A note from Managing Editor Greg Collard:

New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, passed in 2019, was intended to impose regulations aimed at significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Many of those regulations haven’t been approved, and in February, the New York Energy Research and Development Authority determined that full implementation of regulations just to meet the law’s 2030 goals would cost people a lot of money — more than $4,000 annually for oil and gas households in upstate New York, and $2,300 for natural gas customers in New York City.

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Of course, businesses would be hit, too. “Depending on the utility and size of the facility, such entities could expect utility costs to increase by as much as 46%. Costs for operating a delivery truck would increase by over 60%,” the Development Authority’s president and CEO wrote.

Hochul now wants to amend the law.

“While I am still committed to working toward our targets, with all the stress our residents are under, New Yorkers expect their elected officials to prioritize affordability,” Hochul wrote in a March 20 op-ed.

Climate activists are not happy, and they expressed their dismay Tuesday at the state capitol in a protest filmed by Ford Fischer of Racket News partner News2Share. At one point, a protest leader stood up and said, “I heard many of us chanting just a few weeks ago, ‘No kings.’ Now, no queens!”

A new chant was born.

Nyserda Memo

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Ford Fischer of News2Share had a lot of options for covering last weekend’s No Kings protests for this edition of Activism, Uncensored. After all, there were about 3,300 protests nationwide. Minneapolis-St. Paul was one option, but with Bruce Springsteen as a headliner, Ford figured there would be plenty of cameras there.

Ultimately, Ford chose Los Angeles. For one, it was the scene of intense anti-ICE riots last summer, when a curfew was imposed and parts of downtown L.A. were not exactly date night territory.

Ford’s sources also told him that LA had the potential to be just as combustible last weekend. While it wasn’t quite that bad, police did use riot gear and fire anti-riot munitions. It was also combustible in another sense, with one protester burning a red MAGA hat. As you see from the thumbnail, some protesters also broke out yard equipment in futile attempts to push back police. Overall, the LAPD arrested about 75 people. - Greg Collard, Managing Editor

It didn’t take long for the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran to spur both protests and celebrations. Left groups including the ANSWER Coalition, 50501, and CODEPINK quickly united Saturday for emergency protests in several cities. Ford Fischer of News2Share filmed one demonstration in Washington, D.C., where the crowd’s anger was directed as much at Israel as President Donald Trump.

At 4:37 p.m., Trump announced that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had been killed. People gathered to celebrate where protesters had been just two hours earlier.

Both events are part of the Activism, Uncensored video above, along with a follow-up rally Monday night by the same coalition that organized Saturday’s emergency protests. - Greg Collard, Managing Editor

A note from Racket News Managing Editor Greg Collard:

Ford Fischer has made Minneapolis his reporting home base in 2026. He’s spent 16 days there this year documenting federal immigration enforcement and the escalation in opposition from activists after the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Border czar Tom Homan announced Thursday that the immigration crackdown there, Operation Metro Surge, would wind down. Agents will be withdrawing through next week. Homan took over the operation from Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on Jan. 26 after the fatal shooting of Pretti.

Ford’s latest trip was Feb. 2-8. Ford said there were notable differences from an earlier trip from Jan. 12-17. The number of federal agents present at protests declined, with local and state police involved in making arrests, which Ford said reduced the need for federal agents to rely on riot munitions to push protesters back.

“In my previous trip, federal agents would do the majority of front line policing against people protesting them. This would lead to street skirmishes involving tear gas, pepper spray, and sting balls, which would in turn tend to have an escalating effect.

Ford’s work included documenting Border Patrol and ICE agents, which prompted criticism from ICE on its official X account earlier this month.

“No stalking, impeding, or obstruction here, but the filming will continue!” Fischer replied on X. “Every federal agent swore an oath to protect and defend that right.”

Our partner from News2Share, Ford Fischer, has spent nine days in Minneapolis-St. Paul in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Renee Good. We had him on last week’s America This Week livestream reporting while in a vehicle following federal agents and anti-ICE activists.

