Jan. 23 News Reports

Editor’s Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and January 2026 news and views

Note: Excerpts are from the authors’ words except for subheads and occasional “Editor’s notes” such as this.

Jan. 23 

 

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage.

New York Times, In Testimony, Jack Smith Defends Decision to Prosecute Trump, Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer, Jan. 23, 2026 (print ed.). The former special prosecutor argued a case he was never allowed to in court: that President Trump “engaged in criminal activity” that undermined democracy.

Jack Smith, the special prosecutor who twice indicted Donald J. Trump, defended his investigation in a tense and long-awaited appearance before a House committee on Thursday — flatly accusing Mr. Trump of causing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

“No one should be above the law in this country, and the law required that he be held to account,” Mr. Smith said in his opening remarks. “So that is what I did.”

His testimony represented the argument he was never allowed to deliver in court: that Mr. Trump “engaged in criminal activity” that undermined democracy and the rule of law.

The hearing posed significant risks to Mr. Smith, who has said he believes Mr. Trump and his appointees will seize on the smallest misstep to investigate, prosecute and humiliate him. House Republicans had made it clear that they would make a criminal referral to the Justice Department if his testimony revealed serious inconsistencies or misstatements.

As if to underscore that danger, Mr. Trump took to Truth Social to go after Mr. Smith. Hopefully Attorney General Pam Bondi “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,” he wrote,

But the hearing also provided Mr. Smith with what was likely to be his best opportunity to challenge, in an official forum, Mr. Trump’s justification for ordering the Justice Department to pursue his enemies: that he was persecuted for his politics, not prosecuted for his alleged misdeeds.

“Our investigation revealed that Donald Trump is the person who caused Jan. 6, that it was foreseeable to him and that he sought to exploit the violence,” Mr. Smith said, sitting alone at the witness table with a water bottle, legal pad and white ballpoint pen.

He appeared wan and tired, speaking so softly at times his voice did not register with voice transcription apps. Before sitting at the witness table, Mr. Smith greeted four law enforcement officers who were attacked by the pro-Trump mob at the Capitol — Michael Fanone, Daniel Hodges, Aquilino Gonell and Harry Dunn.

Republicans repeatedly accused Mr. Smith of participating in a Democratic conspiracy to destroy Mr. Trump by investigating his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as well as his handling of classified documents after he left office.

Mr. Smith and his team interfered in the “democratic process by seeking to muzzle a candidate for a high office,” Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in his opening statement, quoting from an editorial in The Washington Post.

But Republican lawmakers offered no new evidence to support that claim, and spent much of their time rehashing political arguments and grilling Mr. Smith about his decision to seek a court order for metadata about phone calls Mr. Trump and his allies made to nine Republican lawmakers as they sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Representative Brandon Gill, Republican of Texas, pressed Mr. Smith on his decision to seek a nondisclosure order that prevented the lawmakers from knowing about the record requests. Mr. Gill was particularly concerned that Mr. Smith’s team sought such an order for former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s records.

The order said there were grounds to believe telling Mr. McCarthy would result “in flight from prosecution, destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses and serious jeopardy to the investigation.”

“Was Speaker McCarthy a flight risk?” Mr. Gill asked.

“He was not,” Mr. Smith replied.

Another Republican on the panel, Representative Lance Gooden, Republican of Texas, questioned the validity of Mr. Smith’s 2022 swearing-in after he was appointed to oversee the investigations into Mr. Trump. Mr. Smith seemed puzzled by the line of inquiry.

Asked to comment on Mr. Trump’s threat on Truth Social during his testimony, which included a call for his disbarment, Mr. Smith suggested he expected federal prosecutors to investigate his actions.

New York Times, 4 Takeaways From Jack Smith’s Testimony Before Lawmakers, Alan Feuer and Glenn Thrush, Jan. 23, 2026 (print ed.). In his remarks, the former special counsel repeatedly denied that he had acted out of partisan animus and bemoaned the Trump administration’s efforts to go after the president’s perceived enemies

The former special counsel Jack Smith appeared before Congress on Thursday to defend his decision to bring two criminal indictments against Donald J. Trump after he left office in 2021.

Mr. Smith’s restrained five-hour testimony to the House Judiciary Committee was the first and perhaps only chance he will have to make his case in an official forum that he was justified in filing the two sets of charges against Mr. Trump in 2023. In separate indictments, Mr. Smith accused Mr. Trump of seeking to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election and of illegally removing reams of highly classified documents from the White House and taking them to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.

Much of what Mr. Smith, left, told lawmakers reprised the testimony he gave last month in a videotaped deposition behind closed doors. In his remarks, he repeatedly denied that he had acted out of partisan animus, and bemoaned the Trump administration’s own efforts to use the Justice Department to go after the president’s enemies.

Here are a few takeaways from his testimony.Smith’s work was under scrutiny, not his findings

Republican members of the committee spent most of their time attacking various procedural steps that Mr. Smith took in his prosecutions of Mr. Trump in an effort to suggest that he had acted out of political motives. They had less to say, however, about Mr. Smith’s repeated assertion that if the two cases — both of which were dismissed after Mr. Trump won re-election — had gone to trial, there was sufficient evidence to secure convictions.

Skipping from complaint to complaint, the Republican members noted that Mr. Smith had obtained phone records for several Republican lawmakers who were in touch with Mr. Trump and his allies about their plans to overturn the election; issued subpoenas to dozens of Republican fund-raising groups allied with Mr. Trump; and made payments to confidential human sources in the course of his investigation of the election interference charges.

The Republicans expressed outrage about all of these tactics — even though Mr. Smith explained that they were standard tools of criminal prosecutions and that he had followed both the law and the procedures of the Justice Department in using them.The political attacks were familiar

Instead of raising serious qualms about Mr. Smith’s methods, the committee majority often fell back on familiar political attacks, claiming that he and his team had “weaponized” the criminal justice system on behalf of the Biden administration — an accusation that Mr. Smith repeatedly and adamantly denied.

Several times, under questioning by Democratic lawmakers, Mr. Smith said that he had never received orders from the attorney general at the time, Merrick B. Garland, or from anyone else in the Biden administration about how to pursue his cases against Mr. Trump.

“I am not a politician and I have no partisan loyalties,” Mr. Smith said during his opening statement.

He said that, after three decades as a prosecutor, he had simply followed the facts and the law without “fear or favor.”

“No one should be above the law in this country, and the law required that he be held to account,” he said of Mr. Trump. “So that is what I did.”Smith remained unbowed by personal broadsides

When asked whether he had any regrets about his investigations, Mr. Smith said he had only one: that he had not expressed more appreciation for the F.B.I. agents and prosecutors who worked under him.

