Rants Raves And Spicy Noodles

In today’s NZ Herald

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Michael Jochum is in Denver, CO.

Own it, MAGA

444 days in, 444 relentless days of chaos, corrosion, and calculated stupidity, and now more than a month into a full-blown war with Iran that has already destabilized global energy, shut down one of the most critical shipping lanes on Earth, and pushed the world to the edge, and we’re supposed to pretend this is strategy? That this is leadership? No. This is what happens when you hand the controls of a fragile, nuclear-armed world to a narcissistic arsonist with a microphone and a messiah complex. What we’ve witnessed isn’t governance, it’s demolition.

Let’s stop sugarcoating it: World War III isn’t some distant hypothetical anymore. It has already been ignited. The match was lit the moment those U.S.–Israeli strikes hit Iran on February 28, setting off a chain reaction of retaliation, escalation, and global instability that has not stopped since. This isn’t a “conflict.” It’s a regional war with global consequences, missiles flying across borders, oil routes collapsing, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz dropping to near zero, and entire economies holding their breath.

We are already in it.

And what has this administration given us in return? Deadlines. Ultimatums. “Forty-eight hours.” “Twenty-four hours.” “This is it.” Followed by the same pathetic cycle of retreat, TACO diplomacy, Trump Always Chickens Out, after he’s already poured gasoline on the fire. Over and over again. Escalation followed by denial. Threats followed by backtracking. A rolling, incoherent disaster dressed up as strength. Even now, we’re sitting in the middle of a so-called “ceasefire” that nobody agrees on, while strikes continue and the region remains a powder keg waiting for the next spark.

This isn’t strategy. This is delusion.

And the most dangerous part? He doesn’t even understand what he’s started. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz alone, something Iran has effectively enforced, has disrupted roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply and sent shockwaves through global markets. That’s not just a regional problem, that’s a global crisis. That’s how wars expand. That’s how alliances get pulled in. That’s how a reckless, ego-driven conflict metastasizes into something far bigger than anyone can control.

This is who he is: a pathological liar cloaked in patriotism he doesn’t understand, a coward who hides behind bluster while sending others to die, a man so consumed by ego that he confuses escalation with strength and chaos with control. Corruption, nepotism, cronyism,it’s not a flaw in the system, it is the system. He hasn’t strengthened America, he’s hollowed it out, humiliated it, and turned it into a global punchline while insisting the laughter is applause.

And don’t let the GOP off the hook. They didn’t just enable this, they engineered it. They handed him the matches, stood back, and now act shocked as the fire consumes everything in its path. Party over country. Profit over principle. Power over people. That’s the doctrine. That’s the decay.

“America First”? No, America diminished. America isolated. America dragged into a war that never needed to happen, now teetering on the edge of something far worse. Because when you ignite a conflict of this scale in a region this volatile, with global powers watching and waiting, you’re not just playing with strategy, you’re playing with extinction-level stakes.

Own it, MAGA. Own the war. Own the chaos. Own every lie you swallowed and every warning you ignored. You didn’t just get played, you participated. You handed him the stage, the spotlight, and the script, and now the rest of the world is trapped in the consequences of your willful blindness.

You didn’t elect a strategist. You handed the controls to a gambler.

And now we’re all paying the price.

Polite language has failed. Calm explanations have failed. Panels, op-eds, “both sides,” and soothing reassurances have failed. Fascism does not advance because people lack information. It advances because people are comfortable, distracted, anesthetized, and trained to mistake civility for virtue.

If you’re looking for gentle guidance, go find a museum placard. This article is not for you.

FASCISM IN AMERICA

American fascism isn’t creeping in. It’s already unpacked, changed the locks, and put your institutions on a payment plan. Camps exist. Courts are bent. Power is centralized. Cruelty is procedural. And half the country is still arguing about whether the word “fascism” is too dramatic, like vocabulary is the problem instead of cages.

You don’t defeat this by convincing everyone. You defeat it by making it unworkable.

Fascism is a machine. It requires obedience. It requires participation. It requires millions of people doing small, cowardly things every day and calling it normal. Your job isn’t to scream at the machine. Your job is to throw sand in the gears until it starts tearing itself apart.

NORMAL IS THE MOST DANGEROUS LIE IN THE ROOM

Every authoritarian project survives on one magic trick: making the unacceptable feel routine. Once cruelty becomes policy, people stop reacting to it like an emergency and start reacting to it like weather. Camps become “facilities.” Abuse becomes “incidents.” Dead people become “statistics pending review.”

The first move is to kill normal.

You do that by refusing euphemism. By documenting obsessively. By naming names. Contractors. Officials. Judges. Budgets. Timelines. You make the system visible again because fascism thrives in abstraction. When the harm has faces, when the paper trail is public, when denial becomes embarrassing instead of easy, the spell starts to crack.

This isn’t moral outrage. This is forensic exposure.

MASS BEATS HEROICS EVERY TIME

Fascism loves lone wolves. It loves martyrs. It loves isolated bravery it can crush quietly. What it cannot handle is scale. Not rage scale. Participation scale. The kind that makes repression logistically impossible and politically radioactive.

That’s why disciplined nonviolence keeps winning in history, even against regimes that look invincible. Not because it’s nicer. Because it recruits more people, fractures loyalty, and forces the state into impossible choices. Beat people publicly and look brutal. Back down and look weak. Either way, legitimacy leaks.

This is where tactical frivolity becomes lethal.

Humor shatters fear. Ridicule punctures myth. Absurdity exposes how fragile authority really is. When power is forced to arrest clowns, chase costumes, and explain why it’s scared of jokes, it looks ridiculous. Ridiculous power bleeds supporters. Bleeding power panics.

But frivolity is not chaos. It’s strategy with a grin. Clear message. Clean moral contrast. Punching up, always.

HIT THE PILLARS, NOT THE CROWD

Protests alone don’t topple regimes. Noncooperation does. You identify what keeps the system functioning and you deny it.

Labor that refuses complicity. Professionals who slow-walk enforcement. Cities that block cooperation. Vendors that cancel contracts. Donors who feel heat. Bureaucrats who demand process until the machine grinds itself raw.

This is boring. It works anyway.

You build legal defense. You train for repression. You rotate roles so burnout doesn’t decapitate the movement. You turn every crackdown into proof and every arrest into recruitment. The system is betting you’ll get tired. You build something that outlasts that bet.

STARVE IT AND CONTAIN IT AT THE SAME TIME

Fascism runs on money and legitimacy. So you attack both without playing its game.

