What Will Happen
To All The Crops?
By Steve Rensberry
EDWARDSVILLE -- 10-11-2025 -- I've been watching the fields take shape around Southern Illinois now that harvest has begun and I have to admit it worries me where all the corn is going to go, and the beans.
Is it going to rot in silos, get turned into fuel at double the cost, be the last crop some farmers ever harvest as bankruptcy and Great Depression level hardships move in? Is this it, the funeral is about over?
Are billions in bailouts going to be issued, robbing other areas of the country of funds that may be just as important? I'm not a farmer but many of my relatives are, or were, and many of my friends are.
The worse part is that none of this was necessary -- it's all tariff politics and tariff induced consequences, and neither China nor Brazil will be hurting one iota. You'd see smoke coming out my ears if I was a farmer. Is the fed gov trying to literally starve us of everything we need to live healthy lives, and to maintain healthy rural communities and places to raise our families? It's disturbing to watch it happen.
ACLU Challenges Denial of
Due Process in Immigration Courts
Denying bond hearings violates rights, upends decades of precedent
BOSTON – (ACLU) -- 9/24/2025 -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, together with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, the ACLU of New Hampshire, the ACLU of Maine, the law firm Araujo and Fisher, the law firm Foley Hoag, and the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic, filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court to challenge the widespread denial of bond hearings to people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
As the complaint demonstrates, this denial is a violation of statutory and constitutional rights, upending decades of settled law and established practice in immigration proceedings. As a result, thousands of people in Massachusetts will be denied due process.
The complaint, filed Sept. 22, 2025, alleges that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice recently and abruptly began to misclassify people arrested by ICE inside the United States. DHS and DOJ are now systematically reclassifying these people from the statutory authority of 8 U.S.C. § 1226, which usually allows for the opportunity to request bond during removal proceedings, to the no-bond detention provisions of 8 U.S.C. § 1225, which does not apply to people arrested in the interior of the United States and placed in removal proceedings.
“All people in the United States are entitled to due process — without exception,” said Daniel McFadden, managing attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts. “When the government arrests any person inside the United States, it must be required to prove to a judge that there is an actual reason for the person’s detention. Our client and others like him have a constitutional and statutory right to receive a bond hearing for exactly that purpose. Yet the Trump administration is now ignoring that right and jailing people arbitrarily without a hearing. The Fifth Amendment says that no person can be deprived of liberty without due process of law. This lawsuit seeks to ensure that the promise of our Constitution remains a reality.”
In 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which established the current detention regime for people arrested and detained for civil immigration violations. Since then, people arrested inside the United States and placed in removal proceedings, regardless of whether they initially entered without permission, have been subject to 8 U.S.C. § 1226 and thus entitled to a bond hearing unless subject to certain criminal and national security exceptions.
In late 2022, the Immigration Court in Tacoma, Washington began misclassifying § 1226 detainees arrested inside the United States as mandatory detainees under § 1225, solely because they initially entered the country without permission. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington ruled that this practice was likely illegal in April 2025 and ordered a bond hearing for a wrongfully detained litigant.
Nevertheless, three months later, DHS adopted the Tacoma Immigration Court’s unlawful practice nationwide and began to ask immigration judges to deny bond hearings. Some immigration judges rejected this argument, but on September 5, the Board of Immigration Appeals issued a precedential decision that purports to require all immigration judges to misclassify people in this manner. In the short time since, multiple federal courts have ruled that the BIA's decision is incorrect, but DHS and DOJ continue to misclassify people and unlawfully deny bond hearings.
“Federal courts across the country, including here in Maine, have found the government’s attempt to deny bond hearings by misclassifying people under § 1225 to be unlawful,” said Max Brooks, an immigration attorney with the ACLU of Maine. "Millions of people who have been waiting for their day in court are now at risk of being jailed indefinitely over civil violations. We look forward to vindicating the rights of people in this situation with today’s class action lawsuit.”
“ICE’s current refusal to provide bond hearings for detained clients violates due process and upends nearly 30 years of established practice,” said Annelise Araujo, founding principal and owner at Araujo & Fisher LLP. “The people impacted by this policy are neighbors, friends, and family members, living peacefully in the United States and making important contributions to our communities. Currently, the only recourse is to file individual habeas petitions for each detained client — a process that keeps people detained longer and stretches the resources of our courts. We’re proud to team with the ACLU to ask the court to protect their due process rights of our class members.”
This case is brought on behalf of Jose Arnulfo Guerrero Orellana and a putative class of similarly situated individuals. Mr. Guerrero Orellana has been living in the United States for over a decade and is a devoted husband and father. He brings this case to vindicate his own right to a bond hearing — where an immigration judge can determine whether his detention is justified to protect the community or ensure his appearance in court — and that of thousands of other detainees in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, and New Hampshire who will be denied the opportunity to seek release on bond under the new legal ruling adopted by the executive branch. The complaint alleges that the government's new policy violates constitutional and statutory due process rights and violates the Administrative Procedure Act.
FFRF Demands State Department
Remove Unconstitutional
Christian Nationalist Posts
(FFRF) - 9/13/2025 -- The Freedom From Religion Foundation is demanding that the State Department immediately remove unconstitutional Christian nationalist posts from its official social media accounts.
