The Network Case defendants, during their trial in Penza. Photo courtesy of Yan Shenkman
Around this time nine years ago, the so-called Network Case kicked off in Penza. It was a harrowing case concocted by the FSB against antifascists, whom they tortured. Eleven young men were convicted and sent to prison. Some have already served their time and been released. The key defendant, Dima Pchelintsev, has served half of his sentence and remains in prison. He was sentenced to a total of eighteen years.
While in custody, Pchelintsev has written a book entitled Shooting Fireworks (Strelba iz feierverka). I highly recommend it, since it provides a detailed account of the entire story.
A lot has happened since then: covid, war, exile. Criminal cases based on confessions obtained by torture have become routine, commonplace. People are imprisoned in large numbers, for any reason at all.
It is important to remember that if the sadists at the FSB had been stopped in their tracks back then, in 2017, we would be breathing easier today.
Evil must be battled before it’s too late. Its victims must have our backs when it matters.
You hesitated, you harbored doubts, you were too busy, and before you knew it, you were living under a dictatorship, missiles were raining down on civilians, and you were forced to flee the whole mess.
Back then, public opinion still meant something. Now, it means nothing at all.
All you have to do is show concern when it counts.
SOURCE: Yan Shenkman (Facebook), 20 October 2026. Translated by the Russian Reader. For a list of all the articles on the Network Case that I have published since January 2018, go here. |||||trr
According to Mediazona, [o]n October 16, 38-year-old Vasily Kuksov was released from Penal Colony No. 16 in the Nizhny Novgorod region. [On the] 17th of October he arrived by train in Serdobsk, in the Penza region, where he [was] reunited with his family.
In 2020, Kuksov, a musician and design engineer, was sentenced in Penza to nine years in a penal colony in the case of the “Network organization” (the defendants in this case received sentences of up to 18 years in prison).
The criminal case was opened in October 2017. At the time, FSB officers accused anti-fascists and anarchists, many of whom shared an interest in airsoft, of creating a “terrorist organization” and planning to “mobilize the masses to further destabilize the political situation in the country.”
Over the course of that month, security forces detained Kuksov, as well as Ilya Shakursky, Dmitry Pchelintsev, Andrey Chernov, Arman Sagynbayev, and Yegor Zorin. The formal grounds for initiating the criminal prosecution were Zorin’s confession. The young man had been detained with drugs and gave testimony about a terrorist organization. The case against him was subsequently dropped. In January 2018, Viktor Filinkov and Igor Shishkin were detained in St. Petersburg in connection with the same case. On April 11, another St. Petersburg resident, Yuly Boyarshinov, was also charged.
Initially, most of the defendants made confessions, but later retracted them, stating that they had been tortured. Viktor Filinkov, Dmitry Pchelintsev, Ilya Shakursky, Arman Sagynbayev, and Andrey Chernov reported violence and electric shocks inflicted by security officers. The Investigative Committee did not open a criminal investigation into any of the defendants’ allegations of torture. Five witnesses in the case also reported torture and pressure from security forces.
Vasily Kuksov told the court that FSB officers beat him during his arrest, saying, “You’re screwed, your life is over,” and threatened to cut off his finger. Despite this, he never made a confession.
During the investigation, while being held in Penza’s Pre-Trial Detention Centre No. 1, he was diagnosed with active tuberculosis shortly before his sentencing. He was not hospitalized and continued to be held together with other defendants in the case.
After the verdict in the Network case came into force, Kuksov was transferred in November 2020 to Medical Correctional Institution No. 3 (LIU-3) for tuberculosis patients in Nizhny Novgorod. He was discharged from the medical facility in January 2022. After that, at Penal Colony No. 16 in the Nizhny Novgorod region, he was repeatedly placed in a punishment cell.
Anarchist Black Cross Moscow
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I just saw NAZA at the New York Film Festival. There were a dozen cops outside the theater checking people’s bags. Protesters were anticipated but there were no protests—just a car with the message “NO PROOF” plastered on its door, circling the block.
Several people spoke briefly before the screening. One of them was Harry Davies, an investigative reporter at the Guardian, which co-produced the film. Harry reminded the audience that investigative reporting is based on information obtained from sources whose anonymity is a vital institution. He also said the Guardian’s investigations department (that is, he and his colleagues) had fact-checked all the assertions made by interviewees in the film and had corroborated all of them. Many of the things recounted in the film had been previously published in the Israeli-Palestinian online magazine +972 (whose journalists I know personally). The film itself was the result of nearly three years of work by this team.
As for the film, I can’t say whether it’s great or not. It is staggering. People talk about the work they do with Tel Aviv in the background: we see people in the windows and imagine other people in other windows sixty kilometers down the coast. The interviewees describe a well-oiled machine for murdering people, not a one-off totally fucked-up incident amidst the war. Many of the film’s critics have overlooked the Israeli army’s use of AI to select its targets for murder. According to their own estimates, the system is now approximately eighty-five percent effective, meaning that a minimum of fifteen percent of its targets had nothing to do with Hamas. Moreover, a target doesn’t equated to a victim, hence the term NAZA itself, which is an acronym for “collateral damage” [in Hebrew]. The [IDF] officers in the film explain that a NAZA value of twenty is the threshold of hesitation. Killing twenty bystanders to take out a single alleged insurgent could be problematic, but any number below twenty is a-okay. And yet the officers recall instances where NAZA values of 500 and 200 were green-lighted. Why such [high] numbers? Because alleged or genuine members of Hamas are killed at night, in residential buildings, along with everyone in their vicinity. The estimate of potential victims can be made quite accurately due to the total system of surveillance [used by the IDF]. They can hack a telephone and use it as a microphone. Do you hear a baby crying in the background? The baby is only a single NAZA.
There are many other harrowing details in the film.
