Latest / 5 minute updates on the latest Trump actions by Prof Christina Pagel / What you missed in last 10 days: attacks on the midterms and 3 deaths in ICE encounters

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What you missed in last 10 days: attacks on the midterms and 3 deaths in ICE encounters · 5 minute updates on the latest Trump actions by Prof Christina Pagel

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: So this week behind the headlines, we've got more attacks
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: on the midterm elections and three deaths in seven days involving ICE.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into it.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: So let's start with elections.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: On July 9th,
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Trump fired all three remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, the ESC is the independent federal body created
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  SPEAKER_00: by Congress in 2002 to help states administer elections.
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  SPEAKER_00: It certifies voting equipment, it distributes federal election funding,
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  SPEAKER_00: and it sets standards for voting systems.
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  SPEAKER_00: The two Democratic commissioners were fired by email,
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  SPEAKER_00: and the Republican member was asked to resign by the administration.
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  SPEAKER_00: Replacements must be confirmed by the Senate,
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  SPEAKER_00: but that is a pretty slow process.
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  SPEAKER_00: So four months before the midterms, the only federal agency
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  SPEAKER_00: that's dedicated only to election administration basically has
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: no commissioners and cannot make policy decisions.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: In doing this, the White House cited the Supreme Court's recent ruling
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: allowing the President to fire independent agency heads as legal cover.
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  SPEAKER_00: Arizona's Democratic secretary of state called it irresponsible and dangerous,
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  SPEAKER_00: and Senator Chuck Schumer called it a brazen attempt
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  SPEAKER_00: to seize control of our elections before a single vote is cast.
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  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, the Department of Justice sent letters to election officials
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  SPEAKER_00: in all 50 states and D.C.
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  SPEAKER_00: warning them that they could face
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  SPEAKER_00: criminal prosecution if noncitizens remain on their voter
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, officials had five days to respond, explaining how they would comply.
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  SPEAKER_00: But noncitizen voting is already illegal,
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  SPEAKER_00: and research consistently finds that it is extremely rare.
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  SPEAKER_00: Security experts say there is no evidence of it happening at scale.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: The Utah lieutenant governor, who is a Republican,
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  SPEAKER_00: said she'd received another love
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: letter sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution from the DOJ.
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  SPEAKER_00: One nonpartisan election expert called the letters “what panic
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  SPEAKER_00: and desperation look like after 18 months of finding no evidence of a crime”.
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  SPEAKER_00: The DOJ has already lost more than a dozen court cases
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  SPEAKER_00: trying to get states to hand over their voter data.
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  SPEAKER_00: And these letters basically look like another way
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  SPEAKER_00: of trying to get to the same goal.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, briefly, Trump is planning to give a national televised address
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  SPEAKER_00: about newly declassified intelligence on election interference
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  SPEAKER_00: and what the White House describes as “voting machine vulnerabilities”.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump says it will relate to the 2020 election, so constitutional
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  SPEAKER_00: law experts and election officials have expressed concern
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  SPEAKER_00: that he is going to use this to, again, press claims of widespread fraud,
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  SPEAKER_00: for which absolutely no evidence has been found, ahead of the November midterms.
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  SPEAKER_00: So basically, in the last week, you've got the administration
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  SPEAKER_00: threatening election officials with criminal prosecution.
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  SPEAKER_00: You have an administration that's eliminated the federal body
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  SPEAKER_00: that helps run elections, and an administration that has laid
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: the groundwork for yet another stolen election narrative for the midterms.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we’ve basically got four months still to go.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now on to nationalism.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the stories
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  SPEAKER_00: this week cluster around two things: what ICE are doing on the streets
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  SPEAKER_00: and what the administration is doing to protesters against ICE on the streets.
