THE RELEASE OF ADDITIONAL EPSTEIN FILES IS JUST ONE MORE BIT OF EFFLUENT IN THE FIREHOSE

More Jeffrey Epstein files were released yesterday. The government has additional documents but says it won't release them, in defiance of the law. Nevertheless, what we saw yesterday hinted at the loathsomeness of many famous people -- Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Howard Lutnick, Steve Tisch ... And then there are the more horrifying claims, such as the allegation that the late Robin Leach, who hosted the TV series Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous in the 1980s and 1990s, "strangle[d] a young girl to death at a party."

Was this worth it? We're shaming these boldface names, but no one seems to have a plan to hold anyone accountable, up to and including Trump. It's good to put a scarlet letter on these vile people, but that's probably all we're going to get out of this.

As for the timing: In a 2018 interview, Steve Bannon told Michael Lewis that the correct Republican strategy for dealing with the media was to "flood the zone with shit." The standard interpretation of this phrase is "flood the zone with lies and half-truths" -- as David Corn wrote last year, "It’s Trump’s version of what’s been called the 'firehose of falsehood' model of propaganda utilized by Russia."

But what we're getting from the Trump White House in 2026 -- and have been getting since he was inaugurated a year ago -- isn't a firehose of falsehood necessarily. The Trumpers just throw everything at us all at once, and we struggle to respond to one outrage as twenty others pop up on our phones. Yesterday I noted that the Trump administration has been arresting journalists who covered a protest at a church in Minnesota, seizing ballots and other electoral records in Georgia, and planning to do to Haitian refugees in Springfield, Ohio, what's recently been done to Minneapolis. Now there's more. It's being reported that Trump wants the arch he intends to build in D.C. to be more than twice the height of the Lincoln Memorial. He also announced that he wants an Indy-car auto race to take place on the streets of Washington this summer, and he wants a stadium that can hold 100,000 people to be built in front of the White House, in time for a scheduled UFC event scheduled for his birthday. This isn't "shit" as in lies and misinformation -- it's "shit" as in I'm doing this, and you haters will just have to eat shit.

The Bulwark's Sarah Longwell posted this yesterday:

Called it.

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— Sarah Longwell (@sarahlongwell25.bsky.social) January 30, 2026 at 11:15 AM

I'd say that Trump is throwing so much at us that it's all a distraction from Minneapolis, and the other items I've mentioned are distractions from the newly released Epstein files, and the fact that the administration withheld millions of Epstein pages but exposed many famous people in the newly released files is a distraction from the additional appearances of Trump's name in the newly released files, and reports that the administration is adopting a "new tone" in Minnesota are distractions from the fact that the crackdown hasn't really abated -- the administration continues to claim broad powers to arrest people without judicial warrants, and there's this:

The government is escalating its war, not drawing down.

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— The Editorial Board (@editorialboard.bsky.social) January 31, 2026 at 8:45 AM

We're all struggling to get purchase on all of this, and that's what the Bannon strategy envisions.

TRUMP WILL GET HIS ABUSE FIX ONE WAY OR ANOTHER

This week, far too many people fell for the notion that President Trump now recognizes the need for self-restraint in Minnesota after the thuggish murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Trump made a few cosmetic changes in the state, but he appears to have responded to the widespread outrage by getting his abuse fix in other ways.

Here's the act of abuse that's leading the news:

The former CNN anchor Don Lemon was arrested late Thursday night on charges that he violated federal law during a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minn., his lawyer said, in a case rejected last week by a magistrate judge.

Mr. Lemon has said he was simply reporting as a journalist when he entered the Cities Church on Jan. 18 to observe a demonstration against the immigration crackdown in the area.

The protesters interrupted a service at the church, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official serves as a pastor, and chanted “ICE out.” Afterward, the Trump administration sought to charge eight people over the episode, including Mr. Lemon, citing a law that protects people seeking to participate in a service in a house of worship.

But the magistrate judge who reviewed the evidence approved charges against only three of the people, rejecting the evidence against Mr. Lemon and the others as insufficient. The Justice Department then petitioned a federal appeals court to force the judge to issue the additional warrants, only to be denied.

Lemon is well off and has a high-powered D.C.-insider lawyer, Abbe Lowell. It's quite likely that he'll beat the rap. But Lemon isn't the only Black journalist who's been arrested for the crime of covering this protest:

Minnesota based Independent Journalist GEORGIA FORT has been arrested for filming a protest of the church pastor that works as an ICE manager. SPREAD THE WORD! Georgia has been doing outstanding reporting from ground zero!

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— The Letterhack (@theletterhack.bsky.social) January 30, 2026 at 8:23 AM

Georgia Fort, an independent journalist and vice president of the Minnesota NABJ chapter, was also arrested by federal agents this morning I was sent this video of agents at her door:

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— Phil Lewis (@phillewis.bsky.social) January 30, 2026 at 9:58 AM

On Wednesday, the FBI seized voting records and ballots from the 2020 election in heavily Democratic Fulton Country, Georgia. Yesterday, Trump sued the FBI for $10 billion, accusing the agency of negligence in hiring an employee who went on to leak Trump's tax returns. And there are

media reports that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine told state leaders that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning a 30-day surge in Ohio....

The operation in Ohio is set to begin Feb. 4 after the Trump administration ended Temporary Protective Status about 500,000 Haitian immigrants in the U.S.

If we want to look at these new fronts in Trump's war on common decency as "distractions," please note that he's distracting us from his evil acts in Minnesota with more evil acts.

If it's all meant as a distraction, it's not meant as a distraction intended to make us forget that Trump's thugs have been doing morally reprehensible things in Minnesota. If anything, it's intended to distract us from the fact that Trump didn't crush the Minnesota resistance. Trump doesn't think he did terrible things in Minnesota that alienated most of America -- he thinks he looks weak because he had to make even a superficial retreat. If he's trying to distract us, he's trying to distract us from his failure to be a completely successful thug.

(Or you could argue that he's trying to distract himself from his poor polling and his failure to dominate Minneapolis.)

Regrettably, it will be a struggle to get normie voters to respond to these outrages the way they've responded to two summary executions in Minneapolis, even though the attacks on elections and the First Amendment are deeply alarming. Maybe Trump understands that on a gut level. Maybe he assumes that only journalists -- who are held in low esteem these days -- will be truly outraged at the arrests. Maybe Trump critics in the press will continue to insist that he can't really tamper with the midterms. If so, these will turn out to be successful distractions, whether or not that's what they were meant to be.

SENATE DEMOCRATS SURRENDER THEIR ADVANTAGE

Senate Democrats have preemptively surrendered on Department of Homeland Security funding, David Dayen of The American Propsect reports.

... the Democrats’ list of demands appears to have shrunk after internal deliberations.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer released the Senate caucus’s set of asks on Wednesday. They included an end to roving patrols and a requirement for proper judicial warrants, limiting enforcement actions to known targets in conjunction with local law enforcement; standards on use of force that match those of the local police; and a “masks off, body cameras on” policy.

The first few items would be good if they could be enforced. "Body cameras on" is useless -- those of us who live in big cities know that cops with body camera requirements routinely say, "Whoops! I forgot to turn my camera on!" when footage is demanded after a controversial incident. We also know that the Republican message machine can persuade nearly everyone in the GOP voter base that they're seeing something other than what video evidence shows.

And the thugs will sidestep "masks off," saying they need to wear face coverings for the cold (in places like Minnesota and Maine now), or wear gas masks because they're deploying tear gas and pepper balls.

And:

Arguably many of these conditions are already part of ICE and CBP standards; the problem is a lack of enforcement. Indeed, a new directive sent to ICE agents late Wednesday night instructed them to avoid talking to community members (“agitators,” to use their word) and to only target immigrants with criminal charges or convictions. That would encompass a good chunk of the Schumer demands.

What's missing from the Democrats' list of demands?

Ideas like requiring cooperation with state and local investigations into ICE and CBP misconduct, returning CBP personnel to the border rather than interior enforcement, preventing enforcement in “sensitive locations” like schools or churches, and ending mass quotas for immigration arrests are not present in the Schumer list. And Schumer also doesn’t touch funding levels, nor does he attempt to claw back the surge funding for ICE that enables operations like those we’re seeing in Minnesota.

Yes, end the quotas! It's a reasonable ask, and Democrats could have made the case that the quotas are the reason Trump's thugs are detaining children, elderly citizens in their underwear, and immigrants who are working and not committing crimes. Also, there are reports that even the agents themselves find the quotas burdensome.) And stay away from schools, churches, and hospitals.

But that's the problem: old-fashioned Democrats feel they need to be strictly passive in the face of public opinion -- or even what they imagine public opinion is. They don't believe they're within their rights to try to change public opinion, even if they have compelling arguments. They finally understand that the public has turned against ICE, but they've internalized the belief that it's still the late twentieth century, and normies -- Chuck Schumer's imaginary Baileys -- believe in "law and order" and keeping law enforcement accountability to the absolute minimum. They can't imagine that they could invoke the arrest of children to stir justifiable outrage. They think only Republicans are allowed to try to steer public opinion -- or even, in this case, nudge it further in the direction it's already going.

There are Democrats who aren't thinking like this.

... the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has released “non-negotiable” policy positions for DHS funding, including suspending ICE/CBP enforcement actions in Minnesota, barring detention of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, protecting sensitive locations, banishing Border Patrol to the border, redirecting Big Beautiful Bill funding of DHS away from mass detention and deportation, and a bunch more.

Even if you're a Schumer Democrat and believe that most of these demands are the more than the Baileys can tolerate, what's wrong with demanding that Trump's Gestapo no longer detain citizens and lawful permanent residents? Or even just citizens? Is it so hard for the Schumer Democrats to imagine that normie voters might react positively to the idea that it makes no sense to detain U.S. citizens in what's supposed to be a crackdown on undocumented immigrants?

But the Schumer Democrats can't wrap their minds around the idea that Democratic messaging should lead to the conclusion They're the extremists. We're the reasonable Americans. And so, once again, they're squandering an opportunity.

NOEM ISN'T PULLING MILLER UNDER THE BUS -- SHE'S USING HIM AS A HUMAN SHIELD

The White House response to public outrage over events in Minnesota is being described in some quarters as a "circular firing squad." Some people don't believe Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem will keep her job for much longer, and they believe she's trying to take De Facto President Stephen Miller down with her.

Wow. It’s clear what is happening here, and it is juicy. Kristi Noem knows she’s being thrown under the bus for her slanderous lies about Alex Pretti…and now she’s trying to pull Stephen Miller under the tires with her. These people deserve each other. www.axios.com/2026/01/27/t...

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— TrumpsTaxes (@trumpstaxes.com) January 27, 2026 at 4:58 PM

So will multiple heads roll, or will only Border Patrol's Greg Bovino lose his job? Regrettably, it appears that the latter scenario is more likely.

The New York Times says that Noem seemed to be in President Trump's doghouse, but only for a short time:

Facing an intense and increasingly bipartisan fusillade of criticism over the killing of a protester in Minneapolis and how Ms. Noem and other officials sought to portray the victim as a “domestic terrorist,” Mr. Trump removed the official running the deportation campaign in Minnesota and replaced him with an aide reporting directly to him, effectively cutting Ms. Noem out of the chain of command....

But her time in Mr. Trump’s penalty box was measured in hours. By Monday night, she was in the Oval Office, meeting with Mr. Trump. By Tuesday the president was telling reporters that her job was safe and that the media should focus more on her role in shutting down illegal immigration into the country, not the chaotic scenes coming out of Minnesota in which agents who report to her have twice shot and killed American citizens protesting their presence.

The Axios story cited in the Bluesky post above (free to read here) does say this:

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is under fire for issuing misleading and incendiary information that claimed immigration agents killed an armed Minnesota protestor Saturday because he wanted to "massacre" them.

But that language was dictated to Noem and her department by the man most responsible for the controversial operation: Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and top Trump adviser, four sources tell Axios....

"Everything I've done, I've done at the direction of the president and Stephen," Noem told a person who relayed her remarks to Axios.

And why would she say this? Because Miller is apparently untouchable:

The episode illustrates the sheer power of Miller, Trump's close and longest-serving political adviser whose dominion in the White House far exceeds his title.

His influence extends to de facto oversight of Noem, though she's a Cabinet secretary who technically outranks him.

... Miller ... remains one of the president's closest advisers, sources said.

"Stephen Miller is one of President Trump's most trusted and longest-serving aides. The president loves Stephen," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Axios.

Miller, for his part, declared that the shooting of Alex Pretti -- which he'd previously celebrated -- happened because Customs and Border Protection agents "may not have been following ... protocol." So he's throwing Noem (who oversees CBP) under the bus. She, on the other hand, is using him as a human shield.

Which means, sadly, that neither one is likely to be unemployed anytime soon. The majority of Democrats in the House want to impeach Noem, but that's not enough to make it happen in a Republican-controlled House. Much is being made of Republican discontent with Noem, but in the Senate -- where twenty Republican votes to convict would be needed in the event of an impeachment by the House -- only two Republicans, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski and North Carolina's Thom Tillis, have called for Noem's resignation.

It's taken an extraordinary series of events and an unprecedented level of Democratic outrage to get us this far, and it's still not enough. It seems as if it would take twice as much outrage to achieve major personnel changes. There might be more hope for reforms of ICE, however inadequate they might be. But with Trump still at 41% approval and public opinion on ICE abolition still roughly 50-50 (actually 45%-45%, according to a recent Economist/YouGov poll), it's hard to imagine Republicans in Congress breaking with the White House in significant numbers to permit a serious turnaround in how the federal government handles immigration.

THEY THOUGHT THEY'D BE FIGHTING THEIR CARICATURE OF LEFTIES

The people of Minnesota have backed the Trump administration down:

Gregory Bovino has been removed from his role as Border Patrol “commander at large” and will return to his former job in El Centro, California, where he is expected to retire soon, according to a DHS official and two people with knowledge of the change.

Bovino’s sudden demotion is the clearest sign yet that the Trump administration is reconsidering its most aggressive tactics after the killing Saturday of 37-year-old Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents under Bovino’s command.

Democrats in the Senate might be able to compel the administration and congressional Republicans to accept at least some reforms:

Dems coalescing around 5 restrictions on ICE, I'm told: DHS required to cooperate with state probes (big) CBP stays at border warrants for arrests IDs, bodycams ICE out of churches, schools "That package unites a lot of Dems," Sen Chris Murphy tells me on the pod: newrepublic.com/article/2057...

