“As an adjudicated insurrectionist, Trump is an illegitimate president according to Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and therefore every official act as president will be illegitimate.”
–Mike Zonta, co-editor of OccupySF.net
The 14th Amendment states: “No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
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Anne Richards, left, co-chair of DSA-SF, seen with Hazel Williams, a delegate on the group’s national political committee: “We are fighting for material gains for the working class in San Francisco, and we also are the working class in San Francisco.Craig Lee/The Examiner
A group spearheading the hot-button affordable-housing ballot measure that Mayor Daniel Lurie attacked this week is the San Francisco chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, an organization in the headlines across the country this year with the election of member Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor and a spate of other electoral wins.
Democratic Socialists of America — San Francisco — which decries the failings of capitalism and the concentration of wealth, aims to empower workers, and calls for city divestment from companies supporting Israel — is a leading champion of Proposition I, which would dedicate city transfer taxes on properties worth $10 million or more to housing-related purposes.
The left-wing group has had a significant effect on San Francisco government in recent years. It has seen two supervisors elected and backed a property-tax measure that has raised more than $500 million, among other things. It says its dues-paying membership in The City has surged more than 28% this year to 1,506 members in the wake of Mamdani’s victory.
“We are fighting for material gains for the working class in San Francisco, and we also are the working class in San Francisco,” said Anne Richards, one of the local group’s two co-chairs, who said she was “a tech worker” in The City.
The local chapter’s growth has been mirrored at the national level as DSA candidates have won elections in federal and state primaries, as well as for local offices in Colorado, Michigan, New York, Washington, D.C., and other places. The national organization said in July it had hit 120,000 members, making it the largest socialist organization in U.S. history.
“People are just seeing that the system is broken for all but a handful of people, and I think there’s a lot of people who are very disillusioned and disappointed with the establishment Democratic Party and are actively looking for something different.” Richards said.
In July, DSA issued a national platform that drew criticism from some Democratic and Republican figures alike.
The platform calls, among other things, for abolishing the U.S. Senate and the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency; replacing the president and the supreme court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to the House of Representatives; public financing for all elections; and redirecting “funding to public services as steps towards fully abolishing the police and prison system which protects the rich and jails the poor.”
Hazel Williams, who helped produce the platform as a San Francisco delegate on the organization’s national political committee, said parts of the platform “we want to do right away, and then there are some that represent the horizon for us.”
“The biggest point here is that we are winning. We are winning more than ever. Our message is resonating with people more than ever,” she said.
“This pushback is largely people that have been defending the status quo for a very long time, feeling threatened by this renewed energy, this progressive, radical energy that people are rallying around, and so they kind of weave this story,” Williams said. “DSA offers an alternative to the liberal status quo that has not been working for people.”
Along with the recent victories, nevertheless, have come defeats, including for a DSA candidate in Wisconsin who narrowly lost an Aug. 11 Democratic primary for governor after polls had shown her leading.
Asked about the Democratic Socialists of America, Nancy Tung — chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party — was measured in her response.
“I think generally the Democratic Party has to be a big tent, and we have to not be afraid of having conversation, whether or not there’s consensus or disagreement,” Tung said.
The San Francisco chapter’s recent growth has come after city voters in 2024 elected a more moderate majority on the Board of Supervisors and a popular business-friendly mayor who has emphasized the importance of public safety and clean and safe streets.
Former Supervisor Dean Preston (seen in July): “It’s been a very active chapter. I think that the DSA chapter in San Francisco has had a big impact in The City in recent years.”Craig Lee/The Examiner
Former District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston, a member of DSA, lost his seat in that election to Supervisor Bilal Mahmood. Preston had won a special election in November 2019 to finish London Breed’s term after she was elected mayor, and he was re-elected in 2020.
Still on the board is District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, a DSA member who won in 2024 with nearly 60% of the vote against a more centrist challenger.
In addition to Prop. I, the local DSA chapter is supporting a November ballot measure sponsored by Supervisor Chyanne Chen that would create a public bank — something Fielder and the organization have sought.
In an interview, Fielder talked about the organization’s various priorities.
“On a bigger level, it means an expanded weight of the people into the decisions that actually govern their lives,” she said.
“It means making sure that money does not obliterate representative democracy, and ensuring the economy works for all of the working class — not just the billionaires who have all the capital and means of production,” Fielder said.
Michael Martin oversees Fisherman’s Wharf remake, huge real-estate projects, and planning to protect The City’s waterfront
Lurie and The City’s police and firefighters unions on Wednesday warned that Prop. I would create “an unaccountable slush fund” while carving a hole in The City’s general fund by shifting what the City Controller said would be nearly $120 million a year to a House SF Fund for affordable-housing programs — a charge Prop. I backers vehemently rejected.
Max Szabo, a Lurie spokesperson on political matters, reiterated Friday that Prop. I “misleads voters” and that it would “tie The City’s hands by requiring millions to flow to a small group of nonprofits — such as those who wrote the measure — with no requirement that they actually build housing.”
