Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

January 27

MAGA Rep Rallying Behind ICE Skipped Vote to Fund Goons

A Republican congressman’s spotty voting record undercut his vocal support for ICE.

A MAGA congressman got hit with his own voting record when he voiced support for ICE.Texas Rep. Wesley Hunt, 44, rebuked growing calls for President Donald Trump to pull ICE out of Minnesota after federal agents killed 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday, the second fatal shooting amid unrest over the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.

“Another glaring display of Republican WEAKNESS: calls for President Trump to pull ICE out of Minnesota. That’s surrender,” Hunt said in a lengthy post on X. “President Trump shouldn’t pull ICE out, he should double down. The rule of law will be enforced by the federal government. The border will be secured. And every individual who violated federal immigration law must be deported. Period.”

Hunt warned that “capitulating” to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who called on Trump to halt ICE operations in the embattled state, is “how republics die.”

“If the President of the United States caves to Democrat pressure and anti-law-enforcement tantrums, then we’ve abandoned sovereignty altogether,” the lawmaker wrote. “We must stop capitulating to Democrats. We must stop capitulating to invaders. And any leader who cannot step up to a podium and clearly say enforce the law, defend the nation, and secure the Republic is compromised, and unfit for leadership.”

But Hunt’s top rival pointed out the irony in his statement. The Texas representative is running for Senate to unseat fellow Republican John Cornyn, who highlighted his spotty voting record.

“Nice speech. When are you going to show up for work?” Cornyn wrote in response to Hunt’s X post. “#MrNoShow Can’t support @realDonaldTrump agenda if you don’t vote.”Official records show that Hunt missed the Thursday vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency. The House passed a massive spending package funding several federal agencies last week after seven Democrats broke with their colleagues, who revolted over ICE operations, to join Republicans, 220-207.

Hunt has gained notoriety for regularly missing votes—so much so that Cornyn’s supporters have launched WheresWesleyHunt.com, a website that keeps track of his voting record.

According to GovTrack, a nonprofit transparency and accountability website, Hunt has missed 44 of 48 roll call votes this month alone. He missed about 24 percent of House votes last year.

On Thursday, Hunt was spotted at the Dulles International Airport as the DHS funding vote was ongoing.

When he finally made it to Capitol Hill, Hunt cast the decisive vote tanking a measure that sought to prevent President Donald Trump from taking military action in Venezuela without approval from Congress.

Hunt was quick to take a victory lap in a news release.

“In the middle of his campaign to retire a 40-year career politician, John Cornyn, Congressman Wesley Hunt left the campaign trail, rushed to Washington, and cast the decisive vote that obliterated the radical Democrats’ attempt to block President Trump from securing the Western Hemisphere,” it read.

Later that day, Hunt evaded questions about his voting record. His office did not immediately return a request for comment from the Daily Beast on Sunday.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-rep-wesley-hunt-rallying-behind-ice-skipped-vote-to-fund-goons/?

ps:Maybe it's because he really doesn't believe in what's happening? He does talk out of both sides of his mouth!!!!!

January 27

Vance Gives Deranged Excuse for Agents Killing ICU Nurse

JD Vance is trying to blame Minnesota officials for Alex Pretti’s killing by federal immigration agents.

JD Vance has suggested that Minnesota officials invited the killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti in an unhinged defense of the Trump administration’s deportation operation. The 41-year-old vice president went on a long-winded diatribe Sunday in an attempt to rationalize the shooting of Pretti, 37, by multiple masked Border Patrol agents on Saturday.

He claimed on X that local officials “created the chaos so they can have moments like yesterday, where someone tragically dies and politicians get to grandstand about the evils of enforcing the border.”

Vance tried to cast the federal agents as the victims by recounting a “crazy” story he claimed to have heard during his trip to Minneapolis last week.

“A couple of off duty ICE and CBP officers were going to dinner in Minneapolis,” he wrote. “They were doxed and their location revealed, and the restaurant was then mobbed. The officers were locked in the restaurant, and local police refused to respond to their pleas for help (as they’ve been directed by local authorities). Eventually, their fellow federal agents came to their aid.”

The vice president, who frequently makes false claims—such as alleging that Haitian migrants in Ohio are eating dogs—added, “This is just a taste of what’s happening in Minneapolis because state and local officials refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement.”

In the wake of Pretti’s killing and the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent earlier this month, President Donald Trump and his administration have tried to shift the blame onto Minnesota officials like Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, accusing them of refusing to cooperate with the federal government and of inciting anger toward federal agents.“The solution is staring everyone in the face. I hope authorities in Minneapolis stop this madness,” Vance wrote.

Walz, in turn, has accused the Trump administration of trying to “make an example of Minnesota” by flooding the state with thousands of federal agents, and has called for their withdrawal.

Pretti, a Veterans Affairs ICU nurse, was shot dead in the street by federal agents who pepper-sprayed him in the face and then wrestled him to the floor as he filmed an immigration operation on his phone.

Despite video footage suggesting otherwise, Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino immediately claimed that Pretti ambushed law enforcement with his gun and “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller claimed that Pretti was an “assassin” who “tried to murder” federal agents in an X post, which Vance reposted.

He later wrote in an X post, “This level of engineered chaos is unique to Minneapolis. It is the direct consequence of far left agitators, working with local authorities.”

But Walz fired back while speaking to the press on Sunday, saying, “The world knows how he died. He died at the hands of ICE agents on the streets of Minneapolis.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to Walz’s office for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jd-vance-gives-deranged-excuse-for-agents-killing-icu-nurse-alex-pretti/?

January 27

ICE Civil War Breaks Out Over Bogus Claims About ICU Nurse

Sources within a divided DHS say they are “losing the base.”

A Fox News reporter claims staff morale within the Department of Homeland Security is at a “catastrophic” low after the public killing of Alex Pretti by an immigration officer.

Pretti, 37, was shot dead in Minneapolis on Saturday by a masked federal agent during a protest over ICE raids. Renee Good was killed by an ICE agent on Jan. 7 in the same area.

In a post on X on Sunday, Bill Melugin, congressional correspondent for Fox News, said he had spoken to over half a dozen federal sources in immigration enforcement, including several in senior positions, about their disappointment with the department’s handling of the fatal shooting.

Melugin said his sources admitted they had grown “uneasy and frustrated” with the “claims and narratives” pushed by DHS after Pretti’s death.

As happened after the killing of Good, Pretti was immediately labelled a “domestic terrorist” by DHS officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

The DHS claimed an agent shot Pretti in self-defense and that the ICU nurse had a handgun and had resisted attempts to disarm him.

Noem said Pretti “had a weapon on him, and multiple—dozens—of rounds of ammunition; wishing to inflict harm on these officers, coming, brandishing like that.”

She added, “This individual impeded the law enforcement officers and attacked them.”

Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol commander, said it resembled a “situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

Pretti’s family have challenged that narrative, while footage of the incident does not show him using force against the agents during a protest over the ongoing ICE raids in Minnesota that were sanctioned by the Trump administration.

“Specifically, I’m told there is extreme frustration with DHS officials going on TV and putting out statements claiming that Alex Pretti was intending to conduct a ‘massacre’ of federal agents or wanted to carry out ‘maximum damage’, even after numerous videos appeared to show those claims were inaccurate,” Melugin posted.

“These sources say this messaging from DHS officials has been catastrophic from a PR and morale perspective, as it is eroding trust and credibility.”

Melugin said one of his sources claimed DHS’ response to the tragedy is “making the situation worse,” while another said “we are losing this war, we are losing the base and the narrative.”

They also complained that ICE was being blamed for the actions of Border Patrol, which is a different agency within Homeland Security that is not usually used for immigration enforcement in the country’s interior.

The Daily Beast has contacted the DHS for comment.

When reached for comment, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Beast: “Nobody, including President Trump, wants to see people get shot or hurt. That’s exactly why Governor Walz and Mayor Frey need to allow local police to work with federal law enforcement to remove illegal alien criminals, murderers, and pedophiles from Minnesota.”

DHS told Melugin there had been a “highly coordinated” campaign of violence against their law enforcement officers.

“This individual committed a federal crime while armed as he obstructed an active law enforcement operation. As with any situation that is evolving, we work to give swift, accurate information to the American people as more information becomes available.”

On Sunday, President Donald Trump made a lengthy Truth Social post which did not mention Pretti or Good by name, and blamed Democrats for not cooperating with ICE officers in Minnesota.

“By doing this, Democrats are putting Illegal Alien Criminals over Taxpaying, Law-Abiding Citizens, and they have created dangerous circumstances for EVERYONE involved,” Trump posted. “Tragically, two American Citizens have lost their lives as a result of this Democrat ensued chaos.”

Trump was interviewed on Sunday about Pretti’s death, but dodged the question of whether the agent who fatally shot him had done the right thing.

Instead, he said his administration would investigate the death, which was caught on camera.

“We’re looking, we’re reviewing everything and will come out with a determination,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal.

The president had posted a photo, reportedly of a gun legally owned by Pretti, on Truth Social on Saturday, without mentioning the ICU nurse had been killed by ICE agents.

“I don’t like any shooting. I don’t like it,” Trump told the WSJ. “But I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets also. That doesn’t play good either.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-civil-war-breaks-out-over-bogus-claims-about-icu-nurse/?

January 27

Trump Has Lost the Trust of the People With His ICE Lies

The president’s dogged defence of ICE risks destroying the trust upon which America was built.

