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The atrocities and the fury mount. Astoundingly, after a murderous thug shot a mother of three in the face in broad daylight - "He didn't kill her because he was scared, he killed her because she wasn't" - state terror has ramped up with more lies, goons, attacks on "gangs of wine moms," brutish agitprop literally echoing the Nazis'. So when mini-Bovino went to take a leak at a store, the people's wrath, a bittersweet splendor, erupted. Their/our edict: "Get the fuck out."
For now, Trump's America keeps getting scarier and uglier. He's threatened to (illegally) withdraw the US from the world’s most vital climate treaty and 65 other agencies doing useful work. He's trashing a once-thriving economy because he doesn't know how it works, scapegoating longtime Fed chair Jerome Powell, who's (startlingly fighting back, flipping off autoworkers, admiring non-existent ballrooms. After (illegally) killing over 100 Venezuelans and abducting their president - Chris Hedges: "Empires, when they are dying, worship the idol of war" - he called oil executives to a dementia-ridden meeting where in a reality check one brave skeptic argued Venezuela is historically "uninvestable." He ordered invasion plans for Greenland - wait what - that joint chiefs are resisting as "crazy and illegal": “It’s like dealing with a five-year-old.” And in a supreme irony overload, he's menacing U.S. protesters while warning Iran's killers of protesters they'll "pay a big price" and urging Iran's people to "take over your institutions." We can't even.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, he's sending yet more thugs, persisting in calling Renée Good "a professional agitator" - Professional Agitators 'R Us! - and warning a besieged, traumatized community, "THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!" Up is down and MAGA minions dutifully follow suit. Tom Homan: "We've got to stop the hateful rhetoric. Saying this officer is a murderer is dangerous. It’s ridiculous. It’s just gonna infuriate people more." Newsmax and GOP Rep. Pete Sessions agree: Dems have to quiet their "rhetoric," cease "honking of horns," and stop "putting an iPhone on your face." "STOP THE MADNESS," shrieks David Marcus on Fox, blasting "organized gangs of wine moms" across the country - Wine Moms 'R Us! - using Antifa tactics to "harass and impede" ICE: "It's not civil disobedience. It isn’t even protest. It’s just crime." Here, Renée Good was "a trained member" of groups "executing missions that put law enforcement and the public in harm’s way," probably all part of "criminal conspiracies."
To support the insane narrative that the brazen murder of a mother of three in her car in public constitutes "an attack on our brave law enforcement," DHS released crude, "pathological," Goebbels-worthy propaganda that repeats the first day's lies and includes footage of when Good "weaponized her vehicle” by “speeding across the road" while failing to mention it was when "she had just been shot in the fucking face and her dead foot hit the pedal." No wonder the mindless carnage goes on. A thug leers to a cuffed protester she should've "learned her lesson," she asks what lesson, he snarls, "Why we killed that fucking bitch." And gangs of goons rampage door-to-door, barging into households of kids with guns and tasers ready. One brave, calm woman records it all, demands a warrant, barks get your hands off me, mocks how big and bad they are flashing a light in her face and sneers that, on the street, "You're all some pussies without that shit on your chest...Your mamas raised a bitch if you can wear that outfit proudly."
Last week both Illinois and Minnesota, and each state's targeted cities, filed federal lawsuits to end their invasions by thousands of armed, masked, violent goons racially harassing, terrorizing and assaulting their communities. The courts may yet halt the deadly mayhem; the regime sure as shit won't. In the wake of the DOJ's predictable, outlandish announcement they won't investigate Good's murder, multiple attorneys in the civil rights division - for decades "America’s last line of accountability when federal agents kill" - have resigned, the latest in a flood of departures totaling over 250, a 70% reduction. In their stead, the FBI seized control of the "investigation" after blocking local law enforcement's access to evidence. Kash's Keystone Cops are now looking into, not Jonathan Ross, but Good and her "possible connections to activist groups" - also, because there truly is no low, her widow's. "This isn’t a cover-up," said one former DOJ attorney. "It’s the end of civil rights enforcement as we've known it."
