Trump’s Goon Squad Strikes Again
Just another day on the job for ICE as it arrests another Democratic official.
With one week to go, Andrew Cuomo holds a shrinking but still substantial lead over democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in polling for New York City’s Democratic primary for mayor. A new Marist poll this morning finds Cuomo leading Mamdani through every stage of the city’s ranked-choice voting, eventually winning out at 55 percent to Mamdani’s 45 percent. This will be one to watch. Happy Wednesday.
ICE Unembarrassed
by Andrew Egger
Last Thursday, California Sen. Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a Department of Homeland Security news conference, pushed to the ground, and handcuffed by authorities. If you thought the ensuing backlash might make federal agents more cautious about manhandling opposition politicians, you thought wrong.
Yesterday, federal agents in New York City handcuffed another Democratic official: Brad Lander, the city comptroller and a current candidate for mayor. Video taken inside a New York immigration court showed Lander standing next to someone who ICE agents—some in plainclothes, some masked—were trying to take into custody. Lander repeatedly demanded to see a warrant, and kept an arm locked with the man as agents tried to take him away, walking in a scrum with them down the hallway. Moments later, agents placed Lander under arrest as well.
In a statement released after the encounter, the Department of Homeland Security preposterously claimed that Lander had been arrested “for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer.” The latter claim was true; the former laughably false.
“No one is above the law,” the DHS statement went on, “and if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences.” The U.S. attorney’s office in New York seemingly disagreed. Lander—like Padilla last week—was released without being charged.
“I’m happy to report I’m just fine,” Lander told reporters afterward. “I lost a button. But I’m gonna sleep in my bed tonight, safe, with my family.”
“At that elevator, I was separated from someone named Edgardo,” Lander went on. “Edgardo is in ICE detention and he’s not going to sleep in his bed tonight.”
A few thoughts on this. The first is that the White House’s immigration enforcement mooks1 plainly haven’t been instructed to avoid further high-profile clashes with Democratic officials. Lander—who, as we noted, is currently running for mayor—might well have been angling for a photo-op. But ICE agents were also all too happy to give him one, and DHS leadership was all too happy to lean into the story.
Second, on a similar note, the story continues the pattern of Trump’s federal law enforcement agencies publicly accusing people of criminal conduct that goes beyond what they’re willing to actually charge in court. Think of last month, when Attorney General Pam Bondi repeatedly accused Kilmar Abrego Garcia of “human trafficking” during a press conference announcing charges against him—when in fact the Justice Department was charging him with the significantly milder crime of ferrying undocumented migrants around. You can say anything on Twitter or in a press conference; in an indictment, you need the facts to back you up.
Finally—and most important—there’s the way in which ICE’s lawlessness has incentivized good samaritans to resist their enforcement efforts. Think of how ICE arrests used to go. Agents show up to take a person into custody. They may be in uniform or in plainclothes, but their faces are visible and they show their badges when asked. The person they’re arresting knows he’ll have the opportunity to speak to a lawyer, to tell his family where he’s being held, and to plead his case before a judge.
Now snap back to the present day and put yourself in Lander’s shoes. Masked agents show up to whisk a migrant away. Maybe he’ll get to tell his family where he is, maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll have the opportunity to speak to a lawyer or plead his case to a judge, maybe he won’t. And you think to yourself: Will there be a legal process? Or am I the very last person who has a chance to intervene on this person’s behalf?
You Go to War with the President You Have
by William Kristol
Since most of the news from the G7 summit early this week focused on President Trump’s early departure from it, a joint declaration Monday by all the nations attending got less attention than it deserved. In that statement, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan stated clearly that “Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror,” and that “We have been consistently clear that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.”
In other words: The view that this Iranian regime is dangerous, and that it can’t be permitted to have a nuclear weapon, isn’t an idiosyncratic view of Israel, or of Israel and the United States. It’s the correct and measured judgment of what we might still call the Free World.
And the fact is that Israel has, in this last week, gone a long way to removing the threat of Iran having a nuclear weapon. It’s very hard to see how this isn’t a good thing. As German Chancellor Friedrich Merz put it yesterday, “This is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us. We are also victims of this regime. This mullah regime has brought death and destruction to the world.”
