Trump’s Goon Squad Strikes AgainJust another day on the job for ICE as it arrests another Democratic official.
With one week to go, Andrew Cuomo holds a shrinking but still substantial lead over democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in polling for New York City’s Democratic primary for mayor. A new Marist poll this morning finds Cuomo leading Mamdani through every stage of the city’s ranked-choice voting, eventually winning out at 55 percent to Mamdani’s 45 percent. This will be one to watch. Happy Wednesday.
ICE Unembarrassedby Andrew Egger Last Thursday, California Sen. Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a Department of Homeland Security news conference, pushed to the ground, and handcuffed by authorities. If you thought the ensuing backlash might make federal agents more cautious about manhandling opposition politicians, you thought wrong. Yesterday, federal agents in New York City handcuffed another Democratic official: Brad Lander, the city comptroller and a current candidate for mayor. Video taken inside a New York immigration court showed Lander standing next to someone who ICE agents—some in plainclothes, some masked—were trying to take into custody. Lander repeatedly demanded to see a warrant, and kept an arm locked with the man as agents tried to take him away, walking in a scrum with them down the hallway. Moments later, agents placed Lander under arrest as well. In a statement released after the encounter, the Department of Homeland Security preposterously claimed that Lander had been arrested “for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer.” The latter claim was true; the former laughably false. “No one is above the law,” the DHS statement went on, “and if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences.” The U.S. attorney’s office in New York seemingly disagreed. Lander—like Padilla last week—was released without being charged. “I’m happy to report I’m just fine,” Lander told reporters afterward. “I lost a button. But I’m gonna sleep in my bed tonight, safe, with my family.” “At that elevator, I was separated from someone named Edgardo,” Lander went on. “Edgardo is in ICE detention and he’s not going to sleep in his bed tonight.” A few thoughts on this. The first is that the White House’s immigration enforcement mooks¹ plainly haven’t been instructed to avoid further high-profile clashes with Democratic officials. Lander—who, as we noted, is currently running for mayor—might well have been angling for a photo-op. But ICE agents were also all too happy to give him one, and DHS leadership was all too happy to lean into the story. Second, on a similar note, the story continues the pattern of Trump’s federal law enforcement agencies publicly accusing people of criminal conduct that goes beyond what they’re willing to actually charge in court. Think of last month, when Attorney General Pam Bondi repeatedly accused Kilmar Abrego Garcia of “human trafficking” during a press conference announcing charges against him—when in fact the Justice Department was charging him with the significantly milder crime of ferrying undocumented migrants around. You can say anything on Twitter or in a press conference; in an indictment, you need the facts to back you up. Finally—and most important—there’s the way in which ICE’s lawlessness has incentivized good samaritans to resist their enforcement efforts. Think of how ICE arrests used to go. Agents show up to take a person into custody. They may be in uniform or in plainclothes, but their faces are visible and they show their badges when asked. The person they’re arresting knows he’ll have the opportunity to speak to a lawyer, to tell his family where he’s being held, and to plead his case before a judge. Now snap back to the present day and put yourself in Lander’s shoes. Masked agents show up to whisk a migrant away. Maybe he’ll get to tell his family where he is, maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll have the opportunity to speak to a lawyer or plead his case to a judge, maybe he won’t. And you think to yourself: Will there be a legal process? Or am I the very last person who has a chance to intervene on this person’s behalf? You Go to War with the President You Haveby William Kristol Since most of the news from the G7 summit early this week focused on President Trump’s early departure from it, a joint declaration Monday by all the nations attending got less attention than it deserved. In that statement, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan stated clearly that “Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror,” and that “We have been consistently clear that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.” In other words: The view that this Iranian regime is dangerous, and that it can’t be permitted to have a nuclear weapon, isn’t an idiosyncratic view of Israel, or of Israel and the United States. It’s the correct and measured judgment of what we might still call the Free World. And the fact is that Israel has, in this last week, gone a long way to removing the threat of Iran having a nuclear weapon. It’s very hard to see how this isn’t a good thing. As German Chancellor Friedrich Merz put it yesterday, “This is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us. We are also victims of this regime. This mullah regime has brought death and destruction to the world.” So it makes sense to support Israel in its impressive effort to do this work for all of us. It also makes sense for the United States to be willing to step in and finish the job of denuclearization—if necessary. It would make no sense to stop now, with the job only partly done, leaving in place a wounded regime thirsting for revenge, with its capacity for terrorism retained and with enriched uranium and missiles still on hand. If that regime is to stay in power, it needs to be thoroughly neutralized. But perhaps it won’t be able to stay in power. It certainly makes no sense to stand in the way of the oft-expressed aspirations of the Iranian people to be rid of this cruel and backward regime. Hanging over all of this is the fact that at this pivotal moment, Donald Trump is our president. Apparently the Lord has an excellent—if somewhat dark—sense of humor. And so the self-absorbed Trump, seeing the Israeli attack is going well, tries to take credit for it. He indulges in unhelpful and grandstanding bleats like “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.” No one who’s watched Trump in office can assume he’s suddenly going to become a font of prudence, a source of statesmanship. We have to take account of that as we judge next steps for the United States in the Middle East. But we also must recognize that we are at a very unusual moment, when getting things broadly right will be important for the future of the region and the world. Israel went to war with the flawed government it has. We will have to deal with the challenges and opportunities we face with the very flawed government we have. It may be, as Immanuel Kant wrote, that “out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” But out of the crooked timber of the Trump administration we have to hope that, in this case, a good outcome can be made.
It’s Not Delivery, It’s D’terrence |
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There’s little question at this point that we should see federal immigration officers as direct agents of Trump’s political will. DHS is run by leaders who were selected for their deep personal loyalty to the president: The department’s secretary, Kristi Noem, memorably subjected herself to ritual humiliation during a congressional hearing last month rather than admit Trump had wrongly described Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s knuckle tattoos. And, as we’ve seen repeatedly over the last week, bedrock questions like whether to carry out workplace enforcement raids change on the president’s whim.
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