The 47th President and the Post-Biden World

But Representative Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) agreed that agents “need body cameras. They need to remove masks. They need proper training. They need to be conducting operations that are consistent with their mission.”

Did it ever occur to him that if these agents didn't behave like Gestapo goons, treated people with respect, and acted in accordance with the U.S. Constitution they might not provoke this level of resistance?

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina — the Senate’s only Black Republican — wrote on X that he hoped the post was fake “because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.”

Late last night, President Donald J. Trump’s social media account posted a video full of debunked claims about the 2020 presidential election that included an image of former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama with their heads attached to the bodies of apes.

Predictably, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt derided the “fake outrage” over the image, but as Tim Grieve of NOTUS explained, when Republican senators Tim Scott of South Carolina, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, and Roger Wicker of Mississippi called out the racism behind the post, the president deleted the video and a White House official said that a “staffer erroneously made the post,” as if somehow a staffer could post random racist videos from the president’s account in the middle of the night. As soon as they could blame the post on a staffer, Republicans rushed to condemn the post’s racism.

Later tonight on Air Force One, Trump said that he had posted it himself. When a reporter asked if he would apologize, he said, “No, I didn’t make a mistake.”

While the post exhibited both the president’s vile racism and his failing impulse control, it also seems to have been an attempt to use racism to break the growing coalition against him. As when they arrested Black journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort as well as Black protesters at a church while leaving white protesters free, Trump and his allies are hammering on racial fault lines. As with the ape trope, the White House went so far as to digitally alter a photograph of church protester and civil rights activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, who appeared to be quite composed during her arrest, to make her look blacker and as if she is sobbing in terror.

“They couldn’t break me,” Armstrong told Nil Köksal of Canadian news interview show As it Happens. “And so they altered an image showing me broken.” “I thought, am I that much of a threat to the world’s greatest superpower?”

The answer is that the growing coalition of Americans from all walks of life standing against MAGA and defending American democracy is the United States of America at its best, and that coalition is absolutely a threat to the cabal trying to seize the assets of the nation for itself. And American history from Bacon’s Rebellion in the late 1600s forward has established a blueprint for breaking democratic coalitions that threaten those in power along racial lines.

Trump’s doubling down on racism reflects Americans’ growing disillusionment with him and his administration.

Bad news about federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol continues. In emails, Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, who was removed from his oversight of Border Patrol operations in Minneapolis after agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens, said he did not report to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Border Patrol’s parent agency. Bovino told a courtroom, under oath, that his boss was Secretary Kristi Noem of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the department in which Customs and Border Protection is housed.

But in an email, Bovino wrote that when acting director of ICE Todd Lyons told Bovino that he, Lyons, was in charge of the surge into Chicago, Bovino disagreed. “Mr. Lyons said he was in charge, and I corrected him saying I reported to Corey Lewandowski. Mr. Lyons seemed intent that CBP conduct targeted operations for at least two weeks before transitioning to full scale immigration enforcement. I declined his suggestion. We ended the conversation shortly thereafter.” Lewandowski is a special government employee who advises Noem and has a history of favoring political theater to project dominance. He has no experience in law enforcement.

A court transcript from Tuesday, February 3, posted online by Minneapolis lawyer Dan Suitor shows that the administration’s sweeps of immigrant communities have stretched the Department of Justice (DOJ) to the breaking point. As Chris Geidner of LawDork explained, U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell dug into why individuals he had ordered released from detention were not being released. “Detention without lawful authority is not just a technical defect,” he said, “it is a constitutional injury that unfairly falls on the heads of those who have done nothing wrong to justify it.” The DOJ, DHS, and ICE “wield extraordinary power,” he said, “and that power has to exist within constitutional limits.”

The government had an obligation to make sure that each arrest it made in its dramatic sweeps complies with the Constitution and with court orders for the release of those wrongly imprisoned, he said. “[W]hat you cannot do is to detain first and then sort out lawful authority later.” One of the government’s lawyers responded that the administration’s surge into Minnesota has “outpaced the system’s capacity to ensure that the Constitution is being complied with.” “Detain first, find authority later, this is exactly their strategy, and we’ve seen this from all of our cases where there’s no warrant, there’s no probable cause.” Authorities simply take people “for how they look or for where they are.”

A Marist poll released yesterday shows that 65% of Americans think that ICE has gone too far in enforcing immigration laws.

Even those who are not focused on that issue have increasing concerns about the Trump administration’s policies.

Measles is back in the United States with the biggest outbreak the U.S. has seen in decades. Now news has broken that Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears to have lied in his Senate confirmation hearings when he said that a trip he took to Samoa in 2019 had “nothing to do with vaccines.”

