The People Are Turning Against ICE. Will the Politicians Take Notice?
Strongly worded statements will not stop the terrorization of the country.
Days after threatening military action against Iran over its brutal treatment of protesters, Donald Trump is stepping back from the brink. The Treasury Department is instead implementing new sanctions on Iranian officials responsible for the crackdown, while Trump himself is suggesting Iran might be mending its ways:
Which is a pretty remarkable way to gloss a mass protest that has already seen thousands of civilians butchered by their own government. Happy Friday.
Fighting ICE’s Reign of Terror
by William Kristol
The unjustified and indefensible killing of an innocent woman, Renee Good, by U.S. government agents; the lack of any recognition or acknowledgement by those agents or their superiors that what they did was wrong; the intensification of the government’s reign of terror in the streets of our cities and towns; the unabashed defense of brutality by the administration in power, and their wholesale lying about it . . . it’s horrifying.
But the less dramatic stories emerging from our reign of terror are also horrifying.
At around 3 p.m. Wednesday, four Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up for lunch at a small, family-owned Mexican restaurant, El Tapatio, in Willmar, Minnesota. They took a booth and apparently enjoyed their meal—though staff at the restaurant appeared “frightened,” according to a witness who spoke to the Minnesota Star-Tribune.
When the restaurant closed that evening at 8:30 p.m., ICE agents followed departing workers and detained three of them.
The agents presumably had a good laugh about this. Perhaps they relished their meal even more because the staff that served them was frightened. Humiliation of their victims, a kind of relish in their fear and misery, a kind of—let’s call it what it is—sadism has become a dominant part of the culture of ICE.
It does not, thankfully, appear to be dominant in the culture of the country. At least not yet. A Quinnipiac poll shows only 40 percent of Americans approve of the way ICE is enforcing immigration laws, while 57 percent disapprove. In a CNN survey, 51 percent of Americans say they believe ICE is making cities less safe, while only 31 percent say ICE is making cities safer.
Those numbers in support of ICE are higher than they should be in a healthy and humane society. But still, in today’s polarized politics, a 17–20 percent margin is substantial. If only Democrats could win the national vote this fall by that amount!
White House border czar Tom Homan admits the administration has a problem. Not with the policy, of course. It’s just, Homan said yesterday, that ICE needs “to be better at messaging at what we’re doing.” Still, it’s good to see Homan on the defensive.
The question is whether the Democratic party is going to go on the offensive.
Yesterday Minnesota Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar put out a statement: “Our local law enforcement, mayors, and community leaders all agree: The best way to restore order and safety in Minnesota is for ICE to leave our streets. This Administration is escalating rather than de-escalating and it needs to stop.”
ICE of course could care less about local law enforcement, mayors, and community leaders, who can do little to stop ICE’s terror. But ICE is an agency of the federal government. It operates under authorities granted and defined by Congress. It uses funds appropriated by Congress.
So if ICE needs to stop what it is doing, it’s Democrats in Congress who need to try to do their best to stop it. Which does not mean offering a couple of pro forma amendments that will lose. It does not mean failing to excoriate Republican senators, by name, for refusing to stand up to their dear leaders. It does not mean going on to approve government funding as usual.
The government funding deadline is two weeks away. The Senate is on break for the next week. Democrats didn’t object to this recess. After all, it’s been scheduled for a while, airplane tickets were bought, plans were made—no one wants to inconvenience anyone much. Gotta go along to get along!
But if something needs to stop, and it’s not stopping, maybe it’s not the right time to go along or to get along? Maybe it’s time to stand and fight. For the memory of Renee Good. For everyone terrorized, in Minnesota and elsewhere, by ICE and other agencies of our government. For everyone who hasn’t yet been terrorized, but will be as long as the administration isn’t checked. For the workers at a family-owned restaurant in a small town in Minnesota.
The Make-a-Wish President
by Andrew Egger
There’s an old episode of The Twilight Zone, “It’s a Good Life,” that centers on a six-year-old boy, Anthony Freemont, who has the powers of a god. Little Anthony is the tyrant of his small town, which he’s somehow cut off from the rest of the universe and immiserated with a series of thoughtless, pointless whims: no cars, no electricity, and so on. The people in his thrall live in terror of him, but they don’t dare show it—he has a habit of shooting the messenger, and a cheerful, contented god-boy is better than an angry one. Instead, they shower the kid in constant, petrified praise, telling him his every decision is wise and good.
Donald Trump has always had a lot in common with Anthony Freemont.1 But his months-long tantrum over his own failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize has taken things to another level.
Last week, in the midst of a Truth Social rant about the supposed uselessness of NATO, Trump whined that “I single-handedly ENDED 8 WARS, and Norway, a NATO Member, foolishly chose not to give me the Noble [sic] Peace Prize.” Trump did not end eight wars. The nation of Norway does not select the winner of the Nobel prizes, which are also not called the “Noble” prizes. And it’s hard to imagine a crazier metric by which to assess the merits or demerits of NATO in the first place. This isn’t the ranting of a supervillain; it would never occur to Stephen Miller to say something like this. It’s the tantrum of a child.
