MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Federal immigration officers shot and killed a man Saturday in Minneapolis, drawing hundreds of protesters in a city already shaken by another fatal shooting weeks earlier.
The details surrounding the shooting weren’t immediately clear, but Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said the person was shot amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. A hospital record obtained by The Associated Press that a 51-year-old man who was shot by immigration officers had died.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the AP in a text messages that the person had a firearm with two magazines and that the situation was “evolving.” DHS also distributed a photo of a handgun they said was on the person who was shot.
The shooting happened amid widespread daily protests in the Twin Cities since the Jan. 7 shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good, who was killed when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fired into her vehicle. Saturday’s shooting unfolded just over a mile away from where Good was shot.
After the shooting, an angry crowd gathered and screamed profanities at federal officers, calling them “cowards” and telling them to go home. One officer responded mockingly as he walked away, telling them: “Boo hoo.” Agents elsewhere shoved a yelling protester into a car. Protesters dragged garbage dumpsters from alleyways to block the streets, and people who gathered chanted, “ICE out now,” referring to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
Man shot dead was pronounced dead at the scene, DHS says
The Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE and Border Patrol, has just said that the man shot dead by federal immigration enforcement earlier this morning was pronounced dead at the scene.
The federal agency said an agent fired “defensive shots”. It is now characterizing protesters as “rioters”, saying there are about 200 people on the scene in south Minneapolis trying to “obstruct and assault law enforcement”….
In a statement sent to the Guardian, assistant secretary of homeland security Tricia McLaughlin said that at 9.05am local time, “as DHS law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis” against a person they said was in the country illegally, who she said was “wanted for violent assault”, “an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun.”
McLaughlin said that “the officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted” and that “more details on the armed struggle are forthcoming.”
“Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots” she said, adding: “Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject but was pronounced dead at the scene.”
She added that the man also had “2 magazines and no ID”.
Minneapolis officials plead for calm, tell federal enforcement to leave
The police chief of Minneapolis, Brian O’Hara, has kicked off a press conference by acknowledging that people are angry about the latest fatal shooting by federal law enforcement of a man in the city.
He called on federal personnel in the city to conduct themselves with discipline and humanity.
Then he said that members of the public gathered to protest at the scene of the shooting in south Minneapolis were taking part in an “unlawful assembly”.
“There is a lot of anger and questions around what has happened,” O’Hara said.
And he called for calm and begged the public not to damage the city.
A couple more updates:
Man shot dead was 37-year-old US citizen, Minneapolis police chief says
Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara has said the city authorities know the identity of the man killed by federal officers this morning, but the name is not being released at this time.
He described the person shot dead as a white man, a resident of the city and a US citizen. O’Hara said the victim was 37 years old. Wire services had previously said the man was 51.
O’Hara said that the federal authorities have not provided any details about today’s incident to the police department and city authorities….
The Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said it was his understanding that multiple federal officers were involved in the incident this morning where a man was shot dead by the government personnel.
O’Hara said that the Minnesota authorities have put National Guard troops on stand by.
The scene where the shooting took place this morning in the south of the city appears to be calming down somewhat at this moment.
MINNEAPOLIS — Thousands of people converged at a downtown park on Friday afternoon in the state’s biggest show of opposition yet to the Trump administration’s immigration operations in Minnesota, braving subzero temperatures and skipping work and school.
Hundreds of businesses in the Twin Cities closed for the day of action, an effort organized by faith leaders and labor unions amid continuing tensions over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in the state, including the fatal shooting of Renée Good by an ICE officer earlier this month.
On Friday morning, about 100 clergy members were arrested at a peaceful sit-in at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport protesting deportation flights. Labor leaders said more than 15,600 people had claimed tickets to the 2 p.m. march in Minneapolis — where the National Weather Service warned of minus-50 degree wind chill through Sunday morning.
Bundled in down coats, beanies and ski goggles, demonstrators chanted “What do we want? ICE out!” and held signs bearing slogans such as “No MN Nice for ICE” and “Leave Us Alone!” as they marched peacefully.
“This rally says it all. We’re fighting for truth and freedom,” said Mary Turner, a night-shift nurse in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, and a union member who joined the march.
Residents opposed to ICE’s actions in Minnesota say federal agents have gone far beyond their mission of removing undocumented criminals since starting operations there two months ago, instead detaining U.S. citizens, pulling people from their cars, appearing to stop people on the basis of race, and using chemical irritants on people demonstrating against or monitoring their work.
Federal immigration agents detained a two-year-old girl and her father in Minneapolis on Thursday and transported them to Texas, according to court records and the family’s lawyers.
The father, identified in court filings as Elvis Joel TE, and his daughter were stopped and detained by officers around 1pm when they were returning home from the store. By the evening, a federal judge had ordered the girl be released by 9.30pm. But federal officials instead put both of them on a plane heading to a Texas detention center.
Irina Vaynerman, one of the family’s lawyers, told the Guardian late Friday afternoon that immigration officials had since flown both of them back to Minnesota and released the two-year-old into the custody of her mother. The father remains detained in Minnesota, she said.
“The horror is truly unimaginable,” Vaynerman said. “The depravity of all of this is beyond words.”
Court records and the attorney’s accounts paint a harrowing picture of the toddler and father’s detention and the frantic efforts that followed to get her released from custody and reunited with her mother. The detention came two days after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained five-year-old Liam Ramos in Minnesota, in a case that has prompted international backlash and increased scrutiny of the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown in the region.
As the father and daughter were arriving home on Thursday, agents entered their backyard and driveway area, Kira Kelley, one of the family’s lawyers, wrote in a filing. The officers did not have a warrant, the attorney said. One agent then allegedly broke the glass window of the father’s car while the girl was inside.
The mother was by the door and stepped inside the house as the agents approached, Kelley wrote. The agents refused to allow the father to bring his daughter to the mother or other family members “waiting terrified inside the home”.
The two-year-old and her father were then placed in an immigration agent’s vehicle, which Kelley wrote did not have a car seat.
Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents refused to allow 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos to stay at his Columbia Heights home with family after being detained, observers said, despite people in the home, neighbors and school officials begging them to do so.
Those who saw the federal agents detain Liam Tuesday pushed back against claims this week by ICE and Vice President JD Vance that the child was abandoned by his family after the boy and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, were detained on their way home from school.
Neighbors and Columbia Heights school officials say they pleaded with agents to let the child enter the home to join his mother or to stay with a neighbor or school leader after agents took the father into custody.
They also say that they did not see Conejo Arias flee the scene and leave his son in the cold as ICE officials maintain.
“There was ample opportunity to be able to safely hand that child off to adults,” said Mary Granlund, chair of the Columbia Heights School Board who said she was at the scene and among those who offered to take Liam to his family or back to school.
“There was another adult who lived in the home that was there saying, ‘I will take the child. I will take the child.’ Somebody else was yelling … that I was there and said, ‘School is here. They can take the child. You don’t have to take them.’ And mom was there. She saw (through) the window, and dad was yelling, ‘Please do not open the door!’”
ICE officials say the father and son are together at an ICE residential family facility in Texas. Marc Prokosch, the lawyer representing Liam and his dad, said he had still not had direct contact with them.
ICE says the father is in the country illegally but Prokosch says that’s not the case.
The deployment of thousands of federal agents to Minnesota to round up undocumented immigrants has yielded no shortage of indelible images in recent weeks.
There was the American citizen dragged out of his home in subzero weather in his underwear. And the detention of a 5-year-old boy wearing a Spider-Man backpack and a hat with floppy ears drew outrage from school officials.
But photos of a Border Patrol agent squirting pepper spray in the face of a man who was being pinned down by fellow officers on Wednesday searingly captured why the ongoing immigration operation has been met with furious resistance on the streets of Minneapolis.
Images of the episode drew millions of views online, made the front page of The Minnesota Star Tribune and elicited blistering condemnation from local officials.
“No one looking at this image can seriously claim this is about public safety,” said Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis. “It should alarm every American because if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.”
Gov. Tim Walz reposted the Star Tribune newspaper page on social media, along with a two-word comment: “Trump’s America.”
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, did not respond to an email asking about the confrontation and whether the use of force depicted in photos and videos taken by bystanders that day had violated use of force policies.
The identity and whereabouts of the man who was sprayed was unclear on Friday.
An F.B.I. agent who sought to investigate the federal immigration officer who fatally shot a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis this month has resigned from the bureau, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The agent, Tracee Mergen, left her job as a supervisor in the F.B.I.’s Minneapolis field office after bureau leadership in Washington pressured her to discontinue a civil rights inquiry into the immigration officer, Jonathan Ross, according to one of the people. Such inquiries are a common investigative step in similar shootings.
After the incident, several Trump administration officials described Ms. Good as a “domestic terrorist,” accusing her of trying to ram Mr. Ross with her vehicle. But a video analysis by The New York Times showed no indication that he had been run over.
Senior Justice Department officials have repeatedly said there are no plans to follow the path normally taken in such situations and pursue an investigation into whether Mr. Ross, who fired multiple shots at Ms. Good, had used excessive force.
Federal investigators have also refused to cooperate with state and local prosecutors in Minnesota, complicating any efforts they might take to open their own investigations into Mr. Ross.
Trump has now sent his private army into Maine and Mainers are fighting back.
PORTLAND, Maine — Hundreds of protesters gathered here Friday in the largest demonstration since a federal immigration sweep began in Maine earlier this week, decrying the ongoing operation as cruel and illegal, while widespread fear continued to paralyze communities across the state, bringing some aspects of daily life to a halt.
On a frigid evening, a crowd nearing an estimated 1,000 people demonstrated at the rally in Portland’s Monument Square before marching through the streets. The energy from the crowd — bundled in hats, scarves, and gloves — was reverberating throughout the city.
