Reflections on the Pro Kilmar Abrego Garcia Protest in Nashville Today

by Rod Williams, July 13, 2025- I drove by the protest at the Federal Courthouse this morning about 10:30. If the library garage at not been closed due to the recent fire that closed the garage, I would have stopped and got a closer look. I was stopped at the redlight at Church and 7th and with windows down observed the crowd. It was loud, but orderly. I did not see a police presence. 

I had no intention of taking part in this protest. If I would have parked and got a closer look, I would have lingered across the street and observed. While I will protest Donald Trump's denial of due process and his authoritarian policies and tendencies, I am not interested protesting on behalf of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. My concern about this case has never been a defense of Garcia, but a defense of due process. While the charges against Garcia may be trumped up, I am willing to let justice run its course. The charges are serious. Also, the organizers of this protest are leftist. I don't want to march with a group led of radical leftist who I often find as offensive as I do Donald Trump. 

To stand up to Donald Trump's destruction of American democracy, we may have to rub shoulders with some unsavory characters. I plan on participating in the No Kings protest tomorrow. If I arrive and there are a lot of leftist sloganeering, and the preponderance of the signs and banners represent a leftist agenda, I will leave. 

Often, when a lot is at stake, one has to ally themselves with people who are only slightly better than the primary opponent. In World War II, America allied itself with Communist movements and Communist Russia, although Communism is every bit as evil as Nazism. That uncomfortable alliance was necessary as Nazi Germany was the more immediate threat, During the Cold War, the US had to ally with some authoritarian regimes in order to prevent a Communism world-wide victory. I don't fault us for doing so. Politics can make strange bedfellows.  Each of us must decide our comfort level in allying ourselves with people who under other circumstances we would oppose. 

Below are other reports on the protest. The Pamphleteer is a publication I respect and trust and a source I read regularly. 

Dispatch from a Protest

by Davis Hunt, The Pamphleteer, July 13, 2025- This morning, a group of journalists and activists gathered at the Fred Thompson Federal Courthouse to protest the detention of illegal alien Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Garcia is scheduled to be arraigned today on human trafficking charges.

The particulars of what the protests are about aren’t really important because all the same people who show up to protest, say, the state government thinking about forgoing federal education funds, show up. The Democratic Socialists of America were there. The Party for Socialism and Liberation was there. Etc. One big blob of protestors just vaguely venting anger.

I went to observe this morning for a minute. Aside from hearing chants like “Jesus would’ve been on our side” and witnessing an old lady with wild eyes bouncing around with an American flag, pausing in front of a passerby, and yelling, “Don’t be satisfied with the status quo because it’s broken,” the main thing that stuck was how journalists waddle around the periphery like cattle feeding at a fetid pond. Yes, I was there. I was among the journalists. I was the cow drinking from the fetid pond.

But let me tell you about the others. All the big names were there, including Footman Phil in all his glory. I couldn’t really tell what these journalists were doing. Kind of just hanging out, talking to each other, slowly wandering over to “areas of interest” to observe and jot notes, maybe hoping for some confrontation they could use to give the protest a narrative.

One incident that drew a host of journalists was when an old man approached a speaker and interrupted the proceedings. I couldn’t really tell what he was talking about, but his presence immediately drew a swarm of reporters who lolled their heads up from the pond, swatted the flies off their ass, and slowly gathered around the man with their cameras as he exited shouting.

Another peculiar thing was the UVOTN people wearing yellow vests and ear pieces patrolling the perimeter. As our disruptor left the scene, one of them paused in front of me. “He’s moving South on Seventh, South on Seventh,” he reported. 

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Tennessee Should Have a Cap on Property Taxes

Local residents across Tennessee are criticizing a proposed property tax increase. Unfortunately, Tennessee is one of four states without any sort of cap on property taxes, so local governments can implement unlimited property tax increases at any time.

Are you tired of local property tax increases making it harder and harder to live—and live well—in Tennessee? If so, join Beacon in the fight for a statewide cap on property tax increases.  Together, we can ensure that Tennessee remains a state where families, retirees, and individuals can thrive without being burdened by unaffordable property taxes. Now is the time to act.

