Battle Over Facial Recognition in New Orleans Will Shape Future of Surveillance


Edith Romero, an organizer in New Orleans, discusses the dangers of the growing surveillance state.
By Ed Vogel , TruthoutPublishedJanuary 17, 2026

The New Orleans City Council and New Orleans Police Department continue to push for facial recognition technology, despite persistent community opposition.  John Lund via Getty Images

While New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago have all received significant attention when it comes to police use of surveillance technologies, the small city of New Orleans has for years been the laboratory for a sophisticated surveillance apparatus deployed by the city’s police department and other policing bodies.

Just last year, New Orleans was in the news as the city considered setting a new surveillance precedent in the United States. First, a privately run camera network, Project N.O.L.A., was exposed for deploying facial recognition technology, including “live use” (meaning Project N.O.L.A. was identifying people in real time as they walked through the city). All of this was done in close collaboration with the local police, despite these uses violating a 2022 ordinance that placed narrow limits on the use of facial recognition.

Then the city flirted with formally approving the use of live facial recognition technology, which would have been a first in the United States. If enacted, live facial recognition technology would allow police to identify individuals as they move about New Orleans in real time. All of this occurred in the months before the Trump administration deployed Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, wielding an array of surveillance technologies, to terrorize and kidnap New Orleans residents. Of course, New Orleans residents have organized and actively fought back against the police and their spying, offering lessons for organizers across the country.

Edith Romero, an organizer with Eye on Surveillance (EOS), spoke with Truthout about the history of Eye on Surveillance, Project NOLA, the use of facial recognition technology in New Orleans and why we should all be watching what’s happening there if we’re concerned about the growing surveillance state.

Ed Vogel: Who is Eye on Surveillance and what do you do?

Edith Romero: In 2020, the Eye on Surveillance (EOS) coalition campaigned for and passed a surveillance ordinance ban that prohibited cell site simulators, facial recognition, and other surveillance technologies. Unfortunately, this ordinance was amended a couple of years later to approve loopholes for the use of facial recognition technology. EOS continues working to halt the expansion of surveillance locally, to change narratives regarding surveillance, and to build a New Orleans that is truly safe for everyone. At this moment while we face the occupation of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), ICE, and National Guard troops, we are even more committed and engaged in the fight against surveillance, with the clear understanding that surveillance is being deployed to kidnap and terrorize our communities of color.


New Orleans Resists ICE Invasion Despite Surveillance and State Repression
Before ICE descended on New Orleans, GOP lawmakers made it a crime to interfere with immigration enforcement. By Mike Ludwig , Truthout/TheAppeal  December 9, 2025

EOS has done some amazing organizing to make the problem of surveillance legible in New Orleans and across the country. Can you share more about your organizing strategy to challenge surveillance systems and infrastructure?

Our organizing strategy has always been community and coalition building. Surveillance affects us all, especially our communities of color. That is why we work with immigrants, Black and Brown residents of New Orleans, teacher unions, civic organizations, and local organizations to unite under the same mission: building a New Orleans free of surveillance. Surveillance truly impacts all of us, in every aspect of our lives; we bring forward the interconnectedness of shared struggles via our fight against surveillance through community meetings, teach-ins both in person and virtual, online educational campaigns and creative community events such as community scouting of local surveillance cameras. Relationship building is key for nurturing movements and narrative change towards a world that truly takes care of all of us. Relationship building has not only enabled the victory of getting the live facial recognition surveillance ordinance withdrawn but has strengthened community power and narrative change regarding surveillance and the root causes of safety, resources, and community care.

How have you leveraged your base building towards policy change?

Base building is essential for policy change. We know surveillance is an issue that transcends time, lived experience, and identities. To build a wide coalition that truly represented the broad harm, danger, and systemic inequities that surveillance upholds, we brought together organizations whose work doesn’t necessarily focus on surveillance, but was a reflection of how surveillance permeates almost every aspect of our lives. We worked with formerly incarcerated community leaders who teach about the dangers of surveillance for those on parole, especially in emergency situations, we brought in immigrant community members whose lives are constantly monitored and whose families are separated by ICE/CBP with the aid of surveillance weapons, we talked with teachers who provided insight into the school-to-prison pipeline and how surveillance of our youth is seeping into our education system. Base building enables a holistic perspective regarding the harm and racism that surveillance embodies, countering narratives that erroneously attribute safety to overpolicing and surveillance. The goal is to truly have conversations and demand policy that resources communities rather than corporate interests that sacrifice our wellbeing.

From the outside, it feels like the use of facial recognition technology in New Orleans is a perpetual issue. Can you trace for us what has changed regarding facial recognition technology since the policy victory in 2021?

After our victory with the surveillance ban in 2021, which banned four different surveillance technologies including facial recognition, we had to mobilize continuously against the City Council and NOPD as they continued to push for the approval of facial recognition against persistent community opposition. In 2022, City Council added amendments to the surveillance ban that approved facial recognition for “violent offenses,” opening the door to the use of facial recognition by NOPD. Fast forward to 2025, City Council and NOPD again introduced an ordinance to expand facial recognition and other surveillance technologies even further, with the goal of approving live facial recognition in all the city cameras. NOPD and City Council try to sell surveillance as the ultimate solution for crime and safety, even though research and lessons from history show that safety comes from resourcing community, not surveillance or overpolicing. New Orleans heavily invests in surveillance; for example, the French Quarter is the most surveilled area of all the city, and even so, we still have tragedies like the New Year’s Day attack last year. Surveillance will never bring safety, and as of late we have seen how surveillance is being weaponized through drones, facial recognition apps, and license plate readers to kidnap our communities of color through the violent CBP operation in New Orleans, Catahoula Crunch.

How did you learn that NOPD was using facial recognition in real time?

For a while, we had knowledge about Project NOLA secretly spying on us with banned facial recognition cameras. However, we weren’t aware of the extremely close relationship between Project NOLA and NOPD. In early 2025, The Washington Post reported that NOPD was using Project NOLA to bypass the surveillance ban on facial recognition. Through this reporting we learned that despite the ban, Project NOLA would send alerts and work intimately with NOPD officers, sending live facial recognition alerts to their phones, providing feeds of their cameras to certain officers, or communicating about certain people of interest that they wanted to be tracked through live facial recognition.

Can you contextualize the use of facial recognition in New Orleans and describe the specific communities who are targeted by the police?

Facial recognition in New Orleans has to be considered in the context of the deep history of Black enslavement, Jim Crow, and racism in Louisiana, as well as the fact that Louisiana is the incarceration capital of the world. As we know, facial recognition is a deeply biased technology, one that reinforces the systemic racism that exists in our modern-day society. Research finds that facial recognition misidentifies people of color, leading to arrests of people like Randal Reid, a man from Atlanta, who was arrested by the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office for crimes in Louisiana that he did not commit. Surveillance historically has been used as an excuse to overpolice and criminalize people of color, starting from the lantern laws that were put in place to surveil enslaved Africans when they moved at night through the carrying of lanterns, to the CIA operations that targeted prominent Black civil rights leaders, to the Patriot Act that demonized Muslim and Arab community members to institute surveillance of U.S. citizens and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

New Orleans is a majority Black city (55 percent, according to the 2024 census) with a sizable Latine and immigrant community, a city that is constantly being labeled as a sacrifice zone for climate crisis induced hurricanes or cancer-causing factories. It is appalling for New Orleans to constantly be used as a testing ground for racist surveillance, considering the amount of harm this technology would bring to an under-resourced city that depends on hospitality revenue from a Black and Latine labor force.

