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 inthose 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.
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.
One of the key moments in the fall of the Berlin Wall are these protests that happen in the East German city of Leipzig. These protests get bigger and bigger, and they begin to create a collective understanding that, in fact, the regime is wildly unpopular. Susanne Lohmann, a political scientist, wrote this classic article on this. She argues that the Leipzig protesters seemed like normal people — good, decent people you would like to have as neighbors. The East German propaganda is that these are evil, weird freaks, that these are dissidents, they’re scruffy, they’re whatever. And it’s the fact that these look like normal, ordinary people that actually make this powerful. So I think what we’re seeing in Minnesota is we’re seeing ordinary people. It’s very clear that the people who are organizing, the people who are pushing back are neighbors. They are people who seem like very straightforward, very ordinary Midwestern people, people who are part of the community.
People see that the protesters demonized by a coercive government are “normal people — good, decent people you would like to have as neighbors.” They are not “evil, weird freaks.”
In Minneapolis, the lies and slander spread by Trump’s loyalists in the federal government have collided with what people see with their own eyes.
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.
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”
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.)
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.
As ICE, CBP, and other federal agencies amp up their violent, lethal occupation of Minneapolis, the Deputy Attorney General, aka Donald J. Trump’s personal attorney, Todd Blanche hurls charges of “insurrection” and “terrorism” at state and city officials (Democrats elected by voters who have repeatedly voted against Trump). The ALL CAPS emphasis apes Trump’s.
ICE operates in thousands of counties without incident. Men and women doing their jobs, protecting us from criminal aliens.
Minnesota insurrection is a direct result of a FAILED governor and a TERRIBLE mayor encouraging violence against law enforcement. It’s disgusting.
“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law & stop the professional agitators & insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done…” – President Trump pic.twitter.com/d7XJMA7qUU
Neither Blanche, nor Trump have come close to seeing insurrection so often as has Stephen Miller. The zealous author, often referred to as the president’s most influential advisor, of the anti-immigration blitzkrieg sees insurrection nearly everywhere he looks (as noted by Conor Friedersdorf):
What we’re witnessing in Minnesota is a more savage, perhaps more desperate, version of what has come before. In May 2025, Border Czar Homan promised, “We’re going to flood the zone,” and that’s what they did in Los Angeles in June. As Philip Bump observed then, “the Trump administration wanted to bring California to heel …,” to “inflict pain on an entity that Trump viewed as hostile to his presidency.” Bump also noted then, “Miller referred to isolated scenes of conflict as an “insurrection” over and over and over and over again.”
There’s no insurrection here, just lawless aggression by the feds. State and local officials, as in Los Angeles more than seven months ago, are trying to protect their communities and — fearing that Trump seeks a pretext to inflict greater military force — have called for calm.
The Trump playbook is hardly a secret. On the contrary, Trump’s state police forces have openly celebrated their brutality. In an op-ed (“Trolling Democracy”) last July, Nathan Taylor Pemberton wrote that Trump 2 and Republican surrogates have
relentlessly posted sadistic memes about policy decisions in the style of social media trends. A highlight reel of ICE arrests set to “Ice Ice Baby.” An A.S.M.R.-style video that features people in shackles boarding a deportation flight. An image of a woman being arrested, rendered in the style of a Hayao Miyazaki movie. The vice president has threatened his critics with deportation via a GIF image. One Republican congressman even suggested that an undocumented migrant be thrown out of a helicopter, Pinochet style. Faced with criticism over one such taunting post, Kaelan Dorr, a White House press aide, announced: “The arrests will continue. The memes will continue.”
In recent months, official government social media accounts—primarily for the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and the White House—have resembled parodies of themselves. But experts say it’s intentional: The memes these accounts share are core to the Trump administration’s propaganda strategy. Through them, with attempts at Gen Z humor as the gateway, the administration reinforces an “us vs. them” mindset. Along with normalizing mass deportation, they also tap into Christian nationalist narratives and reach young men via callous jokes that have been recycled through the far-right online ecosystem.
