Finally Friday Reads: How Goes the War

Posted: February 20, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, #We are so Fucked | Tags: , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

“DEFCON 1!!!” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Glancing through the headlines in traditional and social media reminds us that there is nothing normal about life in the United States these days. Economic news is surreal, as historical, economic, and constitutional mistakes like tariffs are back in the headlines. Plans for a potential war with Iran sit on the resolute desk somewhere. Don’t even get me started on jaw-dropping weirdness still happening among the jerks and incompetents sitting in Cabinet offices. I guess it’s just another normal yet insane week in Trumplandia.

It may be hard to choose the read to start out with, but the rest will be equally shocking today, believe me. Just minutes ago, the Supreme Court made the obvious decision to strike down most of Trump’s tariffs in a 6-3 vote. This is from the New York Times. Live Updates: Supreme Court Strikes Down Trump’s Sweeping Tariffs. In a major setback for President Trump’s economic agenda, the court ruled that he could not invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to set tariffs on imports. (I’ve gifted the full article for you to read.)

The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that President Trump exceeded his authority when he imposed sweeping tariffs on imports fromnearly every U.S. trading partner, a major setback for his administration’s second-term agenda.

The court’s 6-3 decision has significant implications for the U.S. economy, consumers and the president’s trade policy. The Trump administration had said that a loss at the Supreme Court could force the government to unwind trade deals with other countries and potentially pay hefty refunds to importers.

Mr. Trump is the first president to claim that a 1970s emergency statute, which does not mention the word “tariffs,” allowed him to unilaterally impose the duties without congressional approval.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the statute does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.

“The president asserts the extraordinary power to unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope. In light of the breadth, history, and constitutional context of that asserted authority, he must identify clear congressional authorization to exercise it,” the chief justice wrote.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Brett M. Kavanaugh dissented, with Justice Kavanaugh warning that any refund process could be a substantial “mess.”

The United States “may be required to refund billions of dollars to importers who paid” the tariffs, he wrote, “even though some importers may have already passed on costs to consumers or others.”

The court’s ruling, backed by justices from across the ideological spectrum, was a rare and significant example of the Supreme Court pushing back on Mr. Trump’s agenda. Since he returned to the White House, the court’s conservative majority had overwhelmingly issued emergency orders allowing the president to carry out his policies on a temporary basis. But the decision on Friday will have a more lasting impact.

Early last year, Mr. Trump invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to set tariffs on imported goods from more than 100 countries. He said his goal was to reduce the trade deficit and spur more manufacturing in the United States. Since then, he has used the tariffs to raise revenue and to pressure other countries in trade negotiations.

A dozen states and a group of small businesses, including an educational toy manufacturer and a wine importer, sued over the tariffs, saying the president had unlawfully infringed on Congress’s power under the Constitution to impose taxes. The businesses, which rely on imported goods, argued in court filings that the tariffs had disrupted their operations and led to higher prices for consumers and cutbacks in staffing.

In court filings and social media posts, the president and his advisers cast the outcome of the Supreme Court case as critical to his trade and foreign policies, making clear he would see defeat as a personal rebuke. Without the emergency power, the solicitor general had warned the justices, there would be economic ruin akin to the Great Depression, in addition to an interruption of trade negotiations and diplomatic embarrassment.

This is from Talking Points Memo‘s Layla A. Jones.

The Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump’s signature economic and foreign policy Friday morning in a fractured 6-3 split decision.

Trump cannot use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, to override Congress’s power of the purse, using the emergency declaration to levy widespread global tariffs, the majority held. The decision will now likely require an end to those tariffs, and could trigger the return of tariff revenue collected by Customs and Border Protection and deposited into the U.S. Treasury.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, which was joined in part by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Kagan filed a concurring opinion, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, while Jackson filed her own concurring opinion.  Gorsuch and Barrett also filed concurring opinions.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito dissented, with Thomas filing one dissenting opinion and Kavanaugh filing another, joined by Thomas and Alito.

“Based on two words separated by 16 others in [a section of] of IEEPA — ‘regulate’ and ‘importation’ — the President asserts the independent power to impose tariffs on imports from any country, of any product, at any rate, for any amount of time,” Roberts wrote. “Those words cannot bear such weight.”

The majority opinion ultimately agrees with the main argument of the plaintiffs, a slate of small businesses suing the government on the grounds that Trump’s IEEPA tariffs are illegal. Tariffs are a tax, the plaintiffs had argued, and taxing authority rests solely with Congress.

Speaking of authorities that rest solely with Congress, Trump is still brooding about declaring War on Iran. This is from Michelle Goldberg writing for the New York Times. “This Is How an Autocrat Goes to War.”

On Wednesday, Axios’s well-sourced reporter Barak Ravid warned, “The Trump administration is closer to a major war in the Middle East than most Americans realize. It could begin very soon.” America has undertaken the largest air power buildup in the region since the Iraq war. Outlets including The New York Times have reported that the military has given Trump the option to strike as soon as this weekend.

Not only has Congress not authorized such a war, it has barely even debated it. The administration has not bothered to explain, either to Congress or the American people, why it might bomb Iran or what it hopes to achieve. “There haven’t been any briefings about a military strategy,” said the Democratic representative Ro Khanna, who is working with his Republican colleague Thomas Massie to force a vote on an antiwar measure.

Most reporting indicates that the White House is planning for a campaign far more intense and sustained than last year’s bombing of Iran or the abduction of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. But we don’t know if Trump and his team are after regime change, and if they are, what they think comes next. This is how an autocracy goes to war, without even a pretense that the consent of the governed matters.

At the center of the conflict between America and Iran is Iran’s nuclear program, which Trump claims he destroyed eight months ago, at the close of Israel’s 12-day war. Back then, a report from the Defense Intelligence Agency found that America’s bombing campaign set Iran’s program back by less than six months. But to this day, a page on the White House website proclaims, “Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise Are Fake News.” The administration apparently feels no need to justify a potential war to end a program that it claims it already eliminated.

The administration is also reportedly demanding that Iran curtail its ballistic missile program and end its support for regional proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. It is unclear whether these demands are serious or simply a negotiating tactic, but they seem to be red lines for Iran.

“I don’t know whether it’s pretextual or genuine,” Rob Malley, Joe Biden’s special envoy for Iran, said of the Trump administration’s conditions. Given that Iran was probably bound to refuse, he said, the Trump team’s position could be “simply part of a Kabuki game to be able to say, ‘We tried diplomacy.’”

So far, the administration has scarcely bothered to elaborate the reasoning behind these demands. After all, Iran’s missiles, and the militias it supports, threaten Israel far more than they do the United States. If you take the administration’s stance at face value, it’s hard to square it with Trump’s America First campaign rhetoric.

If Trump isn’t bad enough, he has a cabinet that’s equally incompetent and dangerous. This is yet another New York Times headline. “Labor Secretary’s Husband Barred From the Department After Sexual Assault Reports.  At least two female staff members said Dr. Shawn DeRemer had touched them inappropriately at the agency in Washington.”

The husband of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has been barred from the department’s headquarters after at least two female staff members told officials that he had sexually assaulted them, according to people familiar with the decision and a police report obtained by The New York Times.

The women said Ms. Chavez-DeRemer’s husband, Dr. Shawn DeRemer, had touched them inappropriately at the Labor Department’s building on Constitution Avenue. One of the incidents, during working hours on the morning of Dec. 18, was recorded on office security cameras, the people said. The video showed Dr. DeRemer giving one of the women an extended embrace, and was reviewed as part of a criminal investigation, one of the people said.

In January, the women’s concerns about Dr. DeRemer, 57, were raised as part of an internal investigation by the department’s inspector general into alleged misconduct by Ms. Chavez-DeRemer and her senior staff, one of the people said.

On Jan. 24, Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department filed a report about forced sexual contact in December at the Labor Department, according to their report, which was viewed by The Times.

