Saturday, January 31, 2026

Epstein Files Release


Aaron Blake at CNN:
President Donald Trump’s name shows up a lot in the latest batch of files, which includes material ranging from investigative documents to emails to news clips. A few of the mentions stand out so far.

First is an email chain from August 2025 in which an apparent FBI employee displays a list of apparently unsubstantiated tips involving Trump and Epstein – many of them quite salacious.

“Yellow highlighting is for the salacious piece,” one official writes to explain how the allegations were being sorted.

Trump has never been accused by law enforcement of Epstein-related wrongdoing, and he has denied engaging in any.

The allegations appear to be unverified, and the officials note that some are secondhand information. The document notes that in many instances, there was no contact made with the individuals who sent in the allegations, or no contact information was provided.

Some of the allegations were followed up on. One was sent to the FBI’s Washington field office to conduct an interview, and another was deemed not credible, according to the document.

There are also allegations made in the document against former President Bill Clinton, who has denied wrongdoing related to Epstein.


Two files featuring that particular email were later removed temporarily from DOJ’s website then restored. A DOJ official said the document had gone down “due to overload.”





It’s not clear why officials created the list of allegations related to Trump last year. But the political sensitivities of Trump’s proximity to Epstein – with whom he associated for years before Trump said he ended their relationship in the mid-2000s – were made abundantly clear last year when Trump at one point falsely denied having been told his name was in the files.

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Friday, January 30, 2026

A Burst of Fascism

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.The DHS killing of a disarmed man is among the worst.

April Rubin at Axios:

Journalist Don Lemon was arrested by federal agents on Thursday night following backlash over his coverage of an anti-ICE protest in a Minnesota church, his lawyer said Friday morning.

Why it matters: The former CNN anchor's arrest comes after a magistrate judge rejected the DOJ's initial attempt to bring a case against him last week, citing insufficient evidence that he violated any law.

His charges were not immediately known.

Lemon was targeted by conservative influencers and politicians after interviewing protesters, congregants and a pastor during the protest earlier this month.

...

Zoom out: Georgia Fort, an independent journalist, was also arrested for her coverage at the church protest, she announced during a livestream."It's hard to understand how we have a Constitution, Constitutional rights, when you can be arrested for being a member of the press," Fort said.


Josh Dawsey,  Dustin Volz and Sadie Gurman at WSJ: 

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has spent months investigating the results of the 2020 election that Donald Trump lost, according to White House officials, a role that took her to a related FBI search of an election center in Georgia on Wednesday.

Gabbard is leading the administration’s effort to re-examine the election and look for potential crimes, a priority for the president, the officials said.

The national intelligence director is usually focused on ensuring the president has the best intelligence available to make national-security decisions. Gabbard has been sidelined from some of those deliberations, including the Venezuela operation earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

She has begun studying information about voting machines, analyzed data from swing states and pursued theories that President Trump has promoted to claim the 2020 election was unfairly taken from him, the officials said, particularly on foreign government interference.

She has regularly briefed Trump and chief of staff Susie Wiles about her inquiry in recent months along with others involved in the investigation. Those include senior Justice Department officials, Trump’s outside ally and lawyer Cleta Mitchell and Kurt Olsen, a lawyer who pushed claims in 2020 that the election was stolen and joined the administration as a special government employee.




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Thursday, January 29, 2026

Democratic Problems

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  Democrats are gaining from Trump's problems --but remain weak among key elements of the electorate.

Thomas B. Edsall at NYT:
Four studies conducted in the second half of 2025 reveal the depth of the predicament Democrats face. Even as support for Trump deteriorated, each analysis found that the public, including many Democratic voters, had a dismal view of the Democratic Party.

“Many Democrats see their political party as ‘weak’ or ‘ineffective,’” The Associated Press reported based on a July poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which it said also found “considerable pessimism within Democratic ranks.”
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The A.P. quoted Cathia Krehbiel, a 48-year-old Democrat from Indianola, Iowa, who called her party “spineless,” adding that “they speak up a little bit and they roll right over.”

A Pew Research survey showed that in late September “67 percent of Democrats say their own party makes them feel frustrated.” Asked why, “the dominant pre-shutdown response of frustrated Democrats (41 percent) is that the party has not pushed back hard enough against the Trump administration.”