In suburban Chicago last month, a masked ICE agent shot a pepper ball into the head of a Presbyterian pastor as he prayed outside an ICE facility. Another ICE agent fatally shot a Mexican immigrant in Illinois. Also last month, in New York City, an ICE officer was removed from duty after he was captured on video forcibly shoving a woman to the ground outside an immigration court. Meanwhile, earlier this month, ICE agents conducted a military-style raid on a South Side Chicago apartment building, detaining hundreds of residents, many of whom are U.S.-born children.
Directing violence and terror at perceived enemies
These assaults, unlike anything our country had seen before 2025, are directed by the White House.
“Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone. ‘You guys aren’t doing a good job. You’re horrible leaders.’ He just ripped into everybody. He had nothing positive to say about anybody, shot morale down,” said the first official, who spoke with those in the room that day. “Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” the official recited.
The White House got what it wanted. On May 28, 2025, the White House account on X posted this tweet, which has been viewed 1.9 million times:
Watch: ICE Tip Sparks EPIC Takedown of 5 Illegal Aliens Outside Home Improvement Store
Amplifying the threats to create fear far and wide
For the White House, amping up violence and terrorizing communities wasn’t enough. High federal officials articulating lies and slander wasn’t enough. The Trump administration sought to amplify the threats to immigrants and citizens alike so the message was crystal clear and hard to miss. In December, the Washington Post reviewed thousands of internal messages to tell the story (“IT’S A WAR – Inside ICE’s media machine”).
Seeking to satisfy White House demands, ICE responded frantically. From the Post’s story:
“To feed the beast” ICE scrambled to hire videographers to record the arrests and deportations. They worked overtime, filming day and night, to make the White House happy.
ICE added soundtracks (often violating copyright laws) to boost the likelihood of going viral.
To make the clips more frightening and “action-packed” ICE distorted what was happening on the ground. Many detainees had no criminal records; ICE simply crafted increasingly aggressive narratives. To mislead, they used video clips from distant cities taken months earlier. They edited women out of deportation videos, so the folks portrayed seemed scarier.
One official advised: “If the truth of the operation does not match the narrative of the ‘worst of the worst,’ it’s going to be killed.” Meaning: the video clip won’t be posted on social media.
We’ve learned from other sources — here and here and here and here and here, for instance — that ICE has deployed white nationalist, white supremacist, and Nazi language, graphics, books, and songs in its campaigns as well. All the better to demonize immigrants.
ICE gave exclusive access to its operations and video clips to rightwing influencers who could rouse up their followers with “wild scenes.”
ICE officials celebrated when the White House posted their clips (like the one immediately above this section). “White House just ran with it!” It didn’t take long for ICE to hit its stride with divisive, violent clips that pleased the White House.
On June 10, after hearing from the White House demanding highlights of the “worst of worst LA arrests across relevant accounts/channels,” ICE’s media machine went into overdrive posting 38 tweets over 11 hours.
The White House directive around the L.A. protests forced the agency to play more of an “attack-dog” role online to keep up with the administration’s demands, one former worker on the DHS media team told The Post. “That was the turning point to get even more aggressive with their messaging, and to paint pictures of these places as war-torn,” he said. “There was a much more blustery edge, and a need to put stuff out as quickly as you can. You’re steamrolling everything.”
Minnesota and Minnesotans under fire
We’ve learned that(consistent with standard operating procedure when law enforcement uses lethal force) the FBI opened an investigation of the ICE shooting of Renee Good, but officials have shut it down. We also know that the feds have refused to share evidence of the shooting with Minnesota officials, have opened up an investigation of Mayor Jacob Frey and Governor Tim Walz, and that DOJ officials are pushing for an investigation of Good’s partner.
An out of control president, acting on resentment and whim, threatens us all.
