“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” — Mark Twain
January 10, 2026
Housing
Elizabeth Warren - Under Donald Trump, the median age of a first-time homebuyer hit a record 40 years old. There’s a housing crisis in every state across the country.
ICE
Phiiadelphia Sheriff - “No law enforcement officer may wear a mask. We will arrest those who wear masks to hide their identity. If you come to this city and commit a crime, the criminal in the White House cannot keep you from going to prison.”
The Guardian - More than a thousand protests are planned across the US this Saturday and Sunday after ICE agents shot three people, one fatally, in Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon, this week.
“This weekend, people all over are coming together not just to mourn the lives lost to ICE violence, but to confront a pattern of harm that has torn families apart and terrorized our communities,” said Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of Indivisible, an organizer of “ICE Out for Good Weekend of Action”.
The partisan media outlet Alpha News first posted the video on X, a 47-second clip that showed the perspective of the ICE agent – and captured a man’s voice calling Good a “fucking bitch” after she was mortally wounded. It was then shared by the White House’s official Rapid Response X account as well as JD Vance, with the vice-president writing in part that he agreed with the notion that Good’s death was “a tragedy” but accused the media of dishonestly covering the circumstances of her killing.
In a statement to the Guardian, the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed that the footage was authentic while claiming that Good “was impeding law enforcement and weaponized her vehicle in an attempt to kill or cause bodily harm to federal law enforcement” and the “officer was in fear of his own life”.
“The American people can watch this video with their own eyes and ears and judge for themselves,” McLaughlin added.
Donald Trump
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| Trump Underwater in Most States: Approval Craters Amid Mounting Economic Fears — Economist |
Federal judge blocks White House freeze of childcare subsidies in Democratic states
The Guardian - A federal judge ruled on Friday that the Trump administration cannot block federal money for childcare subsidies and other programs aimed at supporting low-income families with children from flowing to five Democratic-led states for now.
The states of California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York argued that a policy announced on Tuesday to freeze billions of dollars in funds for three grant programs was having an immediate impact on them and creating “operational chaos”. In court filings and a hearing earlier on Friday, the states contended that the government did not have a legal reason for withholding the money from them.
The US Department of Health and Human Services said it was pausing the funding because it had “reason to believe” the states were granting benefits to people in the country illegally, though it did not provide evidence or explain why it was targeting those states and not others....
US district judge Arun Subramanian, who was nominated to the bench by Joe Biden, did not rule on the legality of the funding freeze but said the five states met a legal threshold “to protect the status quo” for at least 14 days while arguments are made in court.
Trump announces one-year 10% cap on credit card interest rates
The Guardian - Donald Trump announced a one-year cap that would limit credit card interest rates to 10% this week, in a move that has prompted mixed reaction from lawmakers and beyond.
The president’s social media post on Friday night said the restriction would take effect on 20 January, but he did not provide specifics on how the government would implement it or ensure that companies comply...
During his campaign for a second term, Trump said he would implement such a cap, as American credit card debt hit a record of more than $1.1tn. US credit card debt surpassed that and reached a whopping $1.17tn in the third quarter of 2024, growing from $770bn in the first quarter of 2021.
After not seeing action on that campaign promise, senators Bernie Sanders and Josh Hawley introduced a bipartisan bill in February 2025 to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for the next five years.
“When large financial institutions charge over 25 percent interest on credit cards, they are not engaged in the business of making credit available. They are engaged in extortion and loan sharking. We cannot continue to allow big banks to make huge profits ripping off the American people. This legislation will provide working families struggling to pay their bills with desperately needed financial relief,” the lawmakers wrote in a statement announcing the bill.
Trump regime suspends $129m in benefit payments to Minnesota
The Guardian - The Trump administration announced it is suspending $129m in federal benefit payments to Minnesota amid allegations of widespread fraud in the state.The secretary of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Brooke Rollins, shared a letter on Friday on social media that was addressed to Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, and the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, notifying them of the administration’s decision and citing investigations into alleged fraud conducted by local non-profits and businesses.