Experts say the escalating malfeasance and accompanying thuggery are the logical culmination of a longtime "culture of violence" within border control agencies. Ryan Goodman of Just Security describes a scathing 2013 report, commissioned but then buried, that specifically cites agents' proclivity for standing in front of blocked vehicles as a pretext to open fire on drivers attempting to flee a tense encounter. Thank God we don't see that anymore. Nor do we have to see Stephen Miller's nightmare vision of Dems in power making "every city into Mogadishu or Kabul or Port-au-Prince," complete with roaming convoys of masked, armed, hefty hoodlums snatching people off the streets, dragging them out of their cars, beating them up, kneeling on their necks (illegal under post-George-Floyd Minnesota law), and brutalizing them for unknown offenses until they go limp, fate unknown, like in this video by Ford Fischer last week. For MAGA, ICE proudly represents "the fearsome power of the American state." But don't call them fascists.
It was sick Greg Bovino's knee on that neck. Then he went on Sean Hannity's show to praise Jonathan Ross for shooting Renée Good three times in the face - "Hats off to that ICE agent" - because "a 4,000-pound missile is not something anyone wants to face." Hannity readily agreed it was "not even a close call...There is no ambiguity for anyone with eyes to see that (Good) had been taunting officers," which is not true, also definitely a death penalty offense. Later, Bovino claimed that 90% of the public "are happy to see us." Last week, a YouGov poll disagreed, finding a majority of Americans disapproved of the murderous job ICE is doing, and almost half support abolishing it entirely. That may be why, when Bovino went to take a piss last week at a Target in St. Paul, accompanied by a phalanx of surly stormtroopers with itchy trigger fingers and nervous cameras held aloft, they were met by pure, gut-level fury, and a crowd of we the people with no fucks left to give. More video from Ford Fischer of News2Share.
A handy transcript: "You’re a fucking bum. you’re a bitch. and if your wife’s got a problem, fuck her, too. you guys are all bitches. you can’t do shit to me. you can’t do a thing. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out. nobody wants you here. right. get the fuck out. walk the fuck, you stupid bitches. get the fuck out of here. coward. you’re a fucking coward, bitch. you’re a fucking bitch. fuck you. hold on, babe, I’m on the phone with these bitch-ass niggas. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out of here, you stupid bitches. you’re a fucking coward piece of shit. fuck you. and if you didn’t have a gun or a vest, I would beat the shit out of you. take that fucking badge off, and that fucking gun, and see what happens to you. you shut the fuck up, you’re not fucking tough. you’re a bitch and get the fuck out, you fucking pussy. you fucking bitch-ass white boys. I’ll fucking spit on you. fucking get out of here. get the fuck out. shut the fuck up. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out. nobody wants you here."
Among Minnesota's ICE victims was a Marine veteran who said she was following agents "at a safe distance" when they rammed the car, broke the window, dragged her out by the neck, slammed her face into the ground, tightly cuffed her and snarled, per their memo, "This is why we killed that lesbian bitch." Shaken, she told a reporter, "I took an oath, and they're spitting on it. They're Nazis. They're Gestapo. This isn't Germany." Not yet. But close, says James Fell's Sweary History: "Those who cannot remember the past need a history teacher who says 'fuck' a lot." When ICE Barbie, "this puppy-killing, plasticized bag of fascism" called Good a domestic terrorist, he notes, her podium read, "One of Ours, All of Yours" - the phrase Nazis used when the Resistance killed "murderous motherfucker" Reinhard Heydrich, and Nazis retaliated by killing thousands of Czechs and most of the village of Lidice, where they (wrongly) thought the assassins came from. Kill one of ours, we murder all of yours: "This is what DHS is threatening should people dare to resist the American Gestapo."
Dark echoes keep coming. In more Goebbels-worthy agit-prop, the Dept. of Labor just posted a bizarre musical photo montage captioned, "One Homeland. One People. One Heritage," which even X's AI chatbot Grok noted is just like the Nazi slogan, "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" - One People, One Realm, One Leader. Huh, said many: "Sounds familiar," "Sounds better in the original German," "I didn't have DOL dropping race-baiting propaganda with moody techno music on my 2026 Bingo card," "I remember this one from history books," "Can't wait for the sequel! Labor Creates Liberty!" and, "That 1930s retro energy really matches the new vibe." The video added, "Remember who you are, American." Rob Kelner responded, "I remember who I am. I am the grandchild of immigrants, in a nation that welcomed all four of my grandparents, dirt poor...fleeing tyranny." We have fallen so far, and lost so much. But some truths remain: "There is no world in which these are the good guys. None."
"Get it all on record now. Get the films. Get the witnesses. Because somewhere down the road of history, some bastard will get up and say that this never happened." - Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commander of the Allied Forces, on atrocities committed by the German Nazis.