The police report is the only one from the last three months associated with the Labor Department’s address, a police spokesman said, adding that the Police Department’s sexual assault unit is investigating.

After the women described the incidents to investigators, Dr. DeRemer was barred from entering the Labor Department’s premises, according to people familiar with the decision, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the allegations and ongoing investigations surrounding the department.

“If Mr. DeRemer attempts to enter, he is to be asked to leave,” a building restriction notice viewed by The Times said.

Mika reacts

Then there is this embarrassing, let me rephrase that to gross, televised moment from the HHS Secretary. This is from The Independent.  “Even Fox News hosts struggling to make sense of RFK Jr’s and Kid Rock’s workout video, ‘Listen, somebody needs to tell RFK Jr. it’s okay to wear shorts. I mean, bro, don’t be upset about your legs,’ Fox News military analyst Johnny Jones said.” This is reported by Graig Graziosi.

Why did Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr and aging rap-rocker Kid Rock release a sweaty, shirtless workout collab video? Not even Fox News is sure.

During an episode of The Five on Wednesday, the panel members were left scratching their heads during a discussion of the bizarre video.

In a clip posted to X, Kennedy and Kid Rock, both shirtless, take turns riding on a stationary bike and doing pushups in what looks like a sauna. At one point, Kid Rock flips the middle finger to the camera. A title screen, inexplicably featuring a great white shark, tells us this is Kennedy and Kid Rock’s “Rock Out Work Out.”

The video is apparently intended to promote the DHHS secretary’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.

Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld watched the video and asked his co-panelists, “This raises a question: who rubs off on who?”

“You would think, ‘Oh, my God. RFK Jr is hanging out with Kid Rock. Oh, poor RFK Jr. is going to end up drinking. He’s going to be drinking again. He’s going to be womanizing again.’ And then what happens? You see Kid Rock at the gym,” Gutfeld said. “He’s like, you know, working out and cold plunge—it’s like RFK was a bad influence on Kid Rock. Who would have seen that coming?”

Fox News military analyst Johnny Jones pointed out that the DHHS secretary wore blue jeans throughout his entire workout.

“Listen, somebody needs to tell RFK Jr. it’s okay to wear shorts. I mean, bro, don’t be upset about your legs. I don’t care what they look like. Take it from me, nobody needs impressive legs. You look great with your shirt off. Throw the shorts on so we don’t all go, ‘Wow, that’s weird.’”

Esquire’s coverage was brutal. “The Republican Party Is So Tacky Now. The party of Lincoln has been reduced to RFK Jr. and Kid Rock’s “workout” video. Are they really okay with that?”  This analysis was written by Dave Holmes.

As you know by now, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got together with Woodstock ’99 standout Kid Rock to produce a short video promoting nutrition, exercise, and bathing with your pants on. The “Rock Out WORK OUT” video was filmed at Kid Rock’s home gym and sauna, and it is scored to his 1998 single “Bawitdaba,” so just when you start to realize that your tax dollars funded this video, you have to face the fact that some of your tax dollars have gone directly to Kid Rock, which is a lot to sit with. Like you, I spent much of yesterday trying not to see it. But it turns out to be a pretty good barometer of where we are as a country and a culture in February 2026, and if I have to lose 90 seconds to this goddamn thing, then so do you. Pour yourself a glass of whole milk and let’s dive in.

The video opens with Kennedy and Kid, shirtless and flexing, in front of the taxidermic bear you were already sure existed in Kid Rock’s home gym. A quick camera pan reveals that this bear is wearing a checkered fedora, suggesting that it was shot while onstage with its ska band, which hardly seems sporting. From there is a montage that includes an American flag, a shark, a fighter jet, a bald eagle, and an explosion, so what we know right off the bat is two things: One, they’re going to be throwing everything at the wall here, and two, NFTs must really be over, because this would be the perfect place to slide one in.

A highlight reel shows Secretary Kennedy and American Bad Calves running through some basic exercises in the workout room, and then it’s right to the sauna, where Kennedy keeps his jeans on and Rock does a set of push-ups so comically weak it awakens the sadistic gym teacher inside us all. Seriously: I want to bully him, and I own Liza with a Z on Blu-ray. What is happening here? As if anticipating this response, Kid Rock flips off the camera. That’s the message of American public health in 2026: Get active, eat real food, and fuck you.

Kennedy dips himself in the cold plunge, in the jeans which you have to imagine are sodden with sweat from the Assault bike session he just did in the sauna. The hygienic ramifications are too hideous to consider, so you focus your attention on the decor of Kid Rock’s home fitness center, which is identical to what you’d see in one of those Hammer & Nails salons for men, where they surround you with rough-hewn wood and tables made out of wagon wheels so you can get a pedicure and it won’t make you gay.

Kennedy gets out of the cold plunge and walks his wet ass through a sitting area, dripping his Kennedy juice all over the Navajo rug. “Where’s Kid?” he asks, a valid question only after we have answered the question “Why is Kid?” Well, Kid is in some kind of hot-tub room, flexing his biceps with a look on his face that is unmistakably 10 percent apologetic. Kennedy shakes his head. Kid, in his own hot tub? He can’t believe it!

The economy remains sluggish, with high prices. This is from CNBC. Jeff Cox reports that “Fourth-quarter U.S. GDP up just 1.4%, badly missing estimate; inflation firms at 3%.”

U.S. growth slowed more than expected near the end of 2025 as the government shutdown impacted spending and investment, while a key inflation metric showed high prices are still a factor for the economy, according to data released Friday.

Gross domestic product rose at an annualized rate of just 1.4%, according to the Commerce Department, well below the Dow Jones estimate for a 2.5% gain.

Consumer spending increased at a slower pace for the period while government spending tumbled sharply in a quarter marked by the record-length shutdown. The department estimated that the shutdown subtracted about 1 percentage point from growth, though it added that the exact impacts “cannot be quantified.”

For the full year in 2025, the U.S. economy grew at a 2.2% pace, down from the 2.8% increase in 2024.

“The Federal government shutdown clearly sent the economy careening off its strong growth path in the fourth quarter which is a one-off that won’t be repeated in early 2026,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds.

It doesn’t take an economist to know that Trump and his lackeys have no idea what they are doing.

Anyway, I hate being the bearer of bad news, but other than the SCOTUS decisions, that’s what’s out there.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

Mostly Monday Reads: Presidents Day in a Lost Country

Posted: February 16, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: #FARTUS, #MAGAnomics, #We are so Fucked, Democratic Backsliding, Environmental Protection, Foreign Affairs | Tags: , , , , | 15 Comments

“The latest cabinet meetings aren’t televised for a reason. Fear not, our de facto leader is in control as the ethnic cleansing of the country formerly known as the United States roars ahead unabated. The must-see TV drama not being broadcast is Whose Turn Is It to Change the Old Guy’s Diaper?” John Buss, @repeat 1968

Good Day Sky Dancers!

As we stare down the 250th anniversary of the day our country started its journey from monarchy to democracy, we have to take a look at where we’ve landed today and utter some word of disappointment. The headlines today are filled with references to autocracy, and it’s not difficult to see how the MAGA/Trump overreach is playing out.

Politico sums up the current situation like this. “Trump’s second year: Whiplash. Even proposals that don’t ultimately move forward have consequences.” I’d just like a few more adjectives like weird, cruel, and inexplicably unnecessary.

President Donald Trump’s first year back in office was defined by sweeping upheaval that was largely plotted out during his four-year Florida exile. But the president has somehow intensified the volatility in year two with a succession of whiplash-inducing policy swings, several of which have almost immediately withered in the face of Republican opposition and public outcry.

The administration this week finally withdrew the thousands of federal law enforcement officers from Minneapolis, after violent and at times deadly clashes with protesters turned the tide of public opinion against the president’s immigration crackdown.

