How ICE recruitment propaganda targets the worst of the worst

Sabrina Haake
January 18, 2026

RAW STORY


Federal agents stand guard in Minneapolis. REUTERS/Ryan Murphy

Before Renee Nicole Good’s body was cold, Donald Trump, Kristi Noem, and JD Vance grabbed the national spotlight to defame her (terrorist mows down federal agents!) while defending the goon who murdered her.

The masked ICE agent who shot Good at close range held his cellphone in one hand while firing his gun with the other, showing more interest in spectacle than fear. His video will be added to the Department of Homeland Security library of recordings to generate bloodlust among the type of recruits ICE seeks: Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, pardoned J-6ers, and basement-dwelling incels craving skin on skin action of any kind.

Under Noem’s guidance, and on the American taxpayers’ considerable dime, DHS records high-resolution, highly-edited, "cinematic" style videos of their own brutality for recruitment propaganda. Like the midnight raid of a Chicago apartment building when DHS filmed a Black Hawk helicopter swooping in to terrify sleeping people with flash-bang grenades, most violence is staged, performative horror.

With the Supreme Court temporarily blocking Trump’s deployment of military forces into U.S. cities, ICE is stepping up, morphing into Trump’s Praetorian guard. A look at DHS’ recruitment materials makes clear that ICE isn’t targeting intelligent, law-respecting recruits, but a rabid ethnic cleansing force to serve Steve Miller’s white nationalist agenda.

Emotional appeals to racists

In ICE’s August recruitment push, DHS posted on X, “Which way, American man?” with signs on a deserted road pointing Uncle Sam to “Cultural Decline” and other destinations.

“Which way, American man” is a call for white nationalism, and was the title of William Gayley Simpson’s 1978 white nationalist, neo-Nazi book.

An online review shows DHS similarly misusing American iconography to recruit new agents, manipulating emotions with depictions of a fictitious, ‘happier’ time in America by turning homey Norman Rockwell-style graphics into sinister appeals for violence.

In September, DHS started using Rockwell’s images on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, starting with the 1946 Working on the Statue of Liberty. The image appears with ICE slogans, “Protect Your Homeland. Defend Your Culture,” and adds a racist dog whistle by Calvin Coolidge — “Those who do not want to be partakers of the American spirit ought not to settle in America” — along with a URL where people can sign up with ICE.

Rockwell’s family has asked federal agencies to stop using his work because DHS has “become infamous in recent months for its increasingly brutal and often illegal enforcement methods.” In early November, Rockwell’s family wrote an op-ed in USA Today complaining that the Trump messages behind the posts run so contrary to the artist’s personal beliefs that he would be “devastated” to see his art “marshaled for the cause of persecution toward immigrant communities and people of color.”

Us vs. them propaganda

ICE.gov features job postings in which a Civil War era Uncle Sam points and intones, “America needs you. America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out.” Then, in smaller print, “You do not need an undergraduate degree.”

ICE’s YouTube site features video after video of Fox News “interviews” — propaganda — alongside professionally filmed fast-action shorts. One video, “Veterans Day Message,” is an interview with acting Director Todd Lyons conflating ICE agents with the military. Spliced with war-time footage, it shows fast action war scenes, paratroopers dropping from planes, armed troops descending from helicopters, and a war-gaming situation room.

Another, “Florida 287(g) with Collier County Sheriff Rambosk,” is accompanied by video game music and features an “Alligator Alcatraz” sign above swampland complete with live alligators waiting for prey.

Another, “Break the law. We regulate” appeals to directly to thugs. It opens showing six masked ICE officers pulling a man out of his car and shoving him to the ground, then segues to other arrests as a narrator says, “Regulators. We regulate the stealing of his property. We damn good too. But you can’t be any geek off the street. You gotta be good with the steal, you know what I mean, to earn your keep.”

Another features an Ohio sheriff in a ten gallon cowboy hat bragging about how many illegal aliens are in his jail, proclaiming, “Thank God that we have an administration, that we have ICE and President Trump actually doing what people want.”

This racist, political propaganda, illegally funded with federal tax dollars, obviously targets low-intellect applicants.

Minnesota fights back

Immediately after Good’s murder, the Trump regime doubled down, and sent 1000 more ICE agents into Minnesota, on top of an already unwanted 2,100 DHS and Border Patrol agents.

Trump officials know that increased ICE forces, now expanding without legal authority into traffic stops, elevate the threat to civilians. Since increased violence and civic unrest will hasten the day Trump declares martial law, escalation appears to be the goal.

St. Paul, Minneapolis, and the state of Minnesota are fighting back. On Monday, they filed suit, alleging that thousands of armed and masked DHS agents have stormed the Twin Cities to conduct militarized raids and carry out dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional stops and arrests in sensitive public places, including schools and hospitals — all under the guise of lawful immigration enforcement.

This operation is driven by nothing more than the Trump administration’s desire to punish political opponents and score partisan points — at the direct expense of Plaintiffs’ residents. Defendants’ actions appear designed to provoke community outrage, sow fear, and inflict emotional distress, and they are interfering with the ability of state and local officials to protect and care for their residents….

Minnesota notes that state and city governments are bearing the costs of ICE’s civil rights violations. Government brutality, broad-scale and publicly excused by Trump’s spokespeople, “recklessly endangers the public safety, health, and welfare of all Minnesotans. Additionally, Defendants’ agents’ inflammatory and unlawful policing tactics provoke the protests the federal government seeks to suppress…”

Kristi Noem’s DHS podium is inscribed with “One of ours, all of yours,” the Nazi philosophy of collective punishment. By lore or fact, when one SS officer was killed in a Czech Village, the Nazis killed every resident of that village in retribution. Wildly disproportionate, lawless, ignorant, and brutal, the slogan complements ICE recruitment materials perfectly, and draws a map of where Trump’s ICE is heading.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

Immigrant Rights Advocates Say Trump’s First Year Was “Much Worse” Than Expected

“Trump wants us to hang our heads and give up, but that’s not happening,” says organizer Rossy Alfaro.

