The FBI executed a search warrant on Wednesday at an election office near Atlanta in Fulton County, Georgia, a locale infamous among MAGA conspiracy theorists who fulminated about the 2020 election and beyond. The search was, indeed, related to the 2020 election, according to a sweeping search warrant that surfaced hours after the raid.
Continue reading “Trump Finally Achieves His Ambition To Seize the Voting Machines (Or, at Least, Their 2020 Tabulator Tape)”Can Dems Push MAGA and Its ICE Army Into a Disorganized Retreat?
Big public and political fights often have the dynamics of military confrontations. The ongoing backlash and outcry over the ICE murder of Alex Pretti is one such example. Over the first days of this week, the Trump White House lost its footing on the whole issue of ICE wilding sprees in Blue cities. As we discussed yesterday, they’re trying to manage what amounts to a live-action rebranding, telling the public they’re getting things back into line without, if possible, changing anything. But the White House’s public line on ICE and its Blue state wilding sprees has been so categorical and over-the-top it’s a really tough pivot. It’s hard to get your footing when you’re rapidly going from “ICE is our warrior force against immigrant-befouled hellholes run by domestic terrorists” to “we need a real investigation and ICE probably shouldn’t be murdering this many people.”
Continue reading “Can Dems Push MAGA and Its ICE Army Into a Disorganized Retreat?”Don’t Fall for the Bogus Claims That the Feds Are Probing the Pretti Shooting
Morning Memo Live!
A small number of tickets are still available for tomorrow night’s event in D.C. I’ll be talking about DOJ weaponization with a stellar panel:
- Stacey Young, a DOJ veteran who is the founder and executive director at Justice Connection;
- Kyle R. Freeny, a former DOJer who was a member of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team and is now senior counsel at the Washington Litigation Group; and
- Anna Bower, senior editor at Lawfare
Ticket information here (TPM members should look out for a special discount code in your inboxes to get 2-for-1 tickets. Reach out to allegra@talkingpointsmemo.com if you didn’t receive or can’t find it.) Hope to see you there!
Authoritarian Trickery
Since the Trump administration abandoned its initial false claims about Alex Pretti — reportedly authored by Stephen Miller — it has repeatedly fallen back on the position that it cannot comment on the fatal shooting by two Customs and Border Protection agents because there is an ongoing investigation.
As I pieced together in yesterday’s Morning Memo by reviewing a cluster of newly filed declarations from federal law enforcement officials, their investigation is limited to an administrative review of the use of force by the officers who shot Pretti, not a DOJ criminal probe under civil rights laws. That is to say, the inquiry is focused on whether officers broke CBP’s internal rules, not the law.
As MSNow has since confirmed, the Trump DOJ has decided not to open a civil rights investigation into the Pretti shooting, the same decision it made in the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good:
A Justice Department official confirmed that there is no current DOJ investigation but said, “We are not going to prejudge the facts. At some later point, if the evidence presents itself, we may investigate.”
As in the Good shooting, the focus of at least one federal investigation is not on the use of deadly force but on the victim:
A Customs and Border Protection office will investigate whether its own officers followed agency policy in the shooting, according to the people. Another DHS unit, Homeland Security Investigations, will investigate whether Pretti broke any laws, according to two people familiar with the decision.
Re-read that last sentence: “whether Pretti broke any laws.”
MSNow also reports that federal agencies are still not sharing information about the fatal shootings with Minnesota law enforcement or giving them access to evidence.
You wouldn’t think the clumsy rhetorical trick of hiding behind a pending investigation to avoid immediate accountability would work, but the number of news stories citing the federal investigation as if it’s a real thing over the past 48 hours suggests the trickery is more effective than it should be.
It’s not a new trick:
This Was Not DHS’ First Rodeo
In all 16 incidents since July in which DHS officers have fired shots, the Trump administration has publicly declared their actions justified before waiting for investigations to be completed, the WaPo reports.
