Riverhead Democrats

05/14/2026

Reflect on this.
Back in April, after deciding to paint the Reflecting Pool, the president said he would be using a contractor he knows from his years in real estate, stating “Over the years as a developer, I’ve probably built more than 100 swimming pools,” and adding, “I have some really good pool builders.”

He then gave a no-bid $6.9 million contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, LLC, claiming that they were his personal golf motel pool painters.

But with problems and delays impossible to ignore, he has abruptly changed his story, not only saying he didn’t’t know the company, but posting “I didn’t give out the contract, ‘Interior’ did, to a contractor I did not know, and have never used before.”

05/14/2026

OLA of Eastern Long Island, wondering if this young firebrand is a distant relative of Minerva Perez? Or perhaps, just a kindred spirit?

For months, one of the leading voices in the fight to block a massive ICE warehouse detention center from opening in Surprise, Arizona has been Cali Overs -- a 17-year-old who walks past the planned facility every day on her way to school. The Department of Homeland Security quietly purchased the $70 million warehouse in January without notifying the city, the state, or school leaders whose building sits just half a mile away -- with plans to convert it into a detention facility holding up to 1,500 people. No community meeting. No environmental review. No warning.

When Cali found out what was happening in her own neighborhood, she didn't wait for someone else to do something about it. A senior at Dysart High School in El Mirage and vice president of the student body, she started organizing.

Her school's student body is 60% Hispanic, and one of her first and most urgent concerns was what the facility would mean for her classmates once it was staffed with ICE agents -- pointing to a recent Supreme Court decision allowing federal agents to use race and ethnicity as a basis for stopping someone.

"Students are scared they will be stopped on their way to school just because they are Hispanic," Cali wrote. "These are not hypothetical fears. Many students have told me they are too scared to go past this area and are switching to online classes. These are American citizens changing the course of their education because they no longer feel safe going to school anymore."

The physical reality for students is stark. Due to budget cuts, every student living within two miles of school is not provided with bus transportation -- meaning hundreds of children walk, drive, or bike past the warehouse every single day just to get to class.

"By placing an ICE detention center on the same route that hundreds of children use to get to school," Cali observed, "DHS is creating unnecessary danger. This is reckless, irresponsible, and completely avoidable." Someone already tried to set the building on fire, she noted -- and it's not even open yet.

She drafted a proposal calling for a mandatory three-mile buffer between any detention facility and a school, and began taking it directly to elected officials. She wrote letters, spoke at town halls, started an online petition, and took her case all the way to the Arizona Attorney General's office. She spoke at a press conference alongside Attorney General Kris Mayes in April when Mayes announced a lawsuit against DHS and ICE.

When the Dysart School Board and Surprise City Council repeatedly failed to respond to her emails, she showed up at the school board meeting and posted every unanswered email publicly. "Every single one of these leaders sat there watching me spend the last few months of my senior year doing their job," she wrote, "because they refuse to do it."

No one in the community "fought harder, or more visibly" than Cali Overs, observed Rook Wi******er, who has been covering the fight for the investigative newsletter Closer to the Edge.

The lawsuit, filed April 24th, argues that DHS failed to conduct required environmental reviews and that the facility's location -- directly across the street from a hazardous chemical storage site -- makes it unsuitable for housing human beings. A stop work order had been issued to GardaWorld just days before the suit was filed -- the private security firm awarded a $313 million contract to retrofit the warehouse. The project is now officially "paused." As Cali put it when the news broke: "Although it's a big win, the stop is not permanent."

Since new DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin took over, there are signs of growing recognition inside the department that the warehouse conversion program, conceived under his predecessor Kristi Noem, was poorly thought through. There is now talk of selling some of the already-purchased properties back.

The price tag alone tells part of the story -- warehouses purchased for tens of millions of dollars, contracts worth hundreds of millions more, an entire $38 billion architecture of industrial-scale detention that is now, as Wi******er described it, "a plan under review." Cali has responded by requesting a virtual meeting directly with Secretary Mullin to push for the three-mile buffer as official DHS policy.

