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What Now, America?

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 21, 2026

Adapting to a new reality

If you haven’t watched Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech to the World Economic Forum from Tuesday, take 17 minutes to watch it while you sip your coffee.

Carney declares in Davos, Switzerland that the rules-based order of the post-war world is over. In fact, it never was. It was a fantasy we all accepted because it served our mutual interests.

A rupture, not a transition

American hegemony “helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.” So we pretended that rules were rules while the hegemons violated them at will and the world looked away:

This bargain no longer works.

Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

What do we do now, Carney asks, when globalization has led to domination? Aim for greater strategic autonomy or a new model for cooperation? Canada is reevaluating its posture. The reality is that not every trading and alliance partner shares its values. (Looking at you, United States.)

We are calibrating our relationships so their depth reflects our values, and we’re prioritizing broad engagement to maximize our influence, given the fluidity of the world at the moment, the risks that this poses and the stakes for what comes next.

And we are no longer just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength.

He outlines Canada’s recent moves. A kind of reset.

We’ve agreed to a comprehensive strategic partnership with the EU, including joining SAFE, the European defence procurement arrangements. We have signed 12 other trade and security deals on four continents in six months.

In the past few days, we’ve concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We’re negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines and Mercosur.

We’re doing something else: to help solve global problems, we’re pursuing variable geometry. In other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests. So on Ukraine, we’re a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per capita contributors to its defence and security.

On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland’s future.

Our commitment to NATO’s Article 5 is unwavering, so we’re working with our NATO allies, including the Nordic-Baltic Eight, to further secure the alliance’s northern and western flanks, including through Canada’s unprecedented investments in over-the-horizon radar, in submarines, in aircraft, and boots on the ground — boots on the ice.

Canada strongly opposes tariffs over Greenland and calls for focused talks to achieve our shared objectives of security and prosperity in the Arctic.

Carney does not mention Donald Trump or the United States by name in reference to tariffs or to Greenland, but his message is clear. The U.S. can no longer be trusted as guarantor of order and stability. The “middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”

The cooks in this analogy are the United States, Russia, and China. And for Canada, primarily the U.S.

In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in-between have a choice: compete with each other for favour, or combine to create a third path with impact. We shouldn’t allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong if we choose to wield it together.

It’s a brave new world for the “middle powers,” with no going back. The nations in Davos must acknowledge the fantasy and face the new reality realistically, Carney argues. Whether the rest of the EU accepts Carney’s assessment that

The powerful have their power. But we have something too: the capacity to stop pretending, to name realities, to build our strength at home, and to act together.

Likely there are quiet planning meetings happening in Davos as states in attendance recognize that the United States they once admired and respected falls into fascism with imperialist designs.

Here on this continent (with Canada and Mexico), Americans have to sort out whether we will allow a madman to demand that the western world accede to his demands for obeisance lest he throw over the game board. That is, if there are enough of us with the right stuff to fight back against Trump and his gang of thieves.

We too have operated under a comfortable fiction that America’s stability over the years was built on our constitution, our laws, and our democratic traditions. Trumpism ripped that veil away to reveal how much the entire edifice of Exceptionalism was built on “norms.” It was only a gentleman’s agreement that our leaders behave like gentlemen, until the country fell for a con man and cult leader. Not once, but twice. Trumpism ripped the masks off neighbors who wave American flags, boast of their real Americanness, and loudly profess faith in Jesus, not Christianity as a system of values but as an authoritarian agenda. It was so much vapid branding.

“America isn’t the way it is because [Trump is] president. He’s president because America is the way it is,” as Canadian journalist David Cochrane explained two weeks ago. He seems to have anticipated Carney’s Davos speech.

The American challenge going forward is to examine our weaknesses, acknowledge them honestly, and adapt. There is no going back. Norms have failed us. We have failed ourselves. Barbarians are not at the gate. They are in the Oval Office and in the streets of Minneapolis. They are staged to invade Greenland.

Canada has figured it out. Americans seem the last to know.

The Price Of Eggs

Published by digby on January 20, 2026

Those of you who read this blog regularly will recognize this analysis by JV Last since it’s one that I’ve been discussing ever since Trump won back in 2016. This was not inevitable but the writing was on the wall from the beginning:

We are witness to something rare in human history: Abdication by the leader of the global order.

