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OMG. We have landed in an inane, insane, bombastic Monty Python skit, slap-dash improvised by a sick vengeful child king churning through endless hissy fits. He wants to invade Greenland, occupy Minnesota, whitewash America, attack allies, bomb everyone, be Hitler with a shiny Peace Prize so his daddy will like him, and Jeffrey who? Still, there are heroes, often unlikely, among us. MLK Jr., surely spinning in his grave: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Who would've thought: Despite so much winning, polls show almost 60% of Americans say Trump's year in office has been "a failure," 71% say the country is "out of control," he has a lame 37% approval and 65% say a deranged, ignorant old man who spends his time pointing at random countries on a map squealing "mine" - and/or abducting their leaders - is "not someone they are proud to have as president." He probs hasn't won over many more with his rage-posting we really have to invade Greenland - "World Peace is at stake!" - because it only has "two dogsleds as protection" and his "very brilliant" imaginary Golden Dome system can only work at its full potential "because of angles, metes, and bounds" if Greenland is included, though just 4% of Americans agree, so "thank you for your attention to this matter, DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA," also Biden's autopen.
In the face of "the ramblings of a man who has lost touch with reality" - and whose "stunningly vindictive," "extraordinarily dangerous" hallucinations could “incinerate the NATO alliance" and world peace with it - eight E.U. countries "united in our resolve" have pledged military support for Greenland; meanwhile, that country's sardonic populace have designed cool new MAGA hats - Make America Go Away - and gathered over 200,000 signatures on a petition to buy California from us. Undeterred and Adderalled-up, Trump has also announced a vague new Board of Peace, "the Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled," whose inchoate mission would be doing...something about peace, especially if as yet unnamed countries - Orbán's in! Putin's invited! - pay a billion dollars for permanent membership in his secret club, and, again, "thank you for your attention to this matter!"
In other world news, we got the pathetic spectacle of the ever-needy boy giddily accepting a re-gifted, illegitimate Nobel Peace and Participation Prize - like Goebbels! - from Venezuela's Maria Corina Machado "for the work I have done," like bombing nine countries, more than any former president, killing 100 fishermen and turning this country into a war zone. He gave Machado some crappy MAGA swag but evidently stayed so miffed he wrote a juvenile, "beyond precedent, parody and reality" letter" to Norway's Prime Minister - whose government has nothing to do with the Nobel Committee and neither of them is Denmark - to whine because they didn't give him the real prize "though I stopped 8 Wars PLUS" and he's "done more for NATO than any other person" he no longer feels he has to "think purely of peace" so he might as well invade Greenland. Media felt obliged to note: "This story is actually not a parody.”
Equally terrifyingly and less entertainingly, he's also embracing his longtime urge to play dictator by invading Minnesota with thousands more ICE thugs after the murder of Renee Good, play dictator, subpoenaing Walz, Frey and other state officials and threatening to send in the military to subdue his stubbornly diverse, decent, welcoming new enemy - "a nice place, filled with nice people." Lydia Polgreen, a foreign correspondent who's covered civil wars in multiple countries, describes being stunned by "the size, scope and lawlessness of the federal onslaught (in) my once placid home state" - shops closed, empty desks in classrooms, ICE agents lurking in idling SUVs, the "quiet, yet pervasive fear" one resident deems, "fucking close to civil war." Its "true mission": To stage "a spectacle of cruelty," an occupation designed to "terrorize anyone who dares defy this incursion and, by extension, (Trump’s) power to wield limitless force against any enemy he wishes."
"We don’t have to speculate what American fascism looks like," says A.G. Keith Ellison. "It’s right outside the door." Somali American journalist Mukhtar Ibrahim echoes him: "Minnesota represents everything the administration hates. It's ground zero. If Minnesota falls, the country will fall." With ICE/CBP stormtroopers outnumbering local police 3,000 to 600, Stephen 'Goebbels' Miller gloats, "Only federal officers are upholding the law. Local and state police have been ordered to stand down and surrender." His lies and hubris reflect the feds' sense they can get away with "just being pure evil": Detaining an older, underwear-clad, U.S citizen Hmong man, CIA allies in Laos; tear-gassing a couple "human-trafficking their six kids home in their weaponized assault-SUV" so severely their six-month-old stopped breathing before her mother performed CPR; partly blinding two peaceful protesters with "non-lethal" munitions; and brutally gassing and tackling photographers, who get back up: "The world needs to see it."
