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Minnesota: A Hero Judge

By dianeravitch
January 30, 2026 //
1

The Trump fascists have many problems in Minnesota. One of them is the Chief U.S. District Judge of Minnesota, Patrick J. Schiltz, appointed by President George W. Bush.

Judge Schiltz believes in his oath of office. He believes in upholding the Constitution. That spells trouble for Trump’s military occupation of Minneapolis.

Judge Patrick G. Schiltz

Politico wrote about Judge Schiltz:

“My hope is to be the Benjamin Harrison of chief judges: one that no one remembers,” he told his hometown paper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, in 2022.

Four years later, the mild-mannered George W. Bush appointee — known for his conservative jurisprudence, his clerkship with late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and his mentorship of future Justice Amy Coney Barrett — has been thrust into an increasingly pitched legal confrontation with President Donald Trump’s immigration forces.

It’s a role that will be remembered.

Schiltz, 65, has publicly aired his fury over the Trump administration’s mistreatment of noncitizens arrested in Operation Metro Surge, the Department of Homeland Security’s mass deportation push in the Twin Cities. He blasted the Justice Department for its criticism of his courthouse colleagues and labeled as “frivolous” the administration’s effort to compel him to issue an arrest warrant for former CNN anchor Don Lemon and others involved in last week’s church protest in St. Paul.

The clash is slated to reach a climax Friday, when Schiltz plans to haul into his Minneapolis courtroom Todd Lyons, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to grill him about the rampant violation of court orders that Schiltz and his colleagues say has poisoned the trust between the administration and the court.

CNN wrote that Judge Schiltz is ready to hold Lyons’ feet to the fire.

The hearing raises the prospect that a top federal official could be sanctioned for his agency’s failures to obey the courts. And at the very least, he’ll be forced to begin accounting for an extraordinary number of cases — more than 2,000, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney — in which judges have ruled that ICE has illegally detained people…

In a court order, Schiltz cited “dozens of court orders with which respondents have failed to comply in recent weeks….”

Schiltz acknowledged his move was extraordinary, but he added that “the extent of ICE’s violation of court orders is likewise extraordinary, and lesser measures have been tried and failed.”

“The Court’s patience is at an end,” he added….

The order follows a pair of letters Schiltz sent last week that featured similarly exasperated language, this time about people who were arrested for protesting at a St. Paul church where they claimed a pastor was a top local ICE official..

In that case, Schiltz derided what he cast as an effort by the Justice Department to ignore the usual process in order to bring charges in a politically charged case.

A magistrate judge found there was no probable cause to charge five of the eight people DOJ wanted to charge, including former CNN anchor Don Lemon, who has said he was acting in his capacity as a journalist. The DOJ quickly asked for the district court to intervene. Schiltz said he surveyed a wide variety of colleagues, and everyone who responded could think of no precedent for such a request. Then when Schiltz didn’t rule fast enough, the DOJ sought the intervention of an appeals court, which ultimately declined.

In his letters, Schiltz cited “the defiance of several court orders by ICE, and the illegal detention of many detainees by ICE (including, yesterday, a two-year old).”

He wrote at one point: “The government has also argued that I must accept this as true because they said it, and they are the government.”

The judge also criticized the government for characterizing the situation as a national security-related emergency, noting it had declined to bring the cases to a grand jury that could have decided on charges quickly.

(The administration has failed to get grand juries to indict in a number of such politically charged cases in which the evidence appeared thin.)

Schiltz’s first letter, in particular, is remarkable.

CNN legal contributor Steve Vladeck wrote Sunday, before the judge summoned Lyons, that his letters were must-reads when it comes to understanding the Trump DOJ’s manipulation of the legal process.

“Were it not for Chief Judge Schiltz’s actions here, we might not know about any of this backstory — or, even worse, the Eighth Circuit might have simply acceded to the government’s entirely one-sided account of what happened and granted unprecedented relief,” Vladeck wrote.

He argued that other judges should lay these things bare just like Schiltz did. And now Schiltz’s summoning of Lyons puts these issues even more squarely in the spotlight.

On Friday, a judge with impeccable conservative credentials is set to hold an extraordinary hearing putting the top ICE official in a Republican administration on the spot about its disregard for court orders.

And it could be a big moment in an already bad week for the administration’s Minneapolis crackdown.

However, Judge Schiltz cancelled the hearing after ICE met one of his stipulations, releasing an immigrant named Juan T.R., as per his order. The Court had previously demanded the release of Juan by January 15. ICE ignored the court’s order. Judge Schiltz wanted to know why. When Juan was finally released, Judge Schlitz canceled the hearing.

In his statement canceling the hearing, Judge Schiltz made clear his impatience. He wrote:

Attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases. The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated. This list is confined to orders issued since January 1, 2026, and the list was hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges. Undoubtedly, mistakes were made, and orders that should have appeared on this list were omitted.

This list should give pause to anyone—no matter his or her political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law. ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence. The Court warns ICE that future noncompliance with court orders may result in future show‐cause orders requiring the personal appearances of Lyons or other government officials. ICE is not a law unto itself. ICE has every right to challenge the orders of this Court, but, like any litigant, ICE must follow those orders unless and until they are overturned or vacated.

FOX News thought they did a gotcha on Judge Schlitz when they discovered that he had donated to immigrant legal groups. AHA! A closet liberal!

But he stopped them in their tracks with his response. FOX said:

A Minnesota-based federal judge who threatened to hold Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons in contempt of court has donated to a nonprofit that gives legal support to illegal immigrants.

