ICE Started the Fire
Rather than trying to calm things down, the government is fanning the flames.
Most of the news recently has been stupid and awful, but luckily today we’ll get some news that’s stupid and fun: Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado will join President Trump for lunch at the White House today. How much extremely embarrassing discourse about the Nobel Peace Prize Machado stole from its rightful recipient Donald Trump will ensue? Hey, don’t change that channel. Happy Thursday.
Lying Us Into a Crisis
by Andrew Egger
In the days immediately following the death of Renee Good, the protests that grew around the city remained strictly peaceful. But yesterday, in the wake of another ICE-involved shooting—this time involving a Venezuelan man who was shot in the leg during an attempted traffic stop—the situation started to boil over.
Last night, protesters who gathered at the scene of the shooting scuffled with Border Patrol agents, ICE agents, and local and state police. They vandalized a car with police lights and at least one threw fireworks at ICE agents. The federal agents, meanwhile, deployed tear gas and pepper sprayed multiple protesters on the scene. Several protesters were detained and later released.
The ongoing tensions between local cops and federal agents were on display as well: According to the New York Times, a Minneapolis police officer told several protesters on the scene that he wasn’t sure what all had happened: “It’s not like they’re talking to us,” he said of the federal officers.
City leaders, including Mayor Jacob Frey, have urged protesters to remain peaceful. Last night, Frey explicitly condemned any who failed to do so: “This is not creating safety,” he said. “For those that have peacefully protested, I applaud you. For those that are taking the bait, you are not helping. . . . Go home.”
Frey, of course, is right to say this. For a street protest to curdle into violence is deplorable on every level. For one thing, rioters don’t tend to be very good judges of whom exactly they’re rioting against—what did the Minneapolis Police do, that their cars should get trashed?
The more righteous the protest’s cause, the worse it is to besmirch it by associating it with street anarchy. This is what we saw back in 2020: a massive surge of protest for a noble cause that provoked a massive backlash after rioters used the cover of those protests to wreak destruction. If you’re at a protest yourself, the absolute best thing you can do in support of your cause is to help the protesters around you keep cool heads.
But we should be clear-eyed about what’s going on here. Minneapolis is overheating right now, not because protesters are running amok, but because federal immigration enforcement and its political leadership at the Department of Homeland Security and in the White House are comporting themselves with astonishing, outrageous deception and malice. As violence continues to break out across the city—violence instigated, far more often than not, by the agents themselves—the idea that the administration will offer accurate information on what took place in any given scuffle has become a bleak joke. Again and again, they lie obscenely about the facts on the ground. Sometimes there are witnesses or video footage that disprove these lies; other times there’s simply no way to know what happened.
So it is in the case of the Venezuelan man shot yesterday. Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS spokeswoman, claimed he “began to resist and violently assault the officer,” that others had run out of a nearby building and begun to attack the officer with a snow shovel and a broom handle, and that the officer had feared for his life and fired his weapon. Is it possible that this is what happened, and that the officer was justified in taking the shot? Of course it is. But this possibility is no likelier for McLaughlin having claimed it to be the truth. She simply has zero credibility left; we know no more for her having opened her mouth than we would have if she’d remained silent.
This is grotesque behavior, a total abdication of leadership on the part of DHS. But more than that, it’s dangerous. At moments of high tension, what you want is leaders who can calm things down by modeling even-keeled, honorable leadership and by dispensing information that people can trust. We, the government, will get to the bottom of what’s going on. We, the government, will dispense justice where justice needs to be dispensed.
It isn’t just that this administration is utterly incapable of adopting this posture. It’s worse: They’re actively egging the chaos on. Over and over, they strike a pose of maximum hostility in their public statements. On Tuesday, Stephen Miller threatened state and local officials in Minneapolis with criminal charges if they interfered with ICE, which he insisted had “immunity to perform your duties.” Last night, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche explicitly blamed Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Frey for the incident that resulted in the shooting of the Venezuelan man:
Minnesota insurrection is a direct result of a FAILED governor and a TERRIBLE mayor encouraging violence against law enforcement. It’s disgusting. Walz and Frey - I’m focused on stopping YOU from your terrorism by whatever means necessary. This is not a threat. It’s a promise.
And in a Truth Social post this morning, Donald Trump added this:
If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and 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 before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State.
