The New York Times editorial board writes: President Trump has never been a man to ask what he can do for his country. In his second term, as in his first, he is instead testing the limits of what his country can do for him. He has poured his energy and creativity into the exploitation of the presidency — into finding out just how much money people, corporations and other nations are willing to put into his pockets in hopes…
Andrea Pitzer writes: Events are moving so quickly that it’s worth stopping to assess where we are. The U.S. government is currently building massive detention facilities, already detaining tens of thousands of people there and elsewhere, with incompetent and deeply racist secret police sweeping undocumented all kinds of people—immigrants, those with their paperwork in order, and US citizens alike—off the street. We’re hearing grass-roots calls to abolish ICE, while opposition leadership instead speaks mostly about affordability issues. When they do…
Lydia Polgreen writes: Late last Wednesday night, I was standing on a street corner in the Hawthorne neighborhood in North Minneapolis when I witnessed an extraordinary confrontation. A federal agent marched up a narrow residential sidewalk flanked by modest bungalows, kitted out in gear fit for the battle of Falluja: full body armor, military boots and camouflage fatigues and helmet, with a heavy machine gun slung by his side. His carriage was erect, his gaze fixed straight ahead, seemingly oblivious…
Brett Wagner and J. Holmes Armstead, who both served as professors at the U.S. Naval War College, write: Just because the commander in chief of our nation’s armed forces is also our duly elected president, with all the powers invested in that high office, that does not imply, in any way, that the president has unchecked power over the military. A president must follow the law, too, or face the consequences. Normally, in a situation where subordinates believe themselves to…
Don Moynihan shares this account from someone living and working in Minneapolis who wishes, for their safety, to remain anonymous: I am writing as an ordinary citizen of Minneapolis/St Paul ─ one of America’s 20 largest metro areas. I have kids in the public schools, own a house, go to work every day, pay taxes, volunteer in my community (e.g., coaching youth sports, helping in the schools). I am certainly not a radical of any kind. I had never done…
President Trump and members of his administration have said that Renee Good, the woman killed by a federal agent in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, “weaponized her vehicle” against the agent who shot her — an interpretation they claim is confirmed by the agent’s cellphone video. “She didn’t try to run him over,” Mr. Trump said on the day of the shooting. “She ran him over.” That description has been contested by local and state officials, who have blamed the…
The Guardian reports: Two protesters have been blinded by so-called “less-lethal” munitions deployed by federal officers during an anti-ICE protest last week in Santa Ana, California, according to reports. The blindings come amid rising scrutiny of federal authorities’ use-of-force policies, after the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer set off nationwide protests. Widely seen video recorded at the Santa Ana protest showed a homeland security agent shoot Kaden Rummler, 21, in…
Politico reports: A federal judge handling a lawsuit over the deportation of pro-Palestinian activists excoriated top administration officials, including President Donald Trump, for trampling on the First Amendment and for what the judge described as a fearful approach to freedom. “There was no policy here,” said U.S. District Judge William Young, an 85-year-old Reagan appointee who has been on the federal bench in Boston for 40 years. “What happened here is an unconstitutional conspiracy to pick off certain people.” During…
The Washington Post reports: When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced the Jan. 3 death of detainee Geraldo Lunas Campos at a Texas detention camp, the agency said “staff observed him in distress,” and it gave no cause of death. An employee of El Paso County’s Office of the Medical Examiner told Lunas Campos’s daughter this week that, subject to results of a toxicology report, the office is likely to classify the death as a homicide, according to a recording…
Ben Burgis writes: A typical social media post from the official DHS account last year called for Americans to join ICE to “defend your culture.” Note: Not “enforce the law,” not even “defend our safety” against some imagined horde of violent drug-running narcoterrorists streaming across the border. But defend American culture against the grave threat of too many people living here who supposedly have the wrong ethnic background. This is just one among many recruitment posts that explicitly evoke white…
On Wednesday, Governor Tim Walz made the following remarks addressing the federal government’s ongoing presence in Minnesota: “My fellow Minnesotans: “What’s happening in Minnesota right now defies belief. “News reports simply don’t do justice to the level of chaos and disruption and trauma the federal government is raining down upon our communities. “Two to three thousand armed agents of the federal government have been deployed to Minnesota. “Armed, masked, undertrained ICE agents are going door to door, ordering people…
The Hill reports: White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller on Thursday claimed Minnesota state officials are staging “an insurgency against the federal government” as they push back on expanding federal immigration operations in Minneapolis. Miller appeared on “The Charlie Kirk Show” on Real America’s Voice and was asked if the federal government was looking at possible charges “not just against rioters but against government officials who are abetting and encouraging” protests. Miller said that would ultimately be up…
G. Elliott Morris writes: A certain kind of pundit has been telling Democrats they’re on the wrong side of public opinion on Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Sohrab Ahmari, an editor at the conservative online magazine Unherd, tweeted last week that Democrats are “going all in on a case that’s 70-30 (at best) against” them. Because there are actually lots of good people on the Left with whom I agree on various things, I feel compelled to say: Guys, this is…
Andrea Valdez writes: Could the Trump administration really cancel an election? President Trump once again mused about the possibility, telling Reuters recently that he’s accomplished so much that “we shouldn’t even have an election.” This isn’t the first time the president has flirted with the idea of forgoing the midterm elections, and his repeated remarks on the matter have turned what many previously dismissed as a fringe conspiracy theory into a real concern. At an Atlantic Across America event in…
Bloomberg reports: A key Senate Democrat asked Bank of New York Mellon Corp. for information about $378 million in transfers processed for Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier who died in jail in 2019 as he faced sex trafficking charges. Ron Wyden, the Senate Finance Committee’s top Democrat, wrote Wednesday to BNY Chief Executive Officer Robin Vince to seek details about 270 wire transfers in and out of accounts held by Epstein, including a series of “highly suspicious” payments of $1…
Amanda Marcotte writes: The videos pouring out of Minnesota onto social media right now are horrific, showing both ICE and Border Patrol agents acting like the Gestapo by assaulting peaceful people with impunity and suggesting that they will kill more people if residents don’t submit. But time and again, those videos also show reason for hope: Ordinary people are refusing to comply. They film Noem’s secret police, blowing whistles and making a fuss, even as those masked cowards attack them….