U.S. Speaker of the House: 'Imagine if we had to go through the process of getting a judicial warrant'

"Imagine if we had to go through the process of getting a judicial warrant."

                                                           -Speaker of the House Mike Johnson

Those are the complaining words of Johnson a Republican from Louisiana, who was voicing his support for the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which now claims that its agents have the right to forcibly enter private homes without first obtaining a warrant signed by a judge, reported Reason. According to ICE, its agents may forcibly enter homes in certain immigration enforcement contexts based merely on a so-called "administrative warrant," which is not actually a warrant at all, but is rather just a piece of paper signed by someone in the executive branch.

To fully appreciate the inherent lawlessness of the Johnson view, simply replace the phrase "getting a judicial warrant" with any constitutional requirement that you like in the above-quoted statement. For example:

"Imagine if we had to go through the process of guaranteeing freedom of speech."

"Imagine if we had to go through the process of respecting the right to keep and bear arms."

"Imagine if we had to go through the process of paying just compensation when private property is taken for a public use."

You get the idea.

When a government mouthpiece complains that it would be too difficult to follow the commands of the Constitution in a given context, that's a dead giveaway that the government is already violating (or planning to violate) the commands of the Constitution in that context.

The principle that law enforcement must generally obtain a judicial warrant before entering a home is well-established in Fourth Amendment caselaw. In California v. Lange (2019), for example, the U.S. Supreme Court declared, "we are not eager—more the reverse—to print a new permission slip for entering the home without a warrant." At issue in that case was a decision by the California Court of Appeals which said that a police officer may always enter a suspect's home without a judicial warrant if the officer is in "hot pursuit" of the suspect and has probable cause to believe that the suspect has committed a misdemeanor.

But the Supreme Court overturned that lower court ruling because it violated the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. "When the totality of circumstances shows an emergency—such as imminent harm to others," the Court said, "the police may act without waiting." But "when the nature of the crime, the nature of the flight, and surrounding facts present no such exigency," the decision held, "officers must respect the sanctity of the home—which means they must get a warrant." Indeed, the opinion stated, "when the officer has time to get a warrant, he must do so—even though the misdemeanant fled."

The Lange decision also contained a helpful reminder of the warrant requirement's deep roots in Anglo-American jurisprudence by quoting from a venerable British common law judgment:

"To enter a man's house" without a proper warrant, Lord Chief Justice Pratt proclaimed in 1763, is to attack "the liberty of the subject" and "destroy the liberty of the kingdom." That was the idea behind the Fourth Amendment.

Which brings us back to Johnson, who whined, "imagine if we had to go through the process of getting a judicial warrant."

But if an ICE agent has the time to obtain a piece of paper signed by a superior in the executive branch before heading out to bust down somebody's front door, then that agent also has the time to obtain a real warrant signed by an actual judge. As the Supreme Court instructed in Lange, "when the officer has time to get a warrant, he must do so." The "sanctity of the home" demands it under our Constitution.

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Guthrie's alleged 'kidnapping' for ransom is a relic from a bygone era

“A true kidnapping for ransom is a throwback to the Lindbergh time,” former FBI agent Katherine Schweit told the USA Today, citing the 1932 kidnapping for ransom of Charles Lindbergh’s son. The “kidnapping” of Nancy Guthrie is unusual.

These days, most kidnappings are typically connected to domestic or family issues, human smugglers or mental illness. Cases targeting wealthy or famous individuals, though uncommon, garner outsized attention, such the 1974 abduction of William Randolph Hearst’s granddaughter. 

“They’re what movies are made of because they're dramatic and scary. You don't see them playing out in real life,” said Lance Leising, a former FBI agent. “Now you are, unfortunately, in a horrible way for the family and the victim.”

Guthrie was first reported missing by her family on Feb. 1, when she didn't show up for church. Her disappearance sparked a large search effort in the Catalina Foothills community, perched north of Tucson, and a criminal investigation by the Pima County Sheriff's Department and FBI. Sheriff Chris Nanos later said Guthrie was believed to be "taken from her home against her will.”

Three days later, on Feb. 2, ransom messages were delivered to several media outlets, demanding payment in Bitcoin. But with no further contact, the family posted social media videos urging anyone holding Guthrie to make contact. On Feb. 5, the FBI arrested Derrick Callella in California, who authorities say sent text messages referencing Bitcoin payments to Guthrie’s family shortly after they publicly pleaded for her safe return. He’s facing charges including with transmitting ransom-related communications, according to a criminal complaint.

