American Pogrom (#WhatTheyVotedFor)

The Beat People

We might consider the state of things when the domestic violence charge against the law enforcer is second chair to the lede:

An ICE leader has been locked up in the same jail where he'd sent ICE prisoners after he allegedly strangled his girlfriend earlier this month.

Cincinnati Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervisor Samuel Saxon was tossed into Hamilton County Jail on a $400,000 bond last week on domestic violence charges stemming from a Dec. 5 incident.

Saxon, 47, now also faces federal charges and has been transferred into the custody of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to inmate records for the Butler County Jail, Ohio's largest facility housing ICE prisoners.

The Ohio Immigrant Alliance said Saxon is now behind bars in "the most notorious ICE prison in Ohio."

(Kimmins↱)​

The article goes on to note the possibility "that this may be the first time an ICE agent has been incarcerated in his own ICE jail".

It will be a difficult dovi case; the victim is not cooperating with authorities. The the accusation is that Saxon allegedly used some sort of chokehold on his girlfriend in view of other people; the case depends on witnesses. According to the Daily Beast, "Police reported seeing bruises on her neck and said officers had been called out to the apartment 22 times in a year-and-a-half period." Moreover, while the couple reportedly started seeing each other when she was eighteen and he was forty, the relationship has been going on for a while; in 2018, her nose was broken, and earlier this year, her pelvis, by violence attributed to Saxon.

Lynn Tramonte, of Ohio Immigrant Alliance, suggested ICE is "failing to police their own ranks", and reminded, "This is not the first ICE agent arrested for gender-based crimes in recent memory". The Daily Beast notes prior reporting "that DHS had set off alarms by bypassing normal procedures to rush recruits through training, including some with pending charges".

But in addition to all that, Saxon is also accused of lying to federal investigators about domestic violence allegations. And, sure, it's one thing to comment about how only the guilty have reason to lie, but the ICE hiring spree has not done anything good for the reputation of law enforcers, and compared to its scale, it is easy enough to remember that Trump only hires the best people.

Think for a minute what it means that these are the best people for law enforcement.
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Notes:

Kimmins, Leigh. "ICE Leader Thrown in His Own Jail Over Strangling Claims". The Daily Beast. 19 December 2025. TheDailyBeast.com. 19 December 2025. https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-leader-thrown-in-his-own-jail-over-strangling-claims/
 
Tiassa said:
[...] The Daily Beast notes prior reporting "that DHS had set off alarms by bypassing normal procedures to rush recruits through training, including some with pending charges". [...]
Click to expand...

Nick Swartsell: "During his arraignment, Saxon's attorney Tad Brittingham pointed out Saxon has no prior criminal record."

Nevertheless, it may still faintly echo A Clockwork Orange, where Alex's ex-droogs Billyboy and Dim are recruited into the police force (among many others). The State utilizing prior criminal experience and those with unhinged medical conditions to perversely maintain law and order.

And, of course, reverberations of the Indonesian purge of 1965-66, where Suharto employed thousands of young gangsters, and members of other marginalized groups, to constitute death squads that facilitated the orchestrated mass murder. Highlighted, described, and reenacted by an unnamed, elderly gangster himself in the 2012 documentary "The Act of Killing".
_
 
The Times, They Are a'Changin' (#WhatTheyVotedFor)

The headline from the New York Times↱, "To Their Shock, Cubans in Florida Are Being Deported in Record Numbers", either needs some explaining, or it doesn't. The thing is, Florida Cuban-Americans, in staunch anti-communist disapproval of the Castro regime, have long favored Republicans.

The subhead clarifies: "Cubans had long benefited from legal privileges unavailable to immigrants from other countries. President Trump has changed that."

Nowhere has the shock of treating Cubans like other migrants been felt more than in Florida, which was shaped in modern times by exiles of the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

Families, businesses and communities that once felt removed from or immune to immigration enforcement now must face it head-on. Some Floridians worry that these deportations could stain the state's proud Cuban identity, turning older immigrants against newer ones.

Under Mr. Trump, many other countries saw similar increases in repatriation. The difference is that Cubans had not previously been targeted as aggressively for removal. Regular deportation flights to Cuba began in January 2017, under President Barack Obama, paused during the coronavirus pandemic and restarted in 2023.

Many Cubans have also been detained for weeks or months in a facility in the Florida Everglades known as "Alligator Alcatraz." At another nearby detention facility, Cuban detainees protested last June by writing "SOS Cuba" on their shirts and spelling out "SOS" with their bodies in the recreation yard.

Legal immigration has also been all but cut out. Mr. Trump enacted a travel ban on 19 countries, including Cuba, and ended a family reunification program. U.S. officials are rejecting visa applications, which can take years to complete. Last month, the Trump administration paused all Cuban immigration cases, including pending naturalization, residency and asylum applications.