“We the People.” The first three words of the U.S. Constitution. They tell us that the power of the government originates with its citizens.

“In order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” the Preamble continues.

It is the defining ethos of a democracy.

There is an unsaid but explicit understanding that we the people must trust in the government, just as we believe in the Constitution.

With a flurry of gunshots on a freezing Saturday morning, that trust was broken.

The whole country saw it. In Hitler’s Germany, there was no such evidence. The Germans believed what they were told, and they paid an enormous price.

We saw with our own eyes how Alex Pretti died. Buried under a pile of bodies of masked men. Pinned down. Killed in cold blood.

We know that Pretti was not a “domestic terrorist,” as he was slandered by President Donald Trump, Deputy White House Chief-of-Staff Stephen Miller, and Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

He was a U.S. citizen, an ICU nurse working for our veterans, carrying out his absolute right to protest in the streets of his city.

He did not have a criminal record, and it’s an insult to his family and to his memory to suggest he was out to assassinate anyone. There is no shred of evidence to suggest this.

It is the worst kind of disinformation.

We have a state where the governor, the mayor and the police chief are begging the federal government to get the f—- out.

In turn, Trump and the administration stand by their ICE goons in the face of all the facts and attack Minnesota’s leaders.

This is Civil War.

We can only hope that the president sees sense and reins in his thugs before the violence spreads to other cities in other states.

But the signs are not good.

Whatever your politics, there has always been an implicit trust in the president. It is why we were so shocked and appalled at the behavior of Richard Nixon in using burglary and deception to keep tabs on his detractors. It’s why we struggled to forgive Bill Clinton for lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. We worry Joe Biden kept his steep cognitive decline hidden from us.

But these infractions, as serious as they were, are nothing compared to the duplicity of the Trump administration.

They run on the simple strategy that if you tell a lie loudly and often enough, people will believe it.

We must hope that Minnesota is not a microcosm of what we can expect in the rest of America. The sight of armed masked men roaming our streets is sinister and all the more so because there appears to be absolutely no oversight or constraints on their behavior.

There have been three killings in Minneapolis this year. Two of them were by ICE agents.

Timothy McVeigh was a domestic terrorist. He killed 168 people when he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. Patrick Wood Crusius was a domestic terrorist. He shot dead 25 people in an El Paso, Texas Walmart on August 19, 2019.

There are others.

Alex Pretti wasn’t a terrorist. Nor was Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother of three, gunned down in her car by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on January 7.

We the people aren’t stupid. Nor are we blind.

The president needs to come to his senses and end this madness before a polarized country, divided by ideology, becomes a nation at war with itself.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-has-lost-the-trust-of-the-people-with-his-ice-lies/?

January 31

A Year in Trump’s Mass Deportation Campaign

On Jan. 20, 2025, President Donald Trump took the podium at his inauguration and promised to halt unauthorized border crossings and “begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens to the places from which they came.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-mass-deportation-campaign-first-year?

Trump’s border czar suggests a possible drawdown in Minnesota, but only after ‘cooperation’

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Trump administration could reduce the number of immigration enforcement officers in Minnesota, but only if state and local officials cooperate, the president’s border czar said Thursday, noting he has “zero tolerance” for protesters who assault federal officers or impede the ongoing Twin Cities operation.

https://apnews.com/article/homan-minneapolis-immigration-enforcement-0d559bf53b630d7cc525fd3219f430ba?

Trump's border czar suggests a possible reduction of officers in Minnesota, but only after ‘cooperation’

The Trump administration could reduce the number of immigration enforcement officers in Minnesota, but only if state and local officials cooperate, the president’s border czar Tom Homan said Thursday, noting he has “zero tolerance” for protesters who assault federal officers or impede the ongoing operation in the Twin Cities. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

January 31

Trump Team’s Secret Meetings With Group Plotting to Break Up Canada Exposed

Trump officials have met with activists from the Alberta Prosperity Project, a separatist group that wants independence for its province.

“Very, very senior” officials in the Trump administration have had secret meetings with far-right Canadian separatists trying to shake the foundations of the country.

The covert meetings between high-ranking U.S. officials and the Alberta Prosperity Project come as a widening rift appears between Canadian leadership and the White House. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney used a speech in Davos, Switzerland, last week to call out President Trump for creating a “rupture” in the existing world order.

This has created fertile ground for the clandestine meetings, with the separatists trying to capitalize on the friction. People familiar with the talks have told the Financial Times that the group from the oil-rich province where Carney grew up have met U.S. State Department officials in Washington, D.C. three times in the last nine months.

“The U.S. is extremely enthusiastic about a free and independent Alberta,” the body’s legal counsel, Jeff Rath, told the FT. He attended the meetings.

“We’re meeting very, very senior people leaving our meetings to go directly to the Oval Office,” he claimed.

Sources told the publication that the group wants another meeting in February where they plan to request a $500 billion credit facility to help prop up the province financially if an independence referendum passes. A referendum has not yet been called.

A State Department spokesperson admitted the meetings took place but said “no commitments were made.” A White House official said that “no such support, or any other commitments, was conveyed.”A person familiar with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s thinking told the FT that he and his team are not aware of any credit request, nor do they intend to engage with one if it is forthcoming.

A spokesperson from a conservative think-tank in Calgary said the U.S. officials are merely trying to further destabilize Canada. Carlo Dade, from the Canada West Foundation, described the separatist leaders as “attention seekers.”

He added: “The Americans are more than happy to continue to play Canadians off each other.”

News of the meetings comes after Bessent appeared to try to stoke the flames of a rift in an interview with right-wing streaming channel Real America’s Voice.

“Alberta’s a natural partner for the U.S. They have great resources. The Albertans are very independent people,” Bessent said. “Rumor is they may have a referendum on whether they want to stay in Canada or not.”

Bessent made the comment after complaining that Alberta has a “wealth of natural resources,” but it’s not allowed to build a pipeline to the Pacific Ocean.

Earlier this month, Trump shared a Truth Social post that showed an AI-generated image with a map on it that had Canada, Greenland, and Venezuela draped in an American flag.

Polling conducted last week, however, suggests that more Albertans are happy being part of Canada than not. The Ipsos polling found that approximately seven in 10 residents would vote for their province to stay with Canada.

Undeterred, the Alberta Prosperity Project is trying to conjure up 177,000 signatures to bring an independence petition to the legislature before May.

“The overwhelming majority of Albertans are not interested in becoming a U.S. state,” said a spokesperson for Alberta’s premier Danielle Smith.

Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, said Canada is the victim of “foreign interference.”

“It doesn’t feel organic, we are being targeted by the MAGA crowd,” he said.

After Quebec tried to ditch Canada for a second time, in 1995, the country’s Supreme Court said a province does not have a unilateral legal right to secede from the federation.

Any attempt to do so would require a constitutional amendment and cannot be done outside constitutional processes. If a province held a referendum with a clear majority voting to leave, the federal government and the rest of the provinces would have a legal duty to negotiate the terms of potential separation under the Clarity Act.

The federal Parliament passed the Clarity Act in 2000 to implement the Supreme Court’s guidance on how a province might secede from Canada. However, the outcome would still depend on negotiated constitutional change rather than a unilateral break.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-teams-secret-meetings-with-group-plotting-to-break-up-canada-exposed/?

ps:I've said it before, How much lower can he get!!

January 31

Border Czar Throws Trump Goons Under the Bus While Vowing to ‘Fix’ ICE Chaos

Tom Homan used his first Minnesota presser to throw shade on Kristi Noem and Gregory Bovino.

Donald Trump’s border czar has savaged the president’s top immigration enforcers for their failed handling of the Minneapolis mission that has plunged the administration into crisis.

Tom Homan, 64, has been sent by Trump to Minnesota to replace Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s favored Border Patrol commander, Gregory Bovino.

Bovino’s “Green Machine” oversaw an aggressive “turn and burn” street operation that led this month to two U.S. citizens being shot dead by federal immigration agents, sparking public outrage.

Homan—who is known to despise Noem, 54, after she sidelined him in favor of Bovino, 55, as the Daily Beast reported Wednesday—marched into his first press conference Thursday and vowed to do the mission “smarter.”

In what was a clear attempt to quell public anger, Homan stressed twice during his speech that he “didn’t come to Minnesota for photo ops or headlines”—a pointed rejection of Noem and Bovino’s camera-ready approach during the botched Operation Metro Surge in the Twin Cities.

And while he did not mention either of them by name during his speech—only doing so when taking questions from reporters afterwards—the rebuke was unmistakable.

Since the start of Trump’s second term, Noem and Homan have been locked in a feud as both fought to lead the president’s mass deportation efforts. Trump’s decision to deploy Homan to Minnesota was thus viewed inside both the White House and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as a vote of no-confidence in Noem’s handling of operations.Bovino’s trench-coat theatrics and high-profile media and courtroom clashes have likewise rattled the West Wing, with Trump describing him as an “out there kind of guy” and vowing to “de-escalate” the situation.

Homan’s remarks confirmed the shift.

“I didn’t come here for photo ops or headlines,” he said. “I came here to seek solutions.” He repeated the line later, emphasizing that he was rejecting the showmanship that had defined the mission so far.

Homan admitted that his move to the state came after Trump personally phoned him Monday morning—it had been reported the president made the decision moments after a Fox News pundit suggested it—asking him to stabilize a deployment that Homan said even the president conceded was failing.