Boycotts that hurt. Exposure that sticks. Follow the money until it squeals. Make profiteering from cruelty socially radioactive and financially painful. At the same time, you contest power everywhere it shows up. Local. State. Federal. Courts. School boards. Election infrastructure.

This is not about being “above politics.” That’s how authoritarians win. This is about denying them uncontested space.

BUILD WHAT THEY CAN’T BURN DOWN FAST ENOUGH

Mutual aid is not charity. It’s survival infrastructure. Sanctuary networks. Community defense of institutions. Parallel systems that keep people fed, housed, informed, and connected when the state turns hostile or useless.

Fascism collapses when people stop needing it. When fear loses its leverage. When solidarity becomes practical instead of rhetorical.

HOPE ISN’T ENOUGH

This will not be quick. It will not be clean. It will not feel heroic most days. It will feel like work. Relentless, unglamorous, grinding work.

But fascism is brittle. It looks strong because it demands obedience. The moment enough people stop cooperating, it starts screaming. That scream is not victory. It’s the sound of the spell breaking.

This is why hope isn’t enough. Hope sits still. Strategy moves. Pressure works.

You don’t wait for history to save you. You force it to change course.

Ethnic Cleansing in Ohio?

Nazi Lies in Vance's America

TIMOTHY SNYDER

FEB 1

READ IN APP

In the schools and churches of Springfield, Ohio, people are making hasty preparations for a “large deportation” promised by the president. To all appearances, and according to local sources, the city is two or three days away from a federal ethnic cleansing, grounded in a hate campaign organized by the vice-president and American Nazis. The destined victims are ten thousand or more Haitians.

Its origins are in racist fantasy. During the last presidential campaign, JD Vance, then the vice-presidential nominee, put the Haitians of Springfield at the center of national attention. Temporary Protected Status had been granted to non-citizen Haitians in the US after an earthquake in Haiti killed more than 200,000 people; it was extended after the Haitian president was assassinated. This allowed ten thousand or more Haitians to gather in Springfield, a small city between Dayton and Columbus, and to work. Vance heard about Haitians in Springfield, from a city manager who wanted federal assistance for housing. He turned a reasonable request into a racial crusade.

In a speech of 10 July 2024, Vance claimed that “Springfield, Ohio has been overwhelmed” by Haitian immigrants. Although there was certainly friction over schools and housing, there was no basis for such a judgement. In fact, Springfield was doing better economically than in any moment in Vance’s lifetime. In the months to follow, he would return to the theme, publishing a number of inflammatory claims about Haitians in Springfield, not a single one of which was true. As we will see, Vance’s goal was not so much to get individual lies on the record; it was rather to create a self-sustaining story, in which a real place and its real people could become the raw material for an alternative Nazi reality -- I use the word advisedly. Vance had help in expanding his theme, and crucial helpers were Nazis.

In American terms, Haitians are Black; and the American group Blood Tribe are white-supremacist blood-obsessed Nazis. After Vance’s speech, Blood Tribe took its cue. Blood Tribe had marched in other cities in the previous two years, wearing masks, distinctive uniforms, and carrying banners with swastikas. These marches were unmistakably Nazi. Vance’s speech drew the attention of Blood Tribe to Springfield. On 10 August 2024, members of Blood Tribe carried out their usual performance in the city’s downtown, two of them carrying banners with swastikas and another two brandishing automatic rifles. Mayor Rob Rue called the march “an attempt to disrupt our community by an outside hate group.” Blood Tribe responded on social media: “We hear that you have a real problem with Haitian ‘refugees.’” 

And from whom did they “hear” this? JD Vance.

Later that month, a local Springfield (self-described) social media influencer named Anthony Harris attended a meeting of the Springfield City Commission. He claimed that Haitians were “flipping cars in the middle of the street,” which was not the case. He then introduced a colorful new element to Vance’s image of a Springfield “overwhelmed” with refugees. He claimed that Haitians went to Springfield parks, seized ducks by the necks, cut off their heads, and then devoured the headless fowl. This was untrue. 

Five Blood Tribe members also attended that same 27 August City Commission meeting. One of the Nazis, Drake Berentz,  stood up to say that “I come to bring a word of warning. Stop what you are doing before it’s too late. Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian that you bring in.” Haitians had been living in Springfield for years. The only novelty was that Vance had drawn attention to them. After the City Commission meeting, Blood Tribe took to the internet to spread the lie that “Haitians eat the ducks out of city parks.”

This business of purported animal abuse would become very important. A month later a version of the story would be spread to tens of millions of people by a former (and future) president of the United States, who would use a tale of barbarism as a justification for a “large deportation.” 

The question of who is human and who is not can be defined by animals. In a predominantly rural society, the claim that people are beasts is a suggestion that they can be slaughtered. This is a frequent theme in histories of mass killing, such as the Holodomor (the Stalinist political famine) in Ukraine, or for that matter the current Russian invasion of Ukraine. In an urban or suburban setting, in which animals are companions, the idea that others mistreat animals can be the signal that they are not like us, barbarians, not fully human. Among the many other accelerating repressions, Jews in Nazi Germany were not allowed to keep pets at home. In the US, the slur of eating pets has traditionally been applied to Asians. The idea that Black people eat the wrong things in the wrong way is a staple of American racism.

In early September 2024, a Springfield woman posted on Facebook about a lost cat. She had heard from someone who had heard from someone else who had heard from yet someone else that a cat had been abducted and eaten by Haitians. The story had no basis. But once online, it could be used, and it was. The fascist-friendly Twitter account @EndWokeness posted that “ducks and pets are disappearing,” with a screenshot of the cat post and a photo of a man holding a Canada goose. The photo was taken in another city, and the man in the image complained that his image was being used in a campaign of lies. The baseless notion that Haitians were mistreating or killing animals, spread to make them seem like barbarians, was quickly shared by prominent far-right figures such as Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk.

When Vance then posted about Haitians on 9 September 2024, two months after his first speech, a circle was closed. He had drawn attention to Springfield, including the attention of Nazis. This led to the portrayal Haitians as criminals and barbarians. Vance now repeated the specific claims, to which he himself had given the general impulse, as evidence that his initial slander had been true. “Reports now show,” he wrote, “that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who should not be in this country.” 

There were no such reports; there was only the campaign of aggression that Vance himself had initiated. Cat-eating now became a favorite topic among national elected Republican officials. Often this took a joking tone, with cat memes. This levity is a tactic of the on-line far right: even as we demean other people and deny their humanity, it is all somehow just a joke. But of course the consequences are real: an advocate of the Haitian community was harassed after Vance’s post.

