TRUMP WILL GET HIS ABUSE FIX ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

This week, far too many people fell for the notion that President Trump now recognizes the need for self-restraint in Minnesota after the thuggish murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Trump made a few cosmetic changes in the state, but he appears to have responded to the widespread outrage by getting his abuse fix in other ways.

Here's the act of abuse that's leading the news:

The former CNN anchor Don Lemon was arrested late Thursday night on charges that he violated federal law during a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minn., his lawyer said, in a case rejected last week by a magistrate judge.

Mr. Lemon has said he was simply reporting as a journalist when he entered the Cities Church on Jan. 18 to observe a demonstration against the immigration crackdown in the area.

The protesters interrupted a service at the church, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official serves as a pastor, and chanted “ICE out.” Afterward, the Trump administration sought to charge eight people over the episode, including Mr. Lemon, citing a law that protects people seeking to participate in a service in a house of worship.

But the magistrate judge who reviewed the evidence approved charges against only three of the people, rejecting the evidence against Mr. Lemon and the others as insufficient. The Justice Department then petitioned a federal appeals court to force the judge to issue the additional warrants, only to be denied.

Lemon is well off and has a high-powered D.C.-insider lawyer, Abbe Lowell. It's quite likely that he'll beat the rap. But Lemon isn't the only Black journalist who's been arrested for the crime of covering this protest:

Minnesota based Independent Journalist GEORGIA FORT has been arrested for filming a protest of the church pastor that works as an ICE manager. SPREAD THE WORD! Georgia has been doing outstanding reporting from ground zero!

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— The Letterhack (@theletterhack.bsky.social) January 30, 2026 at 8:23 AM

Georgia Fort, an independent journalist and vice president of the Minnesota NABJ chapter, was also arrested by federal agents this morning I was sent this video of agents at her door:

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— Phil Lewis (@phillewis.bsky.social) January 30, 2026 at 9:58 AM

On Wednesday, the FBI seized voting records and ballots from the 2020 election in heavily Democratic Fulton Country, Georgia. Yesterday, Trump sued the FBI for $10 billion, accusing the agency of negligence in hiring an employee who went on to leak Trump's tax returns. And there are

media reports that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine told state leaders that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning a 30-day surge in Ohio....

The operation in Ohio is set to begin Feb. 4 after the Trump administration ended Temporary Protective Status about 500,000 Haitian immigrants in the U.S.

If we want to look at these new fronts in Trump's war on common decency as "distractions," please note that he's distracting us from his evil acts in Minnesota with more evil acts.

If it's all meant as a distraction, it's not meant as a distraction intended to make us forget that Trump's thugs have been doing morally reprehensible things in Minnesota. If anything, it's intended to distract us from the fact that Trump didn't crush the Minnesota resistance. Trump doesn't think he did terrible things in Minnesota that alienated most of America -- he thinks he looks weak because he had to make even a superficial retreat. If he's trying to distract us, he's trying to distract us from his failure to be a completely successful thug.

(Or you could argue that he's trying to distract himself from his poor polling and his failure to dominate Minneapolis.)

Regrettably, it will be a struggle to get normie voters to respond to these outrages the way they've responded to two summary executions in Minneapolis, even though the attacks on elections and the First Amendment are deeply alarming. Maybe Trump understands that on a gut level. Maybe he assumes that only journalists -- who are held in low esteem these days -- will be truly outraged at the arrests. Maybe Trump critics in the press will continue to insist that he can't really tamper with the midterms. If so, these will turn out to be successful distractions, whether or not that's what they were meant to be.

SENATE DEMOCRATS SURRENDER THEIR ADVANTAGE

Senate Democrats have preemptively surrendered on Department of Homeland Security funding, David Dayen of The American Propsect reports.

... the Democrats’ list of demands appears to have shrunk after internal deliberations.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer released the Senate caucus’s set of asks on Wednesday. They included an end to roving patrols and a requirement for proper judicial warrants, limiting enforcement actions to known targets in conjunction with local law enforcement; standards on use of force that match those of the local police; and a “masks off, body cameras on” policy.

