In 2024, Donald Trump won the presidency with the support of 44% of Hispanic voters, suggesting that a major realignment in party preferences might be underway. But just two years later, it appears much of that support has eroded. Sixty-one percent of Hispanic voters say they will now support Democrats in the midterms, including 11% who previously had voted for President Trump. We get a bird’s-eye view of what to expect from the Latino vote from Marisa Franco, the co-founder and director of the advocacy organization Mijente. While ICE brutality will be at the front of voters’ minds, she says, Democrats cannot continue to take Latino voters for granted. “The vast majority of Latinos are working-class. Quite simply, they voted for Trump because they were looking at issues of economy, cost, inflation,” explains Franco. “And at the end of the day, these same issues have worsened under Trump’s administration, under Republican control. So people, I think, are looking for someone who’s going to explain what’s happening and propose solutions and be dogged about finding them.” TRANSCRIPT This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. We end today’s show...

Tomorrow’s midterm elections are widely viewed as a referendum on Trump’s second presidency. Prior studies have found strong associations between protest and U.S. election outcomes, including the 2010 and 2018 midterm elections. Protests can influence popular opinion on policy issues, boost turnout among eligible voters, and shape how candidates set policy priorities. At the Crowd Counting Consortium, or CCC, we have tallied an extraordinary number of protests since Donald Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025. The majority of protests in Trump’s second term so far have named democracy or the presidency itself as a primary claim — think the nationwide Hands Off and No Kings protests in 2025 and 2026. But among protests focused on more specific policy domains, one key theme stands out. The administration’s anti-immigration policies and expansive, violent crackdown on immigrants have generated active, grassroots support networks in neighborhoods across the country and fueled a wave of protests in support of immigrants’ rights. As a result, March 2026 may have been the month with the highest number of pro-immigrant protests in U.S. history, with protests taking place in over 30 percent of counties containing 80 percent of the nation’s population. A significant proportion of these protests occurred...

In the months leading up to the 2026 midterm elections, congressional Republicans and federal prosecutors have targeted dozens of local officials in cities and counties across the country that have adopted some sanctuary policies. The investigations have increasingly focused on prosecutors and law enforcement officers, many of whom have publicly announced plans to go after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who commit crimes in their jurisdictions or refuse demands to cooperate with federal immigration policing. In total, 65 officials in 16 states have been targeted since January, according to a review of documents released by the House Judiciary Committee and the Department of Justice (DOJ), as well as interviews with senior officials who have direct knowledge of individual investigations. The House Judiciary Committee has issued subpoenas and other demands for testimony, documents, and records to more than 40 officials, 15 of them local prosecutors. Alongside that, the DOJ has initiated investigations into 50 local or state officials since 2025, including five involving local prosecutors. In all, 17 local prosecutors have been swept up in House Judiciary or DOJ investigations and lawsuits related to immigration policies. House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jim Jordan said in a recent report that “Democrats’...

Voters in Minneapolis and Houston left "I Voted" stickers this Election Day at memorials for people killed by federal immigration agents this year. Dozens of stickers were left at the Minneapolis memorials for Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two U.S. citizens fatally shot by federal agents in January. In Houston, more than 1,000 stickers had been placed by late October on a memorial for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican construction contractor killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in July. Both Minneapolis memorials featured portraits of Good and Pretti, surrounded by flowers and messages criticizing ICE and President Donald Trump. The Houston memorial also drew handwritten notes, many in Spanish. Some read "Por usted" ("For you"), while others said, "You didn't deserve this." Mexican and U.S. flags and portraits of Salgado Araujo were also displayed at the site. Read More on Politics Why Are People Placing 'I Voted' Stickers at Memorials? In Houston, it started with Salgado Araujo's oldest son, Ronaldo Salgado, who voted on October 19, the first day of early voting in Texas, then went to Canal Street and put his sticker on the plywood memorial marking where his father was killed. What began with...

