The Boundary Waters of Chaos

Lost in the roiling, overpowering chaos created and topped every day by the Boss Chaos administration, is a clear and present danger to America's last vestiges of wilderness, its sanctuaries for wildlife, its national forests and even its national parks. It's the stealth threat in a bill that may be voted on in the US Senate this very week.

Using the Congressional Review Act, a previously obscure and dubious catch-all law that has become another favorite of the far right, Republicans in the House recently voted to end the federal ban on mining on protected federal land near the Boundary Waters Wilderness on the northern Minnesota border, noted as the most visited wilderness area in America.   That bill goes to the Senate, and may be up for a vote as early as this week.  By using this Act, passage requires only a majority vote, and not the 60 votes needed to prevent filibuster.  Boss Chaos has promised to sign it into law.

There is already a foreign mining company waiting to begin a copper sulfide operation at the Boundary Waters, the most dangerous form of industrial mining known.  This kind of mining does not have a record of occasionally contaminating nearby waters with toxic pollution; nor a record of often causing it.  According to environmental and political opponents, it has a 100% record of always polluting.  

But it gets worse.  If the bill succeeds by this controversial use of the Congressional Review Act, it is feared that it may establish the precedent to apply to withdrawing protection from every protected area in the country, including those preserved a century or more ago.

In an effort to give myself a break and some distance from the world of Chaos, I've been reading some very long books about other critical moments in which American Presidents actually acted constructively.  I started with two 600+ page books on Franklin D. Roosevelt, including Rightful Heritage by Douglas Brinkley.  That history is about FDR's lesser known efforts on environmental issues, including his expansion of wilderness, bird sanctuaries and other protected areas across the country, as well as new national parks.

FDR grew up with a forest in his backyard.  His first enthusiasms were trees and birds.  He became very knowledgeable about endangered species and habitats, so as President he was very specific in what he wanted accomplished, and where.  Many of his New Deal efforts had the added goal--and added benefit--of healing lands and waters depleted and destroyed by poor farming practices (leading in part to the Dust Bowl) as well as rapacious industries and rampant pollution.  The Civil Conservation Corps was his most conspicuous effort.  

In this he was somewhat following in the footsteps of his famous relative, Theodore Roosevelt (who unlike FDR was a Republican.)  TR is the subject of an earlier book by Douglas Brinkley, The Wilderness Warrior.  It's even longer--more than 800 pages with nearly 100 more pages of footnotes etc.  I'm about halfway through it now. In the late 19th and early 20th century, TR was an imperialist, Social Darwinist, and by today's standards probably a racist.  He favored using the military to expand US influence in the hemisphere, and he was a proud big game hunter. 

 But he also grew up hands-on in a natural world, and well into his teens his chosen profession was as a scientific naturalist.  He had a fierce intelligence and a scientific bent: Darwin was a hero he actually read.  As an adult he explored mountains, forests, rivers and waterways all over North America, as the great wilderness areas were rapidly being destroyed by railroad, timber and other industrial interests.  Species were going extinct and others seriously threatened--birds in particular were being killed in vast numbers to provide feathers for ladies' hats.  In his public life as President and before, he tenaciously fought all of these interests, fostered regulations on hunting and fishing, put teeth in the protection of federal protected areas, and expanded these wilderness and protected areas to save them for posterity.

TR accomplished this with popular support by using his celebrity as well as his power and political acumen.  His immense enthusiasm--which may have been partly the product of a bipolar personality--was his greatest asset.

Reading these books really helped in my less inspiring present.  Particularly Rightful Heritage was at times an almost blissful reading experience.  And I took hopeful solace from the outcomes, that these environments, these parks and national monuments, bird and wildlife sanctuaries and wilderness areas were permanent accomplishments.  Whatever else, American would have these.

If only.

I was of course aware of the environmental protections the Chaos administration was dismantling, one by one.  But only recently did I become aware of a frontal assault on these protected lands and waters, beginning with the Boundary Waters. Heather Cox Richardson talked about it recently, and Minnesota Senator Tina Smith has been vocal about it.  I should have known about it, since the fight against this bill in the House was led by our own California district's Member of Congress Jared Huffman, the ranking Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee.  

But I immediately saw the connection with what I'd been reading, the history that seemed a triumph for the good, but that was now being assaulted and endangered.  Not that this is unique these days, but when wilderness is destroyed the next administration can't rebuild it.  

The direct connection I saw to FDR and TR because of this reading was also apparent to the direct descendants of Theodore Roosevelt.  In TR's name, they wrote a letter sounding the alarm on the Boundary Waters issue and related dangers--the first time that all four branches of TR's descendants signed a statement together.  National media by and large has yet to cover this story, but this letter caught the attention of the New York Times. 

