As usual, there is just too much news for anyone to deal with. I’m going to focus on the death of a great newspaper, the torture of an American city, the efforts of a vain and ignorant “president” to grab power and steal elections, and his obsession with building monstrosities. Here’s what’s happening.
The Washington Post told employees on Wednesday that it was beginning a widespread round of layoffs that are expected to decimate the organization’s sports, local news and international coverage.
The company is laying off about 30 percent of all its employees, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. That includes people on the business side and more than 300 of the roughly 800 journalists in the newsroom, the people said.
The cuts are a sign that Jeff Bezos, who became one of the world’s richest people by selling things on the internet, has not yet figured out how to build and maintain a profitable publication on the internet. The paper expanded during the first several years of his ownership, but the company has sputtered more recently.
Matt Murray, The Post’s executive editor, said on a call Wednesday morning with newsroom employees that the company had lost too much money for too long and had not been meeting readers’ needs. He said that all sections would be affected in some way, and that the result would be a publication focused even more on national news and politics, as well as business and health, and far less on other areas.
“If anything, today is about positioning ourselves to become more essential to people’s lives in what is becoming more crowded, competitive and complicated media landscape,” Mr. Murray said. “And after some years when, candidly, The Post has had struggles.”
Mr. Murray further explained the rationale in an email, saying The Post was “too rooted in a different era, when we were a dominant, local print product” and that online search traffic, partly because of the rise of generative A.I., had fallen by nearly half in the last three years. He added that The Post’s “daily story output has substantially fallen in the last five years.”
“Even as we produce much excellent work, we too often write from one perspective, for one slice of the audience,” he said.
The Post’s sports section will close, though some of its reporters will stay on and move to the features department to cover the culture of sports. The Post’s metro section will shrink, and the books section will close, as will the “Post Reports” daily news podcast.
Mr. Murray told the staff that while The Post’s international coverage also would be reduced, reporters would remain in nearly a dozen locations. Reporters and editors in the Middle East were laid off, as well as in India and Australia.
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of The Washington Post, and Will Lewis, the publisher he appointed at the end of 2023, are embarking on the latest step of their plan to kill everything that makes the paper special. The Post has survived for nearly 150 years, evolving from a hometown family newspaper into an indispensable national institution, and a pillar of the democratic system. But if Bezos and Lewis continue down their present path, it may not survive much longer.
Over recent years, they’ve repeatedly cut the newsroom—killing its Sunday magazine, reducing the staff by several hundred, nearly halving the Metro desk—without acknowledging the poor business decisions that led to this moment or providing a clear vision for the future. This morning, executive editor Matt Murray and HR chief Wayne Connell told the newsroom staff in an early-morning virtual meeting that it was closing the Sports department and Books section, ending its signature podcast, and dramatically gutting the International and Metro departments, in addition to staggering cuts across all teams. Post leadership—which did not even have the courage to address their staff in person—then left everyone to wait for an email letting them know whether or not they had a job. (Lewis, who has already earned a reputation for showing up late to work when he showed up at all, did not join the Zoom.)
The Post may yet rise, but this will be their enduring legacy.
Ashley Parker
What’s happening to the Post is a public tragedy, but for me, it is also very personal. When my parents’ basement recently flooded, amid the waterlogged boxes of old photos and vinyl records, we found my younger sister’s baby book. There, on a page reserved for memories from the month she was born—news about visits from doting grandparents, perhaps, or descriptions of her mewling gurgles—my dad had filled the lines with news from our hometown paper, The Washington Post.
“Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).” “Irangate.” “The Bork nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.” “The NFL went on strike.” “Wall Street had the worst day since 1929!!!” “The U.S. was having a garbage crisis, i.e.; running out of disposal sites, esp. in the northeast.” (To be fair, he worked in waste management. But also … welcome to the world, Baby Girl!)
Which is to say: The Washington Post feels like a part of my family’s DNA, imprinted on our earliest memories, memorialized among clippings of our hair and other, more traditional, recollections (first diaper blowout, first word)….
The Post was also how I fell in love with journalism. Every newspaper lover has the section they read first—Sports, Comics, Metro—and mine was Style. The section, which debuted in 1969, was like nothing that had come before it, or what has come since: a newspaper that gave its writers the time and space and freedom and voice to produce narrative long-form journalism that was must-read, holding its own against the New Journalism magazine greats of the era. And for me, it was a chance to commune with giants—to read people such as Libby Copeland, Robin Givhan, Paul Hendrickson, Sally Quinn, David Von Drehle, Gene Weingarten, Marjorie Williams—and puzzle over how they’d done it.
Then, in 2017, I arrived at the Post as a reporter to cover the Trump White House, and I stayed for eight magical years. I had planned to stay forever. So what is happening at the Post right now—what has been happening there for a while—is personal. But it is also so much larger than me or any single person.
The least cynical explanation is that Bezos simply isn’t paying attention. Maybe—like so many of us initially—he was charmed by Lewis’s British accent and studied loucheness that mask an emperor whose bespoke threads are no clothes at all. Or maybe, as many of us who deeply love the Post fear, the decimation is the plan.
Bezos is killing the Post. I’m not sure if he just wants it to die or he wants it to become a propaganda arm of the Trump adminisration.
The morning her father called to say that he had been detained on a snowy Minneapolis road, Xochitl Soberanes was seized by an urgent and inescapable feeling. At 16 years old and the eldest of four, she would suddenly have to become the backbone of the family.
Their mother had died of pneumonia less than a year ago, so it was Xochitl who convinced her 4-year-old brother that their father was working late as they packed up belongings to go stay with a nearby aunt. That January night, a cousin found all four siblings curled up asleep in the same queen bed — cradled by Xochitl, who lay on the edge.
“We just wanted to be close together,” she said.
Xochitl cut her younger siblings’ breakfast into bite-size pieces.Credit…Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
For weeks, the Minneapolis area has been a landscape of intense turmoil as federal immigration agents face off against furious citizens. But there is a quieter upheaval taking place behind closed doors as the city’s youngest residents attempt to grasp the altering of their neighborhoods, their schools, their sense of security.
Regardless of what they might understand about the politics embedded in their surroundings, some things are clear: The adults in their lives are weary and overwhelmed. Neighbors are scared to leave the house. Bomb threats have been called in to schools. Events have been canceled. Friends are missing from classrooms. And parents have been taken.
“I was just thinking, ‘What are we going to do without him?’” Xochitl said about the day her father, Victor, did not come home. She began to insist to her aunt that she could finish her final exams and be available to help with her siblings. Within a week, her friend, a U.S. citizen, was also detained and later released.“It’s like living in fear all the time,” Xochitl said.
It is a sentiment that many children in the area speak of — this fear that now feels innate and will continue to linger in ways they cannot yet comprehend. They live in a world where a barrage of honks and whistles signal that immigration agents are in their midst, and that something bad could happen soon.
It is not unusual for them to see agents dressed in riot gear and carrying rifles stationed on their streets. And those who have found themselves swept up unwillingly into altercations have been left to endure the aftereffects.
Tom Homan, the White House border czar, said on Wednesday that the federal government would immediately withdraw 700 law enforcement officers from Minneapolis, scaling down the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the area.
