The Senate on Thursday passed three appropriations bills in a largely bipartisan 82-15 vote. The three bills, grouped into a minibus, will fund the Departments of Energy, Commerce, Interior and Justice, the EPA, water programs and federal science initiatives through the end of the current fiscal year.
Continue reading “Senate Takes Big Step Toward Funding Gov’t as Some Dems Demand ICE Constraints”The FBI Freeze-out in Minnesota Is a Bigger Deal Than You Think
You’ve probably seen that the FBI asserted exclusive control over the investigation into the death of Renee Good. This is a bigger deal than I think most people think. If I understand correctly, since this case involved federal officers and a crime scene controlled by federal officers the practicalities of the situation are relatively straightforward. The feds collected the evidence. The shooter is a federal agent. They can say, don’t talk to the locals. And clearly the shooter is happy to oblige. So in this particular case the nature of the incident means the feds have all the stuff and they simply don’t share it. As far as I know the FBI has not claimed any ability to overrule or remove the case from local authority. They’re just making bogus claims about jurisdiction and refusing to share the evidence. And in this case, especially with an increasingly obedient federal judiciary, possession is 9/10s of the law.
Continue reading “The FBI Freeze-out in Minnesota Is a Bigger Deal Than You Think”Trump Threatened to Invoke the Insurrection Act — He’ll Need an Insurrection First
The Trump administration has flooded Minneapolis with thousands of immigration enforcement officials who have killed, shot and brutalized its inhabitants.
Protests have ramped up accordingly. Videos show ICE officers using force against the protesters, in some cases reportedly taunting them with ICE officer Jonathan Ross’ killing of U.S. citizen Renee Good last week. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) has put the National Guard on standby.
And Thursday morning, President Trump posted on Truth Social: “If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT…”
Continue reading “Trump Threatened to Invoke the Insurrection Act — He’ll Need an Insurrection First”Fed Judges Rejects GOP Claim That California Maps Were Racially Gerrymandered After SCOTUS Texas Ruling
The Trump administration’s pressure campaign to get red states across the country to engage in midcycle redistricting has hit another roadblock.
A panel of federal judges rejected a Trump DOJ and California Republican Party request to block California’s new map on Wednesday — once again calling into question the efficacy of the Trump administration’s larger gerrymandering crusade. And although Republicans may appeal, experts tell TPM that given the precedent of a recent Supreme Court ruling upholding Texas’ gerrymandered map, it would be unusual for the Supreme Court to step in.
In a 2-1 ruling on Wednesday, a panel of federal judges ruled in favor of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and rejected Republicans’ argument that the maps were racially gerrymandered, specifically to favor Latino voters.
“We find that Challengers have failed to show that racial gerrymandering occurred, and we conclude that there is no basis for issuing a preliminary injunction,” Judge Josephine Staton, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote.
“Having carefully reviewed and weighed the relevant evidence, we find that the evidence presented reflects that Proposition 50 was exactly what it was billed as: a political gerrymander designed to flip five Republican-held seats to the Democrats,” Staton continued.
In response to Republicans’ passage of a new gerrymandered map in Texas last year, Newsom worked with Democratic state lawmakers to spearhead a voter referendum known as Prop 50, allowing lawmakers to temporarily bypass the state’s independent map-drawing commission and approve new congressional district lines for several Republican-dominated and swing districts in the state.
Voters approved Prop 50 this past November, paving the way for new congressional maps that will likely flip five Republican-held seats in California for Democrats in the U.S. House — offsetting the impact of Texas’ maps that are expected to flip five Democratic seats for Republicans.
Wednesday’s ruling comes against the backdrop of a recent Supreme Court ruling that approved the use of a gerrymandered map in Texas for the midterm elections.
Wednesday’s ruling explicitly mentioned that California’s map is similar to Texas’ in that both are partisan, but not racially gerrymandered. That earlier Texas ruling seems to have laid the groundwork for Wednesday’s ruling on California’s map.
Last month, the Supreme Court put on hold a lower court ruling that had initially blocked Texas’ gerrymandered maps from being used in the midterms, finding instead that the District Court’s decision was made too close to the midterm elections. The Supreme Court also ruled that Texas’ map was indeed partisan, but not racially gerrymandered. The court found that a partisan motivation for the new congressional maps was acceptable, but a racial motivation for the map would violate the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
In a concurring opinion on the Texas map, Justice Sam Alito, who was joined by Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, referenced California specifically, writing that “the impetus for the adoption map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple.”
