Daily Beast - The first lady’s eponymous documentary continued to plummet on only its third weekend, suffering a 62.3-percent drop in attendance, according to data from IMDbPro. This puts the project on pace to gross $15.4 million in total, nowhere near the $40 million that Jeff Bezos’ Amazon spent to acquire it and an additional $35 million to promote it.
@DougWahl1 - The annual ranking of the Presidents came out today. The list is compiled by 125 presidential scholars. Trump second term was unanimously ranked the worst in history... it edged out his 1st term which was also unanimously voted as the 2nd worst.
Sam Smith – I covered my first Washington news story in 1957. Since then, in a period covering about a quarter of America’s official history, I’ve seen attempts to undermine democratic laws and principles but in no case did these match what is going on under the Trump regime.
In fact, the conventional media is even beginning to write stories about threats to our Constitution which used to be scribbled only by alternative journalists like me. Now conventional commentators are, for the first time, at least mentioning that the Constitution and democracy are under attack.
We have never had a president as dishonest and ill-directed as Donald Trump. And while it is a good sign that a few in the conventional media are realizing that our democracy is under serious assault, it’s not yet part of a general consciousness.
My father worked for Franklin Roosevelt so even as a kid I was aware of what a functioning democracy was like. Words like decency, cooperation and concern were more frequent than lie, illegal and offense. And certainly you didn’t have folk like me pondering whether we were in an era that could properly be called the Second Civil War,
Lately I’ve been trying to see what cultural factors have helped put us in this crisis-ladened period.
It seems that America started its downfall during the era of Ronald Reagan who had successfully taken the country’s mind off such shared activities as cooperation and assisting others.
But there were non-political changes as well such as the rise of TV and the Internet. As Wikipedia puts it:
The global internet took shape in academia by the second half of the 1980s, as well as many other computer networks of both academic and commercial use … By 1989, the Internet and the networks linked to it were a global system with extensive transoceanic satellite links and nodes in most developed countries. Based on earlier work, from 1980 onwards Tim Berners-Lee formalized the concept of the World Wide Web by 1989. Television viewing became commonplace in the Third World, with the number of TV sets in China and India increasing by 15 and 10 times respectively explains it.
One little discussed aspect of TV and the Internet is how they changed our relationship with friends and neighbors. What the ever wise Joe and Jackie down the street had to say had been replaced by the words online. Just one example; the final episode of M*A*S*H in 1983 had 60.2% of all households with television sets in the United States watching it.
Having spent major periods of my time split between local and national news I’m well aware that the latter doesn’t tell you enough about how life really works these days. Real people doing real things really matter.
And knowing our real status, which is now the collapse of constitutional democracy.
MSN - Out of 11,406 eligible voters surveyed between mid-December and mid-January, just 60% said they were confident that midterm votes will be counted fairly — down from 77% who held such confidence in vote counting shortly after the 2024 presidential election.
NY Times - Limb-lengthening has been practiced by
orthopedic surgeons for decades as a means of correcting deformities or length
discrepancies. But in height surgery, also called stature-lengthening, it can
be used for patients who wish to add a few inches to their height. The cosmetic
procedure has grabbed more attention recently. Patient numbers are difficult to
track, but four clinics in the United States said that they had received an
uptick in interest over the past decade.
....The risks have made height
surgery a contentious topic, and the procedure is expensive. It can cost
between $70,000 and $150,000 in the United States, driving some people to seek
treatment abroad.
A proposed constitutional amendment giving Congress the power to block presidential pardons has gained its first House Republican cosponsor, Axios' Andrew Solender reports. Go deeper.
Wiktoria Gucia - The Trump administration has spent over $40 million on deporting people to the wrong country, only for most migrants to end up back in their nation of origin.
A 30-page report by the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, released on Friday, details the huge cost to American taxpayers of what one U.S. official called a “scare tactic” and a “hugely expensive deterrent” operation by the administration.
According to the report, more than $32 million has been paid to five countries—some with a history of corrupt governments and human rights abuses—as of January, to accept roughly 300 third-country nationals deported from the U.S. The term third country refers to the U.S. deporting migrants to nations that aren’t their own.
Hartmann Report - This fight isn’t really about immigration. It’s about whether the Constitution still restrains government power at all.
When elected officials call it a “nonstarter” to require federal agents to get a judicial warrant before kicking in doors, to give people bail or a trial before they face long-term prison, and to allow protests, they’re not debating border policy, they’re testing whether the Bill of Rights is still binding or has become merely decorative.
The Bill of Rights was written to put friction between the state’s power to use force and the people it governs. To restrain government.
