First there was Occam’s Razor, which states that the simplest explanation to a situation is usually the best explanation. Then there was Hanlon’s Razor, which states that we should never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Now I wish to introduce a corollary to Hanlon’s Razor which I call Trump’s Razor. It is defined as follows: when it comes to the actions of the present administration, the motivation can only be explained by malice while the execution can only be explained by incompetence.
Case in point: the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) recently released (and quickly retracted) a list of sanctuary cities.
A sanctuary city is a jurisdiction that limits the extent to which it cooperates with federal immigration authorities to enforce immigration laws in order to protect undocumented immigrants. According to an excellent article in Cardinal News (“Feds list multiple localities in Southwest and Southside as ‘sanctuary jurisdictions’”), about a dozen localities in southwestern Virginia were incorrectly listed as sanctuary cities by DHS, including both the city and county of Martinsville.
Local residents will immediately notice that the county of Martinsville does not exist. Furthermore, the city of Martinsville is not and has never been a sanctuary city, as the Martinsville Police Department was quick to point out.
According to the article, not only are the majority of the localities on the DHS list NOT sanctuary cities, many of them are Republican strongholds that largely voted for Trump.
I understand that it’s never good to be falsely accused of something, especially if that something puts you in the crosshairs of a federal government largely motivated by vengeance. Still, there’s something grimly comical about the speed with which Martinsville denied these accusations, as if to say, “Hey, this city may be a lot of things, but we CATEGORICALLY DENY being a safe haven for our nation’s most vulnerable!”
How did the DHS list of sanctuary cities get so screwed up? There are two theories presented in the article. Rep. Morgan Griffith said that it “appears that there may be some paperwork anomalies related to federal detainers, particularly at some regional jails.”
Sen. Tim Kaine, meanwhile, offered another theory.
“Coupled with the Department of Health and Human Services’ report this week that cites nonexistent studies, I’m concerned that the Administration is turning to artificial intelligence to replace the work of dedicated civil servants that are being fired,” Kaine said.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time reading about AI — particularly the myriad ways in which it’s terrible — and this situation has all the hallmarks of lazy, AI-generated slop.
I can’t conclusively prove that the list was AI-generated, but I have a theory. There’s a brief reference in the Cardinal News article to Charlotte County and Tazewell County both voting to designate themselves as “Second Amendment Sanctuaries” back in 2019.
As you might recall, in 2019, Martinsville, Henry County, Patrick County, and a slew of other localities voted on whether or not to become Second Amendment Sanctuaries. The motivation for this was that on May 31, 2019, a disgruntled Virginia Beach city employee shot and killed 12 people and wounded four others at a municipal building in Princess Anne. This inspired then-Governor Ralph Northam to convene a special session of the General Assembly to take up gun control legislation.
Nothing came from that session, although a bunch of localities decided to formally announce that they were now Second Amendment Sanctuaries and would not comply with any gun laws that violated the Second Amendment. This was, at heart, a symbolic gesture that accomplished nothing, but the Democrats had just won the House and the Senate and people were afraid their guns were going to get taken away. You can see how that panned out.
I’m convinced that whatever AI program DHS used to compile the list of sanctuary cities scanned the internet, found a whole bunch of stories about rural localities that repeatedly featured the word “sanctuary,” and then generated the list. Considering that the federal government also released an AI-generated list of tariffs by country a couple of months ago that prominently featured landmasses populated only by penguins, it stands to reason.
If I’m correct and most of these localities were only listed as sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants because they chose to make a meaningless gesture in favor of guns six years ago and AI is too worthless to tell the difference, it may well be the most hilariously ironic story of the year so far. If nothing else, it’s the most perfectly 2025 story of 2025 so far.
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