform searches them all at once, building comprehensive profiles on millions of people.

The scope is staggering. Documents obtained through FOIA requests by Just Futures Law reveal that ICE’s surveillance platforms now pull in international travel records, student visa data, telecommunications metadata, and GPS-based location information. In May 2025, ICE got unprecedented access to IRS tax records, data that had been explicitly protected from law enforcement since the Privacy Act of 1974. ICE’s social media monitoring programs expanded in 2025, with rights groups warning of round-the-clock surveillance. While ICE’s Law Enforcement Support Center in Vermont and facilities in California are known to support immigration enforcement, no documentation confirms the existence of dedicated 24/7 social media monitoring hubs in those locations.

The targeting goes way beyond immigration violations. After Trump designated “Antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization in September, ICE began using administrative subpoenas to demand data from Meta about accounts publishing information on immigration operations, including pages like StopICE.net. Legal challenges documented by VisaVerge describe it as “administrative powers intended for civil immigration cases being used for criminal investigations involving protesters and watchdogs.” That should alarm anyone who values First Amendment protections.

Despite California’s sanctuary laws explicitly barring local cooperation with ICE, Southern California authorities shared license plate information with immigration enforcement more than 100 times between January and September 2025, CalMatters reported. In San Francisco, officers let out-of-state law enforcement run over 1.6 million searches of the city’s license plate reader database. At least 19 were related to ICE operations.

The Architects of Deportation Are Financially Invested in the Technology

The conflicts of interest aren’t hidden. They’re documented in public financial disclosures.

Stephen Miller, the Trump administration’s chief architect of immigration policy, holds between $100,000 and $250,000 in Palantir stock. That’s according to forms obtained by the Project on Government Oversight in June 2025. Representative James Comer (R-KY), Chair of the House Oversight Committee with authority over DHS contracts, bought $15,000 in Palantir stock on Trump’s inauguration day. The stock has since risen 73%, driven largely by government contracts.

“Every deportation conducted using Palantir’s technology potentially increases Stephen Miller’s personal wealth,” argues Nick Schwellenbach of POGO. “Miller designs the enforcement priorities, signs off on the contracts, and benefits financially from their execution.”

The money flowing to Palantir is extraordinary. The company has pulled in more than $900 million in federal contracts since Trump took office in January 2025, according to The New York Times. During the third quarter of 2025 alone, ICE paid Palantir $51 million for surveillance software. The company also kicked in funds for Trump’s $300 million White House ballroom project and sponsored the military parade in June. CEO Alex Karp personally donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee.

Meanwhile, the private prison company Geo Group reported an all-time high occupancy of 26,000 people by September 2025. Geo Group’s detention facilities held immigrants that were flagged by Palantir’s system. “We’ve never seen anything like this before,” CEO George Zoley told investors. “Our existing facilities are on full throttle.” The company is projecting $3 billion in revenue for 2026.

Citizens Aren’t Protected From This Surveillance

The infrastructure built for immigration enforcement doesn’t distinguish between citizens and non-citizens. It tracks database interactions, not legal status.

In June 2025, ICE agents raided three Houston restaurants armed with detailed information that could only have come from tax records: employees’ full names, addresses, Social Security numbers, employment history, and wage data. Twelve workers were detained, including three U.S. citizens held for “verification” despite presenting birth certificates and passports.

The system had flagged the restaurants not because of criminal activity, but because tax data analysis showed the presence of workers who might be undocumented. ImmigrationOS built “association networks” linking all employees and recommended enforcement for the entire workplace.

Similar operations hit Nebraska meatpacking plants, Arizona construction sites, and California agricultural operations throughout summer 2025.

“The algorithm doesn’t check citizenship before recommending enforcement—it identifies patterns and lets agents sort it out later,” explains a National Immigration Law Center attorney working on related litigation.

What It Means

This isn’t a slippery slope toward authoritarianism. It’s operational infrastructure for it. The technical capability for mass surveillance, ideological screening, and political targeting now exists. Only policy changes are needed to redirect it.

Amnesty International documented the targeting of student protesters as evidence that “the use of this technology in this context risks fueling the Trump administration’s capacity to make arbitrary decisions to deport marginalized people on a whim and in massive numbers with limited to no access to due process.” But the implications extend beyond immigration. When license plate readers flag protest attendees, when social media monitoring identifies “anti-enforcement activities,” when tax records become deportation tools—the infrastructure serves whoever controls it.

“Essentially, AI architecture becomes policy,” notes the American Immigration Council in its August 2025 analysis. The system’s design—how it integrates data, flags individuals, and prioritizes actions—inevitably shapes outcomes. And those outcomes currently concentrate enormous power in platforms with minimal public oversight.

Thanksgiving 30-day Trial

Buy Me a Coffee

What’s Next

Fourth Amendment litigation challenging algorithmic enforcement is moving through multiple district courts. These cases will determine whether AI-driven “enforcement prioritization analysis” satisfies constitutional requirements for individualized probable cause or represents the kind of general warrant the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent.

ICE’s September 2025 prototype deployment of ImmigrationOS marks the beginning, not the end, of expansion. Contract documents describe three main functions: identifying removal targets, tracking “self-deportations” with near real-time visibility, and optimizing deportation logistics. The self-deportation tracking component reveals totalizing ambition through monitoring of border crossings and travel patterns to identify when anyone voluntarily leaves the country.

Watch for USCIS implementation of its new enforcement powers. On October 6, 2025, agents who traditionally process benefits applications gained authority to carry firearms, execute warrants, and conduct arrests. This means surveillance now operates even in contexts where people seek legal status.

What You Can Do

Identify local contracts. File public records requests with your city, county, and state agencies asking about contracts or data-sharing agreements with Palantir, ICE, or fusion centers. Just Futures Law provides FOIA templates at justfutureslaw.org.

Attend contract renewal hearings. Most surveillance contracts renew annually. City councils and county boards hold public hearings. Show up and testify. Berkeley successfully canceled Palantir contracts through sustained organizing pressure.

