Hey all, the FCC is taking comments about adding warnings to media containing trans/non-binary representation in media: read document
If you have a moment, please fill out the for in the link and tell them how you feel:
https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings/express?proceeding%5Bname%5D=19-41
Tip: you will need your 9 digital zip code. To look this up, head over to: https://www.smarty.com/articles/zip-4-code
Tonight, an all-new Election Night stream live on twitch.tv/50501movement with Hunter and Glo from PolRev, guest host Snack Mom, and the 50501 team!
We also have special guests, the Working Families Party, Abolish ICE Pledge, and Neighbors Not Numbers Coalition!
Come on down and hang out with Hunter and the team tonight at 7:30 PM ET (3:30 PM PT).
Just saw this group over I80, I think at Madison Ave. Give em a honk if you're going by!
Maybe you do something to build your mutual aid network. Maybe it's something targeting corporate operations. Maybe you focus on the elections. There are lots of possibilities:
There are TONS of things we can do. Some of these are small enough that you can even do more than one. Maybe you're already doing these things, and can suggest others or get other folks involved.
ETA: A lot of people complained about the May Day action being just one day, and small actions like these lay the foundation for larger actions, by more people, down the road
The North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters endorses Platner.
Platner: “Power in society comes from two places, organized money or organized people and we all know that the money is organized and it has bought our political system.”
After U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained his mother, 2-year-old Orlin Hernandez Reyes moved into a shed.
His uncle, Samuel Maldonado Erazo, was charged with taking care of the toddler and his three cousins, the oldest of whom was 7, while Orlin’s mother and her sister waited in ICE detention to be deported to Honduras.
Maldonado had once served in the Honduran military, a co-worker later told investigators, and now lived in the Florida Panhandle. He was separated from Orlin’s aunt, and police said he drank heavily and whipped the children with a wire. Orlin repeatedly endured the worst of the abuse.
An autopsy showed he had multiple broken bones. There were signs his tiny body had been sexually battered. Authorities allege Maldonado repeatedly struck Orlin in the head, stomped on his body and burned his skin with a lighter. His hands bore bruises, a sign that Orlin had tried to shield himself from the blows. The coroner listed his cause of death as multiple blunt force traumas.
Maldonado has been charged with murder and pleaded not guilty.
In a statement a week after Orlin died, acting ICE director Todd M. Lyons berated Orlin’s mother, Wendy Hernandez Reyes, alleging that she had “abandoned” her child to the man who allegedly killed him — an undocumented immigrant who “never should’ve been in this country in the first place,” but was nonetheless allowed to care for the children while Orlin’s mother was in detention.
“Reyes chose to leave her son here with a violent murderer who took his life,” he asserted.
But a review of court records and the mother’s own account contradict ICE’s narrative and raise questions about how the Trump administration is deporting scores of parents, many without their children. Hernandez was detained by a sheriff’s deputy in Alabama while on her way to work. Local law enforcement agencies are increasingly carrying out immigration enforcement as part of the president’s mass deportation campaign.
The Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office handed Hernandez over to ICE. She was deported back to Honduras less than a month after her arrest.
Hernandez does not match the profile of the “worst of the worst” criminals that the Department of Homeland Security has promised to prioritize for removal. She is a victim of domestic violence, her lawyer said, and has no criminal record. But in President Donald Trump’s second term, the stated goal is to remove as many undocumented immigrants as possible. That has increasingly included parents of young children, who are being placed in foster care, living with relatives or even left to fend for themselves — with little or no follow-up to ensure they are safe.
Nothing in federal law requires ICE — or any other agency — to check in with a child’s caregiver after detaining their parents, attorneys say. Agency policy calls for following parents’ wishes for their children, including removing them together, but immigration lawyers say requests to be deported as a family are often ignored. The lack of safeguards for the children left behind is considered a glaring blind spot in a system going full-tilt to deport record numbers of immigrants.
Hernandez said she repeatedly urged ICE officers to let her son go with her, but her pleas were met with silence.
