The moral values inherent in democracy

Context

Extensive research in moral and political psychology shows that for politics most people do not primarily rely on facts, truths, and conscious reasoning. Instead we are mostly guided by unconscious moral values, identity, biases, partisan and group loyalties, and social context. Perception itself is filtered through these lenses, so people quite literally see and interpret “the same” political reality differently. (link 1, link 2)

In The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (2010), neuroscientist Sam Harris argued that science could, in principle, ground objective moral values in facts about the well‑being of people. But he didn’t claim that science had already identified a list of universal human values. In 2016, S. Matthew Liao’s book, Moral Brains: The Neuroscience of Morality, brought together leading neuroscientists and philosophers and showed that the neuroscience of morality still is far from explaining it. At present, science has not found a consensus list of universal moral values, let alone ones tailored to secular liberal democracy. One person’s morality can be immorality or even evil to others, e.g., abortion. (link 3, link 4)

Authoritarianism vs. democracy

In modern authoritarian regimes, e.g., dictatorships, oligarchies, theocracies, and kleptocracies, the regime’s survival does not depend on accurately informing ordinary people or respecting their independent moral judgment. Average citizens have little real political power, so it doesn’t much matter if their narratives are false, incoherent, openly cruel or anything else. People just have to survive under the regime’s rhetoric.

Secular democracy is supposed to work differently. In theory, an informed electorate chooses representatives in free and fair elections. Those representatives serve the public interest within a framework of constitutional constraints. However, political science shows that this idealized picture fits poorly with how mass opinion and elections actually work. In Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (2016), Chris Achen and Larry Bartels argue that ordinary citizens’ political thinking is often closer to group loyalty and tribal identification than to the informed, policy‑driven reasoning assumed in textbook democracy.​ They characterize people’s political reasoning and behavior as “infantile”. (link 5, link 6)

A universal moral value hypothesis for democracy

Despite the mess in science, a hypothesis is that a small set of semi‑universal moral value clusters is baked into the concept of secular, liberal democracy. These moral values are simple to grasp, but hard to apply cleanly in practice. Some experts have argued for reasoning that is compatible with these proposed moral values. (link 7, link 8, link 9)

The three proposed clusters of moral values could be support for:

1. Democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, and honest, competent, transparent government because that is morally superior and preferable to all forms of authoritarian rule.
2. Government and policy should prioritize the public interest over special interests, while minimizing harms both to (a) democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, and honest governance, and (b) all affected people, groups, and interests.
3. Moral, pro‑democracy political reasoning and engagement should be grounded, as far as possible, in good‑faith respect for and acceptance of facts, robust truths, and sound reasoning, even when these are inconvenient.

This is not a claim that everyone lives up to these values. But they do seem to function as widely shared moral standards that most people at least rhetorically say they believe in.

Evidence of universality 1: authoritarian rhetoric and behavior

Two kinds of evidence suggest that these moral clusters have a powerful, near‑universal pull. The first comes from how authoritarians talk and act. Modern authoritarian leaders generally do not openly say they reject democracy, rule of law, or civil liberties. Instead, they loudly insist that they, not their opponents, are the true defenders of “the people,” “law and order,” “freedom,” and “the national interest,” even as they dismantle those things in practice.​ (link 10)

Post‑World War II, most authoritarian regimes adopt democratic and “people’s” branding. For example, consider the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or other “people’s republics”. They hold elections that are plainly shams. But they are carefully preserved as symbols of popular consent. The same holds for Russia under its brutal dictator Putin. Putin has never canceled a national election, but he has subverted them. Political scientists often describe such systems as “electoral autocracies” precisely because they mimic democratic forms and language while hollowing out their substance.​ Some experts now classify the US as a “competitive authoritarian” state, not a democracy.

If democracy, rule of law, civil liberties, and service to the public interest were not widely perceived as morally superior, authoritarians would have far less incentive to appropriate that vocabulary rather than openly celebrating their naked domination. Their propaganda strategy shows that they clearly understand that trying to convince people these values are bad or immoral would be nearly impossible. Instead of changing minds, it is far easier to hijack democratic values rhetorically while betraying them in practice.

