Letter From An American by Heather Cox Richardson

January 22, 2026 (Thursday)

Vice President J.D. Vance was in Minnesota for the administration today, trying to regain control of the narrative about the violence perpetrated there by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). A new poll out today from the New York Times and Siena University shows that nearly two thirds of Americans, 63%, disapprove of how ICE is handling its job, while only 36% approve. Even among white Americans, 57% disapprove, while only 42% approve. Sixty-one percent of Americans, including 19% of Republicans, think that ICE agents have gone too far. 

Just hours after ICE agent Jonathan Ross killed 37-year-old Renee Good on January 7, and long before there was any official investigation of the shooting, Vance was out in front of the news, blaming Good for her own death and claiming that the officer was clearly justified in shooting her. 

But even MAGA voters don’t buy it. Podcaster Joe Rogan has compared ICE to “the gestapo,” and Greg Sargent of The New Republic noted that a majority of both young voters and those without a college degree, those who tend to be easy for MAGA to reach, disapprove of ICE enforcement. Media Matters reported that the senior judicial analyst on right-wing channel Newsmax, Andrew Napolitano, called the newly revealed secret ICE memo claiming the right to break down doors to arrest people in their homes “a direct and profound violation of the Fourth Amendment, which expressly says people are entitled to be secure in their homes and that security can only be invaded by a search warrant signed by a judge based on probable cause of crime.”

Today a jury in Chicago acquitted a man charged with trying to hire a man to kill U.S. Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino. The Department of Justice claimed Juan Espinoza Martinez was a member of a street gang who had offered $10,000 to his brother and a friend to kill Bovino. Jon Seidel of the Chicago Sun-Times noted that 31 Chicagoans have been charged with nonimmigration crimes tied to the federal action there. With Thursday’s acquittal, Seidel notes, “15 of them have been cleared. None of the cases have led to a conviction, so far.”

Today Vance continued to defend ICE agents but walked back some of his earlier belligerence. He admitted that “of course there have been mistakes made, because you’re always going to have mistakes made in law enforcement,” although he added that “99% of our police officers, probably more than that, are doing everything right.”

The vice president also denied his words from January 8, when he said of Ross at the White House: “You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action. That's a federal issue. That guy's protected by absolute immunity.” Moving the goalposts considerably today after it turned out that Americans don’t particularly like the idea that masked agents can do whatever they want, he said: "I didn't say…that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity. That's absurd. What I did say is that when federal law enforcement officers violate the law that's typically something federal officials would look into. We don't want these guys to have kangaroo courts."

The New York Times/Siena poll had bad news for Trump more generally, too. It showed that his approval rating has fallen to 40%, while 56% disapprove of the way he is handling his job, and that 49% of registered voters think the country is worse off than it was a year ago, while only 32% think it is better off. In fact, the poll showed him underwater on every single issue: managing the government, Venezuela, immigration, the economy, relationships with other countries, the Israli-Palestinian conflict, the cost of living, Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the Epstein files, on which only 22% of registered voters approve while 66% disapprove. The only area where he is not underwater by double digits is on the issue of border between the U.S. and Mexico, where 50% of registered voters approve and only 46% disapprove.

After news of the poll dropped, Trump’s social media account posted that “Fake and Fraudulent Polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense. As an example, all of the Anti Trump Media that covered me during the 2020 Election showed Polls that were knowingly wrong. They knew what they were doing, trying to influence the Election, but I won in a Landslide, including winning the Popular Vote, all 7 of the 7 Swing States, the Electoral College was a route [sic], and 2,750 Counties to 525. You can’t do much better than that, and yet if people examined The Failing New York Times, ABC Fake News, NBC Fake News, CBS Fake News, Low Ratings CNN, or the now defunct MSDNC, Polls were all fraudulent, and bore nothing even close to the final results. Something has to be done about Fraudulent Polling. Even the Polls of FoxNews and The Wall Street Journal have been, over the years, terrible! There are great Pollsters that called the Election right, but the Media does not want to use them in any way, shape, or form. Isn’t it sad what has happened to American Journalism, but I am going to do everything possible to keep this Polling SCAM from moving forward!”

Trump’s social media account posted that he would add the Times/Siena poll to his existing lawsuit against the New York Times. 

Trump also threatened to sue JPMorgan Chase and Jamie Dimon, its chief executive officer, claiming it had broken the law by closing his accounts in April 2021 after notice given just two months before, at the same time that many businesses were refusing to work with Trump after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The bank has refused to do further business with the Trump family, the lawsuit alleges, putting them on a “blacklist.” The lawsuit claims the family was “debanked” because of "political and social motivations,” and Trump wants “at least $5,000,000,000 in damages, an award of attorneys’ fees and costs…and any other relief this Court deems proper.” 

JP Morgan Chase says the suit is meritless and that while it does not close accounts for political reasons, it does close accounts “because they create legal or regulatory risk for the company.” 

The 2020 presidential election is clearly on Trump’s mind with former special counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of that election and delivered a grand jury indictment of him on four counts, testifying today before the House Judiciary Committee. Smith was sworn in and testified under oath. Unlike him, representatives are not sworn in for such hearings and are covered by the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution that enables them to say virtually anything they want without legal repercussions. 

That matters, as Republicans showed no inclination to engage with the evidence Smith uncovered that Trump conspired to defraud American voters of their right to choose their president and fraudulently seize another term. Instead, they appeared eager to discredit Smith and to fall back on Trump’s narrative that former president Joe Biden and former attorney general Merrick Garland weaponized the Department of Justice against Trump and MAGA Republicans. 

Smith called the narratives spread about him and his team “false and misleading,” and said: "Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity. If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.”

That Republicans were not willing to engage with the actual evidence apparently frustrated the president, who openly threatened Smith, posting that “Deranged Jack Smith is being DECIMATED before Congress. It was over when they discussed his past failures and unfair prosecutions. He destroyed many lives under the guise of legitimacy. Jack Smith is a deranged animal, who shouldn’t be allowed to practice Law. If he were a Republican, his license would be taken away from him, and far worse! Hopefully the Attorney General is looking at what he’s done, including some of the crooked and corrupt witnesses that he was attempting to use in his case against me. The whole thing was a Democrat SCAM—A big price should be paid by them for what they have put our Country through!” 

Meanwhile, the Democrats on the committee offered evidence from the events Smith had investigated, playing, for example, the recording of Trump demanding that Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger “find” 11,780 votes to steal the state of Georgia, which had voted for Biden, for Trump instead. 

As The Guardian noted, when Brad Knott (R-NC) observed that Smith had charged only Trump, suggesting that Smith had singled out Trump for political reasons, Smith answered that he had been in the process of considering charging others when Trump was elected president again and the case was then closed. He said that he and the lawyers on the case believed they did have sufficient proof to charge other people.