And the law enforcement veteran made clear he intends to overhaul the operation from top to bottom by reversing the operational style that produced two deadly shootings and left agents themselves describing the mission as “lost.”

Making a point of repeatedly distancing himself from past tactics while insisting he would not accept excuses from ICE leadership, Homan said the reforms he is instituting will make the operation “safer, more efficient, by the book”—a direct acknowledgment that what he inherited was neither.

“I do not want to hear that everything that has been done here has been perfect,” he said. “I’m not here because the federal government carried out its mission perfectly. Nothing is ever perfect. Anything can be improved on.” He added, “The mission is going to improve because of the changes we are making internally.”

Homan revealed that Trump himself had “recognized that certain improvements could and should be made” and tasked him with strengthening discipline and refocusing the mission on what the administration originally promised, to go after the “worst of the worst.”

That is by targeting “public safety” and “national security” threats, not street-level roundups of anyone who looks deportable, Homan said. “We will conduct targeted enforcement operations,” he added. “Targeted, strategic… with a prioritization on public safety threats.”

The pivot is a striking repudiation of Noem and Bovino’s scattershot tactics that have thus far defined Metro Surge, and that state officials have repeatedly blasted as dangerous, destabilizing, and ineffective.

Homan’s comments suggest Trump has accepted those criticisms and is repositioning ICE around a narrower, more defensible strategy after weeks of catastrophic headlines.

Homan also confirmed reports that he has already met Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and multiple sheriffs—an approach that sharply contrasts with Noem’s combative posture. He said he and local officials disagreed on plenty but agreed on “paramount” public safety and on not releasing “public safety risks back into the community.”

Homan praised Minnesota’s Department of Corrections for honoring ICE detainers and said Ellison had clarified that county jails may inform ICE of release dates—steps Homan framed as “big wins” that would allow ICE to reduce its manpower footprint.

He also noted he has ordered ICE and CBP to begin preparing a “drawdown plan” once targeted arrests, not broad sweeps, become the norm, in another quiet rebuke of the mass-presence strategy of Noem and Bovino.

While he defended frontline officers and denounced what he described as dangerous anti-ICE rhetoric and violent protests, Homan again implicitly criticized the operation’s conduct before his arrival. “If they don’t [perform professionally], they will be dealt with like any field agency,” he warned.

Homan ended by stressing that “President Trump wants this fixed, and I’m going to fix it.”

The Daily Beast has contacted DHS for comment.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson pointed to multiple comments by Trump expressing support for Noem and saying she’s “doing a very good job.” She said Homan’s shift in tactics should not be seen as a sign that enforcement actions will ease up, warning that “any left-wing agitator or criminal illegal alien who thinks Tom’s presence is a victory for their cause is sadly mistaken.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/border-czar-throws-trump-goons-under-the-bus-while-vowing-to-fix-ice-chaos/?

January 31

The director of national intelligence has made a habit of pursuing President Trump’s pet causes.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has come under fire for her role in an FBI raid on an election facility in Georgia that appeared designed to fuel Donald Trump’s debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Gabbard was on site Wednesday as Kash Patel’s FBI searched the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center, a warehouse-like facility outside Atlanta, and seized boxes of ballots and computers related to the 2020 election, Reuters reported.

The search warrant, which was obtained by ProPublica, also covered all the voter rolls from the 2020 election. Former law enforcement officers told Reuters that it was unprecedented for a director of national intelligence to be present for that type of domestic law enforcement operation, while top Democrats blasted Gabbard’s involvement as a “political stunt.”

Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that if Gabbard really believed there was a foreign intelligence connection to the election probe, she had failed to communicate her concerns to congressional intelligence committees, as required by law.

The other option was that she was there “injecting the nonpartisan intelligence community she is supposed to be leading into a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy.”

“Either is a serious breach of trust that further underscores why she is totally unqualified to hold a position that demands sound judgment, apolitical independence, and a singular focus on keeping Americans safe,” Warner said.

The Daily Beast has reached out to Gabbard’s office for comment.

A senior administration official told CNN’s national security reporter Zachary Cohen that Gabbard was on scene because she “has a pivotal role in election security and protecting the integrity of our elections against interference, including operations targeting voting systems, databases, and election infrastructure.”

Last year, Gabbard formed a group of dozens of officials from across the federal government to help Trump enact his revenge campaign on his perceived enemies, Reuters reported.

In July, as the administration was facing widespread fury over the Justice Department’s failure to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, Gabbard announced she had uncovered a “treasonous conspiracy” and “years-long coup” against Trump involving top Obama administration officials.

Nothing ultimately came of the supposed revelations, but for a brief moment Trump crowned Gabbard the “hottest” person in his administration over the ultimately unfounded allegations.

With Fulton County, Gabbard has once again honed in on one of Trump’s obsessions during a politically fraught moment for the president, who is trying to contain a massive backlash after immigration agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis.

Trump has long tried to overturn his 2020 election loss, including demanding that Georgia’s top election official “find 11,780 votes” after Joe Biden narrowly won the state.

For years, he has maintained the election was “rigged,” a claim he repeated just last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“People will soon be prosecuted for what they did,” he said. Thursday’s raid came as the Justice Department has sued dozens of states demanding copies of their voter rolls. The administration also sued Fulton County last month to try to get hold of the ballots.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/tulsi-gabbard-spotted-at-keystone-kash-patels-bonkers-ballot-raid/?

January 31

Keystone Kash Accidentally Sets Off Crisis With Social Media Brag

The FBI director’s X brag about a raid on an accused drug boss has angered a key ally—and seen a defense attorney question its “legality.”

FBI Director Kash Patel has dug himself into a hole after boasting on social media that U.S agents helped grab an alleged cocaine kingpin in a cross-border raid—apparently giving ammunition to the man’s defense.

Ryan Wedding, 44, a Canadian former Olympic snowboarder now accused of running a vast cartel-linked cocaine pipeline, was captured in Mexico last week after years of allegedly hiding out under the protection of the Sinaloa Cartel.

Patel, 45, claimed on X last Friday that the bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team “executed with precision, discipline, and total professionalism alongside our Mexican partners to bring Ryan James Wedding back to face justice.”

The same day, Patel—dubbed ‘Keystone Kash’ for a string of law enforcement blunders—was ridiculed for a chaotic airport-tarmac news conference where he shouted over jet engines and bizarrely branded Wedding a “modern-day El Chapo.”

Patel’s very public announcements should never have happened, however, because the raid was meant to be kept secret, according to The Wall Street Journal. Now, Wedding’s attorney, Anthony Colombo, is questioning whether his client’s rights were violated in a tease of a potential defense.

Colombo told the Daily Beast: “With enforcement actions against Nicolas Maduro and my client, Mr. Wedding, the Trump Administration has shown a bold new willingness to pursue fugitives beyond our borders.

“But bold action does not suspend due process, and the legality of Mr. Wedding’s arrest and the circumstances surrounding his apprehension will be subject to judicial review before the District Court.”

Patel’s disclosures have also reportedly rankled Mexican authorities, as Mexico bans foreign agents from taking part in operations on its soil, and its nationalist government is hypersensitive about U.S. incursions, the Journal reported, citing a U.S. official.

The country’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, 63, has attempted to contain the blowback. Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, she flatly denied U.S. involvement in the on-the-ground arrest and insisted American operatives face strict limits.

“I’m not going to get into a debate with the FBI director, nor do I want there to be a conflict,” she said, adding that U.S. officials had told Mexico it was a voluntary surrender.

She also pointed to an Instagram image purportedly showing Wedding standing outside the decommissioned U.S. Embassy with a caption saying he was turning himself in.

The post was captioned, “To the media and my followers: After seeking guarantees for a fair process, I have decided to voluntarily turn myself in to the authorities,” and thanked his wife and supporters for their messages, adding: “I am fully confident that the truth will come to light and set me free.”

Colombo has blown up that version, however.

“He was arrested, he didn’t surrender,” he told reporters outside federal court in Santa Ana, California, noting that any unilateral U.S. snatch on foreign soil would understandably alarm the government involved.

Colombo also stressed that his client has pleaded not guilty to 17 federal counts, including murder.

The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, has also tried to dampen the blunder by describing Wedding’s surrender as the result of “pressure applied by Mexican and U.S. law enforcement working in close coordination and cooperation,” according to the Journal.

The dispute comes as Trump has threatened land strikes against Mexican cartels and leaned on Sheinbaum to ramp up enforcement, slap tariffs on Chinese goods, and even put three planeloads of imprisoned drug bosses on U.S.-bound jets without formal extradition.

Inside the FBI, Patel’s latest gaffe is being treated as classic ‘Keystone Kash.’ The Beast began using the nickname—a dig that references the bumbling Keystone Cops of silent-movie fame—after he oversaw a string of avoidable fiascos and self-inflicted diplomatic wounds during his turbulent first year in the job.

Just one day before Patel’s Wedding whoopsie, it was reported that senior bureau officials complained he had blown a sensitive Five Eyes intelligence summit in the U.K. by demanding meetings at soccer games and on jet skis.

He also pushed to post a group photo from Windsor Castle that British partners had explicitly ordered him not to share, one senior FBI official told The New York Times.

That episode followed a drumbeat of reporting about Patel allegedly treating a $60 million FBI jet as his personal shuttle to watch his country-singer girlfriend perform and deploying FBI SWAT protection details around her shows.

