One big upside of the smartphone era is that it has become impossible for authorities to tell egregious lies about heavily videoed events and retain any semblance of credibility. The Trump Administration is struggling to find a foothold in the face of the national backlash over the extensively documented execution of ICE execution of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. We pointed out in comments that even the Wall Street Journal threw its institutional weight against the insulting Team Trump claims that ICE shooting of Alex Pretti was somehow justified:
A fresh story in Axios describes how Republicans are reluctant to strip ICE of funding to avoid a shutdown but feel the need to Do Something about the out-of-control border goons. From The dam is breaking on Republicans questioning Trump’s DHS:
After lockstep unity on immigration for the first year of Trump 2.0, a growing number of Republican lawmakers are calling for investigations and testimony from top Trump officials after the deadly shooting of Alex Pretti.
Why it matters: The dam is breaking, with Republicans more directly questioning the administration — including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — for its handling of the tragedy in Minnesota.
- “I disagree with Noem’s premature DHS response, which came before all the facts were known and weakened confidence,” Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) posted on X on Monday.
…
What they’re saying: “I am deeply troubled by the shootings in Minneapolis involving federal agents,” Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) posted on Monday.
- “Our Constitution provides citizens protection from the government. We have a right to free speech, to peaceably assemble and to bear arms,” Moran continued.
- “I would encourage the administration to be more measured, to recognize the tragedy, and to say, we don’t want anyone’s lives to be lost,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told reporters.
- “I support a full and transparent investigation into the tragic event in Minneapolis,” Sen. Todd. Young (R-Ind.) said in a statement. “Congress has requested testimony from ICE, CBP, and USCIS leaders in an open hearing, and they should testify soon.”
- This builds on other GOP statements from over the weekend — such as from Sens. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and Reps. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), Michael Baumgartner (R-Wash.), Max Miller(R-Ohio) and Michael McCaul (R-Texas).
What we’re hearing: Many congressional Republicans have been quietly frustrated by the administration’s hasty public response to the shooting, aides tell Axios.
- In an email sent to congressional Republicans on Saturday, obtained by Axios, the DHS communications director wrote that there was an “incident between US Border Patrol officers and an illegal alien with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun,” referring to the killing of Pretti.
- Multiple GOP aides said the message frustrated lawmakers who felt DHS had once again gotten ahead of the facts.
Poll results may also be focusing some minds:
And even though many on Twitter criticized the NRA throat-clearing over the bogus claim that Alex Pretti merely carrying a licensed gun that was quickly and safely removed justified murder by ICE as too weak, even that mild response hit a Republican nerve:
Jessica: It takes a lot to unite the NRA and Greg Abbott against the Trump Administration. The first amendment, the second amendment and fourth amendment have all been violated by the way they are carrying this out. pic.twitter.com/fA3Scwi96g
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 26, 2026
A must-read article by Ken Klippenstein describes at length how law enforcement officers, including many within ICE, are disturbed by the thuggery and lack of professionalism:
I’ve listened to the stories and the beefs of immigration officers….to a person, they all blame the shooter, one of their own…
They paint a picture that is more Police Academy (or even Reno 911!) than a Gestapo on the march…Theirs is also a story of gung-ho 19-year-olds, drunken stakeouts, and senior officers disappearing…
They are also frustrated with the narrative unfolding and the information war…
“As much as I support this administration there needs to be more common sense in situations like this, not a knee jerk damage control narrative that does not line up with the evidence on video,” one Border Patrol agent said …“This individual was shot 8 to 9 times while unarmed.”…
An ICE agent was even more critical. “Yet another ‘justified’ fatal shooting … ten versus one and somehow they couldn’t find a way to subdue the guy or use a less than lethal [means],” the agent said. “They all carry belts and vests with 9,000 pieces of equipment on them and the best they can do is shoot a guy in the back?”…
Sagging morale and declining standards are a constant theme I picked up…
“I can go on and on but overall it’s been a ridiculous experience,” one ICE agent told me. He says that many agents on the ground are just going along with the expanded mission because they are more interested in their away-from-home per diem pay and collecting overtime than whatever the mission is…..
“The brand new agents are idiots,” an experienced ICE agent assigned to homeland security investigations told me…
Even one of the new ICE recruits agreed with the experienced agent’s low assessment of the Trump freshman class. “A lot of the guys,” he said, referring to the new ICE recruits he worked alongside, “are honestly pretty sketchy.”
