Saturday, January 17, 2026
■ The Week in Review
"What a slap in the face to struggling working families," Rep. Pramila Jayapal said of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins' interview.
By Jessica Corbett • Jan 15, 2026
The Trump administration was again blasted for grocery prices this week after Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins discussed the new federal dietary guidelines during a NewsNation appearance.
“We’ve run over 1,000 simulations,” Rollins said in a clip shared on social media by journalist Aaron Rupar on Wednesday. “It can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, corn tortilla, and one other thing.”
“So there is a way to do this that actually will save the average American consumer money,” Rollins continued, pushing back against host Connell McShane’s inquiry about whether the new guidelines expect people to spend more money on food.
The Guardian noted that “data from the consumer price index, as referenced by McShane, showed that food prices kept rising in December, increasing by 0.7%, the biggest month-to-month jump since October 2022. Prices for produce rose 0.5%, coffee increased by 1.9%, and beef went up 1% over the month and 16.4% compared with a year earlier.”
Responding to the clip, Chasten Glezman Buttigieg, an author and teacher married to former Democratic Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, said, “Private jets and tax breaks for them and their rich friends, and one piece of broccoli *AND* a tortilla for you!”
Noting a similarly mocked statement from President Donald Trump before the holidays, Civic Media political editor Dan Shafer said: “You will eat one piece of broccoli and your child will have one Christmas toy. This is the Golden Age.”
Other critics, including Democratic lawmakers, used artificial intelligence programs to generate images of what they called Rollins’ proposed “depression meal.”
“Due to Trump’s tariffs, last month was the largest spike in grocery prices in three years. So now this is what the Trump administration suggests you can afford for a meal,” wrote US Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), sharing the image below.
(AI image: Rep. Ted Lieu/X)
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said: “Trump gets a gold-plated new ballroom. You get a piece of chicken, broccoli, and one corn tortilla.”
(AI image: Rep. Jason Crow/X)
“MAHA!” declared Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee, invoking a phrase seized on by Trump after he won the support of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “Make America Healthy Again.”
(AI image: House Ways and Means Committee Democrats/X)
Sharing an edited video clip of Rollins’ interview, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said, “What a slap in the face to struggling working families.”
Marlow Stern, who teaches at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, suggested that “you should eat prison meals” was “prob not the best message” from the Trump administration to the public.
The video went viral as the congressional Joint Economic Committee’s (JEC) Democratic staff on Thursday released a report showing that “a typical American family paid $310 more for groceries” during the first year of Trump’s second term compared to 2024.
Some of the biggest estimated jumps in annual cost documented in the report were for coffee (+$76.06), ground beef (+$70.99), eggs (+$51.66), candy (+$47.21), potato chips and salty snacks (+$22.59), orange juice (+$14.18), whole chickens (+$12.51), and chicken breasts (+$11.55).
“Despite President Trump’s promises that he would lower grocery costs, families across America are paying higher prices at the cash register,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), the JEC ranking member. “This report provides proof of what the American people are experiencing every day: Costs are too high, and Trump’s policies are only making them worse.”
"Officers threw flash-bangs and tear gas in my car. I got six kids in the car," said the children's father. "My 6-month-old can't even breathe."
By Brett Wilkins • Jan 15, 2026
The father of three children who were hospitalized in Minneapolis on Wednesday night accused federal agents of launching flash-bang munitions and tear gas into their family van after they were caught up in protests against the Trump administration’s deadly immigration crackdown.
“Officers threw flash bangs and tear gas in my car. I got six kids in the car,” Shawn Jackson told KMSP. “My 6-month-old can’t even breathe.”
The explosions were strong enough to trigger the car’s airbags.
“They were innocent bystanders driving through what should have been a peaceful protest when things took a turn,” Destiny Jackson, the children’s mother, explained.
Destiny Jackson said that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents “began to start throwing tear gas bombs everywhere.”
“We were trying so hard to get out the way but didn’t want to harm anybody with our car in the process,” Jackson added. “One of the bombs rolled under our truck, and within seconds our truck lifted up off the ground, and the airbags deployed, the car doors locked themselves, and the car began to fill with the powerful tear gas. We fought hard to get the doors open and get all of the kids out. Bystanders had to help.”
Shawn Jackson told KMSP while holding up his child’s car seat: “This was flipped over. My car filled with tear gas; I’m trying to pull my kids from the car.”
Destiny Jackson said she performed CPR on the infant after the baby stopped breathing and lost consciousness.
Three of the children—the 6-month-old infant and two others, ages 7 and 11 years—were taken by ambulance to a local hospital for treatment.
“My kids were innocent, I was innocent, my husband was innocent, this shouldn’t have happened,” Destiny Jackson told KMSP. “We were just trying to go home.”
Jackson said that neither she nor her husband have ever protested before—but now they feel they have good reason to do so.
“I’m mad as hell,” Shawn Jackson said during an interview with Sky News. “But now there’s gonna be hell on wheels. They’re definitely gonna have to pay for this.”
“This just shows how they don’t care,” Jackson said of the federal agents. “I was arguing with the officers to call the ambulance for five minutes... He knew there were [children] in the car; he didn’t even try and help.”
Also on Wednesday in Minneapolis, a federal officer shot and wounded a man who the US Department of Homeland Security said was an undocumented Venezuelan pulled over during a “targeted traffic stop.” DHS said the man fled after exiting his vehicle, that a fight ensued when an officer caught him, and that the agent shot the man in the leg after a pair of bystanders came to the targeted individual’s aid and attacked the officer.
Protests have been mounting in the Twin Cities following last week’s killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE officer Jonathan Ross and the Trump administration’s subsequent effort to portray the victim as a domestic terrorist.
Demonstrators are also condemning what many opponents call the invasion and occupation of Minneapolis and other cities, as well as the Trump administration’s wider campaign targeting undocumented immigrants for roundup, detention, and deportation.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, said that “armed, masked, undertrained ICE agents are going door to door ordering people to point out where their neighbors of color live.”
State and local officials in Minnesota have implored the Trump administration to end its operation in the state. Meanwhile, Trump threatened Thursday to invoke the Insurrection Act—which hasn’t been used since the Los Angeles uprising in 1992—to deploy troops to quell Twin Cities protests.
The ACLU, the ACLU of Minnesota, and a trio of law firms on Thursday filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of people “whose constitutional rights were violated” by federal operatives in the state.
“The people of Minnesota are courageously standing up to the reign of terror unleashed by the Trump administration,” plaintiffs’ attorney Robert Fram said in a statement.
"Take Trump at his word here," said one Minnesota attorney. "But know his word isn’t law."