This was just the beginning. The alternative reality that Vance and Nazis co-created was bleeding into the real world. The next day was the presidential debate between Donald Trump, then the Republican nominee, and Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.

On the stage in Philadelphia on 10 September 2024, before a national televised audience of sixty-seven million people, Trump led with racial abuse of Haitians in Springfield: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there, and this is what is happening in our country and it’s a shame.” One of the moderators pointed out that there was no evidence for any such claim. Trump then said that he had seen “people on television” complaining that their dogs had been eaten. There were no such television reports.

After the debate, Vance revealed what he was doing: saying one thing that was not true (the pets) in the service of spreading even bigger lies (some general catastrophe). He essentially granted to an interviewer that the story about cats and dogs was not true, but “whatever the case may be,” it was legitimate to spread that false claim because it drew attention to the general “carnage” in Springfield, of which of course there was none. Vance’s stance might be summarized thus: “Where there is the smoke that I made up, then there must also be the fire that I also made up.” In other settings, Vance was more specific than “carnage,” claiming increased rates of disease and crime. All of these claims were also baseless and false.

A spurious alternative reality, built from Nazi marches, internet memes, and Vance’s and Trump’s lies was consciously created and spread. The day after the presidential debate, the leader of the Nazi group Blood Tribe understandably declared victory, expressing his pride that Blood Tribe had “pushed Springfield into the public consciousness.”

Ohio politicians began to respond. Governor Mike DeWine spoke up to contain the lies that Vance and others had spread. DeWine acknowledged the very real challenges created by rapid immigration to schools and housing, and described state-level measures designed to address them. He described the Haitian immigrants as a “positive influence.” He elaborated: “People who want to work, people who value their kids, who value education, you know, these are positive influences on our community in Springfield, and any comment about that otherwise, I think, is hurtful and is not helpful to the city of Springfield and the people of Springfield.” Mike DeWine, who was born in Springfield, knew what he was talking about. But he was reaching thousands of people. Social media had reached millions, Trump tens of millions. The damage had been done.

Vance’s Nazi-propelled propaganda had won. And a propaganda victory of this sort, involving degrading claims about crime, barbarism, and disease, can lead directly to threats and violence. Two days after the presidential debate, Blood Tribe doxed Springfield residents, while several public buildings in Springfield had to be closed due to bomb threats, at least one of which involved hate speech about Haitians. The day after that, on 13 September 2024, three Springfield schools had to be closed after bomb threats. Amidst the chaos that he himself had sown, Vance blamed the immigrants and Kamala Harris. 

Having created the problem, Trump and Vance had a “solution,” That same day, Trump claimed that immigrants had “destroyed” Springfield, and promised that, were he to become president, he would order an ethnic purge of the city: “I can say this, we will do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio — large deportations. We’re going to get these people out.” Trump’s words were as magnetic as Vance’s: on 28 September, the Nazis of Blood Tribe returned to Springfield, this time waving a swastika flag in front of the mayor’s house.

The Trump-Vance lie that the city had been “destroyed,” the notion of “carnage,” the dehumanization of immigrants— all of this creates the impression that their promised ethnic cleansing action would be a responseto something, rather than a simple choice to exercise state violence against an invented racial enemy. These reversals are very important. It is important to consider this carefully.

First, Vance reported that the Nazi propaganda campaign that he had himself inspired amounted to factual evidence. Mental chaos has been created where there was none before. And then that mental chaos becomes the justification for physical chaos: Trump’s “large deportations,” ICE raids that will, in fact, wreck an improving local economy. And once that physical chaos has been created, it will be blamed on the immigrants who are no longer there. Most of this has already played out. A key threshold, which it appears that we are about to cross, is the application of the state violence. At that point, so to speak, the lie is supposed to become “true.”

Hitler gave very specific propaganda guidance in Mein Kampf: a Nazi leader should tell a lie so big that his people cannot accept that they could be deceived on such a scale. And that is one logic, for those predisposed to believe a cat-eating-scale liar like Vance and to accept that the violence was justified. Others, those who do not trust Vance, might still find it hard to believe that their own government, however untrustworthy, is really about to carry out an ethnic cleansing operation just because Nazis march and the vice-president messages.

But if we lose time in incredulity, we risk becoming complicit. Once a big lie has led to violence, violence in which we are implicated because it is our government, it becomes harder to deny the initial lies — we do not want to think that we are complicit in an act of state terror that was based on absolutely nothing except Vance’s lies and Nazi marches. And so some kind of resistance now, even if it is not completely effective, is not only politically but ethically very important.

One answer to a big lie, to a Nazi alternative reality, are the small truths. When I visited Ohio in October 2024, after the presidential debate, and then again in October 2025, I was told that the narrative imposed by Vance and Trump on Springfield was irritating and wrong. To be sure, Springfield had problems, like most cities in my home state. But when I stopped there last October, my impressions were in line with what the Ohio governor has been saying. The city is clearly on the upswing. 

When I was growing up in the area, Springfield was much rougher than it is now. When I was finishing middle school, in 1983, Newsweek devoted an entire issue to Springfield, a gentle case study of the decline of the American dream. When I was in high school, the city (still) had two high schools, and so two football teams, which meant that I visited several times (to watch). It was a tricky town. Things got worse in the 1990s, as the main local employer, International Harvester cut back production, and industry in nearby Dayton also retreated. Between 1999 and 2014, median income in Springfield fell by more than in any other metropolitan area in the country. By 2012, Springfield self-rated as the unhappiest city in the land, and in 2016 it was presented in national media as the nadir the rust belt trajectory. But the city presented itself as a good place to do business, and in 2017 a big Japanese auto parts maker moved in. And suddenly there were more jobs than people seeking them. Soon the Haitians, who could legally work, starting coming.

By the 2020s, the city has visibly improved. The downtown, which had gone almost dark, is much more bright and functional: the Museum of Art and the Heritage Center Museum are still inviting, and there are good restaurants in the center — in part thanks to Haitians. Looking out into the sunshine of a perfect fall day from the pavilion of a Mexican place, it seemed grotesque to imagine that restaurants and other sites of employment could be raided by federal agents, that the city could be laid to waste on the lying logic that it had already been laid to waste. There was nothing here, nothing among the small truths of Springfield, that could justify such an action.

