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.