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Jan. 25 News Reports

Sunday, January 25, 2026 9:22

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Editor’s Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and January 2026 news and views

Note: Excerpts are from the authors’ words except for subheads and occasional “Editor’s notes” such as this.

Jan. 25

A scene in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Jan. 24, 2026 (image by David Gutfelder for the New York Times).

A scene in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Jan. 24, 2026 (image by David Gutfelder for the New York Times).

New York Times, Federal Agents Kill a 37-Year-Old Minneapolis Man, Ernesto Londoño, Devon Lum, Hamed Aleaziz and Mitch Smith, Jan. 25, 2026 (print ed.). The victim, a nurse, was an American citizen with no criminal record, the city police chief said. Videos of the encounter contradict the federal government’s description of the shooting, a New York Times analysis found.

Federal agents shot and killed a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident on Saturday morning, the city’s police chief said. The shooting prompted clashes between law enforcement and hundreds of protesters, as Minnesota officials renewed demands that the Trump administration end its immigration crackdown, which has now resulted in two deaths.

Videos analyzed by The New York Times contradict the accounts of Homeland Security officials, who said that the man approached Border Patrol agents with a handgun and the intent to “massacre” them. Footage of the encounter shows the man was holding a phone in his hand, not a gun, when federal agents took him to the ground and shot him.

Federal officials posted images of a handgun they said the man was carrying. Chief Brian O’Hara of the Minneapolis police said the man who was killed, a 37-year-old American citizen with no criminal record, had a firearms permit. Open carry is legal in Minnesota.

A senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation identified the man as Alex Jeffrey Pretti. He is a registered nurse, according to state records. The Minnesota Organization of Registered Nurses issued a statement grieving his loss.

Agents appear to have fired at least 10 shots within five seconds at Mr. Pretti while he was on the ground, according to a Times analysis of verified videos posted to social media. Chief O’Hara said investigators believe that at least two agents opened fired.

In a news conference, Mayor Jacob Frey accused the Trump administration of terrorizing his city. “How many more residents, how many more Americans, need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end?” he asked. At least two other people have been shot by federal agents in Minneapolis this month, including Renee Good, 37, who was killed on Jan. 7.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 24 2026 [], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Jan. 25, 2026. heather cox richardson cnn This morning, on a street in Minneapolis, at least seven federal agents tackled and then shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse for the local VA hospital.

Video from the scene shows Pretti directing traffic on a street out of an area with agents around, then trying to help another person get up after she had been pushed to the ground by the agents. The agents then surround Pretti and shoot pepper spray into his face, then pull him to the ground from behind and hit him as he appears to be trying to keep his head off the ground. An agent appears to take a gun out of Pretti’s waistband during the struggle, then turns and leaves with it. A shot then stops Pretti’s movements, appearing to kill him, before nine more shots ring out, apparently as agents continued to fire into his body.

It looked like an execution.

After he was dead, the agents walked away, apparently making no effort to preserve the crime scene, which people on the street later tried to secure by walling it off with trash bins.

As journalist Philip Bump noted, administration officials didn’t even pretend to wait for more information before jumping straight to “the opponent of the state deserved it.”

Mitch Smith of the New York Times reported that federal agents have blocked state investigators from the scene. Drew Evans of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a statewide investigations team that specializes in police shootings, told reporters his agency had obtained a search warrant—a rare step—but the federal government still refused them access.

Tonight, in a lawsuit against Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and other administration officials, Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison asked a judge for a temporary restraining order to prevent DHS agents from destroying evidence related to the shooting. The suit noted the “astonishing” departure from normal investigations, seemingly trying not to preserve evidence but to destroy it. A judge, who was appointed to the bench by Trump, immediately granted the restraining order, barring the administration from “destroying or altering evidence” concerning the killing.

Ernesto Londoño of the New York Times reported that federal officials also “have refused to disclose the identities of federal agents involved in Saturday’s shooting, as well as the names of federal agents who have shot people in recent days.”

Minnesota police have refused to obey the federal officers, though. Local law enforcement has been talking to witnesses and finding videos of the shooting. Minneapolis police chief Brian O’Hara said at a press conference: “Our demand today is for those federal agencies that are operating in our city to do so with the same discipline, humanity, and integrity that effective law enforcement in this country demands. We urge everyone to remain peaceful.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said that it, rather than the FBI, will investigate the shooting. But, as Alex Witt of MS NOW noted, DHS had already issued a statement about the shooting, which falsely asserted that Pretti had “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun” and that he “violently resisted” as “officers attempted to disarm” him. The statement continued that “an agent fired defensive shots” and added that Pretti “also had 2 magazines and no ID—this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

“So,” Witt noted, “they’re gonna be investigating that which they’ve already issued a summary about…. It would seem that it’s a closed book?”

After repeatedly being exposed as liars over previous accusations against those they have shot, the Department of Homeland Security has so little credibility that Witt is not the only journalist calling out the federal agents for lying. Devon Lum of the New York Times wrote: “Videos on social media that were verified by The New York Times contradict the Department of Homeland Security’s account of the fatal shooting of a man by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday morning.

“The Department of Homeland Security said the episode began after a man approached Border Patrol agents with a handgun and they tried to disarm him. But footage from the scene shows the man was holding a phone in his hand, not a gun, when federal agents took him to the ground and shot him.”

But lying to the American people is the only option for the administration when we can, once again, all see what happened with our own eyes. Pretti did have a permit for a concealed handgun and appeared to have carried the gun with him, although witnesses say he never reached for it. Tonight Noem doubled down on the lie, saying again: “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.”

When the Democratic Party’s social media account posted: “ICE agents shot and killed another person in Minneapolis this morning. Get ICE out of Minnesota NOW,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller replied: “A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists.” The Democrats’ social media account responded: “You’re a f*cking liar with blood on your hands.”

Miller continued to bang that drum. When Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said that “ICE must leave Minneapolis” and that “Congress should not fund this version of ICE—this is seeking confirmation, chaos, and dystopia,” Miller responded: “An assassin tried to murder federal agents and this is your response.” When Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar similarly decried the killing, Miller responded: “A domestic terrorist tried to assassinate federal law enforcement and this is your response? You and the state’s entire Democrat leadership team have been flaming the flames of insurrection for the singular purpose of stopping the deportation of illegals who invaded the country.”

Miller is a white nationalist, who has recommended others read a dystopian novel in which people of color “invade” Europe and destroy “Western civilization.” Those who support immigration are, in the book’s telling, enemies who are abetting an “invasion”—a word Miller relies on—that is destroying the culture of white countries. They are working for the “enemy.”

In the wake of Pretti’s shooting, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to Minnesota governor Tim Walz to suggest he could “bring back law and order to Minnesota” if he handed over the state’s voter rolls to the Department of Justice. As Jacob Knutson of Democracy Docket noted, she explicitly tied the administration’s violence in the state to its determination to get its hands on voters’ personal data before the 2026 election. Minnesota has voted for the Democratic candidate running against Trump in the past three presidential elections, but he insists that he really has won the state each time.

As G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers wrote: Republicans could stop this at any time they wanted to.

“All it would take to end the murder of American citizens by an untrained government goon squad is 16 Republicans in Congress voting with Dem[ocrat]s to defund ICE (or 23 to impeach and remove Trump—3 in House & 20 in Senate). That’s it. 23 Americans can vote for the public and end all of this.”

Morris also pointed out that in December, Trump’s approval rating was negative in 40 states, including 10 he won in 2024. That covers 30 seats currently held by Republicans. Pretti’s shooting will likely erode Trump’s support further. Tonight, even right-wing podcaster Tim Pool reacted to Pretti’s killing by noting that it looked as if the agent had disarmed Pretti before the other agents shot him. “I don’t see Trump winning this one,” Pool commented.

The funding bill for DHS is effectively dead in the Senate, as Democrats have said they will not support any more funding for DHS. Tonight, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters: “Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.” But the July law the Republicans call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act poured nearly $191 billion into DHS through September 30, 2029, with almost $75 billion going to ICE and $67 billion going to Customs and Border Protection (FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, got just $2.9 billion).

Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA) had more to say: “What we just saw this morning on the streets of Minneapolis is another outright murder by federal officials. And let me just be clear, those federal ICE officers are absolute cowards. I am a Marine veteran standing here telling you to your face they are unprofessional, pathetic cowards. Because if a Marine, an 18 year old Marine, did that in Iraq in the middle of a war zone, he would be court martialed because it is murder. And you pathetic little cowards who have to wear face masks because you’re so damn scared, couldn’t even effectively wrestle a guy [to] the ground, so you needed to shoot him? This is why ICE needs to be prosecuted. Yeah, I voted to defund it, but ICE, you need to be prosecuted, and Director [Todd] Lyons, who’s running ICE right now, I hope you’re hearing this from this Marine to you. You guys are criminal thugs. You need to be held accountable to law if you think you can enforce it, and you need to be prosecuted right now.”

Just hours after the killing of Alex Pretti, agents pinned U.S. citizen Matthew James Allen to the street while he screamed: “I have done nothing at all. My name is Matthew James…Allen. I’m a United States citizen…. You’re gonna kill me! Is that what you want? You want to kill me? You want to kill me on the street? You’re going to have to f*cking kill me! I have done nothing wrong.” Nearby, his sobbing wife screamed: “Stop please! Stop!! Please!! We were just running away from the gas. That’s all we were doing.”

“We all know the poem,” Blue Missouri executive director Jess Piper wrote, “and there is no shade of white that will save you from this murderous regime.”

Tonight, Susan and Michael Pretti, the parents of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, issued a statement:

“We are heartbroken but also very angry,” they said.

“Alex was a kindhearted soul who cared deeply for his family and friends and also the American veterans whom he cared for as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital. Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, he will not be with us to see his impact.

“I do not throw around the ‘hero’ term lightly. However, his last thought and act was to protect a woman. The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He had his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down, all while being pepper sprayed.

“Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Monsters, Paul Krugman, right, Jan. 25, 2026. And their enablers are accessories to murder.

I was working on another wonkish post about China’s trade surplus when the news about Alex Pretti’s murder broke. I’ll put that post up at some point, but not today.

It has been clear for a long time, to anyone willing to see, that the people running the federal government — Trump, Miller, Noem, Bovino and more — are monsters. It has been equally obvious that ICE and the Border Patrol are now filled with sadistic thugs. Yet many people — almost the entire GOP, everyone serving in the Trump administration, some Democrats, a significant part of the media — were too cowardly to admit the obvious.

At this point, however, there are no more excuses. In a way the cowards and opportunists enabling Trump are more to blame for where we are than Trump and company themselves: monsters are monsters and can’t help themselves, but the enablers have a choice. And they have chosen, again and again, to accommodate and facilitate evil.

I wish I could believe that the last few weeks will be the last straw, but I don’t. To be honest, I wish I believed in Hell, because if it did exist, the enablers would be going there along with the monsters.

What I do believe in is the courage and decency of millions of ordinary Americans, which have been so dramatically on display in Minneapolis. We can only hope that this courage and decency get us through this nightmare — and we must do all we can to make it happen.

Line of federal agents on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis (Source: Chad Davis)

Line of federal agents on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis (Source: Chad Davis)

The Contrarian, Opinion: Execution in Minneapolis, Jennifer Rubin, right, Jan. 25, 2026. The ugly face of fascism cannot be ignored any longer.

The contrast between, on one hand, federal shock troops’ brutal, unjustified execution in Minneapolis on Saturday of Alex Pretti, a thirty-seven-year-old ICU nurse for the VA, and, on the other, Friday’s closures and a massive, peaceful demonstration and rally, where “Tens of thousands gather[ed] in downtown Minneapolis for ‘ICE Out’ day” (reportedly the largest union action in state history) — attended by union members, business people, clergy, and community activists in -20 degree weather — sums up the battle between tyranny and democracy.

The struggle between facts we all see and regime lies we all know to be preposterous plays out as well. As is their standard knee-jerk response, Donald Trump and his regime lied about the victim and the circumstances of the killing, despite the tragedy being captured on video from multiple angles.

As the New York Times reported:

Other video angles seem to show Pretti’s gun was taken before he was repeatedly shot dead. Eyewitnesses’ declarations confirmed the gruesome details and utter lack of provocation. Alex Pretti (Source: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs)

After the killings of Renee Good (whose autopsy shows she was killed by the third shot when the ICE agent was not in the vehicle’s path) and Pretti, the Trump regime tried to exclude state investigators and predetermine the details and outcome before any factual inquiry. That has led to a slew of resignations, the latest of which was reported Friday, by the New York Times: “[FBI] agent, Tracee Mergen, left her job as a supervisor in the FBI’s Minneapolis field office after bureau leadership in Washington pressured her to discontinue a civil rights inquiry into the immigration officer, Jonathan Ross.” In the case of Pretti, state and local officials held their ground and vowed to investigate and hold the killer(s) responsible.

Even more outrageous, late Saturday Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, telling him ICE would pull out if he met a list of unrelated demands, including the release of voting files. Any shred of doubt that this had nothing to do with immigration or safety vanished in this shameful act of what amounts to extortion.

The latest murder has seemed to rouse at least Democrats on the Hill — eliciting vows to cut off DHS funding from Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, (D-NY) issued a statement yesterday, declaring that “Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.” The actions also received a full-throated condemnation from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY):

Masked and lawless DHS agents have brutally killed another American citizen in Minneapolis. Donald Trump’s extremists have unleashed this carnage on the streets of America. They must all be held criminally accountable to the full extent of the law.

Even before Pretti’s killing, it beggared belief that any lawmaker could vote to continue to fund the murderous ICE operation without serious restraints. And yet seven House Democrats joined in voting to fund Department of Homeland Security with only token restrictions. That may have been the worse vote of their careers.Subscribed

Yet, as confirmed by Schumer’s statement, Senate Democrats now seem poised to reject the House bill, denying Republicans the 60 votes required for passage. They will need to formulate demands and then try to induce some Republicans to join them.

Vulnerable Senate Republicans might be stirred. Take the case of perpetually “concerned” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). With thousands of shock troops still in Minnesota, the ICE onslaught struck in Maine last week. As we have come to expect from frenzied and incompetent agents, ICE arrested a Black corrections officer (a citizen), to the horror of the local sheriff, who now opposes the “bush league” operation from coming to his state.

Mainers are angry; Gov. Janet Mills explicitly denounced their actions. Collins issued a mealy mouthed statement avoiding criticism of ICE and cheering deportation of undocumented immigrants — again demonstrating her uselessness when it matters most. She has said she would rubber stamp the DHS funding measure. Does she still intend to do so?

Now is the time to apply pressure on House and Senate members facing the voters (including the feckless Collins) in their home states and districts as well as in sustained speeches on the Senate floor. Peaceful protests at campaign appearances or outside district offices, letters to local newspapers, and statements denouncing Beltway laggards at public hearings or gatherings can turn up the heat on Republicans — and force Democrats to cut off funds to lawless street thugs.

State and local officials appear serious and well-positioned to control the situation and pursue justice, despite Trump’s lies and obstruction. The rest of us need to internalize Minneapolis’s heroic defense of democracy and do our part to rise to the defense of all Americans.

Global News

New York Times, Trump Threatens Canada With Tariffs as Post-Davos Fallout Continues, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Jan. 25, 2026 (print ed.). President Trump said he would impose tariffs if Canada made “a deal with China,” though there is no sign that those countries are discussing a broad trade agreement.

President Trump on Saturday threatened Canada with steep tariffs if it “makes a deal with China” and insulted Prime Minister Mark Carney, his latest swing at the country since Mr. Carney pushed back against his policies in a highly publicized speech in Davos, Switzerland, this week.

“If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the U.S.A.,” Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social. He referred to Mr. Carney as “Governor Carney,” a reference to Mr. Trump’s repeated insistence that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state.

There is no indication that Canada and China are in discussions about a broad trade agreement. Mr. Trump may have been reacting to Mr. Carney’s state visit to China last week, during which he agreed to lower tariffs on some Chinese electric vehicles in exchange for China doing the same for some Canadian agricultural products. The closely watched visit was billed as a crucial reset in the two countries’ relationship, but the trade agreement itself was modest.

davos 2026 square Canada gave Jamieson Greer, the U.S. Trade Representative, a detailed preview of the agreement with China before it was signed, a senior Canadian official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to divulge details about communication between the two administrations. Mr. Trump appeared to praise Mr. Carney after the deal was announced. (“Good for him,” he said.)

But he soured on the prime minister after Mr. Carney’s Davos speech, in which Mr. Carney declared that the U.S.-led world order had been ruptured and called on “middle powers” like Canada to band together to survive a new and perilous era.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Canada and China? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Without mentioning Mr. Trump or the United States by name, Mr. Carney pointedly called out the use of tariffs as coercion. “More recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited,” Mr. Carney said.ImageMark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, is visible on a large screen, giving a speech. Various people’s silhouettes are in the foreground.

U.S. Weather, Disasters

New York Times, Winter Storm Brings Severe Cold and Outages Across States, Clyde McGrady, J. David Goodman, Amy Graff and Judson Jones, Jan. 25, 2026 (print ed.). Airlines, transit systems and schools have announced extensive cancellations as a mix of snow, ice and freezing temperatures hit regions where nearly 200 million people live.

Jan. 24

A scene in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Jan. 24, 2026 (image by David Gutfelder for the New York Times).

A scene in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Jan. 24, 2026 (image by David Gutfelder for the New York Times).

New York Times, Federal Agents Kill a 37-Year-Old Minneapolis Man, Ernesto Londoño, Devon Lum, Hamed Aleaziz and Mitch Smith, Jan. 24, 2026. The victim, a nurse, was an American citizen with no criminal record, the city police chief said. Videos of the encounter contradict the federal government’s description of the shooting, a New York Times analysis found.

Here’s what else to know:

Federal accounts: Gregory Bovino, right, the official in charge of President Trump’s Border Patrol operations, said without evidence that the victim had “wanted to do maximum damage,” and that the agent who killed him was an eight-year Border Patrol veteran.
Street protests: Dozens of protesters at the site of the shooting blew whistles and angrily demanded that police officers arrest the federal agents. In response, law enforcement officials deployed tear gas and flash bangs to drive the crowd away.
White House call: Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat, said on social media that he had spoken to the White House about the shooting. He called the incident “sickening” and said President Trump “must end this operation.” He added, “Minnesota has had it.”
Trump response: The president blamed local politicians and police officials for the shooting on social media, and accused Mr. Walz and Mr. Frey of “inciting insurrection.” He also accused Minnesota officials of orchestrating a “cover up” of government fraud.
Prosecutor’s concerns: Mary Moriarty, the elected prosecutor in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, said that the “scene must be secured by local law enforcement for preservation of evidence.” Minnesota officials have been blocked by federal agencies from accessing evidence and pursuing an investigations of Ms. Good’s death.

Occupy Democrats: Footage from the Glam Doll Donuts in Minneapolis shows a group of six agents surrounding a man and beating him before one draws his gun and fires multiple shots, several of them AFTER the guy is lying motionless on the ground.

The MPD chief has confirmed the victim has died.While details are still very murky, it is impossible to argue that a man who is on the ground being beaten while surrounded by SIX ICE goons could somehow have posed a threat to them.Gov. Tim Walz said that “just spoke with the White House after another horrific shooting by federal agents this morning.””Minnesota has had it,” the governor wrote. “This is sickening. The President must end this operation. Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now.”

New York Times, Live Updates: Federal Agents Shoot and Kill a Person in Minneapolis, Officials Say, Mitch Smith, Ernesto Londoño and Hamed Aleaziz, Jan. 24, 2026. Federal law enforcement agents shot and killed a person in Minneapolis on Saturday morning, according to local and federal officials with knowledge of the episode, prompting a clash between the authorities and more than 100 protesters who swarmed the scene.

The shooting prompted a clash between ICE agents and more than 100 protesters who swarmed the scene. The circumstances of the shooting were not immediately clear, but video circulating on social media and verified by The New York Times appears to show it from a distance. In the footage, several people, apparently federal agents, are seen holding a person down on the sidewalk while at least one officer strikes the person with an object.

An apparent gunshot is heard, and several more appear to follow. The agents scatter, and a person falls to the ground.

The shooting occurred near the intersection of 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue, officials said, near a Glam Doll Donuts location. Dozens of protesters at the site blew whistles and angrily demanded that police officers arrest the federal agents. In response, law enforcement officials deployed tear gas and flash bangs to try to disperse the crowd.

City officials said they would share information in a news conference at 11:30 a.m. local time about “the shooting of an adult male in Minneapolis involving ICE agents.” Officials with the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately comment publicly on the shooting.

Here’s what else to know:

White House call: Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat, said on social media that he had spoken to the White House about the shooting. He called the incident “sickening” and said President Trump “must end this operation.” He added, “Minnesota has had it.”
Growing protests: The shooting came a day after thousands of people protested against Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, and hundreds of businesses shut down in solidarity.
Escalating violence: This is the third shooting involving federal law enforcement agents in Minneapolis this month, including the killing of Renee Good, 37, on Jan. 7.
Prosecutor’s concerns: Mary Moriarty, the elected prosecutor in Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, said that the “scene must be secured by local law enforcement for preservation of evidence.” Minnesota officials have been blocked by federal agencies from accessing evidence and pursuing an investigations of Ms. Good’s death.

The Parnas Perspective, Another CBP Involved Shooting with Multiple Masked Agents, Horrific Video Circulating, Aaron Parnas, Jan. 24, 2026. There is confirmation of another CPB involved shooting in Minneapolis early this morning.

This article will be updated throughout the day with information as it comes in, as this situation is a very fluid situation. I will be working around the clock right now, please come back to this article periodically for updates, and subscribe to support this work if you can.

A video of the shooting is now circulating online and has been confirmed as authentic by the Huffington Post. The footage shows multiple masked federal agents involved in the incident. I am going to show you the video below, but I need to warn you that it is extremely graphic.

The content is so disturbing that TikTok would not allow the video to be posted on its platform.The shooting reportedly took place in the Whittier neighborhood of south Minneapolis at around 9 a.m. According to the City of Minneapolis, the incident occurred near the intersection of 26th Street West and Nicollet Avenue. Emergency responders and law enforcement quickly flooded the area as residents looked on in shock.

The Star Tribune reports that federal agents attempted to order local police to leave the scene where the man was shot and killed by federal agents earlier this morning. According to the report, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara refused to comply with that demand and instead instructed his officers to remain on site and preserve the scene.

The City of Minneapolis posted a statement on Twitter saying it is aware of the shooting and is actively working to confirm additional details. City officials urged the public to remain calm and avoid the area while the situation is investigated and secured.

Hopium Chronicles, Pro-democracy Commentary: The Courage Of The People Of Minnesota Is Lifting Up And Inspiring A Nation, Simon Rosenberg, right, Jan. 24, 2026. Yesterday, tens of thousands of Minnesotans braved -15 degree temperatures for one of the largest public protests against the Trump regime we’ve seen so far.

Watch the video above to see the scope and scale of the protest, and check out these photos from Minnesota Star Tribune (below). I now subscribe to the Star Tribune to support their excellent coverage of the Trump regime’s ongoing assault on Minnesota, and encourage you to join me in becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Here’s the front page of the Star Tribune this morning:

minnesota toddler headlines

Here’s a screen shot of The Guardian’s home page right now [a United Kingdom newspaper] today to get a sense of how this is all playing abroad:

ice toddler guardian

Here’s another story from the Star Tribune today that is worth our attention, and outrage. As DHS/ICE cannot work with state and local law enforcement due to their lawless tactics they are having to fly people they detain in Minnesota out of state to other detention facilities. Even children separated from their parents. And some of the people being shipped to these facilities are dying. This is a story of a 34 year old father of two in Minnesota who died EIGHT DAYS after arriving Texas. Imagine the terror this is bringing to targeted communities there. They get you and you can die.

Here’s an excerpt from the story:

The family of a Minnesota man who died at a Texas facility eight days after he was detained in Minneapolis is questioning the circumstances of his death and demanding a more thorough investigation.

Victor Manuel Diaz died Jan. 14 after being found unconscious in the Camp East Montana detention center in El Paso, Texas. Four days later, ICE announced the news, saying in a statement that his death was a “presumed suicide,” though the official cause of death remains under investigation.

Diaz, a 34-year-old father of two, is the third immigrant to die at the makeshift tent facility at Fort Bliss since it opened last August, and which has been plagued by reports of substandard conditions. His death prompted advocacy groups to demand the camp be closed and is also fueling fear for the safety of other Minnesota detainees sent there in recent weeks.

The El Paso county medical examiner said the death of another detainee in early January at the camp likely will be classified as a homicide after witnesses saw him being choked to death by guards, according to the Washington Post, despite federal officials saying the detainee died after attempting to take his own life.

That case shows the need for an independent autopsy in Diaz’s case, said Randall Kallinen, a Houston attorney hired by Diaz’s family. He said after Diaz’s death, ICE decided to have their own doctor perform his autopsy.

“We want our own autopsy done just to check for signs of what really happened,” he said.

Gov. Tim Walz, Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith and other local leaders have called for a full investigation into the death, with Walz adding that it’s “deeply disturbing, especially after reports of growing concerns about the conditions at this facility.”

In December, the ACLU and other human rights groups sent a letter to ICE describing beatings and sexual abuse of immigrants by officers at the camp, among other concerns about the poor conditions and human rights violations.

renee good she mattered graphic The family of Renee Good released an autopsy this week that confirmed that the first shots Agent Ross fired into her car at point blank range did not kill her. It was the third shot, taken after he was out of harm’s way, that did. As many prosecutors have argued the case for charging him with intentional homicide is very strong.

Yes, in their haste, bloodlust, and fanaticism they are just killing people.

In a related development on Thursday the regime dismantled a slavery exhibit in Independence National Historic Park:

philadelphia skyline w The city of Philadelphia (above) sued the Department of the Interior and the acting director of the National Park Service on Thursday over reports that slavery exhibits were being dismantled in the city’s historic district.

The suit, filed in federal court, seeks a preliminary injunction to restore the exhibits at the President’s House Site, part of Independence National Historical Park.

The lawsuit says that “the National Park Service has removed artwork and informational displays at the President’s House site referencing slavery, presumably pursuant to the mandate” of Executive Order No. 14253, which President Donald Trump signed in March.

The city said in the suit that it learned Thursday that the educational panels that referred to slavery had been removed.

“Removing the exhibits is an effort to whitewash American history,” Philadelphia City Council President Kenyatta Johnson said in a statement Thursday. “History cannot be erased simply because it is uncomfortable. Removing items from the President’s House merely changes the landscape, not the historical record.”

NBC Philadelphia aired video Thursday that shows people with crowbars taking down panels, one of which reads “The Dirty Business of Slavery.”

The suit says the city was given no notice about the change to the President’s House.

As I’ve been showing you these past few weeks the public has rejected these extreme tactics. Trump’s already low approval rating has dropped in the last 10 days. His rating on “immigration” is now sharply negative. The big NYT this week had Trump 40%-58% on immigration. Polling on ICE is even worse:

36%-63% ICE Approve/Disapprove (NYT)

37%-57% ICE Beneficial/Harmful (Emerson, in a poll 9 pts more favorable to Trump than the average rn)

As I wrote to you yesterday in my post, We Must Choose Freedom, it is time now for the free states and cities to band together with our Congressional leaders to create a unified national front against Trump’s rising authoritarianism and his dangerous, corrupt foreign policy:

In an ideal world, what we would see next week is a public statement signed by all Dem Governors, AGs, Senate and House Democrats that states clearly that

Rule of law must be re-established in America, ICE must be reined in, and Trump’s outrageous plunder and corruption must end
That he must back off his illegal and destructive territorial ambitions, end all these ridiculous tariffs, and re-commit to the Trans-Atlantic Alliance

Stake in ground. Unified voice. Muscular defense of liberty, democracy, and the American creed. Yes, it is time now for something akin to our Letter to America, and for our leaders to make clear, before it is too late, that we are willing to come together and fight for America, freedom, and democracy; and for us to start listing, clearly, his modern day “injuries,” “abuses,” and “usurpations.” That we elected an American President and not a dictator, and it is way past fucking time he start acting like one.