The first few items would be good if they could be enforced. "Body cameras on" is useless -- those of us who live in big cities know that cops with body camera requirements routinely say, "Whoops! I forgot to turn my camera on!" when footage is demanded after a controversial incident. We also know that the Republican message machine can persuade nearly everyone in the GOP voter base that they're seeing something other than what video evidence shows.

And the thugs will sidestep "masks off," saying they need to wear face coverings for the cold (in places like Minnesota and Maine now), or wear gas masks because they're deploying tear gas and pepper balls.

And:

Arguably many of these conditions are already part of ICE and CBP standards; the problem is a lack of enforcement. Indeed, a new directive sent to ICE agents late Wednesday night instructed them to avoid talking to community members (“agitators,” to use their word) and to only target immigrants with criminal charges or convictions. That would encompass a good chunk of the Schumer demands.

What's missing from the Democrats' list of demands?

Ideas like requiring cooperation with state and local investigations into ICE and CBP misconduct, returning CBP personnel to the border rather than interior enforcement, preventing enforcement in “sensitive locations” like schools or churches, and ending mass quotas for immigration arrests are not present in the Schumer list. And Schumer also doesn’t touch funding levels, nor does he attempt to claw back the surge funding for ICE that enables operations like those we’re seeing in Minnesota.

Yes, end the quotas! It's a reasonable ask, and Democrats could have made the case that the quotas are the reason Trump's thugs are detaining children, elderly citizens in their underwear, and immigrants who are working and not committing crimes. Also, there are reports that even the agents themselves find the quotas burdensome.) And stay away from schools, churches, and hospitals.

But that's the problem: old-fashioned Democrats feel they need to be strictly passive in the face of public opinion -- or even what they imagine public opinion is. They don't believe they're within their rights to try to change public opinion, even if they have compelling arguments. They finally understand that the public has turned against ICE, but they've internalized the belief that it's still the late twentieth century, and normies -- Chuck Schumer's imaginary Baileys -- believe in "law and order" and keeping law enforcement accountability to the absolute minimum. They can't imagine that they could invoke the arrest of children to stir justifiable outrage. They think only Republicans are allowed to try to steer public opinion -- or even, in this case, nudge it further in the direction it's already going.

There are Democrats who aren't thinking like this.

... the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has released “non-negotiable” policy positions for DHS funding, including suspending ICE/CBP enforcement actions in Minnesota, barring detention of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, protecting sensitive locations, banishing Border Patrol to the border, redirecting Big Beautiful Bill funding of DHS away from mass detention and deportation, and a bunch more.

Even if you're a Schumer Democrat and believe that most of these demands are the more than the Baileys can tolerate, what's wrong with demanding that Trump's Gestapo no longer detain citizens and lawful permanent residents? Or even just citizens? Is it so hard for the Schumer Democrats to imagine that normie voters might react positively to the idea that it makes no sense to detain U.S. citizens in what's supposed to be a crackdown on undocumented immigrants?

But the Schumer Democrats can't wrap their minds around the idea that Democratic messaging should lead to the conclusion They're the extremists. We're the reasonable Americans. And so, once again, they're squandering an opportunity.

NOEM ISN'T PULLING MILLER UNDER THE BUS -- SHE'S USING HIM AS A HUMAN SHIELD

The White House response to public outrage over events in Minnesota is being described in some quarters as a "circular firing squad." Some people don't believe Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem will keep her job for much longer, and they believe she's trying to take De Facto President Stephen Miller down with her.

Wow. It’s clear what is happening here, and it is juicy. Kristi Noem knows she’s being thrown under the bus for her slanderous lies about Alex Pretti…and now she’s trying to pull Stephen Miller under the tires with her. These people deserve each other. www.axios.com/2026/01/27/t...

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— TrumpsTaxes (@trumpstaxes.com) January 27, 2026 at 4:58 PM

So will multiple heads roll, or will only Border Patrol's Greg Bovino lose his job? Regrettably, it appears that the latter scenario is more likely.