By Stephen Prager • Jan 15, 2026
As armed federal agents roam the streets of American cities and amid threats to declare the Insurrection Act and use military force to quell protests in Minneapolis, President Donald Trump said once again that the next elections should be canceled because he expects his party to lose.
“It’s some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don’t win the midterms,” Trump said in a closed-door interview published by Reuters on Thursday. He added that because he’s accomplished so much during his first term, “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”
It’s at least the second time this month that Trump has floated the idea. He previously did so less directly during a speech commemorating the five-year anniversary of the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, during which his supporters attempted to violently overturn his 2020 election loss to former President Joe Biden after he told them it was the result of fraud.
During that speech at the Kennedy Center, Trump described it as an outrage that Republicans even have to contest elections against Democrats later this year, suggesting canceling the election, but later backing off the idea.
“How do we even run against these people?” Trump said. “I won’t say cancel the election; they should cancel the election, because the fake news would say: ‘He wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator.”
In the same speech, he warned: “You gotta win the midterms. Because if we don’t win the midterms, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”
Trump is correct that sitting presidents rarely see their parties do well in midterm elections two years after being elected. No sitting president has seen their party gain seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate since 2002, when former President George W. Bush’s Republican Party was able to capitalize on fears of terrorism following the September 11 attacks just over a year before.
The president’s grip on a legislative trifecta is nearly as thin as it could possibly be, with Republicans holding just 218 seats to the Democrats’ 213.
Democrats were already favored to retake the House in November, and now appear even more likely to do so amid Trump’s consistent unpopularity. On Thursday, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved a total of 18 House races in the Democrats’ direction in its latest assessment of the odds to win the chamber.
However, Trump is wrong that elections can be “canceled,” at least legally. Under the Elections Clause in Article I, Section 4 of the US Constitution, the administration of elections is vested in the states, with Congress holding the power to “make or alter such regulations.” The president has no authority to determine the timing of federal elections.
The United States has never once postponed a presidential election in its nearly 250-year history: They were carried out on schedule during periods of extraordinary crisis, including the Civil War in 1864, the influenza epidemic in 1918 and 1920, and World War II in 1942 and 1944.
Elections were also carried out on schedule in 2020, though Trump, who was then the president running for a second consecutive term, also suggested that they should be delayed then due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the time, he claimed that the widespread use of mail-in ballots, necessitated by the illness, would make it “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history” and asked if he should “delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” But Trump never pursued the idea seriously, as it was shot down by top Republicans.
After losing the election, he wrote in 2022 that what he called “a Massive Fraud” allowed for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution” in order to address the 2020 result.
Trump has more recently suggested that a war could give him the ticket to cancel elections. While speaking with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in August of 2025, he spoke approvingly of the leader’s invocation of martial law and suspension of elections following Russia’s invasion three years prior.
“So during war, you can’t have elections?” Trump said with a smile. “So let me just say, three and a half years from now— so you mean if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections? Oh, that’s good.”
Since then, Trump has notably launched a war to take over Venezuela’s oil and threatened to launch several more, including with Greenland, Iran, and Mexico.
Asked on Thursday about why the president keeps talking about canceling elections, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters: “The president was simply joking. He was saying, ‘We’re doing such a great job, we’re doing everything the American people thought, maybe we should just keep rolling.’ But he was speaking facetiously.”
Ryan Broderick, the writer of the political newsletter Garbage Day, said that with his latest comments—and “the threats of invoking the Insurrection Act in Minnesota this morning—he is very clearly exploring how to cancel the midterms.”
Trump has in recent days suggested using the National Guard to seize voting machines, stating that he regretted not doing so as he attempted to overturn his loss in 2020. His handpicked election officials have previously urged him to declare a “national emergency” that they said would give the federal government unprecedented powers to override the states and write their own election rules.
On the question of canceling the midterms outright, Ken White, a criminal defense attorney and First Amendment litigator, agreed that Trump “wants to, it’s plausible he’ll try, and his people would support it,” but said “it’s vastly harder and more complicated than people are suggesting and can’t be done by his fiat.”
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie argued that even if Trump wanted to cancel the midterms, he would face many logistical hurdles in doing so.
“How does Trump force 50 separate state boards of election to cancel their midterms?” he asked on social media. “How does he convince Republican House members to quit their jobs and give up their paychecks?”
“[US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] can’t even deal with irate middle-aged Midwesterners. How does he occupy hundreds, if not thousands, of polling sites and precincts?” he continued. “Trump v. Illinois clarified that he has no legal authority to unilaterally commandeer national guards. How does he move forward from there?”
Minnesota lawyer Andrew Rothstein encouraged people to “take Trump at his word here... but know his word isn’t law.”
Even if this year’s elections go forward as planned, Trump is working to influence the results by bullying Republican state legislators to rig their congressional maps for the GOP and attempting to seize sensitive voter data.
"If you’re Black or brown, Kristi Noem thinks it’s fine to stop you, cuff you, and demand proof you’re American."
By Brad Reed • Jan 15, 2026
US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday was called out for making a blatantly false claim about whether federal immigration agents are arbitrarily demanding that Minnesota residents provide evidence of their legal status.
While speaking with reporters outside the White House, Noem was asked about videos that have emerged from Minneapolis showing federal agents asking passersby to give proof of citizenship.
“Is that targeted enforcement and are you advising Americans to carry proof of citizenship?” a reporter asked Noem.
“In every situation we are doing targeted enforcement,” Noem said. “If we are on a target and doing an operation, there may be individuals surrounding that criminal that we may be asking who they are and why they’re there, and having them validate their identity. That’s what we’ve always done.”
In reality, there have been multiple alleged instances of federal agents asking Minneapolis residents for proof of citizenship that were completely unrelated to any “targeted” enforcement operation.
A lawsuit filed by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on Monday documented numerous such instances, including one where federal agents surrounded and questioned a driver at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport about his citizenship, and another where US Department of Homeland Security agents approached a team of Minneapolis Public Works employees and questioned them on their citizenship.
A Monday report from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, meanwhile, quoted a St. Paul resident who said federal agents knocked on her door and asked her to help them “identify Hmong and Asian households” in her neighborhood.
Given the extensive evidence of federal agents hounding Minnesotans for proof of their citizenship, many critics were quick to call out Noem for dishonesty.
“This is just a lie,” wrote Democratic strategist Matt McDermott in a social media post. “There has been extensive reporting on ICE doing random door-to-door neighborhood patrols looking for anyone who is not white.”
NPR reporter Sergio Martínez-Beltrán countered Noem’s claims by describing an incident he saw first-hand.