Judge Patrick Schiltz, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, and his wife were listed in a 2019 annual report for the organization, the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, which routinely condemns the Trump administration and advertises free legal advice for immigrants, refugees and people detained by ICE.

Schiltz told Fox News Digital in a statement he has “donated for many years to the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.

“I have also donated for many years to Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid. I believe that poor people should be able to get legal representation,” Schiltz said.

Categories Honor Roll, Justice

No, ICE May Not Enter Your Home Without a Judicial Warrant

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2026 //
2

The deployment of ICE to detain and arrest undocumented immigrants threatens to become a war against U.S. citizens who object to ICE’s brutal tactics. We have all seen the videos of ICE agents smashing car windows, knocking men and women to the ground, grabbing women by their hair, pummeling people on the ground, operating in teams of 5 or 6 as they beat up those they choose.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution forbids ICE from entering homes. This article appeared on the blog CAFE, where seasoned prosecutors and law professors comment on matters of law and hold the federal government accountable.

No ICE Cannot Enter Your Home Without a Warrant — and Why Doing So Is Very Dangerous For All of Us
By Perry A. Carbone and Mimi Rocah

Dear Insider,

A leaked internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo claims that ICE agents may enter people’s homes without a judicial warrant. That claim is wrong as a legal matter— and it threatens one of the most basic freedoms Americans have: the right to be safe in their own homes.

The memo—dated May 12, 2025 and signed by Acting Director Todd Lyons—was leaked by two whistleblowers and shared with Senator Richard Blumenthal. According to the whistleblowers, the memo was directed to all personnel but was distributed in a secretive manner to selected personnel.
We spent many years as federal prosecutors enforcing federal law – about 50 years between the two of us. We know firsthand the power of law enforcement authority and how important it is that it be exercised within constitutional limits, especially within the sacrosanct safety of a person’s home.

Our homes have special protection under the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution protects people from unreasonable government searches and seizures and explicitly names “houses” as protected spaces: “The right of the people to be secure in their … houses … against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause….”
 
The Supreme Court has repeatedly made this protection crystal clear.

In Payton v. New York (1980), the Court held that police may not enter a home to make an arrest without a judicial warrant, unless there is an emergency or the resident consents, calling  physical entry of the home “the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.”

In Kyllo v. United States (2001), the Court reaffirmed that the home is a place where privacy protection is at its highest. Even using technology to detect heat patterns inside a home — without ever physically entering — violated the Fourth Amendment if it was done without a warrant.

In Florida v. Jardines (2013), the Court held that bringing a drug-sniffing dog to the front porch of a home to investigate constituted an unlawful “search” under the Fourth Amendment, if done without a search warrant.
If the Constitution forbids the government from using technology and animals to sense what happens inside a home, it certainly forbids crossing the threshold without judicial approval.

The whistleblower disclosure shows ICE claiming its agents may enter homes without judicial warrants because immigration enforcement is “civil.” But the Fourth Amendment does not contain a “civil enforcement” carveout. And the relevant Supreme Court’s cases do not turn on whether a matter is labeled “civil” or “criminal.”  There is no “immigration exception” to the Constitution.

The ICE memo reportedly relies on Form I-205, a “warrant of removal/deportation” created within the executive branch and not signed by a judge. It authorizes officers to use “necessary and reasonable force” to enter certain residences to arrest people with final removal orders.

That is incompatible with the Fourth Amendment’s demand for judicial oversight. A judicial warrant is one that is issued by an individual who is ”neutral and detached” and can determine probable cause. An administrative warrant, by contrast, is issued by the government agency itself and so does not meet the Constitution and Court’s repeated requirement of being issued by someone “neutral” and “detached.”  Federal agencies do not get to rewrite the Constitution through internal memos. Put simply, an administrative warrant is the government agency authorizing itself to enter a home — the constitutional equivalent of letting the fox write its own warrant to enter the henhouse.

This is not an immigration issue. It is a constitutional issue with consequences for all Americans. Yes, it will have huge implications for immigrants, who have long been advisednot to open their door to federal agents unless they have a warrant signed by a judge. But it will not end there. If ICE is permitted to enter homes without judicial warrants, the consequences will not stop with immigration enforcement. Other agencies will follow the same path — and they will do so using the same logic: that civil enforcement, public safety, or administrative necessity justifies bypassing judicial oversight.

One can easily imagine a parade of horribles:

  • Tax enforcement: IRS agents entering homes to seize records or property based solely on internal agency warrants, without a judge ever reviewing probable cause.
  • Health and safety enforcement:Public health officials entering private residences to conduct inspections or remove occupants during disease outbreaks without judicial authorization.
  • Child welfare investigations: Social services entering homes to investigate allegations based only on agency paperwork, without court approval.
  • Firearms regulation: Regulatory agents entering homes to inspect compliance with gun laws without judicial warrants.
  • Local law enforcement: Police departments reclassifying certain arrests as “civil” or “administrative” to avoid the warrant requirement altogether.

Once the government can enter a home based on its own approval, the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement becomes optional — a procedural inconvenience rather than a constitutional command.

And that erosion won’t stop at homes. If agency-issued warrants suffice for entry, then agency-issued authorizations will soon suffice for searches of phones, computers, bank accounts, and digital records — all areas the Supreme Court has increasingly treated as deserving heightened constitutional protection.

The Fourth Amendment was written precisely to prevent this outcome: a system in which government officials authorize their own intrusions. Judicial warrants are not a technicality — they are the firewall between liberty and unchecked power. And when that firewall falls, it does not fall selectively. It falls for everyone.

