This is a massive risk. Don’t be surprised if it happens. And now, instead of a CDC or NIH that at least has real scientists running it we have cranks and quacks in charge. It’s just terrifying.
Let’s talk about “qualified immunity” (via the National Council of State Legislators):
The doctrine of qualified immunity protects state and local officials, including law enforcement officers, from individual liability unless the official violated a clearly established constitutional right.
The evolution of qualified immunity began in 1871 when Congress adopted 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which makes government employees and officials personally liable for money damages if they violate a person’s federal constitutional rights. State and local police officers may be sued under § 1983. Until the 1960s, few § 1983 lawsuits were successfully brought. In 1967, the Supreme Court recognized qualified immunity as a defense to § 1983 claims. In 1982, the Supreme Court adopted the current test for the doctrine. Qualified immunity is generally available if the law a government official violated isn’t “clearly established.”
If qualified immunity applies, money damages aren’t available even if a constitutional violation has occurred. If qualified immunity doesn’t apply, while the government employee or official technically is responsible for money damages, the government entity virtually always pays. So qualified immunity protects states and local governments from having to pay money damages for actions not yet deemed unconstitutional by a court.
The qualified immunity doctrine is very favorable to states and local governments. “Clearly established” means that, at the time of the official’s conduct, the law was sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would understand that what he or she is doing is unconstitutional. According to the Supreme Court, qualified immunity protects all except the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.
The Supreme Court has offered multiple justifications for qualified immunity, including that it encourages government officials to “unflinching[ly] discharge . . . their duties” without worrying about being sued for actions a court has not yet held violate the constitution.
Note how much “clearly established constitutional right,” “reasonable official,” and “except plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law” rely on good-faith behavior. “Qualified immunity” breaks down when we have people who do not respect the rule of law both on the enforcement and on the interpreting side of American justice.
We now routinely see lawless DHS/ICE thugs assaulting citizen observers and accusing observers of the assaults. The agents’ purpose is to arrest critics, threaten them with felony assault, and perhaps charge them with assaults that the federal agents committed. This is to minimize citizen oversight of agents’ civil rights violations, initimidate critics, and in the case of Renee Good, even kill them. All protected by qualified immunity.
It is a rule designed to protect government officials operating in good faith and playing by and respecting the rule of law. That horse left the barn some years ago.
A couple of examples from this week.
Democrats have introduced a string of bills to limit or remove qualified immunity in the wake of behaviors on display in Donald Trump’s and Stephen Miller’s ethnic cleansing operation. As I wrote two weeks ago, none of these bills have a prayer this term. They are mainly for P.R. But I’d be inclined to present the stack to any DHS agent threatening me and ask him if he knows what the statute of limitations on civil rights lawsuits is in this state. Those bills might come back to bite him and his family in the future. It’s a bluff, of course, but I’d expect few of these idiots to know that.
The headline above appeared on the Weather Channel’s site Friday night. We on the east coast are bracing for whatever Mother Nature has in store later today. Whether it will be “catastrophic” where I live remains unknown. (Commercial weather forecasters love to hype big weather events.) Still, there could be widespread tree damage and power outages due to an expected ice storm followed by temperatures in the low single-digits on Monday night. And we’re still cleaning up the tree damage from Helene’s visit on September 27, 2024.
A 3:13 a.m. email from The Guardian carried the subject line “A(nother) week where decades happen.” That’s after a year where decades happened, including for civil servants like those at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Weather Service (NWS).
Hurricane Musk fell upon Washington, D.C. last February. A gleeful Elon Musk precipitated rounds of staff cuts to the agencies Americans depend on to warn us of impending weather disasters like the one forecast for this weekend. By April 1 over 1,000 lost jobs with more expected as the purges rolled on.
As The Guardian reported April 1:
“Dysfunction is the polite way of putting it, you could also say it is incompetent chaos,” said Andrew Rosenberg, formerly the deputy director of Noaa’s national marine fisheries service.
