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2025-08-23 04:47:57

It’s 7 p.m. on Thursday and Elli, a 19-year-old transplant from Chattanooga, Tennessee, just took an Adderall. The DC resident, who goes by they/them pronouns and asked Mother Jones not to publish their last name, needed the boost of energy. They’re drained from spending the last several nights roving the city on foot to surveil the FBI and ICE agents who are—under the orders of President Donald Trump—surveilling the people of DC.

“Wherever there are people watching, law enforcement gets intimidated,” the lanky teenager explained of their efforts as we walked past tactical military vehicles in Navy Yard.

Elli wouldn’t make it back to their apartment until 2 a.m. on Friday, after visiting six DC neighborhoods and uploading 10 social media posts alerting followers to various forms of law enforcement activity. In all, Elli’s iPhone shows they’ve walked upwards of 20,000 steps a day while documenting the federal takeover. 

And Elli was just one of more than a dozen of self-appointed watchdogs I observed participating in what amounted to an after-dark patrol squad on Thursday night. The scene contrasted with what a columnist described as a “weirdly quiet” local response in a Politico piece titled, “Why Washington Residents Aren’t Flooding the Streets to Protest Trump,” published earlier that day.

While it’s accurate to say there hasn’t been anything close to a modern-day March on Washington since Trump brought in the National Guard to address DC’s purported crime problem, the DC locals who are wrestling with the increased presence of law enforcement say that’s for good reason. Megaphones and mass demonstrations are unlikely to mollify the hazards of a heightened police state—and these tactics may even exacerbate what Trump-opposing locals fear most: bigger dispatches of law enforcement, which could target more immigrants and other vulnerable populations.

“Being a middle-aged white man, I can be outside and keep an eye on what’s happening,” says Andrew Hall, a DC resident of 19 years who lingered around the corner of 14th and U St NW around 9:30 p.m., after a concert protesting the National Guard presence ended. “It’s not safe for others to be out in public, or even go to the grocery store right now.”

But what’s clear from merely existing in my city this week is that the “lack of street-level backlash” the Politico columnist lamented isn’t the full picture of DC’s response to the federal agents donning tactical vests near our landmarks. There is plenty of backlash—it’s just a grittier and less organized form of it, carried out by Washingtonians with cellphone cameras and some spare time. The DC resistance isn’t manifesting this week as recognizable members of Congress marching up and down Pennsylvania Avenue with CNN cameras in tow, but as an array of ordinary DC residents documenting what’s happening in their neighborhoods and mobilizing pop-up actions based on the information being shared.

In the densely populated Northwest DC neighborhood of Columbia Heights on Tuesday, for example, locals noticed about a dozen Homeland Security personnel outside a metro station. “ICE go home!” some 150-plus people chanted at the agents, several of whom had their faces covered with masks. The growing crowd and their pinpointed cameras were apparently enough to deter the ICE agents from the area, which has a high population of Black and Hispanic residents. 

In Mount Pleasant, an even smaller display of opposition took place recently when a local woman approached what appeared to be a handful of off-the-clock federal agents sitting outside a restaurant. She repeatedly asked them if they were locals, where they lived, and what agency they worked for while filming them. Declining to answer her questions, the three or four individuals eventually walked to a black Hyundai Sonata with an out-of-state license plate. “Nobody likes you,” she yelled in a video shared by the news outlet Migrant Insider on Thursday. “Get the fuck out of my neighborhood!”

On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller took a field trip to visit the National Guard troops patrolling outside Union Station. While there, the politicians got some Shake Shack—plus a stupendous amount of heckling. The opposition included professional protestors who have shown up daily at the train station since May, as well as many residents who happened to be there for their daily commute. 

In the days since, more and more DC locals have been trying to gather information what to do should they encounter the federal agents, or the politicians who ordered them here. On a Zoom call organized by the DC-statehood group Free DC Friday morning, more than 250 showed up and asked questions about best practices for fighting back. In break-out rooms, attendees discussed walking around their neighborhoods with signs alerting people to the presence of ICE, as well as joining ward-based Signal chats to organize response efforts among neighbors. In the Zoom chat, one attendee asked how they could warn others that ICE was in their area at that very moment.

