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Month: January 2026

The Criminal Donald Trump

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 17, 2026

And Acting President Stephen “Trump’s Brain” Miller

On Friday, the criminal Donald Trump refused to take off the table the United States attacking another NATO member (meaning the Danish territory of Greenland). Watch:

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) thinks the criminal Donald Trump’s designs on Greenland are “the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard” and any moves in that direction could lead to impeachment. At the very least, says Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), they would generate “sufficient numbers [in the Senate] to pass a war powers resolution and withstand a veto.”

Also on Friday (according to Axios), the Department of Justice weaponized by the criminal Donald Trump “launched an investigation into Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey for allegedly obstructing federal law enforcement officers in their state, per a source familiar with the matter.” Walz and Frey are not alone:

The statute bandied around as supporting the investigation is 18 USC 372:

If two or more persons in any State, Territory, Possession, or District conspire to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, any person from accepting or holding any office, trust, or place of confidence under the United States, or from discharging any duties thereof, or to induce by like means any officer of the United States to leave the place, where his duties as an officer are required to be performed, or to injure him in his person or property on account of his lawful discharge of the duties of his office, or while engaged in the lawful discharge thereof, or to injure his property so as to molest, interrupt, hinder, or impede him in the discharge of his official duties, each of such persons shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six years, or both.

Force? Intimidation? Threat? The DOJ investigation is BS. But like CBP agents ignoring your valid passport, Trump doesn’t care. The cruelty (harrassment) is the point. Trump’s DOJ doesn’t care if it wins in court; “winning” is causing headaches for Walz and Frey, costing their families dearly, and frightening other critics into silence. The only intimidation here come from the criminal Donald Trump.

Government of the bullies for the billionaires

Meantime, Acting President Stephen “Trump’s Brain” Miller is furiously preparing the ground for his puppet’s invocation of the Insurrection Act by painting victims of CBP/ICE violence as perpetrators of violence.

Is public resistance to CBP/ICE assaults in Minneapolis an insurgency, asks Fox’s Laura Ingraham. “Insurrection,” Miller corrects her. Or “domestic terrorism.” By “criminal illegal aliens and criminal refugees who are looting and pillaging” Minnesota. Minnesota. Miller cites (as if he himself discovered it; he didn’t) Federal Nutrition Program fraud by Somali refugees as another reason armed goons have flooded the state.

Will Stancil, a lawyer-activist, tells Richard Warnica of the Minneapolis Star:

“If you want to investigate fraud, bring an accountant,” Stancil, a Democratic activist and education policy adviser told me as we drove around his neighbourhood Monday. The ICE agents in Minnesota don’t look like accountants. They look like soldiers. And you don’t bring soldiers unless you want to fight a war. 

Walz called the CBP/ICE invasion “a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.” 

Miller is the same Wormtongue who convinced the criminal Donald Trump that Portland was in flames, Chicago is a hellhole, and other cities run by Democrats are “cesspools of blood.”

Neighbors rallying behind neighbors in Minneapolis, Miller insists, engage in “trained insurgent tactics.” He’ll sell that hard until Trump invokes the Insurrection Act and puts the U.S. Army in the streets to crush any dissent.

One observation. If Acting President Stephen “Trump’s Brain” Miller believes neighbors with whistles are trained insurgents, then he clearly believes their “training” is better than that of the goons Trump’s DHS has dispatched to beat blue state citizens into submission.

At this point I may take to referring to the dangerous, doddering fool occupying the Oval Office as the criminal Donald Trump. Because he is. I’d also like to see people referring to Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller as Acting President Stephen “Trump’s Brain” Miller, a la Karl Rove. Trump cannot abide challenges to his authority, nor to his magnificent brain. Undermine their relationship every chance you get.

If Minnesota Were Alabama

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 17, 2026

Captain Crook wants blood

Seth Abramson looks at numbers in Minneapolis:

The question media should be asking: if Minneapolis only needs 600 police officers to perform all general law enforcement activities in the city, why did Trump send 3,000 federal agents to execute a statutorily and constitutionally much smaller task?

Answer? He wanted a war.

He offers a breakdown at Threads:

Based on the size of the task and authority ICE actually has—merely executing judicial warrants for already-identified undocumented persons—we’d expect an ICE “surge” in Minneapolis to be about 100 agents.