The Israeli secret services will have a tough time identifying the interviewees. We don’t see their faces, and sometimes even their heads are hard to make out; their voices have been altered, and their handwriting has been blurred. Many of the interviews draw and caption on paper what they saw on their [computer] screens. Many of them are involved in combat remotely. One of the interviewees had been in Gaza itself, burning down houses.
There was no ovation [when the screening ended]: no one applauded at all, so the credits rolled down the screen in profound silence. I could hear several people crying, and the person to my left intoned, “Oh Jesus, Jesus.”
Something else that struck me as vital is the extent to which war is no longer waged blindly, the extent to which every decision, every step in this war, and in all contemporary wars, is weighed and documented, and yet people continue to make those decisions nonetheless.
Some of the interviewees describe their role as a technical one, while others speak of the prestige of working in reconnaissance, about their mission, about [being part of] the speartip pointed at the enemy. One person talks about having “fun.” Judging by what they say, nearly none of them feels hatred. Hatred isn’t obligatory for committing murder, nor is ignorance. Remember the parable about the smoke constantly streaming from the crematorium and how “we were looking the other way”? You can’t say that anymore.
The film will soon be viewable on the Guardian’s website. I heartily recommend that everyone see it. Don’t be in a hurry to sound off now [about this post]: you might feel like an idiot only a couple of weeks later. Wait and see the film, and then we’ll talk.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) is preparing a new case, for high treason, against Ruslan Siddiqi, the Russian-Italian anarchist serving a 29-year sentence for sabotaging a train carrying munitions to the Ukrainian front.
Siddiqi wasconvictedin May last year, and the Military Court of Appealupheldthe sentence on 1 July this year. In 2023 he blew up railway tracks in the Ryazan region, derailing a freight train carrying munitions, and organised a drone attack on the Dyagilevo military airfield.
Ruslan Siddiqi in court last year
Siddiqi confessed to these actions and told the court he sees himself as a partisan, opposing Russia’s war on Ukraine. He denied a further charge of preparing another attack. He was tortured extensively during questioning, but the authorities have refused to investigate.
Fires of Freedom, who give legal and other support to Siddiqi,saidthat, although he should have been transferred to prison after conviction, he is being held at a pre-trial detention centre (SIZO) in Ryazan. Transfer has now been delayed because of the new case.
Here isa Facebook postabout the new charges by Ivan Astashin, who campaigns in defence of political prisoners, translated by Giuliano Vivaldi:
“Isn’t that enough for them?” is the first thought that automatically springs to mind upon hearing the news of a new criminal case against anarchist Ruslan Siddiqi, who has already been sentenced to 29 years in prison for two anti-war acts of sabotage and has now also been charged with treason.
And yet for the security forces, everything is much more mundane, has a more practical raison d’etre. The sentence itself plays no role here.
It was the Investigative Committee [a federal agency answerable directly to the Kremlin] who took on the first case against Ruslan. And not just some district department, but the central bureau of the Investigative Committee — or, to be precise, the department for investigating war crimes, genocide, and the rehabilitation of Nazism, which [Investigative Committee chairman Aleksandr] Bastrykin established in 2022.
At the same time, under the Code of Criminal Procedure, only the Federal Security Service (FSB) can investigate cases of high treason. So if the Investigative Committee had “discovered” signs of high treason in Ruslan’s actions, it would have had to hand the case over to the security services.
Naturally, the Investigative Committee did not want to give such a juicy case to anyone else, so they “didn’t discover” high treason, but only terrorism, terrorism, and once again terrorism … which the Investigative Committee has the right to investigate on an equal footing with the FSB.
At the same time, the version that Ruslan was cooperating with Ukrainian military intelligence, which has now become the basis of the treason charge, was always foregrounded. Indeed, it was one of the central elements of the prosecution’s case.
The investigation explicitly proceeded on the assumption that Siddiqi coordinated his actions with representatives of Ukraine’s Chief Directorate of Intelligence. It was precisely through this framework that his actions were classified, among other things, as having been committed by an “organised group”.
So the evidence on which the FSB is now building a new treason case was already there in the materials of the first case. But turning this evidence into a separate charge based on the violation of Article 275 [on high treason] would have meant transferring the case to another agency, the FSB.
The central office of the Investigative Committee took on a high-profile case, “investigated” it itself, gathered the “evidence” itself, brought nine (!) criminal charges, and saw the case through to a conviction. There was absolutely no reason for it to hand such a case over to another agency.
Now the Investigative Committee’s work is finished. The verdict has been handed down; the appeal has been heard. And this is where the baton is already passed to the FSB Directorate for the Ryazan region.
For them, it’s a perfect case. The accused is already in custody. The skeleton of the case has been assembled by colleagues from another agency. All that remains is to rewrite the Investigative Committee’s material to fit the structure of the article of the criminal code on treason, and receive a ready-made crime against state security that has already been “solved”.
I have already told a similar story about Aleksander Leleko: he was convicted as a teenager for setting fire to railway relay cabinets, and several years later the FSB began reworking those same events into a new treason case. [Leleko, from the small Siberian town of Sharypovo, was arrested in 2023, then aged 16, and sentenced to six-and-a-half years. In April this year it was reported that he was in prison hospital, and being administered psychtropic drugs, while investigators sought to put together the new case.]
Therefore, the question “Really, is 29 years not enough for them?” hardly makes sense here. It’s not about the sentence, but about the crime-solving rate, which our investigative authorities so badly need to improve. Especially now, when generals are being blown up and shot at home.
This situation illustrates my point very well that a repressive system has rules. It can produce an utterly monstrous result, but internally it still remains a bureaucratic machine with jurisdictional boundaries, departmental interests, reporting requirements, and its own rules.
An all-powerful security official cannot simply take any desirable article of the Criminal Code and put it into his casework. Even when the decision to imprison someone has already been taken, you still have to properly document who exactly is supposed to imprison them and under which article.