Evidence of universality 2: lived experience and survey data

The second line of evidence comes from common experience and large‑scale survey research. In ordinary political conversations, very few people openly say they prefer dictatorship, theocracy, oligarchy, or kleptocracy over democracy. Likewise, almost no one volunteers that they intentionally lie, reject inconvenient facts, or embrace crackpot reasoning because “the end justifies the means,” or that they want special interests served at the expense of the public interest.

These everyday observations are consistent with systematic survey data. The World Values Survey and related polling consistently find high global support for democracy in principle. For example, one summary reports that more than 82% of respondents worldwide say that having a democratic system of government is a good thing. A 2024 Ipsos poll for the Halifax Security Forum likewise found that 81% of people across 30 countries believe that democracy, human rights, and the rule of law are universal values that all nations deserve and can aspire to, rather than uniquely Western ideals. (link 11, link 12, link 13)

Among people doing politics, one rarely or never encounters anyone who openly say they favor dictatorship, oligarchy, theocracy, or kleptocracy over democracy. A person encounters few or no people who proudly say they lie or employ bad‑faith reasoning in their politics. More than a few people act in ways that oppose democratic and truth‑seeking values, but consciously or not, they feel pressure to deny that and claim those values as their own. (link 14, link 15, link 16)

Q1: How many people doing or discussing politics have you encountered that say their engagement with politics relies significantly or mostly on lies, deceit, fake facts, fomenting unwarranted, divisive emotional reactions, and/or crackpot reasoning/conspiracy theories?

Q2: How many people doing or discussing politics have you encountered that say they prefer dictatorship, oligarchy, theocracy or kleptocracy over democracy or secular democracy?

The Surge That Didn’t End: Witnesses to an Unfinished Occupation

 

A month ago in Minneapolis, a children’s performer named Stella Carlson stayed when others ran. She filmed federal agents firing ten shots into the body of a 37‑year‑old U.S. citizen, Alex Pretti, who was not suspected of any crime and was never charged with anything.

In a later CNN interview, Carlson’s voice shook as she described feeling utterly abandoned: “nobody’s here for us… nobody’s going to help us… so it broke down to: then it’s us. We only have each other.” Yet she still insisted she believed Minnesota officials “want to protect us” and were trying to help, even if their hands were tied by the Trump administration.

Those are the people Democrats now celebrate as “brave protesters” who, in Sen. Klobuchar’s words, “stood up” and “stared down” ICE. The problem is that the version of reality being told about them is no longer compatible with what is still happening on the ground.

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The day the surge “ended”

On February 12, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan stepped to a podium in Minneapolis and announced that Operation Metro Surge was ending. In the same breath, he warned that “forcibly assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating or interfering with a federal law enforcement officer is a crime,” and said the administration would not tolerate “agitators who are just causing havoc.”

Democratic leaders immediately accepted his premise. Senator Amy Klobuchar declared that “ICE is getting out of Minnesota,” crediting “Minnesotans who stood strong and stared them down.” Attorney General Keith Ellison issued an official statement: “Make no mistake: the people of Minnesota ended Operation Metro Surge… this is a win for Minnesota,” praising “voices, dedication to peaceful protest, documenting abuses, and commitment to providing for each other” as the decisive force. Governor Tim Walz, who days earlier had warned of a potential “Fort Sumter moment” and called the surge an “armed force” attacking his constituents, shifted into talk of “drawdown in days” and “healing” without demanding publicly verifiable proof that thousands of agents had actually left.

In theory this is the moment when an opposition insists on receipts: How many agents are still here? Which hotels have emptied out? How many flights have departed and where? Instead, both the administration and the state’s top Democrats agreed to treat “ending” as a story beat, not a claim to be tested.

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What small outlets kept seeing

If you want to know whether ICE actually left, you have to leave the headline outlets and follow the people who never stopped watching.

