Trump Crime Cartel

Late Night Immigration Open Thread: To the Surprise of No One…

by Anne Laurie| June 30, 202510:11 pm| 71 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Grifters Gonna Grift, Immigration, Trump Crime Cartel

Bartiromo: "Have you been backing away from [deportations]? Recently you said let's ease up on…farms and hotels."
Trump: "I don't back away. What I do, I cherish our farmers…Let the farmers sort of be in charge. The farmer knows. He's not going to hire a murderer."

[image or embed]

— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) June 29, 2025 at 11:14 AM

What the Felon-in-Office ‘cherishes’ is the thought of indentured servants, with no rights that a Big Important Employer (like Mr. Trump at Mar-A-Lago) needs to respect. Per the Washington Post, ICE is arresting migrants in worksite raids. Employers are largely escaping charges. [gift link]:

Trump administration officials have vowed to hold companies accountable for employing people who are in the country illegally — no matter which industry they are in or how big or small they might be.

But the Department of Homeland Security’s enforcement operations have overwhelmingly focused on arresting workers rather than punishing employers.

Since the start of the year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has posted news releases regarding approximately two dozen raids on the “Worksite Enforcement” section of its website. Local news outlets have documented dozens more. The Washington Post was able to identify only one employer charged after the raids ICE has publicized. The Post reviewed court filings and searched for records involving individuals named in corporate records of businesses DHS has raided.

Charging company owners for employing undocumented workers has historically been rare because the government needs to demonstrate that the employer knew of the worker’s illegal status. That is a high burden of proof, and investigations can take months. Neither Democratic nor Republican administrations have made worksite raids as much of a priority in the past. The Biden administration halted large-scale immigration arrests at worksites and focused enforcement on employers.

The raids immigration officers are conducting have largely targeted small businesses such as car washes. Some are carried out in a span of minutes. Two business owners said officers did not show a warrant, even when asked for one, raising questions about whether immigration agents are violating constitutional rights in their effort to drive up migrant arrests.

show full post on front page

“The difference about these raids of the last six weeks is that this is not principally an action against employers,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “This is principally an action in pursuit of mass deportations. When they could not produce the number of arrests that they had been hoping for, they suddenly said, ‘Let’s raid employers.’ It was not, ‘Let’s penalize employers.’”

Though the recent raids in Los Angeles outside Home Depots and at a garment factory drew much attention, immigration authorities have conducted enforcement operations in states throughout the country. They arrested 33 workers at construction sites near Ocala, Florida, and 11 at Outlook Dairy Farms near Lovington, New Mexico. The first raid ICE publicized took place at Complete Autowash in Philadelphia eight days after President Donald Trump took office…

Small businesses with limited resources are easier targets than deep-pocketed corporations, immigration experts say. That’s because they’re less willing to challenge government actions or stir up a public commotion. Though immigration officers need a judicial warrant to enter private areas within a business, they can go into any areas considered publicly accessible, such as the space where customers eat at a restaurant. Nonetheless, two business owners whose companies were raided said armed DHS agents had entered areas restricted from the public….

DHS did not respond to questions about how many workplace raids have led to charges against employers. In April, ICE announced it had arrested more than 1,000 workers who were in the country illegally during Trump’s first 100 days and proposed more than $1 million in fines “against businesses that exploit and hire illegal workers.”…

The administration has claimed it is going after the “worst of the worst” and prioritizing the arrest and deportation of people who are a threat to public safety. But former ICE officials said raiding car washes and taco trucks is not an effective strategy for reaching that goal.

“This is the exact opposite,” said John Sandweg, acting ICE director under President Barack Obama. Under the second Trump administration’s approach to worksite raids, “you are much more likely to find non-criminals because professional criminals don’t work at car washes, typically.”

Late Night Immigration Open Thread: To the Surprise of No One…Post + Comments (71)

Wednesday Evening Open Thread: The GOP Death Caucus

by Anne Laurie| June 25, 20255:59 pm| 63 Comments

This post is in: Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Trump Crime Cartel

People in wheelchairs are getting arrested right now in the Russell Senate Office Building in DC. They showed up to tell Congress not to cut their Medicaid, because they cant afford health care without it. If you look closely you can see the zip ties on their hands. #WeWontGetOverLosingMedicaid

[image or embed]

— Aaron Black (@aaronblack.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 2:26 PM

===

We really would benefit from national attention shifting to how bad this bill is for the state of American health care.
Millions will lose care. Millions more will find it their costs increase and odious practices that deserve to be banned for good could come roaring back.

[image or embed]

— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 1:51 PM

…Medical bankruptcies, “job lock,” deferred treatment, the psychological agony of uninsurance—Obamacare made all of these problems much smaller. It has been a boon to American liberty. Democrats in 2009 and 2010 could have reduced the uninsured population to a similar degree without prohibiting the status quo barbarism: If they’d reduced the Medicare eligibility age, increased the income threshold for Medicaid, tweaked rules governing employer-sponsored insurance, it would have been a good bill, and reduced human suffering quite a lot, just as the ACA did. But there’d still be a hole in the center of our safety net large enough to swallow many lives; sick people left out of the incremental expansions would have been screwed.

So when Republicans began their most recent crusade against Medicaid, the affront did not feel quite as severe as when they went after pre-existing conditions protections per se. Mitch McConnell knows as well as anyone how hot the politics of health care legislation can get, and even he’s grown complacent.

“I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about Medicaid,” he told Senate Republicans Tuesday. “But they’ll get over it.”…

That explains why he keeps lying about his party's intent to cut Medicaid

[image or embed]

— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha1.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 9:47 AM

show full post on front page

With President Donald Trump’s July 4 deadline drawing near, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told POLITICO on Tuesday night he believes the Senate is “on a path” to start voting on the megabill Friday.

But he’s got several fires to put out first. For one, he’s under immense pressure to water down the Medicaid provisions the Senate GOP is counting on for hundreds of billions of dollars worth of savings.

Speaker Mike Johnson is warning in private that Senate Republicans could cost House Republicans their majority next year if they try to push through the deep Medicaid cuts in the current Senate version, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the matter.

That comes as Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) cautions GOP senators that those same cutbacks could become a political albatross for Republicans just as the Affordable Care Act was for Democrats…

“[Barack] Obama said … ‘if you like your health care you can keep it, if you like your doctor we can keep it,’ and yet we had several million people lose their health care,” the in-cycle senator told reporters Tuesday. “Here we’re saying [with] Medicaid, we’re going to hold people harmless, but we’re estimating” millions of people could lose coverage.

GOP leaders are trying to ease concerns by preparing to include a fund to help rural hospitals that could be harmed by the reductions, even as Thune insisted Tuesday “we like where we are.” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who’s been pushing for the fund, said while that “helps lessen the impact,” she remains “concerned about the changes in the funding for Medicaid in general.”…

Nobody hates his own supporters more than Donald Trump.

[image or embed]

— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) June 25, 2025 at 2:29 PM

…GOP lawmakers have also included provisions in their so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” to crack down on the health care provider tax that states charge health care providers to help fund Medicaid, particularly in rural areas. Under the new proposal, the federal government would limit reimbursement to states, with some conservatives citing “abuse” of the program by undocumented migrants in blue states.

A cap or freeze on that fee would cost rural hospitals, like the Hermann Area District Hospital, billions of dollars in funding, according to providers, physicians, hospital associations and even some Republican lawmakers. They include Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who argued the provision would “defund” rural hospitals.

Dr. Michael Rothermich, the chief of staff at the Hermann hospital, said it is already treading water with current funding levels…

The hospital has just three full-time physicians on staff to service patients in two counties, where 1 in 4 rely on Medicaid.

“There are fewer and fewer people to take care of it and fewer and fewer resources to try and do what we need to do to take care of people,” Rothermich said.

In southern Missouri, Karen White, the administrator for Missouri Highlands Health Care, said the new provisions could mean they need to prioritize which patients to care for.

“I think we will see loss of life, maybe not immediate, but if chronic conditions go untreated for an extended period of time, it does result in lower quality of life, less people working,” White said. “We’ve lost three hospitals in the last 10 years in our region, and that has left Missouri Highlands as the only form of health care.”

Missouri Highlands is a federally qualified health center, or FQHC — a community-based health care provider that relies on federal funding to operate. White said 46% of the population there is on Medicaid, and Missouri Highlands is the only health care provider in a three- to four-hour radius…

Wednesday Evening Open Thread: The GOP Death CaucusPost + Comments (63)

Excellent Read: Return of the Mad King

by Anne Laurie| June 22, 20253:10 pm| 124 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Iran, Trump Crime Cartel

Trump said you can measure a presidency by the wars you avoid, and for once he was right. Saturday's Iran bombing was the exclamation point on his abject failure
Trump is copying dictators from Mussolini to Putin in seeking glory through pointless war. My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/dona…

[image or embed]

— Will Bunch (@willbunch.bsky.social) June 22, 2025 at 1:44 PM

Will Bunch, at the Philadelphia Inquirer – “A mad king’s pointless war is where Donald Trump was always heading”:

“We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.”
— Donald Trump’s second inaugural address, Jan. 20

In a sense, you gotta hand it to Donald Trump. America’s 45th and 47th president — and first dictator — may have made 30,573 false or misleading claims in his first term, but he started his second term with arguably the most prescient and honest words he’s uttered since descending from his golden escalator 10 years and one week ago.

A mad king’s impulsive, unchecked decision on Saturday to send waves of U.S. B-2 bombers halfway around the globe to drop the world’s most powerful nonnuclear bombs on three targets inside Iran is indeed a perfect way to measure Trump’s success after just over five months back in the White House.

And by every measure, Trump 47 has been an abject failure.

One week after 5 million Americans flooded the streets for a massive “No Kings” protest, with his approval rating heading underwater faster than the next climate-fueled flash flood, with his masked-secret-police deportation drive starting to alienate his own voters, with gas prices and 20-something unemployment starting to soar, and almost zero legislation despite GOP control of Congress, Trump showed that even a POTUS who hates canines can still wag the dog.

It took another epic failure — the inability of any of America’s democratic institutions since World War II to constrain the war-making abilities of an “imperial president,” which is a polite euphemism for “emperor” — to give Trump this option: to try and reinvent his disastrous reign by picking up the phone and ordering death and destruction 6,500 miles away…

The current wave of death in both Iran and Israel probably could have been avoided if not for another arbitrary and pointless Trump decision: to rip up Obama’s Iran deal in 2018. Not because that made the world safer. But because Trump — who showed his true self yet again last week in failing to observe the federal Juneteenth holiday — was on a mission to undo every achievement of the first Black president.

The truth is that another foreign war is always where Trump was going to take America, no matter what horse manure about world peace he spread during his 2024 presidential campaign. That’s because starting wars is what ego-driven personalist “strongmen” do — to stake their dubious claim on both national and personal greatness, to change the focus from domestic disasters and the suffering of their own people, and to create the perfect excuse to silence dissent and a free press in “the homeland.”…

This is not a time for Americans to “rally ‘round the flag” — not for a war being waged on behalf of one American and not the other 339,999,999. This is a moment for resistance and for accountability, in whatever ways are possible today, and more forcefully once the people can take our country back. And it starts with this basic understanding: that Trump is revealing the fallacy behind “strongman” rule.

He bombed Iran because he is a weak man.

Excellent Read: Return of the Mad KingPost + Comments (124)

Heartbreaking Read: ‘Abandoned by Trump, a farmer and a migrant search for a better future’

by Anne Laurie| June 21, 20252:40 pm| 216 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Immigration, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Trump Crime Cartel

Abandoned by Trump, a farmer and a migrant search for a better future – Washington Post www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio…

[image or embed]

— Michael Huggins (@michaelhugg2591.bsky.social) June 21, 2025 at 11:59 AM

The Washington Post at its best [gift link]:

KIRK, COLORADO – There was a saying he’d heard, about how every farmer rooted for all the other farmers to do well, too, until one of those others started farming next door. So JJ Ficken didn’t talk much about the grant money with other farmers.

But his bills had mounted, and his ambitions had unraveled, and in Kirk, a town of 61, it was easy to feel alone. Now on that afternoon in mid-April, JJ, 37, unstrapped the bags of seed corn on his trailer for a customer…

The federal government had promised JJ a $200,000 grant, spread across two years, to cover the cost of a seasonal farmhand from Latin America. In a place where local, legal help was nearly impossible to keep, the extra worker would give him the freedom to handle more jobs and invest in his own equipment. It was an opportunity that could transform his family’s future, but, JJ explained to his friend, President Donald Trump had frozen the money.

“Good,” the man said, grinning. “Too much spending here and there. I’m okay with a little hurt.”…

Hurt was something JJ already understood. It had been part of the landscape long before Trump took office. JJ was an American farmer, perpetually subject to weather, labor, loans, overhead, markets, health, politics. None of it was predictable, and all of it was a threat. The industry’s survival has long depended on the deals made between millions of Americans willing to brave all that uncertainty and a federal government willing to sustain them, through grants, subsidies, insurance, financing, payouts and disaster relief.

But then Trump, in the earliest days of his second term, threatened to break tens of thousands of those deals, suspending billions in agricultural funding and decimating the staffs that managed it. Swept up in the freeze was JJ and the $50 million grant program he’d signed up for along with 140 other farmers across the country. All of them had agreed to hire and, in many cases, house domestic workers or lawful immigrants willing to take jobs that Americans would not, but with the reimbursements in doubt, farmers worried they’d miss payrolls, default on loans or face bankruptcy. Many feared the checks would never come.

“I tried to do things right,” JJ said, because he could have taken on an undocumented laborer at any time for $14 an hour, as many of his neighbors had, but he didn’t believe in supporting illegal immigration. Almost nothing mattered more to him than his word, and he’d kept it to the U.S. government: He’d committed to buy a plane ticket for a 24-year-old from Guatemala named Otto Vargas. He’d rented him a single-wide. He’d bought him an old pickup to use. He’d spent tens of thousands of dollars to do what the grant required, covering most of it with a line of credit at 8.5 percent interest.

Now, he didn’t know if Otto would ever get here, or if the government would ever pay him back…

show full post on front page

===

Otto was the youngest candidate JJ interviewed, but he sounded eager. Through an interpreter, Otto told him he wanted to learn English, and JJ told Otto he wanted to learn Spanish. The language barrier didn’t concern JJ when he offered him the job. He already had another worker, a 21-year-old named Riggin Williams, who had grown up in the community. As long as he had Riggin, JJ wouldn’t have to ask Otto to deal with customers or operate the most technical equipment.

Then, one morning in mid-April, Riggin quit.

He had found a job with regular hours and didn’t want to spend another season baling hay. He gave JJ two weeks’ notice and told him he hoped the new guy worked out.

But the new guy was still in Guatemala, waiting for a visa. JJ couldn’t even apply for the first installment of his grant money until Otto arrived, which should have happened weeks earlier. He’d heard from a recruiter that the administration’s attempt to make the government more efficient had slowed the visa process throughout Central America…

===
In Guatemala, Otto was pleading with God.

From his rural hometown of Aldea Chispán, he’d prayed that he’d get a job interview, and when he did, he prayed he’d do well, and when he did, he prayed he’d receive an offer, and when he did, he prayed the United States would let him come.

Otto had made the six-hour round-trip drive to interview for his visa on April 15 — the same day Riggin quit.

Now, he waited, worrying he would be denied or JJ would back out. The two men had spoken during their video interview for just 17 minutes.

Each week Otto missed because of the delay cost him at least $700 in lost wages, and all of it mattered to Otto. His family’s 40-acre farm, he said, had struggled in recent years. Bad winters killed crops. A lost onion harvest squandered five months of work.

His earliest memories were on the farm, fetching his dad’s tools. His father would dig a little hole, and Otto would press fertilizer into the soil by hand. In the flatlands east of the mountains, he’d learned to tolerate temperatures that topped 110 degrees. During planting season, he and his dad would rest in the shade of their lemon trees, sweating and laughing and sharing his mother’s empanadas.

Now his dad was 64, and Otto dreaded leaving him. He relied on Otto to manage the land, but Otto also leaned on his dad, who had tried to prepare him for the United States, a place he’d never visited. In the months since Trump took office, Otto said, he’d seen videos on Facebook of immigrants being harassed and arrested…

Heartbreaking Read: <em>‘Abandoned by Trump, a farmer and a migrant search for a better future’</em>Post + Comments (216)

Dodger Stadium Standoff Open Thread

by Anne Laurie| June 20, 202510:28 am| 143 Comments

This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Immigration, Open Threads, Trump Crime Cartel

It is the official position of ICE that this very real event that did, in fact, happen was not them.
Vigilantism is worse. It would be nice if federal agents had means to identify themselves as legitimate law enforcement.

[image or embed]

— Matt Ortega (@mattortega.com) June 19, 2025 at 4:42 PM

This feels pretty notable IMO

[image or embed]

— Nute (@nutedawn.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 3:36 PM

NB: The Athletic is the NYTimes’ sports sub-blog:

The Los Angeles Dodgers said they denied federal immigration officials access to the area around the team’s stadium on Thursday morning.
The news comes hours after The Athletic reported the team’s plans to announce assistance to immigrants impacted by recent militarized raids.

[image or embed]

— The Athletic (@theathletic.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 5:12 PM

Looking weak like this in the Trump administration is literally begging to get Miller come to your office and shout for hours and hours, it's not surprising they're all rushing to cover they asses.

[image or embed]

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 5:41 PM

show full post on front page

if you don’t know the history of Dodger Stadium you can’t fully understand what unfolded today. thanks @chrislhayes.bsky.social for the opportunity to share it.

[image or embed]

— Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 9:05 PM

Imagine being one of these pampered blow-dried TV dolts giggling like a child about the idea of mass deportations at a Dodgers game.
So much misery and chaos! It would be so much fun for these assholes to watch from their living rooms.

[image or embed]

— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) June 16, 2025 at 6:18 PM

Sure looks like ICE got their assignment to stage a raid at Dodgers Stadium from these giggling dipshits.

[image or embed]

— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 3:22 PM

Barry Petchesky, reporting for Defector — “The Dodgers Can’t Sit This Moment Out”:

… Around 8 a.m., a line of unmarked vans and SUVs attempted to enter the stadium parking lot. They were feds—they said as much, although as has been characteristic of this campaign there was no sure way to tell by looking. They wore no uniforms, displayed no badges or service logos, and covered their faces. In short, they looked and dressed like immigration officers have looked and dressed around the country as they perform deportation raids on terrified communities—like thugs, or kidnappers, or just criminals…

It should be noted that they were not, or not entirely, ICE, but rather Customs and Border Protection agents—another enforcement organization under the Department of Homeland Security, with much of the same powers and purview. It’s a distinction without a difference; they all act more or less the same. The agents themselves were not exactly forthcoming with their identities, they told an L.A. Times reporter only that they were “DHS.”

Denied entrance, the line of vehicles relocated to another gate outside a closed parking lot, where they gathered before gradually dispersing. They had apparently intended to use Dodger Stadium’s lot as a quiet place to process people arrested in early-morning raids, including a major one at a Home Depot in Hollywood that had targeted day laborers and street vendors. One activist showed the Times photos of vehicles that were present at both the Home Depot raid and at Dodger Stadium. That activist also told the Times that a CBP agent had told her why they sought the apparent isolation of a closed stadium parking lot.

“We bring the detainees here to process them and conduct our investigation without public interference,” the agent said, according to [Emily] Phillips, who wrote down his quote. “We can’t do it in the Home Depot parking lot because the public makes it dangerous.”

Angelenos made sure they couldn’t do it at Dodger Stadium, either. After images of the feds at the stadium began spreading on social media, protestors showed up in an attempt to confront them.

The protestors were kept from the federal agents by LAPD. The feds eventually left as more protestors arrived over the course of the morning.

The Dodgers, in the wake of Thursday’s showdown, announced they will delay announcing their community initiatives. “Because of the events earlier today, we continue to work with groups that were involved with our programs,” Dodgers president Stan Kasten said. “But we are going to have to delay today’s announcement while we firm up some more details. We’ll get back to you soon with the timing.”

If the exact form of Thursday’s events wasn’t predictable, the broad strokes absolutely were. This isn’t the type of politics where neutrality can be maintained indefinitely. Any pro sports team will inevitably be entwined with its community, and this is especially true of the Dodgers, from the composition of their fanbase to their immigrant megastar to their stadium’s very origins. They didn’t ask to be involved, but neither did those Angelenos being targeted and terrorized by the government. Not an inch can be given.

Dodger Stadium Standoff Open ThreadPost + Comments (143)

Open Thread: ICE Melting Down, Just A Bit?

by Anne Laurie| June 19, 20255:04 pm| 118 Comments

This post is in: Immigration, Open Threads, Trump Crime Cartel

fwiw, tea leaves of doing this imho is that ICE knows that denying members entrance to facilities is a losing issue for them.

[image or embed]

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 10:48 AM

Scrabbling for figleaves…

… Under the annual appropriations act, lawmakers are allowed to enter any DHS facilities “used to detain or otherwise house aliens” to inspect them as part of their oversight duties. The act outlines that they are not required “to provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility.”

The agency’s new memo also seeks to differentiate ICE field offices from detention facilities, noting that “ICE Field Offices are not detention facilities” and therefore do not fall under the appropriations act provision.

Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, called the move “unprecedented” and an “affront to the Constitution and Federal law.”

“This unlawful policy is a smokescreen to deny Member visits to ICE offices across the country, which are holding migrants – and sometimes even U.S. citizens – for days at a time. They are therefore detention facilities and are subject to oversight and inspection at any time. DHS pretending otherwise is simply their latest lie,” Thompson said in a statement.

Previous DHS language for lawmaker visitations said “ICE will comply with the law and accommodate Members seeking to visit/tour an ICE detention facility for the purpose of conducting oversight.”

The recent memo now says the department “will make every effort” to comply with the law and accommodate members, while listing circumstances like “operational conditions, security posture, etc,” that could impact the time of entry…

I mean this is continuing confirmation, imho, that the massive public pressure campaign is tanking morale internally.
Homan, et. al doing these sort of appeals to humanity really gives away the game a bit.

[image or embed]

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 1:58 PM

You can see the ICE agents in their minivans then the LAPD cars in the back appearing to block the Dodger Stadium parking lot entrance.
When I asked an LAPD officer if they are blocking ICE from entering the parking lot she said “put it this way. The Dodgers don’t want them coming in.”

[image or embed]

— Molly Knight (@mollyknight.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 2:56 PM

Cops not letting ICE in? Perfect.

— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) June 19, 2025 at 3:10 PM

Open Thread: ICE Melting Down, Just A Bit?Post + Comments (118)

The Coming Assault On Our Cities

by Betty Cracker| June 16, 20256:46 am| 369 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Trump Crime Cartel, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome

In a post last week, we discussed a recent Anne Applebaum column on revolutionary logic. In her piece in The Atlantic, Applebaum observes that sputtering revolutionary regimes tend to escalate violence to consolidate power. She cites the depredations of the faltering Bolshevik and Maoist regimes as historical precedents, linking them to the flailing Trump regime’s violent assault on Los Angeles.

Now Trump faces the same choice as his revolutionary predecessors: Give up—or radicalize. Find compromises—or polarize society further. Slow down—or use violence. Like his revolutionary predecessors, Trump has chosen radicalization and polarization, and he is openly seeking to provoke violence.

The regime seeks to appease its base by carrying out Trump’s mass deportation threats, but it’s coming up against the hard fact that the economy depends on immigrant labor. Last week, Trump announced policy “changes” at DHS: (WSJ)

The Trump administration said it has directed immigration officers to pause arrests at farms, restaurants and hotels, stressing that sweeps should focus on people in the U.S. illegally who have criminal backgrounds.

The new guidance by the Department of Homeland Security comes after raids in Los Angeles sparked protests in the city that have spread across the country and led to the Trump administration sending in the National Guard and Marines.

“We will follow the President’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets,” said DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin.

At first, I figured this announcement of a partial walk-back was a lie to placate worried business interests, and immigration raids at worksites would continue. Immigrants commit fewer crimes than U.S. citizens, so if the regime truly focused on “the worst of the worst,” deportations would drop to Obama and Biden-era levels, and that would constitute a de-escalation.

But last night, after marinating in the humiliation of his flop of a birthday parade contrasted with the millions of Americans who turned out Saturday to oppose his authoritarian power grab, Trump issued a preview of coming horrors in a truly insane and spittle-flecked Truth Social post.

Our Nation’s ICE Officers have shown incredible strength, determination, and courage as they facilitate a very important mission, the largest Mass Deportation Operation of Illegal Aliens in History. Every day, the Brave Men and Women of ICE are subjected to violence, harassment, and even threats from Radical Democrat Politicians, but nothing will stop us from executing our mission, and fulfilling our Mandate to the American People. ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.

In order to achieve this, we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens. These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities — And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them. That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports — And that is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role. You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!

I want our Brave ICE Officers to know that REAL Americans are cheering you on every day. The American People want our Cities, Schools, and Communities to be SAFE and FREE from Illegal Alien Crime, Conflict, and Chaos. That’s why I have directed my entire Administration to put every resource possible behind this effort, and reverse the tide of Mass Destruction Migration that has turned once Idyllic Towns into scenes of Third World Dystopia. Our Federal Government will continue to be focused on the REMIGRATION of Aliens to the places from where they came, and preventing the admission of ANYONE who undermines the domestic tranquility of the United States.

To ICE, FBI, DEA, ATF, the Patriots at Pentagon and the State Department, you have my unwavering support. Now go, GET THE JOB DONE! DJT

This is, of course, fucking nuts. All of it. And keep in mind the context in which Trump issued this authoritarian decree: One of his supporters was then still at large after assassinating Democrats in the state governed by the Democrat who was the VP nominee last year.

So, it appears this is the form the escalation will take: an all-out assault on our cities carried out by federal law enforcement and probably the U.S. military. It’s going to be a long, hot summer.

Open thread.

The Coming Assault On Our CitiesPost + Comments (369)

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Bark louder, little dog.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Republicans do not trust women.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

The lights are all blinking red.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

No one could have predicted…

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

When I was faster i was always behind.

“Alexa, change the president.”

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Late Night Immigration Open Thread: To the Surprise of No One…

Wednesday Evening Open Thread: The GOP Death Caucus

Excellent Read: Return of the Mad King

Heartbreaking Read: ‘Abandoned by Trump, a farmer and a migrant search for a better future’

Dodger Stadium Standoff Open Thread

Open Thread: ICE Melting Down, Just A Bit?

The Coming Assault On Our Cities