Rising This Week: Fathers and freedom
Days before Father's Day, Kilmar Abrego Garcia's children became evidence against the Trump admin's charges, and freedom takes focus the week of Juneteenth.
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During a hearing in Nashville on Friday, Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s attorneys unveiled a potent defense against the Trump administration’s human smuggling claims — his three special needs children.
The government’s key cooperating witness said that Abrego almost always had his wife and children in the SUV when allegedly smuggling immigrants twice a week between Texas and Maryland. Abrego’s attorney Richard Tennent crunched the numbers: It’s a roughly 24-hour trip between those states, each way. That means that Abrego would regularly drive his special needs children all day on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, the attorney noted.
Tennent then asked FBI agent Peter Joseph about his experiences as a father driving his children long distances.
“They of course get a little antsy,” Joseph noted, referring to his children.
The point of the defense attorney’s line of questioning was clear: The allegations of informant Jose Hernandez Reyes, a two-time felon and five-time deportee with serious credibility problems, were wildly implausible. (Hernandez Reyes and his close relative, CC-3, received help from the government with their criminal and immigration troubles in exchange for their cooperation.)
None of this is to suggest that Abrego is a model parent. His wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura sought protective orders from Abrego for domestic violence in 2020 and 2021, filings that the Trump administration cites at every opportunity. The couple has since reconciled, and Vasquez appeared in court in support of her husband on Friday.
“No one is perfect, and no marriage is perfect,” Vasquez Sura told news outlets in April. “That is not a justification for ICE’s action of abducting him and deporting him to a country where he was supposed to be protected from deportation.”
To be sure, Abrego stands accused of far more than imperfections, and in our system, he has the right to defend himself against the government’s allegations in a court of law. U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes noted that Abrego must be presumed innocent of those charges, and liberty is the norm under the Bail Reform Act.
Vasquez has said at every opportunity that she and her children want Abrego back home. Prosecutors say that the government will not let that happen. Even if the judge orders Abrego’s release, immigration authorities may detain him again and seek his deportation to another country than El Salvador. Acting U.S. Attorney Richard McGuire claimed that the government is doing this for the protection of children, but the judge appeared to doubt that prosecutors proved that Abrego victimized even a single child. She adjourned the hearing without a ruling, planning to issue one “sooner rather than later.”
In his 1899 poem “The Old Issue,” Rudyard Kipling wrote this verse about fathers and freedom:
All we have of freedom, all we use or know—
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago.
Fatherhood is among our most common images for describing personal liberty, from Kipling to the Founding Fathers of the U.S. Constitution. We often speak of defending freedom in the language of protecting our birthright, and Kipling’s poem is in part a call for resistance against tyranny. Written at the onset of the Boer War, the poem repeats the refrain “Suffer not the old King.”
Over all things certain, this is sure indeed,
Suffer not the old King: for we know the breed.
The day after Abrego’s hearing, protesters gathered by the thousands at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, roughly a 15-minute walk from the courthouse. Crowds gathered at an amphitheater located between the state capitol and a memorial for Tennesseans who served in World War II to defeat fascism. Their message, along with the message of thousands of other protests across the United States, was that Donald Trump is not a king.
This Father’s Day, I am thinking about the sources of my personal freedom: generations of people who treasured and fought for the systems that secure it, and of course, the unqualified love and support of my parents.
Before moving on to this week’s listings, I have some final thoughts about our recent coverage in Nashville, Tenn.
The day after our special coverage in Nashville, Tenn., All Rise News jumped to the No. 4 spot in Substack’s rising leaderboard in the “news” category.
Substack ranks that list based on momentum in paid subscriptions in a given category, relative to the size of the publication. In short, it measure how quickly a publication is growing.
That’s something to celebrate — and not only for All Rise News.
It demonstrates that people want to support firsthand newsgathering: live, shoe-leather, on-the-ground reporting, the kind that requires investment. It cannot happen without airfare, accommodations, and the daily necessities of life on the road. It’s more expensive than opinion, but it’s never been more essential during a time when newsrooms across the country are getting gutted, shuttered, and losing their audiences.
You have decided that substance matters, and as a business model, substance works. That is an important message to send for journalism and democracy.
After Abrego’s hearing, independent news powerhouses helped get the word out about our coverage. Ben Meiselas interviewed me about the hearing for MeidasTouch. Brian Tyler Cohen and I discussed the case for his YouTube channel, and Allison Gill spoke to me outside the courthouse in a live-stream. More interviews are on the way.