“This administration is paying people on administrative leave and asking staff to name five good things they’ve done but they get email bounce backs when they do because the inboxes are full. If you were looking at the inverse of efficiency, this would be it.”
Then came the whipsaw as — whoops — Musk’s ad hoc “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) realized that, hmmm, maybe we need some of the people who warn the public of tornadoes and hurricanes. By August, DOGE was backtracking. NOAA received permission to refill 450 positions at NWS “after a summer of deadly, extreme weather.” That is “nearly all” the “critical positions” lost in the spring to Musk’s college-age hackers.
My ice storm warnings are changing by the hour. Maybe that’s NWS experts staying atop changing weather data and fine-tuning forecasts as the storm develops. Or maybe it is because like Helene survivors here in Western North Carolina, NWS is still recovering from last year’s Hurricane Musk.
Politico reports, “The monster storm that’s threatening to dump snow across much of the U.S. could be a test of the Trump administration’s willingness to help states after natural disasters.”
Help? We’re still waiting for the help Trump promised us last January. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under Joe Biden, he said, was “very bureaucratic” and “very slow.” As of September, we’d received “less than $5 billion of the estimated $60 billion needed for full recovery.” The promised aid is still dribbling out.
Politico again:
With heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain forecast to begin falling Friday and continuing into Monday over a massive swath of the country, from the Rockies to the Atlantic, governors from dozens of states could be forced to navigate shifting policies under President Donald Trump, who has set efforts in motion to reduce the flow of disaster aid to states. As governors declare emergencies ahead of the storm, some are wondering whether the White House will reject their requests for federal funding to help pay for cleanup and repairs if predictions for over a foot of snow in some areas prove accurate.
“They’re preparing for the worst,” said a former senior Federal Emergency Management Agency official who was granted anonymity to describe discussions with state officials. “They’re preparing for no grants, no money.”
Ice is bad, but is I.C.E. worse? The Trump administration thinks so (CNN):
Homeland Security officials have urged disaster response staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to avoid using the word “ice” in public messaging about the massive winter storm barreling toward much of the United States, according to two sources familiar with the directive.
The concern is that the word could spark confusion or online mockery, given the ongoing controversy surrounding US Immigration and Customs Enforcement — also known as “ICE.”
The guidance, informally delivered to a group at FEMA Thursday by officials from the Department of Homeland Security – which oversees both FEMA and ICE – comes as states across the South brace for potentially devastating ice accumulations, with some areas expecting a quarter -inch or more.
Head : desk. Mock away.
Baby slow loris!
The Bronx Zoo has announced the birth of an Endangered pygmy slow loris, born December 13, 2025 as the first primate born at the zoo’s new immersive World of Darkness exhibit.
The pygmy slow loris is a small primate native to Southeast Asia. They are considered Endangered by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, with habitat loss and poaching for the illegal pet trade contributing to rapid population decline. The Bronx Zoo participates in the pygmy slow loris Species Survival Plan (SSP), a breeding program managed by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) to maintain a genetically diverse population of the Endangered species.
Slow lorises are born fully furred with their eyes open and reach an adult weight of about one pound. Infants are carried on the mother’s stomach and intermittently “parked” on branches while the mother forages for food. The baby will become more active and independent as it grows, becoming fully weaned around 6 months of age. Bronx Zoo animal care staff will determine the baby’s sex at its first veterinary exam.
These guys are very cute, but they’re also deadly:
I love them anyway.
Heidy Sánchez took her 17-month-old daughter to a routine check-in last April with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tampa, Fla. During the appointment, federal authorities told her that she was being detained and that her husband should pick up their daughter, who was still breastfeeding. Two days later, Ms. Sánchez, 44, who worked as a home health aide, was deported.
Ms. Sánchez’s story quickly spread across social media, in part because she is Cuban, a group that had long been treated differently than other immigrants, even when they entered the country illegally.
That has changed under President Trump.
He has repatriated more than 1,600 Cubans in 2025, according to the Cuban government. That is about double the number of Cubans who were repatriated in 2024. And in the years that Mr. Trump has been president, he has sent more Cubans back than his three predecessors.
