Law school attendance surging

NY Times -  For decades, the American law school has served as a popular hedge against a cooling economy. When the “Help Wanted” signs disappear, the “J.D.” applications surge.

That’s what is happening now. The number of U.S. law school applicants for the 2026 cycle is up an estimated 17 percent from last year, according to data from the American Bar Association compiled by the Law School Admission Council. That figure is a staggering 44 percent increase from just two years ago.

But for this new wave of aspiring lawyers, the safety of the ivory tower comes with a steep entry fee and a shifting floor. Between new federal loan caps and the looming shadow of generative artificial intelligence, the legal profession’s newest recruits are walking into a high-stakes gamble that looks very different from the one their predecessors lost after the 2008 financial crisis.

Enrollment rose to 52,404 by 2010, a 7 percent jump from three years earlier. Many of those students didn’t enter the legal careers they may have envisioned; about half of 2011 law school graduates were not working in full-time jobs that required a law degree within a year of graduation.

Fun facts

Via Johnny Cadillac

Health

NPR  - North Carolina just wiped the slate clean for 2.5 million residents by eliminating their medical debt. All of the state’s hospitals agreed to scrap bills dating back to 2014 and automatically discount care for low-income patients. Medical debt is estimated to affect 1 in 12 Americans, and other states are also taking action to address the $220 billion problem.

Snow, sleet and power outages: 140m Americans under warnings for major winter storm

Minnesota

The Guardian - Two witnesses to the killing of Alex Pretti have said in sworn testimony that the 37-year-old intensive care nurse was not brandishing a weapon when he approached federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday, contradicting a claim made by Trump administration officials as they sought to cast the shooting of a prone man as an act of self-defense.

Their accounts came in sworn affidavits that were filed in federal court in Minnesota late Saturday, just hours after Pretti’s killing, as part of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of Minneapolis protesters against Kristi Noem and other homeland security officials directing the immigration crackdown in the city.

One witness is a woman who filmed the clearest video of the fatal shooting; the other is a physician who lives nearby and said they were initially prevented by federal officers from rendering medical aid to the gunshot victim.

Immigration officers shooting at drivers

MS NOW - The tragic shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis was not an isolated incident. An MS NOW review of court records and media reports found that federal agents working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol have shot at people in their cars at least 15 times since July, write David Noriega and Kay Guerrero, as part of a new series, “Cities Under Siege.” The shootings have occurred most often in places that Trump has targeted for federal deployments, including California, Illinois, Minnesota and Washington, D.C. After each shooting, federal officials and agencies have quickly asserted that the driver was attempting to run over or ram agents with their vehicle, but the claims have frequently fallen apart once videos and other evidence emerged. Eight of the incidents led to criminal cases, four of which were dropped or dismissed by judges and four of which are ongoing. In two, charges were never filed because the civilians were fatally shot. None of the agents, meantime, has been charged. Read the article here.

New world order?

MS NEWS - New world order? Frustrated with America’s increasingly hostile behavior, Western allies are starting to chart their own path. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the leaders of Belgium, France and Canada called for new relationships with one another as a hedge against American bullying, notes political columnist Michael A. Cohen. But there have also been moments in the past when it seemed like a new world order was about to emerge, only to have America re-emerge as the center of multilateral efforts. For all their current frustrations, Canadian and European leaders “would almost certainly welcome a sane America back with open arms” — even Mark Carney. Read more.

Greenland

Mike Luckovich | Creators Syndicate

MS NOW - Greenland’s soft landing: After all the bellicose threats, President Donald Trump has pulled back from the brink of economic and military war with Europe over his quest to annex Greenland after announcing a “framework of a future deal” over the Danish territory. The details are still unclear, but it’s a relief that Trump seems to have found an off-ramp from “one of the dumbest and most dangerous foreign policy ideas he’s ever had,” argues Zeeshan Aleem. While this will likely reward Trump for his bad behavior, the deal appears to be fairly benign — and may even be mostly illusory. Read more.

Minnesota

NY Times -  Federal agents shot and killed a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident on Saturday, prompting renewed clashes between law enforcement officers and protesters demanding an end to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Colleagues and a senior law enforcement official identified the man who was shot as Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an intensive-care nurse.

