The Blue Country Gazette is the successor to the Rim Country Gazette, reflecting our evolution to a nationwide political blog for readers who identify as "blue," liberals, progressives, and/or Democrats. Our mission is to provide distinctive coverage of issues during a time of extreme polarization in the U.S. We strive to provide side-stories and back-stories that provide additional insights and perspectives conventional coverage often doesn't include.
Trump launched his war from a hastily
constructed space in Mar-a-Lago with (left) John Ratcliffe, the Director
of the CIA, (fourth from right) Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White
House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and (second from right), Dan Scavino,
his golf caddy turned aide. (photo: White House)
The peace president has gone to war, again.
Philippe Naughton/The Daily Beast
01 March 26
America’s top generals have been as clear as they dare in warning Donald Trump off his latest military adventure. But the president wasn’t listening.
Eight weeks after sending helicopter-borne special forces into
Caracas to seize Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump has taken
his warmongering to a new level with the launch overnight of “major
combat operations” in Iran.
The Venezuela raid
was well planned, limited in scope, and a clear military success, just
the kind of stunt Trump and the former Fox News host who serves as his
“Secretary of War” needed to fire up the troops in their new anti-woke
army.
But Iran is a whole different matter. There’s a reason why, as Trump
put it, the Iranian regime has been able to chant “Death to America” for
the past 47 years as it targeted American forces and interests in the
region through its network of terror groups and proxy militias.
The last time the United States tried to use military power to
deliver regime change in the Middle East, with the ill-fated invasion of
Iraq in 2003, its forces were bogged down for eight years. The real
winner of that adventure was Iran, which was effectively handed control
of the new Iraq after the dismantling of the Baathist regime.
Of course, Iran has been massively weakened over the past couple of
years. Hezbollah and Hamas, its main proxy forces, have been all but
destroyed by Israel, and while an American bombing raid last June did
not actually “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear program, as Pete Hegseth
claimed at the time, it did set it back.
Reports from inside the White House say Trump’s military advisers,
including Gen. Dan “Raizin” Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, have warned the president against a full-scale attack on Iran,
briefing not just that it could cost American lives but dangerously
degrade already depleted weapons stockpiles. Trump dismissed a
Washington Post report that Caine is “against us going to War with Iran”
as “100% incorrect.”
It’s possible that Trump will walk away with an “easy” military
victory, or that the Islamic regime, once prodded, could fall, as the
president suggested in his video address from the White House. That will
depend on Iran’s will and ability to resist the warfighting power of
the United States and Israel and whatever allies they can persuade to
join them in the ominously titled “Operation Epic Fury.”
But it’s far from clear why Trump had to go to war with Iran now,
while his son-in-law Jared Kushner and New York property pal Steve
Witkoff are still trying to bring the regime to heel. The massive
military force gathered in the Middle East and Mediterranean was already
sending a pretty clear message to the Mullahs.
In a text message last month to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr
Støre, Trump explained that since Norway had denied him the Nobel Peace
Prize despite him supposedly ending at least eight wars, “I no longer
feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.”
When Trump first entered the White House in 2017, there was
widespread fear that the nuclear suitcase would be following around such
a volatile president. But he defied expectations and ended up being
more cautious militarily than his Democratic predecessor as
commander-in-chief, Barack Obama.
The great American peacemaker of the late 20th century was another
second-term conservative president, Ronald Reagan, who clearly had an
eye on his legacy as he joined with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to
limit nuclear arsenals and call an end to the Cold War.
Trump seems to
have gone in the opposite direction in his second term: he wants to blow
everything up, to test the limits of his power, as though a switch has
flicked in his 79-year-old brain. And, of course, to finally put his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein on the back page.
The peace president is bored of peace and the ghosts of young dalliances past are drawing near.
Denver
Mayor Mike Johnston signed an executive order Thursday that attempts to
limit the ability of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to
operate in the city.
The order blocks ICE agents from staging on
city property to enforce immigration law if they don’t have a judicial
warrant, a court order or other legal mandate. And it empowers Denver
Police officers and sheriff’s deputies to arrest ICE agents in some
instances.
