Faith leaders are calling on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to immediately free a pair of pastors who advocates say were wrongfully detained by ICE agents in Texas on Thursday while traveling to a religious retreat.Pastor Nepthalí Zozaya Saucedo and his wife, pastor Cinthia Saraí Cardona Otero, were detained by federal immigration enforcers after arriving at McAllen International Airport.According to the couple and their church leaders, the longtime pastors at the Comunidad Cristiana Emanuel Assemblies of God congregation in Edinburg, Texas were on their way to a marriage retreat in North Carolina organized by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association when they were detained and taken to a US Border Patrol processing center in McAllen.At a Friday press conference hosted by leaders from the Assemblies of God and the Latino Christian National Network, LCN board member Sandy Ovalle said that the couple has valid R-1 religious worker visas.“We are calling for their immediate release, the protection of their due process rights, and an urgent oversight into ICE’s conduct,” Ovalle said. “No one should be pressured to give up their rights under the threat of losing their children.”A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told Religion News Service that the pastors are “illegal aliens” who overstayed their visas.Addressing the conference by phone from the detention center, Nepthalí said that the couple was threatened with separation from their US citizen children if they did not sign papers authorizing their “voluntary” deportation.“They spoke with us about separation—to be separated from our children and even as married people,” he said, according to Religion News Service. “They spoke about how much time that we could end up spending here.”Speaking during the press conference, Comunidad Cristiana Emanuel senior pastor Sarai Martinez Luna said, “I think it’s very cruel that somebody that had no status for deportation be pressured to sign a voluntary deportation based on the separation of their children.”Friday’s news conference followed a Wednesday press briefing by faith leaders at the Texas Capitol in Austin to condemn the killings of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine, Juan Jairo Coronilla Durán in Florida, and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston.“This is not of God. This is no peace that we want a part of because let’s be honest, this isn’t a peacekeeping initiative. This is a terror campaign with the mission of traumatizing our neighbors until they self-deport,” said Dan De Leon, senior pastor at Friends Congregational Church in College Station. “We don’t need terror. We need peace.”Elyse Rosenberg of the National Council of Jewish Women and Temple Beth Shalom in Austin said during the press conference that “throughout our history, we have repeatedly seen first-hand the consequences of governments exercising unchecked power on vulnerable populations.”Friday’s event also preceded nationwide vigils in more than 300 communities across the nation on Saturday to demand justice for the dozens of people who have been killed by federal enforcers or died in ICE custody during President Donald Trump’s second term.“We refuse to grieve quietly. We refuse to accept this terror and violence as inevitable," Crystal Cron, executive director of Presente! Maine, said ahead of the vigils. “Johan Sebastián should still be here with his wife and daughter—and instead, his name joins a growing list of people killed by an institution that treats our communities as disposable.”“This is bigger than one shooting,” Cron added. “We will not stop fighting until there is justice for the Durán Guerrero family and a total dismantling of this lawless, criminal agency that took him from them.”
U.S. military forces disabled a tanker trying to get through the Strait of Hormuz on July 24, stopping what officials said was a deliberate attempt to run a regional blockade after the crew repeatedly ignored warnings.
