Think you’ve lost your capacity to be shocked by stories of Donald Trump’s open corruption? Try this one on for size: The Wall Street Journal reported this weekend that a UAE sheikh bought a 49 percent stake in the Trump family’s crypto venture World Liberty Financial last year, four days before Trump’s inauguration, with a cool $187 million flowing immediately and directly into Trump-family coffers. Another $31 million went to the family of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s U.S. envoy to the Middle East. Happy Monday.
The Boy Who Cried ‘De-escalation’
by Andrew Egger
Is ICE “de-escalating?” That was the word on the street last week, as the White House suddenly realized its messaging—our cops are a law to themselves and anyone who disagrees is a terrorist—wasn’t landing so well and began speaking in more neutral tones about ICE’s operations in Minneapolis and elsewhere.
This was significant. After all, this White House rarely admits any need to change course. But pivoting on messaging is one thing; actually de-escalating ICE operations is another. So far, we’ve seen little evidence of that.
On Saturday, for instance, we got a remarkable story out of the small Minnesota town of St. Peter, an hour south of the Twin Cities. A legal observer was driving behind an ICE vehicle and recording them with her dashcam when multiple ICE vehicles boxed her in and forced her to stop. Video then shows multiple ICE agents piling out of their car, immediately drawing their guns, pointing them at the observer, and screaming at her to “get out of the car.”
When the observer refused, the agents dragged her from her vehicle, put her into one of theirs, and began driving her back toward the Twin Cities, the woman later told MPR News, before appearing to change their minds and dropping her instead at the St. Peter police station.1 The chief of police then gave her a ride home in his squad car.
“He started talking to me like he just couldn’t [believe] how terrible it was, what was happening,” the woman said. “And he was so sorry and so scared for me and that type of thing, and [he] was so upset by what they’re doing to our community.”
Naturally, the Department of Homeland Security had its own take on events. In multiple social-media posts Saturday, DHS called the woman “an agitator” who had been “stalking and obstructing law enforcement” before she “began driving recklessly including running stop signs, nearly colliding with multiple vehicles, and driving directly at law enforcement in an attempt to ram their vehicle.”
Is it possible events unfolded as DHS described them? Sure, maybe. But the woman’s dashcam video shows none of this, DHS has a well established track record of lying through its teeth about such interactions, and boxing in a moving vehicle to force it to stop doesn’t tend to work if the driver’s willing to “ram” you. (In the video, she just pulls over.) Although DHS’s post casually accuses the woman of committing multiple felonies, they eventually just decided to drop her off without further incident—an odd move, if those felonies actually occurred.
As stories like these keep emerging, it’s worth contemplating what “de-escalating” actually means. The fact that the White House is suddenly willing to use the word means nothing if its orders to ICE haven’t changed.
Even if those orders do change, these systems now have a logic of their own. The Department of Homeland Security spent the last year building ICE into something that looks less like a disciplined law enforcement agency than a small paramilitary force—trawling the nation for the meatheads most susceptible to “WHICH WAY, AMERICAN MAN”–style propaganda, training them quickly and poorly, and dispatching them armed into America’s streets. Even if the White House’s sudden stated desire to “de-escalate” is sincere, what do they think is going to happen as this force keeps getting in tense, weapons-out encounters with civilians?
And it’s not just ICE. Over the weekend, ProPublica reported the identities of the two agents who shot Alex Pretti. Both are longtime veterans of Customs and Border Patrol, not new recruits. The gung-ho, low-constraint border enforcement culture of that agency has now been deployed into America’s streets. Compared to those agents’ long-honed instincts, what are a few White House statements about “de-escalation”?
And all that is to assume the desire to “de-escalate” is actually sincere, rather than just a cheap PR dodge to get the White House through the Alex Pretti scandal as painlessly as possible. On Saturday, Trump promised to deploy his immigration enforcement agencies to protect federal buildings that are “being attacked by these highly paid Lunatics, Agitators, and Insurrectionists” in “various poorly run Democrat Cities” around the country.
“Please be aware that I have instructed ICE and/or Border Patrol to be very forceful in this protection of Federal Government Property,” the president wrote. “There will be no spitting in the faces of our Officers, there will be no punching or kicking the headlights of our cars, and there will be no rock or brick throwing at our vehicles, or at our Patriot Warriors. If there is, those people will suffer an equal, or more, consequence.”
Does this statement make it sound like the president sees ICE and the Border Patrol as bodies limited to the specific legal task of enforcing immigration law? Or does he seem instead to view them as a general-purpose “Patriot Warriors” squad to be deployed anywhere and for any purpose he sees fit?
What other head-fakes by Trump have we been duped by—or seen through—in the past? Is there a pattern, or are his whims and decisions as erratic as they appear? Share your thoughts with us.
Trump Will Lose the Midterms. Unless...
by William Kristol
Politically, January went out with a bang. Almost 100,000 voters turned out Saturday in a special election for a Fort Worth–area Texas state senate seat. The result was startling: Democrat Taylor Rehmet, a 33-year-old union leader and Air Force veteran, won by more than 14 points in a Republican district that Donald Trump won by 17 points in November 2024.
This wasn’t some sort of under-the-radar race. Both national parties were engaged. Trump posted three separate get-out-the-vote messages on social media in the two days before the election for the Republican candidate, Leigh Wambsganss. The Republican Party of Texas worked hard for Wambsganss, and her campaign and allied groups massively outspent Rehmet.
I know, I know: Don’t overinterpret the results of one special election on a Saturday at the end of January, when turnout was less than half of what it will be in November. On the other hand: The swing toward the Democrat throughout this large urban-suburban-exurban district in an important swing county was both striking and uniform. And this result didn’t come out of nowhere. It fits a pattern of Democratic overperformance in special elections throughout the nation over the past year, including the results in Virginia and New Jersey this past November.
This coming November is a long way away. But you’d have to say at this point that a blue wave in 2026 looks more likely than not. The House is very likely to go Democratic, and I’d be surprised if it weren’t by a substantial margin.
And Democrats winning control of the Senate now has to be considered a real possibility. The kind of swings we’ve been seeing, combined with early polling in states like Iowa, Kansas, Alaska, and Texas, suggests that Senate seats in these and other states could be in play, along with the more obvious likely Democratic pickups in Maine and North Carolina.
Trump could deal with losing the House, though it would be an inconvenience. But losing control of both houses of Congress would be a far greater blow. Senate and House majorities working together can pass legislation and coordinate investigations. Trump can veto their bills and resist their inquiries, but having both the Senate and the House makes the contest something closer to an even match. And of course a Senate majority can block presidential appointments—including, perhaps especially, judicial nominations.
The last time a party in control of the presidency and both houses of Congress lost both those houses in a midterm was in 2006. That result marked the end of the political potency of the Bush administration.
Republicans and MAGA groups, Trump and his supporters, will spend a fortune to prevent such an outcome. But money only goes so far if the voters want change and a check on an unpopular president.
It’s hard to see how Trump fixes his unpopularity. But it’s easy to see how Trump will try to tilt the electoral playing field. His Justice Department has already been seeking to interfere in state and local elections in many, often unprecedented ways. So far Democratic state officials have fought back effectively, and the courts have tended to support their resistance. But that fight will continue. And in red states, the state-level resistance will be less potent or non-existent—and Democrats will need to win House and Senate seats in red states. And even in blue states, as we’ve seen in Minnesota, it’s not easy to restrain a determined federal government.
So as the Trump administration is well aware, their easiest path to keeping political control will be to intimidate voters, corrupt the vote count, and in general subvert free and fair elections in the blue cities where Democrats will need high turnout and big margins for a successful election day.
Trump may try to enlist the military in this effort. But even if Pete Hegseth succeeds in doing real damage to the non-political traditions of the U.S. military, that would be tricky to pull off. What Trump really needs is a paramilitary force at his disposal. What he needs are troops who aren’t scrupulous about staying strictly within the limits of the law. What he needs are large, well-armed, and unchecked militias that he can deploy as he chooses on the streets of cities, with very little transparency or accountability. What he needs are organizations that already have a history of not being too finicky about obeying the law, and that are now recruiting people who have far less interest in law enforcement than loyalty to Trump’s political agenda, and who are willing to cooperate with like-minded vigilante groups outside the government.
In other words, what Trump needs is a rapidly growing and lavishly funded Department of Homeland Security, with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a Border Patrol unlimited in their deployments, unaccountable to others, and subject to his own direction.
Curbing Trump’s ability to create, marshal, and deploy such an ICE and Border Patrol, to the degree possible, is the key task ahead. Otherwise last Saturday’s special election will stand merely as a sad reminder of what might have been, not as a herald of what could be.
AROUND THE BULWARK
How Can I Save Democracy? Protect Democracy founder IAN BASSIN joins The MONA CHAREN Show to talk about victories and setbacks in the effort to thwart authoritarianism America-style, and what each person can do to preserve free and fair elections going forward.
America’s New Defense Strategy Is Nonsense… On Shield of the Republic, ERIC EDELMAN and ELIOT COHEN discuss Trump’s latest reversals on Greenland before pivoting to the recently released National Defense Strategy.
For Success at the Polls, Dems Look to the Pews… Can candidates of the cloth help the party close the ‘God gap’? LAUREN EGAN reports in The Opposition.
