Terror
Week of January 9-15, 2026
Welcome to TRACKING THE CRISIS, a weekly round-up from The Democracy Collaborative tracking the administrative, legislative, and other actions of the Trump Administration as well as the many forms of legal and movement response from across a broad range of social, political, and economic actors. TDC is providing this service for collective informational purposes, as a tool for understanding the times during a period of disorientingly rapid flux and change in the U.S. political economy. This round-up is produced by humans, not by Artificial Intelligence. TDC should not be understood as endorsing or otherwise any of the specific content of the information round-up.
TRUMP TRACKER: Administration actions
‘It’ is Happening Here: Trump threatens to invoke Insurrection Act in Minneapolis as citizens take to the streets to resist ICE terror campaign; DOJ attorneys resign en masse over shooting investigation. Many images from the streets of Minneapolis this week shocked the nation as nearly 3,000 ICE agents were dispatched to the city, joined by 800 Customs and Border Patrol agents, in the wake of the murder of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of ICE agent Jonathan Ross. Apparently freed from constraint as Stephen Miller declared “absolute immunity” for federal agents and claimed that anyone who attempted to resist agents would be committing a felony, ICE unleashed a campaign of violence against the residents of Minneapolis as brutal scenes hit social media one after another; of Black and Brown people being racially profiled and asked for their papers, ICE agents conducted door-to-door raids and invaded homes while pepper-spraying protestors outside, breaking windows and ripping people out of their cars; launched teargas and flash-bang grenades at a car containing 6 children which resulted in their hospitalization, including a 6-month-old baby who stopped breathing; ganged up on and beat a man at a gas station, arrested teenagers at school; and used businesses as ‘hunting grounds’ as detained workers were held in life-threatening chokeholds that echoed the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Federal agents clashed with protestors who poured out on the street to confront ICE in scenes that resembled asymmetric urban warfare as throngs of Minnesotans defended their neighbors against an occupying force. Native American Tribal citizens and several U.S. citizens have been caught up in ICE’s dragnet; released detainees described harrowing conditions and an atmosphere of fear inside the Whipple Building at Fort Snelling, which had been hastily converted into a temporary ICE holding facility; they also reported that detained citizens were pressured to name protest organizers. Minneapolis City Council President Elliot Payne was filmed being assaulted by federal agents, and in New York, a City Council member was assaulted in what Mayor Mamdani called “an assault on our democracy.” A second shooting in Minneapolis occurred Wednesday night after a Venezuelan man tried to escape from ICE at a ‘targeted traffic stop’ and neighbors came out with shovels and broom handles to defend the man from an agent, who then shot the migrant in the leg as he tried to run. As protests sprang up across the country, ICE’s aggressive tactics have spread with them; also on Wednesday, a protestor at an ICE facility in California was permanently blinded after a federal agent shot him in the face with a non-lethal projectile at point blank range, which also fractured the man’s skull.
Trump praised ICE agents as ‘patriots’ and warned that a ‘day of reckoning and retribution is coming’ as DHS head Kristi Noem, as well as other senior Trump Administration officials and Republican lawmakers, doubled down on characterizing Renee Good, and anyone else who shows disrespect or resistance to ICE agents, as ‘domestic terrorists’. Following the second shooting on Thursday night, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act which would allow him to legally deploy the U.S. military on domestic soil to quell protests – which, as Rep. Ilhan Omar and human rights observers have warned, may have been the plan all along. At a White House press conference shortly afterward, Karoline Leavitt confirmed that this, along with Trump’s earlier threat in October to invoke the Insurrection Act in Chicago, was a message intended to speak “very loud and clear to Democrats across this country.” Minnesota Senator Tina Smith said Trump’s announcement was akin to “declaring war on Minnesota,” as Governor Walz delivered a rare primetime address on Wednesday night attempting to defuse the situation with a “direct appeal” to the Trump Administration to “turn the temperature down and end the occupation,” while also urging protestors to remain calm and maintain civility in the streets. The White House responded with mockery, calling Walz “Tampon” and “a loser” on social media as Karoline Leavitt, from the White House podium, expressed doubt that Walz’s appeal to speak with Trump was “genuine”; and DOJ deputy director Todd Blanche accused Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey of “terrorism” that must be stopped “by any means necessary.” Trump, who has repeatedly singled out the Somali community in Minneapolis for attack and recently called them “garbage,” announced the termination of temporary protected status for over 2,400 Somali migrants this week, forcing them to leave the country by March 17.
