ICE Just Detained the Superintendent of Iowa’s Largest School District

Superintendent Ian Roberts of Des Moines Public Schools was detained Friday by federal agents. The reason for his detention was not clear, according to the school district.

An email issued Friday afternoon by DMPS Board President Jackie Norris announced that Associate Superintendent Matt Smith would take over Roberts’s role effective “immediately” and “until further notice.”

“This action follows Dr. Ian Roberts being detained by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents this morning,” Norris wrote in an email obtained by Iowa Public Radio. “We have no confirmed information as to why Dr. Roberts is being detained or the next potential steps.”

Roberts’s whereabouts are also, alarmingly, unclear. A list of detainees on ICE’s website lists the educational administrator in the Pottawattamie County Jail in Council Bluffs, but an employee at the jail told Iowa Public Radio that Roberts was “not located there.”

The ICE website claims that Roberts was born in Guyana. Roberts’s district profile states that the educator’s parents were immigrants from Guyana and that he grew up in Brooklyn.

Roberts has been responsible for the largest public school district in Iowa since 2023. At the time of his hiring, Roberts’s “focus on creating equitable experience for students” was openly celebrated by then–school board Chair Teree Caldwell-Johnson. Roberts was named a top 100 education influencer by a K-12 magazine, District Administration, earlier this summer for his Reimagining Education program, a plan to modernize the district’s classrooms as requested by local residents.

It’s not the first instance of federal immigration officers throwing their weight around to neutralize their dissenters’ influence. In June, masked ICE agents detained New York City Comptroller Brad Lander after he tried to escort a defendant out of immigration court.

Justice Clarence Thomas cast doubt on the Supreme Court’s commitment to following legal precedent Thursday, as the high court gears up to revisit major rulings holding back Donald Trump’s sweeping policy agenda.

Speaking at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C., Thursday evening, Thomas said it was time to rethink a commitment to “stare decisis,” a legal principle that the court should stand by things decided previously.

“It’s not some sort of talismanic deal where you can just say ‘stare decisis’ and not think, turn off the brain, right?” Thomas said.

“We never go to the front, see who’s driving the train, where is it going. And you could go up there in the engine room, find it’s an orangutan driving the train, but you want to follow that just because it’s a train,” Thomas said, ostensibly comparing decades of previous decisions by justices sitting in his very same position to the attitudes of apes.

“I don’t think that I have the gospel,” Thomas said, “that any of these cases that have been decided are the gospel, and I do give perspective to the precedent. But ... the precedent should be respectful of our legal tradition, and our country, and our laws, and be based on something, not just something somebody dreamt up and others went along with.”

If Thomas’s remarks are anything to go by, the conservative majority is set to flip major precedents during the upcoming session.

In December, the Supreme Court is expected to weigh the 1935 case Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, in which the court rejected Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s attempt to fire a conservative commissioner appointed by President Herbert Hoover overseeing FDR’s New Deal policies.

Earlier this week, Justice Elena Kagan slammed the Supreme Court’s conservative majority for approving Trump’s emergency request to remove Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission. The court had previously allowed Trump to oust Gwynne Wilcox at the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris at the Merit Systems Protection Board—whose terms weren’t due to expire until 2029—as well as three Democratic appointees on the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Breaking with precedent on Humphrey will allow Trump to continue his unfettered campaign of firing Democratic appointees.

The Supreme Court is also set to consider whether to roll back anti-gerrymandering rules established by the 1986 case Thornburg v. Gingles, as part of Louisiana’s suit challenging the use of race in redistricting efforts. Trump’s Department of Justice filed an amicus brief Wednesday arguing that the Voting Rights Act does not provide “a compelling interest that can justify race-predominant districting” and urging the court to lay waste to the landmark decision.

Pete Hegseth’s big, urgent military summit will just be a “pep rally” for what he calls the “warrior ethos.”

Earlier this week, the defense secretary ordered a mass gathering of every senior military offier—a group of admirals and generals that could total well over 1,000—in Quantico, Virginia. Rumors swirled about what the reason could be. Some said a mass firing, others said a fitness test. But the meeting, which is set to take place next week, will actually just be an opportunity for Hegseth to do some pompous grandstanding about the “warrior ethos” he’s been so obsessed with for years, CNN reported Friday.

