Sunday, October 12, 2025
■ Today's Top News
"Silence is supporting this abuse of these members of God's family," one Chicago pastor told his congregants on Saturday.
By Brad Reed
As demonstrations against an immigration detention facility in Broadview, Illinois have ramped up in recent weeks, several local priests have joined in the protests to call attention to what they say are affronts to Christian teachings.
Father Larry Dowling, pastor at the St. Agatha Catholic Church in Chicago, wrote a lengthy Facebook post on Saturday in which he described his experience in trying to gain access to the Broadview Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility to offer communion services to detainees.
Dowling began his post by praising the work of the Maywood and Broadview Police Departments, as well as the Illinois State Police, who facilitated his and his congregants’ procession to the ICE facility on Saturday.
He was far less complimentary, however, about the reception he got after arriving at the ICE facility.
“There were no ICE or federal representatives there,” he explained. “When requesting to talk with a representative from Homeland Security and ICE, the state police reached out on our behalf to make the request over the phone. After a brief wait, the answer came back very clearly: No, you cannot bring a hint of compassion and prayer into this place!”
Dowling called this response outrageous, and he encouraged his followers to pray for “the children, for the mothers and fathers who are being treated inhumanely” at the ICE facility.
“Please step up and speak out,” he concluded. “Silence is supporting this abuse of these members of God’s family.”
In an interview with NPR published on Sunday, Rev. Quincy Worthington of Highland Park Presbyterian Church explained why he has become more involved in the ICE facility protests over the past few weeks.
“What I’ve experienced is that some people feel that God has abandoned Broadview, and they’re looking at signs of hope,” he told NPR reporter Ayesha Rascoe. “Having a member of clergy there standing with them is a reminder that God stands with them as well.”
Rascoe then asked him if he’d witnessed incidents of violence during the demonstrations at Broadview, and he mostly pointed the finger at ICE officials.
“What I’ve seen every time I’ve gone is ICE’s response to the protests has continually escalated,” he said. “At first, they would come out of the gates, shove people to the ground, push people out of the way in order to make room for vehicles to enter and exit the facility. Then it started turning into they would shoot pepper balls at us. And then tear gas started coming out, and then flash-bangs and rubber bullets.”
Worthington emphasized that he hadn’t seen any actions taken by the demonstrators that “would provoke this response.”
Rev. David Black, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, has also recently been making headlines for participating in demonstrations at the ICE facility, and last week he filed a lawsuit alleging that the government was infringing upon his First Amendment rights by using excessive force in response to his peaceful protests.
“I extended my arms, palms outstretched toward the ICE officers, in a traditional Christian posture of prayer and blessing,” he alleged in his complaint. “Without any warning, and without any order or request that I and others disperse, I was suddenly fired upon by ICE officers. In rapid fire, I was hit seven times on my arms, face, and torso with exploding pellets that contained some kind of chemical agent. It was clear to me that the officers were aiming for my head, which they struck twice.”
Video of Black getting shot in the head by pepper balls at the Broadview ICE facility went viral last week, he told CNN host Erin Burnett that he could hear ICE agents laughing as they opened fire on him.
“It was deeply disturbing,” he said. “We’ve gotten to witness a few things against these ICE agents operating in Broadview, and really what it has shown us is how disorganized they are and how poorly supervised and trained they are.”
"The guardrails are gone," warned Democratic political strategist David Axelrod.
By Brad Reed
Vice President JD Vance sparked alarm on Sunday when he said that President Donald Trump was considering invoking the Insurrection Act under the pretenses of combating violent crime in US cities.
During an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” host Kristen Welker asked Vance if Trump was “seriously considering” invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to use the US military to carry out law enforcement operations.
Vance responded by saying Trump is “looking at all his options,” and added that he hasn’t felt the need to invoke it for the time being.
Vance proceeded to justify invoking the Insurrection Act, which he said could be necessary to protect the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.
LIES! DISCREDITED ELSEWHERE WITH FACTS:
“We have to remember why we’re talking about this, Kristen,” he said. “Because crime has gotten out of control in our cities, because ICE agents, the people enforcing our immigration laws, have faced a 1,000% increase in violent attacks against them. We have people right now who are going out there, who are doing the job the president asked them to do, who are enforcing our immigration laws, they’re being assaulted.”