We have seen empires fall and civilizations crumble. But we’ve almost never seen a people renounce their leadership of the world—all at once, in full public view. That is what has happened in the 365 days since January 20, 2025.

Here’s what comes next.

The blinding of Five Eyes. The UKUSA intelligence sharing agreement—informally known as Five Eyes—has been in danger since Tulsi Gabbard was appointed director of national intelligence. But we’ve gone further than the possibility of having a Russia sympathizer atop the U.S. intelligence community: America’s allies now understand that we are—at best—a strategic competitor to Canada and the United Kingdom and at worst a threat to the other English-speaking countries. The days of intelligence sharing between America and our former allies are drawing to a close.

The death of NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was conceived as a way to tame Europe. By establishing the United States as the strategic counterweight to the continent, NATO (a) held the Soviets in check but also (b) removed the need for Germany to re-arm at a scale sufficient to tip the local military balance and menace its neighbors.

NATO is now a zombie organization. America has progressed from unreliable ally to overt threat to European sovereignty. Europe will re-arm. There is no longer any question on this point.

The new nuclear age begins. The world’s three largest nuclear powers are now expansionist predator states. This leaves the lesser nuclear powers no choice but to create their own umbrellas while buying time for smaller allies to join the nuclear club. Germany, Poland, and Canada will acquire nuclear weapons. So will Japan. Sweden, Australia, and South Korea may develop nuclear capabilities as well.

Europe + China. The Chinese communist regime is authoritarian. It does not adhere to the rule of law in any meaningful way. But while it is ambitious, it is stable, and it understands that stability is its biggest advantage. China does not threaten Europe as acutely as Russia and the United States do, and Europe needs some stability undergirding the next world order. Europe will draw closer to China and supplant the United States as China’s main trading partner.

Ukraine will join Europe. As Europe rearms it will need Ukraine’s defense industrial base; therefore it will draw Ukraine into its collective security arrangement (the EU’s, not NATO’s) once the Russo-Ukraine war draws to a close.

Greenland will become disputed territory. Greenland is about to become, like Crimea or Kashmir or the little islands in the South China Sea, disputed territory. The Republican party has made an unmistakable, irrevocable territorial claim on Greenland. There are only two possible ways to resolve this question.

There is much more at the link and I urge you to click over if you have a sub or get one if you have the means. I think many of the former conservatives are the most clear-eyed about what Trump is doing to us on the world stage right now and their alarm is palpable.

Also read this one (gift link) from Robert Kagan in the Atlantic. An excerpt:

Americans are entering the most dangerous world they have known since World War II, one that will make the Cold War look like child’s play and the post–Cold War world like paradise. In fact, this new world will look a lot like the world prior to 1945, with multiple great powers and metastasizing competition and conflict. The U.S. will have no reliable friends or allies and will have to depend entirely on its own strength to survive and prosper. This will require more military spending, not less, because the open access to overseas resources, markets, and strategic bases that Americans have enjoyed will no longer come as a benefit of the country’s alliances. Instead, they will have to be contested and defended against other great powers.

None of this had to happen. People didn’t like the old man and the Black lady and the price of eggs was just too high. They ignored everything else he and his henchmen were saying. It’s was all there — Trump addled mind, his unquenchable thirst for vengeance and monuments to himself, the utter depravity of his Project 2025 and GOP leaders’ craven cowardice were all on display. Why would anyone think that the man who could not accept his loss in 2020 and incited an insurrection to overturn it would be anything but a tyrant?

The Tariff King

Published by digby on January 20, 2026
actual quote

The Wall St. Journal reports what we already knew:

Americans, not foreigners, are bearing almost the entire cost of U.S. tariffs, according to new research that contradicts a key claim by President Trump and suggests he might have a weaker hand in a reemerging trade war with Europe.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that his historic tariffs, deployed aggressively over the past year as both a revenue-raising and foreign-policy tool, will be paid for by foreigners. Such assertions helped to reinforce the president’s bargaining power and encourage foreign governments to do deals with the U.S.

[…]

The new research, published Monday by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a well-regarded German think tank, suggests that the impact of tariffs is likely to show up over time in the form of higher U.S. consumer prices.

The findings don’t mean that the tariffs are a win for Europe—on the contrary. German exports to the U.S., which have rocketed in recent years, have contracted sharply in the past year.

