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A federal judge heard arguments on Jan. 26, 2026, as the state of Minnesota sought a temporary restraining order to stop the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operation in the state.

(THE CONVERSATION) — A federal judge heard arguments on Jan. 26, 2026, as the state of Minnesota sought a temporary restraining order to stop the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operation in the state. The administration has sent some 3,000 immigration agents to Minnesota, and attorneys for the state have argued, in part, that it amounts to an unconstitutional occupation, on 10th Amendment grounds. Alfonso Serrano, a politics editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with Andrea Katz, a law scholar at Washington University in St. Louis, about the Minnesota lawsuit and its possible legal implications.

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What’s the legal issue at stake in this court case?

In Minnesota v. Noem, attorneys for the state are arguing that the federal government is acting illegally by intruding on a sphere of state power (the police power). They’re claiming violations of the 10th Amendment, which is this idea that under the U.S. Constitution, states are reserved powers that existed before the Constitution was drafted, powers that are not delegated to the federal government.

They’re also making this rather new claim under what’s called the equal sovereignty principle, which is that states all have to be treated equally by the federal government. There’s also a First Amendment claim, and an Administrative Procedure Act claim, which is that the government is acting illegally in an arbitrary and capricious way. I think the 10th Amendment arguments are ones that I would say are kind of unprecedented, rather untested waters.

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On that note, when does a federal law enforcement response cross the line and violate the 10th Amendment? Is there precedent for this?

The question you just posed is one that the district judge, Kate M. Menendez, seems to be nervous about having to hear. This is essentially asking a federal judge to sift into different buckets that which is federal power and that which is state power. And I can say there’s not a lot of case law on this issue.

The most filled-out doctrine under the 10th Amendment is the anti-commandeering doctrine. It holds that the federal government cannot use the state government as a sort of puppet. The federal government can’t use state officers forcibly against the state’s will to enforce the law. Now that is not, strictly speaking, what’s going on here, because Minnesota is complaining about the presence of federal agents enforcing the laws in ways that it thinks are illegal.

And so it seems to me that the 10th Amendment has been most developed in this area that Minnesota is not touching on, and so for that reason, I think their invocation of it is pretty unusual. They’re essentially claiming that the 10th Amendment protects their police powers and that the federal government is intruding on that. I think that’s a novel argument in court, and my suspicion is that it is not likely to be a winning argument in court.

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The Trump administration has dismissed the state’s legal theory, saying the president is acting within his authority, correct?

Yeah, I think that’s correct. Again, I want to make clear that Minnesota has made many arguments against the Trump administration, and I’m just focusing on the merits of this 10th Amendment argument.

There was a sort of undeveloped strand of cases in the mid-20th century where the Supreme Court tried to develop this idea of core state powers. And so it said the federal government couldn’t act in a way that violated a state’s core powers, like where to put your state capital, or control over natural resources, or defining salaries for state government employees. The court said these are core state powers.

But then in a famous case called Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, in 1985, the court overruled itself and said – and this is still where we are – federal courts cannot be in the business of defining what constitutes a core state power. It’s too open-ended, undefined. It’s a political inquiry. It’s not something that’s appropriate for a judge.

And so I think on this 10th Amendment argument, Minnesota is essentially asking the courts to revive this core state powers doctrine, which I think the court is unlikely to do.

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What repercussions could the judge’s ruling have?

Minnesota has already filed, in a case called Tincher v. Noem, a more conventional set of claims, which is that ICE agents broke the law, are violating rights, acting in excess of their authority. They have already gotten preliminary relief on this first set of claims, although Judge Menendez’s order is now on hold, pending appeal before the 8th Circuit court.

That is different from this 10th Amendment claim. In the 10th Amendment argument, one of the arguments that Minnesota has made is the equal sovereignty principle. The equal sovereignty principle was articulated in the 2013 case, Shelby County v. Holder. This is the famous case where the Supreme Court struck down an important part of the Voting Rights Act that prevented Southern states from restricting the vote, apparently on the basis of race. In Shelby County, the court said that the Voting Rights Act, which subjected certain states with a pattern of racial discrimination on the vote to a preclearance process where the federal government had to approve their laws before they passed them, treated different states differently.

