Author: Ophelia Benson

Updates on the latest ICE murder:

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that federal officers were conducting an operation as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

She said officers fired “defensive shots” after a man with a handgun approached them and “violently resisted” when officers tried to disarm him. O’Hara said police believe the man was a “lawful gun owner with a permit to carry.”

Are Trump and allies going to go all anti-guns now?

An angry crowd gathered after the shooting and screamed profanities at federal officers, calling them “cowards” and telling them to go home.

One officer responded mockingly as he walked away, telling them: “Boo hoo.”

So we should be happy when random people are murdered by the cops? We’re crybabies if we object? They’re going with that?

Via Mosnae in comments:

White House posts digitally altered image of woman arrested after ICE protest

I’m sure the fact that the woman is Black has nothing to do with this whimsical bit of forgery from the Trump goons.

The captions are wrong: the one on the left is the fake, obviously.

Pretty unabashedly racist, if you ask me. In the real image she looks calm and resolved; in the fake one created and posted by the government she looks a mess.

They get worse every day.

Another kill.

A Minneapolis man was shot and killed by federal agents today, according to city officials. The man is believed to be a US citizen, police said.

DHS says agents defended themselves: The Department of Homeland Security said the man had a handgun and approached Border Patrol officers during a targeted operation. He “violently resisted” when officers tried to disarm him, and an agent shot him in self-defense, according to DHS.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said videos show masked agents “pummeling one of our constituents and shooting him to death,” and he denounced the “impunity” of federal agents operating in the city. Gov. Tim Walz called on President Donald Trump to pull ICE out of Minneapolis and allow Minnesota to lead an investigation into the shooting.

Horst Wessel.

God damn them all to hell.

The National Park Service has taken down an exhibit on slavery at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, the Interior Department said on Thursday, following President Trump’s directive to remove materials that promote “corrosive ideology.”

What corrosive ideology would that be? The one that doesn’t try to deny the fact that the US was a slaveholding nation for its first three centuries? Is it really more corrosive to admit it than it is to lie about it? No, it damn well is not.

The outdoor exhibit, called “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation,” memorialized nine people enslaved by George Washington at the President’s House Site, where the first president once lived. The exhibit “examines the paradox between slavery and freedom in the founding of the nation,” according to a description on the Park Service website.

See the famous Samuel Johnson remark: “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”

The move follows an executive order issued by Mr. Trump in March 2025 instructing the Park Service, a part of the Interior Department, to review materials at national sites to ensure they “focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people” and do not “inappropriately disparage Americans.”

Accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative eh wot?

Bad idea. Terrible idea. Very Trumpian idea. Boast loudly at all times and never admit mistakes or cruelties or harms. Terrible idea because if you don’t admit the flaws you won’t fix them. That certainly is how Trump operates, and look at the result.

The removal of the exhibit comes amid a broader effort by the Trump administration to de-emphasize Black history. The National Park Service has removed merchandise related to diversity, equity and inclusion from its gift shops, and cut Martin Luther King’s Birthday and Juneteenth, two holidays honoring Black history, from its list of free entrance days this year.

Ugh. Those horrible spiteful fucks.

The bullying continues.

Trump on Saturday threatened to slap 100% tariffs on Canadian imports if America’s second-biggest trading partner makes a trade deal with China.

…

Trump mockingly referred to Carney as “governor,” a term he has also used for former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, playing off his call for Canada to become the 51st US state.

“Playing off” nothing. They always have to sugar-coat it. Don’t sugar-coat it.

“It sounds like Trump is lashing out at Carney for stealing the limelight at Davos. (Trump) didn’t get his tariffs over Greenland, so now he’s searching for another target to threaten,” said Inu Manak, senior fellow for international trade at the Council on Foreign Relations.

That’s more like it. Trump is acting like an angry toddler, but with real bullets. It’s neither normal nor amusing.

Trump one week ago: "It's a good thing for him [Carney] to sign a trade deal. If he can get a deal with China, he should do that."

