Panic World - We were at ICE’s invasion in Minneapolis

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

After an ICE agent killed Renee Good, Ryan & Grant flew to Minneapolis to cover the resulting protests. This special episode documents their experience with protestors, law enforcement, ICE agents, right-wing YouTubers, and of course... some extreme cold.Show NotesGet 50% off Unlimited premium wireless starting at $15/month at — https://mintmobile.com/courierGet 50% off your first Factor box PLUS free breakfast for 1 year at — https://factormeals.com/panic50off Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm finally most comfortable doing this because now I'm looking at you through a screen and not having to see your actual face. I like this better. I like not having to look directly. It feels like I'm safe at home in a Zoom window. We almost made eye contact once that's horrible. I agree. My name is Ryan Broderick. I host the Panic World podcast and I write the Garbage Day Newsletter and I'm here in Minneapolis, Minnesota for Currier News. We're in front of the federal building where ICE officers just deployed chemical weapons smelled like tear gas to me. Today, I need to hear you just for freedom. You're going to fight. We are recording from the parking lot of the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis.

We've been here since Thursday. It's been like basically four days, three, four days of just pretty nonstop unrest. But it hasn't flipped over into any sort of violence, at least on the civilian side. after last night, which we'll get to in a minute, it feels like everyone's a little freaked out. And I would include ice in that, actually. I mean, they spent most of yesterday afternoon barricading one of the entrances to the parking lot

of the federal building. So clearly they are a little freaked out. And as it stands, there are now more ice agents in Minneapolis than there are actual members of the local law enforcement, according to reports we're seeing online. I just talked to one protester I've seen every day. We've been here. He's been one of the most active people.

and he's just described being so tired, just standing out, and it's kind of a war of attrition, and I understand it being less people out here right now. I think that's probably where to start. This feeling that there isn't a lot that can be done, and it's something that we have noticed throughout our time here. There is this sense that the mechanisms of protest that you can use, to put pressure on politicians, institutions in a democratic society do not work for ICE.

That is really hard to wrap your head around. It's been the biggest struggle for me, I think, in sort of how to write about this and how to think about this. We've spoken to a fair number of people upwards of 30, probably at this point since being here, and people are trying to be positive. people are trying to put on a brave face, but like it's eerie. We've seen two nights in a row where over a thousand people suddenly appeared, and they are furious and they are joyful with one another, and it is a diverse crowd,

and there's children there, and dogs there, and babies, and people are so upset, but they have nowhere to go. State officials care if you're disrupting peace. state officials care if you're pissed at them and are going to vote them out. ICE wants to fuck you up. What do you do? It's really weird. Yeah. On the subject of ICE aggression, we also yesterday witnessed the arrest of two protesters.

Basically, like, a woman yesterday, you know, punched a car kind of like that. And two vehicles with ICE agents pulled over and jumped her and her friend. And we saw them being taken into the federal building afterwards. There's also a lot of gloating. Like, people are yelling at the cars for ICE as they're going in and out, and they are fist bumping, they're waving. I don't think that the crowd chanting at them is demoralizing anyone. I've read reports that morale inside of ICE is very bad. I think as psychopathically, you know, violent as these guys are and untrained as they are,

I'm not willing to say that they're all just like inhuman monsters. Like, you know, we're not getting a lot of great information from inside the DHS. Reporters are kind of like trying their best. But we know a few things. We know that the standards are very low for the recruitment process. We know that there are connections with Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent, accused of gunning down Renée Nicole Good and the proud boys. He was at the very least a fan of the proud boys on. Facebook, according to reports I've seen. According to a story from the Washington Post this week,

the reason why the ICE agent that is accused of murdering Renee Nicole Good had a cell phone out was because they are under intense pressure from the Trump administration to be filming as much as they can. So all over the city this week, they have been raiding different businesses and different people's homes, and they've got cameras out. They've got cameras out here. There's also the assumption for most of the protests here that all of our faces you're being uploaded to some sort of database likely run by Palantir. The protesters have been chanting about Palantir. Yeah. This is a very generally offline protest movement and I find it very interesting that they seem highly aware of Palantir as an entity. I think that's an important thing to hit. So

basically, unlike most of the protest movements that I have witnessed over the last 15, years where you have a heavily online protest movement, activist movement, versus a largely semi-online or even offline establishment. Here, that dynamic has completely flipped. So most of the protesters we've spoken to, they're using Facebook maybe. They're reading the local news. That's great. Go MPR. They're fantastic. There's a bunch of great local outlets here. If they are using apps, we've heard from some protesters that they're on signal. But I think the thing that I find the most interesting about the kind of like activist network right now is that we've been finding out about protests and demonstrations by attending one. Like it's literal word of mouth.