So it makes sense to support Israel in its impressive effort to do this work for all of us. It also makes sense for the United States to be willing to step in and finish the job of denuclearization—if necessary. It would make no sense to stop now, with the job only partly done, leaving in place a wounded regime thirsting for revenge, with its capacity for terrorism retained and with enriched uranium and missiles still on hand. If that regime is to stay in power, it needs to be thoroughly neutralized.
But perhaps it won’t be able to stay in power. It certainly makes no sense to stand in the way of the oft-expressed aspirations of the Iranian people to be rid of this cruel and backward regime.
Hanging over all of this is the fact that at this pivotal moment, Donald Trump is our president. Apparently the Lord has an excellent—if somewhat dark—sense of humor.
And so the self-absorbed Trump, seeing the Israeli attack is going well, tries to take credit for it. He indulges in unhelpful and grandstanding bleats like “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.”
No one who’s watched Trump in office can assume he’s suddenly going to become a font of prudence, a source of statesmanship. We have to take account of that as we judge next steps for the United States in the Middle East.
But we also must recognize that we are at a very unusual moment, when getting things broadly right will be important for the future of the region and the world. Israel went to war with the flawed government it has. We will have to deal with the challenges and opportunities we face with the very flawed government we have.
It may be, as Immanuel Kant wrote, that “out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” But out of the crooked timber of the Trump administration we have to hope that, in this case, a good outcome can be made.
Pizza Through Strength
It’s Not Delivery, It’s D’terrence
Better Ingredients. Better Pizza. Bomb Iran.
It’s Not Delivery, It’s D’terrence
by Andrew Egger
Are you tracking the Pentagon Pizza Index? If not, saddle up and grab yourself a slice.
The index is premised on the old joke that major outbreaks of global conflict are preceded by a spike in carryout orders at Pentagon-adjacent pizza places. It got new life on social media this week, when X accounts like “Pentagon Pizza Report,” which tweet out regular updates of Google data about local restaurant traffic, noted a spike in orders immediately before Israel launched a major offensive against Iran.
Are we really able to get a heads up on upcoming geopolitical conflicts based on how many pies are being baked around the Pentagon? To get to the crusty bottom of the cheesy story, we asked the pizzerias themselves. And, well, they aren’t sold on the theory.
Freddy Reyes, a manager at Pentagon City’s We the Pizza, told me he hadn’t heard of the phenomenon—although he did volunteer that, in his experience, pizza orders from the Pentagon are down in general since Donald Trump retook office. (Maybe his regulars got DOGE’d?)
Reyes put me in touch with the store’s general manager, Erick Morales, who said the theory was news to him as well. “I think it’s very interesting,” he said. “It could be true, or could be a theory like you mentioned. We typically do get more business anytime there are big events going on in DC given the fact of how close we are.”
Down the street at Extreme Pizza, an employee who declined to share his name with a nosy Bulwark reporter waved off the index as mere “rumor.”
“It’s a funny made-up story,” he said. “I think if we were going to war, it’s definitely covered up—they don’t want you to know about it.”
Uncle Sam agrees. The Pentagon insists its pizza proclivities have no relation to the war planning it may or may not be undertaking, and went so far as to try to squash the Pentagon Pizza Index story this week, telling Newsweek that the X account’s narrative did “not align with the events.”
“There are many pizza options available inside the Pentagon,” a spokesperson said, “also sushi, sandwiches, donuts, coffee, etc.”
Annoyingly, like the debate over Chicago v. New York pies, this one may never fully be settled. The Google data on which accounts like the Pentagon Pizza Report rely is a rough estimate aggregated from phone location data inside individual stores, so its ability to give an accurate read on carryout orders is suspect at best.
Still, it’s hard to squash deeper (dish?) suspicions. Maybe the Pentagon and the pizza places are worried that the Pentagon Pizza Report is blowing their cover on a mutually beneficial arrangement. Do our nation’s hardworking military desk jockeys really want to settle for cafeteria pizza when they’re wargaming dropping a bunker buster at Fordo? Do Northern Virginia Dominos outposts want to have to deal with foreign intelligence agents lurking in the parking lot?