“A few days ago, I witnessed how immigration agents stopped at a parking lot and asked drivers charging their electric cars for proof of citizenship or legal status,” he explained.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said that Noem’s claims were false not just in the context of Minneapolis, but of other US cities as well.
“In Los Angeles, for example, DHS officers outright admitted to doing ‘roving patrols,’ which are NOT targeted,” he explained.
Another first-hand account was given by Dan Mihalopoulos, an investigative reporter at Chicago-based public radio station WBEZ.
“Last month, I saw Border Patrol roll up to random Asians in the parking lot of a Costco in Illinois asking if they are citizens,” he said. “They backed off a woman who spoke English without an accent. But a Chinese shopper had to show his green card to agents.”
Democrats on the US House Homeland Security Committee accused Noem of supporting racial profiling by law enforcement.
“If you’re Black or brown, Kristi Noem thinks it’s fine to stop you, cuff you, and demand proof you’re American,” they wrote. “Republicans support racial profiling. They want it in your neighborhood.”
"Primary every Democrat who wants to fund and still support ICE," said journalist Mehdi Hasan.
By Julia Conley • Jan 15, 2026
Americans across the country are protesting federal agents’ violent crackdown on immigrant communities and on dissent, support for doing away with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement entirely is at an all-time high in the wake of an officer’s killing of a legal observer, and the outrage is intensifying just as the Democratic Party has negotiating power ahead of a January 30 deadline for funding the government.
A number of Democrats, however, are hesitant to leverage their position in the appropriations fight to rein in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the agencies it controls, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which oversees Border Patrol.
That reluctance, said journalist Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo, should result in primary challenges for “every Democrat who wants to fund and still support ICE.”
As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which includes nearly 100 Democratic members of the US House of Representatives, said clearly that it would “oppose all funding” for federal immigration enforcement agencies in the upcoming appropriations bills unless, as Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said, “meaningful reforms are enacted to end militarized policing practices.”
The House and Senate are currently negotiating a dozen spending bills to keep the government running past the January 30 deadline, and each bill must garner at least 60 votes to pass in the Senate.
A DHS funding bill was already excluded from a spending package earlier this week amid outcry over the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis and the agency’s violent treatment of demonstrators, bystanders, and even residents who are not involved in protests against President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
But at the Bulwark, Joe Perticone reported Tuesday that a number of Democrats in the Senate expressed doubt that they would treat ICE funding in appropriations bills as a red line to force the administration to drastically change its approach to immigration enforcement.
“I certainly don’t want see funding increases,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) told the Bulwark. “We’re going through these negotiations right now. I don’t want see that funding... I don’t ever make predictions about where my vote’s coming down on, but what I will say is that I’m certainly gonna fight to stop it.”
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) told the Bulwark that she would not want to increase ICE’s budget, which includes $75 billion it was given in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) last year, but said Republicans were “taking the lead on these [appropriation bills].”
“Is this what they want to rubber-stamp for residential neighborhoods across this country?” she asked. “Thousands of masked, armed agents coming into their communities?”
But while criticizing the agency’s practices, she told the Bulwark that discussions about reforming ICE’s enforcement should be separate from the appropriations debate.
“That’s obviously—I don’t wanna get in the weeds—that’s obviously an authorizing committee issue,” she said. “When we’re talking about appropriations, I call on my Republicans... Do they wanna rubber-stamp this or what?”
Organizer and attorney Aaron Regunberg compared the comments—which echoed earlier remarks from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)—to saying: “We are the resistance. We are also negotiating furiously to figure out how to fully fund the Gestapo.”
Sens. Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, both Democrats from Nevada, announced their own proposal on Thursday to redirect some of the OBBBA funding to local law enforcement agencies—many of which work with ICE.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, did not make any specific policy commitments regarding what changes ICE and DHS would need to make to ensure funding for immigration enforcement continues, but has suggested that Border Patrol agents should return to the border instead of being unleashed in communities with ICE, agents should be banned from wearing masks and required to wear identification, and federal officers must obtain warrants for immigration arrests.
“You should demand that we make sure that this appropriations process is used to make ICE comply with the law,” Murphy told Time magazine. “And I see a lot of signs out there—not one additional dime for ICE in this budget.”
Murphy also told NBC‘s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Republicans must decide if they are “willing to shut down the government simply to endorse the most lawless Department of Homeland Security in the history of the country.”
Last fall, the federal government saw its longest shutdown in US history, with funding lapsing for 43 days after Democrats refused to approve a spending package that would have allowed Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire and threatened healthcare for millions. Ultimately, some Democrats caved, and the subsidies lapsed.
Journalist Aaron Rupar said that ahead of the January 30 deadline, “Senate Democrats absolutely have to shut the government down to stop this ICE insanity in the Twin Cities.”
“This is not sustainable and cannot be normalized,” said Rupar. “Any Democratic vote to provide money to the thugs who are brutalizing this community is a grave betrayal to the people here. Accountability can’t wait.”
"Senate Republicans must pass this bipartisan legislation today, end the Republican healthcare crisis, and deliver immediate relief to American families," said one campaigner.
By Jessica Corbett • Jan 13, 2026
A week away from open enrollment ending in most states, 17 GOP members of the US House of Representatives helped Democrats pass a bill to restore lapsed Affordable Care Act premium tax credits—but senators have declined to act with that same urgency, and the deadline for many Americans to make coverage decisions for 2026 is Thursday.
Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), a lead negotiator for a bipartisan Senate group working on a compromise for the expired ACA subsidies, told Politico on Tuesday that the legislative text will no longer be ready this week. Instead, it’s now expected the last week of January—after not only the upper chamber’s upcoming recess, but also when millions of people nationwide will have already had to choose a plan on an ACA marketplace or to forgo health insurance coverage due to surging premiums.
In response to the reporting, Unrig Our Economy campaign director Leor Tal highlighted in a statement that “millions of Americans are paying sky-high health insurance premiums after congressional Republicans ended the healthcare tax cuts working families depend on. A three-year extension has already cleared the House with bipartisan support.”
“Any delay needlessly sticks millions of working people with higher costs; There is no excuse,” Tal added. “Senate Republicans must pass this bipartisan legislation today, end the Republican healthcare crisis, and deliver immediate relief to American families.”
Tal, Democratic lawmakers, labor leaders, and other supporters of reviving the ACA subsidies had similarly demanded Senate action following last Thursday’s 230-196 vote—which came after multiple Republican lawmakers broke with party leadership and signed a Democratic discharge petition that enabled the bill’s backers to bypass House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
Moreno’s remarks on the Senate group’s “punt,” as Politico put it, came after Axios reported that congressional Democratic leadership on Sunday sent Republicans a proposal to renew ACA subsidies for three years, “paired with extensions of other expiring health programs.”