Perhaps, in Ruslan’s case, there also exists a more personal motivation on the part of the Ryazan security services officers. They could not find Ruslan after the first action, caught him only three weeks after the second, and subjected him to brutal torture.
But a much more mundane and so perhaps more frightening mechanism is quite enough to explain the emergence of a new case: the agency needed a criminal case of its own; a ready-made defendant was available with a “body of evidence” already sitting on their desk.
For the security agencies, the people involved in these cases are primarily numbers in a report, not human beings.
□ Fires of Freedom, which supports Ruslan, is on Telegram (Russian only). In English, there are reports on Ruslan Siddiqi’s case, and information about how to give support, on the Autonomous Action site e.g. here, here and here. Ivan Astashin was interviewed here.
□ Ruslan Siddiqi’s final statement in court, and letters describing his anti-war action and arrest, are included in the book Voices Against Putin’s War, free to download here. The letters were published by the Russian Reader here.
Far-right activists once again turn up for annual reading of Great Terror victims’ names
The annual Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Great Terror is taking place in the Sandarmokh forest tract. Among those in attendance are nationalists from the so-called Russian Community (Russkaya Obshchina) and Cossacks. One of the far-right activists, his face covered by a mask, is brandishing a Russian flag, according to our correspondent.
For the most part, the provocateurs are being ignored, and they have not played any music.
“So far, no one has been aggressive,” our correspondent reported.
Journalists from pro-government TV channels 78 and Channel One also turned up for the reading.
A monument to the Jews murdered in the area had been toppled but was later restored to its original location.
What you need to know
In 1937–1938, Sandarmokh was the site of mass executions and burials during Stalin’s Great Terror. The site was discovered by members of the Petersburg and Karelian branches of Memorial in 1997.
Every year on August 5, official memorial ceremonies are held in Sandarmokh to honor the victims.
Last year, far-right extremists also attended the ceremony: they splashed water on those who had come to the memorial event and sang “Katyusha.” The year before last, they tried to drown out the reading of the names by playing military songs over loudspeakers.
The Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Great Terror is annually held on August 5 in Sandarmokh, [a] forest area in Karelia. Thousands of people killed by Stalin’s NKVD are buried in the area.
This year’s commemoration did not proceed without trouble.
A significant number of people had traveled to the memorial site to pay their respect[s]. Among them were representatives of the Finnish Embassy in Moscow, including Ambassador Marja Liivala.
They were met by militant activists from the ultraright group Russkaya Obshchina (Russian Community).
Many of the militants had their faces covered by balaclavas. They verbally attacked the foreign diplomats, accusing them of being ‘fascists.’
The provocateurs also told the guests at the commemoration that they were ‘collaborators’ and that they should “go to Donbass.”
At one point, several of the militants began to chant the patriotic song “Katyusha.”
The Barents Observer has gotten access to photo and video footage from the event.
The provocations were carefully planned by Russkaya Obshchina and its partners. The extremist group has close links to powerful people in the Putin regime. Lately, it has become more active and visible in the Russian public space, including in north Russian regions like Murmansk.
Representatives of the Finnish Embassy in Moscow, along with diplomats from the other Nordic countries, regularly attend commemoration events like the one in Sandarmokh.
The day before the commemoration event in Sandarmokh, a memorial event for victims of political repression took place at the Krasny Bor memorial cemetery near Petrozavodsk, Republic of Karelia. Activists read out the names of the terror victims. An 80-year-old veteran of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Tatyana Savinkina, who had been involved in the rehabilitation of the repressed for many years, attended the event, reported SOTAvision. In December 2024, Savinkina was convicted for “discrediting the army.”
Since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine, Sandarmokh has repeatedly become a site for provocations. In 2022, pro-government activists stuck the symbol of the Russian invasion – the letter Z – on the cars of people who came to the site, placed leaflets with insults directed at the Ukrainian president, and attempted to distribute books by the well-known Karelian Stalinist Alexander Stepanov. In 2024, a group of Cossacks and unknown individuals arrived at the site, hiding their faces under balaclavas. They set up speakers between the pines, from which military songs played. Ukrainians holding a memorial service at their cross of sorrow were shouted at with “Glory to Russia,” and near the Holocaust monument, provocateurs shouted “Jews sponsored Hitler.”
Son of political prisoner Oleg Belousov sentenced to 7 years in prison
The 1st Western District Military Court in St. Petersburg sentenced Daniil Belousov to seven years in prison on multiple counts of “condoning” terrorism,” our correspondent reports. The indictment states that Belousov was an administrator of the project Media Partisans, which was declared a “foreign agent” in March of this year.
The prosecutor had requested a nine-year sentence. Belousov’s case was heard in closed chambers.
Bumaga first learned of Daniil’s arrest in March in a letter from Pavel Sinelnikov, a defendant in the Vesna Case. At the time, Belousov was being held in the Crosses pretrial detention center.
The case stemmed from a message posted in a public chat group called “No to War” (Net voine), Sinelnikov reported. Bumaga located a chat with that name where Belousov had posted photos of a pro-Ukrainian rally, organized by Ukrainian refugees near the [Moldovan] parliament building in Chisinau. The chat is linked to the Media Partisans project.
In April, Ostorozhno, Peterburg reported, citing a source in the FSB, that an administrator of the Media Partisans chat had been detained in Petersburg. According to security officials, the detainee had urged Russians to join the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Free Russia Legion. SOTA clarified that the individual in question was Daniil Belousov.
Daniil Belousov has a disability dating back to childhood: he suffers from a residual organic lesion of the central nervous system. He finds it difficult to secure employment and requires constant care, Oleg Belousov toldBumaga. Oleg Belousov raised his son as a single parent. And yet, according to the website Kino-teatr.ru, Belousov junior has appeared in several Russian films over the past three years.
