From Somalis To The Karen, Trump Removes Temporary Protected Status In Minnesota (Because That's What Racist Xenophobic Tyrants Do)

Listen. Minnesota is home to the largest Somali and Karen populations in the United States. Both sets of communities have fled their home countries of Somalia and Myanmar/Burma because of civil unrest and portions of these communities are here under Temporary Protected Status.

Out of the 20,000 Karen that have moved to MN, approximately 4,000 have protected status. 

Out of the roughly 87,000 Somalis in MN roughly 400 have protected status.

Now it's being removed and everyone is free to be deported (well...hopefully there will be legal challenges...)

Why are we removing TPS from these groups and others, which are ALL BROWN AND BLACK COUNTRIES BY THE WAY?

What is the path for those affected in the community to become legal citizens? As America do we give TPS but then decide to take it away and just unceremoniously deport people out of the country back to civil unrest?

Is that how this is going to work?

For a number to hit? To show how we won't be taken advantage of by these "foreigners"? That we are America first and to hell with everyone else except the people that can make the administration rich?

GIVE ME A MF BREAK. 

As an Immigrant, as a Naturalized Citizen, as an Asian American, I know where it comes from---it's all about prejudice and xenophobia. 

It's about keeping the White Elite and the Brown and Black people they designate to come with them--but who they won't hesitate to throw to the wolves--at the top of the food chain.

It's about the mindset that our country is being taken over by the "immigrants" and even more so, it's this underlying feeling that White America and those "glory days" are moving onward and those ideals will eventually die out--albeit it's a fight and will continue to be a fight.

And all of this--it's deplorable, despicable, and chisels away at what actually makes America a truly wonderful country. 

Olivia Rodrigo Versus Trump's ICE

If there's a war and we have to choose between the young popstar who will lead the masses into the future of song and Trump's ICE, AKA The SS, we should all choose Olivia Rodrigo.

Olivia Rodrigo has criticized the Trump administration after one of her songs was featured in a government video promoting deportation efforts.

A clip posted on the official Department of Homeland Security and White House Instagram accounts encouraged undocumented immigrants to voluntarily leave the US. The video used a segment of Rodrigo’s song all-american bitch as its soundtrack.

Rodrigo, who is Filipino American, reportedly condemned the use of her music in a comment on the post, writing: “don’t ever use my songs to promote your racist, hateful propaganda.” The comment was later taken down, but not before screenshots were captured and circulated widely.

Apparently though they just want Rodrigo to go submissive:

"America is grateful all the time for our federal law enforcement officers who keep us safe," a spokesperson for the DHS told USA TODAY in a Nov. 7 statement, referencing lyrics in Rodrigo's song. "We suggest Ms. Rodrigo thank them for their service, not belittle their sacrifice."

The response comes after the 22-year-old "drivers license" singer reportedly shared a sharply worded response to the video that read, "Don’t ever use my songs to promote your racist, hateful propaganda," according to Billboard and Rolling Stone.

Highly doubt that ever happens... 

 

Andy Kim Declines Salary During Government Shutdown

From the PR last week:

"September 30, 2025

WASHINGTON D.C. – As President Trump and congressional Republicans steer the federal government into a shutdown, Senator Kim is continuing his fight to stand with working families across New Jersey and is formally requesting his paycheck be withheld during a shutdown until the federal government is fully reopened. 

“It’s wrong that the President and Members of Congress get paid during a government shutdown when our military and public servants don’t,” said Senator Kim. “I will be refusing my own pay if we end up in a shutdown. Government leaders shouldn’t be playing with other people’s chips.” 

In a letter to the U.S. Senate Disbursing Office, Senator Kim outlines that if the federal government shuts down due to the current lapse in appropriations, more than 48,000 federal employees and 10,000 active-duty servicemembers living in New Jersey face the prospect of either working without pay or being furloughed. He states that, “this is unacceptable.” 

Read the complete letter here. 