On Feb. 6, the FBI announced it was examining a new ransom message without providing further details. Tucson TV station KOLD, which received both the most recent and one of the first potential ransom note, said the new note contains information that seemed intended to prove that the senders were the same. Still no suspects have been identified.

The latest Guthrie family posted a new Instagram video on Feb. 7.

"We received your message and we understand," Savannah Guthrie also said in the video.

Leising, the former FBI agent, said that "the 'understand' comment is obviously referring to something in the note that we are not privy to." He said that could be a nod to the kidnappers grievances or directions on how to deliver money, while the “celebrate” reference could refer to a resolution of some kind.

"I do think investigators are going on the assumption that she is still alive, however, there are indications in the family statement that indicates they are concerned that she is no longer alive," he said.

It marked the latest in a case in which law enforcement has been trying to determine the validity of the demand.

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Clintons call for public testimony before Congress regarding convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein

Former US president Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary are calling for their congressional testimony on ties to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein to be held publicly, to prevent Republicans from politicising the issue, reported The Guardian.

Both Clintons had been ordered to give closed-door depositions before the House of Representatives’ oversight committee, which is investigating the deceased financier’s connections to powerful figures and how information about his crimes was handled.

Democrats say the probe is being weaponised to attack political opponents of president Donald Trump – himself a longtime Epstein associate who has not been called to testify – rather than to conduct legitimate oversight.

House Republicans had previously threatened a contempt vote if the Democratic power couple did not show up to testify, which they have since agreed to do.

But holding the deposition behind closed doors, Bill Clinton said Friday, would be akin to being tried at a “kangaroo court”.

“Let’s stop the games + do this the right way: in a public hearing,” the former Democratic president said on X.

Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, said the couple had already told the Republican-led oversight committee “what we know”.

“If you want this fight ... let’s have it in public,” she said on Thursday.

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The President holds up funding for NYC infrastructure until Penn Station and Dulles Airport are renamed for Trump!!!

President Donald Trump told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer last month that he was finally prepared to drop his freeze on billions of dollars in funding for a major New York infrastructure project, CNN.

But there was a condition: In exchange for the money, Schumer had to agree to rename New York’s Penn Station and Washington’s Dulles International Airport after Trump.

The startling offer, which was described by two people familiar with the conversation, was swiftly rejected by Schumer, who told the president he didn’t have the power to deliver on such an unorthodox request.

In the weeks since, Trump has continued to withhold the more than $16 billion earmarked for the long-planned Gateway project connecting New York and New Jersey through a new rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River.

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Purges and mass resignations deplete U.S. Attorney's offices across the country

 The Justice Department is requiring all US attorneys to rapidly assign prosecutors for “emergency jump teams” supporting districts handling alleged assaults or obstruction of law enforcement, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg Law.

A senior official instructed leaders of the nation’s 93 US attorney’s offices Feb. 2 that they have until Feb. 6 to designate one or two assistant US attorneys who’d be available for short-term surges in unspecified areas needing “urgent assistance due to emergent or critical situations.” The memo coincides with media reports this week of a new round of mass resignations of federal prosecutors in Minneapolis.

Rather than deploying volunteers to meet the needs of Minnesota or other districts experiencing protests from White House-directed boosts in law enforcement, the “jump teams” are designed to establish a standing list of prosecutors available on a rotating basis, said Francey Hakes, the director of DOJ’s Executive Office for US Attorneys, in her emailed memo.

Hakes’ message signals the Trump administration’s attempt to offset career prosecutor attrition—a recurring pattern in liberal-leaning districts the White House has singled out with military and law enforcement deployments—with a nationwide pool of reinforcements on standby.

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Philadelphia wants to replicate record drop in shootings

 Mensah M. Dean writing for The Trace:

Last year, Philadelphia’s record-breaking decline in shootings outpaced that of every other large U.S. city. That progress hasn’t slowed down violence prevention groups like Men Who Care of Germantown, Inc., whose volunteers are still making their rounds.

“It hasn’t slowed down for us,” said Executive Director Joe Budd. “We still go to the street corners because the guys are still hanging on the corners. We still go and have conversations with them and bring resources to those guys to get them working and productive.”

Five days a week, volunteers stop by schools. Off campus, they regularly canvass their community, chatting up young people at rec centers and on street corners, Budd said. It’s a long-term approach designed to continue the city’s historic streak of decreasing violent crime. 

“We’re prevention. We’re engaging them where they are, building relationships and bringing resources to prevent them from even thinking about picking up a gun,” said Budd. “I don’t think we can slow down, because you don’t want the numbers to rise.”