If that friction can be removed so government can attack any one disfavored group, then constitutional rights stop being universal guarantees and turn into conditional privileges. And once that shift happens, history ... show us that the groups of people who’re unprotected never stays small for long.
This week’s news which highlights this crisis is that Republicans have shut down the Department of Homeland Security because they say Democrats’ call for ICE to follow the law and the Constitution is “a nonstarter.”
Seriously. Here’s the first sentence of the Democrats’ demand that Republicans say is so unreasonable:
... Right now, ICE is kicking in doors and smashing windows of cars in order to attack and arrest both citizens and non-citizens alike. They do it because they say they can. And to arrest, detain, and imprison people they claim they can issue their own phony, made-up “administrative warrants” and don’t need a judge or court to see any evidence or say a word.
This is complete bullshit, and it’s genuinely astonishing that Republicans are backing them up. The Fourth Amendment isn’t complicated. Here it is, in it’s entirety (notice it does NOT say “citizens” but says “people”):
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
That’s it. Every word. And it applies to any “person” who happens to be in the United States. Nonetheless, ignoring 250 years of American law and history, DHS General Counsel James Percival said:
“[I]llegal aliens aren’t entitled to the same Fourth Amendment protections as U.S. citizens.”
NBC News - Early in her tenure as homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem made some calls that rankled Coast Guard officials, including shifting resources away from a search and rescue mission to find a missing service member and putting them toward efforts to deport migrants, sources told NBC News.
The dynamic has only worsened in recent months, and in one contentious incident, Noem's top adviser Corey Lewandowski berated Coast Guard flight staff and threatened to fire them for taking off without one of the secretary's personal items on board: a heated blanket.
Time - Tens of thousands of people with no criminal record or pending criminal charges have been pulled off the streets by immigration agents and put into detention centers. If that pattern were to stop, the Trump Administration’s deportation stats would likely plummet.
“The apprehension of criminals moves more slowly than everyone else,” says John Sandweg, former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Obama administration....
The data illustrates Trump’s commitment to mass deportations. The number of people arrested and detained by ICE who have no criminal convictions or pending charges has skyrocketed from 945, or 6% of all arrests, last January, to 26,044, or 44%, last month, according to data published by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. That spike reflects a dramatic transformation in how the country’s immigration system treats people who are in the country unlawfully, but have no criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.
WalletHub - To determine which residents face the highest property tax burden relative to their state, the personal finance company WalletHub released its 2026 Property Taxes by State report today, along with expert commentary. The report compares home and vehicle property taxes nationwide and includes insights from a panel of experts.
States with Highest Real-Estate Taxes
States with Highest Vehicle Property Taxes
42. Iowa
42. Kansas
43. Wisconsin
43. Connecticut
T-44. Nebraska
44. Nevada
T-44. Texas
45. Massachusetts
46. New York
46. Nebraska
47. Vermont
47. South Carolina
48. New Hampshire
48. Maine
49. Connecticut
49. Missouri
50. Illinois
50. Mississippi
51. New Jersey
51. Virginia
Key Stats:
Hawaii has the lowest real-estate tax, which is 7.9 times lower than in New Jersey, the state with the highest.
Twenty-six states levy some form of vehicle property tax. Of those states, Louisiana has the lowest, which is 39.9 times lower than in Virginia, the state with the highest.
Blue States have 27.02 percent higher real-estate property taxes, averaging $3,594, than Red States, averaging $2,830.
The Guardian - Anderson Cooper will leave the CBS News program 60 Minutes after nearly two decades, he said on Monday, in the latest staffing shake-up to hit the storied news magazine amid broader newsroom changes under the new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss.
...The editorial independence of CBS News, and its flagship investigative show 60 Minutes, has been in doubt since the network’s new owner, David Ellison, installed Weiss, an opinion writer and editor with no prior experience in broadcast television.
In December, Weiss ordered 60 Minutes to hold a report on the Cecot prison in El Salvador, where the Trump administration had sent immigrants from Venezuela to be jailed without due process, arguing that it lacked the perspective of the Trump administration, which had declined requests for comment.
The Hill - Violent crime fell dramatically in 2025, in what experts expect to be the year with the sharpest drop in homicides in recorded history. The decline, detailed in two recent reports of major U.S. cities, follows a trend that began in 2022, after the COVID-19 pandemic saw a record-breaking spike in homicides.
“This is the fourth year in a row of declines, and each year has gotten a little bigger than the year before. And this is the first time that we’ve seen it in all of the categories, I think seven of the eight categories fell by close to a record amount,” John Roman, director of the Center on Public Safety and Justice at NORC at the University of Chicago, said in an interview Monday, referring to the eight major crime categories that the FBI tracks.
...The FBI has not yet published its official crime statistics for 2025, but the findings are expected to align with recent reports from the Major Cities Chiefs Association’s (MCCA) violent crime survey, released earlier this month, and the Council on Criminal Justice’s (CCJ) year-end crime update, released late January.
The MCCA survey, including data from 67 of 68 responding agencies, shows from 2024 to 2025, homicide is down 19.3 percent, rape is down 8.8 percent, robbery is down 19.8 percent, and aggravated assault is down 9.7 percent.
The CCJ report — which includes data from 40 large American cities, though not every city reports data for every crime — shows from 2024 to 2025, homicides dropped by 21 percent, robbery decreased by 23 percent, and aggravated assault declined by 9 percent.
Many experts...say the primary driver of plummeting crime rates is the sharp increase in crime in 2020 and 2021.
...Some point to the investments in community violence intervention programs as successful, but others say it’s difficult to prove the effectiveness of those programs and the evidence has been mixed in their results.
Emily Owens, a professor of criminology and economics at the University of California, Irvine, agreed that the national trend suggests a larger reason.
“The consistency of the homicide decline, both across cities and over time, makes me inclined to think this has to do with larger social movements, temporarily disrupted by COVID-19 when the world turned upside down, than with any one particular thing one particular city might be doing,” Owens said in an analysis of the data.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson pushed back on suggestions that funding contributed to crime drop. The legislation, which included $350 billion for state and local governments, was signed by President Biden in 2021.
Sam Smith, 2017 - I was one of a handful of whites in the Washington office of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee when Stokely Carmichael announced that we were no longer welcome in the movement. Yet in no small part because of what DC whites and blacks had learned working together in an often successful battle against more freeways, cultural nationalism – or identity politics as it’s called today – didn’t really catch on and within a few years we had formed a bi-ethnic third party that would hold a seat on the city council and/or the school board for 25 years.
I am not bitter about Carmichael nor about those loyal to identity politics. I just grew up in a time when politics was not about theories but about what was happening right around you. It early became clear to me that issues rather than identity allowed you to build a force that could not only write nice articles but actually produce change.
And as [Martin Luther] King noted in 1967, “Effective political power for Negroes cannot come through separatism. SNCC staff members are eminently correct when they point out that in Lowndes County, Alabama, there are no white liberals or moderates and no possibility for cooperation between the races at the present time. But the Lowndes County experience cannot be made a measuring rod for the whole of America’’
He tried to exemplify this with the multi-cultural Poor People’s Campaign and its Resurrection City on the National Mall. In an interview, Jesse Jackson Jr. described King’s goal:
"Well, the context of it is the Saturday morning before Dr. King was assassinated, he called this emergency staff meeting at his office in Atlanta, Georgia. He had this vision we should wipe out poverty, ignorance and disease, that you couldn't do it on an ethnic basis. That was not, that was never going to be in the plan to wipe out Black poverty that would leave the Hispanics in poverty or Whites or women in poverty or Native American in poverty."
Jackson put some of King’s principles to test as he ran for president in 1988. The Wikipedia account is worth reading because so many have forgotten this remarkable moment:
In early 1988, Jackson organized a rally at the former American Motors assembly plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin, approximately two weeks after new owner Chrysler announced it would close the plant by the end of the year. In his speech, Jackson spoke out against Chrysler's decision, stating "We have to put the focus on Kenosha, Wisconsin, as the place, here and now, where we draw the line to end economic violence!" and compared the workers' fight to that of the civil rights movement in Selma, Alabama. As a result, the UAW Local 72 union voted to endorse his candidacy, even against the rules of the UAW…. Jackson ran on what many considered to be a very liberal platform. Declaring that he wanted to create a "Rainbow Coalition" of various minority groups, including African Americans, Hispanics, Middle Eastern Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, family farmers, the poor and working class, and LGBT people, as well as white progressives, Jackson ran on a platform that included:
Creating a Works Progress Administration-style program to rebuild America's infrastructure and provide jobs to all Americans,
Reprioritizing the War on Drugs to focus less on mandatory minimum sentences for drug users (which he views as racially biased) and more on harsher punishments for money-laundering bankers and others who are part of the "supply" end of "supply and demand"
Reversing Reaganomics-inspired tax cuts for the richest ten percent of Americans and using the money to finance social welfare programs
Cutting the budget of the Department of Defense by as much as fifteen percent over the course of his administration
Declaring Apartheid-era South Africa to be a rogue nation
Instituting an immediate nuclear freeze and beginning disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union \
Giving reparations to descendants of black slaves
Supporting family farmers by reviving many of Roosevelt's New Deal–era farm programs · creating a single-payer system of universal health care
Ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment · increasing federal funding for lower-level public education and providing free community college to all
Applying stricter enforcement of the Voting Rights Act and
Supporting the formation of a Palestinian state.