Like someone gets over a megaphone and is like, meet us here tomorrow at this time. The local law enforcement have effectively let go of the city. There is no opposition here. It is not like 2020 where the local police are, I mean, I assume they're monitoring activist activity, protest activity, but it's not like they are the enemy here. And ICE doesn't really seem to give a shit what anyone is doing here as long as it's not at the federal building because they are racing around the city picking up as many people as possible. And that is a really hard thing to run defense for it. Now, you've talked to people about sort of like how they're organizing the local neighborhood defense networks. I mean, do you get the sense that it's effective?

I talked to somebody who was on the scene moments after Renee Good was killed. Local activist got the call, went out there. Let's take a listen to a little bit of that. You said that they're acting very different than any other police or activist group. Can you explain the difference in how they're acting versus? just how other agencies have acted? There are a lot more proactive in attacking people than any police force I've ever seen, you know?

It's not the first time I've been shot with chemical weapons. It's not the first time I've been tear gassed. But, I mean, I don't think these guys have any real training. I think they're just like thugs that are giving a gun and being like, all right, let loose boys and they act like it's a video game. I mean, this motherfucker came up to me and shot me right at,

point blank range completely unprovoked. I was standing in a snowbank on the sidewalk. Like I was not even taking the street and I saw them, you know, tackling people for, you know, basically no reason as well. It doesn't seem like they, uh, they oftentimes, um, for example, if you're up against like NPD or LAPD or some force like this, like they'll have commanders giving clear like hand signals for orders. They'll have little snatch squads that are operating like independently of the skirmish line that has, you know, the riot clubs and stuff. These guys are not really behaving like this.

They're kind of just like let loose. How did you end up on the scene so quickly? I was here at Whipa Watch at 8 in the morning, taking pictures of their license plates so we could get them out to the neighborhoods and warn them about like incoming ICE kidnappers. and my home girl who was planning on joining me, texted me, I can't come. They just shot and killed somebody. And I got in my car and sped over there.

How are you doing? You know, my face is puffy and my tears are spicy. But I'm all right, man. We got to pull out all the stops and everybody's got to fight the federal threat right now. I wonder if it crushes your mind. This seems a lot scarier and more dangerous to me. In 2020, you might go to jail for a night.

Charges are probably going to be dismissed. Make no mistake about it. I respectfully disagree. In 2020, we were out because they killed a man. And now we're out for the same reason. They killed Renee Good. She could have been any one of us. She didn't do anything that every observer here hasn't already done.

She could have been all of us. And I think the correct attitude in this moment is that she is all of us. And everyone needs to know her name. Day one of it, dramatically different now than every other day in interesting ways. Because of you. We've spotted several instances of ICE agents laughing at the crowd, filming them. There's a lot of chaos in the ground right now. You said you spoke to a lot of teachers?

Day one was a lot of teachers. Like I remember there's one scene where I heard this one and go, oh my God, you teach at the Bell School? I teach at the Bell School. And it felt very community-based, to paraphrase a post I saw on like. line. It was like, it's cold. The normies are out here. We're doing our best. And that kind of, that, that, I think it was the best way to describe the first day. Of course, they were also, um, a lot of instances of ice agents shooting us with pepper spray balls. But it was, it was, it was largely kumbaya, I would say on Thursday. Now I'm like, that was so significantly less than the number of pepper balls we ended up getting shot by. Yeah, that was, um, I was really surprised that day. It was first or second time people had protested was, was the vibe I got. Um, I talked to, um, I talked to one mom who was a conservative and the first protest she went to was a no Kings and then she was out in front of ice and I also talked to a guy who was a

loaded up on waters and snacks and you can just hear from both of them they don't know what to do and this is the best thing they could think of let's a let's take a listen to just like the baseline of normality not the people you'd expect in front of a federal building, which is like a kind of high-end protest tactic. How many protests have you gone to in your life? This is it. This is it. And you knew to bring food and water.