The Times story even quotes Douglas Brinkley, author of the FDR and TR books, known as a presidential historian. He observed that "there has never been a President with zero interest in protecting the natural world" until the current one.

The best summary I found so far of what's gone on with the Boundary Waters bill is this post on Substack, in a column called Public Domain.  Since this is officially the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness, and the very existence of many small canoeing businesses and related businesses in the area are threatened, a publication called Paddle Portage is following the story.  A recent post points out that the first step in the Senate is a ruling by the Senate Parliamentarian as to whether this bill qualifies under the Congressional Review Act, which applies only to "rules" and not "orders," with their technical but very meaningful distinctions.  If she decides it is an "order" then the CRA doesn't apply, and at the very least it will require the full 60 votes, which it is very unlikely to get.  It may in fact stop this measure in its tracks, and even invalidate the House bill.

That decision could come in days, or not for weeks.  Even if the bill passes, there are further steps that must be taken before the mining can begin.  Everything will be subject to law suits and court decisions.  The state of Minnesota can also weigh in with their own prohibitions and protections, though their state legislature is currently closely divided between Democrats and Republicans.  

I've never been to the Boundary Waters (I got as far north in Minnesota as Lake Superior), though my friend Mike went on a canoe trip there some months ago.  I know of it mostly through the descriptions in the novel Solar Storms by Linda Hogan, as a mysterious place with both practical and mystical power to the Native peoples whose ancestors first inhabited it. (This 1995 novel also involves an external environmental threat.)  A recent Minnesota Post article describes the area (with above photo) as "a vast swath of remote woods, lakes and swamps in the Superior National Forest...along the border with Canada...It remains largely untouched by humans."  It is regarded as one of the most important wilderness areas in the US.

Even if the mining effort ultimately fails, the successful use of this obscure Act could ultimately threaten all protected lands and waters, all protected life forms that together define America and its heritage for the future--everything that generations of conservationists, outdoor enthusiasts, ecologists and Presidents from Lincoln forward have worked to protect. 

The Word is Minneapolis--But It's Not Over

 

If the United States survives its current authoritarian chaos and the future consequences of the destruction left in its wake, even for a decade or two more, historians (if there are any) will need just one word to signal the reasons it did: Minneapolis.

Chicago showed the way, with elements of resistance learned from Los Angeles, Portland and elsewhere, but it was Minneapolis that made the difference.  An unprecedented and overwhelming assault of some 3,000 armed federal thugs was met with steadfast, intelligent, inventive and relentless resistance.  

The key moments within the daily responses to the hourly official crimes were of course the way the city showed up after the murders of Rene Good and Alex Pretti, never wavering from their resistance and support for their immigrant neighbors (including organizing to feed families when they were too terrorized to leave home), and coming out in sub-zero temperatures by the thousands to protest peacefully--and to mourn.  

Now the feds have announced the end of their operations in Minnesota.  In other words, ICE is out.  But there is no dancing in the streets of the Twin Cities.  For one thing, since the feds have done nothing but lie, no one in Minnesota believes anything they say.  They will watch what happens, and what if anything stops happening.

For another, the federal thugs leave behind vast damage to communities and people: traumatized families and children, economic ruin for some, and a host of residual problems for schools, medical care facilities, government and businesses.  There are still Minnesotans vanished into black site prisons and with unknown fates, including children.  There are also children left behind when their parents were swiftly deported.  Even those released from concentration camps still face official efforts to deport them, including Liam Ramos and his family.  Community support for immigrant families will need to continue.

For yet another, Minnesotans are concerned for other places in the US that may yet be visited with the lawless thugs fostered and protected by a rich bureaucracy in Washington.  The feds still plan to spend over $38 billion on new "detention centers," many of which will warehouse more individuals than any actual federal prison, while prisoners convicted of no crime die in existing concentration camps, and disease runs rampant. They  still contain hundreds of children, though these publicly-funded prisons refuse to disclose anything about themselves. 

 It's known however that one family with five children, from age 18 to twins who had their fifth birthday in captivity, has been imprisoned in Texas for at least nine months.  Another known case: A healthy infant sent to one of these camps contracted a number of life-threatening diseases there, and even then ICE extracted her from the hospital.  A judge has since seen to her release.

Congressional Democrats are refusing to fund the Homeland Security department until the same rules that apply to all other kinds of law enforcement are institutionalized in ICE and Border Patrol.  Polls show a majority of Americans support this stand.   

