Bolton to plead guilty charges that he unlawfully retained sensitive national security information in agreement that includes $2.25m fine
The decades-long prison sentences for a group of Texas activists convicted of terrorism and other charges in connection to a Fourth of July protest last year has caused widespread alarm, given their unusually punitive length and for the apparent harsh criminalization of protest activity under Donald Trump’s justice department.
Eight people who participated in a protest at the Prairieland ICE detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, were sentenced on Tuesday to between 50 and 100 years in prison. A ninth person, Daniel Sanchez-Estrada, the husband of one of the demonstrators, did not participate in the protest, but was sentenced to 30 years in prison after he was convicted of moving boxes containing leftwing zines and other materials after a prison phone call from his wife.
[The zines Sanchez-Estrada was punished for moving are] no different from the pro-Revolution pamphlets this country’s founders had in mind when they drafted the first amendment’s press clause.
Sanchez’s case is the latest example of the Trump administration grasping at any legal straws it can to criminalize disfavored ideologies and writings, from conflating dissent with terrorism to deporting immigrants who report on protests or criticize wars the US bankrolls.