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— Greg Sargent (@gregsargent.bsky.social) January 27, 2026 at 6:24 AM

This is obviously not enough, and it's not clear that the restrictions could actually be enforced, but it's a step in the right direction, and a package of restrictions might reduce the brutality.

Adam Serwer believes that the Trump administration misunderstood the resistance in Minnesota and nationwide. I think Serwer is right about some of what he says, though he's overthinking a bit:

The federal surge into Minneapolis reflects a series of mistaken MAGA assumptions. The first is the belief that diverse communities aren’t possible: “Social bonds form among people who have something in common,” Vance said in a speech last July....

A second MAGA assumption is that the left is insincere in its values, and that principles of inclusion and unity are superficial forms of virtue signaling. White liberals might put a sign in their front yard saying IMMIGRANTS WELCOME, but they will abandon those immigrants at the first sensation of sustained pressure....

The MAGA faith in liberal weakness has been paired with the conviction that real men—Trump’s men—are conversely strong.

The Trump administration appears to have made a mistake similar to one made by the U.S. government in Vietnam and in the War on Terror: being unable to believe that the enemy will fight to defend its own homeland, and might offer an unexpected level of resistance on terrain the locals know and the U.S. invaders don't. This is the kind of mistake you make when you caricature the enemy as weaklings, and as people who don't have human feelings.

I know that Vance thinks a lot of white nationalist thoughts, but I'm not sure the majority of the Trumpers -- no, not even Stephen Miller -- were thinking, This is a diverse community. They won't fight for one another for that reason. I think they simply imagined that Minneapolis was a hellhole populated by a motley assortment of people they hate and don't respect: non-white immigrants, native-born non-whites, and, primarily, white liberals, whom right-wingers routinely caricature as shrill cat ladies, simpering feminist men, and people outside the gender binary, all of whom -- obviously! -- were expect to be no match for heterosexual Real Men with big guns and the government on their side. This is how they see white liberals and progressives:

They thought these people couldn't possibly beat them -- and they couldn't imagine middle-of-the-road Americans siding with them rather than the manly heroes of ICE and the Border Patrol.

And here's where Serwer and I really diverge:

The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority.

The Trump administration and its goons don't think they're morally depraved, and don't see any virtue in the protests. The vast majority of them think that the protesters are paid, and that the goal of the protests is to destroy America.

No one in Trump World is rethinking the morality of what's taken place in Minnesota. The reshuffle is purely about optics. The Trumpers in Washington and on the ground in Minnesota and elsewhere still hate us, and still think we're evil. Maybe some of them now believe that a greater percentage of Americans than they realized are depraved lefties. But they still believe that all good people are on their side, or at least would be if the biased and treasonous liberal media weren't out-messaging the administration. They have no self-doubt, even now.

IS THE PLUTOCRACY FINALLY FED UP WITH TRUMP?

After the murder of Alex Pretti, many mainstream media outlets disputed the Trump administration's narrative of the incident. This happened much faster than I expected. Then the critiques of the administration became more widespread. It's not surprising that The New York Times published a debunking of the Trump narrative -- but CNBC as well? Yet there it is, under the headline "Videos of Alex Pretti Shooting by Federal Agents in Minneapolis Contradict Trump Official Claims."

A finance-oriented news channel said that administration officials aren't telling the truth, and now the two most right-wing, pro-corporatist editorial boards at major American newspapers have criticized the Trumpers as well. Editorials in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post take plenty of swipes at Democrats, and even at Pretti himself, but their main thrust is that the administration needs to change course in Minnesota.

Jeff Bezos's Post editorial board writes:

The unjust killing of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse in Minneapolis, marks a turning point in President Donald Trump’s second term. His mass deportation campaign has been a moral and political failure, leaving American citizens feeling outraged and unsafe.

And from the house of Murdoch, the Journal's ed board says:

... [Pretti] had a license to carry a gun, which was legally concealed, not carried in his hand as some claimed. He was carrying his phone. To hear the ardent gun-rights advocates of the Trump Administration claim he had malicious intentions because he carried a concealed weapon is bizarre.

Pretti made a tragic mistake by interfering with ICE agents, but that warranted arrest, not a death sentence. The agents may say they felt threatened, but it’s worth noting the comments over the weekend by police around the country who say that this isn’t how they conduct law enforcement.

Either many ICE agents aren’t properly trained, or they are so on edge as they face opposition in the streets that they are on a hair trigger. Either way, this calls for rethinking how ICE conducts itself, especially in Minneapolis as tensions build.

The members of the Journal ed board make little effort to conceal what they're really worried about:

Whether he likes it or not, most of the burden now lies with Mr. Trump as the President who controls ICE. He would be wise to pause ICE enforcement in the Twin Cities to ease tensions and consider a less provocative strategy. Yes, many on the left would conclude that their civil disobedience has paid off. But Mr. Trump can still pursue enforcement with a smaller force and a strategy aimed at criminals, not at hotel maids and gardeners.

... This is backfiring against Republicans....

[Stephen] Miller’s mass deportation methods are turning immigration, an issue Mr. Trump owned in 2024, into a political liability for Republicans in 2026.

So the issues are two:

1. Leave the hotel maids and gardeners our readers hire at cheap wages alone!
2. Back off or Democrats will win the midterms in a blowout!

I suspect that the one-two punch of Trump's Greenland misadventure and his jackbooted thuggery in Minneapolis have unsettled the billionaire class. On Greenland, they watched as Trump took a wrecking ball to NATO and nearly motivated Europe to unleash a set of trade measures that could have frozen American firms out of the European market. Now plutocrats are reading poll after poll showing that Trump has alienated middle-of-the-road voters on immigration. They probably have nightmare visions of a Mamdani-esque Congress in 2027 (if only), and they want Trump to back down.

Something has made Chuck Schumer and other non-Fetterman Democrats in the Senate feel it's okay to block funding for the Department of Homeland Security, even if it means a partial government shutdown. Something has inspired even some middle-of-the-road Democrats to call for Kristi Noem's impeachment. (The number of Democrats in the House who are sponsoring a Noem impeachment resolution is now 120.) Something has made a few of the usually supine congressional Republicans feel they need to call for an independent investigation of the Pretti shooting.

I think the donor class is worried -- worried that Republicans in competitive districts and states will lose to Democrats, worried that meek centrist Democrats will lose to progressives. I think America's Establishment no longer feels it can insulate itself from Trumpian chaos, and that's the main reason Trump is losing the mainstream press, as well as moderate and semi-moderate officeholders, right now.

THE TRUMP BASE JUST WANTS TO BE REASSURED THAT IT'S RIGHT, AND LIES ARE GETTING THAT DONE

Here are a couple of responses to the execution of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis yesterday:

I disagree with Stonekettle on a couple of points. The Trump administration will continue to lie about what happened here, but within hours of Pretti's murder, the lead story at The New York Times was "Videos Appear to Contradict Federal Account of Fatal Shooting" -- and now it's simply "Videos Contradict Federal Accounts of Fatal Shooting." The Washington Post leads with "Federal Agent Secured Gun from Minn. Man Before Fatal Shooting, Videos Show." CNN's Dana Bash pushed back on Greg Bovino of the Border Patrol when he tried to advance the administration's narrative:

Dana Bash grills Bovino to provide any evidence that Alex Pretti "assaulted law enforcement" and Bovino has absolutely nothing

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) January 25, 2026 at 9:26 AM

Referring to members of the administration, Stonekettle says, "MAGAs know they are lying." But they don't. We think they can watch the videos we've watched, see the Alex Pretti never reached for his gun, see that he was disarmed before he was shot, learn that he had the legal right to carry a weapon, and reach the same conclusions we do. But they won't do that.

