Hi everyone,
It’s Friday. We went through a whole lot together this week. Let’s make no mistake: as the week progressed, Trump got weaker, and the American people — and pro-democracy people across the world — got stronger.
Trump thought he’d get a hero’s welcome in Davos. He thought he’d bully the word into submission. He thought he’d scare away brave Americans protesting his regime here at home. He was wrong on all counts. Thank you to all the subscribers who helped us hold the regimes feet to the fire. Consider subscribing now if you can to keep this momentum going.
Let’s dive into the news.
Donald Trump is back in Washington, D.C., and he is clearly losing control. At the same time, a historic moment is taking shape across the United States. A general strike that began in Minnesota is now spreading to other parts of the country, with workers, nurses, and pro-democracy activists coordinating actions that we have not seen at this scale in roughly seventy years. The goal, shared openly by organizers, is to make this the largest general strike in modern U.S. history.
In Minnesota, the epicenter of the strike, people are taking extraordinary risks. In Minneapolis and Saint Paul, where temperatures have dropped to as low as minus sixteen degrees Fahrenheit, workers are calling in sick, walking off jobs, and gathering in the streets to protest the Trump regime’s ICE and Border Patrol operations. These actions are resistance to a coordinated campaign of intimidation and repression aimed at immigrant communities and working people. Despite the extreme cold, turnout has remained strong.
This uprising is not limited to Minnesota. In New York City, more than 15,000 nurses have been on strike for over nine days, demanding fair pay, safe staffing levels, and basic respect for the work they do. These nurses carried hospitals through the worst moments of the pandemic, yet hospital executives continue to collect salaries in the range of twenty to thirty million dollars a year while pleading poverty at the bargaining table. The contrast could not be clearer. The nurses are asking for dignity and sustainability, not extravagance. Their strike has drawn public support from figures including Bernie Sanders and New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani, but the driving force remains the nurses themselves, who show up day after day to make their case.
While workers are standing in freezing streets and on picket lines, Trump is posting his latest deranged fantasies online. He shared new renderings of golden triumphal archs and opulent construction projects he claims he wants to build in Washington, D.C. This comes as his administration allows Affordable Care Act subsidies to lapse, threatening health coverage for tens of millions of Americans. Housing costs continue to rise, wages lag behind inflation, and Trump continues to show his priorities.
At the same time, the administration’s cruelty is becoming even more explicit. Today, Trump’s border leadership defended the kidnapping of five-year-old Liam Cornejo Ramos, who was taken from his family and used as bait to lure out his father before both were sent to detention in El Paso, Texas. At a press conference, officials claimed the child was “doing great” and insisted he was in the “least restrictive setting,” while simultaneously admitting they could not even say whether the father had committed any crime. Another official blamed the father for “abandoning” his son. Punish first, justify later, and shift blame onto the victims. The classic authoritarian playbook.
The rhetoric from Trump’s allies has grown increasingly dangerous. JD Vance publicly mocked protesters in Minnesota, labeling them sex offenders and criminal aliens simply for demonstrating in extreme cold. Anyone who opposes this regime, whether they are nurses, workers, or community members, is treated as an enemy. Speaking of sex offenders and criminals, where are those Epstein Files, JD? Why do you continue to cover them up? We will keep reporting on the Epstein-Trump files, no matter how much they try to hide them or change the subject.
Trump himself continues to peddle lies about climate change, even as he openly talks about melting ice and new shipping routes around Greenland when arguing for U.S. control of the territory. He posted that freezing temperatures across the country show that climate change is a hoax, blind to the fact that extreme weather events like this are a direct result of climate change.
His recent trip to Davos was widely seen as humiliating, particularly after he insulted U.S. allies and dismissed the sacrifices of NATO countries whose soldiers fought and died alongside Americans in Afghanistan. He has revived his habit of calling and implying that fallen troops “suckers and losers,” this time extending that insult to British, Danish, Canadian, French, and other allied soldiers.
Internationally, Trump is aligning himself ever more closely with authoritarian leaders. His so-called Board of Peace now consists of figures such as Vladimir Putin, Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, with no democracies and no NATO allies involved. Putin has openly dangled financial incentives while demanding that frozen Russian funds be released, all while Trump falsely claims to have reached agreements on Greenland that Denmark and Greenland’s own leadership say simply do not exist.
Back at home, Trump is still reposting conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, including content from QAnon-linked accounts. Many of the lawyers who pushed those lies lost their licenses. The damage, however, remains. Unlike Brazil, where former president Jair Bolsonaro now faces decades in prison for his role in an attempted coup, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Trump sweeping immunity. That decision has left the country with a system that protects powerful figures while leaving ordinary people exposed.
Against that backdrop, the growing general strike takes on added significance. Independent outlets like Migrant Insider are tracking the spread of strike actions across multiple states, showing how quickly this movement is expanding. Protesters themselves have summed it up with clarity and courage. One person standing outside in subzero temperatures said they were there because they are stronger together, because unity is the one thing this regime cannot defeat.
What we are seeing is a stark contrast. On one side, a collapsing authoritarian project built on lies, cruelty, and self-enrichment. On the other, workers and communities asserting their collective power and demanding a country where people can live with dignity, support their families, and care for one another without fear. That is the real story unfolding right now, and it is only getting bigger. And we’ll cover it every step of the way.
Thanks for reading, watching, and subscribing.