Jackson captured 6.9 million votes and won 11 contests: seven primaries (Alabama, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Puerto Rico and Virginia) and four caucuses (Delaware, Michigan, South Carolina and Vermont). Jackson also scored March victories in Alaska's caucuses and Texas's local conventions, despite losing the Texas primary
What Jackson had done was to follow a greatly ignored rule of thumb about America: If you are in a minority you can still lead the majority. In fact it’s one of the best things you can do. There are all sorts of ways - the moral leadership of civil rights activists, political leadership, leadership in the arts and literature, or in a high school.
Or creating cross-cultural spaces such as the traditional Irish bar As one politician said in Chicago many years ago, “An Italian won't vote for a Jew and a Lithuanian won't vote for an Pole but all four will vote for an Irishman.”
The Irish did it politically, the Jews did it culturally and blacks – thanks to those like King and Jackson – did it with a movement that spoke across cultures.
It can happen again but to do so, blacks and latinos need to stop accepting the limited role of what Bobby Seale called cultural nationalism and see themselves as those with the greatest chance of becoming the new moral voice for all of America, regardless of ethnicity or gender. And the great common ground is an economic system that screws too many Americans regardless of their ethnicity.
It is true that, thanks to the lies and machinations of people like Donald Trump and large corporations, a lot of white guys have been taught the wrong way to solve their real problems. They don’t need condemnation, they need help. And true friends.
The email, from “secret admirer Donald J. Trump,” begs people to read the “love letter” from the president and prove their devotion with a monetary donation.
“Roses are red, violets are blue. Do you still love Trump, as I love you?” the email from the PAC Never Surrender Inc. says.
NBC News -Add it all together, and members of Congress are heading for the exit at a historically high rate ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, with two more House Republicans adding themselves to a growing roster just last week.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., announced Wednesday that he was retiring from Congress, while Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., announced Friday that he wouldn’t run for re-election, either. Loudermilk said he wants “to spend more dedicated time with my family,” while Amodei said it was “the right time for Nevada and myself to pass the torch.”
The latest retirements mean 60 members of Congress have decided not to run for re-election this year — 51 House members and nine senators. It’s the most retirements from both chambers combined this century, according to historical data from the Brookings Institution’s Vital Statistics on Congress. That includes lawmakers who are retiring from political life altogether and those leaving their seats to run for other offices, but it doesn’t include members who have resigned or died during the current Congress.
Peter Noren, Trade Talks Live - On January 8, the Trump administration dropped a bombshell that most of the mainstream media is treating like a footnote. They’ve created a new Division for National Fraud Enforcement at the DOJ. Now, on paper, fighting fraud sounds great. Nobody likes a scammer. But here’s the kicker: this new Assistant Attorney General doesn't report to the Attorney General like every other lawyer in the building. They report directly to President Trump and Vice President Vance....
The Department of Justice is supposed to have a firewall between the guys with the badges and the guys in the Oval Office. When you melt that firewall down, law enforcement stops being about "the law" and starts being about "the mission." Former DOJ officials are already sounding the alarm that this direct supervision compromises criminal independence.
NPR - As the United States heads toward the midterm elections, there are growing concerns among some political scientists that the country has moved even further along the path to some form of autocracy.
Staffan I. Lindberg, the founding director of Sweden's V-Dem Institute, which monitors democracy across the globe, says the U.S. has already crossed the threshold and become an "electoral autocracy."
Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and co-author of How Democracies Die, agrees.
"I would argue that the United States in 2025-26 has slid into a mild form of competitive authoritarianism," Levitsky said. "I think it's reversible, but this is authoritarianism."
Under competitive authoritarianism, countries still hold elections, but the ruling party uses various tactics — attacking the press, disenfranchising voters, weaponizing the justice system and threatening critics — to tilt the electoral playing field in its favor. ...
Other political scientists say the U.S. system of government is battered but still democratic. Kurt Weyland, who researches democracy and authoritarianism at the University of Texas at Austin, says he's increasingly confident that the U.S. can withstand Trump's sweeping attempt to expand executive power.
The Hill - A federal judge ordered the National Park Service to restore exhibits about slaves who lived at the nation’s one-time executive mansion in Philadelphia, agreeing with the city that the Trump administration likely unlawfully removed the displays.
