Very funny that the guy who turned the east wing of the White House into a pile of rubble one Friday is criminally investigating the federal reserve chairman about a building renovation

What’s also insane is how the courts have spent years pretending this man is putting forth novel, considered theories of constitutional authority when, as demonstrated here, he is simply making decrees as if the Constitution didn’t exist and waiting for servile judges to validate them

I got extremely up close with a bunch of them earlier and they looked miserable. One was visibly shaking. Every single time they get out of their vehicles it's a madhouse, in a city where every person is their enemy. They're outnumbered 100-1 by people screaming at them in almost incoherent rage

The credit card companies should coup him

Anyway it seems like Trump remembered at some point he made this campaign promise, and having literally zero grasp of how to actually pass laws or move legislation, decided he'd simply try ruling by decree

Important video. These guys are rattled. They can't go anywhere, they can't get anything done. They killed someone and it just got worse. They don't have any other intellectual or law-enforcement tools. They don't know what to do.

yeah the fact my car is literally half the length of theirs means I can pull extremely fast u-turns and get right behind someone coming the other direction. small cars good

you'd never be able to safely tail these guys in some giant fed SUV. the kind of driving it requires and the huge blind spots would make it impossible in the city

The chair of the fed ripping off his shirt and yelling "you know where to find me, bitch" while very clearly signaling to The Money that Trump is breaking The Money can I have a precedented time again? I've been good

We also just gotta straight up outlaw crypto. But but but but I don't care, shut the fuck up, you're done

Powell standing up to Trump is the same thing as the Minneapolis residents standing up to ICE - both rely on the realization that all of their power flows out of their ability to make you afraid, and you don’t have to be, and then they have barely any power over you anymore.

Everyone is preemptively giving in to them - because of fear, or because they’ve convinced themselves that surrender is savvy. And that’s what they want. They expect you to cower. If you don’t, they don’t really have a plan B.

They want us to close the shades, hide inside, do what they say. They want us to run away. When they discover that the people they thought they’d intimidate are running TOWARDS them instead, they’ve got nothing. Like all bullies they only feel strong and confident when the victim is defenseless.

Sen Tillis (R-NC): Trump is trying to end the independence of the Fed through blackmail. This must stop.

there are *so* many people who cower before trump's threats, and jerome fucking powell is out here on youtube going, "all of this is corrupt horseshit, they're doing it because i won't bail them out, they're all liars"

“Sometimes public service requires standing firm in the face of threats, which is what this unambiguously is” How did the banker dude get here before the leaders of every self-mythologizing media organization or even Congress

Deleting this because while I think it’s important to share, I realized the person who filmed it is a bit nervous about putting it out there. If they decide they’re okay with it, I’ll repost. In the meantime please do share videos of encounters with ICE if you can. The world needs to know.

also please note that this appears to be a heavily armed 10-man escort causing chaos so that Bovino can take a leak

everywhere they go, this

This is pretty much what happens, for the record. And by standing up, honking, making noise, shouting, you create a permission structure for bystanders to do the same. One tailing car honking at ICE quickly becomes five, one person blowing a whistle becomes 50 shouting citizens.

I hope this person is okay but the video is horrifying beyond belief - not gory, just the violence of the scene. WHY IS THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT DOING THIS TO MY CITY

As someone pointed out, this is what a Kavanaugh stop REALLY looks like.

This is a Kavanaugh stop.

Because they know that any tail is calling for backup, and the moment they get out of their car we’re going to start laying on the horn and shouting and they won’t be able to do the thing they were sent to do. It’s why they need 20 guys to grab someone: 2 to grab, 18 to fight the crowd

And this is why you chase ICE. Every minute these worthless thugs spend running from us is a minute they can’t be doing this.

Someone sent me this video of Trump’s goons in action today in the Twin Cities. The audio is disturbing.

It’s a huge advantage tracking ICE. People report convoys and I’m almost always able to intercept them or get in front of them because I know the street grid by heart and they’re completely lost. And then you just lay on the horn ICE ICE ICE and random drivers start following them, they’re blown

Funniest encounter today was the giant ICE SUV full of masked dudes who spent 20 minutes whipping around Uptown trying to lose the tail (my doughty little Fit), at one point turning the wrong way onto a one-way street, before fleeing on to I35 and finally finding a state trooper to park/hide behind

These guys get made instantly and they HATE being followed. The other one I tailed all the way to Eden Prairie, he’s whipping across five lanes of highway traffic like a lunatic at 85 mph and he can’t lose the terrifying fit full of nerds

Another one hid in the grocery store parking lot. They immediately know if you’re tailing them, they were watching like hawks. I circled the block to get a better vantage point and they TORE out of there

Maybe 20 armed DHS goons descended on the Uptown McDonald’s to abduct one poor woman, causing absolute chaos as the entire neighborhood rushed in to shout and throw snowballs. Why are we doing this, it’s insane

They were in my face holding the pepper spray bottle like one inch away and I have to say it’s amazing how scary it wasn’t. They were the ones who needed to be scared

