That led to a great many questions, including a practical one: Who, exactly, is Donald Trump going to pay? Reuters shed some light on one possible answer (as part of a report that has not been independently verified by MS NOW):

U.S. officials have discussed sending lump sum payments to Greenlanders as part of a bid to convince them to secede from Denmark and potentially join the United States, according to four sources familiar with the matter.

While the exact dollar figure and logistics of any payment are unclear, U.S. officials, including White House aides, have discussed figures ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 per person, said two of the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Because nothing says “America First” like writing generous checks to tens of thousands of Danish citizens.

As for why the president has made this such a priority, the Republican spoke to The New York Times this week about his need to acquire the island.

“Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success,” Trump said. “I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.”.....

As for our traditional allies abroad, officials are taking the White House’s threats quite seriously. The Associated Press reported that “Denmark and Greenland’s envoys to Washington have begun a vigorous effort to urge U.S. lawmakers as well as key Trump administration officials to step back from President Donald Trump’s call for a takeover of the strategic Arctic island.”

Watch this space.

Gabbard is on record arguing that the United States “needs to stay out of Venezuela.” After the boss launched a military operation in Venezuela over the weekend, has the DNI changed her mind? It’s tough to say — because Gabbard has suddenly vanished from public view. The Washington Post reported:

President Donald Trump’s top national security advisers in recent days have outdone one another, publicly extolling his bold decision to launch the risky military raid that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. But one key figure has been largely absent from public view: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

Gabbard, an Iraq War veteran who for years has spoken out against costly U.S. interventions abroad, waited more than three days before commenting publicly about Operation Absolute Resolve.

The DNI’s social media feed, traditionally quite active, has suddenly grown quiet. What’s more, while Gabbard can usually be counted on to deliver tiresome talking points during appearances on conservative media outlets, the Post added that she’s been “missing in action from Fox News and other conservative broadcasts.”

A Bloomberg News report added that Gabbard was deliberately excluded from the planning of the administration’s military offensive in Venezuela, precisely because of her earlier, outspoken opposition to intervention in the South American country.

In the U.S. political system, senators can’t initiate impeachment proceedings; only House members can. That said, senators can encourage representatives to launch impeachment efforts, and on Wednesday, that’s precisely what several Senate Republicans did. NBC News reported:

Republican senators on Wednesday increased their scrutiny of federal judges whose rulings they’ve opposed, with some pushing for them to be impeached.

Attention at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing focused on two judges: Washington-based U.S. District Judge James Boasberg and Maryland-based Deborah Boardman, both of whom have fallen [afoul] of MAGA world.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who called and chaired the hearing, argued that Boasberg and Boardman “meet the standard for impeachment and for conviction and removal from office.” Similarly, Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri added that he sees Boasberg as “the embodiment of a rogue judge.”

To date, no congressional Republicans have presented any evidence of Boasberg committing high crimes or engaging in misconduct......

At this point, there’s nothing to suggest GOP leaders are planning to bring any of these efforts to the House floor for a vote, and there’s no reason to assume the impeachment resolutions will pass. What’s more, even if the House did impeach any or all of these jurists, it would take 67 votes in the Senate to remove them from the federal bench, which is effectively an impossibility.

These obvious attempts at intimidating the judiciary, in other words, almost certainly won’t work.

Last year, a Marquette University Law School poll found that 70% of Americans opposed impeaching federal judges over anti-Trump rulings. There is, however, often a big gap between what the public wants and what Republican officials decide to do. Watch this space.

Billionaire Elon Musk has been a highly controversial figure for quite a while, but the former DOGE chief is finding new ways to draw attention to himself. The Daily Beast reported:

President Donald Trump’s once and future First Buddy has endorsed a social media post calling for white people — especially men — to defend their political power against other races and ethnicities.

‘If White men become a minority, we will be slaughtered,’ a user going by the name Jerr wrote on X. ‘Remember, if non-Whites openly hate White men while White men hold a collective majority, then they will be 1000x times more hostile and cruel when they are a majority over Whites. White solidarity is the only way to survive.’

To be sure, Musk didn’t write that missive, but just days after dining with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the billionaire used the social media platform he owns to amplify and endorse the explicitly white supremacist message......

The trouble is, Musk (who’s made similar vows in the recent past before reversing course) has already indicated he’s ready to boost Republicans again ahead of Election Day 2026.