Trump today: "If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff against all Canadian goods and products". pic.twitter.com/wakc1hPMkW

— Adam Schwarz (@AdamJSchwarz) January 24, 2026

Not just women

A Scottish university has issued guidance stating that it is “not just women” who menstruate and experience the menopause.

The advice from the University of Strathclyde states that “trans men and women” may have “actual or pseudo menopause symptoms”. It adds that non-binary and intersex people can also be affected. It reiterates this guidance for menstruation, stating again that it is “not only women” who have periods.

Silly party trick. “If you use different words to label women then it’s “not just women” who do things only women can do. Very impressive; even adorable; now stop talking and finish up your vegetables.

For Women Scotland (FWS) described the guidance as “misleading, deeply stupid and, quite frankly, offensive”.

Yes but offensive only to people who think women count as human, so, you know – no big deal.

Documents obtained from the university, which is in Glasgow, state that the guidance is “part of a series which outlines support for students at the University of Strathclyde, with a particular focus on promoting equality of opportunity and preventing discrimination irrespective of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, care experience or socio-economic background”.

Oh come on, that’s only 14 items, surely you can pile up more than that. Dance experience, political orientation, board games background, ability to read a map, age at birth, height, zither playing, biceps – keep going.

Its Student Menopause Guidance states: “It is not only women who go through menopause and related symptoms. Some trans men and women, who may experience actual or pseudo-menopause systems due to treatment or treatment interruptions, as well as non-binary people and intersex people can also be affected.”

In other words if you rename everything then you rename everything, so ha. Cute trick.

The independent MSP Ash Regan, who quit as an SNP minister in 2022 over its plans to make it easier for people to change their legally recognised gender, said: “The promotion of ideological claims that men can somehow experience menopause or menstruation has reduced serious health provision to a nonsense, including, shamefully, within academic institutions like the University of Strathclyde, where critical thought is assumed to be foundational.

“As we have increasingly come to expect, women and girls are being treated as secondary subsets of their own sex. Only women menstruate and experience systems of menopause. It is not only wildly inaccurate to suggest that men go through some sort of ‘pseudo menopause’ but deeply insulting to the hundreds of thousands of women, in Scotland, who experience debilitating menopause systems annually.

Ah well you see that is the point. Being deeply insulting to women is the hot new way to be More Progressive Than Thou.

The University of Strathclyde said: “The university is a socially progressive, people-oriented organisation, which values the diversity of its student and staff populations and seeks to create a culture where everyone is welcome and thrives within the institution.”

Everyone except women, that is. Of course. Why would women be included?

Fairy pronouns a step too far?

The Green Party is being sued by a former member who was suspended for mocking “fairy” pronouns.

Emma Bateman, who was co-chair of Green Party Women, was found to have breached diversity rules by making “clearly antagonistic” comments about “fae/faer” pronouns, a type of “neopronoun” inspired by the mythical world.

So there are “diversity rules” that require solemn respect for bullshit like “neopronouns” “inspired by” “the mythical world”? Have we reached peak stupid yet?

Ms Bateman, 58, is suing the party for discrimination under the Equality Act 2010 after being repeatedly suspended and eventually expelled for her gender-critical views.

Speaking to The Telegraph, she claimed to have been labelled an “anti-Semitic, eugenicist, fascist, far-Right bigot” and warned the party’s “dogmatic” support for trans rights threatened to ruin its reputation for “following the science” on climate change.

Which the party’s even more dogmatic support for the fae/faer citizens of the neopronoun world will hammer even more firmly into the ground.

Ms Bateman’s legal battle with the party stretches back years. She says she was first put on a “no-fault” suspension in 2021 after asking whether Kathryn Bristow, then the co-chairman of Green Party Women, was biologically female.

At the time, Bristow identified as a transgender woman and claimed to be female. They now go by “any” pronouns.

In other words he’s a man who makes a point of forcing other people to pay special attention to him.

Ms Bateman also warned that the party’s position on trans rights “makes a mockery” of its claims that it is following the science on climate change.

“The Green Party prides itself on being a party of science, and we want people to believe us on climate change, and that’s one of the first things that I got into this over because I thought no one is going to believe us on science if we can’t tell them what a man and a woman is, because it’s ridiculous,” she said.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous to say we can’t tell you whether someone is male or female, but we’re a science-based party. I mean, it makes a mockery of it, so that’s why I was really vehement about it.”

See also: Pharyngula, and Freethought Blogs in general. We all about science! And freethought! And if you refuse to say men can be women you are OF THE DEVIL.

To wash out our brains from the Minneapolis dirt.

The Freedom Singers, Newport 1964.

Medical doctor is nostalgic for the days when people died in their thousands of cholera, diphtheria, typhus, tb, smallpox.

Offering a startlingly candid view into the philosophy guiding vaccine recommendations under the Trump administration, the leader of the federal panel that recommends vaccines for Americans said shots against polio and measles — and perhaps all diseases — should be optional, offered only in consultation with a clinician.

Dr. Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist who is chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, said that he did have “concerns” that some children might die of measles or become paralyzed with polio as a result of a choice not to vaccinate. But, he said, “I also am saddened when people die of alcoholic diseases,” adding, “Freedom of choice and bad health outcomes.”

Maybe, just maybe, freedom of choice is not more important than herd immunity. Maybe freedom of choice that puts other people at risk is not a valid form of freedom of choice. Maybe the collective good actually does matter more than Mai Perrsonal Choyce.

In the case of an infectious disease, a personal choice to decline a vaccine may also affect others, including infants who are too young to be vaccinated or people who are immunocompromised. But a person’s right to reject a vaccine supersedes those risks, Dr. Milhoan said.

Nope, it doesn’t. Maybe if said person lives in a sealed building and is never physically able to infect other people said person has a right to reject a vaccine, but otherwise, no. People don’t have a right to run over pedestrians, they don’t have a right to set fire to the neighborhood because they’re chilly, they don’t have a right to take up two seats on the bus when people are standing.

Dr. Milhoan said that making the vaccines optional, rather than requiring them for entry into public schools nationwide, as is now the case, would ultimately restore trust in public health.

As measles and polio come roaring back? I don’t think so.

“He has no idea what he’s talking about,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the infectious disease committee at the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“These vaccines protect children and save lives,” Dr. O’Leary said. “It’s very frustrating for those of us who spend our careers trying to do what we can to improve the health of children to see harm coming to children because of an ideological agenda not grounded in science.”

But freedom! Freedom freedom freedom!

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on The asteroid doesn’t care.

I’m terrible at remembering who said what and when, but someone at a recent podcast made the point that many European leaders lack the confidence to take a strong bold stance against Trump because their popular support is so weak. Well, maybe their popular support is weak precisely because they’re perceived as so feeble and pathetic and spineless and lacking in character. They’re sure as hell not doing anything to earn my support. At least we can all stop pretending to be baffled by how the Germans could go along with the the Nazis and still manage to live with themselves: We’re seeing the same collective failure play out before our eyes right now. There’s a reason why the first lesson from Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny was “Don’t obey in advance”. Because if you fail that test, you have already failed all the others.

Speaking of which, this is anecdotal, so don’t take my word for it, but supposedly the guy who coined “Godwin’s Law” has retracted his own invention in the light of recent events. Taken literally, the so-called “Hitler fallacy” was, of course, always kind of a silly idea. Obviously analogies to Hitler and the Nazis should be used with caution, but to dismiss any such analogy as inherently fallacious in principle pretty much amounts to saying that there is nothing we can possibly learn from the worst atrocities in history. That doesn’t seem like a very useful lesson to me.