Axios also noted that President Donald Trump told reporters late Sunday that he “might” veto a subsidy extension. Whether any will reach his desk, though, remains unclear—and even if one does, it is increasingly likely it’ll be after Americans have to make choices about 2026 coverage. Amid the uncertainty over future ACA subsidies, Illinois and Pennsylvania extended the enrollment period through February 1.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Monday that nearly 22.8 million people have signed up for 2026 individual market health insurance coverage through the ACA marketplaces—around 19.9 million returning consumers and 2.8 million new ones.
The nonprofit Community Catalyst pointed out that the overall enrollment figure is down by about 1.4 million from last year. Michelle Sternthal, the advocacy group’s interim senior director of policy and strategy, said that “these numbers confirm what people across the country are already feeling: We are in a healthcare affordability crisis.”
“When Congress failed to extend the enhanced premium tax credits, premiums spiked overnight—from $921 to $1,998, or $121 to $373. Families are facing impossible choices,” Sternthal stressed in her Tuesday statement.
“These outcomes aren’t random. They are the direct result of policy decisions that have weakened our healthcare system over time,” she continued. “Coverage works. Stability matters. Healthcare is not a luxury—it is shared infrastructure. When people are healthy, our communities and our economy are stronger. Congress created this crisis, and Congress has the power—and the responsibility—to act now.”
The drawn-out debate over the ACA tax credits on Capitol Hill has spurred broader critiques of the US healthcare system, including fresh demands for Medicare for All. Even before the subsidies expired at the end of last year, the typical working US family spent $3,960 on healthcare annually, including premiums and out-of-pocket costs, according to research released Tuesday by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).
“Ten percent of working families paid more than $14,800 on insurance premiums and other out-of-pocket healthcare expenses,” says the CEPR report, which is based on 2024 data. “And more than 1 of every 8 workers (13.3%) are in families that spent greater than 10% of their annual income on healthcare.”
The publication warns that “healthcare costs are rising faster than inflation, and future increases in premiums, ACA costs, and Medicaid cutbacks will worsen the burden.”
"I was scared. I was devastated," said a Somali-American citizen who was accosted by ICE as part of what the agent called a "citizen check." No such thing exists in American law.
By Stephen Prager • Jan 13, 2026
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents deployed to Minnesota are pulling many nonwhite residents aside and asking them to prove their citizenship, according to several reports and multiple videos posted to social media this week amid the Trump administration’s surge of immigration agents to Minneapolis.
There is no federal law requiring US citizens to carry proof of their citizenship, and immigration agents are barred from carrying out indiscriminate searches unless they have reasonable suspicion to believe that someone is in the country without authorization.
And yet, one video, posted on Sunday by a Somali resident of Minneapolis, a US citizen named Nimco Omar, shows a group of agents accosting her and asking her to show her identification as part of what they said was a “citizen check.”
Omar said she was on a walk when masked agents who “looked like soldiers” approached her and began questioning her.
The video shows one of the agents asking Omar, “Do you have an ID on you, ma’am?”
She replied: “I don’t need an ID to walk around in my city. This is my city.”
“OK, do you have some ID, then, please?” the officer asked. “If not, we’re going to put you in the vehicle, and we’re going to ID you.”
Omar responded: “I am a US citizen. I don’t need to carry around an ID in my home. This is my home.”
After being repeatedly asked, “Where were you born?” Omar replied simply, “Minneapolis is my home.”
The agent then told her: “We’re doing an immigration check. We’re doing a citizen check.”
Another agent then pulled out his cellphone and, without asking, appeared to snap a picture of Omar, likely to run through a facial recognition application that ICE has used to verify the status of people it detains—including citizens.
Omar continued to hold her ground, telling the agents: “I’m a US citizen. I don’t have to identify myself. I belong here—and it doesn’t matter where I was born.” After failing to get an answer, the agents then walked away.
“I was scared. I was devastated. I never imagined that something like this could happen to me in the United States,” Omar wrote in a social media post documenting the encounter. “As a community member who grew up here, who built a life here, and who calls Minnesota home, I want to be clear: This is not acceptable. This is not something we should ever normalize. This is not what the United States of America is supposed to look like.”
The scene was just the latest report of immigration agents conducting what Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said was “unlawful racial profiling by DHS agents” in a lawsuit against the agency filed Monday by the state of Minnesota. Illinois filed a similar but separate suit Monday.
“We’re doing a citizen check.”
Since last week, when ICE agent Jonathan Ross was filmed fatally shooting 37-year-old Renee Good in a Minneapolis neighborhood—which Vice President JD Vance said in a press conference occurred during “door-to-door” sweeps by ICE in search of undocumented migrants—several other similar cases have been documented in which immigration agents have approached nonwhite US citizens demanding they prove their citizenship.
In another case, on the same day of Good’s shooting, a Somali Uber driver was pulled over outside the Minneapolis airport and asked to prove his citizenship. One of the agents told the driver he did not believe the driver’s claim to be a citizen because “I can hear you don’t have the same accent as me,” and asked the man where he was born repeatedly.
It mirrored another case from December in which another Somali man, a US citizen identified only as Mubashir, was tackled to the ground by immigration agents who refused to accept his government-issued Real ID as proof of citizenship.
Outcry over that case prompted Gregory Bovino, the commander at large of the US Border Patrol, who has taken part in several stops and raids as part of the Trump administration’s operation in Minneapolis, to falsely claim that US citizens “must carry immigration documents” under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
About 83% of Somalis living in the US are citizens, according to census data. However, Minneapolis’ large Somali population—which has an even higher rate of US citizenship—has been used as a justification by President Donald Trump to flood the city with immigration agents. In recent months, the president has referred to Somalis as “garbage” and called for them all to be deported from the country.
But Somalis have not been the only targets of arbitrary “citizenship” checks in recent days.
Another video, filmed on the day of Good’s shooting, showed agents pinning a Hispanic Target employee, 17-year-old Jonathan Aguilar Garcia, to the ground, along with another employee, after asking him whether he was a US citizen. Even after shouting multiple times that he was a citizen and showing his government ID, Garcia was reportedly taken to an undisclosed location for hours with no notice given to his family about where he was or when he’d return.
In another case, detailed in the Minnesota lawsuit, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents “approached a team of four Minneapolis Public Works employees, working in Minneapolis and wearing city uniforms and badges. The agents asked the three nonwhite city employees for identification and questioned each of them about their citizenship and place of birth. The agents did not ask to see any identification or ask any questions of the fourth employee, who was white.”