The NOPD says that they are no longer using real time facial recognition technology but there is an effort to enshrine its use into law. Tell us about the proposed ordinance and how EOS is challenging it?

Ordinance 35,137, introduced in May 2025, was a joint attempt by NOPD and City Council to approve live facial recognition in New Orleans, right after their possibly illegal partnership with Project NOLA was exposed by The Washington Post on a national level. EOS quickly mobilized against this dangerous ordinance, bringing together multiple diverse local organizations to oppose it. This included Step Up Louisiana, Voice of the Experienced (VOTE), Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and immigrant rights organizations. National organizations such as MediaJustice, Fight for the Future, and Southerners Against Surveillance Systems & Infrastructure (SASSI) also joined the fight against live facial recognition in New Orleans, echoing the understanding that an assault on New Orleans’ through racist surveillance tech is an assault on our collective safety, dignity, and privacy. Surveillance is a danger to everyone, and a coalition of organizations that have diverse perspectives and communities is best situated to denounce the imminent harm posed by live facial recognition. Through public community events, meetings with council members, and campaigns to inform local communities of the danger posed by facial recognition and surveillance, EOS was able to shift public narratives, build diverse coalitions against surveillance and ultimately, get City Council to withdraw the live facial recognition ordinance.

Who is Project NOLA, the organization facilitating this vast camera apparatus?

Project NOLA is a spy network of thousands of private cameras in New Orleans as well as other cities across the country, that uses banned live facial recognition technology through their status as a non-profit. Project NOLA is owned and managed by Bryan Lagarde, an ex-NOPD officer who also hosts Project NOLA footage in reality TV crime shows. He pays himself $220,000 a year for this work and his family populates the executive board of Project NOLA. Project NOLA cameras are installed in business, houses, and private properties throughout Louisiana and even other cities such as Midfield and Fairfield, Alabama. Project NOLA’s purpose is to bypass city law and, through loopholes, facilitate law enforcement with the use of dangerous, racist live facial recognition alongside other highly invasive surveillance technology including license plate readers. Project NOLA has sole discretion and zero community accountability regarding what, how, and where their invasive video footage is stored, disposed, used, or even shared. We know Project NOLA is sharing their video streams with the Louisiana State Police, FBI, and select NOPD officers. If Project NOLA decides to, they could easily share these camera streams with facial recognition with ICE or CBP, facilitating the kidnapping and racial profiling of people of color.

How do the police, elected officials, Project NOLA, and others in New Orleans align and shape the narrative to justify the use of facial recognition and other surveillance tools?

Police, elected officials, Project NOLA, and people who have financial interests that benefit from surveillance justify and sell facial recognition as the ultimate solution for community safety. According to these people in positions of power, more cameras mean less crimes. It also means more incarceration, more profit for private prisons and detention centers, and a lazy, degrading direction to take when trying to ignore the extreme lack of resources in our communities. Real community safety doesn’t take shortcuts, it doesn’t incarcerate, and it surely doesn’t come from surveillance.

Louisiana recently passed Act 399. Can you tell us more about what this legislation does and how it compounds the potential harms of surveillance tools like facial recognition in New Orleans?

Act 399 is a state law designed by right-wing state legislators with the purpose of scaring, intimidating, and silencing any type of action that can seem to be against immigration enforcement in the state of Louisiana. As of December 26, 2025, no one has been prosecuted by this state law, but it has a chilling effect on the people of Louisiana, promoting fear of incarceration for providing mutual aid, recording ICE, or in any way supporting our immigrant communities. ICE, CBP, and our right-wing Gov. Jeff Landry could use Act 399 to force Project NOLA to share their cameras, video streams, and racist surveillance technology with and for violent “immigration enforcement” attacks.

Why do you think people from around the country should be paying attention to this fight in New Orleans?

The fight in New Orleans is one that every city will eventually face. New Orleans is the laboratory for mass surveillance experiments that eventually may spread to the rest of the country. If live facial recognition would have been approved in New Orleans in 2025, it would have provided a blueprint and example for the rest of the country to follow. Surveillance affects us all, whether in one corner of the country or another, or in Palestine where these surveillance technologies were first tested on Palestinians, because it creates a ripple effect of mass surveillance expansion that decimates privacy and constitutional rights, and perpetuates the long history of systemic racism and criminalization of poor people and people of color. At this conjuncture, when the U.S. federal government is increasingly attacking free speech and kidnapping people of color through racial profiling, the threat and danger of surveillance is even more palpable as is the need to fight it and build a better future for our communities.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Ed Vogel is a researcher and organizer.

A Tech Bro Think Tank Is Trying to Roll Back Evidence-Based Homelessness Policy

Housing First policies are being replaced with punitive reforms that could push 170,000 people back into homelessness.

By Garrett L. Grainger , 

Truthout

January 19, 2026

A general view of the Robert C. Weaver Building, serving as the Department of Housing and Urban Development, on December 12, 2025, in Washington, D.C.Heather Diehl / Getty Images

Last fall, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) nearly triggered a homelessness disaster of its own making. A rush of policy changes that were rolled out with almost no warning and even less guidance threatened to push up to 170,000 formerly unhoused Americans out of stable housing.

The strangest part? Much of this upheaval traces back to a little-known think tank that was born in Silicon Valley.

The Cicero Institute, created by tech investor Joe Lonsdale, has spent the past few years promoting aggressive policies targeting encampments for the unhoused and pushing cities to move away from Housing First, the U.S.’s primary model for responding to chronic homelessness. Over the summer, HUD quietly adopted several of Cicero’s key recommendations. And the result was widespread panic among the local agencies responsible for keeping people housed.

Meet the Tech-Bro Think Tank Redesigning Homelessness Policy

Joe Lonsdale, best known as a founding partner of Palantir and a member of the original “PayPal Mafia,” created the Cicero Institute in 2016 to inject what he calls “entrepreneurial thinking” into government. The group operates on a roughly $10 million annual budget that is financed by undisclosed donors, and its board is dominated by Lonsdale’s family members, other entrepreneurs, and political staffers. Its messaging leans heavily on the idea that homelessness persists not because of poverty or a shortage of affordable housing, but because service providers are enabling poor behavior.

On his social media accounts, Lonsdale warns of a “homeless industrial complex” supposedly enriching itself through failed policies. That claim is not grounded in evidence, nor does it match the reality I’ve seen after eight years interviewing and observing frontline service workers in the homeless sector. If anything, the people running U.S. homeless shelters and supportive housing programs are overworked, underpaid, and overwhelmed by needs that far exceed their funding.

Yet Cicero’s arguments have found a national platform through the work of Devon Kurtz, the organization’s “public safety policy director.” Kurtz has a background in classics and criminology, but there is no evidence of any experience working in U.S. homelessness systems, according to his LinkedIn profile. Despite this, he has become a frequent commentator, urging lawmakers to ban encampments, expand involuntary psychiatric commitment, move unhoused people into transitional housing programs with strict behavioral requirements, and dismantle key federal institutions that design homelessness policy.

The proposals are sweeping. The evidence behind them is thin.

The Campaign Against Housing First

Cicero’s preferred target is Housing First, a model adopted by the George W. Bush administration and expanded under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, during the latter’s first term. Housing First prioritizes moving chronically unhoused people into permanent housing without requiring sobriety or treatment upfront. The model rests on numerous randomized controlled trials, which find that people stay housed at far higher rates and reduce consumption of some costly emergency services when basic stability comes first. By contrast, evidence for mental health, income, and employment impacts shows no advantage for the conditional services that Cicero advocates.