“When
civil immigration enforcement operations disrupt our neighborhoods,
they don’t just target individuals — they spread fear, tear families
apart, and erode the trust that holds our community together,” the
executive order states. “These actions put our residents and law
enforcement personnel at risk and undermine the values we stand for as a
community. Our responsibility is clear: We will work to protect the
people who call Denver home and guard against federal overreach.”
ICE did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The
order was inspired by community members who asked the mayor and city
council how they planned to protect residents against a potential
immigration surge from President Donald Trump’s administration.
“We've
seen Americans like Renee Good and Alex Pretti killed for peacefully
raising their voices,” Johnston said at a Thursday press conference.
“And Denverites ask me every day, ‘What will we do if that chaos comes
to Denver?’ To answer that question for Denverites today, I will sign
Executive Order 152.”
Denver
Mayor Mike Johnston holds a press conference to sign a bill prohibiting
federal overreach, condemning tactics used by ICE in front of the City
and County Building in Denver, Colo., on Thursday, Feb. 26. 2026.McKenzie Lange/CPR News
The
order was informed by Johnston’s conversations with mayors around the
country — including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey — who have been trying
to protect their communities from ICE surges.
Denver City Council
members, who have been working on banning law enforcement from wearing
facial coverings in response to ICE actions, backed the order.
“No
one should live in fear, not the fear of being separated from their
families, not the fear of being targeted because of who they are, and
not the fear of systems that are inaccessible,” City Council President
Amanda Sandoval said. “Public safety must mean safety for every one of
us in every neighborhood.”
And, Sandoval said, that includes safety from law enforcement itself.
What does the order do?
The
order explicitly states that Denver Police and Sheriff departments must
intervene if immigration enforcement agents engage in actions that
could kill or seriously injure someone. That could include arresting,
citing or detaining federal agents.
The focus, though, Police Chief Ron Thomas said, would be de-escalation rather than physical or deadly conflict.
Per
the order, law enforcement now explicitly has the right to provide
life-saving aid if people are harmed by ICE agents. If agents interfere,
Denver Police would be permitted to cite or arrest them.
“We are
not looking to create hostility or to create conflict or to escalate,”
Johnston told Denverite. “But when it comes to protecting people's
rights, [Denver police] swear an oath to do that and they're going to
keep doing that.”
ICE
and ERO officers stand in the middle of Park Avenue in Minneapolis, a
block away from where Renee Good was killed. Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026.Courtesy: Ben Hovland/Minnesota Public Radio
The
department will document ICE activity with body-worn cameras. Police
will independently investigate any reported legal violations and will
refer potential felonies to the Denver District Attorney or the Colorado
Attorney General for prosecution – whether a simultaneous federal
investigation occurs.
City agencies will continue to refuse to
share databases or enter into technology use agreements with the
Department of Homeland Security or immigration enforcement unless the
law explicitly requires them to do so.
Finally, the order
continues to bar ICE from schools, churches, stadiums, libraries and
hospitals, and the agency is also barred from racially profiling
residents.
Protecting residents or ‘poking the bear’?
The order immediately made national news, in part because the mayor granted The New York Times an exclusive early interview to break the story.
One
reporter asked the mayor whether he was “poking the bear,” and another
wondered whether Johnston feared signing the order could provoke
President Donald Trump’s administration to invade Denver.
The
executive order could pit armed Denver officers against armed federal
officers, raising the possibility of a standoff or even a conflict.
When
Denverite asked Thomas about the possibility of the executive order
leading to a civil war, he said: “I think that that is a reasonable
concern, but again, we are experts in de-escalation. That is our value.
That is what we will lead with.”
Denver
Mayor Mike Johnston holds a press conference to sign a bill prohibiting
federal overreach, condemning tactics used by ICE in front of the City
and County Building in Denver, Colo., on Thursday, Feb. 26. 2026.McKenzie Lange/CPR News
He’s also aware ICE has used deadly force against armed residents and understands that could occur with his own officers.
“At the end of the day, I think we're all human, and I think that we're going to hope that humanity prevails,” Thomas said.
Thomas
told reporters he has run multiple “tabletop” scenarios about possible
interactions between his officers and ICE, and he’s confident his team
will not engage in a fight.
“We've developed systems that really
work for public safety and law enforcement here, and we are going to
extend those to the people that do operations here,” Johnston said.