"It's the most sweeping rollback of Cuban migration channels since the Cold War," said María José Espinosa, the executive director of the Center for Engagement and Advocacy in the Americas, a nonprofit strategy organization based in Washington.

Polls suggest that most Cuban American registered voters, who tend to be Republican, continue to support Mr. Trump, said Michael J. Bustamante, an associate history professor and director of Cuban studies at the University of Miami who studies Cuban American political culture. But he said that he had noticed "a growing amount of unease" throughout the community.​

One thing that ought to stand out is how downright American these Cuban-Americans sound:

Some older Cuban American immigrants are angry over the turnabout in circumstances. Alicia Peláez, 78, arrived in the United States as an unaccompanied minor in 1960, under Operation Pedro Pan, a secret program run by the Catholic Church with help from the State Department that resettled some 14,000 young Cubans.

"We were welcomed into the country," said Ms. Peláez, who is a registered Republican, but has not voted that way in recent elections. "Now, it's the complete opposite."​

To the one, sure, it really is hard to express how much Trump has unsettled just in this one aspect of his white supremacist pogrom; to the other, it's hard to understand what people were expecting, given that Republicans told us this was coming since before Trump↗.
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Notes:

Mazzei, Patricia. "To Their Shock, Cubans in Florida Are Being Deported in Record Numbers". The New York Times. 19 January 2026. NYTimes.com. 21 January 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/us/politics/cubans-florida-deportations-trump.html
 
How It's Going: Interview with the Furious

Sylvie McNamara↱, for Washingtonian:

In late November, I spent several hours talking with a member of the DC National Guard. I'd met him at an event—one unrelated to the Army—and when I found out what he did, I had questions. Was he among the soldiers stationed on street corners since the summer? Did he think he was helping the city? Was the public getting in his face?​

And there's a lot to tell:

The soldier said he's never seen this level of animosity toward members of the Guard. Civilians are "yelling in our face, recording us, taking pictures of us, walking away looking scared." He blames the President's rhetoric, which he feels has pitted soldiers against the communities in which they live and serve.

Responding to a summary of the soldier's opinions of this deployment, a spokesperson for the DC National Guard wrote that servicemembers "bring a wide range of perspectives to any mission, particularly one conducted in a highly visible and complex environment. The DC Safe and Beautiful mission was established to support District and federal partners through a whole-of-government approach focused on public safety, deterrence through presence, and community confidence—not to replace civilian law enforcement." The statement also noted that guardsmen "perform a range of public safety support functions," including "providing medical assistance, administering naloxone to reverse overdoses, reuniting lost minors with their families, deescalating violent incidents, and supporting law enforcement apprehensions." The National Guard's "enduring responsibility," the statement says, "is to serve the American people—often in challenging circumstances—by strengthening public safety, reinforcing trust, and supporting democratic institutions at home."

But the soldier does not believe that Safe and Beautiful has served those ends. To be clear, his dissent isn't ideological. He trends Republican, and he voted third party for President in 2024. He simply thinks the mission doesn't make sense. Local crime is a problem, he said, though not bad enough to justify bringing in federal troops. And he believes that it's wrong—"objectively unnecessary and almost wicked"—to station armed soldiers on street corners as props in the deterrence of crime. "I love my country and I love the Army," he said, "but this is not what I signed up to do" ....

.... Safe and Beautiful, though, has felt pointless. "I neglected to mention this, partially out of shame," he told me nearly two hours into our interview, "but every Wednesday, we picked up trash." Officers would distribute supplies—plastic bags, gloves, grabber sticks—so the troops could collect candy wrappers and bottle caps. The public sometimes "laughed in our face," he said. At quitting time, servicemembers would haul their bounty to a central point to be weighed so that leadership could crow about how many pounds of garbage they'd bagged.

"That was a low point for me, spiritually," the soldier said. It wasn't that trash pickup was beneath him: In the Army, he's gladly cleaned bathrooms and mopped floors. Instead, he took issue with feeling condescended to by his superiors, who "never addressed how fucking ridiculous" this whole mission was or acknowledged that "we are in a bad situation and this should not be happening." The DC National Guard's aviation unit, of which he is a member, includes two medical evacuation companies, a fixed-wing company, and a security-and-support company. "Is this the best use of our tax dollars?" he said about his unit's highly trained military pilots picking up trash.

I asked if there's dissent within the DC Guard, whether some soldiers think that fighting crime might benefit the city. He bristled at the premise of my question. "But we're not taking on crime," he said. "That's the crux of the issue: We're not doing anything. We're checking IDs at Park Police." The soldier told me that there isn't much sense among servicemembers "that we're actually making anything better," and as a consequence, morale has been low. ​

It was during this interview that the reporter had occasion to pause in order to pass along a news alert that two members of the National Guard had just been shot in D.C. What were you doing when the news broke? Sylvie McNamara was conducting this interview.

Scanning the homepage of the New York Times, I informed him that the victims were West Virginians. (Both were initially reported killed, though one would survive.) For almost a minute, he was silent. Finally, he said, "Those poor kids just came to the city, and they didn't want to be here. Now they're not going home."

I asked if he needed some time, if he wanted to talk another day. He didn't.

"The whole thing is fucking senseless," he said. "I gave up trying to understand it."

Understand what, I asked.

"The purpose of why we're out here. Why we're in the streets."​
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Notes:

McNamara, Slyvie. "An Anonymous DC National Guardsman Tells All". Washingtonian. 21 January 2026. Washingtonian.com. 22 January 2026. https://washingtonian.com/2026/01/21/an-anonymous-dc-national-guardsman-tells-all/
 
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Unsubtleties

Journalist Radley Balko↱ observes, "I've Covered Police Abuse for 20 Years. What ICE Is Doing Is Different."

Police agencies in the United States kill more than 1,000 people each year. After many of those deaths, the agencies involved put out statements. Those statements often use what's known as the exonerative voice to minimize officers' involvement. The first statement from the Minneapolis Police Department after George Floyd's death, for example, said that the officers at the scene "noted that he appeared to be suffering from medical distress." Quite the understatement. These communications often cast events in a light most favorable to the officers involved, sometimes to the point of deception. Too often, they'll try to smear the deceased by citing a criminal record or suggesting a drug addiction or gang affiliation.

I have been covering policing for more than 20 years and have read and parsed a lot of these statements. The Department of Homeland Security's response after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis this month is something else entirely.

For all their flaws, typical communications from police officials usually include a modicum of solemnity. There are assurances that there will be a fair and impartial investigation, even if those investigations too often turn out to be neither. There's at least the acknowledgment that to take a human life is a profound and serious thing.

The Trump administration's response to Ms. Good's death made no such concessions. There were no promises of an impartial investigation. There was no regret or remorse. There was little empathy for her family — for her parents, her partner or the children she left behind. From the moment the world learned about her death, the administration pronounced the shooting not only justified but an act of heroism worthy of praise and celebration.

It isn't just the lying; it's that the lies are wildly exaggerated and easily refutable. All the evidence we've seen so far, including a meticulous Times forensic analysis of the available footage, makes clear that at worst, Ms. Good mildly obstructed immigration enforcement, disobeyed ambiguous orders or perhaps attempted to flee an arrest. None of those are capital crimes, nor do law enforcement officers get to dole out punishment in such cases. At one point, President Trump justified her shooting by claiming she'd been "very disrespectful" to immigration officers. That isn't a crime at all.

The lies this administration is telling about Ms. Good aren't those you deploy as part of a cover-up. They're those you use when you want to show you can get away with anything. They're a projection of power.​

It's an interesting phrase, "For all their flaws", compared to everything wrong with police disinformation, but this is also the gnashing expectation of propriety, a standard of seriousness prerequisite to participation. "For all their flaws, typical communications from police officials usually include a modicum of solemnity"; one might as well say, "Despite everything else, police departments usually at least try to pretend." After all, part of the credibility of law enforcement is its decency; when this is how they represent justice, protection, and service, their credibility is diminished.

And maybe there are plenty of critics on the inside, but that says nothing about what is self-inflicted.

Then again, the Bad Seeds Thesis on Police Behavior and Criminality appears to have finally fallen through; the would-be "good cops" are way overdue, and we must countenance the real possibility that they're not coming. True, circumstance brings out the best in some law enforcers, but we cannot pretend it impossible that Jack Smith or Robert Mueller are the rare seeds. The Trump pogrom inflicts against the credibility of all law enforcers in the United States.

And inasmuch as it is behavior put on "when you want to show you can get away with anything", well, sure, they're law enforcers. They're still pissed off about the nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds failing to make the point.
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Notes:

Balko, Radley. "I've Covered Police Abuse for 20 Years. What ICE Is Doing Is Different." The New York Times. 21 January 2026. NYTimes.com. 22 January 2026. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/opinion/ice-shooting-renee-good.html
 
History and Pogrom: Porvenir and the Hope for Once Upon a Time

We must remember #WhatTheyVotedFor:

In the early morning on January 28, 1918, a group of Texas Rangers, alongside U.S. Cavalry soldiers and local white ranchers, arrived in Porvenir, Texas, a small farming village that was home to refugees of the Mexican Revolution. The officers, looking for a robbery suspect, woke up the residents of the town and searched them at gunpoint for weapons and stolen goods. The officers found only one antique rifle and a pistol that belonged to the only white resident of the town. Nevertheless, they tied up 15 Mexican American men and boys from the village and shot them until they ran out of bullets.

The officers later tried to defend their actions by claiming that the residents were "thieves, informers, spies, and murderers." However, a report by an adjutant general of Texas found that the victims were "defenseless and unarmed" and killed "without provocation."

