Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

JV Last at the Bulwark is channeling my thoughts these last few days:

During the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump promised to deport every illegal immigrant who was a rapist, murderer, or thief. He also promised to deport 20 million immigrants. Some voters believed the first promise; other voters believed the second.

Because people are stupid, that first group of voters believed that there were 20 million undocumented immigrants who have committed felonies. This is not possible. The total number of people in jail in America today—this includes federal, state, local, and tribal land prisons—is just under 2 million. The number of undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes cannot be 10x the entire prison population of the United States. If it were, then daily life in America would look like Escape from New York.

So some Trump voters were duped owing to their general ignorance and/or innumeracy.

But others were not. Others signed up for Trump because of his second promise (the 20 million deportations) and viewed the first promise (about deporting only criminals) as the pap necessary to get the suckers onboard.

He looks at the number supporting it today and it’s not surprising but still depressing:

That’s a consistent level of support around 80 percent. Now here is the first poll conducted after the killing of Renee Good:

Even after the killing of an unarmed American citizen, a total of 80 percent of Republicans approve of what ICE is doing and 53 percent of Republicans strongly approve.

It seems pretty clear that, at best, one in five Trump voters were duped. The majority of them are getting exactly what they wanted.

As Last points out, this is about much more than just whether a percentage loss of those people means that the Democrats can win. It’s about what kind of a society we have.

And Last points out that the worst of these people are in charge:

[I]t seems that many of the Republicans most invested in a race war have a great deal of power. Like, for instance, Vice President JD Vance, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

And needless to say, Donald Trump.

One Homeland. One People. One Heritage.

Remember who you are, American. pic.twitter.com/2eh8njcz9Z

— U.S. Department of Labor (@USDOL) January 11, 2026

Sound familiar?

Here’s Trump in Detroit today:

Another urgent priority for bringing down the cost of living is to stop the colossal fraud that is bleeding American taxpayers absolutely dry, the fraud being committed by the Somali population in Minnesota. Have you heard of them? They’re a lovely people — it’s monumental. ..

You know they came from a place with nothing, and they come here and they drive around in Mercedes Benz. You know, the Mercedes Benz dealers do well in that area of Minnesota. Can you believe it? They have nothing, they get welfare payments and they have Mercedes Benzes. It angers me so much, but we’re going to straighten out our country.

This was done under Biden and Obama, very much under Obama. It all started under Obama. And we just can’t — we’ve got a great country; we’re not going to screw it up. But this is one of the great scams ever. They have the same thing, Somali in Maine. Who would think? I never saw — I never saw that happening…

Think of that Ilhan Omar. She lives in Somalia. They don’t have a government; they don’t have a military; they don’t have police; they don’t have anything. All they have is murder and robbing ships, bringing in ships, pirates. That’s stopped, same missile, ping, that’s the end of them. It’s amazing how that can stop corruption.

Those missiles, they never miss, you know. The same one, exactly the same one. But think of it, she comes from a country with nothing, and she comes here and she tells us about our Constitution. I have a constitutional right to rip off the country. I guess she’s — she’s a total scam artist, anybody knows it. How do you let her get away with it? AOC plus 3, she was one of the 3. No, they’re all scammers, they’re so bad for our country.

Those are just a few of the highlights of the racist, xenophobic section of that speech. It’s more than obvious what he’s talking about, although I would suggest that the anger at the “wine mom gangs” and the brutalizing of priests and others who are protesting signals that it’s not just racism, but a fascist crackdown on dissent as well.

(And yes, there’s more than a tiny bit if an echo of “welfare queen” rhetoric perfected by the right wing over half a century ago. He’s just tickling their racist lizard brain with that one.)

Last concludes:

So tell me: …What is the percentage of Trump voters in each of these categories:

• Group A: Sees and understands the administration’s intent and supports it.
• Group B: Sees and understands, but oppose it.
• Group C: Do not understand that the regime views its program as part of a race war and thinks it’s all business as usual?