But Prop. I proponents said that the mayor’s “slush fund” allegation made no sense because the measure puts the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development in charge of administering the money, and it requires the city Controller’s Office to audit spending.
“[Lurie is] calling his own department an unaccountable slush fund,” Preston said.
A section in the measure says “[OHCD] shall administer the House SF Fund.” The same office also administers the Housing Trust Fund that would be extended and expanded by Proposition C — another ballot measure the mayor does support — according to The City’s website.
“These are the same rules that apply to any other housing funding measure that The City has passed in recent history,” said Quintin Mecke, executive director of the Council of Community Housing Organizations.
Prop. I also specifies percentages for how much of the tax proceeds must be spent on affordable-housing production, preservation or acquisition programs, tenant stabilization or homelessness prevention, and administration.
DSA victories
Former Supervisor Dean Preston said Proposition I follows a series of successful city ballot campaigns in which the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America played a big role over the past eight years.
2018: Preston was the author of Proposition F, which established a right to city-funded legal representation for residential tenants facing eviction.
2018: The chapter was part of a coalition that opposed Proposition H, an unsuccessful measure to enact policies to equip San Francisco police officers with conductive-energy devices (also known as tasers) and to govern the use of such devices by police officers.
2018: Proposition C established the Homelessness Gross Receipts Tax, which imposes a tax on businesses with gross receipts of more than $25 million to feed the Our City, Our Home Fund. Proceeds go to services for people experiencing homelessness and to prevent homelessness.
2022: The Empty Homes Tax established penalties for leaving residential properties vacant for extended periods. The measure was struck down by a San Francisco Superior Court judge in a ruling The City is now appealing.
2020: Proposition I changed the City’s property transfer-tax rate on commercial and residential properties valued between $10 million and $24.99 million from 2.75% to 5.5%, and on properties valued at $25 million or more from 3% to 6%.
2020: Proposition K authorized The City to own, develop, construct, acquire or rehabilitate up to 10,000 units of low-income rental housing. Passed with more than 73% of the vote, it had no funding tied to the measure and was a companion piece to Prop. I.
2022: Proposition H changed the election cycle for mayor, sheriff, district attorney, city attorney and treasurer from odd-numbered years to even-numbered years concurrent with presidential elections.
Service Employees International Union Local 1021 — The City’s largest public-employees union — publicly endorsed the initiative this week, joining United Educators of San Francisco.
The money in question comes from an existing transfer tax on property transactions worth $10 million or more, which voters doubled in 2020 via a ballot measure sponsored by Preston.
Prop. I proponents say the measure is needed because even though the 2020 tax initiative was touted to voters as a housing measure — and the Board of Supervisors at the time unanimously stated the intent that the proceeds should go to housing-related programs — city officials have since used money from the tax for other purposes.
The tax had raised $504.6 million by February, about $200 million of which initially went to housing-related programs, advocates say.
“This one’s exciting because it’s a real solution to the housing affordability emergency that we have in The City,” Richards said. “It expands city investment in developing affordable housing and rent relief without raising taxes.”
Prop. I was also written to protect the high-end levy by removing the existing authority of the Board of Supervisors to reduce, suspend, or repeal the property transfer tax without voter approval.
Earlier this year, Lurie and Mahmood proposed eliminating the tax for transactions of multifamily housing, commercial real estate and other property— excluding single residences — valued at $10 million or more as a way to stimulate economic activity. They later suspended that effort in the face of massive budget deficits, but Mahmood said he hoped to revive the plan.
“We are defending this money that voters mandated to be put towards affordable housing — housing that San Franciscans can afford,” Richards said.
The San Francisco chapter of DSA was launched in the early 1980s. One of its founding members was Harry Britt, who was appointed to fill the vacancy on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1979 left by the assassination of gay-rights activist Harvey Milk.
Members say the modern incarnation of the chapter traces its roots to 2016 and a surge of interest across the country sparked by the Democratic presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.
In addition to electoral activities, the San Francisco chapter has working groups focused on specific areas such as labor unions, homelessness, immigrant rights, tenants’ rights, “ecosocialism” and “Palestine solidarity.”
Members have raised money for and walked picket lines with striking workers and delivered food and clothes to people who are homeless.
“It’s been a very active chapter,” Preston said. “I think that the DSA chapter in San Francisco has had a big impact in The City in recent years.”
Santa Clara County and the state filed a lawsuit in federal court to block a proposed 26-acre Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility outside of Gilroy.Godofredo A. Vásquez/For the S.F. Chronicle
Public meetings packed with fearful residents and anti-ICE advocates. Highway bridges transformed into protest sites. Small-town mayors fielding questions about the limits of federal power.
This summer, these scenes played out in the Bay Area city of Gilroy, the state’s garlic capital, and farther south in the Mojave Desert town of California City (Kern County), as the rural localities grappled with how to effectively oppose immigration detention centers imposed on their communities.
The communities have transformed into battlegrounds against the Trump administration’s planned multibillion-dollar detention center network expansion, a linchpin of its campaign to deport millions of immigrants without permanent legal status living in the United States.