Americans are confronting democratic erosion far beyond anything previously experienced in our lifetimes. We are witnessing a wannabe authoritarian — without an appreciation of, much less a commitment to democratic institutions — using the levers of power to dominate the country, enrich himself, and sow vengeance. The liberties guaranteed us by the Constitution, the separation of powers, the rule of law, the impartial administration of justice — all are at risk.
An ICE agent shot a Minnesota woman in the face last week, a killing caught on video by the agent himself and numerous bystanders. Almost immediately, she was defamed by the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and others, who added a malicious fabricated tale about the circumstances of her slaying.
Violence and lies weaved together are defining features of Donald Trump’s presidency. The Big Lie — that Trump won the 2020 election — and the conspiracy built around it to undo the results of the 2020 election, led to the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol. That was the capstone of Trump 1.
Trump 2 has injected violence (primarily in Democratic-led cities) directed against anyone who stands in the way of Trump’s domestic police force. This militaristic campaign led to the killing of a mother, who had just dropped off her 6-year old at school, shamelessly smeared as a “political terrorist” within two hours of her death at the hands of an ICE agent.
January 6 indictment
First, a look back at Trump 1 with the December 31 release of the testimony of Special Counsel Jack Smith before Congressman Jim Jordan’s Judiciary Committee. [YouTube video; redacted House transcript.] In this brief exchange the committee counsel poses questions(Q) and Smith responds (A):
Q: Now, people with different views than you can say the Special Counsel’s Office is only interested in prosecuting President Trump because an election is coming up and he is — he’s going to be the Republican nominee. And the special counsel works for a Democratic President, the special counsel works for a Democratic Attorney General. And so the special counsel’s laser focus on President Trump is simply to prevent him from, you know, either being the party’s nominee or being a successful party’s nominee — or, at the very least, keeping him off the campaign trail. How do you respond to that?
A: All of that is false, and I’ll say a few things. The first is the evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit. So in terms of why we would pursue a case against him, I entirely disagree with any characterization that our work was in any way meant to hamper him in the Presidential election. I would never take orders from a political leader to hamper another person in an election. That’s not who I am. And I think people who know me and my experience over 30 years would find that laughable.
Q: So did you develop evidence that President Trump, you know, was responsible for the violence at the Capitol on January 6th?
A: So our view of the evidence was that he caused it and that he exploited it and that it was foreseeable to him.
Q: But you don’t have any evidence that he instructed people to crash the Capitol, do you?
A: As I said, our evidence is that he in the weeks leading up to January 6th created a level of distrust. He used that level of distrust to get people to believe fraud claims that weren’t true. He made false statements to State legislatures, to his supporters in all sorts of contexts and was aware in the days leading up to January 6th that his supporters were angry when he invited them and then he directed them to the Capitol. Now, once they were at the Capitol and once the attack on the Capitol happened, he refused to stop it. He instead issued a tweet that without question in my mind endangered the life of his own Vice President. And when the violence was going on, he had to be pushed repeatedly by his staff members to do anything to quell it. And then even afterwards he directed co-conspirators to make calls to Members of Congress, people who had were his political allies, to further delay the proceedings.
President Donald Trump has pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or vowed to dismiss the cases of all of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, including people convicted of assaulting police officers, using his clemency powers on his first day back in office to undo the massive prosecution of the unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. Trump’s action, just hours after his return to the White House on Monday, paves the way for the release from prison of people found guilty of violent attacks on police, as well as leaders of far-right extremist groups convicted of failed plots to keep the Republican in power after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden.
On the fifth anniversary of the pro-Trump mob attack on the Capitol, the Trump administration created a new page on the official White House website that represented the president’s most brazen bid yet to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 riot with false claims aimed at absolving him of responsibility. The site blames Capitol Police officers, who defended lawmakers that day, for starting the assault; Democrats, who were the rioters’ main targets, for failing to prevent it; and former Vice President Mike Pence, who rejected falsehoods about the 2020 election, for allowing the results to be certified.