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Nashville, Beacon Center agree to $1.4M settlement

by Kim Jarrett, The Center Square, Jun 5, 2025 - The Beacon Center and the city of Nashville have settled a class action lawsuit over stormwater capacity fees.

Peyton Pratt sued the city after he was charged more than $6,000 in fees when he expanded his residence, according to a release from the Beacon Center, which represented Pratt.

Nashville enacted the new fee structure for residents obtaining building permits in February 2024. The money from the fees was allocated to fund capital improvements in the city's stormwater system.

"Perhaps worse, Metro's stormwater capacity fee charges individuals on a per square-foot fee not just for impervious area that they're adding, but also for impervious area that has existed all along," the lawsuit said. "Thus, even though Mr. Pratt sought to add less than 2,500 square feet in impervious area, Metro charged him a stormwater capacity fee for over 8,000 square feet."

Impervious areas include roofs, streets, sidewalks and parking areas that are covered.

Nashville agreed to settle and pay back $1.4 million to residents who were charged the fees in order to obtain a permit. Pratt will also recoup his money and the Beacon Center will receive $5,000 in attorneys fees, according to the settlement.

A federal judge has to sign off on the agreement before it is final.

“This is a landmark agreement, not just for our client, but for all Tennesseans,” said Wen Fa, Beacon's vice president of legal affairs. “Tennesseans have long identified the lack of housing as a significant issue, so we're pleased that this proposed settlement clears the path for builders to make housing affordable by building more homes for Tennesseans."

The stormwater capacity fee ordinance did not generate the revenues expected prior to adoption, said Julie Oaks Smith, senior director of communications for Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell. 

"Metro Water Services stopped collecting the charge and is in favor of repealing the ordinance,' Smith said. "As a result, it made sense to settle the case by refunding the fees that had been collected plus attorney fees."

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Eight months later, FBI investigation of GOP Congressman Andy Ogles still awaits federal judge's ruling

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — It’s been said that the wheels of justice grind slowly, and there may be no better example than the FBI’s investigation of Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles. For more than eight months, FBI agents have been blocked from looking at evidence seized from the Maury County Republican while a federal magistrate decides what agents can see. Attorneys for both sides gave Magistrate Judge Alistair E. Newbern everything she needed to make a decision in the case on Oct. 7, 2024, court records show. Since then, Newbern has been silent on the matter. (read more)

Rod's Comment: Can anyone say, "slow-walking"?

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TN lawmakers introduce bill targeting Mayor Freddie O'Connell

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Regarding the Mostly Peaceful Riots in L. A.

 

by Rod Williams, June 10, 2025- I set up late last night watching the L. A. demonstrations on TV. There are all of these amateur citizen journalists who go out and livestream events as they happen. I know I could wait until the next day and get the highlights, but there is something about being there in real time waiting to see what happens that I enjoy. It is a lot more exciting than watching golf or, in my opinion, most sporting events.

Last night I watched a store being looting. It was some kind of clothing store. This was about 1:30 in the morning L.A. time. The store had one of those roll down metal doors that cover the front of the store. Vandals had pried it up, broke the front door down, and looters were entering the store and carrying away armfuls of clothes. This went on for several minutes before the police arrived. The looters fled and police only caught one of them. I don't know how looting this store helps poor innocent immigrants being persecuted by Donald Trump's ICE. 

I suspect there are a lot of people who could care less about the cause and just enjoy thieving and vandalizing. During the BLM riots of 2020 we saw people topple statues of abolitionist and poets. I guess it is empowering to topple a statue, and one doesn't care who it is a statue of.

I think there are a certain segment of the population who find a riot a festive event. Looting, toppling, spray painting, setting police cars on fire and even beating up helpless people must be an adrenaline rush for some people. I am also not buying the excuse that it is poor oppressed people venting their rage. No! It is low lives, thieves, and thugs taking advantage of a situation to get free stuff and experience the enjoyment of violence and destruction.  

