Monday, January 19, 2026
■ Today's Top News
DEMAND INDEPENDENT AUTOPSIES AS A BEGINNING! ICE GESTAPO ARE KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE EVERYWHERE!
"This is the third person who has died in the $1.24 billion privately-run facility that focuses on profits instead of meeting basic standards," said one lawmaker.
By Julia Conley
Officials in both Texas and Minnesota are calling for accountability and a full investigation into conditions at Camp East Montana, the sprawling detention complex at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, following the third reported death at the facility in less than two months.
Victor Manuel Diaz, 36, was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Minneapolis, where ICE has been carrying out violent immigration arrests, cracking down on dissent, and where one officer fatally shot a legal observer earlier this month.
He was one of roughly 2,903 detainees being held at Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss US Army base, one of the largest ICE detention centers in the country, on January 14 when contract security workers found him “unconscious and unresponsive” in his cell.
DEMAND AN INDEPENDENT AUTOPSY!
He was later pronounced dead and ICE released a statement saying he had died of “presumed suicide,” but officials arre still investigating his cause of death.
Diaz’s death comes days after it was reported that a medical examiner in Texas was planning to classify another death reported at Camp East Montana—that of Geraldo Lunas Campos—as a homicide.
A doctor said Lunas Campos’ preliminary cause of death in early January was “asphyxia due to neck and chest compression.” An eyewitness said he had seen several guards in a struggle with the 55-year-old Cuban immigrant and then saw guards choking Lunas Campos.
A month prior of Lunas Campos’ death, 49-year-old Guatemalan immigrant Francisco Gaspar-Andres died at a nearby hospital; he was a detainee at Camp East Montana. ICE said medical staff attributed his death to “natural liver and kidney failure.”
Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan called for a “complete and transparent investigation” into what happened to Diaz after his death was announced Sunday.
“We deserve answers,” said Flanagan.
US Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), who last year expressed concern about the US government’s deal with a small private business, Acquisition Logistics LLC, to run Camp East Montana, said the detention center “must be shut down immediately,” warning that “two deaths in one month means conditions are worsening.”
After the administration awarded a $1.2 billion contract to Acquisition Logistics to build and operate the camp, lawmakers and legal experts raised questions about the decision, considering the small company had no listed experience running detention centers, its headquarters was listed as a Virginia residential address, and the president and CEO of the company did not respond to media inquiries.
“It’s far too easy for standards to slip,” Escobar told PBS Newshour after touring the facility. “Private facilities far too frequently operate with a profit margin in mind as opposed to a governmental facility.”
In September, ICE’s own inspectors found at least 60 violations of federal standards, with employees failing to treat and monitor detainees’ medical conditions and the center lacking safety procedures and methods for detainees to contact their lawyers.
Across all of ICE’s detention facilities, 2025 was the deadliest year for immigrant detainees in more than two decades, with 32 people dying in the agency’s centers.
After Diaz’s death was reported Sunday, former National Nurses United communications adviser Charles Idelson said that “ICE detention centers are functioning like death camps.”
"Every dollar of tariff revenue represents a dollar extracted from American businesses and households."
By Brad Reed
President Donald Trump has long insisted, in the face of decades of research by economists, that foreign producers are the only ones who are paying for his tariffs on imported goods.
However, a major new study released Monday by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, an economic think tank based in Germany, shows that US businesses and consumers are shouldering the burden for the vast majority of Trump’s tariffs.
After examining more than 25 million shipment records of goods imported to the US last year, the institute found that foreign exporters only absorbed 4% of the $200 billion in tariff payments, with the remaining 96% being passed on to US importers and consumers.
“This finding has profound implications,” the study explains. “If foreign exporters do not reduce their prices in response to tariffs, then the entire burden of the tariff falls on US buyers. The tariff functions not as a tax on foreign producers, but as a consumption tax on Americans. Every dollar of tariff revenue represents a dollar extracted from American businesses and households.”
The study identifies several factors to explain why exporters did not slash their prices to remain competitive in the lucrative US market, including exporters shifting their sales to other markets where they will not face such high tariffs; firms not being able to shoulder the high price cut that would be needed to overcome the tariff rates set by the president; and companies not wanting to give Trump an incentive for further tariffs by rewarding US consumers with lower prices.
Julian Hinz, research director at the Kiel Institute and an author of the study, described the Trump tariffs as an “own goal” that has harmed Americans far more than it has harmed foreigners.
“The claim that foreign countries pay these tariffs is a myth,” explained Hinz. “The data show the opposite: Americans are footing the bill.”
The Kiel Institute study came out two days after Trump vowed to slap even more tariffs on European countries opposed to his efforts to take over Greenland.
In an analysis published Monday, economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) said that the latest Trump tariffs on Europe amounted to a “$75 billion tax increase” in an attempt to fulfill the president’s “demented dreams” of taking over the self-governing Danish territory.
