Is Anyone Doing Anything?!

The answer is a heartening “absolutely.”

Image courtesy of TOI

Think back to the start of Trump’s second term. DOGE arrived alongside a deluge of head-spinning executive orders. The White House illegally impounded billions in grant funding, paralyzing science and research. It closed whole agencies, including all of USAID, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of aid recipients. It mass-fired federal workers. It rendered hundreds of migrants, including many innocent men, to a torture prison in El Salvador. It deployed ICE to Los Angeles and federalized the National Guard, sending it into blue enclaves.

Many wondered what, if anything, was being done to stop him and his cronies like Elon Musk, Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio and Kristi Noem.

Much was happening, but it took time. Blue state governors and civil rights groups filed suit. Federal judges ultimately blocked the regime on many fronts. Then No Kings protesters began taking to the streets, growing to the millions by summer.

Now, the Trump regime is making its second power play. It has surged ICE agents to Minneapolis, terrorizing immigrant communities. It attacked Venezuela and is actively threatening a NATO ally over Greenland. And it’s launched a bogus and pretextual criminal investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell and moved to strip Sen. Mark Kelly of his military pension.

So we ask again: Is anyone doing anything about it? The answer is a heartening “yes, absolutely.”

Response to ICE abuses in Minnesota

The plan by the Trump regime was as transparent as it was cynical: Use bogus claims of “day care fraud” to create a Reaganesque “welfare queen” moment. Use that “fraud” claim to justify a harsh crackdown on the Somali immigrant community in Minneapolis. Surge 2,000+ federal immigration agents to that city to show the liberals who’s boss and rally the MAGA base around federal power and authority.

It’s not going as planned.

The murder of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross became a rallying point and set off a national condemnation of ICE. The hardened, anti-factual response of the White House quickly started backfiring as the public saw the truth through the denials. Now Minnesota and the Twin Cities have sued to enjoin DHS’s operations there, as has the State of Illinois.

After federal officials began a massive cover-up and refused to launch an investigation into Good’s killer, local and state prosecutors announced their own independent investigations. The Hennepin County Attorney, Mary Moriarty, disclosed that her office had received a “substantial” number of submissions. And Minnesota AG Keith Ellison warned that there is no statute of limitations on murder.

In response to the DOJ’s decision to ignore Good but pursue a witch-hunt investigation into the politics of Good’s widow (yes, this really happened), six prosecutors resigned from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Minnesota. Meanwhile, four attorneys within the Civil Rights Division accelerated their departures to protest that office’s decision not to pursue an investigation into Good’s murder. Unlike many big law firms and media companies, these professionals refused to be complicit in politicized injustice by the White House.

Across American cities, from large urban centers to towns in South Carolina, protests broke out immediately against ICE over the weekend. The infrastructure for rapid, mass protest now exists where it did not before.

And in Congress, there are now active measures to rein in ICE, including a three-point plan from Sen. Chris Murphy to limit border patrol jurisdiction and Democratic-led moves to condition ICE funding on key reforms, including disallowing masked agents.

On the internet, videos circulated widely documenting widespread ICE abuses, including of peaceful protesters and legal observers who are U.S. citizens. (To view collections of these clips, I recommend the accounts LongTimeHistory, Oliya Scootercast and Status Coup (no relation!), all of which you can view on the Twitter mirror site Xcancel.)

The White House has also seen its support erode rapidly among outspoken influencers with gigantic platforms. Radio host Charlamagne tha God called the murder of Good’s murder “domestic terrorism,” throwing the false claim by Kristi Noem about Good directly back at her.

And podcaster Joe Rogan even compared ICE to the Gestapo:

The President’s own party is pushing back

Within hours after Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell issued a remarkable, scathing criticism of the criminal prosecution opened against him by Trump’s Justice Department, key GOP senators, notably Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, opposed the move. Other GOP senators, such as John Kennedy of Louisiana, came to Powell’s defense. Kennedy said he knows Powell “very well” and that he would be “stunned and shocked if he has done anything wrong.” (Susan Collins showed her usual “concern” by noting that the probe “may be more about maintaining the independence of the Federal Reserve, which I support.”)

While two opposed senators do not a majority make, even when joined by all the Democrats, the announcement by Tillis that he would block any of Trump’s replacements of Powell when his term is up in July is notable. Tillis sits on the Senate Banking Committee, which is split 13-11 in favor of the GOP. That means that any single defection by a GOP senator would create a tie vote, and no candidate could advance out of that committee and on to a full Senate vote.

While criticism of Tillis for allowing horrific candidates like Pete Hegseth to advance is completely valid, his recent opposition to Trump’s picks has carried real consequences. He opposed Trump’s nominee Ed Martin for U.S. Attorney for D.C., sinking his chances before it even came to a vote. And he stalled four other Trump judicial and U.S. attorney picks until his demands on unrelated legislation (federal recognition of the Lumbee Tribe) were met.

Should Tillis hold firm on his current position on the bogus Fed Chair criminal investigation, this would have the ironic effect of keeping Jerome Powell in his position after his term is set to expire, dealing Trump a blow and creating a political self-own that the passage of time could have simply avoided.

In other embarrassing votes against the president, Sen. Murkowski was joined by four GOP senators—Josh Hawley (R-MO), Rand Paul (R-KY), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Todd Young (R-IN)—to vote with Senate Democrats to require Trump to obtain congressional approval for any future military action in Venezuela.

And in the House, 17 GOP House members joined Democrats to pass a three-year extension of ACA premium subsidies, which came to a full vote by way of a discharge petition. If you’re counting, that’s the third House discharge petition in recent months, meaning Speaker Johnson has effectively lost control of the floor.

Heroes among the people

We’ve seen the bravery and impact of ordinary people who are rallying to their immigrant neighbors’ aid. At significant risk to their own safety, and in the face of illegal threats and arrests by ICE, they are speaking out, documenting abuses and standing firm.

The bravery is contagious. Yesterday, we even saw another hero stand up to Trump himself with exactly zeros Fs to give. A Ford autoworker in Dearborn, Michigan named TJ Sabula shouted “pedophile protector” during Trump’s visit to the plant, causing a rattled Trump to curse and give him the finger. Very presidential.

Ford punished Sabula by suspending him for his act of defiance, but in his defense Sabula said, “I don’t feel as though fate looks upon you often—and when it does, you better be ready to seize the opportunity.” A GoFundMe to support Sabula after his suspension has already raised around a quarter of a million dollars as of the time of this writing.

In sum, the Trump regime is lashing out. We expected it to, after all. We all have long understood that the more pressure Trump faces on all fronts, including those pesky Epstein files, the more desperate and reckless he will become. That is precisely what we’re seeing.

But unlike how it felt last January, the resistance is organized, ready and responding rapidly and effectively.