Absolutely. This is your second protest ever? Yes. Yeah, I went to the No Kings protest. This is kind of my first protests where I'm yelling at you. I was on my way to go grocery shopping with my sister when we noticed this shit from on the train. So you sat out the whole First Trump administration? Yeah.

What was different this time around? Okay, a little embarrassed, but I'm like a former Republican-ish. Did you vote for Trump the first time around? No, but I didn't vote. People need food, they need water, especially, you know, with the tear gas. And now, look at this bullshit. After the federal building, the sun started to go down, and we made our way to the south side of the city near where Good was murdered. When we got there, it was starting to rain, and there weren't a lot of.

people. We actually didn't have super high expectations. Organizing in a non-walkable city that is as large as this area, I really wasn't sure what to expect. Contrary to what you may be seeing on right-wing news channels and right-wing YouTube channels right now, there are no Antifa super soldiers here. We did see one guy though handing out coffee, you know, kind of dangerous. I guess. This is the most organized protest and family-friendly protest after dark I've ever seen. I think for the most part, you know, there's obviously an insane amount of anger, but the vibes were good on Thursday night. Even with the horrible weather conditions, it felt the right kind of cathartic. But, and this will become a theme throughout our time here, it was extremely noticeable that there was. no opposition to the protest. And I don't mean in the sense that like, oh, like the cops didn't

come and shut it down. I mean, like, there was nowhere to put that anger. And this has been an existential problem. Ice is here in the federal building or they're driving around in unmarked cars scooping people up. And they don't really care how mad people are. They don't give a shit. And so it is hard not to sort of be in these mass actions here and have this. creeping sense of dread that this is for nothing. And I don't want to be callous about that. Let me just slow that down for a second there. That's actually when we had probably the most impactful conversation I think we had this

weekend where he only wanted to talk to us off the record, but we talked to somebody who had been a long-term activist and he admitted that this is scarier that than what they were up against before, the unpredictability that we've been describing. has affected him. And he said something that, like, I'm going to really stay with me, which was, in 2020, when I was upset at the cops, I could throw a brick, hypothetically, at a cop car, and they could get the message. Like, there was somewhere to direct it to, and he said, I can't go to Mar-a-Lago.

And, like, coming to ICE is just like, if you get too grouty, like, you're going to get your ass kicked. But also, they're not going to see it. There may have been undercover ice agents at the protests we've been to beyond the federal building here, but I didn't see any. There may have been feds. I don't know. It was dark and there was freezing rain.

It is really hard not to overstate this. Like, it is a machine that doesn't care. But then you had this crowd that is only gaining in size. It only gains momentum. They're only getting more upset and more agitated as you're moving through. But then they did a really wise thing. and they ended the march at the neighborhood on the block where she was killed, where you then see, I guess it's a barricade, but it looks really like a memorial.

It's a memorial and an encampment and there's like a soup line there and we got hot cocoa. It is not, it is not like an autonomous zone. It's not like a chaz or something. It's a block party. There's fire pits and it's like it's sad and it's somber. It's not what the right wing media is showing it. be. And that just took every everyone then was like, hey, we're in this neighborhood now. We're going to be respectful. We're going to show the people who are in this neighborhood that were mourning with them.

And that just kind of settled everything down. And then we saw a house that said, uh, free toilet, which we did a toilet here, free toilet, which we did use. And that was very nice guy. So that's the vibe. Like come walk into my house. Turned out that that was Renee's new name. who was just moving in. He's still at things in boxes. And he was nice enough not only to let us use his bathroom, but also give me a couple of minutes of his time. I'm Evan. We're outside of your house. You're very benevolently letting people use your restroom. Yeah. People got to go. When did I start showing up in this neighborhood? I mean, so I haven't, like, we're just moving in. So I've been here. You're still just moving in. Yeah, still just moving in. So like, I've heard people honking, um, You know, like all three November, whenever I was here, I would usually like once or twice a day. I would hear caravans going by the way.