After the executions, the surviving residents fled Porvenir, returning only to bury the bodies of their loved ones. The victims, who ranged in age from 16 to 72, were Antonio Castañeda, Longino Flores, Pedro Herrera, Vivian Herrera, Severiano Herrera, Manuel Moralez, Eutimio Gonzalez, Ambrosio Hernandez, Alberto Garcia, Tiburcio Jáques, Roman Nieves, Serapio Jimenez, Pedro Jimenez, Juan Jimenez, and Macedonio Huertas.

The U.S. Army subsequently burned the whole village, and no participants in the massacre were ever prosecuted for their actions.​

This is the sort of American history some would seek to forestall from our future. And then there are those who find that concern so paternalistic, so condescending, that they must vote for that future in order to make sure that people understand their place.

The records from La Matanza are problematic: The American pogrom killed somewhere between a few hundred and several thousand Mexican-Americans. It would appear we don't know the actual toll. It's one thing if there are people who want to do it all over again; they weren't even alive, back then, and now they need their chance to do the same. But history will not look kindly on the people who made excuses along the way, who sought to coddle what has come to pass, and loathe what would refuse it.

That's the thing about history: We know what they're trying to do. They've been at it the whole time.
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Notes:

"Texas Rangers Execute 15 Mexican American Men and Boys in Porvenir, Texas". Equal Justice Initiative. n.d. EJI.org. 28 January 2026. https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/jan/28
 
A Note for the Enabler-Heroes

A sitting Congressman, Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI02) reminds:

Important for everyone to know: Liam’s parents didn’t enter the US illegally. They presented at a port of entry, requested asylum and were waiting for their hearing.

Many of the families ICE has been snatching off the streets are like this. Immigrants who entered legally!​

It's actually an interesting discussion leading up to that: Bill Melugin↱ reported and complained about Judge Biery's order↗ to release Liam Conejo Ramos and his father from ICE detention in Texas. FOX News host Laura Ingraham↱ confidently declares, "Will be overturned." The retort from podcaster and former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau↱ arrived this morning: "Sorry to disappoint, but the 5-year-old has already been released from prison and is home with his family."

And as the Distinguished Gentleman from Rhode Island Two observes, these were not illegal or undocumented migrants; they are in the country legally. This American pogrom is not about "illegals" or dangerous criminals, but straightforward racism; the cruelty is the point.

And we've known this was coming; it's what people chose to defend when complaining against political correctness or shaming or cancel culture. It's the darkness of the populist "intellectual dark web"↗. It's why making sense matters, compared to dismissing longtime chatter↗ about changing the Constitution as just another political opinion; they told us, over and over again what was coming, but the real offense against freedom was that they should ever be expected to be honest, or even merely make sense.

It's one thing that they couldn't see this coming, but neither could they ever actually imagine their idyll. These delusional racist fancies are kind of like pornographic fantasies in which their gratification is not evil, but they would never actually acknowledge or describe to anybody what they really, really want.

There is no perfect rape; there is no perfect nationalist-libertarian tyranny. And compared to their shameless roar, their fearful silence is simply how ashamed they are of what is most likely infantilist mommy fantasy confused with the parasympathetic confidence of an erection. Yes, even Laura Ingraham.

Okay, maybe not most likely. Maybe, at best. Remember, we're talking about cultural heritage, here.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2018019592057086187
 
Truth and Sunshine

The Cato Institute, a'ight? The Cato Institute:

The government first began gathering detailed information on benefits use by citizenship status in 1994. The data show:

• For each year from 1994 to 2023, the US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government.

• Over that period, immigrants created a cumulative fiscal surplus of $14.5 trillion in real 2024 US dollars, including $3.9 trillion in savings on interest on the debt.

• Without immigrants, US government public debt at all levels would be at least 205 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)—nearly twice its 2023 level.​

These results, which do not account for any of immigration’s indirect, tax-revenue-boosting effects on economic growth, represent the lower bound of the positive fiscal effects. Even by this conservative analysis, immigrants may have already prevented a fiscal crisis.

(Bier, Howard, and Salazar↱)​
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Notes:

Bier, David J., Michael Howard, and Julián Salazar. "Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023". The Cato Institute. 3 February 2026. Cato.org. 3 February 2026. https://www.cato.org/white-paper/immigrants-recent-effects-government-budgets-1994-2023
 
#TheCrueltyIsThePoint | #WhatTheyVotedFor​

A pogrom story, from the Minnesota Star Tribune↱:

Sixteen-year-old Sebastian, an asylum-seeker from Ecuador, was driving alone in north Minneapolis when immigration agents apprehended him in early January. Moments before his phone was confiscated, the teenager called his father and told him what was happening.

He is one of many children who have been swept up under Operation Metro Surge. But instead of taking Sebastian to the Whipple Federal Building and sending him to another detention center, the feds sent him to a Christian youth shelter in Michigan.

