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2025-12-12 01:56:37

A US citizen, who is Somali, was detained by immigration agents in Minneapolis on Tuesday after he repeatedly offered to hand over his identification, according to the man, a local elected official, and legal advocates. Mubashir, 20, who has chosen to go by his first name only, said at a news conference that he “felt targeted.” 

A video of the incident published by the Sahan Journal shows a federal agent putting Mubashir in a headlock while handcuffed, bringing him to his knees in the snow, and forcefully placing him in the back of a vehicle before driving off. Multiple people chased after the vehicle, with one witness to the detainment standing in front of the car. Prior to the recording, Mubashir said that the immigration agents chased him on foot in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis. 

“I deserve to be here like anyone else. I’m a U.S. citizen,” Mubashir said. “I can’t even step outside without being tackled—no question—because I’m Somali.” 

Before grabbing Mubashir, according to Sahan Journal, the agents were walking into nearby businesses in the Somali-heavy neighborhood, questioning people and asking them to show their passports.

Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement descended upon the twin cities last week in what federal officials are calling “Operation Metro Surge.” The operation is primarily targeting the Somali immigrants in the area, spurring locals to carry around their passports or even fear going outside at all, according to the New York Times. This week, Trump repeatedly referred to people from Somalia as “garbage.” The president said Somalia “stinks” and that immigrants from the country “come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch.” “We don’t want them in our country,” he said multiple times. 

According to Mubashir, while en route to the immigration offices, which were about twenty minutes away, he repeatedly asked the agents to show his identification. But, he said, they refused. 

Once they arrived at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Mubashir said that the agents took his fingerprints, asked to take his photo, which he refused, and then eventually allowed him to show ID proving his US citizenship. Then, Mubashir, who has lived in Minneapolis since he was a year old, was allowed to leave. 

“I asked them, ‘can you take me back to where you picked me up from?’ They said ‘no, you have to walk in the snow,'” Mubashir said. His parents then came to get him. 

“I apologize that this happened to you in my city, with people wearing vests that say ‘police.’ That’s embarrassing,” Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said during a press conference.

“This young man is a bright, hardworking member of our community,” Minneapolis City Council Member Jamal Osman said in a statement “and his experience is a stark reminder of the overreach and lack of accountability in ICE operations.”

The Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which organized the press conference where Mubashir shared his story, said they have received many calls from local Somali residents who are US citizens reporting that they were either arrested or questioned by immigration agents. “We believe this is a violation of our constitution,” Jaylani Hussein, executive director of CAIR-MN, said. Hussein said that at least two other US citizens were picked up by immigration officials and then released on Tuesday. 

In a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem following these arrests, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz urged her to review all recent arrests in Minnesota. “The forcefulness, lack of communication and unlawful practices displayed by your agents will not be tolerated in Minnesota,” Walz told Noem in his letter.

According to a ProPublica investigation published in October, more than 170 US citizens were detained and held against their will—whether during immigration raids or protests—in the first nine months of Trump’s second term.

A representative from the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to Mother Jones’ request for comment on whether its immigration agents detain people without checking identification that is actively being offered. 

2025-12-11 23:33:16

Already this year, anti-vaccine activists have downplayed the risks of measles and polio. Now, they’re adding whooping cough to the list, even as cases of the disease surge, killing at least ten babies over the past two years. Two of those babies died in Louisiana, where a crusading state surgeon general, Dr. Ralph Abraham, waited months to warn the public about the outbreak and banned mass vaccination campaigns.

Instead of discipline, Abraham has been rewarded: Last month, he was appointed to the second-highest leadership role at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Abraham will now be the highest-ranking scientist at the agency. His background is unusual for the role. He practiced veterinary medicine at first, and only later was a family physician. Abraham also served as a representative for Louisiana in Congress from 2015 to 2021. (During the pandemic, Abraham promoted the anti-parasite drug ivermectin as a Covid cure, despite evidence showing it didn’t work.)

Whooping cough, also called pertussis, is caused by bacteria that produce toxins that damage the respiratory lining, resulting in prolonged bouts of coughing. Such episodes are especially dangerous for infants, in whom they can lead to life-threatening respiratory distress. Pertussis has been on the rise since the pandemic—according to the CDC, last year, there were more than 35,000 cases, compared to fewer than 8,000 the year before.

One factor that may be contributing to the soaring pertussis case counts is declining rates of vaccination: Last year, the CDC reported that just over 92 percent of US kindergarteners were vaccinated against the disease, down from 95 percent in 2017. The dip occurred against a backdrop of increasing anti-vaccine activism, embraced by the US Department of Health and Human Services under Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. In Kentucky, three babies have died this year of the disease—none of them were vaccinated, nor were their mothers, according to Kentucky’s Center for Health and Family Services.

Since 2024, the pertussis surge has been especially acute in Abraham’s home state of Louisiana. But this didn’t prompt swift movement from him or other officials. Despite high case counts, it wasn’t until May of this year, by which time two babies in the state had died of the disease, that Louisiana finally issued a health alert. Physicians criticized Abraham for failing to warn residents of the disease’s dangers—and the critical importance of maternal vaccination during pregnancy, since babies can’t be vaccinated until they are two months old.