The home is the heart of American liberty. The Fourth Amendment draws a bright line at the front door — and for good reason. This leaked ICE memo crosses that line. It is legally wrong. It is constitutionally dangerous. And it should concern everyone who values privacy, liberty, and the rule of law — regardless of their views on immigration.

Stay Informed, 
Mimi & Perry 

CAFE Contributor Mimi Rocah is the former District Attorney for Westchester County, and previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and Division Chief for the Southern District of New York. She is currently an adjunct professor at Fordham School of Law.

Perry A. Carbone served as Chief of the White Plains Division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York; he previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of New Jersey.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Extremism, Freedom, Justice

ICE Ignores Constitution

By dianeravitch
January 26, 2026 //
7

The Department of Homeland Security decided that ICE agents were exempt from the Fourth Amendment, which prevents police from entering homes without a warrant signed by a judge.

U.S. District Court judge Jeffrey Bryan ruled last Saturday in Minneapolis that ICE had to abide by the Fourth Amendment.

The Fourth Amendment says:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This means that law officers can’t burst into your home without a judge’s warrant.

The Fourth Amendment underpins the phrase that “a man’s home is his castle.”

Recently, ICE decided that its agents did not need a judge’s warrant and that an “administrative warrant” would suffice. The administrative warrant would be signed by an ICE employee.

ICE decided that with an “administrative warrant,” it could batter down doors and enter homes to seize suspects.

Federal Judge Bryan said they could not.

Wired magazine summarized the situation:

A FEDERAL JUDGE in Minnesota ruled last Saturday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents violated the Fourth Amendment after they forcibly entered a Minnesota man’s home without a judicial warrant. The conduct of the agents closely mirrors a previously undisclosed ICE directive that claims agents are permitted to enter people’s homes using an administrative warrant, rather than a warrant signed by a judge.

The ruling, issued by US District Court judge Jeffrey Bryan in response to a petition for a writ of habeas corpus on January 17, did not assess the legality of ICE’s internal guidance itself. But it squarely holds that federal agents violated the United States Constitution when they entered a residence without consent and without a judge-signed warrant—the same conditions ICE leadership has privately told officers is sufficient for home arrests, according to a complaint filed by Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit legal group representing whistleblowers from the public and private sector.

In a sworn declaration, Garrison Gibson, a Liberian national who has lived in Minnesota for years under an ICE order of supervision, says agents arrived at his home in the early morning on January 11 while his family slept inside. He says he refused to open the door and repeatedly demanded to see a judicial warrant. According to the declaration, the agents initially left, then returned with a larger group, deployed pepper spray toward neighbors who had gathered outside, and used a battering ram to force the door open.

The declaration was filed as part of a January 12 Minnesota lawsuit against Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem challenging federal immigration enforcement operations in the Twin Cities, which state officials characterize as an unconstitutional “invasion” by ICE and other agents that has roiled Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

Federal officials did not contest Gibson’s habeas petition.

Gibson, who reportedly fled the Liberian civil war as a child, says agents entered his home without showing a warrant. His wife, who was filming at the time, warned that children were inside, he says, and that agents holding rifles stood in their doorway. “One agent repeatedly claimed ‘We’re getting the papers’ in response to her demand to see the warrant,” he says. “But without showing a warrant, and apparently without having one, five to six agents moved in as if they were entering a war zone.”

Only after he was handcuffed, Gibson says, did the agents show his wife an administrative warrant.

One day after the judge ordered Gibson’s immediate release, ICE agents took him back into custody when he appeared for a routine immigration check-in at a Minnesota immigration office, according to his attorney, Marc Prokosch, who said Gibson arrived believing the court order had resolved the matter.

“We were there for a check-in, and the original officer said, ‘This looks good, I’ll be right back,’” Prokosch told the Associated Press. “And then there was a lot of chaos, and about five officers came out and then they said, ‘We’re going to be taking him back into custody.’ I was like, ‘Really, you want to do this again?’”

The re-arrest did not reverse the court’s finding that ICE violated the Fourth Amendment during the warrantless home entry, but underscores how the agency retains civil detention authority even if a judge rules that a specific arrest was unconstitutional.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Justice, Minneapolis

Obamas Issue Statement About Murder of Alex Pretti

By dianeravitch
January 26, 2026 //
11

Former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama released a statement about the murder of Alex Pretti.

Will we hear from former President George W. Bush?

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Justice, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Obama

Why Is the Justice Department Refusing to Investigate Killing of Renee Good?

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2026 //
12

This short video was made by Liz Oyer, who used to be the attorney in charge of Presidential pardons at the Justice Department.

Please watch.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Justice, Trump

U.S. Justice Department Will Investigate Renee Good and Her Widow, Not ICE Officer Who Killed Her

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2026 //
6

The Trump administration is determined to prove that Renee Good was a domestic terrorist who was trying to kill an ICE officer by running him down with her car. He had to kill her to save his own life. The many videos that have been released demonstrate that these assertions were lies. Renee Good was attempting to flee the scene and did not strike or injure ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who fired three shots point blank at her and killed her.

The New York Times reported that key federal prosecutors in Minnesota quit rather than defend the administration’s lies. The government wanted them to investigate the victim’s widow for links to terrorism.

Three Minnesota federal prosecutors resigned over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent and its reluctance to investigate the shooter, according to people with knowledge of their decision.

Joseph H. Thompson, who was second in command at the U.S. attorney’s office and oversaw a sprawling fraud investigation that has roiled Minnesota’s political landscape, was among those who quit Tuesday, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.

Mr. Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Nicole Good, the Minneapolis woman killed by an ICE agent last Wednesday.

Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful, the people familiar with his decision said.

Two other senior career prosecutors, Harry Jacobs and Melinda Williams, also resigned on Tuesday. Mr. Jacobs had been Mr. Thompson’s deputy overseeing the fraud investigation, which began in 2022. Mr. Thompson, Mr. Jacobs and Ms. Williams declined to discuss the reasons they resigned

The Guardian reported that several attorneys in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division resigned in protest when they learned that the Government would investigate the victim but not the killer.

The Guardian reported.

Several attorneys in the US justice department’s civil rights division have reportedly resigned in protest at a decision not to investigate the fatal shooting of an unarmed US citizen by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis – while the FBI presses ahead with an inquiry into the victim.

At least four leaders of the division’s criminal investigations section have stepped down, according to MS NOW, citing three people it said were briefed about the departures.

It follows a decision by Harmeet Dhillon, the Donald Trump administration-aligned assistant attorney general for civil rights, not to investigate the 7 January killing of Renee Nicole Good by Jonathan Ross, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, as would be usual in the case of a shooting by law enforcement.

Separately, the FBI – which seized total control of the investigation after freezing out local officials – is looking into Good’s “possible connections to activist groups”, according to the New York Times. A succession of Trump administration officials, including the president himself, have portrayed Good, without presenting evidence, as a “domestic terrorist” or “paid agitator” – while video of her confrontation with Ross appears to show her trying to steer her vehicle away from him when she was shot three times in the face…

The resignations are the latest in a flow of departures from the civil rights division since Donald Trump began his second term a year earlier. In May, the Guardian reported that more than 250 attorneys had left, been reassigned or accepted a deferred resignation offer since January, a roughly 70% reduction.

Dhillon, a former Republican official in California, and an election denier who promoted the “big lie” that Trump’s 2020 election defeat was fraudulent, was confirmed by the Senate in April. She worked quickly to realign the division’s priorities away from its longstanding work tackling discrimination and protecting the rights of marginalized groups and towards Trump’s political goals, including exposing voter fraud, which is rare, and focusing on anti-transgender issues.

“I don’t think it’s an overstatement to see this as the end of the division as we’ve known it,” a civil rights division attorney told the Guardian at the time.

Subsequently, in September, the online news outlet Notus reported that only two lawyers remained out of 36 at the justice department’s public integrity unit assigned to investigations of corrupt politicians and law enforcement.

What you need to know about Harmeet Dhillon, the lawyer appointed by Trump to lead the Civil Rights Division, is that she spent years litigating against civil rights law. Thus, she is just what you would expect: a prosecutor ready and willing to investigate the murder victim, but not the murderer.

Categories Civil Rights, Justice, Shame

Parker Molloy Read Jack Smith’s Testimony So You Wouldn’t Have To

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2026 //
4

Thank you, Parker Molloy! She reviews Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s testimony behind closed doors. The House Republicans were determined to pin Smith as a political partisan, but Smith made crystal clear that he would prosecute anyone without regard to party labels.

Molloy writes on her Substack blog, “The Present Age”:

House Republicans released the 255-page transcript of Jack Smith’s closed-door deposition on New Year’s Eve. You know, the day when absolutely nobody is paying attention to the news. The day when political operatives dump things they don’t want people to see.

Funny how that works.

Smith testified before the House Judiciary Committee on December 17th, spending an entire day answering questions about his investigations into Donald Trump. Republicans had been demanding this testimony for months, framing it as part of their “weaponization” investigation.

They got what they asked for. And then they released it when America was busy watching the ball drop.

I spent the holiday reading through the whole thing. Here’s what they didn’t want you to see.

Smith says Trump is guilty

In Smith’s opening statement, he declared that his office had developed “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that Trump committed crimes in both the January 6th case and the classified documents case.

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power. Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.” (p. 17)

When asked if he would prosecute a former president on the same facts today, Smith said he absolutely would:

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power. Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.” (p. 17)

When asked if he would prosecute a former president on the same facts today, Smith said he absolutely would:

“If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.” (p. 18)

And when asked point-blank if he’d ever prosecuted someone he didn’t believe was guilty, Smith’s answer was simple:

“Never.” (p. 83)

Special Counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks on a recently unsealed indictment including four felony counts against former U.S. President Donald Trump on August 1, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Trump’s tweet “endangered the life of his own vice president”

Smith described what happened on January 6th in stark terms. When asked whether Trump was responsible for the violence at the Capitol, Smith testified:

Categories Accountability, Justice, Lies, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson on Venezuela Invasion

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2026 //
23

Heather Cox Richardson reviews the events of the weekend. One update: the Vice President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, initially gave a defiant speech declaring that Maduro was still the President of Venezuela. But she later remarked that the best response to the new situation was to be “cooperative,” implying that she has had conversations with Rubio and has agreed to hold Venezuela together by remaining in office. Her statement late Sunday included this: “We extend an invitation to the U.S. government to work together on a cooperation agenda, oriented toward shared development, within the framework of international law, and to strengthen lasting community coexistence.”

Trump and Marco Rubio may have learned a lesson from our disastrous invasion of Iraq, where U.S. forces removed everyone–civilian and military– associated with Saddam Hussein, who built a powerful resistance. Apparently they intend to “run” Venezuela by using the current regime to do their bidding.

Most frightening fact about this event is that Trump and his close associates believe they can take military action anywhere in the world without consulting Congress, as the Constitution requires. They treat Congress and the Constitution as useless appendages, not worthy of even a nod. So long as the Republicans who control Congress accept Trump’s disdain, they may as well go home and stop pretending that they matter.

