"Mario's treatment should terrify any person in this country that cares about a free press," said an ACLU attorney.
By Jessica Corbett • Oct 2, 2025
Journalist Mario Guevara’s family and lawyers said Thursday that the award-winning Spanish-language journalist is set to be deported from the United States to his native El Salvador on Friday morning.
The announcement comes after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday declined to block a final order of removal from the Board of Immigration Appeals. The ACLU said in a statement that Guevara’s wife and three children were not allowed to say goodbye to the journalist, who was transferred to a Louisiana facility ahead of his deportation after being held in a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) center in Georgia for over 100 days.
“Words cannot begin to describe the loss and devastation my family feels. I am in utter shock and disbelief the government has punished my father for simply doing his life’s work of journalism,” said his son Oscar Guevara, who also shared an update in Spanish on his father’s Facebook account.
“My father should have never had to face over 100 days in detention,” Oscar Guevara continued. “He is the center of our family. He is the reason our home feels like home. To me, he’s my rock, and I don’t know what life without him here will look like now that he will be deported.”
“When I was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2021, it was my dad who centered me, who drove me to my medical appointments, and who lifted me up,” he added. “Now, I will have to manage my healthcare on my own, and live thousands of miles away separated from him. My family has been torn apart for no good reason, and I can only hope that we can one day be reunited.”
Guevara has covered immigration in the Atlanta area for two decades. He was arrested in June while reporting on a “No Kings” protest in Georgia. The local charges against him were dropped, but he has remained in ICE custody in Folkston, despite having work authorization and a path to a green card through his son.
The reporter’s battle to remain in the United States has played out as ICE works to deliver on President Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations and his adminstration cracks down on criticism from journalists, comedians, and more. Press freedom and immigrant rights advocates have sounded the alarm about his case.
“The government kept Mario unlawfully detained for weeks because of his vital reporting on law enforcement activity. His deportation is a devastating and tragic outcome for a father and celebrated journalist,” said Scarlet Kim, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU, one of the groups representing Guevara in federal court.
“Journalists should not have to fear government retaliation, including prolonged detention, for reporting on government activity, and showing up to work should not result in your family being torn apart,” added Kim. “Mario’s treatment should terrify any person in this country that cares about a free press.”
Freedom of the Press Foundation is among the groups that have been demanding his release. The organization’s director of advocacy, Seth Stern, said Thursday that “Mario Guevara was ripped from his family and community because the Trump administration punishes journalists to protect its own power.”
“The only thing that journalists like Guevara threaten is the government’s chokehold on information it doesn’t want the public to know. That’s why he’s being deported and why federal agents are assaulting and arresting journalists around the country,” Stern continued. “The full impact on our freedom of speech may never be known. But what is certain is that Guevara’s deportation sends a chilling message to other journalists: Tell the truth, and the state will come for you.”
“This is unconstitutional, un-American, and wrong,” he added. “It’s an assault on the First Amendment, and it won’t stop until we all fight back by speaking out.”
"The 24 American citizens on board these ships cannot afford another failure of American leadership," the Democratic lawmakers emphasized.
By Brad Reed • Oct 1, 2025
A group of Democratic lawmakers in the US House of Representatives are demanding that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio protect the civilians aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla, which is headed to deliver humanitarian aid to starving Palestinians in Gaza.
Led by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the Democrats on Monday sent Rubio a letter warning that the flotilla’s passengers are “at serious risk” as their ships enter the final leg of their journey to Gaza.
“Hundreds of brave civilian volunteers from over 40 countries—including the United States—have set sail to Gaza to deliver essential aid, establish a humanitarian corridor, and save lives,” they said. “Already, flotilla ships have been targeted and attacked by drones on at least three occasions.”
The lawmakers also noted that the flotilla has been facing “communications jamming, daily harassment and surveillance from the skies, and increasingly threatening rhetoric from Israeli government officials.”
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said last week it would take “all necessary measures” to stop the humanitarian flotilla from delivering aid to Palestinians, more than 400 of whom have starved to death so far due to Israel’s near-total blockade.
The Democrats emphasized the importance of allowing the flotilla to pass through the Israeli naval blockade so that it can complete its mission to deliver aid.
“Famine and mass starvation are underway and worsening in Gaza, threatening the very survival of Gaza’s entire Palestinian population of over 2 million people,” they said. “This forced starvation is a direct result of the Israeli government’s siege and blockade of the territory, which has prevented nearly all food and humanitarian aid from entry.”