Several of those agents and prosecutors have been fired by the Justice Department because of their service to Mr. Smith. They have also faced efforts by members of Congress to impugn them and their work. 

New York Times, D.H.S. Cited Foreign Students’ Writings and Protests Before Their Arrests, Zach Montague, Updated Jan. 23, 2026. Documents unsealed by a federal judge on Thursday include dossiers that investigators prepared on pro-Palestinian student activists before they were targeted for deportation.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right, personally approved the deportation of five student activists last year after receiving memos largely describing their participation in pro-Palestinian protests and their writings about the war in Gaza, according to internal government documents unsealed by a federal judge on Thursday.

The documents reveal new details about how the Trump administration decided to target the activists, who were all foreign students visible in campus protests. They had been in the United States legally but were arrested and threatened with deportation last spring.

The several hundred pages were submitted as evidence in a trial held in Massachusetts in July over noncitizen students’ freedom of expression.

After hearing testimony and examining the documents, Judge William G. Young, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, ruled last year that the Trump administration had illegally targeted the students for deportation based on their speech — in particular their opposition to the Israeli government and its military operations in Gaza.

Judge Young, shown at left in a 2010 photo, had acceded to requests from the government to seal the documents because of details they contained about federal investigations. But last week he agreed to a request from The New York Times and other media outlets that they be released as a matter of public interest.

The documents include several batches of memos, prepared by the Department of Homeland Security and sent to the State Department, which contained the formal recommendations that five students — Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Badar Khan Suri and Yunseo Chung — be deported.

The documents indicate that in nearly all instances, the arrests of the students were recommended based on their involvement in campus protests and public writings, activities that the Trump administration routinely equated to antisemitic hate speech and support for terrorist organizations. They also show that officials privately anticipated the possibility that the deportations might not hold up in court because much of the conduct highlighted could be seen as protected speech.

“Given the potential that a court may consider his actions inextricably tied to speech protected under the First Amendment, it is likely that courts will scrutinize the basis for this determination,” read one memo describing the effort to deport Mr. Madhawi, who had a green card and was an undergraduate at Columbia University at the time of his arrest.

A spokesman for Mr. Rubio did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday evening.

In one set of documents with the referrals, officials acknowledged that almost no grounds existed for deporting the students other than a rarely used 1952 law that says the secretary of state may deem noncitizens deportable for reasons related to foreign policy.

“D.H.S. has not identified any alternative grounds for removability,” agents wrote of several of the students, “including the ground of removability for aliens who have provided material support for a foreign terrorist organization or terrorist activity.”

In justifying the attempt to deport the students, Mr. Rubio and other administration officials repeatedly asserted that they had supported terrorist organizations.

“We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported,” Mr. Rubio wrote online in March, referring to the militant Palestinian group in Gaza.

The students have denied that charge. They sued over their arrests, and judges last year ordered each of them released, citing concerns that their arrests had been based on protected speech.

The case before Judge Young, brought by two national academic organizations, argued more broadly that the arrests had chilled academic speech on the nation’s college campuses. Judge Young agreed, describing the behavior of Mr. Rubio and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, as an “unconstitutional conspiracy” to “pick off” a few students with an eye to “violating” the free speech rights of thousands of noncitizen scholars.

“These cabinet secretaries have failed in their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution,” Judge Young said last week in an emotional denunciation of the government from the bench.

The government had argued in court that Mr. Rubio was exercising his sole authority to determine which activity by noncitizens might jeopardize the country’s foreign policy interests, which could include relations with Israel. They contended that the demonstrations had grown threatening to Jewish students on campus.

A homeland security spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Concluding the case, Judge Young ordered on Thursday that any future attempts to deport members of the two academic organizations that had sued could be immediately challenged in court, where the Trump administration would need to prove that it was not retaliating against the members over their speech or academic work.

The documents that Judge Young unsealed showed that government investigators searched for findings of wrongdoing on the part of the students, but internally acknowledged that they had found the task difficult.

New York Times, ‘Enough Is Enough’: Hundreds of Minnesota Businesses Take Stand Against ICE, Pooja Salhotra and Jazmine Ulloa, Jan. 23, 2026. After protesters called for a pause on economic activity and work to strike against the federal immigration crackdown, many business owners won’t open their doors on Friday.

No work, no shopping, no dining out. Hundreds of businesses across Minnesota are expected to close and many people are vowing to pause everyday activities on Friday as part of a general strike against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

As tensions mount and a sense of fear of detention by immigration agents permeates the state, vendors, labor unions and residents are set to participate in an economic blackout and gather at prayers and protests on what organizers called a “Day of Truth and Freedom.”

“It’s tense and emotional, and folks are hurting,” said Bishop Dwayne Royster, the executive director of Faith in Action, which is helping with the organizing effort. Minnesotans, he said, are demonstrating “deep resilience and willingness to stand together in ways I haven’t seen folks do in a very long time.”

Word of Friday’s strike and protests spread “like a wildfire,” said Jake Anderson, an executive board member with the St. Paul Federation of Educators, a labor union representing teachers and educational support professionals. Hundreds of businesses, mostly in Minneapolis and St. Paul, said they would close, while others have vowed to pause any economic activity, stay home from work or school, or fast to show support.

“There’s a time to stand up for things, and this is it,” said Alison Kirwin, the owner of Al’s Breakfast, a restaurant in Minneapolis that will be closed on Friday. “If it takes away from a day of our income, that is worthwhile.”

The strike comes as Minnesotans have clashed for weeks with federal agents, mostly in the Minneapolis and St. Paul areas. The immigration operation, which started late last year, has led to some 3,000 arrests, at least two shootings in Minneapolis and chaotic scenes on the streets.

Calls for the ouster of federal agents have grown from residents and local officials in recent weeks, especially after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Renee Good, an American citizen, in Minneapolis on Jan. 7. Protesters and state officials have also filed lawsuits to restrict the agents’ conduct toward demonstrators and to block the surge of immigration agents in the state.

But federal officials have asserted that the crackdown is necessary to root out fraud in the state’s social services system and have defended the actions of the ICE agent who killed Ms. Good.

On Thursday, Vice President JD Vance said that the Trump administration wanted to “turn down the temperature” in Minneapolis after weeks of clashes. Mr. Vance, who said he had traveled to the city to understand the tensions, called Minneapolis protesters “far-left agitators” who had harassed federal agents. He also said a “failure of cooperation” by state and local officials was to blame for the situation getting “out of hand.”Editors’ PicksHow Little Exercise Can You Get Away With?Forget the Cynics. Here’s Why You Should Get Your Dog a Stroller.Inside an Exploding Marriage: Belle Burden in Her Own Words

In an email on Thursday, a Department of Homeland Security official called the strike “beyond insane,” asking, “Why would these labor bosses not want these public safety threats out of their communities?” The official then included a list of undocumented immigrants who had apparently been convicted of serious crimes.