According to Financial Times columnist Ed Luce, there was one moment during Donald Trump’s long and lie-filled State of the Union address that will cause his White House no small measure of problems as the president’s poll numbers are in freefall.
Appearing on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,“ the longtime journalist agreed with co-host Jonathan Lemire that Trump’s speech was “boring” but added that Trump’s comments about affordability was not what his inner circle wanted to hear coming out of his mouth.
“I
don't think, you know, this is effective campaigning, although it is
campaigning, was him rolling the word affordability around in his mouth,
as if it's some very strange word that the Democrats have just learned,
and that it isn't really a serious issue at all," he suggested to
Lemire.
“I
imagine Susie Wiles and others were gnashing their teeth as they
watched that, because this was clearly supposed to be, at least in part,
a speech that set up Republicans
for the midterms as serious on questions of affordability,” he added.
“And he didn't really do that.
He told Americans that their prices are
all falling. Don't believe your own lying eyes, etc. He at one point
said that drug prices have dropped 100 percent, which would mean they're
now zero.”
“So you know, I can't I can't get excited about this
speech. But I'm and I guess the fact that we're so used to these
torrents of lies and the whoppingness of these lies and that it's
actually boring, does say something about us and about this president,”
he wryly admitted.
FBI Director Kash Patel was recorded on Sunday chugging beers with the U.S. Hockey team at the Olympics.Federal Bureau of Incompetence leader guzzles while America burns
FBI Director Kash Patel traveled to the Olympics in Italy at taxpayer expense
and celebrated with the gold-medal-winning hockey team as Americans
dealt with international crime, violent threats, and the possibility of
war.
Patelwas recorded
on Sunday chugging beers with the hockey team as part of the
celebration of their gold medal win against Canada. During a celebratory
phone call with President Donald Trump, Trumptasked Patel with transporting the team to Washington to attend his State of the Union address on Tuesday.
After a video of the moment circulated on social media, Patel pushed out a defensive post about his behavior.
“For
the very concerned media - yes, I love America and was extremely
humbled when my friends, the newly minted Gold Medal winners on Team
USA, invited me into the locker room to celebrate this historic moment
with the boys- Greatest country on earth and greatest sport on earth,”he wrote.
Earlier in the day as he hung out at the Olympic Games,Patel had posted a message in his official capacity about the allegedwould-be shooter that was intercepted on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Patel’s party trip not only coincided with the shooter’s apprehension, but also as global tensions are increasing because Trumphas been threatening
military action against Iran. Such an attack could lead to violence
against U.S. citizens via retaliation in the form of terrorism or other
means.
Similarly, as Patel was enjoying himself watching the Olympics, Americans living in Mexico werebeing warned by
the federal government to shelter in place in response to increased
drug gang violence after the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel
was killed by the Mexican army.
And, of course, Nancy Guthrie's abductor has yet to be apprehended.
Patel’s trip was already under criticism for the luxury nature
of the FBI director’s travel. After reports emerged of the use of
taxpayer-funded jet travel for these purposes, the Trump administration
lashed out at reporters.
On Thursday, FBI Assistant Director for Public Affairs Ben Williamsoninsisted that Patel’s trip to Italy was part of his official duties.
“No, it’s not a personal trip. Director Patel is on a trip that
was planned months ago. It includes: partner meetings with Italian law
enforcement and security officials (they invited the Director last
July), meeting with Ambassador Fertitta (as a follow up to our law
enforcement roundtable he hosted in January), meetings with Legal staff,
and more,” he wrote on X.
Williamson apparently didn’t realize that his boss would soon
be recorded smashing beers in a locker room, undermining his attempt at
spin.
Back when he was a civilian in 2023,Patel criticized
then-FBI Director Christopher Wray for using “a government-funded G5
jet to go to vacations” and suggested grounding the plane. But after
being appointed by Trump and securing approval by the Senate Republican
majority, Patel has clearly dropped his concerns about the use of
federal resources for personal travel.
In fact, in addition to his Olympic trip, Patel has been using a Gulfstream to fly to work while also enlisting FBI agents to ferry his girlfriend around.
The hockey party is just the latest in a yearfilled with Patel
bumbling through his position. But the writing was on the wall about
how he would handle the job before he was even officially sworn in.
Patel is a right-wing conspiracy theorist, who spent years
publicly attracting Trump detractors and pushing myths and falsehoods
related to Trump. His qualification to lead the FBIwas loyalty to Trump and his dedication to writing pro-Trump fan fiction—not in law enforcement.
Using taxpayer resources for a beer-soaked international party
merely confirms the worst fears about putting Patel in such an important
position.
“Kash Patel’s girlfriend, your ride is here." She must be some kind of special.
GAZETTE
BLOG EDITOR'S NOTE: Retired United States Court of Appeals Judge J.
Michael Luttig, appointed by Republican President George H. W. Bush,
made an inspiring acceptance speech last week upon receiving honorary
membership to the New York Bar Association.
In
presenting the award, Bar Association President Muhammad Faridi noted:
'In a recent essay, Judge Luttig quoted Thomas Paine’s Common Sense:
“For as in absolute governments the
King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be
king; and there ought to be no other.”' That simple proposition—that in
a free country, the law must be king—is the animating principle behind
tonight’s honor."
Judge
Luttig's urgently inspiring remarks are a call to action for every
American, and are a must-read for any and all Americans as we face an
authoritarian administration and a challenging mid-term election which
the president is sure to disrupt and delegitimize.
Please take a few moments to read his words below:
"We must find the courage to speak truth to power now, today."
Now, friends, listen not for my words, but for the words of George
Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and
Thomas Paine. Listen for the words of Abraham Lincoln and for the words
of Martin Luther King, Jr. And hear.
“These are the times that try men’s souls” — as were the times that tried our souls 250 years ago.[1]
In these times, as in those, and in those times 163 years ago, we “are
engaged in a great civil war, testing whether this nation, or any nation
so conceived . . . in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that
all men are created equal can long endure.”[2]
As we dedicated ourselves here before, we must now “here dedicate
ourselves again to the great task that yet remains before us – that this
nation, under God, and this government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”[3]
Since its very Founding, America has been the envy of the world and
the beacon of freedom and liberty because of the shining light of its
Democracy and its Rule of Law. But today, as we celebrate the 250th
Anniversary of America’s birth, America is not that same envy to the
world and not that same beacon of freedom and liberty to the world that
it has been since its beginning.
We pray that tomorrow America will once again assume its deserved place as the envy of the world.
January 6, 2021, was a dark day in American history. On that day, the 45th
President of the United States instigated a war on America’s Democracy
and forced upon this nation an unpeaceful transfer of power for the
first time in almost 250 years. From that day until this day, he has
persisted in the prosecution of that war, presenting himself to America
and to the world as a “clear and present danger to American Democracy.”
Four years later, on January 20, 2025, the same man, the 47th
President of the United States and now wannabe king, declared war on
the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and the nation’s Federal Judiciary.
“But where, say some, is the King of America? I’ll tell you, friend,
he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute
of Great Britain. . . . Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the
world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America
the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in
free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.
But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the Crown at the
conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people
whose right it is.”[4]
The Founders believed that were such a demagogue ever to come into
power in America, he would, having once been elected “and at a second or
third election outvoted by one or two votes, pretend false votes, foul
play, and hold possession of the reins of government.”[5]
The Founders of this, the greatest nation on earth and the greatest
experiment in self-government in all of civilization, feared this man
who has waged these wars on America’s Democracy and Rule of Law, and
they feared these times. They believed these times would mark the end
of the nation they had founded. Alexander Hamilton writing to George
Washington in 1792:
Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true
Artificers of monarchy . . . When a man unprincipled in private life
desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable
talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his
ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of
liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of
popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every
opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it
under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the
zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to
throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the
whirlwind.
A half century later, a young man of mere twenty-eight years who would one day become the 16th President of the United States also foretold of this “danger” to the Republic “from within”:
We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them–they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented
and departed race of ancestors. Their’s was the task (and nobly they
performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this
goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political
edifice of liberty and equal rights; ’tis ours only, to transmit these .
. . to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know.
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall we expect
some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a
blow? Never! . . .
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I
answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot
come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its
author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all
time or die by suicide.
I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something
of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which
pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and
furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the
worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice.[6]
The “danger from within” has arrived and America’s time of testing has come.