“People are afraid,” Portland City Councilor Pious Ali told the Globe after leaving a mosque following a Friday prayer service in the city’s Bayside neighborhood. “There’s fear, there’s anxiety. There’s a feeling of not knowing what’s going to happen next.”
Thirty-five miles north, the streets of Lewiston were quiet, with a few stragglers going in and out of businesses. Shop owners said they had never seen business this slow — and signs on their doors warned of ICE presence in the area. Several stores were completely shuttered due to the increase in ICE activity.
“We are temporarily closed until further notice. Sorry for the inconvenience,” a sign on one Somali-owned food market on Lisbon Street downtown read.
The Department of Homeland Security said Friday US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested more than 100 in Maine this week as part of “Operation Catch of the Day,” the latest initiative that is part of President Trump’s mass deportation agenda. The operation started on Tuesday.
While other cities, such as Chicago and Minneapolis, have seen large-scale deployments of immigration agents swarming neighborhoods, the operations here seem to be quicker and more targeted: A few ICE vehicles will be spotted in a neighborhood. Immigrant advocates who are watching the agents will blow whistles and honk horns. But quickly, the agents move in to arrest one or two individuals. Within minutes, they are gone.
Mainers are grappling with the increased presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in their cities as the state becomes the latest target for President Donald Trump’s mass deportations agenda.
Details, though, about who is being targeted and in which communities are thin, state and local officials say.
“Why Maine? Why now?” Democratic Gov. Janet Mills said Thursday. “We’ve reached out, we’ve asked questions. We have no answers.”
The Department of Homeland Security announced the launch of its Maine operation, “Catch of the Day,” earlier this week, saying agents were focused on “the worst of the worst” in its arrests.
But Mills said in a news conference that the increased ICE presence in the state has been disruptive to schools and businesses, adding that it’s been difficult to know the operation’s full scope and justification because federal agencies aren’t providing those details.
I have no idea how long this post is, but I’m going to end there. We are truly in a crisis as a country. How long before Trump tries sending in military troops? Congress must act now! Democrats need to find their spines and stand up to Trump. This is really getting terrifying.
Take care everyone.
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This morning I woke up and turned on the TV to see our “president,” easily the stupidest president in American history, walking hunched over and tired in Davos to give another long, rambling, nonsensical, insulting “speech” to the assembled political and business leaders. He spoke for 70 minutes and it seemed much longer.
I watched the speech for awhile, but it was the same old garbage he talks about off the cuff to the assembled press in the oval office. He went on and on in his old man voice, attacking allies, demanding that Greenland be handed over to him, ranting about windmills–all to complete silence from the audience. How could they sit there and watch this embarrassing display of abject stupidity?
I don’t expect this post to make much sense, because I’m just soooo angry!
The big headline, according to the legacy media is that Trump announced he won’t “take Greenland by force.”
President Donald Trump ruled out military force to acquire Greenland in his remarks Wednesday to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, providing a momentary sense of relief to Europe after weeks of worry that the U.S. would enter a confrontation with NATO.
“We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable, but I won’t do that,” Trump said. “That’s probably the biggest statement I made, because people thought I would use force, but I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force.”
Trump said Wednesday that he wants to see negotiation to acquire what he called “a piece of ice.”
The president, though, warned Denmark that if it doesn’t give up Greenland to the U.S., “we will remember.”
He argued in his remarks that the U.S. can protect “this giant mass of land” better than Europe can, insisting that taking over Greenland wouldn’t be a threat to NATO but would instead enhance security for the alliance. While the president’s obsession with Greenland has accelerated in recent weeks, his pledge to not use force to acquire the island marks a shift in his rhetoric.
“I don’t want to use force,” he added. “All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland, where we already had it as a trustee but respectively returned it back to Denmark not long ago after we defeated the Germans, the Japanese, Italians and others in World War II. We gave it back to them.”
He added that it was “stupid” for the U.S. to not keep the island after the war. Still, Trump downplayed the significance of his threats against Greenland, arguing it’s a trade-off for the years of support the U.S. has given to NATO allies.
“What I’m asking for is a piece of ice, cold and poorly located,” he said. It’s a very small ask, compared to what we have given them for many, many decades.”
What does that mess of words really mean? Nothing. Trump is the world’s worst liar and he’s insane. Not to mention stupid. Nothing he says can be believed.
The choice is impeachment and removal or calamity for the United States. I don't see how anybody watching Trump's speech in Davos can draw any other conclusion. He's a senile madman.
“Denmark’s investment in U.S. Treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
It comes as Trump’s threats to impose 10% tariffs on eight European countries as part of his push to take over Greenland spooked markets. The levies would come into force on Feb. 1, Trump said, and later rise to 25%.
Danish pension operator AkademikerPensionsaid Tuesday it was selling $100 million in U.S. Treasurys. The decision was driven by “poor [U.S.] government finances,” said Anders Schelde, AkademikerPension’s investing chief.
When Bessent was asked how concerned he is about European investors pulling out of Treasurys, Bessent said at a news conference at the World Economic Forum: “Denmark’s investment in U.S. Treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant.”
“That is less than $100 million. They’ve been selling Treasurys for years, I’m not concerned at all.”
Really? I’d like to hear what Daknikat has to say about this.
No one can be watching this Davos speech and reach any conclusion but that the President of the United States is mentally disturbed and that something is deeply wrong with him. This is both embarrassing and extremely dangerous.
Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada delivered a stark speech in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, prompting global political and corporate leaders in the audience to rise from their seats for a rare standing ovation.
He described the end of the era underpinned by United States hegemony, calling the current phase “a rupture.” He never mentioned President Trump by name, but his reference was clear.
The speech came as President Trump doubled down on his threats to take Greenland away from Denmark, saying he would slap fresh tariffs on European powers as punishment for their support of Greenland’s sovereignty.
Global leaders have been scrambling to find a unified response.
“Every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great-power rivalry,” Mr. Carney said. “That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”
And he warned, “The middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”
He would know.
Mr. Trump started his second presidential term making claims on Canada as the 51st state and threatening Canada’s previous leader, Justin Trudeau, whom Mr. Trump publicly derided, with unilaterally scrapping agreements that have governed the relationship between the neighboring countries for over a century….
Mr. Carney chastised other leaders too, many of whom would have been following his speech in Davos, for not standing up for their interests.
“There is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along,” he said. “To accommodate. To avoid trouble. To hope that compliance will buy safety. It won’t.”
Mr. Carney made clear he is choosing a different path.
He wrote his own speech, according to a government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the inner workings of his team, which is a departure since speeches of this magnitude are usually prepared by high-level staffers with the leader’s input.
Mr. Carney, a former investment executive who has served as the governor of Canada and England’s central banks, has attended the global gathering about 30 times, according to his office….
Mr. Carney spoke not long after Mr. Trump had posted an altered image on social media that featured a map of American flags superimposed over both Canada and the United States, as well as Greenland.
Well worth a listen from Canadian PM Mark Carney at Davos summit.
President Trump said in Davos on Wednesday that Canada should be “grateful” to the U.S. for the “freebies” it receives because of the two nations’ relationship.
Why it matters: Trump’s dig at Canada came a day after Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered his own warning at the World Economic Forum over the “rupture” of the world order.
Driving the news: “Canada lives because of the United States,” Trump said Wednesday before taking a direct jab at Carney. “Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
Trump said Carney “wasn’t so grateful” in his address.
Carney avoided naming Trump in his speech — a strategy a Canadian official previously told Axios was deliberate. However, the official indicated that Carney’s remarks were aimed squarely at the president’s recent actions.
Zoom out: As Trump pushes a vision of hemispheric dominance — coupled with threats of the U.S. making its northern neighbor the “51st state” — Ottawa has reportedly started preparing for how to repel a U.S. invasion.
Growing up, I never really understood Aesop’s fable about the goose that laid the golden egg. It’s a cautionary tale about greed and hubris: A farmer with a miraculous goose that lays a solid-gold egg every morning gets fed up with passive wealth generation and figures killing the bird will speed things along. But alas: He finds no store of eggs within and realizes he butchered his meal ticket for nothing. The moral’s straightforward, but it never really worked for me as a story. Like, come on: Nobody’s that stupid.
Well, almost nobody, I guess.
As long as I live, I don’t think I’ll get over this pure, dumb fact: Trump told his fans he had to blow up the liberal order because it was the only way to secure the very benefits the liberal order was already bringing us.
Trump insists America needs Greenland as a strategic positioning ground from which to restrain Russia and China in the Arctic. But thanks to the liberal order, this was something we already enjoyed. Through the magic of multilateral cooperation, we were able to treat someone else’s territory as though it were our own for the purposes of military positioning—not by bribing or intimidating them, but because they agreed their interests and our interests aligned.
Trump insists America needs to blow up America’s preexisting economic relationships to ensure America gets an advantageous position in international trade. But America already had such an advantageous position: an orderly world economic system that had lavished previously unimaginable prosperity on America and to the entire globe, with us at the proverbial (and very profitable) head of the table.
It’s not just that Trump had the hubris to think he could hero-ball the country to a better deal by canceling a century of history and starting over. It’s that his own broken personality—his miserable meanness, his dispositional inability to cooperate with and trust others—has always prevented him from understanding what was good about the deal we had to begin with. The idea that multipolar agreements could be better for America, in some cases, than outright ownership—that, say, we already have everything we need from Greenland—he rejects as ridiculous. Ownership, he told the New York Times, is “what I feel is psychologically needed for success. . . . I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty.”
He really is determined to burn everything down if he can’t get his own way on everything.
