“I think, at a very basic level, people think we’re making policy decisions, we’re saying we think this is how things should be, as opposed to what the law provides. I think they view us as purely political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do.” — Chief Justice John Roberts, May 6, 2026

Come hell or high water in the Trump era the Roberts Court has almost always found a way to enable Donald Trump and advance the interests of the contemporary Republican Party. The 6-3 Republican supermajority has given us Trump v. United States (July 1, 2024) and Louisiana v. Callais (April 29, 2026), which, among a host of other decisions, have strengthened the evidence that the Republican justices have less fidelity to the Constitution than to a partisan agenda. The latter decision, the latest in a pattern, illustrates the Roberts Court’s hostility to the Reconstruction Amendments.

Of these amendments, Eric Foner has written:

 The 13th Amendment irrevocably abolished slavery. The 14th constitutionalized the principles of birthright citizenship and equality before the law. The 15th sought to guarantee the right to vote for black men throughout the reunited nation. All three empowered Congress to enforce their provisions, radically shifting the balance of power from the states to the nation.
The amendments had flaws. The 13th allowed involuntary servitude to continue for people convicted of crime, inadvertently opening the door to the creation of a giant system of convict labor. The 14th mandated that a state would lose part of its representation in the House of Representatives if it barred groups of men from voting but imposed no penalty if it disenfranchised women. The 15th allowed states to limit citizens’ right to vote for reasons other than race.
Nonetheless, the amendments should be seen not simply as changes to an existing structure but as a second American founding, which created a fundamentally new Constitution.

The majority on the Roberts Court is intent on clawing back what Congress intended in the post-Civil War era and again (as recently as 1982) what Congress intended following passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. With the decision on April 29, the six Republican justices have succeeded in demolishing the VRA.

Louisiana v. Callais will have dramatic consequences going forward — eliminating Black representation in Congressional districts, state legislatures, and local governing bodies. In fact, dramatic changes are already taking place, as a number of Republican states rush to redistrict and disable Black voting strength before the November 2026 elections.

[“Deadline: White House,” July 1, 2024. Marc Elias begins speaking at the 8:27 mark]

On the day theTrump v. United States decision was handed down, Nicolle Wallace asked voting rights attorney and activist Marc Elias for his response, which is worth quoting in full:

I think that we run the risk even on a day like today of overly lawyering, legalizing what the Supreme Court has done.
Let’s be clear. As you know, you’ve heard they knew exactly what they were doing not just for the past but for the future. Donald Trump is campaigning on a platform of being a dictator for a day and of seeking vengeance against his enemies. And, you know, to do that he needs the support of a lot of people who are going to go along with him.
Well, what have those people who have gone along with him learned in the past couple weeks? Number one, that the U.S. Supreme Court was going to narrowly construe a statute that went after January 6 insurrectionists. Number two, the Supreme Court was going to let Donald Trump remain on the ballot. Number three, that the Supreme Court was going to give him basically absolute immunity, not just for what he did last time, but what he may do in the future. And that his pardon power is absolute.
So let’s be clear. It’s not just that the Supreme Court knew what it was doing with respect to the to the criminal cases that have been indicted. The Supreme Court knows what it’s doing with respect to empowering his attitudes and his impulses and those of his followers as we are four months from the next election, four and a half months from the next set of lawsuits, five months from the next insurrection at the Capitol, and then potentially four years of him seeking vengeance and misusing power to go after his political opponents and to prosecute his case against the American people.
It is a shameful day for democracy. The court has disgraced itself. And I’ll tell ya, everyone one of us needs to be steeled for a battle to stand up for the rule of law going forward.

Wallace followed up: “Can I just ask you one last question, Marc Elias. In your view, why?” His response:

Because they agree with him.
You know, one of the things that has always struck me as odd in this town is that people look at a bunch of justices and they say: Well, you know they all went to Harvard and Yale Law School. And they all went to the best colleges. And they send their kids to the same schools that our kids go to. And you know they enjoy a glass of wine with a crudité at a reception at the Supreme Court. And they wear robes and they speak in very flowery language. They’re just like us.
No. They actually believe that Donald Trump is the future of America. They believe that the flag should be flown upside down, indicating distress, when Joe Biden wins. They believe that Donald Trump as a strongman should have immunity.
And it’s time that, you know, people that are in the center, the center-left, the center-right, stop looking at justices and thinking, Well, they must share our value system.
They don’t share our value system. They share his value system.