The Attorney Generals of Minnesota and Illinois, along with the local governments of the Twin Cities and Chicago, filed civil rights lawsuits against the Trump Administration on Monday, January 12 in an attempt to halt the operations, alleging that the federal government had, in both cities, caused harm to citizens and infringed on state and local rights to self-governance in violation of the 10th Amendment. The ACLU of Minnesota have also filed a class-action suit for civil rights violations against ICE and CBP. Legal experts have noted the difficulties of pursuing a 10th Amendment case on these grounds, warning that the cases may not gain much traction in the courts given the lack of precedent and case law. Democrats in Congress are considering targeting ICE funding in the next spending bill to threaten another government shutdown as leverage. The Wall Street Journal this week released video evidence of twelve other shootings committed by ICE agents in 2025 before the killing of Renee Nicole Good, two of which resulted in deaths; not including that of Keith Porter Jr., a Black U.S. citizen who was fatally shot by an off-duty ICE agent in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve. A leaked report from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol detailed numerous incidents on the use of deadly force by CBP agents that were heavily criticized by law enforcement experts, including several in which agents deliberately stepped in front of cars in order to claim the justification of self-defense, in nearly identical fashion to Renee Nicole Good’s killer and former CBP agent Jonathan Ross, with CBP Director Greg Bovino and the Trump Administration’s uncritical backing, in the wake of last week’s shooting. Sworn testimony from an FBI agent casts doubt on whether Ross had “followed his training” as Kristi Noem has repeatedly insisted; this week, a Slate reporter tested signing up for ICE and was hired within hours despite having failed a drug test, casting doubt on the entire training and vetting process for the 12,000 new agents hired during ICE’s glitzy recruiting campaign. Rep. Jamie Raskin demanded to know “who is hiding behind those masks” in a letter to DHS and DOJ, alluding to the possibility that some rioters from the January 6th insurrection and invasion of the Capitol may have been hired as ICE agents after being pardoned by Trump.
At least six senior federal prosecutors in the Minneapolis U.S. Attorney’s office, along with at least six other top federal prosecutors in D.C., including four leaders of the Civil Rights Division which investigates police killings, have resigned in protest at the Justice Department’s decision to investigate Renee Nicole Good’s widow, Rebecca Good, for their ties to activist groups while dropping the inquiry into Ross’s role in the shooting incident, pressuring DOJ attorneys to treat the case as an attempted act of “terrorism” by Good against the man who killed her. Among the resignations was Joe Thompson, lead prosecutor in the Minnesota fraud case that served as the catalyst for the federal surge into Minneapolis. The Justice Department’s decision is confirming many observers’ fears that last week’s tragedy is being used as a pretext by the Trump Administration to initiate a sweeping attack on nonprofits, activist organizations, neighborhood ICE Watch groups, liberal and left-wing journalists, and a host of political opponents and First Amendment-protected dissent broadly defined in September’s National Security Presidential Memo 7. An anonymous, “disgruntled” Border Patrol agent has leaked several documents to Ken Klippenstein this week detailing at least 21 ‘major’ ICE operations across the country, employing up to 2,000 ‘intelligence assets’ that have been conducting surveillance on “immigrants and Americans alike.” Klippenstein writes that the operations amount to "a parallel FBI, a DEA and an independent police force whose mission has crept well past the deportations that media tend to focus on," pointing out how many of the operations outlined by the agent include “tying every individual who crosses the border illegally to a Foreign Terrorist Organization… in order to develop targets.” EFF has documented that ICE has spent nearly $100 million on surveillance contracts with private tech companies for cutting-edge AI-powered digital and biometric surveillance tools, including AI technology developed by Peter Thiel-backed firm Palantir to target neighborhoods for ICE raids. 404 Media reports that with the complicity of retail corporations and local law enforcement agencies, thousands of facial recognition cameras, stealth biometric scanners, license-plate readers, and cell phone interceptors have already been installed to track the daily movements, habits, and political views of hundreds of millions of Americans to aid Trump and DHS’s crusade against “Antifa, cartels, the radical left, those who are “anti-American,” and anyone else they consider terrorists,” with ICE and CBP as a federal paramilitary force that is unaccountable to anyone but Trump.
