Politics

Hasan Piker, the biggest progressive political streamer in America, was detained by Customs and Border Protection for hours of questioning upon returning to the U.S. from a trip to France this weekend. Piker posted about the incident on X and later talked about it on stream.

He was detained in Chicago and questioned for two hours about protected journalistic activities like who he’s interviewed and his political beliefs. He was asked whether or not he’d interviewed Hamas, Houthis, or Hezbollah members. He was questioned about his opinions on Trump and Israel and asked about his history of bans on Twitch. His phone and laptop were not confiscated.

"They straight up tried to get something out of me that I think they could use to basically detain me permanently,” Piker said on stream following the incident. “… [the agent] kept saying stuff like, do you like Hamas? Do you support Hamas? Do you think Hamas is a terror group or a resistance group?”

“I kept repeating the same statement over and over again,” Piker said. “I kept saying... I'm on the side of civilians. I want the endless bloodshed to end. I am a pacifist. I want wars to end… which is insane because up until this moment. If you were to say as an American citizen, you stand 10 toes down with Hamas, or you stand 10 toes down with the Houthis, they can’t deny you entry into the country for that shit.”

“DHS flagging and detaining one of the U.S.’s largest left-wing voices for their political opinions while the Trump admin suggests they might suspend habeas corpus does not portend well for the future,” said lawyer and content creator Alex Peter.

Bolts this week talked to Judith Brett, an emeritus professor of politics at Melbourne’s La Trobe University and the author of From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage: How Australia Got Compulsory Voting, a book that retraces the history and aftermath of her country’s adoption of compulsory voting.

Australia’s system, Brett tells Bolts, emerged out of a commitment to majoritarian democracy that was stronger in Australia in the 1920s than in the United Kingdom and other former British colonies like the United States. Since then, she says, it has exerted an “egalitarian pressure on our politicians.”

Some other countries have also adopted compulsory voting, many of them in South America. To U.S. voters, though, it may certainly seem an unusual practice. Here, proposals that the state merely register people to vote automatically, let alone require them to actually cast a ballot, already sparks controversy, as critics of automatic registration say individuals should be the ones to decide whether they want their names added to voter rolls.

In Australia, which has required that people register since 1911, compulsory voting has remained fairly uncontroversial, which Brett says has helped develop a strong culture around voting. “The parties don’t have to mobilize the vote,” she told Bolts. “The state, the government, gets the vote out for them.”

Still, that “egalitarian pressure” is felt very unevenly. For one, Indigenous Australians were largely excluded from the 1902 electoral act that gave other Australian men and women the right to vote, and they did not gain full voting rights until the 1960s. Today, turnout is lower in predominantly Indigenous areas; in the Northern Territory, it stood at 73 percent in 2022, well under all other Australian states. WBEZ reported last year from the Northern Territory on the mix of political distrust and socioeconomic difficulties that fuels that gap.

Citizens who are at least 18 are eligible to vote in federal elections, with the exception of people who are presently serving a prison sentence of more than 3 years. But incarcerated Australians who are eligible to vote experience immense logistical barriers to actually casting ballots.

This dispatch by Bill Shaner, an independent journalist who writes the Worcester Sucks and I Love It newsletter, was first published by Luke O’Neil’s Welcome to Hell World.

I’m driving five miles across the city to check out a tip that there’s an ICE rendition ongoing. I’ve got the scanner on the car stereo as I’m about to pull onto the street in question. It’s a quiet neighborhood, small houses on small lots, people walking dogs, the mailman waving, the lawnmowers running, and I hear the dispatcher: “We have an ICE officer over there who’s allegedly being surrounded.”

“On our way,” the officer responds.

As a local reporter for a decade now, I’ve learned that you can hear the cops at their most honest on the scanner. And as I’m hearing that “surrounded” comment I remember what the city’s police chief told the city council in January:

“We do not do civil detention arrests,” Police Chief Paul Saucier said at the time, reassuring them that they wouldn’t be party to the ICE assault Trump was about to unleash. The police, he said, “do not have the authority to affect a civil arrest.”

What he didn’t say is that if you try to stop the civil arrest, the police will stop you from stopping it.

This morning a few dozen of us here in Worcester, Massachusetts, got to see that unstated fine print in action firsthand. A woman was led by federal agents in cuffs away from her family, through a throng of community organizers trying to stop it, and into an unmarked car. The local police arrived to prevent the community from protecting their neighbor from an unlawful kidnapping. They succeeded, and in the process arrested two of the people who tried to stop it.

I park my car on the edge of the scene and all I can hear are the screams—the deafening desperate screams, from a mother, from her daughter, from the woman holding the daughter’s baby. Wordless screams.

And then I see the mother, a young woman in a green shirt, wailing, crying, held on either side by menacing white men in tactical vests, black neck warmers pulled over their noses in the style du jour for our secret police forces.

Surrounding them are a few dozen community members who were tipped off about the ICE raid and got to it before the police did. Before I arrived, they demanded to see a warrant. The ICE agents refused to provide one, so they created a human chain, which the ICE officers eventually broke through.