Those numbers are greater for Cubans who were deported by land into Mexico. Some of them had been in the United States for decades and built families and businesses, but were removed because of an old criminal conviction — say, from Miami’s infamous cocaine cowboys days in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Well now. All those Cuban exiles who supported Republicans for decades are finding out that they aren’t so special after all. Not even Marco Rubio has stepped up to defend them.
And yet…
Polls suggest that most Cuban American registered voters, who tend to be Republican, continue to support Mr. Trump, said Michael J. Bustamante, an associate history professor and director of Cuban studies at the University of Miami who studies Cuban American political culture. But he said that he had noticed “a growing amount of unease” throughout the community.
A growing sense of unease? There should be:
Legal immigration has also been all but cut out. Mr. Trump enacted a travel ban on 19 countries, including Cuba, and ended a family reunification program. U.S. officials are rejecting visa applications, which can take years to complete. Last month, the Trump administration paused all Cuban immigration cases, including pending naturalization, residency and asylum applications.
“It’s the most sweeping rollback of Cuban migration channels since the Cold War,” said María José Espinosa, the executive director of the Center for Engagement and Advocacy in the Americas, a nonprofit strategy organization based in Washington.
This is why no person of color, immigrants from anywhere or even foreigners visiting the country should trust the Republicans. Did they really think these racists see a difference between a Cuban and a Mexican? Please.
Dr. Ryan Marino on BlueSky:
Mortality rates:
Mifepristone: 0.65/100,000
Penicillin 2/100K
Viagra 4/100KPregnancy in the US: 22/100,000 (some states see rates >60/100K)
More people have died in ICE detention centers already in 2026 than will die from mifepristone all year. These politicians are extremely dangerous to women.
They are dangerous to humanity.
There are several lawsuits going through the courts that would severely restrict or ban mifepristone based on this dishonest propaganda. It’s fairly likely that the Supremes will uphold the ban on teleheath prescriptions as a threat to states’ rights which they are very protective of as long as the states aren’t led by Democrats.
Is corporate America too scared to criticise Donald Trump? The Economist’s editor-in-chief, @zannymb, puts that question to the boss of one of the world's biggest banks. When asked whether there is a climate of fear in America, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, says “I… pic.twitter.com/E7WCO2LzUC
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) January 22, 2026
Is corporate America too scared to criticise Donald Trump? The Economist’s editor-in-chief, @zannymb, puts that question to the boss of one of the world’s biggest banks.
When asked whether there is a climate of fear in America, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, says “I think that’s clear”.
Tim O’Brien at Bloomberg reports:
Trump sued one of the world’s largest banks, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and its chief executive officer, Jamie Dimon, on Thursday. He contended that he and his companies were illegally and unfairly barred from doing business with the bank for “woke” political reasons a few months after he left the White House in 2021.
[…]
Trump sued another financial institution, Capital One Financial Corp., for similar reasons last year, so a trend might be afoot. Personal animus may be at work here, too. Just a day before the lawsuit was filed, Dimon criticized Trump’s plans to cap credit-card interest rates as an “economic disaster” during an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Dimon also said he would have approached negotiations with Europe in a “more polite” fashion than the president. After praising Trump for enforcing tighter immigration standards at the US’ southern border, Dimon also ripped the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s recent thuggery in Minneapolis, where an agent killed a US citizen, Renee Good. Videos of other violent encounters there have gone viral. “I don’t like what I’m seeing with five grown men beating up little women,” Dimon said.
I don’t think there’s any doubt what this is all about do you? Dimon criticized the man-baby so he decided to sue him. That’s as predictable as the sun coming up in the morning.
Trump and Dimon have traded barbs in the past. “I’m as tough as he is, I’m smarter than he is,” Dimon said of Trump at an event in 2018. “He could punch me all he wants, it wouldn’t work with me. I’d fight right back.” Dimon also noted that “this wealthy New Yorker actually earned his money. It wasn’t a gift from daddy.” Trump took to social media to respond, observing that Dimon could never cut it as president because “he doesn’t have the aptitude or ‘smarts’ & is a poor public speaker & nervous mess – otherwise he is wonderful.”