By Derek Seidman , 

Truthout

January 17, 2026

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agents watch immigrants board a deportation flight at the Tucson International Airport, in Tucson, Arizona, on January 23, 2025.

Department of Defense photo by Senior Airman Devlin Bishop

Donald Trump rode to reelection with racist attacks on immigrants and refugees and promising mass deportations. The first year of his second term was filled with heartbreak, trauma, and fear as his administration escalated its assault on immigrant communities: separating families, occupying cities, targeting workers, and expanding deportations. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using its bloated budget to recruit among Trump’s far right base. This comes amid ICE’s horrific killing of Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis, staunchly defended by the Trump administration.

At the same time, we’ve seen inspiring community resistance to ICE and Trump across the U.S. Rapid response networks have grown. Teacher unions are defending immigrant students and families. There is growing mass resistance to ICE from Los Angeles to Chicago to Minneapolis.

A year ago, Truthout spoke to several community and farmworker organizations about how they were preparing for the second Trump administration. We reached out to some of those participants again to reflect on the past year in a new roundtable interview. They discuss the anguish of the past year and the challenges immigrant communities have faced, as well as how organizers are proactively responding and what’s keeping people motivated and inspired.

Rossy Alfaro is a former dairy worker in Vermont and organizer with Migrant Justice, which organizes dairy farmworkers in Vermont and oversees the worker-driven Milk with Dignity campaign. María Carrasco is a longtime volunteer with Derechos Humanos, a grassroots organization supporting migrant rights in Tucson, Arizona, and she is closely involved with the group’s rapid response work. Jeannie Economos is the longtime pesticide safety and environmental health project coordinator for the Farmworker Association of Florida, which has organized farmworkers for over four decades.

Note: These interviews took place in December 2025 and were conducted separately and edited into a roundtable format afterward. Alfaro’s interview was done with interpretation provided by Migrant Justice.

Related Story

When ICE Comes Calling, Rapid Community Responses Can Make a Difference
Is your community ready to fight deportations? Here’s how people in New York, New Jersey and Arizona are organizing. By Derek Seidman , Truthout February 3, 2025

Derek Seidman: A year ago, we discussed how you were approaching the new Trump administration. How has the past year been for your community and organizing efforts?

Jeannie Economos: It’s much worse than we expected. The tactics they’re using are very disturbing. Children are being ripped apart from their parents. It’s causing chaos and heartbreak and mental health issues. The community is traumatized. ICE is waiting for people at courthouses and even schools and is intimidating people by wearing masks and dragging people out of their cars. It’s terrible. This is unprecedented.


“The tactics they’re using are very disturbing. Children are being ripped apart from their parents.”

María Carrasco: We’ve seen so many things already. Bounty hunters are out there doing a lot of damage. Many racist people got jobs with ICE and they don’t respect human rights. Sometimes they’re really violent when they arrest people. Every day it’s becoming more dangerous, and this is barely the beginning, because ICE is receiving more money.

They’ve detained a lot of workers we know. Their families come to our meetings. It’s heartbreaking how the kids whose parents are in detention are suffering. We’re traumatizing them. I’m so worried about that.

So many people are missing in the system. We can’t find them. I try to calm down the families. They call me and they’re desperate. There are a lot of Venezuelans being taken. They’re being picked up and deported even though they’re refugees and have all their paperwork.

Rossy Alfaro: It’s had a huge impact on our community. The attacks have been so extreme. Even though we knew what was coming, you can’t really be prepared for it being so intense. So there’s a certain amount of panic in the farmworker community. People are feeling terrorized.


“So many people are missing in the system. We can’t find them.”

At the same time, people are really resolute, especially within our farmworker community here in Vermont. We fought hard for the protections that we’ve won, and we’re going to fight to retain them.

Can you discuss more what the administration’s escalating attacks on immigrants has meant for farmworker communities?

Economos: Things were difficult over a year ago with all the anti-immigrant sentiment and rhetoric, but that looks good compared to what we are seeing now, especially some of the tactics they’re using against the immigrant population. Before, farmworkers were afraid to file complaints for workplace violations, but now they’re afraid to go to work at all. Of course, some people still go to work, but they’re taking a risk. Some farmers have planted fewer crops because they are worried they won’t find enough workers to harvest. It’s causing chaos in agriculture.


“Before, farmworkers were afraid to file complaints for workplace violations, but now they’re afraid to go to work at all.”

Many employers in Florida are implementing E-Verify, a system which tracks immigration status, which means a lot of people won’t get jobs. So they end up in the underground economy working for unscrupulous employers who exploit them and commit wage theft because they’re undocumented and they know they’re very vulnerable.

In November, ICE stopped a bus of farmworkers near Immokalee. They were mostly women and asylum seekers going to work, just trying to take care of their families. They dragged them from the bus. Who will take care of their kids? Along with the fear, how do you go about your daily life with so much uncertainty? It’s terrifying. Some farmworkers are leaving the country.

Alfaro: In April 2025, Border Patrol detained eight farmworkers at a farm where workers had really begun to organize and stand up for their rights. This had a big impact. People felt fear and no longer wanted to speak out and organize. Some stopped going out to get groceries. People are just now feeling enough courage to start organizing again.

Migrant Justice spoke with the detained workers and their families and we launched a public campaign. We had marches and rallies, and thousands of people signed our petition calling for their release. This had a huge impact. The workers being held behind bars knew that they weren’t alone and they knew that the community was behind them.

How has your organization responded over the past year to the Trump administration’s intensified attacks?

Alfaro: We’ve really focused on educating people about their rights and how to prepare for potential encounters with federal agents and minimize risk in those situations. We’ve been building a system of support through our rapid response network so people can respond when there’s a detention happening. We have people trained on how to intervene to defend a person’s rights when they see an arrest — though it’s difficult to respond in time in rural areas.