On the same day the White House posted the fraudulent narrative, dozens of January 6 rioters marched in Washington with a list of demands, including financial restitution. Said Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, echoing Trump: “Retribution is what we seek.”
Military occupation of Democratic cities
With his infusion of federal agents — masked, equipped with assault rifles and full military gear — into Los Angeles last summer, followed by the federal takeover of the California National Guard and then the arrival of the United States Marines, Trump launched a war on Democratic cities (led by Democrats put into office by citizens who voted overwhelmingly against Trump). The aggressive tactics of these agencies (celebrated in official government social media posts and emphasized in recruiting pitches) and the disdain of constitutional and legal restraints, belie any pretext of evenhanded justice under the law.
Rather, from the beginning it has been clear that the intent has been to provoke a violent response. As I wrote on June 11, 2025:
The Trump White House … craves a violent confrontation, which city and state authorities are doing their best to ward off. Trump’s actions have escalated the situation, rather than calmed things down. Deliberately. That’s not law and order; this is an authoritarian assault directed at political enemies and at constraints on a rogue White House. Even if Trump doesn’t get the explosion of violence he is egging on, and the fig leaf of a plausible excuse for violent suppression by the military, he has already damaged the Constitution, federalism, state sovereignty, checks and balances, and the rule of law.
The state sanctioned killing in Minneapolis
First of all, what happened? Watch:
The New York Times provided a clear, simple analysis of the video evidence, posted by an NBC senior reporter on Bluesky:
The New York Times states it plainly in display type:Videos Contradict Trump Administration Account of ICE Shooting in Minneapolis
“It was an act of domestic terrorism. What happened was our ICE officers were out on an enforcement action. They got stuck in the snow because of the adverse weather that is in Minneapolis. They were attempting to push out their vehicle and a woman attacked them and those surrounding them and attempted to run them over and ram them with her vehicle.”
Noem’s statement is at odds with what we see in the video; it is a blatant lie. Donald Trump’s response on Truth Social is a bunch of blatant lies strung together with additional defamatory rhetoric (nor does the video in his post come close to salvaging what he falsely reports).
The president and his DHS secretary are both spreading lies, while slandering an American citizen who opposed Trump’s militaristic crusade targeting immigrants and political opponents and who should not have lost her life for her views (or apparent panic to escape the scene). There is absolutely no reason to believe, based on what we have seen and learned, that her actions posed a threat to any agent or that she intended to cause harm to anyone.
Noem and Trump cannot be trusted. Nor can Vice President JD Vance, who has outdone himself in pushing to the front of the MAGA pack. As David Frum has observed, “More than Donald Trump, more than Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, more than anyone in ICE’s leadership, J. D. Vance has made himself the lead defender of the killing in Minnesota.”
What the press has done in lying about this innocent law enforcement officer is disgusting. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. https://t.co/IfXAAxi9Ql
That’s their story and they’re going to stick with it. They also intend to ensure that there will be no credible investigation to establish what actually happened.
“The investigation would now be led solely by the FBI, and the BCA would no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation,” Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Superintendent Drew Evans said in a statement. It had been decided that the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension would investigate Good’s shooting death along with the FBI, but that later was changed by the U.S. Attorney’s office, according to Evans.
If a crime is committed that is a violation of local, state, and federal laws, does the FBI “take over” the investigation?
No. State and local law enforcement agencies are not subordinate to the FBI, and the FBI does not supervise or take over their investigations. Instead, the investigative resources of the FBI and state and local agencies are often pooled in a common effort to investigate and solve the cases. In fact, many task forces composed of FBI agents and state and local officers have been formed to locate fugitives and to address serious threats like terrorism and street violence.
A couple of days ago, we learned that the DOJ experts on police shootings would be blocked from investigating the Minneapolis shooting.
