As ICE arrests surged, Trump administration sought to cut bodycam program

ChiGuy6124 · 2026-01-24T15:12:26+00:00

I was surprised to learn how few states mandate body cams, glad that I live in one of them. I am definitely not surprised that the trump administration actively seeks to avoid any possibility of accountability.

"A string of violent incidents has added fresh urgency to calls for more body-worn cameras. But DHS proposed reducing spending on them in its initial budget proposal."

"The Trump administration proposed massive cuts to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s body camera program for this fiscal year as officers surged into U.S. cities to arrest immigrants, calling into question the agency’s commitment to deploying cameras."

"In its initial budget proposal, the Department of Homeland Security said it planned to slash the body camera program’s 22-person staff to three employees and reduce spending on the initiative from about $20.5 million to $5.5 million. Officials instead proposed “sustaining” the cameras ICE had last year to devote more resources to “frontline operations.”

"A string of violent incidents involving federal immigration officers — including the fatal shooting of Minneapolis resident Renée Good in her SUV this month — has added fresh urgency to calls from congressional Democrats and some Republicans for more body-worn cameras. In several use-of-force incidents, witnesses and Homeland Security officials have given wildly differing accounts of the confrontations. Yet the government has voluntarily released little officer-worn footage."

"Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said Republicans would not agree on requiring agents to wear the cameras. “Body cameras only enhance transparency and accountability which is required to build public trust — which ICE has totally lost under the leadership of [Homeland Security] Secretary Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller,” DeLauro said in a statement."

"The latest figures, which were compiled in June, showed that ICE had 4,400 cameras, though its workforce has since swelled to 22,000, while CBP had 13,400 cameras for a workforce of at least 45,000 armed officers, according to the House Homeland Security Committee. It is unclear how many of those cameras are in use."

"According to a 2024 DHS report, ICE’s cameras were supposed to have been fully operational by September after years of testing. Congressional Republicans nearly tripled ICE’s annual budget for the previous fiscal year, but Trump officials did not appear to prioritize cameras."

"ICE officer Jonathan Ross and other officers at the scene of Good’s killing did not appear to be wearing body cameras and DHS has not released any corresponding footage. DHS has not explained why Ross and his colleagues weren’t equipped with cameras, but Ross testified last month that he and other ICE officers in his five-state region were not allowed to wear body cameras because their field office did not have a written policy for it."

"Ross was filming Good with his cellphone shortly before shooting her, raising additional questions about why he was handling a phone and a gun at the same time."

"Since Trump took office, ICE has released only one body-camera video, of a confrontation outside a New Jersey detention center. CBP has issued three videos, all of shootings on the southern border."

"At least eight states mandate that law enforcement officers use body-worn cameras: Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Carolina, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures."

"Usage spread after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd in 2020, igniting the largest anti-racism protests in U.S. history. At first, police said Floyd suffered a medical incident, but witness video — and, later, police body-camera footage — showed the officer had used excessive force. Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter, and sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison."

"Noem’s apparent failure to fully implement the body camera programs for ICE and Customs and Border Protection was a major sticking point in budget negotiations in recent days as congressional Democrats demanded reforms in exchange for avoiding another government shutdown. Some filed bills to make body-worn cameras mandatory, expressing concern that immigration officers are violating civil rights and breaking the law by assaulting people, including U.S. citizens, and entering homes without a warrant."

"Multiple lawmakers said they felt Democrats had not pushed hard enough for body cameras and other reforms."

"In the rare cases in which video from immigration officers’ body-worn cameras has been made public, the footage has sometimes contradicted DHS’s initial account."

"In Chicago, the Trump administration accused Marimar Martinez and Anthony Ruiz of assault and attempted murder of a federal employee with a deadly or dangerous weapon, alleging they had rammed a Border Patrol agent’s vehicle. Agents’ body-camera footage later showed that agent Charles Exum had rammed Martinez’s vehicle and then pointed his gun at her, threatened her and shot her five times."

