All Posts

Elizabeth Warren fumbled the easiest question in progressive politics. Asked whether she'd continue funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Massachusetts senator offered a conditional yes—funding with restrictions on behavior. A technocratic answer that misses the entire point. The correct answer was no. ICE didn't materialize from Trump's fever dreams. The agency was created in 2003 under the Homeland Security Act, signed by Republican George W. Bush but supported b

Most Texans couldn't pick the Land Commissioner out of a lineup if their property tax refund depended on it. That should probably change. The Texas General Land Office manages over thirteen million acres of state property and funnels billions into public school funding through the Permanent School Fund. When hurricanes flatten coastal towns, this office distributes disaster recovery money. When veterans need housing assistance, this agency writes the checks. The commissioner

Here's what you need to know about how federal agents are trained to kill people and call it self-defense. In February 2013, the Police Executive Research Forum delivered a report to Customs and Border Protection that should have ended careers. Instead, CBP tried to bury it. The nonprofit had reviewed 67 use-of-force incidents from January 2010 through October 2012 that left 19 people dead along the southern border. What they found was a pattern so egregious it read like a tr

Minnesota is living the future that so many Americans still think could never happen here. The president of the United States has singled out one state on his social media megaphone and promised a “day of reckoning and retribution,” even as his immigration agents tear through neighborhoods with paperwork that looks like a warrant but is not. In Minneapolis, people are learning the hard way that the difference between a judge’s signature and an ICE form can be the difference b

Representative Jasmine Crockett angered people when she compared some Latino voting patterns to a "slave mentality" during a post-election interview with Vanity Fair. Her words have been resurfaced and people are obviously losing their minds. But nobody wants to talk about whether she was right about the matter. In a December 2024 Vanity Fair interview about Kamala Harris's loss, Crockett was asked about race and gender in the election. Trump pulled 46 percent of the Latino v

"We will move next week in the House Oversight Committee markup to hold former President Clinton in contempt of Congress," Rep. James Comer announced. The threat itself matters less than what came next. Bill and Hillary Clinton responded with a letter that abandons the careful distance former presidents typically maintain from congressional battles. The response extends far beyond the testimony request that prompted it. "Every person has to decide when they have seen or had e

Got a ringing in your ear for the last two days? A wheezing in your chest that won't go away? Forget ChatGPT. Forget WebMD. One message to the group chat and you expect a clear diagnosis. Who cares if your cousin just finished their first semester as a medical assistant. He should know this shit by now. Right? In any Mexican-American household, when a kid announces their acceptance into any medical program, the entire extended family exhales in collective relief. Finally, som

The world won't stop screaming. Every ping on the phone delivers fresh disaster. Every headline promises the end of something. Doomscrolling has become a reflex, and the brain can't process one crisis before three more arrive. The desperate need to fix something, control anything, takes over when the entire system seems built to self-destruct. Start here: figure out what's actually yours to manage. Most of what floods the news feed lives completely outside anyone's individual

The United States government will hand you a badge, a gun, and the authority to detain human beings after eight weeks of training. That's 336 hours. In Texas, you need 600 hours of supervised instruction before you're allowed to paint someone's fingernails. In 2025, during the Trump administration's hiring surge, ICE slashed training from six months to six weeks. Some reports put it at 47 days. Forty-seven. The number was allegedly chosen because Trump is the 47th president,

A Starr County case reached the Fourth Court of Appeals in San Antonio today, bringing a conviction for three counts of Super-Aggravated Sexual Assault of a Child under close judicial examination. Jesus Moises Lopez received three life sentences last year. His attorney, Hilda Gonzalez Garza, is now asking the appellate court to decide whether the trial court followed the law when determining Lopez’s mental competency before trial. Garza’s position rests on two issues. The fir

Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina didn't have to do much to earn President Donald Trump's endorsement. He just had to not be Henry Cuellar. That's the peculiar calculus propelling Tijerina's congressional campaign in Texas's 28th District, where Trump's backing arrived Tuesday as punishment for someone else's insufficient gratitude. The president pardoned Cuellar five weeks ago, eliminating federal bribery charges that threatened prison time. Cuellar responded by staying Democr

Grok just delivered the most delicious clapback in artificial intelligence history. Elon Musk's own chatbot, the one he built presumably to combat what he considers censorship on other platforms, just ranked him number one on its list of accounts spreading the most misinformation on X. The irony is equivalent to his net worth. Grok was asked to identify the five X accounts most responsible for spreading lies and misleading information. The AI analyzed aggregated data from 202

Stephen Miller is the man who looks like every mall Santa’s lawyer, if that lawyer’s specialty was getting kids deported for crying in line. He is best known not for one bad policy or one ugly soundbite, but for a sustained, years‑long crusade to turn the immigration system into a weapon, especially against Latino families who dared to believe that “land of opportunity” was a promise and not a legally unenforceable slogan. He is the human embodiment of the “Do Not Enter” sign

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped to the podium on September 10, 2001, and declared war. Not on a foreign enemy, but on the Pentagon itself. "The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America," he told the audience. The enemy? Pentagon bureaucracy. The evidence? $2.3 trillion in transactions the Department of Defense couldn't track. This was a financial black hole representing roughly 25% of the enti

Representative Jasmine Crockett stood during a House Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday and let it rip. "It is so hard to sit here sometimes because I didn't come to Congress to write laws or to do things that are hurting people," Crockett said. "I'm asking if there's any decency or heart or courage on that side of the aisle. The fact that a woman was killed, she was shot in her head, and y'all are pretending like nothing happened." The Texas Democrat wasn't finished. "I re

The Moderates Moving As GOP Allies

Texas handed over the personal information of every registered voter in the state to the Trump administration's Justice Department on December 23. Dates of birth, driver's license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers for 18.4 million Texans now sit in federal files. Secretary of State Jane Nelson's office confirmed the transfer last week, framing compliance as routine cooperation rather than capitulation. Twenty-three states have been sued by the Justice Department fo

The Rio Grande Valley just lost control over immigration enforcement in its own backyard. Hidalgo County confirmed full participation in the federal 287(g) program, not because officials chose cooperation but because Texas Senate Bill 8 gave them no alternative. The state law took effect January 1, 2026, requiring counties with populations over 100,000 to partner with ICE through 287(g) agreements. Hidalgo County already worked with federal agencies before the mandate, but SB

Dystopian fiction has always been absurdly far-fetched. No wonder school boards keep banning these books. Too unrealistic for classroom consumption. I blame Tolkien for starting all these dystopian novels with his silly little book Lord of the Rings about Frodo and a Fellowship on a quest to destroy a magic ring. Like who in their right mind would want to destroy a ring with power. That ridiculous premise set the tone for everything that followed. Take Margaret Atwood's The H

Minnesota is standing in that classic fault line right now, where the state line meets the federal boot, and a governor is quietly getting his Guard ready, not for a hurricane or a blizzard, but for Washington’s own agents on his streets. That alone tells you how far this immigration “crackdown” has gone off the rails, and how willing this administration is to turn blue states and brown bodies into props in a national show of force. In south Minneapolis, ICE didn’t just show