Wil Trapp and Hassani Dotson have been in a similar predicament, but the midfielders have gone about it differently.

Trapp wanted to leave Columbus Crew in 2019; Dotson said via a statement in January that he wants to be traded from Minnesota United.

Trapp left in a move to Inter Miami in 2020 before coming to MNUFC in 2021. Dotson has thus far remained a member of the Loons with a contract that expires at the end of 2025.

This week, Trapp spoke about his own situation and what he has seen from Dotson over the past month. MNUFC has not met Pioneer Press requests to speak with Dotson during preseason.

One apprehension on Dotson’s situation is it could become a distraction with the season opening coming Saturday at Los Angeles FC, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

After his agent made the trade request, Dotson went back to work. He was one of the top finishers in the “beep” fitness test, has maintained his starting central midfield spot during preseason friendlies and presumably will begin 2025 in that key role at LAFC.

On Tuesday, Dotson and goalkeeper Dayne St. Clair — another Loons player on an expiring contract — coached up second-year center back Morris Duggan during a pause in the training session in Blaine.

“It’s not an easy situation to handle,” Trapp said, “and (Dotson’s) been unbelievable. Like, you would never know. It’s a huge testament. (Head coach Eric Ramsay) and I were talking about it, his level of professionalism, his commitment to better himself and better the group.”

Ramsay said in late January he is focusing on his working relationship with Dotson. Chief Soccer Officer Khaled El-Ahmad said in early February that it’s “all calm, good conversations” on the Dotson situation.

Dotson’s view was made public, and that appears to be it — for now at least.

Trapp used a different tactic in Columbus; he kept his stance internal.

“I was just ready to go,” Trapp recalled Tuesday. “It was tough. You have to do things that you potentially don’t want to do, sit out a training or make yourself (an outsider).”

During one practice in Columbus, Trapp said, he didn’t try during a drill and Crew assistant coach Ezra Hendrickson, who later was head coach of the Chicago Fire, got on him.

“He was like, ‘Wil, I don’t know what is going on in your contract situation, but you are (messing) up my drill, dude,’ ” Trapp recalled with a laugh.

It wasn’t funny in the moment. “I came off the field and I was crying,” Trapp said. “It was the worst feeling I’ve ever felt on the field.”

A lack of effort is the antithesis of Trapp’s set-the-example reputation — one backed in captaincies in Columbus, Minnesota and with the U.S. men’s national team. But Trapp felt the need to take a stand in Columbus.

“I needed them to see that we are at that point,” Trapp said. “I would never do that again. That was terrible.”

Yet Trapp is respectful of Dotson’s specific situation.

“There are so many more layers to it than we know,” he said, “but from what we see as a teammate, or as a partner, amazing.”

John Summit, Tiësto and Alison Wonderland will headline the second annual Breakaway Music Festival June 6 and 7 outside St. Paul’s Allianz Field.

Tickets start at $134 and go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday via breakawayfestival.com.

The electronic music festival began in Ohio in 2016 and has since expanded into multiple cities across the country. This year will stand as Breakaway’s biggest to date, with festivals in 12 cities.

Festival organizers said the inaugural festival drew 24,000 fans over two days. DJ Illenium topped the bill of more than two-dozen local and national acts for the first major music event at the soccer stadium since it opened in 2019.

Ramsey County emergency dispatch also received some 200 noise complaints that weekend, most of them likely linked to the stadium.

In a written statement last July, festival organizers promised “further sound engineering studies to improve upon the layout of our event, hopefully mitigating more of the impact to local residents” before a “hopeful return to St. Paul in 2025.”

National acts also on the bill include Acraze, Bunt, Cassian, Disco Lines, Grabbitz, Hedex, HOL!, Jev, J.Worra, Kream, Linska, Mary Droppinz, Max Styler, Mojave Grey, Skilah, Surf Mesa and Troyboi. Locals set to perform include Caiked Up, Christian Baca, Gemini Danger and Zella.

