April 15, 2025 - Acts of Tyranny

Trump claims dictatorial power to lock Kilmar up and throw away the key, plus this week's rallies and organizing calls, resistance in education and more

Apr 15, 2025

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KILMAR ABREGO GARCIA’S IMPRISONMENT IS TYRANNY, AND IT’S JUST THE BEGINNING

BRING KILMAR HOME. No Justice, No Peace. A photo of Kilmar Abrego Garcia with his child.

The White House is once again blatantly defying court orders and the law to keep an innocent man behind bars in a foreign land, with the connivance of another nation’s dictator. And as he and his jackbooted thugs insist they cannot bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia home from unjust imprisonment in El Salvador, Trump is also endorsing similar detention for U.S. citizens, telling Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele “the homegrowns are next… you gotta build about five more places.”

Today, Trump is claiming his government can declare an immigrant a criminal, abduct them, hustle them out of the country and have an ally keep them locked away forever, without any chance to see the evidence against them, prove their innocence or access the justice system at all – and no one has the power to stop him. He is blowing up the rights the Founding Fathers fought the British to secure, that are a basic part of a just society. And he’s suggesting Americans may be next. There is a word for this: tyranny. Crisis is insufficient. This is a firestorm that could burn our Constitution to ashes.

Our institutions must rise to this moment. Our members of Congress need to engage in blanket opposition to the Trump Administration, refuse to fund these deportations and detentions, and use procedural tools to bring Capitol Hill to a stop until Kilmar Abrego Garcia is rescued and everyone this regime has targeted is able to use their basic rights. They need to take action to make it clear these injustices are unacceptable and bring them to an end – Senator Chris Van Hollen has demonstrated one way forward by announcing he will travel to El Salvador to check on Kilmar’s condition this week, and we can ask other members to join him. And they need to do everything in their power to reassert the judiciary’s power to stop Trump from acting as a king.

Furthermore, our state and local officials need to be working to protect us, whatever that may require. They should know we are counting on them to do their duty.

Let’s be sure to reach out to our electeds on all levels and tell them inaction is unacceptable. We can use scripts and language here.

EVEN MORE WAYS TO HIT THE STREETS FOR SOCIAL SECURITY, IMMIGRANTS, WORKERS

Hands Off was a great moment, but it needs to be more than a moment. We’re going to need to continue to show up in large numbers and in our communities – for ourselves and for each other. As we saw in our last rundown, folks across the country are stepping up to make it happen! Here’s another group of rallies and organizing calls for mass mobilizations we can join in the next few days:

TODAY Social Security Works has asked Americans to host rallies at their nearest field offices to say Hands Off Social Security. Let’s find a rally near us here, or just print a sign and flyers and show up at our local SSA sites to do a standout any time!
TOMORROW The Hands Off Coalition is holding a mass call on how we can build on our success on April 5th and keep the pressure on at 8PM Eastern. Let’s sign up to join here.
THURSDAY organizations including Action Lab, United We Dream, Make the Road, MoveOn, Indivisible, Sunrise, and multiple unions are coming together for a national organizing call for events on International Workers Day/May Day, standing for labor rights, workers rights and people’s needs over private profits. We can sign up to join the call here, find May Day events already on the schedule near us here, check out a toolkit for setting up our own here, or for organizers with events already on the books we can email join@maydaystrong.org to get ours on the map.

11 STATES REFUSE TO COMPLY WITH TRUMP ON RESEGREGATION IN SCHOOLS

Trump is using funding for low-income students as a weapon to force schools to censor ideas he doesn’t like and promote resegregation, threatening to deny Title I funds to schools that refuse to certify they are not putting diversity, equity and inclusion practices to work. States are being charged with collecting paperwork from individual school districts have until April 24th to comply.

California on Friday became the 11th state to announce they won’t be cooperating. 16, along with Puerto Rico, are going along with Trump. We can check the status of our state here.

Wherever we are, there’s still work to be done. Along with the 23 states and Washington, D.C. that have not yet weighed in, state education officials giving in doesn’t mean our school districts will, and state education officials standing tough can be end-run by individual districts. Let’s reach out to our state education departments and local school leaders, along with our state and local politicians, and tell them they need to fight the Trump Administration instead of giving in to their threats. We can find scripts and language to use here.

UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES MUST UNITE TO STOP TRUMP

On March 10th, 60 Universities received a letter from Trump’s Department of Education "warning them of potential enforcement actions if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus.” Whatever their claims, in reality this has nothing to do with antisemitism – it’s "the Trump administration weaponizing legitimate investigations as a pretext for an unprecedented federal attack on higher education. The administration’s recent actions—including its letter to Columbia University's Board of Trustees and its illegal detention and threatened deportation of a student green card holder who has not been charged with a crime—go far beyond enforcing civil rights law. These measures threaten free speech, due process, and the very foundations of inquiry and unrestricted exploration of ideas on which academic institutions are built."

Those of us who are faculty members at these sixty institutions, as well as other faculty who consider themselves allies, may consider signing an open letter asking University presidents and other leaders to "unite in a coordinated, proactive defense." The full open letter may be found here. (Those of us who aren’t can consider joining in the Coalition for Action in Higher Ed’s planned day of action for higher education on Thursday. We can find virtual events here or join one in our area marked on the map here.)

TAX DAY CAMPAIGN AGAINST TAX GIVEAWAYS TO BILLIONAIRES

It’s never a happy Tax Day, but this year’s is particularly bitter, with the Trump-Musk Administration scheming to slash services we depend on to line the pockets of the wealthy and powerful. It is, however, a good opportunity to spread the message: if Trump gets his way, next April we’ll be paying more through tariffs while Musk and the oligarchs benefit from what we used to spend on Medicaid and food assistance. Americans for Tax Fairness has put together a full social media toolkit with graphics, charts, sample language and resources we can use here – let’s make use of it today! (And let’s also check to see if there are #StopTheCuts events near us this recess we can join here.)

KEEPING AN EYE ON…

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