The German research echoes recent reports by the Budget Lab at Yale and economists at Harvard Business School, finding that only a small fraction of the tariff costs were being borne by foreign producers.

We knew all that but I guess it has to be proven once again.

Trump is whining about having to pay the tariffs back to the US importers and manufacturers if the Supremes rule against his scheme. (It’s his mad money that he likes to use to buy whatever toys and people he wants to play with.) And, frankly, his henchmen already have other plans in place to use other authorities to continue to act like barbarians around the world dictating other countries’ policies with tariffs. So that may end up being meaningless.

But the ramifications of his batshit crazy behavior with threats of trade wars (and shooting wars) are going to bite in a big way. We may have seen that already today with the reaction of the markets and all kinds of investors from currency to bonds to long term interest rates. Perhaps they’ll all bounce back if Trump tacos again, but I have to wonder if it isn’t finally sinking in (especially after the Venezuela and Greenland nonsense) that three more years of this lunacy is intolerable. The party is being ruined by a big, orange bully who insists on beating he shit out of everything just because he can.

Unfunny Comedian

Published by digby on January 20, 2026

This is the supposed “comedy” that people love about this lunatic and I will never understand it:

Trump: "Whoo. I'm glad my finger wasn't in that sucker. That could've dome some damage but you know what? I wouldn't have shown the pain. I would've gone back. Boy did you hear that? That was nasty. But I would not have shown the pain. I would've acted like nothing happens as my finger fell off."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-01-20T19:06:00.347Z

It used to be that anyone who bragged, whined and lied as much as this person would be shunned by society and a disgusting boor. Now the whole government talks like this. And apparently millions of people still can’t get enough of it.

What is the next generation of Americans going to be like if this is how our leaders speak?

Lie Back And Enjoy It

Published by digby on January 20, 2026

I think this gentleman speaks for Europe:

Even the European right wing is rejecting this bullshit:

Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s far-right party National Rally:

The United States is presenting us with a choice: accept dependency disguised as partnership, or act as sovereign powers capable of defending our interests. When a U.S. president threatens a European territory while using trade pressure, it is not dialogue—it is coercion. And our credibility is at stake. Greenland has become a strategic pivot in a world returning to imperial logic.

Yielding today would set a dangerous precedent, exposing other European—and even French overseas—territories tomorrow. The European Union cannot remain silent. The agreement negotiated last summer must be suspended. Our anti-coercion instruments must be activated, and targeted measures adopted. This is not escalation—it is self-defense. The choice is simple: submission or sovereignty. Europe must choose freedom, responsibility, and control of its own destiny.

Meanwhile, back in the states:

Not that he cares. Everything has always turned out well for him, he’s never been richer or more powerful and he believes that no one can stop him because no one ever has. Public opinion is no longer relevant.

His GOP allies may have some problems but I’m not sure they’re very worried either. They figure Trump will just do whatever’s necessary to ensure they stay in power and they’ve come to believe that Trump is magic/omnipotent so there’s no margin in trying to do it without him.

Read this NY Times article (gift link) about what has to happen, and soon, from Masha Gessen, a Russian emigre who knows what they’re talking about. We don’t have much time.

Good Morning!

Published by digby on January 20, 2026

How’s everyone feeling today?

President Trump’s intensifying standoff with European leaders over the fate of Greenland prompted a sharp response from investors Tuesday morning, with the value of U.S. stocks, dollar and government bonds all falling.

The S&P 500 dropped over 1 percent as investors reacted to Mr. Trump’s increasing threat of higher tariffs on European allies unless they supported his plans for America to take control of Greenland.

Tuesday morning’s decline was the first time the index has started the day that much lower since April amid turmoil from Mr. Trump’s initial sweeping tariff threats on nearly all of America’s trading partners.

Often when stocks are roiled by geopolitical upheaval, investors flock to the safety of other U.S. assets, like the dollar or government bonds. But in a sign that investors were embracing a “sell America” trade and moving away from U.S. assets altogether, both the dollar and U.S. government debt lost value Tuesday morning.

The dollar index, which pits the currency against a basket of currencies that represent America’s major trading partners, fell 0.8 percent. The dollar weakened against every currency from the group of 10 nations, which includes the euro, British pound and Norwegian Krone.

The yield, which moves inversely to price, on the 10-year U.S. government note rose, meaning its value declined. This yield acts as one of the most important interest rates in the world by underpinning interest rates across consumer and corporate debt. The 10-year yield rose 0.1 percentage points, to 4.3 percent, its sharpest move higher so far this year, undermining the administration’s efforts to move interest rates lower.