A much more useful concept is the “Historian’s Fallacy” which basically boils down to thinking and acting as if people in the past had access to the same information that’s available to us now about what was going to happen later. When Hitler was elected Reichskanzler in 1933, the horrors of World War 2 and the Holocaust were still years into the future, and it is fallacious to take our current knowledge of what happened later into account when judging the behavior of the Germans at the time. This still does not get the Germans off the hook, however, since the information that was available to them – Hitler’s attempted coup d’état, his obvious extremism as expressed in Mein Kampf, his many speeches, the party program of the N.S.D.A.P. etc. – should have been more than enough to conclude that this person needed to be kept as far away from the reins of power as possible. Likewise, the information that is already available about Trump (and has been since before he was first elected in 2016) should have been more than enough to lead any sane and halfway decent person to the exact same conclusion, and this remains true even if – by some miracle – we manage to get out of the current crisis relatively unscathed. Again, it’s fallacious to take things that haven’t happened yet into account. If anything, the people who go along with Trump now have even less of an excuse than the Germans of the 1930s. For one thing, we really do have the benefit of knowing how things turned out back them. And, of course, as much as there is reason to worry about the weaponization of the American legal system, the role of ICE etc., the risk associated with opposing Trump is still negligible compared to risk associated with opposing Hitler once he came to power.

What I still keep wondering is why Kennedy thinks he knows better than the people who have actual education in the subject. He does not have that education.

The Trump administration announced new dietary guidelines on Wednesday, including an inverted food pyramid that places red meat and whole-fat dairy at the top alongside fruits and vegetables.

“We are ending the war on saturated fats,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during a press conference at the White House this week. “My message is clear. Eat real food.”

But saturated fats—>cholesterol. Why is Bad Kennedy telling us to up our cholesterol?

The new guidelines encourage research-backed practices like eating more whole foods including fruits, vegetables and whole grains, as well as reducing intake of highly processed foods. But it also offers different guidance [from] what health experts say about eating large amounts of red meat, whole milk and cheese.

Why does it? Why does he think he’s qualified to ignore what health experts say? He is not a health expert. He’s what’s commonly known as a crank. He has crank ideas about diet. He also has a job that empowers him to enshrine his crank ideas in government health advice. That’s bad.

Having too much saturated fat in your diet can lead to spikes in your cholesterol levels and increase your chances of heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association. Full-fat dairy tends to be high in saturated fat.

Why is Bad Kennedy so happy to urge 340+ million people to increase our chances of heart disease and stroke? Why does he feel so entitled to take that risk? Why doesn’t his lack of actual education in the subject give him pause?

Oh good, let’s make grease great again.

Beef tallow, a fat that both cardiologists and the federal government told Americans to avoid for nearly half a century, has become an unexpected breakout star in the new federal dietary guidelines.

The rendered beef fat has been quietly growing in popularity over the past few years among cooks who like how it crisps fries and doughnuts, beauty influencers who smooth it on their skin and others who favor it for high-fat diets or believe it’s healthier than oil pressed from seeds.

On Thanksgiving in 2024, it was thrust onto the national stage. A barefoot Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pulled a turkey from a vat of boiling beef tallow and declared, “This is how we cook the MAHA way,” referring to the “Make America Healthy Again” movement he leads.

Oh well then. He’s the expert after all.

Now the federal government has enshrined the fat as healthy. “We are ending the war on saturated fats,” Mr. Kennedy said at a news conference on Wednesday where he introduced new dietary guidelines that will steer national nutrition programs for the next five years.

The updated food pyramid he released flips the traditional diagram on its head. It downplays whole grains and moves protein and full-fat dairy to the top, as foods to be eaten most often, along with fruits and vegetables. Beef tallow and butter, which is also high in saturated fat, are name-checked along with olive oil in the guidelines as cooking mediums to prioritize. The guidelines add that “more high-quality research is needed to determine which types of dietary fats best support long-term health.”

A collective shudder rose from the nation’s established nutrition and medical communities, which point to studies that show saturated fats can increase the risk of heart disease. The American Heart Association issued a counterstatement advising people to avoid tallow and other high-fat animal products to keep artery-clogging cholesterol levels low.

Ok but obviously R Kennedy knows better because his name ends in Kennedy.

Rob Henderson in the Times:

In recent years, casual contempt for white women has come mostly from the left. On May 25, 2020, the same day that George Floyd was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, a white woman called the police on a black man who was birdwatching in Central Park. Derek Chauvin went to prison for murdering Floyd, and Amy Cooper was given an insulting nickname for her supposedly racist reaction.

