As is well known, the day after the first #No Kings Day, Trump began demolition of the East Wing of the White House. He announced that he was adding a huge ballroom that would be almost twice the size of the White House. He didn’t bother with required reviews and approvals from “independent” commissions, which are required by statute.
Before anyone could absorb the shock, the East Wing was gone. Reminded that he needed to go through a formal approval process, Trump fired the members of the two commissions and replaced ed them with his loyalists. Approval, even post facto, would be no problem, thanks to his lapdogs.
But the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which he does not control, filed a lawsuit to stop work.
A federal judge expressed deep skepticism Thursday that the White House has legal authority to construct President Donald Trump’s massive new ballroom without express authorization from Congress.
US District Judge Richard Leon said during a hearing in a challenge to the project that the White House was attempting to “end-run” Congress’ role in the historic undertaking. Leon appeared ready to at least partially side with the nation’s top historic preservation group in a lawsuit it brought late last year.
The judge said government lawyers defending the project were adopting “a pretty expansive interpretation of the language” of a federal law they’re leaning on in the case. That law, which authorizes the president to spend taxpayer dollars to maintain the People’s House, is meant to cover “very small sized projects,” Leon said, pointing to air conditioning and heating, lighting, and other standard maintenance.
“It’s not (for) $400 million worth of destruction and construction,” the judge told Justice Department attorney Yaakov Roth.
As Roth pointed to two other White House projects that didn’t receive congressional approval, Leon quickly pushed back and accused the lawyer of downplaying the significance of the ballroom project, which is expected to dramatically expand the size of the building.
The other projects Roth cited – Gerald Ford’s swimming pool and cabana and a tennis pavilion overseen by first lady Melania Trump during the president’s first term – did little to advance their arguments, the judge said.
“The ‘77 Gerald Ford swimming pool? You compare that to tearing down and building a new East Wing? Come on. Be serious,” the judge said.
The sprawling ballroom project has an estimated size of approximately 89,000 square feet, according to lead architect Shalom Baranes. By contrast, the primary White House structure, the Executive Mansion, is just 55,000 square feet.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation seeks a stop-work order and a determination by Congress to hear from the public and review the project.
Since its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has suffered the deaths of one million soldiers. Its economy is a shambles. If it meant to project its power, it failed.
He speaks plainly and bluntly. It’s a fascinating interview.
The attraction of ICE to white supremacists — and now their open appeal to racists in their recruiting messages — didn’t start with George W. Bush adopting the word “Homeland” on October 8, 2001, the first time it’d been publicly used by a mainstream politician in American history. It arguably started on September 5, 1934, with a speech by Rudolf Hess, introducing Adolf Hitler at the Nurnberg Rally.
I have a weird connection to that speech, and it’s always haunted me. For more than half of my life I’ve been a volunteer for a German-based international relief organization that was founded by Gottfried Müller, who’d been an intelligence officer in Hitler’s army until he was captured in Iran and spent virtually all of WWII in a prison camp. There, he had a conversion experience and dedicated his life to helping “the least of the least of this world, as Jesus taught us.”
Müller told me how he was there for that Nuremberg Rally, in which Hess introduced Hitler with the following speech:
“Danke irher Führung wird Deutschland sein Zeil erreichen. Heimat zu sein. Heimat zu sein für alle Deutschen der Welt. (“Thanks to your leadership, Germany will reach its goal: to be a homeland. A homeland to be for all Germans of the world.”)
This use of Heimat (“Homeland”) was intentional on the part of Hess and Hitler. “Homeland” suggested a racial identity, as Hitler noted in Mein Kampf when he speaks of the German people as a racial organism with the German land (Boden) and hereditarily German people (Volk) inseparable:
“The German Reich must gather together and protect all the racially valuable elements of Germandom, wherever they may be.” (Volume II, chapter 13)
As Herr Müller told me, Hitler wanted to create an identity that went beyond language and culture. He wanted to posit a pure “German race,” and have Germany be that race’s “homeland,” all so he could sell to the German people their own racial superiority and use that to justify exterminating others.
Throughout American history, our leaders have avoided that type of language:
— Thomas Paine wrote: “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.” — Abraham Lincoln said that our Founders had created: “a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…” — Woodrow Wilson used the word “democracy” instead of “homeland” during WWI: “The world must be made safe for democracy.” — FDR simply used the name of our nation on December 7, 1941: “The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked…”
Across 220+ years, during revolution, civil war, global war, and even the attack on Pearl Harbor, American presidents systematically avoided homeland-style language that implied ancestral ownership, ethnic belonging, or insiders versus outsiders.
Instead, they used words like: republic, nation, people, citizens, democracy, and country to describe America. This wasn’t accidental: it was the core distinction between American civic nationalism, and 19th century European whites-only ethno-nationalism.
George W. Bush blew that all up when he announced the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. I immediately called it out, writing more than 20 years ago that using that word would lead America in a dark direction.
And here we are.
ICE is now openly using white supremacist slogans, memes, and advertisements to recruit men who’re enthusiastic about chasing down Black and brown people. As the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch project documents:
“The increase in white nationalist content [from ICE] appears to originate with a June 11, 2025 post. That day, DHS’ official X and Instagram accounts posted a graphic of Uncle Sam hammering up a sign with the caption: “Help your country … and yourself … REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS.” A hotline number for ICE accompanied the post.
“Mother Jones reported the doctored graphic of Uncle Sam originated from an X user called ‘Mr. Robert,’ who is associated with white nationalist content. Mr. Robert’s bio highlights the phrase: ‘Wake Up White Man.’
Since then, it’s been a nonstop barrage of white nationalist and Nazi rhetoric and symbology, as compiled by Dean Blundell.
Thanks to Dean Blundell for compiling these images
— Kristi Noem behind a podium with the words “One of ours. All of yours.” Malcolm Nance noted:
“This is the order to kill all the people in the village of Lidice in Czech Republic when the sadist SS General Heydrich was ambushed and killed by the British SOE. THEY ORDERED 173 MEN MASSACRED. ALL WOMAN AND CHILDREN SENT TO AUSCHWITZ WITH THESE WORDS.”
— The US Department of Labor posting an image of George Washington with the words: “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage,” an eerie echo of “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer (One People, One Nation, One Leader).
— Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino, who showed up in Minneapolis last week, photographed for the ICE/CPB website in nearly-full Nazi drag.
Others consistently feature white people with slogans or images appealing to a white supremacist or nationalist base:
As political scientist Dr. Rachel Bitecofer noted in her excellent The Cyclenewsletter:
“‘We’ll have our home again’ is the emotional core of Great Replacement ideology, the white nationalist belief system that frames demographic change as dispossession and recasts the nation as something that has been stolen and must be taken back. This is the same worldview that produced the chant ‘You will not replace us’ at Charlottesville. The only thing that has changed is who is now saying it. …
“This ideology is not abstract. It has been articulated explicitly by mass shooters, embedded in white nationalist manifestos, and popularized by contemporary influencers who now operate openly in American political discourse. Figures like Nick Fuentes center their politics on the claim that the United States properly belongs to a single cultural and racial group, and that reclaiming it requires hierarchy, exclusion, and force.”
From Hess to Bush to Trump, here we are.
One of the regular themes of callers to my radio/TV show is the question:
“Are they hiding their faces behind masks so we can’t see that so many of these well-paid goons are open members of the Klan, Proud Boys, Patriot Front, Goyim Defense League, and J6ers?”
It’s as good an answer for the masks as any other I can come up with. Throughout American history, the only police agency known to conceal their identities were the Klansmen in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when they were routinely deputized in the South to police segregation laws.
The police officers who murdered Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in Mississippi on June 21, 1964, for example, were all Klansmen, and that’s where Don Jr. went to give a speech on “states’ rights,” echoing Reagan’s first official speech on the same subject in the same place after he got his party’s nomination in 1980.
Yesterday, Congressman Jamie Raskin sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asking if their “white nationalist ‘dog whistles’” are being used in their recruitment campaigns that appear to target members of “extremist militias” like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters:
“Unique among all law enforcement agencies and all branches of the armed services, ICE agents conceal their identities, wearing masks and removing names from their uniforms. Why is that? Why do National Guard members, state, county, and local police officers, and members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines all routinely work unmasked while ICE agents work masked?
“Who is hiding behind these masks? How many of them were among the violent rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6 and were convicted of their offenses? The American people deserve to know how many of these violent insurrectionists have been given guns and badges by this administration.”
Racism has been one of the animating themes of Trump’s three candidacies and two administrations; finally Americans and the mainstream media are waking up to it and calling it out.
We need a purge, and that begins by calling our elected officials at 202-224-3121 and telling them to vote “No” on funding DHS and ICE until there have been significant reforms.
Get rid of the masks and weapons of war. Require them to follow the law and the Constitution. No more arrests or home invasions without warrants signed by judges per the Fourth Amendment.
If America is a homeland, it’s only a homeland to the surviving Native Americans who Europeans haven’t entirely wiped out.
It’s far past time to end this use of white ethnonationalist rhetoric, rename the Department of Homeland Security, and purge that organization — and it’s ICE offspring — of their white nationalist bigots.
Foreign Policy, a distinguished publication for leading scholars of foreign affairs, published an article by staff writers Keith Johnson and Christina Lu asserting that Trump’s lust to control Greenland is just plain nuts.
They wrote;
Seeking additional barrels of oil in Venezuela or digging for rare earths in ice-covered Greenland makes no sense from an economic or security point of view. And yet U.S. President Donald Trump persists, even though the costs massively outweigh the benefits.