Trump said after Maduro’s removal that he’s still determined to take Greenland away from Denmark, because we need it for our “national security.” Rubio issued a warning to Cuba, implying that it was in our sights. Trump is now reveling in the successful capture of Maduro and Venezuela. Who’s next?

Richardson wrote:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio took the administration’s message about its strikes on Venezuela to the Sunday talk shows this morning. It did not go well.

Asked by George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week under what legal authority the U.S. is going to run Venezuela, as President Donald J. Trump vowed to do, Rubio served up a lot of words but ultimately fell back on the idea that the U.S. has economic leverage over Venezuela because it can seize sanctioned oil tankers. Seizing ships will give the U.S. power to force the Venezuelan government to do as the U.S. wants, Rubio suggested. This is a very different message than Trump delivered yesterday when he claimed that the people standing behind him on the stage—including Rubio—would be running Venezuela.

When Stephanopoulos asked Rubio if he was, indeed, running Venezuela, Rubio again suggested that the U.S. was only pressuring the Venezuelan government by seizing sanctioned oil tankers, and said he was involved in those policies. When Kristen Welker of NBC’s Meet the Press also asked if Rubio was running Venezuela, Rubio seemed frustrated that “People [are] fixating on that. Here’s the bottom line on it is we expect to see changes in Venezuela.” Historian Kevin Kruse commented: “Yeah, people are fixating on a Cabinet Secretary being given a sovereign country to run because the president waged war without congressional approval and kidnapped the old leader. Weird that they’d get hung up on that.”

When Stephanopoulos asked why the administration thought it didn’t need congressional authorization for the strikes, Rubio said they didn’t need congressional approval because the U.S. did not invade or occupy another country. The attack, he said, was simply a law enforcement operation to arrest Maduro. Rubio said something similar yesterday, but Trump immediately undercut that argument by saying the U.S. intended to take over Venezuela’s oil fields and run the country.

Indeed, if the strikes were a law enforcement operation, officials will need to explain how officers managed to kill so many civilians, as well as members of security forces. Mariana Martinez of the New York Times reported today that the number of those killed in the operation has risen to 80.

Rubio highlighted again that the Trump administration wants to control the Western Hemisphere, and he went on to threaten Cuba. Simon Rosenberg of The Hopium Chronicles articulated the extraordinary smallness of the Trump administration’s vision when he wrote: “We must also marvel at the titanic idiocy of our new ‘Donroe Doctrine’ for it turns America from a global power into a regional one by choice. I still can’t really believe they are going through with this for it is so batsh*t f-ing crazy, and does so much lasting harm to our interests.”

Shortly after Trump told reporters yesterday that Venezuela’s former vice president, now president, Delcy Rodríguez is “essentially willing to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Rodríguez demanded Maduro’s return and said Venezuela would “never again be a colony of any empire, whatever its nature.” Indeed, U.S. extraction of Maduro and threats to “run” Venezuela are more likely to boost the Maduro government than weaken it.

In a phone call today with Michael Scherer of The Atlantic, Trump threatened Rodríguez, saying that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” Tonight on Air Force One, Trump told reporters that the U.S., not Rodríguez, is in charge of Venezuela.

Trump also told Scherer that he does indeed intend to continue to assert U.S. control in the Western Hemisphere, telling Scherer that “we do need Greenland, absolutely. We need it for defense.” Greenland is part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), meaning it is already part of U.S. national defense.

Although he ran for office on the idea of getting the U.S. out of the business of foreign intervention, Trump embraced the idea of regime change in Venezuela, telling Scherer: “You know, rebuilding there and regime change, anything you want to call it, is better than what you have right now. Can’t get any worse.” He continued: “Rebuilding is not a bad thing in Venezuela’s case. The country’s gone to hell. It’s a failed country. It’s a totally failed country. It’s a country that’s a disaster in every way.”

At Strength in Numbers, G. Elliott Morris noted that military intervention in Venezuela is even more unpopular with the American people “than Trump’s tariffs and health care cuts.” In September, only 16% of Americans wanted a “U.S. invasion of Venezuela,” with 62% against it. A December poll showed that 60% of likely voters opposed “sending American troops into Venezuela to remove President Maduro from power.” Only 33% approved. Even support for strikes against the small boats in the Caribbean could not get majority support: 53% opposed them while only 42% approved.

“By the time American forces touched Venezuelan soil early Saturday morning,” Morris writes, “Trump had already lost the public.”

But officials in the administration no longer appear to care what the American people want, instead simply gathering power into their own hands for the benefit of themselves and their cronies, trusting that Republican politicians will go along and the American people will not object enough to force the issue. The refusal of the Department of Justice to obey the clear direction of the Epstein Files Transparency Act seems to have been a test of Congress’s resolve, and so far, it is a gamble the administration appears to be winning.

Morris notes that a December CBS poll showed that 75% of Americans, including 58% of Republicans, correctly believed a president must get approval from Congress before taking military action against Venezuela. The president did not get that approval. By law, the president must inform the Gang of Eight before engaging in military strikes, but if an emergency situation prevents that notification, then the president must inform the Gang of Eight within 48 hours. The Gang of Eight is made up of the top leaders of both parties in both chambers of Congress, as well as the top leaders from both parties on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) who as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee is a member of the Gang of Eight, told CBS’s Margaret Brennan this morning that neither he nor House minority leader and fellow Gang of Eight member Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) had been briefed on the strikes. Himes said: “I was delighted to hear that Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been in regular contact with the administration. I’ve had zero outreach, and no Democrat that I’m aware of has had any outreach whatsoever. So apparently we’re now in a world where the legal obligation to keep the Congress informed only applies to your party, which is really something.”