Welker countered by noting that a judge in Illinois found last week that the ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois has remained entirely open and operational despite being the target of protesters in recent weeks.
She also informed Vance that crime has been coming down significantly in both Chicago and Portland, two US cities where Trump has tried to deploy National Guard forces.
LIES:
“Kristen, crime is down in Chicago and Portland often because they’re so overwhelmed at the local level, they’re not even keeping their statistics properly,” Vance replied, without providing any evidence to back up his claim.
Vance’s justifications for invoking the Insurrection Act on the grounds that he laid out drew alarmed reactions from many critics.
“This is a pretext to take over American cities by force,” wrote CNN political commentator Karen Finney in a post on X.
Shannon Watts, the founder of anti-gun violence organization Moms Demand Action, linked Vance’s comments to the current shutdown of the federal government and questioned whether the government deserved to be funded when its executive branch was threatening to unleash the military against its own citizens.
“Why should Democrats vote to open the government while this is still happening?” she asked.
Cornell William Brooks, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and former president of the NAACP, argued in a post on Bluesky that Vance’s comments show that the Trump administration “insults your intelligence.”
“The same administration that fired an economist for reporting statistics on the economy,” he wrote, “is asking you to not believe lower statistics on crime, not see safer streets, and accept the National Guard in your front yard.”
Democratic political strategist David Axelrod warned that the Trump administration seems genuinely eager to send troops into US cities.
“Believe them when they tell you what they’re planning, folks,” he wrote. “Trump wanted to use American troops against Americans in his first term, and was dissuaded by responsible civilian and military leaders. No more. The guardrails are gone.”
Attorney George Conway, a former Republican who left the party over its embrace of Trump, responded to Vance’s comments by posting a video of anti-ICE protesters in Chicago dancing in the streets to the classic Neil Diamond hit, “Sweet Caroline.”
Talk of invoking the Insurrection Act has ramped up in recent weeks, despite the fact that protests against ICE facilities in Illinois and Oregon have remained overwhelmingly peaceful and have featured impromptu dance parties carried out by people dressed in inflatable animal costumes.
THIS IS ICE ABUSE! 44 YEARS IN PRISON FOR WRONGFUL CONVICTION!
ICE is preparing to deport an exonerated man to a country he hasn't set foot in since he was nine months old, his family alleges.
By Brad Reed
A man who spent more than four decades in prison for a murder he didn’t commit was finally freed earlier this month—only to get immediately apprehended and detained by federal immigration agents.
As the Miami Herald reported on Sunday, 64-year-old Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam was released from prison on October 3 after having had his murder conviction vacated when a court found that prosecutors had concealed evidence that would have seriously undermined their case against him.
Vedam’s freedom was short lived, however, as he was taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, who justified his detention by citing a decades-old deportation order that was based largely on a murder conviction that has since proven to be false.
He is currently being held at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center, an ICE facility in central Pennsylvania, where he is being processed for deportation.
Vedam’s family, which had expected to welcome him home after his release, put out a statement demanding justice and calling on immigration courts to intervene on his behalf.
“This immigration issue is a remnant of Subu’s original case,” the family said. “Since that wrongful conviction has now been officially vacated and all charges against Subu have been dismissed, we have asked the immigration court to reopen the case and consider the fact that Subu has been exonerated. Our family continues to wait—and long for the day we can finally be together with him again.”
Vedam was born in India but was brought by his parents to the US when he was just 9 months old.
In 1982, he was arrested and charged with the murder of a friend, whom prosecutors alleged he shot with a .25-caliber pistol. However, the Pennsylvania Innocence Project three years ago uncovered evidence that prosecutors had covered up a report from the FBI on the case, which suggested “that the bullet wound in Kinser’s skull was too small to have been caused by a .25-caliber bullet,” wrote The Miami Herald.
Before his wrongful arrest for murder, Vedam had pleaded guilty to intent to distribute LSD when he was 19 years old, although his family insists this was a youthful indiscretion rather than evidence of hardcore criminality.