The government then lost track of his whereabouts for the better part of a week, during which his family searched frantically for their son.

Sebastian's journey is one of the strangest wrongful-detainment petitions to emerge from the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in Minnesota. It's also illustrative of the administration's new approach to the "unaccompanied minor" system.

Long a designation for youth apprehended while crossing the border alone, the unaccompanied minor system now applies to immigrants detained in interior operations like Metro Surge. The children are sometimes kept from their parents and placed in a vast, increasingly impenetrable network of shelters holding immigrant kids in government custody.​

Note the point, in there, about changing definitions: Previously "a designation for youth apprehended while crossing the border alone", ICE "now applies to immigrants detained in interior operations like Metro Surge".

And then consider:

After a federal judge ordered the government to respond to Sebastian's case last month, ICE attorney Julie Le wrote in an email, "I have done some research, and it does not appear that this Petitioner is in ICE custody."

Glenn couldn't believe it. "Are you saying that you do not have a record of him ever being in ICE custody, or that you have record he was released?" she asked ....

.... After the feds apprehended Sebastian, they labeled him an "unaccompanied minor" and gave him a new "alien number." As an asylum-seeker, Sebastian already had an A number, so the second one made him virtually untraceable after DHS transferred him into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the network of federally contracted shelters housing unaccompanied immigrant children. ​

Instead of using the existing reference number for Sebastian, ICE issued a new number to identify the boy, and kept it to themselves; anyone looking for him according to his actual file number wouldn't find the records.

A note from two years ago↗:

The question of Trumpism is one of brand popularity; the underlying product it is and represents existed before, and will continue in the marketplace even after the last trumpence is spent. The more enduring question pertains to the underlying components, which were present before Trump, and will remain well after, especially if given comfort.

There is, of course, another way of looking at it, which has to do with asking why these enduring elements emerged to expression in the manner and time they did. Well, inasmuch as "the majority has other reasons", this is, somehow, where those other reasons have led. Vis à vis Trump, these enduring elements that sound like supremacism and conspiracism—i.e, "crazy", "racism", "sexism", "those other bad things"—were what they had left. The end of the twentieth century saw conservative moralism in disarray; the beginning of the new century quickly saw the collapse of conservative economic and national security arguments, irreparable erosion of American moral authority and international prestige, and increased reliance on what would eventually be described as sincerely held beliefs, and then, during the Trump years, alternative facts.

It's what they had left; after decades feeling the sting of invalidation for being rejected by facts and reality, what they had left was their inalienable beliefs and the searing invalidation of feeling refused. These durable, enduring elements of tradition, were what they had, and they built an identity politic around it.

The hyperbole about "being bad people to the core" really does require less thinking, because conservatives didn't just fall into this by accident. And, sure, we can seek reasonable explanations for why they double and triple down, but that also means acknowledging the extraordinary focus conservatives place on certain issues known as culture wars, which precede a latter-day retort denouncing social justice warriors. That is to say, at some point we must countenance the supremacism, conspiracism, and crackpottery while refusing their shield of exaggeration and indignance.​

It's the kind of consideration that tends to upset people; the problem with trying to make excuses according to the other reasons people might have supported Trump is the same, this time later, as it was then, or even ten years ago during the first Trump presidency. It's what they have left, what remains after everything else falls apart; by some tellings, it's all they ever had.

†​

Think it through: Ronald Reagan once declared, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help.'" It's the sort of quip conservatives used to enjoy recalling. After all, it's somewhat doctrinaire among conservatives that government just doesn't work.

What does it mean, then, when Republicans send so much government?

What does it mean when the party that worries about bad governance deliberately initiates disorganized, failure-prone government well beyond the bounds of normalcy?

Do we really believe the rolling calamity of the Trump government is an inevitability of governance? Do we actually think these outcomes are just an accidental series of unfortunate events?

In that way: Did the government set out to fail?

Why would people who believe government doesn't work send the government?

Why would conspiracists worried about how their opponents will subvert the Constitution send an extraordinary amount of government to subvert the Constitution?

Interestingly, one of the biggest jobs gains conservatives have managed in the second Trump presidency is government jobs.

Or, maybe we could see it coming. It's possible. Thirty years ago the middling compromise was that sure, someone supports your civil rights, but that traditionalish sort of person over there, the white Christian one, is uncomfortable with your equality under law, so we need to slow down and your civil rights under the law need to wait a little longer.

And in between, the only thing they got, no matter how many times they might have voted for "other reasons", was the hatred and supremacism.

And if somebody once observed↗ that something "needs to be repeated several times, by more than one poster, and yet we still have no indication as to whether or not it is understood", it is at least a little difficult to convey that prospect over the course of years, perhaps more so as a mass behavior.