Later in the letter, the lawmakers condemned Rubio for not protecting past aid flotillas that had been intercepted by the Israeli military, and argued that “the 24 American citizens on board these ships cannot afford another failure of American leadership.”
“The United States has an obligation to protect its citizens from foreign attack,” they wrote.
Rep. Melanie Stanbury (D-N.M.) backed her colleagues’ demand for protection of the flotilla in a social media statement on Tuesday.
“The Global Sumud Flotilla is set to arrive in Gaza in the next 24 hours,” she wrote. “Fifty boats from across the world, bringing aid and food to the people of Gaza. We are calling for their safe passage, an end to the blockade, and unrestricted humanitarian aid to all those suffering now! The entire world is watching.”
David Adler, co-general coordinator of Progressive International and one of the organizers aboard the flotilla, said in a social media post as the humanitarians neared Gaza that “even if we do not complete our mission this time, the Sumud flotilla has already achieved so much.”
“The flotilla has rallied the world’s attention once again to the suffering of the people of Gaza,” he said. “The flotilla has joined land and sea in the mass mobilization of millions. And the flotilla has forced reluctant states into active confrontation with the illegal siege that has starved the people of Palestine and robbed them of their right to self-determination.”
The House Democrats’ letter came days after a group of progressive lawmakers in the US Senate sent Rubio a letter demanding the he put pressure on Israel to stop it from attacking the flotilla.
The governments of Italy and Spain last week sent navy ships to help protect the flotilla, which set sail one month ago with the goal of breaking through the Israeli military blockade that has for months prevented aid from reaching Gaza, causing famine in the exclave.
Passengers on the flotilla include Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg; American actress Susan Sarandon; Irish actor Liam Cunningham; Portuguese politician Mariana Mortágua; former Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau; and Mandla Mandela, the grandson of former South African President Nelson Mandela.
Also on Wednesday, Amnesty Internationaldemanded that states including the US provide protection to the flotilla as it enters a “high-risk zone” where organizers expect to be intercepted.
“The persistent inaction of states in the face of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has forced activists from across the world to take peaceful measures to break the siege,” said the group. “States have a responsibility to guarantee the flotilla’s safe passage. They must step up pressure to protect the flotilla and demand an end of Israel’s genocide, and of its unlawful blockade once and for all.”
"What I'm not going to do is tolerate 4 million uninsured Americans because Donald Trump decided one day that he just wants to make sure that kids are dying because they don't have access to insurance," said the New York Democrat. "That's what's not gonna happen."
By Jon Queally • Oct 1, 2025
With the US federal government in a shutdown after a midnight deadline passed, outside progressive voices and Democrats in Congress who are holding the line against a $1 trillion evisceration of healthcare funding by President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers say the battle lines should be made clear for all to see.
“When Republicans use a legislative mechanism to gut the American healthcare system, we have to use a legislative mechanism in order to restore it,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), in a Tuesday night interview with MSNBC‘s Chris Hayes just hours before the shutdown became inevitable after the Senate failed to pass a stopgap bill, one already passed by the GOP-controlled House.
“This moment is a test. Donald Trump wants us to blink first and hand him over power. We have too much to save to give in,” Ocasio-Cortez declared. “Protecting the American people is too important a task for us to give up before anything even starts.”
Republican leaders, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) have falsely claimed that Democrats refused to back the stopgap bill because they want to extend healthcare insurance benefits to unlawful and undocumented immigrants, a claim that is not just ”misleading,” says expert critics, but a ”giant lie.”
“What I’m not going to do is tolerate 4 million uninsured Americans because Donald Trump decided one day that he just wants to make sure that kids are dying because they don’t have access to insurance. That’s what’s not gonna happen.” —Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Asked to explain the Democratic message and strategy surrounding the shutdown fight, Ocasio-Cortez said, “We’re here to help people. We are here in the midst of the destruction of the federal government, the federal safety net, a trillion dollars eviscerated from people’s healthcare, their Medicare, their Medicaid, in this country, with prices that are skyrocketing and life becoming completely untenable for the American people. We are here to try to be a backstop...which is what the American people have elected us to do.”
Ocasio-Cortez pushed back on the idea that fears of a possible primary challenge against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, also from New York, had anything to do with his refusal to cave to the Republicans and therefore made her culpable for the shutdown in the eyes of some GOP lawmakers who have floated such speculation.