But even as I was visiting Springfield last fall, Vance’s mendacity was doing its political work. The fiery racial lies were becoming cold bureaucratic power. A few weeks later, in late November, the federal government took the actions necessary to establish the institutional preconditions for an ethnic cleansing of Springfield. In late November of last year, the Department of Homeland Security issued an unpersuasive finding of improved conditions in Haiti. This was the step needed to deprive Haitians of the official Temporary Protected Status that allows them to live and work legally in the United States. Read attentively, the text reveals that conditions in Haiti remain disastrous. At most, there is some weak gesturing towards the future possibility of some improvement — which, in normal times, would be obviously insufficient to deprive Haitians of their status. There is no sense of such improvement in State Department documents, such as the current travel advisory strongly discouraging Americans from visiting Haiti.

The concluding claim of the finding is that the presence of Haitians “is contrary to the US national interest.” This assertion, which is presented as dispositive of all other issues, goes unexplained and undefended. What national interest, exactly? How? The only answer is a vague reference to Trump’s beliefs. In the context of the previous events, the meaning is clear enough. The president and the vice-president have repeated that Haitians eat domestic animals, cause diseases, commit violent crimes, and wreck cities. These very specific dicta about Haitians originated with JD Vance and American Nazis. Given the lack of any other explanation, it would seem reasonable to conclude that the motive of the policy is the racial hatred expressed by the president and the vice-president. 

This expression of state of mind is one reason why, should a major ICE operation go forward in Springfield, it would be the ethnic cleansing of an American city. To be sure, the appearance of racial difference drives ICE raids all over the country. But in this case we have a particularly clear trail from public racism to practical policy. This is what lawyers and historians concerned with genocide try to ascertain: was there the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”? It is not easy to settle questions of intent, or of genocide generally; but the expression of racial fantasy about “carnage,” “destruction,” and barbarism by the vice-president and the president weighs on one side of the scale.

Today begins Black History Month. This Saturday there will be an open house at Gammon House, Springfield’s museum of the Underground Railroad. What will happen between now and then? Absent a court decision or a change of attitude by the White House, the Haitians’ Temporary Protected Status will expire on Tuesday (3 February) at 11:59pm. Springfield local authorities believe that an ICE surge will begin on Wednesday (4 February) and last for thirty days. The governor has said the same.

And some local people are responding. Mayor Rob Rue, a Republican, asked the “silent majority” who supports the local Haitian population to speak up. A conservative couple took up the challenge by gathering more than a thousand signatures for the extension of Haitians’ Temporary Protected Status. On Thursday 29 January, in a Springfield church, people gathered for an information session about their rights. Mayor Rue initiated on Tuesday 27 January a resolution in the City Commission, asking that ICE agents respect local rules and norms. The specific concern was that ICE agents would be masked and could not be identified. In the course of the last month, of course, two Americans have been shot dead by agents carrying out raids. One of the victims was Alex Pretti, a nurse. On 27 January, the Ohio Nurses Association, in an open letter to Ohio’s Congressional delegation, called for all funding for federal immigration enforcement to be halted.

Up until now, the major ICE raids have taken place in states and cities with reliable Democratic majorities. In Springfield, Ohio, the politics would be different. Republicans dominate a wildly gerrymandered Ohio state legislature. Ohio’s two Republican United States senators are unlikely to contradict the president on his signature issue. Mayor Rue and Governor DeWine unsurprisingly say that the law is the law; even these local and state-level Republicans, for whom the issue is close at hand, cannot be expected to use a language of opposition. That said, their expressions of concern are unmistakable; and, in DeWine’s case, thoughtful and detailed. Dewine is far more informed about both Springfield and Haiti than Vance, Trump, Kristi Noem, or anyone else involved in the process.

DeWine disputed the two justifications given by the Department of Homeland Security for the federal action: that Haiti is safe and that Haitians in Springfield somehow compromise “national security.” He said that the decision to remove their Temporary Protected Status as “wrong.” His description of Haiti is, sadly, quite accurate: “it’s extremely violent, the economy’s in shambles, the government does not function, the police are virtually worthless.” He contradicts the Department of Homeland Security finding: “it doesn’t qualify as the situation changing for the better in Haiti.” DeWine is an informed observer. He and his wife Fran DeWine helped to fund a school in Haiti, named in honor of their deceased daughter, Becky. This charitable effort became unsustainable in 2024.

The direction of federal deportation policy really rests on claims about Springfield. Here DeWine’s statement was equally clear: “But probably more important for the United States and the people of Ohio, is that the Temporary Protected Status, if it goes away next week, it’s going to mean that you have thousands of Haitians who are working, contributing members of the community, contributing to the economy, who one day will be able to work, and who the next day will not be able to work. Springfield and Clark County are coming back, they’ve been doing a very very good job. It’s an upward movement. Part of that upward movement comes about because, frankly, of Haitians who are working and contributing to the economy and buying things and opening restaurants and doing all the things that working people (do). These people are working, and they’re hard workers, so I think from a public policy point of view, it is a mistake, it is not in the best interest of Ohio, for these individuals who are workers and working to lose that status.”

Still, the thin, cold guillotine of bureaucratic language descends, from Washington DC to Columbus and Springfield: “A federal list of individual removal orders has been identified in Springfield as an initial focus for enforcement activity.” Public employees in Springfield have just read these chilling words. DeWine’s description helps us to imagine the realization, in an actual city, of this bureaucratic language. There are at least ten thousandmen, women, and children who will be subject to arrest and deportation. These are those men and women at work, “who one day will be able to work, and the next day will not be able to work” -- the end of Temporary Protected Status means that people who try to work will be seized in their workplaces, and if not seized in their home.

Those are adults; we also have to imagine the children. Roughly twenty percent of the children in Springfield Public Schools do not have documentation that would establish their citizenship. All of these boys and girls, about fifteen hundred children, are vulnerable. As in other cities, they can be taken from schools and away from their parents, or return home to find their parents gone. Springfield churches are preparing right now for that very situation. The city employees who received that memo about the “removal orders” and the “initial focus of enforcement activity” were the teachers. The Ohio Education Association, the largest teachers’ union in the state, “strongly opposes” any presence of ICE agents in schools, which “undermines trust, disrupts learning, and creates trauma for children and families.”

Sad though it is to contemplate, trauma is a goal of ethnic cleansing. The stages that we have seen in Ohio are all too familiar: the fiction of the subhuman enemy; the false details that are used to introduce the stereotypes; the organized use of the propaganda of racial hatred in media; the capture of government by people involved in all this; and then finally the application of violence to thousands of human bodies. At every stage we will be offered the reasons that we should find this normal: on the one side, the fiery talk about subhumans; on the other, the frozen bureaucratic passive-voice institutional boilerplate suggesting that all is normal and inevitable and that no one need take personal responsibility for what is simply happening and must happen.

