By Ben Meiselas
Hi all! It’s Tuesday. And because it’s a day that ends in “y” in Trump’s America, the chaos continues.
I want to again thank everyone for the messages of support for our on-the-ground coverage of the ICE protests in Minneapolis with our partners Status Coup. Their reporting and your support matter, and they help cut through the flood of disinformation pouring out of this regime. No matter how much the Trump regime tries to criminalize recording their thugs on the ground, we will not let them scare us away. This moment is too important.
Also, our Editor in Chief Ron Filipkowski’s full bulletin will be published later today, and it will go even deeper into all of these developments and more. Thank you for sharing Ron’s bulletins and making it one of the most-read political news bulletins in the world. Remember to like and share these posts to make sure they spread widely.
Here is where things stand right now.
Late last night, MS NOW broke the news that top officials inside the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division resigned after being ordered not to investigate the murder of Renee Nicole Good. According to the reporting, the Trump DOJ instructed the division to investigate Good herself, not the ICE agent who shot and killed her. That is the level of rot we are dealing with. Four of the highest-ranking officials in the unit, leaders who have spent their careers investigating police violence, quit in protest. Their departures follow a February wave of resignations in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, where prosecutors refused to obey a Trump-appointed supervisor’s demands to dismiss a bribery case against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
What we are watching is the destruction of the Department of Justice from the inside. Thousands of career officials have resigned or been fired. Federal judges appointed by both parties now look at the DOJ not only as corrupt but as dysfunctional. It is humiliating on the world stage and dangerous here at home.
And the exodus isn’t limited to the executive branch. Another Republican member of Congress, Neal Dunn of Florida, announced this morning he will not seek re-election. Dunn is a senior member of powerful committees, but even he has had enough. With multiple MAGA members either out sick or unwilling to show up for work, Speaker Mike Johnson cannot reliably pass legislation. The Republican majority is collapsing under the weight of its own extremism.
Then came the major development out of the Southern District of New York.
Judge Paul Engelmayer issued a pointed order demanding that the Trump Department of Justice explain its refusal to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, co-authors of the bipartisan discharge petition, had written to the court requesting the appointment of an independent monitor or special master to force compliance. The judge responded by ordering the DOJ to publicly address whether the lawmakers have standing, whether the court has authority to compel action, and why deadlines have repeatedly been ignored. The government must respond by January 16. Even Ghislaine Maxwell will be able to weigh in if she wishes. One thing is abundantly clear: this regime cannot be trusted with the Epstein Files. And if we’re ever going to see real transparency, we will need an independent monitor to ensure we are getting all the documentation.
We also received economic updates. Headline CPI is rising 2.7 percent year over year. But here is the real problem: the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been gutted so severely that 40 to 50 percent of CPI inputs are estimates. Basically, the Trump regime has given themselves the latitude to guess (in other words, make things up). So we have numbers that are already too high, and they still understate what Americans are living through. Anyone who buys groceries, pays for health care, fills a tank of gas, or keeps the lights on knows these numbers do not reflect reality.
And yet Donald Trump treated the news like a victory, declaring “great low inflation numbers” and demanding that Jerome Powell immediately cut interest rates. This is the same Jerome Powell that Trump is currently trying to criminally investigate. He posts contradictory orders, decrees meaningless policies, then backtracks when congressional Republicans tell him his demands are impossible. Recently, Trump claimed to “hereby decree” a 10 percent cap on credit card interest rates. Then, after Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson warned of consequences, Trump quietly dropped the proposal and blamed a need for “consensus.” His administration now investigates Powell for supposedly dragging his feet on these very demands by Truth Social post.
Central bank leaders from around the world issued a rare joint statement supporting Jerome Powell and warning that Trump’s attacks threaten the independence of the Federal Reserve and global financial stability. I cannot emphasize how unusual it is for bank leaders from other countries to issue such a statement, and it speaks directly to the crisis in which we find ourselves.
And then Trump turned his sights back to Minnesota, posting an unhinged threat: “FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!” These are the words of an abuser. These are the words of a man deploying militarized ICE units into Minneapolis and Saint Paul while simultaneously smearing the very communities his forces are terrorizing.
The cruelty is not incidental. It is the point.
We have already seen reporting, confirmed in Slate, from a journalist who applied for an ICE job without passing drug tests, submitting a domestic violence affidavit, or meeting basic training requirements. She still got hired. Standards do not exist. And now, with mass hiring surges and lowered screening protocols, ICE has become the largest unregulated paramilitary force in the country. That is why people are protesting in Minneapolis. That is why Status Coup’s cameras are so critical. That is why your support matters.
As all of this unfolds, MAGA Republicans continue floating delusional imperial projects on state-run media. Today one GOP lawmaker proudly pushed a bill to make Greenland the 51st state, claiming America must “assert our dominance” and prevent Greenland from falling under Russian or Chinese control. This is what the Republican Party has become: a movement that cannot help working families pay for housing but has endless time for authoritarian fantasies and territorial conquest.
In other world news, protests continue to grow in Iran, with over 3,000 people reported killed by the regime’s forces. Independent sources say the real number could be at least 12,000 and possibly as high as 20,000. Make no mistake: this is a full blown revolution against the Ayatollah, and the regime is doing everything in it’s power to crush dissent, including imposing severe internet blackouts in an attempt to stop information from getting out. We will continue to share videos and updates on this situation as we verify them.
Stay tuned for Ron Filipkowski’s full bulletin later today. Stay engaged. Stay informed. And thank you again for supporting our reporting and the courageous work happening on the ground by independent reporters and regular Americans in Minneapolis.