We have people trained to go observe anytime there’s a rumor about ICE or Border Patrol in an area. That lets us differentiate fact from fiction and helps with that sense of panic that the community feels. This rapid response network has been important for our community, because we haven’t felt so alone. There are people here in Vermont who have our backs.

Economos: We have five offices in Florida. We’ve been doing Know Your Rights trainings with workers across the state. We’ve been handing out red cards in the fields. Some employers have actually asked us to do Know Your Rights trainings for their workers, which is unusual. Some local businesses have put up signs saying they’re a safe place for immigrants.

We’ve been working in coalition with other organizations locally, statewide, and nationally. We have a rapid response group. We’re keeping track of detentions and deportations. We hope to publish a report on this soon.

We were lucky to escape any hurricanes this [past] year. We’ve been really worried about what to tell people if there’s an evacuation order or they need to find shelter. We’ve been contacting local governments about their policies around sheltering undocumented workers. We’re trying to protect people. How can people go to shelters if there is no guarantee that ICE won’t target them there? There’s so much fear and uncertainty.

Carrasco: There are so many groups organizing in Tucson. It’s getting bigger and bigger. People are really pissed off. The more they try to oppress us, the more people are coming out.

We tell people to take out their phone and start recording if someone’s being detained. It’s our right. We keep eight feet away from them. As soon as someone starts recording, ICE wants to go hide. They’ll be less violent toward people. They don’t want to be recorded, because they know sooner or later, we’re going to take them to court. We’ve been cataloging their cars and license plates.

We’re just so mad. These ICE agents don’t even show their faces. They kick us and do whatever they want. They’re the criminals. We have the right to protest.

A lady from Chicago is sending me whistles and offered to train us on how to respond to tear gas. But big cities like that are different from Tucson. They’re crunched up, so when ICE shows up, people pour out together. It’s difficult in Tucson because our city is so spread out, and we’re so close to the border, so it’s more militarized.

Can you talk about your hotline in Tucson?

Carrasco: Some days the phone is ringing off the hook. Just now, while we’re talking, I received three calls. We get a lot of calls in the morning because ICE is getting people on their way to work. This is every day. They’re not criminals. They’re workers.


“They’re dehumanizing people and stealing their wages.”

We’re trying to help people get lawyers. We try to help as many people as we can. Every day is a different story. One worker called us last month. A guy hired him and exploited him and then brought him to ICE. Those are the kinds of abuses we’re seeing. They’re dehumanizing people and stealing their wages.

After the Taco Giro raids here, I got 48 calls. People wanted to join our meetings and our rapid response network. Even though we’re in a really bad situation, people who never helped before are coming out to defend the community. There’s hope out there.

We need people to have our number and call us if you see anything. Call me every time. We have more than 200 people who are ready to come out.

Rossy, you were personally impacted this past year. Can you talk about that?

Alfaro: This is really difficult for me to talk about. My family members, Nacho and Heidi, were detained by Border Patrol and then held in ICE detention for a month. They were detained completely in violation of their rights, and it was done very violently. Their window was shattered, and they were pulled out of the car.

They both knew their rights. They refused to provide any information about themselves to those immigration agents. The agents took them in without any cause. But that also gave them the ability to challenge their detention on legal grounds and helped get them released, because they could show there was an unlawful arrest.

My son and I suffered terribly from all the stress and sadness of having our family separated. They were held for several weeks. But they trusted their community to fight for them. They have very high profiles as community leaders and as fighters for human rights. That faith that the community would fight for their release sustained them during those months in detention, until they ultimately came home.

Have you seen any victories this past year that you want to lift up?

Alfaro: One victory we’re most proud of is the passage of the Housing Access for Immigrant Families Act, which makes it easier for immigrant families to find housing in the state. We campaigned for this and won it last year. For farmworkers especially, having access to housing that’s not associated with your job really opens up opportunities.

Also, the Education Equity law we won that went into effect this year allows undocumented students to attend university and pay the same rate and receive the same financial aid as their classmates who were born here. My daughter is one of the students benefiting from that. She’s able to go to college because of this law that we fought for and that she helped get passed.

Amid the challenges and heartbreak of this past year, what is keeping you motivated or even hopeful?

Economos: All I can say is I’m more committed than ever. There’s no way that we can turn our backs now. It’s personal, too. A community member who’s on our leadership committee — her nephew was sent to Alligator Alcatraz. When you know people, you feel their pain and it makes you more committed than ever before.

Seeing what other people are doing — young people, students standing in front of ICE or blocking a road, pastors going to immigration court to try and protect people; seeing the risks people are taking, just an outpouring of resistance around the country to what’s happening — that’s inspiring.


“People who’ve never protested are coming out to defend our community.”

Carrasco: People are waking up. People who’ve never protested are coming out to defend our community. A really old lady called me the other day. She was so mad. She wanted to join us. Even white people want to join us — people who are less afraid and who’ve never been active in the community, but who are waking up to what’s happening.

I’m hopeful. People are always calling me to help. Our communities are coming together and they’re defending each other every day. We’ll keep working and defending our communities regardless of what they do to us.

Alfaro: Trump wants us to hang our heads and give up, but that’s not happening. These experiences fill us with anger and rage, and the only way to release that anger is by organizing with a community to fight for your rights. The terrible experiences that we’ve had are the fuel we’re now using to fight even harder for the rights of our community.

Trump proves again that America is being run by a halfwit

Dean Baker

January 20, 2026

ALTERNET

Donald Trump is taking his demented dreams to a new level in his quest to take over Greenland. The man who whined over not getting a Nobel Prize and then followed Hitler propagandist Joseph Goebbels lead in accepting a prize awarded to someone else, has now decided he wants Greenland.

Trump is now proposing to whack us with a $75 billion tax increase to put pressure on Denmark and the rest of the EU to give him Greenland. If you missed Trump’s plans to hit us with this tax hike it’s because of the consistently awful reporting we get from major media outlets.

They reported on the tariffs Trump is imposing on the European countries most visible in resisting U.S. pressure to take Greenland. The problem with the reporting is that it implies the European countries pay the tariffs. They don’t, we do.

This is not a debatable point; the data are very clear. Well over 90 percent of the cost of a Trump tariff is borne by consumers or importers in the United States, not by the exporting countries. When Trump starts yelling “tariff, tariff, tariff,” he is yelling “tax, tax, tax,” and we’re the ones paying it. And $75 billion is not trivial. It’s one percent of the budget, more than twice the cost of the enhanced premiums for Obamacare policies that Trump says we can’t afford.

Let’s be clear, Trump wants Greenland because it is big. And he almost certainly thinks Greenland is far bigger than it actually is because he doesn’t understand that the Mercator projection maps, which are standard ones we all use, hugely exaggerate the size of areas near the poles.

No one likes the idea that the United States is being run by a moron.

We all know Trump says that he needs Greenland for national security. This argument is not worth a second’s consideration. Greenland and Denmark are both members of NATO. If he felt there was some need for putting additional military assets in or around Denmark, all he has to do is ask.

In fact, there were many more United States military installations in Denmark during the Cold War. We removed them after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Trump’s team themselves made it clear that Greenland is not a national security issue. The country is not even mentioned once in Trump’s National Security Strategy plan that was crafted just two months ago.

Trump effectively admitted this in an interview with the New York Times earlier this month. He acknowledged that he could address any security issues through negotiation with Greenland, Denmark, and the rest of NATO, but said Trump said that he would feel better “psychologically” taking over Greenland.

He compared it to the difference between owning and renting. Insofar as Trump feels a psychological need to own territory that is something that is best addressed through therapy, not military action against allies.

The other argument is that Greenland is rich in rare earth minerals, which Trump’s rich buddies are anxious to exploit. This is popular among people who want to highlight both Trump’s venality and also find rationality in what seems to be an otherwise crazy quest.

While no one should ever underestimate Trump’s corruption, the story doesn’t make any sense. First, it’s not clear that there is big money to be made on Greenland’s rare earth minerals. It is a remote area with little infrastructure. It will be extremely expensive to reach these minerals and would almost certainly take many years. Given developments in technology, it’s not even clear these minerals will still be of much value at the point anyone is able to bring them to the market.

But what’s even more damning for this line of argument is that they could start mining in Greenland tomorrow, if they think it would be profitable. Greenland is very open to foreign investment. If they think there is big money to be made by mining Greenland’s minerals, they would be doing it already.

Trump’s rich friends are undoubtedly pushing for him to take Greenland, he’ll probably give them better deals than Greenland would. Most importantly he will likely get rid of environmental regulations that Greenland’s government would demand.

But the cost of environmental regulations is not likely to be the sort of thing that would warrant a military invasion. Also, it probably is not a good sell to the people of Greenland that Trump wants to take away their ability to protect their environment.

At the end of the day, we really can’t escape the basic story, Trump wants Greenland because it is big. No one likes the idea that the United States is being run by a moron. And it’s painful for those of us left of center to acknowledge that this is who we losing to, not some evil genius. However, that happens to be the reality, and we need to recognize it.

Trump's latest straight out of a Monty Python skit

(BBC)

Robert Reich

January 20, 2026

It could be a Monty Python skit from 40 years ago: A demented U.S. president demands that Norway award him the Nobel Peace Prize (which he initially spells “Noble,” and which isn’t Norway’s to give anyway), after converting the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, sending troops into American cities, threatening Canada, and abducting the president of a Latin American country by force.

When he doesn’t get the peace prize, he says he’s no longer interested in peace and decides to take over Greenland. When Greenland refuses him, and Denmark and the rest of Europe make a fuss, he goes into a rage, raises tariffs on Europe (which cost Americans dearly), and threatens war on NATO. The president of Russia is delighted.

Can’t you see it? Eric Idle plays the American president — full of himself and utterly off his rocker. John Cleese is the vicious and hapless Latin American president who’s abducted. Terry Gilliam is the baffled, incredulous head of Greenland. Terry Jones plays the righteous leader of Denmark, Graham Chapman a perplexed NATO dignitary, and Michael Palin the wacky but triumphant president of Russia.

The Monty Python team was so funny because they came up with completely absurd situations, handled them with deadpan seriousness, and stretched them to the limits.

But this particular absurd situation isn’t funny. It’s actually happening. And Trump is truly, tragically, frighteningly out of his mind.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

Trump Has Dragged the Nation to a Point So Low It’s Hard to Fathom

How did we get to this point? The answer is clear.


Hundreds participate in a protest rally in Pershing Square on Saturday against the Trump administration’s incursion into Venezuela and recent ICE shootings in Minneapolis and Portland in downtown Los Angeles on January 10, 2026.
(Photo: Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

James Zogby
Jan 19, 2026

Common Dreams


How did we get to the point where the president can say and do things that put our culture and democracy at risk, and it’s just shrugged off as if it were normal?

In social media posts and unscripted press comments he uses language that would have been unimaginable coming from a president in any other period of American history. In just the past few months, Mr. Trump: was photographed making an obscene gesture and mouthing a vulgarity at a demonstrator; demeaned a popular TV personality who had just been murdered; called a Somali American member of Congress garbage, adding that all Somalis were garbage; called the Governor of Minnesota “retarded,” an especially hurtful slur as that governor has a son with a disability; and insulted women reporters who asked him challenging questions, calling them “ugly,” “obnoxious,” and “stupid.”

Parents wouldn’t tolerate this from their children and yet here we have a president of the United States demeaning his office by speaking in such a deplorable manner.

