[coldpie]

Your scepticism is well warranted. That's exactly the playbook Biden chose to follow, and I agree the most likely outcome is the next admin will follow it again.

However, I am unfortunately an incurable optimist, and sometimes we Americans really do pull off amazing feats. I live in the Twin Cities and we actually defeated DHS/CBP/ICE here. It was an amazing thing to witness, and maybe there is enough outrage at this admin's looting of the US that we can build the support nationally to do that kind of thing again.

[lotsofpulp]

"Defeated" is an interesting way to look at it. My perception is that the administration was just using the Twin Cities as a distraction, like they do for basically everything. In the mean time, the higher ups get their business deals done while the commoners are busy wasting energy cleaning up the mess. In which case, they succeeded. Now, onto the next distraction, and then the next one, and so on and so forth.

Minnesota has a very high probability of sending 2 Democrat senators and all their electoral votes to the Democrat presidential candidate. Minnesota and the Twin Cities are of zero consequence to this administration, so why not use them as a distraction?

The primary goal of the administration, sweeping tax cuts, was already accomplished in Jul 2025, so even Congress is of limited value now until after the next presidential election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_the_zone

[pchristensen]

They certainly liked the distraction, but the invasion of MN allowed them to 1) catch some illegal immigrants, 2) intimidate legal immigrants, encouraging them to "self deport", 3) flex their power and demonstrate the ability to cause pain and harm to political enemies, and 4) give agents practice and training for the next city they invade. So far they have had these "surges" in Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, and Minneapolis. There are plenty more cities in blue states and plenty of money left in their budget, and almost 3 years left in this administration.

[jghn]

It wasn't just Biden. This is how it played out with Obama as well, except that Romney lost in 2012.

Heck, Obama won the peace prize for no other reason than he wasn't George W Bush

[insane_dreamer]

I blame Garland for much of the mess we are in. If the DOJ had done their job regarding the Jan 6 insurrection we wouldn't be here talking about stupid tarrifs that caused a year of turbulence for US businesses and contributed to inflation, for no good reason (and this might be the least of the problems caused by the Trump admin).

[wat10000]

It seemed like the Democrats selected Garland just so they could poke the Republicans in the eye. "You blocked him from SCOTUS so now we're going to make him Attorney General, how you like them apples?" Without really considering whether he'd actually do a good job.

[ceejayoz]

An alternative view is his personality used to be what you want (in theory) as both AG and SCOTUS justice - slow, deliberate, non-partisan.

[wat10000]

There's slow, and then there's taking more than four years to prosecute high-profile crimes committed in plain view.

[insane_dreamer]

I agree; but different times called for different measures. There was also too much of a feeling of "whew, that was close, but now we can get back to normal" instead of "let's make sure that never happens again".

[Schmerika]

If you care to read a bit more about it [0], then the Garland pick looks a lot more sinister.

That's Sarah Kendzior, one of the few journalists who was talking about Epstein long before all that started to became well known.

'Fun' fact: The Attorney General is able to unseal court documents at will. And for four years Garland didn't do that with the Epstein files. It was beyond clear that the SC were slow rolling Ghislaine Maxwell's appeal, and still nothing even leaked.

0 - https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/servants-of-the-mafia-s...