“At town halls in their districts and in one-on-one meetings with constituents and activists,” Axios reported after speaking to more than two dozen Democrats in the House of Representatives, “Democratic members of Congress are facing a growing thrum of demands to break the rules, fight dirty — and not be afraid to get hurt.”
Last week, Democrats and their progressive enablers in the mainstream media were outraged after what they described as an immigration raid on a marijuana farm in Southern California turned violent when someone appeared to fire a gun either in the air or at ICE officers. Though it wasn’t actually an immigration raid and was instead the execution of a warrant for potential human trafficking, and the Department of Homeland Security has issued a $50,000 reward for anyone with information about the suspected shooter, meaning law enforcement lives were clearly in danger for doing their jobs, Governor Gavin Newsom immediately claimed, “Kids running from tear gas, crying on the phone because their mother was just taken from the fields,” he wrote in a social media post accompanied by a video of people running to avoid gas used by authorities after they were fired upon. “Trump calls me ‘Newscum’ — but he’s the real scum…Instead of supporting the businesses and workers that drive our economy and way of life, Stephen Miller’s tactics evoke chaos, fear and terror within our communities at every turn. At Miller’s direction, Trump’s agents continue to detain U.S. citizens and racially profile Americans, ripping families apart and disappearing parents and workers into cruel federal detention centers to meet their self-imposed arrest quotas.” Perhaps needless to say, Governor Newsom failed to mention that it was a marijuana farm, not exactly the sort of business that most people associate with being essential to our way of life and the owners of the farm had donated at least $10,000 to his campaign along with other progressive causes, leading at least the cynical among us to question why he would turn a blind eye to the exploitation of migrant workers including children. For their part, the media chose to pretend that ICE had raided an ordinary farm for no reason, making no mention of the fact that it was a corporate owned pot harvesting operation using undocumented immigrants for labor. “Federal Agents Clash With Protestors During Immigration Raid at California Farm,” blared The New York Times. “Protestors and Border Patrol agents clash near Ventura County Farm,” reported CBS News. ABC said much the same, “Federal agents clash with protestors during ICE raid at Southern California farm while NPR had it “Protestors and federal agents clash during raid at Southern California Farm.” Even after DHS reported that they found ten underage children, all undocumented, eight unaccompanied by parents, working illegally on the property, likely part of a child trafficking ring that they were continuing to investigate, progressives continued to be incensed about the raid that was not a raid and the idea of raids in the first place. In their view, someone needs to do these jobs because Americans won’t even if they employ illegal child labor and pay far, far less than minimum wage, or as Alex Cole put it, “MAGAs can’t wait to pick crops for $2 an hour.”
Perhaps someone should ask him if his own children are available to apply for such a summer job, but President Trump at least wasn’t having any of it. Indeed, he broadened the issue by pointing out that some 300,000 immigrant children went missing under President Joe Biden’s watch and it’s his mission to find them. “Some that you should have,” he harangued reporters, “that you haven’t reported, as you know 300,000 children are missing. Right? 300,000 under Biden. We’ve already gotten back 10,000 of those children and we have a lot more planned to come back. We’re getting them back by the thousands.” While it might be tempting to consider this an isolated incident, protestors also impeded an ICE raid at another marijuana farm in California just a day earlier. In this case, pink haired people rammed Mexican flags into military vehicles, blocking their path and preventing them from arriving at the scene. A month earlier, protests broke out throughout large parts of Los Angeles over immigration as well, prompting President Trump to deploy the National Guard to protect Federal Buildings and some Democrats to proclaim Governor Newsom a new leader at the forefront of the Resistance. “What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty. Your silence. To be complicit in this moment. Do not give into him,” he said during a televised address. “If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant – based only on suspicion or skin color – then none of us are safe. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.” “This isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles,” he continued. “When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state in this nation. This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next. Democracy is under assault before our eyes. This moment we have feared has arrived.”
In the interim, Axios published an interesting piece that would be helpful in understanding the violence increasingly prevalent on the progressive left if any of the credentialed experts in the media bothered to think past the latest, largely inaccurate anti-Trump talking point. Namely, that the progressive base wants blood, and not the figurative kind. Actual blood, bodies, gunshots, and other violence as part of the resistance, and they are actively urging lawmakers to dispense with regular political niceties to fight dirty. “At town halls in their districts and in one-on-one meetings with constituents and activists,” Andrew Solender reported after speaking to more than two dozen Democrats in the House of Representatives, “Democratic members of Congress are facing a growing thrum of demands to break the rules, fight dirty — and not be afraid to get hurt.” “This idea that we’re going to save every norm and that we’re not going to play [Republicans’] game … I don’t think that’s resonating with voters anymore,” explained one House Democrat. Another said a “sense of fear and despair and anger” among voters “puts us in a different position where … we can’t keep following norms of decorum.” “We’ve got people who are desperately wanting us to do something … no matter what we say, they want [more],” Representative Brad Schneider, chair of the center-left New Democrat Coalition, said on the record. According to Axios, this is happening even after some Democrats have tried to “up the ante” in response, “Heckling Trump, mounting rogue impeachment attempts, and getting tackled by law enforcement and even indicted in their efforts to scrutinize the president’s deportation campaign.” Regardless, the “grassroots wants more.” “Some of them have suggested … what we really need to do is be willing to get shot” when visiting ICE facilities or federal agencies, a third House Democrat said. “Our own base is telling us that what we’re doing is not good enough … [that] there needs to be blood to grab the attention of the press and the public,” they added. A fourth said he’s been told “civility isn’t working” and to prepare for “violence … to fight to protect our democracy.”
Under these conditions, is it any wonder that there is violence and it appears to be increasing or is it merely a coincidence that three days after Axios ran this story someone actually fired a gun to protest an ICE raid at an illegal pot farm? Democrats and the media don’t seem interested in asking the question, but three things are apparent. This is likely to get worse – the far left seems to believe that creating as much chaos and violence as possible will redound negatively upon President Trump rather than themselves for causing it and the supposedly adult-in-the-room politicians clearly agree, because instead of trying to contain it, they are tacitly encouraging this sort of behavior, feeding it with their own outrage, forget who gets hurt or who died – and sadly, someone did. Apparently, an illegal immigrant at the pot farm in Southern California climbed to the top of a three story building for some reason, fell off, cracked his skull, ended up in a coma, and subsequently succumbed to their injuries. Second, and perhaps most importantly, these same so-called adults in the room cannot be trusted or taken seriously under any circumstances. If conservative voters were calling for violence in the streets, they would be demanding that every Republican politician in the country condemn it as an atrocity akin to fomenting an insurrection or a civil war. Instead, they are condoning and excusing it or as another House Democrat told Axios, “people who are angry don’t accept that [the right cause of action is to win the 2026 midterm elections]. They’re angry beyond things.” Last, but certainly not least, there is no principle they aren’t willing to sacrifice in their anger over President Trump, even covering for child slave labor in their quest to take him down, or as I put it on X recently, “I don’t know if they truly wish it to continue or they simply don’t care about it that much when there is a border to keep open. What I do know: They will do anything, say anything, defend anything up to and including the devil himself if they think it will get Trump somehow.”
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 