#SAVE Tool Keeps Mistakenly Flagging #Voters as #Noncitizens, Sparking Confusion for States

ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found that the Department of Homeland Security rushed out a tool for identifying noncitizens on #voter rolls while the agency was still adding data and before it could discern voters’ most up-to-date #citizenship information
#dhs #elections

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3cX15J7_4wU

Letters from an American – January 31, 2026 – Heather Cox Richardson

https://substack.com/session-attribution-frame

Letters from an American, January 31, 2026

By Heather Cox Richardson

Jan 31, 2026

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted on social media this morning:

“Plenty of countries in history have experimented with importing a foreign labor class. The West is the first and only civilization to import a foreign labor class that is granted full political rights, including welfare & the right to vote. All visas are a bridge to citizenship. In America, for generations now, the policy has been that anyone who would economically benefit from moving to the US can do so, exercise the franchise in the US and their children, the moment they are born, will be full American citizens with all the rights and benefits therein.”

After his call for a “labor class” excluded from citizenship and a voice in government, Miller went on to reject the idea that Haitians living and working legally in Ohio should be described as part of Ohio communities. Calling out Democratic former senator Sherrod Brown, who is running for the Senate again this year, for including them, Miller posted: “Democrats just flatly reject any concept of nationhood that has ever existed in human history.”

History is doing that rhyming thing again.

Editor’s Note: We are seeing just the edges of “white supremacy” from Miller and others. These posts try to hide the message, the white race in America is superior, and the rest are our “labor force,” but not citizens. We appear to see the edges of Nazi-ideology and the “superior race,” from Miller and others aligned with his views. –DrWeb

In 1858, Senator James Henry Hammond (D-SC), a wealthy enslaver, rose to explain to his northern colleagues why their objection to human enslavement was so badly misguided. “In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life,” he said. Such workers needed few brains and little skill; they just had to be strong, docile, and loyal to their betters, who would organize their labor and then collect the profits from it, concentrating that wealth into their own hands to move society forward efficiently.

Hammond called such workers “the mud-sill of society and political government.” Much like the beams driven into the ground to support a stately home above, the mudsill supported “that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement.” The South had pushed Black Americans into that mudsill role. “We use them for our purpose, and call them slaves,” he said. The North also had a mudsill class, he added: “the man who lives by daily labor…in short, your whole hireling class of manual laborers and ‘operatives,’ as you call them, are essentially slaves.”

But Hammond warned that the North was making a terrible mistake. “Our slaves do not vote,” he said. “We give them no political power. Yours do vote, and, being the majority, they are the depositories of all your political power. If they knew the tremendous secret, that the ballot-box is stronger than ‘an army with banners,’ and could combine, where would you be? Your society would be reconstructed, your government overthrown, your property divided…by the quiet process of the ballot-box.”

Hammond was very clear about what he believed the world should look like. Black Americans should always be subordinate to white men, of course, but white women, too, were subordinate. They were made “to breed,” as “toy[s] for recreation,” or to bring men “wealth and position,” he had explained to his son in 1852. Hammond’s promising early political career had been nearly derailed when he admitted that for two years he had sexually assaulted his four young nieces, the daughters of the powerful Wade Hampton II (although he insisted he was being wronged because he should get credit for showing any restraint at all when faced with four such “lovely creatures”).

If women and Black people were at the bottom of society, southern white men were an “aristocracy” by virtue of their descent from “the ancient cavaliers of Virginia…a race of men without fear and without reproach,” “alike incapable of servility and selfishness.” By definition, whatever such leaders did was what was good for society, and any man who had not achieved that status was excluded because of his own failings or criminal inclinations.

The southern system, Hammond told the Senate, was “the best in the world…such as no other people ever enjoyed upon the face of the earth,” and spreading it would benefit everyone.

The next year, rising politician Abraham Lincoln told an audience at the Wisconsin state fair in Milwaukee that he rejected Hammond’s mudsill theory. Lincoln explained that Hammond’s “mud-sill theory” divided the world into permanent castes, arguing that men with money drove the economy and workers were stuck permanently at the bottom.