Across the Rubicon: Trump presses on Greenland as EU sends troops, warning that conflict would end NATO. A small contingent of fifteen French troops arrived in the Greenlandic capital of Nuuk on Wednesday, January 14, as several other European countries – including Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Netherlands and Britain – prepared limited contingents of their own to travel to Greenland for Operation Arctic Endurance, a joint ‘reconnaissance mission’ that would also be a show of unity. French senior diplomat Olivier Poivre d’Arvor told the BBC, “This is a first exercise… we’ll show the U.S. that NATO is present.” The mission launched a day after Denmark and Greenland’s Foreign Ministers returned from talks with Marco Rubio and JD Vance (who invited himself to the talks at the last minute). Danish Foreign Minister Lars Rasmussen reported that they remained in “fundamental disagreement” with the United States over Greenland, though Vance agreed to form a “working group” with Denmark to continue discussions towards resolving their differences. Rasmussen added that Denmark has had the “longest-lasting diplomatic relation” with the United States of any country in Europe, and that U.S. acquisition of Greenland was “absolutely not necessary.” Trump doubled down with a ‘warning’ to NATO on Wednesday morning, insisting that the United States needs Greenland for NATO’s security, for the proposed Golden Dome project (an upgraded version of Ronald Reagan’s unrealized ‘Star Wars’ missile defense system and potential $2 billion contract windfall for SpaceX), that NATO would be nothing without American firepower, and that “NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES. Anything less than that is unacceptable.” Danish PM Mette Frederiksen said in response that Greenland’s defense policy is a “common concern” for the whole of NATO, and that part of the initial pan-European mission is to establish a planning scope for a "larger and more permanent" NATO presence to secure the island. Trump mocked Denmark’s Greenland military base on Monday, calling the Arctic reconnaissance hub, housing approximately 200 soldiers, “just a couple of dog sleds.” Denmark’s defense ministry said that as ‘geopolitical tensions’ have spread to the Arctic, the mission aimed to accomplish two goals: 1) demonstrate European unity, and 2) signal to the United States that NATO’s continental wing is prepared to take Arctic security seriously with or without the Americans. Rasmussen added that “there is an element of deterrence in all of this,” expressing incredulity at the “strange thought” that “in this day and age, a group of NATO countries is considering deterrence against the United States itself.”