This statement is likely to be uncomfortable for MAGA figures who were deeply involved in Trump’s efforts but who were not publicly investigated. In both the House and the Senate, members have been furious at the information that the Department of Justice got the permission of a judge to obtain toll records for Trump’s calls on and around January 6. Many of them were on those calls. Now they are falsely claiming they were “wiretapped” although toll records simply record the phones involved and the duration of the call. 

Meanwhile, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller suggested that he, too, is concerned about the law catching up to people on the Trump team. On social media, Miller posted: “Everyone serious understands that the justice system is rigged. Far-left prosecutors, magistrates, judges and juries unhesitatingly shield their violent activists and gleefully imprison their political opponents. Unrigging the system is necessary for the survival of the Republic.” 

Billionaire Elon Musk, whose work with Trump led to the government’s dropping a number of investigations of his companies and lawsuits against them, chimed in: “Absolutely.” 

Today the United States officially withdrew from the World Health Organization, leaving behind $278 million in unpaid dues. We joined the organization in 1948.

Tomorrow people across Minnesota will stay home from work, school, and shopping areas in an “ICE Out Day” to protest the federal agents in the state. The general strike has the support of businesses, unions, faith organizations, democratic lawmakers, and community activists.

“RECORD NUMBERS ALL OVER THE PLACE!” Trump’s social media account crowed tonight. “SHOULD I TRY FOR A FOURTH TERM?”

January 25, 2026 (Sunday)

As the nation mourned the killing of VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti yesterday at the hands of federal officials in Minneapolis, President Donald J. Trump spent last night at the White House at a black-tie private screening of a documentary about First Lady Melania Trump. Amazon paid $40 million for the rights to the film just weeks after executive chair Jeff Bezos dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago following the former president’s reelection and is spending another $35 million to promote the film. 

Then, this morning, Trump’s social media account posted a 450-word social media screed complaining about the lawsuit against his addition of a massive ballroom to the White House. Calling the National Trust for Historic Preservation a “Radical Left” organization, the account claimed that the addition “is being done with the design, consent, and approval of the highest levels of the United  States Military and Secret Service. The mere bringing of this ridiculous lawsuit has already, unfortunately, exposed this heretofore Top Secret fact. Stoppage of construction, at this late date, when so much has already been ordered and done, would be devastating to the White House, our Country, and all concerned.” 

This morning, administration officials doubled down on their insistence that the killing had been justified.

On CNN’s State of the Union this morning, U.S. Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino claimed the true victims of yesterday’s shooting were federal agents. He confirmed that the agents who killed Pretti yesterday remain on the streets today, though they have been reassigned elsewhere. FBI director Kash Patel claimed on the Fox News Channel that the fact Pretti was carrying a weapon proved that he was planning trouble, although because he was part of a community-led first-responder network, carrying the weapon for which he had a permit made sense. 

But Americans are not buying it. They are coalescing around the idea of the American people versus an out-of-control government. As conservative lawyer George Conway put it: “I just checked—it turns out that Art. II, Sec. 1 of the Constitution of the United States does *not* say 'The executive Power shall be vested in a bunch of sociopaths who think they can do whatever the f*ck they want and make sh*t up as they go along.'"

Reports out of Minnesota say that in the face of the terror inflicted on it by federal agents, the people there are even more closely linked together in community solidarity. They are patrolling the streets, donating food, delivering groceries, helping with legal services, organizing to look out for each other in a demonstration of community solidarity so foreign to administration figures that Attorney General Pam Bondi yesterday suggested that there was something nefarious about how well organized they are as they protect their neighbors.

In Minneapolis today, the Minnesota prison system took the extraordinary step of launching its own website to combat lies from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Its first major announcement suggested that Bovino had lied about the Border Patrol operation that was underway when agents killed Alex Pretti. The Minnesota Department of Corrections expressed its condolences to the family and loved ones of Alex Pretti and said that although Bovino claimed that the operation was targeting a man with a significant criminal history, that information was false. 

In fact, the individual Bovino identified had never been in custody in Minnesota, and records showed only traffic-related offenses for him. Records did show, though, that he had been in federal immigration custody during Trump’s first administration and had been released.

Chief Brian O’Hara of the Minneapolis Police Department told Margaret Brennan of Face the Nation, “People have had enough. This is the third shooting now in less than three weeks. The Minneapolis Police Department went the entire year last year recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds and hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn't shoot anyone, and now this is the second American citizen that’s been killed, it’s the third shooting within three weeks…. This is not sustainable. This police department has only 600 police officers. We are stretched incredibly thin. This is taking an enormous toll, trying to manage all of this chaos on top of having to be the police department for a major city. It’s too much." 

The Minnesota National Guard made it clear which side they were on. Wearing neon vests to distinguish themselves from federal agents, they handed out doughnuts, coffee, and hot chocolate to anti-ICE protesters. 

The National Basketball Players Association said it could no longer remain silent. “Now more than ever,” it said, “we must defend the right to freedom of speech and stand in solidarity with the people in Minnesota protesting and risking their lives to demand justice. The fraternity of NBA players, like the United States itself, is a community enriched by its global citizens, and we refuse to let the flames of division threaten the civil liberties that are meant to protect us all. The NBPA and its members extend our deepest condolences to the families of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, just as our thoughts remain focused on the safety and well-being of all members of our community.” 

The newest killing has opened up a rift in Republican ranks. Administration officials not allied with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and her cronies are complaining to reporters, including Bill Melugin of the Fox News Channel, that they are frustrated with DHS officials’ statements that Pretti was intending a “massacre” of federal agents in the face of videos that disprove such absurd claims. They have told Melugin such comments are “catastrophic.” “[W]e are losing this war,” sources say, “we are losing the base and the narrative.” 

Indeed, at the base level of politics, MAGA supporters who support gun ownership are appalled by statements like that of FBI director Kash Patel, who told the Fox News Channel’s Maria Bartiromo, “You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It's that simple. You don't have the right to break the law and incite violence.” But Pretti had a license to carry a weapon, and he did not brandish it. President Rob Doar of the Minnesota Gun Owners Law Center noted that Pretti had the right to carry a gun in that situation and that it shouldn’t be necessary “to choose between exercising your First Amendment rights or your Second Amendment rights.” He expressed concern that “our government and agents of our government are not engaging in good faith with what we’re seeing with our own eyes.”

Lawyer John Mitnick, who served as deputy counsel of the Homeland Security Council from its inception during the George W. Bush administration and then served as general counsel of the United States Department of Homeland Security from 2018 to 2019, when he clashed with Stephen Miller, wrote on social media: “I helped to establish DHS in 2002 and 2003 and later had the homeland security portfolio as a White House Counsel and served as General Counsel of the Department. I am enraged and embarrassed by DHS’s lawlessness, fascism, and cruelty. Impeach and remove Trump—now.” 

Aside from a few strong MAGA voices, elected Republicans appeared reluctant to defend the killing. Neither Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) nor House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) commented on it. 

