Its Gestapo tactics are stimulating a mass revulsion.Click to view this email in your browser. [link removed]

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JANUARY 8, 2026

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Ransomware Recovery Firms Share in the Hacking Spoils [link removed]

Incident response firms negotiate with hackers while also processing payments to them, leading to potential betrayals of their clients’ trust. [link removed]

**BY JAMES BARATTA** [link removed]

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Donald Trump’s Degenerate Plans for Greenland [link removed]

The worst president in history wants conquest for its own sake, even if it opens America up to nuclear attack. [link removed]

**BY RYAN COOPER** [link removed]

****KUTTNER ON TAP****

**The ICE murder and the broader battle**

**Its Gestapo tactics are stimulating a mass revulsion.**

Wednesday’s cold-blooded murder by an ICE agent of a peaceful legal observer, 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, brings America one step closer to a civil war between cities and states defending their citizens and a Trump administration using fascist-style tactics to have a secret police force provoke confrontations, arrests, and in this case, a killing.

There will now be massive resistance, in the form of mass demonstrations both in Minnesota and nationally, and by state and local leaders. There will be far more citizen groups armed only with whistles, cameras, and cellphones, warning their neighbors about ICE raids. Any semblance of normal relations between federal and state officials has evaporated.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz **termed the deployment** [link removed] “a war that’s being waged against Minnesota.” He added, “Don’t believe this propaganda machine … What we’re seeing is the consequences of governance designed to generate fear, headlines, and conflict. It’s governing by reality TV, and today that recklessness cost someone their life … To Americans, I ask you this. Please stand with Minneapolis.”

The mayor of Minneapolis, **Jacob Frey, was more blunt** [link removed]. The DHS characterization of the killing as self-defense, he said, was “bullshit.” To ICE he said, “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here. Your stated reason for being in this city is to create some kind of safety, and you are doing exactly the opposite.”

Walz, who has previously termed ICE “Trump’s modern-day Gestapo,” also said that he is preparing to call up the Minnesota National Guard. If the Guard were to direct ICE to back off, or interpose itself between ICE agents and demonstrators, this would be uncharted legal territory.

In September, the Supreme Court by a 6-3 vote **in**

**Perdomo v. Noem** [link removed] reversed a ruling from two lower courts that bars immigration agents from stopping people based on apparent race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or English with an accent; presence in a particular location like a bus stop, car wash, or agricultural site; or type of work. It was the Roberts Court at its worst.

But when the facts change, so does the law, as interpreted even by this Court. ICE as a rogue secret police is entitled to far less deference. Last week, the same Court, by an opposite 6-3 vote, **upheld lower-court rulings** [link removed] prohibiting Trump from using federalized National Guard troops in local police operations.

The two legal issues are not quite identical, but the vibe is. And don’t kid yourself, the Supremes may work in a temple of justice, but they don’t live on Mount Olympus. They read the same news and watch the same videos that we do.

It means one thing when immigration officials are looking for people in the country illegally, another when 2,000 marauding agents are rushed into a city in a staged-for-TV show of force to punish a state governed by the opposition party.

Meanwhile, the state of California has passed a new law **prohibiting ICE officials and other federal agents from covering their faces** [link removed] with masks, and directing local sheriffs and police to enforce the requirement. This law, which took effect January 1, has not yet been tested, either in practice or in court.

Reviewing the video of the murder of Renee Nicole Good, in a two-hour interview with

**New York Times** reporters, **Trump slightly hedged his earlier claims** [link removed] that the killing was purely self-defense. Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, told CBS News that he would not make a judgment based on the videos. “Let the investigation play out,” Homan said, “and hold people accountable based on the investigation.”

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**PULLING BACK TO A WIDER-ANGLE LENS**, this is all part of Trump’s pattern of random acts of violence, used to keep changing the subject. Is the aftermath of the kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Maduro a mess? Threaten Greenland. Are cities and states resisting Trump’s incursions? Send in more ICE agents to create provocations and pretexts for more violence. Trump is so addled that he doesn’t quite grasp that his seizing of a Russian-flagged oil tanker and his claims to Greenland to block Russian Arctic power undermine his Ukraine alliance with Vladimir Putin.

On all fronts, Trump is losing the battle for public opinion. Well before the latest ICE outrage, polling showed public **opposition to ICE tactics by a margin of 53 to 39 percent** [link removed]. In the wake of the Minneapolis killing, new polls will surely show even more opposition.

While successful military operations, even wag-the-dog ones, usually increase support for a president in the short run, **a Reuters/Ipsos poll** [link removed] taken right after the Venezuela raid showed that Americans, by a margin of 72-25, are concerned that the U.S. will become too involved in Venezuela.

As for Greenland, depending on the poll, Americans oppose Trump’s efforts to take it militarily or buy it from Denmark by margins of 2-1 to 3-1.

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and chief ideologue, recently said out loud what Trump’s policies are really about. **In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper** [link removed], Miller disparaged the very idea of the global rule of law. “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said, sounding just like Hitler’s favorite theorist, Carl Schmitt. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

He could have been speaking about Minneapolis.

Whether Miller and Trump prevail depends on the resolve of local officials, citizens, and, we can hope, courts. So far, they have lost this round. There will be others.

Robert Kuttner
Co-Editor, Co-Founder

Robert Kuttner
Co-Editor, Co-Founder

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