The new ICE officer continued: “I thought federal agents were supposed to be clean cut but some of them pass around a flask as we are watching a suspect,” observing as well that the new guys “have some weird tattoos.”
Those tattoos, I’m told, are symbolic of the fact that the new recruits tend to be more ideologically motivated than those of the past….
It is unclear how these task forces are organized in cities like Minneapolis…but … some agencies (like the FBI) are increasingly no shows in the field, and others are expressing a reluctance to participate in non-immigration missions.
“Last I heard,” says one ICE officer, “FBI didn’t want to help us out much anymore, especially in Minneapolis, due to the bad press.”
However, before you get too excited, the GOP-controlled Judiciary Committee has called on ICE Barbie Kristi Noem to testify…on March 3. This slow-walking suggests that Republican Congresscritters are giving Team Trump time to de-escalate and also get the undisciplined thugs under some measure of control.
Trump is indeed retreating a bit in the face of yet another backfire. From the Financial Times:
Donald Trump has signalled a shift in his administration’s immigration crackdown as the US president seeks to quell the growing furore over the killing of a man by federal agents in Minnesota at the weekend.
The president on Monday said he was deploying border tsar Tom Homan to Minnesota, in a move that was widely seen as a rebuke of homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, who has overseen Trump’s aggressive campaign to detain and deport immigrants.
Trump also dialled down his rhetoric about Democratic leaders in Minnesota, saying in a social media post that he had spoken to Tim Walz, the state’s Democratic governor, in a “very good call”….
Trump later posted that he had a “very good telephone conversation” with Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, adding: “Lots of progress is being made!”
Bloomberg also reported that the too-clearly-compensating-for-physical-inadequacy Border Police thug Greg Bovino had been sent packing. From Trump’s Border Enforcer Plans to Leave Minnesota After Backlash:
Greg Bovino, the US Border Patrol commander who became the face of President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, is leaving the city following a mounting public outcry over the killing of two US citizens by federal agents in recent weeks.
Bovino and some Border Patrol agents are expected to begin departing as soon as Tuesday, according to local officials…
The White House said it’s dispatching border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis, where he will report directly to Trump and has been charged with easing tensions.
However, the fact that Bovino is in a forced retreat does not mean he is gone. Later in the same story:
The Atlantic reported on Monday that Bovino had been removed from his role as “commander at large” and was expected to return to his previous CBP position in Southern California. The Department of Homeland Security disputed that report, with Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson, saying in an email that “Bovino has NOT been relieved of his duties.”
Sadly, the Democrats are vanishingly unlikely to press the advantage they now have. The Republicans are keen to avoid a loss of DHS funding or to precipitate a shutdown by standing too firm. That means the Democrats could extract non-funding concessions, such as explicit restrictions on how ICE operates with funding limits set in the event of official non-compliance. Basic changes could have a big ripple effect:
BREAKING: ICE officials are reportedly worried that, if Congress requires ICE agents to unmask and wear identification, 75% of the agents will quit rather than be ostracised for the rest of their lives by family, friends, employers, and society.
— The Halfway Post (@HalfwayPost) January 26, 2026
If this take is correct, it may not be as hard to defang ICE as thought.
However, given Trump’s use of violence, radical uncertainty, and flooding the zone as preferred tactics, there is no reason to think that he has learned any real lessons from his Hitler-esque jackbootery not working according to plan. Trump is also fabulously duplicitous, witness him pretending to negotiate with Iran as Israel made the attacks that started the 12 Day War. Finally, he has an off-the-charts need to dominate, which results in his stepping back when he finally encounters forces he cannot overwhelm, only to have at it again, as we can see with his trade war with China. Even though Xi showed decisively that China has escalation dominance merely with rare earths and has vastly more serious ammo in reserve (such as pharmaceuticals), Trump keeps poking at China and reneging on interim understandings.
A key measure that could prove Trump’s commitment to a real course correction in his immigration policy would be personnel changes, above all the exit of Greg Bovino and the utterly vile Kristi Noem.
It may seem like a small episode in the scheme of things, but it shows how easily and pathologically Kristi Noem lies.
She completely fabricated a meeting with Kim Jong Un, which she put in her book to boast that she stared him down. She never met him, but refused to admit it: pic.twitter.com/rS2ZULBmkT
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 26, 2026
Financial Times columnist and former speechwriter to Larry Summers Ed Luce argues that the best hope for Team Dem is Trump’s remarkable gift for self-sabotage:
Following Good’s slaughter, JD Vance, the vice-president, declared that ICE and border patrol agents had “absolute immunity”. Vance and his colleagues are ploughing through the US constitution at speed. Each of its key amendments — the first on free speech, the second on gun rights, the fourth on protection from warrantless searches — turns out to be optional, depending on whether it is convenient. A competent wannabe autocrat would be covering his actions in the patina of legality, pitching scholars against scholars. Trump, by contrast, is uniting scholars and ignoramuses against him.