It came after Trump threatened to decertify Canadian aircraft, a move deemed “unjustified and dangerous” by a Washington-based aerospace trade union that the president soon dropped. Trump said in early January that he’d cap credit card rates at 10 percent, a move that would have upended the banking industry, only to change his mind and ask Congress for legislation.

Also last month, Trump’s administration paused millions in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funding for state public health infrastructure — only to reverse course roughly 24 hours later.

“The whiplash has real implications,” said Chrissie Juliano, executive director of the Big Cities Health Coalition, a forum of the leaders of metropolitan health departments. “It’s incredibly disruptive, even if you can get back to continuing the work, you know, two days later.”

The unpredictability of a presidency that prioritizes posting over process and often leaves friends and foes alike guessing whether pronouncements should be taken seriously, literally, or both, remains a feature, not a bug of Trump’s approach to governance. In many matters, especially negotiations with other countries, his mercurial opacity is often an attempt to gain leverage, but his threats seemingly lead just as often to backtracking as blowing things up, be they Iranian missile depots, Venezuelan drug boats or the transatlantic alliance.

The same often holds true for domestic policy. The president has made numerous pronouncements with emphatic declarations on social media, sometimes even suggesting he is governing by fiat in cases where legislation is required. But he has quickly moved on from many of them: a cap on credit card interest rates, 50-year mortgages and, according to a new Financial Times report, possibly even the sweeping tariffs on aluminum and steel that have led to higher costs.

We’re just beginning to explore the depths of depravity that Trump and his buddies will go to just feel powerful and get richer. This is from Robert Reich’s SubStack. “The Squalor of the Epstein Class. Happy Presidents Day!”

Here’s how Kentucky Republican Congressman Thomas Massie responded on Sunday, during ABC’s “This Week,” to a question about the Trump regime’s handling of the Epstein files:

“This is about the Epstein class …. They’re billionaires who were friends with these people, and that’s what I’m up against in Washington, D.C. Donald Trump told us that even though he had dinner with these kinds of people, in New York City and West Palm Beach, that he would be transparent. But he’s not. He’s still in with the Epstein class. This is the Epstein administration. And they’re attacking me for trying to get these files released.”

The Epstein Class. Not just the people who cavorted with Jeffrey Epstein or the subset who abused young girls. It’s an interconnected world of hugely rich, prominent, entitled, smug, powerful, self-important (mostly) men. Trump is honorary chairman.

Trump is still sitting on two and a half million files that he and Pam Bondi won’t release. Why? Because they implicate Trump and even more of the Epstein class. The files that have been released so far don’t paint a pretty picture.

Trump appears 1,433 times in the Epstein files so far. His billionaire backers are also members. Elon Musk appears 1,122 times. Howard Lutnick is there. So is Trump-backer Peter Thiel (2,710 times), and Leslie Wexner (565 times). As is Steven Witkoff, now Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, and Steve Bannon, Trump’s consigliere (1,855 times).

The Epstein Class isn’t limited to Trump donors. Bill Clinton is a member (1,192 times), as is Larry Summers (5,621 times). So are LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman (3,769 times), Prince Andrew (1,821 times), Bill Gates (6,385 times), and Steve Tisch, co-owner of the New York Giants (429 times).

If not politics, then what connects the members of the Epstein Class? It’s not just riches. Some members are not particularly wealthy, but they’re richly connected. They trade on their prominence, on whom they know and who will return their phone calls.

They exchange inside tips on stocks, on the movements of currencies, on IPOs, on new tax-avoidance mechanisms. On getting into exclusive clubs, reservations at chic restaurants, lush hotels, exotic travel.

Most members of the Epstein Class have seceded into their own small, self-contained world, disconnected from the rest of society. They fly in one other’s private jets. They entertain at one other’s guest houses and villas. Some exchange tips on how to procure certain drugs or kinky sex or valuable works of art. And, of course, how to accumulate more wealth.

Many don’t particularly believe in democracy; Peter Thiel (recall, he appears 2,710 times in the Epstein files) has said he “no longer believes that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Many are putting their fortunes into electing people who will do their bidding. Hence, they are politically dangerous.

The Epstein Class is the by-product of an economy that emerged over the last two decades, from which this new elite has siphoned off vast amounts of wealth.

It’s an economy that bears almost no resemblance to that of mid-20th-century America. The most valuable companies in this new economy have few workers because they don’t make stuff. They design it. They create ideas. They sell concepts. They move money.

I’ve always argued here and in classes that the biggest economic policies of the Reagan and Bush years were tax cuts that made it more profitable to gamble on financial assets rather than to actually produce goods and services. The changes in tax policies that cut upper brackets, then treated capital gains as a tax slash, and other ridiculous policies mean that money never lands where it can actually do good. It also creates a lot of idle hands and minds.

China is beginning to look more modern, more concerned about actual economic outcomes, and the planet. The U.S. continues to race back to the Gilded Age with hints of the Great Depression years. This is from The Guardian. “The Guardian view on Donald Trump and the climate crisis: the US is in reverse while China ploughs ahead.  The president’s destructive policies enrich fossil fuel billionaires, while Beijing has bet big on the green transition.”

Devastating wildfires, flooding and winter storms were among the 23 extreme weather and climate-related disasters in the US which cost more than a billion dollars last year – at an estimated total loss of $115bn. The last three years have shattered previous records for such events. Last Wednesday, scientists said that we are closer than ever to the point after which global heating cannot be stopped.

Just one day later, Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin, the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, announced the elimination of the Obama-era endangerment finding which underpins federal climate regulations. Scrapping it is just one part of Mr Trump’s assault on environmental controls and promotion of fossil fuels. But it may be his most consequential. Any fragment of hope may lie in the fact that a president who has called global heating a “hoax” framed this primarily as about deregulation – perhaps because the science is now so widely accepted even in the US.

The administration claimed, without evidence, that Americans would save $1.3tn. Never mind insurance or healthcare costs; a recent report found that US earnings would be 12% higher without the climate crisis. The Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse called the decision “corruption, plain and simple”. In 2024, Mr Trump reportedly urged 20 fossil fuel tycoons to stump up $1bn for his presidential campaign – while vowing to remove controls on the industry.

In the same week as this reckless and destructive US decision, it emerged that China had recorded its 21st month of flat or slightly falling carbon emissions. As Washington tears up environmental regulations, Beijing is extending carbon reporting requirements. China remains the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, though its per capita and cumulative historical emissions are still far behind those of the US. But clean energy drove more than 90% of its investment growth last year.

The Carbon Brief website, which published the emissions analysis, says the numbers suggest that the decline in China’s carbon intensity – emissions per unit of GDP – was below the target set in the last five-year plan, making it hard to meet its commitments under the Paris agreement. The shift in emissions may not prove enduring. There is fear that China’s focus may change; the next five-year plan, due in March, will be key. Some subsidies for renewable power have already been withdrawn. The installation of huge quantities of renewable energy infrastructure has been accompanied by a surge in constructing coal-fired power plants, though the hope is that these are intended primarily as a fallback.

We continue to disregard the actual civilized nations and cavort with the worst of the worst. This is from France24.  “Rubio tells Orban ‘your success is our success’ during Hungary visit ahead of elections. During a visit to Budapest Monday, just weeks before Hungary’s parliamentary elections, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban that the nationalist leader’s “success” was a success for the US. An ally of President Donald Trump, who has also maintained ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Orban lags behind the main opposition candidate in opinion polls.” The entire Trump cabinet is feckless, shameless, and incompetent. They are also enabling a backslide in democracy.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio hailed Viktor Orban‘s leadership during a visit to Budapest on Monday, ahead of elections threatening the nationalist prime minister’s hold on power.

Rubio’s visit is the final stage of a whirlwind trip to Europe that also saw him address the Munich Security Conference and visit another right-wing ally, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico.

US President Donald Trump has made no secret of his high regard for Orban, saying in a social media post on Friday that the prime minister had produced “phenomenal” results in Hungary.

