Thanks so much for joining me today. I’ve got a great edition for you today. Before we jump in, hit the like button and restack this—it helps us punch a big hole through the MAGA propaganda machine.
To assemble this report we read through 16 primary documents—among them a sworn criminal complaint, federal court orders, bail records, a governor’s executive order, and a county board motion.
Here’s some of what our digging turned up. Right now, the federal government still has a press release on its website saying three men “violently assaulted law enforcement with a shovel and broom handle” before an ICE agent opened fire. We have the criminal complaint. The video it describes contradicts the agent’s account. And buried on page four it says FBI agents at the scene told state investigators they were directed to stop cooperating with them. The regime has blocked them ever since.
If you aren’t yet a paid subscriber, know that we need all hands on deck. Readers like you have sent more than 860,000 letters to the House and Senate since November 2024, and millions since 2016—every one of those campaigns starting with the kind of digging in today’s edition. Our readers are what keep this operation going. Join us as a paid subscriber today—you’ll also unlock our Senate battleground analysis.
He Blamed A Snow Shovel. The Camera Was Running.
On September 16, ICE agent Christian Castro was arrested in Minneapolis and booked on four felony counts of second-degree assault.
Castro had told the FBI that three men beat him with a broom and a snow shovel for around three minutes while he lay on the ground, in fear for his safety. But there was a city camera pointed at that yard already.
The footage shows just 24 seconds between Castro stepping out of his vehicle and opening fire—and the two men were physically in contact for only 11 seconds of it. The shovel hit the grass before Castro ever reached the house.
According to a separate federal indictment charging him with lying to the FBI, “no person struck [Castro] with a broom as he described, and no persons wielded the broom and snow shovel as he described.” Prosecutors say he stretched those 11 seconds into an account lasting about three minutes. A doctor found one injury on Castro—a scrape on his thumb.
The next day, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a statement saying three men “violently assaulted law enforcement with a shovel and broom handle,” under a headline that called them violent criminals. Castro had fired a bullet through a closed front door. It went through Julio Sosa-Celis’s leg and stopped in a child’s bedroom wall.
The complaint says that at the time of the shooting, Sosa-Celis was residing in Minnesota lawfully. The federal charges brought against Sosa-Celis on the strength of Castro’s account were dismissed with prejudice. The statement remains on the DHS website today.
Within hours of the shooting, FBI agents at the scene said they had been told to stop working with Minnesota’s investigators—and federal officials have kept them out ever since.
But Hennepin County built a case anyway, off a traffic camera and a bullet’s angle through a door. “His federal badge does not make him immune from state charges,” said County Attorney Mary Moriarty. Since these are state charges, a conviction can’t be undone by a presidential pardon.
Each felony count carries up to seven years in prison and a three-year mandatory minimum. Castro posted $200,000 bond and is due back in a Hennepin County courtroom on November 3—the same day as the midterms.
The Country Is Telling Data Centers No
Loudoun County, Virginia, is known as Data Center Alley. The board recently moved to freeze every data center application that requires a board vote, effective immediately. The formal vote on it is set for October 20.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger also barred Virginia’s executive branch from signing nondisclosure agreements about data centers. It’s been hard to stop these projects when the people living next door weren’t allowed to know what had been promised in their name. “We are in a place where day by day, community members are demanding action,” Spanberger said.
Los Angeles County passed a temporary ban on new data centers across every unincorporated area. The Sandpoint, Idaho, City Council barred any data center over 5,000 square feet inside city limits—a threshold that rules out everything but a server room. All of it happened last week.
And in Louisville, Kentucky, there’s a moratorium on new data center approvals until February 2027 or until the council writes real rules. About 3,600 people answered the city’s survey, and the vast majority said they wanted a countywide ban outright. The council committee takes it up again this month, and nothing has been decided. That’s what got every place on this list here—people refusing to back down.
