Policy / January 15, 2026
As a new deadline approaches at the end of the month, party leaders must use the power they have to begin dismantling Trump’s police state.
Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino, flanked by masked agents, at the perimeter of the site where Renee Good was shot.
(Scott Olson/Getty Images) Democrats must shut down the government over ICE or face the wrath of their voters
Last week public execution The story of an unarmed Minneapolis mother engaged in routine ICE surveillance appears to be a critical moment in the Trump administration’s attempted authoritarian takeover of the United States. And while congressional Democrats can sometimes take too much criticism from activists for not doing things they literally can’t do, this escalation of internal repression coincides with another looming budget deadline on January 30. To continue funding the government, Republicans must either win at least seven Democratic votes in the Senate to keep the government open or neutralize the Senate’s filibuster rule and take ownership of everything.
For Democrats, this shouldn’t be difficult. If the party cannot take a stand here for its own voters in the Twin Cities and elsewhere, who are effectively living under unlimited and vengeful military occupation, it risks wasting what looks like a decisive advantage in the upcoming midterm elections. Many Democratic voters, now eager to see the party begin the long fight to reclaim the basic constitutional protections and democratic traditions destroyed by the Trump regime, would be discouraged from participating next November if the party refused to confront this latest crisis with anything other than polite requests from consultants to institute better training protocols for ICE goons ready to terrorize our cities. Worse yet, another prolonged episode of “Democrats Inexplicably Back to a Winning Hand” could fracture the party entirely, with newly radicalized urban wine moms joining the coalition’s long-aggrieved left flank to decamp entirely for a new party.
The situation in Minnesota is much worse than Democratic elites seem to imagine. Last week in the Twin Cities, parents struggled to find child care in public schools. farm for two days in anticipation of massive protests and street clashes with ICE agents who roamed the city’s streets with impunity. According to field observersthe city looks more like a war zone festooned with checkpoints than the prosperous, peaceful city it was before another far-right racial panic — this time over Somali immigrants allegedly defrauding the government — led our completely stupid president to send a stunning message. 3,000 federal agents to terrorize the townspeople. As a good Minneapolis friend (and mother of two) told me, “Every time you take your kids out of the house, it feels like a calculated risk.”
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As beleaguered Democratic voters look around to see if anyone will help them, many of their representatives in Congress are once again citing their helplessness as the minority party while faintly invoking hope that a Trump-stacked justice system will roll back the worst excesses of ICE’s domestic terror campaign. There may very well be enough senators to allow a resolution on continued funding to pass the House, thereby approving continued funding for the $175 billion slush fund that the immigration enforcement complex called for in the spending bill Trump signed last year. And as they announce their intention to once again appease the autocrat, cue the “…but it might work for us! » Arrested development memes – they will almost certainly have a copy of one note ” from a new Third Way-lite “think tank” called the Searchlight Institute that claims that “saying you want to “abolish ICE” is trading one kind of anarchy for another.”
Democrats don’t necessarily need to shut down the government until ICE is abolished — that will require taking back power in Washington and ousting almost all of the party’s top leaders. But they should, at a minimum, demand an immediate reduction in agency funding, as in the case of a new invoice from the House Progressive Caucus that would take $175 billion from ICE and use it for affordable housing. Democrats should also demand, as a condition of keeping government open, that ICE end its offensive in the Twin Cities and other major metropolitan areas, require all remaining agents to obtain warrants before arresting anyone, ban the loose wearing of masks, and permanently and verifiably cease all operations in and around schools, houses of worship, hospitals, and courthouses. They should also ensure the passage of Qualified Immunity Abolition Bill introduced in the House by Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and in the Senate by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA). Innocent Americans subjected to ICE’s reign of terror cannot and should not have to wait until January 2027 to hope for relief from their nightmarish ordeal. Democrats must do everything they can to bring about this salvation now.
Despite what you might hear from people like Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman — aka Joe Manchin in a hoodie — Democrats would have public opinion on their side if they chose to fight. In a YouGov from January 12 surveyrespondents said they thought ICE made them less safe by a margin of 13 points, and for the first time in a publicly released survey, a 46 to 43 percent majority supported abolishing ICE altogether. By a margin of 20 points, those surveyed believe that the murder of Renée Nicole Good was not justified. The only people who believe the Trump administration’s ridiculous propaganda about his filmed murder are the unwavering MAGA cultists who would let Donald Trump empty their retirement savings right in front of them and set them on fire if they thought they would own the libs. The complacent consultant class, meanwhile, is trying to dissuade Democrats from a frontal attack on ICE funding with the outdated and absurd claim that the summer 2020 movement to “defund the police” was electoral poison, even though that year happened to be the year in which Democrats captured their one and only government trifecta since 2008. If that’s poison, inject it straight into me veins, baby.
This spotlight brain is what led House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to devote much of their time. 15-minute joint press conference the day after Good’s murder, praising their elderly, retired colleague Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and highlighting the affordability crisis rather than threatening to cut off government funding if Trump doesn’t end his brownshirt assault on America’s cities. “We’re focused on reducing costs,” Schumer said grimly as ICE agents continued to threaten to murder peaceful protesters on camera. “We think that’s what the American people want.” While Jeffries called Good’s murder an “abomination and a disgrace,” neither he nor Schumer could commit to cutting ICE funding — which was triple last year. Instead, both leaders emphasized the need to expand the ACA’s tax credits, even though Senate Democrats hadn’t bothered to fight for them just a few months ago.
What Jeffries, Schumer, and all the other fearful Hill Democrats need to understand is that knowing whether you can drive your kids to school without going through a series of military checkpoints, worrying that your fellow parents will be kidnapped and disappear in front of your horrified children, and that you yourself will be gunned down by a rampaging ICE agent is not just A kitchen table problem but THE a kitchen table issue for many voters right now.
If they don’t see this anger reflected in the words and actions of their political leaders, voters will eventually turn elsewhere. The fate of the British Labor Party government is instructive here. Elected with one of the largest parliamentary majorities in modern history in July 2024, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s clueless government has spent most of its time rolling back trans rights and attempting to outflank the loathsome, nativist Reform Party to the right on immigration. The result is a disastrous and truly astonishing figure of 18 percent. approval rating for Starmer in the latest YouGov poll. Many polls suggest Labor would finish a distant third if the election were held today. Perhaps most worrying for the future of the Labor Party is that 30% of voters aged 18-24 say they would vote for the Green Party, raising the possibility that the Labor Party itself is on life support as an institution. To think this couldn’t happen to a Democratic Party that challenges its own voters again and again on everything from Israel to ICE is delusional.
The alternative is clear. Democrats must shut down the government indefinitely until Republicans agree to stop ICE from terrorizing both immigrants and ordinary Americans. There is, of course, no guarantee that they would win, but even a losing battle would galvanize the party’s base and give them, and the long-suffering residents of towns targeted by this rancid, hateful regime, something to fight for in November and beyond.
David Faris David Faris is professor of political science at Roosevelt University and author of It’s time to fight dirty: How Democrats can build a lasting majority in American politics. His writings appeared in Slate, The week, The Washington Post, The New RepublicAnd Washington Monthly. You can find him on Bluesky at @davidfaris.bluesky.social.