Defender of protest do not like it when the violence is reported or featured. Sympathetic newscasters and pundits can stand in front of a burning police car and speak of the "mostly peaceful" demonstration.  I am not buying it.

What does it mean that a demonstration was "mostly peaceful? 

On January 6th, 2021, 53,000 people attended the "Stop the Steal" rally where President Trump spoke and is accused of inciting the violence. The FBI estimated that between 2,000 and 2,500 people entered the Capitol Building during the January 6th attack. Assuming the above numbers are correct and using the 2500 number as the number who trespassed into the capitol that is 4.7% trespassed. We know that many of those who trespassed entered after the door had already been opened and they just entered and loitered a while and left. 1,500 people were charged with federal crimes in connection with the January 6th United States Capitol attack. The number of charges includes a range of offenses from misdemeanor violations to felony offenses like assaulting police officers. So about 2.8% of those in attendance at the protest were charged with some sort of offence. I know some people who were at the Stop the Steal rally, and they said they were not close to the action and if not for watching the news on their cell phone they would have not known about the breach of the Capitol. 

January 6th was a mostly peaceful demonstration.

If you have 10,000 people taking part in a demonstration and 97% are peaceful, you could still have 300 people who are setting police cars on fire, toppling statues, looting stores, and throwing chucks of concreate off of interstate overpasses and pulling people from cars and beating them. That is a "mostly peaceful" demonstrations. 

If 5,001 of the 10,000 are not burning down a city, that is a "mostly peaceful" demonstration. After all, one more than half is most of the people.  I don't find "mostly peaceful" a very compelling excuse for rioters. I don't think it is the most accurate and descriptive of terms for describing what is happening. 

Having said what I have said above, this is not a commentary on the January 6th insurrection, Trump's immigration policy, or Trump's authority to use the military for domestic policing or crowd control. I am simply pointing out that when someone tells me an event is "mostly peaceful" that doesn't tell me a lot and sound like an excuse for the violence. 

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The White House Marching Orders That Sparked the L.A. Migrant Crackdown

WH Bernstein

From WH Bernstein, Facebook, June 10, 2025 - Important reporting in today's WSJ.

In case you wondered what prompted the very aggressive enforcement actions by ICE, that's in this article.

Seems Trump was frustrated that his rate of deportations was lower than Biden's.  Right, the same Biden Republicans claim had an open border policy and was flooding the country with illegals.

Turns out he had deported more people than Trump ever did.

So Steven Miller, cosplaying the role of Himmler in this administration, gave a speech basically saying "fuck the rules, get out there and grab Hispanic butt."

Instead of identifying illegals and targeting them the strategy now became to hone in on Home Depot parking lots (I'm not making this up, I swear) and other places illegals tended to gather and simply arrest people.

Incompetent people in administration make bad choices and this regime demonstrates it daily.

The White House Marching Orders That Sparked the
L.A. Migrant Crackdown

by Elizabeth Findell, Ruth Simon, Michelle Hackman, and Tarini Parti, Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2025 - Even with the high-profile arrests of suspects by masked immigration agents and the plane loads of migrants swiftly ferried out of the U.S., President Trump was falling short of the number of daily deportations carried out by the Biden administration in its final year.

So in late May, Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and the architect of the president’s immigration agenda, addressed a meeting at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The message was clear: The president, who promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, wasn’t pleased. The agency had better step it up.

Gang members and violent criminals, what Trump called the “worst of the worst,” weren’t the sole target of deportations. Federal agents needed to “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,” Miller told top ICE officials, ... Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away.  “Who here thinks they can do it?” Miller said, asking for a show of hands. 

ICE agents appeared to follow Miller’s tip and conducted an immigration sweep Friday at the Home Depot in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Westlake in Los Angeles,...

... “To do this in militaristic gear in L.A. is intended to notch up the image of deportations being in high gear,” said Muzaffar Chishti, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. “But the actual deportations are paltry compared with the imagery.” 

...There are no written directives, but officers have been told to “do what you need to do” to make more arrests, according to current and former ICE officials familiar with the directives.

