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Michael Fanone Held The Line. Trump Freed The Rioter Who Robbed Him. It Didn’t Last.

And: the machine that fed ICE 47,000 home addresses, the memo that sank the regime’s own lawsuit, and the state that fought Trump’s health care cuts one person at a time

Sep 9

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They Gave ICE 47,000 Addresses.

A Court Shut It Off.

In January, ICE broke down ChongLy Scott Thao’s door in St. Paul, Minnesota, and walked him into the snow in his underwear and Crocs while wrapped in his grandson’s blanket. They had the wrong man. Thao is 56 and a naturalized US citizen. Agents checked his ID later that same day and then drove him home. There was no apology given.

One of the men they were looking for during this raid had actually been in prison since 2024.

Federal Judge Indira Talwani cited the arrest when she blocked the IRS from giving ICE any more addresses. Then she went further, ordering ICE to stop using the data it already had.

Talwani was the second judge to shut it down. The first was Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who in November ordered the IRS to stop the transfer and tell ICE in writing that handing over that data broke the law.

After Nixon’s Watergate scandal, Congress locked down the IRS so no president could ever use tax files to attack their enemies. Last summer, then-acting ICE director Todd Lyons asked the IRS for the last known address of around 1.28 million people. The IRS built a machine to fill the order, and only checked one thing about each address ICE supplied—whether the box had five or nine digits. Any digits. Kollar-Kotelly wrote ICE could’ve typed “Don’t Care 12345” and still gotten a home address back.

47,289 records went out. In more than nine of ten, nobody checked if the addresses ICE supplied were real.

Just yesterday a federal appeals court upheld Kollar-Kotelly unanimously. The lawyer for the regime admitted that the data transfers were unlawful. He then said three times he had no idea whether anyone had ever actually fixed the machine that processed them.

Our tax returns are not a weapon

Trump can use against us.

They Sued Her With A Memo That Says It

Doesn’t Count

In February of this year, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill ordered every state agency she controls not to let ICE into nonpublic areas of state property, or let them use it as a staging ground for raids. Agents were required to have a warrant signed by a judge. Anywhere the public could go, ICE could go, same as anybody.

Just 12 days later, the regime sued her. Their case relied heavily on a memo signed by then-acting ICE director Todd Lyons. Page three of that memo says it’s for internal ICE guidance only. It adds that ICE can cancel it at any time without telling anyone, and that no one can use the memo in court to claim a right to anything.

Then they took it to court to claim a right to something anyway. And page one gives up the game. It admits ICE goes to courthouses precisely because some states and cities refuse to hand people over from jail. The courthouse is the workaround.

On Friday, Judge Georgette Castner threw out the regime’s claims and dismissed the case with prejudice—they can’t sue again. Congress built immigration enforcement to run on states coordinating on a voluntary basis, she wrote. New Jersey said absolutely not—and that’s exactly what the law allows.

What ICE wanted was to take over the back hallways of state courthouses, where people go to fight an eviction or testify against somebody who hurt them. So in New Jersey, if you have to be in court on a Tuesday morning, you can walk in the front door and no agents will be waiting for you in the back.

Trump Pardoned Him. New York

Convicted Him.

Thomas Sibick just picked up another felony conviction. But Trump can’t do anything about this one.

During the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol, former DC police officer Michael Fanone was yanked into the crowd and beaten unconscious. He suffered a heart attack and a brain injury, and left the force 11 months later after 20 years on the job.

While the mob surrounded him, Sibick took Fanone’s badge and radio off his vest. Later, Sibick lied about it, changing his story three separate times. He claimed he hit the emergency button on the radio to get help, but records show it went off around 16 minutes after others had already walked Fanone to safety. That was one minute after Sibick posed for a picture with a Capitol Police riot shield.

Sibick buried the badge in his backyard, then bought a metal detector so he could dig it back up when agents started to close in on him. He was arrested, and Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him to 50 months.

Trump pardoned him after he had served 18, along with more than 1,500 other rioters.