What, then, must we do if we are to bequeath this “political edifice
of liberty and equal rights” to our descendants, this legacy that was
bequeathed to us by “our once hardy, brave, and patriotic, race of ancestors”?[7]
We must “dedicate ourselves to the great task that yet remains
before us” 250 years later. “[‘T]is ours only, to transmit this ‘goodly
land’ and this ‘political edifice of liberty’ . . . to the latest
generation that fate shall permit the world to know.”[8]
We must, finally, summon the courage that has eluded us in our
all-consuming fear. Americans must summon from deep within the courage
that was once our Founders’ courage when, “with a firm reliance on the
protection of divine Providence, they mutually pledged to each other
their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor.”[9]
The time has come again, as it has come before, when the “appalling silence of the good people” is now “betrayal.”
We must stand, raise our voices, and speak out against what we are
witnessing in America today. We must “break the silence of the night.”[10]
For, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., warned, “In the End, we will
remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”[11]
If we but find the courage to speak truth to power now, today, as did
the Founders and our ancestors when their time of testing came, the
United States of America will endure forever as the beacon of freedom
and liberty to the world. America will once again be the envy of the
world.
"It will be incumbent on
all of us...to see the administration’s efforts for what they are and to
fight back."
Sean Morales-Doyle/The New York Times
15 February 26
President Trump has dropped unsubtle hints about
his desire to cancel the November elections. “We [shouldn't] have to even run
against these people,” he said
in a speech last month. “I won’t say cancel the election; they should
cancel the election.” Mr. Trump didn’t stop there. “When you think of
it, we shouldn’t even have an election,” he mused a week later.
These remarks have caused understandable concern, but they are empty
threats. Mr. Trump’s power depends on the appearance of winning
elections, and he knows it. He’s obsessed with convincing the world he
won in 2020. And control over elections is dispersed among thousands of
officials across the country, making cancellation impossible.
But more to the point, it’s election subversion, not cancellation,
that is the real authoritarian move. The goal is to keep elections going
but without unseating those in power.
Look around the world. Vladimir Putin hasn’t canceled an election.
Iran has regular elections. In the 21st century, the name of the game is
“competitive authoritarianism,” in which democratic institutions and
elections persist, but are hollowed out by authoritarian incumbents.
Elections — even if they’re rigged — give rulers legitimacy.
Mr. Trump’s call last week
to “nationalize” elections — arguing that Republicans should “take
over” voting — more closely reflects how he could subvert the electoral
system. The president has no lawful authority for such a takeover: Under
our Constitution, states and Congress set the rules that govern
elections. Under our laws, state and local officials run our elections.
Still, his administration has taken dozens of actions to undermine elections that, together, show that an attempted election “takeover” may be underway.
There’s Mr. Trump’s executive order from last March attempting to
institute a “show your papers” rule requiring Americans to produce a
passport or a similar document when they register to vote. This policy
would block the votes of millions of citizens who lack ready access to
those documents. A version of this rule is at the core of the SAVE Act, legislation that Mr. Trump is pushing his colleagues in Congress to pass.
There are the Justice Department’s efforts to vacuum up personal information on voters and force purges.
The federal government lacks the know-how, the tools and the legal
authority to conduct such purges, creating the real risk that eligible
voters will be knocked off the rolls.
Then, there are the attacks on the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure
Security Agency. Last year, the administration fired or sidelined its
election security personnel and defunded its election security
operations, which state officials relied on for critical intelligence
and support. This eliminates a crucial line of defense against
cyberthreats, which are constantly evolving.
And, of course, Mr. Trump teed up the interference campaign on Day 1
of this administration when he pardoned the people responsible for the
Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — sending a clear message to would-be
election subverters that he will have their back.
We have every reason to expect more actions like these in the coming months. A few weeks ago, Mr. Trump reiterated his threats
to prosecute election officials who ran the 2020 election. Just days
later, F.B.I. agents seized ballots and election records from 2020 in
Fulton County, Ga. As federal officials collect personal voter data from
the 11 states
that have agreed to share their voter registration lists, we are likely
to hear officials claim, falsely, that there are multitudes of
noncitizens on the rolls. And there is a growing fear that Mr. Trump may
try to illegally deploy federal forces to interfere at the polls in
November.