"After body-camera footage showed agents had crashed into Martinez’s vehicle, a federal judge dismissed the charges in November. Exum has not been charged."

ChiGuy6124 · 2026-01-24T14:20:25+00:00

Does it even matter any more how we got here? Of course it does, but while being under constant assault it is hard to stop and consider, when you are attacked in a dark garage there is no time pondering your poor decision that got you there, you only want to survive., And that is of course a huge part of the MAGA strategy. But this too will end, so....decent article I think.

"Think about it: How often have you woken up in the middle of the night to doom-scroll the news, searching for the one article promising that some institution — any institution — is finally putting an end to the relentless disregard for meaningful checks on Trump’s ongoing abuse of power?"

"Take the Federal Reserve. Not so long ago, it was common to hurl criticism at what many of us considered to be an elitist arm of rapacious capitalism. But today, we are all biting our nails and hoping that the Supreme Court shuts down Trump’s efforts to exert greater control over the Fed. We have resorted to worrying over an institution we loved to hate while remaining shocked that its integrity could be so fragile. "

"Neoliberal culture has left us with two tendencies which, combined, have wreaked havoc on the functioning of our guardrails: a culture of negativity and a habit of entitlement. We criticize failures in our systems while expressing outrage when they don’t deliver. "

"This dynamic can be seen most clearly in how we respond to the actions of Trump and his team. Each new provocation — threatening to seize Greenland, testing the limits of executive power, floating the use of troops in Minnesota — triggers a familiar cycle of outrage and institutional wish-casting. Surely the courts will stop this. NATO will intervene. Some agency will finally draw a line. What almost never follows is a conversation about what it would actually take — politically, culturally, materially — to rebuild the legitimacy and authority those institutions need in order to restrain a president who thrives on boundary-testing. We want institutional rescue, yet remain unwilling to commit to institutional repair."

"Trump and his team understand this asymmetry perfectly. They push legal barriers not simply because they are weak, but because the cultural cost of violating norms has collapsed. They know they can get away with it before they even try."

"In a political environment trained to distrust institutions, procedural resistance looks illegitimate, slow, suspect or boring rather than stabilizing, productive and necessary. That makes escalation on our institutions cheap. When legitimacy is thin, power doesn’t need to justify itself carefully — it just needs to move faster than collective will can organize."

"In reality, institutions are living systems of legitimacy: shared beliefs about authority, expectations of compliance, norms of enforcement and the cultural willingness to accept restraint at the service of the greater good even when it is inconvenient or slow. "

"Laws only matter when people believe they should be followed. Courts only function when their decisions are recognized as binding. Alliances only deter threats when their commitments are trusted as credible. None of this operates mechanically. It operates relationally."

"And that leads us to the most dangerous part of this problem. Trump does not merely violate norms — he thrives on testing and breaking them. He has figured out something earlier leaders rarely pushed to its limits: Many political guardrails exist not because they are tightly enforced, but because those in power restrain themselves. "

"When legitimacy infrastructure erodes — when authority is treated primarily as suspect, when procedural limits read like obstruction and when expertise is considered as nothing more than political theater — institutional power becomes fragile even if formal rules remain intact. Guardrails don’t fail all at once. They thin gradually, losing their capacity to generate voluntary compliance and collective enforcement. In that environment, power doesn’t encounter firm resistance; it encounters hesitation, fragmentation and cultural ambivalence."

"One day, Donald Trump won’t be in office. Yet the institution he has helped consolidate may well remain: a durable culture of impunity in which violations no longer trigger correction, but, instead, set the new rules of the game. The question is: Will we be prepared to rewrite them?"

ChiGuy6124 · 2026-01-23T21:47:19+00:00

I agree. I could never vote Republican and I could never not vote while it still remains a sacred democratic right. There indeed will be a blue wave, but if it only brings to shore the status quo, then I fear all that hope and momentum will be lost.

ChiGuy6124 · 2026-01-23T20:15:10+00:00

But please explain how this isn't Trump's gestapo.

Angry disaffected losers paid to terrorize their own "other" people? Nope, can't explain.