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By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, CHRIS MEGERIAN and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Although some parts of President Donald Trump’s agenda are getting bogged down by litigation, Elon Musk ’s Department of Government Efficiency is having better luck in the courtroom.

Labor unions, Democrats and federal employees have filed several lawsuits arguing that DOGE is running roughshod over privacy protections or usurping power from other branches of government.

But judges appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents haven’t always gone along with those arguments, at least so far. Most notably, DOGE critics are failing to obtain temporary restraining orders that would prevent Musk’s team from accessing sensitive government databases.

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“It is not the job of the federal courts to police the security of the information systems in the executive branch,” wrote U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in a case involving the Office of Personnel Management. Moss was appointed by President Barack Obama.

The success is striking given the other challenges that Trump has faced in the judicial system, which has blocked — at least temporarily — his efforts to limit birthright citizenship, freeze congressionally authorized foreign aid and stop some healthcare services for transgender youth.

If Musk’s opponents continue struggling to gain traction with lawsuits, he could be largely unencumbered in his crusade to downsize the federal government and workforce.

“The continued successes in the courts in favor of the Trump administration shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has ever read our great Constitution, which clearly lays out the role of the Executive Branch, and which President Trump and his entire administration are following to a T,” Harrison Fields, the White House deputy press secretary, said in a statement. “The resistance campaign can try, but they will continue to fail in their pursuit to rewrite the Constitution and deny the people the legal authority of the President to run the Executive Branch.”

An exception to DOGE’s legal victories has been a suit regarding Treasury Department systems, which are used to distribute trillions of dollars in federal money. The databases can include sensitive information like bank accounts and Social Security numbers, and they’re traditionally maintained only by nonpartisan career officials.

A judge in Washington restricted DOGE’s access to two staff members, while another judge in New York has temporarily blocked DOGE altogether.

Norm Eisen, a lawyer who worked for House Democrats during their first impeachment of Trump, said it was too early to say that the legal efforts wouldn’t work. He noted that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, also appointed by Obama, expressed concern about Musk’s apparent “unchecked authority” in a case involving federal data and worker layoffs.

Although she didn’t issue a temporary restraining sought by Democratic attorneys general from 14 states, Chutkan said they could still make a strong argument Musk and DOGE violated the Constitution as the case progresses.

Eisen is representing current and former employees at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was shut down by Musk and Trump. His lawsuit alleges that Musk and DOGE are exercising powers that should only belong to those elected by voters or confirmed by the Senate.

“These are not minor peccadillos,” Eisen said. “These are some of the most fundamental issues that our Constitution and laws address.”

John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California in Berkeley, said an important factor has been the administration’s contention that Musk is a presidential adviser without any independent authority. He said there are echoes of another legal battle from the 1990s, when Hillary Clinton chaired a healthcare task force as first lady. A federal appeals court in Washington ruled that the task force did not need to comply with rules on open meetings.

“That’s how they’re winning the lawsuits,” Yoo said. “They’re trying to stay on the side of the line that the D.C. circuit has drawn.”

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman heard more than three hours of arguments Wednesday on a request for a temporary restraining order in a lawsuit challenging DOGE’s access to personal information collected by the federal government.

She did not issue a decision, and expressed skepticism about the argument from labor unions. But she also pressed administration lawyers on why DOGE representatives “need to know everything.”

Emily Hall of the Justice Department said DOGE was tasked with making “broad, sweeping reforms” that require such access.

“It’s a pretty vague answer,” responded Boardman, who was appointed by President Joe Biden.

A major victory for Trump and Musk came in Boston, where U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. allowed the administration to implement its deferred resignation program.

Commonly described as a buyout, the program allows workers to quit while getting paid until Sept. 30. It was challenged by a group of labor unions, but O’Toole ruled against them on technical legal grounds, saying they didn’t have standing to sue. O’Toole was appointed by President Bill Clinton.