Build coalitions. Link immigrant rights organizations with privacy advocates, racial justice groups, and civil liberties defenders. The surveillance infrastructure affects everyone.

Document abuses. If you witness ICE operations, workplace raids, or surveillance-related detentions, document details and connect with organizations like the American Immigration Council and National Immigration Law Center .

Support litigation. Organizations like Just Futures Law and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are challenging these surveillance systems in court. Financial support and case referrals strengthen these efforts.

Get 50% off forever

Methods & Verification: All factual claims were cross-checked against the following: federal contract records (USAspending.gov), financial disclosures (Office of Government Ethics, FEC), leaked internal communications verified by 404 Media, FOIA documents obtained by Just Futures Law, corporate earnings calls, and investigative reporting from The New York Times, NOTUS, Biometric Update, and Amnesty International. Quotes independently confirmed via original sources and organizational reports dated April-November 2025.

PRIMARY SOURCES

Mahmoud Khalil Detention Case

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil

2. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/20/nx-s1-5440351/judge-orders-release-of-columbia-activist-mahmoud-khalil

3. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-student-facing-deportation-palestinian-activis-rcna196799

4. https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/11/us/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-ice-green-card-hnk

5. https://www.democracynow.org/2025/3/10/columbia_university_mahmoud_khalil

Palantir ImmigrationOS Contract ($30 Million)

1. https://immpolicytracking.org/policies/reported-palantir-awarded-30-million-to-build-immigrationos-surveillance-platform-for-ice/

2. https://www.axios.com/local/denver/2025/05/01/palantir-deportations-ice-immigration-trump

3. https://www.yahoo.com/news/ice-just-ordered-30-million-212445164.html (Business Insider via Yahoo, April 17, 2025)

American Immigration Council Analysis

1. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/ice-immigrationos-palantir-ai-track-immigrants/ (August 22, 2025)

Stephen Miller’s Palantir Holdings

1. https://www.pogo.org/investigations/stephen-miller-conflicts-of-interest (June 24, 2025)

2. https://newrepublic.com/post/197149/stephen-miller-palantir-stocks-immigration-report (June 24, 2025)

3. https://truthout.org/articles/stephen-miller-owns-up-to-250000-in-palantir-stock-report-finds/ (June 24, 2025)

4. https://www.democracynow.org/2025/6/25/headlines/trump_adviser_stephen_miller_holds_six_figure_investment_in_tech_firm_profiting_from_deportations

5. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/stephen-miller-financial-stake-palantir-ice-contractor-1235371343/ (June 25, 2025)

6. https://www.fastcompany.com/91358479/stephen-miller-palantir-stock-project-on-government-oversight-report (June 26, 2025)

404 Media Leaked Documents

1. https://www.404media.co/leaked-palantirs-plan-to-help-ice-deport-people/ (April 18, 2025)

2. https://www.404media.co/ice-just-paid-palantir-tens-of-millions-for-complete-target-analysis-of-known-populations/ (April 18, 2025)

Amnesty International Report

1. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/08/usa-global-tech-made-by-palantir-and-babel-street-pose-surveillance-threats-to-pro-palestine-student-protestors-migrants/ (August 21, 2025)

2. https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/usa-global-tech-made-by-palantir-and-babel-street-pose-surveillance-threats-to-pro-palestine-student-protestors-migrants/ (August 21, 2025)

3. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr51/0211/2025/en/ (Palantir response, August 26, 2025)

ICE Arrest Statistics

1. https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/ice-arrest-numbers-2025-comparison-3911ad (October 20, 2025)

2. https://knowledge.luskin.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/UCLA_CNK_ICE_Arrests_CA_TX_Sept2025.pdf (UCLA CNK Report)

3. https://luskin.ucla.edu/ucla-report-finds-latino-arrests-by-ice-have-skyrocketed-under-the-trump-administrations-second-term (October 28, 2025)

4. https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/ice-deported-california-21075519.php (September 30, 2025)

5. https://www.deseret.com/politics/2025/07/10/ice-arrests-of-unauthorized-immigrants-triple-across-western-states-under-trump/ (July 11, 2025)

6. https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-states-ice-arrest-immigration-2107629 (August 5, 2025)

7. https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/07/president-trump-delivers-again-ice-arrests-surge-nationwide/ (July 22, 2025)

Biometric Update Technical Analysis

1. https://www.biometricupdate.com/202504/palantirs-immigrationos-fuels-trump-administrations-immigrant-removal-agenda (April 21, 2025)

2. https://www.biometricupdate.com/202506/ice-advances-sole-source-deal-with-palantir-for-new-surveillance-backbone (June 10, 2025)

GOVERNMENT SOURCES

ICE Official Statistics

1. https://www.ice.gov/statistics

USAspending.gov (Contract Database)

1. https://www.usaspending.gov

Thanksgiving 30-day Trial

Buy Me a Coffee

Forever Discount Only Available for a Limited Time—Thanks for Your Consideration

Get 50% off forever

Faith leaders, parents, and unlikely Republican allies are defending religious freedom and blocking Christian nationalist overreach—one school board at a time.

Something’s happening across America. Grassroots resistance to Christian nationalism in public schools is racking up wins. Real ones. Oklahoma blocked its religious charter school. Texas districts are refusing school chaplains. And the coalitions making it happen? They include faith leaders, parents, and Republicans who get the danger of mixing government with religion.

Here’s what winning actually looks like.

Last May, the Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 on Oklahoma’s attempt to create the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school. That tie meant the state court’s rejection of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School stood. Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself. For anyone who cares about church-state separation, this was huge.

But the courtroom is just part of it. This victory came from a coordinated resistance strategy that’s been building in red and blue states—legal challenges combined with local organizing, interfaith coalitions, and support from Republicans who see what happens when government establishes religion.

