January 26, 2026

January 25, 2026

GO FIGURE:

As my New York Post column for tomorrow notes, it’s a distraction from the fraud. Or at least they hope it will be.

Posted at 10:07 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

BARACK OBAMA FORGETS HIMSELF, PONTIFICATES ON WHAT THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SHOULD DO ABOUT ICE:

Obama begins:

The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy. It should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.
Which “core” values are under assault? The values of safety, security, and not being afraid a criminal illegal is going to rape, murder, or ram you with a car or commercial truck? Or is it the core value of not having your First Amendment and other civil liberties violated? As I recall, Obama was not big on civil liberties, since he used his presidential powers to not just spy on journalists (Hello, James Rosen and Sharyl Attkisson), but to weaponize the IRS to block Tea Party and pro-liberty groups who opposed him from acquiring 501(c)(4) status so they could fundraise against his 2012 re-election.

Of course, Obama just leaves that one hanging, because his “core values” are flexible.

He blathers on.

Federal law enforcement and immigration agents have a tough job. But Americans expect them to carry out their duties in a lawful, accountable way, and to work with, rather than against, state and local officials to ensure public safety.

That’s not what we’re seeing in Minnesota. In fact, we’re seeing the opposite.

Jan Brewer smiles: Byron York on immigration law: Federal government has enforcement authority.

Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York said that, despite what Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass think, state and local governments do not have the authority to enforce immigration laws — only the federal government does.

Bass defended her resistance to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement on CNN’s The Situation Room, where she responded to the network’s new poll finding that 54% of people approve of the administration’s program to deport illegal immigrants. However, Bass said she does not believe this poll is accurate and that federal agents were “overstepping,” taking away power from the state.

In response, York clarified that the federal government has the sole authority to enforce immigration law.

York recalled the Obama administration, when Arizona officials told former President Barack Obama, “You are not enforcing immigration laws, so we’ll do it.” Obama said no, the issue went to court, and the president won.

“The ruling is the federal government has the sole authority to do this,” York said Tuesday on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom. “So when Karen Bass says, ‘It is like the federal government is coming in and taking our state and local authority,’ no, they don’t have any state and local authority.”

Bill Clinton has weighed in as well, despite having his own unique record of smashmouth immigration enforcement:

Posted at 8:52 pm by Ed Driscoll

INSURRECTION:

Thread:

Related: The Anti-ICE Signal Chat in Minneapolis Has Reportedly Been Infiltrated…and *That* Name Looks Familiar.

Posted at 7:24 pm by Glenn Reynolds

THE LEFT DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS ABOUT ALEX PRETTI, THE MAN THE BORDER PATROL SHOT: “We already knew that Pretti was carrying a loaded handgun and two extra loaded magazines when he showed up at an active ICE operation targeting a violent criminal illegal immigrant. And like Good before him, Pretti wasn’t some random citizen. He was part of an organized network dedicated to interfering with immigration enforcement. And he brought a loaded gun. Cam Higby from Newsmax spent days undercover inside the Signal messaging groups these activists use to coordinate their efforts. What he found was stunning in its sophistication. These aren’t just angry citizens showing up to protest. This is a well-oiled machine running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Related:

UPDATE:

Posted at 6:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

IRONY: ICE Incident At One Epicenter of Welfare Fraud.

Including an old friend:

“Before all this chaos erupted, the entire country had its eyes on the fraud; now everybody is angry about ICE.  That’s how Frey and Walz want it.”

Posted at 5:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

NATIONWIDE ANTI-ICE PROTESTS REVEAL HOW UNIONS AND ORGANIZED LEFTIST GROUPS AIM TO REKINDLE THE ANGER AND DISORDER OF BLACK LIVES MATTER:

The organized nature of the demonstrations has not been lost on President Donald Trump.

“These people are professionals,” he wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. “They are highly trained to scream, rant, and rave, like lunatics, in a certain manner.” Speaking to reporters that same day about the scene at the death of Renee Good in Minneapolis, he described a protester who was “so loud, like a professional opera singer … These are professional agitators that want to see our country do badly.”

This month, assuming a role similar to that which it played in fomenting BLM chaos, unions, including United Auto Workers, have taken leading roles in coordinating the nationwide march.

“No work, no school, no shopping — only community, conscience, and collective action,” the ICE Out For Good website reads. Those outside of Minnesota are encouraged to “take action on January 23 in solidarity by organizing or attending a non-violent solidarity event, demanding corporations stand up to ICE, and calling on Congress to act now to rein in ICE.”

An “ICE Out for Good” rally—organized by a conglomerate of large and small unions as well as left-wing political groups such as Zohran Mamdani’s Democratic Socialists of America—is being held in Manhattan’s Union Square late Friday afternoon.

The unions, which once championed the BLM cause, have since rechanneled their energies toward resisting ICE and Border Patrol officers, perhaps seeing an opportunity to rebuild solidarity and passion on the left in the face of the MAGA movement. Friday’s strikes and protests, for example, resemble the nationwide “Strike for Black Lives” that took place in July 2020 at the behest of 60 unions and social justice groups, the San Diego-based outlet KPBS reported. Essential workers from Boston to San Francisco ditched their jobs to “rewrite the rules so that Black people can thrive, that corporations dismantle racism, [and] white supremacy.” In June of that year, researchers around the world promised a strike to #ShutDownSTEM and #ShutDownAcademia in support of BLM.

Flashback: Welcome to protest season, where the cause changes but the tactics stay the same. “One year, statues are toppled and the next, Jews are bullied, but it’s amazing how the far-left treats such wildly diverse issues with the same small toolbox. It has ever been thus. As one radical wrote for a Students for a Democratic Society publication in the 1960s, ‘The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.’”

Incidentally, Worst Hitler, Ever: Church-Invader Nekima Levy Armstrong Rushes to Democrat-Friendly CNN After Release by Activist Judge.

UPDATE:

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

QUESTION ASKED: Who Built the USSR?

One of the epic stories of World War II is how Russian troops held the Stalingrad tractor factory against repeated assaults by German units from August to October 1942. That factory, the historians tell us, had produced more than half of the Soviet Union’s tractors before the war, and had begun manu­facturing T-34 tanks in 1941. The factory finally fell in battle, but it was rebuilt after the war as a symbol of Soviet resistance to fascism—and an enduring icon of the economic miracle of Soviet socialism.

The truth was, the Stalin­grad factory had been designed and built by American engineers and American workers living on-site in the early 1930s, and then outfitted by a dozen or so American companies, including International Harvester. The McClintic-Marshall Company made the plant’s steel structures, which then shipped to Stalingrad for assembly. The first tractors to roll off the assembly line in June 1930 were designed by the McCormick Deering company.

In other words, this supposed icon of Soviet industrial prowess was one of many examples where American companies, engineers, and workers helped transform the USSR into a major ­economic power.

Oh sure. Next you’re going to tell me that the Americans designed the Soviets’ postwar Tupolev Tu-4 bomber:

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

BUNKERTIME: Iran’s supreme leader retreats underground, warned of likelihood of US airstrikes: report.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has gone underground, reportedly hiding out in a bunker out of fear of being wiped out by US airstrikes — as the USS Abraham Lincoln steams toward the Persian Gulf.

The 86-year-old supreme leader has moved to a fortified shelter in Tehran connected to a series of elaborate underground tunnels after senior military officials warned of the increasing likelihood of an imminent US attack, Iran International reported, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Faster, please.

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

MINNESOTA’S AMY KLOBUCHAR IN 2006: Build That Wall!

Indeed. Here’s Klobuchar in 2026: Dems “are focused on getting ICE out of our state.”

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll