Michelle S. Phelps

Plus photos by Salih Basheer; fiction by Emmett Rensin; @blbalthaser.bsky.social on Mark Mazower’s “On Antisemitism”; and Marie Gottschalk on the deportation-industrial complex & books by @briannanofil.bsky.social, @jesspish.bsky.social, @michellesphelps.bsky.social, @equalityalec.bsky.social

Winter 2026 The violent reconfiguration of U.S. politics and power.

Our next issue, BRUTE FORCE AND PLUNDER, drops soon.

With @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social, Vivian Gornick, @davidaustinwalsh.bsky.social @joshuacraze.bsky.social @liv-veazey.bsky.social Robin D. G. Kelley, Aslı Ü. Bâli & Aziz Rana, Gerald Epstein, @adambonica.bsky.social & @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social +

Yeah, I've been sitting with the fact that two men with Latino surnames were responsible for killing a white man in the name of "immigration enforcement" in Minneapolis.
For a great book on the identity navigation of border agents from sociologist Irene Vega, see: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

My current project argues that we're experiencing democratic backsliding and the way out is through politics, not legalism. Yet even as someone with misgivings about the role of courts in our society, many judges clearly understand the moral stakes here, an awareness which itself has seemed so rare.

‘Streets of Minneapolis’: 32 protest songs inspired by the city's ICE resistance MinnPost contributor Jim Walsh compiles a playlist by songwriters who are tapping into their talent, anger, artistry and empathy to support Minnesota.

Teaching Social Movements this Term? Something for everyone in this 32 "Songs of the Siege" compilation that goes from Laamar to Bruce to Maria Isa to NOFX to Durry to Messersmith to Sparhawk to Bathtub Cig to those sweet, sweet drums on the Stone Arch Bridge. www.minnpost.com/arts-culture...

This is just insane. It’s only a matter of time before DHS kills another innocent person here.

(clip via MPR and @davidjbier.bsky.social on X)

I got to talk about Black Reconstruction and the general strike that ended slavery @marketplace.org

This is right. The White House keeps looking for the “Kneel Before Zod” button — and seems completely shut off to evidence that there isn’t one.

Some of the books covered in this week's Nonfiction Views, the column we write each Tuesday evening for the political website Daily Kos. Books pictures here are - Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces, by Radley Balko - The Coroner's Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence, by Terence Keel - Cop Cop: Breaking the Fixed System of American Policing, by Mac Muir and Greg Finch - Blue Power: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves, by Stuart Schrader - The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy, by Jessica Pishko - America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s, by Elizabeth Hinton - The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America, by Michelle S. Phelps - Deadly Force: A Police Shooting and My Family’s Search for the Truth, by Lawrence O'Donnell, Jr. - Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back, by Joshua Clark Davis

Our weekly Tuesday evening Nonfiction Views for @dailykos.com this week offered a survey of books on the militarization of police, police violence, and the racism often connected to it. You can read it here: www.dailykos.com/stories/2026...
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Perry: Abolish ICE? How about DHS altogether. "We have models for how to structure federal immigration oversight that doesn't rely on an unaccountable masked secret police force running rampant in our streets," David M. Perry writes.

Abolish DHS. If you can imagine a world before Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, you can imagine a world without the Department of Homeland Security. My latest at @startribune.com. (gift link)

Last night I went to bed hoping for two things -- that ICE would GTFO of MN and that the literal ice in my bathroom pipes would unfreeze. Happy to report one of those things happened, time to double down on the other.

Well that explains why Liam was sleeping in the photo -- he's sick with a fever, separated from everyone but his father and essentially locked up in a prison. 💔 For all the horrors we're seeing on the streets, what's happening inside these detention facilities outside of public view is surely worse.

"Fight Against Fed Overreach" is a great term, bc the acronym doesn't feel forced at all.

And worth remembering that by ousting/not electing reformers, places like Chicago and LA opted for DAs who would not stand up against fed law enforcement like this.

A cost of our gross misframing of reform.

““I’ll believe it when I see it,” Villerius said. “I hope that he’s sincere and actually wants the police to be confrontational with ICE,” they continued, referring to O’Hara. “But again, I’ll believe it when I see it.””

