Rising This Week: A Congressional fight brews about ICE
Kristi Noem's new policy requires a week of advance notice to visit ICE detention facilities. A Congress member vowed to fight it "immediately."
The day after a federal agent shot Minneapolis mother-of-three Renee Nicole Good to death, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem quietly reinstated a policy that a federal judge blocked last month.
Congress members vowed to fight back.
On Dec. 17, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb found in favor of a dozen House Democrats who sued Noem and the agency she leads over a policy requiring seven days of advanced notice before visiting any immigration detention facility.
Noem signed a memo reinstating a virtually identical policy on Thursday, claiming to assert a different legal rationale.
“This policy is a clear attempt to subvert the ruling — a mere 3 weeks ago — in Neguse et al. v. ICE et al,” Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado, who led the lawsuit, wrote on Saturday. “We will challenge it in court immediately.”
Last month, Judge Cobb found that Noem’s advance notice requirement violated the explicit terms of an appropriations bill, Section 527, forbidding the agency from doing anything “to prevent” a “Member of Congress” or that Member’s designated staff “from entering, for the purpose of conducting oversight, any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens.”
Noem planned to end-run that ruling by claiming that she would use only the funds allocated from Donald Trump’s mammoth spending bill, taunting lawmakers who visited ICE facilities in the wake of Good’s death.
“Unannounced visits require pulling ICE officers away from their normal duties,” Noem wrote in her two-page memo. “Moreover, there is an increasing trend of replacing legitimate oversight activities with circus-like publicity stunts, all of which creates a chaotic environment with heightened emotions.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who was denied entrance into such a facility, reposted Neguse’s vow to challenge the revival of Noem’s policy. Neguse and his congressional peers haven’t filed their formal response on the docket by press time.
Shortly before the publication of this newsletter, major news broke: Trump’s Justice Department targeted Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell with a criminal investigation.
Trump crony and Fox cable pundit turned U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, whose record in that office includes a humiliating number of grand juries rejecting indictments, purports to be looking into whether Powell misled Congress about the scope of the Federal Reserve’s renovation of its D.C. headquarters. (The Trump Justice Department’s criminal case accusing ex-FBI director James Comey of lying to Congress collapsed quickly last year.)
Powell blasted the government’s transparent “pretexts.”
“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president,” Powell said. “This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions, or whether instead, monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.”
Watch his statement in full below:
The probe represents a sharp escalation of Trump’s authoritarian attacks on the independence of the Federal Reserve.
Trump attempted a similar maneuver targeting Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, unsuccessfully trying to oust her from her role. The Roberts Court will consider whether to uphold a ruling blocking Cook’s termination on Jan. 21.
Look out for my conversation on Monday with Legal AF’s Michael Popok on the threats against Powell and the Federal Reserve more broadly.
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In the Courts
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a pair of cases on Tuesday — Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B P-J — to determine whether Idaho and West Virginia laws banning transgender participation in women’s sports violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
In the lead up to the arguments, The Associated Press profiled one teen at the center of the arguments: Becky Pepper-Jackson, quoting her mother saying this about the drive to keep her daughter out of West Virginia sports.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she told the news wire. “This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Also on Tuesday, a federal judge will hold a status conference advancing the case filed by seven Capitol Police officers nearly five years ago to hold Trump liable for the Jan. 6 attack.
Trump’s ex-White House aide Lindsey Halligan also has a deadline on Tuesday to explain to a federal judge why she keeps describing herself as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, despite a binding court ruling finding that she is not.
Little v. Hecox (Tues., Jan. 13): The Supreme Court considers whether laws barring transgender athletes in women’s and girls’ sports violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
Where: SCOTUS, One First Street, NE, Washington, D.C.
Remote: Watch live on C-Span here.
Time: 10 a.m. Eastern Time
Smith v. Trump (Tues., Jan. 13): A federal judge holds a status conference in the civil suit that Capitol Police officers filed against Trump in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Location: U.S. District Court, 333 Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, D.C.
Time: 10:15 a.m. Eastern Time
In the Streets
More than 1,000 protests and other events cropped up across the country this weekend for “ICE Out for Good.”
Protests also cropped up across the map of the United States: in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and beyond.
Building off the momentum, the Women’s March already announced the “Free America Walkout” at 2 p.m. local time on a workday: Tues., Jan. 20. The organizers described ratcheting up their tactics on their website like this:
“The walkout is a collective escalation—and a test.
Those in power have escalated attacks on our rights, our bodies, and our livelihoods. We’re escalating in response. Walking out lets us stress-test our readiness for real, collective action—not just symbolic protest.”
Find out more about that event here.
On the Phones
The more than 1,000 protests and other events across the country in response to a federal agent shooting Rene Nicole Good to death has been heard across Capitol Hill at least tens of thousands of times.
Last week, users of the app 5 Calls logged more than 41,000 calls to lawmakers demanding to curb violence by federal agents against immigrants and citizens.
Note: Since congressional call records aren’t usually publicly available, the app’s internal data offers a rare glimpse into this form of civic engagement. See our previous coverage here for context about how the information 5 Calls collects fits into the bigger picture.
Last week’s Top 5 topics were:
“Stop ICE’s Aggressive Attacks on Immigrants and Citizens” (41,692 calls)
“Stop the Military Escalation with Venezuela” (37,225 calls)
“Block Trump’s Imperialist Invasions” (10,243 calls)
“Impeach DHS Secretary Kristi Noem” (9,260 calls)
“Reject RFK Jr.’s Attacks on Childhood Vaccination” (4,788 calls)
The group’s weekly dashboard can be found here.
I work for a major social service research firm and we are currently working on a major study for the Federal Reserve Board. Mr. Powell and his staff are penultimate professionals and what the Orange Man is doing is a travesty.
"Healing will not occur if events are either forgotten or distorted, and hence it is important to continue to search for the truth behind the events of May 4 at Kent State... most importantly, May 4 at Kent State should be remembered in order that we can learn from the mistakes of the past. The Guardsmen in their signed statement at the end of the civil trials recognized that better ways have to be found to deal with these types of confrontations."
https://www.kent.edu/may-4-historical-accuracy