Tell Google & YouTube: Take down vile ICE recruitment ads now

 

Tell Google & YouTube: Take down vile ICE recruitment ads now.

The Department of Homeland Security is seeking to hire 10,000 new ICE agents to supercharge the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. To do it, DHS is pouring $100 million into what it calls an “aggressive” recruitment campaign—one steeped in wartime imagery and overtly anti-immigrant rhetoric. ICE recruitment ads are being targeted at listeners of right-wing and so-called “patriotic” podcasts, as well as people who express interest in guns and tactical gear. The messaging leans heavily on militarized language, invoking a “sacred duty,” the need to “defend the homeland,” and warnings about “foreign invaders.” After artists including Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo, and SZA condemned ICE for using their music without permission, DHS shifted tactics again—this time turning to “niche music beloved by neo-Nazis,” openly courting white supremacist aesthetics and audiences. As one researcher put it, “In the past, those dog whistles were coming from supporters. Now they’re coming directly from the administration.” While most of the spending is aimed at recruiting new ICE agents, DHS has also shelled out nearly $3 million for Spanish-language ads on Google and YouTube. These ads target Spanish-speaking communities in the U.S. with harassment and intimidation, telling people to “go home.” No corporation in America should be enabling ICE—let alone accepting its money and profiting from this campaign of fear and dehumanization. Demand Google and YouTube take down these vile ads and stop accepting money from ICE. Send a message to the CEOs of Google and YouTube now.

TAKE ACTION

Thanks for taking action, The whole Common Dreams team

 

The Trump administration is immoral and unjust

The Trump administration is immoral and unjust. When we talk about morality, we are also talking about justice. We are talking about rights, duties, and mutually agreed principles based on trust and compassion, and how and why we should live moral and just lives through an interdisciplinary understanding of philosophical ethics, social and political psychology, evolutionary biology, and theology to create a framework and identification with morality and justice.

The Trump administration have failed. They do not care about how morality serves an important function in our lives as individuals and in our community. They do not care about what maximizes the well-being of others. They do not care about moral rights. They do not care about ethical principles that reconcile self-interest with the common good and promote personal integrity and respect for legitimate rights. They do not even care about children’s rights.

 -Glen Brown

Shame on the Immoral and Illegal Trump Administrative Goons

A five-year-old child — Liam Conejo Ramos — was taken from his home and sent hundreds of miles away to a detention facility for-profit concentration camp in Texas. He was never accused of a crime, didn’t cross our southern border alone, and is so young he barely understands what’s happening to him; odds are he has no understanding of why he’s being treated with such brutality.

Nobody told little Liam about Tom Homan and Stephen Miller being so eager to punish brown-skinned immigrants, delighting in their pain, rationalizing it as a “deterrent” to “illegal immigration” that’s “poisoning the blood” of white America, as Donald Trump himself pointed out on the election trail.

He’s confined to a cell in a cold, concrete facility where the lights are kept on day and night. There’s no school for him to attend, nobody to hold him and reassure him, his medical care limited, and the food so bad he’s struggled to keep it down.

His lawyer says his health has declined while in government custody. But this isn’t really about immigration; it’s about power. And how stories and language facilitate the exercise or restraint of that power. It’s about what happens when a nation starts talking about its own people (and the people seeking refuge here) as if they’re enemies in a war.

As Radley Balko noted on BlueSky: “I’m coming to Boston and I’m bringing hell with me.” — Tom Homan in February: “Do I expect violence to escalate? Absolutely.” — Tom Homan in March: “I actually thought about getting up and throwing that man a beating right there in the middle of the room…” — Tom Homan in July, referring to a Democratic congressman who’d offended him.

This week, during a press briefing, Homan again used the language of war to describe immigration enforcement against brown-skinned people, and resistance from blue states. Words like “fight,” “battle,” “theater,” and “invasion.” When asked how many of his masked goons were still in Minneapolis, he said: “3,000. There’s been some rotations. Another thing I witnessed when I came here, I’ll share this with you, I’ve met a lot of people, they’ve been in theater, some of them have been in theater for eight months. So there’s going to be rotations of personnel.” [emphasis added]

“In theater”?!? That’s how Eisenhower used to talk about taking on the Nazis in Europe. That’s not how law enforcement talks; it’s how invading armies speak of invading the territory of their enemies.

That’s no accident by Homan, nor is it the mere use of “colorful phrasing.” When he uses that kind of language, he does it explicitly as a political weapon. And history tells us exactly where that leads.

