You’d have to be willfully blind—and many people, unfortunately, are just that—to ask why ICE agents are trying to protect their identities by wearing masks.
“Anti-ICE Agitation Reaches a Boiling Point” is the headline on National Review’s lead story this morning.
The magazine’s Noah Rothman pens a stunning account of the Monday morning attack on a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility in McAllen, Texas:
At around 6 a.m.on Monday, CBP officers hit the ground as “many dozens of rounds” were fired at the building and the agents inside, according to McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez. The officers reclaimed the initiative and returned fire, killing their attacker, 27-year-old Ryan Louis Mosqueda. No federal officers were injured in the attack, but one local police officer is recovering today after taking a bullet in the knee.
Mosqueda’s motives have not yet been determined, but we can hazard a guess. “Images from the scene show the driver’s side door of the vehicle was spray-painted with “Cordis Die,” a Latin phrase meaning “Day of the Heart,” the BBC reported. “In the Call of Duty: Black Ops II video game, Cordis Die is a revolutionary movement that aims to cripple capitalist governments, according to gamer websites.”
An earlier ambush at the Alvarado facility on July 4 featured attackers in pseudo gear. An officer was shot in the neck.
Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York comments on this wave of attacks on ICE and border agents in a piece headlined “Disturbing Demonstrations of Democratic Anger”:
Obviously, these are Democrats who have moved beyond the defeat-them-at-the-ballot-box stage of politics, and even beyond the protest-by-civil-disobedience stage. They’re ready to turn a political fight into a physical fight. …
This is the radical, violent tip of the protests against the Trump administration’s enforcement of immigration law. Other examples of recent radicalization include far-left “Free Palestine” extremist Elias Rodriguez, who is accused of murdering two Israeli Embassy staff members outside the Jewish National Museum in Washington on May 21. Then there is Luigi Mangione, the accused killer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City on Dec. 4, 2024. Despite the brutality of his crime, Mangione found himself celebrated in some parts of the left — his crime minimized or excused — for what some apparently consider a bold action against an oppressive health-care system.
This reminds Ms. Must of violence perpetrated by the radical Weather Underground in the long-ago 1960s and ‘70s. I don’t think we ever really reckoned with the Weather Underground. Remember a future president once partied with guests in the Chicago residence of a former member, whose Wiki entry leads off disarmingly describing her as “a retired law professor.”
Meanwhile, President Trump received some good news. “The Supreme Court Says the President Can Fire People” is how an editorial in the Wall Street Journal describes it:
Do you hear the Justices now? That’s the question for lower court judges after the Supreme Court on Tuesday nixed a universal injunction that had barred the Trump Administration from even attempting to shrink the federal workforce. …
The Justices stayed the injunction in a pithy order, noting “the Government is likely to succeed on its argument that the Executive Order and Memorandum are lawful.” They also stressed that “we express no view on the legality of any Agency RIF and Reorganization Plan produced or approved pursuant to the Executive Order and Memorandum.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose opinions have struck a favorable note with satirists, was singled out for mention by the editors:
Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. The order includes “no mention of congressional buy-in,” she writes. But Congress does not control the executive branch. “What is at issue here,” Justice Jackson says, is whether the order effects “a massive restructuring of the Federal Government (the likes of which have historically required Congress’s approval), on the one hand, or minor workforce reductions consistent with existing law, on the other. One needs facts to answer that critical question.” Precisely.
The American Thinker’s Andrea Widburg dubbed Justice Jackson’s dissent “wacko” (“For decades, I’ve read Supreme Court opinions that span centuries, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”), while RedState’s Bonchie suggests that this time Justice Jackson “did something so stupid that even Justice Sotomayor couldn’t let it slide.” A Townhall report on Justice Jackson’s latest quotes a tweet from Eric Daugherty:
OMG: Now a LIBERAL Supreme Court justice is trying to teach Justice Ketanji Jackson how this whole “judicial” thing works…
President Trump conducted a rollicking, two-hour Cabinet meeting yesterday (see it here: I dare you to watch the entire two hours) that prompted eagle eyed observers to claim the current president is more on the ball than his immediate predecessor. Speaking of whom, “How Insularity Defined the Last Stages of Biden’s Career” is the headline on a New York Times story.
“Insularity” is a rather mild word to describe the bunker White House insiders erected around the former president, but the story is worth reading. Former Biden doctor (no, not her) is scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee probing the former president’s mental decline. Taking bets on whether he will phone in sick.
The Jeffrey Epstein client list was supposed to be the holy grail of smut: Suddenly, everybody anybody hated was going to be officially labeled a pedophile. But now AG Pam Bondi is under siege for announcing that there is no client list. Bummer. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board refers to “The Epstein Conspiracy Boomerang.”
Meanwhile, sea shell enthusiast and former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA head James Brennan, a member of the magic 51, have been referred for criminal investigation for their alleged roles in the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. Brennan pushed for the discredited Steele Dossier, a work product of the Hilary Clinton campaign, to be included in a Justice Department investigation of President Trump in his first term.
“New York’s Mayoral Debate: No, You Quit” is the headline on a Wall Street Journal editorial:
Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams apparently agree that the most credible strategy for stopping a socialist takeover of New York is for one of them to drop out of this fall’s mayoral race. They simply disagree on the small matter of which one should do it. Zohran Mamdani, now the Democratic nominee, must be chuckling.
Mr. Adams said in a TV interview Monday that Mr. Cuomo had asked him to take one for the team, as it were, and quit the campaign. “I said, ‘Andrew, are you that level of arrogant?’” Mr. Adams told CNBC. “‘I’m the sitting mayor of the city of New York, and you expect for me to step aside when you just lost to Zohran by 12 points.’” …
The GOP’s nominee, Curtis Sliwa, doesn’t have much of a chance of winning, given New York City’s voter makeup, but he recently said the only way to get him out of the mayoral race before Nov. 4 “is in a coffin, in a pine box, and you bury me 6 feet under the ground.” This week he expressed no preference as to whether Messrs. Cuomo and Adams “play musical chairs on the Titanic.”
Identity Theft Alert! City Journal’s Chris Rufo explains how children of privilege, Zohran Mamdani and Sandy from Westchester, feign oppression for personal gain. Richard J. Sexton writes in the WSJ that instead of government grocery stores, Mamdani could make food more affordable, allowing Walmart to expand. One problem: Mamdani cares more about expanding government than growing food choices.
Two Marvelous New Freedoms: The TSA is going to let us keep our shoes on, and the IRS has ruled that priest, minister, rabbi, imam or shaman (have I missed anybody) “can endorse political candidates to their congregations, carving out an exemption in a decades-old ban on political activity by tax-exempt nonprofits.” Let’s kick up our (shod) heels!
