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Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation Endorses Day of Truth and Freedom January 23, 2026
January 16, 2026
For Immediate Release
Contact: Stacie Balkaran:
stacie@minneapolisunions.org / 971.291.9486
Minneapolis Labor Union Delegation and Local Regional Labor Bodies Endorse January 23: Day of Truth and Freedom—No Work, School, or Shopping
Minneapolis—The Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO along with regional bodies throughout the state, including the Saint Paul Regional Labor Federation, the West Area Labor Council, the North East Area Labor Council and the East Central Labor Council, have joined in solidarity to endorse a powerful unified statewide action on January 23: Day of Truth and Freedom. The Minnesota labor movement is united against the violent ICE occupation of our beloved cities that has directly impacted union members, our workplaces and our families.
Workers are essential for our communities to function. Since the ICE campaign of terror began, both immigrant and non-immigrant workers have feared for their safety when going to work, being at work, and coming home from work. Union members and our families are being illegally detained at alarming rates, with workplaces and schools facing increased challenges.
Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou, President of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, shared why union federations are joining this call:
“Working people, our schools and our communities are under attack. Union members are being detained commuting to and from work, tearing apart families. Parents are being forced to stay home, students held out of school, fearing for their lives, all while the employer class remains silent. Our labor federations are encouraging everyone to participate on January 23rd. It’s time for every single Minnesotan who loves this state and the notion of truth and freedom to raise their voices and deepen their solidarity for our neighbors and coworkers living under this federal occupation.”
Unions join the demands for the day that call for:
· ICE must leave Minnesota now.
· The agent who killed Renee Good must be held legally accountable.
· No additional federal funding for ICE in the upcoming Congressional budget and ICE be investigated for human and constitutional violations of Americans and our neighbors.
· Minnesotan and national companies to become 4th Amendment Businesses—cease economic relations with ICE and refuse ICE entry or using their property for staging grounds.
The Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO is the umbrella organization of Minneapolis-area local unions and includes 175+ affiliated unions representing over 80,000 working people across seven Minnesotan counties. www.minneapolisunions.org
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CALL TO DROP THE CHARGES AGAINST NICK TILSEN BEFORE JANUARY 26, 2026
In 2022, an incident took place where a Native unhoused relative was being harassed and assaulted by Rapid City Police (RCPD) in Rapid City, South Dakota. Nick Tilsen, CEO and Founder of NDN Collective, pulled over to conduct a routine cop watch. One officer accused Nick of assaulting him despite no physical contact being made with the officer. During the interaction, Nick remained in his vehicle because he felt unsafe surrounded by several police cars. Nick communicated with an officer, who then got approval from someone off-site and allowed Nick to leave.
Despite no immediate action being taken at the time, more than a year later, the officer involved accused Nick of attempting to run him over, leading to a complaint and warrant for Tilsen’s arrest being filed on June 30, 2023 – the same day NDN Collective announced they would host a July 4th March Towards Justice.
Nick was originally charged with aggravated assault and obstruction of a police officer. But just a few weeks before the trial date (January 12, 2026), Nick was notified that the Pennington County Grand Jury added a “simple assault” to the list of charges.
Nick is being systematically targeted as local prosecutors intentionally sought out the police officer named in this case and encouraged him to press charges. The charges brought against Nick are false and inflated to criminalize, silence, and ultimately isolate him from his community through imprisonment. Nick is being targeted by RCPD because he has unapologetically stood on his values and has called for accountability and justice for people harmed by police in Rapid City.
NDN Collective has been pushing for a federal investigation into the Rapid City Police Department for over 3 years. This fight is bigger than just Nick Tilsen. It’s about protecting movement leaders, movement organizations, our right to free speech, and to demand justice for those harmed by colonial white supremacist systems and structures.
NDN Collective believes this to be a politically motivated effort to silence a movement leader by criminalizing his actions and misusing the legal system. If found guilty of these charges, Nick could face up to 26 years in prison.
Nick’s trial is set to begin January 26, 2026, at 9 am MT at the Pennington County Courthouse in Rapid City, SD.
As we see continued targeting of movement leaders, including Nick, we need your support to continue fighting these legal battles. Trials are expensive and are tactics used to drain movement resources. We need resources to continue this fight against legal repression and to continue our work.
This fund safeguards our organization against legal attacks aiming to suppress our leaders, imprison our people, and obstruct our movement’s objectives.
DONATE TO NDN LEGAL FUND HERE:
https://ndnlegalfund.org
SIGN PETITION: DROP THE CHARGES:
Support for the charges against Nick to be dropped is clear, with over 16,500 signatures on a petition to the Pennington County State’s Attorney’s office. If you haven’t already, please add your name to our petition:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DTdap1GFD-1/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D
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End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Atler Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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 Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) After Trump Reignites a Trade War Over Greenland, Europe Weighs Going All-Out
Europe’s dependence on the United States for NATO security limits its options. Its strongest response could be retaliating with its own trade “bazooka.”
By Jeanna Smialek, Reporting from Brussels, Jan. 18, 2026
"Greenland shows little sign of wanting to be acquired, by money or by military force. Greenlanders have at times chafed at Danish power, but polls and interviews indicate that most don’t want to give up their free education and universal health care."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/world/europe/greenland-us-trade-war.html
A protest against President Trump in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, on Saturday. Juliette Pavy for The New York Times
In a single post on Saturday night, President Trump upended months of progress on trade negotiations with an ultimatum that puts Europe on a crash course with the United States — long its closest ally and suddenly one of its biggest threats.
In the Truth Social post, Mr. Trump demanded a deal to buy Greenland, saying that otherwise he would slap tariffs on a group of European nations, first 10 percent in February, then 25 percent in June.
It appeared to leave little room for Europe to maneuver or negotiate in a harsh and combative era of geopolitics. It also left Europe with few options to counter Mr. Trump without repercussions.
European leaders are loath to accept the forced takeover of an autonomous territory that is controlled by Denmark, a member of both NATO and the European Union.
Officials and outside analysts increasingly argue that Europe will need to respond to Mr. Trump with force — namely by hitting back on trade. But doing so could come at a heavy cost to both the bloc’s economy and its security, since Europe remains heavily reliant on the United States for support through NATO and in Russia’s war with Ukraine.
“We either fight a trade war, or we’re in a real war,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research institute in Brussels.
Europeans have spent more than a year insisting that Greenland is not for sale and have constantly repeated that the fate of the massive northern island must be decided by its people and by Denmark. Last week, a group of European nations sent personnel to Greenland for military exercises — a show of solidarity that may have triggered Mr. Trump, since the same nations are the ones to be slapped with tariffs.
The exercises were intended to reinforce Europe’s commitment to policing the Arctic. Mr. Trump has insisted that the United States needs to own Greenland to improve security in the region.
In that sense, the exercises were part of an ongoing effort to placate Mr. Trump. For weeks, officials across Europe had dismissed Mr. Trump’s threats to take Greenland, even by military force, as unlikely. Many saw them more as negotiating tactics and hoped that they could satisfy the American president with a willingness to beef up defense and spending on Greenland.
But Mr. Trump’s fixation on owning the island and his escalating rhetoric is crushing European hopes that appeasement and dialogue will work. Scott Bessent, the American Treasury secretary, doubled down on that message in a Sunday morning interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
American ownership of Greenland would be “best for Greenland, best for Europe and best for the United States,” Mr. Bessent said, suggesting that would be the case even if Greenland were taken by military force.
“The European leaders will come around,” he added.
There is little sign of that. Facing the reality that a negotiated compromise is less and less likely, Europeans are now racing to figure out how to respond to Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign.
Within hours of the post, members of the European Parliament announced that they would freeze the ratification of the trade deal that Mr. Trump and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, struck last summer. And members of European Parliament are openly calling for trade retaliation. Ambassadors from across the 27-nation bloc will gather in Brussels for an emergency meeting at 5 p.m. Sunday, diplomats said.
Hitting back is complicated.
Europe has a trade weapon specifically created to defend against political coercion quickly and forcefully, and as Mr. Trump’s threats sank in, policymakers argued that this is the time to wield it.
The tool — officially called the “anti-coercion instrument,” unofficially called Europe’s trade “bazooka” — could be used to slap limitations on big American technology companies or other service providers that do large amounts of business on the continent. But using it would sharply ratchet up trans-Atlantic tensions.
Europe has spent the past year avoiding such escalation, and for a reason. The continent remains deeply reliant on the United States for NATO protection and for support against Russia in the war on Ukraine, so a full-on trade war could have consequences on other fronts.
“The question is — how far do you want to go?” said Penny Naas, an expert on European public policy at the German Marshall Fund think tank.
European leaders are still hoping that they might be able to talk things out. Ms. von der Leyen struck an accommodating tone in a social media post on Saturday night.
“Dialogue remains essential, and we are committed to building on the process begun already last week between the Kingdom of Denmark and the U.S.,” she wrote.
But she also warned that tariffs would “risk a dangerous downward spiral.”
So far, talks have been all but futile. Foreign policy officials from Denmark and Greenland met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance in Washington last week. Afterward, the Danes and Greenlanders acknowledged that the two sides remained at an impasse, but expressed hope.
The two sides, they noted, had agreed to set up a high-level working group to work through their issues.
That optimism was quickly snuffed out when the White House said that the group was meant to work on America’s “acquisition” of Greenland.
“This is just all brute force,” Ms. Naas said. “The president really wants Greenland, and he’s not backing off of it.”
Greenland shows little sign of wanting to be acquired, by money or by military force. Greenlanders have at times chafed at Danish power, but polls and interviews indicate that most don’t want to give up their free education and universal health care.
As Mr. Trump takes on a more aggressive posture, European leaders are growing blunter.
Ulf Kristersson, the prime minister of Sweden, wrote that “we will not let ourselves be blackmailed.” Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, wrote on social media on Saturday night that “no intimidation nor threat will influence us.”
Mr. Macron will request, on behalf of France, the activation of the anti-coercion trade tool, a senior French official said on Sunday.
Even Keir Starmer, the prime minister of Britain — which, like Norway, is not in the European Union, but was listed among the countries that will be slapped with tariffs — called Mr. Trump’s tariff move “completely wrong.” Mr. Starmer has carefully cultivated a positive relationship with the White House.
“We will of course be pursuing this directly with the U.S. administration,” he said in a statement.
Lisa Nandy, a British government minister, told the BBC on Sunday that Mr. Starmer would discuss the issue with Mr. Trump “at the earliest opportunity,” possibly at the World Economic Forum this week in Davos, Switzerland.
Lizzie Dearden contributed reporting from London, Minho Kim from Washington and Ségolène Le Stradic from Paris.
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2) D.H.S.’s Role Questioned as Immigration Officers Flood U.S. Cities
The Department of Homeland Security was formed after 9/11 amid international terrorism threats. Now, its most visible targets are domestic.
By Hamed Aleaziz, Reporting from Washington, Jan. 18, 2026
“More than two decades after its formation, the Department of Homeland Security is the government’s largest law enforcement agency, with around 250,000 employees. … ICE’s budget increased dramatically because of the sweeping domestic policy bill the president signed into law last July, making it the highest funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/us/dhs-cities-bush-sept-11.html
Customs and Border Protection agents deployed a cloud of tear gas against protesters in Minneapolis on Thursday. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
In November 2002, President George W. Bush signed a bill creating a federal agency devoted to protecting the United States. The country was still reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, and the threat of international terrorism permeated public life.
Among the agencies that would be included in the Department of Homeland Security, as it would be called, would be Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection — the parts of the government most responsible for enforcing federal immigration laws.
“The new department will analyze threats, will guard our borders and airports, protect our critical infrastructure, and coordinate the response of our nation for future emergencies,” Mr. Bush said at the time, adding that the department would “focus the full resources of the American government on the safety of the American people.”
But more than two decades later, as thousands of ICE and Border Patrol officers flood Minneapolis, some Democratic leaders say the department’s role appears to have strayed far from its original purpose, turning its tools of enforcement away from external threats and toward President Trump’s domestic critics.
