POLITICO:
States move to rein in ICE after fatal Minnesota shooting
Legislators nationwide are advancing bills to curb immigration enforcement and limit cooperation with federal agents.
State legislatures across the country are accelerating efforts to shape immigration enforcement policy after the deadly shooting of a Minnesota woman by a federal agent, raising tensions between local leaders and the Trump administration.
State legislatures across the country are accelerating efforts to shape immigration enforcement policy after the deadly shooting of a Minnesota woman by a federal agent, raising tensions between local leaders and the Trump administration.
You can’t play nice with these goons.
Peter Wehner/The Atlantic:
The United States has turned dark, aggressive, and lawless.
Republican Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee, in defending Trump’s stance on Greenland, referred to the United States as the “dominant predator” in the Western Hemisphere. He meant it as a compliment.
Earlier this week, in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Stephen Miller, Trump’s most influential adviser, was asked, “Can you rule out that the U.S. is ever going to try to take Greenland by force?” Miller responded by saying that the official position of the Trump administration is that “Greenland should be part of the United States.” He wouldn’t take military force off the table. But what was most notable was Miller’s articulation of the MAGA worldview.
“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” Miller said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
STATnews:
The NIH has lost its scientific integrity. So we left
We tried to be optimistic about the Trump administration. But we could not continue
We are National Institutes of Health scientists and administrators with more than 50 years of collective civil service.
Or, more accurately, we were NIH scientists and administrators…
But we can no longer lend our credibility to an organization that has lost its integrity. In recent months, each of us independently reached the decision to resign in protest of the actions of an administration that treats science not as a process for building knowledge, but as a means to advance its political agenda. One of us resigned just Friday.
G Elliott Morris/Strength in Numbers:
Venezuela polling update: Republicans fall in line on comparatively unpopular action
Last Sunday, I wrote that Americans broadly opposed the invasion of Venezuela, but predicted that Republican voters would likely “fall in line now that the operation” had happened. That’s exactly what new data shows.
New polling from YouGov/The Economist (Jan. 2-5) and a standalone YouGov poll (Jan. 5-6) shows Republican support for using military force to overthrow Maduro jumped 22 points in two weeks — from 44% to 66%. Meanwhile, the share of Republicans saying Trump should seek congressional authorization fell 19 points, from 58% to 39%.
This is textbook “follow the leader“ dynamics. As political scientist Seth Masket noted after the Maduro capture, voters tend to update their foreign policy views toward the actions taken by their party’s leaders. In this case, for Republicans, that’s Trump. We saw the same increase in GOP support for bombing Iran after Trump did so last Summer...
But note that overall public opinion hasn’t moved much. Americans still oppose military action 44% to 33%, per YouGov/The Economist data, and 49% disapprove of Trump’s handling of Venezuela vs 32% who approve. And support for “using military force to invade Venezuela” is just 36%, vs 51% who oppose.
This pales in comparison to the rally effect for Iraq 1.0 and 2.0 under the two Bushes.
Public Notice:
Tim O’Brien on the decline of The Donald
"He talks in circles that would defy Magellan to make sense of."
O’Brien has covered Trump for more than 35 years and is author of the 2005 book, “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald.” (Trump responded to O’Brien’s reporting about how he exaggerated his wealth with a ludicrous but on brand $5 billion lawsuit.) We previously interviewed him during the 2024 campaign about Trump’s transformation from a TV huckster to “the centerpiece of an authoritarian movement that wound up rocking the Republican Party and US politics to their cores,” as O’Brien put it.
O’Brien has covered Trump for more than 35 years and is author of the 2005 book, “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald.” (Trump responded to O’Brien’s reporting about how he exaggerated his wealth with a ludicrous but on brand $5 billion lawsuit.) We previously interviewed him during the 2024 campaign about Trump’s transformation from a TV huckster to “the centerpiece of an authoritarian movement that wound up rocking the Republican Party and US politics to their cores,” as O’Brien put it.
Paul Krugman:
One Year of Trumponomics
What have we learned?
How is the U.S. economy doing?
Early every month the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases data on the state of the job market the previous month. The Employment Situation report is based on two surveys: a survey of employers and a survey of households. The employer survey produces, among other things, estimates of total employment. The household survey produces, among other things, estimates of unemployment.
While these data are noisy on a monthly basis, last Friday’s final job report for the year smooths out the noise and gives us an assessment of U.S. job performance over 2025 as a whole. And it definitely wasn’t great. As the chart at the top of this post shows, job growth in 2025 was clearly weak. In fact, the year of the Covid pandemic aside, it was the weakest in a decade.
This is not a hot economy. Indeed, by multiple measures it’s notably worse than the economy Trump inherited from Biden.
David French/New York Times:
Trump and Vance Are Fanning the Flames. Again.
President Trump is putting on a clinic about how to break the United States.
There are few things in American life more divisive than controversies over police violence. The racial reckoning of 2020 and the protests and riots that followed George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a police officer are still fresh in our minds. We also remember the unrest and violence that followed the police shooting of Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014.
The last time a president invoked the Insurrection Act and deployed active-duty troops to American streets was at the request of the mayor of Los Angeles and governor of California in 1992, during the Los Angeles riots that followed the acquittal of four officers on charges, including assault and the use of excessive force, after their severe beating, crucially videotaped, of Rodney King.
The King case was a preview of our modern dilemma. How do political leaders respond when video evidence causes the public to make up its own mind — regardless of what any judge or jury might have to say?
Video is the key. Speaking of...
