30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

https://theintercept.com/2026/06/26/daniel-sanchez-estrada-zines-prairieland-free-speech/

by xrd • 24 days ago

726 292 24 days ago

xrd• 24 days ago

Up until now these crazy cases have been rejected by the courts. But this feels like a crack in the dam. A judge actually sentenced someone to 30 years for hiding zines, zines that had been published for years. This was under the pretense hiding those zines was hiding evidence of criminality. And the criminality was worth 75 years. For someone who was at a protest where a federal agent was shot, but was not the shooter.

Does anyone have a link to details on the case because there must have been more details, like these two were accused of planning a murder in advance, because otherwise this seems insane. It seems insane no matter what, but if this was a judge making a bunch of logical leaps while guided by DOJ lawyers, something is really broken

appreciatorBus• 23 days ago

I think all of this hinges on whether or not you think it was a protest. If they had been peacefully sitting outside the facility holding signs, I think you'd have a case that the sentencing is insane. But if they were actively planning a break-in & preparing to use deadly force, that's quite another matter. I haven't spent a lot of timing reading about it, but what I have read suggests it was much closer to the latter.

devmor• 23 days ago

From what I read, the person who was arrested for transporting zines was not even at the protest or part of the group - just the husband of one of the protestors.

ipython• 23 days ago

Unfortunately, the administration wants it both ways- if you were on the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021, you were simply part of a "peaceful tour group". If you stand to the side of an ICE agent in Minneapolis, you are a "domestic terrorist", deserve to be murdered in cold blood, and any attempts to investigate further will be stonewalled.

So it's hard to take their characterization seriously when they have demonstrated that there is a clear double standard, depending on whether you are a FoT (Friend of Trump).

lelandfe• 23 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Prairieland_ICE_detention...

felixgallo• 23 days ago

'they' is doing a lot of work. This guy wasn't even there.

shimman• 23 days ago

What hogwash. Resistance is as American as the founding of the country, acting like there is a "right way" to protest is deeply antihuman.

daedrdev3• 23 days ago

If you think that this was a protest then yeah it's worrying.

The feds case, which they did win convictions based on, was that they were terrorists who set off fireworks to lure police into an ambush, and there weren't more casualties because one of the members shot early and only injured one cop. An accessory to this who hid evidence is also part of the crime in the Feds case

Is this embellished by the Feds? I think so, it seems some of the group did not think this was the plan. But there did seem to be a plan and it did involve bringing guns, setting off fireworks, opening the gate and trying to break out the prisoners, and "not going quietly"

tkel3• 23 days ago

"Lure police into an ambush" is quite a stretch. It's quite normal to do noise demonstrations outside jails/prisons to show solidarity with the captives, the captives will often times knock on the windows to communicate back. In fact there were noise demonstrations outside the Delaney Hall ICE jail in New Jersey just this month, which you may have heard about. The mischaracterization of fireworks as "explosives" is also a huge stretch by the government in order to pursue their antifa conspiracy.

aprilthird2021• 23 days ago

The pardoned Jan. 6 rioters had a lot of far worse plans that were foiled which could have resulted in more casualties. There was lots of evidence several of them planned to kidnap sitting congressmen and women.

Do you know why they were pardoned and this zine hider got 30 years? Must just be a quirk of the justice system...

throwawayffffas• 23 days ago

... like these two were accused of planning a murder in advance, ...

The 30 years is for evidence tampering. The rest have been convicted of various terrorist charges. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Prairieland_ICE_detention...

It's really funny because all of this has played out in the past with people that actually conspired to do all that and more and walked away free. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Smith_sedition_trial

That case, the incredibly bad handling of Ruby Ridge and Waco put a real freeze on the FBI dealing with domestic terrorism, and then the focus moved outward with 9/11.

But now "domestic terrorism" is priority number 1. Enjoy your choices folks.

totetsu2• 23 days ago

All the best discussion of this is on sites that I wouldn’t want to link to on HN incase It puts me on a list in line for a 30 year prison sentence

vrganj2• 23 days ago

Will you look at that, the authoritarian suppression of opposition speech is already working!

sourcecodeplz• 23 days ago

prob zerohedge, i can say it. no need to link it.

nylonstrung• 23 days ago

Insane to think they'd have gotten a small fraction of the sentence had they been distributing CSAM they produced instead

Apparently Marxist film reviews and gardening tips are more criminal than child pornography

jmyeet5• 23 days ago

This isn't even a theoretical comparison. Consider the case of popular far-right influencer Dom Lucre. In 2023, he uploaded screenshots from what is apparently a "known" CSAM video. Not only that but he watermarked the screenshots, showing he had the screenshots on a computer he had access to and likely had access to the source video itself. Mere possession of this should land you in jail.