“Despite a staggering, wide-reaching fraud scandal, your administrations refuse to provide basic information or take common sense measures to stop fraud. The Trump administration refuses to allow such fraud to continue,” Rollins wrote.
Rollins asked Walz and Frey to provide the USDA with justification for all federal spending from 20 January 2025 to the present within 30 days. She is also requiring that all federal payments to the state moving forward require the same justification.
Elon Musk
Axios - Elon Musk's top investors are shrugging off a post that crossed the line from political incorrectness to outright racism, Axios' Dan Primack reports.
- Musk agreed with a post yesterday that said, in part: "If White men become a minority, we will be slaughtered. ... White solidarity is the only way to survive."
- Musk's post remains up, with 42.5 million views.
Axios reached out about Musk's post to each of the investors named by his company, xAI, in this week's $20 billion fundraising announcement.
- That includes Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, Baron Capital Group, Sequoia Capital, Nvidia and Cisco Investments. Fidelity and Sequoia declined to comment. The rest didn't respond. MORE
Meanwhile...
After looking at dozens of clinical trials, UK researchers concluded that exercise can reduce depression symptoms similarly to antidepressants and therapy. (Read on Gizmodo)
The Hill - The Kennedy Center on Friday confirmed the Washington National Opera (WNO) will leave the renowned venue. “After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to part ways with the WNO due to a financially challenging relationship,” a Kennedy Center spokesperson told NewsNation.
“We believe this represents the best path forward for both organizations and enables us to make responsible choices that support the financial stability and long-term future of the Trump Kennedy Center,” they added.
The opera told The New York Times in a statement that it had “announced its decision to seek an amicable early termination of its affiliation agreement with the Kennedy Center and resume operations as a fully independent nonprofit entity.”
Climate change
Inside Climate News - Though the concept of a bike bus is simple—gather a group, hop on the bicycles and go—it didn’t creep into public awareness until 2021 when one in Barcelona went viral. In 2022, physical education teacher Sam Balto, who had started a bike bus in Boston in 2016 and another in Portland, Oregon, after moving there in 2018, organized the Bike Bus for Earth Day event in Portland that gained massive social media attention. By 2024, there were at least 470 bike bus routes around the globe, according to City Lab Barcelona.
Inside Climate News - Several global trends are colliding with disastrous consequences for health and the environment, new research warns.
Plastic production has skyrocketed since the 1950s, from a few million tons a year to nearly half a billion tons today, and is on track to triple by 2060. And since just a small fraction of plastics is recycled, millions of tons of plastic—derived from fossil fuels and loaded with toxic chemical additives—enter the environment as waste every year. That staggering figure is also likely to triple by midcentury.
For decades, the United States and other high-income countries have exported their plastic waste to low-income countries in the Global South, many ill-equipped to manage the burgeoning waste stream. At the same time, billions of people across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America lack access to clean cooking fuels, adequate sanitation or waste-management services. As urbanization accelerates at an unprecedented rate across those regions, city dwellers living in extreme poverty often resort to burning debris from the massive mounds of plastic waste that inundate their communities.
Now, as climate change drives rising sea levels and increasingly brings devastating floodwaters to native lands, that same water is forcing coastal villages located in Washington State to adapt to protect their heritage.
The scope of the change needed was made clear by the flooding across the state this past December, which forced 100,000 people to evacuate from low-lying areas, required 600 rescues and took at least one life. Many of those who fled the rising waters were members of the Indigenous fishing tribes positioned on the front lines of the storms, east of the Puget Sound.
What we know about internet use, smartphone ownership and digital divides in the U.S.
Article covers issues including
- Young adults, Hispanic adults, those with lower incomes are more likely to rely on smartphones for internet
- Nine-in-ten U.S. adults use the internet daily, including 41% who say they’re online almost constantly. This is on par with what we found in 2023 and 2024.
- Americans in households making under $30K a year are far less likely than those with higher incomes to subscribe to broadband
Venezuela
7 facts about Venezuelans in the U.S.
