HEATHER

 

January 11, 2026 Heather Cox Richardson Jan 12 The news has seemed to move more and more quickly in the last week. The story underlying all others is that the United States Congress passed a law requiring the Department of Justice to release all the Epstein files—the files from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation into the activities of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein—no later than December 19, and it has not done so. Epstein and President Donald J. Trump were close friends for many years, and the material the Department of Justice (DOJ) has released suggests that Trump was more closely tied to Epstein’s activities than Trump has acknowledged. Although Trump ran in 2024 on the promise of releasing the Epstein files, suggesting those files would incriminate Democrats, his loyalists in the administration are now openly flouting the law to keep them hidden. Despite the clear requirement of the Epstein Files Transparency Act that they release all the files by December 19, to date they have released less than 1% of the material. Another part of the backstory of the past week is that the Supreme Court on December 23, 2025, rejected the Trump administration’s argument that it had the power to deploy federalized National Guard troops in and around Chicago, a decision that seemed to limit Trump’s power to use military forces within the United States. Yet another part of the backstory is that on New Year’s Eve, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released a 255-page transcript of former special counsel Jack Smith’s December 17 closed-door testimony before the committee. In that testimony—under oath—Smith said that his office had “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power. Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.” With pressure building over the Epstein files and Jack Smith’s testimony, and with the Supreme Court having taken away Trump’s ability to use troops within the United States, the administration went on the offensive. Only a week ago, on January 3, the military captured Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. After months of suggesting that he was determined to end what he called “narco-traffickers,” Trump made it clear as soon as Maduro was in hand that he wanted control of Venezuela’s oil. Then, on January 6, the fifth anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters determined to keep Trump in office despite Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s majority of 7 million votes, Trump’s White House rewrote the history of January 6, 2021, claiming that the rioters were “peaceful patriotic protesters” and blaming the Democrats for the insurrection. That same day, after the Supreme Court had cut off the administration’s ability to federalize National Guard soldiers and send them to Democratic-led cities, the administration surged 2,000 federal agents to Minneapolis in the largest federal immigration enforcement operation ever launched. The next morning, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good, and the administration responded by calling Good a domestic terrorist. On Thursday, January 8, as protests broke out across the country, Republicans in both chambers of Congress began to push back against the administration. In the House, Representatives Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), the leading sponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, asked U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer to appoint “a Special Master and an Independent Monitor to compel” the DOJ to produce the Epstein files as the law requires. The House also passed a measure to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits for three years. The Senate advanced a bill to stop the Trump administration from additional attacks on Venezuela without congressional approval. And, just two days after Trump had reversed the victims and offenders in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, suggesting that Capitol Police officers had been among the offenders, the Senate unanimously agreed to hang a plaque honoring the police who protected the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Congress passed a law in March 2022 mandating that the plaque be hung, but Republicans until now had prevented its installation. Friday was a busy day at the White House. On Friday, Trump threatened Greenland, saying that he was “going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.” Trump’s threat against a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally has had American lawmakers and foreign allies scrambling ever since. In a joint statement, the leaders of Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom said that “Greenland belongs to its people.” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) released a video explaining that “what you are essentially talking about here is the United States going to war with NATO, the United States going to war with Europe. You’re talking about the U.S. and France being at war with each other over Greenland.” Trump’s threats against Greenland came at a meeting with oil executives. When he attacked Venezuela to capture Maduro, Trump told reporters that United States oil companies would spend billions of dollars to fix the badly broken infrastructure of oil extraction in that country. But apparently the oil companies had not gotten the memo. They have said that they are not currently interested in investing in Venezuela because they have no idea how badly oil infrastructure there has degraded and no sense of who will run the country in the future. What oil executives did suggest to Trump on Friday was that they would quite like to be repaid for their losses from the 2007 nationalization of their companies from the sale of Venezuelan oil Trump has promised to control. ConocoPhillips, for example, claims it is owed about $12 billion. “We’re not going to look at what people lost in the past, because that was their fault,” Trump told them. “That was a different president. You’re going to make a lot of money, but we’re not going to go back.” Yesterday the government made public an executive order President Donald J. Trump signed on Friday, declaring yet another national emergency—his tenth in this term, by my count—and saying that any use of the revenue from the sale of Venezuelan oil to repay the billions of dollars owed to oil companies “will materially harm the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” Specifically, the executive order says, such repayment would “interfere with our critical efforts to ensure economic and political stability in Venezuela” and, by extension, jeopardize U.S. foreign policy objectives including “ending the dangerous influx of illegal immigrants and the flood of illicit narcotics;…protecting American interests against malign actors such as Iran and Hezbollah; and bringing peace, prosperity, and stability to the Venezuelan people and to the Western Hemisphere more generally.” So, it appears, Trump wants to retain control of the money from the sale of Venezuelan oil. Tonight Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said he is under federal criminal investigation related to his congressional testimony about a $2.5 billion renovation of historic Federal Reserve buildings. On Friday the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve grand jury subpoenas. Powell, whom Trump appointed, released a video noting that he has kept Congress in the loop on the renovation project and saying that complaints about renovations are pretexts. Trump is threatening criminal charges against Powell because the Fed didn’t lower interest rates as fast as Trump wanted, instead working in the interest of the American people. “This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions—or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.” Powell vowed to “continue to do the job the Senate confirmed me to do, with integrity and a commitment to serving the American people.” The Federal Reserve is designed to be independent of presidents to avoid exactly what Trump is trying to do. The attempt to replace Powell with a loyalist who will give Trump control over the nation’s financial system profoundly threatens the stability of the country. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, appeared to have had enough. He posted that “[i]f there were any remaining doubt whether advisers within the Trump Administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should now be none. It is now the independence and credibility of the Department of Justice that are in question.” He said he would “oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed—including the upcoming Fed Chair vacancy—until this legal matter is fully resolved.” Kyle Cheney of Politico observed that it is “[h]ard to overstate what a remarkable statement this is from a Republican senator…accusing the Trump White House of weaponizing DOJ to control the Fed.” Over a picture of the demolished East Wing of the White House, conservative lawyer George Conway noted: “I also must say that it’s a bit rich that Trump and his DOJ think it’s a good idea to gin up a bullshit investigation about supposed illegalities in....{checks notes}…renovating a federal building.” On social media tonight, Trump posted a portrait of himself with the title: “Acting President of Venezuela.”

 

January 12, 2026 A fading president obsesses over leaving a mark By Frank Bruni No matter what you think about the wisdom of the operation to snatch Nicolás Maduro, it was logistically audacious and technically impressive, an emphatic demonstration of American military prowess. It was President Trump flexing more than he has ever flexed before. But when, later that morning, he stood before television cameras at Mar-a-Lago to take his victory lap, it was more a victory wobble. He looked spent. He spoke in a mumbling, meandering fashion. He wasn’t President George W. Bush landing on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit in 2003 to deliver a speech prematurely declaring America’s interventions in Iraq a success; he was the same old Trump in the same old duds droning on in the same old way, only he sounded older. Granted, the 79-year-old president had been up all night or almost all night, a fact evident in part because he took a 4:30 a.m. call on his mobile phone from my Times colleague Tyler Pager. Anyone in Trump’s dress shoes would be exhausted. But his bearing and his cadence suggested something more than a mere sleep deficit, as did his inability to sound triumphant as he claimed another triumph, to flash much color as he peacocked. At a moment like that, you’d expect there to be enough adrenaline pumping through him for a pumped-up performance. Instead he delivered a wound-down one. It illustrated a potentially dangerous collision of dynamics that’s one of my great concerns about the span of time between now and the November midterms — which, as Trump well knows, could bring a comeuppance and then restraints that he doesn’t currently face. Will diminished vigor and a ticking clock yield expanded ambitions and compensatory displays of strength? Will his hunger — for more ostensible victories, for more recognition, for just plain more — intensify along with the prospect of political enfeeblement? I watch and listen to him and get the sense of a man stuffing himself at the buffet before it’s taken away. A man bellowing, or trying to bellow, about his superiority as his voice weakens. “Dominance,” “dominance,” “dominance” — he returned repeatedly to that word during his Mar-a-Lago news conference, a tic that was just as much a tell. Also telling was the show he staged for Pager and three other Times reporters — Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Katie Rogers and David E. Sanger — on Wednesday evening, when he welcomed them into the Oval Office for a two-hour interview whose duration was part of its point, as Trump himself made clear. “Two hours,” he said to the reporters as the interview concluded. “I could go nine hours.” With the reporters present, he took a phone call from Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia. The call’s contents were off the record, but its length — “the better part of an hour,” as the reporters described it — was something Trump seemed to want noted. He asked them, “Do you think Biden could do that?” Rogers wrote that Trump sought to “present himself as indefatigable, projecting stamina and energy for a news organization he has accused of seditious behavior for reporting about his health and age.” And Trump said unabashedly that the only limits to his power were his “own morality.” Which, to my ears, means no limits at all. I’ve never observed in Trump anything approaching a conventional moral code, a set of ethical bearings that circumscribe his conduct. I’ve beheld gripes, grudges, whims and wants — so very, very many wants. For months now, he has been acting with a rapacity remarkable even for someone so famously given to greed. He’s creating an ostentatious White House ballroom in a new East Wing as tall as the main White House building. He’s attempting to stamp his visage on both sides of a $1 coin to commemorate the country’s 250th birthday. He’s constructing a whole new monument — a gaudy arch — for the occasion, too. He announced the building of a “golden fleet” of “Trump class” warships. He put his name on the Kennedy Center and on the U.S. Institute of Peace. “You’ve got to put your name on stuff, or no one remembers you,” he reportedly said during his first term in the presidency. In this second term, he’s in “don’t you dare forget me” mode, and the infinity of directions in which that impulse could sprawl is terrifying. Could it spread to Greenland? That’s a buffet item he’s eyeing. To Canada? He has salivated over it. He’s lavish with threats. He’s brimming with need. He wants more affirmation. He bristles when it’s not immediately forthcoming. “I wish you could explain to me what the hell’s going on with the mind of the public,” Trump told Republican members of the House at a party gathering last week, alluding to polls that portray an unhappy, restive electorate. “Because we have — we have the right policy.” Those pesky voters! So unappreciative. Trump warned the lawmakers that they’ve “got to win the midterms” because if they don’t, “I’ll get impeached.” That’s the statement of a man who is keenly aware of his power’s mortality — and who seems to be combating and quelling his anxiety by taking an ever more extravagant power trip.

 

Kill, smear, cover-up Judd Legum Jan 12 A picture of Renee Nicole Good is displayed near a makeshift memorial for Good, who was shot and killed at point-blank range on January 7 by an ICE agent. (CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP via Getty Images) On January 7, Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen, was fatally shot by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis. After her death, Good was subjected to a vicious smear campaign by the President, the Vice President, administration officials, and their allies. The baseless attacks against Good are a coordinated, brazen and callous government propaganda effort. The goal is to convince Americans to believe an official narrative over objective evidence — including video of the incident. It is an ongoing campaign to legitimize the homicide of an American based on misinformation. Meanwhile, the FBI is blocking state law enforcement from conducting an independent investigation while selectively leaking information to partisan outlets. Minnesota officials are calling it a cover-up. Trump: Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer” In a January 7 post on Truth Social, Trump claimed that Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer.” This is objectively false. Videos taken by witnesses show that the first shot into Good’s vehicle occurred while Ross was standing in front of the vehicle as Good turned the wheel to avoid him. The second and third shots occurred while Ross was standing to the side of Good’s vehicle. There is no evidence that Good’s car even touched Ross, much less ran him over. In the post, Trump claimed it was “hard to believe [Ross] is alive.” In a video, Ross stays on his feet throughout the incident and is seen walking toward Good’s car, which crashed, after the shooting. The Department of Homeland Security says Ross went to the