Last June, Job Garcia — a U.S. citizen — was tackled to the ground by federal immigration agents while he was filming an ICE raid at a Home Depot in Hollywood. Yesterday, Garcia cast his ballot for the midterm elections at a church less than two miles from where he was arrested, overcoming his fears that ICE agents might show up at the polls. “I’ve been looking forward to this day since what happened to me last year,” said Garcia, 38, who was detained for 25 hours after being arrested last summer. “While there isn’t an ICE policy directly on the ballot … It’s a very intentional vote that I’m making to hopefully shift the power over to individuals that are going to help make those changes [to immigration policy] possible.” The issue of immigration loomed large over yesterday’s elections in Los Angeles — the county with the largest population of foreign-born residents in the country and ground zero for the Trump administration’s ICE crackdown last year. Capital & Main spoke to more than 30 voters at eight polling places in neighborhoods across L.A. County that were hard hit by the immigration crackdown. Some expressed frustration with the cost of...

Before federal immigration agents surged in California last year, Marisol Perez wasn’t interested in politics. But when the Trump administration’s immigration dragnet swept the state – in some cases, detaining people with legal status and even U.S. citizens – she paid attention. Ms. Perez, a teenager, watched the flood of social media images and videos of masked federal agents handcuffing and taking away people who frequently looked like her or her relatives, she says. Then, a few weeks ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials descended on her town of Wasco, a farming community of about 26,000 people. Local police say they are aware of at least two immigration enforcement incidents in the community, though they have not confirmed how many people were detained. Now, just months after her 18th birthday, Ms. Perez is eager to vote in direct response to what she’s seeing in her community. Here, in California’s competitive 22nd Congressional District, the most heavily Latino district in the state, there is concern over recent immigration enforcement. In some cases, canvassers encounter people who will not answer the door because they fear who might be knocking. But in places like Wasco, there are signs that the Trump administration’s immigration...

Ian Austin, like so many Americans, watched the video of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shooting Renee Nicole Good in January. But unlike most people, the 36-year-old U.S. Army veteran knows how it feels to shoot someone while wearing a uniform. “I can still see myself on the firing line, and I can still feel what I felt in my stomach then. I couldn’t identify it at the time, but I knew it didn’t feel right,” Austin said. After watching the video, Austin drove from his home in Bryn Athyn to Minnesota, where he participated in a protest inside a St. Paul, Minn., church. He soon became a defendant in the high-profile federal case alleging protesters infringed on churchgoers’ rights. Former CNN anchor is one of the co defendants. To Austin, his trip to Minneapolis is part of a much longer journey that began during his military service in Afghanistan. Killing people at war, he said, traumatized him and led him to seek healing and spiritual renewal. It’s a road he’s still very much on, as he lives with post-traumatic stress disorder and bouts of depression. Austin said watching Good’s killing brought back the guilt, shame, and rage...

A year ago, the Trump administration said the city of Portland was being ravaged by protests. So much so, U.S. Department of Justice attorneys argued they needed to deploy the National Guard. The city and state quickly sued. What followed was an unprecedented trial that tested the power of the presidency. Attorneys for the city of Portland argued the administration falsely labeled the city as “war-ravaged,” and that the protests were under control. U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut ultimately agreed with Portland. Legal experts say the three-day trial between the clashing governments became a rare test of federal power. “If there’s a crisis, then it makes sense to give the government more powers to handle it,” said Juliet Stumpf, a law professor at Lewis and Clark. “If things had gone the other way, and the judge had said ‘It’s OK to bring the military in, it’s OK to federalize the National Guard’ — I think things would have looked very different. “And that almost happened,” Stumpf added. Related: Watch the first episode of “The Crackdown” Related: Watch the second episode of "The Crackdown" The third episode of OPB’s documentary series “The Crackdown” explores how the dueling narratives around Portland’s...

A year ago, the Trump administration said the city of Portland was being ravaged by protests. So much so, U.S. Department of Justice attorneys argued they needed to deploy the National Guard. The city and state quickly sued. What followed was an unprecedented trial that tested the power of the presidency. Attorneys for the city of Portland argued the administration falsely labeled the city as “war-ravaged,” and that the protests were under control. U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut ultimately agreed with Portland. Legal experts say the three-day trial between the clashing governments became a rare test of federal power. “If there’s a crisis, then it makes sense to give the government more powers to handle it,” said Juliet Stumpf, a law professor at Lewis and Clark. “If things had gone the other way, and the judge had said ‘It’s OK to bring the military in, it’s OK to federalize the National Guard’ — I think things would have looked very different. “And that almost happened,” Stumpf added. Related: Watch the first episode of “The Crackdown” Related: Watch the second episode of "The Crackdown" The third episode of OPB’s documentary series “The Crackdown” explores how the dueling narratives around Portland’s...