Vermont’s Republican governor Phil Scott did, though, leading the way for other Republicans in districts that are sliding away from MAGA. In a statement, he said: “Enough…It’s not acceptable for American citizens to be killed by federal agents for exercising their God-given and constitutional rights to protest their government. At best, these federal immigration operations are a complete failure of coordination of acceptable public safety and law enforcement practices, training, and leadership. At worst, it’s a deliberate federal intimidation and incitement of American citizens that’s resulting in the murder of Americans…. The president should pause these operations, de-escalate the situation, and reset the federal government’s focus on truly criminal illegal immigrants. In the absence of presidential action, Congress and the courts must step up to restore constitutionality.” 

G. Elliot Morris of Strength in Numbers noted today that even the Republican-leaning Rasmussen polls have shown that 59% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, while only 39% approve. In Strength in Numbers today, he reported that “Trump’s 2024 coalition has come undone.” He explained that “[y]oung voters, non-white voters, and low-turnout voters who swung to Trump from 2020 to 2024 have swung back against him in force. In many cases, these groups are even more anti-Trump now than they were ahead of the 2020 election.”

Morris also noted that Trump’s approval rating is not underwater in ten of the states he won in 2024, as I wrote last night. It’s underwater in fifteen. 

Today the editorial boards of both Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and his New York Post urged the administration to pause its ICE operations in Minneapolis after the killing of Alex Pretti. The Wall Street Journal’s famously right-wing editorial board warned that “[t]he Trump Administration spin on this simply isn’t believable.” It continued: “Ms. Noem and Mr. Miller aren’t credible spokesmen. Their social-media and cable-TV strategy is to own the libs, rather than to persuade Americans. This is backfiring against Republicans…. Mr. Miller’s mass deportation methods are turning immigration, an issue Mr. Trump owned in 2024, into a political liability for Republicans in 2026. Americans don’t want law enforcement shooting people in the street or arresting five-year-old boys.”

Tonight, the editorial board of the New York Post warned that Trump’s ICE actions in Minneapolis are “backfiring.” “Swing voters…see US citizens dying at federal agents’ hands, and recoil in horror.” It concluded: “Mr. President, the American people didn’t vote for these scenes and you can’t continue to order them to not believe their lying eyes.”

Trump’s social media account turned defensive tonight. After repeating Trump’s false claim that he had won election in a historic landslide (in reality, he won less than 50% of the vote), it blamed Democrats for the chaos ICE and CBP agents have caused in Democratic-led cities. It demanded that every Democratic mayor and governor cooperate with the administration to “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Yesterday, after Alex Pretti’s death, the son of a man Pretti had cared for at the VA hospital published a video of Pretti speaking at his father’s deathbed. “Today we remember that freedom is not free,” Pretti said. “We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it, and even sacrifice for it. May we never forget and always remember our brothers and sisters who have served so that we may enjoy the gift of freedom. So in this moment, we remember and give thanks for their dedication and selfless service to our nation in the cause of our freedom. In this solemn hour, we [give] them our honor, and our gratitude.”

January 27, 2026 (Tuesday)

The murder of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday morning at the hands of federal agents has put wind in the sails of those trying to rein in the Trump administration at the same time it has sent the administration scrambling to regain its course. Popular outcry over the killing of a beloved ICU nurse for the VA and popular organization over the general violence of federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol have unleashed pent up fury over the actions of the Trump administration. The outpouring has reached as far as spaces like a subreddit devoted to videos of people playing cats like bongos, as Drew Harwell and Scott Nover of the Washington Post noted. The anger has been so overwhelming that it has changed the course of national politics.

Pretti’s killing has thrown into doubt the passage of a funding package that includes the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Seven Democrats in the House voted in favor of the measure, which also includes funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Labor Department, and so on. The bill is one of the twelve appropriations bills that must pass Congress by the end of the month to fund the government. Part of their argument for voting in favor of the bill even with funding for DHS is that the Republicans’ July 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” poured so much money into DHS that it can function until September 30, 2029.

So until Saturday, the measure was expected to have enough Democratic votes to pass through the Senate. The killing changed the equation. On Sunday, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) issued a statement saying: “Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.” 

Representative Tom Suozzi (D-NY) publicly apologized for his vote for the bill. “I failed to view the DHS funding vote as a referendum on the illegal and immoral conduct of ICE in Minneapolis,” he posted on social media. “I hear the anger from my constituents, and I take responsibility for that. I have long been critical of ICE’s unlawful behavior and I must do a better job demonstrating that.” He called for Trump to pull federal agents out of Minneapolis. 

Senate Democrats want the Republicans to take the DHS funding out of the larger bill and pass it to prevent a government shutdown, but such a change would require unanimous consent in the Senate, and Republicans there are refusing to do it. In the House, the far-right Freedom Caucus has written to Trump to ask that he refuse to “allow Democrats to strip [DHS] funding out to pass other appropriations separately. We cannot support giving Democrats the ability to control the funding of our Department of Homeland Security,” they wrote.

Meanwhile, news about the actions of federal agents is unlikely to garner them more support. People, a widely read popular magazine that has devoted more of its pages to politics lately than in the past, has been publishing stories of those who died in ICE custody last year—at least 32—including Geraldo Lunas Campos, whose death in ICE custody in Texas has been ruled a homicide. It told readers about five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, detained by ICE after being used as bait to capture relatives, and of Wael Tarabishi, who died of a rare genetic disease thirty days after his father, Wael’s primary caregiver, was detained by ICE at a routine check-in at an ICE facility in Dallas.

News broke today that federal agents deported a five-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras, a country where she had never been before being sent there with her mother. The agents did not permit either to have access to a lawyer or a hearing before a judge. An immigration attorney tried to find them, but ICE agents allegedly told the attorney the mother and child weren’t in their database. The two were being held at a hotel rather than a detention center, a choice some advocates suspect was designed to keep them from being included in such a database. 

Today Jeff Winter and Pricilla Alvarez of CNN broke the story that ICE agents have been collecting the personal information of protesters in Minneapolis. They reported that officials asked federal agents sent to Minneapolis to “capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” A form titled “intel collection non-arrests” enabled agents to fill in protesters’ personal information. 

This information supports the statement of Trump’s “border czar”—a fancy term for an advisor—Tom Homan on the Fox News Channel earlier this month. “[W]e’re going to create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding and assault, we’re going to make them famous,” Homan said. “We’re going to put their face on TV. We’re going to let their employers, in their neighborhoods, in their schools, know who these people are.” 

Before a Border Patrol agent shot Renee Good, he captured her face and license plate on camera, and in Maine, a protester recorded an agent responding to her question of why he was recording her license plate. “We have a nice little database,” he answered, “and now you are considered a domestic terrorist.” 

This information also seems to reflect Trump’s 2025 National Security Presidential Memorandum NSPM-7 that suggests anyone objecting to the administration’s policies is a domestic terrorist.

After the Maine incident, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told CNN: “There is NO database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS. We do of course monitor and investigate and refer all threats, assaults and obstruction of our officers to the appropriate law enforcement. Obstructing and assaulting law enforcement is a felony and a federal crime.” She reiterated today that there is no DHS database.