For his part, Lincoln embraced a different theory: It was workers, not wealthy men, who drove the economy. While men of wealth had little incentive to experiment and throw themselves into their work, men on the make were innovative and hardworking. Such men could—and should—rise. This “free labor” theory articulated the true meaning of American democracy for northerners and for the non-slave-holding southerners, who, as Lincoln reminded his listeners, made up a majority in the South. “The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land, for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him,” he explained.

In the election of 1860, southern Democrats tried to get voters to back their worldview by promising they were reflecting God’s will and by using virulent racism, warning that Black Americans must be kept in their place or they would destroy American society.

But, in a nation of immigrants and men who had worked their way up from day laborers to become prominent men, Lincoln stood firm on the Declaration of Independence. He warned that if people started to make exceptions to the idea that all men are created equal, they would not stop. They would “transform this Government into a government of some other form.” “If that declaration is not the truth,” Lincoln said, “let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out!” To cries of “No! No!” he responded: “[L]et us stand firmly by it then.”

Miller’s white nationalism is not the concept on which this nation was built. The United States of America was built on the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the sweat and blood of almost 250 years of Americans, often those from marginalized communities, working to make those principles a reality.

The hierarchical system Miller embraces echoes the system championed by those like Hammond, who imagined themselves the nation’s true leaders who had the right to rule. They were not bound by the law, and they rejected the idea that those unwilling to recognize their superiority should have either economic or political power.

The horrors of the Epstein files show a group of powerful and wealthy men and women who sexually assaulted children and showed no concern either for their crimes or that they might have to answer to the law. The public still does not know the extent of the horrors or the human-trafficking business in which Epstein and others were engaged. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters yesterday that the Department of Justice was not releasing any item from the Epstein files that showed “death, physical abuse, or injury.”

“You [know] the biggest problem with being friends with you?” Dr. Peter Attia wrote in an email to Epstein in response to an email with the subject line “Got a fresh shipment.” Attia answered his own question: “The life you lead is so outrageous, and yet I can’t tell a soul.”

Trump echoed Hammond in a different way tonight on Air Force One as he traveled to Florida. Asked by a reporter how he would handle being on both sides of his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, he suggested that taking the money of the American people into his own hands would enable him to use it for the public good. “I’m supposed to work out a settlement with myself,” he said. “We could make it a substantial amount, nobody would care because it’s gonna go to numerous, very good charities.”

Another story tonight indicated the degree to which the president sees himself as part of a wealthy caste that is above the law. Sam Kessler, Rebecca Ballhous, Eliot Brown, and Angus Berwick of the Wall Street Journal published a blockbuster report showing that four days before Trump’s 2025 inauguration, men working for an Abu Dhabi royal signed a secret deal with the Trump family to buy 49% of their brand-new cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial. The investors would pay half immediately, sending $187 million to entities held by the Trump family and at least $31 million to entities held by Steve Witkoff, a co-founder of World Liberty Financial whom Trump had named U.S. envoy to the Middle East weeks earlier.

The deal was backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is the brother of the president of the United Arab Emirates and oversees more than $1.3 trillion that includes the country’s largest wealth fund. Tahnoon has wanted access to U.S. AI technology, but the Biden administration blocked access out of concern it could end up in Chinese hands. The Trump administration, in striking contrast, has committed to allowing the United Arab Emirates to buy about half a million of the most advanced AI chips a year.

Federal agents acting for the Trump administration are trying to enforce the authority of those like Miller, tear-gassing, arresting, and killing American citizens. Thousands marched peacefully in Portland, Oregon, today but, as Alex Baumhardt of the Oregon Capital Chronicle recorded, “federal officers outside the ICE facility in Portland…indiscriminately threw loads of gas and flash bangs” at marchers, including children. Portland, Oregon, city councillor Mitch Green reported: “I just got tear gassed along with thousands of union members, many of whom had their families with them. Federal agents at the ICE facility tear gassed children. We must abolish ICE, DHS, and we must have prosecutions.”