Abraham has a history of anti-vaccine rhetoric. In February, Louisiana’s Department of Health officially banned vaccine promotion events in the state. That same month, Abraham and his deputy surgeon general, Wyche Coleman, published a letter on the health department’s website decrying what they saw as an overbearing public health system. “For the past couple of decades, public health agencies at the state and federal level have viewed it as a primary role to push pharmaceutical products, particularly vaccines,” they wrote. “Government should admit the limitations of its role in people’s lives and pull back its tentacles from the practice of medicine.” (The Louisiana Department of Health didn’t respond to a request for comment from Mother Jones.)

Given Abraham’s vaccine skepticism, it is perhaps unsurprising that he has earned a leadership position under Kennedy. In his new role, Abraham will work on high-level agency strategy, as well as coordinate between divisions, and oversee both internal and external communication.

Against the backdrop of the whooping cough surge, anti-vaccine activists have been mounting a campaign against the immunization that protects people from the worst effects of the disease. Last week, Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy, devoted an episode of its TV show to whooping cough, inaccurately claiming that the vaccine actually caused more cases. In September, another anti-vaccine group, Physicians for Informed Consent, falsely claimed to its 117,000 followers on X that pertussis vaccines “have big gaps—surveillance, trials, even population data fall short.”

Dr. Fiona Havers, a respiratory disease and vaccine expert who led the pertussis work for the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices before the pandemic, said the anti-vaccine groups’ claims about whooping cough weren’t supported by evidence. While protection from the version of the vaccine that children receive can wane and require a booster, large, high-quality studies consistently show that the vaccines are indeed effective. Likewise, community immunization is critical for protecting babies who are too young to be vaccinated.

The anti-vaccine groups’ claims were “very consistent with the false information that the anti-vaccine movement, including RFK Jr, has been spreading about vaccines for years,” said Havers, who is also an adjunct associate professor at the Emory School of Medicine. “They are minimizing the seriousness of whooping cough and also spreading false information about the effectiveness of the vaccines, which are very effective in preventing disease in children.”

In its TV show episode, Children’s Health Defense suggested that a home remedy of Vitamin C could treat whooping cough. Social media wellness influencers offer similar treatments—one with the Instagram handle of the_detoxmama tells her 811,000 followers that a natural treatment works by “clearing out the barrier and allowing the immune system to get in and deal with the bacteria.”

Pediatric immunologist and social media health communicator Dr. Zachary Rubin said the only proven treatment for whooping cough is antibiotics, which are most effective when given early on in the illness. “Vitamin C does not neutralize the toxin, clear the infection, or shorten the course of illness,” he wrote in an email to Mother Jones. “Relying on vitamin C alone can delay appropriate treatment and increases the risk of complications, especially for babies.”

As of late November, there have been more than 25,000 pertussis cases this year, including three deaths of infants, two in Louisiana and one in Kentucky. Though this year’s total number of cases will likely be lower than last year’s, it will surpass counts in the few years before the pandemic; in 2019, there were fewer than 19,000 cases.

In recent weeks, pertussis has continued its rampage, especially in western states, including Washington, Oregon, and California. The CDC hasn’t yet issued any specific alerts about whooping cough, and the agency did not respond to questions from Mother Jones, except to confirm Abraham’s new role.  

Havers sees Abraham’s appointment as part of a pattern of dubious public health leadership decisions—evidenced by his failure to warn Louisiana residents about the dangers of whooping cough. “Obviously, getting information out to the public and to clinicians that pertussis is circulating in a community is critical for protecting vulnerable infants and for stopping an outbreak,” she said. “It continues to be appalling, the type of people RFK Jr. is putting into high-level positions in CDC.”

2025-12-11 22:14:13

Six weeks ago, Jack Posobiec asked me to comment on whether I have a “creepy fetish for Asian women.”

That was one of several false and wildly personal allegations that the far-right pundit and newly minted member of the Pentagon press corps said that he planned to include in “a story that I’m writing about you.”

I immediately understood his October 28 email to be a threat, though it was not made explicit. The day before, I had sent the Pentagon press office a series of questions concerning Eric Geressy, a senior Pentagon adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Geressy, who served with Hegseth during a tour in Iraq in the mid-2000s, is part of the Pentagon effort to instill a “warrior ethos” within the US military. He now leads a team reviewing the role of women in the armed forces.

Calling Geressy “my toughest critic and my best mentor,” Hegseth in March presented him with the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest award for valor, for Geressy’s conduct following an ambush in Baghdad in 2007. 

I had discovered that Geressy’s email address was linked to a public Goodreads page with a “currently reading” list that included various books featuring stories about “Asian wife sharing.” These pornographic works, with titles such as “Asian Wife Went With Her Dad’s Friend: A Cuckold Story,” appeared on the list alongside two books by Hegseth and a handful of military histories. They contain detailed descriptions of cuckolding, group sex, and scenes involving “ladyboys”—a term used to refer to Thai transgender women. The page, active since 2021, was taken down the day after I contacted the Pentagon and Geressy about it.