1/ Jonathan Lemire writes, "Trump's lust for Greenland is about increasing American dominance in the Western Hemisphere 7 redrawing the maps of the world. The island is roughly 836K square miles, which would make it the largest territorial addition in US history." Gift link.
Franklin D. Roosevelt famously illustrated with a simple metaphor the need for a healthy transatlantic alliance. Justifying his decision to lend Great Britain warships and other military supplies in the early days of World War II, Roosevelt likened it to loaning a neighbor a garden hose to put out the fire consuming his house. Sure, Roosevelt charitably wanted to help a neighbor in need. But it was self-interested too; if the neighbor could extinguish the blaze, it wouldn’t spread to FDR’s home. The United States benefited from the friendship—and the buffer—that allies could provide.
Today, Donald Trump will fly to Europe. Ukraine is already ablaze. And now the president is ready to set a bunch of new houses on fire.
The president will speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, tomorrow, and he appears prepared to shatter the nearly 80-year-old NATO alliance in order to seize Greenland. In his quest to claim a strategically located island of ice and rock, Trump has turned against his nation’s most stalwart friends. He has antagonized and mocked panicked European leaders, threatened punishing tariffs on countries that object to his plans, and pointedly not ruled out using military force. Trump’s thirst for Greenland—even if he stops short of ordering an armed invasion—threatens to unravel the partnership born from the ashes of World War II that has, in the decades since, ensured the spread of peace, prosperity, and democracy on both sides of the Atlantic.
Today marks one year since Trump’s return to office, and in that time, he has fundamentally reshaped the United States’ relationship with the rest of the world. But nothing has upended the global order more than what would happen if he follows through on his threats toward Greenland. The island, of course, belongs to Denmark, which says that it is not available for the taking. Troops from Europe have been dispatched to the territory, and Greenland’s prime minister warned his populace to prepare for an invasion. If Trump were to persist, Denmark could trigger NATO’s Article 5 mutual-defense pact, and then the unthinkable could occur: American soldiers firing on Europeans while Russian President Vladimir Putin’s dream of NATO’s self-immolation is thoroughly realized.
The annual meetings in Davos, normally a clubby gathering of business titans and political leaders, have been consumed by talk of what Trump may or may not do. European leaders have found themselves scrambling on strategy—appeasement? Defiance? Compromise? Early this morning, Trump posted screenshots of text messages that revealed the dilemma facing those leaders. (Lesson to everyone: Be careful what you text the guy unless you want the world to see.)
In one message, Mark Rutte—the secretary general of NATO, who has prized warm relations with Trump—praised the president’s foreign policies, then vowed that he is “committed to finding a way forward on Greenland.” But in another, French President Emmanuel Macron, whose relationship with Trump has been turbulent, admitted: “I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland.” In fact, Trump couldn’t be more clear, as he demonstrated once again by circulating a pair of presumably AI-generated images on social media. In one, he’s planting an American flag in Greenland. In the other, he’s lecturing European leaders in the Oval Office with a map behind him that depicts Greenland as part of the United States. (Canada and Venezuela too.)
Trolling close U.S. allies has seemingly been an unofficial policy of Trump’s second administration since its first days, beginning with Vice President Vance lecturing Europe in Munich on the virtues of free speech. But this time feels different for those nervously waiting in snowy Switzerland. The president’s address to the forum tomorrow is poised to be a defining moment, and Trump plans to make the unequivocal case that the United States should have Greenland, a senior White House official told me.
Pretty good predictions, except for Trump’s claim he won’t use force.
A few non-Davos stories:
Did you watch Lawrence O’Donnell last night? He still insists that Trump’s Greenland obsession is really a way to distract the press from the Epstein files. I think he could be right. If you didn’t see it, I recommend watching it now.
Three hundred and sixty-five days after Donald Trump swore his oath of office and completed an extraordinary return to power, many historians, scholars and experts say his presidency has pushed American democracy to the brink – or beyond it.
The scale and velocity of what he has been able to accomplish in just a year have stunned even longtime observers of authoritarian regimes, pushing the debate among academics and Americans from whether the world’s oldest continuous democracy is backsliding to whether it can still faithfully claim that distinction.
“In 2025, the United States ceased to be a full democracy in the way that Canada, Germany or even Argentina are democracies,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, the prominent Harvard political scientists and authors of How Democracies Die, and the University of Toronto professor Lucan Way, wrote in Foreign Affairs last month. They argued that the US under Trump had “descended into competitive authoritarianism”, a system in which elections are held but the ruling party abuses power to stifle dissent and tilt the playing field in its favor.
There is no universally accepted definition of democracy. Some argue the US is a “flawed” or “illiberal” democracy, or a democracy facing substantial “autocratization” – a process that began long before Trump came to power a decade ago but which his presidency has rapidly accelerated. Still, others believe the concerns are overblown, or reflect an intense partisan dislike of the current president.
Since Trump’s first term, scholars have warned that it can happen here. But many now say this moment is different – not only because Trump’s approach is more methodical and his desire for vengeance more pronounced, but because he now faces far fewer internal constraints.
Read more at the link.
Hunter Walker at Talking Points Memo: Trump Marks First Year In Office With Unhinged Racist Rant Targeting ‘Very Low IQ’ Somalis.
President Donald Trump spent the first anniversary of his second term on Tuesday pitching himself to the American people from behind the White House briefing room podium. In nearly two hours of remarks, Trump seemingly sought to address his cratering approval by running through a list of his supposed accomplishments. His remarks also included a series of vicious, racist remarks about Somali people and other immigrants.
I think Trump likes this photo.
“They all ought to get the hell out of here, they’re bad for our country,” Trump said of the Somali population at one point during the extraordinary rant.
At multiple points during his remarks, Trump indicated he felt the need to make his case directly because his team was not up to the task. A slew of anniversarypolls show the president’s numbers are currently underwater with notably steep declines in voter approval of the president’s handling of his signature issues: immigration and the economy. Those figures have come amid slow job growth and violent raids staged by Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
“Maybe I have bad public relations people, but we’re not getting it across,” Trump said as he argued the economy is particularly strong since he returned to office.
Trump came equipped with a couple of binders including one labeled “ACCOMPLISHMENTS.” Yet as he read through the provided list, Trump repeatedly raged against the Somali population, including suggesting that they are of inferior intelligence. Trump first turned to the topic as he alluded to the ongoing ICE raids in Minnesota, which have been met with massive protests. The state is home to the country’s largest Somali population and the federal crackdown has come amid a wave of right-wing influencers making exaggerated claims about alleged daycare fraud in the community.
“Nineteen billion dollars at a minimum is missing in Minnesota, given to a large degree by Somalians. They’ve taken it,” Trump said. ”Somalians, can you imagine? And they don’t do it — a lot of very low IQ people. They don’t do it. Other people work it out and they get them money and they go out and buy Mercedes Benzes.”
The Supreme Court will consider Wednesday whether President Trump can fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve board, in a case that tests the longstanding independence of the central bank, with potentially major consequences for the economy.
The court’s conservative majority has repeatedly allowed Mr. Trump to oust leaders of other independent agencies as he moves to expand presidential power and seize control of the federal bureaucracy. But the justices have signaled that the Fed may be different and uniquely insulated from executive influence because of its structure and history.
Lisa Cook
The case lands as the administration has dramatically escalated its attacks on the Fed, apparently aimed at remaking its board and lowering interest rates. The Justice Department this month opened a criminal investigation into whether Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, lied to Congress about cost overruns related to the Fed’s renovation of its headquarters.
Mr. Powell, whose term as chair ends in May, forcefully pushed back on the threat of criminal charges, saying it was a result of the Fed setting borrowing costs “based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president.”
The investigation prompted a backlash from Republicans, international policymakers, Wall Street and some Trump allies, who warned that the central bank’s independence and credibility was at risk.
It also threatened to complicate Mr. Trump’s plans to name Mr. Powell’s replacement as chair — and, legal experts said, the Supreme Court case being heard on Wednesday.
The justices agreed to hear Ms. Cook’s case on an expedited basis, and are likely to rule quickly on her status as litigation continues in the lower courts. The outcome of the case could determine how much latitude Mr. Trump and future presidents have to influence the direction of the powerful central bank, which Congress intentionally tried to insulate from political pressures.
Police agencies in the United States kill more than 1,000 people each year. After many of those deaths, the agencies involved put out statements. Those statements often use what’s known as the exonerative voice to minimize officers’ involvement. The first statement from the Minneapolis Police Department after George Floyd’s death, for example, said that the officers at the scene “noted that he appeared to be suffering from medical distress.” Quite the understatement. These communications often cast events in a light most favorable to the officers involved, sometimes to the point of deception. Too often, they’ll try to smear the deceased by citing a criminal record or suggesting a drug addiction or gang affiliation.
Renee Good
I have been covering policing for more than 20 years and have read and parsed a lot of these statements. The Department of Homeland Security’s response after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis this month is something else entirely.
For all their flaws, typical communications from police officials usually include a modicum of solemnity. There are assurances that there will be a fair and impartial investigation, even if those investigations too often turn out to be neither. There’s at least the acknowledgment that to take a human life is a profound and serious thing.
The Trump administration’s response to Ms. Good’s death made no such concessions. There were no promises of an impartial investigation. There was no regret or remorse. There was little empathy for her family — for her parents, her partner or the children she left behind. From the moment the world learned about her death, the administration pronounced the shooting not only justified but an act of heroism worthy of praise and celebration.
It isn’t just the lying; it’s that the lies are wildly exaggerated and easily refutable. All the evidence we’ve seen so far, including a meticulous Times forensic analysis of the available footage, makes clear that at worst, Ms. Good mildly obstructed immigration enforcement, disobeyed ambiguous orders or perhaps attempted to flee an arrest. None of those are capital crimes, nor do law enforcement officers get to dole out punishment in such cases. At one point, President Trump justified her shooting by claiming she’d been “very disrespectful” to immigration officers. That isn’t a crime at all.