Morning News Roundup

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Deadly Keystone Cops, Andrew Egger, Will Saletan and Jim Swift, Jan. 23, 2026. DHS and ICE are incompetent—but that doesn’t make them any less dangerous.

Also, you don’t really get the sense these days that Donald Trump views his authoritarian outbursts as a limited resource, something he can only indulge in so much before he’s wasted all his political capital.

Here he was yesterday on Truth Social, fuming about how much he wants to make it illegal to publish “fake polls”: “Fake and Fraudulent polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense,” he went on in a follow-up post. “I am going to do everything possible to keep this Polling SCAM from moving forward!” Happy Friday.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: January 2, 2026 [Controlling the ICE Narrative?], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Jan. 23, 2026. 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?”

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Trump 0, Europe 1, Paul Krugman, right, Jan. 23, 2026. Ignorance and contempt lose a round. Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for moreTrump 0, Europe 1Ignorance and contempt lose a round

As I wrote yesterday, Donald Trump and his team clearly went to Davos determined to demean and insult their hosts. It was, one might say, a novel approach to diplomacy: “You’re pathetic, your societies and economies are falling apart, now give us Greenland.”

And it worked about as well as you’d expect. Trump may have imagined that the Europeans would cower in the face of his wrath. Instead, they humiliated him. He dropped his latest tariff threats in return for a “framework” that gave the United States essentially nothing it didn’t already have — and left behind a Europe that is finally united in resistance to his bullying.

The Trump team went to Europe in a state of malign ignorance, exemplified by Trump saying during his Davos harangue that “without us, you’d all be speaking German.” Most Swiss speak … German.

Trumpian contempt for Europe rests on two beliefs we already knew were false, and a third belief the Europeans proved false this week.

First, Trump and company are wedded to the belief that nonwhite, non-Christian immigrants have destroyed European society, that Europe’s cities are hellscapes of rampant crime and social disorder — the trans-Atlantic version of what they believe about New York. In reality, while Europe has had some problems assimilating immigrants, the continent remains incredibly safe by U.S. standards: A graph of death from crime AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Second, MAGA types are sure that Europe is an economic disaster area.

I wrote about this last month, arguing that while Europe lags in information technology, this does not mean that the European economy is failing to deliver what matters: higher living standards for its people.

European workers took a bigger hit than American workers from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which cut off much of the continent’s supply of natural gas. But real wages have recovered, and over the longer term European workers have seen their incomes grow at more or less the same rate as their US counterparts.

Europe has problems, as we all do. But when MAGA types declare that a prosperous continent that in many ways delivers a better life for its citizens than we do is a social and economic hellscape, that says more about them than it does about Europe.

Finally, Trump and company believed that Europe is weak, that European leaders would never stand up to U.S. bullying. And Europe’s initial response to Trump’s trade war — an attempt to appease and flatter him, hoping that it would all go away — surely reinforced Trumpian contempt.

But even Eurocrats have their limits. Operation Arctic Endurance, the deployment of European military forces to Greenland, might equally well have been called Operation Rising Gorge. There was rational calculation behind that deployment, but it was also a way for European leaders to say that enough is enough, that they’re done with trying to make nice.

And when Trump threatened to put tariffs on the exports of nations that have sent troops to Greenland, Europe didn’t cower in submission — it got ready to strike back at U.S. businesses.

Trump then confirmed the old adage that bullies are also cowards. Brave Sir Donald ran away, ran away, ran away.

This isn’t over. There is no reason to believe that Trump has learned a lesson. Learning is not something he does. He’s still the bully he was as a child, and he’s already lashing out in other ways, suing JPMorgan for closing his bank accounts after Jan. 6 and threatening to sue The New York Times over an unfavorable poll.

But Europe has learned a lesson. Appeasing a bully doesn’t work, especially when, as anyone watching Trump’s Davos rant could see, that bully is experiencing rapid cognitive decline. But standing up to him does work.

The question now is whether and when enough influential people here at home will learn the same lesson. 

More On Immigration, Rights, Law, Crime, Courts

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion:,Jack Smith’s Trial by Bullsh*t, Will Saletan, right, Jan. 23, 2026. Former Special Counsel Jack Smith finally got to testify in public about his investigations of Donald Trump yesterday. But testifying before the House Judiciary Committee was nothing like presenting a case in court. His efforts to talk about facts and law were overwhelmed by a blizzard of Republican smears.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) accused Smith of “spying” on “conversations of the speaker of the House”—i.e., then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy—and demanded to know why McCarthy’s conversations were “any of your business.” Issa knew why those conversations were Smith’s business: McCarthy had phoned Trump during the January 6th attack on the Capitol, imploring the president to call off his mob. Issa also knew that it was misleading to say Smith had spied on McCarthy’s conversations: The special counsel had requested only the dates and times of McCarthy’s phone calls, not their contents. But pretending that Smith tapped the phones of Republican lawmakers is part of the GOP’s campaign to discredit him.

Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.) said Smith had committed “election interference” by bringing charges against Trump “during an active election cycle.” He accused Smith of “disregarding longstanding Department of Justice policies designed to prevent prosecutors from influencing elections.” But DOJ’s policy restricts prosecutors only in the 60 days (or at most, 90 days) before an election. By extending the no-prosecution zone to the whole election cycle (whenever that is), Republicans would make any investigation of a candidate essentially impossible.

Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) derided Smith for failing to win convictions against two former senators. “You also prosecuted John Edwards and Bob Menendez, and those both ended in mistrials,” he told Smith. Tiffany omitted the fact that Edwards and Menendez were Democrats. Yet just half an hour later, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) accused Smith of never targeting Democrats. “Not one Democrat. It’s all Republicans,” he huffed. “Everything you’ve ever done is always against Republicans.”

In his next breath, Van Drew had the gall to ask Smith whether Smith’s partisan bias—which Van Drew had just fabricated—undermined public trust in the justice system. The truth is that undermining trust in the justice system is exactly what Van Drew and other Republicans, by falsely ascribing bias to Smith, are trying to do.

Then Van Drew lied about the House January 6th Committee. “Everybody on it was a Democrat, except two Republicans that hated Republicans,” he declared. He was referring to then-Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who were eventually purged from the GOP for acknowledging Trump’s role in the plot to overturn the 2020 election. Only in an authoritarian party could this heresy by two lifelong conservatives—choosing truth and the Constitution over Trump—be considered “hating Republicans.”