Was it escalating in the days ahead of the shooting? No, I mean, like, I didn't see anything until the day. I, like, heard a bunch of honks, saw ice was outside, came out for a bit, and then I, like, went back and tried to take a call, and then I heard the shots and came back out again. This is your introduction to the neighborhood. How are you feeling? I mean, I think a mess. a lot of really lovely people, a lot of very nice people come and use my bathroom.

It's been not the best way to meet neighbors, but it's been nice to connect with everybody and like everyone out on the street. Doing all of the stuff have just been really lovely. If anything, this has made me feel more positive about living here. I mean like there's already the issue of the occupation in LA, right? It kind of feels like everywhere. Um, use the bathroom? Yes.

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Plans required 15 month equivalent, taxes and fees extra initial plan term only, 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Capable device required, available speed and coverage varies. See mittmobile.com. We headed back out to the federal building on our second day here on Friday. And it was aggressive from the start. Come on, you fucking cowards. Fighting in your fucking cars warming up. Where are you from the south? That's where you're from.

You come to places you don't belong where the people do not want you here. You are traitors to the Constitution. You are traitors to America. Ice was way more aggressive. And the crowd was different. The crowd was younger. By that point, a lot of the protesters that we were talking to were from out of town. There was a whole contingent of protesters that sort of travel around and follow ICE action.

And there were multiple members of that cohort there. And ice was very, very trigger-happy with the pepper spray balls and tear gas and flashbangs. And they like to just spray their little pepper spray ball gun at you. It's a paintball gun and they shoot it at your feet usually. And the ball breaks and it basically just distributes pepper spray into the air. Ice agents are fucking stupid. And so they don't realize that like shooting pepper spray at the feet of someone directly in front of them is going to make them sick too. So they're coughing too.

It's, I mean, you really, I can't believe how stupid these guys are. It kind of seemed to work on like 25 to 30 minute intervals. Like, you know, that's an estimate where. You're on a two-way street. There's a yellow line. The day before, it was when you went up to the gate. Yeah. The ice would start to shoot or push you back.

On Friday, they decided that crossing the yellow line was too far. Right. So protesters were out there. They'd get a little agitated. And then after 20 minutes, they get a little bit emboldened. They get closer to the line. And then the ice agent. would just shoot off a couple of pepper balls

and everyone would back up. And it had this odd rhythm. Yeah. And I don't want to make this sound like Soros was flying Antifa from everywhere to Coala, so Minneapolis. If he was, they love ska music because there was a guy there

with loudspeaker who was playing streetlight manifesto and we talked about it briefly. So George Soros, if you're sending Antifa super soldiers in, to cities across America to fight ice, you should start playing Streetlights newer albums, too. Ryan's had a really long couple of days, so I'm not going to make fun of that.

My point being that it was mostly local teenagers or college students is what I would say. Also, we should say that schools are closed here. So they closed the schools on Thursday because ice kept swarming the schools. Ryan, you actually, before we get there, while we're speaking about the Antifa Super Soldier who had an anti-Maga cape and a screen and was a very friendly guy, he, not recorded, not off the record, said something to you about his travels and going to ICE facilities in San Diego.

Do you want to talk about that? Yeah, he said something really interesting where basically when you're arrested by ICE, you're given what's called an A number. It's sort of your ID number inside of the ICE facility. He travels down to an ICE detention center in San Diego where prisoners will yell their A number out the window hoping someone hears. And the reason they're doing that is because when ICE detains you, you can't call anyone without money in your commissary fund. But you can't get money put into your commissary fund without someone on the outside knowing your A number. And ICE will not give that number to people on the outside.

So what that results in is people who are trapped there with no ability to communicate with the outside world. And so there are basically volunteers that go and try to get the A numbers of anyone they can just so they can put money in it so those people can make a call. It's a nightmare. The other thing I want to touch on here is that on our second day here on Friday was when we, basically saw the closest link that we're probably going to get between ice agents, the Department of Homeland Security, and the right-wing median. Who are you with? Aren't you in uniform?

