He left out that they have a license to kill and “absolute immunity” (though his pardon power) but they already know that.
"what digby sez..."
Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
This piece by Ashley Parker in The Atlantic (gift link) called “The Wrath of Stephen Miller” will chill you to the bone. He’s running things. He’s a psychopath. And it truly appears that he’s extremely popular in the White House:
[I]n Trump’s second term, Miller finds himself at the height of his powers—the pulsing human id of a president who is already almost pure id.
Miller has tried to recast the nation’s partisan political disagreements as an existential conflict, a battle pitting “forces of wickedness and evil” against the nation’s noble, virtuous people—a mostly native-born crowd that traces its lineage and legacy “back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello.” He accuses federal judges of “legal insurrection” for ruling against Trump’s policies, describes the Democratic Party as a “domestic extremist organization,” and dismisses the results of even legal immigration programs as “the Somalification of America.” And he has declared an end to the post–World War II order of “international niceties” in favor of a world that rebukes the weak, “that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” as he put it this week when discussing recent military action against Venezuela.
Along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Miller was the chief force behind Trump’s decision to capture the Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro. “We are a superpower, and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower,” Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday, articulating a worldview that started with the fear of immigration but has gradually expanded to a broader national-security and rule-of-law argument. (In this Darwinian vein, Miller also declared that the U.S. military could seize Greenland without a fight, echoing a social-media post that his wife, Katie Miller, had made two days earlier, showing an American flag superimposed on a map of the icy landmass alongside the word: SOON. NATO leaders have nervously affirmed Denmark’s claim to the territory.)
Miller’s official titles—he is also the director of the interagency Homeland Security Council—understate the full sweep of his purview. Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser and a Miller ally, describes him as Trump’s “prime minister.” Miller has a role in nearly every area about which he cares deeply: immigration and border security, yes, but also national security, foreign policy, trade, military action, and policing. He may draft a flurry of executive orders one day, lead a meeting on lowering domestic beef prices the next, and travel to deliver a fiery speech of his own—think Trump at his angriest and most dystopian, without any of the president’s impish humor—the following week. (Miller declined to comment for this story.)
Early in Trump’s second term, he invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to treat migrants as part of a foreign invasion, directed Congress to pass $150 billion in new funding for homeland-security enforcement, and captained the administration’s assault on elite universities such as Harvard and Columbia. Late last year, he helped orchestrate Trump’s authorization of military strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, setting the stage for the military operation against Maduro.
The force behind Miller’s directives became clear during Signalgate—in which the Trump administration accidentally included The Atlantic’seditor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, on a private Signal chat about a bombing campaign in Yemen. It was Miller—not Trump’s national security adviser, Pentagon chief, or even vice president—who ended the debate and directed the group to move forward with the strikes. Trump has described Miller as sitting “at the top of the totem poll” inside the White House.
He’s a very adept operator who knows how to work the levers of power and has been given a massive portfolio. And they all seem to have immense respect for his abilities.
And then there’s the sociopathy which doesn’t seem to bother any of them. Barbara Wien, a retired women protesting in his neighborhood looked at his wife and did this:
He went crazy:
“You want us to live in fear? We will not live in fear,” Miller said days later, in an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program. He had gone on the program to discuss the federal response to Kirk’s recent assassination, but although he was focused on “domestic terrorists,” he included doxxing on the list of related offenses. For those familiar with the Millers’ personal lives, it sounded less like he was talking about Kirk’s assassin than about Wien, who’d distributed flyers with his address.
“You will live in exile,” he continued, “because the power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and, if you have broken the law, to take away your freedom.”
Miller set about drafting a series of executive orders, later signed by Trump, that directed federal law enforcement to refocus counterterrorism efforts on people with “anti-fascist” ideas, such as “extremism on migration, race, and gender” and “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
This fall, Miller also began describing a central divide in the country, pitting “legitimate state power” against what he termed left-wing “street violence.” His definition of the latter was broad. He accused Democratic politicians who called him or Trump “authoritarian” of “inciting violence.” (Never mind that he had repeatedly called the Biden administration “fascist.”) He placed doxxing—what his family faced—on the continuum that leads to violence. (Also never mind that Vice President J. D. Vance encouraged calling out those who celebrated Kirk’s murder, including at their place of employment.)