Four members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, who were homeless and living under a bridge, were also reportedly detained last week and have still not yet been located. The tribe’s president has directed members to declare their tribal affiliation when encountering immigration officers, which makes them US citizens and therefore not subject to immigration enforcement.
“DHS said they were ‘highly targeted’ and go after ‘the worst of the worst,’” said the Democrats on the House Committee on Homeland Security in a post on social media responding to agents’ questioning of Omar. “In reality, DHS is indiscriminately profiling Black and brown American citizens.
They urged readers: “Protect yourself and your neighbors and film everything.”
"We need to hold ICE accountable and we need to uphold human rights in ICE facilities. This is the time for Americans to speak up."
By Brad Reed • Jan 13, 2026
Rep. Ro Khanna on Monday called for the arrest and prosecution of the federal immigration officer who killed Minneapolis resident Renee Good last week.
In a video posted on social media, Khanna (D-Calif.) made the case for arresting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross, who has faced accusations of murder after he fatally shot the 37-year-old Good and left her 6-year-old son an orphan.
Khanna also said that the problems with ICE weren’t merely from one trigger-happy agent.
“ICE has gone rogue,” Khanna said. “We need accountability.”
He then referenced legislation he had written with Rep. Jasmine Crocket (D-Texas) that would force ICE agents to wear body cameras and carry visible identification, and would also bar them from wearing masks to conceal their identities while conducting operations.
Khanna also described a recent trip he made to an immigration detention facility in California, where he said he witnessed deplorable treatment of detainees, including one man who reported having blood in his urine but who had not seen any medical professional for the past seven days.
“We need to hold ICE accountable and we need to uphold human rights in ICE facilities,” he emphasized. “This is the time for Americans to speak up.”
As Khanna called for greater ICE accountability, new videos emerged on Tuesday of chaos caused by federal immigration officials in Minneapolis.
In one video posted by extremism researcher Amanda Moore, federal agents can be seen smashing a woman’s car windows, cutting her seat belt, and then dragging her out of the vehicle to be arrested.
Status Coup News reporter JT Cestkowski shared footage of federal agents lobbing tear gas canisters and firing pepper balls at demonstrators, which he described as “an everyday occurrence in America.”
NPR national correspondent Sergio Martínez-Beltrán posted a video of immigration agents walking around a Minneapolis parking lot and demanding shoppers offer proof that they were legally in the US.
“The drivers were people of color,” Martínez-Beltrán observed.
WOW! TRUMP IS DELUSIONAL & IRRATIONAL!
Despite multiple videos showing Minneapolis residents angrily confronting federal immigration officials, President Donald Trump dismissed the demonstrations as “fake” during what was supposed to have been a speech on the US economy.
“One of the reasons they’re doing these fake riots—I mean they’re just terrible,” Trump said, referring to largely peaceful demonstrations in Minneapolis. “It’s so fake. ‘Shame! Shame! Shame!’ You see the woman. It’s all practiced. They take hotel rooms and they all practice together. It’s a whole scam. We’re finding out who’s funding all this stuff too.”
"The American people deserve to know how many of these violent insurrectionists have been given guns and badges by this administration."
By Julia Conley • Jan 13, 2026
Congressman Jamie Raskin got right to the point in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as he sought an answer to a question several Democratic lawmakers have raised in recent months regarding the Trump administration’s recruiting practices as it seeks to flood American communities with immigration officers.
“How many pardoned January 6th insurrectionists have been hired by your respective departments?” Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, asked the two officials.
The congressman wrote to Bondi and Noem as video evidence continues to mount of federal agents’ violent tactics in communities across the US following an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent’s fatal shooting of Minneapolis resident Renee Good last week.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said Raskin, “seems to be courting pardoned January 6th insurrectionists.”
He pointed to “white nationalist ‘dog whistles’” it’s used in its recruitment campaigns that appear to target members of “extremist militias” like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters.
Potential ICE recruits have been bombarded by messages from DHS calling on them to help “defend the homeland” and images like one of a white Uncle Sam caricature standing at a crossroads with signs pointing one way—labeled “INVASION” and “CULTURAL DECLINE”—and another, labeled “HOMELAND” and “LAW AND ORDER.” The image and caption appeared to be a reference to the white nationalist text Which Way, Western Man? by William Gayley Simpson.
The groups and militias apparently being targeted by the recruitment push coordinated with one another on January 6, 2021 as their members and leaders were among those who stormed the US Capitol in an effort to stop former President Joe Biden’s electoral victory from being certified.
One of President Donald Trump’s first actions after taking office last year was pardoning more than 1,500 people convicted of participating in the attempted insurrection, and dozens of them have been rearrested, charged, or sentenced for other crimes including child sexual assault, possession of child pornography, and domestic violence.
Other Democratic lawmakers have previously raised alarm about the lax hiring requirements DHS has put in place as it seeks to grow its ranks of ICE agents, with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) noting in an October letter to Noem that in its push to hire more so-called “patriots,” ICE has “changed the age requirements for new recruits.”
“DHS announced that applicants now can apply at the age of 18 and there is no age cap. ICE also removed its Spanish-language requirement—shortening the training program by five weeks—and is pursuing additional ways to expedite training,” wrote Durbin. “The loosening of hiring standards and training requirements is unacceptable and will likely result in increased officer misconduct—similar to or worse than what occurred during a small surge in hiring US Customs and Border Protection officers in the early 2000s.”
On Monday, Raskin pointed out that ICE agents have been permitted to go to great lengths to hide their identities with masks as they’ve tackled people to the ground, “detained and battered multiple pregnant women,” threatened people and confiscated their cellphones for filming them—a protected activity under the First Amendment—and rammed open the door of a home in Minneapolis as they apparently began “door-to-door” operations.
“Unique among all law enforcement agencies and all branches of the armed services, ICE agents conceal their identities, wearing masks and removing names from their uniforms. Why is that? Why do National Guard members, state, county, and local police officers, and members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines all routinely work unmasked while ICE agents work masked?” wrote Raskin.
“Who is hiding behind these masks?” he continued. “How many of them were among the violent rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6 and were convicted of their offenses? The American people deserve to know how many of these violent insurrectionists have been given guns and badges by this administration.”
He demanded the release of records related to the solicitation or hiring of anyone charged or investigated for participating in the January 6 attack.
Raskin’s letter was sent as independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reported on leaked documents showing that ICE and Border Patrol officials on the ground are struggling to cope with both staffing and legal compliance issues following Good’s killing.
