US Court Upholds Order Blocking Indiscriminate Targeting By Immigration Patrols In California
The ruling late Friday by a three-judge panel denies the federal government's appeal to overturn a temporary July order to halt the "roving patrols" in Los Angeles that immigration rights groups have described as illegally using racial profiling.
District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong had ordered an end to the arrests, arguing such actions by agents violate a person's constitutional rights that safeguard against unreasonable seizures by the government.
She said the detentions were being made "based upon race alone," on whether a person was speaking Spanish or English with an accent or because of their place of work, and ordered them stopped.
Friday's ruling by the US court of appeals for the Ninth Circuit described the case of plaintiff Jason Gavidia, a US citizen born and raised in East Los Angeles who was arrested outside a tow yard in Montebello on June 12 by agents carrying military-style rifles.
"The agents repeatedly asked Gavidia whether he is American -- and they repeatedly ignored his answer: 'I am an American,'" the ruling said.
Agents asked what hospital he was born in, and Gavidia responded he did not know, but said he was born in "East LA."
It said Gavidia told the agents he could show them his government-issued ID. "The agents took Gavidia's ID and his phone and kept his phone for 20 minutes. They never returned his ID."
California residents and advocacy groups sued the Department of Homeland Security over the detentions.
Los Angeles and surrounding suburbs have been ground zero for President Donald Trump's aggressive immigration crackdown.
He ordered the US military deployed there for weeks, and agents have rounded up migrants at car washes, bus stops, stores and farms.
The ruling said the government's defense team argued that "certain types of businesses, including car washes, were selected for encounters because... they are likely to employ persons without legal documentation."
Rights groups hailed the order as a victory for those seeking to bar the Department of Homeland Security and agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement from conducting such raids.
"This decision is further confirmation that the administration's paramilitary invasion of Los Angeles violated the Constitution and caused irreparable injury across the region," said attorney Mohammad Tajsar of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.
"We look forward to holding the federal government accountable for these authoritarian horrors it unleashed in Southern California."
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Scroll.in
16 minutes ago
- Scroll.in
‘A Glimpse of My Life' by Ram Prasad Bismil: A moving autobiography of a young revolutionary
Ram Prasad Bismil's life was devoid of any glory or achievement. He was an idealist who dreamt of freeing his country from the British. He sincerely believed that through acts of violence and killing, they would strike terror in the hearts of the British bureaucracy. That their acts of courage and sacrifice would also inspire the youth of the country to take up cudgels against the British. His was a brief life, which was tragically cut short in 1927 when, at the age of 30, he was hanged for his involvement in the Kakori dacoity case. The moment of his death would have been a moment of both satisfaction and dejection for him. He would have been gratified for having made the supreme sacrifice of his life for a cause that was so dear to him. But he was also much less than certain whether his sacrifice had brought the cause of India's freedom any closer to fulfilment. Such was his lot, and of many others of his generation who thought and believed like him. The importance of Bismil's life lies not so much in what he achieved but in his ideals and the sincerity with which he pursued them. When in jail, Bismil started writing about his life on scattered scraps of paper that were available to him. They were surreptitiously smuggled out and printed after Bismil was hanged. These have now been translated admirably and competently into English by Awadhesh Tripathi as A Glimpse of My Life, thus making them accessible to a wider readership. A life of revolt Bismil lived during the first three decades of the 20th century, when the ideas of anti-imperialist Indian nationalism had begun to break out of the ivory towers of Indian politics, located in the metropolitan cities, and had spread out to small cities and towns. Stories of the Swadeshi movement had begun to reach people through newspapers. Ideas of Indian nationalism were being transmitted to remote areas and, in the process, getting transformed. People's experiences of discontent with British rule were now finding a new articulation. It was in this climate that Bismil grew as a young teenager in Shahjahanpur, a small city in UP. Quite unlike many other nationalist leaders, Bismil grew up in a completely locked and insular zone, where he had no exposure to modern ideas of liberalism and secularism. His social environment was remarkably devoid of broad external influences. The one major source of inspiration for him was the Arya Samaj. Very early in his life, Bismil transcended the narrow world of self-interest and