We begin today with Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times comparing the federal occupation of Minneapolis in 2026 to the British occupation of Boston, which took place over an eight-year period from 1768 to 1776.
Acting under the pretext of immigration enforcement, the Trump administration has sent both Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection to terrorize the people of Minneapolis. Masked paramilitaries stalk streets, schools, businesses and other places of public accommodation in search of anyone deemed “illegal,” regardless of whether they’re citizens or legal residents. Using race as part of their criteria — a now-legal tactic, thanks to a recent opinion from Justice Brett Kavanaugh — armed officers go door to door through neighborhoods searching for Latino, Asian and African people to detain. [...]
All occupations resemble one another in some way, and it is striking to read descriptions and accounts of the occupation of Boston in light of events in Minnesota. “Having to stomach a standing army in their midst, observe the redcoats daily, pass by troops stationed on Boston Neck who occupied a guardhouse on land illegally taken it was said from the town, and having to receive challenges by sentries on the streets, their own streets, affronted a people accustomed to personal liberty, fired their tempers, and gnawed away at their honor,” writes the historian Robert Middlekauff in “The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763 to 1789.” [...]
Occupations are, as Americans should know from our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, brutally unpopular, too. So it goes for the response to the federal occupation of Minnesota. More than half of Americans, according to a recent CNN poll, say that ICE enforcement actions are making cities less safe rather than safer; 57 percent of Americans, according to a survey from Quinnipiac University, disapprove of how ICE is enforcing immigration laws, and 55 percent of Americans support ending mass ICE raids targeting immigrants, according to a poll conducted by YouGov for the A.C.L.U.
OK, I’ll allow it since there are primary sources for both occupations but I’d also like to see Bouie use the contemporaneous sources more extensively.
J. Patrick Coolican of the Minnesota Reformer writes of the duty to resist federal occupation.
The moment has arrived, Minnesota: Masked, heavily armed, poorly trained men are roaming the streets, checking citizenship papers of random Black and Hispanic people, breaking car windows, shooting people in the face, targeting hostile businesses, detaining U.S. citizens without charges.
Some people voted for this because they thought we would merely get a correction of former President Joe Biden’s failed immigration policy. They believed that the Trumpists would only go after the “the worst of the worst.” That was deeply misinformed.
You barely had to scratch the surface to find the fascist philosophy undergirding the MAGA movement — not to mention the “Mass Deportation Now” signs that plastered the 2024 National Republican Convention. It’s all been laid bare by official government accounts sending out white nationalist messagesin recent days, e.g., the Department of Homeland Security: “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage. Remember who you are, American.” [...]
Although we should all strive for the stoic virtues and be strategic and levelheaded in our opposition — and eschew violence — it’s not a moment for “diplomacy.” [...]
It’s actually a moment for confrontation, both loud and quiet. And, for saying: No more. Take the mask off. Honor the Constitution. Better yet, leave.
Tim Dickinson of The Contrarian wonders what ICE is hiding inside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building just outside Minneapolis.
The Whipple building at Fort Snelling sits on a narrow swath of land between the airport and the Mississippi River. How many people are detained there? How long do detainees stay? In what conditions? The Department of Homeland Security is not providing details, beyond a rough count of 2,400 arrested in Minneapolis since late November. A CBS affiliate reports that many detainees are eventually shipped to outlying county jails.
When members of Congress sought to perform oversight at the federal facility on Saturday, they were turned away after just 10 minutes — on the basis of a new policy issued by Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem that states Congress must give one-week notice before entering a detention facility funded by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. [...]
Such oversight is critical given the abuses that have occurred at other facilities that were ill-prepared to scale up for mass detention. The Broadview ICE facility outside Chicago is the nightmare precedent. A class-action lawsuit filed in October compiled a litany of horror stories from detainees, who described being deprived of adequate water and food, being held in unsanitary conditions, being unable to contact attorneys, and lacking any modicum of privacy, including to use the toilet.
The Broadview declarations shocked the conscience.
G. Elliott Morris always includes multple analyses of several different datasets at his “Strength in Numbers” Substack. Today’s focus is on the large swing in party ID that has occured during Trump’s second term.
I have been pretty critical of media coverage that painted Trump’s victory in 2024 as a huge, mandate-qualifying defeat of Democrats and progressivism. On election night 2024, Trump went on TV and claimed an “unprecedented” mandate for an agenda of tax cuts, tariffs, mass deportations, and revenge against his partisan opponents.
The media was generally happy to repeat those claims, even though they were obviously wrong. Trump’s victory was not large and his agenda was not popular. Journalists were playing right into his marketing scheme.
This helps explain Trump’s decline since. Trump won the 2024 election for two reasons. First, he won a good amount of soft support relative to 2020 from people who didn’t like Biden and wanted a solution for high prices. Second, a lot of Democrats stayed home. His victory was small, but he overplayed his hand.
Voters gave Trump a second chance in 2024, and now feel betrayed by his policy agenda. From tariffs to mass deportation and many attempts to circumvent the courts, from the DOGE chaos to harsh Medicaid/ACA cuts, and now the transparent grifting in Venezuela — pretty much every official action of Trump’s second term has been opposed by a plurality to a clear majority of the American public.