In going it alone, Europe, accustomed to its role as a ‘coalition of the willing’ in the sidecar of U.S. interventionist foreign policy, is beginning to adjust to a new geopolitical reality without the assurances of an allied superpower or a rules-based international order as guarantors of their interests. After decades of ‘Arctic exceptionalism’ characterized by cooperative governance between states, Europe now finds itself on the receiving end of U.S. policy, facing an emboldened Trump fresh off of the successful kidnapping of Venezuela’s president and an authoritarian turn at home, as a relatively peripheral power on the frontiers of a new ‘Scramble’ for the Arctic between the Great Powers, the United States and China: for critical rare earth minerals on Europe’s Northern and Eastern flanks, and with Russia for premium shipping lanes, atmospheric/near-orbit space, and strategic military positioning as the polar ice caps retreat under conditions of climate change. European Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius offered to send EU security assets to Greenland, warning – echoing Danish PM Fredericksen – that U.S. military action would signal the end of NATO, in law as well as spirit. Just Security provides a thorough overview of Article 5, the ‘obligation’ of member states to provide collective self defense and the centerpiece of the North Atlantic Treaty; international relations expert Marko Milanovic notes that the drafters of the treaty never provided for this kind of ‘unthinkable’ scenario. Unlike the UN Charter, the North Atlantic Treaty contains no provisions for expelling a member who takes unlawful actions against a fellow member of the alliance. Therefore, legally, “the sole course of action other Allies could take in the face of the U.S. threats or subsequent military operations against Denmark would be to suspend or terminate the operation of the treaty on the basis that the United States is in “‘material breach.’” Trump’s renewed threat to Greenland – and by extension, NATO – comes after several months of deteriorating relations within the transatlantic alliance, which were exacerbated after the Trump Administration released its National Security Strategy, calling for intervention on behalf of Europe’s far-right parties, although those nationalist parties have since distanced themselves from Trump after the attack on Venezuela, and several far-right parties this week outright condemned Trump’s ‘imperial ambitions’ to colonize Greenland. Trump’s unpredictable, oscillating affinities regarding Ukraine have complicated Europe’s efforts to support the country in its war against Russia, a priority for NATO and the impetus behind Europe’s re-armament push. As of last Friday, January 11, NATO chief Mark Rutte tried to turn down the temperature by assuring members that NATO is “not at all in crisis” and said, “I think we are really working in the right direction.”
As if on cue, just two weeks after he helped solidify Ukraine/NATO’s position in the latest revision of the peace plan, Trump swung away from Zelenskyy again on Wednesday, blaming him for holding up the peace process. The Kremlin officially rejected that draft on January 10th, one day before launching an Oreshnik hypersonic missile into Zelenskyy’s hometown, reportedly sending Macron into a ‘panic’ as he urged allies to speed up development of long-range weapons. Russia launched another barrage of missiles into Kyiv and several other cities overnight on Thursday, after agreeing with Trump’s latest assessment. On Friday, Trump threatened to place tariffs on member nations who refused to support his bid for Greenland. For the 57,000 residents of Greenland – 89% of whom are Indigenous Inuit and a majority of whom support independence – being thrust in the middle of an imperial geopolitical firestorm has already done harm to their quest for self-determination, being silenced once again just 15 years after having achieved semi-autonomy status and having recently secured apologies from Denmark for past abuses and a path to independence. Threats from Trump have pushed Greenlandic officials back towards dependence on Denmark as a shield. A bipartisan Senate delegation led by Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Chris Coons met with Danish and Greenlandic leaders on Thursday and vowed to use a War Powers Resolution to curb Trump’s rush to war, a measure many frustrated Republicans are eager to break party lines to support. Just 17% of Americans support a takeover of Greenland in polls taken this week. A fed-up Congressman Thomas Massie scored the mic-drop moment of the week on social media as he tweeted, “Tell the Trump Administration the Epstein files are in Greenland… they’ll lose all interest and will never find it.”
