Report from Occupied America: Minneapolis fights on alone

By Legal Correspondent Saori Shiroseki with Spy Minnesota Bureau Chief Murray Slaughter in Minneapolis

The attacks come from anywhere, anytime.  One minute it's a peaceful school, restaurant, or residential neighborhood.  The next minute, heavily armed paramilitary forces of the Fascist Mad King regime roll in, occupying, wounding, capturing and even murdering the residents going about their business.

The business could be picking their kids up from school, buying gas or groceries, or even going to the hospital.  The invaders don't care.  Anyone, anywhere can be a target, regardless of age, ethnicity, or immigration status.

Sometimes the terrified residents of Minneapolis get a minute or two of warning from the network of whistle blowers pressed into service to guard the streets.  Sometimes they are attacked or shot without warning.

The only offense committed by the traumatized citizens of Minneapolis: they voted against the Mad King's tyranny in the last election.

This is Minneapolis in the 250th year of American independence.

And yet the unarmed overwhelmed citizens of the city continue to resist the invaders valiantly.

Here's the front page of the Minnesota Star Tribune, still publishing despite the occupation:

The crimes against humanity committed by the Mad King's rampaging hordes are by now familiar, but still shocking:

● The brazen murders of an unarmed 37-year-old woman driving away from her murderers because the shooter was insulted by her wife and of a male nurse coming to the aid of another innocent victim.

● The repeated beatings and torture of unarmed civilians (whose only offense was to bear witness to the carnage) already tackled and immobilized:

Photo by Pierre Lavie. Yes this is me. And I threw my Leica. It landed on the bass plate with hardly a scratch. Another Photographer grabbed it along with my phone and I was able to track him later. I was held face down tear gas deployed right in front of me and pepper sprayed directly into the eye.

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— John Abernathy (@john-abernathy.bsky.social) January 17, 2026 at 9:57 AM

● The use of small children as bait to seize their parents and the subsequent kidnapping of the kids after their parents have been arrested despite pending claims for asylum or other immigration relief.

The youngest victims of the Mad King's desperadoes 

That outrage sparked a deluge of Poland-invades-Germany lies from the Mad King's mouthpieces, who claimed that his stormtroopers had no alternative but to lock up the child because it had been “abandoned by its parents.”

The Department of Homeland Security has generally been unapologetic and defiant in the face of criticisms of ICE’s actions in Minneapolis....the department’s spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, limited her comments to [the child]'s father, who she called “an illegal alien” who had “fled on foot – abandoning his child.”

“ICE did NOT target a child,” she said. “For the child’s safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended [his father].

“Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates.”

What they mean by that brazen lie is that the parents were fleeing or fearing unlawful arrest, which would lead to the seizure of their child no matter what they did.

It's the parents' own fault if they don't report to the transports. Got it. 

The list of brazenly unlawful attacks is endless.  We'll mention only one more: the willingness of the occupying forces to break down the doors of private homes without a warrant issued by a judge, in defiance of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and hundreds of years of its application by all three branches.

The Mad King's legions are now falsely claiming that they can issue their own “warrants” to invade and rampage through your house.

This would in practice repeal the Fourth Amendment and represent a long march toward nationwide tyranny.

But, you say, the courts will surely protect us.

Let's check out that hypothesis. 

On January 16, 2026, the federal district court in Minneapolis, after carefully reviewing the evidence submitted by both sides, issued an 83-page preliminary order preventing the occupying troops from engaging in certain brazen illegal acts:

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez in an 83-page order blocked federal agents who are deployed to Minnesota as part of the Trump administration's immigration operations from using pepper spray or nonlethal munitions on peaceful protesters. The order also barred them from arresting peaceful protesters.

It also barred federal law enforcement from stopping or detaining drivers and passengers when there is "no reasonable articulable suspicion" that people driving near protests are forcibly interfering with law enforcement operations. 

The injunction lasted four days.  The relevant court of the appeals, the Eighth Circuit, decided to liberate the occupying troops from the fetters imposed on them by the lower court with the following order, included in its entirety:

 

At this point an observer may be compelled to pose that classic legal query:  What the f***?

And what is an “administrative stay” anyway?  Those who practiced before Courts of Appeals in the previous century never heard of them.  But in recent years, they have been used to block lower court decisions the appeals court doesn't like, for reasons they don't have to disclose.  They are only supposed to last a few days while the appellate court figures out what to do, but in some notorious cases beneficial to Republicans they have lasted for months. 

Notably the appeals court has no obligation to explain why it is issuing a stay, or even which judges authorized it.  

What could possibly explain this appellate thumb-twiddling while Minnesota is under violent and unconstitutional assault? 

Let's start by looking at the distinguished thumb-twiddlers of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.

There are 11 active judges who are eligible to sit on motions panels and rule on things like administrative stays.  Here they are:

A minute's analysis will demonstrate that 10 of the 11 are Republicans appointed by Republican Presidents, including 4 by the Mad King and 5 by George W. Bush.  What are the chances that a Court 90% of whose members are Republicans will vote to call a halt to the depredations of a Republican administration?  So far, they don't appear too terrific.

Just for the fun of it, let's learn more about these great jurisprudes.

Chief Judge Colloton as a mere law student advocated bravely for the rights of white male Princeton a******s to eat and vomit in the comfort of their eating clubs without those pesky women telling them to chew with their mouth closed.  Later he clerked for two insane reactionaries: Laurence Silbermann and Bill Rehnquist.

Not great.  

Ray Gruender voted consistently to impose forced-birth ideology on unconsenting women.  What do you think he'll do with respect to federal stormtroopers rampaging through an unconsenting state?

And whom did the Mad King install on this august court?

L. Steven Grasz won an unusual and prestigious “not qualified” rating from the American Bar Association, citing his “temperament issues, particularly bias and lack of open-mindedness.”  So of course a Republican Senate confirmed him. 

David Stras wrote an opinion stating falsely that Section 2 of the Voting Rights could not be invoked by minority voters who alleged disenfranchisement in violation of that law because – that outcome is good for Republicans who want to disenfranchise minority voters.

The ABA rated this distinguished nominee “not qualified” 

Jonathan A. Kobes was also deemed “not qualified” by the American Bar Association.  His confirmation squeaked through thanks to a tie-breaking vote by Mother Pence.

So how likely is it that the Eighth Circuit will protect the innocent citizens of Minnesota from outrages perpetrated by the Mad King's goons?  Anything is possible but based on their backgrounds and the issuance of the ridiculous administrative stay, we're going on Fan Duel and put a unit on not bloody likely.

And even if the Eighth Circuit upholds the law, what will happen when the regime's body snatchers appeal to the Republican-bent Supreme Court? 

Which brings us to the larger point.  The bent Eighth Circuit, like the equally bent Supreme Court, is not solely a confection of the Tangerine-Faced Traitor.  They were built, human brick by human brick, by over 30 years of Republicans, including lovable mainstream Republicans named Bush, to serve as tools of permanent Republican domination of all three branches of government.

That means that anyone who supported or shilled for any Republican Presidential candidate since 1988 owns a piece of this cracked edifice, including our wonderful and wonderfully-pious Republican allies, some of whom, like Mr. Kellyanne Conway, have the great brass balls to seek elective office as Democrats.

If it turns out that the Eighth Circuit fails to enforce the law and protect the citizens of Minnesota from summary execution at the hands of the Mad King's sadistic content-generating goons, assign the blame not just to one demented tyrant, but to the entire Republican Party apparatus that supports his reign of terror.