The lies this administration is telling about Ms. Good aren’t those you deploy as part of a cover-up. They’re those you use when you want to show you can get away with anything. They’re a projection of power.
For the past decade or so, since the protests in Ferguson, Mo., America has engaged in a high-stakes dialogue about police abuse and accountability, the militarization of law enforcement and the push and pull between public safety and civil liberties. Those discussions, while occasionally heated, have been based on a shared understanding that the primary job of domestic law enforcement is to serve the public. What Mr. Trump is doing with federal immigration forces has rendered those debates obsolete.
Those are my recommended read for today. What do you think?
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I really struggled to get out of bed this morning. I’m usually an early riser although I don’t really get going until I’ve had some caffeine and psyched myself up a bit, but today my body resisted all my efforts to be dragged out of dreamland.
Like many Americans, I’m traumatized by what’s happening to our country and the cumulative effects of a decade of dealing with the monster from Mar-a-Lago. Everything is awful, and I’m not sure we can make it until the midterm elections.
So here’s a Caturday distraction from The Smithsonian Magazine. (The illustrations are from the article except for one from The Baltimore Sun.)
A cat left pawprints on this 500-year-old manuscript.
More than 500 years ago, after dedicating hours to the meticulous transcription of a crucial manuscript, a Flemish scribe set the parchment out to dry—only to later return and discover the page smeared, filled with inky paw prints.
Perhaps the world’s first known instance of a so-called “keyboard cat,” that manuscript is the inspiration for and centerpiece of an exhibition currently on display at Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum. Running through late February, “Paws on Parchment” explores the roles of cats in the Middle Ages—and the myriad ways humans showed affection for their feline friends hundreds of years ago.
“Objects like [the manuscript] have a way of bridging across time, as it’s just so relatable for anyone who has ever had a cat,” Lynley Anne Herbert, the museum’s curator of rare books and manuscripts, tells Artnet’s Margaret Carrigan. “Many medieval people loved their cats just as much as we do.”
This affection is evidenced by the myriad illustrations of cats across cultures. After finding the Flemish manuscript, Herbert searched the museum archives and found no shortage of other feline mentions or depictions in Islamic, Asian and other European texts and images….
“Because they were so stealthy and they could see in the dark, they were seen as a little bit ethereal as creatures,” Herbert told WYPR’s Ashley Sterner in August. “This sort of translates to the idea that that’s kind of the way the devil works. If you’re sinful, he can stalk you, and eventually he’ll pounce on you.”
Paws on Parchment is the first of three animal-themed exhibitions planned at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore over the next two years. The Walters Museum
In the margins of manuscripts on display, seemingly silly illustrations of cats playing instruments detail this double-sidedness. “[They] reinforce the importance of an orderly society by showing the chaos possible if the natural order of things got turned on its head,” Herbert tells Artnet.
But at the same time, humans relied on their pets’ killer instincts much more than they do today. Rats, mice and other vermin in the Middle Ages were more likely to carry disease, and housecats were an important defense for families.
“Their ability to catch and kill mice and rats was actually critical to healthy living,” Herbert told WYPR. “Those critters would often get into food stores and contaminate them or eat them. They would also chew on valuable things like cloth and books. … Very early on, people realized that cats were excellent mousers. They were actually defined in encyclopedias of the era by their ability to catch mice.”
You can read more about medieval cats and the Walters Museum exhibit at the link.
In the news today:
Trump beclowned himself and embarrassed most Americans by accepting the Nobel Peace Prize medal that was awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado. I can’t imagine being so shameless that you would accept a medal won by someone else, but Trump apparently can’t feel shame. In fact, he kind of strong-armed Machado into giving it to him. She probably imagined he might then let her return to her country as president–after all, she did win the election. But Trump isn’t likely to do that. In fact later yesterday, he seemingly forgot her name.
President Donald Trump was handed the Nobel Peace Prize he has been whining about for so many months—only to seemingly forget the name of the woman who passed hers on to him just hours earlier.
In a media huddle outside the White House, the 79-year-old president was asked why he has yet to support María Corina Machado’s bid for Venezuelan leadership.
“I had a great meeting yesterday by a person who I have a lot of respect for and she has respect, obviously, for me and our country and she gave me her Nobel Prize,” Trump said, notably avoiding her name.
“I’ll tell you what, I got to know her, I never met her before, and I was very, very impressed. She’s a really—this is a fine woman.”
On social media, severalcommentatorsnoted that it appeared as though Machado’s name had slipped the president’s mind.
Machado, leader of the opposition to Nicolás Maduro’s government, has been vying for power in the South American nation following the U.S. gunpoint abduction of Maduro at the start of the month.
However, despite claiming Maduro was operating a “cartel,” the Trump administration left his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, running the country, along with virtually all of his government….
While the coveted Nobel Prize was claimed by Trump, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has since reiterated its ruling that prizes cannot be exchanged and the transfer is ultimately meaningless.
I doubt if this will stop Trump’s incessant whining about how the Nobel committee cheated him out of his own Nobel Peace Prize.
Meanwhile, Trump is supporting Venezuela’s vice president Delcy Rodrigues as acting president.
When President Donald Trump announced the audacious capture of Nicolás Maduro to face drug trafficking charges in the U.S., he portrayed the strongman’s vice president and longtime aide as America’s preferred partner to stabilize Venezuela amid a scourge of drugs, corruption and economic mayhem.
Left unspoken was the cloud of suspicion that long surrounded Delcy Rodríguez before she became acting president of the beleaguered nation earlier this month.
In fact, Rodríguez has been on the radar of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for years and in 2022 was even labeled a “priority target,” a designation DEA reserves for suspects believed to have a “significant impact” on the drug trade, according to records obtained by The Associated Press and more than a half dozen current and former U.S. law enforcement officials.
The DEA has amassed a detailed intelligence file on Rodríguez dating to at least 2018, the records show, cataloging her known associates and allegations ranging from drug trafficking to gold smuggling. One confidential informant told the DEA in early 2021 that Rodríguez was using hotels in the Caribbean resort of Isla Margarita “as a front to launder money,” the records show. As recently as last year she was linked to Maduro’s alleged bag man, Alex Saab, whom U.S. authorities arrested in 2020 on money laundering charges.
The U.S. government has never publicly accused Rodríguez of any criminal wrongdoing. Notably for Maduro’s inner circle, she’s not among the more than a dozen current Venezuelan officials charged with drug trafficking alongside the ousted president.
Three current and former DEA agents who reviewed the records at the request of AP said they indicate an intense interest in Rodríguez throughout much of her tenure as vice president, which began in 2018. They were not authorized to discuss DEA investigations and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Rodríguez’s name has surfaced in nearly a dozen DEA investigations, several of which remain ongoing, involving agents in field offices from Paraguay and Ecuador to Phoenix and New York, the AP learned. The AP could not determine the specific focus of each investigation.
Obviously, Trump couldn’t careless about drug trafficking.
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (AP) — President Donald Trump said Saturday that he would charge a 10% import tax starting in February on goods from eight European nations because of their opposition to American control of Greenland, setting up a potentially dangerous test of U.S. partnerships in Europe.
Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland would face the tariff, Trump said in a social media post while at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida. The rate would climb to 25% on June 1 if no deal was in place for “the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland” by the United States, he said.
The Republican president appeared to indicate that he was using the tariffs as leverage to force talks with Denmark and other European countries over the status of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark that he regards as critical to U.S. national security.
“The United States of America is immediately open to negotiation with Denmark and/or any of these Countries that have put so much at risk, despite all that we have done for them,” Trump said on Truth Social.
The tariff threat could mark a problematic rupture between Trump and America’s longtime NATO partners, further straining an alliance that dates to 1949 and provides a collective degree of security to Europe and North America. Trump has repeatedly tried to use trade penalties to bend allies and rivals alike to his will, generating investment commitments from some nations and pushback from others, notably China.
Trump is scheduled to travel on Tuesday to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he likely will run into the European leaders he just threatened with tariffs that would start in little more than two weeks.
Making a symbolic visit to Copenhagen, a bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers — including senior members of the House and Senate — tried to reassure leaders of Denmark and Greenland, and their increasingly anxious citizens, that most Americans do not support President Donald Trump’s plan to annex or buy Greenland, let alone the prospect of military action against a fellow NATO ally.
The Congressional visit comes as tensions are soaring over the Trump’s threats. Thousands gathered Saturday in Denmark for “Hands-off Greenland” protests, with gatherings also planned for later in Greenland’s capital, organizers said.
“It is important to underscore that when you ask the American people whether or not they think it is a good idea for the United States to acquire Greenland, the vast majority — some 75 percent — will say we do not think that that is a good idea,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said Friday at a news conference after the American group met counterparts in the Danish Parliament. “This senator from Alaska does not think it is a good idea.”
“Greenland needs to be viewed as our ally, not as an asset,” Murkowski added.
Asked how Trump might be stopped in his quest to obtain Greenland, Murkowski suggested Congress would assert its authority. “You are hearing from the executive branch,” she said. “The Congress also has a role.”
That’s if Republicans in Congress are willing to stand up to Trump. Meanwhile:
COPENHAGEN – Thousands of people marched from Copenhagen City Hall to the U.S. embassy Saturday afternoon in protest of President Trump’s comments that he wants to acquire Greenland.
The crowd, waving Greenlandic flags, chanted “Greenland is not for sale.” Many demonstrators wore red hats in Trump’s own “Make America great again” fashion that read, “Make America go away.” [….]