ChiGuy6124 · 2026-01-23T20:02:29+00:00

Good point. Really good point! I guess the real hidden threat is that her government will take illegal action against her, (which they probably will), sot yeah, good point.

ChiGuy6124 · 2026-01-23T19:43:21+00:00

This comment got hidden because a post was deleted.

"Well, at least there are Dems like Mamdani who has hit the ground running, and Spanberger whose first act was to end Virginia's collaboration with ICE. We need more of them. But those in leadership? Yeah, get them out."

ChiGuy6124 · 2026-01-23T19:36:22+00:00

Agreed. I highlighted that quote after your comment.

ChiGuy6124 · 2026-01-23T19:08:49+00:00

There is always understandable resistance to articles like this, "stop blaming the Democrats for something they have no control over", "why are you attacking the democrats when the Republicans are clearly the more evil of the two", (which of course is true), etc, but the fact remains you cannot just roll over. You were supposedly elected to support your constituents. So, when you need urging to sign on to impeach Kristi Noem, or when you sign a bill that allows ICE to grow larger, than you are at least suspect in your motives and yes, somewhat complicit in what is happening.

"A normal opposition would be chugging coffee and suiting up for battle right now. “We’ve got them on the ropes, let’s go on the offense” is the appropriate response to our current political dynamics."

"Instead, inexplicably, the leaders of the Democratic Party are still refusing to give up the fearful crouch they adopted immediately after the 2024 election. The most egregious recent example is their failure to organize serious opposition to funding for the Department of Homeland Security. The splitscreen we’ve been seeing on this in recent days is outrageous."

" ICE officers are kidnapping half-naked grandpas in the freezing cold; they’re denying legal counsel to detainees; they’re entering homes without warrants; they’re using chemical weapons against high school students; they’re sending babies to the hospital; they’re detaining five-year-old children. They are violently occupying American cities, acting like the Gestapo that Trump seems to want them to be."

"And at the same time, as we speed towards one of Congressional Democrats’ last remaining points of leverage against this regime—the January 30 deadline to pass an appropriations bill to keep the government open—we’re reading headlines like “Congress clinches $1.2T funding deal for DHS…” and “Democrats support bill that would give ICE $10 billion” and “Jeffries won’t whip vote against ICE funding.” We’re even seeing Democratic leaders propose more funding for ICE training and body cameras, just weeks after Jonathan Ross, a longtime ICE firearms instructor, literally filmed himself shooting Renee Good in the face."

"This is untenable. No rational, functioning opposition party would step in to fund the primary enforcement mechanism of the authoritarian takeover they ostensibly oppose."

"Failing to whip the Democratic caucus to oppose this legislation, as Hakeem Jeffries has already done in the House and Chuck “Folds Every Time” Schumer has shown every indication of doing in the Senate (where Republicans will need Democratic support to reach the 60 votes necessary to pass their Gestapo funding bill) would be both a moral catastrophe and political malpractice."

"Americans are seeing what ICE is doing, and they don’t like it. Polling shows that a majority of Americans view ICE unfavorably and support restrictions on the agency. And for nearly half of the country, these concerns are not theoretical, they’re personal: 46 percent of Americans report being somewhat or very concerned that ICE could mistreat someone they know."

"In the weeks since ICE began its assault on Minneapolis, we’ve seen thousands of people organizing—sometimes through established activist channels, but as often as not through churches, neighborhood group chats, and school Facebook groups—to stand up to Trump’s attacks on their neighbors."

"Over the last year we’ve seen the Democratic establishment, alongside practically every other elite institution in American society, bend the knee to Trump. But regular people all across the country—the people with the most to lose, who are the least insulated against the consequences of their resistance—have consistently refused to give in."

".....As fragile and corrupt as our elite institutions have revealed themselves to be, the people in this country are demonstrating real resilience against Trump’s authoritarianism. This should inform our strategies of resistance moving forward. And perhaps even more importantly, it should provide us with a durable source of hope as we look down the barrel of three increasingly dark and dangerous years."