Who is he with? Is he with you? Is he with you? Why isn't he in uniform? Who is he? Why are you turned around? Who are you with? Why are you in uniform? Who are you? What are you shooting this for? Where's that content going?

I was able to grab footage of at one point, you know, they're pushing us, as Grant said, back behind the yellow line dividing the street. A pro-Trump content creators there, he's screaming, go-Trump, go-Trump. He then fist-bumps the ICE agent and they let him sort of do whatever he wants. I thought that was pretty egregious. and then a few hours later a woman hits the window of a car with ice agents in it they all jump out tackle her to the ground arrest her jumping out with them with a big grin on his face

was a reporter I've since learned is Matt Finn a local Fox reporter here who was doing a little ride along with ice yesterday and he had a big smirk on his face as he filmed the agents tackling her to the ground. He then posted on Twitter that it was quote unquote intense video. The last thing I'll say here is a couple hours after that. A gang of far right YouTubers showed up led by the January 6th insurrectionist Jake Lang. He was in tow with someone who kind of was dressed up like a Yu-Gi-o villain

and then like a littler, uglier guy wearing the same outfit. And they kind of paraded around for, several hours live streaming and, you know, fighting with people. And once again, ICE was more than happy to protect them. Although it didn't stop the little uglier one from getting slapped in the face by a woman and then he started crying. I think we, two things. If you're worried, the window was fine. Of the car, yes.

Driving in Philadelphia traffic does more damage to your car. car each time than the window. I know some of you are very worried about property and I just want you to know that the car has not been harmed. The potholes here are worse. We should break down. An interesting thing happened with the

what word do I want to describe them. The content creators. Hardcore anime fan energy. Like they looked like... Oh my God. They were very embarrassed. They were wearing very bad suits that were very shiny, and they were wearing, like, big long piquots.

And they had that unmistakable whiff of, like, someone who learned how to socialize by watching too much anime. You know what I mean? So when they first came, Crowdy got very upset, and people were getting in each other's faces. They brought their little flags, and they were being tugged on. and that is when ice agents went ham and Ryan will be coughing tear gas for the next week. Right behind me are a group of far-right YouTubers that have showed up to the federal building here in Minneapolis, waving American flags and provoking the crowd. Immediately, I started running defense for these guys shooting pepper spray, tear gas, flashbangs at the crowd. Thankfully, their sound system that they showed up with has run out of juice.

Before this, they were playing the song Ice Ice Baby hit over and over again and picking fights with people here. This has been going on for at least 20 minutes now, and it's absolute pandemonium. Apparently they've done this every day this week, usually around. this time. Guys, no political violence. It's not worth it. Save it for the enemy. Don't waste.

Hey, don't catch a charge on these little binties. Let me tell you, I don't think these ice agents have been trained very good because they released something that they didn't know what it was going to do and then a protester had to help them

stomp out a fire that they started. From my understanding, they launched a flashbang incorrectly. Because I could hear them kind of talking about like, I didn't know it would do that. It seemed to just be kind of like an improv game because protesters first got there.

People were getting in their faces. And they're like, all right, we're going to do something. They're following and they're releasing a shit ton of tear gas. There's video. There was a cloud of tear gas that you couldn't see through. Like really was pushing people back. It was really heavy. And then it just kind of like, they got bored of that.

And then, and like also the content creators. like everyone just kind of like it's like when you're at a hardcore show and the first song the Mosh Pit's fucking crazy and if you withstand that song then it just kind of like finds a rhythm

like then the YouTubers were just there for like another hour and a half and really embarrassing and like people were just kind of chatting and like the ICE agents decided like no longer their problem eventually people petered themselves out that they just ended up like

arguing about shit they've watched it debate videos and they're like debate me bro but don't actually like really know what to say or how to talk to each other. Here's a short example. Just baby

our country will not fall to you violent migrants. Our country is going to stand for another 250 years of beautiful freedom. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful freedom. You.