“Well over 90% of the cost of a Trump tariff is borne by consumers or importers in the United States, not by the exporting countries,” Baker contended. “When Trump starts yelling ‘tariff, tariff, tariff,’ he is yelling ‘tax, tax, tax,’ and we’re the ones paying it.
And $75 billion is not trivial. It’s 1% of the budget, more than twice the cost of the enhanced premiums for Obamacare policies that Trump says we can’t afford.”
"Europe should respond to Trump’s blackmail with targeted measures aimed not at American consumers, but at American billionaires," wrote Gabriel Zucman.
By Jake Johnson
The leading French economist Gabriel Zucman is urging European governments to inflict financial pain on American billionaires in response to US President Donald Trump’s effort to seize control of Greenland, a mineral-rich island that some of Trump’s rich campaign donors see as a potentially massive profit opportunity.
“Europe should respond to Trump’s blackmail with targeted measures aimed not at American consumers, but at American billionaires,” Zucman wrote in a post on his Substack. “Access to the European market—by billionaires and the companies they own—should be made conditional on paying a wealth tax: in effect, a tariff for oligarchs. If Elon Musk, for example, wants to keep selling Teslas in Europe, he should have to pay it. If he refuses, Tesla would lose access to the European market.”
Zucman outlined his proposal after Trump threatened over the weekend to hit France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland with tariffs up to 25% if they don’t drop their opposition to the US president’s demand for “the complete and total purchase of Greenland,” an autonomous territory of Denmark.
The targeted countries are currently weighing retaliatory tariffs and other potential responses to Trump’s threat.
Zucman, a renowned expert on global inequality, argued that while existing mechanisms such as the anti-coercion instrument known as Europe’s trade “bazooka” can be useful, “anti-oligarchic protectionism has a decisive advantage: It opens a two-front struggle against Trump, at home and abroad.”
“By targeting oligarchic wealth rather than national pride,” Zucman wrote, “Europe can blunt Trump’s ability to mobilize nationalist resentment and rally part of the American public behind his imperial agenda.”
Trump’s proposed Greenland takeover is widely opposed by the island’s population and US voters. But as journalist Casey Michel wrote for The New Republic last week, there is one key constituency that stands to benefit massively from a US takeover of the mineral-rich territory: American oligarchs, including some of Trump’s top campaign donors.
“Ranging from tech moguls to fossil fuel company heads, all of these figures and forces have invested in mining and extraction companies across the island—and all stand to profit if only they can cut out any pesky Danish or Greenlandic authorities from regulating or restraining their operations,” wrote Michel. “The figures behind the curtain are by no means obscure. KoBold Metals, a mining outfit helping lead Greenland’s ‘modern gold rush,’ has seen investments from figures like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and hedge funds like Andreessen Horowitz.”
“Another company eyeing Greenland,” Michel added, “is Critical Metals Corp, which is backed by the same hedge fund that Howard Lutnick, now Trump’s commerce secretary, spent years running.”
“The vast fortunes of the sleaze buckets who put Trump into the White House and back his attack on democracy in the United States and around the world will suddenly be thrown into question.”
Tariffs targeting such firms and the billionaires behind them, Zucman argued, would be the most effective way to penalize Trump’s reckless behavior and deter him in the future.
“If imperialism is driven by oligarchic power, then oligarchic power must be confronted,” Zucman wrote. “What are the alternatives? Doing nothing invites endless blackmail.”
US economist Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, made the case for a similarly aggressive European response to Trump’s economic warfare.
“European countries can announce that they will no longer honor US-owned patents and copyrights,” Baker wrote Monday. “Putting US patents and copyrights on the line is a guaranteed attention grabber. The vast fortunes of the sleaze buckets who put Trump into the White House and back his attack on democracy in the United States and around the world will suddenly be thrown into question.”
“The key point is that European countries, by opting to not respect US patents and copyrights, have an incredibly powerful weapon to use against Donald Trump and his rich supporters,” Baker added. “The time has come for them to go nuclear.”
"The IDF has proven itself to be a despicable, criminal organization, and there is no excuse for joining it," said Yuval Peleg.
By Jessica Corbett
Nearly two weeks after finally being freed from the Israeli military prison Neve Tzedek, 18-year-old conscientious objector Yuval Peleg forcefully called out the Israel Defense Forces in a Monday statement shared by Amnesty International.
“After five times being imprisoned and a total of 130 days spent in military prison for refusing to enlist in the IDF, I have finally been released and exempt from army service. I am incredibly happy to be out of prison,” said Peleg, who was released January 6.
Even though Peleg made his objection to compulsory enlistment clear through the refusal process by the conscientious objector network Mesarvot, and to IDF representatives at the recruitment center in Ramat Gan last year, the military initially declared his refusal to be disobedience. Amnesty has advocated for the release of Peleg and other “prisoners of conscience.”