As Aaron Blake notes: “This kind of maximalist, factually challenged approach isn’t just commensurate with who Trump is; it’s who the top Department of Homeland Security officials involved have shown themselves to be. This was very much par for the course. And to the extent the name of the game was sobriety, steadiness and credibility, these might not have been the people for the job.”
It Wasn’t Alex Pretti’s First Rodeo Either
About a week before his death, Alex Pretti suffered a broken rib at the hands of federal officers, who tackled him when while he was protesting a detention operation, CNN reports:
The earlier incident started when he stopped his car after observing ICE agents chasing what he described as a family on foot, and began shouting and blowing his whistle, according to a source who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution.
Pretti later told the source that five agents tackled him and one leaned on his back – an encounter that left him with a broken rib. The agents quickly released him at the scene.
“That day, he thought he was going to die,” the source told CNN.
The Public Meaning of Masculinity
Brian Beutler contrasts the thuggish masculinity extolled by MAGA with the bravery of Alex Pretti:
Pretti was unafraid. His last act was to help a woman who had been tackled to the ground by a masked invader—to place himself between her and him. He died in a heroic way, but if he’d survived, he’d have been welcomed home by a grateful community. Strangers, who would have wanted to get to know him, learn from him, and see him safely through the rest of his life. He would have lived the life of fulfillment that MAGA wants you to believe is only possible if you behave like a thug.
‘Demented Shit’
Mass Deportation Watch: Minnesota Edition
- After threat from the chief federal judge in Minnesota that he would haul the acting ICE director into court for contempt of court proceedings unless it complied with his previous order to release an ICE detainee, the Trump administration released the man, his lawyer said.
- The government of Ecuador filed a protest with the U.S. embassy after an ICE agent attempted to enter the Ecuadorian consulate in Minneapolis without permission but was rebuffed by consular staff. “One ICE officer can be heard responding by threatening to ‘grab’ the staffer if he touched the agent before agreeing to leave,” the AP reports.
- A very informative NYT analysis uses one AP photo of federal agents conducting a warrantless raid in Minneapolis to illustrate the militarization of U.S. law enforcement
Fuck Around and Find Out
Nine state prosecutors from big blue cities have launched a coalition to assist in prosecuting federal law enforcement officers who violate state laws. The pungent name of the organization — Project for the Fight Against Federal Overreach — left the NYT struggling to to convey the word play: “Its acronym, F.A.F.O., references a slang term for negative consequences”
Quote of the Day
“It’s not like the SS are coming.”—Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani trying to tamp down domestic concerns that ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations will be helping with security at next month’s Winter Olympics in Italy
Man Arrested in Assault on Rep. Omar
Anthony James Kazmierczak, 55, was arrested for the assault on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) during a town hall in Minneapolis last evening after he disrupted the meeting by spraying an unknown foul-smelling substance on her:
Omar declined to end her appearance after the assault. “We will continue,” she said. “These fucking assholes are not going to get away with this.”
For the Record …
We know exactly who Trump is at this point, but yesterday offered a couple of especially pointed examples of the curdled soul of the man:
- On the assault on Rep. Omar …
Just spoke to Pres. Trump. I asked him if he had seen the video of Rep. Omar being attacked and sprayed by a substance.
— Rachel Scott (@rachelvscott) January 28, 2026
“No. I don't think about her. I think she's a fraud. I really don't think about that. She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her,” the president said.
I…
In related news, Trump — in a move that would have been a standalone scandal in any other administration — revealed on social media before the Omar assault that she is the subject of Justice Department criminal investigation that apparently dates back to the Biden administration.
- On the two fatal shootings in Minneapolis …
Erasing American History
The U.S. Park Service has undertaken a new wave of removals of exhibits, signs, and interpretative aids that whitewash U.S. history to conform to a sanitized MAGA revisionism embodied in President Trump’s March executive order.
The changes have hit 17 additional parks mostly in the West, including Grand Canyon, Glacier, Big Bend, and Zion, the WaPo reports: “The removal orders include descriptions of how climate change is driving the disappearance of the glaciers at Glacier National Park and a wayside display at the Grand Canyon referring to the forced removal of Native Americans.”