Uneasy detente over Iran intervention as details of massacre unfold. Protests that began in Iran on December 28 as a devastating economic crisis followed a bank collapse and currency crash, pushing inflation for food above 70% and continued for nearly 13 days resulted in one of the worst massacres in Iran’s history, with thousands dead and thousands more imprisoned as the state instituted a violent crackdown and shut down the internet, keeping the country in a communications blackout for over a week as the international community debated how or whether to intervene. According to the New York Times, which was able to speak with ten protestors who evaded the communications blackout, the protests began when cell phone and electronics shopkeepers in a Tehran bazaar decided to strike, and others shut down their shops and took to the streets. The protests quickly spread throughout the capital and its hinterlands, reaching into all 31 provinces across the country in what some analysts speculated could be the biggest protest movement and worst crisis for the regime since the 1979 revolution. On Friday, January 9, Trump announced on Truth Social that the United States was “locked and loaded” and ready to take military action if the government killed protestors; he was met with sharp responses not only from the Islamic Republic but also from some protestors themselves, with some saying they wanted no help from the United States or Israel, both of whom have been sources of destabilization throughout the region. One of the protestors said, “we want regime change, but we do not want our country to be destroyed,” as others advised that a U.S. intervention could throw the entire region into chaos. Their comments were echoed by expat community leaders with the National Iranian American Council, who expressed solidarity with protestors while warning against intervention from the United States or Israel.
On Monday, as the death toll climbed above 600, Trump appeared to back off of military action; Karoline Leavitt hinted that he had received private requests from the Iranian government asking for negotiations, so instead of force he announced a 25% tariff on any country who did business with Iran. By Tuesday, the communications blackout had mostly lifted, and shocking images of bodies emerged on the internet as news of a grisly death toll emerged. So far, international organizations estimate that over 2,500 people were killed and over 18,000 imprisoned, with multiple reports of protestors being sprayed by machine guns in the street. Among the injured, hundreds had apparently been deliberately shot in the eye and blinded; one Tehran doctor said “They want to damage the head and the eyes so they can no longer see, the same thing they did in [2022].” Trump, having unleashed his own crackdown on protest at home, encouraged Iranian protestors to continue to resist and ‘take over’ public institutions, telling them “help is on the way.” Analysts say the economic crisis that sparked the protests was ultimately the product of sanctions that Trump has kept imposed on the country for the last eight years. Axios reported that envoy Steve Witkoff met briefly with the exiled son of the Shah, Reza Pahlavi, whose name had become a common chant during the protests. Iran replied that they were ‘prepared for war’ but remained ready for dialogue. On Tuesday, Elon Musk’s Starlink service was offered free to subscribers in Iran, which helped some people to call outside the country for the first time in ten days. Government leaders announced that fast trials and executions of protest leaders would be taking place, prompting Trump to escalate his threats of military action.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi blamed U.S. and Israeli intelligence for fomenting the protests on Tuesday, saying “the 12-day war [U.S. bombing of Iran last June] never ended.” In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, he repeated assertions that provocateurs had slipped into the protests, distributing weapons and firing at security forces, then began indiscriminately shooting at both protestors and guards and beheading people. The ‘terrorists’ also set fire to dozens of mosques, which he said no Iranian, whatever their politics, would do; and, comparing their behavior to Minneapolis, illustrated how their actions lacked the organic character of grassroots protests. He concluded that armed ‘terrorists’ were planted in the crowds to ‘increase the number of deaths’ and give Trump a pretext for military action. On Wednesday, things escalated to the brink of war as Iran closed its airspace and the United States pulled workers out of the embassy in Kuwait. Appearing on Fox News, Araghchi reiterated the claim that ‘outside terrorists’ had perpetrated violence, using ‘Daesh-style terrorist operations’ particularly in the last three days of protests, a second ‘phase’ of the protest that was qualitatively different from protests in the days before. He then asked the Trump Administration to allow them to negotiate a deal on their nuclear program; saying he was empowered by the Ayatollah Khamenei to pursue “talks to reach a deal ensuring Tehran will “permanently not go for nuclear weapons” in exchange for lifting the sanctions. Late Wednesday, Trump announced that he was told the killing had stopped, by “people are aware of what’s going on.” While not taking military action off the table, he told reporters “we’re going to watch and see what the process is.” By later Thursday, network service was restored as more information on the death toll emerged; doctors called it a ‘mass casualty event’ as hospitals shared stories of being overwhelmed with the injured and dead; others informed family members living abroad of the deaths of their relatives.