None of this means the fight is over. The administration has not abandoned its mass detention agenda -- it may be recalibrating it, shifting toward purchasing existing, already-operational detention facilities that require no retrofitting and generate less community resistance. Advocates who follow detention policy closely warn that the history of these pauses is not encouraging -- the federal government has a pattern of stepping back when attention is high and quietly resuming when it drifts.

Cali Overs will graduate this spring -- and she's already shown what one person, paying attention and refusing to stay quiet, can do.

To support Cali's fight and help push her proposal for a three-mile buffer zone between ICE detention facilities and K-12 schools into federal law, you can sign her petition at https://www.3milebuffer.com/

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For books for children and teens about the importance of standing up for truth, decency, and justice, even in dark times, visit our blog post, "Dissent Is Patriotic: 50 Books About Women Who Fought for Change," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=14364

For books for tweens and teens about girls living under real-life authoritarian regimes throughout history that will help them appreciate how precious democracy truly is, visit our blog post "The Fragility of Freedom: Mighty Girl Books About Life Under Authoritarianism" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=32426

For books for children, teens, and adults about Mighty Girl immigrants of the past and present, visit our blog post, "A New Land, A New Life: 25 Mighty Girl Books About the Immigrant Experience" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=12855

To stay connected with A Mighty Girl, you can sign-up for A Mighty Girl's free email newsletter at https://www.amightygirl.com/forms/newsletter

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To read Cali's op-ed in the Phoenix New Times, visit https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/opinion/surprise-arizona-ice-detention-center-school-op-ed-40656297

To read more about Cali in a profile on AZ Central, visit https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/surprise/2026/05/03/surprise-ice-facility-cali-overs/89073544007

To read the Arizona Agenda's profile of Cali, "Disrespected, But Not Discouraged," visit https://www.arizonaagenda.com/p/disrespected-but-not-discouraged

To read the Arizona Attorney General's lawsuit announcement against DHS and ICE, visit https://www.azag.gov/press-release/attorney-general-mayes-sues-block-proposed-ice-detention-facility-surprise

To read Axios's reporting on DHS pausing the warehouse detention program nationally, visit https://www.axios.com/2026/05/07/ice-immigrant-detention-private-contractors

To follow the community organizing effort in Surprise, visit https://www.noiceinsurprise.com

05/14/2026

Isn’t it just delightful to have a President who puts political donors over public health? Fruit flavored vapes coming for your kids! Start ‘em young!! Build back big to***co! And the added bonus down the road is lots of money to be made by the medical institutions. It’s a win/win for them. A heinous loss for us.

In a dispute over vapes, the president sided with to***co companies that filled his groups’ coffers over his own F.D.A. commissioner, who resigned in protest.

05/14/2026

Easthampton Township votes to support OLA of Eastern Long Island legislation.

Tal y como lo había anunciado en la audiencia pública celebrada el 7 de mayo pasado, la supervisora de East Hampton, Kathee Burke-González, presentó este martes la resolución para adoptar la ley de…

05/13/2026

Dear Congressman Nick LaLota Nick LaLota,
In case you are missing who and what you are actually serving, instead of serving your constituents AND the Constitution, maybe you can take a couple minutes to digest this.

05/12/2026

While Congressman Nick LaLota turns his back on Veterans to better serve his boss, Veterans can count on 100% support from Chris Gallant for Congress.

05/11/2026

So, this is where we are now in our country.

About 1 in 4 say the correspondents’ dinner shooting was staged, the poll found, including roughly a third of Democrats, as conspiracy theories spread widely online.

05/11/2026

Who will finally rid us of the Laziest Congressman in (Current) History? Before the run against LaLota, there will be a primary and before the primary, your chance to hear from both Lukas Ventouras for Congress and Chris Gallant for Congress. Please take the time to hear what these two strong contenders will bring to the the race. And bring along your friends and neighbors.

