How Is Trump Planning To Weaponize ICE As His Personal Police Force Today?
Putting the b in subtle.
It’s no secret Donald John Trump intends to steal the midterms for Republicans by any means necessary, and that he considers ICE to be his personal Stasi. And now all his plans are coming together to install MAGA in power forever and ever.
Alarming plans latest to weaponize ICE to achieve this:
Using ICE goons to surround the polls!
Steve Bannon, Trump’s longtime multi-shirted confidant / former Jeffrey Epstein backchannel has announced that the regime’s plan is to send ICE to surround the polls in November, so as to not allow any elections to be “stolen” from them “again.”
(Pram? This is America, learn the language!)
Throw in Trump personally directing DNI Tulsi Gabbard to oversee the seizure of voting machines in Fulton County, Georgia and Trump moaning about “nationalizing” elections, and frameworks of concepts of a plan start to get some flesh.
Steps first, already long underway, are redistricting, of course, and also dropping as many potentially non-MAGA voters from states’ voter registration rolls as possible, ideally leaving the burden on those voters to have to prove their citizenship at a hearing before November to be able to vote, like North Carolina Republicans would like to do.
Step next, ICE goons glowering at the polls on election day, and dragging away anyone in line darker than a paper bag off to indefinite ICE detention until they can have a hearing to prove their citizenships.
Steps possible, get warrants for the FBI to seize voting machines in swing states, with some bug-eyed claim like they’ve been infected with Venezuelan space lasers or whatever Tulsi Gabbard is going to cook up to say about Fulton County.
Leave behind like two voting machines for a million people, and/or replace them with special, “nationalized” voting machines. And, or, seize the machines after Trump loses, then whine, cry and throw toys out of the pram screeching FRAUD.
SEE ALSO:
It’s no secret plan, they’re shouting it in the streets! Seems Bannon and Trump (probably for good reason) are feeling pretty confident that a certain Supreme Court majority will let them get away with at least enough of whatever vote-snatching plan for long enough to cement their Reich.
Using ICE to harass regime enemies!
Less noticed with all of the murder and mayhem in Minneapolis was the brief siege of Maine, “Operation Catch of the Day.” Yes, Maine, the state tied with Vermont for the whitest one in the country, and with the fifth-smallest immigrant population. But ever since Governor Janet Mills made Trump’s balls prune up by laughing him, he’s been on a crusade of WEAPONIZED VENGEANCE against the state. And losing in court. And there is no greater fury than Trump being publicly humiliated and losing, repeatedly, to a woman his own age who sees through his con-artist bullshit! It cannot stand! Trump will take his revenge, hot, cold, secondhand, however he can get it.
PREVIOUSLY!
Thus Trump sent his ICE goons to descend on the Pine Tree State on around January 20. But they left after about a week, following Susan Collins concern-Karening to manager Kristi Noem for a special exception to the thing Collins herself had repeatedly voted for, and endorsed happening to other states. But Bangor? Barely knew ‘er!
And as is their way, ICE left chaos in their wake, with more than 200 residents sent to holding facilities all over the country. And more new enemies for their vengeance list, including Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce, who blasted immigration agents for arresting one of his guards, an Angolan immigrant with a work permit and no criminal record who’d passed multiple background checks.
Watch:
ICE responded to Joyce’s speech by demanding employment records of everyone who works at the jail, including its 25 immigrant employees and Joyce himself.
Which leads us to
Making sure everyone knows that anyone who speaks up is not safe
DHS has been targeting regular people, harassing them, even showing up at their doors with administrative subpoenas for no other reason than expressing an objection to what the government is doing. Like, holy crap, this story from the Washington Post (gift link) about a Pennsylvania retiree who sent a letter to a prosecutor’s office objecting to the deportation of an Afghan refugee. Within five hours he got an administrative (as in, made up by ICE itself) subpoena, and soon after a knock of goons at his door.
MAH FREE SPEECH!
That’s sure not the only time they’ve pushed the boundaries of their legal authority. From the story:
In March, Homeland Security issued two administrative subpoenas to Columbia University for information on a student it sought to deport after she took part in pro-Palestinian protests. In July, the agency demanded broad employment records from Harvard University with what the school’s attorneys described as “unprecedented administrative subpoenas.” In September, Homeland Security used one to try to identify Instagram users who posted about ICE raids in Los Angeles. Last month, the agency used another to demand detailed personal information about some 7,000 workers in a Minnesota health system whose staff had protested Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s intrusion into one of its hospitals.
“There’s no oversight ahead of time, and there’s no ramifications for having abused it after the fact,” said Jennifer Granick, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. “As we are increasingly in a world where unmasking critics is important to the administration, this type of legal process is ripe for that kind of abuse.”
Ripe and ready!
It is a challenge for 172,000 DHS employees to eliminate every vocal Trump enemy in a nation of 342 million where about 55 percent disapprove of him (and growing), even with all of the identity-stealing software and AI that Peter Thiel can produce and install in everybody’s apps, the finest military hardware in the world, and Trump well on his way to being the King of All Media.
But try they sure will.
They Say that once a population reaches 3.5 percent of people out on the streets protesting and engaging in resistance against a regime, it’s just a matter of time before it falls. If true, that’s “only” about 12 million Americans, 1 in 30ish.
So tick tock, panicking muthacluckers! Your crowd of marchers and resisters is not shrinking.
[Bangor Daily News / BBC / Washington Post gift link]
It'd be cooler if the house and senate did something about this.
OT: After a lingering illness, The Death of the WaPo...
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