Let’s not bicker and argue about who murdered who.
From my perspective on a university campus where I’ve had occasion to see it in action lately, the ADL has turned into a straight-up reactionary organization, that is is eager to treat a completely unambiguous Nazi salute by the president of the United States’s current BFF as an “awkward gesture.”
Last week, the Border Patrol conducted raids on farm workers in Bakersfield, California.
Acres of orange fields sat unpicked in Kern County this week as word of Border Patrol raids circulated through Messenger chats and images of federal agents detaining laborers spread on local Facebook groups.
The Border Patrol conducted unannounced raids throughout Bakersfield on Tuesday, descending on businesses where day laborers and field workers gather. Agents in unmarked SUVs rounded up people in vans outside a Home Depot and gas station that serves a breakfast popular with field workers.
This appears to be the first large-scale Border Patrol raid in California since the election of Donald Trump, coming just a day after Congress certified the election on January 6, in the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency. The panic and confusion, for both immigrants and local businesses that rely on their labor, foreshadow what awaits communities across California if Trump follows through on his promise to conduct mass deportations.
“It was profiling, it was purely field workers,” said Sara Fuentes, store manager of the local gas station. Fuentes said that at 9 a.m., when the store typically gets a rush of workers on their way to pick oranges, two men in civilian clothes and unmarked Suburbans started detaining people outside the store. “They didn’t stop people with FedEx uniforms, they were stopping people who looked like they worked in the fields.” Fuentes says one customer pulled in just to pump gas and agents approached him and detained him.
Fuentes has lived in Bakersfield all her life and says she’s never seen anything like it. In one instance, she said a man and woman drove up to the store together, and the man went inside. Border Patrol detained the man as he walked out, Fuentes said, and then demanded the woman get out of the vehicle. When she refused, another agency parked his vehicle behind the woman, blocking her car. Fuentes said it wasn’t until the local Univision station showed up that Border Patrol agents backed up their car and allowed the woman to leave.
Fuentes says none of the regular farm workers showed up to buy breakfast on Wednesday morning. “No field workers at all,” she said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment. On social media, Gregory K. Bovino, the Border Patrol chief in El Centro, called the sweeps “Operation Return to Sender.”
“We are taking it to the bad people and bad things in Bakersfield,” the El Centro Border Patrol said in response to a comment on its Facebook page. “We are planning operations for other locals (sic) such as Fresno and especially Sacramento.”
“We’re in the middle of our citrus harvesting. This sent shockwaves through the entire community,” said Casey Creamer, president of the industry group California Citrus Mutual, on Thursday. “People aren’t going to work and kids aren’t going to school. Yesterday about 25% of the workforce, today 75% didn’t show up.”
He pushed back on the Border Patrol’s claims they’re targeting bad people. He said they appeared to be general sweeps of workers.
“If this is the new normal, this is absolute economic devastation,” said Richard S. Gearhart, an associate professor of economics at Cal State-Bakersfield.
Video at the link.
The United Farmworkers Union published advice in Spanish and English on Bluesky. I saw these graphics again last night, so another raid may be in progress or expected.
QUE HACER SI SE ENCUENTRA CON LA MIGRA: Mantén la calma. Recuerda sus derechos. Y no se deje ganar el miedo.
There have been demonstrations against the raids in Fresno, Salinas, and Bakersfield.
In SoCal, folks have demonstrated all week against recent ICE raids and arrests of migrant workers there. Looks like 100s out today in Fresno and LA after big gatherings in Bakersfield and Salinas yesterday. Pretty much all homemade signs talking about families, hard work, and stolen land.
Mark Zuckerberg wants you to believe Meta is "returning to its roots" with today's announcement about "free expression." What he's actually doing is showing us his true colors.
This morning, Meta announced it's killing its fact-checking program, loosening content moderation, and moving its trust and safety teams from California to Texas (because, apparently, neutral content moderation has a zip code now). The timing couldn't be more transparent: Trump wins the election, and suddenly Meta discovers a burning passion for "free speech."
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Let's look at how they rolled this out: Joel Kaplan, a former George W. Bush adviser freshly promoted to Chief Global Affairs Officer, went straight to Fox & Friends to make the announcement. Not CNN, not MSNBC, not even a tech publication. Fox News. The message wasn't subtle: Meta is ready to be a team player in Trump's America.
"We've got a new administration and a new president coming in who are big defenders of free expression, and that makes a difference," Kaplan told Fox News, apparently hoping we'd all forgotten that Trump has repeatedly threatened to sue news organizations and nominated an FBI director who wants to target critical media outlets.
Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images.
But Meta's hypocrisy runs deeper than just convenient timing. While they're publicly championing "free expression," they're actively suppressing it within their own walls. As 404 Media reported this morning, Meta is deleting internal employee criticism of their new board member Dana White—you know, the UFC president who was caught on video slapping his wife in a nightclub. Apparently, "free expression" doesn't extend to pointing out inconvenient facts about company leadership.
And let's talk about that "commitment to free expression." Just yesterday, at revealed that Meta had been blocking teenagers from searching LGBTQ-related content for months, hiding it under "sensitive content" restrictions while letting creepy right-wing "tradwife" content flourish. Only after getting caught did they claim it was an "error." Funny how these "errors" keep happening to the same communities, isn't it?
This isn't about Meta being scared of Trump. It's about Zuckerberg recognizing an opportunity. He's not capitulating to pressure; he's aligning himself with power. There's a difference. The company that claimed it needed to protect teens from LGBTQ content is now suddenly concerned about having too many content restrictions. What changed? The political winds.
Make no mistake: this is a calculated business decision. Meta is fighting antitrust cases, hoping for government help against TikTok, seeking regulatory approval for various AI initiatives, and looking to curry favor with an administration that rewards loyalty.
The cynicism here is staggering. Meta isn't "returning to its roots"—it's revealing them. They're not championing free expression; they're showing us exactly what kind of company they've always been: one that will embrace whatever ideology serves its bottom line.
But hey, at least we can all rest easy knowing that Meta's trust and safety teams will be working from Texas now. Because nothing says "we believe in free expression" quite like moving your content moderators to a different state to prove you're not too "woke."
And there you have it. A tech company worth hundreds of billions of dollars, led by a man who once promised to "bring the world closer together," is now openly choosing to align itself with authoritarianism. Not because they have to, but because they want to. The most disturbing part isn't that Zuckerberg is making this choice—it's that he clearly thinks we're all too stupid to see exactly what he's doing.
I want to use this space to promote my friend Ana Marie Cox’s writing workshop.
I've known Ana for years and she's a wonderful, talented person and writer. For a few years now, she's been teaching a workshop for people who want to write about their recovery. Her next session starts on January 21st, and if you're at all interested in diving into your own recovery story, I know she gears the class to be as friendly as possible to all kinds of people—you don't need any experience writing or be in some kind of formal recovery. Here's what she sent me about it:
It's the "Third Story Workshop," focused on helping people to own their recovery journey
I taught writing workshops at treatment centers for years before bringing this out to the world, since everyone is recovering from something
In addition to recovery from addiction, people have taken it to deal with grief, job loss, relationships ending and medical trauma.
11 weeks at 6:30pm ET/5:30pm CT, starts 1/21 and ends 4/8
$1200 if you sign up in the next two weeks, $1500 after that... but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. I have several scholarship slots. People can contact me via the website anamariecox.com/contact
I also interviewed her about the newsletter last year, if you want to check that out:
Omg this looks like some sort of Fairytale Horror; like, a town with trees that have missing pets or people etched into them- coming off naturally enough to be dismissed as bark/tree discolouration
The framing of this image is just perfect subtle horror.
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