Music: Nils Petter Molvær — ‘Honey in Your Head’
The resistance libs were right. Donald Trump is indeed a fascist
Michelle Goldberg writes: For the last decade there’s been a debate, among people who don’t like Donald Trump, about whether he’s a fascist. The argument that he isn’t often hinges on two things. First, when Trump first came to power, he lacked a street-fighting force like Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirts, even if he was able to muster a violent rabble on Jan. 6. “Trump didn’t proceed to unleash an army of paramilitary supporters in an American Kristallnacht or take dramatic action…
Immigration agents terrified of backlash against ICE after Minneapolis shooting
Ken Klippenstein reports: In the wake of an ICE officer’s killing of Renee Good, the Department of Homeland Security is rolling out “Operation Metro Surge,” flooding Minneapolis with hundreds of additional federal agents — only to realize it doesn’t actually have the confidence to match the bravado. While homeland secretary Kristi Noem and others in the administration preen about justifying last week’s shooting and trumpet their war on “domestic terrorism,” DHS is privately divided and hesitant about the latest deployments….
Thousands of Border Patrol and ICE agents unmasked by DHS whistleblower
The Daily Beast reports: Sensitive details of around 4,500 ICE and Border Patrol employees—including almost 2,000 agents working in frontline enforcement—have allegedly been released by a Department of Homeland Security whistleblower following last week’s fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good. The Jan. 7 killing of the mother by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has sparked nationwide protests and worldwide outrage, including among some DHS employees. The alleged leak to ICE List, a self-styled “accountability initiative,” is believed to…
Amid ICE crackdown, unions and community groups call for Minnesota shutdown on January 23
In These Times reports: Unions and community groups gathered in front of the Hennepin County Government Center in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota this morning to announce a day of “no work, no school, no shopping” on January 23 to oppose the ferocious assault on the state by federal immigration authorities. “We are facing a tsunami of hate from our own federal government,” Abdikarim Khasim, a Minnesota rideshare driver, told the crowd. “We’re going to shut it down on the 23rd. We’re…
We found more than 40 cases of immigration agents using banned chokeholds and other moves that can cut off breathing
By Nicole Foy and McKenzie Funk This story was originally published by ProPublica Immigration agents have put civilians’ lives at risk using more than their guns. An agent in Houston put a teenage citizen into a chokehold, wrapping his arm around the boy’s neck, choking him so hard that his neck had red welts hours later. A black-masked agent in Los Angeles pressed his knee into a woman’s neck while she was handcuffed; she then appeared to pass out. An…
State Department threatens UK over probe into Elon Musk’s X
Politico reports: The U.S. Department of State’s Sarah B. Rogers says “nothing is off the table” if the U.K. government makes good on its threat to ban Elon Musk’s X over concerns about a deluge of AI-generated sexualized deepfakes on the platform. “I would say from America’s perspective … nothing is off the table when it comes to free speech,” Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, told GB News in an interview which aired in the U.K….
Buddhist monks and their dog captivate Americans while walking for peace from Texas to Washington DC
The Associated Press reports: A group of Buddhist monks and their rescue dog are striding single file down country roads and highways across the South, captivating Americans nationwide and inspiring droves of locals to greet them along their route. In their flowing saffron and ocher robes, the men are walking for peace. It’s a meditative tradition more common in South Asian countries, and it’s resonating now in the U.S., seemingly as a welcome respite from the conflict, trauma and politics…
Music: Nils Petter Molvær — ‘Softer’
Four days on the ground in Minneapolis: We’re all just content for ICE
Ryan Broderick writes: The frontline of America’s slow-moving civil war has come to Minnesota. The Department of Homeland Security doubled down on their occupation of the state following last week’s murder of Renee Nicole Good. Now residents armed with whistles, snowballs, and group chats race through the streets, trying to protect one another from the more than 2,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers swarming the city. During my four days in the Twin Cities, I watched the fabric of American…
Inside ICE’s media machine
The Washington Post reports: For the Immigration and Customs Enforcement public affairs team, the nighttime operation across metro Houston in October was a gold mine. An ICE video producer shadowed agents as they pulled over and handcuffed more than 120 suspected undocumented immigrants, then sent the footage to a private team chatroom. Across thousands of internal ICE messages reviewed by The Washington Post, this kind of celebration has become commonplace. The messages show how the team has worked closely with…
ICE against indigenous peoples: The new erasure of Native Americans through immigration
IC Magazine reports: Leticia Jacobo was scheduled to be released from Polk County Jail in Des Moines, Iowa, after being booked in for a traffic violation. Instead, the 24-year-old Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community citizen was scheduled for deportation. Last week, ICE raided Little Earth, a Native community of South Minneapolis, Minnesota, detaining at least 5 Native American men. ICE agents even tried to forcibly detain Rachel Dionne-Thunder, who is Plains Cree and the co-founder of Indigenous Protectors Movement, out…
Right-wing influencers have flooded Minneapolis
Wired reports: In the days since a masked federal agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, right-wing creators and influencers like Nick Sortor and Cam Higby have descended on Minneapolis, filming protesters and interviewing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. So far, they’ve produced a steady stream of content that appears designed to paint Minneapolis as a lawless city, and the actions of ICE agents like Jonathan Ross, who reportedly shot and killed Good, as self-defense. “HELL YES! ICE just…
‘Freaked out’ about the bond market: White House reels from Powell probe
Politico reports: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent spent months laying the groundwork for a smooth transition at the Federal Reserve that wouldn’t rattle markets. That plan is now in disarray. The Justice Department’s criminal investigation into whether Fed Chair Jerome Powell misled Congress about renovations at the Fed headquarters — and allegations over who leaked the news — has the White House in damage-control mode. Officials are scrambling to reassure markets and create distance from an episode that aides say was…
The AI debt surge: How tech’s borrowing binge may drive up interest rates
WebProNews reports: The artificial intelligence boom is fueling an unprecedented wave of capital spending, but it’s not just innovation that’s accelerating—it’s debt. Major technology companies, often dubbed hyperscalers, are issuing bonds at a record pace to finance the massive data centers required for AI advancements. This borrowing frenzy, while enabling rapid expansion, is raising alarms among economists and investors about potential upward pressure on interest rates. As these firms tap debt markets to fund their ambitions, the sheer volume of…
Cells use ‘bioelectricity’ to coordinate and make group decisions
Elise Cutts writes: We’re used to thinking of the brain as an electric organ. The rest of the body? Not so much. But it would be a mistake to dismiss your other tissues as dumb hunks of electrically inert flesh. Even the protective layers of cells that compose your skin and line your organs use electrical signals to make decisions, according to recent research. Results published in Nature show that cells use bioelectricity to coordinate a complex collective behavior called…