Moss, the judge in the case involving the Office of Personnel Management, also decided not to block Musk’s team from viewing Education Department data. He pointed out that DOGE employees had testified in court papers they would follow laws around information sharing.

U.S. District Judge John Bates, an appointee of President George W. Bush, also did not stand in the way of DOGE’s involvement at the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Although Bates said he had “serious concerns” about the privacy issues raised by the legally complex case, he found the evidence did not yet justify a court block.

Administration lawyers said the DOGE team was not “running rampant, accessing any data system they desire” and had gotten security training and signed nondisclosure agreements.

Fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids began to spread the day after President Donald Trump was inaugurated for the second time. Posts on social media and Reddit claimed that ICE had already been spotted in the Dallas neighborhood of Oak Cliff, where Latino immigrants began to settle in large numbers in the 1970s and have profoundly shaped the culture of the vibrant community. 

That same Tuesday morning, an X account with over 17,000 followers named GlomarResponder made an ominous post. “Yeah, I’m in a courthouse wating [sic] on warrants,” GlomarResponder wrote. “Turns out there’s a lot of bitch work to be done to make mass deportations happen.” One day prior, GlomarResponder had posted that he “Can confirm all of those,” regarding a list of cities where ICE was expected to begin deportation operations the next day. “May have a betting pool to see who can guess which one I’m at on any particular day, based on the news,” GlomarResponder wrote.

These were but the latest posts that GlomarResponder has made over the years that suggest the operator of the account is an ICE employee. GlomarResponder has also routinely expressed blatantly racist and anti-immigrant views. Through an extensive review of GlomarResponder’s X posts, publicly available documents, and other social media profiles and posts, the Texas Observer has identified the operator of GlomarResponder as James “Jim” Joseph Rodden, a 44-year-old who works as an assistant chief counsel for ICE in the Dallas area. Rodden represents the agency in immigration court hearings where judges decide whether an individual is removed from the country. 

Since GlomarResponder was first created in 2012, the account has posted hateful, xenophobic, and pro-fascist content. “America is a White nation, founded by Whites. … Our country should favor us,” GlomarResponder wrote last month. “All blacks are foreign to my people, dumb fuck,” the account posted in September of last year. “Freedom of association hasn’t existed in this country since 1964 at the absolute latest,” GlomarResponder wrote four months prior, further clarifying the post was referring to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a reply to a comment. “I’m not a commie, I’m a fascist,” GlomarResponder posted a couple weeks later. “Fascists solve communist problems. Get your insults right, retard.”

In August, GlomarResponder posted: “‘Migrants’ are all criminals.” Two months later, GlomarResponder shared an image that reads: “It is our holy duty to guard against the foreign hordes.” Some GlomarResponder posts evoke anti-immigrant violence: “Nobody is proposing feeding migrants into tree shredders,” the account posted in March 2024. “Yet. Give it a few more weeks at this level of invasion, and that will be the moderate position.” And in January: “My WWII vet grandfather didn’t get a chance to kill asians, so he volunteered for Korea. He’d be asking for a short term job with ICE kicking doors and swinging a baton.”

Rodden’s ICE employment is confirmed by federal court records, background interviews, and Observer courtroom visits.

A resident of Frisco, Rodden has previously lived in Pennsylvania, Northern Virginia, and North Carolina, according to county voter registration, private data broker sites, and property records. Rodden attended Penn State and Wake Forest University law school. A James J. Rodden possesses a license to practice law in Washington, D.C., which allows representation of ICE in Texas immigration court and was granted within a year of Rodden’s graduation from Wake Forest. In court filings, Rodden has claimed to have worked in federal government for a number of years prior to his ICE job. What appears to be his LinkedIn lists prior employment as a U.S. Border Patrol agent, a United States Marine Corps armorer, and a litigation clinic student at a federal public defender’s office. The Marine Corps confirmed Rodden’s service and final rank of corporal, and the Federal Public Defender’s office in Greensboro, North Carolina, confirmed his prior employment. The Border Patrol’s parent agency declined to confirm Rodden’s prior employment and denied a public records request, citing privacy and national security concerns.

