in case you're curious about how angry Minnesota is about ICE, it was -20 today

New episode alert!

Awful.

“The biggest organization of terror in this moment is the Department of Homeland Security,” @ramirez.house.gov told us in the latest episode of The Intercept Briefing. Listen on Spotify: interc.pt/49Hoc4x Apple: interc.pt/3LoHJxi Elsewhere: interc.pt/4a2JysY

An Intercept analysis confirmed that the White House used Google AI tools to alter the photo of Minnesota activist Nekima Levy Armstrong.

I've never seen a population more united. If people can hold onto that unity, if people can accept that different people will have different ways of confronting fascism, if we can remind NGOs and orgs that they can join but not control the resistance, then, well, people here will write history.

I came to Minneapolis to report on what's going on, and one of the main questions I showed up with is "just what is the scale of the resistance?" After all, we're all used to the news calling Portland a "war zone" or whatever when it's just some protests in one part of town.

I know people keep saying this but it’s hard to communicate the depth of active resistance here. Like, I’m on random cafes and people are checking in for observation shifts. Signs everywhere. Folks in visibility vests on the corners. It’s wild. Absolutely wild.

A reminder: Bolts is always looking for pitches for reporting on criminal justice and law enforcement (including immigration enforcement), and voting rights & democracy. We’ve put together a guide on what we may be looking for (below). If you’re a freelancer reporter with an idea, get in touch!!

They are targeting children because they are trying incite violence. I have talked to many journalists today, and they all made the same observation: Border Patrol and ICE have been rolling around with maximum aggression, lingering for ages as crowds, gather, seemingly trying to cause a riot.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino is seen deploying a gas canister at Mueller Park in south Minneapolis this afternoon. Video by Ben Luhmann.

A five-year-old boy seized on his way home in Minnesota and now locked up in Texas. His family didn't know where he was for 24 hours.

This is a photo of someone being tortured, not someone being restrained

Looks like Senator Blumenthal's office worked with the whistleblowers, and has already put out a letter to the Trump admin demanding answers. Congress MUST act. This is a five alarm fire for our basic rights under the law. bsky.app/profile/blum...

This is the Trump administration trashing the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution in pursuit of its mass deportation agenda. Worse, a footnote to this memo suggest they won't even rule out authorizing home invasions with no judicial warrant for people not even ordered removed!

🚨HOLY CRAP. An ICE whistleblower just revealed a secret memo authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS's own legal training materials say is unconstitutional! ICE then hid the memo from the public, passing it along by word of mouth and private conversation.

ICE detained a 5-year-old Minnesota boy coming home from school + took him and his dad to Texas, school officials say. The family has an active asylum case + entered the US at a port of entry. "They’re taking children. They're not violent criminals. They're little kids," the superintendent told me.

BREAKING: San Francisco Giants star Jung Hoo Lee has been detained by CBP at LAX. Pelosi's office says she is working to secure his release. www.sfchronicle.com/sports/giant...

BREAKING: Immigration officers are asserting sweeping power to enter homes without a judge’s warrant, a memo obtained by AP says.

a heavily armed paramilitary force with legal immunity is occupying a city and going door to door kidnapping non-white adults and children in furtherance of an explicitly white nationalist political project

NEWS: While Hakeem Jeffries has announced he's opposing the DHS/ICE funding bill tomorrow, his team is not whipping the vote. Several frontliners are expected to vote yes. There's a difference in leadership between personal vote decisions & unifying the caucus. From me: prospect.org/2026/01/21/j...

Senator Chris Van Hollen is also a No on the DHS funding deal, his spox confirms to me.

We cannot normalize this federal occupation of Minneapolis. It is not normal to watch people abducted in front of our eyes—dragged from car windows, pulled from their homes, and children left without parents. This is not about immigration. It’s about unchecked cruelty.

the international far right’s embrace of trump, and trump’s attempts to force the rest of the world to adopt miller’s international segregationism, is a reminder that even the “globalist” attack was projection. They want to use american power to remake the whole world into fash ethnostates

This is what happened in our neighborhood yesterday. ICE snatched a human being off of our streets, roughed them up badly, and then pepper sprayed legal observers as they documented it all. This is a daily occurrence happening all throughout Minnesota right now.

