End. This. Now.
A meme circulating on social media riffs on a famous line from Jaws: We’re gonna need a bigger Hague. The front page of today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune proves that the meme is more than a cute joke.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof responds to the photo at the top:
Take a moment to look at the inhumanity captured in this extraordinary photo running on the front page of tonight’s Minneapolis @StarTribune. It shows federal immigration agents immobilizing a protester on the ground and spraying chemical irritant directly into his face. The scene reminds me of the brutality used against civil rights protesters in the 1960s. We look back at those old photos and wonder how the authorities could have behaved so savagely; many years from now, young Americans will look at these photos from 2026 and wonder how anyone could have justified shooting a woman in the head as she tried to drive away, arresting 5-year-old schoolchildren on the street, or holding a man down and spaying chemicals into his face. Thanks to the Star Tribune reporters and photographers for documenting this work; they create accountability, they make democracy work, and they make all of us in journalism proud.
Jim Wright, a.k.a. “stonekettle,” a 23-year Navy veteran responds to the photo:
If I had done this to an enemy prisoner under my control in the warzone, or if as an officer I had allowed this by any man under my command, I would still be in prison right now. This is the American government doing it to an American.
1984 simply arrived late
Like Donald Trump’s DHS brute squads, workers in Philadlphia are just following orders. (Philadelphia Inquirer):
The National Park Service dismantled exhibits about slavery at the President’s House Site in Independence National Historical Park, provoking a lawsuit from Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration.
The President’s House, which serves as a memorial to the nine people George Washington enslaved there during the founding of the United States, has come under increased scrutiny from President Donald Trump’s administration. The president and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum last spring ordered displays at national parks that “inappropriately disparage” the U.S. to be reviewed and potentially removed.
Around 3 p.m. Thursday, an Independence Park employee who would not give his name told an Inquirer reporter that his supervisor had instructed him to take down all the displays at the iconic site earlier that day. Three other individuals later joined the employee to help remove the educational exhibits. The final display was removed at 4:30 p.m. The displays were then loaded into the back of a white Park Service pickup truck.
Trump is erasing history. It’s Orwellian.
— David Corn (@davidcorn.bsky.social) January 23, 2026 at 9:31 AM
More DHS lies and lying liars.
The U.S. citizen dragged from his home into freezing weather in his shorts? ICE mistook him for a man already in prison. The Minnesota Department of Corrections held a news conference Thursday morning to refute disinformation issued by DHS?ICE (KARE 11):
DOC Commissioner Paul Schnell pushed back on ICE detainer information, saying, “DHS has repeatedly claimed that there are more than 1,360 individuals with ICE detainers in Minnesota custody. Despite requests, DHS has provided no data, no data source, no tracking methodology, no jurisdictional breakdown, no timeframe explaining how their numbers were produced.”
[…]
Commissioner Schnell said the DOC conducted its own survey of county jails across the state, showing 94 people with ICE detainers. In state prisons, there are 207 people with ICE detainers.
“That total is 301 individuals, nowhere close to the 1,360 that DHS has discussed,” said Commissioner Schnell.
Regarding ChongLy “Scott” Thao, whom ICE at gunpoint without a warrant this week, the criminal the brute squad was seeking was already in a state prison.
No stinking warrants
We’re gonna need a bigger Hague.
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History will look upon us and say we all had ash in our feather dusters.