Van Drew wasn’t finished. He asserted that Smith had based his entire investigation on the “biased, unfair, prejudiced” work of the January 6th Committee. That, too, was a lie. It’s part of the GOP’s scheme to compress all investigations of Trump into one big “witch hunt.”

Rep. Brad Knott (R-N.C.) depicted Smith as singularly focused on getting Trump. He asked why the special counsel hadn’t charged any of Trump’s purported co-conspirators in the alleged plot to overturn the election. Smith explained that attorneys on his team “believed that we did have proof to charge other people,” and “I was in the process of making that determination” when the investigation was shut down because of Trump’s election. Knott ignored Smith’s answer and repeated his talking point as though Smith hadn’t just debunked it. “You didn’t find it necessary to charge them criminally,” the congressman said of the alleged co-conspirators.

Again and again, Republicans interrupted Smith before he could answer their questions. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) asked him: “Do you really believe that President Trump thinks he lost that election?” Smith got five seconds into his answer before Grothman cut him off. “No way,” the congressman declared, substituting his answer for whatever Smith had intended to say. “That’s enough.”

The biggest lie peddled by members of the committee, including Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), was that the 2024 election exonerated Trump. “The American people . . . rejected, sir, your witch hunt, loud and clear in November, handing President Trump a commanding victory,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) told Smith. “That is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the crap you were shoveling did not pass the smell test with the American people.”

That’s bunk. To begin with, the election wasn’t a referendum on Smith’s prosecutions. According to the Fox News Voter Analysis of the 2024 electorate, 53 percent of voters said “the legal cases involving Donald Trump” were an important factor or the most important factor in their vote, and Trump lost that 53-percent bloc by nearly three-to-one. He won the election by crushing Harris among voters who said the legal cases weren’t important.

Second, the whole point of a trial is to impose rules very different from an election. Trials are designed to focus jurors on provable facts. In an election, it’s a lot easier to drown out facts by spewing propaganda. That’s why Trump lost his only criminal trial in 2024 but won the election. And his allies in Congress are using the same demagogic lies to bury Jack Smith.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Always the Last Place You Look…, Andrew Egger, right, Jan. 23, 2026.  Yesterday I reported a remarkable new development in the story of ChongLy Thao, the U.S. citizen whom ICE took half-naked from his Minnesota home last weekend.

ICE had claimed it had been looking for a pair of migrant sex offenders at Thao’s address; in repeated social-media posts, the Department of Homeland Security said the men were still loose in the streets and asked people to call in tips. But they should have known exactly where to find at least one of the migrants in question, Lue Moua: He’s in state prison on a felony kidnapping conviction, and has been since 2024.

This information wasn’t exactly secret. Moua’s name, face, and criminal record are easy to find in a public database of state criminal records. Minnesota Department of Corrections Communications Director Shannon Loehrke confirmed to The Bulwark Thursday that the Moua in their custody is the same individual DHS is seeking. Moreover, Loehrke added, Moua is already under an ICE detainer—meaning ICE is already aware he is there and has requested he be placed into their custody upon his release from state prison, which is currently scheduled for early 2027. . . .

Why the agents who manhandled Thao this weekend thought Moua might be at Thao’s home is unclear. It’s unclear, too, why DHS officials spent days imploring citizens to keep their eyes peeled for Moua in the streets of Minneapolis when at least some part of ICE already knew he was in state prison.

DHS didn’t respond in time for publication yesterday, but late last night, spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin sent a belated statement. She confirmed ICE had placed a detainer on Moua, adding: “This is exactly what we have been saying: We need state and local law enforcement engagement and information so we don’t have to have such a presence on the streets. If we work together, we can make America safe again. We are calling on Governor Walz and Mayor Frey to turn this child predator over to ICE, so we can get him out of country where he can never prey on innocent American children.”

This was, of course, not exactly what DHS had been saying. They had been saying Moua was still at large. And even in her updated statement, McLaughlin seemed unaware of basic facts about Moua’s imprisonment. He’s in state prison; Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey can’t do anything to “turn him over” even if he wanted to.

This sort of thing has become a pattern. McLaughlin and other DHS officials have repeatedly accused Walz and Frey of conspiring to keep even criminal aliens out of the hands of ICE. But while some county jails continue to refuse to honor ICE detainers, the state prison system has been honoring them all along. In fact, when DHS releases its now-routine self-congratulatory lists of “worst of the worst” offenders apprehended by ICE in Minnesota, many of the migrants listed are people who have simply been handed over by the state prison system at the conclusion of their sentences.

State prison officials have been flabbergasted by DHS’s apparent unwillingness to get even basic facts correct here. “Despite our best efforts to correct the record and engage directly with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, they continue to publicly repeat information that is inaccurate and misleading,” Minnesota Department of Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell said in a press conference yesterday. “This is no longer simple misunderstanding. At best DHS fundamentally misunderstands Minnesota’s correctional system. At a minimum, this reflects systemic data management inadequacies or incompetence as it relates to DHS tracking of detainers in custody. At worst it is pure propaganda, numbers released without evidence to stoke fear rather than inform the public.”

Schnell accuses DHS of either radical incompetence or pure propaganda, but the real story seems to involve both. Throughout their shambolic rampage through the Twin Cities, DHS has been both clownishly incompetent and eager to lie and spin to cover up their overreaches and mistakes. It’s an operation perfectly summed up in a video taken this week of Border Patrol honcho Greg Bovino struggling to pull the pin on a tear-gas canister he subsequently tossed at peaceful protesters—only to have the wind blow the gas right back over him and his own agents.

It’s a Keystone Cops operation—but as Renee Good’s death attests, that hasn’t made it any less dangerous.

If the next president is a Democrat—or even, hard as it might be to imagine, a less authoritarian Republican—what happens to ICE? What’s the route back to healthy, law-abiding, non-abusive federal law enforcement? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.

AROUND THE BULWARK

• TGIF! Be sure to make time for Friday’s Triad AMA with JVL here on Substack!
• For Some, Trump’s Mask Is Finally Slipping… European leaders have given up pretending the president is someone he’s not. Maybe some American voters will, too, argues MONA CHAREN.
• Trump Sounds a Lot Like You-Know-Who… He’s no Hitler. But his speech in Davos about Greenland eerily echoes 1938, writes WILL SALETAN.
• ‘No Other Choice’ Review… Park Chan-wook, Tim Robinson, and masculinity in crisis, reviews SONNY BUNCH.