We have no reason to doubt this assessment and every reason to believe that when we watch the Roberts Court, we understand exactly what it is doing. This court is making policy decisions based on partisan preferences. It is enabling an authoritarian Republican president. At the same time, it is disabling Democratic public policies (such as the Voting Rights Act).

The Roberts Court is relying not on the Constitution, not on originalism, not on conservative judicial principles (such as judicial restraint, adherence to precedent, or respect for the coequal branch of government established by Article I). These Republican justices are dedicated to boosting the MAGA political agenda, because they prefer an earlier America than the one we have lived in since the second founding. They are imposing their political preferences on the nation.

With last week’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais the six Republican justices on the United States Supreme Court wrung the life out of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, killing off the protections it had offered minority voters.

Election maven Rick Hasen offered this assessment:

Wednesday’s 6–3 party-line decision in Louisiana v. Callais will go down in history as one of the most pernicious and damaging Supreme Court decisions of the last century. All six Republican-appointed justices on the court signed onto Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion gutting what remained of the Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters, while pretending they were merely making technical tweaks to the act.
This decision will bleach the halls of Congress, state legislatures, and local bodies like city councils, by ending the protections of Section 2 of the act, which had provided a pathway to assure that voters of color would have some rudimentary fair representation. It’s the culmination of the life’s work of Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who have shown persistent resistance to the idea of the United States as a multiracial democracy, and a brazen willingness to reject Congress’ judgment that fair representation for minority voters sometimes requires race-conscious legislation. It gives the green light to further partisan gerrymandering. It protects Alito’s core constituency: aggrieved white Republican voters. It’s a disaster for American democracy.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been called “the single most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever passed by Congress.” In fact John Roberts himself has made reference to this judgment. Quoting (in an internal memo during his service in the Reagan administration) a sentence of Section 2 of VRA, Roberts wrote: “This provision, which is an important part of what has been uniformly described as the most successful civil rights law ever enacted, is applicable nationwide.”

Voter suppression

Don Moynihan offers a graph that presents registration rates of Black and White voters in Louisiana from 1878 to 2010. As you can see, the most dramatic changes in Black voter registration occurred with the advent of Jim Crow and then with passage of the VRA.

Regarding the graph, Moynihan observes:

In a single image, it tells the story of political power and discrimination. Black voters had power, briefly, then it was taken from them. A series of policies that were more or less explicit in their discriminatory purpose worked as intended, disenfranchising Black voters, and some poor White voters along the way.
This ended with the Voting Right Act of 1965, which removed the ability of governments to put in place facially neutral but clearly discriminatory practices, and in doing so ratcheted up Black registration in Louisiana until it matched White voters. This effect was immediate and enduring across the South.

While violence and intimidation were widespread during the Jim Crow era ( just months before passage of the VRA the country witnessed the bloody clash at the Edmund Pettus Bridge), election law was often enough to keep Black folks from registering. And note that the practices that disenfranchised Black voters during the Jim Crow era were represented as color-blind; in Moynihan’s words, they were “facially neutral but clearly discriminatory practices.” Poll taxes, literacy tests, exams assessing good character, property requirements, and so on were effective instruments in the hands of state officials who wished to preserve White rule.

The decades-long crusade of John Roberts

When a young John Roberts wrote the memo quoted above, he was the Reagan administration point person to defeat an amendment to the VRA. A 1980 Supreme Court opinion (City of Mobile v. Bolden), a 6-3 ruling with the Republican justices constituting the majority, had overruled an appellate court decision that the VRA rendered a gerrymandered district map (icing out Black representation) illegal. The SCOTUS majority, in overturning this decision, held that “action by a State that is racially neutral on its face violates the Fifteenth Amendment only if motivated by a discriminatory purpose.”

Congress, granted the power to enforce the Fifteenth Amendment by Section 2 of that amendment, did not agree. Roberts and the Reagan White House lost that battle. The 1982 legislation — passed with bipartisan support and signed into law by President Reagan — clarified that states were prohibited from introducing voting procedures with discriminatory effect.

But Roberts stayed the course. It was his “life’s work,” as Hasen noted. The Roberts Court has chipped away at the VRA in decision after decision. Finally, more than four decades after that initial defeat, Roberts has finally succeeded in demolishing the VRA. Sam Alito wrote the 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, powered by the Republican supermajority on the court.