Conservative media allies have also turned on him over high-profile blunders, including his premature claims of a suspect in custody for the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and a Brown University shooting investigation that saw a “person of interest” paraded, then quietly released.

When asked for comment, the White House referred the Beast to the FBI, whose spokesman Ben Williamson said the Journal report was “totally false,” and called the operation “a tremendous success in collaboration with our Mexican partners.”

He noted that Wedding’s arrest was the Bureau’s sixth capture of those on its ‘Ten Most Wanted’ list in a year, saying: “You don’t get there without strong leadership and partnerships.”

The Beast also contacted Mexico’s Department of Foreign Affairs, but it did not immediately respond.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/keystone-kash-patel-accidentally-sets-off-fbi-crisis-with-social-media-blab/?

January 31

Liberals Are Buying Guns. It Won’t Make Us Safer

The thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is not a good guy with a gun. Especially when everyone thinks they’re the good guy.

A noticeable shift is underway on the American left. Progressives who once spoke confidently and consistently about the dangers posed by guns are now, increasingly, buying firearms themselves.

“If more guns made us safer, we’d be the safest country on Earth. It doesn’t work that way,” quipped then-rising star presidential contender Pete Buttigieg in 2020. Fast forward to 2025, where the Liberal Gun Club, a group that trains and educates liberals about guns in over 30 states, reported seeing over 60% membership growth in the year following Trump’s return to office. Gun shops and community defense groups report growing interest from people who until recently would have dismissed personal gun ownership as unnecessary or even reckless.

Many cite concerns with the openly authoritarian Trump administration, rising political violence and the sense that institutions meant to protect are either weakened or being repurposed against them. What was once framed as an outdated cultural obsession of the right is now being reconsidered, quietly but seriously, as a form of insurance.

The anxiety is understandable. The second Trump administration has shown a willingness to retaliate against critics, defy courts and target innocent people. This has been particularly apparent in the ‘crackdown’ on undocumented immigrants—and the American citizens standing up for their human rights. Federal immigration enforcement has become more aggressive and more visible in American cities; for many communities, ICE is no longer an abstract agency but a daily presence associated with raids, detentions and even deaths. In moments of fear, arming oneself can feel like clarity. It can feel like doing something concrete in the face of power that appears unaccountable.

But as a former member of the litigation team at the leading gun violence prevention non-profit Everytown for Gun Safety, I can also tell you it is a serious mistake—and an escalation that overwhelmingly favors the state.

Federal agents operate with numbers, armor, intelligence and institutional protection, though not the absolute immunity Vice President J.D. Vance has claimed. A privately owned firearm does not restrain agency behavior or create leverage over federal policy. What it reliably does is transform already volatile situations into minefields where every movement is interpreted through the lens of lethality. This should not be the case, but it is our present reality.

The recent killing of Alex Pretti in Minnesota illustrates this with painful clarity. Pretti, an intensive care nurse, was legally carrying a firearm when federal agents confronted him. Videos reviewed by journalists show him being forced to the ground and disarmed before he was shot at ten times and killed. DHS officials nevertheless emphasized that he had been “armed” in spinning narratives to excuse his death.

Commenting on Pretti’s killing, President Trump attempted to explain it away by remarking, “you can’t have guns.” (Quite a pivot from the man who suggested in 2016 that Second Amendment supporters shoot Hillary Clinton.) In fact, the administration’s effort to paint Pretti as guilty merely because he had a gun has been so loudly hypocritical and unconstitutional that even the far-right NRA has pushed back on the White House’s narrative.

Pretti followed the law and was carrying legally. It did not protect him.

His death is not an anomaly. It reflects a pattern in which the mere existence of a civilian firearm becomes both the trigger for escalation and the justification for what follows. This seems particularly true as information about ICE’s lack of vetting and training comes to light. Unqualified, scared, federal agents with backgrounds of violence are clearly over-emboldened and overreactive in this moment.

But even beyond protests and ICE raids, there is a deeper contradiction in the current turn toward liberal gun ownership. The empirical case has not changed simply because the political context has. For decades, progressives have pointed to the same grim body of evidence: more guns in circulation lead to more accidental shootings, more fatal domestic violence episodes, more teen suicides and more children injured or killed by weapons that were never meant for them. These are not ideological claims. They are findings repeated across public health research, hospital records, and law enforcement databases over and over again. A gun purchased for “just in case” scenarios does not remain sealed in a political box or linger as a symbolic protest. It entrenches lethal force into everyday life.

A society already saturated with weapons—the U.S. has more guns than people —does not become safer when one more group decides that it, too, must arm itself. It becomes more fragile, more reactive, and more dangerous to live in, particularly for the people least insulated from harm.

Corny as it may sound, the solution is not to bear arms, but to link arms in community and resistance. The solution is collective action: showing up for one another, building durable community networks, funding legal defense and rapid-response organizations, documenting abuse, and voting. And organizing. And suing. And voting. And organizing. And suing. And voting. Our democracy is not gone yet.

Guns offer the feeling of agency while quietly increasing the odds of catastrophe. Community offers something harder and slower, but enduring: protection that does not depend on who fires first. If progressives abandon what they have long known about firearms out of short-term fear, they will be multiplying the danger that follows in the long-run.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/liberals-are-buying-guns-it-wont-make-us-safer/?

February 1

Democrats block government funding package in Senate as negotiations continue to avert a shutdown

Democrats voted to block legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security and several other agencies Thursday as they continued to negotiate with Republicans and the White House on new restrictions for President Donald Trump’s surge of immigration enforcement. Read more.

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Democrats, White House strike spending deal that would avert government shutdown

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats and the White House struck a deal to avert a partial government shutdown and temporarily fund the Department of Homeland Security as they consider new restrictions for President Donald Trump’s surge of immigration enforcement. But passage was delayed late Thursday as leaders scrambled to win enough support for the agreement before the midnight Friday deadline.

https://apnews.com/article/senate-democrats-budget-shutdown-trump-homeland-security-5e6788e433e51399c8aa4399035aee22?

February 1

Homan's calming effort

Border czar Tom Homan, President Trump's new man on the ground in Minnesota, struck a cooperative tone today, and said he sees a path to de-escalation in the Twin Cities, Axios' Brittany Gibson and Avery Lotz report.

Why it matters: A four-decade veteran of immigration enforcement, Homan has been a calm voice for de-escalation after weeks of unrest in Minnesota.

"I'm not here because the federal government has carried this mission out perfectly," he told reporters this morning in Minneapolis.

Homan pitched a return to prioritizing criminals and public safety threats. That would address the "roving patrols" — such as Border Patrol officers descending on Home Depot parking lots — that Democrats are ready to shut down the government to stop.

He took a subtle jab at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former Border Patrol commander-at-large Greg Bovino: "I didn't come to Minnesota for photo ops or headlines."

Homan said he found areas of agreement during meetings with Minnesota elected officials and law enforcement over the past 48 hours.

He cited a "very good meeting" with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. Homan said Ellison clarified that county jails "may notify ICE" of release dates for "criminal public safety risks" so that immigration enforcement can take them into custody.

Go deeper.

February 1

American Rage

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The attack on Representative Ilhan Omar on Tuesday was horrifying but depressingly predictable. Not only has the country seen a recent spree of political violence, but Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, has also been a frequent target of death threats.

The suspect, whom police have identified as Anthony Kazmierczak, was arrested after he squirted a combination of apple-cider vinegar and water at Omar during a town hall in Minneapolis, according to court documents. She was apparently not injured in the attack and continued to speak for 25 minutes before being medically screened. Kazmierczak has a long rap sheet, and he also has a long record of social-media posts that support right-wing causes and President Trump. His brother told The Independent that Kazmierczak frequently complained about Somali immigrants and about Omar in particular, who was born in Somalia before immigrating and becoming an American citizen. Court documents allege that he once said someone “should kill that bitch.”

Kazmierczak’s alleged animosity toward Omar didn’t come out of nowhere. A chorus on the right, led by Trump, has worked for years to villainize her. When ABC News reached Trump on Tuesday night, he said that he hadn’t seen the footage of the attack but then baselessly claimed that Omar had staged the incident. “I don’t think about her. I think she’s a fraud,” he said. “She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.”

For a guy who claims not to think about Omar, Trump sure seems obsessed with her. Just a few hours earlier, at a speech in Iowa, Trump had been talking about her. “She comes from a country that’s a disaster,” he said. “It’s considered, I think, the worst. It’s not even a country.” He has sought to make her the face of Somali immigration, usually invoking her name when he mentions the fraud rings involving Somali immigrants in Minnesota. (Omar has no known connection to the criminal investigations.) Trump has mentioned her at least 10 times this month alone on Truth Social, where he’s labeled her “disgusting,” called her a “fake ‘Congresswoman,’” and alleged that she married her brother, a long-running claim that fact-checkers have noted is baseless. He said last week that she should be investigated for “Political Crimes,” a chillingly authoritarian phrase, and even found time to rant about her during his speech at the World Economic Forum.

In fact, Trump helped turn Omar into a national figure in 2019, shortly after she entered Congress. “‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe,” should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” he wrote on social media in July of that year. The comment was widely interpreted as a swipe at Omar (among others)—a theory that Trump effectively confirmed a few days later when he complained about her personally, inciting a rally crowd to chant “Send her back!”

In other words, Trump is a major driver of the visceral anger toward Omar. He knows the effect his words might have, though he avoids specifically encouraging violence against her, a phenomenon that Juliette Kayyem, a terrorism scholar and an Atlantic contributor, has called “stochastic terrorism.”