Nixon taught us this lesson when he declared a “war on drugs” and then used it to spy on and persecute antiwar and civil rights leaders: the language of warfare changes the moral rules. Dan Baum chronicled how it works — and why — in 1994 when he interviewed Nixon’s domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, about Nixon’s “war on drugs” effort, and Ehrlichman said: 

“You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying?

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.

”We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.

“Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

In war, suffering is normal. In war, collateral damage is unfortunate but socially acceptable. In war, the people caught in the middle stop being human beings with rights and start being obstacles to be managed, broken, or, as in the cases of Renee Good and Alex Pritty, killed dead.

Five-year-old Liam, one of hundreds of children Trump and Homan have shipped off to Texas, is now living inside the consequences of that shift in language, that “war” rhetorical frame. This is absolutely unnecessary. The United States has laws for immigration enforcement. We have courts, due process and longstanding legal standards for the treatment of children in government custody.

I recently wrote about a friend who was deported during Obama’s administration by ICE agents in windbreakers with badges and ID, who politely gave him a month to get his affairs in order. Obama actually deported more people than Trump in any given year, including 2025, and nobody had their window smashed in or suffered 10 bullets in the back.

We’ve been enforcing immigration laws since 1924 when the Border Patrol was created, and never before have we needed an armed force with a larger budget than the FBI or the Marine Corps to pull it off. And we’ve deported a hell of a lot of people:

Syracuse University’s TRAC data attribute more than 3.1 million deportations over Obama’s eight years, with a peak of over 407,000 removals in FY 2012.​ By comparison, the first Trump administration (2017–2020) carried out fewer than about 932,000 deportations total, peaking at roughly 269,000 removals in 2019.​ After Trump’s return to office last year, ICE reported about 290,000 removals through late 2025 and mid‑FY 2026, which is still far below Obama’s cumulative total.​

In other words, Obama deported more “illegals” than Trump in any year, including last year with ICE going full force, and he did it with courtesy and the law. No masks or guns, no people being shot, no cars being chased and rammed.

As you can see, today’s ICE violence is more about the skin color of the deportees than about enforcing the immigration laws or ridding the country of undocumented persons.

None of those systems require keeping children locked in facilities where the lights never go off. None of them require denying a child a hug or an education. None of them require the conditions that lawyers and doctors have repeatedly warned cause physical and psychological harm to both children and adults but that Miller, Homan, Trump, et al insist on using.

The conditions of this child’s confinement aren’t a bureaucratic accident; they’re the predictable result of a system designed around the use of violence, isolation, terror, and pain directed at people with nonwhite skin as a brutal way of enforcing “deterrence” to Make America White Again. A system designed to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars to private prison operators on the assumption they’ll recycle a good chunk of that back as campaign contributions and “gifts” to Republican politicians.

For years now, Republicans and rightwing media figures have described immigrants as if they’re part of an invasion. A “flood,” or a “threat” to be repelled. When leaders and the press talk about human beings that way, people find it easier to treat them as less than human. It becomes easier to cut corners, ignore the suffering, and to look away when a child gets sick or even dies behind locked doors.

And — like Nixon’s war on drugs — it doesn’t stop with migrants. Trump’s war on immigrants is as phony as was Nixon’s War on Drugs. Blacks are again the victims, but now instead of the young white men and women who took LBJ and Nixon down, he chose brown-skinned children. This is a sickness.

When that same war language is turned against Blue states, states that disagree with grandstanding politicians and brutal, inhumane agendas, something even more dangerous happens. Political disagreement becomes treason. Federalism becomes defiance. And America itself starts to look like a battlefield.

If we accept that it’s normal to treat migrant children this way because we’re at war during an invasion, what else becomes acceptable? What happens the next time a governor refuses to comply with a federal directive? What happens the next time protesters take to the streets, or a reporter chronicles a demonstration? Who gets labeled the enemy then?

This is not hypothetical. We don’t even have to reach back to the 1930s in Europe; we’ve seen this movie before right here in America. The “war on drugs” gave us mass incarceration and militarized police. The “war on terror” gave us torture, secret prisons, and ongoing surveillance.

Every time we let wartime language redefine our domestic policy debates, the result is the same. Rights shrink, power concentrates, and dissidents, members of the media, and the most vulnerable alike pay the price.

Children are supposed to be the line we never cross: they’re the moral stress test of any society. If a system refuses to protect its children, it isn’t a system worth defending. Little Liam locked up in that Texas facility behind concrete and razor wire is not a symbol: he’s a child who should be in school. Who should be sleeping in his own bed at home, tucked in by a loving parent. Who should be held by people who see him as a human being, not a person with brown skin to be exploited to satisfy the racist bloodlust of the MAGA base.