Elena Kagan dissents

In the opening paragraphs of her dissent (joined by justices Sotomayer and Jackson), Justice Kagan offers a hypothetical illustration to clarify what’s at stake:

Consider the story of a hypothetical congressional district in a hypothetical State, subjected to a redistricting scheme. The example is admittedly stylized, but in its essence simulates the dispute before us, and clarifies the immense issues at stake. The district, let’s say, is a single county, in the shape of a near-perfect circle, sitting in the middle of a rectangular State. The State is one with a long history of virulent racial discrimination, and its many effects, including in residential segregation and political division, remain significant even today. The population of the circle district is 90% Black; the rest of the State, divided into five surrounding districts, is 90% White. And voting throughout all those districts is racially polarized: Black residents vote heavily for Democratic candidates, while White residents vote heavily for Republicans. The circle district thus enables the State’s Black community to elect a representative of its choice, whom no neighboring community would put in office. But that arrangement, in this not-so-hypothetical, is not to last. The state legislature decides to eliminate the circle district, slicing it into six pie pieces and allocating one each to six new, still solidly White congressional districts. The State’s Black voters are now widely dispersed, and (unlike the State’s White voters) lack any ability to elect a representative of their choice. Election after election, Black citizens’ votes are, by every practical measure, wasted.
That is racial vote dilution in its most classic form. A minority community that is cohesive in its geography and politics alike, and that faces continued adversity from racial division, is split—“cracked” is the usual term—so that it loses all its electoral influence. Members of the racial minority can still go to the polls and cast a ballot. But given the State’s racially polarized voting, they cannot hope—in the way the State’s White citizens can—to elect a person whom they think will well represent their interests. Their votes matter less than others’ do; they translate into less political voice. Or, as this Court put it recently, the cracking makes “a minority vote unequal to a vote by a nonminority voter.”

That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? Cracking districts creates two tiers of voters. The first tier dominates the second. Votes cast by the dominate group count. Votes cast by the disadvantaged group are, as Kagan writes “by every practical measure, wasted.”

Cracking a district is simpler than ever before with today’s computers. Denying fair representation to Black voters — so their votes matter less than others’ — is a snap. Congress, Kagan continues, chose to remedy this inequality by passing the Voting Rights Act. And by renewing it again and again. Congress made such unfairly apportioned legislative districts illegal because of the sordid history of voter suppression.

Even after the Fifteenth Amendment banned racial discrimination in voting, state officials routinely deprived African Americans of their voting rights. Through a seemingly boundless array of mechanisms—most of them facially race-neutral and among them the drawing of district lines—States either prevented Black citizens from casting ballots or ensured that their votes would count for next to nothing. The Voting Rights Act was meant as the corrective. And when this Court construed it too narrowly—insisting that a person suing under Section 2 had to prove discriminatory intent—Congress amended the law so that it turned solely on discriminatory effects. . . . And for 40 years now, this Court has recognized that language to encompass districting decisions that, in the way illustrated above, result in vote dilution—the “minimiz[ing]” of minority voters’ “ability to elect their preferred candidates.”
But no longer.

No longer. Not with the Roberts Court, especially not now that there is a Republican supermajority on the court.

The Republicans in power abhor multiracial democracy

The vision of the Roberts Court is at odds with the Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution and with the authority of Congress to pass legislation to enforce those amendments. This is a court that adamantly opposes multiracial democracy. The Republican justices prefer a return to an earlier time when the domination of White folks was unquestioned and the Black community was kept in its place. The court’s vision is akin to the Jim Crow era, which was ushered out by the civil rights revolution of 1960s America.

This Supreme Court majority is intent on turning back the clock, as implied by Donald Trump’s divisive invocation, Make America Great Again. This corruptly partisan majority has, often in brazen defiance of the Constitution and the rule of law, aggressively sought to impose its vision on the country.

John Roberts pledged at his confirmation hearing, “I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.”

That’s hardly how things have worked out during his tenure as chief justice. Roberts has pushed the court toward the MAGA vision as much as the Republican justices in the majority have permitted him. The contrast between word and deed, especially during the Trump era, has been dramatic. Either Roberts was being disingenuous. Or he has had a massive change of heart since Ginsburg’s death, the unscrupulous maneuvers in the Senate, and the resulting 6-3 Republican supermajority (with no more Souters among them).