It’s not just the president’s speech that has been so “unpresidential.” Mr. Trump’s need to gratify his ego has led him to make exaggerated false claims about his grievances and his successes. He claims that he has been attacked by media, Congress, and law enforcement agencies like no other president in history. At the same time, he boasts that he has improved the economy and made our cities safer than they have ever been. None of this is true.

In an effort to impose his will and worldview, he has surrounded himself with White House staff and Cabinet that not only heap praise upon him and carry out his every whim, but also support his efforts to silence and intimidate those whom he has denounced as critics.

Herein lies a fundamental difference between President Trump’s first and second terms. In the former, some senior members of his staff and Cabinet served as a check on his behavior. Many were fired and replaced. He began his second term with a detailed plan to transform government, and with a more compliant senior leadership (e.g., the Department of Justice and FBI are willing to order investigations of his critics).

This combination of unchecked power, the president’s need to have his every ambition fulfilled, and his disrespect for law and precedent has led to actions that are illegal. In the first few months, his administration put in place a program to remove over 300,000 government employees. He shuttered USAID, the Voice of America, and the US Institute for Peace—all illegal actions as these were congressionally created and funded entities. He later reopened the Institute for Peace as the Trump Institute for Peace; renamed the nation’s premier center for the arts The Donald J Trump, The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts without any authorization; and had the White House’s East Wing torn down to be replaced by another vanity project—a massive ballroom—which no doubt will also bear his name in the near future.



58% of Americans—Across Political Spectrum—Say 2025 Was a ‘Failure’ Under Trump

Conceivably the most dangerous of President Trump’s moves have been the dramatic expansion of ICE—the immigration enforcement entity—and its unleashing in US cities, posing a direct threat to American democracy.

In recent weeks Mr. Trump sent a massive contingent of ICE agents to Minneapolis, Minnesota ostensibly to root out illegal immigrants, while attempting to embarrass that state’s Democratic governor and to target one of Mr. Trump’s new favorites, Minnesota’s large Somali community. As expected, ICE’s arrests have been indiscriminate, detaining many legal residents and citizens, and their behavior unacceptably brutal. As seen in other cities, ICE behaviors have provoked widespread protests. In one horrifying incident, a member of an observer team monitoring ICE behavior was shot and killed through an open car window by an ICE agent.

The shooting was filmed from multiple angles, establishing that the victim posed no threat to the ICE agent. That didn’t stop the president and other administration officials from propagating a lie about what had transpired. They called the murdered woman a domestic terrorist, saying she’d threatened the life of the ICE shooter. Unwrapping this murder is instructive on many levels.

First, with the enormous budget appropriated for ICE expansion, that entity now has over 10,000 armed agents. The rapidity of its growth has led to inadequate vetting and training. More dangerous still is how ICE has recruited agents: at gun shows and right-wing events, and targeted advertisements on right-wing radio shows. The White House appears to be forming an ideologically cohesive national police force that is anti-immigrant and violence-prone and has been told by the administration that they can act with impunity.

This incident also points out the extent to which the White House is capable of fabricating a storyline that will be echoed by other leaders and their supportive media outlets. The impact is clear. A recent poll showed that, by a wide margin, most Americans believe that the woman’s killing was wrong, but more than three-quarters of Republicans believe the president’s narrative that the murdered woman was a threat to the ICE agent and her killing was justified.

So, how did we get to this point? The answer is clear. A president who says whatever he needs to say to justify his position, officials around him and a supportive media who vociferously agree with him and threaten those who disagree, and a cult-like movement of partisans who will believe what they are told even when the facts speak to a different reality.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


James Zogby
Dr. James J. Zogby is the author of Arab Voices (2010) and the founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community. Since 1985, Dr. Zogby and AAI have led Arab American efforts to secure political empowerment in the U.S. Through voter registration, education and mobilization, AAI has moved Arab Americans into the political mainstream. Dr. Zogby has also been personally active in U.S. politics for many years; in 1984 and 1988 he served as Deputy Campaign manager and Senior Advisor to the Jesse Jackson Presidential campaign. In 1988, he led the first ever debate on Palestinian statehood at that year's Democratic convention in Atlanta, GA. In 2000, 2008, and 2016 he served as an advisor to the Gore, Obama, and Sanders presidential campaigns.
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Move Over Greenland, Will Egomaniac Trump Threaten to Invade Norway Next?

Nobody knows where our ship is sailing, including our current captain. That makes for a very dangerous, bellicose world.


People wave Greenlandic flags as they take part in a demonstration that gathered almost a third of the city population to protest against the US President’s plans to take Greenland, on January 17, 2026 in Nuuk, Greenland.
Photo by Alessandro RAMPAZZO / AFP via Getty Images

Les Leopold
Jan 19, 2026

Common Dreams


Presidents say stupid things. It’s inevitable, because they talk so damn much, and it is human to stumble into sounding awkward or even dumb. The most interesting gaffes are always revealing. Here are a few memorable ones:Jimmy Carter: “I’ve looked on many women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. God knows I will do this and forgives me.”

Ronald Reagan: “Trees cause more pollution than cars do.”

Richard Nixon: “When the President does it, that means it’s not illegal.” • Bill Clinton: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
Joe Biden: “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”

There’s an extensive list from President Trump, but this one might be the number one of all time:

Provoking War Over Greenland, Trump Warns Nobel Snub Ends Reason to ‘Think Purely of Peace’


‘Greenland Belongs to Its People’: European Leaders Begin Waking Up to Dangers of Trump Imperialism

“I can’t think of anybody in history that should get the Nobel prize more than me.”

True enough. Trump probably can’t think of anyone other than himself who deserves the award or any other accolade including renaming the Kennedy Center after himself. Greatest president of all time? Of course.

But it’s hard to imagine without cringing how he or any human, really, could make such a boastful statement. And how could he demand the Peace Prize just days after his invasion of Venezuela, repeated killing of civilians on alleged drug boats, and initiating the threatening drumbeat against Greenland. Then there’s his changing the Department of Defense’s name to the Department of War. Last I heard, war is the opposite of peace.