Though the lawlessness of these federal thugs became most obvious in Minneapolis with its treatment of protests--including the murder of two peaceful protestors--and its violation of fourth amendment rights, it was also exposed there in its treatment of those it disappeared.  A federal court judge in Minnesota ruled that they have been violating constitutional and basic human rights of prisoners.  The top federal court judge in Minneapolis earlier declared from the bench that ICE had "likely violated more court orders in January than some federal agencies have in their entire existence." 

Last week Reuters put a number on this aspect of defiance of the law: Courts have ruled 4,400 times against ICE for jailing people illegally.  There is no indication that they are stopping.

There is also little redress or consequences from any of this.  In a Chicago case where federal thugs rammed a vehicle and shot the woman driving five times (she survived), and a Minneapolis case where federal thugs shot a man in his home through his door, the preponderance of evidence showed that the federal agents were lying about what happened (the feds acknowledged this in the Minnesota case.)  Cases against the victims were dismissed, but there are no criminal cases brought against the thugs for what they did.  Similarly and most obviously, there are no consequences so far for the murderers of Good and Pretti.

Attempts to intimidate protestors and criminalize protest continue.  It's well known that agents have been identifying protesters and threatening them with terrorist watch lists, and some Minnesotans have filed charges in court saying they were menaced at home by federal thugs.  The New York Times reports that Homeland Security had demanded information from Google, Facebook and other companies about social media accounts of those who criticized ICE--and have often been given such information.

Even if the army of federal secret police does decamp from Minnesota, they leave a very damaged legal system behind that will take a lot of time to repair, as Politico reports.  The US Attorney's Office in Minneapolis has been hollowed out by resignations by prosecutors who refused Washington's directives to ignore the murders and otherwise support the federal thugs in their thuggery. The federal prosecutors that remain face judges that no longer trust them.  State and local law enforcement no longer trusts the feds either, and cooperation is disintegrating.  In this as well, Minneapolis may be a harbinger, if the lavishly funded federal Gestapo invades other cities and towns in the United States of America.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

 

So here we are: in Black History month 2026, with the current President of the United States posting racist images of the first and only black President of the United States.  This while his underlings attempt to scrub authentic Black History from public life. 

This after the Chaos administration has attempted to disappear top leaders in the military and the federal government who are Black, and most often succeeded without much media criticism or public response. It's also no coincidence that the two most prominent journalists recently arrested by federal thugs are Black.

 This after vilifying and demonizing efforts supporting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, also without much outrage.  Perhaps we'll even get a decision from the Republican Supreme Court this month that destroys the last vestige of the Civil Rights Act. 

This while the United States government is openly attempting ethnic cleansing in the name of immigration law enforcement, using racial profiling of the crudest kind openly on the public streets, private homes and previously protected buildings across America, targeting and attacking children, women, the disabled and disenfranchised, as well as white citizens who dare to dissent.

This president was elected.  But it turns out the vast hidden popular support for the racist rampage of ethnic cleansing he and his white supremacist minions were counting on, just isn't there.  There are plenty of cowardly billionaires, corporations and universities. But a joyous halftime show celebrating Puerto Rican culture, largely in the Spanish language, was just shown to billions of people worldwide. (I don't understand Spanish.  I don't know many of those performers, and I'm unfamiliar with the culture, except for some of the music.  But I loved it. And isn't that the point?  I felt it, and its equivalents in the cultures I do know. )

It turns out that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are now rooted deep in our communities, and in our economy.  There always are the racist haters and their race-based crazy theories and dark surmises. There are always these conflicts.  They've risen as far as the US Congress, but for at least a century have never before taken control of the federal government.

This racism is only part of the ongoing destruction of our federal government, America's relations with the world, and the American economy--with implications for the world economy.  But while this daily destruction attacks us all with its oppression and cognitive dissonance, it is also awakening many, many Americans to what they don't want, and what they do value.

Unfortunately there will likely be harder times before they get better.  Economic consequences are just beginning, as the residual resilience is strained to its breaking point. With an increasingly dysfunctional government, including a collapsing Justice Department, everything that might happen just gets more dangerous.  But it seems possible that more and more Americans are also becoming clearer on the kind of country they want.  What they want to keep, and what they want to change.  And how they want to do it: together.

Weekend In Protests (With Liam Update)

 

Eureka CA

About the national shutdown protests initiated by students on Friday, the New York Times:

"They ditched school in Atlanta. Left work in Philadelphia. Blocked traffic in Los Angeles. And closed businesses in New York. Across the country on Friday, protesters marched, rallied and disrupted their everyday routines in solidarity with Minneapolis residents to demand an end to the Trump administration’s immigration tactics.