And follow-up question: How big can Group A be for us to retain a functional, liberal society?

No answer to that here. We’ve always had many racists living among us. I think we thought there were fewer today than there were in the past but that was a miscalculation. The difference here is that we have not experienced the full scope of presidential tyranny combined with a determination to use the full power of the federal government to shut down all opposition. We are in new territory. How many will support him?

I mentioned the new right wing meme about the “gangs of wine moms” who need to be put in their place yesterday. It’s made it’s way to the White House. Here’s Trump ragging on women during his “economic” speech in Detroit today:

One of the reasons they are doing these fake riots. They are just terrible. You see it is so fake. “Shame, shame, shame.” You see the women? That is all practiced. They go to areas. They take hotel rooms and practice together. It is a whole scam. We are finding out who is funding this.

Fuckin’ bitchuz…

ICE arrested a 55-year-old U.S. citizen in Minneapolis for acting as an observer. She stayed on a public sidewalk, did not interfere, was tackled, handcuffed, put in an unmarked vehicle, and held for hours while family tried to find her.pic.twitter.com/8gkCLzWz5I

— WarMonitor (@TheWarMonitor) January 13, 2026

Fox News' Will Cain: “There's a weird kind of smugness… in the way that some of these liberal white women interact with authority”

— Media Matters for America (@mmfa.bsky.social) 2026-01-13T19:54:32.041Z

Mommie issues?

Sadly, a fair number of people on the left also have nothing but disdain for the “wine moms” because they insist they are too moderate and milquetoast.

Yeah. Well, maybe they need to re-evaluate that. They’re putting their bodies on the line. Is that radical enough?

That’s Grandpa MAGA talking which is bad enough. Here’s the shadow president’s similar message:

I thought this was an apt retort:

More Justice Department lawyers have reached their limit:

At least five [now six] senior prosecutors in the criminal section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced their resignations this week, believing that the Trump administration has undermined the work and mission of the section, according to four people familiar with the personnel moves.

The office is the only part of the Civil Rights Division that handles criminal violations of the nation’s civil rights laws. For years, the Justice Department has relied on the section to prosecute major cases of alleged police brutality and hate crimes. The announcement of the resignations followed the administration’s highly unusual decision to not include the Civil Rights Division in the initial investigation of an immigration officer’s fatal shooting of a woman in Minneapolis.

The departures wipe the office of its most experienced prosecutors, including the section’s longtime section chief and deputy — Jim Felte and Paige Fitzgerald — career attorneys who served in their positions during President Donald Trump’s first administration and through President Joe Biden’s administration. Three other supervisors and senior litigators are also leaving.

Aaand:

On Tuesday, at least three veteran prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota — an office that would typically work alongside the Civil Rights Division to investigate the shooting by the officer — resigned, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.

Apparently, the head of that Minneapolis office who resigned was a Trump guy who wasn’t expected to prosecute the officer who murdered Renee Good. He reportedly resigned because he was ordered to investigate Good’s wife and all of her acquaintances. Apparently even he has his limits. I’m going to guess there are extremists and/or opportunists who aren’t that fastidious.

There is no Justice Department. It’s a Trump enforcement agency, that is all.

Liberal used to be a four-letter word in this country, but no longer.

The % of Americans identifying as liberal is at a 50-year high. Most Dems now say they're liberal (59%), a 50-year high too.

Also, the Dem lead on party id is even bigger than at this pt in the 2018 cycle! pic.twitter.com/wriMxybqVG

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) January 13, 2026

This is probably why Trump is talking about seizing the voting machines again. He believes he will be impeached again and I certainly hope he’s right.

My assumption has always been that they will probably not be able to actually stop the election but that they will contest it and possibly refuse to seat Democrats if the margin is close enough to keep Mike Johnson and John Thune in charge by doing so. And who knows what the courts will do?

