“The evidence suggesting the Justice Department is an institution in crisis is increasingly difficult to avoid.”
The timeline of events isn’t exactly subtle. Two weeks ago, after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced that he was ending his bid for a third term, Donald Trump and his White House team said the end of the Democratic governor’s campaign wasn’t enough, and they wanted Walz to face a Justice Department investigation.
Less than a week later, The Wall Street Journal reported that the president had begun complaining privately about Attorney General Pam Bondi, “describing her as weak and an ineffective enforcer of his agenda,” at least in part because she hasn’t pursued his perceived political enemies as quickly as he’d prefer. The following day, the Journal published a follow-up report, adding that Trump also criticized some of his own U.S. attorneys at a White House event, “complaining they weren’t moving fast enough to prosecute his favored targets.”
Connecting the dots was rather straightforward: Team Trump wanted the Justice Department to go after Walz, and the president has been whining about the pace at which prosecutors were pursuing his domestic foes.
Take a wild guess what happened a few days after the Journal’s report reached the public. MS NOW reported:
The Justice Department has opened an investigation into Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, according to two people familiar with the matter, a significant escalation of President Donald Trump’s campaign of retribution against his critics and a move that is almost certain to further inflame tensions with the state.
The investigation focuses on allegations of obstructing federal immigration enforcement amid protests throughout Minneapolis following the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer last week.
The governor and mayor join a growing list of Democrats facing Trump administration investigations, which now includes former President Joe Biden, former President Bill Clinton, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff of California, Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, Sen. Ellisa Slotkin of Michigan, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, Rep. Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, Rep. Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania. [!]
By all accounts, the criminal inquiry in Minnesota is quite thin. As a Washington Post report summarized, Walz and Frey “have loudly disparaged ICE’s presence in the state and the way Trump and his administration have defended the officer and sidelined state officials in an investigation into the shooting. The subpoenas the Justice Department is preparing to send suggest the agency is looking at whether Walz’s and Frey’s public statements about the administration’s actions amount to illegal interference with law enforcement.”
In other words, the Justice Department has opened a criminal case against a governor and a mayor for criticizing alleged Trump administration abuses in ways the Trump administration doesn’t like.
Time will tell what, if anything, comes of prosecutors’ scrutiny of Walz and Frey, but in the meantime, the one person in Minnesota who need not worry about a Justice Department investigation is the ICE agent who shot and killed Good.
“There are over 1,000 shootings every year where law enforcement are put in danger by individuals, and they have to protect themselves, and they have a lawful right to do so,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said on “Fox News Sunday.” “The Department of Justice doesn’t just stand up and investigate because some congressmen thinks we should, because some governor thinks that we should.”
Blanche, a former Trump defense attorney, added, “We investigate when it’s appropriate to investigate. And that is not the case here. It was not the case when it happened and is not the case today.”
In other words, Trump’s Justice Department won’t investigate an ICE agent who shot and killed an unarmed woman, but it will investigate a governor and mayor who condemned an ICE agent who shot and killed an unarmed woman — as well as the victim’s family. […]
President Trump’s decision to suspend naturalization ceremonies is leaving residents across the country in an unusual position, now stuck in limbo after they were on the verge of gaining U.S. citizenship. […]
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) suspended naturalization ceremonies for citizens of the 19 countries covered by the travel ban. It’s a list that’s since grown, as the president in December expanded the list to 39 countries.
In some cases, immigrants have already passed the citizenship test, only to be blocked from taking the oath that makes their naturalization official.
“People are just somewhat confused and concerned that, although they sort of went through the process, with the exception of the actual ceremony, that now at the eleventh hour, on the ninth inning they’re going to be disqualified and not allowed to be officially sworn in,” Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) said.
[…] The U.S. typically naturalizes about 800,000 new citizens per year, the bulk of which are from Mexico, India and the Philippines.
[…] “They are rightfully upset that the administration has stopped them — individuals who are already approved for citizenship — from taking their oath of allegiance to this country.” [Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said on the floor this week.]
[…] many prospective citizens have been in the U.S. for years if not decades and have been vetted at every turn.
[…] many of those who are about to take the oath have already progressed though various immigration statuses, taking years to gain their green card and then eventually seek citizenship.
[…] There have been reports of residents from countries that are not on the travel ban list having their appointments canceled, and because other migrants have been arrested after immigration court hearings, some are fearful to make appearances.
“Now I’ve got people who are saying to me, ‘Should I go to my naturalization ceremony? What if they grab me in my naturalization ceremony?’ It’s really unprecedented, and it’s attacking legal immigration. They’ve always said they want to attack undocumented immigrants, the so-called worst of the worst,” Jayapal [Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)] said.
“It’s Martin Luther King Day, Which Suddenly Seems Incredibly Relevant”
On this Martin Luther King Day holiday, thousands of federal agents are continuing to lay siege to Minneapolis in an operation that’s no longer only about pursuing Donald Trump’s ethnic cleansing program (though that’s definitely still aggressively underway). As Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pointed out, it has become a “campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota,” because they continue to stand up against the deportation campaign and the fascist invasion of the Twin Cities.
If you want to be terrified for America’s future, look at what Trump’s Homeland security thugs are doing in Minnesota.
But if you want to be inspired for America’s future, look at how ordinary Minnesotans refuse to be terrorized.
Minnesota, right now, is where Americans are bravely, resolutely, and boisterously living out King’s words in “Letter From Birmingham Jail”:
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Yes, you’ve heard those words so often they verge on cliché. But let’s spend a few minutes seeing them applied in the Twin Cities. (With a wind chill of -8 degrees F for today’s high, and another “Arctic blast” on the way at that! As this post goes online, the “feels like” wind chill is -28° F)
The most popular personal accessories in the Twin Cities are whistles and cell phones (personal body cams are another option). The owner of Minneapolis bookstore Comma says on Instagram that more people have been dropping by to pick up free whistles than to buy books […]
Following a trend that may have begun in Chicago, people are stocking Little Free Libraries with whistles and “Know Your Rights” pamphlets. If that isn’t a beautiful adaptation of an already nice thing into a tool for getting through crisis, I don’t know what is.
In another strategy borrowed from Portland and Chicago, nerds are sharing files to make hundreds of loud 3D-printed whistles for pennies apiece. Mischief, a Minneapolis toy store, is just one of many local small businesses making and distributing whistles […]
[…] In one of those double-edged Nice Things that are only necessary because of terrible things, the City of Minneapolis wants folks to know that if their car gets towed to an impound lot after ICE grabs them, the city will release the vehicles “to their owners or a representative” at no charge. [smiles] The implication that the owner may have been disappeared and deported is implicit in “or a representative,” which is fucking terrifying. But for families in a crisis who may depend on that car, the city has at least made clear it won’t add the insult of impound/towing fees to the injury of people being grabbed off the street.
Sometimes the comfort is as cold as the below-zero temperatures in our ongoing national horror.
You want Mutual Aid? How about the folks in the Twin Cities who are picking up and doing laundry for folks who have to stay home and can’t risk going to a laundromat, since ICE is lurking there, too. The People’s Laundry is primarily a mutual aid service to provide laundry help for people in poverty or who are without housing, but it’s expanded its services for people who are in hiding. [!]
[…] As in Portland, some of the protesters outside the federal building that ICE has turned into a detention center have chosen tomfoolery, to mock the violent thugs, because if there’s anything fascists hate, it’s being made ridiculous. And few things can better underline the ridiculousness of these thugs than this Fox News chyron (yes, it’s a screenshot from very real video.) [“Frozen Pickle Yells at ICE”, more social media posts, including one from Boise, Idaho]
But here’s a disturbing (and entirely predictable) escalation from DHS: They tolerated people in funny costumes making fun of them in Portland. In Minnesota, even dancing furries are being treated as enemies of the state.
Friday morning, DHS sent out a gang of thugs to tackle and rough up a protester dancing in a fox costume in front of the federal building. (Ignore the Bluesky poster’s erroneous caption saying it was the city police department; the goons’ body armor, necessary to protect them from mockery, is clearly marked “DHS”.) [Video]
[…] After the murder of Renee Good, we know the stakes of standing up to this regime. There will almost certainly be more killings. But it won’t work. Instead, people will keep showing up to chase ICE away, as they have again and again. Just look at how people seemingly materialized out of nowhere to confront the goons in the Minneapolis neighborhood of Lyn Lake last week, just days after Good was shot: [Video]
[…] Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock discussed the now deadly terror the government is unleashing in Minnesota, pointing out that the prospect of deadly violence didn’t deter the Civil Rights movement either. […]
And yes, he quoted the same line from “Birmingham Jail,” because our destinies are inextricably linked to our neighbors’.
Warnock also recounted a story that MLK aide Andrew Young told about a meeting in which King urged Lyndon Johnson to push for the Voting Rights Act. Johnson pointed out that he’d already expended a great deal of political capital on passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and thought it was a bit ungrateful of King to want another landmark bill less than a year later. He told MLK, “I don’t really have the power. You think I have more power than I have.”
King’s aides left the meeting downcast, but King, in Warnock’s telling, just shrugged his shoulders and told them, “Well, I guess if the president doesn’t have the power, we’re going to have to go get him some.” (Young’s version was phrased slightly differently but made the same point.)
That led to more demonstrations, including the attempted march from Selma to Montgomery which was cut short by Alabama state troopers beating marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965. Nationwide outrage helped build consensus that it was time for the VRA as well.
Warnock told Scott, “I think that’s the moment we’re in now. We’ve got to remind ourselves that it’s not about the people in power, it’s about the power that’s in the people.”
Goddamn right. We’re at a very dangerous place right now, and instead of LBJ in the White House, we have a far stupider version of Bull Connor. […]
One more King quote for you, from his 1958 “The Power of Nonviolence.” Just sub in “ethnic cleansing” for “segregation” here:
But there are some things within our social order to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I call upon you to be maladjusted. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to adjust myself to mob rule. I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic effects of the methods of physical violence and to the tragic militarism. […]
God grant that we will be so maladjusted that we will be able to go out and change our world and our civilization.
We are at a truly terrifying moment in our history. But we have to bring this madness to an end. Find a protest, participate in a boycott, find opportunities to volunteer, and keep up the pressure on your electeds at every level.
“As federal agents swarm the Twin Cities, their presence has also grown in medical centers. Health care workers are pushing back.”
The arrival of thousands of federal immigration agents has altered life in Minneapolis and St. Paul in ways large and small, including in the corridors of hospitals serving the Twin Cities.
The sheer presence of the agents, sometimes in uniform, sometimes in plainclothes, has been enough to unnerve health care workers, who were already straining under conditions some have compared with those of the coronavirus pandemic.
[…] “Any medical center or hospital is supposed to be a place of healing,” said Dr. Brian Muthyala, a physician at the hospital systems Hennepin Healthcare and M Health Fairview. “It is a place where people go when they are at their most vulnerable, when they are hurt or scared or in need of care, and any presence that disrupts that environment is harmful.”
Officials with the Homeland Security Department said that they do not conduct operations in hospitals. “We go in if there is an active danger to public safety,” said Tricia McLaughlin, an agency spokeswoman. [Not true]
Health care workers, however, describe a different reality, saying agents have broken hospital protocol, refused to provide documentation and, in some cases, gotten into shouting matches with doctors and nurses.
[…] “Federal agents barging into patient care areas trying to question or detain patients — I’ve never seen anything like that before,” said Dr. LeFevere, who works at Regions Hospital, a few blocks from the State Capitol in St. Paul.
[…] Federal immigration officers, like all law enforcement agents, are allowed to enter hospitals, clinics and other medical institutions if they are accompanying a patient in their custody and cannot be restricted from accessing public areas. But hospital officials said they do not allow immigration officers into private spaces, such as patient rooms and care units, without judicial warrants and that security officers escort them and limit their searches to the terms of those warrants.
[…] One health official said that over the past week, agents had brought in about two dozen patients to M Health Fairview Southdale Hospital, which is the closest medical center to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building […]
Two nurses, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss patient care, described witnessing a confrontation between health care workers and federal agents last weekend that devolved into a screaming match in a hallway at Hennepin Healthcare System in Minneapolis.
A crowd of nurses and physicians, many in scrubs and medical gear, tried to stop the agents from shackling a severely injured man to his bedside, they said. […]
Hennepin County lawyers have filed a legal petition on behalf of the patient contesting his confinement by ICE […]
The patient remains in the hospital, and agents have been rotating in and out of the facility as they keep watch at his side, according to three health care workers who asked not to be named because they did not have permission from their employer to speak on the issue.
About 10 miles to the east, in St. Paul, Dr. LeFevere said there had been at least two instances at Regions Hospital when federal agents entered the emergency department, once through the ambulance bay and another through a back entrance reserved for law enforcement.
In both cases, it appeared that the agents had been trailing people with whom they had interacted with on the streets, but the individuals were not in their custody, Dr. LeFevere said. The agents became argumentative when health care workers requested to see their warrants, but they eventually left the hospital, he said.
[…] Jeffrey Lunde, who serves as a Hennepin County commissioner and chairman of the hospital board of the Hennepin Healthcare System, said there were recent instances at Hennepin Healthcare in which hospital staff had asked federal agents to produce documentation as to why they were present in a private area or in a patient’s private room. Agents were not able to provide it.
[…] Nurses, doctors and other health care professionals across the Twin Cities had prepared for precisely such situations as they watched immigration crackdowns unfold in other cities over the past six months.
Jamey Sharp, a health care worker who is also a community organizer with the nonprofit Unidos MN, said his organization had trained more than 300 health care workers since March on patient privacy and knowing their rights. The group, which advocates social justice, said it had also helped to connect health care workers through Signal chat groups in hopes of tracking the activity of federal agents inside their facilities and ensure that rules were being followed.
[…] Aisha Gomez, a Democratic state lawmaker who represents parts of South Minneapolis, said she is worried about deleterious effect.
“I am deeply concerned about the chilling effect it is having on people seeking the care,” Ms. Gomez said.
“Denmark says its troops could stay in Greenland for one to two years.”
With Donald Trump continuing to ramp up pressure in his bid to annex Greenland, Denmark on Monday is boosting its military presence on the Arctic island, according to local press reports.
A “substantial contribution” of Danish combat soldiers is expected to arrive in Kangerlussuaq, the location of Greenland’s main international airport, on Monday evening […]
Denmark’s top military commander in the Arctic, Maj. Gen. Søren Andersen, said that about 100 Danish soldiers have already arrived in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, and a similar number in Kangerlussuaq, in western Greenland. The soldiers are due to take part in the Arctic Endurance training exercise. Andersen said last week that the deployment is a response to Russian threats and not to Trump. [That last bit sounds like a diplomatic or political spin.]
Copenhagen on Monday asked for a NATO mission to Greenland, Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said, […]
Lund Poulsen slammed Trump’s threats against Greenland as “really, really hurtful,” but warned the alliance still can’t afford to sever ties with Washington.
“If the Americans withdraw from NATO tomorrow, we will have a huge challenge in fending for ourselves,” he said, adding: “it also gives us reason to do more on the European side.”
[…] “We will continue the mission for a year, maybe two, with the cooperation of foreign soldiers. We are trying to establish a schedule for deploying troops to Greenland in 2026 and the following year, so yes, it is a long-term mission,” Andersen told Le Monde.
In the past days, the European military officers participated to a reconnaissance mission and “assessed training opportunities throughout the year and are planning to return in March with different capabilities,” Andersen said.
The deployments came amid intensifying pressure from Trump, who wants to annex the Arctic island, a semi-autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. He has not ruled out using military force to do so.
Trump denounced the move by allied countries, warning: “These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable.”
Trump argues that Denmark hasn’t done enough to protect Greenland from a possible attack from Russia or China, joking that Copenhagen only has two dog sleds to defend the island. In reality, Denmark said last year it would boost defense spending for Greenland by 27.4 billion krone (€3.7 billion) for naval vessels, patrol aircraft, drones and surveillance radars.
Despite Trump’s contention that Chinese and Russian vessels are “all over the place” near Greenland, there is no evidence that is the case. [Trump lied, as usual.]
Denmark announced last week it was boosting its presence on Greenland and that the exercise could include guarding critical infrastructure, providing assistance to local authorities, receiving allied troops, deploying fighter aircraft in and around Greenland and conducting naval operations.
Good news concerning Trump losing, again, in the courts:
A federal judge on Jan. 9 became the third one to block key provisions of President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at revising election rules nationwide, ruling that the Constitution gives states and Congress —not the president— the authority to exercise power over elections.
The administration signaled it is likely to appeal the decision, the latest blow to Trump’s agenda on elections.
His March executive order sought to require proof of citizenship on the federal voter registration form, mostly ban the use of machine-readable codes when tallying ballots, and prohibit the counting of ballots postmarked Election Day but received afterwards.
The administration has appealed two earlier rulings in other cases against the executive order. The cases could ultimately reach the U.S. Supreme Court, but election law experts told Votebeat the president faces long odds. […]
More at the link. This fight, and similar court fights, are ongoing.
[…] The White House has said the president is planning a second executive order on elections, though it’s unclear what will be in it, and federal court rulings so far show the approach has limitations. […]
Ukraine will continue to carry out offensive military operations, as victory cannot be achieved through defense alone, the country’s top military commander said, warning that Russia’s strategic plans for 2026 remain unchanged and aimed at all of Ukraine.
Ukraine plans to go on the offense more in 2026. Except for the Kursk surprise distraction, Ukraine has made little attacks to blunt Russian attacks or to surprise under defended points of value. Syrsky avoids saying anything specific, only that Ukraine plans to take the initiative in some way. This could entirely be deception but I expect Syrsky is being honest. To force Russia into a reasonable settlement Ukraine has to go on the offense at some point or Russia has to collapse internally. Russia looks like it may be unstable but Ukraine can’t depend on Russia failing to win the war for them.
Speaking in an interview with LB.ua, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) Oleksandr Syrsky said Russia is sticking to its long-term objectives, adjusting only timelines, troop numbers and weapons supplies.
Ukrainian intelligence believes that Russia’s goals have not changed. They have not changed since the first year of the war, when Russia had to back off it’s quick attack and resort to a slow conquest so this isn’t really big news.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a daring daytime mission on Monday, aircraft from the European members of NATO flew over the White House and sprayed its airspace with antipsychotic medication.
All NATO leaders signed off on the plan with the exception of the UK’s Keir Starmer, who proposed inviting Donald Trump to yet another state dinner.
Explaining the rationale behind the mission, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said, “We saw his letter to me as a cry for help.”
On the decision to deploy antipsychotic meds, Stoere added, “We were uniquely qualified to do this because our drug prices are far lower than in the U.S.”
Stressing that the NATO members did not take their decision lightly, the Norwegian PM said, “We had been hoping that Congress would intervene, but we were left with no other choice.”
This line is particularly funny, since Trump just confused Norway and Denmark in his petty complaint (again) about the Nobel Prize:
Explaining the rationale behind the mission, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said, “We saw his letter to me as a cry for help.”
Trump’s message:
Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT
House votes to fund the arts, despite Trump threats
Months after President Trump proposed excluding the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) from his Fiscal Year 2026 budget, the Republican-led United States House of Representatives approved a bill that would continue funding both agencies.
Last Thursday, January 8, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of several funding measures, including the Interior and Environment Appropriations Act of 2026, the bill that determines the annual allocations for the NEA, NEH, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Gallery of Art, the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), and other cultural programs.
The House voted in favor of full or near-full funding for the nation’s federal cultural agencies despite various threats from the Trump administration to dismantle or otherwise reduce allocations for many of them. The Senate is expected to pass the bill, but on Monday, it delayed a final vote.
[…] After Mr. Trump’s response, Mr. Store said in a statement, “As regards the Nobel Peace Prize, I have on several occasions clearly explained to Trump what is well known, namely that it is an independent Nobel Committee, and not the Norwegian government, that awards the prize,” Mr. Store said.
[…] Mr. Trump has repeatedly challenged Denmark’s claims to Greenland, but in decades-old agreements that the United States has signed with Denmark, the United States has recognized Denmark’s close connection to the island.
A 2004 amendment to an older defense pact between Denmark and the United States, which grants the United States broad military access, explicitly recognizes Greenland as “an equal part of the Kingdom of Denmark.”
And in 1916, Denmark sold what are now the U.S. Virgin Islands to the United States for $25 million in gold. In the treaty for that deal, a clause reads, “The United States of America will not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland.” […]
You cannot even own land in Greenland. You can get an allotment for your house, and you own the house on top of the land. But Greenlanders don’t believe that the land is for one person; it’s for everyone. […] It’s a big miscalculation that he thinks that Greenlanders would be excited by cash. We are not. Even it it were $100,000 per person, we wouldn’t give up free healthcare; we wouldn’t give up free education; we wouldn’t give up being part of Europe […] we are autonomous right now […] Everyone here knows about the Inuit in Alaska and all of the American Indians […] Their land was taken from them, and they haven’t been treated that well in America. We know that Trump is surrounding himself with white power people, and we are not White […] so we know our rights would be taken away.
[…]
We know about the treaties that we have with America. This is akin to when you have a dog sled team (he’s using that analogy) and one of the dogs all of a sudden turns around and bites you. You have to take it out […] and shoot it. Of course we’re not gonna shoot Americans […] but you cannot trust that dog any more forever. […] We still want to be friends, but […] if Donald Trump wants a new world order, okay that’s what he’s gonna get.
* That YT channel mirrored—and edited out b-roll—from Viory, a UAE news site.
* The YT channel also weirdly anonymized her as “Greenlandic Politician”. She is Tillie Martinussen, a former MP of the Cooperation Party she co-founded breaking from Democrats in 2018, of which she has been the only member to ever win a seat. The party aims to privatize public companies and deregulate.
Her electoral defeat was largely due to the climate of civil war that erupted within the [Cooperation Party] in late 2020, when a group of leaders, including the party’s [other] founder, accused the leader of appropriating party funds for her own benefit. In the end, she was unanimously re-elected and her accusers were expelled.
No other parties have negative equity in their accounts for 2020. […] an ongoing police investigation after several former members reported chairman Tilie Martinussen to the police. The police report alleges that money from the party treasury was used for private consumption.
“Remember the president’s many rants about Tylenol? The latest evidence shows how wrong he was.”
Ahead of a White House press conference on autism in September, Donald Trump made a deliberate effort to hype the information he said he was eager to share. The president boasted the week before the event that he was poised to deliver an announcement that was “very, very big.” A day later, he added that the information he was ready to share was “so big.”
Those who tuned in to the White House announcement, however, quickly learned otherwise. Trump, standing alongside Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., instead stood at a podium and said, “Don’t take Tylenol” — 11 times.
Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine researcher at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told The Washington Post after the event, “That was the most dangerously irresponsible press conference in the realm of public health in American history.”
Undeterred, the president kept going in the weeks and months that followed, publishing an online screed to his social media platform two weeks ago that began, “PREGNANT WOMEN, DON’T USE TYLENOL UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, DON’T GIVE TYLENOL TO YOUR YOUNG CHILD FOR VIRTUALLY ANY REASON.”
It remains a mystery why Mr. “Inject Disinfectants” believes that he has the credibility and expertise needed to give Americans guidance on matters of public health, but for those interested in evidence, The New York Times reported over the weekend:
A scientific review of 43 studies on acetaminophen use during pregnancy concluded that there was no evidence that the painkiller increased the risk of autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders.
‘We found no clinically important increase in the risk of autism, A.D.H.D. or intellectual disability,’ Dr. Asma Khalil, a professor of obstetrics and maternal fetal medicine at St. George’s Hospital, University of London, and the lead author of the report, said at a news briefing. The study was published on Friday in the British medical journal The Lancet.
Khalil added that acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, remains “the first-line treatment that we would recommend if the pregnant women have pain or fever in pregnancy.”
Confronted with this scientific research, the White House had little choice but to acknowledge reality.
No, I’m just kidding. Trump and his team, at least so far, have ignored the latest findings, which dovetail with other recent research on the same subject.
The next time the president starts offering advice on over-the-counter pain treatments, however, keep this in mind.
In a letter to Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store of Norway — that was forwarded to European ambassadors in Washington – President Trump connected his threats against Greenland (which is Danish) on Norway’s failure to award him the Nobel Peace Prize (which is not awarded by the Norwiegan government).
People buy the equipment on Amazon and it shows up at Benson’s house. From there, he reaches out to local community organizers […] “I think more than 350 of those cameras have gone out and are already deployed in the community now,” […] Benson got the idea […] when ICE told local police that one of his friends was ramming their cars. “That was completely fabricated,” Benson told me. But there was no way to prove it. It was the word of the federal government against Benson’s friend.
birgerjohanssonsays
Let’s Talk Elections
“Democrats’ Midterm Advantage Is BIGGER Than It Looks”
As I mentioned on the other thread, this Trump letter to “Jonas” should be grounds for convening an emergency meeting to invoke the 25th amendment. Each and every day brings more examples that the man is not fit to be in charge of his own affairs let alone the USA government and that his mental capacity is going down fast. That should be shouted on every news media 24/7 until something is done but of course nothing will be done.
With Americans reeling from high consumer prices, the federal government will suspend tax refund seizures and wage garnishments for people in default on their student loans, the Education Department said Friday. The action dials back the Trump administration’s recent decision to resume involuntary collections after a nearly six-year suspension because of the pandemic.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will attend the Supreme Court’s oral argument Wednesday in a case involving the attempted firing of Fed governor Lisa Cook, an unusual show of support by the central bank chair.
As Steve Benen noted, a symbolic move, but important.
birgerjohanssonsays
Something for your flying cars?
Li-S batteries have far more energy by weight than lithium-ion batteries.
When Ciji Graham visited a cardiologist on Nov. 14, 2023, her heart was pounding at 192 beats per minute, a rate healthy people her age usually reach during the peak of a sprint. She was having another episode of atrial fibrillation, a rapid, irregular heartbeat. The 34-year-old Greensboro, North Carolina, police officer was at risk of a stroke or heart failure.
In the past, doctors had always been able to shock Graham’s heart back into rhythm with a procedure called a cardioversion. But this time, the treatment was just out of reach. After a pregnancy test came back positive, the cardiologist didn’t offer to shock her. Graham texted her friend from the appointment: “Said she can’t cardiovert being pregnant.”
The doctor told Graham to consult three other specialists and her primary care provider before returning in a week, according to medical records. Then she sent Graham home as her heart kept hammering.
[…] As ProPublica has reported, doctors in states that ban abortion have repeatedly denied standard care to high-risk pregnant patients. The expert consensus is that cardioversion is safe during pregnancy, and ProPublica spoke with more than a dozen specialists who said they would have immediately admitted Graham to a hospital to get her heart rhythm under control. They found fault, too, with a second cardiologist she saw the following day, who did not perform an electrocardiogram and also sent her home.
Graham came to believe that the best way to protect her health was to end her unexpected pregnancy. But because of new abortion restrictions in North Carolina and nearby states, finding a doctor who could quickly perform a procedure would prove difficult. […] she would spend her final days struggling to find anyone to save hers.
Graham hated feeling out of breath; her life demanded all her energy. Widely admired for her skills behind the wheel, she was often called upon to train fellow officers at the Greensboro Police Department. […]
She thought her surprise pregnancy had caused the atrial fibrillation, also called A-fib. In addition to heart disease, she had a thyroid disorder; pregnancy could send the gland into overdrive, prompting dangerous heart rhythms.
When Graham saw the first cardiologist, Dr. Sabina Custovic, the 192 heart rate recorded on an EKG should have been a clear cause for alarm. “I can’t think of any situation where I would feel comfortable sending anyone home with a heart rate of 192,” said Dr. Jenna Skowronski, a cardiologist at the University of North Carolina. A dozen cardiologists and maternal-fetal medicine specialists who reviewed Graham’s case for ProPublica agreed. The risk of death was low, but the fact that she was also reporting symptoms — severe palpitations, trouble breathing — meant the health dangers were significant.
