The Rise of State Violence in the United States

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Welcome to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams from Crooked Media.

I'm your host, Stacey Abrams.

On October 15th, Pete Hexeth evicted the Pentagon Press Corps for refusing to agree to voluntary censorship.

The United States Department of Defense had previously issued a 21-page decree laying out press restrictions that constrain press access to information and curtail the right of journalists to share what they'd learned with the public without Pentagon permission.

When all of the journalists refused, except for the right-wing propaganda Apparatch OAN, the Defense Department confiscated the press badges of hundreds of Pentagon journalists.

This is occurring at a moment when Qatari fighter pilots have been promised access to Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho.

And the U.S.

military has been striking civilian boats off the coast of Venezuela, killing 27 people without a congressional declaration of war.

And as disturbing as these items are in isolation, they come together to paint a starkly terrifying portrait of America in 2025.

You see, the same military that is now hiding from scrutiny and denying public access is the very one that has deployed National Guardsmen into American cities that Trump has described as the enemies within.

We have military occupation of Washington, D.C., and promised or completed incursions into Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Memphis.

I'm not going to bother with the mealy-mouthed excuses they've offered.

They are utter nonsense.

And even if they were a little true, this behavior by our government is unconscionable and it has a body count.

But the vast might of American power without congressional or judicial restraints stretches across agencies.

There's the NSPM 7, the presidential edict that brands dissent as domestic terrorism.

The enforcement mechanisms there are the FBI, the IRS, and the Department of Justice.

Over at the Department of Homeland Security, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau has become a full-on paramilitary secret police dispatched to menace, threaten, and kidnap citizens and immigrants alike, armed with Blackhawk helicopters and lethal weapons.

The U.S.

Supreme Court, in an unsigned opinion, told them it's okay to apply these tactics based on the race and language of their suspects.

Their goals are blatant and simple.

to impose state violence as a deterrent and as retaliation for non-violent transformative beliefs like demanding an economy that works for everyone or denouncing ISA's oppressive tactics.

To pervert our rights and label practitioners as extremist, to target the vulnerable and the marginalized as warm-ups to full-scale right-wing domination.

The chosen form of political power is authoritarianism.

But the ideology?

Well, that's an American blend of Christian nationalism and ethno-fascism that uses the threat of state violence to accomplish state capture.

Now, my description may sound like exaggeration or fear-mongering, but it's not.

Hyperbole is no longer required when we're describing what's unfolding in America under this apocalyptic Republican authoritarian regime.

Military personnel still occupy DC, even if the outrage has faded from the headlines.

The comic clashes between inflatable frogs and armed secret police in Portland are deeply serious.

Los Angeles residents still worry about kidnappings at local home depots based on a Supreme Court-sanctioned skin color test.

In suburban Chicago last month, a masked ICE agent fired a pepper ball into the head of a Presbyterian pastor as he prayed outside an ICE facility.

Another agent fatally shot a Mexican immigrant in Illinois.

And earlier this month, ICE carried out a military-style raid on a Southside Chicago apartment building in the dead of night, rappelling down from a Black Hawk helicopter to menace and detain hundreds of residents, undocumented people and citizens alike, many of them children.

But Trump and his loyalists aren't stopping with shutting out the press, flagrant misuse of the military, auctioning off our internal security, and hunting down law-abiding Americans.

They and their Republican allies who have justified this behavior, or worse, cheered on the shredding of American liberties have more in store for all of us.

They have promised worse, and we should believe them.

Step nine in the 10 steps to autocracy and authoritarianism is the normalization of violence.

And if there's one thing Republicans have proven since January's inauguration, it's that they are not afraid to use excessive force against those they deem unworthy of their presence here in America.

Whether through police, ICE, or the National Guard, this authoritarian regime will deploy whatever power they deem necessary to get what they want and to intimidate perceived enemies.

While Trump may be the face of these acts of brutality, the silence or support of every Republican in office, from governors sending troops to patrol peaceful American cities to the members of Congress fighting to block health care, but not acts of undeclared war, they are all responsible.

We cannot heap so much blame on Trump that we exonerate his handlers and those who cheer him on.

State violence didn't erupt overnight.

It builds, desensitizing the public to corruption and cruelty.

And it's not a new part of our history.

The litany is chillingly long.

The institution of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Act, the forced march of Native Americans along the Trail of Tears, the perversity of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan, Japanese internment, the Eisenhower mass deportations, the Ohio National Guard killing four student protesters at Kent State, and police brutality at peaceful protests from the civil rights movement all the way through to Black Lives Matter.

Again and again, the state has used violence to control and oppress oppress its citizens.

But again and again, we have learned to recognize its intent and organize to defeat its barbaric ends.

Those are the 10 steps to freedom and power.

And like so much of what has happened since the overthrow of democracy, Unfortunately, we are slowly becoming numb to the realities of what horrors are being carried out in our name by our government against our people and our neighbors.

That numbness is the point.