In his first term Trump would have just tweeted an insult. Now he sues. I would expect that if he gets really mad he’ll sic the IRS or the DOJ on him.
O’Brien says what we’re all thinking:
Other business leaders should take a cue from Dimon and start standing up for themselves more forcefully and openly. They all get paid quite well for being leaders, after all, and we are living in an era when public courage is essential. Trump’s second term has been a revenge tour as much as anything else. When he disrupts or threatens corporate operations with unhinged policies and proclamations — or lawsuits — rooted in personal grievances, bravado or political expediency, CEOs would do well to push back. Trump’s trampling of core American values — including the rule of law and respect for our global alliances — should inspire them as well.
It should but so far, it’s very rare. O’Brien goes into the details of the case which sounds very weak and probably won’t go anywhere. It’s just the latest in a string of nuisance suits Trump has filed. I guess now that he’s grifted a couple billion as president he figures he has plenty of money to spend on revenge:
The Florida lawyer representing Trump, Alejandro Brito, has also filed suits against Dow Jones & Co., News Corp., the New York Times Co., and the British Broadcasting Corp. seeking combined damages of $35 billion for allegedly defaming his client. The media companies have denied wrongdoing and said they are ready to go to court. Still, Trump has turned flimsy or ludicrous suits into a lucrative cottage industry that has supplemented his presidential salary.
The Supreme Court gave him immunity from criminal prosecution for his “official duties” which has made him feel invulnerable. He’s now using the criminal law and the civil courts with abandon to wreak revenge on his enemies. How’s that working out for us?
The new head of the CDC Vaccine Board wants to run a massive experiment on America’s children to see how many will die of disease without vaccination. I’m not kidding:
The chair of a federal vaccine advisory panel charted a new course for the committee in a podcast released Thursday — suggesting the public might want to reconsider the use of polio vaccines, arguing individual freedoms should be a north star of the panel, and pointing to the Covid pandemic as key to his thinking on health policy
Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist who became chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in December, also downplayed established science on vaccines during an interview for the podcast and suggested policy goals, not new research, were the driving force behind changing recommendations in recent months.
In a wide-ranging interview with the podcast “Why Should I Trust You?”, Milhoan painted a more detailed picture of the committee’s strategy than has been previously known as it moves to weigh recommendations for vaccines given to children and pregnant people.
When asked why the committee had revised existing recommendations, including delaying the age by which some children are immunized for hepatitis B, Milhoan said plainly: “Yeah, because we were concerned about mandates, and mandates have really harmed and increased hesitancy.”
This is a public health official who doesn’t believe in public health. Someone should tell him how disease is spread because he doesn’t seem to know. He is a right wing libertarian nutcase:
“What we are doing is returning individual autonomy to the first order, not public health, but individual autonomy to the first order,” he said…
“[Patients] should be making the decisions on what the risks are of disease, what the risks are of vaccines, which is different for each person, what the family history is, and then make a decision from there, as opposed to what was sort of more of a heavy-handed, authoritarian thought of the vaccine schedule that led to mandates that if you didn’t have this set of vaccines exactly how they were prescribed, then you didn’t get in school,” he said.
Asked about Milhoan’s remarks, an AAP official said they were “only the latest step in an effort to sow doubt and confusion” about vaccines.
This one really gets me because what he’s saying is that people being unable to “do things” during the early period of the pandemic was a worse problem than the fact that over 1.2 MILLION AMERICANS DIED!!!! What kind of a doctor is this?
Overall, the spectre of Covid-19 loomed large for Milhoan in the podcast: He frequently pointed back to messaging about the Covid vaccines, which he believes were made out to be more effective than they are. He also said that, as a pediatric cardiologist, vaccines weren’t front of mind for him until Covid-19 vaccine mandates.
“People couldn’t go to school, and they couldn’t do this, and they couldn’t do this, to get a vaccine that has really been a large failure,” he said.