The evidence that Rodden operates the GlomarResponder account includes an overwhelming number of biographical details that GlomarResponder has shared over years that align with information about Rodden, including employment history, locations lived, characteristics of a spouse, involvement in a lawsuit against the federal government, height and fashion preferences, penchants for specific phrasing, and a variety of specific interests and hobbies. The Observer confirmed these details about Rodden through other social media profiles, public records, private data broker sites, open-source investigative tools, interviews, and attendance of court hearings in which Rodden was representing ICE.

Rodden did not respond to multiple Observer requests for comment, which detailed the findings of this story, sent to his ICE email address. A call to a phone number associated with Rodden reached a man who declined to confirm his identity before hanging up. When approached in a public hallway outside the Dallas immigration court and asked to confirm receipt of the emailed requests, Rodden said only to “call [his] press office.”

James Rodden approaches a courtroom at the Dallas immigration court in Dallas in February. (Steven Monacelli)

An ICE spokesperson declined to confirm Rodden’s employment, and the agency declined to release personnel records for Rodden without his written permission. The spokesperson wrote in an email: “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will not comment on the substance of this article pending further investigation, to include whether the owner of the referenced ‘X’ account is a current employee. Notwithstanding, ICE holds its employees to the highest standards of professionalism and takes seriously all allegations of inappropriate conduct.” 

In November 2021, a group of federal employees filed a class action lawsuit, styled James Joseph Rodden, et al. v. Dr. Anthony Fauci, over the federal employee vaccine mandate that required all federal workers to receive the COVID vaccine to keep their jobs. Per the lawsuit, Rodden was an “Assistant Chief Counsel at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” a position the Observer was able to confirm Rodden still occupies by attending Dallas immigration court and noting his name on a schedule circulated by the Dallas ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, where attorneys are generally referred to as assistant chief counsels. 

On September 6, 2023, GlomarResponder wrote: “I’m party to a lawsuit where preventing transmission was the justification for a shot mandate,” referring to the COVID-19 vaccine. He later lamented, on December 12 that year, that the lawsuit had been vacated.

Lawsuit filings reveal that Rodden took a blood test as part of providing evidence of naturally acquired immunity to COVID, and a briefing submitted on behalf of Rodden and his co-plaintiffs in a similar case argues that the vaccines are “less efficacious than natural immunity in preventing reinfection.”

In posts on X, GlomarResponder has made statements that echo what Rodden asserted in the court filings. In 2023, GlomarResponder wrote that he found out he had had COVID when he “got a blood test for a lawsuit” and that his immunity was found to be “better than that of the multi-shot morons.” In a recent response to a post that described the vaccine mandate as “insane,” GlomarResponder wrote that “some of us not only said so at the time, we sued them over it.”

(Shutterstock, X)

On January 21 of this year, the same day that GlomarResponder claimed to be waiting for warrants at a courthouse, Rodden was scheduled to be at the immigration courthouse in downtown Dallas, according to a weekly schedule document from ICE. Later that week, the Observer witnessed Rodden working at a deportation hearing, where he was representing the government agency. At this hearing, and another hearing in early February, Rodden wore a three-piece suit, cufflinks, and a watch—items GlomarReponder has posted about wearing—and appeared to be approximately 6’2”, corresponding to the height that GlomarResponder has disclosed in posts on X. He also maintained a cleanly shaved head, something GlomarResponder has recommended as “wisdom” to men who are going bald.

During the January court hearing the Observer attended, Rodden repeatedly used his phone at moments that corresponded to times GlomarResponder made posts. At the February hearing, the Observer saw Rodden scrolling through the X app on his phone and drafting a post at 1:14 p.m. The profile photo that appeared while Rodden drafted the post resembled that of GlomarResponder, which posted at 1:15pm.

