Yes, it was reported on CNN and other sources. Don’t know if this was Noem’s brainstorm or (much more likely) that it came from the Orange Tyrant.
Bovino is basically just an employee. He could be demoted (as apparently he has been) or just fired. I assume his basic problem here wasn’t his outrageous statements about Pretti being a “terrorist” and an aggressive threat to the ICE officers, because that was the official line being parroted by Trump’s sycophants. Rather, he could be fingered as the guy in charge of tactical ICE operations in Minneapolis, making him a convenient scapegoat for an aggressive and lawless attitude among a bunch of untrained thugs that really came down from Trump. It’s the same way that the culture of both the first and current Trump administration emboldened CBP to act like belligerent assholes at border crossings, especially toward non-white people.
Which is clearly extortion. It is an attempt to hold the city hostage in exchange for something that the administration is not legally entitled to have, so they use illegal means to force it out of them.
It didn’t work because the city fought back, both its leaders and citizens.
Not meaning to criticize you; just quoting this bit to set the context for my remarks below.
Why would anyone believe that the current criminal regime would honor their side of the “bargain” (extortion really) after the records were turned over?
The one thing you don’t do with terrorists is negotiate. And make no mistake, the current criminal regime are terrorists fully within the legal definition of US law. The people they’re victimizing aren’t “domestic terrorists”; the regime is.
I disagree. Our system is a ridiculous hodgepodge of ideas that barely works and leads to folks like Trump attaining power, along with his terrible vicious goons. In an ideal system, there’d be separate mechanisms for symbolic acts designed to influence public opinion, distinct from the systems for removing a bad actor from power.
But we don’t have that idea. We got the hodgepodge.
In the system we have, impeachment can’t remove the bad actor directly. But it can erode support from the bad actor, delegitimize the bad actor in the eyes of the public. It can frighten the bad actors, so that they might hesitate before making bad decisions. And, next election cycle, maybe the bad actors are yeeted from public office.
Impeachment for trivial reasons (cough blowjob cough) has the opposite effect. But impeachment for legitimate reasons can, at least temporarily, have some powerful positive effects.
I disagree with your disagreement. No conviction after and impeachment along party lines will be seen as a victory by 1/3, useless political theater by 1/3 and possibly important by 1/3. Ultimately useless. I thought that about both of Trump’s impeachments. The first one because the majority didn’t really understand what it was all about and the second one because it happened after he wasn’t president anymore. The bragging rights of “Your guy got impeached” are worth nothing.
If it’s one of Trump’s appointees it will go one of two ways (assuming a D majority in the house). If it’s something so egregious that there is a danger of conviction and even some of his base doesn’t like what they did, Trump would have thrown them under the long before there is an impeachment. With an Air Force One standing by the bathroom soliloquy about how bad they are. Or it will die in the Senate and it will be another Trump victory.
There does seem to be a stigma to anyone who has been impeached even if not convicted. I have seen it come up as a stain on Bill Clinton’s legacy, and Trump is often described now and then as “twice impeached”. I assume it matter to a degree to someone.
Now, when that impeachment does nothing to stop the abuses that caused the impeachment in the first place, it’s a fair point to say it is meaningless.
I think these days, Samuel Chase is remembered mostly because he was the only SCOTUS member to ever be impeached (he was also acquitted).
I don’t know that there would be any harm in impeaching Noem if she survives the trial in the Senate.
The third who sees a failed impeachment as victory also sees it as further proof that the Ds who failed are nothing but treasonous traitors inventing garbage charges to try to gum up the righteous works of Dear Leader.
I think DOJ is trying to get voting records in all the States, via lawsuits, by extortion, or other ways. In Georgia, the FBI just seized hundreds of boxes of voting records in Fulton County.
It seems to me that they’re only extorting or gestapo-ing swing states or states that went Democratic concerning false claims from an election Trump lost six freaking years ago.