At the 2025 National Prayer Breakfast in February, President Trump said God saved him from an assassination attempt. He told Americans to “bring religion back,” adding “we have to bring religion back much stronger.” That rhetoric captures what organizers have warned about for years: an explicit push to merge Christian identity with American government.

The data tells a different story, though. In 2024, only three in ten Americans qualified as Christian nationalism Adherents (10%) or Sympathizers (20%). Meanwhile, two-thirds were Skeptics (37%) or Rejecters (29%). In California, New York and Virginia, over 75% of people said they were rejecters or skeptics.

The pluralist majority exists. Question is whether they’ll organize before it’s too late.

Part 9 in the Christian Nationalism Series:

Part 1 in the Christian Nationalism Series:

Local Communities Block Christian Nationalist School Policies in Texas and Beyond

Texas passed legislation in 2023 allowing schools to hire spiritual “chaplains” as counselors—part of a national push to insert religious authority figures into public education. But many school boards chose not to implement it. Local resistance worked.

In Mansfield, Texas, parent Megan Fanning connected with Christians Against Christian Nationalism organizers after the chaplain bill passed. She got toolkits, fact sheets, materials. Then she emailed her school board. “To have a field organizer from Christians Against Christian Nationalism come and speak at our school board meeting on behalf of our community against this chaplain policy meant so much,” Fanning said. “I like to think that community feedback might have made a difference in them voting against and rejecting the policy.”

This pattern keeps repeating: state legislatures pass aggressive Christian nationalist bills, then they stall at implementation. Amanda Tyler’s Christians Against Christian Nationalism campaign has drawn over 40,000 signatories, many from churches that once stayed out of politics. Now there are 13 community-led coalitions in 10 states responding to local needs and taking the message into public conversations about religious freedom in schools.

“These extreme policies passed by the legislature are not necessarily getting implemented because of local resistance,” Tyler told Religion News Service.

The leverage point is clear. Christian nationalists may have captured many state legislatures, but defending religious freedom in public schools requires local action. Every school board meeting is a battlefield. Every city council session is a chance to defend pluralism.

Faith Leaders Build Interfaith Coalitions Against Christian Nationalism

Rev. Dr. William Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis lead the Poor People’s Campaign, which addresses “at least 140 million people in the country who are impacted by the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism and the false narrative of Christian nationalism.”

Barber’s approach—what he calls “moral fusion politics”—deliberately crosses lines that usually divide Americans. “When people sit down across the lines that have tended to divide us – race, geography, sexuality – and then take an honest look at the politics of extremism,” he explains, “they figure out that the same people who are voting against people because they are gay are” also voting against healthcare, living wages, and public education.

This isn’t theory. Around 100 faith leaders associated with Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH) launched a “We All Belong” campaign protecting pluralism and religious freedom at local government meetings. In January 2025, over two dozen Black ministers issued “A Credo to Legatees of the Black Church Tradition,” calling for resistance through bold acts including economic empowerment and community investment.

The resistance is explicitly theological. Mara Richards Bim, justice and advocacy fellow at Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas, organized protests against immigration enforcement. “We don’t want state-imposed prayer,” she said, noting that “even within Christianity, we have a diversity of traditions.”

Republican Allies Join Fight Against Government-Funded Religious Schools

Here’s what’s underreported: the fracture within Republican ranks over Christian nationalist policies. Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed suit against the Catholic charter school proposal in 2023, calling it a “potential cancer.” He said he’d continue “protecting our Christian values and defending religious liberty” by opposing taxpayer-funded religious charter schools.

Read that carefully. A Republican attorney general arguing that preventing government funding of religious schools is how you protect Christian values and religious freedom.

Drummond’s reasoning is both strategic and principled. If government can fund Catholic schools today, it can fund Islamic schools tomorrow. “The Supreme Court’s decision represents a resounding victory for religious liberty,” he said after the May ruling, emphasizing “that Oklahoma taxpayers will not be forced to fund radical Islamic schools, while protecting the religious rights of families to choose any school they wish for their children.”

This creates an organizing opportunity progressives have mostly missed. Principled conservatives worried about government overreach into religious affairs are potential allies in defending church-state separation. The argument isn’t just about defending pluralism. It’s about preventing the state from controlling religion.

Chief Justice John Roberts may have provided the critical fourth vote against the religious charter school, despite his previous support for religious school funding in different contexts. The institutional conservative concern about government entanglement with religion hasn’t disappeared. It’s been dormant.

Digital Organizing Tools Help Communities Fight Christian Nationalist Overreach

In September 2025, over 150 advocates from 22 states gathered in Dallas for the Religious Freedom in Public Schools Summit, led by Interfaith Alliance and cosponsored by Americans United, Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Freedom From Religion Foundation, Hindus for Human Rights, Muslim Public Affairs Council, National Council of Jewish Women, Pastors for Children, and Texas Impact.

They chose Dallas deliberately. Texas has passed laws allowing chaplains as school counselors, requiring Ten Commandments displays in classrooms (now facing legal challenge), mandating prayer time, and funneling public dollars to private religious schools—all key Christian nationalist policy goals.

“Texas is a testing ground,” said Rev. Alyssa Aldape of Americans United. “The strategies developed here often spread nationwide. So that’s why it is critical to understand not only what’s happening in Texas but how Texans are organizing to resist. Texas is a state of fighters and that there are good folks in this state fighting for our public schools.”

Laura McKee, field organizer for Christians Against Christian Nationalism, described how social media translates into offline power: “We’ve really seen the impact of online to offline organizing with TikTok. We multiple times have helped people develop their public comment that they’re going to go and share that evening at their local school board or city council meeting.”

Christopher and Mendi Tackett, a Texas couple, spent years connecting Christian nationalist organizations to Project 2025. In late 2023, Christopher posted a video warning about Project 2025 with the strategy “See It. Name It. Fight It.” Their grassroots effort helped catalyze mainstream coverage from outlets like The Washington Post and NPR pointing to the plan’s goal of “infusing Christian nationalism into every facet of government policy.”