Minneapolis Council President Elliott Payne on TV last night reflecting on the politics of the George Floyd era as it relates to the current federal threat.

Honestly nothing feels different here today at all. There are still ICE raids all over, they're still letting people out at Whipple into the cold with nothing, and like you said, people still need food and rent money.

Yes, as people here in Minneapolis keep shouting, ICE’s Minnesota siege is, among other things, A HORRIBLE WAY TO DO IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT. To randomly grab a single pedestrian who probably ends up being a citizen, they need 12 guys and to tear gas a bunch of people! It’s insanely inefficient!

Every time I talk to someone outside of Minnesota, we always spend time on *really* basic things they have don’t understand about what is happening here.

So let’s do a Q&A. What are your most basic questions about what’s going on in Minnesota?

Trump-administration officials and MAGA influencers have repeatedly called these activists “violent” and said they are involved in “riots.” But the resistance in Minnesota is largely characterized by a conscious, strategic absence of physical confrontation. Activists have made the decision to emphasize protection, aid, and observation. When matters escalate, it is usually the choice of the federal agents. Of the three homicides in Minneapolis this year, two were committed by federal agents. “There’s been an incredible, incredible response from the community. I’ve seen our neighbors go straight from allies to family—more than family—checking in on each other, offering food and rides for kids and all kinds of support, alerting each other if there’s ICE or any kind of danger,” Malika Dahir, a local activist of Somali descent, told me. If the Minnesota resistance has an overarching ideology, you could call it “neighborism”—a commitment to protecting the people around you, no matter who they are or where they came from. The contrast with the philosophy guiding the Trump administration couldn’t be more extreme. Vice President Vance has said that “it is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, ‘I want to live next to people who I have something in common with. I don’t want to live next to four families of strangers.’” Minnesotans are insisting that their neighbors are their neighbors whether they were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu. That is, arguably, a deeply Christian philosophy, one apparently loathed by some of the most powerful Christians in America.

One thing I found deeply moving about resistance in the Twin Cities was the universalism of loving your neighbor, the philosophy driving the opposition to the ICE/BP invasion. I couldn't help but notice the contrast with the blood and soil-ism of Miller and Vance. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

NEW: Minnesota's top federal judge says ICE has been violating court orders repeatedly — detaining noncitizens or rushing them to Texas despite judges' commands.

He wants ICE's director to answer for it "personally," and could level contempt sanctions.

www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

Hey hey, good bye!

The people of Minnesota have executed one of the most impressive civil resistance campaigns I can remember:

- Organized a city wide general strike
- Maintained nonviolent discipline amidst violence
- Mobilized 10,000s in subzero temps to protest and watch ICE
- Flipped public opinion against ICE

Hmm... I think I read him as just exhausted now not necessarily more/less strong in the pushback overall. But generally I think he's been consistent.

Weird, I’ve taken pictures of people bringing firearms, loaded with multiple magazines to protests outside Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s home and the Minnesota State Capitol.

You don't murder people for using the word "kidnapper" (which, I'll add, is an accurate description of grabbing people and locking them up without due process.)

If you do, you're a fascist.

A lot of trauma I wouldn't wish on other cities, honestly. But yeah, I do think we can do more to push for local-fed fracturing in this moment.

Starting now!

In Minnesota, the Fight Against ICE Is Also the Fight Against Authoritarianism The community is pulling together. It has been eye-opening.

There isn't a perfect playbook for defeating authoritarianism, but we know from other countries that democratic resurgence is possible. I wrote for @slate.com about some of what we're seeing in Minnesota and why I believe, even now, that we will win.

slate.com/news-and-pol...

For example, I have never seen a cop watch trail a squad car in traffic, wailing on the car horn with others in traffic spontaneously joining, while recording the footage to share on social media!

Yeah, lots of overlap between cop watch and abolitionists, esp. 2020 onwards. Still, the degree to which these responders see all physical presence of ICE/BP in the city as an immediate and urgent crisis in of itself feels unique. But yeah, def points of continuity.