This story is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
After 9/11, fear changed the U.S. That fear was exploited by our government, fostering a culture of complacency and turning Americans against one another in pursuit of “securing the homeland.” As a first-generation Iraqi American, I understand that on a deeply personal level.
On September 11, 2001, I was a senior in high school. What happened that day set off a chain of events that uprooted my sense of belonging in this country. Quickly, our society incubated an ugly and pervasive reward system for stoking fear of the “other.” As Muslims and people of color were targeted indiscriminately under the Patriot Act, I was forced to reckon with the reality that we had become the enemy. Even if you were born long after 9/11, it’s hard to miss the ways that Islamophobia and xenophobia have shaped national policymaking.
In the weeks after that fateful day, we ceded ground on the constitutional rights that protected all of us. That oft-exploited fear and mistrust of those of us who have been broadly cast as “foreigners” — even when we were born in America or are naturalized citizens — led us exactly to where we are today, with state-sanctioned violence being perpetrated en masse against immigrants and citizens alike. The violence being wielded against our neighbors and in our streets is born out of a lasting vestige of our nation’s post-9/11 pandemonium: the Department of Homeland Security.
An election denier and lawyer who was involved in lawsuits brought by Trump allies related to the 2020 election, worked closely with conspiracy theorists like Mike Lindell and Kari Lake and who spoke to Trump multiple times on Jan. 6 2021 is at the center of the FBI’s criminal investigation into the 2020 election results in Fulton County, Georgia.
The Trump White House on Monday evening sent a counterproposal to Democrats in response to the sticking points congressional Democrats laid out last week in a public letter and legislative text, outlining their priorities for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reforms in the wake of two recent killings of U.S. citizens by ICE agents.
One issue we’ve discussed again and again during the Trump years is the purported belief as a form of performative aggression. It’s something essential to the Trumpian/MAGA world. You believe things that are, in factual terms, obviously absurd. But they’re also convenient. They create permission structures for all sorts of things they already want to do. To an important degree the absurdity of the professed belief is part of the attraction, especially since aggression is so deeply embedded in the professed belief. This issue comes up in a less extreme, though still similar, way in the various ways Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Trump administration try to justify ICE’s behavior.
Let’s start with masking.
We know their basic argument. There are legions of anti-ICE activists. If ICE agents don’t obscure their faces, they risk being “doxxed.” Set aside whether this is a justification for masking. This doesn’t seem crazy on its face. Demanding legal accountability for ICE agents is near the top of all anti-ICE activism. And the more radical activists can be quite aggressive in their tactics. So could this have happened? Of course. But what journalist Philip Bump was able to determine is that “doxxing,” the notional rationale for ICE masking has in fact never happened. Not once. It’s important to note what definition we’re using here. As Bump puts it, “At no point in time has an officer been seen conducting his work, identified and subsequently attacked. While there have been threats issued against agents and incidents of off-duty harassment, there are no known incidents in which an officer was assaulted while off-duty because he was identified as a federal agent.”
In a mostly soporific Tuesday House Homeland Committee hearing called amid the widespread public outcry over Customs and Border Protection agents’ killing of Alex Pretti, Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) managed to set the whole room astir.
She asked acting ICE Chief Todd Lyons whether he’s religious, reacting with surprise when he responded that he is.
“How do you think Judgment Day will work for you, with so much blood on your hands?” she asked.
Tuesday’s hearing is one of the first chances congressional Republicans will have to back up their tweets and statements expressing discomfort with agents’ highly publicized killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
House Republicans are hardly united in those disavowals, and some of the President’s most steadfast supporters will certainly express full-throated support of the administration’s actions. But House Homeland Security chair Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) called the hearing amid the outpouring of disgust after the Pretti killing, suggesting that at least some members might break with the party line.
Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow are set to testify.
On Monday, toward the end of another court hearing in the interminable Alien Enemies Act case, Trump DOJ lawyer Tiberius Davis haltingly issued a new threat to the Venezuelan nationals who were originally deported to El Salvador’s brutal CECOT prison: If you try to vindicate your due process rights, we might send you back to CECOT again or to another third country.
The warning came as U.S. District Judge James Boasberg considers what remedies are available to give the Venezuelans the due process they were denied when they were labeled Tren de Aragua gang members and rushed out of the country without notice or hearing in March 2025.
Among the remedies Boasberg is considering to allow the men a chance to remove the stain of being labeled alien enemies are (i) remote hearings from Venezuela or from third countries; or (ii) ordering the Trump administration to facilitate the former detainees’ return to the United States.
