All posts tagged "Protest"

Hundreds of protesters linked hands around the Kennedy Center on Friday night, days after its Trump-appointed board voted to close the building and as the president again tied his help saving it to getting credit for the effort.

CNN reported that the Kennedy Center laid off about a dozen employees Friday, cutting further into what the network described as an already skeleton staff.

The rally was organized by Hands Off the Arts, which said it was protesting the president's "defacing of JFK's memorial," the removal and censorship of art, and his threat to demolish the center if he cannot remake it in his image....

The federal judge presiding over the trial of nine “antifa” defendants charged with terrorism and attempted murder in relation to a protest at an ICE detention facility in Texas last summer on Tuesday granted a request by the Department of Justice to bar self-defense claims in response to the shooting of a local police officer.

The order by Judge Mark Pittman during a hearing in Fort Worth, Texas — made in light of a ruling arising from the deadly Waco siege of 1993 — forbids defendants from presenting further evidence and argument to claim that one acted in self-defense or in defense of others when he allegedly shot Alvarado Police Lt. Thomas Gross.

The government’s motion asserted that such claims were “legally invalid.”...

Defendants on trial in Texas in the Trump administration’s first “antifa” prosecution are claiming self-defense, in answer to attempted murder and terrorism charges stemming from a chaotic confrontation outside an ICE detention facility that culminated with the shooting of a local police officer.

After defense lawyers cross-examined Alvarado police Lt. Thomas Gross, who suffered minor injuries after allegedly being shot by one of the nine defendants, the government last Friday filed a motion in court in Fort Worth, seeking to bar defendants from making a self-defense claim.

The government argues that because any claim of self-defense or defense of others was “legally unsupportable,” introducing evidence or arguments that raise that defense would amount to “a thinly veiled attempt to encourage the jury to nullify any verdict in this case.”...

The judge overseeing the so-called “Texas Antifa” case of nine defendants accused of attacking an ICE detention facility abruptly declared a mistrial on Tuesday, while scolding a defense lawyer for reportedly wearing a tee-shirt displaying civil rights icons.

But in a case widely seen as a test of the Trump administration strategy of criminalizing the antifascist movement and collectively punishing political opposition, friends and family members on the defendants’ support committee said they see another reason for the action by Judge Mark T. Pittman, who was appointed by President Donald Trump.

The jury pool, such observers say, was unexpectedly cool to the Trump administration generally and more specifically to federal immigration enforcement....

A trial set to begin on Tuesday in Fort Worth, Texas will test whether President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice can use a criminalized notion of “antifa” to convict nine anti-ICE activists of attempted murder and terrorism, after they shot fireworks and vandalized government vehicles.

On July 4 last year, most of the defendants showed up at the Prairieland ICE detention facility 25 miles south of Fort Worth to put on a fireworks display for immigrant detainees. A smaller group used spray paint to graffiti vehicles in the parking lot.

They dressed in black and concealed their faces with masks — a tactic commonly known as “black bloc.” One activist, former Marine Corps reservist Benjamin Song, carried an AR-15 rifle. A wagon nearby was stocked with an additional rifle, body armor and bottled water. One activist had guns in his car. ...

Protesters surrounded Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during a news conference in California on Thursday.

It appeared that Noem's voice was nearly drowned out at some points by people yelling and sirens blaring during a visit to Otay Mesa, San Diego, to discuss an update on border security and drug seizures along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Journalist Aaron Rupar pointed out how the press conference was physically set up, and how the view could have been obstructed as the volume of voices escalated around her. Video and images showed a large number of evidence bags and boxes surrounding her....