• taiyang@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Without the context I felt super out of the loop, but no, it’s the church protests that’s being treated as some crazy hate crime that it isn’t. I just didn’t expect Don Fucking Lemon to be involved, lol.

    • Noblesavage@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Don Lemon was there as an independent reporter interviewing the protestors and church people as the protest was going on. I just watched Legal Eagle’s video about the protest yesterday.

      Basically, it boils down to the federal government pushing to get a perp walk (photos of the alleged criminal in handcuffs being walked by “authorities”) to plaster photos of them all over social media to make the accused look bad. As Legal Eagle says, it’s the federal government making content and doing it for the memes.

      Once they’re arrested, federal lawyers TRY to get them in front of a judge to get them (protestors and Don’t Lemon now) convicted of something, but in this case a whole bunch of judges have said, “What you’re doing doesn’t make sense and hasn’t been done before, but if you want to try this case in front a grand jury - go ahead.” The judge knows they won’t because they’ll lose so the case eventually gets dropped - but hey, they got some good photos of people they don’t like!

      • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.works
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        2 hours ago

        They’re still having their freedom violated regardless of the outcome. It’s some bullshit to arrest some journalists just to prove a fucking point and burn through some more money while the economy just collapses around us.

      • counterfactual@sopuli.xyzBanned from community
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        4 hours ago

        The US is putridly the source of all evil, pretty much. If one of you guys’ pentagon nukes self-detonated the world would be a better place.

        • ameancow@lemmy.world
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          There are millions of people here who are kind and compassionate and want none of this and are absolutely horrified and too depressed to even work and function, but have no idea what to do about it.

          • The Octonaut@mander.xyz
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            3 hours ago

            Can I tell them what to do about it?

            I mean it’s repeated every time someone shoots school children

          • KneeTitts@lemmy.world
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            3 hours ago

            millions of people here who too lazy to even vote to save their own democracy…

            fixed that for ya

            • ameancow@lemmy.world
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              The last several US elections had the highest voter turnout in US history. Laziness was not the issue, it was media compromise by internal and external sources pushing lies, ruining attention spans, and legions of foreign troll farms amplifying the most extreme voices of both sides of every single social issue so the majority of people tuned out from actual information.

              There was an entire report on it from intelligence agencies that was broadly ignored by those in power benefitting from the effects it caused.

              Whatever country you feel superior for living in right now, you are equally vulnerable and I guarantee you’re entire life is nothing more than fractions of decimals in some analyst’s office after being told to give profit projections for capturing gainshare from doing the same damn thing to you and your people.

            • athatet@lemmy.zip
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              2 hours ago

              Except for, you know, the millions of people who DID vote for democracy.

          • amateurcrastinator@lemmy.world
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            4 hours ago

            If only those kind and compassionate people had gone out to vote that last time… I would have believed it. Sure some people are nice but boy these nice people shot themselves in the foot

            • ameancow@lemmy.world
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              Most of them did go out and vote, and they voted wrong because our media landscape is massively, impossibly compromised and fucked, so attacking the the general population for not knowing who to vote for is like condemning an orphanage of misled children for being enlisted as child-soldiers. I get everyone wants to blame people, but lets blame the right people. There are reasons we don’t send mentally challenged people to the electric chair and why we have rules about premeditation for crimes.

              You guys want to see satisfaction but know the conservative segment will never feel regret so you’re now turning on the innocent-minded people who have been manipulated. We’ve had some of the largest marches and protests against Trump’s regime in US history since even his first administration, we’re not a healthy country right now but attack the disease, not the compromised immune system. It’s basic logic.

              Unless you are also going to reject logic. I guess it’s the “in” thing to do in the 2020’s.

              • amateurcrastinator@lemmy.world
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                That is a misleading comparison. People voting are not children regardless of what they like to watch. This fucker told you what he was going to do and so many nice people said yep that’s what we want or they only liked parts of it and ignored the rest. Because it aligned with their truth, beliefs or whatever bullshit you guys tell yourselves, some hated gays (see the Latino community who voted mostly orange), hated blacks, immigrants or your favorite niche of hate. The orange fucker promised to sooth all your collective hates but you all ignored that you might be the subject of someone’s hate…

                • village604@adultswim.fan
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                  43 minutes ago

                  One thing you have to keep in mind is these people might not be aware of the things he promised. Not everyone is terminally online doom scrolling politics, and the media sources they consume likely buried the information or straight up lied about it.