Tom Homan
The change comes after the Trump administration sent thousands of federal officers and agents to Minnesota, a deployment that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said was the agency’s “largest operation to date.” About 2,000 officers and agents would be left in the state, Mr. Homan said.
Tom Homan, the White House border czar, said on Wednesday that the federal government would immediately withdraw 700 law enforcement officers from Minneapolis, scaling down the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the area.
The change comes after the Trump administration sent thousands of federal officers and agents to Minnesota, a deployment that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said was the agency’s “largest operation to date.” About 2,000 officers and agents would be left in the state, Mr. Homan said.
“This is smart law enforcement, not less law enforcement,” he added.
I’ll believe that when I see it.
Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, a Democrat, said in a statement that the reduction in officers was “a step in the right direction” but that 2,000 federal officers in the region was still “not de-escalation.”
“My message to the White House has been consistent — Operation Metro Surge has been catastrophic for our businesses and residents. It needs to end immediately,” he said, referring to the name of the federal crackdown in the city.
Mr. Homan also emphasized that immigration officers would focus on more targeted enforcement operations that prioritize arresting criminals who pose public safety threats. Last week, Mr. Homan said that was “the way we’ve always done it,” but that “we got away from it a little bit.”
Still, he said that any immigrants residing in the country illegally would not be exempt from enforcement operations.
“If you are in the country illegally, you are not off the table,” Mr. Homan said.
“I want to see elections be honest, and if a state can’t run an election, I think the people behind me should do something about it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office after signing legislation to end a partial government shutdown, with Republican lawmakers surrounding him.
“Because if you think about it, a state is an agent for the federal government in elections,” the president continued. “I don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do ’em anyway.”
He added, “But when you see some of these states, about how horribly they run their elections, what a disgrace it is, I think the federal government [should get involved].”
“The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting in at least 15 places,’” Trump said. “The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
In the Oval Office on Tuesday, the president referenced Detroit, Philadelphia and Atlanta — all Democratic-run cities — as places where “horrible corruption on elections” is occurring.
President Trump’s declaration that he wants to “nationalize” voting in the United States arrives at a perilous moment for the relationship between the federal government and top election officials across the country.
While the executive branch has no explicit authority over elections, generations of secretaries of state have relied on the intelligence gathering and cybersecurity defenses, among other assistance, that only the federal government can provide.
But as Mr. Trump has escalated efforts to involve the administration in election and voting matters while also eliminating programs designed to fortify these systems against attacks, secretaries of state and other top state election officials, including some Republican ones, have begun to sound alarms. Some see what was once a crucial partnership as frayed beyond repair.
They point to Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election, his continued false claims that the contest was rigged, the presence of election deniers in influential government positions and his administration’s attempts to dig up evidence of widespread voter fraud that year, even though none have ever been found.
The worry, these election officials say, is that Mr. Trump and his allies might try to interfere in or cast doubt on this year’s midterm elections. The president is urgently trying to defend the Republican majorities in Congress, and the political environment has appeared to grow less friendly to his party.
Of all the threats we face, the threat that Donald Trump will use ICE and Border {atrol agents to suppress the vote calls for a response by the Senate in the pending budget bill. By word and deed, Trump has shown an intent to do all he can to subvert a free and fair election this November. He must be stopped.
Who would bet $5 that Donald Trump, the man who staged an attempted coup and urged a Governor to “find” 11,000 votes, is not going to interfere with the ability of Americans to cast their votes this November? Who thinks that his “moral code,” the only thing that he says restricts him, will prevent him from using his massive ICE private army from suppressing the vote in Democratic precincts? Who thinks Steve Bannon is kidding when he says Trump will use federal agents to screen voters?
Donald Trump represents the largest threat to free and fair voting in American history since Jim Crow. He has demonstrated time and again, his willingness to subvert our democratic norms. His recent extortion note to Minnesota and his seizure of Georgia ballots are clarion calls for action to stop him from using ICE to suppress the vote.
Think about the private voter suppression army he has entirely at his disposal, an organization purportedly in existence to deal with immigration, but which could be used for Trump’s best survival tool, the suppression of votes in Democratic precincts in competitive districts and states.
Unless something changes, what we have seen in Minneapolis is just the harbinger to the use of ICE and the Border Patrol as a massive and strategically planned voter suppression campaign, surrounding polling places with intimidating federal agents.
By separating the Homeland Security budget from the rest, the dedicated Senate Democrats now have a chance to put roadblocks in Trump’s path.
Fulton County in Georgia took legal action on Wednesday demanding that the federal government return ballots and other election materials from the 2020 presidential contest that the F.B.I. seized last week.
The motion was filed under seal in federal court in Georgia, according to Jessica Corbitt, a spokeswoman for Fulton County. The motion also seeks the unsealing of the affidavit that was filed in support of the search warrant that allowed F.B.I. agents to conduct an extraordinary search of the county’s election headquarters.
At a news conference on Wednesday morning, Robb Pitts, the chair of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, cast the legal action as a means of upholding the Constitution, as well as the rights of Fulton County voters.
“We will fight using all resources against those who seek to take over our elections,” he said. “Our Constitution itself is at stake in this fight.”
The move follows a chaotic week in Fulton County, which includes much of Atlanta and is Georgia’s most populous county, after F.B.I. agents conducted an extraordinary search and took away pallets of ballots and other materials.
Local officials were particularly alarmed and confused by the presence of Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, whose agency’s involvement in elections traditionally pertains only to foreign influence. The day after the search, she met with some of the agents who had participated and called Mr. Trump on her cellphone, The New York Times reported on Monday. After initially not picking up, he called back and spoke to them on speakerphone, asking them questions and praising and thanking them, according to three people with knowledge of the meeting.
President Donald Trump is planning to install a statue of Christopher Columbus on White House grounds, according to three people with knowledge of the pending move,in his latest effort to remake the presidential campus and celebrate the famed and controversial explorer.
In 2020, demonstrators targeted monuments deemed symbols of racism, colonialism, and oppression.
The statue is set to be located on the south side of the grounds, by E Street and north of the Ellipse, two of the people said, although they cautioned that plans could change. The three people spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak on private discussions. The piece is a reconstruction of a statue unveiled in Baltimore by then-President Ronald Reagan and dumped in the city’s harbor by protestersin 2020 as a racial reckoning swept the country.
A group of Italian American businessmen and politicians, working with local sculptors, obtained the destroyed pieces and rebuilt the statue with financial support from local charities and federal grant funding.
Bill Martin, an Italian American businessman who helped recover the remnants of the original sculpture and organize a campaign to rebuild it, said the statue is expected to be transferred from a warehouse on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to the Trump administration in coming weeks.
The White House declined to comment on its plans but praised the 15th-century explorer.
“In this White House, Christopher Columbus is a hero,” spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement. “And he will continue to be honored as such by President Trump.
Trump celebrated his $400 million project on social media, posting that it will be the “Greatest of its kind ever built!!”
A rendering of President Donald Trump’s ‘New East Wing’ at the White House, including his nearly 90,000 square foot ballroom (The White House)
He wrote on Truth Social Tuesday that the new building “replaces the very small, dilapidated, and rebuilt many times, East Wing, with a magnificent New East Wing.” He also said that the new structure will be taller than the White House’s Executive Mansion.