In so doing, he is stirring the public out of an apathy that is essential to any power grab. Someone once remarked that Trump’s incompetence outruns his malevolence….
The legitimate fear is that Trump will rig the US midterm elections this November to stop a widely forecast Republican defeat. But he is robbing himself of the means to get away with it. The meta-tool available to him is public gullibility. Enough people must be willing to believe that ballot boxes are being stuffed, or illegal immigrants are being bussed to the polling booths, for any shenanigans to work. The hollow people working for him are wrecking that tool with easily discredited propaganda.
That, in turn, threatens to neutralise Trump’s on-the-ground muscle. ICE and Border Patrol are the obvious federal crack troops to respond to viral stories about “illegals” swamping polling booths. The US public is now deeply familiar with masked men poking guns in the faces of unmasked civilians. “We are the storm,” said Miller at the funeral of the murdered Maga broadcaster Charlie Kirk last September. “Our enemies cannot comprehend our strength, our determination, our resolve . . . You are nothing. You are wickedness.” That indeed was a scary threat from Miller. But it was super-unwise. A competent autocrat would be stoking the country’s desire to be protected from the “enemy within”. Instead, Americans increasingly fear their alleged protectors.
Luce does point out: “It is possible that actual Democrats will miss the open goal that Trump has presented to them.” Since he presumably remains well-connected to insiders, his scenario of “rigging the elections” shows a lack of imagination as to how far Trump might go to prevent the Republicans losing the House, which he knows would mean yet another impeachment process, and perhaps even the Senate. We are hardly alone in speculating that Trump would find a way to cancel elections. We have said in comments even before the Trump pullback that trying to deploy the military would not work now. Not only would the courts (even this Supreme Court) be unlikely to back that on the present fact set, but the armed forces would similarly not be willing to fire on Americans given the current givens. If he tried to instigate a deployment over court orders, a variant of the Nixon Saturday Night massacre, where a series of DoJ officials refused to comply with his orders, is within the realm of possibility. If anything, Trump could even trigger a military coup against him, either soft form by refusing his orders (as they did at end of his first term when they rejected his instruction to pull out of Afghanistan) or something more visible.
Trump, even more so than most, is a prisoner of his deeply flawed character. Like the scorpion in the fable of the scorpion and the frog, it’s in his nature to keep pressing for what he thinks is a win, no matter how much evidence accumulates that he is rapidly making his situation worse. But sadly, with less apparent venom than the fabled scorpion, the Democrats are also captives of their self-destructive tendencies, above all to compromise with bad actors out of misguided self-preservation reflexes rather than take even a modest risk to do the right thing.
Update 7:45 AM: G. Elliott Morris’ latest post dropped after ours launched. Key sections from The ICE shootings are a tipping point:
Note: I wrote this article the morning of Monday, Jan. 26, before news broke that Greg Bovino is being fired as “commander at large” of U.S. border control (the White House disputes the reporting), and that Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski could be next. Bovino’s ouster is further evidence that the politics of immigration enforcement are deteriorating quickly for the Trump administration, and that the backlash I describe below is now driving consequences inside the White House. I’m not saying that this is proof of the tipping point…but if we had hit a tipping point, these are the consequences we’d probably see….
I. The numbers are moving against Trump fast
First, consider the trajectory in Donald Trump’s overall approval rating. His net rating — the difference between the percent of Americans who approve of his presidency and the percent who disapprove — is -17.5 in the FiftyPlusOne.news aggregate, a record low for his second term. But the more telling story is what’s happening on immigration specifically. And his approval percentage also hit a new low this week, at 39.2% of all adults….
And, for what it’s worth, the averages may be underestimating Trump’s recent decline on immigration. Other surveys have shown even steeper drops for the president: a New York Times/Siena University poll last week found Trump at -18 on the issue. A NYT poll from last Sept. had Trump at “just” -6, so the Times is clocking a 12-point drop in four months (compared to ~5 points in the average)…..