The massive energy needs of artificial intelligence data centers became a major political controversy in 2025, and new reporting suggests that it will grow even further in 2026.
CNBC reported on Thursday that data center projects have become political lightning rods among politicians ranging from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on the left to Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on the right.
However, objections to data centers aren't just coming from politicians but from ordinary citizens who are worried about the impact such projects will have on their local environment and their utility bills.
CNBC noted that data centers' energy needs are so great that PJM Interconnection, the largest US grid operator that serves over 65 million people across 13 states, projects that it will be a full six gigawatts short of its reliability requirements in 2027.
Joe Bowring, president of independent market monitor Monitoring Analytics, told CNBC that he's never seen the grid under such projected strain.
"It’s at a crisis stage right now," Bowring said. "PJM has never been this short."
Rob Gramlich, president of power consulting firm Grid Strategies, told CNBC that he expects the debate over data centers to become even more intense this year once Americans start getting socked with even higher utility bills.
"I don't think we’ve seen the end of the political repercussions,” Gramlich said. “And with a lot more elections in 2026 than 2025, we’ll see a lot of implications. Every politician is going to be saying that they have the answer to affordability and their opponents’ policies would raise rates."
Concerns about data centers' impact on electric grids are rising in both red and blue states.
The Austin American-Statesman reported on Thursday that a new analysis written by the office of Austin City Manager TC Broadnax found that data centers have the potential to overwhelm the city's system given they are projected to need more power than can possibly be delivered with current infrastructure.
"The speed in which AI is trying to be deployed creates tremendous strain on the already tight resources in both design and construction," says the analysis, which noted that some proposed data centers are seeking more than five gigawatts, which is more than the peak load for the entire city.
In New York, local station News 10 reported last year that the New York Independent System Operator is estimating that the state's grid could be 1.6 gigawatts short of reliability requirements by 2030 thanks in large part to data centers.
Anger over proposed data centers has even spread to President Donald Trump's primary residential home of Palm Beach County, Florida, where local residents successfully postponed the construction of a proposed 200-acre data center complex.
According to public news station WLRN, locals opposed to the project cited "expected noise from cooling towers, servers, and diesel generators, along with heavy water use, pollution concerns, and higher utility costs" when petitioning Palm Beach County commissioners to scrap the proposal.
Corey Kanterman, a local opponent of the proposed data center, told WLRN that his goal is to shut the project down entirely.
"No good comes of having an AI data center near you," Kanterman said. "Put them in the location of least impact to the environment and people. This location is not it."
The Democratic attorneys general of California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York on Thursday sued President Donald Trump's administration over its "extraordinary and cruel action to immediately freeze $10 billion in federal funds that plaintiff states use to help provide services and cash assistance that allow families to access food, safe housing, and childcare."
Amid a childcare funding fraud scandal in Minnesota, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Tuesday announced the halt on a total of around $7.35 billion for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, $2.4 billion for the Child Care and Development Fund, and $870 million for social services grants for those five Democrat-led states.
The states' complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, says that the department and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., along with the Administration for Children and Families and its leader, Alex Adams, "have no statutory or constitutional authority to do this. Nor do they have any justification for this action beyond a desire to punish plaintiff states for their political leadership. The action is thus clearly unlawful many times over."
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison argued that "withholding all funding for these vital programs will not help fight fraud as purported, and will instead shred the finances of Minnesotans already struggling to get by. Without childcare assistance, poor families will be forced to choose between parents going to work and paying their bills or staying home to provide childcare during their working hours. And it's not just families who benefit from these programs that will suffer."
"Minnesota's entire childcare system will be put under immense strain if childcare centers lose the funding provided by these programs, which could force centers to lay off staff or close their doors entirely," Ellison warned. "This extreme outcome is not just cruel, it's also another example of the Trump administration going off the rails and deciding not to follow the processes and mechanisms Congress put in place to manage federal grants in a responsible way."
"Federal laws and regulations give a roadmap for reasonable, legal ways to audit funding programs and address areas of potential noncompliance, but this 'funding freeze' takes a chainsaw to the entire system without regard to who it hurts," the former congressman stressed. "I will not allow that to happen, so today I am filing a lawsuit to halt these cuts and protect families across Minnesota from Trump's heartless attack on low-income families."
BREAKING--We have filed our 50th lawsuit against the Trump Administration, challenging its illegal and harmful actions. It addresses the withholding of funds for the neediest among us, including access to child care. I will always fight for Colorado. www.axios.com/local/denver...
