Trump

In MAGA media outlets, President Donald Trump is often depicted as having boundless energy. But Trump's critics are raising questions about his mental and physical health, pointing out that during the recent World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, he repeatedly confused Greenland and Iceland during a rambling speech. Former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb told MS Now's Ari Melber that he believes there is a "significant decline" in the president's mental fitness.

According to CNN reporters Kristen Holmes and Kevin Liptak, Trump is "beefing up" his public appearances in order to counter concerns about his physical and mental stamina.

Holmes and Liptak, in an article published on January 29, explain, "Despite near-daily appearances before cameras, some of them stretching for hours, Trump, 79, had become frustrated at a perception — fueled by analyses of his daily public schedules — that his days were lighter now than during his first four years in office. In his mind, it only contributed to questions swirling about his health and stamina, sources said. Shortly after, his team began noting private meetings on the daily schedule sent to reporters and posted online."

The CNN journalists add, "Aides said the goal is to better reflect what they believe are jam-packed days. They've also started listing meetings and interviews that typically wouldn’t appear on the public calendar."

The increase in public appearances, according to CNN sources, is something that Trump himself requested — and he want to make sure they are well-publicized.

"Long wary of appearing to slow down, despite his advanced age, Trump personally asked that more events be listed on his schedules," Holmes and Liptak report. "He had been enraged after a November article in The New York Times suggested his aging was impacting his job. The newspaper's analysis of Trump's official public schedules found his total number of official appearances had decreased by 39 percent compared to his first year in office in 2017, that his events were starting later on average, and that he had taken fewer domestic trips."

Read the full CNN article at this link.

When the FBI executed a warrant on Wednesday to seize records from the 2020 presidential vote in Fulton County, Georgia, it marked both an extraordinary event in the history of American elections and a significant escalation in President Donald Trump’s breaking of democratic norms, several legal experts said.

Trump has long claimed, without evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen from him and blamed Georgia, in particular, for his loss to Joe Biden. After the election, he famously made a call pressuring the secretary of state to “find” him enough votes to win. About a week ago, in a speech at the World Economic Forum, Trump once again called the 2020 election “rigged” and promised, “People will soon be prosecuted for what they did.”

The warrant served on the Fulton County election center sought ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data and voter rolls, which it alleged might constitute “evidence of the commission of a criminal offense.” It cited stiff criminal penalties related to “the procurement, casting, or tabulation” of fraudulent ballots.

“I’m not aware of something like this happening ever before,” said Rick Hasen, a professor at the law school of the University of California, Los Angeles. “The idea that federal officials would seize ballots in an attempt to prove fraud is especially dangerous in this context when we know there is no fraud because the Georgia 2020 election has been extensively counted, recounted and investigated.”

Trump and his allies filed over 60 legal cases across the nation seeking to overturn the 2020 election results — all of which failed, even those before Trump-appointed judges.

“This just looks like a way to use the might of the federal government to further Trump’s voter fraud narratives,” Hasen said.

An FBI spokesperson declined a request for comment except to say that the bureau “is conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity. No other information is available at this time.”

At a press conference, Fulton County Commission Chair Robb Pitts said that the ballots had been “safe” in the county’s custody and defended its handling of the election as fair and accurate. But now that the ballots had been seized, he said, the county “can no longer satisfy … that those ballots are still secure.”

Mo Ivory, a Democratic Fulton County commissioner, arrived on the scene shortly after the FBI agents and said that once an error on the warrant was corrected, they backed up lines of trucks to the elections warehouse and spent hours carting away boxes of ballots and other materials. The search began in the morning and was still going well past nightfall.

“This is not legitimate. This is Donald Trump’s obsession with losing the 2020 election,” Ivory said. “This is his way to sow doubt that Fulton County doesn’t hold proper elections.”

Fulton County — which covers much of the Democratic-stronghold of Atlanta — has long been the target of attempts to call into question its election systems as a way to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 vote.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani accused election workers of rigging the vote with suitcases of ballots in his arguments to overturn the election — claims that were quickly debunked and for which he lost a nearly $150 million defamation lawsuit brought by two of the workers.

But this did not end the focus on the county by Trump’s allies, who inundated it with thousands of voter registration challenges and continued to make claims of voter fraud, as ProPublica has reported.