Trump sent 30 times that.

Because he wants to declare an insurrection. 

So if you’re an American paying only small attention to Minneapolis and wondering why things are crazy there, imagine your town being the target of an unprecedented federal op.

Big deal, right?

Now imagine the feds sending *30 times* too many men—most virtually untrained. 

Sounds horrifying, right? But what’s happening in Minneapolis is much worse than even that.

DHS is sending volunteers from its ranks—the men who *most* hate blue states, cities, and Americans…and nonwhites.

They’re armed, masked, and have been told they have total immunity.

If you’re a Republican, take everything I just said but change the president to Barack Obama and the men populating the army that just invaded your town to ones who hate red towns, states, and Americans…and white Christians.

You would’ve called it a civil war two minutes in. 

Of course, that analogy can’t be made because Barack Obama never pardoned 1,600 insurrectionists—many of them violent. Obama never said he wants to cancel elections. Obama never said he deserves an illegal third term. Nor is Obama a convicted felon known for personal violence.

Across the world people are asking, “Is America in a civil war?”

And the answer—for now—is a very simple one.”

Not yet—but only because Democrats aren’t like Republicans. If the aggressors and victims were reversed, the Second American Civil War would already be well underway.”

So as you watch Minnesotans protest and march and on occasion throw snowballs at the jackbooted, masked thugs who are killing them and violating their civil liberties every minute, say a “thank you” to them in your heart.

Because if this were Alabama instead, we would be at war.

A Big Shift

Published by digby on January 16, 2026

I had been hearing a lot from the punditocracy that the Resistance had died during the second Trump term but it turns out they were wrong. Very wrong. G. Elliott Morris has this:

In the first year of Donald Trump’s first term as president in 2017, the share of Americans calling themselves Republicans (or independents who leaned toward the Republican Party) dropped just 2 percentage points — from 42% in 2016 to 40% by Q4 of 2017. I predict it will surprise many people to hear that the Democrats didn’t actually change their advantage in party ID much at all in Trump’s first term, expanding their advantage to +7 in 2018 from +6 in 2016.

In Trump’s second term, however, the Republican Party is shedding members at a much higher pace. Gallup released its latest party identification data this week, and the numbers show Republican identification dropped from 46% in 2024 to just 40% in Q4 of 2025 — a 6-point decline, triple the 2-point drop during Trump’s first term.

This week’s Chart of the Week is: Backlash to Trump has been more severe in his second term.

[…]

Here’s the trajectory of leaned party ID in Trump’s second term, quarter by quarter:

  • Q4 2024: R+4 (before inauguration)
  • Q1 2025: Tied
  • Q2 2025: D+3
  • Q3 2025: D+7
  • Q4 2025: D+8

That D+8 reading is now a recent record for the Democratic Party. If it holds for all of 2026, D+8 will be the largest lead for the party — the largest lead for either party — since 2009.

Trump’s 12-point decline in party ID margin (a 6-point decrease in share GOP) since Q4 2024 is 3x the decline in his first term.

There’s a lot more at his Substack which I think is going to be a vital resource in this election year.

The upshot is that Democrats appear to be going into this cycle looking pretty good. The resistance is alive after all and as much as everyone says they hate the party (and they do) they certainly seem to be willing to identify with them more than they have in many years and will likely vote for them in November.

I don’t want to make any predictions. This era is way too volatile. But it’s something to build upon for sure.

Today In Presidential Dementia

Published by digby on January 16, 2026

He keeps repeating this story for no apparent reason. Here he is three days ago in Detroit:

For the record:

Over 25,000 workers died building the Panama Canal, with around 22,000 during the failed French attempt (1881-1889) and approximately 5,600 during the successful U.S. construction (1904-1914), primarily from diseases like malaria and yellow fever, as well as industrial accidents. The vast majority were Afro-Caribbean laborers, with far fewer American deaths than often misreported.  

I can’t find any mention of the snake but there is this from the recent NY Times interview. While discussing his White House renovations this happened:

David E. Sanger: So would you do it on the West Wing? Would you do it on the arcade?

President Trump: I would do it here — arcade and over to here, to about here. Here’s the Oval.

David E. Sanger: Until you stop at the Oval.