“This moment is so not about me,” she said when asked about that dynamic by Hayes. But given those claims by GOP senators, she added, “If that is the case, my office is open and you are free to walk in and negotiate with me directly. Because what I’m not going to do is tolerate 4 million uninsured Americans because Donald Trump decided one day that he just wants to make sure that kids are dying because they don’t have access to insurance. That’s what’s not gonna happen.”
Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) described the shutdown as a “sad day” for the nation. Still, she echoed Ocasio-Cortez’s vow to fight on behalf of her constituents and all Americans facing real hardship due to the impacts of Trump’s agenda.
“Republicans own this shutdown,” said Chu in an overnight statement. “They control the House, the Senate, and the White House, and yet they chose to shut down the government rather than protect affordable health care for millions of Americans. After forcing through a partisan spending bill that failed in the Senate, Republicans then blocked House Democrats from bringing up a commonsense bill that would have kept the government open, canceled health care cuts, lowered out-of-pocket costs, and protected the affordable care that working families rely on.”
The shutdown, she said, makes clear the GOP’s priorities under Trump.
“First, they passed their Big Ugly Law, which ripped $1.5 trillion out of our health care system, kicked 15 million Americans off their insurance, slashed Medicare and Medicaid, and weakened the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—all to fund massive tax cuts for billionaires,” explained Chu. “Now, with 24 million Americans facing premium hikes of up to 114 percent, Republicans left town and shut down the government. This is a failure of leadership and a despicable betrayal of working Americans who depend on ACA tax credits to afford health care.”
Progressive advocates nationwide backed the message and the strategy that Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats are rallying around.
“Across the country, working-class people are struggling,” said Carolyn Martinez-Class and Rebecca Garrard, co-executive directors of Citizen Action of New York, in a Tuesday night statement alongside groups aligned with the national community organizing group People’s Action.
“Instead of getting to work delivering affordability for their constituents, the Republican majority in Congress continues to advance MAGA extremism in DC,” said Martinez-Class and Garrard. “Instead of reigning in Trump’s attacks on our rights, the Republican majority are taking our money for Medicaid and food stamps and giving it to billionaires. Republican leaders, like Thune and Johnson, want to pass an annual funding bill that will result in health and housing costs skyrocketing while funding Trump’s assault on our communities using ICE and the military. It’s on the Republican majority to come to the table and negotiate a deal with the Democratic minority that prioritizes New Yorkers and working people across the country living paycheck to paycheck, not CEOs.”
Lindsay Owens, executive director at Groundwork Collaborative, blasted the GOP for their refusal to meet the Democrats’ demand to restore healthcare funding cuts that will impact an estimated 22 million people struggling to make ends meet.
“Republicans in Congress just sent a message to the American people that they would rather shut down the government than lower your health care costs,” said Owens. “Each day that the government is shut down and Republicans refuse to negotiate brings more than 20 million people closer to seeing their insurance premiums spike on November 1, and puts millions more at risk of losing Medicaid coverage. The American people deserve leaders who’ll fight to protect our health care and lower costs — not drive prices up and make life harder for everyone.”
Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert said, “This harmful and perfectly avoidable government shutdown is the natural conclusion of the MAGA agenda,” applauding lawmakers in Congress for their opposition.
Polling released Tuesday from Our Revolution, the organizing group founded in the wake of Sen. Bernie Sanders first presidential run in 2016, showed that the Democratic base of the party wants its elected leaders to fight tooth and nail over the healthcare funding, as well as Trump’s increasingly authoritarian push that has attacked free speech, targeted political enemies with the power of the state, and threatened to use US cities as “training grounds” for the US military.
Laura Martin, executive director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada Action Fund, echoed those calling for Democrats to continue holding the line.
“Our community continues to come last for the Trump administration and his billionaire cronies,” said Martin. “We saw it in the budget reconciliation bill, and now, working families are expected to accept cuts to life-sustaining social safety net programs while billionaires benefit from tax cuts and ICE gets more funding than a small army.”
What people across need across the country, she added, “is health care, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Congress should not pass any funding bill that forces struggling families to choose between health care and basic needs. It is an impossible decision that results in the loss of lives. We expect our representatives in the House and Senate to make it clear that our lives are non-negotiable, which means no cuts to health care or social security benefits.”
"We're going to show up in the largest peaceful protest in modern American history," said Indivisible's co-founder. "Millions will come together in more cities than ever to say collectively: No kings ever in America."