I also asked about a 1997 domestic violence allegation against Geressy, about his dating habits, and past relationships with foreign women. I inquired if the Pentagon had assessed those relationships as part of Geressy’s security clearance process, and, more broadly, if his personal life might create concerns about his susceptibility to foreign influence operations.

The Pentagon repeatedly asked for more time to address those questions. Eventually chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell responded, in part: “Geressy has served for 38 years in the government, has been vetted numerous times by the relevant agencies, and has never posed a security risk or engaged in improper behavior as this piece tries to suggest. Mother Jones has stooped to a new low with this shoddy hit piece and should be ashamed of itself.”

Posobiec’s email arrived the day after my initial inquiries. The false claims he asked about, particularly the Asian fetish thing, seemed to mirror my questions. Posobiec, who in 2016 promoted the bogus Pizzagate conspiracy theory, gave me a deadline, 5 p.m. on October 29, that was the same as the one I had given the Pentagon press office. A Pentagon spokesperson and Posobiec both denied coordination. Geressy declined to comment. But considering the questions, timing, and Posobiec’s links to Defense Department officials, the situation seemed clear. This was either an incredible coincidence or a deliberate message: Publish your article and get smeared.

Posobiec’s email claimed I have “a history of objectifying women,” and that I had engaged in some kind of misconduct. The email also included questions about my marriage.

Posobiec’s questions suggested one of his “two sources” may have been a real woman with whom I did have a brief relationship nearly a decade ago. Contrary to the email’s depiction, that relationship was perfectly amicable at the time. But it was part of some personal messiness, especially around the end of my first marriage, that is embarrassing. 

My first instinct was to laugh this off. Who cares what the Pizzagate guy writes? But getting lied about by someone with 3 million X followers is not that funny. Comet Ping Pong never housed a Democratic pedophilia ring in its basement. But that didn’t make it less dangerous when the restaurant was targeted by QAnon crazies, including a guy who fired an AR-15 into a room that had just been full of kids. 

I have done reporting that angered other well-known figures on the right—Roger Stone, Miles Guo, Steve Bannon—and that drew some doxxing and half-assed personal attacks from their allies. But I am not famous. Who cares about me?

The threatened audience for the smear, clearly, was my peers—and my wife. It seemed meant to scare me into spiking my own story. That is not journalism, but an attack on journalism.

This apparent threat became more explicit as the possible publication date we had given the Pentagon approached. In tweets, Posobiec asked his followers if he should publish a story about mistreatment of women by a “DC-area liberal reporter.” After our possible publication date passed, though, he went quiet.  

That left my editors and me with a problem. Here was what we believed to be an attempt to strong-arm Mother Jones, and perhaps an expansion of the administration’s war on the press. This was news. But the development also complicated an already tricky story. And if we delayed publication, or decided the story was not important enough to run, we risked leaving the impression that we, and I, had been intimidated into silence. 

We knew that we would not drop the article because of Posobiec’s ploy, nor rush into running it before we were ready. Instead, we did what reporters are supposed to do when confronted with a journalism dilemma: more journalism. 

My emails to the Pentagon and Geressy were part of an effort to check the information we had gathered. We wanted their side of the story. My questions went largely unanswered, but I kept asking. I talked to more people. And I worked to verify the information we had.

We had linked the Goodreads account to Geressy based on various pieces of identifying information, including an email address he had used. The account was listed under the username Eric J—Geressy’s middle name is Joseph. At one point, the page noted that Eric J lived in a specific Florida town, which matched Geressy’s known residence. Also, some of the non-erotic books displayed on the account were seemingly of interest to him; they included books, like Hegseth’s The War on Warriors, that mention Geressy’s military service. These titles appeared on the page between 2021 and July of this year.

The same email address was also linked to other apps, including Yelp and MyFitnessPal, that appeared to be Geressy’s, along with a MySpace page that includes what looks like a photograph of him.

Geressy declined to comment, and did not confirm he had a Goodreads account. In theory that made it possible, if highly unlikely, that someone could have used his email account, obtained through a hack or other means, to set up the Goodreads account. So we tried to rule out that possibility.

I spoke to Nathaniel Fried, the CEO of OSINT Industries. That’s a British organization whose platform matches personal information such as emails and phone numbers to online accounts; we had relied on this platform to connect Geressy’s email address to the Goodreads account. Fried said that while OSINT can’t tell you for sure who signed up, “it’s 100 percent that that email has an account.” In other words, either Geressy or someone using his email and personal information created the account.

I also asked Amazon, which owns Goodreads, about the account. After much back and forth, the company said it did not currently have a record of an account linked to Geressy, or the email address he appears to have used. But they also said that they do not retain identifying information for deleted Goodreads accounts. Since the account linked to Geressy had been deleted weeks before, right after I reached out to the Pentagon and Geressy for comment, this statement gave us little new information. Overall, Amazon’s carefully parsed response did nothing to refute the connection.

Still, none of that fully bore on the main consideration. That is, whether personal reading tastes, past relationships, or apparent dating habits are worth reporting on. After extensive discussion, we decided that in this case, they are.

For one thing, former national security officials told us that for Pentagon personnel in particular, relationships with foreign partners are a major concern. 