The way I have been thinking about this is that by pushing extreme enforcement measures that are now resulting in the deaths of innocent American citizens, Trump has changed the images people attach to the word “immigration” in their heads. When “immigration” doesn’t mean “pictures of migrants under an overpass in south Texas” but “ICE officer killing a woman in her car and calling her a ‘fucking bitch’” or “regular guy being shot 10 times in the back after being tackled to the ground and disarmed”, that’s going to change how people view the issue.
As I wrote last April, opinions change when voters get new information about an issue. The information that has been saturating U.S. political news in the last month is violence against citizens that is a direct result of the president’s policies….
II. This is a tipping point
It is not normal for the public to move 50 points on an issue in just a little over a year.
Please read his important and well-documented argument here.
65 comments
Comments are closed.
Veterans react to killing of VA nurse Alex Pretti by federal agent.
Doug Collins of Georgia covers himself in…something.
What a world. Here’s what he’s said – despicable – and the guy is a “chaplain”
So will Rodney Dangerfield Trump bomb Iran next as a way to get himself some respect? It’s not just America but the world in the grips of this psychodrama.
And large swaths of our ruling class, with their pretend victimhood, are part of the mental imbalance. They were so intent on portraying carnival barker Trump as Hitler that they are turning him into that. However as St. Clair points out in a Monday column, Hitler was a politician and a lot smarter than Trump. He cut his own SA loose in the Night of the Long Knives because he did have a plan and that plan needed the Prussian establishment once the bully boys had played their role.
There has to be a way out of this mess and the feckless Dems growing a spine may be the only solution. The public too need to step up and realize the danger they are in.
I think your take is pretty accurate. Trump *is* a carnival barker who, in a significant sense, has been a creation of our ruling class. He can be quite dangerous to us, and to the world, as he has shown. But while he has been backed by some powerful individuals – Zionist billionaires, tech-bros, etc. – he does not have the backing of our “Prussian establishment.” Not yet anyway, and as we’ve said all along his recklessness, unpredictability, and tendency to say the quiet parts out loud will continue to concern most of them.
I have no hope for the Democrats. They may issue strongly worded statements if they think the wind favors their doing so, but they will do nothing significant. What might work, and appears to be working in this case, is (1) for Trump to lose enough support from his MAGA base, which is his only real power; and (2) *effective* resistance by our “Prussian establishment” – i.e. not the transparent fakery of a Russiagate or the lawfare efforts, but frontal attacks based on actual principles with popular support. It will certainly help if enough traditionally conservative constituencies – the military, law enforcement, Republicans, right-wing commentators, etc. – decide that their rhetoric about the Constitution should be taken seriously.
I agree with you (and Carolinian), except the last part. The vast majority of ‘traditionally conservative’ have absolutely no real belief in the Constitution, especially other than 2A for whites. My personal opinion is only about 20% are of the libertarian stripe and hold firm Constitutional rights for all.
My SWAG is the risk of bombing Iran just got much higher for Trump, given the Iranian threat to close the straits of Hormuz and having hypersonic missiles (and ISR from Russia/China) that can sink the US carrier groups. There is one thing Americans despise worse than extrajudicial assassinations of average Americans by masked paramilitary thugs (hooded in the old days), and that is high gas prices.
The upside of Iran strikes for Trump is small – a few weeks of positive headlines – see Maduro – but the downside is almost unlimited.
“There is one thing Americans despise worse than extrajudicial assassinations of average Americans by masked paramilitary thugs (hooded in the old days), and that is high gas prices.”
Amen. LOL.
I am scheduled to attend business meetings in Europe next week with Israeli colleagues and this morning they mentioned that they are tensely waiting for “the start of war season” and if it would impact their departure from Israel. Keep an eye on Ben-Gurion’s flight board, the last couple of times it started on a Friday night.
ETA: I don’t think Trump is above bombing Iran in an attempt to distract from a temporary deescalation/change in tactics on the domestic front if the materiel is already in theater and there are already plans in place for something
If counting on the Dems to finally grow a spine is the only way out, stick a fork in us. We’re done.
Trump, and his admin, have to see the pitchforks at the gates and feel the heat from the torches. That’s the only way out, I’m afraid.
When you write:
“We have said in comments even before the Trump pullback that trying to deploy the military would work now.”
you most probably mean:
“We have said in comments even before the Trump pullback that trying to deploy the military would no longer work now.”
“not work now”. Very big drafting error! Fixing pronto.
Just an FYI – When sharing Naked Capitalism links, Facebook blanks out the preview, haven’t ever seen this sort of thing from them before. I have gotten around it by doing a screen shot of the article but the point is it looks like soft censorship.
