* Hypocritically ironic authoritarianism: Trump has shown combative support for anti-authoritarian protesters in Venezuela and Iran. As for Minneapolis? All in for ICE Gestapo.
* One result of Trump’s constant threats to invoke the Insurrection Act: We’re all learning about American statute laws—albeit in the worst (ICE invasions, election-suspensions threats) way.
* The U.S. was the only major tourism market in the world to decline in 2025. Hardly happenstance.
* Lest we forget: Former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s House Judiciary Committee testimony was a sobering reminder of what the insurrectionist Trump was up to on Jan. 6, 2021. “Our investigation revealed that Donald Trump is the person who caused Jan. 6, that it was foreseeable to him and that he sought to exploit the violence,” said Smith.
* “I think the dementia and the cognitive decline are palpable.” That was Ty Cobb, a White House attorney in Trump’s first term, on Trump’s “significant decline” in his mental faculties.
* Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer rejected a Trump offer to sign off on billions for New York infrastructure projects in exchange for the renaming of Penn Station and Dulles International Airport after Trump. A compromise? Perhaps the renaming of the Queens Landfill?
* The U.S. has finalized its withdrawal from the World Health Organization.
* Who knew? Many Baptist churches have pastors who also work other jobs. In the Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., a U.S. ICE official serves as a pastor. Really.
* The imperial, off-putting Trump was upstaged by Canadian PM Mark Carney at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Middle powers must act together, because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu,” underscored Carney.
* Trump’s Gaza-focused Board of Peace is looking increasingly to key allies as a self-serving rival to the UN Security Council.
* All too true—and scary. This was Trump’s response to a query about whether there were any limits to his power. “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
* When Trump was gifted the Nobel Peace Prize by its recipient, anti-Venezuela regime activist Maria Corina Machado, it did not make him an official Peace Prize laureate. Nor was it precedent setting. In 1943, the Norwegian writer Knute Hamsun, a Hitler admirer, sent his (1920) Nobel literature medallion to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Didn’t count then either.
* “Discombobulator”: Trump’s term for a secret U.S. pulsed energy weapon used to disable Venezuelan equipment during the blackout capture of Nicolas Maduro. Deadpanned Trump: “I’m not allowed to talk about it.” Promise?
* It’s been reported that there have been sightings of locals in Nuuk, Greenland sporting red MAGA caps. Word has it that these lids, however, stand for Make America Go Away.