The New York Times says that Noem seemed to be in President Trump's doghouse, but only for a short time:

Facing an intense and increasingly bipartisan fusillade of criticism over the killing of a protester in Minneapolis and how Ms. Noem and other officials sought to portray the victim as a “domestic terrorist,” Mr. Trump removed the official running the deportation campaign in Minnesota and replaced him with an aide reporting directly to him, effectively cutting Ms. Noem out of the chain of command....

But her time in Mr. Trump’s penalty box was measured in hours. By Monday night, she was in the Oval Office, meeting with Mr. Trump. By Tuesday the president was telling reporters that her job was safe and that the media should focus more on her role in shutting down illegal immigration into the country, not the chaotic scenes coming out of Minnesota in which agents who report to her have twice shot and killed American citizens protesting their presence.

The Axios story cited in the Bluesky post above (free to read here) does say this:

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is under fire for issuing misleading and incendiary information that claimed immigration agents killed an armed Minnesota protestor Saturday because he wanted to "massacre" them.

But that language was dictated to Noem and her department by the man most responsible for the controversial operation: Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and top Trump adviser, four sources tell Axios....

"Everything I've done, I've done at the direction of the president and Stephen," Noem told a person who relayed her remarks to Axios.

And why would she say this? Because Miller is apparently untouchable:

The episode illustrates the sheer power of Miller, Trump's close and longest-serving political adviser whose dominion in the White House far exceeds his title.

His influence extends to de facto oversight of Noem, though she's a Cabinet secretary who technically outranks him.

... Miller ... remains one of the president's closest advisers, sources said.

"Stephen Miller is one of President Trump's most trusted and longest-serving aides. The president loves Stephen," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Axios.

Miller, for his part, declared that the shooting of Alex Pretti -- which he'd previously celebrated -- happened because Customs and Border Protection agents "may not have been following ... protocol." So he's throwing Noem (who oversees CBP) under the bus. She, on the other hand, is using him as a human shield.

Which means, sadly, that neither one is likely to be unemployed anytime soon. The majority of Democrats in the House want to impeach Noem, but that's not enough to make it happen in a Republican-controlled House. Much is being made of Republican discontent with Noem, but in the Senate -- where twenty Republican votes to convict would be needed in the event of an impeachment by the House -- only two Republicans, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski and North Carolina's Thom Tillis, have called for Noem's resignation.

It's taken an extraordinary series of events and an unprecedented level of Democratic outrage to get us this far, and it's still not enough. It seems as if it would take twice as much outrage to achieve major personnel changes. There might be more hope for reforms of ICE, however inadequate they might be. But with Trump still at 41% approval and public opinion on ICE abolition still roughly 50-50 (actually 45%-45%, according to a recent Economist/YouGov poll), it's hard to imagine Republicans in Congress breaking with the White House in significant numbers to permit a serious turnaround in how the federal government handles immigration.

THEY THOUGHT THEY'D BE FIGHTING THEIR CARICATURE OF LEFTIES

The people of Minnesota have backed the Trump administration down:

Gregory Bovino has been removed from his role as Border Patrol “commander at large” and will return to his former job in El Centro, California, where he is expected to retire soon, according to a DHS official and two people with knowledge of the change.

Bovino’s sudden demotion is the clearest sign yet that the Trump administration is reconsidering its most aggressive tactics after the killing Saturday of 37-year-old Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents under Bovino’s command.

Democrats in the Senate might be able to compel the administration and congressional Republicans to accept at least some reforms:

Dems coalescing around 5 restrictions on ICE, I'm told: DHS required to cooperate with state probes (big) CBP stays at border warrants for arrests IDs, bodycams ICE out of churches, schools "That package unites a lot of Dems," Sen Chris Murphy tells me on the pod: newrepublic.com/article/2057...

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— Greg Sargent (@gregsargent.bsky.social) January 27, 2026 at 6:24 AM

This is obviously not enough, and it's not clear that the restrictions could actually be enforced, but it's a step in the right direction, and a package of restrictions might reduce the brutality.

Adam Serwer believes that the Trump administration misunderstood the resistance in Minnesota and nationwide. I think Serwer is right about some of what he says, though he's overthinking a bit:

The federal surge into Minneapolis reflects a series of mistaken MAGA assumptions. The first is the belief that diverse communities aren’t possible: “Social bonds form among people who have something in common,” Vance said in a speech last July....