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)—also a member of the Gang of Eight—told reporters that he hadn’t been briefed either and that the administration had deliberately misled Congress in three classified briefings before the strikes. In those briefings, officials assured lawmakers that the administration was not planning to take military action in Venezuela and was not pursuing regime change. “They’ve kept everyone in the total dark,” he said.

Nonetheless, Himes told Brennan that he thought Trump’s Venezuelan adventure would not go well: “We’re in the euphoria period of…acknowledging across the board that Maduro was a bad guy and that our military is absolutely incredible. This is exactly the euphoria we felt in 2002 when our military took down the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2003, when our military took out Saddam Hussein, and in 2011, when we helped remove Muammar Gaddafi from power in Libya. These were very, very bad people, by the way, much, much worse than Maduro and Venezuela, which was never a significant national security threat to the United States. But we’re in that euphoria phase. And what we learned the day after the euphoria phase is that it’s an awful lot easier to break a country than it is to actually do what the president promised to do, which is to run it…. [L]et’s let my Republican colleagues enjoy their day of euphoria, but they’re going to wake up tomorrow morning knowing what? My God, there is no plan here any more than there was in Afghanistan, Iraq, or in Libya.”

Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) was more direct: “The U.S. attack on Venezuela is illegal,” he posted. “Congress never authorized this use of military force. I will vote to stop it. This is insane. Health care costs and food prices are surging. Trump’s response is we’re going to run another country. Batsh*t crazy.”

—

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Ethics, Justice, Trump

Bernie Sanders: The World We Need and Deserve

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2025 //
28

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont shared his year-end thoughts along with his hopes for the future. As the first year of Trump’s second term winds down, it’s hard to believe that the dreams he describes can come true. Every day brings a new blow to the environment, to our health care, to our schools, to our children, to the rule of law, to our allies, to our national sense of purpose.

Yet we will persist. We have no other choice.

Sisters and Brothers – 

As we come to the end of a very difficult year, I want to wish everyone a very happy holiday season, a wonderful new year and thank you all for the support you have given our progressive movement.

Let me take this opportunity to share some end-of-the-year thoughts with you. 

As I reflect on the moment in which we’re living, what is most disturbing to me is not just that a handful of multi-billionaires control our economic life, our political life, and our media. That’s bad, and extremely dangerous. But, what is even worse is the degree to which these Oligarchs, through their wealth and power, have created an environment that limits our imaginations and our expectations as to what we deserve as human beings.

It really is quite amazing.

We live in the wealthiest country in the history of the world and, yet, we are asked to accept as “normal” the reality that tens of millions of Americans struggle every day to afford the basic necessities of life – food, housing, health care or education. 

We live in a “democracy,” but we are told that it is legal and proper for one man, the wealthiest person on earth, to spend $270 million in campaign contributions to help elect a president who then provides huge tax breaks and other benefits to the very rich. 

We live in a nation whose Declaration of Independence in 1776 boldly proclaimed “that all men are created equal” while, today, the gap between the rich and poor is wider than ever and the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 93%.

We live under a criminal justice system which punishes people for being poor, but rewards fossil fuel tycoons whose carbon emissions are wreaking havoc on the lives of billions of people and posing an existential threat to the planet.

As we enter the new year, our job is clear. We don’t have to accept the Oligarchs’ determination as to what is possible and what is not. We must think big, not small. We must reject status quo politics and economics. We must imagine, and fight for, a world very different than the one in which we now live. We must demand and create a world of economic, social, racial and environmental justice.

Yes. We no longer have to be the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care for all as a human right. The function of healthcare must not be to make the insurance companies and drug companies even richer. We CAN create a high quality cost-effective health care system that focuses on disease prevention, extends our life expectancy and is publicly funded. This is not a radical idea.

Yes. In a highly competitive global economy we CAN have the best public educational system in the world from child care to graduate school. As a nation, we must respect the importance of education and adequately compensate educators for the important work they do. We must strengthen and improve our primary and secondary educational systems and make child care and public colleges and universities tuition free. This is not a radical idea.

Yes. We CAN end the housing crisis and the reality that 800,000 Americans are homeless and millions spend half of their incomes to put a roof over their heads. We must build millions of units of low-income and affordable housing and, in the process, create many good paying union construction jobs. This is not a radical idea. 

YES. With effective regulation we CAN utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics to improve the lives of all, not just the billionaires who own that technology. As worker- productivity increases we can raise wages, improve working conditions and reduce the work week. Making sure that AI and robotics benefit all of society and not the wealthy few is not a radical idea.

YES. We CAN address the outrageous level of income and wealth inequality that we are now experiencing. While we can respect talented businesspeople and entrepreneurial skills, we do not have to accept the outrageous level of greed and vulgarity that the billionaire class too often exhibits. It is beyond absurd that we have a tax system in which the richest people in this country often pay an effective tax rate that is lower than truck drivers or nurses. Demanding that the 1% and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes is not a radical idea. 

At a time when we live in a dangerous and unprecedented moment in American history, and part of a rapidly changing world, it is absolutely imperative that we boldly respond to the crises that we face. This is not the time for timidity. Our agenda must be fearless and straightforward. Nothing less than the preservation of democracy, the well-being of the planet and the future of humanity is a stake.

As we enter the new year, let us go forward together. 

In Solidarity. 

Bernie

IN THAT SPIRIT, dear friends, Happy New Year!

Don’t stop believing in the power of conscience and collective action.