Trump is doing now what he always does: He puts a claim on what he wants and then pressures people to give it to him. “Stop the Steal” was no different than his campaign for the Peace Prize. Whatever he wants, he thinks, should be his, and he will do all he can to reshape the world so that it comes his way. And when it doesn’t, it’s people being unfair to him. He’s the victim for not getting the Nobel.

But it’s not a joke. On January 19, Trump sent a text to Jonas Gahr Store, Norway’s leader, saying “Considering that your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”

But you’ve got to wonder how much anyone’s ego can expand without an explosion of some sort. Most of us mortals get squeamish when bragging about ourselves. A few athletes have been able to pull it off, like Mohammed Ali’s “I am the greatest!” (He was.) Or Joe Namath’s “We’re going to win [the Superbowl] Sunday. I guarantee it.” (They did.)

But a boxer in the ring and a quarterback on the field must continually prove it or they lose face. Trump does not. He can claim he’s the greatest peace president ever, just by saying it, even if he goes to war while doing so. The people who point out that he isn’t are quickly branded liars, Marxists, idiots, losers, ugly, and operating under TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome).

Does bragging in general have social benefits that lead people like Trump to incessantly exaggerate their talents and accomplishments? A recent study found it may make them sexier!

“Seen from an evolutionary perspective, strategic self-promotion might have evolved as a beneficial psychological mechanism in mating competition.”

But there’s a downside, a big one. The noted psychologist Carl Jung in 1944 warned:
An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead.

Is there some kind of limit to ego expansion after which the “inevitable doom” strikes? If so, then we should all be worried. We have no idea what might happen if that limit is breached. It’s one thing for an inflated ego to feed off adoring MAGA fans who see Trump as another Joe Namath. But the danger is multiplied many times over because Trump’s ego now commands the mightiest military machine in the history of the world. If war comes to mean peace, duck and cover.

I can understand why some of my brothers and sisters in the labor movement gravitated towards Trump. He promised to save jobs and make the economy work again for working people. And many were deeply disappointed that the Democrats, on their watch, failed to mitigate millions of unnecessary mass layoffs. But Trump’s working-class support may be fading as mass layoffs continue and the cost of living rises. Increasingly working people understand that Trump’s priority is for himself, enriching his family, and boosting his billionaire buddies. And my guess is that Trump’s inflated ego is turning off many of his working-class fans who value performance over boastfulness.

But some people believe they have no choice but to play a symphony on Trump’s ever expanding ego. Maria Corina Machado, the leader of the democratic opposition in Venezuela, gave her Nobel Prize to Trump in the hope that he would soon call for elections so that she could run again. After all, her party had the 2024 election stolen from them by the now imprisoned Nicolas Maduro, and his vice-president Delcy Rodriguez, who Trump has chosen to run the country instead of Machado.

But the flagrant fawning didn’t seem to work. Trump cares more about Venezuelan oil, and supports the entrenched Maduro autocrats who can facilitate its export. He hasn’t yet said anything about stolen elections and restoring democracy in Venezuela.

He also knows the difference between a hand-me-down Peace Prize and the real thing. Here’s what he said on Truth Social soon after Machado’s gift-giving:
Without my involvement Russia would have ALL OF UKRAINE right now. Remember also I single handedly ENDED 8 WARS. And Norway, a NATO member, foolishly chose not to give me the Noble [sic] Peace Prize. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I saved Millions of Lives…..

Uh oh, Norway, not just the Nobel Committee, is now the target. To paraphrase Marco Rubio’s warning to Cuba after the Venezuela invasion, “If I lived in Oslo and I was in the government, I’d be concerned.”

Nobody knows where our ship is sailing, including our current captain. That makes for a very dangerous, bellicose world. If ego inflation continues to run amok, not aground, perhaps the next battle for peace will be an incursion into ungrateful Norway to extradite the Nobel committee and return the coveted prize to its rightful recipient.

Let’s hope that’s a joke and not a prophecy.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and author of the new book, “Wall Street’s War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It." (2024). Read more of his work on his substack here.
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'Take away the car keys': Buttigieg slams Trump for 'unhinged' Norway letter

Ewan Gleadow
January 20, 2026 

RAW STORY

Donald Trump gestures after speaking in Quantico, Virginia. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

The former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has slammed Donald Trump over a letter the president sent to Norway.

In it, Trump confirmed to Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre the US would look to subsume Greenland into its territory for the purpose of national security. In his letter, Trump also told Frederiksen that NATO members would have to do something for the US, rather than the US doing something for them.

The letter reads, "Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America."

"Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also."

"I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT."

Buttigieg has since denounced the letter and called on Americans to push back against Trump's rhetoric and keep the pressure on the GOP when it comes to healthcare subsidies.

He said in a video posted to his YouTube channel, "On the House side, pressure works, do not let up. Don't let up on Senate Republicans, and don't let up on the White House that those Senate Republicans tend to obey."

"Meanwhile, the president sent an unhinged message to Norway, like a 'take away the car keys' level of crazy message. Basically saying because the Norwegian government didn't give him the Nobel Peace Prize, the Danish government needs to give him Greenland or else he will punish all of Europe."

"This isn't just crazy and embarrassing, it is dangerous. These are our allies. I remember serving side by side with troops from Denmark in Afghanistan. These alliances have kept us safe for generations. Tearing them up makes all of us less safe, here at home."

Buttigieg went on to say Trump is bringing about a "destabilizing event" for the western world.

AMERIKAN FEMICIDE

Renee Good, Viola Liuzzo and the Fragile Ego

of Masculinism

Phil Wilson

 January 19, 2026

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Viola Liuzzo.

