Attention to the Unseen

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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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  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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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