“If you notice, the North Wall is a replica of the North Facade of the White House,” he wrote in the post.
The new rendering is generally similar to previous drawings of the upcoming ballroom shared by Trump.
The ballroom is projected to be approximately 90,000 square feet, and the attached “New East Wing” complex will include a new office for the First Lady, a new movie theater, and a commercial kitchen.
Trump’s decision to demolish the historic East Wing for a ritzy ballroom has been met with severe criticism, particularly from historic preservationists.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued the Trump administration in December in an effort to force the president to submit his plans for the ballroom to several review bodies, including Congress and the public. The lawsuit asked a court to pause his construction project until those demands are met.
Construction at the site has not been ordered to stop and Trump’s Department of Justice is moving to try to ensure that doesn’t change.
A DOJ filing on Monday asked a federal judge overseeing the lawsuit to stay any injunction into the construction over alleged “national security” concerns, ABC News reports.
That’s all I have for today. I hope you find something of interest here.
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I’m going to focus on the immigration fight today. So much is happening in Minnesota and now in Maine. The murder of Alex Pretti has raised people’s consciousness in the public and even in Congress. The protests are working. I’m not kidding myself that Trump’s attempts to calm the federal government rhetoric are really sincere, but he seems to feel he needs to fake some semblance of compassion if only for a short time.
Federal immigration officers have been collecting personal information about protesters and agitators in Minneapolis, sources told CNN – and had documented details about Alex Pretti before he was shot to death on Saturday.
It is unclear how Pretti first came to the attention of federal authorities, but sources told CNN that about a week before his death, he suffered a broken rib when a group of federal officers tackled him while he was protesting their attempt to detain other individuals….
A memo sent earlier this month to agents temporarily assigned to the city asked them to “capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form,” according to correspondence reviewed by CNN.
Pretti’s previous encounter is another reflection of the aggressive approach federal agents are taking with observers and protesters – a philosophy underscored by the request for agents to collect information about protesters whose activities are broadly protected by the First Amendment.
DHS has repeatedly warned of threats against federal law enforcement officers during immigration enforcement operations—and criticized protesters who they argue are impeding those operations. On Tuesday, the department also publicized an online tip form to share information about people allegedly harassing ICE officers….
The earlier incident started when he stopped his car after observing ICE agents chasing what he described as a family on foot, and began shouting and blowing his whistle, according to a source who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution.
Pretti later told the source that five agents tackled him and one leaned on his back – an encounter that left him with a broken rib. The agents quickly released him at the scene.
“That day, he thought he was going to die,” said the source.
Pretti was later given medication consistent with treating a broken rib, according to records reviewed by CNN.
“That day, he thought he was going to die,” Yet he went back out to observe ICE agents and help immigrants.
The two Border Patrol agents who subdued, punched, and fatally shot Veterans Affairs ICU nurse Alex Pretti have been placed on administrative leave, according to multiple reports.
The paid leave will only last three days, an anonymous official told MS NOW. An unnamed Homeland Security official claimed to The New York Times that the placement was “standard protocol.”
MS Now reported that those involved in the brutal killing will return to “desk duty” after three days, not field work. The report added that the two agents who opened fire at Pretti received “mental health support” after killing the 37-year-old in Minneapolis on Saturday morning.
Now Trump is pretending to “de-escalate.” I don’t buy it for one minute. It won’t last.
The government’s account of the killing on Saturday of Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen with no criminal record, was unraveling. Stephen Miller, the mastermind of President Trump’s hard-line immigration policy, had called Mr. Pretti a “terrorist” and told other administration officials, including Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, to call him an “assassin.”
But videos clearly contradicted that story. Mr. Pretti was pinned down when immigration agents opened fire and killed him. Protests and a palpable sense of outrage were growing across the country. Even the president’s allies were alarmed. Many of them wanted to see changes on the ground, and several made a recommendation directly in calls to the president: Send Tom Homan, the White House border czar, to Minneapolis.
Early Monday, Brian Kilmeade, the co-host of “Fox & Friends,” of which Mr. Trump is a loyal viewer, repeated the message three times in two hours.
Twenty minutes later, the president announced on social media that he was sending Mr. Homan to Minneapolis, a tacit acknowledgment that he was losing control of a situation that posed one of the most serious political threats of his second administration.
Gregory Bovino, a Border Patrol official who had been directing on-the-ground operations in Minneapolis, and who was known for aggressive tactics, was out. “Bovino is pretty good, but he’s a pretty out-there kind of guy,” Mr. Trump told Fox News. “Maybe it wasn’t good here.”
And while there is no sign that Mr. Trump is repudiating the tactics used by the federal agents in Minnesota or the core tenets of his immigration policies, the moment was a rare example of the president moving to mitigate the harsh optics associated with a crackdown his administration has otherwise celebrated.
A bit more:
Mr. Trump has honed a survival tactic over many years facing criticism in the public eye: He creates diversions to barrel from one news cycle into the next. But in other moments, when he has faced particularly intense — and politically damaging — public outcry, he has taken stock of news coverage and decided to take a different tack, often temporarily.
Mr. Pretti’s killing and its aftermath created one of those moments. And Mr. Trump seemed to realize in this case that his message, at least, had to change. Shortly after he made the announcement about Mr. Homan, Mr. Trump and his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, softened their tone about the shooting and distanced themselves from the incendiary comments made by Mr. Miller, Mr. Bovino and Ms. Noem. Mr. Trump also said he spoke with Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, whom he had castigated only days before.
And as the White House walks back some of its harshest statements, a blame game of sorts has erupted, with Mr. Miller suggesting immigration authorities in Minneapolis may not have been following protocol.
In a statement, Mr. Miller said the White House had advised Customs and Border Protection officials to create a “physical barrier” between “arrest teams” and “disrupters.”
“We are evaluating why the C.B.P. team may not have been following that protocol,” said Mr. Miller, who just days earlier had called Mr. Pretti a “would-be assassin.”
It remains to be seen if the rhetorical shift will tamp down the outcry or if there is any will inside the Trump administration to change tactics on the ground. Mr. Homan, a longtime ICE official, is seen among Mr. Trump’s allies as someone who could bring a measure of calm to the chaos in Minnesota, particularly because he has called for targeted arrests instead of sweeping raids. But he is fully on board with Mr. Trump’s mass deportation campaign; in 2018, he, along with two senior officials, recommended a policy that eventually led to families being separated at the southern border.
Homan was the architect of the family separation policy in Trump’s first term. He’s also on video accepting a $50,000 bribe. I’m not holding my breath expecting him to be a peacemaker.
The media verdict is in: President Trump has “softened” his stance on his paramilitary war on Minneapolis. He struck a “cooperative tone” in a call with Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz. The administration hopes to “shift its strategy” on its ICE raids. Trump is executing a “pivot” and is attempting to “deescalate.”
You get the idea: Trump is chastened by the backlash to the ICE murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. So he’s now recalibrating the government’s approach in an effort to appear to dial down the violent social conflict that’s been unleashed.
Tom Homan and Kristy Noam
So let’s stipulate some threshold questions: Will any of this change how ICE is actually conducting its operations in American cities that fundamentally do not want ICE’s presence among their populations? Is Trump reversing the underlying reality of these operations—that they have become akin to military occupations of enemy territory within the American nation? Will there be serious governmental efforts to investigate those shootings, mete out accountability for them, and address what went wrong?