When White Supremacy Is Official Gov’t Policy
The NYT catalogues dozens of social media posts by government agencies over the past month that include iconography associated with far-right extremist groups.
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
Family of Men Killed in Venezuelan Boat Strikes Sue Trump Admin for Damages
‘The Line Remains Dead to This Day’
The mother and sister of two Trinidadian citizens who the Trump administration killed in a mid-October boat strike have sued the government in federal court, seeking “pecuniary, compensatory, and punitive damages.”
Continue reading “Family of Men Killed in Venezuelan Boat Strikes Sue Trump Admin for Damages”Trump Pitches a Kinder, Gentler ICE Wilding Sprees As His Top Fluffers Fight Amongst Themselves
Yesterday I discussed how in a flash, over roughly 24 hours, the Trump administration began to lose control of the public narrative about ICE and its wilding missions in Minneapolis. The public has been turning against ICE for months. This isn’t new. What we see now is the fragmentation of the pro-ICE wilding chorus. These propaganda choruses are like schools of fish. They are marvelously united and function in a way that no fish has any interest in straying from the school. They flit this way and that but always in unison. When they begin to fragment, that coherence breaks apart very rapidly as the incentive for each fish to stay in line diminishes.
I want to recommend a new article in The Atlantic, one by Adam Serwer, the kind of article only Adam can write. The gist is that ICE and MAGA are losing in Minneapolis in large part because the citizens of the city are performing — really embodying — a resistance of mutual protection. MAGA (and its paramilitary wing, ICE) presents itself as a movement of social solidarity, camaraderie and valor based on ethnic and ideological purity. But it’s the citizens of Minneapolis who are embodying those values. Good and Pretti lost their lives acting as observers, spotters, place-your-body-in-the-breach defenders of people they didn’t know. They showed bravery and selflessness and concern for their neighbors, the kind of intense communalism MAGA posits as commonplace in a lost golden age that can be regained with a purifying violence.
Continue reading “Trump Pitches a Kinder, Gentler ICE Wilding Sprees As His Top Fluffers Fight Amongst Themselves”Alex Pretti’s Killing Has Upended the Right’s Narratives About Government Overreach
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
On a frigid day in late January, more than a dozen masked federal agents surrounded a white ranch house in St. Paul, Minnesota. They entered the home with guns drawn after one busted open the front door with a battering ram; when they re-emerged, they led a man wearing nothing but sandals, blue underwear, and a red plaid blanket thrown over his shoulders, head bowed, into the street. ChongLy “Scott” Thao, a U.S. citizen, told the Associated Press that the agents handcuffed him in front of his 4-year-old grandson and refused to let him retrieve his ID. In Thao’s telling, the agents drove him to the “middle of nowhere,” photographed him outside in the subfreezing temperatures, and asked to see the ID they had not let him collect before they returned him to his rental home a few hours later.
The Department of Homeland Security said its agents detained Thao because they believed he was living with two convicted sex offenders they were seeking to arrest, which he has denied. The AP reported that the nearest sex offender listed as living in Thao’s zip code is more than two blocks away, raising the question of why the department thought its targets were living at his address. And under what authority, exactly, did these immigration enforcement officers break into Thao’s rental? According to the Washington Post, ICE agents now have been empowered to enter homes in order to arrest immigrants, a directive that advocates say flagrantly violates the Constitution. “The highest levels of ICE are, in effect, saying agents should break down your door, ransack your home, terrify your children, arrest or detain you without a judicial warrant,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told MSNOW. “It simply means the law means nothing to these agents.”
A flex of power like this should confirm the deeply-held suspicions of many on the right that federal agents are, as former National Rifle Association president Wayne LaPierre infamously worded it 30 years ago, “jack-booted thugs armed to the teeth who break down doors, open fire with automatic weapons and kill law-abiding citizens.” From Waco and Ruby Ridge in the ‘90s to armed standoffs at the Bundy ranch and the Malheur National Wildlife refuge in the mid-2010s, conservatives have long viewed use of force by federal agents as tyrannical — even when that threat of force was entirely made up, like when conservative officials and commentators stoked conspiracy theories that former President Obama would use military training exercises as cover to implement martial law and seize law-abiding citizens’ guns.