While Araghchi and the Iranian regime accuse Mossad and/or the U.S. State Department of being behind the ‘outside agitators’ in the incident, some scrutiny has begun to focus on Reza Pahlavi, son of the Shah who was deposed in 1979. Pahlavi continued to urge protestors to the streets, and appealed multiple times to Trump to initiate strikes after Trump appeared to pull back. The New York Times revealed on Thursday that Israel, along with several Arab nations, had asked Trump not to intervene with military action for fear that a hot war would spread through the region. Politico published an interview with Pahlavi on January 13, where Pahlavi outlined a plan he had been executing since June of last year to foment regime change inside Iran – including bringing banned Starlink nodes into the country, courting venture capitalists and oil executives for investment opportunities, recruiting defectors within the military, making an alliance with Netanyahu, and cultivating relationships with Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff, and other figures within the Trump Administration while positioning himself to take over Iran as a kind of ‘democratic monarch’ in the event of regime change. On Friday, Trump thanked the Islamic Republic for reversing their plan to hang protestors and agreed to consider talks, while Pahlavi continued to implore Trump to follow through on strikes. When asked about the death toll of the protests so far, Pahlavi replied, “This is a war, and casualties are inevitable.” Trump told Reuters reporters in an exclusive interview that he questioned the level of organic support for Pahlavi in Iran; as with Machado, Trump said Pahlavi “seemed very nice” but expressed doubt as to whether he could muster enough support to remain in power. Foreign Minister Araghchi closed out his Al Jazeera interview with hopes for a diplomatic option to end the sanctions, and a warning: “Unfortunately, there are those who seek to drag the United States into wars, and endless wars, for their own purposes, and in order to achieve Israel’s interest. We will see to what extent the United States chooses to move along the path of wisdom.”
Trump quips about canceling midterms after putting down GOP mutiny over War Powers resolution; Johnson losing grip on threadbare House majority as defections mount over spending bills; SCOTUS backs election challenges. Amidst the maelstrom of controversy generated by his authoritarian turn at home and imperial turn abroad, Trump dropped the second – and most overt – hint in a month that this year’s midterm elections may not be business as usual. Reuters sat down with Trump in the Oval Office for an extended interview this week, during which he touted his many accomplishments (a record of which he kept in a specially bound book on the Resolute Desk) and looked ahead to the midterms, expressing frustration at the prospect of Republicans losing control of the Senate, House, or both. “It’s some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don’t win the midterms,” he said, citing historical trends wherein the party in power is often overturned in one or both Congressional houses. Boasting of all the achievements he’s made in the past year, Trump said: “When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.” Less than two weeks ago while delivering a speech at the Kennedy Center on the five-year anniversary of the January 6th insurrection, Trump found it an outrage that Republicans even had to contest Democrats for their own house: “How do we even run against these people?” Trump said. “I won’t say cancel the election; they should cancel the election, because the fake news would say: ‘He wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator.” Several minutes later in the speech, he quipped: “You gotta win the midterms. Because if we don’t win the midterms, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”
When asked about the comments at a White House press conference, Karoline Leavitt claimed he was ‘simply joking, and chastised the press for taking the matter so seriously; although there are factors that are giving Democrats, and other democracy observers, some pause – January 6th itself notwithstanding. Although he appears to have dropped his musings about an unconstitutional third term, his redistricting efforts point at his proclivity for gaming the system however he can. What is of most concern this year to election officials, as well as Schumer and top Democrats, are changes as well as practices that have eroded election integrity, as well as oversight and accountability around voter suppression. Trump’s executive order initiating an effort to ‘clean’ voter rolls of possible fraudulent ‘illegal alien’ voters – spearheaded by a politicized Justice Department – has been quietly implemented in at least half of U.S. states until a California judge this week struck down the Trump Administration’s bid to force the information out of 23 Democratic-led states that refused to comply. The order in question also allows DOJ to share sensitive voter data with other agencies, such as ICE. State election officials are also worried about Trump’s attacks on mail-in voting, which would affect voting access in 36 states and require 8 all-mail voting states to completely overhaul their systems before November. The Supreme Court also ruled this week to make it easier for candidates to challenge a state’s election laws, including how votes are counted. Democrats are leaning into a shift in control over voter registration systems as a way of staying one step ahead of any Election Day shenanigans, and preparing as best they can to handle unexpected disturbances and disputes come November.