U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe invoked the dystopian novel “1984” as she blocked the Trump administration from changing or damaging the site, which is now an outdoor exhibition.
“As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ this Court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims—to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts. It does not,” Rufe wrote.
Rufe is an appointee of former President George W. Bush.
Philadelphia entered an agreement with the federal government in 2006 to develop President’s House, the home and working space for George Washington and John Adams when they were commanders in chief. It’s now an open-air pavilion part of Independence National Historical Park and contains exhibits about Washington’s slaves who lived there.
Last month, Philadelphia sued the Interior Department and the park service after it removed the slavery references. The city said the changes were in response to an executive order Trump signed last year directing the removal of content that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
The judge on Monday ruled the Trump administration had disregarded its agreement with the city and requirements imposed by Congress. Te ruling also invoked the Declaration of Independence, which was signed at the park.
This Will Hold - For more than a decade amid Republican bluster about widespread noncitizen voting, the Heritage Foundation has been investigating and documenting such cases. And according to its own dataset, from 1982 to 2025 there have been only 99 documented cases of noncitizens voting in U.S. elections....
That’s an average of roughly 2.3 cases per year since 1982.
In 2024 there was just one documented case of noncitizen voting. In 2023, there was also only one documented case of noncitizen voting. In 2022, there were two. That’s it.
Which is why both left-leaning and conservative organizations, including the Heritage Foundation, have consistently found rates of noncitizen voting to be near zero. It is virtually nonexistent—and a manufactured nonissue.
Over the last decade, Donald Trump and Republican leaders have doubled down on the conspiracy theory that large numbers of noncitizens are voting. They have used this fabricated threat to justify increasingly harsh voting restrictions...
Enter the SAVE America Act: a nationwide voter suppression system disguised as “election security.” It introduces new documentation requirements for a law that has existed for decades. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 already explicitly prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections.
On its surface, the bill claims to protect election integrity. In reality, it would fundamentally restructure how Americans register and vote, creating one of the most restrictive federal voting regimes in modern history.
....The consequences are easy to predict. Millions of Americans lack immediate access to certified birth certificates, valid passports, or updated records. Elderly citizens born at home, Native Americans born on reservations, women and trans people who changed their names, naturalized citizens awaiting replacement papers, low-income families unable to afford document fees, and disaster survivors who lost records would all face new obstacles.
This Will Hold - For more than a decade amid Republican bluster about widespread noncitizen voting, the Heritage Foundation has been investigating and documenting such cases. And according to its own dataset, from 1982 to 2025 there have been only 99 documented cases of noncitizens voting in U.S. elections....
That’s an average of roughly 2.3 cases per year since 1982.
In 2024 there was just one documented case of noncitizen voting. In 2023, there was also only one documented case of noncitizen voting. In 2022, there were two. That’s it.
Which is why both left-leaning and conservative organizations, including the Heritage Foundation, have consistently found rates of noncitizen voting to be near zero. It is virtually nonexistent—and a manufactured nonissue.
Over the last decade, Donald Trump and Republican leaders have doubled down on the conspiracy theory that large numbers of noncitizens are voting. They have used this fabricated threat to justify increasingly harsh voting restrictions...
Enter the SAVE America Act: a nationwide voter suppression system disguised as “election security.” It introduces new documentation requirements for a law that has existed for decades. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 already explicitly prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections.
On its surface, the bill claims to protect election integrity. In reality, it would fundamentally restructure how Americans register and vote, creating one of the most restrictive federal voting regimes in modern history.
....The consequences are easy to predict. Millions of Americans lack immediate access to certified birth certificates, valid passports, or updated records. Elderly citizens born at home, Native Americans born on reservations, women and trans people who changed their names, naturalized citizens awaiting replacement papers, low-income families unable to afford document fees, and disaster survivors who lost records would all face new obstacles.
Independent, UK - In January 2011, Jeffrey Epstein received an email inviting him to join a freshman congressman for breakfast at a luxury hotel in midtown Manhattan.
The billionaire pedophile was promised the chance to rub shoulders with Rep. Allen West, a “rising star” Florida Republican, whose district encompassed Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion.
“You will have the opportunity to explore his views on a variety of issues including spending, the national debt, taxes, education, the economy, Islam, Israel, among others,” the letter read.
An hour after it landed in his inbox, Epstein replied that he was “unfortunately” in the Caribbean.
For Epstein, this type of offer was far from unusual. After he pleaded guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution in 2008 and served a 13-month stint in jail, the convicted sex offender received offers to meet with over a dozen current or former members of Congress, according to The Independent’s analysis of documents released by the Department of Justice..