DC residents are routinely reporting such sightings on ICEblock, an iPhone app tailor-made for locals to pinpoint ICE agents in real time. There’s also an emergency hotline (202-335-1183), which then shares the reports with the immigrant community. Beyond these dedicated spaces, I’m also seeing neighbors post sightings of law enforcement and police checkpoints on Nextdoor, which historically has been known as a watering hole for nosy neighbors and humdrum bigots, but in DC—at least recently—has turned into a space where people are trying to help strangers.

“On The Corner Of 4th And Rhode Island Ave RIGHT NOW,” one Nextdoor user posted alongside an image of an ICE-labeled vehicle on Thursday. “ICE is back in Mount Pleasant at Bancroft & Park Pleasant Apartments,” shared someone else. 

“You don’t need to do what I’m doing to be helpful,” Elli says of the various ways DC residents can warn their neighbors. “All you need is a phone.”

2025-08-23 04:27:33

The Trump administration’s campaign of vengeance against perceived political enemies escalated Friday morning when the FBI raided the home and office of former national security adviser John Bolton, a vocal Trump critic.

That search follows Attorney General Pam Bondi directing federal prosecutors to open a criminal investigation into whether former President Barack Obama and his aides concocted evidence about Russia’s efforts to help Trump in the 2016 election. Last month, the Justice Department said it was separately investigating former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey, without specifying the allegations. Meanwhile, loyal Trump underlings— including DOJ official Ed Martin and Bill Pulte, a real estate heir running the Federal Housing Finance Agency—are using government power, along with social media gimmickry, to allege wrongdoing by frequent Trump foils.

The various investigations may differ in their legitimacy. But they are all the manifestation of Trump’s promises to use the White House to prosecute his enemies. The threat of an authoritarian president using his office and control of federal law enforcement to try to imprison critics is not hypothetical. It is happening, as Trump advisers race to please him by launching probes aimed at his foes.

These efforts are predicated on concocted claims that it was the administration’s Democratic predecessors who misused federal agencies for politics. The Trump administration is politicizing intelligence, law enforcement, and other government functions while pretending to be punishing politicization, as with the ironically named “Weaponization Working Group” that Martin now leads. That can feel a bit confusing, but it is more easily understood as a string of efforts by individual Trump advisers to their please boss by helping him crack down on dissent and deliver retribution.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s report on “Russiagate” was widely derided, but it came following reports that suggested Trump was considering firing her after she contradicted his claims about the danger of Iran’s nuclear program. The former Democratic representative appears to have protected her job by handing Trump a report that helped him try to shift attention amid scrutiny of his relationship with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Bondi, too, has faced withering attacks from within MAGA over her botched handling the Epstein scandal. Her quickly launched investigation aimed at Obama may never meet the standards of federal judges, but it made her boss happy.

The search of Bolton’s home required a judge to find probable cause to issue a warrant. The FBI is reportedly looking into accusations that Bolton, who was investigated during the first Trump administration for revealing sensitive information in a book, had leaked national security information more recently.

Trump on Friday claimed he was not aware beforehand of the Bolton raid. But that claim, true or not, overlooks the reality that various Trump advisers appear to be using attacks on his enemies to win or keep the mercurial president’s favor.

Vice President J.D. Vance even weighed in on Bolton Friday. “If we think Ambassador Bolton committed a crime, of course eventually prosecutions will come,” Vance told NBC’s Meet the Press. Vance added that “classified documents are certainly part of it, but I think that there’s a broad concern about Ambassador Bolton.”

FBI director Kash Patel—who attacked Bolton in a 2024 book, complaining at length that Bolton had dragged his feet on hiring him during the first Trump administration—tweeted about the raid at the time it occurred, writing: “NO ONE is above the law…@FBI agents on mission.” Bondi then reposted Patel, adding, in part: “Justice will be pursued. Always.”

Such public pronouncements were once unusual for DOJ officials. But they are increasingly standard under Trump. Martin, who got his current position after the Senate declined to confirm him as US attorney for DC, is seeking presidential favor through highly public, if legally dubious, campaigns. He said in a May press conference that he planned to use publicity to attack Trump foes. “If they can be charged, we’ll charge them,” he declared. “But if they can’t be charged, we will name them. And we will name them, and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed.”