Either way, Trump and the Republicans are almost certain to lose the House in the midterms. Johnson’s slim House majority dwindled to almost nothing this week, after the sudden death of CA Rep. Doug LaMalfa, the resignation of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the retirement announcement this week of Rep. Neal Dunn, who will retire at the end of this session. The House of Representatives’ official website is maintaining a ‘Casualty List’ of the record number of members of Congress who are retiring after this tumultuous term. Trump himself has had to contend with an increasing number of internal revolts over both his personal actions and the party’s policy direction. Five Senate Republicans were poised to break with the party to vote for the War Powers Resolution constraining Trump in Venezuela, until Trump was able to lambast two of them back into line; the measure narrowly failed, with JD Vance giving the tie-breaking vote. In the House, Johnson has had to deal with near-constant intraparty revolts; GOP lawmakers broke the party line to kill Johnson’s second attempt at a reconciliation bill, Trump’s push to cap credit card rates, a GOP labor bill that would have exempted training time from being counted as overtime hours, and Trump’s signature “Saving Homeowners from Overregulation With Exceptional Rinsing Act,” otherwise known as the Showerhead Act – all just this week. More than a handful of Republicans are ready to advance a War Powers Resolution to block Trump on Greenland when the moment arises; and still more GOP lawmakers are choosing to just not show up to work rather than deal with the cognitive dissonance of getting behind Trump’s erratic agenda. Not that it has mattered much this year, given that Johnson’s House in 2025 was officially the lowest-productivity House of Representatives in history, as Trump preferred to exercise executive power wherever possible; and even when the House had something to do, it was largely a GOP-majority rubber stamp for Trump – which voters may or may not have an important opportunity to change in November.
MOVEMENT TRACKER
Which Side Are You On? A self-aware anti-fascist movement comes alive in Minneapolis. The brazen daylight shooting of Renee Nicole Good – and the response of the Trump Administration to label her as a ‘domestic terrorist’ while protecting her killer, Jonathan Ross – appears to have created a singular moment of reckoning in Minneapolis as well as in communities across the country. Media on the ground, as well as the social media universe, chronicled a week of extraordinary images from the embattled city; not just the harrowing depictions of violent ICE raids that terrorized the Twin Cities block by block, because ‘the cruelty is the point’; but the even more astonishing scenes that unfolded as ordinary Minnesotans, many of whom had never attended a protest or engaged in activism before, acted as if on instinct to protect their neighbors and stand up for their community, in direct contravention to the ‘lesson’ that ICE, DHS, and the Trump Administration intended to teach them. As Rebecca Solnit writes this week: “Minneapolis has been heroic.” In a political climate where we are told to avoid polarization, she continues, it is important to understand what George Lakey taught: that “polarization is not something to be avoided – it is a clarification and a crucible in which people have to choose their values, in which as the old labor song had it, they must decide ‘which side are you on.’ From it profound social change often emerges.” Thousands, and maybe millions already across the United States, are hitting the streets despite the danger, “afraid but undeterred”; as James West of Mojowire framed it, they understood what they saw with their own eyes and refused to be gaslit by the Trump Administration, and acted as if to say, “if Renee Good was what they call a ‘domestic terrorist,’ let them call me one too.”