It’s still getting pricey

Everybody was touting the fact that inflation isn’t as high as some thought it would be in December. But I have some bad news for the administration. The aggregate number doesn’t mean much when this is happening. Just ask Joe Biden:

Grocery prices rose at the fastest pace in three years, keeping pressure on household budgets even as overall inflation held steady in December.

The jump in costs highlights the challenge for the White House in the lead-up to midterm elections. Broad inflation relief is little consolation for Americans if they aren’t seeing it reflected in grocery bills.

Grocery prices (or “food at home,” as the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls it) rose by 0.7% in December, the largest monthly gain since the peak inflation period in August 2022.

• Food inflation was evident at restaurants, too: Costs for dining out (or “food away from home”) rose by a similar amount, the largest monthly gain in three years.

Grocery prices were up roughly 2.4% in December compared to the prior year.

• But that masks double-digit price increases for a slew of household staples over the past 12 months, including coffee (+20%), beef (+16%) and candy (+10%).

None of that matters, not really. Because:

There is some relief elsewhere in the grocery store: Egg prices, for instance, are down more than 20% from a year ago, with an 8% decline in December alone.

It’s the hottest country in the world! And omelettes have never been cheaper!

America has been through plenty of dark times in its history, from a Civil War to depressions and two bloody world wars that leveled much of the world. But for most of us alive today, those events all happened before we were born. Aside from the ongoing menace of nuclear annihilation, the biggest threat we’ve faced as a country was 9/11 when the country’s mainland was attacked by al-Qaeda. It led to what we quickly dubbed the War on Terror, an absurd misnomer that had the effect of not only empowering the George W. Bush administration to invade a country that didn’t attack us, but also opened the door to a new era of domestic government police powers with very little oversight. 

While the War on Terror may be something of an anachronism today, the bureaucratic relics of that time are still with us — and they have become exactly what we feared it would be: a domestic police force that has led not only to the repression of basic rights and liberties, but also to a creeping authoritarian state.

As the nation still reeled from the attacks in September 2001, the administration and its enablers in Congress set about enacting many of the repressive laws, having sometimes chafed at the restrictions imposed by post-Watergate reforms reining in the various police and intelligence agencies that had gone wild during the Cold War. 

Within 45 days, Congress passed the USA Patriot Act with overwhelming bipartisan support, vastly expanding the government’s spying authority and capability, and lifting much of the oversight which protected citizens’ civil liberties. The bill also gave the government new authority to designate individuals as part of a terrorist group, seize property and jail immigrants indefinitely. Such was America’s fear and angst that its leaders were more than willing to toss aside the nation’s hard-won privacy protections in a moment of shock. 

Over the years, there has been tremendous pushback from civil libertarians, and while the legislation expired in 2020, many of its provisions are still in effect thanks to the USA Freedom Act of 2015, which included some reforms but left the country with a more repressive system overall. 

Even before 9/11, officials in national security circles had discussed changing the structure of some of the agencies to deal with the urgent threat of terrorism following the end of the Cold War. The previous decade had seen a number of attacks, starting with the first World Trade Center Bombing in 1993, Oklahoma City in 1995, the embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998 and the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. There had been ongoing debates about ways to confront this new threat, although they didn’t make much headway. After 9/11, everything changed.

Learning that there had been warnings and clues about the attacks that weren’t communicated to other agencies, the government quickly adopted an idea that had been floating around for some time to consolidate many of the agencies under a couple of big new umbrellas. One would be the director of National Intelligence, a position that would coordinate between all the security agencies such as the National Security Agency and the CIA. The other would be a massive new domestic police agency, combining some of the agencies that had either been independent or housed in other departments including Transportation Security Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Customs Service, Coast Guard and the Secret Service, along with parts of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). 

From the moment they called it the Department of Homeland Security, many civil libertarians and historians knew we were looking at trouble. The word “Homeland” carries a lot of freight, evoking the German heimat, a word that was used liberally by the Nazis.