[image or embed]
— Phil Weiser (@philweiser.bsky.social) January 9, 2026 at 11:18 AM
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Wednesday that at least one other targeted state is being investigated. She said that "the president has directed all agencies across the board to look at federal spending programs in not just Minnesota, but also in the state of California to identify fraud and to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law all those who have committed it."
After the federal suit was filed, HHS General Counsel Mike Stuart said that the department "stands by its decision to take this action to defend American taxpayers" and "it's unfortunate that these attorney generals from these Democrat-led states are less focused on reducing fraud and more focused on partisan political stunts."
Meanwhile, California Attorney General Rob Bonta—who has now taken the Trump administration to court over 50 times—declared that "the American people are sick and tired of President Trump's lawlessness, lies, and misinformation campaigns."
"It is especially pathetic that, once again, his administration's actions are inflicting harm on the most vulnerable among us," he said. "As a society, we are rightly judged by how we treat our neighbors in need, and this is a shameful way to treat them."
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul similarly ripped the funding freeze as not only "unlawful" but "particularly callous," while New York's Letitia James also highlighted that "once again, the most vulnerable families in our communities are bearing the brunt of this administration’s campaign of chaos and retribution."
"After jeopardizing food assistance and healthcare, this administration is now threatening to cut off childcare and other critical programs that parents depend on to provide for their children," James continued. "As New Yorkers struggle with the rising cost of living, I will not allow this administration to play political games with the resources families need to help make ends meet.”
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser emphasized that "the US Constitution does not permit the president to single out states for punishment based on their exercise of core sovereign powers," and vowed that "the administration cannot punish Colorado into submission."
In addition to being blasted by leaders from the five targeted states, the funding freeze has been condemned by a growing number of elected officials across the country. US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) noted Friday that the move could impact nearly 340,000 children.
"At a time when our childcare system is already struggling, this will be a disaster for working parents and their kids," Sanders said. "This illegal order must be rescinded."
Self-proclaimed "free speech absolutist" Elon Musk believes schoolteachers should be "imprisoned" for educating students on topics that portray America negatively—including the nation's history of racism and the displacement of Native Americans.
The world's richest man, who was a prolific donor to President Donald Trump and a member of his administration, expressed this desire in a post on his social media app X on Thursday in response to a survey of high school students from 2022 conducted by the right-wing Manhattan Institute, about whether they had been taught concepts labeled as part of "critical social justice."
The post Musk replied to specifically emphasized that, according to the poll, 45% of students said they had been taught that "America was built on stolen land," while another 22% said they'd heard it from an adult at school.
Any even cursory retelling of US history makes such a statement beyond dispute. Since the arrival of European settlers in what would become the United States, Native Americans have been subject to over 300 years of well-documented forced migration policies, wars of extermination, and coercive treaties codifying their dispossession from lands they lived on for centuries.
In 2021, a year before the survey was conducted, researchers examined the first comprehensive dataset quantifying the forced removal of Native Americans and found that Indigenous people had lost approximately 99% of the lands they historically occupied.
The poll showed that students had also been taught other ideas about America that, while politically contentious, are also well-founded by US history and ongoing realities of legal and economic inequality—including that "America is a systemically racist country," that "white people have white privilege," and that "America is a patriarchal society."
With state-level bans on what it calls "critical race theory," "gender ideology," and other supposedly "divisive concepts" in public education, the right has in recent years been systematically chipping away at classroom discussions related to the uglier parts of US history and resulting ongoing inequality. Meanwhile, the second Trump administration has sought to use federal funds to coerce public schools into adopting his standards for "patriotic education."
But Musk, who donated an unprecedented $290 million to Trump to help him reclaim the presidency in 2024, thinks merely banning students from learning negative things about the country is not enough.
"Teaching people to hate America fundamentally destroys patriotism and the desire to defend our country," he wrote. "Such teachings should be viewed as treason and those who do it imprisoned."
The irony was immediately apparent to many. Musk's call comes just days after he claimed that by pushing to ban his platform X over its proliferation of nonconsensual artificially generated pornography, including of children, the United Kingdom “want[s] to suppress free speech.”
Musk has on numerous previous occasions emphasized the importance of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to free expression.
"You can't claim to care about the First Amendment if you believe this," responded Billy Binion, a reporter for the libertarian news outlet Reason." Treason is a capital offense. Imprisoning or executing people for their words is impossible to reconcile with any understanding of free speech. Incoherent and un-American."