But there’s also plenty of evidence from the past year that we have the power to fight back — if
we don’t get sidetracked by Mr. Trump’s threats to cancel elections.
So
far, three different courts have blocked the “show your papers”
requirement in Mr. Trump’s executive order, along with other provisions
that would suppress voting or threaten election integrity. While some
states have acquiesced to the Justice Department’s requests for voter
information, election officials of both parties from 27 states and the
District of Columbia have refused — and, so far, courts have approved
those refusals.
On the state and local level, officials are already banding together
to fill the void left by the dismantling of the Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency. Mr. Trump’s attempts at retributive
prosecutions have largely fallenflat. And not only are there clear laws
barring ICE agents from the polls and prohibiting interference by
federal agents in elections, but the recent events in Minneapolis serve
as a reminder that peaceful protest and public mobilization can force
the administration to change course.
And the SAVE Act — which attempts to carry out Mr. Trump’s “show your
papers” rule via legislation — can still be stopped. The first version
of the bill died in the Senate last year after it generated widespread
public resistance. It should face the same fate this year. Congress,
unlike Mr. Trump, does have the authority to regulate our elections. But
the bill’s failure is a perfect illustration of why our nation’s
founders put that power in the hands of a bipartisan legislative body
and not in the hands of a single partisan actor.
We are still nine months out from Election Day, but it seems that
every day we get a new elections-related headline from this
administration. That’s not an accident. The campaign to rig our
elections is well underway. We are already seeing how effective people
can be in pushing back, whether on the streets of Minneapolis or at town halls
hosted by their representatives in Congress. It will be incumbent on
all of us — election officials, advocates, state law enforcement and
voters — to see the administration’s efforts for what they are and to
fight back.
A Minneapolis Resister: “It became
clear very quickly that ICE is the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo boys,” Dan
said. “They’ve given them uniforms and let them run wild.”Jack Califano/The Atlantic Adapted by The WeekFeb. 6, 2026
The federal immigration crackdown in Minneapolis has united residents in outrage, said Robert F. Worth in The Atlantic. Will other communities follow their model of resistance?
THE
SIX-CAR ICE convoy came to a stop, and instantly dozens of people
swarmed it, cellphones in hand, while others ran out of nearby houses—I
saw a woman in gym shorts in the 20-degree weather—and began surrounding
the masked and heavily armed agents who had spilled out of their black
SUVs. The fury in the crowd felt almost like a physical force, as real
as the cacophony of whistles and honking cars and angry chants: “ICE
out! Fuck you! Go home!”
The officers threw a protester to the
slushy asphalt and piled on top of him, then cuffed him and dragged him
away. The screaming only got louder. With their escape route blocked by
protesters and their cars, the agents tossed out tear gas canisters, the
white clouds billowing up into the winter air. An injured man stumbled
past me and vomited repeatedly into the snow.
From where I stood, a
few yards back from the Jan. 21 scrum, it looked, at best, to be a
savage caricature of our national divide: on one side, militarized men
demanded respect at the butt of a gun; on the other, angry protesters
screamed for justice.
But behind the violence in Minneapolis is a
different reality: a meticulous urban choreography of civic protest. You
could see traces of it in the identical whistles the protesters used,
in their chants, in their tactics, in the way they followed ICE agents
but never actually blocked them from detaining people. Thousands of
Minnesotans have been trained over the past year as legal observers and
have taken part in lengthy role-playing exercises where they rehearse
scenes exactly like the one I witnessed. They patrol neighborhoods day
and night on foot and stay connected on encrypted apps such as Signal,
in networks that were first formed after the 2020 killing of George
Floyd.
Again and again, I heard people say they were not
protesters but protectors—of their communities, of their values, of the
Constitution. Vice President JD Vance has decried the protests as
“engineered chaos” produced by far-left activists working in tandem with
local authorities. But the reality on the ground is both stranger and
more interesting. The movement has grown much larger than the core of
activists shown on TV newscasts, especially since the killing of Renee
Good on Jan. 7. And it lacks the sort of central direction that Vance
and other administration officials seem to imagine.