Both communities are struggling with the question of what, if anything, residents can do to stop a detention center in their backyard.
Gilroy, a small, majority-Latino town about 30 miles south of San Jose, has a long history of agriculture sustained by immigrant workers, Mayor Greg Bozzo said. Santa Clara County’s residents are already fearful amid actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Bozzo said that fear would deepen if a federal lockup opened nearby.
“We want the city of Gilroy to know every one of their elected leaders is opposed to the detention center,” Bozzo said.
Santa Clara County and the state filed a lawsuit in federal court to block the facility, which sits just outside Gilroy’s jurisdiction on unincorporated county land.
The lawsuit, filed on June 10, argues the federal government violated a slew of environmental laws and administrative procedures when it began building the facility for 150 detainees on Holslaw Road. The federal government voluntarily halted construction until a September hearing.
The Department of Homeland Security told the Chronicle it has no new detention centers planned at the Gilroy location, despite acknowledging in court papers it had been doing construction at the location.
“Every day, DHS is conducting law enforcement activities across the country to keep Americans safe,” said the spokesperson, who declined to provide a name. “It should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and is actively working to expand detention space.”
The lawsuit argues that DHS violated state and federal laws when it began construction. Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti said he believed there was solid legal basis for their arguments.
That said, the federal government is generally exempt from local laws, including zoning, by the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause, which asserts that federal law trumps local laws when the two are at odds.
“The biggest challenge is that states and localities’ ability to regulate the federal government is limited,” said Rick Su, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law specializing in the intersection between cities and federal immigration. “Especially with regard to something that is within the core (federal) government powers, it’s traditionally understood that states and localities cannot regulate them, cannot stop them, cannot block them.”
But across the country, successful challenges to new detention centers have alleged violations of federal law, Su said. In Maryland, for example, the attorney general sued to halt a new immigration detention center, saying the feds violated the National Environmental Policy Act. In April, a federal judge temporarily blocked the project, which involved converting a large warehouse.
The lawsuit over the site near Gilroy alleges a violation of the same law, among others.
It also argues that under the California Land Conservation Act of 1965, the county and landowner entered into an agreement designating it exclusively for agricultural use in exchange for tax benefits. As a tenant of the property, the lawsuit argues, the federal government is subject to those restrictions. The plaintiffs are asking the court to permanently block the federal government from constructing an immigration detention facility at the site.
Unlike the lawsuit over the Gilroy site, the lawsuit over the California City Detention Facility doesn’t involve suing the federal government. The target of the California City facility lawsuit is the private prison company contracted by the federal government to operate the site and the city that approved the project.
The nonprofit Dignity Not Detention Coalition and an anonymous man detained there since September are suing CoreCivic, one of the nation’s largest immigration detention operators, and California City itself, alleging they failed to follow proper permitting procedures and violated a California law passed in 2017 that limits the circumstances in which cities can enter into contracts with private detention operators.
The California City lawsuit argues that CoreCivic is subject to local and state laws, especially because the contract it signed with the Department of Homeland Security explicitly stated it would be.
The facility, built in 1999, had been operated by CoreCivic as a state and federal prison for years until 2024, when the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation decided not to renew its lease with the company. After President Donald Trump took office last year, it was converted into a detention facility and began holding immigrants in August.
The lawsuit argues the company did not obtain the proper city approvals, including a permit and business license, before detaining immigrants.
In a statement, CoreCivic said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation. The company’s attorney, Dan Struck, has said during city meetings that the California City facility can operate today under the same conditional use permit the company obtained when it ran a state prison at the site.
The city quietly granted CoreCivic the business license in February. The plaintiffs appealed the decision, but California City’s planning commission rejected it before a packed room of protesters in June. A second appeal is pending before the City Council.
Joseph Petta, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said he is confident in their legal arguments, but acknowledged it won’t be an “easy fight.”
Petta argued that private operators of federal detention facilities are still subject to state and local laws. He pointed to a case in which the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that Washington state health and safety requirements applied to the Tacoma, Wash., immigration detention center run by a private contractor. In another case, decided in January 2025, judges found that GEO Group violated Washington’s minimum wage laws by paying detainees $1 a day for labor.
The Trump administration last month purchased two private prisons it was already contracting with to house immigrants, including the California City facility. Petta said he did not think the federal government’s purchase of the land diminished the lawsuit, because CoreCivic is still the operator of the facility.
In recent earnings calls, however, CoreCivic and GEO Group both told investors the federal government’s purchase of their properties could strengthen their legal position.
GEO Group CEO George C. Zoley said the federal government’s ownership “will provide stronger credibility” in arguments over the supremacy clause, and “that these are federal facilities carrying out the congressional priorities of immigration programs … and that states can only have very limited involvement.”
Local elected officials want to make sure that if the federal government plans to open detention facilities in other parts of California or expand existing ones, cities and counties have tools to fight them.