Given this context, it is unlikely that the Supreme Court would step in and rule that California’s process was different than Texas’, experts say.
“The facts on the ground for the plaintiffs in Texas were always much stronger. And SCOTUS said there, despite an extraordinarily thorough opinion from the trial court, ‘not strong enough,’” Justin Levitt, professor of law at Loyola Marymount University, told TPM. “It’s not really credible for the Court to say that a much weaker set of facts in California are strong enough.”
Podcast Scheduling Note
Because of some family travel I’m doing, we’ve rescheduled this week’s podcast til tomorrow, Friday. So it should be in your podcast feeds sometime Friday afternoon.
Mahmoud Khalil Can Be Arrested Again, Appeals Court Rules
A 2-1 conservative majority on a federal appeals panel on Thursday reversed a ruling that had blocked federal officers from arresting Mahmoud Khalil, handing the Trump administration a win in its effort to crack down on and in some cases remove pro-Palestinian voices from the country.
The ruling is unlikely to take immediate effect, as attorneys for Khalil are expected to ask a full session of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear the case. But it marks a defeat for the pro-Palestine activist, whose nighttime detention by ICE agents last year over his pro-Palestine advocacy was an early, high-profile example of the administration’s swift crackdown on those it regards as political opponents.
Continue reading “Mahmoud Khalil Can Be Arrested Again, Appeals Court Rules”What Do Elected Democrats Actually Plan to Do About ICE?
This story was originally reported by Marissa Martinez of The 19th. Meet Marissa and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.
A week after an agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fatally shot a Minneapolis woman, half of American women are in favor of abolishing the law enforcement agency altogether, according to one new poll.
Dismantling ICE was a policy embraced by a number of Democratic politicians under President Donald Trump’s first administration, particularly the progressive Squad made up largely of women of color legislators. But whether to double down on a renewed push to abolish the agency is a divisive issue within the party.
Continue reading “What Do Elected Democrats Actually Plan to Do About ICE?”With Blood on His Hands, Trump Is Eager To Invoke Insurrection Act
Programming Note
We’re hosting our first Morning Memo Live event on Jan. 29 in Washington, D.C. Find details and tickets here — and TPM members should look out for a special discount code in your inboxes today.
Another Federal Shooting in Minneapolis
I was in the midst of preparing a Morning Memo arguing that Minneapolis is shaping up to be the catalyzing moment that President Trump was looking for to justify doing what he has wanted to do since his first term: invoke the Insurrection Act … when he posted exactly that to Truth Social:
For months, Trump has been trying to instigate civil unrest that would provide the pretext for a U.S. military crackdown on protestors by provoking clashes with federal agents first in Los Angeles, then in Portland, and finally in Chicago. I’ve been puzzling over why he may succeed in Minneapolis when he failed elsewhere, but I don’t think it has much to do with Minnesotans or the elected Democrats in the blue state, but rather with the escalating use of violence that culminated with the shooting of U.S. citizen Renee Good which, critically, was captured on video from multiple angles.
That eruption of violence, while spontaneous, was an entirely foreseeable result of a mass deportation policy built on provocation, retribution against blue states, a rotten policing culture, inadequate training of new agents, machismo, and swaggering belligerence operating under the color of law.
The bellicosity of thousands of masked armed agents swarming the streets of Minneapolis has been amplified, echoed, and reinforced by the highest officials in the land, including President Trump, rather than tamped down.
Last night, in a startlingly provocative social media post after another shooting involving a federal agent, deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche called the protests there an “insurrection,” baselessly accused Minnesota elected Democratic leaders of “terrorism” for “encouraging violence against law enforcement,” and threatened to “take whatever means necessary” to stop them. Not whatever legal means or whatever constitutional means or whatever prosecutorial means but a bare “whatever means.” Whatever that means.
Blanche’s Rambo rhetoric came the same evening that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz gave a brief six-minute televised address to the state. “This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government,” Walz said.
In a remarkably stark assessment of the clash between a blue state and the Trump administration, Walz warned the people of Minnesota: “Donald Trump wants this chaos. He wants confusion. And, yes, he wants more violence on our streets. We cannot give him what he wants. We can, we must, protest loudly, urgently, but also peacefully. … We cannot and will not let violence prevail.”
