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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."
The first year of President Donald Trump's second White House term made abundantly clear who he and his Republican allies in Congress serve—and who they don't.
That's the argument of a report published Tuesday by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) marking the one-year anniversary of the start of the second Trump administration, which has so far delivered big for the billionaire class while shafting the working class.
"While American families struggle to pay the bills due to higher tariffs and cuts in public benefits, Trump’s billionaire cronies have never been wealthier," said ATF, noting that "billionaires bet big on Trump and Republicans in the 2024 elections, with just 30 MAGA billionaire families spending $1.4 billion to influence the outcome."
"Their investment seems to be paying off rapidly, with this clique’s collective wealth growing by $408 billion in 2025, an increase of 37.5% from the year prior," the group continued. "Billionaires across the country saw their collective wealth reach a record high of $8.2 trillion in the first year of the second Trump regime. Their total wealth increased from $6.7 billion, a 22% increase in 2025."
In the summer of 2025, Trump and congressional Republicans passed sprawling legislation extending massive tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, fueling their wealth surge. ATF noted Tuesday that "the top 1% of households alone will get $1 trillion from this tax package."
Meanwhile, in the same legislation, Trump and the GOP's launched an unprecedented assault on Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance with cuts that are expected to leave millions without health insurance and food aid in the coming years and inflict significant damage on healthcare systems across the country.
The ATF report also points to the Trump-GOP refusal to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that lapsed at the end of 2025, sending health insurance premiums skyrocketing for millions of people nationwide.
"After a year in office, Trump and the GOP majority betrayed their promises to working people, instead serving billionaire elites and wealthy corporations," David Kass, ATF's executive director, said in a statement. "Trump promised lower prices but enacted chaotic tariffs that spiked consumer costs, and also cut billions from SNAP and Medicaid while ballooning the deficit. He eliminated ACA tax credits, making healthcare unaffordable for millions—all to fund trillions in tax giveaways to the ultra-wealthy and large corporations."
"With an affordability crisis and historic income inequality," Kass added, "Americans for Tax Fairness will oppose this administration's regressive economic policy."
Entering year two of Trump's second White House term, Republicans are signaling that they have no intention of changing course. Last week, the Republican Study Committee released its priorities for a possible second reconciliation bill—a list that includes repeal of the estate tax, a move that would benefit a small sliver of rich Americans.
"After a year of broken promises around affordability and control of government, this is what House Republicans have come up with: legislation that further enriches the richest of the rich at the expense of working Americans” Leor Tal, campaign director of the progressive advocacy coalition Unrig Our Economy.
“After the Republican tax law made the largest cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in history," said Tal, "Republicans should stop raising costs on working families and, instead, focus on helping their constituents afford basic items like groceries and stop stripping even more Americans of vital services."
A broad coalition of organizations is calling on the US Congress to block funding for the mass surveillance programs being used by federal immigration enforcement officials.
In a letter sent to members of Congress, the groups decry US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents for "leveraging a multi-billion dollar budget to terrorize our communities and build a surveillance panopticon" with no accountability from elected officials.
The letter then singles out several mass surveillance projects being carried out under the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that it says are worthy of defunding, including "building databases of biometrics, sensitive personal data, and daily movements of not only immigrants, but everybody in the US"; "purchasing technology to surveil all the phones in a neighborhood without a warrant"; and "recklessly relying on facial recognition technology that is banned in some states, and misusing that data to intimidate protesters and witnesses."
The groups call on Congress to completely defund ICE or, if that is not politically feasible, to "severely restrict what ICE can spend money on, including a complete moratorium on the purchase and use of surveillance tech" such as facial recognition and license plate readers.
"We urge you to do everything within your power in order to block ICE’s reign of terror in our communities and halt the build out of surveillance tech infrastructure that will make it impossible for everyday people to do anything at all without Big Brother watching," the groups conclude. "Milquetoast calls for better identification, bodycams, and training fall far short of what is required of you to meet this moment."