The ACLU’s Lee Gelernt, who represents the former detainees as a class, conceded that if any of the men do return they would probably be detained and put into immigration proceedings, but they could then pursue asylum claims while also vindicating their due process rights in the AEA case. The worst case scenario, Gelernt surmised, was they would be deported back to Venezuela but probably not to the most extreme of the far-flung third countries to which the administration has sent immigrants.
In response, Davis at first seemed to almost be quibbling with Gelernt, saying it’s not a “major point,” but then warning that even if the men are in asylum proceedings they can still be sent to third countries and that a return to CECOT was not out of the question. Davis then seemed to try to soften the threat by noting that the one-year agreement the United States struck with El Salvador last March soon lapses and that no one has been sent to CECOT from the U.S. since then.
Still, the Trump administration’s position is that, of the range of possible remedies, facilitating the men’s return is the “least problematic,” Davis said, especially compared to remote hearings from third countries. But that is only if the administration is forced to provide any remedies at all, which it continues to insist is beyond Boasberg’s power to order.
Boasberg, who said he expects to rule on remedies by next week, was sardonic about whatever he does being immediately appealed by DOJ, which came into the hearing threatening exactly that. “I’m not going to rule today,” Boasberg said. “They may appeal anyway today because that seems to be the MO in this case.”
Must Read
Politico’s Kyle Cheney documents the Trump administration’s pattern of defying court orders, spiriting immigrants out of jurisdictions, and giving bad or incomplete information to judges in hundreds of newly filed habeas cases.
Mass Deportation Watch
An immigration court blocked the deportation of Tufts student Rumeysa Öztürk, the Turkish national who was swiped off a city street by masked federal agents in a operation caught on video, after finding last month that DHS had not proved she should be removed.
The Trump administration’s immigration courts suddenly began fast-tracking dozens of cases by Somalis seeking asylum in what their lawyers fear is a coordinated effort to deny them asylum and deport them without due process, NPR reports.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed President Trump to proceed with ending deportation protections for more than 60,000 migrants from Nepal, Honduras and Nicaragua, when it stayed a lower court ruling that had blocked the deportations.
So Effing Gross
It’s tougher for Republicans to rile their base about the southern border when they control the White House, so Texas Republicans have reverted to Islamophobia as their xenophobia of choice for the midterm elections, the NYT reports in a story headlined with exceptional clarity: Without a Border ‘Invasion,’ Texas G.O.P. Turns to an Old Enemy, Islam
Jan. 6 Lives On, Part 1
In a series of moves, the Trump DOJ began abandoning the prosecution of Steve Bannon, who was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify to the House Jan. 6 committee.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche called the House’s subpoena of Bannon “improper.”
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court, where Bannon’s appeal of his conviction was pending, that the Trump administration had determined “in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice.”
D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro moved to dismiss the case in federal district court.
All of these moves are, as NBC News notes, “largely symbolic” since Bannon already served four months in prison for his conviction.
Jan. 6 Lives On, Part II
President Donald Trump has directed U.S. spy agencies to share sensitive intelligence about the 2020 election with his former campaign lawyer, Kurt Olsen, who is known for pushing debunked theories of electoral fraud and is now a temporary government employee in the White House, Politico reports.
Jan. 6 Lives On, Part III
A state judge in Georgia made clear his frustrations with the FBI’s seizure last week of Fulton County’s 2020 voting records, the NYT reports. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert C.I. McBurney, who has been presiding for years over litigation brought by Trump allies pushing the Big Lie, expressed his frustration with asides in rulings Monday:
“We are left to hope that the bureau and the Department of Justice handle the ballots and related records with the care required to preserve and protect their integrity.”
The ballots “were, until recently, here in Fulton County. Now, however, they are somewhere else. Where exactly the court cannot say.”
Great Point
Adam Klasfeld turns an arched eyebrow to the coverage of the Big Lie video that President Trump shared last week which ended with a depiction of the Obamas as apes:
Coverage of the video focused on the overt racism of the video’s final moments, either ignoring the election lies that preceded the ending or treating it as an unrelated detail.
That ignores crucial context: Racism was always the lifeblood of Trump’s Big Lie.
Trump to DOJ: More Politicization NOW!
With President Trump complaining about a lack of vindictive prosecutions, DOJ leaders are pressuring the Weaponization Working Group “to deliver results in the coming weeks,” including producing its first report, NBC News reports.