From the moment they called it the Department of Homeland Security, many civil libertarians and historians knew we were looking at trouble. The word “Homeland” carries a lot of freight, evoking the German heimat, a word that was used liberally by the Nazis. As James Traub wrote in the New York Times, the word “points to a world of solidarity forged through blood ties, through ancient ritual and legend” which “America’s founding generations gratefully left behind when they reached the New World, where they built a nation out of acquiescence to a shared social contract.” Even right-wing pundits like the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan said they should change the name because “it grates on a lot of people, understandably. Homeland isn’t really an American word.” 

It certainly grated on people who were concerned that building a gigantic, centralized, domestic police agency with virtually unaccountable new powers would very likely lead to repression and authoritarianism. They were dismissed as hysterics, as usual.

The fervent embrace of that word — “homeland” — should have been a clue that it was a feature, not a bug. We know that now. DHS is a vast bureaucratic organization, which is currently in the process of abdicating its duties to functions like disaster relief and airline security and focusing its massive budget on what is essentially operating as a secret police agency. 

That agency is the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which was created out of whole cloth in 2003 as part of the DHS, as was Customs and Border Protection, which merged the functions from Customs Service, Border Patrol and certain aspects of INS. Despite the fact that these new domestic agencies were allegedly conceived for counterterrorism purposes, immigration at the border became a top conservative issue during the same period.

ICE was given jurisdiction to chase down undocumented workers throughout the nation’s interior, unlike border patrol, which was confined to 100 miles from the border. Under Barack Obama, ICE deported more immigrants than any administration in history, but they focused on new immigrants and didn’t go into the country’s interior to grab long-time residents. The idea, at the time, was to prove they were serious about border security to get buy-in for comprehensive immigration controls from Republicans. That, of course, As usual, that was a pipe dream.

Donald Trump, with the guidance of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, has now unleashed this huge police force on the entire country to terrorize cities and towns all over the country with faces covered, dressed in military gear and armed to the teeth. ICE forces are not only brutalizing immigrants (and anyone they think looks like they might be one), they are aggressively confronting protesters and citizens who are filming them doing what they’re doing. Last week they shot and killed one such citizen activist, Renee Nicole Good, in Minneapolis. 

As feared from the moment DHS was given a name that echoed authoritarian governments of the last century, these secret police are being used for political purposes. Trump has sent them into Minnesota to target a specific Black, immigrant and Muslim community, and to exact vengeance on his perceived enemies, Gov. Tim Walz and Rep. Ilhan Omar, both Democrats. Now they are calling that young, liberal, white, female protester who was shot in the face at close range by an ICE officer a domestic terrorist. It ticks all the boxes of their agenda. 

The danger was clear from the beginning. If you build a giant police organization and give it virtually unlimited money and unlimited power, they will use it. To paraphrase Trump, if you create a secret police force you won’t have a democracy anymore. We are perilously close to losing ours.

Salon

The boy who cried “witch hunt” goes witch-hunting

The Donald Trump administration assumed that AMERICANS pissed off at being treated like subjects by a totalitarian government would react like frightened cocker spaniels. They were mistaken.

But Americans would be mistaken to presume that Trump’s enforcers will back down in the face of unanticipated public resistance. And they are meeting resistance.

This YouGov poll on ICE is really eye-opening. Public opinion has really swung against DHS/ICE and their terror regime. d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/IC…

— Simon Rosenberg (@simonwdc.bsky.social) 2026-01-13T00:12:57.846Z

Conservative extremists’ first instinct, as always, will be to double down. They have already quietly prepared the ground.

On September 7, Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-7) called “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” Among other things, it adds non-Trumpy nonprofit groups and their donors to the government’s list of potential “domestic terrorists.”

They are now using NSPM-7 to target activist groups connected to Renee Good.

Breaking NYT:

Federal investigators assigned to the killing of Renee Good are looking into her possible connections to activist groups.