aspired to a life of service to larger causes. This major shift was informed by three major influences: traditions and family socialisation, anti-imperialist nationalism that had reached the interiors of Indian society, and the Arya Samaj. These influences created a personality that was both unique and complex. His personal life was deeply conservative, in which he nurtured ideas of austerity and celibacy. He attached great value to Brahmacharya, which to him was the fountainhead of all virtues. As he grew older and came under the influence of Arya Samaj, he worked towards Shuddhi, a purificatory movement geared towards re-converting Muslims back to Hinduism. The Shuddhi movement was generally anti-Muslim and ridden with communal overtones. But his involvement with Shuddhi did not come in the way of a deep emotional bonding with Ashfaqullah Khan, his fellow revolutionary who was involved in the Kakori train dacoity and eventually hanged along with him. His memoirs are full of very fond and moving references to his soulmate Ashfaqullah Khan, and through him, to the supreme necessity of Hindu-Muslim unity. Bismil's social universe was very Gandhian, even though he did not come directly under Gandhi's influence and may not have been aware of it. It is also possible that his social ideas were inspired by sources other than Gandhi. But the Gandhian stamp on his social ideas is quite unmistakable. Bismil's idea of a viable economy was that of a decentralised village economy, in which villages would be able to sustain themselves without depending on outside forces for their needs. Also, he wanted villagers to grow as 'true khadi-wearing, swadeshi patriots' who would read and write and 'subscribe to newspapers so that they keep themselves informed of what is happening in the country'. This sounds so remarkably similar to Gandhi's imagination of an ideal Indian village. However, his political universe could not have been more distant from Gandhi's. Bismil's political world was marked by guns, bombs, and killing. The politics of underground violence required money. Therefore, a train carrying the government treasury had to be looted. It was for this offence that he was caught and hanged. For most of his life, he was convinced that these acts of violence would strike terror in the British officials and bureaucrats and would thus help to liberate the country. However, such politics had its pitfalls. There was just no support, financial or political, from society. The extremely efficient intelligence network of the British enabled them to catch all those involved in the Kakori dacoity. Some of the efficiency of the British network stemmed from the fact that a number of Indians were ready to collaborate with the government and provide information about the revolutionaries. Often, factional fights among them let out their secrets. Many practitioners of underground violence turned approvers after being arrested. Both the factors – fear of torture by the police and the incentives offered – were at work. This was the inevitable fate of all such clandestine, secretly held, underground violent activities. Quite often, common people were also suspicious of them. Bismil was aware of these pitfalls, yet remained committed to the politics of underground violence till a few months before the end of his life. His personal, social, and political trajectories flowed in very different directions. One was not a derivative of the other and existed quite independently of the other. On death row After Bismil was arrested, he was found guilty and given a death sentence. The two moments – awareness of the impending death and the actual death – were separated by three months. Bismil spent these three months in deep introspection. His last note in the memoirs is just three days before the hanging. It was during this period that he began to question the efficacy of violent methods. He realised that the route to effective politics lay through educating and mobilising the masses and not through violence and killing: '… if we had directed our efforts towards educating the masses and spreading awareness among them, our actions might have been more successful and more lasting'. The following were his thoughts during the last moments of his life: 'I am now convinced that no revolutionary organisation can be successful in India … as the conditions are not conducive for revolution. That is why it is foolish to attract the country's youth to revolutionary work and ruin their lives in the process. It is likely to do more harm than good. My final message to the youth is that they should choose to serve the nation sincerely instead of entertaining the romantic idea of using revolvers or pistols'. Bismil's short life of 30 years was rich, unique, and in keeping with the highest ethical standards. When in jail, there were moments of opportunity for him in which he could have escaped. But he chose not to escape as it would have put the careers of the policemen at risk of removal. He lived his life selflessly and acted out his ideological commitments. His memoirs give us an ample reflection of his life and ideas. Awadhesh Tripathi has done well to make this world available to readers of the English language. Salil Misra is a visiting faculty member at the BM Munjal University, Manesar.