Geressy lived in 2016 with a woman who evidence suggests may be a Chinese national. That woman started a limited liability company during that time with a name that references Chinese investment. It was registered at Geressy’s home address, then dissolved a few months later. (I am omitting some specifics to avoid including identifying information.) The Pentagon said that Geressy has never been deemed a security risk. But it did not provide verifiable answers to questions about whether that relationship and company were examined as part of Geressy’s security clearance review. Neither did Geressy.

Geressy has had what appears to be a stormy personal life that has included three marriages. In 1997, a jury acquitted him of a domestic violence charge after an accusation by his then-wife, according to court records.

Email addresses Geressy used, and other identifying information, including his first name and biographical information, also appeared in three data breaches, between 2011 and 2016, of adult websites geared toward finding sexual partners, according to databases that include the hacked data. Those sites are Fling, AdultFriendFinder, which then called itself “the World’s Largest Sex & Swinger Community,” and Ashley Madison, which billed itself as “the most famous name in infidelity.” 

The presence of Geressy’s email and other information in these data breaches does not confirm he used these sites, according to cyber researchers.

But as John Sipher, a former senior CIA officer, told Mother Jones, in normal circumstances, a government official who might be involved with such websites and who had romantic relationships with foreigners would draw scrutiny. “It’s all about whether you are susceptible to a foreign service getting any leverage against you,” Sipher said. “It may not be disqualifying, but it should be looked at.”

And there is a second point. Geressy is a top official in a Defense Department that has booted trans people from the military based on President Trump’s executive order that argues that “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.” Geressy is not responsible for trans policy, but he is part of a Pentagon leadership that is concerns itself with subordinates’ private lives.

In The War on Warriors, one of the books on the Goodreads page linked to Geressy, Hegesth cited his mentor to support the position that women should not serve in combat roles. “From my perspective,” Hegseth quoted Geressy as saying, circa 2007, “overwhelmingly most females want nothing to do with combat arms.” According to Hegseth, Geressy had argued that the Army had unfairly awarded medals to some women who had served in combat. “If SGM Geressy was a transvestite—or gay, or black, or a woman,” Hegseth wrote, “he would have three Distinguished Service Crosses and be on the front of a Wheaties box.”

The Pentagon is already beset by scandals in which top officials, most notably Hegseth himself, have been accused of conduct that falls short of the standards it demands of other Defense Department officials and service members. Critics have argued that for lower-ranking personnel, actions like Hegseth sharing military plans outside of approved channels, or the adultery he acknowledged during confirmation hearings, would result in firing. The racy selections on the Goodreads account linked to Geressy’s email may be comparatively minor. But that a public page listing such titles existed until we flagged it adds to the impression that the department’s leadership is not only hypocritical, but inept.

Hegseth has reacted furiously to reporting on some of his missteps. He has raged over coverage of his sharing of plans for bombing targets in Yemen with a Signal group that included the editor of the Atlantic. (The department’s inspector general reported that Hegseth’s actions could have put US troops at risk.) He fired aides accused of leaking news of a plan to give Elon Musk a top-secret briefing on US war plans versus China. Posobiec’s email came as the Pentagon took an increasingly hostile stance toward the media.

Kingsley Wilson, a former conservative influencer who is the department’s press secretary, told me that she did not speak to Posobiec about my story and did not believe Parnell did either. Posobiec also denied coordinating with the Pentagon. Geressy did not respond to a question about it.

But it came amid broader pushback to our reporting. “This is a garbage story made up of false allegations, decades-old claims that proved untrue, and disgusting innuendo aimed at smearing a man who was awarded the Army’s second-highest military honor for extraordinary heroism in combat,” Parnell said.

That response is consistent with the combative press relations posture of the second Trump administration. Shortly before, when a reporter asked the White House press secretary to identify who had suggested Trump meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest, she responded: “Your mom did.”

Similar truculence drives the Defense Department’s recent decision to force outlets that assign reporters to the Pentagon to agree to a policy that bars reporters from revealing news the department does not authorize. Most news organizations refused. (The New York Times recently sued the Pentagon, arguing that the policy violates the First Amendment.) Posobiec is among a group of pro-Trump influencers who accepted the restrictive terms. The result is that the new press corps the Pentagon grants access to is largely composed of far-right activists.

The Pentagon press shop maintains close ties to its newly constituted press corps. Wilson, the department’s press secretary, occasionally appears on a program Posobiec hosts. In an October episode, she thanked him for agreeing to the department’s restrictions. “Now we get to have incredible journalists like yourself who are going to be here in the Pentagon reporting on what the Department of War is doing every single day,” she said.

On Wednesday night, after weeks of silence, I heard from Posobiec again. He said he was “finalizing my story,” and wanted to know if me, my wife, “or your in-laws” wished to comment. His message arrived an hour and forty minutes after I wrote to Geressy, posing some last questions and telling him I was “finalizing this story.”

Trump’s Pentagon wants reporters to be not just docile recipients of the administration’s preferred narratives but active propagandists. That is a direct attack on the free press. It is also an insidious danger. It threatens to make us bad at our jobs. It can be harder work to treat people whom we cover critically like complete human beings, people who deserve empathy and a real chance to explain themselves. If the department yanks credentials for tough reporting, if a press secretary just attacks a story without engaging with questions, and if inquiries draw personal attacks, why give spokespeople, or the officials they work for, any opportunity to respond at all?   