In reality, naked resource grabs explain a lot about Trump’s dizzying foreign policy, perhaps even more so than other explanations that have been proposed. It seems Trump may have reached back even further in time for his guiding light than tariff-happy William McKinley and big-stick imperialist Theodore Roosevelt to the British and Dutch quasi-state mercantilist corporations that introduced much of the world to rapacious capitalism starting in the 17th century. The British and Dutch East India Companies did grab much of the world, usually at gunpoint. At least they got pepper, spices, and tea. All we have here is sulfurous oil and neodymium.
Trump’s obsession with natural resources that the companies paid to extract them refuse to touch does raise several questions. Are these even the right resources to be grabbing? Is any of this legal? And most importantly, is any of this a remotely good way to promote the security of the United States?
WHEN IT COMES TO OIL, which has been a Trump obsession for decades, the answer is clearly no.
Oil demand is a tricky thing to project into the future. Some forecasters expect global demand for oil to peak within five years, while others reckon fast-growing developing economies will still be thirsty into the next decade, requiring more wells and more production. Either way, oil from Venezuela and Greenland is not the answer.
Venezuela’s oil woes have been amply demonstrated. It’s an expensive thing to produce in a place with little security and less rule of law, especially with oil languishing in the mid-$50s a barrel. The chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil, Darren Woods, told Trump at a White House meeting last week that Venezuela was “uninvestible.” Trump then said he would ensure that Exxon was kept out of any U.S.-led Venezuela ventures—and Exxon’s stock rose on the news.
Greenland, too, is rumored to have oil: billions of barrels of it. It’s not clear if that is actually the case, because decades of exploration have hit only dry wells, but on paper, Greenland could have 8 billion barrels of oil hidden under the tundra and the whitecaps, or nearly 3 percent of Venezuela’s unattractive reserves.
But there are some daunting challenges. Most of those estimated oil resources are north of the Arctic Circle, and mostly offshore. That is not easy to access, even with climate change stretching summer on both ends. Even the oil on land is not easy to tap. There are fewer than 100 miles of paved road on an island the size of Mexico. Deep water ports, airports, pipelines, oil-export terminals, housing, clinics—all are on somebody’s to-do list to build, but not that of oil majors.
Also relevant: Since 2021, Greenland has banned further oil exploration due to environmental concerns. The only current play, a land-based oil-exploration operation on the island’s east coast with U.S. backing, relies on a grandfathered lease from years ago. That legal stricture, in the absence of a complete annexation, could complicate further U.S. efforts to tap Greenland’s possible oil.
BUT WHAT ABOUT GREENLAND’S rare earths, which Trump officials have suggested are one of the primary reasons the U.S. president is so interested in the island?
While those who focus on rare earths mining simply say the plan is “bonkers,” the real issue is that rare earths are not rare—processing facilities and magnet factories are. Which makes a race for ice-bound dodgy mining prospects in somebody else’s territory all the harder to understand.
“It certainly doesn’t make any sense as a rare-earth story,” Ian Lange, a professor in the mineral economics program at the Colorado School of Mines, recently told Foreign Policy.
Rare earths, or a set of 17 metallic elements with obscure names like neodymium and samarium, have catapulted in geopolitical importance because they power everything from F-35 fighter jets to Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. China overwhelmingly commands their global supply chains, giving it powerful leverage in its ongoing trade spat with the United States.
Sure, Greenland may have some sizable rare earth reserves, according to the U.S. Geological Survey—but so do many other countries. And a big economic question hangs over potential operations in Greenland, where no rare earth mining has ever taken place and mining itself remains a fraught and divisive issue.
The biggest problem with Trump’s resource grabs is not their lack of economic foundation, which is nil, or their legality, which is none, but with what they do for U.S. security, which is little or worse.
Also, the bulk of Greenland’s land—a whopping 80 percent—is estimated to be covered in ice. All of those factors are certain to make establishing crucial mining and processing infrastructure, already a difficult and hefty financial endeavor, even more costly and challenging.
In his pursuit of rare earths, industry experts say, Trump will likely have an easier time looking elsewhere.
AND THEN THERE’S THE QUESTION of the legality of how Trump is going about his resource grabs. Abducting heads of government to seize resources is not anywhere sanctioned in the U.N. Charter, nor is threatening to invade a NATO alliance partner to forcibly annex their territory. But rogue states are hard to red team.
Trump has waved aside centuries of international law, telling the New York Times “I don’t need international law,” because his own “morality” was the only check or balance required.
It’s not an abstruse debate. For centuries, the West has sought to paint a patina of law over the anarchy of the international system, and even today, tomes are written about revisionist powers seeking to pervert international law for their own ends. Until very recently, the United States was not among the revisionist powers.
But there’s little to be done on that front. Trump’s installed successor in Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro’s former vice president and now also acting president Delcy Rodriguez, who has been under U.S. sanctions since 2017 for human rights abuses, is according to Trump “a terrific person.” Also not entirely legal is storing the proceeds of Venezuelan oil sales the United States has carried out in an offshore account in Qatar.
THE BIGGEST PROBLEM with Trump’s resource grabs is not their lack of economic foundation, which is nil, or their legality, which is none, but with what they do for U.S. security, which is little or worse….
The great advantage the United States had, until recently, was its network of alliances: NATO, Japan, South Korea, and a multitude of others. That’s all gone now, or nearly. It is surely a sign of bungled foreign policy when Sweden dispatches troops against you.
Nancy Bailey is an extraordinary blogger. She was a teacher for many years, and she’s an independent thinker. She has a keen eye for frauds, and she calls them out. A few years ago, Nancy and I collaborated on a book called Edspeak and Doubletalk: A Glossary to Decipher Hypocrisy and Save Public Schooling (Teachers College Press). We worked together closely by computer and telephone, despite the fact that we had never met.
One of this blog’s loyal readers said recently that he judged educational phenomena by the simple term WWNBD: “What Would Nancy Bailey Do?”
A good watchword.
In this post, Nancy Bailey catches Secretary of Education Linda McMahon devoting herself to a completely illegal activity, as explicitly defined in federal law: changing the history curriculum of American public schools.
On one hand, the former wrestling entrepreneur says that education should be returned to the states, but at the same time, she’s promoting a rightwing history curriculum that she describes as a “patriotic curriculum.”
Secretary McMahon is breaking the law. Surely the first duty of a citizen or patriot is to uphold the law. Secretary McMahon may be ignorant of the law but ignorance is not a defense for illegal actions.
In its wisdom, at the creation of the U.S. Department of Education in 1979, the U.S. Congress forbade any official in the U.S. Department of Education from interfering in matters of curriculum.
Traveling across the country, Education Secretary Linda McMahon is promoting patriotism and “History Rocks,” her religious civics curriculum for kids. She does this as Americans have watched the terror unfold in Minneapolis, including the shooting of a mom protecting undocumented immigrants, there will apparently be no investigation.
In addition, billionaire McMahon, like billionaire Betsy DeVos before her, and billionaire Donald Trump, chip away at the fabric of public schooling that this country’s children have relied on for years. She continues to dismantle the U.S. ED for her boss, without Congressional approval (a terrible civics lesson in and of itself), casting aside laws protecting students. Either she doesn’t understand the harm she’s doing, or she doesn’t care.
McMahon’s emphasis on state-run schools (public schools have always been run by states) is more about vouchers, which the privileged can cash in on to supplement the tuition of their children attending private schools, which are unaffordable for many Americans. Those other children will get charter schools, which are inconsistent and mostly unregulated.
It’s not just McMahon. For years, the incredibly wealthy in America have done little to assist those who helped them acquire their wealth. When it comes to public schools, they’ve done much to destroy them.
What kind of civics is McMahon promoting? How patriotic must children be when they don’t have access to decent health care or good schools? Patriotism? How difficult is it to wave the flag when you’re a hungry child without a home? Or what if you come from a family of undocumented immigrants, whose dream has been to be able to wave that flag, but their dream has now been dashed?
Our country is rapidly evolving into two Americas.
One America consists of less than a thousand billionaires who have an unprecedented amount of wealth and power and have never ever had it so good.
The other America, where the vast majority live, consists of tens of millions of families who are struggling to put food on the table, pay their bills and worry that their kids will have a lower standard of living than they do.
How is McMahon giving back to America? Providing kids a so-called civics program that includes religion is hollow when they’re hungry.
Has she spoken with US agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins? Rollins is not a billionaire yet, but on her way with an acquired $15 million. She claimed last week that Americans could save money by aligning their meals with the new Department of Health and Human Services dietary guidelines. They could simply eat“a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli”, “a corn tortilla” and “one other thing”.
“…too many schools have moved away from teaching the basics of what it means to be an American — from understanding the Constitution to showing respect for the nation’s symbols — warning that America’s sense of national identity is quickly fading.
We don’t teach love of country. We don’t say the Pledge of Allegiance. We are not creating that same sense of patriotism. …in some districts, the word patriot was actually crossed out of some of the curriculum in some of our schools.
History Rocksis a national partnership with the following religiously connected groups:
She was there as part of a national tour she’s doing. She’s going to visit every state, and they call this the History Rocks! Trail To Independence Tour, where McMahon is visiting, as I said, one school in each state. This whole thing is organized by a private coalition in partnership with the Department of Education, and it’s a coalition of conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and Turning Point USA. These groups have a goal of using education to promote patriotism, but in a very specific way, which includes adding a particular Christian perspective on American history.
McMahon doesn’t appear to understand the history behind patriotism and public education. If she did, she would know there has been a long history of controversy.
Leo Tolstoy said:
Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government’s ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery.
Albert Einstein stated:
Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism – how passionately I hate them!
Teaching patriotism in public schools has always been debated. In 2006, Diane Ravitch penned “Should We Teach Patriotism?” She didn’t endorse a special class for patriotism but instead proposed:
Students who study American history will learn about the sacrifices of previous generations who sought to safeguard our liberties and improve our society, and they will learn about the men and women of all races and backgrounds who struggled to create a land of freedom, justice, and opportunity. Students must learn too about the failings of our democracy, about the denials of freedom and justice that blight our history.
But to deprive students of an education that allows them to see themselves as part of this land and its history and culture would be a crying shame. Just as students must learn to value themselves as individuals, to value their families, and to value their community, so too should they learn to value the nation of which they are citizens. To love one’s country does not require one to ignore its faults. To love one’s country does not require one to dismiss the virtues of other countries. Indeed, those who are patriotic about their own country tend to respect those who live elsewhere and also love their respective countries.
That last part about not dismissing the virtues of other countries eerily rings true today, as the President seeks to take over other countries, ignoring the great needs, especially those of America’s children in the United States.
On this MLK day, consider where we’ve been as a nation, and where it looks like we’re sadly going, and what it must mean to America’s children, every one of them.
Linda McMahon’s billionaire patriotism is not right. It does nothing to help American children live good lives where they can become successful, Republican or Democrat.
References
Ravitch, D. (2006). Should we teach patriotism? Phi Delta Kappan, 87(8), 579–581.
It was, writes Graham, filled with the trademarks of Trump speeches: lies, incoherence and confusion. It was the kind of speech that Trump has delivered to adoring audiences while campaigning. Filled with boasts, grievances, and exaggeration.
“Without us, right now you’d all be speaking German,” Donald Trump scolded European leaders at the World Economic Forum this morning. Perhaps the Germans have a word for the experience of watching your country’s leader embarrass himself and the country on the global stage.
Where does one start in summarizing such a speech? The straightforward racism? The economic illiteracy? The determination to alienate allies? The many moments where the president said things that were blatantly, provably false? And because he rambled through more than an hour, he covered a lot of ground.
The most anticipated section was about Trump’s ongoing effort to acquire Greenland. Trump argued that only the United States could defend the island, which he perplexingly also dismissed as “a giant piece of ice” and accidentally called “Iceland” on a few occasions. He also said Greenland was essential for the “golden dome” missile-defense system he claims he will build. (He denied that the U.S. is after rare-earth minerals in Greenland.)
Although Trump insisted that he has the utmost respect for both Danes and Greenlanders, nothing else he said evinced any. He accused them of being ungrateful for the U.S. defense of Greenland during World War II and argued that the American government erred when it “gave it back” after the war. Trump delivered a classic mafioso threat to take Greenland by force, saying that U.S. military might was irresistible, before adding nonchalantly that he would not do such a thing. This was not as reassuring as some headlines might lead readers to believe. And he said that if European leaders didn’t acquiesce, “we will remember….”
Heather Cox Richardson read Trump’s frequent posts on his social media outlet “Ttuth Social,” and she included some of them in this post. He is not well. He has delusions of grandeur, omnipotence. But his glorious accomplishments have yet to be acknowledged with a Nobel Prize. He rants on about the 2020 election, which he lost decisively. He refuses to accept reality. He is wildly envious of Joe Biden. He commands the world’s most powerful military. He is angry and vengeful. He is not well. He is delusional.
World leaders are gathered at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which is taking place from January 19 to January 23. Trump is scheduled to go to the meeting in person for the first time since 2020, although now, with him still in the U.S., his social media account has been posting wildly.
Just after midnight, the account posted that Trump had “a very good telephone call with Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of NATO, concerning Greenland. I agreed to a meeting of the various parties in Davos, Switzerland. As I expressed to everyone, very plainly, Greenland is imperative for National and World Security. There can be no going back—On that, everyone agrees!” Shortly after, the account posted an AI image of world leaders sitting in front of Trump’s desk in the Oval Office with a large picture of North America entirely covered with stars and stripes to indicate American ownership—including Canada, as well as Greenland. The flag also covers Venezuela.
Then the account posted an image of Trump with Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio next to him as he stands on what looks to be an arctic landscape, holding a U.S. flag waving above a sign that reads: “GREENLAND—US TERRITORY EST. 2026.”
Later on, it would post private text messages to Trump from Rutte and French president Emmanuel Macron, mocking their attempts at diplomacy, and repost a message reading: “at what point are we going to realize the enemy is within [angry emoji]. China and Russia are the bogeymen when the real threat is the U.N., NATO, and [Islam].”
And then the account posted: “No single person, or President, has done more for NATO than President Donald J. Trump. If I didn’t come along there would be no NATO right now!!! It would have been in the ash heap of History. Sad, but TRUE!!! President DJT”
But seizing Greenland was not the only thing on the mind of administration officials. The account’s posts suggest they are worried about Trump’s declining popularity. It launched an attack on Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook, whom the administration is targeting for alleged mortgage fraud, just before it claimed that Trump was lowering mortgage rates. Later, the account would post a short video of Trump under which the chyron read: “I AM STANDING UP FOR AMERICAN AUTOWORKERS,” although the video was of him promising to stop all federal payments to “sanctuary cities” on February 1.
Then it bopped over to claiming that the people resisting ICE violence in Minnesota are “agitators and insurrectionists. These people are professionals! No person acts the way they act. They are highly trained to scream, rant, and rave, like lunatics, in a certain manner, just like they are doing. They are troublemakers who should be thrown in jail, or thrown out of the Country.” The first to go, he said, should be Democratic governor Tim Walz and Democratic representative Ilhan Omar, both of whom he called corrupt. Later, the account insisted that Democratic governor of California Gavin Newsom is also corrupt.
Later, the account posted that “[t]he Department of Homeland Security and ICE must start talking about the murderers and other criminals that they are capturing and taking out of the system. They are saving many innocent lives! There are thousands of vicious animals in Minnesota alone, which is why the crime stats are, Nationwide, the BEST EVER RECORDED! Show the Numbers, Names, and Faces of the violent criminals, and show them NOW. The people will start supporting the Patriots of ICE, instead of the highly paid troublemakers, anarchists, and agitators! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN”
Then the account turned to reposting long-debunked lies about the 2020 presidential election. It reposted claims that there was voter fraud in Nevada (there wasn’t), that Dominion Voting Machines flipped 435,000 votes from Trump to Biden (they didn’t), that China had rigged the voting for Biden (it didn’t). It appears someone is thinking about the fact that Special Counsel Jack Smith, who investigated Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, will be testifying in public on Thursday, January 22.
In Washington today, in a long, rambling speech before reporters, Trump appeared to try to bring his social media post directly to the media. The speech was supposedly to outline the accomplishments of his administration, and he brandished a large sheaf of papers held together with a binder clip, labeled “ACCOMPLISHMENTS,” both of which he later threw on the floor.
But Trump turned from it almost immediately to insist that agents from Immigration and Customs enforcement are not arresting and detaining American citizens, although they very publicly did so on Sunday, breaking into the home of U.S. citizen ChongLy “Scott” Thao without a warrant, holding him at gunpoint, marching him outside in subfreezing weather in just sandals and underwear, driving him around for an hour or two before dropping him back at his home, and then lying that members of his family are on the registered sex offender list.
Trump denied such abuses, claiming that in Minnesota, ICE is apprehending “bad people.” To illustrate his claims, he held up one photo after another of individuals above the label “WORST OF WORST” as he mumbled about how bad they were: “many murderers, many many murderers, people that murdered.” Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, who has watched and clipped Trump’s speeches for years, commented: “folks, this is some really weird sh*t. the president is not well.”
From there, Trump was off with the usual litany of complaints about former president Joe Biden, and familiar stories like this one:
“I should’ve gotten the Nobel Prize for each war, but I don’t say that. I saved millions and millions of people. And don’t let anyone tell you that Norway doesn’t control the shots, ok? It’s in Norway. Norway controls the shots. They’ll say, ‘We have nothing to do with it.’ It’s a joke. They’ve lost such prestige. Got all—that’s why I have such respect for Maria doing what she did. She said, ‘I don’t deserve the Nobel Prize, he does.’ When she got it, they named—they said, ‘Wow that’s amazing, I thought President Trump would get it.’”
Trump also had words about Jack Smith: “Deranged Jack sick Smith. He’s a sick son of a b*tch. They gave me the worst of the worst.”
Trump’s threats against Greenland and his promise to hit Europe with high tariffs if governments there don’t support his seizure of Greenland drove the U.S. stock market sharply downward today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 870.74 points (1.76%), the S&P 500 was down 2.06%, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.39%, the worst day for all three of these major indexes since October.
Yesterday Tom Fairless of the Wall Street Journalreported that, contrary to Trump’s repeated assertions, U.S. consumers and importers—not foreign countries—are the ones who have paid for Trump’s tariff war. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank, echoed the findings of Yale and Harvard Business School economists, confirming that American consumers and importers have absorbed 96% of the cost of Trump’s tariffs.
Trump’s threats against Europe are an entirely different kettle of fish, for as Konrad Putzier, Chao Deng, and Sam Goldfarb of the Wall Street Journal explain, the European Union is the biggest trading partner of the U.S., its largest investor, and its closest financial ally. European leaders are discussing whether to retaliate against the U.S. using the EU’S Anti-Coercion Instrument, nicknamed “the Bazooka,” which can restrict imports and exports to any country trying to coerce an EU member and can limit U.S. investment there.
In The Atlantic on January 18, Robert Kagan wrote that “Americans are entering the most dangerous world they have known since World War II” and warned they “are neither materially nor psychologically ready for this future. For eight decades, they have inhabited a liberal international order shaped by America’s predominant strength” and “have grown accustomed to the world operating in a certain way.”
European and Asian allies have cooperated with the U.S. on both defense and trade, while the power of those alliances has prevented serious challenges to that order. Global trade has generally been free, and oceans have been safe for travel both by humans and container ships. Nuclear weapons have been limited by international agreement. “Americans are so accustomed to this basically peaceful, prosperous, and open world that they tend to think it is the normal state of international affairs, likely to continue indefinitely,” Kagan wrote. “They can’t imagine it unraveling, much less what that unraveling will mean for them.”
In Davos today, Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, told the world, “We are in the midst of a rupture.” The rules-based international order is no longer an automatic route to prosperity and security, he said, as the world’s most powerful nations now use that system’s economic integration to coerce other countries.
In its place, Carney offered a different vision than the “world of fortresses” made up of major powers with spheres of influence that Trump and Russia’s president Vladimir Putin are trying to build.
If “middle powers” pursue a system he called “variable geometry,” he said, they can rebalance the world and help solve global problems while still building strength at home. His vision is a version of the “diplomatic variable geometry” of former U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken, but Carney’s vision decenters the U.S., noting that middle powers must work together to be at the table to avoid being on the menu. Under a system of variable geometry, countries can develop infrastructure and trade at home, strengthening their own nations, while negotiating new international agreements, as Canada has done recently with China, Qatar, India, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Thailand, the Philippines, and Mercosur, a South American trade bloc made up of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
But for international affairs, variable geometry means creating international “coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests,” “coalitions that work issue by issue with partners who share enough common ground to act together. In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations. What it’s doing is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities.”
“We know the old order is not coming back,” Carney said. “We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from genuine cooperation.”
The Wall Street Journal gave front-page coverage to this new study, which concludes that American consumers are paying for Trump’s tariffs. This is a direct refutation of Trump’s claims that other nations are paying to access American markets, that the trillions collected for tariffs will eventually replace income taxes and pay for all the government’s expenses.
Guess who is paying for tariffs? We are!
FRANKFURT—Americans, not foreigners, are bearing almost the entire cost of U.S. tariffs, according to new research that contradicts a key claim by President Trump and suggests he might have a weaker hand in a reemerging trade war with Europe.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that his historic tariffs, deployed aggressively over the past year as both a revenue-raising and foreign-policy tool, will be paid for by foreigners. Such assertions helped to reinforce the president’s bargaining power and encourage foreign governments to do deals with the U.S.
A relatively brisk growth and moderate inflation last year, even as growth in Europe and other advanced economies remained sluggish.
The new research, published Monday by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a well-regarded German think tank, suggests that the impact of tariffs is likely to show up over time in the form of higher U.S. consumer prices.
The findings don’t mean that the tariffs are a win for Europe—on the contrary. German exports to the U.S., which have rocketed in recent years, have contracted sharply in the past year.
The German research echoes recent reports by the Budget Lab at Yale and economists at Harvard Business School, finding that only a small fraction of the tariff costs were being borne by foreign producers.
By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the qpart burden of last year’s U.S. tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%.
James Fallows is a veteran journalist who has published widely and was a regular columnist for TheAtlantic. Early on in his career, he was chief speechwriter for President Carter.
This morning on Fox, two well-matched intellects: Maria Bartiromo and Ted Cruz. Next to them is a Fox-produced map making Greenland look bigger than China, which in reality is more than four times its size. And on a par with the whole of Africa, which in fact is nearly 15 times as large. Fox is famous as the main source of real-time intel for the person who has assumed one-man control of US military, economic, and diplomatic relations with the world. What could go wrong?
This post includes a reprise of some previous items on Greenland, especially from this post one week ago. But as news has evolved, and as the insane idea of taking over Greenland has moved closer to alliance-destroying “reality,” and as a handy one-place guide to the main issues, I offer this update:
I’m not expert on Greenland. But at least I’ve been there, last spring for nearly a week. Which is a week more than the current US President, his Secretary of State (who is also his National Security Advisor), or his Secretary of Defense can claim, among them. And I’ve been reading about the place, and asking people about it, before that and ever since. Which I doubt any of them have done.
Here are my main suggestions if you find yourself in a “Wow, this Greenland situation, what do you think??” conversation any time soon.
1) This crisis is all coming from someone’s gut. Not from anyone’s brain.
Maybe you want to keep this to yourself, rather than leading with it in the conversation. But it’s worth knowing: Does the Trump-era obsession with Greenland seem completely irrational? That’s because it is—as no less an authority than Trump himself has told us.
The most self-aware part of Trump’s recent hours-long gabfest with NY Times reporters, and among the most self-damaging, was the “why Greenland?” exchange.