What Christian Nationalism Resistance Victories Mean for Democracy

The resistance to Christian nationalism has three structural advantages organizers need to leverage.

Demographics favor pluralism. Christian nationalism support has stayed stable since late 2022 at around 30% of Americans. This isn’t a rising tide. It’s a well-organized minority that’s successfully captured institutional power through strategic organizing while the majority slept.

Overreach creates backlash. The Dobbs decision eliminating federal abortion rights energized millions of previously disengaged voters. Oklahoma’s attempt to mandate Trump-branded Bibles in classrooms was so extreme that 75% of superintendents refused to comply before the state Supreme Court blocked it. Christian nationalists are winning in legislatures but struggling at implementation because normal people—including many Christians—recognize authoritarian excess when they see it.

Local power remains democratic. Gerrymandered legislatures and a conservative Supreme Court pose real obstacles, but school boards, city councils, and county commissions remain directly accountable to voters. A packed school board meeting can still change outcomes. A coalition of parents, clergy, and educators can still block a chaplain policy or Ten Commandments mandate.

But these advantages only matter if the pluralist majority organizes with the same discipline and long-term commitment Christian nationalists have shown for fifty years.

What’s Next: Christian Nationalism Battles to Watch in 2026

The 2026 midterm elections will test whether resistance organizing can translate to electoral power. A majority of Republicans qualify as either Christian nationalism Adherents (20%) or Sympathizers (33%), creating a direct link between Christian nationalist ideology and partisan control. Swing districts and states will determine whether local resistance can scale to state and federal power.

Watch for:

• New religious charter school cases emerging in other states, potentially reaching the Supreme Court again in 2-3 years when Justice Barrett might participate

• State legislative sessions (January-May 2026) attempting to mandate religious instruction, display requirements, voucher expansion, and school chaplain programs

• School board elections in spring and fall 2026, where Christian nationalist megachurches are organizing coordinated takeover campaigns

• Trump administration policy implementation through Project 2025’s “180-Day Playbook,” particularly Department of Education guidance and DOJ civil rights division priorities

As Dahlia Taha of the Muslim Public Affairs Council argued at the Dallas summit: “Religious liberty is supposed to be America’s first liberty. But really, it’s a stress test, and nowhere is this test clearer than in our public schools. Public schools are arms of the state. When they deny religious accommodations, silence students, or trivialize harassment, they aren’t just failing young people. They’re failing the First Amendment.”

Take Action: How to Fight Christian Nationalism in Your Community

The playbook for defending religious freedom and blocking Christian nationalist overreach is working, but it requires participation:

Find your local coalition: Visit ChristiansAgainstChristianNationalism.org to connect with one of the 13 state coalitions or start your own

Attend school board meetings: Check your district’s calendar and prepare public comment on school chaplain programs, curriculum mandates, or Ten Commandments displays

Support legal challenges: Americans United, ACLU, and Baptist Joint Committee are litigating cases nationwide and need funding

Know your school board candidates: Ballotready.org provides detailed information on local races where Christian nationalist organizing is intense

Share Resist and Rise

Reader Question: What does resistance look like where you live? Have you witnessed local officials pushing back against Christian nationalist policies? Are people of faith in your area organizing to defend pluralism and religious freedom? Have you seen school boards reject school chaplain programs or Ten Commandments mandates? Share your story because democracy depends on ordinary people taking extraordinary action in their own communities.

Share Your Story

Frequently Asked Questions About Fighting Christian Nationalism

How can I fight Christian nationalism in my local school district? Start by attending school board meetings, connecting with local coalitions like Christians Against Christian Nationalism, and preparing public comments on policies like school chaplain programs or religious instruction mandates. Local organizing is the most effective tool.

What states have passed Christian nationalist education policies? Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Florida have passed the most aggressive policies, including school chaplain programs, Ten Commandments display requirements, religious charter schools, and voucher programs that fund religious education with public dollars.

Are Republicans opposing Christian nationalism? Yes, some principled conservatives are joining the fight. Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond successfully sued to block the nation’s first religious charter school, arguing it threatened religious liberty and church-state separation.

How effective is local organizing against Christian nationalist policies? Highly effective. While Christian nationalists control many state legislatures, local school boards and city councils remain democratically accountable. In Texas, many districts rejected school chaplain programs despite state authorization. In Oklahoma, 75% of superintendents refused to implement Bible mandates before courts blocked them.

Methods & Verification

All factual claims were cross-checked against primary sources including Supreme Court decisions, PRRI survey data (22,000+ respondents across all 50 states), organizational reports from Americans United and Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, and news coverage from NPR, Religion News Service, CNN, and local outlets. Supreme Court information verified through SCOTUSblog and official court documents. Quotes attributed to named sources with dates and contexts.

Sources:

PRRI American Values Atlas 2024

U.S. Supreme Court St. Isidore ruling via SCOTUSblog

Christians Against Christian Nationalism

Religious Freedom in Public Schools Summit coverage, KERA News, September 17, 2025

The Forward, “Christians against Christian Nationalism leader talks Trump,” February 18, 2025

Trump National Prayer Breakfast remarks, Voice of America, February 6, 2025

NPR, “Progressive Christians counter Christian Nationalism message,” October 22, 2025

Thanksgiving 30-Day Trial

Buy Me A Coffee

Forever Discount Only Available for a Limited Time—Thanks for Your Consideration

Get 50% off forever

Across the globe, allies of faith and secularism are effectively countering Christian nationalist advances. This includes a federal court’s decision to halt Texas’s Ten Commandments bill and a trans-Atlantic “seven mountains” backlash. As the tactics employed expand, so should your activist toolkit.

