Brian Highsmith

This is Literally the Job Political journalists need to stop pretending they don't know what Republicans are going to do.

"They told us what they were going to do. They published it. They put it on a website. And when it happened, the press was surprised."

Hoo boy, everyone should bookmark this @parkermolloy.com piece & make sure everyone involved in media reads it.

The ICE shootings are a tipping point Donald Trump's approval on immigration has collapsed 17 points since taking office, and support for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement has swung 50 points since Sept. 2024.

We are at a tipping point on ICE and immigration enforcement. The shootings are so unpopular that Trump appears to have lost his edge on both deportations and immigration more broadly. Abolishing ICE is net popular with independents. & Bovino is out! 2026≠2024 www.gelliottmorris.com/p/trumps-imm...

ICE watchers in Maine say they were threatened by federal agents Community members have been monitoring the activity of immigration agents in Greater Portland.

ICE is changing tactics in Maine: "Now, the volunteers in Maine say federal agents have started showing up at their homes and intimidating them or threatening arrest. Some of them, masked and wearing tactical gear, have issued stark warnings not to follow them." www.pressherald.com/2026/01/23/i...

A lot of Americans seem to have the idea that Jim Crow regimes were simply flawed democracies. They were authoritarian states that violently enforced caste, disenfranchisement and racial conformity. Nonviolence was the only effective tool. And it turned out to be revolutionary.

Really hard to look at this and all the other examples of bravery and kindness from ordinary people in this moment not think also of the tremendous cowardice exhibited over the past year by some of the richest, most well-protected people in business, media and politics

to say that public opinion matters isn’t to say that everything will stop immediately. what it means is that the administration’s strategic options narrow considerably and their odds of meeting meaningful institutional resistance goes up.

I'm just going to keep saying this until I die:

In a white supremacist patriarchy, you have value only insofar as you serve the white supremacist patriarchy.

Kyle Rittenhouse & Ashli Babbitt did. Renee Good & Alex Pretti didn't. On Jan 6, the insurrectionists did. The cops didn't.

Rinse, repeat.

Slave Patrols and ICE: A Shared History America's authoritarian approach to immigration enforcement is an echo of its past

"US state power is alone among similarly wealthy states in its comfort with on-demand proof of legitimacy. This “show me your papers” ethos did not emerge out of nowhere. It is an inheritance from the antebellum South."

Absolutely reprehensible that AG Bondi is offering ICE stand down in exchange for access to voting rolls. Outrageous and disgusting. It shows ICE is in Minneapolis is not for law enforcement purposes. Instead it’s a way to stir up shit in blue states and extort them.

To that end, USCIS declared flatly that the children of immigrants who are "unlawfully present" will "no longer be U.S. citizens at birth." They will, instead, inherit the status of their parents, rendering them detainable and deportable as infants and throughout their lives. There is no indication that the government will provide some grace period before snatching up and imprisoning this new underclass of noncitizen babies; they are apparently subject to arrest from the moment of birth.

Reminder: If the Supreme Court upholds Trump’s attack on birthright citizenship, some of the ICE officers currently brutalizing Minnesotans may be reassigned to apprehend newborns from the hospital for immediate deportation. Just read the Trump administration’s own memo. slate.com/news-and-pol...

People are terrified of our government. This isn’t a healthy democracy.

I hate how often I’m forced by this administration to think of this @clintsmithiii.bsky.social poem

this is all downstream of the idea that some americans are more real than others. it’s a manifestation of the basic and fundamental logic of authoritarian populism. we will not heal ourselves until we understand that this kind of thinking - and this kind of rhetoric - is anathema to any free society

Once again, observers are not protesting. This wasn’t during a protest. He was murdered while being in his community and observing the out of control federal occupation of our city.

And its yet another instance where we can all see the video with our own eyes and they're saying "dont believe that, believe us." Arrogant to the point of not grasping they were already in a horrible position with the country & are determined now to make it even worse

This is a white supremacist paramilitary operation. Their goal—their stated goal!—is to force America to submit to the President's racist domineering vision for the country.

The sooner everybody starts confronting it on the terms that they themselves have stated, the better.

Armed mask secret police abducting witnesses without jurisdiction and disappearing them into their secure facility, not great!

Why is Dem leadership not on the ground in MN? If the answer is “polls show Trump’s disapproval is only -15 on deportations, but -25 on prices,” thats a Bad Use Of Polling and a complete failure in their capacity as leaders to lead public opinion and fight for democracy and the rule of law

The cowardice of so many elites has led us to this moment

I don’t care if the man had a gun. By all accounts he was disarmed & on the ground when he was shot 5 times.

You don’t get to shoot people unarmed on the ground point blank 5 times. I know this sounds crazy under fascism but standards for law enforcement should be higher not lower than civilians!

State and local government have to find ways to protect their citizens against federal violence—now, everywhere, not just in MN. States and jury trial are our best legal instruments against actual fascism now.

A straight line from insurrection to shooting citizens in the streets of Minneapolis.

It is yet another example of how treating opinon polling as these infallable missives from The Voters™️has actually led us to be more confused about politics rather than clearer about it. Opinion polling presents as coherent and easy to understand a range of beliefs that are anything but!

‘Enough Is Enough’: Hundreds of Minnesota Businesses Take Stand Against ICE

I've covered a lot of protests and resistance movements of various kinds in my days on this earth -- I've never seen anything quite like this epic day in Minneapolis today.

www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/u...

You read things like this and you can only hope that when the time comes, if it comes, when it is your community's turn to be tested, that you acquit yourselves half as well.

I would argue that the case for dismantling ICE has, at this point, virtually nothing to do with larger questions of immigration enforcement and reform, it's just clearly incompatible with a free and democratic society to maintain a secret police force with sweeping and arbitrary authority.

But when I asked an organizer what they wanted to see out of press coverage, they told me they wanted people to see the beautiful things they are building here, and not just the worst stories of the worst of ICE's crimes.

What people are doing here is beautiful. It's a tragic beauty, but a real one

abcnews.go.com/US/lawyers-a...

Also, the Court struck down the ACA's mechanism for requiring states to expand Medicaid, which arguably did more damage to the law than striking down the individual mandate would have.

I was pleased when I saw Lydia Polgreen would be covering this. Grateful for this piece (and her work).