let’s venerate the brave souls of the Twin Cities, who came together to protect their neighbors from an invading force of masked paramilitaries. Let’s study and replicate their strategies, but be wary that the “great blonde beast” of ICE still lurks, its coffers swollen with taxpayer loot, wounded and chastened, but not slain, and, like many wounded creatures, is perhaps now even more unpredictable and dangerous.

Tom Homan announcing the “end” of Operation Metro Surge. (Screengrab from Fox News coverage.)

What are we going to do now?

– The Clash, The Clampdown

ICE is being chased out of Minneapolis. Hurray! Congratulations to the homegrown resistance, which rose up against an armed invasion of their city like the people of Stalingrad against the Wehrmacht, stood their ground in Arctic weather and clouds of tear gas drove the masked intruders away.

But hold on. Is ICE really leaving Minneapolis?

Yes, Gregory Bovino, that scarf-adorned brand ambassador for fascist couture, was abruptly yanked out of town and sent back to Southern California after his Border Patrol shock troops executed Alex Pretti in broad daylight and their feeble justifications for killing him crumbled from 12 different camera angles. Truth at 24-frames a second. Good riddance, Gregory.

But Bovino was swiftly replaced by Trump’s “Border (though he spends most of his time far from any border, including that of sanity) Czar” Tom Homan, the man whose cruel policies propelled Barack Obama to the heavyweight title of “Deporter-in-Chief.” It was Homan who advocated the caging of children as a tactic to deter border crossings. It didn’t work to keep desperate poor people from seeking a better life in the States. But it did serve to titillate the xenophobes of MAGA, where Homan became a minor celebrity on the rightwing creepshow circuit, a status he swiftly exploited to secure lucrative contracts for his expertise at making life even harder on brown-skinned people of any gender or age, from infants to geriatrics, than it already is here “Under the Red-White-and-Blue (Fitzgerald’s ungainly original title for The Great Gatsby). He eventually grew so full of himself that he walked right into an FBI sting operation, allegedly offering two undercover agents his services to secure them DHS contracts in the new Trump administration in exchange for a grocery bag full of cash.

After Trump was elected and took power, the FBI investigation into Homan’s contracts-for-cash influence peddling was quashed and Homan rose to new heights of power and arrogance, even lecturing two popes on matters of morality and the social teachings of the Catholic Church.

So, I ask again, who would believe Tom Homan, who was one of the key architects of what the twisted PR flacks at DHS dubbed Operation Metro Surge (All domestic invasions now have names like wars), which the department claims is “the largest immigration enforcement action ever.” Enforcement is another bit of misdirection. There’s been very little targeting of actual criminals. Instead, the “surge” has been characterized by a wave of unconstitutional searches, arrests and detentions. In the last three months, ICE and Border Patrol have arrested more than 4,000 people, shot at least three people (none of whom posed a threat to the agents who shot them), killed two people, injured and tear-gassed thousands and repeatedly tried to provoke confrontations with peaceful protesters, conflicts which they could use to escalate the violence of the crackdown.

The targeting of the Twin Cities came from the White House, which had habitually smeared the city’s Somali population as human “garbage,” who, according to Trump, Miller, Noem and Homan, were somehow plotting the “takeover” of the entire state of Minnesota. (In fact, the 87,000 Somalis who live in the Twin Cities make up less than 3 percent of the population of the metro area and the vast majority of them are American citizens.)

The resistance to ICE’s paramilitary-style raids in the city began only days after the operation was announced. Locally organized citizen networks began monitoring ICE’s movements and sending out alerts when ICE and Border Patrol units arrived in neighborhoods. Photographers, lawyers, and activists showed up to witness and document ICE’s raids. Soon, nearly every ICE raid was greeted by demonstrators. The Trump administration responded by targeting the protesters, calling them paid agents of George Soros and domestic terrorists.

Border Patrol’s roving commander, Gregory Bovino, an impresario of chaos and violence, was summoned to Minneapolis, less for his skills at tracking down wanted criminals–for which he has shown little talent–than his penchant for bombastic media appearances, made-for-TV raids and roughing up protesters. Soon, the inevitable happened. Renée Good was in the face and called a “fuckin’ bitch” by her killer as she bled to death in her car.

Three days later, Victor Manuel Diaz, a Nicaraguan immigrant who had been seized by immigration and quickly sent to an ICE prison in Texas, was found dead in his cell. DHS claimed he committed suicide. But offered no proof.