The administration’s immigration enforcement is a sharp break with past government practices, according to attorneys, immigration advocates and officials from previous administrations. 

Federal agents make warrantless arrests. Masked agents take people into custody without identifying themselves. Plainclothes agents in at least a dozen cities have arrested migrants who showed up to their court hearings. And across the U.S., people suspected of being in the country illegally are disappearing into the federal detention system without notice to families or lawyers, according to attorneys, witnesses and officials.

.... They were seeking a resident’s son who had allegedly posted fliers alerting neighbors to the presence of ICE agents. The raid alarmed the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, an organization that defends free speech, which requested a copy of the warrant. “Criticism of government officials is core protected speech, and to criticize them you have every right to identify them,” said Aaron Terr, the group’s director of public advocacy.

.... The Border Patrol’s El Centro sector in Southern California posted photos of a broken car window on Facebook: The caption said, “This illegal alien is listing his accomplishments for the past week: Refused to open window during an immigration inspection; Got his window shattered for an extraction.”

... ICE has stopped regularly publishing arrest data, and has been accused of overstating the numbers. The Trump administration arrested roughly 66,500 migrants living in the U.S. illegally and deported nearly 66,000 in its first 100 days, a higher pace of arrests compared with 2024, and a slightly slower pace for deportations.

Earlier this year, ICE officials set daily arrest quotas and deputized agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law-enforcement agencies. ICE officials eliminated a Biden-era policy that blocked officers from arresting people without proof of legal residency who happened to be in the vicinity of targeted suspects. Raids at schools, churches and hospitals are now allowed.

... Officials from the White House and the Department of Homeland Security have made clear there will be consequences for not hitting arrest targets. Top officials at DHS have pushed out one acting ICE director and are threatening a second. 

... Elsewhere, Americans detained by ICE have said they were held for hours or longer before being allowed to prove their citizenship. ... Courthouse arrests have become a nationwide strategy, according to DHS officials and lawyers. They allow ICE to boost arrest numbers with fewer resources. It also puts migrants in a corner: Should they risk arrest by following the legal process and appearing in court? ... Other lawyers say clients have been denied access to legal counsel. Luis Campos, a Tucson-based attorney, said a Border Patrol agent physically blocked him from seeing a woman on the maternity ward who had just given birth. The woman and her family had requested that she have counsel, Campos said. ICE said all laws and procedures were followed. (read it all)

Bill Bernstein, formerly of Nashville where he was owner of Eastside Gun Shop, now lives in Sumter, South Carolina. He is a scholar with a BA degree from Vanderbilt University and degrees in Classics from Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UNC-Chapel Hill, and University of Pennsylvania.

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Rep. Mark Green Retires from the U.S. House of Representatives

Rep. Mark Green

Press release from Rep. Mark Green, June 9, 2025—Today, Rep. Mark Green (TN-07), Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, released the following statement:

“It is with a heavy heart that I announce my retirement from Congress. Recently, I was offered an opportunity in the private sector that was too exciting to pass up. As a result, today I notified the Speaker and the House of Representatives that I will resign from Congress as soon as the House votes once again on the reconciliation package. 

It was the honor of a lifetime to represent the people of Tennessee in Congress. They asked me to deliver on the conservative values and principles we all hold dear, and I did my level best to do so. Along the way, we passed historic tax cuts, worked with President Trump to secure the border, and defended innocent life. I am extremely proud of my work as Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and want to thank my staff, both in my seventh district office, as well as the professional staff on that committee.

I have now served the public for nearly four decades. The Army took me to Iraq and Afghanistan. The people sent me to the Tennessee legislature and the halls of Congress. Along the way, I have often remarked on the strength of the men and women I have served with. I know that the integrity, decency, and faith of the American people are what powered us for the first 250 years, and will power us for another 250 and beyond. 

I can proudly look back at my time in Congress and the success that we have accomplished on behalf of Tennesseans and the American people. I am grateful to Speaker Johnson and House Leadership for placing their trust in me to chair the Committee on Homeland Security, lead the effort to impeach former Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and to pass H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act, the strongest border security legislation in history to ever pass the House. However, my time in Congress has come to an end.