Of course, in that case, the federal government said those are states that have a history of discrimination, so the federal government was justified in treating them differently.

But Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the Shelby County opinion, said the 10th Amendment means that the government can’t treat different states differently.

Now it’s not a well-regarded doctrine, so it’s kind of shocking that Minnesota is invoking it here. For one reason, the equal sovereignty principle has not been well developed since Shelby County. The second reason it would be a big deal – quite shocking to me, if the judge enforced it – is that Shelby County was talking about legislation that treated different states differently.

If we pass a rule where the executive branch can’t treat different states differently, you’re essentially denying the existence of discretion in enforcement, which is very quintessentially an executive power, right?

It could, for example, lead to states saying that federal agents can’t come in to help people in a natural disaster. So again, I think this argument, like the rest of the 10th Amendment arguments, suffers from being undeveloped in the case law and potentially carrying a risk of kneecapping the federal government’s ability to enforce the law, which sometimes does, for totally good-faith reasons, require treating different states differently.

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Any final thoughts?

The first Trump administration was highly disorganized and didn’t take concerted action for a while. The second Trump administration was the precise opposite of that. They acted quickly and in a very organized fashion, pushing power as far as it can go in a number of agencies.

And I think the question this gets back to is how the federal courts have reacted to this barrage of executive orders, of new applications of old laws, of new forms of government power exercised in a way that threatens federalism.

The federal courts usually grant deference to the president when the government issues statements in the context of litigation. Court doctrine is to defer to those statements as being entitled. It’s a presumption of regularity, of accuracy. And I think we’re already seeing in the district courts some suspicion by the judges of the government’s version of things.

To me, this is sort of a brave new world, whether we’re going to see courts relax their deference toward the executive branch. And I mean, we are in kind of a brave new world. We have videos all over the internet showing the facts of the Alex Pretti shooting. But I just want to note that, from a separation of powers point of view, it’s very interesting to see federal judges seeming to distrust official accounts of events from the executive branch. I think this is an area in which the doctrine seems to be moving, and we’re watching it in real time.

In Minneapolis, two recent fatal encounters with federal immigration agents have produced not only grief and anger, but an unusually clear fight over what is real.

By Stephanie A. (Sam) Martin
Boise State University

(THE CONVERSATION) — In Minneapolis, two recent fatal encounters with federal immigration agents have produced not only grief and anger, but an unusually clear fight over what is real.

In the aftermath of Alex Pretti’s killing on Jan. 24, 2026, federal officials claimed the Border Patrol officers who fired weapons at least 10 times acted in self-defense.

But independent media analyses showed the victim holding a phone, not a gun, throughout the confrontation. Conflicting reports about the earlier death of Renée Good have similarly intensified calls for independent review and transparency. Minnesota state and local officials have described clashes with federal agencies over access to evidence and investigative authority.

That pattern matters because in fast-moving crises, early official statements often become the scaffolding on which public judgment is built. Sometimes those statements turn out to be accurate. But sometimes they do not.

When the public repeatedly experiences the same sequence – confident claims, partial disclosures, shifting explanations, delayed evidence, lies – the damage can outlast any single incident.

It teaches people that “the facts” are simply one more instrument of power, distributed strategically. And once that lesson sinks in, even truthful statements arrive under suspicion.

And when government stories keep changing, democracy pays the price.

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Lying in politics

This is not a novel problem. During the U.S. Civil War, for example, President Abraham Lincoln handled hostile press coverage with a blunt mix of repression and restraint. His administration shut down hundreds of newspapers, arrested editors and censored telegraph lines, even as Lincoln himself often absorbed vicious, personal ridicule.

The Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s brought similar disingenuous attempts by the Reagan administration to manage public perception, as did misleading presidential claims about weapons of mass destruction in the 2003 leadup to the Iraq War.

During the Vietnam era, the gap between what officials said in public and what they knew in private was especially stark.

