It's Not About Training

People in Minneapolis and Saint Paul are now getting caught up in ICE tear gas attacks who are not involved in trying to deter them or daring to "scarily follow" them down the street. People who are just driving past the area of a raid (including people I know) or walking down a street in a busy commercial intersection (Lyndale and Lake).

Minnesota Public Radio's Matt Sepic was on WAMU's 1A show today recounting the details of the ICE home invasion in the near-north suburb of Robbinsdale (or North Minneapolis), in which five of them broke down a door to take a single person. They claimed they had a judicial warrant, but of course they didn't. In the video taken by one of the home's residents, which has been widely shared, she demands the warrant repeatedly, but they never show it. They shine a light in her eyes and at one point brandish a long gun at her. 

Sepic says a 9-year-old was in the house. 

All of this was done so they could kidnap a Liberian refugee man whose status is in dispute. He has an order for final removal, Sepic said, but has been checking in as ordered, including just a few days ago. When they could have detained him, as they have been doing to many other people. 

But no, they waited until Sunday to come and terrorize his friends or loved ones in this house, his neighbors who tried to come help, and anyone who heard about this — by illegally breaking down the door and raiding the house. 

MPR Reporter Matt Sepic, who is just about the most deadpan reporter you'll ever hear, ended this description to 1A's host with these words: "These are police-state tactics."

And two people who were detained while they were legally following an ICE vehicle, described on MPR the eight-plus hours they were held at the locally based federal Whipple Building, before they were released without charges. How they were treated, and what they heard and saw of the way the non-citizens were being treated. Note that one of them was told by an ICE member that Renee Good was a "lesbian bitch." 

At this point, the number of people carrying out perfectly legal activity who've had their car windows smashed must be over two dozen. And that's not counting people who ICE suspected of being undocumented, who also should not have their car windows smashed when ICE attempts detention. 

This is all obvious provocation by Trump's private army. He's wants people to fight back so he can declare the Insurrection Act. 

It's not about "better training." This is what they're trained to do. No more funding (my god, they have enough!).

And as soon as possible, get rid of ICE and "homeland" security. Restructure these departments to their pre-9/11 state.

___

Update/addendum: From Jake Steinberg, who does maps and visual stories for the Star Tribune, and his colleague Jeff Hargarten:

There are now more federal immigration agents in Minnesota than the 10 largest Twin Cities police departments combined.

9% of ICE is in Minnesota right now, even though Minnesota has less than 1% of the nation's undocumented immigrants.

DHS forces outnumber the metro's 10 largest police departments.

Three Watercolors

Last Sunday morning, before we knew what would be happening this week with the invasion of the Twin Cities, I went to see the last day of an exhibit at the University of Minnesota's Bell Museum. It was called Curious Allies: Exploring Relationships in Fungi, Parasites, and Carnivores. Parasitic and carnivorous plants, that is. 

It was primarily an exhibit of botanical illustrations, and within that, almost all watercolors. These three stood out to me. The level of detail and control in the paintings is something that just makes me blink.

Ghost pipes, Monotropa unitropa, a parasitic plant, by Jessica Daigle. 


Pitcher plant, Saracenia purpurea, a carniverous plant, by Robin Jess. (In addition to the painting itself, check out Jess's beautiful pencil handwriting.)


Another pitcher plant, Saracenia purpurea, this time by Beverly Simone.

Click any of them to enlarge. 

I know the resolution in the photos, especially as saved for web, is not the best for appreciating what I'm talking about, but I wanted to share them anyway.