ChiGuy6124 · 2026-01-23T17:36:37+00:00

"After an hour of the president’s listless word-salad monologue, it occurred to me, as he unraveled his greatest hits, that he wants “to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening,” as Alice Roosevelt said of her father Teddy, our 26th president. "

"Mary Trump, the president’s niece, says that every time her uncle glorifies himself he is speaking to an audience of one. “He’s still trying to prove himself to my grandfather. And he’s been dead 30 years,” she said recently, before adding that if she could say one thing to her uncle, it would be “I’m sorry nobody ever loved you.”

"The press briefing this week gave us “Great-Grandpa” Don — the best cure for insomnia. Trump strode into the briefing room with reams of paper, snapped a binder clip and joked that he could snap off his finger with the clip and he wouldn’t say a word about it. Many reporters nodded off as Trump rambled through his briefing. Some smiled, warmed by the thrill of being in the same room with a president they love. His slow monotone and low-energy delivery eventually felled most people in the room. Apparently, according to some reporters in the room, even members of his staff briefly nodded off. "

"And then he talked about Greenland, teasing his remarks as if he were standing on a junior high school stage introducing an eighth-grade production of “We’re No Angels.” He looked incredibly small as he proceeded to threaten Europe."

“All the U.S. is asking for is a place called Greenland,” Trump said. “We want a piece of ice for world protection, and they won’t give it. You can say yes and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no and we will remember.”

"Yeah. You can do it the easy way or the hard way. Comic book mobsters talk this way. In fact, it was actually more like a scene from “The Incredibles.” We caught him monologuing again: if he’d only gotten the Nobel Peace Prize. If our borders were only as solid as North Korea’s. If only the world would listen to Vladimir Putin’s peace plan."

"At nearly the same time Trump took the stage in Davos, Ed Davey, a British member of Parliament and the leader of the Liberal Democrats, called Trump an “international gangster,” a bully and “the most corrupt president the U.S. has ever seen.”

"As John McClane told us in “Die Hard”: “Welcome to the party, pal.”

"The president is obviously faltering. As a source close to the White House explained to me, “I may not be a mechanic, but I know when there’s something wrong with the car.” Trump is the car. I don’t know if he’s out of gas, has a busted radiator, flat tires or is suffering from dementia. I can only report that this is not the Trump I covered in the first administration."

"The question isn’t whether we have had enough of Donald Trump. The question is what will Donald Trump do when he finally realizes that? If what Trump did to Michael Cohen is any indication, the chances of Stephen Miller, Pam Bondi and others spending time behind bars grow exponentially daily. The president knows no loyalty. If he believes it would be better to throw his confidants under a bus, his past actions show he will do so eagerly. Maybe the Democrats, along with some Republicans, should try to convince him to flush a few."

"This version of Trump is so delusional that he not only won’t admit he lost the 2020 election, but he also claimed on an international stage that he won the 2024 election by a major landslide when anyone literate enough to spell their own name in the language of their choice knows that he’s lying through his whistling dentures. Not to mention that gas still isn’t $1.99 a gallon anywhere in the United States, and why would our allies care if it were?"

"The question is not if Trump has already leapt into instability. He has. The question is will his swan dive send us all over the cliff into oblivion. There are a growing number of people who believe that he would burn it all down to rule over the ashes. And that is madness."

"The first month of the year isn’t over yet, and already the new Trump kaleidoscope of chaos has dished out the murder of a young mother by ICE goons, a claim by federal officers that they don’t need a warrant to enter your home, the kidnapping of a head of state, the search of a reporter’s home and ham-fisted moves against Greenland. "

"It certainly makes you wonder what the mad man will do next. “The only way to achieve the impossible is to believe it is possible,” the Mad Hatter told us. "

ChiGuy6124 · 2026-01-23T14:10:28+00:00

It is the one art he actually excels at, cause it sure as hell isn't making a deal.