Tyler Pager: Building office —

President Trump: I’ve got to show — I shouldn’t do this, but I have to do it. I’m sorry, Karoline. Here’s my son holding a snake.

[Mr. Trump stops midsentence, leans over and pulls out of his desk a printed Instagram photo of his son Donald Trump Jr., who is smiling and holding up a rattlesnake.]

Do you believe that? No, do you believe that? That’s a cottonmouth rattlesnake. He’s a great hunter, but I said, “You know, ultimately they win.” I don’t like it. Don. No boots, no nothing. He was — he was born for that.

[The reporters look at the photo, in which the president’s son is wearing flip-flops.]

Katie Rogers: Flip-flops around that.

President Trump: But I said, “Ultimately, they win.” You better be careful. So ready? Don’t take any pictures of this ’cause you’ll scare people. So I started off with a building half of the seats —

[Mr. Trump puts a model for a new White House ballroom on the table.]

This happened the other day too while Trump was meeting with oil executives about Venezuela:

That is a very disordered mind, which is evident throughout that interview. He’s all over the place.

Meanwhile, today:

A half hour later he was on his way to Mar-a-lago for a long weekend.

Aaron Rupar’s Public Notice has an interview with Simon Rosenberg who offered up this tasty quote:

“It’s all an issue of who he’s become — a vain autocrat who is building himself a gilded ballroom and falling asleep. He’s implicated in the Epstein affair by Epstein himself, right? It’s just too much. It’s grotesque. He’s become a grotesque figure. It’s similar to historical figures like Nero or Caligula. Their madness took over and they started doing wildly destructive things. Trump is in that place.”

Yep.

Wine Moms And Childless Cat Ladies Are Enemies Of The People

Published by digby on January 16, 2026

Michelle Goldberg writes about the latest MAGA target today. (gift link)

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.”

It’s as if the right is speedrunning the Martin Niemöller poem that begins, “First they came for the Communists.” 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

I’m more of a tequila drinking, childless, cat lady but we’re all in this together. And we are pissed.

They used to call us “feminazis” but as my friend Brad Friedman quipped during my appearance on his show yesterday, they had to abandon that because they can’t afford to insult Nazis.

Yeah, Whatever

Published by digby on January 16, 2026

He’s flummoxed because he’s outsourced this policy completely to Miller and he knows it looks bad. Axios had this, this morning:

President Trump’s team recently reviewed private GOP polling that showed support for his immigration policies falling. The results, reflected in public surveys, bolstered internal concern about the administration’s confrontational enforcement tactics.

  • Now, as the chaotic scenes from Minnesota play out around the clock on TV and social media, Axios has learned that some Trump advisers quietly are talking about “recalibrating” the White House’s approach — though it’s unclear what changes Trump would embrace, if any.

Why it matters: The worries in part of Trump’s brain trust are the first signs of internal second-guessing of his controversial ICE enforcement tactics.

  • The private polling suggested a rupturing of the coalition of independent, moderate and minority voters who were key parts of Trump’s victory in 2024. Such voters will play a big role in determining whether Republicans keep their slim House majority in November’s midterms.
  • If Republicans lose the House, Trump will head into his final two years in office as a lame duck who, he acknowledges, could face a third impeachment.

To the degree they support a more constrained approach, some advisers are playing to the president’s occasional misgivings about the optics of some ICE tactics.

  • “I wouldn’t say he’s concerned about the policy,” a top Trump adviser told Axios. “He wants deportations. He wants mass deportations. What he doesn’t want is what people are seeing. He doesn’t like the way it looks. It looks bad, so he’s expressed some discomfort at that.”
  • “… [T]here’s the right way to do this. And this doesn’t look like the right way to a lot of people.”

Several Republicans in Congress have expressed concern to the White House about how the raids are playing out, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

  • ICE’s aggressive tactics are dominating the news and obscuring the White House’s work on cost-of-living issues that congressional Republicans, Trump and his team see as more important.

The internal GOP polling that alarmed some Trump insiders was completed at the end of December, days before an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis.

  • 60% of independent voters and 58% of undecided voters said Trump was “too focused” on deporting illegal immigrants, the poll viewed by Trump’s team found.
  • 33% said Trump was primarily deporting law-abiding people, as opposed to criminals.