Hundreds of employees at the US robotics firm Boston Dynamics signed a petition calling for executives to halt a sale of the company’s robot dogs to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement—but executives stood by the deal, while saying the robots would not be weaponized. On September 25, the Department of Homeland Security contract awarded $1.3 million to a Connecticut company called Radeco to provide ICE with modified versions of Boston Dynamics’ quadruped robots. But Boston Dynamics workers sent the petition letter with more than 300 signatures—half of them anonymous—to the company’s executives in early September and shared copies with The Boston Globe and WBUR public radio station. “Many of us have gotten messages from friends and family, asking us in disbelief and horror if this news is true, and how we can live with ourselves if it is,” according to the petition. “The risk for Boston Dynamics is simply too great to continue with this deal.” The petition described the signatories as employees who normally “love showing off what we do to our friends, family and the world” and who “love challenging ourselves to innovate and change the perception of what robots can do.” The 300 signatures come out of...

Most of that production takes place in the state’s southwest corner, in what is often called the “golden triangle,” where processing plants run by National Beef, Tyson, and Cargill are concentrated in three cities—Liberal, Dodge City, and Garden City. On the outskirts, feedlots and dairies abound. And like other meatpacking towns, these cities are home to large numbers of immigrant workers and their families. One grassroots organization that supports those communities is Loud Light, whose New Frontiers project typically fills its social media feed with a mix of images promoting free tacos, outdoor movies, and celebrations of Mexican heritage. “They’re targeting brown, Spanish-speaking people. They’re targeting farmworkers.” But late last month, another kind of post took over, as the organization rushed to alert residents to the presence of federal immigration officers in the area. “Be careful during shift change,” read one of the first posts. “They are posted in the Liberal National Beef lot and around the Love’s by National Beef in Dodge City.” Such posts document an unprecedented moment, for Kansas, and for the nation. In August, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested a record 51,000 people across the country in one month, and the summer surge continued...

Hundreds gather for a statewide people's assembly to strengthen a growing network of community organizers, build collective power, and advance a shared vision of an ICE-free New Jersey. NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., Oct. 10 - On Saturday, October 10, immigrant families, grassroots organizers, rapid response teams, community leaders, and allies from across New Jersey came together for the ICE Out of New Jersey Asamblea Popular, marking an important victory for a growing a unified statewide movement determined to confront immigration enforcement and build a future free from ICE. The assembly brought together communities that have spent months organizing in their neighborhoods, responding to ICE activity, supporting families facing detention and deportation, and developing networks of mutual aid and community defense. However, what emerged was more than simply a gathering of people and organizations. What began as local efforts by families and neighbors to protect one another is increasingly becoming a coordinated statewide struggle, uniting communities from across New Jersey around a common vision: an ICE-free future. At the heart of this movement are immigrant families themselves. Across New Jersey, immigrant families are transforming fear and isolation into collective action. Families directly impacted by detention, deportation, and immigration enforcement are not simply...

Hundreds gather for a statewide people's assembly to strengthen a growing network of community organizers, build collective power, and advance a shared vision of an ICE-free New Jersey. NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., Oct. 10 - On Saturday, October 10, immigrant families, grassroots organizers, rapid response teams, community leaders, and allies from across New Jersey came together for the ICE Out of New Jersey Asamblea Popular, marking an important victory for a growing a unified statewide movement determined to confront immigration enforcement and build a future free from ICE. The assembly brought together communities that have spent months organizing in their neighborhoods, responding to ICE activity, supporting families facing detention and deportation, and developing networks of mutual aid and community defense. However, what emerged was more than simply a gathering of people and organizations. What began as local efforts by families and neighbors to protect one another is increasingly becoming a coordinated statewide struggle, uniting communities from across New Jersey around a common vision: an ICE-free future. At the heart of this movement are immigrant families themselves. Across New Jersey, immigrant families are transforming fear and isolation into collective action. Families directly impacted by detention, deportation, and immigration enforcement are not simply...

