Following Murder Of Renee Good By ICE Officers, ICE Blocks Congressional Reps From Its Detention Facility

Legal Issues

from the rule-of-law-party-at-it-again dept

ICE killed a US citizen in broad daylight for the apparent crime of not being sufficiently intimidated when surrounded by ICE officers. Renee Good was shot by ICE officer Jonathan Ross, who selectively leaked his recording to a right-wing news outlet in apparent hopes of shoring up the administration’s swiftly crumbling narrative.

The wagons are circling even tighter — a metaphor that ICE has made extremely apt now that it’s just the extension of the administration’s xenophobic id: an invading force that’s meant to rid America of anyone not sufficiently white enough to “deserve” to live in the United States.

It’s back on its old bullshit, continuing to pretend it’s not legally obligated to allow members of Congress to tour its detention facilities. DHS and ICE have claimed (without legal support) that they need advance notice, citing unspecified “security” concerns of the “national” variety. The government continues to place obstacles in the path of congressional representatives who are engaged in acts that are supported by law and legal precedent: oversight of ICE operations.

To be sure, there are plenty of reasons ICE doesn’t want congressional reps touring its detention facilities. First and foremost, ICE doesn’t seem all that interested in treating its indefinite detainees humanely. Even when confronted by courts about these constitutional deficiencies, ICE has flat out refused to comply with court orders demanding a full accounting of detainee conditions. Not only that, but visiting reps are more likely than not to come across the occasional US citizen who’s being denied their rights while ICE decides whether or not to believe the citizenship documents it’s been provided.

Last December, the DC Circuit Appeals Court ruled against ICE, upholding Congress’s right to inspect immigration detention facilities. Not that it matters to ICE and other federal components (and it’s pretty much all of them) involved in Trump’s mass deportation program. And I’m sure the DHS will just pretend that ruling has no bearing on its recent obstruction efforts in Minneapolis, Minnesota, even though the federal law it’s violating is effective everywhere in the nation — not just in places where the government has been successfully sued.

Here’s how things look in Minneapolis, one of the more recent targets of Trump’s vindictive, anti-Democratic party wrath:

Three Democratic members of Congress from Minnesota, including House representative Ilhan Omar, were blocked from entering an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center located near Minneapolis on Saturday morning.

[…]

During a press briefing, Omar explained that they were initially allowed inside the facility but were soon told to leave. “Shortly after we were let in, two officials came in and said that they received the message that we were no longer allowed to be in the building and that they were rescinding our invitation to come in and declining any further access to the building,” she said.

First of all, Congress has a right to perform unannounced inspections. No one needs an “invitation.” Since congressional reps don’t need an invitation, ICE doesn’t have the option of “rescinding” something it never had the right to offer in the first place.

Following that by kicking out the people who oversee your work and vote on your budget is so fucked up that it boggles the mind. It’s like a tenant evicting a landlord. Things just don’t work that way and these reps should have called ICE’s bluff and bore witness to any efforts made by officers to restrict access and/or force these representatives to leave the building. So, while it’s nice to have this flouting of the law on the record, the end result looks like a missed opportunity to further expose the administration’s utter disrespect for the rule of law.

At least we have whatever the hell this is to take with us from this secondhand experience:

Omar and her colleagues said they were informed the reason for the denial of access was because the facility’s funding came through the Big Beautiful Bill Act, and that this funding source was being used to justify restricting their visit.

Do what now?

ICE is claiming that because the facility was funded with federal funds derived from a federal budget bill members of the federal government who voted for (or against) this funding bill were not allowed on the premises. Never mind the thing I said about evicting the landlord. There’s nothing in the common vernacular that’s analogous to this bizarre assertion by the government.

Unfortunately, the party in power will make sure violating the law remains the status quo. Court orders are being ignored and violated regularly by federal agencies and officers. And the Democratic party still seems unwilling to deploy some of its more nuclear options, either out of fear of failure or a fear of jeopardizing their own political futures. But we’re well past the point of considering these tactics to be optional. If they’re not willing to sacrifice themselves to save a nation, they’re in the wrong business.

Filed Under: angie craig, dhs, ice, ilhan omar, kelly morrison, mass deportation, minneapolis, minnesota, trump administration

Daily Deal: The 2026 Canva Bundle

Deals

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

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Filed Under: daily deal

Tom Homan: If Democrats Don’t Stop Calling Us Murderers, We’re Just Going To Be Forced To Keep Murdering You

Say That Again

from the the-abuser's-lament dept

The murder of Renee Nicole Good by ICE officer Jonathan Ross has certainly created quite the divide between the reality-based majority of the population who doesn’t want masked unaccountable federal law enforcement goons invading cities they have no business being in and shooting people for saying “dude, I’m not mad at you” and trying to drive away… and the fantasy-land MAGA folks who are bending over backwards to justify the murder.