Bring Me The News, a small Minnesota site, ran a February 16 live blog whose headline and lede kept the surge in the present tense: “we’re following Monday’s developments from the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota.” It explicitly promised to “continue to provide daily updates until the change is confirmed on the ground,” and then logged fresh raids and arrests in Burnsville, Chaska, Rochester, and Columbia Heights after Homan’s announcement. ICEOut and allied volunteers kept posting maps and alerts: people grabbed at bus stops, construction sites, and workplaces, a climate of fear local farmers described as ongoing rather than resolved.

Protesters’ own language matched that reality. Minnesota AFL‑CIO and Indivisible’s “Day Out for Democracy” march on February 16 did not sound like a victory lap; their call was for “ICE out of Minnesota immediately” and “an end to ICE’s occupation.” ICE OUT and MIRAC organizers were blunt: “Operation Metro Surge is NOT over!! We continue to stand…,” “ICE OUT NOW,” “no compromise.” In one reel from that day, Marcia Howard faces a crowd and says, “DAY OUT FOR DEMOCRACY / ICE OUT NOW… You ever hear of a Minnesota goodbye?… It might be a long while… We demand ICE OUT NOW with NO COMPROMISE. We call on our leaders from City Hall to the Governor’s Office to stand with the people.”

None of this is the language of people who believe the surge has ended. It is the language of people who believe they are living under an ongoing occupation that their own side refuses to acknowledge.

Sahan Journal, a nonprofit focused on immigrant communities, put the contradiction into a headline: “Operation Metro Surge hasn’t ended. It’s expanded to the suburbs.” Its February 19 report describes what happened after the cameras left downtown. Observers in Columbia Heights and Fridley say convoys and “abductions” continued “those first couple days” after the announcement; what changed was that agents shifted into “really old, beat up garbage cars,” unmarked minivans, plain clothes, and smaller teams. In Eden Prairie, one volunteer says, “they’re there every single day”—unmarked vehicles angle themselves around children’s bus stops for hours, stage outside apartments, parks, and small businesses. Union hotel workers and community monitors report ICE still lodged in multiple hotels around the metro, with 20 or more ICE vehicles routinely parked in suburban hotel lots.

State lawmakers from those districts describe the same thing: drones and helicopters, unmarked cars tailing them and local observers, residents still too afraid to leave their homes. Representative Alex Falconer recounts an unmarked vehicle flashing lights and following him toward the Capitol; Senator Erin Maye Quade calls the damage “generational” and says “Operation Metro Surge has morphed into something else,” not ended.

None of this appears in the politicians’ victory posts. None of it has forced them to revise their story.

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Elsewhere: the same operation, different zip codes

Minnesota is not unique. In Los Angeles, LAist reports that immigration raids and mass arrests have continued for months, with DHS itself boasting that more than 10,000 people have been detained in the region since June. A Koreatown church that used to serve 500–600 people in a weekly food distribution now sees maybe 350; some weeks they cut the line early “because the ICE agents were around here,” as families stay home rather than risk groceries or school.

On Long Island, the East End Beacon describes federal agents in camouflage labeled “Police,” “HSI,” and “ERO” detaining a man in the parking lot of a family courthouse in Riverhead, while one agent stands with pepper spray out and residents film in fear. Locals describe people “abducted” off streets and coffee shops, and a woman in Patchogue arrested simply for filming a raid and released only because local police recognized her. An immigrant‑rights group, OLA (Organización Latino Americana of Eastern Long Island), begs the town board for a basic resolution requiring masked agents to identify themselves and to coordinate with local police; the board sits through three hours of other business and says nothing.

