U.S. President Donald Trump visits a Ford production center in Dearborn, Michigan, U.S., January 13, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
During the first few weeks of 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump has generated plenty of headlines — from capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to sending even more U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Minneapolis, Minnesota following the fatal shooting of unarmed 37-year-old U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good in that city.
Trump's actions have plenty of defenders in MAGA media outlets. But MS NOW's Vaughn Hillyard, in an article published on January 13, stresses that Trump's "increasingly brazen assertions of executive power" are "running into an unexpected problem: They risk undermining the very goals they were meant to achieve."
"His threats to seize Greenland from NATO ally Denmark are accelerating European discussions about looking for alliances beyond the United States," Hillyard observes. "His public verdict in a fatal shooting by an immigration agent — delivered before a Justice Department investigation — risks further politicizing law enforcement. His administration's attempts to pressure Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to reduce interest rates — culminating in the DOJ's investigating Powell for criminal charges — threatens to make it harder for Trump to appoint Powell's successor. And a week after the mission to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power, the chief executive of ExxonMobil called the country 'uninvestable,' undercutting the economic rationale for the military intervention."
According to historian/author Ruth Ben-Ghiat — a New York University professor known for her expertise on the history of authoritarianism — authoritarians can become increasingly volatile when they are feeling desperate.
Ben-Ghiat told MS NOW: "Trump was recently on a downward path in terms of popularity with his base, and that is when autocrats do unpredictable things to assert their power."
A Pentagon official, interviewed on condition of anonymity, warned that Trump's belligerent foreign policy risks destroying alliances that have served the U.S. well for many years.
The official told MS NOW: "If Greenland goes, so goes the allies in Europe. The one refrain I've been hearing is we don't realize how many equities the U.S. has in Europe and how valuable Australia is, too, and they'll all pull the bridge out from over the moat."
After Good's death, Trump and his allies — including Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — defended the ICE agent who killed her. And according to MS NOW legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance, attacking Good can only hurt law enforcement in Minneapolis.
"If people don't have confidence in DOJ excessive force investigations, communities will spiral down without closure after events like the shooting of Renee Good," Joyce Vance said. "If the president fully breaks it, the consequences will be dire — we could become a country of endless protests with escalating violence from law enforcement on American streets."
Read Vaughn Hillyard 's full article for MS NOW at this link.
