The 47th President and the Post-Biden World

Officials in the Trump administration insist its surges of federal agents into Democratic-led cities are necessary to round up undocumented immigrants, but the agents’ mission increasingly looks as if it is to frighten opponents of the administration into submission. But instead of submission, they appear to be sparking deeper and deeper opposition.

Since agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have broken out across the nation. Federal agents in Minnesota have responded by increasing their violent attacks, many of which have involved U.S. citizens and have been captured on video: agents breaking into a home with weapons drawn, a teenager dragged away from his job, agents guarding a restroom at Target, engaging in door-to-door searches without warrants, using illegal chokeholds, dragging people out of their cars.

Confronted with footage of officers using prohibited chokeholds, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told ProPublica reporters Nicole Foy and McKenzie Funk: “Officers act heroically to enforce the law and protect American communities.” On Air Force One Sunday evening, Trump cut to the heart of MAGA’s attacks on those resisting ICE when, speaking about Renee Good, he told reporters: “At a very minimum, that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement.”

Luke Broadwater and Katie Rogers of the New York Times noted the response of Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) to Trump’s comment. Raskin recalled that the insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, “violently attacked police officers and called them everything from traitors to pigs to racial epithets, and ruthlessly taunted them and maligned them for hours,” and yet Trump pardoned them.

Raskin concluded that “Donald Trump’s very dubious characterization of Renee Good as having been disrespectful is not only factually suspect, but it’s legally irrelevant. The police do not have the right to shoot people in the head because they consider them having acted in a disrespectful way. That legal standard would have led to a slaughter on January 6.”

In The Atlantic yesterday, David Frum explained that the administration’s attacks on Good are not at all a true defense of law and order. “For MAGA America,” he wrote, “ICE is an instrument for cleansing violence.” ICE’s social media accounts celebrate videos of armed agents hurting unarmed nonwhite men and women who are then shown weeping, pacing, or with their head in their hands in a jail cell. Most of the situations the videos show, Frum writes, could be managed “with a couple of plainclothes officers bearing holstered sidearms.” But the point is not to enforce the law; “[t]he point is to prove that the fearsome power of the American state is being wielded by righteous MAGA hands against despised MAGA targets.”

Frum notes that ICE has lowered its standards to fit the deportation targets White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has announced, lower standards that have increased the numbers of untrained and violent agents on the streets, but Frum attributes much of the violence of ICE to the fact that “its main purpose has become theatrical…. ICE is less a law-enforcement agency than it is a content creator.”

Frum argues that the violence shows MAGA that a government they control is demanding respect from those overeducated coastal elites they think get too much respect. By punishing Good rather than letting her drive away, Ross made sure she didn’t get away with disrespecting him.

The scenes ICE is performing seem to be the logical outcome of the idea of cowboy individualism Republicans have pushed since the 1980s: white men reclaiming the government they insist has been corrupted by Black Americans, women, and people of color and using the power of that government to defend the “real” America. In that scheme, anyone resisting the government is not showing proper subservience and is anti-American by definition.

But the protests against ICE have created a problem for the MAGA ideology. Key to the idea of the individualist man as a real American is that he will protect white women. And yet white women are among those standing in the front lines against Trump, and now an ICE agent has killed one.

On Sunday, David Marcus of Fox News warned that “organized gangs of wine moms” are using “Antifa tactics to harass and impede Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.” He claimed that those people organizing to protect their neighborhoods from ICE may be “criminal conspiracies.” He complained of “self-important White women” protesting “with a weird and disturbing glee.” He seemed to threaten them by warning: “if we simply allow these cosplaying would-be revolutionaries to do whatever they want…, Renee Good will not be the last to needlessly die.”

On Monday, Will Cain of the Fox News Channel echoed Marcus, saying: “There’s a weird kind of smugness...in the way that some of these liberal white women interact with authority.”