They say enforcement has looked more like an occupation, as officers in helmets and tactical gear have faced off against hostile residents and left-wing protesters in Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago and Washington. The interactions, broadcast to the world through social media videos filmed by protesters and federal agents alike, have given the impression of a government at war with the country’s own cities.
The Department of Homeland Security “was designed to protect Americans from threats, and what we’ve essentially done is, in some cases, we’ve turned that agency on Americans,” said Mayor Keith Wilson of Portland, Ore., a Democrat. “It’s deeply unsettling.”
Mr. Wilson said he was concerned that federal immigration enforcement activities could lead to a shooting like the one in Minneapolis that took the life of Renee Good, a 37-year-old protester fatally shot by an ICE officer. Hours after his comments, Border Patrol agents shot two Venezuelan nationals who had rammed their vehicle, the department said. The Venezuelans survived their injuries, and one was charged in connection with the incident.
More than two decades after its formation, the Department of Homeland Security is the government’s largest law enforcement agency, with around 250,000 employees. It includes many functions that are not directly part of the turmoil on the ground, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the agency that oversees airport security.
Yet even those agencies have come under pressure to meet Mr. Trump’s political objectives, with the airport security agency providing information to immigration agents and Mr. Trump trying to redirect disaster funding away from states not cooperating with his deportation goals.
ICE’s budget increased dramatically because of the sweeping domestic policy bill the president signed into law last July, making it the highest funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.
Under Mr. Trump, the department also redirected thousands of agents from their normal duties to focus on arresting undocumented immigrants, a New York Times investigation found last year.
The Trump administration and officials in some of the targeted cities have used militaristic language to describe the conflict unfolding on the ground.
A lawsuit filed this week by Minnesota described the recent deployment of thousands of immigration agents and officers as “a federal invasion of the Twin Cities.”
“I see it as a personal militarized police force for the president to do his bidding against people who don’t see the world through the lens of the ultra rich,” said Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago, a Democrat.
Mr. Trump has recently raised the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy the military to suppress rebellions and enforce federal laws. On Tuesday, he said on social media that Minnesotans should expect more action in their state, and that the “DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING.”
Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, has called Chicago a “war zone,” and said the agency had made parts of the city “much more free.” In recent weeks, the department has described Minnesota as a place where there was “rampant fraud and criminality happening.”
“We would love to have the cooperation of these politicians to remove the worst of the worst from their cities,” Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said in a statement. “Instead, they refuse to protect their own citizens and let these criminals roam free on their streets.”
It is a starkly different environment than the one in which the department was created.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, there was a bipartisan consensus that the United States needed to do more to fend off terrorist threats and protect its citizens. The Department of Homeland Security was created the following year, when Mr. Bush signed the Homeland Security Act of 2002.
Mr. Bush at the time said that the United States would be better equipped to “reduce our vulnerability and, most important, prevent the terrorists from taking innocent American lives.”
Building the agency was a big task, with all or portions of 22 federal agencies, including the Coast Guard and what was then the Immigration and Naturalization Service, to be folded into a single department. Some politicians in Washington initially resisted the creation of a new cabinet-level agency, including Mr. Bush.
Supporters of the department’s stepped-up role on immigration enforcement this year say the surge of officers in cities has made the country safer by rounding up violent criminals. They say voters endorsed decisive action on immigration when they elected Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly criticized “sanctuary cities” that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. He has pledged to be more aggressive.
“What these mayors are asking D.H.S. to do is not really an option,” said Chad Wolf, an acting homeland security secretary during the first Trump administration. “The majority of American people said, ‘We don’t want that America. We actually want criminal illegal aliens arrested and removed, as well as others.’”
Some law enforcement officials who have had productive relationships with federal authorities in the past have watched the new D.H.S. approach with concern.
“The biggest question that I’ve been receiving is: How will we intercede if there’s a conflict between community members and D.H.S.?” Shon Barnes, Seattle’s chief of police, said in an interview last fall. “Who will we side with? What will we do?”
The answer, Chief Barnes said, was that the department would “keep the peace.”
Jim McDonnell, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, said the city had long had close ties to D.H.S., in particular the agencies focused on criminal matters. But that cooperation became harder last summer, he said, when the agency launched a regionwide immigration operation that ensnared thousands of immigrants.
“This has been something very different — unprecedented — that we’ve seen here,” he said last year.
In many ways, Los Angeles was on the front line of the agency’s incursion into large, Democratic-led cities. Last June, following protests of an ICE operation in downtown Los Angeles, the agency empowered Border Patrol agents to lead immigration enforcement in the area.
Soon, agents were seen raiding carwashes, Home Depot parking lots and other locations. At one point, border agents traveled through a city park as a show of force. It was also the first time the National Guard had showed up to protect the Department of Homeland Security in its immigration work.
“The federal government invaded, intervened and created a problem, and then patted themselves on the back for so-called saving the city, when the city was never at risk of anything,” said Karen Bass, the city’s Democratic mayor.
The recent conflicts with local officials have alarmed some former leaders of the Department of Homeland Security.
When it was created, the agency was not just supposed to connect different parts of the federal government, but also expand its outreach to local and state entities.
“We must open lines of communication and support like never before, between agencies and departments, between federal and state and local entities, and between the public and private sectors,” Tom Ridge, who led the White House Office of Homeland Security, a precursor of the Department of Homeland Security, said when he was sworn in.
Janet Napolitano, who served as homeland security secretary in the Obama administration, has watched recent events with concern.
“Federal law enforcement in general, and D.H.S. in particular, work best and most effectively when they’re in coordination with local and state authorities,” she said, noting that local police know their communities better than anyone. “And when you have a federal force come in, like the recent ICE deployment in Minneapolis, and then just kind of overlay, without coordination, you have all kinds of problems.”
Ms. Napolitano added that “this kind of a disruption and kind of a dissing of the role of state and local law enforcement — it doesn’t help anyone, and it makes overall for a more dangerous situation.”
Andrea Fuller and Madeleine Ngo contributed reporting.
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3) Martin Luther King’s Son: ‘Justice Demands Endurance’
By Martin Luther King III and Norman J. Ornstein, Jan. 18, 2026
Mr. King is chair of the Drum Major Institute and the son of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Mr. Ornstein is a retired scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Lela Harris
The future of the Voting Rights Act hangs in the balance. As the Supreme Court deliberates in Louisiana v. Callais, Times Opinion convened a conversation between the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s son and Norm Ornstein, a leading scholar of voting rights, to talk about the stakes of this case — and look back on what’s been accomplished since 1965.
Times Opinion: Can you tell us what this Supreme Court case is all about?
Norman Ornstein: In 2024, Louisiana created a new congressional map to remedy racial bias, and the new map created a second majority-Black district. A group of white voters challenged the move as a racial gerrymander, turning the Voting Rights Act on its head. Now, in Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court will decide not just the fate of that district, but whether the part of the Voting Rights Act that forced the redistricting, Section 2, is constitutional.
If the oral arguments are any guide, the court is poised either to eliminate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act or render it impotent. If that happens, there will be next to no protections left for minority voters. In effect, Section 2 is the remaining core piece of the act that remedies voting discrimination on the basis of race. And it won’t just affect Louisiana. We will be back in the era before Dr. King’s achievement — the dark days of Jim Crow.
Times Opinion: What does Section 2 say?
Ornstein: That if a government limits someone’s voting rights on the basis of their race or minority status, they can sue.
Martin Luther King III: Section 2 is one of the last backstops protecting the right of Black, brown and minority communities to challenge discriminatory election laws and to elect candidates of their choice.
Times Opinion: Mr. King, do you remember your father talking about voting rights when you were growing up?
King: My father was often traveling during the voting rights campaign. But my mother took the time to explain to my siblings and me what each of the Civil Rights movement campaigns was trying to accomplish. “The right to vote is a central goal of our freedom movement,” she’d say. “Without it, we will continue to be oppressed. But with it, we can help change our society and make America better for everyone.”
The vote is the most powerful nonviolent tool that the citizens have at their disposal. As we see an unacceptable increase in political violence, voter intimidation and other barriers that make voting harder, we need to remind all Americans that our political differences must be decided at the ballot box and elections need to be free and fair.
As my dad said, “A voteless people is a powerless people.”
Times Opinion: Tell us a little bit about the Voting Rights Act’s passage.
King: After the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, Lyndon Johnson told my father that, to pass the Voting Rights Act, he and his movement needed to dramatize the need for the law.
Bloody Sunday in Selma, Ala. showed the nation a brutal and violent reaction to a peaceful group of protesters marching for their right to vote. At that time, Black residents accounted for more than half of the population of Selma, but only 2 percent of its registered voters.
Weeks later, at the conclusion of the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, my dad said, “In focusing the attention of the nation and the world today on the flagrant denial of the right to vote, we are exposing the very origin, the root cause, of racial segregation in the Southland.”
Ornstein: Up until that march, because of the Senate filibuster, a minority led by white Southern Democrats had blocked every effort to erase discriminatory measures that demeaned and disempowered Black voters. It was because of the pressure applied by Dr. King and his allies that President Johnson, who feared that he would not have the votes, mobilized. In a historic address to Congress urging the law’s passage, Johnson paid tribute to the voting rights movement and its martyrs, saying, “We shall overcome!” With bipartisan support, including key Republican leaders like Everett Dirksen, they did overcome.
King: Several Black and white volunteers in the struggle were murdered. Many others were beaten, threatened and jailed — including my father. Both my parents received death threats, and because of her lifelong work for voting rights, my mother continued to receive such threats for the rest of her life.
As a child, my parents did their best to protect us from all of this, but I understood very clearly that voting was empowering and that the most important step you can take is that short step to the ballot box.
That said, Dad understood that voting rights were never just about ballots; they were about belonging — about whether Black and brown people are full participants in the promise of America, or whether we’re conditional guests whose access can be narrowed, delayed or denied. Protecting those rights is the measure of whether our democracy lives up to its ideals.
Times Opinion: Was the act popular when it was passed in 1965?
Ornstein: Yes, a poll that year found that 95 percent of Americans approved of it. And over time, it’s continued to be embraced broadly. It was reformed and amended five times, each time to ensure that its key protections would continue. That last revision in 2006 passed the House by 390-33 and passed the Senate unanimously, demonstrating the degree to which a deeply divisive issue had turned into a national consensus.
But its widespread popularity doesn’t seem to extend to Chief Justice John Roberts and a majority of the Supreme Court. After Congress had revised the Voting Rights Act to extend its protections by 25 years, Mr. Roberts and his majority eviscerated a key part of the act in the 2013 case Shelby County v. Holder.
Times Opinion: What exactly was the court’s ruling in Shelby County v. Holder?
Ornstein: The decision removed any way to enforce Section 5, a provision that required governments with a history of voter discrimination to get a federal clearance before changing their voting laws. The clearance process had been an effective deterrent to voter suppression efforts.
In his majority opinion, Mr. Roberts said that pre-clearance was no longer necessary — that the Voting Rights Act had been so successful that discrimination had virtually disappeared. The day of the decision, Texas lawmakers moved to reinstate some of the roadblocks to voting that had been stymied by the Voting Rights Act.
King: In the decade since Section 5 was effectively gutted, we have seen a stark rise in partisan and racially motivated redistricting efforts, the enactment of over 100 restrictive voting laws and state level initiatives across the country that disproportionately disenfranchise voters in the Black, brown, and other minority communities.
To go further now and gut Section 2 would not be merely a legal setback; it would be a moral failure. It reveals, once again, the nation’s recurring temptation to retreat from its highest ideals when justice demands endurance. The court would be stripping away the Voting Rights Act’s last essential safeguards.
Times Opinion: If the court decides to roll back the Voting Rights Act again in Louisiana v. Callais, what could happen?
Ornstein: A report by the Black Voters Matter Fund indicates a ruling could lead to as much as a 30 percent reduction in the size of the Congressional Black Caucus, including the erasure of majority-minority seats in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina and Louisiana. It would also eliminate majority-Hispanic districts in Texas and other states.