Our grudging acceptance of the inevitable is the point.

Too often we say nothing because we believe not only that we can change nothing, but that to protest would put us in harm's way.

But doing nothing is dangerous, deceptively so.

And that's why this week on Assembly Required, we're bringing on two guests who are experts in recognizing, responding to, and rebuilding after state violence.

Lindsay Tozlowski, co-founder and president-slash-CEO of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, and Insha Rahman, Vice President of Advocacy and Partnerships at the Vera Institute of Justice and Director of Vera Action.

InshaA Rahman and Lindsay Tozlowski, welcome to Assembly Required.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, glad to be here.

So I've developed this framework called the 10 Steps Campaign, and it outlines the key moves that authoritarians make to dismantle democracy.

Things like gutting civil services, shutting down the government, installing loyalists, attacking the media, scapegoating marginalized communities.

And in that 10-step process for authoritarianism and autocracy, step two focuses on the expansion of executive power, pushing presidential authority beyond its legal limits to see just how far the system will bend.

So, Insha, I'm going to start with you.

How are we seeing Trump and his administration test those boundaries right now?

What we are watching is a full-on assault on democratic norms and institutions and the very things that we as a society hold dear under the politics of fear.

And this isn't a new playbook.

Many listeners will know the Willie Horton story from 1988, a very famous, infamous ad that the GOP ran against Michael Dukakis

and featuring a man who had been released from prison in Massachusetts.

And really, as you watch that, you see the politics of fear on full display, the racial implications of crime and who is quote unquote a criminal, the fear of safety, and that if you don't agree to repressive authoritarian tactics, that you will not be safe.

And look, safety is one of those things that is apolitical.

It doesn't matter how you vote, everybody wants to be safe.

And what the GOP has done so effectively since 1988, well before it and certainly today, is play upon those politics of fear.

And we are seeing that in Overdrive right now.

And so, what does it look like?

It looks like mass raids in communities where our neighbors are being snatched up off the street without any probable cause or due process.

It looks like National Guard and federal law enforcement being sent into our cities, the militarization of our cities under the guise of quote-unquote crime control when what we know it is, is it's not about public safety.

And things like running roughshod over basic due process process and legal norms like bombing boats in near you know the coast of Venezuela claiming that these are drug cartels and all of this is without basis in the law at best it is sort of open-ended of like is this legal or not we should be calling it this is not legal this is not with precedent in the law and we have to be calling it out and challenging it.

And one thing we are seeing is that when the American public sees this, they see their neighbors being snatched up, they see boats being bombed for no good reason, they see military on our streets and cities, they say, this is not safety and we don't want this in our name.

And Lindsay, I know and should just laid out what's happening now.

I'd love for you to talk a bit about how immigration has been weaponized both now and previously and how this moment differs from what we've seen before or does it?

Yeah, well, I think it does.

So I'll start there.

I mean, what we're seeing are really unprecedented attacks on due process for immigrants and on immigrant communities really across the board.

And I was talking with my team, you know, earlier this week about what's different between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0.

And, you know, there are a few key differences.

And the biggest part of it is that we're really operating now in a place where they aren't afraid to break the law.

And I think

we see that with the raids that happened here in Los Angeles and that continue to happen in Chicago and DC and across the country with the rampant use of racial profiling.

This is something that would have been violating the law and norms during the prior administration, during the first Trump administration.

but they are blatantly violating the law.

And we see this also particularly with due process

in order to move forward their goals of mass deportation they have decided that due process is no longer the law of the land.

They run ramshod over due process in almost every instance of the immigration system right now.

And we've seen this escalating since you know the first executive orders that came out in January right after the inauguration

to what is happening now.

And what this has looked like in real time in our immigration courts

are people who do everything the government asks them to do.

Whether they came in through CBP1 appointments at the border, whether they show up to their court hearings, whether they have a criminal history or not, none of it matters because

without due process, people don't get their day in court.

And we've seen this time and time again, where people show up to court, the court is dismissing their case at the government's request, and they're being detained.

So all of this is to say that, you know, when I think about what is happening, it's really that Stephen Miller and the Trump administration find due process and those

vital constitutional protections inconvenient to their plans for mass deportation.

And they are operating in a space where they want to push that as far as possible to see

how far our judicial system will bend, but also how much our society will tolerate.

You know, if I could add something very quickly onto that,

Lindsay, you're talking about immigration.

I kicked off by talking about crime.

But for our opposition and for this GOP, they've basically conflated them as one and the same because it is essentially going back to playing upon fear.

And so if you think back to this time last year in the 2024 election cycle, who was the Willie Horton of that season, right?

It was people who are crossing the border.

It's our immigrant neighbors.

So it's not really about immigration policy or crime policy.

It's certainly not about keeping us safe, but it is playing upon the same fear and it's just a different character playing the main role.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

And it also has to do with the propaganda that we're seeing.

You know, I will follow the Department of Homeland Security on their socials just to see the way that they are portraying

people.