The Fulton County Board of Elections became a battleground, once the Republican Party appointed Julie Adams to it. Adams, ProPublica has reported, played a key role in trying to change rules around certifying elections in Georgia that could have allowed activists to dispute a Trump loss in 2024. (Adams didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica for these articles.)

In advance of the 2024 election, right-wing activists also forced out a moderate conservative on the Georgia State Election Board, tilting its balance of power. Its new MAGA majority — which Trump praised by name at a rally as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory” — began relitigating the 2020 election. In October 2024, the State Election Board voted to issue subpoenas for 2020 materials, including ballots.

Once Trump returned to the White House, state and federal officials combined to pressure Fulton County to hand over 2020 voting materials.

In the months after the State Election Board passed a resolution suggesting the Justice Department should intervene, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent letters to Fulton County officials demanding records and citing “anomalies” in counting votes during the 2020 election, according to a court filing.

Fulton County Clerk Ché Alexander didn’t respond, and in December the U.S. Department of Justice sued her.

In a court filing, Alexander said that the federal government had no right to the ballots and documents, which were under seal because of ongoing cases related to the 2020 election.

Alexander said that if Bondi could “identify a legitimate basis” for accessing the 2020 election materials, then she should seek an order from a Fulton County Superior Court judge to unseal them.

On Wednesday, agents wearing tactical vests and jackets reading “FBI Evidence Response Team” arrived with a warrant. Shocked officials looked on as the boxes were paraded away.

Ivory, the Fulton County commissioner, said that while county officials had complied with the warrant, they expected to challenge the administration’s actions in court.

“We’ve assembled a team to fight back against this,” Ivory said. “We’ll see what happens. The legal maneuvers are happening right now.”

Experts said the action in Fulton County had triggered fears of federal interference in this year’s midterm elections.

“It’s a dramatic escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to expand federal control over our country’s historically state-run election infrastructure,” said Derek Clinger, a senior counsel at the State Democracy Research Initiative, an institute at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

President Donald Trump said that Americans would see a de-escalation in Minnesota, and a “more relaxed” approach on the ground in Minneapolis after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in under three weeks. But Attorney General Pam Bondi’s messaging on Wednesday pointed in a different direction.

In a social media post Wednesday afternoon, the attorney general wrote:

"MINNESOTA ARRESTS — I am on the ground in Minneapolis today. Federal agents have arrested 16 Minnesota rioters for allegedly assaulting federal law enforcement — people who have been resisting and impeding our federal law enforcement agents."

"We expect more arrests to come," she added, appearing to suggest the arrests would target Americans who are protesting, rather than undocumented immigrants accused of crimes.

"I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: NOTHING will stop President Trump and this Department of Justice from enforcing the law."

Bondi then posted the names of the people who were arrested, and, in many cases, photos of them standing next to federal officers, who had their backs to the camera. It was unclear why they were identified as "rioters."

Critics slammed the attorney general.

"They’re not arresting the people responsible for the murders of Renée Nicole Good or Alex Pretti," wrote author and activist Lev Parnas. "No — they’re arresting Minnesota citizens and using them as props for a headline. Enough is enough. We need accountability. We need justice. And we are not backing down."

"No deal on ICE," political commentator Keith Olbermann wrote to U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI). "Bondi is boasting that they're rounding up protestors there now."

"It will be interesting to see if these actually hold up in court — DOJ track record under Bondi has not been good," noted The Independent's Andrew Feinberg.

CNN's Aaron Blake appeared to concur, writing, "the Trump admin has repeatedly accused people of assaulting law enforcement -- but then either not actually brought charges or seen the cases crumble."

"There ain’t no walk back," declared The Bulwark's Bill Kristol, appearing to invoke the president's call for de-escalation."They’re still all in on mass deportation and mass intimidation."

"Could we see some video of the 'assaults' you allege?" asked U.S. Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY). "Nobody believes you or your partisan DOJ — which is focused on protestors not ICE murderers."

When top public officials and law enforcement authorities lie routinely to cover up police misconduct, the lawless killing of innocent civilians becomes inevitable. That is why Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good -- and others who have perished in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security -- are dead today.