Over the years, GlomarResponder has also made a number of posts that closely align with the posts of a Facebook account with the profile name Jim Rodden. James Rodden often goes by “Jim,” according to multiple sources, and the Facebook profile has posted in the Wake Forest Law Class of 2012 group, corresponding with education information on the James Rodden LinkedIn profile (which uses the first name “Jim” in the URL). James J. Rodden also appears in the list of 2012 Wake Forest law graduates. GlomarResponder has posted multiple times about Wake Forest and the city where it is located, Winston-Salem.

The Jim Rodden Facebook profile has been tagged in a post by an account appearing to belong to Rodden’s wife, and the Facebook has posted both specific text and uncommon images that align with those posted by GlomarResponder. 

On June 8, 2023, GlomarResponder wrote that “They tried to force a needle in my arm, and threatened to take food out of my family’s mouths. I don’t take kindly to threats. I have responded by spending a significant portion of my time and treasure on lawsuits.” 

A year prior, the Jim Rodden Facebook account posted: “This is your periodic reminder that anyone who is trying to force a needle into my arm, or my son’s arm, can fuck directly off forever with the ‘my body, my choice’ bullshit.” This post, along with many others, was either deleted or made private after the Observer contacted Rodden for comment.

The Facebook account has posted about opposition to “red flag laws” that can restrict a person’s ability to purchase a gun, used an image depicting the “Appeal to Heaven” flag that has become associated with far-right Christian nationalism for a profile banner photo, posted about the Comedian from the comic book series The Watchmen, shared an image of the Mexican wrestler Blue Demon, used an image of the character Kratos from the video game series God of War as a profile picture, and used multiple images of the insignia for the rank of Corporal in the Marine Corps for various profile pictures. On X, GlomarResponder has also posted critically about red flag laws, repeatedly posted the phrase “Appeal to Heaven,” posted about how he thinks the Comedian is “based,” shared the same image of the wrestler Blue Demon as the Facebook account (within 24 hours), posted about Kratos and the God of War video game series, and posted about how he had attained the rank of Corporal when he left the Marines, which corresponds with the final rank Rodden attained before leaving the Marines.

The Facebook account also features a banner image depicting an M1942 “Frog Skin” camo flag with an atypical cracked-skull Marine Raiders emblem that was updated in November 2023. In July 2024, GlomarResponder posted the same photo. The flag is an uncommon variant that was previously sold on a website called Paid to Raid but is no longer listed among their products. Reverse image searches for the photo of the flag do not turn up any other exact matches outside of Paid to Raid’s webstore. 

Left: A screenshot of the M1942 “Frog Skin” camo flag image posted as Jim Rodden’s Facebook banner. Right: A screenshot of GlomarResponder’s post featuring the same M1942 Frogskin Camo Flag image

The Observer also matched other publicly available information about Rodden with biographical details revealed in GlomarResponder posts. County property records and university documents confirm his prior residence in Northern Virginia and North Carolina and attendance at Penn State, where he participated in marching band according to the Linkedin profile. This is consistent with GlomarResponder’s posts that the account operator attended Penn State, worked at an office in Northern Virginia, and was in marching band. James Rodden appears in a 2003 Penn State yearbook.

GlomarResponder has also posted repeatedly about being an armorer, serving in the Marines, and working for Border Patrol, which correspond with Rodden’s LinkedIn. 

According to the Register of Deeds’ office of Forsyth County, North Carolina—reached by phone—James Rodden got married in August 2009. (Forsyth County is where Wake Forest is located.) His wife’s maiden name, confirmed by the clerk, aligns with public records and private data broker information that help confirm Rodden resides in Frisco.