On January 18, ICE raided a house in Minneapolis without a warrant and seized a grandfather, and perp walked him out of his house in his underwear in freezing weather. The man was a US citizen and was later released.

Two days later, a five-year-old boy was seized by federal agents on his way home from pre-school and used as bait to arrest his father. Both father and son were shipped to an ICE detention prison in Texas, despite a court order and a pending asylum claim.

A civil rights lawyer and reporters were arrested and charged with federal felonies for observing protests. There was barely a provision of the Bill of Rights that the Feds didn’t almost gleefully traduce in Minneapolis. Then they killed Alex Pretti and most of the country (and the world) turned against them in horror.

Bovino was exiled, like some domestic William Calley, fingered as the scapegoat and now shunned even by bartenders in Vegas. And Homan was brought in to declare the end of Operation Metro Surge, the only time ICE has publicly announced the conclusion of an operation, which is in itself suspicious.

But again, why would anyone believe Tom Homan? This administration lies more frequently than it tells anything resembling the truth. It lies to the press. It lies to Congress. It lies to federal judges. It probably lies to itself.

During his press conference announcing the end of the surge, and in later appearances, Homan lied repeatedly. He lied about protester violence. He lied about paid protesters. He lied about ICE primarily targeting “criminal aliens.” He lied about ICE not engaging in racial profiling.

The “surge” has ended. But there are still two thousand immigration agents in the Twin Cities (nearly three times the number of local police), still doing what they’d been doing: making warrantless arrests, detaining US citizens, and harassing protesters and observers. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Yes, let’s venerate the brave souls of the Twin Cities, who came together to protect their neighbors from an invading force of masked paramilitaries. Let’s study and replicate their strategies, but be wary that the “great blonde beast” of ICE still lurks, its coffers swollen with taxpayer loot, wounded and chastened, but not slain, and, like many wounded creatures, is perhaps now even more unpredictable and dangerous.

So constant, if not eternal, vigilance remains the order of the day.

+++

Ilhan Omar speakingon Operation Metro Surge. (Screengrab from a video posted to X.)

Rep. Ilhan Omar Statement on Homan’s Announcement Ending Operation Metro Surge:

Two of my constituents, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were killed by federal immigration enforcement agents. A third was shot under questionable circumstances. Thousands were tear-gassed and shot with less-lethal weapons and harassed by masked agents. What we witnessed was not law enforcement — it was militarized racial terror unleashed on the streets of Minnesota as a deliberate attempt to demonize the Somali community.

Operation ‘Metro Surge’ has exposed just how far ICE is willing to go to intimidate and terrorize Black, Brown, and immigrant communities in our state. Nearly all Somalis in Minnesota are citizens, yet ICE agents harassed residents demanding proof of papers and, and when citizens sought to document these unlawful stops, they were met with lethal force. Latino, Asian, and other communities of color were forced into hiding regardless of their status, and those who dared to live their lives were often arrested with no cause. That was not public safety. That was an authoritarian abuse of power.

Nothing about what we witnessed was normal. Businesses are reeling from the economic devastation. Families are shattered. Children will carry the trauma of federal agents descending on their neighborhoods for the rest of their lives. The pain inflicted on this community will not fade — it will remain etched in their memory as the moment their own government turned against them.

Minnesotans are resilient, and the world has seen what makes our state strong: compassion, solidarity, and justice. But I am outraged and heartbroken that our state was forced to endure unfathomable suffering at the hands of this administration. The American people saw clearly that fear and cruelty were not side effects; they were the point.

It is past time for ICE operations to leave Minnesota. And it is time to move to abolish this rogue agency so that no community in America is ever terrorized like this again. But ending this operation is not enough. There must be justice and accountability. This administration must fully cooperate with independent investigations into the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Congress must withhold funding for unlawful actions and ensure federal dollars never bankroll civil-rights violations. We should be hauling cabinet secretaries and agency heads before congressional committees and demanding sworn testimony. They must explain who authorized these actions, what legal justifications were used, and why constitutional protections were ignored. Our businesses deserve economic restitution for the harm done. I won’t rest until we can ensure this abuse of power and terror can never happen again.

Minnesota State Senator Erin Maye Quade: On New Year’s Eve 2025, the DHS said they want to achieve 100 million deportations. That is a third of the population in the US. There are not 100 million immigrants in this country. They have deported US citizens. We absolutely should see Minnesota as the test case for how they want to remove one-third of the population from this country.”