“How could I abandon my son, if my son was the love of my life?” Hernandez, 29, said in an interview. “I did everything with my son. I am not a bad mother who left my child with a killer.”
ICE did not respond to questions about how officers handled the case and whether they checked on Orlin afterward. The Florida Department of Children and Families, which responds to allegations of abuse, also did not respond to questions about the case. It is unclear whether anyone reported concerns before Orlin collapsed and was pronounced dead at a hospital in Pensacola, Florida.
The Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office said the officer stopped the car Hernandez was riding in for alleged traffic violations, checked the immigration status of all of the passengers inside as required by state law, and alerted ICE and sheriff’s officers who had been deputized to enforce immigration laws under an agreement known as 287(g).
Hernandez said she is currently in hiding in Honduras because ICE had previously deported her ex-partner after he was arrested in Pensacola for allegedly beating her and Orlin.
Orlin’s body remains at a morgue in Atlanta. Hernandez is trying to return to the United States to bury her son. She believes that, as an American, his grave site should be here.
Hernandez was pregnant with Orlin when she arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2022, following her sister to the U.S. in search of safety and a better life. Both had relationships with volatile and sometimes violent men, according to Hernandez’s lawyer, and often found protection in each other. Hernandez said she surrendered at a port of entry, with the help of a pastor in Mexico who worked in a migrant shelter, and was released to stay with a friend in Ohio while she awaited an asylum hearing.
She later moved to Pensacola to be closer to her sister and gave birth to her son. While in Florida, she missed her court hearing, which resulted in an immigration judge ordering her deportation in 2023. Nonetheless, her dream was for Orlin to grow up in the U.S., and under the Biden administration, she was not a target for removal.
Orlin’s father followed them to Pensacola, but the couple’s relationship was unraveling.
In 2024, the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office responded to her home after a neighbor called 911 on her partner. The police report said that he had gotten drunk and that they argued. She grabbed the baby, then 18 months old, and hid in the bathroom, but police said her partner kicked in the locked door. As she fled, he allegedly hurled a wooden chair at her and Orlin and struck her in the head with a beer bottle.
A few months later, Trump won the presidential election with broad support in Florida, where she lived, and Alabama, where she worked. Trump immediately issued an executive order to enlist state and local police to assist his mass deportation program to “the maximum extent permitted by law.”
In Baldwin County, Alabama, Sheriff Anthony Lowery celebrated, calling it a “great day for Baldwin County and for the United States.” He said that under President Joe Biden, ICE often refused to arrest the undocumented immigrants his officers found during traffic stops. Officials in the previous administration asserted that officers should focus on preventing crime rather than apprehending people with civil immigration violations.
“The answer was no every time,” he told Midday Mobile host Sean Sullivan in January 2025, speaking of his department’s efforts to transfer undocumented immigrants to ICE under Biden. He said the Trump administration’s eagerness to engage local law enforcement in immigration enforcement had enabled them to arrest more undocumented people.
The Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office soon announced it was signing up for a federal program known as 287(g), for the section of the 1996 law that created it. The program offers three ways of collaborating with ICE, including a “task force” model that trains and encourages state and local officers to enforce federal immigration laws. The program gained renewed interest following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, after reports found that some of the hijackers had been stopped for traffic violations.
But Justice Department investigations found that some localities later engaged in racial profiling targeting Latinos for unlawful arrests. President Barack Obama ended the task force collaborations with local departments, though 287(g) programs operating out of jails to identify criminals continued.
Only 135 police agencies across 16 states were signed up to participate in the initiative when Biden left office. The program now has more than 1,800 agreements spanning 39 states.
Hernandez separated from her partner after the 2024 incident, and her sister left Maldonado late last year. Around November, the sisters moved into a trailer together in Pensacola, to raise Orlin and Hernandez’s sister’s children, then ages 6, 4, and 2.
In their spare time they took the children to the playground. Hernandez’s phone is filled with photos and videos of Orlin eating french fries, his favorite food, wearing Spider-Man pajamas, and running fearlessly around the playground, flashing a dimpled smile at his mother as she followed closely behind.