You can watch a compilation of his work from January 12 to January 17 in the video above. We also thought it would be good to hear more from Ford. The following Q&A includes links to additional video, and has been edited for brevity and clarity:

Racket: You’ve been there nine days. What has your schedule been like?

Ford Fischer: These have been long, pretty challenging days, but the community of fellow journalists consisting of freelancers and other independents has made it possible. Generally, it’s looked like rolling out fairly early in the morning, and chasing reports about ICE and CBP activities throughout the day in vehicles. As watchers, protesters, and journalists come across immigration enforcement activity, they follow closely behind and jump out of the vehicles to record when the agents get out to do what they’re doing. Most days have been like that all day, possibly followed by protests in the evening, such as the demonstrations outside the hotels housing ICE, and those outside the Whipple Federal Building, which are non-stop.

On Wednesday night (January 14), I was with six journalists at a restaurant. I was two mozzarella sticks in and awaiting a patty melt on rye when we had to abandon our food because ICE shot someone about two miles away. The resulting unrest lasted for hours.

Q: Things were already heated when you arrived, but has there been a change in how ICE agents have reacted to protests and the people they’re arresting as part of the operation?

FF: My impression from my friends filming and photographing out here before my arrival is that the shooting of Renee Good had the dual effect of driving further involvement among the anti-ICE watchers, and more forceful tactics on the part of ICE. Entire crowds have formed around the agents amidst raids, and they’ve reacted with copious amounts of crowd control munitions.

However, since the Wednesday night shooting, as of today (Saturday), ICE appears to have been a bit more restrained, staying in their vehicles, and generally have had a more trollish attitude.

Q: How dangerous has the environment been for agents, protesters, and the public?

FF: Because of the activists’ tactic of being in contact online in real time, protesters tend to converge in greater force around scenes with longer durations. This has led to correspondingly aggressive tactics by ICE to push them back using riot control munitions. For protesters and agents, this is a chaotic environment, but one they’ve elected to end up in.

I think the effect on the public cannot be overstated. Tear gas canisters have ended up on lawns and under cars. In one scene, I filmed ICE agents rush away and leave behind an unspent flash grenade on the ground, which could severely injure someone if it were unpinned and detonated while holding it. At the shooting scene, I filmed a handful of 9mm unspent rounds on the ground, while a friend of mine filmed activists picking up a fully loaded AR-15 style magazine.

Q: Has the number of people attempting to block federal agents with vehicles grown?

FF: I’ve seen hundreds of activists follow agents in vehicles, and not once have I seen them attempt to use their cars to block agents’ movement. However, as people rush to converge on a scene — squads of agents, the watchers and journalists — additional vehicles also arrive. I have absolutely seen vehicles left on the street in a way that inadvertently has this effect [of blocking agents], causing the agents to stay in the area longer as they instruct people to move the cars. I’ve always seen this complied with, but additional violence has occurred when agents are stuck confronting crowds.

GC: From videos, we get the sense that all of the Twin Cities have erupted. Is it business as usual in parts of the city? Are we getting a distorted view of life there?

FF: I’ve had dinner at a handful of restaurants since arriving, and the management and servers have always said the same thing to me, which is that businesses are dead right now. Many people are afraid to go outside, fearing interaction with ICE regardless of immigration status or any kind of related conflict.

The two exceptions, so far, have been hotel restaurants and a business I won’t name here positioned close to the Whipple Building. Specifically, because these businesses are accommodating federal agents in their downtime as well as press, it would be fair to say they’ve benefited, while the economy more broadly seems to be suffering.

Q: From what you’ve seen, are ICE and Border Patrol agents stopping people who are targeted, or has it been more random? In other words, have you seen ICE or Border Patrol agents appear to stop people only because of how they look or sound?

FF: The Department of Homeland Security denies using race as a metric for establishing suspicion to begin an interaction, but the consensus among people here is that people of color are inherently at risk regardless of status. While filming BORTAC [Border Patrol Tactical] units on the 12th, I witnessed agents get out of a vehicle because a kid was on what appeared to be his driveway. They spoke to him briefly in Spanish, and the conversation that has been translated for me was roughly the following: The agents asked the kid for his ID, and the kid responded that it was inside the house. Agents said that he couldn’t be allowed in the house because he might not come out, so they forced him into a van.