King: The consequences would be devastating. The Voting Rights Act is the instrument that gives the marginalized a voice.
I urge Chief Justice Roberts and his colleagues to recognize both their moral obligation and the clear reality that many voters continue to be denied fair representation because of partisan gerrymandering and other methods of voter suppression. My mother said it well: “Freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience. I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others.”
Martin Luther King Jr. Day stands as a powerful testament to my father’s achievements. A day for all Americans to show their support. The Supreme Court has a choice to make: weaken voter protections, further silencing the voices of Black and brown voters, or honor and preserve my father’s legacy and make real the promise of our democracy. This is a test of whether we will accept the slow erosion of democracy, or rise up — as generations before us did — to redeem it.
Martin Luther King III is the chair of the Drum Major Institute, a nonprofit, progressive think tank that was created by his father. Norman J. Ornstein is a political scientist and a member of the Drum Major Institute’s board.
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4) Lula: This Hemisphere Belongs to All of Us
By Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Jan. 18, 2026
Mr. Lula is the president of Brazil.
The New York Times
The United States’ bombings in Venezuelan territory and the capture of its president on Jan. 3 are yet another regrettable chapter in the continuous erosion of international law and the multilateral order established after World War II.
Year after year, major powers have intensified attacks on the authority of the United Nations and its Security Council. When the use of force to resolve disputes ceases to be the exception and becomes the rule, global peace, security and stability are jeopardized. If norms are followed only selectively, anomie sets in and weakens not only individual states but the international system as a whole. Without collectively agreed-on rules, it is impossible to build free, inclusive and democratic societies.
Heads of state or government — from any country — can be held accountable for actions that undermine democracy and fundamental rights. No leaders have monopolies over the suffering of their peoples. But it is not legitimate for another state to arrogate to itself the right to deliver justice. Unilateral actions threaten stability around the world, disrupt trade and investment, increase refugee flow and further weaken the capacity of states to confront organized crime and other transnational challenges.
It is particularly worrying that such practices are being visited on Latin America and the Caribbean. They bring violence and instability to a part of the world that strives for peace through the sovereign equality of nations, the rejection of the use of force and the defense of the self-determination of peoples. In more than 200 years of independent history, this is the first time that South America has come under direct military attack by the United States, though American forces previously intervened in the region.
Latin America and the Caribbean are home to more than 660 million people. We have our own interests and dreams to defend. In a multipolar world, no country should have its foreign relations questioned for seeking universality. We will not be subservient to hegemonic endeavors. Building a prosperous, peaceful and pluralistic region is the only doctrine that suits us.
Our countries must strive for a positive regional agenda that is capable of overcoming ideological differences in favor of pragmatic results. We want to attract investment in physical and digital infrastructure, promote quality jobs, generate income and expand trade within the region and with nations outside it. Cooperation is fundamental to mobilizing the resources that we so desperately need to combat hunger, poverty, drug trafficking and climate change.
History has shown that the use of force will never move us closer to these goals. The division of the world into zones of influence and neocolonial incursions for strategic resources are outdated and damaging.
It is crucial that the leaders of the major powers understand that a world of permanent hostility is not viable. However strong those powers may be, they cannot rely simply on fear and coercion.
The future of Venezuela, and of any other country, must remain in the hands of its people. Only an inclusive political process, led by Venezuelans, will lead to a democratic and sustainable future. This is an essential condition for the millions of Venezuelan nationals, many of whom are temporarily sheltered in Brazil, to be able to safely return home. Brazil will continue working with the Venezuelan government and people to protect the more than 1,300 miles of border that we share and to deepen our cooperation.
It is in this spirit that my government has engaged in constructive dialogue with the United States. We are the two most populous democracies on the American continents. We in Brazil are convinced that uniting our efforts around concrete plans for investment, trade and combating organized crime is the way forward. Only together can we overcome the challenges that afflict a hemisphere that belongs to all of us.
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5) The Biggest Challenge in Venezuela? Forget the Oil, It’s Stocking the Fridge.
Economic instability in Venezuela after the U.S. raid to capture its president is deepening inflation and rattling the currency, sending grocery bills soaring for millions of people.
By Ana Ionova, Camille Rodríguez Montilla and Isayen Herrera, Jan. 18, 2026
Ana Ionova covers Latin America. Camille Rodriguez Montilla reported from Caracas, Venezuela, and Isayen Herrera from Los Teques, Venezuela.
Nair Granado rushed to buy groceries as soon as she got her $60 paycheck.
She knew it wouldn’t be enough to fill the pantry in her home on the eastern fringes of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital. Still, she worried that, before long, her earnings would not be enough to cover even the basics.
“Prices are rising every day,” said Ms. Granado, 33, a lab receptionist living in a sprawling working-class neighborhood with her two children. “It’s completely out of control.”
After more than a decade in crisis, Venezuela is no stranger to food shortages, high prices and economic pain.
But the U.S. military raid that removed Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, has plunged the South American nation into a chaotic new chapter of political and economic uncertainty, setting off a new wave of inflation and currency woes pushing basic grocery items out of the reach of many Venezuelans.
Ms. Granado, on a recent weekday, could still afford to buy flour and half a carton of eggs. But she did not even dream of buying meat — at more than $9 per pound, the price had nearly doubled in only a few days.
“You really have to find ways to be frugal, to make your salary stretch,” Ms. Granado said. “It’s getting harder to buy things.”
The economic turmoil is now threatening to deepen a yearslong humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, where more than 70 percent of people already live in poverty, according to a survey by a group of leading universities in the country.
The new affordability crisis is hitting Venezuelans especially hard because many have already been living on the edge of hunger for years, said Phil Gunson, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, a research organization, who has lived in Venezuela for over two decades.
“They’ve sold everything they could, they’ve tightened their belts until there are no more holes left,” Mr. Gunson said. “So there’s nothing left to fall back on.”
At the core of the sharp rise in food costs is Venezuela’s dependence on the U.S. dollar, widely used in everyday transactions because it is typically less volatile than the country’s own currency, the bolívar. When Venezuela’s economy, once Latin America’s richest, spiraled deeper into crisis in 2019, driven by government mismanagement and exacerbated by U.S. sanctions, many people began to save, spend and charge in U.S. dollars.
As a result, even though the country’s economy is not formally “dollarized,” Venezuelans today rely on U.S. dollars for their daily spending. Vendors often buy from suppliers in dollars, so they peg prices to the currency. And they typically charge higher prices if buyers want to pay in Venezuelan bolívars.
New U.S. sanctions over the past year have also forced Venezuela to sell less oil on the global market, which has reduced the volume of dollars circulating in its economy and made the currency more valuable. Now, anxiety about Venezuela’s economic future has sent the value of the dollar soaring, effectively doubling local prices of staples like meat, cheese and milk.
The Central Bank of Venezuela sets an official exchange rate, but most people rely on an unofficial rate called the “parallel dollar,” which reflects what dollars actually sell for on the street. This past week, the unofficial value of the dollar peaked at twice the official rate. It has since stabilized, but remains well above the official rate — and grocery store prices have not fallen in step.
At the same time, the incomes of Venezuelans, who are mostly paid in bolívars, “have gone up in smoke” as the value of the bolívar has dropped, said José Guerra, an economist and professor at the Central University of Venezuela.
“So we have a case of an economy that is experiencing extremely high inflation and, at the same time, may be entering an economic recession,” he added, estimating inflation could reach 2,000 percent this year. (The Venezuelan government does not publish official economic statistics and has persecuted economists tracking inflation.)
Venezuela’s minimum monthly wage, eroded by a decade of inflation and not adjusted in years, is now equivalent to roughly 50 cents. The government has tried to plug the gap, in part, by paying public-sector workers bonuses, though these have also diminished in value as the currency continues to wither.
There are signs the United States is already brokering deals for the sale of Venezuelan oil, which could help stave off an economic disaster in the country and inject critical dollars into its economy. But, in the short term, this potential economic lifeline is a long way from helping ordinary Venezuelans.
A survey by Gallup showed that last year, three in five Venezuelans struggled at times to afford food, among the highest rates in Latin America and the Caribbean. Even among the wealthiest 20 percent of Venezuela’s population, more than half said they were finding it difficult to pay for groceries.
Over the past year, soup kitchens and other community projects that once fed those in need have also been forced to close, as Mr. Maduro targeted nongovernmental groups with restrictive new rules. The government does deliver basic food baskets to the poor, but this welfare program is plagued by frequent and lengthy delays that can leave families without provisions for months.
While Venezuela’s interim government is focused on its new client-like relationship with the Trump administration, many Venezuelans are simply trying to figure out ways to stretch their dwindling purchasing power.
Johana Paredes, 30, said she was used to rationing the month’s groceries for her family of four. But the new sharp increase in food prices has made it difficult to buy even essential items that were, until recently, within reach.
“This past week, we couldn’t do any grocery shopping,” Ms. Paredes said, showing the scant supplies in her tin-roofed home in Los Teques, an hour outside Caracas. “That’s why there aren’t even potatoes,” she added. “Before, we were rich and we didn’t even know it.”
In Caracas, shoppers toured the stalls of the city’s most iconic municipal market hunting for a bargain, as vendors shouted prices in dollars and inflated them in bolívars. Leaning on the counter of the butcher shop where he works, Jesús Balza, 50, said customers were buying less.
“People are only spending on necessities,” he said. “Whoever used to buy a kilo of cheese is now buying half.”
This was on full display in Valencia, a city in central Venezuela, as shoppers walked out of supermarkets with half-empty bags. Marilsa Mendoza spent her budget of 13,000 bolívars, the equivalent of $35, on only a few necessities: flour, rice, pasta, oil and butter. Until a few weeks ago, she was able to buy far more for the same amount. “Everything is terrible, more or less double the price,” said Ms. Mendoza, 52, a hot dog vendor.
President Trump has outlined grand plans to revive Venezuela’s oil industry, vowing to strike a series of deals that would bring American investment into the sector. The main engine of the economy has decayed after years of mismanagement.
And while there are early signs that these plans may be taking shape, it is not yet clear whether this financial lifeline will ultimately materialize and fix Venezuela’s broken economy over the long-term.
Many Venezuelans long ago lost faith in their government’s ability to improve their lives.
Will whatever oil deals are in the works “actually benefit Venezuela,” asked Mr. Gunson, the analyst. “Only time will tell,” he added. “Right now, all we have is Trump saying that he’s taking the oil and he’s going to sell it.”
As leaders in Caracas and Washington wrestle over Venezuela’s future, Ms. Paredes said she was holding out hope that real transformation would soon begin to reach people like her.
“We try to stay positive, believing that things will really change,” she said. “Because honestly, we don’t see any improvement. Everything just keeps getting worse.”
Reporting was contributed by Tibisay Romero, María Victoria Fermín, Maria Ramírez and Patricia Sulbarán.
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6) The Screwdriver Salesman Behind Trump’s Airstrikes in Nigeria
Spotty research from a Christian activist has been used by Republican lawmakers to justify U.S. intervention in the country.
By Ruth Maclean, Reporting from Onitsha, in southeast Nigeria, Jan. 18, 2026
Emeka Umeagbalasi, 56, at his home in Onitsha, Nigeria, last month. Taiwo Aina for The New York Times
In a market in southeastern Nigeria, a short man wearing one earbud recently made his way to the tool section, dodging wheelbarrows of sugar cane and porters carrying stacks of hard hats.
The man, Emeka Umeagbalasi, owns a tiny shop selling screwdrivers and wrenches in this market in Onitsha, the commercial hub of southeast Nigeria.
But this screwdriver salesman is also an unlikely source of research that U.S. Republican lawmakers have used to promote the misleading idea that Christians are being singled out for slaughter in Africa’s most populous nation. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Representative Riley Moore of Virginia and Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey have all cited his work.
Armed with his ideas, President Trump launched airstrikes on the other side of Mr. Umeagbalasi’s country on Christmas Day.
To Mr. Umeagbalasi, that the American president had taken up a cause he had promoted, was “miraculous.”
