Tomorrow’s front page of the Minnesota Star Tribune: Jan. 23, 2026

The Founding Fathers right now:

I grew up hearing stories from my father about how folks abducted by Franco’s secret police would routinely “escape” to the roof of police HQ and “commit suicide.” The obviousness of the lie was itself an intimidation tactic.

Cat wandered in front of the camera during the #aurora long exposure

The disorientating thing about the Trump era is that he and his hangers-on are blatantly unfit for office- a mix of authoritarian, bigoted, corrupt, cruel, dishonest, erratic, incompetent, and just plain stupid- but every new claim they make is treated seriously- like maybe they're right this time.

BREAKING: James Rodden, an ICE prosecutor who the Observer identified last year as the operator of an X account that posted “America is a White nation," “‘Migrants’ are all criminals,” and apparent praise of Adolf Hitler, appeared to be back at work Tuesday. www.texasobserver.org/ice-prosecut...

Trump taking over the Fed is how we get the inflation like the country had back in the 1970s.

This got lost in a comment, so going to put it back up here, because I think its super interesting. There was this Axios article that got some discourse play last year based on a survey where people were asked how much you have to earn to be financially successful. Gen Z says they need 587k

NEW: Data released by ICE shows that virtually the entire growth of detention in the last few months has been among people with no criminal record at all - no prior convictions (no matter how minor) and no pending criminal charges.

a few thoughts youtu.be/lERS4kJIQR8

It's not the only problem, but I think is a problem that a lot of Americans seem to think that our presidents serve as temporary elected dictators.

A remarkable trend that will come as a shock to you if your only info about NYC is from this Fox News. Homicides in NYC... 1990: 2,262 1993: 1,927 1998: 629 2001: 649 2013: 335 2019: 320 2021: 488 2024: 382 2025 (as of 12/28): 302

One problem for Ukraine is that a guarantee from Trump means nothing. It's effectively void as soon as the ink is dry and the photo op is over. And even after Trump is gone, the world may not trust us still- we've twice proved ourselves to be a people capable of electing a Trump.

James Merril’s poem “Christmas Tree,” written while he was dying of AIDS. 1995.

There will come a time when people of good faith are empowered to uphold the law. When that time comes, Illinois will have the testimony and records needed to pursue justice to its fullest extent. The truth of what Trump and his masked agents are doing in Chicago will be told.

And finally, the assault on Section 230. This is the endgame for independent speech. If you repeal 230, you don’t hurt Google or Meta—they have the lawyers to survive. You destroy the small forums, the independent blogs, the dissenters. You make the cost of speaking the truth too high to bear.

"ICE and CBP must be abolished" is the only reasonable position. We can debate the specifics of new agencies for immigration functions, but these agencies are simply too infected with a culture of impunity, racism, and fascism to continue. They're gangs with badges.

Housing affordability is important, but the idea that renters have less of a stake in their community and the country’s future is absolutely insidious and offensive.

Don’t look away. sahanjournal.com/immigration/...

A U.S. citizen who in October was dragged from her SUV by masked federal immigration agents in West Town testified before a congressional public forum in Washington Tuesday that she has experienced panic attacks and daily nightmares after being held in federal custody.

I worry about the short-term economic effects of wealth taxes, but I think the past decade has made clear that there's a scale of individual wealth that is incompatible with liberal democracy- we'll need to pass wealth taxes that make it impossible to amass the power that Musk and Bezos have accrued

The main fact about the Supreme Court is that the 9 justices who decided the Trump immunity case were nominated by presidents who'd won the prior 9 elections. Dems won the popular vote in 7 of those elections and the electoral vote in 5, but a 6 GOP/3 Dem court bestowed immunity upon Trump.

It starts with knowing the truth. Don’t allow yourselves to be gaslit into believing this is a real question.

fascism is so mundane as it's unfolding and that's part of what makes it so dangerous

Driving a car creates immense pressure to act selfishly & think in zero-sum terms, while also physically isolating one from the outside world, inhibiting both our ability to empathize with others & our comprehension of speeds and force It promotes & even rewards reckless, nihilistic individualism

it should probably be a bigger story that the richest man on earth and leading Republican is a fucking Nazi media needs to stop beating around the bush. this is Nazi shit.

