Because I have this lovely Sankey of oil imports and exports here that explains how Iran is currently threatening to zero China's economy that will not be solved even if you are correct:

The US customs agency is preparing a system that will be ready to process refunds on illegally ‌collected tariffs in 45 days without requiring importers to sue, a customs official said in a court filing reut.rs/4utouUW

“Kristi Noem tried to upstage the President. And Trump would never stand for that. You can run an agency into the ground, and trample all over Americans’ constitutional rights, and use government funding like it’s your own personal slush fund. But you absolutely cannot steal Trump’s spotlight."

I’ve seen enough. Not about the election. Just generally.

The glibness. The indifference. The carelessness. The utter lack of planning for a war against a country of 90M. The sickness of a man who acts on whim that will kill thousands not hundreds. The horror of a regime that enables this sickness. The broken body politic that votes in such malignancy.

Radiohead is demanding that the Trump administration take down a pro-ICE promotional video featuring a version of its song “Let Down” without permission. Full statement from the band:

Cover of The Lancet: @thelancet.com www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

The Heritage Foundation has released a 250-year roadmap to “save America.” The document is a how-to guide for subjugating girls & young women: a detailed plan to push them out of college, funnel them into early marriage and motherhood, and then trap them there. jessica.substack.com/p/theyre-com...

This is the second account - the first being in Chicago - of DHS agents mass detaining people and then *sorting them by race*.

Her community rallied so fast and so diligently. This is a victory to uphold and celebrate. Reminds everyone that it's worth fighting back.

“Parliament had turned over its constitutional authority to Hitler and thereby committed suicide, though its body lingered on in an embalmed state.” Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. p. 331

Again, there is one constitutional mechanism for solving problems like "The president threatens to nationalize & overturn valid elections." For the previous 45 presidents, it would have been used already. Everyone is just kidding themselves at this point & pretending there are other solutions.

Here's my obligatory posting of the flow chart I created two years ago to help folks understand whether they'll be able to register to vote under the SAVE Act. (Red lines are no, green lines are yes.) (I apologize that I don't have an alt description for this chart.)

Movie review from Guardian on Melania.

please remember that no matter how many “ICE is losing in MN” articles you read today, there is still a very real, urgent, ongoing crisis in Minnesota. people need food and they need rent money. that has not changed.

Union representing CBP and ICE agents calls for the firing of Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller.

Two Republican senators have now called on Kristi Noem to resign. If she won’t leave and Trump won’t fire her, we must remove her from office. Keep pressing.

Ecuador’s minister of foreign affairs has filed a protest with the U.S. Embassy after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents tried to enter the Ecuadorian consulate in Minneapolis without permission Tuesday.

if polling is so tilted against DHS/ICE that Laura fucking Ingraham is calling the post-9/11 creation of DHS unnecessary bureaucratic overreach on Fox News, the Democrats shouldn’t be aiming for moderate reforms as a negotiated compromise position - they should be pressing this advantage.

A lot of Dems are going to take Bovino and Noem being fired as the finish line, and it's very important to make it clear to them that it is a starting line

ICE is changing tactics in Maine: "Now, the volunteers in Maine say federal agents have started showing up at their homes and intimidating them or threatening arrest. Some of them, masked and wearing tactical gear, have issued stark warnings not to follow them." www.pressherald.com/2026/01/23/i...

A major newspaper publishing guide to help people identify the munitions their government is using against them is a real "Late Republic America" timepeice that future historians will comment on.

Further to my post about the Cities Church case and DOJ's effort to strong-arm Chief Judge Schiltz, DOJ has now *withdrawn* its request (that Schiltz reconsider the magistrate judge's refusal to sign five of the eight arrest warrants for which it had applied): www.stevevladeck.com/p/205-chief-...

No notes

“Freedom is not free. We have to work at it. Nurture it. Protect it. Even sacrifice for it.”

It’s a little confusing because on the ground everyone uses “ICE” as an umbrella term for feds of any stripe, but there are many agencies that have been thrown into this paramilitary invading force - ICE, ERO, Border Patrol, HSI, FBI, US Marshals. Border Patrol is easily the most militarized

Training doesn't fix this.

Pam Bondi just sent a letter to Minnesota officials saying ICE will leave if the state turns over its voter database to Trump. Guess what? This has never been about safety or immigration. It’s a pretext for Trump to take over elections in swing states.

Spotted just now in Minneapolis: Arizona CBP Agent Timothy Donahue (knit cap). Donahue has a history of physical violence, waving his sidearm, and threatening to shoot people. His social media feed was littered with racist, bigoted right-wing hate-speech.

Protester in Minneapolis just before disappearing in gas: "Fuck you! Stop. Damn! I'm 70 years old and I'm fuckin' angry!"

you can’t tell me that they don’t know this

Mortality rates: Mifepristone: 0.65/100,000 Penicillin 2/100K Viagra 4/100K Pregnancy in the US: 22/100,000 (some states see rates >60/100K) More people have died in ICE detention centers already in 2026 than will die from mifepristone all year. These politicians are extremely dangerous to women.

Monsters. Irredeemable. Unreformable. There is no technical or administrative fix for this, this is not a matter of training. This isn’t about policy at all. As a matter of democratic self-defense, ICE must not be tolerated.

The reality is that 2024 was a fundamental test of the moral character of the nation and we failed spectacularly. We’re living with the consequences now. Maybe we improve. I hope so.

I try to avoid hyperbole when it comes to Trump policies, but this is absolutely frickin’ insane—on about eleventy different levels. Massive, systemic Fourth Amendment violations because … reasons.

Boston was just ranked the #1 metro area in America for STEM professionals. • 9%+ of GDP spent on R&D (highest in the United States) • 2nd-most patents per capita • Best math scores in the country • Most top-100 engineering schools • 11% of all jobs are STEM

No one can be watching this Davos speech and reach any conclusion but that the President of the United States is mentally disturbed and that something is deeply wrong with him. This is both embarrassing and extremely dangerous.

Until today, Helsinki was our worst moment in public diplomacy, but this is the new Hall of Famer

It's not like the Supreme Court is about to hear oral arguments on whether this guy should have the power to invent reasons to fire members of the Federal Reserve board... (Narrator: The oral argument in Trump v. Cook is set to begin in about 20 minutes.)

16 years ago, SCOTUS ruled in Citizens United, allowing the ultra-rich to flood elections with dark money. Since then, billionaires have taken over our gov’t and screwed over working people. It’s time to pass my We the People Amendment to FINALLY reverse this disastrous ruling.

History will likely teach the US had more to lose by abandoning our European allies than it ever had to gain from Donald Trump

the President of the United States is insane - actually, literally, insane

BREAKING A federal judge STRIKES the words "United States Attorney" from Lindsey Halligan's signature and warns that he will refer her to disciplinary proceedings if she persists in calling herself one. Doc buff.ly/JvTKLlD Background buff.ly/Ay2iB6u

Shared clinical decision making was devised to help patients & their doctors make choices when the answer isn't clear cut. People who devised the approach fear it's being hijacked to undermine decades of study supporting #vaccines, @ericboodman.bsky.social writes. www.statnews.com/2026/01/20/s...

accurate headline: "Greenlanders in tears, Ukrainians die, Kremlin in joy" euromaidanpress.com/2026/01/19/g...

Even on here, I’ve noticed a distinct shift from people outside the country that’s essentially, “This isn’t funny anymore, fix your shit America.” I just wonder if our congressional invertebrates are feeling that at all.

"The wealth and power of oligarchs far exceed their *Gilded Age* peak."