What was evident (though many observers deferred judgment of what they were witnessing in order to give Roberts and the Republican majority the benefit of the doubt) before 2020 — that partisan preferences, not the Constitution or the rule of law move these justices — has become unmistakable.

This is a court that is committed above all else to advancing the interests of the contemporary Republican Party. Disenfranchising Black voters is a priority of the national party in order to retain political power. The Roberts Court has proven willing, again and again, to enable the MAGA GOP in the quest for political domination.

Last week I posted “This is Trump being Trump waging war on Iran.” Trump is still being Trump of course. Here’s another installment, beginning with his post on Pope Leo.

[Link on Truth Social.]

Thirty-seven minutes later he posted this:

After getting “rare criticism from the religious right and allegations of blasphemy,” Trump deleted the post (an altered version of a post that appeared on the web previously). The Washington Post, which helpfully notes that the post was AI-generated, describes some of the criticism in an Instagram post.

Afterwards Trump acknowledged the posting, but denied that it depicted him as Jesus Christ. “I did post it. I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with Red Cross, as a Red Cross worker, which we support. And only the fake news could come up with that one.”

Reporter: Did you post that picture of yourself depicted as Jesus Christ?Trump: It wasn't a depiction. I did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor. And had to do with red cross as a red cross worker, which we support and only the fake news could come up with that one.

— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) 2026-04-13T16:45:19.663Z

Thus begins a Washington Post report of the high court’s hard shift to the right. The story continues:

Note that, “Overall, the Supreme Court has consistently leaned to the right for 50 years. That pattern has persisted despite the country being closely divided politically and the White House and Congress regularly changing hands between Democrats and Republicans.”

Republican presidents have chosen every Chief Justice since Eisenhower’s appointment of Earl Warren in 1953. Republican-appointed justices have comprised the court’s majority since 1970 — over half a century.

Nonetheless, the Roberts Court — packed with 3 Trump appointments — has set itself apart by its crusade against the rights of women and racial minorities.

Assault on democracy

The Roberts Court has also made history in attacking voting rights; attacking fair small-d democratic representation by enabling gerrymandering; and opening the floodgates of money in American politics. In the words of Adam Liptak

In the two decades Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has led the Supreme Court, the justices have reshaped American elections not just by letting state lawmakers like those in Texas draw voting maps warped by politics, but also by gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and amplifying the role of money in politics.

Gutting voting rights has been a career-long mission of the Chief Justice since he served in the Reagan White House, where he sought vainly to undermine the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Roberts has found considerable success in the past decade leading the court, beginning with Shelby County v. Holder (2013), decided 5-4. This was an especially cynical ruling, with Roberts writing for the majority, striking VRA’s pre-clearance requirement: “Racial disparity in those numbers was compelling evidence justifying the preclearance remedy and the coverage formula. There is no longer such a disparity.”

Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s dissent was on the mark, “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” Within 24-hours of the decision Texas gloated that it would enforce its voter photo id law. Other Republican-led states followed with a range of voter suppression measures (closing polling places; cutting back on early voting; purging the voting rolls).

In Citizens United v. FEC (2010), McCutcheon v. FEC (2014), and a host of other decisions, the Roberts Court shredded campaign spending limits. The sums of money from billionaires (aka oligarchs) are staggering (“The Scale of Billionaires’ Campaign Donations is Overwhelming U.S. Politics”). And dark money compounds the problem.

In Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) the Roberts’ Court not only refused to uphold lower court rulings striking down gerrymandered redistricting schemes, it forbade federal courts from consideration of constitutional violations resulting from partisan redistricting. Justice Elena Kagan dissented:

For the first time ever, this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities.
And not just any constitutional violation. The partisan gerrymanders in these cases deprived citizens of the most fundamental of their constitutional rights: the rights to participate equally in the political process, to join with others to advance political beliefs, and to choose their political representatives. In so doing, the partisan gerrymanders here debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people. These gerrymanders enabled politicians to entrench themselves in office as against voters’ preferences. They promoted partisanship above respect for the popular will. They encouraged a politics of polarization and dysfunction. If left unchecked, gerrymanders like the ones here may irreparably damage our system of government.

The Rucho decision has led to mid-decade redistricting across the country to amplify gerrymandered Congressional districts. “The current frenzy is just the latest example of the most antidemocratic feature of American politics in 2025. It’s the toxic combination of the conservative Supreme Court majority and a political party that believes longstanding norms are for suckers and that lacks any commitment to fair play and majority rule.”