When a federal judge in Austin ruled against Texas Senate Bill 10, which mandates a Ten Commandments display in every public school classroom. The decision had far-reaching implications beyond the Lone Star State. It marked a significant setback for a strategy that seeks to intertwine scripture with state authority, a defining characteristic of the Christian nationalist movement that has significantly influenced American politics since the 1970s. However, courtroom victories alone are insufficient to halt this movement. Instead, a growing and coordinated resistance is emerging, encompassing interfaith coalitions, strategic narrative campaigns, and disciplined nonviolent protests. These efforts are demonstrating that the movement can be slowed, if not completely stopped. This week, we delve into the evidence, hear from those on the front lines, and provide actionable steps that individuals can take to contribute to this resistance.

Part 8 in the Christian Nationalism Series:

Part 1 in the Christian Nationalism Series:

Strength in Diversity

The Interfaith Alliance (IA) and more than 130 faith‑based groups jointly sent a letter to Congress in October 2025, condemning federal overreach on “patriotic education” and demanding the protection of pluralist democracy.1 Christians Against Christian Nationalism (CACN) reports that over 40,000 signatories from various denominations are actively opposing the merging of Christianity with state policies.2 A 2024 Pew Research Center survey shows 73% of Americans favor a “nation of many religions” rather than a singular Christian identity.3

“Interfaith coalitions are the backbone of resistance,” says Rev. William Barber II, co‑chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, in a Nation interview (Nov 2025).4

Analysis:

By uniting various religious traditions with secular civil rights groups, these coalitions form a moral majority that surpasses the narrowly defined Christian nationalist base. The diverse range of voices makes it challenging for opponents to portray the resistance as “anti-Christian,” instead framing it as a defense of constitutional liberty.

Courts Are Battlegrounds

On August 20, 2025, a U.S. District Court ruled Texas SB-10 unconstitutional, citing the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.5 Also in 2025, the Supreme Court declined to review the case of St. Isidore Catholic Charter School v. U.S., preserving a lower‑court decision that barred public funding for overtly religious charter schools.6 According to PRRI’s “Resistance to Christian Nationalism in All 50 States” report, roughly 67% of Americans either reject or are skeptical of Christian‑nationalist ideology, creating a strong public‑opinion foundation for ongoing litigation.7

“Legal challenges are costly and slow, but they set crucial precedents that protect rights for the long term,” notes Doug Pagitt, founder of Vote Common Good, speaking to Religion News Service (Oct 2025).8

Analysis:

Court victories do more than halt a single bill; they generate jurisprudential scaffolding that future litigants can climb. When combined with a favorable public climate, they force policymakers to reckon with constitutional limits before drafting the next “faith‑first” proposal.

Storytelling as a Remedy

A 2024 study conducted by the Center for Religion and Civic Culture revealed that 45% of respondents who were exposed to personal stories of faith-based resistance reported a more nuanced perspective on “Christian nationalism” compared to those who were only presented with abstract policy arguments.9 The “See It. Name It. Fight It.” campaign, initiated by activist Christopher Tackett, gained traction and garnered 20,000 followers who actively submit incident reports of religious coercion in educational institutions and workplaces.10 Internationally, the “Seven Mountains” strategy, originally devised as a Christian nationalist playbook, has undergone a significant transformation. Interfaith groups in Poland and Hungary have taken the initiative to reverse the strategy, establishing parallel “peace mountain” media hubs. These hubs actively broadcast pluralist narratives, effectively countering state-aligned propaganda.11

“Narratives shape reality; we must tell better stories,” asserts Sarah Posner, senior editor at Politico, in a briefing on faith‑based activism (Sept 2025) .12

Analysis:

Numbers alone rarely evoke emotions; compelling, relatable stories do. By gathering testimonies and amplifying them through multimedia, resistance movements establish a feedback loop that educates the public and inspires further activism.

Nonviolent Protests

The Poor People’s Campaign organized over 150 coordinated “book ban walkouts” across 12 states in September 2025. These walkouts prompted three state education boards to reconsider curriculum changes aligned with Christian nationalist agendas.13 In Milwaukee, the interfaith coalition MICAH (Milwaukee Inner City Congregations Allied for Hope) organized a “Rally for Democracy” on October 5, 2025. The rally drew 2,300 participants from churches, mosques, synagogues, and secular NGOs.14 A 2024 FBI report revealed a 12% increase in hate crime incidents targeting religious minorities in counties where anti-Christian nationalist protests took place. This report suggested a potential backlash risk but also highlighted the heightened visibility of the issue.15

“Nonviolent protest is the oldest, most effective tool for democratic change,” remarks Amanda Tyler, director of Christians Against Christian Nationalism, in an interview with Forward (Oct 2025).16

Analysis

While protests may initially incite short-term hostility, their long-term impact lies in reshaping public discourse and exerting pressure on legislators. The key to success lies in strategic, inclusive mobilization that presents a unified front, rather than fragmented dissent.

What It Means

The convergence of interfaith solidarity, courtroom victories, narrative crafting, and disciplined protest is reshaping the battleground against Christian nationalism. When these tactics complement each other, legal victories bolstered by public opinion and stories amplified through coalition networks, the movement gains resilience that pure litigation or isolated rallies could never achieve. This development signifies a growing, evidence-based bulwark capable of countering theocratic encroachments before they become entrenched law, thereby safeguarding democracy.

What’s Next

• House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on “Religious Freedom vs. State Endorsement,” November 15, 2025—Why Watch: Potential new federal guidelines that could tighten or loosen church‑state boundaries.

• Launch of the “Global Faith‑Freedom Forum” in Brussels, December 2, 2025—Why Watch: International coalition building; European partners may export successful tactics to the U.S.

• Project 2025 rollout of “Seven‑Mountains” policy memo, Early 2026—Why Watch: Anticipated blueprint for further Christian‑nationalist infiltration of state institutions.

Call to Action

1. Submit Your Story: Join the “See It Name It Fight It.” platform

   (https://seeitnameitfightit.com/) and log any instance of religious coercion in schools, workplaces, or public spaces. Your report adds to a national database that lawyers use for litigation.

