Jack Smith is testifying live to a House committee regarding his investigation into January 6. I keep turning the hearing on and off again because the Republicans are too annoying. There are also live updates at The Hill. There’s going to be special coverage on MS NOW tonight and maybe I’ll just watch that.

Trump’s speech at Davos yesterday was a disaster. If anyone on the globe hadn’t already realized Trump is a mentally addled and erratic despot who has no idea what he’s talking about regarding just about anything, they all know now. Yet he’s allowed to remain in office and in charge of the largest nuclear-armed military in the world. There could be no clearer demonstration that the entire political system of the U.S. is hopelessly corrupted.

Here’s a bit more, from Lawrence O’Donnell.

Regarding Trump’s “most favored nation” drug plan, which he believes has already delivered 800 percent lower drug prices to American consumers — apparently the pharmaceutical companies Trump thought he had a deal with haven’t cut any U.S. prices at all. However, they have raised the prices of some drugs sold elsewhere, just so they can they say are meeting Trump partway. Since drug prices in many other countries are set by law, they don’t have much room to maneuver in that regard.

There’s a piece at Wired by Garrett Graff headlined We Are Witnessing the Self-Immolation of a Superpower. It begins:

Imagine you were Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping and you woke up a year ago having magically been given command of puppet strings that control the White House. Your explicit geopolitical goal is to undermine trust in the United States on the world stage. You want to destroy the Western rules-based order that has preserved peace and security for 80 years, which allowed the US to triumph as an economic superpower and beacon of hope and innovation for the world. What exactly would you do differently with your marionette other than enact the ever more reckless agenda that Donald Trump has pursued since he became president last year?

Nothing.

Right on cue, the NY Times is running an analysis headlined China Wins as Trump Cedes Leadership of the Global Economy. (Note: The NY Times is having some technical issues regarding gift links; I’ll try to get a gift link later today.)

In a long, rambling address that was by turns bombastic, aggrieved and self-congratulatory, President Trump pronounced last rites on American leadership of the liberal democratic order forged by the United States and its allies after World War II.

Mr. Trump used a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday — a pilgrimage site for adherents of globalization — to assert that the United States was done offering its markets and its military protection to European allies he derided as freeloaders. And he vowed to advance his trade war. He characterized tariffs as the price of admission to a land of 300 million consumers.

“The United States is keeping the whole world afloat,” Mr. Trump said. “Everybody took advantage of the United States.”

Of course, no country benefited more from the old arrangement than the United States, but Trump is too stupid to understand that.

Where is the Greenland issue, btw? Trump seemed to think he had made some kind of satisfactory deal, or at least had the framework of a deal, but what I’m reading today suggests this deal may exist only in Trump’s head. See the BBC, What we know about Trump’s ‘framework of future deal’ over Greenland. There were earlier stories leaked by somebody that somehow some areas of Greenland would be ceded to the sovereignty of the U.S. But Secretary General of NATO Mark Rutte, with whom Trump was negotiating, said that they didn’t discuss sovereignty at all. And Denmark/Greenland say that sovereignty is off the table and behind a red line and probably an impenetrable forest of thorns and ghosts and spells by several witches. Ain’t gonna happen. So nothing is settled.

I’m hearing that Trump is keenly interested in rights to Greenland’s mineral resources. The problem is that even if the U.S. had the “rights” to the minerals, actually extracting those minerals from Greenland would take more investment in money and time than the stupid oil in Venezuela and it’s unlikely any part of the private sector would take it on.

Let’s hope Trump doesn’t notice there really isn’t any more of a deal with Denmark than there is with the pharmaceutical companies.

Meanwhile, the Trump-made crisis in Minnesota appears to be escalating, with no end in sight. See David Kurtz at TPM for the latest.

I take it Trump gave a press conference at the White House yesterday in which he repeatedly confused Greenland with Iceland. But the only mainstream media I see reporting this is the Wall Street Journal.

That’s as much as I can read; the rest is behind a paywall. I’m just thinking of how it made many headlines every time Joe Biden mixed up a name.

I take it today Trump has been addressing Davos. This is the executive summary of the speech, courtesy of the New York Times:

Trump Speaks: President Trump used a speech at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland on Wednesday to criticize Europe and cast the world as almost entirely reliant on the United States for peace and prosperity. “Without us, most of the countries don’t even work,” Mr. Trump said in lengthy remarks that contained complaints that the United States had been mistreated by its allies, and could not rely on them for mutual defense. Read more ›

Greenland: Mr. Trump said the U.S. “won’t use force” to take Greenland, repeating that control of it was necessary for national and international security. He said he would be “appreciative” if the world acquiesced to his desire to take over the territory. “Or,” he added, “you can say no and we will remember.”