A 15th-century prayer book featuring an illustrated gray cat The Walters Museum
Saturday’s protest came on the heels of a bipartisan Congressional delegation that travelled to Copenhagen. House and Senate lawmakers met with Danish and Greenlandic officials, as well as members of the Danish business community. The visit was meant to be a reassurance tour — affirming the longstanding relationship between the U.S. and the Kingdom of Denmark in the face of Trump’s rhetoric.
Peder Dam, who lives in Denmark,attended the demonstration with a sign that featured an image of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker from Star Wars that read: “Americans: I know there is good in you. Come back to sanity.”
“We know what is going on in the White House is not representative for all Americans,” he told NPR.
But he said he wonders why there isn’t more widespread outrage from the American public.
“I can’t understand. If my government said they would attack Sweden, then Denmark would step up and protest that,” he said. “I like protests in the U.S. But why aren’t there more normal, average Americans stepping up, trying to protest what is going on? It’s crazy.”
Another protester, Thomas, whom NPR is identifying only by his first name because of concerns about retaliation at work, said the march represents “an unseen level of resentment towards the U.S.
“I cannot express how deeply disappointed I am — that we have sent our troops to die with you in Iraq, we were with you in Afghanistan,” he said. “How dare you turn your back on us in this way?”
The Trump administration’s persecution of Minnesota is going from bad to worse.
The Justice Department is planning to issue subpoenas for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey as part of an investigation alleging that the two Democratic leaders are impeding federal law enforcement officers’ abilities to do their jobs in the state, two people familiar with the matter confirmed Friday.
In partnership with the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter, four foster kittens visited the exhibition shortly after it opened. The Walters Museum
The subpoenas, which are without recent precedent, escalate an already bitter political battle between the Trump administration and state officials following the fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis by an immigration officer last week. That shooting happened amid a surge of federal immigration officers in the state ordered by President Donald Trump.
One of the people familiar with the case confirmed that the plan was to serve the subpoenas Friday. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an open investigation. Neither Walz nor Frey had been served with a subpoena by early Friday evening, spokespeople for the officials said.
Walz and Frey have claimed they have been wrongly excluded from the investigation into the killing of Renée Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer through the window of her SUV as she and others were monitoring and protesting the crackdown. The governor and mayor have publicly said they fear that the Justice Department is not conducting a fair and robust probe. In turn, Trump administration officials have said that Minnesota’s Democratic leaders are corrupt and can’t be trusted to handle an investigation.
Minnesota’s attorney general this week sued the federal government over the surge, saying it amounted to an unconstitutional “federal invasion.”
The subpoenas suggest that the Justice Department is examining whether Walz’s and Frey’s public statements disparaging the surge of officers and federal actions have amounted to criminal interference in law enforcement work. The law under which they are investigating the two officials, a federal statute on conspiracy to impede a federal investigation, is similar to the charges filed against protesters who federal officials allege have attempted to block immigration officers as they do their work.
That sounds like a violation of the Walz and Frey’s first amendment rights.
In a statement Friday, Frey called the subpoenas “an obvious attempt to intimidate me for standing up for Minneapolis, our local law enforcement, and our residents against the chaos and danger this Administration has brought to our streets.”
“I will not be intimidated,” he said. “My focus will remain where it’s always been: keeping our city safe.”
“Weaponizing the justice system and threatening political opponents is a dangerous, authoritarian tactic,” Walz said in a separate statement Friday evening. “The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her.”
We have late word this evening that the Department of Justice has launched a “criminal investigation” of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minnesota Mayor Jacob Frey over a purported “criminal conspiracy” to impeded ICE’s work in the state. Let’s start with the obvious and important fact that the bar that has to be cleared to launch such an investigation is essentially nil. All you need is a couple toadyish and corrupt DOJ appointees and they are currently in oversupply. Getting a criminal indictment let alone a conviction is in a different universe of possibility. The main point of this is simply to generate the headlines you’re seeing this evening (“criminal investigation!”) and perhaps load state and local government with subpoenas or perhaps raids.
Medieval cat art from the Walters Museum, source The Baltimore Sun
But none of that should distract from the fact that this is the main conflict being joined or at least pointed to in a very clear and public way. Right now Trump has created a kind of rickety authoritarian presidency with lots of prerogative powers on overdrive — military adventures, pardons, corruption of the DOJ, ICE wilding expeditions in Blue states — and a lot of corruption. But there’s not a lot more. It doesn’t have the kind of power in depth to really subvert the constitutional order in a robust or durable way. To do that you have to bring the states to heel. That’s where most policing power operates. It’s where elections operate. It’s where most of the actual governmental power in depth in the U.S. actually operates.
As recently as Monday I wrote this: “If you look at the trend of Trump rule in blue cities and blue states, the clear trajectory is that not being dominated is getting closer and closer to being a criminal offense, likely through conspiracy laws and such.” That’s precisely what’s being alleged here: that resisting these kinds of federal invasions or ICE wilding expeditions into Blue cities through entirely legal means and by the elected state authorities actually amounts to a criminal offense or, as predicted, a criminal conspiracy. In other words the states’ very existence as a separate albeit subordinate sovereign is a criminal offense against the federal government.
This is really scary, because we just don’t know what the Supreme Court will do with these arguments if they get their hands on the case. Fortunately, it will probably be hard to get a grand jury to indict on these ludicrous grounds.
Federal officers in the Minneapolis area participating in its largest recent U.S. immigration enforcement operation can’t detain or tear gas peaceful protesters who aren’t obstructing authorities, including when these people are observing the agents, a judge in Minnesota ruled Friday.
U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez’s ruling addresses a case filed in December on behalf of six Minnesota activists. The six are among the thousands who have been observing the activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol officers enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area since last month….
The activists in the case are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, which says government officers are violating the constitutional rights of Twin Cities residents….
Safely following agents “at an appropriate distance does not, by itself, create reasonable suspicion to justify a vehicle stop,” the ruling said.
Menendez said the agents would not be allowed to arrest people without probable cause or reasonable suspicion the person has committed a crime or was obstructing or interfering with the activities of officers.
Menendez is also presiding over a lawsuit filed Monday by the state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul seeking to suspend the enforcement crackdown, and some of the legal issues are similar. She declined at a hearing Wednesday to grant the state’s request for an immediate temporary restraining order in that case.
“What we need most of all right now is a pause. The temperature needs to be lowered,” state Assistant Attorney General Brian Carter told her.
Menendez said the issues raised by the state and cities in that case are “enormously important.” But she said it raises high-level constitutional and other legal issues, and for some of those issues there are few on-point precedents. So she ordered both sides to file more briefs next week.
Those are my recommended reads for today. What do you think? What else is on your mind?
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Before I get going with today’s news, I want to share this disturbing, but absolutely essential piece by Robert Reich: You could be next. This is personal.
If agents of the federal government can murder a 37-year-old woman in broad daylight who, as videotapes show, was merely trying to get out of their way, they can murder you.
Even if Trump and his vice president and his secretary of homeland security all claim, contrary to the videotapes, that Renee Nicole Good was trying to kill an agent who acted in self-defense, they could make up the same about you.
Even if Trump describes her as a “professional agitator” and his goons call her a “domestic terrorist,” they could say the same about you regardless of your political views or activism. If you have left-wing political views and are an activist, you’re in greater danger.
Renee Good
How can we believe what the FBI turns up in its investigation, when the FBI is working for Trump and is headed by one of his goons, and is investigating possible connections between Renee Good and groups that have been protesting Trump’s immigration enforcement?
What credence can we give federal officials who are blocking local and state investigators from reviewing evidence they’re collecting?
You could be murdered because Trump’s attorney general has defined “domestic terrorism” to include impeding law enforcement officers. What if you’re merely standing in the way — in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or maybe you’re engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience?
In October, Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen in Chicago, was in her car trying to warn people about ICE when she collided with a Border Patrol vehicle. Federal officials say she “rammed” the car. Her lawyers say she was sideswiped by it.
The agent then got out of his car and shot her five times. She survived. The Justice Department then charged her with assaulting a federal officer.
You could be next. All of us need to realize this. The people who are being assaulted and murdered are abiding the law….
Trump could just as well arrest and expel permanent residents who voice support for, say, transgender people or DEI or “woke” or anything else the regime finds “anti-American” and offensive.
What’s to stop the Trump regime from arresting you for, say, advocating the replacement of Republicans in Congress in 2026 and electing a Democrat to the presidency in 2028? [….]
What’s at stake isn’t just American democracy. It’s also your safety and security and that of your friends and loved ones. This is personal — to every one of us.
A dictatorship knows no bounds.
These are the facts of life in the U.S. now. We are all at risk. Trump can order his goons to any city or state and they will run wild because Trump and Vance have told them they have “absolute immunity.” You can be dragged from your car and beaten–even killed and Trump will celebrate you for it.
Admittedly, those of us who are white are less at risk, but the murder of Renee Good shows that we are not immune from the ICE reign of terror. Trump now has his private army–comparable to Hitler’s SS. They report to him, not to Congress or the American people.
The video shows a young employee in a reflective vest being hauled away by federal agents from the entrance of a Target store in a Minneapolis suburb.
“I’m a U.S. citizen!” the worker shouted as the armed agents shoved him into an S.U.V. after he had directed expletives at one. “U.S. citizen! U.S. citizen!”
In and around Minneapolis in recent days — in quiet residential neighborhoods and busy shopping districts, at gas station and big box store parking lots — similar chaotic scenes are unfolding, an escalation of tensions between residents and federal agents as the Trump administration intensifies its immigration crackdown in Minnesota after the killing of Renee Good by an immigration officer last week.