  • Luke Abraham told me that Quade was the running-mate of Erin Murphy, the Medicare for All supporting former nurse and far more progressive candidate than Tim Walz, who helped get a lot of great progressive legislation through the legislature under Walz. He recommended that “she or Murphy should run for Minnesota Governor against Klobocop.”

  • Last week, Leqaa Kordia, a 33-year-old Palestinian woman who has been held for a year in an ICE prison in Texas, fell twice, hit her head and suffered a seizure. She regained consciousness in a hospital, where her arms and legs had been shackled to the bed. “The entire time I was chained,” Kordia said. “I felt like an animal.” Kordia is not a violent criminal. She’s never been convicted of a crime. But she was detained by ICE last March when she showed up for a scheduled check-in on her immigration status. Her only offense seems to have been showing up at Columbia University to protest the Israeli genocide in Gaza and sending money to her family. Doctors told Kordia that she was likely prone to seizures because of stress and a poor diet, both of which are beyond her control. “The food is so bad it makes me sick,” Kordia said. “We live in filthy conditions. The best medicine for me and everyone else here is our freedom.”

  • DHS admitted that Leqaa Kordia was arrested and held in detention for more than a year because she legally donated money to victims of Israel’s genocidal rampage in Gaza.

  • Bloomington, Minnesota, Police arrested Rashad Johnson, a background investigator for ICE, Homeland Security, and federal agencies, during a sex trafficking operation called ‘Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places.’ Johnson was charged with attempting to purchase sex.

  • On January 14, ICE agents pulled up behind a car driven by Julio Celis-Sosa and tried to pull him over, causing Celis-Sosa’s car to crash into another vehicle. Celis Sosa and his friend Alfredo Aljorna got out of the car and ran to a friend’s nearby apartment. The ICE agents caught up with them on the porch and a scuffle occurred as Celis-Sosa pulled his friend from the grip of an ICE agent into the apartment and shut the door. Almost immediately, an ICE officer fired at least twice through the door and into the apartment, where four children were present. One shot hit Celis-Sosa in the right thigh. Another bullet was lodged near a playpen. The ICE agents broke into the apartment and placed both Celis-Sosa and Aljorna in custody.

Later, the two agents involved in the shooting signed sworn affidavits that they had been assaulted and feared for their lives. According to their account, Celis-Sosa and Aljorna repeatedly beat them on the porch of the apartment with a snow shovel and a broomstick, leaving them no choice but to shoot through a closed door to save their lives. Then the DHS smear machine went into operation, labeling the two Venezuelan men as would-be murderers. Celis-Sosa and Aljorna were quickly charged with assaulting federal officers.

Those charges have now been dropped, after federal prosecutors say they discovered evidence “materially inconsistent with the accusations.” In other words, the ICE agents lied. The two ICE are (allegedly) under investigation, but not the people running the DHS propaganda machine, which treats each ICE arrest, regardless of the evidence, as a Social Media perp walk.

  • Rich Ruohonen, US Men’s Curling Team, Brooklyn Park, Minnesota:

I’m proud to represent Team USA and to represent our country. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention what’s going on in Minnesota and what a tough time it’s been for everybody. This stuff is happening right around where we live. I’m a lawyer. We have a Constitution. It allows us freedom of the press and freedom of speech. It protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures and makes it that you need to have probable cause to be pulled over. What’s happening is wrong. There are no shades of gray. It’s clear. I really love what is happening there now with people coming out, showing the love and the compassion, integrity and respect for others that they don’t know and helping them out. We love Minnesota for that. I want to make it clear that we love our country. We’re playing for the US. We’re playing for Team USA. And we’re playing for each other and our families and friends, who sacrifice. What the Olympics mean is excellence, respect and friendship. We all, I think, exemplify that. And we are playing for the people of Minnesota and the people around the country who share that compassion, love, and respect.

  • According to DHS’s own documents, fewer than 14% of the nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in 2025 had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses.

  • One of the differences between Trump and Stalin is that Stalin won all of his Show Trials, while Trump has now lost 4,000 of them, where federal judges have ruled that his masked police have arrested and jailed people illegally.

It’s hardly surprising that the Feds are getting roughed up in court. (LA public defenders have yet to lose a case.) Their ranks have been depleted of their most experienced prosecutors, either through firings or resignations by attorneys revolted by the political nature of the cases and interference from DoJ HQ or the White House. Most of the prosecutors trying the (weak or bogus) immigration cases are inexperienced, second-rate or incompetent lawyers, seemingly hired on the basis of loyalty and/or looks.

But the courtroom debacles haven’t stopped or even slowed the purge, though. The maximum terror effect is derived from raiding and jailing, even temporarily, the innocent and unsuspecting, trampling Constitutional rights without any fear of reprisal.

  • From Pro Publica’s investigations into the criminal conditions separated kids are existing in at the ICE Dilley Detention jail in Texas: “There were children in Dilley who were so distraught they cut themselves or talked about suicide…Moms told me that their kids had lost their appetites after finding worms and mold on their food.”

  • According to a report by NBC News San Diego, detainees at ICE’s Otay Mesa detention jail, a private facility run by CoreCivic outside of San Diego, have been tossing handwritten notes over the fence in lotion bottles, describing months without fresh food, near constant illness, and being held in small cages “just big enough for a chair.”

  • Philip Brown on being shot at by ICE three times (one bullet grazed his collar, two hit the passenger seat of his car) while stopped at a traffic light on his way to watch a basketball game in DC: “When it finally got quiet and I realized it was cops shooting at me, I asked them, ‘What is all of this for?’ They were looking around and saying, “‘We’re trying to figure that out.’ And I’m like, ‘How do you not know why you just shot at me?’”

  • Markwayne Mullin: “When you start talking about judicial warrants — it would be basically making every arrest, even if it’s a traffic stop, that’s like making judicial warrants only possible to arrest somebody with a DUI. That’s the same concept as having judicial warrants for arresting someone that’s entered the country illegally.” This Constitutional idiot is a US Senator…

  • Google complied with an ICE subpoena demanding a student journalist’s bank account and credit card numbers. This company is a menace to civil liberties. Stop using it. When it proclaimed, “Don’t be Evil,” it was a confession that they were, in fact, doing evil.

  • Rep. Delia Ramirez blasting DHS officials to their faces at a Congressional hearing this week: “I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol. Those activities were criminal and so are yours.”

  • When Ammon Bundy turns against ICE, you know you’re losing…

  • An ICE agent pointed a grenade launcher inches from the face of a protester during a demonstration last night outside the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles.

  • $38.8 billion: the amount ICE plans to spend buying large warehouses across the country and turning them into detention prisons for thousands of immigrants swept up in their raids.

  • Rep. Joaquin Castro says ICE should be disbanded after warrantless entry guidance, fatal shootings, and lack of accountability. “When you become that lawless, I don’t think you should have a role in immigration enforcement.”

  • Clearly, “defunding” ICE isn’t enough. The Democrats could “defund” ICE by 5% and then re-fund ICE by 10% in a supplemental spending bill. That they way they operate. ICE must be abolished.

  • This is how crazy it is out there: According to Pam Bondi’s whacked-out DoJ, federal prosecutors arrested a US citizen and Border Patrol officer, then charged him with “harboring an illegal alien.” What kind of harboring did he engage in? He maintained a romantic relationship with an undocumented person. He now faces a potential 10-year prison term.

How many more warnings do you need not to go to work for these people?

+++

  • “The greatest economy ever actually in history?” Did Kudlow share a few lines with Trump before this interview?

  • Nearly all of the job growth under Trump comes from the health care sector, signs of an aging, ailing and rotting Republic.

  • Julian Hinz, Research Director at the Kiel Institute and one of the authors of a study proving again that consumers are paying an average of $1,000 a year extra because of Trump’s tariffs: “The tariffs are an own goal. The claim that foreign countries pay these tariffs is a myth. The data show the opposite: Americans are footing the bill.”

That this had to be “proven” is a depressing assessment of the economic illiteracy of the country. That this proof will be dismissed or ignored by 35% of the country is evidence of terminal brain rot. Is an accumulation of microplastics in American gray matter to blame?

  • This study was backed up by a report from the New York Fed, which said consumers and businesses carried 94 percent of the economic burden associated with tariffs.

  • As home sales slid by 8% in January, the US housing market is about to face the same fate as every other real estate development Trump ever touched…

  • The percentage of Millennials who think they’ll never own a home has doubled since 2018.

  • In Oregon, job-seekers outnumber job openings by two-to-one…

  • Peter Navarro blamed the depressing job numbers on immigrants, even as they’re being expelled from the country: “The jobs report comes out tomorrow. We have to revise our expectations down significantly for what a monthly job number should look like … Wall Street has to adjust for the fact that we’re deporting millions of illegals out of the job market.”

  • Trump is threatening to block the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge connecting Detroit to Windsor, Canada, because, according to Trump, Canada has treated the US “very badly.” (Three-year-olds throw fewer and more rational tantrums.)

  • They just make this shit up as they go along…

Reporter: The President threatened to block the new Gordie Howe Bridge, which would connect Detroit to Canada. This is a bridge that was fully paid for by Canada. It used American labor to construct it. It used American steel to construct that bridge. The president in 2017 was actually in favor of this bridge. Why has the president changed his mind as it relates to this bridge?

Leavitt: The fact that Canada will control what crosses the Gordie Howe Bridge and owns the land on both sides is unacceptable to the president. It’s also unacceptable that more of this bridge isn’t being built with more American-made materials. The US should own half of the bridge.

+++

  • A year of Trump is apparently enough to make voters long for…Joe Biden? But surely it’s time to abandon any political affection for either of these sundowning, genocidal geezers.

  • You might be able to fool White Protestants and White Catholics some of the time, but you can’t fool Black protestants (at least Trump can’t. Clinton, Biden and Obama did)…

  • A large majority of voters (64%) think that Trump will attempt to deploy immigration enforcement agents to interfere in the 2026 midterms. A majority of voters (56%) also support blocking ICE enforcement actions at polling locations or other election-related sites. 45% of Republicans think Trump will try to use immigration enforcement agents to interfere with the midterms — and most of them are fine with it!

  • Last week, Trump expressed his desire to “nationalize elections” in “at least 15 states.” This week, Trump vowed to force voter ID cards on the American electorate, “whether approved by Congress or not.”

  • Kristi Noem: “When it gets to Election Day, we’ve been proactive to make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country.”

  • If you want to rig an election, the best way to do it is to say exactly what you’re going to do and if no one stops you, just do it, which seems to be exactly what’s happening…

  • Trump Approval Rating

U.S. Adults

Approve: 37% (-3) Disapprove: 56% (+2)

Registered voters

Approve: 40% (-2) Disapprove: 57% (+2)

Generic Ballot

Democrats: 44% (+1) Republicans: 38% (-2)

Trump’s net approval on issues

  • Immigration: -9
  • Economy: -19 (new low)
  • Inflation: -22

Trump Approval Rating (ages 18-29)

Feb 2025: 52–43% (+9) Apr 2025: 32-53% (-21) Dec 2025: 29–66% (-37) Feb 2026: 25–67% (-42)

YouGov.

  • “We had lunch on the island, that is true, for an hour,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick admitted to the US Senate that his relationship with Epstein was much deeper than he previously copped to and included a trip to Epstein’s Caribbean Island. Who goes to an Island for “an hour?” Someone quipped, “No way it even lasted an hour.” Depending on the meaning of “it,” that’s almost certainly true.

CNN: Do you think Howard Lutnick (for lying about his association with Epstein) should resign?

Mike Johnson: Of course not. It’s absurd. As Commerce Secretary, he’s done an extraordinary job for the country. Thomas Massie should stop playing political games.

CNN: Do you have any concerns about Lutnick’s ties to Epstein?

Johnson: I don’t know anything about it.

  • Like Bernie before him, Zohran Mamdani has gifted the Democrats a roadmap for how to win elections. Odds on them following it? Less than zero…

  • Meanwhile, in a YouGov poll, 18% of Americans would support their state seceding from the Union. Seems low to me. My secession plan is for the legalized marijuana states of the West (AK, HI, WA, OR, CA, AZ, NV, CO, NM and MT) and the tribal reservations to form their own confederation and leave ID, WY, and UT to fend for themselves. Montana has more than 100 nuclear-armed ICBMs, in case the rest of the country tried to stop us.

  • Washington Post on how the FBI tricked a federal magistrate into approving a subpoena to raid the Fulton County elections office and seize ballots from the 2020 elections by submitting debunked conspiracy theories as evidence: “Many of the irregularities they raised — including claims of duplicate ballots and missing ballot images — have been previously explained by county officials as the types of routine errors that frequently occur, are typically corrected in the moment, and are not significant enough to sway the outcome of an election. Independent reviews have backed up that conclusion.”

  • The US Marshals Service’s defense for one of their thugs, viciously kicking a small dog and cracking its ribs: “….the deputy marshal’s action was not done with malice.” Police kill at least 10,000 dogs a year, almost none of them posed a threat to the cops. Not surprisingly, a study of dog killings (canicide) by cops in Los Angeles County from 2010 to 2017 reveals that they are ‘clustered to a statistically significant degree in predominantly low-income communities of color.”

  • Rep. Tim Burchett: “A lot of Congressmen probably should be in jail.” And not only the Congressmen, Tim. Just lock the doors on the Capitol while it’s in session, slip them some bologna sandwiches on stale Wonderbread once a day, pipe in some Kid Rock and sort out the innocent from the guilty later…

  • Rep. Gym Jordan lecturing protesters during the Epstein hearings: “You have a right to protest in the street, but that doesn’t give you a right to go into the Capitol and disrupt Congress.” Say what, Gym?

  • According to the Wall Street Journal, Corey Lewandowski, who clings to Kristi Noem like a Lone Star tick, “fired a U.S. Coast Guard pilot after Noem’s blanket was left behind on a plane.”How Corey the Pugilist has the power to fire anyone is a mystery, never mind a member of the Coast Guard. But he was forced to quickly rescind his decision when he and Puppy Killer realized they needed someone to fly them home.

  • Pam Bondi lost her shit at a Congressional hearing this week on her (mis)handling of the Epstein files, screeching at members of Congress, refusing to answer direct questions, offering unsolicited, slobbering praise for Trump, veering off into bizarre non sequiturs about the stock market and repeatedly reminding people who needed no reminder that she was the attorney general.

  • Not a fan of the pro-Israel hawk Jared Moskowitz by any means, but this is a pretty funny line he dumped on Pam Bondi’s lap this week: “Trump’s name appears more times in the Epstein files than ‘God’ does in the book about God.”

  • The question is whether Trump’s name appears more often in the Epstein files than Epstein’s…

Screenshot

  • We pay these people’s salaries…

REPRESENTATIVE JERROLD NADLER (D-NY): How many of Epstein’s co-conspirators have you indicted? How many perpetrators are you even investigating?

ATTORNEY GENERAL PAM BONDI: First, you showed it, I find it–.

REPRESENTATIVE JERROLD NADLER (D-NY): How many have you indicted?

ATTORNEY GENERAL PAM BONDI: Excuse me! I’m gonna answer the question!

REPRESENTATIVE JERROLD NADLER (D-NY): Answer MY question!

ATTORNEY GENERAL PAM BONDI: No, I’m going to answer the question the way I want to answer the question!

REPRESENTATIVE JERROLD NADLER (D-NY): No, you’re going to answer the question the way I asked it!

ATTORNEY GENERAL PAM BONDI: Chairman Jordan, I’m not going to get in the gutter with these people, but I’m going to answer the question.

REPRESENTATIVE JIM JORDAN (R-OH): Again, the time belongs to the.

REPRESENTATIVE JERROLD NADLER (D-NY): Reclaiming my time!

ATTORNEY GENERAL PAM BONDI: I think it’s very interesting.

(CROSSTALK)

ATTORNEY GENERAL PAM BONDI: I think it’s very interesting that he talks about they indicted, the president said they indicted him twice.

REPRESENTATIVE JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Stop the clock and restore his time!

They sure did! Oh, okay, here we go with these theatrics.

REPRESENTATIVE JIM JORDAN (R-OH): The time belongs to the gentleman from New York. We will give you a few more seconds. We will do that, but when you ask a question, the witness gets to answer. You may not like the answer, but she gets to.

REPRESENTATIVE JERROLD NADLER (D-NY): The question was, how many of Epsi…

ATTORNEY GENERAL PAM BONDI: They don’t like the answer, Chairman, because it’s honest! So he asked a four-minute question.

REPRESENTATIVE JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Restore 45 seconds to Mr. Nadler, please, Mr. Chairman. You can let her filibuster all day long, but not on our watch. Not on our time. No way. And I told you about that, Attorney General, before you started. Before you started.

ATTORNEY GENERAL PAM BONDI: You don’t tell me anything! Washed up (inaudible) lawyer.

REPRESENTATIVE JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): I DID tell you because we saw what you did in the Senate!

ATTORNEY GENERAL PAM BONDI: Not even a lawyer.

REPRESENTATIVE JIM JORDAN (R-OH): The committee will be in order.

REPRESENTATIVE JERROLD NADLER (D-NY): I should get back at least 45 seconds.

REPRESENTATIVE JIM JORDAN (R-OH): We will give you a few more seconds. I said that already.

REPRESENTATIVE JERROLD NADLER (D-NY): 45 seconds.

REPRESENTATIVE JIM JORDAN (R-OH): Okay. I’m timing right now, Mr. Nadler.

REPRESENTATIVE JERROLD NADLER (D-NY): Reclaiming my time. The answer to my question, how many of Epstein’s co-conspirators has she indicted, is zero.

  • Bondi v. Raskin on the Ellipse of the White House at Trump’s cage fight event this summer?

  • At -70%, Keir Starmer is the most unpopular British Prime Minister since records began, according to a new Economist poll.

  • JD Vance took a break from chastising US Olympic athletes for exercising their 1st Amendment rights to post a photo of him and Usha laying a wreath at a memorial to victims of the Armenian Genocide. But Vance had to quickly delete the tweet because it violated his own Administration’s policy of refusing to recognize the Armenian Genocide…

  • Sports Reporter Sarah Spain: “When I see JD Vance’s eyeliner face, I literally feel ill. I feel like I just looked at a demon, like the devil, and I don’t even believe in that. My body felt like when you have been spooked and you have a little tingle that feels like, ‘Ooh, something’s not right.’ “Or like when you get in a situation and you feel like, ‘Oh, some of the energy’s bad, something could go wrong here, maybe I should get out of here,’ or something’s dangerous…He’s a human being, allegedly, but he exudes demon energy….It was disgusting to me.”

  • I love Sarah Spain and find this account very funny and an accurate description of the sinister creepiness of Herr Vance. But Lola and I have been listening to a great recording of The Master and Margarita on our morning and evening walks and let’s face it, Professor Woland (“Hope you guess his name”) has more charm, intelligence and wit than JD Vance. Even Behemoth the Demonic Cat has more charm than JD Vance. Speaking of The Master and Margarita, while the South Americans get credit for “magical realism”, can there be much doubt that the Russians invented ‘magical surrealism?” Gogol invented the genre, but Bulgakov took it to darkly hilarious new heights. Is there a funnier novel about people who keep disappearing or, more precisely, being disappeared? Stalin didn’t think so. He thought it was so funny that he banned its publication. And the novel stayed banned even after Bulgakov’s fellow Ukrainian, Nikita Khrushchev (who lacked Stalin’s morbid sense of humor), pursued de-Stalinization and wasn’t published in full until 1967, which is around the time Marianne Faithfull, out of sympathy, gave a copy to poor gloomy Mick Jagger, to cheer him up. The rest, as they say, is musical history.

And, as Diana Machado Salles said: “To bring it back to South America, Jagger turned it into a Samba.”

+++

  • Interior Secretary Doug Burgum: “CO2 was never a pollutant. When we breathe, we emit CO2. Plants need CO2 to survive and grow. They thrive with more CO2. So the whole endangerment thing opens up an opportunity for the revival of clean, beautiful, American coal.” We’re governed by a freak show of morons and maniacs.

  • A large majority of Americans in every congressional district favor the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions as pollutants.

  • Jeva Lange, Heatmap: “Last year, there were more wildfires east of the Mississippi than west of it. Over the past 40 years, the East and Southeast have seen a 10x increase in the frequency of large fires. All of New Jersey could burn through in 48 hours.

  • While wolves are making their way from Oregon down the spine of the Sierra to Los Angeles, wolf restoration in Colorado isn’t going nearly as well. At last count, the state had only 18 wolves, with possibly a few unreported pups. The state has released 25 and attracted a couple of immigrants from Wyoming. But overall, the mortality rate is approaching 50% for the reintroduced wolves. And the Trump administration has blocked the state from receiving any new wolves this year. To date, only four females have bred and two of those might have lost their entire litters. Unless new wolves arrive, the existing population is likely to start inbreeding. Not a healthy scenario.