In Chatham County, Georgia, The Current GA documents roving patrols on a one‑mile stretch of road near a K‑8 school, beginning months before a teacher’s death. Unmarked SUVs with grille lights box in drivers “who appear to be Latino,” masked agents surround the car, demand ID without identifying themselves, issue no citations, and leave. A U.S. citizen and two Central American legal residents recount being stopped this way multiple times—“driving while Hispanic”—long before February 16, when ICE tried to stop an undocumented man with a prior deportation order, he fled, and his truck struck and killed special‑education teacher Linda Davis on her way to school. National outlets cover Davis as a discrete tragedy—a “man fleeing ICE” killed a beloved educator—without integrating the months of local reporting on roving patrols and racial profiling that made such an outcome likely.

The pattern is the same: small, often precarious outlets document an ongoing interior operation and its abuses; large platforms treat what they see as isolated accidents, backstory for polls, or remnants of a crisis that is already over.

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Local journalists and observers under fire

None of this is without cost. LA Public Press’s editor would later describe covering immigration enforcement in her city under Trump as work where “your local reporter needs the same protection as a war correspondent.” Freelancers were hit by rubber bullets; one was struck in the face. A reporter’s immigrant mother was followed from her hospital job and stopped by immigration agents near her home. The International Women’s Media Foundation and Committee to Protect Journalists report that in 2025 at least 32 journalist detentions and arrests in the United States occurred while covering immigration actions or protests, most ending without charges but not without damage: assaults, kettling, weapons drawn, cameras broken.

When local reporters in Denver and San Jose did what local reporters are supposed to do—follow unmarked vehicles and report on raids—Homan and other officials went on Fox News to blame “media leaks” for low arrest numbers and threatened to restrict access. The new FCC chair opened an investigation into a California radio station that described undercover ICE operations on air, raising the prospect that “reporting in the public interest” could itself be treated as a regulatory violation. As one war correspondent put it, this is “an agency trying to silence unembedded reporting.”

So the information we do have exists because local journalists, volunteers, and faith leaders have accepted real personal risk to collect it. The hard part—evidence gathering—is not what’s missing.

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The blink—and what it reveals

In theory, this is exactly what opposition parties, the “fourth estate,” and adversarial outlets are for: to take those fragments of dangerous, high‑value local reporting and stitch them into a binding national reality. In practice, the opposite has happened.

Within days of warning about “Fort Sumter” and describing Metro Surge as an occupation, Walz was talking about drawdown and “healing.” Klobuchar rushed to proclaim that “ICE is getting out of Minnesota,” invited people to refill hotel rooms, and appeared on national shows in pure victory and autopsy mode. Frey praised “brave protesters” and talked about recovery, while admitting he had no data on flights, hotel departures, or agent counts. Protesters kept chanting “ICE OUT NOW” and insisting “Operation Metro Surge is not over,” but their own leaders chose to narrate a win instead.

Litigation continues. The ACLU and ACLU of Minnesota filed Tincher v. Noem in January to challenge suspicionless stops, racial profiling, and retaliation against observers, amended their complaint in mid‑February to add journalists and more than 80 new incidents, and have brought cases elsewhere against NSPM‑7 and related tactics. Yet when Judge Katherine Menendez, a Biden appointee, ruled on Minnesota’s bid to rein in Metro Surge, she described “racial profiling, excessive use of force, and other harmful actions,” called the harms “profound and even heartbreaking,” and still declined to halt the operation invoking deference to federal authority and the likelihood of appellate reversal. The ACLU’s own February statements on Homan’s announcement warn of “hollow words” and vow to monitor, but also adopt “ending” as the operative frame, focusing on rebuilding and accountability rather than insisting on public, real‑time verification of drawdown.

Adversarial media have followed a similar arc. In January, outlets like The Intercept and WIRED did genuine work: exposing a secret “domestic terrorist” list that sweeps in antifascist and climate activists, mapping more than 150 new ICE offices and $38.3 billion in detention warehouses and “mega‑facilities,” documenting Track‑2 build‑out and database tie‑ins. By mid‑February, those same brands had turned back to structural essays, polls, and election coverage. With a few exceptions, they are not integrating the new Sahan, LAist, East End Beacon, Current GA, ICEOut, or Bring Me The News evidence into a live national narrative about ongoing enforcement.

