Today protesters with @XRebelDC & @ShutDown_DC targeted several @WellsFargo bank branches in DC to demand they stop funding Line 3 Pipeline.
When group arrived at the branch near Freedom Plaza, officers toppled over their makeshift oil drums as they got behind the police line.
As the activists began smearing fake oil onto the windows of the Wells Fargo branch, a shirtless man confronted the group, getting up in their faces and threatening to fight for the bank's private property.
Officers removed the man when he grabbed someone's sign.
"STOP LINE 3" the @XRebelDC activists left behind written into the fake oil smear on the Wells Fargo branch.
I've filmed them do this before; the substance is food dye, corn starch, and water. It washes away easily.
At the branch closer to Dupont Circle, a manager actually came outside to listen to the crowd.
An activist asked him to commit to Wells Fargo defunding Line 3, which he wouldn't, but he did listen and take a banner offered to him.
At the Wells Fargo branch near Farragut Square in DC, officers surrounded the entrance before activists arrived.
The group suggested that MPD is "on the bank side, they're on global capitalism's side, they're on the side of the climate crisis."
Finally around noon (the activism began at 8:30am) the activists arrived at Wells Fargo's DC headquarters.
Police had the entrances surrounded again; activists put up "Climate emergency" branded crime-scene tape between them and the cops as they rallied.
"Stop Line 3" the @XRebelDC / @ShutDown_DC activists painted in fake oil on the street outside the @WellsFargo HQ before dumping the whole bucket on the street.
"We will be back until Wells Fargo makes this commitment," an organizer promised as the event concluded.
VIDEO THREAD: Activists dressed as contractors took down a banner outside the National Archives in Washington DC this morning and replaced it with their own demanding Biden publish the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) into the Constitution before leaving office.
The activists brought two additional banners which they had also planned to put up in the place of existing ones, but police arrived and confiscated them before the group could get those two up.
2) Kamala Lopez, founder and president of Equal Means Equal, explained that the ERA has already been ratified by 38 states, so she insists that Biden can be a "hero" by publishing it into the Constitution to be enforced.
Without doing this, she calls Biden a "zero."
3) Responding officers told the activists to sit down on the sidewalk and disputed whether their truck had been legally parked.
Additional activists arrived dressed as women from the science-fiction Dune series to advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment.
VIDEO THREAD: Craig Sicknick, brother of Brian Sicknick who died of a stroke the day after fighting on January 6, 2021, spoke at a rally demanding Congress refuse to certify Trump's electoral victory on January 6, 2025.
"I came here today to urge Congress to do its job and block Mr Trump from taking office just a few short weeks from now," Sicknick said.
"They can do this by upholding their oath of office and acting under Article III of the 13th Amendment which clearly states that no person who was involved in trying to overthrow our government can hold any office, state or federal."
2) @JessicaDenson07, a 2017 campaign staffer for Trump who ultimately sued him, is an organizer of this weekend's rallies demanding Congress block him from retaking the White House.
"Donald Trump is an adjudicated insurrectionist disqualified and the only mechanism to remove that disability is by a 2/3 vote of both houses. That's it. We don't need new legislation," she said.
"It only takes 1/5 of both houses of congress... to raise an objection and a simple majority to sustain it!"
She says there was "mixed" reception as she and others lobbies for this idea to members of Congress.
3) "Congresspeople, keep us safe, Hallelujah!" sang protesters demanding Congress block Trump from the White House on January 6.
"Do your duty to the states, Hallelujah!"
"Insurrectionists can't be president!" they chanted. "Call your representatives!"
Now: Anti-Trump protesters gather at the Lincoln Memorial to demand Congress block Trump’s January 6, 2025 certification for being an “Insurrectionist” over his actions on January 6, 2021.
“Insurrectionists can’t be president, call your representatives!” chant protesters on the National Mall.
BIG THREAD: Today, I attended the preliminary/detention hearing for Brad Spafford, charged with possessing a short barrel rifle.
Federal prosecutors say more charges are coming and that his arrest yielded the "largest seizure of finished explosive devices in FBI history."
2) I first reported the case December 19 following Spafford's arrest by the feds, who used a Confidential Human Source (CHS) for two years to get the warrant to arrest Spafford for the alleged Short Barrel Rifle.
3) Rachelann Cardwell, a Suffolk Detective assigned as an officer on the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, took the stand today.
She testified that the investigation into Spafford began in January 2023 when the CHS reported Spafford disfiguring his hand with a homemade explosive.
THREAD: On Tuesday, Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) officers with the Norfolk FBI and assistance from the ATF arrested Virginia man Brad Spafford for possessing an unregistered short barrel rifle (SBR).
The arrest was the result of a multi-year Confidential Human Source (CHS).
2) A Confidential Human Source (CHS, commonly known as "informant" or colloquially as "snitch") reported in January 2023 that Spafford lost fingers on Independence Day 2021 "while working with a homemade explosive device."
He says Spafford and friends were making ammunition for "something that Spafford would not be able to do alone."
The informant reportedly saw Spafford's hands "before and after the event" which is confusingly worded; if he saw them in person, then the informant has been around the defendant for more than three years.
If he saw them pre- disfigurement some other way, like a photo, then he still has been around him for at least nearly two years.
3) In May 2023, the informant and Spafford went to a gun range together, each with "their own weapons."
The informant brought his own Short Barrel Rifle, but it was registered.
The now-defendant allegedly brought what the informant believed was also an SBR.
Just now: Attendees of Vice President Kamala Harris’s rally at the Ellipse resort to climbing over the “scale proof” fences surrounding the event after exit gates were closed, apparently due to pro-Palestine protesters on the other side.
2) "Push it down!"
During some of the confusion as police wouldn't allow people to leave the Harris Ellipse speech, some pushed over a small plastic fence that divided them from other people also trying to exit.
It didn't make a difference.
3) "You say it's open but where's it open?" crowds frustrated attempted to confront police as they had difficulty leaving the Harris rally.
"No! No! No!" a cop said as a man jumped, leaving a woman with him behind, who would have had to find a not-closed gate.
Meanwhile, police attempted to confine the pro-Palestine protests outside.