You can tell by the way he’s answered questions in the recent interviews that he’s aware this looks bad. He personally loves the strong arm tactics, of course, he’s just leery of the optics which he knows a lot of people (not MAGA but others) really don’t like to see. He actually likes to see himself as a caring, empathetic person, which is absurd of course, but he’s

The polling out today from CNN, AP, and the rest are all showing him cratering on this issue. The MAGA faithful are fine with it, naturally. They are the folks who love to see their people getting violent, whether it’s the J6 insurrectionists or the ICE thugs. Apparently, the rest of the country still has a core of decency and doesn’t care for it.

By the way, the third impeachment is a must. I don’t see how the Democrats can not do it considering what he’s already done. No, he won’t be convicted but at this point I think that is an indictment of the GOP and it’s excellent politics. If we survive this, Trump’s legacy which is all he cares about now, will not be his ballroom or “the arch” or any of the things he’s slapped his hideous logo on. It will be that he was a criminal who almost destroyed the country and the world. He will instead join the pantheon of villainous leaders and Democrats should help that along by impeaching him a third time.

Ice Lies

Published by digby on January 16, 2026

The NY Times has done a new forensic analysis of the various videos of the Good murder. Here’s a gift link. It’s worth watching.

In a video analysis, The Times focuses on some of the key contested moments of the agent’s cellphone video alongside other footage. More videos are likely to emerge, but the visual evidence shows no indication that the agent who fired the shots, Jonathan Ross, had been run over. The footage provides visibility into the positioning between the agent and Ms. Good’s S.U.V., and the key moments of escalation. It also establishes — millisecond by millisecond — how Mr. Ross put himself in a dangerous position near her vehicle in the first place.

It appears that there will be no criminal investigations and since they have qualified immunity, probably no lawsuits. But the truth still matters. They lied. The agent shot her in the head three times. And his actions show that he has no one to blame but himself.

American Gestapo

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 16, 2026

Joe Rogan: “Are we really gonna be the gestapo?”

Violent gangs of masked thugs are terrorizing American cities. It’s all on video. That would be fodder for weeks of breathless Fox News punditry if they weren’t issued badges and guns by the Trump administration, or if they were marching north in Mexico toward the U.S. border. Anti-ICE protesters set alight a Waymo in Los Angeles and the EXISTENTIAL THREAT claxons go off on the American right. But DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s bumbling stormtroopers triple-tap a Minneapolis mother, killing her, or send a child who’s stopped breathing to the hospital, or put out a protester’s eye, and American fascists get all moist between the thighs.

“Politically idiosyncratic” bro-caster Joe Rogan has become a huge critic of the Trump administration’s ethnic cleansing/retribution efforts.

“You don’t want militarized people in the streets just roaming around, snatching up people, many of which turn out to be U.S. citizens that just don’t have their papers on them,” Rogan said. “Are we really gonna be the gestapo?” Rogan asked. “Where’s your papers—is that what we’ve come to?”

Why, yes. Yes, we have.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed that on Thursday outside the White House (via Daily Beast, “ICE Barbie Warns Americans Must Be Prepared to Prove Citizenship”):

“In every situation, we are doing targeted enforcement. If we are on a target and doing an operation, there may be individuals surrounding that criminal that we may be asking who they are and why they’re there and validate their identity,” Noem claimed. “That’s what we’ve always done in asking people who they are so that we know who’s in those surroundings.”

She said if they are breaking the law, they will be detained them, “until we’ve run that processing.”

The least our American Gestapo can do is make the demand using the accent. (Yes, I know this guy is SS):

More than 80 House Democrats have signed articles of impeachment against Noem.

“Utterly dystopian. If I had accused Republicans of wanting this world 5 years ago, I’d have been accused of lying and exaggerating,” tweeted Cato’s David Bier.

Renee Good was not the first to die after an encounter with Noem’s secret police. Here is a slide show of others who died in ICE custody.

The death in Texas of one of those people, Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, could soon be under investigation as a homicide (The Washington Post):

An employee of El Paso County’s Office of the Medical Examiner told Lunas Campos’s daughter this week that, subject to results of a toxicology report, the office is likely to classify the death as a homicide, according to a recording of the conversation.

In the recording, which the daughter shared with The Washington Post, the employee said a doctor there “is listing the preliminary cause of death as asphyxia due to neck and chest compression,” which means Lunas Campos did not get enough oxygen because of pressure on his neck and chest. Pending the results of a toxicology report, the staffer said on the recording, “our doctor is believing that we’re going to be listing the manner of death as homicide.”