They're not embracing the administration's version of events out of fear, as Stonekettle suggests. They're embracing it because they want to be reassured at all times that the people they like are right and the people they dislike are evil. They want Bovino and other members of the administration to tell them that they don't need to watch the videos of the incident -- if Trump officials say that Pretti was violently assaulting federal agents, they believe it, and that settles it. If he says this took place in the midst of a "riot," as he did at another point in the interview, they believe that too. Assertions by Trumpist talking heads serve as evidence, even if actual video evidence contradicts what the Trumpists are saying.

Video has value because it reveals the truth to people on the left and in the center who want to know what really happened. But Republican voters don't want to know what really happened. They want to be told that they're right. They want people they regard as authorities to tell them what they see in these videos (or what they would see if they watched them). Lies keep them loyal, so the lying will continue and the base will remain onboard.

WHEN YOU LIVE IN A RIGHT-WING BUBBLE, YOU LOSE YOUR ABILITY TO TALK TO NORMAL PEOPLE

I keep thinking about this CNN story with the headline "Trump Privately Frustrated That He Risks Losing Control of Immigration Message Amid Minnesota Chaos."

The ongoing protests and images coming out of Minnesota have prompted concerns from some Trump administration officials over the optics of the immigration crackdown as Americans grow alarmed by the chaotic scenes unfolding in the state.

President Donald Trump has expressed frustration behind closed doors that the immigration messaging is getting lost, sources familiar with the discussions told CNN.

The Trumpers are saying, Who are you going believe -- your lying eyes or our narrative? because they've spent years communicating only with their own supporters -- on Fox, on right-wing podcasts, on X -- and their persuasion muscles have completely atrophied. They're used to communicating with people who automatically assume that the GOP narrative is correct, because gthey believe that anyone opposed to Trump and Republicans is evil. In the Trumpist bubble, no one will watch the videos that clearly show Renee Good steering away from ICE officers; they limit themselves to the videos that fit the Trump administration's narrative because they're already inclined to hate ICE critics like Good and her partner.

Children are being seized by ICE? The president and administration officials aren't used to having to persuade Americans that brown people who have pending asylum claims, like five-year-old Liam Ramos and parents, are bad by definition. The people in their bubble already believe that. They already believe every brown-skinned asylum seeker is a threat to U.S. sovereignty. The Trump administration doesn't know how to make this case because the Trump base considers the case closed.

Trump has sought to take control of the narrative, starting with an impromptu press conference on the anniversary of his first year in office.

The president, at times sounding exasperated, thumbed through mugshots of individuals arrested in his immigration crackdown, highlighting their alleged crimes. His message was clear that while there might be some issues, ICE is necessary to follow through on his agenda — to deport the most dangerous criminals back to their home country.

But we don't see "the worst of the worst" being arrested. We see children being arrested. We see white protesters being arrested. We see ordinary immigrant workers being arrested. We see citizens of the "wrong" ethnicities being arrested. The Trumpers don't understand that normal people see a disconnect between their stated goal and what they're actually doing. The people they're used to talking to don't see the disconnect -- they think all immigrants are evil by definition and all protesters are violent terrorists paid by George Soros. Recall that a statement made by Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin in the immediate aftermath of Renee Good's murder said that "rioters" were "blocking ICE officers" and referred to Good as "one of these violent rioters." The Republican base literally believes that a riot was taking place in the minutes leading up to Good's death, even though they haven't seen a single video showing protesters doing anything other than shouting and filming.

And recall what Trump said about ICE agents in that press conference (emphasis added):

“They’re going to make mistakes sometimes. ICE is going to be too rough with somebody or — you know, they’re dealing with rough people — or they’re going to make a mistake sometimes. It can happen. We feel terribly.”

They don't understand that normal Americans watch what's happening in Minnesota and don't see "rough people." They can't grasp this because the people in their base thinks they're actually seeing "rough people."

We're told:

... top White House officials have been plotting how to move the narrative away from the unrest in Minneapolis and instead focus on what they view as ICE’s achievements.

“There’s an effort underway to come up with new ideas and new ways to amplify the good work they are doing,” a senior White House official told CNN....

Do you know how ordinary law enforcement agencies show that they're rounding up "the worst of the worst"? They hold press conferences showing seized caches of weapons, bundles of cash, bricks of drugs. The Trump administration can't do that because ICE's mandate is arresting the most, not arresting the worst. If the administration wants praise, it needs to start prioritizing arrests of really bad people. But that's not what Stephen Miller wants, so it won't happen.

I wonder if Trump will eventually decide that Stephen Miller is a liability because his heavy-handed, merciless tactics make Trump look bad. It seems doubtful -- many top aides found themselves in Trump's doghouse in his first term, and some have in the second term, But Miller has never been on the outs with Trump.

I don't think Trump will ever understand why his government acts are offputting to normal people because, apart from some outreach to swing voters in the 2024 campaign, Trump hasn't tried communicating with normal people in years.

DISTORTED REALITY IS HOW REPUBLICAN VOTERS -- AND TRUMP -- SELF-SOOTHE

We all know that Donald Trump lies to himself in order to get through life in a world where some people don't believe he's the world's most remarkable human being. He tells himself he's ended eight wars, dropped gas prices to below $2.00 a barrel, and lowered drug prices by mathematically impossible percentages. When his polls are bad, he just makes up a new approval rating that's much higher than pollsters' actual numbers. A normal president would understand that some people won't agree with what a politician does. Trump can't bear that.

And we also know that Republican voters prefer a media diet that tells them exactly what they want to hear -- that everyone who agrees with them politically is a person of pure virtue, and everyone who disagrees with them is a figure of pure evil. I've always assumed that they maintain this worldview merely because they want to believe in their own moral superiority. But they clearly need more reality distortion than right-wing narratives can supply. They need the world to look the way they want it to look.

That's why they love AI, and why this story isn't surprising:

The White House posted a digitally altered image of a woman who was arrested on Thursday in a case touted by the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, to make it seem as if she was dramatically crying....

The woman, Nekima Levy Armstrong, also appears to have darker skin in the altered image. Armstrong was one of three people arrested on Thursday in connection to a demonstration that disrupted church services in St Paul, Minnesota, on Sunday. Demonstrators alleged that one of the pastors, David Easterwood, was the acting field director of the St Paul Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office....

The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, posted an image of Armstrong’s arrest at 10.21am on Thursday, less than an hour after Bondi’s announcement. The image shows a law enforcement agent, face blurred out, escorting Armstrong, who appears to be handcuffed. Armstrong, dressed in all black, appears to be composed in the picture.

A little more than 30 minutes later, the White House posted another image of Armstrong’s arrest in which she is crying. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, reposted the image. The image posted by the White House is altered....