I have no way to confirm his status at this point, nor whether he was released. But it would be nonsensical to expect a child to carry ID on his own driveway and treat his failure to immediately present one as evidence of lack of legal status.

Likewise, I filmed a man’s car window being smashed at a gas station and him being dragged out of his vehicle and taken away. A later DHS report said that he was indeed in the country illegally, but my understanding of the moments before my video started was that he was simply approached at the gas station and questioned, and this occurred because he refused to roll down his window. What made them begin suspecting him in the first place? Their statement doesn’t say.

Q: You spoke before about local police often being hands-off. Do you have a sense that people can do whatever they want around local police?

FF: There are a few different nexuses here. Local and state police are not supposed to participate in assisting immigration enforcement. It has been my experience that the police are not getting between the watchers and ICE. The only city I’ve seen police assist in that manner so far is New Orleans. However, the Minneapolis Police Department was out in force at the Wednesday night shooting scene, even firing riot munitions alongside the federal agents. So, in short, it seems like it takes a lot for them to get involved.

Likewise, the police did show up at the hotel protests, but it took a long time for them to do so. Protesters attempting to break into a hotel on my very first night scattered when state police showed up, but that didn’t happen for hours.

Q: You’re used to hearing allegations of paid protesters. What have you learned about these demonstrators? Do you see evidence of a well-funded, organized resistance?

FF: From my perspective, this week has further entrenched my view that “paid protesters” is, for the most part, an absurd fantasy. Having watched the Signal chats used to track the activities of ICE, these are formed by people joining and volunteering as they can, most of whom don’t even appear to know each other, and the work is done out of sheer commitment.

I will caveat this by saying that of course, some demonstrations are led by coalitions that have non-profits attached to them, and so donations are clearly used for things like signage. However, their calls to demonstrate attract the public with absolutely zero, zilch, nada evidence that the participants are somehow financially incentivized to participate.

In 10 years of documenting activism, I’ve very rarely run into even a crumb of evidence of “paid protesters,” but I’ve heard the accusation thrown around constantly without evidence to discredit them.

After protester Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis last week, freelance videographers poured into the city. Toward the weekend, many left town, but our partner Ford Fischer – with whom we’ll be talking live on today’s America This Week – stuck around covered the continued escalation. He’s following a convoy of protesters and ICE agents at this writing.

Donald Trump and Homeland Security Chief Kristi Noem had already dispatched 2,000 ICE agents to Minnesota before Good’s shooting in what was called the “largest immigration operation ever.” After the shooting, he sent at least “hundreds” more, with those officers arriving this past weekend.

“You’re tripping over feds now,” Ford says.

The hour-long montage above is a compilation of six scenes between Friday and Sunday. Only one, from Saturday, is what Ford calls “a traditional march, people walking around Ilan Omar speaking from the back of a truck,” i.e. “your standard First Amendment activity.”

The other protests have a more complex character. “What’s more fascinating to me is the people who are directly trying to follow around what ICE is doing, and their purpose is basically to make a ton of noise everywhere that ICE goes, in order to warn people around them.”

These protests exist in a gray area. As you watch the tape you see ICE agents — to the extent you can see them, given how much face-covering they wear — scrutinizing protester behavior, here and there determining it’s crossed a line. Ford has been trying to monitor where that line is and talk to anyone he can about the status of these confrontations, which were tense to start and grew more so as the weekend progressed.

A catalogue of this weekend’s heated events:

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A note from Managing Editor Greg Collard:

The U.S. Border Patrol has had the support of local and state police in New Orleans, a notable difference from its operations in other cities. Ford Fischer of News2Share experienced their effectiveness when he and colleague Dave Decker followed Border Patrol officers. Police would often block a road or drive slowly to back up traffic while Border Patrol officers proceed ahead.