I still don’t know her name or where they’ve taken her. The federal officials provided no information to anyone at the scene. But apparently they called the local police for backup. They felt that they were surrounded. Black Hawk Down.

New video shows close-up view of ICE agents slamming the young woman's face into the ground during arrest in neighborhood raid."I don't have anyone at home. They arrested my mom, my sister, and a 2-month-old baby," a family member cries out. pic.twitter.com/9vcxEICW5Y

— (@LongTimeHistory) May 9, 2025

As they’re marching this woman to the back door of the tan unmarked Ford SUV representing her nebulous fate, the community is swarming, surrounding, yelling at the ICE officers. City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj, a dear friend and a relentless advocate for her community, is following closest behind them. She’s screaming. “You are cowards.” She’s jogging to keep pace as they march their jackbooted march to the SUV with New York plates. “This is an innocent woman.”

An ICE agent opens the door and the woman’s daughter shrieks—an unforgettable noise of agony. Her mother is about to disappear, into the purposefully vague bureaucratic world of forced removal. The opening of that door, to this shrieking girl…it must look like a life torn apart. Her family fractured. And for what? No one bothers to explain that to her. Perhaps they’re not allowed to.

The Worcester Police Department steps in at this crucial juncture, among us residents surrounding the car about to take one of our neighbors away. And they do so on behalf of the ICE agents, not us. A Worcester cop comes over, stepping between the open car door and the community, past the ICE agents stuffing the mother into the back seat, and he looks at a woman holding the shrieking daughter’s baby. She’s also wailing in desperate anger and he says—to her—“Stop, stop, stop. They’ll explain. They’ll explain.”

Of course they don’t explain.

The woman’s daughter then jumps on the hood of the car. A Worcester cop pulls her off.

The crowd chants, “Don’t take the mother!” over and over again as the daughter keeps trying to get back on the hood of the car. More Worcester cops arrive, all helping the ICE agents carry out their rotten senseless work.

The deportee’s daughter, a 16-year-old whose name has not been disclosed, held to the ground and cuffed by Worcester police officers. (Bill Shaner)

When I say ICE, it’s a catchall. These federal agents were wearing a myriad of badges and few of them had name tags. Most of them had “POLICE” written somewhere on their tactical vests. There were ICE insignias, but also Customs and Border Patrol, and one ATF.

A CBP agent, his face cover falling down slightly below his nose, pushes a woman away from the car in the manner of an offensive tackle—elbows out, knees bent, forearms thrusting. Others take the woman’s place.

The crowd of community members, who these officers ostensibly protect and serve, continues to cheer, “Don’t take the mother, don’t take the mother.” The daughter is still shrieking.

“This is ICE. This is federal,” one of the WPD officers explains, as if a suitable explanation. Case closed.

A woman says, “They don’t have a warrant.” Another says, “They’re trying to kidnap someone.”

As the local cops are clearing the road for ICE’s unmarked SUV, community organizer Maydee Morales confronts them. “Worcester police are not supposed to be involved in this.”

In the background, a Worcester police officer looks at the desperate woman holding her baby trying to stop the agents from taking her mother and says “Do you want to stay with your baby?” The tacit threat of separation for her protestation of another separation. Later he would complain “She’s putting the baby in harm’s way.” A classic move: “harm” goes undefined because the harm is him.

Maydee, still confronting the officers, says, “Where is the warrant?” Officer Lugo, according to his nameplate, says, “Ma’am we are trying our best but they are federal.”

Morales again asks for the warrant.

“They’re federal.”

“They still need a warrant.”

Another officer, frustrated, says, “They don’t need a warrant.” Finally, one of them tells the truth. Due process is not a matter they’re concerned with. The deportation must proceed. Trying to stop it is the unlawful thing. At this point an ICE agent starts pushing me away, but not very hard. Lazy jabs, his mind elsewhere. Too many people, too much pushing to be done. I return to my pre-push position. I keep filming. I don’t know what else to do.

A Worcester police officer stands between the ICE agents and a crowd of community members. (Bill Shaner)

A cop pulls his cruiser behind us—we’re boxed in now—and from the intercom says “This is the Worcester Police Department. This is an unlawful assembly, I’m warning you to disperse right now or you will be subject to arrest.”

On the other side of me, a crackle of the scanner from an officer’s vest-mounted radio: “Do I have a car to escort the marshals out of here?”

They don’t need a warrant but they do need an escort.

As the car pulls away, nudging into the thick crowd, the daughter shrieks another horrible horrible horrible shriek, communicating the non-communicable as the disappearers take another step toward disappearing her mother. As the car breaks from the crowd she runs after it. A Worcester police officer, his voice frothing with anger, shouts, “Arrest her right now. You are under arrest.” And then four cops swarm her, grab her, throw her to the ground. All the while she’s crying crying crying. Her hair’s caught in her mouth and matted to her face, wet with spit and tears. Four cops hold her pinned to the ground.

Then they march her away. Her and another member of the community who had tried to intervene. They take the pair away from the crowd. I follow. They have the daughter by both arms, same as the ICE agents had her mother. I still don’t know either of their names. Next to me is a TV reporter from a Spanish language station and her cameraman. She yells out, “What’s your name?” and the woman responds in Portuguese. I can’t make it out. She asks her age and this one I catch: “dezesseis.”