You're racist. Tim was your retard. So on Friday night, we were at a protest that probably has the, you know, the closest it's come so far to like an actual riot. I'm here in downtown Minneapolis. There's easily close to a thousand people gathering in the street right now. They've shut down the whole block and they plan to stay here and make as much noise as they can to disrupt ice and to put pressure on the hotel to give up their contract with the Department of Homeland Security. There's noise protest scheduled outside of

the hotel that activists here believe may be housing ice agents, but they're not sure. So after making a bunch of noise in front of that hotel, we then marched around the city making noise at other hotels. And as we did that, protesters, especially younger ones, who started to kind of show up later in the night, it is a Friday night. And people are angry, rightfully so. They were trying to get into the hotels that people were making noise in front of. And then the organizers who were a couple different progressive and leftist orgs kind of just stopped at nine.

But unlike the march in the rain that ended at the memorial for Renee Nicole Good, this one didn't really have an end. And it became chaos really quickly. I was pressed up with the protesters as they were trying to break into the doors of this hill. in downtown Minneapolis that they believe ice agents are in. And it got really, really hairy. People don't know where to go. They were marching ground. They were going to what they hope is the hotel.

But there's no actual sign of ice agents. They could have come to the ice facility. But that would have been pretty dangerous. So they've nowhere to direct that anger. So now they're just banging on a hotel. Because like where are, how are they supposed to express this? and the only place to do it is this building that is symbolic

and when people started to get in I was thinking you know if there are actual ice agents in there they don't like and these were gonna shoot you these were these were kids these were these were like some as young as like 13 14 yeah who were just like wild and out and like yeah if you bang on the hotel doors

of ice agents like They don't have weapons. There's not a plan here. Like, it would go really bad. I understand the grief, but, like, there's nowhere to put it. And it feeds into propaganda of, like, look at these wild leftists. The right have created a fiction and then are imposing it on a town. And then it makes chaos a reality is what I'm stuck with.

And I don't say this with any judgment to anyone who is out there. But just if you're... neighborhood is invaded and you are scared and you don't have anywhere to put that or direct it, I don't know what comes of that. Here's a great example of how powerless I think this community is right now in the face of this, and I hate to say this. Where we're sitting a couple hours ago, Ilhan Omar and a few other local politicians tried to get into this building and ICE pulled weapons on them.

They pulled tear gas and they pulled pepper spray on them and they didn't use it, but there's a standoff. and they were not allowed in the building. We are in a city in the midst of a standoff, and it is under siege by ICE agents, and it is effectively just protesters versus ICE agents now. We don't know what's about to happen. We have been visited by state-sanctioned violence We want for ourselves and for our neighbors.

We are here today to demand and end to the blame attacks on black and brown citizens. We are trudging through the snow of Powderhorn Park. I like to pride myself from being from the Northeast. This is different. This is different and I take it back. I take it all back. So when we were parking to come here,

we got stopped by another car and they asked if we were with ice, and I said, no, we're journalists. And they said, oh, a lot of the rental cars, A lot of the rental cars are former ice vehicles. So we had Florida plates, they figured we might beat with ice. And I told them, you know, we're not. And then he got on his walk-to-talkie app on his phone. And he said, hey, the license plate I just reported

for being possible ice activity is actually journalists. So kind of another interesting detail of the kind of information environment that we're in right now is that was a guy in his 50s, 60s, part of some sort of decentralized neighborhood watch system. where they're flagging license plates, possibly belonging to ice. Fascinating. I've seen estimates of 5,000 people gathered in Powderhorn Park

near the neighborhood where Renee Nicole Brown was gunned down. And we spent about two to three hours following activists, leftists, progressive groups. They were marching. They were chanting. But now I don't really know what happens. Yeah. I hate everything I'm about to say, and I hope I'm wrong about all of this. It's really disheartening. I overheard people say, look how many people are here.