Quick Hits

THE KING OF SMARM: Apparently, Donald Trump wasn’t satisfied by insulting NATO’s support for the United States after 9/11 just the one time this week. In a Fox Business interview yesterday, he doubled down on his remarks at Davos that “I don’t know that they’d be there for us” in a crisis:

I’ve always said, will they be there if we ever needed them? And that’s really the ultimate test. And I’m not sure of that. . . . We’ve never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them. You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, and this or that. And they did. They stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.

The only time NATO’s mutual defense clause has been invoked was by our European allies on our behalf after 9/11. Over the following two decades, hundreds of soldiers from NATO nations were killed during the war in Afghanistan. Relative to the size of its population, Denmark lost as many troops there as the United States did. Just one more intolerable, inexplicable, pointless slander of our allies from the president.Subscribed

AI LIES: We mentioned the other day that we weren’t big fans of the Minneapolis protest last weekend in which activists disrupted a church service, alleging that one of the church’s pastors was affiliated with ICE. The protest was foolish, misguided, likely illegal, and totally counterproductive.

But the White House’s response has been nothing short of chilling. It isn’t just that the Justice Department, operating on the usual paradigm that no opportunity to prosecute a liberal should be wasted, swooped theatrically into action, swearing to round up both the perpetrators and journalists who covered the protest. (A U.S. magistrate judge refused yesterday to sign charges against Don Lemon, the former CNN anchor who livestreamed the event while seemingly embedded with the protesters.)

It’s also the sneering, utterly truth-agnostic way in which the White House has orchestrated its propaganda about the arrests. When DHS brought in activist Nekima Armstrong, they didn’t just stage a photo-op perp walk for her. The White House also tweeted out an AI-altered picture of her, changing her stoic expression to make her appear to be sobbing. Asked to comment on the fakery, the White House was shameless: “Enforcement of the law will continue,” a spokesperson told CNN. “The memes will continue.”

U.S. Politics, Governance

Hopium Chronicles, Pro-Democracy Advocacy: We Must Choose Freedom, Simon Rosenberg, right, Jan. 23, 2026. It’s time now to “abandon caution” and do what Americans do – fight for freedom and democracy, here and everywhere.

We will be talking a lot about the DHS vote in the days ahead but it’s important to understand the strategic backdrop to what’s happening in Congress this week. The passage of individual appropriations bills by Congress, something that has not been done in a long time, was a way for Congress to claw back some of the power it had recklessly given to Trump and Russell Vought. That both parties were able to come together, largely around Democratic funding levels throughout government, will end up being a bi-partisan, bicameral repudiation of Trump’s attempt to functional eliminate the legislative branch. Trump’s wild overreach and assault on our Constitutional order forced Congress – even Republicans in Congress – to fight restore their power and begin repairing our system of government.

Some excerpts from a Punchbowl News story this am:

Jeffries and House Democrats won here too. CRs give the Trump administration too much leeway in doling out federal dollars. From Democrats’ point of view, GOP appropriators came their way on nearly every issue, from topline spending numbers to eschewing “poison pill” policy riders.

“This is the most significant progress towards restoring regular order in this institution in many years,” Johnson told reporters following a huge bipartisan vote for the $1.2 trillion Defense-Labor-HHS-THUD package.

…….

OMB Director Russ Vought called for more than $100 billion in discretionary cuts on top of the hundreds of billions of dollars cut from Medicaid and other mandatory programs in the One Big Beautiful. House GOP appropriators drafted partisan spending bills at the Vought-proposed level knowing Democrats and the Senate would never go along with it.

Hill Republicans also did nothing when President Donald Trump unilaterally shut down USAID and tried to dismantle the Education Department, all while laying off tens of thousands of federal employees.

But the record-setting 43-day government shutdown — which Democrats triggered in an epic clash over Obamacare subsidies — was a watershed moment for House and Senate appropriators.

With House and Senate leaders’ tacit approval, the Four Corners on the Appropriations panels — Cole, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) — began to quietly hash out spending deals. It was clear that the Vought-pushed spending level wasn’t going to work, and they drafted bipartisan bills accordingly.

Appropriators and party leaders desperately wanted to avoid another CR. It’s not hyperbole to say that this was a critical moment for the 160-year old House Appropriations Committee.

“We got the bills done, and we came out very well, you know, and that should be proof enough that we need to make the process work,” DeLauro said in an interview.

“But first and foremost, it is reaffirming the power of the purse, as the Constitution said, resides in the Congress, and there we are not just going to let Russ Vought, an unelected bureaucrat … go run roughshod over the appropriations process.”

Is the deal here – claw back Congressional powers Trump had illegally appropriated for himself, get meaningful funding wins, accept ugly DHS appropriations – worth it? We will be debating this vigorously in the coming weeks. But at the very least our expectation should be, after these bills are passed, and hopefully signed by Trump, that our Congressional leaders offer a plan to work to rein in ICE and restore rule of law this year – not after we win back power in the elections.

In this week’s talk I argue that this first year of Trump was a good one for us electorally and politically. We’ve won elections of all kinds all across the country, some by enormous margins. New, promising leaders have emerged for the pro-democracy movement. We are likely to win the redistricting wars with Trump. The No Kings movement has brought millions of people to the streets, peacefully. The response we are seeing from every day citizens in Minnesota has been inspiring and powerful. Trump and his agenda have been powerfully rejected by the American people, including his various puerile strongman plays. His ironclad control over Congress had frayed, and he is starting to regularly lose votes on the Hill – as he is with these appropriations bills. Republicans have clearly grown weary of defending the indefensible.Subscribed

But where we were not successful in this first year of Trump, and should be not satisfied, has been in our ability to block the damage Trump is doing to the country and the world. Thus in 2026 we need to maintain our electoral and political momentum and seize the clear opportunity in front of us; and we must do more to stop him from wrecking the country and destabilizing the world. Here’s how I described this second responsibility in last Sunday’s post, Coming Together:

We are here now, deep into dangerous Mad King/Bond Villain territory. 2026 is no longer about affordability or restoring the ACA subsidies. It is about pro-democracy movement somehow coming together and forming a unified and far more powerful front against his dangerous Imperial and dictatorial designs.

In an ideal world, what we would see next week is a public statement signed by all Dem Governors, AGs, Senate and House Democrats that states clearly that

Rule of law must be re-established in America, ICE must be reined in, and Trump’s outrageous plunder and corruption must end

That he must back off his illegal and destructive territorial ambitions, end all these ridiculous tariffs, and re-commit to the Trans-Atlantic Alliance

Stake in ground. Unified voice. Muscular defense of liberty, democracy, and the American creed. Yes, it is time now for something akin to our Letter to America, and for our leaders to make clear, before it is too late, that we are willing to come together and fight for America, freedom, and democracy; and for us to start listing, clearly, his modern day “injuries,” “abuses,” and “usurpations.” That we elected an American President and not a dictator, and it is way past fucking time he start acting like one.