It's in line with the admin's strategy of deflecting blame toward opponents they describe as domestic terrorists — without providing evidence.…

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 13, 2026

The New York Times reports that Trump, in his usual fact-free manner, wants to identify and punish imagined “professional agitators” and whoever is financially supporting them (gift link):

The decision by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department to scrutinize Ms. Good’s activities and her potential connections to local activists is in line with the White House’s strategy of deflecting blame for the shooting away from federal law enforcement and toward opponents they have described as domestic terrorists, often without providing evidence.

Justice Department officials under Mr. Trump have long maintained that investigating and punishing protesters who organized efforts to physically obstruct or disrupt immigration enforcement is a legitimate subject of federal inquiries. But casting a broad net over the activist community in Minneapolis, former department officials and critics of the administration said, raises the specter that forms of political protest traditionally protected by the First Amendment could be criminalized.

Be advised, efforts like NSPM-7 designed to clamp down on the First Amendment (and to pretty much gut the rest of the Constitution) are well underway.

For his friends, everything; for his enemies, the law 

A rule published in the Federal Register last June modified 41 CFR 102-74, the rule governing the Federal Protective Service, or FPS. Originally set to take effect on Jan. 1 of this year, the new rule’s effective date was moved up to Nov. 5. If you’ve wondered what allows DHS goons to step off federal property and cross streets to assault protesters on a public sidewalk, here it is.

The Justice Guy’s substack reported in December:

It did not come from Congress and it did not come from a court. It arrived quietly, tucked into the Federal Register, written in the dry language of administrative housekeeping. Yet the practical effect is this: it expands where federal officers can detain you, and for what reasons, and it does so in a way that directly touches the right to protest and to document government action.

[…]

The new rule, codified at 6 CFR Part 139, rewrites the jurisdictional line. Instead of limiting enforcement to federal property, the rule now applies to areas outside federal property whenever the conduct in question affects federal property or the people on it. The text says that FPS jurisdiction extends to public areas whenever it is necessary to protect federal property or personnel. It also says that prohibited conduct now includes actions that occur off federal property if they affect, threaten, or endanger federal property or persons on the property.

Administration bluster has ramped up in an attempt to maintain the fiction that it is firmly in control. Trump’s “truthful hyperbole” is now state-sponsored propaganda supporting state-sponsored terrorism. Nonetheless, there is evidence that Trump 2.0 is back on its heels somewhat.

Ken Klippenstein claims that even as the Border Patrol boasts that it’s adding a massive number of agents to its Minnesota operation, that the agency is having trouble recruiting volunteers for an increasingly unpopular mission. He further claims to have obtained a Border Patrol “Legal Refresher” memo issued Monday by Tactical Commander Greg Bovino that cautions agents to review the rules for “reasonable” use of force in interactions with the public.

To be determined: Will any of that make a difference to the goons under Bovino’s command? We know he can posture, but can he control his men? They’re all working for the clampdown.

Over the top, but fair

Where are the Epstein files? A social media poster on Monday noted, “So when an ICE officer tells you to get out of the car, you’re supposed to get out of the car, what are you supposed to do when a judge tells you to release the Epstein files?”

Thus in the field failure to comply with orders barked by kitted-out and under-trained DHS enforcers merits a bullet to the head. Yet failure of AG Pam Bondi’s DOJ to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed by Dear Leader, seems not to merit not even a slap on the wrist. Immediately after the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, the right claimed her death was the consequences of her own choices.

Donald Trump’s “Great Again”: For my friends, a pardon; for my enemies, a bullet to the head. God bless America.

Here’s a choice a fine Republican from Florida’s 6th District made on Monday: H.R.7012 – To authorize the annexation and subsequent admission to statehood of Greenland, and for other purposes.

Is it a troll by a Trump brown-noser? The image suggests that that is likely. But these days, who can tell? Rep. Randy Fine has one cosponsor. Greenland has a tenth the population of Wyoming and no love for Donald Trump. Fine would likely oppose statehood for Puerto Rico or the District.

Huge News! Today, I am proud to introduce the Greenland Annexation and Statehood Act, a bill that allows the President to find the means necessary to bring Greenland into the Union. 

