Showing posts with label no kings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label no kings. Show all posts

Saturday, May 2, 2026

The wannabe king’s empire is in decline

The wannabe king’s empire is in decline

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/5/2/800031213/series/trump-empire-in-decline/ 

The wannabe king’s empire is in decline

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President Donald Trump waves as he boards Air Force One, Wednesday, March 18, 2026, at Dover Air Force Base, Del., after attending the casualty return for the six crew members of an Air Force refueling aircraft who died when their plane crashed in western Iraq while supporting operations against Iran.
Attribution: AP (original)President Donald Trump waves as he boards Air Force One on March 18.

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Ah, the Trump Administration, the best possible evidence of an empire in decline. 

At the height of its global power and influence, the United States isn’t drifting into dysfunction. It has literally elected to do so by handing the machinery of government over to someone uniquely suited to corrode it.

This isn’t just chaos or incompetence. President Donald Trump has created an America where governance is replaced by spectacle, expertise by ideology, analysis by hot takes, and process by impulse. Week after week, he shows that his presidency is built on a performance—and that he lacks the competence to sustain it.

Trump’s meeting with King Charles III should have been straightforward. A head-of-state visit, carefully staged, diplomatically neutral, visually controlled. Instead, it turned into forced pageantry and another show of Trump’s narcissistic self-indulgence. He seemed less interested in representing the United States than in basking in proximity to monarchy itself.

And it’s not just monarchy. Trump is increasingly reaching for any symbol that conveys power and legitimacy without requiring him to actually earn it.

Trump’s supporters have spent a year pushing back against the liberal “No Kings” framing, insisting the concern is overblown or hysterical. But Trump himself keeps reaching for exactly those symbols: monarchy, religion, anything that signals unquestioned authority. Never underestimate his ability to make fools out of the people trying hardest to defend him, whether it’s portraying himself as Jesus or calling himself a king—both of which he has done.

Donald Trump and king charles tweet, by the White House, captioned TWO KINGS
Attribution: White House’s X account

But spectacle works only if everyone plays along. And that consensus is starting to crack.

Fox isn’t suddenly interested in telling the truth. But it is the most important amplifier of Trump’s theatrics, and even there, the strain is visible. When polling can’t be spun cleanly, and even friendly hosts start pressing for basic answers, it signals something more than a bad news cycle. It means that Trump is losing control of his own narrative. And in that environment, weird ideological obsessions flourish. 

You would think that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and his boss would have more important things to worry about, like figuring out how to get out of their idiotic war of choice against Iran. But that would require the kind of serious governing that would’ve avoided that quagmire in the first place. It’s much easier to pander to the anti-vaxxer crazies than figure out how to open up the Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil route. 

At least his Republican Party is starting to realize that consequences are on the horizon. 

It is stunning that Republican senators are quietly urging Trump to take care of any Cabinet shake-ups now, lest he be unable to do so in a potentially Democratic-controlled Senate next year. That is remarkable in a year when a Democratic Senate majority will require winning states like Alaska, Nebraska, Ohio, and Texas. 

Amazingly, you know what wasn’t in the week’s top stories? Anything having to do with the attempted Trump assassination at last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

There was a time when attempted presidential assassinations led to wall-to-wall news coverage. It would have driven the narrative, been unavoidable.

Now? Few care. 

On the left, there’s exhaustion. Trump has so thoroughly saturated the political environment with theatrics and bad faith that even something this serious struggles to break through. If nothing he says is credible on the small stuff, why would anyone suddenly take him at face value on something this large?

On the right, it becomes just another weapon. Another excuse to target enemies, to spin conspiracies, and to make the most ridiculous arguments for Trump’s stupid White House ballroom.

When a political system can no longer produce a shared understanding that political violence is unacceptable—when even that becomes just another partisan Rorschach test—that’s not just polarization.

It signals that the system is utterly corrupted.

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Friday, May 1, 2026

Thousands in US to join ‘no school, no work, no shopping’ May Day protest in economic blackout

Thousands in US to join ‘no school, no work, no shopping’ May Day protest in economic blackout

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/01/may-day-strong-economic-protests 

People holding a banner reading ‘No war, no ICE, May 1st general strike’
People holding a banner reading ‘No war, no ICE, May 1st general strike’ at a protest in Atlanta, Georgia, on 28 March. Photograph: Elijah Nouvelage/AFP/Getty Images

Thousands in US to join ‘no school, no work, no shopping’ May Day protest in economic blackout

Walkouts, marches and other gatherings planned for ‘May Day Strong’ demonstrations across the country

Thousands are expected to join an economic blackout for International Workers’ Day , as part of 3,500 “May Day Strong” events across the country today. Organizers are calling for “no school, no work, no shopping” with walkouts, marches, block parties and other gatherings planned into the evening.

On the east coast, protests were already under way by the early morning. In Manhattan, a group of Amazon workers, Teamsters and local politicians marched from the New York public library’s main branch to Amazon’s nearby corporate offices to demand the corporation cut its contracts with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In the nation’s capital, protesters with the organization Free DC shut down intersections across the city, holding handmade banners reading “Workers over billionaires” and “Healthcare not warfare”.