One side of the story is that Elon Musk personally intervened to unban him for this [1], which is a whole other aspect to this. But the Feds, as far as we know, never charged him. This leads many (including myself) to believe Dom Lucre is an asset to the FBI already.

Jeffrey Epstein was charged for his pedophile ring. Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted but is now sitting in a Work camp she should never be in for her crimes. And she was charged with trafficking. To whom exactly? Nobody has ever been charged or even named as being who minors were trafficked to. At least 4 presidents have sat on a mountain of evidence of this and done precisely nothing. The last president (Biden) and his AG (Garland) even sat on these files when the current president was credibly implicated.

And of course there are the January 6 ringleaders who were convicted of seditious conspiracy (22, 18 and 18 years) for attempting to overthrow the government and storming the Capitol. All pardoned now of course.

But sure, 30 years for moving a box of zines.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/07/27/twitter-...

WalterGR• 24 days ago

5 days ago, 90 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649884

rationalist2• 24 days ago

Thank you, at least that article doesn't require an email address to read it.

One fired an AR-15 at the police, which goes beyond legitimate protest into inciting violence (and maybe even deliberate provocation).

Uh, I think firing a gun at someone is a bit more than "inciting violence", more like attempted murder?

The article doesn't say what the actual charges were. Was it tampering with evidence? Although 30 years for just tampering with evidence doesn't seem right either. Maybe there's more that they're leaving out?

Another comment in another HN thread shared this quote and link:

"Prosecutors said that the group launched a premeditated terror attack on the detention facility inspired by antifa ideology, by setting off fireworks, vandalizing property, and shooting at police officers who responded. One officer was struck in the neck with a bullet and survived."

https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/ice-detention-attack-defe...

Perhaps the cop getting shot in the neck is why they're throwing the book at them.

topgrain24• 23 days ago

Uh, I think firing a gun at someone is a bit more than "inciting violence", more like attempted murder?

The shot cop had drawn a gun on someone who was running away.

The judge didn’t even permit the defense to argue “defense of self or others” as a justification.

arjie• 24 days ago

It's pretty straightforward that if someone tells you to hide something because they've been arrested and they think it ties them to some criminal act, and then you hide it, you're an accessory to the crime. 30 years for that seems harsh though I anticipate they will be pardoned by the next Democratic Party President.

Describing such an act without the obvious context is a pretty good way to point out that it's partisan text and likely misrepresents other things. Listen, we've all been on the Internet a few decades. This kind of understatement of things is not new to any of us. "Oh so just because your country thinks it's not a big deal for someone to go to America to fly a plane means it should get bombed?" No, champ, it's the flying of the plane into the WTC and subsequent sheltering of the guy who planned it that does that.

jrflowers• 24 days ago

No, champ, it's the flying of the plane into the WTC

Sir, a second zine has struck the south tower

lovich2• 24 days ago

Was the speech illegal? Not giving my email to this site so I can’t read the rest but it seems odd that any sort of speech gets multi year sentences much less multi decade unless it was direct calls to violence.

ndriscoll• 24 days ago

I don't think there's even a claim the speech is illegal. Rather, it's that "transporting zines" when your spouse gets arrested on suspicion of crimes related to a designated terrorist organization is about as legal as "arts and crafts" (i.e. shredding documents) when your spouse is arrested for fraud. It's the obstruction of justice part that's illegal, not the possession. As far as I know she could be fully acquitted and he'd still be on the hook for trying to conceal evidence.

fakedang• 24 days ago

If it costs 30 years for transporting zines, how much is treason and conspiracy to overthrow the government worth?

a96• 24 days ago

"Priceless"

fn-mote• 23 days ago

30 years for an accessory charge? For someone who did not attend the event? Sounds excessive.

aqme28• 23 days ago

30 years for that seems harsh though I anticipate they will be pardoned by the next Democratic Party President.

I really doubt it.