The billionaire has long claimed to be one of free speech's foremost defenders, but often only in cases involving his ideological allies.
Since he took over the social media platform formerly known as Twitter in 2022, those who have criticized him, reported negative news stories about him, or promoted causes he disagrees with—particularly Palestinian or LGBTQ+ rights—have often had their accounts suspended or their content’s reach limited.
In recent weeks, echoing rhetoric from the Trump administration about deporting tens of millions of nonwhite American citizens, Musk has spiraled further into explicit calls for the ethnic cleansing of the United States, endorsing posts stating that white people must “reclaim our nations” or “be conquered, enslaved, raped, and genocided” and that “if white men become a minority, we will be slaughtered,” necessitating “white solidarity.”
"Obviously, the whole Elon-is-a-free-speech-absolutist thing is long dead," wrote Alex Griswold, a spokesperson for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, commonly known as FIRE. "But it goes beyond that to the point that he is significantly more censorial than the median American."
Pam Fessler, a former news correspondent for NPR wrote that "People who call for the imprisonment of those who teach facts are the ones who 'hate' America."
US President Donald Trump is letting corporate criminals—including some of his donors—run wild with no accountability as he unleashes federal immigration agents across the country and threatens to deploy troops against protesters in Minneapolis in the name of "law and order."
A report published Thursday by the watchdog group Public Citizen shows that the Trump administration in the president's second term has so far canceled or halted 159 enforcement actions—from federal investigations to lawsuits—against 166 corporations accused of illegal conduct.
"As a result of Trump’s corporate enforcement retreat, at least eighteen corporations accused of lawbreaking avoided paying $3.1 billion in penalties for misconduct, including 12 that benefited from canceled enforcement and six that settled enforcement actions with penalties significantly reduced from those sought under" former President Joe Biden, the report observes.
Public Citizen estimates that a third of the corporations that have benefited from dropped or frozen enforcement efforts during Trump's second term have ties to his administration, including more than 30 that donated to the president's inaugural fund or ballroom project.
Those corporations include Amazon, Coinbase, Microsoft, Meta, and Pfizer. The pharmaceutical giant, which Pam Bondi represented before becoming US attorney general, has benefited from three canceled Justice Department enforcement actions since the start of Trump's term—more than any other company.
Rick Claypool, a Public Citizen research director and author of the new report, said the findings further undercut Trump's claim to care about the rule of law.
“The Trump administration is canceling accountability for corporate predators that cheat consumers, exploit workers, and illegally abuse their power at home and abroad,” said Claypool. “The ‘law enforcement’ claims the White House uses as pretext for authoritarian anti-immigrant crackdowns, city occupations, and imperial resource seizures abroad lose all credibility when cast against the lawlessness Trump allows for the pursuit of corporate profits."
NEW @Public_Citizen report:
Trump agencies canceled or froze 159 enforcement actions vs 166 alleged corporate lawbreakers over the 1st year of his 2nd term.
1/3 of the corps have Trump admin ties such as ballroom donations.
They avoided paying $3.1 billion in penalties. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/szM0umFzmD
— Rick Claypool (@RickClaypool) January 15, 2026
Public Citizen's analysis came hours after Trump, in an early morning social media post, threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to crush protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minneapolis, where federal agents have shot at least two people over the past week—one fatally—and brutalized many others.
Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen's co-president, said Thursday that "invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy military forces against the American people is the exact opposite of what Minneapolis—and the country—needs right now."
“Trump should abandon this idea immediately and stop threatening to use the military against the American people," said Gilbert.
The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland on Wednesday indicated that they had not dissuaded President Donald Trump and his administration from trying to illegally seize their territory.
Shortly after a meeting at the White House with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and Greenlander Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt indicated that little had changed after the two parties spoke for less than two hours about the self-governing Danish territory.
"We didn't manage to change the American position," Rasmussen told reporters. "It's clear that the president has this wish of conquering over Greenland."
He then said that Denmark wants to "work with our American friends and allies," but warned that "it must be respectful cooperation."
Danish Foreign Minister Rasmussen:
“We didn't manage to change the administration position. It's clear that the president has this wish of conquering over Greenland."
pic.twitter.com/omrHSwzNkR
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) January 14, 2026
Motzfeldt, meanwhile, said that she and her Danish counterpart used the meeting with Vance and Rubio to show "where our limits are," while also expressing a "hope for mutual understanding" between the two parties in any future talks.