The Guardian and the Associated Press obtained emails from U.S. Embassy and United Nations staff saying that Kennedy was indeed visiting Samoa to spread his skepticism of vaccines. One email read: “The real reason Kennedy is coming is to raise awareness about vaccinations, more specifically some of the health concerns associated with vaccinating (from his point of view).” After his visit, antivaccine activists gained ground, and vaccination rates dropped. A subsequent measles outbreak sickened thousands of people and killed 83, most of whom were children under the age of five.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) told The Guardian: “Lying to Congress about his role in the deadly measles outbreak in Samoa only underscores the danger he now poses to families across America. He and his allies will be held responsible.”

The sprawling web being exposed by the Epstein files has ensnared not just Trump, but other members of his administration as well. Tonight, Daniel Ruetenik and Graham Kates of CBS News reported that U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick was in business with the convicted sex offender as recently as 2014. Lutnick previously claimed he had cut ties with Epstein in 2005 after touring his New York mansion, saying, “I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.”

Mike Stunson of Forbes reported today that the U.S. lost 108,435 jobs in January in the biggest cuts since January 2009 during the Great Recession. Despite Trump’s insistence that he would bring back masculine jobs like manufacturing, in 2025 the U.S. lost about 68,000 manufacturing jobs.

On Tuesday, February 3, a bipartisan group of 27 former Agriculture Department officials and leaders from farm and commodity groups wrote to the leaders of the agriculture committees of both chambers with a dire warning about “the damage that is being done to American farmers.”

Linda Qiu of the New York Times highlighted the letter, which noted that “just a few years ago,” farm export surpluses and farm incomes were at record highs. This year, “[f]armer bankruptcies have doubled, barely half of all farms will be profitable this year, and the U.S. is running a historic agriculture trade deficit.” The authors blamed this crisis on the fact that “the current Administration’s actions, along with Congressional inaction, have increased costs for farm inputs, disrupted overseas and domestic markets, denied agriculture its reliable labor pool, and defunded critical ag[ricultural] research and staffing.”

They warned of “a widespread collapse of American agriculture and our rural communities.” They noted that administration cuts to healthcare will add to the decimation of rural communities, wiping out a way of life. Rural voters tend to be an important part of Trump’s base.

Apparently concerned that even racism won’t help keep Republicans in office, Trump is trying to rig the system.

Yesterday the Office of Personnel Management issued a final rule to strip civil service protections from about 50,000 federal employees, enabling the administration to replace nonpartisan civil servants hired for their skills with loyalists. Trump tried to do this at the end of his first term, but his successor, President Joe Biden, reversed the plan immediately upon taking office. The United States has had a nonpartisan civil service since 1883. When the government proposed the reintroduction of the political system the U.S. had before then, 94% of 40,000 public comments opposed the change. Only 5% supported it.

The Republicans are also trying to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which would require a document proving citizenship in order to register to vote and in order to vote. Only Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, and Washington have “enhanced” driver’s licenses that would meet the requirement. In all other states, voters would need either a passport or a birth certificate.

Half of Americans don’t have a passport, others don’t have their birth certificates, and the names of married women who took their husband’s last name and transgender Americans would not match their birth certificates. All of these groups tend to vote for Democrats. The bill also calls for state officials to purge voter rolls. The Brennan Center for Justice found that if the measure passes, about 21 million Americans could lose their votes.

Trump is also trying to guarantee that Americans will remember him differently than they perceive him now. Last fall he withheld money for the $16 billion Gateway tunnel under the Hudson River, connecting New York and New Jersey. This major infrastructure project is important to the entire region. Jonathan Karl of ABC followed up on a story broken by Punchbowl News yesterday, explaining today that Trump told Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) last month that he would release the appropriated money if Schumer agreed to rename Penn Station in New York City and Dulles Airport outside Washington, D.C., after him.

Schumer refused, after which Trump’s social media account accused Schumer of “holding up” the project.

But House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), at least, appears to think the American people have moved too far from Trump for him to recover their loyalty. Now, rather than dividing Americans, Trump’s outrageous behavior is uniting Americans against him. Jeffries leaned into that anger in his own video responding to Trump’s vile image of the Obamas.

“This disgusting video, posted by the so-called president, was done intentionally. F*ck Donald Trump and his vile, racist, and malignant behavior. This guy is an unhinged bottom feeder. President Obama and Michelle Obama are brilliant, caring, and patriotic Americans. They represent the best of this country. It’s time for John Thune, Mike Johnson, and Republicans to denounce this serial fraudster, who’s sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue pretending to be the president of the United States.”

A federal judge on Friday ruled that the U.S. Department of Energy violated federal law when it formed a secretive group of researchers to produce a report downplaying the effects of climate change.

