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Now, after the Supreme Court greenlit racial profiling, they're just picking anyone up. They're in detention centers and driveways trying to get people to narc on their neighbors. They're attacking protesters and people filming. They are pulling people out of cars and smashing windows and cameras and phones. It's a free for all. It's like every fucking asshole you have ever met in a bar with a short fuse and one too many, except now this. You want to. You want to go, bro? Racist, misogynistic, shit disturber guy has been given free reign by our government to act with total immunity. This isn't about immigration enforcement, about the president being able to use force to suppress dissent. Trump is pushing the boundaries. Well, Trump and his people are pushing the boundaries because, let's be honest, these are Stephen Miller's plans. They are seeing what they can get away with, and apparently it is a lot. Hello, and welcome to the Politics Girl podcast. I'm your host, Leigh McGowan. Let's get into it. Well, it has been a heavy week. ICE escalated its violence and terror in Minnesota with the Trump administration making a concerted effort to either intimidate and force people into compliance or incite enough chaos and unrest to justify cracking down on the American people with the Insurrection Act. And this isn't just talk. This week, the President threatened the American people with the Insurrection act on Truth Social, while when he said, if the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don't obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the patriots of ICE who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the Insurrection act, which many presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great state. And I think we have to take this very seriously. DHS has already flooded Minneapolis with five times the ICE officers than Minneapolis has in total. Police. There are currently 600 police officers to 3,000 federal ICE agents on the ground. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry responded to people asking if the police could arrest ICE by saying, yes, but they outnumber us and have bigger guns. Which is basically a frustrated leader's way of saying no, because the city officers are beholden by the law, while these federal officers, according to J.D. vance and the Trump administration, have total immunity. And I think that's the unfathomable reality America is dealing with right now. Is it legal? It doesn't matter. It's happening. And I think that realization understandably confuses a lot of people, particularly white people who have been raised to believe that constitutional rights meant something in the United States of America. But we're quickly coming to realize what black and Native Americans and minorities have been telling us forever, that the law only protects you if the law wants to protect you. And rights aren't rights if they can be taken away. They're simply privileges that can be revoked. And right now, America's First, Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights are being restricted. If not revoked. You can be kidnapped or killed for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time or simply observing what is happening in your own city. While ICE agents, who are the ones causing the chaos, remain untouchable, the administration has given the violent group immunity while holding the peaceful group to impossible standards. The Trump administration are calling the protesters professional agitators, paid protesters and insurrectionists when there is absolutely no evidence of any of that. There is, however, evidence, according to internal documents that were leaked from DHS, that Kristi Noem and her team are spending $8 million to pay influencers to spread pro ice propaganda. So the American taxpayer is footing the bill for the privilege of being lied to by the very people invading their cities. Now, you can call me a libtard, but wouldn't those people be the professional agitators? Literally everything this administration says and does is projection accuse the other side of that which you are doing. Classic Goebbels style information warfare. The mayor of Minneapolis has referred to what's happening in their city as an invasion. And to me that word feels very accurate. Governor Walz is clearly walking a fine line between holding these people responsible for the chaos they're bringing and for being the spark that starts the civil war or instigates the Insurrection Act. He is saying what they are seeing in Minneapolis defies belief that ICE has become a campaign of organized brutality against the people of the city. And I think that also seems like a completely accurate statement. After Governor Walz spoke last week, the right wing, who not coincidentally spent the past month and a half priming the pumps to discredit Walls by smearing him with a daycare fraud scandal, something that was already under investigation, where people had already been arrested. A scandal that began during Trump's first term, but it took the Biden DOJ to investigate it and in which Walls took no part. But we spent three weeks before the invasion listening to right wing agitator Nick Shirley, an absolute moron if there ever was one, acting a fool in Minnesota and ginning up contro against Somalis. And