“If nothing is done,” he said in an interview from his home, “Nigeria will explode.”
Mr. Umeagbalasi says he has documented 125,000 Christian deaths in Nigeria since 2009, but told The New York Times that he often does not verify his data. He acknowledged that his research was mainly based on “secondary sources,” including Christian interest groups, Nigerian news reports and Google searches.
Mr. Cruz, Mr. Moore and Mr. Smith did not respond to requests for comment. A White House spokeswoman did not address questions about Mr. Umeagbalasi’s data and methods, but said in a statement that “the massacre of Christians by radical, terrorist scum will not be tolerated.”
It is notoriously difficult to collect data on the killings, kidnappings and attacks that have wrought havoc on Nigerians for years.
The Nigerian government does not release comprehensive data on the number of people killed in violent attacks, or their religions. Many attacks in Nigeria go unrecorded because they happen in remote areas and are only heard of long afterward.
While some research shows that Christians are being killed in large numbers in Nigeria, researchers say a lack of security and widespread impunity in the most affected parts of the country endangers both Christian and Muslim Nigerians.
Mr. Umeagbalasi, who is Catholic, founded the International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, or Intersociety, in 2008. He runs the organization out of his home. His wife, Blessing, an evangelical Christian, is a board member.
He said he has degrees in security studies and peace and conflict resolution from the National Open University of Nigeria and described himself as a very “powerful” and “knowledgeable” investigator, comparing himself with the veteran CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour.
But when questioned about the accuracy of his data, establishing the religion of victims and determining the intent of perpetrators, he admitted that he rarely travels to the regions where attacks have occurred and usually assumes the victim’s religion.
Mr. Umeagbalasi has said that more than 7,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria in the first seven months of 2025. But an independent conflict-monitoring group, Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, estimates that around 6,700 people, including Islamist insurgents and military personnel, were killed in the same period. Only 3,000 of them were recorded as civilians, but that data is not disaggregated for religion.
Mr. Umeagbalasi explained that he determines the religious identity of victims based on where each attack occurs. If a mass abduction or killing happens in an area where he thinks many Christians live, he assumes the victims are Christians.
“For instance, if killings take place in Borno today, when I look at it, I will just look at the zone where the killings take place,” he said, referring to the majority-Muslim state at the heart of Boko Haram’s deadly insurgency in Nigeria. “Once they take place in southern Borno, there is likelihood of the victims being Christians or many of them or most of them being Christians.”
Many of Boko Haram’s victims are Muslim.
He also gave the example of 25 schoolgirls recently kidnapped in the state of Kebbi. The girls were all Muslim, according to the school principal and local officials. But Mr. Umeagbalasi claimed that they were mostly Christian.
“The girls — a majority of them are Christians, but you know what Nigerian government did?” he said. “They went and Islamized them. Gave them Islamic names just to confuse people.”
Alkasim Abdulkadir, a spokesman for Nigeria’s foreign minister, denied that the government had misrepresented the girls’ religion. “There’s a lot of fallacy to his research, a lot of confirmation bias,” he said of Mr. Umeagbalasi. “He’s very performative.”
Mr. Umeagbalasi said he almost never travels to Nigeria’s Middle Belt, the region where violence against Christians is most intense. Instead, he said, he relies on “secondary sources” like news reports and Open Doors, a Christian advocacy group whose data has been cited by Mr. Trump.
One of his main secondary sources is Truth Nigeria, a project founded by a filmmaker and evangelist from Iowa, Judd Saul.
Like Intersociety and other Christian advocacy groups in Nigeria and the United States, Truth Nigeria frequently identifies the perpetrators of attacks on Christians in the country as “Fulani ethnic militias.” The Fulani are an ethnic group with tens of millions of mostly Muslim members, some of whom are herders whose ancestors have roamed across West Africa for centuries.
Mr. Umeagbalasi called the Fulani “animals” and said all Fulanis should be confined to one Nigerian state, a move that would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
Researchers, journalists and prominent Christians regularly dispute Mr. Umeagbalasi’s figures.
Nnamdi Obasi, the Nigeria adviser for the International Crisis Group, described Intersociety’s methodology as “a total blank” and said that the figures in Intersociety’s reports did not add up correctly.
“The basic addition is very, very faulty,” he said.
Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, the Catholic bishop of Sokoto, the northwestern Nigerian state that the United States bombed in December, said in an interview that focusing too much on the data about Christians obscured a more important issue. “Focus on the fact that this state is weak and doesn’t have the capacity to protect its people,” he said.
Mr. Umeagbalasi remains undeterred by criticism.
He flipped open his laptop, where he had almost completed work on his next report, titled, “The Situation of Christians in Nigeria Fueled by Jihadist Terrorism Inches a Point of No Return.”
“This is our heavenly marathon,” he said.
He sat in his living room, its walls painted green and black. A bookshelf was crammed with old papers and plaques. One read, “For excellent service to humanity.”
He said close to 20,000 churches were destroyed in the past 16 years, and, he said, 100,000 churches existed in Nigeria.
There is no government data on the number of churches in Nigeria. So where did he get the 100,000 figure?
“Googled it,” he said.
Reporting was contributed by Saikou Jammeh, Dionne Searcey, Ismail Auwal and David Chidi Eleke.
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7) Pentagon Tells 1,500 Troops to Prepare for Possible Deployment to Minnesota
But President Trump has already backed away from a threat to invoke the Insurrection Act in response to protests against the killing of a woman by a federal immigration agent.
By Helene Cooper, Reporting from Washington, Jan. 18, 2026
Federal agents in Minneapolis last week. The use of military force on domestic soil in the United States is rare, and it is usually reserved only for the most extreme situations. Credit...Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
The Defense Department has told 1,500 active-duty troops to prepare for a possible deployment to Minnesota, where President Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act as a response to protests there against the killing of a Minneapolis woman by a federal immigration officer.
Since threatening to invoke the little-used 1807 law, Mr. Trump has already appeared to back away from actually doing so, as Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike have called for restraint.
Even so, the Pentagon last week put troops with two infantry battalions with the Army’s 11th Airborne Division on alert in case they ended up being called up, two Defense officials said.
“The Department of War is always prepared to execute the orders of the commander in chief if called upon,” Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said in an emailed statement, using the Trump administration’s preferred moniker for the department.
The Pentagon last week also quietly alerted 200 Texas National Guard troops to be ready to deploy to Minnesota in the event that Mr. Trump followed through with his threat. The Texas Guard soldiers have remained on standby since returning home from Chicago late last year.
But the deployment of troops from the 11th Airborne Division, which is based in Alaska, would be a major escalation for Mr. Trump, who has already sent National Guard troops into a number of American cities.
The use of military force on domestic soil in the United States is rare, and it is usually reserved only for the most extreme situations. Active-duty forces are barred from domestic law enforcement unless the president invokes the Insurrection Act, which allows for the use of federal troops on U.S. soil.
The order putting the troops on notice to deploy was reported earlier by ABC News.
On Friday, a day after issuing his Insurrection Act threat, Mr. Trump appeared to walk back his comments. “I don’t think I need it right now,” he told reporters while leaving the White House to spend the weekend in Florida.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2024, urged Mr. Trump on Thursday to back off the heated rhetoric. “Let’s turn the temperature down,” the governor wrote on social media. “Stop this campaign of retribution.”
The Justice Department has opened an investigation into Mr. Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, an escalation in the state-federal battle over the conduct of immigration agents in the city.
Mr. Trump was talked out of invoking the Insurrection Act in 2020 following the protests over the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman. At the time, his defense secretary, attorney general and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff all advised him against sending active-duty troops into American cities to battle local citizens.
But Mr. Trump has a much more compliant Pentagon in his second term, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has worked to amplify Mr. Trump’s directives and inclinations, rather than seek to restrain him.
One defense official said on Sunday that the Pentagon was aware that Mr. Trump had appeared to back away from his threat, but also said that Mr. Hegseth wanted to be prepared.
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8) The Message in Renee Good’s Last Words
By Rachel Louise Snyder, Jan. 18, 2026
Ms. Snyder is a contributing Opinion writer.
I know that dude.
That dude is every contractor who’s ever come into my house. That dude is every first date, every mechanic, every guy walking behind me in the dark. When Renee Good said, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad,” I heard her addressing every man who would or could or might take advantage of us as women.
That “dude” was a peace offering, a reaching out to show we’re not like those other women, the kind who don’t know about cars or home repairs. We’re not weak or uncool. We’re not hysterical or overly emotional. We’re not into drama. No. We’re just like you, dude.
That “dude” is our signal. Our call for mercy.
That “dude” is a please and thank you. Resistance to an unwanted hug. An unwanted anything.
That “dude” is our negotiation for a world that threatens us.
Did the ICE agent kill Ms. Good because he feared her? Or did he kill her because she didn’t fear him?
The man, with his face covering, his tactical vest, his handgun and his shorn hair, was kitted up to playact in a war against unarmed everybodies. He was frailty wrapped in fatigues.
In the days since Ms. Good was killed, more agents have been caught on camera asking residents questions like “Have y’all not learned from the past couple of days?”
“Learned what?” asks a woman. “What’s our lesson here?”
“Following federal agents,” an agent says, and then lunges for her phone and snatches it out of her hands. It seems he has no words to explain what, exactly, he is doing and why.
Is fascism our lesson? Is male supremacy our lesson? Hatred? Cowardice? That some citizens are more equal than other citizens? That some of us no longer have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? That the First Amendment turns out to be as fragile as rice paper? When there is no moral justification, the only tool that remains is to attack.
The violence just seems to expand, as violence so often does. Daily, now, there are videos of tear gas and physical aggression from the foot soldiers of ICE. I watched another video of a woman trying to tell the men who are dragging her, face down, through the street that she has a brain injury and was on her way to a medical appointment. She is detained by federal agents and forced into their car, for what we do not know. Think back to April, when one of the first broken car windows in an ICE arrest made national news. It was in a town in Massachusetts. A couple sat calmly in the car, on the phone with their immigration lawyer. Think how normal it’s become now to see ICE agents shattering car windows.
I wonder why they so often choose escalation over de-escalation. I wonder if they know how those who perpetrate violence can come to be haunted by their past actions, even if that violence is mandated by the state. Recently, I watched a documentary called “In Waves and War” that premiered at Telluride. The film follows three former Navy SEALs with severe PTSD. It is a moving examination of what it means to live in the aftermath of war, of the unbearable moral weight of what these men did and saw and endured. Each new generation, it seems, must relearn how difficult it is to find peace after war.
The three men are racked by trauma. One wife says she could look into her husband’s eyes and see that he was simply not there. The men go to Mexico and use psychedelic drugs to treat their PTSD. They expected, while on the drugs, to see images from the battles they’d faced as Navy SEALs, the battles in which they’d lost friends and been injured and nearly lost their own lives.
But instead, says a man named DJ, what comes are visions from childhood of his father’s rage and violence and humiliations. How terrified he was of his dad. And how he learned to mirror that rage and violence toward his own children.
“If we didn’t abuse children,” a veteran asks in the film, “would we have a military?”
These men release their trauma at least in part through their own wrecked and cathartic sobbing. How rare, I think, to see a grown man drowning and then healing something in himself through anguished tears. Rare and beautiful, because he is finally engaged in the full range of what it means to be human.
I do not know the ICE agent who shot Ms. Good, but I know the impulse for violence tends to come from the experience of pain. If this applies to Ms. Good’s killer, I hope he can find his way out of that pain someday, not because he deserves it or because I want to absolve him, but because no good comes to a world that gets in the way of men like him.
That ICE agent may not have known what Renee Good’s “dude” meant. Someday he may learn. In the meantime, I hope that word is an auditory purgatory, a looped soundtrack — dude, dude, dude — that’s as difficult to escape as a bullet.