TrackerFF3• 23 days ago

The writing on the wall is pretty clear now: Undoing Trump-policies and Trump-legacy should be priority for any potential presidential dem candidate, no mater how center or left leaning.

I don't think we'll get a Ocasio-Cortez type front runner, but I don't think you can be a total milquetoast "water under the bridge" candidate to win either.

If there is one thing the Trump 47 presidency has shown, it is that traditional decorum will not get you anywhere. It is the reason the Trump investigation didn't end up with anything - Biden and the DOJ were too fixated on decorum, and doing things as impartially as possible.

The Prairieland case is a direct product of Trump. They are terrorists because Trump has designated them as terrorists.

jmyeet5• 23 days ago

I would love to see a detailed comparison of everyone who comments on this issue vs their comments on the age verification issue. For the latter, people bend over backwards to make it a free speech issue yet so many bend over backwards on this issue to argue this 30 year sentence was good actually because they were an accessory to domestic terrorism.

My hypothesis is that these two groups are mostly the same people.

Tad Stoermer, lecturer on American history and author of A Resistance History of the United States summed this up [1]. The person in question here wasn't even at the event. They moved a box of publications and from all this the Federal government created an domestic terrorist organization out of whole cloth (ie Antifa).

What people seem to refuse to accept is that "terrorist" is a political designation, nothing more. It's basically saying "we don't like this person or organization". Were the standards of today around in the 1960s, every civil rights organization would've been labelled domestic terrorists.

The comparisons to January 6 are apt because that was an attempted coup in which people died. The harshest sentences were Enrique Tarrio (ringleader, 22 years), Stewart Rhodes (seditious conspiracy, 18 years) and Ethan Nordean (seditious conspiracy, 18 years). All pardoned by the way.

Yet the people who want to defend 30 years for moving a box of zines by someone who wasn't at the event is astounding.

[1] https://www.tiktok.com/@tadstoermer/video/765517473106636316...

ChrisArchitect• 24 days ago

More discussion:

Texas man sentenced to 30 years for transporting pamphlets

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48659703

Signs you're a dangerous terrorist: using Signal, moving zines

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48649884

Xorakios• 24 days ago

Here's the case: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/antifa-cell-members-con...

The 30 year sentence was for hiding documentation being sought under a federal warrant after being called by his wife and asking him to do so. The warrant was for documentation after the protesters shot fireworks to bring out first responders from the ICE facility, and allegedly one of the group shot a responder in the neck instead of the head.

A lot of stuff to scrutinize and complain about in the sentence, but it wasn't just "transporting Zines"

Ukv2• 24 days ago

The 30 year sentence was for hiding documentation [...] it wasn't just "transporting Zines"

As far as I can tell, the moving of zines (he was pulled over and had a box in his car) is what's being presented as "hiding documentation" - not something beyond that.

being sought under a federal warrant

Timeline seems to be that a warrant was obtained after pulling him over ("Sanchez-Estrada was then arrested on state traffic offenses, and officers obtained a search warrant [...]"). Can't find a source saying there was a warrant prior to this.

The warrant was for documentation after the protesters shot fireworks to bring out first responders from the ICE facility, and allegedly one of the group shot a responder in the neck instead of the head.

It's true that demonstrators were setting off fireworks, and it's true that Benjamin Song later shot at a police officer who had drawn his gun. But it's just the government's narrative/speculation that the intent of the fireworks was to draw out first responders to ambush, and that Sanchez-Estrada's zines were in some way documentation of this despite him not being at the protest and his wife not being the shooter.

expedition32• 24 days ago

Chilling effect on demonstrations. If you attend one were someone starts shooting you become an accomplice. And ofcourse this also leaves the door open for a "false flag" incident.

will42743• 23 days ago

Being aware that he was moving the zines to obstruct a federal felony investigation is surely relevant. Intent is an important aspect of crime.

stronglikedan• 23 days ago

If you lie with dogs, you're going to get fleas. :shrug:

goatlover2• 23 days ago

There are murderers who get shorter sentences. This is a clear attempt to discourage ICE protests by using the label "Antifa" as some sort of left-wing terrorist organization to send a message as the Trump appointed judge stated.

sbseitz• 23 days ago

yeah you know that's still a crock of sh*t.

CobrastanJorji• 23 days ago

Exactly. The content of the zines was not an issue in the case.