The answers to those questions sure look like “no,” “no,” and “no.” To wit, The Wall Street Journalreports that some Trump aides have realized that all this has become a “political liability,” so they’re in discussions over “how to continue deportations without clashing with protesters.” They’re also planning new steps to “improve ICE’s image.”
Meanwhile, The New York Timesreports that Trump met with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for two hours amid “concern” about the shootings. But Noem’s job is safe. Trump has replaced the public face of the Minneapolis occupation, removing Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino, who swaggers around these scenes of occupation like a conquering general, with border czar Tom Homan, who swaggers around on Fox News like a conquering general.
Note the problem here. Trump does apparently want to minimize clashes between government security services and protesters. But he doesn’t appear to want those heavily armed government militias to stop doing the things that are causing those clashes in the first place.
What’s really going on here is this: Trump is looking to defuse anger among congressional Democrats for purposes that don’t portend a meaningful shift. An administration official gave away the game to Punchbowl News, admitting that these “de-escalatory measures” are about placating Senate Democrats so they don’t seize this moment to demand restrictions on ICE as part of any government funding package.
I don’t think that is going to work. Democrats in the Senate at least seem to be getting the message that the majority of the public doesn’t like what’s happening.
ICE Barbie has passed the blame to Stephen Miller after she received calls to be fired in response to immigration officials killing another U.S. citizen, multiple sources told Axios.
“Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and Stephen,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told one source who relayed her comments to Axios.
In an earlier copy of the Axios report, others blamed Miller for divisive comments about slain anti-ICE protestor Alex Pretti wanting to “massacre law enforcement,” which were made by Border Patrol senior official Greg Bovino.
Miller denied the blame placed upon him for the “massacre” statement, instead deflecting the fault to information provided by Customs and Border Protection, which is under Noem’s Department of Homeland Security.
“Any early comments made were based on information sent to the White House through CBP,” he told the outlet.
President Trump’s shakeup in Minnesota immigration operations in the wake of two fatal shootings is “a disaster” for Kristi Noem, sources have told the Daily Beast.
Kristy Noam and Cory Lewandowski
Trump, 79, announced Monday that border czar Tom Homan, 64, will now run the embattled Minnesota operation and report directly to him. He did so amid rising public anger over the brutal and deadly manner in which operations have been carried out on Noem’s watch under her Border Patrol “commander-at-large” Gregory Bovino, who has been shown the door by the president.
For months, senior officials have griped that Homeland Security Secretary Noem, 54, and her chief adviser and rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski, 52, built a parallel power structure around Bovino, 55. This, they say, marginalized ICE and cut Homan out of key calls as Noem and Homan both fought to lead Trump’s mass deportation drive.
With Homan now tapped to take the reins in Minnesota, administration insiders say it doesn’t bode well for Noem’s job prospects. “Homan taking control is a disaster for Noem,” one Department of Homeland Security source said, adding that Homan was likely to be everything that the publicity-obsessed Noem and Bovino were not.
Meanwhile, ICE is ramping up it’s operation in Maine.
As a snowstorm blanketed the region, the Department of Homeland Security said Monday that federal agents have so far arrested more than 200 people in the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration operation in Maine.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has dubbed its operation “Catch of the Day,” the latest in the administration’s immigration crackdowns across the country.
On Monday, the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project of Maine, the largest organization of its kind in the state, called for ICE to stop its operation, while also sending condolences to their counterparts in Minneapolis.
“There are not adequate words to describe how difficult the past week has been,” ILAP’s Executive Director Sue Roche said.“We are seeing mostly people in lawful immigration processes with no criminal records being arrested. Many have been racially profiled and abducted from their cars off the street, and some have been targeted at home. ICE is stalking grocery stores and schools. The lack of due process or humanity in this enforcement operation is appalling.”
The group added that it is leading a legal effort to file emergency habeas petitions and seek bond hearings “to try to secure the freedom of Maine residents swept up in the ICE operation.” As of Monday, ILAP said, it has received requests for emergency legal help from more than 60 people arrested in the operation, and federal judges have issued at least eight emergency orders blocking ICE from transferring individuals out of the area.
BIDDEFORD, Maine — Five-year-old Keyli Camila Espin Vaca expected her mother to come pick her up after school on Friday, just as she always did.
But her mother never came.
Mayra Vaca Latacunga, 25, had dropped Camila off at the Biddeford Primary School that morning, then went to get groceries. Soon after, ICE agents stopped her car and requested her documentation, her brother said. She didn’t have it. The agents handcuffed her and transferred her to Massachusetts.
Camila sat for a photo with her aunt and uncle, after Camila’s mother was detained by ICE in Biddeford, Maine.Finn Gomez for the Boston Globe
Vaca Latacunga, a single mother from Ecuador, was Camila’s sole caretaker. On Friday, school officials escorted the kindergartner to her Uncle Javier’s house. She stayed there for several days, pleading for her mom.
“Quiero mi mamá, tío,” Camila said in Spanish on Sunday. “Yo quiero estar con mi mamá.”
“I want my mom, uncle . . . I want to be with my mom.”
Camila is among a growing number of children who have been left without a parent as the Trump administration carries out a major immigration enforcement effort in Maine, according to local officials. “Operation Catch of the Day,” as the Department of Homeland Security calls it, is meant to arrest around 1,400 people. They have arrested more than 200 so far, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement Monday to the Globe….
On Tuesday morning, a few hours after the Globe published this article, ICE released Vaca Latacunga in Massachusetts with an ankle monitor, according to Javier. The family was fearful to pick her up because of their legal status, so Vaca Latacunga was in a waiting room at the Burlington field office until the family found an Uber to take her back to Maine. On Tuesday afternoon, she was reunited with Camila.
SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — When Fátima Lucas Henrique left home before 6 a.m. last Friday to head to her shift as a certified nursing assistant, it was with a sense of resolve. She had come to the United States from Angola, and pursued a career as a nurse so she could help people and make a difference. The ongoing immigration crackdown in the state wasn’t going to change that.
Fátima Lucas Henrique moved to Maine over two years ago from Angola. She was arrested in South Portland on Friday when heading to work.David Fonseca
Then came the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, rushing to her and forcing her from her car as onlookers honked their horns and shouted for help. Her terrified, piercing screamsthroughout the arrest, captured in a video widely circulated on social media, confirmed the fears and panic that many here worried would take hold once federal agents arrived. Since the arrest, Henrique has been detained in Boston and not been able to communicate at length with friends or family.
“We’re not safe right now. We can’t go grocery shopping. We can’t even go put the trash out without being afraid,” said a close friend of Henrique, who asked to not be identified because of her immigration status. When she first saw the video, the friend said, she recognized Henrique’s desperation, because it could have been her. “I felt so impotent,” said the friend, who also came to Maine from Angola and has been following the legal process for applying for citizenship.
The arrest has been held up as an example over recent days of the sort of strong-arm tactics by agents that immigrant-rights advocates have been watching for, as they embark on a campaign to monitor and document an immigration enforcement operation that began in Maine last week and that continues today.