A Facebook profile sharing his wife’s name made a post in August about a family dog, Freya, in which the account tagged the Jim Rodden Facebook account. The Facebook account has described the dog as a “Working Line German Shepherd,” also referred to generally and by the account as “GSD,” specifically from the Czech lineage of the breed. According to the Facebook and a LinkedIn profile matching her name, as well as publicly available corporate information, Rodden’s wife is a horseback jumper trainer and owner of Clear Round Jumpers. Her Facebook account features posts about an interest in dressage. The account’s profile picture, originally shared in a post by a Collin County horse training facility’s Facebook page that tagged the apparent Facebook of Rodden’s wife, is of a woman with red hair and no visible tattoos.

GlomarResponder has posted that the account operator’s wife is a “hunter / jumper trainer” who is competent at “dressage” and has red hair and no tattoos. The account has also posted several times about having a female dog and training German Shepherds—referring to them as GSDs, positively describing the virtues of the “average working line shep,” and posting that “Czech [GSDs] are also very good dogs.”

On X, GlomarResponder has posted about meeting a spouse at age 27 and getting married before age 30. That aligns with Rodden’s August 2009 marriage record in Forsyth County, North Carolina, where Rodden owned property according to public records. Private data brokers also place his wife at the same North Carolina address as Rodden at this time. “At 28, am I the old guy in the class?,” reads an April 2009 post made by the Jim Rodden Facebook account in the Wake Forest Law Class of 2012 Facebook group. 

On Facebook, Jim Rodden has liked and replied to mixed martial arts photos and videos posted by a Frisco MMA gym.

GlomarResponder has claimed to be under consideration for a federal appointment that would require Senate confirmation, which the Observer could not confirm. The account has also suggested that some of its posts may be misrepresentations to purposely mislead those who wish to uncover the operator’s identity.

“If you’re reading my anon Twitter account, some personal details may be misdirection,” GlomarResponder wrote on August 17, 2024.

But the alignment of biographical details, political viewpoints, interests, and the use of the same images across accounts is so specific that open-source intelligence experts who reviewed the Observer’s findings said the evidence linking Rodden to GlomarResponder (and another account, devildog_jim, used for forum posting) is unlikely to be coincidental.

“We asked two of our analysts with more than 20 years of combined experience in open source intelligence to review the identification,” said Bjørn Ihler, founder and CEO of Revontulet, a private counterterrorism intelligence and research company. “They found it to be thorough, well-supported, and worthy of public attention. They agree that the evidence linking James Rodden to the online accounts in question is strong, with significant biographical consistencies spanning over a decade. … The depth of the investigation leaves little room for doubt.”

An attorney expressing racism, xenophobia, and fascist politics would raise questions about their ability to act fairly and impartially in legal proceedings, such as in Rodden’s capacity representing ICE in immigration removal hearings, said Cyrus Mehta, a New York-based immigration attorney with over 30 years of experience.

“A government lawyer who vilifies people that he opposes in court, and puts that out under the radar, would clearly be engaging in conduct that’s prejudicial to the administration of justice,” Mehta said. 

Mehta said such conduct could violate the Rules of Professional Conduct for the District of Columbia Bar—which declined to comment for this story—through which James J. Rodden holds his license. According to Mehta, such rules are common in bar associations and have been used to charge and sanction attorneys.

There’s also a rule in the Code of Federal Regulations regarding government attorneys, Mehta noted, that says it’s “in the public interest for an adjudicating official or the board to impose disciplinary sanctions against any practitioner who falls within one or more of the categories enumerated in this section.” One of those categories is “conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice or undermines the integrity of the adjudicative.”

As of publication time, Rodden is still scheduled to represent the government in immigration court.

Kyle Phalen, an independent researcher, contributed to this report.

Editor’s Note: Exiting extremism can be a difficult process. If you or someone you love is caught up in hate or extremist politics, there are free resources that can help. Life After Hate and Parents for Peace are two non-profit organizations that operate help lines and provide support to help individuals and families recover from extremism.