The actions, including gatherings in cities and towns from Boise, Idaho, to Gainesville, Fla., were part of what groups of organizers called a national shutdown, encouraging Americans to abstain from work, school and shopping “to stop ICE’s reign of terror” and denounce the recent killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

"The protests reflected widespread fury at the killings, which have endangered President Trump’s political agenda and threatened a government shutdown. The specter of masked men killing American citizens during protests has raised fears of authoritarianism and talk of resistance, with many residents saying America’s 250-year experiment in democracy is imperiled....

From city to city, many of those who participated said that after the killings of Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti, standing by and doing nothing was no longer an option. Many also wanted to show their gratitude to Minneapolis residents for standing up. Some said they no longer recognized the country they live in."

The Saturday ICE OUT OF EVERYWHERE protests, covered by the New York Times:

"Crowds rallied in dozens of cities across the nation on Saturday to protest the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, hoping to build on momentum from demonstrations on Friday against federal operations targeting Minneapolis and other liberal-leaning cities...

An afternoon rally in Portland, Ore., swelled to become one of the largest protests the city had seen in months, joined by demonstrators from other events held earlier in the day....

Church bells pealed solemnly throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., on Saturday, expressing solidarity with protesters and with people facing deportation."

Also on Saturday, a federal judge in Texas ordered the release of Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, in an order quoting the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and lambasting procedures of the Chaos Gestapo that would equally apply to many others languishing in substandard federal detention centers/concentration camps.  

Liam was photographed by two Members of Congress able to visit him in prison.  He never opened his eyes the entire time they were there, in a traumatized fugue state.

From ABC News:

"Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, asylum seekers who were arrested last week in Minnesota, were ordered to be released by a federal judge in Texas on Saturday. 

U.S. District Judge Fred Biery ordered the boy and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, released from the immigration detention center at Dilley "as soon as practicable" but no later than Feb. 3. ..

In the order releasing Liam and his father, Biery said the case "has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children."

"Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency," the judge wrote. "And the rule of law be damned."

UPDATE: Liam and his father were released and back at home in Minneapolis on Sunday.  But other children remain in ICE prisons, including others from Liam's school, one of whom is a ten year old girl. 

Shutdown Today, March Tomorrow

 National media has been all but silent about this, but pledges of participation are growing: National Shutdown Day on Friday January 30.  Similar to the Minnesota general strike last Friday, this time it is a national in scope: no work, no school, no shopping, as a protest against federal thugs and murderers that everyone's taxes are paying for.

This is to be followed on Saturday January 31 by marches calling for ICE OUT OF EVERYWHERE.  Both are organized by Fifty Fifty One.  Two notable features: the organizing and especially the call to participate has been happening all week online, specifically through social media.  And it seems to be mobilizing young people to a greater extent than before.  

Businesses in Denver, Los Angeles county, Madison (Wisc.), New York City, San Antonio, Connecticut, Las Vegas, Eugene (OR), Phoenix, Utah and the California Bay Area are among those announcing they will shut down on Friday in protest.

On Thursday, the prestigious Pew Research Center poll announced its findings of a survey conducted this past week.  King Chaos has a 37% approval rating, with 61% disapproving. A majority-- 51% --believe he is not mentally fit to be President, and 60% don't believe he acts ethically in office.

Washington Turmoil, Minnesota Vigilance

 

Many have been touting a shift, a change, in popular sentiment, political response and even Chaos administration verbiage seemingly signaling a retreat, and have attributed this correctly to the stubborn and relentless bravery of Minneapolis residents (Rachel Maddow was among the most eloquent), in the wake of what is now regularly and openly being called the Alex Pretti murder by federal thugs.   Spontaneous or quickly planned protests brought thousands into the streets across the US over the weekend, even in places where a furious winter storm and frigid temperatures were descending on 80% of the nation's population this week.

But national and local reporters note that as of Tuesday night, Minneapolis was not celebrating, but remaining vigilant.  And there were over 300 sightings of ICE/Border Patrol actions there during the day, and another mother and her toddler caught up in violent attack.  It's not over.

There seems to be more resistance to the lies and cruelty and cowardice, in the country and reflected in words by politicians, if not yet in actions.  But we've seen these tactical pauses before in the inner sanctums of Chaos, lulling the perennially gullible and the legitimately exhausted. We are still, in the words of Senator Raphael Warnock, "witnessing the spiraling spiritual death of a nation, and it's the people who have to stand up and redeem the soul of our country."   

Apart from the Chaos administration slightly shuffling the deck of their fascist overseers, there was one notable action taken.  One of the top three Republican candidates for governor of Minnesota, Chris Madel, dropped out of the race because of the "unmitigated disaster" of the Chaos occupation.  Not only did he conclude that no Republican could win a statewide office because of it, he expressed his moral qualms at rampant racial profiling and the climate of fear instilled by federal thugs.

