Eric Swalwell, better known as the butt of jokes than for serious leadership, is a current member of Congress who now wants to run California. His big idea is to revoke ICE offers’ driver’s licenses, strip them of legal protections, and direct local law enforcement to prosecute them. He delivered these remarks with bravado, convinced that performative toughness could override the Constitution.

“They’re going to lose their immunity, they’re not gonna be able to drive. I will take your driver’s license. Good luck walking to work, a–holes,” Swalwell said at the Empowerment Congress California Governor Forum Saturday. – New York Post

None of this is legal and will not survive a court challenge. But this is the new style of progressive politics. Politicians on the left do not want to defuse tensions. They’ve learned how to inflame them and then campaign on the chaos they helped create.

Surely Swalwell knows that immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility. Then again, maybe he doesn’t. Or he doesn’t care. A governor cannot revoke the rights of federal officers for doing federal work. A governor cannot nullify the Constitution because a crowd is clapping.

Swalwell either knows this, or he doesn’t care. Neither option is flattering. But the legal reality is not the most interesting part. The motive is.

🚨 BREAKING: Eric Swalwell announces if elected California Governor, he will REVOKE ICE agents’ drivers licenses

“They’re gonna lose immunity. I will take your driver’s license! Good luck walking to work, a*sholes!”

ARREST HIM if he targets ICE agents! pic.twitter.com/e6OKZBSqMB

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 17, 2026

An Inverted Justice System

In Swalwell’s fantasy moral universe, the justice system has been flipped upside down. Lawbreakers are fragile, and enforcers are cruel. Activists are brave, and citizens are nothing but obstacles. To Eric and his ilk, criminals are simply misunderstood, while order is oppression and chaos is compassion.

This worldview does not produce stability, and it isn’t meant to. It produces disorder, and then everyone pretends to be shocked by it.

Progressive politicians have mastered this inversion. They no longer debate policy. They moralize it. They refuse to argue outcomes because they are too busy assigning virtue. Instead of persuasion, they are attempting emotional blackmail.

Eric Swalwell is a very stupid person. pic.twitter.com/S75g8hNvZc

— Gain of Fauci (@DschlopesIsBack) January 9, 2026

Selective Compassion

Swalwell and politicians like him insist they are protecting people. That is laughable because what they are really doing is ignoring real American victims while propping up the worst offenders.

They never talk about women assaulted by illegal aliens or children trafficked across the border. They won’t speak about neighborhoods hollowed out by fentanyl or the working-class communities absorbing the consequences.

Whatever this is, it’s not compassion. What Eric Swalwell actually wants to do is go after ICE agents. They wear uniforms, so they become convenient stand-ins for the idea that laws exist for a reason and that borders mean something. Attacking them is easier than doing the actual work of governance, but it also feels like a betrayal of the people he was elected to serve – American citizens, not illegal criminals.

Swalwell is not alone. Tim Walz, Kathy Hochul, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus all reflect the same pattern: hostility toward enforcement, retreat from responsibility, and abandonment of the people who live with the consequences. Let me say it in more straightforward terms: traitors of the American people.

Instead of going after traffickers, cartels, and violent offenders, they go after ICE agents.

Political Arson as Leadership

Did Swalwell say he would modernize immigration law? Streamline legal entry? Crack down on trafficking networks? Protect the women and children of America? Nope. He wants to go after the real protectors of American citizens, ICE. That tells you what he values. He would rather punish federal law enforcement for doing their jobs. That means, to me, he prefers the illegal criminals to run wild and feral all over the country.

Eric liked to try to talk like a tough guy. He uses profanity and wants to sound bold. Thankfully, it’s just that, blustering noise from his pie hole. Nothing he is promising will actually happen. Courts will block it, and federal law will override it; lawsuits will bury it. Which is also a waste of resources.

Why This Keeps Working

The rhetoric escalates because this type of behavior sadly gets rewarded when activists cheer, donors fund, media flatters, and voters shrug. The promises get wilder. Swalwell is not an outlier. He’s a product.

In the left’s warped cultural view, sounding bold matters more than being competent. A serious governor would not promise illegal actions or train people to see laws as optional and enforcement as evil.

Swalwell isn’t offering solutions. He is offering spectacle because it’s easier. It’s cheap. And if anyone knows cheap, it’s Eric.

Feature Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons/edited in Canva Pro