A bit more:
Over the last several weeks, in anticipation of the surge, a team of activists has been training people on what to look out for, preparing them to deploy with whistles and car horns to warn immigrants and to monitor the agents’ tactics. And they said they are already seeing it: The apprehension of people while still in their vehicles, seemingly based on racial profiling; the patrols of bus stops; the arrest of people with no criminal background who are pursuing immigration legally.
The attorney general’s office has also urged Mainers to send in reports of intimidating and excessive federal enforcement behavior, in response to “evidence of constitutionally-deficient, excessive, and intimidating enforcement tactics” in the state.
DHS has maintained it is going after people with criminal histories, though advocates say many of those taken into custody have no criminal backgrounds at all. And they say Henrique’s case has resonated widely because of the rawness of her screams and because she, also, is not a criminal.
A search of the Maine criminal history record information request service returned no results for Henrique. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment Monday about her case.
So that’s the latest on ICE in Minnesota and Maine. Here in Massachusetts, we are wonder if we’ll be next.
What do you think? What else is on your mind?
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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 was the plan all along. Authoritarianism has arrived and is on full display. Can’t wait to hear the “this is what I voted for” crowd crying when they are executed on the streets protesting the confiscation of their guns. But hey, there are no men in women’s sports!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Yet another start to a week in the cruel and vulture-ridden world of Donny J. His obsession with his own self-interest continues to plague the country with problems we don’t need, didn’t ask for, and most of us know they ruin our way of life. The most ridiculous aspect is that all these grudges have evolved into bizarre legal actions, which have been disrupting nearly every process and institution that we rely on. Today, stocks are falling because Trump just has to have someone to blame for his rotten economy.
Richard Nixon FAFO’d with the Fed back in the 1970s and learned exactly how international financial and monetary markets are massively disrupted by politicians meddling with these markets. This is a journal article that you can read if you’d like. (How Richard Nixon Pressured Arthur Burns: Evidence from the Nixon Tapes, Burton A. Abrams, Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 20, no. 4, Fall 2006.)
A more updated analysis can be found at NPR. This is from February 2025. “What happened when Richard Nixon wanted more control over interest rates? This is a tale of a president pressuring the head of the central bank for political reasons. Burns fights it, then capitulates, and it lays the foundation for later inflation.” I lived through this as I was actually studying to be an economist. It has significantly shaped many of my perspectives on why politicians should refrain from certain functions. I can also offer testimony that everyone — including me at one time — who has worked for the Fed holds Fed independence as a sacred trust to the American People.
Whether the Federal Reserve raises, lowers or maintains baseline interest rates is one of the most important economic decisions it makes. And that decision is made outside of presidential control, at least theoretically. Kenny Malone and Mary Childs from our Planet Money podcast had the story of what happened when one president wanted more control over interest rates.
MARY CHILDS, BYLINE: In 1971, President Richard Nixon began secretly recording basically everything.
KENNY MALONE, BYLINE: Thirty-three years later, virtually all of those tapes were publicly available.
BURTON ABRAMS: Well, everyone else was interested in Watergate. I was interested in monetary policy.
CHILDS: Economist Burton Abrams drove down to the National Archives.
ABRAMS: They were available on reels, and then you had to put on earphones and try to make out the garbled conversations that existed.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RICHARD NIXON: Arthur, how are you? (Inaudible).
CHILDS: Arthur, how are you? Nixon says to Arthur Burns, chairman of the Federal Reserve.
MALONE: Nixon was one year away from reelection, and unemployment had been rising.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
NIXON: So this will be the last conservative administration in Washington.
MALONE: This will be the last conservative administration in Washington.
CHILDS: Nixon seems to tell his Fed chair to let more money flow through the economy, which generally helps unemployment but risks inflation.
MALONE: Arthur Burns seems to push back and also seems to tap on the table to make this point.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ARTHUR BURNS: I don’t want to see interest rates exploding (inaudible).
ABRAMS: Burns is making an appeal to Nixon that he doesn’t want to stimulate anymore. He’s still holding out. Yep.
MALONE: So I assume Nixon is not super jazzed about that meeting.
ABRAMS: No, so I suspect that behind the scenes, pressure is still to give Nixon the monetary policy he wants.
MALONE: According to Arthur Burns’ personal diary, he was warned that White House operatives had their bayonets out for him and that Nixon was threatening to pack the Fed board and completely take control.
Economist Mark Zahn explains it all. This is from ABC. “Stocks fall after Trump’s DOJ opens criminal probe into Fed Chair Powell. Powell rebuked the probe as an effort to undermine the Fed’s independence.” It’s not nice to fool your major donors. We continue the Magical Misery tower with whatever this brand of “conservatism” claims to be. Republicans only want the government out of business when it suits them.
Stocks slid in early trading on Monday hours after reports that the Department of Justice had opened a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell centered on the central bank leader’s remarks to Congress about an office renovation project.
Powell, who was appointed by Trump in 2017, issued a rare video message rebuking the investigation as a politically motivated effort to influence the Fed’s interest rate policy.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 290 points, or 0.6%, while the S&P 500 fell 0.4%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq declined 0.3%.
Gold and silver — safe-haven assets often seen as a hedge against the stock market — moved higher on Monday.
The selloff on Monday also appeared to include reaction to a social media post from President Donald Trump advocating for a 10% cap on credit card interest rates for one year. Shares of several major banks fell in early trading.
The DOJ’s criminal probe follows a monthslong influence campaign undertaken by Trump as he has frequently slammed the Fed for what he considers a reluctance to significantly reduce interest rates.
The criminal probe appears to center on allegations of false remarks made by Powell about a renovation of the Fed’s headquarters during a congressional hearing in June.
Trump has repeatedly denounced Powell for alleged overspending tied to the central bank’s $2.5 billion renovation project. The Fed attributes spending overruns to unforeseen cost increases, saying that its building renovation will ultimately “reduce costs over time by allowing the Board to consolidate most of its operations,” according to the central bank’s website.
Federal law allows the president to remove the Fed chair for “cause” — though no president has ever done so. Powell’s term as chair is set to expire in May, but he can remain on the Fed’s policymaking board until 2028. Powell has not indicated whether he intends to remain on the board.
It’s sincerely hypocritical to me to watch a convicted and well-known lifetime felon try to trump up charges on some of the most ethical government servants we’ve ever had. Powell has released a statement through the usual Fed channels.
I have deep respect for the rule of law and for accountability in our democracy. No one—certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve—is above the law. But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration’s threats and ongoing pressure.
This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings. It is not about Congress’s oversight role; the Fed through testimony and other public disclosures made every effort to keep Congress informed about the renovation project. Those are pretexts. The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.
This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions—or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.
No rational, studied, normal economist would disagree with his statements. However, sell-outs for money, power, and greed will always pop up to empower evil intent.
ICE is now using AI to make human hunting easier for them thanks to Palantir.#FuckICE #ICE #Palantir #Pinks #ProudBlue #Resist
ICE continues to be a rogue organization with no respect for the law or for human life. Judd LeGume’s blog’s Popular Information has some great perspectives on the ICE Raids today. The inhumanity of their actions shows intent, organization, and planning. “Kill, smear, cover-up.”
“The known facts do not support the official federal government narrative of Renee Good’s killing. Now, in an unusual move, the federal government is excluding state law enforcement from the investigation.