The Times team didn’t put it exactly this way, but the implied setup for their question was: With brutal war ongoing in Ukraine, with carnage in Gaza, with regime change in Venezuela, with upheaval in Iran, with federal troops occupying major cities, with tariffs upending world economies, and so on, why on Earth are you even talking about Greenland?
Here’s how the Q-and-A played out, with emphasis by me.
David Sanger [NYT]: Why is ownership [of Greenland] important here?
Trump: Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success…. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document…
Katie Rogers [NYT]: Psychologically important to you, or to the United States?
Trump: Psychologically important for me. Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I’ve been right about everything.
Give Trump credit, this one time, for honesty. Give him demerits on every other count. What he’s doing to all the rest of us is crazy. But, in a moment like Tony Soprano on the psychiatrist’s couch with Dr. Melfi, he’s looking into himself and seeing a deeper truth.
Because the feeling of ownership is “psychologically important” for this one damaged man, the US is throwing alliances and interests built over centuries into a bonfire. Great. But not what Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson had in mind.
2) The US has nothing to gain by ‘owning’ Greenland. Zero.
Actually less than zero, into the negative range. The military bases the US might want, to patrol activity over the Arctic? Especially as melting ice opens more sea lanes? We already have treaty rights to operate as many bases as we could want.
The Chinese and Russian boats allegedly crowding the waters around Greenland? Bullshit. Check out MarineTraffic.com, VesselFinder.com, ShipFinder.co, etc (the rough maritime counterparts of FlightAware and ADSB-Exchange in aviation) to see for yourself.
The “rare earths” that are so prized? As mentioned before, the “mining” terrain in Greenland is about as challenging as any in the world. Even as glaciers melt at a quickening pace, the average thickness of the ice cap over Greenland is more than one mile. There are simply no roads in the country—none, at all—to connect potential mining sites with ports. What you see in Greenland, apart from tiny settlements on the coast, is ice. Melting ice, yes.
But still a stupendous amount of it. Rare earth miners may eventually go to work there. But it will be a very long time. And the US doesn’t need to “own” this territory to buy their output. If and when there is any.
And this is not even to get into all the burden of maintaining Greenland, if the US took it over. Health care. Education. Food. Transport to remote locations. Adjudicating indigenous rights versus those of the central government.
People in the US grumble about the challenges of remote rural locations. This is on an entirely different scale.
Denmark already has agreed to open Greenland to every security and economic ambition the US might have. And meanwhile, Denmark is juggling all the challenges of this semi-autonomous state. One man’s sense of what is “psychologically important, to me” might matter to him. It should matter less to us, than Tony Soprano’s did to his mob.
3) No one wants us there. Zero.
Greenlanders have complex feelings about their “mother” country, Denmark. The ties are deep. So are the desires for independence. Greenland is self-governing, and has its own flag, its own culture, its own ambitions—as we heard from everyone we met. But nearly everyone we met had studied in Denmark, and spoke Danish, and had relatives there.
That’s complicated. By contrast, the view of US takeover is simple. No!
There is more but you half to open the post and subscribe to finish it.
When Trump selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, the nation’s leading source of research and policy about health, many critics worried that Kennedy’s adherence to conspiracy theories about vaccines would cloud his judgment.
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Senator Bill Cassidy–a medical doctor–asked Kennedy if he would promise that he would not apply his personal views to the vaccine schedule. Kennedy promised. But, of course, once he was confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, he broke his promise. He fired all the members of his advisory committee on vaccines and replaced them with his own choices.
Recently Kennedy released a new childhood vaccine schedule, which eliminated some vaccines that had been standard. Organizations of medical professionals were aghast. Until now, guidance from the HHS and Centers for Disease Control were reliable sources for guidance.
Many states responded to Kennedy’s bad advice by determining to ignore the federal recommendations and make their own decisions.
Governor Maura Healey released new guidance on childhood vaccinations Wednesday, countering Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent overhaul of the schedule.
On Jan. 5, the Trump administration reduced the number of vaccinations it recommends for all children, framing the decision as a way to increase public trust by backing only the most important shots.
Unlike the federal government, Massachusetts continues to recommend that every child receive inoculations for hepatitis B, rotavirus, flu, COVID, and RSV, following guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Under Kennedy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommends these shots only for children at high risk or when doctors encourage them in what’s called “shared decision-making,” in which doctors and patients collaborate on treatment decisions.
Insurance will continue to cover all vaccinations for children.
The federal rollback caused outrage among doctors and health authorities, mainly because it came amid a particularly deadly flu season. The flu has killed 66 people in Massachusetts so far this season, including four children, double the number of deaths reported at this time last year.
The federal changes came without any new evidence casting doubt on the decades of data showing vaccines for children are safe and effective.
“The decision to change CDC’s childhood immunization schedule is reckless and deeply dangerous,” said Dr. Robbie Goldstein, the state public health commissioner, in a statement Wednesday. “It replaces decades of transparent, evidence-based guidance with uncertainty.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 