And when they, you know, their language that they use is so vile to describe people.

And for those of us who go inside of immigration detention centers and who are meeting with community members

who see that more than 70% have no criminal history, that many people who are being picked up here in Southern California have lived here for decades, are business owners.

Their kids go to school with our kids.

They're our neighbors, the heart of our community.

To have particular cases picked out and sort of blasted through all of these channels, through this entire media, you know, ecosphere

is really shows you that this idea of criminalizing immigrants and,

you know, criminalizing the entire community is a strategy.

It's a clear communication strategy.

I think both of you are making incredibly important points, and I think they come together in how Republicans have essentially declared war on America's cities.

And we call them blue cities, but let's be clear.

These are the places that are the most racially diverse.

They tend to have higher concentrations of immigrant populations, and they tend to vote more Democratic than Republican.

And we have watched them deploy the National Guard to Los Angeles, to D.C., to Tennessee.

They're heading to Oregon.

And I want to really put a fine point on this, that the National Guard that's being deployed is often being contributed by Republican governors in other states, which is why this is not to me just a Trump issue.

This is a Republican issue.

But before we dive deeper into that, Incha, I would love to have you describe how the National Guard actually works.

To my point, who typically deploys the troops and what role do they play?

Yeah, so the National Guard is a standing body of thousands of officers who are ready to be deployed.

We often see governors and

state officials call in the National Guard for emergencies like the wildfires in California or flooding in Texas or the Eastern Seaboard.

They are ready to step in in emergencies.

They are also often deployed overseas to help with military.

What they are not there to do is to do local law enforcement.

They are not there to enforce local laws around crime and public safety.

And this is where what the Trump administration is doing, to Lindsay's point, of Trump 1.0 versus Trump 2.0,

this administration is blowing through all the norms of what the National Guard is here to do.

And we are seeing the rest of the GOP go along with it as well.

But again, there's...

A standing body.

There's two different ways that they can be called in and called to action.

One is under Title 32, which is state and local control.

It's what governors can activate to, again, respond to an emergency, respond to other kinds of deployments.

And then there is Title 10, which is what is under the president's power, executive power.

And it is for good reason over the past 200 years has been cabined very, very carefully so that the federal government and the president can't step over states' rights and the authority and independence of local governors.

And let me just say a few words about sort of how the Title 10 power of the National Guard and of the President is cabined.

One is there's this law that suddenly, you know, sort of we talk about at cocktail parties, the posse comitatus law, which nobody had heard of, I think, until quite recently, and everybody should know about it.

It was a law that was put in place during the

Civil War to protect states' rights, to say the president cannot use the National Guard for local law enforcement.

The only way to get around that, at least under the laws we know it right now, is what's called the Insurrection Act, which again is also suddenly cocktail party sort of conversation.

And the Insurrection Act is essentially in very limited circumstances to put down a rebellion, to enforce the law when things are quote-unquote out of control.

That is the limited circumstances in which a president can say, over the

objection of a governor, I'm sending in the National Guard locally.

And so this is like, again, to that point of, is what they are doing legal?

Are they bending the law?

Yes, they are absolutely bending the law because this and what is happening in cities, we mentioned DC, Portland, Memphis.

It is just without any kind of precedent or norms in our law.

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And Lindsay, I want to come back to you because I was recently at an event where someone said, well, mass deportation isn't actually working.

That instead this is mostly theater and that the left is overreacting.

But as Incha pointed out, and as you've pointed out,

the National Guard has been called in.

We have military occupation of our cities.

And to me, and to my observation, the immigration crackdown hasn't slowed at all.

Can you talk about why we should be concerned about what is happening and what it portends, not just over the next few weeks, but what does it portend for the next few years?

Yeah,

I think, you know, it's a bit of two issues.

With the National Guard, and I can just say this from personal experience here in Los Angeles.

My office is in downtown LA.

The federal building is just a few blocks from here.

And we have had National Guard here since June of this year.

National Guard,

you know, were

largely at the federal building itself.

But the theatrics that the Trump administration portrayed of what they were doing, it was almost incredible.

I mean, to live here and to, you know, go to opera in the park one night while the president is on TV talking about LA burning to the ground.

And then to walk by the federal building to see on the streets of downtown Los Angeles, steps from my building, to walk by with my own kids who are out on the street, to have people, you know, in military gear, heavily armed.

It's just something that I, you know, had never imagined that I would see

and so unnecessary.

And so now I really feel for people in Portland and Chicago because I imagine they're experiencing the same thing where what is being said about their cities, it's so blatantly false about the conditions, about the crime that's occurring, occurring, about the, you know, here in LA, I say that, you know, there was literally no unrest.

We had a protest one afternoon, and the next thing we know,

you know, we have National Guard troops.

So all of that is to say I think the National Guard is political theater for the Trump administration to push forward their ideas that

cities need this when it is so clear for those of us living in these places that we do not.

That being said, in terms of mass deportation, you know, we are in a real crisis moment.