At times,
Minneapolis reminded me of what I saw during the Arab Spring in 2011, a
series of street clashes between protesters and police that quickly
swelled into a much larger struggle against autocracy. As in Cairo’s
Tahrir Square, Minneapolis has seen a layered civic uprising where a
vanguard of protesters has gained strength as many others who don’t
share progressive convictions joined in feeling, if not always in
person.
“Overall, this community has exercised enormous
restraint,” Allison Sharkey, the executive director of the Lake Street
Council, which represents many minority-owned businesses that have been
hit hard by the ICE raids, told me. “But we have been pushed, probably
intentionally, towards civil unrest.”
And as with the Arab
uprisings, there is profound unease about where it is all
leading—especially now that two people have been shot dead in scenes
like the one I witnessed—alongside an undertow of hope that Minnesota
can provide the rest of the country with a model of democratic
resistance.
OVER THE PAST year, a three-story brick building in
south Minneapolis has become a magnet for people who feel they—and their
neighbors—need protection from their own government. The nonprofit that
runs training sessions there asked me not to identify its location.
When I visited, an ebullient labor organizer named Emilia Gonzalez
Avalos was standing onstage in front of a packed auditorium, talking
about the facial-recognition technology used by ICE agents, who
routinely photograph protesters. “Everyone is at risk now,” she said.
Behind her, a screen offered bullet points on how to legally observe ICE
raids.
Avalos told me that 65,000 people have received the
training, most of them since December. “We started in a very different
tone; it was preventive,” she said. Now, after Good’s death, “people are
understanding the stakes in a different way.”
The nonprofit
groups that run these training sessions are not organizing or directing
the anti-ICE protests taking place in the Twin Cities. No one is. The
people who follow ICE convoys have organized on a neighborhood basis,
using Signal groups. It’s visible to anyone walking through Minneapolis.
One
bitterly cold morning, I approached a man standing across the street
from an elementary school, a blue whistle around his neck. He told me
that he stood watch every morning for an hour to make sure the kids got
into school safely. Other local volunteers come by regularly to bring
him coffee and baked goods, or to exchange news. These community watches
take place outside schools throughout the Twin Cities, outside
restaurants and day-care centers, outside any place where there are
immigrants or people who might be mistaken for them.
Inside the
schools, many administrators have been making their own preparations
over the past year. Amanda Bauer, a 49-year-old teacher at a Minneapolis
elementary school that has a large portion of immigrant students,
struggled to maintain her composure as she described the day early this
month when ICE showed up in force outside her school. Agents had been
circling the school since December, seemingly learning its routines, and
they arrested some parents just before the winter break. But this time,
agents leaped out in riot gear and began entering the apartments just
across from the school, where many students live.
“We had to lock
down and keep the kids inside, and parents linked arms to block the
school entrance,” Bauer said. “We had a student who was looking out the
window and saw them break into his apartment and just sobbed, ‘That’s my
house. That’s my home.’ And we shut the blinds, but it was too late.”
Bauer
has been a teacher for 25 years, a period that has included a rise of
school shootings and the drills that have become common to protect
against them. “But I never thought it would be our own government we had
to protect the kids from,” she told me. “We kept them physically safe,
but they saw what happened.”
As she spoke, Bauer’s hands were
trembling. She held them up and smiled weakly. “I don’t think I’ve
stopped shaking for two weeks,” she said.
Children were a moral
fault line for many of the people I met in the Twin Cities. A couple in
their 70s, Dan and Jane (like many others, they asked that I shield
their full names), told me they had never considered joining a political
protest until ICE came to town, and they realized that their
granddaughter was at risk of witnessing a violent immigration raid just
by going to school. “When a child witnesses violence or crime, it’s
profoundly different from adults,” Dan said. “It leaves scars.”
Dan and Jane resisted the idea that they had become political. A better word, Jane said, was humanist.
Their anger was unmistakable as they told me that the Trump
administration was violating basic Christian principles. “It became
clear very quickly that ICE is the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo boys,” Dan
said. “They’ve given them uniforms and let them run wild.”
I
ARRIVED IN Minneapolis 11 days after an ICE agent shot Good in the face.
Her picture was hanging like a religious icon on windows and walls all
over the city. To many who had not already become involved, her death
was a call to action.
One of those latecomers was a 46-year-old
documentary filmmaker named Chad Knutson. On the morning after Good was
killed, he was at home watching a live feed from the Whipple Building,
where ICE is based, a five-minute drive from his house. A protester had
laid a rose on a makeshift memorial to Good. As Knutson watched, an ICE
agent took the rose, put it in his lapel, and then mockingly gave it to a
female ICE agent. They both laughed.
Knutson told me he had never
been a protester. But when he saw those ICE agents laughing, something
broke inside him. “I grab my keys, I grab a coat, and drive over,”
Knutson told me. “I barely park my car and I’m running out screaming and
crying, ‘You stole a fucking flower from a dead woman. Like, are any of
you human anymore?’”
He now goes to the Whipple Building almost
daily, bringing thermoses of hot coffee for the people who hold up signs
and bellow at the ICE agents and convoys as they drive in and out. He
has been tear-gassed so many times, he said, his voice has gone hoarse.
He mentioned in passing that his neighbor had “an adopted brown kid down
there; they hid her in the basement yesterday.” This kind of thing no
longer sounds weird in Minneapolis. Many people are hiding indoors—so
many that, in a city with a substantial minority population, I hardly
saw any Black or Latino faces on the street.
All this sheltering
has created an economic crisis that has grown worse by the day. Many
immigrant-owned businesses have seen their sales drop by as much as 80%,
said Sharkey. The Karmel Mall, a mazelike shopping hub for tens of
thousands of east African immigrants in the Twin Cities, is usually
packed with people drawn to the aromas of stewed goat and coffee and sambusa
pastries, but when I visited, the place was silent, and most of the
stalls were empty. Several people looked frightened when I tried to ask
questions, saying they didn’t speak English well or that the owner would
be back in an hour.
ICE observers have organized by neighborhood.
One
man willing to chat, a 42-year-old named Ziad who was sipping coffee by
himself, quickly showed me his passport card, saying he had come to the
U.S. from Somalia decades ago. He has a master’s degree in public
health and was working in a community center, he said, but now it’s
closed. His children are attending school online, as they did during the
coronavirus pandemic, and his wife almost never leaves home. The visits
to the mosque and to family members and friends that sustained their
emotional lives are on hold.
But Donald Trump “will go and we will
stay,” he said. “We Somalis know how to survive. We’ve been through a
lot—civil war, refugee camps.”
The Somali refugees who began
coming to the Twin Cities in the early 1990s did so with the help of
religious organizations and churches, especially Lutheran and Catholic
parishes, that have a history of welcoming people fleeing war and
famine. Those groups have been at the forefront of the resistance to
ICE, and some of their leaders have been asking difficult questions:
When does protest cross the line into violence? When is it morally
acceptable to break the law? How do you retain the trust of people who
are uncomfortable defying the authorities?
“We’re going to have to
live with our discomfort in making other people uncomfortable,” Ingrid
Rasmussen, the lead pastor at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, who has been
one of the most outspoken clergy members in the city, told me.
Rasmussen’s
church was near the center of the riots that took place after the
killing of George Floyd in 2020. “Everything to the west of our building
burned,” she told me. During that period, her church became a medical
site for injured people. She and her congregation worked for years to
help rebuild the neighborhood.
The new round of ICE raids has
struck even closer to home for the church, whose congregation includes a
large number of immigrants. Rasmussen, who has young children, has
continued to put herself in harm’s way. On Jan. 23, she was among those
arrested during the protest at the Minneapolis airport. On the morning
of Jan. 24, Rasmussen got word that a man had been shot by ICE agents.
She put on her warmest winter clothes and went to the scene, figuring
she might be outside for hours.
By the time she got there, Alex
Pretti, an ICU nurse, was dead. The federal agents who had wrestled him
to the ground and then shot and killed him were throwing tear gas and
flash-bangs at a crowd of furious protesters chanting “Shame!”
Rasmussen
attended another protest that afternoon. When we spoke hours later, her
voice sounded weary, as if she wasn’t sure what such gestures of
defiance would accomplish. She found it “almost unbearable” to witness
such brutality from her government day after day, she told me. And it
was galling to hear people in power say that they were acting in defense
of freedom. The streets still looked like a war zone, with flash-bangs
detonating and clouds of tear gas in the air.