This case is crazy, but it's not insane for free speech reasons.

jMyles3• 23 days ago

I don't approve of the violence apparently planned and carried out by these people, even though their cause was seemingly just.

However, we can't afford to let the government's position dictate the particulars of all the facts here.

The theory that the fireworks were lit to "bring out first responders" is just that - a theory, from the government's lawyers.

The undisputed facts are that these people were working to disrupt an ICE facility, which is to say a facility of a lawless, criminal organization which, given its placement entirely outside any constitutional limitations, renders it, at least at a moral/ethical layer, ineligible for any sort of civic protections of its property or activities. A third party, who was employed by a police department, then aimed a firearm at these people, and one of them fired, in apparent self-defense at this person who was training a firearm on them. Again, I hate that they shot this dude who was just going his job. But it's certainly not tantamount to attempting a premeditated mruder.

All of this 'moving zines' business is downstream of this basic fact pattern. I'm not willing to buy the government's advocacy that this was a crime to society in the first place, so I certainly don't have any ruffled feathers about moving zines.

When the state brings its lawless armed kidnappers to heel and follows its own rules with the unrelenting strictness befitting a nation of laws and not of men, then we can talk about whether those same laws can be applied to persons attempting to disrupt its activities.

polski-g2• 23 days ago

What in God's name are you talking about? Shot at a police officer "in self defense"? In what world do you have a right to try to murder a cop?

dwroberts• 23 days ago

If this was an incident in Europe, comments like this would be talking about how clearly the state is corrupt, it’s account cannot be trusted, and obviously civilisation is collapsing because free speech outside of the US is dead. “You can be arrested for zines!”

Inside the US though? No, clearly the state’s account is definitely accurate, the citizen is obviously guilty, it’s not only correct they are being jailed it is actually good, free speech - oh it’s not relevant because they committed unrelated crimes (we’re told. By the state’s account).

US propaganda/copaganda on its own citizens really is something else to behold

antoniojtorres• 23 days ago

Yeah I feel like I’m going insane reading some of these comments.

sixothree• 23 days ago

US propaganda/copaganda on its own citizens really is something else to behold

I live in the deep south. It's so much worse than you think. I regularly have people argue with me that they don't deserve to have nice things (like paid vacation) because someone, somewhere, might get something they don't deserve. You know, those government employees are lazy and get paid for doing nothing.

It's bizarre to an extreme. Mixed with the constant anger makes it particularly repulsive. I'll notice that everyone simultaneously seems angry about the same issue all at once. And it's almost always an issue that has no affect on them whatsoever. But they are _angry_ because someone is getting something they don't deserve.

It's worse than you can imagine.

Aeolun4• 23 days ago

make clear that those who choose violence over lawful expression will face the full force of the American justice system

I’m sure Iran agrees.

viccis• 23 days ago

choose violence over lawful expression

You mean the ICE agents who've already chosen to respond with violence to any expression, lawful or otherwise, against them?

Ah no, you mean the people upset about them illegally acting as secret police.

TrackerFF3• 23 days ago

Let's not ignore the fact that:

- The group was designated as "Antifa cell", and thus this became a terrorist and aiding terrorism charges.

- The judge went above and beyond to hand out harsh punishments. There's been commentary from previous state prosecutors that the sentences, and how they were carried out, were much harsher than predicted. The speculation was that these sentences are being handed out to be served consecutively, not concurrently.

Would not surprise me if some of them could be appealed as "cruel and unusual punishments" / 8th amendment.

Tadpole91813• 23 days ago

I would be shocked if this doesn't get overturned on the basis that the judge hand selected the jury without allowing participation of the defense.

DoneWithAllThat• 23 days ago

It’s not “alleged” that one of the terrorists shot an officer in the neck. It was proven in court that he did and he was convicted for it.

flossposse4• 22 days ago

The 30 year sentence was for hiding documentation being sought under a federal warrant

Can you cite a source to support the claim that the stuff he transported was being sought under a federal warrant at the time he transported it? And is there documentation showing that he was aware of the warrant?

type0• 24 days ago

Is there a functional Samizdat in US?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat

magenta42• 23 days ago

Freedom of speech is absolute. It doesn't matter what the government thinks of the situation. It isn't a "crime" to move publications, even if the police think that.