The sisters found jobs laying concrete foundations for new houses for $150 a day across the state border in Mobile, Alabama, which required them to travel through Baldwin County.
On Jan. 8, a Baldwin County sheriff’s deputy pulled over the car they were riding in. Maj. Tony Nolfe said the vehicle was stopped around 6 a.m. in Bay Minette, a small city north of Mobile. The driver was cited for speeding, though Hernandez said he was not.
The deputy asked everyone in the car to show their IDs. The two sisters only had their Honduran passports. Nolfe noted that an Alabama state law requires officers to check the immigration status of people they stop and suspect are in the U.S. illegally. The deputy alerted ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations and sheriff’s deputies trained to help ICE under the 287(g) program, according to the sheriff’s office, Hernandez’s lawyer and federal records detailing her sister’s arrest.
At that point, Nolfe said, the federal agency took over the case. Hernandez and her sister were handcuffed along the side of U.S. Highway 31. The ICE officers who responded to the scene asked the women what they should do with their children, Hernandez said.
Hernandez told them she was a single mother and begged them to release her to care for her son.
Her sister was her emergency contact, and Maldonado the only relative the women could ask to care for the children. He had been abusive toward Hernandez’s sister, but never the children, she said.
“I had no other option,” Hernandez said. “The police stopped me. They didn’t want to release us.”
She reasoned it would be best for Orlin to stay with his cousins, who were more like siblings. On the morning of their arrest, Orlin and two of his cousins were with a babysitter and the oldest child was at school. ICE officers permitted Hernandez’s sister to call Maldonado. He assured them Orlin would be safe.
“Tell Wendy not to worry,” Hernandez said he told her sister. “The boy is going to be okay.”
Inside a Louisiana detention center, Hernandez said she made constant requests through an ICE-issued tablet to be reunited with her son. She did not want to leave the U.S. without him.
On the day she was deported, the tablet went dark. She said she and other crying mothers were shackled and loaded onto the planes without their children. One had recently given birth and her breasts were heavy with milk.
“I told them to help me with my boy,” Hernandez said. “I needed him.”
She was deported on Jan. 26, without her passport or other documents needed to prove her parentage and arrange Orlin’s return, Hernandez said. ICE did not respond to questions about that allegation, saying in a news release that Hernandez “chose not to take her U.S. citizen child with her.”
Hernandez said she scrambled to get the Honduran government to issue new documents and stayed in touch with Orlin by phone. Their conversations were often brief and she said neither Orlin nor Maldonado indicated anything was wrong. He turned 3 years old in February without her.
“You’ll be with me soon,” she told Orlin.
On March 4, her brother-in-law sent her an audio message saying that Orlin was sick.
Maldonado had taken Orlin to work and then left early to bring him home, where the child collapsed and Maldonado called 911, according to a police report. He told Hernandez authorities were interrogating him. An ambulance transported the child to a hospital.
Then Maldonado called with the hospital on the line: Orlin was dead.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “If I had known I would have looked for help. I would have gone to the church, the pastor would have helped. Nobody told me anything.”
The next day, Maldonado told authorities that he cared for the child and could explain the injuries. He said Orlin had been bitten by bugs and that he had dropped a 12-pack of soda on him accidentally. His public defender did not respond to requests for comment.
But Deanna Oleske, the chief medical examiner who declared the death a homicide, said the evidence contradicted Maldonado’s account. She said Orlin had a swollen stomach and testicles that were consistent with being “stomped on.”
“Absolutely no toddler has ‘normal’ injuries like bruising to the back of the hand/knuckles from doing toddler stuff,” she told police, according to court records.
Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons called Orlin’s injuries “horrendous.”
A week after his death, ICE put out a news release disparaging his mother for leaving Orlin “with a violent murderer.”
“This little boy suffered extensively and died when his mother abandoned him to Maldonado-Erazo’s ‘care,’” Lyons said in a written statement shared with the media after Orlin died. “I encourage parents to self-deport with their children, but even if they choose not to do that, ICE gives them the opportunity to be removed with their kids.”