Though I planned to retire at the end of the previous Congress, I stayed to ensure that President Trump’s border security measures and priorities make it through Congress. By overseeing the border security portion of the reconciliation package, I have done that. After that, I will retire, and there will be a special election to replace me. 

I have no doubt that my colleagues in this Congress will continue to strengthen the cause of freedom. May God bless them, and the United States of America.”

Rep. Green served as the Freshman Class President in the 116th Congress following his election in 2018. At the beginning of the 118th Congress, Rep. Green was selected as Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, becoming the only member of Congress to be selected at the start of their third term to chair a major legislative committee in the 21st century. In 2024, Rep. Green led the effort to impeach former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Nicolas Mayorkas for high crimes and misdemeanors. On February 13, 2024, the House of Representatives successfully impeached Secretary Mayorkas. 

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Medicare Waste is Rightly Back on the Table

 

Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, June 9, 2025 -The Senate is reportedly exploring options to reduce Medicare waste, fraud, and abuse as they consider changes to the House-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). This would be a welcome improvement, and in fact something we suggested recently. There are a number of bipartisan reforms – such as adopting site-neutral payments or reducing excessive risk scores in Medicare Advantage – that could lower Medicare costs without cutting benefits and help offset the $3 trillion net cost of the current reconciliation bill. Medicare is the largest government program that can be addressed in reconciliation, with a projected $13 trillion cost over the next decade. There is a broad expert consensus that a significant share of that spending is wasteful or unnecessary and could be reduced without meaningfully reducing access to or quality of care. Indeed, Presidents Trump, Obama, Biden, and Bush each proposed hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare savings from reducing wasteful spending and overpayments – including many of the same policies.  As policymakers work to improve the OBBBA, they should incorporate these and other reforms.

Perhaps the most broadly-supported reform is the adoption of site neutral payments in Medicare. Medicare currently pays higher rates for procedures performed in hospital outpatient departments than for the same procedures performed in a physician’s office. As we’ve explained. The payment differentials are sometimes quite large – such as an average of 125 percent more for basic evaluations – and can drive hospital consolidation.  Members of both parties have endorsed site neutrality for some or all Medicare services, including as part of President Obama’s final budget, most of President Trump’s budgets, the bipartisan House-passed Lower Costs, More Transparency Act, Senator Kennedy's (R-LA) Same Care, Lower Cost Act, and a bipartisan site-neutral framework from Senators Cassidy (R-LA) and Hassan (D-NH). The policy – which is also supported by experts on the left, right, and center – could save over $150 through 2034. We’ve estimated it could also reduce premiums and cost-sharing by tens of billions more. Numerous other policies with broad support could lower Medicare costs and reduce waste without cutting benefits. For example, Presidents Trump, Obama, and Bush have all supported reducing payments to post-acute care facilities, reforming Medicare payments for Graduate Medical Education (payments to hospitals and new doctors for their residency programs), restricting or ending reimbursements for “bad debts” (uncollected cost sharing), and modifying hospice payments. Presidents Trump, Obama, and Biden have all supported extending the Medicare ”sequester,” which reduces provider payments by 2 percent, and changing Medicare Part D cost-sharing rules to encourage the use of generic drugs. Together, these policies could save up to $300 billion through 2034. Lawmakers could also consider reducing reimbursements for physician-administered drugs to hospitals benefiting from the 340B drug discount program – as currently those hospitals are able to pocket most of the drug savings. This change could save up to $75 billion over a decade. And most significantly from a savings perspective, lawmakers could consider reducing Medicare Advantage (MA) overpayments, which we recently estimated could total $1.2 trillion over the next ten years – about 14 percent of total MA spending. These overpayments are driven mainly by the fact that insurers make their enrollees appear sicker (while simultaneously selecting a healthier population) to take advantage of “risk adjustment” payments, a phenomenon that has been recognized by experts on the left and right. In the Senate, the bipartisan Cassidy-Merkley NO UPCODE Act would limit the ability of MA plans to inflate their enrollees’ risk scores. And although President Trump’s prior budgets had not proposed any Medicare Advantage reforms, Budget Director Russ Vought proposed well over $100 billion of MA savings in late 2022. More recently, the Trump Administration announced an effort to beef up MA plan audits to recover more overpayments, building on efforts under the Biden Administration. CMS Director Oz has also discussed the importance of addressing upcoding.  With a projected cost of $13 trillion over the decade, lawmakers should be keen to adopt policies with broad support among experts, which will reduce waste and excessive payments in Medicare. While these savings would ideally be used to reduce the deficit, they could also lessen the impact of OBBBA on the debt.