Oleg Belousov is an amateur archaeologist from Petersburg who in late March 2023 was sentenced to five and a half years in a medium security penal colony under the law prohibiting the dissemination of “fake news” about the Russian army. According to investigators, Belousov senior had called Putin a war criminal and wrote about war crimes in Bucha, Hostomel, and Irpin in a private VKontakte chat group for treasure hunters.
Before his imprisonment, Oleg was unemployed and lived on state benefits, as he has a third-class disability due to an arm injury. In February, the EU identified the judge who sentenced Belousov senior as “culpable of serious human rights violations.”
A crowd gathers outside city hall in Springfield, Ohio, to react to the Supreme Court’s decision in Mullin v. Doe. Photo: Jim Swift/The Bulwark
Forward Together, Backward by Order
by Jim Swift
SPRINGFIELD, OHIO—What organizers had hoped would be an evening of celebration was instead an interfaith prayer service. Ministers, immigration lawyers, community organizers, Haitian families, and hundreds of their neighbors gathered in front of Springfield City Hall beneath the city’s motto, “Forward Together,” alternating between English and Creole as they decried the Supreme Court’s decision and prepared for what many fear could become mass deportations.
Thursday morning, after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to end temporary protected status for Haitians, the people who helped revive Springfield, Ohio, were trying to figure out how long they could keep their jobs and their driver’s licenses, and whether they should start preparing for deportation. Pastor Carl Ruby captured the mood: “We had hoped this would become a time of celebration . . . but it has become a time of lament.”
Fleeing gang violence and what has become a de facto civil war, thousands of Haitians have helped reverse decades of decline in Springfield since 2010. They filled factory jobs, opened businesses, started churches, and helped stabilize the city’s population after years of shrinkage. But that growth stopped after JD Vance amplified a pernicious lie about Haitians in Springfield eating dogs and cats.
Now the Trump administration is set on removing many of the very people who helped bring Springfield back.
Yesterday’s 6–3 ruling by the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to end TPS, meaning that although litigation may continue, many Haitians here in Ohio and all across America under TPS are subject to deportation immediately.
On a live zoom press conference earlier yesterday held by Springfield G92, a volunteer-led group of churches and faith advocates that focus on immigrant rights and mutual aid, Geoff Pipoly, a lead attorney on the TPS case, Mullin v. Doe, explained that while they’re reviewing what’s left of the case to determine whether any further legal appeals from his plaintiffs were tenable, the situation for Haitians here varies by their status.
Haitians here under TPS could consider filing asylum claims—if they can find an immigration lawyer to help them. The immigration court system is, to put it mildly, a shitshow right now. Donald Trump is purging judges who don’t deport a lot of people, the New York Times reported this week.
The data say the purge is having its desired effect: In Fiscal Year 2025, the denial rate for asylum claims more than doubled—from 14.3 percent to 30.8 percent—while the grant rate fell from 12.0 percent to 9.9 percent, its lowest level since 2017.
Those here under TPS alone are facing a lot: Their state-issued driver’s licenses are set to expire on July 6, as Ohio provided them with temporary extensions due to the uncertainty of their TPS status. Before the stay, Haitians were unable to renew their driver’s licenses because DHS made it clear that Trump wanted to end their protected status. Their expiry in ten days will make driving illegal, not that many are going to be venturing out due to the chance that ICE could stop them and deport them. And, unless they have another legal basis to remain, they won’t have jobs to drive to: the end of TPS will mean the end of their work authorization.
Biassou Pierre, a community organizer from Haiti, told the crowd: assembled in front of city hall, “Today many people call me asking, ‘How will I feed my children if I lose my job? What will happen to my family if I get detained by ICE?’ Unfortunately, we don’t have a good answer.”
But even if one had the money and could find an immigration lawyer with availability to take up their case, that doesn’t mean a quick return to work. “People who have pending asylum applications may be eligible to apply for a work permit after their application has been pending for 180 days,” Katie Kersh, a senior attorney with Advocates for Basic Legal Equality in Dayton, told reporters. “But the administration is trying to extend the required waiting period to one year.”
At the rally last night, Kersh put this avoidable tragedy in these terms: “These individuals followed the law. They followed the law and applied for TPS, and often asylum. The law abandoned them.”
There is some hope in Congress in the form of H.R. 1689, which would extend TPS until the end of the Trump administration. By some small miracle, it passed the House in April on a bipartisan basis, with ten Republicans, including Ohio’s Mike Carey and Mike Turner (who represents Springfield), supporting it. But Haitians here now have to depend on the Senate, and Ohio’s senators are notably silent.
Sens. Moreno, an immigrant himself, and Jon Husted, who is up for election this fall, having been appointed to fill Vance’s seat, do not have a position on the bill. Outgoing Gov. Mike DeWine, who grew up in the area and has done charitable work in Haiti with his wife, has supported extending TPS and called Thursday’s ruling a mistake that was “not in the best interest of the United States nor Ohio.”
This has the potential to become a big campaign issue for both Husted and Vivek Ramaswamy, the controversial Republican candidate for governor. As Jonathan Cohn reported in these pages earlier this week, Haitian immigrants are a bedrock in multiple industries around the country, most notably healthcare.
Former Sen. Sherrod Brown, running against Husted, has been vocal in his support for the Haitian community, calling on both Husted and Moreno to support an extension of TPS for Haiti. Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for governor, has been more careful in her wording, saying: “Law enforcement should be keeping people safe by going after dangerous criminals, not terrorizing communities.”
Viles Dorsainvil is a Haitian pastor and co-founder of the Haitian Support Center, which has been helping with utility bills, rent assistance, legal services, and transportation for Haitians who have been looking over their shoulder since Trump and Vance propagated heinous lies about them.