In my 15 years of representing people in immigration court, of representing people in ICE prisons, we have never seen the things that we are seeing now.

And they are different in fundamental ways that

merit the response and the outrage and really the the red flags that we are all raising about what's happening.

One, right now we know that more than 61,000 people are in ICE detention across our country.

That is the highest number that we have ever had.

It surpasses the numbers from 2019 when we previously had, you know, even close to this number.

And what that looks like in a place like Los Angeles that has seen these large-scale Home Depot,

large-scale raids at places like Home Depot and on street corners and at car washes.

since early June are people being ripped out of our communities, more than 6,000 from our region alone?

IMDEF has a rapid response hotline where we

talk to family members of people who are detained.

More than a third of the people who have been detained are now outside of the state of California in ICE prisons.

And I bring this up because the way that it happens is people are detained.

They're held in the basement of a building in downtown Los Angeles in the most horrific conditions you could imagine in U.S.

government custody, often without access to bathrooms, without access to water, without access to food.

Many people, we've had people on dialysis who are in those conditions with active chemo,

all sorts of medical conditions.

And that is really because of those conditions, why we are on track to have one of the deadliest years in ICE custody history, with the 19th person dying just this week in government custody.

But those conditions and sending people far away from their families and far away from their lawyers is intentional.

It's intentionally cruel in order to give, to get people to give up on the constitutional rights they have to fight their case.

And so by holding people in these horrific conditions at numbers that we have never seen before, and getting people to, you know, voluntarily accept removals rather than remain in horrific and deadly conditions, that is all part of their plan to move people out as quickly as possible.

So, you know, to the point that the person was making at the event you were at, I would say, you know, take a closer look.

Look at what is happening in our detention centers.

Look at the data because we are in a moment that we have never seen before.

And the numbers that we will see if they are able to continue to push forward at the rate they are right now will fundamentally alter places like Los Angeles.

And I think, you know, our governor and Mayor Karen Bass and others have said this over and over.

We in Los Angeles and California thrive because of our immigrant communities, not in spite of them.

So to have that core of our city and our county and our state pulled apart in such a horrific manner, you know, I think the hypothesis.

hysteria is really not loud enough right now given the damage that's happening to our our communities.

And I would ask both of you, and I'm going to start with you, Lindsay, who is responsible for that observation?

You said if people knew what was happening inside, we have watched congressional members, we've watched mayors, we've watched city council members be arrested for trying to observe.

Who is watching the watchers?

Who is actually responsible for making certain that 19 people do not die in government custody?

And

I guess the fundamental question is who's failing us right now and what could we do about it?

So I think there is obviously congressional oversight and we have seen

many members of Congress attempting to do that.

And Senator Ossof did an incredible report on the conditions that exist in immigration detention and why they are becoming so deadly at this time.

I think

similar to where we started this conversation, part of the issue is that we are functioning with

an administration that is engaging in authoritarian practices, that believes they do not need to follow the law, they do not need to follow the norms of allowing congressional oversight of these facilities.

They take

opportunities to almost mock

congressional representatives who come to conduct this oversight.

And the way that I look at this in terms of who has a front row seat, really, lawyers have been able.

We currently are suing the government for continued access to counsel for people who are being held in the detention center here in downtown Los Angeles that I mentioned.

We are insisting on that access to counsel because, in addition to Congress, it has to be the lawyers who are able to meet with people to tell these stories.

And then, you know, it's really a whole of civil society approach in terms of us then being able to, you know, come to places like this to say

what we're seeing, but also to be able to make sure that the media is focusing in on what's happening.

Because I think when the...

When people realize what's happening, when they hear about the conditions that our child clients and their parents are being held in, when they hear about

children being woken up in the middle of the night under the cover of darkness to be shuttled onto planes to be removed without due process.

When people hear about these conditions, when they know that we are holding people who need medical attention and some who've died because they don't get that medical attention, you know, using our tax dollars in for-profit prisons.

This is not a popular issue.

This is not something that looks good for the Trump administration.

And so I think it is, you know, really Congress, it's the lawyers, it is all of us, the media that need to make sure that we are shining a light on these atrocities that are happening every single day across the country.

And Incha, as you respond, I'd love for you to widen the scope because part of what's happening is that for a lot of Americans, they say, well, these are immigrants.

They weren't here legally.

Therefore, it's not really my issue.

But can you talk about what the treatment of migrants in the United States, this horrific treatment, what it means when it's juxtaposed with the escalation of militarization, with the military occupations?

What does that mean for the rest of America to allow this to happen without pushing back, without responding?

Stacey, you asked the question of who is responsible, and I would say all of us.

We saw on day one, January 20th, this sort of overreach of suddenly ICE agents out.

in neighborhoods, in communities.

This isn't a sort of ramp up from this summer.

This has been happening.

And one of the responses we heard was, well, Trump won with a mandate.

He won the popular vote.

This is where the voters are.

And we have to fix the immigration system.