Again: Frey has not encouraged violence, but peace and calm. He also said this: “This is not sustainable. This is an impossible situation that our city is presently being put in.”
He couldn’t be more right. And the White House, its jackboots, and its paid liars are entirely to blame.
What are peaceful, unarmed people supposed to do in the face of masked, armed thugs? Tell us in the comments.
Keep It Simple, Democrats
by William Kristol
Politics can be a tricky business. Here’s one obvious reason: Sometimes what’s right isn’t popular, and sometimes what’s popular isn’t right. In those circumstances, a politician faces a choice: to stand up to public opinion on behalf of what’s right for the country, or to accede to public sentiment to maintain political viability? Or is there a clever way to do a little or both? In any case, it’s an obvious fact of political life that principle and popularity don’t always coincide.
But sometimes they do. Sometimes the stars align in a way that makes things pretty simple. Sometimes the other party is unambiguously in charge. They’re pursuing policies that are bad for the country, loudly and belligerently. Those policies are in the news, and they’re likely to stay in the news. They’re high-salience policies. And they’re clearly and unambiguously unpopular.
And there will be an election in ten months that will be a referendum on those policies and that party.
It makes the life of an opposition party pretty simple. Oppose the policies that are at once wrong and unpopular. Oppose them clearly and vigorously. All you have to do is avoid the trap Robert Frost noted long ago, when he worried that American liberals were too broadminded to take their own side in a quarrel.
All Democrats need to do now is to take their own side in the quarrels roiling the nation.
Which is surprisingly hard for Democrats, being Democrats. Instead, they’re wrapping themselves around the axle, indulging in hand-wringing and navel-gazing, worrying that things could go wrong. Worrying, worrying, worrying . . .
After all, what if we don’t frame the issue quite right? What if we take a stance that could boomerang? Look before we leap! And we don’t really need to leap! Maybe we can just dip our toe in the water first? I think we need some more polls, and many, many focus groups! Make sure the water’s not too hot! But also that it’s not too cold!
No. No. No. The water will never be better. Take the plunge. Now.
How? Here are three high-salience, easy-to-understand issues where the Trump administration and the Republican party are on the wrong side both substantively and politically.
Tariffs
The issue of tariffs has receded a bit recently. But a big Supreme Court decision is coming soon. The Court will either uphold Trump’s tariffs, which will remind the public of this distinctive Trump policy they already dislike and blame for inflation and economic disruption; or the Court will strike the tariffs down, Trump’s policies will acquire an aura of illegitimacy, and then he’ll go ahead anyway and reimpose tariffs using other authorities. Either way, the public will be reminded of the fact that the centerpiece of his economic policy agenda is ineffective and unpopular.
ICE
ICE is obviously in the news, and it will stay there. It’s the face of Trump’s mass-deportation regime and the administration’s increasingly obvious and accelerationist authoritarianism. The administration is doubling down on the aggressive deployment and behavior of ICE and the Border Patrol, and is lying shamelessly about their actions, as people can see on videos.
And ICE is becoming more unpopular at an astounding rate. In fact, ICE’s activities have done away with any Trump edge on the issue of immigration. In the most recent AP/NORC poll, where Trump’s overall approval is at 40 percent (vs. 59 percent disapproval), Trump’s immigration policies are at 38 percent approval, 61 percent disapproval. And those numbers can slide even further as ICE continues its depredations.
Epstein
The public—correctly!—wants the Epstein files released. The Trump administration hasn’t done so, and its handling of the Epstein files has been wildly unpopular. Nor is the issue going away, thanks in large part to the admirable efforts of the survivors. The administration is right now failing to release the files as they’ve promised to do. If and when they do gradually release incomplete and redacted tranches of the Epstein files, that rolling partial coverup isn’t going to look any better than a total stonewall. Either way, the Democrats should stay on offense, every day, even as the political class amazingly continues to underrate the potency of this issue.
And by the way, no Democrat should be distracted by the fights between House Republicans and Bill and Hillary Clinton on whether they should testify before a congressional committee. Democrats who want to duck can say that’s a question for the lawyers. Bolder Democrats should just say that they think the Clintons should testify. Either way, the Democrats should stick to the “let the chips fall where they may” stance that has served them well on Epstein so far. Even if one of those chips is Bill Clinton.