A second MAGA assumption is that the left is insincere in its values, and that principles of inclusion and unity are superficial forms of virtue signaling. White liberals might put a sign in their front yard saying IMMIGRANTS WELCOME, but they will abandon those immigrants at the first sensation of sustained pressure....

The MAGA faith in liberal weakness has been paired with the conviction that real men—Trump’s men—are conversely strong.

The Trump administration appears to have made a mistake similar to one made by the U.S. government in Vietnam and in the War on Terror: being unable to believe that the enemy will fight to defend its own homeland, and might offer an unexpected level of resistance on terrain the locals know and the U.S. invaders don't. This is the kind of mistake you make when you caricature the enemy as weaklings, and as people who don't have human feelings.

I know that Vance thinks a lot of white nationalist thoughts, but I'm not sure the majority of the Trumpers -- no, not even Stephen Miller -- were thinking, This is a diverse community. They won't fight for one another for that reason. I think they simply imagined that Minneapolis was a hellhole populated by a motley assortment of people they hate and don't respect: non-white immigrants, native-born non-whites, and, primarily, white liberals, whom right-wingers routinely caricature as shrill cat ladies, simpering feminist men, and people outside the gender binary, all of whom -- obviously! -- were expect to be no match for heterosexual Real Men with big guns and the government on their side. This is how they see white liberals and progressives:

They thought these people couldn't possibly beat them -- and they couldn't imagine middle-of-the-road Americans siding with them rather than the manly heroes of ICE and the Border Patrol.

And here's where Serwer and I really diverge:

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority.

The Trump administration and its goons don't think they're morally depraved, and don't see any virtue in the protests. The vast majority of them think that the protesters are paid, and that the goal of the protests is to destroy America.

No one in Trump World is rethinking the morality of what's taken place in Minnesota. The reshuffle is purely about optics. The Trumpers in Washington and on the ground in Minnesota and elsewhere still hate us, and still think we're evil. Maybe some of them now believe that a greater percentage of Americans than they realized are depraved lefties. But they still believe that all good people are on their side, or at least would be if the biased and treasonous liberal media weren't out-messaging the administration. They have no self-doubt, even now.

IS THE PLUTOCRACY FINALLY FED UP WITH TRUMP?

After the murder of Alex Pretti, many mainstream media outlets disputed the Trump administration's narrative of the incident. This happened much faster than I expected. Then the critiques of the administration became more widespread. It's not surprising that The New York Times published a debunking of the Trump narrative -- but CNBC as well? Yet there it is, under the headline "Videos of Alex Pretti Shooting by Federal Agents in Minneapolis Contradict Trump Official Claims."

A finance-oriented news channel said that administration officials aren't telling the truth, and now the two most right-wing, pro-corporatist editorial boards at major American newspapers have criticized the Trumpers as well. Editorials in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post take plenty of swipes at Democrats, and even at Pretti himself, but their main thrust is that the administration needs to change course in Minnesota.

Jeff Bezos's Post editorial board writes:

The unjust killing of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse in Minneapolis, marks a turning point in President Donald Trump’s second term. His mass deportation campaign has been a moral and political failure, leaving American citizens feeling outraged and unsafe.

And from the house of Murdoch, the Journal's ed board says:

... [Pretti] had a license to carry a gun, which was legally concealed, not carried in his hand as some claimed. He was carrying his phone. To hear the ardent gun-rights advocates of the Trump Administration claim he had malicious intentions because he carried a concealed weapon is bizarre.

Pretti made a tragic mistake by interfering with ICE agents, but that warranted arrest, not a death sentence. The agents may say they felt threatened, but it’s worth noting the comments over the weekend by police around the country who say that this isn’t how they conduct law enforcement.

Either many ICE agents aren’t properly trained, or they are so on edge as they face opposition in the streets that they are on a hair trigger. Either way, this calls for rethinking how ICE conducts itself, especially in Minneapolis as tensions build.