The answer, I think, is that in journalism, like everywhere else, we should treat people the way we want to be treated. This story, with its weird personal twist, drove home that necessity. By proposing to smear me, Posobiec inadvertently provided a reminder of how responsible reporters ought to act.

I have worked to be fair—and honest. This attempt won’t appease the Pentagon or the people who threatened me. And the choice here, between appearing to be coerced into silence or maybe getting slandered, lacks an option that doesn’t feel shitty. 

But what I can control are the standards I aim for. Those are ultimately up to me. But they reflect the values of Mother Jones, and the influence of other journalists, one of whom is my wife. She makes the judgment I’ll live with.

2025-12-11 22:04:13

A version of the below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

For over a decade—!!!—Donald Trump has defied political gravity. After descending that Trump Tower elevator surrounded by fake supporters who had been paid to attend his campaign announcement, Trump pulled one disqualifying move after another. He insulted war hero John McCain. He mocked a reporter with a physical disability. He made crass and crude comments. He lied relentlessly. He celebrated fringe players like conspiracy theory–monger Alex Jones. And with each of these misdeeds and missteps, the pundits declared he was kaput. But he wasn’t. Not even after the grab-’em-by-the-pussy videotape.

Trump was able to survive gaffes, controversies, and scandals that would blow away any other politician. In part that was because, as one of his early advisers told me, being an asshole was part of his appeal. It was baked into the cake. How many times since he was first elected president has a commentator said—or you thought—in response to some Trump outrage, no other politicians could get away with this? That includes bear-hugging Vladimir Putin, mismanaging the Covid epidemic (which led to avoidable deaths of tens of thousands of Americans), his first impeachment, his effort to overturn a legitimate election to retain power, his incitement of political violence that aimed to destroy American democracy, and the countless instances of grift and graft he and his clan have perpetrated.

It seemed that the rules of politics and public life did not apply to Trump. Yes, he lost the 2020 election, but he resurrected himself—yet again defying the conventional wisdom following the January 6 riot that he was finished politically.

Trump still survives revelations and scandals that would destroy past presidencies—swiping classified documents, paying off a porn star. But the good news is that this does not mean that the political universe has been permanently upended. In recent weeks, there have been signs that political gravity does still exist and that we are not adrift in a cosmos free of all rules.

The most obvious indicator was the off-year elections. History suggested that Democrats would fare well, given Trump’s falling approval numbers and still-too-high prices. And they did, even better than expected in many places. (See Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, and Eileen Higgins, who this week became the first Democrat to be elected Miami mayor in three decades.) Beyond those electoral returns, we are seeing other normal political occurrences.

Trump is technically a lame duck president. Given his hold on the GOP, which he has turned into a cult of personality, it might be expected that he could escape this diminished status and still dominate. And, mostly, that’s so. But there have been a few whiffs of Republican restiveness. His illegal military attacks on suspected drug boats prompted a few Hill Republicans to ask questions and even suggest the need for an investigation. That might not lead to a full-fledged inquiry. But it’s the most pushback we’ve seen from the GOP. And a handful of congressional Republicans have hinted that they are concerned by the dramatic hike in health insurance premiums that’s about to hit because Trump and the GOP killed the extended subsidies for Obamacare policies. Again, there’s no open rebellion—except for Marjorie Taylor Greene—but the 100 percent obeisance of the GOP has dropped a point or two.

Then there’s MAGA. As historians of political movements will note, none of them live forever. The tea party, BLM, Occupy, the nuclear freeze—eventually they lose steam and develop fractures; leadership fights and disagreements cause fissures and sometimes cannibalistic internal conflicts. We’re witnessing that with MAGA now. There have been numerous splits and disagreements these past few months, with almost a civil war over the release of the Epstein files (and that may still transpire, depending on what the Trump administration does in response to the new law that compels the release of these documents).

MAGA world had a major brawl over Tucker Carlson’s friendly and supportive interview with Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist and Hitler fanboy. On the right, there’s been a pitched battle regarding support for Israel. The aforementioned Greene, once a MAGA favorite, has cast herself out of Trump’s circle of trust after tussling with him over the Epstein records and calling Israel’s war on Gaza “genocide” and voicing worry over rising health insurance premiums. The manosphere—Joe Rogan and the army of Rogan-wannabes—have groused about the ICE raids going too far, especially when they round up day laborers outside Home Depot who are simply looking for work. Steve Bannon, the grand strategist of MAGA, is not happy Trump is handing Big Tech a blank check. 

To get a sense of the insane vitriol and vituperation within MAGA land these days, check out this recent tweet from Laura Loomer, the avenging angel of Trumptown:

I don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to dissect and process this particular feud—for you or for me. But the point is clear: These people are nuts, and the internecine bloodlust is high.

I’m sure I’m forgetting some of the other fractures that have arisen recently. But MAGA is behaving in a familiar manner, with grifters and ideologues vying for attention, money, and turf. Trump won’t be around forever, and there’s scrambling for positioning in the post-Trump era. That’s true within the GOP for those who yearn to run in 2028, presuming there will be an election, and it’s also true for those who want to claim the MAGA mantle next. These may be separate power struggles.