President Trump is scheduled to give the State of the Union address on February 24. Four respectable polls within the past few days now have Trump at 40 or 41 percent approval. Here’s a simple goal for the opposition: Get him down clearly into the 30s by the time of the State of the Union. Here’s a simple one-two-three program: tariffs, ICE, and Epstein. And, if it’s helpful, here’s a simple mnemonic to TIE those things together.
AROUND THE BULWARK
The Best Military ‘Option’ for Greenland: Let It Be… Attacking an ally with special forces would be the wrong tool for the wrong mission, explains MARK HERTLING. He also joins TIM MILLER on the flagship pod to talk about the cowardice of ICE.
Time to End the Last U.S.–Russia Nuclear Treaty… The agreement is no longer in America’s interests, argue ERIC S. EDELMAN and FRANKLIN C. MILLER.
ICE Is a Law-Breaking ‘Law Enforcement’ Agency… A Trump-appointed judge took the agency to task for its flagrant contempt, observes MONA CHAREN.
Quick Hits
THE CBS NEWS TREATMENT: The White House still hasn’t managed to control the story of the death of Renee Good, but it sure isn’t for lack of trying. Their earlier strategy of smearing Good as a domestic terrorist having failed to convince the American people (who could say why?), they’re now opting for a different tactic to bring around the median voter: dressing their case up in more respectable-sounding language and leaking it to the newly sympathetic CBS News. Yesterday, Bari Weiss’s outfit reported—citing “two U.S. officials”—that the ICE agent who shot Good, Jonathan Ross, “suffered internal bleeding to the torso following the incident.”
What precisely is “internal bleeding to the torso”? What does “following the incident” mean here, exactly? The officials didn’t say—and didn’t respond, CBS News said, to their follow-up inquiries.1
If Ross was violently injured during his encounter with Good, he maintained remarkably good poise, not even dropping his cell phone while he kept his balance, drew a bead, and shot her in the head. Nor did he seem badly hurt in video footage taken immediately after the shooting as he strolled down the street to assess Good’s crashed car.
Still, that hasn’t stopped the administration’s worst posters from treating their own leak to CBS News as some sort of major smoking-gun revelation. “While much of left has lied about this case, it turns out ramming a law enforcement officer with a car causes injuries,” Vice President JD Vance yukked. “Who knew!”
As for CBS News, the editorial standards at the network now appear to be that a months-long reported segment on torture at CECOT can’t be aired unless there is an on-camera response from the Trump administration, but a dubious item anonymously sourced to “U.S. officials” is fit for print.
WAR POWERS? MORE LIKE S’MORE POWERS: Just last week, five Republican senators bucked their party and their president by voting to advance a war powers resolution aimed at limiting Donald Trump’s ability to escalate the conflict with Venezuela. The resolution had no chance of becoming law—that would have required veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress. But the message was striking nonetheless.
Not even a week later, two of those senators, Josh Hawley (R.-Mo.) and Todd Young (R.-In.) changed their votes, causing the resolution to fail on reconsideration last night. “After numerous conversations with senior national security officials. I have received assurances that there are no American troops in Venezuela,” Young said in a statement. “I’ve also received a commitment that if President Trump were to determine American forces are needed in major military operations in Venezuela, the Administration would come to Congress in advance to ask for an authorization of force.”
Yes, Sen. Young! Donald Trump would never renege on a commitment.
Let’s call this the Cassidy Maneuver. About a year ago, Sen. Bill Cassicy (R.-La.), a physician and chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, provided a key vote to advance Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be secretary of health and human services after he had received assurances that the infamous wing-nut wackjob would consult with him before doing anything dangerous with vaccines. In other words, he gave up all his leverage over the Trump administration in exchange for a promise—exactly what Hawley and Young are doing now.
And how did that work out for Sen. Cassidy?
—Benjamin Parker
Cheap Shots
This rant from a Minneapolis protester last night is well worth your time:
Reporters always know sources are good when they give you carefully worded, oddly ambiguous “leaks” that bolster the government’s official line and then immediately ghost you.
I'm with Woke Bill Kristol - and Dems have the perfect opportunity to use the shutdown leverage to attack ICE hard. What are Schumer and Jeffries doing? Making it publicly known how much they don't actually want to use that leverage.
The President has fantasized about the Insurrection Act since he came down his gold escalator. Of course he's going to use it!
The only "amusing" part will be listening to how surprised his enablers are.