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9) In Minneapolis, I Glimpsed a Civil War
By Lydia Polgreen, Opinion Columnist, Jan. 19, 2026
Mark Peterson for The New York Times
Late last Wednesday night, I was standing on a street corner in the Hawthorne neighborhood in North Minneapolis, when I witnessed an extraordinary confrontation. A federal agent marched up a narrow residential sidewalk, flanked by modest bungalows, kitted out in gear fit for the battle of Falluja: full body armor, camouflage fatigues and helmet, military boots, and a heavy machine gun slung by his side. His carriage was erect, his gaze fixed straight ahead, seemingly oblivious to the crowd of protesters who blew whistles and shouted curses as he passed, enraged that one week after Renee Good was gunned down by an ICE agent, another civilian had been shot by ICE in their city.
Suddenly, the tense scene dissolved into slapstick. The federal officer slipped on a patch of ice and tumbled to the ground. A raucous roar of laughter and jeers erupted from the protesters surrounding him. He quickly scrambled to his feet and marched on. But a few seconds later one of the protesters shouted:
“He dropped his magazine!”
And sure enough, lying on the patch of ice was a fully loaded magazine from his automatic weapon. Dan Engelhart, one of the city’s parks commissioners, was standing nearby. He grabbed the magazine and turned it over in his hands.
“Well, we’re fucking close to civil war,” he told me.
As a longtime foreign correspondent, I have covered civil wars in countries across the globe. Not so long ago, I would have rolled my eyes at the notion that one could erupt anywhere in America, much less in my once placid home state of Minnesota. And yet here I was, eyes stinging and throat burning as tear gas wafted over me, watching heavily armed agents of the federal government invade a quiet residential neighborhood five miles as the crow flies from the suburb where I went to middle school.
Like many Americans, I had watched the video of the killing of Good by an ICE officer on a residential street in Minneapolis with horror and sorrow. From afar, this tragic and possibly criminal act of violence could plausibly be seen as incidental to President Trump’s mission to deport undocumented people from the country. But when I landed in Minneapolis on Monday and saw the size, scope and lawlessness of the federal onslaught unfolding here, I understood that Good’s killing was emblematic of its true mission: to stage a spectacle of cruelty upon a city that stands in stark defiance of Trump’s dark vision of America.
Thousands of masked, heavily armed agents, some with minimal training, have been unleashed on the streets of an American state. They have been promised near-total legal immunity by the president, effectively unshackled from any constitutional constraints.
They have been given limitless license to abduct anyone — not just the undocumented immigrants, but American citizens who happen to look foreign, whatever that might mean. Even Native Americans, whose ancestors lived here long before anyone else, have been detained on the absurd suspicion that they are undocumented immigrants. They have roughed up local lawmakers, detained and jailed legal observers without charges, tear-gassed high school students, smashed in car windows of bewildered drivers unlucky enough to cross their path. Anyone who gets in their way — by protesting, filming their actions or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time — is presumed to be a domestic terrorist.
We’ve all seen the horrifying viral videos — I was a couple blocks away, engulfed in a cloud of tear gas not far from where Good was gunned down, when a disabled woman on her way to a doctor’s appointment was dragged from her car, cuffed and carried away like a livestock carcass by federal agents.
But it was the quiet, yet pervasive, fear that stunned me most. St. Paul’s new mayor, Kaohly Her, who came to the United States as a Hmong refugee at the age of 3, told me she has started carrying proof of citizenship with her at all times, just in case she is stopped by ICE agents. There are empty desks in school classrooms across the Twin Cities as immigrant children stay home, afraid that they or their parents will be snatched up by ICE agents who lurk in idling SUVs near schools during drop-off and pickup. Restaurants and shops have closed because their employees are too afraid to come to work, even if they are here legally, because the informal policy of federal agents seems to be to detain first, ask questions later.
Minnesota is under siege. It might not yet be a civil war, but what the White House has dubbed “Operation Metro Surge” is definitely not just — or even primarily — an immigration enforcement operation. It is an occupation designed to punish and terrorize anyone who dares defy this incursion and, by extension, Donald Trump’s power to wield limitless force against any enemy he wishes.
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“This is tyranny,” Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general, told me. “There is no other way to put it. We’re all shocked by it. Nobody ever thought America would look like this. We now don’t have to speculate as to what American fascism looks like. It’s right outside the door.”
Minneapolis is not the first city to face an influx of federal agents at the behest of President Trump. Federal immigration enforcement officers, and in some cases the National Guard, have been sent into Washington, D.C., Chicago, Denver and Los Angeles over the course of the last year. But what is happening in Minnesota is of an entirely different scope and character: administration officials have called it the largest immigration enforcement effort in the nation’s history.
Compared to the other Trump administration targets, Minnesota is an odd choice for such a huge operation. It is a medium-size state — fewer than six million people — and its percentage of undocumented immigrant residents is less than half the national average, far lower than states like Texas, Florida, California and New York. The Trump administration claims the federal incursion was necessary because of a vast welfare fraud scheme initially prosecuted by the Biden administration that involved dozens of Somali and Somali-American defendants. Trump and his top aides have used vile, racist language to describe the community.
“We always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right?” he said in December. “Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.” He told reporters at a cabinet meeting, “They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country, I will be honest with you,” adding, “Their country stinks.”
But Trump’s animus toward Minnesota seems to be driven by something even deeper. The state is a political outlier in the upper Midwest — the five states that surround it have all voted for Trump at least twice. On paper, Minnesota might look like friendly territory for MAGA: it is significantly whiter than the national average, and it has a substantial rural and exurban population.
Trump is convinced that Minnesota belongs in his column, insisting that he won it all three times he ran for president, but that his victory was snatched away by devious local election officials. His administration seems to think that riling up resentment against the state’s roughly 100,000 residents of Somali origin is a ticket to luring the state’s white supermajority into his xenophobic camp.
But Minnesotans are unlikely to take the bait. The state has a long tradition of welcoming refugees, and Somalis, along with Hmong, Cambodians, Ethiopians and Ukrainians, have become part of the fabric of the state. Representative Ilhan Omar and several other elected officials are of Somali descent.
Minnesota hasn’t given its electoral votes to a Republican presidential candidate in 50 years. It eluded even Ronald Reagan, who swept 49 states in 1984. For decades, Minnesota has been a bastion of defiantly progressive politics: home to heroic figures of the left like former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, an ardent civil rights supporter, and the progressive Senator Paul Wellstone, who tragically died in a plane crash in 2002.
The state has been able to absorb the shock of the murder of George Floyd, as Minneapolis became ground zero for a nationwide protest movement. It has weathered a long season of sometimes destructive protests, but managed not to tear itself apart.
By American standards, it has a generous social safety net, and among the lowest rates of uninsured residents. Despite its relatively high taxes, it is one of the sought-after destinations for people moving from state to state, offering a surfeit of good jobs at numerous Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the Twin Cities. It has an excellent and well-funded public university system and highly rated public schools. It routinely ranks in the top five states for quality of life. It has its problems, including the deep inequality and segregation that fueled the protests in the wake of Floyd’s murder. But for the most part it is a nice place, filled with nice people who seem quite happy to take care of one another.
“Minnesota represents everything that the administration hates,” said Mukhtar Ibrahim, a Somali-American journalist and entrepreneur who came to Minnesota as a refugee 20 years ago. “If he can do this in Minnesota, nothing else will stop him. This is, I think, ground zero. If Minnesota falls, the country will fall.”
The Minnesotans I met on the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul were determined to resist and fight back. The Trump administration has tried to paint the anti-ICE activists as hard-left agitators, “blue-haired” domestic terrorists bent on stirring up mayhem. But I found they looked a lot more like a woman I met named Hillary Oppmann, a blonde, 50-something solar energy consultant who lives in South Minneapolis.
I stumbled upon Oppmann on a frigid morning last week, when I rolled up on a corner near a high school in South Minneapolis. She lives in the neighborhood and is part of a school parent group that began patrolling the streets at the beginning and end of the school day after the ICE incursion began, trying to protect students and parents from arrest. Many such groups have sprung up across the Twin Cities, staffed by volunteers who track ICE vehicles, follow them, record their movements and try to delay and distract them.
A few minutes before I had come upon her, Oppmann had heard the sound of whistles like the one that she wears around her neck, and hustled to the spot. On her phone, she showed me a video of agents detaining two girls: One seemed to be a teenager, the other a little younger, who had been in a pickup truck with a small white dog. The officers appear to handcuff the younger girl in one of the videos and put her in their vehicle.
Oppmann had gotten involved as a volunteer in this group through a parents’ group at the local high school, where the student body includes a large proportion of immigrant children. That morning she had chosen a walking patrol to keep warm. It was so cold that day that her garage door had frozen shut.
She told me she wasn’t surprised at how quickly her neighbors had sprung into action. The community groups that formed in the wake of the murder of George Floyd quickly reactivated, she told me, making it much easier to organize a response. The killing of Renee Good was a horrific shock, but it has not deterred the volunteer observers — if anything, Oppmann said, their ranks have swelled.
“Minnesotans are really good at chipping away at ice,” she dryly noted.
As we were talking, a minivan pulled up. The driver was a Native American woman named Nicole, who was also on patrol, fueled by Red Bull and Marlboro 100s. She was looking for homeless people who might need supplies: tarps, blankets and food. One of the bizarre ironies of the ICE abductions is that several Indigenous Americans — people whose roots on this land predate anyone else’s — have been detained. Four homeless members of a local Native tribe had been seized days earlier, and three remained in custody, according to local tribal leaders.
“I got my tribal,” she told Hillary, gesturing at the card that identifies her as a member of a Native American tribe.
A few blocks away from where we stood, the Pow Wow Grounds coffee shop has become a nerve center of the Native American response to the ICE incursion. An art gallery attached to the cafe has been transformed into a supply depot: Volunteers pick up food, diapers, medicine and other essential supplies for families too frightened of ICE to leave home. There were masks, gloves, goggles and first-aid kits of observers and protesters. It bustled with warm camaraderie — a constant stream of volunteers, embracing and exchanging intel about what was happening on the street.
There, I met a man named Crow Bellecourt. He told me how his father had started the Indigenous Protector Movement in the 1960s to fight harassment of Native Americans who lived in the area, and that his community has put its long history of fighting the violence of the federal government in service to vulnerable newcomers.
“I really hate using the word immigrant or illegal immigrant, because them are brown people just like me,” he said. “These are our relatives.”
He said that the community response has been disciplined and robust, with none of the property destruction that marked the protests after the murder of Floyd, when a police precinct burned to the ground. Back then, it was internal tensions that exploded. Now, it is an outside force besieging the city.
“I think we’ve learned as a community to try to keep it calm this time around,” he said. “And I also think our Minneapolis Police Department learned from that incident, and we’re all trying to keep our calm. It seems like the Feds want to incite something here.”
The exceptionally broad solidarity I saw across the Twin Cities is emblematic of the qualities that have made Minnesota such an irritant to Trump. For all the efforts to paint those opposing the ICE incursion as domestic terrorists, the kinds of people who came out were not just activists but people like Ryan Ecklund, a suburban real estate agent who was detained and shackled while filming ICE vehicles he had spotted after dropping his son off at school.
“My goal isn’t to become a political activist,” Ecklund told Minnesota Public Radio. “It is our responsibility as citizens, whichever side of the aisle you lean toward, to protect the Constitution, and we are all given inalienable rights via that Constitution.”
It echoed something I heard from a 17-year-old high school junior I met named Jesse Fee, who was among hundreds of students who walked out of class to march on the State Capitol to demand that ICE leave Minnesota.
“ICE might not break into my house and try to take one of my family members, because we’re all white” Fee told me. “But I’m not gonna not care, just because it’s not gonna happen to me. That’s irresponsible, that’s disrespectful, and it’s sinful, honestly.”
For all their military gear and unchecked power, the federal agents flooding this city, like the president ultimately commanding them, seem unprepared for what they are facing here. Like the agent who slipped on ice, they have misjudged the ground beneath their feet: a state full of ordinary people — real estate agents, high school students, solar energy consultants — who’ve decided that watching their neighbors being dragged away is an intolerable sin.
