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May 1, 2025
A New Thing
(From a Facebook post)
Slate Auto is shaking up the electric vehicle market with its radical new offering: the Slate Truck, a $20,000 American-made EV that strips away modern car luxuries to focus on affordability and simplicity.
Slated for release in 2026, the minimalist two-seater features no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen, with body panels made of durable, unpainted plastic.
Embracing a "digital detox" ethos, it invites owners to customize their trucks with DIY vinyl wraps and add-on kits, while skipping the costly complexities that usually plague auto manufacturing. By eliminating major production hurdles like paint shops and offering one model, one color, and one trim, Slate aims for financial sustainability few EV startups have achieved.
Despite its bare-bones approach, the Slate Truck isn't skimping on safety or potential upgrades. It targets a 5-Star crash rating and offers bolt-on expansion kits, extended battery packs, and user-friendly maintenance backed by "Slate University." Investors, including reportedly Jeff Bezos, have shown interest in Slate's radically simplified model, which challenges a bloated auto industry increasingly reliant on tech-heavy, high-cost vehicles. The big question now: Are consumers ready to embrace a back-to-basics, fully customizable EV as a new standard in personal transportation?
Apr 30, 2025
100 Days Of Shit
What Trump has been doing.
From Indivisible - Littleton CO
• Withdrew from World Health Organization
• Stopped objecting to health misinformation on social media platforms
• Halted public communications from HHS, CDC & NIH
• Scrubbed abortion information from government sites
• Suspended job-related travel by HHS employees
• Revoked limits on ICE and Border Patrol enforcement in hospitals
• Cancelled monthly HHS call with nationwide pathology authorities to review health threats
• Appointed contrarians Robert Kennedy, Mehmet Oz, Jay Bhattacharya to HHS, CMS, NIH
• Reinstated global gag rule on abortion referrals
• Rescinded Biden price reductions on Medicare and Medicaid prescription drugs
• Curtailed prosecutions for blocking access to abortion clinics
• Stopped disbursing HIV drugs overseas
• Crashed Medicaid payment portals in all 50 states
• Dismantled USAID affecting programs to supply HIV and malaria drugs
• Froze government grants on healthcare
• Cut ACA enrollment period from 90 days to 45 days
• Cut funding for ACA navigators by 90%
• Rescinded increased subsidies for low-income ACA enrollees in Medicaid
• Took down thousands of informational webpages from CDC, FDA and other agencies
• Fired FDA employees who reviewed food safety and medical devices
• Fired thousands of scientists, doctors and public health officials from CDC, NIH, FDA
• Fired border station health inspectors
• Disbanded Medicare and Medicaid health equity panel
• Endorsed Congressional Republican proposal to reduce Medicaid federal subsidy share
• Granted DOGE access to Medicare and Medicaid payment and contracting records
• Postponed CDC vaccine panel meeting on recommendations for meningitis, flu, RSV
• Barred future public comments on new HHS rules
• Placed hundreds of federal buildings for sale including HHS and Medicare headquarters
• Extended buyout offers to federal health agency employees
• Placed burdensome requirements on low-income ACA enrollments
• Convened closed-door White House health commission conference
• CDC commissioned study of vaccine-autism link
• Proposed allowing bird flu to spread through farm population
• Cut $34 million from budget for food testing
• Terminated support for Gavi organization that supplies vaccines to developing nations
• Cancelled $12 billion grants to states for infectious disease, mental health and addiction
• DOGE terminated 10% of USDA’s plant and seed gene bank staff scientists
• Forced resignation of FDA’s head of vaccine safety and effectiveness
• Reduced HHS workforce by 25%
• Froze funding for Title X family planning services
• Dropped Medicare/Medicaid coverage for weight loss drugs
• Shut down CDC’s premier laboratory for studying sexually transmitted diseases
• RFK Jr. declared FDA employees “sock puppet” of pharmaceutical industry
• Imposed tariff on international drug supply chains
• Proposed to cut NIH budget in half and reduce 27 agency health centers to eight
• Eliminated early hearing detection program for newborns
• Took down COVID-19 informational websites and replaced with conspiracy theory sites
• Cancelled $40 million in EPA research grants to universities
• Cut or reduced hundreds of millions in funding for autism research from multiple agencies
• Briefly proposed national autism registry
Entering A Dark Time
Two cities stopped adding fluoride to water. Science reveals what happened
Calgary, Canada, and Juneau, Alaska, show how ending fluoridation can affect health
Warren Loeppky has been a pediatric dentist in the Canadian city of Calgary for 20 years. Over the last decade, he says, tooth decay in children he’s seen has become more common, more aggressive and more severe. Many of his young patients have so much damage that he has to work with them under general anesthesia.