Both the Johnson and Nixon administrations repeatedly insisted the war was turning a corner and that victory was near. However, internal assessments described a grinding stalemate.

Those contradictions came to light in 1971 when The New York Times and The Washington Post published the Pentagon Papers, a classified Defense Department history of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam. The Nixon administration fiercely opposed the document’s public release.

Several months later, political philosopher Hannah Arendt published an essay in the New York Review of Books called “Lying in Politics”. It was also reprinted in a collection of essays titled “Crises of the Republic.”

Arendt, a Jewish refugee who fled Germany in 1933 to escape Nazi persecution and the very real risk of deportation to a concentration camp, argued that when governments try to control reality rather than report it, the public stops believing and becomes cynical. 
People “lose their bearings in the world,” she wrote.

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‘Nobody believes anything any longer’

Arendt first articulated this argument in 1951 with the publication of “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” in which she examined Nazism and Stalinism. She further refined it in her reporting for The New Yorker on the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, a major coordinator of the Holocaust.

Arendt did not wonder why officials lie. Instead, she worried about what happens to a public when political life trains citizens to stop insisting on a shared, factual world.

Arendt saw the Pentagon Papers as more than a Vietnam story. They were evidence of a broader shift toward what she called “image-making” – a style of governance in which managing the audience becomes at least as important as following the law. When politics becomes performance, the factual record is not a constraint. It is a prop that can be manipulated.

The greatest danger of organized, official lying, Arendt warned, is not that people will believe something that is false. It is that repeated, strategic distortions make it impossible for citizens to orient themselves in reality.

“The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie,” she wrote, “but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world … [gets] destroyed.”

She sharpened the point further in a line that feels especially poignant in today’s fragmented, rapid and adversarial information environment:

“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer,” she wrote. “A lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history … depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge.”

When officials lie time and again, the point isn’t that a single lie becomes accepted truth, but that the story keeps shifting until people don’t know what to trust. And when this happens, citizens cannot deliberate, approve or dissent coherently, because a shared world no longer exists.

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Maintaining legitimacy

Arendt helps clarify what Minneapolis is showing us, and why the current federal government posture matters beyond one city.

Immigration raids are high-conflict operations by design. They happen quickly, often without public visibility, and they ask targeted communities to accept a heavy federal presence as legitimate. When killings occur in that context, truth and transparency are essential. 
They protect the government’s legitimacy with the public.

Reporting on the Pretti case shows why. Even as federal government leaders issued definitive claims about the victim’s allegedly threatening behavior – they said Pretti approached agents while pointing a gun – video evidence contradicted that official account.

The point isn’t that every disputed detail in a fast-moving, complicated event causes public harm. It’s that when officials make claims that appear plainly inconsistent with readily available evidence – as in the initial accounts of what happened with Pretti – that mismatch is itself damaging to public trust.

Distorted declarations paired with delayed disclosure, selective evidence or interagency resistance to outside investigations nudge the public toward a conclusion that official accounts are a strategy for controlling the story, and not a description of reality.

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Truth is a public good

Politics is not a seminar in absolute clarity, and competing claims are always part of the process. Democracies can survive spin, public relations and even occasional falsehoods.

But Arendt’s observations show that it is the normalization of blatant dishonesty and systematic withholding that threatens democracy. Those practices corrode the factual ground on which democratic consent is built.

The U.S. Constitution assumes a people capable of what Arendt called judgment – citizens who can weigh evidence, assign responsibility and act through law and politics.

If people are taught that “truth” is always contingent and always tactical, the harm goes beyond misinformation. A confused, distrustful public is easier to manage and harder to mobilize into meaningful democratic participation. It becomes less able to act, because action requires a shared world in which decisions can be understood, debated and contested.

The Minneapolis shootings are not only an argument about use of force. They are a test of whether public institutions will treat facts and truth as a public good – something owed to the community precisely when tensions are highest. If democratic life depends on a social contract among the governed and those governing, that contract cannot be sustained on shifting sand. It requires enough shared reality to support disagreement.