Time of India
16 minutes ago
- Time of India
Harm or help? Why companies are battling tariffs meant to benefit them
Live Events Dan Digre's family business has been manufacturing speakers in Minnesota for 75 years, clinging on even as his U.S. competitors shut their factories and relocated to company is the kind of American manufacturer that President Donald Trump says his trade policies will protect. But since Trump began imposing tariffs on Chinese exports in 2018 in an effort to help U.S. manufacturers, Digre's company, MISCO, has been forced to offshore some of its manufacturing. Tariffs have pushed up the cost of the foreign parts he needs for his U.S. factory, making it more economical to produce his speakers situation illustrates one of the perils of the president's sweeping tariffs, which are intended to raise the cost of foreign goods and encourage consumers to buy domestically instead. For some companies, the tariffs are giving them a chance to compete with cheap imports, particularly from China But for other manufacturers that do business globally, like MISCO, the tariffs are having the opposite effect. Stiff levies are cutting companies off from supplies and markets they depend on abroad, in ways that could undercut Trump's goals, hurt small manufacturers and weigh on the American company has long manufactured speakers in Minnesota for export, including to a major customer in Canada. His firm relies on certain materials from China, the only place to get many small components needed for speakers. But Digre must now pay a 55% tariff on those Chinese imports. As a result, manufacturing for that customer from the United States no longer makes sense. So Digre has shifted speaker production to a factory in China, where he will export directly to Canada and bypass the United States entirely."We're starting off with a 55% material cost disadvantage to our global competitors," he said. Illogically, he said, the United States charges higher tariffs on speaker parts from China than finished speakers from either China or Vietnam, which also discourages U.S. manufacturing."Making things here and exporting them isn't really feasible as long as these tariffs are in place," he situation stems from the administration's broad-brush approach to tariffs. Trump has applied levies to bananas, bolts, T-shirts and robots, seemingly without regard to whether those industries can or will relocate to the United States. The president has applied tariffs to finished products as well as the parts and raw materials that U.S. factories need, including 50% tariffs on steel and far, Trump's tariffs seem to be benefiting companies that can thrive on serving American customers, particularly those that face tougher competition from China. But for firms that depend on global supply chains and markets, the tariffs the administration is imposing or threatening can be more of a harm than a includes some of the United States' biggest export industries, like the aviation sector, which has been arguing against tariffs on aircraft and parts. It also includes industries the United States has been trying to build up, like semiconductor manufacturing. As the Trump administration considers new chip tariffs in the coming weeks, semiconductor companies have warned that a 25% charge on the machines they need to make chips, which can cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars each, would make manufacturing in the United States unviable."It isn't as simple as, you put on a tariff, you incentivize stuff to be made here," Digre said. "It's got to be more strategic."Trump's trade policy is aimed at reversing trends that many in the United States now see as harmful, in which companies moved factories overseas in past decades in search of cheaper a manufacturing conference last month, Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, said that offshoring had stripped Americans of family-supporting jobs, and the country of an important source of national security and innovation. It had also created the largest trade deficit "of any country in human history on planet Earth," "a state of affairs that is as unsustainable as is unacceptable," he economists who support the goal of shoring up U.S. manufacturing are skeptical about the administration's approach given it doesn't distinguish between lower-value goods, like shoes and electronic components, and higher-value ones. Many say the cheaper goods are not economical to make in the United States, as opposed to products like airplanes and medical devices that require the advanced manufacturing in which U.S. companies continue to excel."If you were really serious about bringing manufacturing back into the U.S., you'd be doing much more targeted industrial policy," said Dani Rodrik, a Harvard University economist, "versus these across-the-board tariffs, which are an extremely blunt instrument."Brad Setser, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations, agreed that the administration had chosen to place significant tariffs on a lot of goods without much U.S. production, or the prospect for it to return. "There is a pretty hefty 'Walmart tariff,' you'd say," he also said the administration's decision to put large tariffs on the materials factories need, including steel, would backfire. U.S. steel is already significantly more expensive than elsewhere in the Trump administration has not offered any exclusions to its tariffs out of concern that the process would undercut its effectiveness and reduce the revenue the president wants to collect. But Setser said the impact would be to make manufactured goods more expensive, which ultimately reduces demand for them."The price goes up, and people economize," he said. "There are just a series of design decisions that are going to complicate any real expansion in manufacturing."While it is likely too early to judge, there is little sign so far that tariffs are bolstering U.S. manufacturing in any significant Trump supporters have pointed to a slight uptick in industrial production this year, as well as growing capital expenditures, which suggests companies are continuing to spend on plants and a monthly survey of manufacturing executives has indicated that the factory sector was in a contraction in recent months, as it has been for much of the past three years. And the United States has shed manufacturing jobs in recent months, even as jobs in other sectors, like health care, have risen. Data released Friday showed that the United States lost 11,000 manufacturing jobs in June, a fairly significant decrease that comes on top of 6,000 job losses the previous data also shows that company spending on new factories has slumped, despite the Trump administration's frequent announcements of large investment commitments. Spending on factory construction had surged in 2024 as the Biden administration subsidized the semiconductor and clean energy industries, efforts that the Trump administration has criticized or Swonk, the chief economist at KPMG , said that the bulk of the