Trump’s “Insurrection Act” Trap… On How to Fix It, MICHAEL WALDMAN of the Brennan Center joins JOHN AVLON to talk about ICE violence in Minnesota, the administration smearing a victim as a “domestic terrorist,” and why legal accountability may still be possible.
‘Frustrating and Demoralizing’: The Measles Comeback Gets Worse… The disease is exploding in South Carolina, we’re about to lose elimination status, and RFK Jr.’s team says it’s just the “cost of doing business,” reports JONATHAN COHN in The Breakdown.
Put Excuses on ICE… ADRIAN CARRASQUILLO joins SARAH LONGWELL on The Focus Group to discuss his reporting and listen to voters’ raw reactions to what they’re seeing in the news.
Quick Hits
STOP THE MUSIC: Since he seized the reins of the Kennedy Center and slapped his own name on the building last year, Donald Trump has barely stopped making bombastic promises about how damn good he’s about to make it. “Wait until you see it a year from now!!!” he posted last month.
“A year from now”? Sorry, Trump must have meant “in 2029.” Yesterday, he made a remarkable announcement: The Kennedy Center will be closing this summer, he said, “for an approximately two year period of time,” for “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding” to turn the center into “a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment, far better than it has ever been before.” Okay then!
Trump has been irked by the obvious failure of his approach to MAGAfy the Kennedy Center, which has seen ticket sales crater and artists frequently back out of performances over the past year. Whether performances will actually cease remains to be seen—the latest round of the “I guess we’re gonna find out if he’s allowed to do this” game Trump has been forcing us all so often to play. If he does in fact succeed in shutting the place down, D.C. enjoyers of fine live entertainment can at least console themselves that Trump’s plan to stage an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout on the White House lawn seems to be going forward without a hitch.
AUSAs WANTED, INQUIRE WITHIN: The Kennedy Center isn’t the only institution that Trump and his goons have swaggered into only to discover it’s a little trickier to run than they thought. The Justice Department’s shortage of top legal talent—sparked by a year of mass firings and resignations amid constant ideological purges—is apparently reaching a crisis point. How can you tell? Well, check out this X post from Stephen Miller ally and recently departed Justice Department Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle:
If you are a lawyer, are interested in being an AUSA, and support President Trump and anti-crime agenda, DM me.
We need good prosecutors. And DOJ is hiring across the country. Now is your chance to join the mission and do good for our country.
There’s the obvious corruption angle here, of course: It’s flabbergasting that, just one year into Trump 2.0, we’ve already shredded the norm of Justice Department independence to such a degree that administration allies are openly saying that only Trump supporters need apply to career roles. But the more striking thing might be that Team Trump feels the need to be grubbing for AUSA applications on X at all.
Since Mizelle advertised that his DMs are open, we reached out to him—not for a job, but for an interview. He has yet to reply.
RON GRABS THE MIC: Democrat Taylor Rehmet’s shock win in a ruby-red Texas Senate district this weekend has shaken loose some interesting responses. “A swing of this magnitude is not something that can be dismissed,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned. “Republicans should be clear-eyed about the political environment heading into the midterms.”
DeSantis, for readers who might be too young to remember, is a politician who was once thought of as the Next Big Thing in Republican politics, before Trump trampled him like a parade of elephants in the 2024 GOP presidential primary. Since then, DeSantis has receded from the political consciousness, leapfrogged in the 2028 conventional-wisdom sweepstakes by figures like JD Vance and Marco Rubio. But he has something Rubio and Vance lack: Unlike them, he isn’t lashed to the wheel of the current administration. If Trump keeps floundering around and shedding support, guys like DeSantis might smell opportunity—the sort of opportunity that could incentivize them to start encouraging the party to finally move beyond the era of The Donald.
Cheap Shots
It’s not clear exactly what happened here: The woman’s husband said that St. Peter police chief Matt Grochow had intervened with ICE on her behalf in the middle of her detainment, but the city later said that the police department “did not participate in, coordinate with or intervene in any federal enforcement activity.”
>>> "Over the weekend, ProPublica reported the identities of the two agents who shot Alex Pretti. Both are longtime veterans of Customs and Border Patrol, not new recruits. The gung-ho, low-constraint border enforcement culture of that agency has now been deployed into America’s streets."
This is why reform is impossible. Abolishment is a moral necessity. The infection is deep; it is cultural and ethical gangrene. We must amputate before all of society has sepsis.
We are absolutely going to need all hands on deck to prevent Trump was stealing the midterms.
Remember, it’s always projection and confession with him, so everything he has said about the Democrats is because he fully intends to do it himself.
So the Democrats better be ready to play hardball over the DHS funding in the next two weeks. Period.