Q: What did Trump's team say when you told them that you can't just take over a nation? Did they appreciate that perspective?
GREENLAND FOREIGN MINISTER: I don't want to say what we discussed in the closed meeting room, but I'd like to have hope for more mutual understanding pic.twitter.com/thNP5LK5bH
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 14, 2026
While taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump was asked directly if he would respect the limits set out by Greenland, and he indicated that he would not.
"Well, we're gonna see what happens with Greenland," the president said. "We need Greenland for national security... If we don't go in, Russia is gonna go in and China is gonna go in. And there's not a thing that Denmark can do about it. But we can do everything about it. We're going to see what happens, but we need it."
Q: Are Greenland's limits going to be respected?
TRUMP: Well, we're gonna see what happens with Greenland. We need Greenland for national security. If we don't go in Russia is gonna go in and China is gonna go in. And there's not a thing that Denmark can do about it. But we can… pic.twitter.com/cH7yQypMYj
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 14, 2026
In fact, since Greenland is part of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO), the US would be obligated to defend it in the event that Russia or China launched an invasion.
As Trump has refused to back down from his threats to invade the territory of a longtime US ally, other European countries have started announcing troop deployments to Greenland to act as a potential deterrent.
In a social media post, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson revealed that "several officers from the Swedish Armed Forces are arriving in Greenland today" at Denmark's request to take part in an exercise dubbed Operation Arctic Endurance.
According to Le Monde, both France and Germany, two of the largest military powers in Europe, have also agreed to send troops to Greenland at Denmark's request. Canada and the Netherlands also pledged to send forces to help carry out the training exercise, Newsweek reported.
"Where is the ceasefire?" asked the father of a teenage girl killed in an Israeli strike on their family home.
Authorities in Gaza said Friday that Israeli forces killed or wounded dozens of Palestinians within the past 24 hours amid widespread skepticism over the Trump administration's announcement that the second phase of what many in the coastal strip say is essentially a sham ceasefire has begun.
The newly formed Gaza Administration Committee met Friday for the first time in Cairo, where members discussed immediate humanitarian relief and reconstruction plans for the obliterated strip. The body is an integral part of Phase 2 of US President Donald Trump's 20-point peace plan for Gaza, which US special envoy Steve Witkoff said began on Wednesday.
Trump said Thursday that his so-called Board of Peace to oversee Gaza has also been formed. In a post on his Truth Social network, Trump touted the body as "the Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled at any time, any place.”
The Gaza Administration Committee is chaired by former Deputy Palestinian Planning Minister Ali Shaath, who said during a Friday press conference that “our goal is to give the Palestinian people hope that there is a future" and bring “smiles to the faces of Gaza’s children, women, and men.”
However, Israeli bombs and bullets continued to claim Palestinian lives across the strip, including women and children, in the latest of what Gaza officials say are more than 1,200 violations of the three-month ceasefire. At least 463 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,250 others wounded since the tenuous truce took effect on October 10, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
"Where is the ceasefire?" asked the father of a teenage girl killed in an Israeli strike on their family's home in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. "We are civilians in our homes, and we are dying.”
Another Gaza resident, Jaber Mohammed, called the ceasefire process "all lies."
“We’ve been suffering for two years and now starting the third,” Mohammed told Al Jazeera Friday. “We’re suffering from the lack of food and drink, and from high prices.”
Yet another Gazan, Fayeq al-Helou, said: “They haven’t even started the first phase yet. How can they start the second?”
“We don’t want it to be like every other time, just words on paper," he added.
In addition to ongoing air and ground strikes, Israel has continued to block humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, where widespread hunger and illness are rampant among the nearly 2 million forcibly displaced Palestinians, many of whom are living in tents and other makeshift shelters unfit for human habitation. Gaza's Interior Ministry says that at least 31 people—some of them children and infants—have died in the strip due to exposure to cold, flooding, and shelter collapse amid winter storms.
Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, Israel's genocidal war on Gaza has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing.
Hamas, which has governed Gaza since 2007, said Thursday that it welcomes the new administration committee. Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas' political bureau, said that "the ball is now in the court" of the United States.
Trump said Thursday that Hamas must "immediately" return the body of the final Israeli hostage abducted in October 2023 "and proceed without delay to full demilitarization."
"They can do this the easy way, or the hard way," the president added.