Axios reported a few weeks ago:

Elon Musk has begun funding the GOP’s House and Senate campaigns for the 2026 midterms — an indication his relationship with President Trump has thawed since their messy breakup earlier this year.

Musk — who threatened to launch a third party and support challengers to Republican incumbents during his dispute with Trump — is now firmly back in the GOP’s camp. The tech billionaire recently cut big checks to help Republicans win congressional races next year and indicated he’d give more throughout the 2026 cycle, two sources with knowledge of the situation tell Axios.

.....Will Republican beneficiaries of the billionaire’s generosity face questions about the propriety of accepting money from someone who amplifies white supremacist messages? Watch this space

As Donald Trump considers a maximalist foreign policy vision rooted in his whims and “psychological” needs, it’s worth appreciating the degree to which the rest of the world has taken note of the president’s erratic radicalism. Consider some of the developments from the past week:

The leaders of France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Poland, Spain and Denmark issued a joint declaration this week that warned the United States that they would “not stop defending” the values of sovereignty and territorial integrity following Trump’s threats related to Greenland.

The U.S. faced a rare rebuke at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council this week, where even our allies said Trump’s military offensive in Venezuela violated the U.N. charter and “chips away at the very foundation of international order.”

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who has a largely ceremonial role, warned of a major global realignment this week, insisting that there had been a “breakdown of values by our most important partner, the USA, which helped build this world order.”

The Netherlands announced this week that it’s scaling back its participation in U.S.-led missions to counter drug trafficking in the Caribbean because of its opposition to the Trump administration’s deadly military operations against civilian boats. That came on the heels of a related announcement from Great Britain, which said it would stop intelligence sharing with the U.S. about boats in the Caribbean for the same reason.

If we look back just a few weeks earlier, Denmark’s military intelligence service for the first time also described the U.S. as a potential security risk.

In isolation, each of these stories was and is important, but taken together, the emerging picture is one in which much of the world is not only afraid of what’s become of the United States, but is also forging new partnerships and alliances that leave us behind......

But it’s not only foreign citizens who’ve lost respect for the Trump-led U.S. — it’s also foreign officials, who are increasingly looking at what’s become of us with a combination of fear, disappointment, contempt and confusion.

Russia and China have spent years trying to disrupt U.S. alliances. In 2026, the incumbent American president is doing their job for them.

The Norwegian Nobel Institute said that a Nobel Peace Prize cannot be transferred or shared with another person, responding to comments by Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who said she wanted to "share" her 2025 Nobel Peace Prize with U.S. President Donald Trump.

"A Nobel Prize cannot be revoked nor transferred to others. Once the laureate or laureates are announced, the decision is final," said Erik Aasheim, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Nobel Institute, which serves as the secretariat for the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Aasheim added that while the prize itself is not transferable, laureates are free to dispose of the prize money as they see fit.

The statement followed remarks by Machado during a Fox News interview on Monday, in which she praised Trump's actions that led to the capture of Venezuela's former president, Nicolás Maduro, and said that "because this is the prize of the Venezuelan people, certainly we want to give it to him and share it with him." Machado said she had not spoken directly with Trump since October, when she dedicated the award to him after it was announced.

"For Renee Nicole Good Killed by I.C.E. on January 7, 2026."
by Amanda Gorman

They say she is no more,
That there her absence roars,
Blood-blown like a rose.
Iced wheels flinched & froze.
Now, bare riot of candles,
Dark fury of flowers,
Pure howling of hymns.
If for us she arose,
Somewhere, in the pitched deep of our grief,
Crouches our power,
The howl where we begin,
Straining upon the edge of the crooked crater
Of the worst of what we’ve been.
Change is only possible,
& all the greater,
When the labour
& bitter anger of our neighbors
Is moved by the love
& better angels of our nature.
What they call death & void,
We know is breath & voice;
In the end, gorgeously,
Endures our enormity.
You could believe departed to be the dawn
When the blank night has so long stood.
But our bright-fled angels will never be fully gone,
When they forever are so fiercely Good.

Please like and share!

Donald Trump apparently doesn’t like being referred to as a “dictator.” As recently as Tuesday, the president was whining to House Republicans, “They always call me a dictator.”