This is going to get the media's attention and that's going to do something. I just wish things worked that way. In our very brief period of time here, I've seen it become more conspiratorial, more upset on the ground, and when people are being directly confronted or going to a place. like this ice facility and then a crowd of people that just don't know what to do. Meanwhile, the ice raids today

in neighborhoods has seemed to be brutal and just picking up. I don't know how things don't get worse. I basically had two major questions about what's happening here because I think that they are the most important for answering

for the next city this happens to. The first one is how does the far right media machine interface with ice. Now we know. Ice agents are filming their arrest. They're filming their invasions of people's homes and businesses. And there are far right YouTubers and influencers that flock to the scene of ice-based violence and they will run oppo for the Trump media machine. We've also seen that Fox and Fox affiliates are doing ride-alongs with ICE agents

and they are more than happy to frame any kind of opposition to ICE as liberal derangement. And then the other half of that coin is, well, what do you do about that? And the answer is at least here in Minneapolis, I think the answers that are most useful for people in other cities wondering about this is if you are using technology of any kind to network, it has to be completely off public feeds. We've heard about signal. We've heard about peer-to-peer Facebook sharing, like in Facebook DMs or something. We've also heard people saying that they're just hearing about it. like out loud, like IRL. And I think that is the most important takeaway for me from being here.

Trump and the MAGA movement and the Department of Homeland Security and ICE have thoroughly dominated mainstream public social feeds. And so if you want to oppose what they're doing, it is not worth the time or energy to fight against their algorithms in the case of X or give them the ability to surveil. and counteract what you're doing. So the term, by the way, for this is dark social. So if you are listening to this and you're saying, wow, like this could happen to me.

What am I supposed to do? You have to talk to your neighbors in real life. And if you want to use technology, it has to be completely dark social. Text messages, back channel apps. I wish I had more there. I think I'm leaving feeling like we're all on our own. Your neighborhood is on its own.

Calling balls and strikes, raising a flag. There's no one to answer the call. right now because that calls the federal government. And at least here in Minnesota, the state seems to be saying like anything we seem to do seems to just create more problems or we're about to like start the civil war. And so it seems completely handoff leaving people only in their own hands to communicate and to literally blow a whistle. I don't know what to do about that. This Trump, too, has given their proud boys something to do. focus on that sucks up all the oxygen and all the attention and it just feeds things in for

themselves and I don't know how we how that how that technology or messaging elsewhere is possible to combat but all those ideas scare me. I think what you and I have sort of been talking about for the last three days is that there's like a missing link. The Trump administration has weaponized the federal government and there is really without I mean it's great. to see like Ilhan Omar out here and it's great that governor Tim Walls and Mayor Fry are saying how mad they are to ice get the fuck out of Minneapolis but there's no way for that to mean anything there's no way to put pressure on a regime as centralized as the Trump administration it's that that's how it works so like

You can scream and yell and you can drive around until they throw you in the back of a van and, you know, file federal charges at you. You could do all of that. But that's not going to make its way up to Trump. Like it's, and it's definitely not going to change the mind of like hardcore fascist ideologues like Bovino. It has been a very constructive initial response. But even at the March today, you know, like the speakers are saying, like, this isn't it. Like, we got to keep going. That puts things into like really scary territory because now you're talking about like okay who can last longer the entire machinery of the photo government or like decentralized networks of neighbors driving around trying to protect each other.

I think our takeaway and I think this would have been really hard to gleam if we weren't on the ground is that this is an appreciation for how much we're in uncharted territory at least in America where there isn't. a local elected official to annoy or a police chief to get to resign. The problem is just much bigger and it's and it's hyper-local and then it's every state's issue simultaneously and that is confounding. I'll end with this. So there's a video that was filmed here yesterday of a door dasher, like a gig worker who was trying, who was basically trying to run from ice. get one, then they're going to break the door down.

That's fine, but I don't want to open the door if they don't have a warrant. Because this was my door dash lady. I don't even know the lady. She just ran to my house. Who were trying to pick her up as she was dropping off a delivery. And the video was filmed by the woman who owned the house. And it was a standoff where she called the police. The police said, if you don't give up the door dasher, you are, you're sheltering a,

a fugitive. And luckily, ICE eventually backed down because they do back down. They will back down. They are, by all accounts, like, completely illiterate, overweight cowards who seemingly are all like sick with COVID. So, like, it's not hard to get these guys to back down if you can stand doing it and you have the privilege and the means to do it. And so what I want to leave anyone who's watching this with, until this is over, you, as an individual have to think if I was that person, if someone knocked on my door and they said, help me, you have to make the decision for yourself,