The massive response makes it much more likely that All Rise News will be on the ground when, for example, Judge Hannah Dugan goes to trial in Milwaukee, Wisc., Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) goes to trial in Newark, N.J., and Abrego’s civil and criminal cases have future hearings in Maryland and Tennessee.
The courts have been a bulwark against authoritarian attacks on U.S. institutions. Your support ensures that someone you trust will be there to witness and report on the most important cases for our democracy, while making sure that you never miss a dispatch.
In the Courts
On Friday, a judge promised to issue her ruling soon on whether to release Kilmar Abrego Garcia. It isn’t clear when that ruling will land — or whether the Trump administration will simply put Abrego, if he is freed, directly into immigration custody.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reviews a federal judge’s order blocking Trump from deploying the National Guard in California at noon Pacific Time on Tuesday.
Two highly controversial prosecutions of public officials by the Trump administration head to court this week: Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) has an arraignment scheduled on Monday, and Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan has a court appearance on Wednesday.
The list of hearings below will be updated as more are scheduled.
Massachusetts v. Kennedy (Mon., June 16): A multi-state coalition challenges Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s grant funding delays inside the National Institutes of Health.
How to attend: U.S. District Court, 1 Courthouse Way, Boston, Mass. (Judge Young)
Virtual access: Click here to register.
When: 10 a.m. Eastern Time
United States v. McIver (Mon., June 16): Democratic Rep. McIver has an arraignment on the Trump administration’s allegations that she impeded law enforcement during a melee at a private immigration facility.
How to attend: U.S. District Court, 50 Walnut St., Newark, N.J.
When: 11 a.m. Eastern Time
Newsom v. Trump (Tues., June 17): The state of California defends a federal judge’s ruling that Trump’s federalization of the National Guard is illegal and unconstitutional.
How to attend: Ninth Circuit, 95 Seventh Street, San Francisco, Calif.
Virtual access: The court’s YouTube page
When: 12 p.m. Pacific Time
United States v. Dugan (Weds., June 18): A judge holds a telephone status conference in the case of Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan to discuss scheduling matters.
Virtual public access: Dial 1-669-254-5252, then use Meeting ID 161 8470 1401 and Passcode 187773
When: 11:15 a.m. Central Time
The Supreme Court is expected to release orders on Monday, June 16 and opinions on Weds., June 18.
In the Streets
Protests against Trump’s immigration policies have swept across the United States.
Earlier this week, The Independent mapped them across 23 states and 40 cities, and you can find those listings and graphics here. It is unclear how many of those protests will remain active throughout the week.
Juneteenth falls on Thursday this year, and The New York Times highlighted nine events across the United States commemorating the date formerly enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas learned that they were free. These events are mostly celebrations and community gatherings at museums, memorials and other cultural institutions.
On the Phones
As part of our ongoing coverage of civic engagement, All Rise News exclusively looks at the 5 Calls app’s internal data, which they shared with us for the seven days leading up to Fri., June 13.
Note: Since congressional call records aren’t usually publicly available, the app’s internal data offers a rare glimpse into this form of civic engagement. See our previous coverage here for context about how the information 5 Calls collects fits into the bigger picture.
Topline: Trump’s militarized response to anti-ICE protests generated the highest number of calls to elected officials over the last week by a mile — with 82,699 calls! No other topic cracked 10,000 calls last week, but there was a late-breaking contender generating a lot of civic engagement: the No Kings protests.
The other Top 5 topics were calls for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s resignation (9,867 calls), opposing funding cuts to NPR and PBS (8,843 calls), and opposing cuts to clean energy programs and climate protections in the budget bill (6,924).
5 Calls posted the No Kings topic on Thursday night, and it immediately cracked into the last spot of the Top 5 for the entire week, spurring 6,830 calls.
The app’s data and visualizations expert Katie Dektar found that calls sharply spiked when Trump activated the National Guard on Monday and when Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was handcuffed on Thursday.
This is such a busy week for the court cases. It is so worthwhile subscribing to this newsletter for getting current and precise information on these cases.
Thank you for posting about Mr Garcia on Fathers Day, and thank you for stepping back from Diddy. The only reportable and newsworthy element is what you pointed out early on: the network that exists to cover up the crimes is bound to be pierced and exposed. A word of caution as your star rises, selective whom you interact with. There’s one guy I’d love to hear you engage..Jason Kint. There’s a link with the corrupt social media oligarchs he reports on and the cases you are following I think. Lastly, thanks for added poetry. I used to love Eric Boelert’s newsletters. Greg Olear too for the added wisdom and culture.