That’s the new line from Donald Trump, the guy who once told supporters he could personally commit murder and he wouldn’t lose any supporters. He said that last time. He’s president again, so apparently it’s time to see if this adage holds up.
Trump has already pretended the mere existence of foreign gang members anywhere in the world justifies whatever actions he chooses to take under the heading of “immigration enforcement.” That includes sending people to countries they’ve never lived in or back to countries they fled from for fear of getting tortured or killed. All of this has been greeted with shrug from a man with an ill-fitting jacket and head full of hate.
In recent weeks, things have escalated. Trump is pretending the mere existence of a worldwide drug trade is a combination of undeclared war on the United States and an ongoing act of terrorism. So, we’ve just started committing extrajudicial killings in international waters and expecting DOJ/DoD lawyers to work out the legal details after the fact.
A few legislators have started to speak up about this, suggesting that, at the very least, Trump should approach Congress to secure a declaration of war to justify these… well, let’s call them what they are: murders. Even though he’s got a majority working for him, Trump doesn’t want to do this. He’d rather just do whatever he wants and let everyone else deal with the consequences.
Trump has never been the most coherent or erudite of orators. And that’s what gives statements like these an extra edge: the boorish, almost-bored vow to commit murder spilling out of the mouth of the nation’s largest single-cell organism.
Trump: "I don't think we're necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war, I think we're just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We're going to kill them. They're going to be, like dead."
Here’s what Trump said, in case you can’t see the embed:
Trump: “I don’t think we’re necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war, I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be, like dead.”
That is chilling. There’s literally no precedent for that in this country. And he’s not just talking about the nearly daily sinking of boats Trump and Hegseth claim (without evidence) are filled with drugs and drug dealers. He’s talking about what’s in the works, which appears to be a land invasion of Venezuela and Colombia.
That’s the sort of thing that usually requires a declaration of war. But, of course, Republican presidents in particular have tended to feel congressional involvement isn’t necessarily needed. George Bush invaded Panama to take down Manuel Noriega. Ronald Reagan did the same thing in Grenada. And the less said about the forever war on terror, the better, because I’d hate to see what’s being discussed now turn into decades of misery for everyone involved.
This is horrific and it should have been immediately greeted by a deafening uproar by Democratic leaders. It should have been rejected out of hand by members of Trump’s own party. Instead, it has just become another part of the background noise that is the Trump administration grinding its way towards its authoritarian goals.
Mike Brock’s piece on Sequoia Capital last week laid out a pretty damning case study: a well-respected COO complains about a partner’s Islamophobic posts, senior leadership invokes “institutional neutrality” and declines to act, she resigns, he stays because he made them billions on SpaceX. Brock correctly calls this out as a choice, not neutrality—a calculation about whose value to the firm matters more.
The thing that struck me about Brock’s piece is that it highlights how there’s a broader pattern here: institutional cowardice from organizations that spout high-minded ideals as a shield to explain their refusal to make a clear decision, while ignoring that doing so is a very real choice with very real consequences.
That’s worth highlighting, because we keep seeing it play out in nearly identical ways. Whether it’s a venture capital firm or a social media platform, the playbook is the same: invoke “neutrality” or “free speech” as a shield, refuse to take a clear stance on bigoted behavior, and then act shocked when the people being targeted decide they don’t want to stick around.
This is the Nazi bar problem, and it keeps happening because people in positions of power either don’t understand it or don’t want to.
If you’re not familiar with the Nazi bar analogy, it comes from a story about a bartender who learned the hard way that if you don’t kick out the first Nazi who walks in, you end up running a Nazi bar. Not because you’re a Nazi yourself, but because once word gets out that Nazis are welcome, they keep coming back and bringing friends. And everyone else? They stop showing up. Because who wants to drink at the Nazi bar?
The key insight—the one that keeps getting missed—is that claiming “neutrality” in these situations isn’t actually neutral. It’s a choice. You’re choosing to prioritize the speech and presence of the people spewing bigotry over the speech and presence of the people being targeted by it. And that second part is what everyone claiming to be “neutral” conveniently ignores.
We saw this exact dynamic play out with Substack last year. CEO Chris Best went on Nilay Patel’s podcast and repeatedly refused to answer straightforward questions about whether Substack would host overtly racist content. Nilay asked him point-blank: if someone says “we should not allow brown people in the country,” is that allowed on Substack?
Best wouldn’t answer. He kept deflecting to vague principles about “freedom of speech” and “freedom of the press” and how Substack wasn’t going to “engage in content moderation gotchas.”
But here’s the thing: not answering is an answer. When you refuse to say “no, we won’t host that,” you’re saying “yes, we will.” And everyone hears it. Bigots hear it. The targets of bigots hear it. Everyone hears it. As much as you pretend it’s “staying out of it,” it is the statement. The bigots hear it as “you’re welcome here.” The people being targeted hear it as “your safety and dignity matter less than our commitment to not making hard calls.”
As we wrote at the time:
If you’re not going to moderate, and you don’t care that the biggest draws on your platform are pure nonsense peddlers preying on the most gullible people to get their subscriptions, fucking own it, Chris.
Say it. Say that you’re the Nazi bar and you’re proud of it.
Say “we believe that writers on our platform can publish anything they want, no matter how ridiculous, or hateful, or wrong.” Don’t hide from the question. You claim you’re enabling free speech, so own it. Don’t hide behind some lofty goals about “freedom of the press” when you’re really enabling “freedom of the grifters.”
And, of course, it wasn’t much surprise earlier this year when Substack took that “statement” to the next level and literally started recommending and promoting blatant pro-Nazi speech. You made your choice. You voted for Nazis and against anyone who doesn’t like Nazis.
Don’t pretend it’s about “neutrality” or “free speech.” It’s not. You made a choice. You made a decision. Nazis are welcome. Those targeted by them… are not.
The exact same cowardice is on display at Sequoia, just in a different context. As Brock notes, managing partner Roelof Botha has described the firm’s approach as “institutional neutrality where staff are entitled to their own positions.”
And here’s what that “neutrality” actually accomplished: Sumaiya Balbale, a practicing Muslim who has spoken publicly about how her gender, ethnicity, and faith shaped her career, felt she had no choice but to leave.
Meanwhile, Shaun Maguire—who wrote that Zohran Mamdani “comes from a culture that lies about everything” and that “it’s literally a virtue to lie if it advances his Islamist agenda,” who endorsed far-right extremists around the globe—gets to stay because he picked a good rocket company.
This is the choice Sequoia made. Not “we’re neutral.” Not “everyone gets to speak.” The choice was: we value the partner who makes Islamophobic statements more than we value the COO who objects to them.
Sequoia took the cowardly way out. It made a choice, but it wouldn’t own it, just like Substack refuses to own its pro-Nazi position. It pretends it doesn’t by saying “we’re staying neutral.” But their version of “staying neutral” and “supporting free speech” is really “bigotry and hatred are welcome” and then, what follows naturally is “the targets of bigotry and hatred must leave.”
And it’s the exact same choice Substack made. When Best refused to answer Nilay’s questions, he was saying: we value the revenue from writers who publish bigoted content more than we value the writers and readers who don’t want to be associated with that content.
Both organizations are hiding behind “free speech” and “neutrality” to avoid owning what they’re actually doing, which is creating an environment where one kind of speech—bigoted, hateful speech—is implicitly encouraged, while another kind of speech—the speech of people who say “I don’t want to work here” or “I don’t want to publish here” or “I don’t want to be associated with this”—is implicitly discouraged.
Because here’s what gets lost in all the hand-wringing about free speech: free speech isn’t just about whether you’re allowed to say something. It’s also about whether you feel safe saying it. Whether you feel welcome. Whether the environment is one where your voice matters as much as anyone else’s.
When Sequoia chose not to discipline Maguire, they sent a clear message to Balbale and everyone like her: your concerns don’t matter as much as his returns. When Substack refuses to draw clear lines about what’s acceptable, they send a message to every writer and reader who’s being targeted by bigotry: you’re on your own here.
And those people hear the message loud and clear. They leave. Or they never show up in the first place.
This is what Brock means when he writes:
Sumaiya Balbale walking out the door while Shaun Maguire keeps his partnership isn’t a scandal Sequoia is managing. It’s a decision Sequoia made—about whose presence matters, whose complaints count, and which political positions are compatible with partnership.
It’s also what we meant when we wrote about Substack:
You have every right to allow that on your platform. But the whole point of everyone eventually coming to terms with the content moderation learning curve, and the fact that private businesses are private and not the government, is that what you allow on your platform is what sticks to you. It’s your reputation at play.
Both Sequoia and Substack want to pretend they’re taking the principled high road by refusing to “censor” anyone. But what they’re actually doing is making a choice about whose speech and whose presence they value more. And in both cases, they’re choosing the bigots over the people being targeted by bigotry.
That’s not neutrality. That’s not a commitment to free speech. That’s just being “the Nazi bar” and refusing to admit it.
The frustrating part is that there are real, difficult tradeoffs in content moderation and community standards. We’ve written about this extensively. There’s no perfect answer. Every decision you make will piss off someone. Drawing lines is hard, and where you draw them will differ based on your values, your community, and your goals.
Refusing to draw any lines at all—or claiming you’re “neutral” when you’re actually just choosing to tolerate bigotry—is abdication. And the people you’re abdicating your responsibility to protect will notice, and they’ll leave, and you’ll end up with exactly the reputation you deserve.
Sequoia can call it “institutional neutrality” all they want. Substack can invoke “freedom of the press.” But when your COO walks out because you won’t address Islamophobia, or when your users leave because you won’t say whether racism is not allowed, you’ve made your choice clear.
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A lot of GOP politicians align themselves with Christianity, especially the offshoot that believes the richer you are, the more God loves you. (That it tends to dovetail nicely with white Christian nationalism is just a bonus in these Trumpian times.) But somehow they never seem to be able to spend a dime of their own when people are in need.
Just take a look at Kristi Noem, current DHS head and former South Dakota governor. Noem sent a bunch of South Dakota National Guard members to the Texas border. Later, she refused to spend money deploying troops while her constituents were getting flooded out of their homes. She justified her refusal to spend residents’ tax dollars to help residents by pointing out the trip to the Texas border was actually paid for by someone with more money than discretion. She apparently hoped this would offset the $1.3 million in state emergency relief funds she blew on being performative, rather than on helping out the people who likely voted for her.
It’s always nice to have a few helpful millionaires/billionaires in your pocket. Donald Trump has more than a few of those. With the GOP refusing to negotiate in good faith with the Democratic party on a funding bill, the government remains shut down. Despite the fact that it’s the GOP holding the country hostage, rich Trump supporters who would absolutely riot if anyone suggested raising their taxes are cutting massive checks to cover a few of the administration’s expenses during this shut down.
Mr. Trump announced the donation on Thursday night, but he declined to name the person who provided the funds, only calling him a “patriot” and a friend.
[…]
“He doesn’t want publicity,” Mr. Trump said as he headed to Malaysia. “He prefer that his name not be mentioned which is pretty unusual in the world I come from, and in the world of politics, you want your name mentioned.”
The New York Times managed to identify the person behind this generous donation — a donation that can only be considered “generous” in the sense that it never should have happened in the first place.
Timothy Mellon, a reclusive billionaire and a major financial backer of President Trump, is the anonymous private donor who gave $130 million to the U.S. government to help pay troops during the shutdown, according to two people familiar with the matter.
It sounds like a lot, but we’re talking about a government that has been several trillion in the hole for years now. I’d love to see how this gets divvied up because if it’s just divided equally, it’s not going to mean a thing to the troops currently getting screwed by the party that claims it loves them the most.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Trump administration’s 2025 budget requested about $600 billion in total military compensation. A $130 million donation would equal about $100 a service member.
Getting an extra Benjamin is nice if you’re already getting paid. When you’re not getting paid, $100 is just enough money to make you resent it. Sure, you’ve got $100 more than you had before Mellon stepped briefly out of the shadows to stuff a little cash into Trump’s coat pocket, but what the fuck are you supposed to do with it? It’s not enough to do anything practical, like keep all the utilities on or cover the house payment or even stock the cupboards. May as well just toss it in the nearest slot machine and hope for the best.
Mellon is a billionaire and a fan of Trump, as so many billionaires are. He’s also donated millions to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his anti-vax efforts. He’s also this guy:
In an autobiography that he self-published in 2015, Mr. Mellon described himself as a former liberal who moved to Wyoming from Connecticut for lower taxes and to be surrounded by fewer people.
His book also contains several incendiary passages about race. He wrote that Black people were “even more belligerent” after social programs were expanded in the 1960s and ’70s, and that social safety net programs amounted to “slavery redux.”
And yet here he is, being a social safety net for thousands of troops who may never even see the money he gave to the Trump administration. For one thing, the logistics costs alone would probably eat up a great deal of what’s been donated. For another, this is pretty clearly illegal, which means no distribution will even happen.
[T]he donation appears to be a potential violation of the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits federal agencies from spending money in excess of congressional appropriations or from accepting voluntary services.
With that much still unsettled, this may remain in limbo. And that’s probably for the best. The only thing more insulting that gifting troops with a useless $100 bill would be clawing it back once federal funding resumes.
Finally, if we really want billionaires to bail out the government, the easiest way to do this is by TAXING THEM MORE. Let’s not pretend this guy is some sort of quiet hero who did this because he cares too deeply for this country to see soldiers go without pay. He did this because it’s another way to ensure he and the rest of the people in his tax bracket remain as privileged as they’ve always been. $100 can be gone in a second. But influence and access is forever.
That has involved chasing pointless “growth for growth’s sake” megamergers, imposing bottomless price hikes and new annoying restrictions, undermining labor, and cutting corners on product quality in a bid to give Wall Street that sweet, impossible, unlimited, quarterly growth it demands.
Last week Warner Brothers announced it was up for sale; ushering forth yet another acquisition or merger after literally two decades of terrible, harmful mergers (AOL, AT&T, Time Warner, Discovery) resulting in endless price hikes, layoffs, and dysfunction. And if as on cue, the company announced they’d be once again hiking prices on their HBO (Max Extreme Plus) streaming video service:
“HBO Max’s ad plan is going from $10 per month to $11/month. The ad-free plan is going from $17/month to $18.49/month. And the premium ad-free plan (which adds 4K support, Dolby Atmos, and the ability to download more content) is increasing from $21 to $23.
Meanwhile, prices for HBO Max’s annual plans are increasing from $100 to $110 with ads, $170 to $185 without ads, and $210 to $230 for the premium tier.”
The move comes after Warner Bros CEO David Zaslav spent much of last month whining about how the company’s streaming service was “way underpriced.” Despite the fact the company has raised prices every year for the past three years. Zaslav himself has been endlessly criticized for his soaring compensation package that’s never been commensurate with any sort of actual leadership skill.
Again: these are executives all out of original ideas, boxed in by Wall Street’s demand for impossible, endless growth. They can’t deliver consumers and labor what they want (better pay, better product, lower prices, better customer service), so execs have to resort to financial trickery, price hikes, and megamergers to goose stock valuations and provide significant tax relief.
They’re not building or improving anything, they’re just engaged in an elaborate shell game where they shuffle things around and pretend they’re savvy deal makers.
If you’re not familiar with what happens next: Warner Brothers is sold (probably to Larry Ellison and Paramount/CBS, which is already laying off people from its latest merger). The massive debt load triggers even more layoffs and additional price hikes, the quality of the overall product continues to deteriorate, and annoyed customers flee to fee alternatives, including piracy.
At that point the executives responsible blame everything but themselves (generational entitlement! VPNs!) until companies are finally forced to face evolutionary disruption by more convenient, cheaper alternatives, at which point the execs responsible have taken their bag and failed upward to other companies. And the cycle repeats itself all over again.
Per that article, the Insurrection Act has been invoked 31 times, 30 separate incidents, in our nations history by, 15 times by presidents and once illegally by MacArthur. 4 times to prevent the state from using the national guard from acting, they were ordered to stand down.
Not once has it been used to stop peaceful protest.
So the tech bros who funded Trump are finding out why our societies spent several hundred years expanding the concepts of the rule of law and (the idea of at least) justice for all to include the man at the top
It’s already started with the media owners
I’ve got no sympathy for them. This was as predictable as the Sun rising in the morning
Instead I’m frightened for the futures of everyone
Thought I might raise a glass when it’s time for the Supreme Court to take their turn at the pillory
If the broligarchs weren’t so arrogant and drunk on their own power and wealth, they would have known this is what has happened in the past, most notably in Nazi Germany. Hitler was more subtle than Trump, but the result was the same. Even the gas chambers were available for those of the wrong racial heritage.
The Orange Felon says he’s “giving [the $230M] to charity” if he gets it. Of course, he firmly believes in the 144th Ferengi Rule of Acquisition: “There’s nothing wrong with charity…as long as it winds up in your pocket.”
Way back in Trump’s first term, back when he was still claiming he was going to build some enormous border wall and get Mexico to pay for it (neither happened), the lovely people over at Cards Against Humanity bought a parcel of land along the boarder with the intention of taking every possible action to prevent a wall being built upon it. It was part of a marketing campaign where a percentage of sales of the game would go to buying the land, which eventually happened in 2017. And that’s where things stood for the rest of Trump’s term and all the way up to 2024. No wall was built on the land, Mexico paid for nothing, and the land remained empty.
Until, that is, SpaceX decided to dump a bunch of trash on it. The Elon Musk-owned company has a fabrication plant nearby and apparently just decided to use someone else’s property to dump a bunch of construction materials and trash. The irony that a parcel of land that was bought to keep a border wall from being built to keep out foreign trespassers that was instead trespassed upon domestically is not lost on me.
Well, CAH sued for $15 million and seemed like it had a very good case. SpaceX must have eventually agreed, as they have now settled the case days before the trial was set to begin.
A court document shows that SpaceX admitted it did not ask for or receive permission to use the property. SpaceX admitted that its “contractors cleared the lot and put down gravel,” parked vehicles on the property, and stored construction materials. An Associated Press article yesterday said that “Texas court records show a settlement was reached in the case last month, just weeks before a jury trial was scheduled to begin on Nov. 3.”
The game company said a victory at trial wouldn’t have resulted in a better outcome. “A trial would have cost more than what we were likely to win from SpaceX,” the company’s statement to Ars said. “Under Texas law, even if we had won at trial (and we would have, given their admission to trespassing), we likely wouldn’t have been able to recoup our legal fees. And SpaceX certainly seemed ready to dramatically outspend us on lawyers.”
Given that the details of the settlement are annoyingly confidential, we can’t really suss out just how just this outcome is. But the folks over at CAH seem to be satisfied, so I have to imagine at least a decent amount of money changed hands here. Still, part of the idea here was supposed to be sending money won from Musk to all the donors to the campaign, but it appears the settlement money won’t be enough to do so in an update CAH provided publicly.
Dear Horrible Friends,
Remember last year, when we sued Elon Musk for dumping space garbage all over your land, and then you signed up to collect your share of the proceeds? Also, remember how we warned you that we’d “probably only be able to get you like two dollars or most likely nothing”?
Well, Elon Musk’s team admitted on the record that they illegally trespassed on your land, and then they packed up the space garbage and fucked off. But when it comes to paying you all, he did the legal equivalent of throwing dust in our eyes and kicking us in the balls.
So while we can’t give you what you really wanted––cash money from Elon Musk––we’re going to make it up to you, our best, sexiest customers…with comedy! We’re sending you each a brand new mini-pack of exclusive cards all about Elon Musk, which you can sign up to receive for free right here.
You’ve got to give it to these folks: they’re never not on brand.
Donald Trump just cut off all trade negotiations with Canada because an Ontario ad campaign quoted Ronald Reagan accurately. The quotes are real. The context is accurate. But Trump called them “fake” and “fraudulent,” and the Reagan Foundation—the institution literally tasked with preserving Reagan’s legacy—backed him up by lying about what their own guy said and even threatening frivolous litigation in support of Trump’s temper tantrum.
Now, thanks to Trump’s meltdown, millions more people are watching Reagan’s actual words. And learning that Trump’s entire tariff philosophy directly contradicts what Reagan believed and said.
The ad that triggered all this is pretty straightforward. A few weeks ago, Ontario Premier Doug Ford launched a $75 million campaign using clips from a 1987 Ronald Reagan radio address about the evils of tariffs and the benefits of free trade. You can see it here:
Ford’s politics are often Trumpian, but he’s not backing down from a stupid trade war. So he pulled Reagan’s own words and ran them as a 60-second spot.
The ad campaign is definitely targeting Republicans and business execs. It first ran on the very MAGA Newsmax and the very business-focused Bloomberg, but has been expanding to Fox News (of course), CNBC, CBS, ABC, ESPN and others.
Apparently, somewhere this week, Donald Trump saw it, and it made him sad. And when Donald Trump gets sad, he lashes out like a six-year-old. He claimed that the ad was “fake” and because of that he was cutting off all trade negotiations with Canada.
If you can’t see that image, it’s Trump spewing on social media:
The Ronald Reagan Foundation has just announced that Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is FAKE, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about Tariffs. The ad was for $75,000. They only did this to interfere with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, and other courts. TARIFFS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY, AND ECONOMY, OF THE U.S.A. Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT
So, first off, it’s a bit weird to cut off all negotiations with Canada based on an ad from one province, Ontario, which is run by a politician from a different party than the Prime Minister. But, okay.
But the bigger issue is the claim that the Reagan quotes are “fake” or “fraudulent.” They’re not. The Reagan Foundation put out this statement, and the only “misrepresentation” is in the Foundation’s own statement:
That one says:
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute learned that the Government of Ontario, Canada, created an ad campaign using selective audio and video of President Ronald Reagan delivering his “Radio Address to the Nation on Free and Fair Trade,” dated April 25, 1987. The ad misrepresents the Presidential Radio Address, and the Government of Ontario did not seek nor receive permission to use and edit the remarks.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute is reviewing its legal options in this matter. We encourage you to watch President Reagan’s unedited video on our YouTube channel.
So, first off, note the difference between what the Foundation said and what Trump said. The Foundation claims that the ad is “using selective audio” in a way that “misrepresents” Reagan. Trump took that claim (which was already bullshit) and said it means the ad is “fake” and “fraudulent.” It is neither.
The Foundation also suggests it might sue, which is laughable. They have no claim here and any attempt to go to court would fail, and fail in an embarrassing manner.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation has gone fully Trumpy—their website is packed with MAGA interviews—and now they’re lying about what Reagan actually said and believed. The institution designed to preserve his legacy is rewriting it to please Donald Trump.
It’s pathetic.
But, of course, the Streisand Effect kicks in, and now everyone can watch what Ronald Reagan actually said in that address:
It’s only five minutes long. Every quote in the Ontario ad is in there, accurate both in text and in context. The speech was framed around Reagan’s decision to impose tariffs on certain Japanese products in response to Japan dumping below-market semiconductors, which Reagan argued violated an earlier agreement.
However, he was quite clear throughout that he was a strong believer in free trade and against tariffs, and he was only doing this, regretfully, in response to Japan violating an earlier trade agreement.
Reagan explicitly contradicted Trump’s claim that tariffs are “very important to the national security and economy of the US.” Reagan said the opposite.
Incredibly, Trump freaking out and lying about this ad is making many more people watch it and learn what Reagan actually said about tariffs and free trade. Even CNN, which pretty typically just repeats whatever Trump says, is pointing out that Trump’s claims here are nonsense and Reagan very clearly spoke out against tariffs.
On top of all this, Canada is now cutting trade deals with China and other countries in Asia. This is effectively pushing our closest ally into the waiting arms of our biggest economic rival.
This is stunningly bad policy: a foreseeable disaster stemming from a stupid approach to trade, kicked into overdrive by a presidential temper tantrum over accurate quotes from a politician many in the MAGA world pretend to idolize. Trump lied. The Reagan Foundation lied to back him up. And now Canada is cutting deals with China while the world learns that Reagan explicitly opposed everything Trump claims tariffs accomplish.
Congratulations to everyone involved. You’ve Streisanded the world into a history lesson, and handed China a trade partner in the process.
When Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stormed through Santa Ana, California, in June, panicked calls flooded into the city’s emergency response system.
Recordings of those calls, obtained by ProPublica, captured some of the terror residents felt as they watched masked men ambush people and force them into unmarked cars. In some cases, the men wore plain clothes and refused to identify themselves. There was no way to confirm whether they were immigration agents or imposters. In six of the calls to Santa Ana police, residents described what they were seeing as kidnappings.
“He’s bleeding,” one caller said about a person he saw yanked from a car wash lot and beaten. “They dumped him into a white van. It doesn’t say ICE.”
One woman’s voice shook as she asked, “What kind of police go around without license plates?”
And then this from another: “Should we just run from them?”
During a tense public meeting days later, Mayor Valerie Amezcua and the City Council asked their police chief whether there was anything they could do to rein in the federal agents — even if only to ban the use of masks. The answer was a resounding no. Plus, filing complaints with the Department of Homeland Security was likely to go nowhere because the office that once handled them had been dismantled. There was little chance of holding individual agents accountable for alleged abuses because, among other hurdles, there was no way to reliably learn their identities.
Since then, Amezcua, 58, said she has reluctantly accepted the reality: There are virtually no limits on what federal agents can do to achieve President Donald Trump’s goal of mass deportations. Santa Ana has proven to be a template for much larger raids and even more violent arrests in Chicago and elsewhere. “It’s almost like he tries it out in this county and says, ‘It worked there, so now let me send them there,’” Amezcua said.
Current and former national security officials share the mayor’s concerns. They describe the legions of masked immigration officers operating in near-total anonymity on the orders of the president as the crossing of a line that had long set the United States apart from the world’s most repressive regimes. ICE, in their view, has become an unfettered and unaccountable national police force. The transformation, the officials say, unfolded rapidly and in plain sight. Trump’s DHS appointees swiftly dismantled civil rights guardrails, encouraged agents to wear masks, threatened groups and state governments that stood in their way, and then made so many arrests that the influx overwhelmed lawyers trying to defend immigrants taken out of state or out of the country.
And although they are reluctant to predict the future, the current and former officials worry that this force assembled from federal agents across the country could eventually be turned against any groups the administration labels a threat.
One former senior DHS official who was involved in oversight said that what is happening on American streets today “gives me goosebumps.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, the official rattled off scenes that once would’ve triggered investigations: “Accosting people outside of their immigration court hearings where they’re showing up and trying to do the right thing and then hauling them off to an immigration jail in the middle of the country where they can’t access loved ones or speak to counsel. Bands of masked men apprehending people in broad daylight in the streets and hauling them off. Disappearing people to a third country, to a prison where there’s a documented record of serious torture and human rights abuse.”
The former official paused. “We’re at an inflection point in history right now and it’s frightening.”
Although ICE is conducting itself out in the open, even inviting conservative social media influencers to accompany its agents on high-profile raids, the agency operates in darkness. The identities of DHS officers, their salaries and their operations have long been withheld for security reasons and generally exempted from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. However, there were offices within DHS created to hold agents and their supervisors accountable for their actions on the job. The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, created by Congress and led largely by lawyers, investigated allegations of rape and unlawful searches from both the public and within DHS ranks, for instance. Egregious conduct was referred to the Justice Department.
The CRCL office had limited powers; former staffers say their job was to protect DHS by ensuring personnel followed the law and addressed civil rights concerns. Still, it was effective in stalling rushed deportations or ensuring detainees had access to phones and lawyers. And even when its investigations didn’t fix problems, CRCL provided an accounting of allegations and a measure of transparency for Congress and the public.
The office processed thousands of complaints — 3,000 in fiscal year 2023 alone — ranging from allegations of lack of access to medical treatment to reports of sexual assault at detention centers. Former staffers said around 600 complaints were open when work was suspended.
The administration has gutted most of the office. What’s left of it was led, at least for a while, by a 29-year-old White House appointee who helped craft Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint that broadly calls for the curtailment of civil rights enforcement.
Meanwhile, ICE is enjoying a windfall in resources. On top of its annual operating budget of $10 billion a year, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill included an added $7.5 billion a year for the next four years for recruiting and retention alone. As part of its hiring blitz, the agency has dropped age, training and education standards and has offered recruits signing bonuses as high as $50,000.
“Supercharging this law enforcement agency and at the same time you have oversight being eliminated?” said the former DHS official. “This is very scary.”
Michelle Brané, a longtime human rights attorney who directed DHS’ ombudsman office during the Biden administration, said Trump’s adherence to “the authoritarian playbook is not even subtle.”
“ICE, their secret police, is their tool,” Brané said. “Once they have that power, which they have now, there’s nothing stopping them from using it against citizens.”
Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, refuted descriptions of ICE as a secret police force. She called such comparisons the kind of “smears and demonization” that led to the recent attack on an ICE facility in Texas, in which a gunman targeted an ICE transport van and shot three detained migrants, two of them fatally, before killing himself.
In a written response to ProPublica, McLaughlin dismissed the current and former national security officials and scholars interviewed by ProPublica as “far-left champagne socialists” who haven’t seen ICE enforcement up close.
“If they had,” she wrote, “they would know when our heroic law enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify themselves as law enforcement while wearing masks to protect themselves from being targeted by highly sophisticated gangs” and other criminals.
McLaughlin said the recruiting blitz is not compromising standards. She wrote that the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center is ready for 11,000 new hires by the beginning of next year and that training has been streamlined and boosted by technology. “Our workforce never stops learning,” McLaughlin wrote.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson also praised ICE conduct and accused Democrats of making “dangerous, untrue smears.”
“ICE officers act heroically to enforce the law, arrest criminal illegal aliens and protect American communities with the utmost professionalism,” Jackson said. “Anyone pointing the finger at law enforcement officers instead of the criminals are simply doing the bidding of criminal illegal aliens and fueling false narratives that lead to violence.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the Trump pick who fired nearly the entire civil rights oversight staff, said the move was in response to CRCL functioning “as internal adversaries that slow down operations,” according to a DHS spokesperson.
Trump also eliminated the department’s Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, which was charged with flagging inhumane conditions at ICE detention facilities where many of the apprehended immigrants are held. The office was resurrected after a lawsuit and court order, though it’s sparsely staffed.
The hobbling of the office comes as the White House embarks on an aggressive expansion of detention sites with an eye toward repurposing old jails or building new ones with names that telegraph harsh conditions: “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades, built by the state and operated in partnership with DHS, or the “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska.
“It is a shocking situation to be in that I don’t think anybody anticipated a year ago,” said Erica Frantz, a political scientist at Michigan State University who studies authoritarianism. “We might’ve thought that we were going to see a slide, but I don’t think anybody anticipated how quickly it would transpire, and now people at all levels are scrambling to figure out how to push back.”
“Authoritarian Playbook”
Frantz and other scholars who study anti-democratic political systems in other countries said there are numerous examples in which ICE’s activities appear cut from an authoritarian playbook. Among them was the detention of Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was apprehended after co-writing an op-ed for the campus paper that criticized the school’s response to the war in Gaza. ICE held her incommunicado for 24 hours and then shuffled her through three states before jailing her in Louisiana.
“The thing that got me into the topic of ‘maybe ICE is a secret police force’?” said Lee Morgenbesser, an Australian political science professor who studies authoritarianism. “It was that daylight snatching of the Tufts student.”
Morgenbesser was also struck by the high-profile instances of ICE detaining elected officials who attempted to stand in their way. Among them, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was detained for demanding a judicial warrant from ICE, and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a DHS press conference.
And David Sklansky, a Stanford Law School professor who researches policing and democracy, said it appears that ICE’s agents are allowed to operate with complete anonymity. “It’s not just that people can’t see faces of the officers,” Sklansky said. “The officers aren’t wearing shoulder insignia or name tags.”
U.S. District Judge William G. Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee, recently pointed out that use of masked law enforcement officers had long been considered anathema to American ideals. In a blistering ruling against the administration’s arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters, he wrote, “To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police.” The Trump administration has said it will appeal that ruling.
Where the Fallout is Felt
The fallout is being felt in places like Hays County, Texas, not far from Austin, where ICE apprehended 47 people, including nine children, during a birthday celebration in the early morning of April 1.
The agency’s only disclosure about the raid in Dripping Springs describes the operation as part of a yearlong investigation targeting “members and associates believed to be part of the Venezuelan transnational gang, Tren de Aragua.”
Six months later, the county’s top elected official told ProPublica the federal government has ignored his attempts to get answers.
“We’re not told why they took them, and we’re not told where they took them,” said County Judge Ruben Becerra, a Democrat. “By definition, that’s a kidnapping.”
In the raid, a Texas trooper secured a search warrant that allowed law enforcement officers to breach the home, an Airbnb rental on a vast stretch of land in the Hill Country. Becerra told ProPublica he believes the suspicion of drugs at the party was a pretense to pull people out of the house so ICE officers who lacked a warrant could take them into custody. The Texas Department of Public Safety did not respond to a request for comment.
The Trump administration has yet to produce evidence supporting claims of gang involvement, said Karen Muñoz, a civil rights attorney helping families track down their relatives who were jailed or deported. While some court documents are sealed, nothing in the public record verifies the gang affiliation DHS cited as the cause for the birthday party raid.
“There’s no evidence released at all that any person kidnapped at that party was a member of any organized criminal group,” Muñoz said.
McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, did not respond to questions about Hays County and other raids where families and attorneys allege a lack of transparency and due process.
In Plain Sight
Months after ICE’s widely publicized raids, fear continues to envelop Santa Ana, a majority-Hispanic city with a large immigrant population. Amezcua, the mayor, said the raids have complicated local policing and rendered parents afraid to pick up their children from school. The city manager, a California-born citizen and Latino, carries with him three government IDs, including a passport.
Raids of car washes and apartment buildings continue, but the community has started to “push back,” Amezcua said. “Like many other communities, the neighbors come out. People stop in the middle of traffic.”
With so few institutional checks on ICE’s powers, citizens are increasingly relying on themselves. On at least one occasion in nearby Downey, a citizen’s intervention had some effect.
On June 12, Melyssa Rivas had just started her workday when a colleague burst into her office with urgent news: “ICE is here.”
The commotion was around the corner in Rivas’ hometown, a Los Angeles suburb locals call “Mexican Beverly Hills” for its stately houses and affluent Hispanic families. Rivas, 31, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, belongs to Facebook groups where residents share updates about cultural festivals, church programs and, these days, the presence of Trump’s deportation foot soldiers.
Rivas had seen posts about ICE officers sweeping through LA and figured Downey’s turn had come. She and her co-worker rushed toward the sound of screaming at a nearby intersection. Rivas hit “record” on her phone as a semicircle of trucks and vans came into view. She filmed at least half a dozen masked men in camouflage vests encircling a Hispanic man on his knees.
Her unease deepened as she registered details that “didn’t seem right,” Rivas recalled in an interview. She said the parked vans had out-of-state plates or no tags. The armed men wore only generic “police” patches, and most were in street clothes. No visible insignia identified them as state or federal — or even legal authorities at all.
“When is it that we just decided to do things a different way? There’s due process, there’s a legal way, and it just doesn’t seem to matter anymore,” Rivas said. “Where are human rights?”
Video footage shows Rivas and others berating the officers for complicity in what they called a “kidnapping.” Local news channels later reported that the vehicles had chased the man after a raid at a nearby car wash.
“I know half of you guys know this is fucked up,” Rivas was recorded telling the officers.
Moments later, the scene took a turn. As suddenly as they’d arrived, the officers returned to their vehicles and left, with no apology and no explanation to the distraught man they left on the sidewalk.
Through a mask, one of them said, “Have a good day.”