38th Lawless Boat Strike
Two people were killed and a lone survivor left to flounder in the 38th unlawful U.S. attack on an alleged drug-smuggling boat. After the latest attack, in the eastern Pacific, the U.S. military said it summoned the Coast Guard to begin search-and-rescue operations for the survivor. It’s unclear whether post-strike search-and-rescue operations are viable at the distances and in the time frames involved in that expanse of ocean.
The Retribution: Blue States Edition
In another lawless swipe at blue states, the Trump HHS is planning to withhold from four blue states — California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota — some $600 million in federal grants already approved by Congress for public health programs, including HIV and STI prevention.
RIP Endangerment Finding
In the culmination of a years-long climate deregulation campaign, the Trump administration is poised this week to reverse the EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding that is the foundation for the federal regulation of greenhouse gases.
What New Madness Is This?
Spanning the Detroit River, the Gordie Howe International Bridge will connect southern Detroit, Michigan, USA and Windsor, Ontario, Canada. (Photo by Dominic Gwinn / Middle East Images via AFP) (Photo by DOMINIC GWINN/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
In another bullying move against Canada, President Trump made wild threats on social media to bar the opening of the soon-to-be-completed Gordie Howe International Bridge connecting Detroit and Windsor, Canada.
In a mad king diatribe, Trump said: “I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve.”
The NYT story on the threats contains this choice aside:
The nearby Ambassador Bridge, one of the busiest border crossings on the continent, has been privately owned for decades by a Detroit trucking industry billionaire and his family, the Morouns. The family had previously called on Mr. Trump to halt the construction of the Gordie Howe bridge — which would, once opened, compete for the more than $300 million in daily cross-border trade over the Ambassador Bridge.
On social media, Trump took things a step further, with an extortion threat. Trump’s price for opening the Canadian-built-and-paid-for bridge: The U.S. “should own, perhaps, at least one half of this asset.”
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A mere fraction — just 14 percent — of the immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first year of President Trump’s mass deportation effort had previously been convicted of or charged with violent criminal offenses, CBS News reported Monday, citing a Department of Homeland Security report that the news outlet obtained.
The big weekend news came late Friday when a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a key element of the Trump administration’s policy of mass detention of migrants.
While the ruling from the uber-conservative appeals court wasn’t unexpected and is surely headed to the Supreme Court for final resolution, I wanted to take this opportunity to briefly explain why the particular unilateral policy change at issue has been so important in driving the misconduct we’ve seen since last summer.
Without getting lost in the weeds, this is the change the Trump administration made: Despite 30 years of government practice, it re-interpreted a 1996 law to allow it to detain migrants anywhere in the country without a bond hearing. Previous administrations had only applied one section of the law in that way at the immediate border. Everywhere else, under a different section of the law, undocumented immigrants were allowed to be released and were entitled to a bond hearing before deportation.
Federal judges around the country — faced with a resultant wave of habeas petitions — have widely rejected the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law. The 5th Circuit accepted the administration’s new interpretation and its decision applies within Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to “every undocumented immigrant who originally entered across the border, no matter how many decades in the past,” notes one expert.
“The ruling is nonsensical and wrong, but it is also particularly horrifying in this moment. The consequences are all the more alarming, building, as it would, on the Supreme Court’s shadow docket order that unleashed Kavanaugh stops, ultimately, across the nation,” Chris Geidner wrote in reaction to the ruling.
For a deeper dive on how the 5th Circuit came to have this case that it ruled on so quickly and on where this goes from here, Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck has a very granular analysis.
A few broader points:
The administration was never going to hit its deportation targets if everyone in the interior got a bond hearing, so it dispensed with the bond hearings.
The ability to detain anyone without a bond hearing not only accelerated detentions, but it effectively allowed the administration to give up on targeted operations and detain anyone based on skin color, accent, and other blunt and outright racist outward indicia of being an immigrant.
U.S. citizens have been increasingly swept up in the indiscriminate raids, traffic stops, and detain-first-ask-questions-later operations we’ve seen most recently in Minnesota, but not just there.
Despite its repeated losses in court, the Trump administration has not reigned in its operations but rather continued to force judges to overrule them over and over again. The 5th Circuit decision is going to buttress the administration’s legal approach and fuel even more of the growing chaos of the past several weeks.