Governor Walz, to be clear, it is not that there wasn't daycare Fraud. There was, and I should probably point out that a white woman was the ringleader. But Nick's careless claims that daycares were empty or the governor knew and was allowing these Somalis to rip off taxpayers were easily debunked. Lies when you brought in the evidence. Or real journalists. But just like the attack on the Haitian community in Ohio, when everyone from the top to the bottom of the right wing spectrum keeps repeating the same lie in Ohio, it was that they were eating cats and the dogs. Despite the fact that it's a totally made up story, it goes viral. People think it's true. The idea that Tim Wallace had anything to do with this daycare fraud case just stuck. They successfully discredited the state's leader right before they attacked his state. And I would put money down that that was not a coincidence. And it should be noted that this bullshit scandal also forced the successful sitting governor out of the governor's race in 2026. The right wing continues to lie about Tim Walz to this day, giving the poor people of Minnesota a weakened leader right when they need a strong one. Look how Scott Jennings completely misrepresented what Governor Walz said this past week. Governor Walz said, I know that you're angry. I'm angry. What Donald Trump wants is violence in the streets, but Minnesota will remain an island of decency, of justice, of community and of peace. Scott then cherry picked that statement and said that Tim Walls had said that Minnesota will remain an island. Then he went on to say, he couldn't be more explicit. This buffoon believes he is seceding from the Union. We are well into Insurrection act territory, bro. What? This is so classic right wing. The quote is, we will remain an island of decency, of justice, of community and peace. And they say we will remain an island. Then they extrapolate that out to say he is clearly trying to secede. So we need the military in the streets to quell this rebellion. These lies, they never stop. You want to talk about paid propagandists and agitators, well, those are the kind of people you should be looking at. Because not for nothing, there's the Insurrection act again. I am telling you, it is not just the ramblings of Covfefi, it is the actual plan. In December 2024, I was on CNN and I said Trump was going to send the military into blue cities to make them behave. And Scott Jennings lost his mind. He said I was being outrageous that I had taken the show into the fever swamps. And he asked the host to step in he was so over the top with his denial that I called my husband after the show and I said that reaction was a tell. They are definitely going to use the military against us. And six months later, the National Guard was in our cities. I should note, however, that despite the fact the Trump administration sent the military into places like LA and Portland and dc, the courts kept overturning their actions, telling Trump to remove the troops. So clearly, the administration had to rethink a way to intimidate the people of blue cities. And this is how we got immigration enforcement in places where immigration is clearly not why they were sent there. We hear all the time that they are going after the violent criminals who are here illegally, that they are taking these actions for the safety and success of the American people. But look at their actions. They are arresting people arbitrarily. Citizens, non citizens, legals, illegals. They don't have warrants or probable cause. They don't have a list of people they're looking for. For a while, they were arresting people at their immigration hearings. So it was clearly never about people doing it the right way. But now, after the Supreme Court greenlit racial profiling, they're just picking anyone up. They're in detention centers and driveways trying to get people to narc on their neighbors. They're attacking protesters and people filming. They are pulling people out of cars and smashing windows and cameras and phones. It's a free for all. It's like every fucking asshole you have ever met in a bar with a short fuse and one too many, except now this. You want to. You want to go, bro? Racist, misogynistic, shit disturber guy has been given free reign by our government to act with total immunity. This isn't about immigration enforcement. It's about the president being able to use force to suppress dissent. Trump is pushing the boundaries. Well, Trump and his people are pushing the boundaries because, let's be honest, these are Stephen Miller's plans. They are seeing what they can get away with, and apparently it is a lot. This is how police states begin. This is the playbook. You flood a city with federal agents, their presence results in violence and public outcry. You. You say the outcry is from individuals who are terrorists or enemies of the state. And then you say, well, the local law enforcement can't handle it. I have no other choice but to send in the military. To be clear, the Insurrection act, or deploying military forces against citizens, despite what Trump says, has very rarely been used 30 times by 15 presidents in the history of our country. Many of them were in the 1800s when the law was created and the country was still forming. Andrew Jackson used it for the slave rebellion of 1831. Lincoln used it when the Southern states