Cruelty is the durable value, the enduring appeal: Consider functional analogies as if they were Pitchbot headlines: "Whether trying to murder someone or trying to defend oneself, both sides have strong feelings about when violence is okay". Was that too rough, too extreme? Okay: "Whether trying to censor or saying you can't censor that, both sides have strong feelings about their right to free speech". That one's actually kind of a real thing.

Again, the past is the past but we can leave markers for the future: Yes, there are some people who took part in that deplorable false equivalence who should probably feel at least a little awkward or embarrassed, because certain things have long been clear, and what remains unclear this time later is why we should ignore the obvious¹. One way to work through that, of course, is for the well-intended to explain what they saw and heard along the way; the thing about a mitigating story, though, is that it must first acknowledge something went awry², so they won't tell us. And, sure, maybe that in itself is telling. But at some point, it is as Wallace Shawn suggested↗, "Maybe they didn't want to be gentle or kind."

So the marker for the future would have to do with observing the particular application of this or that interesting thing one happens across along the way. Sometimes it's the difference between ad hominem and reality; that a given magazine is part of how a professional censor gained his reputation and ascended to state power does not in and of itself disqualify anything written, or anyone writing, in that magazine, but when the partisan magazine that supports partisan censorship publishes rightist-supremacist complaint and advice about free speech, remember how that interesting thing is being applied, i.e., toward censorship.

The only part of this pogrom we couldn't see coming really was the unbelievability of the stupidity about its cruelty. Only this, and nothing more. The credulity of cacophony is how we let them in.

And it's true, the how and why people fell for it really is the important part. And maybe they don't want to tell us because they didn't really fall for it.

[1/2]​
 

Notes:

¹ It's one thing, for instance, to try to take Helen Lewis at face value↱, but to what degree is that separate from what Helen Lewis is working toward↗? And, sure, maybe something sounds like good advice about cancel culture and free speech coming from rightist sources working toward censorship, segregation, and supremacism, but at some point maybe it is worth considering why those people are trying to give that advice; ca. August, 2024↗:

「The thing about Shapiro's advice is that it only really works if it happens to be correct: "If you did nothing wrong, don't apologize"; this is entirely subjective, much like the advice that one "must not accept the opponent's terms of debate". It's one thing to refuse certain terms of discussion, but that refusal only works if one is actually right according to fact and merit. There is a difference between doing nothing wrong and thinking what you've done ought not be called wrong.」​

² We must be careful with our words; if we suggest acknowledgment that something went wrong, for instance, the sensitive and exposed will object to a moral or ethical indictment of wrongness, instead of acknowledging the mere fact that something went awry, that things did not go as ostensibly intended.

It's not a new point, around here; for instance↗, "it's six years later and the mitigating or differential diagnosis would also happen to be the punch line from once upon a time"; or↗, "there are any number of ways someone might fall into that hole, but it's not ours to write mitigating explanations for uncertain stories we can only project"; also, "if some people missed that the discussion of antisemitism that caused such consternation actually lent toward a mitigating explanation↗, neither can we ignore that mitigation might have come at too high a cost↗ according to some other principle or measure"; and:

「It's like a mitigating story. As none of us are perfect, we all have our mitigating stories. Unless nothing ever happened. I can't empathize with what never happened, nor sympathize with humanity that never existed. And, y'know, if twenty-some years of memory turn out to have never happened in the first place, it would not be the strangest thing anyone ever expected me to believe. Much of it was, in its moment, unbelievable, anyway, so, sure.」​

Du, Susan. "ICE detained a Minnesota teen, labeled him an 'unaccompanied minor,' and lost him". The Minnesota Star Tribune. 22 February 2026. https://www.startribune.com/how-ice...an-unaccompanied-minor-and-lost-him/601578960

[2/2]​
 
How It's Going (Charleston Chew-Out)

Kyle Cheney↱ suggests, "The federal judges in West Virginia have seen enough."

Judge Goodwin↱, in Charleston, delivered a habeas corpus order, yesterday, including a section called "Final Notice". In Dominguez Izaguirre v. Mason:

This Memorandum Opinion and Order serves as explicit notice to all officials—state and federal—involved in the detention of individuals whose cases come before this court.

Continued detention without individualized custody determinations, after this court's repeated holdings that such detention violates the Fifth Amendment, will result in legal consequences. For state jail officials, those consequences include personal civil liability without qualified immunity protection. For federal officials, those consequences include exercise of this court's full inherent authority to enforce constitutional compliance including contempt.

Officials who believe this court has erred in its constitutional analysis may seek stay of this court's orders pending appeal or pursue appellate review. What they may not do is continue systematic constitutional violations while preserving appellate objections and expecting this court to grant relief in case after case without enforcing its rulings.

