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“Do something, bitch!”* Kristi Noem Dressed Russia’s Useful Idiot Up to Cosplay CBP

October 7, 2025/26 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

The White House denies that Kristi Noem told President Trump that she was going to zero out counterterrorism funding for the cops in NYC who protect — among other high profile potential targets — Trump Tower.

That’s where we start this very very long story of stupid things DHS is doing that are awful in real time but, with concerted focus, may backfire. We’re seeing it in NY, we’re seeing it in the Portland and Chicago invasions, and we see the potential result in the Kilmar Abrego case.

Kristi Noem didn’t warn Trump she was stripping security funding from New York City

As New York described it in a lawsuit, on the last day of the fiscal year last week, the state learned that DHS had zeroed out security grant funding for New York City’s MTA from a news article; as of the filing of that suit, DHS had not notified New York it had withdrawn funding.

4. New York learned about the Reallocation Decision not from the government but from an online news story, which reported earlier today that “[t]he federal government will deny the [the Metropolitan Transit Authority (“MTA”)] tens of millions of dollars in requested security grant funding, withholding every dollar the agency asked for because New York City and New York state are ‘sanctuary jurisdictions.’” Dave Cole & David Myer, BIG ZERO: Trump Stiffs MTA in ‘Sanctuary City’ Tantrum, STREETSBLOG NEW YORK CITY (Sept. 30, 2025), https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/09/30/trump-admin-zeros-out-mta-security-grant-funding. At this time, MTA has not even received formal notice that their award was cut to nothing.

5. Upon information and belief, New York’s award was changed from the $33,898,500 that FEMA had targeted New York to receive in the Notice of Funding Opportunity (“NOFO”) to $0. As of the filing of this complaint, New York has received no explanation from DHS or FEMA, despite repeated attempts to contact the agency through the Department of Justice. But upon information and belief, New York has been targeted because the administration believes it is a “sanctuary” jurisdiction. FEMA also did not treat all “sanctuary” jurisdictions evenhandedly. Upon information and belief, at the same time as it eliminated New York’s allocation, FEMA made increases to other States’ allocations, including other “sanctuary” jurisdictions.

[snip]

9. Now today, FEMA issued increased TSGP award notifications for other states, and Plaintiffs have discovered the Reallocation Decision through the media. At 1:07 PM today, counsel in Illinois v. FEMA and Illinois v. Noem sent an email communication to the Department of Justice inquiring about the story, asking for New York’s notice of award, and alerting the government that they would file the instant lawsuit and a TRO motion before the end of the federal fiscal year tonight. Counsel followed up that email with a second. At the time of filing, New York has not received a response. The New York Attorney General’s Office was sent (not by Defendants) a power-point presentation that appears to be a genuine document prepared and presented to Congressional staff, which is aligned with the online story. That document, attached as Exhibit 3 to the Affirmation of Rabia Muqaddam, identifies the MTA as the only applicant for TSGP funding that was denied, while other applicants received greater than originally allocated awards. It further states that MTA did not receive their award “because it is based in a Sanctuary Jurisdiction city.” Id. at *25.

In a NYT article providing more details of the funding, Kathy Hochul aptly described this as Republicans defunding the cops.

“A Republican administration literally defunding the police is the height of hypocrisy — and walking away from the fight against terrorism in the No. 1 terrorist target in America is utterly shocking,” Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said in a statement on Tuesday.

The decision to strip NY of counterterrorism funding directly violated an order issued just days earlier in a lawsuit seeking to enjoin this kind of politicized DHS process.

There’s the legal issue: how DHS continues to double down on politicizing security grants in defiance of court orders, just as the government is trying to defy Karin Immergut’s order enjoining the deployment of the Guard to Portland. A judge in NY’s lawsuit issued a TRO to prevent the cuts, as Immergut did in Oregon; a judge will hold a hearing Thursday in Chicago’s challenge to Trump’s invasion.

But holy hell! In pursuit of politics, Kristi Noem cut counterterrorism funding created in response to 9/11 to the city of New York.

At least according to the White House, no one told the President that DHS was going to strip counterterrorism funding from a city where he owns significant property.

The cuts, which represented the largest federal defunding of police operations in New York in decades, were made by the Department of Homeland Security, without explanation and without the approval of President Trump, White House officials said.

Indeed, President Trump was blindsided by the decision to defund the police, not learning of the cuts until Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York called him on Sunday to protest the change after the fact, according to three people with knowledge of the call.

The other politicized cuts rolled out in recent days, both the cuts to transportation projects cherished by New Jersey commuters and to energy projects focused on swing congressional districts, will be fairly easy to politicize.

But to cut counterterrorism funding for New York City is self-evidently insane by any measure.

And also put Donald Trump’s flagship branded property at risk, which is probably one of the reasons he reversed the decision so quickly.

Trump Federalizes Oregon National Guard based off Fox News propaganda

The claim — however incredible — that Trump had no idea DHS was cutting counterterrorism funding from NYC is important background to the repeated pieces of evidence that Trump deployed the National Guard to Portland because he believes the propaganda he sees on Fox News.

By his own description, Trump did so based on seeing things on television “that are different from what’s happening,” as described by Governor Tina Kotek.

In an NBC News interview on Sunday, Trump himself appeared to question the narrative he used to justify the deployment following a phone call on Saturday with Kotek, who said Trump told her he’d seen videos of fires in the city that may have been from the 2020 protests.

“I spoke to the governor, she was very nice,” Trump said in the interview. “But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible.”

As Salon noted, Trump was under a mistaken belief that what he sees on Fox News reflects reality.

“I told him in very plain language there is no insurrection or threat to public safety that necessitates military intervention in Portland or any other city in our state,” Kotek said. “Putting our own military on our streets is an abuse of power…Here’s the deal. “We cannot be looking at footage from 2020 and assume that that is the case today in Portland.”

On Sunday, Oregon and Portland filed a 41-page lawsuit in federal court against Trump’s actions. The suit referenced a recent Fox News report cited by the president that misled viewers by wrongly presenting “outdated protest footage from 2020.” As Oregon’s Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden told reporters on Friday, “If [Trump] watches a TV show in the morning and he see Portland mentioned, he says it’s a terrible place.”

But even after Trump’s announcement, Fox continued to use old footage to paint Portland as a lawless state.

The initial order from Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, enjoining the deployment focused on how unnecessary the deployment was.

The protests generally were limited to fewer than 30 people and were “largely sedate.” Id. ¶ 25. If the protests were to increase or threaten public safety, PPB could call on additional available resources. Id. ¶ 26. But the protests have been such a minor issue, that the normal nightlife in downtown Portland has required more police resources than the ICE facility. Id.

[snip]

Defendants also express concern about danger in Portland because of incidents that have occurred elsewhere in the country. Id. ¶ 21. Most concerning is the sniper shooting in Dallas, Texas, targeting an ICE van, and the protest that followed in Chicago when a protestor was found with a firearm. Id. ¶¶ 21–22.

[snip]

Defendants’ declarants describe only four incidents of protesters clashing with federal officers in the month of September preceding the federalization order—on September 1st, 9th, 12th, and without further specification, the second week of September. Wamsley Decl., ECF 38 ¶¶ 16, 18; Cantu Decl., ECF 40 ¶ 15. The first involved protesters setting up a makeshift guillotine to intimidate federal officials; the second involved four people shining overpowered flashlights in the eyes of drivers; the third involved someone posting a photograph of an unmarked ICE vehicle online; and the last involved additional drivers having flashlights shone in their eyes. Cantu Decl., ECF 40 ¶ 15; Wamsley Decl., ECF 38 ¶¶ 16–18. These incidents are inexcusable, but they are nowhere near the type of incidents that cannot be handled by regular law enforcement forces. They also occurred at least two weeks before President Trump issued his directive.

She compared that to the nonsense Trump put in his Truth Social posts leading up to his declaration.

On September 19, 2025, President Trump explained that the administration was going to “get rid of” the “problems” in cities, including Chicago, Memphis, and Portland. Marshall Decl., ECF 9 ¶ 25. He described that in Portland people were “out of control” and “crazy.” Id. On September 25, 2025, the President again described Portland, exclaiming that “nobody’s ever seen anything like it” with activity happening “every night,” with people that “just burn the place down.” Marshall Decl., ECF 9 ¶ 26. President Trump commented on “professional agitators” in Portland who are “paid a lot of money by rich people,” “anarchists,” and “crazy people” who try to “burn down buildings, including federal buildings,” with Portland having activity “every night . . . for years.” Id. He promised to do a “pretty big number” on the “people in Portland that are doing that.” Id.