05/11/2026

Congrats, Jerry Dicecco. Well deserved!

Plan a visit to Long Island restaurants where fresh seafood, varied menus, and welcoming settings make them stand out across New York this year.

05/11/2026

05/11/2026

Yesterday… in Hungary. A beautiful view of their happy ending, courtesy of Heather Cox Richardson.
“In Hungary, a different kind of celebration was underway as Péter Magyar took the oath of office as prime minister after winning a landslide victory over Putin ally Viktor Orbán.

In his 16 years of rule, Orbán rejected the liberal democracy his country used to enjoy, saying that its emphasis on multiculturalism weakened the national culture while its insistence on human equality undermined traditional society by recognizing that women and LGBTQ people have the same rights as straight white men. The age of liberal democracy was over, he said, and a new age had begun.

In place of equality, Orbán advocated what he called “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy.” “Christian democracy is, by definition, not liberal,” he said in July 2018; “it is, if you like, illiberal. And we can specifically say this in connection with a few important issues—say, three great issues. Liberal democracy is in favor of multiculturalism, while Christian democracy gives priority to Christian culture; this is an illiberal concept. Liberal democracy is pro-immigration, while Christian democracy is anti-immigration; this is again a genuinely illiberal concept. And liberal democracy sides with adaptable family models, while Christian democracy rests on the foundations of the Christian family model; once more, this is an illiberal concept.”

Orbán focused on LBGTQ rights as a danger to “Western civilization.” Arguing the need to protect children, his party has made it impossible for transgender people to change their gender identification on legal documents and made it illegal to share with minors any content that can be interpreted as promoting an LBGTQ lifestyle. After Orbán put allies in charge of Hungarian universities, his government banned public funding for gender studies courses. According to his chief of staff: “The Hungarian government is of the clear view that people are born either men or women.”

The American right wing championed Orbán, who called for the establishment of a global right wing to continue to work together to destroy liberal democracy and establish Christian democracy. Before Hungary’s April election, Trump not only repeatedly endorsed Orbán but also promised “to use the full Economic Might of the United States to strengthen Hungary’s Economy, as we have done for our Great Allies in the past, if Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the Hungarian people ever need it.” Vice President J.D. Vance actually traveled to Hungary to campaign for Orbán.

But the Hungarian people overwhelmingly rejected Orbán and his party, giving Magyar’s party more than a two-thirds majority in parliament. This will give it the power to overturn not only the laws Orbán and his party passed, but also the changes Orbán made to entrench himself and his party in power permanently. Magyar promised to root out the corruption that has made Orbán and his cronies rich, to restore the rule of law and freedom of speech, and to repair Hungary’s ties with the European Union, which Orbán had frayed almost to the breaking point with his loyalty to Vladimir Putin.

In his inauguration speech, Magyar vowed to “serve my country, not rule over it.” He noted that the corrupt members of the outgoing government “stole from the pockets of Hungarians” and left behind a huge budget deficit and a broken healthcare system. He vowed accountability for those who plundered the country and broke its laws, and promised to rebuild the nation’s shattered checks and balances. He urged Hungarians always to criticize their leaders and hold them accountable.

“We inherited a country where politics deliberately pitted Hungarians against each other,” he said, and he explained how Orbán mobilized supporters with hatred and fear, poisoning “the collective psyche of an entire nation.” “The Hungarian state must never again do this to its own citizens,” he said. He vowed to heal the country: “We will once again learn to think of ourselves as one nation,” he promised.”

Then Magyar and members of his party walked out to the crowd outside the parliament on Lajos Kossuth Lajos Square. Magyar urged them to see themselves as one community. He assured them that the story of the day had not been written by politicians in backrooms, but by them. “[I]t was all of you. You wrote it, through your work, your hope, your concern, and your determination. This is now your transition to democracy, this is your homeland, your National Assembly, and we thank you!”

Photo: Denes Erdos -AP