There are a few new things in the US – just recycled atrocities that the media fails to recognize as sequels. In the US flash flood of bad dreams, the latest event in the drive-by-whizz of meaningless horror – the cold-blooded public execution of Renee Good – has come and gone. Good now becomes – at the moment the bullets strike – a sort of wayward example of uncertainty. Why Renee Good? At a casual glance she is none of the things that the US hates murderously – not an immigrant or a communist, not even an atheist. We learn that she has a wife and that she had been previously married twice to male partners. There is no reason to assume that the murderer, Jonathan Ross, knew any of this – and one should not speculate that he acted out of homophobic rage. Have we seen Renee Good before in the shadow play of the US news cycle? Renee Good projects a disturbing ordinariness – an old dog in the back with a grey muzzle, and a child seat next to the dog. Our bleary eyes alight for a moment on a seemingly unremarkable white woman caught in the act of briefly departing from domestic routine. Like all random murder victims, she dies in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We have a history of home-based enemies – Jews, Muslims, atheists, Unitarians, communists, Quakers, socialists – people that the FBI historically side-eyes with a measure of latent disgust, but only sporadically assaults. Fascism pulls up the mask, pulls down the pants, and reveals a fully erect gun that finally has the full blessing of the highest authorities. Renee Good is not the first upstanding White woman to be offered up at the altar of violent sacrifice – even in my own youth, we had Allison Krause (not Allison Krauss, the blue-grass fiddle savant) and Sandra Scheuer. Kent State National Guardsmen panicked and sprayed gunfire. This massacre fell well within the US tradition of mass shootings – the periodic ritual involving guns, crowds, vengeance, and paranoia. Nixon, sociopath, lia,r and war criminal that he was, understood that the optics of repression required that he tread carefully around the issue of murdering upstanding White US citizens. He called a press conference after the shooting and cleverly, in a soft, measured voice, bullshitted the public about his belief that “the protesters” wanted peace just like he did. We are really all on the same side he said. Yeah, this was the sort of flagrant dishonesty that inspired Trump. Trump figured out that racists want their bile in its most transparent form. But America’s homicidal zeal generally has tiptoed around the unique privilege of those living comfortably in the homeland. If Allison Krause and Sandra Scheuer were mere victims of paranoia and chance – catching bullets that momentarily sprayed hatred while seeking random targets – we have an obscure history of political harm toward wayward White women that has been overlooked.

Predictably, Black women are killed by police in greater numbers than White women, but researchers have compellingly argued that class, even more than race, accounts for the demographic details of police killings. One study concluded that poor White people are statistically more likely to be killed by police than middle and upper-middle-class Black people. The murder of Renee Good, however, does not fit into the typical categories of police violence that help us to place the killing of, say, Breonna Taylor into a broader context. Middle and upper-middle-class White women are among the least likely demographics to die by police violence.

However, Good was not killed by police, but by paramilitary forces (even if given official status in the current fascist system). Unlike Breonna Taylor, who was killed in a random hail of bullets by hair trigger police who had forcefully entered Taylor’s apartment in a botched effort to arrest a suspect who was not present, Good seems likely to have been targeted, at least in part, for her gender. We can’t get into the head of the murderer, Jonathan Ross, but it might not be outlandish to guess that Good’s white skin triggered the homicidal response in some way as well. If dark skinned and poor people often risk police ire as a matter of predictable institutional racism, White, educated, middleclass women have a very rare and specific way of falling afoul of violent authorities.

Good’s murder fits into a category so vanishingly small, that I can think of only one single historical incident that shares similar context – the 1965 KKK murder of civil rights volunteer, Viola Liuzzo. It may seem startling to view ICE as the linear offspring of the KKK, but the tie between Klan violence and police killings (as recognized in the famous Rage Against the Machine line, “some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses”) ought to make us aware that right wing paramilitary violence has always been an adjunct to official power structures.

Liuzzo entered America’s most terrifying fantasy when a car with four Klansmen (one being an FBI informer) pulled alongside her vehicle on an Alabama road between Selma and Montgomery. She had Michigan license plates and a 19-year-old Black male passenger next to her. She had bravely gone to Alabama to help organize Black voters, and to ferry disenfranchised people to places of registration – in and of itself, a capital offense in Jim Crow states. Thus, the psychological triggers, within the KKK hypervigilant psyche, made her fate inevitable. Her killers likely imagined her as the very symbol of “miscegenation.” A White woman with a younger Black man on a rural stretch of road might have stirred the most violent fear in the White, masculinist heart. A klansman shot her in the head. Like with Renee Good, her car veered and crashed. Her passenger, Leroy Moton, survived by pretending to be dead. In the hierarchy of masculinist rage, the murderous impulse reserves a place for White women who stray from their cultural niche.

But death was not enough retribution – FBI head, J Edgar Hoover, launched a smear campaign against Liuzzo, accusing her of being an adulterer and a heroin addict. The Klan publicly exulted in her murder, posting pictures of her dead body, and “bragging about the murder.” The masculinist, racist mindset mobilized against Viola Liuzzo’s legacy – in death, she might have become the first White, female martyr in the struggle for racial equality. J Edgar Hoover and his allies in the Klan made every effort to erase Viola Liuzzo from historical consciousness. They succeeded in spectacular fashion. We recall John Brown, Medgar Evans, Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney and Rev. James Reeb with due reverence, but Viola Liuzzo remains as an obscure footnote.

An undergraduate research paper by Alyssa Ness observed:

“When comparing Liuzzo’s murder to other murders during the civil rights movement, it is evident that she not only received less recognition for her heroic dedication in the movement than others but was also heavily scrutinized by the government and the public through the media for defying traditional white gender roles for women of her time. Louis B. Nichols was hired by the FBI in order to manage the bureau’s interactions with news and media. Nichol’s main role in the bureau was to prevent the bureau from gaining negative attention through media and entertainment by promoting its preferred image, and any media outlet that opposed the FBI would be attacked by supporting media outlets. The FBI and press distorted the reason Liuzzo had participated in the march and what the march was about in order to gain public support. Along with Hoover and the press, traditional middle class white women tormented the legacy of Liuzzo with accusations of her being mentally ill because she was not solely fulfilled by the role of a homemaker and mother. The public and media also heavily criticized Jim Liuzzo due to his inability to keep his wife under control. The New York Times published an article calling out Liuzzo for failing to deter his wife from her fate.”