To Republican voters, this is what should have happened. Armstrong shouldn't have been calm and composed. She should have been owned. MAGA/GOP propaganda promises that everyone Republican voters hate will be made miserable in the glorious reign of Donald Trump, and it's almost unendurable if the evil libs don't appear to be suffering.

This is mild compared to the usual AI slop Republican voters enjoy. Here's a tweet from a long-time Trump cheerleader who's been nominated to be ambassador to Malaysia:

President Trump is immune from corruption because he can’t be bought. pic.twitter.com/D4JfINcvwP

— Nick Adams (@NickAdamsinUSA) January 18, 2026

Think about what you're witnessing here: Adams is ascribing a high level of virtue to Trump, and his "evidence" is an encounter that's completely made up.

This is a template for a staggering amount of pro-Trump propaganda. Here are just a few examples from a pro-Trump Facebook account:



(And yes, I know what you're thinking about that last one.)

In the real world, consumer prices seem high, there's unrest in the streets, and America seems perpetually on the verge of war. Republican voters' self-esteem would plummet if they had to live exclusively in the real world. Fortunately for them, they don't. They can live in a fantasy world where Trump is good (and thus they're good), while evildoers (and demons) are suffering. But this means, in the long run, that they need to remain in this world, where the object of their adoration isn't a normal, flawed human being but an inerrant god. I don't think they can tolerate reality anymore.

YOU CAN'T BEAT ABSOLUTIST ZEALOTS WITH CRINGING APPEASERS

This New York Times poll isn't good for Donald Trump.

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

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

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

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

But the cult still loves the man. One poll participant is shockingly frank about his mancrush on Trump.

“I think he must be doing something right when there are so many people opposed to him,” said Paul Minihane, 77, a real estate broker who lives in Dedham, Mass. “I mean, Donald Trump could look at me in the face and tell me to go screw myself. And I’d say, ‘Thank you.’ I think that’s good. I don’t think he’s looking to kiss everybody’s ass. I think he’s going to do what he thinks is the right thing. And I think that’s a positive thing.”

I'm reminded of Dennis Hopper as a drugged-out photojournalist talking about Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now:



This is a personality cult interwoven with a cult of Fox News-style zealotry, a belief system according to which everything Democrats and liberals do or believe is evil, and every aspect of human life can be summed up in right-wing catchphrases. Consider this woman:

A New Hampshire state representative is in hot water after messages from an encrypted GOP group chat were leaked and show her advocating for “segregated schools.”

Granite Post was the first to report about a group chat in the encrypted messaging app Signal that includes Rep. Kristin Noble, the chair of the House Education Policy and Administration committee in the New Hampshire House of Representatives....

In one message, Noble states, “When we have segregated schools we can add all the fun stuff lol.”

She follows that message up with another, saying, “Imagine the scores if we had schools for them and some for us.”

When the story leaked, Noble responded with a catchphrase I'm sure she believed trumped all objections:

Only hours after news of the messages was made public, Noble released a statement on social media with a donation link asking people to help her “stop the spread of the woke mind virus.”

She want on to insist that she was talking about political segregation, not racial segregation:

“It’s funny to watch the Democrats feign outrage when I thought they’d be supportive of managing their own schools, with libraries full of porn, biological males in girls sports and bathrooms, and as much DEI curriculum as their hearts desire. Schools like that will have terrible test scores because they focus on social justice rather than academics.”

“Republicans have been self-segregating out of the leftist indoctrination centers for decades. If democrats had their own schools, and we had our own, families wouldn’t need to avail themselves of the wildly successful education freedom account program. It’s a win / win proposition.”

These people are only 40% of the country at most. We're the majority. But these catchphrase-spewing automatons punch above their weight because the party in opposition to them is led by this pathetic nebbish:

How closely, if at all, should Dems collaborate with this administration, especially in an election year? That question is always pertinent to a minority party, but especially now. The latest edition of The Opposition from @lauren-egan.bsky.social plus @samsteindc.bsky.social:

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— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) January 22, 2026 at 9:08 AM

A HOST OF PROMINENT POLITICAL LEADERS descended on Onondaga County, New York, last week to mark the official groundbreaking of a $100 billion semiconductor manufacturing facility by Micron Technology.

Among those in attendance were Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (New York’s senior senator) and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

... Micron’s expansion was initially made possible by the CHIPS Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law, and which Donald Trump opposed. And so, as the gathered politicians and Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra took questions from the press, Luke Radel, a college reporter from nearby Syracuse, posed a question to Lutnick: Why should Trump get credit for these jobs?

Lutnick geared up to answer. But before a word left his lips, Schumer—a Buffalo Bills beanie tented over his head—jumped in: “We’re not looking for one side or the other,” he said. “We’re working together to make this thing happen in the right way.”

If Schumer were in attendance just to ensure that anyone watching the ceremony understood the Democratic contribution to this project, fine. He could invoke Biden and the CHIPS Act, and could let Lutnick take the heat from (unsurprisingly) a student journalist.

But no. He ran interference for Lutnick.

And what thanks did he get?

Later that day, the Commerce Department posted a glossed-up promotional video about the Micron groundbreaking. Schumer was not even in it. Instead, it featured Lutnick mugging triumphantly in a variety of settings: shoveling dirt, striding alongside Mehrotra, photographed with his arms crossed and a vainglorious grin, boasting from a lectern that Biden had secured a measly $75 billion investment from Micron while Trump had negotiated one for $200 billion.

I'm pounding my head on the desk as we speak.

We talk about Donald Trump's mental state, but maybe it's Chuck Schumer who should be taking a cognitive test. I question Schumer's grasp on reality, specifically the reality of politics in the 21st century.

I don't really believe that Chuck Schumer has dementia, but he's a stubborn old man. He's as committed to his belief that appeasement is the only way Democrats can win as Trump is to the belief that tariffs are a miracle economic elixir. Like Trump, Schumer refuses to process any information, any facts from the real world, that suggest he should reconsider his idée fixe. Chuck Schumer will not utter a negative word about the Republican Party. He will sing the praises of bipartisanship every chance he gets. He's dug in. He will die on this hill.

And America may die with him.

INSIDE THAT WORLD-BESTRIDING MEGALOMANIAC BULLY LIVES A MID-LEVEL CEO WORRIED ABOUT THE MARKETS

Donald Trump has been a narcissist all his life, but prior to his career in politics, life occasionally slapped him down: his media coverage was sometimes disrespectful, he was never wholeheartedly welcomed into elite society in New York, and he struggled to keep his businesses afloat and his personal wealth intact.

That 1980s/1990s guy still lives inside the global bully we see today. I think twentieth-century Trump's insecurities explain this:

President Trump reiterated his determination to take control of Greenland from Denmark during a 72-minute tirade at the World Economic Forum — but seemingly ruled out using force to do so....

Trump began the Greenland portion of his speech by calling for "immediate negotiations" to acquire the Arctic territory, mocking Denmark for losing it "in six hours" during World War II.

But he also signaled it was time for de-escalation with NATO, dismissing fears that the U.S. military would attack its own allies.

... Trump said that if the U.S. decided to take Greenland by force it would be "unstoppable," but "I don't want to use force. I won't use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland."

Trump apparently couldn't remember which cold island he wants to seize against the residents' will (and the global community's will), but he was clearly shaken up by yesterday's selloff.