The “Climate Working Group” was composed of five scientists hand-picked by Energy Secretary Chris Wright shortly after the White House dismissed more than 400 scientists working on the sixth National Climate Assessment. The group’s July report, “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate,” breaks from broad scientific consensus and questions the severity of global warming.

But Judge William G. Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts said the group failed to meet the requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, a 1972 law governing federal advisory groups that requires for public meetings, open records and other acts of transparency. Records released under the judge’s orders indicate that the group met in secret at least 18 times.

“These violations are now established as a matter of law,” Young wrote in his 4-page decision.

The Energy Department had argued that the Climate Working Group was not subject to those requirements because it was “assembled to exchange facts or information with a Federal official.” It also argued that the claims were moot because the group was disbanded shortly after the lawsuit was filed.

The judge disagreed, noting that the group provided policy advice and recommendations to the Department of Energy. The five members of the group are John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Koonin, Ross McKitrick and Roy Spencer, scientists and researchers who question prevailing climate science and policy.

Among its conclusions, the July report from the group maintains that carbon dioxide-induced global warming “might be less damaging economically than commonly believed,” and that “aggressive mitigation policies” — such as those designed to curb the use of fossil fuels — “could prove more detrimental than beneficial.”

The report was widely condemned, including by more than 85 U.S. scientists and experts who published a withering 459-page document denouncing it as biased, error-ridden and unfit for guiding policy. The lawsuit was brought by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists, a national group of about 250 scientists and experts.

“The court confirmed today that the process for this sham report, which was conducted in secret by five known climate contrarians, violated the law,” Gretchen Goldman, president and chief executive of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement. “The public deserves transparent climate policy decisions rooted in the best available science advice from credible experts.”

In a statement provided to The Times, the Energy Department said it was pleased that the judge had denied a request that would have prevented the agency from using the report or keeping it online.

“The activists behind this case have long misrepresented not just the actual state of climate science, but also the so-called scientific consensus,” said department spokesman Ben Dietderich. “They have likewise sought to silence scientists who have merely pointed out — as the Climate Working Group did in its report — that climate science is far from settled.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also leaned on the report in its controversial proposal to repeal the endangerment finding, a landmark 2009 determination affirming that planet-warming greenhouse gases pose a threat to human health and the environment. The endangerment finding forms the foundation of much of U.S. climate policy.

Erin Murphy, senior attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund, said in light of Friday’s decision that the EPA “must immediately withdraw its fundamentally unlawful and forever tainted proposal to repeal the endangerment finding, which would impose high costs on the American people who are already experiencing the impacts of pollution-fueled fires, flooding, higher insurance costs, and rising energy costs.”

The lawsuit named the Environmental Protection Agency as a defendant. However, the judge on Friday dismissed the EPA from the suit, writing that he had found “no persuasive evidence” that the agency violated the advisory committee law.

Yesterday two right-wing circuit judges signed off on the Trump administration’s new mass detention policy: the extraordinary assertion that vast numbers of noncitizens throughout the country can be arrested and held in detention centers without the right to release until they are deported.

As Steve Vladeck explained in December in One First, this new policy dramatically expanded the number of immigrants suddenly subject to arrest and long-term detention. U.S. judges overwhelmingly rejected the new policy; Vladeck quoted Politico’s Kyle Cheney, who reported that in more than 700 cases, at least 225 judges appointed by all modern presidents—including 23 appointed by Trump—have ruled that the new policy likely violates both the law and the right to due process.

But the administration handpicked a right-wing circuit to rule on the policy, and last night, as Vladeck explained today in One First, Judge Edith Jones and Judge Kyle Duncan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit okayed the Trump administration’s new rule denying detained immigrants the right to release on bond. That includes, as Vladeck wrote, “millions of non-citizens who have been here for generations; who have never committed a crime; and who pose neither a risk of flight nor any threat to public safety.” It is likely the plaintiffs will appeal the decision.

This policy has dramatically increased detention of immigrants. Before it, the U.S. held about 40,000 people on any given day. Now, according to Laura Strickler and Julia Ainsley of NBC News, the United States is currently holding more than 70,000 immigrants in 224 facilities across the nation, 104 more facilities than it had before Trump took office. Those detainees include children.

Private prison companies under contract with the U.S. government operate these detention facilities, including the $1.2 billion Camp East Montana located at Fort Bliss Army base in Texas, where a medical examiner recently ruled the death of detainee Geraldo Lunas Campos a homicide. The cause of the January death of Victor Manuel Díaz there remains unclear, although officials claim it was “presumed suicide.” A third man, Francisco Gaspar Andrés, died in December after being transported from the camp to an El Paso hospital for treatment for a serious medical condition.