I’m sure that went over well. Most of the headlines are saying that Trump “ruled out use of force” to take Greenland,  As one NY Times reporter put it, “The contours of Trump’s challenge to Europe in this speech: ‘Give me Greenland, or I will tariff you into oblivion — though I won’t send troops to take it.'”

Paul Krugman must have anticipated what Trump would say. See MAGA Delusions of Economic Leverage.

… we can say something about the likely effects of his attempt to coerce Europe with tariffs — namely, that it won’t work. Only in Trump’s fantasies does America possess huge economic leverage over Europe. To the extent that we have any leverage over them, it’s matched by the leverage they have over us.

Krugman cites a new study from the Kiel Institute for World Economics. In 2025 American consumers paid 96 percent of the cost of the tariffs. Foreign businesses absorbed only 4 percent. The only people being “tariffed into oblivion” by Trump are Americans.

And Krugman goes on to say that the European economy is huge and diverse and the U.S. isn’t its only market. He thinks Trump’s tantrum tariffs will hurt the U.S. economy more than it will hurt Europe’s. He also notes the Supreme Court is still holding back its opinion on Trump’s tariffs. “At this point the Court’s cowardice is unmistakable; the justices’ robes must be drenched in flop sweat,” Krugman writes.

In another Great Moment in Diplomacy, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Denmark “irrelevant.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday offered some biting words about Denmark, which maintains territorial control over Greenland, after the European country’s pension fund announced it would unwind its investment in US government bonds.

Bessent said in response that Denmark and its investment in the United States were “irrelevant.”

“Denmark’s investment in US Treasury bonds – like Denmark itself – is irrelevant,” Bessent told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, when asked how concerned he is about institutional investors in Europe potentially pulling out of Treasuries.

There ought to be a way citizens of the U.S. could collectively send Denmark a note of apology for these assholes. I understand the bond market in general is in a volatile place. We are not in a good position to piss off the world right now.

Speaking of the economy — today the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments over whether Trump can legally fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Trump fired Cook in August over extremely dubious claims of wrongdoing over a mortgage. She has remained on the Fed  board as one lower court after another ruled that Trump overstepped his authority when he fired her. Trump is desperate to get his hands on monetary policy so he can lower interest rates to provide a temporary “sugar high” to the economy. Which would lead to big inflation, all the financial people say.

Yesterday the New York Times published a Big Deal Report on how Trump is using the presidency to make himself a fortune. See How Trump Has Pocketed $1,408,500,000.

A review by the editorial board relying on analyses from news organizations shows that Mr. Trump has used the office of the presidency to make at least $1.4 billion. We know this number to be an underestimate because some of his profits remain hidden from public view. And they continue to grow.

Again, if this were Any Other President it would have absolutely overwhelmed the next several news cycles. With Trump, it appears hardly anyone noticed.

Update: Trump met with Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, and came away deciding to not tariff the bejeezus out of Europe after all. So the threatened new tariffs are canceled, for now. Trump said there is a “framework” of a plan regarding Greenland and the broader arctic region. But there are no details yet what that framework might be. Since I doubt the secretary general of NATO has been authorized to negotiate a sale of Greenland to Trump, Rutte must have somehow found an acceptable off ramp for Trump’s demands. Let’s hope.

Another update: Jack Smith will be giving public testimony tomorrow, starting at 10 am EST.  I believe you can watch it on MS NOW and C-Span.

Update update: I’m hearing some of Trump’s speech. He seems to believe that the U.S. took Greenland from the Nazis, or somebody, but then stupidly “We gave Greenland back to Denmark.” WTF?

Last July Trump was really proud of his trade deal with the EU.

Trump said that the 27-member bloc also agreed to purchase $750 billion worth of U.S. energy and invest an additional $600 billion worth of investments into the U.S. above current levels.

He said that the bloc would also be “purchasing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of military equipment,” but did not provide a specific dollar amount.

You might remember that after his “liberation day” tariff announcement of almost a year ago, Trump promised the world would line up to make deals with him. 90 deals in 90 days, he said. And he was still bragging in April:

U.S. President Donald Trump said overnight that global leaders are willing to do anything to make a trade deal with him as American tariffs come into force.

“I am telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass,” Trump said during a speech at the National Republican Congressional Committee Dinner in Washington,

“They are dying to make a deal. ‘Please, please sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything sir,’” he imitated a begging foreign leader.

But by July, when the 90 days were up, he’d achieved only two — with the UK and with Vietnam. Which was making him look a bit stupid. But then the EU deal appeared to bail him out, although if you read beneath the headlines it was more of a framework than a firm deal. And enforcement was not part of the deal, so that the promises of purchases of energy or military equipment maybe would happen, but probably not. But Trump got his headlines about a major tariff deal success. He clearly was very proud of himself. You could say this was one of the biggest actual achievements of his first year back in office. Since, frankly, there weren’t many others other than his Big Ugly Bill.

