Indy Digest: June 16, 2025
When I woke up on Saturday morning and looked at my phone, I saw the news about the murder of Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and the attempted murder of state Sen John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.
I felt nauseated. I was already worried about the news the day would bring—with all of the No More Kings rallies/protests, and the military parade in Washington, D.C.—and the day was off to a terrifying start. I got even more concerned when I saw that Palm Springs Police had arrested a La Quinta man for making an online threat to shoot protesters at the No Kings rally in Palm Springs that evening.
By the time the day was over, we learned about scary incidents in Riverside, Salt Lake City, San Francisco and a few other places—but for the most part, Saturday’s protests were peaceful.
And, both individually and collectively, they were huge.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a part of the coalition that put on the demonstrations, said in a late Saturday, June 14 statement that more than five million people participated in over 2,100 rallies and protests.
Political organizing group Move On, who was a partner in the “No Kings” rallies, echoed the 5 million person estimate in a fundraising email.
Jeremy Pressman, the co-director of the Crowd Counting Consortium—a Harvard University and University of Connecticut project that estimates political crowds—told USA TODAY June 15 that it will take “some time” to complete an estimate on the “No Kings” rallies.
Data journalist G Elliott Morris estimated there were between 4 million and 6 million protesters at No Kings rallies across the country (believable), while the Alt National Park Service Facebook account estimated that there were more than 13 million protesters (not believable). I’ll be curious to see what the Crowd Counting Consortium comes up with eventually.
In any case, the protests were pretty massive—and, I hate to say it, this has to be just the start. The Associated Press reports:
President Donald Trump on Sunday directed federal immigration officials to prioritize deportations from Democratic-run cities, a move that comes after large protests erupted in Los Angeles and other major cities against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
Trump in a social media posting called on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials “to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”
He added that to reach the goal officials ”must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside.”
To this administration, facts don’t matter. Dissent is punished. We have a long road ahead.
—Jimmy Boegle
From the Independent
Hiking With T: Beautiful Cooler-Weather Hikes Are Just Steps Away From Downtown Idyllwild
By Theresa Sama
June 16th, 2025
A leisurely walk along Strawberry Creek will bring the calming sounds of the creek as water gently flows through and over the rocks, creating small waterfalls and stream pools along the way. You may even catch a glimpse of fish darting around.
Cosmic Creation: ‘The Life of Chuck’ Is a Fascinating, Universe-Encompassing Film That’s Not Getting the Audience It Deserves
By Bob Grimm
June 16th, 2025
The Life of Chuck is a profound, meaty, deep movie that has surely gotten lost in the summer-blockbuster shuffle.
CV History: Ruth Hardy Created the Ingleside Inn—and Is Credited for Bring Palm Trees to Palm Canyon Drive
By Greg Niemann
June 13th, 2025
In 1935, Ruth Hardy bought the Birge estate and turned it into the Ingleside Inn, a first-class, 20-room hotel. She began by inviting special guests into her home—for a fee, of course.
More News
• Late last week—before the aforementioned threat on Sunday against Democratic cities—President Trump seemed to say he would back down on ICE raids targeting agriculture and hotels. NBC News says: “The surprise move came after executives in both industries complained to Trump about losing reliable, longtime immigrant workers in immigration raids and struggling to replace them. ‘Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace,’ Trump wrote. ‘In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs,’ he added. ‘This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!’ The New York Times reported the next day that a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement official had ordered a pause in immigration raids at agricultural businesses, meat packing plants, restaurants and hotels.” The only thing consistent is change …
• The New York Times talked to Terry Moran, the veteran political journalist fired by ABC News after he harshly criticized Stephen Miller and President Trump on social media. He said he has no regrets: “Terry Moran wasted no time ending the speculation. ‘It wasn’t a drunk tweet,’ he said, flashing a lopsided grin on Sunday as he chatted on Zoom. Mr. Moran, a longtime ABC News correspondent, was ousted from his network last week over a post on X that castigated the Trump administration in searing, personal terms. … Recounting how he came to write his fateful post, Mr. Moran, 65, said it was ‘a normal family night’ that began with a meditative walk with his dog in the woods: ‘I was thinking about our country, and what’s happening, and just turning it over in my mind.’ … And then: ‘I wrote it, and I said, “That’s true.”’ ‘That’ was a provocative post, published after midnight on June 8, tearing into Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, as ‘richly endowed with the capacity for hatred.’ Mr. Moran wrote that Mr. Miller ‘eats his hate’ as ‘spiritual nourishment’ and assigned the term ‘world-class hater’ to both Mr. Miller and President Trump, whom the correspondent had interviewed in the Oval Office weeks earlier.”