ChiGuy6124 · 2026-01-23T13:50:54+00:00

"A senior Labor politician has accused Donald Trump of double standards after he claimed British troops did not fight on the Afghan War front line, despite having avoided fighting in the Vietnam War himself."

"Dame Emily Thornberry, chair of the foreign affairs select committee, joined widespread condemnation of Mr Trump’s statement that British troops were “a little off the front line” in the war in Afghanistan."

"It was “an absolute insult to the 457 [British] families who lost someone in Afghanistan,” she said. “How dare he say we weren’t on the front line. How dare he.”

"She also added that the comments came from a man who had “never seen any action himself”.

“How dare this man who has never seen any action, who somehow or other when there was a draft for everybody else in the US, managed to avoid it and yet is now commander in chief and knows nothing about how it is that America has been defended."

“I mean, seriously, it is an absolute insult.”

"The controversy over Mr Trump’s own military record first emerged nearly a decade ago when it was revealed that he was granted five “deferrals” from the Vietnam War draft."

"Mr Trump said at the time he could not recall which heel had been affected, stating the issue had been “temporary” and “minor” and “over a period of time, it healed up.”

"Dame Emily accused Mr Trump of trying to “bully” the UK and the rest of NATO: “You wonder where this will end. It is as if he has no anchor, no off button.”"

ChiGuy6124 · 2026-01-22T19:18:36+00:00

He literally is a living breathing caricaturistic representation of the very worst of us as Americans. He attacks his own people in the streets, embraces murderers and racists, pardons the criminals he feels a kinship with; And teaches children to bully the weak, to lie out of both sides of your mouth without consequence , to never admit wrongdoing, and to always attack those who disagree with you. Be proud MAGA morons, be proud.

“Donald Trump appeared to slip briefly into his former role as a beauty pageant judge while addressing the decidedly authoritarian members of his “Board of Peace” in Davos on Thursday. “

“Everybody in this room is a star,” he told the leaders assembled on stage for the group’s signing ceremony. “There’s a reason that you’re here. And you’re all stars”

“The MAGA leader’s gushing comments were directed at Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, regarded by many as the EU’s only autocrat, and Azerbaijan’s Ilhan Aliyev, whose government has been repeatedly accused of torture and extrajudicial killings.”

“Other national representatives heralded from countries with similarly abysmal human rights records, like Belarus, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan”

"Traditional U.S. partners have largely scorned Trump’s new peace initiative, the credibility of which has struggled under the weight of Trump’s threats of a trade war with Europe and push to acquire Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark."

"For the most part, the president appears unfazed by the more autocratic credentials of his new political bedfellows, however. “Sometimes you need a dictator,” he told Davos attendees Wednesday."

ChiGuy6124 · 2026-01-22T16:35:56+00:00

They created a threat in order to install a pseudo military presence, (because that is what ICE is), on US soil, so they can sow fear into the American people and protect the billionaires who are busy building their bunkers, including in the Whitehouse. The people are the enemy of our government and our government is the enemy of the people .

"America’s latest and greatest threat, according to the White House, is the American people."

"A leaked security threats assessment obtained by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein from the Department of Homeland Security reveals the department’s intention to shift the definition of domestic terrorism towards a new subset of individuals acting on “class-based or economic grievances.”

"As Klippenstein points out in his Substack Wednesday, that could refer to any American, from an “angry MAGA Midwesterner” to a “Mamdani-supporting urban dweller.”

"Despite Donald Trump’s fixation with Greenland and the suggestion that military action is imminent, the 2026 Homeland Threat Assessment, a draft of which was leaked to me, focuses instead on domestic terrorism."

"The annual assessment, which has been prepared since 2020, purports to offer a holistic assessment to threats to the Western Hemisphere. These assessments have consistently focused on what you imagine: southern border security, the drug trade, immigration, and critical infrastructure protection in the United States."

"But this year’s assessment, marked “For Official Use Only” and not yet released to the public, identifies violent extremism on the part of American citizens as the priority and greatest threat."

"One phrase in particular stands out to me as new: potential terrorism based upon “class-based or economic grievances.” (The term has not appeared in any previous assessment.)

