ICE Takes on New Role in Suppressing Online Dissent

INSIDE: Tyrin Johnson ... Graham Platner ... Jenny Racicot

David Streever (credit: Jeffrey Carlson / Crimson Dawn Media)

‘Warning Notice’

This story has been percolating in local media since last month — credit to Syracuse.com, which appears to be the lead dog on this story — but the totality of it just hit the national radar over the last 24 hours or so.

In two instances in western New York, ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility — which has apparently switched from serving as an internal watchdog to targeting online critics — has tried to force people who posted criticisms of ICE to sign a “Warning Notice” admitting that their criticisms were unlawful.

David Streever of Rochester, New York, sued ICE on Monday in federal court in D.C., alleging that ICE’s OPR violated his First Amendment rights when it went to his home last month and then tracked him down while he was traveling to issue him a “Warning Notice” about a critical email he sent to then-acting ICE Director Todd M. Lyons. He refused to sign it.

“Like many Americans, I was deeply upset after the shootings in Minnesota and I felt compelled to do something,” Streever said in a press release about his lawsuit. “Writing an email to the head of ICE seemed like the least I could do to express my sense of outrage. I never dreamed it would lead to a knock on my door by federal officers or descending on my hotel in the dark of night.”

The visit to Streever’s home came the same day that ICE OPR approached Paigelynne Gonyea while she was serving as a poll worker at a polling place in Syracuse, New York, about an Instagram post from January about the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good. Gonyea also refused to sign the “Warning Notice.”

In Gonyea’s case, there’s some dispute over which Instagram post prompted ICE to investigate. She says it was this post that urged the indictment of the ICE agent by name:

ICE claims it was a separate post that provided the agent’s home address, a claim Gonyea denies.

The fact that both cases are out of western New York could mean a particularly aggressive ICE OPR effort in that area, rather than a nationwide push. The “Warning Notice” in the Rochester case looks looks nearly identical to an image of the one in the Syracuse case.

The story has now been picked up by Wired, the WaPo, and the New York Times.

Streever is being represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which said in a statement: “Simply put, the only threat here is the one DHS and ICE officials pose to Streever’s First Amendment freedoms — and those of his fellow Americans.”

National Guard Shoots Black Man

National Guard troops deployed to combat street crime shot and killed an allegedly armed Black man in Memphis early Sunday.

The incident began when Memphis police responded to reports of shots having been fired. With assistance from the National Guard, they began pursuing “an armed male carrying a handgun,” according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which has taken over investigation of the shooting and issued a statement on the incident:

During the pursuit, the male turned toward NG members with his weapon. Tennessee National Guard soldiers discharged their weapons, striking the male. The male was pronounced deceased at the scene.

Tyrin Johnson, 20, was pronounced dead at the scene.

National Guard troops are not typically trained in policing or in the use of force in the civilian context.

Trump DOJ Watch

Bloomberg: “Justice Department leaders’ shutdown of a long-running criminal case against Abbott Laboratories over contaminated baby formula has fueled a broader pullback on corporate prosecutions protecting consumer health, said people familiar with the situation.”

The Roberts Court’s Corrupting Power

Drawing on the work of Mark Warren, Henry Farrell has an important new piece that argues for a more expansive understanding of corruption in a democracy …

To understand corruption properly, we shouldn’t think of it as an individual level phenomenon. Classical thinkers, like Machiavelli, understood corruption as a condition that could afflict governments and indeed societies. But if we value democracy as the best way to order our affairs, we should understand corruption as not a moral phenomenon but a political one, which involves the corruption of democratic processes.

… and applies it to the Roberts Court:

Across an apparently unrelated range of issues – campaign finance, executive immunity, political corruption and gerrymandering – the Roberts Court’s decisions have persistently corrupted the workings of democracy, so as to undermine equality in decision making and voice in favor of processes that are both duplicitous and exclusive.

The point is that individual level quid pro quo corruption is too narrow and cramped a way of thinking about the corruption of democracies — and the corruption of the Roberts Court, which has been a driving force in the deeper, systemic American corruption that has become so insidious over the past two decades.

Platner Meltdown Is All But Complete

A woman who dated Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner off and on a few years ago came forward a second time with new allegations that he sexually assaulted her. Jenny Racicot was first interviewed by the NYT for last month’s bombshell report in which she was one of several women who described unsettling behavior by Platner:

Ms. Racicot also said that in 2021 he arrived at her house drunk, after she had asked him not to come over. She declined to elaborate, but said she cut off contact soon after that episode and found his behavior “reckless” and “unsettling.”

Racicot was far more forthcoming about the incident in a Politico story published yesterday and in a later story by the WaPo. She also sat for an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper:

Democrats quickly began abandoning Platner’s candidacy en masse. If he withdraws, as seems likely, state Dems have until July 27 to name a replacement candidate

Trump’s Attack on Higher Ed: Ph.D Edition

NYT: “The number of students admitted to Ph.D. programs this fall dropped 15 percent from the previous year, according to data from over 50 top research universities, raising fears that the nation’s capacity to produce new science could be diminished.”

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