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  SPEAKER_00: On July 7th, an ICE agent shot and killed Lorenzo
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  SPEAKER_00: Salgado Araujo during a traffic stop in Houston, Texas.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was a 52 year old Mexican national who had lived in the US
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  SPEAKER_00: for more than 30 years, and was on his way to work with his construction crew.
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  SPEAKER_00: ICE said that he ignored commands and tried to ram an officer with his van,
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  SPEAKER_00: and that the officer fired in self-defense.
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  SPEAKER_00: But three witnesses who were passengers in that van, including the man's brother,
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  SPEAKER_00: gave a completely different account to their lawyer.
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  SPEAKER_00: They said that at no point was an agent directly front of the vehicle,
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  SPEAKER_00: and that the fatal shots came from the side rather than the front.
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  SPEAKER_00: No body camera footage exists.
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  SPEAKER_00: So ICE said that the officers weren’t
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  SPEAKER_00: equipped with body cams because of funding lapses.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Department of Homeland Security later acknowledged that Araujo wasn't
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: actually even the target of the operation.
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  SPEAKER_00: He only resembled the person they were looking for.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Harris County Medical examiner has ruled the death
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  SPEAKER_00: a homicide, and his brother,
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  SPEAKER_00: who witnessed the shooting, is now in deportation proceedings.
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  SPEAKER_00: More than a thousand people marched in Houston's East End in protest,
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  SPEAKER_00: and a local congresswoman said ICE owes this family an apology.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then a week later, on July 14th, a 26 year
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  SPEAKER_00: old Colombian man called Joan Sebastian Guerrero
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  SPEAKER_00: was fatally shot by an ICE agent during a traffic stop in Biddeford, Maine.
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  SPEAKER_00: ICE said that he tried to flee and that the officer fired,
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  SPEAKER_00: fearing for public safety, but witnesses again dispute this.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Colombian embassy has formally requested information
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  SPEAKER_00: from the Department of Homeland Security, and again, there were no body cameras.
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  SPEAKER_00: The DHS statement explaining why there were no body cams was basically,
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  SPEAKER_00: according to CNN, exactly the same as the one issued after Houston.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now Guerrero, the Colombian man who was shot, was authorized to work in the US,
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  SPEAKER_00: and he had been issued a social security number,
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  SPEAKER_00: according to the Maine Immigrants Rights Coalition.
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  SPEAKER_00: And surveillance footage obtained by the Associated Press appears
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  SPEAKER_00: to show that his car was driving slowly in circles near an intersection before
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  SPEAKER_00: an unmarked vehicle blocked its path, a sequence that neighbors
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  SPEAKER_00: and local officials say basically raises serious questions about ICE's account.
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  SPEAKER_00: So again, what we see are there are disputed accounts.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's no footage, there's no independent evidence.
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  SPEAKER_00: And witnesses are basically saying that the agency's version doesn't match
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  SPEAKER_00: what they saw.
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  SPEAKER_00: this isn't new.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: So when ICE shot and killed Renee Good, in Minneapolis
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  SPEAKER_00: in January, Trump claimed that she had run over the agent.
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  SPEAKER_00: But then later video footage clearly showed
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  SPEAKER_00: the agent was standing
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  SPEAKER_00: to the side of the vehicle and that it was turning away from him
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  SPEAKER_00: when he fired the three shots that killed her.
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  SPEAKER_00: The DOJ then shut down a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting,
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  SPEAKER_00: and withheld evidence from the Minnesota state investigators.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then on to the third case.
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  SPEAKER_00: So on July 14th, which is the same day as the Maine shooting, a 28 year
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  SPEAKER_00: old Mexican national died in Saint Augustine, Florida, after running
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  SPEAKER_00: from ICE and Homeland Security investigation agents at a gas station.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then he was struck by a tractor trailer on a nearby road and died.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's not been publicly identified, and it's not known
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  SPEAKER_00: whether he or any of the others in the vehicle
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  SPEAKER_00: were the intended targets of that operation.