The order is best understood as laying out that DOJ was absolutely unable to substantiate the things Trump said in his Truth Social posts that were the ostensible purpose for the deployment. This great Greg Sargent interview with Oregon’s Attorney General, Dan Rayfield, describes how easy it was to prove Trump deployed the Guard based on delusions.

Sargent: Well, to go into the guts of that, by law, Trump can only federalize the National Guard if there’s an invasion by a foreign nation, a rebellion, or if the laws can’t be executed with regular forces. The crucial thing though is that while the president has a fair amount of deference in determining whether those things are happening, you can’t just make it up whole cloth. The judge cited a few examples of violence but said it doesn’t come close to reaching those conditions. Can you talk about the importance of that aspect of the ruling?

Rayfield: Yeah, and I think it’s important for all of us to be grounded. We actually do want a rational president to have deference in being able to determine when there’s an emergency that might necessitate the military, right? You wouldn’t want to second-guess a president—is this an invasion or is this not? You want to give them a ton of deference to react immediately.

What made this very unique is that, right now, it’s not even a close call. You can give all the deference you want to the president, and still—none of those circumstances exist.

And I often joke, the only rebellion going on in Oregon right now is when I try to feed my son a vegetable. So it’s just a very strange dynamic. The president is really just fixated on social media gossip, which is incredibly reckless to rely upon when you’re deploying the United States military.

Sargent: Well, I want to try to get at Trump’s bad faith in all this. The judge cited a tweet from Trump after a period of really minimal activity outside the Portland ICE facility. Trump tweeted that he’s directed the defense secretary to protect, quote, “war-ravaged Portland and any of our ICE facilities under siege from attack by Antifa and other domestic terrorists.”

The judge looked at that and said Trump can’t just make up “facts on the ground”—said Trump was “untethered from the facts.” So, AG, didn’t Trump’s bad faith work against him here?

Rayfield: Unquestionably, right? But that’s what’s so amazing about our court system in the United States. It’s a place where we get to go in and talk about truth. We get to talk about facts. And we have a judge—no matter where they come from in life—who gets to evaluate the circumstances on the ground and make these decisions.

It doesn’t matter what the president says. You can say whatever you want, but you still have to be able to back it up with real facts. And to be able to push back against the president and say, Hey, no, this is unacceptable, is incredibly important.

The man is delirious. DOJ cannot substantiate the reality he is living in.

And yet the far right keeps churning out propaganda in hopes of justifying an invasion. Even as this hearing was going on, right wing provocateur Nick Sortor was whining that he had been arrested outside the ICE facility.

Not only did DHS get him released from Portland custody, but one after another top official decided they were going to investigate Portland for arresting an outside agitator.

Trump even took some time out to encourage the outside agitator.

There are multiple problems with this big rush to defend Sortor. Not only does Sortor have a history of doing this and ties to far right extremists, not only was the conflict caught on video showing him making physical contact first, not only has ICE elsewhere violently assaulted real journalists (meaning Civil Rights Division is selectively intervening), but according to the press release, Federal authorities started arresting people before Portland arrested Sortor.

PPB was monitoring the protest during the evening and observed some protest participants engaging in fights.

At about 8:09 p.m., PPB Dialogue Officers (DLOs) observed two men fighting near the ICE building driveway. The DLOs called in additional resources and officers were responding when the fight ended following one participant being knocked to the ground. He did not lose consciousness and never requested medical help. Both involved were detained by federal law enforcement and were later released. Neither party indicated they wanted to make a police report.

PPB continued to monitor the situation and responded after seeing additional fights break out. At about 11:16 p.m., RRT moved in and arrested three people were arrested and all booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center (MCDC) on charges of Disorderly Conduct in the Second Degree:

Angela Davis, 49, of Vernonia, Oregon

Nicholas Sortor, 27, of Washington, DC

Son Mi Yi, 43, of Portland

DOJ is saying that Portland can’t arrest people who travel across the country to spark unrest in Portland. And Sortor has been out since then trying to provoke violence.

When this goes to court — and undoubtedly it will in some form — DOJ will be stuck defending the premise that DOD has to invade Portland because right wingers with close ties to the President traveled across the country to stoke unrest.

And they did so in conjunction with an invasion premised on persistent false propaganda shown on Fox News.

Sunday, Trump was babbling some more about what’s going on in Portland, claiming that the reason Mayors don’t want the Guard is that they’re too terrified of … the inflated frog personas, I guess.

Kristi Noem dresses up a Russian useful idiot to produce propaganda about Chicago

Which leads us to Chicago.

I suggested, last week, that one reason Trump’s immigration invasions are so unpopular is they result in so many videos showing ICE butt cracks and beer bellies, poorly trained-men rolling around in a street like greased pigs as they try to arrest brown men. That negative spectacle, going viral, has drowned out the staged attempts to pitch the violence against brown people in eroticized terms.

Which is an important thing to remember when reviewing just the last few days of outrageous abuse: there is the abuse, there is the staged spectacle, and there is the effort (as with Nick Sortor) to use the resultant spectacle to provide a pretext to justify further invasion.

Consider that DHS produced a highly produced video of its assault on a South Shore apartment building last week, which may do more to explain the timing of the raid — which started at 1AM and thus necessitated strobe lighting — than any law enforcement purpose (to say nothing of the fact that judges ordinarily require warrants be executed after dawn). Since it was hours before even the US citizens detained in the raid got back into their apartments, there were few live videos of the raid — though one neighbor took a picture of Noem’s goons apparently traveling the same way the extremist group, Patriot Front, travels: in the back of a rental truck.

It wasn’t until after residents were able to return to their homes that they found that ICE had taken an already squalid place into a hell hole.

Dan Jones stood outside with police officers to file a report after his valuables — from his mattress and iPad down to his air fryer — were stolen after agents broke his door.

Jones slept at an aunt’s house following the raid and returned to find clothing and garbage that wasn’t his all over his apartment floor.

A small moving crew said they had been hired after the raid to clear out now-vacant units — but didn’t say by who. Doors were boarded up. In one room, there were zip ties and blood stains on the floor next to baby shoes. Flies swarmed around open fridges.

Water damage had caved in ceilings. Strollers and air conditioners and more things left behind blocked the middle of dark hallways. The lobby elevators were broken, with their buttons perpetually lit on the down arrow.

There was a strong odor everywhere.

Jones said the building’s “dirty” conditions predated the raid, but this was the worst he’d seen the place. It was the first of the month and his rent was due.

“It looks like hell,” Jones said. “ICE really just a gang.”

There’s reason to suspect that one beneficiary of this raid, like similar ones in Colorado targeted at apartments significantly rented by Venezuelans, is the slum landlord who had neglected the building.

As I noted, Illinois’ lawsuit against the Federal government focuses on how Noem and her chief goon, Greg Bovino, staged a number of other photo ops around the city, including the confrontation they staged with protestors.

I’ve also laid out the significant discrepancies in the claims surrounding CBP’s shooting of Marimar Martinez, discrepancies that could doom that prosecution even if the central allegation, that she rammed the CBP vehicle, were true (which her attorney contests).

Where Noem’s urge to create propaganda may get her in trouble is how she invited Russia’s useful idiot, Benny Johnson, to tag along wearing Border Patrol armor.

Among other things Benny did on his cosplay cop caper was to post a video of protestors as they were being arrested, claiming they were being arrested for “VIOLENT ASSAULT.”

Of the Federal charges filed since then, just one has been from Broadview (it was assault, but even that one sounds like someone charged for being pushed by the Feds). If, in fact, these people weren’t charged — much less with assault — this would be slander. Since he was dolled up as a “Border Patrol Federal Agent,” even if they were arrested, this will be a privacy violation that might endanger any charges the Feds tried to file.

Worse, Benny’s AI slop video from the cosplay should make it easy for Chicago to show that — as in Portland — Trump’s people are simply making (literal) shit up about Chicago.

In multiple states, Trump’s Administration is relying on provocateurs (in Benny’s case, once funded by the Russian government and still scrutinized for his unnatural YouTube growth) to spread outright slop claims to justify these invasions.

There’s so many ways this could backfire.

Kilmar Abrego gets Vindictive Prosecution discovery

Which brings us, after much delay, to the potential consequences for all this.

The other day, Judge Waverly Crenshaw granted Kilmar Abrego discovery associated with his motion for vindictive prosecution. He cited a range of public comments government officials made about the case. He focused closely on Todd Blanche’s admission that the government only started investigating Abrego after his habeas case got traction.

