The backfire has begun: It was set by the people of Minneapolis

Update 2/27/2026 America sours on Trump's immigration policies in new poll. The backlash spreads nationally and impacts Trump's approval rating.  The legalisms as a basis for argumentation have changed to moral outrage that human beings, regardless of legal status or race, are treated this way. The fear of all immigrants is somehow criminals has been replaced by the word "neighbor" and its meaning in biblical terms as defined by the words of Jesus. Yes, if polled, most Americans approve of deporting illegal migrant violent criminals, but that is not what is happening. In their dragnet approach, there are far more innocent victims of their violent techniques. Yes, No Kings still has great significance and protections in the amendments of the Constitution that need to be respected and upheld. Moral outrage is becoming even more significant as the stories emerge of the treatment, the denial of civil and human rights, the warehousing of thousands of children and adults, disappeared with no recourse, no sunlight, into a chain of concentration camps.  These are echoes of what we know and see as evil, the Japanese internment in WWII or Russia throughout history, the gulag archipelago. Cruelty is not a humane value nor an American one. 

Note, too, while polls reflect wide attitudes of a cross section, the street demonstrations (big one scheduled in Chicago today led by the Catholic church)are by, yes, mostly White people on behalf of brown and black people, risking to die for them, as two did,and speak out against ICE trying to intimidate them.New Filings Detail Harrowing Accounts of ICE and Border Patrol Violence and Intimidation Against Minnesotans | American Civil Liberties Union  In this situation, especially brown people racially profiled and persecuted for just being brown, or without documents and with documents, terror keeps them hidden..

 For those who still harbor racism in their souls, white nationalism and/or white supremacy, this must come as a shock, especially if they only listen to friends who already agree with them or only get their news and information from social media and TV media that cater to their preferred political beliefs. 

Massive crowds from California to New York turn out to protest ICE crackdowns | Watch The attempt to frighten protesters into submission in Minneapolis is backfiring on the Trumpists, and instead, their violent behavior may be resulting in more than just increasing the numbers of protesters in Minneapolis, but it is feeding an already vibrant pro democracy movement nationwide. Many can now see what it is like to be oppressed by an out-of-control militia, a hands-on lesson to the rest of the nation of what a police state dictatorship looks and feels like. Supporting democracy is no longer a matter of keeping some revered abstract political science theory memorialized in a Founders' document that we must protect just because we have had it for 250 years. Protecting it is the antidote to a real-life attempt by a wannabe tyrant strong man to wreck a democracy so he can have more power at the expense of we the people.

What Minnesota has done is to replace the description of undocumented migrants as murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and fraudsters with the term "neighbor". That alone has a profound impact of giving the law-abiding, papered or unpapered brown and black migrants and citizens, a positive name, and throws in the face of the white nationalist ideology, their assumption that citizens will cheer migrants' removal from their communities. It is not a value shared by the citizens and state city officials. It was a gross miscalculation by the Trump machine that, in their media-echoing bubble, ordinary people in blue states share the same racist /anti migrant attitude as MAGA land. Minnesota has turned the perception of the evil nature of migrants upside down by calling and protecting them because they are neighbors. The moral outrage this has inspired is now evident in word, deed, and protest by the citizens themselves, mostly white who know their brown and black neighbors are living in fear of being snatched in the ICE racist profiling dragnet.

In Minneapolis, the neighborhood-by-neighborhood and city-wide demonstrations of thousands have become an inspiration to those fighting to keep a democracy in hundreds of communities elsewhere. To help keep the focus on ICE's violent overreach, Bruce Springsteen just composed a protest song:

Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio) - YouTube

The buzzword of the 2026 elections: affordability.What does that mean?

Zohran Mamdani's winning election campaign for New York City mayor's contribution to the 2026 elections is the word: affordability. It is one of those words that can be such an umbrella term, it can mean much to so many that even if it could be defined, it falls into a category of "I can't tell you, but when I see or feel it, I know what it is".  It is sort of like the judge trying to define what obscenity means. In 1964 Judge Potter Stewart wrote an opinion in a Supreme Court case that has become famous in defining a vague term like hard-core obscenity: He famously wrote: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."  Affordability is like that: hard to define, but a voter knows when he/she sees it.

Lying about it as Trump is doing in Iowa does not fly either. Fact check: Trump says Democrats don’t talk about affordability anymore (they do) because inflation is over (it isn’t)  It is either his staff does not dare correct him, or his gears and mouth are stuck in lying or he thinks his MAGA base is really that  dumb. 