But Orban, 62, has a fight on his hands for the April 12 legislative elections in Hungary. Polls suggest his Fidesz party is trailing opposition leader Peter Magyar’s TISZA.

“I can say to you with confidence that President Trump is deeply committed to your success because your success is our success,” Rubio said during a joint press conference with Orban after their meeting.

“The president has an extraordinarily close relationship to the prime minister, he does, and it has had tangible benefits,” he said.

Europe’s nations have read the writing on the wall, according to CNN’s Kasie Hunt. “Trump’s damage is done. Democrats – and Europe – are struggling to define what’s next.”

Many of the Democrats who came to the Munich Security Conference this weekend want to be president. But even if one of them can win the White House in 2028, they may find they can no longer claim the title every American president since the 1940s has borne: leader of the free world.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom went on stage to insist his state is more permanent than President Donald Trump. But he acknowledged in an interview with CNN that the leaders he met with believe the damage to the transatlantic alliance is irrevocable.

Progressive star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York came to pitch a left-wing populist foreign policy but made headlines for a massive stumble instead.

A number of Democratic senators hoping to burnish their foreign policy credentials ahead of possible presidential bids found themselves in a painfully awkward moment with the Danish prime minister, as some Democrats tried to smooth over pugnacious remarks Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham made at the start of the meeting that suggested Trump has not given up his designs on Greenland – a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.

And most members of the House of Representatives who planned to attend didn’t come at all after Republican Speaker Mike Johnson pulled the plug on the congressional delegation.

European thought leaders were reduced to offering a brief standing ovation to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose speech was far more conciliatory than the one Vice President JD Vance delivered at the same gathering last year. But Rubio had kicked off his trip telling American reporters: “The old world is gone.” He also left the conference to fly onward to Slovakia and Hungary, two countries led by strongmen sympathetic to Trump.

The conference’s opening remarks from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz crystallized Europe’s new reality in what seems to be rapidly becoming a post-American century.

“A divide has opened up between Europe and the United States,” Merz said Friday. “The United States’ claim to leadership has been challenged, and possibly lost.”

It’s more than just words. Merz has said he held “confidential talks” with France on European nuclear deterrence. It’s a stunning admission there’s no longer unconditional trust that the US will do what needs to be done for its transatlantic allies.

“What I’m hearing now is, even if we are able to repair these relationships, it’s going to take generations before they feel comfortable,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, of Arizona, a possible presidential hopeful who traveled to Munich not long after learning the Trump administration had tried and failed to indict him over a video he made telling troops not to obey illegal orders.

If this continues, the momentum and direction of the world’s political entanglements will change. Who knows what this will mean? This Op Ed piece from MS Now by Anthony L. Fisher discusses Trump and his attempts at an Imperial Presidency. “Libertarians warned about the ‘imperial presidency.’ Too few actually warned about Trump. A recent New York Times op-ed showed the blind spot many libertarians still have for President Donald Trump.”

When I saw the headline “Libertarians Tried to Warn You About Trump” atop a New York Times op-ed last Monday, I thought, “Hmmm, that’s not quite how I remember it.” Adorned with the striking image of the Gadsden flag’s “Don’t Tread on Me” snake about to get curb-stomped by an enormous black jackboot, the piece was written by Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor in chief of the libertarian magazine and website Reason — where I worked as a journalist for roughly six years. (I left shortly after President Donald Trump’s first inauguration.)

Sure enough, upon reading the column, I discovered the headline didn’t accurately reflect Mangu-Ward’s argument. She primarily made the case that libertarians have warned for years — under presidents in both major parties — about the dangers of ever-expanding executive authority, what’s been aptly coined the “Imperial Presidency.” Rather than claiming to have specifically warned “about Trump,” the writer boasted that libertarians had long sounded the alarm over the consolidation of such power — power now being used for nefarious purposes by a president who just happens to be Donald Trump. (The Times later that day amended the headline to the less specific but more honest, “Libertarians: We Told You So.”)

I can’t argue with that. To the extent most self-identified professional libertarians warned about Trump, they warned about the awesome powers that could be abused by a generic authoritarian president from either party.

But Trump is not a hypothetical. He always told us who he was. And there are far fewer of us who took (and continue to hold) the comparatively unpopular view among libertarians and other right-of-center fellow travelers that Trump presented as a uniquely authoritarian, vindictive, racist, corrupt and lawless demagogue — of which there isn’t remotely an analog on the other side of the aisle.

The problem is that, even now that Trump has proven us skeptics right on every one of those counts, too many libertarians continue to position themselves safely in a “pox on both your houses” perch — much too nuanced and enlightened to be dragged into partisan rancor. This position is how your movement ends up conflating the tyranny of overbearing, temporary Covid policies in Democratic-run areas as equal to (or worse than) the tyranny of a secret police force acting without due process for everyone when attempting to arrest suspected illegal immigrants, summarily executing Americans in the street and branding them “domestic terrorists” while their bodies are still warm.

All of these thoughts lead to one logical conclusion. The Midterm elections need to depose him and remove the spineless and the true believers, or whatever this is, from Congress.

Just to let you know, we’re having the most unkind Mardi Gras Celebration that even the police have seen. We seem to have been overrun by spontaneous groups of young men that are behaving a lot like the droogies in A Clockwork Orange. I may write about it on Friday; however, I’m busy listening to my friends’ experiences uptown and around the Quarter right now.

Peace, Love, and Understanding to you all!

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging Lists today?

 

Finally Friday Reads: WTF has this regime done to our Country?

Posted: January 30, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: #We are so Fucked, ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE Minneapolis, ICE raids, Take Back America | Tags: , , , , , , | 10 Comments

“The Eighth Amendment prohibits ‘cruel and unusual punishments,’ which the real Supreme Court has interpreted to forbid torture. Of course, the Trump administration does as it pleases.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The first text message I woke up to today put a lot into perspective. “ICE on S Claiborne in Holly Grove! Please relay… 3 HOURS AGO.” It was way uptown, so all I could do was just put the word out and hope. I have a copy of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence in my desk drawer, which I had left on top after trying to tame the contents of my drawers.

Which among us these days would “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor?” It’s times like these that I remember the 6 in my family who did, and 7 if you count the stepfather of one of my grandfathers, George Washington. Then there is the rest of the family who fought in all the wars to keep us free and ensure that all men and women were free and had the right to vote.

It’s been interesting to share the awful experience of having your city invaded by your own country. It’s given me a chance to reconnect with high school friends in L.A. and Minneapolis. I know many people here who daily mutually pledge to these causes down here in New Orleans, and we didn’t become a part of the scene until the Louisiana Purchase.

It’s time to stand up for what we’re supposed to stand for.

This Op-Ed in the New York Times caught my eye immediately after I tucked my pamphlet back in its rightful drawer. Lydia Polgreen, an Opinion Columnist, asked the same question that I had earlier and answered it succinctly. “This Week Has Revealed 3 Types of Americans.” I know where I stand, do you?

In Minnesota, I saw scenes that reminded me of the chaos and violence in civil wars I’ve covered in other countries. Heavily armed agents have rampaged through the streets, assaulting, tear-gassing and arbitrarily detaining people. They have fired on civilians at close range, killing two of them.

If this is a war, it is one-sided: The forces Trump has unleashed face not military opponents to their authority but ordinary people equipped with cellphones and whistles. Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota has activated the National Guard under his command, it’s true. But so far, they have been deployed to do little more than deliver coffee, hot cocoa and doughnuts to Minnesotans who have taken to the streets. There hasn’t been the kind of state and federal standoff that would constitute a classic civil war, though Walz has worried such a confrontation could soon be in the offing.

Yet the clash in Minneapolis has revealed a cleavage over the meaning of citizenship and constitutional rights perhaps as profound as the one that split the nation in 1861. The fight, now as it was then, is over that simple question: What kind of America are we?