He did more that drop out of the race.  He seemed to signal that he's left the Republican party. "I cannot support the national Republicans' stated retribution on the citizens of our state.  Nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so."

Meanwhile, news has begun to spread of something that happened a few days ago in the federal detention center in Dilley, Texas, where parents and their children caught in the Minnesota federal kidnappings are imprisoned.  They include Liam Conejo-Ramos, the five year old boy with the floppy blue cap and Spiderman backpack grabbed and hustled away with his father, who is becoming a national icon for these degenerate policies and actions.  

It seems that word of Friday's massive march in Minneapolis (latest estimate is 75,000 people marching in what was at that moment the coldest place in the world) had reached inside these walls, and on Saturday many inmates--particularly the children--staged their own demonstration, chanting "Let us go!" and "Let the children go!" 

Though a few lawyers who happened to be there were quickly moved away, images of the protest in an open area were caught by an Associated Press drone.  That's how Liam's mother reportedly caught her first sight of her boy.

Rachel Maddow referred to these immigration prisons as "black sites."  That term emerged in the post-9/11 fury, and during the Iraq war, as America bowed to the "new normal" of distant prisons in faraway countries built and maintained (but not acknowledged) by the United States, where suspected terrorists and others were sent without trial to be tortured and held indefinitely.  They went in and no information came out--they were "black sites," and in that sense the beginning of  brutalization contrary to law and American ideals, a deep spiral towards the spiritual death of this nation.

We became used to no longer being ashamed of being torturers.  Still, it was too shameful to have these black sites in our own country.  No longer.  They may not be water-boarding prisoners in Texas, but there's evidence that even there, in a prison for families, there is tainted food and water, and negligent medical care.  There are reports of relentless inhumane treatment in other US black sites, of what easily qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment--and this is without trial and therefore without a verdict, or a sentence.     

Liam and his father are in this prison despite being in the US legally.  The family's petition for asylum is active in the judicial system.

One of the lawyers who was present on the day of the demonstration was there to meet with clients that included a family with five children imprisoned with them, a 9 year old, a 16 year old, an 18 year old girl, and twins who turned five years old in the prison.  They've been there for eight months and counting.

The Dilley prison is a black site because there are no visitors, little if any oversight by media or even congressional representatives who are legally entitled to inspect at any time but have so far been denied entry.  Like everything the Chaos administration does regarding their so-called immigration actions, there is no accountability because there is no information.

Children, including at least one two year old, can find themselves in the routine of their Minnesota lives, suddenly kidnapped by heavily armed men in masks and combat gear, and six hours later imprisoned in this Texas black site.  These actions and these places shame this country, especially the powerful who remain silent and complicit, while some of them profit.     

Official Murder in Minneapolis--Again

 

He put his body between federal thugs and a woman they had assaulted and knocked down, then bent down to help her to her feet.  The thugs then ejected pepper spray into his face from inches away, forced him to the pavement and beat his head with the spray container.

He was prone on the pavement with seven federal thugs holding him down, his face being pressed to the ground, when federal thugs pumped ten bullets into his back and body, and fled.

Politicians by and large used their usual flat cliches in characterizing and criticizing this action.  It took an NBA player, Tyrese Haliburton, to say it plainly: "Alex Pretti was murdered."

It was an act of horrific, immense and cowardly brutality in Minneapolis, followed by the usual comprehensive lies by Chaos officials and their Republican enablers in Washington, that will echo through history, a stain on the name of the United States of America.  Its echo will remain loud this week, this year.

For relevant news on this as of Sunday, read Heather Cox Richardson's 1/25 post on Substack.

Minnesota Meets Chaos and Cruelty With Passion and Community

 

It was the coldest day of the year so far in a place that has very cold days.  Wind chill temperatures were around 30 below.  Nevertheless, they persisted. In early afternoon, tens of thousands (earliest estimate was 50,000) marched in Minneapolis against the federal armed invasion of their city and state.  

Towards evening thousands gathered in the Target Center for a rally. The New York Times quoted Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, praising the day's protests.  "We are meeting ICE violence with nonviolence," she said. "We are meeting their chaos and cruelty with passion and community."

There was a related protest earlier in the day at the Minneapolis airport which ended with an act of civil disobedience, as around 100 faith leaders were arrested by local police for briefly blocking car traffic (and later released.) 

The day began with a first in this wave of protests: a general strike that brought the Twin Cities to a virtual standstill on Friday morning.  Though first called by faith leaders and quickly supported by labor unions, this shutdown included hundreds of businesses that voluntarily closed for the day in support.

The action was statewide, so in addition to Al's Breakfast in Minneapolis and the Black Coffee and Waffle Bar in St. Paul, self-striking businesses included the Battleground Cafe in White Bear Lake, Cafe Meow in New Hope, Bliss Acai in St. Louis Park, and businesses in Duluth, Rochester, Edina, Richfield, Grand Marais, Excelsior, Two Harbors, Osseo, Prior Lake, Apple Valley, Stillwater, Shoreview, Crystal and other municipalities in every part of Minnesota.

A good many cafes and eateries in Minneapolis opened their doors in the afternoon to warm protestors and provide them with free coffee and soup.  One of these was The Lotus, run by Yoom Nguyen, quoted by CBS News. "This is not about money for us.  We've been here since 1984.  This community embraced our family when we were going through tough times, and we feel it's our turn to return the favor, bring some hope and some joy and some warmth to people."

Along the march route organizers passed out hand warmers and a kiosk gave out paper cups of Somali tea.

Commenting on the protest on MSNow, Nicole Wallace called it "an act of historic bravery."

MN: Day of Truth and Freedom

The havoc and horrific harm being caused by federal Gestapo across Minnesota is mobilizing the state's institutional leaders as well as the traumatized citizens.  The latest is a call by unions and others for what amounts to a general strike in the Twin Cities and throughout the state on Friday, January 23:

"Minnesota’s unions, progressive faith leaders and community activists are calling a general strike on Friday, encouraging Minnesotans to stay home from work, school and refrain from shopping — suspensions of normal orders of business to protest the presence of federal immigration agents in Minnesota.

Friday is “ICE Out of Minnesota: Day of Truth & Freedom” — a statewide pause of daily activity to “stand together against the actions of the federal government against the state of Minnesota,” according to the website.

Demonstrators will march and rally in downtown Minneapolis Friday starting at 2 p.m."

So far over 100 businesses in the Twin Cities have announced they will close on Friday.

On Tuesday, the Minneapolis Chief of Police and other police officials held a press conference protesting ICE actions, which have included the harassment of off-duty local police officers, at gunpoint.  

Chief Mark Bruley cited "endless complaints" to the police about forcible stops and other "civil rights violations in our streets."  Several officers in his department and other nearby departments have been victims of aggressive and dangerous stops.  "Every one of these individuals is a person of color," he said.

After describing the violent stop of one of his officers, Bruley added, "I wish I could tell you that this was an isolated incident. In fact, many of the chiefs standing behind me have similar incidents with their off-duty officers," Bruley said. "This isn't just important because it happened to off-duty officers, but what it did do is we know that 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."

Another press conference was held by representatives of major physician organizations in various specialties describing the lawless actions of ICE agents invading hospitals and clinics, and more generally citing the harm being caused both directly and indirectly (by causing such fear that people are afraid to seek needed medical care).

The doctor representing pediatricians called ICE interventions "atrocities."  She spoke of children being traumatized by sudden invasion into their homes by heavily armed thugs, as well as children handcuffed face down in front of their school.  "Horrific trauma," lifelong trauma, is one result.

One incident described was a mother with her child attacked in a clinic parking lot where she was going to fill a prescription for anti-seizure medicine.  The attack caused the child to have a seizure on the spot, while the mother was carried off to be transported to a detention prison in Texas. ICE is "traumatizing an entire generation" of children.

They also said that half of their regular hospital staff is afraid to show up for work, because they are Latin and Somali.  These are the people who braved the pandemic to save lives in these hospitals.

When asked if there are laws in the works to apply to these situations, one spokesperson said, "We can pass 110 laws but ICE is already acting outside the law."  The doctors, almost all of them women, were from across Minnesota, and those who didn't speak stood with tears in their eyes.

They promised that they were organizing ways to bring medical care to people too fearful to leave their homes.  "Minnesota doctors will stand in solidarity with our patients."

A Minneapolis resident provided her unofficial testimony on Facebook, which was then included in a daily meditation by Matthew Fox.  The situation, she confirmed, "is FAR WORSE than anything the mainstream media is presenting."  The number of videos, accounts of ICE raids, "beatings, abductions and other crimes" are too many to even count.  "Everyone I know here is shaken to the core."

The raids are "nonstop, day or night."  The sweeps in every public or semi-public place where people normally have the expectation of privacy, the violence to people driving in their cars, has been joined by door to door attacks--"kicking in the door armed to the teeth, entering illegally without a warrant and without batting an eye."

"These agents aren't out for any particular person.  Don't believe the LIES about picking up criminals.  They just grab whoever they deem non-white. Native Americans have been taken, and many are still missing. They are also abducting white legal observers, including those who offer no confrontation whatsoever."