Tim Dickinson of The Contrarian wrote: “Today I saw ICE gas little white kids in the streets of Portland with chemical weapons. Imagine what they’re doing to brown and black kids in the detention camps.”

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link. Featured image at the top is WP AI creation. — DrWeb

Continue/Read Original Article Here: January 31, 2026 – by Heather Cox Richardson

Noncitizens & MORE ARTISTS [X-MAS NAVIDAD] - by SOMOS HUMANOS, CARDALES - 25 Dec feat. Noncitizens, Bob Tosh

#SESH #Noncitizens #BobTosh

https://sesh.sx/e/1458921

#DHS Wants States to Hand Over Driver’s #License Data for #Citizenship Checks

It’s the latest step in an unprecedented initiative to pool confidential data that the #Trump administration claims will help identify #noncitizens on #voter rolls and tighten #immigration enforcement.
#privacy #ICE #Immigrants #driverslicense #MAGA

https://www.propublica.org/article/dhs-citizenship-checks-drivers-license-data?

FACT FOCUS:
Posts overestimate number of #noncitizens living in #US by tens of millions

https://www.twincities.com/2025/08/22/fact-check-trump-visas/

Humanos Mallorca, with Guy Gerber, Colyn, Noncitizens @ Coliseo Balear, Palma de Mallorca - 13 Sep feat. Guy Gerber, Colyn, Noncitizens

#SESH #GuyGerber #Colyn #Noncitizens

https://sesh.sx/events/12229454

Feds charge 3 current or former #Louisiana #police chiefs in an alleged #visa #fraud scheme

Federal authorities said Wednesday that they charged 3 current or former Louisiana police chiefs with taking hundreds of #bribes in exchange for filing false police reports that would allow #noncitizens to seek a visa that allows certain #crime victims to stay in the #US.

#criminal #law #corruption #bribery #MoneyLaundering
https://apnews.com/article/louisiana-visa-fraud-police-chiefs-charges-5b186fac2a61cb7266087c8cd7f00621?utm_source=onesignal&utm_medium=push&utm_campaign=2025-07-16-Breaking+News

1/2 US Protest Law Tracker - Updates to #Federal #Protest Laws introduced in 2025.

Latest updates: Jun. 10, 2025 (US Federal)

Providing for deportation of non-citizens who commit protest-related offenses

Would cancel the visa of any individual convicted of protest-related crimes and provide for the individual’s deportation within 60 days. Under the bill, individuals convicted of any “crime (i) related to [their] conduct at and during the course of a protest; (ii) involving the defacement, vandalism, or destruction of Federal property; or (iii) involving the intentional obstruction of any highway, road, bridge, or tunnel” would be deportable. The bill requires that such individuals’ visas be “immediately” cancelled and the individuals removed from the US within 60 days. If enacted, a non-citizen convicted of even a nonviolent misdemeanor “related to” a protest, such as trespass or disorderly conduct, could face deportation. The bill’s sponsor cited protests around immigration raids in #LosAngeles as the impetus for his bill.
(Full text of Bill: https://www.cotton.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/61025novisasforviolentcriminalsactreintro.pdf)
Status: pending
Introduced 10 Jun 2025.
Issue(s): Traffic Interference

Heightened penalties for "#riot" offenses

Would amend the federal #AntiRioting law to raise the maximum penalty to ten years in prison, instead of five, for participating in or inciting a “riot,” or aiding or abetting someone to do so. The federal definition of “riot” is broad, requiring only a “public disturbance” where one individual in a group commits violence. Under the bill, someone who committed or abetted an “act of violence” during the commission of a “riot” offense would face a minimum one-year sentence, while an individual who assaulted a law enforcement officer would face a sentence of at least one year and up to life in prison. Federal law defines “act of violence” broadly to include using force against #property—or just attempting or threatening to use such force. As such, if enacted, the bill could result in steep criminal penalties for protesters who do not actually engage in violence or destructive conduct. The bill’s sponsor cited protests around immigration raids in Los Angeles as the impetus for his bill.
Status: pending
Introduced 10 Jun 2025.
Issue(s): Riot