When officials reshape the facts, the damage isn’t only to the record. The damage is to the basic belief that a democratic public can know what its government has done.

Tariffs are on, until they are not. Military force is an option … and then it's off the table.

(THE CONVERSATION) — Tariffs are on, until they are not. Military force is an option … and then it's off the table.

Erratic behavior and unpredictability are having a moment in foreign policy circles. In the White House and elsewhere, it is seemingly being viewed as a strategic asset rather than a weakness.

But it is far from a new strategy. Wild threats, sudden policy reversals and intentionally confusing language have long been used to keep adversaries off balance and gain leverage.

In fact, the concept has its own name in international relations: "madman theory." As outlined by Cold War strategists Daniel Ellsberg and Thomas Schelling, it holds that projecting a readiness to take extreme action can shape an opponent's calculations by heightening fears of escalation.

While the theory was meant to be explanatory, in the sense that observers used it to explain apparently irrational behavior, it has sometimes been used in a prescriptive way, as an approach consciously adopted by leaders.

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The 3 conditions for madman success

The madman theory has historical roots going back to Machiavelli, but it is most closely associated with Richard Nixon, who, as incoming president, reportedly used the term to explain his approach to trying to force North Vietnam's surrender in the Vietnam War.

Historians see evidence of the theory's limited applicability in episodes such as Nixon's 1969 placing of the U.S. military on nuclear alert, which appeared to have reinforced Soviet caution even if it did not bring about an end of the Vietnam War.

The theory was more applicable in Nixon's era because of three background conditions that were in place.

The first was information scarcity. During the Cold War, signals traveled more slowly than they do today and through narrow channels. Messages were filtered by professional diplomats, intelligence analysts and military officers.

Ambiguity could be sustained. A country's leader could appear possibly unhinged without being instantly decoded, contextualized or publicly dissected. "Madman" signaling depended on this controlled opacity.

The second condition was a stable adversary with a shared notion of risk. Nixon's gambit worked, when it worked at all, because Soviet leaders were deeply conservative risk managers operating inside a rigid hierarchy. They feared miscalculation because they believed it could lead to the Soviet Union's fall — or at least their fall within it.

The third condition was credibility built through restraint elsewhere. The madman pose only works if it is exceptional. Nixon appeared dangerous to adversaries precisely because the American system normally appeared controlled. His apparent erratic behavior was exceptional in a context of bureaucratic orderliness.

But the world of those three conditions is gone.

Threats today are tweeted, clipped, reframed, leaked, mocked and talked about in real time. Unpredictability doesn't have time to breathe public fear into existence. Rather, it can devolve into noise.

And nations such as Iran, Russia and China operate in a world they already regard as unstable and unjust. Volatility does not frighten them; it is the environment they expect. In such conditions, apparent irrationality can invite probing, hedging or reciprocal escalation.

Meanwhile, erratic behavior is no longer exceptional or unexpected.

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Many a madman would struggle today

Unpredictability only works if it's strategic rather than designed on the fly. Trump has blustered, contradicted himself publicly, ramped-up rhetorically and then backed down, mostly without receiving obvious concessions.

The more this happens, the more predictability he creates about unpredictability.

And once unpredictability becomes expected, it loses its coercive force.

This dynamic is evident in Trump's handling of both Iran and Greenland. In the Iranian case, pressure — including military strikes — has been applied without clearly defining where escalation would end.

With Greenland, coercive threats aimed at an ally only strained NATO without producing compliance.

In neither instance did unpredictability translate into durable leverage. Instead, it generated uncertainty about objectives and limits.

A bigger problem for any leader wishing to adopt a madman strategy is that today's international order and media ecosystem are more inured to volatility. Threats no longer freeze opponents into caution.

Friendly nations hedge their bets. For example, faced with U.S. threats over tariffs, India strengthened ties with China.

Meanwhile, enemies test boundaries. Russia, for example, has treated Trump's ambiguous signaling on Ukraine as little more than a green-light for it to continue its campaign to conquer the Donbas region.