That’s not to say protesters haven’t had an impact. Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino confirms as much in a text that Ford captured in the video above. Still, Bovino told Ford that activists’ constant blowing of whistles and honking of horns “actually helps us” because “we’re able to look at reaction from a horn and gather intelligence information from that.”

In the video above, you can see Ford’s exchange with Bovino and judge the effectiveness of the activists trying to follow their every move.

A note from Managing Editor Greg Collard:

In the late 1980s and early 90s, Randall Terry was well known as the founder of Operation Rescue. Terry and his group became synonymous with protests against abortion, often forming human blockades at clinics to keep people out until police inevitably arrived to drag protesters away.

These sit-ins and blockades mostly came to an end in 1994 with the passage of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The legislation made it a federal crime to block entrances and also made anyone who did so subject to federal lawsuits. President Trump’s Justice Department, however, is no longer prosecuting FACE cases except under “extraordinary” circumstances. Trump also pardoned 23 people convicted of FACE violations.

So now Terry is helping lead blockades again, this time with a coalition of groups such as the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising. They call their movement “Operation Resurrection.” In the video above, Ford Fischer of News2Share films their inaugural blockade of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Memphis and a training session in which Terry repeatedly spoke of the need to bring back Operation Rescue — a group that, by the way, has made clear it’s no longer associated with him.

A note from Managing Editor Greg Collard:

Dearborn, Mich., America’s largest city with an Arab-majority population, has been the subject of a lot of negative attention and fear. A Wall Street Journal op-ed called it “America’s Jihad Capital.” In September, the mayor told a resident he wasn’t welcome in the city. Prayer calls on loudspeakers are the subject of regular complaints on social media.

For years, the city has also dealt with accusations that Sharia Law is in force, including from long-shot Republican gubernatorial candidate Anthony Hudson. In response, he planned to lead a march in Dearborn. That didn’t happen. Instead, the event got hijacked Westboro Baptist Church-style by pardoned J6er Jake Lang, who goes so low as to casually drop an n-bomb while leading the march.

Meanwhile, Hudson started criticizing Lang before the demonstration and even recorded a video from inside a mosque to apologize for the Sharia Law allegations he got wrong.

In the video above, Ford Fischer of News2Share documents the chaos that ensued with Lang and his followers’ provocation — for starters, slapping bacon on a Quran and attempting to burn one — as they marched through Dearborn and profanely addressed a city council that was extremely accommodating despite his disruptive behavior. In the end, council members proved more tolerant of Lang’s existence than he was of theirs.

A note from Managing Editor Greg Collard:

This is a wild edition of Activism, Uncensored. Ford Fischer of News2Share starts off with his fourth visit to suburban Chicago to document activism against ICE and Border Patrol agents, but this time was quite different. The action wasn’t around the ICE detention facility in suburban Broadview. It was on the streets as agents went to neighborhoods to arrest illegal immigrants. I say “action” because activists followed the agents in vehicles, blowing whistles along the way to alert the public. It got intense as ICE and Border Patrol tried to shake their tail, which included activists and media. At times it was more like a car chase, but with the agents being pursued.

Ford then flew to Portland, where protests continued at the ICE facility there. The oddities we’ve come to expect in Portland continued, such as:

• A blowup pink shark being peppered with anti-riot munitions.

• A transgender activist with a group called “Degenerates Against Fascism” deadpanning through a loudspeaker, “I’ve literally had fucking spicier breakfast burritos than your shit.”

Ford then traveled across the country to Washington, D.C., for a more traditional Veterans Day protest against the continued presence of National Guard troops there.

A note from Managing Editor Greg Collard:

There are two things you learn about Portland from this Activism, Uncensored video. 1) It has a high ratio of gas mask-wearing protesters, and 2) they’re accompanied by a lot of inflatable animals. As Ford Fischer of News2Share notes, the inflatables are an attempt to soften their image. Perhaps it’s not a terrible strategy. I’ll admit I laughed when I saw this:

Then again, those cute inflatables don’t overshadow a protester yelling at ICE officers: “So when is someone gonna fucking murder you guys? It would do the world so much — I have a fantasy of beating your heads in.”