HR 2272: Blocking #FinancialAid to students who commit a "riot"-related offense

Would bar federal financial assistance and loan forgiveness for any student convicted of a crime in connection with a “riot.” The bar would apply to students convicted of “rioting” or “a) inciting a riot; b) organizing, promoting, encouraging, participating in, or carrying on a riot; c) committing any act of violence in furtherance of a riot; or d) aiding or abetting any person in inciting or participating in or carrying on a riot or committing any act of violence in furtherance of a riot.” Many states define “riot” broadly enough to cover peaceful protest activity; many also have broad laws criminalizing “incitement to riot” that cover protected expression. The bill would bar financial aid and #LoanForgiveness for students convicted under such provisions. As written, the bill would also bar financial aid and loan forgiveness to students convicted of any offense related to “#organizing, #promoting, encouraging” a riot, or “aiding and abetting” incitement or participation in a riot, which could cover an even wider range of expressive conduct, from sharing a social media post to cheering on demonstrators in a protest that was deemed a “riot.”
(Full text of bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/2272)
Status: pending
Introduced 21 Mar 2025.
Issue(s): #CampusProtests, Riot, Limit on #PublicBenefits

#HR2273: Providing for visa revocation and deportation of #noncitizens who commit a "riot"-related offense

Would require the Secretary of State to revoke the visa of and make deportable a noncitizen #student, #scholar, #teacher, or #specialist convicted of a crime in connection with a “riot.” Under the bill, individuals in the US on an F-1, J-1, or M-1 visa would have their visas revoked and would be deportable if they were convicted of “rioting” or “a) inciting a riot; b) organizing, promoting, encouraging, participating in, or carrying on a riot; c) committing any act of violence in furtherance of a riot; or d) aiding or abetting any person in inciting or participating in or carrying on a riot or committing any act of violence in furtherance of a riot.” Many states define “riot” broadly enough to cover peaceful protest activity; many also have broad laws criminalizing “incitement to riot” that cover protected expression. The bill would provide for the deportation of foreign students, scholars, and others convicted under such provisions. As written, the bill would also provide for their deportation if convicted of any offense related to “organizing, promoting, encouraging” a riot, or “aiding and abetting” incitement or participation in a riot, which could cover an even wider range of expressive conduct, from sharing a #SocialMediaPost to cheering on #demonstrators in a protest that was deemed a “riot.”
(Full text of bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/2273)
Status: pending
Introduced 21 Mar 2025.
Issue(s): Campus Protests, Riot

#S1017: New federal criminal penalties for protests near #pipelines

Would create a new federal #felony offense that could apply to protests of planned or operational pipelines. The bill would broadly criminalize under federal law “knowingly and willfully” “#vandalizing, tampering with, disrupting the operation or construction of, or preventing the operation or construction of” a gas pipeline. A range of peaceful activities could be deemed “disrupting… the construction of” a pipeline, from a rally that obstructs a road used by construction equipment, to a #lawsuit challenging a pipeline’s #permit or# zoning approval. The bill does not define “disrupt,” such that even a brief delay would seemingly be covered. Further, the underlying law provides that any "attempt" or "conspiracy" to commit the offense would be punished the same as actual commission. As such, individuals as well as organizations that engage in the planning or facilitation of a protest that is deemed to “disrupt” pipeline construction could be covered. The offense would be punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for an individual, or $500,000 for an organization.
(Full text of bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/1017)
Status: pending
Introduced 13 Mar 2025.
Issue(s): Protest Supporters or Funders, #Infrastructure

#ProtestLaws #protestors #protestors_in_prison #CivilLiberties #Fascism #USA #USPol #NoKings #Project2025 #TrumpIsAFascist

#FactCheck

#BillClinton did not sign law in 1996 allowing #deportation without #dueprocess

The act created a legal mechanism called "expedited removal," a process that allows the deportation of certain #noncitizens without a #courthearing.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bill-clinton-immigration-reform-act/