Videos analyzed by The New York Times appear to contradict accounts given by Homeland Security officials about the shooting. They said the man approached Border Patrol agents with a handgun and the intent to “massacre” them. Footage of the encounter shows the man holding a phone in his hand, not a gun, when agents take him to the ground.

 

The Guardian -   Tens of thousands of Minnesotans marched in Minneapolis and otherwise participated in an economic blackout on Friday to protest against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surge in the state.

About 100 clergy members were arrested by police during the action, video footage showed.

Beside faith leaders, the “no work, no school, no shopping” day of protest was kicked off by community leaders and labor unions – and included actions around the state, plus business closures in solidarity.

...The protesters’ demands include that ICE leave Minnesota, that the ICE officer who killed Good be legally held accountable, an end to additional federal funding for ICE, and for the agency to be investigated for human rights and constitutional violations.

Hundreds of local businesses in Minnesota announced closures in solidarity. Thousands of people took the day off from their jobs to join the action, while others participated by not shopping on Friday. The Minneapolis city council endorsed the day of action and the general strike.

Federal immigration agents detained a two-year-old girl and her father in Minneapolis on Thursday and transported them to Texas, according to court records and the family’s lawyers.

The father, identified in court filings as Elvis Joel TE, and his daughter were stopped and detained by officers around 1pm when they were returning home from the store. By the evening, a federal judge had ordered the girl be released by 9.30pm. But federal officials instead put both of them on a plane heading to a Texas detention center.

Why the Trump administration is detaining immigrant children – and what happens to them next

Read more

Irina Vaynerman, one of the family’s lawyers, told the Guardian late Friday afternoon that immigration officials had since flown both of them back to Minnesota and released the two-year-old into the custody of her mother. The father remains detained in Minnesota, she said.

“The horror is truly unimaginable,” Vaynerman said. “The depravity of all of this is beyond words.”

The Guardian -   Federal immigration agents detained a two-year-old girl and her father in Minneapolis on Thursday and transported them to Texas, according to court records and the family’s lawyers.

The father, identified in court filings as Elvis Joel TE, and his daughter were stopped and detained by officers around 1pm when they were returning home from the store. By the evening, a federal judge had ordered the girl be released by 9.30pm. But federal officials instead put both of them on a plane heading to a Texas detention center.

Irina Vaynerman, one of the family’s lawyers, told the Guardian late Friday afternoon that immigration officials had since flown both of them back to Minnesota and released the two-year-old into the custody of her mother. The father remains detained in Minnesota, she said.

“The horror is truly unimaginable,” Vaynerman said. “The depravity of all of this is beyond words"

Polls

Politics & Poll Tracker 

YouGov poll | 1/16-1/18 President Trump approval Disapprove 57% Approve 39%

Money

Via Brian Tyler Cohen

How the National Park Service Is Deleting American History

NY Times -  At Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, the Trump administration took down an exhibit on the contradiction between President George Washington’s ownership of enslaved people and the Declaration of Independence’s promise of liberty.

At Muir Woods National Monument in California, the administration dismantled a plaque about how the tallest trees on the planet could help store carbon dioxide and slow the Earth’s dangerous warming.

And at Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts, Trump officials ordered the National Park Service to stop showing films about the women and immigrants who once toiled in the city’s textile mills.

Across the country, Park Service workers have started taking down plaques, films and other materials in connection with a directive from President Trump to remove or rewrite content that may “disparage Americans” or promote “corrosive ideology.”

The president wants to present what he considers a more positive view of American history to millions of people who visit more than 400 national parks and historic sites each year. Critics call it whitewashing, an attempt to erase difficult periods in the nation’s past as well as contributions made by people of color, gay and transgender figures, women and other marginalized groups.

“The Park Service, for most of its 100-year history, has been a standard-bearer for telling America’s stories, and not just the happy stories,” said Jonathan B. Jarvis, who led the Park Service under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017. “You know, you can’t just put a happy face on slavery.”