"Yesterday, they violently abducted an autistic woman who was just trying to get to a doctor's appointment on a street they were occupying."  

In her Wednesday letter, Heather Cox Richardson passes this on: "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."

The feds use of tear gas, mace and pepper balls against lawful protesters led to sanctions by a federal judge, though it was later countermanded at least temporarily by a Court of Appeals in a one sentence unexplained ruling.

The above witness echoes one of the doctors when she said, "I get so tired of hearing people lecture about what ICE can and cannot do legally.  Yes, we all know.  The problem is that ICE agents don't care, and do what they want."

On Wednesday AP revealed the existence of a memo within ICE asserting their thugs have a right to forcibly enter anyone's home without a judge's warrant, with only their own administrative warrant, in direct violation of law interpreting the fourth amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Also Wednesday, results of a YouGuv/Economist poll showed that 71% of Americans surveyed agreed that the United States "is out of control."

Dreaming Up Daily Quote

 "We cannot fan the flames of chaos.  That's what he wants."

Governor Tim Walz, appealing to Minnesotans to protest but peacefully.

Standing Together in Minnesota

 I have many fond memories of my visits to Minnesota and its Twin Cities.  Once I was there for a week or so during the winter.  From observation and my friends who lived there I learned two things: Minnesota people aren't afraid of the cold and the snow, and a primary reason they aren't is because mutual aid is ingrained in the culture.  If your car gets stuck in the snow, you won't wait long for passers-by or people who see you from their homes to come with shovels and big smiles, to dig you out.

That's why I am not surprised when I hear over and over the refrain from Minnesota people about why they're out there every time the federal thugs show up: I'm looking out for my neighbors.

Minnesota at the moment is the land of American heroes.  Facing at least 2800 heavily armed thugs who they now know will use violence against them, including lethal force, with impunity and without consequences, they continue to come out to face them in the streets, in even greater numbers.

After Renee Good was killed and the forces of Chaos spoke to support her killer and demonize her, I read a NYT column quoting MN Attorney General Keith Ellison suggesting that the only reason for this was to make Americans so afraid that they would cower in their homes, and look away.

Not in Minnesota, as it is turning out.  It's very volatile and dangerous, but thousands of federal thugs wreaking havoc, breaking laws with every breath and causing trauma, while trampling on the human rights of everyone now, disappearing children off to imprisonment--they can't make a move unobserved and unopposed.   

The besieged people of Minneapolis can now take heart from the six top federal prosecutors in Minnesota who resigned rather than be used in a smear campaign, and the four Civil Rights division prosecutors in Washington who resigned rather than accede to the Chaos orders to not perform the standard investigation of a fatal shooting by federal law enforcement.  These resignations reveal that Chaos is not even going through the motions of investigating this homicide, but is intent on smearing protesters, specifically the partner of Renee Good.  But they aren't getting away with it unnoticed or unopposed.

By looking out for their neighbors, regardless of where they came from, these Minnesotans are doubly expressing the best hope for America, both in what they are doing in the face of volatile thugs with military weapons, and in why they are doing it.  I can only express my vigilant support, and especially my admiration for their courage, as they up the game established in Chicago, pioneered in Portland and southern CA and wherever else in America the Chaos SS has brought violence and tears. 

No Good

 Let us return for a moment to sanity.  In Minneapolis a woman in a car was shot at three times at very close range and killed by an ICE agent standing next to the car.  Federal officials claim the officer was in fear of his life because she was attempting to run him over, and so the killing was justified.

Since pretty much the invention of the automobile, there have been no circumstances in America in which this homicide would be justified.  The driver was unarmed, and both hands were visible.  The officer provided no warning that he was threatening lethal force.  There was no outstanding warrant for the driver.  If the driver was blocking law enforcement, then she could have been ordered to move her vehicle, which she was in the process of doing when she was shot.  And the federal vehicles were unmarked.

A different officer shouted to her to get out of the car.  Even if she heard him (though it was noisy, and it doesn't seem he had properly identified himself), the penalty for fleeing is not death.  There is no police force in the country which would claim that attempting to slowly drive away from masked armed agents justifies lethal force, or even the discharge of a gun.

The claim on behalf of the officer that Renee Good was attempting to run him over is not credible given the copious video evidence.  But even if she were (the federal press release language is "weaponize a car"), the car was barely moving (and the video evidence shows her wheels were turned away from the agent), and all an agent in fear of his life had to do was to take two steps away from the car.  Besides, how could anyone expect to stop a car that close to him by shooting the driver?  