There are 75,977 people born in Somalia who are now citizens of the United States, including those specific people. He is talking about US citizens. He is talking about *us*. The truth is that none of us are garbage, and the job of the US president is to represent all of us. We, the people.

"With the news that the administration plans to link the COVID vaccine to child deaths using data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), it’s worth revisiting how we actually detect whether a vaccine is causing harm." Excellent explainer from @drjenndowd.bsky.social from 9/2025😷🛟🧪

Just an absolutely gutting essay by Tatiana Schlossberg, a writer, mother of two young children, and cousin of RFK Jr who is dying of leukemia. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Various group-philosophical pessimisms will have you believing that universalism is impossible, not worth striving for. That if you don't oppress, you will inevitably be a victim. I refuse. We are best protected by democracy, by the rule of law, by human and civil rights.

This has gotten surprisingly little attention — it's not even on the front page of @science.org right now — but it's really hard to describe what the SAFE Research Act would do to US science and scientists without sounding insane www.science.org/content/arti...

Trump is the ultimate Facebook Boomer.

This isn't a closing election argument, it's Vidkun Quisling explaining why surrender is better than resistance.

Can't overstate how fucked up it is that unraveling what is arguably the greatest achievement in the history of humanity is now a motivating issue of one of the two dominant parties in the U.S.

This is the sound of candidates losing the struggle against the crushing weight of partisan gravity. This is nationalization and polarization and presidentialization swallowing everything else. This is the dangerous collapse of dimensionality, in one chart leedrutman.substack.com/p/the-modera...

I've been watching the Foundation series on AppleTV and I'm not sure if I'll make it thru- I like all the characters, but I hate when they speak to each other. Granted, they're usually in extraordinary situations, but no one talks like a normal human being- the dialogue is all so portentous.

Before the civil rights act was signed it was a great question how effective the civil rights movement was going to be, too. Difficult to predict the future but we're much better off that people tried so hard to do the right thing to the best of their ability.

Student government leaders of MIT, UVA, U of AZ, Dartmouth, UPenn, Brown, and Vanderbilt united in their opposition to the "compact" proposed by the Trump administration.

Here is an enduring challenge in my field, foreign policy. For decades, there was a broad and bipartisan consensus of US foreign policy abroad, within which presidents would vary. Things like "treaties will be honored" and "basing commitments will last as agreed to by our predecessor", predictable.

this is fucking obscene

If Dems win in 2028, Trump will likely pardon everyone in his administration. Starting now, Dems should run on ending the presidential pardon power. Maybe it makes no difference, maybe it wins elections, but maybe by 2028 Trump is so unpopular that we have the votes for a constitutional amendment.

This may be the last time you ever see a current issue of the CDC's weekly MMWR: www.cdc.gov/mmwr/index.h...

I don't know what congressional Dems should demand in a funding bill. The basic issue is that the Trump admin is trying to dictate spending in violation of Congressional appropriations. If Trump, Miller, and Vought can't be trusted to obey the law, what is the point of negotiating a funding bill?

Over the weekend ICE abducted an NIH contractor when he showed up to a courthouse for his green card hearing. He is documented. His wife is a citizen. He is also member of the skeleton crew of animal care staff that works through a shutdown, to ensure the health and wellbeing of research animals.

I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win

IMO this hasn't gotten enough attention: a recent memo at NIH announces that peer review will be devalued in determining which grants get funded, granting more power to political appointees to make decisions based on the admin's whims over scientific merit kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

The basic problem for Trump's popularity is that he won in 2024 arguing that the US (inflation, crime, immigration) and the world (foreign wars) were in chaos because of Dem weakness and we need a strongman to bang heads, but now he's the one creating chaos and people don't like it.

Odd whiplash in my feed from the daily back-and-forth between "the Trump administration is too weak and stupid to consolidate power into an authoritarian regime" and "the Trump administration is rapidly consolidating power into an authoritarian regime".