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One of the consequences of covering American politics is that it forces you to have frequent close encounters with some of the dumbest people alive and their terrible ideas. Cutting taxes on wealthy people will eventually enrich the middle class. Invading and occupying Iraq will spread democracy throughout the Middle East. Michael Bloomberg should be president. The list goes on. Anyway, here’s the latest, greatest hit from the terminally stupid: We can fix ICE by retraining them. The idea that a right-wing goon squad can somehow be reformed through the magic of Powerpoint presentations is squarely rooted in the fear among the Beltway-brained that proposing to abolish this rogue agency is going to cost Democrats a winnable election. I’m not sure where these fears find their foundation given that when “Abolish ICE” was in vogue, Democrats did great: They won in 2018 and 2020 and surprisingly overperformed in 2022. Then they got to 2024 and lost, not long after they took a rightward turn on immigration in an attempt to prove that they could be tougher on migrants than Trump was, as if his main failing was that his draconian immigration policies weren’t dressed up in enough management consultant–speak.The Searchlight Institute, the Beltway consultant class’s latest rebrand of gelatinous centrism, recently released a sternly worded memo tsk-tsking everyone who believes that it was a mistake to resurrect the Stasi and turn it loose to terrorize liberal cities. “Let’s be clear that advocating for abolishing ICE is tantamount to advocating for stopping enforcement of all of our immigration laws in the interior of the United States—a policy position that is both wrong on the merits and at odds with the American public on the issue,” the memo bleated. “Instead, Democrats should embrace an aggressive plan to rebuild ICE based on two concepts: Reform and Retrain.”This is all written at a significant remove from what’s actually happening in places like Minneapolis or even Washington, D.C.—and it’s no mean feat to be out of touch with a community of which you’re ostensibly a member. To have a real-world understanding of what ICE has been doing makes calls for its reeducation land in the ears with a cloddish thud. These are marauding, fascist thugs who enjoy terrorizing people. They’re in their dream job. They raid churches. They abduct people. They abduct children. They use children to abduct other people. They shot a woman in the face. They tear-gassed a car of children. They grabbed an elderly man from his house and dragged him outside in his underwear in the freezing cold simply because he wasn’t white. They detained a 5-year-old, used him to bait his parents, and then took them all away.Here’s a disturbing fact: When Minneapolis parents started putting stuffed animals on their dashboards so that kids could identify safe cars driven by the volunteers assigned to ferry them safely home from school, ICE started doing the same thing. What I’m trying to say is that ICE—from Secretary Kristi Noem down to the lowliest desk jockey—really, really has a fixation on abducting children. This is irredeemable beyond measure.ICE misrule isn’t happening because someone skipped a meeting during their onboarding process. This is a deeply ingrained and incurable corruption—not that anyone at ICE wants to be “cured.” ICE agents already receive comprehensive training, which they comprehensively ignore. In the latest instance, we’ve learned from a whistleblower that agents have claimed the right to break into homes without a judicial warrant, directly countermanding their vaunted legal training. No one can or should trust a retrained version of this agency. A root-and-branch teardown is in order. Mass firings are in order (I guess the leakers and whistleblowers can stay in some capacity). The clawback of billions of dollars is in order. Damnation, in every sense of the word, is in order.One of the problems with the argument that this mob of sickos can be retrained into something sane and decent begins with the fact that people misconstrue what ICE actually is and does. Searchlight’s statement, for instance, assumes that ICE is performing the task of enforcing immigration law. But ICE is not an immigration enforcement agency. It’s a rotted tentacle of the war on terror that’s been turned against the American people. A real immigration enforcement agency would be operating in places like Texas or Florida, which have large numbers of undocumented immigrants, and not Minnesota, which has relatively few. It also wouldn’t be targeting Minnesota’s Somali population, most of whom are American citizens and thus not subject to immigration enforcement. In addition, a real immigration enforcement agency would have a decent working relationship with local law enforcement. As Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley recently explained, ICE is impeding Twin Cities cops from doing their jobs—and harassing them to boot.The road back to a competent, humane, and lawful immigration enforcement agency necessarily begins with the elimination of the agency that’s absorbed all the money to perform those tasks while putting it toward an army of jackbooted thugs who harm innocent people. Don’t want to call this “Abolish ICE”? That’s fine, I’m invested in action, not slogans. Whatever gets us to the point where we’re firing all of the paramilitaries doing enforcement and removal operations, re-vetting all the people doing laptop jobs so that we can fumigate the agency of all its cryptofascists, and perhaps housing the enforcement agency at the Justice Department, alongside a bunch of other lawyers and bureaucrats working on immigration and naturalization processes—some kind of Immigration and Naturalization Service, maybe?—would do the trick.Retraining ICE isn’t just a stupid idea from an intellectual or moral perspective. It’s also really bad politics. A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that for the first time, a bare majority of respondents—46 to 43 percent—were in favor of abolishing ICE. But what’s more important, from the perspective of Democrats, is that 80 percent of Democrats were in favor of it. That puts “Reform ICE” at the business end of an electoral shellacking. The wine moms Democrats need to win anywhere aren’t having it with going soft on Trump’s hoodlums. If you bring a timid, half-measure response on ICE to the people whose bonds to one another have been forged in the fires of protecting their own neighbors from state violence, I promise: You will eat no small amount of shit.It’s no wonder that a pretty broad swath of Democratic officials, from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton, have reached the correct conclusion that ICE is beyond redemption. Here we have a simple example of people who have seen what this agency is all about and understand what needs to be done. To be out here making the case that an outlandishly malevolent gang of brownshirts can be reformed will require a lot of explaining. And when you’re explaining, you’re losing.The salient fact is this: What most of us see in ICE are people who are not fit to serve in any governmental capacity, many of whom should probably be in jail for serial violations of citizens’ constitutional rights and lawless corporal violence on the residents of major American cities. If you want sane and effective immigration enforcement that doesn’t shame the nation on a daily basis—well, ICE is standing in the way of that. They are a force for misrule. I’m not going to entertain the stupid notion that any of ICE’s current workforce can be meaningfully reeducated, and neither should you. It’s like suggesting a rabid dog can be retrained.This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. Sign up here.