Sources told Winter and Alvarez that federal agents had documented details about Pretti before Saturday. About a week before his death, Pretti stopped his car to observe federal agents chasing a family on foot, shouted, and blew a whistle. Five agents tackled him and one leaned on his back, breaking a rib, before they released him. Medical records confirm Pretti was treated for the injury. It is not clear if the agents on Saturday recognized him.  

Federal agents are causing trouble on the international stage, too. Today a federal agent tried to force his way into the Ecuadorian consulate in Minneapolis. As Max Bearak of the New York Times notes, international law forbids federal agents from entering a consulate or embassy without permission from the consul or the ambassador. An employee blocked the agent. Videos show an employee saying: “This is the Ecuadorian consulate. You’re not allowed to enter.” The agent responds: “If you touch me, I’ll grab you.” The Associated Press reports that Ecuador’s minister of foreign affairs has filed a protest with the U.S. embassy. 

This morning, news broke that ICE agents from the Homeland Security Investigations Unit would join other federal agents working at the Olympic Games in Milan, Italy, in February. According to Brian Mann of NPR, Homeland Security officials have worked at past Olympic Games, but this time many Italians objected. The mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, told reporters: “This is a militia that kills, a militia that enters into the homes of people, signing their own permission slips. It is clear they are not welcome in Milan, without a doubt.”

Italy’s foreign minister Antonio Tajani tried to reassure concerned Italians, saying: “It's not like these are the [ICE] people on the streets of Minneapolis. It’s not like the SS are about to arrive.” Former Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte remained skeptical, calling out ICE for “street violence and killings” in the U.S. As for letting ICE agents into Italy, he said: “We cannot allow this.” 

The administration appears to be floundering as it tries to respond to the popular outrage. 

While DHS has announced it has taken on the investigations of the killings of both Good and Pretti itself, FBI director Kash Patel yesterday told a right-wing podcaster that the FBI will be investigating the Signal chats of those organized in Minneapolis to observe and record federal agents to see if they have endangered federal agents. Aram Roston of The Guardian reported that podcaster Benny Johnson suggested the chats were “coordinated infrastructure,” adding that he would “like for the feds to take a crack at trying to get rid of this infrastructure the way they approach the mob or cartels or other terrorist networks, right?” 

Mark Caputo and Brittany Gibson of Axios reported today that sources in the White House told them the administration knows the situation in Minnesota is a mess and is looking for a way to calm the fury without leaving the state. “We can't lose Minneapolis because if we do, we lose Chicago and Los Angeles,” one advisor explained. “We're not going to let the people who lost the presidential election over immigration dictate to us on immigration.” 

Marianna Sotomayor of the Washington Post reported today that House Democrats plan to open an investigation into Noem as part of “a push to impeach her.” Such an outcome would be a long shot, but they want to make Republicans take a stand either for or against the administration’s policies, something most Republicans want to avoid. Justin Papp of CNBC reported that the Democrats will impeach Noem if Trump doesn’t fire her. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Democratic leaders said in a statement. 

As two Republican senators also called for Noem to resign, her supporters in the White House today tried to deflect blame for the outrageous story that federal agents acted in self-defense when they killed Pretti, for he intended to “massacre” them. Officials told Caputo of Axios that White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller was behind the White House lies. Through an intermediary, Noem passed to Caputo the statement: “Everything I've done, I've done at the direction of the president and Stephen.” 

For their part, Miller’s team tried to put the blame on federal agents, including Bovino, claiming the agents had said Pretti had a gun. A source told Caputo that Miller “heard 'gun' and knew what the narrative would be: Pretti came to 'massacre' cops.” Miller called Pretti “an assassin” on social media. Vice President J.D. Vance reposted the statement, and Noem used the same language in front of the press. 

Trump made it clear tonight that the crisis in Minneapolis is not going to make him stop his attacks on either immigrants or Minnesota Democrats. At a speech in Iowa, he called those arrested by federal agents in Minnesota “hardened, vicious, horrible criminals.” He called out Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar—a frequent target of his—saying of her Somali birthplace: “She comes from a country that’s a disaster…. It’s not even a country. It barely has a government. They’re good at one thing—pirates. But they don’t do that anymore because they get the same treatment from us as the drug dealers get: Boom! Boom! Boom!” 

Omar appeared tonight at a town hall in Minneapolis and said: “We must abolish ICE for good. And Secretary Kristi Noem must resign or face impeachment.” As she spoke, a man rushed her and sprayed her with liquid from a syringe before security grabbed him and rushed him out as Omar herself advanced toward the man. “I’m ok,” Omar later posted. “I’m a survivor so this small agitator isn’t going to intimidate me from doing my work. I don’t let bullies win. Grateful to my incredible constituents who rallied behind me. Minnesota strong.” 

Former president Joe Biden also weighed in on events in Minneapolis today. This morning, he posted on social media: “What has unfolded in Minneapolis this past month betrays our most basic values as Americans. We are not a nation that guns down our citizens in the street. We are not a nation that allows our citizens to be brutalized for exercising their constitutional rights. We are not a nation that tramples the 4th Amendment and tolerates our neighbors being terrorized. The people of Minnesota have stood strong—helping community members in unimaginable circumstances, speaking out against injustice when they see it, and holding our government accountable to the people. Minnesotans have reminded us all what it is to be American, and they have suffered enough at the hands of this Administration. Violence and terror have no place in the United States of America, especially when it’s our own government targeting American citizens.

“No single person can destroy what America stands for and believes in, not even a President, if we—all of America—stand up and speak out. We know who we are. It's time to show the world. More importantly, it's time to show ourselves.

“Now, justice requires full, fair, and transparent investigations into the deaths of the two Americans who lost their lives in the city they called home. Jill and I are sending strength to the families and communities who love Alex Pretti and Renee Good as we all mourn their senseless deaths.”

January 28, 2026 (Wednesday)

Federal agents continue to rain terror on Minneapolis, Minnesota, and other U.S. cities including Portland and Lewiston, Maine. That violence has made it crystal clear that the goal of attacking immigrants is not simply to create a white nation; it is also to terrorize Americans into accepting the domination of MAGA Republicans. 

Attorney General Pam Bondi has delivered the Department of Justice into the service of this project. The Department of Justice is not investigating the killings of Renee Good or Alex Pretti and so evidently intended to cover up information about the shooting of Pretti that a judge ordered its officers not to destroy evidence. 

On Monday, four Democrats from the House Committee on the Judiciary wrote to Bondi noting that “[f]ederal agents have now gunned down and killed two American citizens—Renée Good and Alex Pretti—in Minneapolis. Videos taken by bystanders who observed and documented these killings leave little doubt that there is no legal or moral justification for these cold-blooded homicides. Yet, under your leadership, the Department of Justice (DOJ)—an agency created in 1870 at the height of post–Civil War Reconstruction to enforce the civil rights of all Americans—actively obstructed any investigation into these killings, and instead of defending the civil rights of Americans, now appears to be covering up the most egregious civil rights offenses and systematically condoning the lawless killing of Americans by agents of the government.” 