Six Hours’ Notice To A Country You Have Never Seen
For more than a year now, the regime’s been able to deport someone to a country they’ve never set foot in, with as little as six hours’ notice. It has sent more than 25,000 people to at least 29 countries. One group was told they were flying to Louisiana—then found out in flight they were headed to Africa.
In February 2025, an immigration judge ruled that a Guatemalan man known as O.C.G.—an asylum seeker who had no criminal record—couldn’t be sent back to Guatemala, where he would face serious harm. Two days later the regime put him on a bus to Mexico. He ended up in Guatemala anyway, in hiding.
“Those necessary steps, and O.C.G.’s pleas for help, were ignored,” federal Judge Brian Murphy wrote. Murphy ordered him brought back—on June 4, 2025, he was.
On Friday, a three-judge panel of the First Circuit agreed with Murphy that DHS has to give people effective notice and “a meaningful opportunity to contest removal.” DHS’s top lawyer posted within hours that the ruling isn’t in effect yet. Notice what he didn’t say: that the court was wrong.
It wasn’t even close. All three judges—one appointed by a Republican president—struck down the policy guidance. It’s now gone. Everyone in that position now has a right they didn’t have on Thursday.
They Wrapped It In Tarps. Thousands Showed Up Anyway.
Trump wanted his name back on the Kennedy Center. He had it put there late last year, a judge ruled it was added illegally, and it came down in June. On Tuesday, Judge Christopher Cooper blocked him from putting it back—“linguistic gymnastics,” Cooper wrote, “cannot extricate” the board from a court order. Hours later Trump’s board voted to close the building indefinitely, and fencing went up around it.
On Wednesday night, a photographer caught Trump through a cabin window on Air Force One, looking down at a printout labeled “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.” Rep. Joyce Beatty’s lawyers put it in front of Cooper. Thursday, he ordered 30 days’ notice before any major physical change to the building, including demolition.
That isn’t paranoia. “Look at the East Wing,” said Chris Raleigh of Hands Off the Arts, meaning the wing of the White House that came down for Trump’s ballroom. “We got up one morning and there was a giant hole there.”
On Friday night, thousands showed up to protest Trump at the Kennedy Center, linking hands around the entire complex. They held the ring for roughly 30 minutes. One participant, Bud Wilkinson, brought a chalkboard covered in Trump’s name, written hundreds of times, and handed out erasers. People flocked to it, rubbing out the names and drawing hearts.
Trump’s name is off the front, it can’t go back without an act of Congress, and he can’t touch the place without telling a judge first. Thousands of people stood outside on a Friday night to make sure it stays that way.
We have exactly 43 days until the midterms.
We don’t investigate these records just to document the regime’s abuses for history’s sake. We take these receipts and turn them into direct pressure, fueling more than 860,000 constituent letters delivered to the House and Senate since November 2024—along with countless phone calls. And our social media Watchdog Coalition generates billions of impressions monthly in our fight against Trump propaganda.
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Before you go, be sure to hit the like button and restack this edition. The truth about what happened in Minneapolis needs to spread like a wildfire. Thanks for all you do.
Onward!
Scott
The DHS press release with the false account of that shooting is still online eight months later. What do you think it would take to get it pulled down?
If you had been in Washington Friday night, would you have gone and stood outside the Kennedy Center? What’s the building in your life you’d show up for?
🚨 The regime is breaking on 4 fronts. 29k on Roberts, 13 letters to 15k on Yosemite, 7.2k on Hegseth, and the AI ban. Send all 4:
Roberts:
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-impeach-supreme-court-chief-justice-john-roberts/
Yosemite:
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-stop-trumps-yosemite-giveaway
Hegseth:
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-impeach-pete-hegseth/
AI Ban:
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-pass-the-ban-on-ai-we-cant-control/
If you finished this and you’re still calm, read the bedroom-wall sentence again. Then tell me the first headline was ever the story.
I needed the part where a pardon can’t touch it. That’s the line I came here for.
Spanberger going after the NDAs is the quiet win in here and I don’t want it to get lost. You can’t fight what you’re not allowed to see.