The sense of impunity that has defined Donald Trump's life and regime is poisonous to the rule of law and encourages murder, just as he predicted when he famously proclaimed that he "could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"

When he first uttered those words a decade ago, Trump was merely a candidate for president, and what he said about himself was taken as a "joke." What that supposed jest reflected was the sense -- inculcated in him by his corrupt and mendacious attorney Roy Cohn -- that he could get away with anything. Extended to its maximal reach in his presidency, it has repeatedly proved lethal.

How far Trump would take his self-awarded license to kill began to emerge back then, too, when he repeatedly urged supporters to "knock the hell out of" hecklers at his rallies and promised to pay the legal expenses of anyone arrested for such an assault. His constant invocations of violence, up to and including killing, have long since become an expansive genre of Trump coverage. As Americans have seen in his unrestrained awarding of pardons to his most dangerously rabid and criminal supporters, the president believes that he and anyone who backs him ought to be immune from prosecution -- or even criticism.

In the wake of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement killings in Minneapolis, Trump's appointees displayed their own sense that they would never be held accountable for anything that they say or do. Although these were scarcely the first instances when the president and his minions have prevaricated, misled and brazenly lied, it was perhaps the most serious episode of untruthfulness in his second term.

Responding to the deaths of both Good and Pretti, the loudest voices in the White House and the DHS spread lies about the incidents and vicious slurs about the victims. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, widely viewed as the enforcer of Trump's anti-immigrant blitz, joined with the dumb and unqualified DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in defaming the dead as "domestic terrorists." Gregory Bovino, the DHS official running ICE operations, told the press that Pretti, a licensed gun owner who had never drawn his weapon, had showed up to "massacre law enforcement."

In their zeal to shape the public narrative even as they shut down and frustrated any actual investigation, the Trump regime invented versions of the deadly incidents that were clearly contradicted by video evidence. So unsustainable were their impulsive lies that Trump himself as well as Bovino and Noem were finally forced to backtrack, insisting that they now intend to unearth the truth.

Having rushed to false and fraudulent judgments, the administration can make no plausible claim to pursuing any impartial finding of fact in these alleged crimes. Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel -- both devoid of professional qualifications for their jobs and politically tainted from the beginning -- have already offered pronouncements on these cases that befoul any probe they might oversee. They have allowed tampering at the crime scenes and behaved in ways that no honest law enforcement agency would permit in these circumstances.

Before the advent of Trump, America had started to develop a culture that prioritized lawfulness in law enforcement, that upheld accountability for police officers and others empowered to use lethal force. But we now live under a government that scorns the ethical and legal norms that most Americans cherish, even when they are imperfectly upheld.

That scorn, embodied in the president himself, is a danger to all of us. Inculcated in the poorly trained, bullying ICE agents on the streets of American cities, the Trumpian sense of impunity is a public menace that will not abate until he is gone from office.

The best defenses are massive public protests demanding that the killers and their enablers be held accountable. If ICE is not abolished, then its budget must be cut and its recruitment and training practices drastically reformed. Miller should be fired, as should Bovino and most of the hierarchy of DHS, ICE and the Border Patrol -- along with many of the agents they recruited. Noem and her friend Corey Lewandowski ought to be dismissed as well -- and if they are not, then Congress should move to impeach her.

Their lies kill -- and will kill again.

The Trump regime started the week by telling lies about Alex Pretti’s murder. Now, Trump has pivoted back to telling lies about the economy in order to change the subject. Trump lies like other humans breathe.

Trump’s year back in office has been filled with lies and broken promises. We’re in the gravitational pull of the midterm elections, so it’s not too early to examine what he promised and how he’s delivered on them.

In this week’s video, I take a look at Trump’s 10 biggest campaign promises and what’s happened since he took office.

I doubt you need convincing, but you might share the video with your Trumpish “Uncle Bob” or anyone else still under the illusion that he’s doing what he said he would.

Are you feeling the “New Golden Age?” Are you enjoying those home and energy prices cut “in half?” How about the satisfaction of having peace throughout the world? And what of his promise to release ALL the Epstein files?

There are so many promises to talk about, you’ll never guess the one promise he actually kept.

Thanks for watching.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

A federal judge has ordered the Polk County Jail to immediately release an asylum seeker, ruling that the Russian immigrant was illegally detained through a “legal fiction” constructed by the federal government.