hospital and was released, but there is no documentation of any specific injuries. Trump repeated this claim to New York Times reporters that same day. “[Good] behaved horribly,” Trump claimed. “And then she ran him over. She didn’t try to run him over. She ran him over.” Trump then showed reporters a video he said supported his claims. When the reporters noted the video did not show Good running over Ross, Trump said it was a “terrible scene.” In a January 8 press conference, Vice President J.D. Vance repeated Trump’s false claims. “Ramming an ICE officer with your car, that’s what justifies being shot,” Vance said. Noem: Good engaged in an “act of domestic terrorism” Hours after the incident, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed that Good “attempt[ed] to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents,” which Noem described as an “act of domestic terrorism.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller also described the incident as “domestic terrorism“ on X. Domestic terrorism is defined by law as a violent criminal act intended to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.” In this case, Good was driving home after taking her 6-year-old son to school. There is no evidence that she was attempting to hit Ross. She has no criminal record beyond a speeding ticket and no known links to any terrorist group. Good’s last words were, “That’s fine dude. I’m not mad at you.” Leavitt: Good was an “insurrectionist” and part of a “sinister left-wing movement” On January 8, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed Good was part of “a large, sinister left-wing movement.” Leavitt also described Good as “a leftist insurrectionist who was purposefully and illegally obstructing law enforcement operations.” Vance amplified these claims, contending Good was “brainwashed“ and a “victim of left-wing ideology.” “We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate!,” Trump added on Truth Social. An insurrectionist is someone involved in a violent uprising against the government. Good was not associated with any violent or extremist group. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Good was affiliated with ICE Watch, a loose coalition of citizens that alerts neighbors to ICE activity using whistles and messaging apps. This activity is legal and constitutionally protected. “We had whistles. They had guns,” Good’s wife, Becca Good, said in a statement. “Covering up the killing of a U.S. citizen” The known facts do not support the official federal government narrative of Renee Good’s killing. Now, in an unusual move, the federal government is excluding state law enforcement from the investigation. Initially, the FBI and Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) agreed to conduct a joint investigation of Good’s death. This is standard procedure. But this agreement was quickly rescinded. The BCA says it has lost “access to the case materials, scene evidence [and] investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation.” As a result, the BCA believes it will not be able to conduct a thorough investigation that will ensure “accountability and public confidence.” Instead, the investigation will be led exclusively by the FBI, which is run by Kash Patel, one of Trump’s most partisan supporters. Patel wrote a series of children’s books that referred to Trump as a “king.” “What are you hiding?” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison asked. “I mean, if you feel that you’re — that the ICE agent operated within the law, then let there be an investigation so that that can be revealed.” Ellison said that the federal government was undermining “a fair, transparent investigation” by excluding state investigators. According to Ellison, the FBI investigation “will look simply like a whitewash… covering up… what could well be nefarious, bad activity.” “Let’s call a spade a spade,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said. “Kristi Noem watched the videos and doesn’t want an impartial investigation because she knows her narrative about domestic terrorism is bullshit.” After an officer-involved shooting, it is standard protocol for the officer and witnesses to remain on the scene to be interviewed. Further, nothing should be removed from the scene. But in this case a video shows “several agents, including the agent who opened fire, get in their vehicles and drive off, apparently altering the active crime scene.” ICE policy requires “officers and agents… to activate body-worn cameras at the start of enforcement activities and to record throughout interactions.” But no body cam videos have been released. Since the federal government has asserted control over the investigation, it has selectively leaked evidence to ideologically friendly publications. A 47-second video of the incident, for example, was shared with Alpha News, a right-wing outlet in Minnesota. It was then amplified by Vance. It was released by the DHS the next day. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced she was conducting her own investigation and urged the public to submit evidence directly to her office. Vance told reporters on January 8 that Ross has “absolute immunity” for Good’s killing. Moriarty said that is not true. Moriarty revealed that federal law enforcement removed Good’s vehicle from the scene before state investigators could examine it. Good’s car is a key piece of evidence because it could help definitively establish if Ross was struck in any way.