Best…H
Android engages in this behavior as well. Haven’t tested it on Naked Capitalism specifically but I will go back and look for messages I have sent via SMS containing Naked Capitalism links and systematically see what the associated behavior is in the SMS client.
Access to presstv.ir is frequently tampered with.
And see this: https://rt.com/news/631552-whatsapp-privacy-braindead-durov/ – I had the original article pulled up LAST NIGHT, maybe 16 hours ago, but when I sent the URL via SMS a few hours later the client pulled up a picture of the Governor of Minnesota and I’m like, that’s not the page *I’m* looking at, WTF? Took a photograph of the original article and sent that as a follow-up. Unbelievable. Russia Today, an organ of The State! Whodathunkit? lol
My intuition is TPTB have monitoring and choke points in place for the Internet and all the chat clients that rely upon TCP/IP (IE, Signal) and they are now developing tools with which to filter SMS texting and cellular networks; the goal is to control communications and thereby control the shape of media events.
Here, for example, is a media event: https://www.times-standard.com/2022/07/23/former-humboldt-county-counsel-remembered-by-friends-family/
Here is evidence that’s not exactly true: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-blanck-506b4a1b3/
Which fact is publicly available, three years later?
Notice how there are no more photographs of what is going on in Gaza? That’s our future if we continue retreating.
The current setting seems coup friendly. I wonder if there are military brass noticing.
I think everybody, from Pelosi to Trump, was uncertain what regular military and National Guard might do if brought into the scene at the Capitol on 1/6. I think that uncertainty continues. I think Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act is an empty one. Units could end up firing on each other, themselves, their officers.
That’s why Miller, Vance (?), Lewandowski et al. need a new, private army, a modern-day Brown Shirts. Obviously, they’re far too small, untrained and undisciplined to constitute a threat other than to citizens and the undocumented at this point, but I’m sure the goal is to change that ASAP. If Congress doesn’t even try to use the purse to shut this down, then the regular military will have no choice but to step in before Miller’s Army becomes a major pain to eliminate without lots of collateral damage.
That’s a heck of a thought. Congress could step in and make sure that the ICE and CBP paramilitaries are more professional and better able to carry out Stephen Miller’s plans without getting bad PR. Maybe even inadvertently put them under new organization reporting directly to him. Sounds like par for the course.
This ICE fiasco imo increases the chances of an attack on Iran. “Distracted from distraction by distraction” and all that.
Yeah, distract and divide….and the old Epstein files drama seems to have been swept under the rug for the moment. The “pedophile protector” in chief has a lot to distract from.
A piece about dissent from inside the team around bad apples seems to be a standard narrative alignment/crisis response play to preserve legitimacy of any institution from governments to banks.
“We’re good people, really, but the new guys are sketchy and bringing us down”, or “lack of training”.
Valid questions around the very legitimacy of the instution itself are thus deflected.
This ^
Trump may appear to be giving some concessions over ICE in Minnesota but you have to remember that he loves head fakes. So I would not put it past him to pull those 3,000 ICE agents out of Minnesota and move them to somewhere else like Wisconsin or Michigan. Those ICE agents wouldn’t care so long as they are being paid the big bucks and the Trump White House may figure that they will meet less resistance in another state.
Agreed. Notably, there has been no mention of exactly how many agents are being removed. Both the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments have about 600 officers each so unless most of the 3000 or so ICE/CBP agents are removed, the situation won’t fundamentally change.
I think Wisconsin, particularly Madison, will give ICE another melting.
some of the media on the ground in minnesota are already showing the new bosses , just like the old bosses .
The hotel where ICE was staying, had the protesters being roughed up and arrested by the national guard and the uniformed cops.
Was this the deal from WALZ?
Ice moves to the backround while the state muscle moves in?
If so, this is exactly what you would expect from democrats.
All manor of caving to the fascists…. cause really they are fascists too.
Thanks for this post. I think a good bookend to it is this segment from Judge Napolitano and Sheriff David Hathaway on ICE’s lack of accountability. utube, ~24+ minutes.
Sheriff David Hathaway : Power Without Accountability — ICE Under Scrutiny
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPEoRXElty8
Thanks for this. IIRC he was on Judge Nap before and was highly credible and informative.
Yes, thanks for the link I listened to the other talk with Hathaway and it was great to hear some sanity from a law enforcement person.
Two events were: police riot, hysterical panic or Trump war on US citizens?
Evidence: war on domestic terrorists, aka US citizens being Americans using their rights/duties.