Since July 2025, immigration courts around the nation have been denying bond hearings for people detained in county jails by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The denials are based on the Trump administration’s newly adopted legal theory that longstanding federal laws require that ICE detainees who are at risk of being deported be held in jail without the possibility of bond.

As reported by Politico, more than 300 U.S. District Court judges in 1,600 cases have rejected that theory, finding the new interpretation of the law is contrary to ICE’s own regulations, its published enforcement guidelines, previous court rulings, and “the overall logic” of the nation’s immigration system.

Even so, Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice have continued to use that interpretation of the law to argue for mandatory detention in cases where immigrants have lived in the United States for months, years or decades.

Some of the immigration judges — who are not part of the Judicial Branch and instead function as administrative employees of the Executive Branch led by the president – continue to deny detainees bond hearings unless otherwise ordered by a federal judge in U.S. District Court.

One such case involves 26-year-old Arsen Kulumbekov, a Russian immigrant who came to the United States in March 2023 through the so-called “CBP One” process that at the time allowed migrants, at U.S. ports of entry, to request asylum or other legal pathways to residency.

Upon his entry to the United States, Kulumbekov was released, or paroled, with the understanding that he would have one year to formally apply for asylum. After filing for asylum in 2024, Kulumbekov was granted authorization to work in the United States and, by all accounts, he complied with the requirements of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to remain in the United States while his asylum case was pending.

Court records show that at some point, ICE issued an undated notice canceling Kulumbekov’s asylum application, and then forwarded his information to immigration court. In October 2025, ICE notified Kulumbekov that he was considered an alien who had been apprehended while in the process of entering the United States and that he was therefore subject to being detained without bond.

A few weeks later, in November 2025, ICE agents took Kulumbekov into custody and placed him in the Polk County Jail. Homeland Security then scheduled an immigration-court hearing for him in Texas, mistakenly believing he was being held in Polk County, Texas.

Kulumbekov then took Polk County, ICE and Homeland Security to U.S. District Court, where a judge ordered Homeland Security to show why Kulumbekov was not being unlawfully detained and then barred the agency from moving Kulumbekov outside Iowa’s Southern District without first giving the court notice and offering Kulumbekov a chance to be heard on the matter.

In response, the U.S. Department of Justice argued Kulumbekov was subject to mandatory detention without a bond hearing, citing the Trump administration’s new legal theory.

On Jan. 20, 2026, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Goodgame Ebinger ruled against the government, citing the fact that ICE detained Kulumbekov 32 months after he entered the country, and not while he was in the process of entering. As such, Ebinger ruled, Kulumbekov was not subject to mandatory detention.

Citing previous case law on the subject, Ebinger characterized the Department of Justice’s position in the matter as a “legal fiction.” She also noted that upon entry to the United States, Kulumbekov had been paroled for one year, had successfully completed the term of his release, and had met the requirements of Homeland Security while his case for asylum proceeded.

“Kulumbekov is being unlawfully detained,” Ebinger ruled, ordering his immediate release from the Polk County Jail.

The judge then took the additional step of barring the U.S. Department of Justice from using the same “mandatory detention” theory to deny Kulumbekov bond in any subsequent proceedings they may bring against him.

Andrew Kahl of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District Iowa is the lead attorney for the government in the Kulumbekov case. He declined to comment on the judge’s ruling or the DOJ’s handling of the case.

The FBI executed a raid on an elections hub in Fulton County, Georgia on Wednesday, relating to the 2020 election, which President Donald Trump maintains he "won." The move comes the week after the top agent was shoved out.

Speaking about it to CNN after the news broke, former Palm Beach County State Attorney David Aaronberg called it a "Kash Patel attempt to continue to be in the good graces of President [Donald] Trump."

Patel took over as the director of the FBI after Trump fired his own previous appointee, Christopher Wray and Wray was hired after then-FBI Director James Comey refused to swear fidelity to Trump in 2017.

Aaronberg noted that Trump has been "obsessed" with the 2020 election to such a degree that he went through over 60 court rulings across the country where judges refused to allow further attempts by Trump to challenge votes in key Democratic areas or through mail-in voting.

"There's absolutely no evidence of widespread fraud," said Aaronberg. "But before we go down that road, we have to realize that if this seizure took place, if this raid took place, it means that a federal judge or magistrate had to sign off on a warrant, that there was probable cause of a crime, and that evidence of that crime would be at that location."