Here’s another sign of the reassertion of political gravity. After Trump won the election a year ago, there was much blathering about a strategic realignment in politics. He had increased his share of votes among Latinos, Blacks, and young people, especially men in these categories. Republicans were giddy, believing Trump had cracked a code that would bring these traditionally Democratic voters into the GOP coalition permanently. That was then. In the elections last month, these voters switched back to the Ds, even and especially young men. No, Trump did not deliver a history-defying permanent shift in electoral politics. It now looks like there’s a regression to the mean.

That brings us to Trump’s poll numbers. Cheap analysis focuses on this standard marker. But it shows us that Trump is not a supernatural politician. In recent decades, all presidents decline in popularity after they enter office. Trump is following that pattern—and more so. His approval rating, according to the latest Gallup poll, has plummeted to 36 percent, with disapproval hitting 60 percent. Some surveys have Trump a few points higher on approval. Yet it’s evident he’s getting close to hitting his floor.

My unscientific guesstimate is that about 30 to 35 percent of the nation fully buys Trump’s bunk. They believe his bullshit—America’s about to be destroyed by migrants; radical lunatics, commies, antifa, Democrats, and the media are scheming to annihilate the nation; the Deep State is out to sabotage Trump; and only Trump, the smartest, strongest, and most noble man in human history, can save the US of A. No matter what happens, they will stand by their man.

Yet the rest of the nation is not cottoning to his mass deportation crusade, his economic policies, his razing of the East Wing, his revenge-infused implementation of authoritarianism, his brazen corruption, his plutocratic policies, and his never-ending nastiness. It’s not wearing well. If you do a lot of crap that’s unpopular, you won’t be popular. That’s a rather basic rule of politics, and Trump is not escaping that. And Republicans, naturally, are wigged out that one of the major historical trends of American politics will likely hold next year: The president’s party gets socked in midterm elections.

It’s far too early to make any predictions. External circumstances can always change any political equation. What happens if there’s a war in Venezuela? Or if the White House can find a trans migrant who commits a heinous crime? And we all ought to worry about Trump and his crew concocting ways to screw with next year’s elections.

Don’t put on any rose-colored glasses. Trump has done so much harm and damage. According to Impactcounter.com, the ending of US foreign assistance and the demolition of USAID has led to nearly 700,000 deaths, including the deaths of 451,000 children. There’s still much harm and damage to come, here and abroad. But it is reassuring that the laws of politics remain partially intact. Trump, the GOP, and MAGA are not immune. But their opponents need to keep in mind that these vulnerabilities do not predetermine a downfall; they only provide an opportunity for a fight.

2025-12-11 20:30:00

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Early last year, the hydropower company Nature and People First set its sights on Black Mesa, a mountainous region on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona. The mesa’s steep drop offered ideal terrain for gravity-based energy storage, and the company was interested in building pumped-storage projects that leveraged the elevation difference. Environmental groups and tribal community organizations, however, largely opposed the plan. Pumped-storage operations involve moving water in and out of reservoirs, which could affect the habitats of endangered fish and require massive groundwater withdrawals from an already-depleted aquifer. 

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has authority over non-federal hydropower projects on the Colorado River and its tributaries, ultimately denied the project’s permit. The decision was among the first under a new policy: FERC would not approve projects on tribal land without the support of the affected tribe. Since the project was on Navajo land and the Navajo Nation opposed the project, FERC denied the permits. The Commission also denied similar permit requests from Rye Development, a Florida-based company, that also proposed pumped-water projects.

Now, Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright wants to reverse this policy. In October, Wright wrote to FERC, requesting that the commission return to its previous policy and that giving tribes veto power was hindering the development of hydropower projects. The commission’s policy has created an “untenable regime,” he noted, and “For America to continue dominating global energy markets, we must remove unnecessary burdens to the development of critical infrastructure, including hydropower projects.” 

Wright also invoked a rarely used authority under the Federal Powers Act to request that the commission make a final decision no later than December 18. And instead of the 30 to 60 days generally reserved for proposed rule changes, the FERC comment period was open for only two weeks last month. If his effort proves successful, hydropower projects like the ones proposed by Nature and People First could make a return to the Navajo Nation regardless of tribal support. 

More than 20 tribes and tribal associations largely in the Southwest and Pacific Northwest, environmental groups, and elected officials, including Representative Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey, sent letters urging FERC to continue its current policy.

“Tribes are stewards of the land and associated resources, and understand best how to manage and preserve those resources, as they have done for centuries,” wrote Chairman William Iyall of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe in Washington in a letter submitted to the commission. 

Tó Nizhóní Ání, or TNA, a Diné-led water rights organization based in Black Mesa on the Navajo Nation, also submitted comments opposing the proposed hydropower project. In the 1960s, after Peabody Coal broke up sections of the resource-rich region between the Hopi and Navajo tribes for mining, the company was accused of misrepresenting the conditions of its operations and the status of mineral rights to local communities. Environmental problems soon followed, as the company’s groundwater pumping exceeded legal limits, compromising the aquifer and access to drinking water. According to Nicole Horseherder, Diné, and TNA’s executive director, this led residents of Black Mesa to use community wells.