Most tellingly, Attorney General Bondi’s direct report, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, linked Abrego’s criminal charges to Abrego’s civil lawsuit in Maryland. Strikingly, during a television interview Deputy Attorney General Blanche revealed that the government started “investigating” Abrego after “a judge in Maryland . . . questioned” the government’s decision, found that it “had no right to deport him,” and “accus[ed] [the government] of doing something wrong.” Kilmar Abrego Garcia was indicted on ‘very serious’ charges, US deputy attorney general says, Fox News (June 6, 2025), https://www.foxnews.com/video/6373969491112.

[snip]

Deputy Attorney General Blanche’s remarkable statements could directly establish that the motivations for Abrego’s criminal charges stem from his exercise of his constitutional and statutory rights to bring suit against the Executive Official Defendants, rather than a genuine desire to prosecute him for alleged criminal misconduct. 1

1 It may be that Deputy Attorney General Blanche’s opinion distressed former Chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Tennessee, Ben Schrader. It is alleged that Mr. Schrader resigned on May 21, 2025—the day Abrego was indicted—because of what some have suggested were his “concerns that th[is] case was being pursed for political reasons.” Katherine Faulders et al., Kilmar Abrego Garcia Brought Back to US, Appears in Court on Charges of Smuggling Migrants, ABC News (June 6, 2025), https://abcnews.go.com/US/mistakenly-deported-kilmar-abrego-garcia-back-usface/story?id=121333122.

Judge Crenshaw suggested this list, from Abrego’s lawyers, would be a good starting point for discovery (though he said bullet e should be narrowed):

a. Material concerning the predication and reasons for opening the investigation that led to the indictment, including, but not limited to, communications between the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and DHS, such as email, text messages, and other correspondence;

b. Communications among DOJ, DHS, the State Department, and/or the White House about the inception or progress of the investigation, such as email, text messages, and other correspondence;

c. Material concerning the decision made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) and/or Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) in or around 2022 not to pursue any investigation or prosecution of the November 30, 2022 traffic stop;

d. Material concerning the government’s change in position and decision to prosecute this case;

e. Material concerning negotiations and the decision to return Mr. Abrego to the United States after he was removed from the United States to El Salvador in March of 2025, including, but not limited to, communications among DOJ, DHS, the State Department, the White House, and/or the government of El Salvador, such as email, text messages, and other correspondence;

f. Material concerning the departure of Ben Schrader, formerly the Chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville, Tennessee, whose resignation was reportedly prompted “by concerns” that the instant case “was being pursued for political reasons.”1 See, e.g., United States v. Adams, 870 F.2d 1140, 1146 (6th Cir. 1989) (allowing discovery in connection with vindictive prosecution claim); United States v. Fieger, No. 07-CR-20414, 2008 WL 205244, at *16 (E.D. Mich. Jan. 24, 2008), as amended (Feb. 1, 2008). [my emphasis]

Bullets b and f get you directly from decisions made in the White House and shared with Blanche to their effect on the AUSA who quit because of the way this went down — and it may well lead to a deposition of both Blanche and Schrader.

We’re in uncharted territory here. Even if DOJ doesn’t find a way to appeal this, there will be a heated fight over privileged communications (which will implicate Trump v. US when this inevitably gets to SCOTUS).

But this was the predictable outcome of a bunch of boneheaded things DHS and DOJ did back in April.

It’s also a measure of where all the things they’re doing right now could be headed … a few months down the road.

* The “do something bitch” comment is what a CBP officer said before shooting Marimar Martinez on Saturday in Chicago.

Update: Now Oregon’s GOP is making fabrications about what Portland looks like, based off old pictures of South America. And Broadview’s Mayor is claiming ICE made false 911 calls to their office.

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The Brutal CBP Assault Tied to the Marimar Martinez Shooting

October 7, 2025/17 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

There have been three stories told about the incident that led to the shooting of Marimar Martinez on Saturday: DHS propagandist Tricia McLaughlin’s original statement, the claims made in a criminal complaint charging Martinez and another guy with assault, and the revelations from a detention hearing yesterday at which Martinez was released.

The differences people have noted so far are:

How many vehicles were allegedly following the Tahoe carrying the CBP officers?

Tricia McLaughlin claimed that ten cars were following the CBP vehicle.

A video from before the conflict does show a lot of vehicles, but it’s not clear how many are following as opposed to, you know, driving.

One thing the video does not show is a detail in the complaint: that there was a dark pickup truck in front of the Tahoe, which is critical to their claim they were boxed in.

Specifically, according to BPAs 2 and 3, a dark pickup truck cut in front of the CBP Vehicle, the Martinez Vehicle drove up along the driver’s side of the CBP Vehicle, the Ruiz Vehicle drove up along the passenger’s side of the CBP Vehicle, and another vehicle drove near the rear of the CBP Vehicle. According to BPAs 2 and 3, the CBP Vehicle regularly used its lights and sirens while driving.

What role did her gun play?

McLaughlin’s original statement implied, but did not state, that Martinez brandished a semi-automatic weapon at the officers.

One of the drivers who rammed the law enforcement vehicle was armed with a semi-automatic weapon. Law enforcement was forced to deploy their weapons and fired defensive shots at an armed US citizen who drove herself to the hospital to get care for wounds.

The complaint made no mention of Martinez having a gun.

At her detention hearing the other day, a prosecutor explained that there was a gun in her vehicle, apparently in her purse (for which she had a concealed carry license), but she never brandished it.

But in court Monday, Hennessy said Martinez had a loaded firearm on the passenger side of her car but never brandished it. Martinez’s attorney, Parente, said she has a valid firearm and concealed-carry license.

Who rammed who?

DHS claims that Martinez (and Anthony Ruiz, her co-defendant) rammed the Tahoe simultaneously.

According to the BPAs, at approximately the intersection of 39th and Kedzie, the Martinez Vehicle drove into and side-swiped the driver’s side of the CBP Vehicle. A moment thereafter, the Ruiz Vehicle drove into and struck the rear right quadrant of the CBP Vehicle.

Parente claims that the Tahoe drove into Martinez’ vehicle.

Parente said the video shows an agent turn a federal vehicle left into Martinez’s vehicle, after which an agent says, “Do something b—-.” The agent then exits the vehicle and shoots at Martinez.

The damage to her car, with her wheel well jammed in, is consistent with her being rammed by a larger vehicle, not vice versa.

Indeed, the damage to the Tahoe is inconsistent with the claims the Border Patrol officers made to the affiant: If Martinez had hit the Tahoe on the side of the driver’s door, they would have been stuck in the car, but the driver was able to get out and shoot at Martinez. Moreover, at least some of the shots went through her windshield, meaning she would have been further back.

How the Border Patrol came to be in that neighborhood?

But the more interesting part of the tale told in the criminal complaint is how the Tahoe came to be in the neighborhood.

McLaughlin claimed the officers were “conducting routine patrolling in the greater Broadview area,” where the ICE facility is. The officers told the affiant a wildly different story: that they showed up in the Brighton Park area after diverting the convoy from other officers they had worked with in Oak Lawn, which is how they came to be driving north on Kedzie.

7. According to the BPAs, their assigned area of operation on or about October 4, 2025, was Oak Lawn, Illinois. According to BPA 3, while operating the CBP Vehicle in or around Oak Lawn, multiple civilian vehicles began to follow the CBP Vehicle and vehicles driven by other CBP agents. According to BPA 3, many of the civilian vehicles drove aggressively and erratically towards the CBP Vehicle, including by driving within inches of the CBP Vehicle, pulling up alongside both the passenger’s and driver’s side of the CBP Vehicle, and disobeying traffic laws, including running red lights and stop signs, driving in the wrong lane, and driving the wrong way down one-way streets in order to pursue the CBP Vehicles.

8. According to the BPAs, BPA 1 drove the CBP Vehicle away from vehicles driven by other CBP agents in an effort to draw the pursuing civilian vehicles away from the other CBP agents, which ultimately resulted in the BPAs driving the CBP Vehicle northbound on Kedzie Avenue, in Chicago

That is, Border Patrol only ended up at “approximately” the intersection of 39th and Kedzie, they claim, because they were pursued there by Martinez and others.

How Martinez knew they were federal law enforcement officers?

Which brings me to the — by far, in my opinion — biggest discrepancy.

The Tahoe was unmarked. You can’t charge someone under 18 USC 111 for ramming an unmarked car unless you can prove that they knew you were a Federal law enforcement officer.

The complaint substantiates that knowledge by claiming they were using a siren (not visible in the video above) and that Martinez was shouting “la migra” at them.