2. Donate to Legal Defense: Contribute $25 or more to the Interfaith Alliance’s litigation fund (https://www.interfaithalliance.org/donate) to help finance upcoming court battles.

3. Attend a Local Group: Find a “Christians Against Christian Nationalism” group near you on the coalition map

   (https://www.christiansagainstchristiannationalism.org/localgroups)

Methods & Verification

All factual claims were cross‑checked against primary court filings, recent news articles, and organizational reports. Quotes and data were independently confirmed via official press releases, reputable news outlets, and publicly available surveys.

Citations

State legislatures are rapidly advancing efforts to incorporate Christian nationalist ideology into public schools, reproductive rights, immigration policies, and civil liberties. This move is testing the boundaries of democracy, pluralism, and the Constitution.

The Theocratic Surge: Why This Week’s Battles Matter

In 2025, the United States is witnessing a coordinated effort to transform state laws into instruments for advancing Christian nationalist agendas. From Oklahoma’s now-repealed mandate to incorporate the Bible into classrooms to a surge in anti-LGBTQ+ and abortion restrictions, statehouses have become battlegrounds for the very essence of American democracy. These aren’t isolated conflicts; they are pivotal moments in a national initiative to redefine citizenship, education, and rights along exclusionary religious lines. The outcome of these battles will determine whether pluralism or theocracy will dominate public life.

Part 7 in the Christian Nationalism Series:

Part 1 in the Christian Nationalism Series:

Consider buying me a cup of coffee if you find value in series like these.

Buy Me a Coffee

Schoolhouse Theocracy: Bibles, Censorship, and Forced Outing

In 2024, Oklahoma mandated that teachers keep Christian Bibles in every classroom and incorporate them into lessons. However, this policy was rescinded in 2025 after facing legal challenges and public backlash, highlighting the constitutional risks associated with state-mandated religion. (https://www.pjstar.com/story/news/2025/10/31/oklahoma-abandons-bible-classroom-requirement/86982456007/)

Furthermore, thirteen states now restrict LGBTQ+ topics in schools. Since 2022, nine states have passed “Don’t Say LGBTQ+” laws, which censor classroom discussions and educational materials. (https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/05/28/human-rights-violations-against-lgbtq-communities-united-states) Notably, LGBTQ+ topic books accounted for 39% of the banned books in the 2023–2024 school year, reflecting a deliberate effort to erase diverse identities from education. (https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/05/28/human-rights-violations-against-lgbtq-communities-united-states)

Additionally, seven states require school staff to out transgender students to their families. Texas and Florida further prohibit employees from assisting students with social transition, even with parental consent. (https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/05/28/human-rights-violations-against-lgbtq-communities-united-states)

Kelley Robinson, President of the Human Rights Campaign, emphasized that “bills that aim to write hate into state law, through censoring or banning LGBTQ+ topics and books in the classroom, only help to affirm bullying, hate, and discrimination.” (Washington Post, 2024-03-12) (https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/roundup-of-anti-lgbtq-legislation-advancing-in-states-across-the-country)

Analysis:

Oklahoma’s swift reversal demonstrates that aggressive Christian nationalist overreach can be curbed through legal and civic resistance. However, the sheer volume and coordinated nature of anti-LGBTQ+ and religious mandates suggest a deliberate strategy to overpower opposition and establish theocratic governance.

Bodies and Borders: Reproductive and Immigration Control

Twelve states enforce total abortion bans, and 29 others ban abortion at various gestational points, as of July 7^th, 2025. (https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/state-policies-abortion-bans) 154,900 people crossed state lines for abortion in 2024—15% of all abortions in states without total bans (https://www.guttmacher.org/2024/12/state-policy-trends-2024-anti-abortion-policymakers-redouble-attacks-on-bodily-autonomy). The Department of Homeland Security ended its policy of treating churches as “protected areas” for immigration enforcement, prompting lawsuits from religious groups who argue that sanctuary is a core faith practice. The state is attempting to shut down Annunciation House, a Catholic organization sheltering migrants, arguing that religious beliefs cannot defend “harboring unauthorized immigrants.” The organization is countersuing under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

“The call to solidarity is also a call to promote the effective recognition of the rights of immigrants and to overcome all discrimination based on race, culture, or religion. . .. Catholic lay people, diocesan officials, and bishops should continue to work together with community organizations, labor unions, and other religious bodies on behalf of the rights of immigrants in the workplace, schools, public services, our legal system, and all levels of government.” Welcoming the Stranger Among Us: Unity in Diversity, A Statement of the U.S. Catholic Bishops ( https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/migrants-refugees-and-travelers/quotes-rights-migrants-refugees )

Analysis:

Christian nationalist actors exploit religious liberty as a pretext for exclusionary policies, yet they refuse to extend the same protections to faith-based immigrant advocates. This stark contrast highlights a blatant double standard in the interpretation and application of “religious freedom.”

Courts as Battlegrounds: The Legal Infrastructure of Theocracy

National groups like Alliance Defending Freedom and the Heritage Foundation draft model bills and defend them in court, creating a pipeline from statehouse to Supreme Court (https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/right-wing-labs-how-state-legislatures-are-driving-anti-lgbtq-attacks-at-federal-level). For instance, in 2025, a Montana court blocked a broad anti-trans bathroom ban, while the 4th Circuit blocked West Virginia’s ban on transgender girls in school sports. These cases highlight the ongoing efforts to challenge anti-LGBTQ policies at the federal level (https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/joint-statement-on-preliminary-injunction-ruling-in-case-challenging-anti-transgender-bathroom-ban), (https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/active-court-cases-that-will-influence-the-state-of-lgbtq-rights). The Court will soon rule on transgender sports bans and the limits of federal judicial oversight in immigration, with nationwide implications (https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/state-legislative-round-youth-schools-and-transgender). Oklahoma’s Bible mandate was rescinded after legal action, demonstrating that Establishment Clause violations remain vulnerable, even in conservative states (https://www.pjstar.com/story/news/2025/10/31/oklahoma-abandons-bible-classroom-requirement/86982456007/). Judge Jason Marks, Missoula County District Court, emphasized the need for extraordinary protection for transgender Montanans due to their history of unequal treatment and political powerlessness (https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/joint-statement-on-preliminary-injunction-ruling-in-case-challenging-anti-transgender-bathroom-ban).