The members of the Journal ed board make little effort to conceal what they're really worried about:

Whether he likes it or not, most of the burden now lies with Mr. Trump as the President who controls ICE. He would be wise to pause ICE enforcement in the Twin Cities to ease tensions and consider a less provocative strategy. Yes, many on the left would conclude that their civil disobedience has paid off. But Mr. Trump can still pursue enforcement with a smaller force and a strategy aimed at criminals, not at hotel maids and gardeners.

... This is backfiring against Republicans....

[Stephen] Miller’s mass deportation methods are turning immigration, an issue Mr. Trump owned in 2024, into a political liability for Republicans in 2026.

So the issues are two:

1. Leave the hotel maids and gardeners our readers hire at cheap wages alone!
2. Back off or Democrats will win the midterms in a blowout!

I suspect that the one-two punch of Trump's Greenland misadventure and his jackbooted thuggery in Minneapolis have unsettled the billionaire class. On Greenland, they watched as Trump took a wrecking ball to NATO and nearly motivated Europe to unleash a set of trade measures that could have frozen American firms out of the European market. Now plutocrats are reading poll after poll showing that Trump has alienated middle-of-the-road voters on immigration. They probably have nightmare visions of a Mamdani-esque Congress in 2027 (if only), and they want Trump to back down.

Something has made Chuck Schumer and other non-Fetterman Democrats in the Senate feel it's okay to block funding for the Department of Homeland Security, even if it means a partial government shutdown. Something has inspired even some middle-of-the-road Democrats to call for Kristi Noem's impeachment. (The number of Democrats in the House who are sponsoring a Noem impeachment resolution is now 120.) Something has made a few of the usually supine congressional Republicans feel they need to call for an independent investigation of the Pretti shooting.

I think the donor class is worried -- worried that Republicans in competitive districts and states will lose to Democrats, worried that meek centrist Democrats will lose to progressives. I think America's Establishment no longer feels it can insulate itself from Trumpian chaos, and that's the main reason Trump is losing the mainstream press, as well as moderate and semi-moderate officeholders, right now.

THE TRUMP BASE JUST WANTS TO BE REASSURED THAT IT'S RIGHT, AND LIES ARE GETTING THAT DONE

Here are a couple of responses to the execution of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis yesterday:

I disagree with Stonekettle on a couple of points. The Trump administration will continue to lie about what happened here, but within hours of Pretti's murder, the lead story at The New York Times was "Videos Appear to Contradict Federal Account of Fatal Shooting" -- and now it's simply "Videos Contradict Federal Accounts of Fatal Shooting." The Washington Post leads with "Federal Agent Secured Gun from Minn. Man Before Fatal Shooting, Videos Show." CNN's Dana Bash pushed back on Greg Bovino of the Border Patrol when he tried to advance the administration's narrative:

Dana Bash grills Bovino to provide any evidence that Alex Pretti "assaulted law enforcement" and Bovino has absolutely nothing

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) January 25, 2026 at 9:26 AM

Referring to members of the administration, Stonekettle says, "MAGAs know they are lying." But they don't. We think they can watch the videos we've watched, see the Alex Pretti never reached for his gun, see that he was disarmed before he was shot, learn that he had the legal right to carry a weapon, and reach the same conclusions we do. But they won't do that.

They're not embracing the administration's version of events out of fear, as Stonekettle suggests. They're embracing it because they want to be reassured at all times that the people they like are right and the people they dislike are evil. They want Bovino and other members of the administration to tell them that they don't need to watch the videos of the incident -- if Trump officials say that Pretti was violently assaulting federal agents, they believe it, and that settles it. If he says this took place in the midst of a "riot," as he did at another point in the interview, they believe that too. Assertions by Trumpist talking heads serve as evidence, even if actual video evidence contradicts what the Trumpists are saying.

Video has value because it reveals the truth to people on the left and in the center who want to know what really happened. But Republican voters don't want to know what really happened. They want to be told that they're right. They want people they regard as authorities to tell them what they see in these videos (or what they would see if they watched them). Lies keep them loyal, so the lying will continue and the base will remain onboard.

