Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Those forty-five words lay the foundation for our freedoms!
Those forty-five words lay the foundation for our freedoms! Yet, those using their First Amendment rights are being punished with court hearings without even being arrested—targeted simply for following a vehicle while a woman was denied the right to travel here in the United States!
By Ashley GramsUpdated on: February 3, 2026CBS MinnesotaAs the immigration crackdown continues in Minnesota, Nicole Cleland, a resident of Richfield, Minnesota, believes federal agents identified her through facial recognition software.Cleland has actively protested against the deployment of federal agents in the Twin Cities. She says she's a trained observer, following officers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as Customs and Border Protection. Her account is detailed in a lawsuit filed alongside other observers against the Department of Homeland SecurityOn Jan. 10, Cleland says she was following a truck with federal agents inside.[...]Cleland described the unmasked Border Patrol agent as stern while warning that he was using facial recognition and his body camera was rolling."He said, 'I'm giving you a warning. This is the only verbal warning that you're going to get,'" Cleland recounted.One source briefed on DHS tactics confirmed to CBS News that Border Patrol uses facial recognition software, including Mobile Fortify, to scan the faces of demonstrators.
Then they denied her right to travel like some communist country!
Cleland said three days after that interaction with Border Patrol, she received an email notice that said her Global Entry was revoked."You can click on a link and there is a letter that just says, 'Your status has been changed. We're not obligated to give you any reason for that change,'" Cleland said after showing WCCO the revocation notice.Cleland says she's used Global Entry since 2014 and was reapproved in 2024. Global Entry status typically lasts for five years.While CBP did not share a reason, Cleland describes the timing as "pretty coincidental," noting she had no issues with the traveler program in the past.
No hearing, no court, nothing but some bureaucrat red-lining her because she exercised her 1st Amendment rights for a redress of grievances. The other thing is that the government now has a database of those who are legally using their 1st Amendment rights!
Attack on the freedom of the press...
Agents searched Hannah Natanson’s Virginia home and seized devices in inquiry tied to a classified materials caseThe GuardianRichard Luscombe and Jeremy BarrWed 14 Jan 2026The FBI raided the home of a Washington Post reporter early on Wednesday in what the newspaper called a “highly unusual and aggressive” move by law enforcement, and press freedom groups condemned as a “tremendous intrusion” by the Trump administration.Agents descended on the Virginia home of Hannah Natanson as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials.An email sent on Wednesday afternoon to Post staff from the executive editor, Matt Murray, obtained by the Guardian, said agents turned up “unannounced”, searched her home and seized electronic devices.[...]“It’s a clear and appalling sign that this administration will set no limits on its acts of aggression against an independent press,” Marty Baron, the Post’s former executive editor, told the Guardian.
Hey, the Constitution is only for losers!
Oh, and they forgot one little detail when they got the warrant... they forgot to tell the judge it was for a reporter... Ops. Sorry about that boss.
The website Reporters Committee reports that,
“In its affidavit, the government did not reference the federal law that prohibits, with few exceptions, raids targeting journalists or newsrooms to seize unpublished work. The government appears to have ignored a crucial press freedom guardrail in searching a journalist’s home and did not alert the magistrate judge to the law’s application in this case, let alone show how or if it had complied with the statute’s considerable protections.”That federal law is the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which created essential protections for journalists and newsrooms from government searches and seizures. Congress passed it out of concern that such raids could stanch the free flow of information to the public.
The Trump & Company seems to have a little problem with reading — they keep adding thing like "freedom of the press only if it is good news..."
Then we have the Department of Justice banning gun possession in Washington DC!
February 2, 2026U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro on Monday threatened jail time for people who bring firearms into Washington.“I don’t care if you have a license in another district, and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else,” Pirro said on Fox News. “You bring a gun into this district, count on going to jail.”[...]But the remarks prompted outrage from gun rights advocates and some Republicans, adding to mounting friction between the Trump administration and gun owners following the fatal shooting of Minneapolis intensive care nurse Alex Pretti.The National Association for Gun Rights called Pirro’s assertion “unacceptable and intolerable,” suggesting it shows how “broken and out of touch” local gun laws are.
The 2nd Amendment... bah humbug!
The Guardian writes that the Trump adminstration has ignored court orders;
Chief US district judge Patrick Schiltz demanded ICE lead Todd Lyons explain himself personally in a three-page order issued Monday evening, declaring that “the court’s patience is at an end”.The rebuke follows weeks of tilting anger during the so-called “Operation Metro Surge”, the Trump administration’s large-scale, aggressive and now deadly immigration enforcement campaign in Minneapolis-St Paul. The operation has generated numerous emergency lawsuits from immigrants claiming unlawful arrest or detention, with judges consistently ruling in their favor.Schiltz, appointed by George W Bush, accused the Trump administration of deliberately delaying or ignoring judicial directives across Minnesota’s federal courts. His order came in the case of a man he had ordered released on 15 January who remained in custody as of Monday night.
Ha, laws? They're just for Democrats!
Then they are politicizing the law by attacking opponents and going after judges whose rulings they don't like. The right-wing Washington Examiner reported that.
A federal appeals court judge quietly dismissed a judicial misconduct complaint the Justice Department filed against U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, dealing a setback to the Trump administration’s effort to challenge one of its most prominent judicial critics in the fight over deportations to El Salvador.The complaint was rejected on Dec. 19, 2025, by Jeffrey Sutton, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, although the order did not become public until this weekend. Sutton concluded that the DOJ failed to back up its allegations with evidence and fell well short of the standard required for a misconduct finding, according to a seven-page decision.The complaint centered on James Boasberg, the chief judge of the federal district court in Washington, D.C., who repeatedly clashed with President Donald Trump’s administration last year over its use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan migrants to a high-security prison in El Salvador.
Laws mean nothing to this administration. With the Supreme Court ruling that the President is above the law, a spineless Congress, and a base that loves the lawlessness, people are being denied their constitutional rights. The government has crossed the line from "serving the people" to "monitoring the subjects."
"Your papers, please!"
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