And now Trump has thrown last year’s EU trade deal away with his push to acquire Greenland. Yesterday European leaders announced the trade deal is on hold. And now they are discussing among themselves how they will retaliate against Trump’s demands. Because they are absolutely not going to step aside and let Trump have Greenland. That’s irrational. See A stunned Europe gathers to respond after Trump increases pressure over Greenland. See also European nations weigh retaliation after Trump’s Greenland threats.

France is pushing for the bloc to use an instrument often dubbed its trade “bazooka,” which would allow for targeting or restricting American services in Europe, a major profit center for U.S. tech giants. That tool has not been triggered since its adoption in 2023. E.U. capitals shied away from using it last year during the tariff war with Trump to avoid a major escalation.

This will hurt the economy in Europe as much as the U.S., but what choice do they have? Because they’re not going to let Trump have Greenland.

Governing is hard, Donald. You should have noticed that your one Great Plan cancels out your other Great Plan.

I understand Trump has mused about offering $700 billion to buy Greenland. In comparison, the entire U.S. defense budget in 2024 was $872 billion. In 2024 the U.S. spent roughly $100 billion on SNAP food assistance. Apparently Trump thinks we can’t afford SNAP but we can afford Greenland? No wonder he thinks “affordability” is a hoax. He doesn’t grasp what it is.

And one of these days the Supreme Court is going to issue its tariff decision. What if, next week, they decide Trump really can’t just set tariffs by himself and has to go through Congress? That might save all of our asses, although I don’t trust the Roberts court to be that sensible. But if Europe found out Trump no longer has the authority to threaten anybody with tariffs, he’s got no leverage. Hmm.

A CNN poll found that 75 percent of Americans oppose Trump’s Greenland scheme. So why is he doing this? It’s not rational.

Many have wondered if Trump understands that Greenland really isn’t as big as it appears on maps.

This is such a cool illustration of how the Mercator map distorts the size of Greenland, which looks as big as the whole continent of Africa on that map but is actually the size of Mexico.

[image or embed]

— Helen Kennedy (@helenkennedy.bsky.social) January 18, 2026 at 2:43 PM

Yeah, he’s that stupid. See also Trump’s latest Western Hemisphere fixation: Canada.

In other news, Trump got the brilliant idea to organize a Board of Peace and invite other nations to join. This is apparently to rival the authority of the United Nations, which Trump is pissed at because its escalator stopped and he didn’t get a renovation contract back in 2008. Anyway, he invited 60 nations to join, saying their first job was to solve the Gaza problem. A permanent membership costs $1 billion, but nations can get a temporary position on the board without paying. Trump is chairman for life. (The Financial Times says the proposed charter seems to give Trump veto power over decisions of the board.)

So far the only world leader who has accepted is Viktor Orban of Hungary, although I don’t know if he’s coughed up the $1 billion. Nor is it clear to me who will collect the membership fees. other than Trump himself, and what he fees are for. I’ll be very surprised if any other nation takes this seriously, though, or at least not seriously enough to pay any money.

Regarding Minnesota — see Paul Waldman, The President of the United States Is at War With His Own Country. It’s really more than just Minnesota; Trump is trying to punish blue states for being blue states. “The Trump administration is engaged in a comprehensive war, and its enemy is half of America,” Waldman writes.. “This war is being waged in rhetoric and regulation, budget cuts and violence. Its aim is to tear the country in two.”

But Minnesota is really catching hell now. Trump has ordered 1,500 regular troops to be prepared to deploy to Minnesota in case they are needed to put down “violent” protests, which I take it would be any protests involving mouthy White women with whistles. Frightening stuff. There also are reports that Gov. Walz has “mobilized” the state Guard, but they haven’t yet been deployed.

“MSP” is the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport.

I can confirm via friend that works at MSP….”there was a confrontation with Ice and tsa yesterday. They were confronting the tsa in the checkpoints and asking for THEIR papers”

— Marc Bloomquist (@m40dotcom.bsky.social) January 15, 2026 at 11:19 PM

Hey, Kristi Gnome says we all need to carry our papers at all times or else ICE can “detain” us. But that stirred up manosphere influencer Joe Rogan. Greg Sargent writes at The New Republic,

This week, Rogan harshly criticized Trump’s ICE raids again after the horrific and unjustified killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. “You don’t want militarized people in the streets just roaming around, snatching up people, many of which turn out to be U.S. citizens that just don’t have their papers on them,” Rogan said:

“Are we really gonna be the gestapo?” Rogan asked. “Where’s your papers—is that what we’ve come to?”