“Everything has changed in the community” Dorsainvil told reporters early Thursday, “And the worst thing now is that the employers will terminate workers immediately. . . . It was predictable that our community will be in trouble and that the decision will amplify the humanitarian crisis that we’ve already had here. That’s the reality. So as a center, we’ll continue to do our best, but we don’t know how long we’ll be able to survive.”
What awaits these Haitians in Springfield? Pastor Ruby, who welcomed me into Springfield Central Christian in February to talk and show me the preparations they had made to provide this community sanctuary, said, “We have had to think about issues of civil disobedience. We’ve had to think about the issue of providing sanctuary, and when there’s a conflict between man’s laws and God’s laws, we have an obligation to side with God’s laws.”
The situation in Haiti remains bleak. The State Department doesn’t advise Americans to travel there, as it’s one of the “most dangerous places on earth right now” Ruby says. He recounts a conversation with a young boy, about his life before coming to America: “I was talking with a 12-year-old boy . . . we were talking about farm animals. And he started talking about seeing huge pigs. . . . I said, ‘What were the huge pigs doing?’ And he said, “The huge hog was eating bodies.”
He added: “So that’s what Haitian children have observed. They’ve all been traumatized. This is gonna re-traumatize them. I can’t imagine the fear that they’re experiencing right now. There’s another person in our church . . . the decapitated body of a friend was left in front of his house. That’s what Haiti is like right now, and our justices knew that.”
Dorsainvil, for his part, is appreciative of the support his center has gotten from around the country. “We are grateful for people who’ve been standing in solidarity with us . . . because you understand our struggle . . . We will continue to count on you to stand in solidarity with our community here in Springfield.”
“I am no different from other folks.” he told reporters, “I just have a pending asylum. . . . Everything is in limbo now. I don’t know how that will be.”
Pierre, speaking to an audience beyond those assembled in front of him, pleaded: “We are not just immigration cases or statistics. We are your neighbors, your coworkers, and members of your church.”
“Please don’t forget us.”
You can donate to the Haitian Support Center here and other local charities here.
America today has lots of hard-working immigrants, and plenty of native-born citizens who accept and respect them. But there are also plenty of Americans these days who were born on third base and think they hit a triple.
I hasten to say there’s no fault in being born on third base. Indeed, all of us, whether rich or poor, who were born in today’s America might be said, in the grand historical scheme of things, to have been born on third base. A healthy American patriotism begins with acknowledgment of our good fortune, and with gratitude for what our forebears—most of whom were not born on third base—did to make our privileged lives today possible.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with also taking pride in what we and our contemporaries have accomplished. And if we sometimes overestimate our own achievements and underrate those of our predecessors—and therefore underrate our simple good fortune in being born here—well, that’s human nature, and it’s probably not worth getting all worked up about.
But what is worth getting worked up about is those who have no sympathy for others who didn’t happen to enjoy good fortune. What’s worth getting worked up about is those who have contempt for and who revel in cruelty toward the less fortunate.
There are lots of those people in America today. They include our president. They include many in his administration. They include many in the world of MAGA.
And they include Megyn Kelly, who was so proud of what she said on her show yesterday after the Supreme Court’s TPS decision that she then posted the clip on X:
Megyn sends a message to the Haitians who lost their TPS today:
“Go home! Get out! We know our country is better than yours. That’s because we filled it with our work ethic, culture, and values. You being here only dilutes it for us . . . GO BACK TO FUCKING HAITI!”
Kelly thinks that “we” made America great with “our work ethic, culture, and values.” But most Americans of Kelly’s generation—and, to be clear, of mine—have had to do little in the way of heavy lifting to make America great. And is it clear that today’s culture and values are so exceptionally wonderful?
It was our forebears who made America great. Many of them were immigrants and refugees, whom earlier generations of nativists treated with hostility, bigotry, and cruelty.
The rhetoric of yesterday’s Court ruling is not itself bigoted or cruel. But the policies it permits are bigoted and cruel. They are the policies of people who found themselves, mostly by good fortune, standing on third base. Many of them aren’t particularly good hitters or fast runners. But they’ve decided to protect their status by making sure no one else—especially no one else of a different skin color or background—will have a chance to get up to bat.
Source: “After SCOTUS Ruling, Haitians Prepare for Disaster,” The Bulwark, 26 June 2024. Despite (or maybe even because of) my own leftist sympathies, I’m a proud subscriber and reader of The Bulwark, an online publication anchored by “recanted” (?) neocons like Bill Kristol. The younger me would have wondered how such an unbelievable thing could have come to pass, but I would explain to him that we need a united front against fascism right now, and the Bulwarkers, Kristol included, are quite explicitly, vocally, and usefully part of that front. ||||| trr
TRY ME FOR TREASON is a 50-minute film, in English, featuring speeches made by anti-war protesters in Russian courts. It has been made by a group of actors to draw English-speaking audiences’ attention to the stand taken by Ukrainians, and Russians, against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The YouTube premiere of the film will be broadcast on Sunday 17 May at 20.00 UK time. To participate, go to this link and hit “Notify me”:
□ Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, thousands of people have been arrested for protesting against the war. Many appear in court, facing years of imprisonment. What do they say to the judges? What would any of us say? This 50-minute film, in English, features some of their speeches in court.
□ The speeches are from the book Voices Against Putin’s War: protesters’ defiant speeches in Russian courts (Resistance books, 2025). You can buy a copy, or download a free PDF, via this page.
□ Readings by John Graham Davies, Leila Mimmack, Gareth Brierley, Maya Willcox and Nick Evans. Script by Simon Pirani and John Graham Davies. Videography by Anthony Aldis
□ From Sunday 17 May the film will be free to view, or download, on YouTube, under a Creative Commons licence.
And here is a trailer to share:
There will be an in-person film premiere in London at 6.30pm on Sunday 17 May, just before the YouTube premiere – all welcome! – details below.
