Bluesky

On Thursday, Tom Homan, the corrupt, fascist, “border czar” the media insists on treating as respectable, announced an end to “Operation Metro Surge,” which is the Trump administration’s name for its unconstitutional invasion of Minnesota. Homan declared “success,” shared some data on the numbers of immigrants who’ve been deported or sent to concentration camps, didn’t list the numbers of people his goons have assaulted, injured, or murdered, and scuttled off. I assume the next time he receives an envelope stuffed with cash it will be wrapped in a “Mission Accomplished” banner.

I’m also forced to assume that Homan is either outright lying about ending the occupation of Minnesota or trying to throw the media off the scent in some fashion. That’s because the only thing this administration does is lie or misdirect, and taking its people at their word is something only fools and corporate media publications do. Ever since Homan replaced SS-cosplayer Greg Bovino in Minnesota, the media has lost interest in the ongoing horrors in Minneapolis/St.Paul. Declaring an “end” to the operation doesn’t necessarily mean ICE will leave the Gopher State.

I must also point out that Homan’s alleged ending of the great Northern occupation coincides with the budget showdown over DHS funding in Congress. Trying to make nice just long enough to secure another year of funding for their goon squads seems like exactly the kind of thing Republicans would do—and Democrats would fall for.

Luckily, some Democrats in Minnesota don’t seem to be too eager to trust. On Thursday, St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her signed an ordinance requiring federal agents to identify themselves. When asked about Homan’s comments, she said, “Any announcement of a drawdown or end to Operation Metro Surge must be followed by real action.” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz noted that Homan has not told people when the governments’ goons will be leaving, but Walz offered to help them “pack their bags.” 

Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is running for governor but has not exactly covered herself in resistance glory, said, “ICE withdrawing from Minnesota is just the beginning. We need accountability for the lives lost and the extraordinary abuses of power at the hands of ICE agents, and we must see a complete overhaul of the agency.”

No, Senator Klobuchar, we do not need an “overhaul” of the agency. We need abolition of the agency.

You can see why I have trust issues. I don’t trust Homan to keep his word, don’t trust the media to keep reporting on the facts instead of merely transcribing the administration’s press releases, and don’t trust Democrats not to sell everybody out in their endless, cloying attempts to find the center between fascism and liberty.

As I said a few weeks ago, Minnesota made Trump blink, and that is a kind of victory. What we’ve seen there is proof that dedicated, nonviolent resistance can work. But that work is not finished, and it will not be finished until the fascists have been returned to the barbeque-ammo joints from whence they came, their institutions discredited and destroyed, and their leaders held accountable for their crimes.

The Bad and the Ugly

• When I say we need to abolish ICE, I’m talking about getting rid of all masked goon squads operating under the color of law. That includes the ones working for the state of California. Earlier this week, a federal judge blocked California’s “No Secret Police Act,” which prohibits federal agents from wearing masks. When I saw the headline, I was pissed, but then I read the opinion by US District Judge Christine Snyder (a Clinton appointee). She said the law discriminates against federal agents, because it allows state police to wear masks. So, it turns out, I shouldn’t be pissed at the judge; I should be pissed at the California lawmakers who legislated a carve-out for their own secret police in their No Secret Police Act. Politicians are unreliable assholes.
• The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will allow Trump to revoke Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua. These are judges we can be pissed at.
• The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals backed the Trump administration’s mass detention policy of locking people up without a hearing, trial, or opportunity to post bond. I mean, I wake up every day pissed at the Fifth Circuit. I hate the Fifth Circuit so much I boo the number five when it comes up on Sesame Street.
• US District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai (a Biden appointee… based on his name I was pretty sure he wasn’t a Trump appointee, but I googled anyway because I don’t assume my prejudices are facts) dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter information from the state of Oregon. The judge ruled that the DOJ can no longer be trusted, saying that the “presumption of regularity” traditionally accorded to the government “no longer holds.” If you subscribe to The Nation, you’ll be getting a print piece on what this all means, after our heroic interns… replace my prejudices with facts. 
• Speaking of the utterly untrustworthy DOJ, Attorney General Pam Bondi refused to turn around and look Jeffrey Epstein’s victims in the face during her four-hour testimony in front of Congress about the Justice Department’s handling of Epstein files. Instead, she tried to make the hearing so toxic that people would forget Epstein’s victims altogether. I don’t think it worked, but I’m sure it made Trump happy.

Inspired Takes

• David Gelernter, the Yale computer science professor seen in the Epstein files essentially pimping out one of his students, is no longer teaching students. Yale undergrad Zachary Clifton broke the news in The Nation as part of a deep dive into the professor’s career. One of the key takeaways is that Gelernter is at Yale not because he’s a particularly great computer science professor but because he’s a Republican who is a climate denier and brings viewpoint diversity. This happens all throughout academia: Universities bring in shoddy conservative “thinkers” simply because they are conservatives, and those same “thinkers” then go on to embarrass the university when they… act like conservatives act. Another example from just this week is Ohio State professor Luke Perez, a conservative hired to promote intellectual diversity. Perez was placed on leave after punching a reporter who was trying to interview the Republican that Perez had invited to speak on campus. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
• The Nation’s Katha Pollitt got her first exposure to the art of deepfakes and… well, she tried to put Melania Trump in a Saranwrap bikini to get around Grok’s nudity filters, so it’s the kind of thing you’ll enjoy reading. Pollitt’s overall point is that deepfakes are extremely bad and harmful, a point on which I fully agree. However, the lawyer in me always gets uncomfortable when it comes to regulating deepfakes because of the potential to infringe on First Amendment protections, including the protection that allows people to make “clear parodies” of public figures and generally mock them. The way to slice it is to say you can’t make deepfakes about private individuals but you can make them about public figures, which is similar to how defamation laws work. But that solution runs into problems, because some of the most egregious deepfakes involve fake Taylor Swift sex tapes and people putting words in the mouths of former presidents—two things that would be protected under my proposal. Don’t worry, though: When I come up with an actual solution to this, I will tell you, and then you can all make deeptruth videos of Congress ignoring me. 