Maine Democrats on Saturday overwhelmingly nominated Troy Jackson, a former state Senate president and logger by trade, as their party’s nominee to challenge longtime Republican incumbent Susan Collins in November’s high-stakes US Senate election.“Well, thank you, Maine,” Jackson, 58, said after securing the votes of 566 of 571 delegates during Saturday’s special Democratic convention at Cross Insurance Center in Bangor. “Today we turn the page, today this becomes a general election campaign, and today we win the work of defeating Susan Collins in November.”“For nearly 30 years, Collins has told Maine that she is ‘concerned’,” Jackson said, referring to the 73-year-old incumbent’s go-to word when President Donald Trump and Republicans attack rights and justice. “She was concerned while she rubber-stamped Trump’s Medicaid cuts and gutted our healthcare.”“She’s concerned when she cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy,” he continued. “Concerned when she confirmed justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. And really tragically, she was concerned when she gave [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] billions to terrorize our neighbors and murder people in the streets with no accountability.”“But concern does not lower the costs of groceries or gas,” Jackson said. “Concern does not keep our monitoring wards of rural hospitals like down in Lincoln County open. Concern does not restore all the rights that she’s taken away. Maine does not need another six years of concern. We need someone with courage. We need a fighter, and we need a senator who remembers exactly who sent them to Washington.”“So if you’ve ever been ignored, underestimated, pushed around, or told that you have to wait your turn while the rich cut the line, I’m asking you to stand with us in this campaign,” he continued. “If you believe in your heart that healthcare is a right, stand with us. And if you believe that workers deserve power, stand with us. And if you believe our freedoms are worth defending, stand with us.”“And if you believe that Maine deserves a senator who will fight like hell for working-class people, well, stand with us,” Jackson added. “We have a party to unite, we have a movement to build, and we have a senator to defeat.”Jackson’s improbably rapid rise followed former Democratic nominee Graham Platner’s withdrawal from the race earlier this month amid allegations of sexual assault and abusive behavior. Supporters of Platner’s progressive platform warned at the time that they would not back a replacement candidate who did not share the same pro-worker, anti-war agenda.While Collins spokeswoman Blake Kernen called Jackson a “low-energy version” of Platner, Maine Democrats decided the fifth-generation lumberjack fit the bill.“The working class has been left behind and forgotten about,” Shelly Mountain, a former Aroostook County Democratic Committee chairwoman and Jackson delegate at the convention, told NBC News. “He is definitely working class and always—has always—been a champion for the working class.”Progressive politicians, advocacy groups, and labor organizations cheered Jackson’s nomination, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) saying that “he’s ready to fight for working people and flip this seat.”International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) president Brian Bryant said Saturday that “Troy Jackson knows firsthand what it means to work hard for a living and fight for a better future for working families.”“Throughout his career, he has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with union members and working people, never backing down from a challenge when workers’ rights were on the line,” he added. “He represents the strength of a people-powered movement focused on fairness, opportunity, and economic justice. Troy has our full support as he heads to the general election.”
Senator Lisa Murkowski’s concerns about the SAVE America Act are legitimate, and they can be fixed with amendments rather than a no vote.
The post Exclusive—Jenny Beth Martin: Senator Murkowski, Let’s Get You to ‘Yes’ on the SAVE America Act appeared first on Breitbart.
A Democratic Senate hopeful on Saturday shredded Robert F. Kennedy Jr. like the lettuce Americans are now afraid to eat. U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D-MI) tore into the scandal-plagued Health and Human Services secretary as the nation faced a Cyclospora parasite outbreak — linked to contaminated shredded iceberg lettuce — under his watch. "The last time I checked, the guy who's running Health and Human Services for this country works out in jeans," El-Sayed quipped. "Meanwhile here in Michigan we're trying to dodge lettuce." El-Sayed was met with cheers and roars of laughter — the reference to Kennedy was met with boos. This is not the first time Kennedy has been mocked for his strange gym habit of working out in denim. A Vogue contributor tried it and decided the HHS secretary was "insane." "All I felt was sticky and desperate for a clean pair of sweatpants," Emma Specter wrote in February. "My experiment in RFK Jr.-style jeans-clad exercise wasn’t the worst thing I could have experienced by following his lead (I could have a rubella rash or, at the very least, a nasty case of E. coli contracted from frozen bear patties right now). Nevertheless, it… wasn’t great."Nor was this the first ribbing Kennedy faced this weekend. On Friday, President Donald Trump took aim at his Health secretary in front of a room of journalists at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. "I hope that everyone finally got to enjoy their entire very delicious beef tenderloin," Trump said. Then he pointed to Kennedy and said, "[He] personally ran over the cow in his car."This was likely a reference to Kennedy's habit of collecting road kill for strange purposes — among them a bear cub crime scene frame-up in Central Park. These odd quirks of Kennedy's prompted El-Sayed to tell his crowd of supporters in Michigan, "I think we might be able to use a public health Senator right about now."