In a letter sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, FFRF objects to recent posts on the Department’s official X account that falsely promote Christianity as the foundation of the government of the United States and promise to eradicate policies that “demean the Christian faith.”
One post reads:
“Our nation was founded on the recognition that moral virtue and a steadfast faith in God are necessary preconditions of freedom. Yet under the Biden Administration, U.S. foreign policy belittled Christianity and weaponized government against faith. That era has ended. Under @POTUS’s leadership, the State Department will eradicate practices that devalue and demean the Christian faith.”
Another post vows that the department will “never apologize for our God-given rights”:
“At @POTUS’s direction, @SecRubio is taking action to secure religious liberties both at home and abroad, including terminating unlawful State Department policies targeting Christians and addressing the violent repression of Christians overseas. We will never apologize for our God-given rights.”
“These statements send a dangerous and unconstitutional message that the State Department serves Christians first and reduces millions of other Americans to second-class citizens,” writes FFRF Legal Counsel Chris Line. “U.S. foreign policy should defend human rights, not elevate one religion above all others.”
FFRF’s letter points out that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment requires strict government neutrality between religion and nonreligion. FFRF underscores that America’s Founders deliberately created a secular government — investing sovereignty in “We the People,” not a deity. The U.S. Constitution contains no reference to God and expressly prohibits religious tests for public office, religious oaths, and any establishment of religion by government.
“America’s strength lies in its secular Constitution,” the letter emphasizes. “True religious freedom requires a government free from sectarian favoritism.”
With nearly 37 percent of Americans now identifying as non-Christian — including almost 29 percent who are religiously unaffiliated — FFRF stresses that the State Department is obligated to represent all citizens equally, not to promote Christian nationalism.
FFRF is urging the State Department to delete the unconstitutional posts and confirm in writing what steps it will take to ensure compliance with the U.S. Constitution.
Date of original press release: 9/10/2025
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters of nontheism. With more than 42,000 members, FFRF advocates for freethinkers’ rights across the globe. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
Shuttering the Corporation for
Public Broadcasting Will Undermine
Democracy, Endanger Communities
WASHINGTON — (FreePress) -- 8-5-2025 -- On Aug. 1 the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced that it would shut down operations later this year. The move follows Congress’ mid-July decision to claw back $1.1 billion in funding from the previously approved federal budget for the corporation, which provides federal support for the operations and programming at hundreds of NPR and PBS affiliates across the country.
CPB has reportedly told its employees that a majority of positions will be eliminated on Sept. 30 with a small transition team staying on through January 2026. “We now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” CPB president and CEO Patricia Harrison said in a statement.
Zeroing out federal funding for public media has been a dream of Republicans since the Nixon administration. But the congressional vote, which was prompted by a rescission request from the Trump White House, marks the first time they’ve succeeded. Past efforts ran up against an outspoken public — including people of every political persuasion — who believe federal funding for public media is taxpayer money well spent.
Hardest hit by the closure of CPB will be smaller and rural stations, some of which receive more than 50 percent of their budgets from the federal government.
Free Press Co-CEO Craig Aaron:
“The shuttering of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — and the many dedicated public servants losing their jobs — is devastating for this country. It puts vital outlets in communities all across the country in jeopardy and endangers essential educational programs, news coverage, and life-saving emergency alerts. The ripples will be felt far beyond Washington, D.C..
“The end of CPB is the direct result of the deep and corrupt failure of Congress and the Trump administration to invest in informing the American public. They have trashed decades of democracy-building work and will deny many journalists, artists, educators and creators the opportunity to be heard. The cost of their decisions is almost incalculable in terms of lost opportunities, untold stories, closed minds — and yes, the lives of people who won’t know about the next earthquake, wildfire or tsunami before it’s too late.
“Public broadcasting is far from perfect, and for too many years the leadership of institutions like CPB, NPR and PBS have tried too hard to placate the politicians who were committed to their destruction. Despite incredible popularity — and even greater public need — the public media system has been starved and sidelined by partisan attacks and poor choices. But the promise of public media is still worth fighting for, and so are the many journalists, producers, engineers and employees who have committed their careers to these institutions and produced incredible work under trying circumstances.”
“But this is about far more than one government agency or the embarrassingly low public investment the United States makes in public media compared to the rest of the world. The elimination of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting is about trying to end accountability, pump out propaganda, and sow the kind of chaos and disinformation under which authoritarianism thrives. We won’t stop that march with pledge drives and tote bags.
“It will take years of organizing to rebuild what the Trump regime has demolished in six months. And that will require a vision that goes far beyond what we lost today — one that doesn’t just replace what’s been lost but reinvents public media as a bulwark against authoritarianism that meets the civic needs of all our communities. This is about fighting for democracy and recognizing that if we don’t keep fighting we stand to lose a lot more than this.”
Background:
In February, Free Press Action Co-CEO Craig Aaron testified before the House Judiciary Committee about the Trump administration’s censorship of media viewpoints the president dislikes, calling it a “free-speech emergency.” In May 2024, he testified about false claims of bias at NPR and PBS. Free Press Action is leading grassroots efforts to craft public policy that supports local noncommercial news and information.
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