He said that the prosecutors must have some kind of affidavit that gives them "evidence" to convince a judge to sign off.

"So, it can't be entirely pie in the sky political stuff by Kash Patel," he continued. However, "At the same time, it doesn't mean they have any real evidence, just perhaps an affidavit saying they think that there's something there."

CNN asked Aaronberg where he sees the new investigation going and he said he assumes it will be dismissed like all of the others.

"Oh, I see it going the same way that True the Vote and Kash Patel and a lot of these conspiracy theorists will end up, which is in a court rejecting these claims. Remember when True the Vote and Dinesh D'Souza came up with '2000 Mules' and these ideas of ballot harvesting and election fraud. When they stood up in court — they stood down. They fell apart. They did not last the test in court because it's one thing that you can say anything you want in a court of public opinion, but in front of a judge, you've got to have real evidence," recalled Aaronberg.

Those allegations don't result in actual evidence, however, he said.

"It's all stuff that's fit for right-wing podcasts. Not for courts. So, I think this thing will fall flat. But they're getting what they want now they get to feed the right-wing media base to say that, look, we've got a raid! There must be something there! In the end, when the cameras are turned off, I think that this story will go away," he said.

- YouTube youtu.be

President Donald Trump demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi investigate Democrats' ties to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, but no action appears to have followed.

Politico reported Wednesday that when the Justice Department faced demands to release Epstein files, it cited an "open investigation" and withheld some documents. Bondi then assigned that to the Southern District of New York. However, two months later, it's unclear if that probe ever materialized—or if it was just a stall tactic.

Trump directed the DOJ to target high-profile Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. MS NOW columnist and producer Steve Benen questioned whether the announcement of the investigation was a dodge to the congressional law—signed by Trump himself—ordering the files' release.

The independent outlet Radar Online sued for the Epstein files in September 2023. On Wednesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on whether to send the case back to a lower court for review.

The court aims "in part ... to determine how to handle any disclosures to Radar in the context of the Justice Department's legal obligation to release millions of documents in accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act," reporter Erica Orden wrote.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Allison Rovner, from the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office, remained silent on whether Trump's ordered probe into Democrats is active. Asked if Radar's access would "be reasonably expected to interfere with a law-enforcement proceeding," she pivoted instead to Ghislaine Maxwell's ongoing appeal to vacate her sex-trafficking conviction.

The judges were not convinced. "What do you think the odds are that there's going to be a new trial of Ghislaine Maxwell?" asked Judge Steven Menashi.

He had earlier chuckled, "It's probably not a reasonable expectation that this is going to result in a new trial."

Read the full report here.

During his speech at the recent 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, U.S. President Donald Trump bragged that the American economy has never been "hotter." Trump claimed that he inherited a broken economy from former U.S. President Joe Biden and turned things around in record time.

But other world leaders attending the event voiced strong concerns about the United States' political and economic wellbeing. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, in his Davos speech, lamented that the U.S. has become increasingly unreliable for longtime allies.

In an article published by The Bulwark on January 28, Never Trump conservative Jonathan V. Last analyzes the state of the U.S. economy and lays out a variety of reasons why many Americans are feeling increasingly "bearish."

"The Conference Board's monthly consumer confidence survey came out this week, and the results were grim," Last explains. "Consumer confidence is now at the lowest level since 2014 — worse than it was at any moment during the pandemic, even. Why are people bearish about the economy? Perhaps because they see all the news about layoffs, for starters."

Last continues, "Amazon is laying off 16,000 employees. UPS cutting 30,000 jobs. Citigroup shed 1000 jobs in January and announced more cuts coming in March. Pinterest: 700 jobs, which is 15 percent of its workforce. Nike: 775 jobs. Meta: 1000 jobs."

The conservative journalist notes that although there are ways to put a positive spin on these "data points" — for example, saying that Amazon is "cutting management so that it can spend money on data center construction" — the "job destruction across so many sectors" is not encouraging.

To illustrate his point, Last references a CNBC chart that uses U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data and compares job creation under Biden in 2022 and 2023 to job creation under Trump in recent months. And the data, Last writes, isn't encouraging.

Other countries, according to Last, are looking at economic trends in the U.S. — and they're worried.