And the answer is yes. That’s what we’ve come to.

Sargent goes on to say the murder of Renee Good is, among other things, a massive PR problem for the Trump Administration. A Quinnipiac poll found that 87 percent of Americans have seen the videos of the shooting. Only 35 percent of those believe the shooting was justified. CNN and Yahoo News found that only 26-27 percent believe the shooting was justified. In all polls a clear majority believe it was unjustified.

Sargent points to a private memo on research circulating among Democratic party operatives:

The testing also found that the killing has “broken through with voters,” the memo says, with 86 percent saying they have heard at least “a little” about it and 76 percent saying they’ve seen footage. And importantly, the testing also finds that Democratic proposals to rein in ICE have broad support. Voters favor requiring warrants for arrests by 29 points, and back a prohibition against masking during arrests by 16 points, though “Abolish ICE” remains a few points underwater.

However, according to Forbes, more people want to abolish ICE than keep it.

Sargent’s point is that this issue is breaking through to the “low-information” Americans who don’t pay much attention to the news. And it hands Democrats an opportunity that even Chuck Schumer couldn’t miss, one hopes.

Trump is eager to invoke the Insurrection Act, reportedly in the belief that it would give him absolute dictatorial powers to crush all opposition. The government-sponsored violence will likely get worse. And, possibly, Trump is preparing an excuse to cancel the midterms. He doesn’t have the constitutional authority to cancel the midterms, but don’t be surprised if he tries. Democrats are preparing to counter any move he might make to interfere with the midterms.

See also this Chris Hayes segment.

Stephen Miller and other elements of the Maladministration are flapping their lips as fast as they can to paint ICE as the noble, hard-working victims of an insurrection that has been funded and orchestrated by nefarious anti-American forces. But clearly the public ain’t buyin’ it.

To complicate matters regarding the murder of Renee Good — The New York Times is reporting that Good still had a pulse when emergency workers got to her. You might have seen that ICE prevented a doctor at the scene from going to her and also blocked first responders from driving to her car, forcing the first responders (they may have been firefighters) to carry her back to their vehicle to begin trying to save her. According to an ABC News timeline of the shooting, the first shot was fired at 9:37:13 a.m. She began to receive CPR at 9:45:30 a.m.  That’s not a huge amount of time, but maybe if CPR and other lifesaving measures had begun immediately she could have been saved. We’ll never know.

In other news — yesterday Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado met with Trump at the White House and gave him her Nobel medal. And he kept it. I assume she still thinks he will change his mind and support her as Venezuela’s rightful leader. But I hope she doesn’t hold her breath. Most likely she gave away her medal for nothing but a swag bag. I hope that someday when Trump is gone someone has the decency to return the medal to her, but she’ll probably never see it again.

Regarding Trump’s threats to attack Greenland — I see that Republicans in Congress realize how stupid and self-destructive that would be. Some of them are even telling Trump it’s a really bad idea; they are trying to “scare him back to reality.” But I can’t take them too seriously if they can’t even pass the bill that would stop Trump from further military action in Venezuela.

Update: Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on countries that don’t back the US’s claim to control Greenland.

Yesterday the DoJ announced that they had no plans to investigate the shooting death of Renée Good by an ICE agent. At least four leaders of the Civil Right Division have resigned. I’m hearing on the teevee that six DoJ prosecutors resigned. There may not be anyone left with any integrity.

However, there is an investigation related to the shooting. The DoJ is pushing to investigate Renée Good’s widow. Of course they are. WaPo:

Paul Krugman gives his perspective on Trump’s oil delusions:

It’s amazing, if you think about it: Trump launched a war for oil without talking to the oil companies first.

On the day before, the Bureau of Land Management auctioned off more than 20,000 acres of public land in Colorado for oil and gas drilling. Or I should say, tried to auction the land off — because there were no bids, despite the fact that the land was offered at very low prices.

If they’re not interested in drilling in Colorado, why would they drill in Venezuela?

Krugman goes on to quote Trump’s second inaugural speech, and I’m going to quote it here at greater length:

The inflation crisis was caused by massive overspending and escalating energy prices, and that is why today I will also declare a national energy emergency.  We will drill, baby, drill.  (Applause.)

America will be a manufacturing nation once again, and we have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have — the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on earth — and we are going to use it.  We’ll use it.  (Applause.)

We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again right to the top, and export American energy all over the world.  (Applause.) 

We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it. 

Trump and his followers seemed to believe that oil and gas production were down during the Biden administration, but just the opposite was true. Here is a Reuters article published on March 28, 2024:

The counter-intuitive fossil fuel boom under Biden reflects an awkward truth for his supporters and detractors alike ahead of the November elections, proving that what happens in globally interconnected markets like oil and gas is often well outside the immediate control of the person in the White House.