As Miller announced federal policies aimed at combatting the threat, he was also fighting a private battle against the very enemy he described. In the weeks after Wien made her gesture in front of his wife, the Millers decided that they were no longer safe in their six-bedroom, roughly $3 million Northern Virginia home. They sought out military housing at a nearby base, arguing to friends and allies inside the administration that their safety depended on it.
But the legitimate powers of the state repeatedly declined to fully cooperate with the Millers’ attempt to turn their own situation into a catalyst for the sort of crackdown they claimed was necessary. The FBI was initially hesitant to take a major role in the investigation of Wien, prompting the Millers to demand its involvement, according to a person briefed on their efforts. A Democratic Virginia state prosecutor became concerned about the federal involvement in a search warrant on Wien, and sought to narrow its scope. A federal magistrate judge refused to approve federal search warrants, according to a report by Axios.
Katie Miller, who hosts her own podcast, recently appeared on Piers Morgan’s YouTube show and accused a progressive guest, Cenk Uyger, of attacking her Jewish children by merely having a difference of opinion with her. She then offered a veiled threat to have Uyger’s citizenship revoked. (Uyger is a naturalized citizen; in a text message, he described Katie Miller’s threat as “not an attack on me as much as it’s an attack on America.”) When the investigation against Wien appeared to stall, Miller’s longtime ally Jim Jordan, the House Judiciary Committee chair, announced that he had opened an inquiry into the Democratic prosecutor in Virginia who had sought to narrow the search warrant and raised concerns about federal involvement.
“This is so cool,” Katie Miller said on social media. “Thank you.”
The prosecutor refused to get that warrant. But I doubt the Millers are going to give up.
This is what he has in common with Trump and why they work so well together. They are bonded in their thirst for vengeance.
Read it all. I feel more unnerved by this than anything I’ve seen recently. This man is in charge.
Trumpland? Republic of Trump? North Trumpia?
U.S. officials have discussed sending lump sum payments to Greenlanders as part of a bid to convince them to secede from Denmark and potentially join the United States, according to four sources familiar with the matter.
While the exact dollar figure and logistics of any payment are unclear, U.S. officials, including White House aides, have discussed figures ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 per person, said two of the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The idea of directly paying residents of Greenland, an overseas territory of Denmark, offers one explanation of how the U.S. might attempt to “buy” the island of 57,000 people, despite authorities’ insistence in Copenhagen and Nuuk that Greenland is not for sale.
[…]
One of the sources familiar with White House deliberations said the internal discussions regarding lump sum payments were not necessarily new. However, that person said, they had gotten more serious in recent days, and aides were entertaining higher values, with a $100,000-per-person payment – which would result in a total payment of almost $6 billion – a real possibility.
Six billion for Greenland. Reimbursement for any oil companies’ investments in Venezuela and untold billions for the occupation. An extra half trillion for the military, which is already budgeted for a trillion in this year’s budget. Over a hundred seventy billion more for DHS (more than the entire budget for the U.S. Marines corps.) Pretty soon we’ll be talking about real money.
Meanwhile, Trump and his friends and family are swallowing a firehouse full of corrupt money.
I heard the price of eggs is down, though. So it’s all good.
President Trump declared on Wednesday evening that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality,” brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world.
Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
“I don’t need international law,” he added. “I’m not looking to hurt people.”
When pressed further about whether his administration needed to abide by international law, Mr. Trump said, “I do.” But he made clear he would be the arbiter when such constraints applied to the United States.
“It depends what your definition of international law is,” he said.
WTF???
The pussy grabbing, convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, classified documents thief, coup plotter, insurrection inciter, swindler in chief says we must depend on his mind and his morality instead of laws, treaties, institutions. He says, “it’s the only thing that can stop me.” Let’s stop pretending otherwise. We know what we’re dealing with.
I can’t imagine why they haven’t given this sociopath the Nobel Peace Prize yet.
Minneapolis Public Schools on Wednesday canceled classes district-wide for the remainder of the week “due to safety concerns,” following the killing of a woman Wednesday by an ICE agent. The district said it was acting “out of an abundance of caution.”
The move came after officials at Roosevelt High School said armed U.S. Border Patrol officers came on school property during dismissal Wednesday and began tackling people, handcuffed two staff members and released chemical weapons on bystanders.
“The guy, I’m telling him like, ‘Please step off the school grounds,’ and this dude comes up and bumps into me and then tells me that I pushed him, and he’s trying to push me, and he knocked me down,” a school official, who spoke to MPR News on condition of anonymity said.
“They don’t care. They’re just animals,” the official added. “I’ve never seen people behave like this.”