Enabling an off-the-rails wannabe strongman in the White House

Trump v. United States (2024) took the cake for the most outlandish, anti-constitutional decision of the Trump era. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent:

Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency. It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.
Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for “bold and unhesitating action” by the President, ante, at 3, 13, the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more. Because our Constitution does not shield a former President from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent.
…
Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like a loaded weapon” for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation.

Since that 2024 decision, the Roberts Court’s supercharging of Trump’s authoritarian ambitions and lawless conduct have often come through the shadow docket — in rulings without full briefings, oral arguments, or explanation. Often the majority’s reasoning is mysterious (if the Republican-appointed justices actually agree on a rationale). The lower courts are denied guideance and often the authority to act. Trump wins again and again, while the court’s GOP majority preserves exclusive right to decide such controversies on a case by case basis.

Former judge and conservative scholar J. Michael Luttig has taken the court to task: “The supreme court was never intended to function like this. Never before has it entertained such challenges from the president, and never before has it decided them so flippantly.” Luttig again:

“The supreme court has pulled the rug out from under the lower federal courts, and it has done so deliberately and knowingly,” Luttig said. “The chief justice has no higher obligation than to protect the federal judiciary from attacks by this president, and in my view he has utterly failed.”

[Link at Truth Social]

[Link at Truth Social]

Senate Republicans:

Iran would be wise to take President Trump at his word. 

They can choose the easy way or the hard way.

— Senate Republicans (@SenateGOP) April 7, 2026

Deal for 2-week ceasefire

[Link on Truth Social]

Iran’s 10 point peace plan

1. The US must fundamentally commit to guaranteeing non-aggression.

2. Continuation of Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz.

3. Acceptance that Iran can enrich uranium for its nuclear program

4. Removal of all primary sanctions on Iran.

5. Removal of all secondary sanctions against foreign entities that do business with Iranian institutions).

6. End of all United Security Council resolutions targeting Iran.

7. End of all International Atomic Energy Agency resolutions on Iran’s nuclear program.

8. Compensation payment to Iran for war damage.

9. Withdrawal of US combat forces from the region.

10. Cease-fire on all fronts, including Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

[Source: Wall Street Journal]

David French reviews an argument made by Trump’s evangelical followers: Progressives, by focusing on the suffering of undocumented immigrants, women with unwanted pregnancies, the poor and vulnerable in other countries, and so on have duped Christians into wavering from the necessity to “to do tough, hard things.”

These MAGA advocates argue against “the sin of empathy” and “toxic empathy” (transgressions which were overlooked in the Sermon on the Mount). This is, French suggests, misguided:

The problem in those cases isn’t with empathy, which is a vital human virtue, but rather in its selective application. Just as we wouldn’t call love a sin because we might be stingy in our love, empathy isn’t a sin because its application is incomplete.
Or, put another way, our problem isn’t with too much empathy, but too little. We’re unwilling to place ourselves in other people’s shoes, to try to understand who they are and what their lives are like.
It’s hard to talk about this issue without recognizing a fundamental truth of the moment: The attack on empathy would have gained very little traction in the church if Donald Trump weren’t president. He delights in vengeance, and he owes his presidency to the evangelical church.
I’ve shared this statistic before, but if you look at 2024 exit polling, you’ll see that Trump won white evangelical and born-again voters by a 65-point margin, 82 percent to 17 percent. He lost everyone else by 18 points, 58 percent to 40 percent.
Given the sharp differences between Trump and every other Republican president of the modern era, in my experience evangelicals are desperate to to rationalize their support for a man who gratuitously and intentionally inflicts unnecessary suffering on his opponents.
That’s exactly how empathy becomes a sin.

xxx

[Photo Eric Lee for the New York Times.]

A banner featuring a photo of Donald Trump and the words “Make America Safe Again” was hung from the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington on Thursday in one of the most public signs of the president’s influence over a department that once brought criminal charges against him.
The Justice Department has traditionally operated with a degree of independence from the White House. That separation, however, has eroded during Trump’s second term as the Justice Department has gone after his perceived political foes. — Raquel Coronell Uribe and Ryan J. Reilly, NBC News

The separation disappeared on January 20, 2025. Only the banner, celebrating Trump’s thumb on the DOJ and mocking the rule of law, is new.