Erie County, New York had him on charges Trump can’t erase. After a domestic incident in June, a judge ordered Sibick to turn over every gun he owned. Police pulled two semi-automatic rifles and loaded large-capacity magazines out of the house. In August a grand jury charged him with six felonies and a misdemeanor. He was held without bail. On September 2 he pleaded guilty to the highest felony and the misdemeanor. Sibick now faces up to seven years in prison. Sentencing is November 17.

Trump’s pardon works on federal crimes—not on state ones. Prosecutors in 50 states never need his permission.

Three Thousand People Keep Their Care

Trump’s big ugly budget bill ripped away more than a trillion dollars from health care and food help across the country. It stuck states with enormous bills just to carry out the cuts that states like Washington never wanted.

Gov. Bob Ferguson said Trump’s scheme is to make Medicaid hard enough to navigate that people who qualify stop trying. Nobody has to be denied, they just have to give up. Ferguson calls what Trump and Congress did morally bankrupt.

There were around 14,000 lawfully present immigrants in the state set to lose their insurance on October 1 due to Trump’s mess. State health care workers and community groups sat down with people to walk them through the confusing forms. Thanks to them, 3,000 people have kept their coverage. They’re still working on the rest.

On Thursday, Ferguson signed an order to keep all of that work going. It sets up a committee that will track every person losing health care, and do what they can to get them covered. Ferguson signed it at a community health center in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District, where more than half the patients are on Medicaid. The clinic serves people in over 90 languages.

Ferguson also urged people to open their mail. Under the new Trump rules you have to prove that you qualify twice a year. If the form doesn’t get sent back in time, you’re dropped from coverage. So if you or anybody you love is on Medicaid, open your renewal letter.

A state can only patch a hole like this. Closing that hole takes Congress. November is coming.

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California Can Flip The House

My read on what the new California map did, with fifty-five days left.

According to the Cook Political Report, Democrats could pick up three to five House seats thanks to the new lines that have been drawn. The 2024 election was run on the old map, so the numbers below are how that race would have gone inside the new districts.

Republicans lost one already. Last fall, when California voters passed Prop 50, it redrew the congressional map. GOP Rep. Ken Calvert, who has been in Congress since 1993, essentially had the district he served in deleted from the map. The new district shares no ground with the old one. Kamala Harris would have taken 56% of the vote there. Calvert abandoned it within hours and ran against fellow Republican Rep. Young Kim. One of them will lose in November—the GOP gains nothing either way.

A Republican left the party. Rep. Kevin Kiley took a look at his new district outside Sacramento, and he stopped calling himself a Republican. He filed as an independent on the last day he could. He’s now the only one in the House, but he still votes with Republicans. Harris would have carried his new district.

Democrats have to take these seats. GOP Rep. David Valadao has held the Central Valley district for years. In the new district, Trump and Harris would have finished less than two points apart. GOP Rep. Darrell Issa’s old San Diego County seat—which Issa quit instead of defending—is just over three points apart. Those two are must-wins for Democrats.

Two seats Democrats have to hold. Dem Rep. Adam Gray won his Merced-area seat in 2024 by only 187 votes. The new district lines have it as a virtual tie. It’s now the tightest district in California. Dem Rep. Derek Tran’s Orange County seat is also close. They must hold both.

The Bottom Line: Republicans hold the House 219 to 214. Democrats need four seats—California could hand them three to five.

The midterms are going to be here before we know it. As of now, if we all show up and vote—we will win. But we have to keep working as if we are behind, and we must sprint through the finish. That’s why we need all hands on deck to support our reporting and organizing here.

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Onward!

Scott

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Still focused on these two:

**Yosemite.** A Nevada developer wants a strip of the park for a private road. 1,172 letters in the first three days. https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-stop-trumps-yosemite-giveaway

**Mail voting.** Hearing is Thursday, and ballots are already going out in some states. https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-protect-our-use-of-voting-by-mail-and-voting-machines/

JUST A FEW COMMENTS:

Done. Now that I am out of Facebook jail, I can post ad nauseum. But I bet that only lasts so long before I am in jail again. So I might as well go to jail with a mighty roar.