Signatories of the letter include the Yale Privacy Lab, digital rights organization Fight for the Future, and several local chapters of progressive political organizing group Indivisible.
ICE's big investments in surveillance technology were documented in an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) report published earlier this month, which found ICE "is going on a shopping spree, creating one of the largest, most comprehensive domestic surveillance machines in history."
The EFF report highlighted the role played by Cellebrite, a company that helps ICE unlock protesters' phones and "take a complete image of all the data on the phone, including apps, location history, photos, notes, call records, text messages, and even Signal and WhatsApp messages."
This is particularly important, the report noted, because the number of phones searched by ICE and other agencies has been steadily increasing, hitting a record high last year.
ICE also has a contract with Paragon, the company behind the spyware Graphite that "is able to harvest messages from multiple different encrypted chat apps such as Signal and WhatsApp without the user ever knowing."
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado's gifting of her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to US President Donald Trump raised eyebrows around the world Friday—but it wasn't the first time that the winner of the prestigious award gave it away.
Last month, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the peace prize to the 58-year-old opposition leader "for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy."
Machado joined a notorious group of Nobel Peace laureates who either waged or advocated for war, as she backed Trump's aggression against her country. This has included a massive troop deployment, military and CIA airstrikes, bombing of boats allegedly transporting drugs, and the abduction earlier this month of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Trump has ordered the bombing of nine other countries during his two terms, more than any other president in history. US forces acting on his orders have killed thousands of civilians in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. While running for president in 2016, Trump vowed to "bomb the shit out of" Islamic State militants and "take out their families," and then followed through on his promise.
Despite being passed over by Trump for installation in any leadership role in Venezuela so far, Machado presented Trump with her framed Nobel medal along with a certificate of gratitude during a Thursday meeting at the White House. Trump subsequently posted on his Truth Social network that “María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done. Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.”
In 1943!!!“Nobel Literature laureate Knut Hamsun famously gave his Nobel medal and diploma to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as a gesture of admiration for the Nazi regime, following his support for the occupation….”
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— Molly Jong-Fast (@mollyjongfast.bsky.social) January 16, 2026 at 10:56 AM
That gesture prompted the Norwegian Nobel Committee to issue a statement noting that the prize cannot be given away.
"Even if the medal or diploma later comes into someone else’s possession, this does not alter who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize," the committee said. "A laureate cannot share the prize with others, nor transfer it once it has been announced. A Nobel Peace Prize can also never be revoked. The decision is final and applies for all time."
The committee's statement was extraordinary—but this is not the first time that a Nobel winner gave away their prize. In 1943, Norwegian author Knut Hamsun gifted his 1920 Nobel Prize for Literature—awarded for his novel Markens Grøde (Growth of the Soil)—to Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels after a trip to Germany. Other Nobel laureates have donated or sold their medals.
The progressive media outlet Occupy Democrats said on social media: "Clearly, the similarities between Trump and Goebbels extend beyond just a mutual admiration for fascism. Both men possess(ed) the kind of spiritually sick, egotistical temperament that allows one to accept a prize that someone else has earned."
"Obviously, Donald Trump does not deserve the Nobel Peace Prize," the outlet continued. "He has bombed Iran, Yemen, Nigeria, innocent fishing boats in the Caribbean, Venezuela, and is in the process of turning the United States into a war zone. That said, Machado doesn't deserve it either."
"Anyone spineless enough to surrender the prize to an evil man like Trump in the hopes of obtaining power is not someone we should be celebrating," Occupy Democrats added.
Last month, Wikileaks founder and multiple Nobel Peace Prize nominee Julian Assange sued the Nobel Foundation—the Swedish organization that manages administration of the approximately $1.2 million-per-winner prize—in a bid to prevent Machado from receiving the money.
Machado's win also sparked protests outside the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo.
"While masked officers terrorize communities—smashing into cars, harassing citizens, and inflicting violence with impunity—Trump’s corporate backers are laughing their way to the bank."