As President Trump met with U.S. oil executives on Friday, Exxon CEO Darren Woods called Venezuela “uninvestable” at present and others expressed caution in response to the president’s overtures to pour billions of dollars into the country.
Health
Wired - On averqage, the typical American contracts two to three colds per year between September and May, at an estimated cost of around $40 billion to the economy. Effective forms of treating or preventing colds have proven hard to come by, with the majority of over-the-counter medicines yielding modest results; it’s hard to devise a drug that tackles the vast array of viral pathogens that cause them. The need for better respiratory protection during the winter months is clear. It might be found in a practice that dates back thousands of years.
The concept of saline nasal irrigation, or bathing the nasal passages with a saltwater solution, is thought to have been introduced as part of Ayurveda, an alternative medicine system that originated in the Indian subcontinent more than 5,000 years ago. Now, modern science is beginning to demonstrate that this ancient practice really does serve as a surprisingly effective shield against many of the seasonal bugs behind the common cold.
In 2024, a major new study of nearly 14,000 people funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research in the UK found that using a simple saline-based nasal spray between three and six times a day at the first sign of an infection reduced illness duration by around 20 percent. A follow-up study, published last year, reported similar benefits.
Events
JAN 10 - Maine Middle Eastern Orchestra
Sicilian Table, 261 US 1, Falmouth: Jim Ciampi Duo featuring Christina Ackroyd, 5:30-8:30
Tonic, 7 Dunlap St., Brunswick: Open mic hosted by Rexy Dinosaur, 6-9
JAN 13 - Chamber of Commerce Annual Meeting
Feds bashed for handline of ICE shooting probe
Axios - Former prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys are alarmed by the Trump administration's "highly unusual" decision to kick local investigators off the probe into the deadly ICE shooting in Minneapolis.
Politicians on both sides rushed to weigh in on whether the killing of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good was justified. With so many officials making snap judgments — and the feds' lockdown of the evidence — widespread acceptance of the results seems unlikely, Axios' Brittany Gibson and Marc Caputo report.
"This is what a cover-up looks like," said Dan Gelber, former federal prosecutor and Miami Beach mayor.
"It's shocking to me that this is the route and the path that it's taking, because I do believe that it undermines the public trust in the government," said Eric Nelson, one of the defense attorneys for Derek Chauvin, a former police officer convicted in 2021 for the murder of George Floyd. More
Bannon eyes '28 run
Axios - MAGA godfather Steve Bannon is laying the groundwork for a 2028 run for president, two people familiar with his thinking tell Axios' Alex Isenstadt.
The former White House adviser isn't serious about becoming president — that's not the point. Instead, he's told allies he wants to shape the debate and pressure Republican candidates to embrace an "America First" agenda — including a non-interventionist foreign policy, economic populism and opposition to Big Tech.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who has appeared on Bannon's "WarRoom" podcast, said: "The Bannon campaign will merge the foreign policy of Rand Paul with the tax policy of Elizabeth Warren."
Bannon adamantly denied a run to Axios: He called the idea "bullsh*t" and said he's been focused on something else for 2028: supporting a third term for President Trump, despite the Constitution's two-term limit on presidents. Full Story
Donald Trump: Not the cause of our problems but a major beneficiary
An excerpt from the book, Why Bother?, which I wrote in 2001, that reflects a major change in American values and goals that began with Ronald Reagan and is still with us. One of the problems with history is that many of us ignore it for too long while others are taking advantage of it
Sam Smith, 2001 - From the start of the New Deal to the
end of Jimmy Carter's tenure, the main course of American domestic politics was
directed towards the improvement of life for the average citizen. The pace
might vary markedly and the methods change, but not until the arrival of Ronald
Reagan did power turn massively inward
-- determined to serve itself firstly and mostly.