“While Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem and others in the administration preen about justifying last week’s shooting and trumpet their war on ‘domestic terrorism,’ DHS is privately divided and hesitant about the latest deployments,” wrote Klippenstein, detailing efforts within the agency to find around 300 volunteers to deploy in Minneapolis, “in part due to opposition within the ranks.”
Following DHS’ aggressive recruiting push that appears to designed to appeal to extremist militias, “there might be some immature knuckleheads who think they are out there trying to capture Nicolás Maduro, but most field officers see a clear need for deescalation,” a high-ranking career official at DHS told Klippenstein. “There is genuine fear that indeed ICE’s heavy handedness and the rhetoric from Washington is more creating a condition where the officers’ lives are in danger rather than the other way around.”
Officials are reportedly pushing to rein in the agents whom the Trump administration has unleashed on communities including Minneapolis, where ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot Good while she was sitting in her car after she had reportedly been given conflicting orders by officers.
While Trump has suggested Good was to blame for her killing because she was “disrespectful” to the officers and videos have surfaced of agents attacking and threatening people for filming and observing them, Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino sent a “legal refresher” to agents in the field, reminding them that protesters who use profanity, insults, and rude gestures are not breaking any laws.
Noncompliance with law enforcement and recordings of ICE agents are protected activities, the document reminds officers.
Sarah Saldaña, a former director of ICE, also recently said that DHS’ decision to frame its recruiting push as a “war effort” would inevitably result in a federal anti-immigration force that views itself as being at war with the communities it’s sent to.
DHS is promoting a viewpoint among recruits that “the quicker we get out there and run over people, the better off this country will be,” Saldaña told the Washington Post days before Good was killed. “That mentality you’re fostering tends to inculcate in people a certain aggressiveness that may not be necessary in 85% of what you do.”
A DHS official who spoke to Klippenstein said that “the claim is that recruiting is up, but there is also dread that the gung-ho types that ICE and the Border Patrol are bringing in have a propensity towards confrontation and even violence.”
"The Civil Rights Division exists to enforce civil rights laws that protect all Americans," one former DOJ attorney said recently. "It doesn't exist to enact the president's own agenda."
By Julia Conley • Jan 13, 2026
President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice is seeing its latest mass resignation over its handling of the case of Renee Good, who was fatally shot by a federal immigration agent last week in Minneapolis.
Days after Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, announced that the agency’s Civil Rights Division would not be investigating the shooting—despite the fact that the office’s criminal unit would ordinarily probe any abuse or improper use of force by law enforcement—four top officials in the section have resigned.
As MS NOW reported Monday night, the chief of the criminal unit—listed on the DOJ website as Jim Felte—has resigned, as well as the principal deputy chief, deputy chief, and acting deputy chief. The outlet reported that other decisions by administration officials also contributed to their decision to leave.
The FBI announced late last week that it would be probing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross’ shooting of Good, who was killed while sitting in her car on a street in Minneapolis where ICE was operating—part of a surge of federal immigration agents who have been sent to the area in recent weeks, with the Trump administration largely targeting Somali people.
Despite video evidence showing that Good’s wheels were turned away from Ross, who was one of a number of officers who had approached her car and reportedly given her conflicting orders, the Trump administration is continuing to claim that she purposely tried to drive into the ICE agent and that Ross fired “defensive shots”—something law enforcement agents including ICE officers are trained not to do in situations involving a moving vehicle.
“It is highly unusual for the Civil Rights Division not to be involved from the outset with the FBI and US attorney’s office.”
As administration officials have aggressively pushed a narrative painting Good as a “domestic terrorist”—a designation that ordinarily would never be used by the government until a full investigation had been carried out—the FBI has blocked Minnesota authorities from conducting a probe, leading the state and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul to file a lawsuit Monday.
As the Washington Post reported Monday, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division would typically work alongside the FBI “to guide investigatory strategy” on a case like Good’s. Prosecutors with the division were involved in trying the officers who killed George Floyd in MInneapolis and Tyre Nichols in Memphis.
“It is highly unusual for the Civil Rights Division not to be involved from the outset with the FBI and US attorney’s office,” Vanita Gupta, who led the division during the Obama administration, told the Post. “I cannot think of another high-profile federal agent shooting case like this when the Civil Rights Division was not involved—its prosecutors have the long-standing expertise in such cases.”
Hundreds of attorneys in the Civil Rights Division have resigned since President Donald Trump began his second term a year ago. Stacey Young, a former division attorney who left the DOJ soon after Trump was inaugurated, told NPR that the division is “not an arm of the White House.”
“The Civil Rights Division exists to enforce civil rights laws that protect all Americans,” Young said. “It doesn’t exist to enact the president’s own agenda. That’s a perversion of the separation of powers and the role of an independent Justice Department.”
Dhillon, who has said the division will work to carry out the president’s priorities, said last April that she was “fine” with the mass departure of civil rights attorneys.
“The job here is to enforce the federal civil rights laws—not woke ideology,” she said.
Dhillon’s announcement that the division would not investigate Good’s killing suggested that the DOJ views probing improper use of force cases as it has in the past as “woke ideology.”
The mass resignation at the Civil Rights Division comes a month after more than 200 former DOJ employees signed an open letter condemning “the near destruction of DOJ’s once-revered crown jewel.”
“The administration wants you to believe that career staff who fled the Division ‘were actively in resistance mode’ and ‘decided that they’d rather not do what their job requires them to do,’” said the former employeees. “That could not be further from the truth. We left because this administration turned the Division’s core mission upside down, largely abandoning its duty to protect civil rights.”
Now in the wake of Good’s killing, said one observer, the division under Dhillon’s leadership “refused to probe a murder. The people with consciences walked out.”
"I never imagined that my government would so blatantly lie like this," said one author and attorney.
By Julia Conley • Jan 12, 2026
As Americans have continued to document federal agents violently pushing a bystander to the ground during an arrest, handcuffing a screaming mother, and demanding to see citizenship papers of people of color, observers said the US Department of Homeland Security’s latest video about a federal officer’s killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis last week showed it has resorted to “blatant propaganda” to shape public opinion on the Trump administration’s violent crackdown on immigrants and dissenters.
“This agency, and the way it now speaks, is the most repulsive and un-American things I have ever seen,” said one writer of a video featuring Lauren Bis, the deputy assistant secretary of homeland security, that was released four days after Good was fatally shot by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer.
NOTED NAZI RHETORIC! WE ALL SAW THE VIDEOS!
The video was posted to social media Sunday, accompanied by the text: “Defend the Homeland. Protect the American way of life.” Bis presented footage of Good’s vehicle before and after she was shot while sitting in the driver’s seat of her car by an ICE agent who had approached the driver’s side of the front of the vehicle.