A campaign launched Wednesday by an economic justice coalition highlights how five major US corporations saved a collective $19 billion in annual tax cuts under President Donald Trump, while also aiding in his Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.
Americans for Tax Fairness' (ATF) "ICE Corporate Collaborators: Exposed" campaign details how five corporations that "received massive tax breaks paid for by healthcare cuts" under Republicans' so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) are now "making money through contracts to help the Trump administration terrorize communities" as part of the president's deadly anti-immigrant purge.
“Today we launched our corporate accountability campaign to give citizens the information they need to hold giant corporations accountable for their complicity in the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies," ATF executive director David Kass said in a statement.
The report notes that five companies—Amazon, AT&T, Home Depot, Microsoft, and Palantir—"helped ICE track, detain, and deport families" while they saved a total of $19 billion in annual corporate taxes under the OBBBA, and their CEOs "collectively received an estimated $124 million in personal tax giveaways."
NEW: Our research is exposing the corporations that received massive tax breaks from the Trump administration—and are now collaborating with ICE.Billions of dollars are going into the corporate deportation machine.Is this really the America we want?americansfortaxfairness.org/ices-corpora...
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— Americans for Tax Fairness (@4taxfairness.bsky.social) January 21, 2026 at 11:49 AM
Amazon's cloud computing services, the authors wrote, "have become vital to ICE's crackdown on immigrants, with their data storage being used for mass surveillance and deportation."
AT&T, which received $382 million in Department of Homeland Security contracts between 2022-24, "serves as the digital backbone for Trump’s deportation machine."
Home Depot "has appeared to be collaborating with Trump’s ICE mass immigration sweeps on their property, putting thousands of customers and employees' safety at risk."
Microsoft—which gave the Trump Inaugural Committee $750,000 in 2024—has received at least $45 million in homeland security-related contracts in recent years.
Palantir has partnered with ICE to use the company's artificial intelligence system to identify, track, and deport suspected undocumented immigrants—and is reportedly helping the government build a database of Americans’ private information in likely violation of multiple laws.
These and other companies have been the target of protests and boycott campaigns. These can work—Spotify stopped running ICE recruitment ads and Avelo Airlines ended its contract for deportation flights amid public pressure.
ATF estimates that Palantir CEO Alex Karp—who "received an estimated cumulative ordinary income of $3.3 billion from 2019 through 2024"—personally saved an estimated $85.7 thanks to the OBBBA's tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.
Karp is followed by Microsoft's Satya Nadella ($25.4 million in estimated tax savings), Amazon's Andy Jassy ($6.9 million), AT&T's John Stankey ($3.2 million), and Home Depot's Edward Decker ($2.9 million).
"While masked officers terrorize communities—smashing into cars, harassing citizens, and inflicting violence with impunity—Trump’s corporate backers are laughing their way to the bank,” Kass said.
"As Trump and his billionaire-backed GOP majority cut billions in healthcare, Medicaid, and SNAP benefits, Americans face steep hikes in the cost of living to pay for tax giveaways to large multinational corporations and the billionaires that run them," he added. "The American people will not be silent.”
"Does he want the Smith report to be locked up with the Epstein files?"
As his administration continues dragging its feet in releasing the Epstein files, President Donald Trump is pushing to keep another potentially damning set of Justice Department documents hidden from the public.
On Tuesday, Trump filed a 19-page motion requesting that the US District Court of the Southern District of Florida step in to prohibit the DOJ’s planned release of Volume II of the final report prepared by former Special Counsel Jack Smith next month. The volume relates to the president’s handling of classified documents after leaving office in 2021.
Trump was indicted by a grand jury for 37 felony counts following Smith's investigation, 31 of which involved violations of the Espionage Act, after transporting "scores of boxes" full of classified materials, including top-level military and intelligence secrets, to his home at Mar-a-Lago and showing them off to people without security clearances.
But Smith ultimately dropped the case in November 2024 after it became clear that Trump's reelection would shield him from legal liability.
