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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...
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— 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 Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday was called out for making a blatantly false claim about whether federal immigration agents are arbitrarily demanding that Minnesota residents provide evidence of their legal status.
While speaking with reporters outside the White House, Noem was asked about videos that have emerged from Minneapolis showing federal agents asking passersby to give proof of citizenship.
"Is that targeted enforcement and are you advising Americans to carry proof of citizenship?" a reporter asked Noem.
"In every situation we are doing targeted enforcement," Noem said. "If we are on a target and doing an operation, there may be individuals surrounding that criminal that we may be asking who they are and why they're there, and having them validate their identity. That's what we've always done."
In reality, there have been multiple alleged instances of federal agents asking Minneapolis residents for proof of citizenship that were completely unrelated to any "targeted" enforcement operation.
A lawsuit filed by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on Monday documented numerous such instances, including one where federal agents surrounded and questioned a driver at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport about his citizenship, and another where US Department of Homeland Security agents approached a team of Minneapolis Public Works employees and questioned them on their citizenship.
A Monday report from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, meanwhile, quoted a St. Paul resident who said federal agents knocked on her door and asked her to help them "identify Hmong and Asian households" in her neighborhood.
Given the extensive evidence of federal agents hounding Minnesotans for proof of their citizenship, many critics were quick to call out Noem for dishonesty.
"This is just a lie," wrote Democratic strategist Matt McDermott in a social media post. "There has been extensive reporting on ICE doing random door-to-door neighborhood patrols looking for anyone who is not white."
NPR reporter Sergio Martínez-Beltrán countered Noem's claims by describing an incident he saw first-hand.
"A few days ago, I witnessed how immigration agents stopped at a parking lot and asked drivers charging their electric cars for proof of citizenship or legal status," he explained.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said that Noem's claims were false not just in the context of Minneapolis, but of other US cities as well.
"In Los Angeles, for example, DHS officers outright admitted to doing 'roving patrols,' which are NOT targeted," he explained.
Another first-hand account was given by Dan Mihalopoulos, an investigative reporter at Chicago-based public radio station WBEZ.
"Last month, I saw Border Patrol roll up to random Asians in the parking lot of a Costco in Illinois asking if they are citizens," he said. "They backed off a woman who spoke English without an accent. But a Chinese shopper had to show his green card to agents."
Democrats on the US House Homeland Security Committee accused Noem of supporting racial profiling by law enforcement.
"If you’re Black or brown, Kristi Noem thinks it’s fine to stop you, cuff you, and demand proof you’re American," they wrote. "Republicans support racial profiling. They want it in your neighborhood."
Just hours before a report on Wednesday that an attack on Iran by US President Donald Trump may be "imminent," a poll showed that a majority of Americans already believe the president has overstepped in using the US military to intervene in other countries.
Over the past two weeks, Trump has carried out an operation to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in order to "run" the country and hand its oil reserves to American companies, has said he may use the military to conquer Greenland and annex it for the US, and has made repeated threats to strike Iran as it cracks down ruthlessly on anti-government protests.
The survey of American adults by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 56% believe Trump has "gone too far" in using the military to intervene in other countries, while just 35% felt his approach has "been about right."
In Venezuela specifically, 57% said they disapproved of Trump's handling of the situation, while 61% said they disapproved of his foreign policy in general.
Just 8% of those surveyed said they wanted to see Trump go further with military interventions. But they appear to be who Trump is listening to.
An anonymous US official told Reuters on Wednesday that the United States has begun to pull personnel from military bases in the Middle East as a precaution after the Islamic Republic said it would retaliate in the event of a US strike. Britain has reportedly begun to do the same with military bases in Qatar in anticipation of a US strike.
"All the signals are that a US attack is imminent, but that is also how this administration behaves to keep everyone on their toes," another Western military official told the outlet. "Unpredictability is part of the strategy."
Trump's threats to strike Iran come as the nation clamps down on the largest wave of unrest it has seen since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, following the collapse of the nation's currency and skyrocketing cost of living in part due to US sanctions.
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, security forces had killed at least 2,586 demonstrators as of Wednesday, while more than 18,000 have been detained.
