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Category: Politics

The U.S. can no longer be trusted ‘as a reliable ally on military security, economic security, or any other major matter’

The U.S. can no longer be trusted ‘as a reliable ally on military security, economic security, or any other major matter’

John Cassidy writes: It’s been a couple of weeks since Donald Trump and his cohort tried to bully the U.S.’s European allies into submission over Greenland, but the reverberations are still being felt. “There was a real sense that we were witnessing a moment of rupture,” Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University and the Brookings Institution, who was attending the annual World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, when Trump flew in, recounted to me. “One thing that was clear…

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Two experienced CBP agents identified in Alex Pretti shooting

Two experienced CBP agents identified in Alex Pretti shooting

By J. David McSwane This story was originally published by ProPublica The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez. The records viewed by ProPublica list Ochoa, 43, and Gutierrez, 35, as the shooters during the deadly encounter last weekend that left Pretti dead and ignited massive protests and calls for criminal investigations. Both men were assigned to…

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Crime rate inside CBP higher per capita than crime rate of undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

Crime rate inside CBP higher per capita than crime rate of undocumented immigrants in the U.S.

Garrett Graff writes: On Friday, I testified in front of Governor J.B. Pritzker’s “Illinois Accountability Commission,” the state government body he set up after the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” attack on Chicago last summer and the precursor of the even larger federal occupation of Minneapolis that we’re experiencing now. The body’s goal is to both document what happened to Chicago, with an eye on future prosecutions, understand the role of various Trump officials in this federal occupation, and offer…

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Ohio Haitians targeted for ethnic cleansing in hate campaign led by JD Vance and American Nazis

Ohio Haitians targeted for ethnic cleansing in hate campaign led by JD Vance and American Nazis

Timothy Snyder writes: In the schools and churches of Springfield, Ohio, people are making hasty preparations for a “large deportation” promised by the president. To all appearances, and according to local sources, the city is two or three days away from a federal ethnic cleansing, grounded in a hate campaign organized by the vice-president and American Nazis. The destined victims are ten thousand or more Haitians. Its origins are in racist fantasy. During the last presidential campaign, JD Vance, then…

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UAE ‘spy sheikh’ bought secret stake in Trump company

UAE ‘spy sheikh’ bought secret stake in Trump company

The Wall Street Journal reports: Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, lieutenants to an Abu Dhabi royal secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49% stake in their fledgling cryptocurrency venture for half a billion dollars, according to company documents and people familiar with the matter. The buyers would pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities. The deal with World Liberty Financial, which hasn’t previously been reported, was signed by…

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Jerusalem Post: Removed file stated Epstein would bring children for Trump to auction off

Jerusalem Post: Removed file stated Epstein would bring children for Trump to auction off

The Jerusalem Post reports: The Department of Justice has removed files containing hundreds of mentions of US President Donald Trump from the latest wave of Epstein files documents that were released on Saturday. The removed files included descriptions of Trump sexually assaulting several women, some of them being underage. In the removed files, which still have a preview and broken link on the DOJ’s website, Trump is described by victims and friends of victims as, among other things, engaging in…

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Epstein files: FBI memo says Israel ‘compromised’ Trump, Epstein had Mossad ties

Epstein files: FBI memo says Israel ‘compromised’ Trump, Epstein had Mossad ties

Middle East Eye reports: A declassified FBI memo from the Epstein files, released on Friday, includes incendiary allegations about US President Donald Trump. The memo says that Trump was “compromised by Israel”, that convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein worked with Israeli intelligence, and that a Jewish religious group calling itself Chabad-Lubavitch sought to hijack his first term in office. The memo, written in 2020, formed part of an FBI investigation into domestic or foreign influence over the US electoral process. It…

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Thousands of new ICE observers hit the streets after two murders

Thousands of new ICE observers hit the streets after two murders

The Washington Post reports: Jordan’s parents didn’t want her to become an ICE watcher. But on Tuesday, after a single day of training, she climbed into her Jeep and joined hundreds of neighbors patrolling the streets of this embattled city, where federal immigration agents have shot and killed two people this month who were monitoring and attempting to disrupt their activities. “I’m not really nervous, it’s more like, I want to prevent bad things from happening in my neighborhood,” Jordan,…