Secs of State Targeted By DOJ Voter Data Demands Condemn Bondi Letter to Minnesota
Secretaries of State across the country are denouncing Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent demand for access to Minnesota voter rolls — an attempt to tie the Trump administration’s months-long crusade to obtain personal voter information from various states with the recent killing of 37-year-old U.S. citizen Alex Pretti by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
In a letter to Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz following Pretti’s killing by federal immigration officers, Bondi described the ways in which Walz could end the “chaos” in Minnesota and “restore the rule of law.” One of those things being, as outlined by Bondi, allowing “the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to access voter rolls to confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law as authorized by the Civil Rights Act of 1960.”
During a press briefing this week, Walz rejected Bondi’s order and slammed the attorney general for her request.
“I would just give a pro tip to the attorney general — there’s 2 million documents in the Epstein files we’re still waiting on. Go ahead and work on those,” he said.
“The way to fix this is get these [ICE] folks out of here,” he added.
A handful of Democratic secretaries of state who have also been targeted by the DOJ’s voter roll demands have rebuked Bondi’s letter to Minnesota, with one describing the maneuver as “blackmail.”
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows argued that the ongoing ICE raids, specifically in parts of the country that did not vote for President Trump, are all part of a broader effort to “create chaos and control our states and elections.” Maine is one of a handful of states that the Trump administration is targeting with its ongoing immigration enforcement occupation.
“Attorney General Bondi’s letter to Minnesota made explicit what has long been clear: ICE is invading our states and inflicting violence in order to create chaos and control our states and elections. These sinister actions are Donald Trump’s attempt to assume absolute power,” Bellows said in a statement.
“Let me say this clearly for President Trump: Maine will never turn over our voter rolls as a ransom payment to get ICE to end its unconstitutional assault on our state,” she added.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, similarly spoke against the letter.
“I am horrified that this administration would inflict violence and chaos on American communities and continue to pressure the state into handing over its voter data. This is wrong, morally bankrupt, and a disgrace,” she said.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes described Bondi’s demand as “blackmail.”
“The Department of Justice has now told Minnesota officials that they will remove ICE if they hand over their voter rolls — this is not how the law works,” he said.
In rejecting Bondi’s letter, Minnesota’s own Secretary of State Steve Simon described Bondi’s attempt to connect the DOJ’s voter data order with an end to the “chaos” in Minnesota as “an apparent ransom to pay for our state’s peace and security.”
Bondi’s demand for voter files is part of the Trump administration’s months-long crusade to obtain sensitive voter data from 44 states across the country. The DOJ is currently suing 24 states — including Minnesota — who have not complied with this request, which experts have described as an overreach of the DOJ’s authority, at best.
Against the backdrop of this ongoing DOJ pursuit in Minnesota, a federal judge recently dismissed a related lawsuit in Oregon. The lawsuit was brought by the DOJ against Oregon after the state refused to comply with the DOJ’s demands for voter data.
U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai referenced Bondi’s letter in his Monday order, asking lawyers on either side to explain specifically how that letter is relevant to the DOJ’s request.
As part of this ongoing campaign, the DOJ has relied on provisions in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (CRA) to justify their order. While both of these statues give the states the authority to engage in voter list maintenance, neither of them give the DOJ this authority.
Justin Levitt, professor of law at Loyola Marymount University, previously told TPM that the DOJ is merely “citing a bunch of things to get the files, without a real reason to believe that states are currently violating any laws.”
Trump Has Taken a Sledgehammer to the Rule of Law. Now What?
In just the first month of this year, President Trump’s forces have abducted a foreign leader and fatally shot two U.S. citizens protesting the administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown. Laws are being bent, twisted and broken so frequently and so egregiously that it’s hard to keep up.