Meanwhile, deaths mount at the $1.24 billion Texas detention center where many Minnesotans are sent. A medical examiner just classified the death of Geraldo Campos, the third in 44 days, as a homicide, days after a 55-year-old Cuban died of "asphyxia due to neck and chest compression" by guards and a 49-year-old Guatemalan died of "liver and kidney failure." Still, robotic regime mouthpiece Press Barbie insists, ICE is "doing everything correctly," though she utterly lost it when a reporter for center-right The Hill dared to note 32 people have died in ICE custody, 170 U.S. citizens have been detained and Renee Good was shot in the head. He's "a biased reporter with a left-wing opinion," a "left-wing hack," "a left-wing activist posing as a journalist," she shrieked. "Shame on people like you." Pot/kettle. Ditto strutting Il Ducette Bovino leading the charge - hilariously, to shouts of "Coward chicken shit fuck!" and "Brown shirts!"
The Bovino hecklers stand in fine, bountiful company in Minnesota, with its "exceptionally broad solidarity" forged in the wake of George Floyd's murder. So many people have been galvanized to protest, including many who hadn't before, the city was moved to announce that vehicles abandoned "due to an ICE detention" and subsequently towed would be released at no cost to patriotic owners. Their resolve is powerfully noted by Robert Arnold, who salutes the 6,000 marchers in cold rain, "and not the cinematic kind," representing "a people who showed up when staying home would have been so much easier." Also emblematic is the teenager insisting that, though he's white, "I'm not going to not care just because it’s not going to happen to me." Such callousness - see Trump's vileness on those from Somalia, "filthy, dirty, disgusting...I don't want them in our country" - would be "irresponsible, disrespectful, actually sinful."
As usual, judges have largely been on the right side of history. Most recently, a federal judge ruled thugs in Minnesota cannot "retaliate against, detain or attack (people) engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity"; one plaintiff testified of the "terrifying violence" that she asked a single question - "Are you ICE?" - before goons "rushed me, grabbed me, and slammed me face-first into the snow" as other DHS louts filmed the assault for their "ongoing production of political theater." In the face of state terror - sequentially, Good's clearly documented murder as she was shot three, possibly four times, the appalling lies and smears from Noem, Vance, Miller et al, the despicable failures of accountability by DHS and FBI, which found a new low by then targeting Good's widow, and the mindless, ongoing escalation - we're left to take solace, in part, from the savage, stalwart wise guys of tragi-comedy who've seen us through other dark times.
On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart has offered both helpful geography lessons to moronic imperialists - "Dibs on Greenland" - and Don't Join ICE videos to aspiring thugs: "Are you the type of guy who wants to go join ICE because it looks like playing Halo? Here's a better idea: Don't join ICE, stay home in your basement where it's warm, and play Halo! Whatever void in your life is making you respond to those ICE ads, we'll fill it! Stay home! It's better for everyone! Brought to you by everyone who just wants to go outside without getting shot." Andy Borowitz announced Greenland, along with the EU, has begun construction of a maximum-security prison for pedophiles that will house "the worst of the worst." A Greenlandic spokesperson said the construction “should not be seen as an act of provocation, adding, "The only person who could be offended would be a pedophile.”
Trump's fake Peace Prize - "Local man receives giant gold-framed second-hand soother" - led Jimmy Kimmel to suggest pacifier analogies; he also offered his own bribes - his 1999 Emmy for Best Game Show Host and his 2015 Soul Train Award for "White Person of the Year" - if Trump would pull ICE out of Minnesota. Jimmy Fallon, meanwhile, claimed he'd gotten audio from the meeting with Machado, which mostly consisted of, "Gimme, gimme," "Mine," and, "Me wanty." Along with "what a view" GIFS, many others posited additional awards that Trump by all rights should receive. They include the Ten Commandments (from Moses), the All Valley Karate Championship, the Wimbledon Women's Singles, the 4H Biggest Pig, Best In Show from Westminster Kennel Club, the Award for Unusually Quickly Healed Ear, and the 1936 Olympic Gold from his hero, Hitler. It remains to be seen if, as suggested, he'll ask Taylor Swift for one of her Grammys.

By way of resistance, others have just done their (jury) duty. Jacob Winkler, a 33-year-old homeless man in D.C., was arrested in September on a felony charge after allegedly shining a toy laser beam at Trump's helicopter as he left the White House. As with Sandwich Guy, fake US Attorney Jeanine Winebox Pirro was eager to prosecute another lowly perp "to the fullest extent of the law." A Statement of Probable Cause described the gritty crime: A cop shone a flashlight at Winkler, who shone a beam at the cop, then "in the direction of" the helicopter. The cop "immediately identified" the action as a lethal danger. Winkler said he didn't know he couldn't point the laser there: "He points it all kinds of things," like stop signs. Last week, a jury deliberated 35 minutes before finding him not guilty. His public defender noted the feds "spent scarce resources to make a felon out of a homeless man (with) a cat toy keychain...We need to stop policing poverty and start investing in dignity.”
There's also the unnamed hero in Florida who registered the domain nazis.us and redirected it to the DHS website. It still works. Go there. It shrieks "Become a homeland defender," "America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out," and "New Year, New Dirtbags," which announces 5,000 more "criminal illegal aliens added to wow.dhs.gov, “Worst of the Worst” and the arrest of "over 10,000 criminal illegal aliens who were killing Americans, hurting children and reigning terror (sic) in Minneapolis." No, wait, ICE Barbie says "brave" Gestapo have arrested 3,000 "criminal illegal aliens including vicious murderers, rapists, child pedophiles and incredibly dangerous individuals." They name three "criminals." No word on the other 2,997. This week their shock troops swarmed into coastal Maine in "Operation Catch of the Day." Just what the fucking fuck. Childish sociopaths are running our government.
Also safeguarding the worst pedophile in modern history. The DOJ has again stonewalled on releasing files legally mandated by the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) to have been released by Dec. 19, a month ago. Instead, Pam Bondi, hours after posting, "No one is above the law!" filed a motion to block an effort by Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie to compel her to...follow the law. Autoworker T.J. Sabula wants that too, which is why he just yelled "Pedophile protector!" at Trump as he toured a Ford plant; ever stately Trump screamed "FUCK YOU!" and flipped him off before launching into a vile racist speech that blamed high living costs on....Somalis in Minnesota. Sabula was suspended - "Know your place" - the union vowed to fight for him, a GoFundMe - "TJ Sabula is a patriot!!" - raised almost half a million dollars before shutting down to make room for other causes, and Sabula had "definitely no regrets whatsoever...I don't feel as though fate looks upon you often."
On Tuesday, in the same spirit, the members of Secret Handshake marked what would have been Epstein's 73rd birthday with a new "participatory public artwork" on the National Mall. Following up on their faux-bronze besties holding hands, they installed a massive, 10-foot-tall replica of the infamous, obscene birthday card Trump sent Epstein. One side reads, "Happy Birthday to A Terrific Guy!", the other reproduces the drawing of a naked woman, or, chillingly, girl. Next to it are mock boxes of redacted files, Sharpies, and an invitation for visitors to write "your own message" to salute the birthday of Trump's "closest friend." Read one, "RAPISTS LOVE RAPISTS.” Their art, the group says, provides a vital, life-affirming "voice in dark times.” So did Springsteen the other night when he appeared unannounced at a New Jersey benefit to dedicate his song The Promised Land, "an ode to American possibility," to Renee Good - "if you believe that truth still matters, and it's worth speaking out."
- YouTube www.youtube.com
President Donald Trump's plan to dramatically expand offshore drilling could result in thousands of additional oil spills and put dozens of endangered species at increased risk, according to a new analysis by a leading conservation group.
In November, the US Department of the Interior published a draft plan to expand drilling over the next five years, replacing a more restrictive one drawn up by the Biden administration.
The proposal includes as many as 34 potential offshore lease sales across American coasts, covering approximately 1.27 billion acres, far more than previous administrations have offered.
The new plan opens up drilling in 21 areas off the coast of Alaska, seven in the Gulf of Mexico, and six along the Pacific Coast. These are in addition to 36 new offshore oil lease sales mandated in last year's Republican budget reconciliation package.
An analysis published Tuesday by the Center for Biological Diversity found that the increase in drilling could lead to an additional 4,232 oil spills and dump an extra 12.1 million gallons of oil into ocean waters.
The calculation is based on average spill rates from pipelines and platforms from 1974 to 2015. However, it does not even include catastrophic events like the 2010 BP oil spill, which resulted in more than 210 million gallons of oil being released into the Gulf of Mexico.
"Trump’s ridiculously reckless drilling plan could cause thousands of new oil spills, threatening almost every US coast,” said Kristen Monsell, the oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
The group estimates, based on prior figures, that 2,627 of those spills—more than half—will occur in the Gulf of Mexico, releasing about 7.5 million gallons of oil into the ecosystem.