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‘That’s him. Get him.’ Witness at an earlier shooting was arrested at the scene of Alex Pretti’s killing

‘That’s him. Get him.’ Witness at an earlier shooting was arrested at the scene of Alex Pretti’s killing

The Intercept reports: Less than 40 minutes after federal immigration agents shot and killed 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti on Nicollet Avenue in south Minneapolis, Clayton Kelly was thrown face-first onto the sidewalk, tasting snow and street grime as a federal agent’s knee drove into his back. The incident, a video of which The Intercept reviewed and corroborated with an independent eyewitness, occurred not long after Kelly and his wife arrived in the area where Pretti was killed. With protesters amassing…

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An immigrant who ICE says ‘ran headfirst into a brick wall’ — an echo of ‘shot while trying to escape’

An immigrant who ICE says ‘ran headfirst into a brick wall’ — an echo of ‘shot while trying to escape’

After World War One, German nationalist paramilitary groups frequently used the phrase “shot while trying to escape” (Auf der Flucht erschossen) to cover up the elimination of political opponents. During the Nazi era, this pretext was used for a range of extrajudicial killings. The Associated Press reports: Intensive care nurses immediately doubted the word of federal immigration officers when they arrived at a Minneapolis hospital with a Mexican immigrant who had broken bones in his face and skull. Immigration and…

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ICE expands power of agents to arrest people without warrants

ICE expands power of agents to arrest people without warrants

The New York Times reports: Amid tensions over President Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota and beyond, federal agents were told this week that they have broader power to arrest people without a warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo reviewed by The New York Times. The change expands the ability of lower-level ICE agents to carry out sweeps rounding up people they encounter and suspect are undocumented immigrants, rather than targeted enforcement operations in which they set…

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The blood-and-soil nationalism that killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti

The blood-and-soil nationalism that killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes: In the wake of poet and writer Renee Good’s killing, Donald Trump and his collaborators have done all they can to define her as an enemy of “The Homeland.” The administration claims, for instance, that Good was a “domestic terrorist,” a term it is now applying to Alex Pretti, the ICU nurse whom federal agents killed on Saturday. This rhetoric is employed to justify the state taking life, by associating the dead with national villainy. But the…

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What ICE should have learned from the Fugitive Slave Act

What ICE should have learned from the Fugitive Slave Act

Jelani Cobb writes: One measure of the numbing effect that the constant heedless and cruel assault on democracy and on simple reason that Trumpism has imposed upon American life is the fact that we no longer flinch at the word “unprecedented.” Now, a full decade since Donald Trump’s arrival on the national scene, we have reached a point where the violation of norms has become a norm in itself. At the same time, however, there has been a tendency to…

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MAGA is prying Christianity further and further away from the ethic and teachings of Jesus

MAGA is prying Christianity further and further away from the ethic and teachings of Jesus

Peter Wehner writes: Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, has become an evangelist of a certain sort. During her tenure, her department has on multiple occasions released slick social-media recruitment videos in which scripture verses feature prominently. One video quotes from Isaiah 6:8 (“Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, ‘Whom shall I send and who will go for us?’ I said, ‘Here I am. Send me.’”); another quotes from Proverbs 28:1 (“The wicked flee when no…

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The case against Don Lemon is bogus, and dangerous

The case against Don Lemon is bogus, and dangerous

The Associated Press reports: Journalist Don Lemon, who dared the Trump administration to come after him after he covered an anti-immigration enforcement protest that disrupted a service at a Minnesota church, was indicted for civil rights crimes. Lemon was arrested Thursday by federal agents in Los Angeles, while another independent journalist and two protest participants were arrested in Minnesota. The arrests brought sharp criticism from news media advocates and civil rights activists including the Rev. Al Sharpton, who said the…

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ICE’s surveillance app is a techno-authoritarian nightmare

ICE’s surveillance app is a techno-authoritarian nightmare

Moustafa Bayoumi writes: The lethal force Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is meting out on American streets is rightly drawing loud condemnations from politicians and editorial boards across the nation and around the world. Now is the time we must start paying attention to another highly damaging part of ICE’s arsenal: the agency’s deployment of mass surveillance. I’m referring specifically to Mobile Fortify, a specialized app ICE has been using at least since May 2025. (Usage of the app was…

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