The black vehicles with tinted windows converged on the bus stop just after 5:30 a.m. It was June 18, 2025, and Pedro Vasquez Perdomo and his co-workers were drinking coffee, waiting for a ride to a construction job in Pasadena, California. Masked, armed men poured from the vehicles and charged at them. Vasquez Perdomo thought they were probably immigration agents, but he couldn’t be sure. The agents wore plain clothes with no visible badges and didn’t identify themselves. They seized the 54-year-old Vasquez Perdomo, handcuffed him, chained his feet, waist and hands, and hauled him away. No one showed him a warrant or told him why they were arresting him, he later wrote in a declaration. “It felt like a kidnapping,” he wrote. The agents drove Vasquez Perdomo and his coworkers to B-18, an immigration processing site in the basement of a federal building in downtown Los Angeles. Some lawyers had dubbed the facility a “black hole,” because detainees could be hard to locate or reach there. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Eleven days earlier, about 20 miles away, another confrontation with immigration agents had ended in handcuffs. Brayan Ramos-Brito,...

Inside an abandoned work truck in northern Orange County one recent Saturday sat a steaming cup of coffee and a Danish with a bite taken out of it. The remnants of an ordinary morning, suddenly interrupted. The truck belonged to a man who had gone out for gas and a car wash before the workweek. He never made it home. ICE agents had taken him into custody after a roadside stop, leaving his truck in a nearby parking lot. Shortly afterward, I accompanied another community volunteer to tell his wife what had happened. She cried out, and her body began to shake. Her husband had lived and worked in the United States for decades. Now she, a U.S. citizen and their U.S.-born children faced the urgent task of locating him, ensuring he received lifesaving medication, and figuring out how their family would survive without him. His story is becoming increasingly familiar across Orange County. As the Trump administration escalates immigration enforcement across Southern California, local rapid-response groups report a disturbing new pattern: federal agents stopping Latino men driving landscaping and construction trucks, taking them into custody and leaving their vehicles behind. These arrests raise troubling questions: How are immigration agents...

Nearly 300 Boston Dynamics employees signed an internal petition this fall asking leadership to kill a $1.3 million robot sale tied to ICE. The company sold anyway, and the fight over who gets to use Spot just moved from the lab floor to the loading dock. Boston Dynamics builds the four-legged robot that can climb stairs, open doors and do a backflip on command. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants four of them to search tunnels at the border. According to WBUR, which obtained the petition and first reported on it this week, dozens of Boston Dynamics employees wrote to company leadership in early September asking it to cancel the sale, arguing it "presents us as working directly with ICE" at a moment when the agency has, in the employees' words, worked to sow fear across immigrant communities. The petition picked up close to 300 signatures, WBUR reported, though a Boston Dynamics spokesperson noted that nearly half came in marked anonymous. The Waltham, Massachusetts company employs more than 1,500 people, so the petition is a vocal minority, not a majority revolt. But a vocal minority willing to put its name, or lack of one, on a letter against a paying customer...

Ogden • About 50 people gathered Saturday in Ogden to call for the release of a young couple detained by federal immigration agents after a traffic stop earlier this week. Protest organizers say the couple left their 2-month-old child in the care of a family member. Pablo Oyarce, 25, and Javiera Galvez, 26, were booked into the Weber County Jail on Oct. 22, booking records show. The Weber County Sheriff’s Office pulled them over for a traffic stop and contacted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to Ogden United, the group organizing Saturday’s protest. Neither had charges listed in the jail’s booking records as of Saturday morning. Jared Rosser, an Ogden resident who knows the family, said Galvez’s mother had been visiting from Chile to help care for the couple’s newborn. She was the one who told Rosser the couple had been arrested, he said, and he started to spread the word. Now, she’s scrambling to figure out how to bring her daughter home, unsure how to “navigate any of it,” Rosser said. “I think we can all agree that a 2-month-old baby should be with their mother,” protest organizer Kim Haslam told the crowd. Rosser said Galvez has been...

A new community solar garden in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is now producing power for low-moderate income (LMI) residents. The 704-kW system sits on the city-owned Eastside Maintenance Facility and serves 100 LMI subscribers, with 25 spots remaining. The Minnesota Renewable Energy Society (MRES) and Greenway Solar developed the project that was funded in part by a $150,000 grant from the City of Minneapolis’ Green Cost Share Program, which offers funding to help pay for solar projects on buildings across the city. “Expanding access to clean energy means working together to ensure its benefits reach the people who need it most. A $150,000 grant from our Green Cost Share program helped this project come to life and bring near-term impact for our residents. Even as our electric grid gets cleaner, local solar is an important tool to help make bills lower and electrification more affordable,” said Megan Hoye, the City of Minneapolis’ Director of Climate Equity Action. “We believe this community solar garden serves as a meaningful representation of what’s possible. When public investment and local clean energy partners come together, we can advance both environmental goals and economic opportunity.”...