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

🍾🍾🍾🍾🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂

Categories Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Hope, Inequality, Injustice, Justice

David French: Why the Laws of War Matter

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2025 //
12

David French was hired by The New York Times to be a conservative opinion writer. He is a lawyer who practiced commercial law, then joined the military during the war in Iraq and served there as a lawyer. After deployment, he was a writer for the conservative National Review.

His explanation of the “laws of war” and the “rules of engagement” was very helpful to my understanding of current events, which is why I share it now.

He wrote:

In their military campaign in South America, Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth aren’t just defying the Constitution and breaking the law. They are attacking the very character and identity of the American military.

To make this case, I have to begin in the most boring way possible — by quoting a legal manual. Bear with me.

Specifically, it’s the most recent edition of the Department of Defense Law of War Manual. Tucked away on page 1,088 are two sentences that illustrate the gravity of the crisis in the Pentagon: “The requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders that the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal. For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”

Here’s another key line: “It is forbidden to declare that no quarter will be given.” A no quarter order is an order directing soldiers to kill every combatant, including prisoners, the sick and the wounded. The manual continues, “Moreover, it is also prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, or to threaten the adversary with the denial of quarter.”

Before we go any further, it’s important to define our terms. This newsletter is going to focus on the laws of war, not a related concept called rules of engagement. The laws of war reflect the mandatory, minimum level of lawful conduct, and all soldiers are legally obligated to obey them at all times and in all conflicts.

Rules of engagement are rules devised by commanders that are often more restrictive than the laws of war. For example, when I was in Iraq, our rules of engagement sometimes kept us from attacking lawful targets, in part because we wanted to be particularly careful not to inflict civilian casualties.

In my service, we were often frustrated by the rules of engagement. We did not, however, question the laws of war.

There are now good reasons to believe that the U.S. military, under the command of President Trump and Hegseth, his secretary of defense, has blatantly violated the laws of war. On Nov. 28, The Washington Postreported that Hegseth issued a verbal order to “kill everybody” the day that the United States launched its military campaign against suspected drug traffickers.

According to The Post, the first strike on the targeted speedboat left two people alive in the water. The commander of the operation then ordered a second strike to kill the shipwrecked survivors, apparently — according to The Post — “because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo.” If that reporting is correct, then we have clear evidence of unequivocal war crimes — a no quarter order and a strike on the incapacitated crew of a burning boat.

And if it’s true, those war crimes are the fault not of hotheaded recruits who are fighting for their lives in the terrifying fog and fury of ground combat but rather of two of the highest-ranking people in the American government, Hegseth and Adm. Frank M. Bradley, the head of Special Operations Command — the man the administration has identified as the person who gave the order for the second strike.

My colleagues in the newsroom followed on Monday with a report of their own, one that largely mirrored The Post’s reporting, though it presented more evidence of Hegseth’s and Bradley’s potential defenses. Hegseth, our sources said, did not order the second strike, and the second strike might have been designed to sink the boat, not kill survivors.

But if that’s the explanation, why wasn’t the full video released? The administration released limited video footage of the first strike, which created the impression of the instant, total destruction of the boat and its inhabitants. Now we know there was much more to see.

At the same time, Hegseth and the Pentagon have offered a series of puzzling and contradictory statements. Sean Parnell, the Pentagon spokesman, told The Post that its “entire narrative was false.”

Hegseth weighed in with a classic version of what you might call a nondenial denial. In a social media post, he said the Post report was “fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory,” but rather than explain what actually happened (and make no mistake, he knows exactly what happened), he followed up with an extraordinary paragraph:

As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be “lethal, kinetic strikes.” The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people. Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.

“Biden coddled terrorists,” Hegseth wrote later in the same post. “We kill them.”

We shouldn’t forget that this incident occurred against the backdrop of Hegseth’s obvious disdain for military lawyers. He has called them “jagoffs” and — along with Trump — fired the senior military lawyers in the Navy and Air Force.

We also know that the commander of Southern Command, which is responsible for operations in Central and South America, Adm. Alvin Holsey, announced that he was stepping down after holding the position for less than a year. As our newsroom reported, two sources “said that Admiral Holsey had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats.”

He announced his departure in October, weeks after the September strike.

Unlike many wartime incidents, airstrike incidents can be rather easy to investigate. Unless an airstrike is in response to an immediate battlefield emergency, the intelligence justifying the strike and the orders authorizing it are frequently preserved in writing, and the video and audio of the strikes are typically recorded. If this Pentagon, which proudly calls itself the “most transparent” in history, were to release the full attack video and audio, it would help answer many questions.

It’s a mistake, however, to limit our focus to the legality of this specific strike — or even to the important question of the legality of the Caribbean strikes in general. We live in an era in which our nation’s first principles require constant defense.

In other words, as we dig into incidents like this one, we cannot presume that Americans are operating from a shared set of moral and constitutional values or even a basic operating knowledge of history. We will have to teach the basic elements of American character anew, to a population that is losing its grasp on our national ideals.

The laws of war aren’t woke. They’re not virtue signaling. And they’re not a sign that the West has forgotten how to fight. Instead, they provide the American military with a number of concrete benefits.

First, complying with the laws of war can provide a battlefield advantage. This year I read Antony Beevor’s classic history of the end of Nazi Germany, “The Fall of Berlin 1945.” I was struck by a fascinating reality: Hitler’s troops fought fanatically against the Soviets not simply to preserve Hitler’s rule (most knew the cause was lost) but also to slow the Red Army down, to buy more time for civilians and soldiers to escape to American, British and French lines.