She was dubbed “the Central Park Karen”.

Since then, many conservatives have complained about the left’s attack on white people and the “values” of white supremacy, which apparently include perfectionism, urgency, individualism and objectivity. All of this helped fuel a political backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and the second term of President Trump.

Henderson blunts his point by failing to point out that there is no male equivalent of “Karen”. Part of the venom of the pejorative “Karen” is that this despicable person is female. Yuck. Yet there is no Bob or Dave or Steve. Why’s that then? It can’t possibly be because there’s something disgusting or contemptible about just being female, can it?

After a federal ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old white woman in Minneapolis, on January 7, Republican officials and conservative commentators characterised her as “very violent”, a “deranged lunatic woman” and a “domestic terrorist”. They also tarnished her with an insult long used in certain corners of social media but which is new to the general public: Awful.

The term, which first appeared on Wiktionary as AWFL, stands for “Affluent White Female Urban Liberal”, and it’s how the conservative commentator Erik Erickson described the killing of Good on X. “An AWFUL,” he wrote, “is dead after running her car into an ICE agent who opened fire on her. Progressive whites are turning violent. ICE agents have the right to defend themselves.”

And yet there’s no AWMUL. Why’s that? Because it’s much worse when women do it?

Because long before Awfuls existed, the progressive left had been demonising Karens. Take The Root, a left-wing outlet that covers race in America, rounded up “20 real-life Karens who ruined someone’s day” over the past few years. The piece noted that: “You can’t even board a plane or even feed the homeless without one of them spawning into a racist or ignorant tantrum. Luckily, some of them end up facing the law when their tirades escalate into acts of violence or other harmful behaviour.”

But no such rants about George or Mike or Jim.

Funny how that works.

Sigh.

Let Andrea Egan’s appointment as Unison general secretary be the last, dying breath of this pernicious disease. pic.twitter.com/x13TcKcfJz

— Bruce Bowman (@boswelltoday) January 23, 2026

No, the argument cannot “then develop to” whatever scenario you dream up. Knowing that men are not women does not “develop to” or lead to or prompt or motivate or allow random extreme remarks along the lines of “you’re out because you have blue eyes.” Saying, pointing out, underlining that men are not and cannot be women is not random the way “because blue eyes” is. What sex people are is not random and it’s not always or automatically irrelevant. It’s not random and arbitrary to say that men should not be in women’s sports or in jobs reserved for women.

Trans nephews are irrelevant to this fact.

Trump big mad at Canada.

Trump rescinded on Thursday his invitation for Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada to join his “Board of Peace,” an organization that he had founded to oversee a peace deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza but that he has now tried to broaden into an institution to rival the United Nations.

Which is like trying to square the circle, because the United Nations is what it says on the tin – a grouping of nations – while Trump’s “Board of Peace” is one deranged man’s plaything. There’s no rivalry because there’s no commonality.

In a high-profile speech at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday, Mr. Carney had urged leaders of smaller nations to band together to resist Mr. Trump’s America First doctrine and his efforts to dismantle the post-World War II international order. On Thursday, hours before Mr. Trump’s announcement, Mr. Carney went further, denouncing “authoritarianism and exclusion” in a speech that appeared to be referencing the president.

Though Mr. Trump did not explain why he was rescinding the invitation, Mr. Trump, who often lashes out against leaders who publicly defy him, appeared to be reacting to Mr. Carney’s candid remarks. In a similar episode months earlier, Mr. Trump sought to punish Canada with additional tariffs because of a Canadian television ad that quoted former President Ronald Reagan denouncing tariffs.

And so he struck the blow.

“Please let this Letter serve to represent that the Board of Peace is withdrawing its invitation to you regarding Canada’s joining, what will be, the most prestigious Board of Leaders ever assembled, at any time,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post framed as a letter to Mr. Carney.

In a language purporting to be English but not really managing it.