All the experts said they would have tried to treat Graham with IV medication in the hospital and, if that failed, an electrical shock. Cardioversion wouldn’t necessarily be simple — likely requiring an invasive ultrasound to check for blood clots beforehand — but it was crucial to slow down her heart. A leading global organization for arrhythmia professionals, the Heart Rhythm Society, has issued clear guidance that “cardioversion is safe and effective in pregnancy.” [!]
Even if the procedure posed a small risk to the pregnancy, the risk of not treating Graham was far greater, said Rhode Island cardiologist Dr. Daniel Levine: “No mother, no baby.”
[…] The next day — as her heart continued to thump — Graham saw a second cardiologist, Dr. Will Camnitz, at Cone Health, one of the region’s largest health care systems.
According to medical records, Graham’s pulse registered as normal when taken at Camnitz’s office […] Camnitz noted that the EKG from the day before showed she was in A-fib and prescribed a blood thinner to prepare for a cardioversion in three weeks — if by then she hadn’t returned to a regular heart rhythm on her own.
Some of the experts who reviewed Graham’s care said that this was a reasonable plan if her pulse was, indeed, normal. But Camnitz, who specializes in the electrical activity of the heart, did not order another EKG to confirm that her heart rate had come down from 192, according to medical records. “He’s an electrophysiologist and he didn’t do that, which is insane,” said Dr. Kayle Shapero, a cardio-obstetrics specialist at Brown University. According to experts, a pulse measurement can underestimate the true heart rate of a patient in A-fib. Every cardiologist who reviewed Graham’s care for ProPublica said that a repeat EKG would be best practice. If Graham’s rate was still as high as it was the previous day, her heart could eventually stop delivering enough blood to major organs. […]
Three weeks was a long time to wait with a heart that Graham kept saying was practically leaping out of her chest.
Camnitz knew about Graham’s pregnancy but did not discuss whether she wanted to continue it or advise her on her options, according to medical records. That same day, though, Graham reached out to A Woman’s Choice, the sole abortion clinic in Greensboro.
North Carolina bans abortion after 12 weeks; Graham was only about six weeks pregnant. Still, there was a long line ahead of her. Women were flooding the state from Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina, where new abortion bans were even stricter. On top of that, a recent change in North Carolina law required an in-person consent visit three days before a termination. […]
Graham would need to wait nearly two weeks for an abortion.
[…] a procedure at the clinic would not have been right for Graham; because of her high heart rate, she would have needed a hospital with more resources.
Dr. Jessica Tarleton, an abortion provider who spent the past few years working in the Carolinas, said she frequently encountered pregnant women with chronic conditions who faced this kind of catch-22: Their risks were too high to be treated in a clinic, and it would be safest to get care at a hospital, but it could be very hard to find one willing to terminate a pregnancy.
[…] Graham never learned that she would need an abortion at a hospital rather than a clinic. Physicians at Duke University and the University of North Carolina, the premier academic medical centers in the state, said that she would have been able to get one at their hospitals — but that would have required a doctor to connect her or for Graham to have somehow known to show up.
[…] In the United Kingdom a doctor trained in caring for pregnant women with risky medical conditions would have been assigned to oversee all of Graham’s care, ensuring it was appropriate, said Dr. Marian Knight, who leads the U.K.’s maternal mortality review program. […] The maternal mortality rate in the U.S. is more than double that of the U.K. and last on the list of wealthy countries. [!]
[…] Graham texted [a friend]. “Ain’t slept, chest hurts.” “All I can do is wait until the 28th,” Graham said, the date of her scheduled abortion.
On the morning of Nov. 19, Scott awoke to a rap on the front door […] A police officer introduced himself and explained that Graham hadn’t shown up and wasn’t answering her phone. He knew she hadn’t been feeling well and wanted to check in.
[…] When Scott walked into their bedroom, Graham was face down in bed, her body cold when he touched her. The two men pulled her down to the floor to start CPR, but it was too late. SJ stood in his crib, silently watching […]
The medical examiner would list Graham’s cause of death as “cardiac arrhythmia due to atrial fibrillation in the setting of recent pregnancy.” […]
High-risk pregnancy specialists and cardiologists who reviewed Graham’s case were taken aback by Custovic’s failure to act urgently. Many said her decisions reminded them of behaviors they’ve seen from other cardiologists when treating pregnant patients; they attribute this kind of hesitation to gaps in education. Although cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in pregnant women, a recent survey developed with the American College of Cardiology found that less than 30% of cardiologists reported formal training in managing heart conditions in pregnancy. “A large proportion of the cardiology workforce feels uncomfortable providing care to these patients,” the authors concluded in the Journal of the American Heart Association. The legal threats attached to abortion bans, many doctors have told ProPublica, have made some cardiologists even more conservative. [….]
Three doctors who have served on state maternal mortality review committees, which study the deaths of pregnant women, told ProPublica that Graham’s death was preventable. […]
Graham’s is the seventh case ProPublica has investigated in which a pregnant woman in a state that significantly restricted abortion died after she was unable to access standard care.
The week after she died, Graham’s family held a candlelight ceremony outside of her high school, which drew friends and cops in uniform, and also Greensboro residents whose lives she had touched. One woman approached Graham’s sisters and explained Graham had interrupted her suicide attempt five years earlier and reassured her that her life had value; she had recently texted Graham, “If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be here today, expecting my first child.”
As for Graham’s own son, no one explained to SJ that his mother had died. They didn’t know how to describe death to a toddler. Instead, his dad and grandmother and aunts and uncles told him that his mom had left Earth and gone to the moon. SJ now calls it the “Mommy moon.”
For the past two years, every night before bed, he asks to go outside, even on the coldest winter evenings. He points to the moon in the dark sky and tells his mother that he loves her.
Nestled in a strip mall in suburban Philadelphia, The Trump Store is hard to miss, with its all-caps sign in bold next to a photo of President Trump hugging the American flag. But after six years of drawing MAGA supporters from all over, the 800-square-foot store, which sports everything from hats and watches emblazoned with the president’s name, is closing. The store’s owner, 56-year-old Mike Domanico, said that, with sales down, it was time.
Lawmakers in both the House and Senate are in crunch time.
So far, Congress has passed six of the 12 appropriations bills needed to fund the government. The House last week passed an additional two-bill package known as a minibus that would fund the State Department and the Treasury Department. Senators will take that minibus up after they come back from their recess.
That leaves just four bills for the lower chamber to clear — including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appropriations bill, which has emerged as a major point of contention between both parties.
As of Monday afternoon, appropriators had not released text for the four bills.
Democrats in both chambers are intensifying their push to overhaul U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after one of its officers fatally shot an unarmed woman in Minneapolis. They are threatening to oppose the DHS bill unless it includes tougher oversight and conduct guidelines for ICE officers.
It’s unclear whether both parties can reach an agreement on the DHS bill before the Jan. 30 deadline to prevent a partial government shutdown.
If they don’t, one option they have is to pass a stopgap measure, known as a continuing resolution, that would temporarily fund the department at existing levels until they strike a deal.
The clock is tight for both chambers, with the Senate in recess this week and the House set to be out next week.
A solar radiation storm stronger than one we’ve seen in over two decades is in progress, the Space Weather Prediction Center announced Monday.
The storm is classified as an “S4” – the second-highest possible level of a solar radiation storm. The last time we observed an S4 storm was in October 2003.
“Storms of this strength are very rare,” said the Space Weather Prediction Center. Forecasters expect the storm to continue for days, cutting off high-frequency communications completely in the polar regions and posing some added health risk to passengers and crew in high-flying aircraft.
The strong solar flare that triggered the radiation storm has also caused a severe geomagnetic storm, which strengthened to a G4 on Monday afternoon and “came with a punch” at around 2:20 p.m. Eastern Time, said Shawn Dahl, a service coordinator with the SWPC.
“We reached nearly 20 times what’s normal background level for magnetic energy out in space with that arrival here at Earth,” said Dahl.
If the geomagnetic storm continues into the evening, northern lights could be visible across much of the United States.
[…] As of the Monday afternoon forecast, the lights were expected to be visible in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, northern Utah, northern Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, northern Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, northern Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Alaska.
[…] If the G4 levels we saw earlier in the day are reached again in the evening, that could make the northern lights visible as far south as Alabama and California, the SWPC said.
[…] For your best shot of seeing the aurora, look to the northern horizon.
“The death toll in a crackdown by authorities that smothered the demonstrations reached at least 3,941 people, activists said.”
Hackers disrupted Iranian state television satellite transmissions to air footage supporting the country’s exiled crown prince and calling on security forces to not “point your weapons at the people,” […]
The hacking comes as the death toll in a crackdown by authorities that smothered the demonstrations reached at least 3,941 people […] Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had his invitation to speak at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, withdrawn over the killings.
Meanwhile, tensions remain high between the United States and Iran over the crackdown after President Donald Trump drew two red lines for the Islamic Republic — the killing of peaceful protesters and Tehran conducting mass executions in the wake of the demonstrations. A U.S. aircraft carrier, which days earlier had been in the South China Sea, passed Singapore overnight to enter the Strait of Malacca — putting it on a route that could bring it to the Middle East.
[…] The footage aired Sunday night across multiple channels broadcast by satellite from Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, the country’s state broadcaster. The video aired two clips of exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, then included footage of security forces and others in what appeared to be Iranian police uniforms. It claimed without offering evidence others had “laid down their weapons and swore an oath of allegiance to the people.”
“This is a message to the army and security forces,” one graphic read. “Don’t point your weapons at the people. Join the nation for the freedom of Iran.”
The semiofficial Fars news agency, believed to be close to the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, quoted a statement from the state broadcaster acknowledging that the signal in “some areas of the country was momentarily disrupted by an unknown source.” […]
A statement from Pahlavi’s office acknowledged the disruption that showed the crown prince. […]
ship-tracking data analyzed by the AP on Monday showed the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, as well as other American military vessels, in the Strait of Malacca after passing Singapore on a route that could take them to the Middle East.
[…] The Mideast has been without an aircraft carrier group or an amphibious ready group, likely complicating any discussion of a military operation targeting Iran given Gulf Arab states’ broad opposition to such an attack.
[…] The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency put the death toll Monday to at least 3,941, warning it likely would go higher.
[…] The agency has been accurate throughout the years of demonstrations and unrest in Iran, relying on a network of activists inside the country that confirms all reported fatalities.
[…] The agency also reported over 25,700 people had been arrested. Comments from officials have led to fears of some of those detained being put to death in Iran, one of the world’s top executioners.
“While the killers and seditious terrorists will be punished, Islamic mercy and leniency will be applied to those who were deceived and did not have (effective) roles in the terrorist event,” a statement Monday from Iran’s president, its judiciary chief and its parliament speaker said.
ICE came to my brother-in-law Saly’s apartment, broke down the door, trashed the place, handcuffed him, and put a gun to his daughter-in-law’s head. They did not allow him to put on proper clothing and forced him outside in freezing weather.
As snow falls, an elderly man wearing nothing but blue boxers and white Crocs with his hands restrained behind his back is forced out of his home by ICE agents. A red and white plaid blanket is draped around his shoulders, but his chest is completely bare […] ChongLy Scott Thao, also known as Saly, is a Hmong American born in Laos who has lived here most of his life. Born in a Laos refugee camp, he’s a US citizen, and St. Paul, Minnesota is his home.
[…]
“There were, gosh, 10-15 agents […] They all had weapons. People were screaming to see a judicial warrant. They were ignoring everybody. Neighbors were outside.[“] […] Photos from that moment show his grandson looking out the window, a pacifier in his mouth. […] Thao was then thrown into an ICE vehicle and taken away. […] video of the whole scene, which I’ve posted to Youtube. [Reuters filmed the battering ram.]
[…] “Saly is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He has NO criminal record […] ICE drove him around for nearly an hour, questioned him, and fingerprinted him. Only after all of that did they realize he had no criminal history and no reason to be detained. They then dropped him back off at his apartment like nothing happened.”
[…]
DHS [alleged] that the operation was targeting “two convicted sex offenders” with final orders of removal from an immigration judge. She claimed, without evidence, that Thao lives with these two men and that he was detained because “he matched the description of the targets.” […] both appear to be significantly younger than him. […] Thao was taken half-naked in 10 degree weather simply because he’s Asian.
[…]
The only people residing at the home are Mr. Thao, his son, his daughter-in-law, and his young grandson. […] The family said no warrant was presented, agents did not ask for Thao’s ID, but they “nevertheless forcibly entered the home with weapons drawn.” […] Thao and his family have lived in the home for two years.
[…]
“We received reports of federal law enforcement officers going door to door, asking people where the Asian people live,[“] Mayor Her said.
* The family GoFundMe said Thao was traumatized but not physically harmed. The large red patches on his face, torso, and legs were severe psoriasis. His health has declined since the attack.
Commentary
ICE forcing their way into homes without a warrant goes SO FAR BEYOND what Kavanaugh descibes and yet it’s commonplace now.
a home invasion.
Kavanaugh himself said what they are doing is not what he said they could do.
Any one of these daily atrocities should result in a full congressional investigation and a disbanding of the agency. The fact that it’s all just shrugged off by those with the power to stop it is a national disgrace.
The bar is so low at this point I’m actually pleasantly shocked they dropped him back off at his apartment instead of just kicking him to the curb on the spot and letting him freeze to death.
If Kavanaugh isn’t careful, his blatant racism will overshadow his penchant for drunken sexual assaults.
birgerjohanssonsays
Seth Meyers: We are living in a cocaine snow globe.
Trump’s Bonkers Message to Norway Over Greenland; Nobel Committee’s Responds to Trump.
EU explores €93B Trump tariff retaliation over Greenland threats – Lynna, OM@3, linking to earlier comments
The retaliation should be aimed squarely at Trump’s techbro sycophants: Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Pichai, Altman… block their social networks, sales outlets and AI tools. Sure, no block will be fully effective, because of VPNs and Tor, but it’ll hit them in the advertising revenue, and these are the guys with real influence, not American small businesses dependent on European sales to stay solvent.
KGsays
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a daring daytime mission on Monday, aircraft from the European members of NATO flew over the White House and sprayed its airspace with antipsychotic medication.
All NATO leaders signed off on the plan with the exception of the UK’s Keir Starmer, who proposed inviting Donald Trump to yet another state dinner. – Lynna, OM@11 quoting the Borowitz Report
Borowitz is right to call out Starmer’s sycophancy (he fancies himself a “Trump whisperer” although the trade and investment deal he thought he’d negotiated turned out to be made entirely of froth). But unfortunately he’s by no means alone in NATO: leaders of Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, Turkey, Czechia are all Trumpist in political orientation – while Starmer is not, but is simply putty in Trump’s hands.
birgerjohanssonsays
Yesterday was the birthday of both Dolly Parton and Edgar Allan Poe.
I found this verse on Zuckerbergbook.
.
Working 9 to 9
For a man whose eye is ceeepy
That’s why I decide
To assault him when he’s sleepy
But his heart still beats
In the floorboards where I set it
It’s enough to drive me
Crazy if I let it!
Activists troll Trump with naked doodle card on Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday. Rachel Maddow shares photos of a giant replica of the naked woman birthday doodle that appears to have been from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein on his 50th birthday. The replica is meant to commemorate Trump’s relationship with Epstein as Epstein’s birthday approaches.
Moral principles drive faith leaders to speak out against Trump on immigration, foreign policy. Rachel Maddow shares recent examples of prominent members of the clergy speaking out against Donald Trump’s abuse anti-immigrant tactics and his belligerent foreign policy, and talks with Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, about defending immigrant members of his community and Donald Trump’s dismantling of the moral role the U.S. plays in the world.
Towns reject ICE as agency looks to place immigrant prisons throughout United States. Rachel Maddow reports on a growing number of towns and communities that are speaking out and standing up to Department of Homeland Security plans to open ICE detention and processing facilities to take in immigrants being arrested in federal raids. The rejection of ICE facilities fits into a bigger picture of pressure being put on companies and organizations that have become tacit ICE resources, from Avelo Airlines conducting deportation flights, to Home Depot allowing arrests of day laborers in their parking lots.
For Trump’s opponents, a model for finding their fight to stop him. While Donald Trump has made clear how he intends to wield his power and retain his power, the most pressing question for Americans is how his opponents intend to stop him. Jon Ralston, founder and CEO of the Nevada Independent, and author of the newly published “The Game Changer: How Harry Reid remade the rules and showed Democrats how to fight,” talks with Rachel Maddow about how the Democrats’ best political tactician and savviest fighter in living memory would have handled stopping Trump and retaking power before it’s too late.
“The administration doesn’t just want to criticize parts of the media, it also wants to control parts of the media — even if that means exceeding legal limits.”
As many service members and veterans likely know, Stars and Stripes is a military newspaper with a generations-old pedigree, and which has long described itself as the “U.S. military’s independent news source.”
The word “independent” is key: Stars and Stripes covers the military, but it has long enjoyed the same kind of editorial freedom that civilian newspapers have, even if that means publishing reports the Pentagon doesn’t always like.
It was against this backdrop that Donald Trump’s Defense Department decided it was time to change the nature of Stars and Stripes’ work. The New York Times reported:
The Pentagon on Thursday said it planned to commandeer Stars and Stripes, a government-funded newspaper that covers the military, and align it with official department messaging.
‘We will modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members,’ Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, wrote in a post on X.
The decision to effectively seize control over Stars and Stripes came roughly a month after the Pentagon held its first briefing with a group of conservative “correspondents” who agreed to cover the DOD in ways the administration approved of.
One day after the Pentagon commandeered Stars and Stripes, the public learned that CBS News had aired an unedited version of anchor Tony Dokoupil’s interview with Donald Trump following a demand from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who reportedly had threatened to sue the network if it failed to comply.
One day after that, the president said he intended to issue an executive directive that would order television networks not to air other college football games at the same time as the annual Army-Navy football game.
[…] a picture emerges of an administration that doesn’t just want to criticize parts of the media, it also wants to control parts of the media […]
Asked about Trump’s plan for an executive order on networks and college football games, for example, Jeffrey Cole, the director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism’s Center for the Digital Future, told The Washington Post: “With a stroke of a pen, the President will assert a power that any television programmer in history would have killed for. […] he has no legal power of enforcement.” […]
At least in part, Trump wants only the Army-Navy football game on TV because that is the game that he and Marco Rubio plan to attend.
“Remember the pretense that the White House’s tariffs policy was the result of ’emergency’ conditions? That’s gone now.”
Related video at the link.
There are all kinds of questions about what, exactly, Donald Trump intends to do with his so-called Board of Peace, but the president is apparently looking for countries to become members of said board, which will ostensibly have something to do with the future of Gaza.
The Republican’s pitch is, however, facing some predictable international skepticism, even as he seems to believe he can blackmail some U.S. allies into participating in the endeavor. The New York Times reported:
President Trump threatened on Monday to impose 200 percent tariffs on French wine, including Champagne, if President Emmanuel Macron of France declined to join his proposed ‘Board of Peace’ for Gaza.
France was among the countries the Trump administration invited last week to join the body, which Mr. Trump has said he plans to lead to oversee the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and supervise the rebuilding of Gaza.
During a brief Q&A with reporters on Monday night, Trump initially acknowledged that he’d invited Vladimir Putin to join the “peace” panel, which seemed utterly indefensible given the Russian leader’s obvious rejection of peace in Ukraine. Soon after, a reporter asked the American president if he had a reaction to the French president saying he doesn’t intend to be part of the endeavor. [social media post, with video]
“Oh, did he say that?” Trump replied, apparently unaware of comments that Macron had made 12 hours earlier. After suggesting that “nobody wants” Macron to be a part of the panel that Trump had invited him to join, the Republican added, “What I’ll do is, if they feel, like, hostile, I’ll put a 200% tariff on his wines and champagnes — and he’ll join.”
I have no idea whether or when Trump might follow through on such an idea, but the comment underscored a larger point that the White House has been generally reluctant to acknowledge: The entire foundation of the president’s tariff strategy is rooted in an “emergency” that doesn’t exist.
The administration and its lawyers have spent months arguing that the president must have unilateral power to impose arbitrary tariffs on U.S. trade partners — without congressional approval — in response to “emergency” conditions that necessitate dramatic action.
Except, with a Supreme Court due to rule on Trump’s trade policy any day, Trump keeps giving away the game. Brazil prosecuted a politician allied with Trump? Tariffs. European countries aren’t on board with his Greenland crusade? Tariffs. Macron isn’t interested in Trump’s “Board of Peace”? Tariffs.
The “emergency” pretense is gone (to the extent that it ever existed in the first place). If the justices notice this and rule against the White House, Trump will have no one to blame but himself.
Anders Vistisen, a Danish member of the European Parliament, shared his opinion of President Donald Trump’s Greenland aggressions during a debate Monday, making his stance very clear.
“Let me put this in words you might understand,” he said. “Mr. President: Fuck off.” [video]
Visiten’s comment comes shortly after Trump sent a message to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre Sunday night, accusing Norway of withholding the Nobel Peace Prize from him.
“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”
While Visiten was admonished for breaking the chamber’s language rules, his message was far less toothless than Republicans’ vows to rein in Dear Leader.
It has taken Trump just one year to dismantle almost all goodwill with the United States’ European allies.
Republicans are up in arms after California Gov. Gavin Newsom set a special election to fill a GOP-held House seat for Aug. 4—the latest date he could under state law.
The move ensures that the seat—left vacant when Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa died unexpectedly on Jan. 6—will be open for eight months, thereby robbing House Speaker Mike Johnson of a critical vote in his narrow and unruly majority.
“Gavin Newsom’s decision to punt this special election to August is a blatant waste of taxpayer dollars and a disservice to the people of California’s First District,” National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson whined in a statement. “He could have scheduled this election alongside the June primary, but instead chose to leave this seat vacant for months. Californians deserve a voice in Congress, and Newsom is denying them one for purely political reasons.”
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California also complained, writing in a post on X, “When its [sic] a Democrat seat, Newsom says the goal is representation as soon as possible. When its [sic] Republican, he purposely leaves constituents stranded.”
Of course, Newsom was just giving Republicans a taste of their own medicine. GOP governors have held Democratic-leaning seats open for even longer, as a way to help House Republicans.
For example, a safely Democratic House seat in Houston will have been vacant roughly 11 months, after Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott played politics and called a special election for the latest date he could.
In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis kept the seat of the late Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings vacant for nine months, starting in 2021. That robbed Democrats of a vote in a critical period of then-President Joe Biden’s first year in office.
Yet Republicans weren’t complaining then.
They whine only now, when a Democrat is using Republicans’ hardball tactics against them.
Indeed, that should be a feather in Newsom’s cap in what is expected to be a crowded Democratic primary field in the 2028 presidential race.
Newsom has consistently fought fire with fire, including shepherding through a mid-decade redistricting effort that thwarted President Donald Trump’s efforts to rig the midterm elections for Republicans.
Back in August, when Newsom launched the redistricting effort, he explained why it’s so critical that Democrats do whatever they can to fight back against Trump and the GOP.
“We’re not going to act as if anything is normal any longer,” Newsom said at the time. “It’s not about whether we play hardball anymore. It’s about how we play hardball. And California has your back.”
With his decision to hold California’s 1st District open as long as possible, Newsom is proving that to be true once again.
“The judge said he would allow Halligan to avoid attorney disciplinary proceedings for now ‘in light of her inexperience.’ ”
A federal judge has barred Trump loyalist Lindsey Halligan from “masquerading” as the top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia, but said he would allow her to avoid attorney disciplinary proceedings for now “in light of her inexperience.”
U.S. District Judge David Novak issued an order that bars “Ms. Halligan from representing herself as the United States Attorney in any pleading or otherwise before this Court until such time as she may lawfully hold the office either by Senate confirmation or appointment by this Court… should either occur.”
Novak warned that Halligan would face disciplinary referrals if she continued to improperly refer to herself as the United States Attorney. A judge ruled in November that Halligan was unlawfully serving in the role, though the Justice Department has appealed that ruling.
“The Court recognizes that Ms. Halligan lacks the prosecutorial experience that has long been the norm for those nominated to the position of United States Attorney in this District,” he wrote. “Consequently, and in light of her inexperience, the Court grants Ms. Halligan the benefit of the doubt and refrains from referring her for further investigation and disciplinary action regarding her misrepresentations to this Court at this time.”
The move came the same day as the federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia posted a job opening for a top federal prosecutor position previously occupied by Halligan.
Chief Judge M. Hannah Lauck entered an order on Tuesday ordering the clerk of the court to post a vacancy announcement, soliciting applications from attorneys interested in filling the position of Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. [LOL, kind of funny … and ridiculous that this has to be done.]
“In the exercise of the authority conferred by 28 U.S.C. § 546(d) to appoint an Interim United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia until the position is filled by a Senate confirmed person, the Court is soliciting expressions of interest in serving in that position,” the order read.
Under the law, when the position is vacant — as the chief judge declared it was — the court can “appoint a United States Attorney to serve until the vacancy is filled” by a Senate-confirmed candidate. The application deadline is listed as Feb. 10, 2026.
A judge ruled in November that Halligan was unlawfully serving in the role and dismissed cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. After President Donald Trump urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute James and Comey, frequent targets of the president’s ire, Halligan— who had no prior prosecutorial experience — presented the cases against them to federal grand jurors. […]
“Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger Launches De-Youngkinization On Day One”
“With a big middle finger to ICE and Trump, too.”
Abigail Spanberger was sworn in Saturday — wearing Suffragette white, her hand on her grandmother’s Bible — as Virginia’s first woman governor, though she’s the 75th person to hold the office. She quickly made clear that with a Democratic trifecta in the commonwealth, elected by far larger margins than outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin, it’s time to stand up to the authoritaran regime that’s taken over the federal government. She didn’t name Donald Trump, and didn’t have to. Everyone knows who eliminated the jobs of roughly 23,000 federal workers who live(d) in Virginia (plus layoffs of another 7,000 private jobs, many with companies that contracted with the federal government).
It was a good speech! Here, have a video and a transcript! [Many embedded links are available at the main link.]
[…] After the speech, Spanberger signed a package of 10 executive orders aimed at reversing some of Youngkin’s policies, and at shielding people from the economic impact of the dog’s breakfast that Trump is making of federal tax and funding policy.
Beyond the EOs, Spangberger and the new Democratic majority in both houses will decouple Virginia tax law from federal policy, a step the Lege began right after Congress passed the Big Stinky Bill:
Virginia normally conforms to federal tax law on a “rolling” basis, with some exceptions. However, state lawmakers paused that conformity in 2025 in light of the federal cuts to taxes that could have trickle-down effects on Virginia’s tax collections — to the tune of billions of dollars.
Democrats said during the opening of the General Assembly session they would not look to conform to many of new federal tax law’s provisions.
And in the most significant departure from her predecessor, she threw out Youngkin’s executive order requiring state and local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with ICE. [!!]
Youngkin only had the power to order state law enforcement agencies — Virginia State Police and the Department of Corrections — to enter into “287(g) agreements” with ICE, although his February 2025 order also encouraged local agencies to do so.
That order also created a “task force” to help ICE apprehend criminal immigrants […]
And here’s a telling data point: Not a single one of Virginia’s municipal police departments followed up by signing a 287(g) agreement. [!] But 26 sheriffs — who are elected — did. [!] Funny what happens when law enforcement priorities are subject to demagoguery.
At the signing ceremony, Spanberger said, “State and local law enforcement should not be required to divert their limited resources to enforce federal civil immigration laws.”