"(Trump) takes the view that economic actors should do what he wants, and so, he uses the levers of government to attempt to control the market," Last argues. "His toolbox includes the following: Those on-again, off-again tariffs which are announced, delayed, and canceled at his whim based on any number of factors…. The federal government taking ownership stakes in various private companies as Trump sees fit…. Sweetheart deals with certain businesses (both foreign and domestic) in order to obtain wealth for the Trump family. As a result of all this instability, the rest of the world is moving on from America."

Jonathan V. Last's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

If there was any confusion before, Donald Trump now owns deportation and its tactics.

Having seemingly flip-flopped on his own key decision to flood cities with federal border agents, Donald Trump faces the problem of defining what exactly he does support about deporting millions.

The decision to remove Greg Bovino, Homeland Security's operational commander on the ground in Minneapolis, and to withdraw at least some of the 3,000 armed federal agents there, is being framed as a retreat on his policies forced by protests in the streets.

But at best, what we have heard so far is what he doesn't want, not what the expectation is going ahead.

Trump clearly didn't like association with the bad image of Homeland Security insisting on unsupported explanations contradicted by videos of the killing of Alex Pretti, but his government has yet to change the claims of total immunity and sole federal role for investigation in any of the legal arguments his Justice Department has offered the courts, as well as any noticeable change in tactics. The government told the court it was limiting inquiries to a "use of force" review about possible violation of training standards, not a homicide probe that could lead to murder charges.

Minnesota's chief federal judge has ordered Todd Lyons, acting head of ICE, to appear in his court Friday and threatened to hold him in contempt for what he says has been repeated defiance of judges' orders in the state.

Trump has not walked away from Attorney General Pam Bondi's letter to Gov. Tim Walz essentially offering a reduction of border agents for turnover of voter registration information and details of state fraud investigations involving Somali immigrants.

By handing leadership to White House border czar Tom Homan, answerable only to him, Trump has lost whatever fig leaf of distance from the brutal tactics that have led to two shooting deaths of bystander citizens, forced family separations and rough, random grabs of migrants from job sites and outside schools and immigration offices.

Despite Trump descriptions of "good talks" with Minnesota officials, Trump's decision to keep Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after an emergency, two-hour White House meeting Monday night does not suggest wholesale change is coming. In a speech and interviews into last night, Trump doubled down on attacking protesters as paid agitators and insisted he was removing "murderers" from Minneapolis streets.

Questions Abound
The questions before Trump are numerous. Even as Trump distances himself from his own White House advisers and Homeland Security, his troops and Minneapolis leaders and residents are waiting to hear what replaces a campaign of fear and dread, of aggressiveness on residential streets.

Did Trump just react to news images and citizen upset based on self-serving and offensive lies by his administration, or is he rethinking the deployments that have played out almost inexorably the violence that his aggressive deportations put into motion? Will he proceed with deployments to other cities? Will he force Homeland Security to focus on the migrants with serious criminal records whom he had said he was focused on before turning to roundup of children and separating parents?

Is Trump taking responsibility for his own decisions, never mind the split-second choices facing an under-trained ICE officer being shouted at by protesters? Was this a rueful reassessment of the excesses of random grabbing of residents, migrant or citizen, criminal or not, or merely a chance to deflect blame in the eye of an angry public? Is this retreat only a reflection of obvious unhappiness with pushback from gun groups reacting to federal justification of the death because Pretti was lawfully carrying a holstered handgun?

Is Trump ready to accept state prosecution of a federal agent for what certainly looks to be an unjustified killing, because to date, the only approved investigations are internal to the affected federal law enforcement agencies themselves?

As with Trump's retreats after aggressive moves in tariffs and economics, international conflicts, and even the physical changes at the White House, even his supporters are never quite sure what the current policy says.

On the Streets
Trump is facing significant political problems from his current deportation deployments, even as his advisers, led by Stephen Miller, are plotting expansion from Minneapolis and now Maine.

Trump has a problem maintaining a common message for his administration spokesmen, including Vice President JD Vance, that has worsened now that he has seemed to retreat himself from the most forceful arguments about opposition to deportation in Minnesota.

Whatever he and Gov. Tim Walz discussed seems to change, depending on who is summarizing their conversations.