There has been some polling to try to understand what a word like affordability means. One was just published, but the final conclusion was what it meant to most polled concerning specific costs that worried them the most.. Per a New  York Times analysis of an in-depth poll (Cross-Tabs: January 2026 Times/Siena National Poll  of Registered Voters - The New York Times): "When we asked voters what they were most worried about affording, they usually didn’t mention the costs of goods that surged in the wake of the pandemic, like gas, cars, and food. Instead, they mentioned major expenses like housing, retirement, and health care."  The Tilt - The New York Times,  in a column written by Nate Cohn and published January 28, 2026.

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Affordability vs economy is not about semantics; both are true at the same time

If the Trump regime tries destroy Colorado's vote integrity in 2026 a buzz saw awaits

Update 1/30/2026  FBI raid in Georgia has little legal basis – but serves Trump’s goal to weaken trust in election results | Georgia | The Guardian    Why now? FBI raid in Georgia has little legal basis – but serves Trump’s goal to weaken trust in election results | Georgia | The Guardian Why now? Here is why, as the British press tries to explain this to its readers. It is to undermine our faith in the integrity of our voting. My comment: This kind of action constitutes an attempt to create a pretext for federal takeover and control of elections by separate states. The beauty of having elections controlled separately by each of the 50 states is the protection it provides from just a tyrannical wannabe who wants to control who can vote and the outcome of the vote. The tyrant may succeed in a state or two, but not in the entire nation. It is a matter that may both suit an egomaniac power-mad tyrant, but it also serves to try to shape public opinion to accept the end of our ability to trust that our elections are free and fair, the fundamental undermining of democracy that is a government of, by, and for the people, regardless of whoever sits in the Oval Office. All voters of any affiliation must understand that there is an effort to make sure your voice expressed in a vote can be ignored and you no longer count in determining who governs you if this trust is broken and breaking the trust is what such actions like the Fulton raid is also about. Note: Felicia Muftic is a former Denver elections official who holds trust in the integrity of elections sacred.

Update 1/29/2026: Trump's obsession with the 2020 elections, an attempt to prove it was stolen 6 years later, and his FBI raid on the Fulton County, Georgia, voting records could be attributed to an out-of-control personality quirk of an egomaniac who never admits a loss, or worse. Trump looks like he has an obsession with rewriting history to fit a false narrative and to justify anti democratic power grabs.. In recent history, communists and fascists, from Hitler to Mao, have used this propaganda tactic.

What is most scary about this is that there is a concerted drive to undermine fair and free elections more easily by putting voter records kept separately by 50 states per the Constitutiion into the hands a federal control and to set up the acceptance of a FBI loyal only to the president to undertake such similar actions to do so in the future, including November 2026 and 2028. Political scientist Jason Stanley warned about this in his recent book.Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future: Stanley, Jason: 9781668056912: Amazon.com: Books

FBI searches Atlanta election office, chasing Trump 2020 vote fraud claims | Reuters

Continuing with original post:

The Trump regime is threatening to hurt Colorado voter integrity in November.  The Colorado Secretary of State is ready protect our vote from the Trump attempt to federalize voter counts and elections in direct contradiction to the Constitution. Expect Trump et al will try to keep Colorado's vote from being counted, as well as any blue states,  throwing the results of who gets the majority in Congress into chaos and dispute. They will meet a buzz saw if they try such tricks on Colorado. Colorado has a plan and backup plans. 

Threat of force won’t change Colorado secretary of state’s mind on voter rolls, mail-in ballots 

Trump's false pretense of such dirty tricks is still: the 2020 election was stolen because all of those illegals voted and mail-in votes are all a fraud, their propagandists and a delusional Trump claim.. In over 6 years, such attempts to prove these claims have failed. They think if they can get voters' personal information, they can prove their pretext, the Constitution provisions delegating elections to states be hanged. The DOJ has requested Colorado’s voter rolls, including driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, and is attempting to change the post office delivery terms of mail-in ballots to be counted by local officials.  There may be hope as a federal judge blocked the DOJ request for Oregon 1/27/26. Federal judge blocks Trump DOJ access to Oregon voter rolls

  This Trumpian scheme smells like a pretext to keep the House in GOP hands by throwing the 2026 midterms into chaos.  In the longterm, it is also a way to put the control of elections in the hands of the federal government over vote outcomes, voter participation, and election results.  If Trump and his administration can't win one way (the predictions are he will lose control of the House), they will find another way, and this one is ugly.  It will mean the end of fair and free elections that we can trust.

"Don't believe your eyes ", a pattern of Trump's spin doctors that needs exposing..