The video below was shared by Mesarvot in November, when Peleg was released from his fourth stint behind bars.
“It was a difficult experience, and lasted longer than I had hoped,” Peleg said Monday, “but I want to thank everyone at Amnesty International for the support—it was incredibly strengthening to know that even though I’m imprisoned there are people all over the world who support my actions and are pushing for my release, and without them I’m not sure how I would have gotten through it.”
“As difficult as this was, I do not regret refusing the draft and would do so again,” he continued. “The IDF has proven itself to be a despicable, criminal organization, and there is no excuse for joining it. I, and many others, will continue to fight and oppose it as long as is necessary. I would like to remind everyone that while I have finally been freed, there are still two other conscientious objectors in prison currently, and another that might be sent back. I hope they all get released as soon as possible, and support them throughout their incarceration.”
“Most importantly, the criminal actions of the IDF and state of Israel have not ceased,” Peleg stressed, pointing to the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip launched after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack. Since then, Israeli forces have killed at least 71,550 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 171,365, according to local health officials. Global experts warn the true toll is likely far higher.
The IDF’s killing has continued despite a ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel in October. Since then, the Gaza Health Ministry said Monday, Israel has killed 465 Palestinians and injured 1,287, plus 713 bodies have been found beneath the rubble.
Scholars, world leaders, human rights groups—including Amnesty—and other critics like Peleg call the Israeli assault genocide. The conscientious objector noted Monday that “the genocide in Gaza is ongoing despite the facetious ‘ceasefire’ and the now almost 60-year occupation of the West Bank keeps accelerating, to add to the campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out by the Zionists since even before 1948.”
“This is what truly must be fought against,” he said, “and as long as it continues, so will the resistance to it.”
Peleg’s comments came after Reuters reported Friday that not only are Palestinians in Gaza suffering “a volcano” of psychological trauma, but also Israel’s Defense Ministry has recorded a nearly 40% increase in post-traumatic stress disorder among its troops since September 2023, with 60% of the 22,300 people being treated for war wounds experiencing PTSD.
“An Israeli parliamentary committee found in October that 279 soldiers had attempted suicide in the period from January 2024 to July 2025, a sharp increase from previous years,” according to the news agency. “The report found that combat soldiers comprised 78% of all suicide cases in Israel in 2024.”
The US 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline—which offers 24/7, free, and confidential support—can be reached by calling or texting 988, or through chat at 988lifeline.org. For the Veterans Crisis Line, dial 988, then press 1, or text 838255.
"These are the ramblings of a man who has lost touch with reality," said one US senator. "And he’s about to get us into a war with our allies."
By Julia Conley
After receiving President Donald Trump’s latest demand for Greenland via text message Sunday, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre was among the European leaders who signaled they aim to meet with Trump at this week’s World Economic Forum in Switzerland to dial down European-US tensions that have been stoked by Trump’s persistent threats.
In his message to Gahr Støre, Trump announced that his desire to control Greenland was partially motivated by his anger over being passed over last year for the Nobel Peace Prize, which is handed out in Norway annually—but not by the country’s government.
“Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America,” Trump wrote in his message, which was reportedly forwarded by the National Security Council staff to numerous European ambassadors in Washington, DC.
He repeated his claim that Denmark, which has counted Greenland as part of its kingdom for hundreds of years, “cannot protect” the Arctic island from Russia and China, and said that the “World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.” Security experts in Europe say Russia and China do not pose any immediate threat to Greenland.
Trump also asked why Denmark has a “right of ownership” to the semiautonomous territory. The US has recognized for decades in formal agreements with its European ally that Greenland is a part of Denmark’s kingdom.
Trump’s oft-repeated claim that he has “stopped 8 Wars PLUS” has been heavily disputed, considering hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by US-backed Israeli forces since the “ceasefire” agreement the president brokered was signed in October. He has claimed credit for truces between Cambodia and Thailand as well as India and Pakistan, but the former conflict has seen renewed fighting and India has denied the existence of a ceasefire. Other peace agreements Trump had a hand in mediating have not been finalized or fully implemented.
The president has also invaded Venezuela and killed over 100 people aboard boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific as he claimed they were involved in drug trafficking—killings that have been called extrajudicial murder by legal experts—all while harboring anger over the Nobel Committee’s refusal to honor his supposed peacemaking efforts.
In the US, the news of Trump’s message led Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) to write on social media that the president’s mental acuity appears to have “degraded significantly in the last year.”
“These are the ramblings of a man who has lost touch with reality. He isn’t okay,” said Murphy. “And he’s about to get us into a war with our allies.”