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  SPEAKER_00: But what it is is that’s three deaths in encounters with ICE in a single week.
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  SPEAKER_00: after this, ICE directed its agents to temporarily pause most vehicle stops.
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  SPEAKER_00: But they didn't publicly announce that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Border Czar Tom Homan described it as a short pause rather than a policy change.
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  SPEAKER_00: But then the next morning, Trump posted on Truth Social
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  SPEAKER_00: that ICE is doing a great job and that we cannot give up on one of ICE's
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  SPEAKER_00: most important and effective crime fighting tools: the traffic stop.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then ice activity
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  SPEAKER_00: this past year has been violent over and above the documented deaths.
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  SPEAKER_00: A new report from Physicians for Human Rights and the Human Rights Campaign
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  SPEAKER_00: has documented 412 verified incidents of the use of tear gas,
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: rubber bullets or pepper spray against anti-ICE protesters
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  SPEAKER_00: between June 2025 and May 203 of those have resulted
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  SPEAKER_00: in lasting injuries, including blindings and traumatic brain injuries.
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  SPEAKER_00: A former Customs and Border Patrol commissioner have said that agents
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  SPEAKER_00: have violated every protocol on less lethal weapons and crowd control.
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  SPEAKER_00: The report says that the true number of incidents is actually
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: likely much greater than what they've managed to document.
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  SPEAKER_00: So just a couple of other things to note.
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  SPEAKER_00: Trump first sent troops to Washington, D.C.
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  SPEAKER_00: just under a year ago, in August 2025 after declaring a crime emergency.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's something he can do because the city has this kind of unique
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  SPEAKER_00: federal status.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Pentagon has just confirmed that the National Guard
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: will remain deployed in D.C.
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  SPEAKER_00: until Inaugeration day in January 2029, and that will be the longest
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  SPEAKER_00: such deployment in U.S. history.
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  SPEAKER_00: As one constitutional expert put an emergency
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  SPEAKER_00: is a sudden, unforeseen and temporary state of affairs.
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  SPEAKER_00: Announcing that an emergency is going to last for another two
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  SPEAKER_00: and a half years to some arbitrary date, which happens to be the inauguration,
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  SPEAKER_00: means it's not an emergency.
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  SPEAKER_00: There are now nearly 5000 guard members of more than 20 states
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  SPEAKER_00: in D.C., at a cost, which has been confirmed
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  SPEAKER_00: by the Congressional Budget Office of more than $3 million a day.
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  SPEAKER_00: So two independent studies have both found that the deployment has had no
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  SPEAKER_00: measurable effect on violent crime in D.C..
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  SPEAKER_00: So while Trump has been claiming that D.C.
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  SPEAKER_00: has almost no crime anymore, that's just not what the evidence shows.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, 15 people have been charged with conspiracy
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  SPEAKER_00: in Minneapolis for their involvement in anti-ICE protests.
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  SPEAKER_00: The charges relate to a group called Direct Action Minnesota,
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  SPEAKER_00: which prosecutors have linked to Antifa.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Antifa is not a thing.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's not an organization.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a loose label for people opposed to fascism.
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  SPEAKER_00: Now, but Trump still designated it a domestic terror organization last
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  SPEAKER_00: The indictment includes serious alleged conduct, so stalking
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  SPEAKER_00: ICE agents, coordinating blockades at federal buildings,
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  SPEAKER_00: and some defendants allegedly advocating violence.
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  SPEAKER_00: But it also includes things like writing a first person account of a protest for an
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  SPEAKER_00: anarchist blog, or attending meetings or wearing Antifa branded clothing.
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  SPEAKER_00: Defense attorneys say that the prosecution is politically motivated,
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  SPEAKER_00: and that the process itself is the punishment, designed to spread
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: fear and deter protest activity against future immigration enforcement.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that's it for this week.
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  SPEAKER_00: All of these stories with sources are on TrumpActionTracker.info.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: See you in a week or two.