Jeff Bezos and his liberal friends are as much to blame for the death, destruction, and constitutional demolition caused by ICE as any Republican.  While communities suffer, Bezos and his liberal friends celebrate the release of a movie that his Amazon customers paid for as a bribe to an emerging tyrant.  As our republic descends into despotism, they fly off to Italy in private jets and dine on gold-flaked cannoli.  Meanwhile, masses of brave Minnesotans are defending what little remains of our tattered constitution.  Let Minnesota lead the way to a new America governed by representatives of the people, not money.

Free Minnesota, Free US

Sometimes it’s good when a command verb turns into an adjective.   “Make Minnesota Free from ICE!” remains the primary demand.  After 700 ICE agents withdrew, Minnesota secured a temporary victory, aided by strong public support making the Trump administration’s efforts to assert control over the state difficult. This outcome gives people a reason to celebrate.  Free people are people who do not cower in fear in the face of evil.  Free people are people who stand on principle.  Free people defend the vulnerable.  Thank you, Minnesota, for showing us freedom.  Thank you, Minnesota, for helping illuminate the way out of this nightmare.

A brief note on terminology.  This essay will refer to “the regime”  or “the Trump regime” rather than Trump or his administration.  Trump is merely a symptom of a corrupted political culture decades in the making.  This corrupted political culture has contaminated all three branches of government, our media landscape, our religious organizations, and our local institutions.  Unfettered greed has caused this corruption.  Even though the Republican Party is the main cause of this crisis, the problem is endemic. 

Minnesotans did not fall into the trap set by the regime.  The regime sent in a heavily armed masked brigade to intimidate and abuse the residents of Minneapolis with the expectation that residents would engage in violent protest in response.  The federal authorities anticipated significant and potentially violent demonstrations, akin to those following the death of George Floyd, as a possible basis for declaring a state of emergency and invoking the Insurrection Act.  Minnesotans stood firmly nonviolent as agents of ICE beat them, destroyed their property, shot them in cold blood, and violated every one of their constitutional rights.  Minnesotans documented, bore witness, and revealed all the lies perpetrated by the agents of the regime.  They did not tremble.  They did not compromise.

State Terrorism

Minnesota is experiencing state terrorism. Since “terrorism” is a term often abused, some clarification is in order.  Terrorism is a tactic whose strategic goal is chaos that generates politically manipulable fear, anger, and confusion.  The attacks of 9/11 and the insurrection of January 6 are the two most notable recent instances of violence used to create manipulable confusion to effect political consequences in our recent past. 

Osama bin Laden believed that the United States was a vulnerable nation, marked by ignorance, prejudice, hatred, and division among its citizens and led by corrupt, self-interested groups and institutions.  Was Osama right?

The aftermath of 9/11 should give us pause.  The attack resulted in two futile wars that have resulted in the complete control of Afghanistan by the Taliban allies of bin Ladin and a war in Iraq whose principal beneficiary was Iran.  The total cost of these wars, when veterans’ care and interest is included, is approximately $8 trillion dollars.  Bear in mind that the total debt of the US accrued since its inception is around $38 trillion.

ICE’s history suggests that bin Laden might be considered a prophet of our doom.  ICE was established within the Department of Homeland Security about two years after 9/11.  ICE’s initial budget was $3.3 billion.  Today it has a budget of $37.5 billion, which is more money than the military budget for Italy and Israel.  It is by far the largest federal police agency after having doubled its force by 12,000 additional recruits over the last year.  So far, there has never been a domestic armed force operating solely under executive control, without accountability to the legislative or judicial branches.   

ICE’s recent hires were selected from a highly specific social subgroup.  Recruitment posters, slogans, and songs came from well-known sources affiliated with white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups.  One of the reasons they wear masks is so that their identities cannot be traced and tied to White supremacist organizations, criminal convictions, January 6, or other networks of businesses and associations.

ICE operates with impunity. It can kill people in cold blood then confiscate the evidence and undertake a predetermined “investigation” that excludes judicial oversight or cooperation with the state police where the killing occurred.   ICE enters homes and makes arrests without warrants or even probable cause.  It breaks up peaceful assemblies.  These are the behaviors of a police state.  The Declaration of Independence was written in response to such abuses.  The Constitution was written to prohibit such abuses.