Good Climate News

For a change of pace, some good news from Assaad Razzouk, the Angry Clean Energy Guy:

Good climate news this week:

1. UK: 2025 sees forst full year without any coal power since 1882
2. Europe: EU carbon border levy comes into force
3. UK: Renewables made up 47% of electricity supplies in 2025, a record
4. China: Action plan unveiled to promote green consumption
5. China: 2025 CO2 emission factor of electricity down 8 to 9% year-on-year
6. China: ‘Artificial sun’ breaks nuclear fusion limit thought to be impossible
7. Germany: Solar overtakes coal and gas in 2025, delivers 18% of electricity
8. China: First national corporate climate disclosure standard issued
9. Europe: EVs jump 37% year-on-year in November
10. Germany: EVs up 43% year-on-year in 2025
11. UK: EVs up 23.9% year-on-year in 2025
12. Mexico: 20 renewables projects awarded, 3.3GW of contracts
13. Turkey: 4.7GW of solar installed in 2025
14. Australia: 1.2 GWh of behind-the-meter battery storage added in December
15. China: Smart power grid technology developed that cuts blackout recovery time to a 10th of a second
16. Global: $479b invested in power grids globally in 2025, up 18% year-on-year
17. US: Developers of five offshore wind farms, ordered to halt construction, file lawsuits to restart work

Of course, the only one of those in the U.S. is an attempt to stop the Trump regime from doing something bad. But at least it's something.

Powderhorn Today

I went to the large anti-ICE march that started from Powderhorn Park in South Minneapolis this afternoon. 

On the way there, I could tell it would be large because there were a lot of people (young people, at least to me) who didn't know how to navigate the bus system who were heading there. I helped them figure out where to get off the connecting bus for the B line on Marshall Ave. 


On the way to the march with my sign, coffee can, and drum stick. And mittens.

About six of us got on the B at Cleveland. More and more people got on at every stop going west on Lake Street, and almost all were going to Powderhorn Park. Some of them got off at Cedar, many at Bloomington, and our original group exited at Chicago. 

Too many of the sidewalks as we went south from Lake Street, as I expected, were terrible — never shoveled, so the surfaces were completely uneven ice. Dangerous. At Powderhorn Park itself, 10th Avenue alongside the park had ruts in the driving lane with a wide, flat, hard ice ridge between them. The protected bike lane next to the park had a 2-foot-tall ice ridge crusted between the plastic flex poles, which was dangerous to clamber over as you went into the park. Walking was a dangerous enterprise. I'm surprised I only saw one person fall the whole time.

The northwest corner of the park is flat, but not large enough for the huge number of people who arrived for the event, so people filled 10th Avenue and probably 32nd Street at the north edge and maybe 33rd as well (I couldn't see that far). 



As usual, my goal was to find the Brass Solidarity Band, but I never managed to do that. Too many people this time! So I found another person with a drum to join up with so I could accompany him with my coffee can. 

I think there were a lot of people there who have not been to marches before. There were so many signs made from unfolded cereal boxes, or unfolded Amazon boxes, and just miscellaneous pieces of cardboard. There was one couple who each carried signs made from small pieces of cardboard taped to wooden yardsticks. The funniest improvisations I saw were a person who had used a purple magic marker to write an anti-ICE message on the inside of a gray Rubbermaid tub cover, and a person who had made crude lettering with masking tape on the back of their winter coat.

Anger was the primary mood. The chant of the day had to have been "Fuck ICE – ICE out!" It wasn't one of the official chants done by the person leading from the sound truck. It started from behind me, after the march finally started to move. At first I didn't understand what the words were. I could only hear the rhythm of it. But it carried forward through the crowd until it reached the spot where I was. This chant was repeated over and over spontaneously by people who just started it, block after block, interspersed with other chants.

The march route went from the park up to Lake Street then west past Chicago Avenue. There were also a lot of FUCK ICE tags on various signs along the way on Lake Street. I have very few photos of anything, though, because I was banging on the coffee can, I had mittens on, and as usual at these things, I had turned off touch ID on my phone for security purposes, which makes it even harder to take photos quickly. 


The last photo I took before turning off touch ID (also taken on 10th Avenue by the park).

When the march turned south off of Lake Street onto Portland Avenue, I knew the intent was to go to the site where Renee Good was killed, between 33rd and 34th Streets. Which is what happened.