Earlier this month, Rep. Sam Liccardo, D-San Jose, shared a step-by-step guide designed to help local governments create new ordinances intended to insulate them from ICE and the federal government. Liccardo said local codes that strengthen health and safety zoning requirements could help deter detention center conversions and expansions.
“Experience has taught us that putting the head in the sand is not a successful strategy for deterring authoritarian aggressions,” he said.
These ordinances are modeled after a law passed in Tacoma in 2018 in response to environmental hazards and public safety concerns posed by an ICE processing center, and effectively prevented an existing facility from expanding. GEO Group, the private contractor that operated the center, sued over the ordinance, but a federal judge determined Tacoma leaders were acting within their authority to regulate residents’ health and safety.
“The courts are going to be at the middle of this,” Liccardo said.
Beyond lawsuits are the public pressure campaigns that advocates are pressing in both areas of the state.
Su, the North Carolina law professor, said the most successful pushback against detention centers he’s seen has come through public protest, not the courts.
“The law might not be in their favor, but half of these battles are not won by law,” Su said. “Half of these battles are political opposition.”
He pointed to Social City, Ga., where the federal government called off plans to convert a massive warehouse into a detention center after widespread pushback from the majority-Republican city. The local government argued such a facility would severely strain the city’s utilities and emergency response system. It would have held up to 10,000 immigrants, almost twice the city’s population.
That resistance has inspired local advocates.
“I do believe we could win,” said Rebeca Armendariz, a fourth-generation Gilroy resident who is leading the ICE Out of Gilroy coalition. “The amount of community pressure is lending to this hope that drives us, that compels us to keep doing action after action to keep it in the public eye.”
Armendariz recalled pulling into a Gilroy home’s driveway in July just as armed immigration agents who’d come in souped-up cars with tinted windows handcuffed a father in front of his three daughters. Armendariz was called to the home as a volunteer with a Santa Clara County group that provides rapid response services to people detained by ICE and their families.
“It was just so incredibly painful to experience their pain,” she said.
To keep the pressure on, her group organized a 2-mile protest walk to the site of the proposed Gilroy detention center. On July 3, one of the busiest travel days, she and other protesters hung anti-detention banners over freeways in 30 locations across Monterey, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.
“We’re a small town,” she said. “There’s a lot of learning that our community has to do and a lot of organizing we have to do.”
Similarly, advocates have organized vigils, protests and marches in California City opposing the facility and the reports of medical neglect endured by detainees since it opened.
On a sunny day in late July, dozens of protesters gathered in San Jose’s Japantown alongside elected officials to celebrate the construction pause on the Gilroy facility.
One was Susan Hayase, a third-generation Japanese American whose parents, aunts and uncles were all incarcerated during World War II under the government’s mass detention of people of Japanese descent.
During the first Trump administration, she started San Jose Nikkei Resisters to oppose what she considered racist immigration policies.
When she learned about the Gilroy site, she was alarmed. But she also was determined.
“The struggle we’re in now is very complex, it’s daunting,” she said. “There’s no one thing that’s going to do it. We have to organize communities to be ready to do different things at different times because this is going to be a prolonged struggle.”
Sara DiNatale covers politics and the Trump administration’s impact on the Bay Area. She joined the Chronicle in 2025, after a decade reporting across the southern U.S. for the San Antonio Express-News, the Tampa Bay Times and Mississippi Today. DiNatale was the recipient of a 2024 George Polk Award for her investigation on the Texas residential solar industry, which led Texas to adopt new state laws to regulate bad actors and scammers. She’s a graduate of the University at Buffalo and a native of Western New York.
Ko Lyn is a reporter on the metro team covering Asian American and Pacific Islander communities and immigration for the Chronicle, which she joined in January 2024. She previously covered housing and city government for the Indianapolis Star, and her work, including reporting on jail deaths and immigration detention, has been recognized by the Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards, the Goldsmith Prize, the Sidney Awards, the San Francisco Press Club’s Greater Bay Area Journalism Awards and the Connecticut and Indiana Societies for Professional Journalists. She’s a graduate of Yale College and speaks Mandarin.
How to reach Ko Lyn
To provide story tips or feedback, email kolyn.cheang@sfchronicle.com or contact her on Signal or her cell phone at 415-961-7047.
Congressman Ro Khanna said in a speech at the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting on Saturday that the party must support cutting off military assistance to Israel, pointing to the country’s ongoing genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip and imposition of an “apartheid system” in the West Bank.
Khanna (D-Calif.), who is considering a presidential run in 2028, told DNC members gathered in Austin, Texas that “Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza, and we should have the courage to say so.” The congressman’s remark was met with enthusiastic applause.
Khanna, who also said the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel “must be condemned unequivocally,” cited his recent trip to the illegally occupied West Bank, where the lawmaker was detained by armed settlers and the Israeli military.
“Zero aid to Israel,” Khanna declared Saturday. “No military sales of weapons used to kill civilians. And let me be clear: If our party cannot stand for these principles, it will never convince a generation that watched the horrors of Gaza on their iPhones that we mean what we say about justice.”