Even NPR’s February 18 story on Minneapolis observers—detailing how ICE now pulls guns on people like “Jess,” smashes car windows, and detains observers for eight hours for following at a distance—quietly contradicts the “protesters won / surge ended” story it previously took for granted, but never pulls those threads together. It shows that abuses in Minnesota are “increasing,” not fading, and that the people credited with “ending the surge” are now being told their mere presence is a crime. The narrative does not adjust. At that point the United States looks less like a democracy “under threat” and more like a competitive authoritarian, personalist regime where elections continue but meaningful opposition and truthful narration have largely been absorbed.

At the same time, Trump’s second term has moved rapidly toward open personalism. His name and face now hang over the Department of Justice, the U.S. Institute of Peace, national park passes, and even proposed coins and stadiums; scholars like Steven Levitsky and Barbara Walter now openly describe the United States as a competitive authoritarian or electoral autocracy rather than a full democracy. Bondi’s January 24 letter to Walz explicitly tied any “ending” of Metro Surge to turning over Minnesota’s voter rolls and welfare data, scrapping sanctuary policies, and opening local jails to ICE—a fusion of immigration enforcement, election control, and retributive justice that DOJ then sealed with a literal Trump banner on its headquarters.

Against that backdrop, what happened in Minnesota this month is not just a local failure. When a regime can kill citizens on camera, call them “terrorists” without evidence, refuse to share the evidence it does have, expand the agencies involved, and then offer an “ending” story that both parties and much of the press gratefully adopt while the operations continue elsewhere, it is hard to see how “still a democracy under threat” remains the right description.

That is why I find myself writing this not as an advocate but as a witness. In principle, institutions could still change course, but my considered judgment—as a social theorist and as a person trying to tell the truth in real time—is that the opposition we have has already buckled and chosen the “protesters won” story over the people it claims to represent. The information exists. Local journalists, volunteers, and ordinary people like Stella Carlson have done their part, at real personal cost. What is missing is any institutional opposition with sufficient reach and will to treat that information as binding reality once it conflicts with a comforting story. I hope I am wrong about how far gone the system already is. But given the record, silence feels less like caution and more like complicity.

                              ***

Postscript: 

In the week since Tom Homan first declared the surge “over,” the official numbers have only gotten more surreal. On February 19, he told CNN there are “probably…2,000” agents still in Minnesota but insisted the “immigration surge” is over and that the state will be back to a “regular footprint” of 150 within a week. The anchor did not ask how 2,000 counts as anything but surge‑level presence, or how this squares with his own claim five days earlier that “well over a thousand” of 3,000 had already left and “hundreds more” were leaving in the next few days. On February 18—between those two sets of numbers—NPR reported that intimidation and detention of legal observers in Minneapolis are increasing, not fading, with windows smashed, guns drawn, and observers held for eight hours at the Whipple building. On February 20, Representatives Ilhan Omar and Angie Craig, forced by a Noem‑imposed seven‑day rule to book their oversight visit more than a week in advance, were shown an emptied and freshly scrubbed Whipple facility and told there are now “fewer than 500” agents in Minnesota, that only about 20 people a day are being picked up, and that no observers have been held there in recent days. They called the emptiness “convenient,” but publicly accepted the 500‑agent figure and did not press the obvious questions about who had been moved out hours before, or how any of this fits with the continuing reports of harassment and suburban raids. Taken together, those three days capture the new normal: incompatible numbers and narratives offered in rapid succession, and a political and media class—including Democrats—willing to accept each in turn without forcing them to add up, while the largest interior ICE deployment in the country quietly continues in Minnesota and other cities slip under the same gun out of frame. 