“They were now starting to have to haul all their water needs in this way,” she said. “That really changed the lifestyle of the people on Black Mesa.” 

After the coal mines closed 20 years later, Black Mesa communities have focused on protecting their water resources while building a sustainable economy. But when Nature and People First’s founder Denis Payre presented the company’s plans, he seemed unaware of the tribes’ history in the region. During these presentations, Payre also made promises that if the company’s hydropower project went forward, it would benefit residents. The project would generate 1,000 jobs during construction and 100 jobs permanently, he claimed, and would help locals readily access portable drinking water.

“He wasn’t understanding that our region has a history of extraction, and that is coal mining and its impact on our groundwater,” said Adrian Herder, Diné, TNA’s media organizer. “It seemed like this individual was tugging at people’s heartstrings, [saying] things that people wanted to hear.”

If the commission decides to retract tribes’ ability to veto hydropower projects, it will mark a shift in the relationship between Indigenous nations and the federal government. Horseherder described such a move as the “first step in eroding whatever’s left between [these] relationships.” She is pessimistic about the commission’s decision and expects it will retract the current policy. 

“The only thing I’m optimistic about is that Indigenous people know that they need to continue to fight,” she said. “I don’t see this administration waking up to their own mistakes at all.” 

2025-12-11 20:30:00

This column originally appeared on author Hamilton Nolan’s site How Things Work, which you can subscribe or donate to here.

Even stipulating that America is a nation of immigrants, and that the persecution of immigrants is an insult to our history wherever it occurs in this land, it must still be said that launching a violent government purge of immigrants is even more ludicrously monstrous when it happens in New Orleans. In New Orleans! A city that for centuries has collected drifters from Europe and dreamers from the Caribbean and schemers from Central America and prisoners from Africa, and has molded all of their descendants into a culture unmatched anywhere else in this plastic country. A city with its own city-sized Vietnamese population. A city that built a statue in Crescent Park to honor the Latino workers who rebuilt it after Hurricane Katrina. You want to bring a bunch of white racist clods in clownish tactical gear to run the immigrants out of New Orleans? The city of gumbo metaphors?

You villains. You dirty dogs.

The entire concept makes the skin prickle in reprehension. Yet here we are. ICE and CBP goons, balaclavas emphasizing the penis-like nature of their heads, have descended on New Orleans. Led by unapologetic Border Patrol boss Gregory Bovino, whose fascist high top haircut and affinity for black double-breasted trenchcoats cross the line from “unintentionally Nazi-esque” into “Nazi on purpose,” they are all over the streets of America’s Friendliest City, vowing to deport five thousand(!) people in the name of Purifying America’s Blood or some more publicly acceptable synonym of that purpose. This is Operation “Catahoula Crunch,” which sounds like an AI-generated name for a Louisiana breakfast cereal. In the first three days of raids, they arrested 38 people, fewer than a third of which had criminal records. Clearly, the motherfuckers are going to be here for a while.

I went to take a look.

You could park your car outside the entrance of the Naval Station in Belle Chasse that the agents are using as their headquarters and try to track them when they emerge each morning. But they can be hard to identify, and even harder to follow. They have the assistance of local and state police as well—one Ojos activist was pulled over twice in one day by a Louisiana State Police officer demanding that he stop driving in the vicinity of a convoy of CBP vehicles.

Alternately, you could make an educated guess about where la migra might show up and go there in advance and drive around hoping to catch them, becoming a fun house mirror version of a cop patrolling a high crime area. I tried this myself one day. I spent hours driving around Kenner, a working class New Orleans suburb out by the airport that has so far been the target of more immigration raids than anywhere else. For hours on a rainy Saturday, I circled down Veterans Boulevard and up Williams, stopping at the obvious places where ICE tends to pop up. I went to all three Walmarts in the Kenner area. I went to Lowe’s. I went to Home Depot. I did not see any immigration officers, but I did see Spanish-speaking families out shopping in stores that had translated their signs into Spanish, but had conspicuously not taken any actions to indicate that they disapproved of their customers being kidnapped on their property. Contrast this with small businesses across New Orleans that have posted fliers on their doors declaring that ICE is not welcome there. It makes you think about corporate responsibility, and cowardice, and things of that nature.

Without two-person teams—one to drive and one to navigate and monitor the chat and alerts and social media in real time—constantly on patrol in each neighborhood hot spot, it takes luck to catch officers in the act. Nor is it easy to know if you are parked right next to one. They tend to roll around in big American-made SUVs. Now go look at a Home Depot parking lot. See any big SUVs there, maybe with a burly guy wearing a baseball cap inside? Yeah. Everywhere!

I found myself peering hard at anyone who fit the profile. I hovered, camera ready, by an oversized white SUV with tinted windows and crash bars parked in front of Walmart, until the doors opened and an elderly Latino couple emerged. In downtown New Orleans, I crept up on a group of a half-dozen brawny white guys with beards, until it became clear that it was a group of gay tourists. Add to this the flood of well-intentioned people sharing rumors online—my friend saw a suspicious car parked outside this hotel, I wonder if they’re staying there?—and it becomes clear that ICE watching is a long game, and an imperfect science. It will require grace from all of us. As a white guy who looks a little bit like I could be a cop, I accept any future sideways looks I get as my tiny sacrifice for the cause.