                  They’re still ultimately responsible for being negligent, but a great many people don’t know the platforms of the people they vote for.

                  The Republicans have been waging war against our education system for over 50 years now, critical thinking and questioning authority are actively discouraged, and they’ve been told since birth they have to vote R or the Democrats will take everything from them. They were raised in a cult.

                  Don’t automatically attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance. There’s a good reason why people tend to be less right leaning after college.

                  The people, in my opinion, who are most to blame are the people who knew what he promised, but didn’t vote for Harris out of protest. They were ultimately what caused Trump to win.

                • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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                  3 hours ago

                  Even if one voted on the premise of smaller government, yay small towns, less spending, fiscal responsibility, good christian, blah, blah, blah… that the republicans constantly state is their goal, they haven’t managed to do any of that maybe ever. They have been doing exactly the opposite for decades.

                  There is no reason to think this time it will be different. None. Not with trump’s track record or any of the other republicans who kiss the ring.

                  So doing the math, it means republican voters are willfully ignorant or stupid, or their hatreds of some facet of democrats or the people they represent were the overriding factors in voting for trump. There really isn’t much in between.

                • ameancow@lemmy.world
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                  I don’t think you would want to be judged by the dumbest people in your country either, we are all just humans and failing, but I place blame where it belongs which is those who have the power and platform and mislead deliberately.

                  The first person to claim “their people” are better than others are the first people who start pulling the levers of fascism. Welcome to the machine.

              • counterfactual@sopuli.xyzBanned from community
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                3 hours ago

                I’m so glad I’m not American, it seems exhausting to need to make up excuses for the real reason behind your problems: half of your population embraces fascism and racism to the extent that they are literal Nazis. And the other half lets them do it.

              • etuomaala@sopuli.xyz
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                Openly admitting the average Murcan has the intelligence and education of a child.

                But yeah, you’re right. The people aren’t in control, and haven’t been for some time. One wouldn’t expect them to be well-educated.

                • ameancow@lemmy.world
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                  Openly admitting the average Murcan has the intelligence and education of a child.

                  Yes? And? Your stupid people are better?

                  This capitalist sabotage of intelligence and attention isn’t contained by one border, after the US is ravaged they will come for you as well. This is ALL our problem.

          • counterfactual@sopuli.xyzBanned from community
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            Your ancestors inspired the atrocities of the Holocaust, and your more than 41% of your current citizens would vote for Trump again if they had the chance. You guys are not all compassionate and kind like your echo chamber opinions and rose-coloured glasses make it seem.

            • ameancow@lemmy.world
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              What does this mean? Fuck everyone then?

              Hmnn, who else can I name who has decided to condemn an entire nation of men, women and children and wish them death based on the actions of the minority.

              Hmnnnn… where or where has this played out.

              edit: folks, lot of trolls out there doing this act on purpose, many are even paid to continue to sow division between peoples, don’t trust these bad-faith astroturfers and edgelords to even have a good conversation, report them, block them and move on.

  • MagicShel@lemmy.zip
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    7 hours ago

    Attorney General Pam Bondi denounced the protest […] saying […] that the scene was “horrific.”

    Horrific? A protest? People shouting to get attention and be heard is horrific?

    Tell me you’ve led the most privileged of lives without telling me. What a completely unrelatable train wreck. You’ve got conservatives who’ve seen combine accidents and IEDs and child soldiers — the true horrors of the world. Let’s see what their response is.

    Crickets.

    I see.

      • Anakin-Marc Zaeger@lemmy.worldOP
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        And somehow, I get the feeling this DOiJ would defend the first amendment rights of the God Gats F*gs church the next time they decide to protest the funeral service of a gay victim of hate crime. Not only that, but I get the feeling this DOiJ would make it a crime to drown them out or block the view of their spectacle from the funeral.

        • IamSparticles@lemmy.zip
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          Not even 2/3rds of the voting population voted. The turnout was 64% of eligible voters. Trump won the popular vote with 49.8% of the votes. That’s about 32% of eligible voters that voted for this.