Bis repeated claims that have been pushed by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Vice President JD Vance, and President Donald Trump: that Good was a “rioter” who “weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them.”
She said that “the American people can watch this video with their own eyes and ears and judge for themselves,” but legal experts, news outlets, and members of the public have already spent the past several days doing just that.
Experts and media organizations have extensively analyzed footage of the killing and said that despite the administration’s repeated claims, there is no evidence that Good was part of any riot. As the Guardian reported last week, “The officer who fired the fatal shots walked up to the front of Good’s car, which was turning away from him as it began to move forward, and he remained on his feet as the vehicle passed him.”
Author and University of Missouri law professor Thom Lambert said that the government “may argue that the ICE agent feared for his life, perhaps even reasonably, but the video CLEARLY shows that Good had turned away from the officer.”
“I never imagined that my government would so blatantly lie like this,” added Lambert, who also took issue with Bis’ insistence that the administration “pray[s]” for Good and her family—even as another White House official, press secretary Karoline Leavitt, called the victim a “lunatic” in comments to reporters on Monday.
Despite DHS’ display of footage that many observers have said proves Good’s wheels were turned away from the ICE agent when she began driving, David J. Bier of the libertarian Cato Institute said: “They are still using verbatim the utterly inaccurate statement from the first day. This is pathological.”
Another critic noted that the video was edited by DHS to make it appear that Good “weaponized her vehicle” by “speeding across the road”—“obviously failing to mention that footage is of when she had just been shot in the fucking face and her dead foot hit the pedal.”
Jessica Simor, an expert in human rights law in the UK, said that Joseph Goebbels, the architect of Adolf Hitler’s propaganda machine in Nazi Germany, “could not have improved” on Bis’ video.
As the video circulated online Monday, ICE and Border Patrol agents were seen in numerous new footage treating people in Minneapolis and elsewhere violently and appearing the warn them against even acting as bystanders to their enforcement actions.
Federal agents were seen chasing and tackling a man to the ground, apparently for filming with his cellphone as they carried out an arrest at a gas station in St. Paul, Minnesota.
In another video, a federal officer approached a woman who was filming him and said, “Listen, have you all not learned from the past couple of days?” before snatching her phone.
It is legal under the First Amendment for bystanders to film ICE and other federal agents as long at they are not obstructing their operations.
Organizer and attorney Aaron Regunberg said in response to that video that the US will ultimately “need some serious Truth and Reconciliation/Nuremberg shit for every fascist scumbag member of this administration.”
"We must not allow our great country, the United States of America, to become an authoritarian society."
By Brad Reed • Jan 12, 2026
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday warned that the Trump administration’s targeting of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for criminal investigation was part of a broader pattern of intimidation aimed at quelling dissent.
In a prepared statement, Sanders (I-Vt.) acknowledged that he had his own disagreements with Powell, a conservative Republican who was first appointed by President Donald Trump to be chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2017.
However, Sanders said political disagreements had nothing to do with the Department of Justice launching a criminal probe of Powell.
“In a democracy, debate and disagreement are normal,” Sanders said. “But Donald Trump does not ‘disagree’ with his opponents. In his pursuit of absolute power, he attempts to destroy anyone who stands in his way. He’s actively prosecuting Powell not because the Fed chair broke the law, but because he won’t bend the knee to Donald Trump.”
Sanders noted that Powell was only the latest target of the Trump administration’s vindictive retribution.
“When Sen. Mark Kelly (R-Ariz.) spoke out against Donald Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric and threats toward political opponents, Trump didn’t agree,” Sanders explained. “He had his Defense Department investigate Kelly for misconduct and threatened to have him executed.”
Sanders also pointed to the prosecutions of New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey, as well as his threats against assorted other critics, as evidence that Trump seeks to “intimidate and destroy... as part of his march to authoritarianism.”
“We must not allow our great country, the United States of America, to become an authoritarian society,” Sanders concluded. “Trump’s persecution of his political opponents must end.”
The co-chairs of the Not Above the Law coalition–Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen; Praveen Fernandes, vice president of the Constitutional Accountability Center; Kelsey Herbert, campaign director at MoveOn; and Brett Edkins, managing director for policy and political affairs at Stand Up America—also denounced the investigation into Powell as politically motivated on Monday, while arguing it was part of an effort to stifle dissent in the US.
“Whether targeting federal judges, members of Congress, civil society organizations, or now the chair of the Federal Reserve, Trump weaponizes the full force of government against anyone who won’t submit to his will,” they said. “Undermining the Federal Reserve threatens Americans’ jobs and savings, and our nation’s economy.”
"This unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration's threats and ongoing pressure," said Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
By Jake Johnson • Jan 12, 2026
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell revealed in a defiant statement late Sunday that the US Department of Justice is threatening him with criminal charges, a step the central bank chief condemned as “intimidation” for not bowing to President Donald Trump’s demands on interest rate policy.
“I have deep respect for the rule of law and for accountability in our democracy. No one—certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve—is above the law,” Powell said in a video statement. “But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration’s threats and ongoing pressure.”
Powell said that the Justice Department, which Trump has repeatedly wielded against his political opponents, served the Federal Reserve on Friday with grand jury subpoenas related to the central bank chair’s congressional testimony on Fed office building renovations.
But Powell, who was first nominated to his role by Trump in 2017, said accusations that he misled lawmakers about the scope of the renovations were a “pretext” obscuring the real reason the Justice Department is pursuing a criminal indictment.
“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president,” said Powell. “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.”
The New York Times reported Sunday that the investigation into Powell was approved late last year by Trump loyalist Jeanine Pirro, a former Fox News host now serving as US attorney for the District of Columbia. Trump claimed he didn’t “know anything about” the Powell investigation, but added, “He’s certainly not very good at the Fed, and he’s not very good at building buildings.”
Powell, whose term as Fed chair ends in May, has repeatedly defied Trump in public, dismissing the president’s threat to remove him from the helm of the central bank as unlawful and, at one point, fact-checking Trump to his face about the estimated cost of Fed renovations.
Powell has also publicly blamed Trump’s tariff policies for driving up inflation.
“It’s really tariffs that are causing the most of the inflation overshoot,” Powell said last month, following the central bank’s December 10 meeting. The Fed cut interest rates three times last year, bringing them down by a total of 75 basis points.
But Trump has pushed for much more aggressive rate cuts and attacked Powell—who does not have sole authority over interest rate decisions—as a “moron” and “truly one of my worst appointments.”