Khanna’s remarks came after the DNC approved by voice vote a package of resolutions that included one calling for full enforcement of the so-called Leahy Laws, which prohibit the transfer of US weaponry to governments credibly accused of human rights violations.
A United Nations commission said last month that “even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children continue to be killed and seriously injured, with continued disregard by Israel for the ceasefire and for the protection owed to Palestinian children under international law.”
Demonstrators make noise outside of hotels thought to house Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents in Minneapolis on Jan. 9, 2026. Photo: Michael Nigro/Sipa USA via AP
Organizers in Minneapolis long suspected they were being surveilled by the federal government during the height of the winter protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It was not until a court filing on Thursday, however, that the youth-led Sunrise Movement and other groups learned the depths of infiltration.
The Sunrise Movement has long preached nonviolence even as it pursues aggressive tactics, such as making a racket outside of the hotels where ICE agents sleep.
But the group’s public commitment to peaceful protest did not spare it from a months-long, aggressive campaign of government snooping that included ICE agents attending its meetings and protests undercover, subpoenas of its financial records, and at least one apparent attempt to entice an organizer into backing more confrontational tactics.
Sunrise Movement Executive Director Aru Shiney-Ajay said in an interview Thursday that the government’s tactics are a sign that the Trump administration is losing the battle for public opinion.
“What this is meant to do is scare protesters and scare people away from joining protest groups,” she said. “It is very essential that we remember that actually what we are doing is incredibly normal, it is incredibly popular, and we cannot let ourselves be scared out of organizing.”
The revelations about the tactics ICE used against Sunrise, along with a wide variety of labor unions and protest groups, came in a court filing from a defense attorney for one of 15 Minnesota activists charged in June for trying to stop the federal government’s immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities.
Shortly after federal agents killed Alex Pretti on January 24, ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations opened two investigations it called “Operation Puppet Master” and “Project Whipple Shield,” the latter a reference to the federal building that was the site of many ICE protests.
Supposedly, those probes would focus on a network supporting “violent opportunists and agitators.” In reality, the investigative reports that the federal government has turned over to defense attorneys show that undercover ICE agents secretly recorded at churches, libraries, and schools even when organizers stressed the importance of nonviolence.
In the case of Sunrise, undercover agents were already targeting the group before the killings of Pretti and Renee Good.
Sunrise is a national organization with a Twin Cities chapter. Long known for its aggressive climate advocacy, the youth-led group pivoted just before the start of the federal government’s crackdown on immigrants in Minnesota to fighting the Trump administration’s authoritarianism.
One of the group’s most famous early acts was occupying then-Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office in support of the Green New Deal. It brought that same energy to the protests in Minneapolis, playing a key role in the nighttime noise protests targeting hotels in the Twin Cities that were allegedly hosting ICE agents. But it has always counseled its supporters to remain peaceful, Shiney-Ajay said.
“We are a strictly nonviolent movement. We make that very clear in almost every training we run, in all the meetings we run,” she said.
Yet almost as soon as Operation Metro Surge started, ICE agents were attending Sunrise trainings on the sly.
Undercover agents attended a “How to stop ICE” training that Sunrise hosted at a church on December 13. By December 22, an undercover agent had been added to the Signal group for planning one of Sunrise’s hotel protests. On January 9, two undercover agents attended a noise demonstration outside a Hilton Hotel, noting that a member of the crowd set off fireworks at one point.
The killing of Pretti — and the ensuing nationwide backlash against ICE — appears to have done nothing to slow the investigation. One week after Pretti’s slaying, two undercover agents attended a Sunrise Movement Twin Cities training on “resistance skills” hosted at a public library.
The meeting included primers on deescalation at protests, and the ICE agent noted that it was “made clear that the Sunrise Movement organization focused on ‘peaceful’ protests.”
That did not stop the undercover agent from making a private approach to one of the organizers, according to a report the agent produced. The agent told the organizer that he worked in construction and “could build items that might assist other groups with more ‘direct-action’ protests.” When the undercover agent declared that “going to jail did not bother him,” the organizer “acknowledged” the agent’s comments and took down his phone number, according to the report.
Kevin Riach, the attorney representing one of the defendants in the indictment targeting Minneapolis activists, said in a court filing this week that that report was one of several showing that ICE’s undercover agents “actively participated in organizing and directing the groups they were surveilling, at times working to entice people into discussing or committing crimes.”
By the start of March, the federal government had scaled down its immigration crackdown in Minneapolis — but it was continuing to investigate groups such as Sunrise.
On March 9, ICE sent a subpoena to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for the nonprofit’s wire transactions dating back to January 1, 2023, long before Trump was even elected to his second term. That same date, ICE also sent a subpoena to the Clearing House, a private wire transfer company, for years of financial records from Sunrise and several labor unions.
The Sunrise Movement was never given notice of those subpoenas or an opportunity to contest them, Shiney-Ajay said.
Training for This Moment
None of the activists who were eventually charged in a June 16 indictment were members of the Sunrise Movement, Shiney-Ajay said.
ICE declined to offer an explanation for why it investigated Sunrise and the other groups.