So this quack had never thought much about vaccines until somebody said that people should wear masks and the government partially closed up the country until we could get a handle on the problem. He is a political extremist period, not an immunologist, a public health expert or anything else. They might as well have dragged in some dentist from Dubuque and put him in charge of vaccines.
He’s also a liar and an idiot:
Milhoan also addressed what top appointees at the Food and Drug Administration have described as evidence that at least 10 children died from getting Covid vaccines, calling it “a very large death signal.” Vaccine experts have called on the FDA to make the data public; to date it has not. Milhoan told the podcast hosts he had seen the data, but did not elaborate on them.
At the same time, Milhoan cast doubt on the scientific rigor of current public health decision-making. “I don’t like established science,” he said, adding “science is what I observe.”
And he wants to bring back polio just as measles is now spreading so he can “observe” how many kids get it and die:
Asked about his thoughts on polio and measles vaccines, Milhoan seemed to question whether both are still necessary. There has been an international effort for nearly the past 40 years to eradicate the crippling polio virus, which still spreads in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and which occasionally makes its way out of that region. Measles, however, is running rampant in parts of the United States, with transmission occurring at rates that haven’t been seen since the early 1990s.
“I think also, as you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then. Our sanitation is different, our risk of disease is different, and so those all play into the evaluation of whether this is worthwhile of taking a risk for a vaccine or not,” Milhoan said.
“When … we talk about the risk of, let’s say, measles, many of those risks of not getting measles without having a vaccine was in the 1960s. We take care of children much differently now,” he added.
Milhoan’s suggestion that both better sanitation and less crowding could bring those diseases under better control than before the vaccines were introduced is a common talking point of Kennedy’s as well. One of Kennedy’s lawyers, Aaron Siri, prior to Kennedy’s confirmation, had petitioned the FDA to revoke approval for the polio vaccine.
“What we’re going to have is a real-world experience of when unvaccinated people get measles,” he said. “What is the new incidence of hospitalization? What’s the incidence of death?”
Hey, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, amirite??? A few kids bite the dust from measles and we reintroduce polio into the population then maybe we’ll see if that brainworm-addled RFK Jr and this crank are right about everything.
I don’t know how much damage these freaks can do in the next three years alone but if we aren’t able to take back the country as the earliest possible moment a lot of people are going to get sick and die.
Putting that weirdo RFK Jr in charge of our public health and medical science may end up being the worst thing Trump did. And don’t ever forget why he did it. He was trying to win the election and needed to bring over the anti-vaxxers who were mad at him for doing the one good thing he did in his first term — sign off on the rapid development of the COVID vaccines. The worst political transaction in his depraved political career.
Donald Trump held a marathon press briefing on Tuesday, ostensibly to celebrate the first anniversary of his triumphant return to the White House before he set off for the World Economic Forum in Davos to announce his takeover of the world. He carried a thick sheaf of papers with hundreds of numbered “accomplishments” he has supposedly achieved, from saving millions of lives to banning paper straws through executive decree. But that wasn’t the real reason he emerged to make such an unexpected appearance before getting on a plane for an important speech and meeting with world leaders. He obviously saw the latest polls — and they aren’t good.
We know this because Trump mentioned it in the White House briefing room. Going on and on (and on) about his alleged economic genius, shouting out nonsensical numbers for what felt like hours, he couldn’t help but whine a little. “I mean, I’m not getting — maybe I have the — bad public relations people, but we’re not getting it across.” Coming from the man who bills himself as the greatest leader, the best deal maker and the most compelling salesman the world has ever known, his words were a tell.
[B]ecause he has no idea what to do about it other than slap tariffs on everyone and misrepresent the results, the president’s only move is to go on camera and tell the American people that they aren’t experiencing what they’re in fact experiencing.
Trump knows that people aren’t buying his lies. Some of his own voters are, to quote Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, “sneaking away.” But because he has no idea what to do about it other than slap tariffs on everyone and misrepresent the results, the president’s only move is to go on camera and tell the American people that they aren’t experiencing what they’re in fact experiencing.