The recent killing of Alex Pretti involves an element that has not received nearly the attention it deserves.  Eleven days prior to being killed by ICE officers, Pretti was filmed spitting at and kicking out the taillight of an ICE SUV.  Unless there was further evidence in this story not available to what is in the video, Pretti committed a crime for which he should have been prosecuted.  The masked agents got out of the car, roughed him up, and then drove away without filing a police report about the incident. [Vern adds: When we see Alex’ rage that day, it’s worth remembering this was six days after they’d murdered and slandered Renee Good.] 

It is reasonable to ask why the two ICE officers did not make a police report.  For reasons that should bother everyone, we do not know the names of the officers involved in the January 13 encounter with Pretti.  We now know that the two CBP agents responsible for killing Pretti on January 24 execution were Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez.  Filing a police report on January 13 would have allowed ICE agents to justify their actions and given Mr. Pretti an opportunity to explain his own behavior.  That is due process.  That is how the law operates in a free country.

The decision of the ICE officers to not file a police report raises two questions.  The officers appeared to not want their names known because they were possibly hired by ICE despite earlier criminal convictions or affiliations with known right-wing extremist groups.  Additionally, there is a valid concern about the potential involvement of these officers in the subsequent murder of Pretti.  Were Ochoa and Gutierrez involved in the January 13 encounter?  If not, did they know anyone who was involved?  As it stands right now, there has been no accountability for their needless killing of an innocent man.  Was it premeditated?  The only answer we know for sure is that the DOJ is not the least bit interested in these questions.

The reasons they wear masks is that they have something to hide from their past and fear the future consequences of their present behavior.  Heavily armed agents with no identification with criminal histories are now empowered to operate outside of the law.  This is tyranny.  With a very small number of exceptions, Republicans stand fully in support of the emerging police state.

The Goal is Dictatorship

The ICE occupation of Minnesota is a policy that the Republican Party is undertaking to fulfill the dictatorial agenda of Project 2025.  Project 2025 advocates the concentration of power in the executive branch of government, the politicization of federal agencies, and the widespread imposition of a Christian Nationalist ideological agenda.  Project 2025 advocates for an executive with power above and beyond the law and a wealthy class with unconstrained ability to manipulate sham elections.  Project 2025 aims to establish a single-party state that empowers its plutocratic backers.   

The Trump regime is the product of decades of legislation and Supreme Court decisions that have elevated the power of money and diminished the rights of workers, women, and minorities.  Even in the event of an extremely unlikely Big Blue Wave in November that would result in the impeachment and conviction of Trump, the legislative and judicial framework that created the environment for Trump to be elected will remain.  Plutocracy has already fundamentally corrupted all three branches of government. 

This plutocratic regime is responsible for the deaths of Renee Nicole Good, Alex Pretti, and at least thirty-eight other people who have died in ICE custody since 2025.  The plutocrats are those who knowingly put a sadistic person in office.  The real killers are the titans of the mining and extraction industries, private equity and hedge fund managers, cryptocurrency schemers, real estate developers, agribusiness companies, media moguls, and AI tech bros.  The real murderers have names like Tesla, Palantir, Meta, Amazon, Paramount, Fox, Comcast, HP, T-Mobile, and Nantworks.  The billionaires who control such companies have enriched themselves while impoverishing our discourse and demolishing the rule of law.

The Complicity of Bezos’ Liberals

If there is one person who embodies the regime in a uniquely pernicious way, it is Jeff Bezos. 

• It is Bezos who demanded that the editorial board of the once vaunted and courageous Washington Post withdraw its endorsement of Kamala Harris and thereby sanction the election of a man with 34 felony convictions and a federal jury verdict that found him liable of sexual abuse and defamation. 
• It is Bezos who saw no problem with a president who had attempted to violently overturn the results of the 2020 election. 
• It is Bezos who tacitly endorsed the Big Lie of election fraud even though the reporters from his own paper were among those who most powerfully proved that lie. 
• It is Bezos who sent his Amazon CEO to cozy up to Mohammad bin Salman, a man responsible for the torture and murder of one of his WAPO journalists. 
• It is Bezos who has no problem with someone closely aligned with a convicted child sexual predator running the country. 
• It is Bezos who spent over $50 million on his own wedding while demanding major cutbacks on the Washington Post. 
• It is Bezos’ company that has contributed unreported millions to the East Wing remodel project and provided $75 million to the production and promotion of “Melania.”  (BTW, $75 million is the estimated annual loss that the Washington Post has incurred in recent years.).
• While Minnesotans were holding vigils mourning the death of Alex Pretti, the CEO of Amazon along with other plutocrats including Tim Cook of Apple were attending a Black-Tie celebration of that shameful film.