By midday, six protesters with youth-led Sunrise Movement were arrested for blocking a bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In Portland, Oregon, Sunrise protesters occupied a Hilton hotel lobby where DHS officials are allegedly staying.

May Day has long been an annual day of protest for the labor movement, and this year, many active movements are converging to demand no ICE, no war, and taxing the rich. The May Day Strong coalition includes labor unions, immigrants rights groups, political organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, and the organizers behind the No Kings protests. Friday’s economic disruption builds on a similar coordinated effort out of Minnesota in January, when tens of thousands of Twin Cities residents took off from school and work to flood the streets in protest of federal immigration agents storming the city.

A large crowd of people hold signs outside in a coordinated demonstration against ICE
What is May Day Strong, the ‘no work, no school, no shopping’ protests against Trump?
Read more

Leah Greenberg of Indivisible, one of the main organizations behind No Kings, described the May Day economic blackout as a “structure test” for the movement.

“We are asking people to take a step into further exerting their power in all aspects of their lives – as workers, as students, as members of local organizing hubs,” she said. “It’s important as it builds muscles towards greater non-cooperation.”

Teachers’ unions and students are an active part of the fight, a continuation of their months of organizing against ICE. At least 15 school districts in North Carolina have given teachers the day off to join a statewide May Day “Kids Over Corporations” rally for public education funding. In Chicago, Illinois, the Chicago Teachers Union fought and won to have May Day made a “day of civic action”. School is also canceled in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where teachers planned to demonstrate.

“As educators, we feel a very real accountability to the young people in the families that we serve,” Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union and Illinois Federation of Teachers, said earlier this week. “We want to connect people not just to the affordability crisis but the crisis of our institutions being marginalized in this moment and the impact on our young people.”

Sanshray Kukutla, a student at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and organizer with the campus’s Sunrise Movement chapter, is helping coordinate a local walkout for students, teachers, workers and residents. “We’re taking collective action to send a message to the billionaire class: it’s our labor, our spending and our participation that keeps the whole system running, and if we don’t work, they don’t have profits,” said Kukutla.

Some labor unions also planned for a strike today. Nurses at University Medical Center New Orleans announced they would begin a five-day strike for a fair contract.

Organizers say the day of action is an effort to build toward a general strike, which was essentially outlawed through the 1946 Taft-Hartley Act and hasn’t happened in the US since. As a workaround, Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), has called for unions to work toward a general strike on 1 May 2028, by having existing union contracts expire in unison.

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Saturday, April 11, 2026

Video of an ICE shooting shattered the agency’s story. Will it usher in accountability?

Video of an ICE shooting shattered the agency’s story. Will it usher in accountability?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/11/ice-shooting-dhs-accountability-minneapolis 

Video of an ICE shooting shattered the agency’s story. Will it usher in accountability?

Roque Planas
9–11 minutes

A screengrab from the 14 January shooting of Sosa Celis in Minneapolis.
A screengrab from a surveillance video of the 14 January shooting of Sosa Celis in Minneapolis. Photograph: City of Minneapolis

Video of an ICE shooting shattered the agency’s story. Will it usher in accountability?

The case against two Venezuelan men in Minneapolis is the latest to fall apart. Now agents could face repercussions, but questions linger over whether it signals a real shift

On 14 January, in the thick of Donald Trump’s massive anti-immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, two deportation officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attempted to stop a car in traffic.

They had identified the owner as an unauthorized immigrant, according to an FBI affidavit. The driver, later identified as Alfredo Aljorna, a Venezuelan national, sped off, hitting speeds of 80mph and eventually crashing into a parked car. He then took off running toward an apartment building where his roommate, Julio Sosa Celis, stood at the entrance holding a broad-bladed snow shovel.

Two people by a car behind red police tape
DHS’s account of two Venezuelans shot by border patrol falls apart in court: ‘a smear campaign’
Read more

In the agency’s telling, what ensued next was a violent altercation in which ICE agents said they were attacked, and eventually fired at Sosa Celis. Both men were later charged with assaulting a federal officer. But the prosecution crumbled weeks later, as the evidence to support the claims of a violent altercation fell apart.

And this week, newly released surveillance camera footage publicly undermined the agents’ accounts, casting fresh scrutiny on an agency that has gained a reputation for a toxic combination of excessive force and dishonesty.

It was the latest case to fall apart in a string of prosecutions against people accused of assaulting ICE officers. It was also the third time video evidence had undermined ICE’s attempt to describe an officer-involved shooting in Minneapolis as the result of self-defense. Federal immigration agents’ fatal shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, both of which were captured on cellphone videos by bystanders, appear so egregiously excessive they prompted the White House to reorganize the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security in the face of the mass deportation campaign’s plummeting popularity.

Video appears to contradict ICE account of officer shooting a man in Minneapolis

“In the long arc of our immigration enforcement history, Minnesota will be the major inflection point,” Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow with the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute, told the Guardian. “Accountability, at least the beginning of accountability, started in Minnesota after the death of Pretti.”