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Selected sources (with links)

• Bring Me The News live blog, Feb. 16, 2026:
  https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/list-of-ice-raids-major-updates-in-minnesota-on-monday-feb-16
  

• ICEOut Minnesota (raid alerts / maps):
  https://iceout.org   (Note: Do not click on a  EULA if prompted, as gov't monitors traffic on this site) 

• Sahan Journal, “Operation Metro Surge hasn’t ended. It’s expanded to the suburbs,” Feb. 19, 2026:
  https://sahanjournal.com/immigration/ice-minnesota-suburbs-operation-metro-surge/
  

• LAist, “As ICE raids continue, volunteers say grocery deliveries are still critically needed,” Feb. 17, 2026:
  https://laist.com/news/politics/ice-raids-volunteers-say-grocery-deliveries-are-still-critically-needed

• The Current GA, “Aggressive ICE stops in Chatham County raise fears among residents  https://thecurrentga.org/2026/02/19/aggressive-ice-stops-in-chatham-county-raise-fears-among-residents/

• East End Beacon/Riverhead News Review:As ICE raids grow in Riverhead, OLA presses for public safety: https://riverheadnewsreview.timesreview.com/2026/02/132020/as-ice-raids-grow-in-riverhead-ola-presses-for-public-safety/

  
  

• NPR, Meg Anderson, “Watching ICE isn’t a crime, but officers tell people it is https://www.npr.org/2026/02/18/nx-s1-5699708/ice-observers-impeding-obstructing-interfering

• CBS News, “Bondi seeks Minnesota voter rolls, welfare data to ‘help …’,” Jan. 24, 2026:
  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bondi-minnesota-voter-rolls-welfare-data-walz-immigration-shootings/

Good news for Trump before midterms!!

 

He’s still more popular than cockroaches

Donald Trump’s disapproval rating, this time according to the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, among all Americans is currently 61%, which means he is not as unpopular as wasps, but is disliked more than spiders (57% – I know, I know, spiders are not insects, but YouGov included them on the list ) and ants (52%).

Cockroaches have a disapproval rating of 84% - worse than Trump's approval rating.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/18/ants-wasps-trump-and-the-midterms 

 

OPERATION METRO-SURGE DIDN'T END-- IT JUST WENT DARK

 (Based on a 30 page report including topically organized bibliography here)

For about a month, Operation Metro Surge turned Minneapolis–St. Paul into the most closely watched domestic story in the United States. Masked federal agents fanned out through neighborhoods, schools closed, families hid indoors, and at least two U.S. citizens—Renée Good and Alex Pretti—were killed by federal immigration officers. Evidence in their cases was withheld from state investigators, and thousands of people, including citizens, were swept up and disappeared into a rotating archipelago of detention sites. Then, on February 12, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan announced that Metro Surge was ending.

Since that day, almost everything the public thinks it knows about the “end” of the operation comes from Homan’s mouth and from politicians’ victory laps. Almost nothing comes from verifiable reporting on the ground.

I. The Spectacle

For weeks, the country watched an unprecedented domestic deployment of ICE and related federal forces into Minnesota’s largest cities. The numbers and images were staggering:

• At its peak, roughly 3,000 federal immigration officers operated in the state—many masked, often unidentifiable, moving through residential neighborhoods and around schools.
• At least two citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, were killed by these agents; another person died in federal custody.
• Minnesota’s attorney general, Keith Ellison, testified that his office had been denied basic evidence in the Good and Pretti cases: the weapon, shell casings, even access to a victim’s car. State investigators were told, in effect, to accept federal word on faith.
• Residents described people being grabbed off streets and out of vehicles, then vanished into far-flung detention centers before lawyers or family could locate them. Some estimates put the number of those swept up at well over 4,000.

This was not “routine immigration enforcement.” It looked and felt like an occupation: masked agents, opaque chains of custody, a cloud of terror that drove families underground and forced neighbors to improvise support networks just to get food and basic supplies to those too afraid to leave their homes.

For about a month, media volume matched the stakes. Minnesota dominated domestic coverage; international outlets in Europe ran segments and explainers. The spectacle was impossible to ignore.

II. The Pivot

On February 12, the narrative changed with a single statement.

Tom Homan announced that Operation Metro Surge was ending. He did not present data, manifests, or third-party confirmation. He simply stated that the operation was over, that hundreds of officers would leave, and that Minnesota would see a return to an “original footprint” of 80–150 agents.