The people of Minnesota are showing us what must be done now. It is time for the rest of the leadership of the Democratic Party, from all across the country, to “abandon caution” and join them. There may have been a moment earlier in Trump’s return that Democrats should have been wary of engaging Trump on immigration. That moment has long passed. For history tells us that appeasement never works, and only encourages authoritarian escalation. At this moment we all need to be as brave as the people of Minnesota.

Together, we must choose freedom.

New York Times, Videos Showing Aggressive ICE Tactics in Minnesota Fuel a Backlash, Elena Shao, Arijeta Lajka, Helmuth Rosales and Raj Saha, Jan. 24, 2026. Federal immigration agents have broken windows and dragged occupants out of their vehicles. They have forcefully tackled people to the ground. They have pushed and shoved protesters, and deployed pepper spray directly in their faces.

For weeks, residents have documented the scenes unfolding as federal agents pursue President Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. The videos have circulated widely and intensified outrage and fear among many Minnesotans.

Marty Kurcias, 76, who was protesting at the airport on Friday, said the aggressive treatment he has seen of Minnesotans was jarring. “It can’t go on like this,” he said, adding, “We don’t abide by cruelty or violence.”

Trump administration officials have defended the tactics as necessary in the face of widespread protests. But the heavy-handed use of force has drawn mounting scrutiny.

The New York Times reviewed dozens of videos taken in recent weeks and identified multiple aggressive tactics that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents used during immigration arrests and in encounters with protesters.Officers forcibly entered homes without a judge’s warrant.

On Sunday, federal agents were seen dragging a man from his home in St. Paul. The man was later identified as ChongLy Scott Thao, a Hmong immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen with no criminal record, according to his family. Mr. Thao and his family said that the armed agents did not present a warrant or allow him to show identification at the time of arrest.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Mr. Thao refused to be fingerprinted or facially identified and that he had matched the description of two sex offenders they were seeking.

An internal memo, leaked by a whistle-blower group, showed that ICE officials had drafted guidance saying that their officers could enter homes without a judicial warrant and that they could rely instead on administrative warrants that are issued by a government agency and do not go through the federal court system.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the department, acknowledged that officers had relied on administrative warrants to enter homes to conduct arrests.

John Sandweg, who served as an acting director of ICE under President Barack Obama, said the practice of entering homes without a judicial warrant would be a significant departure from decades-old ICE policies and procedures.They interrogated people because of their ethnicity or accents.

Administration officials have repeatedly said that the operations in Minnesota have targeted violent criminals and people who pose a serious threat to the community. But immigration agents have confronted and interrogated people because of what they assumed their race or ethnicity to be.

A video posted on social media and additional footage provided to The New York Times show one man, Ramon Menera, questioned by immigration agents who told him they were asking for documentation because of his accent.

“Why are you asking me for my paperwork?”
“Because of your accent.”
“I still —
you have an accent too.”
“Where were you born, sir?”
“Where were you born at?”
“Put your hands behind your back.”

Morning News Round Up

minnesota map

dhs 100 million deportations The Parnas Perspective, Political Commentary, General Strike in Minnesota Makes History as Resignations Plague FBI Over Failure to Investigate ICE Office, Aaron Parnas, right, Jan. 24, 2026. There is a lot to cover today, including a historic moment in Minnesota where the first general strike in 80 years succeeded.

Resignations are spreading through the FBI over the failure to properly investigate Renee Good’s death, and the Department of Homeland Security has reportedly instructed FEMA not to use the word “ice” when describing the ice storm out of concern for public ridicule.

At the same time, I have major personal news to share with you. In just 24 hours, because of your support, The Parnas Perspective has climbed to the number six podcast on all of Apple Podcasts, surpassing Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Ben Shapiro, and others. We can beat Joe Rogan today. Click here or use the button below and leave a five-star rating.

I have said from the beginning that we have big plans to expand this platform and reach more people, and this is only the start. We are approaching the one-year anniversary of my decision to become a full-time journalist, and I am proud to say we are building something different and better together.

TikTok has already censored one of my videos, but we are growing here and we are doing it collectively. PHere’s the news:

We are getting more information about the first general strike in the United States in nearly eighty years. Tens of thousands of Minnesotans, estimated at 50,000 or more, marched through downtown Minneapolis in subzero temperatures as part of a statewide strike and economic shutdown demanding ICE leave the state, with workers staying home, hundreds of businesses closing, nearly 100 faith leaders arrested in civil disobedience at the airport, and organizers citing outrage over aggressive federal immigration enforcement and the killing of Renee Good as central motivators.

An FBI supervisor in Minneapolis resigned over concerns that the investigation into the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE officer was being steered by Trump administration officials to scrutinize Good and her partner rather than the officer’s actions, amid multiple prosecutor resignations, public protests, and escalating tensions between federal authorities and Minnesota officials.

MS Now has confirmed that Justice Department officials under the Trump administration directed prosecutors and the FBI to halt a civil rights investigation into the ICE officer who fatally shot Renee Good and instead pursue a criminal probe of Good herself after her death, including seeking a search warrant that a judge rejected as improper, a move that fueled resignations by FBI supervisors and federal prosecutors and drew sharp criticism from judges as protest-related cases repeatedly collapsed in court.

The front page of today’s Minnesota Star Tribune:

The word “ice” has become so toxic for the Department of Homeland Security that it has instructed FEMA officials not to use “ice” when describing the once in a generation ice storm impacting hundreds of millions of Americans this week.

German media criticized US border patrol official Gregory Bovino’s distinctive greatcoat and grooming during immigration raids, comparing his appearance to Nazi and fascist aesthetics—claims he denies, calling the outrage manufactured and saying the coat was standard issue.

Federal judges in Minnesota rejected the Trump administration’s request to detain three protesters arrested after disrupting a church service tied to an alleged ICE employee, ruling that DOJ lawyers provided no factual or legal basis to treat the incident as a crime of violence and ordering the defendants released while prosecutors pursue conspiracy charges instead.

Donald Trump is back to calling Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, “Governor” and is threatening 100% tariffs on Canada if it makes a deal with China over the United States:

Texas officials have formally cleared Tommy Lee Walker, a Black man executed in 1956 for the murder of a white woman, after a review found his conviction was based on false and coerced evidence, ignored alibi testimony, and was deeply shaped by racial bias in Jim Crow–era Dallas, prompting a unanimous resolution declaring his case a profound miscarriage of justice.

Families of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan, including the mother of a Scottish sergeant who died in 2009, condemned Donald Trump’s claim that Nato allies stayed off the front lines as deeply hurtful and false, saying it diminishes the sacrifices of UK troops who fought and died alongside US forces.

The U.S. military carried out a lethal strike on a vessel suspected of drug trafficking in the eastern Pacific Ocean, killing two people and leaving one survivor, marking the first known such attack since U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month and reflecting a broader Trump administration campaign to disrupt maritime drug routes through repeated strikes on alleged smuggling boats.

The Guardian has confirmed that the Trump administration has sharply cut funding, training, and grants for law enforcement and prosecutors handling child sex exploitation cases, including canceling a major national training conference and withholding ICAC task force funds, moves that prosecutors and investigators say are hindering investigations, weakening coordination, and putting vulnerable children at greater risk.

Public health and environmental groups are suing the EPA over its approval of the PFAS insecticide isocycloseram, arguing the agency ignored evidence that it can damage reproductive organs, harm fetal development, threaten wildlife and pollinators, and pose heightened risks to children, while critics say industry-aligned EPA leadership fast-tracked the pesticide despite scientific warnings.

Good news:

A 61-year-old South Carolina man, Jim Gogan, who had been colorblind his entire life, became emotional after putting on color-correcting glasses gifted by his son, immediately seeing reds and greens clearly for the first time, passing color tests he had always failed, and marveling at everyday sights like bricks, trees, and the sky as his world suddenly appeared in full color.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife is developing a legislatively mandated Wolverine Restoration Plan to reintroduce the species, absent from the state for over 100 years, by relocating about 45 wolverines with diverse genetics into three high-elevation regions, aiming to eventually support roughly 50 to 100 animals statewide, restore ecological balance, address rancher concerns through compensation measures, and rebuild a population that once naturally existed across Colorado’s alpine ecosystems.

Delta Air Lines announced it will share about $1.3 billion in profits with employees in 2026, giving workers an average of three to five weeks’ pay through its profit-sharing program, one of the largest payouts in company history and a continuation of a practice that has distributed roughly $5 billion to employees over time.

Scientists in China revealed that an 800-year-old Song Dynasty nobleman known as the Changzhou Mummy was remarkably preserved through a unique embalming method that left his organs intact and infused them with mercury, cinnabar, and fragrant oils via an enema, allowing detailed genetic, dietary, and health analyses that shed new light on medieval Chinese mummification practices and the ancient origins of diseases like atherosclerosis.

U.S. Politics, Governance

New York Times,Trump Threatens Canada With Tariffs as Post-Davos Fallout Continues, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Jan. 24, 2026. President Trump said he would impose tariffs if Canada made “a deal with China,” though there is no sign that those countries are discussing a broad trade agreement.

There is no indication that Canada and China are in discussions about a broad trade agreement. Mr. Trump may have been reacting to Mr. Carney’s state visit to China last week (shown above), during which he agreed to lower tariffs on some Chinese electric vehicles in exchange for China doing the same for some Canadian agricultural products. The closely watched visit was billed as a crucial reset in the two countries’ relationship, but the trade agreement itself was modest.

Canada gave Jamieson Greer, the U.S. Trade Representative, a detailed preview of the agreement with China before it was signed, a senior Canadian official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to divulge details about communication between the two administrations. Mr. Trump appeared to praise Mr. Carney after the deal was announced. (“Good for him,” he said.)

overtime bulwark Overtime via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: For Some Voters, Trump’s Mask is Slipping, Jim Swift, Jan. 24, 2026. Plus: What You Missed This Week From The Bulwark.

THERE IS A WELL-KNOWN DRAMATIC device that comes to mind when watching the Trump show. A villain whom the audience knows to be duplicitous and dangerous has a talent for presenting himself as normal and benign. Only the hero knows the truth. But at a critical moment—Captain Queeg’s rant about strawberries in the Caine Mutiny, or Lonesome Rhodes’s hot mic moment in A Face in the Crowd—the mask slips and everything is revealed.

Some have been waiting for years for such a moment, an epiphany in which Trump’s base will finally come to see that nearly every word out of his mouth is a lie—“including ‘and’ and ‘the,’”as Mary McCarthy once scathingly said of Lillian Hellman. In this fantasy, his supporters would see his unhinged tantrums, pathetic boasts, and omnidirectional aggression for what they are. Throughout 2017 and into 2018, I was one of those fervently hoping for such a moment.

But years ago, I accepted that the scales-falling-from-the-eyes revelation will never come for the MAGA faithful. They are too invested. As psychologists and others have observed, it is far easier to con someone than to convince them that they have been conned.

Still, the Trump bitter-enders represent only about 29 percent of the voters who pulled the lever for him in 2024, according to new research by More in Common, an international pro-democracy organization. (Full disclosure: I serve on More in Common’s board.) And as a recent Chicago Tribune report found, a small but significant percentage of 2024 Trump voters either regret their vote or have serious concerns about the way things are going. When elections are decided by just a few hundred thousand votes in seven states, those defections are crucial.

It’s entirely possible that those swing voters care only about the cost of living and not about the collapse of American decency, but on the chance that that isn’t the case, it’s worth spelling out one of the great delusions of the Trump era that has been definitively unmasked by the Davos Debacle.

Trump has always claimed that his derisive pose toward our NATO allies arose from pique that they were not pulling their load on defense spending. Many reasonable people agreed that Europe should spend more on defense, and so they took Trump at this word. When European nations did boost their defense budgets, some were quick to give Trump credit—though the big increases came only after Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, not in response to Trump’s threats and whines.

While Trump’s resentment of America’s outsized role in NATO was doubtless due in part to his perennial sense of being exploited (no matter how many advisors attempted to disabuse him of the notion that there was one NATO bank account in Brussels into which the United States made disproportionate contributions), the ground truth of it becomes undeniable now. It isn’t just the money.

Trump has never believed in the principles that NATO was founded to promote and preserve. He doesn’t feel affinity for liberal democracy. Recall that in early 2024, Trump recounted a conversation (probably fictional) with the leader of a “large” European nation who supposedly asked Trump whether America would come to its defense in the event of a Russian invasion. Trump claimed to have replied: “You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent? No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay.”

Even if it were true that a European power had spent too little on defense, welcoming a Russian invasion would rather defeat the purpose of the whole treaty.

Trump doesn’t respond to naked aggression the way normal people do. He gets excited. Recall that when Putin’s tanks rolled into Ukraine, Trump swanned into the Mar-a-Lago dining room gushing over what a “genius” Putin was. He later issued some rote condemnations, and eventually settled into the narrative that the attack would never have happened if . . . you know the rest. But his initial response to the murderous violence was delight, just as he had reveled in the January 6th attack on the Capitol—the gravest assault on our democracy since 1861.

Most hostility to the “neocon” agenda stems from the belief that the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan failed, but Trump doesn’t even endorse the goals. He doesn’t believe in promoting democracy at all, even if it costs us nothing. Early in his second term, Trump visited Saudi Arabia and declared that the days of Western leaders “in beautiful planes giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs” were over. In hindsight, it’s clear that this rule applied only to authoritarian countries. The Trump administration applied no such rule to our democratic allies.

Trump called former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “far left lunatic” who had destroyed Canada with COVID mandates. He lambasted Volodymyr Zelensky (but not Putin) for failing to hold elections. JD Vance, among other MAGA figures, excoriated European nations for their tolerance of limitations on free speech. Vance’s critique is not without some validity, but it’s rich coming from an administration that is openly attempting to quash free speech here at home, and further, one that is supposedly taking a hands-off approach to others’ internal governance.

It’s hard to think of an occasion when Trump has criticized any authoritarian for their repression. On the contrary, he praised Xi Jinping for his treatment of the Uighurs, and he has often lauded authoritarian leaders (Viktor Orbán, Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, Nayib Bukele, Rodrigo Duterte, among others) for their “strength.” Only democratic leaders get labeled crazy or weak.

It’s Trump’s lack of belief in liberal democracy, as much as stinginess, that explains his coolness toward Ukraine. What seems blindingly obvious to every liberal democratic leader—that brute conquest by a quasi-fascist regime against a fellow democracy demands a forceful response—is not at all clear to Trump. What’s in it for me? he keeps asking. Can I get a Nobel? Can we extort some rare earth minerals?

With the snatching of Maduro in Venezuela, we can see the full contempt Trump harbors toward democracy. The United States went to considerable risk and expense to capture Maduro—but there isn’t even a pretense of pivoting now to help restore democracy to Venezuela. It’s all about the oil. If a Maduro lookalike will pony up petrodollars to Trump, that’s all he cares about. It’s Putinesque.

Trump behaves as a bullying autocrat at home; why would he uphold the rule of law and democracy abroad?

And now we come to Greenland—the mad king in full regalia. There are several layers to this betrayal of American and Western values.

To even threaten military force against a peaceful ally violates common sense, as well as the norms and rules that America spent decades enshrining in international law and practice.

To do so because a private entity in a third country—which Trump himself confirmed he knows is not the same country—hurt his little feelings by declining to give him the Nobel Peace Prize is cringe-inducing and frankly borderline insane.

To insult every member of NATO is to alienate the United States from the entire democratic world.

To admit, in public, that because he is pouting over not winning the Peace Prize, he will no longer prioritize peace is as clear a confession as can be that his true interest was never peace.

For now, Trump has climbed down from his threats (after a market plunge). But our former friends will no longer labor under the delusion that he is a fellow liberal democrat.

Trump has contempt for democratic norms. He wants to move America’s pieces to the other side of the chessboard, alongside those whose systems and methods he finds more congenial—Russia, China, El Salvador, Turkey, and Hungary. NATO leaders at last see it, perhaps it will also dawn on some critical American voters.

texas map

New York Times, Opinion: Two Comedians Told the Truth About Jasmine Crockett’s Campaign, Michelle Goldberg, right, Jan. 24, 2026 (print ed.). This month some of the worst elements of 2020-style online progressive politics made a brief return, thanks to a controversy involving a couple of comedians and Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas. It merits attention, despite its seeming triviality, because the underlying issue could cost Democrats the Senate this fall.

The contretemps started with an offhand comment on “Las Culturistas,” a podcast hosted by the actors and comedians Bowen Yang, until recently a star on “Saturday Night Live,” and Matt Rogers. Rogers was dunking on Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, arguing that Democrats need genuinely populist leaders, not those who simply excel at trolling Donald Trump. From there, he dismissed Crockett’s campaign to move up to the Senate.

“Anytime a politician is making it too obviously about themselves, I’m already done,” he said. “And don’t waste your money sending to Jasmine Crockett. Do not do it.” Yang added, “I must agree.”

Online, there was a backlash from Crockett fans, many of whom accused the “Las Culturistas” hosts of racism and misogyny. The reaction was intense enough that both Rogers and Yang issued abject apologies. “I have great respect and admiration for Rep. Crockett,” wrote Rogers, who promised to “be better.” Yang pledged to use his platform “more responsibly.”

But Rogers and Yang were right to be skeptical of Crockett, who almost certainly cannot win a general election in Texas. Those who disagree have every right to criticize them, and me. But progressives shouldn’t let a retrograde style of internet discourse inhibit them from pointing out the obvious.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

It can be tricky, of course, to discuss electability concerns about Black female candidates. It’s not always easy to draw the line between analyzing the voters’ putative prejudices and reifying them. If liberals decide in advance that Black women are at an electoral disadvantage, they risk making that disadvantage real. But it’s not race and gender that make Crockett a bad candidate, though both obviously shape perceptions of her. The problem with Crockett is that her theory about how Democrats can win Texas is wrong.

I understand why lots of Democrats adore Crockett. She’s charismatic and often funny and knows how to command attention. “I think that we have to take a page or two, or three or four, out of Donald Trump’s book,” she told Vanity Fair in 2024. Some of her insults are in bad taste — she has called Texas’ governor, Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, “Hot Wheels” — but it’s easy to see why Democrats who feel brutalized by Trump want champions willing to go low.

Still, Democrats cannot win Texas, a state where Trump beat Kamala Harris by almost 14 percentage points, without flipping at least some Republican voters. James Talarico, Crockett’s opponent in the Democratic primary, showed that he could do that in his 2018 election to the Texas House, turning a red seat blue and winning a district that was also carried by Abbott. Crockett, by contrast, has always represented a deep blue district and has never had to run a seriously contested general election campaign.

She has been openly contemptuous not just of Trump but also of the Texans who cast their ballots for him. In that Vanity Fair interview, she described Latino voters who agreed with Trump’s pitch on immigration — a demographic where Democrats need to make inroads — as having a “slave mentality.”Editors’ PicksHow Little Exercise Can You Get Away With?Forget the Cynics. Here’s Why You Should Get Your Dog a Stroller.Inside an Exploding Marriage: Belle Burden in Her Own Words

Rather than focusing on peeling off Trump voters, Crockett is staking her candidacy on a promise to motivate Texans who rarely, if ever, go to the polls. “The theory of my case has always been that we could expand the electorate,” she told a Texas news station last month. “We could get people that normally don’t participate in politics to be excited about getting involved.”

This theory is dubious. In a detailed article last month, Texas Monthly called the idea that Democrats can prevail in the state simply by juicing turnout “the biggest lie in Texas politics.” It noted that in 2018, when Beto O’Rourke came close to defeating the Republican senator Ted Cruz, he did so by winning over hundreds of thousands of Abbott voters who split their tickets. In that year’s midterms, races across the country saw presidential-level turnout. But much of the reason there was a blue wave, according to the Democratic data firm Catalist, was that swing voters who opted for Trump in 2016 supported Democrats two years later.

Of course, some candidates have succeeded in part by inspiring low-propensity voters, most notably Trump and Zohran Mamdani. Both were outsider candidates who were able to motivate people who distrust conventional politicians. Crockett, however, isn’t offering an alternative to the Democratic Party’s status quo.

In Vanity Fair, she described Harris as a “perfect candidate” who “did everything right” and whose main flaw was a failure to get her message across. The video announcing Crockett’s candidacy featured a close-up of her face with audio of Trump insulting her. His disdain is indeed a badge of honor, but it is probably not enough to activate voters who couldn’t be bothered to vote against him when he was on the ballot.

Texas is a difficult environment for Democrats, but there are a lot of disaffected Trump voters in the state; according to the Texas Politics Project, the president’s approval ratings are underwater there by seven percentage points. Crockett, however, is poorly positioned to pick up Trump defectors. In November, 49 percent of Texas voters told pollsters they would definitely not vote for her. Only 40 percent said that of Talarico.

Such numbers may explain why Republicans, according to the political news site NOTUS, worked behind the scenes to push Crockett into the race. The National Republican Senatorial Committee disseminated polls showing her winning a potential primary. Further, an anonymous source told NOTUS, Republicans ran an AstroTurf phone and text campaign urging Democrats to contact Crockett and ask her to run. Those efforts might have worked. “The more I saw the poll results, I couldn’t ignore the trends, which were clear,” Crockett said in her announcement speech.

Speaking to The Washington Post this week, Crockett seemed to suggest that the race was such a long shot that Democrats could afford to take chances. Addressing her critics, she said: “If you think it’s a losing cause, then who cares? But at least you could say we tried something new and we learned something from this experience.”

This gets things backward. Texas is not a lost cause, and Democrats cannot afford to treat it like one, given that they must flip four Republican seats if they are to retake the Senate.

If people hesitate to make the case against Crockett because they fear online pile-ons, only Republicans benefit. There is very little that’s good to say about Elon Musk’s transformation of Twitter into a white nationalist propaganda factory, but one tiny silver lining is that it has lessened the platform’s malign influence on progressive politics. As Politico reported this week, now Republicans are the ones dealing with the site’s toxic dynamics, as esoteric debates and influencer feuds tear at the MAGA movement.

But social media is much bigger than X, and the “Las Culturistas” episode shows that bad-faith social justice arguments still have a lot of power on the internet. The fault for this lies not with the people making those arguments but with those who let themselves be cowed by them.

More On ICE Abuses

New York Times, Pepper-Sprayed While Pinned Down: A Searing Scene Provokes Outrage, Ernesto Londoño, Jan. 24, 2026 (print ed.). Images of a man getting pepper-sprayed at close range while being held down by Border Patrol agents fueled more tension in Minneapolis.

The deployment of thousands of federal agents to Minnesota to round up undocumented immigrants has yielded no shortage of indelible images in recent weeks.

There was the American citizen dragged out of his home in subzero weather in his underwear. And the detention of a 5-year-old boy wearing a Spider-Man backpack and a hat with floppy ears drew outrage from school officials.

But photos of a Border Patrol agent squirting pepper spray in the face of a man who was being pinned down by fellow officers on Wednesday searingly captured why the ongoing immigration operation has been met with furious resistance on the streets of Minneapolis.

Images of the episode drew millions of views online, made the front page of The Minnesota Star Tribune and elicited blistering condemnation from local officials.

“No one looking at this image can seriously claim this is about public safety,” said Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis. “It should alarm every American because if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere.”

Gov. Tim Walz reposted the Star Tribune newspaper page on social media, along with a two-word comment: “Trump’s America.”

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, did not respond to an email asking about the confrontation and whether the use of force depicted in photos and videos taken by bystanders that day had violated use of force policies.

The identity and whereabouts of the man who was sprayed was unclear on Friday.

The confrontation began early Wednesday afternoon, when a group of Border Patrol agents got into a slight collision with a vehicle driven by a young woman in a residential neighborhood in south Minneapolis, according to witnesses.

What came next was captured on video by, among others, two activist brothers from Chicago, Ben and Sam Luhmann, who have been documenting immigration enforcement operations in Illinois and Minnesota for months.While agents examined an American passport that the woman in the vehicle provided them, protesters gathered around them, cursing and blowing whistles.

New York Times, F.B.I. Agent Who Tried to Investigate ICE Officer in Shooting Resigns, Alan Feuer and Glenn Thrush, Jan. 24, 2026 (print ed.). The resignation of the agent, Tracee Mergen, was only the latest shock wave to have emerged from the Justice Department’s handling of the shooting of Renee Good.

An F.B.I. agent who sought to investigate the federal immigration officer who fatally shot a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis this month has resigned from the bureau, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The agent, Tracee Mergen, left her job as a supervisor in the F.B.I.’s Minneapolis field office after bureau leadership in Washington pressured her to discontinue a civil rights inquiry into the immigration officer, Jonathan Ross, according to one of the people. Such inquiries are a common investigative step in similar shootings.

Ms. Mergen’s resignation was only the latest shock wave to have emerged from the Justice Department’s handling of the shooting of Renee Good, an unarmed mother who was killed on Jan. 7 as she was behind the wheel of her Honda Pilot.

After the incident, several Trump administration officials described Ms. Good as a “domestic terrorist,” accusing her of trying to ram Mr. Ross with her vehicle. But a video analysis by The New York Times showed no indication that he had been run over.

Senior Justice Department officials have repeatedly said there are no plans to follow the path normally taken in such situations and pursue an investigation into whether Mr. Ross, who fired multiple shots at Ms. Good, had used excessive force.

Federal investigators have also refused to cooperate with state and local prosecutors in Minnesota, complicating any efforts they might take to open their own investigations into Mr. Ross.

Instead of allowing Ms. Mergen to work with the U.S. attorney’s office in Minneapolis to investigate Mr. Ross, the Justice Department has decided to investigate Ms. Good and her partner, Becca Good, scrutinizing their possible ties to left-wing protest groups in Minneapolis. That decision prompted at least six senior prosecutors in the office to resign in protest.

Cindy Burnham, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. office in Minneapolis, declined to comment on Ms. Mergen’s resignation.

In a separate move, the Justice Department has opened an investigation into several elected Democrats in Minnesota in an effort to determine whether they may have conspired to impede the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement actions in the state. As part of that inquiry, the department issued subpoenas this week to the offices of Gov. Tim Walz, Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis and Mayor Kaohly Her of St. Paul, among others.

Moreover, the Justice Department has started cracking down on protesters who have opposed the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement push in Minnesota.

On Thursday, prosecutors filed conspiracy charges against three people who were involved in interrupting a church service in St. Paul to protest a pastor’s apparent work as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. According to a criminal complaint, the three defendants — Nekima Levy-Armstrong, Chauntyll Louisa Allen and William Kelly — “intimidated, harassed, oppressed and terrorized the parishioners.”

On Friday, a pair of federal judges who are overseeing the case denied requests by prosecutors to keep the three in custody as they await trial.

More On Law, Courts, Crime, Rights

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein partying together at Mar-a-Lago, along with an artist’s rendering of a birthday card that the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump sent Epstein in 2003 boasting of their shared secrets.

The Contrarian, Opinion: We Caught DOJ Trying to Hide More of the Epstein Files, Norman Eisen, right, norman eisen Small Jan. 24, 2026. Publisher’s Round-up.