Trump threatens Canada with 100% tariffs

Guardian -   Donald Trump on Saturday said he would impose a 100% tariff on all Canadian imports if the North American country makes a trade deal with China.

Beside that tariff threat, another Trump foreign policy maneuver to make news on Saturday involved the president announcing the US had taken the oil that was on recently seized Venezuelan tankers.

The US president wrote on social media that if the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, “thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken”.

“China will eat Canada alive, completely devour it, including the destruction of their businesses, social fabric, and general way of life,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products coming into the [US].”

Winter storm

Independent, UK - More than 9,000 flights across the United States have been canceled this weekend as a major winter storm bears down on the country, threatening widespread power outages and severe travel disruption.

Word

Sen. Bernie Sanders - Our billionaire Treasury Secretary called Denmark “irrelevant.” Hmm. Unlike the US, in Denmark, health care & college are free, the starting wage is $22 an hour, paid parental leave is 1 year, paid vacation is 6 weeks & all workers get pensions. That seems very relevant to me

More bad health advice

New York Times - Rejecting decades of science, the chair of the federal panel that recommends vaccines for Americans said that shots against polio and measles — and perhaps all diseases — should be optional.

ICE

ABC News -    An Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient says that he was tackled and arrested by ICE agents in Minneapolis and held in a cell for eight hours without being allowed to contact an attorney or his family. 

New York Times - A new poll from The New York Times and Siena University found that 61 percent of voters overall said the tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement had “gone too far,” including nearly one in five Republicans, as my colleagues Jennifer Medina and Ruth Igielnik reported today. Seventy-one percent of independents said the same. It is possible the backlash may grow as the Trump administration expands its immigration operations, pushing this week into Maine — a critical Senate battleground state.

New Republic -  ICE agents in Maine arrested a Black law enforcement officer, even after he repeatedly told them he was a legal immigrant. Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce confirmed to reporters Thursday that a viral cell phone video of a man being detained by ICE agents in a Portland neighborhood Wednesday was a corrections officer recruit from the county. In the video, the man can be heard shouting “What’s wrong? I’m just coming from work. What’s wrong, guys? I don’t understand this. I don’t have any violations.”

New Republic -  Federal judges in Minnesota are rejecting arrest warrants for some anti-ICE protesters because federal officials haven’t actually backed up claims that demonstrators have broken any law.

Federal immigration agents have repeatedly failed to provide sufficient evidence that demonstrators have committed crimes, such as assault, when trying to obtain warrants for arrest, two people briefed on discussions of sealed court proceedings told MS NOW Friday.

In order to obtain an arrest warrant, a federal officer is only required to show a fair probability that the suspect has engaged in criminal activity—but apparently, they’re not even doing that.

POGO - A whistleblower disclosure sent to Congress and obtained by the Associated Press alleges the existence of an internal ICE memo that authorizes agents to forcibly enter homes without a judicial warrant, in stunning violation of constitutional law. The Fourth Amendment puts inviolable limits on the government’s ability to break into and search your home. It enshrines the fundamental right to privacy and due process for every person in this country to prevent exactly the kind of lawless, invasive, and blatantly racist targeting we are witnessing from ICE today. Congress and the courts must intervene to determine if this memo is indeed being used to train new ICE recruits and greenlight arrests on administrative warrants alone, as the disclosure suggests, and ensure ICE is not violating constitutional rights. 

Crime started to drop before Trump took office again

Time -   Data from 40 American cities shows a decrease in crime across 11 out of 13 categories of offenses last year compared to 2024, the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) found in a new analysis released on Thursday. Nine of those offenses, ranging from shoplifting to carjacking to aggravated assault, declined by 10% or more. 

The homicide rate fell 21% in 35 cities which provided data for the crime, accounting for 922 fewer deaths. And the report predicted that the rate will drop even further, to four per every 100,000 residents, when the FBI releases nationwide data for jurisdictions of all sizes. That would represent the lowest homicide rate since 1900 and the largest percentage drop in homicides in any single year on record. 

President Donald Trump has taken credit for falling crime rates around the country, citing his immigration crackdown and deployment of the National Guard in cities across the U.S. since he began his second presidential term. 