In Biden’s case, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed oil and gas prices so high that many producers worldwide made record profits, not just those in the United States. The global economic recovery that followed the darkest days of the COVID pandemic also rapidly pumped up demand for fossil fuels.

The profits of the top five publicly traded oil companies, for example — BP, Shell, Exxon, Chevron, and Total Energies — amounted to $410 billion during the first three years of the Biden administration, a 100% increase over the first three years of Donald Trump’s presidency, according to data compiled by Reuters.

So, even as Biden’s policies were encouraging investment in alternative energy technologies, oil was booming, which caused oil prices to drop eventually. And now oil prices are too low to justify more oil exploration or rebuilding infrastructure in Venezuela.

Back to Krugman:

Trump clearly pictures America in 2025 as being like East Texas in the early 20^th century — a place where all you have to do is drill a hole in the ground, and oil gushes out….

… But it doesn’t work like that anymore. After decades of oil extraction, gushers are a thing of the past. Today, most of the oil extracted by the U.S. petroleum industry is shale oil. To extract that oil sedimentary rocks must be fractured with pressurized liquids — “fracking.” Now, there are many environmental issues associated with fracking. But even if you ignore those concerns, drilling a new well isn’t worth doing unless the price of oil is sufficiently high.

As in most things, Trump is stuck in the past, floating around somewhere between the McKinley Administration and the end of the 1980s, when Michael Crawford was the hit of Broadway in Phantom of the Opera. And with a long pause in Studio 54 in the late 1970s.

Regarding Trump’s utterly stupid attempt to criminally prosecute Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell — Powell’s tenure is over in four months. If Trump thought he could drive Powell out a few weeks early, he appears to be mistaken. Powell is not backing down. See commentary by Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic:

Every affluent Republican, from the tech right to fossil-fuel owners to heirs managing their inherited portfolios, has a direct and visible interest in stable and competent monetary policy. The Republican Party’s respect for the Fed’s independence is already evident in a recent Supreme Court ruling, in which the conservative majority appears to be seeking to create a special exemption for the Federal Reserve from the Court’s general doctrine that presidents are entitled to fire the heads of independent agencies. When Trump messes with the Fed, he is defecating where his wealthy donors eat. Perhaps they will go along with this, too, but he is testing the limits of their acquiescence.

This also is a useful observation:

The apparent source of this desperate gamble is that Trump seems keenly aware that the public disapproves of his presidency and his economic policy making. But rather than move to the center and try to allay the concerns of his wavering supporters, Trump’s response to adversity has been to try to seize as much economic and political power as he can, as fast as possible.

Thus the invasion of Venezuela, which he hopes will provide him with a windfall source of petro-dollars. (Sunday night, Trump shared on Truth Social a mock biography describing himself as “Acting President of Venezuela.”) After floating a proposal to cap credit-card interest rates that stands little chance of passage in Congress, he told reporters on Air Force One that firms that fail to comply with his target by January 20—before any law capping interest rates can conceivably make it through the House and Senate—will be “in violation of the law.”

And he’s also determined to get rid of Powell earlier so he can begin to dictate monetary policy asap. My impression is that Trump want to goose the economy before the midterms. Trump, of course, is the last person on the planet we want to be in charge of U.S. monetary policy. We’d be better off consulting a Magic 8 Ball. But no matter how many times he screws up, Trump appears to have an absolute faith that he’s the smartest guy on the planet and his way is the smart way, or at least the way that’s most advantageous for him.

See also Five Points on the Trump DOJ’s Attack on Fed Chair Jerome Powell by Layla Jones at TPM.

Trump is noticeably terrified of the Democrats retaking the House in the midterms and impeaching him again, which they almost certainly will. So it is interesting that instead of refocusing on the domestic issues he ran on, he’s doubling down on the unpopular crap. He’s trying to consolidate as much global power as he can, I suppose, although he’s pissing off a whole lot of people around the world in the process.

Also instead of trying to please his voters, he’s working hard to change how the midterm elections will be conducted, per WaPo. This is worth reading. The states run the elections and, in theory, can just ignore Trump’s schemes to end mail-in voting and even voting machines — yes, he wants to go back to hand counting, probably because it’s easier to bribe election supervisors than a Smartmatic. But he could cause enough confusion to affect the results.

But it seems to me he’s at least as likely to discourage Republican voters as Democratic ones. By November anyone leaning even slightly left will be prepared to swim with sharks and fight through a wall of ICE agents to get to the polls.

Katrina as in Hurricane Katrina. Garry Kasparov wrote in The Atlantic that Trump supporters like to claim that “he’s playing five-dimensional chess, only to discover too late that he has eaten half the pieces.” And it’s happening big time in Venezuela. The military mission to kidnap Maduro was brilliant. Everything else about Trump’s move on Venezuela is stupid on steroids.

