Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 25, 2026
by Tony Wikrent
Dingbat imperialism and its malcontents
Hoodwinks and Hijinks: Trump ‘Nabs’ Greenland at Davos
Simplicius [via Naked Capitalism 01-23-2025]
…In this case, Trump did major damage to alliances and economic ties, causing Europe and Canada—by way of Mark Carney and Macron—to announce reorientations toward China. That said, it’s still possible for the whole megillah to turn out favorably in the long term, particularly because it helps rupture NATO and the EU, which ultimately works in everyone’s favor, including the US’s. The more the transatlantic mafia and ‘deep state’ can be hobbled and undermined, the weaker the American deep state becomes, which sources much of its power, funding, and influence from the European arm of the cabal…
[TW: Besides providing this badly needed perspective on Trump versus the “Trilateral Commission” transatlantic mafia, Simplicius also provides in the article a very useful collection of Trump’s craziness this past week.]
The Strong Will Suffer What They Must — Vaclav’s Grocer and American Hubris
Seva Gunitsky, Jan 21, 2026
…The Melian Dialogue is not endorsing a timeless law of global politics. It’s showing us Athens at the precise peak of its imperial hubris: the moment when a great power becomes so convinced of its own invincibility that it can no longer perceive its limits….
Carney seems to be betting, I think correctly, that America under Trump has reached its Melian moment: maximum confidence, minimum self-knowledge….
Watching A Superpower Die By Suicide
Garrett Graff, January 22, 2026 [Doomsday Scenario, via Naked Capitalism 01-23-2025]
The Great Greenland War — Three Possible Histories
Big Serge [via Naked Capitalism 01-22-2025]
The Bridge at the Center of the Pentagon
Michael McNair [via Naked Capitalism 01-19-2025]
The Architect of U.S. Defense Strategy
The man setting U.S. defense strategy has already told you exactly how he thinks. He published the playbook years before taking office. And surprisingly few analysts have actually read it.
Elbridge Colby, or “Bridge” to those who know him, now serves as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the senior official responsible for running U.S. defense strategy.
Captain John Konrad, after spending a week inside the Pentagon, put it bluntly in his 13,000-word field report for gCaptain: “aside from Hegseth, the most powerful gravitational body in the building is Elbridge Colby.” He added that Colby’s “grand strategy remains exactly what he published in his books and interviews long before taking office. He is executing it now.”
Trump not violating any law
‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’
Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]
Shaun King, Jan 22, 2026
A Penn law center war-gamed a federal operation spiraling into state vs. federal force. Their scenario is now playing out
Expert Who Ran Simulations on ‘How Civil Wars Start’ Warns Minnesota Is Exactly What It Looks Like
Brad Reed, January 21, 2026 [CommonDreams]
Claire Finkelstein, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, wrote in a Wednesday column published by the Guardian that she and her colleagues at the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law (CERL) conducted a tabletop exercise in October 2024 that simulated potential outcomes if a US president were to carry out law enforcement operations similar to the ones being conducted by the Trump administration with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Minnesota.
‘Absolutely Vile’: ICE Snatches Young Kids From Minnesota Schools, Sends Them to Texas
Jake Johnson, January 22, 2026 [CommonDreams]
Federal immigration agents have detained at least four children from Minnesota public schools over the past two weeks, including a 5-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl who were both sent to Texas detention centers that have come under fire for grotesque conditions.
Trump orders active duty troops to prepare for Minnesota deployment
[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 01-19-2025]
Why are federal agents gunning down Americans in the streets?
Noah Smith, Jan 10, 2026 [Noahpinion]
Here’s an assessment by a 25-year ICE veteran whose job was to evaluate shootings by the agency….
Here’s a video of ICE agents in Arkansas beating up an unarmed U.S. citizen. Here’s a video of ICE agents arresting two U.S. citizens in a Target. Here’s a story about a similar arrest. Here’s a video of an ICE agent brandishing a gun in the face of a protester. Here’s the story of ICE agents arresting a pastor who complained about an arrest he saw. Here’s a video of ICE agents arresting an American citizen and punching him repeatedly. Here’s a video of ICE agents threatening a bystander who complained about their reckless driving. Here’s a video of ICE agents arresting a man for yelling at them from his own front porch. Here’s a video of ICE agents making a particularly brutal arrest while pointing their weapons at unarmed civilians nearby. Here’s a story about another ICE killing, this one in Maryland, under dubious circumstances. Here’s a video of ICE agents savagely beating and arresting a legal immigrant. Here’s a video of ICE agents storming a private home without a warrant. Here’s a video of ICE agents pulling a disabled woman out of a car when she’s just trying to get to the doctor.
