Dear Everybody:
I don’t even know what to call what Trump and ICE are doing anymore--quadrupling down? They’re definitely taking the volume up to eleven:
--Trump wrote a long post today threatening the people of Minnesota and blaming the mayor and the governor and saying, "Minnesota Democrats love the unrest that anarchists and professional agitators are causing because it gets the spotlight off of the $19 billion dollars that was stolen by really bad people." The post ends with "FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING AND RETRIBUTION IS COMING."
--The FBI is looking into Good’s "possible connections to activist groups," even though it’s clear she wasn’t there as a protester--she had just dropped her little boy off at school and was driving home. She was shot in her own neighborhood.
--The head of DOJ’s Civil Rights division, Harmeet Dhillon, has refused to investigate the killing at all.
--Stuart Stevens: "There will absolutely be more violence from ICE because right now Republicans are unwilling to stand up and say that shooting a woman in the face without justification is wrong."
--Rick Wilson: "Her (Renee Good’s) violent and bloody murder served a purpose: it signaled to the MAGA movement that the old rules, the sacred inheritance of the rights of every citizen to life and liberty, were officially dead. ‘Cross us and die’ is the new reality." He said the US has "entered a moment of national crisis unknown since the Civil War" and called for the disqualification of any official serving or appointed under Trump’s command. "Each of them has clearly and definitively violated their oath of office and must be barred from ever holding public office again."
--Bill Kristol: "Is this America now? A country where unaccountable and poorly trained government agents go door to door, arresting and beating people on suspicion and shooting people who don’t obey their every order or try to get away...an authoritarian police state."
--Jeff Tiedrich: "The murders will continue until morale improves."
Don’t believe him? Here’s what the ICE/Gestapo agents have been up to since Good’s killing:
--In St. Paul, Border Patrol agents got mad at a protester, pushed him and then tackled him to the ground. (It’s on video.) You can hear the protester saying, "I’m not resisting. I’m not doing shit," and see them kneeling on him and then dragging him to a car.
--Patty, a woman observer in Minneapolis, was abducted from a car today. When she was released, she told reporters, "ICE said we were obstructing their operation even though there were no cars. We were not in an active raid, there were no cars ahead of them, we were just behind them, and they said we were obstructing. Before they arrested us, an agent came and sprayed pepper spray into the vent of our car, even though we’d not done anything. We’d not done anything! Nothing! And then they came back, broke the windows, took us out of the car, arrested us, and then the driver of the car, the same one that sprayed the pepper spray in, proceeded to say--proceeded to say, ‘You guys need to stop, um, you need to stop, uh, obstructing us. That’s why that lesbian bitch is dead.’"
--Professor Darkness: "ICE abducted a 17-year-old from his job at Target, slammed him on the ground, roughed him up in their car, then discovered he was an American citizen, so they dropped him off in front of a Walmart. The poor kid didn’t have his cellphone and was bleeding, and ICE didn’t offer him assistance in any way."
--Amanda Moore: "Big clash this afternoon between DHS agents and protesters in a residential street in Minneapolis, following a DHS agent hitting another vehicle. Tear glass was deployed in people’s yards and agents pepper-sprayed people." (Note: The use of chemical irritants is illegal in Minneapolis.)
--In Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, there’s video of an ICE agent leading a handcuffed woman to a portable toilet, then going inside with her while the other agent remains in the car.
--RudyMoon: "If this video is real and that ICE agent made her perform a sexual favor, that’s called sexual trafficking and it’s a felony. This needs to be investigated."
--The female Marine veteran Skye who I reported on yesterday has given a more extensive interview about her experience with ICE: "Once in ICE’s hands, they broke my window, they yanked me out by my neck, they threw me to the ground, they stomped on me, they pushed my face into the ground. They put the cuffs on as tight as possible, to the point where it took six agents to try to get them off. They ‘re calling me a bunch of derogatory names, calling me ‘it.’ They tried to break my ankle. When he turned my ankle all the way around, I screamed, and he said, ‘Yeah, I bet you fucking like that, don’t you?’ They literally said in there (the detention center), they said, ‘Have you not learned? This is why we killed that lesbian bitch.’ You think they feel sorry about that at all?"She says an agent who was driving her to the detention center stopped and pulled her out of the car to beat her again. She says she told the agent she would be at his trial at Nuremberg. "They’re enjoying it," she told Status Coup News. (Note: Did I mention that this Marine vet is a WOMAN?!!!)