seceded in the Civil War. Ulysses S. Grant had to use it six times in five years to stop white supremacist insurrections and insurgencies during Reconstruction. The last time the Insurrection act was used was in 1992 during the LA riots, but Roosevelt and Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson had to use them during the civil rights era when white people just could not not handle integration. And then once again after MLK's assassination, the insurrection act actually would have been incredibly helpful during the January 6th insurrection when a mob of thousands stormed the Capitol, putting all of Congress at risk and threatening to overturn the election and hang the Vice President. But President Trump wasn't interested in using it then. According to him, that was a day of love, which is why every single person who was arrested, tried and convicted was pardoned by him when he got back into office. Now he wants to use the Insurrection act not because the protesters are threatening anyone, but because the protesters aren't on his side. Alex Wagner recently said in her podcast Runaway country that it's insane to have the administration attempt to sell us on the idea that the people protesting or resisting Trump are anarchists who want to burn everything down. As she said, this is like Jerome Powell, the director of the Fed, and Senator Mark Kelly, an astronaut and combat veteran and the mom from Minneapolis driving in a Honda. This isn't what anarchy looks like. This is what citizen led resistance to autocracy looks like. But our wannabe autocrat doesn't care. Just like he doesn't care about our rights or our norms or even legal statutes like the Posse Comitatus act, under which federal military is generally barred to from participating in any civilian law enforcement. Again, under normal circumstances, the Posse Comitatus act clearly forbids the US Military, including federal armed forces and the National Guard troops who have been called into federal service, from taking part in civilian law enforcement. This is a long standing reflection of the American tradition of seeing military interference in civilian government as being inherently dangerous to to our liberty. So I should point out that if you support ICE and what they are doing right now, you are actually supporting state sanctioned terrorism. Watching Minnesota, you can't continue to make the argument that this is about immigration or law and order. This is quite clearly about retribution. A vindictive leader invading cities he doesn't like and didn't vote for him to terrorize them and their communities and any argument you make otherwise falls apart in minutes. ICE is in Minneapolis to keep it safe? Nope. By all measurements, Minneapolis is one of the safest places in one of the best states in America to live. The violence only began when ICE arrived. Now there's been a number of murders. A boy is blind. People have been beaten, their property has been destroyed. Federal agents have held children in the streets to force their parents to come out of their homes. A baby was tear gassed. If ICE came with warrants for certain criminals, you could make a different argument. But they are just randomly jumping people, giving conflicting orders and causing harm. Schools are out, businesses are closed. Anyone who looks like a minority has basically had to remove themselves from public life. Sure, people are on the street protesting and filming, but that is their constitutional right. And frankly, considering how dangerous these agents are and how often they get things wrong or commit their own crimes, keeping tabs on them is for our own protection. ICE has no law enforcement jurisdiction in Minnesota. They haven't been asked to be there. In fact, they have been asked to leave. But they stay because apparently their real mission is to terrorize. Now, I'm going to take a minute to thank some of the people who make this show possible and then we'll be right back. A new year means a clean slate. Are you committed to working out this year? Then you're going to want to make sure you rehydrate after your workout. Are you thinking of eating healthier? Then? You might want to carry healthy snacks with you on the go. 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Go right now to Sundays for dogs.com politicsgirl30 and get 30% off your first three orders. Or you can use the code politicsgirl30 at checkout. That's 30% off your first three orders at sundays4dogs.com politicsgirl30 Sundaysfordogs.com politicsgirl30 or use the code politicsgirl30at checkout. Welcome back. Before I get back into it I would like to Just take a short detour to share with you What a brilliant TikTok creator that goes by Redhead Blue Heart said about those who claim to be fiscally conservative but anti immigrant, or those who vote Republican because they say it's better for the economy. What she said is, okay, let's pretend you get everything you want. We just remove 13 million illegals from the country. That is 13 million people who are no longer shopping in our stores or eating in our restaurants. 