what would you do in that situation? And that is a very powerful, heavy thing. But right now, ICE will arrest you if you film them. They can charge you with terrorism. They are becoming more and more aggressive and more emboldened. But like I said, they are illiterate slabs who do not know how to use their own guns or weapons. They have tear gassed themselves in front of us several times since we got here. And they're lazy and they're cowardly. And they're miserable because they know that everybody hates

them. And so as long as you are willing to put that pressure on them and to dig in, I do think small victories are possible. That's as far as I've gotten with that line of thinking. and so, you know, we'll be keeping an eye on Minnesota and everywhere else as this develops. And in between doing things like this, we'll be doing episodes on Gooning, we promise. We will not lose sight of what we believe in and what gives us hope and inspiration. Talking about weirdos on the internet, it's still sacred to us. I could be at home talking about Sonic. the hetrial. But instead, because we live in a fascist dictatorship, I'm here. But I do want to say,

and I want to reiterate, like, we are not here to like parachute in and explain Minnesota to people. There is a great, great local news landscape here. We've met a few of them. And they are doing great work and you should follow them. And we can link in our show notes to some of the sources that we've been using to basically follow the activity here. And I also want to thank Courier News for partnering with us on this trip. We're not a national news organization. Trips like this used to be just like what journalism was, but now they're like a rare luxury.

And being able to like get the funds together in time to get here, to be here for the last three days, it would have been impossible without Courier. So if you want to support Courier, you should go to their merch store and buy a T-shirt. the pretty good t-shirts. Probably ours. I have two of them. We also have a Panic World t-shirt now. You buy that, it supports a courier.

You want to support us, head on over to our Patreon, throw five bucks in. We're going to be uploading additional materials from the trip to Patreon. We might do kind of a recap episode later this week on there, just a couple days later digesting what happened. And if you want to follow more incremental reporting about ICE and the right-wing media machine, you can read my newsletter, Garbage Day. email. I'll be covering this for the foreseeable future over there as well. And yeah, I just want to thank the people of Minneapolis who have been very, very kind to us. Minnesota nice gets thrown

around a lot, but like people here are tremendously kind and this is a wonderful city. It's a, I think, a beautiful city, actually. I am sad and I am angry that so much of the 21st century has been based around the federal government or local law enforcement. trying to make this place miserable for its citizens. It's absolutely insane. I'm so tired of seeing places. I'm like, this place could be delightful. If I was here under any other circumstance,

if you have any questions, you want us to answer anything in this kind of reporting? We'll see if we do it in the future. Hopefully we do. Hopefully we won't have to, but if we do, let us know what you'd like from it. This is all new terrain, and we really do appreciate you.

And I appreciate Currier so much. I'm not going to say something sarcastic about them this one time. Yeah, like I said, we're a really small team. So the fact that we had several people back in New York sort of tracking our movements, doing security for us, this would not be possible without them. And for you listeners, the ones who've reached out, like, thank you. Don't follow Grant on Instagram.

It's not worth it. You can follow me on Instagram, but my Instagram is bad too. Blue Sky, maybe? New Sky, I'm on Blue Sky. Yeah. Thank you, guys. Bye, guys. Thanks. Panic Whirl is a production of Courier.

It is written and produced by Grant Irving and hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Josh Fielstead is our production coordinator, and our amazing researcher is Adam Bumas. From Currier is Shane Verkest, who edits our video episodes, along with our producer, Devin Moroni, and National Managing Director and Executive Producer Kevin Dreyfus. R.C. DeMezzo is their VP of Brand and Social. Charlotte Robinson is their Deputy Director of Brand and Social.

Marianne Couga is their director of marketing, and Tracy Kaplan is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Distribution. If you want to sponsor the show or give us products to sell, she's the one to talk to. You can email her at Tracy at courier newsroom.com. Lastly, here's my advice for you. Chill out and touch grass while you still can. Should we do a tight five on your feelings about Minnesota bagels?

I don't, I've been astounded at how friendly. the Minnesotans have been broadly, especially in such a not friendly way to be meeting people. Yeah.

We are staying at a hotel in a college town off-season. I cannot judge, and I will not judge, I will do them the kindness and not judging any of the food we've eaten, all of which has been garbage. But I'm sure that if we were actually doing a trip for fun,

there's great food here.