Initially, the FBI and Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) agreed to conduct a joint investigation of Good’s death. This is standard procedure. But this agreement was quickly rescinded. The BCA says it has lost “access to the case materials, scene evidence [and] investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation.” As a result, the BCA believes it will not be able to conduct a thorough investigation that will ensure “accountability and public confidence.”
Instead, the investigation will be led exclusively by the FBI, which is run by Kash Patel, one of Trump’s most partisan supporters. Patel wrote a series of children’s books that referred to Trump as a “king.”
“What are you hiding?” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison asked. “I mean, if you feel that you’re — that the ICE agent operated within the law, then let there be an investigation so that that can be revealed.” Ellison said that the federal government was undermining “a fair, transparent investigation” by excluding state investigators. According to Ellison, the FBI investigation “will look simply like a whitewash… covering up… what could well be nefarious, bad activity.”
“Let’s call a spade a spade,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said. “Kristi Noem watched the videos and doesn’t want an impartial investigation because she knows her narrative about domestic terrorism is bullshit.”
After an officer-involved shooting, it is standard protocol for the officer and witnesses to remain on the scene to be interviewed. Further, nothing should be removed from the scene. But in this case a video shows “several agents, including the agent who opened fire, get in their vehicles and drive off, apparently altering the active crime scene.”
ICE policy requires “officers and agents… to activate body-worn cameras at the start of enforcement activities and to record throughout interactions.” But no body cam videos have been released.
Since the federal government has asserted control over the investigation, it has selectively leaked evidence to ideologically friendly publications. A 47-second video of the incident, for example, was shared with Alpha News, a right-wing outlet in Minnesota. It was then amplified by Vance. It was released by the DHS the next day.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced she was conducting her own investigation and urged the public to submit evidence directly to her office. Vance told reporters on January 8 that Ross has “absolute immunity” for Good’s killing. Moriarty said that is not true.
Moriarty revealed that federal law enforcement removed Good’s vehicle from the scene before state investigators could examine it. Good’s car is a key piece of evidence because it could help definitively establish if Ross was struck in any way.”
Joyce Vance warns us in her SubStack that “Tonight’s column is far longer than I like to run, perhaps the longest one ever. But please don’t give up on it. Although I’d planned to write about developments we expect this week in various lawsuits, these are the times we live in. The situation with ICE is critical right now. I’ve packed a lot of information you’ll need this week as the situation in Minneapolis develops into this post, but don’t feel like you have to read it all at once.”
We head into the coming week in an unsettled moment where the administration has blood on its hands. It would have been fair for the administration to call for time to investigate what happened in Minneapolis the morning Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent. But that’s not what ICE’s leadership, the DHS Secretary, or the White House has done. They blamed the victim. They criticized her for exercising her rights as an American citizen. They called her a terrorist. None of this suggests the administration has good intentions. Vice President Harris told us this would happen and now it has.
Sunday morning, CNN’s Jake Tapper showed DHS Secretary Kristi Noem video of the mob attacking the Capitol on January 6.
Tapper: “I just showed you video of people attacking law enforcement officers on January 6. Undisputed evidence, and I just said, President Trump pardoned all of them. You said that President Trump is enforcing all the laws equally. That’s just not true. There’s a different standard for law enforcement officers being attacked if they’re being attacked by Trump supporters. We just saw that.”
Trump’s September 2025 Presidential Memo titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” (NSPM-7) spelled this all out. It divides the country into good guys and bad guys. If you’re for Trump, you’re a good guy. If you’re against Trump, you’re a domestic terrorist. The rules that apply to the two groups are different. Attack the police in support of Donald Trump (January 6), and you get a pardon; stop to watch what an ICE agent is doing, and it’s a death sentence.
Trump attributed the need for NSPM-7 to dramatic increases in “Heinous assassinations and other acts of political violence.” He cited “the horrifying assassination of Charlie Kirk” and called out people who “adhered to the alleged shooter’s ideology, embraced and cheered this evil murder while actively encouraging more political violence,” as the justification for the memo. He also cited the 2024 murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and “the 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh” as further justification, along with the two assassination attempts on his own life and what he calls “riots” in Los Angeles and Portland that were a “1,000 percent increase in attacks on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers since January 21, 2025, compared to the same period last year.” He also wrote that “Separate anti-police and ‘criminal justice’ riots have left many people dead and injured and inflicted over $2 billion in property damage nationwide.”
Trump claims the recent “political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically.” He says it’s the “culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.” No evidence is offered to support this. But that doesn’t seem to matter in the rush to a conclusion: “A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies — including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them — is required.” Although at first this seemed targeted toward civil society and civil rights groups that advocated and litigated on behalf of Americans and their rights, now, it seems to be turned against anti-ICE protestors who are doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights.
This list is horrifying.
NSPM-7 identifies “common threads animating this violent conduct” as:
anti-Americanism;
anti-capitalism;
anti-Christianity;
support for the overthrow of the United States Government;
extremism on migration, race, and gender; and
hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.
If you have any of these tendencies, or if the administration believes you do, one of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) is directed to investigate you.
There are about 200 JTTFs across the country. They are the nerve center of the federal government’s efforts to ensure potential acts of terrorism are detected before they can be committed. Agents and prosecutors from federal and state agencies meet to review cases and ensure nothing important is swept aside. The work can be intense and urgent. Now, Trump has ordered that the JTTFs “shall investigate” an exhausting laundry list of potential infractions committed by people who oppose his views. In Trump’s view, Americans exercising their First Amendment and other rights are violent domestic terrorists.
But it’s all one-sided. Just like Noem’s failure to recognize the crimes committed by January 6 defendants in the question from Tapper that we started out with tonight. It’s all a thinly veiled mechanism for criminalizing innocent behavior by anyone who opposes this administration. Hence the characterization of Good, who was unarmed when she was shot and killed by a law enforcement officer, as the “terrorist.”
I have one more topic today that I find horrifyingly short-sided and cruel. This is all in the name of keeping women out of the workforce. This is from AXIOS. It’s reported by Emily Peck. “Trump funding freeze could stretch child care to a breaking point.”
Child care providers, already under financial strain, face their greatest test yet as the Trump administration imposes new rules and restrictions on funding.
Why it matters: Federal money underpins the entire industry — vital to millions of parents trying to manage work and family, across all income levels. Driving the news: A federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the administration from freezing more than $10 billion for five blue states, claiming widespread fraud.
The administration, meanwhile, is also asking all states to provide more information to justify and support spending on care, a requirement that some state officials and advocates say is onerous and could delay funding.
The big picture: Even before the freeze, states were scrambling to make up for the loss of pandemic-era child care funding.
“There hasn’t been a full-on collapse, but it’s just been a kind of slow-moving deterioration,” says Matthew Nestler, an economist at KPMG who tracks the sector.
Zoom out: Child care providers, mainly small businesses on tight margins, are struggling to stay afloat.
Wait lists for child care are growing in some states, and prices are rising — that often means a parent needs to make a tough choice, and could leave the labor market entirely. Typically, that’s mothers.
So many workers depend on child care that any policies that reduce investment in the sector have big knock-on effects for the entire economy, Nestler says.