Trump is now confusing Greenland and Iceland: "They're not there for us on Iceland, that I can tell you. Our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland has already cost us a lot of money."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) January 21, 2026 at 9:20 AM

The selloff was nothing -- the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.8% yesterday, far less than the worst plunges in history, like the 22.61% drop on October 19, 1987, just about the time that Trump's own businesses began sinking into a sea of red ink. As The New York Times reported a few years ago, referring to a period when Trump suffered nearly a billion dollars in business losses:

... Mr. Trump’s 1990 collapse might have struck several years earlier if not for his brief side career posing as a corporate raider. From 1986 through 1988, while his core businesses languished under increasingly unsupportable debt, Mr. Trump made millions of dollars in the stock market by suggesting that he was about to take over companies. But the figures show that he lost most, if not all, of those gains after investors stopped taking his takeover talk seriously.

Trump intimidates powerful people in America and the rest of the world, but the markets intimidate him. He knows that even if it's seen as a last resort, Europe could use its Anti-Coercion Instrument -- the so-called "bazooka"-- to restrict trade and prevent U.S. companies, especially tech companies, from bidding on European public contracts.

The markets seem to be the only force Trump fears -- see also his "TACO" (Trump always chickens out) approach to truly punitive tariffs. It's regrettable that the markets won't do more than give Trump an occasional wrist-slap -- as I said yesterday, they don't really fear that Trump's mad-king reign will lead to catastrophe for them -- but it's fortunate that he remains responsive even to mild financial punishment. (I'm sure Trump has heard an earful recently from old billionaires in corner offices. He talks a lot with aging moguls, many of whom he's known for half a century.) Other institutions won't save us, but the markets might be a small check on Trump's ambitions.

And yes, I fully realize that Trump might change his mind about using force to take Greenland weeks, days, or hours from now. But if he doesn't, then capitalism saved us from a full-scale Greenland War and the end of NATO.

IT STILL DOESN'T SEEM LIKE A CRISIS TO ANYONE RICH ENOUGH TO MATTER

I regularly see social media posts floating this scenario:

This won't happen. Normal people are fed up with Trump, or at least disapproving of the way he's doing his job, but Republican voters are still worshipful. Any Cabinet member who supported Trump's removal from office would be declared an unperson in the Republican Party and would be faced with daily death threats and threats to spouses and family, which might or might not be carried out. So forget it, folks. They're not going to eighty-six the mad king.

You might imagine that rich and powerful people are worried about the chaos Trump is unleashing -- NATO under threat, a "sell America" mood on global markets, and so on. But you always have to remember that the rich can put their money on whichever side of a rising or falling market makes them the most cash. Right now they don't see the potential for a 2008-style crash, and even if it happened, they'd expect to be made whole if they suffered significant losses, and both political parties would agree that that was for the best.

Moral hazards don't get much more hazardous than that. The people in power simply don't believe their world is going to hell in a handbasket, even if ours is. Meanwhile, they're getting their tax cuts. They're getting their regulatory cuts. They might need to bribe Trump to continue doing business more or less as usual, but as long as he's clear about his price, they're willing to pay it. They don't like the tariffs, but the bifurcated, "K-shaped" economy means that there are rich and upper-middle-class people for whom the price increases aren't a problem, so the economy rumbles on.

We're in this mess because it's practically impossible for rich people to stop being rich. They never have reason to fear, so they have no fear of Trump's societal disruptions. The people who run our economy would probably be whispering to their friends at The New York Times and The Atlantic that it was time to start writing about impeachment or 25th Amendment removal if they felt they were at risk now, but they don't. They don't see Trump's madness as anything more than a minor problem. There certainly won't be a "business plot" to overthrow him in a military coup, as there was when Franklin Roosevelt was president. The rich are too well insulated.

It's all on us. Insiders and fat cats won't help us.

IMAGINE HOW MANY SEATS DEMOCRATS COULD WIN IN NOVEMBER IF THEY ACTUALLY RAN AGAINST THEIR OPPONENTS

There's some good news and some bad news for Democrats in recent polling. This is very good news:

The Democratic Party has a deeply motivated base and a clear advantage on the generic congressional ballot ahead of this fall’s midterms despite dismal impressions of its current leaders in Congress, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.

Democratic registered voters are far more motivated right now than Republicans. While the party has a 5-point edge on the generic ballot, among those who say they’re deeply motivated to vote, that advantage expands to a massive 16 points.

Democratic voters are dissatisfied with the party's congressional leadership, but they're ready to vote Democratic, in a big way. That's good.

This is not so good:

On issue after issue, according to the latest Wall Street Journal poll, voters think Republicans -- specifically, Republicans in Congress -- would do a better job than Democrats in Congress. This is in spite of the fact that voters are quite unhappy with the way the Republican president of the United States is handling these same issues:

... more voters disapprove than approve of his handling of inflation—by 17 percentage points, a worse showing than the 11-point gap in July. By 10 percentage points, more voters disapprove than approve of his handling of the economy.

... 58% of voters in the survey said that Trump’s policies were most responsible for the current economy, while 31% said former President Joe Biden’s policies were most responsible.

And many voters in the survey think Trump has distracted himself from what is most important.

Majorities say they disapprove when asked whether Trump has the right priorities, is looking out for middle-class families or cares about “people like you.” Asked about the president’s attention to Venezuela, Iran and other countries, a 53% majority says he is focusing on unnecessary foreign matters at the expense of the economy, while 42% say he’s working on urgent national security threats.

Voters strongly disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy, inflation, foreign policy, and immigration, yet they think his rubber-stamp party-mates in Congress would do a better job than Democrats on all these issues. Why?

This is what happens when Democrats incessantly sing the praises of bipartisanship and refuse to say that the opposition party is bad because they think it will somehow offend Chuck Schumer's mythical Baileys if they do.

You're probably tired of hearing me say this, but it is normal politics to say that the other party is bad and your own party is better. Democrats reverse this. The party's leaders and consultants can't stop engaging in public criticism of fellow Democrats, who are accused of being "weak and woke" and alienating voters with "faculty-lounge language," and they regularly vow to work across the aisle if elected, even though the people they'd work across the aisle with are the principal enablers of a very unpopular president.

And Democrats' message is weak tea. Here's a Chuck Schumer quote from The Bulwark. Schumer is talking about the possibility that Democrats could win the Senate:

SCHUMER: Let me say this: We have a strong, clear path to winning the majority. We are on our front foot and we are in much, much better shape than people ever thought we would be. A year ago, people thought we had no chance of taking back the Senate. And then I laid out to people that we had to do three things to take back the Senate: recruit candidates in our battleground states, create a political environment where across the country Trump was much weaker, and show that when we get back in charge, we’re going to actually do things. That we’re not just criticizing them.

You will see in the next months, we’re going to be focusing on five buckets. One is housing, one is the high price of food [and] food monopolies playing a major role there. One is electricity. One is the high cost of childcare. And then, of course, health care.

None of these messages -- these "buckets" -- are The Republican Party is dragging this country to hell, and we need to stop them.

I think the messaging will improve in individual races, as it did in New Jersey and Virginia last year. But this is a long-term problem for the Democratic Party. The Republican Party is led by a very unpopular president, a man who inspires blind loyalty in all but a handful of Republicans, but Democrats refuse to say, The GOP is bad for America.