Supporters of these policies will say that enforcement is necessary. That the private, for-profit facilities they use meet legal standards. That Homan’s rhetoric is just “tough talk.” But it’s all bullshit. Enforcement doesn’t require cruelty. Following the law doesn’t require dehumanization. And words are never just words when they come from people with power. Language shapes policy. Policy shapes systems. Systems shape societies.

That’s the through line from Homan’s bizarre press briefing filled with war talk to a small child lying awake hungry, shivering, and crying under fluorescent lights. A nation that truly believes in liberty and justice doesn’t have to declare war on children to enforce its laws. It doesn’t need to turn sovereign states into enemies in order to govern effectively or imprison reporters for doing their jobs. And it doesn’t need to abandon its humanity to keep its citizens safe.

The question this regime confronts us with isn’t one of how to enforce or not enforce immigration law; it’s what kind of society we’re willing to become in the process.

If you believe democracy needs defending, subscribe to The Hartmann Report. Free or paid, your support matters. Share this post to help wake more people

 

Ailing Trump Knows His Reign Is Nearly Over by Olivia Ralph

 

Donald Trump may still dominate the news cycle, but inside the White House, the foundations of his power are weakening—and he knows it, according to Trump’s biographer. On the latest episode of Inside Trump’s Head, author Michael Wolff described a White House increasingly gripped by anxiety as the president enters a pivotal midterm year burdened by collapsing polls, international resistance, self-inflicted crises that refuse to fade, and growing alarm among aides that Trump is losing interest in the presidency.   

“If you lose Donald Trump’s interest, you lose Donald Trump,” Wolff said. “He’s not interested in policy. He’s not interested in bureaucracy. He’s interested in unfettered attention.”

According to Wolff, the daily work of governing—incremental wins, trade-offs, and detail—bores Trump, draining his energy at a moment when political discipline matters most. That disengagement has become increasingly visible on the world stage. After heading to the World Economic Forum in Davos expecting to be treated as an untouchable strongman, Trump instead encountered coordinated resistance from allies who, Wolff argued, are no longer content to maneuver quietly around him.

“Trump’s virtue to voters is that no matter what happened, he looked strong,” Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles. “Now he cannot take Greenland, he cannot take Canada, he cannot do any of the things that he has huffed and puffed and said he will do.”

Wolff said the same pattern is playing out at home, where the administration has struggled to contain the fallout in Minneapolis following two fatal encounters involving federal immigration officers this month, further inflaming protests and political backlash. “This has now become a very, very complicated situation,” Wolff said. 

For Trump, Minneapolis represents the kind of crisis he finds hardest to manage: one that can’t be bullied into submission or drowned out by spectacle. “He cannot threaten his way out of it,” Wolff said. “He can’t seem to generate a new headline to get himself out of it,” he continued. “The headlines that are generated are bad headlines.”

That dynamic, Wolff argued, points to a broader problem for Trump as the midterms approach. Governing, he said, demands a tolerance for incremental progress, which is at odds with Trump’s appetite for dominance and immediate results. “The work of the presidency does not inspire him,” Wolff said. “If it becomes complicated, that has to be pushed to the side.”

As Trump disengages, Wolff went on to say, the president has increasingly turned to performative conflict, including high-profile lawsuits and public feuds with powerful institutions. Once effective at projecting strength, those tactics now risk reinforcing the impression of a leader struggling to maintain control.

“There’s only so many times you can sue people for $5 billion or $20 billion,” Wolff said. “You look foolish.” With a little over nine months until the midterm elections, Wolff framed the moment as a genuine inflection point—not just for Republicans, but for Trump himself. “He can’t seem to generate a new headline to get himself out of it,” he continued. “The headlines that are generated are bad headlines.”

That dynamic, Wolff argued, points to a broader problem for Trump as the midterms approach. Governing, he said, demands a tolerance for incremental progress, which is at odds with Trump’s appetite for dominance and immediate results. “The work of the presidency does not inspire him,” Wolff said. “If it becomes complicated, that has to be pushed to the side.”

As Trump disengages, Wolff went on to say, the president has increasingly turned to performative conflict, including high-profile lawsuits and public feuds with powerful institutions. Once effective at projecting strength, those tactics now risk reinforcing the impression of a leader struggling to maintain control.

“There’s only so many times you can sue people for $5 billion or $20 billion,” Wolff said. “You look foolish.” With a little over nine months until the midterm elections, Wolff framed the moment as a genuine inflection point—not just for Republicans, but for Trump himself.