Zoom in: Colorado froze new child care enrollments in some counties last year because of state budget constraints, coming on top of the pandemic pullback.
That’s been devastating for Westwood Academy, a preschool and child care center in Denver, where two-thirds of kids, about 20, were on federally subsidized tuition at the start of 2025.
Now, the program is down to just four of these kids, says RB Fast, who started the center in 2022 when pandemic funds were flowing. Last year, the center lost about $70,000. (Typically, she turns some profit.)
She’s planning to open a second center in a wealthier suburb, where she’ll charge $2,200 a month for a full-day toddler care. In her current center in Denver, she charges $1,747.
The upshot: “High quality child care is increasingly becoming a luxury good,” she says.
It’s hard to look daily at all the things this regime is doing to make our lives worse-off. Many are focused on harming the least and most vulnerable among us. I know all these grudges Trump holds impact his actions as does his level of greed, need for attention, and seemingly needless compulstion to be cruel.His brain is fed by the likes of Stephen Miller and some backward notion that life was better in previous centuries. But, the man has serious mental issues and personality disorders. Why don’t so many of his followers see that? Why doesn’t the Republican Party do something? They’re empowering the worst in humanity to destroy everything this country has every stood for.
The struggle continues.
What’s on your Reading, Action and Blogging list today?
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A couple of days ago, historian Garrett Graff posted a powerful essay on his Substack Doomsday Scenario: The physical weight of Trumpism.
One constant theme of conversations I’ve had over the last year has been the physical heaviness people feel in Trump’s America. I certainly felt it yesterday in the wake of that horrific murder — there’s nothing else to call it — of a mother by an out-of-control ICE officer in Minneapolis….
To me, there’s actually a simple explanation for that heaviness: It’s the weight of the shift from “zero to non-zero.” There are so many aspects of our daily life that we’d never had to weigh before; so many new possible horrors that we have to carry in our minds each day. We forget how much of the basic fabric of our country has been altered in the space of just a year, how many of our freedoms have been impinged, and how many things we took for granted that now we can’t.
Before last year, there was — effectively — a zero percent chance that as a US resident walking the streets, regardless of immigration status, you’d be swept up by masked secret police and deported to a foreign torture gulag.
Before last year, if you were a dedicated federal employee there was a zero percent chance your department, bureau, or agency would be closed over the course of the weekend, with decades of work by thousands of people, who had carefully stewarded taxpayer dollars to accomplish a mission authorized and supported by bipartisan congresses across decades tossed in the “woodchipper” before any had the chance to object, dooming millions of the world’s most vulnerable to die in the years to come to feed the ego of a single tech oligarch.
Before last year, if you were a daycare worker, there was — effectively — a zero percent chance that immigration agents (or right-wing influencers) would barge into the safe space you had worked so hard to create havoc and, in some cases, do physical violence.
Before last year, if you were an immigrant parent without a criminal record, there was — effectively — a zero percent chance that dropping off your child at school would lead to your detention and immediate removal from your country.
Before last year, if you were a graduate student, professor, or medical researcher working on a long-term federally-funded study, one that had gone through the interminable approval processes and started up to help lives and advance the frontiers of our collective knowledge, you didn’t have to worry your funding would disappear overnight — that you’d be out of a job, your months or years of research thrown into the trash, your own professional trajectory destroyed and the lives of your research subjects upended in a matter of hours or a few days. Similarly, if you were a university administrator, you didn’t have to wake up each morning wondering if the federal government has, without warning or process, canceled the visas of your students.
The list goes on. Graff provides an encyclopedic description of Trump’s cruel, evil actions over in the first year of his second term. I hope you’ll go read all of them. More examples:
Before last year, if you were an American, there was effectively a zero percent chance that you’d wake up to the news that historic parts of the White House itself were being destroyed without warning or consultation to feed the president’s ego.
Before last year, if you criticized the president, there was a zero percent chance that the president would demand you be criminally prosecuted and proceed to fire anyone who refused until he found some flunky willing to indict you on kangaroo court charges.
If you were a federal judge, you knew that threats might come with the position, but there was a zero chance that the President of the United States would single you out for threats and encourage supporters to attack you for doing your job. Nor did you need to worry whether the US government officials appearing before you on behalf of the Justice Department would ignore your legally-binding court orders and lie to you in court.
Now, in bothinstances, that chance is at least non-zero.
And then there’s this week’s other big news: Before last year, if you were a NATO ally and partner of the United States, you never had to worry that one day the United States would begin, for seemingly no reason whatsoever, formulating military plans to seize your sovereign territory.
Not all of these changes and shifts are equal in importance, surely. Some are abstract, others very much tangible. Some personal, some communal. Surely, also, some of these shifts began to unfold before Trump returned to power — although in many cases his rise accelerated or encouraged the shift — and unfortunately some communities and populations have long had reasons to fear government in various forms or question the “protection” of the police, but never have Americans collectively experienced anything like the accumulation of mental weight we have in this last year.
All that weight is piled upon all that we also accumulated in 2020, from Covid to George Floyd to January 6th — the last, also disastrous year of another Trump presidency — and all that other mental weight we’ve accumulated that comes from the rising fear and collective understanding that because of GOP policies, far-right culture and media, and a nation that has lost its collective mind, you cannot count on being safe in the places where we should feel safest — synagogues, churches, schools, universities, offices, and more — and that when you kiss your children and send them to school, you can’t guarantee that they will come home at the end of the day.
That heaviness you feel, that drag on your mental health, that drain on your emotional energy and lethargy in the face of world events, like yesterday, is real. We are all carrying a lot of new weight in the era of Trumpism.
It’s the weight of non-zero.
As it turns out, that simple switch from zero to non-zero — even if it any or all of the above is still infinitesimally unlikely, it is no longer effectively zero. And that tiniest bit of switch, that binary shift from 0 to greater than zero, turns out to be something that we can all feel in our daily lives.
Before last year, if you were a mom, with a glovebox full of stuffed animals, driving your SUV through a peaceful residential street, eager to see your six-year-old child at the end of the day — a wife with no criminal record who had committed no federal crimes, not being sought by any authorities anywhere — a poet who cared about your neighbors — there was, effectively, a zero percent chance you had to worry about being shot in the face by masked, ill-trained, aggressive federal officers who would then pull their guns on a doctor who tried to help you and let you die in the street.
Now that chance is at least non-zero.
I’ve quoted a lot of the piece, but the list is much longer that what I’ve shared here. When you read the list of outrages all at once, it makes sense that we feel so overwhelmed. I really wonder if my psyche can survive the next 3 years.
The News as usual is endless, but I’m going to focus on the ICE story today.
I’m sure everyone has seen the videos of the murder in Minneapolis, including the latest one that was recorded by the murderer himself, now identified as Jonathan Ross. I’ll just share this brief summary from Ellie Quinlan Houghtalinig at The New Republic: “F*cking B*tch”: What ICE Agents Did Right After Minnesota Shooting.
A newly released camera perspective of the ICE shooting in Minneapolis has shed additional light on the moments leading up to Renee Nicole Good’s death. [You can watch the video at the link.]
The previously unseen cellphone footage, obtained and published by Allen Analysis Newsroom, depicts a federal agent’s vantage point of the lethal encounter, and captures audio of at least one ICE agent calling Good a “fucking bitch” after they shot and killed her.
The exchange, as captured in the new video, begins with a 360 degree shot of Good’s red Honda Pilot, with the agent walking from the passenger side to the front to the rear of the SUV, presumably documenting the vehicle and its license plates. In doing so, the agent filming captures video of Good’s dog in the backseat, his large, black head hanging out of the open window.
As the agent passes in front of the driver’s side window, Good can be seen and heard telling him: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.”
“I’m not mad at you,” she shouts again as he walks behind her car.
The agent’s masked reflection is caught in the glass of the backseat windows as he moves away.
Another woman—presumably Good’s wife, Rebecca Brown Good—is filming the agent while standing next to the rear of the SUV. Her voice can be heard over a long shot of the vehicle’s license plate.
“Show your face,” she said. “It’s OK, we don’t change our plates every morning, so it’ll be the same plate when you come talk to us later. U.S. citizen, former fucking veteran—disabled veteran. You want to come at us? I say you go and get yourself some lunch, big boy.”
Someone can then be heard telling Good to “get out of the fucking car,” when she reverses and then pushes the vehicle forward. As she does so, several shots can be heard. The image loses focus. When the camera stabilizes, Good’s car can be seen careening away.
Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good, reportedly had a history of escalating arrests with violent tactics.
Ross, a 10-year law enforcement veteran, was injured in June during the chaotic attempted arrest of Roberto Carlos Muñoz, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala with prior convictions for criminal sexual conduct, who drove off during a traffic stop in Bloomington, Minnesota.
by Laura Seeley
Ross and another agent pulled in front of Muñoz’s vehicle to force him to stop. The two officers exited their vehicle and aimed their firearms at Muñoz, demanding he provide documentation, which he did, according to the affidavit. When the officers demanded that Muñoz roll down his window, he refused. Ross pulled out his taser, which he aimed at Muñoz’s chest, and the officers warned Muñoz that they would break the window if he did not comply.
Ross used a spring-loaded window punch to break the rear driver’s side window, and reached in to try and unlock the driver’s side door. Muñoz put the car in drive and dragged Ross roughly 100 yards, while Ross fired his taser “at least twice,” according to the affidavit. The agent later testified that he fired his taser 10 times.
Eventually, Ross was shaken loose from the window, falling into the street. “The agent suffered serious lacerations on both arms, which required 33 stitches in total to close,” the affidavit said.
“I was fearing for my life. I knew I was gonna get drug,” Ross said, according to a transcript of his court testimony from December. “And the fact I couldn’t get my arm out, I didn’t know how long I would be drugged. So I was kind of running with the vehicle.”
The claim that an officer was “fearing for their life” is a common phrase used by officers to justify their use of deadly force—and has become a familiar refrain for ICE agents who claim protesters’ vehicles were “weaponized” against them.
Is it just me, or does it seem kind of stupid to put your arm into a car that is very likely to start moving? I have to say this guy does sound stupid: using “drug” and “drugged” instead of dragged. And why was a guy back on the street if, according to JD Vance probably had PTSD from the previous incident?
Complaining about a CNN headline that described the incident, Vance said: “What that headline leaves out is the fact that that very ICE officer nearly had his life ended, dragged by a car six months ago, 34 stitches in his leg, so you think maybe he’s a little bit sensitive about somebody ramming him with an automobile?”
Setting aside the fact that it was Ross’s arm, not his leg, that was injured, Vance’s remarks also absurdly suggest that any officer hurt in the line of duty has a free pass to remain in the field and shoot dead civilians if they get scared. That’s exactly why desk duty exists, right?
Renee Nicole Good, 37, mother to a six-year-old boy, was murdered earlier today by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, a few blocks from her home. According to the Minnesota Star Tribune:
[An ICE agent] shot and killed a woman in south Minneapolis during a morning confrontation between community members and federal officers […] Several residents of the area who witnessed the scene said agents were ordering the woman out of the vehicle. A video showed agents around the vehicle as the driver reversed and then pulled forward. One agent appeared to fire multiple rounds into the car.
By Vladimir Dunjic
The bio from a now-private Instagram account belonging to Good describes her as a “Poet and writer and wife and mom and shitty guitar strummer from Colorado; experiencing Minneapolis, MN.” In 2020, when she went by Renée Nicole Macklin, she won the prestigious Academy of American Poets Prize for a poem called “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs,” [….]
This is murder in broad daylight by the Trump administration, obvious and brutal. And though each senseless act of violence committed by the state upon its citizens echoes the thousands that have gone before, we cannot become numb to the particular (and intensifying) depravities of this administration.
First, I want to extend my gratitude to all the people who have reached out from across the country and around the world to support our family.
This kindness of strangers is the most fitting tribute because if you ever encountered my wife, Renee Nicole Macklin Good, you know that above all else, she was kind. In fact, kindness radiated out of her.
Renee sparkled. She literally sparkled. I mean, she didn’t wear glitter but I swear she had sparkles coming out of her pores. All the time. You might think it was just my love talking but her family said the same thing. Renee was made of sunshine.
Renee lived by an overarching belief: there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow. Renee was a Christian who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.
Like people have done across place and time, we moved to make a better life for ourselves. We chose Minnesota to make our home. Our whole extended road trip here, we held hands in the car while our son drew all over the windows to pass the time and the miles.
What we found when we got here was a vibrant and welcoming community, we made friends and spread joy. And while any place we were together was home, there was a strong shared sense here in Minneapolis that we were looking out for each other. Here, I had finally found peace and safe harbor. That has been taken from me forever.
We were raising our son to believe that no matter where you come from or what you look like, all of us deserve compassion and kindness. Renee lived this belief every day. She is pure love. She is pure joy. She is pure sunshine.
On Wednesday, January 7th, we stopped to support our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns.
Renee leaves behind three extraordinary children; the youngest is just six years old and already lost his father. I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him. That the people who did this had fear and anger in their hearts, and we need to show them a better way.
We thank you for the privacy you are granting our family as we grieve. We thank you for ensuring that Renee’s legacy is one of kindness and love. We honor her memory by living her values: rejecting hate and choosing compassion, turning away from fear and pursuing peace, refusing division and knowing we must come together to build a world where we all come home safe to the people we love.
That’s all I have for you today. Please take care of yourselves.
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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.
Economist Mark Zahn explains it all. 
It’s sincerely hypocritical to me to watch a convicted and well-known lifetime felon try to trump up charges on some of the most ethical government servants we’ve ever had. Powell has released a statement through the usual 
Joyce Vance warns us in her 
This list is horrifying.
I have one more topic today that I find horrifyingly short-sided and cruel. This is all in the name of keeping women out of the workforce. This is from 
It’s hard to look daily at all the things this regime is doing to make our lives worse-off. Many are focused on harming the least and most vulnerable among us. I know all these grudges Trump holds impact his actions as does his level of greed, need for attention, and seemingly needless compulstion to be cruel.His brain is fed by the likes of Stephen Miller and some backward notion that life was better in previous centuries. But, the man has serious mental issues and personality disorders. Why don’t so many of his followers see that? Why doesn’t the Republican Party do something? They’re empowering the worst in humanity to destroy everything this country has every stood for.
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