"Emmer Fudd" Strikes Again: Big Lies on TV, Jabbering Dupe in Person
Plus, Trump blocks 20 more countries, Latina sues ICE, Christmas tree market collapses, DHS compiles list of attorneys of color, Ukraine battle drones on the border, Bovino back in Chicago, and more.
Editor’s Note: Good afternoon! Apologies for today’s delayed AM Dispatch. It’s holiday party season in D.C. and I have been waking up late. Plus, the year is finally winding to a close after a brutal 2025. What are the biggest news stories that I should be looking at in the New Year? Let me know in the comments or in the chat. Also I am sending this morning briefing for all subscribers so that you see what paid subscribers get every morning. Consider subscribing!
WASHINGTON — House Majority Whip Tom Emmer was walking fast down a Capitol hallway yesterday morning, moving like a man who knows he’s about to be asked a question he doesn’t want to answer. The Minnesota Republican was stumped by my simple question: Do you think the 5,000 Somali people living in your district in St. Cloud are garbage?
It’s a yes or no question. The kind you answer if you have a spine.
President Trump called Somalis garbage. Said their country stinks. Said he doesn’t want them here. Emmer represents thousands of these people. They vote. They pay taxes. They run businesses. Their kids go to the same schools as everyone else’s kids.
So this should’ve so been easy. “I think what President Trump has done is raise an issue—” Emmer started, before cowardly blaming the press, me, for his failures as an elected official.
“No,” I interrupted. “Donald Trump said that the Somalis are garbage; that’s what I’m asking you about.” “If you could let me finish, I’d love to answer your question,” Emmer replied, scrambling for an answer.
“Well, it’s a yes or no,” I replied.
“Emmer Fudd” stammered on: “Maybe you can find someone else that you can have the argument with. ‘Cause I’m tellin’ ya, not all Somalis are bad—”
Not all Somalis are bad.
I guess is what passes for courage in the Republican Party in 2025. Not all of them are bad. Like you’d say about a batch of apples at the supermarket.
Ten years ago, this same Tom Emmer stood in a St. Cloud town hall and said something different. “If you’re asking me how I feel about immigrant populations who are in this country legally, and who are actually trying to find a better way for themselves and their families, I support it wholeheartedly,” he said then. He called a proposed ban on Somali immigrants “un-American.” He created a Congressional Somalia Caucus with Keith Ellison.
That Tom Emmer had a backbone. That Tom Emmer could look his constituents in the eye. But that was before Trump. Before the need to survive in today’s Republican Party became more important than telling the truth about your own neighbors.
Now Emmer goes on Fox Business and makes up statistics. Says 80 percent of crimes in the Twin Cities are committed by Somalis. It’s not true. The data don’t exist. But he says it anyway. Then he says 90 percent. Different day, different number, same lie.
“Ninety percent of the crimes that have been charged are from the Somali community,” he told me yesterday, “and there’s nothing wrong, and nothing racist, about calling out crime.”
Except that’s a bald-faced lie. None. Minnesota doesn’t even track nationality in crime statistics. It tracks race. And even in those numbers, Black people — which includes but is not limited to Somali-Americans — account for 37 percent of arrests in the Twin Cities metro since 2021.
But why let facts get in the way of muttering gibberish? This is the same Tom Emmer who, as I reported last year for The New Republic, has earned the nickname “Emmer Fudd” among his Republican colleagues for his spectacular inability to do his job as whip.
There are 80,000 Somali-Americans in Minnesota. They’ve been there for 30 years. They own businesses. They’re nurses and teachers and bus drivers. Their kids were born in Minnesota hospitals and go to Minnesota schools and root for the Vikings, which builds character through shared suffering.
Emmer walked away from from my question yesterday after finally coughing up six words: “Not all Somalis are bad.”
Six words. For 5,000 constituents.
And what did we learn? That Tom Emmer, the man who’s supposed to count votes for the Speaker of the House, can’t even count on his own courage when it matters.