According to BPAs 2 and 3, the CBP Vehicle regularly used its lights and sirens while driving. In addition, according to BPAs 2 and 3, the driver of the Martinez Vehicle regularly and loudly referred to the BPAs as “la migra.”

Now, curiously, of the three guys, only one, the guy sitting on the passenger side rear, the furthest from Martinez, had his body worn camera turned on. That’s the camera that shows the driver of the Tahoe ramming Martinez as opposed to vice versa.

The only things the complaint uses that one bodycam to corroborate are:

The time of the claimed ramming, 10:29AM
That the driver shot “approximately” five shots at Martinez
What Ruiz did after the incident

It does not claim that either the sirens or Martinez’ very loud calls of “la migra” were captured in the bodycam. Virtually everything else in this complaint is based off seventeen otherwise uncorroborated claims of the Border Patrol Agents.

But what the complaint does not mention — but McLaughlin did — is that CBP was already out looking for Martinez because she had doxed a CBP officer as a YouTuber.

The armed woman was named in a CBP intelligence bulletin last week for doxing agents online.

[snip]

Just last week, an internal threat intelligence bulleting was circulated about the armed woman for doxing law enforcement officers online.

And that officer — the guy whose identity Martinez allegedly doxed — is the guy involved in a brutal assault at what I believe is just two blocks away, possibly also on Saturday.

The story McLaughlin told is that CBP happened to be chased into the Brighton Park neighborhood by the same person who had doxed their officer days earlier, she brandished a gun, and they shot in defense.

The story CBP told, after trying to figure out what story to tell, is that she rammed their car and they retaliated by shooting “defensively.” (They appear to have given up the claim that she showed them the gun, which they presumably found in a search of her vehicle.)

But another story tells that Martinez identified the YouTube channel of one of the guys who’d been patrolling the neighborhood, and days later, CBP ended up screaming, “Do something bitch” at her before they rammed her car and started shooting.

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Governor Pritzker Argues Trump Is Invading Illinois Out of Animus

October 6, 2025/35 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

Very broadly speaking, the state three challenges to Trump’s invasions adopt different theories.

The 22-page California challenge (the TRO request was filed separately), which was filed during large scale protests, contested whether the scale of the protest merited nationalization of the Guard and invasion by the Marines
The 41-page Oregon challenge basically showed that Trump’s batshit claims about Portland don’t match the reality on the ground, noting that to the extent there were significant protests, they subsided long before Trump called in the Guard
The 69-page Illinois challenge argues that the invasion arises out of animus

Of those 69 pages in the Illinois suit, 21 are dedicated to describing Trump’s animus, which it dates as starting in 2013, continued though his first presidential term, and even came out during the interregnum.

44. The supposed current emergency is belied by the fact that Trump’s Chicago troop deployment threats began more than ten years ago. In a social media post from 2013 Trump writes “we need our troops on the streets of Chicago, not in Syria.”

[snip]

47. Three years ago, in 2022, Trump was between his presidential terms. In two separate speeches that summer, Trump shared his plans for Chicago, stating in July 2022 that the “next president needs to send the National Guard to the most dangerous neighborhoods in Chicago.” He reiterated that point at the August 2022 CPAC speech, saying that the problem was “these cities that were run by Democrats going so bad so fast.”

It shows how Trump and Stephen Miller’s targeting

57. On April 18, 2025, Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and the Homeland Security Advisor leveled the accusation that “Sanctuary cities shield criminal illegal aliens from removal.” Although not a lawyer, he opined that “these cities are engaged in systemic criminal violations and that they are engaged in a scheme to nullify and obstruct the duly enacted laws of the United States of America.” Miller specifically cited Chicago, along with Los Angeles and Boston, saying the cities were “waging war against the very idea of nationhood.”

It showed how, in May, DHS ditched its first draft list of sanctuary jurisdictions to get rid of the Republican ones on the list.

63. In the midst of these immigration-related federal defunding actions and responsive lawsuits, DHS published, on May 29, 2025, a list of 500 purported “sanctuary jurisdictions” around the country. It accused them of “shamefully obstructing” the Trump administration’s deportation plans and “shielding dangerous criminal aliens.” Fox News Channel 32 Chicago accurately characterized the list as an escalation of “efforts to penalize states and cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.”

64. However, days later, based on widespread news reporting as early as June 1st, that first sanctuary jurisdiction list was gone. As reported, very soon after publishing the list, the Trump administration faced objections from Republican stronghold jurisdictions that found themselves on the list. The Department of Homeland Security quickly and quietly removed the list from the website where it had been posted.

65. Then on July 25, 2025, the federal district judge presiding over the United States’ lawsuit regarding Illinois’s, Chicago’s and Cook County’s immigration-related laws and policies dismissed the case. United States v. Illinois, No. 25 CV 1285, 2025 WL 2098688, *27 (N.D. Ill. July 25, 2025). In concluding that there was no claim for the United States to pursue, the court held that “the Sanctuary Policies reflect [Illinois’s, Chicago’s and Cook County’s] decision to not participate in enforcing civil immigration law—a decision protected by the Tenth Amendment and not preempted by the INA. Finding that these same Policy provisions constitute discrimination or impermissible regulation would provide an end-run around the Tenth Amendment. It would allow the federal government to commandeer States under the guise of intergovernmental immunity— the exact type of direct regulation of states barred by the Tenth Amendment.” Id.

66. Less than two weeks later, the Trump administration posted a new version of its sanctuary jurisdiction target list. That August 5, 2025, publication shortened the list from about 500 to just 35 jurisdictions. The new sanctuary “jurisdiction” list targeted twelve states (including Illinois, California, and Oregon), the District of Columbia, eighteen cities (including Chicago), and four counties (including Cook County).

It tracks a number of things Kristi Noem and Greg Bovino did to create a pretext for invasion, focusing closely on Bovino’s boat trips around the river, but also describing the way Noem went out of the way to address protestors directly (the Chief of Police of Broadview was pretty unhappy about that event).

106. As this DHS show of force in Broadview was escalating, CBP appeared in tactical gear with large weapons in hand around the City of Chicago. On September 25, 2025, Greg Bovino, head of the CBP operations in Chicago, led a small fleet of “Border Patrol” boats downtown on the Chicago River, with officers armed with semi-automatic rifles. Photographs in the local news showed the boats passing the upscale Riverwalk, in the area of the Trump Tower:

107. The CBP boats were seen again on the Chicago River in the following days, seemingly doing nothing more than eponymous showboating.

108. However, the day after the Border Protection’s first unimpeded river fleet cruise, DHS executed a memo expressing an urgent need for support in Illinois from the “Department of War.” Specifically, on September 26, DHS requested from DoD 100 troops to protect ICE facilities in Illinois with “immediate and sustained assistance” because of a fictional “coordinated assault by violent groups . . . actively aligned with designated domestic terror organizations . . . .” DoD’s National Guard Bureau informally made this request to Illinois for its National Guard troops on September 27, which Illinois refused the following day.

109. Two days after this request, on Sunday, September 28, around 100 DHS agents, dressed in militaristic tactical gear and carrying semi-automatic rifles, patrolled the Chicago business district near Millenium Park and Michigan Avenue. They positioned themselves in large groups on major pedestrian thoroughfares in tourist and commercial areas.

[snip]

112. On October 3rd, 2025, Kristi Noem, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, orchestrated a visit to the Broadview facility designed to provoke those who could hear or see the visit. Throughout this visit, rather than avoiding the protesters, Secretary Noem and her entourage, including Bovino, entered areas congested with protesters, even when there were alternative routes that would have avoided those areas.

113. Defendant Noem was videotaped speaking to assembled DHS agents about protestors outside of the ICE facility in which she stated: “Today, when we leave here we’re going to go hard. We’re going to hammer these guys that are advocating for violence against the American people . . . we’re going to go out there and we’re going to make sure that there’s consequences for the way that they’re behaving and that we’re going to prosecute them” Noem’s comments about protestors “advocating for violence against the American people” are unsupported by public reports, and appear to conflate the First Amendment-protected speech of protestors with political violence.

114. Noem then introduced Bovino, who began his speech saying, “It’s roll up time here, state instrument is a hard power, you’re going to be put into full effect.” Although at that time demonstrators were confined to a free speech area blocks from the ICE facility, and managed by ISP and local police, Bovino called demonstrators an “unsafe crowd.” He further stated, “we’re going to roll them all the way out of here, and when they resist what happens? They get arrested. So it’s now going to be a free arrest zone . . . I’m giving them one warning . . . They’re getting it here as soon as we leave.”