It's sickening how this could even possibly happen.

will42743• 23 days ago

It's a crime to deliberately conceal another crime, whether you do it by raking leaves, deleting Internet posts, or setting your car on fire. It's called accessory after the fact.

Aeolun4• 23 days ago

That’s only the case if the zines are evidence of anything. What were they evidence of?

polski-g2• 23 days ago

It is absolutely a crime to conceal evidence in an ongoing criminal trial. The contents of the publications is absolutely irrelevant: the individual was asked to conceal evidence and agreed to do it.

vrganj2• 23 days ago

What are zines evidence of?

khalic• 23 days ago

How does that boot taste?

jmyeet5• 23 days ago

The leaders of January 6 got 22, 18 and 18 years for seditious conspiracy in an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States.

This guy got 30 years for not being at an event where an officer was shot (and it was unclear who shot first, according to the FBI) when one of the arrested asked him to move a box of zines.

Now if I murder someone then ask you to dispose of the murder weapon, I've only committed a crime if I am knowingly conceling or destroying evidence. Like, maybe I'm helping you hide possession of an illegal firearm. That may still be a felony but it's in no way as serious as if I knew you killed someone with it.

so, what did the zine mover know, exactly? Did they know there was going to be a protest? Graffitti at an ICE facility? It's unclear to me that there was any plan to shoot a police officer so it's hard to argue that they should've known that was the crime at hand. Were they moving the zines so they wouldn't get confiscated and they still wanted to distribute them?

Nothing about this amounts to "domestic terrorism" under the most generous interpretation of the prosecution's theory of the case. They invented a domestic terrorist organization out of whole cloth and then used it to justify conspiracy charges. There is no "Antifa" like there is/was al-Aqeda or the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers. Who are the leaders? How do you identify members? What are there communications? It's all completely made up to justify excessive prosecution.

magenta42• 23 days ago

No, it isn't a crime to move any of your belongings or those of a friend which you have permission for.

The state tries to terrorize people domestically daily. Just ignore them and carry on.

dghlsakjg• 23 days ago

This judge has a very high rate of overturned rulings, and reliably rules for conservative causes.

Prosecutors openly acknowledge strategically filing cases in his court for conservative causes.

It isn't a mistake that he was the judge here, and there is a very good chance the sentences will be overturned if not entire cases.

Of course, that doesn't matter to these defendants, some of whom probably do deserve punishment for what they did, and all of whom will suffer through years of appeals, stress, etc. because some prosecutor wanted to make their career on a big case, and will have moved on years before this is all resolved.

In short, the case was made for headlines, and after putting the defendants through hell, appeals will invalidate most of those headlines after incurring great expense on behalf of the taxpayers and defendants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_O%27Connor

exmadscientist• 23 days ago

And following on from that, this has all the hallmarks of a successful appeal for unreasonable sentences. However, it's going to go to the Fifth Circuit, who are, ah, not known for their friendliness to criminal defendants.

kpennell• 23 days ago

Here's him speaking at the Federalist Society - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMTt9pxWBhA

Chinjut3• 23 days ago

A lot of people in these Hacker News comments are accepting the framing that moving the zines is evidence tampering and therefore deserves a 30 year sentence. What crime are zines evidence of?

bawolff9• 23 days ago

I don't think that is the relavent question.

Did he move the items because he believed that they were evidence being sought by the police?

I don't really care if they are actually evidence of something or not. I care if the accused believed they were and moved them for that purpose.

vel0city10• 23 days ago

Let's say someone is driving 35MPH. They think "oh snap, I think the speed limit is 30MPH here!". The posted speed limit is actually 40MPH.

Was this person speeding or not? Should a cop ticket them for thinking they're doing something wrong, even if everything they were doing was legal?

Did they even think the zines were implicated as evidence? Were the zines implicated as evidence? What crimes were being committed by ownership of these zines?

If there's a warrant issued to search a house, and a resident of that house eats a ham sandwich for lunch while the cops are on their way, did they destroy evidence?

Chinjut3• 22 days ago

What if you believe (correctly) that a corrupt government intends to punish you exorbitantly beyond reason for possession of these zines? Is it still immoral to move the zines? Is it so immoral that it therefore justifies 30 years of imprisonment for moving the zines?

9x394• 23 days ago

What crime are zines evidence of?

Not quite the right framing.

Look at the chain of events in the probable cause affidavit:https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.41...