“HSI investigates individuals and organizations when there is just and legal cause to do so and within the scope of its legal authorities. To preserve the integrity of our work and protect law enforcement sensitivities, we do not comment on ongoing investigations, investigative tactics, or procedures,” an agency spokesperson said.
“It will likely make many Americans think twice before joining a protest, attending a meeting, donating to an advocacy organization, or speaking out at all.”
While it had never been confirmed that ICE was closely studying the Sunrise Movement before this week, Shiney-Ajay said it had long been treated as a possibility. The group was specifically concerned that federal agents might act as provocateurs at protests.
“We put a lot of work into training de-escalation and safety leads at all of our protests,” she said. “I certainly think that that was a worthwhile investment, reading these things now.”
She said it was “telling” that the investigation was led by the Department of Homeland Security rather than the FBI, which might be constrained by more “rules and regulations.”
The revelation of the widespread ICE probe has already sparked another backlash.
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The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which has received funding from conservative and libertarian donors, said it found the investigation disturbing.
“Some activists have violated federal law, and the government is entirely justified in investigating and prosecuting them. But criminal conduct by some members of a movement does not justify government surveillance and investigation of anyone who shares their broader political goals. That type of aggressive scrutiny chills protected speech and association. It will likely make many Americans think twice before joining a protest, attending a meeting, donating to an advocacy organization, or speaking out at all,” said Aaron Terr, the group’s director of public advocacy.
On Thursday, a coalition of dozens of Minnesota groups promised that that they would not be cowed.
“We know the truth, and we will not be intimidated,” the groups said. “When self-serving politicians are losing, they lie and attempt political repression, trying to silence the voices of those who bravely stand up to them. Minnesotans will not be intimidated or divided by sham accusations or investigations of some of the countless groups and community members who organized, acted, and stood up together to protect their neighbors during Operation Metro Surge.”
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Democracy Now! Aug 17, 2026 Latest Shows Support our work: https://democracynow.org/donate/sm-de… A new book by longtime Bay Area journalist Gil Durán investigates “tech fascism” and its mounting influence on U.S. politics. The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy follows the rise of Vice President JD Vance, the former venture capitalist whose “outsider” campaign for Senate was bankrolled by the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, Peter Thiel. Durán traces the ideological lineage of the current Trump administration back from Vance to Thiel and the far-right-wing monarchist Curtis Yarvin, whose “right-libertarian” political theory has long made the rounds among Silicon Valley elite. “These guys were never libertarians,” says Durán. “Now that they are the government, we see their true face: They’re fascists, and they’re authoritarians.” Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest: https://democracynow.org/subscribe
Israel’s Nation-State Law, passed by the Knesset on July 19, 2018, is a constitutional Basic Law that formally defines Israel as the national home of the Jewish people. It states that the right to national self-determination in the country is unique to the Jewish people. [1, 2, 3]
Core Provisions
Self-Determination: Declares that exercising national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people. [1]
State Symbols: Establishes the menorah as the emblem, “Hatikvah” as the national anthem, and the blue-and-white flag as the national flag. [1, 2, 3]
Capital: Reaffirms complete and united Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. [1, 2, 3]
Language: Designates Hebrew as the official state language, while downgrading Arabic from an official language to a “special status” that allows its continued use in state institutions. [1, 2]
National Value: Views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and mandates that the state should act to encourage and promote its creation. [1, 2]
Arguments and Reactions
Supporters view the law as a vital step that preserves Israel’s identity as a Jewish homeland. They argue it solidifies foundational Zionist principles without changing daily civil rights. [1, 2, 3]
Critics, including Arab-Israeli lawmakers, human rights groups, and the international community, argue that the law marginalizes non-Jewish minorities—especially the Arab-Palestinian citizenry—and legalizes institutional discrimination. [1, 2, 3]
OccupySF.net co-editor:
Marginalizes is a nice way to say it. It sets up an apartheid state.
Google AI
The classification of the Nation-State Law is a subject of intense global debate, with different legal experts, politicians, and organizations holding sharply contrasting views on its impact.
Criticisms and the “Apartheid” Argument
Institutionalized Separation: Critics, including organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, argue the law creates a dual constitutional standard that favors Jewish citizens over non-Jewish ones.
Settlement Promotion: Opponents contend that declaring Jewish settlement a “national value” inherently discriminates against Arab citizens regarding land allocation and planning.
Language Downgrade: Removing Arabic as an official language is viewed by critics as a deliberate move to institutionalize a secondary status for Arab culture and identity. [1]
Defense and the “Democratic State” Argument
No Civil Rights Alteration: Proponents and Israeli government officials emphasize that the law is a symbolic framework and does not repeal existing Basic Laws that protect individual human rights and democratic equality for all citizens, including Arab Israelis. [1, 2]
Zionist Identity: Supporters argue the law simply codifies the primary reason for Israel’s creation—to serve as the nation-state for the Jewish people—similar to how many European constitutions declare a specific national identity. [1]
Supreme Court Review: The Israeli Supreme Court reviewed petitions against the law in 2021 and ruled it constitutional, stating it must be interpreted alongside other Basic Laws that guarantee equality and individual rights.