There were the bystanders and accommodationists. On the day federal officers gunned down Alex Pretti, a nurse who cared for critically ill veterans, they were on full display. Dressed in tuxedos and ball gowns, some of the country’s richest men and women streamed into the White House for a special private screening of a hagiographic documentary about Melania Trump, the first lady.

Along with the chief executives of Apple and Amazon — the latter company had paid the first lady’s production company $40 million for the rights to the film — grandees and celebrities filled out the guest list. Beneath a glittering chandelier, gloved waiters served popcorn in glossy, black-and-white commemorative buckets. As if to underscore the transformation of the people’s house into a Trumpian Versailles, guests were sent home with French cookies emblazoned with the first lady’s name.

Then there were the aggressors. Not content to be largely silent supplicants, these Americans actively supported what had happened. Top administration figures like Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem rushed to paint Pretti as a domestic terrorist bent on slaughtering officers of the law. Never mind that he was a former boy scout and choir boy with no criminal record, his legally owned gun safely holstered. Perhaps most odiously, the conservative media personality Megyn Kelly declared that Pretti had only himself to blame for his death.

But arrayed against these powerful figures were the resisters, embodied by the two Americans gunned down in Minneapolis this month: Renee Good, a poet and a mother who had just dropped her son off at school, shot through the head by an ICE agent whom, it was baselessly claimed, she sought to run down with her car; and Pretti, who bravely placed himself between federal agents and a woman they shoved to the ground, paying for this valor with his life.

You may read more stories about these resisters at the gift link. And then, there are the journalists covering the story. This is from CNN. Journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort were taken into custody after a Minnesota church protest. My great-granddaddy was a Methodist Circuit rider back in Kansas and back in the day, and a fierce abolitionist. People are just oozing traditional American values here, while the Trump Regime just ignores all those years of fighting, standing, dying, and making history. Remember the Presbyterian minister in Chicago? They certainly didn’t care about his right to peacefully protest. What about the rights of journalists to report a story?

Two independent journalists, Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, have been arrested in connection with a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Lemon and Fort were live-streaming as dozens of anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters rushed into Cities Church on January 18, interrupting a church service and leading to tense confrontations.

Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday announced said four people total had been arrested “in connection with the coordinated attack” at the church.

The other two individuals Bondi named were Trahern Jeen Crew and Jamael Lydell Lundy.

Court records related to the arrests were not immediately available. Lemon, a former CNN anchor who now hosts his own show on YouTube and other platforms, is expected to appear in federal court in Los Angeles on Friday.

Lemon was in L.A. to cover the Grammy Awards and was arrested after 11 p.m. local time in a hotel lobby in Beverly Hills.

“Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done,” Lemon’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement Friday morning. “The First Amendment exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable.”

“Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention and resources to this arrest, and that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case,” Lowell added. “This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand. Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court.”

Lemon has repeatedly said he was present at the demonstration as a journalist, not as an activist. In a video of the episode that he posted to YouTube, Lemon said, “I’m just here photographing, I’m not part of the group… I’m a journalist.”

Fort made the same points in a Facebook Live stream when federal agents arrived at her home early Friday morning.

“This is all stemming from the fact that I filmed a protest as a member of the media,” Fort said before she surrendered to agents.

“We are supposed to have our constitutional right of the freedom to film, to be a member of the press,” she said. “I don’t feel like I have my First Amendment right as a member of the press because now federal agents are at my door arresting me for filming the church protest a few weeks ago.”

We are burying our neighbors. Keith Porter Jr. Renee Good. Alex Pretti. Thirty-two more in custody last year alone.Six killed so far this year. They were not statistics. They were us. They were America. The killing MUST stop. Stop funding the killers. #ICEoffOurStreets

— Peggy Stuart (@peggystuart.bsky.social) 2026-01-30T15:22:27.663Z

Our fat Orange Caligula and his cronies sure want him to be king. I just don’t understand how anyone who knows our history could possibly find these events anything but outrageous breaches of our Constitutional democracy. But catch this Trump hatement today. This is reported by NBC News‘ Pillar Melendez. “Trump calls Alex Pretti an ‘insurrectionist’ and ‘agitator’ after new video of ICU nurse emerges. The president’s rebuke of the slain ICU nurse came after a video emerged of a confrontation between Pretti and federal agents days before he was fatally shot in Minneapolis.” The orange idiot has to be the center of attention, no matter how Bond villain evil he sounds.

Donald Trump on Friday called Alex Pretti an “agitator and, perhaps, insurrectionist,” marking an increase in the intensity of his rhetoric toward the ICU nurse fatally shot by federal agents after the president recently said he wanted to “de-escalate a little bit” in Minnesota.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that Pretti’s “stock has gone way down with the just released video of him screaming and spitting in the face of a very calm and under control ICE Officer, and then crazily kicking in a new and very expensive government vehicle, so hard and violent, in fact, that the taillight broke off in pieces.’

NBC News previously reported on the video, shared online this week, that appeared to show Pretti in an altercation with agents just days before he was fatally shot. In the video taken on Jan. 13, Pretti is seen yelling at federal immigration agents and kicking the back of a vehicle used by agents, breaking a taillight. It is not clear what happened before the interaction.

“It was quite a display of abuse and anger, for all to see, crazed and out of control. The ICE Officer was calm and cool, not an easy thing to be under those circumstances! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump said in the Friday post.

The Department of Justice has opened a federal civil rights probe into Pretti’s death, Deputy AG Todd Blanche said in a Friday press conference. He added that he does not know where Pretti’s phone is or the gun that he had on him before his death.

“We’re looking at everything that would shed light on what happened that day and in the days and weeks leading up to what happened,” Blanche said.

David Rothkopf, writing for The Daily Beast, has this characterization of Trump and his hatred of Free Speech. “There Can Be No More Doubt. Trump Wants to Kill Free Speech. JEFFERSON WEEPS. Don Lemon is the most high-profile reporter being targeted. Trump wants to target all of us.”

Donald Trump is seeking to execute the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in the same way that his thugs gunned down Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good.

The arrest of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for doing their jobs as journalists and covering a public protest at a church in Minneapolis is a violent assault on freedom of the press in the United States of America, one of the most egregious we have ever seen from a U.S. government.

Not one but two judges rejected prior efforts by the—misnamed—U.S. Department of Justice to indict Lemon and Fort for their presence at the church protest. But undaunted, Attorney General Pam Bondi proceeded to personally direct the arrest of Lemon in Los Angeles late on Thursday night, thus reminding us that she more than any other member of the Trump cabinet deserves to be impeached—no small distinction in a group that includes deserving candidates for being fired and convicted by the Senate like Kristi Noem, RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth.

Lemon’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, wrote in a statement, “Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable” and he characterized the arrest as an “unprecedented attack” on a free press.

If anything, Lowell understates the dangers associated with Lemon’s arrest. Seeking to prosecute him represents not one but three separate attacks on freedoms so fundamental that were among the first guaranteed by our Constitution.

The latest Trump-appointed Fed Chair is like a read-it-and-weep announcement. I’m wondering what this will do to financial markets worldwide. This is from CNBC. “Trump nominates Kevin Warsh for Federal Reserve chair to succeed Jerome Powell.” Jeff Cox has the lede.

President Donald Trump on Friday named Kevin Warsh to succeed Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair, ending a prolonged odyssey that has seen unprecedented turmoil around the central bank.

The decision culminates a process that officially began last summer but started much earlier than that, with Trump launching a fusillade of criticism against the Powell-led Fed almost since Powell took the job in 2018.

“I have known Kevin for a long period of time, and have no doubt that he will go down as one of the GREAT Fed Chairmen, maybe the best,” Trump said in a Truth Social post announcing the selection.

The pick of Warsh, 55, likely won’t ripple markets because of his past Fed experience and Wall Street’s view that he wouldn’t always do Trump’s bidding.

“He has the respect and credibility of the financial markets,” said David Bahnsen, chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group, on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“There was no person who was going to get this job who wasn’t going to be cutting rates in the short term. However, I believe longer term he will be a credible candidate,” added Bahnsen.