Say it with me now, Chuck: The GOP is the party of inflation and tariffs. The GOP is the party of invading Greenland. The GOP is the party of shooting mothers in the face. There -- that wasn't so hard, was it?

ARE WE IN THE LAWLESS STATE OR THE NON-LAWLESS STATE?

David French says we're living in a "dual state."

... we’ve slowly but surely created the mechanisms of what the Nazi-era Jewish labor lawyer Ernst Fraenkel called “the dual state.”

Last March, Aziz Huq, a University of Chicago law professor, wrote a prescient (and deeply disturbing) piece for The Atlantic that revived Fraenkel’s analysis for this new American age....

The two components of the dual state are the normative state — the seemingly normal world that you and I inhabit, where, as Huq writes, the “ordinary legal system of rules, procedures and precedents” applies — and the prerogative state, which is marked (in Fraenkel’s words) by “unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees.”

“The key here,” Huq writes, “is that this prerogative state does not immediately and completely overrun the normative state. Rather, Fraenkel argued, dictatorships create a lawless zone that runs alongside the normative state.”

It’s the continued existence of the normative state that lulls a population to sleep. It makes you discount the warnings of others. “Surely,” you say to yourself, “things aren’t that bad. My life is pretty much what it was.”

French says that Minneapolis still functions mostly as a normative state -- but if you cross paths with ICE, as Renee Good did, you can be a victim of the prerogative state.

I think it's appropriate to apply this framework to American life now -- and it's why I wrote a post yesterday warning that our electoral system could be at risk, despite the reassurances of many commentators, including French himself. In the New York Times roundtable I quoted yesterday, Jamelle Bouie, David French, and Michelle Cottle argued that the Trump administration's court losses on various issues ought to reassure us that elections will go forward as planned in November.

Bouie: ... I feel like it’s necessary to say that there’s a lot of fear-mongering and scaremongering about what the president can do with regards to the midterms and —

Cottle: Well, he just got shot down by the courts, right?

Bouie: Right.

Cottle: He was arguing that he needed to deprive states of federal funding if they didn’t follow his rules for how they run their elections. And the courts are like: No, bro, step back.

Bouie: He’s demanding voter rolls. And the courts are saying, no, none of this is your business. So for Trump to try to cancel an election in Virginia, for example, like Abigail Spanberger would have to be like, OK, sure.

Cottle: Yeah, that’s going to happen.

Bouie: How is Donald Trump going to stop Gavin Newsom? How is he going to stop Kathy Hochul? You have to think in practical terms. And I understand the temptation to latch on to worst-case scenarios and fantasies. It makes a lot of sense in the moment. But you have to temper that stuff with thinking, how does the practical operation of government actually work?

French: ... there’s another factor that I don’t think people have appreciated quite enough, and that is the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Illinois here in the last few weeks, where it upheld an order blocking the National Guard deployment under this particular statute that Trump was trying to use. That if he was permitted to use it, at his discretion, at his will, we don’t have very many ICE officers, but we’ve got hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the Guard.

... I think that the Trump v. Illinois case was very, very important because it’s really cut off from him this ability to deploy the Guard at his whim.

What they all seem to be saying is that elections absolutely won't take place in the prerogative state, where Trump can do whatever the hell he wants. They'll take place in the normative state, where laws still apply.

But then French says:

Now there’s still the Insurrection Act hovering out there. That’s a whole different can of worms. But I do think that there’s great hope.

Yup, and today we're reading this:

The Pentagon has ordered about 1,500 active-duty soldiers to prepare for a possible deployment to Minnesota, defense officials told The Washington Post late Saturday, after President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in response to unrest there....

The Army placed the units on prepare-to-deploy orders in case violence in Minnesota escalates, officials said, characterizing the move as “prudent planning.” It is not clear whether any of them will be sent to the state, the officials said....

This is the problem: aspects of American life move out of the prerogative state and then move right back into it. Trump can't deploy National Guard troops, but he can deploy ICE, and he could deploy active-duty soldiers. He accepts some court rulings and looks for ways around others. We don't know which state we're in from one moment to the next.

It's possible that Trump will allow elections to proceed more or less as they usually do in November except in Minnesota, because he's so obsessed with the state. Remember, Democrats are trying to win back the Senate, and the Senate seat of retiring senator Tina Smith will be up for grabs. Also, Tim Walz has bowed out of the governor's race, and it appears that the state's other senator, Amy Klobuchar, wants to run for governor.

If he chose to, Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota and stage troops at polling places -- but only in heavily Democratic Minneapolis and St. Paul. Could he prevent residents of the Twin Cities from voting and possibly throw the gubernatorial election to a Republican candidate (maybe even, God help us, Mike Lindell)? Could he throw the Senate race to a Republican? Even if Democrats turn out to vote in the Twin Cities, could he have ballots impounded and declare that victorious Democrats won by fraud?

We just don't know when we're going to be in the prerogative state and when we aren't. As a New Yorker, I assumed we'd be where Minneapolis is now as soon as Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor. It hasn't happened -- yet.

America is a dual state, but it's not a static dual state. It's never clear when you're going to find yourself in the lawless part of Trump's America.

YOU AREN'T AN IDIOT IF YOU WORRY ABOUT THE MIDTERMS

Jamelle Bouie wants us all to know that President Trump can't mess with the midterms. Here's what he says in a New York Times roundtable with David French and Michelle Cottle:

... there’s been a lot of chatter on the internet about the president canceling elections. And since we’re talking about the midterms, I feel obligated to say that that’s not a thing. I know the response is going to be: look, he does everything else he wants. But the more accurate response is that there are a lot of ways in which he’s been stopped or blocked. And in a very practical sense, states run elections. States run federal elections — not the president.

The president has no role in federal elections. The president has no role in certifying federal elections. The president has no role in seating members of Congress. When it comes to the conduct and results of federal elections — at least for legislative elections — the president is just a guy. He’s just a guy watching on CNN like the rest of us.

And yes, he has ICE. He has his own little private army. ICE on paper has 22,000 people. Looking at Minnesota right now, in Minneapolis, they’ve committed more than 10 percent of their on-paper agents to try to pacify the 46th largest city in the country, 45th, 46th. And they can’t do it. Obstinate, middle-aged Midwesterners have essentially stopped ICE from operating in Minneapolis in a meaningful way.

I feel like it’s necessary to say that there’s a lot of fear-mongering and scaremongering about what the president can do with regards to the midterms....

But you don't have to believe that Trump "does everything else he wants" to worry about the midterms. You can acknowledge the ways that the system has rebuffed him and still recognize that if he wants to prevent a Democratic takeover of the House and possibly the Senate, he might have ways to thwart the the will of the voters.

But don't even bother arguing this at Bluesky -- or, presumably, any other forum where liberals and progressives congregate. You'll be called an idiot and accused of "obeying in advance," even though you're the one warning that that Trojan horse might have soldiers in it. You'll be told that you're trying to make everyone who opposes Trump feel hopeless, even if what you're really doing is urging everyone to be ready for a bigger fight.

I find much of what Bouie says persuasive. I don't think Trump can shut down elections nationwide at the point of a gun because he doesn't have enough troops to do that. He might do it in Minnesota, because he's clearly decided to single that state out for a special level of abuse. But I don't think he can do it everywhere.