However, many Iranians taking part in the protests, as well as their supporters abroad, have warned that the US, which has long undermined democracy in the country, will seek to exploit their struggle against the theocratic regime.
Advocates warned wage garnishment "would have risked pushing nearly 9 million defaulted borrowers even further into debt."
Billionaire US Education Secretary Linda McMahon has temporarily suspended the Trump administration's plan to resume garnishing the wages of defaulted student loan borrowers, a reversal that came after advocates warned the pay seizures would have had devastating economic consequences for people across the country amid a worsening cost-of-living crisis.
McMahon, who is actively working to dismantle her department from within, told reporters earlier this week that wage garnishment efforts have "been put on pause for a bit," without providing specifics. The Trump administration, which last summer ended a pause on student loan repayments that had been in place since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, was reportedly set to begin notifying defaulted borrowers of plans to withhold a portion of their wages last week.
Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director at the advocacy group Protect Borrowers, said in a statement Friday that "after months of pressure and countless horror stories from borrowers, the Trump administration says it has abandoned plans to snatch working people’s hard-earned money directly from their paychecks simply for falling behind on their student loans."
"Amidst the growing affordability crisis, the administration’s plans would have been economically reckless and would have risked pushing nearly 9 million defaulted borrowers even further into debt," Canchola Bañez added. "Earlier this month, a coalition of partners sent an urgent letter to ED urging them to do just this. We are pleased to see they have heeded our calls.”
That letter—sent on January 7 by Protect Borrowers, the American Federation of Teachers, Debt Collective, and other groups—called the administration's earlier decision to resume wage garnishment "calloused and unnecessary," warning that it came at a time when "struggling borrowers have been forced to wait amidst a nearly 1 million application backlog to enroll in an Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plan, and as mass layoffs at the department have made it even harder for borrowers to get help with their student loans or if they are experiencing issues with their student loan servicer."
According to an analysis by Protect Borrowers, 3.6 million new student loan borrowers fell into default during the first year of President Donald Trump's second term in the White House. That's one new default every nine seconds.
"Nearly two-thirds of the borrowers who defaulted during the Trump administration—more than 2.6 million people—live in states that President Trump won in the 2024 election," the analysis found.
Under federal law, the Education Department can withhold up to 15% of a borrower's after-tax income to pay down defaulted debt. The Trump administration has already begun seizing income tax refunds from student borrowers in default.
The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) noted in a Thursday blog post that "if you have received a notice of proposed garnishment, there are steps you can take to object to the garnishment notice and request a hearing, which is typically conducted through a written review of your objections."
"You must act quickly to avoid a potential garnishment order from being sent to your employer," the group stressed.
"Double whammy! Trump wants to raise prices on Americans to help invade Greenland, which we don't want."
President Donald Trump on Friday suggested that he would expand his legally contested and costly tariff regime to target any countries that don't support his plan to conquer Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory opposed to a US takeover.
While he was supposed to be speaking about rural healthcare at the White House, Trump recalled threatening Europe with tariffs on pharmaceuticals and said that "I may do that for Greenland too. I may put a tariff on countries if they don't go along with Greenland, because we need Greenland for national security. So I may do that."
Responding to a clip of Trump's remarks on social media, journalist Adam Cochran cited multiple federal laws and called his comments "impeachable."
Meidas Touch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski called the president "the Mad King."
Congressman Darren Soto (D-Fla.) wrote: "Double whammy! Trump wants to raise prices on Americans to help invade Greenland, which we don't want."
Polling has shown that the US seizing Greenland is unpopular with not only Greenlanders but also Americans. As Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Denmark and Greenland's foreign ministers met earlier this week, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that just 4% of US voters think it would be a "good idea" for Trump to take the territory by military force, and only 17% of approve of the president's push to acquire it by any means.
Other countries have rallied around Greenland and Denmark amid Trump's threats, and troops from several nations that have long been allied with the United States—including France, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom—arrived at the Arctic island this week.
The European Union's defense commissioner, Andrius Kubilius, said Monday that he agreed with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen's assessment that a US takeover of Greenland "will be the end of" the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
A bipartisan group of US lawmakers was in Copenhagen on Friday to meet with Danish and Greenlandic leaders, including Frederiksen. The Associated Press reported that the delegation leader, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), thanked the hosts for "225 years of being a good and trusted ally and partner," and said that "we had a strong and robust dialog about how we extend that into the future."