Stock market futures nevertheless were slightly negative Friday morning, though off their lows since Warsh’s appointment became clear.

Warsh now faces Senate confirmation. If approved, he will take over the position in May, when Powell’s term expires. Warsh will fill the Board of Governors position currently held by Governor Stephen Miran, whose term expires Saturday. Miran can continue to serve until a replacement is named.

(Sigh). And now, the movie with the worst buzz ever!!! This is from Mother Jones. “Those Brutal ‘Melania’ Documentary Reviews Have Vanished from Letterboxd. Meanwhile, the First Lady used a Fox News appearance calling for ‘unity’ to shill the film.” I don’t think at my advanced age I’m going to start getting into porn, frankly.

Yesterday I published a story about what was quickly becoming a surprising site of capital R Resistance: the Letterboxd review page for the $75 million documentary film, Melania.

Comments were profane, fun, silly, unprintable. I included some of my favorites. The point I was making was this: Even before the movie’s release this Friday, it has become a lightning rod for anger, not least because Melania Trump’s oligarchic private premiere gala at the White House came the same day Alex Pretti was shot dead in the streets of Minneapolis amid her husband’s disastrous siege of the city. A real let-them-eat-cake moment.

But as my colleague Arianna Coghill went to promote the story today on our social media channels, she discovered the reviews have been wiped from the site entirely.

Sad.

So I sent an email to the Letterboxd press team asking why. What terms were violated? When did that happen? Even though the reviews appeared before the official release of the film, how is Letterboxd to know reviewers hadn’t seen the film itself?

They haven’t gotten back to me, and I’ll share their response when they do.

Update, Tuesday, January 27, 5:45 p.m.: Letterboxd just got back to me (they are based in New Zealand), attributing the erasure to an innocuous, automated back-end update:

This was an automatic update, caused by a previously incorrect premiere date. Letterboxd pulls through film data from TMDB, a user editable database for movies. The official premiere date was corrected on TMDB, automatically updated on the film’s main page on Letterboxd, thus preventing all reviews from appearing on the film page until its premiere. This happens from time to time on film pages through the automated sync, with no manual intervention required from the Letterboxd team.

So there you have it. Friday’s official release of the Amazon-MGM doc will provide would-be reviewers a fresh opportunity to contribute to Letterboxd’s thriving message boards.

Mo. Basuony at Filmogaz has this headline: “melania movie opens after Kennedy Center premiere as reviews turn combative.”

The melania movie reached theaters Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, after a Washington, D.C. premiere that blended red-carpet spectacle with unusually loud online blowback. The project — marketed as both a film and a companion series — has become a test case for how politics, celebrity, and platform-scale promotion can reshape a documentary rollout in real time.

The release centers on Melania Trump and the final weeks leading up to her return to the White House, with Brett Ratner directing and Melania serving as a producer with significant creative input. The premiere drew a mixed roster of political figures and pop culture guests, including Nicki Minaj, while early reactions focused less on what’s on screen and more on money, optics, and the film’s unusually aggressive marketing push.

Thursday night’s invite-only event took place at the Kennedy Center, though invitations and branding around the premiere used the phrase “Trump-Kennedy Center,” prompting immediate debate over naming and institutional politics. The red-carpet photos and guest lists quickly became part of the story, not just a prelude to the story.

Nicki Minaj’s appearance added to the swirl: her presence at a politically charged premiere turned the event into a crossover moment that traveled far beyond film pages and into fandom and campaign-world timelines. The result was a premiere that functioned as a media event first and a film debut second.

The money and the rollout plan

The financial contours are now inseparable from public perception. The film’s backing has been described as a rights/licensing deal near $40 million plus a marketing push widely pegged around $35 million, often summarized as a $75 million total outlay — a figure the filmmakers and team have pushed back on in parts, arguing the production scope is larger than a typical standalone documentary.

So, it’s just a usual day of grifting and pummeling Constitutional law.  And how’s your day going?

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

Mostly Monday Reads: It’s Cold and filled with ICE this Winter

Posted: January 26, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: #We are so Fucked, Federal Budget, ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE Minneapolis, ICE raids | Tags: , , , , | 4 Comments

“Déjà vu all over again and again and again…” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

I had a difficult time sleeping last night and had to rely on all the furry creatures in the house to help. The furnace just couldn’t handle it. Very old houses in Tropical Zones are not cut out for weather in the 20-degree Fahrenheit range. It’s noon, 36, and lots of sun. I’m always thankful to my sister and daughters for sending their ski coats and thick sweaters my way when this happens. We missed the snow, unlike last year, but I still had to do the usual New Orleans thing of wrapping the outdoor faucets and leaving a few indoor faucets dripping overnight.  Fortunately, no pipe breakages!

And of course, the cold, dark hand of winter isn’t the only systemic blast over us. The headlines are still about the nightmare in Minnesota, where ICE is pulling out all the stops. Even the Wall Street Journal and the NRA have had it with them. The NRA’s rationale was explored in USA Today. “Gun rights groups slam feds’ comments after Minneapolis shooting. “I don’t know of any peaceful protesters that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign,” said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.”

Several prominent Second Amendment rights groups have blasted federal officials for suggesting it’s dangerous – and possibly an indication of mal intent – for lawful gun owners to protest while in possession of their legally obtained firearms.

The controversy came after a Border Patrol agent on Jan. 24 shot and killed Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen and registered Veterans Affairs nurse, in Minneapolis. Federal officials said Pretti had a gun and intended to “kill law enforcement.” But videos and a witness account in federal court show Pretti holding a phone, not brandishing a firearm.

Hours after the fatal shooting, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli in Southern California took to X and said, “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you. Don’t do it!” Other members of the Trump administration argued that peaceful protesters don’t show up with guns.

Several prominent gun rights groups took issue with Essayli’s statement, including the National Rifle Association.

“This sentiment from the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California is dangerous and wrong,” the NRA said on X. “Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens.”

Gun Owners for America said in a statement that its leaders “condemn the untoward comments” by Essayli.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal take. “Videos Contradict U.S. Account of Minneapolis Shooting by Federal Agents. See how immigration officers escalated a fatal confrontation Saturday..” Trump’s regime has morphed beyond the reaches of what used to be Republican Conservatism, and a lot of them now can finally smell the fascism.

Federal agents claimed Alex Pretti, 37, forced their hand, alleging he “violently resisted” disarmament until the officers fired “defensive shots.”

Bystander footage appears to tell a different story. A frame-by-frame review by The Wall Street Journal shows a federal officer pulling a handgun away from Pretti. Less than a second later, an agent fires several rounds. Pretti died at the scene.

“Where is the gun?” agents shouted in the chaotic aftermath.

Pretti, an intensive-care nurse, had been on a Minneapolis street Saturday morning and was filming Border Patrol agents. Videos appear to show what happened next.

Since the fatal shooting of Renee Good, the friction between Minneapolis residents and the federal agents patrolling their streets has intensified.

Massive anti-ICE protests have mobilized thousands, while a more granular resistance has taken hold in the city’s neighborhoods through ICE monitoring groups.

On Nicollet Avenue around 9 a.m. local time on Saturday, locals blew warning whistles and filmed masked federal agents walking through Minneapolis’s Whittier neighborhood.

Bystander footage shows Pretti standing in the street where he appears to film with his cellphone while other people approach the agents.

Seconds later, Pretti approaches the group, shouting, “Hey!” and continuing to film.

As Pretti and the two other civilians walk away, one of the agents follows them.

That agent then shoved someone who appeared to be with Pretti.

Pretti immediately puts himself between the fallen person and the officer, who appears to spray a nonlethal chemical agent on all three of them.

As a struggle ensues, agents pull Pretti from the others; at least five masked DHS agents surround him and force him to the ground.

Bystander footage shows one agent drawing his firearm and pointing it at Pretti.