The violence, once it comes, changes normality: first of all, for the people who are rounded up and held in the concentration camps we call “detention centers,” preparatory to being sent either somewhere they do not want to go, or dying in custody. And this leaves trauma among the survivors in the most obvious, incontestable sense. But everyone who observes also partakes in the trauma. The kids who remain in Springfield schools after their friends disappear will need to tell themselves something. Their parents will need to think of what to tell them. Everyone around has to ask how it came to this. The trauma becomes a political resource. The perpetrators of an ethnic cleansing use the emotion to reshape how we see our neighbors — and ourselves. Most people, I expect, will be appalled by what they see in Springfield. The ethnic cleanser, though, rules with the help of those who are not, those who comply, agree, take part. And in this way ethnic cleansing itself is a step away from democracy and towards minority rule by a police state served by those willing to wear the mask.

Those who dispense the trauma are aware of what they are doing. In this whole Springfield story, it is the statements of Blood Tribe and the the vice-president that reveal the most self-awareness. They are guiding a process that they recognize, understand, and approve: the generation of an alternative reality with a clear definition of the detestable other, and then the mobilization of state power to eliminate that imagined enemy. If this process is completed, as there is every sign that it will be, they will have succeeded: and they too will be altered. Blood Tribe, and groups like them, will have seen how they can move the national conversation and the federal government. 

After a Springfield pogrom, JD Vance will have his first namesake policy. Although he has been outspoken during the first year of the Trump administration, and has gotten himself in the way of various endeavors, there is, as of yet, no clear instance of a policy of which he is the author and the executor. The ethnic cleansing of Springfield would be the first. “JD Genocide,” or perhaps “Genocide Vance” -- if all this happens, the sobriquets will write themselves.

And what history will the rest of us write for ourselves? When we are confronted with street terror, concentration camps, and mass deportations, as now in the United States, the thought of historical precedents arises — and is usually suppressed. “It can’t happen here,” we think, so this must not be “it.” When we take the focus down from the national to the local, to the story of Springfield, this is a bit harder to maintain. The “it” is right there in front of our faces. 

We confront no historical analogy, but actual twenty-first century Nazis who took action in the public sphere, shaped the public conversation, and are getting the policy outcome that they desired. As the mayor noted after Blood Tribe marched in Springfield, the aim was to “disrupt the community” — and now that disruption can take on a catastrophic scale. Blood Tribe, Vance and Trump appeal not to someone else’s racism in some other time and place, but to American racism, right here and now.

Indeed, having followed the genealogy of events in Springfield, we might find ourselves more open to broader interpretations of what is happening around us, at a national level. After all, the social media feeds of the Department of Homeland Security are ever less distinguishable from those of Blood Tribe, and of course incomparably more influential. The motives given for the deportation operations as a whole, the notion of “criminal aliens” and the like, are essentially those of Springfield writ large. Springfield, far from being the exception, might help us to see the general rule. When I see masked ICE agents I can’t help remembering the masks of Blood Tribe -- and asking myself if there might be some overlap in personnel...

For me, as a historian of atrocity who was raised in Ohio, it is uncanny to consider this evidence. Usually I am reading the sources years or decades after the fact, not along with the events themselves. Usually I visit sites of memory, not cities at risk, which is what Springfield is right now. I wish that what I know about other times and places was not quite so applicable. But insofar as is historical patterns are of any use, it is in naming what might well happen before it does happen -- which, perhaps, makes the horror less likely. 

An ICE surge in Ohio is not inevitable. Trump could stop his promised “large deportation.” Perhaps Vance or Kristi Noem could stop it. It can be halted, by a court ruling tomorrow, Monday the second of February.

He's losing

Lucian K. Truscott IV

Jan 23, 2026

Where I sit tonight -- probably the same place as a lot of you right now -- is in the path of the largest winter storm in years. Tracy and I spent the afternoon getting ready. We already went to the supermarket yesterday, so what we were left with was making sure our backup battery power supply is charged and the generator is ready to go. That meant finding the little connection thing to charge the Jackery battery and looking for our collection of extension cords we can run from it, and from the generator outside, to the stuff we’ll want to be able to keep on if the power goes out – the fridge, the wifi router, the TV, and a couple of lamps.

I was toiling away in the room at the back of the house we use for cat boxes and cat feeding and keeping-stuff-we’re-waiting-to-put-away, and I was thinking of what to write at the end of this out of control week, the out of control month that’s about to come to an end, hell, the extraordinarily out of control year we have – so far – survived, when it came to me:

He’s losing.

He’s “losing it,” as the saying goes. He is more and more visibly disconnected from the reality the rest of us, and the rest of the world, live in. They can still shoot him up with something that is not vitamin B and wheel him out in front of the public and the press and turn him loose to babble the lies that make him so happy to repeat over and over – he won the 2020 election that he lost; the prices of things like electricity and food and drugs and health care that everyone else knows are going up, he thinks are going down 400 or a thousand percent or whatever number he’s got stuck in his mind; he’s the greatest president ever, greater even than Washington and Lincoln; and on and on. But it’s not working, and he knows it, and his people know it.

He’s losing his health. A new purple wound bloomed on his hand in Davos that they tried to explain away by saying he hit his hand “on a table.” What? There weren’t enough hands to shake in Davos, so they couldn’t explain it away using that lie, or maybe nobody would shake his hand. Who knows. Something is seriously wrong with him. It’s what his narcolepsy is all about. He couldn’t keep his eyes open if they paraded a bevy of topless teenagers in front of him, he’s on the nod so often and so deeply. The thing about dragging the leg comes and goes, but if I were to guess, I’d say one of the reasons they’re rushing to complete the gold-plated jet from Qatar they say will be ready “by summer” is that they’re installing some sort of elevator he can use to get into the thing.

He’s losing supporters. Three or four polls are out telling the tale of his crash in popularity with the 18 to 30-year-olds. Even those who flipped from Biden to him in 2024, think he stinks, with 65 percent in one poll and 69 percent in others disapproving of the way he’s doing his job. He’s so crazed over his tanking poll numbers that he wants to make it a crime to run polls that say his numbers are falling.

He’s losing Republicans in the House and Senate. How many have said they’re resigning now? I lost count at 40. They’re looking at the losses they’re going to face in the midterms and bailing at record levels.

He’s going to lose the midterms. Everybody knows it. James Carville thinks it’s going to be a blowout. Charlie Cook was just dragged kicking and screaming into admitting control of the Senate is likely to go to the Democrats. The White House announced this week that Trump will be traveling to support Republicans for the midterms once a week between now and next fall. That means rallies. Remember the last one, in the Poconos, when they couldn’t fill a casino convention room and had to wall off a smaller space with big curtains? Just wait: His rally tour is going to turn into the Big Search for the Smallest Event Space So It Will Look the Fullest.