115. Subsequently, Secretary Noem’s motorcade, in a large armored, tactical vehicle known as a BearCat, exited the facility through an entrance congested with protesters, rather than the alternative, which was not. She then proceeded to an area with protesters on all sides and exited the vehicle. Because she affirmatively went to the protest area, the U.S. Secret Service was required to extend the protective perimeter, resulting in federal agents engaging with protesters and prompting ISP involvement. There was no legitimate purpose under federal law for this conduct by defendant Noem.

Sadly, they didn’t describe Russian useful idiot Benny Johnson’s role in all this, because his false claims are a key part of the effort to stoke violence (and, probably, to mislead Trump about what is really happening).

It cites a number of Trump’s false Truth Social claims and fundraising emails, including this one from September 6.

And it describes Trump’s incendiary language to describe peaceful protest, including his declaration of a war from within.

120. A few days later, on September 30 at the Pentagon, Trump and Hegseth addressed a gathering of about 800 top military leaders. Trump took the opportunity again to attack Chicago, stating: “You know, the Democrats run most of the cities that are in bad shape. We have many cities in great shape too, by the way. I want you to know that. But it seems that the ones that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places and we’re going to straighten them out one by one.” He went on to say, “And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”

121. Trump then stated that he had informed defendant Hegseth, “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military National Guard, but military, because we’re going into Chicago very soon.” Defendant Hegseth has now taken formal action to do so.

It used Trump’s invitation for Pete Hegseth to use Chicago as a “training ground” as the introduction of the rest of the complaint.

The complaint describes the shooting of a Chicago man and the lies DHS told about it. The Black Hawk invasion of an apartment building appears elsewhere, to show that there was no interruption of whatever that invasion was meant to be. It doesn’t mention the shooting on Saturday: but emails submitted by the ILNG show that Trump had already made the request for Guard before that event (though they happened nearly simultaneously).

I’ve seen some people speculate, because of more recent events, that Chicago would have a tougher time than Portland to prove there was no purpose for the invasion.

But this is a different, more ambitious argument, effectively showing that Kristi Noem set out to create a pretext for a long contemplated plan to invade Chicago.

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The Crime Wave Is Coming from Inside the [White] House

October 6, 2025/28 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

As most of you have noticed, I’ve been trying to do videos summarizing more of my work, because it’s far more accessible than what I do here. As with the Ball of Thread podcast I did last year, I’ve been doing this work with LOLGOP.

He and I are discussing how to keep this effort going long-term. So, in addition to sharing this latest video (which I think is one of our best), I wanted to set up a post for feedback on the videos and — just importantly — to put a tip jar for LOLGOP.

Please consider recognizing his work on these videos with a contribution here.

Thank you! And thanks to LOLGOP for the hilarious editing of Jeanine Pirro boasting about the subway guy.

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$400,000: The “Free” Medical Care Kristi Noem’s Goons Made Taxpayers Pay

October 5, 2025/24 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

Back on August 27, Kristi Noem’s goons raided a car wash in Carson, CA. In the process, they badly broke Bayron Rovidio Marin’s leg. The break was so bad, he has been hospitalized ever since. And in spite of the fact that they’ve never obtained a warrant or even claimed that Rovidio Marin is undocumented, ICE has been paying private guards to guard him 24/7 since then.

On August 27, 2025, Petitioner was arrested at the Carson Car Wash in Carson, California by uniformed Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) officers and unidentified plainclothes federal agents. See Pet. ¶¶ 16, 48; Santiago Decl. ¶ 3. During the arrest, Petitioner sustained severe leg injuries. See Pet. ¶ 48; Santiago Decl. ¶ 5. He was handcuffed and transported by CBP to the emergency room at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Carson, California. Id.

At the hospital, Petitioner was admitted under a “blackout” procedure for patients in law-enforcement custody and was registered under the pseudonym “Har Maine UNK Thirteen.” Santiago Decl. ¶ 7. Federal agents remained at Petitioner’s bedside during admission, transfer to non-public treatment areas, and throughout his stay, keeping him handcuffed to his hospital bed. Id. ¶ 6

On or about August 27, 2025, CBP transferred custody of Petitioner to ICE. See Pet. ¶ 48. He remains detained at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center under the supervision of ICE, which has contracted with Spectrum Detention Services (“Spectrum”) to provide guards. See Santiago Decl. ¶ 8; Pet. ¶ 48.

Since that date, two to four uniformed guards—either Spectrum employees or ICE agents—have been continuously stationed in Petitioner’s hospital room, monitoring him at all times, including while he sleeps, eats, uses the restroom, or receives medical care. See Santiago Decl. ¶¶ 9–10. [my emphasis]

There’s a lot that’s outrageous about this unlawful detention: On top of the original injury, ICE hid this guy using fake names at the hospital, they’ve questioned him without reading him his rights, they’ve restricted his access to lawyers.

Judge Cynthia Valenzuela just ordered ICE to release him from “custody.”

But consider it from the context of right wing manufactured outrage that Democrats want to provide free medical care for “illegals,” a combination of misrepresentation that Democrats would provide healthcare for migrants with legal status, false accusations that those who rely on ACA subsidies are “illegal,” and complaints (voiced explicitly by JD Vance) that under EMTALA (which was passed under Ronald Reagan) hospital emergency rooms have to treat anyone in need of care.

Ignoring that ICE has not even claimed that the guy they hospitalized is undocumented, Kristi Noem’s goons have required taxpayers to pay for 37 days (and counting) of his medical care, plus private guards to watch him 24/7. The guards would cost upwards of $71,000 ($40 X 2 X 24 X 37), and just the room could cost upwards of $333,000 ($9,000 X 37). (ICE probably gets a discount on the room, but they still have to pay for his medical care.)

So just that one victim of ICE violence — someone against whom ICE had no warrant or even knowledge of his identity — may cost taxpayers upwards of $400,000.

And counting, because he’s still not out of the hospital.

Instead of paying for Medicaid and ACA subsidies to keep Americans healthy, right wingers in Congress decided to throw tons of money at Kristi Noem and Tom Homan (whose fondness for bags of cash gives him an incentive to drive up contractor cost) to go hunt down car wash workers who might or might not be undocumented.

And just one of the predictable injuries that resulted (there’s no telling how many other people abused by ICE Noem has hidden away under fake names) has cost taxpayers around $400,000.

Update: They’ve now unsealed Rovidio Marin’s habeas petition.

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Jeanine Pirro’s Recent Flood of Failures

October 4, 2025/22 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

In an opinion dismissing the felony cases against two people charged as part of Trump’s invasion of DC, Donisha Butler and Terrance Wilson, Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui tallied how many of the federal cases charged in the last eight weeks (roughly the beginning of Trump’s invasion) US Attorney Jeanine Pirro has subsequently chosen to dismiss.

The term unprecedented is casually bandied about. But as Judge Sooknanan identified, these recent weeks literally have been “unprecedented.” To contextualize how unprecedented things have been, the undersigned had the clerk’s office run the numbers. Specifically, the Court pulled every motion to dismiss filed by the government in cases charged by complaint for 10 years. The results speak for themselves. Of the over 4,000 cases charged by complaint between 2014 and 2024, the government moved to dismiss less than 20 defendant’s cases. In the last eight weeks, the government has charged 95 cases by criminal complaint. And in that time, the government has moved to dismiss 20 defendant’s cases.

In the previous ten years — a period including the flood of January 6 cases, which were especially challenging given the volume of defendants, the national reach, and COVID — DOJ dismissed fewer than 20 of the 4,000 cases they charged, or less than .5%.

In the last 8 weeks, Pirro has chosen to dismiss 20 of the 95 federal cases that actually got charged, or 21%. That’s on top of cases — close to a dozen — that grand jurors have rejected. There is overlap in the cases; at least three of the cases that Faruqui lists as having been dismissed — Nathalie Jones, Edward Dana, and Paul Bryant — were dismissed after the grand jury rejected the charge.

But not all the cases overlap. Some of the cases (such with Sydney Reid, who was charged with assaulting an FBI officer) were refiled in Federal court as misdemeanors. DOJ is choosing to — or having to — dismiss cases for reasons beyond no bills, including because of Fourth Amendment violations, physical abuse of the defendant, or charges of assaulting a Federal officer in which the victim did not qualify as a federal officer (either because they were a DC cop doing DC cop things, or because they were a National Guard person from another state).

Which means Pirro has chosen to dismiss at least a fifth and close to a quarter of the cases since the invasion of DC started. Not all the cases arose out of the invasion. Two were overblown threat cases, and Reid’s predates the surge.

Nevertheless, it is an unprecedented failure, and a failure that cannot be attributed entirely to grand jurors disliking these cases.