This court will enforce the Constitution.​

Judges don't explicitly collude with one another, but it has been increasingly apparent in recent weeks that they seem to understand the job at hand. While Goodwin's final notice is probably not definitive, it does serve a particular purpose as courts in Minnesota, California, and West Virginia, at least, have taken to making very particular statements constructed very carefully, as if laying down a common record. Recently, a U.S. attorney faced civil contempt, and while that condition was lifted upon government compliance, the Department of Justice intends to contest the court's power to hold government officials in contempt.

But civil contempt is civil process. "Exercise of the court's full inherent authority" includes resolutions under criminal law. Fines, potential jailing, and even disruption of future license to practice are all tools the courts have to compel compliance, though the judiciary is prejudicially loath to exercise these powers against law enforcers.

And given Judge Berger's↗ recent scorch of federal lawlessness, the question everyone is waiting on inches closer to an answer; at some point, knowing the federal government has no intention of enforcing or even abiding the law, state prosecutors will need to make certain decisions. Will they prosecute for the sake of their state government, or roll over for the sake of their fellow law enforcers?

Right now, if a federal judge finds a federal agent has committed a crime, there is nobody to refer the case to because the suspects include prosecutors.

But a good record of what goes on will help local prosecutors who are willing to do the job, and it won't just be liberal prosecutors in blue states; conservatives have a long history of trying to ward off federal power. We're not yet to the point that they must decide, but the pogrom has already done a lot of damage that cannot be repaired, and if, in its wake, prosecuting street-level federal enforcers is what it takes to put the federal government back in its place after this is all over, there will be plenty who are happy to do so. And if history affords a Democratic successor to Donald Trump, those conservative states will find sport in demanding the new administration answer for the former excess because it means they can try to hedge in a Democrat¹. More realistically, the whole thing feels like a RICO mess, and states should be able to force a future DoJ's hand.

Inasmuch as the judges have seen enough, there's a threshold none of them wish to cross, and at this point it seems like they're just waiting for the Trump administration to drag them over the line. Meanwhile, just to mix a metaphor, they're just laying paint. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words will paint a masterpiece?
____________________

Notes:

¹ It's complicated: If what goes on in North Carolina, for instance, becomes relevant, then it becomes relevant.​

Goodwin, Joseph R. "Memorandum Opinion and Order". Dominguez Izaguirre v. Mason. United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia Charleston Division. 27 February 2026. storage.CourtListener.com 28 February 2026. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wvsd.243036/gov.uscourts.wvsd.243036.18.0.pdf

See Also:

Berger, Irene C. "Memorandum Opinion and Order". Tinajero Rodriguez v. Mason. United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia Charleston Division. 24 February 2026. storage.CourtListener.com. 28 February 2026. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wvsd.243037/gov.uscourts.wvsd.243037.20.0.pdf

https://twitter.com/x/status/2027745114932511045
 
Couldn't See It Coming [B☆kk☆ke Facial]

aot-06-mikasafight.png

What they voted for:

President Donald Trump's overhaul of US refugee policies has created a major shift in the number and nationalities of people admitted to the country, US government data shows.

Since October 2025, 4,499 refugees were resettled in the US, according to the Refugee Processing Center. All, except three from Afghanistan, were South African.

In the last full fiscal year of the Biden administration, which started in October 2023, 125,000 people were accepted from 85 countries.

Last year, Trump halted all refugee admissions, including for applicants from warzones, but allowed Afrikaners, a white minority group he said was persecuted, to seek resettlement. South Africa objected to his characterisation.

In announcing the change, Trump said it would help strengthen national security and public safety.

Priority was to be given to Afrikaner South Africans and "other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands", according to an announcement.

(Jones↱)​

So, look, we didn't randomly come back to this as some quirky outcome all whoopsie-whodathunk; they've been carrying this assertion of grievance the whole time. While NYT columnist Bret Stephens might have scolded liberals and other Trump opponents↗ for not thinking deeply enough about the "enduring sources of his appeal", even then it was pretty clear that the enduring source of Trump's appeal is the supremacism as justification for abusive behavior. "You can't defeat an opponent," says the advice, "if you refuse to understand what makes him formidable"; this is one of those arguments↗ that only works if one is actually right according to fact and merit.

For the columnist and other enablers, the problem is that the enduring source of Trump's appeal is the supremacism as justification for abusive behavior, i.e., the supremacist, authoritarian attitudes and thrill of empowerment people feel in behaving abusively.

This is who they always were. These are the attitudes people protected when objecting to the objection against, an important part of what it means that they could not take it so far on their own: They couldn't do this alone; they had to be let in.¹

Thus, again: Inasmuch as the past is the past, and can't be changed, but we can leave markers for the future², the marker for the future would have to do with observing the particular application of this or that interesting thing one happens across along the way, and to consider how that interesting thing is being applied.
____________________

Notes:

¹ Seth Simons, 2021:

「It's easy to lose sight of a simple truth: Things are the way they are because people made them so. The far right did not come into being by chance. People shaped it. They went where they thought they could win people over, and they won people over. They offered permission to revel in racism and sexism, in homophobia and transphobia, and they earned devoted followings in return. They couldn't do this alone, though. They had to be let in.」​

For prior dicussion, see "On 'Cancel Culture'" #167 (2021)↗/ "Trump 2.0" #1432 (2025)↗, 3040 (2026)↗; "Supremacism and Priority: Republicans and the American Right Wing" #101 (2026)↑, above.

