An Incident in Minneapolis

 Zolan Kanno-Youngs at NYT:

Just hours after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Mr. Trump told a group of New York Times reporters that the woman was at fault because she had tried to “run over” the officer.

We were in the Oval Office for an interview with the president, and the unfolding situation in Minneapolis was high on our list of questions. As soon as we started asking him about the incident, he said: “I want to see nobody get shot. I want to see nobody screaming and trying to run over policemen either.”

When we pressed Mr. Trump on his conclusion that the victim, Renee Nicole Good, tried to run over the agent, he asked an aide to pull up the video on a laptop in an effort to prove his point.

“That was a vicious situation that took place,” Mr. Trump said, apparently referring to what federal officials have said was an effort by Ms. Good to run down an ICE agent.

...

Before the video began, Mr. Trump acknowledged the tragic nature of the shooting. “With all of it being said, no, I don’t like that happening,” he said, before pivoting to his common refrain of criticizing illegal immigration.

As a slow-motion surveillance video of the shooting played on the laptop, we told him that this angle did not appear to show an ICE officer had been run over.

“Well,” Mr. Trump said. “I — the way I look at it … ”

“It’s a terrible scene,” Mr. Trump said at the end of the video. “I think it’s horrible to watch. No, I hate to see it.”

But did this fatal shooting mean his ICE operation had gone too far? Mr. Trump sidestepped the question, instead blaming his predecessor's immigration policies.

But did this fatal shooting mean his ICE operation had gone too far? Mr. Trump sidestepped the question, instead blaming his predecessor's immigration policies.

 

Btw, those in my QT's smugly asserting that law enforcement has wide latitude to use lethal force against fleeing suspects may wish to consult Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985).

— Jessica Riedl 🧀 🇺🇦 (@JessicaBRiedl) January 8, 2026

Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985) Argued: October 30, 1984 Decided: March 27, 1985 Annotation Primary Holding Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, a police officer may use deadly force to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect only if the officer has a good-faith belief that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.

The Growing Upper Middle Class

Many posts have discussed economic and educational inequality. 

Stephen J. Rose and Scott Winship at AEI:

Abstract:

Populists on both the political left and right routinely claim that the middle class has been hollowed out. These claims, to the extent they are based on evidence, rely on a relative definition of the middle class, such that if income doubles for every family, the middle class does not grow. Using an absolute definition of the middle class, we find that the “core” middle class has shrunk, but only because more families have become upper-middle class over time. The upper-middle class boomed from 10 percent of families in 1979 to 31 percent in 2024, and its share of income doubled. The share of families whose income left them short of the core middle class fell from 54 percent to 35 percent. Claims of a hollowed-out middle class wrongly reinterpret widespread (if unequal) gains across the income distribution as rising insecurity and declining living standards.

From the article:

We create five income classes, depending on how families’ inflation- and size-adjusted incomes compare with the poverty guideline: poor or near poor (less than 150 percent of the poverty guideline), lower-middle class (150 percent to under 250 percent), core middle class (250 percent to under 500 percent), upper-middle class (500 percent to under 1,500 percent), and rich (1,500 percent or higher). These thresholds were selected building on past research by one of us (Rose 2010, 2016, 2021). We report results using different thresholds as a sensitivity check below.

Table B1 displays the unadjusted family income ranges corresponding to each income class for families of different sizes. For a family of three, the thresholds dividing the five classes are, roughly, $40,000, $67,000, $133,000, and $400,000 (in 2024 dollars).

 

Weakening Nonprofits

Many posts have discussed the politics of philanthropy. 

Thomas B. Edsall at NYT:

In a detailed email, Kim Lane Scheppele, a sociologist at Princeton, described the administration’s evisceration of the nonprofit sector:

The entire nongovernment community (or — as we might say in tax parlance — the 501(c)(3) sector) has been threatened with a combination of loss of tax exemptions, cuts to federal funding and potential investigations.

Some statistics indicate that fully one-third of NGOS incorporated in the U.S. lost funding in the first half of 2025.

