ICE OUT: Border czar Tom Homan said yesterday that he will draw down about 700 immigration agents from Minnesota to focus on “smart law enforcement, not less law enforcement.”  That would still leave about 2,000 agents in the Minneapolis area. 

  Asked by reporters whether immigration officers would cease to challenge people if they are non-white or speak with an accent, Homan dodged, saying only that there would be “targeted” immigration enforcement toward criminals. He said the average immigrant in the country illegally will not be immune. “If you are in the country illegally, you are not off the table,” he said.

  He blamed protesters for some violent confrontations. “Hateful or extreme rhetoric against ICE personnel is completely unacceptable,” he said.

  Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called Homan’s announcement “a step in the right direction” and Gov. Tim Walz called for “state-led investigations into the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, and an end to this campaign of retribution.” The feds have blocked state authorities from investigating the two killings at the hands of immigration officers.

  Senate Democrats said they plan to introduce legislation to govern the actions and behavior of immigration officers. Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii said, “You would not tolerate it if a cop, fully masked without identification, snatched someone off the street in broad daylight without a warrant or due process.”

  Also yesterday a federal prosecutor was fired after telling a judge that she was exhausted from handling the immigration caseload and admitting that ICE ignores judicial orders. “What do you want me to do?” Julie Le asked the judge at one point. “The system sucks. This job sucks.” 

GET OUT THE VOTE: President Trump is not backing down from his call for  federal oversight or control over federal elections, rather than the states. “Look at some of the places, horrible corruption on elections and the federal government should not allow that,” Trump said. “The federal government should get involved.

  For five years Trump has been screaming fraud while unable to expose any. He has offered nothing. And yet he said,  “When you see crooked elections, and we had plenty of them, and by the way we had them last time … go to 2020. Look at the facts that are coming out, rigged crooked elections.” 

  No facts have come out. A crooked election is one he loses.

  In a related development, Fulton County, Georgia moved in court to get back the 2020 election ballots and records seized by the FBI last week.

  The motion filed under seal in federal court in Georgia also seeks unsealing of the affidavit that was filed in support of the search warrant. The legal justification for the FBI search and seizure has not been revealed.

TRANSITION OF OPINION: Two major medical groups this week have come out for limitations on gender-related surgical treatments for minors in the US.

  Both The American Medical Association, the nation’s largest doctors’ organization, and The American Society of Plastic Surgeons said surgery should be delayed until adulthood. 

  The Trump administration has been campaigning for such limits. The issue is usually in regard to mastectomies performed in the early teen years when breasts develop.

  The American Academy of Pediatrics is not changing its stand on gender-related surgery for minors. Their statement said, “Patients, their families and their physicians — not politicians — should be the ones to make decisions together about what care is best for them.”

TAKEN: “Today Show” anchor Savannah Guthrie made an emotional appeal for proof that her 84-year-old mother is alive, four days after Nancy Guthrie appears to have been abducted from her home outside Tucson.

  Guthrie said her mother is dependent upon medications she doesn’t have and, “We’re ready to talk.”

  Nancy Guthrie was dropped at home at 9:45 pm Saturday after a family dinner and her pacemaker last synched with her cellphone at about 2 am Sunday 

ON DEADLINE: You knew something was up when the Washington Post announced it would not send reporters to cover the Olympics. In a sad harbinger for the future of professional journalism, the Post announced that it is laying off 30 percent of its staff including 300 of its 800 working journalists.

  The Post under the ownership of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has been unable to make a profit. But Bezos is the same guy who spent $75 million on Melania Trump’s laughable documentary, “Melania.”

  Matt Murray, The Post’s executive editor, said in a call with newsroom employees that the paper would turn its focus more to national news and politics, business, and health, and far less on other matters such as local, international news, and sports. Murray said, “If anything, today is about positioning ourselves to become more essential to people’s lives in what is becoming more crowded, competitive and complicated media landscape.” 

THE SPIN RACK: The Supreme Court rejected an appeal by California Republicans to block the congressional redistricting map that favors Democrats in that state passed by statewide vote. —Ryan Routh, the man who in 2024 laid in wait by a Florida golf course to gun down Donald Trump on the links was sentenced yesterday in a Florida federal court to life in prison. — Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, the British prince stripped of his titles, has moved out of his palatial 30-room mansion to more humble digs on orders of his brother, the king. — Pizza Hut announced that it is closing 300 of its locations, which sounds like a lot, but it’s just 3 percent of their restaurants. They are owned by Yum! Brands, which also owns Taco Bell and KFC. — China has become the first country to require mechanical car door handles both inside and out on new cars because electrically-operated handles can fail in an accident.  

BELOW THE FOLD:  Cold weather has it raining iguanas in Florida. The invasive reptiles get paralyzed by the cold … but not dead … and they fall from the trees.

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