Tuesday morning’s trading was the first chance U.S. markets had to react to Mr. Trump’s escalating threats toward Europe over the weekend with the U.S. stock market closed on Monday in honor of Martin Luther King’s Birthday.

One bright spot in the stock market came from the rising value of defense stocks. Northrop Grumman, an aerospace and defense company, nudged higher Tuesday morning, pushing further into record territory having risen almost 20 percent already this month.

Great. The markets are betting on war.

And Europe has some tricks of its own up its sleeve:

Trump’s request to purchase land under the jurisdiction of another nation has not gone down well with the Western world. While the U.S. may be the biggest economy on the planet, patience is wearing thin among its allies, after a year of barbed back-and-forths over tariffs and military spending.

This weekend’s power flex may be a stretch too far, economists are now warning, and Trump’s weakness may prove to be America’s voracious spending habits.

Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid highlighted that Liberation Day tariffs in April were stepped back a week later, after U.S. Treasury yields saw a “scary” session as investors retreated to safety, away from American borrowing.

“Financial markets may play a big part in how this situation resolves itself,” Reid wrote in a note to clients this morning. “The main Achilles Heel of the U.S. is the huge twin deficits. So while in many ways it feels like the U.S. holds the economic cards, it doesn’t hold all the funding cards in a world that will be very disturbed by the weekend’s events.”

Investors, analysts, and world leaders have long wondered when—or if—a debt crisis would occur in one of the nations burdened by a massive deficit. While the likes of Japan, the U.K., and France are by no means balancing their books, America’s $38 trillion deficit dwarfs its counterparts. While a great deal of that debt is held by the public (including the Fed, where President Trump is also in hot water), vast sums are also owned by foreign governments and overseas investors.

This exposure—to the tune of $8 trillion—ING pointed out, may be something European leaders decide to remind the White House of. Europe being America’s largest lender “illustrates the deep interdependence between the U.S. and Europe but also shows that, at least theoretically, Europe also has leverage on the U.S.,” wrote Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro, and Bert Colijn, chief economist for the Netherlands. The duo added: “Whether in practice, Europe would really engage in a ‘Sell America Inc’ season is a completely different question. There is very little the EU could do to force European private sector investors to sell USD assets; it could only try to incentivise investments in EUR assets.”

The EU also has a weapon in its arsenal that it has yet to deploy. French President Emmanuel Macron has suggested now is the time to use the E.U.’s Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI). The tool is a set of countermeasures against any foreign powers that unduly interfere in the policy choices of the E.U. or its member states, by restricting U.S. companies from accessing the European market, banning them from bidding for government work, restricting trade, and curtailing foreign investment.

The E.U. could also impose new tariffs on about $100 billion of its imports from the U.S.

This, Goldman Sachs believes, is likely to be one of the reactions European leaders are now weighing. Analysts Sven Jari Stehn and Giovanni Pierdomenico wrote this weekend that the legislation had been designed precisely for situations like this—though perhaps not with a strong ally like the U.S. in mind.

The duo wrote: “Starting the activation does not mean implementation (which requires several steps) but signals potential E.U. action and allows time for negotiation. The ACI could involve a range of policy tools broader than tariffs, such as investment restrictions, taxation of U.S. assets and services.” On services, the E.U. conveniently holds a surplus over the U.S., meaning it would inflict greater harm in this particular industry compared to similar action from across the Atlantic.

A little warning here too:

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio warned Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s aggressive political direction could spark a new phase of global financial conflict, as foreign governments and investors reconsider their appetite for U.S. assets amid rising unease and economic tensions

“On the other side of trade deficits and trade wars, there are capital and capital wars,” Dalio told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “If you take the conflicts, you can’t ignore the possibility of the capital wars. In other words, maybe there’s not the same inclination to buy at U.S. debt and so on.”

The founder of Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, is concerned that countries holding large amounts of U.S. dollars and Treasurys may become less willing to finance U.S. deficits if trust erodes. At the same time, the U.S. continues to issue large volumes of debt, creating a problematic situation if confidence weakens on either side, Dalio said.

“We know that both the holders of U.S. dollars are denominated … and those who need it, the United States, are worried about each other. Right? So if you have other countries who are holding it, and they’re worried about each other, and we’re producing a lot of it, that’s a big issue,” he said.