The Trump administration is attempting to intimidate Latino voters and naturalized citizens with the threat of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and arrests ahead of the midterm elections, democracy advocates are warning. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, has deployed federal agents in multiple states to knock on doors and demand voters verify their identities and registration as part of an “Unlawful Voter Initiative” launched in August. In response to a lawsuit filed on October 19 by labor and voting rights groups, a federal judge in California ruled the DHS initiative violates the Voting Rights Act and ordered federal agents to halt “elections-related field operations and field interviews” in California, Wisconsin, New York, Missouri, Connecticut, Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Washington. “I look at this list of states, and I can think of some high-profile races that may be anticipated to be close in a lot of those jurisdictions,” said David Janovsky, senior policy analyst and acting director of the Constitution Project at the Project On Government Oversight, in an interview. “So, I think there is a reasonable question in all of this about how the federal government is choosing to focus these efforts, and the motivation...

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At least 59 people have died in ICE custody since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, the highest number in more than a decade. Many deaths have been linked to medical neglect, including four of five recent deaths at California’s Adelanto Processing Center, according to a 2026 report by the state attorney general. Al Jazeera English’s Fault Lines investigated deaths at the facility, which is operated by the private prison company GEO Group, in the new documentary Dying in Detention. “GEO Group has made over a billion dollars in profits from immigration detention. They have given more than a million dollars … to help reelect Donald Trump,” says correspondent Natasha Del Toro. “That raises a lot of questions for us about the relationship between GEO and the federal government, and some of these conflicts of interest.” TRANSCRIPT This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman in Los Angeles. Juan González is in Chicago. We’re turning now to the rising numbers of deaths in ICE custody. At least 59 people have died in immigration detention since the start of Trump’s second term, the highest...

A March 2026 NBC News poll put AI's net favorability at negative 20, worse than ICE and worse than Donald Trump. More recent polling shows that public concern about AI remains widespread as the industry's financing comes under greater scrutiny. Here's the number that should worry every AI executive: negative 20. That's the net favorability rating artificial intelligence pulled in a March 2026 NBC News poll of registered voters, two points below ICE's negative 18 and well below both the Republican Party (negative 14) and Trump himself (negative 12). A technology that venture capitalists describe as the biggest wealth-creation event of their careers is, by that measure, less popular than the agency carrying out mass deportations. That wasn't a one-off data point. A February YouGov survey for The Economist found 54% of Americans thought companies were investing too much in AI, while a September AP-NORC poll found 64% thought the technology was developing too quickly. On Wall Street, Bank of America's February global fund manager survey found a record 35% of investors said companies were spending too much on AI. Retail sentiment and institutional sentiment, usually moving on different clocks, converged on the same complaint. This sentiment shift isn't happening...

Minneapolis Hotel Ventures and Lion Hotel Group acquired the 164-room Radisson RED at 609 S. Third St. Lion will operate the hotel and retain existing employees, with no major renovations planned. The hotel reportedly has $700,000 in negative cash flow but attracted multiple bidders. Downtown Minneapolis hotel occupancy is roughly flat year over year, while average daily rates are up about 3%. A joint venture between two local investors has purchased the Radisson RED, a five-story hotel in downtown Minneapolis’ Mill District, according to a recent news release from the buyer. Minneapolis Hotel Ventures and Lion Hotel Group announced that the two firms will be the owners of the property going forward. Lion will operate the property and plans to keep the current employees already working at the site. The 164-unit hotel sits at 609 S. Third St., not far from the Minneapolis riverfront to the north and U.S. Bank Stadium to the south. The hotel features a restaurant and bar, OUIBar + KTCHN. The Radisson RED was formerly owned by Choice Hotels, an institutional hospitality company. Marcus & Millichap’s Joseph Ferguson and Jon Ruzicka arranged the sale for the sellers. The property has a $700,000 negative cash flow, according...