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10) In Minneapolis, a Pattern of Misconduct Toward Protesters
Legal and criminal justice experts said a ruling by a federal judge last week revealed conduct by immigration agents that evokes the civil rights era.
By Stephanie Saul, Published Jan. 18, 2026, Updated Jan. 19, 2026
A protester detained, her bra removed and wedding ring cut off, and some of her clothes never returned. The “gratuitous deployment” of pepper spray. A couple’s car surrounded by agents, who pointed semiautomatic weapons at them at close range.
A federal judge in Minneapolis cited the episodes in an unusually detailed ruling on Friday that found a pattern of misconduct by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and ordered them and other immigration agents to stop using excessive force against protesters while conducting their operations in the city.
In some ways, legal experts said, the judge’s order was fairly mundane because it merely ordered the federal agents to follow established constitutional law, permitting peaceful protests.
In other ways, it stood out.
“Extraordinary,” Michele Goodwin, a law professor at Georgetown University, said of the decision. The judge, she said, reviewed dozens of witness declarations and video evidence and found conduct “alarming enough, dangerous enough that the court has imposed a preliminary injunction.”
Protesters and state officials have for weeks been calling on the federal government to withdraw its immigration agents from Minneapolis, a movement that has only intensified since Renee Good was shot and killed on Jan. 7 by Jonathan Ross, an ICE officer.
In late December, the American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of several protesters, filed a complaint against the federal government and its agents seeking to protect the protesters’ rights to speech, assembly and unlawful search and seizure.
The court order was based on earlier interactions that immigration agents had with protesters that did not gain as much attention as the killing of Ms. Good. The accounts described in the order were submitted to the court from declarations and video submissions from both parties.
Ms. Goodwin was one of several legal scholars and criminal justice experts who said the conduct of ICE agents during Operation Metro Surge, the government’s name for its immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, evoked the attacks by police officers in Birmingham, Ala., on civil rights protesters in 1963.
David Rudovsky, a University of Pennsylvania law professor, also noted the similarities. “I think about the civil rights movement in the South and how Southern law enforcement reacted with hoses, dogs and lynchings,” he said.
Images of Birmingham’s police dogs sinking their teeth into protesters shocked the world. The aggressive conduct of federal agents in Minneapolis has also raised alarm, particularly following the shooting death of Ms. Good.
The constitutional principles at risk are the same.
Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, called the judge’s findings “ridiculous” on Sunday in an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation and then blamed the protesters.
“We only use those chemical agents when there’s violence happening and perpetuating and you need to be able to establish law in order to keep people safe,” she said, adding that the judge’s order will not change the agency’s operations on the ground. “It’s basically telling us to do what we’ve already been doing,” she said.
Her agency was expected to appeal the ruling.
The case is the latest in a series of legal challenges across the country, including in California, Illinois and Washington, D.C., where civil and immigrant rights organizations have sought to curb the tactics of federal agents.
In Illinois, where immigration agents massed for several weeks last year, a federal judge issued a sweeping injunction that placed several limits on how agents could use force and interact with protesters. An appellate court later blocked that ruling, calling it too broad and too prescriptive.
The legal moves have come as the Trump administration pursues its deportation agenda, a cornerstone of the campaign that helped get Mr. Trump elected to a second term. For many, including in Minnesota, the immigration crackdown is the welcome fulfillment of that promise and should not be impeded by protesters.
The 83-page ruling found that “the record adequately illustrates that the defendants have made, and will continue to make, a common practice of conduct that chills observers’ and protesters’ First Amendment rights.”
Judge Katherine Menendez, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota by President Joseph R. Biden, said that neither party requested an evidentiary hearing, even though the court made that available.
She also stated that she gave “substantial weight” to the sworn statements from the plaintiffs and noted that immigration agents involved in the interactions with protesters did not provide sworn declarations.
Rather, the defense depended on testimony from David Easterwood, who directs the St. Paul field office for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations. Mr. Easterwood said he was not present at the encounters, but rather relied on “personal knowledge, reasonable inquiry and information made available to me.” Judge Menendez said because of that, she gave “considerably less weight” to the testimony of Mr. Easterwood.
In one episode described in the order, Judge Menendez concluded that federal agents likely were “simply fed up with the protesters generally” when they decided to violently arrest a man who was involved in peaceful activity.
“‘Let’s get this guy,’ one of the agents said, before they grabbed Abdikadir Noor, and threw him to the ground,” the ruling said.
While ICE contended in court papers that Mr. Noor was leading an agitated crowd of protesters as agents attempted to make an arrest, videos showed that he had pushed another protester away from the officers and held his arm up to urge other protesters to stay back, the court ruling said.
He was detained by ICE agents, taken to a federal building, shackled and put in a cell, and later released, according to the decision.
Mr. Noor, 43, a U.S. citizen of Somali descent, was one of six named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, filed by the A.C.L.U. and private attorneys who are volunteering their time. A call to the A.C.L.U. was not returned.
Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina, said the ICE behavior described in the ruling sets a new level of misconduct.
“In the last 45 years I’ve been studying these events, I’ve seen nothing like what we’re experiencing today,” he said.
Dr. Alpert cited the case of Susan Tincher, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against ICE, as egregious behavior.
Ms. Tincher woke to learn that ICE agents had arrived in her Near North neighborhood in Minneapolis. She drove to a nearby home that was surrounded by agents to find out what was happening.
Standing about six feet from agents who had encircled the home, she said, she heard officers say, “Get back,” and “Take her down.”
Within about 15 seconds, she said, several agents had grabbed her and pulled her to the ground, then handcuffed her while she was face down in the snow. Witnesses said she did not physically resist agents or taunt or threaten them.
ICE agents took Ms. Tincher to the federal building where they removed some of her clothes, cut off her wedding ring, and shackled her. Before releasing her, they told her she would be charged with obstructing a federal officer. She was never charged.
In court papers, Mr. Easterwood said that Ms. Tincher had attempted to cross into the perimeter of the house and tried to push an ICE officer out of the way.
But Judge Menendez disagreed.
She also cited a number of incidents of ICE agents “gratuitously deploying chemical irritants at observers and protesters.”
Alan Crenshaw, 35, a Minneapolis resident involved in the protests, said he entered a restaurant and witnessed two agents “violently slamming a young Black man against the wall” even though the man was yelling in pain and telling them he was a U.S. citizen.
Outside, he said, he saw the agents push the young man into the snow for no apparent reason, handcuff him and place him in a car.
As a crowd gathered, Mr. Crenshaw said multiple people were being pepper sprayed with no warning. Agents drove slowly past, opened the car door and sprayed a bystander on the side of the road. Then, another ICE car without lights drove past and sprayed Mr. Crenshaw right in the face.
“Arresting people who are engaged in peaceful protest, using chemical spray against people engaged in protest activity, these are all very obvious. These are things that no police officer should do,” said Dr. Alpert, who has advised police forces.
On another point of contention — the behavior of ICE officers toward vehicles that seem to be tailing federal agents — Judge Menendez wrote that about a dozen incidents showed that “federal immigration agents are stopping residents’ vehicles without sufficient cause to justify detention.”
ICE agents had positioned their vehicles to block the road, braked abruptly in front of residents and activated emergency lights to initiate a stop.
In court documents, ICE did not specifically address detailed allegations about vehicular stops. Generally, though, the agency responded by saying that when protesters follow government vehicles, there have been cases in which the behavior “is not safe and impedes ICE officers from effecting arrests.”
In one incident described in the documents, a married couple, John Biestman, 69, and Janet Lee, 67, followed an ICE vehicle, making sure to keep their distance.
But when they turned into a park, the couple said, they were surrounded by four unmarked sport utility vehicles. ICE agents emerged from the vehicles, surrounded the couple’s car and demanded that they roll down the windows.
The agents were pointing semiautomatic weapons at them, at close range, the couple said. At one point, one of the agents reached into their car through the driver’s side window.
Judge Menendez concluded that the couple, Minneapolis residents who are both retired, had shown a “likelihood of success” on their claims that the officer violated their rights.
Another expert interviewed by The New York Times, Michael Mannheimer of Northern Kentucky University, said “there’s no law against following someone if you’re not breaking any traffic laws.”
When they told the agents they were U.S. citizens, the couple said, one responded, “It doesn’t matter.” Another offered, “What you’re doing is illegal. This is like Germany 1938,” the court papers said.
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11) Before Urban Raids, Border Patrol Tested Tactics in California Farm Country
Just before President Trump took office, Border Patrol agents led by Gregory Bovino arrested immigrants in Kern County using the same playbook later seen in places like Chicago and Minneapolis. Then a federal judge ordered them to stop.
By Orlando Mayorquín and Jesus JiménezVisuals by Mark Abramson, Jan. 19, 2026
Orlando Mayorquín reported from Kern County and Jesus Jiménez from Los Angeles. Both of them have covered the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.
Border Patrol agents, including Gregory Bovino, at a gas station in Columbia Heights, Minn., this week. Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times
A lawsuit filed against the federal government over its operations in Bakersfield and other parts of Kern County claimed that in some instances, Border Patrol agents had not identified themselves or presented warrants. In others, people were grabbed with force, and their requests to call a lawyer were denied.
And in one case, the lawsuit said, agents stopped a U.S. citizen driving a truck, slashed the tires, blocked the truck with another vehicle, arrested the driver and then released him a few hours later.
The raids last January, in the last days of the Biden administration, initially drew little attention outside the farm country of California’s Central Valley. At the time, the eyes of the world were focused on the two vast wildfires raging in Los Angeles County.
But the Border Patrol’s actions in Kern County, which it called Operation Return to Sender, can be seen as a blueprint for the broader immigration crackdown that was to come. Similar tactics have become part of the agency’s standard playbook in other places, including Minnesota, where federal immigration agents are making hundreds of arrests amid sustained protests from local leaders and residents.
The man who led the Kern County raids, Gregory Bovino, became a star among opponents of illegal immigration. When the Trump administration began an immigration crackdown in Los Angeles in June, Mr. Bovino was tapped to lead operations there, and he was later asked to lead crackdowns in other cities.
“The Kern County operation was a test run, or a pilot project, on Bovino’s part,” Minju Cho, a senior lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an interview. “We called it his audition for the Trump administration, and unfortunately, it seems to have worked. It really propelled him into the national spotlight, and since then, he’s only gained greater prominence as he’s been leading these operations around the country.”
The Border Patrol promoted the Kern County raids as a success, saying that it had arrested 78 undocumented immigrants during the three-day operation, including some with criminal histories.
But the agency’s tactics also showed opponents that it could be challenged and even stopped.
The A.C.L.U. filed a lawsuit on behalf of United Farm Workers and five Kern County residents that accused the agency of racial profiling and coercing at least 40 arrested immigrants “to accept voluntary departure.”
In April, Judge Jennifer L. Thurston of U.S. District Court issued a preliminary injunction barring Border Patrol agents from stopping Kern County residents without a reasonable suspicion of illegal presence, as required by the Fourth Amendment.
In the order, she cited evidence that the Border Patrol had violated its own policies by stopping people without reasonable suspicion, and she wrote that its public statements suggested that it would continue with its aggressive practices. She set out specific rules that the Border Patrol would have to follow for future stops.
The Department of Homeland Security has appealed Judge Thurston’s ruling.
In interviews with The New York Times last year, Mr. Bovino dismissed accusations that the Border Patrol was using racial profiling in its stops.
He also said that the Border Patrol had gone to Bakersfield because agency leaders believed that the area was a hub for smugglers. “It certainly opened our eyes to the need for interior enforcement, whether it’s attacking the smuggling networks going to and through Bakersfield or those illegal aliens that were already in Bakersfield,” he said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a separate agency within the Department of Homeland Security, was not named as a defendant in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit. ICE was not restricted by the injunction and has maintained a presence in the region.
Ambar Tovar, an immigration lawyer at the United Farm Workers Foundation in Bakersfield, said federal immigration enforcement in Kern County had shifted to ICE agents who target people showing up to court dates or supervisory check-ins.
