As I noted yesterday, after the killings of Good and Pretti in Minneapolis last winter, ICE/DHS shifted strategy, trying to keep up the pace of arrests and predation, while also keeping it more under the radar. Then the recent push to up the number of daily arrests began to upset that apple cart with two brazen killings of two motorists in just one week. What was notable yesterday was that ICE didn’t use its standard excuse for killing a civilian — weaponized vehicles, an agent feeling his life was threatened. They simply said the agent shot Joan Sebastian Guerrero because of a vague belief he posed a danger to the community. This seemed odd since ICE has manufactured cover stories with abandon in the past. Why not now? And why go with an excuse that actually provides a much less robust defense in court? Sure it’s good not to lie. But again, they’ve done it so consistently for 18 months.
Now we’re hearing that DHS has ordered ICE to stop most traffic stops around the country, though this claim is being put out by the administration with no one actually saying it on the record. It’s just “sources.” This also looks like an effort to get Susan Collins out of a jam. She claimed credit today for the shift in policy.
We had a solid first week of this year’s Annual TPM Journalism Fund Drive. But we have a long way to go to get to our goal of raising $500,000 and, if possible, a bit more. If you haven’t taken a moment yet to contribute, please take just 90 seconds or so out of your Monday midday routine and join us now. (If you have, thank you so much).
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We’ve discussed a number of times that the high-profile/high-violence occupations of blue cities in 2025 and early 2026 were never designed to maximize deportations. They were meant to overawe and terrorize the city’s inhabitants and the sovereign state governments of those jurisdictions. The public blowback became too extreme and then, along with canning Kristi Noem, DHS/ICE switched to focusing on deportation numbers without most of the high-visibility operations which weren’t really aimed at deportation numbers in the first place. But there have been an increasing number of reports over the last few weeks suggesting that ICE/DHS is intensifying its efforts and upping the number of arrests and detentions. It seems highly likely, though not certain, that the two recent ICE-involved shooting fatalities in the last week — one in Houston and another just today in Maine — are tied to that intensified push for deportation arrest numbers. ICE agents tend to be poorly trained and operate in a culture of violence and impunity. So events like these could happen at any time. But keep an eye on the relationship between the two things. DHS/ICE has been trying to intensify its efforts while avoiding the headlines which were so damaging last winter. But the rapid resorts to fatal violence and the culture of impunity that sustains it, so embedded within Trump Era ICE’s culture, seems to be breaking through.
There’s not a lot I have to add to the reporting on Lindsey Graham’s sudden and unexpected death. The longtime South Carolina senator died yesterday evening after what his office is calling a “brief and sudden illness.” (Other unconfirmed reports point to a heart attack and cardiac arrest.) Obituaries are referring to him as a consistent foreign policy hawk, a stalwart Trump supporter. Both true. But there’s another feature of his personality and political career that is key to understanding the man. He always needed a daddy. Or let’s say a political leader. A top dog.
If you’re a podcast listener, I want you to check out The TPM Social Club, our second podcast which is hosted by reporter Josh Kovensky and publisher Joe Ragazzo. I particularly hope you check out the latest episode where Josh and Joe interview TPM’s Capitol Hill reporter Emine Yücel. They talk about covering Capitol Hill for TPM, being an international competition-level fencer and also her background as an immigrant from Turkey and reporting on Capitol Hill politics through the prism of a Turkish background and upbringing.
We’re now in the midst of one of these now and again collective Democratic meltdowns, filled with dooming laments, drama, intra-party attacks and insults, rending of clothes, “reckonings” and more. But there’s a fact, little discussed and under-appreciated, that is nestled in these collective freak-outs. This may sound nonsensical or perhaps a semantic point with no real meaning. But it’s foundational to how the Democratic Party functions and why it functions differently and often disappointingly compared to the GOP.
We hear lots of arguments in Democratic politics that the party’s base is its left wing. There’s a certain logic to that. It’s a center-left party so it’s left wing is its base and it’s filled out by more fair-weather voters or less ideological ones. In a sense it’s really their party or they’re the legitimate owners of it as soon as corporate interests and softies and other interlopers can be kicked to the curb. But it’s not. The most obvious reason is that are just too few of them. But they are also very different, sociologically, ideologically, demographically from the rest of the party. This isn’t just a dig on the left. The same applies to white liberals. There are dramatically more of them. But they are still really, really different from much of the rest of the party.
Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett made a rare appearance before congressional appropriators Tuesday as the Supreme Court seeks an increased security budget.