Analysis:

The legal landscape is volatile: some courts defend civil rights, others enable discrimination. The Supreme Court’s next moves will determine whether constitutional protections or Christian nationalist legal theories prevail.

The Coordinated Campaign: Model Bills, Money, and Messaging

The Human Rights Campaign has documented how “right-wing labs” like the Heritage Foundation develop template bills that appear in multiple state legislatures, creating the illusion of grassroots movements (https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/right-wing-labs-how-state-legislatures-are-driving-anti-lgbtq-attacks-at-federal-level). This policy manifesto calls for federal action to ban medication abortion, restrict reproductive health language, and rebrand the Department of Health and Human Services as the “Department of Life” (https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/how-project-2025-seeks-obliterate-srhr). Fifteen states now define sex strictly by reproductive anatomy, chromosomes, or hormones, using nearly identical language to exclude transgender and intersex people from legal protections (https://19thnews.org/2025/05/anti-trans-extreme-state-laws-2025/). LGBTQ+ youth crisis hotlines report surges in calls citing anti-LGBTQ+ political rhetoric as a top reason for distress (https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/roundup-of-anti-lgbtq-legislation-advancing-in-states-across-the-country). “The end goal of anti-trans legislation is denying transgender people the words to describe our experience, the means to express it safely, and the community and support we all deserve,” said Chase Strangio, Deputy Director for Transgender Justice, ACLU (ACLU, 2025-09-19) (https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights-2025).

Analysis:

This isn’t a grassroots backlash; it’s a top-down, well-funded campaign aimed at imposing a narrow interpretation of gender, sexuality, and religion on public life. Consequently, we end up with a patchwork of rights and protections that vary depending on your zip code.

What It Means

The Christian nationalist capture of state policy poses an existential threat to American pluralism and democracy. By embedding religious doctrine into various aspects of law, such as school curricula, reproductive healthcare, and civil rights, these movements are establishing a two-tier system of citizenship based on theological conformity. While legal challenges and reversals demonstrate that constitutional protections still hold some sway, the sheer volume and coordination of these attacks suggest a long-term strategy aimed at exhausting opposition and normalizing theocratic governance. The most vulnerable groups, including LGBTQ+ youth, pregnant individuals, immigrants, and religious minorities, are disproportionately affected, even as these policies are justified under the guise of “religious freedom.”

What’s Next

• Supreme Court Transgender Sports Cases: Decisions expected in 2025 will set nationwide precedents for transgender students’ participation in school activities (https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/state-legislative-round-youth-schools-and-transgender).

• Legislative Sessions in Texas, Florida, and Iowa: Watch for new bills targeting LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive access, and immigrant protections in upcoming sessions (https://19thnews.org/2025/05/anti-trans-extreme-state-laws-2025/).

• 2026 Ballot Initiative Campaigns: Both sides are preparing for expanded ballot campaigns, with Christian nationalist groups developing new strategies to counter pro-choice and pro-LGBTQ+ measures (https://www.guttmacher.org/2024/11/abortion-rights-state-ballot-measures-2024).

Call to Action

• Track and Oppose Legislation: Use the ACLU’s real-time tracker to monitor anti-LGBTQ+ bills in your state and sign petitions opposing discriminatory laws (ACLU Legislative Tracker).

• Support Legal Challenges: Donate to organizations like Lambda Legal, the ACLU, and state-based civil rights groups fighting these laws.

• Reader Question: How are Christian nationalist policies impacting your community’s schools, healthcare access, or local government? Share your observations and experiences for our ongoing investigation into democracy.

Methods & Verification

All factual claims were cross-checked against primary legislative tracking databases, recent court records, and reporting from the ACLU, Human Rights Campaign, Guttmacher Institute, and major news outlets. Quotes and data were independently confirmed via official government documents, legal filings, and organizational records from 2024–2025.

A coordinated network of Christian Nationalist organizations, including the ADF, FRC, and AFPI/Project 2025, is utilizing the Seven Mountains Mandate to reshape American law and culture. Their influence is expanding, their strategies are evolving, and the stakes for democracy have never been higher.

If you believe Christian nationalism is merely a fringe movement, think again. In 2025, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), Family Research Council (FRC), and America First Policy Institute (AFPI)/Project 2025 are shaping state and federal policies and executing a strategy for Christian dominion over American society. Their blueprint is the Seven Mountains Mandate, a plan to control government, education, media, and other aspects of society. This week, we will map their network, reveal their funding sources, and highlight the resistance they face. Because the developments in Arizona, Texas, and Florida today could potentially impact your state tomorrow.

Part 6 in the Christian Nationalism Series:

Part 1 in the Christian Nationalism Series:

Buy me a coffee

The Power Players: ADF, FRC, and AFPI/Project 2025

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the largest Christian legal advocacy group in the U.S., boasts a substantial $104 million budget and a network of over 5,200 allied attorneys. ADF is currently engaged in litigation or has recently secured victories in Supreme Court cases related to abortion, LGBTQ rights, and religious exemptions, including notable cases such as 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. On the other hand, the Family Research Council (FRC), which has been reclassified as a church for IRS purposes, serves as a formidable lobbying entity advocating for anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ, and “parental rights” legislation across the nation. In a recent statement, FRC’s president, Tony Perkins, asserted, “We are witnessing an unprecedented assault on faith, family, and freedom in America” (FRC webcast, 2025). Furthermore, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) and Project 2025 emerge as the policy engine driving a potential second Trump administration. Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” outlines a plan to dismantle federal agencies, roll back civil rights, and consolidate executive power. AFPI’s Brooke Rollins emphasized their unwavering commitment to faith, family, and freedom during an AFPI summit in 2025.