Oh, absolutely, the guy with the pepper spray kept saying things like “Try me! I’ll do it!” and I was like “I’M A LAWYER, GO FOR IT PUNK” and he ran away

Schumer won his initial US Senate primary with <400K votes in a state of 18M+ people

A lot of Democratic leaders came up through jurisdictions where getting yourself elected is a matter of being in the right rooms to earn the right endorsements to win a low-turnout primary, at which point your House or Senate seat becomes a virtual sinecure

This is where it would be useful if the political media would take notice of the fact that DHS literally keeps using neo-Nazi slogans, language, memes, and imagery in its official social media.

lol by 6AM there were already dozens of rapid response people patrolling major arteries in my small neighborhood. Minneapolis is fully mobilized

That sense really is pervasive - that many Dems are annoyed they have the responsibility of dealing with this moment, and wish they let someone else handle it while keeping the job. And it comes through every time they dismiss the fury and passion of their own base as an irritation.

They should have done it four years ago but finally they recognize their enemy

Lincoln was the very picture of a relentlessly experimental and energetic leader, cycling through option after option, general after general, to inch closer to his goal. He was always in motion, he never devised a plan and sat back to watch it play out in satisfaction, he adjusted constantly.

Very famously he was met with almost continual frustration and was very depressed about his prospects for success, until - at last! - a breakthrough. Where is that spirit in our modern defenders of the union? Nowhere in the leaders it seems

They’re all self-absorbed Serious People who think the way to get things done is carefully follow the rules and conserve their own dignity, until the moment they can strategically intervene with a perfectly placed speech or statement, tilting history back in the right direction. The Mattis Maneuver.

The idea that real change can’t be controlled like that and comes from relentless hammering, hammering, hammering at every opportunity, until somehow through combination of fortune and sheer persistence you bend the arc of events at some unexpected moment, is inconceivable to our Honor Roll leaders.

You can preserve your dignity or you can change things. Only Republicans choose the latter, it seems

it’s actually beyond belief that for the last DECADE, if you suggest that Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi or Hakeem Jeffries might not be ruthlessly effective politicians, the same dudes will instantly descend on you to screech about how unfair you’re being. the same guys! for a decade!

the Democratic Party’s loser federal leadership has literally given away America to fascism without taking a single meaningful step to check its rise in a way that’s more than mild inconvenience, and these guys STILL insist, just like they did before all this happened, that no one could do better

all I can say in rebuttal is “scoreboard”

It’s funny because people always imply that Dems know through personal experience what lines will get people excited, which implies that Chuck Schumer has earned something other than tepid applause in two decades.

They have zero ability to excite anyone and they don’t know what lands, and to patch over their immense deficiencies they turn to consultants who aren’t actually good at math, who are like “well the top issue is affordability, so I can’t think of any reason that’s not the best thing to talk about”

“Why is Donald Trump wasting time fighting a war with the European Union when he hasn’t even increased affordability for the average American yet? Can anyone say distraction?”

everyone was so committed to appeasing Trump on Venezuela - acting like it was a sensible policy decision rather than an unhinged act of looting and pillaging - that he immediately has taken the next immediate step that appeased tyrants always do

Incidentally, if it helps, he's not actually the lawful president!

if you’re a high military officer and the president orders you to nuke the western alliance and destabilize the entire globe by giving you a literally deranged order to invade Greenland, I think you have a greater duty to perform before god and the world

if Nixon had ordered a nuclear strike on London and refused to be dissuaded from it, “I was required to carry out his order” no longer really cuts it, you know?

"before Russia or China make their move." What the hell are they talking about? This is madness.

I don’t understand how the Europeans are so stupid about Trump. Of course he won’t care about this offer because all he wants is to make the blob on the map labeled “United States” look bigger

The EU sanctioning the US is now a very real possibility. The word "madness" is painfully inadequate to describe what we're witnessing right now.

“We must seize Greenland by force of arms before China does” is apparently the prevailing policy wisdom in the president’s upper echelon right now

two days ago there were [very large number] people in the hyperlocal neighborhood watch channel for my area, one of approximately 15 in Minneapolis today there were 3 times [very large number]

The truth is in the middle. But the reason we can’t get to that happy medium is because of the left.

guys this is me sarcastically restating Adam's (accurate) rendering of the beliefs of the reactionary centrists. clearly I do not believe this absurd thing

in fact, as someone who could be fairly accused of occasionally agreeing with moderates on policy, the main thing that differentiates me from them is that I understand someone can be annoying and also not matter that much, while the far right is the scourge of all mankind and must be obliterated

Not content with pretending a middle-aged Minnesotan woman is a hardened domestic terrorist who needed to be executed, DHS now seems to be moving on to pretending that that their guy is the one who got killed

If you’re a citizen and you’re arrested for lawfully recording, monitoring, and objecting to law enforcement, that’s a terrible thing - but you will also absorb so many of their resources by fighting it, and likely win in the end. ICE is grievously outnumbered. THERE ARE MORE OF US THAN THEM.