On Friday trump met with the oil execs he expected to pour money and resources into revising Venezuela’s oil industry. From all reports most of them said they couldn’t commit under present circumstances. As I wrote yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported the execs “indicated they need security guarantees and an overhaul of Venezuela’s legal and commercial framework to consider diving in.” But Trump chose to leave the Chavismos in control of the government, and it’s their framework. So an overhaul is not likely to happen. And there is much speculation that most of the oil execs won’t go in without a commitment of U.S. military protection. You know, boots on the ground.

To be fair, a couple of execs — Jeff Hildebrand of Hilcorp and Bill Armstrong of Armstrong Oil and Gas (I had never heard of them, either) — gave Trump political cover by promising to invest in Venezuela. But they didn’t commit to how much, or when.

Yesterday Trump declared that Venezuela is now “rich and safe.” And yesterday the U.S. State Department warned U.S. citizens in Venezuela to get out of there, now.

The United States has urged its citizens to leave Venezuela immediately amid reports that armed paramilitaries are trying to track down US citizens, one week after the capture of the South American country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.

In a security alert sent out on Saturday, the state department said there were reports of armed members of pro-regime militias, known as colectivos, setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles for evidence that the occupants were US citizens or supporters of the country.

“US citizens in Venezuela should remain vigilant and exercise caution when traveling by road,” the alert added, urging citizens to depart immediately now that some international flights from Venezuela have restarted.

So the Venezuela misadventure is likely to turn into a world-class quagmire. As always, Trump failed to grasp what it would take to bring about his goals, whatever those were. If it was really about the oil, he grossly miscalculated. If deep down he just wanted to pull off some flashy military thing to get attention, okay, he did that. And if he had any sense he’d announce that after consulting with the oil execs the oil thing is going to be postponed a few months in order to [insert excuse here]. And then when those few months have gone by maybe there will be a better excuse. Or everyone will have moved on to something else. Just leave Venezuela the bleep alone, in other words. But I expect him to keep trying to “fix” it, which will likely blow up in his face. because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Update: Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, told Trump last week (politely) that Venezuela was currently “uninvestable” and that his company required substantive reforms before investing there. Trump is now saying he is “inclined” to keep ExxonMobil out of Venezuela. I doubt Mr. Woods is all that heartbroken about this.

I’m also just now hearing that the DoJ has opened a criminal investigation into Fed chair Jerome Powell. Trump is saying he knows nothing about it, which of course is a damn lie. (end of update)

But it’s worse. The Daily Mail reports that “Donald Trump has ordered his special forces commanders to draw up a plan for the invasion of Greenland – but is being resisted by senior military figures, The Mail on Sunday has learned.” The Mail is a British tabloid, and I don’t know how reliable it is. Trump has been talking a lot about the U.S. must possess Greenland, but I’m not seeing reporting about potential plans anywhere else.

But lots of media sources are reporting that Trump wants to bomb Iran. Yesterday the U.S. military did bomb Syria again. And he’s threatening Cuba to negotiate “BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!”  It’s like he’s just having way too much fun being commander in chief. He can bomb anyone he wants! Maybe he’ll bomb Minnesota next!

If only we had a Congress.

I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed right now. The FBI has blocked Minnesota authorities from the investigation into Renee Good’s apparent murder by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, noting that Ross is innocent until proven guilty in court. But that’s not going to happen as long as Kash Patel and Trump’s girl Pam have anything to do with it. Expect the “findings” of the “investigation” to exonerate Ross and put all the blame on Good. That’s too obvious.

Two people were shot by Customs and Border agents in Portland yesterday, and as with Minneapolis there is every reason to doubt the “official” explanation. The feds are claiming the driver was an illegal alien and Tren de Aragua member who attempted to run over the agents, who were forced to shoot him (and the passenger?). This was on the campus of an office complex, so there were lots of witnesses.

A man who was at the medical building said he saw federal officers follow a Toyota truck into the parking lot of the office building and try to corner it.

One officer pounded on the window, he said. The driver then backed up and moved forward at least a couple of times, striking a car behind him, before turning and speeding off, said the man who gave only his first name. It’s not clear if the car hit by the truck belonged to the federal officers.

Officers fired about five shots at the truck as it left, the witness said.

The two people who were shot are still hospitalized, and so far their identities have not been made public.

María Corina Machado is supposed to meet with Trump soon, next week I believe. At some point she had said something about sharing her Nobel Peace Prize with Trump. I take it he now expects her to give it to him. “… during an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity that aired Thursday. Trump added that he heard Machado wants to give him the prize, ‘and that would be a great honor.'” And if he gets his hands on it, she’ll never see it again. Although possessing a physical trophy (I understand it’s a gold medal) won’t make him a Nobel Laureate.