Source: Ukraine Information Group. Thanks to Simon Pirani for the heads-up and all the invaluable hard work. ||||| TRR
The Gated Community. Photo: Tom Smouse (via Americana UK)
In the face of violence in the streets and unlawful detention what can a musician do, really? They can document what’s going on, make their point and try and raise awareness (and maybe the odd dollar) of the organisations that are protecting citizens from their own law enforcement. Read that sentence, and notice just how screwed up it is to describe daily life in the “shining city on a hill”.
Which brings us to today’s song from The Gated Community. It’s a new recording of a very recently written song, written in response to events in Minneapolis, as singer and songwriter Sumanth Gopinath explains: “After Renee Nicole Good’s murder by ICE agent Jonathan Ross here in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026, I began writing songs that more explicitly address the situation we’re in. I find the ‘protest song’ challenging, as it requires a directness that I tend to avoid in my songwriting. This is my third serious attempt as of late and the one with the most rousing, energizing chorus of the bunch. I am so moved and inspired by the bravery, intelligence, and steadfastness of my fellow Minnesotans in the Twin Cities who, against the odds, are acting tirelessly on behalf of our most vulnerable community members. This song is for them.”
The song is available on Bandcamp, it has a price and there’s an option to add a little more to support the people organising for decency: everyone involed in the recording donated their time and all of its proceeds will be donated to local aid organizations including Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC) — an organization supporting individuals and families impacted by unjust immigration laws and deportations.
And who are The Gated Community? Well, this band that has been described as a Marxist Bluegrass band (you don’t get a lot of them to the pound) was originally a vehicle for Sumanth’s political songs, but has evolved over nineteen years, expanding in size and scope to include many roots music styles and more personal songwriting. It was formed when Sumanth moved from New Haven to Minneapolis to begin working as a professor of music theory at the University of Minnesota, and now features six singers, with the band combining professors like Sumanth (vocals, acoustic guitar, keyboards) and Beth Hartman (vocals, percussion), and artists from various parts of the Twin Cities scene like Rosie Harris (vocals, banjo, cello), Paul Hatlelid (vocals, drums, acoustic guitar), Cody Johnson (vocals, bass), and Nate Knutson (vocals, guitars, mandolin).
thanks and much love to our families, friends, and fans
All proceeds from this recording will go to one or more organizations resisting the occupation of our cities by ICE and providing aid to our community. Everyone involved generously volunteered their time and resources to this project.
Thank you to Tom Campbell, Eva Cohen, Carl and Ina Elliott, Jim and Sara Harris, Marcus dePaula, Michael Gallope, Gabrielle Gopinath, John Miller, Mark Nye, Daniel Owens, Matt Rahaim, Ian Rans, Ellen Stanley, Ryan Stokes, Dean Von Bank, and our families, friends, and neighbors.
Source: The Gated Community (Bandcamp). I would strongly encourage you to buy this digital record (paying as much as you wish) in support of the embattled people of Minnesota, my home state. ||| TRR
Federal immigration agents detained three people and deployed chemical agents at multiple locations around E. 34th Street and Park Avenue in Minneapolis’ Powderhorn neighborhood Tuesday morning. At least two were observers and not the target of immigration enforcement operations.
Around 9:40 a.m., community response networks began sending alerts about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) door-knocking at E. 34th Street and Park Avenue. By 10 a.m., a crowd of over 100 observers had gathered, confronting agents at multiple intersections.
Among the detainees was a woman who was forcibly removed from her vehicle after agents smashed her passenger-side window.
In a video taken by Sahan Journal, the woman can be seen arguing with agents prior to being grabbed by multiple agents and carried to agents’ vehicle. The woman can be heard shouting that she is disabled and on her way to a doctor’s appointment that ICE was obstructing. Prior to the detention agents had instructed her to drive away.
After being pulled out of a car, a women screams as she’s being arrested by immigrations agents at 34th and Park in Minneapolis on Jan 13, 2026. Credit: Chris Juhn for Sahan Journal
Shortly after, another observer on site was tackled and forcibly put in agents’ vehicle as well. According to state Rep. Aisha Gomez, DFL-Minneapolis, who was present at the scene, agents pushed the man’s head into the concrete prior to carrying him away. Gomez also said that agents were physical with her as well.
“These officers have obviously not had the basic law enforcement training,” Gomez said. “I was shoved with no verbal communication whatsoever.”
Andy Larson, a south Minneapolis resident who was out observing ICE activity Tuesday, told Sahan Journal that one protester kicked out the taillight of an ICE vehicle and was tackled to the ground up the road on Park Avenue and E. 36th Street.
“It was a really good kick,” Larson said.
The protester managed to escape ICE agents, Larson said. ICE deployed chemical irritants and shot pepper balls into the crowd and fled the scene.
According to Sahan Journal photojournalist Chris Juhn, a Hispanic man was also visible in the back of one vehicle. It is unclear whether the man was an observer or target of federal operations. ICE did not respond to Sahan’s request for comment on the operations.
At multiple points during the operation, agents deployed chemical agents at observers. Agents fired pepper balls at observers’ feet and threw canisters of tear gas at the corner of 34th Street and both Park and Oakland avenues prior to leaving the scene. Eyewitness Moses Wolf said there was no singular precipitating event that led to tear gas being deployed on Park Avenue.
“There was a crowd confronting each other telling ICE to get out,” Wolf said. “I didn’t really see any physical altercation happening.” He said it appeared to be a tactic by ICE agents to exit the scene.
Wolf said the confrontation prior to the deployment of tear gas had not escalated beyond what had already been happening.
“It wasn’t anything crazy,” Wolf said. “I turned around for one second and there was this whole entire cloud of it, and pepper spray came with that.”
Eyewitness Neph Sudduth said at Oakland Avenue agents used tear gas as they were leaving.
“They were finally leaving, it was the last car of the convoy,” Sudduth said. “They just threw two or three canisters out at us as they left.”