In this atmosphere, Scheppele continued,

NGOs are nervous — and some are pulling back from some of the causes that they know this administration does not support. Some NGOs have created “sister organizations” in other countries to shield resources from U.S. coercive measures (vindictive lawsuits, sudden tax-status changes) and provide an escape route if necessary.

Tracking the financial condition of nonprofit groups is difficult at best. They are only required to disclose receipts and expenditures annually in 990 reports to the I.R.S. A tax-exempt group reporting receipts and expenditures for the calendar year ending Dec. 31, 2025, does not have to file until this coming May 15. In addition, charitable organizations with 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) designations do not have to disclose donors.

 In this murky world of political dark money, Trump and Republican allies appear to have inflicted damage on the most powerful collection of pro-Democratic nonprofits, an interlocking network operating under the umbrella of Arabella Advisors that for two decades has channeled billions to liberal advocacy and get-out-the-vote groups. (I say “appear” because no documentation of current fund-raising and spending is available.)

In 2024 alone, according to I.R.S. reports, four groups aligned with Arabella — the Sixteen Thirty Fund, Windward Fund, Hopewell Fund and New Venture Fund — raised a total of $1.46 billion and spent $1.48 billion, largely in grants to liberal and Democratic-leaning groups.

The first clear signal that the Trump attacks were having considerable effect was a Gates Foundation announcement in June that it was halting grants to the nonprofits administered by Arabella Advisors.

Not Rallying Around the Flag

Many posts have discussed foreign policy, war powers and the US military. This weekend, the US snatched Maduro.

Bart Jansen at USA Today:

One in three Americans approve of the U.S. military strike to remove Nicolás Maduro from the presidency of Venezuela to face federal drug-trafficking charges, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Jan. 5.

In contrast, 72% of respondents worried about the United States becoming too involved in the South American country.

The two-day poll found a sharp partisan divide over the raid that President Donald Trump ordered, with his approval rating at 42%. The results found 65% of Republicans back the military operation, compared to 11% of Democrats and 23% of independents.

The Donroe Doctrine

Many posts have discussed foreign policy, war powers and the US military.  Yesterday, the US snatched Maduro.

Yesterday, Trump said:

Furthermore, under the now deposed dictator Maduro, Venezuela was increasingly hosting foreign adversaries in our region and acquiring menacing offensive weapons that could threaten US interest in lives. And they used those weapons last night. They used those weapons last night, potentially in league with the cartels operating along our border.

All of these actions were in gross violation of the core principles of American foreign policy dating back more than two centuries, and, uh, not anymore. All the way back, it dated to the Monroe Doctrines, and the Mo- -- Monroe Doctrine is a, a big deal, but we've superseded it by a lot. By a real lot. They now call it the "Donroe" Document.

I don't know. It's, uh, Monroe Doctrine. We sort of forgot about it. It was very important, but we forgot about it. We don't forget about it anymore. Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western hemisphere will never be questioned again. Won't happen. So, just in concluding, for decades, other administrations have neglected or even contributed to these growing security threats in the Western hemisphere.

 George F. Will at WP:

Universalism flows from the ninth word of the most important sentence in this creedal nation’s catechism: “all.” All human beings are endowed with unalienable rights, including the right to government legitimated by consent. The perennial American argument concerns what, if anything, this catechism commits the nation to do.

Twenty-one years ago, George W. Bush’s second inaugural address proclaimed “the calling of our time” to be nothing less than “ending tyranny in our world.” This project has not fared well since then.

The 1823 Monroe Doctrine declared the Western Hemisphere closed to further European colonization, and, implicitly, open to U.S. intervention in order to guarantee … Here things become murky. Commercial considerations (long ago, bananas; today, oil) and geopolitics have driven interventions.

The doctrine, although promulgated by President James Monroe, should be called the Adams Doctrine, for his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams. (The Marshall Plan, announced in a brief Harvard commencement speech by Harry Truman’s secretary of state, George Marshall, is not known as the Truman Plan.)