[…] Other orders were aimed at revamping regulations to make housing more available and affordable, and to encourage new home and apartment construction. Another order seeks to depoliticize appointments to the boards that govern Virginia higher education [yes !], thank Crom. Still others will end Youngkin’s attempts to make discrimination great again by dismantling anything that might be labeled “DEI.” You can see a full list at the Governor’s Office webpage.
Seems like Spanberger and the Virginia trifecta (not a good band name, but a good governing team) are already off to a good start. Man, we love what a Blue Trifecta can get done.
[…] Stocks and the dollar plunged after European leaders threatened retaliatory sanctions over Trump’s “blackmail” and began loudly and angrily questioning the extent to which the US is an ally, and the Danish pension fund was already divesting itself of US Treasury bonds because of US instability. Tuesday the bond sell-off snowballed with the growing uncertainty. America strong! [vdeo]
[…] a distracted NATO is not paying attention to Putin’s antics in Ukraine, and the Arctic will only become more important to world domination as the polar ice caps melt away. And as usual Trump’s brain is stuck in the ’80s. All of them! The 1680s, the 1780s, whatever AI meme bastardized from a scanned 1980s middle school textbook that Stephen Miller forwarded to Natalie Harp to put in front of his face at 1 a.m. [ridiculous images and Trump’s social media posts are available at the link.]
As European leaders fret over President Donald Trump’s bluster about Greenland, Ukrainians continue to endure one of the toughest stretches since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Spare a thought for a country that has been fighting a brutal war of national survival for nearly four years — and remains uncowed.
The Kremlin is weaponizing winter, trying to freeze its smaller neighbor into submission. Early Tuesday, Russia launched a fresh onslaught of more than 300 drones, as well as significant numbers of cruise and ballistic missiles, with most targeting the capital of Kyiv. Its mayor says more than 5,600 high-rise buildings are now without heat and about half the city of 3 million is without water. [yikes]
The high Tuesday was 17 degrees Fahrenheit. The low was four. Air raid sirens went off all night. “There is not a single power plant left in Ukraine that has not been attacked,” said Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal. [!]
Worse attacks may be coming. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warns that Russia is looking to knock out more substations connected to nuclear power plants [!], potentially endangering the operation of the plants themselves. He says Ukraine’s energy generation capacity had been reduced to 11 gigawatts, while the country needs 18 to sustain itself. Ukraine’s maximum import capacity from Europe is around 2.3 gigawatts, and allies such as Italy are rushing emergency assistance to repair parts of a badly damaged electrical grid.
Zelensky said Tuesday that his military intercepted a “significant number” of Russian missiles overnight but they had to use 80 million euros’ worth of munitions to do so. [!] He acknowledges that several systems in his country have run out of missiles. Over the weekend, a Ukrainian delegation pleaded for more during a meeting in Miami with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is not ready for peace. Trump, surprising no one, claimed last week that Zelensky remains intransigent because he won’t surrender unconquered territory to Putin, but Zelensky’s stubbornness is understandable and reflects the will of his people. Has Trump already forgotten about Putin embarrassing him with lies about an alleged Ukrainian attack on the Russian leader’s home?
[…] the front line is not moving despite the countless Russian lives Putin has been willing to sacrifice […] he has decided to terrorize Ukraine’s civilian population instead.
Putin thinks he can sap the Ukrainians of their will to fight, but the war looks sure to grind on for quite some time.
Ukraine’s new Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, a brilliant technocrat responsible for the country’s embrace of drones at scale, is busy making reforms to the military, both in procurement and recruitment. He has set a goal of killing 50,000 Russians a month. “Last month, 35,000 were killed,” he told reporters on Tuesday. “If we reach 50,000, we will see what happens to the enemy. They view people as a resource, and shortages are already evident.”
The Russian leader only responds to this kind of toughness and resolve, but the American president seems unwilling to learn that lesson. Meanwhile, Ukraine suffers.
‘Unconquerable’: What a visit to frigid Ukraine convinced me, by David Ignatius
It’s a bitterly cold Saturday night here, the temperature 10 degrees Fahrenheit and falling, and a few pedestrians are skittering down the icy sidewalks to get inside before the midnight curfew. Because the heat is out in some homes in the wake of savage Russian bombing of power facilities this month, they may have to visit one of the hundreds of warming centers in the city to get through the night.
This grim winter scene is a snapshot of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal strategy for victory. By pounding Ukraine’s sources of power and heat, he hopes to freeze the country into submission. President Donald Trump sometimes talks as if he agrees with Putin that Russian victory in this bloodbath is inevitable — and that Kyiv must give up territory in a peace deal.
But conversations here Sunday with Ukraine’s new Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov and other senior officials convinced me that this bleak picture is misleading. Ukraine will soon deploy a new generation of domestically produced air-defense interceptors, powered by artificial intelligence, that could allow the country to fight on indefinitely.
“We have a clear plan about how to stop Russia in our skies,” Fedorovsaid in a meeting Sunday in the defense ministry’s headquarters on a quiet Kyiv side street. A few minutes later, he signed an agreement with the U.S. defense software company Palantir to build an advanced AI “Dataroom.” It will use the millions of bits of sensor data and imagery that Ukraine has gathered over four years of war to train AI systems that can predict Russian attacks — and then guide cheap, autonomous interceptors to defeat them.
“It’s not about us winning, but about us becoming unconquerable,” said Andrii Hrytseniuk, chief executive of Brave1, a technology incubator that has coordinated Ukraine’s astonishing battlefield innovation with drones and AI. “The war stops when the enemy realizes that its political goals cannot be achieved,” he argued.
[…] In its desperate attempt to fend off Russia, Ukraine has developed what may be the world’s most innovative defense-technology sector. Fedorov embodies this drive. He’s just 34, dressed like a tech bro in a simple sweatshirt. But back in 2022, he convinced President Volodymyr Zelensky to seek help from Palantir and Starlink, and launched a project known as the Army of Drones.
Another champion of using technology aggressively has been 40-year-old Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the former chief of military intelligence, who Zelensky just elevated to head his presidential administration. This tech savvy is a big reason Ukraine has survived the onslaught from the much larger and more powerful Russia.
Brave1 coordinated this technology push. When the war began, Ukraine had just seven companies making small drones; a year later, it had 70, and today there are 500 [!] — producing millions of aerial drones annually, according to Hrytseniuk. Another 280 companies are developing autonomous ground vehicles — unmanned tanks, in effect. In 2022, nearly all of Ukraine’s attack strikes were from artillery; today, nearly 90 percent are by drones.
[…] Though Ukraine has fought Russia to a stalemate on the ground, its biggest weakness has been air defense. Relentless Russian attacks have destroyed power and heating plants and other critical infrastructure. Ukraine wages a brave nightly battle against as many as 1,000 missiles and drones, but the attacks have made life miserable for civilians. The Dataroom interceptor project is an attempt to create an air-defense shield to end this nightly onslaught.
[…] Putin doesn’t want to make concessions because he still thinks he can win. But Ukraine’s new network of AI-driven air defenses will make that less likely. If Ukraine can protect the civilians on Kyiv’s frozen streets — and reassure them that they won’t face another winter in the deep freeze, even if the war continues — perhaps Putin will reconsider his bet.
“The subpoenas widen the federal investigation into whether Minnesota officials conspired to impede law enforcement during the Trump administration’s immigration operations.”
Related video at the link.
The Justice Department has sent subpoenas to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and other state leaders, escalating its investigation into whether state officials conspired to impede law enforcement during the Trump administration’s immigration operations, according to a document reviewed by NBC News and a person familiar with the investigation.
The subpoenas were also sent to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, the office of St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her and two counties, according to the document and the person familiar with the probe.
[…] Frey sharply criticized the Trump administration and accused the Justice Department of misusing its power.
“When the federal government weaponizes its power to try to intimidate local leaders for doing their jobs, every American should be concerned. We shouldn’t have to live in a country where people fear that federal law enforcement will be used to play politics or crack down on local voices they disagree with,” Frey added.
“In Minneapolis, we won’t be afraid. We know the difference between right and wrong and, as Mayor, I’ll continue doing the job I was elected to do: keeping our community safe and standing up for our values,” the Democratic mayor added.
In a statement, Ellison said the subpoena was “for records and documents, not for me personally.”
“Everything about this is highly irregular, especially the fact that this comes shortly after my office sued the Trump Administration to challenge their illegal actions within Minnesota,” the state attorney general said.
“Let’s be clear about why this is happening: Donald Trump is coming after the people of Minnesota and I’m standing in his way,” Ellison added. “I will not be intimidated, and I will not stop working to protect Minnesotans from Trump’s campaign of retaliation and revenge.”
[…] Federal officials are also investigating Good’s partner to determine whether she may have impeded a federal officer moments before Good was shot and killed, two people familiar with the investigation said.
Walz has said previously: “The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her.” He was referring to ICE officer Jonathan Ross, a war veteran who spent over a decade working for the Department of Homeland Security.
“For those concerned with the integrity of the Social Security system, the latest allegations are extraordinary — legal accountability or not.”
Related video at the link.
Within weeks of Donald Trump’s second inaugural, members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team showed up at the Social Security Administration and started demanding access to files. The efforts were not well received: Michelle King, in her capacity as the acting Social Security commissioner, resigned after refusing a DOGE request to access the agency’s sensitive government records.
Months later, Charles Borges, who served at the time as the SSA chief data officer, filed a remarkable whistleblower complaint that alleged members of the DOGE operation had uploaded a copy of a highly sensitive database to a vulnerable cloud server, creating “enormous vulnerabilities.”
In fact, The New York Times reported that the database in question included “individuals’ full names, addresses and birth dates, among other details that could be used to steal their identities, making it one of the nation’s most sensitive repositories of personal information.”
As this year gets underway, not only is the DOGE team facing new accusations about the misuse of Social Security data, but the Trump administration revealed in a court filing last week that this might actually have happened. Politico reported:
Two members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team working at the Social Security Administration were secretly in touch with an advocacy group seeking to ‘overturn election results in certain states,’ [!!!] and one signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to match state voter rolls, the Justice Department revealed in newly disclosed court papers.
Elizabeth Shapiro, a top Justice Department official, said SSA referred both DOGE employees for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from using their official positions for political purposes.
At this point, it’s worth emphasizing that the Trump White House has repeatedly indicated that it simply doesn’t care about the Hatch Act, a federal ethics law intended to limit the political activities of federal workers, and has treated it like the punchline to a joke.
Put another way, even if DOGE members are found to have violated the Hatch Act in this case, it would be up to the Trump administration to punish them, and that seems extraordinarily unlikely. For that matter, even if there were reason to believe the unnamed officials in question crossed other legal lines, it’s hard to believe that the hyperpoliticized Justice Department would take such allegations seriously. Indeed, prosecutors who even took a second look at the matter might risk getting fired, given the degree to which Main Justice has been corrupted.
But for those concerned with the integrity of the Social Security system, the allegations are extraordinary, whether or not these individuals face any accountability. The court filing describes incidents in which members of DOGE shared Social Security data on unapproved third-party servers and might also have retrieved private information they weren’t supposed to be able to access under an existing court order.
An Axios report characterized the court filing as “a stunning admission from the Trump administration, after it battled in court over DOGE’s rights to access and use Social Security data as part of its effort to uncover fraud and waste.”
The White House and SSA officials did not respond to Politico’s requests for comment. Watch this space.
Right-wing billionaire Elon Musk continues to exert his influence over the Republican Party, this time with a $10 million donation to a political action committee backing Senate candidate Nate Morris in Kentucky.
Axios reported Monday that Musk made the donation after meeting with Vice President JD Vance and other senior White House officials in November. The contribution is Musk’s largest ever to a Senate candidate.
So far, nine other Republican candidates have declared their candidacy for the seat, which is being vacated by retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell.
The donation comes at an awkward time for Musk and Morris. Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, has recently been blocked in several countries after it generated unauthorized sexual images of people—including children. The bot is also under investigation in California.
Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont slammed the donation, highlighting the transaction as a symptom of the corrupting influence of money over politics.
“Are we really living in a democracy when the richest man on earth can spend as much as he wants to elect his candidates?” Sanders wrote on X. “The most important thing our nation can do is end Citizens United and move to public funding of elections. Billionaires can’t be allowed to buy elections.”
Morris is a friend of Vance’s from when they worked together in the venture capital industry. A self-labeled MAGA extremist, Morris once said that he supports a ban on legal immigration until undocumented people residing in the United States are removed. [!!]
[…] Musk has announced plans to support other Republican candidates this year—a reversal from his very public fight with Trump in 2025. […]
EU leaders have toughened their position and want the European Commission to ready its most powerful trade weapon against the U.S. if Donald Trump doesn’t walk back his Greenland threats.
Germany has joined France in saying it will ask the Commission to explore unleashing the Anti-Coercion Instrument at the emergency EU leaders’ summit in Brussels on Thursday evening, according to five diplomats with knowledge of the situation.
[…] What governments request of the Commission will be decided largely by what the U.S. president says in his address at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday. While several European leaders have been trying to arrange meetings with Trump on the Davos sidelines to talk him down from imposing the tariffs, they are also preparing for the possibility that Trump follows through on his threats.
Trump on Saturday announced he would slap a 10 percent tariff on NATO allies that have opposed his move to take Greenland, including France, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, the U.K., Norway, Sweden and Finland. The U.S. leader has since escalated further, threatening a 200 percent tariff on French wine and Champagne. [!]
Aside from the anti-coercion tool, or “trade bazooka,” leaders have also discussed using an earlier retaliation package that would impose tariffs on €93 billion worth of U.S. exports. Two of the EU diplomats indicated that it is possible to impose the tariffs first, while the Commission goes through the more cumbersome process of launching the powerful trade weapon.
“There is a convergence with the Germans, there’s an awakening on their part, that we have to stop being naive,” said a senior French official, referring to using the bazooka against Washington. […]
[…] The trade weapon is one of the EU’s main levers against the U.S. because it includes a wide range of possible measures such as imposing tariffs, restricting exports of strategic goods, or excluding U.S. companies from tenders. A decision to use the instrument would not be taken lightly because it would have a significant impact on the EU economy.
[…] Pulling the trigger on the ACI would require the support of at least 15 countries in the Council of the EU.
Diplomats hope that Trump ally Giorgia Meloni will also get on board. As the EU’s third-biggest country, Italy’s joining the push would be an important display of unity, they said.
[…] For now Rome has indicated it would prefer to continue de-escalatory talks with Washington, while the position of fellow potential ally Poland is still unclear. However, with France and Germany’s positions converging, pressure on Rome and Warsaw to fall into line with the rest of the bloc will be intense.
Key to the evolution of Germany’s position on hitting back at Trump is buy-in for such a move from industry.
Bertram Kawlath, president of the VDMA German machine builders’ association, called for Brussels to consider using the anti-coercion tool, despite the fact that the European mechanical industry is “already disproportionately affected by the U.S. tariffs.”
Last year, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first at-home test that can detect three common infections in women—gonorrhea, chlamydia and trichomoniasis—as well as the first home-based kit for [HPV]. [A Syphilis test was approved in 2024].
The agency ended the year by approving two different drugs for gonorrhea, the first new options for the disease in decades.
[…]
As more people test at home it could become harder to track national infection rates, which previously have been reported by a handful of large testing laboratories. Additionally, the new tests and drugs come with higher price tags that may limit access. For example, Visby’s $150 test is not covered by insurance.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Lynna @50: Eric Columbus: “The funny (?) thing is that Halligan’s temporary gig would expire today even if she had been validly appointed. [Screenshot]”
U.S. military forces boarded and took control of a seventh oil tanker connected with Venezuela on Tuesday as the Trump administration continues its efforts to take control of the oil in the South American country. U.S. Southern Command said in a social media post that U.S. forces apprehended the Motor Vessel Sagitta ‘without incident’ and that the tanker was ‘operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean.’
A startled British government on Tuesday defended its decision to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, after U.S. President Donald Trump attacked the plan, which his administration had previously supported.
In recognition of the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s second inaugural, the White House released a list of “365 wins” from the past year. One of the entries gave the president credit for delivering “a historic stock-market rebound, with the major stock indices all hitting repeated new record highs.”
It was a flawed boast for a variety of reasons. For one thing, while the major indexes improved in 2025, nothing about the results was “historic.” For another, given that the U.S. stock market had a very good year in 2024, characterizing that growth as a “rebound” didn’t make sense, either. (Also left unsaid is the fact that several major economies internationally fared better than the United States on stock market growth. [True])
But perhaps most notable of all was the problem the White House didn’t see coming: the bad timing of the boast. The New York Times reported:
President Trump’s intensifying standoff with European leaders over the fate of Greenland prompted a sharp response from investors Tuesday, with the value of U.S. stocks, the dollar and government bonds all falling.
The S&P 500 dropped over 2 percent for the first time since October, as investors reacted to Mr. Trump’s increasing threat of higher tariffs on European allies unless they supported his plans for America to take control of Greenland.
It’s worth emphasizing that the Vix index — sometimes referred to in financial circles as the “panic index” — jumped, reaching levels unseen in months. [!]
As an NBC News report, assessing the overall losses, noted, “The S&P 500 ended lower by around 2.1%, while the Nasdaq Composite plunged more than 2.4%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped around 870 points. The S&P 500’s losses Tuesday erased the index’s gains for the year so far. The Nasdaq is now down more than 1% in 2026.”
The same report added that the sell-off “amounted to more than $1 trillion in value wiped out from the S&P 500.” [!]
Happy Anniversary, Mr. President.
If recent history is any guide, the White House will suggest the downturn is unrelated to Trump, his radical Greenland crusade or to the tariffs that risk a trade war with U.S. partners in Europe.
But there’s no great mystery as to what drove Tuesday’s events on Wall Street. “This is ‘sell America’ again within a much broader global risk,” Krishna Guha, head of global policy and central banking strategy at Evercore ISI, wrote in a message to clients.
Donald Trump marked the one-year anniversary of his return to the presidency with a press conference on Tuesday. However, instead of addressing the issues on which his administration is failing, Trump rambled and ranted about a host of other topics. [video]
A considerable amount of Trump’s time was dedicated to justifying the killing of Minnesota mother Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.
“They’re going to make mistakes sometimes. ICE is going to be too rough with somebody—you know, they deal with rough people. Are they going to make a mistake? Sometimes it can happen,” Trump said.
Trump inaccurately claimed that Good’s father was “a tremendous Trump fan” and that “I hope he still feels that way.” This appears to actually be a reference to Good’s former father-in-law, whom conservative outlets like Fox News have touted because he said he doesn’t blame ICE for the killing. [video]
Trump also criticized a woman, apparently Good’s wife, Becca Good, who witnessed the killing.
“When [Good] was shot, there was another woman that was screaming ‘shame, shame, shame, shame,’ right? We saw it. So loud. Like a professional opera singer, she was so loud and so professional,” Trump said.
The right has repeatedly pushed the made-up conspiracy theory that people protesting against ICE actions in Minnesota are paid political agitators. [video]
In another section of his rambling speech, Trump held up mugshots of purported criminals who were also allegedly undocumented immigrants, using the photos to justify the brutality of ICE’s actions across the country. [video]
As has often been the case during his time in the public eye, Trump made racist remarks. This time, it was his decision to call the majority-Black nation of Somalia “a backward country” where “they just have people running around, killing each other, and trying to pirate ships.”
Trump and other Republicans have recently attacked the Somali immigrant community in Minnesota for attacks and racist smears, most notably singling out Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar. [video]
In response to criticism of his deployment of armed federal troops to American cities with large minority populations, Trump said, “To me, a town, it looks better when you have military people. These are big, strong guys. The bad guys look at them and say, ‘We’re not gonna mess with them.’”
He argued that crime has fallen in the cities where federal forces were deployed, which is generally false. (Crime rates were already going down under former President Joe Biden.)
“Your lover’s not going to be killed anymore, so he can act like a real lover,” he said. “You can walk right through the middle of the town. And D.C. is beautiful again too.” [video]
Trump also returned to a favorite topic of his—long-debunked conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. He claimed the race was “rigged” and that “numbers are coming out that show it even more plainly.”
None of this is true. Trump lost to Biden because more people voted for Biden.
The cringeworthy event reinforced why, after a year back in the presidency, Trump faces numerous crises of his own making. Costs are generally up, people live in fear of being harassed and killed by their own government, and the United States has become an international pariah.
Even Trump’s longtime allies at Fox News have begun to admit his unpopularity is a drag on the party. […]
President Donald Trump gave a long—and very ponderous—press conference Tuesday, stepping in for propaganda princess Karoline Leavitt.
At one point in his incoherent rant, Trump launched into a reverie about reviving archaic “mental institutions” with “bars on the windows.” Yes, really.
“I grew up in Queens, we had a place called Creedmoor [Psychiatric Center],” Trump said, “Creedmoor. Did anybody know that? Creedmoor. It was a big … I said, ‘Mom, why are those bars on the building?’ I used to play little league baseball there at a place called Cunningham Park. I was quite the baseball player, you wouldn’t believe. But I said to my mother, ‘Mom,’ she would be there, always there for me. She said, ‘Son, you could be a professional baseball player.’ I said, ‘Thanks, mom.’ I said, ‘Why are those bars on the windows?’” [video]
He went on to blame Democrats for the deinstitutionalization of the 1970s and 1980s, saying it caused many people to become homeless.
But as psychiatric treatments improved, Creedmoor—like most state-run mental health facilities—saw a decline in its number of patients.
The Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, signed by former President Jimmy Carter, was designed to serve as a critical safety net for people who couldn’t obtain mental health services. The legislation was promptly defunded and effectively dismantled by former President Ronald Reagan.
But after blaming Democrats for the end of an older, more barbaric era in mental health care, Trump circled back to his childhood memories.
“It wasn’t normal, you know?” he said. “You’re used to looking at, like, a window. But this one you’re looking at all the steel—vicious steel, tiny windows, bars all over the place. Nobody was getting out. It’s called the mental institution. That was an insane asylum.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani visited “The View” on Tuesday, where he reiterated his staunch opposition to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, saying it is an “entity that has no interest in fulfilling its stated reason to exist.”
“I am in support of abolishing ICE,” Mamdani said. “We’re seeing a government agency that is supposed to be enforcing some kind of immigration law, but instead what it’s doing is terrorizing people—no matter their immigration status, no matter the facts of the law, no matter the facts of the case.” [video]
Mamdani told the show’s hosts that he has no intention of negotiating the dissolution of our country’s civil rights laws with President Donald Trump amid threats he will unleash his ICE goons on New Yorkers. He emphasized that immigration laws do not support Trump’s invasion of American cities.
“What we are talking about is not people who are convicted of serious crimes. We’re talking about people whose crimes simply seems to be being in New York City,” he said.
The mayor said he’s determined to stand up for his city.
“I am trying to inspire amongst New Yorkers a sense of faith and belief in what government can do,” Mamdani explained. “And it’s very hard to do that when they look at masked agents and see them as another face of a similar government—because then they ask themselves, am I supposed to trust or am I supposed to fear?” [video]
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are violating Minnesotans’ civil rights, including those of off-duty officers, Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley said in a Tuesday briefing.
“[As] recently as the last two weeks, we as the law enforcement community have been receiving these complaints about civil rights violations, and our streets from U.S. citizens,” Bruley told reports. “What we’re hearing is they’re being stopped in traffic stops or on the street with no cause and being forced to demand paperwork to determine if they are here legally. As this went on over the past two weeks. We started hearing from our police officers. The same complaint as they fell victim to this while off duty.”
He went on to say that each of the individuals targeted is “a person of color.”
“In Brooklyn Park, one particular officer that has shared her story with me was stopped as she passed ICE going down the roadway. When they boxed her in they demanded her paperwork of which she’s a U.S. citizen,” said Bruley, noting that as a U.S. citizen she wouldn’t have any “paperwork.”
“When she became concerned about the rhetoric and the way she’s been treated, she pulled out her phone and attempted to record the incident. The phone was knocked out of her hands, preventing her from recording it,” the police chief continued. “The officer had their guns drawn during this interaction. And after the officer became so concerned they were forced to identify themselves as a Brooklyn Park police officer in hopes of slowing the incident and de-escalating the incident down.” […]
“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. It has to stop. This behavior erodes the trust that these police chiefs, who worked tirelessly for the last 5 years, and theoretically in the last 60 years, to stop this exact behavior from happening,” he added.
JMsays
@61 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain: The timing is surely not an accident. Part of the whole point of this argument is that Pam Bondi can’t just keep appointing people as temporary interim US Attorneys over and over as a way around getting Senate approval.
JMsays
@63 Lynna, OM: The US seizing these ships is violating international standards and possibly illegal but on the plus side it is cutting off one of the ways Russia was escaping from sanctions. Russia was shipping oil to Venezuela and then passing it off as oil from Venezuela, letting them sell it to a wider audience at higher prices.
birgerjohanssonsays
German spoof article: “Vienna Academy of the Arts offers Trump admission as a student – they don’t want to get blamed again”.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
ICE is Kavanaugh stopping and drawing guns on Minnesota cops now.
the last 2 weeks, we […] have been receiving endless complaints about civil rights violations […] from US citizens. […] they’re being stopped in traffic stops or on the street with no cause to demand paperwork to determine if they are here legally. […] we started hearing from our police officers, the same complaints as they fell victim to this while off-duty. Every one of these individuals is a person of color who has had this happen to them.
[Agents] boxed [one officer] in, they demanded her paperwork, of which she’s a US citizen and clearly would not have any paperwork. […] she pulled out her phone in an attempt to record the incident. The phone was knocked out of her hands […] the [agents] had their guns drawn during this interaction. […] [she was] forced to identify [as a] police officer in hopes of deescalating […] the agents then immediately left after hearing this, making no other comments, no other apologies
[…]
many of the chiefs standing behind me have similar incidents with their off-duty officers.
[…]
When you call ICE leadership or you call Border Patrol leadership […] they’re unable to tell you what their people were doing that day. […] They like to give you a website to go file a complaint, but the complaint requires the identity of the agents. The agents don’t have nametags on. They cover their face. They don’t have body cameras.
[…]
I have contacts through 30 years of law enforcement […] in ICE, HSI, and others. […] I just fundamentally don’t believe that it’s coming from the top. I don’t think that the leaders in Washington, DC fully understand what some of the groups are doing here on the street […] what actual evidence do I have? None, other than agents that I’ve talked to and leadership in certain groups of teams have made it clear this is unacceptable behavior […] I fundamentally believe that this is a small group […] What is a ‘small group’? I absolutely have no idea […] who it is or how many, but I know it is a small portion of the whole.
That excusing is delusional. The admin is flamboyantly white supremacist, reveling in reckless force without regard for law. Also the specific orders for ICE occupations have been documented.
in late May, Stephen Miller […] the architect of the president’s immigration agenda, addressed a meeting at [ICE HQ]. The message was clear: The president, who promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, wasn’t pleased. The agency had better step it up. […] Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores.
But if one were to single out a small group of the worst…
In Greg Bovino’s deposition for the Chicago Book Club lawsuit, plaintiffs counsel Locke Bowman asked whether Kristi Noem gave him direction on the use of force. She does not.
But when Bowman asked Bovino if he had spoken to Stephen Miller about use of force, the DOJ lawyer […] instructed him not to answer [invoking executive privilege].
Bowman also noted that in a TV appearance, Bovino said he took his instructions from the Executive Branch, whether Trump or Kristi Noem. The implication is fairly clear: That Stephen Miller is the one instructing him on use of force.
it is very important for people to maintain distinction bt ICE & CBP. That’s bc CBP’s Greg Bovino takes orders directly from the White House. Jonathan Ross is ICE but Bovino was present. Bovino [is] involved in MANY of worst incidents.