On January 20, Judd Legum of Popular Information reported that ICE stopped paying third-party providers for medical care for detainees on October 3, 2025, and that it would not start even to process claims again until at least April 30, 2026. It told medical providers to “hold all claims submissions” until then. A source in the administration told Legum that some medical providers are now denying detainees medical care.

From 2002 to 2023, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) helped to make sure detainees had medical care if an ICE facility couldn’t provide it, with ICE paying the VA for the coverage. But in 2023, Alabama Republican senator Tommy Tuberville lied that President Joe Biden was “robbing veterans to pay off illegals,” and on September 30, 2025, a small right-wing nonprofit sued to get documents from the Trump administration about the VA’s role in detainee care. On October 3, Legum discovered, “the VA ‘abruptly and instantly terminated’ its agreement with ICE,” leaving it with no way to provide prescribed medication or access off-site care.

According to Legum, ICE said it could not provide “dialysis, prenatal care, oncology, [and] chemotherapy.” ICE officials described the loss of care as an “absolute emergency” that needed an immediate solution to “prevent any further medical complications or loss of life.” But it did not get solved.

Douglas MacMillan, Samuel Oakford, N. Kirkpatrick, and Aaron Schaffer of the Washington Post reported that according to ICE’s own oversight unit, Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss, Texas, has violated at least 60 federal standards for immigrant detention. The contract for the $1.24 billion project was awarded to a small business that operates out of a residential address and has, as Lyndon German of VPM News reported, “little to no publicly available record of managing immigration facilities.”

Last April, at the Border Security Expo in Phoenix, Arizona, acting director of ICE Todd Lyons told attendees: “We need to get better at treating this like a business.” He called for a deportation process “like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.” In the Republicans’ July 2025 budget reconciliation bill—which they call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—they put $45 billion into additional funding for ICE detention.

In November and December, NBC News and Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration was considering “mega centers” for detaining people. Fola Akinnibi, Sophie Alexander, Alicia A. Caldwell, and Rachel Adams-Heard of Bloomberg reported that in November, ICE issued a $29.9 million contract—just below the threshold of $30 million that would require open bidding—to KpbServices LLC for “due diligence services and concept design for processing centers and mega centers throughout the United States.”

In December, Douglas MacMillan and Jonathan O’Connell of the Washington Post reported that the administration was working to put in place a national detention system that would book newly arrested detainees into processing sites before sending them to one of seven warehouses that would hold 5,000 to 10,000 people each. MacMillan and O’Connell reported that “sixteen smaller warehouses would hold up to 1,500 people each.” From there, people would be deported.

“These will not be warehouses—they will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards,” a DHS spokesperson wrote to Angela Kocherga and Dianne Solis of KERA News in Texas. “It should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and is actively working to expand detention space.”

Strickler and Ainsley reported Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security has already secured at least three facilities. It paid $87.4 million for one outside Philadelphia and $37 million for another outside San Antonio, a warehouse of nearly 640,000 square feet. ICE bought a building the size of seven football fields in Surprise, Arizona, outside Phoenix, for $70 million.

But there is increasing criticism of the new warehouses as Americans mobilize against the violence and abuse of ICE and Border Patrol.

Officials from Surprise answered concerns about the federal facility with a statement saying: “The City was not aware that there were efforts underway to purchase the building, was not notified of the transaction by any of the parties involved and has not been contacted by DHS or any federal agency about the intended use of the building. It’s important to note, Federal projects are not subject to local regulations, such as zoning.”

On Tuesday, February 3, more than a thousand people turned out for the Surprise City Council meeting to oppose the establishment of the federal detention center. One of the speakers reminded the council of Ohrdruf, the first Nazi camp liberated by U.S. troops, on April 4, 1945. He said:

“The U.S. Army brought the leading citizens of Ohrdruf to tour the facility, which turned out to be part of the Buchenwald network of concentration camps. A U.S. Army colonel told the German civilians who viewed the scenes without muttering a word that they were to blame. One of the Germans replied that what happened in the camp was ‘done by a few people,’ and ‘you cannot blame us all.’ And the American, who could have been any one of our grandfathers, said: ‘This was done by those that the German people chose to lead them, and all are responsible.’

“The morning after the tour, the mayor of Ohrdruf killed himself. And maybe he did not know the full extent of the outrages that were committed in his community, but he knew enough. And we don’t know exactly how ICE will use this warehouse. But we know enough. I ask you to consider what the mayor of Ohrdruf might have thought before he died. Maybe he felt like a victim. He might have thought, ‘How is this my fault? I had no jurisdiction over this.’ Maybe he would have said, ‘This site was not subject to local zoning, what could I do?’ But I think, when he reflected on the suffering that occurred at this camp, just outside of town, that those words would have sounded hollow even to him. Because in his heart he knew, as we do, that we are all responsible for what happens in our community.”