On its way

Recently: What’s America need allies for? + Why didn’t the U.S. stop Pyongyang from going nuclear? Joel S. Wit’s new book, Fallout: The Inside Story of America’s Failure to Disarm North Korea.

Today: The regime in Tehran has killed thousands in two weeks. And it’s still not clearing the streets.

+ For members: How did U.S. immigration enforcement get so radical, so fast? Austin Kocher on Trump’s refitting of a system his predecessors built.

& New music from The Messthetics x James Brandon Lewis ...

‘Total control’

Iran has crushed mass protests before—in 2009, 2017, 2019, 2022. The regime is trying to crush these ones too: an internet blackout now in its sixth day, state television broadcasting pro-government rallies, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi declaring “total control” on Monday. But the scale appears to be pushing beyond precedent. Reports put the death toll as high as 3,000 in just over two weeks—far exceeding previous crackdowns. Footage via Starlink shows bodies in black bags outside a Tehran morgue, families searching among the dead. A 26-year-old, Erfan Soltani, faces execution as early as Wednesday. And yet protests have continued spreading, now to more than 600 locations across all 31 provinces. Is this 2022 again—or something different?

The regime was already at a historic legitimacy low. Its June war with Israel was a humiliation; the “Axis of Resistance” melted in days. Younger Iranians gave up on reform years ago. But none of that has translated into regime vulnerability—not yet. The Revolutionary Guard’s repressive capacity remains intact. There’s no obviously credible opposition inside or outside the country. Decades of sanctions have hollowed out the middle class that might otherwise drive change. And yet people keep protesting, despite the apparent scale of the killing. No crackdown in Iran has killed this many this fast. And for the first time, an American president is promising intervention while the clashes are happening (“HELP IS ON ITS WAY”). The regime has survived protests before. But it hasn’t faced this combination. … See Vali Nasr on the 2022 protests: “A whole new era.”

Meanwhile

• The Pentagon’s new AI partner. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Monday that Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok will operate on classified and unclassified Pentagon networks, alongside Google’s Gemini. Speaking at SpaceX headquarters in Texas, Hegseth pledged to make “all appropriate data” from military IT and intelligence databases available for “AI exploitation.” The Pentagon’s AI “will not be woke,” he said. Grok goes live later this month.
• Two countries ban Grok; more investigate. Malaysia and Indonesia became the first countries to block Grok over the weekend, after authorities found it generated non-consensual sexual images—including of minors—without meaningful safeguards. On Monday, the United Kingdom’s media regulator launched a formal investigation into whether the chatbot violated laws against illegal content. The European Union, India, and France are also scrutinizing. Musk called the British government’s investigation “fascist.”
• Nuclear-capable missile near NATO’s border. Russia fired its Oreshnik hypersonic missile at western Ukraine on Friday—the second use of the nuclear-capable weapon since the war began—striking near Lviv, close to Poland. Ukraine called an emergency UN Security Council session. On Monday, U.S. Deputy Ambassador Tammy Bruce accused Moscow of “dangerous escalation,” sabotaging the Trump administration’s peace efforts. The Kremlin claims the strike targeted an aircraft repair plant.
• A 25-year negotiation concludes. The EU Council voted on Thursday to approve a trade deal with the South American trade bloc Mercosur—Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay—ending a quarter-century of talks and creating the world’s largest free trade area by population. France, Ireland, Poland, Austria, and Hungary voted against; Belgium abstained. European farmers have protested fiercely. A signing ceremony is expected on Friday in Paraguay. The European Parliament still has to ratify.
• Central bankers rally behind Powell. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro opened a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over cost overruns at the Fed’s headquarters renovation—prompting backlash from Republican senators, Wall Street, and even Trump allies. On Tuesday, 12 central bankers—including the heads of the European Central Bank, Bank of England, and Bank of Canada—issued a statement of solidarity. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried to stop the investigation late last year. … See Stefan Eich on what’s driving political attacks against central banks around the world: “Declarations of independence.”

For members

Shock and awe

How did U.S. immigration enforcement get so radical, so fast? Austin Kocher on Trump’s refitting of a system his predecessors built.

On the morning of January 7, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, through the windshield of her SUV in south Minneapolis. Good had just dropped her six-year-old son off at school. She died at the hospital. The Department of Homeland Security called her a “domestic terrorist.”

It was the ninth time federal immigration agents had opened fire on someone since September—and the most incendiary. In October, a Border Patrol agent in Chicago shot Marimar Martinez, also a U.S. citizen, five times. DHS called her a “domestic terrorist” too, and charged her with assaulting federal agents—until prosecutors dropped all charges in November after evidence emerged contradicting the government’s account. Text messages showed the agent who shot her bragging to colleagues: “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has directed federal agencies to conduct large-scale immigration raids, and over the last several months, they’ve carried them out with overwhelming force. In late September, federal agents rappelled from helicopters into a Chicago apartment building, breaking doors, throwing flash grenades, and zip-tying residents. According to locals, they dragged people naked from the building and held them in custody, including U.S. citizens. This summer, Trump said he’d ordered “the single largest mass deportation program in history.” His immigration-policy advisor Stephen Miller has pushed ICE officers to conduct sweeping raids instead of targeted arrests, hitting housing blocks and workplaces—convenience stores, restaurants—where undocumented migrants might work.

Trump says he wants to go further than any other president in American history—but that would be further than presidents who also firmly enforced immigration laws. Pro-immigration critics nicknamed Barack Obama “Deporter in Chief.” So how much is Trump’s enforcement push a break with the past—and how much is built on it?

Austin Kocher is a research assistant professor at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. Kocher says it’s true that Trump’s enforcement regime is unprecedented in a lot of ways. Every key indicator of immigration enforcement has increased massively since his inauguration a year ago. In the first five months of his second term, arrests tripled. ICE officers now conduct massive street-level sweeps—something they rarely did before. And the administration keeps trying to circumvent, and sometimes break, laws that might restrain it.

Still, Kocher says, Trump’s enforcement push couldn’t have happened without the apparatus successive U.S. governments—Republican and Democratic—spent decades building. President Bill Clinton prepared the ground with his immigration reforms in the 1990s. Every president since has added new mechanisms of control. And even in the months before Trump’s return to the White House, the Biden administration was seeking to expand detention facilities. Now, Trump is testing the limits of executive power over immigration—and finding how few hold …

New music

‘Gestations’

The Messthetics are a D.C. jazz-rock trio featuring Fugazi’s former rhythm section—Joe Lally on bass, Brendan Canty on drums—and Anthony Pirog on guitar. James Brandon Lewis, a saxophonist and force in contemporary jazz known for intense, adventurous solos, joins them. The four released an album together in 2024 and return with Deface the Currency on February 20.