“It’s always sad seeing a young child in pain,” Loeppky says. “Dental decay is very preventable. It breaks your heart to see these young kids that aren’t able to eat.”
Loeppky notes that many factors can contribute to tooth decay in children, including their diet and genetics. Still, he believes part of the problem is linked to a decision made in the halls of local government: In 2011, Calgary stopped adding fluoride to its drinking water.
“This decision of city councilors was surprising to the general public, but shocking and alarming to dentists, to pediatricians, to anesthesiologists and others in the health care field, who knew what it would mean,” says Juliet Guichon, a legal and ethics scholar at the University of Calgary who formed a group that advocated for adding fluoride back to drinking water in the city.
Several studies have shown that fluoride is a safe and effective way to prevent tooth decay. It recruits other minerals, such as calcium and phosphate, to strengthen tooth enamel and fend off acid made by bacteria. Oral health can also affect a person’s overall health.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that communities across the country add 0.7 milligrams of fluoride for every liter of water. It’s up to state and local governments to decide if they want to follow that recommendation. In 2022, the CDC reported that 63 percent of Americans received fluoridated water.
But that practice now is coming under new scrutiny. In March, Utah became the first state to ban fluoridation; many local governments across the country are also debating the issue. And on April 7, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told news reporters that he planned to tell the CDC to stop its recommendation.
Adding fluoride to water has been contested in the United States since the practice became widespread in the mid-20th century. Opponents have historically voiced health concerns, including about tooth staining and disproven worries that fluoridated water could cause bone cancer, as well as claims that fluoridation amounts to mass medication and violates individual freedoms. More recently, people have pointed to research showing an association between fluoride and lowered IQ in children. But those findings, which have been heavily criticized, looked at fluoride concentrations much higher than those found in most Americans’ drinking water.
What happened in Calgary, as well as in Juneau, Alaska, which stopped water fluoridation in 2007, may be a cautionary tale for other municipalities. Science News spoke with researchers and other experts in both cities to understand what can happen when local governments opt to stop adding fluoride to drinking water.
Looking into the mouths of second-graders in Calgary
Lindsay McLaren says she never anticipated becoming a self-described fluoridation researcher. As a quantitative social scientist at the University of Calgary, she studies how public policies can affect the health of a population. She hadn’t given much thought to fluoridation until 2011, when the Calgary City Council decided to remove fluoride from the city’s water.
The move prompted McLaren to design a study looking at how the dental health of the city’s children fared once fluoride was removed. She recruited dental hygienists to go to schools and inspect the mouths of second-grade students. Some went to schools in Calgary and others went to schools in Edmonton, a similar city in the same province that still fluoridated its water.
In Calgary, the team surveyed 2,649 second-graders around seven years after fluoridation ended, meaning they had likely never been exposed to fluoride in their drinking water. Of those, 65 percent had tooth decay. In Edmonton, 55 percent of surveyed children had tooth decay. While those percentages may seem close, they mark a statistically significant difference that McLaren calls “quite large” on the population level.
“Compared to Edmonton kids, Calgary kids were now considerably worse as far as dental health goes,” McLaren says. Other factors, including diet and socioeconomic status, did not explain the differences between children in Edmonton and Calgary, she says.
In 2024, another study found a higher rate of tooth decay-related treatments for which a child was placed under general anesthesia in Calgary than in Edmonton. From 2018 to 2019, 32 out of every 10,000 children in Calgary were put under general anesthesia to treat tooth decay, compared with 17 for every 10,000 children in Edmonton.
The findings didn’t surprise local dentists, says Bruce Yaholnitsky, a periodontist in Calgary. “This is just obvious to us. But you need to have proper science to prove, in some cases, the obvious.”