A 55-year-old Cuban immigrant, Lunas Campos died following a struggle with detention staff, according to an eyewitness account and an internal ICE document reviewed by The Post.

Tricia McLaughlin, DHS spokesliar and Karoline Leavitt wannabe, claims…. What she claims is not worth repeating.

Lunas Campos’s record is not clean, but did not merit a death sentence:

Court records show Lunas Campos was convicted of several crimes, including for aggravated assault with a weapon and, in 2003, first-degree sexual abuse involving a child under 11 years old. ICE arrested Lunas Campos in a “planned enforcement operation” in July, saying in a news release that his criminal record spanned from at least 1997 through 2015 and that “his luck has finally run out.

The Post indicates that recent events have “raised questions” about the recruitment and training of ICE agents. We’ve seen this week that their vetting efforts are slipshod at best. Virtually nonexistent. What’s more, ICE is explicitly targeting men who, put colloquially want to get their rocks off knocking heads (The Guardian):

“They’re aiming for that sweet spot of people who’ve got something to prove, who want to have that power, under the guise of patriotism,” Americus Reed, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, told the Post.

ICE’s controversial ads have leaned heavily on American symbolism – Uncle Sam, George Washington, Lady Liberty – while casting immigrants as bad actors to convince potential deportation officers to apply.

Heidi Beirich, a co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, sees neo-Nazi and white supremacist memes and symbology in government recruitment materials (The Guardian):

“It’s absolutely shocking to see such images being deployed by this administration,” said Beirich. “The idea appeals to racists and white supremacists who think only white people should be in positions of power.”

Recently, DHS recruitment posters have been likened to Third Reich propaganda, while Elon Musk – a onetime government worker during his reign as the head of the so-called “department of government efficiency” – has outright race-baited Somali Americans, who are the main target of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in the Twin Cities.

“I’m not sure if this is trolling or distraction, but there certainly have been more of them,” said Beirich, referring to the onslaught of Maga posting. “More worrisome, especially when it comes to DHS recruitment messages, is that they perhaps are trying to attract far-right extremists to join ICE.”

This is why this week I shifted from more anodyne messages to urging action … now.

HAVE Y’ALL HAD ENUF?
AND YOU’RE DOING??

(h/t DJ)

The Shadow President

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 16, 2026

The Insurrection Act, helluva twofer

“Stephen Miller was perhaps the most concerned about the portrait session. He asked me, “Should I smile or not smile?” and I said, “How would you want to be portrayed?” We agreed that we would do a bit of both. And then when we were finished, he comes up to me to shake my hand and say goodbye. And he says to me, “You know, you have a lot of power in the discretion you use to be kind to people.” And I looked at him and I said, “You know, you do too”.
~ Christopher Anderson, Vanity Fair

Shadow President Stephen Miller is itching to invoke the Insurrection Act his boss has fantasized about for years. Trump wants it now as part of his retribution campaign against anyone and everyone (“I am your retribution.”), but also as a way of suppressing the vote in fall congressional elections. Trump expects to lose control of the House, at a minimim, and face another inpeachment. Miller is just waiting for the right moment to yank Trump’s chain.

Democracy Docket:

“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT,” the president wrote Thursday on Truth Social.

Rep. Veronica Escobar(D) of Texas responds to the threat:

“We knew this was part of his plan all along, and my fear—and I think the fear of many members of Congress and communities across the country—is that he will use the Insurrection Act during the midterm elections to suppress the vote…”

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D):

Pritzker: The feds are supposed to be fighting to protect your civil rights, not to take them away. And the Insurrection Act is designed only for circumstances where your rights can’t be protected by local authorities or by whatever federal authorities are already there. Only then can federal troops be brought in to protect your civil rights. This is exactly the opposite. It’s like they’ve turned it on its head. Your civil rights are being infringed upon by CBP and ICE, and then they want to call in troops on top of that—not to protect your civil rights, but claiming that they’re protecting CBP and ICE. And it’s just false.

I don’t know if this can be stopped, or how widespread it could be. Trump cannot by law prevent elections, but the law seems of little concern to him, doesn’t it? And to Miller.