It looks like political fallout is extending beyond US borders, to Italy. For some bizarre reason the US is insisting ICE agents be present for the winter Olympics and this isn’t going over very well.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y29xzjdzvo
The US should be barred from the Olympics.
Do they need to go to Rome to practice their “Roman salute”? Will they try to arrest athletes with more skin colour for cheating?
“But sadly, with less apparent venom than the fabled scorpion, the Democrats are also captives of their self-destructive tendencies, above all to compromise with bad actors out of misguided self-preservation reflexes rather than take even a modest risk to do the right thing.”
The dems are not captive , what they do is figure-out (sophisticated political calculations while people die) ways to deliberatley do nothing….they are not legislating, blocking, jambing up the works or availing themselves of many tools to stop the madness – both parties deliberatly keep the madness going deliberatley…they signal outrage, signal discontent, signal their hard efforts. So instead of using their their powers they make up calculated sure-to-go-nowhere investigations, sure to fail quasi-legislation proposals, toothless aurguements. They measure their sucess only in campaign cash, how close they can make any argument to makes it seem close to opposition without risking making any argument or passing any legislation that would in fact be easy to make and pass — they are posing as opposition while not useing the tools the constitution provides — They are all in dereliction of their duties. Not only protest in the streets – protest when your elected officials shirk on live conferences- at public meetings….
Ridicule them when they make hollow statements, decry their derelictions, demand action when they blow smoke up your a$$…. tel them to work instead of endless investigations, accusations, commities, puffery, bloviation…..For F$%&s sake Johnson(Lucy – lame Lucy) ,Shummer (still gulible charlie brown), Fetterman, David Harold McCormick – (who were kind enough to reply but, am still waiting for follow up)
Stand up and hold up the constitution and do your F@#$ing jobs — You all just play your games while citizens (around the world) parish — The four horsemen are galloping and ya’ll just do nothing except gibber jabber, kabuki theater and gas-light everything and everyone . Just state where you stand in as few words as possible… do you stand for the constitution or just your lazy-ass self.
Oh and don’t give me the old, that just so undignified BS or some other nonsense about decorum.
Apologies to this site for my rant – just tell me to take this kind of retoric elsewhere and, I will get back to normal Naked Capitalism — the best site, contributors and commentary ever
So you are seriously trying to absolve Democrats as individuals of any agency? Pretty much all of them had some measure of success before they ran for office. Punching any government ticket generally helps or at least does not hurt later private sector opportunities. Look at MTG. Quitting as a matter of principle is alway an option.
In addition:
1. Lambert tried for many years to define what the Democratic Party was as an organization. Not only could he not sort that out, but political scientists could not answer the question either. So you are assuming a level of cohesion that does not exist.
2. There are, however, some very cohesive and disciplined organizations operating with the Team Dem brand. See for instance, the DCCC: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/10/tom-ferguson-congress-is-a-coin-operated-stalemate-machine.html
1) The Democrat/Republican election duopoly is enshrined at the state level in almost every state.
2) It is nearly impossible to run a 3rd party candidate for nationwide office- or even at the district level for House seats- in any US state.
3) Thus, the democrats, no matter how terrible they are, will wind up filling appx. half of congress. Plus, we all know how nice it is to be an incumbent politician- it’s very hard to lose a seat after one has attained it.
4) If the Democrats win a substantial majority, they will be expected to USE power, which it seems they don’t actually want to do. The last time they had a substantial, filibuster-proof majority, they did not use power to any great or popular effect. They created the ACA, which, while being a improvement over what we had before, was not what the moment/people truly called for.
5) Since, then they have either held very slim majorities or have been the minority party. This allows them to cast themselves as scrappy underdogs for voters who are in denial about this con job. I contend that the democratic party, it’s politicians, and the various imps and demons that make up it’s election apparatus LIKE it this way. They like being losers.
6) Money pours in, even for losing candidates. In fact, they seem to rake it in for candidates that they probably know will not win (e.g. Amy McGrath- who is about to lose ANOTHER senate race in KY). It’s LUCRATIVE to be losers.
7) They get to keep their cozy- and one supposes fun-to-them- jobs while not having to face the consequences of using power to attempt to transform a decaying and dysfunctional society. They are Professionals, after all. Career-minded people. And I suspect many of them are also ego-maniacs but that doesn’t really distinguish them from republicans.
8) Q.E.D The dems are professional losers. From within the party infrastructure, it could be stated in an Orwellian-style aphorism: “We win when we lose.” Unfortunately, from without the party infrastructure, the aphorism can be amended as such: “No matter who wins, we lose.”