The four Democratic representatives—Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania, and Lucy McBath of Georgia—noted that Bondi’s refusal to investigate the deaths was unprecedented, and demanded the department provide all documents and information related to the killings by February 2, including those showing who ordered the department to abandon the investigations.    

On Monday, Judge Patrick J. Schiltz of the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota, appointed by President George W. Bush, suggested his patience with ICE had run out. After officials apparently ignored his order to permit a detainee to have a bond hearing or release him, he ordered Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, to appear in court on Friday to explain why he wasn’t in contempt of court. On Tuesday, the government released the detainee. 

Today Schiltz canceled the Friday hearing but went on to rake ICE over the coals. He identified “96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases” and commented, “The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated.” 

“This list should give pause to anyone—no matter his or her political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law. ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.” Schiltz warned that he would haul Lyons or other government officials into court if they kept ignoring court rulings. “ICE is not a law unto itself,” he wrote.  

Malcolm Ferguson of The New Republic reported today that because the federal government won’t hold ICE and Border Patrol agents accountable for their actions, elected prosecutors around the country have launched a group called Fight Against Federal Overreach, or FAFO. This acronym is more commonly used to represent the saying: “F*ck Around and Find Out.”

Today Bondi traveled to Minnesota, not to restore the rule of law but apparently to try to reclaim the narrative of the crackdown in Minneapolis for the administration. In a social media post, she said that federal agents had arrested “16 Minnesota rioters for allegedly assaulting federal law enforcement—people who have been resisting and impeding our federal law enforcement agents. We expect more arrests to come. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: NOTHING will stop President Trump and this Department of Justice from enforcing the law.”

She then posted images of 11 of those arrested. They are facing the camera, while the federal agents standing next to them have their backs to the camera. Journalist Matt Novak commented that the photos make the “rioters,” looking at the camera, appear to be heroes, while the ICE agents look like cowards, afraid to be seen. “Bondi thinks she’s going to win the propaganda war with this sh*t,” Novak wrote, “but it’s never been more clear that they’re losing.” 

The department charged the 16 with assaulting immigration agents, but the judge overseeing the court where they were charged said she was “deeply disturbed” that Bondi had posted the photographs. In the United States of America, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The government should not post their images suggesting otherwise. “This conduct is not something that the court condones,” Judge Dulce J. Foster said.

G. Elliott Morris of Strength In Numbers reported yesterday that federal agents’ killing of Good and Pretti has created a backlash that amounts to a tipping point. The number of American adults who approve of Trump’s presidency has dropped to a new low: 39.2%. Support for his immigration policies has also collapsed, dropping 18 points from its highest point to put it at –10 now. On deportation, Morris says, he is at -12.

Morris notes that these averages may overestimate Trump’s support, as when Americans hear the world immigration now, they don’t think of migrants under an overpass in south Texas, but of an “ICE officer killing a woman in her car and calling her a ‘f*cking bitch’” or a “regular guy being shot 10 times in the back after being tackled to the ground and disarmed.” Morris shows that Americans have moved dramatically toward abolishing ICE: 46% of Americans now support abolishing the agency,, while only 43% oppose getting rid of it. 

Today, music legend Bruce Springsteen posted a song called “Streets of Minneapolis.” “I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis,” he wrote. “It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free.” 

As the administration loses control over the national narrative, MAGA domination may well depend on stealing the 2026 and 2028 elections. Hours after federal agents killed Alex Pretti last Saturday, Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote to Minnesota governor Tim Walz blaming Democrats for the violence and suggesting that to “bring an end to the chaos in Minnesota,” the governor must give the Department of Justice access to the state’s voter rolls “to confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law as authorized by the Civil Rights Act of 1960. Fulfilling this common sense request will better guarantee free and fair elections and boost confidence in the rule of law.” 

Tying aggressive immigration enforcement to access to voter rolls is a different justification for the DOJ’s continuing demands for state voter rolls. According to Eileen O’Connor of the Brennan Center for Justice, since May 2025 the Trump administration has demanded complete voter rolls, including sensitive information, from at least 44 states and the District of Columbia. When most refused, the Department of Justice began in September 2025 to sue for them. So far, it has sued 24 of those jurisdictions. 

Abby Vesoulis and Ari Berman of Mother Jones note that Minnesota has the highest turnout rate of any state and is often cited as a model for election security. The journalists also note that right-wing activists have sought voter data for decades as part of their quest to prove that noncitizen voting is a huge problem in the country, an accusation that has been repeatedly debunked. 

The federal government has no authority to oversee state elections systems. The 1960 Civil Rights Act Bondi cites as authority says that the attorney general may request records “relating to any application, registration, payment of poll tax, or other act requisite to voting in such election.” But it specifies that the DOJ must provide “the basis and the purpose” for the request. Until now, Bondi has claimed that the DOJ wants to make sure lists are maintained correctly, but tying state violence to the voter rolls is an ominous sign. 

“Here’s the bottom line…they’re not entitled to that data,” Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes told Yunior Rivas of Democracy Docket. “This isn’t leadership. This is blackmail. This is the way organized crime works. They move into your neighborhood, they start beating everybody up, and then they extort what they want. This is not how America is supposed to work, and I’m embarrassed that the administration is pushing in this direction.”

Today the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed a search warrant at the elections warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, to seize ballots from the 2020 presidential election. It appears President Donald J. Trump and his loyalists remain determined to convince Americans that the election was stolen through voter fraud despite zero evidence of such a theft, five years in which Trump’s claims have been thoroughly debunked, and the dismissal of dozens of court cases.  

On January 2, 2021, Trump tried for an hour to persuade Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to “find” 11,780 votes for Trump, one more than he needed to steal the state’s electoral votes from Democrat Joe Biden, the presidential candidate the Georgia people had chosen. When Raffensperger refused, Trump suggested Raffensperger could have committed a crime by refusing to do as Trump demanded. 

That story has been in the news again lately, as Trump told the audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 21 that “everybody now knows” the 2020 presidential election was rigged and that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did.” 

Former special counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election, testified before the House Judiciary Committee on January 22. A grand jury indicted Trump on four counts related to that attempt, but Trump’s reelection to the presidency halted the case. Smith reiterated his conviction that there was enough evidence that Trump committed crimes to convict him. 

And now, according to journalist Jen Psaki of The Briefing with Jen Psaki, Trump’s administration has seized the physical ballots from the 2020 election, all tabulator tapes, and all ballot images from the original ballot count, breaking the line of custody and contaminating the files. Crucially, they also seized all voter rolls from Fulton County. “This is a seismic event,” Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) told Psaki. “This should have people across the country absolutely shook. This is a huge deal. This is an FBI raid on the Fulton County elections office.... This is a shot across the bow at the midterm elections. He tried to steal power when he lost it in 2020.” Ossoff warned that Americans must be prepared as Trump tries to take away Americans’ right to choose their elected officials in 2026.