Both Sudduth and Wolf said they witnessed agents using pepper spray out of the windows of their vehicles as they drove off.
“They just wanted to hurt us cause we told them how we felt, and they didn’t like it,” Sudduth said.
The operation in Powderhorn is part of a flood of federal immigration activity in Minnesota. As many as 2,000 federal agents are present in the state according to reporting from the New York Times, with an additional 1,000 set to be deployed.
For Gomez, the clash with ICE is the new reality of life in the Twin Cities with federal agents present.
“This is what our streets are like,” Gomez said. “We have these masked, unaccountable unknown to us federal agents, and it’s like they’re the secret police.”
Despite the difficulties, Gomez believes observers should and will continue to show up to meet federal agents in the streets.
“Our community is undeterred,” she said. “We’re not going to just lay down. You can gas us and mace us all you want, we’re not going to just lay down.”
Sahan Journal reporter Andrew Hazzard contributed to this story.
During the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump promised to deport every illegal immigrant who was a rapist, murderer, or thief. He also promised to deport 20 million immigrants. Some voters believed the first promise; other voters believed the second.
Because people are stupid, that first group of voters believed that there were 20 million undocumented immigrants who have committed felonies. This is not possible. The total number of people in jail in America today—this includes federal, state, local, and tribal land prisons—is just under 2 million. The number of undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes cannot be 10x the entire prison population of the United States. If it were, then daily life in America would look like Escape from New York.
So some Trump voters were duped owing to their general ignorance and/or innumeracy.
But others were not. Others signed up for Trump because of his second promise (the 20 million deportations) and viewed the first promise (about deporting only criminals) as the pap necessary to get the suckers onboard.
There are two crucial questions about these two groups. The first is:
What is their relative size? What percentage of Republican voters were tricked into voting for Trump’s immigration policies versus what percentage are getting exactly what they wanted?
Would you like to guess? Go ahead. I promise that whatever you’re thinking, it isn’t dark enough.
Here’s a survey tracking Republican approval of Trump’s immigration policies (the top line, in red) over most of 2025:
That’s a consistent level of support around 80 percent. Now here is the first poll conducted after the killing of Renee Good:
Even after the killing of an unarmed American citizen, a total of 80 percent of Republicans approve of what ICE is doing and 53 percent of Republicans strongly approve.
It seems pretty clear that, at best, one in five Trump voters were duped. The majority of them are getting exactly what they wanted.
Now if Trump were to lose the support of 20 percent of Republicans voters—or even 14 percent—it would be meaningful for Republican electoral prospects. Which is nice.
The problem is that having 80 percent of Republican voters actively supporting a fascist race war is meaningful for our societal prospects.
Which brings us to the second question: How are these groups distributed through the elite positions of power in government? And here it seems that many of the Republicans most invested in a race war have a great deal of power. Like, for instance, Vice President JD Vance, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
At the elite levels, even the idea of 20 million deportations is too little. Here’s a tweet from the Department of Homeland Security on New Year’s Eve:
100 million deportations?
There are 43 million foreign-born Americans. Most of them are legal immigrants. In order to perform 100 million deportations, DHS would have to round up every immigrant of any status—even naturalized citizens—and then also snatch 57 million American who are citizens by birth and deport them, too.
Want to guess who those other 57 million Americans might be?
This week the Department of Labor published this:
Of course, the slogan sounds better in the original German.
Oh, and don’t forget the Department of Labor’s heroic propaganda posters depicting the American worker in a very specific way.
On the one hand, it feels weird to say that the U.S. government is attempting some low-key ethnic cleansing.
On the other hand, the reality is that we have a masked secret police force going door-to-door attempting to kidnap brown people; one government agency publicly daydreaming about deporting 100 million people; and another government agency saying that the ideal worker is a 20-year-old white guy.
2. Demographics
Another tell: This administration is obsessed with America’s falling fertility rate. From the NYT:
Vice President JD Vance last week called falling marriage rates “a big problem.” The deputy secretary of Health and Human Services in December urged his agency to “make America fertile again.” And at a recent conference for young conservatives, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, doubled down on the importance of marriage and children, holding out his nine kids as a model for others to follow.
Full disclosure: I am also obsessed with America’s falling fertility rate. Enough that I wrote a book about it.
The problem here is that nearly all of the declines in total fertility rate (TFR) over the last decade have been the result of declining Hispanic fertility.
Here’s the deal: The TFR—the total number of kids the average woman has over the course of her life—has been below the replacement level, but relatively stable, among white and black Americans for the last generation or so. But America’s TFR kept declining anyway. Why?
Because Hispanic Americans—many of whom were recent immigrants—had TFR’s higher than the U.S. average. And their baby-making propped up the nationwide number. The problem is that, as recent immigrants spent time in America, their reproductive behavior began regressing to the mean. The shift has been dramatic:
If you were concerned about the fertility rate in America, would you be trying to (a) halt all immigration—since immigrants usually bring with them fertility rates higher than native-born Americans—and (b) deport 100 million people from the ethnic group that has the highest fertility rate?
No.
The only reasonable conclusion is that the concern of people in the Trump administration isn’t about the total fertility rate. It’s about the white fertility rate.
I don’t know how much clearer the regime could be.
So tell me: What does the pie chart look like on Republican voters and race war? What is the percentage of Trump voters in each of these categories:
Group A: Sees and understands the administration’s intent and supports it.
Group B: Sees and understands, but oppose it.
Group C: Do not understand that the regime views its program as part of a race war and thinks it’s all business as usual?
And follow-up question: How big can Group A be for us to retain a functional, liberal society?
“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to announce I will be impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem,” announced Rep. Robin Kelly of Illinois.
“Secretary Noem has violated the Constitution and she needs to be held accountable for terrorizing our communities. Operation Midway Blitz has torn apart the Chicagoland area. President Trump declared war on Chicago and then he brought violence and destruction to our city and our suburbs in the form of immigration enforcement.”