13 million people who no longer need groceries or clothes or gas. What happens to businesses when they lose 13 million consumers all at once? They sell less products, they make less money. And what happens to the job market when companies are making less money? They lay people off, and then the people who have been laid off have less money and then they buy less things. This whole idea of this kind of mass deportation being actually good for the economy is crazy when you add in the fact that undocumented people pay about $89 billion in federal, state and local taxes a year. When you get rid of those 13 million people, you lose that tax revenue. And if they're paying that much money in taxes, which is only a percentage of their income, what are they spending? This argument that illegals are a drain on the system is in reality wrong, especially since the majority of immigrants are not at all dependent on the government. Listen, I'm not saying we don't have an immigration problem. We do. I live in la. I see it every day. But what we need are more ways for people to come here legally so they can pay more into the system they're using. What we need is to be holding the companies who hire illegals so they can lowball their wages accountable instead of the individuals who are looking to care for their families. Immigration is the lifeblood of this nation, not whatever the Nick Fuentes or white Christian nationalists are selling. Even if you take race out of it, illegals are paying way more into the system than they take out. And getting rid of them severely damages the tax revenue. America is not benefiting from the war on immigrants. All the money that's going to ICE right now is being taken from programs. We need programs like SNAP and. And Medicaid. That's just math. But I think watching Minnesota right now, it's kind of clear. It's no longer about immigration. It's about punishing people. The administration doesn't like making a point. And I have to tell you, while that horrifies me, it doesn't surprise me. What surprises me are all the corporations and courts and law firms and universities that are just going along with it. I genuinely can't believe how much our institutions have abandoned us and the principles this country is supposed to stand for. I can't stand that it's been left to regular Americans to fight a violent gang without violence. Where are our leaders? There is a part of me that feels like it's not just about standing up to ICE officers anymore. It's about standing up to our representatives, no matter their party. These people are clearly not hearing us. In fact, it seems like our elected leaders are running cover for the administration or attempting to do this business as usual bullshit as if we're all not seeing what we're seeing. Of course, there are some leaders who get it. AOC Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost, Chris Murphy, Jamie Raskin. Even Republican Thomas Massie seems to get what's going on, and I sincerely appreciate his courage around getting the Epstein files released. But most of them just seem like absolute cowards at this point. I think we should be harassing them peacefully, of course, but we need to be telling them what we expect, and what we expect is better. We need to be at their offices or calling their offices and confronting them in restaurants and stores. We need to be going to the local and state offices and telling them or their staff how completely unimpressed we are and how we expect them to behave differently. These ICE officers don't care if we're angry. They get off on it. It gives them a thrill, not to mention an excuse to attack us. But the representatives will hate it if we get in their faces, and I think that's good. Ben Sheehan, one of my favorite experts on the Constitution and the host of Civics Made Easy on pbs, recently did a quick summary about how calling your representatives still works, but how it comes down to the volume of calls that they get from constituents more than anything. I've said it before and I'll say it again. 100% of the House of Representatives and 35% of the Senate, or 470 of the 535 total members of Congress, are up for election in November. We have the chance to replace all of them if we want to. And while November feels like a million years away, who's on the ballot basically starts right now with the primaries. These people want to get reelected, and that means they have to please their constituents. Ben reminds us that Republicans control the House, but just barely. They can only afford to lose two votes on any bill. But after January 31, when there's a special election in Texas and a Democrat is almost Guaranteed to win. The Republicans can only afford to lose one vote and that's a big deal. And in the Senate, as Ben points out, there are 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two left leaning independents. To stop a filibuster, the Republicans require seven extra votes, which gives the Democrats and independents real leverage. But imagine how that leverage would grow if we flipped some of those seats like we could in say North Carolina or Alaska or Maine or Texas. Right now, this January, there is an upcoming bill to keep funding ICE. Congress has to agree on this by January 30th. And looking at how ICE is behaving gives the Democrats an independence major, major leverage to demand massive changes in exchange for their vote or even get some Republicans whose constituents are unhappy and want to keep their jobs, to vote against funding the department and effectively shut it down. This is why I hate hearing, well, what do you expect the Democrats to