12. January 2026 – THE FLENSBURG FILES

A qualified majority of EU member countries on Friday approved the bloc’s long-awaited trade deal with the South American Mercosur bloc, four EU diplomats said. France, Poland, Austria, Ireland and Hungary expressed their opposition while Belgium abstained. Italy voted in favor, after forcing a delay last month. EU capitals now have until 5 p.m. on Friday […]
EU countries approve Mercosur trade deal after 25 years of talks

This deal is a global shift that will isolate the US even more, as it provides a fourth powerhouse, competing with Russia, the US, and China’s economic influence. Details here:

🇪🇺 THE FLENSBURG FILES

With the government funding running out by the end of January, Congress is waking up to the reality that Trump is becoming unstable and turning the US into a dictatorship. A lot of that has to do with Trump’s new army, ICE, which many have considered the American version of the Gestapo. Already a drive to increase funding to enlarge ICE is being proposed, as well as a law that would allow ICE to go after funding and “terrorists” overseas. In order to stop this, many measures would need to be made- immediately and all simultaneously in order to get Trump overwhelmed and confused and also to stop the US from becoming a ful-fledged authoritarian regime, where we don’t even have a chance to vote anymore.

Government shutdowns, boycotts of products supporting Trump, boycotting the World Cup this year in the US, crippling the economy with a total shutdown, walk-outs from schools, work, universities and the like and even daily protests would help. Yet as we can see in this article by McEnany, Blanc and Sandberg, one of the most important things is to cut the funding to ICE, and apart from a governmental shutdown, boycotting and pressuring companies for supporting ICE. This would be a giant first step, if all of America would do it, for the sake of themselves, their families and their neighbors.

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Renee Nicole Good’s murder by an ICE agent in Minneapolis has left millions of Americans wondering how we can stop ICE from terrorizing our communities any further.

There are many well-known ICE-fighting tactics that we can and should use, like protests, know-your-rights trainings, and neighborhood watches. But two recent victories show a promising, relatively underutilized path forward—one that deserves to be pursued further: we can target businesses to break from ICE.

ICE relies heavily on the private sector to help carry out its Gestapo-like crusade against immigrants and their allies.

Without the logistical, financial, and political support of business, its capacity to terrorize our communities would crumble.

Over the past week, activists around the country successfully pushed Avelo Airlines to stop running deportation charter flights, and workers in Minneapolis pushed a local Hilton affiliate to stop renting rooms to ICE agents. But these wins are just a fraction of what could be achieved if the millions of people who are outraged by ICE’s thuggery organize to pressure all companies to stop working with ICE.

Trump’s Pillars of Support

Anti-authoritarian scholars and organizers stress that the most important thing for pro-democracy movements to do is to peel away a regime’s “pillars of support.”

Even the most despotic of regimes can’t rule without the backing or consent of powerful external institutions.

Businesses are society’s most important non-state institutions, and most of the biggest ones in America are collaborating with Trump, making themselves a very steady pillar of support for his rule.

These mega-corporations have immense financial and political power. It may seem like there’s nothing to be done to bring them to heel. But the successes with Avelo Airlines and the Minneapolis Hilton—as well as earlier pressure campaigns like the #Tesla Takedown, the fight to force Disney to rehire Jimmy Kimmel, and the boycott of Target over its Trump-friendly anti-DEI moves—show the immense leverage that consumers and workers have when provided an opportunity.

We are not powerless, and there are concrete actions anyone can take to start eroding Trump’s support from big business.

Consumer pressure campaigns can start with petition gathering and social media callouts, then escalate to coordinated one-day [and perpetual] boycotts.

Workers have even more leverage: employees can circulate internal petitions calling on their CEOs to cut ties with ICE and organize collective actions like sick-outs.

Tactics can include rallies in front of targeted stores, flyering customers about a company’s ICE contracts or collaboration, and nonviolent civil disobedience that makes clear that business as usual won’t stand.

Other creative ideas include setting up anonymous tip lines for employees to whistleblow on non-public ICE collaborations, pressuring job sites like Monster.com and Indeed to stop featuring ICE job listings, asking local small businesses to post “Immigrants Welcome Here” placards, and writing online reviews calling out companies’ collaboration with ICE.

