Week 56
By 
Happy Valentine’s Day!
It didn’t receive a lot of notice, but Donald Trump’s illegal use of the National Guard in cities was ended this week.
The deployments encountered repeated legal setbacks that stymied President Donald Trump’s desire for a show of force in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, Oregon. (WaPo gift link)
Tom Homan declared the siege of Minnesota by ICE and CBP over. Let’s see how this goes and where they attack next. They don’t have the personnel to do this in more than one place at once, although they have kept a low level of illegal arrests and terrorization going in other places.
They have put one (maybe more?) of the shooters on administrative leave, which would have been normal procedure for the police in a democratic society right after the shootings.
All this may represent victories for us but it’s fair to be vigilant for their next moves.
Meanwhile, they continue to radicalize citizens.
The Wall Street Journal had a banger of an article about the chaos and backbiting in DHS. I can’t fully do justice to the factions involved. Corey Lewandowski, one of those irregular government hires beloved of the administration, seems to be calling a lot of the shots while sleeping with Kristi Noem. Both are married to other people. Tom Homan and the heads of the various agencies seem to be on another side.
It’s worth keeping in mind that fascists often fight with each other. But still a good idea to exacerbate the divisions.
It turns out that when you hire pretty faces from Fox News to run government departments, things go wrong. (gift link) Pete Hegseth handed over a high-powered laser to CBP goons without coordinating with the people who keep airplanes in the sky. Hilarity ensued when the FAA shut down the airspace around El Paso International Airport and the adjacent Fort Bliss, where the goons brought down a party balloon with the laser.
Shutting things down for ten days was excessive, and the action was rescinded within a few hours of when it was imposed, but someone in the FAA was either very incompetent or very annoyed.
The playbook for incompetent cabinet secretaries (All of ‘em, Kate!) testifying before Congress is to shout insults and irrelevancies rather than answer questions. This clearly shows the superiority of their Constitutional Article II powers over the measly Article I Congress. Pam Bondi got caught with her playbook showing that DOJ monitored which pieces of the Epstein files members of Congress examined. Her shouting and irrelevancy was noteworthy but projects less strength when she has to flip pages of her book to find the insults.
President Trump has a truly wonderful proof that unfortunately cannot fit in a single tweet – oh wait, that’s something else.
All kinds of thing are coming out of the Epstein files. This is going to continue for a long time.
And a happy Valentine’s Day story.
Follow the court-watchers for the details of the lawsuits. Chris Geidner (LawDork, Bluesky), Roger Parloff (Lawfare, Bluesky), and the Just Security tracker.
As usual, keep it to things that have actually happened, not hypotheticals. What is actually happening is plenty.
Caring for yourself and loved ones is resistance too. Post your pets.
152 more weeks to go. What are you doing? As Jane Goodall often put it: Do what you can, where you are, when you are able. It’s getting more important to participate.
Previous weeks: Week 10, Week 20, Week 30, Week 40, Week 50, Week 51, Week 52, Week 53, Week 54, Week 55