Treasury prices tumbled Tuesday as investors weighed renewed tariff threats from Washington that revived fears of a trade war with Europe and spurred a flight away from U.S. assets. The president has intensified his rhetoric on Greenland, threatening to impose new tariffs on countries opposing the sale of the Danish territory to the United States.

Dalio said history offers multiple examples of similar episodes in which economic conflict escalated beyond trade into capital flows and currency disputes. “When you have conflicts, international geopolitical conflicts, even allies do not want to hold each other’s debt. They prefer to go to a hard currency. This is logical and it’s factual, and it’s repeated throughout the world history,” he said.

Here’s Mark Carney in Davos:

“I will talk today about the breaking of the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a brutal reality where the geopolitics of the great powers is not subject to any constraint,” said Mr. Carney, who used a mixture of French and English in his address in Davos, Switzerland.

“Every day we are reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry,” he said. “That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”

He added, “Let me be direct: We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”

Mr. Carney, who received a standing ovation, spoke not long after Mr. Trump posted an A.I. image on social media that included a map of American flags superimposed over both Canada and the United States.

Jesus.

In his speech on Tuesday, Mr. Carney said that Canada’s commitment to an article in the NATO treaty that views an attack on any member as an attack on all members was “unwavering.” That article was not written with the consideration that one member would be attacking another. It is also not clear that all NATO members would respond militarily to an attack on another member.

Canada and the United States have a joint command for North American air defense. This week aircraft from both countries are at an American air base in Greenland as part of a regular training exercise that the joint air command said had been approved by Denmark.

In his speech Mr. Carney called on medium-size countries like Canada to band together to offset the power of the United States, China and Russia.

“The middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, we’re are on the menu,” he said. “Great powers can afford now to go it alone.”

We’re all on the menu.

Have a nice day!

Carefully Taught

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 20, 2026

Trumpism will survive Trump

A quote from a Canadian journalist is floating around the net, sometimes paraphrased. It’s best to get the real thing. It’s by David Cochrane, host of CBC News Network’s daily “Power & Politics.”

“America isn’t the way it is because [Trump is] president. He’s president because America is the way it is.”

Three Catholic cardinals don’t address the way America is directly, but:

Three U.S. Catholic cardinals are urging the Trump administration to use a moral compass, saying U.S. military action in Venezuela, threats of acquiring Greenland and cuts in foreign aid risk bringing vast suffering instead of promoting peace.

Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago, Robert McElroy of Washington and Joseph Tobin of Newark, N.J., warned that without a moral vision, the current debate over Washington’s foreign policy was mired in “polarization, partisanship, and narrow economic and social interests.”

“Most of the United States and the world are adrift morally in terms of foreign policy,” McElroy told The Associated Press. “I still believe the United States has a tremendous impact upon the world.”

The statement is ironic insofar as it concerns Donald Trump, an emotionally damaged man who asks forgiveness for nothing. Miraculously, he did not turn to stone after telling The New York Times this month that the only check on his power, his only moral compass, is his own morality. In fact, he has none. Cruelty is his compass. Especially against non-white, non-Europeans. They all have targets on their backs in Trump’s second administration.

The U.S. conference of Catholic bishops in November issued a “special message” condemning the administration’s profiling and targeting of immigrants in the name of border enforcement:

We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones. 

Cupich’s moral compass is shaped by his experiences growing up in Nebraska and serving for a decade as cardinal in Chicago. He told MS Now’s Rachel Maddow Monday night that Chicago is “the immigrant city.” The church celebrates mass there “in 26 different langauges.”

The target of the cardinals’ plea, Donald Trump, grew up in an affluent neighborhgood in Queens, fathered by a man known (and prosecuted) for his own prejudices.

America is the way it is because so many of us, like Trump, were carefully taught to hate all the people our relatives hate. Thus, Trumpism will likely survive Trump, Cochrane concludes.

One wonders if the United States will.

Untruthful Hyperbole

Published by Tom Sullivan on January 20, 2026

Mixed orange bag

Screenshot from New York Times.

The New York Times on Monday scored Donald Trump’s first year in office: “President Trump campaigned in 2024 on promises to “end inflation,” bring back manufacturing jobs and deliver an economic boom. A year after he returned to the White House, he has yet to deliver on those pledges.” There’s been some progress, but even those gains are obscured by what Paul Krugman describes as “Sundowning in America.” We’ll come back to that.