He’s losing it with ICE. The violence and cruelty of his thousands of new barely-trained masked thugs is coming through in spades in Minneapolis. That city is showing what can be done to oppose these modern-day Brownshirts and turn the tide of public opinion against them. His polling on immigration is tanking. CNN ran a poll that found 52 percent find Trump “has gone too far” on immigration. New York Times/Sienna found 61 percent say he has “gone too far” on immigration and customs enforcement. That number included 70 percent of independents. Other polls have had similar results. That whooshing sound you hear isn’t the icy wind bringing the Big Winter Storm. It’s the sound of Trump’s immigration policies flushing down his golden toilet. And these polls were taken before the photo of the five-year-old boy in the knit hat with bunny ears and a Spiderman backpack hit the airwaves. The picture is already being described as “iconic” in the way it shows the inhumanity of Trump’s immigration policy.

That’s the hand of an ICE agent holding the boy by his backpack.Photo: The Guardian

He’s losing it internationally. The kidnapping of Maduro was a big fat bust. He’s leaving the same authoritarian regime in place in Venezuela. None of the Big Three oil companies want to touch Venezuela’s stinky, thick, hard-to-drill-for oil. No major countries want to join his toy U.N. “Board of Peace.” I mean, really – Hungary, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan? It’s like a club for wannabe dictators hoping if they please the utterly unpleasable Trump that some crumbs will fall to the table from the Big Mac he’s stuffing in his mouth. Embarrassing. Ridiculous. Absurd. A plaything for Trump’s ever-expanding ego. Europe is gone for him. Not even his pal Putin will listen to his pleadings about stopping the war in Ukraine so he can get another pretend peace prize.

He’s losing it with Wall Street and Banks. That’s what his incredibly rapid shift into reverse on Greenland was all about. The money-boys took a hit to their bottom lines and punched speed-dial for Trump and told him if he wanted to keep the crooked crypto pay-offs coming, he had to finesse a Greenland agreement and drop the threats of new European tariffs, and presto! After screaming for months that he “needs” Greenland for “national defense” and that you “can’t defend a piece of paper,” Trump’s big new deal on Greenland turns out to be a slight expansion of the 1951 treaty signed between the U.S. and Denmark as a – get this – “implementation of the North Atlantic Treaty.” That’s Trump’s bugaboo, NATO, of course. There is new language about “total access” and some filigrees and bows and it will probably be written on stationery in gold leaf lettering, but it’s “old wine in a new bottle,” according to a former NATO official quoted by Politico.

In the end, he is losing because taken together, what has resulted from all his big authoritarian moves is that he looks weak. Panic is setting in. There aren’t enough needles and “not vitamin B” in the world to keep this staggering act going.

That’s not to say he isn’t dangerous. He is. He’s still surrounded by wannabe Nazis like Stephen Miller, and he’s still listening – on the sly now, I suspect – to tech Nazis like Elon Musk. He’s still got a hand puppet running the Pentagon and his hand on a pen that can sign the bloody Insurrection Act any time he takes a mind to. He wants some form of what he thinks is martial law, and if I were to guess, he’s going to try it and end up being knocked back by the courts.

But he’s fading, and he’s fading fast. He is not invincible. Republicans will be heavily damaged in the midterms. If they lose the House and the Senate, Trump’s last two years will be empty theater. He won’t be able to pass a single law. He won’t be able to make a single appointment. He won’t get any new judges on Courts of Appeals. He won’t get any new U.S. Attorneys. Should a Supreme Court vacancy come up, it will stay vacant until 2029, and a Democrat will be in the White House.

He won’t just be a lame duck. His presidency will be a dead letter.

At Davos, Trump behaved like a man who arrives for a dinner party and then goes to the bathroom with the door open. Sorry, world, but this is the best we can offer right now. As with an embarrassing relative, we develop coping mechanisms around the house, but when they act out in public, we can't help feel ashamed.

It could have been worse. Newspaper accounts reveal that Trump was cowed by nascent congressional resistance to conquering Greenland and Europe's threats of retaliatory trade sanctions. But he still managed to cash in. A friend from Nixon library days, Brett Holmes, was able to see Greenland all the way from Mexico, where he lives and works. He wrote Tuesday that the flap was actually all about securing precious metals for Trump’s high tech bagmen. Sure enough, mining revenue is an element of the draft deal, according to the Washington Post. The Trump bros will no doubt profit, too. The New York Times reports this week that he has already made $1.4 billion from the presidency.

While NATO survived Davos, experts say it’s wounded. Trump and his wonks envision a world of hyper-militarized spheres of interest. If you've seen “The Sopranos,” it's like Tony in Jersey and Johnny Sack in New York. If we sell out Ukraine, which seems likely, it will be because Trump thinks Putin has every right to crush his neighbor. After securing Ukraine, again using the threat of nuclear weapons to deter robust conventional responses, Moscow could turn its exhausted conscript army against the Balkans and Poland. If the U.S. continued to equivocate, NATO would dissolve.

Those who think that Trump is onto something because our postwar alliances weren’t practical or affordable have yet to reveal their plan to stop Putin. Let the solons of enlightened isolationism say how the world is better off without the U.S. taking a stand for what is right when it can. If they think Putin wouldn’t go that far, they should take another look at Trump. China would be the next Trump War Prize winner. President Biden said three times that the U.S. would respond militarily if China moved against Taiwan. Beijing must now know that Trump would do nothing.

In our hemisphere, he doesn’t care about democracy or human rights, just whether leaders pay and flatter him. When he kidnapped Maduro, he had our special forces kill 82 people. This wasn't to lift the weight of oppression from the shoulders of the Venezuelan people. This was to get our hands on their heavy crude. They were people of color, so Trump doesn't care. But it wasn't foreign policy. It was a mob hit. Too bad no one figured out how to accomplish a short hop for Trump from Davos to a war crimes trial at The Hague.

When he is off the stage, it will be hard to rebuild structures of mutual trust and peace. The conquests our alliances exist to deter or prevent may already have occurred. As the U.S. retreats from leadership, our allies are making deals with one another and our adversaries. The new normal will sink its roots into a less secure world where nuclear weapons and tyrants’ unchecked ambitions, including our own, risk a spiral of miscalculation that could destroy everything.