Trump is familiar with this line of thinking, even if he hasn’t used the academic term. After two attempts on his life in 2024, including one that left him bloodied in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump and many of his allies charged that Democrats and other Trump critics were to blame for demonizing Trump and saying that he was a threat to democracy. Many of the same arguments followed the assassination of Charlie Kirk last year, and some on the right tried to crack down on political speech even as they hailed Kirk for defending it.

A handful of Omar’s critics, including Representative Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, have condemned the attack on her. “Regardless of how vehemently I disagree with her rhetoric—and I do—no elected official should face physical attacks. This is not who we are,” Mace wrote on X. But others have hewed closer to Trump’s line. Representative Randy Fine, a Florida Republican, said that Omar shouldn’t have been attacked, and then immediately pivoted: “I also blame Ilhan Omar for what happened.”

After the assassination attempts on Trump and Kirk’s murder, some people believed that a national effort to lower tensions and avoid violent rhetoric might be possible. But the victim-blaming emanating from Trump and Fine shows that many prominent extremists have no appetite for calming their language, and they haven’t developed a principled commitment to suppressing political violence—they just don’t want their own side to face it. Maintaining a peaceful, stable democracy is nearly impossible when some prominent figures are willing to inflame and then shrug off violence against their political adversaries.

Related:

Open the door wider for refugees, Ilhan Omar writes. (From 2024)
Minnesota proved MAGA wrong.

February 1

Trump's Fed pick

🚨 Bulletin: President Trump is expected to nominate Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor and an alumnus of Wall Street, this morning to succeed Jay Powell as Federal Reserve chair.

Warsh, 55, was first appointed to the Fed by President George W. Bush, and was on the Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011. Warsh has become a Fed critic, and said in 2017 that the central bank needs "regime change" to restore credibility. He has degrees from Stanford and Harvard Law.
The White House hasn't confirmed the expected pick, but it's being widely reported.

Why it matters: The Fed pick "is arguably the most important personnel decision Trump faces for the remainder of his term, because the central bank serves as a first responder in financial crises and sets interest rates that affect every corner of the economy and markets," The Wall Street Journal reports.

Between the lines: This is a sweet comeback for Warsh: Trump passed over Warsh for Powell in 2017. Powell's term ends in May.

Warsh met with Trump at the White House yesterday. Trump said last evening that his pick "won't be surprising to people. ... A lot of people think that this is somebody that coulda been there a few years ago."

The Senate would have to confirm Warsh.

Read Warsh's bio ... WSJ gift link.

Trump’s choice of Warsh to lead Fed could reshape the world’s most influential central bank

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh to chair the Federal Reserve could bring about sweeping changes at a central bank that dominates the global economy and markets like no other.

https://apnews.com/article/warsh-trump-federal-reserve-chair-6b4441263c1b7ecb40b96adf17adeea2?

February 1

Trump's tariff trap

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Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Global trade is a minefield in the Trump era: Wherever world leaders step, they risk igniting a new conflict with the White House, Axios' Courtenay Brown writes.

President Trump's constant tariff threats have pushed U.S. trading partners to diversify away from American markets. But that carries its own risks, as Trump vows to punish allies who turn elsewhere.

Trump has sought to assert dominance over global trade in at least three new ways this year:

🇨🇳 Threatening retaliation over China.

Trump said he would impose an additional 100% tariff on Canadian goods if Prime Minister Mark Carney moved ahead on a trade deal with China.
Trump's threat doubles as a warning to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who visited Beijing this week after years of frosty relations.

2. 😡 Threatening retaliation over delays.

Trump threatened this week to raise tariffs on South Korean goods, potentially restoring levies to the 25% pre-deal rate.
He said South Korea's legislature wasn't moving quickly enough to finalize its U.S. investment pledges.

3. 💥 Blowing up existing deals.

Trump backed off his market-rattling threat to impose tariffs on NATO allies over Greenland — but the episode underscored his willingness to revive tariff threats even against longtime partners.
That uncertainty has become a running theme: Deals that once provided predictability can now be reopened at any moment, for any reason.

America's top partners are now looking to strike other deals in a world shaped by Trump's tariffs.

After announcing a free trade agreement last year with a bloc of South American countries, the EU this week unveiled a massive deal with India aimed at bringing "stability" amid "turmoil in the global order."

Go deeper.

February 1

FACT FOCUS: A look at false and misleading claims made during Trump’s first Cabinet meeting of 2026

President Donald Trump held his first Cabinet meeting of 2026 on Thursday, focusing on the economy, housing, energy, health initiatives and drug prices. But while he painted a rosy picture of his administration’s accomplishments, some of his boasts —- and that of other officials —- were off the mark.

https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-trump-cabinet-economy-housing-energy-health-california-f4b4fb985300724a7e717863626e5506?

Trump’s pick to lead the NSA vows to follow the law if confirmed

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Army general tapped to lead the U.S. National Security Agency assured lawmakers Thursday that he will follow the Constitution and the law when it comes to using the NSA’s powerful surveillance tools.

https://apnews.com/article/nsa-rudd-trump-cyber-command-senate-surveillance-8ee0d8c8e9d8eea4e987b77f3f56f370?

ps:Like all the others that said pretty much the same thing??

Trump threatens tariffs on any country selling oil to Cuba, backing Mexico into a corner

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order that would impose a tariff on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba, a move that could further cripple an island plagued by a deepening energy crisis.

https://apnews.com/article/oil-cuba-tariffs-trump-mexico-30f1d74a766fee23001684a5bb8079d9?

Panama Canal ports will keep operating after court finds concession unconstitutional, president says

PANAMA CITY (AP) — Panama’s president moved to assure the public on Friday that critical ports at both ends of the Panama Canal will continue to operate without interruption — a day after the country’s Supreme Court ruled that the concession held by a subsidiary of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings was unconstitutional.

https://apnews.com/article/panama-canal-ports-us-china-b5fe3cdcc1fce45dbf1b0843a620830a?

Trump threatens Canada with 50% tariff on aircraft sold in US, expanding trade war

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened Canada with a 50% tariff on any aircraft sold in the U.S., the latest salvo in his trade war with America’s northern neighbor as his feud with Prime Minister Mark Carney expands.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-canada-aircraft-carney-d8692117bfcf11cf948f834534e7eb88?

February 1

How a digital dragnet is powering Trump’s immigration crackdown

Across Minnesota and other states where the Department of Homeland Security has surged personnel, officials say enforcement efforts are targeted and focused on serious offenders. But photographs, videos and internal documents paint a different picture, showing agents leaning heavily on biometric surveillance and vast, interconnected databases — highlighting how a sprawling digital surveillance apparatus has become central to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Read more.

Why this matters:

Over the past year, Homeland Security and other federal agencies have dramatically expanded their ability to collect, share and analyze people’s personal data, thanks to a web of agreements with local, state, federal and international agencies, plus contracts with technology companies and data brokers. Civil liberties experts warn the expanding use of those systems risks sweeping up citizens and noncitizens alike, often with little transparency or meaningful oversight.
When asked by The Associated Press about its expanding use of surveillance tools, the Department of Homeland Security said it would not disclose law enforcement sensitive methods. “Employing various forms of technology in support of investigations and law enforcement activities aids in the arrest of criminal gang members, child sex offenders, murderers, drug dealers, identity thieves and more, all while respecting civil liberties and privacy interests,” it said.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

February 1

Pennsylvania Gov. Shapiro says he’s readying for federal immigration crackdown

WASHINGTON — Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is preparing a response should the Trump administration surge federal immigration agents into the commonwealth, he said Thursday in Washington, D.C.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/01/29/repub/pennsylvania-gov-shapiro-says-hes-readying-for-federal-immigration-crackdown/?

Trump tries to shift attention away from woes with glitzy Trump Accounts rollout

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump touted the coming generation of “Trump Account children” Wednesday as the administration aims to deflect attention from rising food prices and a deadly federal immigration crackdown that in recent weeks took the lives of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/01/28/repub/trump-tries-to-shift-attention-away-from-woes-with-glitzy-trump-accounts-rollout/?

February 1

Panicked Trump, 79, Ramps Up Deranged Hockey Warnings to Canada

Asked about talks held by a totally different ally, Trump swerved into a bizarre rant about Canada’s favorite sport.

Donald Trump veered into an off-topic rant about Canadian hockey when he was asked about a different ally’s talks with China.

The 79-year-old president told reporters that Canada’s national sport could be at risk when asked a perfectly ordinary question about a trip to Beijing by the British prime minister. Trump warned that closer ties with China could have far-reaching consequences—for Canada.

“Mr. President, what do you think about the U.K. getting into business with China? Keir Starmer is in Beijing,” the reporter asked at the premiere of a documentary about the president’s wife Melania.

“It’s very dangerous for them to do that,” Trump began, before quickly pivoting to Canada, against which he has long held a grudge.

The president was particularly unhappy after Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing and announced a landmark “new strategic partnership” aimed at reversing years of strained relations.

“Canada’s not doing well; they are doing very poorly, and you can‘t look at China as the answer to this,” Trump continued.

“I know China very well, President Xi is a friend of mine, I know him very well…The first thing they’re going to do is say you are not allowed to play ice hockey anymore. That’s not good. Canada’s not going to like that,” the president added.

China is Canada’s second-largest trading partner after the U.S.