The latest polling holds very bad news for Trump. According to the most recent Economist/YouGov poll, which was taken Jan. 16-19, 37% of Americans approve of his job performance, while 57% disapprove. At a net approval of -20%, this is the lowest rating he has received in any Economist poll save one during his first term.
The stark numbers were apparently driven by a drop in GOP voters’ approval, which fell nine points to 79% over the course of a week. Americans’ opinions of Trump’s “strength, honesty and likeability” have also fallen precipitously. (Did people actually once rate him more highly on those qualities?) Those who say the country is on the right track (31%) versus the wrong track (61%) are similarly dismal.
If it is true that the midterm elections are a referendum on the party in power, and that presidential approval ratings serve as a signal for how that’s going, then Republicans are in trouble. According to G. Elliott Morris’ Strength In Numbers/Verasight analysis, Democrats hold an eight-point lead on the generic ballot — a figure even greater than their numbers in the historic blue wave of 2018.
All the polling shows that Democratic voters are much more motivated than Republicans at this point, and it appears that is largely because of negative partisanship. A recent Pew survey found that Democrats do not have a high opinion of their own party compared to Republicans, which could explain why the party is so much less popular than the GOP in polling. However, voting patterns in off-year elections, combined with findings that Democrats have a large advantage in the generic ballot, indicates that many Americans may loathe Trump enough to overcome their antipathy to vote blue.
What’s more, the GOP gerrymandering shenanigans appear to have backfired, with the Blue states stepping up to fight fire with fire. We are also awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision on Louisiana v. Callais, the voting rights case that might eventually give the GOP a structural lock on the House for decades to come. Whether that will affect 2026 depends on when they hand down the opinion and how quickly the states could adapt. At this point it seems unlikely that the Republicans will be able to exploit this advantage, if they get it, until 2028.
Until recently, it seemed that Democrats might not have even a slim chance of winning the Senate, but a possible path has emerged in recent weeks. If everything breaks perfectly, the party could possibly pick up seats in Alaska, Maine, Ohio and North Carolina, with an outside chance in Iowa, and get a majority. That outcome could prevent the unthinkable legacy of Donald Trump leaving office having put five justices on the Supreme Court should Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito retire, as some court watchers have speculated.
The Democrats are, as usual, publicly navel gazing about what kind of messaging they should use to leverage what looks to be a solid advantage. Should they use the term “abolish ICE” and campaign on the president’s toxic wrecking ball of the Homeland Security Department, or should they adopt less aggressive rhetoric, such as “restrain and reform ICE” to insure they aren’t tarred as soft on illegal immigration? Are they better off focusing exclusively on “affordability,” since it’s the issue that most people name as their top priority (and on which Trump’s dreadful performance is dragging down Republicans into the low 30s)? Should they follow the polls that say that the public wants more compromise in Washington, or should they take a strong stand against the GOP’s authoritarian onslaught?
There is a great temptation, as happens so often in politics, to fight the last war. Working under the assumption that because voters said they voted for Trump in 2024 because of the economy, too many strategists still seem to ignore the fact that the country had just gone through unprecedented national trauma with the Covid-19 pandemic and, like virtually every country in the world, reacted by tossing out incumbents. It’s not that people weren’t reeling from the economic upheaval; they were also reeling from five years of death, disruption and despair. It was never just about the eggs.
American voters inexplicably thought that Trump could restore the relative tranquility that existed before that maelstrom. Instead, he has created even more chaos and fear.
However Democratic congressional candidates ultimately decide to approach this, they simply cannot behave as if we are living through a time of politics as usual. A Republican majority that is allowing Trump to use tariffs as a weapon that hurts average Americans, occupy American cities with paramilitary forces, brutalize immigrants, depose foreign leaders, threaten allies, blackmail law firms and universities, defund science and education, and essentially tear up the Constitution, all in order to appease a tyrant, is simply not something they can ignore. Democrats can’t pretend the only thing that matters is the economy.