Lawless Border Patrol bigot Greg Bovino redeployed to Chicago as raids intensify
The Associated Press reported that senior Border Patrol official Greg Bovino has been sent back to the Chicago region roughly a month after being dispatched to oversee crackdowns in other states. Activists and local officials say his return was immediately followed by some of the most visible ICE-Border Patrol enforcement actions in weeks, with at least 15 people detained in operations on Chicago’s Southwest Side and nearby suburbs.
Why it matters: Bovino has become a symbol of the administration’s push to treat interior cities like Chicago as enforcement zones. His movements are a proxy for where the administration wants to ramp up workplace and neighborhood sweeps—and his return to Chicago means intensified raids are coming.
ICE secretly compiles “watch list” of immigration attorneys, removes it after discovery
Al Otro Lado, an immigration advocacy group, has filed a Freedom of Information Act request after discovering what appears to be a hidden “watch list” buried within an ICE government website. The list reportedly contains the names of countless immigration attorneys who are overwhelmingly Latino, Asian, or with African-sounding names. Tennessee-based attorney Arlene Amarante discovered her name on the list while trying to confirm with ICE that she was representing a specific client. “One of the troubling patterns I suppose that I recognized, was that a large number of these practitioners on the list were people of color,” Amarante said. Since its discovery, ICE removed the list from its website. The revelation follows a March 2025 White House memo titled “Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court,” which accused immigration attorneys of “unscrupulous” conduct and directed the Attorney General to seek sanctions and disciplinary actions against those challenging government policy.
Why it matters: ICE was maintaining a secret watch list of immigration lawyers—overwhelmingly attorneys of color—on a government website until advocates discovered it and exposed it publicly. The administration issued a memo in March ordering sanctions against attorneys who challenge deportations. Now there’s evidence the government is compiling lists of those attorneys. This is targeting legal advocates as enemies of the state.
Trump expands travel ban to 20 more countries
President Trump issued a new proclamation expanding US travel and immigration restrictions to 20 additional countries, pushing the total list to roughly three dozen nations under full or partial bans. The additions include complete entry bans for several African states—Syria, South Sudan, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso—as well as new partial restrictions on many others, largely in Africa and the Global South. The administration explicitly ties this expansion to the Thanksgiving-week shooting of two National Guard members near the White House by an Afghan national, casting the new limits as a security response. The policy is set to take effect around January 1 and will hit visa issuance, family immigration, and some forms of legal travel from those countries.
Why it matters: This is the single biggest same-day shift in US immigration policy—effectively hardening the travel ban into a broad regime that targets a large swath of the Global South. It’s also racist as fuck, zeroing in particular on African countries. Three dozen countries are now under full or partial bans, and the administration is using one shooting to justify blocking entire continents from legal migration channels.
Ukraine-tested drones deployed to US-Mexico border with minimal oversight
Drones and technology tested in Ukraine are now being introduced along the US border with Mexico, where the Trump administration has devoted tens of billions to bolster security. Cochise County Sheriff’s Office in Arizona is testing the Draganfly Outrider drone—a system with a hybrid engine allowing seven-hour flight time and 100-pound payload capacity. CBP’s drone fleet has grown to 500 small unmanned systems, up from just a handful six years ago. A 2024 Government Accountability Office report found that DHS lacks consistent requirements for evaluating bias or civil liberties risks across its detection and monitoring technologies, and there is no one federal standard governing how law enforcement should use drones or manage collected data.
Why it matters: The government is deploying military-grade surveillance drones tested in a war zone to the southern border—with no federal standards for how law enforcement uses them, stores data, or prevents bias. CBP’s drone fleet has exploded from a handful to 500 in six years, and the oversight hasn’t kept pace.
Trump administration wage cuts threaten to collapse Christmas tree workforce
The US Department of Labor recently instituted new wage guidelines for H-2A visas that could cut wages by $5 to $7 an hour, saving employers as much as $2.5 billion annually. Workers who grow North Carolina’s Christmas trees—nearly one of every four Christmas trees sold in the US—say the wage cuts combined with fear of ICE operations are making them reconsider returning next season. “We do it for the money,” said Nahuel Hernández Nabor, who has made the journey from Mexico for 26 years. “If it’s not worth it, then we’re not going to come.”
Why it matters: The administration is cutting wages for the legal immigrant workers who grow America’s Christmas trees—by up to $7 an hour—while simultaneously ramping up ICE operations that terrify even workers with legal status. North Carolina growers depend on 4,000 H-2A workers at peak harvest. If they stop coming, the industry collapses.
Administration moves to pause special immigrant visas for Iraqi, Afghan allies
The Trump administration has asked a federal court in DC to pause processing of special immigrant visas for Iraqi and Afghan nationals who assisted US forces, again invoking the National Guard shooting as the rationale. The government’s position is that the attack justifies a temporary halt while it reevaluates vetting and program security—effectively stalling a pipeline intended to protect wartime allies who already face serious retaliation risks in their home countries.
Why it matters: SIV backlogs were already extreme. An additional pause strands some of the most sympathetic, congressionally favored migrant groups—the Afghans and Iraqis who risked their lives working for American troops. The administration is signaling that even “good immigrant” categories are not safe from the new security framing.
Class-action lawsuit exposes “torture chamber” conditions at California’s largest ICE facility
The ACLU and allied groups amplified a major class-action lawsuit, Gomez Ruiz, et al. v. ICE, over conditions at California City Detention Facility, ICE’s largest immigration detention center in California. Seven detained people are suing over what they describe as punitive conditions, extreme medical neglect, disability discrimination, and solitary confinement for petty reasons like asking to finish a shower. A detailed feature includes accounts of a detained man whose serious medical condition is allegedly being ignored to the point of requiring emergency motions, diabetics denied insulin, a Deaf detainee effectively cut off from communication, and widespread use of isolation that people inside describe as a “torture chamber.”
Why it matters: This is shaping up as one of the most expansive current challenges to ICE detention conditions, with class-action potential that could force systemic changes at a flagship private facility. California City is ICE’s largest California detention center—and detainees are documenting systematic torture.
Green card holder sues ICE over violent assault outside Massachusetts courthouse
A Massachusetts green card holder, Hilda Ramirez Sanan, has filed a federal complaint alleging ICE officers violently assaulted her and terrorized her two US citizen children outside a Chelsea courthouse—shattering windows with a tool, slamming her face-first onto the pavement, and threatening to arrest her 13-year-old son if he did not prove his status, despite his disability. Legal filings accuse ICE of ignoring her legal status and using a level of violence far beyond any claimed need.
Why it matters: ICE smashed courthouse windows, assaulted a lawful permanent resident, and threatened to arrest her disabled 13-year-old son outside a Chelsea courthouse. This case pairs with the California detention lawsuit—showing how aggressive courthouse operations are sweeping in even lawful permanent residents and citizen children with excessive force.
Federal judge blocks ICE policy moving minors to adult detention
A DC federal judge blocked an ICE policy to transfer people who entered as unaccompanied minors into adult ICE detention automatically when they turn 18, rather than giving individualized consideration. This halts a key piece of the administration’s push to expand adult detention of former ORR kids.
Why it matters: The administration tried to automatically funnel teenagers into adult detention the day they turn 18—no individual assessment, no consideration of their cases. A judge just blocked it as illegal. This was the pipeline for expanding detention by converting kids into adult detainees.
Wisconsin judge faces criminal trial for allegedly helping immigrant evade ICE
The trial of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan began in federal court, with prosecutors alleging she directed an undocumented man out a back exit of her courtroom to help him avoid waiting ICE agents. She faces obstruction and concealment charges and up to six years in prison if convicted. Coverage frames the case as a test of how far the Trump administration will go to criminalize local officials who resist courthouse arrests.
Why it matters: The government is prosecuting a sitting judge for allegedly helping an immigrant avoid ICE—six years in prison for a judge who sided with immigrants over federal agents. This is what happens when the administration decides the judiciary is an obstacle to deportations.
Keep posting, keep pushing, the people he represents must read/see/hear who 'Emmet Fudd' really is and how he sees them.
Beyond disgusting. Does he kiss his children with that wimpy lying mouth? I could go on.