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Does the madman have a future?

There are still limited circumstances in which ambiguity can serve a strategic purpose.

Limited uncertainty about specific responses can reinforce deterrence by keeping adversaries cautious. U.S. strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan, for example, leaves it unclear whether Washington would intervene militarily in the case of an attack by Beijing, discouraging the locking of any side into automatic escalation.

That part of the madman approach remains effective. But what no longer works is volatility untethered from clear objectives and visible limits.

The madman theory was built for a rigid, rule-bound world. It is least effective precisely where today's politics feels most chaotic.

U.S. President Donald Trump has, for the moment, indicated a willingness to abandon his threat to take over Greenland through military force – saying that he prefers negotiation to invasion. He is, however, continuing to assert that the United States ought to acquire ownership of the self-governing territory.

By Michael Blake
University of Washington

(THE CONVERSATION) — U.S. President Donald Trump has, for the moment, indicated a willingness to abandon his threat to take over Greenland through military force – saying that he prefers negotiation to invasion. He is, however, continuing to assert that the United States ought to acquire ownership of the self-governing territory.

Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility of using military action, against both Greenland and Canada.

These threats were often taken as fanciful. The fact that he has, successfully, used military force to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power has lent some plausibility to these threats.

Crucially, these military possibilities have been justified almost exclusively with reference to what Trump’s administration sees as America’s national interests. Anything short of ownership in the case of Greenland, the president has emphasized, would fail to adequately protect American interests.

As a political philosopher concerned with the moral analysis of international relations, I am deeply troubled by this vision of warfare – and by the moral justifications used to legitimize the making of war.

This view of warfare is radically different from the one championed by the U.S. for much of the 20th century. Most notably, it repudiates the legal principle that informed the Nuremberg trials: that military force cannot be justified on the basis of national self-interest alone.

Those trials, set up after World War II to prosecute the leaders of the Nazi regime, were foundational for modern international law; Trump, however, seems to disregard or reject the legal ideas the Nuremberg tribunal sought to establish.

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Aggressive war as international crime

The use of warfare as a means by which states might seek political and economic advantage was declared illegal by 1928’s Kellogg-Briand Pact – an international instrument by which many nations, including both Germany and the U.S., agreed to abandon warfare as a tool for national self-interests.

After 1928, invading another country in the name of advancing national interests was formally defined as a crime, rather than a legitimate policy option.

The existence of this pact did not prevent the German military actions that led to World War II. The prosecution for the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, accordingly, took two aims as central: reaffirming that aggressive warfare was illegal, and imposing punishment on those who had chosen to use military force against neighboring states.

The first charge laid against the Nazi leadership at Nuremberg was therefore the initiation of a “war of aggression” – a war chosen by a state for its own national interests.

The chief prosecutor in Nuremberg was Robert H. Jackson, who at the time also served as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Jackson began his description of the crime by saying that Germany, in concert with other nations, had bound itself in 1928 to “seek the settlement of disputes only by pacific means.”

More particularly, Jackson noted, Germany had justified its invasion of neighboring countries with reference to “Lebensraum” – living room, or, more generally, space for German citizens – which marked those invasions out as illegal.

Germany used its own national interests as sufficient reason to initiate deadly force against other nations. In so doing, said Jackson, it engaged in a crime for which individual criminal punishment was an appropriate response.

In the course of this crime, Jackson noted, Germany had shown a willingness to ignore both international law and its own previous commitments – and had given itself “a reputation for duplicity that will handicap it for years.”

Jackson asserted, further, that the extraordinary violence of the 20th century required the building of some legal tools, by which the plague of warfare and violence might be constrained.

If such principles were not codified in law, and respected by nations, then the world might well see, in Jackson’s phrase, the “doom of civilization.” Nuremberg’s task, for Jackson, was nothing less than ensuring that aggressive war was forever to be understood as a criminal act – a proposition backed, crucially, by the U.S. as party to the Nuremberg trials.

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The morality of warfare

It is fair to say that the U.S, like other nations, has had a mixed record of living up to the legal principles articulated at Nuremberg, given its record of military intervention in places like Vietnam and Iraq.