Analyzing Medicaid claims in Juneau
Years before Calgary’s city council opted to remove fluoride from its water, members of the local government in Juneau made a similar decision.
Jennifer Meyer says she first became interested in studying the effects of lack of fluoridation in Juneau after moving there in 2015. At the time, she had two young children; a third was born in Juneau. She was surprised at how much dental work, including fillings, she noticed among many other preschool and elementary school children.
“I thought ‘Wow, what’s going on here?’ Because I could see a lot of the decay and the repairs,” Meyer says.
Juneau had stopped adding fluoride to its drinking water in 2007 after asking a six-member commission to review the evidence around fluoridation. A copy of the commission’s report obtained from Meyer, a public health researcher at the University of Alaska Anchorage, shows that two commission members opposed to fluoridation made claims about the health effects that Meyer says are “false” and “not grounded in quality investigations.”
The commission’s chair criticized anti-fluoride positions, at one point writing that part of the literature was based on “junk science.” But he ultimately recommended that the city stop fluoridation, claiming that the evidence about its safety at low concentrations was inconclusive. With the commission’s members split at 3–3, the Juneau Assembly voted to end fluoridation.
Meyer and her colleagues analyzed Medicaid dental claims records made before and after the city stopped fluoridation. They found that the average number of procedures to treat tooth decay rose in children under age 6, from 1.5 treatments per child in 2003 to 2.5 treatments per child in 2012.
The cost of these treatments in children under 6 years old, when adjusted for inflation, jumped by an average of $303 dollars per child from 2003 to 2012.
Meyer says that increased Medicaid costs for dental treatments ultimately end up being paid by taxpayers.
“When politicians decide to withhold a safe and effective public health intervention like fluoridation, they are imposing a hidden health care tax on everyone in their state or community,” Meyer says.
Continued calls to end fluoridation
Today, many opponents to fluoride in water cite a controversial systematic review released last year by the National Toxicology Program, which is nestled in HHS and evaluates the health effects of substances. That August 2024 review concluded with “moderate confidence” that water with more than 1.5 mg of fluoride per liter was associated with lowered IQ in children.
But that dose is more than double the CDC’s recommended amount. And the review authors couldn’t determine if low fluoride concentrations like those found in treated drinking water in the United States had a negative effect on children’s IQ. In addition, merely finding an association does not prove that higher levels of fluoride caused lowered IQ, the NTP notes on its website.
More broadly, Meyer says, “ending fluoridation … based on weak or misrepresented evidence is not a precaution, it’s negligence.”
Juneau remains without fluoridated water. In Calgary, though, residents voted in 2021 to bring it back. With 62 percent of voters opting to reintroduce fluoride, the margin was higher than it was in the 1989 vote that brought fluoride to Calgary in the first place. Guichon says McLaren’s study, combined with “determined advocacy,” helped bring the electorate to the polls.
“More people voted to reinstate fluoride than voted for the mayor. So that’s a success,” Meyer says. “But in America, we are entering a dark time.”
Amy Siskind
New for me today: ADP hiring report says 62,000 non-farm pay check jobs were added in April.
How that stacks up against what Trump's DOL has to say in a few days, we'll just have to see.
note: We need 120-130,000 new jobs every month to keep the ball rolling.
Could be interesting. I think we all know Trump isn't exactly above tinkering with the numbers, so if Labor reports a nice high (ie: made up) number, I hope the Dems are smart enough to play it against the usual Republican refrain: "Who ya gonna believe - private enterprise or da gubmint?"
Meanwhile,
This remains unconfirmed:
But how can we be sure it's not legit?
Leopards vs Faces
You're always 4 or 5 really bad months away from living in a refrigerator box down by the river.
You're never 4 or 5 really great months away from becoming a billionaire.
Salvation and deliverance - if there really are such things - are not to be found in idolizing the people who are actively exploiting your very existence.
The "elites" are not the teachers and the nurses, or the college professors or the virologists.
The elites are the guys who can pay millions to a PR firm to keep you in thrall - to make sure you always believe your toast is buttered on the side they tell you it's buttered on - that the land of milk and honey is just over this next hill.
The Gish Gallop
I'm never going to let up on the Press Poodles for not fact-checking.