Earlier this week, Martin appeared outside the Brooklyn home of New York Attorney General Letita James, where—clad in the trench coat he has attempted to make his signature—he posed for pictures taken by the New York Post, all part of an effort to call attention to claims that James committed fraud in private real estate dealings. In a letter to James’ lawyer, Martin said he would consider it “an act of good faith” if James resigned.

The New York Times recently noted that Martin’s actions violate a slew of DOJ rules and norms: “Prosecutors are barred from making investigative decisions based on politics; they are asked not to comment on specific cases; and they are supposed to avoid turning their investigations into public spectacles.”

But Martin took a similar tack this week in a letter he reportedly sent Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell urging him to fire Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve Board member, over allegations that Cook had improperly claimed a property she owns in Atlanta as her residence. “Do it today before it is too late!” Martin wrote.

The allegations against Cook came from Pulte, the 37-year-old head of an agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Pulte has used his post to highlight unproven mortgage fraud accusations against James, Cook, and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and has issued letters asking the DOJ to investigate. (All three have denied breaking the law.) Martin reportedly met with Pulte early this month.

Pulte, who has 3 million followers on X, posted recently that he had “obtained” a document submitted to the government that he claims shows Cook committed fraud. Pulte’s accusation was quickly taken up by Trump, who is attempting to gain control of the Federal Reserve and oust Powell before his term ends, in effort to push for lower interest rates.

Bloomberg reported Friday that Pulte, who has been “struggling” to maintain influence with the White House” amid irritation by some officials there over his bombastic online behavior—including his habit of announcing significant policy changes via tweet—had returned to favor with the president through his attacks on Cook.

Trump’s efforts to target his critics also got help earlier this month from the Office of Special Counsel, or OSC, a small independent agency charged with enforcing federal rules. The office, which is not part of DOJ, announced that it was investigating whether Jack Smith, the federal prosecutor who twice indicted Trump, had violated a law barring federal workers from using their government jobs to engage in political activity.

Since the strongest sanction OSC can apply is to urge the firing of a federal employee, it cannot impose any real penalty on Smith, who resigned from his post in January. But the agency—whose previous head Trump fired earlier this year, and where Trump has tried to install a far-right loyalist—appears eager to ingratiate itself with the president.

Such efforts show how a president can attack officials he wants to oust—and how the vast powers of a sprawling federal government can be wielded against his critics. These attacks certainly reflect Trump’s own pathology. But they would be impossible without the collaboration of influence-seeking enablers using public positions to enact Trump’s vengeance agenda.

2025-08-22 23:53:25

A federal judge in Miami has ruled that operations at the controversial detention facility Alligator Alcatraz must begin to wind down, ordering state and federal officials to stop transferring detainees there and relocate current detainees within 60 days.

Two weeks after US District Judge Kathleen Williams, an Obama appointee, ordered a temporary pause on any new construction at Alligator Alcatraz, in response to a suit by environmental groups, she has now ordered the dismantling of equipment at the detention camp, such as fencing, lighting, generators, and other infrastructure. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a notice indicating the state would appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

The US Department of Homeland Security previously said in court filings that it was not in charge of operations at Alligator Alcatraz, and the facility was solely the responsibility of Florida, “using state funds on state lands under state emergency authority.” The state argued that the environmental groups that had filed the lawsuit are seeking relief under the National Environmental Policy Act, which does not apply to state agencies. 

But in her 82-page ruling filed on Thursday night, Williams disagreed. “The project was requested by the federal government; built with a promise of full federal funding; constructed in compliance with ICE standards; staffed by deputized ICE Task Force Officers acting under color of federal authority and at the direction and supervision of ICE officials,” she wrote, “and exists for the sole purpose of detaining and deporting those subject to federal immigration enforcement.”

“While the Defendants repeatedly espouse the importance of immigration enforcement, they offered little to no evidence why this detention camp, in this particular location, is uniquely suited and critical to that mission,” the order continued.

As I wrote in June, two environmental groups filed a lawsuit in federal court against federal and state officials to halt the Alligator Alcatraz project. They argued that construction proceeded without an environmental review or opportunity for public comment, in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. On Friday, the plaintiffs applauded Williams’s ruling. “This decision sends a clear message that environmental laws must be respected by leaders at the highest levels of our government—and there are consequences for ignoring them,” Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, said in a written statement.

For weeks, plaintiffs have filed declarations building their case for how the detention camp could potentially impact the neighboring ecosystems and wildlife. Traffic to and from the detention site increases the likelihood of panthers being struck by vehicles, according to court filings, and light pollution could destroy the nighttime foraging abilities of bats in the area.

Last week, Williams concluded a four-day hearing during which she heard testimony from ten witnesses and reviewed hundreds of exhibits. She questioned Jesse Panuccio, an attorney representing the state of Florida, asking for reasons to justify the decision to build a detention center in the Everglades in the first place, according to CNN. Florida wildlife experts also testified about the potential harm to animals in the area. Increased activity, one expert testified, would interfere with the mating habits of endangered panthers, UPI reported.

During the hearing, members of the environmental team from the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians testified that 80 percent of the Tribe’s “residences, two schools, and the Tribal governmental building, are all located in the Miccosukee Reserved Area, a few miles southeast” of the detention camp, Williams’s order states. Any “uncontained wastewater or run-off” leaving the site would likely flow into the Miccosukee Reserved Area. 

From the beginning, the camp has been mired in controversy. Hastily erected in late June on a remote airfield by Big Cypress National Preserve, it is predicted to cost $450 million per year to run. As reported by family members, attorneys, and lawmakers, the facility has been fraught with malfunctioning air conditioners, scarce food, and rampant mosquitoes. Detainees are offered no recreational time and are held in large white tents, each containing 32 beds and three toilets. They are separated into chain-link fenced areas. State and federal officials running the center have previously stated that the camp would be for immigrants with criminal records, but as the Miami Herald reported in July, many detainees have no prior arrests. In July, nearly 1,000 detainees were being held at Alligator Alcatraz. This week, a Democratic lawmaker who visited the detention camp told reporters the number had dropped to 336.

Another Alligator Alcatraz ruling was issued this week. In a separate lawsuit filed in July, the American Civil Liberties Union alleged that attorneys could not reach their clients held at the detention camp. They reported being unable to schedule appointments with clients and the government’s failure to designate an immigration court that would accept filings from detainees held at Alligator Alcatraz. Earlier this week, a federal judge dismissed part of the lawsuit after the government designated an immigration court for Alligator Alcatraz detainees.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to demand information about Alligator Alcatraz. More than 60 US lawmakers signed a letter sent to the Department of Homeland Security this week requesting details about its operations, the Florida Phoenix reported, including whether the facility is following federal standards for the treatment of detainees and details on inspections. “Given that DHS is working directly with the Florida state government on a detention facility with alarming implications,” the letter states, “DHS should ensure transparency and accountability surrounding the facility’s financing operations.” This request may be moot if Williams’s orders are obeyed, but given the state’s interest in appealing, the court case and the operations of Alligator Alcatraz will likely continue.

2025-08-22 21:27:19

The FBI on Friday raided the Maryland home of John Bolton, who served as national security adviser during President Donald Trump’s first term before becoming a vocal Trump critic. Agents were seen entering Bolton’s home around 7 am ET, nearly the exact same time that FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X: “NO ONE is above the law…@FBI agents on mission.”

The probe, which reportedly relates to a previous investigation launched during Trump’s first term over whether Bolton improperly handled classified information, is the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s use of law enforcement powers against perceived enemies. Though Patel’s Friday social media post did not explicitly refer to the Bolton raid, the two men have a fractious history. Bolton made several appearances in Patel’s 2024 book The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy, including in an infamous appendix listing “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State.” In the book, Patel also blasted Bolton as an “arrogant control freak” and personally blamed Bolton for delaying Patel’s hiring in the first Trump administration.

Bolton has been especially outspoken in recent weeks over Trump’s negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In turn, Trump attacked Bolton on Truth Social as “really dumb.”

This is a breaking news post. We’ll update as more developments become available.

2025-08-22 18:00:00

On July 24, President Donald Trump issued an executive order for a nationwide push to involuntarily commit unhoused people to institutions—claiming that roundups would “restore public order,” and demanding the reversal of legal precedents and consent decrees that “impede” the policy, a draconian move that disability rights groups argue violates civil liberties.