The X marks the spot where Renee Good's car came to rest after she was shot.

It was strange being back on that block again after I was there on Wednesday, just after the killing. There were too many people there today for it to be only about her, and the people were too angry about everything ICE is doing and the federal government. 

Another person who was at the march posted this:

The march was so long that when we finished, after an hour of marching, there were still people waiting to start matching. We made a protest ouroboros.

Another:

I stood by the Midtown Global Market [at Lake and Chicago] chanting for the march as it passed. It was 2 hours long from front to back. Steady flow the entire time. Huge numbers.

Yesterday "Homeland Security" announced it is sending another 1,000 storm troopers from other cities it has previously invaded to Minnesota, so there will be 3,000 of them here. That means they will even more overwhelmingly outnumber the total number of cops in our two cities and our state troopers. 

Corruption, Fraud, and Structural Tax Evasion

Donald Trump, of course, pardoned multiple rich guys who defrauded people. His own son defrauded kids with cancer.

But it's not always literal fraud that he chooses as a method to pad his own pockets or those of his friends. Sometimes it's just garden-variety corruption or self-dealing.

From Heather Cox Richardson yesterday:

Vicky Ge Huang of the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump family's cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial today applied for a national banking license from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, part of the Treasury Department. A banking license would integrate the Trump family's crypto currency more fully into mainstream finance.

If the Treasury Department issues the license — a potential outcome that critics say reveals a major conflict of interest for the president — the president and chair of the new company would be Zach Witkoff, whose father is the son of Trump's envoy to Russia Steve Witkoff, who the Wall Street Journal recently reported had been handpicked for his role by Russian president Vladimir Putin. The younger Witkoff started World Liberty Financial in 2024 with Trump's sons Don Jr., Eric, and Barron. 

Today the Star Tribune reprinted a New York Times story called "Partnership audits falter under Trump." It sounds deadly dull, but the gist is that billionaires and other rich business-owners are exploiting a tax loophole that exists for partnerships, originally mom-and-pop businesses, to cheat on taxes for their real estate partnerships and hedge funds. Profits from these types of partnerships went up more than ten-fold between 2000 and 2022 (from $202 billion to $2.6 trillion). We are not talking chump change here. 

Under Biden, the IRS had hired a bunch of experts on partnership law and taxes and begun to crack down on this, but the DOGE lay off of discretionary hires laid waste to all those recent hires, so the cases are being dropped. Of course!

The final paragraph of the story:

A recent study by a team of business and law school professors [at Stanford, NYU, and Chicago] found that audits of complex partnerships had a "high return on investment," generating $20 in collected taxes for each $1 spent by the IRS. That return is more than eight times what the IRS generates from auditing corporations, the researchers found.

But if it's health care fraud that's wanted, there's always the old one by Florida Senator Rick Scott, or the ongoing Medicare Advantage scams like that of UnitedHealth Group (Star Tribune gift link), which alone runs into multiple billions of dollars. 

I know it's fruitless to spend energy being outraged over the Right's hypocrisy. But it's so hard being in Minnesota and having to listen to blah blah blah about this state being the site of the greatest fraud of all time when all of that, and more, is constantly being carried out by Trump's family, friends, and supporters.

Too Dangerous for School

Minneapolis schools were closed today because ICE and DHS invaded Roosevelt High School yesterday afternoon at close of school. Adjudicated liar Greg Bovino of CBP (outside of the 100-mile border boundary) was on site with tear gas strapped to his chest. 

Staff were assaulted and kids were gassed. As quoted on Minnesota Public Radio:

“The guy, I’m telling him like, ‘Please step off the school grounds,’ and this dude comes up and bumps into me and then tells me that I pushed him, and he’s trying to push me, and he knocked me down,” a school official, who spoke to MPR News on condition of anonymity said. 

“They don’t care. They’re just animals,” the official added. “I’ve never seen people behave like this.” 

Today, parents were snatched at multiple child care centers in and near Minneapolis. Children were left in cars. 