As the driver told the agent, they now had her car license number.  Even if she had successfully fled the scene, they could have arrested her later.  I don't know what the penalty for failing to obey a federal officer's order to get out of a car, or of fleeing the scene, but I'm pretty sure it is not death.

But the officer fired three shots into the car, apparently hitting Renee Good in the face and killing her.  The officer (or another officer) was caught on his own phone saying afterwards, "Fucking bitch."

The normal procedure then would be for federal and state officials to open an investigation into the incident.  Officials would express regret at the loss of life, the public would be assured that the officer would be off the streets pending results of the investigation, and would call for calm.

Instead, the FBI has frozen state law enforcement out of the investigation. Instead, before any investigation had at best gone beyond the beginning of on-site evidence gathering, federal officials from the head of Homeland Security to the Vice-President of the United States asserted as known truth that the officer's gunfire was justified,  and moreover that Renee Good was a radical leftist and a "domestic terrorist." No evidence was offered for either charge.  Being a radical leftist is not against the law (even if it were true, which apparently it is not), let alone a capital offence.  It is a political position in a political democracy.

"Domestic terrorist" is the more potent charge, given what basic rights have been violated in the name of fighting terrorism.  But in more normal times such a charge is accompanied by lots of evidence, of criminal activity or at least intent to engage in a terrorist act.  It is a very serious charge, reduced this time to shameless inflammatory and prejudicial rhetoric.  

There is no overt suggestion that Renee Good might be a terrorist, or even an illegal immigrant fleeing capture (though again, that wouldn't justify lethal force).  She was a a native-born American, a white woman and a mother of three, who lived blocks away.  Her dog was in the back seat.

But even a known domestic terrorist, sitting in a car unarmed, may be subject to arrest.  Not to being executed on the spot.  Not even in the Soviet Union would state agents have committed such an act in broad daylight in a public place.

The public response to this shooting has so far been more than a thousand protest demonstrations across the country. Tens of thousands rallied in Minneapolis. Protesters have already spanned racial and ethnic lines.  Further incidences of federal agents threatening lethal violence, including against protesters, were reported. The Renee Good homicide has provoked anger, which makes for volatile public situations.  It has provoked fear.

The fear is that the masked secret police can kill anyone and federal officials will encourage it.  This is identifiable fascism, and the half dozen other names that apply.   But there is another fear, perhaps even more basic.

The shooter's video--which he shot with his phone held in one hand while he shot Renee Good dead with his gun in his other hand--demonstrates that he was not in danger, that she was not threatening him in any way. Other video evidence so far suggests that his actions were at best reckless and at worst deliberate.  Which would make this what some prominent people have called it: murder.

That video was essentially released by the Vice-President, because he and Chaos in Chief say that it proves their version of events is correct. In other times this video might have been suppressed or altered, or otherwise claimed to be deceptive or doctored, because it clearly does not show what they say it shows.  But now--as in so much else said by this government of Chaos--the evidence is not disproven, it is just misrepresented--and not subtly or at the margins, but completely.  Often the Chaos assertions are wildly opposite to the realities demonstrated in various ways, including pictures and video that everyone can see.

This has been their practice since at least the first Homeland Hitler inauguration, but most importantly concerning the events of and in response to January 6, 2021 at the US Capitol.  There are hours and hours of video of what happened there.  There are witnesses, depositions, and mountains of evidence that convinced scores of juries to convict participants.  And yet, Chaos and his minions assert that it never happened.  And they were doing so before the 2024 election, but apparently enough voters chose to ignore this.

Now it must be clear to everyone that in this administration, the truth is solely what they say it is.  This puts us not only in the realm of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, but of  his Animal Farm, and in particular of Kafka.  In a Kafkaesque country, there is no recourse to reality.  Reality is what those in power say it is, at any given moment.  Even when few believe anything this government says.

It is time then to look at the resistance to totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, particularly in the 1960s and afterward.  It was led often by writers as well as political figures who insisted, at great personal cost, on rigorously telling the truth.  They told the truth about their own incarcerations, about how officials claimed they were mentally ill and subjected them to drug treatments and horrific conditions.  Some even catalogued the drugs used on them.  They were scrupulous and relentless.  And eventually they prevailed.

Our fascist government is not yet a year old.  It is not yet deeply entrenched.  Some countervailing institutions still exist, and Americans are used to living in something like a democracy. This incident must be thoroughly and objectively investigated. The truth about Renee Good must be asserted against the lies, over and over.  The truth about this regime must be relentlessly exposed. They may fight harder with their backs against the wall.  But if this battle for truth is not won, the world that is coming with AI will be worse.

Let us return to sanity.  Let us return to at least trying to enact the good.