They also rousted a bunch of day care centers. Oh, and they murdered a legal observer as she was trying to comply.
It’s going to get worse:
He also said:
The idea that Tim Walz and a bunch of radicals are gonna go after and make this guy’s life miserable because he was doing the job he was asked to do is preposterous. The unprecedented thing is the idea that a local official can prosecute a federal official with absolute immunity.”
Federal officials have absolute immunity? Interesting. I thought it was only the president (and even his is ostensibly not “absolute”) but apparently not. But then maybe he’s just talking about the fact that the president will pardon any of his minions and then punish any state that prosecutes them under their own laws. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works now.
She was asking for it:
This is how normal people react to what happened:
NY TIMES: "Our analysis of bystander footage, filmed from different angles, appears to show the agent was not in the path of the victim’s SUV when he fired three shots at close range."#ICE #Minniapolis #Minnesotapic.twitter.com/2D2yQX3f9l
— Mark (@cmadsq) January 8, 2026
That forensic analysis done by the NY Times sows that the ICE agent who murdered Renee Good was not hit. I know that has seemed obvious to many of us but CNN has been saying that he was. This proves otherwise. They need to correct their coverage.
The man was videoing the event just seconds before he pulled out his gun and started shooting. I you didn’t know better you’d think that he was livestreaming the murder. (He wasn’t — he didn’t have the phone up when he fired.) But what in the hell was this guy doing? Facial recognition? Making one of their music videos for Kristi?
Sadlyu, it doens’t seem that we’re going to find out any time soon since Kristi Noem, Kash Patel and Pam Bondi have refused to allow Minnesota to be involved in the investigation. Golly, I wonder why. Could it be because they’ve already decided what happened? That they want to provoke a violent reaction so they can invoke the insurrection act and start brutalizing and killing protesters? Yes, I’m afraid so.
The NY Times happened to be interviewing Trump when this came down. An excerpt:
The exchange was a glimpse into Mr. Trump’s reflexive defense of what has become a sometimes violent federal crackdown on immigration, which in this case claimed the life of an American citizen who was protesting ICE’s presence in Minneapolis.
On Thursday, after our interview with the president, a Times analysis of footage from three camera angles showed the motorist was driving away from — not toward — a federal officer when he opened fire.
But on Wednesday night, Mr. Trump stuck to his position even as we pointed out the inconsistencies in his account and the lack of clarity in videos circulating on social media. We asked if, in his mind, firing into a vehicle like that was acceptable.
“She behaved horribly,” Mr. Trump said. “And then she ran him over. She didn’t try to run him over. She ran him over.”
We told the president that the early videos circulating online were unclear.
“I’ll play the tape for you
Mr. Trump’s aide Natalie Harp brought a laptop over to the Resolute Desk to show us what he said would be evidence of the woman’s wrongdoing.
Before the video began, Mr. Trump acknowledged the tragic nature of the shooting. “With all of it being said, no, I don’t like that happening,” he said, before pivoting to his common refrain of criticizing illegal immigration.
As a slow-motion surveillance video of the shooting played on the laptop, we told him that this angle did not appear to show that an ICE officer had been run over.
“Well,” Mr. Trump said. “I — the way I look at it … ”
“It’s a terrible scene,” Mr. Trump said at the end of the video. “I think it’s horrible to watch. No, I hate to see it.”
But did this fatal shooting mean his ICE operation had gone too far? Mr. Trump sidestepped the question, instead blaming his predecessor’s immigration policies.
They only showed him that one, grainy tape because they didn’t want him out there saying something that could be construed as criticism of the ICE agent. He was surprised to see that it wasn’t true. Of course he reflexively defended than but you can tell that he was surprised. (Ir’s reminiscent of that MS13 tattoo they photoshopped and told him it was real.)
I think it’s pretty clear that this has become one of the problems. Trump is stupid and he’s crazy. But he’s also undisciplined and unconventional and the people around him who have a bigger agenda can’t trust that he won’t go off script. They’re manipulating him. If they were decent people that might even be a good thing. But they’re not.
The MAGA movement is confused. The supposed peace-loving followers of Donald Trump who have spent the last decade disparaging George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden for their “forever wars” are suddenly being confronted with the fact that their leader is bombing, blockading and invading countries all over the world — and they kind of like it. Suddenly, they feel like themselves again.
