Monday, January 12, 2026
Sunday, January 11, 2026
The revenge politics of Chump
Convicted Felon Donald Chump was never fit to be in the White House and he's demonstrated it throughout his second term as he continues to abuse the power of the office of president by using them to seek retribution. For example, Miacel Spotted Elk (MOTHER JONES) reports:
On Thursday, Republicans in the House failed to override President Donald Trump’s first two vetoes in office: a pipeline project that would bring safe drinking water to rural Colorado, and another that would return land to the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians in Florida. Their inability to block the president’s move signals their commitment to the White House over their prior support for the measures.
The Miccosukee have always considered the Florida Everglades their home. So when Republicans in Congress voted to expand the tribe’s land base under the Miccosukee Reserved Area Act—legislation that would transfer 30 acres of land in the Everglades to tribal control—the Miccosukee were thrilled. After years of work, the move would have allowed the tribe to begin environmental restoration activities in the area and better protect it from climate change impacts as extreme flooding and tropical storms threaten the land.
“The measure reflected years of bipartisan work and was intended to clarify land status and support basic protections for tribal members who have lived in this area for generations,” wrote Chairman Cypress in a statement last week, “before the roads and canals were built, and before Everglades National Park was created.”
The act was passed on December 11, but on December 30, President Donald Trump vetoed it; one of only two vetoes made by the administration since he took office. In a statement, Trump explained that the tribe “actively sought to obstruct reasonable immigration policies that the American people decisively voted for when I was elected,” after the tribe’s July lawsuit challenging the construction of “Alligator Alcatraz,” an immigration detention center in the Everglades.
“It is rare for an administration to veto a bill for reasons wholly unrelated to the merits of the bill,” said Kevin Washburn, a law professor at University of California Berkeley Law and former assistant secretary of Indian affairs for the Department of the Interior. Washburn added that while denying land return to a tribe is a political act, Trump’s move is “highly unusual.”
Need another example? Glenn Thrush and Colby Smith (NEW YORK TIMES) report:
The U.S. attorney’s office in the District of Columbia has opened a criminal investigation into Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, over the central bank’s renovation of its Washington headquarters and whether Mr. Powell lied to Congress about the scope of the project, according to officials briefed on the situation.
The inquiry, which includes an analysis of Mr. Powell’s public statements and an examination of spending records, was approved in November by Jeanine Pirro, a longtime ally of President Trump who was appointed to run the office last year, the officials said.
The investigation escalates Mr. Trump’s long-running feud with Mr. Powell, whom the president has continually attacked for resisting his demands to slash interest rates significantly. The president has threatened to fire the Fed chair — even though he nominated Mr. Powell for the position in 2017 — and raised the prospect of a lawsuit against him related to the $2.5 billion renovation, citing “incompetence.”
[. . .]
Mr. Powell, in a rare video message released by the Fed, acknowledged on Sunday that the Justice Department had served the central bank with grand jury subpoenas days earlier. He described the investigation as “unprecedented” and questioned the motivation for the move, even as he affirmed that he carried out his duties as chair “without political fear or favor.”
The Fed chair warned that the investigation signaled a broader battle over the Fed’s independence. “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president,” Mr. Powell added. “This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions — or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.”
AP adds, "The move represents an unprecedented escalation in President Donald Trump's battle with the Fed, an independent agency he has repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as quickly as Trump prefers. The subpoena relates to his testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, Powell said, regarding the Fed's $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project that Trump criticized as excessive."
Meanwhile Chump's gestapo continues to terrorize American cities and with little oversight. Michael Gold (NYT) reports we're entering a phase of even less oversight:
The day after an immigration officer shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis, the Trump administration reinstated limits preventing lawmakers from making unannounced visits to immigration facilities, according to a court filing made public over the weekend.
In a memo dated Thursday, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said that she would once again require lawmakers to give seven days’ notice before conducting oversight visits to Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities.
Ms. Noem’s new guidelines on lawmaker visits are virtually identical to a policy that a federal judge halted last month after ruling that it appeared to violate a provision of the appropriations law that funds ICE.
The woman shot and killed was Renee Nicole Good. And her murder has shocked the nation. On NBC's MEET THE PRESS this morning, Senator Chris Murphy called for ICE to stop breaking the law and return to pre-Kristi Noem policies:
We're simply talking about, you know, essentially going back to the way that ICE was operating when they cared about legality, right? Identification of officers, that's something that has been standard practice in every law enforcement agency all across the country. CBP, who are supposed to be at the border, protecting us at the border, operating in the interior with no training on how to deal with complex urban environments, that's brand new. So we just need to get back to a Department of Homeland Security that is prioritizing the law and prioritizing keeping people safe. And yes, I think it is reasonable for Democrats speaking on behalf of the majority of the American public who don't approve of what ICE is doing to say, "If you want to fund the Department of Homeland Security, I want to fund a Department of Homeland Security that is operating in a safe and legal manner."
"I think what we are seeing here is the federal government -- [Department of Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem, Vice President [JD] Vance, [President] Donald Trump -- attempting to cover up what happened here in the Twin Cities, and I don't think that people here and around the country are believing it," Senator Tina Smith declared to host Martha Raddatz on ABC THIS WEEK:
"You are saying the administration is trying to cover up this shooting. That's a pretty serious charge. What do you mean exactly," Raddatz asked.
"What I mean by that is that you can see everything that they are doing is trying to shape the narrative, to say what happened, without any investigation," Smith said.
Smith went on to criticize the administration for its response to the shooting.
"What I think is essential to keep in mind here is that if we're going to trust the federal government, how can we trust the federal government to do an objective, unbiassed investigation, without prejudice, when at the beginning of that investigation they have already announced exactly what they saw -- what they think happened."
US House Rep Ilhan Omar appeared on CBS' FACE THE NATION:
Rep. Ilhan Omar said Sunday that it is "not acceptable" for President Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to have issued public statements condemning the women shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis "without a full investigation."
"If they're saying we shouldn't believe our eyes, then let the investigation take place before you characterize this mother of three as a domestic terrorist," Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, said Sunday on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan." "Prove to us what documentation you have that one, she was paid and two, that she was agitating when you can hear saying she's not mad, she's not upset, she's clearly trying to waive cars to bypass her. And so it's just this level of rhetoric is unjustifiable to the American people."
Taking time away from both her husband and also her long alleged boyfriend, Homeland Security Tramp and Monster Kristi Noem appeared on CNN's STATE OF THE UNION. John Bowden (INDEPENDENT) reports:
Jake Tapper pressed DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on Sunday to explain how the administration was going to guarantee a fair investigation into Jonathan Ross, an ICE agent who was seen on video shooting a woman in her car in Minneapolis last week.
The shooting of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, prompted hundreds of thousands of Americans to protest across the country this weekend.
Ross can be heard on his own cell phone video calling Good a “f***ing b****” before firing into the vehicle as it appears to turn away from his direction. Whether the officer was struck by the side of the car is unclear.
The secretary attempted to blame Democrats and the media for prejudging the officer’s guilt, but had no response when the State of the Union host questioned whether the administration’s stalwart defense of the officer’s actions would harm future investigations.
The whore wants to set the standard for what's allowed. I don't take standard recommendations from 'family values' politicians who are married and have public allegations -- published in THE NEW YORK POST -- that they are having an ongoing, years-plus affair with another man -- a man that they have brought in as their co-worker at Homeland Security. If I wanted to know a really good mattress, I'd take Kristi's opinion on that or even some really good lubricants. But I'm not interested in a tramp giving me lectures on standards and what's wrong.
At THE NEW REPUBLIC, Michael Tomasky writes:
On January 3, four days before the horrific killing of Renee Nicole Good, the Department of Homeland Security put out a press release. The headline bragged: “ICE Announces Historic 120% Manpower Increase, Thanks to Recruitment Campaign That Brought in 12,000 Officers and Agents.”
The statement went on to boast (bolded language in the original): “After receiving more than 220,000 applications to join ICE from patriotic Americans, ICE blew past its original hiring target of 10,000 new officers and agents within a year. In fact, we have more than doubled our officers and agents from 10,000 to 22,000. With these new patriots on the team, we will be able to accomplish what many say was impossible and fulfill President Trump’s promise to make America safe again.”
It appears that Good’s executioner—and it’s hard to think of a more apt word for someone who fires three point-blank shots at the head of an obviously unarmed civilian who is trying to drive away—was not one of these “new patriots.” The incident his defenders have taken to invoking, in which he was dragged by a car and ended up with 33 stitches, reportedly happened last June, before the hiring spree. But even that raises the obvious question: If he was injured, if he was “traumatized” by that event, as Vice President JD Vance said Thursday, what in the world was he doing still out in the field?
An investigation may answer that question (or, since it’s going to be led by Kash Patel’s FBI, maybe it won’t). But our common sense, and what we have learned in the last year about these people, tells us that he was still in the field for the same reason that ICE has hired 12,000 people in six months, recruiting specifically for people with an enthusiasm for guns and the military. The Trump administration wants to force showdowns that lead inevitably to what happened in Minneapolis Wednesday.
Take a look at the recruitment social media post that DHS placed on X last August: “Serve your country! Defend your culture! No undergraduate degree required!”
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