In short, because of our humanity and decency, Germans surrendered when they would have fought. The contrast with the brutality of the Soviets saved American lives.

I saw this reality in Iraq. By the end of my deployment in 2008, insurgents started surrendering to us, often without a fight. In one memorable incident, a terrorist walked up to the front gate of our base and turned himself in. But had we treated our prisoners the way that prisoners were treated at Abu Ghraib, I doubt we would have seen the same response.

Men will choose death over torture and humiliation, but many of those men will choose decent treatment in prison over probable death in battle.

Second, the laws of war make war less savage and true peace possible. One of the reasons the war in the Pacific was so unrelentingly grim was that the Japanese military never made the slightest pretense of complying with the laws of war. They would shoot shipwrecked survivors. They would torture prisoners. They would fight to the death even when there was no longer any military point to resistance.

We were hardly perfect, but part of our own fury was directly related to relentless Japanese violations of the laws of war. We became convinced that the Japanese would not surrender until they faced the possibility of total destruction. And when both sides abandon any commitment to decency and humanity, then the object of war changes — from victory to annihilation.

Even if only one side upholds the law of war, it not only makes war less brutal; it preserves the possibility of peace and reconciliation. That’s exactly what happened at the end of World War II. For all of our faults, we never became like the Soviets and thus have a very different relationship with our former foes.

Finally, the laws of war help preserve a soldier’s soul. We are a nation built around the notion of human dignity. Our Declaration of Independence highlights the worth of every person. Our Bill of Rights stands as one of the world’s great statements of human dignity. It is contrary to the notion of virtuous American citizenship to dehumanize people, to brutalize and oppress them.

We are also a quite religious society, and all of the great faiths that are central to American life teach that human beings possess incalculable worth.

If we order soldiers to contradict those values, we can inflict a profound moral injury on them — a moral injury that can last a lifetime. I still think about a 2015 article in The Atlantic by Maggie Puniewska. She described soldiers haunted by the experience of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Some of these soldiers describe experiences in which they, or someone close to them, violated their moral code,” she wrote, “hurting a civilian who turned out to be unarmed, shooting at a child wearing explosives, or losing trust in a commander who became more concerned with collecting decorative pins than protecting the safety of his troops.” Others, she said, citing a clinical psychologist who worked with service members who recently returned from deployments, “are haunted by their own inaction, traumatized by something they witnessed and failed to prevent.”

There are moral injuries that are unavoidable. I’m still haunted by decisions I made in Iraq, even though each one complied with the laws of war. Armed conflict is horrific, and your spirit rebels against the experience. But I can’t imagine the guilt of criminal conduct, of deliberately killing the people I’m supposed to protect.

In fact, when I first read the Washington Post story, I thought of the terrified pair, struggling helplessly in the water before the next missile ended their lives. But I also thought of the men or women who fired those missiles. How does their conscience speak to them now? How will it speak to them in 10 years?

I want to close with two stories — one from Iraq and one from Ukraine. There was a moment in my deployment when our forces were in hot pursuit of a known terrorist. We had caught him attempting to fire mortar rounds into an American outpost. Just when we had him in our sights, he scooped up what looked like a toddler and started running with the kid in his arms.

No one had to give the order to hold fire. There wasn’t one soldier who wanted to shoot and risk the toddler’s life. So we followed him until the combination of heat and exhaustion made him put the child down. Even then we didn’t kill him. We were able to capture him without using lethal force.

I’ll never forget that day — and the unspoken agreement that we would save that child.

Now, let’s contrast that moment of decency with the stories I heard in the town of Bucha, just northwest of Kyiv. It was the site of some of the most intense fighting in the first phases of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As I walked in part of the battlefield, I heard the stories of Russian soldiers looting and murdering their way across northern Ukraine.

One woman told me that the Russians shot a neighbor, a civilian, in his front yard and then threatened his wife when she tried to leave her home to retrieve his body. So he just lay there, day after day, until the Russians were finally driven back. That’s the character of the Russian military, and it’s been the character of the Russian military for generations.

Something else happened when I first read the Washington Post story; I instinctively rejected it. The account was completely at odds with my experience. There is not an officer I served with who would issue a no quarter order. There is not an officer I served with who would have given the order to kill survivors struggling in the water.

But I also knew that Hegseth is trying to transform the military. As The Wall Street Journal reported, he has been on a “decades-long quest” to rid the military of “stupid rules of engagement” — even to the point of becoming a champion of soldiers convicted of war crimes. In one of his books, he wrote that he told soldiers who served under his command in Iraq to disregard legal adviceabout the use of lethal force.

I don’t think that all of our rules of engagement are wise. I have expressed profound doubts about many of the rules that were imposed in Iraq and Afghanistan that went far beyond the requirements of the laws of war. Not every soldier accused of crimes is guilty of crimes.

But there is a difference between reforming the rules and abandoning the law — or, even worse, viewing the law as fundamentally hostile to the military mission. There is a difference between defending soldiers against false accusations and rationalizing and excusing serious crimes.

The pride of an American soldier isn’t just rooted in our lethality. It’s rooted in our sense of honor. It’s rooted in our compassion. We believe ourselves to be different because we so often behave differently.

Hegseth, however, has a different vision, one of unrestrained violence divorced from congressional and legal accountability. If that vision becomes reality, he won’t reform the military; he’ll wreck it. And he’ll wreck it in the worst way possible, by destroying its integrity, by stripping its honor and by rejecting the hard-earned lessons and vital values that have made the American military one of the most-trusted institutions in the United States.

Categories Accountability, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Discipline, Ethics, Failure, History, Justice
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