Trump’s prior statements about Greenland, however, hint at something more extreme: They represent an abandonment of the principle that aggressive war is a criminal act, in favor of the idea that the U.S. can use its military as it wishes, to advance its own national interests.

Previous presidents have perhaps been guilty of paying too little attention to the moral importance of such international principles. Trump, in contrast, has announced that such principles do not bind him in the least.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Trump asserted that he did not “need international law” to know what to do. He would, instead, be limited only by “his own morality” and “his own mind.”

European leaders, for their part, have increasingly decried Trump’s willingness to go back on his word, or abandon previously insisted-upon principles, if such revisions seem to provide him with some particular advantage.

Trump’s statements, however, imply that his administration has adopted a position strikingly similar to that decried by Justice Jackson: The U.S., on this vision, can simply decide that its own moral interests are more important than those of other countries, and can initiate violence against those countries on its own discretion. It can do this, moreover, regardless of either the content of international law or of previously undertaken political 
commitments.

This vision, finally, is being undertaken in a world in which the available tools of destruction are even more complex – and more deadly – than those available during the Second World War.

It is, indeed, a historic irony that the U.S. of today has so roundly repudiated the moral values it both helped developed and championed globally during the 20th century.

As Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents continued to use aggressive and sometimes violent methods to make arrests in its mass deportation campaign, including breaking down doors in Minneapolis homes, a bombshell report from the Associated Press on Jan. 21, 2026, said that an internal ICE memo – acquired via a whistleblower – asserted that immigration officers could enter a home without a judge’s warrant.

(THE CONVERSATION) As Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents continued to use aggressive and sometimes violent methods to make arrests in its mass deportation campaign, including breaking down doors in Minneapolis homes, a bombshell report from the Associated Press on Jan. 21, 2026, said that an internal ICE memo – acquired via a whistleblower – asserted that immigration officers could enter a home without a judge’s warrant. 

That policy, the report said, constituted “a sharp reversal of longstanding guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches.”

Those limits have long been found in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed Dickinson College President John E. Jones III, a former federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate in 2002, for a primer on the Fourth Amendment, and what the changes in the ICE memo mean.

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Okay, I’m going to read the Fourth Amendment – and then you’re going to explain it to us, please! Here goes:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Can you help us understand what that means?

Since the beginning of the republic, it has been uncontested that in order to invade someone’s home, you need to have a warrant that was considered, and signed off on, by a judicial officer. This mandate is right within the Fourth Amendment; it is a core protection.

In addition to that, through jurisprudence that has evolved since the adoption of the Fourth Amendment, it is settled law that it applies to everyone. That would include noncitizens as well.

What I see in this directive that ICE put out, apparently quite some time ago and somewhat secretly, is something that, to my mind, turns the Fourth Amendment on its head.

What does the Fourth Amendment aim to protect someone from?

In the context of the ICE search, it means that a person’s home, as they say, really is their castle. Historically, it was meant to remedy something that was true in England, where the colonists came from, which was that the king or those empowered by the king could invade people’s homes at will. The Fourth Amendment was meant to establish a sort of zone of privacy for people, so that their papers, their property, their persons would be safe from intrusion without cause.

So it’s essentially a protection against abuse of the government’s power.

That’s precisely what it is.

Has the accepted interpretation of the Fourth Amendment changed over the centuries?

It hasn’t. But Fourth Amendment law has evolved because the framers, for example, didn’t envision that there would be cellphones. They couldn’t understand or anticipate that there would be things like cellphones and electronic surveillance. All those modalities have come into the sphere of Fourth Amendment protection. The law has evolved in a way that actually has made Fourth Amendment protections greater and more wide-ranging, simply because of technology and other developments such as the use of automobiles and other means of transportation. So there are greater protected zones of privacy than just a person’s home.

ICE says it only needs an administrative warrant, not a judicial warrant, to enter a home and arrest someone. Can you briefly describe the difference and what it means in this situation?