Worst Argument of the Week

Donald Trump’s approval rating is nearing new lows. That’s not news. What is news is that Gallup, which has been tracking presidential approval ratings for 88 years, will no longer produce a presidential approval poll.

I was born at night, but not last night. You will simply never convince me that Gallup just happened to make the momentous decision to stop tracking Trump’s approval rating at a moment when those numbers are very bad for the authoritarian in chief. Making this decision now smacks of complicity and is yet another failure of a major institutional player in an era of institutional failures.

There are, in theory, very good reasons for Gallup to stop tracking presidential approval ratings. For one thing: They’re stupid. Trying to assess the success or failure of an administration based on whether people say they “like” what the president is doing is like trying to assess the health of a company based on how many people liked its Super Bowl ad. The poll contributes to the “horse-race” coverage of our politics, which is one of the many reasons the coverage of our politics often resembles warmed-over crap.

However, the timing of Gallup’s decision is yet another example of a major organization changing the rules in real time to bend itself to Trump’s will. It’s similar to when The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times decided to “not make presidential endorsements” at the precise moment their owners decided they did not like the endorsements their editors were making. It doesn’t look like you’re standing on principle when changes to your well-established procedures just happen to coincide with things that will make Trump happy; it looks like you’re bowing to a strongman.

If Gallup wanted to make this change in an honorable way, it should have announced that it’s going to start this policy with the next administration. “In 2029, we will stop polling approval ratings.” That would make sense. That would suggest a different policy strategy. Doing it now, months before the midterms, no less, just looks like Gallup is trying to help Trump.

Because it is trying to help Trump.

What I Wrote

As I said, I’ve been working on a print piece, so nothing from me this week. Also, I’m off next week. Also, and I cannot emphasize this enough, I am so freaking cold, y’all. Like, “typing in fingerless gloves” cold. I’m not even going anywhere next week. I’m just planning on staying under my covers like a bear in the hope that, when I wake up, it’ll be spring. 

In News Unrelated to the Current Chaos

During an NBA game this week, the Utah Jazz was ahead of the Orlando Magic by 17 points. In the fourth quarter, Utah decided to bench four of its five starters, including the players who were leading the team in points for that night (and the season in general). Orlando came back, and beat Utah by three points.

Utah is “tanking.” The team is intentionally trying to lose games in order to secure a better draft pick. Tanking can happen in all sports that have a draft system in which the worse teams get better draft picks, but it is rampant in the NBA. For the most part, players won’t intentionally try to play badly, even if they’re on a bad team; they’re playing for their next contract, and they want to look as good as possible for other teams that might want to sign them or trade for them. That means the tanking falls to the coaches. They put good players on the “injured list” when they’re not really hurt, or limit their minutes so they can’t play too long and potentially win the game. Or they do what the Jazz did and refuse to play their best players when they’re accidentally winning.

There’s not really anything the fans can do. Buying a ticket should come with an implicit promise that the team is going to, you know, try to win the game, but that promise is not legally binding. Many fans even support tanking as the rational play: If the team is not good enough to win a championship this year, and there’s a stud young player in next year’s draft who might help the team win in the future, the team should lose now, increase its chances of drafting that player, and hope for the future.

But there might be something gamblers can do. Gambling laws require games to be “fair” in some sense, and intentionally trying to lose is not fair. Real people had real money on the outcome of the Utah-versus-Orlando game. The NBA encourages people to bet on its games. It is illegal for those games to be rigged. If a player tried to lose, intentionally, that player would be investigated by the government and likely banned from the sport. Earlier this year, 26 people, including some college basketball players, were indicted on racketeering charges for trying to manipulate gambling outcomes. Last year, NBA players were indicted for illegal gambling, even though most of the alleged misconduct involved illegal poker games supported by the Mafia (of course, getting in debt to the Mafia at the poker table is the gateway drug to trying to lose games on the basketball court).

I don’t see why tanking should be held to a different standard than other forms of bet rigging. Utah is intentionally manipulating the outcome of gambling events by trying to lose. What they’re doing should be illegal under any gambling law in the nation.

There are a lot of discussions inside the NBA about how to address tanking, but I have the quickest way to fix it. If the state of Nevada were to decide that it will no longer accept bets on NBA games because the outcomes are rigged, I promise you the NBA would stop tanking by next season. Degenerate gamblers could save basketball.

***

Note: Elie will be off next week but looks forward to returning with a fresh Elie v. US on Friday, February 27.