  • Greg Grandin responds to Claudia Sheinbaum’s announcement that border-crossing MAGA Americans and their unvaxxed broods have reintroduced measles to Mexico: “What is the United States to Mexico? Assault rifles, insatiable demand for drugs, cheap corn and pigs (nafta did to Mexico’s peasantry what Stalin did to Russian kulaks), empty calories, counterinsurgent training, and now measles.”

  • New study in JAMA on post-pandemic survival rates for cancer patients: “This cohort study found that individuals diagnosed with cancer in 2020 and 2021 experienced worse short-term survival than those diagnosed between 2015 and 2019, suggesting substantial harms associated with cancer care disruptions during the pandemic.”

  • RFK Jr: “I’m not scared of a germ. I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.” And you wonder how he ended up with a brain worm…

  • As if that revelation wasn’t enough to turn your stomach, now comes news that RFK, Jr. went “dinosaur bone hunting” with Epstein and his pimp Ghislaine Maxwell. Tod Browning’s film Freaks ain’t got nothing on the Trump inner circle…

+++

  • During the recent government shutdown, several Army civilian employees were ordered to go to work anyway and sign time cards saying that they hadn’t, which may have exposed them to federal criminal charges. The workers, not their bosses.

  • George Randall Leak, III: “They probably made them watch MELANIA, too.”

And, in fact, Business Insider reported that members of the US military were pressured to go see “Melania” by their commanders. They’ll probably be showing the film on a 24-hour loop to torture people held in CIA black sites and ICE detention jails…

  • Steve Bannon sought Jeffrey Epstein’s help for plotting strategies against Pope Francis, with Bannon telling the sex trafficker that he hoped to “take down” the Hippie Pope, according to newly released documents from the Epstein Files. One pedophile ring vs. another.

  • For obvious historical reasons, the Germans know better than anyone how to satirize Trump where it hurts…

  • Confederate battle flags up, Pride flags down…

  • The Stonewall riots never should have ended.

  • Another Trump-pardoned J6 rioter got convicted of an awful felony. This one, Andrew Paul Johnson, for child sexual molestation. “Deplorables” may not have been a strong enough word for MAGA’s ranks of puppy-killing, measles-spreading, child molesters….

Mugshot Hernando County, Florida Sheriff’s Office.

  • CBS Evening News producer Alicia Hastey sends a scorching resignation letter describing how, under the Ellison/Weiss regime, stories are “evaluated not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations.”

“There has been a sweeping new vision prioritizing a break from traditional broadcast norms to embrace what has been described as “heterodox” journalism. The truth is that commitment to those people and the stories they have to tell is increasingly becoming impossible. Stories may instead be evaluated not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of ideological expectations – a dynamic that pressures producers and reporters to self-censor or avoid challenging narratives that might trigger backlash or unfavorable headlines.

  • Bari Weiss buries CBS News, which, like the emasculation of the WaPost, was probably the goal.

  • James Wolcott on the letters (and tenuous literary standing) of John Updike:

Suburbia was central to Updike’s battle map as a novelist because it’s where the eros could be waged in close quarters with access to actual trees and picnic grounds for gulps of fresh air, whereas free love in Greenwich Village or some San Francisco beatnik pad was sordid and itchy. Post-Pill, marriage was no longer a sealed coffin, a death-do-us-part pact; there were escape hatches, diversionary manoeuvres. The throbbing heart and loins of the Updike letters is the telenovela of passion, angst, guilt and other spicy fixings.

  • While editing Jonah Raskin’s provocative essay on Wuthering Heights for Weekend Edition, I was reminded of Cockburn’s off-hand remark after I gave him a hard-to-find copy of Luis Buñuel’s great film of the book for a Xmas present: “How did that young woman (he actually said, “little girl,” but even Alex needed an editor) write the greatest novel in the English language?”

  • Here’s the incredible final scene of Buñuel’s version of Wuthering Heights, which will never be surpassed. They should just stop trying…

  • Georges Bataille: “Bronte had the sort of knowledge which links not only love with clarity, but also with violence and death–because death seems to be the truth of love, just as love is the truth of death.”

  • RIP to the man bassist Cait O’Riordan called the “Big Clobberer,” Andrew Ranken, the drummer, whose furious attack propelled the music of The Pogues. Ranken also came up with the inimical title for the band’s seminal album, Rum Sodomy and the Lash, quipping that it “seemed to sum up life in our band.”

  • The first six weeks of 2026 feel like one long song by The Cure. But which one? There is No If? The Same Water Deep as You? How about Homesick:

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