In October, the group behind the centrist Democratic WelcomePAC issued “Deciding to Win,” an analysis of “election results, hundreds of public polls and academic papers, dozens of case studies, and surveys of more than 500,000 voters” that found that “since 2012, highly educated staffers, donors, advocacy groups, pundits and elected officials have reshaped the Democratic Party’s agenda, decreasing our party’s focus on the economic issues that are the top concerns of the American people.”

The authors tracked key word usage in Democratic platforms from 2012 to 2024 and found the frequency of the word “hate” increasing by 1,323 percent; “white/Black/Latino/Latina” by 1,137 percent; “L.G.B.T./L.G.B.T.Q.I.+” by 1,044 percent; and “equity” by 766 percent.

Over the same period, usage of “father/fathers” fell 100 percent; “crime/criminal” by 30 percent; “responsibility” by 83 percent; “middle class” by 79 percent; and “veteran” by 31 percent.

Finally, in November, Politico’s Elena Schneider reported the findings of a 21-state research project funded by Democracy Matters involving polling, dozens of focus groups and message testing.

“Working-class voters see Democrats as ‘woke, weak and out of touch’ and six in 10 have a negative view of the party,” she wrote, later adding:
The initial feedback is grim: Working-class voters don’t see Democrats as strong or patriotic, while Republicans represent safety and strength for them. These voters “can’t name what Democrats stand for, other than being against [Donald] Trump,” according to the report.
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Wednesday, January 28, 2026

Gun Politics and the Killing of Alex Pretti


Republican lawmakers are caught between the powerful gun lobby and top Trump officials over the deadly shooting of Minneapolis ICU nurse Alex Pretti.

Why it matters: The GOP has a long, mutually beneficial history with influential Second Amendment rights groups. The tragedy in Minneapolis is complicating their political messaging.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) was asked Tuesday about Trump's latest comments on Pretti carrying a gun. "One. It's a constitutional right. Two. It's legal under the laws of the state of Minnesota," Thune said. "Perhaps he didn't have ID, but with that exception, he was in compliance with the laws. He has a constitutional right."

Between the lines: "You can't have guns. You can't walk in with guns," President Trump told reporters on Tuesday in response to questions about the fatal shooting in Minnesota."I don't like the fact that he was carrying a gun that was fully loaded," Trump told Fox News later Tuesday.

...

The big picture: The Gun Owners of America released a statement after Pretti's death emphasizing that "peaceful protests while armed isn't radical — it's American."The Gun Owners Caucus of Minnesota criticized statements by FBI director Kash Patel, saying he was "completely incorrect on Minnesota law. There is no prohibition on a permit holder carrying a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines at a protest or rally in Minnesota."

The other side: "PRESIDENT TRUMP IS EXACTLY RIGHT," Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told Axios on Tuesday. Norman said people shouldn't carry guns into situations where people are interfering with law enforcement operations.

The bottom line: The NRA has spent tens of millions of dollars on federal elections, primarily backing Republican candidates, according to data compiled by Open Secrets.That gives the gun rights group enormous leverage inside the party.

Norman urged "Marshall Law" as a way of overturning the 2020 election. 

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Tuesday, January 27, 2026

Donald Trump, Fascist

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.The DHS killing of a disarmed man is among the worst.

Jonathan Rauch at The Atlantic explains why he has abandoned his earlier reluctance to call Trump a fascist:

Ehen the facts change, I change my mind.Over Trump’s past year, what originally looked like an effort to make the government his personal plaything has drifted distinctly toward doctrinal and operational fascism. Trump’s appetite for lebensraum, his claim of unlimited power, his support for the global far right, his politicization of the justice system, his deployment of performative brutality, his ostentatious violation of rights, his creation of a national paramilitary police—all of those developments bespeak something more purposeful and sinister than run-of-the-mill greed or gangsterism.
Recent events have brought Trump’s governing style into sharper focus. Fascist best describes it, and reluctance to use the term has now become perverse. That is not because of any one or two things he and his administration have done but because of the totality. Fascism is not a territory with clearly marked boundaries but a constellation of characteristics. When you view the stars together, the constellation plainly appears.

...