It’s an odd thing for him to complain about, especially because, as a candidate in 2024, Trump more than once talked about creating a temporary American “dictatorship” that he wanted to lead. Nevertheless, one day after making the complaint, the president sounded quite dictatorial in his beliefs about the scope of his powers in a lengthy interview with The New York Times. The newspaper reported:

President Trump declared on Wednesday evening that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his ‘own morality,’ brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world.

Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: ‘Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.’

As part of the same exchange, the Republican said he doesn’t “need” international law. Pressed on whether he believes his administration must abide by international law, Trump said, “I do,” before adding, “It depends what your definition of international law is.”.....

Around the time of the “No Kings” protests, the president and his team didn’t merely smear American protesters, they also questioned the underlying premise of the protests. It’s one thing to disagree with Trump, they suggested, but it was preposterous hyperbole to suggest he was acting like some kind of authoritarian monarch.

Except that the Republican periodically abandons all subtlety and subtext and chooses instead to admit (in not so many words) that his critics are correct. He promotes images of himself in a crown. He makes Napoleonic declarations such as “he who saves his country violates no law.” He talks about “terminating” parts of the Constitution that stand in the way of his ambitions — and he freely admits that he believes (what remains of) his alleged conscience is “the only thing that can stop me.”

The next time Republicans express outrage that Trump’s detractors are calling him an “authoritarian,” keep this in mind.

Yet another top federal prosecutor installed by the Trump administration is unlawfully serving in their role, this time in the Northern District of New York, a judge has found. That finding follows similar rulings against Lindsey Halligan’s tenure in the Eastern District of Virginia and against other purported top prosecutors in Nevada, New Jersey and California.

The latest ruling came Thursday against John Sarcone III, whom the administration sought to install as the acting U.S. attorney for the Albany-based Northern District. He had requested that subpoenas be issued to the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, apparently in connection with a federal investigation into civil cases she brought against Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association.

James moved to quash the subpoenas, leading to the ruling that Sarcone was unlawfully serving.

“Mr. Sarcone’s service was and is unlawful because it bypassed the statutory requirements that govern who may exercise the powers of a U.S. Attorney,” U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield wrote.

The Obama-appointed judge noted that U.S. attorneys must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. She said that while federal law provides limited alternatives to temporarily fill vacancies, none of them authorized Sarcone to serve as acting U.S. attorney when he sought the subpoenas in question......

James, of course, figures in the Virginia appointment litigation as well, because she was one of Halligan’s targets for prosecution. Finding in November that Halligan was unlawfully appointed, a judge dismissed the indictments she secured against James and former FBI Director James Comey. The administration is appealing that ruling. If it revives the cases, either with a successful appeal or a lawful prosecutor, the government would still face significant pretrial litigation, including the defense claims that their prosecutions are unlawfully vindictive, underscoring the retaliatory nature of the administration’s efforts in both Virginia and New York.

In the meantime, the rulings against the installation of these prosecutors have served as a check of sorts, however mild, on the Trump administration’s vengeful ambitions.

Since Charlie Kirk’s killing in September, employers across the country have taken action against employees who have spoken about the conservative activist in ways the employers don’t like. To the extent that Kirk has been eulogized as a free-speech advocate, it’s an ill-fitting legacy.

The latest lawsuit seeking to counter that suppression and retaliation comes from the Texas American Federation of Teachers. The union is suing the Texas Education Agency and its commissioner, Mike Morath, over alleged First Amendment violations.

The suit centers on a letter from Morath to school superintendents after Kirk’s death. In it, the education official lamented “reprehensible and inappropriate content on social media” posted by “some” educators in the state’s public schools. He said that he would refer educators who have “proliferated such vile content” for investigation within the agency.

According to the union’s complaint, filed Tuesday in Texas federal court, the state action “quickly unleashed a wave of retaliation and disciplinary actions against teachers based on their First Amendment protected speech.”

The complaint said that based on public reporting, more than 350 teachers have been reported to the Texas Education Agency, which oversees primary and secondary public education in the state, for investigation.....

In November, Reuters published a report finding that more than 600 Americans were fired, suspended, investigated or disciplined by employers over comments about Kirk, who was fatally shot in September while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University. State prosecutors said they’re seeking the death penalty against Tyler Robinson, who’s charged with murder. He has yet to stand trial but is presumed innocent unless and until he’s convicted or pleads guilty.