By Jessica Corbett • Sep 30, 2025
As President Donald Trump and his allies continue to target immigrants, journalists, and anyone else critical of the increasingly authoritarian administration, organizers are gearing upfor another round of “No Kings” rallies across the United States, which they expect will draw even more demonstrators than a similar day of action in June.
“Sustained, broad-based, peaceful, pro-democracy grassroots movements win. Trump wanted a coronation on his birthday, and what he got instead was millions of people standing up to say NO KINGS,” Indivisible co-founder and co-executive director Ezra Levin said in a Tuesday statement. “No Kings Day on June 14 was an historic demonstration of people power, and it’s grown into a broad, diverse movement.”
“While Trump escalates his attack with occupations of American cities and secret police forces terrorizing American communities, normal everyday people across this country are showing up every single day with courage and defiance. On October 18, we’re going to show up in the largest peaceful protest in modern American history,” he added. “Millions will come together in more cities than ever to say collectively: No kings ever in America.”
Indivisible is planning next month’s peaceful protests alongside groups including the ACLU, American Federation of Teachers, Common Defense, 50501, Human Rights Campaign, League of Conservation Voters, MoveOn, National Nurses United, Public Citizen, Service Employees International Union, and United We Dream.
Organizers announced the second Not Kings mobilization earlier this month. As a federal government shutdown loomed on Tuesday, they said that over 2,110 protests are now planned across all 50 states—more than those that drew over 5 million people to the streets in June.
“We the People of the United States of America reject the Trump regime’s repeated assaults on our freedoms,” said 50501 national press coordinator Hunter Dunn. “This administration has invaded our cities, dismantled our social services, and tossed hard-working Americans into concentration camps. He has sacrificed our Constitution on the altar of fascism. On October 18th, the American people will gather together to practice two time-honored American traditions: nonviolent protest and anti-fascism.”
Trump has deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles, California, and Washington, DC, and this week is moving to do the same in Portland, Oregon, and Chicago, Illinois—where US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are already carrying out the deadly “Operation Midway Blitz” as part of Trump’s national push for mass deportations. The administration is also specifically targeting pro-Palestinian foreign students, which a federal judge on Tuesday rebuked with what one reporter called “the most scathing legal rebuke of the Trump era.”
Also on Tuesday, during an unusual gathering of US military leadership in Virginia, Trump declared that the country is “under invasion from within” and generals should use American cities as “training grounds,” while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth pledged to overhaul the inspector general process: “No more frivolous complaints, no more anonymous complaints, no more repeat complaints, no more smearing reputations, no more endless waiting, no more legal limbo, no more sidetracking careers, no more walking on eggshells!”
Meanwhile, Jacob Thomas, a military veteran and communications director for Common Defense, said that “as veterans and patriots who swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution and the freedoms that it enshrines, we are appalled at the lengths President Trump and his billionaire buddies have gone to to strip our neighbors and communities of the rights, dignity, and freedoms owed to everyone residing in this country.”
“We must all do our part to fight back against his authoritarianism and military occupation of cities,” he continued. “We cannot allow a wannabe dictator to destroy our democracy, gut veteran healthcare, keep people from accessing the ballot box, and tank our economy. We must all join together in solidarity to fight back and secure our freedoms. Two hundred and fifty years ago, Americans stood up to a tyrant king, generations later our great-grandparents defeated fascism abroad. Now it is up to us to defeat fascism at home.”
"Wake up, people, the US is fast approaching a point of no return," warned one critic, who said the president's alarming rhetoric "comes right out of the fascism playbook."
Top Republicans have claimed that calling Trump “fascist” or “authoritarian” is an incitement to “terrorism." But party leaders have said nothing about an explicit call for violence from one of their own.
"Without sufficient funding and freedom from political interference, the federal statistical system as we know it—and our ability to make economic and policy decisions based in reality—are in jeopardy," said researchers.
By Julia Conley • Sep 29, 2025
In recent weeks, efforts by the Trump administration to conceal statistics and data from the public have made headlines—from the US Department of Justice’s decision to delete a 2024 study that showed right-wing extremists are behind the vast majority of ideologically driven killings in the US, contrary to the White House’s repeated claims about violence from the left, to President Donald Trump’s firing of a top economist after an unfavorable jobs report that he said was released to hurt him politically.
In a new report Monday, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) detailed how Trump’s overt politicization of data has combined with funding cuts to make it harder for experts—and the public that’s impacted by the Trump administration’s agenda—to see how those very policies are impacting households across the country.