Late last week the video from Ross’s phone was released (why Ross was filming Good is a whole separate issue, but shows how Homeland Security is much more focused on producing memes, not doing actual law enforcement), which MAGA cultists pretended exonerated Ross. It did no such thing. It made him look way, way worse.

He deliberately placed himself in front of the vehicle. He walked around the car filming Good and her partner. As can be clearly seen in the video, Good turned steering wheel of her car all the way to the right such that the car was not heading towards Ross and could not hit him. And he shot her three times anyway, once through the windshield and twice through the open driver-side window. Even if you could (and you can’t) argue the first should was potentially justified if he thought the car was coming towards him, the fact that he easily stepped aside and then continued firing shows that it was not justified at all.

And, of course, his first words after murdering a woman in broad daylight in the middle of the street was: “fucking bitch.”

So her last words: “Dude, I’m not mad at you.” His first words after murdering her: “fucking bitch.”

And then, of course, there’s what was discussed last week: how the MAGA faithful immediately began lying and claiming she was a “domestic terrorist” with multiple people trying to twist the story to claim she somehow “deserved” this.

One of the leaders of the goons, “border czar” Tom Homan, (who appears to have gotten away with taking $50,000 in a paper bag from federal officials pretending to be business owners seeking favors from Donald Trump) went on Meet the Press on Sunday and talked about how Democrats need to stop calling ICE murderers or they’ll have no choice but to murder again:

The transcript is as ridiculous as it is chilling:

We gotta stop the hateful rhetoric. Saying this officer is a murderer is dangerous. It’s just ridiculous. It’s gonna infuriate people more which means there’s gonna be more incidents like this, because the hateful rhetoric is not only continuing, it’s gonna be double down or triple down.

It’s the classic abuser’s lament: if you didn’t want me to hit you, why were you so mean to me.

First of all, the ones ramping up the “hateful rhetoric” have been the MAGA faithful. They’re the ones spreading baseless conspiracy theories, insisting that Good was a “domestic terrorist” or a “paid agitator.” This is the same thing Homan, Gregory Bongino, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and Donald Trump have been doing for months, encouraging ICE to see the public as enemies to be fought, not a public they are supposed to be protecting.

Second, if federal agents are so fragile that people calling them names means they’re going to murder people, they shouldn’t be federal agents at all. They shouldn’t be allowed to handle firearms, frankly.

This is textbook authoritarian blame-shifting: create the conditions for violence through dehumanizing rhetoric, then blame the victims when violence inevitably occurs. And it’s not just Homan. The entire MAGA ecosystem is working overtime to justify this murder and preemptively excuse the next one.

Case in point: Fox News columnist Dave Marcus, who wrote this weekend that “wine moms” protesting ICE’s occupations, invasions, and law breaking is somehow a criminal conspiracy of “wine moms.”

Say what?

Marcus’s piece is transparently absurd—he’s claiming that citizens exercising their First Amendment rights to criticize federal agents constitute a criminal conspiracy—but he gives away the real game a few paragraphs in. Good and these other “wine moms'” actual “crime” wasn’t obstructing justice. It was mocking ICE agents in a manner that hurt their feelings:

The video of Good and her partner heckling and, let’s be honest, goading ICE officers with an obnoxious smugness that makes most people’s skin crawl, is just one of many.

It’s difficult to think of something more “obnoxiously smug” than a Fox News columnist insisting that after an ICE agent murdered a woman in broad daylight for protesting ICE’s actions… we should blame protesting women.

We see these self-important White women doing it in video after video after video, taunting cops, insulting journalists or even bystanders, often with a weird and disturbing glee.

The inclusion of “journalists” in that list is also telling in multiple ways. First off, the MAGA world is way more famous for “insulting journalists.” Hell, it’s part of Trump’s daily activities to insult and taunt journalists. I can’t find any example of Marcus complaining about that. But it sounds like if wine moms make fun of him for his journalism, well, that just means they deserve to be shot in the face?

But, more to the point: obnoxious smugness, heckling, and even goading federal officers is textbook First Amendment-protected speech. Criticizing government officials, even obnoxiously, is perhaps the core function of the First Amendment. Marcus seems to have confused “speech that annoys federal agents” with “criminal conspiracy.” And he’s using his own confusion to justify murder.

All of this, of course, is coming straight from the top. Late yesterday, Donald Trump told the press gaggle on his plane that murdering Good was acceptable because “the woman and her friend were highly disrespectful to law enforcement” and that “law enforcement should not be in a position where they have to put up with this stuff.”

Yes, he is literally justifying murder by his personal police force by claiming that being “highly disrespectful” (i.e., engaging in First Amendment-protected speech) makes the use of deadly force “necessary.”

Also note how Trump himself reveals that all the retconning nonsense by his MAGA faithful that the shooting had nothing to do with how Good spoke to Ross was all pretext. This was always about whether or not you kiss the boot in front of you. If you don’t—if you are “highly disrespectful”—Trump and his cronies think they can shoot you. And if you complain about it, they can shoot more people.

The state sponsored murders of wine moms will continue until morale improves.

You can see how fragile and pathetic these men are. They are so desperate to subjugate and suppress people who disagree with them politically. They seemed to think that once they were in power, the public would love and admire them for their power. Instead, the vast majority of Americans see them for what they are: pathetic, insecure man-babies in way over their heads.

So, now their only recourse is to ramp up the threats. To say that if you actually call out their criminal actions, such as murder, for what they are, they’ll just be forced to murder more critics and protestors.

They will never take responsibility for their own actions. They will never reflect on their own culpability. Because to reflect would require admitting what everyone already knows: they have no argument. They have no legal justification. They have no constitutional authority for what they’re doing.

All they have is the authoritarian’s playbook: dehumanize your critics, commit violence, blame the victims, and threaten more violence if the criticism doesn’t stop. It’s the logic of every tinpot dictator in history, now being deployed by federal law enforcement on American streets.

There is no question that they’ll murder again. Homan has already promised they will. And it’s why we need to keep exercising our First Amendment rights to speak out against this authoritarian nonsense, rather than capitulating and letting them win.

Filed Under: abuse, dave marcus, dhs, donald trump, ice, murder, renee nicole good, tom homan

Microsoft CEO Laments Criticism Of “AI Slop,” Causing The Whole Internet To Double Down On Criticism Of “Microslop”

Overhype

from the have-you-considered-no-longer-being-terrible dept

We’ve noted more than a few times how Microsoft’s use of AI in journalism has been an embarrassing mess. Microsoft’s steadily deteriorating MSN websites have been criticized for years for the lazy use of AI slop, resulting in numerous false headlines, fake stories, and low-quality engagement trash. Like Google and others, the pursuit of impossible scale has made quality and usefulness an afterthought.

Microsoft’s also been broadly criticized elsewhere when it comes to its rushed adoption of AI, whether it’s the privacy implications of the company’s Windows 11 “recall” feature, or forcing the install of Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant on smart TV owners who never wanted it and can’t uninstall it. Microsoft also adores forcing copilot integration into Windows 11 in ways, again, nobody asked for and often can’t disable.

Copilot may very well be useful to some people; but like most tech companies, Microsoft’s rushed, ham-fisted adoption has been a bit of a tone-deaf mess. And it actively undermines the stuff that LLMs can actually accomplish. This is before you get to the environmental impact of AI, or its quickly-expanding, guardrail-optional use in global military imperialism at the hands of insane autocrats.

This all recently resulted in some fairly significant backlash for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Nadella recently shared a fairly innocuous end-of-year post at LinkedIn.

Most of the short post isn’t really all that interesting or incorrect; he notes that AI is stumbling through a phase where we’re beginning to sort between “spectacle” and “substance,” something that’s likely to result in a big bubble pop this year due the chasm between real-world usefulness and broad tech company misrepresentation of AI (he doesn’t really acknowledge that latter part, of course).

Where Nadella got into trouble was apparently this part, where he fairly innocuously laments the rising criticism of “AI slop.” It was first highlighted by Windows Central:

“We need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication,” Nadella laments, emphasizing hopes that society will become more accepting of AI, or what Nadella describes as “cognitive amplifier tools.” “…and develop a new equilibrium in terms of our “theory of the mind” that accounts for humans being equipped with these new cognitive amplifier tools as we relate to each other.”

Nadella’s problem here is he dismissively puts the onus on the consumer when it comes to “getting beyond” concerns about AI slop. That dodges any responsibility for the very rich people and companies dictating the entire trajectory of AI to start using it more responsibly.

They aren’t so far; most wealthy tech leaders see AI largely as a way to undermine labor and create a giant lazy badly-automated ouroboros of shallow clickbait garbage that shits out ad engagement cash with very low lift. Often these efforts redirect money away from human artists and journalists and creators into the pockets of some very sleazy people operating with clearly zero ethical guardrails.

The press aggregation machine (much of it ironically now badly automated) latched on to Nadella’s demand that people stop calling it AI slop, immediately resulting in people doubling down on AI slop criticism in a way that made “Microslop” trend across the internet.

Automation, broadly, certainly has its uses and is, generally, not going away. The backlash to AI is, in many ways, tethered tightly and unavoidably to a growing disdain for wealth disparity at the hands of the authoritarian-simping extraction class keen on eliminating literally all ethical oversight of industry.

A great way for billionaires like Nadella to diffuse this growing animosity about their rushed, clumsy, non-transparent, integration of language learning models into everything (whether you like it or not) in ways that aren’t ethical or useful is to, you know, stop doing that. Another great step might be to stop kissing the ass of authoritarians who are actively destroying democracy, civil rights, and the rule of law?

It sounds like many people might be willing to get over AI slop once the billionaires in charge of its development, trajectory, and implementation stop doubling down on AI slop, and stop being tone deaf, irresponsible assholes.

Filed Under: ai, ai slop, automation, billionaires, journalism, llms, msn, satya nadella
Companies: microsoft