As we discussed yesterday the Europeans have shown us the way – no appeasement, only strength; come together for we are always stronger together than apart. To me these are the two big lessons from his history – appeasement signals weakness, and encourages authoritarian escalation; and we must stick together at all costs no matter how hard that is at times.

For when this appropriations battle ends, and Congress has re-asserted itself in a way that we have all wanted and called for, then it becomes time to really start focusing on “coming together” and creating more power for ourselves in this fight to stop the harms he is doing. We have more power than we understand. We just have to organize ourselves differently in order to be able to wield it. To do this we will, as EU President Ursula van der Leyen counseled this week, have to “abandon caution.” (cc Leaders Schumer and Jeffries).

Lincoln Square Media, Political Opinion: Winning isn’t a Vibe: Democrats Have to Expand the Court and Start Acting Like They Want Power, Kristoffer Ealy, right, Jan. 23, 2026. Pragmatism isn’t betrayal—it’s how you keep basic rights from becoming “negotiable.” One of the most common things people ask me—or wonder about me—is where I’m at on the political spectrum.

Don’t get me wrong: people know I’m left. The confusion is usually how left, and whether I’m “consistent” when I don’t behave like an online political influencer who has to pick one lane and never deviate, like my ideology is a GPS route that can’t handle a detour.

Because yes: in one article I can be admonishing Bernie Sanders about the way he talks to and about Black people when the topic of race comes up. And in my very next article I can be agreeing with Bernie Sanders about the fecklessness of Democrats and the way they constantly seem to capitulate to Republicans. To some people, that might look like I’m all over the place.

I’m not.The easiest way to describe me is: I’m pragmatic, and I want Democrats to win elections. Real simple. If I criticize a Democrat, it will always be followed with the caveat: still vote for them. I can hate a Democratic candidate during a primary and still understand the importance of that same candidate needing to win the general election—because there’s a 99.999% chance they’re running against a MAGA Republican who treats democracy like an expired coupon.

And I’m one of those Democrats who proudly admits to being a Democrat … not because I always love being a Democrat. Trust me, I don’t. But from a psychological perspective, team alignment matters. Politics is coalition work. It’s coordination. It’s collective action. It’s the difference between having a governing project and having a group chat full of righteous vibes.

That said, I completely understand why people who often vote for Democrats don’t want to align with the party.

Trust me: I get it. And you’re not wrong for feeling the way you feel.

What annoys me are the so-called “uber-progressives” who seem to go out of their way to derail Democrats and guarantee Republican wins—then act shocked when the right does exactly what the right always does once it has power.

Voting is not a favor to the person running for office. It’s not a Valentine’s Day card. It’s not a personality endorsement. It is an exercise of civic responsibility.

I’m talking about the Cenk Uygur-types who spent 2024 badmouthing Biden every chance they got, then tried to cosplay a presidential campaign even though he’s constitutionally ineligible for the office because he wasn’t born in the United States. And yes, that guy is exactly why I wrote, I Don’t Negotiate With White Supremacists after he decided it was cute to break bread with Charlie Kirk at a Turning Point rally. That’s not “building coalitions.” That’s laundering extremism with a selfie and calling it strategy.

I’m talking about Nina Turner in 2020 calling Joe Biden “half a bowl of shit”—as if politics is Yelp and the presidency is a brunch spot that forgot her side of toast.

I did not appreciate Marc Lamont Hill’s lukewarm endorsement energy for Kamala Harris in 2024. I definitely did not appreciate Susan Sarandon talking shit, because some people treat elections like they’re auditioning for the role of “Most Morally Pure Person in the Room,” and they don’t care who gets hurt when the credits roll. And Amanda Seales did not become the patron saint of Blackness and political know-it-all-ism by being right all the time. She became that by being loud all the time. Those are not the same skill.

What’s nuts is I share the views of a lot of these people on substance. I’m not allergic to progressive ideas. I’m allergic to political illiteracy—especially from people my age or older, because I know you had to have seen Schoolhouse Rock at least once. Which means, at minimum, you’ve had a cartoon teach you that government is not magic, power is not symbolic, and elections are not performance art.

Voting is not a favor to the person running for office. It’s not a Valentine’s Day card. It’s not a personality endorsement. It is an exercise of civic responsibility. I’ve voted in several elections. There have been several candidates I voted for that I did not particularly love, but I understood I have a list of things I want and need done—and most of the time the Democrat is the candidate who is going to do more of what I need done than the Republican.

It’s not “the lesser of two evils.” It’s a job. And sometimes when you’re hiring for a job, your choices are not perfect—but you still understand: these are the candidates.

And one of the biggest of those issues is the last thing too many people did not take seriously in 2016: the Supreme Court.

Trump got two Supreme Court justices early—then lucked into getting a third pick with the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And after that, Democrats still didn’t treat Supreme Court expansion like the five-alarm emergency it was.

It was talked about during the 2020 election season. In the 2020 vice presidential debate, Mike Pence and Kamala Harris even had a back-and-forth about court expansion and “court-packing,” but the problem was that nobody took the possibility of Supreme Court expansion seriously—like it was a weird theoretical question instead of a looming structural crisis.

And when Biden won in 2020—God bless him—he thought we were still playing by the old rules. In his defense, maybe he didn’t think Supreme Court expansion was needed. Maybe he was banking on a second term. Maybe he figured he’d get a couple retirements. He did get one excellent pick with Ketanji Brown Jackson, and maybe he thought he’d get at least two more picks in a second term.

Then 2024 happened, and Democrats managed to pull off a truly special form of self-sabotage after Biden’s horrible debate performance. Watching the party respond to that moment was like watching people trapped in a sinking boat decide the most important thing is arguing about who brought the wrong life jacket—while the water keeps rising.

And with the party’s reluctance to fully get behind Kamala Harris, here we sit in Trump’s second nonconsecutive term with the stakes getting uglier by the month. Trump is poised to get at least two more Supreme Court picks if the two oldest justices—Justice Thomas and Justice Alito—don’t make it out of this term due to retirement or an act of God. I’m not wishing anything on anyone, I’m just acknowledging what time does to human beings. Time is undefeated. And it does not care about your jurisprudence.

We are still in the fuck around stage. But if we don’t get a Democratic president who prioritizes expanding the Court, we’re going to be in the find out stage so fast it’ll feel like we time-traveled.