Our local police force was caught with , “Citation Bingo” cards. Amusing game, competitive game, incentivized escalating questionable cop behaviors. Big Stinky Dress-down when it came to light.
I have full confidence that these types of games still exist, locally, and as evidenced by post-shooting behavior in Minneapolis, in Federal Law enforcement organizations.
We live in a police state, which trickles down from our M I C -dominated economy and Empirical mind-set.
Putting Homan in the Coop and pen does not sooth my savage breast. He is a seasoned Bad Cop.
As pennies have left the building with Elvis and Jesus, I guess the current mode would be
IMHO, YMMV
I am pleased with our local force – they do not make room for idiots that undermine their duties, nor not that I am aware, play around with your rights – they take them seriously.
Removing qualified immunity would not impair proper (constitutionaly bound) law enforcement… Removing qualified immunity would aid in removing the bad apples which cause the whole barrel to rot – something good law enforcement would welcome.
the ICE barrel has been deliberatly populated with bad apples…. top-down by that Ass-wipe, rot man Trump— his spread of fungus among us can be seen with his bloated ankles, depleated brain, and the vile smell of putrification he eminates.
Unfortunately, with Veteran hiring preference, and while – not Universal–some disturbing things out of our returning Vets, and/or those going in to policing — the cohort may be rightly suspect.
The Pollyanna in me wants to believe in more people than not trying to do the right thing, either in front of or behind the gun, in office, upholding our Constitution and Rule of Law in a a nation of laws.
But then I wake up. Citizen’s United, AIPAC, AI, Techno-Broligarchy…. and just marveling at the White Christian Nationalists pouring in to Montana and the Rockies… the wonton destruction of our natural world, species, Space Ship Earth…
I therefore steadfastly remain
Mister Happy
Oh no.
We had thought that Mr. Bovino was gone from El Centro District.
Looks like he’s gonna be back hanging out with his BORTAC mafia thugs.
And he’s gonna be angry and vindictive.
Keep the cameras on this toxic sicko. Time for one or more of his cohorts in El Centro District to strategize replacing him. Someone less racist hopefully, possibly someone with a higher IQ who can entertain the idea that a “real man” doesn’t need to kill to prove himself.
I can’t see that guy without thinking of Henry Gibson as the Illinois Nazi in The Blues Brothers. Something about that terrible haircut and ridiculous-looking Sam Browne belt…
I have a kind of schizophrenic theory that this incompetence with deportation is all planned so Trump and the Republicans can sign a Reagan style amnesty into law.
The small and big businesses in America like to have these undocumented people working but Trump is at odds with his voter base who want them out. However instead of going to somewhere like Texas (where you think they would have support in a GOP state) or California, they continually pull these stunts in Minneapolis against their perceived boogiemen (like the Somalis who I think are almost all here legally established?). Almost feels like the lash out and bad publicity is intended so Trump can pretend his hands are tied when the amnesty is signed in for the business interests and donors to the GOP and deportations effectively stop.
Only Nixon could go to China and only Trump could provide amnesty. Also all the crash out about Pretti bringing a gun to a protest might be that only Trump could take away the guns from the conservatives.
Or maybe I am just completely crazy, most likely. Some kind of fever dream
https://x.com/disclosetv/status/2013694925431361751
https://salazar.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-salazar-introduces-historic-bipartisan-dignity-act-finally-fix-americas
Trump is deporting at slightly lower rates than Obama, but without the thuggishness – which makes one suspect immigration is not the actual issue – it is using the organs of the state to (attempt) to suppress its political opponents.
It is surprisingly hard to find reporting on immigration trends through 2025. Here is one. Seems most of the difference with Obama is self deportation – i.e., immigrants who have options back home (the type one should retain, such as Chinese scientists – only 22% self-deportations are from Mexico).
https://www.demandsage.com/us-immigration-statistics/
“It is surprisingly hard to find reporting on immigration trends through 2025.”
Agreed. Back at the end of 2024, the US Census department put out an interesting report on population growth and immigration in the US: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2024/12/population-estimates.html. Figure 2 is the most interesting, as it clearly shows the significant increase in immigration that happened during the Biden years.
Unfortunately, as best I can tell, no comparable report was issued at the end of 2025. This makes it hard to know what’s happened since Trump’s second term began. DOGE at work?