The lawless, violent chaos unleashed by the Trump administration’s “Operation Metro Surge” is aimed ostensibly at rounding up and deporting criminals in the country illegally: the worst of the worst. In fact, the actual aim is — as ordered by Stephen Miller — to maximize the number of arrests and detentions, thus creating fear among both immigrants, whether here legally or not, whether law abiding or not, and among citizens who choose to protest these police state tactics.

I. Three American citizens, each detained in Kavanaugh stops by ICE or CBP, described their experiences for PBS. Here is the text of their accounts (via Amanda Carpenter on Bluesky):

Here is the video of the Americans speaking on PBS News Hour:

II. Millions of Americans have protested Trump’s policies. Since Trump’s decision to occupy Minneapolis, Minnesotans have been in the forefront of protests. In addition to physical violence, threats — both implicit and explicit — directed at Americans by federal agents have become standard operating procedure. During the past two months, agents have added a new wrinkle to their menacing behavior. Using facial recognition technology and monitoring people’s social media, they have begun identifying protesters by name and showing up at their homes (as described in a New York Times story):

Among nearly 100 sworn statements filed in federal court on Friday are more than a dozen accounts … in which federal agents deployed to Minnesota singled out protesters, finding the addresses of their homes and showing up there.

One resident reported following an SUV:

Then, she said, the SUV suddenly turned and sped at her. “I thought the agents were going to deliberately T-bone my car,” she wrote. “Right before it hit me, the unmarked SUV braked hard.”
A masked woman leaned out the passenger window and yelled, “Emily, Emily, we’re going to take you home.” She shouted the address where Ms. Beltz lives with her husband and 5-year-old.

III. Whenever Trump’s militarized secret police are called out, the official response is denial, deflection, and slander. The lies keep coming, as in a case that received much media coverage a month ago. This is from the Department of Homeland Security statement posted (with original bold font and italics) the day after the shooting:

At 6:50 PM CT on January 14, 2025, federal law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted traffic stop in Minneapolis for Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis who was released into the country by President Joe Biden in 2022.
Attempting to evade arrest, Sosa-Celis fled the scene in his vehicle, crashed into a parked car, and proceeded to flee on foot. The law enforcement officer pursued Sosa-Celis also on foot, caught up to him, and attempted to apprehend him when Sosa-Celis began to resist and violently assault the officer. While Sosa-Celis and law enforcement were in a struggle on the ground, two subjects came out of a nearby apartment and attacked the law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and broom handle.
As the officer was being ambushed and attacked by the two individuals, Sosa-Celis got loose and began striking the officer with a shovel or broom stick. Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired a defensive shot to defend his life. Sosa-Celis was hit in the leg. All three subjects ran back into the apartment and barricaded themselves inside. ICE successfully arrested all three illegal aliens.

The DHS statement included this as well:

“What we saw last night in Minneapolis was an attempted murder of federal law enforcement. Our officer was ambushed and attacked by three individuals who beat him with snow shovels and the handles of brooms. Fearing for his life, the officer fired a defensive shot,” said Secretary Kristi Noem. “Mayor Frey and Governor Walz have to get their city under control. They are encouraging impeding and assault against our law enforcement which is a federal crime, a felony. This is putting the people of Minnesota in harm’s way.”

Almost immediately, the story began to shift. Details changed. Court reports conflicted with the original story. We’ve seen this again and again. The claims (and reckless lies about domestic terrorism) — as in the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti — conflict with videotaped evidence. In some cases DOJ has failed to convince grand juries to issue indictments against immigrants and citizens, while in cases brought to trial juries have issued not guilty verdicts. In this instance, something unexpected happened.

Last week, citing “newly discovered evidence,” the government asked the court to drop all charges against the men accused of assault and further announced that the two agents were being investigated for lying about what led to the shooting.

Or so we’re told. We’ll see what comes of this.

Regardless, this announcement hardly signals an actual change of policy. We learned today that the “FBI formally notified Minnesota officials on Friday that it would not grant them access to evidence from the investigation into the killing of Alex Pretti by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis.”

So, in all three shooting cases federal authorities have barred the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from participation in joint investigations and refused to provide access to evidence collected. We haven’t the least reason to trust the Trump administration to pursue justice in these cases.

We do have reason, however, to take heart. Courageous Americans embraced their liberties as guaranteed by the Constitution to push back against an occupation by federal forces equipped for combat. In doing so, they’ve won a small skirmish against an out of control president waging war on his political opponents.