... Data shows, however, that there has been a steady decline in crime since a spike during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that rates were already falling before Trump returned to office—including in cities the Administration has targeted in its immigration and crime crackdowns. Experts tell TIME that the drop recorded last year is part of this larger trend and can be attributed to a kaleidoscope of factors, none of which can singularly or definitively account for the decline. 

JD Vance

Roll Call -   On Friday, the White House doubled down on its support for anti-abortion priorities, with Vice President JD Vance acknowledging the “elephant in the room” that “our politics have failed to answer the clarion call to life that this march represents.”

“So let me tell you something very simple, under this administration … you have an ally in the White House,” he told the crowd, his presence a nod to this year’s theme, “Life is a Gift.” 

Meanwhile. . .

Ramped-up ICE activity in Maine continues into weekend

Days Trump’s DOJ has been illegally withholding all non-exempt, unclassified Epstein files: 35

A Diet Coke: Gross, mom. Across the soda aisle, Diet is out and Zero Sugar is in as the latter’s branding resonates more with younger, wellness-minded consumers who shun sugar but don’t vibe with calorie-counting or diet culture.

As Wyoming faces larger and costlier wildfires, scientists warn that the flames could make many of its iconic landscapes unrecognizable within decades.

DOJ investigating Trump adversaries

NBC News - In recent weeks, the Justice Department has started investigating a growing number of President Donald Trump’s political adversaries.

Minnesota Democrats are among the latest added to the DOJ’s lengthy list of targets.

The department sent out a half-dozen criminal subpoenas to various state and local officials, just hours after Trump called for a probe into Gov. Tim Walz.

"Investigate these Corrupt Politicians, and do it now!" the president wrote on Truth Social.

Protesters in the Twin Cities who disrupted church services are also being investigated. The president had called them "troublemakers who should be thrown in jail."

From the head of the Federal Reserve to a former cable TV critic, read who else Trump is targeting.

Millions under weather alerts

NBC News -  The historic winter storm threatening more than 140 million people has prompted urgent calls from officials to prepare.

The governors of North and South Carolina were among the leaders of at least 17 states that have declared emergency status to free up resources for aid.

Gov. Josh Stein warned that the storm could cause major disruptions, possibly for days.

"Get everything you need in advance of the storm and have a plan in case your power goes out," he said.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that FEMA has prepositioned supplies, prepared incident management teams to deploy and put urban search and rescue teams on standby. 

Electricity and gas companies are warning customers that they could experience power outages.

Airlines have already canceled more than 5,000 flights through the weekend, and experts estimate up to 15,000 could be delayed by tomorrow.  Follow live updates on our blog. 

US allies grapple with a world order upended by Trump

• The Hill

The men alcohol study that was not released

NY Times -   Federal dietary guidelines long recommended limits on alcohol consumption for Americans: one drink daily for women, two for men. But last spring, health officials seriously considered a dramatic redefinition of moderate drinking for men, according to two people with knowledge of the process who spoke anonymously because they feared reprisals.

The officials proposed lowering the cap for men to one drink a day, the recommended limit for women. That suggestion, contained in a draft document written in March and obtained by The New York Times, went nowhere.

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, and other officials unveiled the new guidelines earlier this month, they included a vague directive telling Americans only to “limit” alcohol. Even the long-established caps for men and women were gone.

The advice never became a formal draft recommendation, and the team working on the document was disbanded. Some were terminated last spring, and others were reassigned.

Greenland

Shanaka Anslem Perera 

Trump just closed a deal on Greenland. With someone who doesn’t own Greenland. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte sat across from Trump in Davos. NATO doesn’t own Greenland. Denmark does.

Denmark wasn’t in the room. Greenland wasn’t in the room. When reporters asked Greenland’s Prime Minister what’s in the “framework deal” about his own country, he said: “I don’t know what there is in the agreement, or the deal about my country.” The leader of the territory being “dealt” doesn’t know what the deal says. Danish PM Frederiksen: “We cannot negotiate on our sovereignty.” There is no written document. Nothing signed. No terms agreed. Trump told Fox the deal lasts “forever.” Forever on what paper? Signed by whom?