Oh… I spoke too soon. There is a report from the Census. It looks like net international migration was basically cut in half during 2025.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2026/01/pop-estimates-state-change.html
There are also breakdowns by state, but I haven’t had a chance to look through those in detail yet.
Alex Pretti was a member of AFGE Local 3669. Minnesota unions are not backing down and are organizing for a second general strike:
Minneapolis shooting: Union leaders call for strike
AFGE? Ask the Air Controllers how striking worked out for them.
Am I correct in saying that a “domestic terrorist” is any person who says or does anything considered “off message” by the administration and its minions? That is like. saying that anything nor explicitly permitted is forbidden. Orwell said that or something very like it in 1984.
Previous administrations have described various conservative opinions as representing “domestic terrorism” and among MAGA there is what I would consider dominant view that “turnabout is fair play”.
G. Elliott Morris’ article is indeed a good read. It ends with “What lies on the other side of a tipping point? The answer is change that once seemed impossible. Press coverage of the Tet Offensive catalyzed the end of American involvement in Vietnam. Abu Ghraib permanently shifted elite opinion against the Iraq War and influenced mass opinion against military detention practices and torture.” This emphasizes Yves’ point about how this leave a wide open goal for the Democrats. But what do they want? History doesn’t suggest they’re keen to abolish or defend ICE.
defUnd, not defend. ug.
If Trump was halfway competent or capable he would have quickly realized that after the killing of Renee Good they needed a national guardsman drug through the streets by the mob like it was Mogadishu to spin public opinion. And if the protesters were too disciplined to do it, that they needed to make it happen.
That we didn’t get this display tells me they are incapable of reading the situation or unwilling to go the distance to win. I’m hoping it’s the latter. If he’s too chickenshit to rough up a troop (who’d get millions through go fund me) the n I doubt he’ll be canceling elections. But I may be being optimistic.
Would have to ‘stage’ such an event because the “mob” has proved itself much better than that. It has proved itself Good. Don’t put worse ideas in Sick Stephen Miller’s brain. Though visibly mentally impaired he seems to be entrenched. He needs to be fired. Seriously. Yesterday.
I’m not always a fan of Heather Cox Richardson; she’s a bit orthodox Team Blue for me. But she had a good point a couple days ago that one of the historically attainable and effective ways to chip away at a despot is to chip away at his underlings first.
I’m 100% in favor of an outcry to fire Stephen Miller. And give Trump’s history of throwing unpopular underlings under the bus, it could work.
Link to the Ken Klippenstein article on reaction within ICE mentioned in the post.
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/ice-unloads
This part is scary.
Along with the absence of senior officers mentioned earlier in Ken’s article, the possibility of more death seems high.
i think they lost the plot. the plan is to kill brown and black people, not white people.
I see no one calling for the criminal prosecution of the murderers of Alex Pretti. Americans need to see justice served. The best the Dems are doing is talking about a “vote” to stop further increase of DHS funding when it already has plenty of money.
Huh? I see them everywhere, and plenty on YouTube channels too.
I think he’s talking about party leadership.
Republicans are only taking notice because ICE has started shooting White people.
absolve Democrats as individuals of any agency — I am not trying to absolve them of agency – all individuals have agency
Most of the Democratic and Republican parities are very organized and cohesive around exactly what Ferguson delinieates –
Both parties are resolute about – not upseting this apple cart – not making it part of a debate nor mentioning the corrupting influence of big money – not discussing any legislation that would erode a bit of this pay to play –
Where else am I to go to – “Past performance is no guarantee of future results” – what else am I to say other than to remind the congress of their duties – to demand they man up – and if there is to be a resistance to what goes on – you just can’t throw puffballs and not use the tools of minority fight that have been used – even within the context of the Constitution – a clear fact of history where a minority got the thing through, also civil rights were done by the minority at the time.
I digress – but I do appreciate you input – can’t thank you enough for that and the tremendous work you do – Tom
Interesting to see The Usual Suspects suddenly taking somewhat positive notice of the Second Amendment. I’m sure it won’t last, but I intend to enjoy it while it does.
ETA: I have to wonder how things would go if protesters started showing up to these things openly carrying, say, AR-15 rifles a la Kyle Rittenhouse….
It is interesting that there have been no icestapo actions in states with open carry laws, or even no permit conceal laws.
Or for that matter in places with the largest concentrations of those without the correct papers.
But Minnesota IS an open carry state.
That would mean going after their very Red base.. which is what the dont want. They are applying the pressure in Blue areas only. Its all a political play, hence the focus on voting lists.