Philadelphians, from City Hall to the communities plagued by the most gun violence, concur that even on the heels of a 24.5 percent drop in shootings last year, anti-violence intervention and prevention work must not slow down. Many believe that the drop, which went beyond undoing a COVID-era spike in violence, can be explained by across-the-board collaboration among city government agencies — like the city Police Department and other law enforcement partners — and grassroots community organizations, like Men Who Care of Germantown.

Those on the frontlines of violence reduction interviewed by The Trace said that in addition to continued collaboration, key to driving down shootings this year will be keeping community organizations funded and working on stopping violence before it starts.

Their observations come amid the Trump’s administration’s decision to freeze billions of dollars in grants to local governments and slash more than $800 million in funding to organizations working to combat violence, drug abuse, and other social ills. 

“We definitely need a sustainability plan which means continuous and more funding. The organizations that are doing the work need to be able to sustain these programs,” said Angenique Howard, executive director of Unique Dreams, which runs an evening resource center that attracts an average of 35 to 40 youth a day in the city’s Frankford section. “It’s one thing to have it year-to-year. But we need some sort of concrete contract.”

Fewer shots fired

Mayor Cherelle Parker has ramped up community policing since taking office in January 2024, city officials have noted, which means that more officers are walking beats from the troubled streets of Kensington to east Market Street in the heart of Center City. At the same time, the city spent $25 million last year to fund dozens of grassroots community groups’ crime prevention initiatives.   

Violent crime since then has dropped significantly. Philadelphia ended 2025 with 222 homicides, a 17.5 percent decline compared to 2024 and the fewest since 1966, according to the Philadelphia Police Department. Philly saw 24.5 percent fewer shootings from 2024. There were 13.1 percent fewer shooting victims, 20.24 percent fewer robberies with guns, and 12.85 percent fewer aggravated assaults with guns.

So far, that trend is continuing into 2026. Through January 25, there were fewer homicides than at the same time last year. There were nine homicides, down from 13 at the same time last year. There had been 37 slayings on this date in 2021, the year the city recorded the most killings in its history, the data shows.

While a report from the Pew Charitable Trusts late last year lauded the city’s progress, it also acknowledged that parts of Philadelphia remain persistently violent. An analysis from The Trace’s Gun Violence Data Hub reached the same conclusion. 

“The greatest number of gun violence victimization occurred in North, West, and Southwest Philadelphia, areas which also have the lowest median household income, lowest quality of life indicators, and highest concentration of vacant land and buildings,” the report from Pew Charitable Trusts said. “So, while homicides are down citywide, men of color and residents in disadvantaged neighborhoods continue to face an outsized risk of violence.” 

Budd said such realities drive his organization to foster relationships with young people. 

“Our motto is, ‘Catch ‘em before the streets catch ‘em,’” he said. “If they’re in our path we can follow them, conceivably, from third grade to college. Once we build those relationships we can change their mindsets about gun violence and about how to deal with any type of issues that come up surrounding violence and conflict resolution. Those are the types of things we try to do to keep them from picking up a gun.”

Mark Wainwright, founder and CEO of It Takes a Village to Feed One Child, said addressing basic human needs — including making sure young people in low-income, high-crime areas have enough to eat — is part of the solution. His nonprofit, which he founded in 2017, is funded by the federal and state government. It Takes a Village provided more than 250,000 meals a month at over 100 community centers last year. He projects that it will provide more than 350,000 meals a month at 150 centers this year. 

“When children have proper nutrition their motor skills are better, their social and development stills are better,” Wainright said. “They are more positive in the community, and holistically, they want to do better.”

Word of the year: Collaboration  

During her State of the City address in late December, Parker seized on the Pew report’s findings that the city had the largest drop in homicides compared to 20 other cities.

“None of this is happening by accident,” Parker told an enthusiastic audience at Temple University. “Yes, we’re laser-focused on our comprehensive public safety strategy. … But it’s coupled with close and daily collaboration between our Philadelphia Police Department, our Office of Public Safety, and our community-based partners.”

Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said in an interview that officers also recognize and appreciate community-driven work toward safety.

“Order maintenance is one of the biggest things that reduces crime. That’s when the community keeps things in order, they make sure things are being done effectively. They make sure that the block is being kept safe,” he said. “Sometimes, we don’t give the community enough credit.”