But according to the Norwegian Nobel Institute, rules forbid Machado to give someone else her prize.

A Nobel spokesperson told the Daily Beast, “A Nobel Prize can neither be revoked nor transferred to others. Once the announcement of the laureate(s) has been made, the decision stands for all time. As for the prize money, the laureate(s) are free to dispose of it as they see fit.”

Latchem [a Daily Beast reporter] notes that Nobel’s “organization’s refusal to bend its own rules” will “be a disappointment not just to Trump, but also, to some of his loyalists, who are reported to have lobbied for Machado to hand the president the prize he so covets.”

Trump is supposed to be meeting with the oil execs now, as I keyboard. MS Now reports:

President Donald Trump will meet with oil executives at the White House on Friday to pitch an ambitious goal that highlights a fundamental problem in his hopes for Venezuela’s oil industry: He wants American oil companies to invest heavily, but get lower prices for their product.

Trump’s aim is to vastly increase oil production in the country to help reduce the global price of oil to around $50 a barrel to ease costs for American consumers. But dramatically increasing oil production in Venezuela will take years, and oil companies argue that reducing the price of oil to $50 a barrel will make drilling unprofitable….

…“They’re going to rebuild the whole oil infrastructure,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News Thursday night, referring to the oil companies. “They’re going to spend at least $100 billion.”

But executives have expressed deep hesitation about committing capital to a country where they previously lost billions and where profitability remains uncertain, particularly if Trump succeeds in his promise to lower global oil prices.

The piece goes on to say that Trump appears to believe “that the U.S. would be able to quickly generate vast oil revenues in Venezuela,” like within a year or so. And nobody in the industry seems to agree with that. Venezuela has been exporting some oil, mostly to China I believe, but not quantities that anyone would get excited about.

Update: As expected, the two dozen oil execs who met with Trump were not all that fired up to go into Venezuela. The Wall Street Journal reported the execs “indicated they need security guarantees and an overhaul of Venezuela’s legal and commercial framework to consider diving in.”

This is from the New York Times:

Darren Woods, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, said at the meeting that for the company to return to Venezuela it would need “durable investment protections.”

“We’ve had our assets seized there twice, and so you can imagine to re-enter a third time would require some pretty significant changes,” Mr. Woods said. “Today it’s uninvestable.”

In other Trump business news, it was widely anticipated the SCOTUS would release its opinion on Trump’s tariffs today. But it isn’t. The Court is expected to release more rulings on Wednesday, January 14.

Yesterday the House passed a bill to extend the ACA enhanced subsidies for three years, with 17 Republicans voting with the Democrats. It now goes to the Senate, where nothing is certain. I notice my rep. Mike Lawler is among the 17 Republicans.

And yesterday the Senate voted to put limits on future Trump military actions in Venezuela. If they were smart they’d extend that limit to the rest of the planet. Make it clear he has no authority to so much as send a soldier out to pick up pizza without congressional approval. Because he’s not going to stop. He thinks he has absolute power.

Paul Krugman is on a roll. See The Mad King’s Madness Deepens.

And there’s a song already.

And in case any of you missed it, here is the NY Times analysis of the Minnesota shooting that uncledad linked to in comments yesterday. It’s very helpful.

I wonder if Kristi Gnome and Trump were even aware that this video was all over cable news and social media already when they released their statements about what happened. The Gnome’s description of what happened bore no resemblance whatsoever to the video, and millions of people likely had already seen the video. And of course Trump’s claim that an ICE agent had been “run over” was downright hallucinatory.

Yesterday seemed like an inflection point to me, but we’ll see.

Trump chose yesterday to ask  Congress to add another half trillion dollars to the defense budget, to bring it to $1.5 trillion.

The president provided few details in his post on Truth Social, other than to say the money would pay for his “Dream Military.” Trump did suggest that tariff revenues could cover the increase, but even if he managed to circumvent Congress’ constitutionally mandated power over spending, existing tariff collections would still be several hundred billion short of what the president plans to ask for.

While finding half-a-trillion dollars in new spending would prove difficult, Trump and some congressional Republicans appeared confident they could do so. The budget reached $1 trillion this year thanks to $150 billion in new money Congress voted to pour into Pentagon coffers via a reconciliation bill, although much of that will be spread out over the next five years on various long-term projects.

This is just ridiculous. But it ties into Paul Krugman’s column today, titled The Looting of U.S. Foreign Policy.  He starts out talking about Trump’s oil grabbing plans in Venezuela, which seem mostly about enriching Trump and his clique, and then writes this:

I use the word “clique” advisedly. That’s the term used by the political scientists Stacie E. Goddard and Abraham Newman in a recent paper titled “Further Back to the Future: Neo-Royalism, the Trump Administration, and the Emerging International System.”