Police-state tactics. Trump has turned ICE into a sprawling paramilitary that roves the country at will, searches and detains noncitizens and citizens without warrants, uses force ostentatiously, operates behind masks, receives skimpy training, lies about its activities, and has been told that it enjoys “absolute immunity.” He more than doubled the agency’s size in 2025, and its budget is now larger than those of all other federal law-enforcement agencies combined, and larger than the entire military budgets of all but 15 countries. “This is going to affect every community, every city,” the Cato Institute scholar David Bier recently observed. “Really almost everyone in our country is going to come in contact with this, one way or the other.” In Minneapolis and elsewhere, the agency has behaved provocatively, sometimes brutally, and arguably illegally—behaviors that Trump and his staff have encouraged, shielded, and sent camera crews to publicize, perhaps in the hope of eliciting violent resistance that would justify further crackdowns, a standard fascist stratagem. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s recent appearance with a sign reading ONE OF OURS, ALL OF YOURS seemed to nod toward another fascist standby, collective punishment—as did the administration’s decision to flood Minneapolis with thousands of officers after residents there began protesting federal tactics, a prioritization that was explicitly retributive.

 ...

Territorial and military aggression. One reason I held out against identifying Trumpism with fascism in his first term was Trump’s apparent lack of interest in aggression against other states; if anything, he had seemed shy about using force abroad. Well, that was then. In his second term, he has used military force promiscuously. Of course, many presidents have deployed force, but Trump’s explicitly predatory use of it to grab Venezuela’s oil and his gangster-style threat to take Greenland from Denmark “the easy way” or “the hard way” were 1930s-style authoritarian moves. The same goes for his contempt for international law, binding alliances, and transnational organizations such as the European Union—all of which impede the state’s unconstrained exercise of its will, a central fascist tenet. (Mussolini: “Equally foreign to the spirit of Fascism … are all internationalistic or League superstructures which, as history shows, crumble to the ground whenever the heart of nations is deeply stirred by sentimental, idealistic or practical considerations.”)

Jordan Liles at Snopes:

In short, Trump genuinely said, "Sometimes you need a dictator." He made the remark during a reception with business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 21, 2026. Those words came immediately after Trump referenced his critics referring to him as a dictator.

 

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Monday, January 26, 2026

Bad Shoot, Bad Politics

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. The DHS killing of a disarmed man is among the worst.

Alexander Rossell Hayes at YouGov:

After federal immigration agents on Saturday shot and killed a Minneapolis resident for the second time this month, more Americans now say they would support abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) than say they would oppose eliminating the agency. A majority of Americans say ICE's tactics are too forceful and about half say they strongly disapprove of the way the agency is handling its job, according to a YouGov Poll conducted hours after the shooting. More Americans approve than disapprove of protests against ICE. Because the poll was conducted so soon after the shooting in Minneapolis, some respondents who were not aware of the news when they answered the questions might hear about it in subsequent days.

Another poll conducted the day after the shooting found that about half of Americans say the shooting Saturday of Alex Pretti was not justified, while only 20% said it was justified. The gap is even larger among Americans who have seen video of the shooting, nearly two-thirds of whom say it was not justified. While ICE has been the subject of protests since the first killing in Minneapolis — of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross — the shooter in this case worked for the Border Patrol, another agency in the Department of Homeland Security that was supporting ICE's operations in the city. Americans' opinions toward the Border Patrol are not as negative as views of ICE, though Americans who have seen video of the killing are more likely to have an unfavorable than a favorable opinion of the Border Patrol.

These latest results show an increase in opposition to ICE compared to two YouGov polls fielded earlier in January after the killing of Good. At that point, support for abolishing ICE was already at the highest level ever observed in YouGov polls.

The issue is splitting the GOP base. Christopher Cann at USA Today:

Several prominent Second Amendment rights groups have blasted federal officials for suggesting it's dangerous – and possibly an indication of mal intent – for lawful gun owners to protest while in possession of their legally obtained firearms.

The controversy came after a Border Patrol agent on Jan. 24 shot and killed Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen and registered Veterans Affairs nurse, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Federal officials said Pretti had a gun and intended to "kill law enforcement." But videos and a witness account in federal court show Pretti holding a phone, not brandishing a firearm.

Hours after the fatal shooting, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli in Southern California took to X and said, "If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you. Don’t do it!" Other members of the Trump administration argued peaceful protesters don't show up with guns.

Several prominent gun rights groups took issue with Essayli's statement, including the National Rifle Association.
"This sentiment from the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California is dangerous and wrong," the NRA said on X. "Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens."

Gun Owners for America said in a statement that its leaders "condemn the untoward comments" by Essayli.

"Federal agents are not 'highly likely' to be 'legally justified' in 'shooting' concealed carry licensees who approach while lawfully carrying a firearm," the group said. "The Second Amendment protects Americans' right to bear arms while protesting — a right the federal government must not infringe upon."

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, also blasted Essayli's comments, writing on X: "Carrying a firearm is not a death sentence, it’s a Constitutionally protected God-given right, and if you don’t understand this you have no business in law enforcement or government."



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Sunday, January 25, 2026

Kill, Lie, and Smear

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. The DHS killing of a disarmed man is among the worst.



Devon Lum and Haley Willis at NYT:

Videos on social media that were verified by The New York Times appear to contradict the Department of Homeland Security’s account of the fatal shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday morning.

The Department of Homeland Security said the episode began after a man “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun” and they tried to disarm him. The statement did not specify whether the gun was in the man’s hands or merely on his body.

Footage shows Mr. Pretti was clearly holding a phone, not a gun, before the agents took him to the ground and shot him.

 Jonathan V. Last at The Bulwark:

If this were all that had happened it would have been bad enough. But it got worse.
At least some of the DHS agents involved in the killing attempted to leave the scene.

When local law enforcement arrived to begin an investigation, the DHS agents attempted to send them away and deny them access to the crime scene.

Someone—presumably within DHS—leaked to Fox that Pretti had a gun.

DHS put out a statement (repeated by Border Patrol official Greg Bovino in his press conference) claiming that “an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun. . . . The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. . . . Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. . . . The suspect also had 2 magazines and no ID—this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

These statements seem to be lies.

According to local law enforcement, Pretti had a concealed-carry permit and so was legally allowed to possess a firearm in public.

There is no evidence to suggest that Pretti brandished—or even touched—his weapon.

Instead, the available video evidence shows him holding his phone in front of him, in his right hand, and his left hand empty before being pepper-sprayed while attempting to help a fellow observer.

The deputy White House chief of staff, Stephen Miller, called Pretti a “domestic terrorist” and an “assassin.” In fact, Pretti was a registered nurse working in intensive care at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital.

So the government didn’t just use masked, armed, unidentified agents of the state to execute a citizen on the street, in broad daylight and in front of dozens of witnesses—it lied about the victim and what happened in the most brazen manner possible.

The government killed him. Then it smeared him.

And there is one more layer to consider: Less than three weeks ago DHS agents murdered another Minneapolis resident, Renee Nicole Good, in cold blood. And the agency’s response to that killing was not to regroup, retrain, and investigate, but to surge hundreds more of its agents into the city and deploy even more force against the city’s residents.

Which is where our obligation to witness comes in. The murder of Alex Jeffrey Pretti was not a mistake, or a tragedy, or a misunderstanding. It was a choice. The president of the United States and his regime saw what its masked agents had done to Renee Good and decided to do more of it, at a larger scale.

Killing Alex Jeffrey Pretti was the Trump administration’s policy.


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Saturday, January 24, 2026

Trump's Bad Week

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern at Slate:

This week, President Donald Trump suffered a string of defeats that exposed the real limits of his power at home and abroad. First, his Justice Department abandoned its efforts to illegally appoint Lindsey Halligan, his former personal lawyer, as U.S. attorney, yielding to a furious judicial rebuke of its dirty tactics. Then the president dropped his threat to seize Greenland through military force or ruinous tariffs in the face of stiff international resistance. At almost the same time, the Supreme Court threw cold water on his bid to fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, Minneapolis residents continue to protest, thwart, and document his violent assault on immigrant communities.

At NYT, Nate Cohn says Trump looked fairly strong at the start  of his second term, but...

One year later, the vibe has shifted back. The results from today’s New York Times/Siena University poll would have looked fairly typical during his first term. Only 40 percent of registered voters say they approve of Mr. Trump’s performance, and the familiar patterns of American politics have returned. The second Trump coalition has unraveled.
The major demographic shifts of the last election have snapped back. In today’s poll, Mr. Trump’s approval rating by demographic group looks almost exactly as it did in Times/Siena polling in the run-up to his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. If anything, young and nonwhite voters are even likelier to disapprove of Mr. Trump than they were then, while he retains most of his support among older and white voters.

Myah Ward, Samuel Benson and Erin Doherty report at POLITICO that report of ICE thuggery are scaring congressional Republicans.

A new POLITICO poll underscores those worries: Nearly half of all Americans — 49 percent — say Trump’s mass deportation campaign is too aggressive, including 1 in 5 voters who backed the president in 2024. In a sign of growing discomfort among the president’s base, more than 1 in 3 Trump voters say that while they support the goals of his mass deportation campaign, they disapprove of the way he is implementing it.
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Friday, January 23, 2026

Jack Smith: Trump Is a Criminal

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

From: Statement of Jack Smith Former Special Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice before the Committee on the Judiciary U.S. House of Representatives January 22, 2026

During my tenure as Special Counsel, we followed Justice Department policies, observed legal requirements, and took actions based on the facts and the law.  I made my decisions without regard to President Trump’s political association, activities, beliefs, or candidacy in the 2024 presidential election.  President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the very laws that he took an oath to uphold.  Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions, as alleged in the indictments they returned.   

Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power.  President Trump attempted to induce state officials to ignore true vote counts; to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he had lost; to force his own Vice President to act in contravention of his oath and to instead advance President Trump’s personal interests; and, on January 6, 2021, to direct an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the 1 congressional certification of the presidential election and then exploit the rioters’ violence to further delay it.  Over 140 heroic law enforcement officers were assaulted that day, a fact we should never forget.   

And, as set forth in the original and superseding indictments issued in the Southern District of Florida, President Trump stored classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago social club after he left office in January 2021 and he repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.  Highly sensitive information was held in non-secure locations, including a bathroom and a ballroom where events and gatherings took place.  Tens of thousands of people came to the social club during the time period when those classified documents were stored there. 

As I testify before the Committee today, I want to be clear: I stand by my decisions as Special Counsel, including my decision to bring charges against President Trump.  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.  No one should be above the law in our country and the law required that he be held to account.  So that is what I did.  To have done otherwise on the facts of these cases would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and a public servant, which I had no intention of doing.  This is why I appreciate the opportunity to appear today and to correct the false and misleading narratives advanced about our work.  I am prepared to do so while adhering to the Justice Department’s authorization governing the scope of my testimony and while constrained by Judge Cannon’s order restricting the discussion of Volume II of my report regarding the classified documents case.  To that end, and as a result of Judge Cannon’s order and the Justice Department’s interpretation of that order, I will not be able to discuss the contents of Volume II of my report, and can only discuss matters with respect to that case that are set forth in the indictment or other public filings.  Similarly, I cannot discuss the contents of the documents at issue in the case due to their sensitive nature.imilarly, I cannot discuss the contents of the documents at issue in the case due to their sensitive nature.

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Thursday, January 22, 2026

Erratic Trump Backs Down


President Donald Trump’s climbdown on Greenland capped one of the most erratic episodes involving a modern president on the world stage.

Within hours Wednesday, Trump flipped from demanding “right, title, and ownership” of the semiautonomous Danish territory to celebrating an “infinite,” “forever” framework deal over its future.

The breakthrough seems to hinge on extra NATO forces to secure the Arctic — something he could have got before his week of mayhem — if only he’d asked.

...

Farcical scenes unfolded after Trump flung days of insults at allied leaders, raising fears that NATO was about to implode. His initial refusal to rule out sending troops to take Greenland — which is already alliance territory — seemed torn from a bad futuristic thriller.

Trump further confused the issue with several days of rambling and baffling public appearances in Washington and Switzerland. On Wednesday, he even got Greenland and Iceland confused.

He’s always governed by whim and social media outbursts. But in extricating himself from a crisis that he triggered, Trump laid bare the alternative factual reality that surrounds his increasingly unpopular presidency.

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Wednesday, January 21, 2026

Trump's Corruption: $1.4 Billion

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Scandals persist. Trump is abusing his power to increase his wealth.

NYT editorial:

A review by the editorial board relying on analyses from news organizations shows that Mr. Trump has used the office of the presidency to make at least $1.4 billion. We know this number to be an underestimate because some of his profits remain hidden from public view. And they continue to grow.

A hotel in Oman. An office tower in western India. A golf course on the outskirts of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. These are a few of the more than 20 overseas projects the Trump Organization is pursuing, often requiring cooperation with foreign governments. These deals have made millions for the Trumps, according to Reuters. And the administration has sometimes treated those same governments favorably. One example: The administration agreed to lower its threatened tariffs on Vietnam about a month after a Trump Organization project broke ground on a $1.5 billion golf complex outside of Hanoi. Vietnamese officials ignored their own laws to fast-track the project.

Amazon paid far more for the rights to “Melania” than the next highest bidder — and far more than the company has previously paid for similar projects, according to The Wall Street Journal. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chairman and one of the world’s richest people, has many reasons to curry favor with the administration, including antitrust regulation, Amazon’s defense contracts and his space company’s federal contracts.

...
Mr. Trump’s sale of crypto has been by far his biggest moneymaker, according to Reuters. People who hope to influence federal policy, including foreigners, can buy his family’s coins, effectively transferring money to the Trumps, and the deals are often secret. One that has become public: A United Arab Emirates-backed investment firm announced plans last year to deposit $2 billion into a Trump firm — two weeks before the president gave the country access to advanced chips.

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Tuesday, January 20, 2026

Spot the Looney

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.  Serious people are now raising serious questions about his sanity.

Amelia Nierenberg at NYT:
President Trump ratcheted up his feud with European leaders on Tuesday, firing off a series of mocking social media posts that reinforced his designs on Greenland, as he risked damaging the longstanding trans-Atlantic diplomatic alignment beyond repair.

A day before he was scheduled to join allies at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr. Trump insisted that the United States must have Greenland, the semiautonomous Danish territory, repeating a persistent demand that has shaken the foundations of the NATO alliance. “There can be no going back,” he wrote in one of a series of posts on his Truth Social platform.

In another post, he shared messages from President Emmanuel Macron of France, who said, “I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland.” A senior French official confirmed that the messages were authentic.

The tensions over Greenland threatened to dominate the meeting in Davos. Speaking there later Tuesday morning, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, suggested that the European Union would take steps to bolster its security in light of the crisis and would be looking at “how to strengthen our security partnerships with partners such as the U.K., Canada, Norway, Iceland and others.” She did not offer details.

Ms. von der Leyen also argued that Europe needed to change to adapt to a more hostile era, saying, “Nostalgia will not bring back the old order.”

Faced with Mr. Trump’s threats, including a warning that he will impose new tariffs on nations that oppose his territorial demands, European leaders have scrambled to formulate a response and were expected to gather in Brussels this week to come up with a way to answer Mr. Trump’s provocations.

Mr. Macron, who was scheduled to speak at Davos on Tuesday afternoon, appeared to be trying to appeal to Mr. Trump in person, inviting him to dinner in Paris on Thursday, according to the messages Mr. Trump shared online. Mr. Macron offered to set up a meeting there of leaders of the Group of 7 countries — with additional invitations to the Russians, Ukrainians, Danes and Syrians. It was not immediately known whether Mr. Trump responded to Mr. Macron’s messages.

Mr. Trump also shared a message from Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, in which Mr. Rutte said he was “committed to finding a way forward on Greenland.” An official at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said the exchange was authentic.

Mr. Trump said that he had spoken with Mr. Rutte and reiterated his claims that American control of Greenland was essential for the security of the United States and of the world.
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Monday, January 19, 2026

The Madness of King Donald

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.  Serious people are now raising serious questions about his sanity.

One could observe many things about this document. One is the childish grammar, including the strange capitalizations (“Complete and Total Control”). Another is the loose grasp of history. Donald Trump did not end eight wars. Greenland has been Danish territory for centuries. Its residents are Danish citizens who vote in Danish elections. There are many “written documents” establishing Danish sovereignty in Greenland, including some signed by the United States. In his second term, Trump has done nothing for NATO—an organization that the U.S. created and theoretically leads, and that has only ever been used in defense of American interests. If the European members of NATO have begun spending more on their own defense (budgets to which the U.S. never contributed), that’s because of the threat they fe
Yet what matters isn’t the specific phrases, but the overall message: Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for an invasion of Greenland.
Think about where this is leading. One possibility, anticipated this morning by financial markets, is a damaging trade war. Another is an American military occupation of Greenland. Try to imagine it: The U.S. Marines arrive in Nuuk, the island’s capital. Perhaps they kill some Danes; perhaps some American soldiers die too. And then what? If the invaders were Russians, they would arrest all of the politicians, put gangsters in charge, shoot people on the street for speaking Danish, change school curricula, and carry out a fake referendum to rubber-stamp the conquest. Is that the American plan too? If not, then what is it? This would not be the occupation of Iraq, which was difficult enough. U.S. troops would need to force Greenlanders, citizens of a treaty ally, to become American against their will.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been invited to join US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” the committee that will oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, his spokesman said on Monday.

Speaking to reporters during a regular media briefing, Dmitry Peskov said: “President Putin also received through diplomatic channels an invitation to join this Board of Peace.”

He said the Kremlin is now reviewing the invitation and “hoping to get more details from the US side.”

CNN has asked the White House for a comment.

Later on Monday, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry said President Alexander Lukashenko also received an invitation to join the board.