So we are not going to call this out for being

as

depraved and as outside of the law as it is.

And what that has led to is such a slippery slope, right?

It's the fact that President Trump and the GOP sent out ICE agents, picked up people, and that went unchecked in February, in March, in April, in May.

And then suddenly we are seeing the military being deployed on our streets.

It's the exact same sort of abuse of power.

It's just going from targeting immigrants to targeting everyday American people and everybody.

And we have to be afraid of the slippery slope because this is a regime that believes I will take as much power as you give me and I will take some more.

And unless we check that power, even if you don't care about immigrants, and let's be real, every single one of us should, because immigrants are part of our communities, our families, they are part of the workforce.

Like you have to actually stand up for what's right.

It doesn't matter who is the target of it, because if you don't, at some point very soon, it will be you.

Both ICE and military activity have been met with protest across the country.

You know, I think about Augusto Pinochet in Chile or the Shah of Iran before the Iranian Revolution.

Both of of them used extreme force as a way to quell public dissent.

Lindsay, can you talk about how protests are being leveraged by authoritarians as a means of public control?

Well, I think we're seeing this, you know, today in Chicago and in Portland, and we certainly saw it in Los Angeles.

There is a very clear game plan that happened first here in LA and then now is happening in other cities across the country, including DC,

which is the government is doing things to provoke protest.

They are doing things that are intentionally provoking the communities, whether those are ICE raids done in the most violent, horrific situations we've seen where people are being beaten.

Here in LA, one of the things that we're tracking are the number of people who haven't even made it into ICE custody yet because they are missing, because they are hospitalized after being beaten by ICE agents or by Border Patrol who are regularly conducting

actions

within the city.

And these Border Patrol agents,

to the naked eye, to a civilian, would appear to be National Guard because of the way they're dressed, because of the guns that they are holding, because of the combat uniforms they are wearing.

Yet they are at car washes.

in Los Angeles.

So

things like that that are happening are purposely provoking the community.

And then when a protest happens, they are inciting violence.

The government is inciting violence by having heavily armed troops or others there.

They are, you know, throwing tear gas.

We even had two of our lawyers back on June 7th who were photographed speaking to Border Patrol, asking them, what are you doing here?

Is this a raid?

Do you have a warrant?

And those two lawyers, two young female lawyers, were tear gassed moments later.

They had tear gas thrown at them.

Those types of incidents are meant to provoke a reaction from the public to turn a peaceful protest violent and then use that.

as an excuse for further crackdown and further authoritarian crackdown on protesters themselves.

So it is designed specifically to do that, and we've we've seen that play out.

They tested it here in LA first.

Then they went to DC.

Now they're in Chicago.

Now they're in Portland.

And I think to the point that we were talking about earlier, in terms of, you know, not only if this can happen to immigrants, who could be next?

It's also if this can happen on the streets of LA, what city is next?

This is the beginning of them attempting to crack down on dissent at all across the country.

And, you know, I think that we thought that's what was happening in LA, and it has played out exactly as you would have expected.

And Sha, as Lindsay just alluded to, this is not just intended to create harm, it's intended to punish dissent.

And at the time of this recording, the No Kings protests are days away.

And we have heard again and again how the Republican regime's rhetoric towards these protests is vile.

It is

deeply disturbing, and it has become a part of what is now just sort of expected.

Can you talk about what they are intending to invoke with this rhetoric and what type of conduct they want to be able to criminalize next if it works?

With their rhetoric calling peaceful protest anti-American, the work of criminals, domestic terrorism, and Stacey, I know your rule is I don't want to repeat their language.

And I think that is a really good one because we are not accepting their framing.

But I think it's really important to name the absurdities of what they are calling peaceful protest, which is deeply, deeply American and has a long tradition in this country.

And they are just saying it and they're saying it louder and louder as they are watching public support for their agenda plummet.

And I actually think that's a really important point to make here because we've talked a lot about the atrocities that we are seeing.

What I hope we also talk about here is the really incredible resistance and response we are seeing at the local level from local leaders, from advocates, from regular everyday community members.

And so just some examples of really powerful protests to stand up to this rhetoric and to the, again, the politics of fear.

In Portland, we're watching, you know, like old women knitting outside, and that is their protest, or people in frog suits.

In Chicago, the mayor, Brandon Johnson, who followed very closely how Mayor Bass responded in LA, actually issued an executive order reminding people of the right to protest and how the mayor will take it upon himself and his local government to protect people's right to peacefully protest.

So there's actually a lot that this rhetoric, that this fear-mongering is being met with, that should give us a lot of hope.

And And you mentioned the No Kings protest, which is about to happen in two days.

There were millions and millions of people who turned out for the first No Kings protest in June.

It was, by most people's account, the largest one-day gathering of peaceful protest in this country's history.

And folks are hoping that 12 million people turn out for No Kings 2.0.

