Saturday Hashtag: #ManufacturedMartialLaw

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Donald Trump believes that polling shows the Republicans will lose in the midterms, which he predicts will lead to his impeachment. Steve Bannon believes it’s even worse than that. Bannon says conservatives will go to prison if the GOP loses in the midterms.

It seems clear that one option for Trump to avoid this is by having Immigration and Customs Enforcement instigate a violent public reaction so he can declare martial law and derail or cancel the midterm elections. 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to send hundreds more financially incentivised, unqualified, insufficiently trained ICE agents into Minnesota appears designed to foment unrest and instigate martial law. This is an old Soviet trick, known as active measures, used to shut down public dissent.

Minnesota officials realize what’s at stake, which is why they’ve been advising the public not to react to intentional provocation.

ICE the New COINTELPRO

COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program of 1956-1971) was a secret, often illegal project designed to infiltrate, disrupt, discredit, and destroy groups it deemed “subversive.” Newly leaked documents reveal plans for ICE to use similar tactics, as a secret domestic intelligence arm to target Trump’s political enemies. 

Operation Abracadabra forcibly brands all apprehended individuals as criminals or terrorists, regardless of evidence. Operation Benchwarmer plants undercover agents to extract private information outside any legal or formal process.

Israel Has Been Training US Law Enforcement

US immigration agencies, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection, are specifically using an escalating tactic known as the “death box” and modeled after Israel Defence Forces training. It involves the following tactics:

• Agents swarming vehicles.
• Shouting conflicting commands. 
• Blocking escape routes.
• Positioning themselves to justify deadly force. 

This message (from the death box article) demonstrates the effectiveness of shouting conflicting commands:

Forced Lethality 

In 2013, a Police Executive Research Forum report (PERF) cited agents for intentionally stepping in front of moving vehicles and escalating encounters, warning this creates deadly-force situations. Despite this, masked agents, unmarked vehicles, and escalation tactics continue, with claimed immunity shielding any crimes or constitutional violations.

US law enforcement continues training with Israeli security forces in areas like counterterrorism, border enforcement, and tactical response, transferring tactics like the “death box” to justify lethal force. These actions reflect systemic, premeditated patterns enabled by lack of oversight and claimed legal immunity.

In Minnesota, video showed agent Jonathan Ross fired the last two of the three total shots double-tap style, directly into Renee Good’s open driver’s window from the side of the SUV. Without video evidence, shootings like this are reported by ICE as justified self-defense, the way the targeted shooting of Marimar Martinez in Chicago initially was.

Senior ICE and Department of Justice officials are concerned, and even resigning, over the legal exposure resulting from the situation and mounting videos exposing agents’ violent actions, crimes, absurd salaries, and even bonus incentives 

Security Force Fallacy

All these federal agents believe their identities are covert but they are universally tracked like everyone else. The reality is that anonymity is a myth. Agents’ phone location data is logged, all their masked faces are identifiable by AI surveillance systems, and their crimes are captured by default and vulnerable to exposure even without citizens’ recordings, because the databases storing this kind of information are routinely breached.

It’s also clear that Trump officials are denying the obvious parallel of the anti-ICE protestors to the January 6 insurrectionists, casting one group as patriots and the other as terrorists through a selective distortion of reality. 

How To Cope

Manufactured unrest exists to provoke reaction, legitimize repression, and normalize state violence. 

Don’t take the bait. Stay disciplined, document everything. If you encounter social media disinformation, report it and debunk it with factual, sourced links. Support journalists and civil rights groups, and demand real oversight through courts, inspectors general, and Congress. 

Reject narratives that criminalize dissent, defend democratic participation, and vote at scale. Authoritarianism collapses when escalation fails and transparency prevails.

Hashtag Picks

ICE List Fallout: What Happens When Federal Agents Are Named, Mapped and Searchable

The author writes, “Thousands of US immigration officers woke up this week to discover their names and work details circulating on a public website, after a major data leak exposed personal information linked to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol staff. The incident has intensified an already heated national debate over transparency, accountability and the safety of law-enforcement personnel, following the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.”

ICE Ruses

From the Immigrant Defense Project: “When Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents go to homes and the community to arrest non-citizens, it’s common for them to lie about who they are and what they want from the individuals they encounter. The lies are called ‘ruses.’ Ruses are an officially-sanctioned ICE policy, taught to new agents at the ICE Training Academy, and are subject to almost no restrictions. The Immigrant Defense Project’s lawsuit, Immigrant Defense Project, et al. v. ICE, et al., has made internal ICE training documents and memos, including those on ruses, publicly available.”

What Is the Insurrection Act? Trump Threatens To Invoke Law in Minnesota

The authors write, “President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act amid rising tensions in Minnesota. The threat follows clashes between protesters and federal agents after two recent shootings involving ICE. The Insurrection Act of 1807 allows a president to deploy U.S. military forces for domestic law enforcement. State and local officials in Minnesota have described the federal intervention as ‘intolerable.’”

Delusional Trump, 79, Floats Unhinged Reason to Skip Midterms

The author writes, “Donald Trump has made a desperate plea to bypass upcoming midterm elections using an unsettling rationale. The president — who has previously floated the idea of canceling November’s nationwide elections — appeared to acknowledge that Republicans are likely to suffer heavy losses, while offering a desperate workaround during an interview with Reuters. ‘It’s some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don’t win the midterms,’ Trump said. The 79-year-old then suggested that he had accomplished so much as president that ‘when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.’”

GOP Rebel Gives Crazy Reason Why He Caved on Anti-Trump Bill

The author writes, “Sen. Josh Hawley has revealed why he changed his vote on a controversial war powers resolution bill after threats and personal insults from Donald Trump. The Missouri senator was one of five rogue Republicans who voted alongside Democrats last week for a bill designed to prevent Trump ordering further attacks on Venezuela without prior approval from Congress. On Wednesday, however, Hawley and fellow Republican Todd Young of Indiana dramatically flipped to kill the bill.”

Trump Is Canceling the Rule of Law — and US Democracy

From Project Syndicate: “Not only has the second Trump administration shown an utter contempt for the rule of law, but so too have its allies in Congress and on the Supreme Court. The bedrock principle that has long defined and sustained the American democratic project is being shredded before our eyes.”

ICE: US Immigration Agents Are Acting With Impunity

From DW: “Under Donald Trump, the operations of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement have become increasingly ruthless. Human rights organizations decry raids on schools and child care centers, arbitrary arrests and detentions.”