The resultant crackdown in Washington, DC—where an estimated 5,000 people live without permanent shelter, around 800 on the street—began on August 14. DC’s largest encampment was destroyed on Monday, and although it’s unclear how many people have been civilly committed, the sweep has left unhoused people scrambling to find new places to stay, often losing the few possessions they have.

Dr. Sam Tsemberis, who developed the evidence-based Housing First approach Trump has abandoned, spoke to my Reveal colleagues last week about the futility and violence of the White House’s crackdown. “People will get discharged from the hospital. They will get released from the jail. And they’ll be back out on the street and the thing will be going in a circle again,” Tsemberis said. “The only way to end homelessness is to provide housing.”

Trump has always backed brutal crackdowns on visible homelessness and disability, part of a lifelong pattern of hostility to poor people, disgust for disabled people, obsession with “good genes” and cleanliness, and a sense of Washington, DC—until fairly recently, a majority Black city—as a somehow fundamentally unsavory, unsightly place.

His encampment sweeps and ramp-up of policing mirror familiar scenes in the San Francisco Bay Area, where an influx of wealth has sparked a major housing crisis, intense economic inequality, and public hostility towards the growing ranks of homeless locals.

In fact, there’s a throughline from San Francisco to Trump’s anti-disability, anti-homeless agenda: as far back as 1867, San Francisco was the epicenter of a spate of “Ugly Laws,” a legislative crackdown on poverty and disability that closely parallels the Trump program on housing and institutionalization.

Sparked in part by an influx of disabled Civil War veterans, ugly laws fined poor, disabled people for begging, or just existing, on city streets—often followed by institutionalization in brutal 19th-century facilities that offered little or nothing in the way of treatment.

Ugly laws quickly spread across the country, and never entirely went away. Pushes to police, incarcerate, or drive out unhoused and disabled people have been a constant in American life—and hardly just a Republican thing, with high-profile Democratic politicians like California Gov. Gavin Newsom or New York Mayor Eric Adams prominently endorsing encampment sweeps and forced institutionalization.

To understand more about the Ugly Laws and their legacy, I spoke with University of California, Berkeley professor emeritus Susan Schweik, who is also the author of the book The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public.

What societal issues contributed to the first Ugly Law in San Francisco in 1867?

Let me first say that we know about this law because of the disability movement in the 1970s. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Helen Keller were never going to get arrested under this ordinance, which prohibited diseased, maimed, deformed bodies from exposing themselves to public view. It was a status offense. This law was directed against poor people.

It’s extremely important to understand it as part of a big cluster of vagrancy laws that were being practiced in the South after the Civil War, and that US northern abolitionists who went down to fight slavery, unfortunately, saw the effectiveness of the vagrancy law in the South was being used to substitute for slavery.

Abolitionists brought that back up to the cities in the north, which were under all kinds of pressure. People no longer knew the people they passed on the street. Streets were crowded. Poverty was extreme. There were no safety nets. So it targeted poor people. It targeted poor people who were begging, or who were understood to be begging and disability. Being disabled on the street at all could be construed as begging; whether you were putting a hand out or shaking a cup or saying anything to anyone, it was possible to be understood as asking for people’s pity.

What types of punishments did poor, disabled people face under the Ugly Laws? 

At some point, I realized that if I could figure out when a city opened its first almshouse or poor house, it was quite likely that the unsightly begging ordinance would happen, because they had a place to sweep people off the street.

Once big medicalized institutions for the so-called feeble-minded [were established], then it’s easier for a city to pass a law like this without somehow feeling or seeming heartless. It’s very tied to institutionalization and to shutting people away. People were much more likely to be stuck behind those walls for good when it was understood that they were being kind of medically and charitably helped by being given a place.

Very often, the law was unenforced. The police were uncomfortable with it. They didn’t want to do it. A huge thing was sorting out the deserving and the undeserving, and so police often didn’t do it. Even if police did do it, very often, courts didn’t sentence anybody. There’s very little evidence that anybody actually was legally penalized at the level of the municipal courts. [But] that didn’t mean it didn’t have major catastrophic effects.