The Trump administration is using an anti-Ku Klux Klan law to prosecute Minnesota activists for demonstrating against ICE at a St. Paul church. On Thursday, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had arrested Chauntyll Allen, Nekima Levy Armstrong, and William Kelly for their alleged […]

By Julia Conley for Common Dreams Twin Cities residents are weeks into the Trump administration’s deployment of thousands of federal immigration agents in an operation that has seen a legal observer and young mother fatally shot; US citizens dragged out of their homes and vehicles by masked officers; one of President Donald Trump’s top Border Patrol officials lobbing a gas grenade at lawful protesters; children as […]

Federal disclosures show body camera giant Axon lobbied for months as lawmakers carved out millions for the technology.

The memos were released by a judge who, last week, slammed Rubio, Noem, and Trump for “unconstitutional” actions.

Progressive critics say the vote exposes the fecklessness and hypocrisy of what claims to be an opposition party.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has taken a major step to stabilize water use in the state’s rural desert, where a Saudi-owned company established a massive farming operation more than a decade ago. During her State of the State Address earlier this month, Hobbs announced she was placing the Saudi alfalfa farm within an “active management […]

You can see how Democrats got the wrong idea. When President Trump was sworn into his second term one year ago, it was not unreasonable for the opposition to feel somewhat cowed. Though his victory was narrow, Trump won the popular vote and made significant enough inroads into traditional Democratic constituencies—young people, people of color, working-class people—that his grandiose claims of a political realignment were arguably credible. That wasn’t an excuse to roll over—standing up to the regime was essential. But there was an argument for Democrats to be careful about picking their spots. A year later, things look very different. Trump’s approval ratings are dismal on everything from the economy to immigration; more than half of Americans say his policies have made life less affordable for them; and his support among young and nonwhite voters has cratered. His 2024 victory was not a story of realignment, but a more banal case of economic concerns bringing down an unpopular incumbent—a story that now applies with full force to Trump’s own presidency.A normal opposition would be chugging coffee and suiting up for battle right now. “We’ve got them on the ropes, let’s go on the offense” is the appropriate response to our current political dynamics.Instead, inexplicably, the leaders of the Democratic Party are still refusing to give up the fearful crouch they adopted immediately after the 2024 election. The most egregious recent example is their failure to organize serious opposition to funding for the Department of Homeland Security. The split screen we’ve been seeing on this in recent days is outrageous. ICE officers are kidnapping half-naked grandpas in the freezing cold; they’re denying legal counsel to detainees; they’re entering homes without warrants; they’re using chemical weapons against high school students; they’re sending babies to the hospital; they’re detaining 5-year-old children. They are violently occupying American cities, acting like the gestapo that Trump seems to want them to be.And at the same time, as we speed toward one of congressional Democrats’ last remaining points of leverage against this regime—the January 30 deadline to pass an appropriations bill to keep the government open—we’re reading headlines like “Congress clinches $1.2T funding deal for DHS, Pentagon, domestic agencies” and “Democrats support bill that would give ICE $10 billion” and “Jeffries won’t whip vote against ICE funding.” We’re even seeing Democratic leaders propose more funding for ICE training and body cameras, just weeks after Jonathan Ross, a longtime ICE firearms instructor, literally filmed himself shooting Renee Good in the face.This is untenable. No rational, functioning opposition party would step in to fund the primary enforcement mechanism of the authoritarian takeover they ostensibly oppose. Failing to whip the Democratic caucus to oppose this legislation, as Hakeem Jeffries has already done in the House and Chuck “Folds Every Time” Schumer has shown every indication of doing in the