“It feels like our community is under siege by our own federal government,” said State Representative Michael Howard, a Democrat whose district includes Richfield, where the Target employee and another colleague were seized on Thursday.
Mr. Howard said both workers were U.S. citizens and were later released. The Department of Homeland Security said the Target worker seen in the video was arrested in connection with “assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers.” It was unclear on Tuesday if the employee had been charged.
Federal officers are descending on streets in what they say is an effort to find undocumented immigrants with criminal and dangerous backgrounds. They are displaying a show of force they argue is necessary in cities and states where local governments and law enforcement agencies have refused to help them. But many residents, business owners and immigrant workers have denounced the tactics, saying the agents are indiscriminately sweeping up hard-working friends and neighbors based on racial and ethnic profiling, and are increasingly organizing to push back.
The skirmishes between residents and the heavily armed federal agents have been especially nerve-racking for residents of Minneapolis, where the memories of the 2020 murder of George Floyd — and the protests and rioting that followed — are still raw. This time, residents and elected officials say, the fear is not abuses by law enforcement but an encroaching federal government.
Video of the Target arrests:
ICE kidnapping two U.S. citizens from a Target in Richfield, Minnesota. I recognize their head dickhead, Greg Bovino, showed up for the festivities. I’m grateful that there were people there that spoke up and got their names before they could be disappeared. #FuckICE #FuckGregBovino #Minnesota
Mr. Howard said both workers were U.S. citizens and were later released. The Department of Homeland Security said the Target worker seen in the video was arrested in connection with “assaulting, resisting or impeding federal officers.” It was unclear on Tuesday if the employee had been charged.
Federal officers are descending on streets in what they say is an effort to find undocumented immigrants with criminal and dangerous backgrounds. They are displaying a show of force they argue is necessary in cities and states where local governments and law enforcement agencies have refused to help them. But many residents, business owners and immigrant workers have denounced the tactics, saying the agents are indiscriminately sweeping up hard-working friends and neighbors based on racial and ethnic profiling, and are increasingly organizing to push back.
The skirmishes between residents and the heavily armed federal agents have been especially nerve-racking for residents of Minneapolis, where the memories of the 2020 murder of George Floyd — and the protests and rioting that followed — are still raw. This time, residents and elected officials say, the fear is not abuses by law enforcement but an encroaching federal government.
Local concerns over the federal government grew on Tuesday when six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of Ms. Good and questions over whether the shooter would be investigated.
Use the gift link to read more. There are lots of photos too.
Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned on Tuesday over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent and the department’s reluctance to investigate the shooter, according to people with knowledge of their decision.
Joseph H. Thompson, who was second in command at the U.S. attorney’s office and oversaw a sprawling fraud investigation that has roiled Minnesota’s political landscape, was among those who quit on Tuesday, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.
Joseph H. Thompson
Mr. Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Nicole Good, the Minneapolis woman killed by an ICE agent on Wednesday.
Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach, as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful, the people familiar with his decision said.
The Minneapolis police chief, Brian O’Hara, said in an interview that Mr. Thompson’s resignation dealt a major blow to efforts to root out rampant theft from state agencies. The fraud cases, which involve schemes to cheat safety net programs, were the chief reason the Trump administration cited for its immigration crackdown in the state. The vast majority of defendants charged in the cases are American citizens of Somali origin.
“When you lose the leader responsible for making the fraud cases, it tells you this isn’t really about prosecuting fraud,” Mr. O’Hara said.
The other senior career prosecutors who resigned include Harry Jacobs, Melinda Williams and Thomas Calhoun-Lopez. Mr. Jacobs had been Mr. Thompson’s deputy overseeing the fraud investigation, which began in 2022. Mr. Calhoun-Lopez was the chief of the violent and major crimes unit.
A bit more:
Tuesday’s resignations followed tumultuous days at the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota as prosecutors there and in Washington struggled to manage the outrage over Ms. Good’s killing, which set off angry protests in Minnesota and across the nation.
After Ms. Good was shot, Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told her staff that she would not consider opening an investigation into whether the agent had violated federal law, according to three current and former department officials who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the situation. At least four prosecutors who had already intended to quit or retire signaled they would accelerate their departures, those officials said.
Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said in a statement that “there is currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation” into the ICE agent.
Instead, the Justice Department launched an investigation to examine ties between Ms. Good and her wife, Becca, and several groups that have been monitoring and protesting the conduct of immigration agents in recent weeks. Shortly after Wednesday’s fatal shooting, Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, referred to Ms. Good as a “domestic terrorist.”
A week after37-year old Renée Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer near her Minneapolis home, her partner, parents and four siblings have hired an attorney who represented the family of George Floyd to file a claim against federal officials.
“What happened to Renée is wrong, contrary to established policing practices and procedures, and should never happen in today’s America,” Chicago-based law firm Romanucci & Blandin said in a statement to The Washington Post. The statement said Good’s family wants “to honor her life with progress toward a kinder and more civil America. They do not want her used as a political pawn, but rather as an agent of peace for all.”
One of the firm’s founding partners, Antonio M. Romanucci, a civil rights lawyer, was among those who represented relatives of George Floyd after he was killed in 2020 by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. That legal team’s lawsuit against the city and the four officers involved resulted in a record $27 million settlement for Floyd’s family in 2021, the largest of its kind involving police misconduct.
Good’s shooting, on a residential street where neighbors were monitoring and protesting immigration enforcement activity, has similarly stirred national outrage on the left and the right. Since the fatal encounter on Wednesday, federal officials have sent additional ICE officers to the city, leading to a number of violent encounters publicized on social media and accusations that the operation to detainundocumented immigrants has become more ofan armed occupation.
“It absolutely is escalating considerably over the last week here and it was already quite intense before that,” said State Rep. Mike Howard (D), who represents the suburb of Richfield. “We’ve seen many many examples of an escalating level of violence from federal immigrant officials, in particular targeting citizens, not just immigrants.”
“We’ve seen agents break windows of cars and pull observers out of vehicles, pepper spraying cars and individuals who are literally just exercising their constitutional rights to observe or protest. We had an incident outside of one of our high schools … where chemical irritants were utilized right as school was getting out,” Howard said. “It’s really honestly an hour-by-hour type of incursion, if you will, in a lot of our communities.”
More significant news stories:
Pete Hegseth is trying to crack down on reporters who receive leaks from the DOD.
The FBI raided the home of a Washington Post reporter early Wednesday in what the newspaper called a “highly unusual and aggressive” move by law enforcement, and press freedom groups condemned as a “tremendous intrusion” by the Trump administration.
Agents descended on the Virginia home of Hannah Natanson as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials. The Post is “reviewing and monitoring the situation”, a source at the newspaper said.
“It’s a clear and appalling sign that this administration will set no limits on its acts of aggression against an independent press,” Marty Baron, the Post’s former executive editor, told the Guardian.
Pam Bondi, the attorney general, said in a post on X that the raid was conducted by the justice department and FBI at the request of the “department of war”, the Trump administration’s informal name for the department of defense.
Hannah Natanson
The warrant, she said, was executed “at the home of a Washington Post journalist who was obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor. The leaker is currently behind bars.”
The statement gave no further details of the raid or investigation. Bondi added: “The Trump administration will not tolerate illegal leaks of classified information that, when reported, pose a grave risk to our nation’s national security and the brave men and women who are serving our country.”
The reporter’s home and devices were searched, and her Garmin watch, phone, and two laptop computers, one belonging to her employer, were seized, the newspaper said. It added that agents told Natanson she was not the focus of the probe, and was not accused of any wrongdoing.
A warrant obtained by the Post cited an investigation into Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland with a top secret security clearance who has been accused of accessing and taking home classified intelligence reports.
Natanson, the Post said, covers the federal workforce and has been a part of the newspaper’s “most high-profile and sensitive coverage” during the first year of the second Trump administration.
Democrats are hoping to flip an Alaska Senate seat.
Former Rep. Mary Peltola raked in $1.5 million in the first 24 hours of her bid to unseat GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan in Alaska, a sizable haul to kick off what will likely be a costly battle for Democrats to flip a Senate seat squarely in Trump terrain.
Peltola’s day-one haul was fueled by small-dollar donors from across Alaska, including fisherman, silversmiths and train conductors, according to information her campaign shared first with POLITICO. Ninety-six percent of those contributions were $100 or less.
“In just 24 hours, Alaskans made it clear that we’re ready to put Alaska first,” Peltola said in a statement. “I’m grateful and honored for this incredible support from people who are ready to take on the special interests and DC people and focus on what matters: fish, family, and freedom.”
Former Rep. Mary Petola
Peltola raised more in one day than the roughly $1.2 million that Sullivan brought in over the third quarter of last year, according to federal campaign finance filings. Sullivan had yet to post his fourth-quarter fundraising report as of Tuesday night, but the Republican was sitting on nearly $4.8 million in cash on hand to start the last three months of the year.
Her total was likely padded by messages from prominent Democrats including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), former Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who blasted out emails Monday asking their supporters to split donations between their political arms and Peltola.
Her campaign said it also recruited more than 500 volunteers in its first day.
Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan says she has learned that federal prosecutors are investigating her after she took part in a video urging military service members to resist illegal orders.
Senator Elissa Slotkin
Ms. Slotkin, a Democrat, said in an interview on Monday that she found out about the inquiry from the office of Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and a longtime ally of President Trump’s. In an email sent to the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms, Ms. Pirro’s office requested an interview with the senator or her private counsel.
A spokesman for Ms. Pirro’s office declined to confirm or deny any investigation, and it is unclear exactly what officials have identified as a possible crime related to the video.
Ms. Slotkin organized the video, which Mr. Trump and other administration officials have described as “seditious,” along with five other Democratic lawmakers who are also military veterans. Its message that military officers are obligated to ignore illegal orders is a fundamental principle of military law.