Vedam’s niece, Zoë Miller Vedam, told the Miami Herald that deporting her uncle back to India would be unjust, especially given that he has no memory of that country.
“He left India when he was nine months old,” she emphasized. “None of us can remember our lives at nine months old. He hasn’t been there for over 44 years, and the people he knew when he went as a child have passed away. His whole family—his sister, his nieces, his grand-nieces—we’re all U.S. citizens, and we all live here.”
A report in the Centre Daily Times published in early October described Vedam as a “model inmate” who “designed and led a prison literacy training program, raised money for Big Brothers Big Sisters, tutored hundreds of inmates and was the first person in the prison’s history to earn a master’s degree.”
"I never thought that renowned puppy-killer Kristi Noem would be so afraid of protesters wearing frog costumes and chicken costumes, but here we are," said one local official.
By Brad Reed
US President Donald Trump and his administration have been trying to depict the city of Portland, Oregon as a lawless apocalyptic wasteland in which roving bands of Antifa activists set fire to local businesses and terrorize federal immigration enforcement officials.
Local residents and elected officials, however, have been openly ridiculing Trump for making claims that are, according to CNN fact checker Daniel Dale, “detached from reality.”
Trump’s latest salvo against Portland came on Friday, when he said, “Every time I look at that place it’s burning down, there are fires all over the place.”
Trump went on to falsely claim that “when a store owner rebuilds a store they build it out of plywood, they don’t put up storefronts anymore, they just put wood up.”
These descriptions of Portland are are odds with the reality on the ground, where people dressed in inflatable animal costumes have been conducting peaceful protests and dance parties outside of a local Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) center for the last few weeks.
US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appeared to recognize this discrepancy earlier in the week, and on Thursday she accused every public official in the city, including the chief of the Portland Police Department and the superintendent of the Oregon State Police Department, of trying to cover up the rampant lawlessness taking place there.
“They are all lying and disingenuous, dishonest people!” Noem claimed during a White House Cabinet meeting.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) responded to Noem’s claim with open ridicule, and he posted a video showing Portland to be a safe and vibrant city.
“Thoughts and prayers to Cosplay Cop Kristi who had to endure the dogs, farmer’s markets, capybaras, and marathon runners of Portland this week,” he wrote in a post on X.
Portland City Council member Angelita Morillo appeared on CNN Thursday night and also heaped scorn on Noem for her remarks about her city.
“I never thought that renowned puppy-killer Kristi Noem would be so afraid of protesters wearing frog costumes and chicken costumes, but here we are,” she said. “We’re not hiding anything. The reason she didn’t see anything on the ground is because everything here is under control. People are exercising their right to free speech, as they are allowed to under the Constitution... There is no terrorism happening here, I think that they are just a very scared people.”
Portland resident Samuel Cosby also posted a video from Portland that showed people going about their daily lives peacefully and without incident.
“There are not ‘fires all over the place,’” Cosby emphasized. “Stop letting these buffoons lie to you.”
"Say goodbye to federal public health in any capacity," warned one expert. "We won't recover."
By Brad Reed
The Trump administration has carried out mass layoffs of federal public health officials that experts warn will leave the US dangerously unprepared to handle disease outbreaks.
As reported by The New York Times, the layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) carried out on Friday night were deep and wide-ranging, and included employees and leaders “in offices addressing respiratory diseases, chronic diseases, injury prevention, and global health.”
The administration laid off the entire CDC office in Washington, DC, as well as the staff of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication founded in 1930 that has been credited with the first reporting in medical literature on the disease that would come to be known as AIDS in 1981.
In addition to this, several dozen Epidemic Intelligence Service officers, commonly known as “disease detectives” who track outbreaks across the world, received their termination notices.
Dr. Jeremy Foust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, reported in a post on his personal Substack newsletter that CDC insiders are estimating that “between 1,100 and 1,300 employees are being cut” by the Trump administration.
Other public health experts reacted with horror to news of the terminations.
Dr. Catharine Young, a senior fellow at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, described the layoffs as a “Friday night massacre” and warned of severe repercussions for both US citizens and the entire world.
“This isn’t streamlining the government—it’s dismantling our ability to detect and respond to outbreaks before they spread,” she wrote in a post on X. “You can’t cut your way to safety.”
Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a US-born virologist who works at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, wrote that the CDC “is being eviscerated right now” and painted a dire picture of what that means for public health.
“America is not going to have any kind of outbreak response capacity after tonight,” she explained on Bluesky. “Americans’ health data is no longer secure. Say goodbye to federal public health in any capacity. It’s a disaster. We won’t recover.”
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a physician and politician who is running to be the Democratic nominee for the US Senate in Michigan, said that the layoffs made it much more likely that deadly diseases such as the ebola virus would spread unchecked.
“10 years ago, Ebola ravaged through Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone—it made landfall here,” he wrote on X. “Ebola is spreading in the Democratic Republic of Congo right now. What stands between us and Ebola if it keeps spreading? The folks at CDC who [President Donald] Trump and [Office of Management and Budget Director Russell] Vought are using this shutdown to eliminate. Dumb shit.”
Dr. Michelle Au, an anesthesiologist and Democratic Georgia state representative, noted that the CDC layoffs come as the US “is now barreling into respiratory season—when viruses like flu, COVID, and RSV surge—flying blind.”
“It’s always harder to build things than to break them,” she observed. “And breathtakingly easy to destroy the things you don’t value, let alone understand.”
"Ultimately, this court must conclude that defendants'... perceptions are not reliable," wrote Judge April Perry.
By Brad Reed
A federal judge on Friday night released her full opinion justifying an earlier decision to block President Donald Trump from deploying Texas National Guard troops in Chicago, and she even went so far as to question his administration’s grasp on reality.
In her ruling, Judge April Perry began by citing a lengthy quote from the Federalist Papers in which Alexander Hamilton addressed concerns that a tyrannical US president would use a militia from one state to invade and occupy another state.
After giving the matter brief consideration, Hamilton dismissed fears about a would-be tyrant carrying out such a scheme on the grounds that “it is impossible to believe that they would employ such preposterous means to accomplish their designs.”
And yet, Perry noted, this exact scenario is one that the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago claim is happening right now, as they argue that “National Guard troops from both Illinois and Texas have been deployed to Illinois because the president of the United States wants to punish state elected officials whose policies are different from his own.”
Perry went on to consider circumstances in which the president may federalize the National Guard, and concluded that the administration’s case for sending the National Guard to Chicago did not meet any of them.
Perry noted that the president may federalize the National Guard if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority” of the US government, but she argued there has historically been a “very high threshold for deployment” that is not justified by current circumstances.
“In the late 1800s and early 1900s, ‘rebellion’ was understood to mean a deliberate, organized resistance, openly and avowedly opposing the laws and authority of the government as a whole by means of armed opposition and violence,” she explained. “As an example, during the late 1800s, after the close of the Civil War, the Supreme Court and several statutes referred to the Civil War as constituting a ’rebellion.‘”
She then found that the administration itself has not claimed any Civil War-like rebellion is occurring in the US right now.
“In all of the memoranda actually deploying the National Guard to Illinois, the court does not see any factual determination by President Trump regarding a rebellion brewing here,” she wrote. “This is sensible, because the court cannot find reasonable support for a conclusion that there exists in Illinois a danger of rebellion.”
Elsewhere in the ruling, Perry examined the government’s claims that local law enforcement officials have been unable to contain demonstrations at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Broadview, Illinois, which has become a focal point for protests in recent weeks.
Although there have been incidents in which local law enforcement has had to intervene to keep protesters from getting too close to the facility, Perry said, there has never been a level of disorder that would justify the deployment of the National Guard.
“The ICE Processing Center has continuously remained open and operational throughout the protest activity,” she wrote. “Broadview Police are not aware of any occasion where an ICE vehicle was prevented from entering or exiting due to activity by protestors.”
This led her to remark upon a “troubling trend” of the Trump administration “equating protests with riots” and “a lack of appreciation for the wide spectrum that exists between citizens who are observing, questioning, and criticizing their government, and those who are obstructing, assaulting, or doing violence.”
“This indicates to the court both bias and lack of objectivity,” she wrote. “Ultimately, this court must conclude that defendants’... perceptions are not reliable.”
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