If you want to explore this topic further, let me know if you would like to examine specific international legal analyses, the 2021 Israeli Supreme Court ruling, or how other nation-states structure identity in their constitutions.
Stephan: Trump thinks of himself as a king, and the United States as his personal territory. As this story validates he cares nothing for the wellbeing of America’s National Parks or forests. He can do as he likes with them, and he does, because the country no longer has a functional Congress.
Heavy machinery seen operating in famous Santa Elena Canyon amid outcry over new wall infrastructure in beloved Texas park Credit: Natalie Newman / Guardian
Bulldozers have begun plowing up ground at the mouth of Big Bend national park’s famed Santa Elena Canyon as part of the Trump administration’s multibillion-dollar “smart wall” expansion on the US-Mexico border, according to new footage taken by activists who have been monitoring the site.
Tensions have run high since the Trump administration announced plans to erect new border security infrastructure in the roughly 500-mile Big Bend region of south-west Texas, which includes the Lone Star State’s largest and most-visited national park.
Since last week, activists have shared video footage that appeared to show heavy machinery laying the groundwork for newborder infrastructure that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) did not announce and initially denied was happening. By Thursday, photographer Natalie Newman captured video footage of bulldozers plowing earth at the mouth of the […]
The government conducted expansive surveillance, infiltrated group chats and obtained financial records of organizations never accused of crimes.
People marched through downtown Minneapolis in late January to protest the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota.Credit…Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
Alan Feuer reported from New York, and Ernesto Londoño from St. Paul, Minn.
Aug. 13, 2026 (NYTimes.com)
Four days after Alex Pretti was fatally shot while filming officers taking part in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota, the Homeland Security Department quietly opened an investigation at its office in St. Paul.
The target was not the Border Patrol agents who had killed Mr. Pretti, a 37-year-old government nurse, in late January. Instead, it was several left-leaning political organizations — labor unions, a climate change group, socialist collectives — that investigators believed had provided help and money to what they described as the “violent opportunists and agitators” on the street, according to newly released government documents.
As part of their inquiry, the documents show, homeland security officials used an array of invasive tactics during the first half of this year to gather information on many groups and individuals who were never accused of crimes, crossing the line that has traditionally stood between investigating criminal activity and political dissent.
In one instance, officials used administrative subpoenas to obtain more than three years of financial records from the Sunrise Movement, an environmental action group, and a labor union, the Communications Workers of America. That time frame went well beyond the civil unrest in Minnesota, which was prompted by the deployment of thousands of immigration agents to the state during the winter.
In another, investigators scrutinized three years’ worth of wire transfers made by the nation’s biggest health care workers union, the Service Employees International Union, in what they referred to as an inquiry into “domestic terrorist financing.”
The documents further detailed an expansive covert surveillance operation in which undercover agents spied on protesters and organizers at meetings held online, as well as in libraries, parks and churches, taking down not only what they said, but also their names and sometimes license plate numbers. The undercover agents also infiltrated group chats on Signal, listening as activists discussed coming demonstrations and their political opinions.
So far, none of the organizations targeted by the homeland security inquiry, conducted with the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota, have faced charges. And yet, as the investigation moved forward, prosecutors showed grand jurors a PowerPoint slide asserting that 18 groups — including the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the country’s largest federation of labor unions — were part of a conspiracy to impede the work of immigration officers in Minnesota.
Ultimately, that supposed conspiracy led in June to the indictment of 15 people accused of interfering with law enforcement agents as members of the far-left movement known as antifa.
The Homeland Security Department did not respond to a message seeking comment. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota declined to answer questions about the investigative tactics.
By its own account, the institutional left in Minnesota, especially the labor movement, played a central role in bringing out hundreds of thousands of people to march in protest of President Trump’s immigration crackdown in the state. But the demonstrations — and corresponding efforts to monitor the movements of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — were largely undertaken by ordinary residents, most of whom have said they were committed to peaceful resistance.
“While federal agents repeatedly broke the law, ordinary people exercised their First Amendment rights to protect their neighbors,” said Aru Shiney-Ajay, the executive director of the Sunrise Movement. “The Trump administration is now trying to intimidate individuals and organizations who opposed his agenda.”
Some of the 15 people charged in the so-called antifa case did, in fact, belong to some of the unions and political organizations that faced scrutiny over several months during the spring and winter. But the newly released documents, which were disclosed as part of a motion asking for more details about the criminal inquiry, suggest that investigators used those tenuous connections to take a deep dive into the inner workings of the groups.
Kevin Riach, the lawyer who filed the motion, in Federal District Court in Minnesota, wrote that the homeland security investigation into the interference with federal agents “extended far beyond any potential threat to law enforcement safety.”
“It concluded, with no evidence (but obvious political animus),” he wrote, “that numerous Twin Cities unions and nonprofit organizations were involved in a widespread conspiracy,” adding that “it surveilled and surreptitiously gathered financial records generated by these organizations despite the lack of any connection between those organizations and criminal conduct.”