Goddard and Newman have received well-deserved attention for their analysis, which states that Americans should stop believing that U.S. foreign policy serves U.S. national interests. Instead, they argue, we must recognize that in many ways we’ve been transported back to the 16^th century – a time before nation-states existed, when international affairs were a game played by dynasties serving their interests.

Thus, the Italian Wars of the 16^th century weren’t a fight between France and Spain, they were a contest for dominance between the House of Valois and the Habsburgs. Similarly, Goddard and Newman argue that Trumpist foreign policy has nothing to do with, well, making America great again, and everything to do with raising the wealth and status of the Trump family and its hangers-on — what they call our ruling clique.

As Goddard and Newman point out, U.S. foreign policy over the past year makes no sense if interpreted through the lens of national interest. How can it serve U.S. interests to insult and demean Canada, which has been an utterly reliable ally? Why would a U.S. president talk about seizing Greenland, which belongs to another ally, Denmark, and is a place where America already has a military base and can do whatever it considers necessary to protect our national security?

But the Trump clique doesn’t care whether nations have been staunch allies of the United States. They want subservient clients paying tribute, not to America, but to them personally. And that’s something democracies like Canada and Denmark won’t do.

Of course. Now that Krugman points it out, it seems to obvious. Krugman goes on to say that this is why Trump has no interest in restoring democratic government to Venezuela. A corrupt autocracy can be bullied into paying protection money to him. A democracy won’t do that.

According to a December report in The National Interest (an ironic name given Trump’s policies) moving a carrier group to the Caribbean cost around $600 million. In addition, the ongoing operational costs are $6.5 million per day, which have been accumulating since late October/early November. Add in the cost of munitions expended during the Maduro abduction, and the whole adventure has surely cost more than a billion dollars. Moreover, the meter keeps ticking: since Chavistas are still in power, Trump has to keep forces nearby in order to intimidate them to honor agreements. But Trump doesn’t care: The military expenses are the little people’s problem.

The bottom line is that to understand what Trump is doing around the world you must disabuse yourself of the notion that any of it is about serving America. It’s all about glorifying himself and enriching his clique.

He’s not just looting Venezuela. He’s looting American taxpayers and using taxpayer-funded resources like the U.S. military to carry out looting to benefit himself and his cronies. The military expenses are the little people’s problem.

Likewise, ICE is obviously not about making America safer. It’s about making America intimidated. We’ll be more compliant if we’re all afraid.

And I see that Trump’s talk about taking over Greenland is being taken very seriously now.

Yesterday Trump floated the idea of canceling the midterms and then said he wouldn’t do it. Of course not. If he can stir up enough violence and unrest in the U.S. maybe he can use that as an excuse. Constitutionally he has no authority to cancel elections, nor does Congress. Elections are run by the states. But if he could set up a scenario in which some red states did cancel elections he might go to court and say the election results are invalid because some states didn’t participate. I think we need to get ahead of this. But I’m not sure how.

An ICE agent shot and killed a woman in Minnesota today. Immediately Kristi Gnome claimed the woman was a domestic terrorist who was trying to ram ICE agents with her car. Already Gov. Walz and Minneapolis Mayor have both seen a video of the incident and say the video doesn’t show the agent being threatened.  We also have an eyewitness account:

Emily Heller lives near 33rd and Portland and said she woke up to a commotion outside her home. She said she saw a car blocking traffic on Portland Avenue that appeared to be part of a protest against federal law enforcement operations.

Heller said she heard ICE agents telling the driver, a woman, to “get out of here.”

“She was trying to turn around, and the ICE agent was in front of her car, and he pulled out a gun and put it right in — like, his midriff was on her bumper — and he reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face like three, four times,” Heller said.

Heller said it appeared the woman then accelerated and traveled about 100 feet before striking a utility pole and some other vehicles. She could be seen slumped over inside her car.

It may be a while before all the details are public. But we already know that from now on all the MAGAts will defend the ICE shooter and say he was acting in self defense, Just like George Zimmerman and Kyle Rittenhouse. And the dead woman was terrorist libtard scum. Same old same old.

I just watched a video of the incident taken on a bystander’s phone. I don’t know if this is the same video Walz and Frey saw or not. It seems obvious the woman was trying to turn away from the ICE agents and get away from them. I didn’t see any ICE agent in danger, unless there was one crouching in front of her car so he couldn’t be seen. You can see it here, starting at about 1:50.

The Gnome says that the shooting victim was a domestic terrorist. I say the Gnome has led a sheltered life.