The exterior of the Eldon B. Mahon U.S. Courthouse in Fort Worth, Texas, seen during the Prairieland protest trial on March 9, 2026. Photo: Matt Sledge/The Intercept Federal agents raiding the home of two alleged antifa “operatives” seized a telling piece of evidence, a defense attorney said during closing arguments in a landmark trial Wednesday.
A printing press.
That printing press was never presented to jurors. Still, the government has kept it locked away because it hated the pamphlets and zines it published, lawyer Blake Burns said.
Burns represents Elizabeth Soto, one of nine defendants whose fates were in the hands of jurors as deliberations began Thursday. All are accused of roles during or after a late-night noise demonstration outside Prairieland Detention Center, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility near Dallas that ended with a local police officer wounded by gunfire.
The case has become a bellwether for the Trump administration’s crackdown on dissent from the left. The government charged people involved with the anti-ICE protest with a slew of charges, including attempted murder and terrorism counts that defense attorneys said are being used to criminalize protest.
This is why I say the best protest outfit is a clown costume. One: big baggy clothes that you can hide body armor and other utilities underneath. Two: face paint that hides you from facial recognition. And three: the cops are gonna look like idiots beating a clown.
And if you want a fourth reason, your friends can paint all your faces the same so you’re harder to identify in the crowd.
The last part is the main point of wearing all black.
Not a clown with body armor and other utilities. You just end up making Juggalos a terrorist organization.
Didn’t the courts already determine that like a decade ago? Not saying I agree with it, but I seem to remember this already being a thing.
The armor and utilities go under the suit. By the time the truth comes out the cops already look stupider.
By the time truth comes out once, you’ve just condemned clowndom.
Edit: Unless you are considering making it an official military uniform of a breakaway political faction, in which case you’ve just rewritten the meaning of “send in the clowns”.
Yes, I am in fact suggesting that.
In that case I am…
down to clown
🤡
Clown
carAPC, deployEveryone who joins our military is already a clown, so why not make it official
It’s all upside then!
Whoop whoop!
They don’t care that they look cruel, cruelty is the point. They gassed an inflatable frog, choked out high schoolers, dog-piled Captain America, shot clergy, and show zero restraint around children and the elderly. Even before Trump they have savaged POC, women, LGBTQ, and teenagers with mohawks. Shame requires both a sense of right and wrong as well as some sort of consequence to make it work. Cops have been given carte blanche to be violent, and even if they do it for pleasure rather than the state will have their actions publicly defended by the state, and their moral compass is “might is right”.
No matter how one dresses or what actions they engage in during a protest, the new definition of terrorism is defying and disagreeing with the regime. Had the defendants all dressed like clowns the prosecution would have made the case that dressing like a clown is terrorism.
No they can’t!
That would be plagiarism!
One clown, one egg!