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, applauded Powell’s “bold defense of the rule of law” and said that Fed policy “should not be subject to intimidation and bullying by Trump loyalist prosecutors.”
“The Department of Justice should serve the rule of law, not the vindictive instincts of an authoritarian president,” said Gilbert. “And it should never misuse its criminal enforcement powers to pursue pretextual prosecutions against the president’s political opponents or those who show a modicum of independence.”
“He is abusing the law like a wannabe dictator so the Fed serves him and his billionaire friends.”
Democratic members of Congress also rose to Powell’s defense.
“Threatening criminal action against a Fed chair because he refuses to do the president’s bidding on interest rates undermines the rule of law, which is the very foundation for American prosperity,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) wrote on social media.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) added that “no one should lose their sense of outrage about what is happening to our country.”
“This is an effort to create an autocratic state. It’s that plain,” said Murphy. “Trump is threatening to imprison the chairman of Federal Reserve simply because he won’t enact the rate policy Trump wants.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a frequent critic of Powell and Fed rate policy during his tenure, wrote late Sunday that Trump “wants to nominate a new Fed chair AND push Powell off the board for good to complete his corrupt takeover of our central bank.”
Powell’s term as a Fed governor runs through January 2028. Trump’s top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, is widely seen as the president’s likely pick to replace Powell as chair of the central bank.
Warren called on the Senate to “not move ANY Trump Fed nominee” amid the DOJ investigation into Powell.
“He is abusing the law like a wannabe dictator so the Fed serves him and his billionaire friends,” Warren said of Trump.
"It should be terrifying to every American how Noem lies," said one critic. "She doesn't sweat or move uncomfortably. She just doesn't care. This is what Trump has created. An environment where you only get in trouble if you don't lie."
By Jon Queally • Jan 11, 2026
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem sat for a live interview with CNN‘s Jake Tapper on Sunday morning about the killing of Renee Nicole Good by a federal immigration agent last week and lied straight through her teeth to the American public about what happened.
Since Good was shot and killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross on Wednesday, members of the Trump administration have consistently tried to portray the shooting as justified despite indisputable video evidence contradicting their false claims and narratives.
Noem, who released her first statement on the shooting within three hours of Good’s killing, has joined Vice President JD Vance as the leading liars and propagandists—with plenty of help from people like Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the US Department of Homeland Security, and Border Czar Tom Homan—within the Trump administration.
In her exchange with Tapper, who confronted Noem over the blatant chasm between her claims about what happened—she called Good a “domestic terrorist” who “attacked” federal agents—and what anyone with two good eyes who watches the variety of videos made public of the shooting can plainly see for themselves.
Various angles of the video, including audio from Good’s final moments, have shown that she was not “yelling” at officers or “attacking” them in any way. Video shows several vehicles driving around her car in the minutes prior to the shooting. Good has a visible smile on her face when she says, directly to Ross as he circles her car, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” Detailed analyses of the footage shows Ross could just as easily have stepped aside—without drawing and firing his weapon—in order to dodge the moving car, which he did—even with firing the fatal shots—without injury or harm to others.
Asked by Tapper why she did not wait for the full facts before speaking out publicly to demonize Good and defend the officer, Noem falsely claimed that “everything that I’ve said has been proven to be factual, and the truth.”
That’s a lie.
“With all due respect,” Tapper responded, “the first thing you said was not what happened.”
“It is absolutely what happened,” Noem said, lying once again about her initial comments and their relationship to what factually transpired.
“It should be terrifying to every American how Noem lies,” said James Abrenio, a criminal defense attorney, in a social media post on Sunday. “She doesn’t sweat or move uncomfortably. She just doesn’t care. This is what Trump has created. An environment where you only get in trouble if you don’t lie. Even about an officer shooting a woman in the face on video.”
Noem, in the interview, goes on to claim that Good’s behavior fits the textbook definition of “domestic terrorism,” despite scores of law enforcement and civil liberties experts who have reviewed the video saying that Ross’ behavior betrayed basic police training about how to deal with a routine traffic stop or de-escalate a situation involving a motor vehicle in a roadway.
When Tapper tries to pin Noem down, asking her to explain what she thinks Good was trying to do when she moved her car, the secretary deflects by saying the real “question” should be why are people—in this case a broadcast journalist—“arguing with the president who is trying to keep people safe?”
Noem’s overt gaslighting—telling the public something objectively contrary to available facts—has become part and parcel of the Trump administration’s Orwellian approach in the president’s second term.
“Kristi Noem is a stone-cold liar who has zero credibility,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the minority leader in the House, on Friday in reaction to her earlier comments about the case. “There is nothing to suggest the shooting of an unarmed woman in Minneapolis was justified. This heinous killing must be criminally investigated to the full extent of the law.”
On Friday, The Guardian documented a litany of false claims made Noem, Trump, McLaughlin, and others, comparing them against what is factually known based on video evidence and eye-witness accounts:
The claim
“ … rioters began blocking ICE officers and one of these violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them – an act of domestic terrorism” – post on X by the Department of Homeland Security.
The reality
There is simply no evidence that Good was “a violent rioter” or “domestic terrorist”. No riot was taking place before her encounter with the ICE agents, and the department could not yet have been certain of her identity at 12.43pm, the time the message was posted. There is no evidence that Good – a poet and mother – was a terrorist.
The claim
“ … the woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer” – post on Truth Social by Donald Trump.
The reality
Video of the incident shows that Good was not “disorderly”, and had reversed her car and allowed at least one ICE vehicle to pass before other agents confronted her. A separate video clearly shows that the officer who fired the fatal shots walked up to the front of Good’s car, which was turning away from him as it began to move forward, and he remained on his feet as the vehicle passed him.
The claim
“An ICE officer, fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots … The ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries” – Tricia McLaughlin, homeland security assistant secretary, in a post on X.
The reality
The officer who killed Good was not in the pathway of her car when he began firing, analysis of the video shows. Two other officers were beside the car, and no members of the public were seen to be in harm’s way. There is no evidence that any ICE officer was injured.
According to The Atlantic‘s Adam Serwer, such “blatant lies” by the administration in the wake of Good’s killing serve various purposes:
They perpetuate the false narrative that federal agents are in constant peril and therefore justified in using lethal force at the slightest hint of danger. They assure federal agents that they can harm or even kill American citizens with impunity, and warn those who might be moved to protest Trump’s immigration policies of the same thing. Perhaps most grim, they communicate to the public that if you happen to be killed by a federal agent, your government will bear false witness to the world that you were a terrorist.
Following the DHS secretary’s latest comments on Sunday, Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, also speaking on Tapper’s show, said Noem “needs to resign or be impeached.”
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