And there's an important point in that, which is we have seen a very smart, brilliant scholar of civil resistance Erika Chenoweth has named if 3.5 percent of the public turns out in opposition to an authoritarian's agenda that is the point at which we tip over and we are able to fight back and chances are we'll win so I think especially in the face of so much criminalizing of protest and painting it as anti-American and everything else, it is on us to lean into that very, very American right and exercise it in every way, shape, and form that we can.

And we are seeing with the American public, it is working.

People are standing up.

And that gives me actually a lot of hope.

I'm so glad you said that.

I mean, one of the reasons for the 10 Steps campaign that I've been working on is how do we aggregate and know how we're getting to that 3.5%?

How do we use common language about what we're doing?

How do we talk about committing, disrupting, engaging?

How do we use action items to let people know it's safe to be a part of this?

You can be knitting and be part of the resistance.

You can be protesting by marching, but you can also be a lawyer who responds to the MDEF calls and shows up to help.

And as we think about how people are responding, I'd love to turn to you, Lindsay, and talk about how leaders are responding.

Insha just laid out how Karen Bass and Brandon Johnson as mayors have been doing the work.

But have you seen other, and have you worked with other particularly strong government partners in this moment of crisis?

And what would you like to see more of them doing?

Yeah, we, you know, over the last, I mean, it feels like today's 266 days.

And, you know, we have had a lot of opportunities to work with different elected officials on some of our cases.

We obviously, you know, reach out to our elected officials for assistance.

I would say that, you know, when I think about

what needs to be done, I think what we really need is bold leadership, fearless leadership in this moment.

And I would say, you know, we have seen that coming from,

you know, I was there when Governor Newsom signed the law of no secret police here in California.

That I should not be raiding our communities, not identifying themselves, and doing it with a mask on.

You know, we'll see how that is able to be enforced and whether it's challenged in court.

But I think taking that type of bold step to say, we are seeing illegal activity by the federal government happening in front of us.

And even if it's not perfect, we are going to do something is the type of leadership we need.

And another example I would give is that

we represented Andre Hernandez-Romero.

He was the gay makeup artist from Venezuela who was removed from the United States in the middle of the night with no due process, held and tortured in El Salvador for 125 days.

We were able to work with Representative Robert Garcia, with Representative Takano, and others to make sure that that vile situation, that that horrific situation never left the, you know, never left the front pages, that it was talked about, that his name was said on the floor of Congress.

They were able to,

you know, talk about him and talk about him in a way that really used his case to show the absurdity and the illegality of the Trump administration's violations of due process and violations of human rights.

And

Robert Garcia actually went to El Salvador and attempted to visit Andri while he was there.

When I look at that leadership, you know, I'm sure if they took polls and were looking at the numbers and waiting to see is this going to be good for my reelection in the future, they wouldn't take those types of risks.

But in this moment, where we are seeing such grave violations of people's human rights, where we can see things happening before us that, you know, the violations of immigrant rights are really hitting at a violation of our democracy itself, we need that kind of bold leadership that is not just thinking about their own next election, but is thinking about the the future of our democracy.

And we have seen that,

you know, but I think we need more of that.

We need to see more people really thinking about the moment that we are in and taking that bold action that's necessary.

Because for organizations like ours and our many partners across the country, one major difference between the first Trump administration and this one is that the organizations and the people who are serving immigrant communities are also under attack.

And And so we are, you know, putting ourselves on the line and we need our elected officials to be standing right there with us because it's going to take all of us to stand up and take those risks of our own personal safety in order to

defeat what is happening right before our eyes.

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Well, I usually do this in the C block, but I'm going to take a moment of moderator privilege, host privilege, and say, you know, we are all seeing the footage of plain clothes, masked ICE agents who are refusing to show a badge or a warrant, who are detaining people in public.

And of course, this is scary.

We also have to think about the fact that there have been incidents of people impersonating ICE and attempting to abduct people.

And what you just called out, Lindsay, I think is so important.

And one thing I'm going to call on everyone to do, step six of the 10 steps to freedom and power includes doing the work of disrupting.

But then there's a step called engage.

And the engage step is to go to your local elected officials and ask them to do something.

I think it makes a lot of sense for citizens to go to your city council members, your county commissioners, anyone who's running for office right now, and ask them to follow the lead of Governor Newsom and say that masked agents cannot operate in their cities.

I don't care if your city has 100 people or 100,000 people or a million people.

It is about protecting your citizens, your residents.

Let's Let's demand that masked officers cannot operate in our communities.

Make them tell you why it's okay, because this isn't just about whether ICE can operate or not.

It's whether a bad actor, another type of bad actor, let's be clear, can impersonate someone and attempt to actually weaken the protections for all of us.

So I'm just going to put that out there as an opportunity for folks.

If you want to know a kind of policy you should be asking your leaders to pass right now, I think that would be an amazing policy.

And I'm going to invoke you, InshaA, to say, do you have any other thoughts about what people could be doing right now?

What else should they be asking their local elected officials to do that can be part of how they engage and push back?