The attached reporting casts the relationship as consensual. But consent is not operative between concentration camp guards and their prisoners.

i think this MLK day the thing to focus on is the strategic focus and tactical brilliance of the civil rights movement and the way it was laser focused on a set of achievable goals

“At the same time, the FBI is sending messages to its agents nationwide seeking volunteers to temporarily transfer to Minneapolis.”

🛡️ Following the raid on the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson on Wednesday, here are concrete steps to take to safeguard yourself and your sources.

I've been feeling blue about the world, so to cheer me up, my friend and I did some DIY benching. There are new & improved community AC Transit bus benches at: 6 : Telegraph & Wesbter @ Whole Foods 6 : Telegraph & Woolsey @ Smokehouse 12 : MLK & University @ Trader Joes 27 : Ashby & Shattuck

"The 11th Airborne troops were recalled to base on Friday, amid the long holiday weekend, to stand by as a so-called quick reaction force, a rapid-deployment force, according to an internal notice to the unit's leadership, reviewed by ABC News." abcnews.go.com/US/live-upda...

This oped presents lies about "sanctuary cities." First, "sanctuary cities" are a local sovereignty issue. Arguing that you can punish local jurisdictions for polices you may not like is a neo-Confederate argument based on ideas that immigrants/ non-whites (+ supporters) cannot govern themselves.

Right-wing influencer Jake Lang is stuck in a window recess against Minneapolis City Hall. He’s soaked with freezing water after counterprotesters hurled water balloons at him. bit.ly/4baGhJn

Live updates: The Minnesota National Guard is staging for a potential response as Minneapolis police order the remaining counterprotesters to disperse. Jake Lang's anti-Islam group was chased away from Minneapolis City Hall.

The Trump admin, which says it was investigating fraud in Democratic-led states, quietly shelved a massive welfare fraud investigation in Mississippi involving public funds funneled to Brett Favre and others

They nearly killed this woman. Then they went on national TV and tried to smear her.

Do you have to pay more for a second pardon or is it a fixed rate?

ICE has kidnapped so many people from their cars that the city had to put out this statement. Let that sink in.

Every few weeks we get a story like this and it always fizzle out. Stephen Miller is in control. Let's not pretend otherwise. Even when Brooke Rollins convinced Trump to *publicly* say he'd back off of some raids, it took Miller just 48 hours to browbeat Trump into changing his mind.

This week on @theintercept.com Briefing: Trump’s War on America! “It’s not just clashes between protesters and ICE; it’s an attack on basic rights that we’ve taken for granted,” says @mprnews.org reporter @jcollins.bsky.social. theintercept.com/2026/01/16/t...

Five Republican senators had voted to advance a war powers resolution on Venezuela. After Trump went berserk, the final vote narrowly failed.

Maybe this should be bigger news. theintercept.com/2026/01/13/d...

We're going to be publishing our longer conversation with Rep. Delia Ramirez for The Intercept Briefing podcast, and I think it's really worth listening to. She makes the case for fighting long-term to dismantle DHS, while championing measures that could actually pass in the immediate.

FBI Raid on WaPo Reporter’s Home Was Based on Sham Pretext theintercept.com/2026/01/15/f...

Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen: "Greenland does not want to be governed by the United States. Greenland does not want to be part of the United States.” Trump: I don’t know who he is... But that's going to be a big problem for him.”

“It’s not just clashes between protesters and ICE; it’s an attack on basic rights that we’ve taken for granted,” says @mprnews.org reporter @jcollins.bsky.social.

Videos of agents falling down and dropping their guns feel beyond parody. But under-trained law enforcement officers are a real danger to the public.

NEW: Does today’s appeals court decision mean ICE can immediatley re-detain Mahmoud Khalil? In short, no — he is safe from further detention for 45 days, which is the time he has before the order goes into effect and the deadline to appeal. ✍🏽 @theintercept.com theintercept.com/2026/01/15/m...

New poll from Navigator also with an incredible result; the largest drop in support for ICE since June was actually among *Republicans*, 25% of which now say they have an unfavorable opinion of the agency.

Just so people outside of MN know - a lot of the US citizens getting “arrested” by ICE never get processed at Whipple. They are roughed up during the arrest and then often dropped off miles from where they were picked up. It means we don’t know the true scale of what ICE is doing based on ICE stats