In a way, people like Bezos and Cook are far more contemptible than Musk and Thiel.  At least Musk and Thiel have the integrity to celebrate their greed, their racism, and their arrogance openly.  Musk and Thiel don’t care about how they’re viewed in polite society.  Bezos and Cook remain under the delusion that there remains an America where both polite society and state-sanctioned terror can coexist while they stand on the sideline collecting their billions.  Their greed compels them to grovel before the psychopath they have put in office.  They readily sacrifice the well-being created by our nation over generations to gain more riches for the corporations they represent at this moment. 

The inspirational courage of the people of Minnesota stands in stark contrast to the hollowness of Jeff Bezos.  Bezos does not deserve to live in the same country as the people of Minnesota.

The issue extends beyond Bezos himself and encompasses prominent cultural figures who hold his wealth and prestige in high regard.  Even after Bezos instructed his editorial board to not make a moral or political distinction between Trump and Harris, prominent liberals still felt it appropriate to attend his wedding last summer.  The guest list included Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DeCaprio, Usher and Barbara Streisand.  After the 2024 election, savoring gold dusted cannolis with Jared and Ivanka is no longer an option for a moral person. Bezos’s actions regarding the Washington Post during the most significant election of the century cannot be forgiven.  Those who attended the wedding tacitly sanctioned the evil we see today.

Harris’s campaign had clear flaws, but the 2024 election presented a stark moral decision.  The line between good and evil had never been clearer in America.  There was no middle ground.  Bezos’ liberal friends now need to make a stand and publicly denounce him and his complicity.  Good people are dying because of liberals’ dissembling and lack of courage.  And it’s not just ICE’s abuse of Americans.  It is also the regimes’ assault on Palestinians and Ukrainians and Epstein victims and the millions who have died from USAID cuts.  The world bleeds. Minnesota bleeds.

ICE Exists to Undermine Elections

The main task of ICE is to undermine the 2026 elections.  We can see elements of the plot unfold on an almost daily basis.

• On January 24, Attorney General Bondi offered to withdraw ICE in exchange for Minnesota handing over its voter rolls.  This was an extortionist ploy indicating that ICE has never really been about the crimes of undocumented immigrants but rather about undermining voting operations in a Democratic state. 

• On January 28, the FBI seized voter records in Fulton County, Georgia, traditionally a Democratic area in a mostly Republican state.  The appointed magistrate did not challenge the results of the election, which have already gone through multiple audits.  The magistrate authorized the warrant based on allegations indicating subsequent tampering.  The FBI completely disregarded the county’s rights for maintaining custody of the ballots.  Such a federal intervention without the consent or involvement of county officials is a stunning violation of the integrity of the voting process.  The executive branch of the federal government is now exclusively in charge of materials that are the basis of the Big Lie and these “findings” will be used to challenge the results of any county the federal government targets in the future.

• Steve Bannon made it clear on the February 3, 2026 episode of his War Room podcast that ICE will be used to intimidate voters and poll workers in key US cities in the 2026 election cycle.  Steve Bannon played a key role in planning the January 6 terrorist attack.  Everyone should pay attention to what he says today.

• Also on February 3, Donald Trump began to repeatedly call for the “nationalization” of elections and mentioned specific 15 Democratic cities where ICE will be used to suppress votes and undermine the integrity of elections.    

The system of checks and balances established by the Constitution is fundamentally broken and the foundational principle of federalism is presently under assault.

This plan to corrupt elections has been years in the making.  Anyone who thinks that the Trump regime will allow a Congress to emerge that is not under his control is not paying attention.  Anyone who thinks the other branches of the federal government will act to prevent this is not paying attention.  The Trump regime got away with trying to steal the 2020 election.  But for Bill Barr and Mike Pence, he would have accomplished it.  The regime has had four years to plot the theft this time.  We are seeing the plan unfold daily.  That is why what is happening in Minnesota is so important.

The coordinated efforts, effective organization, and strategic approaches demonstrated by the people of Minnesota have provided additional time and offered guidance for confronting what is likely to become a war of attrition against a highly resourced adversary of democracy.  In a curious turn of history, it will be the states of the Northeast, North, and West who will be upholding states’ rights against the South.  We can win this, but it will take an international movement of democratic forces dedicated to making the necessary sacrifices to thwart those who want this to devolve into violence and chaos.

It is time for Bezos’ liberal friends to repudiate him publicly and ostracize him.  It is easy for them to pontificate against Trump, he loves it.  It is Trump’s enablers who are the problem, and there are none more contemptible than Jeff Bezos and Bezos’ liberal sanitizers.