Power to the People News — March 30, 2026
Power to the People News for March 30, 2026: ICE cruelty, Scotus preferential treatment, and religious freedom threats met with truth, dignity, and people power.
When Power Abuses, the People Respond
On March 30 2026, the pattern is clear: those in power are normalizing state cruelty, hollowing out basic rights, and testing how much injustice the public will tolerate — from deadly ICE detention and racial profiling, to attacks on abortion care, threats to voting by mail, and an assault on birthright citizenship itself.
But this is not the end of the story. Communities are organizing. Advocates are rising. Truth is breaking through. And people across this country are refusing to surrender their rights, their dignity, or their democracy. Power still belongs to the people — and together, we can protect our communities and each other.
📰 Stories Shaping Power to the People Right Now
⚖️ The Shadow Docket Has Ruled for Trump 80 Percent of the Time — and That Is Not Judicial Neutrality
In the 13 months since Trump’s second inauguration, the Supreme Court has considered more than 35 emergency applications tied to his administration and ruled in its favor roughly 80 percent of the time — usually with no oral argument, minimal briefing, and no public explanation. The Bush and Obama administrations combined filed eight such applications across sixteen years; Trump’s second administration filed nineteen in its first twenty weeks alone. The shadow docket was designed for procedural emergencies. It has become a governing tool. (New York Times)
Why It Matters for Democracy: Power without explanation is power without accountability. Justice Kagan warned in her dissent in Trump v. Slaughter that the emergency docket was being used to transfer authority from Congress to the President — reshaping separation of powers without a single public hearing. When a court sides with one administration eight times out of ten on applications that determine the fate of immigrants, independent agencies, and civil rights — all in the dark — that is not judging. That is governing without consent.
🤝 Trump Ally Used ICE to Deport the Mother of His Child During a Custody Battle
Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent turned White House special envoy, reached out last June to David Venturella, a high-ranking ICE official, after learning his Brazilian ex-girlfriend, Amanda Ungaro, was in a Miami jail on fraud charges — and in the middle of a custody dispute over their teenage son. According to records, Zampolli asked whether Ungaro’s undocumented status could be used to his advantage; Venturella promptly called ICE’s Miami office, emphasizing it was a favor for a friend of the president, to ensure agents would pick her up before she could post bail. She was transferred to ICE custody and deported to Brazil. Zampolli denies seeking her deportation, and DHS says she would have been removed regardless — but records show the intervention was real, and that it worked. Seattle Times
Why This Matters: ICE is supposed to enforce immigration law — not adjudicate private custody disputes for White House insiders. When a single phone call from a presidential ally can move an entire deportation, ICE accountability has not just failed — it has been replaced by a patronage system.
🏗️ Maryland Courts Pause ICE’s $102M Secret Detention Warehouse
ICE purchased a 54-acre commercial warehouse near Williamsport, Maryland, in January for $102.4 million, with plans to convert it into a facility holding 1,500 people — without conducting a mandatory environmental review or holding a single public meeting. The building has four toilets and two water fountains; experts say it would generate four times more wastewater than the site’s infrastructure can handle, with runoff threatening the Potomac River watershed and state-protected species. Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown sued under the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act, and a federal court issued a temporary restraining order pausing construction while the lawsuit proceeds. ABC News Maryland Attorney General
Why This Matters: ICE is building nationwide mass detention infrastructure in secret, spending hundreds of millions in public dollars with no legal process and no community voice. Maryland’s court victory shows that states retain the power to demand accountability — and that pushing back through the courts can work.
♿ Double Amputee Rodney Taylor Has Spent Over a Year Crawling on Soiled ICE Detention Floors
Rodney Taylor — who is missing both legs and three fingers on his right hand — has been held for more than a year at a for-profit ICE detention facility in Lumpkin, Georgia, where he has been forced to crawl across floors covered in mold, feces, and bodily fluids to reach the shower, after the facility stopped providing meal accommodations and repeatedly denied him properly calibrated prosthetics. The missing silicone linings have caused open boils; a wheelchair was eventually provided, but using it causes wrist pain due to his missing fingers; and staff have refused medical care multiple times. Representative Pramila Jayapal led 20 members of Congress in a letter to DHS demanding Taylor’s release, with a University of Pennsylvania medical professor calling his conditions “repeated acts of dehumanization.” The Guardian
Why This Matters: The Trump administration’s elimination of federal civil rights and immigration detention oversight offices has removed the mechanisms designed to catch exactly this kind of abuse. Rodney Taylor’s case is not an anomaly — it is what ICE detention produces when no one is watching.
⛪ Minnesota Clergy Win Court Order to Pray with ICE Detainees — After Being Turned Away on Ash Wednesday
Evangelical Lutheran, United Church of Christ, and Catholic clergy in Minnesota went to court after being repeatedly barred from the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis — including on Ash Wednesday — to offer prayer, sacraments, and pastoral care to detainees held during Operation Metro Surge. On March 20, U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell granted an injunction, ruling that the restrictions constituted irreparable harm to the clergy’s First Amendment rights and violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and ordering DHS to establish clear protocols for in-person pastoral access. Whipple had also blocked three members of Congress and restricted attorney access — making this the second court ruling in weeks to find ICE’s practices at the facility unconstitutional. Seattle Times
Why This Matters: ICE’s refusal to allow clergy during Lent and Ramadan is not a logistical oversight — isolation is the strategy. When lawyers are blocked, members of Congress are turned away, and priests are refused entry, every outside witness to what happens inside is eliminated.
💥 Your Power in Action: What You Can Do Today
💥 Take action: Tell Republicans: End the Shutdown by Reforming ICE and CBP
✅ Take action: Denounce Trump’s Inhumane Response to Robert Mueller’s Death
➡️ Take action: Stop the Republican Attack on Voting Rights
📢 Take action: Submit an official comment rejecting the criminalization of dissent
💸 Take action: This Tax Day, tell Congress to tax the rich and make life more affordable for working people and families
🗳️ Take action: Tell Congress to stop the SAVE America Act and defend the right to vote
🪖 Take action: Tell Congress to stop Trump from sending American troops into Iran and vote no on the draft
📣 Take action: Tell Congress to pass the War Powers Resolution and stop Trump’s illegal war in Iran
🛑 Take Action Now: Tell Congress: Block the $10 billion scam to fund Trump’s Orwellian Board of Peace
🗳️ Bonus action: Register to vote, vote in every election, and help your community do the same. Reproductive freedom is won and lost at the ballot box.
The movement for progress and power to the people starts here.
Together, we can champion our rights, freedoms, and democracy, hold our leaders accountable to the people’s will, and inspire voters to make a meaningful difference.
Laurie Woodward Garcia (paid with hugs and kisses, not bought by special interests) Leader, People Power United
People Power United | In this community, we will always speak out against racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, misogyny, sexism, ageism, ableism, sizeism, elitism, transphobia, misogynoir, and bigotry!
This is our moment to rise, resist, and reclaim our rights, freedoms, rule of law, and democracy. Millions of Americans are already refusing to back down — in the streets, at the ballot box, and in their communities.
Every movement that was ever won started with people who refused to quit. We are those people.
The future is not lost. It is being built — by us, right now.