Kurtz argues that Housing First has “failed,” pointing to rising numbers of unsheltered people over the past decade. But this argument misuses the data in several ways.

For one, “permanent supportive housing” is the closest thing to Housing First that the federal government provides homeless service recipients. That program wasn’t designed to end all homelessness. It was specifically created for “chronically” homeless households who have been unhoused for at least 12 months and who have a documented disability. Rising unsheltered homelessness, by contrast, has been driven largely by soaring rent costs, the expiration of pandemic-era protections, and insufficient supply of emergency shelter, not Housing First.

There’s also the question of outcomes. HUD tracks Housing First retention each year, and the results are consistent: Since 2015, roughly 90 to 95 percent of people in these programs remain housed. If chronic homelessness is rising, the problem is not that Housing First “doesn’t work.” The problem instead is that there aren’t enough preventative services to keep people housed during crises or sufficient rental subsidies for people who have been unhoused for less than 12 months.

Still, Cicero frequently cites outlier studies to suggest Housing First is dangerous, ineffective, or too expensive. These studies are often based on narrow samples, misapplied to the wrong populations, or interpreted in ways the original authors explicitly warn against. The broader research consensus is clear: Housing First works extremely well for the population it serves. What it cannot do is counteract years of rising rents, stagnating wages, catastrophic shortages of affordable housing, and the collapse of political will to end homelessness.

HUD Adopts Cicero’s Playbook

The Cicero Institute’s advocacy department, “Cicero Action,” has employed “high-powered” lobbyists to push its agenda in states around the country. Cicero Action, for example, hired Alfred Parks, a former state representative, and a corporate lobbyist, Jason Weaks, in New Mexico to advance model bills that criminalize homelessness and redirect funding from permanent to transitional housing programs.

After passing its model legislation in red states like Florida, Missouri, and Utah, it appears the Cicero Institute has expanded its influence to the federal government. In July 2025, President Trump issued an executive order directing HUD to shift federal homelessness funding away from permanent housing and toward transitional housing and encampment enforcement. And HUD has quickly moved to comply.

Federal contracts that were supposed to run through 2026 were abruptly cut short. A new funding notice, released in mid-November, gave local agencies just months to redesign their entire homelessness systems, which took over 10 years to build.

The notice leaned heavily on the same weak evidence that Cicero uses. HUD cited a non-representative survey from 15 states to justify claims that most unsheltered people have severe mental illness or addiction, despite the study’s own authors warning against using their data to generalize about causes. HUD suggested Housing First had failed, even though the agency’s own metrics belied that claim.

Local administrators were stunned. I conducted 12 interviews with local administrators across the country over the past three months. My contacts would only speak to me under the condition of anonymity due to fear of political retaliation from HUD. The administrators I spoke to described HUD’s abrupt change as chaotic, reckless, illegal, dangerous, and impossible to carry out.

“You’re talking about historical supporting of permanent supportive housing,” one administrator said, “and essentially giving us eight months to wind those down. That’s not enough time.”

In addition to this unrealistic deadline, most administrators would have to make those reforms with less funding and, as a result, fewer staff to deliver the intensive case management that HUD is now demanding. “There are some many consequences to this on down the road that they’re not looking that far ahead,” another administrator said. “They are not looking at, ‘If we cut this, how do other services pick that up,’ because we don’t have those services and they aren’t giving us the money to create those services.”

The recently announced $2 billion cuts to community-based mental health and substance abuse treatment will exacerbate this crisis by shrinking, if not eliminating, the case management agencies that deliver the kind of support HUD expects homeless service users to receive.

A lawsuit was quickly filed to thwart disaster. Ninety minutes before its court hearing, HUD abruptly withdrew the funding notice until problems could be worked out.

The Damage Isn’t Over

Even though HUD pulled back its proposal, the uncertainty it created has already strained homelessness systems that were stretched thin long before this episode. With another winter underway and the threat of policy whiplash still looming, governors cannot afford to wait and see what happens next.

Roughly a third of contracts were ending between January and June 2026. A large number of people would therefore lose their rental assistance in the dead of winter if HUD followed through with this disastrous policy. This will cause unsheltered homelessness to spike at a time when emergency shelters already cannot meet demand.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, states used eviction moratoriums, utility shutoff protections, and emergency rental assistance to keep millions of people housed. They may need to use these tools again if HUD continues to pursue abrupt policy shifts without adequate planning.

Thousands of people are depending on them to act before the next crisis hits.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Garrett L. Grainger is Research Fellow in Social Inclusion at Wrexham University in Wales. His work on homeless policy and governance has also appeared in outlets like The Hill, NPR, and The Progressive.

Immigrant Rights Advocates Say Trump’s First Year Was “Much Worse” Than Expected

“Trump wants us to hang our heads and give up, but that’s not happening,” says organizer Rossy Alfaro.

By Derek Seidman , 

Truthout

January 17, 2026

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agents watch immigrants board a deportation flight at the Tucson International Airport, in Tucson, Arizona, on January 23, 2025.

Department of Defense photo by Senior Airman Devlin Bishop

Donald Trump rode to reelection with racist attacks on immigrants and refugees and promising mass deportations. The first year of his second term was filled with heartbreak, trauma, and fear as his administration escalated its assault on immigrant communities: separating families, occupying cities, targeting workers, and expanding deportations. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using its bloated budget to recruit among Trump’s far right base. This comes amid ICE’s horrific killing of Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis, staunchly defended by the Trump administration.

At the same time, we’ve seen inspiring community resistance to ICE and Trump across the U.S. Rapid response networks have grown. Teacher unions are defending immigrant students and families. There is growing mass resistance to ICE from Los Angeles to Chicago to Minneapolis.

A year ago, Truthout spoke to several community and farmworker organizations about how they were preparing for the second Trump administration. We reached out to some of those participants again to reflect on the past year in a new roundtable interview. They discuss the anguish of the past year and the challenges immigrant communities have faced, as well as how organizers are proactively responding and what’s keeping people motivated and inspired.

Rossy Alfaro is a former dairy worker in Vermont and organizer with Migrant Justice, which organizes dairy farmworkers in Vermont and oversees the worker-driven Milk with Dignity campaign. María Carrasco is a longtime volunteer with Derechos Humanos, a grassroots organization supporting migrant rights in Tucson, Arizona, and she is closely involved with the group’s rapid response work. Jeannie Economos is the longtime pesticide safety and environmental health project coordinator for the Farmworker Association of Florida, which has organized farmworkers for over four decades.

Note: These interviews took place in December 2025 and were conducted separately and edited into a roundtable format afterward. Alfaro’s interview was done with interpretation provided by Migrant Justice.

Related Story

When ICE Comes Calling, Rapid Community Responses Can Make a Difference
Is your community ready to fight deportations? Here’s how people in New York, New Jersey and Arizona are organizing. By Derek Seidman , Truthout February 3, 2025

Derek Seidman: A year ago, we discussed how you were approaching the new Trump administration. How has the past year been for your community and organizing efforts?

Jeannie Economos: It’s much worse than we expected. The tactics they’re using are very disturbing. Children are being ripped apart from their parents. It’s causing chaos and heartbreak and mental health issues. The community is traumatized. ICE is waiting for people at courthouses and even schools and is intimidating people by wearing masks and dragging people out of their cars. It’s terrible. This is unprecedented.


“The tactics they’re using are very disturbing. Children are being ripped apart from their parents.”

María Carrasco: We’ve seen so many things already. Bounty hunters are out there doing a lot of damage. Many racist people got jobs with ICE and they don’t respect human rights. Sometimes they’re really violent when they arrest people. Every day it’s becoming more dangerous, and this is barely the beginning, because ICE is receiving more money.

