An ink-wash illustration of a blindfolded Lady Justice holding wildly unbalanced scales — one pan crushed to the ground under shackled figures, the other floating high with a single pardon scroll.
Equal Justice Under Law (Terms and Conditions Apply)
An anti-ICE protest in Texas turned violent — a police officer was shot — and the sentences ran to fifty, seventy, even a hundred years, one of them reportedly thirty years for moving a box of zines. The men who plotted to overturn an election and helped beat 140 officers at the Capitol? Pardoned. A tale of two justices.
Carved above the entrance to the Supreme Court, in letters tall enough to read from the street, are four words: EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW. Keep them in mind, because this week the United States quietly showed us the fine print.
On June 23, in a federal courtroom in Texas, eight people were sentenced to a combined 450 years in prison for an attack last Fourth of July outside the Prairieland immigration detention center in Alvarado [1][2]. The alleged organizer, Benjamin Song, got 100 years; another defendant got 70; several got 50 years apiece; and near the bottom of the range, one person reportedly got 30 years — for moving a box of antifascist zines [3][4]. The Justice Department issued a triumphant press release branding the group an “antifa cell” and the episode a “terrorist attack” [3].
Now let me be honest with you, because this site doesn’t do the thing where the inconvenient facts get left out in the car. This was not a tidy candlelight vigil. Prosecutors say Song opened fire and shot an Alvarado police officer in the neck; the officer survived, thanks to the paramedics and trauma surgeons who actually do the saving [2]. That is a violent crime. A man who shoots a police officer is going to prison, and should. If the story ended there — one shooter, one long sentence — you would not be reading about it here.
But it doesn’t end there, and the rest is what should make the hair on your neck stand up. Fifty years for people who never fired a shot. Thirty years for hauling a box of pamphlets. “Domestic terrorism” for a protest that turned violent — a phrase the very same Justice Department somehow could not locate on a far worse day.
Because here is the other column of the ledger.
The day the actual seditionists got mercy
On January 20, 2025 — his first afternoon back in office — Donald Trump granted clemency to roughly 1,500 people convicted in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and commuted the sentences of 14 more [5]. Among those set free were the leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, convicted of seditious conspiracy — the rare and grave charge of plotting to oppose by force the authority of the government of the United States [5][6].
Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys chairman, had been handed 22 years — the longest sentence of any January 6 defendant — for orchestrating that plot [7]. Trump gave him a full pardon [6]. Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers founder serving 18 years for the same crime, walked out on a commutation [6]. Roughly 140 police officers were assaulted at the Capitol that day. The men who built the machine that did it were home before Valentine’s.
So set the two columns side by side and say plainly what you see. The man who shot one officer in Texas: 100 years. The men who helped unleash a mob on 140 officers at the seat of American government, convicted of conspiring against the nation itself: pardoned, commuted, free. The anti-ICE protester who moved a box of zines: 30 years. The seditious conspirator who tried to overturn a presidential election: time served, and a phone call from the President.
This is not “law and order.” It is the opposite.
One correction, in the spirit of getting it right: the January 6 ringleaders were not convicted of “treason.” That’s a specific, almost-never-used charge with a constitutional definition all its own. They were convicted of seditious conspiracy — which is the closest thing the federal code has to it: conspiring to overthrow, put down, or oppose by force the government of the United States. By any honest measure it is the single most serious category of political crime a citizen can commit. And it got mercy.
That is the tell. “Law and order” means one rule for everyone, with the punishment scaled to the crime. What we are watching instead is punishment scaled to the politics. Storm the Capitol on the President’s behalf, and the gravest offense on the books earns you a pardon and a hero’s welcome. Rally against an ICE facility in his America, and even the hangers-on draw sentences measured in half-centuries, with “terrorist” stamped on the file by the government’s own press office.
You cannot call that a justice system. A justice system is blind. This one keeps peeking out from under the blindfold to check which jersey you’re wearing before it decides how hard to swing the gavel.
We keep a page for this
Regular readers know we maintain a Fascism Watch around here — fourteen classic markers of the slide, measured against this administration. At least two of them are on open display in the gap between Prairieland and the January 6 pardons. One is the obsession with crime and punishment, in which the law stops being a fence around everyone and becomes a club in one man’s hand — savage toward enemies, weightless for friends. The other is the identification of enemies as a unifying cause, in which “antifa,” the immigrant, and the protester are conjured into a folk-devil worth fifty years, while an actual organized assault on the constitutional order gets rebranded as patriotism and waved on through.
When the same Justice Department can chase a century in prison for an anti-ICE protester and, in the same era, move to erase the convictions of men who plotted against the United States, the machinery of justice has quit being a referee and signed on as a weapon. That is not a both-sides problem. It is a one-direction problem, and the direction never changes: maximum force on the President’s opponents, maximum mercy for the President’s mob.
The fine print
So look again at those four words over the courthouse door. Equal justice under law. Right now they are not a description of the country. They are an accusation against it. Equal justice does not hand the seditionist a pardon and the protester a half-century. It does not let the sentence depend on the politics of the defendant.
None of this asks you to excuse the man who shot a police officer — you shouldn’t, and I don’t. It only asks you to notice that we are now running two justice systems inside one country: a gentle one for the people who attack the state for this President, and a brutal one for the people who protest it. That is not a glitch in the system. It is the system. And a government that jails its opponents while pardoning its enforcers has told you, in the plainest possible language, exactly what it intends to be.
The least we can do is refuse to call it justice.
References
[1] “Prairieland Ice protesters in Texas sentenced.” The Guardian, June 23, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/23/prairieland-ice-protesters-texas-sentenced
[2] “Prairieland shooter gets 100 years, others 30-70 for ICE detention center ‘antifa’ protest.” KERA News, June 23, 2026. https://www.keranews.org/criminal-justice/2026-06-23/prairieland-shooter-gets-100-years-others-30-70-in-ice-detention-center-antifa-protest
[3] “Leader of Antifa Cell Members in North Texas Sentenced to 100 Years in Prison for Terrorist Attack on ICE Facility.” U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, June 23, 2026. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-antifa-cell-members-north-texas-sentenced-100-years-prison-terrorist-attack-ice
[4] “Prairieland Defendant Sentenced to 30 Years in Prison for Moving a Box of Antifascist Zines.” The Intercept, June 23, 2026. https://theintercept.com/2026/06/23/prairieland-texas-ice-protest-prison-sentences/
[5] “Trump pardons some 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters, commutes sentences of others.” NPR, January 20, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/01/20/g-s1-36809/trump-pardons-january-6-riot
[6] “Trump’s Jan. 6 clemency releases former Proud Boys leader, Oath Keepers founder from lengthy sentences.” PBS News, January 2025. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trumps-jan-6-clemency-releases-former-proud-boys-leader-oath-keepers-founder-from-lengthy-sentences
[7] “Ex-Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio is sentenced to 22 years for Jan. 6 riot role.” NPR, September 5, 2023. https://www.npr.org/2023/09/05/1197202616/enrique-tarrio-proud-boys-jan-6-sentence