Around the same time, a different video verified by the Journal shows Pretti pinned to the ground and agents appear to discover a firearm on him.

In a statement, DHS said, “The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted.”

Less than a second later, one of the agents fires his weapon toward Pretti—the first of at least 10 shots within 5 seconds.

Each of these statements is followed by camera footage of the event. It’s pretty clear that the story told by Noem and other ICE representatives does not reflect the truth of the situation. After the Congress failed to defund ICE, there was widespread uproar from various quarters. AXIOS has the general overview of what’s going on in Congress right now. Will the Senate defund ICE? “DHS and ICE are under siege by Congress like never before.” Andrew Sollender has the lede.

The Department of Homeland Security is coming under unprecedented scrutiny from Congress in the wake of the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, with Democratic attacks more strident and Republican defenses more muted than ever before.

Why it matters: The growing tension could result in a government shutdown, politically charged hearings and even an impeachment vote.

  • More and more Democrats are signing onto Rep. Robin Kelly’s (D-Ill.) articles of impeachment against DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, with Kelly’s office telling Axios they expect a surge in co-sponsors in the coming day.
  • Senate Democrats are threatening to allow a partial government shutdown next week unless a DHS funding bill is altered with language reining in the agency.
  • And Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, has asked the heads of ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to testify to his panel.

Driving the news: While many Republican leaders and loyal Trump allies leapt to DHS’ defense in the wake of the shooting, a noticeably large group of GOP lawmakers offered more equivocal statements than in the aftermath of the Renee Good shooting weeks earlier.

  • Many centered their responses on calling for a full investigation, including Sens. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), Jon Husted (R-Ohio), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.), and Reps. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), Michael Baumgartner (R-Wash.), Max Miller (R-Ohio) and Michael McCaul (R-Texas).
  • The office of Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), a staunch conservative and Trump ally, said in a statement: “Leaders at every level must lower the temperature, enforce the law, and protect public safety. In the days ahead, we will work to ensure a full and transparent review of events.”
  • “Law enforcement should conduct an objective investigation and get the facts. We defend people’s free speech and right to protest,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) in a statement to Axios, though he added that it is “not right to interfere or obstruct law enforcement in their official actions.”

Zoom in: The responses of Rep. Michelle Fischbach (R-Minn.) to two different shootings in her home state offer a revealing picture of how the GOP’s tone has shifted since the start of the year.

  • After Renee Good was killed on Jan. 7, Fischbach called the incident a “targeted assault on ICE agents” in a post on X, writing, “I stand with the officer who acted in self-defense to save lives.”
  • On Sunday, she wrote after Pretti was killed: “I am deeply saddened by the tragic loss of life in Minneapolis and fully support the ongoing investigation into this incident.”

NBC has this report on the Democrats who seemed in disarray about the situation last week. “Senate Democrats plot strategy as DHS standoff deepens heading into shutdown week. Two sources who were on a Democratic caucus strategy call Sunday said Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told the group the message must be to “restrain, reform and restrict ICE.” This is reported by Sahil Kapur and Frank Thorp V.

Senate Democrats held a conference call Sunday to discuss their strategy after they made it clear they will block a Department of Homeland Security funding bill if it does not include changes to impose conditions on immigration enforcement operations.

The Senate is heading into a critical week with a Friday deadline to fund the government or face a partial shutdown.

The package doesn’t have the 60 votes it needs. Without them, much of the federal government could shut down at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.

Two sources on the call told NBC News that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told the caucus the message had to be to “restrain, reform and restrict ICE.”

According to one of the sources, Schumer told them that the vote won’t come until Thursday and that he discussed the Democratic caucus’ unity in opposition to funding DHS without reforms. He said the five other funding bills apart from the DHS measure are acceptable.

“Basically DHS is the problem and needs to be stripped out,” the source summed up Schumer as saying.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., pushed the caucus to come up with a demand for DHS reforms, two sources with knowledge of his comments said.

Republicans could limit the scope of a shutdown by voting on the non-DHS measures separately and passing them.

Ongoing concern about the health of the rotter in the White House continues to be a topic of discussion. This is from The Hill. “Trump on closing his eyes during Cabinet meetings: ‘Boring as hell’.” This is reported by Ashleigh Fields.

President Trump said he’s closed his eyes during Cabinet meetings because they are “boring as hell” but noted this isn’t a reflection of his health.

“It’s boring as hell; I’m going around a room, and I’ve got 28 guys — the last one was three and a half hours. I have to sit back and listen, and I move my hand so that people will know I’m listening,” Trump told New York magazine.

“I’m hearing every word, and I can’t wait to get out,” he added.

In recent months, speculation about the president’s ability to deal with chronic venous insufficiency and lead the country by past staffers, political strategists and the public has mounted.

Several people described the president as “incoherent” while giving remarks at Quantico, Va., last October; conservative commentator Megyn Kelly even said he was “rambling” on the campaign trail and displayed “senior moments.”

But those in Trump’s orbit defended Trump’s behavior and noted his innate ability to notice details both small and large in a split second.

“The guy is too healthy. He’s too active,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told New York magazine, detailing one time when Trump surprised him with a set of medallion samples after noticing some were missing from chandeliers inside the State Department.

Rubio said when the White House leader closes his eyes, it’s a “listening mechanism” that tunes speakers in rather than drowning them out.

Amid support from one of his top Cabinet officials, the president says he regrets taking an MRI scan and heeding the advice of his medical professionals at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center this fall, as it caused more questions about the state of his health.

At least one of Trump’s unqualified buffoons is out of office. NBC News reports that “Lindsey Halligan is no longer employed by the Justice Department after departure from Virginia U.S. attorney’s office. Halligan, who had no prosecutorial experience, stepped down from her post in the Eastern District of Virginia after a judge found she was “masquerading” as U.S. attorney.” How many hundreds or thousands of them are left?

Donald Trump loyalist Lindsey Halligan, a former insurance attorney who brought two unsuccessful cases against two of the president’s perceived enemies, is no longer a Justice Department employee, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

Halligan, who lacked any prior prosecutorial experience, stepped down last week from her proclaimed role as interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, a position a judge found she unlawfully held. It was not entirely clear last week whether Halligan would assume a new role at the Justice Department, as Alina Habba did after after federal appeals court judges upheld her disqualification as acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey in December.

But two sources familiar with the matter said Halligan is no longer a Justice Department employee. It is unclear whether she has a new job outside of the Justice Department.

A federal judge ruled last week that Halligan had to stop “masquerading” as the Eastern District’s top federal prosecutor.

It’s easy to portray these folks as a run away circus show, but the problem is that every decision they make impacts the lives of millions of Americans and folks around the world. They all need to be sent to one jolly prison to rot.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging lists today?

Finally Friday Reads: Jack is Back

Posted: January 23, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: #We are so Fucked, Elections, FARTUS, GOP Crimes Against Humanity, ICE Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE raids | Tags: , , , , | 4 Comments

“Jack Smith returns to Washington to testify publicly in front of Jim Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Yesterday, the entire news cycle was dedicated to the testimony of former Special Counsel Jack Smith, who prosecuted the rotter in the White House for his election interference scheme. Many of the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee were far from up to the task of diminishing Smith’s appearance and the merits of the case. At one point, Democratic Ranking Member Jamie Raskin and Republican Darrel Issa got into a shouting match.

PBS had this headline yesterday, along with a tick-tock of the day’s events. It was a strange thing to see that Republicans were part of what was a look at Trump’s Election crimes, which appeared to be less daunting to them than dealing with the Epstein Files. Anyone paying attention surely took the event and the testimony as yet another way Trump defies our Constitutionally defined form of government.

Jack Smith is set to testify in a House Judiciary hearing Thursday. It’s an opportunity for the career prosecutor to offer his inside perspective on the investigations into Trump’s mishandling of classified documents and attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The president was indicted in two federal cases, but both were scuttled once it was clear that Trump would return to the Oval Office, due to DOJ policy that prevents prosecution of a sitting president.