Over a month has now passed since the Trump administration was supposed to release the Epstein files under the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA). Not only is the administration flouting the law and withholding millions of pages, but the little it has released is deeply problematic. Indeed, on Friday we identified that the Department of Justice has been surreptitiously adding redactions and hiding information on some of the files after they were initially released to the public.

We are not taking all this lying down. Thanks to your paid subscriptions, my colleagues and I at Democracy Defenders Fund are fighting against this corruption in both the courts of law and of public opinion. We will not stop until we pop the files free — all of them.Subscribed

How Did We Get Here

The Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) had to be brought before the House by discharge petition — an extraordinary measure that bypasses normal procedure — given Speaker Mike Johnson’s obstinate refusal to bring legislation to the floor. That discharge petition itself was stymied by Johnson’s weeks-long delay of swearing in Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) during the government shutdown. Nonetheless, the EFTA passed nearly unanimously, with only one member of the house, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA), voting against it. Donald Trump signed the bill on Nov. 19. (Douglas Rissing/iStock)

Once signed into law, the EFTA required the full release of the Epstein files by Dec. 19, 2025. On the evening of Dec. 19, Democracy Defenders Fund was prepared to review the “several hundred thousand” documents Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche affirmed would be released. Instead, only 12,285 documents totaling 125,575 pages have been disclosed. The DOJ has since stated that it has uncovered many more documents and is reviewing 5.2 million pages. Some were apparently in the offices of the U.S. attorneys, notwithstanding the fact that the department had previously advised Democracy Defenders Fund in response to our FOIA requests that no such records existed.

The existence of these new records brings into sharp relief the mischaracterizations by the DOJ, including the FBI director’s assertion that the FBI had done a systematic review of all Epstein records. And it gets worse. Our initial review of the files that were released identified serious issues.

First, it became abundantly clear that Justice overly redacted information in defiance of the EFTA. Names, email addresses, faces, whole pages were blacked out.

Second, these redactions lacked the required justification. Congress made it clear that every redaction must be “accompanied by” an explanation in the official journal of the government, the Federal Register. The DOJ has yet to file a single justification for specific redactions.

Third, regardless of Justice’s over-redaction of almost all identifying information of any person, the department released photos of former President Bill Clinton unredacted. The disparate treatment of the former president raises concerns about gamemanship.

Based on that initial review, DDF filed an extensive request to the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General on Jan. 7, seeking a comprehensive review of the department’s non-compliance. Importantly, we provided significant legal arguments against DOJ’s use of expansive non-statutory redactions.

More DOJ Malpractice

We have not stopped there. Following our initial review, our expert team has compared documents DOJ previously released against documents currently in DOJ’s online Epstein Library. This week, our review identified over 70 records that had been updated with new or different redactions. The DOJ’s retroactive removals stretch from redactions of nude images to the removal of the name of a U.K. law enforcement liaison officer on official correspondence to hiding the names of several Department of Justice officials.

Do these redactions matter? Who knows — so much other material is missing that it is hard to say for certain. Sure, these changes may turn out to be benign, but the process is not. No notice that we can find was provided to the public, no justification was given for the redactions, and no markings were applied to show these post-release changes. If it were not for our careful review, the American public would have no way of knowing that Justice was altering the original release of the Epstein files before our very eyes.

This surreptitious amendment of already-released files raises profound questions about the integrity and transparency of the department’s review. So, on Friday, we submitted a follow-up request to the OIG and to Congress.

We are, of course, not alone in making noise. Others have called the Department of Justice to account as well. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) — who threatened in December to sue the department for failing to release the Epstein files — has called the DOJ’s actions a “blatant disregard of the law.” He is seeking legislation to authorize court action.

Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA), the authors of the EFTA, have also sharply criticized the Justice Department. Massie explained that the release “grossly fails to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law.” Subsequently, Massie and Khanna requested that a judge appoint an independent monitor to enforce the department’s obligations, but the request was denied because the judge didn’t have oversight over the EFTA.

Is that the end of the story? Not hardly.

Enter Our (and Your) FOIA Litigation

We suspected shenanigans and filed FOIA requests even before the EFTA became law. We demanded documents related to the investigation of Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell. But we also insisted on documents related to the Department of Justice’s refusal to release those investigative documents, its purported search for Trump’s name in the record, and any sweetheart deal Maxwell received to move her to a minimum-security prison camp against Bureau of Prisons policy. Since July, we have filed three tranches of FOIAs, totaling nearly a dozen individual requests.

When the administration gave us the cold shoulder, we initiated a lawsuit in August challenging DOJ’s refusal to release the records. We expanded that lawsuit and filed a motion for summary judgment on the department’s failure to expedite its review of our request. It is pending before the court.

We will not accept the administration’s obfuscation, slow-walking, and out-and-out non-compliance with the law. We expect a favorable outcome in our most recent motion for summary judgment. And we will continue to push the Department of Justice for compliance with the EFTA and call attention to its missteps.

As I highlighted last week, the democracy coalition is overwhelmingly winning in the court of law and in the court of public opinion. The victims of the heinous crimes perpetrated by Epstein and his co-conspirators deserve more than the Justice Department’s abject failure to abide by the law. We won’t stop until we’ve ensured that the Justice Department provides justice to the victims of Epstein and his friends and to the American people.

Your paid subscriptions make that — together with our 248 other cases and matters — possible. Not to mention our unsurpassed Contrarian coverage. Just take a look at this week’s highlights, authored by my wonderful colleagues Meghan Houser, Jamie Riley, Lily Conway, and our Contrarian team

Supreme Court Considers Axing Voting Rights

Janai Nelson spoke to Jen Rubin about what’s at stake in Louisiana v. Callais: Will the Supreme Court cement its MAGA allegiance and gut the Voting Rights Act? Or will it clear the lowest bar in preserving a cornerstone of American democracy and MLK Jr.’s greatest achievement?

Trump’s Assertion of Power Threatens Black Workers

Craig Becker and Joseph A. McCartin analyzed Donald Trump’s claims of absolute authority to fire any federal employee for any reason — including blatant racial, gender, religious or other discrimination — as a threat to “the central principle of the civil service system and a unique threat to Black workers.” See also: Katie Phang’s live reporting on the oral arguments in the Lisa Cook v. Trump case.

Jack Smith Reminds us What Real Prosecutors Sound Like

Andrew Weissmann joined Jen to reveal the hope hidden in the spectacle that was special counsel Jack Smith’s hearing before the House Judiciary Committee this week to defend his investigations into Trump’s 2020 election meddling and the stolen documents. “The government writ large is filled with people like him who are there for the right reasons, who follow the facts and the law.”

The End of the Lawsuit But Not the End of the Fight

Former Federal Labor Relations Authority chair Susan Tsui Grundmann wrote on her lawsuit against the president for wrongful termination — a suit with the natural end of her rightful term — and its place in a larger fight against Trump’s authoritarian power grab. “These firings are intended to concentrate all executive power in one person: him.”NATO No More?

Trump’s Insane Greenland Plot

Jeff Nesbit wrote on Trump’s grasping demands for Greenland this week, calling his threats to take over an ally “a 19th-century solution to a 21st-century problem.” “Seizing Greenland wouldn’t make America great; it would make America alone.”

An Open Letter to European Leaders

Brian O’Neill addressed European leaders directly, apropos of Trump’s militaristic antics at Davos, with the reality check that appeasement has only taught Trump to expect compliance. “The wager was that careful engagement would blunt the edge — keep him inside the guardrails, keep the alliance intact, keep the temperature down. That wager has failed.”

Disaster in Davos

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse joined Jen to discuss a question getting less hypothetical every day, thanks to Trump’s provocations on the world stage: Who is America without its allies? “Once you put into the minds of our allies that the United States … is willing to publicly contemplate invading a fellow member of NATO, they’re going to have to take steps in that vein.”Cracks in the ICE?

“ICE Is A Modern Day Slave Patrol”

Latosha Brown of the Black Voters Matter Fund joined Jen to expose how the dehumanization of Americans is nothing new, and that there are constructive lessons in facing history head-on. “This notion that America was exceptional and that somehow our systems could not be eroded or somehow democracy was ever infallible…. One lesson I think we should take in is that all systems are created by people.”

Kristi Noem is Cold as Ice. She’s No Barbie.

Shalise Manza Young took issue with the trend of disparaging Kristi Noem as “ICE Barbie”—not because the MAGA secretary doesn’t deserve the implied insult, but because Barbie doesn’t. “Barbie … has never been a sociopathic shrew.”

Will ICE Target World Cup Fans Too?

On the latest episode of Offsides, Pablo Torre wonders whether America can guarantee other countries that immigration agents will not harass or detain their citizens visiting for the World Cup. (He suspects not.) “You’re going on a vacation. You want to go to a sporting event. Who wants to have that in the back of your mind?”

Global News

New York Times, Despite Trump’s Words, China and Russia Are Not Threatening Greenland, Edward Wong, Jan. 24, 2026. U.S. and European officials say they are unaware of any intelligence that shows China and Russia are endangering the island, which is protected by the NATO security umbrella.

Fourteen years ago, a Chinese icebreaker called the Snow Dragon made a long and surprising voyage.

Over three months in the summer, the scientific research vessel crossed from the Pacific to the Atlantic, traversing nearly 5,400 nautical miles of the Arctic Ocean, a first for China. The crew discovered that melting ice meant the ship could travel through the remote region without great difficulty, the expedition leader told reporters after docking in Iceland.

“To our astonishment,” said the leader, Huigen Yang, “most part of the Northern Sea Route is open.”

American and European officials took notice at the time and began keeping a close watch on China’s moves in the Arctic.

But while China has talked about expanding trade and access to shipping lanes and natural resources in the Arctic, it has developed only a small footprint there over the years. And even as China and Russia compete with the United States in many parts of the world, they do not present a threat to American interests in or near Greenland, say experts on those two superpowers and current and former U.S. officials, including intelligence analysts.

Those findings contrast sharply with assertions by President Trump, who has repeatedly cited security as the reason he wants to acquire Greenland. In a speech on Wednesday at an annual forum in Davos, Switzerland, he said Greenland was an “enormous, unsecured island” that was a “core national security interest of the United States of America.”

“It’s been our policy for hundreds of years to prevent outside threats from entering our hemisphere, and we’ve done it very successfully,” he added.

At a meeting on Jan. 14 in Washington, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio asked the Danish foreign minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, and the foreign minister of Greenland, Vivian Motzfeldt, whether Denmark had the resources to protect Greenland against any potential future threat from China, Mr. Rasmussen said in an interview.

However, Mr. Trump and his aides have not presented any intelligence that points to Chinese threats to Greenland.

China has increased its collaboration with Russia on maritime patrols and long-range bomber patrols in the vast Arctic region, said Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, the top NATO commander in Europe. But allied officials say there is no looming threat, and in any case Greenland falls under the NATO security umbrella.

jack smith djt w

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage.

New York Times, In Testimony, Jack Smith Defends Decision to Prosecute Trump, Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer, Jan. 23, 2026 (print ed.). The former special prosecutor argued a case he was never allowed to in court: that President Trump “engaged in criminal activity” that undermined democracy.

Jack Smith, the special prosecutor who twice indicted Donald J. Trump, defended his investigation in a tense and long-awaited appearance before a House committee on Thursday — flatly accusing Mr. Trump of causing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

“No one should be above the law in this country, and the law required that he be held to account,” Mr. Smith said in his opening remarks. “So that is what I did.”

His testimony represented the argument he was never allowed to deliver in court: that Mr. Trump “engaged in criminal activity” that undermined democracy and the rule of law.

The hearing posed significant risks to Mr. Smith, who has said he believes Mr. Trump and his appointees will seize on the smallest misstep to investigate, prosecute and humiliate him. House Republicans had made it clear that they would make a criminal referral to the Justice Department if his testimony revealed serious inconsistencies or misstatements.

As if to underscore that danger, Mr. Trump took to Truth Social to go after Mr. Smith. Hopefully Attorney General Pam Bondi “is looking at what he’s done, including some of the crooked and corrupt witnesses that he was attempting to use in his case against me,” he wrote,

But the hearing also provided Mr. Smith with what was likely to be his best opportunity to challenge, in an official forum, Mr. Trump’s justification for ordering the Justice Department to pursue his enemies: that he was persecuted for his politics, not prosecuted for his alleged misdeeds.

“Our investigation revealed that Donald Trump is the person who caused Jan. 6, that it was foreseeable to him and that he sought to exploit the violence,” Mr. Smith said, sitting alone at the witness table with a water bottle, legal pad and white ballpoint pen.

He appeared wan and tired, speaking so softly at times his voice did not register with voice transcription apps. Before sitting at the witness table, Mr. Smith greeted four law enforcement officers who were attacked by the pro-Trump mob at the Capitol — Michael Fanone, Daniel Hodges, Aquilino Gonell and Harry Dunn.

Republicans repeatedly accused Mr. Smith of participating in a Democratic conspiracy to destroy Mr. Trump by investigating his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as well as his handling of classified documents after he left office.

Mr. Smith and his team interfered in the “democratic process by seeking to muzzle a candidate for a high office,” Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in his opening statement, quoting from an editorial in The Washington Post.ImageHarry Dunn, Daniel Hodges, Aquilino Gonell and Michael Fanone sit next to one another. Other people sit behind them.Former law enforcement officers including, from left, Harry Dunn, Daniel Hodges, Aquilino Gonell and Michael Fanone attended Thursday’s hearing. Credit…Kenny Holston/The New York Times

But Republican lawmakers offered no new evidence to support that claim, and spent much of their time rehashing political arguments and grilling Mr. Smith about his decision to seek a court order for metadata about phone calls Mr. Trump and his allies made to nine Republican lawmakers as they sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Representative Brandon Gill, Republican of Texas, pressed Mr. Smith on his decision to seek a nondisclosure order that prevented the lawmakers from knowing about the record requests. Mr. Gill was particularly concerned that Mr. Smith’s team sought such an order for former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s records.

The order said there were grounds to believe telling Mr. McCarthy would result “in flight from prosecution, destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses and serious jeopardy to the investigation.”

“Was Speaker McCarthy a flight risk?” Mr. Gill asked.

“He was not,” Mr. Smith replied.

Another Republican on the panel, Representative Lance Gooden, Republican of Texas, questioned the validity of Mr. Smith’s 2022 swearing-in after he was appointed to oversee the investigations into Mr. Trump. Mr. Smith seemed puzzled by the line of inquiry.

Asked to comment on Mr. Trump’s threat on Truth Social during his testimony, which included a call for his disbarment, Mr. Smith suggested he expected federal prosecutors to investigate his actions.

New York Times, 4 Takeaways From Jack Smith’s Testimony Before Lawmakers, Alan Feuer and Glenn Thrush, Jan. 23, 2026 (print ed.). In his remarks, the former special counsel repeatedly denied that he had acted out of partisan animus and bemoaned the Trump administration’s efforts to go after the president’s perceived enemies

The former special counsel Jack Smith appeared before Congress on Thursday to defend his decision to bring two criminal indictments against Donald J. Trump after he left office in 2021.

Mr. Smith’s restrained five-hour testimony to the House Judiciary Committee was the first and perhaps only chance he will have to make his case in an official forum that he was justified in filing the two sets of charges against Mr. Trump in 2023. In separate indictments, Mr. Smith accused Mr. Trump of seeking to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election and of illegally removing reams of highly classified documents from the White House and taking them to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.

jack smith 2023 Much of what Mr. Smith, left, told lawmakers reprised the testimony he gave last month in a videotaped deposition behind closed doors. In his remarks, he repeatedly denied that he had acted out of partisan animus, and bemoaned the Trump administration’s own efforts to use the Justice Department to go after the president’s enemies.

Here are a few takeaways from his testimony.Smith’s work was under scrutiny, not his findings

Republican members of the committee spent most of their time attacking various procedural steps that Mr. Smith took in his prosecutions of Mr. Trump in an effort to suggest that he had acted out of political motives. They had less to say, however, about Mr. Smith’s repeated assertion that if the two cases — both of which were dismissed after Mr. Trump won re-election — had gone to trial, there was sufficient evidence to secure convictions.

Skipping from complaint to complaint, the Republican members noted that Mr. Smith had obtained phone records for several Republican lawmakers who were in touch with Mr. Trump and his allies about their plans to overturn the election; issued subpoenas to dozens of Republican fund-raising groups allied with Mr. Trump; and made payments to confidential human sources in the course of his investigation of the election interference charges.

The Republicans expressed outrage about all of these tactics — even though Mr. Smith explained that they were standard tools of criminal prosecutions and that he had followed both the law and the procedures of the Justice Department in using them.The political attacks were familiar

Instead of raising serious qualms about Mr. Smith’s methods, the committee majority often fell back on familiar political attacks, claiming that he and his team had “weaponized” the criminal justice system on behalf of the Biden administration — an accusation that Mr. Smith repeatedly and adamantly denied.

Several times, under questioning by Democratic lawmakers, Mr. Smith said that he had never received orders from the attorney general at the time, Merrick B. Garland, or from anyone else in the Biden administration about how to pursue his cases against Mr. Trump.

“I am not a politician and I have no partisan loyalties,” Mr. Smith said during his opening statement.

He said that, after three decades as a prosecutor, he had simply followed the facts and the law without “fear or favor.”

“No one should be above the law in this country, and the law required that he be held to account,” he said of Mr. Trump. “So that is what I did.”Smith remained unbowed by personal broadsides

When asked whether he had any regrets about his investigations, Mr. Smith said he had only one: that he had not expressed more appreciation for the F.B.I. agents and prosecutors who worked under him.

Several of those agents and prosecutors have been fired by the Justice Department because of their service to Mr. Smith. They have also faced efforts by members of Congress to impugn them and their work.

New York Times, D.H.S. Cited Foreign Students’ Writings and Protests Before Their Arrests, Zach Montague, Updated Jan. 23, 2026. Documents unsealed by a federal judge on Thursday include dossiers that investigators prepared on pro-Palestinian student activists before they were targeted for deportation.

marco rubio new o Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right, personally approved the deportation of five student activists last year after receiving memos largely describing their participation in pro-Palestinian protests and their writings about the war in Gaza, according to internal government documents unsealed by a federal judge on Thursday.

The documents reveal new details about how the Trump administration decided to target the activists, who were all foreign students visible in campus protests. They had been in the United States legally but were arrested and threatened with deportation last spring.

The several hundred pages were submitted as evidence in a trial held in Massachusetts in July over noncitizen william young 2010 students’ freedom of expression.

After hearing testimony and examining the documents, Judge William G. Young, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, ruled last year that the Trump administration had illegally targeted the students for deportation based on their speech — in particular their opposition to the Israeli government and its military operations in Gaza.

Judge Young, shown at left in a 2010 photo, had acceded to requests from the government to seal the documents because of details they contained about federal investigations. But last week he agreed to a request from The New York Times and other media outlets that they be released as a matter of public interest.

The documents include several batches of memos, prepared by the Department of Homeland Security and sent to the State Department, which contained the formal recommendations that five students — Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Badar Khan Suri and Yunseo Chung — be deported.

The documents indicate that in nearly all instances, the arrests of the students were recommended based on their involvement in campus protests and public writings, activities that the Trump administration routinely equated to antisemitic hate speech and support for terrorist organizations. They also show that officials privately anticipated the possibility that the deportations might not hold up in court because much of the conduct highlighted could be seen as protected speech.

“Given the potential that a court may consider his actions inextricably tied to speech protected under the First Amendment, it is likely that courts will scrutinize the basis for this determination,” read one memo describing the effort to deport Mr. Madhawi, who had a green card and was an undergraduate at Columbia University at the time of his arrest.

A spokesman for Mr. Rubio did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday evening.

In one set of documents with the referrals, officials acknowledged that almost no grounds existed for deporting the students other than a rarely used 1952 law that says the secretary of state may deem noncitizens deportable for reasons related to foreign policy.

“D.H.S. has not identified any alternative grounds for removability,” agents wrote of several of the students, “including the ground of removability for aliens who have provided material support for a foreign terrorist organization or terrorist activity.”

In justifying the attempt to deport the students, Mr. Rubio and other administration officials repeatedly asserted that they had supported terrorist organizations.

“We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported,” Mr. Rubio wrote online in March, referring to the militant Palestinian group in Gaza.

The students have denied that charge. They sued over their arrests, and judges last year ordered each of them released, citing concerns that their arrests had been based on protected speech.

The case before Judge Young, brought by two national academic organizations, argued more broadly that the arrests had chilled academic speech on the nation’s college campuses. Judge Young agreed, describing the behavior of Mr. Rubio and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, as an “unconstitutional conspiracy” to “pick off” a few students with an eye to “violating” the free speech rights of thousands of noncitizen scholars.

“These cabinet secretaries have failed in their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution,” Judge Young said last week in an emotional denunciation of the government from the bench.

The government had argued in court that Mr. Rubio was exercising his sole authority to determine which activity by noncitizens might jeopardize the country’s foreign policy interests, which could include relations with Israel. They contended that the demonstrations had grown threatening to Jewish students on campus.

A homeland security spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Concluding the case, Judge Young ordered on Thursday that any future attempts to deport members of the two academic organizations that had sued could be immediately challenged in court, where the Trump administration would need to prove that it was not retaliating against the members over their speech or academic work.

The documents that Judge Young unsealed showed that government investigators searched for findings of wrongdoing on the part of the students, but internally acknowledged that they had found the task difficult.

New York Times, ‘Enough Is Enough’: Hundreds of Minnesota Businesses Take Stand Against ICE, Pooja Salhotra and Jazmine Ulloa, Jan. 24, 2026 (print ed.). After protesters called for a pause on economic activity and work to strike against the federal immigration crackdown, many business owners won’t open their doors on Friday.

No work, no shopping, no dining out. Hundreds of businesses across Minnesota are expected to close and many people are vowing to pause everyday activities on Friday as part of a general strike against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

As tensions mount and a sense of fear of detention by immigration agents permeates the state, vendors, labor unions and residents are set to participate in an economic blackout and gather at prayers and protests on what organizers called a “Day of Truth and Freedom.”

“It’s tense and emotional, and folks are hurting,” said Bishop Dwayne Royster, the executive director of Faith in Action, which is helping with the organizing effort. Minnesotans, he said, are demonstrating “deep resilience and willingness to stand together in ways I haven’t seen folks do in a very long time.”

Word of Friday’s strike and protests spread “like a wildfire,” said Jake Anderson, an executive board member with the St. Paul Federation of Educators, a labor union representing teachers and educational support professionals. Hundreds of businesses, mostly in Minneapolis and St. Paul, said they would close, while others have vowed to pause any economic activity, stay home from work or school, or fast to show support.

“There’s a time to stand up for things, and this is it,” said Alison Kirwin, the owner of Al’s Breakfast, a restaurant in Minneapolis that will be closed on Friday. “If it takes away from a day of our income, that is worthwhile.”

The strike comes as Minnesotans have clashed for weeks with federal agents, mostly in the Minneapolis and St. Paul areas. The immigration operation, which started late last year, has led to some 3,000 arrests, at least two shootings in Minneapolis and chaotic scenes on the streets.

Calls for the ouster of federal agents have grown from residents and local officials in recent weeks, especially after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Renee Good, an American citizen, in Minneapolis on Jan. 7. Protesters and state officials have also filed lawsuits to restrict the agents’ conduct toward demonstrators and to block the surge of immigration agents in the state.

But federal officials have asserted that the crackdown is necessary to root out fraud in the state’s social services system and have defended the actions of the ICE agent who killed Ms. Good.

On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance said that the Trump administration wanted to “turn down the temperature” in Minneapolis after weeks of clashes. Mr. Vance, who said he had traveled to the city to understand the tensions, called Minneapolis protesters “far-left agitators” who had harassed federal agents. He also said a “failure of cooperation” by state and local officials was to blame for the situation getting “out of hand.”Editors’ PicksHow Little Exercise Can You Get Away With?Forget the Cynics. Here’s Why You Should Get Your Dog a Stroller.Inside an Exploding Marriage: Belle Burden in Her Own Words

In an email on Thursday, a Department of Homeland Security official called the strike “beyond insane,” asking, “Why would these labor bosses not want these public safety threats out of their communities?” The official then included a list of undocumented immigrants who had apparently been convicted of serious crimes.

Morning News Roundup

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Deadly Keystone Cops, Andrew Egger, Will Saletan and Jim Swift, Jan. 23, 2026. DHS and ICE are incompetent—but that doesn’t make them any less dangerous.

Also, you don’t really get the sense these days that Donald Trump views his authoritarian outbursts as a limited resource, something he can only indulge in so much before he’s wasted all his political capital.

Here he was yesterday on Truth Social, fuming about how much he wants to make it illegal to publish “fake polls”: “Fake and Fraudulent polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense,” he went on in a follow-up post. “I am going to do everything possible to keep this Polling SCAM from moving forward!” Happy Friday.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 2, 2026 [Controlling the ICE Narrative?], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Jan. 23, 2026. Vice President J.D. heather cox richardson cnn Vance was in Minnesota for the administration today, trying to regain control of the narrative about the violence perpetrated there by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

A new poll out today from the New York Times and Siena University shows that nearly two thirds of Americans, 63%, disapprove of how ICE is handling its job, while only 36% approve. Even among white Americans, 57% disapprove, while only 42% approve. Sixty-one percent of Americans, including 19% of Republicans, think that ICE agents have gone too far.

Just hours after ICE agent Jonathan Ross killed 37-year-old Renee Good on January 7, and long before there was any official investigation of the shooting, Vance was out in front of the news, blaming Good for her own death and claiming that the officer was clearly justified in shooting her.

But even MAGA voters don’t buy it. Podcaster Joe Rogan has compared ICE to “the gestapo,” and Greg Sargent of The New Republic noted that a majority of both young voters and those without a college degree, those who tend to be easy for MAGA to reach, disapprove of ICE enforcement. Media Matters reported that the senior judicial analyst on right-wing channel Newsmax, Andrew Napolitano, called the newly revealed secret ICE memo claiming the right to break down doors to arrest people in their homes “a direct and profound violation of the Fourth Amendment, which expressly says people are entitled to be secure in their homes and that security can only be invaded by a search warrant signed by a judge based on probable cause of crime.”

Today a jury in Chicago acquitted a man charged with trying to hire a man to kill U.S. Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino. The Department of Justice claimed Juan Espinoza Martinez was a member of a street gang who had offered $10,000 to his brother and a friend to kill Bovino. Jon Seidel of the Chicago Sun-Times noted that 31 Chicagoans have been charged with nonimmigration crimes tied to the federal action there. With Thursday’s acquittal, Seidel notes, “15 of them have been cleared. None of the cases have led to a conviction, so far.”

Today Vance continued to defend ICE agents but walked back some of his earlier belligerence. He admitted that “of course there have been mistakes made, because you’re always going to have mistakes made in law enforcement,” although he added that “99% of our police officers, probably more than that, are doing everything right.”

The vice president also denied his words from January 8, when he said of Ross at the White House: “You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action. That’s a federal issue. That guy’s protected by absolute immunity.” Moving the goalposts considerably today after it turned out that Americans don’t particularly like the idea that masked agents can do whatever they want, he said: “I didn’t say…that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity. That’s absurd. What I did say is that when federal law enforcement officers violate the law that’s typically something federal officials would look into. We don’t want these guys to have kangaroo courts.”