More school districts and child care centers in the Twin Cities are closing on Friday because of fear of ICE intimidation.

Friday is a day of national unity against ICE. Find a solidarity protest or march or other action where you are and turn out. 

I think I will go to a mosque in Saint Paul, where one of our neighborhood groups is organizing a solidarity support wall outside their afternoon prayers. 

A Murder in Minneapolis

It's too much. 

Renee Good, her wife, and child moved to Minnesota from Colorado Springs for a safer place to live their lives.
 

Five Years After the Coup

I didn't know if I would be able to post about the fifth anniversary of January 6. But I can't let it go unremarked, either. 

I have to refer to my posts from January 2021. I think they hold up pretty well:

• Less than 24 hours (January 6) 
• No shared reality, not even about the portapotties (January 9) 
• What do they want to see? (January 24) 
• Twitter: Insurrection, Inauguration, Reaction (January 31) 

Here are a few new things, first from BlueSky:

I know this feels impossible now, but I swear, on January 6 itself, there was a pretty broad bipartisan consensus that storming the Capitol to find and kill lawmakers was bad, and that Trump was responsible for inciting his followers to try it
Jay Willis

Why did this change?
1. Relentless propaganda by rightwing media complex, including Russia.
2. Corrupt elites, including news media.
3. Radical centrists who believed "woke" are more dangerous.
4. Biden/Garland misjudged the evil, had too much faith in exceptionalism.
5. American goldfish memory.
The Editorial Board

Samuel Alito flew two flags used by insurrectionists. Clarence Thomas' wife plotted to overturn the 2020 election. Both justices refused to recuse themselves from SCOTUS cases related to the January 6th plot. It's a stain on our nation that this has effectively been forgotten.
Robert Reich

Five years ago, Donald Trump instigated a violent insurrection in the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election. The fact that the GOP coddled him, protected him, renominated him, and now support him in office, is a stain that will never be erased.
Marc Elias

Two pieces of media from today should be preserved:

NPR created a Jan. 6 archive that brings together reporting, video, documents and testimony to show what really happened during the Capitol riot. It presents a timeline, with cases and evidence behind the attack. 

WAMU's 1A show spoke with three reporters who were at the U.S. Capitol that day, including Igor Bobic, who captured the video of Capitol policeman Eugene Goodman confronting the first rioters to enter the Capitol. 

It's arguable that the coup has turned out to be successful, given where we're at, though it didn't seem that way at the time. 
 

Noticing in New Orleans

I took quite a number of photos while in New Orleans, as one tends to do these days when traveling with a smart phone. 

Here are a few of the small things I noticed that seem worth sharing.

Just after we had arrived on the train and were walking across the central business district, I noticed this red door and cat.

Someone was feeling friendly and seasonal, but bad at spelling.

The high temperatures were close to 80°F, which meant sometimes there were scenes like this: ferns growing out of steps, layered with brown leaves.

Sometimes it's all about the branding, amirite? 

I noticed the New Orleans water meters are embedded in the sidewalks, like this:

A street artist has taken to decorating them. I saw these three:

Yes, these four fine fellows are taxidermied:

Be sure to zoom in to read this sign:

That building is located on Pirate's Alley in the French Quarter, and is home to Faulkner House Books, which can only admit six people at a time. It's probably famous, but I hadn't heard of it before.
 

Enrique Alférez

One person I learned about while I was in New Orleans recently was the artist Enrique Alférez.

He was born in 1901 in Zacatecas, Mexico. He ran away from home when he was 12 and ended up fighting with Pancho Villa until he was a young man. He then went to Texas, where he met an art teacher from Chicago, who recruited him to the School of the Art Institute. He studied there in the late 1920s, then ended up in New Orleans on his way back to Mexico…and never left.


In that first decade, his work was funded by the WPA. Many of his sculptures are now in the New Orleans Botanical Garden in City Park, which is where I saw them. 