“It’s about getting the horses into the stable and whipping them into shape,” an anonymous defense official told the outlet. “And the guys with the stars on their shoulders make for a better audience from an optics standpoint. This is a showcase for Hegseth to tell them: Get on board, or potentially have your career shortened.”

The meeting announcement was sudden and ambiguous, and will pull these senior military leaders away from their previous assignments.

Hegesth’s “warrior ethos” hinges on his belief that the military is too woke. He is expected to use Tuesday’s meeting to go over new fitness and grooming standards for officers.

“Yes, totally worth the cost and time and effort to pull hundreds of people away from their commands to listen to Hegseth and his deep thoughts about being a warrior,” Tom Nichols wrote.

Hegseth plans to have his speech recorded and later released.

An ICE agent has been “relieved of his duties” after he was caught on camera assaulting a woman in a Manhattan immigration court Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security announced Friday.

The woman, identified by ProPublica as Monica Moreta-Galarza, was pleading with officers at 26 Federal Plaza to release her detained husband when the masked agent picked her up, shoved her into the wall, and pushed her to the ground. Moreta-Galarza was taken to the hospital for a head injury and discharged shortly afterward, reported the investigative outlet.

The federal officer who attacked Moreta-Galarza was put on leave pending an investigation, according to Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin. In a statement, McLaughlin condemned the officer’s actions as “unacceptable and beneath the men and women of ICE.” She refused to elaborate, however, as to whether the unidentified agent had been suspended or fired over his violent actions.

Videos taken right before the attack depict Moreta-Galarza shouting at ICE agents in Spanish as they pried her husband away from his children.

“You guys don’t care about anything!” she shouted, to which an agent responded, “Adios, adios.”

Moreta-Galarza told ProPublica that her family had experienced similar violence in Ecuador before they came to America.

“I didn’t think I’d come here to the United States and the same thing would happen to me,” Moreta-Galarza said.

ICE agents across the country have taken to wearing masks in an attempt to shield their identities from public scrutiny as they ransack American communities. DHS has provided federal support to their anonymizing decision, openly acknowledging that officers would continue to violate agency-specific mask bans put in place by state governments.

But the agent who attacked Moreta-Galarza had his full face on display, allowing NPR to identify him as the same officer involved in the arrest of a court observer last month.

“The agent, who was unmasked and had been sitting in the waiting area earlier, yelled at NPR: ‘Stop fucking following me! Why are you fucking following me?’ before turning and yelling the same thing at the court observer,” the radio outlet reported.

The court reporter was then taken into an enclosed elevator bay, taken into federal custody, and ultimately received two citations, according to NPR—trespassing in a secure area and failing to follow lawful commands from an officer.

An Arizona state legislator called for the execution of Democratic U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal for her statements advocating for peaceful protest, which were clipped out of context.

Republican state Representative John Gillette wrote of Jayapal on Wednesday: “Until people like this, that advocate for the overthrow of the American government are tried convicted and hanged … it will continue.” (“It” seemingly referring to political violence.)

Gillette’s threat came in response to an X account with the name “Patriot Oasis,” which shared a video notably cut to mischaracterize Jayapal’s statements in a March Zoom session, during which the congresswoman spoke about organizing peaceful protests against the MAGA agenda.

In context, Jayapal said:

We want to help you seed, participate, and coordinate these nonviolent resistance actions that are going to make a difference over the next coming months. If we were in the labor movement—and shout out to any of our union members that are on this call—we might call this getting strike ready. I think of it as getting us strike ready, or street ready, and part of that is understanding our own strength.

The “Patriot Oasis” version starts with Jayapal saying, “We might call this getting strike ready. I think of it as getting us strike ready, or street ready, and part of that is understanding our own strength.” The user tagged FBI Director Kash Patel and posted an inflammatory caption: “BREAKING: Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D) calls on Democrats to be ‘strike ready’ and ‘street ready.’ This is a CLEAR call to violence!”

The contextless clip has circulated widely in right-wing corners of social media since the spring, as users attempt to advance the baseless notion of Democratic lawmakers inspiring violence with their rhetoric. It has reemerged as Republicans have sought to advance that narrative in the wake of the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

In this instance, the only elected official guilty of calling for political violence was Gillette.