What must be done? It depends on whom you ask. Some identify Trump as the ultimate expression of American sin and imagine the utopia we could build from the wreckage. I don't find this view helpful. Trump arose not because the U.S. was failing but because its politics was beginning to function optimally. Gender apartheid ended a century ago, racial apartheid just 60 years ago. Pluralism was at last taking hold.

Some on the New Right don't like free elections anymore because they lead to outcomes such as women's rights, marriage equity, protrections for our trans and nonbinary siblings, and immigration reform. But prophets of straight white male hegemony indict themselves, not political and economic liberalism. As for the millions of well-meaning conservatives who liked Trump's tax and regulatory policies, not that they ended up being conservative, they were hoping for the best. But giving power to the Jan. 6 man again was the worst mistake ever. He was always going to reoffend. Ask the battered spouse about hoping for a better tomorrow. A better tomorrow doesn’t come until the hitter is out of the house and in jail.

After Trump, we need a government based on tried and true virtues — the golden rule and half a loaf. All people of faith who believe in the divine law of love, who identify as constituents in a universe God made for God's purposes of peace, love, justice, and joy, should not tolerate any government that hurts or kills unnecessarily. To those who say this proposition violates the separation of church and state, our reply must be that we can no longer afford it.

We also have to return to a politics of robust debate and prudent compromise. Well-meaning people from both parties could solve immigration in a long weekend. But everyone would have to be satisfied with half a loaf. Half a loaf would have been better than the American carnage on the streets of Minneapolis. If someone had baked half a loaf, Renee and Becca Good would be safe at home.

But that is tomorrow. Today, Donald Trump is the most dangerous person in history. It’s a combination of his Armageddon power, weakening inhibitions, rising appetite for deadly violence, and violation of international norms. Peaceful resistance is vital but will only go so far with a government that has hardened its heart, feasts on rage, and bargains on violence to justify its violent reprisals. Trump may well hope to pick fights in enough cities to justify interfering with the November elections.

The fate of our our nation and the Earth, our island home, is up to those with constitutional authority — judges, regime members invoking the 25th Amendment, members of Congress with the power to impeach and convict, and military authorities who stop obeying Trump’s illegal orders. They must do it for the sake of their children and grandchildren. Otherwise Trump will be right about one thing at least. We will look back from the hellscape ahead and say that the annus horribilis we just experienced was, in comparison, a golden age.

Art Of The Deals

* * * *

Robin Snyder

Thursday January 22, 2026

My boyfriend Jack Smith went scorched earth on Trump in his opening statement before the House today, saying “I want to be clear, I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including the decision to bring charges against President Trump. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity.” Well yeah. He said that Trump “engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power.” Uh-huh.

It was kind of disorienting seeing someone speaking truth in Congress lately but there it was. This, of course, caused Gym Jordan to shriek and wave like a lunatic and for all the Republicans to become completely unhinged.

Texas Congressman Troy Nehls, whose Trump fluffing skills are a couple of standard deviations from the mean of even the most insane MAGAs, snarled absurdly at Smith: “We know the crap you are shoveling did not pass muster with the American people. To put it bluntly Mr. Smith, the stink remains on you. And to put it bluntly, I’d like to briefly address the police officers of January 6. I can tell you that the fault does not lie with Donald Trump. It lies with the US Capitol Leadership team.”

At this, American hero/Officer Michael Fanone, sitting with the other officers in the gallery, coughed and audibly muttered “Go fuck yourself.” It was awesome, and of course it took about 5 minutes for the winguts to totally lose their shit, clutching their pearls so hard their hands were bleeding. As Adam Kinzinger points out, “Funny how the right is outraged at Fanone flipping off a congressman just days after celebrating a president flipping off a working American.” Well, they seem pretty immune to cognitive dissonance so that tracks.

Smith was his unflappable self, which made the MAGAs even more nuts, and the Democrats on the committee teed it up for him when given their shot.

California congresswoman Zoe Lofgren: “The fact that Donald Trump, according to Senator Graham, would be that 'Martians stole the election' -- what does that tell you about Trump's state of mind?” (Extra points here for Lofgren throwing Lindsay Graham under the bus.)

Smith: “That's consistent with our investigation, which revealed that Donald Trump was not looking for honest answers about if there was fraud in the election. He was looking for ways to stay in power.”

California Congressman Eric Swalwell: “Mr. Smith I want you to have the utmost confidence in what you did. You did everything right. My Republican colleagues are a joke. History will harshly judge them ... these guys are so lucky they're not under oath, because they would have to tell you what they really think of Trump. They call him crooked, they call him cruel, they call him a scumbag.” **motions and looks around*’* “I heard you all say it.” (OMG inject this shit directly into my veins!!!) “But when the lights go on and the cameras go on you're tiny, you’re small, you shrink. Everyone remembers Matt Gaetz coming over here after a committee hearing. He would laugh at how stupid Trump was. This is all a show and Mr. Smith you’re just the latest act they brought in. But they can’t erase what happened on January 6 because we say it with our own eyes.” Damn, there’s that fife again!!

While Smith is testifying, Trump posts and calls him “a deranged animal.” Stay classy Don. He says he hopes the Attorney General is looking at what Smith has done. Huh, well there’s a choice. As Joe Walsh notes, Trump’s post is proof that he is abusing the powers of his office and abusing the independence of the Justice Department in real time – just another to add to the running list of impeachable offenses!

Speaking of our breathtakingly incompetent and corrupt “president,” here’s our daily reminder to never get too invested in any particular scandal/outrage/crisis when it comes to Trump. Consider that the imminent invasion of Greenland, which had the world on pins and needles for days, is now like the number 8 thing on Trump’s dance card of lunacy. No one still has an earthly clue what particular “deal” Trump allegedly made with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte who, as several Danish lawmakers reminded us today, has absolutely no authority to negotiate jack shit on behalf of Greenland.(I still think it be hilarious if Rutte got the Nobel Peace Prize for it though. LOLOL)

Of course, because Europe stood up to his bullshit, Trump yesterday TACO’d on all the punishments he was allegedly going to impose for not forking over the territory to the US. Now his mind, such as it is, with the attention span of a diminished goldfish, is on to the next clusterf*ck. Unfortunately for him, reporters aren’t quite ready to move on yet.

On Fox today, the ”president” was asked “Does this ultimately mean that the US will acquire Greenland?”

Trump: “Well, I don’t know if I can say that. (I can! We won’t.) But it could be. (Could be that that it’s Iceland, what the hell.) It’s possible. (So is the moon being made of green cheese but probably not.) Anything is possible.” So there you go. That should settle it.