I’ve been out talking to local businesses some and the way they’ve all had to develop ICE contingency plans to bunker up and protect their employees is so depressing.

I got a fast food burger for lunch and had to knock to be let in - and while I’m sitting there a giant ICE convoy of masked men roll by, while a bunch of Latino kitchen workers rush to the windows to watch in alarm.

You know who is helping my city? The immigrants who own and work in these businesses. You know who is hurting my city? The men terrorizing the workers and owners of these businesses into hiding.

Can someone make a don’t tread on me flag with a loon instead of a snake

THE MINNUTEMEN

the Minnesota Minuteman has a nice ring to it

the 250th anniversary of 1776 is less of a celebration, more of a reenactment

I didn’t even think of this but what Minneapolis is doing right now is literally modern minute men. And it’s true to the name: if anything happens, responders are on their way in well under a minute.

The scale of the neighborhood watch network in Minneapolis is insane and it’s growing every day.

The ICE drivers periodically try to intimidate their tails, looping behind them or (reportedly) leading them to the address where the car is registered. But the important thing is they know they’re being watched from every corner, every car, the whole city breathing down their necks. Eyes everywhere

Maybe they simply should go somewhere else. Minneapolis isn’t for them.

in true minnesota fashion hit the world's biggest pothole coming home from ice patrol and now my tire is audibly hissing, so I guess I'll be patrolling on foot tomorrow. extremely frustrating

they tell me that hitting a pothole didn't cause the other damage, it would just be wear and tear, except I swapped all four tires out for all-weather tires in May or June without a hint of trouble. could it really get that bad that fast

the issue I'm running into is I have two separate tire places (the one making the change today and the one that swapped them out eight months ago) and I feel like maybe one of them has screwed me, and I don't know which one bsky.app/profile/jhwk...

Chief O'Hara talks about the problem of federal agents grabbing people out of their cars, leaving the vehicles unsecured. One time with a dog abandoned inside.

Mayor Frey describes incident where federal agents snatched someone out of their car on 3rd Ave: "They left the car in the middle of the street. The car wasn't even in park. So you've got this vehicle that's rolling down the street with nobody in it."

Yes, it’s really hard to capture the full scale of the federal assault on the Twin Cities. At any given point dozens of locations being harassed, across Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and the 185 suburbs. Hundreds of roaming cars, highway checkpoints, heavily armed convoys. We are under attack

The idea that it is “immigration enforcement” is absurd. This is not even a place with a lot of undocumented immigrants. Most of our major immigrant groups - Somali and Hmong - are here lawfully, they might even be majority citizens. The feds are here on a mission of violence and chaos

It is an abomination: our own government not trying to restore order but destroy it. Federal leaders actively trying to instill terror in their citizenry. The historical analogue is nighttime raids on black communities by white supremacist terrorists in the South. They’re Cossacks, they’re the Klan

this is like being stunned that the wolf still is trying to eat the sheep after a yearlong effort to dissuade him

We evacuated our kids out of Minneapolis this weekend and my spouse reports that as she drove them out of town she saw "multiple freeway exits where people are being pulled over." It feels like the Twin Cities is being subjugated by a hostile occupying force.

It’s beyond insane that our overarching internal security agency has spent months tweeting barely-coded messages of support for neo-Nazi groups and the entire media apparatus looks at it and says “That’s odd but certainly not part a major story that is relevant to current events, I’m sure”

They spent years close-reading every left-wing message from college activist groups for hints of anti-semitism and now the most heavily armed domestic agency does a new Nazi meme post every week and they’re like “Odd but not really front-page news, you know? Doesn’t look like anything to me.”

People sort of seem to overlook this but Jacob Frey keeps making these appearances where he denounces ICE as thugs and the Minneapolis chief is sitting right next to him. Surely not an accident! “They are not like the normal police” is a vital message to be encouraged

As it has been from the very start, the problem with Trump, the secret key to his power and the reason he’s going to get us all killed, is the enormous chunk of society that understands he is criminal, a fool, a brute, and deranged, but will not say so because they perceive him as rich and powerful

People like to say that our leaders, our elites, they like Trump - but they don’t. They mostly don’t. The thing they love is THEMSELVES, and in particular, the image of themselves as someone who is smart enough to play the game. The idea of just telling the truth, come what may, is anathema to them.

But now we’re learning the consequences of living in a society where truth has no purchase and honesty is assumed to be a sucker’s game. The consequence is that it will collapse

He’s Mad King of the US.

He needs to be dragged out of the office before he starts World War III because he has the mind of a toddler and just thinks Greenland looks big on a map

Do folks outside of MN realize this includes suburban cities? The door dasher, the person dragged out of Target, this isn’t a thing you can avoid in the Twin Cities region just by avoiding a certain neighborhood. It’s an infestation and the roaches are everywhere.

Jesus

I was on an open rapid response line earlier when someone got pulled for tailing an ICE car and it was a very frightening moment. “Oh we’re going to get got, there are many of them surrounding us” and then a lot of angry shouting. They really do not like being followed. Keep following them.