So one thing I want to point out is we named early on in this conversation that the pretext under which these authoritarian power grabs are happening is quote unquote crime control.

And another thing that we are watching local elected leaders, especially mayors across this country, is to say, I am not letting that stand.

Let me tell you what actually works to make my city and our neighborhoods safe.

And they are leaning into the hard work of Community Violence Interruption, which has done remarkable work to drive down gun violence, to community-based organizations that provide mental health care and addiction treatment, that work with victims, that provide young people with summer youth employment and mentoring, and really being able to paint a picture of what it takes to prevent crime and break its cycle and to say, it's, yes, law enforcement plays an important role, but that's local law enforcement that works with our community, that doesn't come in and occupy us.

And this community actually knows better than anybody else what works.

And that's been really powerful to see because I actually think that that has been missing for so long that it created the opening for President Trump and the GOP to say, let me use the pretext of crime and crime being out of control in these big cities that Democrats run falling to pieces to actually do this.

And so I think that standing up is so important.

And everyday people should be asking their mayors, their local electeds, what kinds of investments are you making with our public dollars, with our taxpayer money, to address the concerns I have around untreated mental health and addiction, around gun violence prevention.

What are we doing for our young people to make sure that they have more opportunity?

And that's a conversation that people are super excited to have because safety matters to all of us.

It is such a nonpartisan thing.

I say this all the time.

And it's something that doesn't matter how you vote or sort of how you feel about, say, a harder issue like immigration or what President Trump is doing.

We can all have very local conversations about safety.

So that's something I also really call on folks to do because for one thing, it will help with getting into the right right solutions because this administration is blaming all the wrong causes of crime.

And if that's left unchecked, we miss the right solutions.

So, I think that piece of it is so important as well.

Yes, on the immigration front, but also on the crime and public safety front, too.

Because, again, they have been really

intertwined by this administration and by this GOP.

And we need to say we have real solutions to both, and we're not going to let you set that agenda.

That is fantastic.

Go Go ahead, Lindsay.

Please.

I was just going to say, on the idea of things that people can be doing,

you know, we obviously need to be pushing our elected officials, but you asked me earlier, Stacey, about

who's responsible.

And I loved Incha's answer, which was that we all are.

Who's responsible for oversight in our immigration detention facilities and our immigration courts for what's happening?

And a great example of this is that people can get involved with rapid response networks in their communities.

We have a right

to record the abuses that ICE is perpetrating on our communities.

We have the right to

record that, to share those videos.

And I really think as we push to continue the push, because we're already seeing public opinion on these issues change drastically in numbers that I don't think any of us expected in terms of the administration's approval ratings on immigration specifically.

It really will take shining a light on that.

And I would just remind everyone that immigration courts are public courts.

Everyday citizens can go to an immigration court hearing and watch what happens.

We encouraged people when ICE is arresting people outside of courtrooms, whether it's at 26 Federal Plaza or in downtown Los Angeles or all over the country, people can go there.

and they can witness that and they can talk to their neighbors and they can write op-eds about it because the government right now wants things to happen in the shadows.

They don't want these stories told.

They don't want people talking about that we are on track for the deadliest year in ICE prisons.

They don't want people going and visiting people in ICE prisons and finding out what's happening.

And every single citizen in this country who cares about these issues can disrupt that by shining a light, by going and being, you know, the one to witness it and then share what they have seen so that everybody is aware.

Fantastic.

So Lindsay and Insha, I'm going to end with one last question because we like to give our folks homework, although we've given them a lot of homework in this episode.

What resources do each of you recommend for listeners who want to stay informed on what's really happening so they can report it, so they can show up, so they can be a part of the solution.

And Insha, I'm going to start with you.

So my organization, the Vera Institute of Justice, we work to end mass incarceration.

We fight for immigrants' rights.

We help build safe, thriving communities.

And we launched a series at the beginning of this year called Justice in the Age of Trump, where with everything that is sort of happening coming out of DC, how do you keep track and how do you make sense of it?

How do you understand it for the justice, safety, and the values that we care about?

So sign up on our website for that.

And you can get blogs and information and webinars and how to get involved.

So that's one plug.

But the other is to turn local and to do something.

And it might be sharing a podcast that you listen to with somebody else to be like, huh, this made me think about these military deployments to cities differently or what's happening with immigration.

And, you know, as Lindsay said, they want to do things in the shadows.

And the more that we are sharing and we are learning and we are bearing witness, the more they will not be able to do that.

And public opinion is absolutely turning on this.

We actually just did a poll around the National Guard deployments and asked American voters, what do you think is the basis for this?

And very few said public safety.

Majority said, I think this is political theater.

So get involved, follow us.

Do something locally.

And most of all, keep sort of paying attention and bearing witness because that is how we get through this.

Lindsay?

So I would also say, you know, follow our socials at MDEF.

We are often posting not only really important, vital stories that you can share about our individual clients and what's happening in our courts, but also volunteer opportunities for people, calls to action, and know your rights resources in English and Spanish and other languages.