During his first days as a U.S. Congressman before entering the Senate, then-Congressman Kim requested his first paycheck from Congress be withheld due to a government shutdown in 2019."

They Pushed Back Against Trump And Won x Keep Your Head Up (Or Down...However You Roll) x Kimmel Time?

All I know is that while this is not unprecedented, we are in dark territory. When you can't criticize your government for fear of losing your job, when the First Amendment is blatantly being shoved aside and run over, days later, run over again and set on fire--we are not the America that made us truly great.

There's a piece of me that feels I'm being told that I must conform to this one thing where it just feels like I'm stuck in a box where everyone looks and has to feel the same, regardless of anything individually. It's that suffocating on both a macro and personal level. 

Seeing companies bend the knee is not comforting. Watching a pay to play government doesn't send warm fuzzies up and down my neck. The fact that I can get taken by people in masks, shoved away into a dark hole waiting for due process, which may take months, maybe even years, while not actually having done anything wrong--I can't say that doesn't scare me a little. Because it does.

Regular people, not named Kimmel, are losing their jobs because they pushed back on the Charlie Kirk narrative exalting him from his racist and homophobic views (from what I've heard from reputable people). 

It's almost as if I find myself sent via a time machine to the 80's with the Moral Majority. 

Censorship and moral guardians.

What's next. Nancy Reagan just saying no? 

How are we moving backwards and becoming less progressive? Less open to more ideas and different thoughts? And why does this always involve someone who's more than just a little racist?

I don't know what Kimmel will do. I hope he fights. He's got the resources to do it and I think because of how it happened he can win.  

In the meantime--here are some companies and organizations who pushed back and either won, or gained a lot of ground in the right direction--and that's important to remember: that you get to stand up for yourself. 

From the interwebs, search machines, and ai hyperbrains:

• Harvard University: A federal judge ruled against a Trump administration attempt to cut federal grants to Harvard, ordering the administration to restore more than $2 billion in frozen funding. Separately, another federal judge sided with Harvard and blocked an effort to rescind the school's right to host international students.
  
  
• University of California (UCLA): A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore some of the $584 million in funding it had frozen for UCLA. However, the University of California system and its unions have filed new lawsuits to fight further funding cuts and alleged financial coercion by the administration.
  
  
• Perkins Coie LLP, WilmerHale, Jenner & Block, and Susman Godfrey: These four firms challenged Trump administration executive orders that targeted them for their work, winning favorable rulings from federal judges. The courts found that the executive orders were unconstitutional and likely violated First Amendment protections for speech and due process. The administration is appealing some of these decisions.
  
  
• AFGE (American Federation of Government Employees) and other unions are part of a lawsuit AFGE v. Trump (2025) in which they challenged massive workforce reductions / layoffs (“reduction-in‐force”) ordered by the administration. They won a restraining order from the district court that temporarily blocked the action. The Ninth Circuit rejected the government’s request to stay that injunction. But later the Supreme Court stayed (i.e., paused) the preliminary injunction. 

• A coalition including AFT Massachusetts, other labor unions, school districts etc. got a preliminary injunction against the Education Dept’s efforts to fire many staff via reductions in force.

• American Bar Association lawsuit over Trump’s “Law Firm Intimidation Policy” — targeting law firms via sanctions, loss of contracts, security clearances, as retaliation for representing clients the government dislikes. Some of the individual law firms sued and won in court (judges have temporarily or permanently barred many of those orders). The ABA’s lawsuit is more recent (filed June 2025) and is seeking relief on behalf of all its members; outcome still developing.

• V.O.S. Selections, Inc. et al. Challenged “Liberation Day” tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), arguing the administration lacked authority to impose them. The Court of International Trade permanently enjoined enforcement of those tariffs; the plaintiffs succeeded in showing overreach under IEEPA. In appeal by Trump government.

