“I Wouldn’t Trust ICE to Shovel Snow!”

Earlier this week, the Trump administration attempted to prosecute journalist Don Lemon for his coverage of protests inside a Minneapolis church. The protesters had flooded the church to call for the resignation of pastor David Easterwood, who allegedly works for ICE. But on Thursday, a federal magistrate in Minnesota rejected the criminal complaint filed by the Department of Justice—a ruling that allegedly “enraged” Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Two activists, Nekima Levy Armstrong and Chauntyll Louisa Allen, have been arrested by the FBI in connection with the protest.

There has been a lot of naysaying about these protests, especially from “Never Trumpers.” Even as people are coalescing around the idea that ICE needs to be stopped, the sight of people protesting inside a church has given the moderates an opportunity to appear, well, moderate about the methods for dispelling ICE.

I am not the protest police, but I will say that there are good First Amendment reasons to protect the sanctity of houses of worship. Protecting people from being harassed while they are inside their places of worship is the legally right thing to do to protect people’s free exercise of religion, even if we think the people worshiping are misguided or even evil in some way. Protesting outside of a person’s church (or house) is great. Protesting inside a person’s sanctuary is violative, and unnecessarily so.

I’ll also point out that ICE regularly violates those sanctuaries, and that protecting people from government interference in their places of worship is even more important than protecting people from private actions.

There are even stronger First Amendment–based reasons to protect the right of journalists to cover such protests. Trying to charge Lemon for covering protests inside a church is the greater attack on the First Amendment.

I’ve seen a lot of hand-wringing from online moderates over the protests inside the church. I haven’t seen enough outrage over the state harassment of a journalist like Lemon for covering the thing that alerted all the moderates to get their underwear in a bunch. I think if you are more concerned about private acts of resistance than state acts of totalitarianism, you are doing it wrong.

The Bad and the Ugly

• The Department of Justice isn’t limiting its harassment to individual activists. The DOJ served subpoenas to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey as part of its “investigation” into official resistance to Trump’s fascist policies.
• Of course, activists, journalists, and elected officials have a lot of options to defend themselves. You know who doesn’t? Little kids. This week ICE detained four Minneapolis schoolchildren. Including a 5-year-old. There are people who don’t like it when I call ICE “evil.” Those people are wrong.
• Even the people who have supported ICE in the past might be starting to realize the evil they’ve been a part of. A new poll shows that a majority of white people with no college education now disapprove of ICE. I’m not too excited by that news: Disapproving of ICE is far different from changing their fascist voting patterns and their rejoining the community of decent folks. But it’s something.
• Last week, the FBI seized documents from the home of a Washington Post reporter, in a direct attack on the First Amendment. This week, a magistrate judge prevented the feds from looking at the documents they seized. I’m pretty sure Kash Patel or whoever has already looked at all the illegally seized documents. But it’s something.
• A California bill proposes to ban local police officers from taking a second job with ICE. Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses.

Inspired Takes

• I haven’t covered the Trump versus Europe fight over Greenland at Davos (except satirically) because billionaire assholes fighting over melting glaciers where 50,000 people make their home is just too much whiteness for me at this stage of my life. The Nation’s Chris Lehmann has you covered though.
• The Nation’s Peter Kornbluh asks, “Is Cuba Next?” A Bay of Pigs II seems like a weird thing to risk, but the Trump administration has doomed us to endlessly relitigating everything that’s happened since 1865.
• I myself try to stay focused on the future. In this piece, Alan Elrod makes an argument I’ve been making since Joe Biden took office: There is no going back to a pre-Trump world. No restoration of the old norms is possible. Trump has done too much damage and shown decisively that our institutions are not designed to stop him or anybody else who wishes to continue what he’s done.

Worst Argument of the Week

To understand this week’s worst argument, you need to take a moment to appreciate the very best argument, which was made by the state of Hawaii. In 2022’s New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Supreme Court eviscerated gun regulations in this country. The court announced that for a gun law to exist in the modern era, it had to have some historical analogue to a gun law that existed at or before the founding of the country. To regulate an Uzi, you have to show that a “historical twin” regulation applied to a musket.

The rule is beyond stupid as an intellectual proposition, but it’s also practically unworkable. What is a close enough “historical analogue”? Nobody knows. Since Bruen, the Supreme Court has been trying to make it up as it goes along.