All of those are now kitchen table issues. People know that things are hurtling out of control, and they’re talking about it. They’re taking to the streets to protest in their own neighborhoods and in huge numbers all over the country. If voters aren’t laying out that whole panoply of atrocities to pollsters and canvassers, it’s not because they aren’t feeling it — it’s because they’re terrified by the apparent impotence of everyone with any power to stop it.
According to the latest CNN poll, 58% of Americans say Trump’s first year back in office has been an abject failure. The number one job for Democratic candidates is to make it clear to the American people that every single member of the Republican Party is complicit in everything he is doing — and the only way to fix that is to elect a Democratic Congress to fulfill its constitutional duty as a co-equal branch of government.
From the looks of the latest polling, that’s fundamentally what people want from the Democrats right now, and it shouldn’t be too difficult to make the case that they’re prepared and equipped to make that happen.
Salon
A meme circulating on social media riffs on a famous line from Jaws: We’re gonna need a bigger Hague. The front page of today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune proves that the meme is more than a cute joke.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof responds to the photo at the top:
Take a moment to look at the inhumanity captured in this extraordinary photo running on the front page of tonight’s Minneapolis @StarTribune. It shows federal immigration agents immobilizing a protester on the ground and spraying chemical irritant directly into his face. The scene reminds me of the brutality used against civil rights protesters in the 1960s. We look back at those old photos and wonder how the authorities could have behaved so savagely; many years from now, young Americans will look at these photos from 2026 and wonder how anyone could have justified shooting a woman in the head as she tried to drive away, arresting 5-year-old schoolchildren on the street, or holding a man down and spaying chemicals into his face. Thanks to the Star Tribune reporters and photographers for documenting this work; they create accountability, they make democracy work, and they make all of us in journalism proud.
Jim Wright, a.k.a. “stonekettle,” a 23-year Navy veteran responds to the photo:
If I had done this to an enemy prisoner under my control in the warzone, or if as an officer I had allowed this by any man under my command, I would still be in prison right now. This is the American government doing it to an American.
Like Donald Trump’s DHS brute squads, workers in Philadlphia are just following orders. (Philadelphia Inquirer):
The National Park Service dismantled exhibits about slavery at the President’s House Site in Independence National Historical Park, provoking a lawsuit from Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration.
The President’s House, which serves as a memorial to the nine people George Washington enslaved there during the founding of the United States, has come under increased scrutiny from President Donald Trump’s administration. The president and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum last spring ordered displays at national parks that “inappropriately disparage” the U.S. to be reviewed and potentially removed.
Around 3 p.m. Thursday, an Independence Park employee who would not give his name told an Inquirer reporter that his supervisor had instructed him to take down all the displays at the iconic site earlier that day. Three other individuals later joined the employee to help remove the educational exhibits. The final display was removed at 4:30 p.m. The displays were then loaded into the back of a white Park Service pickup truck.
Trump is erasing history. It’s Orwellian.
— David Corn (@davidcorn.bsky.social) January 23, 2026 at 9:31 AM
The U.S. citizen dragged from his home into freezing weather in his shorts? ICE mistook him for a man already in prison. The Minnesota Department of Corrections held a news conference Thursday morning to refute disinformation issued by DHS?ICE (KARE 11):
DOC Commissioner Paul Schnell pushed back on ICE detainer information, saying, “DHS has repeatedly claimed that there are more than 1,360 individuals with ICE detainers in Minnesota custody. Despite requests, DHS has provided no data, no data source, no tracking methodology, no jurisdictional breakdown, no timeframe explaining how their numbers were produced.”
[…]
Commissioner Schnell said the DOC conducted its own survey of county jails across the state, showing 94 people with ICE detainers. In state prisons, there are 207 people with ICE detainers.
“That total is 301 individuals, nowhere close to the 1,360 that DHS has discussed,” said Commissioner Schnell.
Regarding ChongLy “Scott” Thao, whom ICE at gunpoint without a warrant this week, the criminal the brute squad was seeking was already in a state prison.
We’re gonna need a bigger Hague.
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History will look upon us and say we all had ash in our feather dusters.