-Newsweek 

  

Bruce Springsteen's Streets of Minneapolis

streets of minneapolis song - Google Search 

Through the winter’s ice and cold
Down Nicollet Avenue
A city aflame fought fire and ice
‘Neath an occupier’s boots
King Trump’s private army from the DHS
Guns belted to their coats
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law
Or so their story goes
Against smoke and rubber bullets
By the dawn’s early light
Citizens stood for justice
Their voices ringing through the night
And there were bloody footprints
Where mercy should have stood
And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets
Alex Pretti and Renee Good
Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
We’ll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
Here in our home, they killed and roamed
In the winter of ’26
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis
Trump’s federal thugs beat up on
His face and his chest
Then we heard the gunshots
And Alex Pretti lay in the snow dead
Their claim was self-defense, sir
Just don’t believe your eyes
It’s our blood and bones
And these whistles and phones
Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies
Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Crying through the bloody mist
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis
Now they say they’re here to uphold the law
But they trample on our rights
If your skin is black or brown, my friend
You can be questioned or deported on sight
In chants of ICE out now
Our city’s heart and soul persist
Through broken glass and bloody tears
On the streets of Minneapolis
Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
Here in our home, they killed and roamed
In the winter of ’26
We’ll take our stand for this our land
And the stranger in our midst
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

streets of minneapolis song - Google Search

"Noem’s lying in and of itself should be grounds for termination"

Kristi Noem dresses up as a Texan. (Department of Homeland Security)

After a nationwide backlash to the extralegal killings of two Americans, Gregory Bovino, the thuggish face of the Customs and Border Patrol, was kicked out of Minneapolis. Now Democrats are rallying to force Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to quit, get fired, or face impeachment. It is easy to cynically dismiss Donald Trump’s personnel shuffling as nothing more than rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, but there are very good reasons to go after Noem, especially now.

Neera Tanden, head of the Center for American Progress, demanded Trump pull Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection out of Minnesota and fire Noem. “She directly lied to the American people about these killings, has overseen an agency that is endangering Americans, and is interfering with local police efforts to keep communities safe,” Tanden said in a forceful written statement.

Noem’s lying in and of itself should be grounds for termination. After condemning her for abjectly smearing two innocent Americans; making false, incendiary comments about “domestic terrorists”; and lying about her agents’ actions, defenders of democracy and truth cannot very well turn around to say she should face no consequences simply because there are worse offenders (e.g., Stephen Miller). We either accept grotesque lies as the new norm or we demand liars — especially people who are supposedly engaged in law enforcement — get fired.

Frankly, Noem should have been canned for deciding not to turn around planes heading for the Salvadoran prison camp CECOT in defiance of a district court order. Lawlessness and phony excuses (the plane was out of U.S. air space!) beget more lawlessness and dissembling.

Lying certainly is not Noem’s only sin. “Noem is absolutely unfit to lead an agency tasked with keeping Americans safe,” Tanden’s statement continued. “She bears responsibility for the agents under her command who killed two people and should face the consequences.”

Again, we cannot demand accountability for the underlings who killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti but not demand accountability for the person who sent unhinged, irresponsible shock troops into American cities, with the vice president promising immunity. (That would be like prosecuting the foot soldiers on Jan. 6, 2021, but refusing to indict Trump, who summoned them.)

Ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) was one of many Democrats demanding she resign, be fired, or be impeached. “Far from condemning these unlawful and savage killings in cold blood, Secretary Noem immediately labeled Renée and Alex ‘domestic terrorists,’ blatantly lied about the circumstances of the shootings that took their lives, and attempted to cover-up and blockade any legitimate investigation into their deaths,” he said in a written statement. The former manager in Trump’s second impeachment trial explained what additional benefits come from impeachment:

Rep. Robin Kelly’s H. Res. 996, a resolution to impeach Secretary Noem, has galvanized Members of the House of Representatives to express their outrage at Secretary Noem’s conduct and has properly propelled our committees along this path.

We must build on this resolution, through fact-finding, public hearings, and committee reports detailing all of Secretary Noem’s potential high crimes and misdemeanors and take our case to the American people. This process — which the House has followed in every successful impeachment — will afford us the best opportunity to build the most fitting and powerful case for impeachment and removal for office. 

It will also enable us to conduct a broad campaign to educate the American people about this sequence of oppressive governmental actions, to counter and ‘impeach’ the Administration’s persistent lies, and to develop legislative solutions to prevent any future assaults on the rights and liberties of the American people by an increasingly autocratic and out-of-control Executive Branch.

In short, the process of impeachment is as important as the decision itself because it serves to galvanize the public’s disgust over Noem’s outrageous conduct and reveal other Trump flunkies’ culpability for outrageous and potentially illegal conduct.