Because many of the people engaged in spontaneous community defense have not hitherto been activists, many of the protests in Minneapolis have tended to be far more militant, belying calls from Gov. Walz and other politicians who are imploring residents to espouse a narrow definition of ‘peaceful protest’, lest the actions of resisters “give them what they want,” i.e. an excuse for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, or clamp down with more repression. His statements are largely being ignored by people seeking to keep their neighbors from being kidnapped, as in this example of a neighborhood group who are literally ‘putting their bodies on the gears’ of an ICE vehicle to keep it from taking a resident; phenomena also observed in Los Angeles and in Gaza, as activists revisit and debate socially acceptable conceptions of non-violent resistance in the context of a life-and-death struggle under conditions of growing fascism. Because Minnesota is an open carry state, members of the New Black Panther Party have been open-carrying rifles at protests in a defensive posture, and are not being policed by other protestors. Hundreds of people are showing up at nighttime ‘noise demonstrations’ to disrupt the sleep of ICE officers, including a man with a full drum kit. As right-wing influencers descend on Minneapolis, many of them are provoking or committing violence against protestors as a way of spinning the tale in DHS’ favor; reactions from the crowd have ranged from counter-messaging, to chasing off January 6th rioters with water balloons, to instances where law enforcement actually apprehends the provocateur, and being literally crowded out. Another feature of the Minneapolis protests have been Trump voters who feel the Administration has gone too far and have joined the ‘woke’ protestors.
Away from the spectacle, Minneapolis residents are organizing to provide mutual aid, services, encouragement and kindness to immigrant families who are afraid to come out of their homes. Neighbors are standing guard over sanctuary areas; cleaning up sites of protest and repression; distributing 3D-printed whistles to more neighborhoods; protecting their workplaces from ICE incursions; preparing packages of food and essential items for distribution to immigrant households in hiding, like this Minneapolis church which distributed 12,000 food boxes in a few days’ time; donated free tattoos; literally disarming ICE vehicles; and handing out hot samosas to demonstrators. This ‘day-in-the-life’ tour of Minneapolis from Slate illustrates the organizing that has taken place in just a few weeks.
National Demonstrations, Strike Actions called to get ICE out of communities nationwide. A number of groups have called for nationwide walkouts and social strikes in response to the ICE occupation of Minneapolis. The largest of these are below:
January 20: Free America Walkout – 2pm everywhere. The Women’s March, along with a coalition of over 200 national organizations, is calling for a mass walkout to Free America from Fascism on Tuesday January 20th, 2pm local time.
From the organizers:
“On January 20 at 2 PM local time, we will walk out of work, school, and commerce. We will withhold our labor, our participation, and our consent. A free America begins the moment we refuse to cooperate. This is not a request. This is a rupture. This is a protest and a promise. In the face of fascism, we will be ungovernable.”January 23: Day of Truth And Freedom – Mass Strike & Economic Blackout. A Minneapolis-based coalition of faith, labor, and community leaders has called for a 24-hour economic blackout – “no work, no school, no shopping” in solidarity with Minneapolis residents, and to oppose the ferocious assault on the state by federal immigration authorities. “We are facing a tsunami of hate from our own federal government,” Abdikarim Khasim, a Minnesota rideshare driver, told the crowd at the coalition’s press conference in Minneapolis. “We’re going to shut it down on the 23rd. We’re going to overcome this.”
Labor Notes provides a backgrounder and profile of the strike action and its primary organizers.
Minnesota residents may sign the Strike Pledge at https://maydaystrong.org/iceoutmn.
Faith groups may sign up for the January 23 Day of Prayer and Fasting for Truth and Freedom to connect with others in the state.
This action has been endorsed by the Minneapolis Labor Union Delegation and Local-Regional Labor Bodies – their press release is available at this link.
January 21: National Kick-Off Call for May Day Strike 2026. The May Day Strong coalition, including labor unions, activist groups, and community-based organizations, is inviting organizers to a National Kick-Off Call to begin organizing towards a mass strike/economic blackout event on May 1st, 2026. Those interested can reserve their spot on the call at this link, or visit MayDayStrong.org for more information.