Confusion and fear on the streets have led to anger and pushback, not submission, with protests in Minneapolis drawing thousands even in sub-zero temperatures. It is doubtful that simply changing ICE leadership from Bovino to Homan will dampen protest about the aggressiveness of the deportation campaign.

In turn, protests have put even many Republican congress members into wanting to question Noem and border officials about training, procedures and the whole policy of deploying thousands of agents to cities that do not want them. Congress now has a problem with passing a budget with money for border agents without also including significant restrictions on tactics and accountability procedures.

Noem faces serious efforts to impeach her.

Chris Madel, a defense lawyer who had been running for governor of Minnesota as a Republican, said he had decided to end his campaign because he had become outraged by the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.

Taken together, Trump appears incapable of outlining clearly exactly what he wants.

During former President Joe Biden's four years in the White House, he made it clear that he considered the United States' alliances with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members crucial from a defense/national security standpoint. President Donald Trump, in contrast, is clashing with longtime NATO members, and those tensions were evident during the recent 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.

The UK has been the United States' closest NATO ally. But Alexander Dragonetti, a former British diplomat, offers a biting critique of Trump's foreign policy in an op-ed published by the iPaper on January 28. And he warns that trust in the U.S. among longtime allies is plummeting.

"Individually, Trump's attacks against allies — threats of tariffs, insulting British troops, downplaying NATO, a photo-op with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin in Alaska last August, sanctioning the International Criminal Court, a public feud with Canada, or setting up a U.S.-led 'Board of Peace' — might have been survivable," Dragonetti explains. "Taken together, they have a cumulative effect."

Dragonetti argues that Trump is applying the ideas in his 1987 book "The Art of the Deal" to foreign policy — and with flawed results.

"Trump's playbook, outlined decades ago in 'The Art of the Deal,' delivers rapid wins," the former diplomat observes. "Opponents often feel lucky to settle for more than they'd ever been willing to give away. Unpredictability and shock produce immediate results, raising the credibility of outcomes previously seen as unthinkable. By his own criteria, the method works. But these short-term gains come at a cost."

Dragonetti adds, "Each surprise move erodes trust, the glue which holds alliances together. Greenland wasn't just a shock — it exposed a pattern that had been quietly wearing down decades of goodwill. Trust is a finite commodity, built over decades but liable to collapse in months — and quick wins draw it down fast."

The ex-diplomat stresses that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's warning during a WEF 2026 speech in Davos are a wake-up call for the U.S. and its allies. Carney told attendees, "The old order is not coming back. We shouldn't mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy."

"As Trump is finding out," Dragonetti writes, "transactions can get you through a single round. But trust wins you the game. In an era returning to Great Power politics, the UK and European allies are now reevaluating who they want to take to the endgame."

Alexander Dragonetti's full iPaper op-ed is available at this link.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump floated the idea of canceling the 2026 midterm elections, drawing widespread attention and concern even as White House officials later dismissed the remarks as facetious.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

But election experts consistently agree that Trump has neither the legal authority nor the practical ability to cancel elections. And state and local election officials consistently say they will carry out the elections they’re legally required to run.

The election system is under real strain, and bad-faith efforts to undermine it are serious. But after talking with local election officials, lawyers, and administrators across the country, I don’t see evidence that upcoming elections are at realistic risk of not happening at all. Elections happen because thousands of local officials follow state and local law that mandates them — and history shows they’ve done so before, even under immense pressure. The greater danger isn’t no election, but one that’s chaotic, unfairly challenged, or deliberately cast as illegitimate after the fact.

Stephen Richer, the Republican former recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona, said the idea that a president could simply halt or meaningfully cancel an election misunderstands how elections function on the ground. The system, he said, is “made up of so many disparate actors” — thousands of local officials, courts, vendors, and administrators operating under different authorities and timelines. Even if there were a coordinated attempt to get these people not to go through with the election, “you’ve got to figure at least half of those people aren’t big fans of the president, and many of the rest are on autopilot regardless of what they think of the president.”

Some election processes are fixed by law and timing. Military and overseas ballots, for example, must be sent on a specific schedule — a deadline Richer described as “an immutable deadline, like gravity.” Any attempt to disrupt that selectively would quickly become obvious. “How absurd would it be that one county got ballots and the next one didn’t?” he said, predicting “a gazillion lawsuits” and court orders compelling officials to move forward.