This shift is entirely predictable. With few exceptions, the American right loves war. Sure, there was the original, isolationist “America First” movement leading up to World War II, which was heavily informed by a little infatuation with a certain fashy, right-wing German chancellor. But in most situations ever since, they have been reliable warhawks.
The right’s detour into a weird sort of pacifism was an uncomfortable fit for a movement based upon belligerence and insults.
The right’s detour into a weird sort of pacifism was an uncomfortable fit for a movement based upon belligerence and insults, made necessary because Trump — a natural warmonger if there ever was one — constructed his entire political philosophy around the idea that whatever previous presidents did, he would have done the opposite. When he entered the presidential race in 2015, the Iraq War was still a live issue and he naturally said that he was against it, a claim that was not true.
But Trump has always issued a disclaimer with those proclamations. “We should have kept the oil,” he has said, insisting the U.S. should seize oil fields wherever it chooses. In that sense, his followers have no need to feel any dissonance over Saturday’s military incursion in Venezuela. In fact, the president told MSNOW’s Joe Scarborough on Tuesday, “the difference between Iraq and this is that Bush didn’t keep the oil. We’re going to keep the oil.”
Despite the administration’s allegations and rationales in recent days about fentanyl and narco-trafficking, taking Venezuela’s oil fields appears to be Trump’s only motivation for his decision to depose President Nicolás Maduro and bring him and his wife to the U.S. for prosecution. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on the other hand, is clearly driven by his long-standing desire to eliminate leftist governments in Latin America and Venezuela as a stepping stone to his white whale: Cuba. Despite reports suggesting he has been given the task of “running” Venezuela, he seems to have little interest in that part of the job, writing off the operation as “law enforcement” and suggesting that the U.S. naval blockade will somehow lead to everyone cooperating with whatever Trump orders them to do.
The GOP establishment has predictably fallen in line, with the only dissent coming from the usual suspects such as former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Rep. Thomas Massie and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, all of whom protested the operation.
But nobody seems to be listening to them anymore. The person whose defense of the operation seems to most appeal to the MAGA base is White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who made the case to CNN’s Jake Tapper for straight-up American domination, saying, “we live in a world in which, you can talk about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” Miller, too, believes the armada stationed off the Venezuelan coast will keep the country’s residents in line.
Much of this is explained by the new “Donroe Doctrine,” which holds that the United States has a right to pretty much do anything it chooses in the Western Hemisphere, including annexing countries, taking their resources and otherwise overseeing their affairs as a regional hegemon. MAGA podcaster Matt Walsh put it succinctly: “I totally support turning other countries in our hemisphere into subordinate vassals of the United States. That’s the very definition of an America First foreign policy,” while MAGA influencer Benny Johnson spoke for many Trump true believers when he tweeted, “This is our hemisphere. America will never be a socialist country. And Trump just reminded everyone we run this joint. Master move.”
According to Will Sommer, who covers the right at the Bulwark, this wasn’t the universal response among the MAGA faithful. When white nationalist Nick Fuentes celebrated the operation on Telegram by posting “TAKE THE OIL. THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE IS OURS,” many of his groyper followers rejected his opinion. Sommer was surprised at this reaction, since Fuentes is rarely a cheerleader for Trump, and quipped, “Perhaps it should be no surprise that someone who considers Adolf Hitler ‘cool’ would want to engage in aggressive, ultimately self-defeating wars.”
But what of MAGA’s big guns like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon? They have preached the America First philosophy seriously over the years, with both denouncing the Iran strikes last summer. Carlson took the position that the operation may have actually been ordered because Maduro was a real social conservative who is against marriage equality. He doesn’t appear to be joking. Bannon supported the operation, but has expressed reservations about the U.S “running the place.” He said, “The bigger issues here people are concerned about is like President Trump saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to do boots on the ground,’ and last night, ‘We’re going to rebuild the country.’” Bannon has his finger on the MAGA pulse, and he may be right.
The one person who’s been conspicuously absent around the Venezuela mission is JD Vance, and that’s unusual. The vice president is usually right at the center of everything, applauding Trump actions like a trained seal. Since this is Rubio’s baby, perhaps he gracefully took a backseat. But considering his only statement on the matter, it seems more likely that Vance is keeping his cards close to his vest until he can determine if the MAGA voters he’s courting for a potential 2028 run will continue to support this assault. More than anyone else in the administration, Vance has staked his reputation on the America First philosophy, but he’s very adept at shape-shifting, so he will no doubt position himself wherever he believes it will most benefit him.
