Maine Officials Say They're Expecting ICE Operations In Coming Days

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Top officials in Maine said they are expecting the Trump administration to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to the state for enforcement operations soon.

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills on Wednesday in a video uploaded on X said operations may be conducted in the state “in the coming days.”

Mills and other local Democratic officials appeared to make references to protests in Minneapolis that arose after an ICE officer fatally shot driver Renee Good after she drove her vehicle toward the agent. The ICE agent was struck by the vehicle and suffered internal bleeding in the incident, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE.

“If they come here, I want any federal agents—and the president of the United States—to know what this state stands for,” Mills said, referring to the operation. “We stand for the rule of law. We oppose violence. We stand for peaceful protest. We stand for compassion, for integrity and justice.”

My statement on speculation that the Federal government may conduct Federal law enforcement operations in Maine in the coming days pic.twitter.com/aNriEQv7aI

— Governor Janet Mills (@GovJanetMills) January 14, 2026

Aside from Mills, Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline, a Democrat, wrote in a social media post that it was his understanding “that there will be ICE enforcement in ... Lewiston, Maine soon. I urge residents and businesses to know their rights and have a plan of action if ICE stops them in the street, visits their home, or visits their business.”

The mayor of Portland, Maine, also suggested that operations may be coming to his city.

“Portland rejects the need for the deployment of ICE agents into our neighborhoods,” Portland Mayor Mark Dion, also a Democrat, told local media outlet News Center Maine.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, Maine in a statement about potential ICE operations that he wants “to encourage everyone to look out a little closer for one another and be mindful of the rights that our Constitution gives to every man, woman, and child in this nation.”

DHS has conducted operations in a number of major U.S. cities since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, targeting illegal immigrants with an emphasis on violent criminal offenders. On Thursday, Trump warned he may invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy troops to quell protests and violence against the federal officers sent to Minneapolis amid an ICE push in the city.

“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump wrote in social media post.

Homeland Security also said in a statement that federal law enforcement officers on Wednesday were attacked in Minneapolis by three illegal immigrants with a shovel and broom handle in a bid to evade arrest.

The claims made by local Maine officials did not include details about the expected ICE operations, and DHS has not commented on their statements.

The Epoch Times contacted DHS for comment Thursday but did not hear back by time of publication.

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/17/2026 - 10:30

How The EU Is Messing Up The AI Boom

Authored by Thomas Kolbe via American Thinker,

Economic prosperity is created in free markets by innovative companies. Over 50 percent of globally operating AI unicorns are located in the U.S., while Europe plays virtually no role. The race for the next future technology is already decided.

It seems that economic history is repeating itself. On the stock markets, companies in the artificial intelligence and data center sectors are being traded feverishly. Massive capital flows into this technology. Much of it resembles the dot-com boom 25 years ago.

Structurally and regionally, little has changed since then: The U.S. and China are fighting for pole position, while the European Union’s economy remains largely on the sidelines, pushed into a spectator role by EU regulators.

Unicorns as a Measure of Innovation

An interesting measure of the EU’s lag in artificial intelligence is the number of so-called unicorns -- private startups valued at at least one billion U.S. dollars before going public. This metric is considered a valid indicator of a region’s innovative capacity -- and for the EU, the comparison with the U.S. is catastrophic.

About 1,700 such innovative companies currently operate in the U.S., while the EU has only around 280. The U.S. dominates this market with over 50 percent share, whereas the European economy lags far behind with less than ten percent of the global market.

This economic gap is also reflected in investment volume. Hyperscalers such as Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta invested over $320 billion in AI and corresponding data center infrastructure this year alone. More than 550 new projects -- with a focus in Virginia, Texas, and Arizona—are forming the backbone of a new economy.

Data center capacity in the U.S. grew by around 160 percent this year, while Europe’s capacity increased by only about 75 percent, equaling an investment volume of just under €100 billion.

With investments of around $125 billion, China’s economy also lags far behind the U.S. An interesting context -- especially from the perspective of European, and particularly German, policymakers -- is that nuclear power is gaining noticeable momentum in these regions.

Even if green-minded Germany refuses to acknowledge it due to its ideological stance against nuclear energy, the enormous energy demand of new technologies will in the future be covered to a significant extent by the expansion of nuclear power.

Among the few major projects in the European Union are the Brookfield project in Sweden, with an investment volume of around $10 billion, and the Start Campus in Portugal, which could also activate nearly $10 billion in investments.

Crash of Ideologies

Especially in AI, the ideological clash between the U.S. and the EU can be observed in practice and in all its consequences. While the U.S. relies on deregulation and private solutions, removing barriers for intense competition, EU Europe still adheres to the mantra of political global control. Nothing may happen unless Brussels officials have schemed it at their green table in all their wisdom.

The Draghi motto still applies here: Only massive public investments -- credit-financed and centrally planned -- will, in the view of EU statist planners, help overcome the enormous gap between Europe and the U.S.

In the simulations of the EU Commission’s master plan, now stretched over seven years under Ursula von der Leyen, everything seems surprisingly simple, almost simplified. The EU’s Invest-AI plan intends to borrow around €50 billion in loans and invest them in selected projects in the coming years. This is supposed to trigger private investments of €150 billion, ultimately creating four AI gigafactories.

