One of the most articulate critics of Donald Trump and his warriors is Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson. Below the separator is the text of her recent Substack post:
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this morning, a visibly exhausted president of the United States of America rambled in angry free association in a speech before the world’s leaders. At one point, speaking of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) dignitaries, he told the audience: “Until the last few days when I told them about Iceland, they loved me. They called me daddy, right, last time. Very smart man said, ‘He’s our daddy. He’s running it.’”
He meant Greenland.
The president of the United States went on to give a virulently racist, insulting, rambling speech in which he complained that people call him a dictator but that “sometimes you need a dictator.” More than anything, though, the speech demonstrated his mental unfitness for his position. Tom Nichols of The Atlantic wrote: “No one can be watching this Davos speech and reach any conclusion but that the President of the United States is mentally disturbed and that something is deeply wrong with him. This is both embarrassing and extremely dangerous.”
Andrew Egger of The Bulwark wrote of Trump’s hostility to traditional U.S. allies today: “As long as I live, I don’t think I’ll get over this pure, dumb fact: Trump told his fans he had to blow up the liberal order because it was the only way to secure the very benefits the liberal order was already bringing us.” Egger likened this to Aesop’s fable about the greedy farmer who butchered the goose that laid golden eggs.
Later, Trump backed off on the tariffs he had threatened to impose on the countries standing against his seizure of Greenland, claiming he had just had “a very productive meeting” with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and had “formed the framework for a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region. This solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America, and all NATO Nations.” Because of that framework, he said, he would not be imposing the tariffs he had threatened on those nations opposing his designs on NATO.
As Ron Filipkowski of MeidasNews noted, this was not a new deal, but Trump surrendering. The U.S. and NATO have always been free to do whatever they want in Greenland, but Trump had insisted he needed to own it for “psychological” reasons. Now he has reverted back to the original agreement.
Amongst all of Trump’s other lies and threats at his Davos speech, one stood out. Talking about Russia’s war against Ukraine, he said: “It’s a war that should have never started, and it wouldn’t have started if the 2020 U.S. presidential election weren’t rigged—it was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. They found out.” This is Trump’s Big Lie, and it has been thoroughly debunked; the 2020 presidential election wasn’t stolen from him.
But then Trump went on to say: “People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. It’s probably breaking news but it should be. It was a rigged election. You can’t have rigged elections.”
This is an astonishing threat. It says he intends to prosecute Department of Justice officials and others for refusing to help him steal the presidency. The timing of this particular threat is not accidental. Tomorrow at 10:00 Eastern Time, former special counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, will testify publicly about the evidence that led a grand jury to indict Trump and led Smith himself to conclude a jury would convict Trump.
Lately, Trump has been rehashing his grievances from that election, repeating debunked claims of rigged voting machines and so on. The issue is clearly on his mind. Jack Smith knows what happened, Trump knows that Smith knows what happened, and it appears Trump is eager to discredit him at the very least.
While Trump is in Davos, the violence from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents that has been obvious for a while has ramped up in what appears to be an attempt to spark violence.
Yesterday Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, police chief Mark Bruley told reporters that the police were getting repeated complaints about violations of civil rights by ICE and that ICE agents were stopping off-duty police officers of color. He recounted that ICE agents had stopped an off-duty police officer, demanded her paperwork—she is a U.S. citizen—and then held her at gunpoint. When she tried to film the interaction, they knocked the phone out of her hand. Finally, when she identified herself as a police officer, they got in their vehicles and left.
“This isn’t just important because it happened to off-duty police officers,” Bruley said, but because “our officers know what the Constitution is, they know what right and wrong is, and they know when people are being targeted, and that’s what they were. If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think [of] how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day.”
Yesterday Dell Cameron of Wired reported that internal ICE planning documents show that the agency is planning to spend up to $50 million on jail space and a privately run transfer hub in Minnesota for immigrant detainees from Minnesota and four neighboring states.
Today the El Paso County Office of the Medical Examiner ruled that the death of 55-year-old Cuban-born Geraldo Lunas Campos detained in Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, was a homicide. Camp East Montana is a tent encampment where migrants have reported poor conditions and physical abuse. Lunas Campos died of asphyxiation after guards put pressure on his neck and chest during an altercation during which Lunas Campos asked for his medication. Two detainees testified that they saw guards choking Lunas Campos, who repeatedly told them he couldn’t breathe. The Trump administration has since tried to deport the two witnesses.
Douglas MacMillan of the Washington Post reported that at least 30 people died in detention last year, the highest number in twenty years. Six people, including Lunas Campos and another detainee at Camp East Montana, died in the first two weeks of 2026.
ICE agents are hanging around schools, threatening children. Reg Chapman of CBS News in Minnesota reported today that ICE has detained a five-year-old preschooler after using him as bait to get someone in his house to open their door. Then ICE transferred him and his father from Minnesota to detention in Texas. His family has an active asylum case and it does not have an order of deportation, meaning they are in the U.S. legally.
Video footage from Minneapolis also shows a federal agent spraying chemical irritants directly into the face of a man agents had pinned and held to the ground. Other video shows Customs and Border Protection leader Greg Bovino throwing tear gas at peaceful protesters.
This afternoon, Rebecca Santana of the Associated Press reported that ICE has been breaking into homes under the authority provided by a secret memo of May 12, 2025, signed by the acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, saying that federal agents do not need a judge’s warrant to force their way into people’s homes.
The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, one of the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights, says: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
As Joyce White Vance of Civil Discourse notes, courts have always interpreted that amendment to mean that a judge must sign a warrant to allow law enforcement to break into a home. Now the Department of Homeland Security says it does not need such a judicial warrant, but can simply use an administrative warrant signed by an official at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or ICE if immigrants believed to be inside a home have a final order of removal.
The legal training manual for DHS itself quotes a 1984 Supreme Court decision that “the ‘physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.”
Immigration law specialist Aaron Reichlin-Melnick noted that this memo is a big deal: it is “the federal government conspiring in secret to subvert the Fourth Amendment.”
Two ICE whistleblowers provided the memo to Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), explaining that they were shown the memo. They suggested that ICE supervisors seemed to understand the order was unlawful, as the supervisors only told agents about the memo rather than sharing a hard copy with them, and that at least one long-time employee resigned rather than be forced to teach material they thought was illegal.
Blumenthal wrote a scathing letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and ICE acting director Lyons noting that the “new policy is based on a secret legal interpretation and is directly contrary to Fourth Amendment law and agency practice.” He demanded to know how many DHS agents had been trained on the memo and where the training had taken place, how many homes had been broken into under the terms of the memo, the legal determination for the memo, and so on.
“Every American should be terrified by this secret ICE policy authorizing its agents to kick down your door & storm into your home,” Blumenthal wrote on social media. “It is an unlawful & morally repugnant policy that exemplifies the kinds of dangerous, disgraceful abuses America is seeing in real time. In our democracy, with vanishingly rare exceptions, the government is barred from breaking into your home without approval from a real judge. Government agents have no right to ransack your bedroom or terrorize your kids on a whim or personal desire.”
“I am deeply grateful to brave whistleblowers who have come forward & put the rights of their fellow Americans first,” Blumenthal wrote. “My Republican colleagues who claim to value personal rights against government overreach now have an opportunity & obligation to prove that rhetoric is real.”
Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who at the beginning of 2025 was considered a moderate on immigration, wrote: “Yeah I am not voting to give whatever ICE has become more taxpayer money. It’s no longer an immigration enforcement arm of the US government.”
Now ICE has landed in Portland and in Lewiston-Auburn, Maine, where it claims to have 1,400 targets for arrest.
—
Notes:
Categories: International, Trump
in-sights.ca 
Is Reality finally having an adverse impact on The White House?
https://www.rawstory.com/leavitt-miller-pretti/
“White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt refused to defend aide Stephen Miller after he described Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse gunned down by Border Patrol, as an “assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.””
“During Monday’s White House briefing, one reporter noted that the Department of Homeland Security had accused Pretti of wanting to do “maximum damage” and “massacre law enforcement.””
“”Stephen Miller on Saturday posted that, or called Pretti a would-be assassin,” the reporter said.”
“Why did administration officials jump to conclusions before an investigation had even been conducted?”
“To follow on Gabe’s question, Secretary Noem said Alex Pretti committed an act of domestic terrorism. Stephen Miller labeled Pretti a domestic terrorist. Does the president agree with them?” another reporter asked later in the news conference.”
“Look, as I’ve said, I have not heard the President characterize Mr. Pretti in that way,” the press secretary asserted. “However, I have heard the President say he wants to let the facts and the investigation lead itself.””
“On Stephen Miller’s comments, will Stephen Miller be apologizing to the family of Alex Pretty for calling him, quote, an assassin who tried to murder federal agents despite the fact that, as you say, this is still under investigation?” one correspondent wondered.”
“Look, again, this incident remains under investigation, and nobody here at the White House, including the President of the United States, wants to see Americans hurt or killed and losing their lives in American streets,” Leavitt remarked.”
=======================================================================
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-admin-2675034827/?cx_testId=6&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=3&cx_experienceId=EXC93HV4HK4I&cx_experienceActionId=showRecommendationsVP9S9ZC8WNR522#cxrecs_s
“Wiles and Miller ‘fully turned’ against two other top Trump officials as admin ‘splinters'”
“The Trump administration was reportedly splintering Monday over the fatal ICE shooting of 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.”
“President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles and White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller — the architect of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policy — have apparently turned on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Corey
Lewandowski, The Daily Beast reported. ”
“Lewandowski and Noem have been subject to multiple reports of a not-so-secret personal relationship, although neither of them have publicly addressed the claims.”
“The administration’s senior leadership has questioned Noem’s competence and decision to have Customs and Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino leading the operation as the “public face” for Trump’s policies. Several of Bovino’s moves had already come into question prior to Pretti’s killing shocked Americans.”
=======================================================================
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-immigration-2675036080/
“Massive union overseeing Border Patrol demands ouster of Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller”
“A massive union that represents some of President Donald Trump’s immigration agents called on two of the administration’s top officials to resign following the killing of an ICU nurse in Minneapolis over the weekend.”
“The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 820,000 federal employees, called on Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to either resign or be fired following the death of ICU nurse Alex Pretti.”
““Our demand is clear: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was responsible for carrying out the policy that led to Alex’s needless killing, and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of that policy, must resign immediately. If they refuse, President Trump must dismiss them,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a statement.
In the aftermath, Trump administration officials smeared Pretti as a domestic terrorist and claimed he was there to inflict harm on immigration officers.”
““Taken together, the actions of Miller and Noem, both before and after Alex’s killing, make clear they are unfit to serve in their current positions, or any position requiring the public trust,” Everett said.”
======================================================================
A “brilliant” Trump tariff threat helps turn the US economy towards The Choir Eternal.
https://www.semafor.com/article/01/26/2026/volkswagen-considers-pulling-out-of-us-factory-plans-over-tariffs
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-tariffs-volkswagen-2675035448/
“Major automaker Volkswagen has considered cancelling its plans for a US major factory over President Donald Trump’s automotive tariffs, according to reports Monday.”
“Oliver Blume, CEO of the Volkswagen Group, said in an interview with Handelsblatt that in the first nine months of 2025 levies issued by the Trump administration had cost the company $2.5 billion and that the company needed to make cuts, Semafor reported.”
“After Trump returned to office, German investments in the US dropped 45% year-on-year in 2025, according to Reuters. The dollar’s depreciation was considered a factor while German exports also declined.”
“Other recent political and economic factors have also come into play.”
“”After Trump warned at the World Economic Forum last week of possible further duties on Europe, growing global uncertainty over the stability of trade relationships pushed gold above $5,000 per ounce for the first time,” according to Semafor.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/german-investments-us-nearly-halve-trumps-first-year-back-report-shows-2026-01-19/
“Exclusive: German investments in US nearly halved in Trump’s first year back, report shows”
“After starting his second term on January 20 last year, Trump repeatedly threatened and eventually implemented higher tariffs on goods from the European Union with the rationale that foreign companies would establish or expand their production in the United States to circumvent the additional financial burden.”
“However, the uncertainty caused by Trump’s policy shifts is leading firms, which usually calculate investment decisions over several years, to take a wait-and-see approach, Sultan said.”
“”When the fundamental assumptions of the economic environment are called into question, sometimes practically overnight, very few companies dare to make such far-reaching decisions,” added the researcher.”
Another negative investment consideration for Europe? Social instability.
In Blue States – typically the most stable and wealthier ones – the public’s reaction to ICE violence and Trump threats of worse is mounting…
How reckless to self-interest would it prove for a foreign country to invest in a country waiting for Trump to enact The Insurrection Act?
Increased profits and growth will result from this? How?
7058a6b52a09a907ef8f6a8422ed005d7276f77fd1ac24986f1ca220e8067018
LikeLike
It’s not as though ICE has ever done anything illegal…
Because Republicans represent The Law and Order Party.
https://crooksandliars.com/2026/01/tarlov-rattles-list-ice-abuses-trump-took
“Kyle Cheney at Politico has been tracking the cases of folks who have been detained, found 2,300 cases since July alone where the judge has ruled that ICE has illegally detained someone.”
========================================================================
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-doj-ice/
“”The question was just, is Todd Lyons going to come to his courtroom on Friday and testify or not?” Rubin said. “And he said, it’s no longer necessary. You have told me that you released the person in question. He was supposed to come and explain why the person hadn’t been released, and they said, he’s been released. We agree the hearing is off. But then he took the opportunity to say,
‘I have spoken with the other judges in my district. We have counted between us nearly 100 instances in which ICE has not followed our orders.”
“Rubin and MS NOW colleague Fallon Gallagher reviewed 61 cases where immigrants were challenging their detentions, which were decided between Jan. 20 and Jan. 27”.
“”We found that in all but one case, with judges appointed by both Democrats and Republicans, the immigrants won every single time but one. And in that one outstanding case, the person had a criminal history. But in all of the rest, not only did they have no criminal history, they were arrested in circumstances that turn your stomach,” Rubin said.”
“Rubin described the cases and circumstances surrounding some of the detained immigrants fighting for justice.”
========================================================================
ICE operations increase morale!
https://www.rawstory.com/minnesota-ice-shootings-threat/
“Prosecutors threaten mass resignations over DOJ response to Minnesota shootings”
“Federal prosecutors have notified President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Minneapolis U.S. attorney’s office they are considering mass resignations to protest the Department of Justice response to the fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti.”
“Two officials familiar with the office told the Washington Post that at least one prosecutor in the office’s criminal division has resigned since a meeting this week with U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen where the prosecutors raised their concerns about the shooting probes.”
“The threat of further resignations is the latest sign of how the federal judicial system in Minnesota has begun to crack under the strain imposed by the administration’s immigration enforcement surge in the state,” the Post reported.”
“On Wednesday, the chief federal district judge in the state wrote that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had violated 96 court orders since launching the crackdown in Minnesota, dubbed Operation Metro Surge.”
“Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz wrote that ICE had “likely violated” more court orders this month than some federal agencies had in their entire existence, and U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota has been wracked with turmoil over the fatal shootings of Good and Pretti.”
“”At least a half-dozen prosecutors in the office — including the second-in-command — resigned earlier this month after top Justice Department officials told prosecutors not to investigate the shooting of Good but instead try to build a case against her partner,” the Post reported.”
LikeLike
Not the kind of ICE Protest you might expect.
DVDs and public transit: Boycott drives people to ditch Big Tech to protest ICE
https://www.npr.org/2026/02/07/nx-s1-5704402/boycott-tech-ice-scott-galloway
https://avg.1news.io/news/df36725b56762dda20a897e3ec4049f6?utm_source=avg&utm_medium=ntp
A growing number of Americans are participating in a boycott called “Resist and Unsubscribe,” targeting tech companies perceived as not sufficiently opposing President Trump’s immigration policies. This campaign, initiated by Scott Galloway, aims to leverage financial pressure on companies that have ties to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or hold significant economic influence.
Detailed Summary:
Individuals are altering their consumption habits, such as buying DVDs instead of streaming services, using public transit over ride-sharing apps, and shopping locally instead of through Amazon, to protest what they see as the Trump administration’s indifference to public outcry over immigration enforcement.
The “Resist and Unsubscribe” campaign, spearheaded by Scott Galloway, seeks to pressure companies by highlighting their business relationships with ICE or their substantial economic impact, believing financial markets are a key lever for policy change.
The boycott is particularly amplified by events like the shooting of two U.S. citizens by federal immigration officers and renewed calls for boycotts against companies like Target for not publicly opposing ICE.
While the long-term impact is yet to be determined, the campaign has generated significant initial interest, with Galloway’s website receiving a substantial number of page views.
The White House has attributed increased assaults on immigration officers to anti-ICE rhetoric, a claim that has been questioned by previous reporting.Experts suggest that while opting out of
“Big Tech” is challenging due to its integration into daily life, successful boycotts require viable alternatives and sustained consumer non-participation, with damaged reputation often being more impactful than short-term profit loss.
Participants are motivated by a desire for tangible change, a belief that consumer action is necessary to jolt the system, and specific grievances against companies associated with the Trump administration, such as Amazon’s acquisition and promotion of a documentary about Melania Trump.
Some participants express a commitment to continue the boycott until significant changes in immigration enforcement are observed or for an extended period, emphasizing the importance of their values and community well-being.
LikeLike