“When you put that together with the state authorities being excluded from even access to the evidence — like shell casings, the car — I don’t have any confidence that a use-of-force investigation is actually even happening when it comes to the death of Renée Good,” said Keith Ellison, the Democratic attorney general of Minnesota. … President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem have all declared the shooting justified, despite an investigation not being completed and video footage that challenges parts of their narrative.
Mr. Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Nicole Good, the Minneapolis woman killed by an ICE agent on Wednesday. Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach, as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful, the people familiar with his decision said.
That’s right: DOJ intends to investigate the widow of the woman killed by the ICE agent.
A 37-year old woman died. Killed at the hands of law enforcement. The last words we heard her speak, with a gentle smile, were, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” That’s consistent with her friends and family’s description of her as a devoted Christian.
Yet Trump and Vance and Noem and others in the MAGA camp have directed so much hatred her way. They will not countenance a fair-minded investigation into her senseless death. They are resolute in their determination to besmirch her, her family and friends, and every American who shares her opposition to the twisted version of our country that Trump 2 seeks to impose on us.
The corruption of the Trump regime couldn’t be clearer. Such is the country we live in now. Blaming the victim isn’t enough. Trump and his minions have already decreed her guilt in her own killing. Now to broaden the blame to the victim’s widow. And — as we have seen already — to every American who opposes Trump.
The world’s billionaires have always been rich and powerful—but never more than now. That’s particularly true in the United States, where Donald Trump was sworn in (again) as America’s billionaire-in-chief in January. This time around, he’s giving the billionaire class more control over the government than ever before. His right-hand man is the planet’s richest person. His administration includes at least ten billionaires and billionaire spouses. And scores of billionaire execs—from Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg to French luxury goods kingpin Bernard Arnault—have lined up behind Trump. — Forbes’ 39th Annual World’s Billionaires List (April 1, 2025)
The United States, with 902 billionaires, leads every other country in the world. (China is second at 516.) And increasingly the American billionaires have begun pouring enormous sums into politics, as the Washington Post reports:
In an era defined by major political divisions and massive wealth accumulation for the richest Americans, billionaires are spending unprecedented amounts on U.S. politics. Dozens have stepped up their political giving in recent years, leading to a record-breaking surge of donations by the ultrarich in 2024. Since 2000, political giving by the wealthiest 100 Americans to federal elections has gone up almost 140 times, well outpacing the growing costs of campaigns, a Washington Post analysis found. In 2000, the country’s wealthiest 100 people donated about a quarter of 1 percent of the total cost of federal elections, according to a Post analysis of data from OpenSecrets. By 2024, they covered about 7.5 percent, even as the cost of such elections soared.
We can thank — first and foremost — the Roberts Court, beginning with Citizens United (2010), with this political state of affairs. In his opinion for the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy concluded that “independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” There is ample reason to disagree emphatically on both counts.
Billionaires are apt to differ with me, of course, as the following quotations from the WaPo piece suggest.
John Catsimatdis of New York City:
“If you’re a billionaire, you want to stay a billionaire,” said Catsimatidis, whose net worth is estimated at $4.5 billion. It’s not just about his own wealth, he said, adding, “I worry about America and the way of life we have.”
Marc Shuster (“a Miami-based lawyer who represents multimillionaires and billionaires”):
“They think the left has been taken over by Zohran Mamdanis,” Shuster said, pointing to the newly elected Democratic socialist mayor of New York. “I think they’ve shifted because a Democratic Party that used to stand for the working class is now immersed in gender ideology.”
And:
“The progressive left of the Democratic Party is a socialist party,” said Thomas Peterffy, who founded an electronic brokerage firm and has a net worth of $57.3 billion, speaking from one of his homes in Aspen, Colorado. “The wealthiest people are business people, and they are surging to Trump because they understand how much better Trump is for a prosperous economy.”