Rueda was in the jail following arrest in an armed group after a firefight at the detention center where 20-30 rifle rounds had been fired, with a police officer killed as a result.

In jail, Rueda called her mother to contact Sanchez because he would know what was going on. Rueda later directly called Sanchez and said, 'whatever you need to do, move whatever you need at the house'. Sanchez indicated to Rueda he had already been to her house.

Sanchez was then observed leaving his house with zines and was observed moving the zines to an apartment of someone else's. The zines were the same TTPs for anti-gov, anti-LE civil unrest topics as seen before and thus considered likely to be connected.

All in all, moving evidence from an investigation involving armed groups engaging in firefights with ICE isn't a stretch once we don't omit the facts known.

kristjansson• 23 days ago

Not killed, wounded.

pcrh3• 23 days ago

At worst, the zines are evidence of Rueda's political opinions. They are not evidence of conspiracy to set off fireworks near the compound, nor shoot an officer.

s1artibartfast8• 23 days ago

I didn't see anyone arguing it was worth 30. I saw a lot aruing that it was a crime, and more than moving zines

thunderfork4• 23 days ago

Insane charges, insane justifications, and judging by the comments in this thread, I feel insane for having ever believed in the myth of the "decent conservative".

Chinjut3• 23 days ago

Hacker News is for people who believe in the hacker ethos "It is immoral to do anything the government takes issue with and you deserve whatever punishment you get for doing so, unless it was breaking regulations to make money, the highest calling".

tkel3• 23 days ago

Also, "It's okay for the government to shoot people, use explosives, kidnap people and put them in cages for their entire lives. But if you try to stop them, you are bad and deserve to be in a cage for your entire life."

reubenswartz• 23 days ago

If only he had deliberately hidden top secret documents with national security implications, he could be eligible to be president...

jrexilius• 23 days ago

The wonderful thing about our current culture is that each side thinks that further empowering the federal government is the solution. And it will only be used by their side against their enemies (other american citizens). No thought at all to the fact that the other side will take power in 4 years. No, no.. short term power is all that matters. The Biden administration started targeting "right-wing terrorists", now its Trumps turn to take it up a notch. Can't wait to see what the left does when they take power in a couple years. I think the technical term for this is death spiral...

paulryanrogers2• 23 days ago

The Biden administration started targeting "right-wing terrorists"

Where can I read more about this?

cobbzilla• 23 days ago

https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/splc-financia...

Aeolun4• 23 days ago

Let me get this right… all these people got from 70-100 years in prison for spray painting slogans on the side of some ICE infrastructure, and setting off fireworks.

Then fair enough, one of them shot a police officer, but the officer survived, and even the FBI employee described in the trial that he’s not sure who shot first.

The US is insane.

What’s to stop any future antifa group from immediately opening up on all the personel involved? They were carrying the guns for it, and apparently it doesn’t make a hoot of difference to the sentencing…

N_Lens2• 23 days ago

It's naked fascism and about sending a message.

A lot of HN visitors align right wing because capital usually aligns with the right wing, and people here are better off than most.

In my opinion capital will no longer serve as the reliable survival signal that it has upto now, and we're in a transitional era.

Optimizing purely for capital is not likely to ensure the survival of the human race, neither collective nor individual. Infact it is the very drive to maximize capital which is threatening our survival.

green_wheel2• 23 days ago

Even if he did exactly what they said he did, no way that's worth 30 years. But people really need to realize that the justice system has been and never will be "blind" or "fair" or whatever you may think it is. It is wielded by those in power largely as they see fit, so keep that in mind if you're thinking about messing with the feds.

pnt12• 23 days ago

It seems especially bad now. This relativistic mindset is really bad for critical thought: "oh, it was never 100% fair". Well, if it was 80% earlier, it seems approaching 20% now. It's a whole new level.

cmrdporcupine4• 23 days ago

I think you need to do some research on how the policing and legal system was used against left wing agitators, thought, and organization for most of the 20th century. From COINTELPRO to Eugene Debs being jailed (for speech), it's a pretty clear and consistent pattern and consistent with what was done here and it was done under both Democrat and Republican administrations.