I had thought for a long time that there was no record of resistance by disabled people to this oppression, and I was wrong. There was an amazing man who lived on the street named Arthur Franklin Fuller, who became the hero of my book, who traveled from town to town until he got kicked out. He self-published books, and one of them was like a legal treatise on the unconstitutionality of the unsightly beggar ordinances. I couldn’t believe it when I found it. It wasn’t like people didn’t try to organize. They did. There was an attempt to unionize disabled beggars in LA to negotiate with the city as a union.

How did the “othering” of disabled people lead to the Ugly Laws not getting the backlash that it should have?

I think the ugly laws were part of a variety of systems and structures, most notably institutionalization. They were tied to the development of various kinds of institutions that were eugenic because they very deliberately removed people from the social world where they might have relationships that might lead to childbearing.

Discrimination in the US has always justified itself on disability grounds. The great historian Douglas Baynton makes this very clear in the realm of immigration: when groups are excluded from being able to enter the US, there’s always a language of disability. They’re contagious, they’re feeble-minded, they’re weak, they’re going to be a burden on the state. Disability has always functioned as a rationale, an alibi, an excuse and a bottom line for all kinds of oppression. Women couldn’t vote because they were hysterical and too emotional. Black people were too volatile or cognitively impaired, or whatever term was going to be marshaled at the moment.

Donald Trump, many decades ago, cut his political teeth by trying to shut down vending stands by disabled veterans on Fifth Avenue, and he was absolutely explicit about them being repulsive and unsightly. He has a very long line of operating out of that terrorizing repulsion.

Did the fight for disability civil rights help lead to the dismantling of the Ugly Laws? 

There was a case in the 1970s in Omaha where a policeman wanted to arrest an unhoused person and didn’t know how—so he goes to the ordinance books, finds this [ugly] law, and he’s like, “Oh, that guy has a scar, so I’ll use this.” He goes to court.

The judge was like, What does this mean? If my neighbor’s homely kids ask me for something, they should be arrested? Like, what? What is unsightly? Even though the judge threw it out of court, the DA held a press conference and said [it was] still a good law—and then it [was] reported as “Begging law punishes only the ugly.” Disability activists in Omaha read that headline, and working with disability activists in other Midwestern cities, decided that they were going to make a fuss about that law.

Chicago disability activists went to their city council as a form of [political] theater, and said this law is still on the books. Nobody was being arrested under it, [but] nobody had ever cared about removing it, and so poor Chicago got a bad rep for being the site of the ugly law, when it really was the site of the activism.

So we know everything we know about these laws because of the disability movement in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. It was invoked explicitly in the campaign for the Americans with Disabilities Act. There are books all over the country, city code books, where they’re still sitting.

Do you think that Trump’s executive order targeting homeless people with psychiatric disabilities is reminiscent of the Ugly Laws? 

Two things that are conjoined in that executive order [are] endemic vagrancy and mental illness, the combination [that] the way in which these unsightly, bigger ordinances got passed after cities had institutions that could be stocked full of people who other people did not want to see on the street. How is endemic vagrancy and unsightly encampment and the presence of what gets called mental illness? How is it going to be tackled by the executive order? It’s going to be tackled by civil commitment, by institutionalization.

I think about the important disability advocate and activist Rebecca Cokley, who put out this call and pointed out that people were tending to reduce the possible impact of that executive order to the realm of homelessness or unhoused people or mental health, but that potentially it had a much broader reach. It could target dissent, and that was true of the history of unsightly beggar ordinances. Someone trans could be identified as a mentally ill person. There are so many ways to contain and hurt and banish immigrants, especially Black and brown people, and to disappear them, as Rebecca says.

Ugly laws basically disappeared after World War I, because the existence of large numbers of disabled veterans produced rehabilitation and systems that were, at least at in theory, meant to include people in every aspect of society. [But] here we are again.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

2025-08-22 18:00:00

This story was produced in partnership with CBS News.

A South Texas woman who was arrested on murder charges in 2022 after using medication to terminate her pregnancy has alleged new details about her case against a local sheriff and prosecutors, claiming they violated her constitutional rights.

Her August 12 court filing comes as the debate over medication abortion is heating up in Texas, with Attorney General Ken Paxton announcing a new effort to prevent the pill from being mailed into the state.

“These abortion drug organizations and radical activists are not above the law, and I have ordered the immediate end of this unlawful conduct,” Paxton said Wednesday.