Continue reading “Trump Has Taken a Sledgehammer to the Rule of Law. Now What?”Bovino Is Out as Trump Recasts Lead Goon Role
Morning Memo Live!
We’re just a few days out from the Thursday evening event in D.C. Find details and tickets here (TPM members should look out for a special discount code in your inboxes. Reach out to talk@talkingpointsmemo.com if you didn’t receive or can’t find it.) Hope to see you there!
Take Your Wins When You Can Get Them, But …
A win is a win, and at a time when wins are desperately needed I don’t want to gloss over the very real shifts that have happened in the 72 hours since a prone Alex Pretti was shot dead by federal agents on a city street in broad daylight in front of numerous cameras.
The reported demotion and expected retirement of Gregory Bovino along with the movement amongst some Senate Republicans are notable changes in the current political landscape that only came after two U.S. citizens were killed while exercising their constitutional rights.
But Bovino, while a problem, is not the problem. Stephen Miller, while a stain on American history, is a mere henchman. Switch out Bovino and Miller and Kristi Noem and whoever else is most deserving of your repugnance, and you’re still left with a mad king in the White House, who replaces Bovino in Minnesota with new muscle: the villainous Tom Homan.
In Donald Trump’s reality-TV addled brain, his underlings are merely a rotating cast of characters. He gloms on to some of them very hard, but they are all expendable. Once their storyline runs its course, Trump is on to the next hook. He’s not invested in them or a particular plot point or in anything really. He’s looking for the next spectacle, the next distraction, the next provocation that gives him a frisson of power.
We have no choice but to confront Trump at every turn, but he will never run out of plot devices or characters or locations for his next production. The pattern is already clear: The shows he puts on become, over time, increasingly low-brow, appealing to a plummeting common denominator. The sex and violence are more gratuitous. The plot contrivances are more absurd and less believable. The production quality declines. He is chasing the audience all the way to the bottom.
Trump’s eye will quickly be caught by the next character to pop up on his screens who is good at being rancorous on TV, flashes sex appeal, ostentatiously flatters him, or matches Trump’s simplistic central-casting archetypes. We are in an endless loop of these Trumpian set-pieces — Minnesota, Venezuela, Greenland — until he is banished from public office forever.
I offer these observations not as an inveterate Eeyore or a chronic Debbie Downer. Take the wins. But don’t lose sight of how Minnesota was unwillingly drawn into the latest set-piece in the same way that world leaders get ambushed in televised Oval Office confrontations. Don’t mistake the end of one Trump-manufactured storyline for true accountability. Don’t let the media’s daily need to craft story arcs with neat and tidy endings for a fundamental shift in the current political moment. And don’t lose sight of the heavy costs of each of these confrontations.
The Latest From Minnesota …
- The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals late yesterday stayed pending appeal a lower court injunction setting limits on the Trump administration’s treatment of protesters and observers in Operation Metro Surge.
- Earlier in the day in the same case, U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez heard arguments over whether she has the legal authority to halt Operation Metro Surge. She did not immediately issue a ruling.
- In a move with major free speech implications, FBI Director Kash Patel told Benny Johnson that he has opened an investigation into the Signal group text chats that Minnesota residents are using to share information about federal agents’ movements.
Who Is Investigating the Pretti Shooting?
As I discussed last week before the Pretti shooting, the relationship between federal and local enforcement has been turned upside down by Trump’s mass deportation operations. Combine that with the Trump administration’s lack of transparency and its failure to abide by normal processes and procedures and you’re left with a very murky picture as to what federal investigations are underway in the Pretti shooting — and the scope of those probes.
In court filings yesterday in the case where Minnesota is trying to make sure the feds preserve evidence from the Pretti shooting, a sketchy picture of the federal investigation began to emerge:
- Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a component of ICE, is the lead investigatory agency “reviewing the use-of-force encounter at issue in this case,” according to a declaration by Mark M. Zito, the special agent in charge of HSI’s St. Paul office. As the NYT notes, that use-of-force review language suggests that HSI’s inquiry is limited to a narrower focus on “whether law enforcement personnel followed agency rules and regulations and where and when to use force, and how much force.” In other words, it’s not a criminal investigation.