Pirro is choosing to pursue felony charges that simply don’t hold up. And for a number of these defendants, she’s detaining them for days in the process.

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Fridays with Nicole Sandler

October 3, 2025/35 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

Listen on spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)

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Right Wingers Dick-Stepping Their Way Through Shutdown

October 3, 2025/44 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

I don’t think Democrats have done a particularly good job of winning the shutdown.

But the Republican Party has taken every opportunity to step on their own dicks in ways that might actually backfire.

Democrats are starting with a surprising advantage. In one of the first polls after the shutdown started, WaPo showed that far more people blamed Republicans than Democrats, a much higher number than G Elliot Morris showed in his poll before the shutdown (possibly because WaPo included Trump in their question).

Even as voters are looking for compromise, right wingers spent much of the last two days posting dickish gotchas for their social media trolls, starting with the series of racist posts featuring someone in a sombrero.

These aren’t even funny trolls, and to the extent that they lead to questions where Mike Johnson or JD Vance defend them by claiming that Dems should just ignore them, they make right wingers look like they’re not serious about reopening government.

Both the White House and their Rapid Response account similarly posted a very brief gotcha from an appearance Jeanne Shaheen made on Fox and Friends. Jeanne Shaheen is probably the key person in any negotiations to peel off enough Democrats to reopen government, and Republicans want to maintain good will with her. Five minutes into the interview, Lawrence Jones played a debate clip from 2019, claiming the entire Democratic party wants to give undocumented people health insurance.

Shaheen’s response was not bad; she accused, “you’re making it an issue, Vice President Vance is making it an issue.” Shaheen distinguished the current debate about the current health insurance plans.

The full clip was even stronger. Before the gotcha, Shaheen described that over 70% of the people who rely on ACA subsidies are in states Trump won; 56% are in Republican districts. She described her goal was to make sure we’re not doubling the premiums for 24 million Americans and kicking 4 million Americans off their health insurance.

Shaheen was explaining much of this to Fox viewers who don’t yet know these details. KFF has a poll showing that 61% of Americans are not yet aware of looming ACA increases, but when asked, huge majorities support extending them — including 57% of MAGAts.

ACA subsidies weren’t the only thing Shaheen exposed Fox viewers to: She also described that EMTALA, which requires emergency rooms to treat everyone and is the only way that undocumented people do get coverage, was put in place by Ronald Reagan.

She dismissed Jones’ quip about the WaPo editorial warning Democrats that they had fallen into a trap because Trump would start cutting programs by noting he was already doing that. So she looked smart on Trump’s breakfast pablum, and they tried to discredit her with a gotcha that didn’t even land.

Shaheen’s point that Trump was already cutting was the only reference she made to impoundment (and she didn’t describe it as such).

But Russ Vought has been busy making that point.

Wednesday I argued that for Trump to use cuts to attempt to pressure Democrats, he needs to make that visible, which might have the same effect Elon Musk’s boisterous face on DOGE did.

What changes with Trump’s promise that he’s going to start retaliating against Democrats — on top of the fact that 40% of the workers he will be targeting are Trump voters and on top of the fact that the policies he will target are the ones that help average Americans and so are popular — is that to use this as leverage, Trump has to claim credit.

Trump has to make visible all the damage he’s doing to the services government offers.

That doesn’t change the legal reality (that, with SCOTUS’ blessing, Trump is usurping the constitutional powers of Congress). It has the ability to change the politics. It’ll be DOGE all over again, where Elon Musk’s loud bragging about the damage he was doing made him an easy political target.

Now it’s Russ Vought’s turn to become the villain in the popular understanding.

And so he did.

Hours after I wrote that, Vought announced the government (this was actually Department of Transportation) was cutting two big NYC transport projects, including the rail tunnel that connects the city with its suburbs in New Jersey.

Mikie Sherrill, who had been giving Democrats pains because of a single close gubernatorial poll (while others showed her with a bigger lead), immediately responded by making it a campaign issue.

Then Vought announced $8 billion in funding cuts in the swing states where both Senators are Democrats.

As Aaron Fritschner has been calculating, many of these projects hit Republican congressional districts, including swing state districts like David Valadao, Young Kim, and Mike Lawler that Republicans would need to

Politico has more, including a link to Rosa DeLauro’s breakdown of what got cut, organized by Congressional district.

Terminating funding to the hydrogen “hub” projects in California and the Pacific Northwest — which were to receive $1.2 billion and $1 billion, respectively, through the 2021 infrastructure law — comes despite bipartisan support for those projects. The Pacific Northwest hydrogen hub includes GOP-led Montana, as well as Washington state and Oregon.

Washington state Republican Rep. Dan Newhouse, whose district would be home in part to the Pacific Northwest hub, had touted the project in an April op-ed, saying it “will support the administration’s focus on energy independence and domestic energy production.”

Americans may no longer go to the same schools as their political opponents. But they do rely on the same infrastructure.

Note, technically both of these cuts were end-of-year rescissions, not shutdown cuts. Maybe Vought will find a way to hurt only Democrats in whatever he has planned next. But even there, Republicans are warning that it may backfire.

But even pro-DOGE Republicans are warning Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought to go slow.

“Russ is less politically in tune than the president,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., a member of the Senate DOGE Caucus. “We, as Republicans, have never had so much moral high ground on a government funding bill in our lives. … I just don’t see why we would squander it, which I think is the risk of being aggressive with executive power in this moment.”

Worse, anonymous sources point out that if Vought attempted to RIF people, he would be incurring costs, breaking the law in new ways, something that could put Vought’s larger victories in firing people at risk.

For example, the Antideficiency Act prohibits the federal government from obligating or expending any money not appropriated by Congress. It also forbids incurring new expenses during a shutdown, when funding has lapsed; some federal government officials have concluded that the prohibition could extend to the kind of severance payments that accompany reductions in force.

[snip]

Asked about the legal concerns, Rachel Cauley, the White House OMB communications director, said in a written statement that “issuing RIFs is an excepted activity to fulfill the President’s constitutional authority to supervise and control the Executive Branch, similar to conducting foreign policy.”

Meanwhile, one of the issues that I thought was just going to be create a background of malaise — the soybean crisis and the Argentine bailout — just became part of the fight as well. For starters, after some equivocating, Trump decided to shut down USDA’s Farm Service Agency, meaning the farmers who’ve been pummeled by Trump’s tariffs will face delays in getting loans.

Thousands of USDA’s Farm Service Agency offices that help producers across the country access loans and other services are completely shuttered and only available for “emergency scenarios.” Even top Republican lawmakers acknowledge the pain hitting their own constituents, despite assurances from President Donald Trump that Democrats will bear the brunt of the shutdown.

“FSA employees are important to the farmers that we all represent. Again, that’s an unnecessary consequence of the Schumer shutdown,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who represents an agriculture-heavy state, said in an interview Wednesday.

Those offices normally close during shutdown. But Trump officials had previously debated contingency options to keep at least some of them open since this year’s funding lapse would hit at an especially poor time for farmers who are already reeling from Trump’s tariff fallout and currently preparing for harvest season.

Ultimately, the Trump administration decided to close the offices, allowing one farm loan officer to be on call in most areas if the shutdown drags on longer than 10 days. Other select employees will be on call for natural disaster response.

Partly because of the bailout Trump just gave Argentina, Trump needs to pay off the right wing farmers whose lives he has ruined with his trade war. But he doesn’t have the money to do that — or an easy way to get it.

The Trump administration is planning to roll out the first tranche of bailout payments for farmers in the coming weeks, likely using billions of dollars in funding from an internal USDA account, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.

But it won’t be enough: USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation fund — which President Donald Trump previously tapped to provide $28 billion in farm aid during his first-term trade war with China — has just $4 billion left in the account. Trump officials, including those at the Treasury Department, are looking at how to tap tariff receipts or other funding to supplement the payments without triggering a messy fight in Congress.

The timing of the actual aid rollout is also tricky given that it’s unlikely to happen or even be possible during the ongoing government shutdown that’s shuttered vast swaths of the Agriculture Department.

Trump officials are still working on estimates of how big the first tranche of aid will be, according to the three people, who were granted anonymity to share private details. But the president has been posting his promises to aid American soybean farmers on social media in recent days.

Republicans seem certain that they’ll peel off enough Democrats — starting with Shaheen — in the Senate to reopen government. They may be right. Or, right wingers may continue to step on their own dicks making the case that Democratic funding priorities are right.

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White House Struggling to Deny Stephen Miller Murdered Boats of Fishermen

October 3, 2025/30 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

There’s a telling part of the Guardian story reporting that Stephen Miller was in charge of the decision to blow some Venezuelan fishing boats up. The article starts by describing previously undisclosed bureaucratic maneuvers via which Miller created his own little National Security Council.

