Wednesday, I sent the Events list together with two items for immediate action. To amplify the key actions, here are links to items that are helpful in connecting with your senators, including scripts you can use.

But while we are pushing back against the government shutdown, we need a bigger, bolder message — one that makes the existential crisis we are facing front and center. Anat Shenker-Osario warns us that "healthcare is essential, to state the obvious. But focusing in on negotiating over restoring subsidies is sending the message that this is a normal administration. That we have policy disagreements and not that we are confronting a regime hell bent on destroying us."

We need to see and to say that this regime is working at warp speed to destroy our democracy. Not that it is simply a right-wing government we don't like! The precondition, in my view, for the destruction of our system of government — one that depends on the three separate and co-equal branches of the federal government AND the independent sovereignty of the states with their own separate branches of government — was the Supreme Court's ruling last summer that the president is immune from criminal prosecution for acts that fall within his powerful purview. From that egregious opinion flows the regime's impunity. So now, we are in crisis.

Let's look squarely at some of Trump's otherwise illegal acts:

1. repeatedly failing to spend funds that the Congress has allocated for specific purposes and that the Congress has not rescinded (see Wikipedia);
2. instructing ICE agents to wear masks, to use racial profiling, and to deport people without the constitutionally guaranteed right to due process;
3. deploying the military in various cities (with Democratic mayors, I might add) to "fight crime," they claim, in contravention of the Posse Comitatus Act, the 1878 law that "generally prevents the president from using the military as a domestic police force."

Just a few nights ago, ICE executed a military-style invasion of an apartment building in Chicago, "dragging residents, including children, out of the building without clothes and loading them into U-Haul vans. [The witness] said the children were separated from their mothers" (Newsweek, October 3, 2025). The Department of Homeland Security told Newsweek that the location was "known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates." With no warrants or other forms of proof, we remain skeptical. Proving probable cause is the American way. Striking fear in the middle of the night is not.

Lest you think we are sitting comfortably north of the fray, I'm here to tell you that Milwaukee will not be spared. Apparently, ICE is planning to move 70 to 80 people into office space downtown (Milwaukee Business Journal, October 2, 2025). And it is already active in several areas of Wisconsin. It behooves all of us to make sure we know what is happening in our state. Worth Fighting For Wisconsin and Grassroots North Shore can fill you in. Our webinar — The ICE Man Cometh (and we’re not talking about a play) — will be held on Monday, October 13 from 7:00 - 8:30 CT. Make sure you sign up to get up to speed.

The webinar will start with a quick walk through the 15 biggest myths about immigration and immigrants. Then we take a deep dive into four different late-breaking and ongoing situations in Wisconsin:

1. Village of Palmyra: first Wisconsin-based ICE bounty hunters; first municipal (rather than county) contract with ICE;
2. Manitowoc: mass arrests in dairy land;
3. Madison: street grabs
4. Milwaukee: ICE seeks 18,500 square feet of office space downtown

Palmyra wasn’t ready for ICE to come to its town — but in less than a week the Concerned Citizens of Palmyra mobilized and they are taking on ICE. Bigly. We’ll hear from them, and others deeply involved in current immigrant-related matters, including Emilio de Torre, executive director of Milwaukee Turners, and DACA recipient, and Iuscely Flores (Comité Sin Fronteras).

The program will cover the impact ICE activities are having on immigrants, citizens of color, communities, businesses, local governments, and more and roll out a toolkit we helped Palmyra build, which you can use to be as ready as you can be if/when the ICE man cometh. With the right research and resources, we can all stand up to ICE. Make sure you are ready. Sign up.

On the same evening, in preparation for the NO KINGS events on October 18, The League of Progressive Seniors is hosting a sign-making party at the Wauwatosa Library (7635 W North Ave) in the Firefly Room from 5:30 - 7:30. Some poster board and art supplies will be available at the library but please bring yours to share. There will be wood sticks to attach to signs or rope to make sandwich boards. For more information, contact Karen Royster.

Alas, there is a long list of other awful news to cover:

• Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin paused abortion services Wednesday at its Madison, Milwaukee and Sheboygan locations "due to the megabill officially titled the 'One Big Beautiful Bill' Act" that included a provision to take away federal funding from the organization if it continues providing abortion services (Washington Examiner, October 2, 2025);
• the regime's subversion of academic freedom continues with it's latest stick-and-carrot offer (New York Times, October 2, 2025, gift article);
• the wholesale corruption of the US Department of Justice (YouTube, IHIP News);
• politicizing the military (‘Deeply un-American’: Democrats slam Trump for politicizing military in speech, The Chronicle, October 3, 2025).

And that list just scratches the surface. Many of us are feeling deeply fatigued and overwhelmed by the unrelenting torrent. But as we face this increasingly existential crisis — what seemed to be a legitimately elected federal government that is now seen to be completely anti-American in its views, actions, and intentions — we simply have to stand strong and stand together. So let me end this long email with some bromides we need to dust off: there is safety in numbers; courage is contagious; we have no choice but to carry on until we prevail!

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