- The FBI, which would typically conduct an inquiry into a federal law enforcement shooting to determine if a criminal investigation is warranted, initially responded to the scene of the Pretti shooting and gathered evidence, including Pretti’s gun and mobile phone, according to the Zito declaration. In a separate declaration, a FBI agent whose name was redacted said the bureau collected evidence from the shooting scene and “from other locations in the Minneapolis area.” The agent said normal procedures were followed for collecting evidence at the scene until it became “volatile” due to protestors, at which point the process was “adapted for the safety of personnel.” It’s not clear from the declaration if the FBI was able to collect all the evidence at the scene, but according to the agent it has preserved what it did collect. Notably, the agent said the FBI has not “conducted any analysis, examinations, or interpretations of the collected evidence.” Hmmm …
- The Office of Professional Responsibility within Customs and Border Protection is assisting HSI with the investigation because the federal agents involved in the shooting were with CBP, according to a declaration filed by Jeffrey R. Egerton, the acting executive director for the Investigative Operations Directorate within OPR. His office was not involved in gathering evidence at the scene, he said.
Judge Threatens to Haul ICE Director into Court for Contempt
With the Trump administration defying an order to release an ICE detainee from custody, the chief federal judge in Minnesota gave the government a choice in a new order: Either release the detainee as I’ve already ordered or acting ICE Director Todd Lyons must appear personally in court on Friday and show cause why he should not be held in contempt of court.
In the same order, U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz also castigated the administration for having “decided to send thousands of agents to Minnesota to detain aliens without making any provision for dealing with the hundreds of habeas petitions and other lawsuits that were sure to result.” As Kyle Cheney reports, the federal judges in Minnesota have been inundated by hundreds of emergency lawsuits from immigrants targeted by ICE during Operation Metro Surge.
So Embarrassing
If Justice Samuel Alito were capable of embarrassment, this would sure be embarrassing.
Marimar Martinez — the Chicago woman who survived a CBP shooting last fall, was criminally charged, then cleared — is asking a federal court to allow her to release the evidence in her case, citing in part Alito’s use of the inaccurate government narrative of the incident in a strident in a December dissent in the Illinois National Guard case, the Sun-Times reports.
Quote of the Day
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), on opposing ICE funding and the prospect of a government shutdown:
I will say in the past, Republicans have just waited us out because they thought that we would break. And we have broken in the past. And this would be, I think, a very dangerous moment for us to do that because of the very specific moral question being put to the nation: Does the president of the United States get to murder American citizens? The answer to that question has to be no, but it likely will only be no if we’re in a position to win this fight.
Trump DOJ Watch
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals declined to reconsider its decision upholding Alina Habba’s disqualification as U.S. attorney for New Jersey.
Trump’s Undermines Own Ballroom Legal Case
On a lighter note, President Trump directly contradicted what the Justice Department has been telling a federal judge being asked to block the White House ballroom project.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon has relied on representations from the government that the project is still reversible and has been emphatic that he will hold them to that in allowing below-ground work on the project to proceed while the case is pending. Leon warned last month that the administration “should be prepared to reverse the below-ground steps if he later concludes they sought to lock in a more expansive project than is eventually permitted.”
In a social media post on Sunday, Trump made it clear IN ALL CAPS what the government’s position really is: “there is no practical or reasonable way to go back. IT IS TOO LATE!”
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Looks Like the White House Is Daring Senate Dems to Vote Down Full Funding Package
The Full Package
Over the weekend and into today, TPM has been reporting on the growing Democratic opposition to the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill that is set for a Senate vote on Thursday, alongside a package of five other bills that will fund much of the federal government through the end of the fiscal year.
Continue reading “Looks Like the White House Is Daring Senate Dems to Vote Down Full Funding Package”