In the following days, he appeared on major Sunday shows. On CBS’s Face the Nation, he claimed that “well over 1,000 people” had already been “removed,” and that several hundred more would leave imminently. The phrasing was vague: did “people” mean federal agents, deported migrants, arrestees transferred out of state, or some combination? He did not clarify. He also listed so many carve-outs—rapid-response teams, church protection units, fraud investigators, jail liaisons—that the promised return to a small footprint became mathematically and operationally incoherent.

Still, that was enough. Within a day, most major outlets were reporting that Metro Surge was “ending,” “over,” or “winding down.” Very few readers would have realized that the only basis for those claims was a set of uncorroborated assertions by Tom Homan—the border czar brought in as the 'grown up' to replace the more volatile CBP commander, Gregory Bovino, whose aggressive rhetoric had become 'bad optics,' effectively rebranding rather than ending the operation.

What followed, almost immediately, were two mutually incompatible victory narratives.

III. Two Potemkin Victories

On the Republican side, the line was simple: the surge worked.

In this telling, Minnesota had been forced into “unprecedented cooperation.” Homan and allies suggested that the state had finally come around on enforcing federal immigration law and that the operation’s success justified similar surges in other “sanctuary” jurisdictions. The message to other states was clear: resist and you will get Minneapolis.

On the mainstream Democratic and liberal side, an apparently opposite story took hold just as quickly: activists had won.

Television segments and op-eds framed the announced ending as a civil-rights-style victory. Commentators praised Minnesota’s protesters, legal observers, and Senator Amy Klobachur, On X, thanked activists for “standing up” and “staring down” federal power. The mayor of Minneapolis, appearing on The Daily Show, credited community resistance, detailed the economic damage, and then pivoted to a tourism pitch: book a flight, stay in a hotel, come enjoy a newly peaceful city. The governor thanked activists in a jogging-shorts video posted on X,  and urged people to get outside and enjoy the weather.These narratives contradict each other. Either Minnesota made real concessions in exchange for the surge’s end, as Homan claimed, or it did not, as state officials insisted. Either the operation ended because it succeeded on federal terms, or it ended because it failed in the face of local resistance. They cannot both be true

Yet both parties had strong incentives to maintain their Potemkin versions. Republicans needed a success story to justify the surge model and to warn other states. Democrats needed a story of activist triumph to offer their base some sense of agency and to avoid admitting how thoroughly they had been outflanked on the ground.

In the middle sat Minnesotans who had actually lived through the occupation—many of whom said nothing fundamental had changed.

IV. The Black Hole

The most telling fact about Metro Surge after February 12 is not what has been reported but what hasn’t

In the days following Homan’s announcement, one would expect a basic set of questions to be answered by reporters:

• How many federal agents have actually left Minnesota?
• What is the visible presence of ICE and related units on Minneapolis and St. Paul streets now?
• Are families who spent weeks hiding indoors now venturing out?
• Have arrests, raids, and harassment truly stopped, or merely slowed?

Instead, coverage evaporated.

National outlets that had saturated the surge itself sent no one back for “after” shots. There were no datelined dispatches from hotel lobbies or airport gates, no counts of departing convoys, no interviews with residents describing a tangible shift in day-to-day life. Local TV and print ran a handful of desk-written “drawdown” stories that simply repeated Homan’s numbers and administration talking points.

Investigative outlets that might have been expected to dig deeper remained silent. Five days after the supposed end of one of the most aggressive domestic deployments in recent U.S. history, there were no major investigative pieces testing the official claims. The journalists who did the hard work of documenting abuses during the surge did not, or could not, deliver a public audit of its conclusion.

On social media, the collapse was even more dramatic. A story that had been a top trending topic for weeks essentially disappeared. Posts from Minnesota residents saying “I still see them out my window” or sharing new videos of harassment drew a few dozen views. Discussions about the surge mutated almost entirely into abstract talk about funding levels and congressional negotiations. Almost nobody seemed interested in the basic question: Did the agents actually leave?

