Good morning, it's Saturday, August 15. Court filings reveal DHS ran undercover surveillance on unions, churches, and climate groups in Minnesota — without evidence of criminal activity.

Also in today's issue: Trump dismisses USS Lincoln families, Sacred site bulldozed for border wall, Hunger strike at ICE detention centers, Historic flooding displaces thousands.

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You've seen the headline about federal agents spying on Minnesota activists — but the court filings tell a story far more organized, and far more troubling, than any headline has captured.

Here's why this should land at your kitchen table. If you've ever gone to a union meeting, attended a church gathering about local issues, or shown up at a protest, the Department of Homeland Security — the federal agency that handles border security and immigration — now claims the authority to send undercover agents to sit in the room with you. No warrant. No evidence you've broken a law. That's what happened in Minneapolis this winter. And nothing in these filings limits it to one city.

The court documents, first reported by the Associated Press, reveal two DHS surveillance programs. Operation Puppet Master launched on January 28. Project Whipple Shield followed two weeks later. Their stated target: people the government called "violent opportunists and agitators." But the methods reached far beyond anyone fitting that label.

An undercover officer sat in on a January 31 meeting at a Minneapolis library where members of the Sunrise Movement, a climate activism group, discussed sit-ins and de-escalation. The agent's own report noted the group focused on "peaceful" protests. DHS sent the agent anyway. A separate DHS slide titled "The Conspiracy" mapped 18 organizations as targets — from a bicycle repair collective to the AFL-CIO, the country's largest labor union. The government subpoenaed years of financial records from major unions through FedWire, the Federal Reserve's own money transfer system — and asked that the subpoenas never be disclosed.

Now look — here's the context that makes this worse. DHS had deployed roughly 3,000 federal officers to the Minneapolis–St. Paul area for what it called its "largest immigration enforcement operation ever." That operation led to thousands of arrests — and the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens. Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, was shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent on January 24. His death sparked massive protests. And the government's response wasn't to investigate its own use of force. It was to investigate the people protesting it.

And we'll come back to the legal framework, because it matters. These operations were authorized under Trump's September 2025 domestic terrorism memo, which expanded DHS authority to target groups the administration considers threats. The legal tools once reserved for foreign terror networks are now pointed at Americans who attend library meetings and union halls.

Minnesota U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen has described the 15 defendants as "antifa" — a loose label for left-wing activists with no legal definition. Defense attorney Kevin Riach, representing one of the accused, called the operations "broad and irrational" and driven by politics, not evidence. The charges include throwing ice and setting up blockades — protest activity traditionally handled by local police, not federal counter-terrorism programs. Riach's defense motion is asking the court to force the government to release more surveillance material. If the judge agrees, we may learn whether DHS used this playbook beyond Minnesota.

Here's the honest truth. The right to organize, to protest, and to attend a meeting without the government recording your name — that's not a partisan question. It's the foundation that makes the rest of the system work. And this week, court filings showed that foundation being treated as a threat.

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Trump told reporters on Friday that families of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln are "not" concerned about conditions on the ship — and called the nearly nine-month deployment "not nearly long enough." The Lincoln has been at sea for more than 250 days since leaving San Diego last November, with its last port call in Guam in December — a modern record, according to reporting from NBC News. Families have reported problems with food, water, and worsening mental health aboard the carrier, which holds roughly 5,000 sailors and Marines. Pentagon officials have privately raised concerns about morale among the more than 50,000 troops deployed for the Iran war. The USS George Washington left Vietnam last week to replace the Lincoln but remains days from the Middle East. When the commander-in-chief dismisses the hardship of thousands of service members in three words, military families hear it clearly.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled Friday that the government's border security interests "outweigh" the Tohono O'odham Nation's harms from 62 miles of wall across its 2.8-million-acre Arizona reservation — built without tribal consent. Contractors have already destroyed Las Playas Intaglio, a 1,000-year-old sacred site the tribe had specifically asked be protected, according to reporting from Archaeology Southwest. The tribe posted "No Trespassing" signs and placed tribal police on alert to escort construction crews off its land. Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, called it "a novel case with novel issues" in his 18-page ruling, as reported by Courthouse News Service. When a federal court says border security "outweighs" a tribe's right to protect thousand-year-old sacred ground on its own reservation, the word sovereignty starts to feel hollow.

More than 140 immigrants entered the third day of a hunger strike on Friday at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, demanding basic medical care; detainees with broken and dislocated bones have reportedly gone untreated. Separately, ICE confirmed the death of José Chajón Raxón, a Guatemalan man detained at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey — the third death connected to that facility since December, as reported by Democracy Now. ICE failed to disclose his death under a new policy that no longer requires the agency to report deaths that occur within 30 days of a detainee's release — a reporting change that makes it harder to track how many people are actually dying. Both facilities are run by the for-profit GEO Group. More than 50 immigrants have died in ICE custody since Trump took office — a pace that, according to CNN, would make 2026 the deadliest year for immigration detention in at least two decades.

Thousands of residents across eastern Indiana and southwestern Ohio have been displaced by historic flooding, with mandatory evacuations ongoing as of Friday. The White River in Anderson, Indiana, crested at nearly 25 feet — the highest in more than 100 years — after days of severe storms that began with a rare derecho, a long-lasting straight-line windstorm, according to CBS News. Indiana Governor Mike Braun declared a statewide disaster emergency, the state's fourth of 2026. Three storm-related deaths have been confirmed, and more than 36 million people across the Midwest remained under flood alerts with additional storms expected through Saturday. When a state hits its fourth disaster declaration before September, the question shifts from whether this is normal to what normal even means anymore.

Organizations — from a bicycle repair collective to the AFL-CIO — mapped on a single DHS slide titled "The Conspiracy" as federal surveillance targets in Minnesota. When the government labels a bike shop and a workers' union as parts of the same conspiracy, the word has lost its meaning. Read the court filings reported by CNN for the full scope.

P.S. Should federal agents surveil union meetings without evidence? Hit Reply — one word is enough.