Data Point:

Recent polling reveals that only 10% of Americans identify as adherents of Christian nationalism. Nevertheless, the influence of these organizations is amplified by their strategic legal and legislative efforts.

Analysis:

These groups do not operate in isolation but as part of a tightly knit network. Their leaders, donors, and legal teams share overlapping connections, enabling them to swiftly respond to political opportunities and threats.

The Seven Mountains Mandate: Dominion, Not Democracy

The Seven Mountains Mandate (7MM) is a call for Christians to “take dominion” over seven different spheres. These spheres are government, education, media, business, family, religion, and arts/entertainment. Today, organizations like ADF, FRC, and AFPI explicitly employ the 7MM as a strategic framework. Lance Wallnau, a prominent advocate, stressed the significance of equipping believers to lead in every cultural sphere to witness America’s return to its godly roots, describing it as a spiritual battle for the nation’s soul (2025 conference). (See video explanation below.) The 7MM is not merely rhetoric; it is evident in legislative efforts for “Don’t Say Gay” laws, book bans, and religious exemptions in states like Texas and Florida. The “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a symbol of the 7MM, was flown during the January 6 Capitol insurrection, underscoring the movement’s willingness to blur the line between spiritual warfare and political action.

Data Point:

Approximately 3 million Americans openly attend churches following Seven Mountains or New Apostolic Reformation teachings.

Analysis:

The 7MM is less about faith and more about power. Its adherents see pluralism as a threat, not a value, and are working to replace democratic norms with a theocratic vision.

Funding the Dominion: Donor Networks and Dark Money

Conservative Christian foundations, such as the National Christian Foundation, DeVos family foundations, and the Bradley Foundation, fund ADF and FRC. AFPI and Project 2025 receive support from Trump-aligned donors and legacy conservative funders. Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs), financial vehicles that allow donors to make anonymous contributions, make it challenging to track the full extent of financial influence. Board members and major donors often serve on multiple organizations, enabling coordinated fundraising and strategy. ADF’s $104 million budget (2022) surpasses that of most progressive legal groups, allowing it to pursue a relentless litigation strategy.

“Donor influence is not just financial but strategic: major funders often help set priorities, shape messaging, and recruit leadership” (Network Funding Report, 2025).

Analysis:

Transparency is a joke when donor-advised funds and “church” reclassifications shield these groups from scrutiny. As a result, they wield outsized influence with minimal accountability.

State-Level Coordination: Policy Labs for Dominion

Arizona, Texas, and Florida are at the forefront of Christian Nationalist policy experiments. These states are implementing measures that restrict LGBTQ rights, ban abortion, and expand religious exemptions. The American Family Defense Fund (ADF) and the Family Research Council (FRC) draft model legislation that is then copied and pasted into state legislatures, accelerating the spread of their agenda. ADF’s litigation has also led to significant Supreme Court decisions that have reshaped national policy, such as Dobbs and 303 Creative. Upcoming cases to watch include Taylor v. Trump, which involves executive power and criminal justice, and National Association of the Deaf v. Trump, which pertains to civil rights and accessibility. These cases have implications for Christian Nationalist priorities. Additionally, over 10,000 bills and resolutions before Congress in the 2025-2026 session address issues championed by these groups, including religious exemptions, education, and reproductive rights.

“These groups are reshaping American politics from the ground up.” — Political Analyst (2025).

Analysis:

State legislatures have become the new laboratories of theocracy. The policies and ideas that originate in Texas and Florida often have a wider impact beyond their states.

What It Means

The Christian Nationalist ‘network,’ despite being a minority in numbers, wields a significant impact. Their coordinated legal, legislative, and media strategies are eroding the separation of church and state, jeopardizing civil rights, and undermining pluralism. The Seven Mountains Mandate is not merely a metaphorical concept; it serves as a roadmap for replacing democracy with dominion. If you value a pluralist, democratic society, it is imperative that you pay attention and take action.

What’s Next

• Court Rulings: Watch for decisions in Taylor v. Trump and National Association of the Deaf v. Trump, which could set major precedents for executive power and civil rights.

• Legislative Sessions: State legislatures in Arizona, Texas, and Florida will debate new bills on education, LGBTQ rights, and religious exemptions in the coming months.

• Project 2025 Rollout: AFPI and the Heritage Foundation have unveiled updated policy recommendations and have hosted public events to promote their agenda for the second Trump administration.

Call to Action

Share Your Story:

Have you seen the influence of ADF, FRC, AFPI, or the Seven Mountains Mandate in your local schools, government, or community? What forms of resistance or solidarity have you witnessed? Share your experience for our upcoming feature on grassroots resistance.

Share Your Story

Take Action:

Support organizations that advocate for pluralism and the separation of church and state. Attend local town halls, join resistance groups, or amplify counter-narratives on social media. The time to take action is now.

Methods & Verification

All factual claims were cross-checked against primary sources, recent news, and organizational records. Quotes and data were independently confirmed via public databases, court filings, and official documents.

Share Resist and Rise

Citations:

1. ADF Legal Cases and Updates

2. Family Research Council

3. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer: ADF

4. AFPI: About and Project 2025

5. PRRI: Christian Nationalism Survey, 2024

6. The Conversation: Seven Mountains Mandate

7. Lance Wallnau, 2025 Conference Speech

8. Texas Legislature Online

9. NPR: Appeal to Heaven Flag

10. OpenSecrets: Conservative Donors

11. ProPublica: Donor-Advised Funds

12. InfluenceWatch: ADF, FRC, AFPI

13. Florida Legislature: Bill Tracking

14. U.S. Federal Policy Tracker

15. Just Security Litigation Tracker

16. Congress.gov: 119th Congress

17. Howard University News Service: Project 2025

18. ACLU: Project 2025, Explained

Remember that Action, is the fuel for Real Change!