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, has played a leading role in directing US strikes against suspected Venezuelan drug boats, according to three people familiar with the situation. At times, his role has superseded that of Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser.

The strikes on the Venezuelan boats allegedly carrying narcotics, which the administration has claimed were necessary because interdiction did not work, have been orchestrated through the homeland security council (HSC), which Miller leads as the homeland security adviser.

Miller empowered the HSC earlier this year to become its own entity in Donald Trump’s second term, a notable departure from previous administrations where it was considered part of the national security council and ultimately reported to the national security adviser.

As a result, the HSC has taken the lead on engaging the Venezuelan boats, the people said, a situation evidenced by his top deputy, Tony Salisbury, and others being the gatekeepers to details about what boat to strike until they are about to occur.

That was the case for instance with the second Venezuelan boat hit with hellfire missiles on 15 September. While the White House was informed the Pentagon had identified the boat as a viable target more than four days before, many top White House officials only learned of the impending strike hours before it happened.

Then it provides the White House comment saying, oh yeah, that means the President did it.

A White House spokesperson said in a statement the strikes were directed by Trump, saying he oversaw all elements of foreign policy. “The entire administration is working together to execute the president’s directive with clear success,” the statement said.

This thing already had all the trappings of “Trump’s” Alien Enemies Act declaration, starting with the transparently false claims of intelligence. In that case, Trump said he’s not the one who signed it.

That also extends to the legal justification.

John Yoo (even John Yoo) publicly explained that you can’t just blow up people you claim are drug traffickers.

[T]he U.S. cannot wage war against any source of harm to Americans. Americans have died in car wrecks at an annual rate of about 40,000 in recent years; the nation does not wage war on auto companies. American law instead relies upon the criminal justice or civil tort systems to respond to broad, persistent social harms. In war, nations use extraordinary powers against other nations to prevent future attacks on their citizens and territory. Our military and intelligence agents seek to prevent foreign attacks that might happen in the future, not to punish past conduct. To perform that anticipatory and protective function, we accept that our military and intelligence forces must act on probabilities, not certainties, to prevent threats that might never be realized.

Law enforcement, by contrast, punishes perpetrators for crimes that have already occurred. The U.S. has long considered drug trafficking a matter for the criminal justice system. The difference in purpose dictates different tools. The FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration — not the U.S. armed forces — have prime responsibility for interdicting drug smuggling (although the military can play a supporting role). The FBI and DEA seek to disrupt the operations of drug cartels with the traditional tools of law enforcement: collecting evidence, arresting suspects and imprisoning the guilty only after a trial. Deadly force may be used only if necessary to defend the law enforcement agent, or another person, against an imminent threat to life.

As an official in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, I was at my desk on Sept. 11, 2001. I advised that the U.S. could wage war against al-Qaeda without blurring the distinction between crime and war. After 9/11, the U.S. declared that it would wage war for the first time against an organization, rather than a nation. But the drug cartels alone do not present a similar challenge that rises to the level of war.

Crime is generally committed for personal gain or profit rather than a political goal. Drug cartels employ murder, kidnapping, robbery and destruction to create a distribution network, grab turf from other gangs, intimidate rivals or customers, and even retaliate against law enforcement. National security threats, such as terrorist groups, might resemble organized crime in some respects, but the Mafia and drug cartels are unconcerned with ideology and are primarily out to satisfy their greed.

Yoo effectively suggested (or rather, suggested, as ineffectively as he is wont) that if the Administration could just tie the trafficking to the Maduro regime, then blowing up fishing boats would be cool.

The use of military force against the cartels may plunge the U.S. into a war against Venezuela. But a conflict focused against the Maduro regime is not a broad, amorphous military campaign against the illegal drug trade, which would violate American law and the Constitution.

The White House has yet to provide compelling evidence in court or to Congress that drug cartels have become arms of the Venezuelan government. That showing is needed to justify not only the deportations (which were just overturned by the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit) but also the naval attacks in the South American seas.

If the administration does meet the high standards for war, it would open the door to another set of difficult problems: Every member, not just of the Venezuelan armed forces but also of the drug cartels, would become a legitimate military target; the U.S. could attack and even occupy Venezuelan territory; and all Venezuelans here would become enemy aliens.

But recognizing a state of armed conflict against Venezuela would prevent the misuse of the tools of war to fight the eternal social problem of crime.

That Yoo piece was September 23.

About a week later, DOD’s General Counsel attempted to explain this all to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Senators on both sides of the aisle pressed the Pentagon’s top lawyer in a closed-door meeting to provide a better legal explanation for striking alleged Latin American drug boats in the Caribbean, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

In a classified Senate Armed Services Committee briefing Wednesday, the Pentagon general counsel, Earl Matthews, detailed the legal basis for the military’s attacks ordered by President Trump.

Matthews repeatedly referred to Trump’s designation of certain Latin American drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, which he said granted the Defense Department unilateral authority to use military force against them, some of the people said. Matthews refused to provide a written justification for the strikes, which legal experts say is necessary for transparency and accountability.

Just a day after the closed-door briefing, Trump declared in a confidential notice to Congress that the U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with the cartels. In the document, which was sent Thursday to Congress and viewed by The Wall Street Journal, the administration dubbed the cartels as “designated terrorist organizations” and said it “determined that their actions constitute an armed attack against the United States.”

But it didn’t work. In the most US Congress move ever, the SASC didn’t tell DOD to stop blowing up fishing boats, but did instruct them to come up with some better legal excuse for doing so.

Some of the Republican and Democratic lawmakers who attended Wednesday’s Armed Services Committee briefing expressed concern about the administration’s rationale and urged officials to devise a stronger legal case, some of the people familiar with the discussion said.

And that may be what precipitated the “notice” to Congress that, like all else, Trump had usurped their authority to declare war, too.

President Trump has decided that the United States is engaged in a formal “armed conflict” with drug cartels his team has labeled terrorist organizations and that suspected smugglers for such groups are “unlawful combatants,” the administration said in a confidential notice to Congress this week.

The notice was sent to several congressional committees and obtained by The New York Times. It adds new detail to the administration’s thinly articulated legal rationale for why three U.S. military strikes the president ordered on boats in the Caribbean Sea last month, killing all 17 people aboard them, should be seen as lawful rather than murder.

Mr. Trump’s move to formally deem his campaign against drug cartels as an active armed conflict means he is cementing his claim to extraordinary wartime powers, legal specialists said. In an armed conflict, as defined by international law, a country can lawfully kill enemy fighters even when they pose no threat, detain them indefinitely without trials and prosecute them in military courts.

[snip]

The Trump administration has called the strikes “self-defense” and asserted that the laws of war permitted it to kill, rather than arrest, the people on the boats because it said the targets were smuggling drugs for cartels it has designated as terrorists. The administration has also stressed that tens of thousands of Americans die annually from overdoses.

However, the focus of the administration’s attacks has been boats from Venezuela. The surge of overdose deaths in recent years has been driven by fentanyl, which drug trafficking experts say comes from Mexico, not South America.

Yeah, Miller wants to include Mexico in here (or at least including Mexico as a threat of invasion). But what’s to stop with Mexico, when you’ve already got an Executive Order claiming that China’s supply of fentanyl precursors is a national emergency.

This is an example of the kind of thing that’ll show in my upcoming post on Miller: He’s great at accruing bureaucratic power, simply usurping the National Security Council on his way to usurping most functions of Congress. But he’s really really bad about the details, about the actual facts, like making sure something is legal before you do it.

And thus far, the facts here say that Stephen Miller murdered a bunch of fishermen in callous blood.

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Lindsey Halligan Even Failed Failing

October 2, 2025/16 Comments/in emptywheel /by emptywheel

Remember how I argued that DOJ might actually be trying to get no-billed in the Jim Comey case? I argued that if the case were charged, it could put Todd Blanche, especially, in a really awkward position.

These leaks make it far more likely that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer will get no-billed (meaning they’[d] vote against indicting Comey). And that may be the point. Indeed, her law license may be among a handful that get saved in the process.

Consider how this would look to Todd Blanche.

Blanche may not have noticed that DC added Ken Chesebro yesterday to the growing list of former Trump lawyers who’ve lost their license to practice law. But he’s no doubt aware of how common it is for Trump lawyers to lose their law licenses.

Also yesterday, the judge presiding over Luigi Mangione’s case, Margaret Garnett, gave DOJ one last warning about inappropriate public comments made about the accused killer, including by Blanche’s own Chief of Staff, before she starts sanctioning DOJ.