They may not be able to do it on the fly because 1) Trump slings the bullshit fast and furious, and 2) as we see in this mess about tattoos, he'll spend 3 minutes arguing against reality every time you stop him, so you're never going to get thru it.
The problem is that I'm hard-pressed to find any kind of post-mortem or followup on what he did or didn't lie about once they put the story to bed.
Joints like Meidas Touch do a decent job dissecting Trump's maniacal Gish Gallops.
Press Poodles, take note.
Numbers
- Consumer Confidence Index: ↓7.9 to 86.0
- Present Situation Index: ↓0.9 (overall)
- Expectations Index: ↓12 to 54*
* anything below 80 usually means we're tipping into recession
Putting Trump back in
the White House is like:
Oh no, I've shit my pants -
I guess I'd better change my shirt.
So much fucking winning.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans’ confidence in the economy slumped for the fifth straight month to the lowest level since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as anxiety over the impact of tariffs takes a heavy toll.
Five straight months. Remind me - how long ago was Trump elected?
The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index fell 7.9 points in April to 86, its lowest reading since May 2020. Nearly one-third of consumers expect hiring to slow in the coming months, nearly matching the level reached in April 2009, when the economy was mired in the Great Recession.
The figures reflect a rapidly souring mood among Americans, most of whom expect prices to rise because of the widespread tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump. About half of Americans are also worried about the potential for a recession, according to a survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center.
“Rattled consumers spend less than confident consumers,” said Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, in an email. “If confidence sags and consumers retrench, growth will go down.”
A measure of Americans’ short-term expectations for their income, business conditions and the job market plunged 12.5 points to 54.4, the lowest level in more than 13 years. The reading is well below 80, which typically signals a recession ahead.
How this gloomy mood translates into spending, hiring, and growth will become clearer in the coming days and weeks. On Wednesday, the government will report on U.S. economic growth during the first three months of the year, and economists are expecting a sharp slowdown as Americans pulled back on spending after a strong winter holiday shopping season.
And on Friday the Labor Department will release its latest report on hiring and the unemployment rate. Overall, economists expect it should still show steady job gains, though some forecast it could report sharply reduced hiring.
The stark decline in consumer confidence also likely reflected the sharp swings in stock and bond prices that roiled financial markets earlier this month. While all age groups and most income brackets reported lower confidence, the decline was steepest among households earning more than $125,000 and among consumers 35 to 55 years old.
Though major U.S. markets rebounded over the past week, the S&P 500 is still down 6% for the year and the Dow Jones has lost 5%. The growth-heavy Nasdaq is down 10% in 2025.
The Conference Board said that mentions of tariffs in write-in responses reached an all-time high this month, with the duties on the top of consumers’ minds. Trump has imposed a tariff of 10% on nearly all imports, as well as a huge 145% tariff on most goods from China. He has imposed separate import taxes on steel, aluminum, and cars.
More Americans are also now worried that the economy could tip into a recession, with the proportion of consumers expecting a downturn in the next 12 months reaching a two-year high.
Fewer consumers said they were planning to buy a home or car in the next six months. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes slowed last month in a lackluster start to the spring homebuying season as elevated mortgage rates and rising prices discouraged those looking.
And Americans also said they would spend less on services. The proportion of Americans planning an overseas vacation in the next six months fell to 16.4%, down from 24.1% in December. And the proportion of consumers planning to spend more on dining out plummeted by nearly the most on record in April, the Conference Board said.
Tame March PCE inflation no salve after downbeat Q1 US GDP report
April 30 (Reuters) - Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, surged 0.7% in March after an upwardly revised 0.5% gain in February, the Commerce Department' said on Wednesday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast consumer spending would rise 0.5% after a previously reported 0.4% increase in February.
The data was included in the advance gross domestic product report for the first quarter that was published earlier on Wednesday, which showed GDP contracted at a 0.3% annualized rate last quarter, weighed down by a record surge in imports.
President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs have fanned fears the economy is facing a period of tepid growth, even recession, and high inflation, commonly referred to as stagflation. The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index was unchanged in March after advancing 0.4% in February. In the 12 months through March, PCE prices increased 2.3% after rising 2.7% in February.