• E. Jean Carroll: The writer successfully sued Donald Trump for sexual abuse and defamation. A jury awarded her $5 million in the first trial and $83.3 million in the second trial.

• The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) successfully sued to block a February 2025 directive from the Department of Education that sought to ban race-based programming at colleges.

What's Happening In Gaza Is Genocide. Jewish Americans Believe That Too. It's Not Antisemitic. Deport Us All.

I mean there's really no other way around it. 

And if the tables were turned, looking at it from an Asian specific point of view, we all know how this would be spun. 

"What? You're saying I can't call out China for.....that's being racist?"

The Trump Administration doesn't even care to be honest in ways. It's an excuse to push out brown people and anyone else who doesn't agree with MAGA time. 

And no--just because MAGA wants the Epstein files opened--it doesn't even close to absolve them.

Deport me for this?

Try your heart out.

From Huy Quoc Phan To Tuan Thanh Phan: It's Just A Collective WTF To The Trump Administration

Huy Quoc Phan and his family (via Amy Phan via USA Today)

Nothing this administration does surprises me anymore. 

I mean, just absolutely nothing.

Even forgetting about what the U.S. did in Vietnam and the pact it had with Vietnamese refugees like Huy Quoc Phan:

"For decades, both the Republican and Democratic administrations protected Vietnamese refugees such as Phan from deportation, citing their specific status as war and displacement survivors. This protection was given to approximately 8,600 Vietnamese who arrived prior to 1995, when the U.S. and Vietnam normalized relations. Vietnam did not take back deportees from this group, and the Biden administration effectively ended such removals.

But President Trump's second year in office has seen a dramatic reversal. The government has redoubled efforts to deport criminal immigrants, even long-standing favorites. "With President Trump and (DHS Secretary Kristi) Noem at the helm, ICE is continuing to safeguard Americans by arresting and removing criminal aliens," replied Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security."

Huy Quoc Phan served his time for the crime he committed. At 17, he rightfully spent the next 15 years behind bars for the robbery he was involved in that left a shopkeeper dead. 

He did his time. 

And now he spends more time, doing time in a Louisiana detention center, because the Trump administration is rolling back all the safeguards for refugees.

"We feel we got abandoned again," Quyen Mai, executive director of the Vietnamese American Organization, stated. Legal scholars and historians insist that the U.S. government committed to safeguarding refugees such as Phan, who now stand to be returned to a land they hardly know, with few resources and extreme uncertainty."

It's despicable. 

But sadly not surprising for this administration.

And They're Getting Deported To...South Sudan?

In the case of Tuan Thanh Phan (pictured left), he was ready to be deported. 

He knew he was going to be deported.

And he already did his time of 25 years.

But he thought it would be back to Vietnam.

Not the South Sudan.

It's inhumane (via NPR): 

"Is it okay for the government then to turn around and destroy their lives and the lives of their families, just because those individuals at one time committed a crime for which they've already been convicted, they've already served their sentence?" said Matt Adams, the legal director at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, one of the groups suing the administration over the flight to South Sudan and deportations to other so-called third countries.

"It's just a complete renunciation of our justice system," he said.

Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American immigration Lawyers Association, said the difference from prior administrations includes the kinds of countries this White House is negotiating with.

"The principle in law is that it needs to be a safe country for that person to be removed there," said Chen, whose nonpartisan organization represents immigration attorneys and law students.

The State Department gives the South Sudan a clear "Level 4: Do Not Travel".

Really? 

So while the US has fought against corruption and regimes around the world--touting itself as more humane--this is what we do now?

We can't even deport people to somewhere at least semi-decent?

We don't give them any due process even though it is court ordered?

And So They Wait

So Huy Quoc is doing more time away from his wife and children and Tuan Thanh is--well who the hell knows where he's at now?

Where is due process?

Where is humanity?

And will we ever get it back? Will other countries and communities ever look at the US the same again?

I can't say nor can I say what will happen in the end.