It's strange for the President of the United States to be litigating in his personal capacity against the Justice Department he runs — but he's seeking an order barring "current, former and future" DOJ officials from releasing Jack Smith's second volume. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
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— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney.bsky.social) January 20, 2026 at 6:38 PM
On January 7, 2025, just days before Trump reassumed office, the DOJ released Volume I of Smith's report, which pertained to Trump's attempts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election by spreading false claims of widespread voter fraud, which culminated in the attack on the US Capitol building by a mob of his supporters on January 6, 2021.
Though Trump's indictment in that case was also dropped following his reelection, the report was released under DOJ rules requiring public disclosure of all investigative reports after cases conclude.
That report described Trump as having undertaken an “unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the election in order to retain power,” a scheme in which he knowingly spread information casting doubt on the election result even after his own staff confirmed it to be false and he acknowledged his loss in private.
Unlike the election case, the classified documents case was dismissed in July 2024 by the Trump-appointed federal judge Aileen Cannon of the same district court, who ruled that Smith's appointment as special counsel was unlawful.
Cannon also issued an injunction blocking the release of the report to Congress, but only until February 24, 2026, so as not to prejudice the legal proceedings against Trump's co-defendants, former aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos De Oliveira, who were accused of helping him illegally stash documents and hide them from investigators.
Citing her previous ruling, Trump is now asking Cannon to permanently block the report, claiming that, because of her ruling against Smith, "all acts undertaken" by him, including the creation and release of the report, are "void."
Not only does he seek to prohibit the "current" DOJ from releasing it, but also "former and future" DOJ officials from ever releasing it, as it would result in the "public dissemination of sensitive grand jury materials, attorney-client privileged information, and other informationderived from protected discovery materials, raising significant statutory, due process, and privacy concerns for President Trump and his former co-defendants."
Trump's request to permanently spike the report immediately drew comparisons to the Epstein files, which remain almost entirely unreleased by the DOJ nearly a month after the deadline mandated by law, which was signed by Trump himself after being passed in November.
For over a year, efforts to halt the release of Smith's report have fueled concerns of a cover-up and raised questions about whether Cannon has any authority to issue rulings at all, since the case has been dismissed.
In a piece for MS NOW (then MSNBC) last year, after the first report was released, legal analyst Glenn Kirschner warned that if the second one were buried in perpetuity, it could allow Trump to escape legal consequences after his term is up.
"If there is no disclosure of Volume II to members of Congress, what might a Trump-led DOJ do to the evidence?" he asked. "Might it be destroyed in an attempt to make sure Trump is never held to account for the classified documents crimes? Recall that the documents case was dismissed without prejudice, which means the case could theoretically be refiled once Trump leaves office."
His colleague, former US Attorney Joyce Vance, noted the peculiarity of Cannon's assertion of authority in a case that had already been dismissed.
"The strangest thing about this entire proceeding is that Judge Cannon continues to issue orders when there is no case pending in front of her," she said. "That’s not how a court’s jurisdiction is supposed to work.”
After appearing at a closed-door deposition last month as part of an inquiry launched by Republicans, Smith is scheduled to testify publicly before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday at 10 am ET.
Smith's lawyer, Lanny Breuer, told the Associated Press earlier this month that "Jack has been clear for months he is ready and willing to answer questions in a public hearing about his investigations into President Trump's alleged unlawful efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his mishandling of classified documents."
"In a future with immense data center growth, ratepayers shouldn't be forced to subsidize Big Tech's profits at the expense of their own health, climate, and pocketbooks," said a Union of Concerned Scientists analyst.
As ratepayers and environmentalists continue sounding the alarm over a push to rapidly build data centers to support artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency across the United States, scientists stressed Wednesday that powering such facilities with clean energy could save trillions of dollars in climate and health costs over the coming decades.