--MT: "StatusCoup’s cameraman Jan Farina was just struck in the leg by a flash-bang ICE fired into a crowd of unarmed protesters in Minneapolis. ICE also fired pepper balls and tear gas. This is America under the Trump regime. Spread the word."
--ICE wrongfully detained the father and 24/7 caregiver for his disabled son. The son has Pompe disease and depends on his father for his care since he is partially paralyzed and has a collapsed lung. ICE has held the father for two months now, and as a result, since his father was not there to care for him, his son has had to be hospitalized. The son said, "My father knows how to keep me breathing, how to keep me alive. He’s the reason I want to continue living." ICE claims the father is a member of a terrorist organization because he’s originally from Palestine.
--ICE tackled a 73-year-old volunteer and US citizen to the ground. "Folks were just waiting for the bus," he said. "Agents didn’t even ask for papers--just detained them."
--Ranglinlover2: "I am supposed to think that people waiting at a bus stop to go to a job paying meager wages are an ‘invasion’ that is ruining my nation, and these masked thugs are heroes? No way."
--Hayley Roberts: "They’re literally ramming their cars into people and then arresting them all over the Twin Cities. No one is safe. And they won’t stop here, your city is next...Going door by door, barging into people’s homes entirely warrantless, now targeting watchers and activists--this is a direct escalation and I guess I’m terrified to see so little acknowledgement of it.
--tech guru: "Minneapolis is becoming the Fort Sumter of Civil War 2.0. It’s a reverse civil-war-starting battle. The government is turning us into ‘rebels’ before we did anything like Fort Sumter. And the immorality is on the government side."
--ordaj: (This) was always part of the plan. Kevin Roberts (of Project 2025) said the revolution will be bloodless ‘if the left allows it to be.’"
The people of Minneapolis are not cowed--they’re fighting back:
--Students at Roosevelt High School walked out to protest ICE days after a clash between US Border Patrol agents and protesters at the school.
--A crowd of hundreds gathered at a St. Cloud strip mall parking lot to observe more than two dozen ICE officers near some Somali-owned businesses.
--One veteran said he saw volunteering as an ICE observer as another way of serving his country. "It’s the most American thing to do: not to be scared of people trying to scare you..."
--Kristi Noem and ICE are telling people that blowing whistles, honking, and filming the actions of ICE agents are against the law, but it’s a lie. People have a perfect right to record. "If ICE tells you not to, just back up--but keep recording..."
--ICE is intentionally ramming into cars, then claiming they rammed into them and using that as a pretext to smash the windows of their cars, pull the drivers out, and arrest them.
And they’re not the only ones fighting back:
--At least six of the lawyers in the Civil Rights Division at DOJ have quit over the refusal to prosecute the ICE agent who shot Renee Good.
--The Twin Cities-based Immigrant Defense Network says the group has trained 2,000 observers so far, including 354 people the day after Good was killed."
--Minneapolis and Minnesota have sued the federal government to stop the enforcement surge by ICE following the fatal shooting of Renee Good, requesting a temporary restraining order to halt the enforcement action and/or limit the operation.
--Illinois and Chicago have sued the DHS over their "militarized" immigration-enforcement tactics, seeking to bar agents from using tear gas without sufficient warning, making warrantless arrests, and randomly stopping people to question them about their citizenship.
--The Bulwark: "Executives at tech companies have been circulating a letter calling on their companies to break ties with the White House’s immigration enforcement. The Bulwark has learned the letter has garnered more than 150 signatures in the days after Good’s shooting."
--Jamie Raskin has written formal Congressional letters to Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem demanding they say how many pardoned January 6 insurrectionists they’ve hired and asking, "Who is hiding behind the masks?"
--Bret Devereaux: "Mussolini had 200,000 blackshirts for the March on Rome in a country of about 35 million. Hitler had 400,000 brownshirts in 1932 in Germany for a population of around 60 million. So around 0.6% of the population. 0.6% of 340 million Americans is just over 2 million. They do not have enough goons."
In tipping point news:
--Rachel Maddow listed all the times Republicans in Congress have stood up to Trump in the last couple of weeks, and it’s surprising how long it is. (Note: Dems have been standing up to him all along.)
--Senate Republicans helped pass a measure blocking Trump’s authority to wage war in Venezuela without Congressional approval.
--Both the House and Senate voted to return funding to NOAA and general scientific research.
--A number of House Republicans backed extending Affordable Care Act subsidies.
--Several GOP senators openly criticized the administration’s handling of the ICE killing in Minneapolis.