But I do think, at the very least, we know who the real monsters are and where they can take us, and that it's not making American great in any way shape or form.

Read more at
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com//news/international/us/we-feel-we-got-abandoned-again-the-story-of-vietnamese-refugees-in-trumps-deportation-firing-line/articleshow/121464545.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cp

Mahmoud Khalil, Try To Deport Me MFs, Freedom of Speech, Rubio Needs To Be Deported To K-Town, And It's Kind Of Feeling Like Nazi Time Here

So I was casually minding my own business, trying to get some rest from the onslaught of what the hell is going on in our nation, lobbing my penis around seeing if it wanted any action (the answer was a NO if you were interested) and then this NYT email in my inbox catches my eye from an article with the headline.

The U.S. Is Trying to Deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Legal Resident. Here’s What to Know.

Mr. Khalil, who helped lead protests at Columbia University against high civilian casualties in Gaza, was arrested by immigration officers and sent to a detention center in Louisiana.

I had saw just a smidgen of a headline about this before and was going to search it out, and the next thing you know (after my lobbing) I get that.

So you take a young man, who in addition to others, led campus protests against the civilian casualties in Gaza, who has a legitimate green card, and is married to a pregnant U.S. citizen and who in a CNN article said--

"As a Palestinian student, I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand-by-hand and you cannot achieve one without the other,” he told CNN last spring when he was one of the negotiators representing student demonstrators during talks with Columbia University’s administration.

“Our movement is a movement for social justice and freedom and equality for everyone,” he said.     

AND YOU TAKE AWAY HIS GREEN CARD AND SEND HIM TO A DETENTION CENTER?

While both Trump and Rubio (among others) are trying to paint him as someone who is antisemitic, Khalil has said that there is no place for antisemitism.

While Trump and Rubio are trying to tie him to Hamas and terrorism, there's nothing that ties him to either. 

He's simply doing the same thing that protestors did here during the Vietnam War. And yes, he's getting the same, "Are you a communist sympathizer", but 1000 steps further bcause he's got his green card revoked for no legal reason, he's detained, and now facing deportation.

The U.S. was built on free speech, and yes, there are limits, but Mahmoud Khalil? He didn't spout hate speech and incite violence, unlike Trumpcession did. He's well within his rights to do what he's done and is afforded the same rights from a free speech perspective (according to journalist Minho Kim from the NYT).

Like I said in the title of this post, it's feeling a little like Nazi time where if I don't like you, get ready for the gas chambers, and if you think that statement is a little pedestrian and overwrought, I would say from an Executive Order Type Of Level, it's mostly high-level anyway, and that's the problem.

Where does it end?

Will U.S. citizens, in "extreme" circmstances try and have their citizenship revoked? 

It's already happening with birthright citizenship. But people think of that as so out of reach and so unconstitutional it will never work, especially with so many legal challenges. 

But what about a newly minted citizen from a country where let's say in a year, is looked at from a hostile perspective, as an enemy.

Instead of concentration camps, which we've already done, is it out of the question to think that an administration, or government body, will say "Anyone from country X that received citizenhip in the last 10 years will have their citizenship revoked and deported."?

Does that sound that far fetched in this current climate against immigrants?

Consider that under current policies: 

A person is subject to revocation of naturalization if the person becomes a member of, or affiliated with, the Communist party, other totalitarian party, or terrorist organization within five years of his or her naturalization.^[6] In general, a person who is involved with such organizations cannot establish the naturalization requirements of having an attachment to the Constitution and of being well-disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States.^[7]

The fact that a person becomes involved with such an organization within five years after the date of naturalization is prima facie evidence that he or she concealed or willfully misrepresented material evidence that would have prevented the person’s naturalization.

It doesn't seem that far out of reach, and no matter what, the vortex of DETAIN NOW ASK QUESTIONS LATER, is always in play. And sure, maybe the legal battle is won, but how long does it take while someone rots away?

This is not the America we should be living in.