In her order, Garnett specifically directed Todd Blanche to clean all this up.

[snip]

Blanche’s personal exposure in the LaMonica McIver case goes far deeper. He is at once:

The official who ordered DHS personnel to arrest Ras Baraka even after he had left Delaney Hall property, creating the physical confrontation in which McIver was charged, and as such, part of the law enforcement team and implicated in a potentially unlawful arrest

The person whose office conducted the prosecutorial review previously done by career prosecutors in Public Integrity Division after that got shut down

Because Alina Habba continues to play US Attorney after being unlawfully retained, the person in charge of the prosecution

If McIver’s own selective and vindictive prosecution claim gains any traction, we may learn far more about Blanche’s effort to criminalize a co-equal branch of government for conducting lawful oversight.

According to a recent CNN story, there’s good reason to believe I was right! DOJ gave her no support to get the indictment, but the FBI prepared her just enough to get the job done.

DOJ headquarters declined to provide lawyers to assist Halligan, and FBI agents and lawyers working to prepare her were denied their request for a para-legal professional to assist in the presentation, according to two people familiar with the matter.

“Lindsey was set up to fail,” one of the sources familiar with the discussions said. “She was the lamb sent to slaughter.”

[snip]

Last Tuesday, Halligan began a crash course to prepare. Justice officials told her that the deputy attorney general’s office didn’t have lawyers to help her, and that it was against federal rules of criminal procedure for one of the attorneys from Justice headquarters to be in the grand jury room, one source familiar with the discussions said.

An administration official pushed back on the sources’ contention that Halligan did not have help from the Justice headquarters. Officials argued that Halligan was in touch personally with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche multiple times, including visiting the Department of Justice for meetings during the week leading up to her presentation, even if she lacked support from lower level attorneys with more experience in the grand jury room in Alexandria. The source added that Halligan and Blanche spoke after the indictment was issued.

Blanche and Attorney General Pam Bondi had earlier expressed qualms about the case, citing concerns raised in a memo produced by prosecutors who had spent months on the case, according to people familiar with the matter.

Instead, Halligan spent hours preparing with a group that included FBI attorneys and the agents who had led the investigation, the sources said.

Halligan participated in a number of “practice runs” and spent hours going through the exhibits in preparation, the sources said.

[snip]

But that Halligan succeeded in getting two counts handed up surprised Justice officials, who nonetheless immediately sought to celebrate.

Shortly after Halligan emerged from the courtroom Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a statement on X, declaring: “No one is above the law.”

In an administration where being quick to post on social media is prized, the move irritated Halligan and FBI officials who felt that top Justice officials were seeming to take credit for an indictment some believed they had sought to doom, according to sources briefed on the matter.

Well, Lindsey Halligan managed to convince barely enough grand jurors to approve the case to get an indictment. Which may be the worst of all worlds for DOJ, because however DOJ tried to insulate themselves, they failed the primary task but also made it easier to dig into the FBI (where Kash Patel lurks).

Meanwhile, Michael Feinberg provides some insight onto who the FBI personnel were who got her across the line. One, he describes as “John Durham’s factotum and enforcer,” a reference to Jack Eckenrode, whom Devlin Barrett told us — without understanding the egregious conflicts involved — was involved in the WDVA investigation. (Feinberg confirms this by pointing to the Eckenrode quote in this article.)

I learned the identities of the two primary investigators who developed the case against Comey.

One of the persons was unsurprising: A former special agent in charge, who has freelanced in a number of overly politicized matters since retiring—he served as John Durham’s factotum and enforcer, is now apparently back at the Hoover Building working in a similar capacity for Patel.

Things are about to get interesting, given that Eckenrode worked with Pat Fitzgerald on the Scooter Libby case. And that’s on top of the fact that Eckenrode kept chasing Russian disinformation for two years after he had reason to understand it was fabricated.

We can add Eckenrode to the list of people who could be criminally implicated by this investigation!

The other investigator is someone Feinberg believes is a really good investigator, leading him to wonder how the fuck someone could be involved in this.

It was the second name that completely undermined my composure. I used to supervise this agent, and, at times, I would like to believe I served somewhat as a mentor to him. We overlapped on the squad I led for only a year or so, but it was not uncommon for him to sporadically reach out when he faced a career decision and needed counsel. He was an outstanding investigator, a natural leader, and someone whom I wanted to see rise in the organization; it goes without saying that I would make time for him when he needed advice.

These two identities were not provided by any friends remaining in the FBI or the Justice Department—they would have known of the latter relationship and attempted to cushion the blow—but through a journalist’s tweet innocently forwarded by a Lawfare colleague. (I’m not providing a link to the post; the point of this article is not to name and shame someone but, rather, to use the situation as illustrative of how otherwise good people at the FBI, either voluntarily or by force, are being corrupted by its current leadership and overt weaponization.) Seeing my former agent’s name, though—once the shock subsided—made me think about the erosion of the rule of law once again not in terms of political theory or legal philosophy, but on a more human level: How does a special agent become involved in such a blatantly politically motivated revenge operation?

It hints at a really interesting possibility: that Lindsey the Insurance Lawyer relied on evidence in EDVA from the investigation at WDVA (basically a theory that Durham materials were put in burn bags to protect Comey rather than to hide Eckenrode’s own incompetence and reliance on Russian disinformation) that would present evidentiary problems, such as relevance problems, that an experienced prosecutor would know to avoid, but might convince jurors. That’s precisely what happened to John Durham’s prosecutions, and there, there were experienced prosecutors involved. They proceeded by wishcasting, just assuming they’d get evidence that was obviously inadmissible admitted at trial.

Here, there’s no experienced prosecutor to weigh those issues.

In any case, the statute of limitations on the charges have expired now, so we shall see whether and if so how Comey challenges Halligan’s appointment as a US Attorney. I mentioned the reason why this is probably true here, but Ed Whelan lays out the reasons she probably is only play-acting as US Attorney here.

4. As I explained in my initial post, the defect in a purported appointment of Halligan under section 546 arises from the fact that Erik Siebert had already served a full 120-day term as AG-appointed U.S. Attorney. Section 546 is best read to mean that the Attorney General cannot make a second interim appointment under section 546 after the first interim appointment has expired. Instead, the authority to make an interim appointment then lies with the district court. This has been DOJ’s own longstanding position, set forth in a 1986 Office of Legal Counsel opinion by then-deputy assistant attorney general Samuel Alito.

It turns out that (contrary to what I thought on Friday) Alito’s OLC opinion is publicly available. Here are some key excerpts (underlining added):

The statutory plan [for section 546] discloses a Congressional purpose that after the expiration of the 120-day period further appointments are to be made by the court rather than by the Attorney General….

Thus, it would appear that Congress intended to confer on the Attorney General only the power to make one interim appointment; a subsequent interim appointment would have to be made by the district court. At most, it could be said that the district court has the primary authority to make subsequent interim appointments, and that the Attorney General may make such appointments only if the district court refuses to make such appointments, or fails to do so within a reasonable period.

In a footnote, Alito explains that Congress has constitutional authority to “place restraints on a statutory authority to make interim appointments.”

But even if they have, knowing there’s an investigation at WDVA with presumably less inexperienced prosecutors involved, it might be better to blow this investigation out of the water via other means, by using the publicity and Halligan’s screw-ups to getting it deemed vindictive.

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“Do something, bitch!”* Kristi Noem Dressed Russia’s Useful Idiot Up to Cosplay CBP

Kristi Noem didn’t warn Trump she was stripping security funding from New York City

Trump Federalizes Oregon National Guard based off Fox News propaganda

Kristi Noem dresses up a Russian useful idiot to produce propaganda about Chicago

Kilmar Abrego gets Vindictive Prosecution discovery

The Brutal CBP Assault Tied to the Marimar Martinez Shooting

How many vehicles were allegedly following the Tahoe carrying the CBP officers?

What role did her gun play?

Who rammed who?

How the Border Patrol came to be in that neighborhood?

How Martinez knew they were federal law enforcement officers?

Governor Pritzker Argues Trump Is Invading Illinois Out of Animus

The Crime Wave Is Coming from Inside the [White] House

$400,000: The “Free” Medical Care Kristi Noem’s Goons Made Taxpayers Pay

Jeanine Pirro’s Recent Flood of Failures

Fridays with Nicole Sandler

Right Wingers Dick-Stepping Their Way Through Shutdown

White House Struggling to Deny Stephen Miller Murdered Boats of Fishermen

Lindsey Halligan Even Failed Failing

Interesting links

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