Hamas has committed to dissolving Gaza's existing government and yield to the administration committee, although the group has been vague about how and when it would disarm, and maintains its "right to resist" Israel's occupation.
“If you get cooked by Ben Shapiro, you don't have a chance against Vance.”
Amid unprecedented backlash against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, California Gov. Gavin Newsom—considered a leading contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination—is being accused of giving the increasingly violent agency a pass after an interview with right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro in which he softened his criticism of ICE.
In recent days, following an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent’s fatal shooting of 37-year-old mother of three Renee Good last week in Minneapolis, officers of ICE and other federal agencies have been documented engaging in blatant racial profiling, unconstitutional “citizenship checks,” and extreme uses of physical force, including dragging a disabled US citizen from her car on the way to a doctor's appointment, as the Associated Press reported Friday.
It is part of a pattern of behavior by ICE that Newsom's press office described as "state-sponsored terrorism" as recently as January 7, when he used the term to describe Good's killing by agent Jonathan Ross, who was recorded shooting Good in the head after stepping in front of her vehicle and referring to her as a "fucking bitch." Agents also obstructed emergency medical services from arriving at the scene of the shooting to assist Good, according to video and eyewitness accounts.
But when questioned by the cantankerous debater Shapiro on his podcast, This is Gavin Newsom on Thursday, the governor backed off that forceful description of the agency.
“Your press office tweeted out that it was state-sponsored terrorism, which, I mean, Governor, I just have to ask you about that. That sort of thing makes our politics worse, and it does,” said Shapiro, to which Newsom responded, “Yeah.”
Shapiro continued: “Our ICE officers obviously are not terrorists. A tragic situation is not state-sponsored terrorism.”
“Yeah, I think that’s fair,” agreed Newsom.
A short clip of that exchange, shared in celebration by Shapiro's outlet, the Daily Wire, was met with widespread criticism on social media from those who wanted to see one of the Democratic Party's most prominent leaders take an unapologetic stance against ICE.
Mehdi Hasan, founder of the news outlet Zeteo, questioned why "Newsom is trying to wreck his otherwise very strong chance of winning the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination by doing this self-destructive podcast where he allows right-wing guests to walk all over him and then promote clips online of them walking all over him."
But this clip showed only one of several instances during the nearly two-hour interview in which Newsom rolled over to his guest's pro-ICE framing.
When Shapiro interrogated Newsom about California's supposed "sanctuary state" policy and suggested the state should “cooperate with ICE in the vast majority of cases,” Newsom responded: “That's exactly what they do in California.”
Newsom then boasted that there have been “over 10,000” deportations he’s cooperated with since he became governor of California. Though he emphasized that the sanctuary law only allows for the state’s correctional facilities to cooperate with ICE, advocates have criticized it for allowing the deportation of those who were never convicted and those who’ve had their cases dropped.
“California has cooperated with more ICE transfers, probably, than any other state in the country,” he continued. “I vetoed multiple pieces of legislation that have come from my legislature to stop the ability for the state of California to do that.”
Newsom has indeed vetoed at least two pieces of Democratic legislation that sought to further limit the state’s cooperation with ICE—one in 2023, which would have repealed requirements allowing prisons to transfer noncitizens to ICE custody after they leave prison, and another in 2019, which would have banned private security companies from entering California prisons to transfer people to ICE custody.
Shapiro later questioned Newsom on whether he agreed with calls from some Democrats to “abolish” ICE in the wake of the shooting, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), another potential favorite for the 2028 nomination.
Newsom said, “I disagree,” adding, “I believe a candidate for president by the name of Harris said that in the last campaign. I remember being on [All In with Chris Hayes] hours later saying, ‘I think that’s a mistake.’”
While she has been critical of the agency and suggested changing its enforcement priorities, it is untrue that former Vice President Kamala Harris has ever called to “abolish ICE,” even saying as far back as 2018 that “ICE has a purpose. ICE has a role, ICE should exist.”
She did not call for ICE to be abolished during the 2024 campaign for president as Newsom suggested, and was criticized by immigrants’ rights activists for running further to the right on immigration than in years past.
By rejecting calls to abolish ICE, critics noted that Newsom was expressing a position far out of touch with the Democratic base and with a widening segment of the country, which has grown increasingly hostile toward ICE over the past year, and especially in the wake of its actions in Minnesota, which have led many to see it more as President Donald Trump's personal paramilitary force than a legitimate law enforcement agency.