U.S. Public Health Service Confronts Migrant Detention
Nearly 400 officers in the uniformed U.S. Public Health Service have done monthlong tours helping to provide basic medical care to detainees at hastily constructed ICE detention centers nationwide, NPR reports. It spoke with six Public Health Service officers who said they planned to leave or had already tendered their resignations due largely to recent or impending deployment to ICE facilities.
In particular, some U.S. Public Health Service officers are quitting over assignments to the ICE detention center at Guantánamo, Wired reports.
Trump DOJ Watch
NYT: Prosecutors Began Investigating Renee Good’s Killing. Washington Told Them to Stop.
Reuters: DOJ unit on police misconduct sees staffing plunge and probes scaled back
NYT: Demanding Support for Trump, Justice Dept. Struggles to Recruit Prosecutors
Citizenship Question Is Baaaack
NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang explains how the census citizenship question that was vanquished in Trump I has snuck back into the conversation in Trump II.
Midterm Election Interference Watch
TPM’s Hunter Walker: A Conspiracy Fueled Report Preceded ‘Black Pill’ Tulsi Gabbard’s Fulton County Election Raid
U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee ordered unsealed most of the legal case in which Fulton County is challenging the seizure of its 2020 voting records and gave the Trump DOJ a Tuesday deadline to file the affidavit it used in support of the search warrant.
The Trump DOJ has removed an important manual — Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses — from the website of its Election Crimes Branch, former Obama White House Counsel Bob Bauer notes.
Quote of the Day
“The presumption of regularity that has been previously extended to [the government] that it could be taken at its word—with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes—no longer holds.”—U.S. District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai of Oregon, in a sweeping rebuke of the Trump DOJ’s nationwide push to seize state voter rolls
The Gabbard Whistleblower Complaint
A series of news reports Saturday began to flesh out some of the details of the whistleblower complaint that DNI Tulsi Gabbard has been sitting on for months:
The Guardian: The National Security Agency last spring “flagged an unusual phone call between two members of foreign intelligence” discussing an as-yet-unidentified person “close” to President Trump. The NSA’s intelligence report was brought to Gabbard, who “took a paper copy of the intelligence” to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and instructed the NSA not to publish it. The person close to Trump is neither an administration official or a special government employee, reported The Guardian, which walked back an earlier version of its story that said the phone call was directly between a person associated with foreign intelligence and a person close to Trump, after the whistleblower’s lawyer said he misspoke.
NYT: The intercepted conversation between the two foreign nationals involved Iran.
WSJ: In a followup story, the WSJ also confirmed that in the phone call between “individuals linked to a foreign government” they had a conversation that “at least in part, concerned issues related to Iran.” The WSJ also confirmed that Gabbard met with Wiles “to discuss the matter.” After that meeting, Gabbard “worked to limit the sharing of the intelligence concerning the call,” the whistleblower complaint says, according to the WSJ.
Known Death Toll in U.S. Boat Strikes: 119
A U.S. attack Thursday on an alleged drug smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific killed two people, according to US Southern Command, bringing the death toll in the lawless months-long campaign to at least 119.
Pretty Big Deal
The Energy Department violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 when Secretary Chris Wright handpicked five researchers who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to work in secret on a sweeping government report on global warming, U.S. District Judge William Young of Boston ruled on Friday.
As Lisa Friedman reports, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin cited the bogus Energy Department report to justify a plan to repeal his agency’s landmark scientific determination — the endangerment finding — that greenhouse gases endanger public health, which serves as the legal foundation for federal regulation of climate pollution.
Freak of the Day
RFK Jr on what he'll eat during the Super Bowl: "I am on a carnivore diet so I just eat meat and ferments, and I'm very happy with that. So I'm probably going to have yogurt."
You’ve probably seen clips of Ian McKellan performing “The Strangers’ Case” speech from the Shakespeare-inflected play “Sir Thomas More” on Colbert last week, but the setup for the monologue is worth a watch, too. It begins at the 20:00 mark:
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This story is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
A key law that protects free speech online is celebrating its 30th birthday under withering fire from critics on both sides of the political aisle.
Even in stable times, rolling back protection would be foolhardy and harmful. In a moment when the Executive Branch and federal agencies seek to censor speech online, it could be a nail in democracy’s coffin.
That’s why it’s so shocking to see bipartisan support for either repealing or sunsetting Section 230 amid today’s deeply divided and tumultuous policy landscape. But a bipartisan bad idea is still a bad idea.