A five-year strategic plan, which is scheduled to be revealed in several weeks, will provide further guidance on community partnerships, he said. The last time the department had a similar report was in 1986, he added. “We’re at a great place right now, we have the wind at our back, and we’re going to keep pushing.”

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner had a similar theory about the cause of Philly’s progress.

“It’s because of good coaches, it’s because of good clergy, it’s because of good neighbors, it’s because of good mentors, it is because of good community-based organizations, and it is because of people in government who actually invest in human beings,” he said at a recent news conference.

Krasner noted that police are making more arrests, thanks in part to technological advances including cameras, license plate readers, and cellphone geolocation. The falling number of open shooting cases has allowed police detectives to spend more time on fewer cases, resulting in stronger cases, he said.

Budd, whose group has worked with Krasner’s office over the years, said he’s set a goal to spend more time this year helping other violence prevention groups establish themselves.

“If they want to mirror our program, we’re open to showing people how to do what we do,” he said. “There’s about 22 schools in the Northwest, and there’s no way we can service all of those schools.”

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Federal government usurps state authority in violation of the 10th Amendment

On Jan. 12, one particularly crucial case was filed by the state of Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, arguing that the federal Metro Surge operation—deploying thousands of ICE and other federal agents to the Twin Cities—violates the 10th Amendment, writes IIya Somin at Lawfare. That amendment states that “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” In a series of decisions supported primarily by conservative justices, such as Printz v. United States (1997) (written by conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia), the Supreme Court has held that the federal government cannot “commandeer” state and local officials to do the federal government’s bidding, or to help enforce federal laws.

Control over state and local government personnel is one of the powers reserved to the states by the 10th Amendment. In addition, as legal scholar Michael Rappaport has shown, the original meaning of the Constitution indicates that such control is a basic element of the sovereignty inherent in being a state in the first place.

Minnesota and the two Twin Cities are among the jurisdictions that have “sanctuary policies” restricting state and local law enforcement assistance to federal immigration enforcement operations. Sanctuary jurisdictions have, for good reason, concluded that their law enforcement resources are better used to combat violent and property crime, rather than helping deport undocumented immigrants. As Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey puts it, “The job of our police is to keep people safe, not enforce fed immigration laws. I want them preventing homicides, not hunting down a working dad who contributes to [Minneapolis] & is from Ecuador.” The latter actually have much lower crime rates than native-born citizens, and many of those the administration seeks to deport have no criminal records at all. Local and state participation in deportation efforts also makes it more difficult to combat crime by poisoning relations between law enforcement agencies and minority communities.

Part of the purpose of the federal “surge” is to coerce Minnesota jurisdictions into giving up their sanctuary policies and using their resources to assist federal deportation efforts. As federal District Judge Katherine Menendez noted in a hearing in the case on Jan. 26, Trump administration officials have repeatedly indicated that this is one of their objectives. Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested as much in a Jan. 24 letter to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. A Jan. 16 White House statement explicitly indicates that Minnesota’s “sanctuary defiance” is “responsibl[e] for the enhanced enforcement operations in Minnesota.” A recent statement by Trump “border czar” Tom Homan indicates that the administration will not withdraw immigration enforcement officers from Minnesota unless state and local governments curb sanctuary policies and extend “cooperation” to federal immigration enforcers.

In addition, Bondi’s letter demands access to Minnesota’s voter rolls, linking those to the surge. That demand constitutes additional intrusion onto state autonomy in violation of the 10th Amendment. The Elections Clause of the Constitution explicitly gives states primary control over elections. While Congress can enact legislation imposing restrictions on state autonomy, no such legislation authorizes Bondi’s demands here, and courts have repeatedly rejected the administration’s demands for voter data from state governments, which one recent ruling described as “unprecedented and illegal.” With the notable exception of Homan’s comments, these and other statements fall short of demanding an explicit quid pro quo. But they provide strong evidence that the operations in Minnesota are intended to coerce the state into surrendering its autonomy on immigration and other issues.

The Minnesota case is not exactly analogous to previous anti-commandeering rulings by federal courts. But that is in part because it represents an even more blatant violation of the 10th Amendment. In Printz and other cases, such as New York v. United States (1992) and Murphy v. NCAA, the Supreme Court struck down congressional legislation requiring states to help enforce various types of federal laws, or to enact legislation of their own. In a series of decisions during the first Trump administration, and continuing in the second, numerous lower federal courts ruled that the president cannot order states to aid in immigration enforcement actions, and cannot withhold federal funds from sanctuary jurisdictions in cases where doing so would be “coercive” or Congress had not authorized immigration-related conditions on recipients.

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