But it's pointless to argue that the law and the Constitution give Trump no official role to play in the midterms. If he declares that the entire process is rotten, we don't know how Republican states will respond. They held the line on behalf of democracy in 2020, and they might do it again, expressing pride in their ability to conduct fair elections. But they might scapegoat Democratic House districts as corrupt if Trump makes clear that he insists on nothing less than that. We don't know.

There are currently 42 Democrats in the House who were elected from states that voted for Trump three times. Not all of those states have unified Republican control, but most do, among them Texas, Florida, and Ohio (25 of the 42 are from these three states, although the numbers are likely to change, especially in Texas because of redistricting).

If Trump demands that Democrats from these states not be certified as winners, what will the states do? Maybe they'll rebuff him. Maybe Democratic court cases will be as successful as they were in 2020.

Or maybe not.

Bouie argues that the system itself acts as a failsafe mechanism.

when the current term of the 119th congress ends on january 2 (or 3, i forget) 227, mike johnson ceases to be speaker of the house bsky.app/profile/gran...

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— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) January 15, 2026 at 11:36 AM

here's what happens after house elections, which are conducted by each state and locality: the state certifies the winner the winners go to washington they convene a new house they choose a speaker notice who isn't involved here? the president or the current speaker or the senate.

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) January 15, 2026 at 11:47 AM

But that's how the system is supposed to work: the members-elect are supposed to choose a speaker on January 3 (it took them a couple of extra days to get that done in 2025) and the speaker is supposed to swear in winners as certified by the states. But what if we're really through the looking glass and the speaker votes of Democratic winners aren't counted? Why couldn't that happen if Trump insists that it needs to happen? Why should we feel 100% certain that Trumpists can't subvert regular order in this case?

I'm not sure even this deeply corrupt Supreme Court would rubber-stamp all this. The Supremes want to continue flying under the radar, rigging the game, but only in ways that are too abstruse for normies to understand.

And, frankly, I'm not sure Trump will fight this fight. I think he might be caught flatfooted by the election results. He had opportunities in 2025 to declare elections fraudulent and he didn't do it -- I'm not sure why. In 2025, it was probably because his party's control of Congress was never threatened. But he might not even try to rig the process -- sending troops to polling places, for instance -- because he genuinely doesn't think he's unpopular.

So, yes, the midterms might proceed in a fair and democratic way. Trump might be lying to himself about his own popularity or might realize that the people who control our decentralized election system won't rig it for him.

Or 2026 might not be 2020, and the center might not hold. Preserving democracy might require more of a fight this time.

REPUBLICANS HATE SO MANY PEOPLE THEY SOMETIMES LOSE FOCUS

The War on Minnesota wasn't supposed to be about misogyny, but what Michelle Goldberg describes sounds a lot like mission creep:

If you read conservative media, you might have heard about a new danger stalking our besieged country.

This week, Fox News warned about “organized gangs of wine moms” using “antifa tactics” against ICE. According to a column in the right-wing PJ Media, the “greatest threat to our nation” is a “group of ‘unindicted domestic terrorists’ who are just AWFL: Affluent White Liberal Women.” (The acronym is wrong, but never mind.) The Canadian influencer Lauren Chen — who had to leave the United States in 2024 after the Department of Justice accused her of working for a Russian propaganda operation, but was allowed back in by the Trump administration — wrote that the ideology of women like Renee Good is “almost wholly responsible for the decline of Western civilization.”

... ICE’s invasion of Minneapolis started with the demonization of Somali immigrants. It took only weeks for conservative demagogues to direct their venom toward the middle-class women of the Resistance. We’re now seeing an outpouring of misogynist rage driven by both political expedience and psychosexual grievance.

Remember, the point of all this was supposed to be rounding up and expelling immigrants. Then the right-wing propaganda machine decided to link the immigrant roundup to fraud in Minnesota -- white-collar crimes that weren't committed by the random blue-collar workers the administration has been seizing off the streets in Minneapolis and other cities. Fraud is best fought by people in offices poring over spreadsheets. It was being fought that way, long before Donald Trump returned to the White House -- the FBI began its investigations in May 2021, a few months after Joe Biden became president.

But Republicans in Washington, at Fox News, and elsewhere in the GOP propaganda community decided that demonizing Somalis in Minnesota -- many of whom are citizens -- was the best way to generate hate content for the GOP base. And then, after an ICE agent murdered Renee Good in Minneapolis, the right switched gears again and decided that white female activists are the real enemy.

No wonder the public, which began 2025 broadly supporting Trump's immigration crackdown, has turned against the administration on this issue.

Republicans hate so many people that they can't keep their focus on enemies they share with normal people. It's completely understandable that normal voters want a crackdown on murderers, rapists, and drug dealers who are here illegally. It's completely understandable that they want a crackdown on fraudsters.

But Republicans don't just hate immigrants who engage in criminal conduct. They hate the ones who bust their humps at difficult jobs for low pay. They hate immigrants here on student visas who don't have the conservatively correct views on Israel and Gaza. And they're so blinded by hate that they indiscriminately shipped immigrants to a foreign torture prison on the basis of innocuous tattoos they misidentified as gang signs.

And now, the same people who brought you the end of Roe v. Wade, then boosted the careers of influencers who argue that career women are history's greatest monsters and maybe only men should be allowed to vote, have decided that normie women who've been radicalized by Trump's immigrant crackdown are the real enemy.

Fox News' Will Cain: “There's a weird kind of smugness... in the way that some of these liberal white women interact with authority”

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— Media Matters for America (@mmfa.bsky.social) January 13, 2026 at 2:54 PM

Republicans are usually good at message discipline, and they're still good at one form of it: agreeing on the same narrative and banding together to push that narrative through every media channel possible. But discipline also means avoiding messages that exceed what the public is willing to hear. Republicans can't seem to do that anymore. They can't keep their hatreds in check, and because they live in a right-wing bubble, they think the country agrees with them.

On Renee Good's murder, it's not working, as CNN's Aaron Blake has noted:

The [latest] CNN poll shows 56% of US adults said the ICE agent’s use of force was “inappropriate,” compared to just 26% who said it was “appropriate.”

Similarly, Quinnipiac University and Yahoo News-YouGov polls released Tuesday tested whether people thought the shooting was “justified.” The former showed registered voters said it was “not justified” by 53%-35%, while the latter showed Americans said it wasn’t justified 52%-27%.

So three polls, all with margins of between 18 and 30 points against ICE. That’s a pretty decisive verdict in public opinion.

... it’s worth emphasizing that the Trump administration didn’t just say the ICE agent, Jonathan Ross, was justified in shooting Good.

It went quite a bit further, immediately casting Good’s actions as “domestic terrorism” and saying she intentionally targeted the ICE agent with her car.

It’s looking pretty clear that that is out of step with the public’s interpretation of events.

The Yahoo-YouGov poll shows just 24% of Americans said Good was committing domestic terrorism. Only 52% of Republicans agreed with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on that.

Normal Americans don't hate Renee Good. Republicans are bizarre, hateful freaks who do. They've lost normal America with this. It was all supposed to be about legitimate targets for law enforcement. But Republicans can't control their hatred.