MARKET REACTION:
STOCKS: The S&P 500 (.SPX), opens new tab was down 1.7%, holding losses after the data but off the day's lowest levels
BONDS: U.S. Treasury 10-year yield seesawed in a small range and was up 0.5 bp at 4.1792%. The two-year yield was 4.1 bp lower at 3.617%
FOREX: The dollar index likewise gyrated and was 0.28% higher
COMMENTS:
CHARLIE RIPLEY, SENIOR INVESTMENT STRATEGIST, ALLIANZ INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT, MOUND, MINNESOTA
"Personal consumption was up slightly from expectations. When you layer in the (PCE) inflation data, it was a little bit better than expected from an overall perspective, coming in a little bit lighter. But I don't think that's the number that the market's reading too much into.""The labor market data is really key as we go forward from here... any meaningful slowdown in hiring or job separations is going to lead to a deterioration in consumption.""The Fed has been very data dependent and they're going to want to see some of this hard data like GDP and some of the labor market data really show signs of weakness. We are starting to see a little bit of that, which is really why you're seeing the market reacting the way it is today."
OLIVER PURSCHE, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, ADVISOR, WEALTHSPIRE ADVISORS, WESTPORT, CONNECTICUT
"It's important to realize that a large chunk of the fall in GDP is due to the sharp increase in imports, which take away from GDP growth. And that's probably due to the expectation of tariffs. So, if you were to normalize that, you end up with positive GDP growth for the quarter, but it certainly doesn't bode well for Q2, which is why the market is selling off.
"The almost unchanged level of core PCE prices in March is welcome news but, given the data precede the implementation of broad-based tariffs, core inflation will inevitably rebound sharply in the coming months. Otherwise, the strong rise in real consumer spending last month should soothe fears that consumers are retrenching in the face of economic uncertainty.
"The 0.03% m/m rise in core PCE prices is smallest rise since April 2020 and the first below-target-consistent reading in four months. It pushed the annual core inflation rate down to 2.6%, from an upwardly-revised 3.0% in February. The three- and six- month annualized rates also fell to 3.5% and 3.0% respectively. The breakdown shows a fall in core goods prices, whereas core services prices edged up. That said, March’s data naturally do not reflect the impact of the broad-based tariffs implemented in April, so goods prices will rise much more strongly in the coming months. As a result, we expect core PCE inflation to reach a peak of almost 4% later this year."
BRIAN JACOBSEN, CHIEF ECONOMIST, ANNEX WEALTH MANAGEMENT, MENOMONEE FALLS, WISCONSIN
"Weak private sector payroll growth, faster inflation than expected, and a negative GDP print all point in the direction of stagflation. To get the stagflation of the late '70s and early '80s would require much higher unemployment and inflation, so this is more of an aroma of stagflation than an actual stench of stagflation."On the surface, the negative sign on GDP growth is upsetting, but final sales to domestic purchasers increased at a pretty decent 3% annualized pace. The surge in imports showed up mostly in information processing equipment and is in the “investments” bucket of GDP."It’s unfortunate that the convention is to focus on spending instead of production. In GDP, the P stands for production, not spending. To back into actual production, they subtract out imports, so it perpetuates the myth that imports are a bad thing."Real Gross Value Added is a better way to look at actual production instead of spending. Those details show where the real pain is being felt. Business value add fell 0.65% with farm value add falling a massive 35%. Federal government value add fell 1.6%."
ROBERT PAVLIK, SENIOR PORTFOLIO MANAGER AT DAKOTA WEALTH IN FAIRFIELD, CONNECTICUT
"Inflation is up. The economy is slowing more. It's not a great environment for the equity market. GDP is backward looking but it doesn't portend good information going forward not with the environment we're currently in. There's still uncertainty with the trade tariffs being high, and uncertainty around what's going to happen.""People are pulling back on spending. People not being sure about their jobs. If you're unsure about your job you're certainly not going to be making major purchases or life changing decisions as far as purchases are concerned."
WASIF LATIF, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, SARMAYA PARTNERS, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
“It’s a surprising number to the market on the downside. This is sort of in line with what we've been anticipating that we might be entering into a 70s-like scenario with weakening economic growth and still sticky, persistent inflation. That’s where you are seeing the response between bond yields moving up and equities going down. But we do need to take a step back because there is some noise in this GDP report because of the pull forward activity on inventory build and then the shipments of gold that impacted the international trade number that goes into the GDP data.”