          • mycodesucks@lemmy.world
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            The people who didn’t vote aren’t some magical absolution of responsibility. They were either okay with this or didn’t care either way, and apathy doesn’t count in the “good” pile. I’m an American and want to find a way to justify defending the US too, but this particular argument doesn’t hold any water. I could JUST as easily claim they all would’ve voted for Trump and they didn’t show up because they figured he had it in the bag.

            • IamSparticles@lemmy.zip
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              I mean… in a sense I kind of agree. Voter apathy largely allows people like Trump to win elections. On the other hand, 64% turnout is among record highs, even for a US presidential election, which traditionally draw the highest voter turnout. There are always people that don’t vote. I don’t assume that they all don’t care or are okay with the results. There are plenty of people who aren’t able to vote for a variety of reasons. Some of them because of economic or health limitations. Some of them due to outright voter suppression activity.

            • hector@lemmy.today
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              For the longest time half the population didn’t vote. In 2020 I think the population that did vote went way up in percent. That said you seem to be spending a lot of energy blaming the voters that did not perpetually vote for a ever declining Democratic party that we knew could not win elections as they are. We knew what the electorate was, and you Forrest your week corporatist cunt establishment Democrats and they let you to blame everybody else and ignore the fact that they are running a doomed to fail strategy. You have nothing to say about that? I’m raising my voice in the last part there.

        • Ex Nummis@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          Just 1/3rd. But the other 1/3rd stood by and watched it happen, which is almost just as bad.

            • PhoenixDog@lemmy.world
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              That was the point I was trying to make. A non vote is still a vote for the winner. If you didn’t vote in the election you voted for Trump.

            • hector@lemmy.today
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              Ignoring that these dems were doomed to fail. You seem to spend a lot of time blaming all of the voters and zero time blaming the Democratic establishment that refuses to adopt a winning fucking strategy. So excuse me if I don’t tell you to piss all the way off as you parrot the excuses of the establishment to stay in power and do it again and again and again. It’s already too fucking late because you trusted these ivy league fucking cunts in the establishment.

        • dhork@lemmy.world
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          Yeah, but what choice did they have? Did you seriously expect them to vote for a lady?

    • SkavarSharraddas@gehirneimer.de
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      Horrific? A protest? People shouting to get attention and be heard is horrific?

      It threatens their narrative. What could be more horrific?

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    7 hours ago

    Lemon was with dozens of anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters as they rushed into Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month, interrupting a church service and leading to tense confrontations.

    “Don Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents last night in Los Angeles, where he was covering the Grammy awards,” his attorney Abbe Lowell said in a statement early Friday. “Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done. The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.”

    “Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention and resources to this arrest, and that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case,” Lowell added. “This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand. Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.”

    This is bad.

    EDIT - I should have said: This is really, really, really bad.

  • UnspecificGravity@piefed.social
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    Kinda makes it seem like journalists spending ten years making Trump seem like a viable candidate didn’t protect them very much, huh?

  • dhork@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    I had been reading elsewhere that the Justice Department had already gone to two Federal judges to press charges against him, only to be denied. I am interested to see whether they bothered a third time, or simply took him into custody without the paperwork, because they could.

    Who’s gonna stop them?

    • mkwt@lemmy.world
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      They did some wildly unprecedented legal maneuvers to try to get these warrants.

      1. Went to magistrate duty judge, who approved 3/8 warrants.
      2. Went to that judge’s manager, Chief Judge Schlitz. He didn’t outright deny the warrants, he just wanted to take a few days to think about it.
      3. That wasn’t good enough. They went to the judge-manager’s manager, the 8th circuit court of appeals. In a sealed emergency petition for writ of mandamus.
      4. Judge Schlitz was required to defend himself in this mandamus action with two hours of notice and he wasn’t even allowed to read the papers.

      Since the mandamus action failed, it seems likely that the government has gotten a grand jury indictment. Which process bypasses judges nearly entirely.

      Note that it’s pretty normal to get indictments first in the federal courts (before the current times), because if the feds arrest someone on a complaint, they have a 30 day deadline to get that indictment. If they don’t arrest first, there’s no deadline and they can retry as many times as they want.

      So normally the feds only use complaints when they need to get someone off the street urgently. These feds use complaints because they only care about splashing the perp walk on social media. They don’t care what happens to the case after that.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      Who’s gonna stop them?

