Reporter Short: James Garder – A political profile

The Department of Justice has charged U.S. House Democratic candidate Kat Abughazaleh for allegedly impeding law enforcement following a September protest at the Broadview ICE facility in Chicago.

In addition to Abughazaleh, the DOJ also charged Michael Rabbitt, Andre Martin, Catherine Sharp, Brian Straw, and Joselyn Walsh. Authorities alleged that the group surrounded an ICE agent's vehicle and damaged it.

Abughazaleh, a former journalist, was accused of bracing her body against the vehicle. The indictment also claimed that someone scratched the word "PIG" on the car.

In a video posted to X, Abughazaleh said she was exercising her First Amendment rights.

"This is a political prosecution and a gross attempt to silence dissent, a right protected under the First Amendment," she explained. "This case is a major push by the Trump administration to criminalize protest and punish anyone who speaks out against them."

A video shared by DHS in September showed Abughazaleh being thrown to the ground by an officer outside the Broadview facility.

"Individuals and groups impeding ICE operations are siding with vicious cartels, human traffickers, and violent criminals," the post claimed. "You will not stop @ICEgov and DHS law enforcement from enforcing our immigration laws."

"I love watching communists get body slammed by ICE," Trump insider Laura Loomer responded, according to MSNBC.

"Good work," Fox News host Laura Ingraham agreed.

Calling the North Carolina Republican Party’s new congressional district map “surgical racism with surgical precision,” Bishop William J. Barber II of Repairers of the Breach was in Raleigh Thursday, announcing a lawsuit challenging the redistricting effort—pledging that the state’s voters will “challenge gerrymandering in the courts, in the streets, and at the ballot box.”

“This is a direct attack on the state’s Black Belt district and marginalized communities,” said Barber at a news conference announcing the legal challenge, a day after the state House of Representatives approved the new map in a party-line vote.

The new map, which was passed by the state Senate earlier this week and cannot be vetoed by Democratic Gov. Josh Stein under state law, will likely give the GOP an additional seat in the US House after the 2026 midterm elections.

President Donald Trump has called for mid-decade redistricting efforts by the GOP in states including Missouri and Texas, as well as North Carolina, with state Republicans heeding his demands.

North Carolina’s new map will likely give Republicans 11 of the state’s 14 districts by moving some Black voters out of the 1st District and into the 3rd District. Had the new map been in place in 2024, Trump would likely have won 55% of the vote in the new 1st District in 2024, up from the 51% he won.

Barber denounced the redistricting efforts across the country as “political robbery” by a party that wants “to rob people of their rights through this racially based gerrymandering... so that they can give power or keep power in the US Congress to engage in political violence,” including by cutting healthcare and blocking the passage of living wages.

“We’ve seen this pattern before—the use of redistricting and voting laws to divide, diminish, and deny,” said Barber. “But the truth is simple: When you steal people’s representation, you steal their healthcare, their wages, and their future. That’s why we will fight back... to make clear that in North Carolina, and across America, the people’s will cannot be gerrymandered out of existence.”

Barber said Republicans in the state Legislature are “gambling” to win another seat, instead of trying to win over voters.

“They’re saying, ‘Let’s move this county over here, let’s move this county over here,’ he said at the press conference. ”Black voters in Congressional District 1 make up approximately 40% of the population, and there’s a growing Latino population that makes up 7%... Black communities, Latino communities, and rural, working-class, poor white voters, if the districts are fair, have the power to build a fusion electorate that can overcome the greedy oligarchs’ will to control elections in our state.“

Along with filing a legal action against state lawmakers to challenge the legality of the map, Barber said Repairers of the Breach will hold a ”Mass Moral Fusion Meeting“ and public hearing on November 2.

”If they won’t hold public hearings, we will,“ said Barber. ”This is our Edmund Pettus Bridge moment... Black, white, and brown together—because our democracy is not for sale.“

What the 2025 elections could tell us about 2026 | The Playbook Podcast

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