I would guess that MAGA will be perfectly happy to go along with whatever Trump wants. Most of them probably cheered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s crude comments about Maduro: “He f****d around and found out.”
But Republicans need more than those true believers to win elections, and they should be worried about that. A Reuters poll taken after the attack showed that only 33% of Americans approve of the Venezuela action, and 72% are concerned that the U.S. will get too involved. Even among Republicans, only 60% endorse sending in troops and taking over the oil fields.
The GOP had better hope the Venezuelans are able to set their country right under Donald Trump’s rule in record time, because they don’t have much running room before the November midterms. So far, the “Donroe Doctrine” is a dud with the American people.
Salon
Step-up time is now
I don’t know if it’s possible for sane Americans with souls to feel more dejected this morning after the ICE killing in Minneapolis on Wednesday. Like the scene below from Andor, it seems that the Empire is in firm control and isn’t even bothering to lie badly to us anymore. (Art imitates life.)
View on Threads
Or even to hide what they are up to:
American forces have been training for extractions after amassing military aircraft in Britain, as President Trump threatens strikes and annexations across the globe.
Special operations soldiers were seen rappelling from CV-22B tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft in a fast-rope and rescue exercise at a British airbase on Tuesday.
The drill took place shortly after a fleet of at least 14 C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft and two heavily armed AC-130J Ghostrider gunships landed at three RAF bases in Suffolk and Gloucestershire since Saturday.
Or this either (they’ve boarded the ship):
That interdiction has me thinking of another movie scene:
So the creeping fear and despair needs addressing.
Over the weekend, I told a former NC state representative about my highway sign efforts. He was taken aback. I’m a behind-the-scenes activist he sees as “an intellectual” and not a street activist.
“Extraordinary times,” I replied.
Donald Trump is all about spectacle. He once was part owner of professional wrestling, FFS. He very memorably had Lafayette Park cleared with tear gas and rubber bullets so he could pose with a Bible. He’s moving our military around the globe like he’s playing with tin soldiers. He’s staging live-fire spectacles in Venezuela and threatening other countries in this hemisphere. He has his secret police killing Americans; they bring their own film crews! All the attention is on him, and right now it looks as if no one is going to stop him/them. Indivisible’s actions are laudable as are the people behind No Kings. But people outside the Beltway need a sense that leading Democrats are at least trying if we expect voters to turn the bastards out in the fall.
Three times this week I’ve written the Democratic minority leaders in the House and Senate on what I need them to do. Last night, it went:
The writer Anand Giridharadas said last Feb., “I feel so fucking undefended right now.” He meant by Democrats in Congress. I’m on street corners and overpasses with signs 4-5x/wk since Aug. Drivers and pedestrians are anxious and afraid. They want more than anything else to be *SEEN* and *DEFENDED*. We’re in an attention economy and I need your entire caucus to get some.
Create a headline-grabbing spectacle, howboutit? Not another tired floor speech to an empty chamber. Not prepared statements delivered to a press gaggle from behind a lectern. Your voters I hope to drag off their couches to vote this fall need a *spectacle* to convince them that their elected representatives give a shit about more than inside-the-Beltway infighting that feels a galaxy from the lives they lead.
Here’s an outside-the-box idea: March the entire Senate and House Dem caucuses down Pennsylvania Ave. to rally in Lafayette Pk. against aggression in Venezuela and the ICE murder in Minneapolis. I don’t expect you to lead the resistance. I expect you to inspire by example. Talk is cheap and Indys [independents] don’t trust politicians. They need to SEE what you got.
Extraordinary times, extraordinary measures. This is an attention economy. Get some or go home. There’s no MLK to lead a march on Washington today. Take some time out of calling committee hearings and issuing sternly worded letters to do something memorable enough and out-of-character enough to grab headlines and buck up your voters or they may stay home this fall.
So I’ve had a scene from Tin Cup (1996) on my mind. Golfer Roy McAvoy (Kevin Costner) is in contention for winning the U.S. Open. He stubbornly throws it away to prove to himself and everyone watching that he can make an unmakeable shot. His caddie wants him to play it safe, but Roy refuses. He makes a spectacle of himself, and in losing wins the hearts of the crowd and steals the winner’s thunder. Watch.
The lesson is delivered by an excited Dr. Molly Griswold (Rene Russo) afterwards. She calls his performance legendary.
“Five years from now nobody will remember who won or lost, but they’re gonna remember your 12!”
Five years from now, there could be nothing left of what was The United States of America or the post-war order. It’s a good time for Democrats to do something legendary.