The Gulf is home to several endangered species likely to be affected by the new drilling. The black-capped petrel's population is in rapid decline as pollution has destroyed its food source. Rice's whale has only about 50 individuals remaining and lost 20% of its population in the BP spill. Kemp's ridley sea turtle, which has experienced a population rebound after dropping to near extinction, would be imperiled by another spill.
In the Pacific, sea otters are uniquely vulnerable to oil spills because they coat their fur, which acts as insulation against the cold. Killer and blue whales, whose populations have been nearly wiped out, would also be in danger.
Meanwhile, Arctic animals already affected by climate change—like bowhead whales, Pacific walruses, and beluga whales—all face potential further damage to their habitats due to drilling off the coast of Alaska.
“Nobody wants beaches and marine life coated in crude, but that’ll be our future if Trump’s scheme goes forward," Monsell said. "Every new drilling project signs us up for decades of problems, and our wildlife and coastal economies will suffer the most.”
The leading French economist Gabriel Zucman is urging European governments to inflict financial pain on American billionaires in response to US President Donald Trump's effort to seize control of Greenland, a mineral-rich island that some of Trump's rich campaign donors see as a potentially massive profit opportunity.
"Europe should respond to Trump’s blackmail with targeted measures aimed not at American consumers, but at American billionaires," Zucman wrote in a post on his Substack. "Access to the European market—by billionaires and the companies they own—should be made conditional on paying a wealth tax: in effect, a tariff for oligarchs. If Elon Musk, for example, wants to keep selling Teslas in Europe, he should have to pay it. If he refuses, Tesla would lose access to the European market."
Zucman outlined his proposal after Trump threatened over the weekend to hit France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland with tariffs up to 25% if they don't drop their opposition to the US president's demand for "the complete and total purchase of Greenland," an autonomous territory of Denmark.
The targeted countries are currently weighing retaliatory tariffs and other potential responses to Trump's threat.
Zucman, a renowned expert on global inequality, argued that while existing mechanisms such as the anti-coercion instrument known as Europe's trade "bazooka" can be useful, "anti-oligarchic protectionism has a decisive advantage: It opens a two-front struggle against Trump, at home and abroad."
"By targeting oligarchic wealth rather than national pride," Zucman wrote, "Europe can blunt Trump’s ability to mobilize nationalist resentment and rally part of the American public behind his imperial agenda."
Trump's proposed Greenland takeover is widely opposed by the island's population and US voters. But as journalist Casey Michel wrote for The New Republic last week, there is one key constituency that stands to benefit massively from a US takeover of the mineral-rich territory: American oligarchs, including some of Trump's top campaign donors.
"Ranging from tech moguls to fossil fuel company heads, all of these figures and forces have invested in mining and extraction companies across the island—and all stand to profit if only they can cut out any pesky Danish or Greenlandic authorities from regulating or restraining their operations," wrote Michel. "The figures behind the curtain are by no means obscure. KoBold Metals, a mining outfit helping lead Greenland’s 'modern gold rush,' has seen investments from figures like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and hedge funds like Andreessen Horowitz."
"Another company eyeing Greenland," Michel added, "is Critical Metals Corp, which is backed by the same hedge fund that Howard Lutnick, now Trump’s commerce secretary, spent years running."
"The vast fortunes of the sleaze buckets who put Trump into the White House and back his attack on democracy in the United States and around the world will suddenly be thrown into question."
Tariffs targeting such firms and the billionaires behind them, Zucman argued, would be the most effective way to penalize Trump's reckless behavior and deter him in the future.
"If imperialism is driven by oligarchic power, then oligarchic power must be confronted," Zucman wrote. "What are the alternatives? Doing nothing invites endless blackmail."
US economist Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, made the case for a similarly aggressive European response to Trump's economic warfare.
"European countries can announce that they will no longer honor US-owned patents and copyrights," Baker wrote Monday. "Putting US patents and copyrights on the line is a guaranteed attention grabber. The vast fortunes of the sleaze buckets who put Trump into the White House and back his attack on democracy in the United States and around the world will suddenly be thrown into question."
"The key point is that European countries, by opting to not respect US patents and copyrights, have an incredibly powerful weapon to use against Donald Trump and his rich supporters," Baker added. "The time has come for them to go nuclear."
Maine's progressive US Senate hopeful Graham Platner smelled blood in the water after the national fundraising arm for Senate Republicans dumped a record investment into the reelection campaign of Sen. Susan Collins.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) boasted that the $42 million investment, most of which will go to an advertising blitz to help the vulnerable five-term senator cling to her seat in November, was the largest the GOP's Senate Leadership Fund had ever spent in Maine.
But while the fund's executive director, Alex Latcham, said it was a testament to Collins' (R-Maine) "history of winning tough races against Washington Democrats," Platner—a military veteran and oyster farmer who has never held higher office—portrayed it as a sign of her vulnerability.
"They’re getting nervous," he wrote in a post on social media, which urged supporters to donate.
Since announcing his campaign less than five months ago, Platner has been amassing his own sizable war chest of nearly $8 million on the back of small-dollar donations, including $4.7 million in just the final quarter of 2025.
If Democrats have any chance of flipping four seats and retaking the Senate in the midterms later this year, the path will almost certainly include unseating Collins.
Polling out of Maine has varied, but has more often tended to show both Platner and his centrist primary opponent, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, running within the margin of error against Collins or outright leading her.
The majority of polls logged by the New York Times show Platner leading Mills in June's Democratic primary, including one released in mid-December by the progressive-leaning polling firm Workbench Strategies, which showed him ahead by 15 points. But the results vary widely, with some showing Platner up by as many as 34 points over Mills, while others show Mills leading by double digits.
A toy store in Saint Paul is facing its first audit of its employees in more than 27 years of operating after one of the shop's owners spoke out about US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's aggressive arrests in the Twin Cities and detailed how the business is helping to protect immigrant neighbors.
Abigail Adelsheim-Marshall spoke last week with ABC News about how her family-owned store, Mischief Toy Store, has been giving out 3D-printed whistles to help community members—following the lead of people in Chicago last year—to warn their neighbors when ICE and other federal agents are in the area.
The whistles were designed to be "a nonviolent form of protest and alert everyone around that there's ICE activity going on," said Adelsheim-Marshall. “Everyone is looking for anything they can do to help their community right now.”
She added that her community is being "terrorized by ICE" and said demand for the whistles has risen following an ICE agent's killing of Renee Good.
"ICE is doing far more to hurt our community than immigrants ever have," said Adelsheim-Marshall. "Almost every customer who comes in tells us about encounters they've had with ICE."
Hours after the interview, in which an ABC News correspondent noted that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) referenced the use of whistles to warn about ICE operations last week in a social media post, two ICE agents arrived at Mischief Toy Store and delivered an audit notice to co-owner Dan Marshall, Adelsheim-Marshall's father.
Marshall and Adelsheim-Marshall were given three business days to turn over federal I-9 forms to prove their five Minnesota-born part-time employees were hired legally, as well as payroll records, tax returns, and other documents.
"We feel very strongly that we were targeted based on the content of Abby's interview that day," Marshall told the Minnesota Star Tribune on Tuesday, as the deadline for the audit approached.
Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, agreed and said the DHS audit appeared to be "immediate punishment for speaking out against the regime."
Mark Jacob, an author and Chicago-area journalist added that ICE's targeting of the toy store offered proof that "it's not about making Minnesota 'safe'—it's about making Minnesota subservient."
A bottomless well of vengeance.
[image or embed]
— Renée Graham 🏳️🌈 (@rygraham.bsky.social) January 21, 2026 at 7:45 AM
Last year, the Mischief owners joined a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump's tariffs and Marshall spoke in a TV interview about how the president's trade was causing anxiety among small business owners.
Following the news of the DHS audit, the Adelsheim-Marshall family and their community have not been deterred from coming to the defense of their neighbors—including the toy store itself.
On Saturday, the day after the ABC News interview and the audit delivery, Marshall told the Star Tribune that the store "sold 250 anti-ICE yard signs in the first three hours that we were open."
Criticism of President Donald Trump's so-called "Board of Peace" mounted Monday after the White House invited controversial figures—including two leaders wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes—to join the body tasked with supporting the management and reconstruction of Gaza.
Among Trump's latest invitees to the board are Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Lukashenko has repressively ruled Belarus for over 30 years and supports Putin's ongoing invasion and occupation of Ukraine, for which the Russian president is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes. Netanyahu is also wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Trump—who has bombed 10 countries over his two terms in office—will chair the organization, whose executive board will also include former British leader and alleged war criminal Tony Blair, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Mideast Envoy Steve Witkoff, World Bank President Ajay Banga, billionaire businessman Marc Rowan, real estate investor and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner—who has publicly called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza—and others.
"As if the people of Gaza have not suffered enough," Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden said on Bluesky. "But Blair’s inclusion confirms the obvious—this is a board of colonial administration, run by war criminals and kleptocrats. It has zero legitimacy."
Leaders of countries including Argentina, Canada, Egypt, France, Hungary, India, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Thailand, and Turkey were also invited to join the board. So was the European Union, with whom US relations are strained over issues including Trump's tariffs and threats to invade Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory and NATO member.
Countries seeking permanent Board of Peace membership will be required to pay a $1 billion fee. A US official told the Associated Press that the fee would go toward reconstructing the obliterated Palestinian strip following more than two years of Israel's genocidal assault and siege.
There are no Palestinians on the board.
A separate National Committee for the Administration of Gaza—a 12-member technocratic body led by Palestinian official Ali Shaath and tasked with managing day-to-day affairs in the strip—held its inaugural meeting last week in Cairo as Witkoff said that Phase 2 of Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza had begun.
While Trump's invitation letters to prospective Board of Peace members said the body will “embark on a bold new approach to resolving global conflict," critics panned the panel as a vanity project for Trump, who fancies himself a grand peacemaker despite having bombed seven countries in the first year of his second term.
"I hope he can find time to attend Board of Peace meetings between meetings about invasions of Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, Canada, and Minneapolis," University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket said of Trump in a Bluesky post.
Former US State Department diplomat Aaron David Miller told the Washington Post Monday, “The Board of Peace is a concept tethered to a galaxy far, far away, not tethered to the realities back here on planet Earth."
"The Board of Peace is not going to be able to solve the conflict in Sudan. It is not going to do what American mediators and Europeans couldn’t do with respect to getting a ceasefire in Ukraine," he continued.
"We need on-the-ground diplomacy, not the performative creation of committees and bringing large numbers of countries and individuals into a process in which most of them will have no role," Miller added. "You need Trump. You need Netanyahu. You need Hamas’s internal and external leadership, and you need the Qataris and the Turks.”
On Monday, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich condemned the Board of Peace.
“It is time to explain to the president that his plan is bad for the state of Israel and to cancel it,” Smotrich said during a ceremony to inaugurate the new Yatziv apartheid settlement in the illegally occupied West Bank. “Gaza is ours, its future will affect our future more than anyone else’s. We will take responsibility for what happens there, impose military administration, and complete the mission.”
This, after Netanyahu said earlier in a rare public rebuke of Trump that the board “was not coordinated with Israel and runs contrary to its policy.”
Nearly a year ago, Trump also said that the US would "own" Gaza, ethnically cleanse it of Palestinians, and transform the coastal strip into the "Riviera of the Middle East." He later clarified that he meant the "voluntary" transfer of Palestinians, which critics said amounted to a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.
The White House also reportedly circulated a plan to transform a substantially depopulated Gaza into a high-tech hub replete with a "Gaza Trump Riviera and Islands" development and an "Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone."
Palestinians have largely been highly skeptical of the Board of Peace.
"When I read the names of the peace council members, I felt this was not a plan that prioritizes the interests of Gaza's residents," Sameh Abu Marsa, a forcibly displaced Palestinian living in a refugee camp in Gaza City, told Xinhua Monday. "It looks more like a new form of international mandate, with decisions made externally and without participation from people on the ground."
"These names suggest political deals rather than genuine peace," he added.
Khaled Elgindy, a Palestinian scholar at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, said on X Saturday that "tellingly, there is not a single reference to Palestinians, their rights, interests, or even a future [Palestinian] state—none of which are a priority for Blair, Trump, or the so-called Board of Peace."
Others noted the continuing dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza as Israel restricts the entry of aid, as well as Israel's more than 1,200 violations of the three-month ceasefire with Hamas. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 465 Palestinians have been killed and 1,287 wounded since the tenuous truce took effect on October 10.
"How can we talk about a peace council while Israel's violations continue here?" asked Khan Younis resident Abdul Raouf Awad.
One UN expert said it shows "why the ICC and the Rome Statute are so important, even if Israel and the US work to undermine it."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on President Donald Trump's so-called "Board of Peace" for Gaza. But he couldn't attend the ceremony in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday because he'd likely be arrested for war crimes if he set foot in the country.
In 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during Israel’s genocidal military assault in Gaza.
At least 71,000 Palestinians—the majority of whom were women and children—have been killed by Israeli forces, and at least 169,000 more have been injured during the military campaign, according to official numbers.
Other estimates suggest the real death toll is much higher when taking into account the results of Israel’s crushing blockade of humanitarian aid and its destruction of infrastructure that has made the Gaza Strip virtually unlivable, and which has continued despite a "ceasefire" reached in October.
These deaths are the result of what the ICC said has been a systematic campaign by Netanyahu to use starvation as a method of warfare and enact collective punishment against the strip's civilian population.
Switzerland is one of 125 nations that have ratified the Rome Statute, which established the ICC in 1998 as an international body to prosecute leaders who commit genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression.
Prior to Davos, the Swiss government stated a firm commitment to arresting Netanyahu if he ever sets foot in its territory.
"As a party to the Rome Statute, Switzerland is obliged to cooperate with the International Criminal Court," the nation's Federal Office of Justice told Haaretz. "Switzerland would in principle be required to arrest accused persons if they were to enter Switzerland at this time, provided that a corresponding arrest warrant or an arrest request based on it had been issued by the ICC, and to initiate the surrender proceedings to the International Criminal Court."
Several other countries, including the Netherlands—where the ICC is based—as well as Spain, Ireland, and Australia, have also said they'd comply with the warrants if Netanyahu were to visit.
While the US and Israel itself have not ratified the statute, many of Israel's other allies—including the United Kingdom, France, and Canada—are also party to the agreement and obligated to arrest Netanyahu, though he has thus far not tested their willingness to do so, and many have not stated clearly whether they'd follow through on the obligation.
The only ICC nation Netanyahu has entered since the warrants were issued is Hungary, whose far-right leader Viktor Orban defied the mandate to arrest him and later withdrew from the ICC.
Meanwhile, the US has placed sanctions on the ICC and its chief justice, Karim Khan, and several judges who participated in issuing the warrants, while threatening to do so against any other entity that cooperates with the court.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who appeared at Davos in Netanyahu’s stead on Wednesday, called the ICC’s warrants “illegitimate” and said it was “unacceptable and shameful” for Netanyahu to be excluded from “a conference that aims to shape the future of the world and the Middle East.”
While the ICC's inability to act on its warrants unilaterally has led some to dismiss them as impotent, Beatrice Fihn, a Swedish senior fellow at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, said blocking Netanyahu from events like Davos shows "why the ICC and the Rome Statute are so important, even if Israel and the US work to undermine it."
"The arrest warrant," she said, "is making Netanyahu's work harder."
The Department of Homeland Security issued deportation notices to two people who witnessed Geraldo Lunas Campos' death, but a judge halted their deportations this week to allow them to potentially provide testimony.
The family of a man who was detained at the makeshift immigrant detention center Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas is preparing to file a wrongful death lawsuit following an autopsy report that officially declared his cause of death to be homicide.
“Based on the investigative and examination findings, it is my opinion that the cause of death is asphyxia due to neck and torso compression,” Adam C. Gonzalez, the deputy medical examiner for El Paso County, wrote in the report on the death of Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55. “The manner of death is homicide.”
The medical examiner's office had previously indicated it was likely to classify the cause of death as homicide, subject to the results of a toxicology report.
According to the autopsy report, Lunas Campos became unresponsive when he was physically restrained by employees at Camp East Montana, a sprawling tent camp at Fort Bliss. He sustained injuries to his head and neck, including burst blood vessels in his neck and on his eyelids. The exact cause of death was listed as “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression."
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) first said in a news release on January 9 that Lunas Campos had died "after experiencing medical distress."
“He said, ‘I cannot breathe, I cannot breathe.’ After that, we don’t hear his voice anymore, and that’s it."
After the Washington Post reported that his daughter had shared with the outlet a recording of a conversation she had had with an employee of the medical examiner's office who said her father's death was likely to be classified as a homicide, DHS described Lunas Campos' death as a suicide.
A DHS official told the Times on Wednesday that Lunas Campos had tried to take his own life and “violently resisted the security staff," causing his death.
An internal ICE log referenced an "'immediate' use-of-force incident" involving Lunas Campos but did not provide details or a date.
Lunas Campos' family petitioned a judge earlier this week to stop the deportations of two detainees who said they witnessed the man's death or the moments leading up to it. Both of the witnesses have been given deportation notices since Lunas Campos died on January 3.
On Wednesday, Judge David Briones, a senior US district judge for the Western District of Texas, granted the request to temporarily halt the deportations, saying they would make it harder to “obtain the testimony of these witnesses."
In the family's petition, they said one witness had seen guards choke Lunas Campos to death and the other had seen him struggling with the guards in the moments before he died.
The first detainee, Santos Jesus Flores, told the Post he had also heard Lunas Campos repeatedly saying, "No puedo respirar"—Spanish for "I can't breathe."
“He said, ‘I cannot breathe, I cannot breathe.’ After that, we don’t hear his voice anymore, and that’s it,” said Flores.
A hearing has been set for January 27 to determine whether the detainees can provide testimony in court.
Lunas Campos is one of six people who have died in ICE custody in the first weeks of 2026, according to ICE records. Three people have died at Camp East Montana since it opened in August.
Physical abuse and medical neglect has been reported at Camp East Montana as well as other detention centers, with an Amnesty International analysis last month warning that some treatment reported at "Alligator Alcatraz" in Florida constitutes torture.
“The search and seizure of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s records is unconstitutional and illegal in its entirety," said one free press defender.
A US judge on Wednesday blocked federal prosecutors from searching data on a Washington Post reporter's electronic devices seized during what one press freedom group called an "unconstitutional and illegal" raid last week.
US Magistrate Judge William B. Porter in Alexandria, Virginia—who also authorized the January 14 raid of Post reporter Hannah Natanson's home—ruled that "the government must preserve but must not review any of the materials that law enforcement seized pursuant to search warrants the court issued."
The government has until January 28 to respond to the Post's initial legal filings against the agent's actions. Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for February 6.
Natanson—who describes her work as covering "Trump's reshaping of the government"—welcomed Wednesday's order.
"I need my devices back to do my job," she said on Bluesky.
Federal Bureau of Investigation investigators executed a warrant to search Natanson's Virginia home as part of a probe into Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a federal contractor who is accused of illegally possessing classified documents. FBI agents seized Natanson’s cellphone, her smart watch, and her personal and work laptops.
As Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney noted, the criminal complaint for Perez-Lugones’ case contains no allegations that he gave classified documents to any Post reporter, as implied by Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.
The Post said that the seized devices “contain years of information about past and current confidential sources and other unpublished newsgathering materials, including those she was using for current reporting."
“The government cannot meet its heavy burden to justify this intrusion, and it has ignored narrower, lawful alternatives,” the newspaper added.
As the Post noted Wednesday:
It is exceptionally rare for law enforcement officials to conduct searches at reporters’ homes. The law allows such searches, but federal regulations intended to protect a free press are designed to make it more difficult to use aggressive law enforcement tactics against reporters to obtain the identities of their sources...
The US has no law that explicitly makes it a crime for a journalist to obtain or publish classified information. In 2019, when WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was indicted under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information, First Amendment scholars warned that his case could set a precedent that could be used against journalists. That issue was never tested in court because Assange and the government reached a plea deal in 2024.
"The outrageous seizure of our reporter’s confidential newsgathering materials chills speech, cripples reporting, and inflicts irreparable harm every day the government keeps its hands on these materials,” the Post said in a statement. “We have asked the court to order the immediate return of all seized materials and prevent their use. Anything less would license future newsroom raids and normalize censorship by search warrant.”
Free press defenders cheered Porter's order.
“The search and seizure of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s records is unconstitutional and illegal in its entirety," Freedom of the Press Foundation chief of advocacy Seth Stern said in a statement. "But even the Trump administration’s policies require searches of journalists’ materials to be narrow and targeted and that authorities use filter teams and other measures to avoid searching protected records."
"That the administration wouldn’t follow its own guidelines shows that the raid on Natanson’s home wasn’t about any criminal investigation, and certainly wasn’t about national security," he added.
The search and seizure of @washingtonpost.com reporter @hannahnatanson.bsky.social's records is unconstitutional and illegal in its entirety.The judge was right to block it until a full hearing, at which time he should block it permanently.Read our statement: freedom.press/issues/judge...
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— Freedom of the Press Foundation (@freedom.press) January 21, 2026 at 2:30 PM
“This is the first time in US history that the government has searched a reporter’s home in a national security media leak investigation, seizing potentially a vast amount of confidential data and information," Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press president Bruce Brown said in a statement. "The move imperils public interest reporting and will have ramifications far beyond this specific case."
Wednesday's order came two weeks after the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Seth Harp, a journalist wrongly accused of “leaking classified intel” and “doxing” a US special forces commander involved in President Donald Trump’s invasion of Venezuela and abduction of the South American nation’s president and his wife.