Greetings and welcome to this 73rd staging of the Carnival of Fools. You already know what kind of news is on the schedule for this week’s episode: bad news. Yes, we’re still talking about events in Minneapolis this week — somewhere in the back of my head lurks the depressing thought that I’ll be able to write that sentence for the next month or so — and having already preliminarily addressed this the other day, there’s nothing to do but jump right back into the fray with an attempt at something a bit more thoughtful.
How to Fix the Immigration Tailspin
Yesterday morning, I offered some blunt advice to President Trump: He should either fire Kristi Noem — preferably aboard a rocket and into the sun — or absent that, demote and back-burner her as the failed face of the Department of Homeland Security. (My actual wording was a bit harsher: “Can nearly everybody within the remote orbit of DHS leadership except for Tom Homan.”) And because Trump was in one of his rare obliging moods, he evidently was already taking that advice, declaring that both Noem and Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino would be departing Minneapolis, with Homan stepping in instead. It’s an excellent and necessary first step.
But I am also alert to the fundamental problem the federal government is faced with: How can it be permissible in a functioning civil society for one narrow segment of it to simply decide it will collectively oppose enforcement of federal immigration laws? You cannot permit activists to effectively nullify federal law out of a misplaced sense of self-righteousness or progressive fervor. You also cannot, well, shoot them — not for being obstreperous agitators, not in America. How does the government enforce the law?
If I had an easy answer, I’d offer it right now. But I don’t, and one reason for that is that the left has had a century-long head start in the (mostly legal, if largely invidious) techniques of organization and protest. It is important to understand the methodology used by the activists here, why it is so devilishly effective, and why the Trump administration needs to be smarter about how it chooses its confrontations. And that requires a bit of a history lesson.
The escalatory tactics seen on the left — of tracking and mobbing suspected ICE vehicles, of tooting shrilly on whistles while heckling and filming — are of modern technological vintage. But their underlying logic speaks of a very old strategy, one whose intellectual lineage can be traced directly back to the radical Marxist revolutionaries of Imperial Russia, whose organizational and strategic thought provided the blueprint for all subsequent left-wing activism. Just read this eerily illuminating excerpt from Richard Pipes’s Russia Under the Old Regime and ask if you don’t feel a twinge of recognition:
The imperial government invariably over-reacted to radical challenges . . . alienating law-abiding citizens who otherwise would have had no truck with the opposition. The radicals, having quickly learned how beneficial to their interests government overreaction was, developed elaborate techniques of “provocation,” that is of baiting the police into brutality as a means of gaining public sympathy for themselves and for their cause. The net effect was for public opinion to shift steadily towards the left. The average liberal found himself in a great quandary as to how he should react to the mounting civil conflict. While he disapproved of violence, he saw that the authorities also did not stay within the bounds of law; his choice was not between “law and order” and violence, but between two kinds of violence, one perpetrated by the (seemingly) all-powerful state, the other by misguided but (seemingly) idealistic and self-sacrificing youths, struggling for what they conceived to be the public good. Faced with such a choice, he tended to opt for radicalism. . . .
The unwilling, half-hearted, often tormented recruits from the centre constituted a critical asset for the radicals. The technique of purposefully driving the government to the extreme right and to violent excesses, first developed by Russian radicals in the late nineteenth century, has ever since served as the most effective weapon in the radical arsenal. It paralyzes the liberal centre and prods it into joining ranks with the left against the increasingly extreme right, thereby assuring, over the long haul, liberalism’s self-destruction. [Emphasis added.]
Sound familiar? The perils of drawing too close an analogy are obvious here: America in 2026 isn’t tsarist Russia in 1905. (For one thing, it’s colder right now in Minneapolis than in St. Petersburg.) We’re not about to plunge into broader civil unrest, despite what hotheads on both sides are boldly warning (or promising). But the dynamic playing out in American public opinion polls right now is shudderingly reminiscent of it nevertheless, as once-stalwart supporters of Trump’s immigration policies — long his unquestionable strength among voters — are repelled by the unceasing violence on the streets.