WHEN YOU LIVE IN A RIGHT-WING BUBBLE, YOU LOSE YOUR ABILITY TO TALK TO NORMAL PEOPLE

I keep thinking about this CNN story with the headline "Trump Privately Frustrated That He Risks Losing Control of Immigration Message Amid Minnesota Chaos."

The ongoing protests and images coming out of Minnesota have prompted concerns from some Trump administration officials over the optics of the immigration crackdown as Americans grow alarmed by the chaotic scenes unfolding in the state.

President Donald Trump has expressed frustration behind closed doors that the immigration messaging is getting lost, sources familiar with the discussions told CNN.

The Trumpers are saying, Who are you going believe -- your lying eyes or our narrative? because they've spent years communicating only with their own supporters -- on Fox, on right-wing podcasts, on X -- and their persuasion muscles have completely atrophied. They're used to communicating with people who automatically assume that the GOP narrative is correct, because gthey believe that anyone opposed to Trump and Republicans is evil. In the Trumpist bubble, no one will watch the videos that clearly show Renee Good steering away from ICE officers; they limit themselves to the videos that fit the Trump administration's narrative because they're already inclined to hate ICE critics like Good and her partner.

Children are being seized by ICE? The president and administration officials aren't used to having to persuade Americans that brown people who have pending asylum claims, like five-year-old Liam Ramos and parents, are bad by definition. The people in their bubble already believe that. They already believe every brown-skinned asylum seeker is a threat to U.S. sovereignty. The Trump administration doesn't know how to make this case because the Trump base considers the case closed.

Trump has sought to take control of the narrative, starting with an impromptu press conference on the anniversary of his first year in office.

The president, at times sounding exasperated, thumbed through mugshots of individuals arrested in his immigration crackdown, highlighting their alleged crimes. His message was clear that while there might be some issues, ICE is necessary to follow through on his agenda — to deport the most dangerous criminals back to their home country.

But we don't see "the worst of the worst" being arrested. We see children being arrested. We see white protesters being arrested. We see ordinary immigrant workers being arrested. We see citizens of the "wrong" ethnicities being arrested. The Trumpers don't understand that normal people see a disconnect between their stated goal and what they're actually doing. The people they're used to talking to don't see the disconnect -- they think all immigrants are evil by definition and all protesters are violent terrorists paid by George Soros. Recall that a statement made by Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin in the immediate aftermath of Renee Good's murder said that "rioters" were "blocking ICE officers" and referred to Good as "one of these violent rioters." The Republican base literally believes that a riot was taking place in the minutes leading up to Good's death, even though they haven't seen a single video showing protesters doing anything other than shouting and filming.

And recall what Trump said about ICE agents in that press conference (emphasis added):

“They’re going to make mistakes sometimes. ICE is going to be too rough with somebody or — you know, they’re dealing with rough people — or they’re going to make a mistake sometimes. It can happen. We feel terribly.”

They don't understand that normal Americans watch what's happening in Minnesota and don't see "rough people." They can't grasp this because the people in their base thinks they're actually seeing "rough people."

We're told:

... top White House officials have been plotting how to move the narrative away from the unrest in Minneapolis and instead focus on what they view as ICE’s achievements.

“There’s an effort underway to come up with new ideas and new ways to amplify the good work they are doing,” a senior White House official told CNN....

Do you know how ordinary law enforcement agencies show that they're rounding up "the worst of the worst"? They hold press conferences showing seized caches of weapons, bundles of cash, bricks of drugs. The Trump administration can't do that because ICE's mandate is arresting the most, not arresting the worst. If the administration wants praise, it needs to start prioritizing arrests of really bad people. But that's not what Stephen Miller wants, so it won't happen.

I wonder if Trump will eventually decide that Stephen Miller is a liability because his heavy-handed, merciless tactics make Trump look bad. It seems doubtful -- many top aides found themselves in Trump's doghouse in his first term, and some have in the second term, But Miller has never been on the outs with Trump.

I don't think Trump will ever understand why his government acts are offputting to normal people because, apart from some outreach to swing voters in the 2024 campaign, Trump hasn't tried communicating with normal people in years.