“These are people who are in active proceedings,” Ms. Tovar said. “ICE knows who they are, where they live, and knows where to find them.”
The Department of Homeland Security said that the Border Patrol had not conducted operations in Kern County since Operation Return to Sender but that Homeland Security continued to enforce the law across the country.
In an interview with The New York Times earlier this month, President Trump said he had directed ICE to ease deportations in the agricultural industry. “They have great people working for them who have been working for them for 25 years,” he said. “They are almost like a member of the family, and I don’t want those people thrown out of the country.”
Still, long after the spectacle of the Border Patrol patrolling the streets has faded in Kern County, immigrant communities there remain shaken and on high alert. The county has two large ICE detention facilities, including one that opened last year, which have loomed large amid the crackdown.
Standing next to his rusty Chevy pickup in the parking lot of a Home Depot in Bakersfield earlier this month, Lazaro Ramirez, a day laborer, recalled the day a year ago when federal agents in green had showed up. Fellow day laborers fled into the street and into the store, he said.
Since then, jobs have become nearly impossible to find. “We never thought that this could happen,” said Mr. Ramirez, a Mexican citizen who has a green card. “This past year, honestly, we have not been well.”
Last week, on the anniversary of the Border Patrol raids in Kern County, Ms. Tovar and members of other immigrant advocacy groups gathered at the U.F.W. Foundation’s office in downtown Bakersfield to reflect on the past year. Some immigrants shared stories of detention and fear, including one woman who said her oldest son had been arrested at an ICE office in October and was still in detention at a facility in California City, in the eastern part of the county.
Leticia Perez, a member of the Kern County Board of Supervisors, said that the Border Patrol’s raids had been unexpected for many. “It was just very clear that Border Patrol was being very creative, very clever and very aggressive,” she said.
Ms. Perez said she had assumed the raids in Kern County would be a singular event. “Certainly in the beginning, I think I was in some denial, hoping that maybe this was to grab headlines and that we would get past it pretty quickly,” she said.
Then in June, Los Angeles became the target of large-scale immigration raids. Mr. Bovino, a Border Patrol chief, was named the commander of the Los Angeles raids, and he later led operations in Chicago, Charlotte and New Orleans. Most recently, Mr. Bovino has been leading the agency’s surge in Minnesota.
Some of those other operations have drawn complaints similar to those in Kern County, including lawsuits claiming that Border Patrol agents targeted people based on the color of their skin or whether they spoke English.
Ms. Cho, the A.C.L.U. lawyer, said that she had noticed the parallels. In several cases that have been filed against the federal government over immigration raids, she said, judges have ruled that the operations have violated the law.
But other cities have not been able to have injunctions put in place the way Kern County did.
“They’re moving faster than courts can,” Ms. Cho said of immigration agents. “So unfortunately, it’s really difficult to hold them accountable.”
Sarah Saldaña, who served as an ICE director during the Obama administration, said she had noticed stark differences between how immigration enforcement was handled while she was with the agency compared with the second Trump administration.
ICE operations, Ms. Saldaña said, have typically required advance preparation and have targeted undocumented immigrants with criminal histories.
The Trump administration is casting a wider net by bringing in the Border Patrol, which uses different tactics. “The agents and the officers, it seems to me from what I can see, are just hitting the streets, as opposed to the targeted operations we did, certainly, under the Obama administration,” Ms. Saldaña said.
On Dec. 31, Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California, led a coalition of 17 state attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in the Kern County case, asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to keep the injunction in place. The filing describes a sense of fear among residents in the area. It cites examples of attendance drops at churches and reduced business at local stores.
“The unscrupulous tactics used by Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino and his team of agents during raids in Kern County, Los Angeles, and across the nation threaten the basic civil liberties afforded to all who call this country home,” Mr. Bonta wrote in the filing.
As the presence of federal immigration agents in cities leads to clashes with protesters, Ms. Saldaña said she is worried about the future.
“This get-them-at-all-costs attitude,” she said, “is just going to continue to cause problems.”
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12) Inside Minnesota Hospitals, ICE Agents Unnerve Staff
As federal agents swarm the Twin Cities, their presence has also grown in medical centers. Health care workers are pushing back.
By Jazmine Ulloa, Jazmine Ulloa reported from Minneapolis, Minn., Jan. 19, 2026
Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis on Sunday. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
The arrival of thousands of federal immigration agents has altered life in Minneapolis and St. Paul in ways large and small, including in the corridors of hospitals serving the Twin Cities.
The sheer presence of the agents, sometimes in uniform, sometimes in plainclothes, has been enough to unnerve health care workers, who were already straining under conditions some have compared with those of the coronavirus pandemic.
In interviews, nurses, doctors and other health care workers said the crisis conditions brought on by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown are wearing down overworked and understaffed medical institutions, and deteriorating patients’ trust in what are supposed to be safe havens.
“Any medical center or hospital is supposed to be a place of healing,” said Dr. Brian Muthyala, a physician at the hospital systems Hennepin Healthcare and M Health Fairview. “It is a place where people go when they are at their most vulnerable, when they are hurt or scared or in need of care, and any presence that disrupts that environment is harmful.”
Officials with the Homeland Security Department said that they do not conduct operations in hospitals. “We go in if there is an active danger to public safety,” said Tricia McLaughlin, an agency spokeswoman.
Health care workers, however, describe a different reality, saying agents have broken hospital protocol, refused to provide documentation and, in some cases, gotten into shouting matches with doctors and nurses.
Over his 20 years as an emergency medicine physician, Dr. Robert LeFevere said, he had encountered law enforcement officers coming in with shooting victims and other patients.
“But federal agents barging into patient care areas trying to question or detain patients — I’ve never seen anything like that before,” said Dr. LeFevere, who works at Regions Hospital, a few blocks from the State Capitol in St. Paul.
Health officials for three of the state’s major health systems, which oversee medical centers and clinics where agents have been spotted, declined to comment on federal activity in their hospitals, but stressed that they do not help enforce immigration laws and that federal officers are expected to follow the law and medical facilities’ safety protocols.
Federal immigration officers, like all law enforcement agents, are allowed to enter hospitals, clinics and other medical institutions if they are accompanying a patient in their custody and cannot be restricted from accessing public areas. But hospital officials said they do not allow immigration officers into private spaces, such as patient rooms and care units, without judicial warrants and that security officers escort them and limit their searches to the terms of those warrants.
“To be clear: We do not allow ICE to circulate in our facilities,” said Aimée Jordan, a spokeswoman with Fairview Health Services and M Health Fairview, which oversees about 10 hospitals in Minnesota. “Our clinics and hospitals remain places where people can seek care without fear. Even in uncertain times — especially in uncertain times — that commitment does not change.”
Tensions have been building since December, when federal agents began fanning out across Minnesota. That unease has increased in recent days after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, Jonathan Ross, shot and killed Renee Good, 37, on Jan 7. The Trump administration has deployed more agents since.
Hospitals have no system in place to track how frequently federal immigration officers enter medical care facilities. But nurses, doctors and local elected officials confirmed that federal agents had increasingly been seen in at least four hospitals in Minneapolis, Saint Paul and surrounding suburbs.
One health official said that over the past week, agents had brought in about two dozen patients to M Health Fairview Southdale Hospital, which is the closest medical center to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, a multiagency facility that includes a holding area for immigrant detainees. Whipple, located near the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, has become a key spot for clashes between protesters and federal agents.
Two nurses, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss patient care, described witnessing a confrontation between health care workers and federal agents last weekend that devolved into a screaming match in a hallway at Hennepin Healthcare System in Minneapolis.
A crowd of nurses and physicians, many in scrubs and medical gear, tried to stop the agents from shackling a severely injured man to his bedside, they said. Acquaintances in the patient’s neighborhood said they knew little about the man, except that he was a roofer and did not have family in the United States.
Hennepin County lawyers have filed a legal petition on behalf of the patient contesting his confinement by ICE, according to documents filed in a Federal District Court in Minnesota. Jeanette Boerner, the director of Adult Representation Services at Hennepin County, declined to comment on the specifics of the pending litigation.
D.H.S. officials and a lawyer representing the agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the episode or the man’s immigration case. Homeland security officials have until Tuesday to respond to the man’s legal petition.
The patient remains in the hospital, and agents have been rotating in and out of the facility as they keep watch at his side, according to three health care workers who asked not to be named because they did not have permission from their employer to speak on the issue.
About 10 miles to the east, in St. Paul, Dr. LeFevere said there had been at least two instances at Regions Hospital when federal agents entered the emergency department, once through the ambulance bay and another through a back entrance reserved for law enforcement.
In both cases, it appeared that the agents had been trailing people with whom they had interacted with on the streets, but the individuals were not in their custody, Dr. LeFevere said. The agents became argumentative when health care workers requested to see their warrants, but they eventually left the hospital, he said.
Dr. Loren Cobb, a psychiatry resident physician at the University of Minnesota and M Health Fairview, said she has been receiving texts and emails alerting health care workers that federal agents have been attempting to enter facilities on their grounds, including a children’s hospital. In at least one instance, the agents entered with someone in their custody, but in another, they were searching for a patient, she said. Staff and health teams have been reminded to follow proper hospital protocols, including not give away patient information.
“I am just worried it is going to escalate even more,” she said, adding that sometimes it is only herself and a handful of doctors on staff who are responsible for overseeing entire floors. “What happens if they inappropriately try to push forward? What comes next?”
For many doctors and nurses, federal immigration officers’ mission can, and often has, collided with their own ethical vows, they said. The Hippocratic oath, taken by doctors, and the Nightingale Pledge, by nurses, guide health care workers to provide patients with treatment and support, regardless of who they are, what they did or where they came from. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, establishes strict national standards to protect patients’ privacy and health information.
Jeffrey Lunde, who serves as a Hennepin County commissioner and chairman of the hospital board of the Hennepin Healthcare System, said there were recent instances at Hennepin Healthcare in which hospital staff had asked federal agents to produce documentation as to why they were present in a private area or in a patient’s private room. Agents were not able to provide it.
“And that is where things get murky and difficult,” he said.
Nurses, doctors and other health care professionals across the Twin Cities had prepared for precisely such situations as they watched immigration crackdowns unfold in other cities over the past six months.
Jamey Sharp, a health care worker who is also a community organizer with the nonprofit Unidos MN, said his organization had trained more than 300 health care workers since March on patient privacy and knowing their rights. The group, which advocates social justice, said it had also helped to connect health care workers through Signal chat groups in hopes of tracking the activity of federal agents inside their facilities and ensure that rules were being followed.
But the reality has gone beyond the scope of their training. Many said they have been shocked, both by the actions of agents inside their hospitals, as well as the injuries that have required treatment as a result of confrontations on the streets. Some health care workers are holding news conferences to denounce the tactics. Dozens flooded a Hennepin Healthcare board meeting this month demanding that local officials provide stronger oversight in their facilities.
Health officials say they are limited in how they can respond. Though hospital staff are obligated to protect the rights of their patients, federal officers can argue that the people they are monitoring or questioning inside hospitals are a danger to society. Who prevails in that back and forth has largely been untested in the courts.
The tension is unfolding at the same time that Homeland Security Department officials are also reviewing the citizenship and legal status of staff at some area hospitals and across the country.
Doctors and nurses say the presence and actions of immigration officials are already having an impact.
Aisha Gomez, a Democratic state lawmaker who represents parts of South Minneapolis, said she is worried about deleterious effect.
“I am deeply concerned about the chilling effect it is having on people seeking the care,” Ms. Gomez said.
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13) Top Catholic Clerics Denounce U.S. Foreign Policy
Citing recent events in Venezuela, Ukraine and Greenland, three cardinals said their statement was inspired by Pope Leo.
By Ruth Graham, Jan. 19, 2026
Cardinal Robert McElroy, archbishop of Washington, was one of the clerics who criticized U.S. foreign policy. Credit...Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times
The three highest-ranking Roman Catholic clerics who lead archdioceses in the United States said in a strongly worded statement on Monday that America’s “moral role in confronting evil around the world” is in question for the first time in decades. Their critique of the Trump administration’s principles — while not mentioning President Trump by name — escalates the American Catholic Church’s denunciations of the country’s top leaders.