Ford spent three days in Portland covering nightly ICE protests and Saturday’s “No Kings” march. Thankfully, there weren’t the antics of a few weeks ago when throngs of people rode their bikes while naked (but wearing helmets!) to protest ICE. However, Portland’s flair for the unconventional was still on display.

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A note from Managing Editor Greg Collard:

For the third week in a row, Ford Fischer of News2Share films clashes between activists and law enforcement officers in the Chicago area. Ford has focused on activism at the ICE detention facility in suburban Broadview, but this past weekend he also visited the Brighton Park neighborhood in southwest Chicago. Tensions erupted there after a Customs and Border Patrol agent shot a woman who allegedly struck a patrol vehicle with her car as part of a convoy attempting to trap officers.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem also said the woman, Marimar Martinez, had a handgun, but the criminal complaint below does not mention the gun. Nor does it mention a separate allegation made by Tricia McClaughlin, an assistant secretary of Homeland Security:

The armed woman was named in a @CBP intelligence bulletin last week for doxing agents and posting online ‘Hey to all my gang let’s fuck those mother fuckers up, don’t let them take anyone.’

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, an assistant U.S. attorney said in court Monday that the loaded gun was on the passenger side of the vehicle, but it was never brandished. Martinez’s attorney, Christopher Parente, says she has a concealed-carry permit for the gun.

Parente also told a federal judge that videos show an officer turning into Martinez’s vehicle and yelling, “Do something, bitch” before exiting his vehicle and shooting her.

The judge released Martinez and another man facing charges in the incident, in part because of their lack of criminal history and family ties in the area.

Martinez Ruiz Complaint

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A note from Managing Editor Greg Collard:

Protests outside an ICE facility in Broadview, Ill., have intensified since the agency launched Operation Midway Blitz three weeks ago.

“This ICE operation will target the criminal illegal aliens who flocked to Chicago and Illinois because they knew Governor Pritzker and his sanctuary policies would protect them and allow them to roam free on American streets,” says an ICE press release in announcing the operation.

Prizker said Monday that ICE’s immigration enforcement is a “pretext to deploy military troops” in the region, and warned that 100 military personnel are on their way.

“People of Illinois, we need your help. Get your cell phones out – record what you see. Put it on social media. Peacefully ask for badge numbers and identification. Speak up for your neighbors. We need to let the world know this is happening – and that we won’t stand for it,” Pritzer said in an X post.

Many of the protesters at Broadview are willing to do that, and much more. Demonstrations have included intense pounding on government vehicles while trying to block them and ICE officers. Ford Fischer of News2Share first documented these interactions in a video we posted last week. Ford returned to Broadview last weekend and found the protests to be larger, longer, and involve repeated firing of riot munitions from weapons that resemble paintball guns.

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A note from Managing Editor Greg Collard:

Ford Fischer of News2Share was in the Chicago area Thursday night when he gave me a heads-up that a protest was planned at a nearby ICE facility for the next morning. He wasn’t sure it would be a big deal, but would stop by to check it out and leave late morning to catch a flight home.

Things didn’t work out as planned. Ford changed his flight and ended up filming all day outside the facility in Broadview, Ill. Protesters attempted to block government vehicles throughout the day, prompting ICE officers to fire riot munitions and make 16 arrests on Friday and Saturday. There was also the butt-bouncing throwdown of a protester who is running for Congress, which was widely cheered by the right and condemned by the left.

Ford made it home a day late, and then got to work producing this edition of “Activism, Uncensored.”

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A note from Managing Editor Greg Collard:

The assassination of Charlie Kirk has ignited a lot of debates. What should be done about social media? Who is more responsible for radicalization, the left or the right? What should the government do?

Attorney General Pam Bondi managed to outrage and unify large segments of the right and the left by saying:

There's free speech and then there's hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society...We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.

She reversed course today, saying, “Freedom of speech is sacred in our country, and we will never impede upon that right.”