And yes—before Democrats start flinching like they just heard an “angry swing voter” sneezed on a focus group, let’s talk about language.

We are past exploratory committees. By 2029 and beyond, Democrats don’t need to explore anything except a spine.

When I say Democrats need to expand the Supreme Court, I do not mean pack the Supreme Court. Pack is something you do to a sack lunch. Pack is luggage. Pack is what you do when you’re trying to zip a suitcase that’s clearly begging for mercy.

The language has to be court expansion—and in the Democratic primary this has to be the language. Democrats cannot do what they usually have a penchant for doing and run away from this. They have to be bold and eloquent and make the case for why court expansion is necessary. They have to explain to voters that the rules have changed—and why they have changed.

Because “court-packing” is a propaganda frame. It’s meant to make Democrats sound like they’re doing something sneaky or corrupt—like they’re “rigging” the system—when the reality is that the system has already been bent out of shape by hardball politics and institutional capture. “Court expansion” is accurate. It’s clean. It refuses the right’s framing. And it keeps the argument where it belongs: legitimacy, democratic stability, and consequences.

Which matters even beyond domestic policy. That’s why I wanted to mention Trump’s lawless capture of Maduro in Venezuela. Whatever you think of Maduro—nobody is obligated to like him—the point is the precedent: a president deciding he can do whatever he wants abroad, whenever he wants, and dare anyone to stop him. A good Supreme Court can help make sure there are consequences for lawless executive behavior, instead of courts becoming a rubber stamp that treats “because I said so” as a constitutional doctrine.

And this is the part Democrats have to understand: you can’t “norms” your way out of an authoritarian project. You can’t commission your way out of a legitimacy crisis. You can’t hold a listening session with a power imbalance.

And this is the part Democrats have to understand: you can’t “norms” your way out of an authoritarian project. You can’t commission your way out of a legitimacy crisis. You can’t hold a listening session with a power imbalance.

You win. And then you govern like you understand what winning is for.

So when Democrats hear “expand the Supreme Court” and start reacting like somebody just suggested arson, I need them to take a breath and get serious. The question isn’t whether this makes you feel warm inside. The question is whether you want consequences for lawlessness and a Court that can function as a backstop instead of an accelerant.

Because if Democrats keep treating power like it’s tacky, Republicans are going to keep treating power like it’s oxygen.

And I’m not interested in being morally correct in the ruins. I’m interested in Democrats winning—so we can actually do the job.

So here’s the ask: act like winning is the first policy. Stop treating elections like a referendum on your personal purity and start treating them like the hiring decision they are. Vote in every race. Drag two people with you. Donate if you can. Volunteer if you can’t. Show up to the boring meetings. Pressure Democrats in the primaries and then back the nominee in the general like you understand what the alternative is. And when 2028 comes, don’t let them flinch—demand court expansion be said out loud, defended with facts, and pursued with urgency.

Democracy Docket, Legal Advocacy: 2026 congressional maps are still up in the air, Staff Report, Jan. 23, 2026. In many states, 2026 congressional maps are still up in the air. Minnesota rejects DOJ voter data demand that targets same-day registration.

We are barreling towards the 2026 election (or are even already “on the eve” of the election, if the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority is to be believed) but voters in a remarkable number of states are still facing uncertainty about which congressional district maps will be used.

After Missouri’s legislature passed a pro-GOP gerrymander at President Donald Trump’s behest, voters have fought to put the new congressional map to a statewide “veto referendum” — and they’re facing an all-out onslaught of obstacles from Republicans. We recently learned that the GOP spent nearly $2.9 million – an “astronomical” sum, according to a leading gerrymander opponent — just trying to stop voters from gathering signatures to hold the referendum. (It didn’t stop them.) Meanwhile, voters in Kansas City still have no idea which congressional map will be in place this year.

This month, federal judges rejected a GOP effort* to block California’s voter-approved redistricting plan for 2026, but the matter isn’t resolved yet. Republicans have appealed their loss to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Virginia, Democrats are still working to pass new maps in response to mid-decade redistricting in other states – and they’re facing a very tight timeline to pull off their plan.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) is hoping his state will also join the fray and redistrict in response to pro-GOP gerrymanders elsewhere, but some key Democrats still aren’t on board.

In New York this week, a state court ordered* a redraw of Staten Island’s congressional district – a decision that will impact New York’s congressional maps for 2026. The court found that the current map dilutes the voting power of Black and Latino residents. It ordered the independent redistricting commission to redraw the district by Feb. 6.

And of course, we’re keeping a close eye on how congressional maps could change in Florida, Louisiana and Alabama later this year, when the Supreme Court is expected to kneecap the Voting Rights Act. That would make it harder for minority voters to challenge racially discriminatory maps. Read more about it here.

*An intervenor defendant in the California case, as well as voter plaintiffs in the New York case, are represented by the Elias Law Group (ELG). ELG firm chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.

VOTER DATAMinnesota rejects DOJ voter data demand that targets same-day registration

Minnesota election officials are pushing back on the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)’s demand that they hand over unredacted records related to election-day voter registration and residency verification.

The Minnesota Secretary of State’s office refused the request, saying the DOJ failed to identify any legal authority allowing it to obtain the data – or evidence that Minnesota’s election policies are violating federal law.

It’s yet another front the federal government appears to be opening in its multi-pronged attack on Minnesota. Read more about the Minnesota demand here.

The Contrarian,  Opinion: Two governors take office and inspire hope, Jennifer Rubin, right, Jan. 23, 2026. Two women governors, Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, above right, and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, posing in a file photo on Capitol Hill when they were each members of Congress, took their oaths of office over the last seven days

Coming off massive victories, both showed remarkable modesty, magnanimity, and restraint — starkly differentfrom the triumphalism, meanness, and vindictiveness that defines Donald Trump’s reign of horror.

At her inauguration, Sherrill delivered powerful oratory to meet the moment of maximum threat from a wannabe dictator. Recalling the founding of our nation, she recalled the “list of grievances in our Declaration of Independence,” including [King George III’s] refusal to assent to laws, obstruction of justice, domination of judges, and maintaining “in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.” She noted that New Jerseyans grasped the similarities to the current mad king:

[W]e see a president illegally usurping power. He has unconstitutionally enacted a tariff regime to make billions for himself and his family, while everyone else sees costs go higher and higher. Here, we demand people in public service actually serve the public instead of extorting money to benefit themselves and their cronies.