That idea that anyone challenging MAGA government is anti-American—even, perhaps, white women—helps to explain the Department of Justice’s decision not to investigate the shooting as an attack on Good’s civil rights, but instead to consider it as an assault on a federal officer. It is investigating not the shooting but the ties of Good and her widow to local activists. This continued attempt to blame Good for her own murder has led to the resignations of at least six career prosecutors from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Reality is crumbling the MAGA fantasy that their leaders could fix the United States if only they purged it of their opponents and stripped away the laws and governmental systems those opponents have created over decades.

Americans are demonstrating that they do not want to answer to ICE and CBP agents, decked out as if they are a war zone while parading in groups through the suburbs, cosplaying as military heroes. Rather than seeming as if they deserve respect, they look both lawless and foolish. Rather than hiding, Americans are forming squads to alert neighborhoods to their presence, escorting children to and from school, and helping feed neighbors who are afraid to leave their homes.

An Economist/YouGov poll released today shows that only 43% of American adults oppose abolishing ICE, while 46% support abolishing ICE. Popular podcaster Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump in 2024, today likened ICE to the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police.

Yesterday, the state of Illinois sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for “unlawful and dangerous tactics” agents from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) used in what the administration called “Operation Midway Blitz.” Illinois officials noted that federal immigration agents have enforced immigration laws in Illinois for decades without significant effect on public order or public safety. Now things have changed.

Illinois attorney general Kwame Raoul said: “Border Patrol agents and ICE officers have acted as occupiers rather than officers of the law. They randomly, and often violently, question residents. Without warrants or probable cause, they brutally detain citizens and non-citizens alike. They use tear gas and other chemical weapons against bystanders, injuring dozens, including children, the elderly and local police officers.” Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker said their actions have undermined constitutional rights and threatened public safety.

Minnesota and the state’s two largest cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, also sued the Trump administration yesterday. Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison called the federal immigration operation that began on January 6 “a federal invasion.” “These poorly trained, aggressive and armed agents of the federal state have terrorized Minnesota with widespread unlawful conduct.”

“Do the people of Minnesota really want to live in a community in which there are thousands of already convicted murderers, drug dealers and addicts, rapists, violent released and escaped prisoners, dangerous people from foreign mental institutions and insane asylums, and other deadly criminals too dangerous to even mention,” Trump posted on social media, revisiting the fact-free refrains of his rallies. “All the patriots of ICE want to do is remove them from your neighborhood and send them back to the prisons and mental institutions from where they came, most in foreign Countries who illegally entered the USA though [sic] Sleepy Joe Biden’s HORRIBLE Open Border’s Policy. Every place we go, crime comes down. In Chicago, despite a weak and incompetent Governor and Mayor fighting us all the way, a big improvement was made. Thousands of Criminals were removed! Minnesota Democrats love the unrest that anarchists and professional agitators are causing because it gets the spotlight off of the 19 Billion Dollars that was stolen by really bad and deranged people. FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!”

Today, as Trump visited a Michigan Ford plant, 40-year-old T.J. Sabula, a United Auto Workers Local 600 line worker, shouted “pedophile protector” at him in reference to the administration’s cover-up of the Epstein files. Trump responded by giving him the finger and mouthing “f*ck you, f*ck you.”

Sabula told Natalie Allison and Dan Merica of the Washington Post that he has been suspended from work pending an investigation, but that he has “definitely no regrets whatsoever.”

If you look at the video from the guard's cell phone, he falls down when the car hits him and had to be taken to a hospital.

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If you look at the video from the guard's cell phone, he falls down when the car hits him and had to be taken to a hospital.

Not true.

The agent was not in the path of Renee Nicole Good's vehicle when she started moving forward. The agent did not get hit by the vehicle. The agent did not fall down, but rather stepped to the side and fired another two bullets at close distance directly at the victim through the driver's side window of the car.

