Photo: Angelina Katsanis/AP
You may have come across a common thought experiment that asks how the establishment U.S. media might cover a given domestic news event were it to occur in a maligned foreign country. The latest disturbing news from Donald Trump’s Justice Department, for example, might be framed as something like: “Trumpist regime targets opposition politician with fabricated charges for carrying out oversight.”
Instead, the typical mainstream reports were muted on the Justice Department’s obscene decision Monday night to charge New Jersey Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver with “assaulting” a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer when the member of Congress attempted to conduct an oversight visit earlier this month at a massive, new ICE detention facility in her hometown of Newark, New Jersey.
Trump is now routinely targeting elected officials and judges with outrageous investigations, threats, and hefty charges for doing their jobs.
“Democratic Rep. McIver charged with assault after skirmish at ICE center, New Jersey prosecutor says,” The Associated Press reported. “Rep. LaMonica McIver charged by DOJ over incident with ICE agents,” read the ABC News headline. “The Justice Department charged a New Jersey congresswoman with assaulting federal agents during a clash outside a Newark immigration detention center,” began the New York Times’s coverage.
All of these are technically accurate: Alina Habba, Trump’s sometime personal lawyer and the interim federal prosecutor for New Jersey, announced on X that the administration was charging the member of Congress with “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement” after an incident when McIver and two other House members went to view ICE’s privately run Delaney Hall detention facility.
News organizations should, however, have long ago stopped affording the Trump administration such credulous coverage. Even the most bare-bones, facts-only reporting here fails the basic task of truth-telling if it doesn’t lead by pointing out that these charges are manufactured, malicious, politically motivated attacks.
These public officials are being treated like criminals for attempting to impose even minimal checks and balances.
The Trump Justice Department is now routinely targeting elected officials and judges with outrageous, baseless investigations, threats, and — as is now the case with McIver — hefty charges for doing their jobs. That is, these public officials are being treated like criminals for attempting to impose even minimal checks and balances on the authoritarian executive.
The administration, for instance, is trying to make an example of a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, judge, who faces federal charges for allegedly preventing ICE from detaining an undocumented immigrant in her courtroom. The Justice Department also announced on Monday that it was opening a civil rights investigation into Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson for — I kid you not — hiring Black people in his office.
The bunk charges against McIver, who is also Black, stem from another attack on an elected Democrat, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka — who, by the way, is himself Black. That makes three Black elected Democrats targeted in extraordinary ways by the Trump administration this month alone.
AFP via Getty Images
“Purely Political”
During McIver’s visit to ICE’s Delaney Hall with two other members of Congress, Baraka attempted to join the lawmakers to check the detention facility in his city. And with good reason: The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey has called the jail “a serious threat to New Jersey’s immigrant communities.”
Baraka was arrested by ICE officers and charged with trespassing. McIver, her congressional colleagues, and several of the mayor’s supporters had attempted to encircle Baraka and protect him from being grabbed by ICE agents. Video footage shows the confrontation was provoked entirely by the aggressive immigration enforcement officers.
Only the most short-sighted and context-stripped framing would describe this as a two-sided “clash” — as the New York Times headline did — or “skirmish,” like the AP and Washington Post. CNN called it a “melee.”
Baraka has publicly stated his opposition to Delaney Hall and argued that it is operating illegally in his city. The city of Newark is currently suing GEO Group, the private-prison company that operates the facility, for allegedly failing to obtain the necessary certificates to open the building, which has the capacity to cage over 1,000 people.
“ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation when they chose to arrest Mayor Baraka,” McIver said in a short statement posted on social media on Monday night. “The charges against me are purely political — they mischaracterize and distort my actions, and are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight.”
In the same statement announcing McIver’s charges, Habba, the federal prosecutor, also said that Baraka’s trespass charge would be dropped “for the sake of moving forward.” She said she was charging McIver, though, because it is her “Constitutional obligation to ensure that our federal law enforcement is protected when executing their duties.”
It could even be argued that physically confronting federal officers acting like a modern-day Gestapo is commendable, but the idea that McIver was assaulting ICE agents is laughable. No officers were injured on the day of Baraka’s arrest.
There is a naked hypocrisy in the Trump administration pretending to care about protecting federal law enforcement officers after pardoning over 1,500 people charged in the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, which involved brutal assaults on dozens of Capitol Police, who are of course federal officers. As I’ve noted before, however, there’s little point charging brazen hypocrites with hypocrisy: They know, and they don’t care. The problem here isn’t hypocrisy, it’s fascism.
Dems Growing a Spine?
“The decision to charge Congresswoman McIver is outrageous. Her visit to Delaney Hall was for statutorily and constitutionally protected oversight,” said Lisa Gilbert, the co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, in a press release. “This prosecution is an attempt to shift the blame for ICE’s odious behavior to Congresswoman McIver. All of Congress, regardless of party, should be reacting with indignation at this spectacular affront to their prerogatives.”
The administration’s attack on McIver has at least provoked an unusually strong response from the House Democratic leadership.
“The criminal charge against Congresswoman LaMonica McIver is extreme, morally bankrupt and lacks any basis in law or fact,” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California, Vice Chair Ted Lieu of California, and Assistant Leader Joe Neguse of Colorado in a joint statement.
“The proceeding initiated by the so-called U.S. Attorney in New Jersey is a blatant attempt by the Trump administration to intimidate Congress and interfere with our ability to serve as a check and balance on an out-of-control executive branch,” they added. “Everyone responsible for this illegitimate abuse of power is going to be held accountable for their actions. An attack on one of us is an attack on the American people. House Democrats will respond vigorously in the days to come at a time, place and manner of our choosing.”
It is high time for fighting words to be met with robust action from the Democrats. We have yet to see it in four months of Trump’s thoroughgoing assaults on civil rights and liberties. I will not hold my breath. But as Trump’s regime has made ever clearer that it will carry out archetypally authoritarian attacks on the perceived opposition in government, a real opposition worthy of the name should step up.
They might be spurred into action more quickly if, instead of soft-pedaling fascist authoritarianism, the media did their job too.
