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The atrocities and the fury mount. Astoundingly, after a murderous thug shot a mother of three in the face in broad daylight - "He didn't kill her because he was scared, he killed her because she wasn't" - state terror has ramped up with more lies, goons, attacks on "gangs of wine moms," brutish agitprop literally echoing the Nazis'. So when mini-Bovino went to take a leak at a store, the people's wrath, a bittersweet splendor, erupted. Their/our edict: "Get the fuck out."
For now, Trump's America keeps getting scarier and uglier. He's threatened to (illegally) withdraw the US from the world’s most vital climate treaty and 65 other agencies doing useful work. He's trashing a once-thriving economy because he doesn't know how it works, scapegoating longtime Fed chair Jerome Powell, who's (startlingly fighting back, flipping off autoworkers, admiring non-existent ballrooms. After (illegally) killing over 100 Venezuelans and abducting their president - Chris Hedges: "Empires, when they are dying, worship the idol of war" - he called oil executives to a dementia-ridden meeting where in a reality check one brave skeptic argued Venezuela is historically "uninvestable." He ordered invasion plans for Greenland - wait what - that joint chiefs are resisting as "crazy and illegal": “It’s like dealing with a five-year-old.” And in a supreme irony overload, he's menacing U.S. protesters while warning Iran's killers of protesters they'll "pay a big price" and urging Iran's people to "take over your institutions." We can't even.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, he's sending yet more thugs, persisting in calling Renée Good "a professional agitator" - Professional Agitators 'R Us! - and warning a besieged, traumatized community, "THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!" Up is down and MAGA minions dutifully follow suit. Tom Homan: "We've got to stop the hateful rhetoric. Saying this officer is a murderer is dangerous. It’s ridiculous. It’s just gonna infuriate people more." Newsmax and GOP Rep. Pete Sessions agree: Dems have to quiet their "rhetoric," cease "honking of horns," and stop "putting an iPhone on your face." "STOP THE MADNESS," shrieks David Marcus on Fox, blasting "organized gangs of wine moms" across the country - Wine Moms 'R Us! - using Antifa tactics to "harass and impede" ICE: "It's not civil disobedience. It isn’t even protest. It’s just crime." Here, Renée Good was "a trained member" of groups "executing missions that put law enforcement and the public in harm’s way," probably all part of "criminal conspiracies."
To support the insane narrative that the brazen murder of a mother of three in her car in public constitutes "an attack on our brave law enforcement," DHS released crude, "pathological," Goebbels-worthy propaganda that repeats the first day's lies and includes footage of when Good "weaponized her vehicle” by “speeding across the road" while failing to mention it was when "she had just been shot in the fucking face and her dead foot hit the pedal." No wonder the mindless carnage goes on. A thug leers to a cuffed protester she should've "learned her lesson," she asks what lesson, he snarls, "Why we killed that fucking bitch." And gangs of goons rampage door-to-door, barging into households of kids with guns and tasers ready. One brave, calm woman records it all, demands a warrant, barks get your hands off me, mocks how big and bad they are flashing a light in her face and sneers that, on the street, "You're all some pussies without that shit on your chest...Your mamas raised a bitch if you can wear that outfit proudly."
Last week both Illinois and Minnesota, and each state's targeted cities, filed federal lawsuits to end their invasions by thousands of armed, masked, violent goons racially harassing, terrorizing and assaulting their communities. The courts may yet halt the deadly mayhem; the regime sure as shit won't. In the wake of the DOJ's predictable, outlandish announcement they won't investigate Good's murder, multiple attorneys in the civil rights division - for decades "America’s last line of accountability when federal agents kill" - have resigned, the latest in a flood of departures totaling over 250, a 70% reduction. In their stead, the FBI seized control of the "investigation" after blocking local law enforcement's access to evidence. Kash's Keystone Cops are now looking into, not Jonathan Ross, but Good and her "possible connections to activist groups" - also, because there truly is no low, her widow's. "This isn’t a cover-up," said one former DOJ attorney. "It’s the end of civil rights enforcement as we've known it."
Experts say the escalating malfeasance and accompanying thuggery are the logical culmination of a longtime "culture of violence" within border control agencies. Ryan Goodman of Just Security describes a scathing 2013 report, commissioned but then buried, that specifically cites agents' proclivity for standing in front of blocked vehicles as a pretext to open fire on drivers attempting to flee a tense encounter. Thank God we don't see that anymore. Nor do we have to see Stephen Miller's nightmare vision of Dems in power making "every city into Mogadishu or Kabul or Port-au-Prince," complete with roaming convoys of masked, armed, hefty hoodlums snatching people off the streets, dragging them out of their cars, beating them up, kneeling on their necks (illegal under post-George-Floyd Minnesota law), and brutalizing them for unknown offenses until they go limp, fate unknown, like in this video by Ford Fischer last week. For MAGA, ICE proudly represents "the fearsome power of the American state." But don't call them fascists.
It was sick Greg Bovino's knee on that neck. Then he went on Sean Hannity's show to praise Jonathan Ross for shooting Renée Good three times in the face - "Hats off to that ICE agent" - because "a 4,000-pound missile is not something anyone wants to face." Hannity readily agreed it was "not even a close call...There is no ambiguity for anyone with eyes to see that (Good) had been taunting officers," which is not true, also definitely a death penalty offense. Later, Bovino claimed that 90% of the public "are happy to see us." Last week, a YouGov poll disagreed, finding a majority of Americans disapproved of the murderous job ICE is doing, and almost half support abolishing it entirely. That may be why, when Bovino went to take a piss last week at a Target in St. Paul, accompanied by a phalanx of surly stormtroopers with itchy trigger fingers and nervous cameras held aloft, they were met by pure, gut-level fury, and a crowd of we the people with no fucks left to give. More video from Ford Fischer of News2Share.
A handy transcript: "You’re a fucking bum. you’re a bitch. and if your wife’s got a problem, fuck her, too. you guys are all bitches. you can’t do shit to me. you can’t do a thing. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out. nobody wants you here. right. get the fuck out. walk the fuck, you stupid bitches. get the fuck out of here. coward. you’re a fucking coward, bitch. you’re a fucking bitch. fuck you. hold on, babe, I’m on the phone with these bitch-ass niggas. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out of here, you stupid bitches. you’re a fucking coward piece of shit. fuck you. and if you didn’t have a gun or a vest, I would beat the shit out of you. take that fucking badge off, and that fucking gun, and see what happens to you. you shut the fuck up, you’re not fucking tough. you’re a bitch and get the fuck out, you fucking pussy. you fucking bitch-ass white boys. I’ll fucking spit on you. fucking get out of here. get the fuck out. shut the fuck up. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out of here. get the fuck out. nobody wants you here."
Among Minnesota's ICE victims was a Marine veteran who said she was following agents "at a safe distance" when they rammed the car, broke the window, dragged her out by the neck, slammed her face into the ground, tightly cuffed her and snarled, per their memo, "This is why we killed that lesbian bitch." Shaken, she told a reporter, "I took an oath, and they're spitting on it. They're Nazis. They're Gestapo. This isn't Germany." Not yet. But close, says James Fell's Sweary History: "Those who cannot remember the past need a history teacher who says 'fuck' a lot." When ICE Barbie, "this puppy-killing, plasticized bag of fascism" called Good a domestic terrorist, he notes, her podium read, "One of Ours, All of Yours" - the phrase Nazis used when the Resistance killed "murderous motherfucker" Reinhard Heydrich, and Nazis retaliated by killing thousands of Czechs and most of the village of Lidice, where they (wrongly) thought the assassins came from. Kill one of ours, we murder all of yours: "This is what DHS is threatening should people dare to resist the American Gestapo."
Dark echoes keep coming. In more Goebbels-worthy agit-prop, the Dept. of Labor just posted a bizarre musical photo montage captioned, "One Homeland. One People. One Heritage," which even X's AI chatbot Grok noted is just like the Nazi slogan, "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" - One People, One Realm, One Leader. Huh, said many: "Sounds familiar," "Sounds better in the original German," "I didn't have DOL dropping race-baiting propaganda with moody techno music on my 2026 Bingo card," "I remember this one from history books," "Can't wait for the sequel! Labor Creates Liberty!" and, "That 1930s retro energy really matches the new vibe." The video added, "Remember who you are, American." Rob Kelner responded, "I remember who I am. I am the grandchild of immigrants, in a nation that welcomed all four of my grandparents, dirt poor...fleeing tyranny." We have fallen so far, and lost so much. But some truths remain: "There is no world in which these are the good guys. None."
"Get it all on record now. Get the films. Get the witnesses. Because somewhere down the road of history, some bastard will get up and say that this never happened." - Dwight D. Eisenhower, Commander of the Allied Forces, on atrocities committed by the German Nazis.

The massive energy needs of artificial intelligence data centers became a major political controversy in 2025, and new reporting suggests that it will grow even further in 2026.
CNBC reported on Thursday that data center projects have become political lightning rods among politicians ranging from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on the left to Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on the right.
However, objections to data centers aren't just coming from politicians but from ordinary citizens who are worried about the impact such projects will have on their local environment and their utility bills.
CNBC noted that data centers' energy needs are so great that PJM Interconnection, the largest US grid operator that serves over 65 million people across 13 states, projects that it will be a full six gigawatts short of its reliability requirements in 2027.
Joe Bowring, president of independent market monitor Monitoring Analytics, told CNBC that he's never seen the grid under such projected strain.
"It’s at a crisis stage right now," Bowring said. "PJM has never been this short."
Rob Gramlich, president of power consulting firm Grid Strategies, told CNBC that he expects the debate over data centers to become even more intense this year once Americans start getting socked with even higher utility bills.
"I don't think we’ve seen the end of the political repercussions,” Gramlich said. “And with a lot more elections in 2026 than 2025, we’ll see a lot of implications. Every politician is going to be saying that they have the answer to affordability and their opponents’ policies would raise rates."
Concerns about data centers' impact on electric grids are rising in both red and blue states.
The Austin American-Statesman reported on Thursday that a new analysis written by the office of Austin City Manager TC Broadnax found that data centers have the potential to overwhelm the city's system given they are projected to need more power than can possibly be delivered with current infrastructure.
"The speed in which AI is trying to be deployed creates tremendous strain on the already tight resources in both design and construction," says the analysis, which noted that some proposed data centers are seeking more than five gigawatts, which is more than the peak load for the entire city.
In New York, local station News 10 reported last year that the New York Independent System Operator is estimating that the state's grid could be 1.6 gigawatts short of reliability requirements by 2030 thanks in large part to data centers.
Anger over proposed data centers has even spread to President Donald Trump's primary residential home of Palm Beach County, Florida, where local residents successfully postponed the construction of a proposed 200-acre data center complex.
According to public news station WLRN, locals opposed to the project cited "expected noise from cooling towers, servers, and diesel generators, along with heavy water use, pollution concerns, and higher utility costs" when petitioning Palm Beach County commissioners to scrap the proposal.
Corey Kanterman, a local opponent of the proposed data center, told WLRN that his goal is to shut the project down entirely.
"No good comes of having an AI data center near you," Kanterman said. "Put them in the location of least impact to the environment and people. This location is not it."
Jensen Huang, CEO of the tech behemoth Nvidia and the eighth-richest man in the world, said Tuesday that he is "perfectly fine" with a grassroots push in California to impose a one-time wealth tax on the state's billionaire residents.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Huang said that "we chose to live in Silicon Valley, and whatever taxes, I guess, they would like to apply, so be it"—a nonchalant response that diverges from the hysteria expressed by other members of his class in response to the proposed ballot initiative.
"It never crossed my mind once," Huang said of the tax proposal.
If the proposed 5% levy on billionaire wealth makes it onto the November ballot and California voters approve it, Huang would face an estimated $8 billion tax bill—a tiny slice of his $165 billion net worth. Those subject to the tax would have the option of paying the full amount owed all at once or over a period of five years.
"'Who cares' is absolutely the appropriate reaction," said Matt Bruenig, founder of the People's Policy Project, a left-wing think tank. "It means nothing to him. David Sacks types look like the biggest babies in the world."
Bruenig was referring to the White House cryptocurrency czar who left California for Texas at the end of 2025 in an apparent effort to avoid the possible billionaire tax, which would apply to anyone living in California as of January 1, 2026.
“As a response to socialism, Miami will replace NYC as the finance capital and Austin will replace SF as the tech capital,” Sacks declared in a social media post last week.
"Frontline caregivers are glad to hear that, much like the overwhelming majority of billionaires, Mr. Huang will not be uprooting his life or business to make an ideological point over a 1% per year fix to a problem that Congress created."
The proposed one-time tax on California's roughly 200 billionaires would raise an estimated $100 billion in revenue, funds that would be set aside for the state's healthcare system, food assistance, and education.
Organizers are pursuing the tax in direct response to unprecedented Medicaid cuts enacted by US President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress over the summer.
Suzanne Jimenez, chief of staff of Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West and the lead sponsor of the ballot initiative, welcomed Huang's response to the proposed tax in a statement late Tuesday.
"We agree with Jensen Huang that California has a tremendous talent pool of workers uniquely qualified to continue moving many industries forward, including within the tech sector and beyond," said Jimenez. "This initiative will ensure the $100 billion healthcare funding crisis created by [the Trump-GOP legislation] in July is fixed, so that all of those workers can access emergency rooms and vital healthcare in California."
"Frontline caregivers are glad to hear that, much like the overwhelming majority of billionaires, Mr. Huang will not be uprooting his life or business to make an ideological point over a 1% per year fix to a problem that Congress created last July—and that California will unite to solve this November," Jimenez added.
TJ Sabula, the Michigan auto worker who was suspended from his job at Ford after calling President Donald Trump a "pedophile protector," has the backing of the largest US auto union.
United Auto Workers (UAW) on Wednesday pledged to support Sabula, whom it described as "a proud member of a strong and fighting union," further noting that "he believes in freedom of speech, a principle we wholeheartedly embrace, and we stand with our membership in protecting their voice on the job."
UAW vowed that Sabula will receive "the full protection of all negotiated contract language safeguarding his job and his rights as a union member."
Sabula on Tuesday accused Trump of being a "pedophile protector"—in reference to the president's reluctance to release files related to the criminal investigation of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein—while the president was visiting a Ford truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan.
Trump responded by giving Sabula the middle finger, while appearing to mouth or yell "fuck you" back at the auto worker.
WATCH: Trump shows his middle finger and appears to say "fuck you" after Ford worker yells "pedophile protector" - TMZ pic.twitter.com/aFsDmrvkr7
— BNO News (@BNONews) January 13, 2026
Sabula has received an outpouring of support since heckling Trump. A GoFundMe campaign aimed at raising money in support of the suspended auto worker has so far raised more than $350,000.
In a Tuesday interview published by the Washington Post, Sabula said he had "no regrets whatsoever" about yelling at the president, despite the uncertain future he now faces at his job.
"I don’t feel as though fate looks upon you often, and when it does, you better be ready to seize the opportunity,” Sabula told the Post. “And today I think I did that.”
As protests against the Trump administration's immigration operations continued in Minnesota on Wednesday, a week after a federal officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar argued that justice for the Minneapolis woman requires impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
"Today we are honoring the life and memory of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, a writer, and a poet," Omar—whose congressional district includes Minneapolis—said outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, beside other lawmakers.
Good "had just dropped... her 6-year-old son off at school and was serving as a legal observer when she was murdered by an ICE agent in South Minneapolis," Omar said, referring to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross.
"ICE's reckless actions have taken a mother from three children, a partner from a wife, and inflicted unfathomable pain on our community. My deepest condolences go out to Renee's family, friends, and anyone who loved her," the congresswoman continued. "We will not stop fighting until we achieve real justice and accountability."
According to Omar: "That must begin with impeaching Kristi Noem and ensuring no federal agent can act as a judge, jury, and executioner on our streets. It must also include [a] full and transparent investigation, and legal action against ICE."
Omar is among dozens of Democrats in the House of Representatives backing articles of impeachment against Noem for alleged obstruction of justice, violation of public trust, and self-dealing, introduced on Wednesday by Congresswoman Robin Kelly (D-Ill.).
That introduction and Omar's remarks at the Capitol came as protests continued in the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul—which, along with Minnesota, are suing the US Department of Homeland Security, ICE, and other agencies and leaders, including Noem, to end the deployment of thousands of immigration agents to the state.
In that case, US Judge Kate Menendez, appointed to the District of Minnesota by former President Joe Biden, declined to issue a temporary restraining order on Wednesday morning. Instead, she is seeking more information from all parties by late next week.
"I think the issues are really important and I don't want to suggest by not acting immediately one way or the other that I think they are unimportant," Menendez said, according to CBS News. "To the contrary, I understand this is important to everybody."
Meanwhile, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who filed the case, joined Saint Paul students for a walkout against ICE.
The Intercept reported Wednesday that "federal agents have repeatedly invoked Good's death to threaten the lives of observers and demonstrators in Minnesota," including in an encounter with local resident Phil Maddox, who filmed a masked man with an ICE officer badge screaming into his vehicle, "Stop fucking following us."
As the outlet detailed:
Maddox pans his phone camera to reveal another agent standing by the passenger-side door with a handgun drawn. Stomping back past the car, the first agent continues his tirade, telling Maddox that he won't "like the outcome" if he follows the agents.
"You did not learn from what just happened?" the ICE agent asks. "Go home to your kids." Maddox said he immediately interpreted the question as a threat.
"They're saying, 'Get in our way and we'll shoot you,'" Maddox said. "'We have immunity, we can do what we want, and you should fear us.'"
On Monday, Pioneer Press, shared another account of an agent referring to Good's death: "Brandon Siguenza told media and detailed in a Facebook post how he and a friend, Patty O'Keefe, were taken into custody near 42nd and 16th streets in South Minneapolis on Sunday morning. He said agents sprayed pepper spray into their vehicle's vents, broke their windows and arrested them both on charges of obstruction."
According to the outlet, which covers the Twin Cities:
O'Keefe told KARE-TV that during the drive to the detention facility at the Whipple Federal Building at Fort Snelling, one agent told her, "You guys got to stop obstructing us, that's why that lesbian (expletive) is dead."
O'Keefe said the comment was "shocking."
As videos emerge of federal agents telling observers to stop recording them, the National Coalition Against Censorship on Tuesday reminded Americans that "the First Amendment unequivocally protects the right to observe, monitor, and take pictures and video of government officials conducting their duties in public."
Minneapolis City Council President Elliot Payne also reminded residents of their rights on Wednesday while sharing his own experience being "assaulted by ICE" with reporters. Payne said that an agent pushed him from behind on Monday, while he observed another agent pointing a taser at people on the street.
"You have the right to observe these operations," Payne stressed. "You have the right to keep your door shut. You have a right to demand a judicial warrant, and if they do not have a judicial warrant, you do not have to open your door."
In recent days, protesters, observers, and targeted Minnesotans have shared footage of federal officials demanding to see proof of citizenship, even though there is no law requiring citizens to carry that and immigration agents are barred from conducting indiscriminate searches.
Pioneer Press reported that "during questioning by investigators, Siguenza said he was told 'they could offer undocumented family members of mine legal protection if I have any (I don't), or money, in exchange for giving them the names of protest organizers, or undocumented persons. I was shocked, and told them no.'"
In a separate report, the outlet shared a story from Elizabeth Lugert-Thom, a Saint Paul resident who said that agents, who didn't identify themselves, knocked on her door and asked if she knew where Hmong and other Asian families lived nearby. She also told them she didn't know, and wrote on Facebook, "I was a bit shaken and a bit shocked of what I was asked to do."
As oil industry giants are being set up to profit from President Donald Trump's invasion of Venezuela, a new analysis shows the ample backing those companies have received from Wall Street's top financial institutions.
Last week, Bloomberg reported that stock traders and tycoons were "pouncing" after Trump's kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month, after having pressured the Trump administration to "create a more favorable business environment in Venezuela."
A dataset compiled by the international environmental advocacy group Stand.earth shows the extent to which these interests are intertwined.
Stand.earth found that since 2021, banks—including JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, TD, RBC, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America—have committed more than $124 billion in investments to the nine companies set to profit most from the toppling of Venezuela's government.
More than a third of that financing, $42 billion, came in 2025 alone, when Trump launched his aggressive campaign against Venezuela.

Among the companies expected to profit most immediately are refiners like Valero, PBF Energy, Citgo, and Phillips 66, which have large operations on the Gulf Coast that can process the heavy crude Venezuela is known to produce. These four companies have received $41 billion from major banks over the past five years.
Chevron, which also operates many heavy-crude facilities, benefits from being the only US company that operated in Venezuela under the Maduro regime, where it exported more than 140,000 barrels of oil per day last quarter.
At a White House gathering with top oil executives on Friday, the company's vice chair, Mark Nelson, told Trump the company could double its exports "effective immediately."
According to Jason Gabelman, an analyst at TD Cowen, the company could increase its annual cash flow by $400 million to $700 million as a result of Trump's takeover of Venezuelan oil resources.
Chevron was also by far the number-one recipient of investments in 2025, with more than $11 billion in total coming from the banks listed in the report—including $1.78 billion from Barclays, another $1.78 billion from Bank of America, and $1.32 billion from Citigroup.
According to Bloomberg, just weeks before Maduro's removal, analysts at Citigroup predicted 60% gains on the nation's more than $60 billion in bonds if he were replaced.
Even ExxonMobil, whose CEO Darren Woods dumped cold water on Trump's calls to set up operations in Venezuela on Friday, calling the nation "uninvestable," potentially has something major to gain from Maduro's overthrow.
Exxon and ConocoPhillips each have outstanding arbitration cases against Venezuela over the government's 2007 nationalization of oil assets, which could award them $20 billion and $12 billion, respectively.
The report found that in 2025, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips received a combined total of more than $12.8 billion in investment from major financial institutions, which vastly exceeded that from previous years.
Data on these staggering investments comes as oil companies face increased scrutiny surrounding possible foreknowledge of Trump's attack on Venezuela.
Last week, US Senate Democrats launched a formal investigation into “communications between major US oil and oilfield services companies and the Trump administration surrounding last week’s military action in Venezuela and efforts to exploit Venezuelan oil resources.”
Richard Brooks, Stand.earth's climate finance director, said the role of the financial institutions underwriting those oil companies should not be overlooked either.
"Without financial support from big banks and investors, the likes of Chevron, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, and Valero would not have the power that they do to start wars, overthrow governments, or slow the pace of climate action," he said. "Banks and investors need to choose if they are on the side of peace, or of warmongering oil companies.”
"Take Trump at his word here," said one Minnesota attorney. "But know his word isn’t law."
As armed federal agents roam the streets of American cities and amid threats to declare the Insurrection Act and use military force to quell protests in Minneapolis, President Donald Trump said once again that the next elections should be canceled because he expects his party to lose.
“It's some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don't win the midterms,” Trump said in a closed-door interview published by Reuters on Thursday. He added that because he's accomplished so much during his first term, “when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election.”
It's at least the second time this month that Trump has floated the idea. He previously did so less directly during a speech commemorating the five-year anniversary of the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, during which his supporters attempted to violently overturn his 2020 election loss to former President Joe Biden after he told them it was the result of fraud.
During that speech at the Kennedy Center, Trump described it as an outrage that Republicans even have to contest elections against Democrats later this year, suggesting canceling the election, but later backing off the idea.
"How do we even run against these people?" Trump said. "I won't say cancel the election; they should cancel the election, because the fake news would say: 'He wants the elections canceled. He's a dictator.' They always call me a dictator."
In the same speech, he warned: "You gotta win the midterms. Because if we don't win the midterms, they'll find a reason to impeach me. I'll get impeached."
Trump is correct that sitting presidents rarely see their parties do well in midterm elections two years after being elected. No sitting president has seen their party gain seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate since 2002, when former President George W. Bush's Republican Party was able to capitalize on fears of terrorism following the September 11 attacks just over a year before.
The president's grip on a legislative trifecta is nearly as thin as it could possibly be, with Republicans holding just 218 seats to the Democrats' 213.
Democrats were already favored to retake the House in November, and now appear even more likely to do so amid Trump's consistent unpopularity. On Thursday, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved a total of 18 House races in the Democrats' direction in its latest assessment of the odds to win the chamber.
However, Trump is wrong that elections can be "canceled," at least legally. Under the Elections Clause in Article I, Section 4 of the US Constitution, the administration of elections is vested in the states, with Congress holding the power to "make or alter such regulations." The president has no authority to determine the timing of federal elections.
The United States has never once postponed a presidential election in its nearly 250-year history: They were carried out on schedule during periods of extraordinary crisis, including the Civil War in 1864, the influenza epidemic in 1918 and 1920, and World War II in 1942 and 1944.
Elections were also carried out on schedule in 2020, though Trump, who was then the president running for a second consecutive term, also suggested that they should be delayed then due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the time, he claimed that the widespread use of mail-in ballots, necessitated by the illness, would make it "the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history” and asked if he should "delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” But Trump never pursued the idea seriously, as it was shot down by top Republicans.
After losing the election, he wrote in 2022 that what he called “a Massive Fraud” allowed for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution" in order to address the 2020 result.
Trump has more recently suggested that a war could give him the ticket to cancel elections. While speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in August of 2025, he spoke approvingly of the leader's invocation of martial law and suspension of elections following Russia's invasion three years prior.
"So during war, you can't have elections?" Trump said with a smile. "So let me just say, three and a half years from now— so you mean if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections? Oh, that’s good.”
Since then, Trump has notably launched a war to take over Venezuela's oil and threatened to launch several more, including with Greenland, Iran, and Mexico.
Asked on Thursday about why the president keeps talking about canceling elections, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters: "The president was simply joking. He was saying, 'We're doing such a great job, we're doing everything the American people thought, maybe we should just keep rolling.' But he was speaking facetiously."
Ryan Broderick, the writer of the political newsletter Garbage Day, said that with his latest comments—and "the threats of invoking the Insurrection Act in Minnesota this morning—he is very clearly exploring how to cancel the midterms."
Trump has in recent days suggested using the National Guard to seize voting machines, stating that he regretted not doing so as he attempted to overturn his loss in 2020. His handpicked election officials have previously urged him to declare a "national emergency" that they said would give the federal government unprecedented powers to override the states and write their own election rules.
On the question of canceling the midterms outright, Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and First Amendment litigator, agreed that Trump "wants to, it’s plausible he’ll try, and his people would support it," but said "it’s vastly harder and more complicated than people are suggesting and can’t be done by his fiat."
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie argued that even if Trump wanted to cancel the midterms, he would face many logistical hurdles in doing so.
"How does Trump force 50 separate state boards of election to cancel their midterms?" he asked on social media. "How does he convince Republican House members to quit their jobs and give up their paychecks?"
"[US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] can't even deal with irate middle-aged Midwesterners. How does he occupy hundreds, if not thousands, of polling sites and precincts?" he continued. "Trump v. Illinois clarified that he has no legal authority to unilaterally commandeer national guards. How does he move forward from there?"
Minnesota lawyer Andrew Rothstein encouraged people to "take Trump at his word here... but know his word isn’t law."
Even if this year's elections go forward as planned, Trump is working to influence the results by bullying Republican state legislators to rig their congressional maps for the GOP and attempting to seize sensitive voter data.
“What’s needed now is not federal escalation, but deescalation."
President Donald Trump and other White House officials have sought to portray protesters against their mass deportation campaign, including in Minneapolis, as out of control and violent—but in condemning the president's threat to invoke to Insurrection Act in order to crack down on growing dissent, a top civil liberties group Thursday said it's clear where the danger to public safety is coming from.
"The real risk to people’s safety comes from [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and other federal agents’ violence against our communities," said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU's National Security Project. “What’s needed now is not federal escalation, but deescalation."
Instead, Trump said Thursday morning—hours after a federal agent shot and wounded a man during a traffic stop in Minneapolis and a week after Renee Good was killed by an ICE agent—officials in Minnesota must "stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of ICE who are only trying to do their job.”
Trump officials have provided no evidence that protesters in Minneapolis or elsewhere are "professional agitators" rather than grassroots community members who have banded together to protect their neighborhoods.
The president didn't detail how he believes officials in the state could bar residents from protesting ICE or observing and filming their violent arrests—which, as Department of Homeland Security officials on the ground recently reminded agents, are protected activities under the First Amendment and other statutes—but said if they didn't do so he would invoke the Insurrection Act.
Invoking the law would allow Trump to deploy US military troops to Minneapolis for law enforcement purposes. The president—who has been accused of inciting an attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021 after losing the 2020 election—has threatened to use the Insurrection Act at other times to clamp down on protests against his anti-immigration agenda. The law is rarely used and was last invoked in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush during riots in Los Angeles.
"It’s hard to think of another instance in which a president would deploy troops to enable further federal deprivation of people’s rights."
Shamsi said that "invoking the Insurrection Act is unnecessary, irresponsible, and dangerous."
"President Trump is continuing to stoke fear in a situation his administration created by unleashing lawless, armed federal agents against our communities," she said. "It’s hard to think of another instance in which a president would deploy troops to enable further federal deprivation of people’s rights."
Even if Trump were to send the US military to Minneapolis or other cities, Shamsi issued a reminder that "no matter what uniform they wear, armed federal agents and military troops are bound by our constitutional rights to peaceful assembly, freedom of speech, and due process. If troops or federal agents violate these boundaries, they and their leadership must be held accountable."
"Pretty much all federal scientists working on climate in the US have had to self-censor," said one scientist. "Thankfully much of the underlying science is still occurring, even if they cannot talk about it."
National Aeronautics and Space Administration Administrator Bill Nelson declared a year ago that "once again, the temperature record has been shattered—2024 was the hottest year since recordkeeping began in 1880," and NASA's statement noted climate change and its consequences, from sweltering heat to devastating wildfires. This week, under a president who has called the fossil fuel-driven crisis "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world," there was no such language from the US agency.
NASA did release a statement about its latest findings on Wednesday. The agency said that, like other experts around the world, its scientists found that "Earth's global surface temperature in 2025 was slightly warmer than 2023—but within the margin of error the two years are effectively tied," and "the hottest year on record remains 2024."
Specifically, 2025 saw average temperatures 2.14°F or 1.19°C above the 1951-80 average, the statement said, also detailing NASA's data sources. However, in line with what President Donald Trump's second administration has done across the federal government, the release does not mention human-caused climate change.
Here's the data:
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— Michael E. Mann (@michaelemann.bsky.social) January 14, 2026 at 8:22 PM
The omission quickly caught the attention of journalists and scientists, including Agence France-Presse's Issam Ahmed, who began a Wednesday report on the topic with, "Don't say the c-word" and spoke with various experts:
"The US government is now, like Russia and Saudi Arabia, a petrostate under Trump and Republican rule, and the actions of all of its agencies and departments can be understood in terms of the agenda of the polluters that are running the show," University of Pennsylvania climatologist Michael Mann told AFP. "It is therefore entirely unsurprising that NASA administrators are attempting to bury findings of its own agency that conflict with its climate denial agenda."
Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, added, "I'm just happy they were allowed to put out a press release."
"Pretty much all federal scientists working on climate in the US have had to self-censor and leave out reference to human influences on climate change, unfortunately," he told AFP. "Thankfully much of the underlying science is still occurring, even if they cannot talk about it."
Mike Scott of Carbon Copy Communications, told Euronews Green on Thursday that NASA's new statement is "consistent" with the administration's other "anti-climate actions."
In September, the US Department of Energy—led by climate liar and former fracking CEO Chris Wright—added "climate change" to its "list of words to avoid" at the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Other banned terms include carbon/CO2 "footprint," clean, decarbonization, "dirty" energy, emissions, energy transition, green, sustainability/sustainable, and tax breaks/tax credits/subsidies.
Last month, the Trump administration removed all references to human-caused climate change from Environmental Protection Agency webpages, as well as data showing global warming over recent decades and the resulting risks. Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, called it "one of the more dramatic scrubbings we've seen so far in the climate space."
And we have a NASA press release at least! www.nasa.gov/news-release...
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— Alexandra Witze (@alexwitze.bsky.social) January 14, 2026 at 9:28 AM
Since returning to office nearly a year ago with support from Big Oil's money, Trump has also declared a "national energy emergency" to help deliver on his campaign pledge to "drill, baby, drill," rolled back various climate policies implemented under his Democratic predecessor, ditched the Paris climate agreement again along with dozens of other international treaties and organizations, refused to attend an annual United Nations summit, and more.
"This increasingly authoritarian regime has operated with impunity to tear up climate and clean energy policies, lie about the scientific realities of climate change and the facts on renewable energy, and ram through measures to boost fossil fuels and the profits of polluters," Rachel Cleetus, policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote Thursday.
"They have attacked the federal scientific enterprise built up over decades through taxpayer investments, fired or forced out agency experts, and cut funding for critical science. And a compliant Congress has enabled this destructive agenda, including by rubber-stamping some of the president's illegal actions and by failing to exercise its constitutional powers to check his tyrannical power grabs," she continued.
"This year has also brought extraordinary efforts to expose and fight back against the worst excesses of this unhinged administration," she noted, pointing to lawsuits, organizing, and wins in states. "And as we face down another tough year under the anti-science, authoritarian Trump administration, we're fired up to keep up the fight for science and for our democracy. We hope you'll join us—because despite it all, that future is ours to build."
The finance industry is relying on climate models that understate the speed of climate change and likely economic impact. New report warns that climate-driven inflation, financial shocks, and insurance withdrawals could happen sooner than anticipated. 🧪greenfuturessolutions.com/news/parasol...
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— Scientists for Global Responsibility (@responsiblesci.bsky.social) January 14, 2026 at 4:38 AM
Like Cleetus, Scott of Carbon Copy Communications expects Trump and his allies to continue waging its war on science.
"It's not clear what climate institutions are left for Trump to try and dismantle, but there is little doubt that if he finds them, he will go after them," he warned. "The climate denial is really worrying and out of line with almost every other country in the world, including most of the world's largest oil producers. Failing to acknowledge the impacts of climate change will leave the US less able to deal with those impacts—which will continue to happen whatever Trump thinks."
"The US stance is bad for science, it's bad for the US economy and its citizens, and it's bad for the climate," Scott added. "It's also unsustainable. Climate change will not stop because the US administration doesn't believe in it. The American response to climate-related disasters will be worse if it doesn't understand why extreme weather events and other climate impacts are happening."