onfocus

After the past three weeks of brutality in Minneapolis, it should no longer be possible to say that the Trump administration seeks merely to govern this nation. It seeks to reduce us all to a state of constant fear — a fear of violence from which some people may at a given moment be spared, but from which no one will ever be truly safe. That is our new national reality. State terror has arrived.

We have to reject this way of life every way we can.

I am using the term “third-country removals” instead of “third-country deportations,” because the latter is a legal process in which a migrant is resettled in a safe third country. What is actually happening, in nearly all cases, more closely resembles chain refoulement, rendition, or kidnapping – and often violate domestic and international law.

The scale of human suffering inflicted by Republicans is difficult to grasp.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan said in his ruling that the agents violated Garrison Gibson’s Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure.

This is not a law enforcement mission, it is a violent harassment mission.

See Also: NYT: Couple Says ICE Agents Gassed Them as They Drove With 6 Children

This weekend, I watched January 6th insurrectionist Jake Lang agitate crowds of anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis and I realized how strange it was that he wasn’t just, you know, officially part of ICE.

Garbage Day went to Minneapolis. I think it’s important to see what’s happening there. It’s much more like an invasion from an occupying force than previous protest movements. Also interesting to hear how that invasion is working hand in hand with right wing media.

See Also: Star Tribune Live Reporting

See Also: TPM: What the ‘Federal Invasion’ of Minneapolis Looks Like on the Ground: Photos

Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned on Tuesday over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent and the department’s reluctance to investigate the shooter, according to people with knowledge of their decision.

Good to see people with ethics leaving rather than enable their lying.

The Boomers are leaving on a very bad note -- but they are leaving. They're leaving emptiness and wreckage as they head for the graveyards, but this is the second quarter of the 21st Century. It's not an era of Baby Boom Population Bomb. It's an era of radically shrinking populations and disturbed landscapes.

Bruce Sterling here in posts 117-121 on the complete destruction of the Republican party. [via Cory Doctorow, where it’s easier to read]

When asked by NYT reporters if there were limits to his power, Trump replied, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

The corrupt supreme court decision to grant the President immunity from criminal prosecution gave us this. The framers designed three equal branches of government so power can’t live with one person. The design didn’t work.

And this is where we are now: Today, several days into Grok’s latest scandal, people are using an AI image generator made by a man who regularly boosts white supremacist thought to create images of a woman slaughtered by an ICE agent in front of the whole world less than 24 hours ago to put her in a bikini.

Please stop using this platform. Every link, visible logo, and pageview gives that project legitimacy and oxygen. Association with it should be a brand-killer. We all need to treat the former Twitter like the radioactive cesspool it is. ️ Nothing valued is there. ️

See also: Why Are Grok and X Still Available in App Stores?