LOU BRIEN, MARKET STRATEGIST, DRW TRADING, CHICAGO
"When you look to real final sales, which fell 2.5%, that's the GDP not counting the inventory data, that's a significantly weak number. It's the weakest since the pandemic period and prior to the pandemic you have to go back to 2009 to find a quarter that has a weaker real final sales. So I think that's probably the reason for the bonds to jump initially, but reconsidering, they probably looked over to the inflation measures, the GDP deflator and the PCE core, both significantly higher than anticipated. And so there was a little bit of a push me pull you on the bond market as a result of the report."
PETER ANDERSEN, FOUNDER OF ANDERSEN CAPITAL MANAGEMENT, BOSTON
"There shouldn't be a surprise, but the market is acting as if it is a surprise. This period where tariffs are trying to be negotiated and acknowledged by the market makes things extremely difficult to model, predict, etc. When the market cannot make a reasonable prediction, it tends to turn to the pessimistic interpretation of things."
PETER CARDILLO, CHIEF MARKET ECONOMIST, SPARTAN CAPITAL SECURITIES, NEW YORK
“The economy has shown negative growth, which means that we are probably already in a mild recession, or we're about to enter a mild recession.”“That's obviously bad news but I would kind of think that the market has been already discounting the possibility of a mild recession now.”“We got to these numbers because of Trump's policies, right? They've created uncertainty and when you create uncertainty, nobody's going to put their foot on the accelerator, and we're seeing that as the earnings come out, right? Guidance has been pulled back.”“So Trump's policies have created this. But you know, he himself many times has said we might be headed for recession. He's not denied that. Is he going to take a victory lap with these numbers? No, of course not.”“But these numbers may accelerate the administration in perhaps reversing the tariff policy, and that would psychologically be a big boost to the economy.”“I think the damage has already been done and so no matter what they do now, they just have to hope that the recession is not a steep one and that the there is a positive ending to the tariff situation. That's what the administration needs to hope for at this point.”
JAMIE COX MANAGING PARTNER, HARRIS FINANCIAL GROUP, RICHMOND VIRGINIA.
"I'm not surprised the headline GDP print wasn't worse, given the surge in imports. Underneath, however, real final demand remains super strong. Those who underestimate the US consumer, do so at their own peril."
Apr 29, 2025
No Good Germans Please
Gettin' pretty fuckin' sick of this shit.
- The assholes who attacked that lady doctor in Idaho showed no ID, and wore no uniforms or insignia.
- The assholes who nabbed that grad student at Tufts showed no ID, and wore no uniforms or insignia.
- The assholes who grabbed the guy in Charlottesville showed no ID, and wore no uniforms or insignia.
People are being disappeared, goddammit.
Don't just sit there pretending it's not happening. And don't start thinking it can't happen to you.
ICE Arrest Virginia Man in Court Despite Judge Dropping Charges Against Him
Federal immigration authorities detained a man at the Albemarle County Courthouse in Charlottesville, Virginia, after a judge had dismissed charges against him.
"Following the dismissal of a misdemeanor state charge, our client exited the courtroom into the lobby and was physically detained by three men," public defender Nicholas Reppucci told Newsweek. "The men showed no identification that they were law enforcement, nor that they had a valid arrest warrant."
Newsweek has contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for comment.
Why It Matters
President Donald Trump, who returned to office in January, has pledged to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. His administration's hard-line immigration agenda has sparked concern about the involvement of federal agents in local legal proceedings—in this case particularly regarding the lack of transparency in their actions at courthouses.
What To Know
A man who appeared in Albemarle County General District Court on April 22 to face assault charges had those charges dropped but was taken into custody shortly afterward by three plainclothes individuals.
Video footage obtained by 29 News shows a man being approached and restrained in an unrestricted portion of the courthouse lobby by multiple individuals, one of whom is wearing a full-face balaclava. Though bystanders asked what was happening, the individuals did not present a warrant or official identification when requested.
Despite the concerns raised by those present, the man was placed in handcuffs and escorted from the building, with the video ending as he was removed from the scene.