      They’ve had more than those two failures in the judicial system, they’ve been hammered by their own judges over and over again recently, just stuff that never gets publicity.

      They probably know that they’re going to face massive legal repercussions for this action, and will never get it to any kind of trial, but they’re just trying to send a message.

      They’re bad at it though, they don’t know how to fascism properly, so they’re going to have to release Lemon and then claim to have some kind of power after being shot down by more legal institutions.

      When other dictatorships do these actions, they usually have the legal system locked-down already. Don’t let the corruption of the Supreme Court make you think that the entire country’s judicial branch is cooked, the USA is HUGE and has a LOT of power in states.

      • Kirp123@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        You think? Their track record with Grand Juries is not the best. They tried to indict the sandwich guy 2 times through a grand jury and failed, had to downgrade the charges to misdemeanors since don’t require a grand jury and then the jury in the misdemeanor trial acquitted the guy.

        My guess is they used an administrative warrant, those have no real oversight and they’ve been using them a lot.

        An administrative warrant is a warrant obtained from a judge by an administrative body to search for violations of administrative rules and regulations. While similar to a criminal warrant, an administrative warrant requires a lower standard of probable cause to be granted. Administrative warrants are governed by 49 USC §32707.

      • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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        That’s what reporting seems to indicate. I’m fairly shocked they managed to get a jury to go along with this. The charges look extremely flimsy on multiple levels.

  • BigMacHole@sopuli.xyz
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    7 hours ago

    If ONLY Journalists had bent MORE at the Knee to Trump MAYBE he would THINK about NOT Arresting them at Some Point!

    • Optional@lemmy.world
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      Exactly. Shame it wasn’t Van “Today he becomes A President” Jones. Or fucking Chuck Todd.

      Yeah you thought we forgot about you, huh Chuck Todd.

  • SillyGooseQuacked@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    There’s a concept in law enforcement whereby arresting one person dissuades others from doing similar things.

    I wonder if the Trump admin doesn’t want reporters in Minneapolis. /s

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      Yah but these fuckwads also are powered by the same people who turned our world into an attention-based economy, and the more they create drama somewhere, the more people will rush there for clicks and views and throw themselves in front of widely hated ICE agents to try to get confrontations on camera.

      They’re fascists trying to make a new fourth reich, that’s for sure. But they’re actually really bad at it. These clowns are shooting themselves in the dick every day.

    • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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      There’s a concept in law enforcement whereby arresting one person dissuades others from doing similar things.

      It doesn’t even have to be about being arrested. The threat of lawsuit, broadcasting licences not being renewed, or business acquisition of a media company by another not being approved by the government elicits enough fear to corporate journalists. These are done well before using threat of arrest to suppress free press.

      • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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        The American government has been taken over by fascists who are rounding up random people in the street, killing who they want without consequence, and are now blatantly and actively suppressing media coverage.

        But only resist if it’s safe to do so. Right.

        I think history will show that America’s gone past that inflection point now. It’s not safe for anyone to resist. That’s the problem. And that’s why resistance is required now more than ever.

        Finally, after 250 years, all that rhetoric about what the 2nd Amendment is actually for is being put to a real test. Let’s see if the Americans meant what they said.

        • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
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          Maybe you don’t understand how mental illness works. Many people with mental illness know they shouldn’t own easily accessible weapons. Maybe some people have mental illness that cycles.

          Maybe, people who can be a threat to themselves and a threat to others are already vulnerable in ways that ICE will exploit with or without that individual having weapons. Such as pressuring them into hurting themselves. Maybe this happens a lot already.

          Maybe you should seriously consider if you want someone who gets really angry when they get anxious to have a firearm around you.

          Don’t encourage stupid behavior. That’s how we got here.

        • Postimo@lemmy.zip
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          But only resist if it’s safe to do so.

          It turns out the requirements for using your second amendment to protect your home from an ICE raid also very quickly enables suicide.

          You can still push for folks to learn to use a gun and train with others to feel comfortable with it, while still not believe that people with suicidal tendencies should have an answer to the question of how they would kill themselves 1 minute away.

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      5 hours ago

      Not sure what good that will do. The government will just use it as an excuse to murder you.