Well, Hawaii looked at all that chaos and said “challenge accepted.” The state passed a gun law specifically designed to either meet Bruen’s preposterous criteria or, ultimately, expose the court’s deep hypocrisy when applying Bruen. The law requires gun owners to receive explicit permission from property owners before they can bring their weapons onto private property. It’s been dubbed the “vampire rule,” based on the trope that vampires need to receive permission before entering your home.

According to the Supreme Court’s own logic in Bruen, Hawaii’s law should be upheld. The state can cite historical analogues for its rules that go well beyond Nosferatu. In 1763 and 1771, New York and New Jersey respectively imposed similar restrictions.

And yet, the law isn’t going to hold (here’s where we get to the “worst” argument part). As Ian Millhiser explains, “[I]t turns out that none of this history actually matters, as all six of the Court’s Republicans…signaled Tuesday that they are likely to strike the law down.”

To accomplish this hypocrisy, the core Republican argument was that the Second Amendment should be treated like any other constitutional right, and the government cannot essentially enact a prior restraint on constitutional rights. But that argument that the Second Amendment should be treated like any other amendment fails the Republicans’ own requirements, laid out in Bruen, that the Second Amendment is so super special that modern regulations must be tied to a specific historically analogous law before it can be enacted. No other constitutional amendment gets that protection. If the Second Amendment is to be treated like every other one, then the entire logic of Bruen should fall apart.

But the Republicans on the Supreme Court want it both ways, and since they have a supermajority, they will have it both ways. When a gun regulation doesn’t have a doppelgänger from the 18th freaking century, Republicans will strike down the law because the Second Amendment allegedly means the same thing now as it did then. When a gun regulation does have a doppelgänger from the 18th century, the Republicans will strike down the law because the Second Amendment magically means something different now from what it meant then.

The only true way to track the Republicans’ logic on the Second Amendment is to ask the question: “Will this lead to people being shot to death?” If yes, the Republicans on the Supreme Court are in favor of it.

What I Wrote

The Supreme Court also heard oral arguments this week in Trump v. Cook, the case concerning Trump’s attempts to fire Fed Reserve Board Commissioner Lisa Cook. Most likely, this will go down as a rare loss for Trump in front of his court. Why? I explain that it’s all about the money. 

In News Unrelated to the Current Chaos

Apparently, it’s going to snow this weekend. A lot. Pretty much everywhere (no, not you, San Diego. You people will continue to enjoy your perfect weather… until the earth swallows you whole).

Snowstorms, and weather events in general, really highlight the isolation of the modern human condition. We don’t come together ahead of these things; we go to ground. Before Trump came to the White House, I was pretty sure that the nadir of American culture could be witnessed at a Costco 24 hours before a snowstorm or hurricane.

I can’t even say the hoarding mentality is wrong, or at least I can’t say that it’s irrational, because the other thing weather events do is highlight how desperately most people rely on government services. If the government doesn’t clear the roads, people can’t get to work, including the people whose jobs are to keep all the other services and infrastructure up and running.

I’m relatively privileged, but this week a small part broke in my furnace, and I was without heat for 24 hours. I was able to get it fixed but, if that had happened during the snowstorm… nobody could come to fix my problem if the city didn’t plow the roads. I need the government to function so I can even access my privilege, and I need it to function the most when things are all screwed up.

But that’s the thing about government: When it’s working, most people don’t notice it. When it’s not working, people sure as shit notice it, but most people don’t carry that knowledge through Election Day. Accountability rarely follows disaster. Last July, a rainstorm killed 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic in Texas; none of the politicians responsible, including Texas Governor Gregg Abbott, has paid a price for the inaction. But a couple of people have been fired from their jobs for making inappropriate social media posts after the tragedy.

Of course, I’ve just explained the fundamentally asymmetrical battle Democrats have to fight every day. Republicans say government doesn’t work, then they make government not work. Then when government doesn’t work people say, “See, government doesn’t work” and vote for Republicans. Democrats say government can work, and when they make it work… nobody notices or cares. 

Bottom line: If New York City handles the snowstorm well, I want Zorhan Mamdani doing an ad with a snow shovel saying, “you’re welcome.” Lord knows he’ll be blamed if things don’t go well, even though he hasn’t been on the job long enough to reform New York’s snow preparedness system.

Stay safe, and warm, this weekend. And if things go well or go to shit, try to remember why.

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