Richer also pointed to the scale of U.S. election administration: more than 9,000 jurisdictions and more than 90,000 polling locations nationwide. “You are not going around and shutting those down,” he said. He noted that even voter-intimidation efforts would face immediate legal challenges and injunctions, while plenty of voters would have cast ballots via other means (e.g., early or mail voting) anyway.

That assessment is echoed by David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, who speaks regularly with local election officials. (When we spoke, he was driving to a conference for Colorado election officials — and had just come from a conference of 300 officials in Texas.) Becker said nearly 1,500 local officials across 47 states have participated in his monthly informational sessions, which he’s held since Trump put out his executive order last March, and none of them have suggested canceling the election or violating state law.

“Every single one of them is committed to putting on the best election they possibly can,” Becker said. Even under pressure, officials aren’t signaling they’ll stop. “They are getting it done,” he said, adding that if support doesn’t come from the state, “they will band together and do it themselves.”

But state election officials aren’t backing down, either. Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, says elections will proceed as planned regardless of what Trump might say. The academics and media stars gaining popularity and attention for saying otherwise are being “disingenuous” and “dangerous,” he said.

Courts have also played a critical role when local officials have threatened to overstep their authority. In 2020, even light suggestions that Trump might delay the election to accommodate COVID were met with outrage. After the 2020 election, judges made clear that certification is not discretionary and ordered officials to follow election law and move the process forward, even amid intense political pressure.

Those same state and local laws remain in place today. Courts and election offices are also better positioned than they were four years ago, with legal strategies drafted, training in place, and judges already familiar with these arguments. Across the country, clerks and secretaries of state describe updating contingency plans, consulting attorneys, and stress-testing procedures much as they would for a natural disaster or cyberattack.

If you’re worried about what lies ahead, election officials say there are meaningful ways to respond — and that spreading fear isn’t one of them. Richer said the bigger danger now is renewed distrust of election results. That distrust makes it easier for those in power to make bad-faith attempts to twist the math after votes are cast.

His advice is straightforward: “Continue being a repository for facts and truth about election administration, and kindly and sensitively inject those into conversations that you are a part of if you hear something you know to be wrong.” He added, “Don’t be dismissive. It never works.” And, he said, “you are responsible for the false information you spread.”

Aguilar said that academic voices predicting doom “don’t understand the nuances” of state and local law and that voters should be skeptical of them. Those who want better information should go to their local and state elections offices.

There’s also a risk that continually framing elections as likely not to happen — or as already lost — could have the opposite of the intended effect, discouraging participation rather than protecting democracy. If you’re concerned about what might happen in your county, there are concrete ways to help now: sign up to be a poll worker, volunteer to help register voters, offer your business or community space as a polling location, or donate to organizations preparing to defend election laws and certification in court.

Elections don’t happen just because people assume they will. They happen because people — especially at the local level — show up and do the work.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

President Donald Trump spoke with right-wing radio host Sid Rosenberg on Tuesday, once again gushing over New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

The New York Daily News relayed the moment in which Trump bragged he gets along “very well” with the Democratic Socialist.

“I think he’s got a really good personality,” Trump said. “I think he’s got tremendous assets, but he’s got some things … policy, concepts, that really haven’t worked over the last 10,000 years.”

The comments come after a warm discussion between the New Yorkers at the White House in November. Trump even went so far as to promise he would "help" Mamdani where he could.

Even when questioned by Rosenberg about some of the negative things Mamdani has said about Trump, he was dismissive.

“He called your administration evil after [Renee Good] was murdered, Mr. President,” Rosenberg told Trump. “He actually came out and said he wants to abolish ICE on The View and in a tweet yesterday. So I want to give the guy a chance ... when people badmouth Trump, I get very upset.”

“You know, it’s politics,” Trump explained away. “It’s a nasty world. It’s a nasty profession, if you want to know the truth, it really is. But I got along very well with him.”

He compared it to his relationship with Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.), who, Trump said, will tell the press one thing while beingcordial with him.

“She calls me, ‘Hi, President. Hi, hi. How you doing?’ … She cannot be nicer. And then I’ll see [her] the following day on television, knocking the hell out of me," Trump said.

Read the report here.