Consider “the life we have.” You and I? Or the billionaires? Regarding “how much better Trump is for a prosperous economy,” the U.S. economy is flourishing, but can that justify the vast chasm, growing ever wider, between the billionaires and the rest of us? And, it’s because they think “the working class” has been deserted by the Democratic Party and Zohran Mamdani, that the billionaires have begun buying elections and political influence, while funneling payoffs to Trump and other MAGA grifters? An appeal to Occam’s razor casts doubt on this conjecture.
In the past ten months, I’ve observed many times — in conversation, not in this blog — that our elites have failed us. That was in reference to the leaders of influential institutions of civil society — media companies, law firms, universities, the opposition political party, and so on. There has been altogether too much “anticipatory obedience” (in Timothy Snyder’s words), not nearly enough pushback (though things have begun to change recently).
Quinta Jurecic has observed (of institutions) that “generally speaking, and with the glaring exception of november 2024, the more directly democratic an institution has been, the better it has checked Trump (eg grand and petit juries); the more elite and insular, the less effective (the Senate, the Supreme Court, big business).” Something analogous is, generally speaking, true of income and wealth: the more riches, the fewer objections to democratic backsliding. Just compare the Americans at the No Kings protests, or casting ballots this month, with the craven billionaires referenced in the quotation that leads this post.
Can we just call them oligarchs? [tə-māʹtō, tə-mäʹtō]
It’s always been true that money buys influence in American politics. In some ways, it was even greater and more brazen in the past since there wasn’t even the pretense of limits on giving or disclosure. But the role of billionaire ownership of the political process has not only grown rapidly in recent years. Public recognition of that fact has, too, which has — perhaps paradoxically or perhaps not — spurred the drive for even tighter ownership. It’s no exaggeration to say that the deca-billionaire or even centi-billionaire class — setting aside those who might command a mere few billion dollars — act now as a kind of post-modern nobility, a class which does not rule exclusively but interacts with politics in a fundamentally different way from the rest of society.
It’s not just that the folks in the upper echelon of the top 1-percent are loathe to defend democratic institutions; they are determined to use their enormous wealth to get their way even at the cost of trashing the guardrails that preserve our democracy. They are playing politics in a fundamentally different way than the rest of us. Moreover, far too many in the billionaire class are prepared to abandon democracy altogether. They identify as billionaires and (for the many convinced that they have a right to rule) as oligarchs.
The billionaire class is a threat to every American who wishes to preserve our democracy.
In Trump v. United States, the six Republicans who comprise the supermajority on the Roberts Court ruled that the president was uniquely exempt from the rule of law. Justice Sotomayer, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson, offered a dissent beginning with these words:
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.
Again and again in 2025, in a string of orders (mostly unexplained cases on the shadow docket), the Republican majority has stayed decisions by district courts and appellate courts that have paused Trump’s lawless, reckless, autocratic actions.
It is a supremely arrogant Supreme Court majority, celebrating the bold and unhesitating actions of Republican presidents (for whom five justices served), that has made it next to impossible to hold President Trump accountable for what he is doing.
In a social media thread, historian Kevin M. Kruse offers a glimpse of a single week:
Over the past week, the president said the DOJ should pay him a quarter billion dollars, bulldozed half the White House to build himself a gaudy ballroom, bragged about murdering civilians in international waters, pardoned some more criminals, directed federal prosecutors to indict his opponents, called several African American politicians “low IQ,” called all Democrats terrorists, insisted the 7 million Americans who protested his regime were all paid, showed a video of him flying a jet and dropping shit all over them, sent $40 billion to Argentina to prop up a fellow dipshit tyrant, threatened to invade every state in the US, renewed his conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and vowed his people would prevent it from happening “again,” bragged about illegally slashing programs Democrats like, said he would send disaster relief to a state because it voted for him, severed economic aid to Colombia in a tantrum, threatened to crack down on NYC, announced drug prices would be coming down “500 percent,” claimed Pete Buttigieg tried to fix the air traffic system with “glass wire,” and committed probably a dozen other crimes we’ve already forgotten about.