It’s absolutely central to the question here. In this context, an administrative warrant is nothing more than the folks at ICE headquarters writing something up and directing their agents to go arrest somebody. That’s all. It’s a piece of paper that says ‘We want you arrested because we said so.’ At bottom that’s what an administrative warrant is, and of course it hasn’t been approved by a judge.

This authorized use of administrative warrants to circumvent the Fourth Amendment flies in the face of their limited use prior to the ICE directive.

A judicially approved warrant, on the other hand, has by definition been reviewed by a judge. In this case, it would be either a U.S. magistrate judge or U.S. district judge. That means that it would have to be supported by probable cause to enter someone’s residence to arrest them.

So the key distinction is that there’s a neutral arbiter. In this case, a federal judge who evaluates whether or not there’s sufficient cause to – as is stated clearly in the Fourth Amendment – be empowered to enter someone’s home. 
An administrative warrant has no such protection. It is not much more than a piece of paper generated in a self-serving way by ICE, free of review to substantiate what is stated in it.

Have there been other kinds of situations, historically, where the government has successfully proposed working around the Fourth Amendment?

There are a few, such as consent searches and exigent circumstances where someone is in danger or evidence is about to be destroyed. But generally it’s really the opposite and cases point to greater protections. For example, in the 1960s the Supreme Court had to confront warrantless wiretapping; it was very difficult for judges in that age who were not tech-savvy to apply the Fourth Amendment to this technology, and they struggled to find a remedy when there was no actual intrusion into a structure. In the end, the court found that intrusion was not necessary and that people’s expectation of privacy included their phone conversations. This of course has been extended to various other means of technology including GPS tracking and cellphone use generally.

What’s the direction this could go in at this point?

What I fear here – and I think ICE probably knows this – is that more often than not, a person who may not have legal standing to be in the country, notwithstanding the fact that there was a Fourth Amendment violation by ICE, may ultimately be out of luck. You could say that the arrest was illegal, and you go back to square one, but at the same time you’ve apprehended the person. So I’m struggling to figure out how you remedy this.

More than half of U.S. adults have either tried or expressed interest in hot honey-flavored snacks. For decades, spicy food has been a polarizing topic; some love the burn while others avoid it like the plague. But the blend of sweet honey and chili peppers has recently moved from a niche condiment to a mainstream obsession.

More than half of U.S. adults have either tried or expressed interest in hot honey-flavored snacks. For decades, spicy food has been a polarizing topic; some love the burn while others avoid it like the plague. But the blend of sweet honey and chili peppers has recently moved from a niche condiment to a mainstream obsession.

Sales of hot honey surged 157% year-over-year in 2025, fueled by viral social media recipes and a growing appetite for “swicy,” or sweet and spicy flavors. Product launches have seen a 61% average annual growth rate over the past five years. A research projects that the global spicy honey market will reach approximately $166.41 million by 2030, up from $106 million in 2022.

Once reserved for hot honey chicken wings, this swicy sauce now shows up on breakfast tables, grocery shelves and even ice cream sundaes. For those who typically shy away from heat, this spicy-sweet sensation might just convert them.

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What hot honey actually is

At its simplest, hot honey is honey infused with chili peppers. That’s it. No complicated process, no obscure ingredients. But the magic is in how it tastes. Instead of an aggressive burn, you get sweetness first, followed by a gentle heat that lingers just long enough to be interesting.

For spice skeptics, that order matters. The honey softens the peppers, rounding out their sharp edges. The heat feels warm rather than painful, more like a background note than the main event. Think cozy rather than confrontational.

Now that you know what hot honey is, it’s worth noting that not all is created equal. Some versions lean bolder, while others barely register as spicy. That range is part of what makes the trend so accessible. You can start mild and work your way up, or stop right where you’re comfortable.

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Hot honey wins over non-spicy eaters

The biggest reason hot honey works for people who avoid heat is that it enhances food instead of overpowering it. Sweetness naturally balances spice, and honey does that better than sugar because it brings depth and floral notes along with the sweetness.