do? They're the minority. Well, I expect them to fight. I expect them to make the argument. I expect them to convince their colleagues, the ones they keep referring to when they say things like my friends across the aisle, to do the right thing here, even if they're just appealing to their own best interests to keep their own jobs. I don't care how the sausage is made. I care if we can stop this hostile takeover of our streets. Public outrage will go a long way with these people. Politicians do not get off on misery like ICE officers do. I think harassing them will make a real difference. If you want to take that action. The number to call Congress is 202-224-3121. You can also go to 5calls.org and they will help you out with the whole process of reaching your personal reps, which is who you should be talking to. Staffers use the volume of calls from their constituents, not the emails or the letters, to measure voter sentiment. They count the issues discussed and they even note the tone of the caller's voice. And while one call might not change anything, many calls from many people absolutely will. Thousands of people calling simultaneously asking for the same things makes it pretty clear that they might not get reelected if they don't do what the people want. Personally, I don't think the representatives should get any rest. While we don't see the Epstein files and while we keep getting into wars and while our president puts oil money in his private overseas account and pardons his friends and sends mass goons into our streets. We are doing our best, but we are getting slaughtered out here. We are literally dying in the street while they are dining in D.C. and it is no, not okay. At the end of the day, no one escapes this attempted authoritarian takeover unscathed. People will get hurt no matter what, whether that's losing their health care, being more exposed to infectious diseases or foodborne illnesses, higher prices because of tariffs or lost labor, or actual violence in their streets. People will get hurt even if they're not involved. A couple and their six children were trapped inside their vehicle last week in Minneapolis when I shot a tear gas canister and the chemical gas filled up their entire car. These people who had nothing to do with ice or the protests were essentially hot boxed and their babies stopped breathing. If American bodies are on the line here, the people who represent those American bodies should at least be willing to put their careers on the line to help us. Now, I'm going to take another pause here to thank the rest of our sponsors, but I'll be right back. With everything that's going on in the news, I really don't feel like cooking or I get caught in my phone and then I start dinner too late. 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What happens in Minneapolis could quite literally determine the next decade of American civil liberties, free speech, and the future of the country and the world. And I know that sounds dramatic, but we are clearly at an inflection point. Before I go on, I want to say that I have read a lot of brilliant people's takes this past week, but Jiggy Geronimo, the brilliant progressive activist who writes the newsletter the Defiance Dispatch, which if you don't get, you really should subscribe to, has written something that I really want to share. Jiggy writes that a leaked DHS document tells us that ICE is having a hard time recruiting agents to go into Minnesota. And she says that that means two things. One, the actions on the ground in Minnesota are demoralizing ICE agents. So the people who are out in the streets, the people who are protesting and calling attention to and mocking and refusing service to ICE agents, are having an impact. And number two, if people don't want to go to Minnesota, that means the people who are showing up are the worst of the worst. They they are there because they want to beat people up. They want to be causing harm. I saw a video of an agent the other day saying, I love my job. I would do this for free. And they probably would if they wouldn't be arrested. Right now these men are getting paid by our government to beat and harass and in some cases sexually assault and kill people they don't like, like brown people and fucking bitches. Timothy Snyder, the professor and author of On Tyranny, reminds us that fascism relies on fear. It relies on the population being so afraid that they obey in advance. Heather Cox Richardson pointed out this week that Trump simply does not have the numbers to properly subjugate a population that refuses to comply I think they will try and help themselves with the new bill that was introduced on January 14 that will give people money for turning in their neighbors. But. But I am not sure it will pass, certainly not in an election year. So the bottom line is the Trump administration doesn't have the numbers to take us all. He cannot win unless we let him. Now, that doesn't mean any of this will be easy or nice or right. But as Jiggy says, remember that these people rely on fear, and they only get their power through compliance. So the next time you feel like that's it, we're cooked, remind yourself that if we fight, they fail. Minnesota is showing us that right now, and it's essential that we encourage them to keep at it. With that in mind, Jiggy has some suggestions of what