The case of Lizelle Gonzalez was among the first to expose the complexities of criminalizing the use of medication to end a pregnancy. Starr County, located on the southern Texas border, launched an investigation into Gonzalez after hospital staff reported to law enforcement that she had taken medication to induce an abortion when she was 19 weeks pregnant. Three months later, she was indicted and arrested. Gonzalez spent three days in jail before her $500,000 bond was posted, and the charges were ultimately dropped.

While Texas has one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, it’s not a crime for a woman to obtain or seek abortion care for herself. The state’s restrictions on abortion target physicians and those who aid a woman in obtaining or seeking an abortion, whether it’s surgical or induced by use of abortion drugs like mifepristone and misoprostol.

According to new filings in the lawsuit made last week, District Attorney Gocha Ramirez dropped the charges against Gonzalez after public outcry over Gonzalez’s arrest. Included in an exhibit in the lawsuit was a text Ramirez wrote to his son, in which he admitted he’d made a mistake and even called Gonzalez to apologize, stating he “didn’t know what happened.”

In the most detailed account to date of the events surrounding Gonzalez’s arrest, her attorneys laid out in the 70-page lawsuit the events that they say led the Starr County district attorney, the assistant DA, and the sheriff to pursue a case against her, even though records suggest prosecutors knew her actions did not violate state law.

“They should have known from the very beginning that the conduct that they were investigating was not going to ever equal probable cause for homicide,” said Lauren Johnson, director of the Abortion Criminal Defense Initiative at the American Civil Liberties Union. “The penal code is very clear that a pregnant person cannot be charged with—cannot be guilty of a crime, of a homicide, for ending a pregnancy themselves.”

According to the original complaint filed in March 2024, Gonzalez says she went to an emergency room in January 2022 after taking misoprostol, an abortion-inducing medication.

Less than an hour after she was discharged, she returned to the hospital with complaints of abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. After an exam detected no fetal cardiac activity, doctors performed a cesarean section to deliver a stillborn fetus.

After the procedure, a nurse at the hospital called 911 and reported the procedure to local police, who then contacted the Starr County Sheriff’s Office. The nurse later said the hospital’s administrators directed her to report the incident “because, she said, abortions could now be considered murder due to a ‘change in the law,’” according to the complaint.

“It is not an overstatement to say that Lizelle’s life was entirely upended by what happened to her,” said Johnson, who is representing Gonzalez in the lawsuit. “She wanted to live her life and didn’t want to be criminalized and have her mugshot in her local community. And have something that should have been a very personal decision be something that was made public.”

In July, the Southern District Court of Texas denied Starr County officials’ attempts to have the lawsuit dismissed after the prosecutors and sheriff raised claims of absolute and qualified immunity, respectively. The immunity doctrine has been developed by the courts to restrict the legal liability of government officials, such as law enforcement, judges, and prosecutors. Absolute immunity applies a complete shield from legal action regardless of the legality or constitutionality of the official’s actions. Qualified immunity, however, cannot shield a government actor, like law enforcement, if they violate “clearly established” statutory or constitutional rights.

However, the court filings allege that all three county officials named in the suit—Ramirez, first assistant prosecutor Alexandria Barrera, and Sheriff Rene Fuentes—violated “clearly established” constitutional rights when they pursued a murder charge and arrest for an action the law clearly states is not a crime. And they allege that the prosecutors acted outside of their prosecutorial capacity by directing the investigation and providing legal advice to drive the indictment—which Gonzalez argues would exempt them from any immunity.

The ACLU says the hundreds of pages of evidence it has gathered contradict the claim by county officials that they didn’t know that it was not lawful to pursue a murder charge against Gonzalez. In a sworn deposition, an investigator with the sheriff’s office testified that she wasn’t ready to charge Gonzalez with murder but was instructed to do so by Barrera.

“No practices have been put in place or conduct changed to prevent something like this from happening or being done differently in the future,” says Johnson. “I think that part has been especially alarming and really does highlight the need for ways to shine a light on this conduct and also really force elected officials to follow the law when they’re using the immense power that they have.” 

The Starr County District Attorney’s office has not yet responded to a request for comment.

This story was reported by CBS News and the Center for Investigative Reporting.