The New York Times/Siena poll had bad news for Trump more generally, too. It showed that his approval rating has fallen to 40%, while 56% disapprove of the way he is handling his job, and that 49% of registered voters think the country is worse off than it was a year ago, while only 32% think it is better off. In fact, the poll showed him underwater on every single issue: managing the government, Venezuela, immigration, the economy, relationships with other countries, the Israli-Palestinian conflict, the cost of living, Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the Epstein files, on which only 22% of registered voters approve while 66% disapprove. The only area where he is not underwater by double digits is on the issue of border between the U.S. and Mexico, where 50% of registered voters approve and only 46% disapprove.

After news of the poll dropped, Trump’s social media account posted that “Fake and Fraudulent Polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense. As an example, all of the Anti Trump Media that covered me during the 2020 Election showed Polls that were knowingly wrong. They knew what they were doing, trying to influence the Election, but I won in a Landslide, including winning the Popular Vote, all 7 of the 7 Swing States, the Electoral College was a route [sic], and 2,750 Counties to 525. You can’t do much better than that, and yet if people examined The Failing New York Times, ABC Fake News, NBC Fake News, CBS Fake News, Low Ratings CNN, or the now defunct MSDNC, Polls were all fraudulent, and bore nothing even close to the final results. Something has to be done about Fraudulent Polling. Even the Polls of FoxNews and The Wall Street Journal have been, over the years, terrible! There are great Pollsters that called the Election right, but the Media does not want to use them in any way, shape, or form. Isn’t it sad what has happened to American Journalism, but I am going to do everything possible to keep this Polling SCAM from moving forward!”

Trump’s social media account posted that he would add the Times/Siena poll to his existing lawsuit against the New York Times.

Trump also threatened to sue JPMorgan Chase and Jamie Dimon, its chief executive officer, claiming it had broken the law by closing his accounts in April 2021 after notice given just two months before, at the same time that many businesses were refusing to work with Trump after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The bank has refused to do further business with the Trump family, the lawsuit alleges, putting them on a “blacklist.” The lawsuit claims the family was “debanked” because of “political and social motivations,” and Trump wants “at least $5,000,000,000 in damages, an award of attorneys’ fees and costs…and any other relief this Court deems proper.”

JP Morgan Chase says the suit is meritless and that while it does not close accounts for political reasons, it does close accounts “because they create legal or regulatory risk for the company.”

The 2020 presidential election is clearly on Trump’s mind with former special counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of that election and delivered a grand jury indictment of him on four counts, testifying today before the House Judiciary Committee. Smith was sworn in and testified under oath. Unlike him, representatives are not sworn in for such hearings and are covered by the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution that enables them to say virtually anything they want without legal repercussions.

That matters, as Republicans showed no inclination to engage with the evidence Smith uncovered that Trump conspired to defraud American voters of their right to choose their president and fraudulently seize another term. Instead, they appeared eager to discredit Smith and to fall back on Trump’s narrative that former president Joe Biden and former attorney general Merrick Garland weaponized the Department of Justice against Trump and MAGA Republicans.

Smith called the narratives spread about him and his team “false and misleading,” and said: “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity. If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.”

That Republicans were not willing to engage with the actual evidence apparently frustrated the president, who openly threatened Smith, posting that “Deranged Jack Smith is being DECIMATED before Congress. It was over when they discussed his past failures and unfair prosecutions. He destroyed many lives under the guise of legitimacy. Jack Smith is a deranged animal, who shouldn’t be allowed to practice Law. If he were a Republican, his license would be taken away from him, and far worse! Hopefully the Attorney General is looking at what he’s done, including some of the crooked and corrupt witnesses that he was attempting to use in his case against me. The whole thing was a Democrat SCAM—A big price should be paid by them for what they have put our Country through!”

Meanwhile, the Democrats on the committee offered evidence from the events Smith had investigated, playing, for example, the recording of Trump demanding that Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger “find” 11,780 votes to steal the state of Georgia, which had voted for Biden, for Trump instead.

As The Guardian noted, when Brad Knott (R-NC) observed that Smith had charged only Trump, suggesting that Smith had singled out Trump for political reasons, Smith answered that he had been in the process of considering charging others when Trump was elected president again and the case was then closed. He said that he and the lawyers on the case believed they did have sufficient proof to charge other people.

This statement is likely to be uncomfortable for MAGA figures who were deeply involved in Trump’s efforts but who were not publicly investigated. In both the House and the Senate, members have been furious at the information that the Department of Justice got the permission of a judge to obtain toll records for Trump’s calls on and around January 6. Many of them were on those calls. Now they are falsely claiming they were “wiretapped” although toll records simply record the phones involved and the duration of the call.

Meanwhile, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller suggested that he, too, is concerned about the law catching up to people on the Trump team. On social media, Miller posted: “Everyone serious understands that the justice system is rigged. Far-left prosecutors, magistrates, judges and juries unhesitatingly shield their violent activists and gleefully imprison their political opponents. Unrigging the system is necessary for the survival of the Republic.”

Billionaire Elon Musk, whose work with Trump led to the government’s dropping a number of investigations of his companies and lawsuits against them, chimed in: “Absolutely.”

Today the United States officially withdrew from the World Health Organization, leaving behind $278 million in unpaid dues. We joined the organization in 1948.

Tomorrow people across Minnesota will stay home from work, school, and shopping areas in an “ICE Out Day” to protest the federal agents in the state. The general strike has the support of businesses, unions, faith organizations, democratic lawmakers, and community activists.

“RECORD NUMBERS ALL OVER THE PLACE!” Trump’s social media account crowed tonight. “SHOULD I TRY FOR A FOURTH TERM?”

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Trump 0, Europe 1, Paul Krugman, right, Jan. 23, 2026. Ignorance and contempt lose a round. Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for moreTrump 0, Europe 1Ignorance and contempt lose a round

As I wrote yesterday, Donald Trump and his team clearly went to Davos determined to demean and insult their hosts. It was, one might say, a novel approach to diplomacy: “You’re pathetic, your societies and economies are falling apart, now give us Greenland.”

And it worked about as well as you’d expect. Trump may have imagined that the Europeans would cower in the face of his wrath. Instead, they humiliated him. He dropped his latest tariff threats in return for a “framework” that gave the United States essentially nothing it didn’t already have — and left behind a Europe that is finally united in resistance to his bullying.

The Trump team went to Europe in a state of malign ignorance, exemplified by Trump saying during his Davos harangue that “without us, you’d all be speaking German.” Most Swiss speak … German.

Trumpian contempt for Europe rests on two beliefs we already knew were false, and a third belief the Europeans proved false this week.

First, Trump and company are wedded to the belief that nonwhite, non-Christian immigrants have destroyed European society, that Europe’s cities are hellscapes of rampant crime and social disorder — the trans-Atlantic version of what they believe about New York. In reality, while Europe has had some problems assimilating immigrants, the continent remains incredibly safe by U.S. standards: A graph of death from crime AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Second, MAGA types are sure that Europe is an economic disaster area.

I wrote about this last month, arguing that while Europe lags in information technology, this does not mean that the European economy is failing to deliver what matters: higher living standards for its people. I’ve been doing some work comparing the growth of real wages there and here; here’s a preliminary estimate: A graph of a graph showing the price of a foreign country AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: Eurostat, European Central Bank, and BLS

European workers took a bigger hit than American workers from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which cut off much of the continent’s supply of natural gas. But real wages have recovered, and over the longer term European workers have seen their incomes grow at more or less the same rate as their US counterparts.

Europe has problems, as we all do. But when MAGA types declare that a prosperous continent that in many ways delivers a better life for its citizens than we do is a social and economic hellscape, that says more about them than it does about Europe.

Finally, Trump and company believed that Europe is weak, that European leaders would never stand up to U.S. bullying. And Europe’s initial response to Trump’s trade war — an attempt to appease and flatter him, hoping that it would all go away — surely reinforced Trumpian contempt.

But even Eurocrats have their limits. Operation Arctic Endurance, the deployment of European military forces to Greenland, might equally well have been called Operation Rising Gorge. There was rational calculation behind that deployment, but it was also a way for European leaders to say that enough is enough, that they’re done with trying to make nice.

And when Trump threatened to put tariffs on the exports of nations that have sent troops to Greenland, Europe didn’t cower in submission — it got ready to strike back at U.S. businesses.

Trump then confirmed the old adage that bullies are also cowards. Brave Sir Donald ran away, ran away, ran away.

This isn’t over. There is no reason to believe that Trump has learned a lesson. Learning is not something he does. He’s still the bully he was as a child, and he’s already lashing out in other ways, suing JPMorgan for closing his bank accounts after Jan. 6 and threatening to sue The New York Times over an unfavorable poll.

But Europe has learned a lesson. Appeasing a bully doesn’t work, especially when, as anyone watching Trump’s Davos rant could see, that bully is experiencing rapid cognitive decline. But standing up to him does work.

The question now is whether and when enough influential people here at home will learn the same lesson.

More On Immigration, Rights, Law, Crime, Courts

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion:,Jack Smith’s Trial by Bullsh*t, Will Saletan, right, Jan. 23, 2026. Former Special Counsel Jack Smith finally got to testify in public about his investigations of Donald Trump yesterday. But testifying before the House Judiciary William Saletan at New America Committee was nothing like presenting a case in court. His efforts to talk about facts and law were overwhelmed by a blizzard of Republican smears.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) accused Smith of “spying” on “conversations of the speaker of the House”—i.e., then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy—and demanded to know why McCarthy’s conversations were “any of your business.” Issa knew why those conversations were Smith’s business: McCarthy had phoned Trump during the January 6th attack on the Capitol, imploring the president to call off his mob. Issa also knew that it was misleading to say Smith had spied on McCarthy’s conversations: The special counsel had requested only the dates and times of McCarthy’s phone calls, not their contents. But pretending that Smith tapped the phones of Republican lawmakers is part of the GOP’s campaign to discredit him.

Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.) said Smith had committed “election interference” by bringing charges against Trump “during an active election cycle.” He accused Smith of “disregarding longstanding Department of Justice policies designed to prevent prosecutors from influencing elections.” But DOJ’s policy restricts prosecutors only in the 60 days (or at most, 90 days) before an election. By extending the no-prosecution zone to the whole election cycle (whenever that is), Republicans would make any investigation of a candidate essentially impossible.

Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) derided Smith for failing to win convictions against two former senators. “You also prosecuted John Edwards and Bob Menendez, and those both ended in mistrials,” he told Smith. Tiffany omitted the fact that Edwards and Menendez were Democrats. Yet just half an hour later, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) accused Smith of never targeting Democrats. “Not one Democrat. It’s all Republicans,” he huffed. “Everything you’ve ever done is always against Republicans.”

In his next breath, Van Drew had the gall to ask Smith whether Smith’s partisan bias—which Van Drew had just fabricated—undermined public trust in the justice system. The truth is that undermining trust in the justice system is exactly what Van Drew and other Republicans, by falsely ascribing bias to Smith, are trying to do.

Then Van Drew lied about the House January 6th Committee. “Everybody on it was a Democrat, except two Republicans that hated Republicans,” he declared. He was referring to then-Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who were eventually purged from the GOP for acknowledging Trump’s role in the plot to overturn the 2020 election. Only in an authoritarian party could this heresy by two lifelong conservatives—choosing truth and the Constitution over Trump—be considered “hating Republicans.”

Van Drew wasn’t finished. He asserted that Smith had based his entire investigation on the “biased, unfair, prejudiced” work of the January 6th Committee. That, too, was a lie. It’s part of the GOP’s scheme to compress all investigations of Trump into one big “witch hunt.”

Rep. Brad Knott (R-N.C.) depicted Smith as singularly focused on getting Trump. He asked why the special counsel hadn’t charged any of Trump’s purported co-conspirators in the alleged plot to overturn the election. Smith explained that attorneys on his team “believed that we did have proof to charge other people,” and “I was in the process of making that determination” when the investigation was shut down because of Trump’s election. Knott ignored Smith’s answer and repeated his talking point as though Smith hadn’t just debunked it. “You didn’t find it necessary to charge them criminally,” the congressman said of the alleged co-conspirators.

Again and again, Republicans interrupted Smith before he could answer their questions. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) asked him: “Do you really believe that President Trump thinks he lost that election?” Smith got five seconds into his answer before Grothman cut him off. “No way,” the congressman declared, substituting his answer for whatever Smith had intended to say. “That’s enough.”

The biggest lie peddled by members of the committee, including Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), was that the 2024 election exonerated Trump. “The American people . . . rejected, sir, your witch hunt, loud and clear in November, handing President Trump a commanding victory,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) told Smith. “That is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the crap you were shoveling did not pass the smell test with the American people.”

That’s bunk. To begin with, the election wasn’t a referendum on Smith’s prosecutions. According to the Fox News Voter Analysis of the 2024 electorate, 53 percent of voters said “the legal cases involving Donald Trump” were an important factor or the most important factor in their vote, and Trump lost that 53-percent bloc by nearly three-to-one. He won the election by crushing Harris among voters who said the legal cases weren’t important.

Second, the whole point of a trial is to impose rules very different from an election. Trials are designed to focus jurors on provable facts. In an election, it’s a lot easier to drown out facts by spewing propaganda. That’s why Trump lost his only criminal trial in 2024 but won the election. And his allies in Congress are using the same demagogic lies to bury Jack Smith.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Always the Last Place You Look…, Andrew Egger, right, Jan. 23, 2026. Yesterday I reported a remarkable new development in the story of ChongLy Thao, the U.S. citizen whom ICE took half-naked from his Minnesota home last weekend.

ICE had claimed it had been looking for a pair of migrant sex offenders at Thao’s address; in repeated social-media posts, the Department of Homeland Security said the men were still loose in the streets and asked people to call in tips. But they should have known exactly where to find at least one of the migrants in question, Lue Moua: He’s in state prison on a felony kidnapping conviction, and has been since 2024.

This information wasn’t exactly secret. Moua’s name, face, and criminal record are easy to find in a public database of state criminal records. Minnesota Department of Corrections Communications Director Shannon Loehrke confirmed to The Bulwark Thursday that the Moua in their custody is the same individual DHS is seeking. Moreover, Loehrke added, Moua is already under an ICE detainer—meaning ICE is already aware he is there and has requested he be placed into their custody upon his release from state prison, which is currently scheduled for early 2027. . . .

Why the agents who manhandled Thao this weekend thought Moua might be at Thao’s home is unclear. It’s unclear, too, why DHS officials spent days imploring citizens to keep their eyes peeled for Moua in the streets of Minneapolis when at least some part of ICE already knew he was in state prison.

DHS didn’t respond in time for publication yesterday, but late last night, spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin sent a belated statement. She confirmed ICE had placed a detainer on Moua, adding: “This is exactly what we have been saying: We need state and local law enforcement engagement and information so we don’t have to have such a presence on the streets. If we work together, we can make America safe again. We are calling on Governor Walz and Mayor Frey to turn this child predator over to ICE, so we can get him out of country where he can never prey on innocent American children.”

This was, of course, not exactly what DHS had been saying. They had been saying Moua was still at large. And even in her updated statement, McLaughlin seemed unaware of basic facts about Moua’s imprisonment. He’s in state prison; Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey can’t do anything to “turn him over” even if he wanted to.

This sort of thing has become a pattern. McLaughlin and other DHS officials have repeatedly accused Walz and Frey of conspiring to keep even criminal aliens out of the hands of ICE. But while some county jails continue to refuse to honor ICE detainers, the state prison system has been honoring them all along. In fact, when DHS releases its now-routine self-congratulatory lists of “worst of the worst” offenders apprehended by ICE in Minnesota, many of the migrants listed are people who have simply been handed over by the state prison system at the conclusion of their sentences.

State prison officials have been flabbergasted by DHS’s apparent unwillingness to get even basic facts correct here. “Despite our best efforts to correct the record and engage directly with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, they continue to publicly repeat information that is inaccurate and misleading,” Minnesota Department of Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell said in a press conference yesterday. “This is no longer simple misunderstanding. At best DHS fundamentally misunderstands Minnesota’s correctional system. At a minimum, this reflects systemic data management inadequacies or incompetence as it relates to DHS tracking of detainers in custody. At worst it is pure propaganda, numbers released without evidence to stoke fear rather than inform the public.”

Schnell accuses DHS of either radical incompetence or pure propaganda, but the real story seems to involve both. Throughout their shambolic rampage through the Twin Cities, DHS has been both clownishly incompetent and eager to lie and spin to cover up their overreaches and mistakes. It’s an operation perfectly summed up in a video taken this week of Border Patrol honcho Greg Bovino struggling to pull the pin on a tear-gas canister he subsequently tossed at peaceful protesters—only to have the wind blow the gas right back over him and his own agents.

It’s a Keystone Cops operation—but as Renee Good’s death attests, that hasn’t made it any less dangerous.

If the next president is a Democrat—or even, hard as it might be to imagine, a less authoritarian Republican—what happens to ICE? What’s the route back to healthy, law-abiding, non-abusive federal law enforcement? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.

AROUND THE BULWARK

TGIF! Be sure to make time for Friday’s Triad AMA with JVL here on Substack!
For Some, Trump’s Mask Is Finally Slipping… European leaders have given up pretending the president is someone he’s not. Maybe some American voters will, too, argues MONA CHAREN.
Trump Sounds a Lot Like You-Know-Who… He’s no Hitler. But his speech in Davos about Greenland eerily echoes 1938, writes WILL SALETAN.
‘No Other Choice’ Review… Park Chan-wook, Tim Robinson, and masculinity in crisis, reviews SONNY BUNCH.

Quick Hits

THE KING OF SMARM: Apparently, Donald Trump wasn’t satisfied by insulting NATO’s support for the United States after 9/11 just the one time this week. In a Fox Business interview yesterday, he doubled down on his remarks at Davos that “I don’t know that they’d be there for us” in a crisis:

I’ve always said, will they be there if we ever needed them? And that’s really the ultimate test. And I’m not sure of that. . . . We’ve never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them. You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, and this or that. And they did. They stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.

The only time NATO’s mutual defense clause has been invoked was by our European allies on our behalf after 9/11. Over the following two decades, hundreds of soldiers from NATO nations were killed during the war in Afghanistan. Relative to the size of its population, Denmark lost as many troops there as the United States did. Just one more intolerable, inexplicable, pointless slander of our allies from the president.Subscribed

AI LIES: We mentioned the other day that we weren’t big fans of the Minneapolis protest last weekend in which activists disrupted a church service, alleging that one of the church’s pastors was affiliated with ICE. The protest was foolish, misguided, likely illegal, and totally counterproductive.

But the White House’s response has been nothing short of chilling. It isn’t just that the Justice Department, operating on the usual paradigm that no opportunity to prosecute a liberal should be wasted, swooped theatrically into action, swearing to round up both the perpetrators and journalists who covered the protest. (A U.S. magistrate judge refused yesterday to sign charges against Don Lemon, the former CNN anchor who livestreamed the event while seemingly embedded with the protesters.)

It’s also the sneering, utterly truth-agnostic way in which the White House has orchestrated its propaganda about the arrests. When DHS brought in activist Nekima Armstrong, they didn’t just stage a photo-op perp walk for her. The White House also tweeted out an AI-altered picture of her, changing her stoic expression to make her appear to be sobbing. Asked to comment on the fakery, the White House was shameless: “Enforcement of the law will continue,” a spokesperson told CNN. “The memes will continue.”

U.S. Politics, Governance

Hopium Chronicles, Pro-Democracy Advocacy: We Must Choose Freedom, Simon Rosenberg, right, Jan. 23, 2026. It’s time now to “abandon caution” and do what Americans do – fight for freedom and democracy, here and everywhere.

We will be talking a lot about the DHS vote in the days ahead but it’s important to understand the strategic backdrop to what’s happening in Congress this week. The passage of individual appropriations bills by Congress, something that has not been done in a long time, was a way for Congress to claw back some of the power it had recklessly given to Trump and Russell Vought. That both parties were able to come together, largely around Democratic funding levels throughout government, will end up being a bi-partisan, bicameral repudiation of Trump’s attempt to functional eliminate the legislative branch. Trump’s wild overreach and assault on our Constitutional order forced Congress – even Republicans in Congress – to fight restore their power and begin repairing our system of government.

Some excerpts from a Punchbowl News story this am:

Jeffries and House Democrats won here too. CRs give the Trump administration too much leeway in doling out federal dollars. From Democrats’ point of view, GOP appropriators came their way on nearly every issue, from topline spending numbers to eschewing “poison pill” policy riders.

“This is the most significant progress towards restoring regular order in this institution in many years,” Johnson told reporters following a huge bipartisan vote for the $1.2 trillion Defense-Labor-HHS-THUD package.

…….

OMB Director Russ Vought called for more than $100 billion in discretionary cuts on top of the hundreds of billions of dollars cut from Medicaid and other mandatory programs in the One Big Beautiful. House GOP appropriators drafted partisan spending bills at the Vought-proposed level knowing Democrats and the Senate would never go along with it.

Hill Republicans also did nothing when President Donald Trump unilaterally shut down USAID and tried to dismantle the Education Department, all while laying off tens of thousands of federal employees.

But the record-setting 43-day government shutdown — which Democrats triggered in an epic clash over Obamacare subsidies — was a watershed moment for House and Senate appropriators.

With House and Senate leaders’ tacit approval, the Four Corners on the Appropriations panels — Cole, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) — began to quietly hash out spending deals. It was clear that the Vought-pushed spending level wasn’t going to work, and they drafted bipartisan bills accordingly.

Appropriators and party leaders desperately wanted to avoid another CR. It’s not hyperbole to say that this was a critical moment for the 160-year old House Appropriations Committee.

“We got the bills done, and we came out very well, you know, and that should be proof enough that we need to make the process work,” DeLauro said in an interview.

“But first and foremost, it is reaffirming the power of the purse, as the Constitution said, resides in the Congress, and there we are not just going to let Russ Vought, an unelected bureaucrat … go run roughshod over the appropriations process.”

Is the deal here – claw back Congressional powers Trump had illegally appropriated for himself, get meaningful funding wins, accept ugly DHS appropriations – worth it? We will be debating this vigorously in the coming weeks. But at the very least our expectation should be, after these bills are passed, and hopefully signed by Trump, that our Congressional leaders offer a plan to work to rein in ICE and restore rule of law this year – not after we win back power in the elections.

In this week’s talk I argue that this first year of Trump was a good one for us electorally and politically. We’ve won elections of all kinds all across the country, some by enormous margins. New, promising leaders have emerged for the pro-democracy movement. We are likely to win the redistricting wars with Trump. The No Kings movement has brought millions of people to the streets, peacefully. The response we are seeing from every day citizens in Minnesota has been inspiring and powerful. Trump and his agenda have been powerfully rejected by the American people, including his various puerile strongman plays. His ironclad control over Congress had frayed, and he is starting to regularly lose votes on the Hill – as he is with these appropriations bills. Republicans have clearly grown weary of defending the indefensible.Subscribed

But where we were not successful in this first year of Trump, and should be not satisfied, has been in our ability to block the damage Trump is doing to the country and the world. Thus in 2026 we need to maintain our electoral and political momentum and seize the clear opportunity in front of us; and we must do more to stop him from wrecking the country and destabilizing the world. Here’s how I described this second responsibility in last Sunday’s post, Coming Together:

We are here now, deep into dangerous Mad King/Bond Villain territory. 2026 is no longer about affordability or restoring the ACA subsidies. It is about pro-democracy movement somehow coming together and forming a unified and far more powerful front against his dangerous Imperial and dictatorial designs.

In an ideal world, what we would see next week is a public statement signed by all Dem Governors, AGs, Senate and House Democrats that states clearly that

Rule of law must be re-established in America, ICE must be reined in, and Trump’s outrageous plunder and corruption must end

That he must back off his illegal and destructive territorial ambitions, end all these ridiculous tariffs, and re-commit to the Trans-Atlantic Alliance

As we discussed yesterday the Europeans have shown us the way – no appeasement, only strength; come together for we are always stronger together than apart. To me these are the two big lessons from his history – appeasement signals weakness, and encourages authoritarian escalation; and we must stick together at all costs no matter how hard that is at times.

For when this appropriations battle ends, and Congress has re-asserted itself in a way that we have all wanted and called for, then it becomes time to really start focusing on “coming together” and creating more power for ourselves in this fight to stop the harms he is doing. We have more power than we understand. We just have to organize ourselves differently in order to be able to wield it. To do this we will, as EU President Ursula van der Leyen counseled this week, have to “abandon caution.” (cc Leaders Schumer and Jeffries).

Lincoln Square Media, Political Opinion: Winning isn’t a Vibe: Democrats Have to Expand the Court and Start Acting Like They Want Power, Kristoffer Ealy, Jan. 23, 2026. Pragmatism isn’t betrayal—it’s how you keep basic rights from becoming “negotiable.” One of the most common things people ask me—or wonder about me—is where I’m at on the political spectrum.

Don’t get me wrong: people know I’m left. The confusion is usually how left, and whether I’m “consistent” when I don’t behave like an online political influencer who has to pick one lane and never deviate, like my ideology is a GPS route that can’t handle a detour.

Because yes: in one article I can be admonishing Bernie Sanders about the way he talks to and about Black people when the topic of race comes up. And in my very next article I can be agreeing with Bernie Sanders about the fecklessness of Democrats and the way they constantly seem to capitulate to Republicans. To some people, that might look like I’m all over the place.

I’m not.The easiest way to describe me is: I’m pragmatic, and I want Democrats to win elections. Real simple. If I criticize a Democrat, it will always be followed with the caveat: still vote for them. I can hate a Democratic candidate during a primary and still understand the importance of that same candidate needing to win the general election—because there’s a 99.999% chance they’re running against a MAGA Republican who treats democracy like an expired coupon.

And I’m one of those Democrats who proudly admits to being a Democrat … not because I always love being a Democrat. Trust me, I don’t. But from a psychological perspective, team alignment matters. Politics is coalition work. It’s coordination. It’s collective action. It’s the difference between having a governing project and having a group chat full of righteous vibes.

That said, I completely understand why people who often vote for Democrats don’t want to align with the party.

Trust me: I get it. And you’re not wrong for feeling the way you feel.

What annoys me are the so-called “uber-progressives” who seem to go out of their way to derail Democrats and guarantee Republican wins—then act shocked when the right does exactly what the right always does once it has power.

Voting is not a favor to the person running for office. It’s not a Valentine’s Day card. It’s not a personality endorsement. It is an exercise of civic responsibility.

I’m talking about the Cenk Uygur-types who spent 2024 badmouthing Biden every chance they got, then tried to cosplay a presidential campaign even though he’s constitutionally ineligible for the office because he wasn’t born in the United States. And yes, that guy is exactly why I wrote, I Don’t Negotiate With White Supremacists after he decided it was cute to break bread with Charlie Kirk at a Turning Point rally. That’s not “building coalitions.” That’s laundering extremism with a selfie and calling it strategy.

I’m talking about Nina Turner in 2020 calling Joe Biden “half a bowl of shit”—as if politics is Yelp and the presidency is a brunch spot that forgot her side of toast.

I did not appreciate Marc Lamont Hill’s lukewarm endorsement energy for Kamala Harris in 2024. I definitely did not appreciate Susan Sarandon talking shit, because some people treat elections like they’re auditioning for the role of “Most Morally Pure Person in the Room,” and they don’t care who gets hurt when the credits roll. And Amanda Seales did not become the patron saint of Blackness and political know-it-all-ism by being right all the time. She became that by being loud all the time. Those are not the same skill.

What’s nuts is I share the views of a lot of these people on substance. I’m not allergic to progressive ideas. I’m allergic to political illiteracy—especially from people my age or older, because I know you had to have seen Schoolhouse Rock at least once. Which means, at minimum, you’ve had a cartoon teach you that government is not magic, power is not symbolic, and elections are not performance art.