I smell a cover-up, and it smells like sausage and peppers. I’m going back to Extreme Pizza, ordering two slices, and demanding that guy’s name.
AROUND THE BULWARK
The Growing Threat of Homegrown Religious Extremism… The alleged Minnesota assassin was known as a ‘deeply religious’ Christian man. That should be an alarm bell for all of us, writes MONA CHAREN.
Trump Should Fire Tulsi Gabbard… But He Won’t. She’s not doing her job—but she is doing what he wants her to do, argues BENJAMIN PARKER.
Why Israel Did It… On Just Between Us, JVL joins MONA CHAREN to ponder the Israel–Iran war and revel in the wonders of Yellowstone National Park.
Zohran Mamdani: FYPod Crossover… NYC mayoral candidate ZOHRAN MAMDANI joins TIM MILLER and CAM KASKY for a special edition of the daily pod to discuss his plans to make the city more affordable, build more housing, and end food deserts—as well as antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Quick Hits
WAR POWERS: As we noted yesterday, President Trump’s increasingly combative rhetoric toward Iran has dismayed GOP doves who have long viewed him as one of their own. It’s also emboldened a coalition of lawmakers who argue—with good reason—that Congress has abdicated far too much authority about when and on whom to wage war.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a measure this week under the 1973 War Powers Resolution seeking to block U.S. strikes on Iran, with sponsors arguing that such a strike would amount to a declaration of war. The Constitution requires such declarations to be made by Congress, not the president. In the House, supporters of the resolution include Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). A similar Senate effort, led by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), would require Trump to seek congressional approval for a strike on Iran except to head off an imminent attack.
Kaine told CBS News Tuesday that his resolution so far had no Senate cosponsors. But, he added, “I definitely have interest.”
WHAT’S ANOTHER TRILLION AMONG FRIENDS?: The Congressional Budget Office is out with its latest scorecard of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” and the fiscal picture just keeps getting grimmer. Per The New York Times:
House Republicans’ sprawling package to cut taxes and slash federal safety-net programs would add about $3.4 trillion to the debt, according to nonpartisan congressional analysts, who reported on Tuesday that the minor gains in economic growth under the bill would not offset its full fiscal impact.
The updated findings from the Congressional Budget Office amounted to yet another dour report card for the president’s signature legislation, which passed the House last month but now faces the prospect of significant revisions to its core components in the Senate.
TRUMP RE-STOPS THE TIKTOK CLOCK: Oh look, Donald Trump is pretending the TikTok ban law doesn’t exist again. Here’s the Washington Examiner:
President Donald Trump will sign an executive order this week once again delaying a ban on TikTok‘s operations on U.S. soil.
Former President Joe Biden signed a bill into law last year that gave TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, until Jan. 19 of this year to divest to a U.S. ownership or cease operating in the U.S.
Trump originally supported banning the Chinese-owned app during his first term in office, but flipped on the matter during the 2024 campaign after witnessing his surprising popularity on the app, especially among young voters.
“As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Washington Examiner in a statement. “This extension will last 90 days, which the Administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure.”
The law says TikTok must go dark, but—as Leavitt says—Trump doesn’t want it to. So for now, it won’t and we’ll all have to continue pretending that laws don’t matter.
Cheap Shots
Wild times for hiring at the Department of Defense:
There’s little question at this point that we should see federal immigration officers as direct agents of Trump’s political will. DHS is run by leaders who were selected for their deep personal loyalty to the president: The department’s secretary, Kristi Noem, memorably subjected herself to ritual humiliation during a congressional hearing last month rather than admit Trump had wrongly described Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s knuckle tattoos. And, as we’ve seen repeatedly over the last week, bedrock questions like whether to carry out workplace enforcement raids change on the president’s whim.
I do not have confidence that Trump and his national security team are competent enough to navigate the Iran threat. This is because said national security team is staffed by loyalists, not experts.
“No one is above the law,” the DHS statement went on, “and if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences.”
Unless, of course, you are doing the FELON's bidding and following his every whim and will. Then you will be pardoned as were those non-criminals who did not assault anyone before our eyes on January 6th, nor invade a government building (of minor importance, on the Capitol) looking for people to kill.
Washington, D.C., a once- great city on the Potomac, to be renamed, the Moskva.