--GOP Senator Thom Tillis slammed Stephen Miller’s comments on Greenland as "stupid."
--And even the lackey of lackeys, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, threw cold water on Trump’s 10% interest on credit cards cap and told Trump it would need to be "worked on to build consensus."
--The New Republic’s Greg Sargent: "We’ve seen other indications that Republicans are slowly turning on Trump. And with Trump himself suggesting in a new interview that his power is basically unlimited, it’s important to remember that, well, no, it isn’t unlimited. And we’re seeing more evidence of this each day."
--And, as Bill Kristol points out, "All of this is coming at a pivotal moment, when some congressional Republicans--one year into Trump 2.0--are starting to reconsider the question of whether their bodies contain spines."
In Jerome Powell/Fed news:
--Trump and Jeannine Pirro have really stepped in it with this cooked-up investigation into Jerome Powell because of the financial ramifications.
--Daily Kos: "If Trump successfully installed a crony in Powell’s position who would follow Trump’s demands to lower interest rates to next to 0%, it could plunge the United States into an inflation crisis that would doom the country’s economy and send it into a horrifying recession."
--A bunch of Republican congressmen and senators have spoken out against the investigation. Republican senators Thom Tillis, Dave McCormick, Kevin Cramer, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski, all expressed their dissatisfaction with Trump’s vindictive prosecution.
-- Financial Services chairman, GOP French Hill, condemned the probe, calling it "an unnecessary distraction that could undermine this and future Administrations’ ability to make sound monetary policy decisions."
--Senator John Thune told reporters that the DOJ probe "needs to be resolved quickly, because the Fed’s independence in shaping monetary policy in the country is something that we need to ensure proceeds without political interference." He said the allegations Trump and the GOP are making against Powell "better be real and they better be serious."
--A bipartisan group of former Fed chairs and top economists, including Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, and Allen Greenspan, called the Trump administration’s investigation "an unprecedented attempt to use prosecutorial attacks" to undermine the Fed’s independence.
--Jerome Powell is standing up to Trump and calling it like it is: "This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions--or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation."
--Central bank leaders from around the world issued a letter in support of Jerome Powell.
In historical news:
--On March 5, 1770, in Boston, nine British soldiers who were stationed in Boston to "keep the peace" among the increasingly "disrespectful" colonists and enforce the British government’s unpopular legislation (like the Tea Tax). shot several people in a crowd, estimated between 300 and 400, who were harassing them verbally and throwing various projectiles, including snowballs and rocks. The gunfire instantly killed three people and wounded eight others, two of whom later died of their wounds.
--It became known as the Boston Massacre and was one of the most significant events that turned colonial sentiment against King George III and British authority. John Adams wrote that the "foundation of American independence was laid on March 5, 1770."
In other news:
--Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a federal judge there is no way to retrieve the 137 Venezuelans deported under the Alien Enemies Act--or even offer then due process--given the "delicate negotiations" with Venezuela’s new post-Maduro regime. (I thought Trump was the President of Venezuela.)
--After ExxonMobil expressed reservations about the ability to make drilling Venezuelan oil possible and calling it "uninvestable" Trump threatened to block them from doing business in the country.
--Citing the Miccosukee tribe’s opposition to Alligator Alcatraz, Trump has vetoed a federal bill intended to provide flood protection to Osceola Camp, a Miccosukee tribal residential area in the Everglades.
In good news:
--Senator Mark Kelly has sued Pete Hegseth for Hegseth’s attempts to punish him because he spoke out, telling soldiers they should not obey illegal orders. Hegseth censured Kelly and moved to reduce his retirement grade and military pension. Kelly has not only the First Amendment on his side, but the speech and debate clause, which protects elected officials from being charged for what they say in their official capacity.
--A federal judge ruled that Trump/Russell Vought’s termination of environmental grants, which were targeted only at blue states, violated the Fifth Amendment’s equal justice clause and ordered the grants restored.
--Nearly 17,000 fans have cancelled their tickets for the USA FIFA World Cup Games this summer because of Trump’s detaining of visitors to the country and the violence they’re seeing in Minneapolis, etc., and the FIFA board has called an emergency meeting on what to do.
Best comment of the day, from the Lincoln Project: "We’re a year in of watching America’s founding principles circling the drain under this tyrannical regime, but just a reminder: masked agents who can gun people down with ‘absolute immunity’ is called fascism. Pure and simple."
Today’s bit of poetry, from Maya Angelou: "You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies, you may trod me in the dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise..."
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis