“Donald Trump ran on a platform of mass deporting illegal aliens from the United States during the 2024 election, and as such, the voters of Oklahoma supported his efforts to do so. In fact, every single county in the Sooner State backed Trump and his policies over the open border approach of Democrat Kamala Harris. So, if Oklahoma voters have made their support for enforcing America’s immigration laws abundantly clear, why is their ‘Republican’ governor going on legacy media to cower before the left’s latest anti-ICE info op?” [editor’s note: I’m old enough to remember a time when the Federalist Society at least occasionally pretended to be kinda-sorta, a little bit, in a way, federalist – TLK] (01/26/26)
“With the killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretty seventeen days after the killing of Renee Good — both shot to death by federal agents in broad daylight on the streets of Minneapolis — it has become overwhelmingly clear that Donald Trump’s mass-deportation regime cannot be sustained without a repressive state machinery that endangers the lives and tramples the rights of legal residents and citizens of the United States, just as critics had been warning. … When defenders of Trump’s immigration policies can’t deny these incidents or spin them into oblivion, they’re reduced to minimizing them, as when MAGA-friendly pundit Wilfred Reilly summed up Thao’s ordeal as, ‘an un-injured man was briefly out in the cold.’ Or they treat such abuses as inevitable — as simply the price of the mass deportations voters supposedly elected Trump to carry out. It’s the can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs argument.” (01/26/26)
“Throughout President Donald Trump’s first term, I recall shouts that he had overstepped his authority under the law only to discover, oftentimes, that the power he was wielding had been bestowed upon our president by a feckless Congress. What I found even more disconcerting was that at no time did those complaining seek to limit these excessive presidential powers. It appears, as Sarah Isgur suggested, that their concern was not with an imperial presidency, only with this current person as that imperial president.” (01/26/26)
“It’s cliché to claim the present is a reflection of the past fictions, to use terms like Orwellian or invoke Kafka. They are useful tools, even for those who have not read them, but still understand the gist of the concept. The trade off made when critical thinking and reason is dropped for comfort and dependency, is that we no longer have choices or even agency. Instead we are ruled by agencies, and governed as subjects and not as those who are supposed to have power over the government. It turns out it was all a lie, like most stories we tell ourselves, just a myth to satiate an inability or unwillingness to change.” (01/26/26)
“When Donald Trump strode into the World Economic Forum in Davos this January flanked by Jared Kushner and other confidants, it was ostensibly to sign a charter establishing a ‘Board of Peace.’ The document, hailed by its backers as a technocratic alternative to decades of dead‑end diplomacy, promises ‘pragmatic judgment’ and a ‘nimble and effective’ institution to rebuild war‑torn Gaza. The preamble reads like an attempt to imitate the United Nations Charter without its collective obligations. Beneath that veneer, the charter sets up a structure that concentrates virtually all authority in the hands of its chairman, Donald J. Trump, and relegates Palestinians to spectators while foreign investors draw up the blueprints for their homeland.” (01/26/26)
“Not long ago, I reported a story for a book about a cannabis start-up founder who, like many licensed operators, mixed legal and illicit business, and wound up killed. The story began in 2016 and unfolded during the turbulent early stages of California’s cannabis legalization gold rush. But a decade later, the promise that legal weed would reduce crime has failed. The reasons are political and economic. A laissez-faire attitude prevails over weed in police departments and district attorney offices across the country. Resources have been directed away from cannabis. But the real driver of organized, violent crime in the cannabis business isn’t the lack of law enforcement. It’s the black market’s existence.” (01/26/26)
“The horror of watching a U.S. citizen die at the hands of federal or state officials transcends ordinary politics. Such a ruthless deployment of power not only evokes deep and widespread human emotion but also collides directly with fundamental U.S. values rooted in the Constitution, especially the commitment to protecting individual liberties from government abuse.” (01/26/26)
“In just a little over two weeks federal agents in Minneapolis have killed two innocent people in broad daylight. Contrary to the Trump administration’s lies, these were unjustified murders, pure and simple. But while both killings sickened and horrified many Americans, the killing of Alex Pretti is evoking a far stronger reaction than the killing of Renee Good.” (01/26/26)
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by the editorial board
“Americans have long struggled with notions of ‘local justice.’ Should state or federal laws sometimes bend to a community’s sensibilities and priorities? In Minneapolis, recent instances of violence by immigration enforcement agents, and sometimes by protesters, point to a federal-local split over immigration policies, not to mention which branch of law enforcement should investigate the violent acts. … Yet, for every standoff like the current one in Minneapolis, there are today examples of cooperation in implementing law – whether federal, state, or local.” (01/26/26)