"It is extremely unusual for law enforcement to not show a badge of authority demonstrating they were legally entitled to seize the individual," Reppucci said. "Even more inappropriate and problematic, one of the individuals was wearing a mask to conceal his identity (which is illegal under Virginia state law)."
He added that the Charlottesville public defender's office was "working hard to develop and fine tune a new protocol to protect all our clients and their support networks moving forward."
The public defender's office was representing Teodoro Dominguez Rodriguez, who was arrested along with another man by the masked agents.
Albemarle County Commonwealth Attorney James Hingeley, who was not present at the time of the arrests, said in a statement that he was investigating the incident. While he expressed relief that no one was injured, he voiced concerns that arrests of this nature by ICE could potentially lead to violence.
He told Newsweek, "ICE operations conducted in the manner of the courthouse arrests on April 23, where lawful authority to arrest was not displayed, constitute a grave danger to our community."
The county courthouse is under the jurisdiction of Sheriff Chan Bryant. In a news release, Bryant said the federal agents showed paperwork and credentials to the bailiffs before making the arrests.
"When the agents were presenting their identification and credential, none of the agents were wearing any face coverings. The agents informed the bailiffs at that time that they were there to detain two individuals who had court cases in the Albemarle County General District Court," Bryant said.
"The federal agents showed the bailiff their paperwork and photographs of the individuals they were looking for and waited outside the courtroom until the conclusion of each case," he added.
In response to concerns over the recent incident at the Albemarle County General District Court, state Senator Creigh Deeds and Delegate Katrina Callsen submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to Albemarle County.
The lawmakers, who seek to obtain answers regarding the presence and actions of plainclothes Department of Homeland Security agents at the courthouse, plan to make the findings publicly available.
Protests erupted outside the Albemarle County Courthouse on Wednesday, with more than 100 people gathering to oppose the arrests.
What People Are Saying
Public defender Nicholas Reppucci told Newsweek: "The decision to execute an immigration seizure at a state courthouse is horrible public policy. Inevitably, this detention will have a severe chilling effect on peoples' willingness to come to court on all matters of disputes, both civil and criminal. Individuals will be less likely to pursue civil protective orders or abide by lawful subpoenas; witnesses on both sides of any issue will be less likely to appear in court. As a result, local courts will be less efficient, less accurate, and less just.
"Additionally, people will be less likely to call the police if they observe criminal activity or are the victims of a crime. They will be less willing to provide important pertinent information to law enforcement and less likely to intervene to help others if they see people being victimized. There will be a significant increase in unreported crime across all categories. It is not just the undocumented community that will be negatively affected, but everyone who lives in, works in, or visits Charlottesville. Our community is less safe and just than it was a few days ago."
Albemarle County Commonwealth Attorney James Hingeley said in a statement: "The information I have reviewed so far indicates that these alleged law enforcement agents did not display a badge or other indication of authority that would empower them to make lawful arrests in these circumstances. I am grateful that no one was hurt in this operation, but I am also greatly concerned that arrests carried out in this manner could escalate into a violent confrontation, because the person being arrested or bystanders might resist what appears on its face to be an unlawful assault and abduction."
Sheriff Chan Bryant said in a statement: "I want to be clear to the citizens of Albemarle County that the safety and security of the citizens and its courts are the top priority of our office. At no time was this a raid of the courthouse. These individuals were identified by the federal agents and taken into custody with paperwork in hand for them. Which would be the same practice whether it be Albemarle or Charlottesville police, state agencies or federal agencies."
Delegate Katrina Callsen wrote on X, formerly Twitter: "Senator Deeds and I penned a letter to Albemarle County requesting more information regarding the presence of plain-clothed Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents operating at the Albemarle County Courthouse."
What Happens Next
It remains to be seen whether further information surrounding the nature of the arrest will be released.
The Fallout Begins
Truckers are taking a pass on carrying stuff to the west coast. Empty ports on the Pacific means they'd have to dead-head it back because there's nothing for them pick up for the return trip.
Trump's trade war means freight haulers would be doing the same amount of work for half the pay.
The future for trucking (and rail, for that matter) is pretty bleak right now - and will not rebound in a big hurry. Even if Trump reversed himself today, it'll be months - if not years - before we get back what we're losing.
I hate that fuckin' guy.
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