They’ve detained a lot of workers we know. Their families come to our meetings. It’s heartbreaking how the kids whose parents are in detention are suffering. We’re traumatizing them. I’m so worried about that.

So many people are missing in the system. We can’t find them. I try to calm down the families. They call me and they’re desperate. There are a lot of Venezuelans being taken. They’re being picked up and deported even though they’re refugees and have all their paperwork.

Rossy Alfaro: It’s had a huge impact on our community. The attacks have been so extreme. Even though we knew what was coming, you can’t really be prepared for it being so intense. So there’s a certain amount of panic in the farmworker community. People are feeling terrorized.


“So many people are missing in the system. We can’t find them.”

At the same time, people are really resolute, especially within our farmworker community here in Vermont. We fought hard for the protections that we’ve won, and we’re going to fight to retain them.

Can you discuss more what the administration’s escalating attacks on immigrants has meant for farmworker communities?

Economos: Things were difficult over a year ago with all the anti-immigrant sentiment and rhetoric, but that looks good compared to what we are seeing now, especially some of the tactics they’re using against the immigrant population. Before, farmworkers were afraid to file complaints for workplace violations, but now they’re afraid to go to work at all. Of course, some people still go to work, but they’re taking a risk. Some farmers have planted fewer crops because they are worried they won’t find enough workers to harvest. It’s causing chaos in agriculture.


“Before, farmworkers were afraid to file complaints for workplace violations, but now they’re afraid to go to work at all.”

Many employers in Florida are implementing E-Verify, a system which tracks immigration status, which means a lot of people won’t get jobs. So they end up in the underground economy working for unscrupulous employers who exploit them and commit wage theft because they’re undocumented and they know they’re very vulnerable.

In November, ICE stopped a bus of farmworkers near Immokalee. They were mostly women and asylum seekers going to work, just trying to take care of their families. They dragged them from the bus. Who will take care of their kids? Along with the fear, how do you go about your daily life with so much uncertainty? It’s terrifying. Some farmworkers are leaving the country.

Alfaro: In April 2025, Border Patrol detained eight farmworkers at a farm where workers had really begun to organize and stand up for their rights. This had a big impact. People felt fear and no longer wanted to speak out and organize. Some stopped going out to get groceries. People are just now feeling enough courage to start organizing again.

Migrant Justice spoke with the detained workers and their families and we launched a public campaign. We had marches and rallies, and thousands of people signed our petition calling for their release. This had a huge impact. The workers being held behind bars knew that they weren’t alone and they knew that the community was behind them.

How has your organization responded over the past year to the Trump administration’s intensified attacks?

Alfaro: We’ve really focused on educating people about their rights and how to prepare for potential encounters with federal agents and minimize risk in those situations. We’ve been building a system of support through our rapid response network so people can respond when there’s a detention happening. We have people trained on how to intervene to defend a person’s rights when they see an arrest — though it’s difficult to respond in time in rural areas.

We have people trained to go observe anytime there’s a rumor about ICE or Border Patrol in an area. That lets us differentiate fact from fiction and helps with that sense of panic that the community feels. This rapid response network has been important for our community, because we haven’t felt so alone. There are people here in Vermont who have our backs.

Economos: We have five offices in Florida. We’ve been doing Know Your Rights trainings with workers across the state. We’ve been handing out red cards in the fields. Some employers have actually asked us to do Know Your Rights trainings for their workers, which is unusual. Some local businesses have put up signs saying they’re a safe place for immigrants.

We’ve been working in coalition with other organizations locally, statewide, and nationally. We have a rapid response group. We’re keeping track of detentions and deportations. We hope to publish a report on this soon.

We were lucky to escape any hurricanes this [past] year. We’ve been really worried about what to tell people if there’s an evacuation order or they need to find shelter. We’ve been contacting local governments about their policies around sheltering undocumented workers. We’re trying to protect people. How can people go to shelters if there is no guarantee that ICE won’t target them there? There’s so much fear and uncertainty.

Carrasco: There are so many groups organizing in Tucson. It’s getting bigger and bigger. People are really pissed off. The more they try to oppress us, the more people are coming out.

We tell people to take out their phone and start recording if someone’s being detained. It’s our right. We keep eight feet away from them. As soon as someone starts recording, ICE wants to go hide. They’ll be less violent toward people. They don’t want to be recorded, because they know sooner or later, we’re going to take them to court. We’ve been cataloging their cars and license plates.

We’re just so mad. These ICE agents don’t even show their faces. They kick us and do whatever they want. They’re the criminals. We have the right to protest.

A lady from Chicago is sending me whistles and offered to train us on how to respond to tear gas. But big cities like that are different from Tucson. They’re crunched up, so when ICE shows up, people pour out together. It’s difficult in Tucson because our city is so spread out, and we’re so close to the border, so it’s more militarized.

Can you talk about your hotline in Tucson?

Carrasco: Some days the phone is ringing off the hook. Just now, while we’re talking, I received three calls. We get a lot of calls in the morning because ICE is getting people on their way to work. This is every day. They’re not criminals. They’re workers.


“They’re dehumanizing people and stealing their wages.”

We’re trying to help people get lawyers. We try to help as many people as we can. Every day is a different story. One worker called us last month. A guy hired him and exploited him and then brought him to ICE. Those are the kinds of abuses we’re seeing. They’re dehumanizing people and stealing their wages.

After the Taco Giro raids here, I got 48 calls. People wanted to join our meetings and our rapid response network. Even though we’re in a really bad situation, people who never helped before are coming out to defend the community. There’s hope out there.

We need people to have our number and call us if you see anything. Call me every time. We have more than 200 people who are ready to come out.

Rossy, you were personally impacted this past year. Can you talk about that?

Alfaro: This is really difficult for me to talk about. My family members, Nacho and Heidi, were detained by Border Patrol and then held in ICE detention for a month. They were detained completely in violation of their rights, and it was done very violently. Their window was shattered, and they were pulled out of the car.

They both knew their rights. They refused to provide any information about themselves to those immigration agents. The agents took them in without any cause. But that also gave them the ability to challenge their detention on legal grounds and helped get them released, because they could show there was an unlawful arrest.

My son and I suffered terribly from all the stress and sadness of having our family separated. They were held for several weeks. But they trusted their community to fight for them. They have very high profiles as community leaders and as fighters for human rights. That faith that the community would fight for their release sustained them during those months in detention, until they ultimately came home.

Have you seen any victories this past year that you want to lift up?

Alfaro: One victory we’re most proud of is the passage of the Housing Access for Immigrant Families Act, which makes it easier for immigrant families to find housing in the state. We campaigned for this and won it last year. For farmworkers especially, having access to housing that’s not associated with your job really opens up opportunities.

Also, the Education Equity law we won that went into effect this year allows undocumented students to attend university and pay the same rate and receive the same financial aid as their classmates who were born here. My daughter is one of the students benefiting from that. She’s able to go to college because of this law that we fought for and that she helped get passed.

Amid the challenges and heartbreak of this past year, what is keeping you motivated or even hopeful?

Economos: All I can say is I’m more committed than ever. There’s no way that we can turn our backs now. It’s personal, too. A community member who’s on our leadership committee — her nephew was sent to Alligator Alcatraz. When you know people, you feel their pain and it makes you more committed than ever before.

Seeing what other people are doing — young people, students standing in front of ICE or blocking a road, pastors going to immigration court to try and protect people; seeing the risks people are taking, just an outpouring of resistance around the country to what’s happening — that’s inspiring.


“People who’ve never protested are coming out to defend our community.”

Carrasco: People are waking up. People who’ve never protested are coming out to defend our community. A really old lady called me the other day. She was so mad. She wanted to join us. Even white people want to join us — people who are less afraid and who’ve never been active in the community, but who are waking up to what’s happening.

I’m hopeful. People are always calling me to help. Our communities are coming together and they’re defending each other every day. We’ll keep working and defending our communities regardless of what they do to us.

Alfaro: Trump wants us to hang our heads and give up, but that’s not happening. These experiences fill us with anger and rage, and the only way to release that anger is by organizing with a community to fight for your rights. The terrible experiences that we’ve had are the fuel we’re now using to fight even harder for the rights of our community.

 Trump boosts post casting NATO as a 'threat' in social media spree

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a press conference, as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio react to a Sky News reporter's question about NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte calling President Trump 'daddy', at the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, June 25, 2025. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

David Badash

January 20, 2026 

ALTERNET

While facing opposition from European leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Donald Trump took time out late Tuesday morning to go on a social media spree, including promoting a post that labeled NATO and the United Nations as threats while declaring that the “enemy is within.”

Trump’s controversial Board of Peace is “falling apart,” according to Bloomberg News UK Political Editor Alex Wickham, who reported that “The UK is not joining the board as things stand,” and that its spokesperson said the UK’s commitment to the UN is “unwavering.

French President Emmanuel Macron has also announced that he would not join the Board of Peace, which requires at least a $1 billion donation for a country to have permanent membership — which can be rescinded by Donald Trump, who is the organization’s chairman.

“So at what point are we going to realize the enemy is within,” the post Trump promoted began. “China and Russia are the boogeymen when the real threat is the U.N., NATO and this ‘religion.’ I put ‘religion’ in quotes because it’s not a religion, it’s a cult!”

Former Obama and Biden official Jesse Lee responded, writing: “So is Trump threatening to invade Greenland to counter Russia and China as he has ludicrously claimed, or is this just the beginning of his war against Europe as it seems on its face?”

Trump, or someone with access to his Truth Social account, posted dozens of posts in approximately 90 minutes.

His last post so far, at 11:47 AM ET, read: “No single person, or President, has done more for NATO than President Donald J. Trump. If I didn’t come along, there would be no NATO right now!!! It would have been in the ash heap of History. Sad, but TRUE!!! President DJT”

'Code red': Newsom tells Europe they’ve been played by Trump

California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks after he and other lawmakers signed the "Election Rigging Response Act" in Sacramento, California, U.S. August 21, 2025. REUTERS/Fred Greaves

David Badash

January 20, 2026

ALTERNET

California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom issued what he described as a “code red” warning over President Donald Trump, citing what he characterized as a “wrecking ball” approach to the global order.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Governor Newsom told reporters that Europeans have been “played,” and that Trump has been “playing folks for fools.”

Calling the entire situation “embarrassing,” Newsom rejected the idea that what is happening between Trump and world leaders is diplomacy.

“This is diplomacy with Donald Trump? He’s a T-rex,” Newsom said, describing the president as a vicious dinosaur. “You mate with him, or he devours you. One of the other.”

Newsom warned that Europe is still playing by the old set of rules, while arguing that in actuality, “It’s the law of the jungle, it’s the rule of Don. And I hope it’s dawning on the world what we’re up against. I mean, this is serious. This guy is — he’s not mad. He is very intentional. But he’s unmoored. And he’s unhinged.”

Asked what Trump’s goal is, Newsom replied, “The goal is whatever he wants it to be. The goal is the world in his image. He’s a narcissist.”

Newsom then chastised European leaders, asking why they don’t do “what they’re saying in private?”

“Why don’t they just simply do what they know is right? Everybody’s talking behind his back. They laughing, and meanwhile they’re sucking up to him. It’s embarrassing.”

“This is not diplomacy,” the governor charged. “This is stupidity.”

Danish fund exits US Treasuries amid Trump’s Greenland threats

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route from Florida to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., January 4, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Thomas Kika

January 20, 2026 

ALTERNET

As Donald Trump's threats about annexing Greenland continue to escalate, a Danish pension on Tuesday announced its exit from the US, saying that the president's policies have made investments in the country "not sustainable" in the long term.

Bloomberg spoke with AkademerPension about the decision to abandon US Treasuries for a report published Tuesday. The fund, worth around $25 billion USD, manages savings for teachers and academics in Denmark. By the end of 2025, the fund had roughly $100 million invested in US Treasuries, which it will withdraw by the end of the month in favor of similar alternatives.

“The US is basically not a good credit and long-term the US government finances are not sustainable,” Anders Schelde, chief investment officer at AkademikerPension, told the outlet.

Schelde claimed that "risk and liquidity management" were the only factors motivating the fund to remain invested in US assets, but given the mounting issues in the country, "we decided that we can find alternative to that." He added that Trump's continued rhetoric surrounding Greenland did factor into the decision to a degree, but the concerns about "concerns about fiscal discipline and a weaker dollar" under Trump's leadership were the primary motivator.

Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark situated mostly in the Arctic Circle. Trump has insisted since his first term that the US must gain control of Greenland, which Danish leaders have consistently dismissed, calling the idea a threat to their nation's sovereignty.

Trump's reasoning for wanting control of the island has been vague and inconsistent. At one point, access to Greenland's supplies of key minerals and oil was cited, though critics have pointed out that the cost and effort required to extract these would be more trouble than they are worth. More recently, Trump has claimed that the US "must" control Greenland for "national security" reasons, though he has not been specific about why, and critics have also pointed out that the US already operates military bases on the island and has access to the waters around it for defense purposes.

Susan B. Glasser is a New Yorker staff writer who has conducted extensive interviews with Trump for one of her books, recently claimed that Trump's obsession with controlling Greenland might stem from how large the territory appears on maps. Due to a phenomenon linked to the Mercator projection, land masses far from the Equator, like Greenland, can tend to appear larger than they actually are on certain maps.

“I said, ‘Why don’t we have that?’" Trump explained, according to Glasser. "You take a look at a map. So I’m in real estate. I look at a corner, I say, ‘I gotta get that store for the building that I’m building,’ et cetera. You know, it’s not that different. I love maps. And I always said, ‘Look at the size of this, it’s massive, and that should be part of the United States.’ It’s not different from a real-estate deal. It’s just a little bit larger, to put it mildly.”

Stunning chart shows Trump’s 'saber-rattling' already 'cost US one Greenland': economist

A trader works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., January 13, 2026. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Sarah K. Burris

January 20, 2026

ALTERNET

President Donald Trump's push to take over Greenland has cost the United States $750 billion so far.

In a social media post, economics and public policy professor at the University of Michigan Justin Wolfers captured the one chart that shows how disastrous Trump's "saber-rattling" has been for the United States, beyond its impact on the country's allies.

Wolfers showed a screen capture of the S&P, which opened down -1.3 percent.

"That's $750 billion of wealth destroyed -- roughly equal to estimates of the value of Greenland," said Wolfers. "And so in dollar terms his shenanigans have already cost the US one Greenland, and we've got nothing to show for it."

U.S. markets were closed on Monday due to the holiday celebrating Dr. Marin Luther King Jr.

The U.S. wasn't the only one to suffer. If the dollar continues to weaken against other global currencies, inflation will increase, one investment firm explained.

The Guardian reported, "In Europe, France’s Cac 40 share index dropped 1.1 percent, Germany’s Dax fell 1.5 percent and Italy’s FTSE MIB was off 1.5 percent."