Then there’s the debate over the legacy of Kirk himself, which you can see for yourself in this installment of “Activism, Uncensored,” by Ford Fisher of News2Share. Ford and his crew filmed rallies, vigils, and counter-protesters in response to Kirk’s murder.

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A note from Managing Editor Greg Collard:

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser recently noted that crime has gone down since the White House took control of the city’s police department and installed National Guard soldiers there. It’s a big reason she issued her own order for the city’s police to continue working with federal law enforcement through its “Safe and Beautiful Emergency Operations Center.”

However, statistics often don’t tell the whole story. The presence of law enforcement and military on patrol might scare off criminals, but they also scare off law-abiding people. Nightlife-dependent businesses are suffering, as Ford Fischer of News2Share shows in this edition of Activism, Uncensored.

Perhaps that will change after Trump’s 30-day emergency order expires Wednesday, although members of the National Guard and federal agents are expected to remain. Protestors aren’t going anywhere either. Ford followed activists last week, culminating with Saturday’s “We Are All D.C.” march. But unlike a few weeks ago, it’s not just the Trump Administration that is the subject of their ire. Mayor Bowser is as well.

A note from Managing Editor Greg Collard:

President Trump says his decision to activate the National Guard and have the federal government take control of the Metropolitan Police Department is an effort to “rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor.”

Ford Fischer of News2Share spent six days in Washington, D.C. to document how the president’s order was carried out and how protesters have reacted to seeing the military and federal agents patrolling the city’s streets. No matter your opinion on this topic, I’m confident you’ll find this to be another excellent installment of Racket’s “Activism, Uncensored” which even includes a parrot as part of the action.

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From Managing Editor Greg Collard:

A little-noticed June 2020 tweet resurfaced this month in which Zohran Mamdani is flipping off a statue of Christopher Columbus. The caption reads: “Take it down.” The most notable thing to me was Mamdani flipping the bird with a plastic glove, presumably to protect himself from Covid. On brand, I thought.

The tweet, however, received a lot of news coverage, and on Monday it was a hook for a protest where it was noted that Columbus is a “symbol of Italian-American pride and ancestry,” but Ford Fischer of News2Share also shows it was about more than saving a Columbus statue. It was about Mamdani’s policies if he ends up mayor of New York City.

The dialogue between protesters and counter-protesters is entertaining. My favorite is the counter-protester yelling:

“You mix your meats! You mix meats in your meatballs! You put raisins in your meatballs!”

Fightin’ words for sure.

Ford then pivoted to the Ed Sullivan Theatre, where there was a protest of CBS’ decision to ax Stephen Colbert and The Late Show next year. One speaker—wearing a miniature Ben and Jerry’s ice cream container as a hat—holds up a copy of 1984 and declares it’s time to speak up or “this [1984] will become our reality.”

A note from Managing Editor Greg Collard:

It took eight days for Florida officials to convert an old airstrip in the Everglades into what is now Alligator Alcatraz. And yes, that’s the official name of the detention center that’s expected to hold 3,000-plus illegal immigrants arrested in Florida and held for potential deportation in cooperation with the federal government under its 287(g) program.

Unlike most — if any — immigration detention centers, Alligator Alcatraz is a source of political fundraising revenue. Florida Republicans are selling Alligator Alcatraz merch. The facility has also attracted a lot of disgust. In collaboration with Racket, Ford Fischer and David Decker of News2Share capture the debate surrounding Alligator Alcatraz in this segment of Activism, Uncensored.

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A note from Managing Editor Greg Collard:

In collaboration with Racket, Ford Fischer and his amazing team at News2Share show the chaos that continued to play out in Los Angeles last weekend while also covering the convergence of No Kings protesters and Trump supporters who attended the U.S. Army parade in Washington, D.C. This video goes back and forth between the two cities, at times showing what was happening simultaneously. In addition to Ford, this Activism, Uncensored piece has contributions from Jake Lee Green, Neil Radimaker, and Allen DuPraw.

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