That Trump is struggling to have his ICE goons meet the quota for detaining and deporting people (reportedly the target is about 3,000 people per day) is clear from the fact that they are now doing so for the most minor of offenses.

An Irish grandmother who has lived in the US for most of her life and holds a green card is facing deportation because she wrote a bad cheque for $25 in 2015.

Donna Hughes-Brown, 58, was detained in July after landing in Chicago on a flight from Dublin and is being held in isolation in a detention centre in Kentucky. She has lived in the US since 1977, has five children and grandchildren, and ran a horse farm in Troy, Missouri.

Her husband, Jim Brown, a US citizen and military veteran, told reporters his wife was not a criminal and that he “100%” regretted voting for Donald Trump as president.

He said she had been detained on a misdemeanour relating to a $25 cheque she signed a decade ago and for which she made restitution and received probation.

She was detained under legislation amended on 4 July as part of Trump’s sweeping “one big beautiful bill” act. The couple visited Ireland that month for a funeral. When they landed at Chicago’s O’Hare airport on 29 July a police officer was waiting for her on the ramp.

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British prime minister Keir Starmer and the governing Labour party have shown themselves to be utterly complicit in the Israeli genocide taking place in Gaza, doing nothing except make largely meaningless statements. But their latest actions are jaw-dropping. After members of a group called Palestine Action were accused of vandalizing tanks, the government took the extraordinary step of not only banning the group but going to the extreme of also making it a crime to publicly support the organization. This blatant attack on the right to political speech has infuriated people and brought them out in defiance, challenging the government to arrest them. Here is one report from August 9th.

Backers of the group, who have held a series of protests around the United Kingdom over the past month, argue that the law illegally restricts freedom of expression.

More than 500 protesters filled the square outside the Houses of Parliament on Saturday, many daring police to arrest them by displaying signs reading “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” That was enough for police to step in.

But as the demonstration began to wind down, police and protest organizers sparred over the number of arrests as the organizers sought to show that the law was unworkable.

“The police have only been able to arrest a fraction of those supposedly committing ‘terrorism’ offenses, and most of those have been given street bail and allowed to go home,” Defend Our Juries, which organized the protest, said in a statement. “This is a major embarrassment to (the government), further undermining the credibility of this widely ridiculed law, brought in to punish those exposing the government’s own crimes.”
…

On Friday, police said the demonstration was unusual in that the protesters wanted to be arrested in large numbers so as to place a strain on police and the broader criminal justice system.

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Over in the UK, it looks like prime minister Keir Starmer is blowing it big time. It was just a little over a year ago that the party swept the Conservatives out of power, winning 412 seats in the 650 member body, a gain of 211 seats from before, giving them a massive majority. The Conservatives had held power for 14 years and the public had clearly had enough of them. But as soon as three months after the election, the popularity of the Labour party had cratered and it has not recovered since, as it lurches from one self-inflicted would to another, accompanied by a feckless leader who seems to have no vision, other than to be a slightly less right-wing version of the Conservatives. The government, rather than improving the condition of those in need, has refused to do so, keeping in place some of the former harsh anti-poor policies and even adding to them. Adding to that have been image-damaging shabby scandals about Starmer and other party leaders accepting gifts such as clothes from wealthy people, cementing the idea that they are on the take and in the pockets of the plutocrats. Just yesterday, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner was forced to step down over allegations that she had evaded paying the appropriate amount of taxes on her properties.

Before the UK election, I linked to a very interesting interview given by Rory Stewart who was at one time an ambitious and upward bound insider Conservative politician before becoming disillusioned with Boris Johnson’s Brexit policies and quitting parliament. He described Starmer as conducting a ‘Ming vase’ election strategy.
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A shooter killed two people and injured 17 others while they were at church on the opening day of a Catholic school in Minneapolis. In reading the news report, I was stuck by this towards the end.

There have been more than 140 shootings reported in elementary and secondary schools in 2025 thus far, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database.

More than 140 school shootings so far this year? That is insane.

One has to wonder why these people target schools. One reason may be that it is a soft target. But with added school security, there are even softer targets like shopping malls, parks, and other open public spaces. Perhaps the shooters had bad experiences in schools as places where they were bullied and intimidated and otherwise made to feel inadequate, leaving them with feelings of rage against the institution and all who are there, even if they were not directly responsible for their unhappiness. Also, killing children, especially younger ones, garners much greater media attention, which momentary and posthumous fame is what some of these killers seek.

At least some people are realizing that platitudes are not an adequate response.

Minneapolis’s mayor, Jacob Frey, who has led Minneapolis since 2018, said earlier in the same conference: “Children are dead. There are families that have a deceased child. You cannot put into words the gravity, the tragedy or the pain of this situation … Those families are suffering immense pain right now. Think of this as if it’s your own.”

He continued, visibly angry: “Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying. It was the first week of school. They were in a church.”

But Trump of course, who I doubt ever prays, came out with the prayers trope saying “Please join me in praying for everyone involved!”

It will not be long for the transphobes to exploit the fact that the shooter is reportedly transgender, in order to obscure the problem of the easy availability of guns that leads to rampant gun violence.

Local news, Kare 11, confirmed the shooter’s name was Robin Westman, 23. Westman grew up in Richfield, and Westman’s mother worked at Annunciation school in some capacity. Westman applied in Dakota county to change their birth name from Robert to Robin because they identified as a female, per court documents obtained by the Guardian. That request was granted in January 2020.

It is a sick society that does almost nothing to prevent such tragedies.