A state grand jury indicted Maldonado on March 26 for first-degree felony murder and aggravated child abuse, saying he inflicted “depraved” violence on Orlin from at least Feb. 1 until the day he died.
At a shadow hearing Friday led by Reps. Delia C. Ramirez (D-Illinois) and Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas), Democratic lawmakers criticized 287(g) programs for scooping up parents with little regard for their children. Hernandez’s lawyer, Shalyn Fluharty, faulted the Alabama sheriff and ICE for Orlin’s death, and called on DHS to allow Hernandez to return to the U.S.
“I blame Baldwin County in Alabama for arresting a mom who was a passenger in a car doing absolutely nothing wrong, and I blame ICE and our leadership for allowing this to happen,” Fluharty said.
Hernandez is struggling to reconcile the whiplash of the past few months. In January, she was a mother, with a son, a job and hope of staying in the United States. Now her only child’s body sits in a morgue. But she said she won’t stop trying to get back to America. She needs to return to bury Orlin, she said, and to lay her eyes on him once more.
"It seems especially fitting in this election year to remember a decision that reshaped the lives of women in Maine and across the country: Sen. Susan Collins’ vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court.
In the months following Kavanaugh’s nomination hundreds of people, mostly women, protested and implored Sen. Collins to vote “No” on his appointment. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford had contacted Sen. Dianne Feinstein in July 2018 to report that she had been sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh years earlier. Given the crude attitudes toward women held by the president who nominated Kavanaugh, the report by Dr. Ford caught the attention of hundreds of Maine constituents and women nationwide.
In September of 2018, protesters packed the hallways and office of Sen. Collins’ Portland office to emotionally share their own stories. We sat and listened to the stories, often moved to tears by the bravery the women displayed and the trauma they had suffered. At 5 p.m. on the day of the protest, the staff asked people to leave. Two minutes later, the staff directed the Portland Police to arrest us, which they did. We were handcuffed, escorted out and charged with criminal trespassing. Others were arrested in her office in the following days.
Dr. Ford courageously testified before Congress on Sept. 27 in a hearing reminiscent of another hearing — that of Anita Hill during the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas. Brave women speaking their truths before dismissive powerful men. Powerful men being anointed with lifelong seats on the highest court in the U.S.
At the same time, the stakes were clear. Advocates warned that Kavanaugh could help overturn Roe v. Wade, ending federal protections for reproductive rights and rolling back decades of progress. That warning proved correct and set the status of women back to the last century.
Protests continued throughout October with hundreds of constituents flooding Sen. Collins with demonstrations, emails and phone calls. Unable to speak directly with the senator in Maine, protesters travelled to Washington to ask Collins to hear them in her D.C. office. Many were arrested.
During her speech on the House floor when she was casting her vote Sen. Collins said that she had spoken with thousands of Mainers about Brett Kavanaugh. It may be true that thousands contacted her urging her to vote no. Saying that she actually spoke with them is laughable.
We know that she did speak with Kavanaugh and believed him when she said he would follow precedent regarding Roe v. Wade. He did not and here we are, and the consequences are undeniable: women dying, unable to access healthcare, being relegated to second class citizens unworthy of even emergency care in some cases.
When Mainers go to the polls this November they should remember the catastrophic impact Susan Collins’ actions have had on the women of Maine and this country. Vote her out before more damage is done."
​
So something occurred to me last night. The MAGA and GOP republicans are getting all their jollies simply saying they don't believe our evidence and facts. Not just news links and data, but many have told me that they don't use google because it's (proven to be) liberal biased. As if a library could be biased.
Now nothing new here to anyone who's had "discussions" with MAGAs online. They pivot from Biden to Hunters laptop to Obama to trans athletes without skipping a beat. Meanwhile open Trump family corruption, media censorship and monopolization, unqualified and inept heads of government departments, the blocking of the Epstein Files release, the litany of broken promises, the endless grifting for every dollar, etc etc etc... it’s a long list, get called "fake" despite overwhelming evidence.
Now having been in these conversations for 14+ months I have long ago learned to just say my piece, with links to evidence, get called a few 4th grade school yard insults in return and wave bye 👋 , Block, and move on.
What occurred to me is why don't we just block from the start. Like as soon as they ask a baited question, or not even that, as soon as we become aware that they're republicans, block them immediately - without discussion of any kind. After all, they're not listening anyway and if they're still in the cult after all that has happened already - they're not leaving no matter what we say.
Let them stew in their limited doctored media soup and leave them to repeat their BS to each other over and over. Do not feed the animal.
Now I started my own subreddit in January which I won't mention here because some subs have rules about self promotion. Part of the reason for starting it was that I was always stepping on some rule or another which was confusing because my sole goal was FDT and the boat he came in on, but I digress. The one rule I have that is added to the reddit-wide rules is that there is a zero tolerance policy for MAGAs. As soon as they show up - banned and muted from my sub -forever. They are, after all, insulting and destructive and bring absolutely nothing to any debate - ever. My subreddit, I'm happy to say is a pleasant and informative space, despite the grim nature of current politics.
So last night I posted a video of someone passionately arguing against the blatant racially motivated redistricting in his state. It went over well on reddit, I also posted it on Facebook (I know, I know, but I have my reasons for still being there) But I got a long list of republicans with all the usual what-about-isms, denials, false information, and straight up racism. I was going through them in my usual fashion, commenting back with facts and links to evidence and copy and pasting 5 second google search answers because they're obviously incapable, when I thought - Why?
So I just went through the whole list of ignorant bigots and blocked every one of them. They will never see any of my posts again. **Then I thought - What if we all do this immediately and - every time?** No comments, no arguments, just cut them off from this posts information and all further information. Leave them in silence.
TL;DR - What if we block and ban and cut off every MAGA, GOP dimwit as soon as they make their presence known across social media? Not just from our personal social media, but if moderators of all political subs, pages and sites did the same. They would be starved of talking points and information not spoon fed by their own one dimensional media. Hell, you can't even directly quote or describe half the things Trump says or does in a pro-Trump group without being banned.
Cut off their oxygen!
We are in a war of attrition with corporate America. They want to suck us dry, leaving us poor and desperate. But we have power too, in the dollars that we spend -- or don't spend. When we help each other, we make it easier for people to avoid handing valuable funds over to corporate America.
Baking treats for neighbors can make it easier for them to skip Starbucks.
Holding a clothing swap can make it easier for them to skip Walmart.
Inviting people over to play cards or board games makes it easier to unplug from Amazon Prime.
And the connections that we build while doing these things make everyone stronger. Find the things -- even little things -- that you can do to help your friends and neighbors pull back from corporate consumption.
The organizations partnering for Seven Days in June – including UNITE HERE, AFL-CIO, SEIU, American Federation of Teachers, Families USA, American Public Health Association, Defend Public Health, Metropolitan Community Churches, NMAC, National Nurses United, National Public Health Coalition, Save HIV Funding, Vivent Health, AIDS United, and Pride at Work – represent millions of Americans who demand answers.
How You Can Help
Host/Register Your Events: Register your hosted event. During the week of June 1-7, we need town halls, panel discussions, forums, demonstrations, marches, rallies, vigils, and AIDS Memorial Quilt displays. Approved events will be added to a national interactive event map.
Recruit & Activate: Bring others into the campaign. Reach out to faith leaders, advocates, local healthcare heroes, community leaders, and elected officials. If an organization is already organizing a similar event, encourage them to register it so it can be added to our national event calendar.
Amplify through social media and communications. Use this toolkit and your social channels, newsletters, emails, websites, media contacts, to build awareness and drive participation.
Demand Answers: Use these events to demand clear and specific commitments from local, state, and federal representatives to protect America's health systems before the election.
Join The Candlelight Vigil: At sunset on Friday, June 5, communities everywhere will gather for candlelight vigils to honor those already lost and the millions more whose lives are at risk if funding is not restored. Every endorsing organization and event host is encouraged to participate.