gAlienLifeform

And I'll never forgive the pundits and social media commenters who derailed conversations about how the Dems tone-deaf campaigning (e.g. promising the most lethal military in the world, Liz Cheney, etc.) was going to make some voters stay home and risked losing the election, very much like how the Dems blew elections in 2016 and 2004. Whining about alienating your own voters is like a football team whining about their opponents scoring too many points when they should be firing their head coach.

e; and before it even comes up, I voted straight ticket Dem and have done so my whole life because there is nothing I want more than the total collapse of the Republican party

I think the problem here is less the funding and more about potential client access

More than 85% of immigrants in Colorado fighting deportation and trying to prove their case for asylum or other legal ways to stay in the United States have no attorney. Many of those visit the advocacy network’s help desks and “Know Your Rights” presentations in the courthouse and detention center before they go into court to face an immigration judge.

...

The order cuts off funding for “Know Your Rights” programs, which is how advocacy groups across the country screen cases for potential attorney representation, RMIAN director of advocacy Laura Lunn told The Sun on Tuesday. While the network’s 41 employees can pivot to other work, “without this initial touchpoint, it will be very challenging” to identify people who are detained who need legal support, she said.

This article doesn't make it super clear if RMIAN attorneys were ever actually turned away from the detention center or if they didn't bother trying to go back, but attorneys at a similar organization in DC were turned away after this order came down (archived)

“Our staff were in the detention center because we would continue doing this without getting paid, because that's our mission,” he said. “Our staff were told to leave, that we could not even go into a detention center and tell people what's happening and give them an ability to figure out what's going on their case and find an attorney. And this is going to just destroy due process in the system.”

[Bolding added]

I think if the RMIAN attorneys tried to do another rights clinic at the detention center in Denver they'd be turned away too

Only barely related, but another stupid law and a stupid court case from recent history is another good example of the US attacking the ability of legal counsel to do important work that this reminds me of, Holder v Humanitarian Law project (discussed by 5 4) (archived)

This case was brought by the law project to preemptively challenge a law that would make it illegal to provide material support or resources to groups that the US Government classifies as terrorist organizations. Sounds reasonable enough, but look a little closer and...

[video playback]

0:00:39.7 Speaker 1: They've written the law so broadly that it criminalizes pure speech, the core of what the First Amendment is designed to protect.

0:00:40.6 Leon: The result of the law is that lawyers cannot provide representation to organizations on the government's terrorism list, even when the lawyer's work is meant to push the groups towards more peaceful and legal solutions.

If we need public resistance then let's resist as the public

How is the public supposed to tell journalists what happened in a USDA office this week? Most of us weren't there.

It's unlikely Fong would have called them up herself.

Which is where she's making a mistake with how she's approaching all of this. I think she's done better than most just because she did try to resist in the first place, but she needs to stay the course and speak out, if only because she's already done enough to land on the administration's enemies list and it will be more difficult for them to do things to her if the entire country is watching.

I don't think she made a mistake by resisting Trump's illegal firing order, that's probably the smartest way to deal with a fascist American empire because it's not like appeasement or running is any guarantee so you might as well resist, but now that she's landed on the administration's radar anyway it would be in her own interest and the country's to push back publicly. It's not like they're going to forgive her for keeping quiet now and the more people who know her name the more political capital it will cost them to go after her.

Hitler didn't have extra-legal detention camps built over twenty years before he came to power that he could just repurpose

I don't see how she could have made a statement Saturday about being physically ejected from her office on Monday

I remember hearing about a student protester Cornell almost caused to be deported for protesting last year (archived)

No, we didn't miss it, it's only just being reported on today, and even then only because anonymous sources told us about it.

Fong should have made a public statement or held a press conference Monday afternoon raising the alarm on this, fascists have a harder time doing their worst when everyone's watching and they're forced to keep justifying their unhinged behavior. If nothing else, she's already going to be punished like she did this anyway.