she believes we who don't live in Minnesota can do to amplify the cause, that while it is important to continue to show the brutality of the officers and the violent reality on the ground, we also have to show the people standing in solidarity for their community. There are so many organizing efforts happening in the streets. Minnesota is showing up in force to protect each other. Many of the people who are coming out have never protested before. Most would not identify themselves as an activist. These are ordinary people living under government occupation, watching as their community is terrorized by armed, masked men. And they are still brave enough to come out. So while we can and should share the videos and stories of ICE being deplorable to American citizens and immigrants alike, we should also share videos of the people who drove ICE out of their restaurant or any restaurant or store that denies service to ice. There was a group of clergy members this week who occupied a Target headquarters in Minneapolis demanding they stop letting ICE come into their stores. And I think that story is incredibly important because the CEO of Target has agreed to meet with them because of that action. There are people all over the city confronting ice, shaming them, asking to follow their conscience. Those stories are worth amplifying because it clearly makes a difference to the officers, which is why they're having a hard time finding people who want to go to that town. There was a video that went around Instagram last week with a man pleading with ICE officers about all the children who were watching, asking, is this how you want to be seen? Yes, we are seeing Americans acting terribly, but they are the ones in masks. We need to highlight the Americans acting with grace and compassion, the ones out there showing their humanity and their face. So share the violent attacks on the community, but also the kind, brave community Activists and protesters who want better. Anger fires people up, but hope inspires. The final thing Jiggy suggests we do is amplify the idea that Americans across the country are against this, that ICE is not popular, that people are resisting, and that you aren't alone in thinking that this is wrong. In fact, you are in the majority. Obviously, watching Renee Good be murdered in broad daylight shocked the country. But watching what's happening in Minnesota is waking people up. The majority of us do not support ice and as I said, there is a vote coming up to fund ICE and DHS at the end of January. So we need to be in our representatives faces with all of that energy right now telling them that they absolutely cannot continue to finance this nightmare. Today, as this podcast drops, there is a national Free America walkout at 2pm which is a cross country walkout of work, school and commerce. As the organizers say, we will withhold our labor, our participation and our consent. A free America begins the moment we refuse to cooperate. This is not a request. This is a rupture, a protest and a promise in the face of fascism, we will be ungovernable. On Friday, January 23rd, the Faith and Union community leaders of Minnesota are planning an economic blackout. No work, no school, no shopping. So if you're in Minnesota, please join them. The Sunrise movement and the young people who run it are calling on people to cancel their refundable reservations that they have with Hilton hotels to pressure them to not do business with ICE anymore. Making corporations hurt is actually a major power in a capitalistic nation. It was economic protests that got Jimmy Kimmel back on the air. Not that we were mad, but that we pulled our dollars. And of course we need to keep in mind that US Senators are currently talking about a bill that would give even more money to ice and we need to demand that not happen. It's not even about defunding ICE anymore, it is about abolishing them. ICE was created in 2003 and looking around I think we can rightly say it's been a failed experiment. No one is made safer by a masked, violent, taxpayer funded group of armed men. I'm going to link Jiggy's newsletter, the Defiance Dispatch in the bio of this episode because she has made it so easy to share a lot of this content and amplify many of these stories. At the end of the day, we've been taught our whole lives that this is the land of the free and the home of the brave. But now we have to use that bravery to make that statement real. We were told that we had certain inalienable rights and they are being taken from us piece by piece and we simply cannot allow that to happen. It comes down to us, the good guys, the kind, the fair, the honest and the just. It comes down to us looking out for our neighbors and our future to stand up to tyranny not with violence but with numbers and intelligence and planning. What we are living through right now is the result of long term planning by the White Christian nationalists and we need to get going on our own plans. It starts now but we need to be considering what we want this country to look like 20 years from now. Thank you so much for joining me today and caring enough about democracy to be here. Keep the faith and fuck ice until next week. Peachy out. The Politics Girl podcast is written and performed by me, Lee McGowan and produced and edited by Happy Warrior Entertainment. All rights reserved.