Welcome to the socialist textbook world of “Habeckonomics”: a system in which state projects like Northvolt repeatedly fail. Yet as long as public guarantees, subsidies, and state-guaranteed purchase prices are in prospect, the small flame of political hope continues flickering in Europe’s lukewarm wind.

As usual, we also observe the typical European jungle of funding programs, subsidies, and steering projects. These include “Horizon Europe,” which is meant to strengthen computing power in science, the RAISE pilot, and the Gen-AI-4-EU initiative, together investing another billion euros in the EU’s digital infrastructure.

The Power of Competition

The ideological clash between the two major economic blocks, the U.S. and the EU, is producing strange effects. While the open capital market in the U.S. lets startups sprout like mushrooms from fertile soil, EU regulation -- especially under the Digital Markets Act -- has fostered a predatory mentality. That this was likely the Eurocrats’ goal from the start comes as no surprise.

Brussels imposed more than €3.2 billion in competition fines this year, mainly targeting U.S. corporations. Brussels has degenerated into a bureaucratic leviathan -- a parasitic glutton absorbing economic energy and generating ossified structures and economic vacuum.

In EU Europe, the motto is: the regulatory framework matters most -- and the state takes its cut. That private industry prefers other locations and withdraws capital matters little to Brussels’ extraction experts.

Against the backdrop of Europe’s massive descent into a climate-socialist dystopia, it is surprising that the roots of libertarian economic thinking originate precisely on this continent. Consider the great economist Ludwig von Mises, who repeatedly pointed out that it is the entrepreneur who drives the engine of the market economy through profit-seeking, and that without exception, decentralized processes create prosperity -- while state interventions regularly derail it.

Civilization-superior models like the free market sink in the waves of ideological EU infantilism. Its repressive climate socialism promotes the growth of corporatist structures in which politics and subsidized parts of the economy carry out the extraction, eliminating competition.

The rigid adherence to centrally planned control of the new tech industry tragically mirrors the timeline of the dot-com era. What Europe fails to understand is that groundbreaking innovation inevitably triggers an investment boom, often resulting in overinvestment and a stock market crash -- but ultimately leaving economically profitable structures permanently woven into the existing economy.

As with companies like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft, Europeans will look back in a few years at these months and examine this intercontinental economic bifurcation through the examples of OpenAI, Gemini, or Perplexity. The energy needed will come from French nuclear reactors and soon also from Polish nuclear power.

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/17/2026 - 08:10

Biden-Appointed Minnesota Judge Limits Federal Immigration Enforcement Actions At Protests

A federal judge in Minnesota on Friday ruled that federal immigration agents can’t detain or use nonlethal munitions and crowd dispersal tools on peaceful protesters who aren’t obstructing authorities, including when these people are observing the agents.

The decision, handed down by U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez - appointed by President Biden in 2021, stems from a lawsuit brought last month by six local activists.

These individuals, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Minnesota, said that Homeland Security (DHS)  personnel were infringing on their First Amendment rights when they observed federal agents performing their duties.

As Joseph Lord reports for The Epoch Times, after the ruling, Tricia McLaughlin, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, issued a statement saying her agency was taking “appropriate and constitutional measures to uphold the rule of law and protect our officers and the public from dangerous rioters.”

She said people have assaulted officers, vandalized their vehicles and federal property, and attempted to impede officers from doing their work.

“We remind the public that rioting is dangerous—obstructing law enforcement is a federal crime and assaulting law enforcement is a felony,” McLaughlin said.

Protestors and federal agents have clashed during enforcement operations in recent months but intensified after an Immigrations and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good during an encounter on Jan. 7 that was captured on video from several angles.

The incident has met with clashing interpretations, with some defending the ICE agent’s shooting as self defense and others alleging that he used excessive force.

Video shows that in the moments before the shooting, four ICE agents stopped their vehicle in the middle of the street, exited, and approached Good’s vehicle which was blocking their path. The footage also shows Good’s female partner, Becca Good, heckling immigration law enforcement.

As one agent attempted to reach into Good’s car and open her door from the inside, Good turned the wheel to the right, away from Ross, and accelerated her car, allegedly striking the agent, who fired his weapon, according to video and audio. The footage also records Good’s wife, who was outside the vehicle, telling her to “drive, baby, drive.”

Protestors took to the streets of Minneapolis on Jan. 10 following the shooting.

Attorneys for the federal side argued that agents operate under established guidelines to uphold immigration statutes and ensure personal safety.

They said officers have been attacked, harassed, and doxxed nationwide and in Minnesota, and that their responses have been appropriate and justified.

Under the new mandate, agents are barred from detaining drivers or their passengers  unless they are obstructing or interfering with agents. The judge said that trailing vehicles at a safe distance does not inherently warrant a traffic stop.

Safely following agents “at an appropriate distance does not, by itself, create reasonable suspicion to justify a vehicle stop,” the ruling said.

Menendez added that agents must have reasonable suspicion supported by solid evidence of a crime or active disruption to officers duties.

Peaceful assembly and oversight, without direct meddling, fall outside permissible reasons for intervention.

The Epoch Times reached out to DHS and the ACLU but did not hear back before publication.

Tyler Durden Sat, 01/17/2026 - 07:35