The ministry’s press service said Minsk “highly appreciates that the American side sees Belarus – and this is clearly stated in the text of the address – as a country ready to take on the noble responsibility of building a lasting peace and leading by example, investing in a secure and prosperous future for future generations.”

Lukashenko is Putin’s closest ally and has been described as Europe’s last dictator.
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Sunday, January 18, 2026

Thermostatic Party Identification

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.   Events could change things abruptly, but the early signs are favorable for Democrats in the 2026 midterms.

 Jeffrey M. Jones at Gallup:

The political landscape in the U.S. changed greatly in the first year of Trump’s second term as president. A record-high percentage of U.S. adults said they identify with neither major party, and a shift in independents’ political leanings caused the Republican Party advantage that aided Trump’s reelection to dissipate almost as soon as he took office. Over the course of the year, the Democratic Party regained and expanded its advantage in party leanings, a trend that was borne out in the party’s strong performance in 2025 special elections compared to similar races in the more Republican-favorable 2024 election cycle.

Importantly, these party shifts do not indicate that Americans are warming to the Democratic Party. In fact, favorable ratings of the Democratic Party are no better than those of the Republican Party, and are among the worst Gallup has recorded for the Democratic Party historically.

Rather, as in 2022 through 2024, these recent political shifts appear to be a consequence of one party’s association with an unpopular incumbent president (the Democrats with Biden and now Republicans with Trump). Negative evaluations of the president’s performance appear to persuade a subset of Americans, primarily political independents who have weaker attachments to either party, to side with the opposition party.

This dynamic has led to frequent changes in the party power structure in Washington in recent federal election cycles, with the incumbent president’s party losing control of the presidency or one house of Congress in each of the past six presidential or midterm elections.

And the long-term future does not look bright for the GOP: 


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Saturday, January 17, 2026

GOP Woes

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.   The early signs in the 2026 midterms do not favor Republicans.

 Ariel Edwards-Levy, Jennifer Agiesta, and Edward Wu at CNN:

Public opinion on nearly every aspect of President Donald Trump’s first year back in the White House is negative, a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds, with a majority of Americans saying Trump is focused on the wrong priorities and doing too little to address cost of living.

A majority, 58%, calls the first year of Trump’s term a failure.

There’s hardly any good news in the poll for Trump or the Republican Party entering a critical midterm year, with the president’s handling of the economy looming as the defining issue in key House and Senate races.

Asked to choose the country’s top issue, Americans pick the economy by a nearly two-to-one margin over any other topic. The poll suggests Trump is struggling to prove that he’s addressing it. And it finds broad concerns over Trump’s use of presidential power and his efforts to put his stamp on American culture.
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Friday, January 16, 2026

Trump: "We Shouldn't Even Have an Election"

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

James Oliphant reports on a Reuters interview with Trump:

The president expressed frustration that his Republican Party could lose control of the U.S. House of Representatives or the Senate in this year’s midterm elections, citing historical trends that have seen the party in power lose seats in the second year of a presidency.

“It's some deep psychological thing,              but when you win the presidency, you don't win the midterms,” Trump said. He boasted that he had accomplished so much that “when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election.”

 Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim at NYT:

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina found President Trump’s claims of election fraud in 2020 “unnerving.” Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia described Mr. Trump’s efforts to get his state’s lawmakers to intervene a “fruitless exercise.” David Ralston, a former speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, called the plan to create slates of fake pro-Trump electors in states he had lost “the craziest thing I’ve heard.”

Transcripts of secret grand jury testimony from the Georgia election interference case against Mr. Trump and his allies, obtained this week by The New York Times, show just how alarmed and exasperated a number of senior Republicans felt about the president’s efforts to overturn an American presidential election. The testimony, given in 2022, is emerging at a time when Mr. Trump is again raising complaints about his 2020 defeat and voicing regret that he did not order the National Guard to seize voting machines after the election.

He has also said he wanted to “lead a movement” to ban voting machines and mail-in ballots in time for the midterm elections this year.

...

Senator Graham, the veteran South Carolina lawmaker, recently called Mr. Trump “the greatest president of all time.” But his 2022 testimony came at a time when Mr. Trump’s political future was uncertain. At that time, Mr. Graham expressed exasperation over the president’s baseless 2020 election fraud claims, telling the grand jurors, “I have told him more times than we can count that he fell short,” and that “if you told him Martians came and stole votes, he’d be inclined to believe it.”
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Thursday, January 15, 2026

Taking Greenland Would Be Unpopular


Avery Lotz at Axios:
Americans are divided on the merits of President Trump's recent foreign incursions and threats and remain especially skeptical of acquiring Greenland, new polling has found.

The big picture: While the U.S. operation to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro has gained support in its aftermath, Trump's Greenland gambit remains deeply unpopular, underscoring the political riskiness of a key piece of his so-called "Donroe Doctrine."

By the numbers: A plurality of Americans say Trump's use of military force against Venezuela was not justified, but a growing share back it, including a majority of Republicans, per polling from The Economist and YouGov.Meanwhile, 17% of U.S. adults said they approve of the president's push to acquire Greenland, according to a Reuters-Ipsos survey conducted between Jan. 12-13. Two out of five Republicans say they support doing so.
However, only 4% of those surveyed — and 8% of Republicans — said using military force to take Greenland is a good idea, per the Reuters-Ipsos poll.

A separate poll released by the Economist-YouGov found broad opposition to seizing ownership of Greenland, either by force or monetary incentives.Just 8% of U.S. adults — and 18% of Republicans — backed taking control of the self-governing territory of longtime U.S. ally Denmark by force.

Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy at CNN:

Three-quarters of Americans say they oppose the United States attempting to take control of Greenland, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, indicating that President Donald Trump’s push to expand America’s territory faces stiff headwinds with the public.

The survey finds just 25% of Americans favor the US attempting to take control of the Danish territory. Even the president’s partisans are about evenly divided, with 50% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents saying they support it and 50% opposed. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are deeply against the move, with 94% opposed overall, including 80% who say they strongly oppose it. About 8 in 10 independents who don’t lean toward either party are also opposed.

Trump said Wednesday on his social media website Truth Social that “anything less” than US control of Greenland is “unacceptable.” The message came ahead of a meeting at the White House between Danish officials, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio that appeared to do little to bring the two sides any closer to an agreement.


 

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Wednesday, January 14, 2026

The Public Cools on ICE

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

GOP consultant Rob Stutzman: " Really is stunning that Trump Admin has taken their greatest asset, immigration enforcement, and turned into a negative with performative BS that Americans have grown weary of."

In the days since Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, federal officials have argued that Good’s death was “a tragedy of her own making,” as Vice President JD Vance put it.

"The woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting,” President Trump claimed on social media. “Then [she] violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.”

But most Americans disagree, according to a new Yahoo/YouGov poll.
The survey of 1,709 U.S. adults, which was conducted from Jan. 8 to Jan. 12, finds that only slightly more than a quarter (27%) think last week’s shooting was “justified.” Nearly twice as many Americans — a 52% majority — say the shooting was not justified.

Days after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot a Minneapolis woman in an incident that was captured on video, voters 82 - 18 percent say they have seen a video of the shooting and a majority (53 percent) think the shooting was not justified, 35 percent think it was justified, and 12 percent did not offer an opinion, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll of registered voters released today.

There are differences based on political party and gender.

Republicans (77 - 10 percent) think the shooting was justified, while Democrats (92 - 4 percent) and independents (59 - 28 percent) think the shooting was not justified.

Men are divided with 42 percent thinking the shooting was justified, while 44 percent of men think the shooting was not justified. Thirty percent of women think the shooting was justified, while 61 percent of women think the shooting was not justified.
"More than eight in ten American voters say they've seen the video. But should the shooting have happened? The majority say the shots should not have been fired by the ICE agent, while more than one third believe the shooting was justified,"said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy.

Forty percent of voters approve of the way U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, is enforcing immigration laws, while 57 percent disapprove. This is largely unchanged since Quinnipiac University's July 16, 2025 poll.

In today's poll, Republicans (84 - 12 percent) approve of the way ICE is enforcing immigration laws, while Democrats (94 - 4 percent) and independents (64 - 33 percent) disapprove.

Thirty-six percent of voters approve of the way Kristi Noem is handling her job as Secretary of Homeland Security, while 52 percent disapprove, and 12 percent did not offer an opinion.

In Quinnipiac University's July 16, 2025 poll, 39 percent approved, 50 percent disapproved, and 11 percent did not offer an opinion.

In today's poll, Republicans (77 - 12 percent) approve of the way Noem is handling her job as Secretary of Homeland Security, while Democrats (85 - 4 percent) and independents (57 - 30 percent) disapprove.

1,133 self-identified registered voters nationwide were surveyed from January 8th - 12th with a margin of error of +/- 3.7 percentage points, including the design effect.

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