While we’re definitely seeing some of the new ICE goons in MN, Ross and Charles Exum (who shot Marimar Martinez in circumstances not dissimilar from the killing of Good) are both highly trained, and they are doing what Stephen Miller wants them to do.
Under the law, ICE is required to provide necessary medical care for this population. While ICE employs some of its own medical staff, it often uses third-party providers. ICE’s Buffalo Federal Detention Facility, for example, houses over 500 detainees and has no doctor or dentist on staff.
ICE, however, has not paid any third-party providers for medical care for detainees since October 3, 2025. Last week, ICE posted a notice on an obscure government website announcing it will not begin processing such claims until at least April 30. Until then, medical providers are instructed “to hold all claims submissions.” ICE’s failure to pay its bills for months has caused some medical providers to deny services to ICE detainees […] In other cases, detainees have allegedly been denied essential medical care by ICE.
[…]
Beginning in 2002, […] When a detainee needed medication or treatment that the ICE facility could not directly provide, the VA Financial Services Center processed reimbursement claims from pharmacies and third-party medical providers. ICE paid the VA for this service—no resources were diverted from veterans.
Beginning in 2023, however, […] Republican officials and right-wing media outlets. […] claimed Biden was “robbing veterans to pay off illegals.”
After Trump’s election, criticism […] quieted down until, on September 30, 2025, […] a small right-wing nonprofit, filed a lawsuit […] to compel the Trump administration to respond to a public records request for documents regarding the VA’s role
[…]
the VA “abruptly and instantly terminated” its agreement with ICE on October 3. That cancellation […] left ICE with “no mechanism to provide prescribed medication” and unable to “pay for medically necessary off-site care.” Among the services ICE said it could not provide were “dialysis, prenatal care, oncology, [and] chemotherapy.” […] The situation was described by ICE as an “absolute emergency” that needed to be resolved “immediately”
[…]
More than three months later […] Acentra, one of the companies that won the ICE contract to replace the VA, says it will not be ready to process claims until at least April 30. […] the situation with ICE detainees has grown so dire that the VA is now working to potentially bring its claims processing back online temporarily
[…]
data shows that, in 2024, the VA processed $246.4 million in medical claims […] In 2025, despite an 83 percent increase in the daily detained population, the VA processed just $157.2 million in claims. […] the data suggests a nearly $300 million gap between needed care from third-party providers and what ICE paid. This gap is a combination of unpaid bills since October 3 and ICE detainees who are simply being denied necessary medical treatment.
birgerjohanssonsays
KING GORGE.
Jimmy Kimmel: “Trump on Verge of War Over Nobel Peace Prize Snub & He Celebrates His First Year In Office.”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=22TJbqBCQA0
They will terrorise you
And call you a terrorist
They will threaten you
And call you a threat.
There is blood in the snow
Where her life drained out
Is America great again yet?
.- Sarah Daly.
Typed out off desktop screen, any typios mine.
Silentbobsays
@ 82 StevoR
Is this a black tie affair?
birgerjohanssonsays
“Trump Attacks World Then Forgets How To Speak … Leaders Go Silent!”
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES
‘F*** off’: World HITS BACK as Trump’s aggression shocks global leaders. “These allies are becoming aware that the most powerful person in the world is a danger and threat to it and making the world order unstable,” says Chris Hayes.
Video is 9:47 minutes
birgerjohanssonsays
Martin Shaw turns 81 today. He has played many roles from The Professionals, and the successor of Roy Marsden in the role of inspector Dalgleish. Wikipedia:
For all of Donald Trump’s misguided boasts about his economic expertise, the president can’t seem to overcome his own economic illiteracy, frequently referencing phrases and concepts that he doesn’t seem to understand at a basic level.
In a recent News Nation interview, for example, the Republican said the United States’ wealth reached its apex in 1887, which didn’t make any sense at all. Hours earlier, he had boasted about lowering the cost of prescription drugs by 600%, which still isn’t how numbers work.
On the U.S. job market — an especially difficult subject for Trump given the severity of his failures — the president bragged that fired federal workers now like him “a lot” because they’ve all received high-paying jobs in the private sector, which might make sense were it not for the struggling private-sector job market that has emerged since the Republican returned to the White House.
But during his lengthy press conference on the anniversary of his second inaugural, one assertion stood out as especially ridiculous. [video]
“Fourth quarter GDP is on track to pass perhaps much more than 5% growth,” Trump said, referring to the nation’s gross domestic product. He added, “Nobody in this room has ever heard about 5%. I think it could be 20% if we do it right.”
So, a few things.
First, the idea that 5% quarterly GDP growth is unheard of is plainly wrong. In fact, the U.S. saw quarterly GDP growth of 7% twice in the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency, which wasn’t really that long ago.
Second, most sensible officials recognize the importance of underpromising and overdelivering, especially after having already failed to deliver on earlier GDP promises. And yet, Trump keeps raising the bar, creating a dynamic in which even strong growth will likely disappoint the president’s unrealistic expectations.
But even if we put that aside, I’m stuck on the president’s claim that U.S. economic growth “could be 20%.”
As a matter of historical record, never in recorded history has the U.S. ever seen 20% growth. In 1942, when domestic production roared at the start of World War II, GDP growth reached nearly 19% — and we haven’t reached double digits since, even during economic booms.
We wouldn’t even want to see growth that robust, since it would invariably lead to breathtaking levels of inflation. [True]
As Trump really ought to understand, the numbers he casually threw around are not going to happen — and should not happen.
Whining about his weak public support on the economy, the president added at his press conference, “Maybe I have bad public relations people.” Or maybe he has bad policies that are a direct result of his profound ignorance?
[…] The president published a post to his social media platform on Tuesday:
The Department of Homeland Security and ICE must start talking about the murderers and other criminals that they are capturing and taking out of the system. They are saving many innocent lives! … Show the Numbers, Names, and Faces of the violent criminals, and show them NOW. The people will start supporting the Patriots of ICE, instead of the highly paid troublemakers, anarchists, and agitators!
The obvious problem with messages like this is that Trump is peddling assertions that are entirely fictional. The people protesting ICE tactics in Minnesota, for example, are not “highly paid troublemakers.” For that matter, the proposition that ICE agents are only capturing “violent criminals” is belied by the statistics that show most of its targets do not have criminal records.
But the less obvious problem is the one that the president doesn’t appear to understand on a conceptual level. To hear Trump tell it, when the Department of Homeland Security and ICE “start talking” about their work, the American public will learn what agents have been up to and be duly impressed.
In reality, the American public already knows what ICE agents have been up to. That’s the problem.
To conclude that the agency is struggling with a public relations crisis is to overlook the inconvenient fact that DHS and ICE are guided by the wrong policies, not the wrong talking points. [!]
At issue are masked, heavily armed federal agents acting with impunity, terrorizing communities, harassing and detaining citizens and noncitizens alike, while racially profiling its victims.
DHS leaders such as Kristi Noem and Tricia McLaughlin have invested all kinds of time and effort doing exactly what the president has recommended, taking their case to the American people, but this hasn’t worked: The American mainstream is rightly repulsed by what it’s seen and learned about ICE tactics.
In a New York Times opinion piece, writer Radley Balko concluded, “We can still stop these abuses of power, but we need to be clear about what we’re facing. This is no longer a conversation about law enforcement or immigration policy. This is about authoritarianism.”
The sooner the president comes to terms with the failures of his administration’s policies and stops pitching a new PR strategy, the safer the public will be.
[…] other world leaders at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland […]
The Wall Street Journal reported:
President Trump is showing up for an annual gathering of the global elite here in the Swiss Alps, swinging a wrecking ball at the international order. […]
The reactions from many U.S. allies and partners, some of them aired in public, many of them still only expressed in private, are stark: Trump’s America seems to have lost its mind.
The most dramatic example of such perceptions came during Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s prepared remarks at the gathering, in which he declared, “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” Without explicitly referencing Trump, Carney went on to describe “the breaking of the world order,” a “brutal reality” in which leading world powers no longer feel “subject to any constraint” as they “abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interest.”
Carney was not alone. French President Emmanuel Macron similarly made clear that his country would not capitulate to Trump’s bullying. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said that he and his allies tried to “appease” the White House, but that those efforts have run their course.
“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 so many red lines are being crossed that you have the choice between your self-respect,” he continued. “Being a happy vassel 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.”
Around the same time, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk published an item to social media in which he declared, “Appeasement is always a sign of weakness. Europe cannot afford to be weak — neither against its enemies, nor ally. Appeasement means no results, only humiliation.”
International skepticism of Trump and his agenda is not altogether new, but as the American president’s radicalism becomes more dangerous and destabilizing, the reactions of some of the United States’ closest allies of longest standing is qualitatively different from anything we’ve yet seen in the modern era.
The emerging picture is one in which leading nations — treaty allies, neighbors, trading partners and friends — see a Trump-led U.S. as an erratic menace, a once-great hegemonic power descending into madness and risking global stability.
In their wildest dreams, America’s foreign adversaries couldn’t have written a better script.
Before the audience in Davos, President Donald Trump repeated a claim on Wednesday that he’s said before — that the Russian war on Ukraine “wouldn’t have started” if the 2020 U.S. presidential election “weren’t rigged.” [What the fuck?!] [video at the link]
One thing is for certain: The 2020 election was not stolen. Biden earned 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. Trump’s allegations of massive voting fraud have been broadly refuted.
Trump, who has long been calling for prosecutions related to the 2020 election, added that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did. [bluster and lies]” […]
“Pentagon orders more active-duty soldiers to ready for possible Minneapolis deployment.”
“The department has issued a ready to deploy order for a Army military police brigade stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.”
The Pentagon has ordered active-duty military police soldiers based in North Carolina to prepare for possible deployment to Minneapolis, three people familiar with the matter told MS NOW.
A prepare-to-deploy order was issued yesterday for members of an Army military police brigade stationed at Fort Bragg, two of the people told MS NOW. At least a few hundred soldiers are being prepared for the possible mobilization to Minneapolis, two of the people said. All of the sources spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the deployments.
[…] The possible infusion of military police is in addition to the Pentagon orders last Friday that two battalions with the Army’s 11th Airborne Division prepare to deploy. The 11th Airborne is stationed in Alaska and specializes in winter weather conditions. Each infantry battalion has at least 500 soldiers.
The potential deployment would come as thousands of immigration agents continue to clash with Minnesota residents and protesters in Minneapolis after the killing of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. A military police brigade would have some law enforcement training and typically have experience in providing security, securing routes and performing crowd control.
When Trump deployed about 700 active-duty Marines to Los Angeles last summer, they primarily stood guard around federal buildings, including a detention center.
If these personnel are deployed in the interior of the United States, they cannot engage in civilian law enforcement unless Trump follows through on his escalating threats to invoke the centuries-old Insurrection Act. The law allows the president to deploy active-duty troops in response to a “rebellion.”
Trump’s racist BS about Somali immigrants, as presented in Davos:
During a bizarre speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, President Donald Trump revisited his own appallingly racist claims—both insisting that the country of Somalia “stinks” and is populated by “low-IQ people,” and peddling his administration’s assertion that Somali immigrants in Minnesota have masterminded a welfare fraud scheme.
“Somalia—they turned out to be higher IQ than we thought,” Trump rambled to the Davos audience, undercutting his own racist claims while also remaining plenty racist. “I always say these are low-IQ people. How do they go into Minnesota and steal all that money? And we have, you know, they’re pirates—they’re good pirates, right?” [video]
Having already doubled down on being a racist dirtbag, Trump proceeded to triple down on it, defending his authoritarian attack on Minnesota and smearing Somalia, the concept of immigration, and Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, whom he dismissed as a “fake congressperson.”
“Ilhan Omar, talking about ‘The Constitution that provides me …’ She comes from a country that’s not a country, and she’s telling us how to run America,” Trump blathered. “Not going to get away with it much longer, let me tell you.” [JFC] [video]
The translators at Davos should be getting double-time pay.
Mainstream media outlets on Wednesday once again reported on a strange, rambling speech by President Donald Trump as if it were a normal presentation, continuing the tradition of “sanewashing” his rhetoric and misinforming their audiences.
Trump’s presentation before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, had him referring to Greenland mistakenly as Iceland as part of his near-constant fuming about the need for the United States to take over sovereign territory. [video]
But soon after the speech was over, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer characterized Trump’s rant “very strong,” betraying the haphazard and unfocused remarks that had just aired on the news network.
The New York Times reported on the speech in a piece headlined “Trump Threatens Europe Over Greenland but Rules Out Sending Troops.” That was based on Trump’s statement, “I don’t have to use force. I don’t want to use force. I won’t use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland.”
But this ignores Trump’s considerable history during his time as a tabloid media figure, a reality TV host, and as a politician during which he has lied with abandon. Trump’s claim that he would not use force against Greenland should rationally be put in context of his past claim that President Barack Obama was not a natural born citizen (a lie) or that climate change was a “hoax” from China (a massive lie). [video]
During his Davos speech, Trump also claimed that in Greenland, which he referred to as Iceland, they “love me, they call me daddy.” But just this past weekend, a large protest against Trump was held in Greenland, not to mention remarks from Danish leadership.
The strange “daddy” comment—conservatives are obsessed with this cringe-inducing rhetoric—was not noted in the Times report. It was also scrubbed from the Washington Post and Associated Press write-ups.
As they did in his first term, the mainstream media is reporting on a version of Trump that does not exist. They paint Trump as a far more sober and sane person than the man the entire world, including millions of Americans, can see right before their very eyes.
His actions and remarks create global instability and lead to loss of life. But for the mainstream press, sanitizing Trump takes precedent over reporting the truth.
whheydtsays
Re: Lynna, OM @ #94…
In one sense, its possible that, had That Felon in the White House, been elected in 2020, the Russian war on Ukraine might not have happened. It would have been because Trump simply forced everyone to hand Ukraine to Putin.
[…] Trump’s largely incoherent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is unlikely to quell the growing questions about his mental fitness after he flubbed the name of the arctic territory he wants to conquer.
On multiple occasions, Trump incorrectly referred to Greenland as Iceland, a nearby country.
First, Trump blamed Tuesday’s stock market slide on “Iceland,” saying, “They’re not there for us on Iceland, that I can tell you. I mean, our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland has already cost us a lot of money.” [video]
Of course, the stock market dipped because investors were rightly concerned about Trump’s rage-fueled tariff threat against our NATO allies, who rightly stood with Denmark and against Trump’s threats to take the country by force.
Then Trump talked about how our NATO allies were happy with him until he started talking about taking Greenland by force—which yeah, no shit.
“Until the last few days, when I told them about Iceland, they loved me. They called me daddy,” Trump said, once again flubbing the name of Greenland and using a word we hope to never hear come from his spittle-flecked mouth ever again. [video]
The fact that Trump is confusing the name of the territory he has been bizarrely consumed with conquering gives fuel to Democrats’ argument that Trump’s Cabinet officials need to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. The 25th Amendment allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to determine that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and thus remove him from the role.
“The president of the United States is extremely mentally ill and it’s putting all of our lives at risk,” Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona wrote in a post on X after Trump embarrassingly told the Norwegian prime minister that his demands to conquer Greenland were the result of him not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. “The 25th Amendment exists for a reason—we need to invoke it immediately.”
“Donald Trump is unfit to lead and clearly out of control. Invoke the 25th Amendment,” Democratic Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California wrote in a post on X.
Trump, for his part, has been defiant that there are no problems with his health or cognitive abilities, even though we all see with our own eyes that he can’t stay awake at events, has bruising on his hands, and speaks like an incoherent fool.
The fact that he keeps confusing the territory he wants to take over—though apparently not by military force, he said on Wednesday—will do nothing to assuage those concerns.
“Donald Trump is overseas embarrassing America on the world stage. Again,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote in a post on X.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) was denied entry to the USA House in Davos, Switzerland, where he was invited to speak during the World Economic Forum.
“Under pressure from the White House and State Department, USA House (a church acting as the official US pavilion) is now denying entry to @CAGovernor Gavin Newsom to speak with media after Fortune — the official media partner — invited him to speak,” his press office wrote in a statement on the social platform X. […]
“RFK Jr. Must Be So Proud: South Carolina Racks Up 646 Measles Cases In Latest Outbreak”
“Clearly this is all going according to plan.”
On Tuesday, USA Today published a new mini-documentary in its Extremely Normal series — which examines how groups and ideas previously considered “extreme” have found their way into the mainstream — about “crunchy MAHA moms” who love natural foods and hate vaccines. To absolutely no one’s surprise, these “crunchy MAHA moms” spent a lot of time talking about how they just wanted more research to “prove” vaccines are safe, only to admit at the end that even if they had all the proof in the world, they still wouldn’t get their kids vaccinated, because they “haven’t dealt with any of the diseases” their kids were not vaccinated against.
Probably because, you know, other people did get their kids vaccinated.
Well, a whole lot of people are now dealing with a pretty serious outbreak of one of those diseases in South Carolina right now. Six-hundred forty-six people, to be exact(ish), have been diagnosed with measles, with 88 new cases confirmed on Tuesday. And it’s not just children. Eighty-four students at Clemson and Anderson Universities are currently being quarantined with the vaccine-preventable virus — a pretty serious situation given that, the older you are, the more deadly the disease can be.
Tuesday also happened to be the one-year anniversary of the first reported case of measles last January. If it turns out these cases are linked, that would mean the US has had a straight year of continuous measles infections. What does that mean? Well, it means that, for the first time since the year 2000, measles will no longer be considered eradicated in the United States.
[…] You know, the kinds of people who say things like “Well, if the vaccine actually works, then it shouldn’t matter to you if I vaccinate my kids or not!” despite the fact that they have been told over and over again that herd immunity is necessary to protect those too young or immunocompromised to get the vaccine, as well as the three percent of people the vaccine doesn’t work as well for. And the fact that it is, again, very clear that their decision not to vaccinate their kids has led to the virus making a comeback.
We’re also likely to see some surges of other diseases as well, pretty soon. Cases of meningitis were already on the rise, due to post-COVID anti-vaccine hysteria. Thanks to RFK Jr.’s recent decision to take that vaccine off the recommended schedule, we can expect to see even more. […]
In the documentary I mentioned earlier, RFK Jr. falsely claimed that “we know” vaccines can cause chronic disease and that the manufacturers admit on their inserts that they cause things like ADHD and diabetes, for which there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever. [!]
Well, we know that they can cause chronic disease because first of all, we have lots of data on that [we absolutely do not] [!!]. Many many studies [NOPE] […]
As someone with ADHD, allow me to be very clear when I say that A) it’s not a “chronic disease,” you absolute tool, and B) Even if that were the case, I would happily take being alive with a neurological difference than being dead without one. […]
Here is the list of adverse reactions that are actually listed by the manufacturer, none of which includes a single thing RFK Jr. mentioned.
The following adverse reactions have been identified during both the subcutaneous and intramuscular use of M-M-R®II or its components in clinical trials or reported during post-approval use: fever, rash, and injection-site reactions.
The following adverse reactions have been identified during the subcutaneous use of M-M-R®II or its components in clinical trials or reported during post-approval use: headache, dizziness, febrile convulsions, anaphylaxis and anaphylactoid reactions, arthritis, thrombocytopenia, encephalitis and encephalopathy.
This is not to say that these potential side-effects can’t be serious, but they’re also very rare [!]. Studies suggest that in 2024, only 77 percent of two-year-olds in the United States were up to date on their MMR vaccines, significantly below the 95 percent necessary to keep outbreaks from occurring. Even so, that’s still about 2.8 million babies, and there has not been a single death recorded in even one individual healthy enough to have received the vaccine. Last year, there were three measles deaths out of those 2,242 cases. Not a lot, but still a whole lot more than zero out of 2.8 million. [Good points]
So far, there haven’t been any deaths in South Carolina, and we certainly hope that continues to be the case. But if it doesn’t, it sure will be too bad, because it didn’t have to be this way.
This is all very dangerous, thank you, the president being an actually insane person! (Paul Waldman) We can all see he’s lost his goddamn mind, and those of us with parents with Alzheimer’s can see it be best. (Paul Krugman)
What comes after the American Age is maybe not that fun actually (and is A LOT of war)! (The Bulwark)
Excerpt from Paul Waldman’s post:
It’s time to say it: The president of the United States has lost his mind.
That is not hyperbole. I (and many others) have often referred to things Donald Trump has done or said as insane, deranged, mad, or unhinged. He has always been ignorant and petty and vindictive and cruel and bigoted. But this is different. Something has broken in his brain.
Is it dementia? Is it an adverse reaction to the medications he is taking? I have no idea. I am not a psychologist, and I am not offering any specific medical diagnosis. But I’ll say it again: The president of the United States has lost his mind. This is not just a national emergency, it is a global emergency.
Nothing is assured, but over the last few days it has become a real possibility that Trump will literally take the United States to war against our European allies. It would be bonkers for almost any reason, let alone the impossibly stupid reason for which he is doing it. He wants to seize Greenland against the will of not only the people who live there but the American people as well — because he’s obsessing about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize, and because it looks really big on the misleading map he saw, and because he wants to destroy NATO, and because he is desperate to show how big and powerful he is.
We can debate just how much importance each of those factors plays in the discordant cacophony clanging about his fevered mind. But this crisis is escalating, because one of one disturbed man’s increasing disconnection from reality.
This is getting out of hand […]
Excerpt from Paul Krugman’s post:
I had never heard the term “sundowning” before it happened to my own father, yet it’s a fairly common syndrome. In his last few months my father remained lucid and rational — remained himself — during daylight hours. Once the sun went down he deteriorated, becoming confused, paranoid and aggressive.
It’s terrible to watch sundowning in someone you love. But that’s a personal tragedy – not a national or global one. It’s an entirely different matter when the president of the United States is sundowning — a president surrounded by malign sycophants who tell him whatever he wants to hear and indulge his every whim, no matter how destructive.
For good reasons, it’s normally bad practice to pronounce on someone’s mental health from afar. […] But after reading the letter that Trump just sent to the prime minister of Norway (Jonas Gahr Støre has confirmed that it’s genuine) there should be no doubt that we have a president who is suffering a real detachment from reality: […]
Excerpt from Arc Digital:
[…] As Norway has repeatedly explained, the government does not decide who gets the prize. And Norway has no say in who controls Greenland.
for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS
Total bullshit, and not worth our time to debunk each lie. The “eight” includes Congo-Rwanda, where fighting continues, India-Pakistan, who say they reached their current status themselves, and Iran, which Trump bombed to little effect. The weird “PLUS” at the end is probably leveling up the lie, similar to how the number of wars he falsely claimed to have stopped was seven at first, then grew to eight.
I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but now can think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.
So absurd it’d be laughable if it weren’t deadly serious. In the first year of his second term, Trump ordered the U.S. military to launch attacks in Venezuela, Nigeria, Yemen, the Caribbean, eastern Pacific, Somalia, Syria, and Iran. His illegal tariffs have undermined the global trading order that has helped keep the world relatively stable—a lesson from the 20th century, since the collapse of trade in the Great Depression contributed to World War II—and his threats to U.S. treaty allies have weakened the United States.
Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China
Of course Denmark would have trouble protecting its land on its own if a larger country attacked. But it doesn’t need to. Denmark and its security partners in NATO, the most powerful alliance in history, protect Greenland together, along with the rest of the North Atlantic. Besides, Russia and especially China are not threatening Greenland. America is.
Everyone can see Trump doesn’t care about protecting land from Russia. Ukraine is under Russian attack, but rather than working to counter Russia’s aggression, Trump has been trying to get Ukraine to surrender.
The main beneficiaries of Trump undermining the Western alliance, America’s trade relationships, and the U.S.-led world order are China and Russia. Taking advantage of America’s new hostility, China recently cut a deal with Europe to allow more sales of Chinese electric vehicles, and another deal with Canada, a broader agreement that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney hailed as “a new strategic partnership.”
Russia’s aggression under Vladimir Putin means few countries are interested in a deal with Russia, but Putin has long dreamed of ending NATO, and probably can’t believe his luck. On Russian state TV, commentators celebrated Trump’s Greenland threats for “delivering a catastrophic blow to NATO” that is “truly tremendous for Russia.”
and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also.
There are written documents, namely the Greenland Home Rule Arrangement of 1979 and the Self-Government Act of 2009, reflecting the will of the people of Denmark and Greenland. But yes, the reason it’s Denmark and not Sweden, Portugal, the U.K., or another country traces back to who landed boats centuries ago.
Many will note the hypocrisy of a white American president saying that boats landing hundreds of years ago is not a basis for current ownership. But Trump’s stance is consistent with a worldview that rejects sovereignty, rights, law, and related concepts, where there’s no such thing as legitimate claims to land, and ownership is exclusively a question of force. […]
President Trump says he decided to levy a 39% tariff on Swiss exports because Helene Budliger Artieda, director of the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, “just rubbed me the wrong way.”
Commentary
Well that’s certainly a national emergency.
As we all should know by now, he has very specific requirements for how women are supposed to rub him.
According to the NYT it was the President of Switzerland who rubbed him the wrong way.
David is correctly identifying the official here, but Trump himself had no clue what her name was or what her position was, saying she was “I guess the prime minister”. Believe it or not, but we used to expect presidents to know these things.
“She just rubbed me the wrong way”—Trump is now rambling about the Swiss head of state, whose name and title he does not know. [Video clip]
In the space of two minutes he confused Greenland and Iceland four times by my count. Folks might not believe this now, but it was considered a quasi scandal when Governor George W. Bush could not name world leaders when he was still a candidate. Trump can’t keep straight the country he is threatening to steal.
By The Editorial Board
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS never been a man to ask what he can do for his country. In his second term, as in his first, he is instead testing the limits of what his country can do for him.
He has poured his energy […] into finding out just how much money people, corporations and other nations are willing to put into his pockets in hopes of bending the power of the government to the service of their interests.
A review by the editorial board relying on analyses from news organizations shows that Mr. Trump has used the office of the presidency to make at least $1.4 billion. We know this number to be an underestimate because some of his profits remain hidden from public view. And they continue to grow.
The Trumps have made at least $23 million from licensing Mr. Trump’s name overseas since his re-election.
A hotel in Oman. An office tower in western India. A golf course on the outskirts of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. These are a few of the more than 20 overseas projects the Trump Organization is pursuing, often requiring cooperation with foreign governments. These deals have made millions for the Trumps, according to Reuters. And the administration has sometimes treated those same governments favorably. One example: The administration agreed to lower its threatened tariffs on Vietnam about a month after a Trump Organization project broke ground on a $1.5 billion golf complex outside of Hanoi. Vietnamese officials ignored their own laws to fast-track the project.
The Trumps are pocketing $28 million from Amazon for a documentary about Melania Trump.
Amazon paid far more for the rights to “Melania” than the next highest bidder — and far more than the company has previously paid for similar projects, according to The Wall Street Journal. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chairman and one of the world’s richest people, has many reasons to curry favor with the administration, including antitrust regulation, Amazon’s defense contracts and his space company’s federal contracts.
Major tech and media companies have paid Mr. Trump $90.5 million in settlements since his re-election.
The settlements have come from X, ABC News, Meta, YouTube and Paramount. None of them were justified on the merits. Paramount, for example, agreed to pay the president $16 million for what he claimed was the deceptive editing of a 2024 Kamala Harris interview. The editing was a normal part of journalism. Three weeks later, the Federal Communications Commission approved an $8 billion merger with Skydance.
[…] The Trumps have made at least $867 million through various cryptocurrencies.
Mr. Trump’s sale of crypto has been by far his biggest moneymaker, according to Reuters. People who hope to influence federal policy, including foreigners, can buy his family’s coins, effectively transferring money to the Trumps, and the deals are often secret. One that has become public: A United Arab Emirates-backed investment firm announced plans last year to deposit $2 billion into a Trump firm — two weeks before the president gave the country access to advanced chips.
All told, Mr. Trump has profited from his return to the presidency by an amount of money equal to 16,822 times the median U.S. household income.
[…] This tally focuses on Mr. Trump’s documented gains. The $1.4 billion figure is a minimum, not a full accounting. It is probable that Mr. Trump has collected several hundred million dollars in additional profits from his cryptocurrency ventures over the past year. The Trumps have acknowledged as much. When The Financial Times asked Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons, about its estimated value of the family’s crypto gains, he said they were probably even larger than the news organization thought.
Our accounting also does not include other ways in which the president has encouraged influence seekers to make donations that benefit him politically, including to his planned White House renovation. During the government shutdown, Mr. Trump even used a private gift to finance his policy priorities. Other presidents did not behave this way. […]
“From segregated Virginia to global impact, her mathematics quietly changed how the world finds its way.”
Dr. Gladys West, the pioneering mathematician whose work laid the foundation for modern GPS technology, has died. She passed away Saturday, surrounded by her loving family. She was 95.
Her story began far from satellites and supercomputers. Born into poverty on a Virginia farm during the Jim Crow era, West grew up in a segregated South where opportunity was scarce. Through determination and extraordinary academic talent, she graduated first in her high school class and earned a scholarship to Virginia State College (now Virginia State University). She received her bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1952 and went on to earn a master’s degree in 1955.
In 1956, West began working as a mathematician at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia. She was only the second African American woman hired at the base and one of just four African American employees at the time. What followed was a career that would quietly change the world.
At Dahlgren, West devoted herself to solving one of science’s most complex challenges: accurately modeling the shape of the Earth. Her painstaking calculations and programming helped transform raw satellite data into precise geodetic models, enabling reliable satellite-based navigation. That work ultimately became the backbone of the Global Positioning System (GPS) — now essential to aviation, shipping, emergency response, smartphones, and daily life worldwide.
Though her work reshaped modern navigation, West remained largely unknown for decades. Friends and colleagues have often noted that GPS’s remarkable accuracy rests on years of meticulous mathematical labor done behind the scenes by scientists like West, who pursued the work not for recognition, but because it mattered. […]
“He said he had agreed on “framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland” and the Arctic with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.”
Related video at the link.
[…] Trump on Wednesday said that he would not impose tariffs on eight European countries that were set to go into effect Feb. 1 unless those nations allowed the United States to take control of Greenland.
On Saturday, Trump said he would hit Denmark, the United Kingdom and other countries involved in NATO exercises with a 10% tariff starting next month.
“Based upon a very productive meeting that I have had with the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, we have formed the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic Region,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“Based upon this understanding, I will not be imposing the Tariffs that were scheduled to go into effect on February 1st,” he added.
Trump had said that if those countries did not comply with his demands by June, the tariff would rise to 25%.
Trump’s comments over the weekend roiled global markets.
Stocks soared to the highs of the day on his announcement that the tariffs were off.
Further details of the deal Trump described on social media were not immediately available from the White House. But in an interview with CNBC, Trump said the deal was “pretty much the concept of a deal,” and that it would last “forever.”
Hours before Trump’s announcement, the European Union’s parliament halted final approval of a critical trade deal that Trump reached with the bloc last summer.
E.U. leaders were also scheduled to hold an emergency summit Thursday to coordinate a response to Trump’s threats.
On Wednesday morning, Trump told an audience of leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that he still wanted the U.S. to control Greenland, but that he would not use force to seize the semi-autonomous Danish territory.
Instead, he said, he wanted “immediate negotiations” with Denmark.
“We will not enter into any negotiations on the basis of giving up fundamental principles,” Denmark’s foreign minister told reporters in Copenhagen.
In his Truth Social post, Trump said “additional discussions” related to Greenland would be led by Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s special envoy for peace, Steve Witkoff.
Those officials are also simultaneously leading discussions with Ukraine and Russia, as well as managing a host of other pressing foreign policy issues.
Rubio is currently serving as the interim national security adviser and the acting national archivist, in addition to leading the State Department.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
“The discussions have taken on new urgency as President Trump escalates his criticism of Europe. Germany and Poland already have suggested France’s nuclear weapons could be expanded to defend their countries.”
Questioning America’s decades-long commitment to guard them against a nuclear-armed Russia, European nations are looking at ways to bolster their own arsenals rather than continue to rely on the U.S., according to six senior European officials.
European leaders are discussing whether to rely more on nuclear-armed France and Britain instead of the U.S. or even develop their own atomic weapons, three of the senior European officials said. […]
French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country is the only member of the European Union with the bomb, is expected to deliver a major speech on France’s nuclear policy in the coming weeks, the officials said.
[…] The discussions also signal shifting security dynamics in the West that could upend decades of global efforts to reduce, not enhance, nuclear proliferation.
[…] European nations are exploring a range of options, three of the European officials said. They said those include improving France’s nuclear weaponry, redeploying French nuclear-capable bombers outside of France, and beefing up French and other European conventional forces on NATO’s eastern flank.
Another option under discussion is to equip European countries that do not have nuclear weapons programs with the technical abilities to acquire them, these European officials said.
Having the technical ability to potentially build a nuclear weapon would not violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but actually taking concrete steps, such as making highly enriched uranium, would.
[…] The U.S. has approximately 3,700 nuclear warheads. France has about 290, which are capable of being launched from submarines and aircraft, and the United Kingdom has an estimated 225 warheads for its submarine fleet.
[…] Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said in an interview with NBC News that the nuclear deterrence issue is one that can be resolved within the NATO alliance.
“We are, for the time being, very reliant on the United States. And I would say it is also in the U.S. interest to have that umbrella in place and also to engage strongly within NATO,” Valtonen said. […]
Concerns in Europe about countering Russia’s nuclear arsenal also come against the backdrop of a collapse in arms control agreements between the U.S. and Russia.
[…] Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in March that his country “is talking seriously” with French officials about coming under the protection of France’s nuclear weapons. And even before he took office, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said last year he was open to the idea of France providing a nuclear umbrella for Germany, a proposal that previous German governments rejected.
[…] Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel said in an interview with NBC News that the Netherlands is “not completely closed off” to the idea of France providing nuclear deterrence for European countries.
Other European governments, including Germany, have expressed broad interest in having France play a larger role, but they also have not outlined a definitive position.
[…] Unlike France, Britain is heavily dependent on the U.S. military for nuclear missiles and other support for its arsenal.
Macron’s expected speech on France’s nuclear policy, which could come as soon as February, could clarify what Paris is prepared to do.
[…] Trump‘s renewed demands for Denmark to hand over Greenland have received an icy response from locals on the remote Arctic island […]
There was a chill in the air in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, thousands of miles away from the summit in the Swiss city of Davos, where Trump used a major speech before world leaders Wednesday to up the pressure on Denmark and Europe to hand over what he called a “piece of ice,” though he appeared to rule out using military force to do so.
“It’s crazy. Totally crazy,” Peter Jensen, an office supply store’s owner in Nuuk, said Tuesday, before Trump’s speech. “But many are scared.”
Tillie Martinussen, a former member of Greenland’s parliament, was incensed by Trump’s remarks. “We’re not just a block of ice,” she said in an interview on Wednesday. “We are human beings. We have elderly people here who are so afraid right now. We have children that are afraid of the United States.”
She said that some Greenlanders had been so panicked by Trump that were gathering emergency supplies, with hunters “taking out their rifles” and getting them ready to defend against any would-be invaders.
No matter what happens, people who had seen the United States as a friend will now think of it as a possible invader that “can never be trusted again,” she said.
[…] Fears for the future have grown in Greenland in recent days, as Trump has intensified his effort to take control of the vast territory, where around 90% of the population of roughly 57,000 inhabitants are Inuit.
In lengthy remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, Trump said he did not plan to “use force” to take Greenland. Referring to NATO spending, he said that the U.S. “probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable, but I won’t do that.”
[Weird. That sounds like a threat nesting inside a statement denying the threat.]
[…] But Trump repeated his claims that acquiring Greenland is vital to “national security,” citing fears of a potential future conflict with Russia or China, though the U.S. military presence there has shrunk drastically since the Cold War, when it was home to critical missile early-warning systems.
In his speech, Trump said controlling the island, which he appeared to erroneously refer to as “Iceland” multiple times, was important “psychologically,” adding: “Who the hell wants to defend a license agreement or a lease, which is a large piece of ice in the middle of the ocean?”
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said it was “positive” that Trump appeared to have ruled out the use of force, but said it was “quite clear” he has not given up on hopes to take over.
[…] The U.S. briefly assumed control of the territory during World War II in a bid to prevent it from being used by the Nazis. In the decades since, an agreement has been in place allowing the U.S. to construct and maintain military bases across the island, with the U.S. Pituffik Space Base being the largest in the territory.
In the face of Trump’s growing threats, those in Greenland are left with little choice but to wait, and make their voices heard where they can.
Kjeldsen, the retired carpenter, said: “I’m only a simple, normal person who’s doing whatever I can to protect one of the big things that we have, which is our freedom.”
Jens Erik Kjeldsen, a retired carpenter who has been staging a one-man protest outside the U.S. Consulate in Nuuk since Monday despite the freezing temperatures, expressed fears that Trump is “trying to buy the world or take it with his power.”
“Jeff Bezos’ space company announced a plan to deploy 5,408 satellites in space, jumping into a market dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.”
Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin on Wednesday announced a plan to deploy 5,408 satellites in space for a communications network that will serve data centers, governments and businesses, jumping into a satellite constellation market dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Deployment of the satellites is planned to begin in the last quarter of 2027, Blue Origin said, adding the network is designed to have “data speeds of up to 6 Tbps anywhere on Earth.”
That speed, possible with the satellites’ planned optical communications, is extreme by consumer standards and would make the network key for data processing and large-scale government programs. Blue Origin said the network is meant to serve a maximum of roughly 100,000 customers.
The reveal of the network, called TeraWave, coincides with a space industry rush to build data centers in space that can meet the soaring demand for large-scale AI data processing, which on Earth requires immense energy and resources as adoption of the technology expands.
The planned network adds another satellite constellation linked to Bezos, executive chairman of Amazon, which is in an early phase of deploying Leo — a network formerly called Project Kuiper involving 3,200 satellites providing internet to consumers and businesses.
Musk’s Starlink network of roughly 10,000 satellites is farthest ahead in a global push to put internet infrastructure in space, where swarms of low-orbiting satellites offer more security and higher connection speeds than traditional, unitary satellites farther out in space.
The TACO cycle: Markets want to price in TACO. But TACO only works if Trump sees stocks tank.
So we get a loop: Trump does things → nothing happens (markets already priced in TACO) → that emboldens him to do more → until markets start to think he might not TACO → stocks fall → TACO is restored.
Here’s the really bad part: over time, this dynamic breeds bigger and bigger crises. Markets keep updating their beliefs about TACO, so it takes ever more extreme actions to convince them he might not TACO. Buckle up.
Fundamentally, the problem is TACO undermines itself over time.
Scott Horton (Harper’s): “Bovino and other DHS leaders are touting their success in rounding up serious criminals. But […] the serious criminals had in fact been apprehended by Minnesota police, whom the ICE and CBP leaders mercilessly disparage.”
Every few days since Operation Metro Surge began, DHS has released lists of people it says have been arrested. MPR News examined one of the lists shared by DHS officials on Monday, Jan. 12 and found that most of the people on the list had been immediately transferred to ICE custody at the end of time served in Minnesota prisons. All of those transfers happened before ICE began its surge of operations in Minnesota on Dec. 1, 2025, with some even happening years before.
DHS has also accused Minnesota prisons of not cooperating with immigration enforcement. But the department said it coordinated with ICE on the release of 84 prisoners last year, several of whom have shown up on DHS “worst of the worst” lists.
[…]
one person [on the Jan 12 list] was offered to be released to ICE custody more than a decade ago and ICE declined, according to the DOC.
[…]
Some of the criminals in question have never been in DOC custody. Rather, they’ve been in county jails. That’s where DHS’s bigger issue has been. DHS officials have argued that because some Minnesota county jails refuse to honor [non-judicial] ICE detainers, it means agents have to track them down in the community after their jail sentence is through. County jails are where people are held before trial, or are sent if their sentence is less than a year. Their policies are not set by the DOC, rather by each county.
[…]
ICE has said it has made more than 2,000 arrests in Minnesota so far during this operation, but it is unclear how many of those people have criminal records. A New York Times analysis of ICE arrests in early December found that about a third of the people arrested last year had no criminal record.
“The president was given an opportunity to knock down one of the dumbest ideas about his 2020 defeat. True to form, he did the opposite.”
At the time, it was the most infamous election press conference in American history. A couple of weeks after Donald Trump lost his 2020 re-election bid, his hapless lawyers held a bewildering event at the Republican National Committee headquarters, where they tried to describe a secret plot that only they were aware of.
The legal team pitched a hysterical tale involving George Soros, “communist money,” the Clinton Foundation, antifa, Cuba and possibly China. Rudy Giuliani and his colleagues also pointed the finger at Venezuela and its former president, Hugo Chávez, who’d died seven years earlier.
All of this came to mind anew watching the president’s lengthy White House press conference on Tuesday, when he fielded a related question. [social media post, with video]
Now that Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro is in U.S. custody, someone asked, “has any more information emerged that you could share with us regarding Venezuelan election software and Venezuelan ties to tampering with the 2020 election?”
Trump replied that members of his team had “learned some things” related to the conspiracy theory, though he didn’t elaborate.
Since White House press conferences don’t come with decoder rings, it’s likely that many viewers had no idea what this exchange was about. Let’s take a moment to clarify.
As my MS NOW colleague Brandy Zadrozny recently explained, one of the recurring storylines among far-right conspiracy theorists is that Venezuela somehow played a role in dictating the outcome of the U.S. election in 2020 by controlling voting machines.
It’s all nonsense, of course, but almost immediately after U.S. bombs started dropping on Venezuela and Maduro was taken into custody, conspiratorial pillow executive Mike Lindell celebrated, telling The Atlantic, “I’m hoping now that Maduro will actually come clean and tell us everything about the machines and how they steal the elections.” [JFC]
Former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and Infowars propagandist Alex Jones have pushed similar lines. And after conservative media personality Sean Davis wrote on social media that “it’s gonna be wild when Maduro tries to plead to lesser charges by proffering evidence that the 2020 election was stolen,” Ed Martin, Trump’s “weaponization” czar at the Justice Department, responded with a tweet of his own that consisted entirely of an exclamation point.
Given a chance to reject all of this nonsense, the president did the opposite, adding fresh fuel to a ridiculous fire that should have petered out years ago.
Back on Jan. 9, Mad King Donald Trump promised credit card interest rates would be slashed by Tuesday, Jan. 20.
“Please be informed that we will no longer let the American Public be ‘ripped off’ by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%, and even more, which festered unimpeded during the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration,” the addled president wrote on Truth Social. “AFFORDABILITY! Effective January 20, 2026, I, as President of the United States, am calling for a one year cap on Credit Card Interest Rates of 10%.”
That Trumpian promise, like so many others, immediately ran into reality. As expected, the banking industry ignored him, either expecting a TACO moment—because Trump Always Chickens Out—or assuming his attention would drift elsewhere, as it so often does (Greenland!).
[…] If Trump was serious, he could work through Congress, potentially even with Democratic support, to turn that demand to cut credit card interest rates into reality. Instead, this latest instance of Trump’s random ramblings appears, at least for now, to have been discarded.
It joins the pile of Trump’s other forgotten populist promises, including $5,000 DOGE checks, $2,000 tariff checks, and the vow to eliminate taxes on tips, Social Security benefits, and overtime pay.
“‘Europe is at a total loss’: Russia gloats over Greenland tensions”
Listen to Donald Trump and you would think Moscow and Beijing were lying in wait off the coast of Greenland, ready to pounce to boost their power in the Arctic.
“There are Russian destroyers, there are Chinese destroyers and, bigger, there are Russian submarines all over the place,” President Trump said recently.
That is why, according to America’s president, US control of Greenland is essential.
So how do you think Moscow has reacted to its alleged plot being uncovered and potentially thwarted by a US takeover of Greenland?
The Russians can’t be pleased. Right?
Wrong.
In an astonishing article, the Russian government paper is full of praise for Trump and critical of European leaders who oppose a US annexation of Greenland.
“Standing in the way of the US president’s historic breakthrough is the stubbornness of Copenhagen and the mock solidarity of intransigent European countries, including so-called friends of America, Britain and France,” writes Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
“Europe does not need the American greatness that Trump is promoting. Brussels is counting on ‘drowning’ the US president in the midterm congressional elections, on preventing him from concluding the greatest deal of his life.”
“Greatest deal”? The reporter explains what he means. I have to keep reminding myself I am reading the Russian government newspaper, not a pro-Trump publication in America.
“If Trump annexes Greenland by July 4 2026, when America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, he will go down in history as a figure who asserted the greatness of the United States,” writes Rossiyskaya Gazeta. [Major fluffing of Trump is going on in the Russian press.]
“With Greenland, the US becomes the second largest country in the world after Russia, surpassing Canada in area. For Americans, that’s on par with such planetary events as the abolition of slavery by Abraham Lincoln in 1862 or the territorial conquests of the Napoleonic Wars.
“If, thanks to Trump, Greenland becomes part of America…for sure the American people will not forget such an achievement.”
And the Russian reporter has this message for America’s president: don’t U-turn.
“It is dangerous for the American president to back down over Greenland. This would weaken the position of the Republican Party in the midterm elections and likely result in a Democrat majority on Capitol Hill with the ensuing consequences for Trump. Whereas a rapid annexation of Greenland before the elections can change this political trend.” [Intense manipulation of Trump’s fear is going on in the Russian press.]
In other words, it’s in Trump’s interest to push ahead with his plans to take over Greenland: according to the Russian government paper.
Let that sink in.
But why the praise from Moscow? Why the apparent encouragement?
It’s because Russia has much to gain from the current situation.
Trump’s fixation with Greenland, his determination to take over the island and impose tariffs on European countries that oppose his plan have put a huge strain on the transatlantic alliance: both on America’s relations with Europe, and within Nato.
Anything that weakens – or threatens to split – the Western alliance is viewed by Moscow as a huge positive for Russia. [True!]
“Europe is at a total loss and, to be honest, it’s a pleasure to watch this,” gloated the Russian tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets in one of its articles about Greenland.
What’s more, American threats to annex Greenland are being used by pro-Kremlin commentators to try to justify Russia’s war on Ukraine. [head/desk]
Victory in Ukraine remains the Kremlin’s priority.
Moscow believes that maintaining a positive relationship with the Trump administration will help achieve this.
Hence Russia’s criticism of Europe. But not of Donald Trump.
birgerjohanssonsays
According to a source at Youtube a Russian retired general named Kovalchuk has defected to Ukraine.
[…] Lindsey Halligan has “quit” her non-job as non-US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia IN A HUFF, and Pam Bondi is IN A HUFF about it, and Halligan will now have to go cosplay at another job she’s wildly unqualified for […]
Bondi announced last night on Twitter that Halligan was leaving to go find a job that will appreciate her brilliance. We’re all supposed to play along like this is some big loss for the Justice Department that this insurance lawyer who had never tried a criminal case won’t get to fuck up any more fake cases against Donald Trump’s political enemies. [social media post]
In other words, while real lawyers are clearly making fun of all of this, Lindsey Halligan was literally the best incompetent partisan hack the Trump Department of Justice was able to get, and they will miss her very much. Sure, Pam Bondi.
[…] You may read Novak’s entire order, dated yesterday, January 20, 2026, but here is a particularly delicious piece:
Ms. Halligan’s response, in which she was joined by both the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, contains a level of vitriol more appropriate for a cable news talk show and falls far beneath the level of advocacy expected from litigants in this Court, particularly the Department of Justice. The Court will not engage in a similar tit-for-tat and will instead analyze the few points that Ms. Halligan offers to justify her continued identification of her position as United States Attorney before the Court. Ultimately, the Court concludes for the reasons that follow that Ms. Halligan’s continued identification of herself as the United States Attorney for this District ignores a binding court order and may not continue; otherwise, Ms. Halligan and anyone who joins her on a pleading containing the improper moniker subjects themselves to potential disciplinary action in this Court pursuant to the Court’s Local Rules.
And so, for 18 pages, Novak tears Halligan a new one, both for her attempts at real arguments and for the ones Novak considers too stupid to even consider. For example, dispensing with Halligan’s complaining that it’s not fair to say she can’t keep being US attorney after a mean judge said she couldn’t, not when Jack Smith got to keep being special counsel after a drooling MAGA judge said his appointment was illegal, Novak explains, in a footnote, that she may fuck off:
Ms. Halligan’s references to former Special Counsel Jack Smith do not merit serious consideration, given the inapposite context. Ms. Halligan appears to share the current administration’s unhealthy obsession with the former Special Counsel. But Mr. Smith’s decision to leave intact his signature block following a court order asserting the illegality of his appointment lacks legal significance here. As such, the Court will not be diverted from addressing the issues related to the lawfulness of Ms. Halligan’s assertions.
Lacks merit, lacks merit, lacks merit, does not merit serious consideration, lacks merit. It just says that throughout.
Novak’s conclusion begins, “The Eastern District of Virginia has long enjoyed the service of experienced prosecutors with unquestioned integrity from both political parties serving as the United States Attorney,” which is just an absolutely vicious way to work your way up to a great big “BUT.” Here’s what follows:
Despite coming from different political backgrounds and holding very different ideological views, they all shared an unwavering commitment to the Rule of Law, putting the interests of the citizens of the District before their own personal ambitions, as true public servants do. Unfortunately, it appears that this ethos has come to an end.
Novak ruled that “this charade of Ms. Halligan masquerading as the United States Attorney for this District in direct defiance of binding court orders must come to an end.” […]
And she quit the whole DOJ. Can’t fire her, she quits!
Don’t worry, she’ll show up on the wingnut welfare circuit soon enough. They always do.
HOLY CRAP. An ICE whistleblower just revealed a secret memo authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS’s own legal training materials say is unconstitutional!
ICE then hid the memo from the public, passing it along by word of mouth and private conversation.
[…]
The memo cites no legal authority, only a further secret DHS’s General Counsel (replaced in the early days with a Trump loyalist) opinion saying administrative warrants filled out by an ICE officer are sufficient to break into homes of people ordered removed.
[…]
Worse, a footnote to this memo suggest they won’t even rule out authorizing home invasions with no judicial warrant for people not even ordered removed!
[…]
In a sign of how explosive ICE knew this secret memo would be, one whistleblower says he was only allowed to read the memo and was barred from taking written notes, and warned that employees had been punished for disagreeing. At least one ICE instructor resigned rather than teach the illegal memo!
[…] It’s the federal government conspiring in secret to subvert the Fourth Amendment. […] Senator Blumenthal’s office worked with the whistleblowers, and has already put out a letter to the Trump admin demanding answers. Congress MUST act. This is a five alarm fire for our basic rights under the law.
The memo itself has not been widely shared within the agency, according to a whistleblower complaint, but its contents have been used to train new ICE officers who are being deployed into cities […] New ICE hires and those still in training are being told to follow the memo’s guidance instead of written training materials that actually contradict the memo
[…]
The memo, signed by the acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, and dated May 12
“Federal officials launch ICE operation in Maine and begin arrests”
“Everyone is on high alert,” Portland Mayor Mark Dion said. His city and nearby Lewiston have seen an influx of migrants and asylum seekers in recent years.
The Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday that immigration agents had launched “Operation Catch of the Day” in Maine, the latest state to be targeted as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping deportation push. [“Operation Catch of the Day” is an offensive name.]
Even as Immigration and Customs Enforcement starts to surge officers there, federal officials are hoping to avoid a repeat of the widespread resistance that ICE’s heavy presence has triggered in Minneapolis, according to several officials familiar with the preparations.
The top prosecutor in Maine issued a statement Monday hinting at the surge and telling residents that “in the coming days, if Maine citizens seek to exercise their rights to assemble and protest, it is vital that these protests remain peaceful.”
[…] The mayors of Portland and Lewiston, Maine’s two biggest cities, had warned residents that ICE might be about to ramp up its enforcement operations in the coming days. Both cities, located about 30 miles apart, are home to sizable communities of Somali immigrants, as well as asylum seekers from several other African countries.
In Portland, volunteers were delivering groceries to families too afraid to venture outside and some local schools reported students staying home, Mayor Mark Dion said Tuesday. “Everyone is on high alert,” he added.
Two local schools briefly stopped people from entering or leaving on Tuesday morning after learning of potential ICE activity nearby. “This is an understandably tense time in our community, as reports and rumors of immigration enforcement actions grow,” Portland Public Schools said in a statement.
[…] Carl Sheline, Lewiston’s mayor, condemned the latest ICE action. “These masked men with no regard for the rule of law are causing long-term damage to our state and to our country,” he said in a statement Wednesday. “Lewiston stands for the dignity of all people who call Maine home.”
[…] “Maine knows what good law enforcement looks like,” Mills [Gov. Janet Mills] continued. “They don’t wear a mask to shield their identities, and they don’t arrest people to fill quotas.”
Somali immigrants began arriving in Maine more than 20 years ago. Many have become U.S. citizens, and some have been elected to city councils and school boards in both Lewiston and Portland. Three Somali Americans serve in the Maine House of Representatives.
In recent years, Portland also saw an influx of migrants and asylum seekers from Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere. Each city has been home to robust refugee resettlement programs, welcoming people fleeing war-torn Ukraine and Afghanistan.
Under the Trump administration, nearly all refugee admissions were suspended. Its only exception was for members of the Afrikaner community, White South Africans who Trump has claimed without evidence are the victims of genocide. A handful of Afrikaners have already arrived in Maine, with a total of 50 expected to settle there over the coming year, refugee advocates say.
Sky Captain @117, in a week with tons of shocking news, that is even more shocking. From text you quoted: “authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS’s own legal training materials say is unconstitutional!” Unbelievably bad. Good to see the Associated Press and others providing coverage.
In other news: “Judge blocks government from searching data seized from Post reporter” [Good]
The seizure “chills speech, cripples reporting, and inflicts irreparable harm,” The Post said in statement. [True]
Government officials may not examine electronic devices seized from a Washington Post reporter until litigation stemming from the search of her home is settled, a federal judge in Virginia ruled Wednesday.
The ruling from U.S. Magistrate Judge William B. Porter was issued hours after The Post demanded in a court filing that federal law enforcement officials return the electronic devices the government seized from staff reporter Hannah Natanson’s home last week. The extraordinary search “flouts the First Amendment and ignores federal statutory safeguards for journalists,” The Post told the court.
Federal agents executed a search warrant on Jan. 14 at Natanson’s home in Virginia, seizing a phone, two laptops, a recorder, a portable hard drive and a Garmin watch. Law enforcement officials said the search was part of an investigation into a government contractor who is accused of unlawfully obtaining classified materials.
In his brief order, Porter wrote that The Post and Natanson had “demonstrated good cause in their filings to maintain the status quo” and would not allow the government to access Natanson’s data until he is able to fully review and rule on the matter. He ordered the government to respond to The Post’s filing by Jan. 28 and scheduled a hearing early next month. […]
The Supreme Court checks Donald Trump every now and then. The latest example of this sporadic phenomenon was seemingly on display at Wednesday’s hearing in Trump v. Cook, over the president’s bid to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors long before her Senate-confirmed term is up in 2038.
Greenland’s government unveiled a new brochure on Wednesday offering advice to the population in the event of a ‘crisis’ in the territory, which US President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to seize from ally Denmark. Guidance includes stockpiling food and water, hunting weapons and ammunition.
Jeffries and his leadership team were “recommending” a no vote, but that is different from a whip operation where Democratic Whip Rep. Katherine Clark and her deputies push members to support the leadership position on the bill. Several frontline Democrats in swing seats are expected to vote in favor of the appropriation.
“They’re terrified of being labeled anti–law enforcement,” said a Hill source tracking the legislation. “They want this to go away so they can talk about the cost of living more. Problem is, it’s not going away.” […] “They’ll just yell at Trump as he escalates and hope people forget and don’t punish them for failing to use what little power they had when it mattered,”
[…]
It is true that ICE has a reserve of $75 billion from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, over seven times its annual budget, and that even if DHS were not funded, ICE agents would still be on the streets and paid in full through drawing from that reserve. Some might argue that this is all the more reason to vote against an inadequate package, because if the concern is to be seen as shutting down law enforcement, that won’t happen in this case.
DAVOS (The Borowitz Report)—In a much-praised resolution to a roiling diplomatic crisis, on Wednesday Denmark offered Donald J. Trump “full ownership” of a room in an assisted living facility in Greenland.
The deal was orchestrated by French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who were seen high-fiving moments after Trump signed the admission form.
Speaking to reporters, Carney said that Trump’s new home was actually located in Iceland, not Greenland, but added, “We’re pretty sure he doesn’t know the difference.”
For his part, President Macron acknowledged that the agreement represented a compromise, noting, “Our first choice was an ice floe.”
States are bracing for what’s projected to be “one of the most extreme” winter storms across nearly half of the United States this weekend. But the potential devastation could be amplified by the lack of federal disaster relief.
In North Carolina, the impacts of 2024’s Hurricane Helene can still be felt across the state. Now, freezing rain threatens dayslong power outages and arctic temperatures for residents who—in some cases—don’t even have a home to shelter in.
And thanks to President Donald Trump’s overhauling of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, help is likely not on its way.
According to local reports, Carolinians who were placed in temporary housing by FEMA were evicted earlier than designated—some as recently as this week—despite having no other housing options. […]
Unhoused locals have been sitting in limbo waiting for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees FEMA, to dole out funds for those affected. Even though there’s plenty of money—a whopping $1.5 billion, in fact—set aside to buy out the homes of Carolina residents, nothing has moved forward.
[…] Trump has been doing everything in his power to destroy FEMA—though sometimes unsuccessfully. Last month, a judge ruled that the Trump administration acted unlawfully by ending a program that helps communities prepare for natural disasters.
Still, FEMA’s ineffectiveness under Trump and Noem has already cost many lives. In July 2025, approximately 120 Texans died during a catastrophic flood when, instead of being able to provide immediate disaster relief, FEMA agents had to wait 72 hours for Noem to sign off on the budget.
Now, as dozens of states prepare for another potential natural disaster, the extreme damage that Trump has done to FEMA might be felt again by those who have already been left vulnerable.
Trickster Goddesssays
Re Lynna’s post @93:
I highly recommend listening to Prime Minister Carney’s full speech (video[17 min] and transcript here)
It historically marks the end of the international rules based system of the past 80 years and the start of the new world order.
A federal judge on Wednesday denied a request by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to appoint an independent monitor to oversee the Justice Department’s disclosure of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, while conceding the lawmakers have raised “legitimate concerns” about the department’s compliance with the law.
In a 7-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer wrote that his supervision of the criminal case against Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell doesn’t grant him “any charter to supervise” whether the Justice Department meets its legal obligation to disclose the files.
But he noted that his order didn’t foreclose the lawmakers’ right to sue over the matter. And Engelmayer, an Obama appointee, added that both the lawmakers and victims “raise legitimate concerns about whether DOJ is faithfully complying with federal law.”
The judge is more or less saying that a special master should be appointed but he doesn’t have the power. It would have to be a judge in a case over that specific law, not an unrelated Maxwell case. The judge even points out that the lawmakers clearly have the right to sue.
birgerjohanssonsays
Let’s Talk Elections
“BREAKING: Republicans LOSE House Seat in New York”
One of the things I’m really struggling with about what’s going on in Minnesota is that if you describe what’s going on in plain, factual ways to someone who’s not paying close attention you sound completely, bugfuck crazy.
“The federal government abducted a kid and used him as bait to try to lure out his parents, who are in the country legally, so they can be detained without charges and sent to Texas”. Think about how ridiculous that sounds to someone who hasn’t been paying attention. It sounds like I made it up!
“Another adult living in the home was outside and begged the agents to let him take care of the small child, and was refused,” […] still not sure of the exact current whereabouts of Liam and his dad. [The lawyer] believes, based on the experience of other clients […] they are currently in Texas in a family holding cell.
[…]
Asked if the 5-year-old’s detainment was illegal, Prokosch said, “Probably not, and that’s what’s going to make my job really difficult. Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s moral. You know, yes, they may have the legal authority to detain a 5-year-old, but why?”
Rando 2: “Stop saying ‘Bait’. The correct word is ‘Hostage’.”
On Monday (Jan. 19), Earth experienced its strongest solar radiation storm since October 2003, according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, surpassing the intensity of the notorious October 2003 “Halloween” space weather storms.
…(Snip)..
,,NOAA classifies solar radiation storms on a scale from S1 (minor) to S5 (extreme) based on GOES satellite measurements of incoming high-energy protons. The Jan. 19 event reached S4 (severe) levels.
While it may sound dramatic, this type of storm poses no threat to people on the ground, thanks to Earth’s thick atmosphere and magnetic field, which absorb the radiation before it reaches the surface.
Notably, this was not a “ground-level event,” in which particles are energetic enough to be detected at Earth’s surface. As space weather physicist Tamitha Skov explained, this storm had a relatively “soft” particle spectrum — historic in strength, but lacking the extreme energies needed to reach the ground.
An ABC NEWS Verify investigation has revealed that some of those involved behind the scenes of the March for Australia (MFA) anti-immigration protests previously tried to recruit people to the now disbanded Neo-Nazi White Australia Party.
March for Australia is planning a fresh round of mass demonstrations across the country on January 26.
White Australia had been the political arm of the Neo-Nazi group National Socialist Network (NSN) but shut down earlier this week due to the federal government’s new hate speech laws.
Jordan McSwiney, who researches the far-right at the University of Canberra’s Centre for Deliberative Democracy, told ABC NEWS Verify that less overt activism would likely become more commonplace among NSN white supremacists following the public disbandment of the group. <//Blockquote>
This form is for reporting incidents or effects related to or caused by recent federal actions in Minnesota, including but not limited to: violations of constitutional rights [and] other administrative actions by Federal agencies [like funding cuts or restricted access to programs].
Katy Tur: A US court of appeals has temporarily lifted the restrictions on use of force against proesters […] pending another appeal
[…]
Jacob Soboroff: Let’s be realistic. We have SEEN uses of force by these very agents irrespective of the ruling […] ostensibly perhaps they would be permitted
I witnessed federal agents with ICE and CBP arresting a US citizen after hitting her car from behind, and then kneeling on the head of a legal observer in the snow, preventing breathing and bloodying their face.
I arrived on scene shortly after the accident happened, and the driver was still in the car. I walked up to the driver’s side to get her name and info, as a legal observer & an agent got out of an SUV behind her to scream at me. I told them to fuck off, I’m a legal observer helping a person. Another agent came around from the other side of the car and forcibly shoved me backward
[…]
they took her passport […] arrested her and put her in their SUV. At that point, there was a scuffle where another agent knocked down an observer into a snowbank […] they were kneeling on the person’s head […] then arrested them and put them in another SUV.
I shouted, “We have medics, let us take care of them,” and the agent in front of me went, “We have medics too,” and I replied, “Oh like you did for Renee?” and his face visibly fell.
As agents were attempting to leave—taking the detained person’s car with them, leaving the scene of an accident—another person stepped out to try to block them and got pepper-sprayed point blank in the face. I stayed to help the pepper spray victim, and down the block, ICE set off tear gas.
I say all this to have a publicly available record. I have also submitted this to AG Ellison’s reporting forms of violations federal agents are doing.
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
Matt Novak (Gizmodo): “Border Patrol agents are very sad that everyone in Minnesota hates them. [Screenshot]”
DHS tweet: At each gas station where the agents stopped to use the restroom, groups of agitators appeared, yelled at them, stalked them, and even tried to prevent law enforcement vehicles from leaving, creating unsafe conditions. At one stop, individuals in the crowd threw food at the agents. At their final gas station stop, someone spit on an agent. When an agent moved to detain the person who spit on him, the crowed tackled and attacked the agents while surrounding them. To safely clear the area agents had to use crowd control measures to disperse the hostile crowd.
Rando 1: “So many questions. 1. Did this even happen? 2. Were they actually spit on? 3. Did they piss themselves? 4. How doctored is the ice footage gonna be? 5. Where’s all the protestor vids at? 6. What the fuck did they expect?”
Bovino has gone to multiple gas stations, with a massive convoy, gotten out of the car, and strolled into the street and posed for ten minutes at a time. No gas, no food, no bathroom. Just over and over in sequence. They are trying to whip people into a frenzy, in the hopes that someone will do something violent
[…]
JD Vance is coming tomorrow.
dozens of Minneapolitans photographing and chanting at the agents, yelling at them to “get out.” […] Bovino appeared to be icily booted from the Speedway’s convenience store, with a man following steps behind him. “ICE does not belong on this property at all, we do not support ICE,” the man said. “Get off our property. Bye, bye, bye.”
This afternoon Bovino & crew were a few houses down from my home and I learned about it via my block chat before I could even make sense of the noises I was hearing from outside […]
I watched from my backyard as over 100 neighbors quickly surrounded the federal agents, blowing whistles, honking horns & yelling at the agents to leave. They successfully shooed them away in minutes. […]
birgerjohanssonsays
I think this may be the oldest kind of human-animal cooperation, potentially long predating the domestication of dogs in Eurasia.
Follow-up to comments 415, 424 on the broomstick / leg shooting incident.
This article is mostly an FBI agent’s narrative synthesizing interviews, I guess.
It contradicts DHS in major ways. Sosa-Celis, the guy who was shot, wasn’t who ICE was after. ICE wasn’t even after Aljorna, the friend, who was chased on wheels then on foot into their shared duplex. ICE had looked up the friend’s car’s license plate, and the previous owner had been flagged as being in the US illegally (though that owner had no serious criminal history or federal cases), which kicked off a traffic stop, the friend fleeing, and the pursuit. The friend almost made it to the duplex but fell, and the ICE agent tussled with him. Sosa-Celis came out to rescue the friend and bring him inside.
There’s disagreement between the FBI and the two immigrants. About whether the broomstick was wielded to bludgeon the agent or was picked up and tossed as chaff in passing. And about whether the door was closed just before or after the agent shot Sosa-Celis. The door was boarded up before a reporter could check.
There was another man whose mugshot DHS waved around as someone allegedly arrested in all this. However, he didn’t appear in the affidavit, and the Tribune couldn’t find any involvement. He had no criminal record in Minnesota. Currently in Texas detention, not charged with any crime.
MAGA influencer Cam Higby captured Bovino on video as a bag of chips was dumped on him […] His agents quickly departed after protesters surrounded them and yelled “Nazi! Nazi!”
birgerjohanssonsays
Gramscini writing about cultural hegemony predated Noam Chomsky by half a century.
Whether to use “a” (before a consonant or /j/) or “an” (before a vowel or silent H) depends on the word immediately following the indefinite article. It’s all about euphony.
Bluerizlagirl @ 143
Thanks.
It is probably the silent H that trips me up most.
birgerjohanssonsays
A Republican claims USA “owns” the Moon.
Meh. Myself I own the sub-glacial parts of Antarctica, the mid- Pacific abyssal plain and rule a grand duchy on Mars.
.
Immigration Officers Assert Sweeping Power To Enter Homes Without A Judge’s Warrant, Memo Says
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES
‘They’re following us’: MS Now report on violent ICE car chase. In an MS NOW exclusive, Antonia Hylton reports on a violent ICE chase in Houston that ended with an injured teen and a deported dad.
ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES
TACO returns: Trump ‘isolated and humiliated’ by Greenland saga, says Hayes. “What we know from experience is Trump will push as far and as hard as he can until he meets resistance. To be clear, that is a toxic, dangerous cycle,” says Chris Hayes.
“The crusade had been largely driven by the Republican fringe — until the House speaker endorsed the radical campaign.”
Related video at the link.
At last count, House Republicans have filed impeachment resolutions against eight federal judges, though these radical efforts have been largely relegated to the party’s fringe. This week, that changed suddenly and unexpectedly. Politico reported:
Speaker Mike Johnson now supports the push inside his party to bring impeachment articles against judges perceived as antagonistic of President Donald Trump’s agenda — a notable shift for the Louisiana Republican who over the summer sought to squelch such effort.
‘I’m for it,’ Johnson told reporters at his weekly news conference Wednesday, responding to the question of whether he would endorse impeaching judges who have ruled against the administration.
He did not appear to be kidding. [video, with Mike Johnson also laughing.]
The trouble began in earnest in March, when Donald Trump took a new step, publicly and explicitly calling for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who ruled in a way the White House didn’t like in an Alien Enemies Act case. Hours later, the president sat down with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham and kept the offensive going.
“We have bad judges, we have very bad judges,” Trump said. “These are judges that shouldn’t be allowed. I think at a certain point you have to start looking at — what do you do when you have a rogue judge?”
A group of congressional Republicans apparently interpreted Trump’s appeal as a directive and got to work introducing impeachment resolutions against judges who ruled against the White House’s preferences.
[I snipped the list of judges]
Republican megadonor Elon Musk soon joined the crusade, sending campaign donations to members of Congress who have supported impeaching federal judges. [head/desk]
[Now] Congress’ top Republican declaring at a Capitol Hill press conference that the crusade has merit.
[…] even if the House were to impeach any or all of these jurists, it would take 67 votes in the Senate to remove them from the federal bench, which is effectively an impossibility.
These obvious attempts at intimidating the judiciary, in other words, almost certainly won’t work.
But for Johnson to endorse publicly such a radical effort speaks volumes about how radical his politics have become.
Last year, a Marquette University Law School poll found that 70% of Americans opposed impeaching federal judges over anti-Trump rulings. […]
This counts as attempting to intimidate federal judges.
“So many Republicans see the president as infallible that even inconsequential slip-ups must be denied in Orwellian fashion.”
Donald Trump’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was an embarrassing mess. The American president peddled a series of absurd falsehoods, he needlessly targeted U.S. allies with baseless whining, and he reminded much of the Western world over the course of an hour and a half why the Trump-led United States has seen its international standing collapse.
But one part of the Republican’s weird, meandering remarks generated attention for an unexpected reason. [video]
Roughly halfway through the speech, Trump claimed that he was popular with NATO leaders, “until the last few days, when I told them about Iceland.” About a minute later, again referring to ostensible U.S. allies, the American president added, “They’re not there for us on Iceland, that I can tell you. I mean, our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland has already cost us a lot of money.”
In context, Trump clearly misspoke, referring to Iceland when he meant Greenland. The timing of the mistake was far from ideal — just last week, his spectacularly unqualified nominee to serve as U.S. ambassador to Iceland, Billy Long, “joked” about Iceland becoming the 52nd state — but accidents happen.
It would have been easy for the White House simply to acknowledge that the president had misspoken. Since everyone misspeaks from time to time, this likely would have generated very little attention.
But that’s not what happened. The New York Times reported:
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, denied that Mr. Trump had misspoken, responding in a social media post to a reporter who wrote that he had appeared to mix the countries up multiple times.
‘No he didn’t,’ she wrote to the reporter. ‘His written remarks referred to Greenland as a ‘piece of ice’ because that’s what it is. You’re the only one mixing anything up here.’
In other words, Leavitt would have us believe that when Trump said “Iceland” four times, he was really commenting on “ice land.” As in a land of ice.
In context, that is obviously preposterous. The Orwellian pushback, however, was oddly familiar.
Ahead of the New Hampshire presidential primary during the 2024 election cycle, Trump spoke at a campaign rally and accidentally referred to former Ambassador Nikki Haley, his principal intraparty rival at the time, when he meant to talk about House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.
There was no great mystery behind the slip-up. Haley was obviously on his mind days ahead of a closely watched primary, so he mentioned her name in error.
Soon after, then-House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, desperate to impress Trump, told a national television audience that this wasn’t “a mix-up,” despite what everyone heard him say.
Something similar happened in 2019. As Hurricane Dorian approached the United States, Trump published a tweet that included Alabama among the states “most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.” Soon after, the National Weather Service told the public the opposite: The region was in danger, but Alabama wasn’t among the states likely to be affected.
When news outlets noted the president’s error, Trump took great offense, insisting he was right, despite the obvious fact that he was mistaken. It set in motion a series of increasingly ridiculous events, culminating in Trump displaying a map to which he literally took a pen, drawing a bump onto the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast so he could make the scientific prediction conform retroactively to his mistake. (The mess became known as “Sharpiegate.”)
Leavitt’s line on the president’s “Iceland” reference is a page from the same book. Since Trump’s loyalists insist he is incapable of being wrong, even minor, inconsequential slip-ups have to be rejected and denied.
The tactics make the White House and its allies look worse. […]
[…] The memo acknowledged that it was offering different legal guidance than DHS had given in the past:
Although the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence, the DHS Office of the General Counsel has recently determined that the U.S. Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose.
Administrative warrants are barely worth the paper they’re printed on. In contrast to arrest warrants issued by a judge based on finding of probable cause that a crime has been committed, administrative warrants are a product of the executive branch and not subject to judicial review.
Legal experts were aghast at the ICE memo and its implications.
“An ICE whistleblower just revealed a secret memo authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS’s own legal training materials say is unconstitutional!” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, posted.
“I try to avoid hyperbole when it comes to Trump policies, but this is absolutely frickin’ insane—on about eleventy different levels,” Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck said. “Massive, systemic Fourth Amendment violations because … reasons.”
In a sign that ICE knew how controversial and potentially illegal the new guidance was, the memo was not widely distributed within ICE, according to Whistleblower Aid, the group representing the whistleblowers:
While addressed to “All ICE Personnel,” in practice the May 12 Memo has not been formally distributed to all personnel. Instead, the May 12 Memo has been provided to select DHS officials who are then directed to verbally brief the new policy for action. Those supervisors then show the Memo to some employees, like our clients, and direct them to read the Memo and return it to the supervisor.
Excerpt from the analysis by Stanford University law professor Orin Kerr:
[…] if you accept the unitary executive theory, in which what various immigration officials do in the executive branch is all ultimately part of the “executive Power. . . vested in a President of the United States of America” and should not be thought of as independent decisions of immigration judges or other immigration officials.
Given the focus in Coolidge, Shadwick, and Payton on the fundamental role of warrants in inserting a judicial check on the executive, it seems out of place to say that this can be satisfied by the executive checking itself. Even if the I-205 Warrant was signed by the immigration official based on an immigration judge’s removal order, that removal order is an order from the President’s executive branch. From that perspective, the traditional thinking that executive-branch warrants cannot satisfy the Fourth Amendment judicial warrant Payton test seems persuasive.
[…] this is another place where the Supreme Court’s gradual cutting back on the scope of the Bivens remedy—the civil action against federal agents for violating the Constitution, including the Fourth Amendment—may make the most obvious form of judicial review unavailable. Even if the policy is unconstitutional, as it seems to be, a person who is illegally searched probably can’t sue ICE for violating their constitutional rights.
[…] the basic idea is that the federal government generally can’t be sued for damages for violating the Fourth Amendment. […]
The weaponized Federal Communications Commission is now targeting network talk shows, contending that they no longer enjoy a carveout for news programs and must provide equal airtime to political candidates
The Trump administration is opening a new front against late-night comedy, announcing plans to enforce long-dormant rules on appearances by political candidates on network talk shows.
Under new guidance released on Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission warned that entertainment-oriented talk shows carried on local television stations were required to offer candidates vying for the same office equal airtime.
The guidance was clearly aimed at the late-night hosts who frequently anger President Trump — Jimmy Kimmel of ABC, Stephen Colbert of CBS and Seth Meyers of NBC — and have in turn drawn scrutiny from the F.C.C. chairman, Brendan Carr. But it would also cover daytime talk shows including another Trump target, “The View.”
[…] Talk shows that want to have political candidates on as guests in an election year would have to petition the F.C.C. for an exemption — or give an equivalent amount of free airtime to the candidates’ opponents. And, it indicated, it would not grant exemptions lightly, basing decisions on whether it determined that the show in question was motivated “by partisan purposes.”
Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a longtime public interest lawyer, said the intent seemed to be to “trim the sails of certain talk shows” and induce a chilling effect; talk shows may be inclined to think twice before booking political candidates in election years altogether.
But he also said there could be an unintended consequence — by raising the question of whether conservative talk show hosts on radio, which falls under the same law, would have to provide equal time to political candidates, too.
The point of the word an is to avoid the awkward silent pause between words when saying something like “a apple.” So, you should put an before any word that begins with a vowel sound, not just a vowel letter. […]
a historian, an honor, a xylophone, an X-ray, a user (begins with y sound), an umbrella, a one-eyed pirate (begins with w sound), an owl.
This will vary somewhat with accents of the region and era.
The same rule applies to acronyms and initialisms […] if one were to write about a memo sent by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (in its initialized form) it would be “an FBI memo”; even though the word following an clearly begins with a consonant, it is voiced as a vowel (“eff-bee-eye”).
[…]
once one accepts that we are applying a rule for the spoken form of English to the printed page it is generally not so hard […] If in doubt, simply say the word which will follow the a or an out loud, and decide accordingly.
[…]
If you begin to dig into written English use from more than a few decades ago it is very easy to find a large number of words which were apparently pronounced differently than they are today, as evidenced by the author’s choice of a or an before them.
There are very few people today who still put an before the words hundred or history, for the simple reason that it would sound funny. Yet some have held onto the notion that historic requires an an before it.
The Trump administration has ordered a review of federal funding sent to more than a dozen Democratic-led states, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
The sweeping scale of the review is outlined in a budget data request that was sent Tuesday to all federal departments and agencies except for the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The Office of Management and Budget memo, which was reviewed by CNN, requests detailed spending data as part of a review to “facilitate efforts to reduce the improper and fraudulent use of those funds.”
The request signals a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive strategy to target federal funding in blue states – an unprecedented policy approach triggered during last year’s government shutdown that has rapidly accelerated in the wake of sweeping fraud allegations in Minnesota.
OMB Director Russel Vought has run point on the effort after spending President Donald Trump’s past year in office re-engineering tools used by the agency, known as the federal government’s “nerve center,” to exert new authority and power over the federal spending process. […]
Republicans are set to lose another House seat in the gerrymandering war that President Donald Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott started. On Wednesday, a New York state Supreme Court judge ruled that the state’s 11th Congressional District illegally disenfranchises Black and Latino voters.
The 11th District, centered on Staten Island, is currently held by GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, who—if this ruling holds on appeal—would see her district redrawn in a way that would likely peel off yet another Republican lawmaker.
If Democrats indeed net another seat out of New York, it would give Democrats a needed boost as they seek to offset gerrymanders that have been passed in Republican-led states.
With Democrats netting five seats out of California, one seat out of Utah, and potentially one seat from New York, they are expected to squeeze seven seats from map redraws. And that number could grow further if Virginia voters pass a referendum to suspend the state’s independent redistricting commission and allow the Democratic-controlled legislature to redraw their maps—a move that would give Democrats as many as four more seats. […]
We want a piece of ice for world protection, and they won’t give it. You can say yes and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no and we will remember.
Mobster.
Trump in Davos:
Without us, right now you’d all be speaking German.
German is the main language of Switzerland.
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein all speak German.
Former special counsel Jack Smith is testifying on Capitol Hill Thursday, in his first public testimony about his investigations into President Trump.
Smith stood by his decision to probe Trump over efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his mishandling of classified documents
“No one should be above the law in our country, and the law required that [Trump] be held to account. So that is what I did,” Smith said in his opening remarks.
Trump is on his way back to the U.S. from Davos, Switzerland, where he met with world leaders and unveiled his new Board of Peace in Gaza at the annual World Economic Forum.
No major European allies attended a Thursday signing ceremony for the peace board initiative, however, as tensions flare with NATO amid Trump’s bid to acquire Greenland […]
Smith expressed concern that a lack of accountability for Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election could result in a diminished democracy.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) recalled an exchange with Smith during his closed-door deposition last month, where they discussed the lack of consequences over the president’s bid to stay in power.
“How would you describe the toll on our democracy if we do not hold a president accountable attempting to steal an election?” Jayapal asked.
Smith said it can be “catastrophic” if the “most powerful people in our society” aren’t held to the same standards of the rule of law.
“Because if they don’t have to follow the law, it’s easy to understand why people would think they don’t have to follow the law as well,” he continued.
He added that, if people aren’t held to account when they commit crimes, it “sends a message that those crimes are okay, that our society accepts that.”
“I believe that if we don’t call people to account when they commit crimes in this context, it can endanger our election process,” Smith said. “It can endanger election workers and ultimately, democracy.”
“The attack on this Capitol on Jan. 6 was — and, the Court of Appeals in Washington D.C., said this — it was an attack on the structure of our democracy,” he continued. “And we could experience much worse results down the road if this happens again.”
[…] In a series of matter-of-fact responses, Smith denied that former President Biden or anyone in his administration had any improper involvement in his investigations of Trump.
Asked repeatedly by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) about undue pressure or participation, Smith said several times that the former president played no role in pushing him to pursue the prosecution.
Smith responded “no” to questions about whether Biden or anyone in his White House sought retribution against Biden’s political opponents, wrote social media posts directing Smith to seek retribution or directed him to take any prosecutorial steps.
He also answered “no” to a question about whether he faced threats of termination over any actions he took or did not take while special counsel.
[…] President Trump on Thursday called for Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Jack Smith as the former special counsel testified before the House Judiciary Committee.
“Deranged Jack Smith is being DECIMATED before Congress,” Trump wrote on social media, calling the prosecutor who investigated the president “a deranged animal.”
“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,” he added. “The whole thing was a Democrat SCAM — A big price should be paid by them for what they have put our Country through!”
Smith rejected the notion that his prosecution was politically driven by noting his own political allegiance lies neither with Democrats nor Republicans.
“I have no partisan loyalties,” Smith said. “I don’t know if I’m registered as independent or not registered at all.”
He doubled down on his prosecutors’ assessment of the evidence that Trump was the person “most responsible” for what happened on Jan. 6.
“He caused what happened,” Smith said. “It was foreseeable to him, and then when it happened, he tried to exploit it.”
[…] Smith recounted that election workers received death threats due to rhetoric from President Trump and his allies in their attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
“During the course of the conspiracy itself, there were election workers who had their lives turned upside down, and received vile death threats, because they were targeted by Donald Trump and his co-conspirators,” Smith said in response to Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.).
The former special counsel said he had a “duty” to protect witnesses during his investigation into the president over concerns that Trump would obstruct justice.
He specifically recalled the president writing, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” on Truth Social in August 2023, shortly after he pled not guilty to charges stemming from Smith’s investigation into his efforts to overturn the election.
“In my mind, I can’t think of a more direct threat to witnesses and individuals involved in that proceeding,” Smith said of the post. […]
Heading into Thursday’s hearing, Republicans have defended Trump’s rhetoric and actions surrounding Jan. 6, saying his false claims that he won the 2020 election are protected by the First Amendment.
Smith dismissed that argument, saying that Americans’ free speech rights do not extend to cases when laws are broken, as his investigation alleged Trump did in trying to overturn the election results.
“The First Amendment does not protect speech that facilitates a crime,” Smith testified.