Aboard the shitty ass Air Force One, which is totally not good enough for Trump, on his way home from his extended faceplant in Davos, he got more questions about the (fake made-up) “deal.”

Reporter: “Will the US have pockets of sovereignty?”

Trump: “We have a lot of great things in the deal.” HAHAHAHAHAHA

Reporter: “Does it give you control over land in Greenland?”

Trump: “We’ll be able to do whatever we want.” We literally already could.

Reporter: “What are some of the elements of the Greenland concept?”

Trump (has no clue and clearly has lost interest): “It’s really a negotiation, but it’s infinity—the time limit is infinity. Meaning there is no time limit. It’s forever.” Standing behind him, Susie Wiles looks like she’s about to stroke out.

Reporter: “We’re just trying to understand what exactly the concept is.”

Trump: “We’ll have something in two weeks.” OMG I am dying here!!! This is comedy gold!

Meanwhile, photos taken in Davos today show that Trump’s left hand – not the one that usually looks like a truck ran over it, the other one – now has a huge discolored bruise on it. White House spokesliar Karoline Leavitt said Trump hit his hand on the corner of a table, so you can take that to the bank.

Speaking of photographs, if one taken today – of a little 5-year-old boy, wearing a blue hat and a Spiderman backpack, being taken into custody by masked ICE agents – doesn’t move the needle, our country is irretrievably broken. Well, maybe we already know that. This, next to videos of disgusting little cosplaying Nazi Greg Bovino gleefully throwing tear gas canisters into groups of unarmed peaceful protesters in Minneapolis should, in a functioning democracy, be enough to bring this whole sordid administration crashing down. Yet here we are.

Extra Credit:

With an alarming percentage of Republican voters seemingly on board with the fascist horror show, a new New York Times/Sienna poll thankfully shows Independents abandoning ship in staggering numbers. Democrats of course already had the good sense to hate Trump’s guts. Overall Trump sits at 16 points underwater with only 40% approving (and the mentality of that 40% being too pants-pissingly scary to contemplate.)

This was, of course, too much for the biggest crybaby of all time, who literally can’t handle the truth.

Blowing out his stubby little fingers, Trump got to typing on his dumb personal social media site, apparently just to underscore what a whiny little bitch he is.

“Something has to be done about Fake Polls! They are truly OUT OF CONTROL….The REAL Polls have been GREAT, but they refuse to print them.(WTF is he talking about???)… They have to pay a price for FAKE AND FRAUDULENT NEWS and, hopefully, in the not too distant future, they will!” In a subsequent post he adds “Fake and Fraudulent Polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense.” Oh dear God.

To underscore his malignant delusions, he also posted “RECORD NUMBERS ALL OVER THE PLACE! SHOULD I TRY FOR A FOURTH TERM?” I can’t even with this asshole.

Julia Nikolaev

If you care about the law, not a political agenda, here is what a former law enforcement officer, Kramer Hammy, says (and I find it very similar to my analysis and arguments):

"It is clear that US citizens' ignorance of federal laws and law enforcement duties, procedures, and limits of authority is getting to the point where it is deadly. I spent probably 3 hours watching and re-watching, and finding every single video and angle I could of the situation in Minnesota yesterday and came to one immovable conclusion based off of what I saw and what I know from a professional standpoint. This is long, but please give it a read.

"As a former officer, let me make something clear: ICE agents ARE NOT police officers, deputy sheriffs, or troopers. They are not local/state law enforcement. They are not federal criminal law enforcement. They have an INCREDIBLY limited scope of authority, and that scope of authority exists in detaining and arresting with probable cause and/or SIGNED WARRANTS those investigated and suspected of being in the US illegally.

"They cannot just pull anyone over for a traffic violation or because their car is in a place they don't want it. They have NO authority to pull people over for ANYTHING other than immigration enforcement- and even then that involves probable cause, such as a known vehicle of someone they have been tracking, or a warrant. On very rare occasions they have the legal authority to pull someone over if they are threatening the lives of others, but that was not happening in this case. They do not have the training nor the authority to pull ANYONE else over. They cannot arrest legal citizens. They cannot detain legal citizens without probable cause to believe they might not be legal. They have ZERO authority to be attempting to force entry into a vehicle- without even identifying themselves, without a warrant, without exigent circumstances such as a life being directly threatened- that is trying to drive down the street without probable cause in relation to IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT.

"This ENTIRE situation in Minnesota was outside of the scope of legal authority from the get go. None of it was done within the scope of authority of ICE. Every single behavior those agents made was procedurally incorrect, done without proper authority, and was based off of intimidation and the assumption that people do not understand the law and their rights in regards to interactions with ICE.

"On no planet should an officer, agent, or any human being ever step in front of a car in 'drive' that is actively trying to leave and use their body as a shield to prevent a person from LEGALLY LEAVING a situation in which they are not legally being detained. It takes maybe a week of any kind of actual law enforcement training to understand that under NO CIRCUMSTANCES do you ever place yourself in front of a vehicle in 'drive.' That agent had every single opportunity to simply take two steps to the right and not be standing directly in front of a vehicle attempting to conduct their legal right to drive away.

"You can see the wheels are turned, [Renee] backed up and turned them to the right, moved forward a bit to leave, couldn't because an agent was standing in front of her, and continued to try to leave by TURNING HER WHEELS TO THE RIGHT and moving forward. He continually chose to stand there and not allow her to legally leave as she had every single right to do.

The officer pulling on her door and banging on her window and swearing at her had ZERO authority to order her out of her vehicle or attempt to make entry into her vehicle. NONE. A single day of actual training of the legal scope of authority and the LAW would've prevented that from happening.

"You now have a frightened citizen being blockaded by immigration agents (with another person in her vehicle) who had zero obligation to follow legally invalid orders from that agent, being blocked in and having a fully grown, masked man attempting to make entry into her car. If this were reversed, every single person would immediately feel she had every reasonable expectation to fear for her safety. It doesn't matter if she knew it was ICE because the agents weren't even acting in their scope of authority anyway.

"Whether or not she made the right decision by very CLEARLY- based off of how hard her wheels were turned and how low and to the driver corner windshield that shot was fired- trying to drive to the left of that agent is IRRELEVANT in the picture as a whole.

None of this would have happened if those agents had done even one single thing correctly. Not just correctly, but within their legal scope of authority. Every single moment of that interaction was escalated by untrained, unprofessional, procedurally inept "agents" who not only had zero control of themselves but everything around them. And not because they are helpless, but because their actions that did not fall under their scope of power CAUSED this. Their tempers, lack of training, and the knowledge that they can get away with violating their own scope of authority caused this.