“Without sufficient funding and freedom from political interference, the federal statistical system as we know it—and our ability to make economic and policy decisions based in reality—are in jeopardy,” said CBPP bsenior research analyst Victoria Hunter Gibney and vice president for housing and income security Cara Brumfield.
The report warns of “disappearing federal data”—both information that has been surreptitiously yanked from public view and data that the administration has announced will no longer be available, like the US Department of Agriculture annual Household Food Security reports.
As Common Dreamsreported last week, the agency called the survey “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous” and claimed they have “failed to present anything more than subjective, liberal fodder,” as it said it would stop publishing the data—the federal government’s main source of information on hunger.
“Without data, it is also going to be hard not only to fact-check Trump and his cronies but to measure the (most likely horrific) impact of Trump’s policies.”
The decision followed the Republican Party’s passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), which includes the biggest-ever cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) at a time when more than 47 million Americans—including 1 in 5 children—are facing food insecurity.
In addition to preemptively rejecting research that would have shown the impact of the GOP’s SNAP cuts, the administration has shown no interest in tracking weather disasters via its Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database, which was discontinued in May; the effects of crime on LGBTQ+ Americans via National Crime Victimization Survey; and even the existence of LGBTQ+ communities via the National Health Interview Survey.
The administration has also stopped the federal government from collecting data by overseeing mass layoffs across the public servant workforce, with the Department of Health and Human Services placing researchers with the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System on administrative leave in April—ending the government’s accounting of maternal mortality numbers. HHS also laid off the analysts who worked on federal poverty guidelines that are used to calculate eligibility for parts of Medicaid as well as nutrition and home energy assistance.
In a multitude of ways, the CBPP said, the administration is “suppressing data that would reveal the harmful effects of the Republican megabill’s deep cuts and leaving families’ struggles harder to track.”
The report also warns that “brain drain” is worsening the US Census Bureau’s ability to collect population data that helps determine communities’ representation in Congress, federal funding allocation, and plan community services. Former Census Bureau Director Robert Santos left halfway through his five-year term shortly after Trump took office in January. Santos spearheaded efforts to make the survey more inclusive and emphasized rebuilding trust with immigrant and Latino communities after Trump, during his first term, pushed to include a citizenship question on the survey.
A top economist at the Census Bureau, Ron Jarmin, was also replaced this month by Trump appointee George Cook, who has “no prior government experience and no advanced training in statistical methods,” the CBPP said.
The Republican Party is currently pushing to further weaken efforts to count the population of the US, with the House Appropriations Committee reporting out legislation this month to officially designate the decennial census as voluntary and drastically limit efforts to follow up with nonrespondents. Mandatory participation is not enforced, but the Census Bureau has found that response rates plummet when the survey is officially designated as voluntary.
The proposed change would “seriously exacerbate risks to data quality from nonresponse bias,” said the CBPP.
The same bill reported out by the House committee proposed slashing $40 million from the Census Bureau budget, impacting the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), which collects data on a number of economic well-being indicators and “enables policymakers to understand how proposed laws will change eligibility and costs.”
The reduced version of SIPP that would be funded by the bill “is unlikely to provide the uniquely rich content (such as month-by-month income data) and structure (such as following children as they move between different caregivers’ homes) that allow the current SIPP to answer policymakers’ questions about families, their needs, and the programs that serve them,” said the group.
The CBPP released its analysis as Liza Featherstone wrote at The New Republic that the president is “waging a catastrophic war on data” that is “fundamental to Trump and his authoritarian regime.”
Trump’s destructive cuts to agencies and surveys that collect crucial data have been paired with numerous baseless claims by the president and his allies—that Tylenol taken in pregnancy causes autism, that violence is surging in cities where he plans to deploy federal troops, and that transgender people disproportionately commit mass shootings and violence.
“It will be increasingly hard for correctives on such points to get traction, however, since Trump’s administration has greatly reduced its own ability to collect and disseminate accurate information about crime,” wrote Featherstone.
“Without data, it is also going to be hard not only to fact-check Trump and his cronies but to measure the (most likely horrific) impact of Trump’s policies,” she added. “That too is almost certainly intentional—or at least very convenient for him.”
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Will American democracy survive this onslaught, straight out of the Dictator’s Playbook? To a large extent, that will depend on you, me, and our elected officials summoning the courage to resist and protest loudly. And our media to call it out for what it is.
While there was little doubt before as to where Trump stood on democracy and human decency, he has made it clear with his decision to designate Antifa a “terrorist” organization that he and his coterie are clearly on the side of fascism.
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