Five-year-old Liam Ramos collared by a federal agent.

Having once told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” Trump has now effectively opened the way for extremist militias—with their signature assault rifles and tactical gear—to antagonize local populations, especially immigrants, as they had in Portland and elsewhere.
And indeed, groups of armed men have been roaming the streets intimidating immigrants, violently confronting protesters, and claiming an authority beyond the purview of state or local law enforcement. This time, though, the men belong to the Department of Homeland Security’s mass-deportation teams. Their tactics bear striking similarities to those of the Proud Boys and other militias that showed up in U.S. cities during Trump’s first term. Clad in the same tactical vests, cargo pants, sunglasses, and neck buffs pulled over their faces, some 3,000 federal agents deployed to the streets of Minneapolis with catastrophic results. — Ali Breland, “Meet the New Proud Boys”

It is dawning on an increasing number of Americans, including folks who don’t pay much attention to politics, that something is wrong with this picture. It’s neither normal, nor morally defensible.

Henry Farrell commented at Programmable Mutter on his recent conversation with Ezra Klein, which clarified for him “the connection between the limits to US power in the world, and the limits to the Trump administration’s power inside the borders of America.”

Trump’s signature move is to crush anyone standing in his way — internationally as well as at home — and many people are repulsed by the brutal depravity they observe.

In his conversation with Klein, Farrell observed:

Gal Beckerman also references what’s normal in his assessment of ICE’s militarized presence in Minnesota. His focus is on the expectation of being free to live an ordinary life. Beckerman refers to this expectation as pre-political, something we expect as a matter of course: the freedom to be ourselves, to live as we choose.

Referencing the protests in Minneapolis, he writes:

The movement that has arisen on the city’s frigid streets is about defending what any reasonable American would call “normal”—the expectation of a life without the threat of violence and coercion.

He elaborates:

The assault by federal agents was an attack on something pre-political, on parts of our communal existence that people, in normal times, take for granted. You should be able to assume that parents, immigrant or not, won’t be ripped away from children. You should assume that people don’t have to hide in their house because their skin is brown or black. You should assume that filming an interaction with the police won’t end in your death. These are all pre-political assumptions, and we hold them not as Democrats or Republicans, but as individuals who just want to live freely.

The Trump administration is aggressively, lawlessly pushing boundaries to deny us and our neighbors the opportunity to live freely.

The miliary occupation of Minneapolis, the brutality and deaths, the family separations and more, are too far from normal to overlook or to shrug off. The lies and smears of Americans pushing back against this federal assault only deepen the depravity.

We want our country back, our neighborhoods. We want to live freely.

On January 7, a federal agent shot and killed Renée Good on the street in Minneapolis. On January 24, two federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti four blocks away from the from the first fatal encounter.

We are witnessing — and there are multiple videos of these episodes for all to see — state violence resulting from Trump’s military occupation in the State of Minnesota. To this point, a week later, these killings have not prompted any change of policy by the Trump administration. None of the agencies involved in these police state activities — ICE, CBP, DHS, FBI, or DOJ — have announced a shift in strategy or practice as a result of these killings. ICE and CBP have continued as before, while DOJ and the US Attorney in Minneapolis have continued to cover up and shut out local officials responsible for investigating the shootings.

In my previous post I reviewed video evidence of an ICE agent’s killing of Good. There is ample evidence regarding Pretti’s killing as well. Here is an image of Pretti (trying to assist a women) moments before the agent pictured pepper sprays him in the face and several agents force him to the ground.

Official responses from the feds

Here’s what Trump’s loyalists in the Executive Branch asserted in the aftermath. DHS posted on X a photo of Pretti’s gun (which he never touched and which was not visible before he was pinned to the ground) and described him as approaching agents with the gun. In fact, he was standing still as an agent advanced on him, brandishing only his phone. The post continued with straight up lies:

The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming.
Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject but was pronounced dead at the scene. 

Greg Bovino, then commander-at-large, repeated these lies and added, “this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” He later said on TV, “The victims are the Border Patrol agents. I’m not blaming the Border Patrol agents. The victims are the Border Patrol agents.”