The key is providing people with concrete, outwards-facing activities they can take right now, while building an escalating national campaign that can culminate in larger coordinated days of nonviolent disruption—for example, on May 1, 2026.

National online mass calls and trainings can give large numbers of people the tools they need to get started. National unions, immigrant rights groups, and organizations like Indivisible and the Democratic Socialists of America can leverage their volunteer activists and resources to help launch and support the campaign. And high-profile politicians like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chris Murphy, and Zohran Mamdani can use their platforms to build momentum around this urgent fight.

Corporate Targets

The most strategic corporate targets fall into three categories: low-lift national targets, high-lift national targets, and local targets.

Low-lift national targets are mostly public-facing companies with relatively small ICE contracts that are set to expire soon, making them particularly vulnerable to consumer and employee pressure. Campaigns against companies like these can play a crucial role in generating further momentum against ICE, Trump, and their worst corporate collaborators.

Here are some examples:

• Dell ($18.8 million contract with ICE for Microsoft software licenses, expiring March 2026)

• UPS ($90,500 small package delivery contract with ICE, expiring March 2026)

• FedEx ($1 million delivery services contract with ICE, expiring March 2026)

• Motorola Solutions ($15.6 million tactical communication infrastructure contract with ICE, expiring May 2026)

• Comcast ($24,600 internet services contract for ICE Seattle office, expiring May 2026 — this could be a great fight for new mayor Katie Wilson to take on).

• AT&T ($83 million IT and network contract with ICE, with a potential end date of July 2032).

• LexisNexis ($21 million data-brokerage contract with ICE — this company is particularly vulnerable to pressure from university students and professor unions, since much of its revenue comes from colleges.)

• The Home Depot and Lowe’s Home Improvement are using AI-powered license plate readers and feeding this data into law enforcement surveillance systems accessible to ICE. Their parking lots are also regular sites of ICE raids targeting day laborers.

High-lift national targets have deeper relationships with ICE, and will be harder to pressure. But two in particular need to be tackled.

• Amazon.com provides ICE with the digital backbone for its data and surveillance operations through Amazon Web Services. Amazon’s Whole Foods stores are a rich potential target for nonviolent disruption on big days of action.

• Palantir Technologies provides ICE with core data platforms that integrate and analyze information from many databases so agents can search, link, and manage deportation operations.

It will take longer to force these behemoths—the two worst corporate collaborators with ICE—to cut their ties, but it’s essential to publicize their centrality to Trump’s deportation machine.

Local targets can be found in communities across the country, where hundreds of smaller business have ICE contracts. Local activists can research and target these businesses—from contractors providing services to ICE offices to suppliers selling equipment—creating distributed pressure campaigns in every region where ICE operates. Hotels that rent rooms to ICE agents are particularly vulnerable targets, as the Minneapolis example demonstrated, and hospitality unions can play a key role in these campaigns.

Defend Immigrants, Defeat Trumpism

Breaking companies from ICE is a winnable struggle that can put serious pressure on the administration by raising the political cost of mass deportations and damaging ICE’s ability to function. No administration can survive long without the consent of corporate America.

Obviously, the stakes are highest for our undocumented friends and family members. But this fight impacts all of us. To stop Trump’s authoritarian oligarchy, we need millions of people — well beyond our normal circles of activists — to join the fight.

Who is going to stop Trump from invading more countries and stealing the 2026 and 2028 elections if not a mass movement from below? Who is going to force politicians, whether Republicans or Democrats, to stand up for immigrant communities? Who is going to make corporations pay a price for collaborating with the Trump regime? We need to start building the organizing muscle and connective tissue now for widespread nonviolent disruption. Strategic organizing to win justice for all is the best way to honor the memory of Renee Nicole Good and the countless other victims of Trump’s inhumanity at home and abroad.

[Republished from The Nation]

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About the Authors:

Eric Blanc is a professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. He writes the Labor Politics newsletter on Substack. His latest book is We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big.

Wes McEnany is a longtime union organizer and was the Deputy Labor Policy Director of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions.

Claire Sandberg was the national organizing director for Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign. She is the founder of Crowdwave Campaigns.

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