It's just out of people's recent memories because the bogeyman in the last 25 years became Islamic fundamentalist radicals, not communist ones. And because far left politics fell markedly in size and impact after the collapse of the USSR.

green_wheel2• 21 days ago

Everything seems worse now because you have access to the Internet. And it doesn't really matter when it was worse. It's bad now and you should be aware of what the government is capable of if you're thinking about fucking with them.

andyjohnson0• 23 days ago

https://archive.ph/tm1pg

zombot• 23 days ago

Holy Fuck. If anybody still needed proof that It Can Always Get Worse™, this should serve the purpose.

arh5451• 23 days ago

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-antifa-cell-members-no...

One or two defendents were likely over prosecuted, the others it seems like a rather straight forward case. The issue is they were bombing/shooting at a federal facility which carries a higher sentence.

I find the sentences agregiously long, but that's a different discussion.

kubafu• 23 days ago

USA is such a weird place these days. Is there a way back to sanity once this administration ends?

birdsongs2• 23 days ago

IMO the DNC needs to grow a spine and perform hard correction and repair. Which is to say, I don't think that will happen, and some form of collapse is inevitable.

But I'm far from a political scientist. Just an engineer with a history hobby, pattern matching.

jmyeet5• 23 days ago

There is a persistent narrative that the DNC is incompetent. That they're just trying to be nice and to compromise. And it's simply not true and needs to be disposed of.

The DNC have known what works in elections since 2008 when Obama swept and won states like Iowa. They might argue that Obama was generationally charismatic (which is true) but it was the message that won, a message of progressive populism. Here's a 2016 quote from Chuck Schumer [1]:

For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia. And you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.

Here's another [2]:

For as long as I live, for as long as I have the privilege of serving in the Senate from New York, I will unflinchingly, unstintingly, and with all my strength, be a Guardian of Israel

Substitute "Israel" for any other country and you'll be charged with something between treason and acting as an unregistered foreign agent (eg [3]).

Also remember that the contentious Epstein files, which implicate a bunch of powerful people including the current president and will likely all but prove that Jeffrey Epstein was an Israeli agent, sat in a dark room doing nothing for 4 years of Joe Biden and Merrick Garland. And no, "ongoing cases" isn't an excuse, particularly after Maxwell was convicted in 2022.

Look at the disastrous Iran war. What was the response from Democrats? How many, particularly in leadership positions, actually opposed the war? Not many. Most of the objections were process objections, namely that Congress wasn't consulted. That's not opposition to a war because most of them don't oppose the war.

I really hope people begin to understand that none of what the DNC and establishment Democrats is doing is incompetence. It isn't.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Schumer

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh8rpFTVBuM

[3] https://www.bipc.com/arcadia-mayor-charged-by-doj-as-chinese...

someonebaggy• 23 days ago

No country has ever recovered from this sort of thing. At best the empire collapses and the country survives as a country and becomes a vassal of a different empire (likely China, or BRICS). If recovery was possible, we wouldn't have gotten this far already.

beardedwizard3• 23 days ago

Can you name a single relevant historical example for this claim?

fzeroracer• 23 days ago

The way back to sanity would've required the opposition party to be worth anything. Right now they're busy writing up their own project 2029 plan which involves cracking down on the internet and whining about the old guard getting voted out of office for being feckless.

TrackerFF3• 23 days ago

Here's the thing: The traditional / establishment democrats have blindly believed that you can negotiate with people like Trump, because of decorum. Establishment candidates have been more occupied with taking the moral high-road, even if that resulted in loss after loss.

There's this ingrained belief that if you just play nice with republicans, they'll play nice back. And that was valid for a long, long time. The problem is that Trump completely upended that, though he was not the start of it - he's just the natural consequence of populism and the ground that had been fertilized for years.

The reason why Trump has been allowed to hijack the republican party, is because of how the two-party system in the US works. Trump has an iron grip on a sizable number of voters, and thus the GOP had to kowtow to Trump.

Luckily Trump is MAGA, and MAGA is Trump. I fully expect that the current MAGA movement will fracture and splinter into smaller factions once Trump is out. And from the looks of it, they do not have any plan B. No front runner in sight.

jmyeet5• 23 days ago

No, it's worse than that. Establishment Democrats are complicit in what Trump is doing. This went so far as to intentionally lose the presidential election in 2024 rather than oppose genocide. How can Trump both be a fascist and an existential threat and a preferable outcome to stopping genocide?