These are all things I noticed on X within just the last two days. There has been a pretty constant stream of these for months. Here’s a roundup of some others, by Jeremiah Johnson….
Josh Kovensky, January 23, 2026 [Talking Points Memo]
…But Vance made another remark while in Minneapolis that has largely escaped attention.
He threw his support behind the idea that the executive branch can enter private homes as part of immigration enforcement without a warrant. It’s an argument that would transform the Fourth Amendment, which mandates that independent judges can issue warrants on the request of law enforcement.
Vance’s remarks came in response to a question about a whistleblower disclosure to the Senate, first reported by the AP. Per the disclosure, ICE issued a memo in May arguing that immigration authorities could enter private residences absent a judicial warrant if they believe that someone with a final deportation order is inside….
Breaking the Fourth Amendment
Joyce Vance, Jan 23, 2026 [Civil Discourse]
[TW: Using a screen shot of a court warrant, and an administrative warrant, Vance explains the differences and legal implications.]
‘Dark, Bizarre Stuff’: White House Posts Deepfake Image of Arrested ICE Protester Crying
Stephen Prager, January 22, 2026 [CommonDreams]
“All of us are on full notice that this White House feels no compunction about concocting obvious lies, concedes nothing when its lies are exposed, and should be presumptively disbelieved in all matters.”
[The Conversation, via Naked Capitalism 01-18-2025]
The Congresswoman Criminalized for Visiting ICE Detainees
Jonathan Blitzer, January 19, 2026 [The New Yorker]
LaMonica McIver went to tour an immigration jail in her New Jersey district. Now she faces seventeen years in prison.
She stood up to ICE. Then came the death threats — Arizona Sen. Analise Ortiz won’t back down
Jordan Zakarin, Jan 23, 2026 [Progress Report]
Senate Republicans Steamroll Democrats on Another ICE Funding Increase
[Migrant Insider, via Naked Capitalism 01-21-2025]
Documents reviewed by Migrant Insider reveal a stark disconnect between Democratic talking points and the actual appropriations tables in the bill negotiated by the Senate Appropriations Committee. While Democrats publicly touted restrictions on ICE and reduced detention capacity, the legislation actually pumps $3.84 billion into ICE custody operations — up from $3.43 billion — and boosts Enforcement and Removal Operations funding from $5.08 billion to $5.45 billion.
The $403 million mandatory funding increase for ICE jail beds represents a Republican victory that comes at a critical juncture: just days after the administration made expanding detention capacity its top immigration priority, and on the heels of widely documented enforcement operations that have terrorized immigrant communities nationwide….
Trump Has Made ICE the Largest Law Enforcement Agency in the Country
[Truthout, via Naked Capitalism 01-23-2025]
ICE Recruiters Are Using Neo-Nazi Memes and Seeking Out Extremists at Gun Shows
[Truthout, via Naked Capitalism 01-23-2025]
ICE Detained a 5-Year-Old Minnesota Boy and Used Him As “Bait”
[Mother Jones, via Naked Capitalism 01-23-2025]
ICE Detains 2-Year-Old Girl Days After Using 5-Year-Old as Bait
Malcolm Ferguson, January 23, 2026 [The New Republic]
CBP Chief Brags They’re “Experts” in Detaining Small Children
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, January 23, 2026 [The New Republic]
Is ICE Running a Black Site in Minnesota?
Thomas Neuburger, Jan 20, 2026 [God’s Spies]
Thomas Neuburger, Jan 23, 2026 [God’s Spies]
Is it really fair to call the ICE prison at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building a “black site”? Let’s take a look.
FBI Agent Resigns in Protest as Trump DOJ Investigates Renee Good—Not the ICE Agent Who Killed Her
Julia Conley, January 24, 2026 [CommonDreams]
ICE Prosecutor in Dallas Runs White Supremacist X Account
[Texas Observer, via The Big Picture, January 19, 2026]
The Observer has identified the operator of “GlomarResponder,” an overtly racist social media account, as ICE Assistant Chief Counsel James Rodden, based on an overwhelming number of biographical details matched through publicly available documents, other social media activity, and courtroom observation.
