On ICE October 28, 2025 Garrett Graff: In those halcyon early days, ICE kept bragging about its huge numbers of applications . . . But it turns out, if you’re hiring for a pariah agency using nakedly fascist and racist messaging and recruiting for a job where you get to be jeered by your neighbors and are so hated that you literally refuse to show your face . . . while facing down people in inflatable frog costumes and wrestling to the ground hard-working roofers in the Home Depot parking lot, America’s best, brightest, and most fit don’t apply. . . . What’s even more worrisome is that other federal law enforcement agencies are now cutting their hiring standards too. . . . [A]gencies like the FBI are actually lowering their long-standing higher hiring and training standards to more closely match ICE. For the first time, FBI Director Kash Patel wants to drop the college degree-requirement and turn its traditionally highly educated, older agent workforce into something more like ICE’s high-school educated street cops; the training they get will drop from 18 weeks to just eight, a stunning cut. Lots of interesting detail here, if you have time to read in full. AND ON THE ECONOMIC FRONT . . . It’s nice to think our economy is “the envy of the world,” as the Economist dubbed it just one year ago. But since Trump took over, the dollar has had its steepest decline in over 50 years, farmers have lost their markets, the government has shut down, billionaires have gotten a tax cut, and . . . well, these dark but powerful 90 seconds tell a story I hope has a different ending. Join Indivisible. Support “my” 26th annual DNC LGBT Leadership Council dinner even if you’re not L, G, B, or T and even if you can’t come. An adequately funded opposition party is absolutely necessary for democracy to prevail. Next year: give to candidates. This year: give to infrastructure. BOREF Needless to say, after two decades’ waiting, I’m counting no chickens. But, as noted here, its half-owned WheelTug subsidiary continues to plug away.