He then calmly walked over to the vehicle, walked back to his ICE buddies, got into a vehicle, and finally drove away - unassisted.

All of that is well-documented, from multiple camera angles.

House GOP majority 'down to almost nothing' as yet another Republican retires

The GOP's House majority "is down to almost nothing" as surprise retirements, resignations and even deaths continue to mount, according to a new breakdown by the New York Times, with the latest defection announced on Tuesday afternoon.

Republicans began the current House session with a razor-thin majority, and as the year passed since then, the mounting unpopularity of Donald Trump's agenda and the overwhelming chaos of Congress have chipped away at that lead, slowly but surely. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's resignation earlier this month was credited with inspiring several GOP lawmakers to jump ship early or decide not to seek reelection in 2026. The sudden death of Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a California Republican, also rocked the caucus.

According to the NYT's breakdown of the House, the GOP's majority now sits at 218-to-213, a lead that will only shrink in the coming months. A special election in Texas later this month to replace the late Rep. Sylvester Turner is expected to go for the Democrats. With a 218-214, "[House Speaker Mike] Johnson would be able to afford only one defection on a party-line vote and still pass legislation," the Times explained. In April, a special election to fill governor-elect Mikie Sherill's seat is also expected to go for the Democrats again, leaving Johnson with the same narrow margin for party defectors.

In his cell phone video, when she hits him, he falls down and the camera is pointing at the sky. He fired through the front window.

In his cell phone video, when she hits him, he falls down and the camera is pointing at the sky.

He fired through the front window.

He was taken to the hospital.

Being attacked by a motor vehicle is grounds for drawing a weapon in any jurisdiction in America.

Today is officially Ratification Day, the anniversary of the day in 1784 when members of the Confederation Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War and formally recognized the independence of the United States from Great Britain.

It almost didn’t happen.

On September 3, 1783, negotiators John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay for the United States, and David Hartley for Great Britain, had signed the document establishing the United States as an independent and sovereign nation.

British officer Lord Cornwallis’s surrender of 8,000 men to General George Washington on October 19, 1781, following the Battle of Yorktown had made it clear that Britain would have to agree to the independence of its former colonies, but the representatives of those colonies didn’t have a lot to bargain with to shape the peace in their favor. What they did have was the ability to play different European powers off against each other, for the American Revolution, after all, was only a piece of a global conflict that included Great Britain, France, Spain, the Dutch Republic, Jamaica, Gibraltar, and India.

Peace negotiations began in Paris in April 1782 and stretched on through the summer and into the fall. The United States were allied with France, which in 1778, just two years after the Declaration of Independence, had come to the rescue of the fledgling nation in its struggle with Great Britain. Spain and the Dutch Republic sided with the Americans too, hoping they could carve their way out from under King George, thus weakening Great Britain and enabling the European nations to take more global territory.

With all these parties involved, negotiations were slow and sticky, especially as Spain wanted to continue to fight until it could capture Gibraltar from the British. (The Great Siege of Gibraltar, which took more than three and a half years, was actually the largest battle of the war in terms of combatants.) At the same time, French foreign minister Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, was frustrated with the continuing cost of the American war and, in fall 1782, proposed a plan that would offer independence to the United States but offer Spain something it would value as much as Gibraltar: more land in North America. Essentially, the plan would keep the new nation

hemmed in where it already was, dividing the land around it between Britain and Spain.

U.S. negotiator John Jay, who as minister to Spain during the war had been instrumental in convincing Spain to loan money to the United States, immediately turned to the British to negotiate without France and Spain. British prime minister Lord Shelburne saw an opportunity to split the new country off from France and set it up as a trading partner until—as would most likely happen—its radical new government fell apart and Britain could reassert control.