A few household items are cheaper. Gas has come down somewhat (he pledged to get it below $2/gal.). And eggs, somewhat. But “December saw the biggest one-month increase in grocery prices since 2022.” Trump can fool some of the people all of the time, but he can’t fool the ones who shop for groceries.

The Times finds that (gift article)”residential electricity prices in December were up 6.7 percent from a year earlier, and have risen far more in some areas.” So not a lot of help there.

“We will bring our automaking industry to the record levels of 37 years ago and we’ll be able to do it very quickly through tariffs.”

Nope. “Globally, U.S. carmakers have lost ground to foreign competitors, particularly Chinese companies specializing in affordable electric vehicles. Employment in the automaking sector has fallen by about 28,000 jobs in the past year.”

How about onshoring manufacturing? Not really.

Manufacturing employment was roughly flat in Mr. Trump’s first few months back in the White House, but has now fallen for eight straight months. Wage growth for rank-and-file factory workers also slowed in 2025.

Etc. This is that “truthful hyperbole” for which Trump is famous. Except for the truthful part.

There is plenty of circus but no bread in Trump 2.0, especially for all the civil servants DOGE fired in Trump’s first months. The only ones seeing gains in the first year of Trump 2.0 are those with investments. (Go figure.) Some of that was fueled by investor irrational exuberance over AI.

The Times Editorial Board finds that Trump himself pocketed at least $1.4 billion from being president in his first year back in office, including that $400 billion jet from Qatar.

But there’s not enough money in the world to fill the void where Trump’s soul should be. At some point soon he may not remember how much he owns or even where he is.

Krugman watched his father’s sundowning and recognizes it in Trump. Referencing Trump’s insane note to Norway, Krugman writes:

This might not exactly be sundowning, since it’s not clear that Trump is lucid and rational at any time of the day. What is incontrovertible is that he’s deeply unwell and rapidly getting sicker.

In fact, Trump is so deeply unwell that it’s time to stop blaming him for all the terrible things he’s doing. He is what he is. Responsibility for the catastrophe overtaking America now rests with his enablers — people who have to know that he’s a sick man but continue to support his depredations.

Some of these enablers are monsters themselves. For example, Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration czar and the architect of his violent ethnic cleansing policies, is clearly a fanatic who is using Trump to achieve his own fascist goals.

However, many of Trump’s enablers aren’t fanatics, just amoral opportunists. Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, clearly understands how destructive Trump’s actions are, evidenced by the fact that he has at times tried to tone them down. But for some inexplicable reason, Bessent has decided to sell his soul to Trump.

Them: If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?Me: If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?Looking at you, Bessent.

— Tom Sullivan (@tmsullivan.bsky.social) 2026-01-19T01:29:48.211Z

Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, Kash Patel. The lot are there for the reflected glow from Trump.

Our deer-in-the-headlights Congress bears responsibility for Trump’s body remaining in office while his brain checks out for fantasies of destroying NATO and becoming emperor of the Western Hemisphere. There was a time in this country when Republicans from the House and Senate knew it was time for a Republican president to turn in his notice. They marched down to the Oval Office and made clear Richard Nixon could leave or be ousted.

But that when there were a few Republicans left with integrity and more devotion to their country than to their own ambitions.

I fear Trump may dispatch those arctic troops from Alaska to Greenland. Question is, will his commanders obey those illegal orders? The clock is ticking on Greenland. Urge your Republican representatives to grow a spine before it’s too late. Do it now.

It Gets Worse

Published by digby on January 19, 2026

He’s got the whole world running around in circles:

US President Donald Trump’s proposed Board of Peace has got off to a rough start: questioned by Europe, criticized by Israel and celebrated by friends of the Kremlin.

France’s Emmanuel Macron, for one, has come right out of the gate to decline an invitation that was also extended to strongmen such as Belarus’s autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko. Several liberal democracies are squirming, uncertain how to respond and not wanting to offend Trump.

He invited Putin for heaven’s sake, the man who invaded Ukraine and is currently raining down bombs on its capitol.

Get a load of this:

They don’t have long to decide.

Trump wants the full constitution and remit of the committee signed in Davos on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter. But some elements of the small print have left invitees wondering whether to accept.