² See #108 (2026)↑ above, "maybe next time think about the actual meaning of what we defend"; it's the sort of thing that keeps coming up: "Ms. Rowling and her Harry Potter books: antisemitic?" #87 (2025)↗, "There will always be an element of know-nothingism … and toward that one important thing in the historical record will be the markers reminding that people knew it was bullshit in its moment"; "parmalee gives … some feedback" #92 (2025)↗, "one thing we can do is choose our occasions to simply answer for the sake of the record, leaving markers to remind there was nothing new about it this time around, either"; "A Scourge Against Justice" #4 (2025)↗, "When are people going to learn, this is what it gets them?"; "Ms. Rowling: insightful critic or myopic [insult]" #656 (2025)↗, 854 (2026)↗, "If they resent being seen on the trolley with infamy, maybe the important question is why they hopped on this particular line", observes the former; "Trump 2.0" #2065 (2025)↗, 2295 (2025)↗, the latter noting, "middle-roaders need to understand what happened when we pretended to take their middle road"; "American Pogrom" #29 (2026)↗, "certain things have long been clear, and what remains unclear this time later is why we should ignore the obvious", as well as the related note in the subsequent post↗, "at some point maybe it is worth considering why those people are trying to give that advice".​

Jones, Mayeni. "US has let in 4,499 refugees since October - all but three were South African". BBC News. 10 April 2026. BBC.com. 10 April 2026. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g89kkvenqo

See Also:

Simons, Seth. "The Comedy Industry Has a Big Alt-Right Problem". The New Republic. 9 February 2021. NewRepublic.com. 10 April 2026. http://bit.ly/3cWC0Lc

Stephens, Bret. "The Case for Trump … by Someone Who Wants Him to Lose". The New York Times. 11 January 2024. NYTimes.com. 10 April 2026. https://bit.ly/48Q0oYL
 
Tiassa said:
Word emerges today that Mario Guevara, the founder of Latinos for Trump, has been deported after 110 days in ICE custody.
Click to expand...
Huh. Is this the same Mario Guevara identified as a journalist who was detained last June after covering a Trump protest? And then deported in October? How many Mario Guevaras are there being deported?

www.aclu.org

A Letter From Detained Journalist Mario Guevara | ACLU

After 100 days in immigration detention, journalist Mario Guevara shares a handwritten letter describing the toll of separation from his family, his love for the U.S., and his determination to keep reporting.
www.aclu.org www.aclu.org

And nothing in this report suggests he was a Latino for Trump....

www.atlantamagazine.com

Mario Guevara reported on immigration. After he was deported, he became the story.

I am the first and only journalist who has been arrested and deported under the Trump administration. But, possibly, I will not be the last. And that worries me. I am still working as a journalist. My plan is to continue reporting on news from around the world. I have already done two...
www.atlantamagazine.com www.atlantamagazine.com

Cognitive dissonance moment?
 
TheVat said:
Huh. Is this the same Mario Guevara identified as a journalist who was detained last June after covering a Trump protest? And then deported in October? How many Mario Guevaras are there being deported?

www.aclu.org

A Letter From Detained Journalist Mario Guevara | ACLU

After 100 days in immigration detention, journalist Mario Guevara shares a handwritten letter describing the toll of separation from his family, his love for the U.S., and his determination to keep reporting.
www.aclu.org www.aclu.org

And nothing in this report suggests he was a Latino for Trump....

www.atlantamagazine.com

Mario Guevara reported on immigration. After he was deported, he became the story.

I am the first and only journalist who has been arrested and deported under the Trump administration. But, possibly, I will not be the last. And that worries me. I am still working as a journalist. My plan is to continue reporting on news from around the world. I have already done two...
www.atlantamagazine.com www.atlantamagazine.com

Cognitive dissonance moment?
Click to expand...
When I did a web search on this, the only reference to Mario Guevara having been associated with Latinos for Trump was something on Muskie's X. There were numerous articles about his detention and his work as a reporter, but no one else mentioned what would have been a very significant, ironic, part of the story.

So I suspect it is ballocks.
 
exchemist said:
When I did a web search on this, the only reference to Mario Guevara having been associated with Latinos for Trump was something on Muskie's X.
Click to expand...

Apparently the confusion is that he was a Latino for Trump, a Latino pro-Trump propagandist. Multiple sources appear to have picked up the founder detail and are slowly scrubbing it. A few upper tier names appear to have bitten, though it remains unclear how reports elevated him to an organizational founder.
 
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