The document was a testament to the negotiating skills of the U.S. team. They got independence, of course, as well as a promise “to forget all past Misunderstandings and Differences that have unhappily interrupted the good Correspondence and Friendship which they mutually wish to restore.” All prisoners of war would be repatriated, no reparations would be demanded, and state legislatures were urged to provide restitution for the confiscated lands of British subjects (a provision that the U.S. government had no power to enforce). The treaty left Britain in possession of Canada but threw out Vergennes’s suggestion and established the western boundary of the new nation at the Mississippi River, although it left the northern and southern boundaries of the new nation vague. It then gave both Americans and British the right to transport goods along that watery highway. It also gave the United States exceedingly valuable fishing rights on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.

But then it said: “The solemn Ratifications of the present Treaty expedited in good & due Form shall be exchanged between the contracting Parties in the Space of Six Months or sooner if possible to be computed from the Day of the Signature of the present Treaty.”

That is, Congress had six months from the September 3 signing to get the treaty across the Atlantic Ocean, ratify the agreement, and get it back across the ocean to England. The voyages alone could take as much as two months each way.

That put pressure on Congress to act quickly, but the Congress that represented the United States in that era was organized under the Articles of Confederation, a weak and loose agreement of “a firm league of friendship” that the thirteen original states adopted on November 15, 1777. That national government had little power, and those lawmakers interested in real power worked to build new governments in their own states.

Congress was supposed to convene at the Maryland State House in November, but it was a terribly cold winter, and delegates trickled in. As late as January 12, only seven of the thirteen states were represented, and Congress needed nine states to ratify the treaty. Finally, a delegate from Connecticut arrived. Then, on January 13, Richard Beresford of South Carolina, who had been ill in Philadelphia, finally made it to the gathering. Congress had a quorum, and it approved the treaty on January 14.

“By the United States in Congress assembled, A PROCLAMATION,” read the document the Congress had printed to spread the news of the treaty. It reproduced the terms of the agreement, then said, “AND we the United States in Congress assembled, having seen and duly considered the definitive articles aforesaid, did…approve, ratify and confirm the same.”

Seeming to recognize the extraordinary significance of their actions, the congressmen continued: “[W]e have thought proper…to notify…all the good citizens of these United States…that reverencing those stipulations entered into on their behalf, under the authority of that federal bond by which their existence as an independent people is bound up together, and is known and acknowledged by the nations of the world, and with that good faith which is every man’s surest guide…they carry into effect the said…articles, and every clause and sentence thereof, sincerely, strictly, and completely.”

The document was signed by the president of the Congress, his excellency Thomas Mifflin, a name few people now remember. For while the long, difficult, and meticulous negotiations and then the fitful energies of Congress had achieved an agreement that the former colonies were now independent, it would not be until the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1788 that they would finally begin the long, difficult journey of becoming a new nation, the United States of America.

Trump called FIFA World Cup 2026 'once in a lifetime opportunity' to showcase the 'greatest of America'.

In his cell phone video, when she hits him, he falls down and the camera is pointing at the sky.

He fired through the front window.

Why are you going with a narrative that is being fed to you instead of simply watching the footage that shows the exact opposite?

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Why are you going with a narrative that is being fed to you instead of simply watching the footage that shows the exact opposite?

that's his *special* debate style...

And just for kicks, let's say that Ms. Good did try to run him over (while steering to the right, away from him). Were that her intention, she failed, and his safety was no longer in danger. They'd noted her license number, her partner was at the scene, they could have easily apprehended her. Instead, the agent kills her on the spot, as she was trying to flee and no longer represented a threat. He shot her in a fit of rage, not in "self-defense".

Oh, there's the hospital thing, too, the report that he was treated for "internal bleeding" and subsequently released.

• Unnamed officials speaking off the record
• No corroborating medical evidence to back this up
• A light bruise is, medically, "internal bleeding" or he might have had an ulcer or other unconnected medical condition
• Serious internal bleeding resulting from a traumatic injury would have would have required immediate surgery...

...unless he was treated by the same surgical team who healed Trump when his ear was hit directly by a high velocity rifle round