Jesus Christ. JUST SAY NO!!! You can’t appease him, he’s crazy as a loon. Haven’t they learned that by now??? He wants another fucking ceremony!!! Don’t give it to him. This is ridiculous.

Apparently this “board of peace” is designed to replace the UN. Trump will be the permanent leader and he’s demanding a billion dollars for any country that wants to be a permanent member of the board. I’m not kidding. Oh, and nobody knows what he’s going to do with the money but it’s going to be controlled by him.

That’s not an idle worry because he is selling Venezuelan oil and putting the proceeds into accounts in Qatar, ostensibly for the benefit of Venezuela but nobody really knows how this is going to work. Between Trump and the criminal regime Trump’s left in place it’s inevitable that the whole thing will turn out to be a corrupt boondoggle.

Bovino The Mastermind

Published by digby on January 19, 2026

This striking guy in the Nazi coat—Gregory (Greg) Bovino—is a high-ranking U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer, holding a position created specifically for him as “Special Operations Commander.”

I don’t know how many of you have listened to Rachel Maddow’s podcast series “Burn Order” about the Japanese internment but it’s really excellent. As with all of her work in that medium she exposes the fact that America has done all this stuff in the past, which isn’t exactly reassuring because it means that we really don’t progress all that much. On the other hand we did manage to survive so maybe we will this time too.

Anyway, in this one she reveals that the masterminds of the internment policy were a west coast military general and his aid who, in the post Pearl Harbor panic, managed to push through the policy over the objections of many in the administration and evidence that there were no Japanese American spies working against the US. (There were white American spies doing that for both Japan and Germany but whatevs.) It’s a great podcast, and I highly recommend it.

Today I read this in the NY Times about Gregory Bovino (that little Il Ducette of the border patrol up top) who is leading the charge in Minneapolis and elsewhere and was reminded once again that the more things change, the more they stay the same:

Before the Border Patrol embarked on its high-profile raids in Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, New Orleans and Minneapolis, it tried out its tactics a year ago in Kern County, in California’s agricultural heartland.

A lawsuit filed against the federal government over its operations in Bakersfield and other parts of Kern County claimed that in some instances, Border Patrol agents had not identified themselves or presented warrants. In others, people were grabbed with force, and their requests to call a lawyer were denied. And in one case, the lawsuit said, agents stopped a U.S. citizen driving a truck, slashed the tires, blocked the truck with another vehicle, arrested the driver and then released him a few hours later.

The raids last January, in the last days of the Biden administration, initially drew little attention outside the farm country of California’s Central Valley. At the time, the eyes of the world were focused on the two vast wildfires raging in Los Angeles County.

But the Border Patrol’s actions in Kern County, which it called Operation Return to Sender, can be seen as a blueprint for the broader immigration crackdown that was to come. Similar tactics have become part of the agency’s standard playbook in other places, including Minnesota, where federal immigration agents are making hundreds of arrests amid sustained protests from local leaders and residents.

The man who led the Kern County raids, Gregory Bovino, became a star among opponents of illegal immigration. When the Trump administration began an immigration crackdown in Los Angeles in June, Mr. Bovino was tapped to lead operations there, and he was later asked to lead crackdowns in other cities.

“The Kern County operation was a test run, or a pilot project, on Bovino’s part,” Minju Cho, a senior lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an interview. “We called it his audition for the Trump administration, and unfortunately, it seems to have worked. It really propelled him into the national spotlight, and since then, he’s only gained greater prominence as he’s been leading these operations around the country.”

The Border Patrol promoted the Kern County raids as a success, saying that it had arrested 78 undocumented immigrants during the three-day operation, including some with criminal histories.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit and won in court the judge finding that the CBP had violated the constitution, the law and its own policies. It was appealed and sits today in the glacially slow justice system while the country is being traumatized by Bovino’s violent, illegal strategy, which continues apace.

These racist hysterics take on a life of their own under the right circumstances. I will say that at least in WWII, we had been attacked and both Germany and Japan had declared war on the U.S. Not that it’s any excuse but there at least was an actual crisis on which they built their racist policy. This is just a vanity project for some sociopaths who are living in another dimension. There is no threat that requires every immigrant in America to be rousted out of their homes and workplaces and sent to camps and deported. It’s not necessary, never has been.

This crisis is completely fabricated. And yet it seems there is no way to stop it.