Perhaps worse, the American dollar has fallen by 1 percent.

Things got worse overnight as Trump threatened to impose a 200 percent tariff on French wine and champagne after France’s Emmanuel Macron indicated he wasn't willing to join Trump's so-called "board of peace" on Gaza.

In the U.S. the Dow Jones Industrial Average crashed 750 points after it opened. The biggest losers were the AI company Nvidia and Tesla.

The Nasdaq composite was down 1.8 percent at the open.

Trump has vowed there's "no going back" after his demands to Denmark for Greenland.

Trump admin orders federal employees to investigate USDA researchers

Lisa Song, Sharon Lerner

Pro Publica

January 19, 2026 

ALTERNET

The Trump administration is directing employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate foreign scientists who collaborate with the agency on research papers for evidence of “subversive or criminal activity.”

The new directive, part of a broader effort to increase scrutiny of research done with foreign partners, asks workers in the agency’s research arm to use Google to check the backgrounds of all foreign nationals collaborating with its scientists. The names of flagged scientists are being sent to national security experts at the agency, according to records reviewed by ProPublica

At a meeting last month, USDA supervisors pushed back against the instructions, with one calling it “dystopic” and others expressing shock and confusion, according to an audio recording reviewed by ProPublica.

The USDA frequently collaborates with scientists based at universities in the U.S. and abroad. Some agency workers told ProPublica they were uncomfortable with the new requirement because they felt it could put those scientists in the crosshairs of the administration. Students and postdocs are particularly vulnerable as many are in the U.S. on temporary visas and green cards, the employees said.

Jennifer Jones, director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the directive a “throwback to McCarthyism” that could encourage scientists to avoid working with the “best and brightest” researchers from around the world.

“Asking scientists to spy on and report on their fellow co-authors” is a “classic hallmark of authoritarianism,” Jones said. The Union of Concerned Scientists is an organization that advocates for scientific integrity.

Jones, who hadn’t heard of the instructions until contacted by ProPublica, said she had never witnessed policies so extreme during prior administrations or in her former career as an academic scientist.

The new policy applies to pending scientific publications co-authored by employees in the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, which conducts research on crop yields, invasive species, plant genetics and other agricultural issues.

The USDA instructed employees to stop agency researchers from collaborating on or publishing papers with scientists from “countries of concern,” including China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela.

But the agency is also vetting scientists from nations not considered “countries of concern” before deciding whether USDA researchers can publish papers with them. Employees are including the names of foreign co-authors from nations such as Canada and Germany on lists shared with the department’s Office of Homeland Security, according to records reviewed by ProPublica. That office leads the USDA’s security initiatives and includes a division that works with federal intelligence agencies. The records don’t say what the office plans to do with the lists of names.

Asked about the changes, the USDA sent a statement noting that in his first term, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum designed to strengthen protections of U.S.-funded research across the federal government against foreign government interference. “USDA under the Biden Administration spent four years failing to implement this directive,” the statement said. The agency said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins last year rolled out “long-needed changes within USDA’s research enterprise, including a prohibition on authoring a publication with a foreign national from a country of concern.”

International research has been essential to the Agricultural Research Service’s work, according to a page of the USDA website last updated in 2024: “From learning how to mitigate diseases before they reach the United States, to testing models and crops in diverse growing conditions, to accessing resources not available in the United States, cooperation with international partners provides solutions to current and future agricultural challenges.”

Still, the U.S. government has long been worried about agricultural researchers acting as spies, sometimes with good reason. In 2016, the Chinese scientist Mo Hailong was sentenced to three years in prison for conspiring to steal patented corn seeds. And in 2022, Xiang Haitao, admitted to stealing a trade secret from Monsanto.

National security questions have also been raised about recent increases in foreign ownership of agricultural land. In 2022, Congress allocated money for a center to educate U.S. researchers about how to safeguard their data in international collaborations.

Since Trump took office last year, foreign researchers have faced increased obstacles. In March, a French researcher traveling to a conference was denied entry to the U.S. after a search of his phone at the airport turned up messages critical of Trump. The National Institutes of Health blocked researchers from China, Russia and other “countries of concern” from accessing various biomedical databases last spring. And in August, the Department of Homeland Security proposed shortening the length of time foreign students could remain in the country.

But the latest USDA instructions represent a significant escalation, casting suspicion on all researchers from outside the U.S. and asking agency staff to vet the foreign nationals they collaborate with. It’s unclear if employees at other federal agencies have been given similar directions.

The new USDA policy was announced internally in November and followed a July memo from Rollins that highlighted the national security risks of working with scientists who are not U.S. citizens.

“Foreign competitors benefit from USDA-funded projects, receiving loans that support overseas businesses, and grants that enable foreign competitors to undermine U.S. economic and strategic interests,” Rollins wrote in the memo. “Preventing this is the responsibility of every USDA employee.” The memo called for the department to “place America First” by taking a number of steps, including scrutinizing and making lists of the agency’s arrangements to work with foreign researchers and prohibiting USDA employees from participating in foreign programs to recruit scientists, “malign or otherwise.”

Rollins, a lawyer who studied agricultural development, co-founded the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute before being tapped to head the agency.

There have long been restrictions on collaborating with researchers from certain countries, such as Iran and China. But these new instructions create blanket bans on working with scientists from “countries of concern.”

In a late November email to staff members of the Agricultural Research Service at one area office, a research leader instructed managers to immediately stop all research with scientists who come from — or collaborate with institutions in — “countries of concern.”

The email also instructed employees to reject papers with foreign authors if they deal with “sensitive subjects” such as “diversity” or “climate change.” National security concerns were listed as another cause for rejection, with USDA research service employees instructed to ask if a foreigner could use the research against American farmers.

In the audio recording of the December meeting, some employees expressed alarm about the instructions to investigate their fellow scientists. The “part of figuring out if they are foreign … by Googling is very dystopic,” said one person at the meeting, which involved leadership from the Agricultural Research Service.

Faced with questions about how to ascertain the citizenship of a co-author, another person at the meeting said researchers should do their best with a Google search, then put the name on the list “and let Homeland Security do their behind the scenes search.”

Rollins’ July memo specifies that, within 60 days of receiving a list of “current arrangements” that involve foreign people or entities, the USDA’s Office of Homeland Security along with its offices of Chief Scientist and General Counsel should decide which arrangements to terminate. The USDA laid off 70 employees from “countries of concern” last summer as a result of the policy change laid out in the memo, NPR reported.

The USDA and Department of Homeland Security declined to answer questions about what happens to the foreign researchers flagged by the staff beyond potentially having their research papers rejected.

The documents also suggested new guidance would be issued on Jan. 1, but the USDA employees ProPublica interviewed said that the vetting work was continuing and that they had not received any written updates. The staff spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk publicly.

Scientists are often evaluated based on their output of new scientific research. Delaying or denying publication of pending papers could derail a researcher’s career. Over the past 40 years, the number of international collaborations among scientists has increased across the board, according to Caroline Wagner, an emeritus professor of public policy at the Ohio State University. “The more elite the researcher, the more likely they’re working at the international level,” said Wagner, who has spent more than 25 years researching international collaboration in science and technology.

The changes in how the USDA is approaching collaboration with foreign researchers, she said, “will certainly reduce the novelty, the innovative nature of science and decrease these flows of knowledge that have been extremely productive for science over the last years.”