Voting is not a favor to the person running for office. It’s not a Valentine’s Day card. It’s not a personality endorsement. It is an exercise of civic responsibility. I’ve voted in several elections. There have been several candidates I voted for that I did not particularly love, but I understood I have a list of things I want and need done—and most of the time the Democrat is the candidate who is going to do more of what I need done than the Republican.

It’s not “the lesser of two evils.” It’s a job. And sometimes when you’re hiring for a job, your choices are not perfect—but you still understand: these are the candidates.

And one of the biggest of those issues is the last thing too many people did not take seriously in 2016: the Supreme Court.

Trump got two Supreme Court justices early—then lucked into getting a third pick with the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And after that, Democrats still didn’t treat Supreme Court expansion like the five-alarm emergency it was.

It was talked about during the 2020 election season. In the 2020 vice presidential debate, Mike Pence and Kamala Harris even had a back-and-forth about court expansion and “court-packing,” but the problem was that nobody took the possibility of Supreme Court expansion seriously—like it was a weird theoretical question instead of a looming structural crisis.

And when Biden won in 2020—God bless him—he thought we were still playing by the old rules. In his defense, maybe he didn’t think Supreme Court expansion was needed. Maybe he was banking on a second term. Maybe he figured he’d get a couple retirements. He did get one excellent pick with Ketanji Brown Jackson, and maybe he thought he’d get at least two more picks in a second term.

Then 2024 happened, and Democrats managed to pull off a truly special form of self-sabotage after Biden’s horrible debate performance. Watching the party respond to that moment was like watching people trapped in a sinking boat decide the most important thing is arguing about who brought the wrong life jacket—while the water keeps rising.

And with the party’s reluctance to fully get behind Kamala Harris, here we sit in Trump’s second nonconsecutive term with the stakes getting uglier by the month. Trump is poised to get at least two more Supreme Court picks if the two oldest justices—Justice Thomas and Justice Alito—don’t make it out of this term due to retirement or an act of God. I’m not wishing anything on anyone, I’m just acknowledging what time does to human beings. Time is undefeated. And it does not care about your jurisprudence.

We are still in the fuck around stage. But if we don’t get a Democratic president who prioritizes expanding the Court, we’re going to be in the find out stage so fast it’ll feel like we time-traveled.

And yes—before Democrats start flinching like they just heard an “angry swing voter” sneezed on a focus group, let’s talk about language.

We are past exploratory committees. By 2029 and beyond, Democrats don’t need to explore anything except a spine.

When I say Democrats need to expand the Supreme Court, I do not mean pack the Supreme Court. Pack is something you do to a sack lunch. Pack is luggage. Pack is what you do when you’re trying to zip a suitcase that’s clearly begging for mercy.

The language has to be court expansion—and in the Democratic primary this has to be the language. Democrats cannot do what they usually have a penchant for doing and run away from this. They have to be bold and eloquent and make the case for why court expansion is necessary. They have to explain to voters that the rules have changed—and why they have changed.

Because “court-packing” is a propaganda frame. It’s meant to make Democrats sound like they’re doing something sneaky or corrupt—like they’re “rigging” the system—when the reality is that the system has already been bent out of shape by hardball politics and institutional capture. “Court expansion” is accurate. It’s clean. It refuses the right’s framing. And it keeps the argument where it belongs: legitimacy, democratic stability, and consequences.

Which matters even beyond domestic policy. That’s why I wanted to mention Trump’s lawless capture of Maduro in Venezuela. Whatever you think of Maduro—nobody is obligated to like him—the point is the precedent: a president deciding he can do whatever he wants abroad, whenever he wants, and dare anyone to stop him. A good Supreme Court can help make sure there are consequences for lawless executive behavior, instead of courts becoming a rubber stamp that treats “because I said so” as a constitutional doctrine.

And this is the part Democrats have to understand: you can’t “norms” your way out of an authoritarian project. You can’t commission your way out of a legitimacy crisis. You can’t hold a listening session with a power imbalance.

You win. And then you govern like you understand what winning is for.

So when Democrats hear “expand the Supreme Court” and start reacting like somebody just suggested arson, I need them to take a breath and get serious. The question isn’t whether this makes you feel warm inside. The question is whether you want consequences for lawlessness and a Court that can function as a backstop instead of an accelerant.

Because if Democrats keep treating power like it’s tacky, Republicans are going to keep treating power like it’s oxygen.

And I’m not interested in being morally correct in the ruins. I’m interested in Democrats winning—so we can actually do the job.

So here’s the ask: act like winning is the first policy. Stop treating elections like a referendum on your personal purity and start treating them like the hiring decision they are. Vote in every race. Drag two people with you. Donate if you can. Volunteer if you can’t. Show up to the boring meetings. Pressure Democrats in the primaries and then back the nominee in the general like you understand what the alternative is. And when 2028 comes, don’t let them flinch—demand court expansion be said out loud, defended with facts, and pursued with urgency.

Democracy Docket, Legal Advocacy: 2026 congressional maps are still up in the air, Staff Report, Jan. 23, 2026. In many states, 2026 congressional maps are still up in the air. Minnesota rejects DOJ voter data demand that targets same-day registration.

We are barreling towards the 2026 election (or are even already “on the eve” of the election, if the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority is to be believed) but voters in a remarkable number of states are still facing uncertainty about which congressional district maps will be used.

After Missouri’s legislature passed a pro-GOP gerrymander at President Donald Trump’s behest, voters have fought to put the new congressional map to a statewide “veto referendum” — and they’re facing an all-out onslaught of obstacles from Republicans. We recently learned that the GOP spent nearly $2.9 million – an “astronomical” sum, according to a leading gerrymander opponent — just trying to stop voters from gathering signatures to hold the referendum. (It didn’t stop them.) Meanwhile, voters in Kansas City still have no idea which congressional map will be in place this year.

This month, federal judges rejected a GOP effort* to block California’s voter-approved redistricting plan for 2026, but the matter isn’t resolved yet. Republicans have appealed their loss to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Virginia, Democrats are still working to pass new maps in response to mid-decade redistricting in other states – and they’re facing a very tight timeline to pull off their plan.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) is hoping his state will also join the fray and redistrict in response to pro-GOP gerrymanders elsewhere, but some key Democrats still aren’t on board.

In New York this week, a state court ordered* a redraw of Staten Island’s congressional district – a decision that will impact New York’s congressional maps for 2026. The court found that the current map dilutes the voting power of Black and Latino residents. It ordered the independent redistricting commission to redraw the district by Feb. 6.

And of course, we’re keeping a close eye on how congressional maps could change in Florida, Louisiana and Alabama later this year, when the Supreme Court is expected to kneecap the Voting Rights Act. That would make it harder for minority voters to challenge racially discriminatory maps. Read more about it here.

*An intervenor defendant in the California case, as well as voter plaintiffs in the New York case, are represented by the Elias Law Group (ELG). ELG firm chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.

VOTER DATAMinnesota rejects DOJ voter data demand that targets same-day registration

Minnesota election officials are pushing back on the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)’s demand that they hand over unredacted records related to election-day voter registration and residency verification.

The Minnesota Secretary of State’s office refused the request, saying the DOJ failed to identify any legal authority allowing it to obtain the data – or evidence that Minnesota’s election policies are violating federal law.

It’s yet another front the federal government appears to be opening in its multi-pronged attack on Minnesota. Read more about the Minnesota demand here.

abigail spanberger mikki sherrill

The Contrarian, Opinion: Two governors take office and inspire hope, Jennifer Rubin, right, Jan. 23, 2026. Two women governors, Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, above right, and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, posing in a file photo on Capitol Hill when they were each members of Congress, took their oaths of office over the last seven days

Coming off massive victories, both showed remarkable modesty, magnanimity, and restraint — starkly differentfrom the triumphalism, meanness, and vindictiveness that defines Donald Trump’s reign of horror.

At her inauguration, Sherrill delivered powerful oratory to meet the moment of maximum threat from a wannabe dictator. Recalling the founding of our nation, she recalled the “list of grievances in our Declaration of Independence,” including [King George III’s] refusal to assent to laws, obstruction of justice, domination of judges, and maintaining “in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.” She noted that New Jerseyans grasped the similarities to the current mad king:

[W]e see a president illegally usurping power. He has unconstitutionally enacted a tariff regime to make billions for himself and his family, while everyone else sees costs go higher and higher. Here, we demand people in public service actually serve the public instead of extorting money to benefit themselves and their cronies.

Sherrill pledged that — in contrast to Trump — she would be fighting for the people and working to do things such as keeping energy prices under control, and would not be wasting taxpayer money on a ballroom. Governor Mikie Sherrill and Governor Abigail Spanberger

Spanberger, just three days earlier, demonstrated her political deftness as she reached across the aisle, practically daring Republicans to obstruct her. She offered the prospect of an endurable governing coalition that would reach well beyond the core base of Democratic activists.

Spanberger’s speech also drew on history, in her case from former Virginia governors such as Patrick Henry and civil rights heroes, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She declared that “our leaders and our fellow Virginians should join in common cause, find common ground, and pursue common purpose — this is the concept at the heart of what it means to be a Commonwealth.”

Spanberger posited a governing model starkly different from the reign of chaos, cruelty, and corruption across the Potomac. “I know many of you are worried about the recklessness coming out of Washington. You are worried about policies that are hurting our communities — cutting healthcare access, imperiling rural hospitals, and driving up costs,” she declared. “You are worried about Washington policies that are closing off markets, hurting innovation and private industry, and attacking those who have devoted their lives to public service.”

Sherrill and Spanberger wound up in the same place: a commitment to tackle real problems (e.g., high housing, energy, and healthcare costs). They both vowed that while they expected disagreements with opponents, they would seek to avoid rancor. As Spanberger put it, “we do not have to see eye-to-eye on every issue in order to stand shoulder-to-shoulder on others.” And while they spoke about their own life experiences and states’ unique challenges, both sought to recapture a sense of shared purpose and destiny. Sherrill’s vision: “Protecting liberty, ensuring that power is not placed in the hands of a few, but rather that the universal rights of all New Jerseyans are protected.”

All of this sounds like politics from another planet — pollyannaish or even naïve — if viewed from the vantage point of Washington, D.C., where MAGA fascists have an iron grip on Congress, and a megalomaniacal president reels from one crisis to another. But we should aspire to reclaim the sort of politics that we used to take for granted: normal and rational rhetoric, responsible governance, and personal decency.

Spanberger and Sherrill will provide a vivid contrast over the next three years between functional democracy (i.e., how Democrats would govern if the MAGA clown car were pushed to the side of the road) and MAGA authoritarianism. Imagine, they implore us, if Trump did not hold his party in line with fear and threats, and a true two-party system (both pro-democracy, sometimes even cooperative) could be restored. (Whether Republicans are capable of such a transformation remains an open question.)

Cynicism is easy. Too many Americans throw up their hands, declare all politicians are crooks and demagogues, and check out of politics. In fact, there is a world of difference between, on one hand, MAGA careerists engaged in nonstop lies, performative politics, and conspiratorial shenanigans, and, on the other, Democrats who trust voters can handle the truth, try to do right by their constituents, and focus on problem-solving.

Sherrill faces a different political environment than Spanberger. Each will need to craft policies attuned to their states. And Democrats, let alone independents and Republicans, will not agree with every decision or every compromise made by the new Democratic governors. But what matters is that they provide a model of earnest, clean, and competent governance.

Sherrill and Spanberger deserve immense credit for landslide elections that defied polls and pundits’ predictions. Their extensive preparation in advance of the inauguration and their polished speeches (ah, that is what a coherent executive leader sounds like!) remind us how diligent public servants conduct themselves. We honor their undaunted, unwavering, and unapologetic belief in the ideals of democracy and the potential for responsible politics. We are grateful for the much-needed reminder that our politics do not have to be defined by Trump and his mad courtiers.

Virginia and New Jersey residents should be proud of their picks, and hold them accountable for their promises. Collectively, as Spanberger and Sherrill promised, the public and elected leaders of these states might set a powerful example for the rest of the country, which is in dire need of adult, decent leadership and engaged, rational citizens.

Ivan Raiklin (L) and ex-Capitol Police Officer Michael Fanone had a heated exchange during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. Here are 5 things to know about Raiklin.

Ivan Raiklin (R) and ex-Capitol Police Officer Michael Fanone had a heated exchange during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. Here are 5 things to know about Raiklin.

Hindustan Times, Ivan Raiklin: 5 key things to know about activist who clashed with Michael Fanone at Jack Smith hearing, Shirin Gupta, Jan. 23, 2026. Ivan Raiklin and ex-Capitol Police Officer Michael Fanone had a heated exchange during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. Here are 5 things to know about him.

Raiklin shook his hand with Fanone during the recess of the hearing, to which Fanone repeatedly cursed at him and told him not to “pretend.”

He said to the people gathering around the scene, “This guy has threatened my family, threatened my children. Threatened to rape my children … you sick bastard.”

The altercation was captured on video and widely shared online. Here are five things to know about Raiklin amid the clash:

Raiklin is an Ex-Army officer. Ivan Raiklin is a conservative activist, far-right political operative, and former reservist in the U.S. Army. Raiklin was a Green Beret before joining the Army Reserve as a lieutenant colonel. The Defense Intelligence Agency employed him as well. His military background has been a core part of his public persona. He has described himself as a defender of constitutional principles in political contexts.

Raiklin ran in a Republican primary. Raiklin also identifies as a registered Republican who has been active in electoral politics. He also ran an unsuccessful bid in the 2018 Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Virginia. He did not collect enough signatures to be eligible to run in the primary.

Later, he filed a lawsuit against the commonwealth and the party over the denial of ballot access; however, federal district judge John A. Gibney, Jr. rejected the motion because it was filed too late.

Raiklin gave birth to the “Pence Card” Theory.Raiklin gained notice after he originated the so-called Pence Card theory. Raiklin asserted that then-Vice President Mike Pence could legally block certification of the 2020 presidential election results. On December 16, 2020, Raiklin tweeted his theory to President Donald Trump, who subsequently retweeted it. The theory has since been widely discredited legally.

Raiklin is a conspiracy theorist promoting “deep-state” rhetoric. Raiklin has promoted a range of conspiracy-laden narratives involving claims of a so-called “deep state” working against conservative interests. He has self-assigned labels such as “Secretary of Retribution” and suggested plans advocated the widespread detention of public servants, civil society activists, and journalists who, in his opinion, ought to be “criminalized for their treason.”

Raiklin’s fight with Fanone. In 2021, Fanone and other law enforcement officials testified before the January 6 Select Committee on their experiences protecting the Capitol from rioters earlier that year. Raiklin was in the centre of pressuring Mike Pence to attempt to reverse the outcomes of the 2020 election.

In the altercation that happened on January 22, Raiklin tried to be friendly with Fanone, which the ex-police officer did not take well. He cursed at him, saying, “Go f**k yourself.” Fanone also alleged that Raikline threatened his family and also threatened to rape his children. However, in a post on X, Raiklin refuted those allegations and said that he might sue Fanone for defamation.

Jan. 22

davos 2026 horizontal

New York Times, Live Updates: Zelensky Criticizes European Allies’ Response to Trump and Russia; Trump Officials Tout Gaza Plan at ‘Board of Peace’ Ceremony in Davos, Aaron Boxerman, Jan. 22, 2026. What We’re Covering Today.

Trump in Davos: President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine used a blunt speech before the world’s political and business elites on Thursday to take aim at European countries, criticizing their inability to stop Russia’s aggression and their timid response to President Trump’s threat to seize Greenland. Separately, Mr. Trump hosted a signing ceremony for his proposed “Board of Peace,” the latest step in his effort to dismantle the postwar international system and build a new one. Read more ›
Trump Investigations: Jack Smith, the special prosecutor who twice indicted Mr. Trump but never got a trial, is delivering what amounts to his closing argument in a public hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. The core of Mr. Smith’s argument is that he conducted his investigation apolitically. Watch live ›
Trump in Davos: President Trump hosted a signing ceremony for his proposed “Board of Peace” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, the latest step in his effort to dismantle the postwar international system and build a new one. Trump officials presented a plan to rebuild postwar Gaza that was ambitious in scope but short on details. Read more ›
Russia-Ukraine war: Mr. Trump was meeting in Davos with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to try to advance a plan to end the war with Russia. Mr. Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, were expected to meet later with the Russian leader, President Vladimir V. Putin, in Moscow. Read more ›

davos 2026 square Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, just presented an ambitious plan for rebuilding Gaza onstage at the “Board of Peace” event. Beginning in the enclave’s south, Gaza will be rebuilt in phases, according to slides presented while he addressed the audience. “We said, let’s plan for catastrophic success,” said Kushner.

jared kushner head shot Kushner, left, said he hopes the southern city of Rafah — which Israel largely razed during its military campaign against Hamas — can be rebuilt in two to three years. His slide suggests their entire plan for Gaza will require at least $25 billion. It is not clear who will cough up the funding.

As part of President Trump’s “Board of Peace” ceremony, Ali Shaath, the leader of the U.S.-backed committee of Palestinian technocrats for Gaza, said that the enclave’s border with Egypt will open next week. The Rafah crossing has long been closed, trapping the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza and preventing those who fled the war from coming home. The border is a “lifeline” for Gazans, Shaath said.

Under the cease-fire, Israel was obligated to reopen the Rafah crossing. But Israel has opposed opening the border until Hamas returns the remains of the last hostage in Gaza, which the group has yet to do.

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, showed one slide titled, “New Gaza,” showing a futuristic looking city with skyscrapers lining a coast. But he said that in order to rebuild Gaza, Hamas must demilitarize. He presented another slide listing “demilitarization principles” that include having one civilian authority in Gaza.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is shown delivering a hard-hitting speech on Canada’s break with the United States at the World Economic Summit at Davos, Switzerland (Associated Press photo via the New York Times). President Trump is shown below in a file photo.

DJT finger in air uncreditedjpg

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Courageous Carney vs. Demented Donald, Paul Krugman, right, Jan. 22, 2026. Canada’s leader is a sane adult. America’s leader isn’t.

On Tuesday Mark Carney, Canada’s Prime Minister, gave a remarkable speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In effect he announced, calmly and lucidly, that Canada is filing for divorce from the Pax Americana:

Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

And he urged other nations — implicitly, although he didn’t say it in so many words, the nations of Europe in particular — to join Canada in a new alliance of democracies no longer willing to take orders from an abusive hegemon:

[T]he middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.

It was a brave stand to take. Canada sits right next to the United States, whose economy is a dozen times larger. Moreover, as the map at the top of this post shows, Canada’s population lies almost entirely within a narrow band on top of the U.S. Back when I was writing a lot about economic geography, I used to joke that Canada was closer to the United States than it was to itself. Nature wants Canada and the United States to be closely intertwined. And for this reason Canada is arguably more exposed to the consequences of Trumpian wrath than any other nation.

davos 2026 square But democracies can no longer maintain close ties with the U.S. The day after Carney spoke, Donald Trump showed why.

I listened to Trump’s Davos speech with fear: How much damage will this demented, vindictive individual do to America and the world? I also felt a deep sense of shame: What is wrong with my country, that we put someone like this in a position of unprecedented power?

As the whole world watched, the president of the United States (God help us) repeatedly referred to Greenland, which he is willing to blow up NATO to acquire, as Iceland. Don’t dismiss this as trivial: if any previous president had been that befuddled, the whole press corps would have been howling about senility and demanding that he step down.

And of course Trump’s press secretary insisted that he didn’t say what we all saw and heard him say.

Trump also repeatedly displayed his trademark willful ignorance, for example when talking about renewable energy. While berating Europe for using wind energy, he admitted that China also has big wind farms — someone must have showed him pictures — but declared that

They put up a couple of big wind farms, but they don’t use them. They just put them up to show people what they could look like. They don’t spin, they don’t do anything.

In reality, China accounts for almost 40 percent of total world generation of electricity from wind power, substantially more than Europe.

Beyond confusion and ignorance, Trump delivered menace: A screenshot of a white text AI-generated content may be incorrect.

The horrifying details of Trump’s rant aside, what strikes me about the Trump administration’s performance at Davos — not just Trump himself but his minions — was the utter lack of purpose. The whole Trump team seems to have gone to Europe with no goal other than to belittle and insult their hosts.

On Tuesday evening Howard Lutnick, the Commerce secretary, spoke to a private dinner at Davos — at which he belittled European economies and their lack of competitiveness. He was reportedly booed, and Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, walked out.

scott bessant On Wednesday morning Scott Bessent, above, the Treasury secretary, dismissed reports that one major Danish pension fund has decided to divest itself of U.S. bonds by declaring that “Denmark’s investment in U.S. Treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant.”

And Trump devoted much of his speech to portraying Europe as a hellhole, its economy destroyed by renewable energy and its society destroyed by immigration.

Never mind whether any of this is true. (It isn’t.) What was the point of saying such things? Do Trump and his Mini-Mes imagine that they can convince European leaders that they, their economies, and their societies are all pathetic losers?

To say what should be obvious but apparently isn’t, we don’t need top government officials playing at being shock-jock podcasters, getting clicks by being outrageous. God knows, MAGA has plenty of those already. Official speeches aren’t supposed to be rants that provide red meat to your political base. They’re supposed to influence people who aren’t your supporters, in ways that serve the national interest.

This doesn’t mean that official speeches must be mealy-mouthed and boring. Mark Carney’s speech definitely wasn’t. But Carney had a clear purpose: To rally other nations into solidarity against U.S. economic blackmail.

Trump, on the other hand, just wanted to swagger, whine, and mostly hear himself talk. And all he accomplished was to turn suspicions that he’s gone off the deep end into certainty.

We’re already seeing some consequences of Trump’s ranting: A white background with black text AI-generated content may be incorrect.

There will be much more of this. American power and influence have always rested, much more than many people realize, on the perception of American trustworthiness. We didn’t always do the right thing, but we honored our agreements and were the least greedy imperial power in history.

That’s all over. At Davos, Mark Carney called for giving up hope that the Pax Americana can be restored, and Donald Trump proved him right.

jack smith djt w

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage.

“No one should be above the law in this country, and the law required that he be held to account,” Mr. Smith said in his opening remarks. “So that is what I did.”

His testimony represented the argument he was never allowed to deliver in court: that Mr. Trump “engaged in criminal activity” that undermined democracy and the rule of law.

“Was Speaker McCarthy a flight risk?” Mr. Gill asked.

“He was not,” Mr. Smith replied.

New York Times, 4 Takeaways From Jack Smith’s Testimony Before Lawmakers, Alan Feuer and Glenn Thrush, Jan. 22, 2026. In his remarks, the former special counsel repeatedly denied that he had acted out of partisan animus and bemoaned the Trump administration’s efforts to go after the president’s perceived enemies

The former special counsel Jack Smith appeared before Congress on Thursday to defend his decision to bring two criminal indictments against Donald J. Trump after he left office in 2021.

Much of what Mr. Smith told lawmakers reprised the testimony he gave last month in a videotaped deposition behind closed doors. In his remarks, he repeatedly denied that he had acted out of partisan animus, and bemoaned the Trump administration’s own efforts to use the Justice Department to go after the president’s enemies.

Here are a few takeaways from his testimony.Smith’s work was under scrutiny, not his findings

“I am not a politician and I have no partisan loyalties,” Mr. Smith said during his opening statement.

He said that, after three decades as a prosecutor, he had simply followed the facts and the law without “fear or favor.”

“No one should be above the law in this country, and the law required that he be held to account,” he said of Mr. Trump. “So that is what I did.”Smith remained unbowed by personal broadsides

When asked whether he had any regrets about his investigations, Mr. Smith said he had only one: that he had not expressed more appreciation for the F.B.I. agents and prosecutors who worked under him.

The Triad via The Bulwark, A Great Rupture of the World Order, Jonathan V. Last, above, Jan. 22, 2026. As Europe reacts to Trump’s Davos rant, America’s capacity for self-delusion remains boundless.

Many Americans want to believe that Trump’s sudden climbdown yesterday in Davos has resolved the Greenland crisis.

It has not.

The foundation of the crisis is the decadence and degradation of American society. For a decade, Americans have looked at the fantastic prosperity they enjoy and assumed that it was their natural right. That they did not have to take civics, or governance, or the rule of law, or international obligations seriously. That they could elect an aspiring authoritarian, tolerate an attempted coup, endorse the embrace of America’s enemies and betrayal of its allies—and there would be no consequences.

In other words:

1. The Greenland crisis is rooted in our self-delusion.

And Trump’s decision to pivot from (a) the United States must have complete and total control of Greenland; to→ (b) military action is possible; to→ (c) the declaration of a trade war; to→ (d) a soft disavowal of force; to→ (e) never mind—in the space of 108 hours—will enable even more self-delusion in America.

But the rest of the world is not nearly so foolish. Our adversaries in Russia and China have taken the full measure of the American people. And so have our former friends.

After the conclusion of Davos, EU leaders will meet in Brussels to discuss the new realities of the transatlantic relationship. Here are some quotes from these Europeans in Politico:

The sense of dread and skepticism remains, and the summit will still go ahead, despite Donald Trump declaring late Wednesday that he’s struck a deal on Greenland and won’t impose tariffs on European countries after all — underscoring how the gathering has become more than just about the latest blowup. . . .

But the moment for making nice “has ended” and “the time has come to stand up against Trump,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO secretary-general and ex-Danish prime minister, told BBC radio. . . .

“Our American Dream is dead,” said an EU diplomat from a country that has been among the bloc’s transatlantic champions. “Donald Trump murdered it.” . . .

“After the back and forth of the last few days, we should now wait and see what substantive agreements are reached between [NATO Secretary-General] Mr. Rutte and Mr. Trump,” Germany’s Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil told German broadcaster ZDF. “No matter what solution is now found for Greenland, everyone must understand that we cannot sit back, relax, and be satisfied.” . . .

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen summed up the mood during her Davos speech Tuesday.

“The world has changed permanently,” she said. “We need to change with it.” . . .

“We are experiencing a great rupture of the world order,” said a senior envoy from a country that was seen in the EU as a key American ally. Leaders will discuss “de-risking” from the U.S., the diplomat said — a term that has previously been reserved for the EU’s relationship with Beijing. “Trust is lost,” they said. . . .

Two senior diplomats POLITICO spoke with separately compared the current state of the U.S. with the time leading up to World War II.

“I think we are past Munich now,” said one, referring to a 1938 meeting where Britain, France and Italy appeased Adolf Hitler by allowing him to annex Czechoslovakia. “We realize that appeasement is not the right policy anymore.”

What’s done is done. And the fact that Americans will tell themselves that the crisis is over just because Trump didn’t drop the 82nd Airborne into Nuuk is why we’re here in the first place.

2. An Authoritarian State

Another pleasant fiction people tell themselves is:

Things may be bad in America right now, but it’s not actual fascism. Not yet, at least.

Well that depends on who you are and where you live, doesn’t it?

For me, a middle-aged white guy in New York City, my day-to-day life is pretty normal. No actual fascism detected.

But for Renee Good, there was quite a lot of actual fascism. She was killed by a masked agent of the state. The federal government then labeled her a “domestic terrorist” and lauded her killer. This same government is now attempting to prevent any investigation of, or legal accountability for, the killer’s actions.

ChongLy Scott Thao is living with actual fascism. Masked, armed agents of the state showed no warrant before dragging this U.S. citizen out of his house, mostly naked, in the freezing cold, detaining him, and interrogating him before finally letting him go.

Citizens attempting to exercise First Amendment rights in Minneapolis are living with actual fascism:

A protester detained, her bra removed and wedding ring cut off, and some of her clothes never returned. The “gratuitous deployment” of pepper spray. A couple’s car surrounded by agents, who pointed semiautomatic weapons at them at close range.