Although European colonization in this hemisphere long ago subsided, perhaps the Monroe Doctrine is still apposite. But two years before the Monroe Doctrine was enunciated, Secretary Adams said of our nation:

“Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

Jack Goldsmith:

In sum, it would not be terribly hard for the Justice Department to write an opinion in support of the Venezuela invasion even if the military action violates the U.N. Charter.

To repeat, that does not mean that the action is in fact lawful—and it pretty clearly isn’t under the U.N. Charter. It only means that the long line of unilateral executive branch actions, supported by promiscuously generous executive branch legal opinions, support it. As I wrote in connection with the Soleimani strike: “our country has—through presidential aggrandizement accompanied by congressional authorization, delegation, and acquiescence—given one person, the president, a sprawling military and enormous discretion to use it in ways that can easily lead to a massive war. That is our system: One person decides.”

This is not the system the framers had in mind, and it is a dangerous system for all the reasons the framers worried about. But that is where we are—and indeed, it is where we have been for a while.

The Separation of Powers at the Start of 2026

Many posts have discussed the separation of powers, which is rapidly eroding.

Zachary S. Price at The Atlantic:

In just the past 11 months, his administration has canceled billions of dollars in foreign aid, frozen billions of dollars in research grants, imposed new conditions on other grants and contracts, slashed agency staffs, and even sought to claw back certain prior grant payments. At the same time, it has employed military resources to assist immigration enforcement, offered civil-service buyouts without statutory authority, and reportedly used a private donation to help pay military salaries during this fall’s government shutdown.

 

"But Wiles conceded that attacking targets on Venezuela’s mainland would force Trump to get congressional approval. 'If he were to authorize some activity on land, then it’s war, then [we’d need] Congress.'"

- White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, November 2025 interview pic.twitter.com/xeajLbi3tM

— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) January 3, 2026

Without congressional authorization, the US military just attacked Venezuela and grabbed Maduro/

Vaccines: Information Gaps and Disinformation

 Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation.The greatest spreader of vaccine misinformation is the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Lauren Weber, Caitlin Gilbert, Dylan Moriarty and Joshua Lott at WP:

The share of U.S. counties where 95 percent or more of kindergartners were vaccinated against measles — the number doctors say is needed to achieve overall protection for the class, known as “herd immunity” — has dropped from 50 percent before the pandemic to 28 percent, according to The Post’s examination of the public records from 44 states and the District of Columbia.

Most of the counties that previously lacked herd immunity for kindergarten classrooms got worse, according to the Post analysis, which in most cases compared the academic years 2018-2019 and 2024-2025.

 ...

Data collection efforts by states are uneven. Public health authorities in some places are flying blind, without adequate data to guide policy decisions, The Post found, because vaccination records have not been uniformly collected. Many school districts are unable to keep track of which kids have received shots.

In Kentucky, state data shows that the measles vaccine rate in Jefferson County, which includes Louisville, was below 60 percent for kindergartners.

Data collection efforts by states are uneven. Public health authorities in some places are flying blind, without adequate data to guide policy decisions, The Post found, because vaccination records have not been uniformly collected. Many school districts are unable to keep track of which kids have received shots.

In Kentucky, state data shows that the measles vaccine rate in Jefferson County, which includes Louisville, was below 60 percent for kindergartners.

“It leaves parents very confused about who they should trust and what information they should rely on,” she said. “And ultimately, often families are choosing not to vaccinate because that feels safer, or it’s easier to not do something out of fear than it is to choose to make a decision.”

The federal vaccine advisory committee Kennedy remade with his appointments voted in December to eliminate a long-standing recommendation for every newborn to receive a hepatitis B shot, which the CDC approved. And more changes could be ahead for the vaccine schedule.

The number of parents questioning vaccine safety in Anita Chandra-Puri’s Chicago pediatric practice has doubled in the last few years, she said. Many of them are highly educated, but they keep coming across misleading information on social media, she said.

Across schools in Chicago, the measles vaccination rate has dropped 6 percent on average since the pandemic.

“They have access to every resource, and they think that they can become the expert at something because they’ve seen it multiple times” on social media, Chandra-Puri said.