In 2026, the country has entered “the most profound and searing debate about the moral foundation for America’s actions in the world since the end of the Cold War,” read the unusual statement issued by Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago; Cardinal Robert McElroy, archbishop of Washington; and Cardinal Joseph Tobin, archbishop of Newark.
Citing recent events in Venezuela, Ukraine and Greenland as having raised fundamental questions about the use of military force, the cardinals call for a “genuinely moral foreign policy” in which “military action must be seen only as a last resort in extreme situations, not a normal instrument of national policy.”
The cardinals did not delve into policy details, and declined to offer specifics about the countries mentioned in the statement. They specifically frame their statement as a message larger than partisan categories. But the context is clear. The president has threatened to take over Greenland “the hard way.” In Venezuela, the Trump administration has ordered U.S. troops to attack boats it says traffic in narcotics, and U.S. forces captured and extracted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife without authorization by Congress.
Pope Leo XIV has emphasized Venezuela’s “sovereignty” and has called for dialogue over violence. He has also repeatedly called for peace in Ukraine, and said President Trump’s peace plan would bring a “huge change” in the alliance between Europe and the United States.
In interviews and in their statement, the American cardinals expressed concern about the rise of a global order based on force and domination rather than one based on peace and freedom.
“The post-World War II consensus of dialogue among nations, the sovereign rights of countries, the refusal to use war to pursue questions of national dominance and national gain — that consensus is shifting away now,” Cardinal McElroy said in an interview. He was appointed by Pope Francis to the influential role of archbishop of Washington just weeks before President Trump’s second inauguration in 2025.
The cardinals’ statement was inspired in part by conversations the three men had earlier this month in Rome, at a closed-door gathering to which Pope Leo had summoned all cardinals around the world.
In discussions there with fellow cardinals, the three Americans were struck by “a sense of alarm about the way things were going in the world, and some of the actions that were being taken here in the United States,” Cardinal Cupich said in an interview. Their colleagues’ distresses included the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development last year, a decision that shut off streams of foreign assistance to the world’s poorest countries.
Soon after meeting with the cardinals, Pope Leo delivered an address to the diplomatic corps to the Vatican in early January, a speech that essentially serves as the pope’s annual foreign policy statement. In the address, the American-born pope condemned “a diplomacy based on force” and a “zeal for war” without mentioning any world leaders by name.
Leo succeeded Pope Francis in May, and is seen by many observers as more reserved than his freewheeling predecessor, but generally dedicated to similar priorities of solidarity with the weak and the oppressed. In his eight months leading the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, Leo has frequently called for peace and dialogue in thorny international conflicts, and has rebuked political leaders for what he has described as unjust treatment of migrants, the poor and the exploited.
Leo has so far avoided direct confrontations with President Trump, but his approach to the turbulent political landscape of his home country has been closely watched here and abroad. In October, as Mr. Trump escalated his deportation campaign in Leo’s hometown, Chicago, the pope urged U.S. bishops to strongly support immigrants. He later encouraged Catholics and others to read a statement by America’s bishops rebuking the Trump administration’s deportation campaign.
The new statement by the three American cardinals is framed as an interpretation of Leo’s emerging vision for international relations as an “enduring ethical compass for establishing the pathway for American foreign policy in the coming years.”
“The sovereign rights of nations to self-determination appear all too fragile in a world of ever greater conflagrations,” the cardinals wrote. “The building of just and sustainable peace, so crucial to humanity’s well-being now and in the future, is being reduced to partisan categories that encourage polarization and destructive policies.”
The statement also refers to abortion and euthanasia as impediments to the right to life, which it describes as the foundation of other human rights. And it criticizes cuts to foreign aid and “increasing violations of conscience and religious freedom in the name of an ideological or religious purity that crushes freedom itself.”
The three cardinals lead dioceses that together include almost four million Catholics, more than 550 parishes and hundreds of Catholic schools.
President Trump told The New York Times this month that his decisions as commander in chief are constrained only by his “own morality.”
“I don’t need international law,” he said. “I’m not looking to hurt people.”
Cardinal Tobin said in an interview that he had been struck by voices in the Trump administration who seemed to be advancing a moral framework that he described as “almost a Darwinian calculus that the powerful survive and the weak don’t deserve to.”
He added, “I would say that’s less than human.”
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14) Donald Trump’s Middle Finger
By Frank Bruni, Jan. 19, 2026
Ben Wiseman
We define most presidents by their biggest moments: the agonizing judgment calls, the signature legislation, speeches that shape public sentiment, treaties that reshape the world.
But it’s the little gestures that tell the truth of President Trump, like the middle finger that he raised to a heckler during his tour of a Ford factory in Dearborn, Mich., last week.
That one flipped bird showed so many of Trump’s feathers.
For starters, it captured the consistent triumph of his pettiness and puerility over any bearing that fits the old definitions of “presidential.” Trump doesn’t even try for dignity. He has his tantrums in public, and his sycophants peddle those outbursts as authenticity or even boldness; in their telling, he has the confidence and honesty to eschew phony courtesies and be true to his emotions — no mask, no manners. Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, responded to Trump’s Michigan meltdown by more or less praising it. He released a statement that said that a “lunatic was wildly screaming expletives in a complete fit of rage, and the president gave an appropriate and unambiguous response.”
Unambiguous? For sure. Appropriate? Only if you believe in answering ugliness with more ugliness, bile with bile, and only if your conception of leadership is acting no better than anybody else but indulging your snits and staging your fits from a higher pedestal, with a louder megaphone. Only if you believe the antonym of — and antidote to — elitism is vulgarity. That’s what Trump and so many of his abettors seem to think. Or, rather, it’s how they rationalize behaving however they like.
The footage of what happened in Dearborn is crude, but apparently one of the men whom Trump passed while walking through the factory shouted “pedophile protector” at him. Trump reacted not only by gesturing obscenely but also by mouthing something at the man. You needn’t be much of a lip reader to make it out. It’s just two words. Two syllables. The first seems to begin with the letter F.
The F-bomb is Trump’s idea of muscular vocabulary. It’s part of the acronym that accompanied an image that the White House circulated after the recent capture of Nicolás Maduro. Trump, looking suspiciously young and slim, strides toward the camera; below his knees, it says, “FAFO.” If you’re unfamiliar with that threat, the first letter stands for a verb that rhymes with muck, the second is for “around,” and the final two are for “find out.” Add a missing “and” in the middle, and you have Trump’s message to the world — not a summons to freedom but a command to obey.
Trump’s middle finger is the exclamation point punctuating his inability to tolerate any dissent, receive any criticism, shrug off any insult. Coupled with that defensiveness is an insatiable need for affirmation and adulation. He complained so publicly and frequently about not being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize that its most recent recipient, María Corina Machado, presented him with hers during a visit to the White House on Thursday. There, there, Mr. President. Stop your sobbing. You can share mine!
Nobel officials saw that ridiculousness coming and felt compelled to speak up and clarify that Machado didn’t have the authority to pay the medal forward or split it in two. But that didn’t end Trump’s pouting, nor did it shame him into politely declining Machado’s munificence. He posed for a picture with her that commemorated her theatrical but meaningless transfer of the honor. How utterly mortifying. How quintessentially Trump.
I’ve read that he doesn’t actually type his splenetic social media posts, but if he did, it would clearly be with his middle finger only. He rants at and curses his opponents, even on the holidays. His 2023 Christmas musings included these tidings for the “SICK thugs” who accused him of wrongdoing: “MAY THEY ROT IN HELL.” He channeled the same generous spirit last month. “Merry Christmas to all, including the Radical Left Scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our Country,” he wrote. Grab some eggnog and a loved one. The president has holiday-season reflections for you.
Many of his predecessors at least performed a pantomime of concern for the Americans who hadn’t voted for them. Those presidents claimed to understand that they represented the whole of the country and owed everyone a measure of respect. They issued pleas for unity and spoke of common ground. Empty words, perhaps, but important nonetheless — they recognized an ideal.
Trump rejects it. “I hate my opponent,” he said in September at a memorial for Charlie Kirk. A month later, in response to the nationwide No Kings demonstrations, he posted an A.I.-generated video in which he wore a crown, piloted a fighter jet with the words “King Trump” emblazoned on it, flew over American cities and dumped rivers of feces on the protesters below. He’s a scatological spin on Marie Antoinette. Let them eat excrement.
And since the killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis, he has done nothing to acknowledge so many Americans’ horror over what happened, to persuade them that he’ll get to the truth of the matter, to calm the unrest. He has chided those critics for disobedience, cast them as enemies of the state and threatened to use ever more force to subdue them.
He can’t extend his right hand in fellowship. One of the fingers on it is otherwise occupied.
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15) Federal Agents Blind Two California Protesters Shot in Face With ‘Less-Lethal’ Munitions
By Roque Planas/Guardian UK, January 19, 2026
Kaden Rummler at his home in California. He said he cannot cough or sneeze ‘because it’s dangerous’. (photo: Damian Dovarganes/AP)
Two protesters have been blinded by so-called “less-lethal” munitions deployed by federal officers during an anti-ICE protest last week in Santa Ana, California, according to reports.
The blindings come amid rising scrutiny of federal authorities’ use-of-force policies, after the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer set off nationwide protests.
Widely seen video recorded at the Santa Ana protest showed a homeland security agent shoot Kaden Rummler, 21, in the face with a less-lethal munition at a distance of only a few feet. Doctors found glass shards and plastic fragments in his skull and a fragment of metal lodged just shy of his carotid artery.
Video also showed the federal officer drag Rummler several yards across the pavement and into a federal building after shooting him. The shooting left him blind in his left eye.
“I can’t sneeze or cough because it’s dangerous,” Rummler told KTLA. “They pulled a piece of plastic the size of a nickel out of my eye.”
“They said it was a miracle I survived,” he added.
Rummler is 5ft 1in tall and weighs 102lbs, he said.
A second person, 31-year-old Britain Rodriguez, described taking a similar close-range shot to the face with a less-lethal round at the same protest, saying it felt like his “eye exploded in my head”, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times published on Friday.
The shooting appeared to take place at roughly the same time as the one that blinded Rummler.
Homeland security use-of-force policies describe “uses of impact weapons to strike the neck or head” as a form of “deadly force”.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment about the Santa Ana incidents.
But a DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, has described the protesters as a “a mob”, accusing them of throwing rocks, bottles and fireworks at federal officers. Local police and media reports, however, said protesters threw only traffic cones. There is no evidence of anything being thrown at officers in the video of Rummler being shot.
About 150 people gathered last week for a procession and vigil honoring Rene Good at which the shootings took place. The event culminated with a demonstration in front of a federal building used by ICE.
Orange county supervisor Vicente Sarmiento described the event as “very peaceful”. Attendees included local elected officials and “many parents with strollers”, he said.
A handful of homeland security officers stood at the top of the steps to the federal building during the protest. When protesters moved closer to them, the officers confronted them, according to Sarmiento. Videos of the shooting that blinded Rummler show him approaching the officers with a bullhorn after they grabbed another protester and dragged them up the stairs to detain them.
“I feel just outraged that some of our federal delegation and others are considering continuing to fund these federal agencies that have now gone rogue and are no longer protecting us, but are putting people in critical harm – killing people and maiming people,” Sarmiento said. “I’m just really, really distressed.”
Crowd control is not a typical function for homeland security. It is not clear why the federal officer chose to engage with protesters who were not the target of immigration enforcement and who appeared to be demonstrating on public property, outside the federal building.
Arizona State University criminologist Edward Maguire, who has studied crowd control, did not observe the Santa Ana protest, but said he had noted recent DHS actions elsewhere “appear inconsistent with basic principles of crowd management and de-escalation”.
“Decades of research show that when law enforcement responds to crowds and protests in this way, it tends to escalate tension and conflict and increases the risk of harm to both officers and civilians,” Maguire wrote in an email.
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