Trump DOJ Uses Anti-KKK Law to Charge ICE Protesters With Felony
Schuyler Mitchell, January 23, 2026 [Mother Jones]
The Trump administration is using an anti-Ku Klux Klan law to prosecute Minnesota activists for demonstrating against ICE at a St. Paul church. On Thursday, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had arrested Chauntyll Allen, Nekima Levy Armstrong, and William Kelly for their alleged involvement in a January 18 anti-ICE demonstration. The three protesters were charged with conspiracy to deprive rights—a federal felony under Section 241, a Reconstruction-era statute enacted to safeguard the rights of Black Americans to vote and engage in public life amid the KKK’s racial violence.
Levy Armstrong and Allen are both prominent Black community organizers. Levy Armstrong leads the grassroots civil rights nonprofit Racial Justice Network and once served as the president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP. Allen is a member of the St. Paul School Board and a founder of Black Lives Matter Twin Cities….
You’ve Heard About Who ICE Is Recruiting. The Truth Is Far Worse
[Slate, via The Big Picture, January 19, 2026]
I’m the Proof. What happens when you do minimal screening before hiring agents, arming them, and sending them into the streets? We’re all finding out.
How Donald Trump Has Transformed ICE
[The New Yorker, via The Big Picture, January 19, 2026]
A former D.H.S. oversight official on what, legally, the agency can and can’t do—and the accountability mechanisms that have been “gutted beyond recognition.”
Brett Wilkins, January 23, 2026 [CommonDreams]
Trump sues JPMorgan for $5 billion, alleges the bank closed his accounts for political reasons
[AP, via Naked Capitalism 01-23-2025]
Chris Hedges, Jan 19, 2026
The presidential election in 2024 may be the last free vote taken in the United States. Dictatorships only hold elections with predetermined outcomes or do not hold them at all. Trump is no exception.
The Evil Man and the Empty Congress — A psalm for the republic in extremis
Mike Brock, Jan 20, 2026 [Notes From The Circus]
…Let me be precise about what I mean. Evil, as I use the term here, is the systematic use of power to dissolve the constraints that protect human dignity and law, while demanding deference to the very crimes being committed. It is not merely selfishness, incompetence, or even cruelty. It is the deliberate subordination of other human beings to one’s own will, coupled with the insistence that this subordination is right and proper, that resistance to it is illegitimate, that the victims deserve what they receive.
By this definition, observe: A president who pardons those who attacked the Capitol on his behalf, while prosecuting those who investigated him. A president who defies court orders and dares the judiciary to stop him. A president who treats foreign policy as a vehicle for personal enrichment and grudge-settling—threatening war over Greenland, blockading Venezuela, inviting Vladimir Putin to advise on Middle East peace. A president who is 30 days late on releasing court-ordered documents and responds to the deadline by releasing one percent of the files. This is not a policy disagreement. This is the methodical dissolution of the constraints that make lawful government possible, conducted by a man who believes he is owed obedience….
First, let us address those who made this moment possible.
The anti-anti-Trump intellectuals. The contrarians and self-appointed heterodox thinkers who could not bring themselves to support Trump, but who found the alarm of his critics unseemly. The real threat, they insisted, was the overreaction itself. They positioned themselves as the adults in the room while the rest of us succumbed to panic…
Here is what I maintained for years, and what I will now state plainly: the obsessive fixation on leftist excess functioned as a form of cognitive capture. It rendered an entire class of otherwise intelligent people incapable of perceiving threats originating in their own ideological vicinity. They became so convinced that the republic faced imminent danger from campus speech codes and diversity initiatives that they looked upon an actual authoritarian—a man who had already attempted to overturn an election—and concluded he represented the lesser evil.
This is the precise error made by German conservatives in the early 1930s, who persuaded themselves that the Austrian corporal was a manageable risk compared to the Bolshevik menace. I do not make this comparison for rhetorical effect. I make it because the structural logic is identical….
The financial class, which assured us that Trump represented the superior outcome for capitalism and markets. They were explicitly and repeatedly warned that this man was unstable, authoritarian, and constitutionally incapable of the restraint that global economic leadership requires. And they made their calculation: yes, but the regulatory burden. Yes, but the tax implications….
The technocratic establishment—the consultant class, the pollsters, the professional Democrats who have made careers of cautious positioning. They have no theory of the moment. They have tactics designed for a political context that no longer exists. They are preparing for an election in 2026 as though elections, conducted fairly and counted honestly, remain a reliable mechanism for the transfer of power….
To the Citizen—and I use that word with the weight it deserves—I hope you understand that this falls to you now.
The institutions have failed. I have just spent considerable effort documenting the various ways in which people who should have known better did not act as though they knew better. The cavalry is not coming. There is no adult in the room who will fix this while you go about your life. The room is full of adults, and they have failed.
Which means the republic is counting on you to keep her….