The only Republicans to join the delegation were Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Thom Tillis (NC), who isn't seeking reelection. Murkowski told journalists, "Greenland needs to be viewed as our ally, not as an asset, and I think that's what you're hearing with this delegation."
"I think it is important to underscore that when you ask the American people whether or not they think it is a good idea for the United States to acquire Greenland, the vast majority, some 75%, will say we do not think that is a good idea," Murkowski added, according to Reuters. "This senator from Alaska does not think it is a good idea."
As the Hill detailed Thursday:
A Republican senator who requested anonymity said Trump's talk of taking over Greenland has generated more opposition from Republicans in Congress because of the dire implications such an aggressive move would have for the future of NATO.
"You see, more than in other incidents, pushback by Republican senators on this topic," the lawmaker said.
"I have no understanding how this is an idea to begin with," the senator added with exasperation, warning that taking Greenland will undermine NATO and put Ukraine at greater risk.
On Thursday, after another bipartisan meeting with Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said that "what I thought was remarkable is that they talked to us about how the entirety of Greenland and the entirety of Denmark right now is focused on whether there is an invasion coming from the United States."
"This would be a cataclysm, the United States going to war with Europe," he warned. "We're trying to show Denmark that they have support on both sides of the aisle in Congress, but we need our Republican colleagues to speak up right now."
"Cruelty and humiliation were probably the point," said one witness.
Several Democratic lawmakers on Friday convened a hearing in Minnesota to hear testimony from local officials and residents about the impact that the surge of federal immigration agents in the state has had on their lives.
The hearing, which was organized by Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), featured elected leaders such as Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, as well as testimony from US citizens who had been taken into custody by federal agents.
Patty O'Keefe, a 36-year-old US citizen, told lawmakers that her encounter with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents began when she and a friend had received a report that legal observers in her neighborhood were being pepper sprayed.
She said they found the agents and began following them in their car while honking their horn and blowing whistles to alert others in the area to their presence.
The ICE agents subsequently stopped their vehicle, surrounded the car, discharged pepper spray into it, then smashed the car's windows and dragged out both O'Keefe and her friend.
O'Keefe said that after being detained by agents, they started taunting her, with one agent telling her, "You guys got to stop obstructing us, that's why this lesbian bitch is dead," an apparent reference to Minneapolis resident Renee Good, who was killed by an ICE agent last week.
O'Keefe said this comment left her feeling "rage and sadness," while also asking why anyone would say something like that about the victim of a horrific killing.
"Then I remembered that cruelty and humiliation were probably the point," she said.
O'Keefe was then taken to the BH Whipple Federal Building in St. Paul, where she was put into leg shackles and placed in a detention area that had been reserved for US citizens.
While in detention for eight hours at the building, she said she saw people being subjected to inhumane conditions.
"I saw holding cells with over a dozen people each, and a large holding cell of between 40 to 50 people," she said. "Most of the people there were Hispanic and East African, both women and men. Some cells had no room for people to sit or lay down. Most people I saw were staring straight ahead, not talking, despondent and grief stricken. I know I'll never forget their faces."
Mubashir, a 20-year-old US citizen of Somali descent, recounted his detention by federal immigration agents in December, when officers tackled him and took him into custody even though he offered to show them his identification proving his citizenship.
"I repeated, 'I'm a citizen, I have an ID,' the agent kept saying, 'That don't matter,'" Mubashir explained.
Like O'Keefe, Mubashir was taken to the St. Paul ICE detention facility, where he was shackled. Unlike O'Keefe, however, he was told that he was going to be deported despite having proof of his legal status.
Eventually, Mubashir was able to show a photo of his passport card to an official at the facility who instructed officers to release him from custody.
"It is difficult to believe this happened to me," he said. "I knew the president had made statements about Somali people and there would be additional ICE officers in the Twin Cities... But I did not think this would happen to me or someone in my family. We are all United States citizens, so we should not be at risk of being jailed or deported by ICE."
Mubashir also emphasized that "my citizenship did not protect me from being physically detained and hurt by ICE agents."