The line of questioning came from Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the senior Democrat on the Judiciary panel and a former constitutional law professor, who noted that, by the Republicans’ broad definition, even inciting violence would be protected by the First Amendment. […]
Justin Baragona (The Independent): For the second time in two days, Trump appears to confuse Iceland and Greenland. [Video clip]
I like how the rules of media sanewashing have a paradoxical effect. Trump doesn’t simply fuck up his speech; he only “appears to” because the rules dictate we have to leave room for the possibility he’s announcing a campaign to acquire the sovereign nation of Iceland—another NATO ally—as well.
birgerjohanssonsays
David Frum talks with Fiona Hill
The David Frum Show Jan 21 |
Why Trump Sides With Putin
The “framework for a future deal” that Trump and Rutte cooked up was formulated without input from Greenland and possibly without input from Denmark. [Video clip]
LOL, Rutte said they didn’t even discuss Greenland. [Video clip]
Take a maximalist position, alienate everyone, accept less than you could have had by asking nicely, declare historic victory.
[…]
Trump’s lying that he got any kind of “deal framework” on Greenland out of Mark Rutte, who as head of NATO wouldn’t be empowered to strike a deal about Greenland even if he wanted to. Rutte said they didn’t even discuss Greenland.
And even if you accept that the “framework to make a deal” is a real thing and not a pathetic cope from Trump, he got it AFTER he relented about using force, not before. Which would undercut the theory that the threat got the concession.
It sounds like Rutte had a chat with Trump about what NATO would like to do to secure the whole Arctic. And Trump came out and implied it was some kind of “framework to make a deal” about the ownership of Greenland. “An infinity deal,” Trump called it, promising this as-yet-unmade deal would last forever.
NATO officials have discussed expanding the 1951 pact with a new agreement that would effectively create pockets of American soil in the territory. Such an agreement would likely be modeled on a “sovereign base area” agreement in Cyprus, where Britain’s military bases are regarded as British territory.
[…]
Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, said on Thursday he was not in favor of giving the United States sovereignty over military bases […] Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark [posted on social media] “We can negotiate on everything political; security, investments, economy. But we cannot negotiate on our sovereignty,”
Rando: “Okay. So we self immolated ourselves on the international stage so we could keep the defense framework we established with Greenland 70 years ago.”
JMsays
@162 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain:
Lindsay Beyerstein:
Take a maximalist position, alienate everyone, accept less than you could have had by asking nicely, declare historic victory.
This makes the mistake of assigning a coherent rational motivation to Trump. It’s likely that whoever suggested taking Greenland to Trump had some rational idea but Trump may not. I get the impression Trump has taken the idea and run in some weird direction of his own. He may be obsessed with owning Greenland because he is thinking about his place in history if makes a historically large expansion of the US, or he may have a property developers obsessions with clear ownership of the land, or he may think he is banking against global warming by providing the US with land that will be critical down the road and the ice melts.
You see the same thing with Venzula, where he is talking about oil market dynamics that date back to the 80s and drug cartel stuff that is just wrong. His obsession with getting a Nobel Peace Prize that is obviously jealousy that Obama got one has led him all kinds of weird directions.
Trump’s Board of Peace logo is basically the UN logo, except dipped in gold and edited so the world only includes America. Charging $1 billion to join a committee with a recycled AI slop logo is phenomenally on brand for Trump.
[…]
Mixing a clip-art wreath with a pseudo-realistic, geo-textured map is a graphic design atrocity. Big Microsoft Paint energy.
* I couldn’t source the the hi-res image at the link. It has extra distortions that didn’t appear in other renderings: missing California, wavy latitude lines.
Daily Beast has photos of two versions used on stage. The gold-on-white version was also tweeted by the White House, currently on Wikipedia. All have messy laurel leaves.
Commentary
Not beating the temu United Nations allegations.
Kinda crazy to pick a map that doesn’t even include the region this org was initially formed to work in.
“Deputy Director Ralph Abraham appears unconcerned that the U.S. is losing its measles elimination status. Public health experts aren’t pleased.”
Related video at the link.
As the 21st century got underway, Americans had reason to celebrate a public health breakthrough: Measles had been eliminated in the United States.
The good news, however, did not last, and there were multiple measles outbreaks in U.S. communities in 2025. In fact, The Hill reported, “The U.S. on Tuesday met one of the key conditions for losing its measles elimination status, more than 25 years after it achieved this distinction and one year into a second Trump administration that has deprioritized the prevention of infectious diseases.”
One might expect the leaders of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to react to these developments with great concern. But the Trumpified CDC is apparently content to shrug with relative indifference. STAT News reported:
With measles transmission in the United States at levels that haven’t been seen in decades, the principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that he would not view the loss of the country’s measles elimination status as a significant event.
‘Not really,’ said Ralph Abraham, a physician who formerly served as Louisiana’s surgeon general. ‘You know, it’s just the cost of doing business, with our borders being somewhat porous [and] global and international travel.’ [Doofus! That’s not the right attitude.]
Of course, international travel was also common between 2001 and 2024, and according to Republicans, our domestic borders were plenty “porous.”
Abraham added, “We have these communities that choose to be unvaccinated. That’s their personal freedom.”
As The San Francisco Chronicle noted, public health advocates responded to the CDC deputy director’s comments with disgust. Pediatrician and vaccine specialist Paul Offit said in an online discussion hosted by the health blog Inside Medicine this week, “When you hear somebody like Abraham say ‘the cost of doing business,’ how can you be more callous? Three people died of measles last year in this country.”
If Abraham’s name sounds at all familiar, it’s probably because Republican Gov. Jeff Landry tapped the former GOP congressman to serve as Louisiana’s surgeon general two years ago, where his tenure was not without controversy.
The Washington Post reported, “Abraham drew intense criticism in office for instructing health officials to stop promoting vaccines including flu shots and instead emphasize personal choice and consulting with doctors. In a December legislative hearing, Abraham said he regularly sees patients injured by coronavirus vaccines and alleged adverse reactions were being covered up, NPR reported. He has also supported research into an extensively debunked connection between vaccines and autism.” [Abraham is a conspiracy theorist. And, his brain is not working properly. The man is a danger to us all.]
Abraham has gone so far as to describe Covid shots as “dangerous” (they are not) and touted ivermectin during the 2020 pandemic, despite science showing the drug was an ineffective treatment. [That figures.]
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. nevertheless brought the Louisiana Republican in to serve as principal deputy director at the CDC, effectively the agency’s No. 2. [!]
Three months later, Abraham appears wholly unconcerned about the United States losing its measles elimination status.
While many observers were repulsed by Donald Trump’s ridiculous speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the president boasted after he left the podium that “we got great reviews.” [Delusion!] He did not say from whom.
But Trump didn’t stop there, going on to suggest that he’d somehow managed to subvert the audience’s expectations. [video]
“Usually they say, ‘He’s a horrible dictator-type person,’ I’m a dictator,” Trump said, reflecting on the criticisms he’s accustomed to. “But sometimes you need a dictator.”
He did not elaborate on when, exactly, dictatorships are needed.
Up until very recently, it would’ve been considered a political story of dramatic significance for a sitting American president to say — out loud, in public, on the record — that he believes dictators are ever preferable to self-rule. But Trump’s comment went largely overlooked, in part because the rhetoric was overshadowed by other developments and in part because much of the political world is simply accustomed to Trump’s overt hostility to democracy.
That said, I remain convinced that it’s best not to brush past these declarations too quickly. [I agree.] The president’s comment offered a fresh peek into a political philosophy he appears to embrace without embarrassment: By his own admission, Trump believes there are some conditions in which freedom should be discarded and replaced by something a bit more totalitarian.
This is the same Republican who has more than once talked about creating a temporary American “dictatorship” that he expects to lead. He has promoted images of himself in a crown. He has made Napoleonic declarations such as “he who saves his country violates no law.” He’s talked about “terminating” parts of the Constitution that stand in the way of his ambitions. He’s “joked” about canceling elections. He’s freely admitted that he believes (what passes for) his alleged conscience is “the only thing that can stop me.” He’s expressed admiration for foreign authoritarians — not despite their despotism, but because of their despotism.
To the extent that there was ever a serious debate about Trump’s authoritarian impulses, the president keeps offering unambiguous answers to the question.
A federal magistrate judge rejected the Justice Department’s initial attempt to bring charges against journalist Don Lemon for appearing alongside protesters who breached a Minnesota church over the weekend, a source told CNN.
“The Attorney General is enraged at the magistrate judge’s decision,” a person familiar with the matter said. Attorney General Pam Bondi has been on the ground in Minnesota for two days meeting with federal prosecutors from the state.
Lemon, who is a former CNN host who now makes content independently, was with dozens of anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters as they rushed into Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota on Sunday morning, interrupting a church service and leading to tense confrontations, CNN has reported. [Lemon works independently!]
Lemon has said that he was present at the demonstration as a journalist and not as a protester. In a video of the episode that he posted on YouTube, Lemon says “I’m just here photographing, I’m not part of the group… I’m a journalist.”
The Justice Department has arrested two people involved in the protests, CNN has reported.
CNN has reached out to representatives for Lemon. The Department of Justice could always try again to bring charges against him.
A ragtag group of over 400 (and counting!) millionaires and billionaires from 24 countries across the globe have signed a letter to the world leaders gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos, asking them to please (pretty please!) tax them and their brethren more, so that everyone can live a better life.
[I don’t know if you can ever call a group of millionaires and billionaires “ragtag,” but I do appreciate the emphasis on the fact that this a diverse group asking for their taxes to be increased. They are, generally speaking, not untidy, but they are often disreputable.]
Now, granted, I do not think billionaires should exist, but if they have to exist, I guess I’d prefer that they not want to be billionaires, either.
The letter — signed by the likes of Mark Ruffalo, Brian Eno, and Abigail Disney — is a project of Patriotic Millionaires, a group of rich folks with the goal of “taxing the rich, paying the people, and spreading the power.”
They wrote:
Today, we are more connected than ever—but at the same time, we have never been more divided. Decades of innovation have gone hand in hand with decades of inequality, environmental destruction, and wasted opportunity. The richest 1% now own more than 95% of the world’s population put together.
The gap between the super rich and everyone else grows larger every day, stretching across neighbourhoods, nations, and, perhaps most of all, generations. A handful of global oligarchs with extreme wealth have bought up our democracies; taken over our governments; gagged the freedom of our media; placed a stranglehold on technology and innovation; deepened poverty and social exclusion; and accelerated the breakdown of our planet. What we treasure, rich and poor alike, is being eaten away by those intent on growing the gulf between their vast power and everyone else.
We all know this. When even millionaires, like us, recognise that extreme wealth has cost everyone else everything else, there can be no doubt that society is dangerously teetering off the edge of a precipice.
We are worn out watching this happen. We want our democracies back. We want our communities back. We want our future back.
Millionaires! They’re just like us! At least in the way that we would like to have all of those things back as well. Not so much in the other ways, probably.
You’d think this would be an unpopular sentiment among the very wealthy, but it turns out that it’s a lot more common than you might think.
Via The Guardian:
The survey, of 3,900 people in G20 countries with more than $1m in assets, excluding their homes, also found that three-fifths think Trump has had a negative impact on global economic stability (the poll was conducted before the US president threatened new tariffs at the weekend against European countries if a deal to acquire Greenland was not reached).
More than 60% of those surveyed were concerned that extreme wealth was a threat to democracy. Two-thirds supported higher taxes on the super-rich to invest in public services, with only 17% opposed.
Public services are pretty great.
It’s not even entirely unselfish of them, frankly. The whole point, I suppose, of being wealthy is living a nice, pleasant life and the whole point of taxes is to make life more pleasant for everyone. Including them. […]
Life also isn’t so pleasant when other people in your tax bracket are buying up politicians, buying up all the news media and producing their own, buying up social media sites and turning them into Nazi hellholes, when people around you are living in poverty.
The fact is, the wealthy rely on the non-wealthy to provide them with the standard of living to which they have become accustomed. If you live in an area where only rich people can afford to live, then you don’t have restaurants, you don’t have salons, you don’t have shops, you don’t have entertainment, you don’t have transportation beyond your own car, you don’t have childcare, you don’t have schools, you don’t really have anything to do … so what the hell are you going to do with all that money? Swim around in it like Scrooge McDuck? […]
It’s already becoming a problem in places like the Hamptons and New York City. Stores and restaurants are experiencing serious staffing shortages in these areas because restaurant workers and retail workers cannot afford to live there. This also obviously hurts business owners and the middle class. There’s a reason they say “a rising tide lifts all boats,” and that reason is that it is both literally and figuratively true.
Right now, in New York City, nurses are on strike because they’re not being paid enough, and because the hospitals where they work are understaffed and undersecured — and that means that people can’t get the care they need, regardless of how much money they have (unless they’re able to fly somewhere else to get it).
Obviously, extreme wealth inequality harms those on the bottom a hell of a lot more, and in more serious ways than not being able to get a nail appointment anywhere, but it’s not actually good for anyone. […]
What would be really helpful is if they could also use some of their money to fund left-wing media (like us, obviously! but also other people and entities!) because it’s really not great that practically all media that isn’t right-leaning is paywalled and siloed. (Exception, as always, for Wonkette, which frankly could use more subscribers at the moment as many of our stalwarts have had to give us up recently for reasons of “so they don’t starve.” We will never have a paywall, because how can you educate The People from behind a block? Be the funder you want to see in the world! Only if you are able.)
Fund media, fund conferences and speaking tours and youth outreach and all of the intellectual infrastructure the Right has, or we have no chance at all of heading towards a more equitable society.
I mean, it’s just a suggestion, but if they could just get on that one sooner rather than later, I think we’d have a far better chance of making their dream of higher taxation a reality.
“The House voted separately on DHS funding and another package of bills to avoid a partial shutdown and repeal a law that allows certain GOP senators to sue DOJ for $500,000.”
A small band of moderate House Democrats teamed with Republicans on Thursday to pass a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, overcoming a revolt by most Democrats furious about ICE’s aggressive operations in Minneapolis and other U.S. cities.
The vote was 220-207, with seven Democrats breaking with their party and voting yes. The House also passed a separate package of bills funding other federal agencies in a broad, bipartisan vote, in a bid to avert a partial government shutdown on Jan. 31.
In an unexpected twist, the House unanimously voted to add an amendment to the package repealing a law crafted by the Senate that allows eight particular Republican senators to sue the government for a minimum of $500,000 in damages after their phone records were collected as part of a Jan. 6 investigation. [Tiny bit of good news.]
[…] The House has combined the repeal amendment and six of its approved spending bills into one package. It now heads to the Senate, where Appropriations Committee leaders have signed off on the funding deal. The package represents the final tranche of the 12 spending bills Congress needs to pass each year to keep the government open and will fund it through the end of September.
[…] “ICE is out of control and operating, in far too many ways, in a lawless fashion,” Jeffries told reporters, accusing the agency of “using taxpayer dollars to inflict brutality on the American people,” including by killing Good “in cold blood.”
[…] The seven Democrats who voted in favor were: Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, both of Texas; Jared Golden of Maine; Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state; Don Davis of North Carolina; and Laura Gillen and Tom Suozzi, both of New York.
Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky was the only Republican to vote no.
Some Democrats lamented that their party had not fought as hard for ICE guardrails as they had for an extension of Affordable Care Act funds, when they forced a 43-day shutdown last fall. (A group of eight Senate Democrats ultimately relented without ACA concessions.)
[…] DeLauro and Murray have pointed out that Democrats did secure $20 million for body cameras for ICE personnel, as well as cuts to ICE funding for enforcement and removal operations and the number of detention beds. [Tiny bit of good news.]
[…] Meanwhile, Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., this week introduced the MELT ICE Act, which would end DHS’s funding to detain or monitor immigrants, and redirect that money to health care, housing and other social services in local communities.
Neither stand a chance of passage under Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
Murray, instead, focused on a series of victories she said Democrats scored in the wider government funding package, including funding for child care, housing assistance, mental health and Pell Grants — in many cases defeating Trump’s proposed cuts. [More bits of good news.]
“There is much more we must do to rein in DHS, which I will continue to press for,” Murray added. “But the hard truth is that Democrats must win political power to enact the kind of accountability we need.” [True]
In just nine days, Grok posted more than 4.4 million images [compared with 311,762 in the nine days before Musk announced the feature]. A review by The Times conservatively estimated that at least 41 percent of posts, or 1.8 million, most likely contained sexualized imagery of women. A broader analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate […] estimated that 65 percent, or just over three million, contained sexualized imagery of men, women or children. […] “This is industrial-scale abuse of women and girls,”
[…]
Last week, X [said] it would no longer allow anyone to prompt Grok’s X account for “images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis.” […] Since then, Grok has largely ignored requests to dress women in bikinis, but has created images of them in leotards and one-piece bathing suits. The restrictions did not extend to Grok’s app or website, which continue to allow users to generate sexual content in private.
Like many punters who have tried to do business with Donald Trump in the past, the UN has found itself a victim of a classic bait-and-switch […] When they voted to endorse the board of peace in November, other members of the UN security council hoped they were binding Trump into a Gaza peace process, but it now appears they were hoodwinked into backing a Trump-dominated pay-to-play club: a global version of his Mar-a-Lago court aimed at supplanting the UN itself.
[…]
Two months on, there is not a single mention of Gaza in the “board of peace” charter sent out to national capitals. That document instead portrays the board as a permanent fixture to promote peace and good governance around the world. […] The document does not name the “failed institutions” that the board will apparently be more nimble and effective than, but there is little doubt that these derogatory references are aimed at the UN.
[…]
the UN Charter […] was anchored in a set of principles which were hard-earned lessons of the second world war: the primacy of non-aggression, self-determination, fundamental human rights, and the “equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small”. The Trump board charter uses no such language. Most of the text is devoted to the club rules, which make the chairman (Trump himself—the only person mentioned by name) all-powerful. […] All other members come and go under the rules, unless they buy a life-membership for $1bn “in cash funds”, and even that does not appear to offer a guarantee against being ejected by Trump.
[…]
While the charter has nothing to say about Gaza, the board will oversee a general executive board, and a Gaza executive board […] It is anyway unlikely that the Gaza arm of the board […] will have much to do in the foreseeable future. The Israeli government is resolutely opposed to moving forward with any element of the second phase of the Trump ceasefire that would bring Palestinian governance back to Gaza or give any other nation a stake or a role in the territory.
Trump’s Board of Peace has now officially been recognized as an international organization, according to the White House.
US law requires 2/3 Senate approval for international treaties.
I think the Board of Peace is one of those things that’s not unconstitutional, but anti-constitutional.
It is not clear to me this org obligates the United States to do anything like a treaty. But, entering a multi-national working group where Trump is chairman for life violates enduring values.
That status might well transition, but I think it really is just a corrupt NGO that Trump controls in a capacity independent of the presidency. It is unhinged, probably impeachable… but [shrug].
Rando: “It’s like a family foundation, but for someone whose family is barred by New York State law from being on the board of any charity.”
Southpaw (lawyer): “I think any straightforward reading of the foreign emoluments clause forbids the president from personally taking a lifetime office and title like this without Congress’s consent fwiw.”
Sky Captain @172, I agree with this text you quoted identifying the so-called “Board of Peace” as “a corrupt NGO that Trump controls in a capacity independent of the presidency.” It’s a scam that Trump is using to put money in his pockets … and, as The Guardian noted, to weaken the United Nations.
A law firm representing the family of Renee Good, the 37-year-old shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis, released preliminary findings from an independent autopsy commissioned by her family. The report, released by the law firm of Romanucci & Blandin, found that Good suffered ‘three clear gunshot wound paths,’ including one to her head.
Emboldened by the U.S. ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration is searching for Cuban government insiders who can help cut a deal to push out the Communist regime by the end of the year, people familiar with the matter said.
Marco Rubio is also undoubtedly pushing hard for this.
Moderna does not plan to invest in new late-stage vaccine trials because of growing opposition to immunizations from U.S. officials, CEO Stephane Bancel said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday.
[…] “Conservative women are just factually more attractive than liberal women. It’s why more conservatives than liberals are having babies,” Katie Miller, the wife of White House chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, said via X Wednesday.
Her claims were paired with an equally strange Fox News segment between Jesse Watters and Kid Rock in which the former dad rock singer shared his sexist epiphany on live television. [social media post, with video]
“We have this low birth rate in America,” Rock began. “It just hit me right now, because who is going to sleep with these ugly-ass, broke, crazy, [Trump Deranged Syndrome], liberal women? You look at these rallies, it’s like a bunch of women that no guy wants to sleep with and a bunch of dudes that want to sleep with each other.”
There are so many problems with Rock’s argument. And it’s a lot to assume any of these hypothetical women would be interested in sleeping with Rock [Yuck, yuck … and more yuck. Heebie-jeebies.]
[…] The thing is, studies suggest that conservative women are indeed having more children than liberals. However, it probably has nothing to do with how badly men want to sleep with them.
Per the Institute for Family Studies:
In the 2020s, just 40% of liberal women between ages 25 and 35 report being parents, down from 51% in the 2010s. By comparison, conservative women in this age range saw no statistically significant change: in the 2020s, 71% report being parents. This means there is a 31-percentage point gap between young conservative women and their liberal peers today.
And it also probably doesn’t have to do with the allegedly radical, leftist, […] women that Watters and the majority of MAGA seem to use as a bogeyman for women’s rights.
While MAGA points to women’s looks as the reason for plummeting birth rates among more left-leaning families, they’re ignoring the policies in place that are keeping women (who want children) from taking that step.
Conservatives are diving toward an ideology that promotes godliness and duty to provide offspring over the practicality of raising children in today’s world altogether. And that concern is what has many liberal families holding off.
Things like extreme costs for day care or childcare when parents go to work have come into the public conversation. Despite the desire, in some households, for one parent to be the breadwinner, affordability in Trump’s America makes that reality out of reach for many. Many mothers were able to join the workforce again when working from home was more accessible, but that has steadily declined as they’ve been forced back into the office.
Once a pregnant person does give birth, however, there is the fear of exorbitant hospital bills and Trump doesn’t care if that medical debt goes on people’s credit reports.
[…] With the overturn of Roe v. Wade, abortion has become less accessible—and continues to become less so. On the bright side, should you have a child before 2028, Trump will start a $1,000 savings account for them.
While women on the left are looking at the logistics, MAGA women seem to be pushing the message of faith that, somehow, it will all work out for them.
However, no amount of hair extensions and lip filler will make better policies for mothers.
Continuing to make this year’s World Economic Forum the weirdest and the worst, President Donald Trump’s nepo baby son-in-law and Slenderman stand-in, Jared Kushner, just unveiled the administration’s plans for a “new Gaza.”
It’s gonna be so elite, guys. Data centers, luxury apartments, “coastal tourism,” you name it.
The plans Kushner is touting are just some AI-generated slop of futuristic, fancy-looking buildings, rather than any actual proposal or architectural renderings. […]
Let’s not forget when Trump bragged about his big, dumb ballroom by showing off his so-called plans, which were also AI slop that featured such niceties as stairways to nowhere and overlapping windows. [!]
[…] Kushner’s plans raise more questions than they answer, and not just because they’re a bunch of vague nonsense.
For one, does the United States have official permission to take over and develop the whole of the Gaza Strip? Sure, the United Nations resolution talks about Trump’s Board of Peace as “a transitional administration with international legal personality that will set the framework, and coordinate funding for, the redevelopment of Gaza,” but that doesn’t seem to mean that Trump and his corrupt family can run wild, turning the Gaza Strip into Mar-a-Lago on the sea.
There’s also the question of what, exactly, Kushner’s role is here. Yes, he was named to the so-called Board of Peace by his father-in-law, but that, too, doesn’t seem quite the same as getting the nod to develop Gaza.
And I’d be remiss not to mention that this also seems wildly corrupt, with a member of Trump’s family set to benefit from Trump’s official actions—but by this point, his corruption is so vast and so commonplace that this isn’t even shocking.
Next, there’s the whole thing about who will live in this glittering seaside resort. The plans call for 100,000 new housing units amidst all of the data centers and fancy hotels, but who gets to live there? Nearly the entire Gaza population of 2.1 million has been displaced and lacks access to the most basic services. Do those folks get first dibs? How will they afford to live in this lap of luxury? [!!]
On top of that, how much will all of this cost? Though Kushner couldn’t be bothered to present any plans beyond basically asking ChatGPT to draw a futuristic city, he already has a number in mind: an investment of at least $25 billion. In true Trump 2.0 fashion, raising that money is going to be another spectacular opportunity for big companies and oligarchs to bribe the president.
Kushner also announced that the United States would be hosting an event for private investors, saying that the investment could be a little risky but would also provide “amazing investment opportunities.” [aiyiyiyi, run the other way!]
All of those billionaires who missed the chance to bribe Trump by helping pay for his gaudy ballroom will apparently get another shot. After all, it’s nice to have a diversified real-estate portfolio of ways to bribe the president.
One more tiny issue here—hardly worth mentioning, really—is that the whole development effort can only proceed if there’s an actual ceasefire. Trump bragged at the World Economic Summit that “we have maintained the Gaza ceasefire and delivered record levels of humanitarian aid,” but that would be news to Gazans, given that Israel keeps killing people in Gaza and Hamas has not been disarmed. [!!!]
But, of course, Trump doesn’t care about answering these questions. He cares about living out his developer fantasy with other people’s money.
“I’m a real estate person at heart, and it’s all about location, and I said, ‘Look at this location on the sea, look at this beautiful piece of property, what it could be for so many people.’ It’ll be so, so great. People that are living so poorly are going to be living so well. But it all began with the location,” he said.
Ah, yes—the location that has been bombed to rubble by Israel. But all Trump sees is the possibility of more gold-plated grift. […]
Trump says the destruction in Gaza means “no one can live there.” […] “We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings,” Trump said.
[…]
deadly items include grenades, artillery shells and large aerial bombs—and their identification and disposal is a necessary first step before rubble can be cleared and the rebuilding can begin. […] The number of pieces of ordnance would be in the “tens of thousands,” [an explosives expert] said. “My estimation is 25 to 30 years to get the priority [clearance] done.”
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captainsays
^ DailyKos quoted at @178.
birgerjohanssonsays
Svante Pääbo and his disciples keep delivering.
“Ancient DNA Finally Solves the Mystery of the Teotihuacan People”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=cxQoj2sutzM
The heritage of the original Americans gets less mysterious.
Trump’s DOJ to investigate Walz and Frey, but not ICE agent who shot Renee Good
“The evidence suggesting the Justice Department is an institution in crisis is increasingly difficult to avoid.”
For the convenience of readers, here are some links back to the previous set of 500 comments on The Infinite Thread.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-2/#comment-2290501
After unveiling a pitiful health care ‘plan,’ Trump struggles to explain its merits
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-2/#comment-2290499
Reagan-appointed judge slams ‘unconstitutional conspiracy,’ calls Trump an ‘authoritarian’
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-2/#comment-2290477
The Kremlin has announced that Vladimir Putin has been invited to join Donald Trump’s “board of peace”, set up last week with the intention that it would oversee a ceasefire in Gaza.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-2/#comment-2290477
“Donald Trump links threats to seize Greenland to Nobel prize snub in letter.”