In one week!
In two posts that immediately precede this one, I wrote about Trump’s tearing down the East Wing of the White House — in large part because while this doesn’t appear as significant as much else on his authoritarian agenda, it has symbolic heft (it’s the White House!) — Paul Krugman sees something more in Trump’s ripping apart the East Wing so he can replace it with something uglier (my emphasis):
Masked government agents are snatching people off the street. The National Guard has been sent into major cities on the obviously false pretext that these cities are in chaos. The U.S. military is essentially murdering people on the high seas. Huge tariffs are, in addition to their economic costs, undermining a system of alliances former presidents spent generations building. Green energy is being eviscerated, vindictive prosecutions are the norm, and many millions are on course to lose their health insurance. So why do I want to talk about Trump’s appalling design sense? But these aren’t separate issues, because tackiness and tyranny go hand in hand. Yes, Trump has terrible taste and probably would even if he didn’t have power and, thanks to that power, wealth. But the grotesqueness of his White House renovations is structural as well as personal. For the excess and ugliness serve a political purpose: to humiliate and intimidate. The tawdry grandiosity serves not only to glorify Trump’s fragile ego, but also to send the message that resistance is futile.
Much of what Trump does is performative, beyond the lies and the trolling. His violations of norms, laws, and decency are deliberate, flagrant. He does what he does because he can. Without restraint or concern with consequences. And because he wishes to appear invincible.
Donald Trump can tear down the White House without discussion, consultation, or authorization; he need not follow any laws or regulations regarding building and safety, much less procedures put in place to preserve federal assets or the nation’s history. He can act on a whim.
There are no meaningful checks on his power. The Republican Congress has stood down. The Roberts Court has granted Trump license to do what he will, to ensure that no one (save SCOTUS itself) can stop him. And SCOTUS won’t stop him.
Trump’s immunity from accountability boosts his contempt for restraints and criticism — and for critics. Dare not question him. His disrespect is in your face. He is, as Krugman notes, sending a message: You can’t touch me. It is senseless — and costly, because he has weaponized the executive branch — to try.
If we’ve learned anything in the first nine months of Trump’s second go-round in the White House, it’s that it doesn’t take long to destroy something. And in the defining era of the Roberts Court — which has celebrated and enabled Republican presidents’ “bold and unhesitating action” — one man can direct the destruction. Solo. Moved by nothing but whim and ego. We have no oversight. No accountability. And no accounting for taste.
President Donald Trump’s promise that his enormous new ballroom wouldn’t touch or interfere with the existing structure was no longer operative. The assurances from his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, that “nothing will be torn down” do not seem to have been made in good faith. With damning visual evidence that the ballroom project would radically alter the design of the White House and its stately grounds, the public began to pay attention, absorbing the worrisome details: that the new 90,000-square-foot structure would now seat not 650 but 999 people, dwarfing the original 1792 White House designed by the immigrant architect James Hoban; that the price was ballooning, from $200 million to $300 million; and that the ballroom would be connected to Hoban’s Georgian-style mansionby a glass bridge.
Where do we go from here?
We don’t know, and we don’t know if the president knows, given how quickly his promises about this terribly reckless project, to be built by Clark Construction, are evolving. The American Institute of Architects asked for answers in August, months before the heavy equipment rolled in to start the destruction; on Tuesday, the National Trust for Historic Preservation demanded that the White House pause the demolition and submit the ballroom plans to “the legally required public review process.” But it takes almost no time to reduce history to rubble, and by Thursday afternoon Roosevelt’s wartime addition to the White House complex was gone.
And now the erratic man in the White House has hatched another idea: an Arc de Trump.
From Harrison Design:
A proposal for a triumphal arch in DC for #America250, in the traffic circle in front of Arlington National Cemetery. America needs a triumphal arch! pic.twitter.com/JjwSZsOE9z