Carolyn Bryant acted out the prescribed role for southern women in the Jim Crow era. Bryant, you may recall, accused Emmet Till of making advances on her as she clerked in her family-owned grocery store in Drew, Mississippi. Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago, was abducted, tortured, and murdered by Bryant’s husband and another KKK-affiliated accomplice 11 years prior to Liuzzo’s murder. Perhaps Liuzzo’s killing sheds light on the psychology of Carolyn Bryant. Women like Bryant knew all too well that vigilant male paranoia circumscribed White female sexuality. Miscegenation was a crime on the books in Jim Crow states, and, as Viola Liuzzo’s fate showed, it took little evidence to provoke the paramilitary institutions that enforced antiquated laws with brutal informality.

The lynching of Emmet Till and the murder of Viola Liuzzo are linked directly to current expressions of hyper-masculine self-doubt. Renee Good, like Liuzzo, violated the unwritten rules of racial propriety that racist White men demand. Female moral fortitude in a racist society will often be conflated with sexual abandonment. In a right-wing ecosystem featuring men who obsessively ruminate about rejection (consider the widespread “Incel” movement), acts of White female resistance to racist violence serve as symbols of sexual rejection.

As White women commit themselves to the battle against ICE, the right-wing pundit sphere will indulge in ever more flamboyant methods to label activism as sexual deviance. My point is well illustrated by the lunatic writer, Naomi Wolf, in this post on X:

“Okay, I’ll just say it. I’ve seen enough videos of the faces of liberal white women in conflict with @ICE, to know what is up. Liberal men at this point (sorry) are disproportionately estrogenized, physically passive, submissive due to woke gender hectoring, or porn-addicted. White liberal women are disproportionately sexually frustrated. Policing others as in the pandemic was an outlet for them, but it was not nearly enough. The smiles you see on their faces now say it all: white women long for all out combat with ICE – who tend to be strong, physically confident, masculine men – because the conflict is a form of physical release for them. They long for actual kinetic battle and it will get even uglier.”

The right-wing politicians and pundits now engage in a desperate struggle to tarnish the memory of Renee Good and to prevent her from becoming a martyr. They will alternately insist that she engaged in domestic terrorism or that she channeled her sexual frustrations into a vicarious rendezvous with the “real men” who work for ICE. When Ross murdered Good, he sneered, “fucking bitch,” as her dead body lay in the moving car. How many men have murdered women who rejected them? Now this inchoate rage against rejection becomes a subconscious theme affixed to a new wave of political violence. While Viola Liuzzo stands out as a historical anomaly, violence toward middle-class White women who confront the brutal treatment of dark-skinned targets of the fascist state will almost certainly occur again.

I don’t believe that Renee Good’s legacy will be destroyed as authorities sullied the memory of Viola Liuzzo. We have the video for Good as we did not for Liuzzo. But isn’t it long overdue that Viola Liuzzo be recognized as one of the great heroes of the civil rights era? After all, Liuzzo’s heroism helps us to understand the tragedy of Renee Good.

Phil Wilson is a retired mental health worker who has written for Common Dreams, CounterPunch, Resilience, Current Affairs, The Future Fire and The Hampshire Gazette. Phil’s writings are posted regularly at Nobody’s Voice.

UK

Woke-Bashing of the Week: From Christmas

to cardigans – the latest ‘anti-men’ panic

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

18 January, 2026
Right-Wing Watch


Quite what constitutes “the very worst left-wing feminist” remains unclear, beyond, perhaps, a woman who doesn’t particularly enjoy being corrected by men.

With Christmas out of the way and the annual ritual of declaring everything “cancelled” complete, the anti-woke brigade has its sights on the next cultural event – Valentine’s Day.

This time, the outrage is directed at retailer Target, over the release of two colourful sweaters released ahead of February 14. According to the Daily Mail, one is pink and emblazoned with “Dump Him” in bold red lettering, and the other is light blue, with “Emotionally Unavailable” written in black.

Despite what the paper describes as “seemingly harmless messaging,” the Mail reports how the designs were swiftly seized upon by social media users, who accused Target of promoting “anti-men” sentiment. The article quotes a so-called men’s rights activist who posted a photo of the display on X:

“I saw this sweater promoted at Target today. Could you imagine if, in the month leading up to Valentine’s Day, Target was spotlighting a “Dump Her” sweater in the men’s section?” they said.

Others followed suit. “More women hating men propaganda. Gee, shocker,” wrote one user.

“Target is woke,” declared another. “Anti-male garbage. I stopped shopping at Target a long time ago,” snarked a third.

To give the impression of a pattern, the Mail reminded readers of Target’s previous brush with controversy over its Pride collection, specifically, its failure to remove placeholder ‘lorem ipsum’ text from some product tags, as though a design oversight and a pair of tongue-in-cheek sweaters belong to the same moral crisis.

This fixation with an alleged ‘anti-men’ movement has become a recurring theme in the right-wing press. Last month, Telegraph columnist Celia Walden asked: “Are you a woman who hates men? Then the Greens are the perfect party for you.”

Her column cited a leaked 53-page Green Party report which, she claimed, showed party leaders considering an expanded definition of misogyny. Among the supposed horrors was a proposal to include “men who correct women” within that definition. Walden warned that such a move would appeal only to “the very worst left-wing feminist”.

Quite what constitutes “the very worst left-wing feminist” remains unclear, beyond, perhaps, a woman who doesn’t particularly enjoy being corrected by men.