Chris Madel was until yesterday not only a leading Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota, he was also providing legal counsel for Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good. In that context, his statement not only dropping out of the race for governor but seemingly dropping out of the Republican Party over the murder of Alex Pretti is all the more striking. I’m going to quote it at length because it deserves to be quoted that way.
“I cannot support the national Republicans’ stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so,” Madel said. “Operation Metro Surge has expanded far beyond its stated focus on true public safety threats … United States citizens are carrying papers to prove their citizenship, that’s wrong. ICE has authorized its agents to raid homes using a civil warrant that need only be signed by a border patrol agent—that’s unconstitutional and it’s wrong. Weaponizing political investigations against political opponents is unconstitutional regardless of who is in power … And I have read about and I have spoken to countless United States citizens who have been detained in Minnesota due to the color of their skin. I personally have spoken to several law enforcement officers, some Hispanic and some Asian, who have been pulled over by ICE on pretextual stops. Driving while Hispanic is not a crime. Neither is driving while Asian.”
Nothing else better encapsulates the shifting winds in the Republican Party over the past 48 hours since Pretti’s killing. Several other Republicans, from Rep. James Comer (R-KY) to Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R-OK) to Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE), are wrestling with how to exit the horrendous legal and political predicament that the president and his consigliere Stephen Miller have gotten them into. Some are merely expressing “deep concern.” Others, including the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, have called for hearings or a transparent investigation. When Greg Abbott—yes, that Greg Abbott—says that the White House has to recalibrate its enforcement mission, you know there’s a problem.
The real winds that Republicans had to carry themselves, if not into opposition, at least into skepticism, came from the intimations by administration officials that merely being a licensed gun owner with a permit to carry was reason enough to be shot by Trump’s agents (even after they disarmed him). This generated serious pushback from Second Amendment advocates, whose entire argument through the years has been that the right to bear arms is necessary to combat oppression from a tyrannical federal government. That had to get tamped down very quickly.
But the thing about winds is that they never go in one direction: they shift and shift back without permanence. We have seen this gambit from Republicans many times, where they wearily decide they must condemn that which they enthusiastically endorsed before, and will endorse again. So today, we’re at the same stage Republicans were at in the immediate period after Trump’s “grab ’em by the pussy” comments and the events of January 6. And the reason is strictly political; even with Madel’s expression of principles, his real complaint comes later: “National Republicans have made it nearly impossible for a Republican to win a statewide election in Minnesota.”
The kidnappings and detentions and deportations of people with no criminal record will continue, and any citizens getting in the way will find themselves in handcuffs or worse.
If you look closely, you can now see nervous Republicans preparing to reverse course again and rally around President Trump. While there was some internal debate at the White House about the best options in Minnesota, Trump’s announcing the dispatch of Tom Homan to oversee operations on Operation Metro Surge, which is less than the least he could possibly do, has somehow become the wise middle path that brings Republicans back on board, a “positive step” that will “de-escalate” matters.
While the move is absolutely a demotion for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her Wee Willie Wehrmacht, Customs and Border Protection Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino, nothing in Homan’s history shows him to be a consensus-builder or peacemaker. His goal will be to keep murderous images off television, and nothing else. The kidnappings and detentions and deportations of people with no criminal record will continue, and any citizens getting in the way will find themselves in handcuffs or worse. Homan’s ascension isn’t a change at all. Yet that’s all it’s taken for Republicans to shift those winds back and return to the fold.
I don’t think cooling the rhetoric for a week and making Tom Homan into some kind of peacemaker envoy is really going to work out politically. Plunging approval ratings will plunge without end. But all these Republicans with furrowed brows have an opportunity to actually do something rather than talk about it, to stop the damage to their party. The Homeland Security appropriations bill is the venue.
Senate Democrats have a fully unified caucus and a list of achievable demands (I’d prefer rolling back funding or reducing it with every municipal occupation) for the bill up this week. They need Senate Republicans to separate DHS from the other five funding bills, and for House Republicans to pass the other five as they negotiate the rest. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement Monday that the caucus would get those other five bills passed immediately, as long as DHS funding wasn’t in the mix.
So far, Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has said nothing publicly. Sources tell the Prospect that while staff-level conversations are ongoing, there has been no negotiating as of yet. There is going to be enormous pressure on Republicans to declare the Homan dispatch as enough of a concession, and to force a partial shutdown. Speaker Mike Johnson’s hardliners won’t want to come back to pass anything else, and House Republican leadership likely feels its work is done.
If Republicans do decide to split out DHS funding, they will have tangibly taken a step to rein in an unaccountable agency, and the public will take notice. But if their position is that Homan is the great savior of the Twin Cities, none of this feigned concern and outrage means anything. That’s the choice facing Republicans in Washington: go down with Trump’s ship, or build another boat.