The DOJ Is Revolting

Plus: ICE polls are cratering

Donald Trump makes an obscene gesture to a Ford employee who called him a “pedophile protector”

Hubris is one of the great renewable resources. —P. J. O’Rourke

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Tomorrow is MLK Jr’s birthday (he would have been 97); Trump continues to threaten Greenland; the FBI has raided the home of a Washington Post reporter who was investigating the Administration, and the President of the United States made an obscene gesture to a man who (quite accurately) called him a “pedophile protector.”

Happy Wednesday.

Let’s start today with two stories about Trump’s Department of Justice, which does not seem to a be a happy place these days. The first comes via the WSJ: “Trump Blasted Federal Prosecutors at White House Event, Calling Them Weak.”

WASHINGTON—President Trump criticized a group of U.S. attorneys at a White House event last week, calling them weak and complaining they weren’t moving fast enough to prosecute his favored targets, according to people familiar with the exchange.

Dozens of U.S. attorneys, who lead prosecutors’ offices around the country, went to the White House Thursday for what was supposed to be a ceremonial photo shoot. After Attorney General Pam Bondi introduced the group of prosecutors, Trump criticized them as ineffective, saying the group was making it difficult for Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to do their jobs, the people said.

This came (perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not) a day before federal prosecutors sent grand jury subpoenas to the Federal Reserve, targeting chairman Jerome Powell.

The second story: “Six Prosecutors Quit Over DOJ Push to Investigate Renee Good’s Widow” - The New York Times

Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned on Tuesday over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent and the department’s reluctance to investigate the shooter, according to people with knowledge of their decision.

Joseph H. Thompson, who was second in command at the U.S. attorney’s office and oversaw a sprawling fraud investigation that has roiled Minnesota’s political landscape, was among those who quit on Tuesday, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.

Mr. Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Nicole Good, the Minneapolis woman killed by an ICE agent on Wednesday.

Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach, as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful, the people familiar with his decision said.

A gentle reminder that none of this is normal.

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ICE Slipping

I feel that it’s something of an understatement to say that things are not going well for ICE. Here’s the front page of this morning’s Drudge Report, which gives you a flavor of the kind of week they’re having:

How is this playing outside of the fever swamps of the right? New polls have ghastly numbers for Kristi Noem and her brute squads: “Shock poll: More Americans want ICE abolished than not after Renee Good shooting”

More Americans favor abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency than oppose it after the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross — the first time a plurality has supported dumping the agency….

Support for abolishing ICE was already growing before the shooting, but was still squarely in the minority at 42 percent in a Civiqs poll.

That support crossed over into a plurality in a new Economist-YouGov poll taken January 9 – 12, 2026. Respondents were asked “Would you support or oppose abolishing ICE?” to which 46 percent replied either “strongly support” or “somewhat support.”

[Forty three percent were strongly or somewhat opposed to abolishing ICE. 12 percent said they were “not sure.”]

Over at Puck, Peter Hamby notes that public support for ICE is collapsing.

The eyewitness video of the Minneapolis tragedy has broken through to normies, who don’t like what they see. This week, a poll from The Economist and YouGov found that a mind-boggling 69 percent of Americans had seen the clip. If extrapolated, that would imply a total viewership larger than last year’s Super Bowl—for a video of a masked federal agent shooting a woman three times.

Of those who saw the clip, a majority (50 percent) said the shooting was not justified. Most say that the ICE officer, Jonathan Ross, should face criminal charges. Only 30 percent of Americans said the killing was justified, putting the Trump administration decisively on the wrong side of public opinion.

Importantly, the poll found that 47 percent of Americans believe ICE is making the country less safe, compared to just 34 percent who say it’s making the country safer.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to pour kerosene into this dumpster fire, threatening Minnesota with a “DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION”

The War on Greenland Escalates

You know it’s bad when JD Vance enters the conversation. This morning’s Wapo reports: “JD Vance to host White House talks on Greenland’s future.”

Visiting officials appeared unnerved by the vice president’s planned involvement after they had sought a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio….

Trump wrote on social media Wednesday that “the United States needs Greenland for the purpose of National Security,” saying that its strategic Arctic location made it necessary for the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system he wants to build. “NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES. Anything less than that is unacceptable.”

He warned that if the United States doesn’t take over Greenland, Russia or China will.

Meanwhile…

Nielsen: Greenland stays with Denmark, not US - Helsinki Times

[Prime minister Jens-Frederik] Nielsen said Greenland’s position is based on democracy and international law. He stressed that Greenland governs its own affairs and decides its own future.

“We are a democratic society that makes our own decisions,” he said. “Greenland does not want to be owned by the United States, and Greenland will not be governed from Washington.”

The Sum of All Fears?

“Pentagon is embracing Musk's Grok AI chatbot as it draws global outcry.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok will join Google’s generative AI engine in operating inside the Pentagon network, as part of a broader push to feed as much of the military's data as possible into the developing technology.

“Very soon we will have the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department,” Hegseth said in a speech at Musk’s space flight company, SpaceX, in South Texas.

The announcement comes just days after Grok — which is embedded into X, the social media network owned by Musk — drew global outcry and scrutiny for generating highly sexualized deepfake images of people without their consent.

Malaysia and Indonesia have blocked Grok, while the U.K.’s independent online safety watchdog announced an investigation Monday. Grok has limited image generation and editing to paying users.

Hegseth said Grok will go live inside the Defense Department later this month and announced that he would “make all appropriate data” from the military’s IT systems available for “AI exploitation.” He also said data from intelligence databases would be fed into AI systems.

Exit take: What can possibly go wrong? I mean we trust these guys not to abuse the massive hive mind they are creating, right? Right?

Yeah, We Were Warned

Michelle Goldberg writes: “The Resistance Libs Were Right” - The New York Times [Nota bene: not just the “libs.”]

For the last decade there’s been a debate, among people who don’t like Donald Trump, about whether he’s a fascist.

The argument that he isn’t often hinges on two things. First, when Trump first came to power, he lacked a street-fighting force like Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirts, even if he was able to muster a violent rabble on Jan. 6….

Second, Trump didn’t pursue campaigns of imperial expansion, which some scholars view as intrinsic to fascism.

It’s striking how much the arguments that Trump is not a fascist have suffered in just the first few days of this year, in which we’ve plunged to new depths of national madness.

Now that America has plucked the dictator Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela and announced that it would help itself to the country’s oil, other nations are adjusting to a reality in which we’re more predator than ally. European countries are contemplating stepping up their military presence in Greenland to protect it from the United States. An Economist headline proclaims, “Canada’s Armed Forces Are Planning for Threats From America.”

In the Midwest, Trump’s paramilitary forces killed a citizen in Minneapolis and now appear to be using her death to threaten other activists, barking at one observer, “You did not learn from what just happened?” Videos from the city show gun-toting men in masks and camouflage descending on people to demand proof of citizenship, pelting crowded streets with tear gas and sometimes attacking those who film them.

Meanwhile, a new ICE recruiting ad declares, “We’ll Have Our Home Again,” which just happens to be part of the refrain of a white nationalist anthem.

Wednesday dogs

Snow dog.