effects of tariffs was still ahead, but that economic literature suggested they were likely to be an impediment to manufacturing."It's too soon to declare it one way or the other, but we're already seeing the headwinds mount," she Desai, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that the tariffs had helped secure trade deals providing "unprecedented market access for American exports.""As the American economy continues roaring back thanks to the administration's economic agenda of deregulation and the One Big Beautiful Bill's tax cuts, American companies are set for historic growth at home and abroad," he manufacturers say tariffs are an important tool to help them compete against unfairly low-priced imports and to preserve manufacturing that could be vital for national Pipe, a 124-year-old, fifth-generation, family-owned business in North Carolina, does the kind of manufacturing that may make sense for the United States to company makes pipe, fittings and manhole covers out of cast iron and plastic, and employs around 2,000 people around the U.S. But Brad Muller, the company's vice president of marketing and government affairs, argues that foundries like Charlotte Pipe can be converted in wartime to produce anything made of melted metal, including tanks or ships. And once foundries close, "they don't really come back," he said, without an investment of hundreds of millions of said that he supported tariffs for his industry, but he acknowledged that they weren't the solution for all sectors."Tariffs are a blunt tool," he said. "But at the same time we feel like some industries need protection, so we have these industries and we can make things in America."For some critical types of manufacturing, the threat from foreign competition is not dissipating. In particular, the Chinese government continues to pour money into its factories, boosting exports and reducing the global price of goods like solar panels and critical minerals to a level where it makes little economic sense for other countries to try to recent months, Beijing has flexed its control over rare earth minerals and magnets needed by U.S. manufacturers, reinforcing for U.S. policymakers the risks of depending on a potential adversary for key Shearing, the chief economist at Capital Economics, said China's factories "are in overdrive as a structurally imbalanced economy pushes a flood of ever-cheaper goods into the global economy.""Tariffs are a blunt response, but they reflect a deeper shift: the world is increasingly unwilling to absorb the consequences of China's investment-heavy model," he some companies that import goods from China that are of little strategic importance to the United States have been bewildered by the Trump administration's sweeping approach, saying their businesses are a Harman, the CEO of Balsam Hill, which sells artificial Christmas trees and Christmas tree decorations, said his company had been stuck with tariff bills on some of its shipments ranging into the tens of millions of dollars, as U.S. tariffs on imports from China climbed this company has trimmed its workforce, frozen wages, investments and travel, and even stopped supplying office lunches. Balsam Hill sources most of its products from abroad, but buys some figurines and other products from artisans in the United States, and employs 170 people in the U.S. in sales, distribution and other activities."It means we've stopped growing our business," Harman said. "That's the reality of what we have to do to pay for the tariffs."(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)Harman said his products were not things that American workers wanted to manufacture. For example, prelighted Christmas trees, a major product for the company, have "never been made in the United States," he said."It's just super painstaking," he said. "That's why our product category exists, because people don't want to put lights on a tree."David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has highlighted the threat that Chinese competition is posing to industries like cars, robotics, semiconductors, aviation, biotechnology and solar power, said that preserving those important industries would "require a much more thoughtful set of policies than simply slapping tariffs on friends and foes alike.""I think there is a role and a place and a time for tariffs in industrial and trade policy, and I think the time is now," Autor said. "But the alternative to doing nothing isn't any random thing you can think of."
New Indian Express
an hour ago
- New Indian Express
Treaty with Terroristan, penalty for India
Some events occur twice in history—the first time as a comedy and the second as a farce. American President Donald Trump is both. On July 30, the reality-TV-host-turned-tariff-tyrant dropped a 25 percent economic bomb on Indian exports, while peddling a pack of diplomatic lies claiming he brokered peace between India and Pakistan. Trump traded fist bumps with Islamabad for backstabbing New Delhi. His economic ambush is engineered not for America, but for himself. Trump is wooing Pakistan's petroleum pushers and crypto cartels, planning pipelines and payment platforms that bypass scrutiny to boost his wallet. His net worth went up $600 million in a year, and his ethics down a black hole. This nefarious act coming from the man who once embraced Narendra Modi in a stadium-sized spectacle of dollar-packed NRIs; his purred sweet-nothings like 'true friend' and 'great leader' stink of hypocrisy today. Trump, the transactional demagogue, has entered into a bromance with Pakistan, which continues to nurture terror camps in its backyard. Behind the orange facade and MAGA mutterings lies a man motivated not by morality, but by dollars to shore up his shady empire. His alliance with Pakistan's General Syed Asim Munir Ahmed Shah is a calculated conspiracy cloaked in cowardice, dragging India back into the nightmares of old. Remember 1971, when Richard Nixon dispatched the formidable aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to bully India during the Bangladesh war? Indira Gandhi didn't blink. India didn't bend. And history remembers the one who stood tall. This time, history repeats not as farce, but as warning. Trump is Nixon in a red tie, siding with Islamabad again. The only difference this time is that the US is standing with Pakistan with tariffs and tweets. But India, then and now, refuses to bend. Trump's treachery is a double-edged sword. His tariff missile, fired last week, targets India's $87 billion exports to the US, its top trade partner, risking an estimated $7-billion hit. POTUS justified it by citing India's 70 percent duties on US motorcycles and 12 percent trade-weighted tariffs. He has branded India a 'big abuser' eight times since February 2025 and dubbed it a 'dead economy' along with Russia. Trump also concocted a story that India had stopped sourcing oil from Russia. He falsely claimed India offered a 'no-tariff deal', which S Jaishankar rebutted: 'Deals must be mutually beneficial.'