Let me be clear, our adversaries are trying to establish a foothold in the Arctic, and we can’t… pic.twitter.com/h28sXU7LAU

— Congressman Randy Fine (@RepFine) January 12, 2026

“By acquiring Greenland, we would prevent our adversaries from controlling the Arctic Region and secure our northern flank from Russia and China,” writes Fine.

Malcolm Nance, former naval intelligence officer, foreign policy analyst and pundit, itemized for Fine a few consequences of annexing Greenland. One assumes from the worst-case rant (and a few misspellings) that Nance is emptying both barrels at the former gaming executive. Nance’s response on X is over the top, but satisfying nonetheless:

CONSEQUENCES FOR DUMBASSES: You are an F’ing idiot. If we invade Greenland we go to war with 31 nations. NATO stays together but without us. Its HQ is in Brussels, not the Pentagon. Our global reach across the Atlantic will end with our closest refueling base in Israel or Egypt. 100,000 American soldiers will be forced to board civil airliners and sent home or be taken as POWs/Detainee sWITHOUT WEAPONS OR EQUIPMENT. Canada will close its airspace and sea space. US Ballistic Missile Defense at Pettufik and Fylingdales ENDS, which means we see nothing except what space sensors can see. US Intelligence is reduced to Fort Meade, Ft Gordon and Colorado Springs and Hawaii. CIA spies will be rolled up by their former friends in HOURS. NO ONE WILL SHARE ANYTHING WITH US. ALL GLOBAL SHIPPING WILL BE CLOSED TO US. Denmark operates the largest shipping company in the world. SIX OUT OF TEN global shipping companies are in Europe … Worlds Biggest container ships? DENMARK! Australia, NZ, Canada are Commonwealth so they will cut ties with us or be neutral too.

PS Denmark & locals tun all life support and generators at Pittufik and Canada resupplies it … all 150 US Spece force personnel would become POWs to guys on sleds. FYI They have troops there now and 35,000 Caribou hunting rifles.

FYI France and UK have nukes. Hundreds of them so you cannot intimidate them with that.

Oh and they collapse the US economy by sanctioning us and selling off 2.3 Trillion in US treasuries simultaneously. Also no Botox, Ozempic or insulin. Its made in Denmark.

Ya fucking dope.

That’s fair. Over the top, but fair. (I especially appreciate Nance’s observation about the potential loss of strategic refueling bases.)

Marcy Wheeler already pointed out that Trump admitted to the New York Times that his need to possess Greenland stems from a personal problem.

Republicans in Congress should all read the transcript from the NYT "interview" where Trump explained the ONLY reason he needs to "own" Greenland is bc of his own psychological neediness.

Will you sit there and do nothing as Trump confesses this is all about his psychological… pic.twitter.com/IDntisr1qt

— EU says Elon should not lie abt my blue check (@emptywheel) January 12, 2026

Elon Musk’s own AI already reported that not owning Greenland is no impediment to building new U.S. bases there or expanding existing ones. As for mining, several reports observe that if whatever useful minerals lie buried in Greenland, if they were “getable,” mines would already be in operation:

Researchers say it would be extremely difficult and expensive to extract Greenland’s minerals because many of the island’s mineral deposits are located in remote areas above the Arctic Circle, where there is a mile-thick polar ice sheet and darkness reigns much of the year.

Not only that, but Greenland, a self-ruling territory of Denmark, lacks the infrastructure and manpower required to make this mining dream a reality.

“The idea of turning Greenland into America’s rare-earth factory is science fiction. It’s just completely bonkers,” said Malte Humpert, founder and senior fellow at The Arctic Institute. “You might as well mine on the moon. In some respects, it’s worse than the moon.”

So is our sitting president. Pray for consequences for him.

Data for Progress for Zeteo:

Almost 70% of Republicans are all in on the administration”s crackdown. I guess that’s no surprise. But Indies are not. This is an ongoing problem for the Republicans. Even the fact that 15-20% of Republicans don’t support this should be of concern as well.