Sherrill pledged that — in contrast to Trump — she would be fighting for the people and working to do things such as keeping energy prices under control, and would not be wasting taxpayer money on a ballroom. Governor Mikie Sherrill and Governor Abigail Spanberger

Spanberger, just three days earlier, demonstrated her political deftness as she reached across the aisle, practically daring Republicans to obstruct her. She offered the prospect of an endurable governing coalition that would reach well beyond the core base of Democratic activists.

Spanberger’s speech also drew on history, in her case from former Virginia governors such as Patrick Henry and civil rights heroes, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She declared that “our leaders and our fellow Virginians should join in common cause, find common ground, and pursue common purpose — this is the concept at the heart of what it means to be a Commonwealth.”

Spanberger posited a governing model starkly different from the reign of chaos, cruelty, and corruption across the Potomac. “I know many of you are worried about the recklessness coming out of Washington. You are worried about policies that are hurting our communities — cutting healthcare access, imperiling rural hospitals, and driving up costs,” she declared. “You are worried about Washington policies that are closing off markets, hurting innovation and private industry, and attacking those who have devoted their lives to public service.”

Sherrill and Spanberger wound up in the same place: a commitment to tackle real problems (e.g., high housing, energy, and healthcare costs). They both vowed that while they expected disagreements with opponents, they would seek to avoid rancor. As Spanberger put it, “we do not have to see eye-to-eye on every issue in order to stand shoulder-to-shoulder on others.” And while they spoke about their own life experiences and states’ unique challenges, both sought to recapture a sense of shared purpose and destiny. Sherrill’s vision: “Protecting liberty, ensuring that power is not placed in the hands of a few, but rather that the universal rights of all New Jerseyans are protected.”

All of this sounds like politics from another planet — pollyannaish or even naïve — if viewed from the vantage point of Washington, D.C., where MAGA fascists have an iron grip on Congress, and a megalomaniacal president reels from one crisis to another. But we should aspire to reclaim the sort of politics that we used to take for granted: normal and rational rhetoric, responsible governance, and personal decency.

Spanberger and Sherrill will provide a vivid contrast over the next three years between functional democracy (i.e., how Democrats would govern if the MAGA clown car were pushed to the side of the road) and MAGA authoritarianism. Imagine, they implore us, if Trump did not hold his party in line with fear and threats, and a true two-party system (both pro-democracy, sometimes even cooperative) could be restored. (Whether Republicans are capable of such a transformation remains an open question.)

Cynicism is easy. Too many Americans throw up their hands, declare all politicians are crooks and demagogues, and check out of politics. In fact, there is a world of difference between, on one hand, MAGA careerists engaged in nonstop lies, performative politics, and conspiratorial shenanigans, and, on the other, Democrats who trust voters can handle the truth, try to do right by their constituents, and focus on problem-solving.

Sherrill faces a different political environment than Spanberger. Each will need to craft policies attuned to their states. And Democrats, let alone independents and Republicans, will not agree with every decision or every compromise made by the new Democratic governors. But what matters is that they provide a model of earnest, clean, and competent governance.

Sherrill and Spanberger deserve immense credit for landslide elections that defied polls and pundits’ predictions. Their extensive preparation in advance of the inauguration and their polished speeches (ah, that is what a coherent executive leader sounds like!) remind us how diligent public servants conduct themselves. We honor their undaunted, unwavering, and unapologetic belief in the ideals of democracy and the potential for responsible politics. We are grateful for the much-needed reminder that our politics do not have to be defined by Trump and his mad courtiers.

Virginia and New Jersey residents should be proud of their picks, and hold them accountable for their promises. Collectively, as Spanberger and Sherrill promised, the public and elected leaders of these states might set a powerful example for the rest of the country, which is in dire need of adult, decent leadership and engaged, rational citizens.

 

Ivan Raiklin (R) and ex-Capitol Police Officer Michael Fanone had a heated exchange during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. Here are 5 things to know about Raiklin. 

Hindustan Times, Ivan Raiklin: 5 key things to know about activist who clashed with Michael Fanone at Jack Smith hearing, Shirin Gupta, Jan. 23, 2026.  Ivan Raiklin and ex-Capitol Police Officer Michael Fanone had a heated exchange during a House Judiciary Committee hearing. Here are 5 things to know about him.

Raiklin shook his hand with Fanone during the recess of the hearing, to which Fanone repeatedly cursed at him and told him not to “pretend.”

He said to the people gathering around the scene, “This guy has threatened my family, threatened my children. Threatened to rape my children … you sick bastard.”

The altercation was captured on video and widely shared online. Here are five things to know about Raiklin amid the clash:

Raiklin is an Ex-Army officer. Ivan Raiklin is a conservative activist, far-right political operative, and former reservist in the U.S. Army. Raiklin was a Green Beret before joining the Army Reserve as a lieutenant colonel. The Defense Intelligence Agency employed him as well. His military background has been a core part of his public persona. He has described himself as a defender of constitutional principles in political contexts.

Raiklin ran in a Republican primary. Raiklin also identifies as a registered Republican who has been active in electoral politics. He also ran an unsuccessful bid in the 2018 Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Virginia. He did not collect enough signatures to be eligible to run in the primary.

Later, he filed a lawsuit against the commonwealth and the party over the denial of ballot access; however, federal district judge John A. Gibney, Jr. rejected the motion because it was filed too late.

Raiklin gave birth to the “Pence Card” Theory.Raiklin gained notice after he originated the so-called Pence Card theory. Raiklin asserted that then-Vice President Mike Pence could legally block certification of the 2020 presidential election results. On December 16, 2020, Raiklin tweeted his theory to President Donald Trump, who subsequently retweeted it. The theory has since been widely discredited legally.

Raiklin is a conspiracy theorist promoting “deep-state” rhetoric. Raiklin has promoted a range of conspiracy-laden narratives involving claims of a so-called “deep state” working against conservative interests. He has self-assigned labels such as “Secretary of Retribution” and suggested plans advocated the widespread detention of public servants, civil society activists, and journalists who, in his opinion, ought to be “criminalized for their treason.”

Raiklin’s fight with Fanone. In 2021, Fanone and other law enforcement officials testified before the January 6 Select Committee on their experiences protecting the Capitol from rioters earlier that year. Raiklin was in the centre of pressuring Mike Pence to attempt to reverse the outcomes of the 2020 election.

In the altercation that happened on January 22, Raiklin tried to be friendly with Fanone, which the ex-police officer did not take well. He cursed at him, saying, “Go f**k yourself.” Fanone also alleged that Raikline threatened his family and also threatened to rape his children. However, in a post on X, Raiklin refuted those allegations and said that he might sue Fanone for defamation.

Source: https://www.justice-integrity.org/2155-jan-23-news-reports