On January 6, 2026, Trump explained to Republican lawmakers: “You gotta win the midterms. Because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just gonna be—I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”

January 30, 2026 (Friday)

As the American people continue to express their fury over the violence of federal agents in Minneapolis and elsewhere, officials from the Trump administration today tried to shift the public narrative to shore up their softening base and silence their opponents.

Late last night, more than two dozen federal agents took independent journalist Don Lemon, formerly of CNN, into custody, charging him with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which criminalizes people who move past peaceful protests to threaten someone or obstruct their access to a reproductive health clinic or “place of religious worship.” 

That law has usually been used to prosecute antiabortion activists who block reproductive health clinics. As soon as he took office in 2025, Trump praised dozens of right-wing protesters who had been convicted of violating the FACE Act when they committed acts of violence at women’s healthcare clinics.  

Lemon is also charged with conspiring to hurt the exercise of rights, a law originally passed after the Civil War to combat Ku Klux Klan members who were trying to force Black Americans back into a form of quasi-slavery.

Lemon filmed protesters who disrupted a church service in Minneapolis on Sunday, January 18. Kiera Butler of Mother Jones reports the ultra-conservative white nationalist church has ties to the Trump administration. One of the church pastors, David Easterwood, is an official from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

Jarrett Ley and Samuel Oakford of the Washington Post reviewed the video Lemon filmed at the church protest. They wrote that the video shows that Lemon identified himself as a journalist and followed protesters into the church. Inside for about 45 minutes, he interviewed four parishioners and five protesters. Eight of those nine exchanges appeared calm. The video does not show Lemon participating in the chants with which the protesters disrupted the service. A pastor asked Lemon to leave, and seven minutes later he exited the church. 

Federal prosecutors tried to charge Lemon, his producer, and six others shortly after the protest, but a magistrate judge refused a warrant for Lemon and his producer, saying prosecutors had not shown evidence that would justify the arrests. The administration then asked a federal judge to overturn the magistrate judge’s decision. When he, too, refused, calling the request “unprecedented,” the administration rushed the case to the Eighth Circuit. It, too, refused. 

At that point, it appears the administration went to a federal grand jury to indict Lemon. 

Officials also arrested independent journalist Georgia Fort of Minnesota, along with two participants in the protest: Trahern Jeen Crews and Jamael Lydell Lundy. 

The arrests of Lemon and Fort are windows into the deep concern of administration officials about how dramatically Americans have turned against ICE and the Trump administration. At its most basic level, the attack on two independent journalists is undoubtedly designed to intimidate other independent news producers from covering the Trump administration, particularly the violence of ICE and Border Patrol agents. 

It is a dramatic assault on the First Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits the government from curtailing the freedom of the press.  

It is also a transparent attempt to change the popular narrative. The killing of two white American citizens—Renee Good and Alex Pretti—by federal agents hammered home to white Americans that they are as much at risk from the authoritarian system Trump is building as are Black Americans and people of color who are not citizens. With that realization—especially when administration officials, including Trump, blamed Pretti’s killing on the fact he carried a gun, although he did not use it—solidarity against the administration has been building, with white Americans often leading the way.   

All four of the people arrested in the past 24 hours are Black. This morning, the official social media account of the White House posted a picture of Lemon with the caption: “When life gives you lemons…” and an emoji of chains, evoking the chains of enslavement. 

In case this appeal to the MAGA base wasn’t clear enough, Attorney General Pam Bondi took to social media to highlight the religious claim behind this profound attack on the freedom of the press enshrined in the First Amendment. “Make no mistake,” she said. “Under President Trump’s leadership and this administration, you have the right to worship freely and safely. And if I haven’t been clear already, if you violate that sacred right, we are coming after you.”

The administration is appealing to the MAGA racist and Christian nationalist base by demonstrating that it is willing to violate the Constitution to impose MAGA’s ideology on the nation. But it is also apparently trying to signal to white American citizens that they should think they are safe from an authoritarian administration: its top victims remain Black Americans and people of color. 

Lemon will be pleading not guilty. After appearing in court Friday, he told reporters: "I have spent my entire career covering the news. I will not stop now…. I will not be silenced. I look forward to my day in court."

The growing concerns of administration officials that they have lost control of the narrative over ICE and federal authority might have been behind their willingness to drop what they say is the last of the Epstein files they will be releasing. Congress passed a law requiring the full disclosure of those files by December 19, but until today, the Department of Justice had released less than 1% of them. Today Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department is continuing to withhold nearly 3 million pages of documents because they contain child sexual abuse material and the department has an obligation to protect victims’ rights. He said the department is withholding another 200,000 pages because of legal privileges. 

"Today's release marks the end of a very comprehensive document review process to ensure transparency to the American people," Blanche told reporters.

For all the talk of protecting the personal information about Epstein’s victims, the new files released the names and identifying information of a number of survivors, including some who have not previously been associated with the Epstein operation. Twenty Epstein survivors released a statement saying: “This latest release of Jeffrey Epstein files is being sold as transparency, but what it actually does is expose survivors. As survivors, we should never be the ones named, scrutinized, and retraumatized while Epstein's enablers continue to benefit from secrecy. This is a betrayal of the very people this process is supposed to serve.”

Journalists are scrutinizing the new material and have already found that billionaire commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, who said last year that he and his wife had been so repulsed by Epstein that they cut ties with him around 2005, in fact visited with him in 2012, four years after Epstein’s first conviction of procuring a child for prostitution,  and continued to correspond with him until at least 2018.

Other administration figures also show up in the files. First Lady Melania Trump wrote a friendly email to Ghislaine Maxwell in 2002. Before she married Trump and when Maxwell was Epstein’s girlfriend, Melania Knauss wrote to compliment Maxwell on a picture of her in a New York Magazine profile of Epstein. Knauss added: “I know you are very busy flying all over the world. How was Palm Beach? I cannot wait to go down. Give me a call when you are back in NY. Have a great time!” She signed the email: “Love, Melania.”

Billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates appears in the files. Elon Musk appears repeatedly in the files with messages suggesting he was a big fan of Epstein’s parties. Trump, too, appears frequently in the files, but a spreadsheet listing accusations against him and other prominent people disappeared shortly after it appeared today. 

The lead sponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Representatives Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), wrote to Blanche today formally requesting access to the unredacted Epstein files as soon as possible. Khanna told Jenna Sundel of Newsweek: “The [Department of Justice] said it identified over 6 million potentially responsive pages but is releasing only about 3.5 million after review and redactions. This raises questions as to why the rest are being withheld.”

Today Trump announced plans for a massive automobile race into downtown Washington, “the Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, D.C.,” in August as part of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this summer. In an executive order, he called the proposed race a tribute to INDYCAR racing and said the race would “showcase the majesty of our great city as drivers navigate a track around our iconic national monuments in celebration of America’s 250th birthday.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said: “To think, 190 miles an hour down Pennsylvania Avenue—this is going to be wild.”

The attempt to change the narrative around ICE does not appear to have been effective, at least so far. Today the Senate passed the appropriations bills to fund the government in 2026 with funding for the Department of Homeland Security pulled out for longer discussion. Now it heads to the House. 

In the Senate, two Republicans joined all the Senate Democrats to vote in favor of an amendment proposed by Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to repeal the $75 billion funding increase for ICE that Republicans included in their July 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Sanders proposed using those savings to reverse the cuts to Medicaid that were also in that law. The amendment failed by a vote of 49 to 51, but that it got so many votes shows that senators are feeling the pressure over ICE. 

“As we speak, ICE agents are shooting American citizens in cold blood, breaking down doors to arrest people, and sending 5-year-olds to detention centers, all in clear violation of our Constitution,” Sanders said. “Instead of funding Trump’s domestic army, we should instead use that money to prevent hundreds of thousands of Americans from losing the health care they desperately need by investing in Medicaid.” 

Across the nation today, people turned out into the streets in a scheduled nationwide protest. CNN's Shimon Prokupecz watched the tens of thousands of people protesting in Minneapolis today and said: “I've covered many protests…and I have to tell you, I've not seen a crowd like this before. I mean, it is eight degrees out here. Eight degrees, it feels like five, it is freezing, but nothing, nothing is stopping these people….”

February 1, 2026 (Sunday)

On February 1, 1862, in the early days of the Civil War, the Atlantic Monthly published Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic,” summing up the cause of freedom for which the United States troops would soon be fighting. “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” it began. 

“He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.”

Howe had written the poem on a visit to Washington, D.C., with her husband. Approaching the city, she had reflected sadly that there was little she could do for the United States. She couldn’t send her menfolk to war: her husband was too old to fight, her sons too young. And with a toddler, she didn’t even have enough time to volunteer to pack stores for the field hospitals. “I thought of the women of my acquaintance whose sons or husbands were fighting our great battle; the women themselves serving in the hospitals, or busying themselves with the work of the Sanitary Commission,” she recalled, and she worried there was nothing she could give to the cause.

One day she, her husband, and friends, toured the troop encampments surrounding the city. To amuse themselves on the way back to the hotel, they sang a song popular with the troops as they marched. It ended: “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave; his soul is marching on.” A friend challenged Howe to write more uplifting words for the soldiers’ song.

That night, Howe slept soundly. She woke before dawn and, lying in bed, began thinking about the tune she had heard the day before. She recalled: "[A]s I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind.... With a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen…. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper." 

Howe's hymn captured the tension of Washington, D.C., during the war, and the soldiers’ camps strung in circles around the city to keep invaders from the U.S. capital. 

“I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.”

Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic went on to define the Civil War as a holy war for human freedom: 

“In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.” 

The Battle Hymn became the anthem of the Union during the Civil War, and exactly three years after it appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, on February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Joint Resolution of Congress passing the Thirteenth Amendment and sending it off to the states for ratification. The amendment provided that "[n]either slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." It gave Congress power to enforce that amendment. This was the first amendment that gave power to the federal government rather than taking it away. 

When the measure had passed the House the day before, the lawmakers and spectators had gone wild. “The members on the floor huzzaed in chorus with deafening and equally emphatic cheers of the throng in the galleries,” the New York Times reported. “The ladies in the dense assemblage waved their handkerchiefs, and again and again the applause was repeated, intermingled with clapping of hands and exclamations of ‘Hurrah for freedom,’ ‘Glory enough for one day,’ &c. The audience were wildly excited, and the friends of the measure were jubilant.” Indiana congressman George Julian later recalled, “It seemed to me I had been born into a new life, and that the world was overflowing with beauty and joy, while I was inexpressibly thankful for the privilege of recording my name on so glorious a page of the nation’s history.”

But the hopes of that moment had crumbled within a decade. Almost a century later, students from Bennett College, a women’s college in Greensboro, North Carolina, set out to bring them back to life. They organized to protest the F.W. Woolworth Company’s willingness to sell products to Black people but refusal to serve them food. On February 1, 1960, their male colleagues from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat down on stools at Woolworth’s department store lunch counter in Greensboro. David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell A. Blair Jr., and Joseph McNeil were first-year students who wanted to find a way to combat the segregation under which Black Americans had lived since the 1880s. 

So the men forced the issue by sitting down and ordering coffee and doughnuts. They sat quietly as the white waitress refused to serve them and the store manager ignored them. They came back the next day with a larger group. This time, television cameras covered the story. By February 3 there were 60 men and women sitting. By February 5 there were 50 white male counterprotesters. 

By March the sit-in movement had spread across the South, to bus routes, museums, art galleries, and swimming pools. In July, after profits had dropped dramatically, the store manager of the Greensboro Woolworth’s asked four Black employees to put on street clothes and order food at the counter. They did, and they were served. Desegregation in public spaces had begun. 

In 1976, President Gerald Ford officially recognized February 1 as the first day of Black History Month, asking the public to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of Black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” 

On February 1, 2023, the family of Tyre Nichols laid their 29-year-old son to rest in Memphis, Tennessee. He was so severely beaten by police officers on January 7, allegedly for a traffic violation, that he died three days later. 

On February 1, 2026, as the fiftieth observance of Black History Month begins, government officials under the administration of Donald J. Trump have just removed an exhibit on enslavement from Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. The exhibit acknowledged nine people enslaved at the President’s House Site when President George Washington lived there. Curators intended the exhibit to examine “the paradox between slavery and freedom in the founding of the nation,” but it conflicted with Trump’s March 2025 order that national historic sites should “focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.” In his order, Trump called out Independence National Historical Park for promoting “corrosive ideology,” teaching visitors that “America is purportedly racist.” 

The administration is openly working to replace American multiculturalism with white nationalism, launching raids by federal agents to terrorize Brown and Black Americans as well as white Americans who reject MAGA ideology. 

On Saturday, in Minneapolis, where federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol are attacking immigrants and those marching to end the violence of the federal agents, people entered a Target store to protest the retail chain’s cooperation with federal agents. In unison, they sang: “We the people stand together, we the people stand together….” 

The words were set to the tune of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

February 3, 2026 (Tuesday)

Yesterday, the day before Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s termination of Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation, U.S. District Court Judge Ana C. Reyes stopped that termination until a pending court case worked its way through the courts. 

At stake first of all were the lives of about 353,000 Haitians living legally in the United States since the catastrophic Haitian earthquake of 2010, whom the termination of that status would render undocumented overnight. The impact on their lives would also affect their families, friends, and employers. Also at stake, though, is Trump administration officials’ rejection of both facts and the rule of law on which the United States was founded in order to advance their white nationalist ideology. 

As Judge Reyes explains, Congress established Temporary Protective Status in 1990 to change previously haphazard executive decisions about whether to receive immigrants from disaster-stricken countries that left recipients unclear about their immigration status. In its place, Congress created “a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics.” It established criteria and a process for designating a country under TPS, accepting applications for immigration under TPS, and reviewing that designation periodically to determine if that designation should be extended. The system leaves to the Secretary of Homeland Security the power to evaluate those extensions.