Considering the challenges, Union Migranted and Ojos are shockingly effective. Every day they blast out multiple sightings, photos, and videos, all verified and confirmed. Over time, it is likely that this kind of community intelligence will save lives and prevent some families from being torn apart. And, on a much shallower level, it is just satisfying to watch a video of an activist filming agents desperately trying to be inconspicuous in a parked SUV, walking by them and drawling, “I’m with Neighborhood Watch. You guys good? You guys need any help?”

The people of New Orleans are also registering their pissed-off-ness by holding protests against the immigration action on a near-daily basis. I went to one on Saturday night, on the steps of Hale Boggs federal courthouse on Poydras Street. There were many “CBP OUT OF NEW ORLEANS!” signs and fliers for a teach-in about general strikes and constant honks of support from passing cars. A billboard for Zatarains loomed picturesquely across the street. A couple of right wing Youtube trolls also attended, prancing around in front of speakers and shouting pro-deportation slogans and aggressively shoving cameras in unwilling people’s faces and generally acting like dickheads. One of these people, a weak-chinned MAGA darling named Nick Sortor, harassed a woman so insistently that a scuffle broke out. In any other setting, he would have gotten his ass kicked, but the security volunteers went out of their way not to do so, just trying to steer him away from people over and over as he cried about being assaulted. All of this while people who were immigrants and who faced very real risks of life-changing government oppression were giving brave and heartfelt speeches just steps away. It really drove home how rude Nazis are. Their own repulsive, racist glee indicts them more effectively than any outside critics ever could.

Before the spotlight descended on New Orleans this month, many had been toiling quietly for years trying to insulate immigrants from the predations of America’s deportation system. One of those people is Angela Davis, an attorney who has spent the past decade running Project Ishmael, a nonprofit that gives legal support to immigrant children. In an office above a church off Canal Street, Davis told me that today’s outrages are different only in degree from what has come before.

She has done this work during the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. Though the work has changed, she said, “Under every single one of those presidents, many, many families are being separated, torn apart, and detained. That has not changed. The immense cruelty of the US immigration system has been consistent.”

Under Biden, at least, her clients with Special Immigrant Juvenile status were able to get “deferred action,” a temporary protection that made it easier for them to work and live here while their applications for lawful permanent residency were processed. In April, the Trump administration ended deferred action and began arresting people, including some of Davis’s clients. Though Project Ishmael’s services are in high demand, it is harder for them to take on new cases now, because every single case requires so much more work than it did when the government was somewhat less hostile.

To have militarized raids layered on top of the bureaucratic hurdles adds an almost surreal level of hardship to New Orleans immigrants’ lives. “People are scared to leave their home,” she says. “We’ve all read Anne Frank, and have very clear images of what it looks like to be in an attic afraid of forces of terror out in your streets. And that is what it is like. Something not too dissimilar.”

Davis carries on with her work, though she admits that she has doubts about how faithfully the government will adhere to the rule of law. “There are still wins in courts, and some of them are still enforceable. There are also many things the government just doesn’t follow.”

On my way out, she gave me a copy of the organization’s summer newsletter. In it was a story that a client from Honduras had written in her own words about her experience as an immigrant. She entered the country in 2018, and was imprisoned and separated from her five-year-old daughter for a month and a half. After being released and reunited, her son joined them here, and she has been dutifully going to all of her immigration appointments for the past seven years. Then, in May of this year, ICE put an ankle monitor on her to track her movements, and began demanding she go to more appointments, making it hard for her to earn enough money to survive. She began living in fear that ICE would track her down and arrest her on the street if she went out.

“If they did that, they could send you away without your children, so it was better for me to leave the United States. I feared for my life returning to Honduras, but I feared being separated from my children again more. I know the United States is about opportunity and I am grateful for my time here, but life is also too stressful and exhausting,” she wrote. She made the decision to risk her life and leave America, rather than risking losing her family. “On our flight back to Honduras, there were five families with me who had deported themselves.”

This, from our current government’s perspective, is a success story. To harass and persecute and terrorize a mother so fiercely that she chooses to bring her children back to an impoverished country where they may be killed is the best possible outcome that Stephen Miller and Gregory Bovino and their nationwide army of masked raiders could hope for. This is what they are about. This is what they accomplish. This is what their legacy will be. This is what they will have to declare at the gates of heaven, or hell.

The most memorable video from the New Orleans immigration sweeps is one taken last week in a residential neighborhood in Kenner, that instantly became famous. It shows federal agents with rifles surrounding a house where men are repairing a roof. As the cops hop out of their cars and approach, one of the roofers snatches the ladder and yanks it up, setting up an hours-long standoff between the agents on the ground and the men working above, unwilling to come down. The men on the roof reportedly got away in the end.

The symbolism in that clip is almost too perfect: Hardworking immigrants escaping deportation by pulling up the ladder behind themselves. But I’m pretty sure that the ICE and CBP agents, all children of people who were immigrants at one time or another, are too dumb to see it.