Rep. Kelly then broke down some of the outrageous violence that ICE has visited upon her district.
“In my district, federal agents repelled down from Black Hawk helicopters and burst into an apartment building in the South Shore area. They dragged US citizens and non-citizens alike out of their beds in the middle of the night. They claimed the apartment was infiltrated by members of a Venezuelan gang. I don’t understand this president’s obsession with Venezuela, but they did not arrest a single member from that gang.”
“I visited that apartment building and saw firsthand the destruction those agents left. Doors to people’s homes or apartments were kicked down. Belongings, including little kids’ toys, were strewn about in the hallway. That raid and so many others shook our community, not just immigrants, but everyone. Now, Secretary Noem has brought her reign of terror to Minneapolis after she left Charlotte and Raleigh. We have all seen what happened.”
“ICE officers shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in cold blood. Without knowing any of the facts or an investigation, Secretary Noem lied about what happened. She called [a] beloved 37-year-old mom a domestic terrorist. Secretary Noem and her rogue agents are the ones terrorizing our communities, and she is breaking the law to do so. I will hold her accountable.”
“I’m filing three articles of impeachment against Secretary Noem. Number one, obstruction of Congress. Secretary Noem has denied me and other members of Congress oversight of ICE detention facilities. It is our constitutional duty to find out what’s happening in these centers where people are reportedly being treated like less than animals. Two, violation of public trust.”
“Secretary Noem directed ICE agents to arrest people without warrants, use tear gas against citizens, and ignore due process. She claims she’s taken murderers and rapists off our streets, but none of the 614 people arrested during Operation Midway Blitz has been charged or convicted of murder or rape.”
“Three, self-dealing. Secretary Noem has abused her power for personal benefit. She steered a federal contract to a new firm run by a friend, her friend. Her propaganda campaign to recruit ICE agents cost taxpayers $200 million. She made a video that turned the South Shore raid into something that looked more like a movie trailer. But make no mistake, this is not a movie. This is real life and real people are being hurt and killed. I really have to wonder who are the people behind the mask. These DHS agents have no identifying factor.”
“From all their botched raids and officer-involved shootings, I have to ask, what is their training like? What is the vetting? Is Secretary Noem recruiting January 6th insurrectionists? I was one of the last members of Congress to escape the House Gallery on January 6th. I remember hiding on my hands and knees and running through the hallways to a safe room. Insurrectionists are not fit to serve as law enforcement. I realize that impeachment of Secretary Noem does not bring Renee back.”
“True justice would be Renee alive today at home with her family. Impeachment doesn’t bring back the four other people killed by immigration officers this year, including a man in Chicago. We could not bring them back to their loved ones. What we can do, though, is impeach Secretary Noem. Hold her accountable. Let her know the public is watching. In this country, we do not kill people in cold blood without consequences. These are not policy disagreements.”
“These are violations of her oath of office and she must answer for her impeachable actions.”
Audience members at the all-ages Minneapolis rock venue Pilllar Forum tussled with ICE agents on the street outside the club on Sunday — prompting that night’s show to be canceled.
The owner of Pilllar Forum, Corey Bracken, said several of his customers and musicians were pepper-sprayed by ICE agents and at least two were hit with batons on the street outside the venue, at 2300 Central Av. NE., where other ICE detainments and community protests have happened in recent days.
“My staff doesn’t feel safe after this, and our artists and customers don’t feel safe,” said Bracken, a dad who expanded his skateboarding store into a music venue and coffee shop in 2023 to bring more live music and art to underage fans.
He is leaving it up to his staff and the bands themselves to decide whether to proceed with upcoming concerts, including several more scheduled this week.
The ruckus started shortly after the 6:30 p.m. showtime for a four-band bill headlined by Pilllar Forum regular Anita Velveeta, a popular trans/queer punk act. Audience members saw ICE agents pull up and detain two individuals outside the neighboring Supermercado Latino market, prompting the club’s young music fans to quickly exit onto the street and protest the agents’ actions.
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to a Star Tribune request for comment. An employee at Supermercado Latino also declined to comment on the incident.
Antonio Carvale, singer/guitarist in one of Sunday’s opening bands, BlueDriver, said he was one of five people at the venue who had to be treated with water and saline solution after being hit with pepper spray. He said agents fired the spray after they pushed a protester who pushed back.
“Honestly, the pain felt brutal, but fortunately the community was prepared and helped treat our eyes,” Carvale said, but he commiserated with a bandmate who was also struck by a baton and “banged up pretty bad.”
The band was disappointed Sunday’s gig then was canceled, but he added, “It would’ve been hard to play when I couldn’t even see the frets.”
One of the audience members who was pepper-sprayed, Jess Roberts of Minneapolis, said she had to go to an urgent care clinic because she was sprayed in the ear, which led to an infection.
The run-in with ICE followed a viral Instagram post by Pilllar Forum that went up Friday and landed 25,000 likes. It showed a peaceful but loud crowd of protesters shouting down ICE agents on Central Avenue, with the message, “And that is how you get it done.”
Minneapolis City Council President Elliott Payne and the new Minnesota state senator representing northeast Minneapolis, Doron Clark, joined Bracken in another social media video posted late Sunday denouncing the incident. Clark called Pilllar Forum “an institution here on Central.”
Payne urged residents, “Stay safe and stay vigilant.”
Twin Cities musicians and music fans offered online support for Pilllar Forum after Sunday’s mayhem.
“Thank you for supporting the community!” veteran rocker Tim Ritter of the band Muun Bato wrote on the venue’s Facebook page.
Bracken did offer refunds to paid attendees of Sunday’s canceled show, proceeds of which were to be donated to families affected by ICE detainments, per headliner Anita Velveeta’s request.
“So far, I haven’t heard from anyone who wants their money back,” Bracken said.