Trump proves again that America is being run by a halfwit

Dean Baker

January 20, 2026

ALTERNET

Donald Trump is taking his demented dreams to a new level in his quest to take over Greenland. The man who whined over not getting a Nobel Prize and then followed Hitler propagandist Joseph Goebbels lead in accepting a prize awarded to someone else, has now decided he wants Greenland.

Trump is now proposing to whack us with a $75 billion tax increase to put pressure on Denmark and the rest of the EU to give him Greenland. If you missed Trump’s plans to hit us with this tax hike it’s because of the consistently awful reporting we get from major media outlets.

They reported on the tariffs Trump is imposing on the European countries most visible in resisting U.S. pressure to take Greenland. The problem with the reporting is that it implies the European countries pay the tariffs. They don’t, we do.

This is not a debatable point; the data are very clear. Well over 90 percent of the cost of a Trump tariff is borne by consumers or importers in the United States, not by the exporting countries. 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 one percent of the budget, more than twice the cost of the enhanced premiums for Obamacare policies that Trump says we can’t afford.

Let’s be clear, Trump wants Greenland because it is big. And he almost certainly thinks Greenland is far bigger than it actually is because he doesn’t understand that the Mercator projection maps, which are standard ones we all use, hugely exaggerate the size of areas near the poles.

No one likes the idea that the United States is being run by a moron.

We all know Trump says that he needs Greenland for national security. This argument is not worth a second’s consideration. Greenland and Denmark are both members of NATO. If he felt there was some need for putting additional military assets in or around Denmark, all he has to do is ask.

In fact, there were many more United States military installations in Denmark during the Cold War. We removed them after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Trump’s team themselves made it clear that Greenland is not a national security issue. The country is not even mentioned once in Trump’s National Security Strategy plan that was crafted just two months ago.

Trump effectively admitted this in an interview with the New York Times earlier this month. He acknowledged that he could address any security issues through negotiation with Greenland, Denmark, and the rest of NATO, but said Trump said that he would feel better “psychologically” taking over Greenland.

He compared it to the difference between owning and renting. Insofar as Trump feels a psychological need to own territory that is something that is best addressed through therapy, not military action against allies.

The other argument is that Greenland is rich in rare earth minerals, which Trump’s rich buddies are anxious to exploit. This is popular among people who want to highlight both Trump’s venality and also find rationality in what seems to be an otherwise crazy quest.

While no one should ever underestimate Trump’s corruption, the story doesn’t make any sense. First, it’s not clear that there is big money to be made on Greenland’s rare earth minerals. It is a remote area with little infrastructure. It will be extremely expensive to reach these minerals and would almost certainly take many years. Given developments in technology, it’s not even clear these minerals will still be of much value at the point anyone is able to bring them to the market.

But what’s even more damning for this line of argument is that they could start mining in Greenland tomorrow, if they think it would be profitable. Greenland is very open to foreign investment. If they think there is big money to be made by mining Greenland’s minerals, they would be doing it already.

Trump’s rich friends are undoubtedly pushing for him to take Greenland, he’ll probably give them better deals than Greenland would. Most importantly he will likely get rid of environmental regulations that Greenland’s government would demand.

But the cost of environmental regulations is not likely to be the sort of thing that would warrant a military invasion. Also, it probably is not a good sell to the people of Greenland that Trump wants to take away their ability to protect their environment.

At the end of the day, we really can’t escape the basic story, Trump wants Greenland because it is big. No one likes the idea that the United States is being run by a moron. And it’s painful for those of us left of center to acknowledge that this is who we losing to, not some evil genius. However, that happens to be the reality, and we need to recognize it.

Trump's latest straight out of a Monty Python skit

(BBC)

Robert Reich

January 20, 2026

It could be a Monty Python skit from 40 years ago: A demented U.S. president demands that Norway award him the Nobel Peace Prize (which he initially spells “Noble,” and which isn’t Norway’s to give anyway), after converting the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, sending troops into American cities, threatening Canada, and abducting the president of a Latin American country by force.

When he doesn’t get the peace prize, he says he’s no longer interested in peace and decides to take over Greenland. When Greenland refuses him, and Denmark and the rest of Europe make a fuss, he goes into a rage, raises tariffs on Europe (which cost Americans dearly), and threatens war on NATO. The president of Russia is delighted.

Can’t you see it? Eric Idle plays the American president — full of himself and utterly off his rocker. John Cleese is the vicious and hapless Latin American president who’s abducted. Terry Gilliam is the baffled, incredulous head of Greenland. Terry Jones plays the righteous leader of Denmark, Graham Chapman a perplexed NATO dignitary, and Michael Palin the wacky but triumphant president of Russia.

The Monty Python team was so funny because they came up with completely absurd situations, handled them with deadpan seriousness, and stretched them to the limits.

But this particular absurd situation isn’t funny. It’s actually happening. And Trump is truly, tragically, frighteningly out of his mind.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

Trump Has Dragged the Nation to a Point So Low It’s Hard to Fathom

How did we get to this point? The answer is clear.


Hundreds participate in a protest rally in Pershing Square on Saturday against the Trump administration’s incursion into Venezuela and recent ICE shootings in Minneapolis and Portland in downtown Los Angeles on January 10, 2026.
(Photo: Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

James Zogby
Jan 19, 2026

Common Dreams


How did we get to the point where the president can say and do things that put our culture and democracy at risk, and it’s just shrugged off as if it were normal?

In social media posts and unscripted press comments he uses language that would have been unimaginable coming from a president in any other period of American history. In just the past few months, Mr. Trump: was photographed making an obscene gesture and mouthing a vulgarity at a demonstrator; demeaned a popular TV personality who had just been murdered; called a Somali American member of Congress garbage, adding that all Somalis were garbage; called the Governor of Minnesota “retarded,” an especially hurtful slur as that governor has a son with a disability; and insulted women reporters who asked him challenging questions, calling them “ugly,” “obnoxious,” and “stupid.”

Parents wouldn’t tolerate this from their children and yet here we have a president of the United States demeaning his office by speaking in such a deplorable manner.

It’s not just the president’s speech that has been so “unpresidential.” Mr. Trump’s need to gratify his ego has led him to make exaggerated false claims about his grievances and his successes. He claims that he has been attacked by media, Congress, and law enforcement agencies like no other president in history. At the same time, he boasts that he has improved the economy and made our cities safer than they have ever been. None of this is true.

In an effort to impose his will and worldview, he has surrounded himself with White House staff and Cabinet that not only heap praise upon him and carry out his every whim, but also support his efforts to silence and intimidate those whom he has denounced as critics.

Herein lies a fundamental difference between President Trump’s first and second terms. In the former, some senior members of his staff and Cabinet served as a check on his behavior. Many were fired and replaced. He began his second term with a detailed plan to transform government, and with a more compliant senior leadership (e.g., the Department of Justice and FBI are willing to order investigations of his critics).

This combination of unchecked power, the president’s need to have his every ambition fulfilled, and his disrespect for law and precedent has led to actions that are illegal. In the first few months, his administration put in place a program to remove over 300,000 government employees. He shuttered USAID, the Voice of America, and the US Institute for Peace—all illegal actions as these were congressionally created and funded entities. He later reopened the Institute for Peace as the Trump Institute for Peace; renamed the nation’s premier center for the arts The Donald J Trump, The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts without any authorization; and had the White House’s East Wing torn down to be replaced by another vanity project—a massive ballroom—which no doubt will also bear his name in the near future.



58% of Americans—Across Political Spectrum—Say 2025 Was a ‘Failure’ Under Trump

Conceivably the most dangerous of President Trump’s moves have been the dramatic expansion of ICE—the immigration enforcement entity—and its unleashing in US cities, posing a direct threat to American democracy.