The investigation by Ms. Pirro’s office is the latest escalation in a campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies to exact retribution on those he views as enemies seeking to undermine his administration or his authority as commander in chief.
Tom Tillis isn’t running for reelection, so now he feels free to criticize Trump.
Sen. Thom Tillis is getting some things off his political chest.
The North Carolina Republican, who decided to oppose President Donald Trump’s massive policy bill last summer and not run for reelection this year, has stepped up his criticism of White House advisers and other Republicans whom he accuses of not serving Trump’s best interests.
Senator Tom Tillis
On Sunday night, Tillis leaped out as the first Republican to bash the Justice Department’s investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell. He declared he won’t support any Fed nominees until the central bank’s long-standing independence is fully restored.
That came after Thursday’s significant symbolic victory in getting unanimous Senate support to display a plaque honoring the police who defended the Capitol during the 2021 insurrection, overriding the efforts of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) to keep the plaque hidden.
And last Wednesday, Tillis delivered a more-than-1,500-word stem-winder on the Senate floor denouncing Trump’s advisers for egging him on with the idea that the U.S. military could take over Greenland.
“I am sick of stupid,” Tillis said.
Early Tuesday afternoon, facing questions about the fallout from the Powell investigation, Tillis said his problems are with the Trump advisers who entertain these positions, not the president himself.
“Who on earth believes that the president could possibly have the depth of expertise to make some of these detailed decisions that he’s making? So, of course, it’s his advisers,” Tillis told a group of reporters in an interview just off the Senate floor.
It would have been nice if he’d spoken up sooner, but better late than never.
Those are my recommended read for today. What stories are you following?
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Yesterday was the 5th anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. There were serious efforts to mark the occasion, as well as unserious efforts by the White House to convince Americans to ignore the evidence of their own eyes and ears.
A couple of reads on the significance of the January 6 anniversary:
Five years! Half a decade ago today, Donald Trump summoned his angriest, most loyal fans from across America to Washington, D.C., with a call to arms and a fervent plea: They’re trying to steal the country from us, and they’ll get away with it, unless we stop them. They assembled on the National Mall, their frustration and rage crackling in the air, waiting to be told what to do. Trump whipped them into a frenzy, sent them marching down to the Capitol, and waited.
Last week, an excellent New York Times editorial described the insurrection of January 6th as a riot that never ended—“a turning point, but not the one it first seemed to be.” To some, it felt like an ending, the final, violent death spasms of the cult of Trump—so much so that the Senate Republicans who could have slammed the door on him forever deluded themselves into thinking he would stay gone without their having to lift a finger.
Instead, it proved to be the dawn of Trump’s total liberation. He had stress-tested his own theory of his base: that they would swallow insane, ludicrous election lies simply because he asked them to, would march themselves into felonies because they thought he wanted them to, and would then sit in their jail cells, not disillusioned but unshaken in their faith in him, patiently awaiting the day of his return and their reward. Eventually, they got it.
Ever since, Trump has lived his life in accordance with the lessons he learned that day. There was no act of selfishness or vindictiveness too grotesque for him to survive, provided he kept his people adequately juiced in the belief that their enemies were worse—and provided he could claw his way back to actual, hard power.
So it’s true: We’ve never left the January 6th era. But what’s most staggering is how many people would prefer to pretend we never entered it in the first place. Outside the core of Trump’s zealot base, which celebrates the patriotic heroes of that day, sits a larger faction of more grudging GOP supporters, for whom the Capitol insurrection is an unpleasant memory repressed as a matter of mental hygiene. These people wouldn’t flat-out deny that January 6th happened, but they’ve mentally sequestered its memory and significance, refusing to allow it to force them into any uncomfortable conclusions. They’d laugh you out of the room for suggesting, for instance, that what happened just five years ago could plausibly happen again.
Three years from today, Donald Trump may well find himself in a familiar situation: asked to leave the White House and preferring not to. The strong odds are, of course, that he won’t be on the ballot himself. But if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028, he’ll have far more compelling reasons not to let the transfer of power go ahead smoothly than he ever did in 2020. Back then, it was mostly a matter of arrogance and pride: He simply couldn’t accept that he’d lost to Joe Biden. This time, the personal stakes will be much higher. Wrapped in the powers of the presidency, he’s acted as a law unto himself for too long not to dread going back into private life, where long-delayed legal consequences might be lurking, waiting for him.
We can only hope the Democrats take over the House and Senate and manage to impeach him.
After a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, it appeared the attack would result in a rare moment of reckoning in American politics — at least for a moment. Even hardline GOP politicians had distanced themselves from Trump, then President Joe Biden was in charge and Congress and the Department of Justice were investigating both the attack and the plot to overturn the 2020 election behind it.
Five years later, any accountability, political or legal, that Trump and his allies faced has been erased.
One of Trump’s first acts after assuming office in his second term was to pardon the nearly 1,600 people who had either already been convicted or were awaiting trial for crimes related to Jan. 6. Many of these people had prior criminal records including sexual assault and domestic violence, many were part of far-right organizations like the Proud Boys and many have been charged with additional, unrelated crimes following their release. None of them, however, will have to serve their sentences for storming the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election results and allow Trump to cling to power.
Likewise, Trump has avoided both legal and political accountability. Trump has effectively excised any Republicans willing to stand up to his false claims that the election was stolen from the party. He easily won the GOP nomination for president in 2024, though he faced multiple prosecutions over the plot to overturn the 2020 election, the first coming in the form of his second impeachment, for which he was acquitted. He was later indicted in Georgia, in a state-level racketeering case and again in Washington D.C. on charges of defrauding the U.S. and obstructing an official proceeding. Both cases stalled out in court and were not tried before the 2024 election.
Since winning re-election, any chance of legal accountability for Trump or the rest of the people who crafted the plot to deny the election results has dissolved. Bennet Gershamn, a law professor at Pace University, said that in his opinion, delay tactics from Trump’s lawyers and his victory in the 2024 election are the primary reasons why Trump has been able to escape any legal consequences.
“Trump was able to escape prosecution because he was elected,” Gershman told Salon. “If you want to say that Merrick Garland dragged his feet a little bit, maybe. If you want to say that the prosecution’s investigation took a little bit more time, I don’t know. I was a prosecutor for a long time, and these investigations are very, very complicated … But at the end of the day, the indictments that were handed down were very strong indictments. The evidence was overwhelming.”
Read the rest at Salon.
Trump responded to the anniversary by publishing a pack of outrageous lies.
The White House published a website Tuesday with a false telling of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, underscoring President Donald Trump’s years-long effort to reshape the narrative surrounding the day when a mob of his supporters violently overran the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college victory.
The White House website criticizes Democrats and some Republicans for engaging in what Trump has called a “witch hunt” against him after the Jan. 6 attack. Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury in August 2023 on four criminal counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, in a case investigating his involvement in the Jan. 6 attack and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results….
The White House website also falsely claims — as Trump has for years — that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen,” and that Pence had the power to “return disputed electoral slates to state legislatures for review and decertification” but chose not to “in an act of cowardice and sabotage.”
Pence, who presided over the certification of the electoral votes following the attack, has steadfastly defended his actions on Jan. 6, saying to do otherwise would have been unconstitutional. Trump’s former vice president was inside the Capitol during the attack and had to be evacuated from the Senate floor with his family as rioters stormed the complex. Many in the mob chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” on the misguided belief that Pence could have stopped Congress from certifying Biden’s victory….
The new White House website also repeats a claim made often by Trump and his allies — that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California), who was speaker of the House at the time of the attack, is to blame for “security lapses” at the Capitol. Pelosi has vehemently rejected those accusations, saying again Tuesday that Trump resisted appeals to intervene in the attack for more than three hours.
“For over three hours we begged [Trump] to send the National Guard! He never did it. He took joy in not doing it. He was savoring it. … What he’s saying today is an insult to the American people,” Pelosi said at a Tuesday House event.
Taxpayers’ money paid for Trump lying website.
So much for the past. As usual, Historian Heather Cox Richardson’s commentary on our current situation at Letters from an American is very helpful:
“They say that when you win the presidency you lose the midterm,” President Donald J. Trump said today to House Republicans. “I wish you could explain to me what the hell is going on with the mind of the public because we have the right policy. They don’t. They have a horrible policy. They do stick together. They’re violent, they’re vicious, you know. They’re vicious people.”
“They had the worst policy. How we have to even run against these people—I won’t say cancel the election, they should cancel the election, because the fake news will say, ‘He wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator. Nobody is worse than Obama. And the people that surrounded Biden.”
And there you have it: in a rambling speech in which he jumped from topic to topic, danced, and appeared to mimic someone doing something either stupid or obscene, Trump explained the ideology behind his actions. He and MAGA Republicans have absorbed the last 40 years of Republican rhetoric to believe that Democratic policies are “horrible” and that only Republicans “have the right policy.” If that’s the case, why should Republicans even have to “run against these people?” Why even have elections? When voters choose Democrats, there’s something wrong with them, so why let them have a say? Their choice is bad by definition. Anything that they do, or have done, must be erased.
That is the ideology behind MAGA, amped up by the racism and sexism that identifies MAGA’s opponents as women, Black Americans, and people of color. In their telling, the world Americans constructed after World War II—and particularly after the 1965 Voting Rights Act protected Black and Brown voting—has destroyed the liberty of wealthy men to act without restraint. Free them, the logic goes, and they will Make America Great Again.
Trump with Peter Thiel
As tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel wrote in 2009: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” He continued: “The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”
“Because there are no truly free places left in our world,” he wrote, Thiel called for escaping into cyberspace, outer space, or seasteading.