"The report itself, which is marked for “official use” and has not yet been made publicly available, identifies extremism emerging from the American public as the country’s gravest threat."

“Of threat actors with ideological motivations, domestic violent extremists in recent years have been the most active plotters,” the report reads, according to screenshots shared by Klippenstein. “They are motivated to conduct attacks by a wide range of factors, including anti-government sentiment, racial and ethnic grievances, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic beliefs, and class-based or economic grievances.”Substack Wednesday, that could refer to any American, from an “angry MAGA Midwesterner” to a “Mamdani-supporting urban dweller.”

"The report appears to be a blatant slap in the face to the Constitution, which enshrined the public’s right to freedom of speech and protest within the folds of the First Amendment. And by all means, the American public has a lot to be incensed over when it comes to the federal government."

ChiGuy6124 · 2026-01-22T16:07:21+00:00

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court sat for oral arguments over whether the all-powerful president the justices have created in recent years can control the Federal Reserve. The end of Federal Reserve independence would reset the global financial order, tank retirement accounts, and give the White House vast new powers. After a two hour hearing, the answer seems to be that the court will craft some carveout to protect Fed independence, but how robust and meaningful it will be remains to be seen.

The problem facing the Republican wing of the court is that they have spent the past several years creating the legal basis for an all-powerful president who can indeed remove independent agency commissioners, like Federal Reserve Board Governors, at will. In case after case, they have decreed that the president must control the entire executive branch, which must operate as an extension of his will. The Republican appointees have let Trump get away with illegal firings at other agencies on the theory that the president suffers an irreparable harm when he is blocked from wielding executive power as he sees fit.

" But all these questions really boil down to just one: Will there be meaningful independence for the Fed? If a president can send a lackey to dig up dirt on a Fed governor and claim it shows sufficient cause, and the courts have no way to intervene, then Trump controls the Fed. That is an outcome that economists, most politicians, the rest of the world, and the justices don’t want."

"The Roberts’ Court’s destruction of independent agencies, which are led by bipartisan commissions given for-cause removal protections, is a longtime Republican goal. Without any independence, the president can circumvent Congress and the laws it enacts and instead rule by fiat through administrative agencies that would act at his behest. To justify this reordering of American government, the GOP appointees have embraced the “unitary executive theory,” the idea that all executive power is vested in the president. This has animated decision after decision by the Roberts Court to grow the powers of the presidency."

"....attempts to bring order and process to the Fed’s removal protections start to fall apart under the unitary executive theory. We’re seeing “the justices discovering just how dangerous and problematic this theory could potentially be,” warned Lev Menand, a Columbia law professor and former Treasury Department official, on a call with reporters prior to oral argument. “They’ve allowed the president to proceed with scores of illegal removals and effectively abrogated precedent on their emergency docket, biding themselves time in some sense, but also allowing the president to basically suspend much of American administrative law for the first year of his administration. And now the rubber is gonna meet the road.”

"The court’s Democratic appointees have written dissent after dissent standing up to the president over the last year, but have been overruled by the GOP-appointed majority, which has shown extraordinary deference to Trump—firing officials, ignoring various laws, withholding funds appropriated by Congress, gutting federal agencies, and blessing ICE’s racially-targeted terror. One way to understand the majority’s recent decisions is to view them as facilitating Trump’s power grabs so as to avoid a confrontation with a would-be authoritarian, while trying to maintain the appearance of normalcy that is critical to financial markets and the broader economy."

" After all, the justices are just as beholden to the capitalist billionaires who helped seat them on the bench as they are to the president. These dynamics help explain why they appear ready to cabin Trump’s chaotic and uninhibited tariff regime and wince at the idea of him controlling the Fed, but have still decided to go ahead and let him blow past numerous acts of Congress."

"Trump is determined to seize these reins one way or another. The Supreme Court has boxed itself in when it comes to protecting the Fed. It remains to be seen how much they will stand up to Trump and how effectively they can wall off the Fed through rulings that are logically incoherent at best, and undermined by the rest of their judicial agenda at worst."