In response to Senator Amy Klobuchar who lamented “the horrific video of the killing,” Trump’s most influential advisor, Stephen Miller responded: “A domestic terrorist tried to assassinate federal law enforcement and this is your response? You and the state’s entire Democrat leadership team have been flaming the flames of insurrection for the singular purpose of stopping the deportation of illegals who invaded the country.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem asserted, “This individual went and impeded their law enforcement operations, attacked those officers, had a weapon on him and multiple dozens of rounds of ammunition, wishing to inflict harm on these officers, coming, brandishing like that.” And further, “Violence against a government because of ideological reasons and for reasons to resist and to perpetuate violence. That is the definition of domestic terrorism.”

FBI Director Kash Patel asserted, “You do not get to attack law enforcement officials in this country without any repercussions.”

Even Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth weighed in on X: “Thank God for the patriots of @ICEgov — we have your back 100%. You are SAVING the country. Shame on the leadership of Minnesota — and the lunatics in the street. ICE > MN”

MAGA influencer responses

Meanwhile prominent MAGA influencers cheered and jeered. Their responses (via the Greg Sargent at the New Republic):

Nick Fuentes: “You feel bad about this race traitor? If you’re out there throwing yourself in front of ICE to die for these dirt bags, let them. Let them. One less asshole in the world. One less traitor in the world.”

Megyn Kelly: “I know I’m supposed to feel sorry for Alex Preti, but I don’t. I don’t. Do you know why I wasn’t shot by Border Patrol this weekend? Because I kept my ass inside and out of their operations.”

Matt Walsh: “The first conclusion is that Alex Pretti was part of an organized campaign to legally obstruct law enforcement operations on behalf of open borders communists who want to destroy the country. He was a domestic terrorist.”

Steve Bannon: “President Trump, you’ve got that opening salvo…you should now invoke the Insurrection Act and flood the zone with troops, either federalized National Guard or good old bring in go to Fort Bragg where Todd Wood is and bring in the good old 82nd Airborne.”

Click on the video

So what actually happened? We can see with our own eyes that Trump’s feds are lying about this killing. Pretti was filming agents with his phone. A federal agent advances toward Pretti and pushes him backwards before pepper spraying him. Multiple agents grab Pretti, force him to the ground, and began beating him. One agent sees Pretti’s gun and disarms him. Moments later shots are fired at Pretti, still pinned face down under the scrum of agents, who quickly back away. In rapid succession, a total of ten shots are fired, including several at Pretti’s motionless body. (The government says two agents fired their guns.)

Social media videos are at odds with the fraudulent narratives advanced by the Trump administration. A New York Times analysis illustrates a number of clear discrepancies between the tales told and what we see. The videos online illustrate grossly bad policing by the feds. The Washington Post (among a number of other media outlets) illustrates some of the most egregious problems. CNN also offered an analysis. And NPR broadcast a critical assessment by a former cop and expert on policing.

View from local law enforcement

The experience of the MPD suggests there are more effective, less lethal methods of keeping the peace (though it stretches credulity to believe that Trump’s militarized campaign seeks to keep the peace).

Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said, “People have had enough. This is the third shooting in less than 3 weeks. The MPD went the entire year last year recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn’t shoot anyone … this is not sustainable.”

Contempt for the rule of law and the judges who uphold the law

The Trump administration has waged a fierce battle to deprive immigrants of their due process rights. Many judges have pushed back.

More than 300 federal judges, including appointees of every president since Ronald Reagan, have now rebuffed the administration’s six-month-old effort to expand its so-called “mandatory detention” policy, according to a POLITICO analysis of court dockets from across the country. Those judges have ordered immigrants’ release or the opportunity for bond hearings in more than 1,600 cases.
And dozens more federal judges have ordered the administration to release immigrants yanked off the street without due process or held for prolonged periods even though no country has agreed to accept them.

The Trump DOJ has shrugged off the legal restraints:

The chief federal judge in Minnesota excoriated Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday, saying it had violated nearly 100 court orders stemming from its aggressive crackdown in the state and had disobeyed more judicial directives in January alone than “some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”
…
“ICE is not a law unto itself,” the judge wrote. “ICE has every right to challenge the orders of this court, but, like any litigant, ICE must follow those orders unless and until they are overturned or vacated.”

Trump and his MAGA loyalists, in a relentless battle to expand presidential power, are stampeding over every guardrail in sight. The Constitution, the rule of law, impartial justice, checks and balances, free and fair elections, the sovereignty of the states — nothing is safe from this crew. Our democracy is under attack. No Americans alive today have faced a more dire threat from their own government to their rights and liberties than the threat posed by this MAGA regime.