They include seven athletic figures originally created for the gates of the park's Tad Gormley Stadium. Here are three of those:


I particularly liked these because they are not all figures of men.

There are a number of explanatory panels in the park about his life and work, created by the Helis Foundation. The Foundation has nice videos of the sculpture garden on its website. 

According to one of the panels, "After this garden fell into disrepair and neglect in the 1960s and 1970s, it was the restoration of Enrique Alférez's art that acted as a catalyst for the Friends of City Park to undertake the redevelopment of the New Orleans Botanical Garden in the early 1980s."

These are three of the statues in the Helis Foundation Enrique Alférez Sculpture Garden. 

Woman in a Huipil: 



Adam and Eve:



La Soladera:


A placard I saw said the La Soladera statue's face is based on that of Alférez's mother. It's hard to tell in my photo, but the woman is breast-feeding the baby. 

This head of a woman is in the Historic New Orleans Collection museum:



The city celebrated Alférez's contributions in 1999, not long before his death at age 98.



In 2020, the Historic New Orleans Collection had a show about his life and work, and a book was created about his life and work. It is still available for sale.  

I didn't realize the book existed when I was in the museum's shop, or I probably would have bought it. Now I have to think about sending for it.

What a Way to Wake Up

Like many others in the U.S., I woke up today to find out the Trump regime had bombed Caracas and a nearby town while grabbing Venezuela's president and his wife. News is now coming out that at least 40 people were killed in the attack. 

The regime leaders sat in a pseudo situation room at Mar-A-Lago with a large screen TV in the background showing their Twitter feed, so they could monitor that most-important aspect of their rule in real time. 

Many people think this is about oil, and I think that's right in one sense. On BlueSky, Josh Grubbs, an addiction researcher/psychologist, wrote:

It’s 1990, I’m 1 years old, and the republican president of the US is attacking a petrol state
It’s 2004, I’m 15 years old, and the republican president of the US is attacking a petrol state
It’s 2026, I’m 37 years old, and the republican president of the US is attacking a petrol state

But others who, it looks like, know what they're talking about point out that attacking to control Venezuela's oil is stupid.

Kate Aronoff (writer for the New Republic):

The US produces more than 13 million barrels of oil per day. Venezuela produces less than 1 million per day. There's a global oil glut, i.e. lower prices. That's bad for US producers, who need higher prices to break even. Hard to imagine they're eager to make big new investments in an unstable place with. decrepit infrastructure.

Sky Marchini, economist and policy researcher:

I know several oil barons, I’ve had the oil and gas industry as clients in a past life: none of them want the Venezuelan oil, it’s dog shit quality and getting the PDVSA fields up to modern standards would take 20 years! It’s just trump being stuck in 1987

literally every oil person I know doesn’t want anything to do with Venezuela: it’s just not worth it at current and foreseeable oil prices. 

It would cost tens of billions of dollars to get the equipment back to modern standards, and then require a ton of operations work to actually extract oil

And it may have made sense to do so in 2005 when oil was 100 bucks a barrel, but it does not make sense to do so when oil is 60 bucks a barrel and you can frack light crude all day in the Permian

So here we are, with these power-mad fascists talking at the same time about Greenland, Mexico, and Cuba and god knows what else. As their masked invaders attack our own people here at home.

Looks Like Largesse, But Actually Smallesse

Here's a thing that was too hard to include in yesterday's BlueSky round-up.

Cartoonist Aubrey Hirsch created a visual explainer of the scale of billionaires' donations that's really helpful. The amounts they give may sound impressive, but it's important to think of the amounts in proportion to their staggering wealth.

A billion dollars — whoa! — to Sergei Brin of Google fame is equivalent to the price of a washing machine. 

Hirsch ends the comic with an inverse punch line: comparing how much the average American gives each year to what that would equal in billionaire dollars. 

Did any of them give that much, relatively? Nope. 

Well, maybe Warren Buffet or Mackenzie Scott — but not the ones she profiles.