The investigation in some ways called to mind Cointelpro, the intrusive counterintelligence program that the F.B.I. ran against leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s under the leadership of the bureau’s director, J. Edgar Hoover.
The Minnesota surveillance reports in particular documented what largely appeared to be political activity protected by the First Amendment. They showed how undercover agents embedded themselves in a “noise protest” outside a hotel where immigration agents were staying and took down notes at other gatherings as demonstrators brainstormed ideas on how to protest the surge of officers who descended on Minnesota late last year.
Former federal prosecutors questioned why homeland security officials took the lead in a case that would typically be overseen by the F.B.I. Others said that the broad use of subpoenas targeting labor unions and other groups was unusual and concerning, especially if it turns out there was no evidence that the organizations were breaking the law.
“The government’s power to investigate is extraordinary, and with that power comes a responsibility to exercise care and restraint,” said Harry Jacobs, who resigned as the chief of the criminal division at the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota in January in protest over the Trump administration’s handling of the killing of Renee Good.
“An investigation should begin with a legitimate basis to suspect criminal conduct, not with a chosen institution or group,” Mr. Jacobs added. “Prosecutors must follow the facts and the law wherever they lead, rather than select a target and work backwards to build a case.”
Several of the groups that were targeted in the inquiry, known as Operation Puppet Master, and in a follow-up investigation called Project Whipple Shield, declined to comment. (Whipple Shield is a reference to the Whipple Building, which served as a hub of the immigration operation.)
When Daniel N. Rosen, the top federal prosecutor in Minnesota, announced the indictment of the 15 purported antifa members two months ago, he chose his words carefully, insisting that the defendants had been charged only because each of them had “violently opposed” federal agents taking part in the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.
“Be assured,” he told reporters, “the Department of Justice and my U.S. attorney’s office has and will distinguish between lawful protest and criminal conduct.”
Daniel N. Rosen, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota, has said his office “will distinguish between lawful protest and criminal conduct.”Credit…David Berding/Getty Images
But what Mr. Rosen did not disclose that day was that the charges filed against the 15 defendants stemmed from a sprawling investigation. Its tentacles had touched the lives of scores of ordinary people — teachers, veterans, union members — who in many instances had gotten together to do little more than discuss monitoring ICE agents or abolishing ICE altogether.
The case in St. Paul, like others against ICE protesters, arose from a sweeping directive issued last year by Mr. Trump known as National Security Presidential Memo 7. The memo ordered a whole-of-government approach to stem what officials have described as a rising tide of left-wing political violence.
But former prosecutors and civil rights lawyers have criticized it for encouraging aggressive investigations and prosecutions of groups and people on the left for activities typically protected by free speech laws.
In drafting their indictment, prosecutors under Mr. Rosen focused on an organization called Direct Action Minnesota, or DAMN, an umbrella group that describes itself as a “decentralized coalition of working-class people engaged in various forms of community defense against the current federal occupation” in Minnesota. Prosecutors said that the group trained its members in how to use shields against law enforcement officers, conduct surveillance, plan events and mount “rapid mass mobilization” against actions by ICE officers.
The indictment details some behavior by protesters with ties to DAMN that clearly seems violent or obstructive.
For example, prosecutors said that on Jan. 23, demonstrators who had gathered at the Whipple Building threw ice blocks at law enforcement vehicles. They also formed a blockade, boxing federal agents into one area near the federal building. Weeks later, prosecutors added, some of the defendants put debris in a road outside the building, trying to block access to it.
But the indictment also notes that the defendants often relied on information gleaned from group chats whose members tracked and monitored vehicles going to and from the Whipple Building — behavior that is not necessarily illegal. Indeed, the federal judge overseeing the case, Katherine M. Menendez, has already issued an order in a separate civil proceeding saying that protesters cannot be arrested simply for following federal agents in their vehicles.
Nonetheless, some groups that organized and ran the group chats were targeted by the surveillance operation and later identified in the prosecutors’ grand jury presentation as being part of the conspiracy to interfere with ICE agents. Other members of the alleged conspiracy were said to include the local chapters of the S.E.I.U. and the Democratic Socialists of America, a state teachers’ union — and even the Grease Pit, a small bike shop in Minneapolis.
In his motion, Mr. Riach described how federal agents took down the license plate numbers of people who attended a training session at a church in Roseville, Minn., and used that information to obtain their names. The agents then searched social media for images of the people, compiling an “intel work-up” that included detailed personal information about them.
“None of these individuals did anything other than engage in protected First Amendment speech in a church meeting room,” Mr. Riach wrote. “Yet now their personal information is memorialized in a D.H.S. dossier.”
Alan Feuer is a reporter for The Times who covers the effects President Trump has had on the courts, the Justice Department and the broader rule of law.
Ernesto Londoño is a Times reporter based in Minnesota, covering news in the Midwest and drug use and counternarcotics policy. He welcomes tips and can be reached at elondono.81 on Signal.
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