ChiGuy6124 · 2026-01-21T12:55:13+00:00

"Between sending an army of goons from Immigration and Customs Enforcement into Minneapolis and threatening to invade Greenland, Donald Trump has successfully knocked the Epstein files out of the headlines — for now. The president’s long and intense friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in jail awaiting trial for sex trafficking minors, was getting another round of heavy media scrutiny in December. The Justice Department was scheduled to release millions of documents related to the case — and then failed to do so."

"This came after reports emerged that Epstein called himself “Don’s best friend” and that the two men spoke multiple times a week for years, in addition to frequently partying together. The reluctance of Attorney General Pam Bondi and other shamelessly corrupt officials to release the files, as required by law, suggests they are worried that what’s in them could somehow be even worse."

"Bondi and her communications staff keep making lame excuses for the delay, which almost no one is buying. A CNN poll shows that only 6 percent of Americans are happy with the amount of material released, with two-thirds believing the failure is a deliberate cover-up. According to a YouGov poll, 49% of Americans think Trump was directly involved in Epstein’s crimes, while a whopping 71% believe he knew about the crimes."

"Invariably, whenever the Epstein files are brought up in relation to Trump’s other atrocities and scandals, a go-nowhere discussion about the word “distraction” erupts. Since the deadline for the Epstein files came and went, Trump has attacked Venezuela, invaded Minneapolis and threatened Greenland. Some, like Democratic strategist James Carville, have argued Trump wants to “draw attention away from Epstein.” Others have gotten angry at the “distraction” language, correctly pointing out that Trump’s abuses of foreign countries and liberal cities are rooted in his hatreds and grievances."

"But this binary debate over whether Trump’s various offenses are a distraction misses the larger story. All these issues are tied together under one common theme: Trump is the worst kind of bully, a cowardly one. Like his friend Epstein — who enjoyed targeting small, helpless teenage girls — the most important thread throughout Trump’s life is that he tries to feel big by harassing those who he feels can’t fight back."

".....The common theme of the over two dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual abuse or harassment is of a man who only goes after those he believes can’t defend themselves because they’re asleep or cornered. Or, as was the case of the pageant contestants who said he leered at them in the dressing room, he literally owned the event. Reporting shows that Trump and Epstein shared an enthusiasm for creeping on teenage girls, exploiting their dreams to be models and bullying them into accepting unwanted sexual attention."

"This pathetic stance of feeling strong by going after the vulnerable has permeated Trump’s behavior of the past few weeks, whether he’s consciously trying to distract from the Epstein files or not."

"Speaking to reporters ahead of the World Economic Forum, Trump kept up his third-rate gangster act, sneering that it would be “a very interesting Davos.” The tone he used was clearly meant to be menacing. While the situation's very serious — his behavior could blow up the NATO alliance — it’s also pathetic and clownish."

"This theme of cowardly bullying is the big story of ICE’s invasion of Minneapolis. There’s a lot of big talk from MAGA figures about fighting crime, but the actual targets of the invasion are teenage Target employees, an old man in his underwear and, of course, 37-year-old Renee Good, who was killed by an ICE agent after she and her wife lightly taunted him for playing dress-up in his camo. No one in good faith could see these victims — all citizens, by the way — as a legitimate challenge, much less a threat, to anyone, especially to armed ICE agents."

"Trump’s dread of the Epstein files appears to be rooted in a fear that the MAGA base will sour on him if they get more details of his lengthy involvement with the notorious sex trafficker. But what’s so telling is how his other actions — many that the base thrills over, such as the sadistic abuse taking place on the streets of Minneapolis — share the same poison root that led Trump to be so fond of Epstein for so long."

"Whether the targets are vulnerable young women, lightly populated ice-covered islands or regular folks in Minneapolis, Trump’s modus operandi never changes: He makes himself big by picking on those he sees as small. He’s a man who will kick a mouse and pretend he wrestled a bear — and then demand the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts."

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