Senate (where Republicans will need Democratic support to reach the 60 votes necessary to pass their gestapo funding bill) would be both a moral catastrophe and political malpractice.Americans are seeing what ICE is doing, and they don’t like it. Polling shows that a majority of Americans view ICE unfavorably and support restrictions on the agency. And for nearly half of the country, these concerns are not theoretical, they’re personal: 46 percent of Americans report being somewhat or very concerned that ICE could mistreat someone they know. This is the kind of playing field in which a fight—which will drive further attention toward ICE’s abuses—is politically advantageous. (To be clear, this is a fight worth picking on principle, even if it’s not a political slam dunk—but the fact is, it’s both!)The same can be said on the topic of climate change and energy. Trump’s positions here are not just deranged—just this week he spent an inordinate amount of time in his Davos speech ranting that wind turbines are “losers” that only “stupid people buy”—they’re also deeply unpopular. Supermajorities of Americans want to see more wind and solar power, and say that expanding these renewable energy sources is a more important priority than expanding fossil fuels. Yet Trump has threatened or canceled 321 major clean energy projects over the last year, keeping enough electricity to power 13.6 million homes off the grid. This will drive up utility costs, and make our grid less resilient to blackouts like those that countless Americans are likely to experience during the upcoming, climate change–driven winter storm. And yet leaders within the Democratic establishment not only refuse to go on the offensive on these issues, but are actually advocating for Democrats to abandon climate action.Instead of listening to these people, Dems might try looking to almost everyone else to learn how to rise to the occasion. Despite everything Trump has done to stop the clean energy transition, renewables have continued to grow, thanks in large part to the actions of regular people who are getting solar panels, installing heat pumps, and taking action however they can. The fight against ICE has been even more instructive: In the weeks since ICE began its assault on Minneapolis, we’ve seen thousands of people organizing—sometimes through established activist channels, but as often as not through churches, neighborhood group chats, and school Facebook groups—to stand up to Trump’s attacks on their neighbors. They’re following ICE officers across the city, honking horns, blowing whistles, recording abductions, and nonviolently disrupting these hateful operations however they can. Other community members are mobilizing to deliver groceries and offer rides to migrants who are afraid to leave their homes.It’s among the most beautiful examples of real-life antifascism I have ever seen. And it’s why, as deeply horrifying as these last few weeks have been—and as soul-crushing as it’s felt to watch Democrats once again utterly fail to meet the most basic minimum standards for an opposition party—I am actually, right now, feeling more optimistic about the survival of American democracy than I have in a long time.Over the last year we’ve seen the Democratic establishment, alongside practically every other elite institution in American society, bend the knee to Trump. But regular people all across the country—the people with the most to lose, who are the least insulated against the consequences of their resistance—have consistently refused to give in.This is where our salvation lies: in our relationships in our communities, our love for our neighbors, and our hatred of bullies. There’s a suffocating amount of malice and evil out there right now. But there’s also a tremendous amount of good old-fashioned American moxie, compassion, and stubbornness. As fragile and corrupt as our elite institutions have revealed themselves to be, the people in this country are demonstrating real resilience against Trump’s authoritarianism. This should inform our strategies of resistance moving forward. And perhaps even more importantly, it should provide us with a durable source of hope as we look down the barrel of three increasingly dark and dangerous years. If all we had to rely on in our fight against fascism was the Democratic Party, we’d be toast. But that’s not all we have. We have each other—and that’s turning out to be a more powerful bulwark than I ever expected.