Now, the reckoning over ICE’s shooting of Sosa Celis has marked a stark shift for the agency. Instead of applauding the officers as heroes in the face of clear evidence casting doubt on their statements, as Kristi Noem, the recently ousted homeland security secretary, used to do, Todd Lyons, the ICE director, has said the officers involved were put on administrative leave and may face dismissal or criminal prosecution themselves for making false statements.

“Lying under oath is a serious federal offense,” an ICE spokesperson said in an emailed statement to the Guardian. “The US attorney’s office is actively investigating these false statements. Upon conclusion of the investigation, the officers may face termination of employment, as well as potential criminal prosecution.”

The shift has cast a spotlight on accountability at an agency that gained notoriety for its recklessness and impunity over a year-long campaign targeting Democratic-led cities including Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Chicago.

“I would characterize it as baby steps and symbolic oversight, at least so far,” said Gabe Sanchez, a researcher at the Brookings Institution. “But it would appear that there is some movement toward accountability. We’re moving in the right direction.”

The question now hanging over the agency is whether those changes will signal a real shift toward greater accountability and transparency, or simply a softer tone coupled with goodwill gestures.

A federal agent's uniform showing an ICE badge
Video undermines ICE account of officer shooting a man in Minneapolis
Read more

A case that fell apart

That the prosecution made it as far as it did highlights how little pushback ICE officers received from other agencies that investigated – and later brought charges – over the incident.

An account offered by an unnamed ICE agent, and described in the FBI affidavit, said Aljorna slipped a few feet from the door to the apartment building, allowing the officer to grab him. Sosa Celis then repeatedly struck the ICE officer in the face with a broom. The officer said a third, unidentified man then attacked him with a shovel. The fight lasted for about three minutes, according to the officer. When the officer drew his service pistol, the men tossed their broom and shovel and ran to the apartment building. The officer fired a single round as they fled, hitting Sosa Celis in the thigh.

But in Sosa Celis’s account, also described in the affidavit, no one attacked the ICE officer with the shovel. Sosa Celis acknowledged holding it when Aljorna arrived, but said he didn’t use it to strike the officer. Aljorna briefly scuffled with an ICE officer, perhaps hitting him with a broom. Sosa Celis pulled his friend away. As they fled, the ICE officer shot Sosa Celis in the leg.

People hold signs saying "Defind ICE' and 'Faceless Domestic Terrorists'
A protest demanding that ICE leave Minnesota in February, after agents swarmed the city during Operation Metro Surge. Photograph: Jérôme Gilles/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

The newly released surveillance video that captured the scene supports key details of Sosa Celis’s story, showing that there was no three-minute tussle in which either man repeatedly battered an ICE officer with a shovel or broomsticks. The overall confrontation appears to last around 12 seconds.

Jacob Frey, the Minneapolis mayor, said after the footage’s release: “The video makes it crystal clear that, just like in other situations during Operation Metro Surge, the federal government’s account of what happened simply does not match the facts.”

Timothy Schanz, an FBI special agent who interviewed the ICE officers and the two immigrants, mentioned viewing the CCTV footage in the affidavit he submitted in support of the federal criminal complaint against Sosa Celis and Aljorna. The affidavit says nothing about the video evidence contradicting the deportation officer’s story. The US attorney’s office for the district of Minnesota had the footage in its possession, but appeared to file criminal charges against Sosa Celis and Aljorna before reviewing it.

After prosecutors saw the footage, they took the unusual step of moving to dismiss their own case with prejudice in February, closing it permanently.

Prosecutions against federal law enforcement officers are exceedingly rare. US law sharply limits people from suing federal law enforcement officers for civil damages when their rights are violated. ICE is currently facing a lawsuit from the state of Minnesota for refusing to share evidence in all three of the agency’s officer-involved shootings.

ICE has not made it clear whether the officers on administrative leave were suspended with or without pay. The agency did not respond to a question from the Guardian.

Calls for accountability

Democrats have waged a pitched battle for months to avoid funding homeland security until securing more ways to hold ICE officers accountable, including requiring body cameras. But given how few checks homeland security agencies have on their power, the most potent way to bring accountability to ICE officers would be to remove their qualified immunity from prosecution for civil rights violations, said Mike Fox, a legal fellow at the Cato Institute.

Federal agents with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency stand guard during the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
A federal agent stands guard during the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photograph: Dave Decker/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

“ICE and border patrol should get zero dollars in perpetuity, unless and until there’s a way to hold agents accountable,” Fox said. “A statute that allows federal officials to be sued in their personal capacity and individually liable when they violate people’s rights, and absent that we don’t fund these agencies at all. That should be the choice.”

If the officers involved in the Sosa Celis shooting did, in fact, lie about why one of them opened fire, prosecutors should consider charges more serious than making false statements, Fox said. Violating someone’s civil rights under the color of law is a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years if the action results in bodily harm.

ICE’s statements have not discussed whether a civil rights investigation would be warranted in this case. And the Trump administration has gutted the justice department’s civil rights division, whose job it would be to prosecute a case like that.

“I can’t say they committed a crime, but I also can’t say they didn’t,” Fox said of the officers involved in the Sosa Celis shooting. “You know who should get to decide in this case? A jury.”

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