Trump rescinding the invitation to Mr. Carney was also the latest sign that the Board of Peace would be anything but a typical international organization, where disagreement and open discourse among member states is tolerated or even encouraged. Its charter grants Mr. Trump, the chairman of the organization, outsized power, including the authority to veto decisions, approve the agenda, invite and remove members, dissolve the board entirely and designate his successor.

So why would anyone want to join such a “board”?

Well, does he?

Trump Shows ‘Unmistakable’ Signs of Advanced Dementia, Experts Say

[M]any U.S. mental health experts have been warning for years that Trump not only fits the profile of a dangerous psychopath, but has numerous hallmark signs of dementia. Today, we revisit their findings – a reminder that the future of the world is at risk if we continue to deny that the emperor has no clothes.

A psychopath with dementia is an alarming prospect. You know who else is an alarming prospect? Trump. What a coincidence!

[T]he authors did not just warn that Trump was dangerously callous, mentally disturbed and showing clear psychopathic tendencies. In later interviews, petitions and editorials, Bandy Lee and others pointed out that he was showing hallmark signs of cognitive decline, including in a statement on the World Mental Health Coalition’s website. Their concerns included not only Trump’s incoherence, impaired memory, and “confabulation, where memory gaps are filled with false or fabricated details,” but also an “amplification” of his paranoid, narcissistic, and antisocial personality traits, which they described as “criminal and dangerous.” The experts also noted Trump’s aggression, disinhibition in behavior and vulgar, hateful language. 

Is that dementia or is it just who Trump is? I don’t know, because I never paid any attention to him until it suddenly became imperative (at which point it was way too late).

Former Johns Hopkins professor Dr. John Gartner has raised similar concerns, both in media appearances and a 2024 petition saying that. “Donald Trump is showing unmistakable signs strongly suggesting dementia, based on his public behavior and informant reports that show progressive deterioration in memory, thinking, ability to use language, behavior, and both gross and fine motor skills.” 

​​In an April 2025 conversation with MindSite News, Gartner explained his conviction that “there was absolutely no doubt” that Trump has dementia. “We’ve collected dozens and dozens of Trump’s phonemic paraphrasias, in which you use sounds in place of an actual word (a hallmark of brain damage and dementia),” said Gartner in one of the many examples he gave. “Trump will say something like ‘mishiz’ for missiles, or ‘Chrishus’ for Christmas, because he can’t complete the word. He is losing his capacity for coherent speech…Then there is the physical deterioration. He used to be quite graceful, and now he uses a wide-based gait typical of frontotemporal dementia.”

Scary enough yet?

Sucks to be you, girls.

🚨For the third year in a row, a boy has stolen a Southern Regional Oireachtas Irish dance title.

On December 7th, male dancer Elias "Alyssa" Saltzman took 1st in the girls' U16 solo category at the 2025 Southern Region Oireachtas which were held in Orlando Florida, not only… pic.twitter.com/0whP8P3dNS

— HeCheated.org (@hecheateddotorg) December 10, 2025

It’s the girls’ category. He’s not a girl.

Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on Ownership.

I’m getting increasingly annoyed when people make a point of how America already has military bases on Greenland and are free to pretty much do what they want. So if they didn’t have have the Danish government’s permission to act as if they owned the place, that would indeed be a legitimate reason to invade? There’s a reason why negotiating with terrorists is considered such a terrible idea. If it were up to me, the American forces on Greenland would be given 24 hours to get the hell out the moment Trump put forth his threat (at the very latest).

As embarrassing as it must be (or at least should!) to be American these days, it’s hardly any better to be European. It’s been sickening to watch our leaders compete to abase themselves before the orange bully and sacrifice every shred of integrity, dignity and honor in exchange for less than nothing. If cringiness had mass, the world would have collapsed into a black hole long ago. Not only are they failing to protect Europe, but they’re turning it into something not even worth protecting. I don’t know whether the European spine died with Churchill and De Gaulle or simply atrophied out of existence through decades of disuse, but anyway it’s gone.

