Think you’ve lost your capacity to be shocked by stories of Donald Trump’s open corruption? Try this one on for size: The Wall Street Journal reported this weekend that a UAE sheikh bought a 49 percent stake in the Trump family’s crypto venture World Liberty Financial last year, four days before Trump’s inauguration, with a cool $187 million flowing immediately and directly into Trump-family coffers. Another $31 million went to the family of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s U.S. envoy to the Middle East. Happy Monday.

The Boy Who Cried ‘De-escalation’

by Andrew Egger

Is ICE “de-escalating?” That was the word on the street last week, as the White House suddenly realized its messaging—our cops are a law to themselves and anyone who disagrees is a terrorist—wasn’t landing so well and began speaking in more neutral tones about ICE’s operations in Minneapolis and elsewhere.

This was significant. After all, this White House rarely admits any need to change course. But pivoting on messaging is one thing; actually de-escalating ICE operations is another. So far, we’ve seen little evidence of that.

On Saturday, for instance, we got a remarkable story out of the small Minnesota town of St. Peter, an hour south of the Twin Cities. A legal observer was driving behind an ICE vehicle and recording them with her dashcam when multiple ICE vehicles boxed her in and forced her to stop. Video then shows multiple ICE agents piling out of their car, immediately drawing their guns, pointing them at the observer, and screaming at her to “get out of the car.”

When the observer refused, the agents dragged her from her vehicle, put her into one of theirs, and began driving her back toward the Twin Cities, the woman later told MPR News, before appearing to change their minds and dropping her instead at the St. Peter police station.¹ The chief of police then gave her a ride home in his squad car.

“He started talking to me like he just couldn’t [believe] how terrible it was, what was happening,” the woman said. “And he was so sorry and so scared for me and that type of thing, and [he] was so upset by what they’re doing to our community.”

Naturally, the Department of Homeland Security had its own take on events. In multiple social-media posts Saturday, DHS called the woman “an agitator” who had been “stalking and obstructing law enforcement” before she “began driving recklessly including running stop signs, nearly colliding with multiple vehicles, and driving directly at law enforcement in an attempt to ram their vehicle.”

Is it possible events unfolded as DHS described them? Sure, maybe. But the woman’s dashcam video shows none of this, DHS has a well established track record of lying through its teeth about such interactions, and boxing in a moving vehicle to force it to stop doesn’t tend to work if the driver’s willing to “ram” you. (In the video, she just pulls over.) Although DHS’s post casually accuses the woman of committing multiple felonies, they eventually just decided to drop her off without further incident—an odd move, if those felonies actually occurred.

As stories like these keep emerging, it’s worth contemplating what “de-escalating” actually means. The fact that the White House is suddenly willing to use the word means nothing if its orders to ICE haven’t changed.

Even if those orders do change, these systems now have a logic of their own. The Department of Homeland Security spent the last year building ICE into something that looks less like a disciplined law enforcement agency than a small paramilitary force—trawling the nation for the meatheads most susceptible to “WHICH WAY, AMERICAN MAN”–style propaganda, training them quickly and poorly, and dispatching them armed into America’s streets. Even if the White House’s sudden stated desire to “de-escalate” is sincere, what do they think is going to happen as this force keeps getting in tense, weapons-out encounters with civilians?

And it’s not just ICE. Over the weekend, ProPublica reported the identities of the two agents who shot Alex Pretti. Both are longtime veterans of Customs and Border Patrol, not new recruits. The gung-ho, low-constraint border enforcement culture of that agency has now been deployed into America’s streets. Compared to those agents’ long-honed instincts, what are a few White House statements about “de-escalation”?

And all that is to assume the desire to “de-escalate” is actually sincere, rather than just a cheap PR dodge to get the White House through the Alex Pretti scandal as painlessly as possible. On Saturday, Trump promised to deploy his immigration enforcement agencies to protect federal buildings that are “being attacked by these highly paid Lunatics, Agitators, and Insurrectionists” in “various poorly run Democrat Cities” around the country.

“Please be aware that I have instructed ICE and/or Border Patrol to be very forceful in this protection of Federal Government Property,” the president wrote. “There will be no spitting in the faces of our Officers, there will be no punching or kicking the headlights of our cars, and there will be no rock or brick throwing at our vehicles, or at our Patriot Warriors. If there is, those people will suffer an equal, or more, consequence.”

Does this statement make it sound like the president sees ICE and the Border Patrol as bodies limited to the specific legal task of enforcing immigration law? Or does he seem instead to view them as a general-purpose “Patriot Warriors” squad to be deployed anywhere and for any purpose he sees fit?