Following the meeting with Xi, Canada announced it would reduce its 100 percent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles, a measure introduced in late 2024 to mirror U.S. policy. In return, Beijing agreed to scale back retaliatory tariffs on Canadian canola seeds and meal.

In response, Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on Canadian imports if Ottawa proceeds with deeper trade engagement with China. Carney said Sunday his country does not intend to pursue a free trade deal with Beijing.

It’s not the first time the president has dished out deranged ice hockey warnings to Canada over its relations with China.

“China is successfully and completely taking over the once Great Country of Canada. So sad to see it happen,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social last week.

He added: “I only hope they leave Ice Hockey alone! President DJT.”

The president’s ramblings on Thursday came amid heightened concerns over his health. Trump has faced increased scrutiny for displaying many signs of physical and cognitive decline.

One of his former press secretaries said that a rambling press conference he gave on Jan. 20 is a sign that he is “mentally slipping.”

Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary for nine months during Trump’s first term, wrote on X: “It’s all the usual rambling, off-topic tales, half-truths, lies, “I’ve fixed everything - no one has ever seen anything like it” stuff…but it’s low-energy & feels like he’s…mentally slipping. Congress-plz wake up. Plz. #EmperorHasNoClothes."

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/panicked-trump-79-ramps-up-deranged-hockey-warnings-to-canada/?

February 1

Trump Immediately Blows Up His Border Czar’s Bid to Calm ICE Backlash

Trump contradicts Tom Homan plan to calm tensions straight away.

Donald Trump immediately undermined his own border czar’s attempt to calm tensions and ease a lethal immigration crackdown in Minnesota by insisting there will be “no pullback” of federal agents.

On Thursday morning in Minneapolis, Tom Homan, 64, stood at a podium in a federal building and pledged to wind down the unprecedented deployment of roughly 3,000 federal immigration agents to a city with roughly 600 police officers.

Yet within hours, the 79-year-old president was saying—as he so often does—the exact opposite.

Appearing at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., ahead of the $40 million Amazon-MGM premiere of Melania Trump’s vanity doc Melania, Trump was asked by a CNN reporter if he envisaged pulling back immigration officers in Minnesota.

He replied: “Not at all. No pullback. Not at all.”

The president’s flat denial was in stark contrast to the message Homan had spent the day selling to a furious state.

Civil rights groups, Minnesota officials, and some law enforcement experts have accused the administration of running an unconstitutional show of force in the Twin Cities.

Their claims have been supported by footage of Border Patrol and ICE agents in military-style gear detaining U.S. citizens, including 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, outside their homes.

During his press conference, Homan said his goal was to move away from the street sweeps and show-of-force tactics that led to the deaths of two protesters, unarmed mom Renee Nicole Good and VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti, both 37-year-old American citizens, at the hands of federal agents this month.

“I didn’t come to Minnesota for photo ops or headlines,” Homan told reporters, in a clear swipe at his political rival, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “I came here to seek solutions.”

The former ICE director, installed in the city by Trump this week after Noem, 54, and Border Patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino, 55, were blamed internally for the chaos, repeatedly vowed to move back to “targeted enforcement operations.”

“We will conduct targeted enforcement operations...which we have done for decades,” he said. “We are not surrendering our mission at all. We’re just doing it smarter.”

Homan also set out, in unusual detail, what sounded like an exit ramp.

He described new agreements with Minnesota’s Democratic leadership—Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and county sheriffs—to hold more suspected immigration offenders in local jails and hand them to ICE at the point of release, rather than relying on roving street teams.

“As we drilled down on these great agreements we got… we can draw down those resources,” Homan said. “When the violence decreases, we can draw down those resources… So, you’re going to see a drawdown.”

The press conference was widely read as an attempt to convince critics that Trump had learned lessons from a mission which Homan conceded Trump had admitted was not “perfect” and where “improvements could and should be made.”

But if Homan hoped his promise of change would calm Minneapolis, his own boss did not sound like he was on board.

The president’s remark raises questions over whether he was publicly overruling Homan’s de-escalation efforts—or whether the border czar’s “drawdown” would be limited to cosmetic changes while thousands of agents remain on the ground.

Homan’s “drawdown” language had marked a sharp break with the earlier posture of Noem and Bovino. Bovino’s “commander-at-large” media persona, SS-style trench coat, and the aggressive use of his “Green Machine” band of Border Patrol agents in city streets had made him the public face of Trump’s immigration blitz. As the Daily Beast reported on Wednesday, Homan and Noem have been locked in a long-running turf war over who gets to run Trump’s deportation drive, with Bovino cast as Noem’s enforcer.

That decision, which was deeply unpopular with voters, has diminished her position in Trump’s inner circle.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-immediately-blows-up-border-czar-tom-homans-bid-to-calm-ice-backlash-in-minneapolis-minnesota/?

ps:Of course he did!! He tells them what he wants, probably word for word, than if he feels he wants to blame someone he just throws them under the bus!!!! Again, and again, and again!!!!!!!!!!

February 1

How Ignoring One Video After Another Put Blood on Trump’s Hands

The horror in Minneapolis was all caught on video and all preventable—if only he had watched.

Before the videos showing Border Patrol agents disarming ICU nurse Alex Pretti then shooting him to death. Before the video showing Border Patrol “commander at large” Greg Bovino throwing tear gas at protesters. Before the video showing a 5-year-old child, Liam Conejo Ramos, being detained by agents when he came home from daycare.

Before all of those horrors, the besieged city of Minneapolis was already awash with videos. There were plenty to watch. Worst of all, of course, was the video of ICE officer Jonathan Ross shooting Renee Good through first her windshield, then her side window, killing the mom of three.

But one man who should have been watching the tidal wave of videos, and acting on them. apparently wasn’t.

These are the stories which—if he had but paid attention—could have stopped a political crisis for President Donald Trump. Far more importantly, he could have stopped the death of another American at the hands of his own agents.

Target’s Teen Workers Seized

A Jan. 8 video shows federal immigration agents piling onto two 17-year-old employees in the vestibule of a Target store in suburban Minneapolis. Both are wearing bright orange vests that signal they are employees. Both are slammed face down and forcibly handcuffed as if they were resisting rather than simply stunned and scared.

The agents do not react when an onlooker with a cellphone calls out, “You’re on video.” One of the two teens, Jonathan Aguilar Garcia, calls out a phone number when onlookers ask if there is somebody who should be contacted.

“That’s my mom!” he yells.

He tells the federal agents that he has his passport on him and asks to show it. They ignore him. He is being hustled to an unmarked vehicle when he calls out, “I’m literally a U.S. citizen.”

The other teen, Christian Miranda Romano, is also loaded into the vehicle. Nearby stands Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, giving no indication that his minions are doing anything but exactly what he wants them to do.

Eerie Echo of George Floyd’s Murder

“Stop kneeing him in the face!” an onlooker cries in a Jan. 9 clip showing a man being held down in a Minneapolis street by five immigration officers, “Stop it!”

The officer continues doing it again and again as the others keep him pinned to the asphalt, unable even to turn his head away.

A Very Revealing Exchange

After Good’s killing, a woman recorded an exchange between herself and an immigration officer on Jan. 9 in another Minneapolis suburb, St. Louis Park.

“Shame,” the woman says.

“Have ya’ll not learned?” the officer says in an accent that marks him from someplace in America far from Minnesota. “Have you not learned from the last couple of days?”

“Learned what?” the woman replied. “What’s our lesson here?”

The officer responds by grabbing her phone.

“Give me my phone back!” the woman says.

A Teacher is Rammed—and Seized

Another video showed agents grabbing a 25-year-old special education teaching assistant named Christina Rank on Jan. 12. She had just arrived at the parking lot at the elementary school in suburban Inver Grove Heights, where she works, when her car was struck by a vehicle driven by a federal agent. A witness can be heard on the video saying that the agents smashed her car window, yanked her into the street, and deployed tear gas in the vicinity of children.

“That’s because she rammed my vehicle,” the agents can be heard saying.

“No, I was right in front of her,” a witness can be heard saying. “You rammed her vehicle. It’s all documented.”

The witness then reassures Rank, saying, “Christina, we’ll call your mom.”

Traumatic Brain Injury Ignored

An autistic woman was on her way to a nearby traumatic brain injury center in Minneapolis on Jan. 13 when federal agents broke her driver’s side window, cut her seatbelt, and yanked her from her car. Video showed that she was then handcuffed and carried face down to an ICE vehicle.

“I have a brain injury!” she cries out. “Put me down! I was just trying to get to the doctor!”

Noem Busted Lying on Camera—Again

A disorderly protest that served as a worrying reminder of the chaos that followed Good’s death came on Jan. 14 after a federal agent shot a Venezuelan immigrant in the leg in Minneapolis.

Federal authorities say there had been a car stop followed by a foot chase that ended outside the immigrant’s home. He and two other immigrants are alleged to have “ambushed” a pursuing federal agent with a shovel and a broomstick. The agent is said to have fired a “defensive shot to defend his life.” Kristi Noem, cosplaying secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), described the actions of the three alleged assailants as “attempted murder.”

Noem’s account is challenged by a video recorded inside the man’s house immediately after the shooting. Small children can be seen wandering about as the man can be heard calling 911, asking for help in Spanish. The man’s wife tells the 911 operator that her husband had been shot “by ICE” after he fled inside their house.

“They shot through the door,” she says in Spanish.

They Tear-Gassed a Baby

Some 200 protesters began gathering at the scene after the Jan. 14 shooting, and the agents responded with enough teargas that a 6-month-old baby in a nearby home began having trouble breathing. The baby’s family decided that the best thing to do was evacuate. They encountered an ICE officer as they headed to their family car.

“‘I told them I was trying to leave,” the father says on a video that was later posted. “He knew I was trying to leave.”

The father says the officer threw three flashbangs.

“Under my car,” the father adds.

The video shows that the detonations caused the airbags to deploy. The father reports that the baby briefly seemed to go into respiratory arrest.

“He can’t breathe,” the father recalls in the video.

Thankfully, an ambulance arrived, and paramedics revived the boy.

The Awful Video Trump Ignored...

ICE agent Jonathan Ross may have been seeking to answer video with video as he made a predatory circle with his personal cellphone around Renee Good’s Honda Pilot SUV. He instead managed to preserve what seems to have been Good’s very last words.

“That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you,” Good can be heard saying on Jan. 7, sounding not at all like a domestic terrorist.

Ross comes around the back of the Honda, where Good’s wife is standing with her own cellphone, apparently recording him recording her as she mocks him as “Big Boy.” Ross continues circling. His cellophane is still recording as he switches it from his right hand to his left, draws his service weapon, and fires.

“You f---ing b---h,” he can be heard saying, sounding not at all like a guardian of justice.

Noem subsequently called Good a domestic terrorist who “weaponized” her vehicle, even though Ross’ own video shows that the Honda’s wheels were turned away from him when she began to drive.

And The Video He Finally Could Not

Noem repeated the slur 17 days later, after multiple videos showed two federal agents killing Veterans Administration ICU nurse Pretti on Jan. 24. He actually had a weapon. But he was licensed to carry his 9-mm semi-automatic pistol, and it never left its holster until one of the agents who piled on him pulled it away. Two other agents then fired a total of 10 shots, several as he lay motionless in the streets, causing no possible harm to anyone.

The Trumpsters again went into lie mode, saying he had brandished his gun when he clearly had not. They wavered only after a 2024 video appeared showing Pretti on the job at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center. Pretti is reading a tender tribute over a deceased patient’s flag-draped body.

Numerous videos from 2026 show federal agents taking actions that would leave them liable to discipline in most police departments. The ones where they are hitting or kneeing people appear to constitute assault, which would mean the agents are violating the law even as they are supposedly enforcing it.

Almost all of the videos appear to have gone unnoticed or simply ignored by the federal authorities who dispatched some 3,000 agents hyped up with talk of defending the homeland against the worst of the worst.

Too often, agents in the videos appear to grab people based on their skin color, regardless of their immigration status. Their masks add to what appears to be the intended effect: instilling terror. And that marks them as the real domestic terrorists, not Good or Pretti.

All the videos were quickly online for any federal official in charge to see. They documented escalating violence on the part of those we pay to protect us. And, by ignoring the warning signs, the top goons have the blood of an ICU nurse on their hands.

DHS and ICE were asked by the Daily Beast to comment on the array of videos of their thugs in action that had preceded Pretti’s death.

They could have gone on video themselves. But their only response was silence.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-ignoring-one-video-after-another-put-blood-on-trumps-hands/?

ps:The problem is he really doesn't care, he does everything to his benefit! If it helps him he's fine with it, but if it doesn't than beware someone is going to be trhown under the bus, period!!!!!

February 1

Frantic Trump, 79, Launches Midnight Tirade Against Slain Nurse

The president suggests Alex Pretti may have been an “insurrectionist” in an incendiary Truth Social post.

Donald Trump stayed up late after the premiere of his wife’s vanity documentary to post a screed against the Veterans Affairs nurse shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis.

“Agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist, Alex Pretti’s stock has gone way down with the just released video of him screaming and spitting in the face of a very calm and under control ICE Officer, and then crazily kicking in a new and very expensive government vehicle, so hard and violent, in fact, that the taillight broke off in pieces,” the 79-year-old president wrote on Truth Social at 1:26 a.m. on Friday.

“It was quite a display of abuse and anger, for all to see, crazed and out of control. The ICE Officer was calm and cool, not an easy thing to be under those circumstances!”

The Daily Beast has contacted representatives for Pretti’s family for comment.

Pretti, a 37-year-old Veterans Affairs ICU nurse, was shot multiple times by Customs and Border Patrol agents during a confrontation in Minneapolis on Saturday.

With MAGA unable to find justification for Pretti’s killing in footage from the incident itself—while Pretti legally had a gun, he did not brandish it while interacting with law enforcement—they instead seized upon footage taken 11 days earlier.

In the older footage, recorded on Jan. 13, Pretti can be seen yelling at federal agents and kicking out the taillight of their car.

“A week before Alex was gunned down in the street—despite posing no threat to anyone—he was violently assaulted by a group of ICE agents,” Steve Schleicher, an attorney for the Pretti family, told the Star Tribune in a statement.

Trump’s decision to use the term “insurrectionist,” in a carefully drafted and grammatically correct post, appeared to be a deliberate reminder to Minnesota authorities that he still has the power to invoke the Insurrection Act and flood the state with military units.

Trump had not previously commented on the new Alex Pretti video, instead reposting an X post from a supporter that sarcastically referred to Pretti as “such a peaceful protestor.”

Meanwhile, others in his orbit were quick to use the footage from the fatal encounter on Saturday to justify Pretti’s death.

Former New York mayor and close Trump ally Rudy Giuliani claimed that the video proved that Pretti and his “female activist accomplice” were “executing a classic ‘rearrest’” when Pretti was shot and killed.

Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly argued that the video indicated Pretti had been “itching for another confrontation with Border Patrol, whom he’d been stalking, harassing and terrorizing.”

Right-wing YouTuber and Trump sycophant Benny Johnson shared the video on his social media accounts with the headline ‘LEFTIST HOAX DESTROYED.’

“This video PROVES that Alex Pretti was not an ‘innocent bystander’ or ‘legal observer’. He was a violent agitator and psychopath hellbent on attacking federal law enforcement,” he added.

The White House had previously sought to distance itself from the more extreme rhetoric used towards Pretti by members of Trump’s inner circle.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had previously described Pretti as a “domestic terrorist,” while top Trump aide Stephen Miller argued that he was a “would-be assassin.”

When asked by reporters about Noem’s description on Monday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “I have not heard the president characterize Mr Pretti in that way. However, I have heard the president say he wants to let the facts and the investigation lead itself.”

The president had also previously expressed a desire to “de-escalate” tensions in Minneapolis, where both Pretti and 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good have been killed by federal immigration agents this month.

Discussing his decision to replace hardline Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino with border czar Tom Homan on Tuesday, Trump told Fox News’ Will Cain, “We have Tom Homan there now. We put him in there, he’s great. And they met with the governor and the mayor and everybody else. And we’re going to de-escalate a little bit.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/frantic-trump-79-launches-midnight-tirade-against-slain-nurse-alex-pretti/?

February 1

Trump’s DOJ Announces Brazen New Epstein Files Cover-Up

The deputy attorney general said DOJ had now “completed” its review of the Epstein files.

The Trump administration has announced it will only release about half the files it has collected relating to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, renewing fears of an ongoing cover-up.

Amid a flurry of news distractions on Friday—including the stunning arrest of former CNN anchor Don Lemon—Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that the department had “completed” its review of the files.

“We’re releasing more than 3 million pages today, and not the 6 million pages that we collected,” Blanche said, noting that 2000 videos and 180,000 images would also form part of the new trove.

“Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance with the act,” he added.

“After submitting the final report to Congress, as required under the Act, and publishing the written justifications for redactions in the Federal Register, the department’s obligations under the Act will be completed.”

The announcement came 42 days after the department was required by law to release all the relevant files relating to Epstein’s networks and crimes, as required under the Transparency Act that president Donald Trump reluctantly signed into law last year.

According to Blanche, some of the files that would not be released include documents that could jeopardize ongoing investigations, anything that breaches attorney-client privilege, files that identify victims, and any depiction of child pornography.

Images of death, physical abuse or injury would also not be released, he said.

But the fact that the department has chosen to hold back so many files has renewed concerns that some people involved in Epstein’s heinous operation may not end up being held to account.

For instance, as revealed by the Daily Beast this week, Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell filed a habeas petition in court last month hoping to void her conviction.

In it, she references four potential “co-conspirators” and “25 men” who allegedly reached “secret settlements” connected to Epstein’s abuse but were never indicted.

Asked about his reaction to Maxwell’s petition, Blanche replied on Friday: “I don’t, I don’t, I don’t have a reaction to her filing.

“I can tell you that we reviewed, as I just described, every single piece of paper that we have associated with these investigations, of Mr Epstein and Ms Maxwell and to the extent that such arrangements exist, I’m not aware of them,” he said.

Epstein survivor Haley Robson said transparency would involve the department “putting all the cards on the table, and that is certainly not what this administration has done.”

Democrat Stephen Lynch, a member of the House Oversight Committee, added that he didn’t trust the department and would seek a review of its redactions.

“They said there were six million documents, we would like to see all six million documents,” he said.

However, Blanche, who is Trump’s former personal attorney, pushed back against suggestions that the department was trying to protect the president from any embarrassing or adverse findings.

The deputy attorney general set off alarm bells last year when he held a highly unusual private meeting with Maxwell as the firestorm over Epstein files intensified.

During their meeting, Maxwell gushed about the president, insisting she had never seen him do anything inappropriate.