So what’s the takeaway here? First of all, de-escalate. That doesn’t mean “quit.” But Minneapolis is a powder keg right now; every activist within 200 miles is ready to “fight the power,” and that means only a fool (or someone who wants another incident) would continue to insist on DHS’s recent “Minnesota surge,” which seems like it was motivated largely by headline-chasing, in any event. (They wanted headlines? Not these headlines, my friend.) Second, use restraint. An operation that justifies itself as enforcing federal law over the objections of local activists cannot just declare itself free of the need to be bound by law — this in particular is what revolted Americans over the weekend about the public response from the likes of Secretary Noem or Stephen Miller. Those entrusted with authority have a responsibility to use it wisely.
A cooling-off period will probably help. But don’t expect this problem to disappear. The dynamic is as old as professional activism, and there are more professional self-described activists nowadays than ever.
Jasmine Crockett Really Cannot Win
Readers, allow me to do the one thing that, informally, everybody knows you’re never supposed to do in this business: take up in defense of a New York Times progressive commentator.
Hear me out before you crucify me: Michelle Goldberg is right. And before you mistake me for some kind of saint, this one’s a “free play” for me: Her own people are so busy crucifying her — as well as all others who dare suggest that Jasmine Crockett’s Texas Senate candidacy is doomed and the most obvious buck-raking grift of 2026 — that I am frankly moved to act by pity if nothing else.
Let’s spool the narrative clock to where it properly begins, because if there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that NR readers aren’t hooked into the latest scandals involving gay podcasters: Former SNL actor Bowen Yang now co-hosts a podcast called Las Culturistas, and in a world where everyone is desperately clawing for market share by playing to niche audiences, he and his co-host Matt Rogers infuriated their target market by advising listeners not to waste their time donating to Crockett’s campaign. “Anytime a politician is making it too obviously about themselves, I’m already done,” Rogers said.
I disagree: I think Democrats should give as much money as possible to Crockett’s 2026 Texas Senate campaign, preferably all the money, so that it doesn’t go to anyone else. But more importantly, so did Yang and Rogers’ audience — who are largely gay, extremely progressive, and apparently totally ga-ga for the fabulous hair, makeup, and brash sass-talk of Crockett. And so the podcasters subsequently engaged in a by now familiar climbdown, apologizing profusely to their listeners for daring to question Miss Jasmine’s inevitability.
Goldberg notes that all this, with its “seeming triviality,” is all too reminiscent of the toxic atmosphere of 2020 on the left: Yang and Rogers were accused of misogyny, racism, every other plausibly applicable ism, and all for making the commonsense observation that Crockett is a grifter who could well cost the Democrats a Senate seat. I happen to think Crockett is set to win her state nomination for other reasons: Her primary opponent, James Talarico, looks and acts like a wimp. But as long as Democrats remain socially forbidden from pointing out obvious truths, I will toast to them handicapping themselves.
The Washington Post Is Hurting
The paper of my youth is currently in a bad place. Shock waves are coursing through the halls of the Washington Post, where word has come down of impending layoffs that may functionally gut the paper’s sports page and foreign desks. It hurts to read, for personal reasons.
When I was a child, the Post was the one paper I could be counted on to read from front to back — the A section, Style, Sports, even the Metro desk. I remember what a healthy, thriving paper it was — back in the mid-’90s, back during a media era that died long ago. All my favorite sportswriters wrote there — Shirley Povich, Tom Boswell, Tony Kornheiser, George Will when he felt like moonlighting. Even that Chicago lunkhead Mike Wilbon was good for a few laughs. (When my dad decided, somewhere around 1996 or so, that he was going to cancel his subscription to one of the two “liberal rags” in our house, it was the New York Times that got the axe — because “their sports section is written by people who hate sports.”)
But that looks likely to be all gone now — the Post has canceled its plans to send reporters to the Olympics and even declared that it won’t bother with Nationals spring training this year. Meanwhile the New York Times, ever centralizing, simply went and bought The Athletic’s website wholesale and slapped its own logo on it. (Tellingly, The Athletic now reads mostly like it’s written by people who hate sports.)
The laments from journalists are altogether predictable: Why doesn’t Jeff Bezos simply spend some of his billions to keep these people in jobs? Well, Bezos owns a business; others may think of it as a “public good” of some sort, but not the man who is losing money hand over fist while running it. With the exception of the New York Times and its immense gravitational pull, all newspapers continue to circle the drain — the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette just announced it’s shuttering completely in May; USA Today just acquired the moribund Detroit News. It’s a dog-eat-dog business, and the devil take the hindmost.
Until next week.