While tech leaders are focusing on escaping established governments, Trump’s solution to an expanded democracy appears to be to silence the voters and lawmakers who support the “liberal consensus”—the once-bipartisan idea that the government should enable individuals to reach their greatest potential by protecting them from corporate power, poverty, lack of access to modern infrastructure, and discrimination—and to erase the policies of that consensus.
On Trump’s version of January 6 history:
Nowhere does Trump’s conviction that he, and he alone, has the right to run the United States show more clearly than in the White House’s rewriting of the history of the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol were Trump supporters determined to overthrow the free and fair election of Democrat Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes in 2020, replacing him with Trump by virtue of their belief that no Democrat could be fairly elected.
But the official White House website reversed that reality today, claiming that the insurrectionists who beat and wounded at least 140 police officers, smeared feces on the walls of the Capitol building, and called for the hanging of Vice President Mike Pence were “peaceful patriotic protesters.” The real villains, the White House wrote in bold type, were “the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters.”
In reality, modern Republican policies have rarely served everyday people, while the policies enacted by Democratic president Joe Biden demonstrably did. Biden rejected the ideology that called for cutting taxes, regulations, and social services in the name of liberty. Instead, he urged Congress to invest in public infrastructure, creating jobs, and he shored up the social safety net.
Read the rest at the link.
Bill Kristol reacted to Richardson’s piece at The Bulwark: The Spirit of Fascism.
MAGA is a vulgar, cartoonish, cultish, and incoherent movement.
So, a century ago, was fascism.
And as today’s MAGA more openly and explicitly embraces the spirit of yesteryear’s fascism, it’s perhaps worth noting that it is the era of the rise of fascism to which MAGA looks back with nostalgia and yearning.
In her most recent newsletter, the historian Heather Cox Richardson reminds us of this 2009 statement by Peter Thiel, who as much as anyone could be considered the theorist of Trumpism as an intellectual movement.
“I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women . . . have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.”
The first sentence is a bit startling. But there is, to be fair, a long tradition of worrying about various tensions between freedom and democracy. Thiel, one could say, has simply adopted the radically pessimistic view that those tensions can no longer be managed or resolved.
Far more striking is the rest of Thiel’s statement, his yearning for the pre-welfare-state and pre-women’s-franchise 1920s, “the last decade during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics.”
Thiel’s history is not striking just because it is wrong—the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in the summer of 1920, making the general election that fall the first to feature the mass participation of women, though some states had granted women full suffrage even earlier.
It’s striking because we do now know, after all, what followed the decade of the 1920s: A 1930s that featured a worldwide Great Depression, and the rise of fascism—which, while unsuccessful in America, came closer here than we often remember, and was dominant overseas. All of that culminated in the horrors of World War II. The terrible events from 1929 to 1945 followed on—followed from—the economic and foreign policies of the decade for which Thiel is so nostalgic.
Kristol on Stephen Miller:
If Peter Thiel is a MAGA theoretician, Stephen Miller is MAGA’s chief propagandist. On Sunday, in the wake of Trump’s Venezuelan intervention, Miller posted:
“Not long after World War II the West dissolved its empires and colonies and began sending colossal sums of taxpayer-funded aid to these former territories (despite have [sic] already made them far wealthier and more successful). The West opened its borders, a kind of reverse colonization, providing welfare and thus remittances, while extending to these newcomers and their families not only the full franchise but preferential legal and financial treatment over the native citizenry. The neoliberal experiment, at its core, has been a long self-punishment of the places and peoples that built the modern world.”
So Britain and France should not have dissolved empires and colonies, but rather have fought to hold countries like, say, India and Vietnam? And the United States’ openness to immigrants from, say, India and Vietnam, has been an exercise in self-punishment?
Apparently so. On Monday, Miller extended his critique of the modern world, going on television to decry “This whole period that happened after World War II where the West began apologizing and groveling and begging.”
Miller is terrifying.
MILLER: The US is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We're a superpower. It's absurd we'd allow a nation in our backyard to become a supplier of resources to our adversariesTAPPER: Sovereign countries shouldn't be able to do what they want?M: *yells*
Stephen Miller has spent the bulk of his White House career furthering hard-right domestic policies that have resulted in mass deportations, family separations and the testing of the constitutional tenets that grant American citizenship.
Now, Mr. Miller, President Trump’s 40-year-old deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, is casting his hard-right gaze further abroad: toward Venezuela and the Danish territory of Greenland, specifically.
Mr. Miller is doing so, the president’s advisers say, in service of advancing Mr. Trump’s foreign policy ambitions, which so far resemble imperialistic designs to exploit less powerful, resource-rich countries and territories the world over and use those resources for America’s gain. According to Mr. Miller, using brute force is not only on the table but also the Trump administration’s preferred way to conduct itself on the world stage.
“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Mr. Miller told Jake Tapper of CNN on Monday, during a combative appearance in which he was pressed on Mr. Trump’s long-held desire to control Greenland.
“These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time,” he said.
This aggressive posture toward Greenland — and in turn, the rest of the world — is a perfect encapsulation of the raw power that Mr. Trump wants to project, even against Denmark, the NATO ally that controls Greenland. The moment also illustrates how people like Mr. Miller have ascended to the inner circle of a leader who has no interest in having his impulses checked, and how they exert their influence once they arrive there.
The moment also shows just how differently Mr. Trump has operated in his second term from how he did in his first.
About midway through his first term, the president began joking with his aides about his desire to buy Greenland for its natural resources, like coal and uranium. At the time, his advisers humored him with offers to investigate the possibility of buying the semiautonomous territory. They did not think Mr. Trump was serious, or that it could ever actually happen. Those advisers are gone.
Flash forward to the second term. Mr. Miller has the president’s complete trust, a staff of over 40 people, and several big jobs that include protecting the homeland and securing territories further afield. A first-term joke made in passing about purchasing Greenland for its natural resources is now a term-two presidential threat to attack and annex the Danish territory by force if necessary, under the guise of protecting Americans from foreign incursions.
TAPPER: Can you rule out the US is going to take Greenland by force?MILLER: Greenland should be part of the US. By what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? The US is the power of NATOT: So force is on the table?M: Nobody is gonna fight the US militarily over future of Greenland
When a bleary-eyed Trump explained the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro this past Saturday, he invoked the Monroe doctrine: while the US president sounded like he was reading about it for the first time, historians of course recognized the idea of Washington as a kind of guardian of the western hemisphere. Together with the national security strategy published in December, the move on Venezuela can be understood as advancing a vision for carving up the world into what the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt called “great spaces”, with each effectively supervised by a great power (meaning, in today’s world, Washington, Moscow and Beijing). But more is happening than a return to such de facto imperialism: Trump’s promise to “run the country” for the sake of US oil companies signals the internationalization of one aspect of his regime – what has rightly been called the logic of the mafia state. That logic is even more obvious in his stated desire to grab Greenland.
The theory of the mafia state was first elaborated by the Hungarian sociologist Bálint Magyar in 2016. Such a state is less about corruption where envelopes change hands under the table. Instead, public procurement is rigged; large companies are brought under the control of regime-friendly oligarchs, who in turn acquire media to provide favorable coverage to the ruler. The beneficiaries are what Magyar calls the “extended political family” (which can include the ruler’s natural family). As with the mafia, unconditional loyalty is the price for being part of the system.
As so often with Trump 2.0, practices that other regimes try to veil have been unashamedly in the open: the “pausing” of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act signaled that the US is not only open for business but also bribing (be it with a jet or a fake prize from Fifa); not only do pardons appear to be for sale; and not only can companies curry favor by financing a grotesque ballroom – but also the president’s political family, which includes billionaires like Steve Witkoff and Howard Lutnick, seems poised to profit handsomely, including from foreign deals, and now foreign military adventures: according to the investigative reporter Judd Legum, the Trump oligarch Paul Singer, owner of the oil company Citgo, is to set to do very well with a Trump-controlled government in Caracas.
This does not mean that the US’s “special military operation” in Venezuela is entirely a matter of “it’s the oil, stupid”; there is an argument that it helps push back against Iran, China and Russia (even if the precedent that killing 40 people and kidnapping sets also legitimizes interventions by other powers, as those lamenting the weakening of international law have rightly pointed out). There is also the old-style neoconservative justification for removing a tyrant from power, something that the former self of Marco Rubio, before bending the knee, would have favored – though leaving a decapitated regime in place has made talk of democracy and human rights protection a tad implausible. But the point is not regime change, as long as a regime is fine with Trumpian exploitation. The alternative is extortion: if the US oil companies get “total access”, the rulers of what is also a mafia state of sorts can stay in place; if not, it’s a bigger boss talking to a minor boss along the lines of: “Nice country you have there; pity if we had to do a full-scale invasion.”
Read the rest for an exploration of Trump’s Greenland obsession.
That’s it for me today. What’s on your mind?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
On Friday morning, about 100 clergy members were arrested at a peaceful sit-in at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport protesting deportation flights. Labor leaders said more than 15,600 people had claimed tickets to the 2 p.m. march in Minneapolis — where the National Weather Service warned of minus-50 degree wind chill through Sunday morning.
Those who saw the federal agents detain Liam Tuesday pushed back against claims this week by ICE and Vice President JD Vance that the child was abandoned by his family after the boy and his father, Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias, were detained on their way home from school.
Images of the episode drew millions of views online, made the front page of The Minnesota Star Tribune and elicited blistering condemnation from local officials.
“People are afraid,” Portland City Councilor Pious Ali told the Globe after leaving a mosque following a Friday prayer service in the city’s Bayside neighborhood. “There’s fear, there’s anxiety. There’s a feeling of not knowing what’s going to happen next.”
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