But a child with godlike powers tends to get what he wants. And so it was yesterday that María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader and actual recipient of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, showed up at the White House to hand the thing over. Feast your eyes on the most powerful man on earth, the Make-a-Wish president, the septuagenarian birthday boy:
Later, Trump headed back to Truth Social in a very good mood. It had been his “Great Honor” to meet Machado, he said, who had “presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.” After giving Trump her medal, Machado was later spotted leaving the White House with a gift bag bearing Trump’s signature. Mutual!
Trump, of course, had really only been presented with the Nobel medal. Earlier in the day, the Nobel Peace Center deadpanned online that, while “a medal can change owners,” “the title of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate cannot.” But Trump isn’t concerned. The mind of a child has trouble with abstract concepts like “title.” He’s got the prize now, doesn’t he? It’s right over there on the wall!
It takes the mind of a child, too, to see Machado’s gift as a gesture of real respect. To the Venezuelan leader, an adult, a hunk of metal matters far less than achieving her political aims. But she understands that Trump, a child, doesn’t see things that way. She is happy to bribe him like a child. And he is too childlike to understand the patronizing nature of her praise.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Trump Is Trying to Instigate Unrest… On the Flagship Pod, SAM STEIN joins TIM MILLER to discuss why the president thinks he is winning the news cycle by occupying a great American city and ordering his agents to violently confront U.S. citizens.
The Last Thing Minneapolis Needs Is the Insurrection Act… Inserting military forces into the situation risks disaster, argues MARK HERTLING.
Can Trump Be Duped Into Dropping His Greenland Obsession? Thom Tillis, hoping to change the president’s mind, is blaming the Greenland idea on Trump staffers giving bad advice. Good luck with that, writes WILL SALETAN.
Europe’s Only Hope Is to Stand Up to Trump… Time for some transatlantic hardball, says DALIBOR ROHAC.
Governor Polis, Do Not Pardon Tina Peters… An open letter from STEPHEN RICHER to Gov. Jared Polis with a plea to protect the integrity of our elections.
Agatha Christie, Still the Queen of Crime… Fifty years after her death, the British novelist continues to define the genre, writes CATHY YOUNG.
Hey. Remember the Epstein Files? Congress’s legal fight with the administration is far from over, reports JOE PERTICONE in Press Pass.
Quick Hits
GOOD TO BE RED: Look, say what you want about this White House: They’re really, really, really concerned with stamping out fraud. So much so that last year they brought on Elon Musk and DOGE to defund basically all U.S. foreign aid rather than risk any going to fraud. So much so that they’ve threatened to cut off all federal funding to Minnesota over its current major fraud scandal. So much so that they’ve . . . quietly been letting Mississippi off the hook over one of history’s other biggest welfare-fraud disasters? HuffPost reports:
Shortly before President Joe Biden left office, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families levied a $100 million penalty against Mississippi for allowing fraudsters to embezzle funds from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. The penalty reflected the estimated size of the fraud.
But the Trump administration reversed the decision in April after the Mississippi Department of Human Services said it uncovered records that could validate some of its allegedly improper spending, rescinding the penalty, and telling the state it would “issue a new penalty letter at the appropriate time.” Eight months later, no new letter has been sent.
BRAIN DRAIN PAIN: Are American universities losing their perch as the envy of the world? The New York Times reports on Harvard University’s slip from first place to third on a list of the world’s most productive research universities (and other top schools’ even faster slide) amid a blizzard of anti-academy policies from the White House and stiff competition from universities in China:
The reordering comes as the Trump administration has been slashing research funding to American schools that depend heavily on the federal government to pay for scientific endeavors. President Trump’s policies did not start the American universities’ relative decline, which began years ago, but they could accelerate it.
“There is a big shift coming, a bit of a new world order in global dominance of higher education and research,” said Phil Baty, chief global affairs officer for Times Higher Education, a British organization unconnected to The New York Times that produces one of the better-known world rankings of universities.
Educators and experts say the shift is a problem not just for American universities, but also for the nation as a whole.
“There is a risk of the trend continuing, and potential decline,” Mr. Baty said. “I use the word ‘decline’ very carefully. It’s not as if U.S. schools are getting demonstrably worse, it’s just the global competition: Other nations are making more rapid progress.”
Cheap Shots
Bizarrely, I think this is the first time the comparison has ever been made in print at The Bulwark—you’d think we’d have hit it fifteen or twenty times by now.
I think it's important that Bill used the word sadistic. That is indeed what is going on with ICE.
"So if ICE needs to stop what it is doing, it’s Democrats in Congress who need to try to do their best to stop it"
Democrats can *try* to stop it. Republicans actually can. And won't.