It is hard not to describe that as an information black hole. The closest recent parallel, in terms of a story that went from all-consuming to opaque, is the Nord Stream sabotage: immense initial attention, followed by years of unresolved core questions and a vacuum filled mostly by speculation. In Minnesota, the energy dissipated even faster.

V. What Didn’t End

While the “ending” of Metro Surge dominates the political and media narratives, the underlying architecture that made it possible is still expanding.

• A large federal presence remains in Minnesota. Even after a reported withdrawal of 700 officers earlier in February, estimates still put roughly 2,000 federal immigration agents in the state. Officials talk of “residual” security forces, rapid-response teams, and specialized units that will stay in place indefinitely. Local observers continue to report ICE activity at levels similar to during the surge, including harassment of legal observers and residents.
• ICE and DHS are quietly building out a national grid. Leaked documents and reporting show more than a hundred new leases and expansions for ICE offices and warehouse-style facilities in or near major urban areas, including proximity to schools, hospitals, and government service centers. The intent is clear: a permanent, geographically distributed infrastructure capable of rapid surge into any city, with 150+ new locations secured through multi-year leases.
• Detention capacity is increasing rapidly. ICE’s detained population has reached record highs, and planned capacity is moving toward six figures with $38.3 billion allocated for 92,600 beds operational by November 2026—the midterm election month. These are not temporary overflow facilities; they are long-term carceral investments.
• Data collection and targeting are accelerating. At the same time that surges have rolled through cities, the federal government has pressed states to turn over complete voter rolls and welfare data (encompassing 40+ million records from 12 states), and has integrated facial recognition and other technologies into immigration and “public safety” operations. The same apparatus that can disappear residents into detention can also flag and pre-label people as “agitators” or “threats” well before anyone arrives on their block, with 655+ protesters, journalists, and legal observers added to surveillance lists.

In other words: the named operation may have been declared over, but the system that produced it is only getting stronger.

VI. The Authoritarian Lesson

Seen in this light, Operation Metro Surge looks less like a one-off crisis and more like a test.From the administration’s perspective, the test was straightforward:

• Could they flood a major American city with masked federal agents exercising broad and abusive powers?
• Could they get away with killing citizens in broad daylight caught on film, while contradicting footage that showed the unjustifiable killings by labeling the victims as domestic terrorists who had been trying to kill the agents? Could they withhold evidence, and face no meaningful criminal consequences?
• Could they pressure a state government by tying the withdrawal of forces to unrelated demands, like access to voter rolls and welfare databases, as AG Pam Bondi did in a letter addressed to Governor Tim Walz?
• Could they defy court orders thousands of times, disappear people into a nationwide detention archipelago in which habeas corpus does not apply, and still ride out the media and political backlash?
• Could they then declare the operation “ended” on their own timetable, on their own terms, without having to submit to an external audit?

On each point, the answer appears to be yes. There were political and reputational costs, especially in the early days of the surge. But those costs have proved navigable. The forces are still in place in significant numbers. The national infrastructure has grown. The narrative of an “ending” has been broadly accepted in official circles.

From the perspective of democracy, this is not a test you can afford to pass.

What has emerged in the wake of Metro Surge is not a functioning representative democracy confronting and correcting an abuse. It is a political system in which both major parties have chosen optics over substance, competing Potemkin victories over a shared commitment to truth, and short-term narrative control over long-term institutional repair.

The people who lived through the surge—those who lost family members, those who were disappeared and returned, those who are still hiding—are left in a kind of double exile: first from the protection of their own state, and then from its memory.

If there is a window left for reversing that trajectory, it will not be found in official statements about “missions changing,” nor in talk show applause lines about activist victories. It will begin with something much simpler and harder: a refusal to accept announcements as endings, and a renewed insistence on seeing, counting, and naming what is actually happening on the ground—even, and especially, when the cameras have moved on.