A Week Where the Pushback Finally Bites
It is not often that the machinery of federal power grinds to a halt and the people operating it have to back down. But over the course of two days, a series of setbacks for the current administration — a retreat from Minneapolis, a blocked spending bill, a judge's rebuke — added up to something worth noticing. Sarah Longwell, Tim Miller, and Bill Kristol chronicle a week that felt, in their telling, "moderately frabjous" — not triumphant, but proof that resistance can actually produce results.
The Minneapolis Retreat
The most visible reversal came when Tom Homan, the White House border czar, announced an end to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol operations in Minneapolis. The federal government had descended on the city with what was widely described as an occupation-style enforcement campaign. It did not break the city. Mayor Jacob Frey noted that the administration launched the operation believing it "could break us," but that Minnesotans demonstrated instead that "a love for our neighbors and a resolve to endure can outlast an occupation."
This was a real, if bounded, victory. The federal immigration enforcement apparatus — one that has operated with escalating aggression in cities across the country — met organized local resistance and withdrew. That is not nothing. Tom Homan's Border Patrol and ICE agents had been deployed in a manner that treated an American city like hostile territory. The retreat suggests there are limits to how far the federal government can push before the political and logistical costs outweigh the benefits.
Critics might note that the Minneapolis operation was scaled back, not dismantled. The broader deportation machinery remains fully funded and active elsewhere. A tactical withdrawal is not a strategic defeat.
Congress Pushes Back
On the same day, Senate Democrats blocked the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill. The result: for now, ICE and the Border Patrol will not receive additional funding beyond what was already appropriated. In the House, enough Republicans crossed the aisle to join Democrats in reclaiming congressional authority over tariff policy — a separation-of-powers check that had been all but abandoned.
Both moves signal that the legislative branch is remembering it has teeth.
The Courts Speak
A federal judge delivered perhaps the sharpest rebuke of the week. District Judge Richard J. Leon, appointed by George W. Bush, ordered the Defense Department to halt disciplinary proceedings against Senator Mark Kelly. The administration had targeted the retired Navy captain over political speech it apparently found inconvenient. Judge Leon did not mince words: "This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly's First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees."
Two days earlier, a federal grand jury had declined to indict Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers over a video the president disliked. Between the grand jury's refusal and the judge's ruling, a coordinated attempt to punish political opponents collapsed under its own weight.
The Epstein Documents — And What They Hide
Attorney General Pam Bondi's appearance before Congress drew sustained scrutiny, particularly her dismissive response to calls for the Justice Department to apologize to survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse. The administration had been ordered — by law passed just two months prior — to release unredacted Epstein documents, with redactions permitted only to protect victims' identities. Instead, the Justice Department redacted names of Epstein's own correspondents.
As Longwell, Miller, and Kristol write, "the Justice Department redacted the name of an Epstein correspondent from a 2014 email that said, 'Thank you for a fun night . . . your littlest girl was a little naughty.'" Another redaction hid the identity of the person to whom Epstein wrote in 2009: "where are you? are you ok, I loved the torture video."
"The 'wall of protection' that existed around 'the Caligula-like antics of Jeffrey Epstein and friends' hasn't yet been demolished. But we're closer than we were a couple of months ago to a real understanding of, and reckoning with, the Epstein scandal and coverup."
The piece also addresses the danger of overreach in the Epstein revelations. Sensationalism — claims about sulfuric acid and murder victims, unsubstantiated trafficking allegations — and guilt-by-association smears against journalists who had incidental contact with Epstein both damage the credibility of legitimate accountability efforts. The authors draw a line between serious investigation and conspiracy-theory mudslinging, arguing that the two are mutually destructive.
Critics might argue that drawing this line is easier in theory than in practice. Once a story reaches the cultural temperature of the Epstein case, the incentive structure rewards sensationalism and punishes restraint. The authors are right to warn against it — but the marketplace of attention rarely listens.
Approval Ratings and the Cost of Tariffs
The president's approval rating hit 40 percent, with disapproval at 56 percent — numbers comparable to George W. Bush's on election day 2006, when Republicans lost both chambers of Congress. Whether history repeats is unknowable. But the economic pressures building are visible.
The Financial Times reported that the administration is preparing to roll back some of its own steel and aluminum tariffs, having concluded they were raising prices on consumer goods — pie tins, food cans, washing machines — far beyond any benefit to domestic producers. As the authors note with some understatement, raising the costs of raw inputs has "ripple effects throughout the consumer-goods industry with economic harms that substantially outweigh the narrow benefits that have accrued to a small slice of domestic industry."
The reversal is an admission that the tariffs were a mistake. It does not undo the damage already done.
A Warning About Who Gets Confirmed
The piece closes with the collapse of Jeremy Carl's nomination to a senior State Department post. Carl's history of incendiary social media posts — promoting replacement-theory conspiracy theories, mocking victims of police violence, calling for the prosecution of political opponents — finally caught up with him when a Republican senator announced he would vote against confirmation. The fixation on Carl's anti-Israel remarks, while the more extreme content went less scrutinized, strikes the authors as oddly selective. It is a reminder that confirmation politics often punishes the politically inconvenient rather than the genuinely unqualified.
Bottom Line
This was a week where institutions that had been acquiescing — Congress, the courts, even the president's own party — started to push back. The results are partial and reversible, not transformative. But the pattern matters: unchecked power creates its own resistance, and the resistance, so far, is starting to win small fights.