"US electricity demand could increase by 60% to 80% between 2025 and 2050, with data centers accounting for more than half of the increase by 2030," according to the new Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report, Data Center Power Play. "Estimates of the cumulative electricity costs attributable to data centers from 2026 to 2050 range from $886 billion to $978 billion."
"Without stronger clean energy policies, the additional fossil fuel generation used to power data centers results in an increase in annual US power plant emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) of 19% to 29% (229 to 342 million metric tons—MMT) by 2035," the document warns. "Restoring federal clean energy tax credits would reduce total US power plant emissions of CO2 by 33% between 2026 and 2035, even if data center demand more than doubles."
Reviving those tax credits is just one of the "forward-looking policies" for which the report advocates. It also calls for "establishing binding emission reduction targets and carbon-free electricity standards, adopting strong power plant carbon standards, and providing incentives to increase transmission capacity."
💡It's the smartest, quickest way to meet growing electricity demand while protecting people’s health, wallets and the climate. 🏛️$248 billion in wholesale electricity costs could be avoided by 2050 by restoring federal clean energy tax credits slashed by the Trump administration.
— Union of Concerned Scientists (@ucs.org) January 21, 2026 at 10:47 AM
The report further pushes for making large electricity customers, including data centers, cover additional costs and requiring utilities to not only conduct long-term planning for data center load growth but also meet that growth with new low-carbon or zero-carbon generation.
"State and federal policymakers should require data center companies and utilities to negotiate power purchase agreements and grid interconnection terms in public proceedings rather than behind closed doors and nondisclosure agreements," the publication argues. "Policymakers should also require data center companies and utilities to publicly report power needs, onsite and induced emissions, water use, and other data—and to do so with enough advance notice for communities to make informed decisions."
In a statement, Mike Jacobs, senior energy analyst at UCS and author of a recent report about costs being pushed onto the public, highlighted that "data centers are already secretly increasing peoples' electricity bills."
"While some utility companies and data center developers are intentionally misdirecting scrutiny, others are willfully ignorant about their roles in passing costs onto consumers," he explained. "In a future with immense data center growth, ratepayers shouldn't be forced to subsidize Big Tech's profits at the expense of their own health, climate, and pocketbooks. State utility regulators have clear authority to assign costs to those that cause them—it's time they require data center developers to pay their fair share for energy needs that can dwarf that of entire cities."
The new report emphasizes that "additional policies to nearly decarbonize the power sector by 2050 would help limit future damages from extreme heat, drought, wildfires, flooding, and other climate impacts. These policies would also deeply cut harmful air pollutants that contribute to respiratory ailments, heart attacks, other illnesses, and mortalities."
Reducing US power sector CO2 emissions 70% by 2035 would result in...🌎 More than $1.6 trillion in avoided global climate damages🌱 Reduce air pollution from fossil fuels, resulting in $40 billion in avoided health costs nationally
— Union of Concerned Scientists (@ucs.org) January 21, 2026 at 10:47 AM
UCS found that "the cumulative global climate benefits from reducing US heat-trapping emissions total $1.3 trillion to $1.6 trillion between 2026 and 2035, growing to $8 trillion to $13 trillion by 2050. Cumulative health benefits from reducing local air pollution range from $120 billion to $220 billion by 2050."
The report's lead author, UCS director of energy research Steve Clemmer, said Wednesday that "the climate and health benefits and net cost savings of building clean energy to meet future electricity needs are obvious and enormous, but they will not materialize without political support and responsible management of data center load growth."
Julie McNamara, associate policy director for the Climate and Energy Program at UCS, took aim at Big Oil-backed President Donald Trump, whose administration "has repeatedly worked to derail clean energy deployment precisely when we need it most."
"With surging demand from data centers, the need for plentiful, affordable power has never been higher," she said. "Yet instead of clearing the path for the fastest, cheapest, cleanest resources to deploy, President Trump is sidelining renewables just to boost the interests of the fossil fuel industry. People will pay the price: in higher bills, in dirtier air, in lost local investments, and in worsened climate impacts."