Read the analysis.

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No Kings rally, June 14th

by Rod Williams, June 8, 2025- On Saturday, June 14th from 10:00 AM–12:00 PM, there will be an anti-Trump gathering at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park here in Nashville to make a powerful statement to Donald Trump: There are NO Kings in America! 

I plan on attending.

NO KINGS is a peaceful protest against authoritarianism, government overreach, and the erosion of our rights. This rally is organized by a group called Indivisible and is in response to Trump's planned military-style birthday parade. 

Time: Saturday, June 14, 10am – 12pm CDT

Location: Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park,600 James Robertson Parkway Nashville, TN 37243, Amphitheater area, Nashville, TN 37243

There are also rallies across the nation including one in Murfreesboro and Gallatin here in middle Tennessee and all major Tennessee cities. For other locations follow this link. 

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God Bless this Honorable Court!

by Rod Williams, June 8, 2025- In case you missed it amidst the Trump-Elon food fight and other news, the Supreme Court issued three significant unanimous ruling last week. Actually 9-0 are the most common type of Supreme Court rulings but because 5-4 rulings attract the most attention it is easy to think divided court ruling are more common than they are. 

One ruling was significant because it is a smackdown of DEI wokeness. That the ruling was 9-0 makes it hard for the woke folk to claim those mean old Trump appointed White racist and misogynist justices on the Court or perpetuating bigotry. This excerpt from a news report explains the case:

The case originated from a heterosexual woman, Marlean Ames, who sued the Ohio Department of Youth Services, which runs the state's juvenile correctional system, after she was passed over for a promotion and subsequently significantly demoted in favor of two gay candidates with less education and experience than herself. Two lower courts ruled against her, arguing that she had failed to clear a higher bar to prove discrimination set for plaintiffs from majority groups. Both courts found that she had not provided "background circumstances" showing that "the agency was the rare employer who discriminates against members of a majority group," according to the Supreme Court Opinion. 

While the Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of Ames' discrimination claim, they did rule that the lower courts' "background circumstances" standard was unconstitutional and inconsistent with federal civil rights law, which protects all individuals equally, regardless of whether they belong to majority or minority groups. (link)

Since Trump has returned to office, he has been on a campaign to purge DEI policies from the Federal government. While I disagree with much that Trump does and especially the way he goes about it, I support the effort to rollback DEI and other aspects of wokeness. Unfortunately, most of the Trump attacks on DEI are simply departmental policies or executive orders. An executive order can simply be overturned by the next administration, but a Supreme Court ruling has more lasting impact and a 9-0 Supreme Court order means that the advocates of reverse discrimination might as well give up. The next president cannot simply go back to things the way they were. This ruling is expected to trigger a slew of "reverse discrimination" lawsuits which will roll back DEI across the country. This will have more lasting impact than all of that the Trump administration has done to fight DEI.

Another 9-0 decision was a blow for religious liberty.  The Court ruled that Catholic Charities is entitled to tax relief it was denied because its operations were not primarily religious. This decision could expand eligibility for religious tax exemptions.

Another 9-0 decision was a victory for gun rights. The Court threw out a lawsuit brought on by the Mexican government against Smith & Wesson. Mexico argued that the gun manufacturer was worsening violence in the country. The justices upheld a law that shields gun companies from legal liability.

Not only are these rulings gratifying for the policy positions they advanced but because the liberal justices ignored policy implications and ruled on the law. Maybe, we really are all originalist now.  

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