Updated: 1/31/2026.We have seen enough of the spins and lies lately to see what Trump's spin doctors are trying to do: to get voters not to believe their very eyes. Their lies and spins are being exposed by citizens who have unlimited access to new kinds of technology. Those objecting to Trump's tactics have the advantage in this age of everyone having a video camera in their cell phones and access to social media to publish it. Whether a passing-by citizen or a seasoned journalist like Don Lemon uses their phone to video a protest, or  ICE killing a protester or shooting a pepper ball at a praying pastor, or a 5-year-old, looking like every other 5-year-old, being shipped with his dad to an ICE camp, the Trumpian attempt to get their followers not to believe their very eyes becomes harder and harder. Drones overhead and protesters themselves film the actual size of 7 million protesting the tyrannical king-like regime of Trump marching in masses in hundreds of locations, making a mockery of theTrump propaganda line that all of those protesters are being paid or are professional agitators.  While the most loyal MAGA close their eyes, cover their ears, Trump minions try to buy out any media who dare report these citizens' and journalists' videos,  or Trump uses the DOJ to prosecute them (the attempt is the punishment; they rarely succeed in court). They are still failing because these days of social media, those videos still escape into the public realm. This is despite the attempts by the Trump regime to suppress press reporting  them by using threats of delicensing and buyouts of their owners by MAGA loyalists.  This is not just a matter of violating the First Amendment, which protects both freedom of speech and the press. It is an attempt of a regime to control the thoughts and minds of citizens, just like the fascists and communist dictators of years past did. What is different now, everyone with a cell phone can become a photo journalist, and social media is their publisher if traditional media is suppressed.

  Here are the danger signs that your mind is being twisted to swallow the spin.  Immediately, within minutes, without any attempt to investigate first, the spin is out: the agent was always acting in self-defense in the shooting, followed by refusing to let independent or multiple agencies do an investigation. The spin doctors depend on the suppression of evidence to the contrary. They are afraid their cover-up would be exposed, which itself suggests they are engaged in a cover-up. Next, if the selected video is shown and edited to support their spin, know that given the same opportunity exists for everyone else in the world to see something quite different, and then give the world the opportunity with eye-opening multi-video opportunities in every media opportunity possible. Third, as the event gets less and less coverage, the propagandists will try to revise history by those whose memories have dimmed. Keep the videos to the contrary shown every time the spin is attempted in the future, and never let up doing it whenever the opportunity presents itself. The pattern itself is damning.

Some opportunities to show the pattern of behavior of lies and spins using  the "don't believe your very eyes"attempts and put events in context of behavior:

A most recent one, 1/28/2026: Lying about affordability, the economy, and inflation as Trump is doing in Iowa does not fly either. Fact check: Trump says Democrats don’t talk about affordability anymore (they do) because inflation is over (it isn’t)  It is either his staff does not dare correct him, or his gears and mouth are stuck in lying, or he thinks his MAGA base is really that dumb. He assumes they do not know the price of gas in the tank is not under $2, or if grocery bills have increased, not decreased or he thinks he can get away with "don't believe your eyes" line on this issue, too.  Even those in Trump's cabinet who should know better about the economy lie. Scott Bessent says construction jobs are booming under Trump's tariffs. Government data show the opposite,  and the job numbers sector is just for starters in this fact check.1/29/2026.

On January 6,the spin: The Trump banner-waving rioters were looky-loos tourists who were not called to be violent that day by the president himself (Jack Smith's detailed findings are to the contrary and demand release of his report. Call it a cover up diverted with personal attacks on Smith). The propagandist response is to bury and rewrite history in words that contradict what we saw with our very eyes or videos of the violence that the stormers of the Capitol committed. In the shooting of Renee Good, show the wheels and back-up lights as she moved away from the threatening ICE agents, and the bullets that riddled her side of the car that killed her is from an agent on the drivers side, not standing in front of it.  An agent claiming that she tried to run him down has a hard time showing why he shot her from the side of the car.. In the case of the killing of  Alex Pretti, focus on the cell phone in his hands, some 9mm pistol. Show he was pinned to the ground on all fours with no gun in his hand. His legally concealed gun was removed from him, but after that, he was shot multiple times by the agent/killer after he was subdued and the weapon was removed..Timeline: How the Shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti Unfolded - The New York Times And do it all over again and again and again as a way to demonstrate a pattern of behavior and destroy the credibility of the Trump spinners.

Sidenote: Some takeaways from the Alex Pretti killing that serve as a warning to protesters: 1) leave your legal conceal and carry weapon at home; you too could be called a domestic terrorist armed and dangerous with an evidenced plan to kill ICE agents 2) wear a covid mask; you are on ICE agents cell phone cameras for future prosecutiion as domestic terrorist. Filming ICE is legal but exposes you to digital tracking – here’s how to minimize the risk 

Gen. Mark Hertling, former commander of US troops in Europe, called out ICE for being an uncontrolled militia. He did this morning, 1/26/2026 on Morning Joe. 'ICE is playing soldier but without the discipline:' Ret. general | Watch

 Hertling and other analysts. In the past heand others have used the term like a "violent militia" or "occupying army". This includes accusations of using excessive force, such as the shooting of a civilian in Minneapolis, which contradicts official reports (per a search on Google AI).