On our website, MDEF.org, we have an entire know your rights section that can really help families if you share with them to know what to do and how to protect themselves both you know before and in the unfortunate event if they have a family member who's detained by ice so i encourage you to share those resources and then i would say like insha we you know would encourage people to get involved locally i talked about that a little bit with you know going to your immigration courts but i'll just give another example that's happening you know i'll be this sunday working at a grocery distribution event.

We actually started these events during the wildfires for families that had lost their homes.

And after June, there are so many families here in the Los Angeles area who are afraid to leave their homes because of ICE enforcement that is happening.

And so they are unable to get to get the necessities that they need for them and their children.

And so, you know, there are many of these that are happening across the country where everyday citizens are coming together and showing the best of American values and taking care of our neighbors and welcoming the stranger.

This is something, you know, here in Los Angeles, we showed these values when Governor Abbott sent buses to our city in 2023 to try to, you know, test whether we would live out our values.

And I'm really proud to say that despite everything that has happened since January 20th and since then, you know, we are still doing that here in Southern California.

California, still living out those values and showing you know that our neighbors are important, they are welcome here.

And that can be done, you know, both by lawyers, but by everyday citizens by just helping the person next to them.

And I think that is, you know, a really important part of the resistance.

Lindsay Toslowski and Shiraman, thank you both so much for being here with us and giving us such great information on Assembly Required.

Yeah, thanks so much for having us.

Thank you.

As always on Assembly Required, we are here to do work together, and we want to give you real, actionable tools that can help us fight back.

So, first, let's be curious.

To understand more about our immigration system and how it impacts undocumented immigration, asylum seekers, and refugees, visit organizations like Refugees International and the American Immigration Council, and visit Lindsay's organization, the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, at immdef.org for resources that can help you or your loved ones understand their rights.

INCHA's organization, the Vera Institute of Justice, which works to end mass incarceration and fight for immigrant rights, has a series called Justice in the Age of Trump.

Visit their website at vera.org and sign up for resources that can help you make sense of the current moment.

Number two, we're going to solve some problems.

This was recorded before the No Kings protest that spanned across the United States.

For those who participated and even for those who couldn't be there, it's crucial to keep showing up, speaking up, and taking action.

The 10 steps to freedom and power begin with you.

Peaceful protest and civic engagement are among the strongest tools we have to hold this administration and this Republican regime accountable and to push back against totalitarian policies.

Do not underestimate the power of consistent collective action.

Every voice, every step, every sign makes a difference.

And number three, we can do good.

And there are so many ways for us to do good.

Donate to organizations like MDeaf and check out their volunteer opportunities to assist immigrant communities that are struggling to access basic resources.

We also have a right to record the abuses that ICE and Border Patrol are perpetrating on our communities.

People can get involved with rapid response networks in their communities to gather footage, including at their local courthouses.

And you can share it widely so that we can shine a light on what's happening and pull this carnage out of the dark.

Finally, call on your local leaders, including your city council members, county commissioners, your school board, and your governors, and ask them to follow Governor Newsom's lead and ban ICE from wearing masks that hide their faces.

Require any law enforcement to provide identification, and whenever possible, try to restrict access to sensitive locations like schools and hospitals.

We have to call on our people to do what we need to save our future.

So as always, if you like what you hear, be sure to share this episode and subscribe on all your favorite platforms.

And to meet the demands of the algorithms, please rate the show and leave a comment.

You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you go to listen and learn.

Please also check out my sub stack, Assembly Notes, for more information about what we've discussed on the podcast today and other tools to help us protect our democracy.

I want to say a personal thank you to the thousands of you who've already signed up for the 10 Steps Campaign at 10stepsCampaign.org.

This is about how we come together and meet that 3.5% that Erica Chinowith talks about.

We are constantly updating our website with more resources, including adding a glossary of terms like stochastic terrorism, a social media kit to help you share what you learn, and a Spanish language version of the site.

We're going to continue talking about the 10 Steps campaign as a way to recognize and activate against this regime.

For more information, visit 10stepscampaign.org and share with your friends and your allies.

As always, I'd love to hear more about what you're going to be doing and what tools and resources would be helpful.

If you have a report, a question, or a comment for me, send it in.

You can start with an email to assemblyrequired at crooked.com or leave us a voicemail.

And you and your questions and comments might be featured on the pod.

Our number is 213-293-9509.

That wraps up today's episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams.

Please continue to be careful out there, and I'll meet you here next week.

Assembly Required is a crooked media production.

Our lead show producer is Lacey Roberts and our associate producer is Farah Safari.

Kirill Polaviev is our video producer.

This episode was recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis.

Our theme song is by Vasilis Photopoulos.

Thank you to Matt DeGroote, Kyle Seglund, Tyler Boozer, Ben Hethcote, and Priyanka Muntha for production support.

Our executive producers are Katie Long and me, Stacey Abrams.

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