Even the threat of Noem getting sacked has apparently prompted her to start pointing fingers at an even bigger fish: Miller. (“Noem has complained to others that she feels she’s being hung out to dry over the episode and has made sure to emphasize she took direction from Miller and the president,” Axios reported.) Organized crime prosecutions traditionally begin by nailing lower-level suspects in hope they reveal incriminating information about higher-ups. To the extent the Trump regime has come to resemble a mob family, this tactic is especially effective.

Let’s remember that pro-democracy forces are in the battle for truth as much as anything. Creating a record, presenting the evidence through credible witnesses, and forcing Republicans to defend the indefensible (just as the original videos of the killings did) are part and parcel of rallying the people, throwing Republicans on defense, splitting the Republican cult, and, candidly, throwing Trump’s party and underlings into panic that others could also face Noem’s fate.

From a purely political standpoint, the calls for her to quit are already sowing divisions among Republicans. “Sens. Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski called for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign Tuesday, making them the first Republicans in Congress to say she should step down,” NBC reported. And, to boot, Tillis called out Miller for the same treatment. (“GOP Sen. Thom Tillis on Stephen Miller: ‘Stephen Miller never fails to live up to my expectations of incompetence,’ he said, later adding, ‘I can tell you, if I were president, neither one of them would be in Washington right now,’ also referring to Noem.”) Squeeze Noem and watch her drop the dime on others, including other Cabinet members, Vice President JD Vance, and Trump.

By making Noem’s ouster a necessary but not sufficient condition of dismantling Trump’s police state, Democrats should also force Republicans up for reelection (e.g., Sens. Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Bernie Moreno of Ohio, and John Cornyn of Texas) to justify why they are covering for her (and Trump). That should make for some effective debate moments.

Finally, without the White House or majorities in either chamber of Congress, Democrats do not have a surplus of “wins” to tout. To reassure the base that elected Democrats are fighting for them and to encourage protestors to achieve progress through nonviolent action, a win of this magnitude — knocking out a Cabinet secretary in charge of arguably the most important domestic initiative of Trump’s second term — would be an invaluable sign of momentum. And for a regime that survives on the aura of invincibility, each stumble, loss, and scandal should be treasured.

The complaint about intermediary progress (“In the long run, the only thing that matters is Trump [or Stephen Miller]”) reminds one of Maynard Keynes (“In the long run, we are all dead.”). Well, if we wait until the biggest fish gets hooked, our democracy may be dead.

Political change and community organizing require leaders to build momentum, show results, and keep their foot on the gas. To sustain the mass movement sweeping the country, Democrats must knock out Noem and then mount even greater assaults on the Trump fascist enterprise.

---

The Contrarian is reader-supported. To receive new posts, enable our work, help with litigation efforts, and keep this opposition movement alive and engaged, please consider joining the fight by becoming a paid subscriber.

 

No Kings Coalition Announces Immediate Efforts and Builds Towards Next National Mass Mobilization on March 28

 

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – In 2025, millions of Americans came together in nonviolent protest to oppose the growing authoritarian actions of the Trump administration and affirm that this nation belongs to its people, not to kings. Since then, people have continued to rise up against ongoing authoritarianism and federal abuses, including the administration’s latest escalation in Minnesota. The No Kings Coalition has activated an immediate and ongoing nationwide digital organizing effort leading up to their next mass mobilization on March 28, including a flagship event in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

No Kings launched its Eyes on ICE training program Monday, a nationwide virtual training designed to equip people with tools to exercise their rights and safely monitor federal enforcement actions. The first training drew a historic turnout of more than 200,000 viewers, and additional nationwide trainings will be ongoing, with the next on February 5.

The Trump administration has escalated their brutality and authoritarianism on families and immigrants in Minnesota and across the country, killing people, including Keith Porter Jr., Renée Good, Alex Pretti, and at least six people in ICE custody so far in 2026. Last year, 32 people died in ICE custody, making it ICE’s deadliest year in more than two decades.

In 2026, the No Kings Coalition expanded its anti-authoritarian movement by welcoming new partners, including even more of those most impacted by the Trump administration’s brutality and authoritarian actions. You can see a full list of partners at nokings.org/partners.

President Trump’s attempts to rule through repression have called Americans across the nation to respond through morally grounded and non-violent protest. Organizers are trained in de-escalation and are coordinating closely with local partners to ensure non-violent, lawful, disciplined, and powerful local actions.

To connect with a spokesperson for interviews, email media@nokings.org.

---

Contrarians, stay engaged and keep watching this space for updates. We will be out in force, coast-to-coast. Start prepping your signs and preparing for this next great mobilization for this essential fight to reclaim our country and our democracy.

Share