Soon after, she was quietly transferred to a low security prison in Texas, where whistleblowers claim she has been given preferential treatment, including access to a puppy, a cordoned off area for visitors, and permission to go to the exercise area after hours.

“We comply with the act, and there is no ‘protect President Trump.’ We didn’t protect or not protect anybody,” Blanche said.

“I mean, I think that there’s a hunger or a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents. And there’s nothing I can do about that.”

The Epstein files have been an ongoing headache for President Donald Trump, who is named repeatedly in the documents released so far.

For instance, bombshell emails reveal Trump “spent hours” at Jeffrey Epstein’s house with one of his victims, and “knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop”—a reference to Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, who recruited victims as part of his sex trafficking operation.

One of the documents also showed an FBI tip that accused him of holding a party for prostitutes at his Mar-a-Lago resort in connection with Epstein and Maxwell, while others revealed that he flew on Epstein’s private jet more frequently than had been previously reported.

Blanche’s announcement came hours after it was revealed that former CNN anchor Don Lemon was arrested by federal authorities on Thursday night in connection with a church protest that had enraged Trump officials earlier this month.

“Time and again, the Trump Administration pursues its own political enemies over real justice,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, the lead Democrat on the House Oversight committee.

“This is an attack on free press, and EVERY American must push back on this dangerous, horrific, and authoritarian act. Don must be freed immediately.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-doj-announces-brazen-new-epstein-files-cover-up/?

February 1

There Can Be No More Doubt. Trump Wants to Kill Free Speech

Don Lemon is the most high-profile reporter being targeted. Trump wants to target all of us.

Donald Trump is seeking to execute the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in the same way that his thugs gunned down Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good.

The arrest of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for doing their jobs as journalists and covering a public protest at a church in Minneapolis is a violent assault on freedom of the press in the United States of America, one of the most egregious we have ever seen from a U.S. government.

Not one but two judges rejected prior efforts by the—misnamed—U.S. Department of Justice to indict Lemon and Fort for their presence at the church protest. But undaunted, Attorney General Pam Bondi proceeded to personally direct the arrest of Lemon in Los Angeles late on Thursday night, thus reminding us that she more than any other member of the Trump cabinet deserves to be impeached—no small distinction in a group that includes deserving candidates for being fired and convicted by the Senate like Kristi Noem, RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth.

Lemon’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, wrote in a statement, “Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable” and he characterized the arrest as an “unprecedented attack” on a free press.

If anything, Lowell understates the dangers associated with Lemon’s arrest. Seeking to prosecute him represents not one but three separate attacks on freedoms so fundamental that were among the first guaranteed by our Constitution.

First, by arresting Lemon, Trump is seeking to silence a journalist and send a message to other journalists that objective reporting about facts that make the administration uncomfortable will not be tolerated. Next, going after Lemon is part of a bigger on-going effort to use the Justice Department to seek retribution against a wide array of perceived critics of the administration.

If Donald Trump or those close to him do not like you or do not like what you say, you are now at risk of arrest or worse.

Finally, Lemon is not the only person who was present at this protest who is being targeted. Therefore, the arrest needs to be seen not only as a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of “freedom of speech or of the press,” it is also yet another assault on “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”

As far as the White House was concerned, it was a matter to be celebrated and they did so with a tasteless mockery of Lemon.

Indeed, it should be seen in this regard as being part of a brutal pattern of suppression of free expression in Minneapolis that has ranged from threatening demonstrators(“You raise your voice, I will erase your voice”), to spraying them with tear gas, to actually gunning them down as in the case of Pretti and Good.

It is all part of an egregious, profoundly un-American, illegal and gravely dangerous long-term campaign against free expression in the United States that has Trump’s views and actions—once again—more aligned with dictators from Putin to Hitler than he is with the principles on which this country was founded or with the Constitution he swore to “preserve, protect and defend.”

White House efforts to limit access to the president to journalists who will cover him favorably, and to ban journalists who have been critical; presidential and White House staff insults against journalists they do not like; and Pentagon and other agency efforts to also limit press access are part of this.

The effort to denigrate, demote, and even court-martial, an American hero, Senator Mark Kelly, as well as recent threats by “border czar” Tom Homan to prosecute Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez for hosting a “know your rights” web event are also elements of their ongoing efforts.

In just the past couple of weeks we have seen other evidence of the onslaught that certainly makes Trump the greatest enemy of the First Amendment ever to occupy the Oval Office.

The takeover he orchestrated of TikTok, putting the influential platform into the hands of his supporters like Larry Ellison is part of this. Other evidence of that systematic seizure of media companies by the right has also been visible, from the post-Ellison buyout machinations of Trump puppet Bari Weiss at CBS News, to the systematic gutting of the Washington Post by Trump suck-up Jeff Bezos. Bezos’ efforts to use his media clout to butter up and actually direct cash to a president who he sees as an important advocate for the companies he owns, was also on particularly embarrassing display with his indefensible, unwatchable and ridiculous $75 million “Melania” bribeumentary.

It is important that all these actions—including the Lemon arrest—be seen in this context. They are part of an effort to strip away fundamental freedoms from Americans. They are critical steps to turning this country into an autocracy. And they are directly linked to efforts to undermine voting rights that were also on display this week with the unjustifiable, conspiracy-theory driven execution of a too general, fishing-expedition warrant to seize election records in Fulton County, Georgia.

The efforts are so sweeping and pernicious that there is only one way to reverse their impact and that is for Americans to more actively, purposefully, and effectively assert and use the rights that are their birthright than they have ever done in the past. Indeed, Trump is hoping that people will not push back, will not fight back, can be intimidated into silence and compliance.

The people of Minneapolis have stood up to say they disagree and again, in this instance, we can only hope that they will serve as an example and an inspiration to the rest of the country.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote that if he had to choose between a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, he would “not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Jefferson also wrote that, “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

It’s a good thing Jefferson did not see the abuses of Trump, Bondi and their administration—both because he would have been outraged and because had he expressed himself today as he did when he was alive, he would probably end up being arrested.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/there-can-be-no-more-doubt-trump-wants-to-kill-free-speech/?

February 1

JD Vance’s ‘Crazy’ ICE Story Shredded as Total BS

The vice president claimed protesters mobbed immigration agents over dinner, but the restaurant owner says it didn’t quite go down like that.

JD Vance just got outed pushing an allegedly bogus account of an encounter between immigration enforcement agents and protesters in Minnesota.

“When I was in Minneapolis, I heard a number of crazy stories,” the vice president posted this week, outlining one incident “near the top of the list.”

Vance claimed that off-duty ICE agents and officers with Customs and Border Protection had stopped for dinner at a restaurant in the Twin Cities earlier this month.

According to him, they were “doxed and their location revealed, and the restaurant was then mobbed,” with the federal agents then supposedly “locked in” at the premises as “local police refused to respond to their pleas for help.”

“This is just a taste of what’s happening in Minneapolis,” Vance wrote.

It’s not, though. At least, not according to local police, or the Department of Homeland Security, or the man who actually owns the restaurant where the incident in question took place.

A Minneapolis Police Department representative told Politico on Friday that officers had “monitored the situation” at the Darbar India Grill & Bar restaurant, and “determined that the federal agents had sufficient resources available to manage the incident.”

The agents were reportedly able to leave within 15 minutes of initially placing a 911 call.

Politico further obtained a copy of an internal DHS report about the encounter that noted local police weren’t notified of the incident until after the federal agents had already departed.

The report describes a much less dramatic confrontation than that depicted by Vance. “A young adult male wearing a black mask was seen walking around their rental vehicle, a white Ford Expedition, before entering the restaurant and approaching the agents,” it reportedly reads.

“The subject accused agents of being ICE personnel, referencing the Ford Expedition as a known ICE vehicle and claiming access to a database of such vehicles,” the report said.

By this stage, a crowd of roughly 30 people are understood to have gathered outside the restaurant, and “a female subject behind the agents locked the restaurant doors, preventing exit.”

The agents are nevertheless said to have been “extracted” within just nine minutes, with “no injuries or use of force reported.”

Balli Singh, who manages the restaurant, further told Politico he didn’t see anyone lock the doors and claimed Vance had inaccurately described what happened on the night in question.

“Singh said the officers were in the middle of their meal when a few people came into the restaurant and told Singh they suspected ICE was there,” the outlet reported. “Singh said more people arrived outside and began congregating around the car. Meanwhile, the two agents told their server they were being harassed.”

“One guy actually told me, ‘Brother, don’t come between this,’” Singh was quoted saying, adding he’d heard one of the officers say “we’ll teach them a lesson” before other officers arrived. The men left not long after, he said.

Vance’s post, which has more than 22 million views, came the day after Border Patrol agents fatally shot 37-year-old protester Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street. Pretti’s death followed the killing of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mom-of-three, by an ICE agent earlier this month.

The vice president accused local law enforcement of not doing enough to protect immigration enforcement agents in the Twin Cities.

“They have created the chaos so they can have moments like yesterday, where someone tragically dies and politicians get to grandstand about the evils of enforcing the border,” he said.

“The solution is staring everyone in the face,” he added. “I hope authorities in Minneapolis stop this madness.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to Vance’s representatives and the DHS for comment.

“We can confirm VP’s post is accurate,” Homeland Security Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told Politico. “This type of behavior is un-American and disgraceful,” she added.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jd-vances-crazy-story-about-ice-agents-in-minneapolis-shredded-as-total-bs/?

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