A federal judge in Minneapolis cited the episodes in an unusually detailed ruling on Friday that found a pattern of misconduct by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and ordered them and other immigration agents to stop using excessive force against protesters while conducting their operations in the city.

Federal officials have unilaterally declared that they don’t need warrants to break into homes. Though I suppose reasonable people could disagree on whether or not this constitutes actual fascism until such time as the Supreme Court rules on it.

The point is: If you live in Minneapolis, right now, you cannot walk the streets without fear of violence being done to you by masked, armed agents of the state. If these agents harm you, you have no redress and they will face no accountability. Your children are not safe from government violence when they are in school. Your home can be invaded at any moment. Armed agents may demand to see your papers. They may shoot you if you are “disrespectful” to them.

That is actual fascism, right here, in America.

The fact that this actual fascism is not everywhere, all at once, does not change its character.

And finally: In societies where actual fascism does exist everywhere, all at once, it always begins as localized episodes. That a majority of Americans does not seem to appreciate this fact is another facet of our self-delusion.

3. ICE Is Different

Radley Balko is always a must-read.

Police agencies in the United States kill more than 1,000 people each year. After many of those deaths, the agencies involved put out statements. Those statements often use what’s known as the exonerative voice to minimize officers’ involvement. The first statement from the Minneapolis Police Department after George Floyd’s death, for example, said that the officers at the scene “noted that he appeared to be suffering from medical distress.” Quite the understatement. These communications often cast events in a light most favorable to the officers involved, sometimes to the point of deception. Too often, they’ll try to smear the deceased by citing a criminal record or suggesting a drug addiction or gang affiliation.

I have been covering policing for more than 20 years and have read and parsed a lot of these statements. The Department of Homeland Security’s response after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis this month is something else entirely.

For all their flaws, typical communications from police officials usually include a modicum of solemnity. There are assurances that there will be a fair and impartial investigation, even if those investigations too often turn out to be neither. There’s at least the acknowledgment that to take a human life is a profound and serious thing.

The Trump administration’s response to Ms. Good’s death made no such concessions. There were no promises of an impartial investigation. There was no regret or remorse. There was little empathy for her family — for her parents, her partner or the children she left behind. From the moment the world learned about her death, the administration pronounced the shooting not only justified but an act of heroism worthy of praise and celebration.

It isn’t just the lying; it’s that the lies are wildly exaggerated and easily refutable. All the evidence we’ve seen so far, including a meticulous Times forensic analysis of the available footage, makes clear that at worst, Ms. Good mildly obstructed immigration enforcement, disobeyed ambiguous orders or perhaps attempted to flee an arrest. None of those are capital crimes, nor do law enforcement officers get to dole out punishment in such cases. At one point, President Trump justified her shooting by claiming she’d been “very disrespectful” to immigration officers. That isn’t a crime at all.

The lies this administration is telling about Ms. Good aren’t those you deploy as part of a cover-up. They’re those you use when you want to show you can get away with anything. They’re a projection of power.

More Global News

New York Times, Denmark Bristles at Idea of Giving Up Any Sovereignty in Greenland, Jeffrey Gettleman, Maya Tekeli and Amelia Nierenberg, Jan. 22, 2026. American and NATO officials have discussed giving the United States sovereignty over U.S. military bases in Greenland. The Danes don’t seem to like that.

Danish officials pushed back on Thursday against any talk of compromising on the sovereignty of Greenland amid confusion over what kind of deal NATO leaders may have struck with President Trump over the future of the Arctic island.

“We can negotiate on everything political; security, investments, economy. But we cannot negotiate on our sovereignty,” Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s prime minister, said in a statement on Thursday about Greenland.

Greenland has been part of the Danish kingdom for more than 300 years, and “only Denmark and Greenland themselves can make decisions on issues concerning Denmark and Greenland,” Ms. Frederiksen said.

It is not clear whether Denmark’s position could scuttle any possible agreement over Greenland that Mr. Trump said he had reached with Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, on Wednesday evening.

Mr. Trump had been insisting that the United States take over the island, despite resistance from Denmark and Greenland. He did not reveal the details of a possible breakthrough though he called it “the ultimate long term deal.”

New York Times, Zelensky says Europe must stand up to Trump and Russia or be left behind, Constant Méheut, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine used a blunt speech before the world’s political and business elites on Thursday to take aim at European countries, denouncing their inability to stop Russia’s aggression and their timid response to President Trump’s threat to seize Greenland.

Mr. Zelensky’s speech, delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, was among his most scathing critiques of Europe. It was unexpected, given that the continent has become Ukraine’s most reliable ally as the Trump administration has stepped back from supporting Kyiv’s war effort.

The address amounted to a call to action for a continent that Mr. Zelensky portrayed as unprepared for a world growing more dangerous by the day. He warned that Europe must unite and step up or risk being left behind in an increasingly competitive global order.

davos 2026 square Ukraine has a direct interest in Europe’s long-term strength, as Kyiv seeks to tie its own future to the continent’s by pursuing membership in the European Union. Mr. Zelensky has argued that Europe’s fate is also tied to Ukraine’s, with a revanchist Russia on its doorstep.

“Instead of becoming a truly global power, Europe remains a beautiful but fragmented kaleidoscope of small and middle powers,” Mr. Zelensky said on Thursday afternoon. “Instead of taking the lead in defending freedom worldwide, especially when America’s focus shifts elsewhere, Europe looks lost, trying to convince the U.S. president to change. But he will not change.”

It had been unclear just a couple of days ago whether Mr. Zelensky would even appear in Davos. He said earlier in the week that he would attend only if “real results for Ukraine” were on the table, fueling expectations that a deal on a postwar recovery plan or security guarantees might be reached.

No such agreement materialized on Thursday. Mr. Zelensky met with Mr. Trump, and both leaders described their talks as “good.”

But with peace in Ukraine seemingly no closer at hand, Mr. Zelensky then turned to imploring Europe to do more to fill the vacuum left by Mr. Trump in sustaining the post-World War II global order.

His remarks risked straining Ukraine’s alliance with a continent that has remained a steadfast source of financial, humanitarian and military support throughout the war, especially after the United States under Mr. Trump disengaged from Ukraine.

Mr. Zelensky’s speech offered an unfiltered list of what he saw as Europe’s failures to assert geopolitical strength compared with the United States, which he said had acted forcefully.

He noted that while there were “different opinions” about the U.S. military operation in Venezuela to capture its leader, Nicolás Maduro, “the fact remains: Maduro is on trial in New York.”

“Sorry, but Putin is not on trial,” he added, referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Mr. Zelensky also contrasted U.S. actions against oil tankers linked to Venezuela and Russia with Europe’s limited enforcement against Russia’s so‑called shadow fleet of tankers that ferry oil under false flags to help Moscow evade sanctions.

Just as Mr. Zelensky spoke, however, President Emmanuel Macron of France announced that the French Navy had intercepted an oil tanker in the Mediterranean Sea that traveled from Russia. The vessel, Mr. Macron said, was “subject to international sanctions and suspected of flying a false flag.”

Mr. Zelensky perhaps hit a raw nerve in exposing Europe’s reliance on U.S. support. He made clear that the continent needed to prepare for a future in which America could no longer be counted on to come to its allies’ defense.

“Today, Europe relies only on the belief that if danger comes, NATO will act,” he said, referring to the Western military alliance, whose power comes largely from the United States’ military. “But no one has really seen the alliance in action. If Putin decides to take Lithuania or strike Poland, who will respond? Who will respond?”

“Right now, NATO exists thanks to the belief that the United States will act, that it will not stand aside and will help. But what if it doesn’t?” Mr. Zelensky continued. “Believe me, this question is everywhere, in the minds of every European leader.”

Those were striking remarks coming from a leader who has long pressed for Ukraine’s integration into NATO, viewing membership in the military alliance as the country’s strongest security guarantee against future Russian aggression. The Trump administration has said it opposes admitting Ukraine to NATO after the war.

Mr. Zelensky called on Europe to step up as it vows to deploy troops to Ukraine after any peace deal with Russia. In private, some Ukrainian officials have dismissed Europe’s pledges, saying such forces would not deter Russia and lack experience fighting a modern war increasingly shaped by new technologies such as drones.

Mr. Zelensky’s administration has long said that Ukraine’s best hope for protecting itself from Russia in the long term is to maintain the strength of its own military, which is the most powerful in Europe.

The Ukrainian leader arrived in Davos shortly after Mr. Trump’s threat to annex Greenland by force had threatened to plunge the Western alliance into disarray. Greenland, a Danish territory, is itself part of NATO, making the threat tantamount to one NATO member attacking another.

Mr. Trump, ultimately, walked back his threats in Davos, saying that an understanding had been reached with NATO to avoid a confrontation. Still, Mr. Zelensky criticized Europe’s response, which included sending a small contingent of troops to Greenland as a show of solidarity.

“If you send 30 or 40 soldiers to Greenland — what is that for?” he said. “What message does it send? What’s the message to Putin? To China?”

Mr. Zelensky said Ukraine needed Europe’s power “to protect our own independence.”

Directly addressing European leaders, he added: “You need Ukraine’s independence, too — because tomorrow, you may have to defend your way of life. And when Ukraine is with you, no one will wipe their feet on you.”

Morning News

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Old Europe. New Backbone, Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Jan. 22, 2026. A lesson in standing up to bullies from across the pond.

Also, the bad polls just keep coming for Your Favorite President. The latest New York Times/Siena poll finds that only 32 percent of Americans believe the country is better off than a year ago, compared to 49 percent who believe it’s worse off. (Personally, we’d love to pick the brains of the 19 percent who clock it as “about the same.”)

“A majority of voters disapprove of how Mr. Trump has handled top issues including the economy, immigration, the war between Russia and Ukraine and his actions in Venezuela,” the Times reports. “And significantly, a ma

The Parnas Perspective, Political Commentary: ICE Begins Detaining Children and Using Them as “Bait” to Detain Family Members as Constitutional Concerns Emerge, Aaron Parnas, right, Jan. 22, 2026.

You need to know what’s happening right now with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. As Congress prepares to vote on more ICE funding, new information shows ICE is detaining five-year-old children and using them as bait to lure their parents. At the same time, ICE has quietly changed policy to allow agents to enter homes without a judicial warrant.

Today is also the day TikTok officially moves under new ownership—and censorship on the platform is already increasing. That’s why I’m doubling down here. The news is too important to be filtered or buried.

Here’s what you missed:

MPR News has confirmed that federal immigration agents detained four Columbia Heights students in separate incidents—most notably a 5-year-old boy allegedly used as “bait” to draw family members out of their home—sparking outrage from school officials, trauma-driven absenteeism across Twin Cities districts, and renewed criticism of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement practices. This is an image of the little boy with an agent:
A leaked 2025 memo shows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told officers they may forcibly enter homes using only administrative warrants—without judicial approval—to arrest people with final removal orders, a sharp break from past practice that critics and whistleblowers say undermines Fourth Amendment protections, a claim defended by the Department of Homeland Security.
The Department of Homeland Security and ICE officials are upset that agents cannot use restrooms in Minnesota without being confronted by protestors:
The New York Times has confirmed that an autopsy ruled the death of Cuban detainee Geraldo Lunas Campos at the El Paso ICE facility Camp East Montana a homicide caused by asphyxiation during law enforcement restraint, contradicting federal claims of suicide and intensifying scrutiny of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security as the family prepares a wrongful-death lawsuit.
Fear of raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is driving some pregnant people to skip prenatal care and consider unsafe home births, raising alarms among health providers about growing risks to maternal and infant health.
A family-commissioned autopsy found that Renee Good was shot three times—including a fatal head wound—by an officer from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during a Minneapolis encounter, sharply contradicting federal claims of self-defense from the Department of Homeland Security and prompting an ongoing investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation amid criticism from state and local leaders.
Congressional Democrats, led by Hakeem Jeffries, are expected to overwhelmingly vote against a bill funding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, citing outrage over aggressive and deadly enforcement tactics under Donald Trump —including incidents in Minnesota—even as party leaders stop short of formally whipping votes to block its passage.
St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her said it was “heartbreaking” to witness a Hmong American man taken from his home by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, amid widespread reports of aggressive, door-to-door immigration raids in St. Paul that community leaders say target people based on appearance, claims strongly denied by the Department of Homeland Security.
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are overwhelmed reviewing more than two million files tied to Jeffrey Epstein for victim-protection redactions, forcing even senior staff to divert time from major cases—including the prosecution of Nicolás Maduro—and raising concerns that the extraordinary workload is delaying other high-profile trials and investigations.
Donald Trump signed the charter for his “Board of Peace” despite the fact that similar charters would need Senate approval as they are akin to a treaty with other nations. No prominent Western nation signed onto the Board of Peace charter, with the following countries joining: Bahrain, Morocco, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Mongolia, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, Uzbekistan
Europe is backing away from Trump’s proposed “Board of Peace,” with major allies including France, Britain, and the Netherlands declining or hesitating over concerns it could undermine the United Nations, invite figures like Vladimir Putin into a parallel global body, and require costly buy-ins — leaving the initiative increasingly populated by non-Western and smaller states despite U.S. pressure.
Donald Trump dismissed concerns raised by Maria Bartiromo about European investors dumping U.S. assets, warning that any such move would trigger “big retaliation” from the U.S. because, he said, “we have all the cards.”
Donald Trump said the U.S. would gain “total access” to Greenland—including unrestricted military access—under a preliminary framework he announced after meeting Mark Rutte at the World Economic Forum, though details and final terms of any agreement remain unclear.
The Trump administration unveiled a redevelopment vision for Gaza at the World Economic Forum, with Jared Kushner presenting slides and maps depicting large-scale reconstruction and investment contingent on security measures, including the demilitarization of Hamas, while urging critics to “calm down” and embrace the possibility of peace.
Gavin Newsom said his scheduled fireside chat at the World Economic Forum was canceled after USA House bowed to pressure from the Donald Trump’s administration, prompting Newsom to accuse the White House of political intimidation and censorship while he was in Davos criticizing Trump on the global stage.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the United States will not provide security guarantees to oil companies planning to operate in Venezuela, emphasizing that it won’t offer on-the-ground protection for foreign firms even as the administration pushes for investment to revive the country’s oil sector, per Bloomberg reporting.
The Guardian confirmed that senior Venezuelan figures including Delcy Rodríguez and her brother secretly assured U.S. and Qatari officials they would cooperate after the removal of Nicolás Maduro, according to sources, signaling regime insiders’ willingness to work with the Donald Trump administration to ensure stability following Maduro’s capture while stopping short of actively helping to topple him.
California Republicans asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block a voter-approved congressional map that could flip up to five House seats to Democrats, urging Justice Elena Kagan to issue an emergency injunction after a federal court rejected claims that the redistricting—passed via Prop 50—illegally used race.

Democratic-Republican Campaign logos Hopium Chronicles, Pro-Democracy Advocacy: Appeasement Never Works, Only Strength, Simon Rosenberg, right, Jan. 22, 2026. Lessons From An Ugly Week (New Video, Analysis): We must remember at all times that Trump has chosen not to govern with us, or for us, but against us – for they are scared of us, of the power of the people. Some takeaways from my weekly talk, video above and transcript here:

In Davos Trump Was Humiliated, And Humiliated Himself. He Is A Much Weaker Global Figure Today.

I cannot stress how much Trump looked like a clown, buffoon, madman, idiot, bully/coward — choose your words — to the world yesterday [now Monday]. His rambling, incoherent speech confirmed to many that is he addled, and not fit to lead a great nation. He also showed the world that he cannot take a punch, and is weak, cowardly, pathetic, desperate.

As we discussed with Rob Shapiro yesterday, Europe has enormous leverage over the US, and can cripple our economy if they so choose. They began selling US Treasuries, the markets freaked, and Trump folded (for now). Trump learned this week that there are checks to his power other than his “own mind.”

I also think it is critical that we do not allow the narrative of what happened this week to be about Trump retreating. For what he did, as we discussed with Rob yesterday, is the greatest policy mistake by an American President in our history. He has done enormous, lasting damage to the country.

We are a far weaker nation today, and calls for him to resign should grow. Not for his madness, his corruption, his rancid cover-up of the Epstein files but because is a historic, titanic fuck up who cannot be trusted to run the country any longer. He will go down in history as our worst leader who pursued an agenda of sabotage, plunder, and betrayal, and did enormous damage to the causes of freedom and democracy here and around the world.

My hope is that Trump’s wild anti-European buffoonery these past few weeks will also weaken the far-right in Europe, and strengthen the liberal parties fighting him head on.

Trump’s early January 2026 escalation — Minnesota, Venezuela, Greenland/War with Europe — that we talked about with Glenn Kirschner earlier this week has also left him weaker here at home. In a rash of new polling we’ve received this past week Trump has clearly fallen further, as the country again rejects his new strongman plays. Look at this data: everything is coming at or below what was the 40%-56% FiftyPlusOne job approval average from a week ago:

35%-63% (-28) ARG
37%-57% (-20) Economist/YouGov
40%-59% (-19) CNN
41%-59% (-18) CBS News
39%-57% (-18) Marist
41%-58% (-17) Strength in Numbers
41%-58% (-17) Ipsos/Reuters
39%-56% (-17) Civiqs
40%-56% (-16) NYTimes

Look at this issue breakout from the new NYT poll today. It’s across the board erosion and repudiation. Like in other polls in recent days his handling of immigration has gone from strength to incredible liability:

The Viscous Cycle Of A Declining Strongman: This new data confirms a pattern we’ve seen since Trump sent troops to Los Angeles in the spring: when he goes strongman, the country recoils, his approval drops, he grows more distant to the electorate, and this failure/rejection/repudiation encourages him to further escalate, as he desperately and manically seeks to feel STRONG, POWERFUL, MIGHTY again. And yes given his humiliation yesterday, his clear failure, we should anticipate further escalation in the days to come.Subscribed

Perhaps that’s why it felt like DHS/ICE escalated yesterday in Minnesota, Vance is visiting the Twin Cities today, and they’ve launched a new operation in Maine.

For in their collective madness this will to power, this need to feel their boot on our neck, their seizing of Gaza and Venezuela, has become the central project of the regime.

It is not about what is good for the country. It is about more and more power and control. I’ve often called this dynamic the struggle between a politics of freedom and one of dominion. Trump has abandoned the politics of freedom that has been our central organizing principle in America for 250 years, and the central organizing principal of the American-led global order for 80 years, and embraced a politics of dominion.

FDR’s Four Freedoms were an articulation of a very American aspiration for how the world should be organized and Trump and his allies have — incredibly, madly, vaingloriously, recklessly — rejected this inheritance, one that as I talked about last night made America the most powerful nation in history and brought about a golden age for human kind. It is the Law of Don now, law of the jungle, a return to an era of dominion – not freedom.

We must learn, however, to see these escalations, this embrace of dominion as inherently weak, pathetic, fearful, and cowardly. We have to, in our own work each day, learn how to see and communicate to others how what we are seeing with Trump is weakness, buffoonery, clownishness, desperation – the very opposite of strong. It also pushes them further and further away from the electorate – hence the vicious cycle.

Watch this video from Minnesota yesterday and feel the fear they have, the pathetic, desperate, cowardly fear:

The Europeans Showed The Pro-Democracy Movement The Way This Week – We Must “Come Together,” Grow Stronger, And Fight Not Appease.

This week the Europeans came together and used the power of their collective to knock Trump off course. That is the big lesson for us in the US – we must organize ourselves into a larger collective to accrue greater power than we have when we fight him in isolation or alone; and we can never appease, only fight. As I’ve been calling for it’s time now for the Democrats to create a unified national front – Govs, Congress, Big City Mayors – to more forcefully challenge Trump’s escalating authoritarianism. We are not going to have a single leader of the opposition until the summer of 2028, so we must build something new now, something that gives us more than what we currently. The free states and free states must band together, while we also make common cause with free nations around the world, forging a “liberal internationale” to challenge the rising illiberal one.

While we should be pleased with where we are electorally and politically we cannot, not for one moment, be pleased with our efforts to stop the damage he is doing to the country and the world. We must be more ambitious this year, and accept that we are in a “new day” that requires new thinking, new strategies, new approaches. For our goal must be, over the next ten years, to take this unsettled time and make it about a “new birth of freedom” here in America and everywhere, and not accept that the coming era will be one of authoritarian and oligarchical consolidation. As FDR did over 80 years, we must replace this politics of dominion with one of freedom. For that is our job as Americans. Our role. It’s one we’ve been doing for 250 years and we need to get on with it now. FDR Memorial, Washington, DC (SR photo)

That’s what we talked about last night. Now…..Let’s Get To Work People!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Will Democrats Be as Strong as the Europeans? William Kristol, Jan. 22, 2026 Can the Democrats in Congress match the performance of the Europeans in Davos?¹ Will the Democratic opposition to Trump’s assault on liberal democracy here at home be as clear-eyed, as tough-minded, as unintimidated, as the European opposition to Trump’s attack on the liberal international order abroad? We’ll see when Congress returns next week and the battle over government funding comes to a head in Washington.

In the run-up to Davos, Trump blustered and threatened. He said that he needed full control of Greenland. He announced that he’d impose 10 percent tariffs on goods from eight European countries if he were denied that control. He refused to rule out the use of military force to obtain that control. “There can be no going back,” Trump posted on Tuesday.

But, as Joshua Keating put it, Trump “seemingly went back.” The “seemingly” is important: Trump didn’t entirely rule out the use of military force. And the fact that Trump may have pulled back for now doesn’t change the fact there’s been a fundamental rupture in the post–World War II global order. The spectacle of the United States behaving like an out-and-out mob boss can’t be unseen.

But at least the Europeans realized that further appeasement of Trump was untenable, and that refusing to face reality wasn’t working. Last July, the EU agreed to a one-sided trade deal with the United States in hopes of placating the bully—and, perhaps, buying time to think up better options. Now, French President Emmanuel Macron speaks for much of the continent when he says, “Europe has very strong tools now, and we have to use them.”

And so the EU announced that it would move to suspend parliamentary approval of that trade deal. It also indicated that reciprocal tariffs against American goods were on the table. And there was talk of denying American service providers, such as tech companies, access to the European market, and even of a refusal to buy more U.S. treasury bonds.

Europeans faced bullying with strength, and the bully at least temporarily backed down.

One of the most powerful statements of European resistance came from an unlikely source, the conservative populist and Flemish nationalist prime minister of Belgium, Bart De Wever. On a panel at Davos on Tuesday, De Wever was blunt:

Until now, we tried to appease the new president in the White House. We were very lenient, also with the tariffs, we were lenient, hoping to get his support for the Ukraine war. We were in a very bad position at the moment, we were dependent on the United States, so we chose to be lenient.

“But now,” he continued,

so many red lines are being crossed that you have the choice between your self- respect. Being a happy vessel is one thing, being a miserable slave is something else. If you back down now, you’re going to lose your dignity, and that’s probably the most precious thing you can have in a democracy is your dignity.

The right-wing Belgian prime minister went on to paraphrase the famous remark by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci: “If the old is dying and the new is not yet born, then you live in a time of monsters.” “It’s up to [Trump] to decide if he wants to be a monster, yes or no,” De Wever concluded.

Of course Trump is a monster, and he’s not going to stop being one, and he has three more years in office in which to do great damage at home and abroad. But the lesson of this week was that if you want to defend the liberal international order, facing the truth works better than averting your gaze. Standing your ground is more effective than rolling over. Behaving with self-respect and defending your dignity is a better guide than calculating and calibrating various degrees of appeasement.

Do those who have the responsibility of defending liberal democracy at home understand these lessons? Will Democrats fund ICE and DHS without attaching any limitations or restrictions on their truly monstrous activities? For that matter, will they do nothing to insist on the overdue release of the Epstein files? And will they say nothing about Trump’s shameful betrayal of Ukraine?

In an age of monsters, one needs to hold firm to the guardrails of self-respect and dignity. Europeans now seem to understand that. Do Democrats?

Give our European friends some free advice: How can they be anti-Trump without coming across as anti-American? It’s a difficult balance—share your thoughts.

AROUND THE BULWARK

Greenland? Iceland? Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off…
JVL, SAM STEIN, and ANDREW EGGER break down Trump’s bizarre Davos stemwinder.
MARK HERTLING joins BEN PARKER to react to the speech and what it means for American national security.
CATHERINE RAMPELL joins SAM STEIN to talk about the market reaction.Wary Dems Weigh Working With Trump Team… They know there’s always a risk they’ll be burned, report LAUREN EGAN and SAM STEIN in The Opposition.
24 Hours Alongside an ICE Protester in Minneapolis… Carolina Ortiz, an immigrant advocate, is preparing for ICE’s next onslaught. ADRIAN CARRASQUILLO writes this edition of his Huddled Masses newsletter from Minneapolis.
A Night Out With the Manosphere’s Most Toxic Extremists… WILL SOMMER joins SAM STEIN to discuss a disturbing viral night out that brought together the worst corners of the manosphere and the alt-right.

Quick Hits

ICE VS. THE FOURTH AMENDMENT: Thanks to the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure, agents of the government generally aren’t allowed to enter your home without a warrant signed by a judge. But according to a new whistleblower complaint provided to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the Department of Homeland Security quietly circulated a memo last year annihilating those protections, telling its officers a judicial warrant would no longer be required to enter homes in which immigrants flagged for deportation were suspected to be.

Instead, the memo signed by Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said, ICE agents could enter homes on the strength of just an administrative warrant—a lower-level warrant permitting the detention of a migrant that the agents themselves have the authority to sign. Even more alarmingly, the whistleblower alleges that the major change in ICE policy was deliberately kept as quiet as possible: “The May 12 Memo has been provided to select DHS officials who are then directed to verbally brief the new policy for action,” the complaint reads. “Those supervisors then show the Memo to some employees . . . and direct them to read the Memo and return it to the supervisor.”

Federal officials did not deny the authenticity of the memo yesterday. Instead, they defended the policy they’d deliberately hushed up: “Every illegal alien who DHS serves administrative warrants/I-205s have had full due process and a final order of removal from an immigration judge,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said. “The officers issuing these administrative warrants have also found probable cause. For decades, the Supreme Court and Congress have recognized the propriety of administrative warrants in cases of immigration enforcement.”

But that’s traditionally been in cases where migrants were arrested in public places, not their own homes. Nor is it only the homes of illegal immigrants that this change affects. Reporting suggests that the ICE agents who battered down U.S. citizen ChongLy Thao’s door and mistakenly arrested him this weekend in Minneapolis, dragging him half-naked out into the snow, were operating only on the strength of an administrative warrant.Subscribed

THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT VS. THE FIRST AMENDMENT: The wheels are coming off everything so fast these days that we’ve barely had time even to mention the White House’s latest assault on press freedom: the seizure last week of a Washington Post reporter’s devices to gather information about her government sources. The Post sued, arguing that the seizures violated the First Amendment, and yesterday a judge ordered the government not to review the seized devices—at least for now. The New York Times reports:

The F.B.I. conducted the search at the home of Ms. [Hannah] Natanson, a prolific chronicler of the upheaval in the federal government under the second Trump administration. Ms. Natanson wrote a first-person article weeks earlier about how she had used the encrypted messaging app Signal to communicate with government sources. A colleague described her as the “federal government whisperer.” . . .

Though the government had drawn criticism in the past for trampling on the rights of journalists in seeking evidence to punish leakers, never before had the Justice Department “raided a journalist’s home in connection with a national security leak investigation,” according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

The search of Ms. Natanson’s home was in connection with the government’s investigation of Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a government contractor in Maryland who held a top-secret security clearance. He is accused of taking home intelligence reports that were discovered in his basement and in a lunchbox. President Trump, in public remarks apparently about the case, referred to a “very bad leaker.”

DOGE VS. THE HATCH ACT: For months, the Trump administration has been denying an alarming whistleblower allegation: that members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team downloaded and shared sensitive Social Security data last year without the knowledge of Social Security Administration officials. Then, last week, the government abruptly admitted it was all true. Here’s the Washington Post:

The Justice Department submitted a court filing Friday in an ongoing case saying that the Social Security Administration had discovered a secret agreement between a DOGE employee and an unidentified political advocacy group. The agreement called for sharing Social Security data with the aim of overturning election results in certain states, according to the filing.

Social Security said it was not previously aware of the agreement and that it has made referrals for potential Hatch Act violations to the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates violations of the law barring political activity in the civilian workforce. The agency learned of the agreement in November, according to the court filing, but had “not yet seen evidence that SSA data were shared with the advocacy group.”

It’s an admission of staggering wrongdoing with a staggering aim: “overturning election results in certain states.” So naturally it will not shock you to learn that the Justice Department isn’t investigating the matter at all. Read the whole thing.

davos 2026 horizontal Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 2, 2026 [Exhauster, Angry Trump Targets Western World Leaders], Heather Cox Richardson, right, heather cox richardson cnn Jan. 22, 2026. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this morning, a visibly exhausted president of the United States of America rambled in angry free association in a speech before the world’s leaders.

At one point, speaking of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) dignitaries, he told the audience: “Until the last few days when I told them about Iceland, they loved me. They called me daddy, right, last time. Very smart man said, ‘He’s our daddy. He’s running it.’”

He meant Greenland.

greenland map2 The president of the United States went on to give a virulently racist, insulting, rambling speech in which he complained that people call him a dictator but that “sometimes you need a dictator.” More than anything, though, the speech demonstrated his mental davos 2026 square unfitness for his position. Tom Nichols of The Atlantic wrote: “No one can be watching this Davos speech and reach any conclusion but that the President of the United States is mentally disturbed and that something is deeply wrong with him. This is both embarrassing and extremely dangerous.”

Andrew Egger of The Bulwark, left, wrote of Trump’s hostility to traditional U.S. allies today: “As long as I live, I don’t think I’ll get over this pure, dumb fact: Trump told his fans he had to blow up the liberal order because it was the only way to secure the very benefits the liberal order was already bringing us.” Egger likened this to Aesop’s fable about the greedy farmer who butchered the goose that laid golden eggs.

Later, Trump backed off on the tariffs he had threatened to impose on the countries standing against his seizure of Greenland, claiming he had just had “a very productive meeting” with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and had “formed the framework for a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region. This solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America, and all NATO Nations.” Because of that framework, he said, he would not be imposing the tariffs he had threatened on those nations opposing his designs on NATO.

As Ron Filipkowski, right, of MeidasNews noted, this was not a new deal, but Trump surrendering. The U.S. and NATO have always been ron filipowski free to do whatever they want in Greenland, but Trump had insisted he needed to own it for “psychological” reasons. Now he has reverted back to the original agreement.

Amongst all of Trump’s other lies and threats at his Davos speech, one stood out. Talking about Russia’s war against Ukraine, he said: “It’s a war that should have never started, and it wouldn’t have started if the 2020 U.S. presidential election weren’t rigged—it was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. They found out.” This is Trump’s Big Lie, and it has been thoroughly debunked; the 2020 presidential election wasn’t stolen from him.

But then Trump went on to say: “People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. It’s probably breaking news but it should be. It was a rigged election. You can’t have rigged elections.”

This is an astonishing threat. It says he intends to prosecute Department of Justice officials and others for refusing to help him steal the presidency. The timing of this particular threat is not accidental. Tomorrow at 10:00 Eastern Time, former special counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, will testify publicly about the evidence that led a grand jury to indict Trump and led Smith himself to conclude a jury would convict Trump.

jack smith 2023 Lately, Trump has been rehashing his grievances from that election, repeating debunked claims of rigged voting machines and so on. The issue is clearly on his mind. Jack Smith knows what happened, Trump knows that Smith, left, knows what happened, and it appears Trump is eager to discredit him at the very least.

While Trump is in Davos, the violence from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents that has been obvious for a while has ramped up in what appears to be an attempt to spark violence.

Yesterday Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, police chief Mark Bruley told reporters that the police were getting repeated complaints about violations of civil rights by ICE and that ICE agents were stopping off-duty police officers of color. He recounted that ICE agents had stopped an off-duty police officer, demanded her paperwork—she is a U.S. citizen—and then held her at gunpoint. When she tried to film the interaction, they knocked the phone out of her hand. Finally, when she identified herself as a police officer, they got in their vehicles and left.

“This isn’t just important because it happened to off-duty police officers,” Bruley said, but because “our officers know what the Constitution is, they know what right and wrong is, and they know when people are being targeted, and that’s what they were. If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think [of] how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day.”

Yesterday Dell Cameron of Wired reported that internal ICE planning documents show that the agency is planning to spend up to $50 million on jail space and a privately run transfer hub in Minnesota for immigrant detainees from Minnesota and four neighboring states.

Today the El Paso County Office of the Medical Examiner ruled that the death of 55-year-old Cuban-born Geraldo Lunas Campos detained in Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, was a homicide. Camp East Montana is a tent encampment where migrants have reported poor conditions and physical abuse. Lunas Campos died of asphyxiation after guards put pressure on his neck and chest during an altercation during which Lunas Campos asked for his medication. Two detainees testified that they saw guards choking Lunas Campos, who repeatedly told them he couldn’t breathe. The Trump administration has since tried to deport the two witnesses.

Douglas MacMillan of the Washington Post reported that at least 30 people died in detention last year, the highest number in twenty years. Six people, including Lunas Campos and another detainee at Camp East Montana, died in the first two weeks of 2026.

ICE agents are hanging around schools, threatening children. Reg Chapman of CBS News in Minnesota reported today that ICE has detained a five-year-old preschooler after using him as bait to get someone in his house to open their door. Then ICE transferred him and his father from Minnesota to detention in Texas. His family has an active asylum case and it does not have an order of deportation, meaning they are in the U.S. legally.

Video footage from Minneapolis also shows a federal agent spraying chemical irritants directly into the face of a man agents had pinned and held to the ground. Other video shows Customs and Border Protection leader Greg Bovino throwing tear gas at peaceful protesters.

This afternoon, Rebecca Santana of the Associated Press reported that ICE has been breaking into homes under the authority provided by a secret memo of May 12, 2025, signed by the acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, saying that federal agents do not need a judge’s warrant to force their way into people’s homes.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, one of the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights, says: “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.”

As Joyce White Vance of Civil Discourse notes, courts have always interpreted that amendment to mean that a judge must sign a warrant to allow law enforcement to break into a home. Now the Department of Homeland Security says it does not need such a judicial warrant, but can simply use an administrative warrant signed by an official at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or ICE if immigrants believed to be inside a home have a final order of removal.

The legal training manual for DHS itself quotes a 1984 Supreme Court decision that “the ‘physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.”

Immigration law specialist Aaron Reichlin-Melnick noted that this memo is a big deal: it is “the federal government conspiring in secret to subvert the Fourth Amendment.”

richard blumenthal portrait Two ICE whistleblowers provided the memo to Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), explaining that they were shown the memo. They suggested that ICE supervisors seemed to understand the order was unlawful, as the supervisors only told agents about the memo rather than sharing a hard copy with them, and that at least one long-time employee resigned rather than be forced to teach material they thought was illegal.

Blumenthal, left, wrote a scathing letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and ICE acting director Lyons noting that the “new policy is based on a secret legal interpretation and is directly contrary to Fourth Amendment law and agency practice.” He demanded to know how many DHS agents had been trained on the memo and where the training had taken place, how many homes had been broken into under the terms of the memo, the legal determination for the memo, and so on.

“Every American should be terrified by this secret ICE policy authorizing its agents to kick down your door & storm into your home,” Blumenthal wrote on social media. “It is an unlawful & morally repugnant policy that exemplifies the kinds of dangerous, disgraceful abuses America is seeing in real time. In our democracy, with vanishingly rare exceptions, the government is barred from breaking into your home without approval from a real judge. Government agents have no right to ransack your bedroom or terrorize your kids on a whim or personal desire.”

“I am deeply grateful to brave whistleblowers who have come forward & put the rights of their fellow Americans first,” Blumenthal wrote. “My Republican colleagues who claim to value personal rights against government overreach now have an opportunity & obligation to prove that rhetoric is real.”

Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who at the beginning of 2025 was considered a moderate on immigration, wrote: “Yeah I am not voting to give whatever ICE has become more taxpayer money. It’s no longer an immigration enforcement arm of the US government.”

Now ICE has landed in Portland and in Lewiston-Auburn, Maine, where it claims to have 1,400 targets for arrest.

More Global News

New York Times, Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ Would Have Global Scope but One Man in Charge, Anton Troianovski, Jan. 21, 2026. The initiative is the latest example of the president dismantling the post-World War II international system and building a new one, with himself at the center.

In the proposed charter of the “Board of Peace” that the United States sent to national capitals in recent weeks, one man has the power to veto decisions, approve the agenda, invite members, dissolve the board entirely and designate his own successor.

His name is spelled out in Article 3.2: “Donald J. Trump shall serve as inaugural chairman.”

“If Trump, then peace,” Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, one of President Trump’s closest allies in Europe, wrote on Facebook on Sunday after Mr. Trump invited him to join the board. “We have, of course, accepted this honorable invitation.”

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Belarus, Pakistan and several more countries also said they were joining, ahead of a signing ceremony planned for Thursday in Switzerland.

But many officials and experts in international affairs were stunned by the breadth of the initiative, the latest example of Mr. Trump taking apart the American-built, post-World War II international system and building a new one, with himself at the center.

“This is a direct assault on the United Nations,” said Marc Weller, a Cambridge international law professor who specializes in peace negotiations and has worked closely with the global body. “This initiative is likely to be seen as a takeover of the world order by one individual in his own image.”

The U.N. Security Council itself endorsed the creation of a Board of Peace in November in a resolution welcoming the U.S.-brokered peace plan to end Israel’s war in Gaza. According to that resolution, the board is to function as a “transitional administration” through 2027 to oversee the redevelopment of Gaza.

But in unveiling the Board of Peace in the last week, the Trump administration has cast Gaza as only a part of what the new institution would do. While its powers are not defined, its mission would overlap with the United Nations.

New York Times, News Analysis: China Wins as Trump Cedes Leadership of the Global Economy, Peter S. Goodman, Jan. 22, 2026. The president used a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland to renounce the last vestiges of the liberal democratic order.

In a long, rambling address that was by turns bombastic, aggrieved and self-congratulatory, President Trump pronounced last rites on American leadership of the liberal democratic order forged by the United States and its allies after World War II.

Mr. Trump used a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday — a pilgrimage site for adherents of globalization — to assert that the United States was done offering its markets and its military protection to European allies he derided as freeloaders. And he vowed to advance his trade war. He characterized tariffs as the price of admission to a land of 300 million consumers.

“The United States is keeping the whole world afloat,” Mr. Trump said. “Everybody took advantage of the United States.”

By evening, Mr. Trump had flip-flopped on Greenland. He said in a social media post that he would no longer use tariffs to try to wrest control of the Danish territory, at least while discussions between his top aides and Europeans carried forth. The announcement spared the sovereignty of the island, but there was no taking back the significance of Mr. Trump’s attack on the global economic order just hours earlier.

The American president appeared in the same auditorium where, nine years earlier, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, gave a speech claiming credentials as a champion of international cooperation. Mr. Xi captivated the village of Davos with his endorsement of what he described as “economic globalization.” His 2017 address, delivered days before Mr. Trump was inaugurated for his first term, resonated as a clear yet futile effort to stave off the trade war that soon unfolded.

New York Times, The Leverage That Europe Has Over the U.S. Economy, Eshe Nelson, Jan. 22, 2026. After the latest bout of trade turmoil with the United States, European leaders are looking for ways to project strength to the Trump administration, which considers them weak.

On any given day, millions of Europeans use Microsoft software, heat their homes with American natural gas and buy U.S. stocks. Many Americans work with German software, drink French wine and take European-made medicines.

More than $5.4 billion worth of goods and services are traded between the United States and European Union each day, backed by extensive cross-border investments that support millions of jobs.

Although President Trump walked back a threat to impose extra tariffs on several European nations to force the sale of Greenland, the turmoil was a clarifying moment for European officials.

They are looking at this enormous flow of goods, services and investments across the Atlantic as a potential source of leverage over the United States. On Thursday, leaders from the European Union say they will meet in Brussels to “coordinate on the way forward.”

“European leaders cannot act as though the last few weeks did not happen,” said Ian Bond, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, a think tank. “This was the most serious crisis in trans-Atlantic relations in a long time, but with Trump in the White House, it will not be the last.”

New York Times, Few Voters Say Trump’s Second Term Has Made the Country Better, Poll Finds, Shane Goldmacher, Ruth Igielnik and Camille Baker, Jan. 22, 2026. A majority of voters said that Mr. Trump had focused on the wrong priorities and that they disapproved of his handling of top issues, but the president still enjoys strong support from Republicans.

Less than a third of voters think the country is better off than it was when President Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with a wide majority saying he has focused on the wrong issues, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Siena University.

A majority of voters disapprove of how Mr. Trump has handled top issues including the economy, immigration, the war between Russia and Ukraine and his actions in Venezuela. And significantly, a majority of Americans, 51 percent, said that Mr. Trump’s policies had made life less affordable for them.

All told, 49 percent of voters said the country was worse off than a year ago, compared with 32 percent who said it was better.

[See all of the latest polls measuring President Trump’s approval rating.]

The survey also revealed the extent to which Mr. Trump has polarized the nation into its furthest partisan corners, with more voters seeing him as on track to be historically bad or good than merely below or above average. Some 42 percent of voters said he was on track to be one of the worst presidents in American history — and 19 percent said he was headed to be one of the best.

Mr. Trump’s own job approval rating stands at 40 percent, down three points since September. His disapproval rating has crept up to 56 percent.

U.S. Civil Rights, Immigration Enforcement

New York Times, Cuban Detainee in El Paso ICE Facility Died by Homicide, Autopsy Shows, Pooja Salhotra, Jan. 21, 2026. The report from the county medical examiner said the detainee, Geraldo Lunas Campos, was asphyxiated and restrained by law enforcement. Federal officials described his death as a suicide.

A Cuban immigrant’s death in an El Paso detention center this month was ruled a homicide, according to an autopsy report released Wednesday by the county medical examiner’s office.

The detainee, Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, became unresponsive while he was physically restrained by law enforcement on Jan. 3 at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility called Camp East Montana, the report said. Emergency medical workers tried to resuscitate him, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The autopsy listed the cause of death as “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.” The report also described injuries Mr. Lunas Campos had sustained to his head and neck, including burst blood vessels in the front and side of the neck, as well as on his eyelids.

The determination by the medical examiner’s office does not necessarily indicate criminal culpability. It is a classification of how a person died, not a legal determination of guilt.

Mr. Lunas Campos’s death has brought renewed scrutiny to the detention center this month after The Washington Post reported the episode last week. His family has asserted that he was killed by the facility’s guards, citing a witness who said he saw guards choking Mr. Lunas Campos to death. The family is preparing a wrongful-death lawsuit, according to their lawyer, Will Horowitz.

“He was being abused and beaten and choked to death,” Jeanette Pagan Lopez, the mother of two of Mr. Lunas Campos’s children, told The New York Times last week. On Wednesday, Ms. Pagan Lopez said she had not yet seen the autopsy report.

Federal officials have offered a different account of how Mr. Lunas Campos died. In a Jan. 9 news release, they said he died on Jan. 3 after experiencing medical distress, but after the Washington Post article published, they described his death as a suicide.

minneapolis ice fatal shooting 1 7 2026

Renee Nicole Gold, U.S. citizen and mother executed by ICE during Minneapolis protest on Jan. 7, 2026 (Collage, commentary and early reporting identifying names by the Wayne Madsen Report via Tik-Tok).

Renee Nicole Gold, a U.S. citizen and mother executed by ICE during Minneapolis protest on Jan. 7, 2026 (Collage immediately above, commentary and early reporting identifying names by the Wayne Madsen Report via Tik-Tok).

New York Times, ‘High Alert, All the Time’: Minneapolis Sees ICE Around Every Corner, Julie Bosman and Matthew Purdy, Jan. 22, 2026. Federal agents have been carrying out an immigration crackdown in Minnesota for weeks. Some residents say they carry a sense of dread even on empty streets.

Over the last several weeks, the Rev. Rachael Keefe has spotted them again and again.

In her heavily Mexican American enclave in a southeast suburb of the Twin Cities, armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in fatigues have been circling in their S.U.V.s and knocking on her neighbors’ doors.

Yet even when the agents are not there, as she is walking her dog through the quiet, snowy streets of a Minnesota winter, the feeling of dread remains.

“I’m always conscious of them,” said Ms. Keefe, the pastor of a small church in Minneapolis. “It’s like being hypervigilant, on high alert, all the time.”

Weeks into what the Department of Homeland Security is calling Operation Metro Surge, federal agents are not visible everywhere all the time, but the reality that they could appear anywhere at any time has put Minnesotans on edge.

In that sense, the ICE operation is everywhere, even when agents are not.

What is constantly visible, even among residents with legal status in this country, are signs of fear. Many public schools look nearly deserted, closed to students as teachers prepare to reopen and offer remote learning. Outside day cares, volunteers wear watchful expressions and orange whistles around their necks, ready to sound the alarm when ICE agents are sighted.

In neighborhoods with heavy immigrant populations, business at grocery stores and restaurants has plummeted. Some small businesses now keep their doors locked even when they are open, admitting patrons one by one. In church basements, volunteers sort canned goods for neighbors too frightened to leave the house. Residents in apartment buildings have taken to pulling their blinds closed all day and night, hoping to escape notice from ICE agents.

U.S. Media, Educatioon, Culture, Religion

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism:DOGE staffer signed deal to share Social Security data with election deniers: Judd Legum, right, and Noel Sims, Jan. 22, 2026.

Editor’s Note: This week, Popular Information was honored by the Harvard Shorenstein Center, which awarded this newsletter the 2025 David Nyhan Prize for Public Policy Journalism. From the announcement:

Praised as “timely, fearless, and factual,” Judd Legum is the founder and author of Popular Information, an independent newsletter dedicated to accountability journalism. Trained as a lawyer and steeped in practical political experience, Legum has built a model of journalism that combines meticulous investigative reporting with clear, accessible explanations of how power operates—and who benefits.

Through Popular Information, Legum has repeatedly shown how a single, well-documented story can spur tangible change. Nyhan Prize judges celebrated his dedication to digging up under-reported stories, and his ability to see a story with the eyes of both an editor and reporter.

…Through dogged reporting, clear-eyed analysis, and a steadfast focus on accountability, Judd Legum exemplifies the people-centered political journalism that the Nyhan Prize was created to honor.

Thank you for your support, which makes this work possible.

Regarding the site’s latest report: After months of denials, the Trump administration has admitted that staffers affiliated with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) misused Social Security Administration (SSA) data. In an extraordinary court filing, “NOTICE OF CORRECTIONS TO THE RECORD,” government lawyers representing the SSA revealed that in March 2025, a DOGE staffer signed an agreement to share the private data of Americans with a “political advocacy group” seeking to “overturn election results in certain States.”

SSA determined in its recent review that in March 2025, a political advocacy group contacted two members of SSA’s DOGE Team with a request to analyze state voter rolls that the advocacy group had acquired. The advocacy group’s stated aim was to find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States. In connection with these communications, one of the DOGE team members signed a “Voter Data Agreement,” in his capacity as an SSA employee, with the advocacy group. He sent the executed agreement to the advocacy group on March 24, 2025.

The filing says that emails “suggest that DOGE Team members could have been asked to assist the advocacy group by accessing SSA data to match to the voter rolls.”

The use of government data for political purposes is unlawful. The Hatch Act prohibits a federal employee from using “his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.” In the filing, government lawyers say the DOGE employees involved were referred to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel for possible Hatch Act violations.

The filing does not reveal the identity of the two DOGE members involved in the scheme.

Antonio Gracias, a DOGE staffer who was embedded at the SSA, publicly spoke about using Social Security data to “expose” voter fraud. During a March 30 rally in Wisconsin alongside Elon Musk, Gracias — a billionaire and the Chief Investment Officer of Valor Equity Partners — made a variety of false and misleading claims.

During the rally, Gracias claimed that 2.1 million non-citizens obtained Social Security numbers and said that this was evidence of pervasive fraud. But these Social Security numbers were given to immigrants who were legally present and had work permits. Gracias claimed that he “took a sample and looked at voter registration records, and we found people here registered to vote in this population.”

Non-citizens with work permits are not able to use their Social Security numbers to register to vote, however. Nevertheless, Gracias claimed that he had identified non-citizens who had voted and “referred them [for] prosecution.” There are no known charges or convictions resulting from those alleged referrals.

Gracias went on Fox News a few days later and, speaking from the White House lawn, made similar claims. He stressed the importance of allowing databases to “talk to each other.”

Gracias also went on the All-In podcast, where he described the issuing of Social Security numbers to non-citizens — a standard practice for those with work permits and other categories of legal residents — as a “move to import voters.”

Another DOGE staffer embedded at SSA, Aram Moghaddassi, reached out to Florida officials in March 2025 to obtain voter registration data he could cross-check with government databases to identify voter fraud.Which “advocacy group” seeking to overturn election results conspired with DOGE?

While the court filing does not name the “political advocacy group” coordinating with DOGE, there is evidence pointing to True the Vote, a right-wing group with a history of pushing false claims of election fraud. True the Vote published “An Appeal to DOGE” in March 2025, the same month that the DOGE staffer signed an agreement with the political group. In the open letter, published on the group’s website on March 5, True the Vote encouraged DOGE to investigate the country’s voter registration system. At the top of the letter, Democracy Docket notes, True the Vote Founder Catherine Engelbrecht wrote, “We’ve received word that this message is being carried forward.”

“Given DOGE’s mandate to enhance governmental efficiency and your recent insights into federal data discrepancies, we urge you to extend your investigative rigor to the nation’s voter registration systems,” True the Vote wrote in the letter. “By combining DOGE’s access to federal databases with our assembled voter roll information, we can efficiently identify discrepancies and work toward a cleaner, more reliable election system.”

True the Vote was heavily involved with pushing false claims of election fraud following the 2020 election. In November 2020, True the Vote filed lawsuits alleging voter fraud in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Less than a week later, the group dismissed all four cases.

True the Vote was also involved in 2000 Mules, the debunked documentary from Dinesh D’Souza. 2000 Mules was based on claims made by True the Vote about alleged ballot stuffing during the 2020 election. The group claimed that it had bought geolocation data from electronic devices that showed that people were repeatedly visiting ballot dropboxes, and therefore were stuffing ballots. The claims were “thoroughly debunked by election and cyber experts.” In one example flagged by True the Vote, the Georgia Secretary of State found that a man was legally dropping off ballots for himself and his family members.

The movie was eventually pulled from the market by its distributor, and D’Souza issued an apology for misrepresenting key video footage.Musk linked programs like Social Security to voter fraud

As the head of DOGE and with a close relationship to Gracias, it is unlikely that Musk was unaware of the “Voter Data Agreement” to share SSA data with an outside political group. In fact, while working in the Trump administration and for several months prior, he repeatedly tied Social Security payments to voter fraud.

Musk has long amplified the conspiracy theory that Democrats are luring illegal immigrants to the United States by offering them government assistance such as Social Security in order to increase their voter base. Starting in July 2024, when Musk endorsed Trump’s presidential campaign, Musk began posting frequently on X about this claim, despite the fact that undocumented immigrants are ineligible to receive Social Security payments.

On July 8, 2024, he posted, “The goal all along has been to import as many illegal voters as possible.” Musk got millions of views on his posts making false claims about illegal immigrant voting, and he continued to spread the conspiracy theory when he joined the Trump administration in early 2025 to lead DOGE.

While working with the Trump administration, Musk placed a particular emphasis on Social Security as a way for Democrats to “attract” illegal immigrants. On an episode of Senator Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) podcast from March, when the Trump administration was pushing for cuts at the SSA, Musk said, “By using entitlements fraud, the Democrats have been able to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants and buy voters. Basically bring in 10, 20 million people who are beholden to the Democrats for government handouts and will vote overwhelmingly Democrat, as has been demonstrated in California.”

A month before, on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Musk said, “Entitlements fraud for illegal aliens is what is serving as a gigantic magnetic force to pull people in from all around the world and keep them here.”

From the archives, a sample screed from the late Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk shows how vicious and extreme his organization functioned as it sought to radicalize America’s youth into an ultra-right fascist force. Following his assassination, his successors have found new and arguably even more extreme ways to sow chaos through America, in one instance targeting newborns and their mothers, as described below.

False Flag! via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: A Government Of Influencers, By Influencers, For Influencers, Will Sommer, Jan. 22, 2026. I regret to tell you that Turning Point USA has a terrible new cause: preventing newborn babies from getting birth certificates.

On Monday, TPUSA host Alex Clark gave her leading MAHA show “Culture Apothecary” over to midwife influencer Lindsey Meehleis, who used the platform to argue that true “sovereign citizens” never report their childrens’ births to the government.

“Why is it better to not have a Social Security number or a birth certificate?” Clark asked.

“They are the ones that have full sovereignty of their child,” Meehleis explained. “Their child is not owned by the state.”

Clark, who boasts 720,000 subscribers on YouTube, is no stranger to crazy ideas. My favorite may have been the theory discussed on her show that sunglasses should be worn only indoors.

How crazy is this recommendation to eschew birth certificates? Sure, you and I may think it’s totally nuts. But the idea that children lose their freedom and become property of the state once their births are registered is getting surprisingly popular in certain circles. Last year on a podcast for the “Free Birth Society,” a nightmarish organization devoted to avoiding traditional medicine during pregnancies, anti-birth-certificate guru Veda Ray explained that she didn’t get her baby a birth certificate after the baby sent her messages to that effect while still in the womb. She also argued that not getting a birth certificate is a great way to help your future child avoid ever paying taxes. (Who knew that was all it takes.)

That said, Meehleis’s appearance on “Culture Apothecary” marks a significant new level of prominence for the anti-birth-certificate movement, giving it the imprimatur of TPUSA, one of the right’s most important institutions.

And speaking of the power influencers have on the right, Minneapolis has for weeks been roiled by the power of MAGA YouTubers. It’s the latest, most vivid, example of how political battles aren’t waged just in the halls of Congress or on the streets at protests, but in the online forums where each side is fighting for algorithmic dominance. That’s the subject of today’s newsletter—let’s dive in!

LIKE MANY OF HIS FELLOW right-wing influencers, Nick Sortor came to Minneapolis this month. Sortor—made famous last year when he was briefly arrested after a scuffle with left-wing activists outside an ICE facility in Portland—once again had come to a troubled city looking for content.

But Sortor’s plans to shoot video of the unsettled city were delayed on Sunday after, in his telling, a woman stole his $1,000 camera.

As fellow influencer Cam Higby faced off near Sortor with a crowd of people filming on their own smartphones, Sortor tried to grab hold of the woman’s car. Instead of giving up the camera, the woman drove off down a snowy sidewalk with Sortor clinging perilously to the side.