Think of Trump’s America as asteroid on a direct collision course with the Earth. You wouldn’t waste your time trying to talk the asteroid into changing its trajectory or argue about what we need the asteroid to do? It doesn’t care. You simply do whatever you have to do to push it out of the way. There is no harm the asteroid is going to do if you fail to appease it that it’s not going to do anyway. Same with Trump. He is going to do as much harm and evil as you allow him to do, and that’s it. There is no possible consequence of fighting back with everything you’ve got that’s worse than failure to do so.

The Battle of Minneapolis continues.

Federal agents deployed smoke and chemicals on Jan. 21 as they clashed with protesters and observers at two spots in south Minneapolis.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino lobbed a smoke canister at Mueller Park in the Whittier neighborhood. “I’m gonna gas. Get back. Gas is coming. Gas is coming, second warning. Second warning,” Bovino can be heard saying in a video captured by Ben Luhmann. “Gas on film! Gas on film!” Luhmann shouts in response.

“Third warning. Gas, gas, gas,” Bovino says, before tossing the canister and pushing people away from the street. Plumes of green and gray smoke burst over the crowd as protesters and observers run from the scene. Some were hit in the face with orange spray. The smoke left behind green stains in the snow.

Just a short while earlier and about a mile away, near West 28th Street and Blaisdell Avenue, agents held a person to the ground as they sprayed a bright orange chemical irritant directly into their face.

I suppose this is what Trump wants. There could be a slower, calmer, less sadistic process by which people who have overstayed their visas (or never had a visa, and so on) are given notice to leave, but that wouldn’t provide MAGA with the thrills it craves.

Just a short while earlier and about a mile away, near West 28th Street and Blaisdell Avenue, agents held a person to the ground as they sprayed a bright orange chemical irritant directly into their face.

The violent encounters between federal agents and local residents set off just before 2 p.m. Wednesday after the detainment of two people near Blaisdell Avenue and West 28th Street drew dozens of protesters who began to yell at the officers.

The encounters came soon after the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily stayed a lower court’s order that had sought to prevent immigration agents from detaining and pepper-spraying protesters and observers.

This sounds kind of familiar. I wonder what it’s reminding me of…

Broken beyond repair.

Trump’s posturing over Greenland has irrevocably changed the transatlantic relationship, even after he backed away Wednesday from his threats of a US takeover of the Danish autonomous territory, European officials told CNN.

One European diplomat, speaking anonymously, described the last week as a “whirlwind of absurdity that damages transatlantic relations, distracts from Ukraine, and makes China and Russia very happy.”

…

Trump ruled out using military force to annex Greenland in his keynote speech at Davos on Wednesday, and he went on to drop his threatened tariffs and announce “the framework of a future deal” over the island after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

But the diplomatic chaos he unleashed over the last two weeks still lingers, with profound ramifications for the US-European economic and diplomatic relationship. A key group of European Parliament members blocked a vote to ratify a US-European trade deal Wednesday, underscoring the tensions between the transatlantic allies.

Of course it lingers. Trump has made it all too clear how reckless and clueless he is, and the fact that he retreats just a little when the adults push back does not mean he has become not reckless and clueless. He will never become that.

Trump ruled out using military force to annex Greenland in his keynote speech at Davos on Wednesday, and he went on to drop his threatened tariffs and announce “the framework of a future deal” over the island after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

But the diplomatic chaos he unleashed over the last two weeks still lingers, with profound ramifications for the US-European economic and diplomatic relationship. A key group of European Parliament members blocked a vote to ratify a US-European trade deal Wednesday, underscoring the tensions between the transatlantic allies.

When you have a deranged ignorant lunatic to deal with you don’t relax.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre emphasized that “NATO countries are cooperating day-by-day very closely.”

“Europe has its challenges. The United States has its challenges,” he told CNN. “But they’re all strong democracies, and they are allies in NATO. … We have great security to look after us and a very proud history of collaborating on that.”

Not really. The United States is not currently a strong democracy. It’s far too vulnerable to the deranged monstrous presider to be strong.