If you haven’t heard, we’re hosting our next event Wednesday July 29 at Crystal Lake in Brooklyn. We’re partnering with Marisa Kabas, founder of The Handbasket, for a conversation about everything going on in politics at the moment. Josh Marshall and Marisa will share their experience running successful, independent media outlets. We only have about 20 tickets left, so get yours here before they are gone!

As I noted yesterday, after the killings of Good and Pretti in Minneapolis last winter, ICE/DHS shifted strategy, trying to keep up the pace of arrests and predation, while also keeping it more under the radar. Then the recent push to up the number of daily arrests began to upset that apple cart with two brazen killings of two motorists in just one week. What was notable yesterday was that ICE didn’t use its standard excuse for killing a civilian — weaponized vehicles, an agent feeling his life was threatened. They simply said the agent shot Joan Sebastian Guerrero because of a vague belief he posed a danger to the community. This seemed odd since ICE has manufactured cover stories with abandon in the past. Why not now? And why go with an excuse that actually provides a much less robust defense in court? Sure it’s good not to lie. But again, they’ve done it so consistently for 18 months.

Now we’re hearing that DHS has ordered ICE to stop most traffic stops around the country, though this claim is being put out by the administration with no one actually saying it on the record. It’s just “sources.” This also looks like an effort to get Susan Collins out of a jam. She claimed credit today for the shift in policy.