While the FBI has vowed to find justice for Sortor, the bizarre incident has become just one more scene in the flood of social-media content coming out of Minneapolis. Following the ICE deployment and the shooting of Renee Good, much of the fight over who the good guys and the bad guys are in Minneapolis has played out among social media personalities.

Of course, there’s no bigger name in Minneapolis content at the moment than another twentysomething Nick S.: Nick Shirley, the 23-year-old right-wing influencer whose video on supposed fraud at Somali-American daycares went viral in late December. While many of Shirley’s claims have been debunked, and there are obviously other reasons daycares might not be willing to open up and allow Shirley to inspect their children, the controversy provoked by his video was used by the Trump administration to justify the surge of ICE agents in the city.

Watching Shirley in a follow-up video this month as he pursues supposed fraud in healthcare transportation companies, I’m struck by the looseness of his connection to what qualifies as evidence. He’s led around by an older Minnesota activist who has called Muslims demonic, and quips to Shirley that Somalis are “the most violent community.” That guy takes Shirley to various storefronts or apartment buildings where transportation companies are registered—and if no one opens the door, Shirley declares that it has to be fraud.

It sure seems like a libel lawsuit waiting to happen, but for now, it’ll also win Shirley some more attention and give Republicans more reasons to cut funding from Minnesota or surge federal agents into the state.

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SHIRLEY’S VIDEO and the shooting of Renee Good set off waves of social media content in Minneapolis. There are countless posts in which Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino is mocked for his height, or how he dresses, or for being kicked out of a convenience store. And ICE opponents had their own social-media disaster over the weekend after protesting in a church.

There are some precedents for MAGA social media craze over Minneapolis . The protests and counterprotests last year outside the Portland ICE facility that eventually earned Sortor a trip to the White House serve as the blueprint here, with right-wing influencers putting their bodies on the line in attempts to get explosive video that could double as an excuse for the Trump administration to intervene.

And going back even further, in 2019 a crew of MAGA influencers that included Laura Loomer and Jacob Wohl traveled to Minneapolis to “investigate” whether Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) married her brother. The trip produced a “documentary” that saw the crew furtively traveling around Minneapolis like their lives were constantly at risk, but the project ultimately unraveled after Wohl was caught faking death threats to himself and reporting them to the police.

The Minneapolis tumult has attracted even less savory right-wing figures. Over the weekend, Jake Lang—a Hitler-saluting January 6th rioter whose hateful remarks about Muslims and Jews have prompted even those on the right to accuse him of being a federal agent out to make Trump supporters look bad—held a small rally against “fraud” that collapsed after he fled attacks from counterprotesters.

As for Shirley, he has apparently struggled with his newfound Minneapolis fame, revealing that he didn’t know the meaning of the word “benevolent” in an appearance on popular YouTube channel “Channel 5,” then feuding with host Andrew Callaghan for claiming he was unfairly edited.

Still, Shirley spoke Wednesday at a congressional hearing, saying the really big fraud is happening in California—a call that’s already been echoed by right-wing influencers like Benny Johnson, and that has the added appeal on the right of undermining California governor and potential presidential hopeful Gavin Newsom. Clearly, the right’s Minneapolis model is going nationwide.

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Fishback Rising

There are plenty of reasons why Florida gubernatorial hopeful James Fishback will never be governor. He faces a legal bill to his former hedge-fund employer that could reach $2 million—due, in no small part, to failed schemes Fishback devised himself. He’s also running a wildly racist campaign against primary rival and Trump pick Rep. Byron Donalds, calling him “By’Rone” and vowing to send him back to the “ghetto.”

And then there are those court allegations that, as an adult, Fishback dated a 17-year-old high school student while involved in an anti-woke debate nonprofit.

And yet, since I last wrote about Fishback in December as the electoral face of white nationalist groyperism, he’s only gotten bigger.

In focus groups featured on an upcoming episode of The Bulwark’s The Focus Group podcast, Gen-Z Trump voters brought up Fishback without prompting as someone they’d like to hear more from. They’re big fans of his proposed 50 percent tax on earnings from OnlyFans creators, an idea that prompted angry replies from a top OnlyFans celebrity and, in turn, brought even more attention to Fishback. He’s followed that up with a proposed (and almost certainly illegal) $50,000 tax on New Yorkers moving to Florida.

It also now appears that Fishback isn’t as much of an outcast in Florida politics as his critics portray him to be. On Sunday, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s top aide, Christina Pushaw, admitted to advising Fishback’s early campaign. Pushaw, a pugnacious X personality in her own right, acknowledged this as part of her attempt to cut ties with Fishback, in part because of “allegations involving additional minors.” Fishback responded by posting text messages that purport to show Pushaw urging him to delete evidence of her support for his campaign.

Fishback’s electoral prospects still look bleak. He’s set to make an announcement “about the future of the Florida governor’s race” later today. But he appears to be well on his way to obtaining a job much more fun and lucrative than governor: right-wing media celebrity.

But one thing could still hold him back: his genetic code. In December, Fishback, racist as ever, challenged Donalds to publish genetic results from 23andMe, saying he would post his own results “soon.”

More than a month later, Fishback hasn’t posted his genetic results, and fumed in an online chat this week when he was asked when he’d finally release his ethnic background. Perhaps he saw something that might damage his brand as a leading white nationalist. For his part, Fishback tells me he just doesn’t have his results back yet.

White House advisor Stephen Miller, above left.

White House advisor Stephen Miller, above left.

Emptywheel, Analysis: Trump’s Vulnerability and the Bunker-Ballroom, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), Jan. 21, 2026. Trump tied his own sense of vulnerability to his rush to rebuild the bunker under the ballroom.

I have long suspected that one reason Stephen Miller has so much control over Donald Trump right now is he played a big part of getting Trump back on his feet after the Butler shooting, which really (and unsurprisingly) rattled him for weeks. Trump’s return coincided with a particular turn to the fascist.

That’s one reason I find this exchange from NYT’s “interview” with Donald Trump interesting.

He directly tied the security of the bunker-ballroom to some trauma (he had earlier raised it, and sent a valet to get all his ballroom models). Then they spoke off the record (one of perhaps four times they do so, aside from the call with Colombian President Gustavo Petro).

President Trump

This is a much more important thing to do. So, this is the ballroom right here. It’s beautiful. People love it. It’ll hold — it’s being designed with bulletproof glass, 4 to 5 inches thick. Can take just about any weapon that we know of. I wish I was in it about a little while ago. [Mr. Trump laughs.]

[Mr. Trump speaks briefly off the record.]

Tyler Pager

Mr. President, on the record, you haven’t even been here a year yet, and you’ve made many renovations. Are there other plans for you to make changes?

They came back on the record with a slightly different topic: renovations generally.

From there, Trump discussed a plan to add a second floor to the West Wing, because the roof that’s there now is not used given that long range rifles could hit them.

Tyler Pager

What about at the White House complex?

President Trump

I may do an upper West Wing. This area. Cover it with one floor because it needs more space. It would be —

David E. Sanger

Including the Oval? Or Oval would be separate?

President Trump

No, less. Short of the Oval. If you take the L [shape] —

David E. Sanger

So you’d put it up — there’s a second floor. It’s sort of in the attic.

President Trump

Well there’s a second floor now that was, that was meant to be a park. People don’t use it as a park. Now with long-range rifles, you tend not to use it.

[snip]

Katie Rogers

The L. Is that why you were on the roof that day?

President Trump

Exactly.

Katie Rogers

What were you doing?

President Trump

I was looking at doing office space.

Grandpa Sundown took a diversion to show a picture of Don Jr holding a rattlesnake while wearing flip-flops.

Then Trump brought out one after another model of the ballroom. When David Sanger asked him about its cost, he distinguished between the aboveground portion — the ballroom — from the stuff below ground (which has not been discussed on the record) — the bunker.

The current $400 million cost does not include the bunker.

President Trump

But I said, “Ultimately, they win.” You better be careful. So ready? Don’t take any pictures of this ’cause you’ll scare people. So I started off with a building half of the seats —

[Mr. Trump puts a model for a new White House ballroom on the table.]

— and then it just kept growing and growing, and the money kept pouring in and pouring in. No, no, please. So I started with that — started with this.

[Mr. Trump puts a model of what he said was the smaller, original planned ballroom on the table.]

And I said: “Wow, I’ve got all this beautiful land. I don’t want to waste it.” So I said: “All right. I’ll go a little bit larger.” This would have seat — seated 450 people. So I said, “Let’s go a little bit larger.” So then I said, “Let’s do this.”

[Mr. Trump removes the smaller model and puts another model for the new ballroom on the table.]

Zolan Kanno-Youngs

What’s the updated price tag on all this?

President Trump

Well, every time I make it larger it goes — but I’ll do it for — I’m under budget and ahead of schedule. You know, I’m — I’d build it larger.

David E. Sanger

Are you at about $400 million now?

President Trump

I’ll bring it in for less than — it’s, it’s ahead of schedule and under budget so far.

David E. Sanger

What’s the budget?

President Trump

Under $400 million.

David E. Sanger

And that’s just the aboveground, not —

President Trump

That’s the aboveground.

According to CNN a White House official acknowledged the security enhancements going on underground.

During a recent meeting of the National Capital Planning Commission where the ballroom was discussed, White House director of management and administration Joshua Fisher said broadly that the overall ballroom project will “(enhance) mission critical functionality,” “make necessary security enhancements” and “(deliver) resilient, adaptive infrastructure aligned with future mission needs.”

Fisher was pressed on why the project broke with precedent by starting the demolition process without the commission’s approval — and he indicated that the “top-secret” work taking place underground was the motivation.

“There are some things regarding this project that are, frankly, of top-secret nature that we are currently working on. That does not preclude us from changing the above-grade structure, but that work needed to be considered when doing this project, which was not part of the NCPC process,” he said.

And to the NYT, Donald Trump tied the bunker-ballroom to his own sense of vulnerability.

New York Times Interesting Times Podcast, Opinion: No, Young Men Are Not Returning to Church, Hosted by Ross Douthat, right, ross douthat newer Produced by Andrea Betanzos, Jan. 22, 2026. All the religious trends you’re wrong about.

In the early 2020s, something unexpected happened: America stopped becoming less religious.

The share of Americans with no religious affiliation had been rising for decades. Suddenly, that increase stopped. And all over the media, there was talk about religious revival. About trad wives and orthobros. About Gen Z potentially being more religious than their parents.

My guest today is the perfect person to talk about what’s really happening in American religion. Ryan Burge is an ordained minister who witnessed American Christianity’s decline close up. In 2024, he had to close the doors of the church that he’d been pastoring. He’s also, in my own opinion, the best data analyst tracking trends in American religion right now, with a new book, “The Vanishing Church: How The Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us.”

Below is an edited transcript of an episode of “Interesting Times.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYTimes app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

Ross Douthat: Ryan Burge, welcome to “Interesting Times.”

Ryan Burge: My absolute pleasure to be here.

Douthat: So I want to start just by talking about the big recent religious trends in American life, and especially the claim that secularization might be going into reverse, or even that revival is in the air.

Before we talk revival, I want to start by defining a very important term for understanding what’s been happening in the U.S. for the last 20 years. That term is “none.” And I do not mean Catholic nuns, but something else. What is a “none”?

Burge: So, “nones” are people who identify with no religious tradition. What that means is we ask a question about affiliation, and they describe their religion as “atheist,” “agnostic,” or “nothing in particular.”

That third piece is the one that we forget about a lot. These are people who look at all the options — Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Mormon — and they just shrug their shoulders and say: “I’m not a Christian, but I’m not an atheist either.” And they just click “none of the above.” So the “nones” are those three groups together: atheist, agnostic, nothing in particular.

That group has grown from 5 percent of America in 1972 to about 30 percent of America today. It’s the biggest social movement happening in America — or happened in America over the last 30 years — that we just don’t talk about that much.Editors’ PicksHow Little Exercise Can You Get Away With?Forget the Cynics. Here’s Why You Should Get Your Dog a Stroller.Inside an Exploding Marriage: Belle Burden in Her Own Words

Douthat: I don’t know if I agree that we don’t talk about it that much. I feel like commentary on religion, as long as I’ve been a pundit, has been dominated by the sense that America is getting less religious. That people are disaffiliating.

But then something changed around 2020 to 2021.

Burge: Yeah. I think we’re moving into a new era of what’s happening with American religion. It was rapid secularization from 1991 to 2020. Now we’re in a period of stasis. The share of Americans who are nonreligious has really stuck at that same level, around 30 percent. The share of Americans who are Christians is in the low 60s, maybe 63 or 65 percent, and it’s been that way for the last five years now.

This is a plateau, not a reversal. This is not a revival. The directions are not reversing themselves. They’re just staying where they are right now.

Douthat: Give me some speculation, though, about why we’ve seen the plateau. Why do you think it seems like there is basically just a chronological pattern where for a while, you could just count on each generation being substantially less religious than the previous generation. And with Gen Z and the millennials, they are less religious, but it’s just not as strong a pattern as you’ve seen before.

And I know this is outside the realm of data — I’m going to do this to you repeatedly in the interview — but did something change in 2017 to 2025 that would put a floor under religion that would make it seem a little more resilient?

Burge: The way I think about it is, there’s a bedrock of American religion that I don’t think exists in any other Western country. What’s happened over the last 30 years is that a lot of people were loosely affiliated. They’d say they were Protestant or Catholic, they’d go to Mass once every two or three years, and they would say they’re Catholic or Protestant because that’s culturally acceptable. But as times have changed and the nones have continued to rise, it used to be you didn’t want to say you were an atheist — there’s a lot of stigma against it — and now there’s —

Douthat: God didn’t like it too, right?

Burge: No! Exactly.

Douthat: People were nervous.

Burge: And America didn’t like it. Think about it: In the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, we had the Cold War. We were fighting against Communism, which was atheistic, so there was sort of a stigma that we could not get over. And now, over the last 30 years, that stigma went away, and more and more people, I think, were actually being honest when they took surveys in saying they were nonreligious. But once you scoop off all that loose topsoil — those marginally attached people — you get closer and closer to bedrock.

I think what we’ve realized is: There’s a core of religiosity in America. I mean, I just don’t see a future in America where the share of Americans who are nonreligious rises above 50 percent. There’s just nothing in the data that says that. Whereas, if you had asked me 10 or 15 years ago, I would have said: Numbers keep going up. And that’s not happening now.

Douthat: How do the identification numbers interact with actual data on church attendance, which I know is itself really hard to measure? People also will say they go to Mass or church or synagogue more than they really do. But is it something where religious identification has fallen faster than church attendance, or has attendance declined meaningfully in the last 20 years?

Burge: So we think about religion with three components: Behavior, belief, and belonging.

So, behaviors, like church attendance — that’s actually fallen the fastest of all of them.

The way we think about it is behavior is the first one that goes. Then usually it’s followed with belonging, and then belief is behind all those things.

If you look at “never attending” people, they actually are more likely to say, “God exists, without any doubts,” than they are to say, “God doesn’t exist at all.” So there’s still this core of belief in America that you don’t see in the rest of the world.

More On U.S. Law, Rights, Justice, Crime

Occupy Democrats via Facebook, Advocacy: Trump’s skeezy plot BACKFIRES immediately as Jack Smith shames Trump and his Republican cronies in a powerful statement and REFUSES to back down from his decision to prosecute Trump! Staff and wire reports, Jan. 22, 2026. Jan. 22, 2026.

Special Counsel Jack Smith is testifying before the Judiciary Committee today because Trump and his cronies want to bully him into recanting his decisions and smear him for conducting a partisan witch-hunt against Trump for breaking the law and trying to overturn the 2020 elections.

What they got was nothing of the sort.

Instead, Jack Smith turned the tables on them and reminded the nation that it is Trump and his J6 conspirators who are the treasonous criminals who should be behind bars.

“I love my country and believe deeply in the core principles upon which it was founded. For nearly three decades, I’ve served as a career prosecutor in both Republican and Democratic administrations. I’ve handled cases ranging from domestic assault and gang violence to public corruption and election crimes across the United States and have prosecuted war crimes overseas. I am not a politician and I have no partisan loyalties. My career has been dedicated to serving our country by upholding the rule of law,” said Smith.

“Throughout my public service, my approach has always been the same. Follow the facts and the law without fear or favor. Experienced prosecutors know that specific case outcomes are beyond our control. Our responsibility is to do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons. These principles have guided me through my career, including as special counsel.”

“During my tenure as special counsel, we followed Justice Department policies, we observed legal requirements, and took actions based on the facts and the law. I made my decisions without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 election. President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the law, the very laws he took an oath to uphold. Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions, as alleged in the indictments they returned. Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power. “

“After leaving office in January of 21, President Trump illegally kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago Social Club and repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.”

“As I testify before the committee today, I want to be clear. I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including the decision to bring charges against President Trump. Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity. If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Democrat or a Republican.”

“No one should be above the law in this country and the law required that he be held to account, so that is what I did. To have done otherwise on the facts of these cases would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and as a public servant, which I had no intention of doing,” finished the Special Counsel.

Thank you for your service to this once-great nation, Mr. Smith. We cannot apologize enough that you now have to be dragged before this kangaroo court of spineless cowards as punishment for doing your job, upholding the law, and attempting to hold the criminal traitor Donald Trump accountable for his many, many, crimes.

Every American needs to read these words and be reminded of what a true patriot looks like. They’re in short supply in Washington these days — but hopefully we can fix that in November.jority of Americans, 51 percent, said that Mr. Trump’s policies had made life less affordable for them.

Trump Justice Department appointee Lindsey Halligan and her critic, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge David Novak of the Eastern District of Virginia. Democracy Docket, U.S. attorney pretender Halligan gets the boot, Jacob Knutson, She illegitimate, she’s incompetent, she’s shambolic — and now she’s out of the Department of Justice (DOJ). Say goodbye to Lindsey Halligan, shown above right (alongside Trump-nominated federal judge David Novak, who ruled that she was not entitled to the job or title,, the loyalist President Donald Trump tapped to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Halligan’s four-month tenure was a comedy of errors. Her cases failed. Her reputation for typos in court filings is now legendary. And after being disqualified from office, she for weeks falsely continued to claim the title of U.S. attorney — even dropping the words “interim” or “acting,” though she was never confirmed.

Beyond Halligan, this week was filled with more Trumpian chicanery. The DOJ has subpoenaed a group of Minnesota Democrats — including Gov. Tim Walz — over their opposition to Trump’s immigration raids. It also revealed that DOGE employees misused Americans’ personal data and communicated with election deniers. And Trump’s attempted ouster of Fed governor Lisa Cook had its day in the Supreme Court — and even some conservative justices appear alarmed.

More On U.S. Politics, Governance

Democratic-Republican Campaign logos

The Contrarian, Opinion: So, You Want to Run for President? Jennifer Rubin, right, Jan. 22, 2026. What 2028 aspirants should consider before running.

It is no secret that a group of Democrats have their eyes on a 2028 presidential run. The many capable governors (e.g., JB Pritzker of Illinois, Gavin Newsom of California, Andy Beshear of Kentucky) are obvious contenders. But, just as no one had paid much attention to Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, or Barack Obama two-plus years prior to their successful presidential runs, there are contenders not presently on anyone’s radar screen who may vie for the nomination. (Illustration Credit: Vitalii Abakumov)

Whatever their name ID, 2028 contenders should spend their time wisely. That will require more than merely speaking out against the mad wannabe king’s domestic and international outrages or preparing (as Obama and Zohran Mamdani did) to viscerally engage the public, create a volunteer army, and activate people previously never political.

Rather, 2028 hopefuls should start refining their vision if they want to run credible campaigns. Several big challenges deserve serious, extended reflection before announcing.

What to do about accountability: The failure to prosecute Trump criminally in time to avert his return to power does not mean Democrats must ignore the trail of corruption, constitutional outrages, and rank illegality he will leave behind. The 2028 contenders should start thinking now about how they want to handle Trump and his cohort of lawless democracy vandals.

Options from criminal to civil liability (including recovering ill-gotten gains) to court martial to disbarment should be on the table. But candidates should not get bogged down in prescribing the prosecutions and penalties to pursue against specific MAGA offenders. Pledging to engage a special prosecutor or series of prosecutors, tasking inspectors general with full reviews, and empaneling an esteemed commission of historians, lawyers, and former government officials to create an official account of the Trump-era outrages would be preferable (and not prejudge prosecutions). Thinking now about that serious challenge would help clear the decks for candidates’ campaign messages and governing agendas.

What to do about democracy: Running to “restore” democracy is the wrong approach. Trump has broken our Constitution and shown its fault lines. Considering a rebirth of (as Lincoln did at Gettysburg) or reinvention of democracy should occupy 2028 contenders’ time. With the aim of making our system more democratic/responsive and less captive to oligarchs, candidates might consider a game plan for each branch of government. (Fixation with the current filibuster as an excuse for not pursuing these items makes evident a refusal or lack of readiness to reinvent our democracy.)Subscribed

The Supreme Court has disgraced itself and lost the public’s confidence. Nevertheless, institutional changes can repair it (e.g., expanding the court, setting term limits, installing an inspector general, instituting a mandatory ethics code, eliminating the shadow docket except in limited cases). The president, with help from Congress, can return the Court to its appropriate role to check the other branches and defend of our constitutional rights.

Candidates must also consider curbs on executive power — not a popular idea with presidents of either party. These can include (ideally, by legislation to make permanent) eliminating many “emergency powers,” limiting the Insurrection Action, putting teeth into both the Emoluments Clause and the Hatch Act, requiring financial disclosure for the president and vice president, abolishing recission authority, bolstering the independence of agencies (e.g., the NLRB, FTC), prohibiting political interference with the Justice Department, and strengthening the Freedom of Information Act.

The nominee will have to develop specific immigration policies but should not miss the opportunity to pledge wholesale reorganization/dismemberment of the Department of Homeland Security, which has bureaucratized the national security structure and created rogue, lawless immigration enforcements that have devolved into fascist street thugs. This should be a mainstream position. (Keep the Education Department, Dismantle DHS!)

The next president, aside from a policy agenda, will need to prepare massive democracy enhancement legislation. That can include updating/reinstituting the Voting Rights Act, setting up independent commissions to prevent gerrymandering and mid-decade redistricting, re-establishing workable causes of action (so-called Bivens cases) to hold federal officials liable for constitutional violations, imposing strict campaign finance rules (let a new Supreme Court revisit Citizens United), criminalizing phony elector schemes and other efforts to subvert elections, and granting statehood to D.C.

The next president should not throw up his or her hands because of horrendous Roberts’ Court decisions. Pass the laws, litigate the cases, and push for a reformed court to overturn ill-conceived precedent.

What to do about foreign policy: One can only imagine what will remain of U.S. alliances and international stature in 2028. Contenders without extensive foreign policy experience should start traveling, studying, and planning for restoration of American leadership. Convincing allies ever to trust us and aggressors to ever respect us will be an uphill task but the 2028 nominee should be ready with an agenda that limits foreign adventurism, eschews imperialism, re-emphasizes international law, and repairs the post WWII world order. This will be a multi-decade process, but has to begin somewhere. A good start: Immediately lifting any remaining Trump retaliatory and nonsensical tariffs, getting out of Venezuela, and recommitting to NATO.

What to do about oligarchy/concentration of wealth: American have never objected to getting rich. But they do object to billionaires getting wealthy at average Americans’ expense and using vast fortunes and outsized power to control government. Thinking through ways to empower workers and promote opportunity (e.g., subsidize childcare, remove barriers to unionization, increase minimum wage with a COLA) and devise an agenda for shared prosperity to appeal to a broad swath of Americans must be a high priority for 2028 contenders.

A good starting place would be Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s recent speech at the National Press Club calling that Democrats “acknowledge the economic failures of the current rigged system, aggressively challenge the status quo, and chart a clear path for big, structural change.”

Warren is correct that there is no shortage of good ideas (universal childcare, tough anti-trust enforcement, crackdown on corruption, a fair taxation system, etc.). And while each contender will have specific proposals, the eventual nominee will need to convey their determination, as Warren put it, to “build an economy for everyone.”

Democratic candidates should embrace Americans’ ambition to get ahead and not be shy about celebrating the benefits of a well-regulated market economy. However, they must commit to ending the kind of predatory, crony capitalism that has made it harder and harder for average people to attain the American dream.

In short, “Democrats need to earn trust — long-term, durable trust — across the electorate,” as Warren put it. Trust, in this case, means demonstrating that they “actually understand what’s broken and … have the courage to fix it — even when that means taking on the wealthy and well-connected.”

Bottom Line: Candidates vying for the Democratic presidential nomination will face a Herculean task but also an enviable opportunity. To be ready, they need to prepare now and start accumulating a brain trust to help them think through not only an election but a path to a renaissance of democracy.

Occupy Democrats via Facebook, Advocacy: Prominent right-wing newspaper finally admits that Trump “needs therapy” and is “throwing his presidency away” over Greenland, Staff and wire reports, Jan. 22, 2026.

When even Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal starts whispering that Donald Trump might be “flirting with cognitive decline,” you know the Trump circus has gone from tragic to dangerous.

For months, the president has been hell-bent on seizing Greenland — confusing diplomacy with real estate, and sovereign nations with beachfront condos.

But this week, conservative editorial board member Holman W. Jenkins Jr. finally said the quiet part out loud: Trump “needs therapy more than the United States needs to own the island.”

“Mr. Trump’s preoccupation with owning Greenland, like his Nobel Prize obsession, would be best addressed elsewhere: in therapy,” Jenkins continued. “I’m perfectly serious. Once he started unburdening himself of his insecurities and traumas, he probably wouldn’t stop for a week. The world, and the U.S., would be better for it.”Ouch.But Jenkins didn’t stop there. He reminded MAGA diehards that you can’t just invade a NATO ally to settle a midlife crisis — Congress literally made it illegal. “This isn’t international law, MAGA types, it’s U.S. law,” he wrote, laying out how the military and Supreme Court would shut Trump down “six ways from Sunday” if he tried it. Oh, and it would likely trigger a third impeachment.

Meanwhile, Trump staggered into Davos like a “bear dragged from hibernation,” huffing, wobbling, and repeatedly calling Greenland ‘Iceland,’ and vice-versa — an international humiliation so cringe that even Fox News had to look away. At one point, the president claimed Iceland “called him Daddy.” Unsurprisingly, both Iceland and Greenland deny using any such term of endearment.And here’s the kicker: the people Trump wants to “take over” want nothing to do with him. Polls show over 85% of Greenland opposes U.S. annexation, and Fox News’ own “Trump fan” from Nuuk turned out to be a serial criminal — because that’s what it takes to find a pro-Trump interview subject up there.For over a year, the president has displayed bruised hands, swollen ankles, and a growing habit of dozing off during high-stakes meetings. His rambling, incoherent press conferences have become so alarming that even conservative media can’t pretend anymore. Murdoch’s empire isn’t exactly filled with Resistance liberals — so if they are sounding worried, buckle up.

The story isn’t just that Trump is losing it. It’s that Republicans, billionaires, and right-wing media have known for ages — and stayed silent as he tanks markets, shreds alliances, and threatens to start a war over an island that wants nothing to do with him.But now the spell is breaking. And the question practically writes itself: If even Rupert Murdoch’s media can see the decline… what’s the Republican Party’s excuse?Please like and share!

Source: https://www.justice-integrity.org/2155-jan-25-news-reports

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Before It’s News® is a community of individuals who report on what’s going on around them, from all around the world. Anyone can join. Anyone can contribute. Anyone can become informed about their world. "United We Stand" Click Here To Create Your Personal Citizen Journalist Account Today, Be Sure To Invite Your Friends.

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