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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   10726 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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And another culture (and shooting) war event happening right now, event of more importance than the pathetic one in Montreal.

After a year (lightning speed for justice) events that happened during protest at ICE detention center in July 4, 2025 were resolved.

In rather unexpected way, by maximum possible prison sentences.

Benjamin Song, who fired the gun at the police officer, was sentenced to 100 years in prison. Song was convicted of attempted murder of an officer of the United States, as well as firearm and explosives charges. He was also convicted of riot, providing material support to terrorists. He faced anywhere from 20 years to life in prison.

Zachary Evetts, Autumn Hill, Savanna Batten, Elizabeth Soto and Meagan Morris were sentenced to 50 years in prison. Maricela Rueda, another demonstrator, was sentenced to 70 years in prison. All six were convicted of riot, providing material support to terrorist, and explosive charges. Rueda was also convicted of corruptly concealing a document or record.

Ineffectiveness of your resistance is no longer an mitigating circumstance, and using Signal is highly aggravating one.

The judge openly said that the sentences are meant to "send a message".

As expected, Xitter celebrates while Bluesky mourns. We will see if this is one time occurance, or Trump's promise to crack down on Antifa was meant seriously.

The court documents are split between three different pages due to glitchiness in RECAP: 1 2 3

There's no sentencing transcript yet, of course.

Reference is made to a pre-sentence report (laying out the prosecutor's rationale for requesting long prison sentences), but I can't find it.

Thank you for the links. I've gone for the first link link, document no 1 (main) and clicked Text rather than PDF.

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71664415/1/united-states-v-arnold/

Search quickly finds me

19, Atthe same time, around 10:59 p.m., an Alvarado Police Department (“APD”) officer arrived in the parking lot at the Prairieland Detention Center in response to the 911 call by the Correctional Officers in order to assist the Correctional Officers in their official duties. Immediately after the APD officer got out of his vehicle, an assailant in the woods opened fire, shooting the APD officer in the neck area. The assailant in the green mask, standing near the woods on Sunflower Lane, then also opened fire at the unarmed DHS correctional officers, In total, the assailants shot approximately 20 to 30 rounds at the Correctional Officers. Police later recovered spent 5.56 caliber casings at the locations of both of the shooters. That caliber is typically used with AR-15-style rifles.
This is so much worse than what I was expecting from the discussion that I'm having to re-calibrate my opinion of following online discussion

I had no idea there were two shooters. I knew that only one person ever got convicted for the actual shooting, I guess they were never able to identify the second shooter.

I know that "imagine if the roles were reversed" is very tired at this point but I can't imagine a group of right wing militants bringing body armor and rifles to a federal government facility and opening fire on federal agents and having a sitting member of congress make a statement about how awful it was that they got sent to prison over it. Truly incredible to me.

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