Not a woman—a girl. A 16-year-old girl. Now in custody for the crime of reacting in an unruly way to the sudden forceful disappearance of her mother.

I keep asking about the charges. The only cop who doesn’t ignore me explains “I’m not the arresting officer.” The arresting officers go on ignoring me.

We get to the spot where the wagon is set to arrive. I ask again. Eventually I get an answer, and it’s the usual package job: disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, unlawful assembly. The charges they throw on anyone they want to arrest for the sake of arresting them, knowing they’re unlikely to stick. But sticking isn’t the goal. The officer who tells me this has a tactical K9 Unit vest on. He tells me the 16-year-old girl was interfering with police business. “Worcester police business?” I ask. What was the police business here exactly? He looks at me like I’m a smart ass. He doesn’t say anything. I press him again: “Kind of a grey area, huh?”

“Not really,” he says.

Update: In a statement posted to the Worcester Police Department’s Facebook page Thursday night, the WPD said they responded to “a report of a federal agent who was surrounded by a large group of about twenty-five people.” The daughter was charged with reckless endangerment of a child, disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest. The other community organizer faces charges of assault and battery on a police officer, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (unknown liquid), disorderly conduct, and interfering with a police officer. Both were out on bail by Thursday night, according to local organizers. The name and whereabouts of the woman taken by ICE remain unknown.

Today, Indivisible and a coalition of pro-democracy partner organizations announced the NO KINGS Nationwide Day of Defiance on Flag Day (June 14). The actions are set to take place during Donald Trump’s military parade in Washington, D.C., on June 14. Instead of allowing this military parade to be the center of gravity, activists will make action everywhere else the story of America that day.

Alongside local organizers, partners, and leaders from across the pro-democracy and pro-worker movements, activists across the country will come together for marches, rallies, and demonstrations to reject corrupt, authoritarian politics in the United States.

Without a Department of Education, who will assist the borrowers of billions of dollars of student aid? Without Social Security field offices or Internal Revenue Service staff, who will administer benefits or investigate tax fraud? And with a massively reduced workforce at the General Services Administration, who will handle the procurement of more than $84 billion of products and services for federal agencies?

To these questions, Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have offered the same answer: artificial intelligence, particularly in the form of chat bots. And while Musk’s vision for the federal government could be seen as a mere pretext for paring back the state and its safety net, it also reflects what many techno-optimists believe will come to pass in the American economy writ large. In this vein, Mark Zuckerberg recently opined that half of the code for Meta will be written by AI rather than humans in the next twelve to eighteen months.

These developments and the rising potential of labor automation bring into sharp focus the question of how to address the potential displacement of workers. One prominent proposal, championed by Silicon Valley tech bosses like OpenAI’s Sam Altman, is Universal Basic Income (UBI). UBI advocates envision a system where all citizens receive a regular, unconditional cash payment from the state, providing a financial safety net that helps decouple subsistence from work. It is considered “universal” because it is not means-tested, setting it apart from targeted welfare programs or work-based initiatives. While healthy skepticism surrounds whether AI will ever create widespread labor automation, examining the popularity of basic income in this discourse reveals important insights about technology and power.

In this brief post, I explain why, in the current legal and economic system, UBI proposals serve a deceptive function in labor automation discourse—the proposal is positioned by tech elites as a progressive solution while its function is to obscure key decisions being made by the powerful about technology and work. By portraying technological displacement as inevitable rather than socially determined, tech leaders’ championing of UBI serves to pigeonhole the state into a subsidy mechanism that absorbs the social costs of automation through redistribution and taxation, while still concentrating ownership over technology, production, and data. This arrangement sidesteps democratic engagement with technological change—questions of how automation unfolds, who decides and benefits, and how implementation can truly advance innovation, productivity, and human flourishing.

Not exactly an in-depth study, but some suggestions for further reading.

It was a tough night for MAGA-aligned candidates in Texas. In the May 3, 2025, local elections, voters across the state decisively rejected far-right candidates, particularly in school board and city council races. From Tarrant County to Collin County, and from San Antonio to Dallas, communities chose leaders who prioritize public education, inclusivity, and pragmatic governance over culture wars and partisan agendas. This widespread shift signals a growing resistance to extremist politics at the local level.

A statewide rejection of extremism.

Last night, voters across Texas sent a message loud enough to rattle the far-right out of their echo chambers: we’re done with your culture wars, your book bans, and your crusade against public schools. Voters chose community over chaos, educators over agitators, and progress over extremism.

The local elections weren’t just a series of wins but a sweep. MAGA-backed candidates got absolutely trounced across the state. This was the result of deep organizing, years of work by local Democrats, and voters who are fed up with the far-right hijacking of school boards and city councils to push their agenda.

Texas isn’t turning blue overnight, but make no mistake: the MAGA movement had a very bad night, and the momentum is shifting.

Can he overcome the reason why it closed?

I don't think I've ever seen the channel go this snarky, even when Beau was around.

President has repeatedly expressed idea of expansion into autonomous territory within fellow Nato member Denmark