A Guardian editorial sees that the method to the madness of Trump’s foreign policy lies in the rhetoric along with occasional actions.
Even as the threat of reckless military intervention in Iran receded, if only for the moment, the dangers facing Greenland were underscored as European troops flew in on Thursday. Meetings in Washington had failed to bridge the “fundamental disagreement” over its future, with Mr Trump reiterating that the US “needs” Greenland and Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, warning that the president is still set on “conquering” Greenland. Venezuela is on the back burner for now, after Mr Trump took his lap of victory for illegally snatching Nicolás Maduro. But he has already warned Cuba, Colombia and Mexico that they could be next. Alarmingly, the former anti-interventionist has concluded that foreign adventures have fewer costs than he anticipated and more gains. He hopes that menace, spectacle and diversion can work abroad as well as domestically.
Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” was that presenting him as uncontrollable and volatile would keep adversaries in line. But Nixon had a clear strategic framework and aims. While the same cannot be said of Mr Trump, it would be wrong to see him as irrational. Despite grandiose threats, he has often been cautious in military action. He does not need to follow through every time; he just needs people to know that he might. But his causes (resource grabs, imperial splendour, vengeance, “civilisational” supremacy and self-glorification) are alarming, his idea of victory is short-termist and egocentric, and caprice rules his court. He revels in unsettling his inner circle too.
As a leading analyst of Iran noted this week, policymaking has shifted from a clear, deliberative, strategic process to bureaucracy mobilising in response to off-the-cuff presidential comments. Post-Maduro, Mr Trump is emboldened – and more likely to miscalculate. It’s telling that Iran’s regional rivals were key in holding him back from a strike, fearing the destabilisation of the region, the strengthening of Israel or perhaps the emergence of a still more hardline regime in Tehran.
For journalists working in Venezuela, Carolina Abbott Galvāo and Ivan L. Nagy report for Collumbia Journalism Review that very little has changed.
...Under the leadership of Hugo Chávez, through Nicolás Maduro’s tenure to today, official narratives have echoed across state-controlled TV, radio, and print media; authorities have declined visas for foreign journalists to enter the country; independent news outlets are banned and accessible only via VPN. In the week following the US incursion, police, military forces, and colectivos—pro-government paramilitaries—roamed the streets, cracking down on protesters, members of the opposition, and independent journalists. On January 5, when Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as Venezuela’s interim president, fourteen media workers, many of them working for international outlets, were detained. (Thirteen of them were soon released; one was deported the same day.) This week, according to the National Union of Press Workers (SNTP), an organization that represents, defends, and promotes the rights of journalists in Venezuela, nineteen journalists who had previously been detained by Maduro were let go from prison. (It is unclear whether the charges against them will be dropped.) Although this “is great news for these journalists’ families, for the press, for the community,” said Artur Romeu, the director of Reporters Without Borders’ Latin America office, Venezuelan journalists remain “repressed” and “restricted.”
The heightened level of pressure on reporters arose in the aftermath of the 2024 elections, when Maduro claimed victory despite evidence suggesting that he had lost, and Venezuelans took to the streets in protest. “The government chased after journalists who covered the clashes,” Lugo remembered. Venezuela currently ranks 160 out of the 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index.
Many journalists fled the country and now work in exile, including the editorial teams of most independent news sites. Those newsrooms still rely on the work of reporters remaining in Venezuela. “We put in a lot of safety measures,” a Venezuelan social media video producer, who asked to remain anonymous for their safety, said. “We don’t have bylines. We always have to ask ourselves: Who’s going to see this? Will the Chavistas get the video?”
Finally today, Andrey Partsev of the Russian independent media outlet Meduza looks at Russia’s silence in the face of Trump’s aggressive actions and rhetoric toward two of Moscow’s most prominent allies.
Moscow has long considered Iran and Venezuela two of its key allies. If they slip out of Russia’s orbit, Meduza’s sources said, it would undercut the idea of a “multipolar world” that President Vladimir Putin has promoted heavily in recent years. At the same time, according to these sources, Russian officials and business leaders hope that U.S. President Donald Trump — who has hinted at regime change in Cuba and openly speaks about annexingGreenland — will stay focused on the Western Hemisphere and lose interest in the war in Ukraine. [...]
An employee of the presidential envoy’s office in Russia’s Central Federal District told Meduza that he and other officials had discussed the possibility of a U.S. military operation in Venezuela before it happened, but none of them believed Washington would actually move to decapitate the government. “It just seemed too bold, especially since [Venezuela] is supposed to be our ally. There were statements saying Russia would come to its aid if anything happened. In the end, the U.S. went ahead, and nobody helped. It left people confused,” the source said.
This person added that while he originally expected some kind of response from Russia’s leadership, he now understands why there wasn’t one. “There are simply no resources for a response — they’re all tied up in the special military operation,” he explained.
Everyone have the best possible day that you can!