A poll earlier this week by the Economist/YouGov revealed that for the first time ever, “abolishing ICE” had more support (46%) than opposition (43%) among American adults. Among those who said they leaned Democratic, 80% favored abolishing the agency, compared with just 11% who opposed it.
“This is an unbelievably stupid move from Gavin Newsom,” wrote the host of the left-wing talk show One Hand Politics, who goes by Mason, in response to the governor's rejection of the call to abolish ICE.
He implored Newsom to “grow a fucking spine and stop chasing Republican moderates that don’t exist. They all hate you.”
Brian Tashman, a political researcher and strategist at the ACLU, noted that Newsom is “not willing to push back against Ben Shapiro but will push back against labor organizers trying to enact a billionaire tax that would affect a few hundred people."
Left-wing commentator Joe Mayall saw the interaction as a window into how Newsom might perform in a possible 2028 presidential debate against Vice President JD Vance, widely seen as the Republican who would succeed Trump.
He wrote: “If you get cooked by Ben Shapiro, you don’t have a chance against Vance."
"Republicans’ excessive funding of ICE and DHS, along with Trump’s pardons and claims of absolute immunity, are literally killing people," said one House Democrat.
A Texas medical examiner is reportedly planning to classify the recent death of Geraldo Lunas Campos, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last summer, as a homicide, marking the latest apparent abuse at the hands of an agency that has been rampaging lawlessly through US communities at the behest of President Donald Trump.
As the Washington Post reported Friday, "An employee of El Paso County’s Office of the Medical Examiner told Lunas Campos’ daughter this week that, subject to results of a toxicology report, the office is likely to classify the death as a homicide, according to a recording of the conversation."
"The employee said a doctor there 'is listing the preliminary cause of death as asphyxia due to neck and chest compression,' which means Lunas Campos did not get enough oxygen because of pressure on his neck and chest," the newspaper added.
In an interview with the Post, one detainee at the sprawling El Paso detention center known as Camp East Montana said he witnessed "at least five guards struggling with Lunas Campos after he refused to enter the segregation unit, complaining that he didn’t have his medications."
The eyewitness, according to the Post, "said he saw guards choking Lunas Campos and heard Lunas Campos repeatedly saying, 'No puedo respirar'—Spanish for 'I can't breathe.' Medical staff tried to resuscitate him for an hour, after which they took his body away."
Jeanette Pagan Lopez, the mother of two of Lunas Campos' children, told the Post that she was contacted by agents from the FBI who said they were investigating Lunas Campos' death.
“I know it’s a homicide,” Lopez told the newspaper. “The people that physically harmed him should be held accountable.”
US Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), co-chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, wrote in response to the Post's reporting that "Geraldo Lunas Campos may have been murdered."
"So disturbing," Barragán added. "Republicans’ excessive funding of ICE and DHS, along with Trump’s pardons and claims of absolute immunity, are literally killing people. Republicans remain silent or are openly OK with this."
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which has lied relentlessly about recent killings and other incidents involving ICE, claimed in a statement that Lunas Campos died after trying to take his own life.
“Campos violently resisted the security staff and continued to attempt to take his life,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “During the ensuing struggle, Campos stopped breathing and lost consciousness. Medical staff was immediately called and responded. After repeated attempts to resuscitate him, EMTs declared him deceased on the scene.”
Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban immigrant, was detained last summer and died on January 3. Citing court records, the Post noted that "Lunas Campos was convicted of several crimes, including for aggravated assault with a weapon and, in 2003, first-degree sexual abuse involving a child under 11 years old."
"Be ready for the Trump admin to highlight this guy's lengthy criminal record to eliminate any sympathy for him, even though none of that justifies being choked to death by guards at a detention center," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
Lunas Campos is one of four people to die in ICE custody so far in 2026.
“ICE kills—full stop," said Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network. "Whether ICE is targeting people in the streets, where they work or live or behind closed doors in one of its nearly 200 abuse-ridden detention centers across the country—ICE is an inherently violent agency jeopardizing families and community safety."
Camp East Montana, where Lunas Campos was reportedly killed, is a huge makeshift tent camp at the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, Texas.
Last month, the ACLU and other human rights groups demanded the immediate closure of the facility for immigrant detention, citing "accounts of horrific conditions, including beatings and sexual abuse by officers against detained immigrants, beatings and coercive threats to compel deportation to third countries, medical neglect, hunger and insufficient food, and denial of meaningful access to counsel, among other rights violations."