• Mike Lindell, the My Pillow proprietor-turned-election denier, has been found guilty of defaming a former Dominion Voting Systems employee. The Associated Press says: “A federal jury in Colorado on Monday found that one of the nation’s most prominent election conspiracy theorists, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, defamed a former employee for a leading voting equipment company after the 2020 presidential election. The employee, Eric Coomer, was awarded $2.3 million in damages. He had sued after Lindell called him a traitor and accusations about him stealing the election were streamed on Lindell’s online media platform. Coomer was the security and product strategy director at Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, whose voting machines became the target of elaborate conspiracy theories among allies of President Donald Trump, who continues to falsely claim that his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 was due to widespread fraud. Dominion won a $787 million settlement in a defamation lawsuit it filed against Fox News over its airing of false claims against the company and has another lawsuit against the conservative network Newsmax.”
• Our partners at Calmatters report that the new preliminary state budgets have gotten rid of a lot of funding for programs combatting homelessness: “Both Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature have proposed gutting the state’s main source of homelessness funding in the 2025-26 budget, sending a wave of panic through the cities, counties and service providers that have been relying on that money for years. Now, those critics warn that thousands of Californians could end up back on the streets, undoing the tenuous progress the state has made in addressing the problem. ‘It’s extremely frustrating,’ said San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, whose city had been receiving about $30 million a year from that pot of homelessness funding—enough to pay for about 1,000 interim housing placements. … The Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program has doled out funds for cities and counties to spend on everything from temporary shelter to services to permanent housing since its creation six years ago. It started with $650 million in the 2019-20 budget, and has since grown to $1 billion last year. … But with the state facing an expected deficit of $12 billion this year, those funds ended up on the chopping block. The 2025-26 budget proposed by the Legislature June 9 allocates $0.”
• The Los Angeles Times reports that a new COVID-19 variant with a particularly nasty symptom is circulating around the state: “COVID-19 appears to be on the rise in some parts of California as a new, highly contagious subvariant—featuring ‘razor blade throat’ symptoms overseas—is becoming increasingly dominant. … Part of the Omicron family, Nimbus is now one of the most dominant coronavirus subvariants nationally. For the two-week period that ended June 7, Nimbus comprised an estimated 37% of the nation’s coronavirus samples, now roughly even with the subvariant LP.8.1, probably responsible for 38% of circulating virus. … The Nimbus subvariant has also been increasing since May in California, the state Department of Public Health said in an email to the Los Angeles Times. Projections suggest the Nimbus subvariant comprises 55% of circulating virus in California, up from observations of just 2% in April, the agency said.”
• And finally … today’s recall news involves … Honey Bunches of Oats! Delish reports: “If you want to start your day off on the right foot and you plan on grabbing the nearest box of cereal from your pantry, it’s smart to double-check which one you pick. The FDA recently issued a recall of over 5,000 units of Post Cereals’ Honey Bunches of (Oats) with Almonds that were sold in 3-pound bags. The affected cereal includes foreign metal material and was distributed in both Colorado and California. The recall was recently updated to a Class II recall, meaning that the consumption of the cereal could cause ‘temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences.’ Fortunately, no reports of illness or injury have been reported so far.”
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