And yet, the judge explains, Secretary Noem ignored the process and the criteria, instead relying on ideology. On December 1, 2025, Noem posted: “I just met with the President. I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies. Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom—not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS. WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.” 

Noem’s statements echo those of President Donald J. Trump, who referred to Haiti as a “sh*thole” country and tried to end TPS for people from Haiti beginning in 2017. During the 2024 campaign, Trump falsely accused Haitian immigrants of “eating the dogs,” “eating the cats,” and “eating the pets” of people who live in Springfield, Ohio. He insisted he would revoke Haiti’s TPS designation and send immigrants “back to their country.” 

Five Haitian TPS holders sued to stop the administration from ending their protected status, claiming Noem ignored the legal procedures because of her “hostility to nonwhite immigrants.” Reyes says Noem did indeed ignore the law and that it “seems substantially likely” she did so because of her white nationalist ideology, noting that Noem has terminated all twelve TPS designations that have reached her desk.

But, as Reyes points out, the facts simply don’t match their ideology. TPS holders participate in the workforce at the exceptionally high rate of 94.6%. Far from being “killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,” the plaintiffs in the case challenging Noem’s decision are a neuroscientist researching Alzheimer’s disease, a software engineer at a national bank, a toxicology lab assistant, a college economics major, and a registered nurse.  

When Noem claimed that it was “contrary to the national interest” to permit about 350,000 Haitian immigrants to stay in the country until it is safe to go back to Haiti, Reyes noted, she characterized them as criminals without any actual evidence. She also ignored the public’s interest in the fact that Haitian TPS holders pay $1.3 billion a year in taxes, and that through their work in sectors that are desperate for laborers, they add about $3.4 billion to the U.S. economy annually. They are deeply embedded in their communities, and tearing them out would shatter families and worksites.

“There is an old adage among lawyers,” Reyes wrote as she decided against the Trump administration. “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table. Secretary Noem, the record to-date shows, does not have the facts on her side—or at least has ignored them. Does not have the law on her side—or at least has ignored it. Having neither…, she pounds X ([formerly known as] Twitter). Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the [Administrative Procedure Act] to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.”

In the conflict between reality and white nationalist ideology, reality appears to be gaining ground. Americans do not like federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol terrorizing their streets, detaining children, and shooting American citizens. As G. Elliott Morris noted in Strength in Numbers on Sunday, a new Fox News poll shows that Americans support Democrats over Republicans on a generic ballot at higher percentages than they have since the survey began: 52% of the vote for Democrats to 46% for Republicans. That 52% for Democrats is the highest support recorded for either party; Democrats hit the poll’s previous high in October 2017 at 50%. Morris notes Democrats are “firmly in ‘wave’ territory” for November’s elections.

Republicans are trying to regain support by seeming to back off their extremism, although they are not backing far: not a single Republican showed up for a public forum held today in Washington, D.C., by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Representative Robert Garcia (D-CA) and other Democrats on ICE violence. At the hearing, Marimar Martinez, a U.S. citizen shot five times by federal agents, told her story; so did Aliya Rahman, another U.S. citizen detained by ICE; and so did the brothers of U.S. citizen Renee Good, killed by federal agents. 

Representative Garcia showed a picture of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who is a key instigator of the ICE attacks, and said: “There's probably no single person in this government [who] has done more damage…and more harm to people across this country, immigrants and U.S. citizens…than this man right here, and it’s our job…to hold him responsible for the crimes that are happening to United States citizens.” A new Data For Progress poll shows that 51% of American voters think Miller should be removed, while only 33% think he should not. 

But lawmakers have at least had to adjust their actions to acknowledge the fury of American voters at the behavior of federal agents.

Today the House passed the budget to fund the government except for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which was funded only for two more weeks to give Congress time to hash out terms for funding the department that Democrats will accept. Republicans had been clear they did not want to separate out DHS funding. Ultimately, Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) had to accept the separation in order to prevent a long-term shutdown, and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) got enough Republicans to go along that the measure, without DHS funding, passed. Trump signed it later in the day.

As of yesterday, the head of the “Weaponization Working Group,” created in the Department of Justice on Attorney General Pam Bondi’s first day in office to punish the people Trump insisted had weaponized the legal system against him, has been removed. Right-wing lawyer Ed Martin had been a leader in Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election and had claimed those convicted for crimes relating to that attempt had been unfairly prosecuted. Once in power, he had turned the department’s resources toward prosecuting those Trump perceived to be enemies, including former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. 

So unpopular has it become to be associated with Trump that an attempt to distract from plummeting ticket sales and artists’ boycotts after he took over the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and put his name on it may be behind Trump’s Sunday night announcement he is closing the venue, claiming it needs two years of renovations.

As voters turn against the administration, Trump is openly working to rig the 2026 election to guarantee Republicans win. 

On Wednesday, January 28, FBI agents raided an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, walking away with 700 boxes of ballots, tabulation tapes, and other election-related material from the 2020 election. Marc Elias of Democracy Docket noted that the warrant came from Thomas Albus, whom Trump appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. Albus should not have had anything to do with a raid in Georgia, but Bloomberg reported that Attorney General Bondi appears to have appointed Albus a special assistant to the attorney general, giving him the ability to operate across the nation. Elias points out that this gives Albus dramatic power over future elections.  

The raid was significant not just because the FBI took the ballots Trump has complained about for years—ballots that have been counted three times—but also because Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was there. The DNI has no law enforcement role in our system; she is supposed to coordinate and oversee the agencies in the U.S. intelligence community. At first, officials tried to suggest she was there by chance, but yesterday William K. Rashbaum, Devlin Barrett, and Julian E. Barnes of the New York Times reported that she met with some of the FBI agents who had conducted the raid. During the meeting, she reached Trump on her cell phone and he spoke to the agents himself. 

David Laufman, who served in the Justice Department in both Democratic and Republican administrations, told the New York Times reporters: “It is extremely dangerous to our democracy and a shocking abandonment of years of sound policy for the president to be directly involved in the conduct of domestic criminal investigations, especially one that seeks to redress his personal grievances and to make the director of national intelligence an instrument of his political will.”

Then, yesterday, Trump told former deputy FBI director Dan Bongino, who has gone back to podcasting, that he loses elections only because Democrats import undocumented immigrants to vote. This is bonkers. Voting by undocumented immigrants, or any noncitizens, is both illegal and incredibly rare, but Trump has made it part of his standard rhetoric since 2016. 

He said to Bongino: “These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally, and the, you know, amazing that the Republicans aren't tougher on it. The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over, we should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places.’ The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. We have states that are so crooked and the county votes, we have states that I won that show I didn't win. Now you going to see something in Georgia where they were able to get with a court order, the ballots? You're going to see some interesting things come in. But, you know, like the 2020 election. I won that election by so much.” 

Although the Constitution gives control of elections exclusively to the states, at a bill signing in the Oval Office today, Trump doubled down on his call for Republicans to “nationalize” elections.