In recent weeks Mr. Trump sent a massive contingent of ICE agents to Minneapolis, Minnesota ostensibly to root out illegal immigrants, while attempting to embarrass that state’s Democratic governor and to target one of Mr. Trump’s new favorites, Minnesota’s large Somali community. As expected, ICE’s arrests have been indiscriminate, detaining many legal residents and citizens, and their behavior unacceptably brutal. As seen in other cities, ICE behaviors have provoked widespread protests. In one horrifying incident, a member of an observer team monitoring ICE behavior was shot and killed through an open car window by an ICE agent.

The shooting was filmed from multiple angles, establishing that the victim posed no threat to the ICE agent. That didn’t stop the president and other administration officials from propagating a lie about what had transpired. They called the murdered woman a domestic terrorist, saying she’d threatened the life of the ICE shooter. Unwrapping this murder is instructive on many levels.

First, with the enormous budget appropriated for ICE expansion, that entity now has over 10,000 armed agents. The rapidity of its growth has led to inadequate vetting and training. More dangerous still is how ICE has recruited agents: at gun shows and right-wing events, and targeted advertisements on right-wing radio shows. The White House appears to be forming an ideologically cohesive national police force that is anti-immigrant and violence-prone and has been told by the administration that they can act with impunity.

This incident also points out the extent to which the White House is capable of fabricating a storyline that will be echoed by other leaders and their supportive media outlets. The impact is clear. A recent poll showed that, by a wide margin, most Americans believe that the woman’s killing was wrong, but more than three-quarters of Republicans believe the president’s narrative that the murdered woman was a threat to the ICE agent and her killing was justified.

So, how did we get to this point? The answer is clear. A president who says whatever he needs to say to justify his position, officials around him and a supportive media who vociferously agree with him and threaten those who disagree, and a cult-like movement of partisans who will believe what they are told even when the facts speak to a different reality.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


James Zogby
Dr. James J. Zogby is the author of Arab Voices (2010) and the founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community. Since 1985, Dr. Zogby and AAI have led Arab American efforts to secure political empowerment in the U.S. Through voter registration, education and mobilization, AAI has moved Arab Americans into the political mainstream. Dr. Zogby has also been personally active in U.S. politics for many years; in 1984 and 1988 he served as Deputy Campaign manager and Senior Advisor to the Jesse Jackson Presidential campaign. In 1988, he led the first ever debate on Palestinian statehood at that year's Democratic convention in Atlanta, GA. In 2000, 2008, and 2016 he served as an advisor to the Gore, Obama, and Sanders presidential campaigns.
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Christian nationalists could resort to 'violence' if GOP loses midterms: Southern Baptist

Wildwood, New Jersey - January 28, 2020: Man holds hands together in prayer during opening ceremonies at President Donald Trump's "Keep America Great" rally held at the Wildwoods Convention Center. Shutterstock/ Benjamin Clapp

Carl Gibson

January 19, 2026 

ALTERNET

One religious scholar is warning that the 2026 midterm elections could prompt a violent response from far-right evangelical Christians.

During a Monday interview with Zeteo host John Harwood, Public Religion Research Institute founder and president Robert P. Jones – who holds an M. Div from the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from Emory University — spoke about how President Donald Trump's MAGA movement has captured a vast bulk of Christian evangelicals. Harwood asked Jones whether MAGA Christians were excusing Trump's "brutality and cruel behavior" due to innate racism, or if they were simply people fearing becoming a demographic minority and overwhelmed by the "loss of life they were accustomed to."

"Do you feel sorry for the people who are embracing what the Trump administration is doing because they're scared or what?" Harwood asked.

"Well, I should just say I am those people. These are my people. Like I said, I grew up in the deep, deep South," Jones said. "... This is deep for me, and personal. It's a big mix of emotions ... I feel some anger about it, for sure. But I also feel some compassion, mostly because I feel like what has happened is they have let their own fears take control of their lives, and they let it snuff out the primary vision of Christianity, which is supposed to be about love."

"There's even now, in some white evangelical circles, a straightforward and serious theological attack on the virtue of empathy," he continued. "Like that's where we are, right? They're deconstructing empathy because Elon Musk has cast empathy as the great weakness of the Western world ... I think those people are sincerely lost. They're lost religiously, they're lost politically, and I'm hoping we can call enough of them back to the fold in order to save the country."

Harwood then asked questions from viewers, including one who wanted Jones' perspective on whether the United States was on the brink of civil war given the Trump administration's actions in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The viewer pointed to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and residents of Minneapolis asking local police to confront U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, calling it "extremely dangerous."

Jones responded by pointing to parallels from the 19th century, in which Christian denominations frequently split into North and South factions due to fundamental disagreements over the issue of chattel slavery. He added that the Episcopal Church felt compelled to dismantle its refugee resettlement program entirely due to its disagreement with the Trump administration prioritizing white Afrikaners from South Africa over Brown and Black refugees from other countries.

"So we're already seeing some moves, and even breaks within the Christian world," Jones said. "I think we may be heading for some very difficult days."

"You mean actual violence or do you mean very, very intense political disagreement? Harwood asked.

"I'm deeply, deeply worried about the midterm elections being a flashpoint for violence in this country," Jones responded.

Watch the segment below:

Christian nationalists believe Trump on a 'mission from God' to occupy cities: author

Members of law enforcement gather, as tensions rise after federal law enforcement agents were involved in a shooting incident in north Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., January 15, 2026. REUTERS/Ryan Murphy

Alex Henderson

January 15, 2026

ALTERNET

President Donald Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act in response to escalating tensions between protesters and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The threat comes a little over a week after the fatal shooting of an unarmed 37-year-old U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross.

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, progressive District Attorney Larry Krasner and Sheriff Rochelle Bilal are threatening criminal charges against ICE agents if they violate the city's laws.

Minneapolis

In a Thursday conversation for The New Republic's podcast, "The Daily Blast," host Greg Sargent (a former Washington Post columnist) and author Sarah Posner examined the connection between ICE raids and far-right evangelical Christian nationalism.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is an aggressive defender of President Donald Trump's mass deportations and ICE raids, and according to Sargent and Posner, extreme Christian fundamentalism is a key part of that mindset.

Posner told Sargent: "For Johnson, he represents only Republicans. In his mind, he doesn’t represent all American people. He thinks that he is on a mission from God to carry out a biblical or a Christian kind of government. And in his mind, that kind of government does not represent the ideals of, you know, helping your neighbor, welcoming the stranger — things that many people would think are biblical values. But for him, the biblical values are a strong, powerful, militarized government that lays down the law and protects America from what he sees as America's enemies: The left."

Johnson and other white Christian nationalists, according to Sargent and Posner, view ICE violence in Minneapolis in decidedly religious terms.

Posner continued: "They would like Americans to believe that the violence that we're seeing on the streets of Minneapolis and elsewhere is caused by protesters, is caused by neighbors with whistles — not caused by the ICE agents themselves or the Customs and Border Protection agents. And so, to him, he would like America to believe that, yes, there are riots in the street. He used that word: riots. And to him, by definition, those are not caused by ICE, because ICE is carrying out a mission from God to defend America from an invasion of illegal immigrants — from the left who would harbor those illegal immigrants. That's the kind of narrative that he's trying to draw here."

She added, "So he would never even conceive of reining in ICE, of putting restrictions on what they can do with their weapons or in terms of detaining people. To him, they are carrying out a government and a God-given mission to protect America. "

Listen to the full New Republic podcast at this link or read the transcript here.