For years, the Democrats have sold this "electability" lie, that the only electable Democrats are "moderates" or "centrists". This was never true and it was just an excuse for the same people funding both parties to make the Democrats the controlled opposition.

What we've seen in the last year is the right democratic socialists ousting incumbents in primaries and defeating establishment candidates. This movement is undeniably popular and what do establishment Democrats do? They side with Republicans in saying that socialism is an existential threat to the US.

As for your last point, I think we're going to find out what happens sooner than many think. MAGA is a cult and cults never survive intact when their leader dies. There's nobody to take his place so the jmost likely outcome is a descent into factionalism and the party splinters for a time until Trump 2.0 can once again unite the factions.

But we should never forget that establishment Democrats are siding and will side with Republicans to defend the current system.

TripleFFF• 23 days ago

Paywalled. Irony or just American

NoImmatureAdHom• 23 days ago

I'll remind you about 1972:

https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/

“People have completely forgotten that in 1972 we had over nineteen hundred domestic bombings in the United States.” — Max Noel, FBI (ret.)

Current times aren't even that spicy.

JuniperMesos• 22 days ago

I think there's a reasonable chance that the judge and prosecutors in this case are familiar with _Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence_ by Bryan Burrough; and consider the failure of the criminal justice system of the time to impose extremely severe prison sentences on the domestic bombers of the 1970s to be a mistake that they do not intend to repeat.

Alien1Being• 23 days ago

As someone living in a non-US country, I get the impression that Russians and Chinese seem to be safer from their respective governments, than residents of the US.

I hope that your country recovers from it's experiment with dictatorship.

anthonybsd• 23 days ago

I get the impression that Russians and Chinese seem to be safer from their respective governments, than residents of the US.

What an utterly misguided conclusion to make from the recent news. While the current US administration is just dipping their toes in the pool of authoritarianism, the aforementioned countries have been on board that train for quite a long time. In Russia teenage girls get prison sentences for reposting anti-war Facebook memes, and LGBTQ+ people get hunted down on the streets. China runs actual concentration camps for their ethnic minorities and has the most locked down Internet in the world. And yet somehow you think a ruling from one activist judge in Texas makes US citizens as a whole less safe than that?

gverrilla• 23 days ago

MAGA = nazi.

xtiansimon• 23 days ago

Can’t read the article without signing up.

On the topic—I’m shocked. Seems like this judge missed the last 40 years of the internet. People organize on all manner of subjects on the net with silly names, and around all subjects. Failure to see this, makes terrorists of us all.

tokai• 23 days ago

The comments here are going so easy on the US. If it had been happening in a European country there would be no end of the comments about how Europe is lost. Americans really need to get it together and save their nation from autocracy.

micromacrofoot• 23 days ago

and still no arrests for the epstein files

csense• 23 days ago

Was this a jury trial?

Tadpole91813• 23 days ago

Technically. But the judge dismissed the first jury and then hand selected a new one without the defense.

rixed• 23 days ago

Recommending this independent journalist's article that pays attention to other colorful characters in this story:

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/450-years-in-prison-for-sa...

krunck• 23 days ago

So I wonder if I go around saying I'm "pro-fascist", it's OK now because I'm not saying I'm "anti-fascist"? But that would be false of me. So maybe I can only declare I'm "fascism-neutral"? That would also be false.

ornornor• 23 days ago

Good that Americans have a right to bear arms exactly to prevent this kind of totalitarian overtake of the country.

From the outside, it looks like what the stasi was doing, in the oh so vile communist regime (it was also a totalitarian one, and not a regime I’d want to live under). And now the US is doing it to itself.

Wait until elections time. Trump has hinted several times publicly that there won’t be a next election or any need to replace him. We assumed it was just more verbal diarrhea like he has a knack for. But in this context and in light of his modus operandi, who knows…

Sophira• 22 days ago

Obligatory reminder that what the US government considers to be extremist activities includes the obvious crime of being interested in privacy and anonymity[0].

(Hence all the age verification laws cropping up everywhere, most likely. Their primary goal isn't actually about protecting children.)

[0] https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/nsa-linux-journal-extre...

csneeky• 22 days ago

Wonder if those two young authors even know the word objective.

flossposse4• 22 days ago

See https://freedes.net to join the community in support of Des. (That's Mr. Estrada, not Data Encryption Standard)

30-year sentence for transporting zines is a five-alarm fire for free speech

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