For someone who usually orders everything no heat, hot honey feels safe. It doesn’t hijack your taste buds. Instead, it makes familiar foods taste more exciting without changing their identity. Fried chicken still tastes like fried chicken, and pizza still tastes like pizza; you’re just getting a little extra something.

There’s also an emotional component. Hot honey feels indulgent but not intimidating. Drizzling it is optional. You’re in control. That alone lowers the barrier for people who have been burned by overly spicy experiences in the past.

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The foods that make hot honey click

Hot honey didn’t rise to popularity by accident. It shines brightest on foods that already benefit from contrast.

Pizza is the poster child. A drizzle over a cheesy personal pizza cuts through the richness and brings everything into balance. The crust tastes toastier, the cheese tastes creamier and the sauce tastes brighter. Even people who normally avoid chili flakes often find themselves asking for just a little hot honey.

Fried chicken is another gateway food. The sweetness plays well with salty, crunchy breading, while the heat adds interest without masking the chicken itself. It’s the kind of combination that feels familiar yet new.

Cheese boards are where skeptics often become converts. Hot honey paired with sharp cheddar, creamy brie or salty blue cheese creates instant complexity. The spice doesn’t scream; it whispers, and suddenly that cheese course feels restaurant worthy.

Even roasted vegetables and salads benefit. A light drizzle over carrots, Brussels sprouts or even a mixed berry salad keeps things from tasting flat. For people who don’t love spicy food, this can be a revelation.

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Hot honey beyond savory dishes

One of the most surprising things about hot honey is how well it works with sweet foods. The heat is subtle enough that it doesn’t clash with dessert. Instead, it adds dimension. A spoonful over vanilla ice cream or yogurt creates a sweet-heat contrast that feels intentional, not gimmicky. Drizzled over biscuits, cornbread or pancakes, it replaces plain syrup with something far more interesting.

For non-spicy eaters, this is often the turning point. When heat shows up in a dessert-friendly way, it feels less threatening and more playful.

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Buy or make hot honey at home

You don’t need to be a culinary adventurer to bring hot honey into your kitchen. Most grocery stores carry at least one brand now, often with notes about heat level. Starting with a mild option is the safest move if spice isn’t your thing.

Making it at home is also simple. Gently warming honey with dried chili flakes or a mild fresh pepper allows you to control exactly how spicy it gets. Infuse briefly, taste often and strain if needed. You’re never locked into a level of heat you can’t handle.

The beauty here is customization. You can keep it barely warm or push it slightly further once you realize it’s not as scary as you thought.

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Why this trend has staying power

Hot honey isn’t just trendy; it solves a problem. People want food that feels exciting without being extreme. They want flavor that adds interest but still works for a Tuesday night dinner. It also fits perfectly into how many people cook now. It’s versatile, low effort and flexible. A single jar can upgrade pizza night, brunch, snacks and even desserts without requiring new skills or equipment.

“I love to substitute hot honey for regular honey in sweet-savory recipes like hoisin beef or sesame chicken,” says Robin Donovan, founder of All Ways Delicious. “It adds the sweetness I’m looking for but also a nice extra kick of spice. But my favorite way to use hot honey is to drizzle it on peanut butter toast. The combination of nutty, sweet and spicy is amazing and surprisingly delicious with coffee.”

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A gentle way to rethink spice

If you’ve spent years saying, “I don’t like spicy,” hot honey won’t suddenly turn you into someone who orders extra-hot wings. But it might soften that stance. It shows that spice doesn’t have to be aggressive to be enjoyable.

Sometimes all it takes is the right pairing, the right balance and a little sweetness to change your mind. Hot honey proves that heat, when handled thoughtfully, can be comforting, versatile and surprisingly approachable.

And if you still only drizzle a tiny bit? That’s fine. That’s kind of the point.

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Lisa MarcAurele is a blogger and cookbook author based in Connecticut. She created Little Bit Recipes to help people save money by minimizing leftovers when cooking for one or two people. Lisa enjoys hiking and taking scenic day trips around New England.