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) added that Trump’s Cabinet must “invoke the 25th Amendment,” which allows administration officials to declare a president unable to serve, while advocate Melanie D’Arrigo of the Campaign for New York Health called on reporters to print out Trump’s letter “on a giant poster, and ask Republicans in Congress why we shouldn’t impeach him when he wants to attack our allies because he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize?”
“I’m tired of Republicans saying, ‘I didn’t see it,’” said D’Arrigo.
Gahr Støre confirmed Monday that he received Trump’s letter via text message and said the missive had been in response to the Norwegian leader’s request for a three-way phone call between himself, the White House, and Finnish President Alexander Stubb to deescalate tensions.
European leaders’ concerns over Trump intensified over the weekend as the US president said on Saturday he plans to impose new tariffs on longtime allies and North American Treaty Organization (NATO) partners Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, the United Kingdom, and Norway, until the US is allowed to purchase Greenland and take control of its vast minerals as well as ostensibly benefiting from its strategic location in the Arctic.
On Monday, Trump did not rule out using military force to conquer Greenland, home to about 57,000 people, saying only, “No comment” when asked about it by NBC News.
Gahr Støre and other leaders signaled plans to continue trying to handle Trump’s threats against his country’s own allies diplomatically, with the Norwegian prime minister amending his schedule this week to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos during Trump’s planned appearance there. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also said Monday he would try to meet with Trump at Davos on Wednesday, when the president is scheduled to deliver a keynote address.
Despite Trump’s comments on the Nobel Prize, “I still believe it’s wise to talk,” Gahr Støre told TV2 Norway Monday.
But Merz emphasized that if European countries “are confronted with tariffs that we consider unreasonable, then we are capable of responding.”
The European Union is considering imposing a never-before-used anti-coercion instrument to limit major US companies from doing business on the continent, or implementing its own package of tariffs on $108 billion in US imports starting February 6.
Gahr Støre said in a statement Monday that Norway’s position on Greenland, as other European allies’ views, “is clear.”
“Greenland is a part of the kingdom of Denmark, and Norway fully supports the kingdom of Denmark on this matter. We also support that NATO in a responsible way is taking steps to strengthen security and stability in the Arctic,” said the prime minister.
“As regards the Nobel Peace Prize,” he added, “I have clearly explained, including to President Trump, what is well known, the prize is awarded by an independent Nobel Committee and not the Norwegian government.”
"The EU cannot simply move on to business as usual," said one member of European Parliament.
By Brad Reed
The European Union appears to be done trying to appease US President Donald Trump over his demands to be given control of Greenland.
The New York Times reported on Sunday that the EU is considering deploying what has been described as an economic “bazooka” at the US after Trump threatened European countries with new tariffs because of their refusal to cede Greenland, which has been part of the Danish kingdom for hundreds of years.
Specifically, the EU has an “anti-coercion instrument” that the Times writes “could be used to slap limitations on big American technology companies or other service providers that do large amounts of business on the continent.”
Enacting this policy would dramatically escalate tensions between the US and its European allies, but some international relations experts think the EU might have little choice given Trump’s fixation on seizing the self-governing Danish territory.
“This is just all brute force,” Penny Naas, an expert on European public policy at the German Marshall Fund, told the Times. “The president really wants Greenland, and he’s not backing off of it.”
Bernd Lange, a German member of European Parliament, said in a social media post that European leaders could no longer try to appease Trump with concessions given his overt aggression and urged the EU to respond with maximum retaliation.
“New US tariffs for several nations are unbelievable,” he wrote. “This is no way to treat partners. A new line has been crossed. Unacceptable. POTUS is using trade as an instrument of political coercion. The EU cannot simply move on to business as usual.”
German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil also signaled on Monday that European nations are at the end of their rope when it comes to Trump’s relentless threats against them, reported Bloomberg.
“We are constantly experiencing new provocations, we are constantly experiencing new antagonism, which President Trump is seeking, and here we Europeans must make it clear that the limit has been reached,” said Klingbeil. “There is a legally established European toolbox that can respond to economic blackmail with very sensitive measures, and we should now examine the use of these measures.”
European officials said in a report published by Politico on Monday that they were considering fully breaking with the US over Trump’s demands of territorial concessions, as they no longer feel that the US can be a trusted international partner.
“There is a shift in US policy and in many ways it is permanent,” said a senior European government official. “Waiting it out is not a solution. What needs to be done is an orderly and coordinated movement to a new reality.”
Europeans aren’t the only ones criticizing Trump’s latest actions, as Melinda St. Louis, director of Global Trade Watch at US-based government watchdog Public Citizen, said the president’s latest tariffs over Greenland show that he has never cared about protecting American jobs, but only about exerting power.
“Misusing tariff authority over his wildly unpopular and head-scratching imperial claim of right to Greenland shows just how little he cares for the everyday struggles of Americans and undermines the legitimate uses of tariffs,” said St. Louis.
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