The latest rhetorical clash came on an evening when a federal agent in Minneapolis shot an undocumented Venezuelan man in the leg. Both men were hospitalized after the incident. According to official account from the Department Homeland Security — which has been notoriously unreliable throughout the nationwide mass deportation operation — the agent was chasing the man after he fled a traffic stop and crashed his vehicle:
The law enforcement officer caught up to the subject on foot and attempted to apprehend him when the subject began to resist and violently assault the officer. While the subject and law enforcement were in a struggle on the ground, two subjects came out of a nearby apartment and also attacked the law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and broom handle.
As the officer was being ambushed and attacked by the two individuals, the original subject got loose and began striking the officer with a shovel or broom stick.
Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired a defensive shot to defend his life. The initial subject was hit in the leg.
Like Blanche, the DHS statement also accused Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey of “actively encouraging an organized resistance to ICE and federal law enforcement officers.”
Protests erupted after the latest shooting incident, and protestors clashed with state and federal law enforcement. “For several hours Wednesday evening, law enforcement and about 200 demonstrators confronted each other in the street, with chemical irritants and flash bangs being deployed and some protesters vandalizing vehicles at the end of the night,” the Star Tribune reported.
We are edging closer to crossing that fateful line when the military is called to put down civil unrest that has not just been provoked but sought after by a president eager to use retributive violence against his political foes while DHS puts out snuff videos that are, as Greg Sargent put it, “consciously depicting the unleashing of ICE on wicked, urban, cosmopolitan, non-MAGA America as a sustained act of cleansing, restorative violence.”
Chart of the Day
The Latest on the Renee Good Shooting
- Mary Moriarty, the top prosecutor in Minneapolis, said that lack of access to the federal investigation was “not a complete barrier” to the prosecution of the ICE agent on state charges for the shooting of Renee Good.
- The six federal prosecutors in the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office who resigned rather than investigate the political activities of Good’s widow have been deemed “fired” by at the direction of Attorney General Pam Bondi, the NYT reports: “That move cut off pay and benefits they would otherwise have received for weeks after having resigned.”
Mass Deportation Watch
- Minnesota Public Radio: Minnesotans describe their encounters with ICE, being detained: ‘I was flooded with fear’
- NYT: How ICE Crackdowns Set Off a Resistance in American Cities
- WaPo: ICE and activists clash over doxing and privacy, in court and streets
- TPM’s Kate Riga: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson takes a swipe at “Kavanaugh stops” in unrelated dissent
- AP: US apologizes for mistake in deporting 19-year-old Babson College freshman Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, but defends her removal.
Quote of the Day
“For those who were there, imagine the flood in New Orleans but instead of federal neglect it’s federal violence. Again and again. And wracked with rage and sadness, people are showing up for each other, again and again.”–Minnesota author Michael Tisserand, who wrote a book about being displaced from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, on the federal occupation of his home state
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
The Landmines Under the Water
For a few hours, we didn’t know why several top prosecutors, including the recent acting head of the office, Joe Thompson, resigned from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota in the wake of the shooting of Renee Good. As David Kurtz explains here, it appears to have been a reaction to freezing local authorities out of the investigation into Good’s death combined with an order to open a criminal investigation into the activism of Good’s widow, Rebecca Good. So we know what this was about, or we’re as close as we’re going to get to knowing. But often in these cases, we don’t ever find out the full picture. Or we don’t find out precisely why the person resigned. I’ve been thinking about this. And the whole terrain is similar to the gravitation surrounding other big scandals. At the beginning, at least, you can’t really see what’s at the center of the scandal, but you can see the force of the gravity around it. There’s something similar to these firings
Continue reading “The Landmines Under the Water”Trump Yells and Jeanine Pirro Listens
The DC US Attorney’s Office Takes Up Trump Retribution
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that when a group of U.S. attorneys gathered at the White House last week for an event, President Trump berated the group for being “weak” and not “moving fast enough to prosecute his favored targets,” in WSJ’s words. Trump’s outburst, during which he also called the group of U.S. attorneys ineffective, happened during a photo shoot, according to the Journal. He reportedly told the group gathered that they weren’t doing enough to help Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche do their work. It’s been clear for some time that Trump believes DOJ leadership’s job is to serve as his personal lawyers and, as such, to enact his own personal retribution.
Continue reading “Trump Yells and Jeanine Pirro Listens”