Even that otherwise egregious
warlock, Richard Nixon, practiced domestic affairs in the tradition of social
democracy. He was, in fact, our last liberal president, an amazing claim until
one considers that he favored a negative income tax, revenue sharing, a
guaranteed income for children, supplementary programs for the aged, blind, and
disabled; uniform application of the food stamp program; better health
insurance programs for low income families, aid to community colleges, aid to
low-income college students, the creation of the National Endowment for the
Humanities, and increased funding for elementary and secondary schools. Today
someone of Nixon's domestic political tendencies would probably be considered
too radical for C-SPAN.
With Reagan and subsequent
presidents this drastically changed. In
the place of social democracy came a bipartisan effort to repeal decades of
American social and economic progress. Since then the moral burden has been
shifted away from collective social responsibility towards increasing sanctions
against transgressors and laggards, indifference towards the victims of moral
apathy, and a government free to do whatever it wants.
Those too young to have
remembered productive liberalism -- before the species became a rigid,
profligate, incompetent parody of itself -- easily accepted the idea that our
problems were due not to faults of those in currently in power but to policies
that had, in fact, helped create the very comfortable perches from which the
successful so loudly complained.
Such developments were
complimented by efforts of major corporations to get Americans to accept a
lower standard of living, albeit cleverly concealed in the rhetoric of economic
growth. For the bulk of Americans not playing the stock market, the end of the
century told a less than glorious story:
- Poor black families were working 190 hours more a year - and poor white families 22 hours more -- than in 1979 for roughly the same pay.
- While the income of middle-class, married-couple families grew 9 % from 1989 to 1998 these families were working six extra full-time weeks a year to earn it.
- Over half of employees said that their company did not genuinely care about them."
- CEOs were earning 107 times that of the average worker, compared to 56 times in 1989.
- The top 1 percent of households held 40% of the nation's wealth in 1997 compared to 25% in 1980. The combined wealth of the top 1 percent of US families was about the same as that of the entire bottom 95 percent.
- Ten percent of the U.S. population owned 82% percent of the real estate, 82% percent of the stock, and 72 % of the country's total wealth.
- Adjusted for inflation, the income of a recent male high school graduate declined 28% between 1973 and 1997.
- In 1939 a farmer had to produce 729 bushels of wheat to pay for his tractor. In 1999 a American farmer had to produce almost 23,000 bushels to pay for his new tractor.
- In 1997, almost half of the new jobs created paid less than $16,000
- The two richest men in America -- Bill Gates and Warren Buffet -- owned more assets than the bottom 45% of the country.
Donald Trump is enjoying
America’s continued decline that began nearly a half century ago.
Trump regime files record number of emergency apps with Supremes
Newsworthy News - The Supreme Court’s shadow docket has emerged as a pivotal instrument in the Trump-Vance administration’s strategy to implement significant policy changes. This tool allows for emergency orders without full briefing, facilitating rapid shifts in immigration profiling, military policies, and federal agency operations. The administration has submitted an unprecedented 28 emergency applications since mid-September 2025, compared to eight during the previous 16 years under Bush and Obama.
Critics argue that this process undermines the Court’s deliberative function, eroding constitutional protections and due process. The liberal justices, including Justice Sotomayor, have voiced strong dissent, particularly against policies that allow racial profiling in immigration enforcement. This division among the justices highlights the ideological split, with conservative justices such as Justice Kavanaugh supporting the administration’s enforcement efficiency.
January 9, 2026
Tariffs
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Reuters - The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue its next rulings on January 14 as several major cases remain pending including the legality of President Donald Trump's sweeping global tariffs.
The court indicated on its website on Friday that it could release decisions in argued cases when the justices take the bench during a scheduled sitting next Wednesday. The court does not announce in advance what cases will be decided.
The challenge to Trump's tariffs marks a major test of presidential powers as well as of the court's willingness to check some of the Republican president's far-reaching assertions of authority since he returned to office in January 2025. The outcome will also impact the global economy.
During arguments in the case heard by the court on November 5, conservative and liberal justices appeared to cast doubt on the legality of the tariffs, which Trump imposed by invoking a 1977 law meant for use during national emergencies. Trump's administration is appealing rulings by lower courts that he overstepped his authority.
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