One of the things we learned is that the manner in which the case was dismissed lets a future Congress and DOJ go after him again. This was yesterday’s New York Times’ conclusion. “In Testimony, Jack Smith Defends Decision to Prosecute Trump. The former special prosecutor argued a case he was never allowed to in court: that President Trump “engaged in criminal activity” that undermined democracy.”  The leded is shared by
By Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer.

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

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

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

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

Mr. Smith and his team interfered in the “democratic process by seeking to muzzle a candidate for a high office,” Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in his opening statement, quoting from an editorial in The Washington Post.

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

This may seem like more rehashing of old news, but remember, Trump is angling to interfere with the 2026 midterms. It’s a good refresher as to the criminal lengths he will go to retain power. The news today still reflects the regime’s abuse of constitutional rights. ICE is still in the headlines. The abuse is on full display in Minneapolis. This analysis of the last Constitutional Crisis nightmare can be found on Joy Vance’s SubStack, Civil Discourse. “Breaking the Fourth Amendment.”

Last night, we learned from a report in the Associated Press that ICE, contrary to longstanding Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, is taking the position that it can enter people’s homes without a judicial warrant. Instead, they believe that an administrative warrant suffices. An administrative warrant is a form signed by an “authorized immigration official,” which means an executive branch employee who can be fired if they displease the president. It’s not difficult to see the problem here.

The Fourth Amendment provides that: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” It’s the reason your home can’t be searched by the police without a search warrant that has been supported with probable cause to believe that evidence or fruits of a crime will be found there.

ICE seems to be arguing that if they think a non-citizen for whom there is a final order of deportation is in a house, they can blow right past the Fourth Amendment, take the doors off the house if they aren’t admitted voluntarily, and go right in. But the Fourth Amendment doesn’t change just because ICE says so.

The Supreme Court has made it clear that a search warrant must be signed by a “judicial officer” or a “magistrate.” Their signature on the warrant says that they have reviewed the evidence that the agents believe constitutes probable cause to justify a search, and they agree that it is sufficient to breach the wall otherwise established by the Fourth Amendment and allow law enforcement into a private home (or car, or private areas of a business, etc.). The idea is that a detached, neutral judge—not someone involved in investigating a case or “on the same side” as law enforcement—should evaluate the evidence before a search warrant or an arrest warrant is issued.

As the Supreme Court explained in Johnson v. U.S., in 1948: “The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime.”

This report by The Washington Post shows how utterly evil, cruel, and lawless the agency has become. “ICE detains four children from Minnesota school district, including 5-year-old. Columbia Heights Public Schools district officials accused ICE officers of using the 5-year-old “as bait.” A 10-year-old and her mother were also detained.” Andrew Jeong provides the report.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota have detained at least four children from the same school district this month, including a 5-year-old boy, school officials in a Minneapolis suburb said Wednesday.

The events have inflamed tensions between residents and ICE officers, sparked by the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renée Good by an ICE officer this month. The Trump administration has sought to justify the presence of ICE personnel by saying that the officers are detaining immigrants convicted of violent crimes.

“Why detain a 5-year-old?” Zena Stenvik, the superintendent of the Columbia Heights Public Schools district, located just north of Minneapolis, said at a news conference. “You cannot tell me that this child is going to be classified as a violent criminal.”

Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, whom the Department of Homeland Security identified as Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias in an emailed statement, were detained in their driveway Tuesday afternoon, just as they were returning from the child’s school, according to a news release from Columbia Heights Public Schools.

The father fled on foot when ICE officers approached him, DHS said. “For the child’s safety, one of our ICE officers remained with the child while the other officers apprehended Conejo Arias,” it added.

After detaining the father, ICE officers then asked Liam to knock on the door to see if any other people were inside the home, “using a 5-year-old as bait,” according to the school district.

Another adult living in the home, who was outside at the time, “begged the agents” to leave the child with them, the school district said. ICE agents refused.

Liam’s middle-school-age brother returned home 20 minutes later to find that his younger brother and father had been taken away.

Liam and his father are now in San Antonio in the custody of Homeland Security authorities, the family’s lawyer, Marc Prokosch, said in an email. They are not U.S. citizens but “have been following the legal process perfectly, from presenting themselves at the border to applying for asylum and waiting for the process to go through,” he said.

The Substack Strength in Numbers of G. Elliott Morris has this true and frightening headline. “The consent of the governed has been withdrawn. One year into his second term, Trump has suffered the largest approval collapse of any modern president (except the one who resigned in disgrace). He is underwater on every major policy area.”  He’s so underwater that the numbers are worse than during the worst of the COVID pandemic.

One year ago this week, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. He entered office with a net approval rating of +5 in the FiftyPlusOne.news approval rating aggregate. Despite a tumultuous first term — which ended with the president posting his worst-ever numbers after the January 6 insurrection — voters, it seemed, were willing to give him another shot.

They are no longer willing to give him that chance. Trump sits at an -16 net job approval on average today, down from +5 on his first day in office. His 21-point drop is the worst first-year performance, in the eyes of public opinion, of any president’s first term going back to at least 1948. If you compare the last year to other second-term presidencies, Trump’s is still the worst first-year performance of any president in the modern polling, with one exception: Richard Nixon (who was consumed by Watergate and other national crises at this point in his term).

Either way, Trump is in historically bad company.

As The New York Times reported this week, Trump’s support among key groups he persuaded to vote for him in 2024 — notably, young, Black, and Latino voters — has now sunk below levels measured in the run-up to the 2020 election (which Trump lost to Joe Biden by 4.5 points in the national popular vote)

Let’s hope that turns into some momentum to get rid of Republicans in Congress. As noted before, the Trump Regime, plus many Republican Congress Critters, are truly afraid of what’s coming for them. Don Moynihan has this to say at his Substack. “Can We Still Govern? Past the breaking point. The violent occupation of an American city is more than a warning.”

We use words like “police state.” Then we see it happen. To watch is not the same as to experience it, of course. Of being afraid to leave your house. Or having a classmate, co-worker, or family member disappear. But the images make it more real. It removes any illusion that it could not happen here. It is happening here. We see it happening here, if we are willing to look.

In recent weeks, the paramilitary occupation of the Twin Cities has moved us past some invisible breaking points. About how we expect our government to treat us. And about what might be done about the government agencies that fail those expectations.

Lets step back: the primary purpose of this occupation is the selective use of government power to establish federal dominance over blue states or cities that President Trump dislikes. Thats it. Trump thinks Minnesota is the enemy, and so he unleashed an armed and masked paramilitary upon its people. There is no serious case that this is about the number of immigrants, or some level of violent crime not seen elsewhere. It is about the Department of Homeland Security, in the form of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Patrol, developing their skills as the President’s stormtroopers. It is about making an example of a community.

To make matters worse, Congress did not defund ICE thanks to a handful of turncoat Democrats. This is from Newsweek. “Seven Democrats Just Voted to Approve ICE Funding: Full List.”  This news is reported by Gabe Whisnant.

Seven House Democrats broke with much of their party to vote in favor of funding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), helping advance a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spending measure in committee despite strong opposition from progressives.

The votes came during a markup of the DHS appropriations bill, with Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky casting the lone Republican vote against the funding, which passed 220-207 and will fund ICE as well as FEMA through September 30.

“Right now we are about to take a vote and that vote is on DHS and whether or not we will give more funding to ICE. Right now I am willing to shut it down. I am going to do what it takes instead of just kind of being a go-along to get-along lawmaker,” Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat, told Newsweek ahead of the vote.

The seven Democratic representatives who voted yes to approve ICE funding were:

  • Tom Suozzi (New York)
  • Henry Cuellar (Texas)
  • Don Davis (North Carolina)
  • Laura Gillen (New York)
  • Jared Golden (Maine)
  • Vicente Gonzalez (Texas)
  • Marie Glusenkamp Perez (Washington)

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

 

 

 

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