Additional links back to the previous set of comments on The Infinite Thread:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-2/#comment-2290446
ICE agents ate meal at a Minnesota Mexican restaurant—then arrested the staff who worked there
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-2/#comment-2290441
“This is such a cool illustration of how the Mercator map distorts the size of Greenland, which looks as big as the whole continent of Africa on that map but is actually the size of Mexico. [Video]”
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-2/#comment-2290427
Jayden Scott, the 23-year-old MAGA hero who went viral for taunting protesters at the site where ICE shot and killed a woman, is now facing a warrant threat after failing to report for jail.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/12/30/infinite-thread-xxxviii/comment-page-2/#comment-2290414
EU explores €93B Trump tariff retaliation over Greenland threats
Link
Wales becomes the first country to sanction politicians who lie.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/1aaYkMcPts/
https://www.wonkette.com/p/its-martin-luther-king-day-which
“It’s Martin Luther King Day, Which Suddenly Seems Incredibly Relevant”
New York Times link
“Inside Minnesota Hospitals, ICE Agents Unnerve Staff”
“As federal agents swarm the Twin Cities, their presence has also grown in medical centers. Health care workers are pushing back.”
Denmark sends more troops to Greenland
“Denmark says its troops could stay in Greenland for one to two years.”
Good news concerning Trump losing, again, in the courts:
Link
More at the link. This fight, and similar court fights, are ongoing.
Kyiv Post: Ukraine to Launch New Offensives as Russia Eyes Massive 2026 Buildup – AFU Chief
Ukraine plans to go on the offense more in 2026. Except for the Kursk surprise distraction, Ukraine has made little attacks to blunt Russian attacks or to surprise under defended points of value. Syrsky avoids saying anything specific, only that Ukraine plans to take the initiative in some way. This could entirely be deception but I expect Syrsky is being honest. To force Russia into a reasonable settlement Ukraine has to go on the offense at some point or Russia has to collapse internally. Russia looks like it may be unstable but Ukraine can’t depend on Russia failing to win the war for them.
Ukrainian intelligence believes that Russia’s goals have not changed. They have not changed since the first year of the war, when Russia had to back off it’s quick attack and resort to a slow conquest so this isn’t really big news.
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/nato-sprays-antipsychotic-medication
Obviously, The Borowitz Report is satire.
This line is particularly funny, since Trump just confused Norway and Denmark in his petty complaint (again) about the Nobel Prize:
Trump’s message:
Cartoon: If we were in the Epstein files …
Good news:
Link
Follow-up to comment 11.
New York Times link
[Video] Greenlandic politician shows mirror to Trump (8:36)
* That YT channel mirrored—and edited out b-roll—from Viory, a UAE news site.
* The YT channel also weirdly anonymized her as “Greenlandic Politician”. She is Tillie Martinussen, a former MP of the Cooperation Party she co-founded breaking from Democrats in 2018, of which she has been the only member to ever win a seat. The party aims to privatize public companies and deregulate.
Esquerda – Greenland 2021 election results (Left-wing news in Portugal via Wiki)
Sermitsiaq (Greenlandic national newspaper):
Study debunks Trump claims, shows no link between acetaminophen and autism
“Remember the president’s many rants about Tylenol? The latest evidence shows how wrong he was.”
Follow-up to comments 11 and 14.
404Media – How one guy crowdsourced more than 500 dashcams for Minneapolis to film ICE
Let’s Talk Elections
“Democrats’ Midterm Advantage Is BIGGER Than It Looks”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=WF74Vhj7rKc
As I mentioned on the other thread, this Trump letter to “Jonas” should be grounds for convening an emergency meeting to invoke the 25th amendment. Each and every day brings more examples that the man is not fit to be in charge of his own affairs let alone the USA government and that his mental capacity is going down fast. That should be shouted on every news media 24/7 until something is done but of course nothing will be done.
About the boat thing being the only claim for Denmark over Greenland, there is actually a document about the US recognizing that right. This article explains it: In 1917 The US traded any rights to Greenland for Epstein Island. Literally.
Good news, as reported by the Washington Post:
Associated Press:
As Steve Benen noted, a symbolic move, but important.
Something for your flying cars?
Li-S batteries have far more energy by weight than lithium-ion batteries.
“Off-the-shelf kitchen chemistry could make Li–S batteries thinner”
.https://techxplore.com/news/2026-01-shelf-kitchen-chemistry-lis-batteries.html
ProPublica link
New York Times:
This week on The Hill: Lawmakers scramble to avert partial shutdown
Strongest solar radiation storm since 2003 hits Earth, bringing northern lights and possible tech issues
Unfortunately, we have cloudy skies where I live.
Hackers target Iran state TV’s satellite transmission to broadcast exiled crown prince
“The death toll in a crackdown by authorities that smothered the demonstrations reached at least 3,941 people, activists said.”
Twisting the legacy of Martin Luther King
.https://theonion.com/mlk-s-family-urges-nation-to-spend-anniversary-of-his-d-1824991630/
Trump wanted to rename today The Donald Trump – Martin Luther King Day.
Thao’s sister-in-law, via Marisa Kabas’ thread of screenshots:
The Handbasket – ICE snatching a half-naked, elderly Hmong American
* The family GoFundMe said Thao was traumatized but not physically harmed. The large red patches on his face, torso, and legs were severe psoriasis. His health has declined since the attack.
Commentary
Seth Meyers: We are living in a cocaine snow globe.
Trump’s Bonkers Message to Norway Over Greenland; Nobel Committee’s Responds to Trump.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=r5EL_cmM7YY
Carville Says Democrats Could Flip 45 House Seats
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=UY9URtIDQdQ
The retaliation should be aimed squarely at Trump’s techbro sycophants: Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Pichai, Altman… block their social networks, sales outlets and AI tools. Sure, no block will be fully effective, because of VPNs and Tor, but it’ll hit them in the advertising revenue, and these are the guys with real influence, not American small businesses dependent on European sales to stay solvent.
Borowitz is right to call out Starmer’s sycophancy (he fancies himself a “Trump whisperer” although the trade and investment deal he thought he’d negotiated turned out to be made entirely of froth). But unfortunately he’s by no means alone in NATO: leaders of Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, Turkey, Czechia are all Trumpist in political orientation – while Starmer is not, but is simply putty in Trump’s hands.
Yesterday was the birthday of both Dolly Parton and Edgar Allan Poe.
I found this verse on Zuckerbergbook.
.
Working 9 to 9
For a man whose eye is ceeepy
That’s why I decide
To assault him when he’s sleepy
But his heart still beats
In the floorboards where I set it
It’s enough to drive me
Crazy if I let it!
Trump takes issue with the British Chagos island deal as performative sabre rattling.
.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=ByvVEEVqDKI
Putin’s Endgame Has Begun… Grab the Popcorn (economic stagnation meets war of attrition)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=OHZfnf_Gxak
Happy 92th birthday Tom Baker, The Doctor!
Robyn: From Pop Puppet to Independent Icon [seen in the wider context of the music of the 1990s onwards]
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=A37w5qcShyM
Trump LEAKS Macron’s Private Messages – USA in Crisis Over Greenland
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=YOw1LDKec50
.
Trump’s ICE Narrative Craters as TRANSCRIPTS EXPOSE HIM
.https://youtube.com/live/MOQ_0iRpi8g
The shooter was not seriously injured, and the injured woman still had a pulse when the ambulance arrived.
Hossenfelder alert
“The Geothermal Advantage Nobody Talks About”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=jCb8Y1sqz-Y
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow/watch/activists-troll-trump-with-naked-doodle-card-on-jeffrey-epstein-s-birthday-2482217539621
Video is 3:36 minutes
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow/watch/moral-principles-drive-faith-leaders-to-speak-out-against-trump-on-immigration-foreign-policy-2482209859921
Video is 11:46 minutes
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow/watch/towns-reject-ice-as-agency-looks-to-place-immigrant-prisons-throughout-united-states-2482205763841
Video is 8:22 minutes
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow/watch/for-trump-s-opponents-a-model-for-finding-their-fight-to-stop-him-2482072131955
Video is 50:11 minutes
Billionaire on billionaire fight!
.https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/20/elon-musk-buying-ryanair-ceo-tesla-michael-oleary-starlink
On multiple fronts, Team Trump tries to exert greater control over media outlets
“The administration doesn’t just want to criticize parts of the media, it also wants to control parts of the media — even if that means exceeding legal limits.”
At least in part, Trump wants only the Army-Navy football game on TV because that is the game that he and Marco Rubio plan to attend.
By threatening France with a tariff on wine, Trump gives away the game
“Remember the pretense that the White House’s tariffs policy was the result of ’emergency’ conditions? That’s gone now.”
Related video at the link.
Wall Street Journal link
“Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs, Study Finds”
“Research contradicts President Trump’s claim that foreigners are footing the bill, and could weaken his hand in the dispute over Greenland”
I do not have access to this article.
Link
GOP furious after Newsom gives them taste of their own medicine
Cartoon: Sparky gets ICEd, part 2
Judge bans Trump loyalist Lindsey Halligan from ‘masquerading’ as top federal prosecutor
“The judge said he would allow Halligan to avoid attorney disciplinary proceedings for now ‘in light of her inexperience.’ ”
Good news: https://www.wonkette.com/p/virginia-gov-abigail-spanberger-launches
“Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger Launches De-Youngkinization On Day One”
“With a big middle finger to ICE and Trump, too.”
https://www.wonkette.com/p/are-the-epstein-files-in-greenland
More at the link.
Washington Post link
Washington Post link
‘Unconquerable’: What a visit to frigid Ukraine convinced me, by David Ignatius
DOJ serves subpoenas to Walz, Frey and other Minnesota officials amid immigration crackdown
“The subpoenas widen the federal investigation into whether Minnesota officials conspired to impede law enforcement during the Trump administration’s immigration operations.”
Related video at the link.
Trump admin. reveals to court: DOGE members may have misused Social Security data
“For those concerned with the integrity of the Social Security system, the latest allegations are extraordinary — legal accountability or not.”
Related video at the link.
Oh, great—Elon Musk is trying to buy elections again
Cartoon: The first 365 days
Politico link
AP News – At-home STD tests offer new options for screening and treatment
Lynna @50:
Eric Columbus: “The funny (?) thing is that Halligan’s temporary gig would expire today even if she had been validly appointed. [Screenshot]”
Sky Captain @61: LOL. The whole thing comes off as a farce. I also interpret the judge’s note about Halligan’s inexperience as a thinly-veiled burn.
Associated Press:
Associated Press:
Link
Trump marks first year back in office with cruelty and lies
Follow-up to comment 66.
What the hell is Trump talking about?
Link
Link
@61 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain: The timing is surely not an accident. Part of the whole point of this argument is that Pam Bondi can’t just keep appointing people as temporary interim US Attorneys over and over as a way around getting Senate approval.
@63 Lynna, OM: The US seizing these ships is violating international standards and possibly illegal but on the plus side it is cutting off one of the ways Russia was escaping from sanctions. Russia was shipping oil to Venezuela and then passing it off as oil from Venezuela, letting them sell it to a wider audience at higher prices.
German spoof article: “Vienna Academy of the Arts offers Trump admission as a student – they don’t want to get blamed again”.
ICE is Kavanaugh stopping and drawing guns on Minnesota cops now.
Minnesota twin cities’ police chiefs held a press conference (28 min)
That excusing is delusional. The admin is flamboyantly white supremacist, reveling in reckless force without regard for law. Also the specific orders for ICE occupations have been documented.
WSJ – The White House marching orders that sparked the LA migrant crackdown
But if one were to single out a small group of the worst…
EmptyWheel – Time to ask if Stephen Miller has authorized assault and murder of peaceful ICE observers
Marcy Wheeler (EmptyWheel)
Austrian cows: We are the herrenrasse of cows!
.https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1ZipTnnmxy/
Mother Jones – ICE has stopped paying contractors for detainee medical treatment
KING GORGE.
Jimmy Kimmel: “Trump on Verge of War Over Nobel Peace Prize Snub & He Celebrates His First Year In Office.”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=22TJbqBCQA0
My walking carefree through the Con.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1Xo6EnMWpm/
The billionaire Ronald S. Lauder originally presented Trump with the idea of purchasing Greenland.
“Complex building blocks of life form spontaneously in space, research reveals”
.https://phys.org/news/2026-01-complex-blocks-life-spontaneously-space.html
For cooking suggestions you can log in at The Guardian free of charge and go to the “Food” department.
“Kenji Morimoto’s recipe for miso leek custard tart with fennel slaw”
.https://www.theguardian.com/food/2026/jan/20/miso-leek-custard-tart-recipe-fennel-slaw-kenji-morimoto
A free market with 2 billion people?
“India-EU “Mother of All Deals” Near! Von der Leyen Drops Big News at Davos”
.https://youtube.com/shorts/38of9ZYiaBs
Happy – I hope and let’s try to find and make happiness please – Penguin Awareness Day folks :
Source : https://www.wwf.org.uk/learn/world-days/penguin-awareness-day
This like World Tapir Day should be more of a thing and global public holiday I reckon!
As Colbert noted here in hisd monologue here – One Exhausting Year | Americans Pay For Trump’s Tariffs | No Obligation To Make Peace – 12 mins.
Also Bernie interview brilliance here & here plus here too
Oh and also here as well – He Took On The Establishment And Won – Sen. Sanders On New York City’s Mayor, Zohran Mamdani (7 mins long.)
Poem. Truth. Meme seen on fb
Typed out off desktop screen, any typios mine.
@ 82 StevoR
Is this a black tie affair?
“Trump Attacks World Then Forgets How To Speak … Leaders Go Silent!”
(You can just fast forward to the bits that show Trump)
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=p5nOoWROsUM
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/f-off-world-hits-back-as-trump-s-aggression-shocks-global-leaders-2482434627692
Video is 9:47 minutes
Martin Shaw turns 81 today. He has played many roles from The Professionals, and the successor of Roy Marsden in the role of inspector Dalgleish. Wikipedia:
.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shaw
For all of the president’s boasts about his expertise, he can’t seem to overcome his economic illiteracy.
Follow-up of sorts to comment 91.
Link
Link
Trump says ‘people will soon be prosecuted’ for 2020 election outcome
https://www.ms.now/news/pentagon-soldiers-military-police-ft-bragg-minneapolis
“Pentagon orders more active-duty soldiers to ready for possible Minneapolis deployment.”
“The department has issued a ready to deploy order for a Army military police brigade stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.”
Trump’s racist BS about Somali immigrants, as presented in Davos:
Link
Media lauds Trump’s Davos speech as ‘very strong’ as world cringes
Re: Lynna, OM @ #94…
In one sense, its possible that, had That Felon in the White House, been elected in 2020, the Russian war on Ukraine might not have happened. It would have been because Trump simply forced everyone to hand Ukraine to Putin.
Trump repeatedly confuses Greenland for Iceland
Petty:
Newsom denied entry to USA House at Davos forum
https://www.wonkette.com/p/rfk-jr-must-be-so-proud-south-carolina
“RFK Jr. Must Be So Proud: South Carolina Racks Up 646 Measles Cases In Latest Outbreak”
“Clearly this is all going according to plan.”
https://www.wonkette.com/p/after-the-american-age-tabs-wed-jan
Excerpt from Paul Waldman’s post:
Excerpt from Paul Krugman’s post:
Excerpt from Arc Digital:
More at the links.
David Gura (Bloomberg):
Commentary
Don Moynihan (Policy prof):
New York Times link
HOW TRUMP HAS POCKETED $1,408,500,000
More at the link.
Dr. Gladys West, Mathematician Whose Work Made GPS Possible, Dies at 95
“From segregated Virginia to global impact, her mathematics quietly changed how the world finds its way.”
BREAKING NEWS, Updated 31 minutes ago, Trump pauses Greenland-linked tariffs on 8 European countries
“He said he had agreed on “framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland” and the Arctic with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.”
Related video at the link.
Doubting U.S. resolve, Europe looks to bolster its own nuclear arsenal
“The discussions have taken on new urgency as President Trump escalates his criticism of Europe. Germany and Poland already have suggested France’s nuclear weapons could be expanded to defend their countries.”
Link
Photo at the link.
Bezos’ Blue Origin to deploy thousands of satellites for new communications network
“Jeff Bezos’ space company announced a plan to deploy 5,408 satellites in space, jumping into a market dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.”
Arin Dube (Economics prof):
Wikipedia – Trump Always Chickens Out
Scott Horton (Harper’s): “Bovino and other DHS leaders are touting their success in rounding up serious criminals. But […] the serious criminals had in fact been apprehended by Minnesota police, whom the ICE and CBP leaders mercilessly disparage.”
MPR – Some criminals ICE takes credit for arresting were already in Minnesota prisons
Trump advances bizarre conspiracy theory about Venezuela, 2020 election
“The president was given an opportunity to knock down one of the dumbest ideas about his 2020 defeat. True to form, he did the opposite.”
What happened to the 10% credit card rates Trump promised?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c17zpvkddpzo
“‘Europe is at a total loss’: Russia gloats over Greenland tensions”
According to a source at Youtube a Russian retired general named Kovalchuk has defected to Ukraine.
https://www.wonkette.com/p/you-cant-fire-lindsey-halligan-two
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (American Immigration Council):
AP News – Immigration officers assert sweeping power to enter homes without a judge’s warrant, memo says
Washington Post link
“Federal officials launch ICE operation in Maine and begin arrests”
“Everyone is on high alert,” Portland Mayor Mark Dion said. His city and nearby Lewiston have seen an influx of migrants and asylum seekers in recent years.
Sky Captain @117, in a week with tons of shocking news, that is even more shocking. From text you quoted: “authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS’s own legal training materials say is unconstitutional!” Unbelievably bad. Good to see the Associated Press and others providing coverage.
In other news: “Judge blocks government from searching data seized from Post reporter” [Good]
The seizure “chills speech, cripples reporting, and inflicts irreparable harm,” The Post said in statement. [True]
Washington Post link
MS NOW:
Yahoo News:
The American Prospect – Jeffries won’t whip vote against ICE funding
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/denmark-offers-trump-ownership-of
States brace for disastrous winter storm as FEMA flounders
Re Lynna’s post @93:
I highly recommend listening to Prime Minister Carney’s full speech (video[17 min] and transcript here)
It historically marks the end of the international rules based system of the past 80 years and the start of the new world order.
Politico: Judge denies lawmaker request for ‘independent monitor’ to oversee Epstein files release
The judge is more or less saying that a special master should be appointed but he doesn’t have the power. It would have to be a judge in a case over that specific law, not an unrelated Maxwell case. The judge even points out that the lawmakers clearly have the right to sue.
Let’s Talk Elections
“BREAKING: Republicans LOSE House Seat in New York”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y0sRBnwNHGI
By canada’s PM Carney – big claim but still
The Most IMPORTANT Speech Of The Century? yt clip & discussion by Novara media, 35 mins long.
Rando 1:
MPR – ICE detains 5-year old Minnesota boy; lawyer says agents used him as ‘bait’
Rando 2: “Stop saying ‘Bait’. The correct word is ‘Hostage’.”
Double Down News The Palestinian Genocide: The Ultimate Evidence – 17 mins long.
Source : https://www.space.com/astronomy/sun/earth-was-just-hit-by-the-strongest-solar-radiation-storm-in-over-20-years-heres-what-it-means
Zeteo Inside Trump’s War on Minneapolis — What We Saw on the Ground – 11 and a half mins long.
MN Attorney General – Federal Action Reporting Form
MS NOW – Appeals court temporarily allows DHS to continue MN surge (5:31)
Rando:
Matt Novak (Gizmodo): “Border Patrol agents are very sad that everyone in Minnesota hates them. [Screenshot]”
Rando 1: “So many questions. 1. Did this even happen? 2. Were they actually spit on? 3. Did they piss themselves? 4. How doctored is the ice footage gonna be? 5. Where’s all the protestor vids at? 6. What the fuck did they expect?”
Will Stancil (Lawyer):
TNR – CBP chief and his goons shamed out of Minnesota gas station
Rando 2:
I think this may be the oldest kind of human-animal cooperation, potentially long predating the domestication of dogs in Eurasia.
“Humans use local dialects to communicate with honeyguide birds, research shows
.https://phys.org/news/2026-01-humans-local-dialects-communicate-honeyguide.html
Follow-up to comments 415, 424 on the broomstick / leg shooting incident.
This article is mostly an FBI agent’s narrative synthesizing interviews, I guess.
MN Star Tribune – FBI reveals how mistaken identity by ICE led to chase, shooting of Venezuelan immigrant in north Minneapolis
It contradicts DHS in major ways. Sosa-Celis, the guy who was shot, wasn’t who ICE was after. ICE wasn’t even after Aljorna, the friend, who was chased on wheels then on foot into their shared duplex. ICE had looked up the friend’s car’s license plate, and the previous owner had been flagged as being in the US illegally (though that owner had no serious criminal history or federal cases), which kicked off a traffic stop, the friend fleeing, and the pursuit. The friend almost made it to the duplex but fell, and the ICE agent tussled with him. Sosa-Celis came out to rescue the friend and bring him inside.
There’s disagreement between the FBI and the two immigrants. About whether the broomstick was wielded to bludgeon the agent or was picked up and tossed as chaff in passing. And about whether the door was closed just before or after the agent shot Sosa-Celis. The door was boarded up before a reporter could check.
There was another man whose mugshot DHS waved around as someone allegedly arrested in all this. However, he didn’t appear in the affidavit, and the Tribune couldn’t find any involvement. He had no criminal record in Minnesota. Currently in Texas detention, not charged with any crime.
* 415, 424 on the previous page.
Corroborating 135.
RawStory – Border Patrol chief has bag of chips dumped on him at a gas station
Gramscini writing about cultural hegemony predated Noam Chomsky by half a century.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/1G45pj4mbd/
@ 133 StevoR
Pissing on the graves of the Rats of Tobruk.
Fucking nazi scum.
A grammar question from an uncultured foreigner.
-Is the right form of this phrase “an advanced stage”, or is it the first letter of the noun that decides if it is an “a” or “an” ?
Whether to use “a” (before a consonant or /j/) or “an” (before a vowel or silent H) depends on the word immediately following the indefinite article. It’s all about euphony.
A different bias:
“Trump Chickens Out on Greenland Tariffs”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=mBFP5Ij7PwI
Bluerizlagirl @ 143
Thanks.
It is probably the silent H that trips me up most.
A Republican claims USA “owns” the Moon.
Meh. Myself I own the sub-glacial parts of Antarctica, the mid- Pacific abyssal plain and rule a grand duchy on Mars.
.
Immigration Officers Assert Sweeping Power To Enter Homes Without A Judge’s Warrant, Memo Says
.https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ice-memo-asserts-sweeping-power-enter-homes-without-warrant_n_69714a7ee4b0dfed77982f7e
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/they-re-following-us-ms-now-report-on-violent-ice-car-chase-2482678339658
Video is 8:55 minutes
https://www.ms.now/all-in/watch/taco-returns-trump-isolated-and-humiliated-by-greenland-saga-says-hayes-2482666563865
Video is 9:01 minutes
Jimmy Kimmel:
“Pure Donsense!”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=84aa__f8yF8
Mike Johnson backs impeachment of judges who ruled against the White House
“The crusade had been largely driven by the Republican fringe — until the House speaker endorsed the radical campaign.”
Related video at the link.
This counts as attempting to intimidate federal judges.
White House insists Trump didn’t say what everyone heard him say about Iceland
“So many Republicans see the president as infallible that even inconsequential slip-ups must be denied in Orwellian fashion.”
Follow-up to Sky Captain’s comment 117.
Link
Excerpt from the analysis by Stanford University law professor Orin Kerr:
Much more at the link.
Trump Unleashes FCC on TV Talk Shows
The weaponized Federal Communications Commission is now targeting network talk shows, contending that they no longer enjoy a carveout for news programs and must provide equal airtime to political candidates
New York Times link
@142 birgerjohansson: Elaborating on euphony…
StackExchange – When should I use “a” versus “an”
This will vary somewhat with accents of the region and era.
Meriam-Webster – An Indefinite Article Guide
Trump administration orders review of federal funding in more than a dozen Democratic states
Cartoon: Gun nutsNRA guns ICE
Link
Cartoon: Tom the Dancing Bug presents Percival Dunwoody, Idiot Time-Traveler from 1909
From Trump’s speech in Davos, Switzerland:
Mobster.
Trump in Davos:
German is the main language of Switzerland.
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein all speak German.
Trrump speaks Arrogant Stupidity.
Live updates: Jack Smith defends Trump probes in first public testimony
Snark on the Davos speech.
Southpaw:
David Frum talks with Fiona Hill
The David Frum Show Jan 21 |
Why Trump Sides With Putin
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=04rPMPwVjdk
Follow-up to 106.
Lindsay Beyerstein (Journalist):
Lindsay Beyerstein:
NYT
Rando: “Okay. So we self immolated ourselves on the international stage so we could keep the defense framework we established with Greenland 70 years ago.”
@162 CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain:
This makes the mistake of assigning a coherent rational motivation to Trump. It’s likely that whoever suggested taking Greenland to Trump had some rational idea but Trump may not. I get the impression Trump has taken the idea and run in some weird direction of his own. He may be obsessed with owning Greenland because he is thinking about his place in history if makes a historically large expansion of the US, or he may have a property developers obsessions with clear ownership of the land, or he may think he is banking against global warming by providing the US with land that will be critical down the road and the ice melts.
You see the same thing with Venzula, where he is talking about oil market dynamics that date back to the 80s and drug cartel stuff that is just wrong. His obsession with getting a Nobel Peace Prize that is obviously jealousy that Obama got one has led him all kinds of weird directions.
Adam Schwarz (Political commentator):
* I couldn’t source the the hi-res image at the link. It has extra distortions that didn’t appear in other renderings: missing California, wavy latitude lines.
Daily Beast has photos of two versions used on stage. The gold-on-white version was also tweeted by the White House, currently on Wikipedia. All have messy laurel leaves.
Commentary
Key CDC leader calls measles outbreaks the ‘cost of doing business’
“Deputy Director Ralph Abraham appears unconcerned that the U.S. is losing its measles elimination status. Public health experts aren’t pleased.”
Related video at the link.
Not that there was any serious debate about his authoritarian impulses, but the president keeps piling on the evidence.
Judge rejects Justice Department’s initial attempt to bring charges against Don Lemon
https://www.wonkette.com/p/take-our-money-please-400-millionaires
House passes sprawling spending package as Democrats split over ICE funding
“The House voted separately on DHS funding and another package of bills to avoid a partial shutdown and repeal a law that allows certain GOP senators to sue DOJ for $500,000.”
David Attenborough observes goths in their element.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1Ddq28oWKt/
NYT – Musk’s chatbot flooded X with millions of sexualized images in days, new estimates show
The Guardian – Trump’s board of peace is an imperial court completely unlike what was proposed
Anthony Kreis (Constitutional law prof):
Rando: “It’s like a family foundation, but for someone whose family is barred by New York State law from being on the board of any charity.”
Southpaw (lawyer): “I think any straightforward reading of the foreign emoluments clause forbids the president from personally taking a lifetime office and title like this without Congress’s consent fwiw.”
Sky Captain @172, I agree with this text you quoted identifying the so-called “Board of Peace” as “a corrupt NGO that Trump controls in a capacity independent of the presidency.” It’s a scam that Trump is using to put money in his pockets … and, as The Guardian noted, to weaken the United Nations.
MS NOW:
Wall Street Journal:
Marco Rubio is also undoubtedly pushing hard for this.
Reuters:
Oh dear heavens to betsy.
MAGA women think lip filler and having a million babies makes you hot
I think that headline paints with too broad a brush.
Follow-up to comments 172 and 173.
Link
DailyKos quoted at @176:
WaPo – What is making Gaza ‘uninhabitable’? Unexploded bombs and more. (2025)
^ DailyKos quoted at @178.
Svante Pääbo and his disciples keep delivering.
“Ancient DNA Finally Solves the Mystery of the Teotihuacan People”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=cxQoj2sutzM
The heritage of the original Americans gets less mysterious.
Russian minister Lavrov is talking trash about the Baltic states.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/1DNCjpMWRV/
What Canadian PM Carney did not say.
.https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1PHryr4M1k/