Update: This from Garrett M. Graff’s Doomsday Scenario. You feel it. I feel it. He feels it.
That heaviness you feel, that drag on your mental health, that drain on your emotional energy and lethargy in the face of world events, like yesterday, is real. We are all carrying a lot of new weight in the era of Trumpism.
Paging Neil Young
About that ICE shooting in Minneapolis comes this from the Marshall Project:
The fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday was not the first time that federal officers have shot and killed civilians since the Trump administration launched its aggressive immigration enforcement campaign.
Federal officers have fatally shot at least three other people in the last five months, according to news reports reviewed by The Marshall Project. In September, Silverio Villegas González, a father originally from Mexico who worked as a cook, was killed while reportedly trying to flee from officers in a Chicago suburb, WBEZ reported. In December, a border patrol agent killed a 31-year-old Mexican citizen while trying to detain him in Rio Grande, Texas. And on New Year’s Eve, an off-duty ICE agent used his service weapon to shoot a man in Los Angeles, California, according to CBS News. Authorities said the man had raised a rifle at the officer.
Other people have also been shot by agents. The Trace, the nonprofit news organization covering gun violence, has counted more than a dozen such shootings. In some cases, the victims survived, including a woman who suffered multiple bullet wounds in an incident in Chicago in October. The Border Patrol officer who shot her appeared to brag about it in a text message, later presented in court evidence. The message reportedly read, “I fired 5 rounds, and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.” That shooting happened as part of Operation Midway Blitz, an immigration enforcement campaign in which federal agents fanned across Chicago, similar to what they are doing in Minneapolis now. The administration has also conducted large-scale blitzes in Los Angeles, Portland and New Orleans.
The New York Times counts nine shootings:
In the last four months alone, immigration officers have fired on at least nine people in five states and Washington, D.C. All of the individuals targeted in those shootings were, like the woman killed on Wednesday, fired on while in their vehicles. In each case, officials have claimed that the agents fired in self-defense, fearing they would be struck by the vehicle.
At least one other person died as a result of those shootings.
The Guardian on Sunday listed 32 people who died in ICE custody in 2025, “making it the agency’s deadliest year in more than two decades.”
DHS spokesliar Tricia McLaughlin issued her standard Mad Lib about the woman shot dead on Wednesday. If DHS had secretly replaced @TriciaOhio with an AI programmed to respond to all acts of DHS violence with phrases including “violent rioters,” “weaponized vehicle,” and “domestic terrorism,” would anyone know the difference?
A federal judge saw this Minneapolis killing coming, Law Dork (Chris Geidner) reports:
Tonight, however, I want to highlight the ways in which U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis, in her November 20 opinion in a case over the federal government’s treatment of protesters and press in Illinois, warned us — warned America — that today was coming.
In the 233-page opinion backing up her earlier orders in the case, Ellis, an Obama appointee, noted throughout the opinion how often federal immigration agents were drawing guns in Illinois and ultimately concluded that “agents have used excessive force … without justification, often without warning, and even at those who had begun to comply with agents’ orders.“
In the November 20 opinion, Ellis found — in the case that led to Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino’s deposition — that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their claim that the Trump administration’s actions at the protests in front of the Broadview ICE facility outside Chicago and at other places in the area violated the First and Fourth Amendments.
Throughout the opinion — issued less than two months ago — Ellis highlighted how guns were being drawn repeatedly and in questionable-at-best circumstances in Chicago.
Ellis’s opinion (and body of evidence), Dork believes, “stands as a document of clear warning that must be part of our larger understanding as efforts to hold the Trump administration accountable for Wednesday’s fatal shooting and stop more Trump administration violence get underway.”
Soulless ghouls flooded a friend’s Facebook post on the Minneapolis shooting claiming that Good suffered the consequences of her choices. I replied that Derek Chauvin could be reached for comment on his at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Big Spring, Texas. Seems I remember that celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death was detestable bad form just four months ago. I guess it depends on whom is on the downrange end of the bullet’s trajectory.
“Today has been bonkers,” historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote on Facebook in advance of her daily letter. That’s an understatement.
When they aren’t murdering US citizens here’s what they’ve been tasked to do:
What in god’s name is happening here? Trump has literally deployed 2000 masked and armed agents to terrorize day care centers. Is there not one Republican other than the usual suspects like the very concerned Susan Collins who will step up here? Not one???
It’s happening at schools too:
