Judge limits ICE’s crowd control tactics following Minneapolis shooting

“Menendez’s order bars Homeland Security and ICE officials involved in Operation Metro Surge from “using pepper-spray or similar nonlethal munitions and crowd dispersal tools against persons who are engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity.” The judge also prohibited federal agents from stopping vehicles following them, as long as those vehicles are maintaining a safe and “appropriate” distance.

“The First Amendment protects speech and peaceful assembly — not rioting,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “DHS is taking appropriate and constitutional measures to uphold the rule of law and protect our officers and the public from dangerous rioters. We remind the public that rioting is dangerous — obstructing law enforcement is a federal crime and assaulting law enforcement is a felony.””

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/16/ice-minneapolis-arrests-judge-protests-00735416?_bhlid=b376075801834ad0b250c6bc586df392cbc430ab&utm_campaign=the-smile-1-21&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=www.readthesmile.com

JD Vance Calls Police Chiefs Liars to Defend ICE (w/ Jon Favreau)

The Vice President either did terrible research, or lied. He said that ICE had no choice but to detain the five year old boy because his illegal father ran and abandoned the child. He failed to mention that another adult living in the home begged ICE to let him stay with them, and that they used the 5-year old as bait to see if they could capture anyone else in the home.

Multiple police chiefs met and said that their off-duty non-white police officers were being harassed by ICE. The Vice President dismissed this as something someone said on the internet, and claimed that they take accusations of discrimination seriously while dismissing credible claims of exactly that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDjdY_zkemM

‘The damage has been done’: As Trump claims victory on Greenland, Europe loses trust

“In an interview with Fox Business, he said, “We’re getting everything we wanted — total security, total access to everything.”
Yet all of that was available to Trump from the start, without the drama that sent the NATO alliance barreling toward an internal crisis, a Danish official told NBC News on Thursday.

The only nonnegotiable point for Denmark was that Greenland shouldn’t be absorbed by the U.S., the person added.

“We can discuss increased military presence and more troops. You name it, basically, you can have it” under existing treaties, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

his Greenland gambit clawed away some of the trust that underpins a successful alliance, said diplomats, government officials and foreign policy experts.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/damage-done-trump-claims-victory-012236295.html

FBI agent who initially investigated fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis has resigned

“The agent’s resignation comes as the agency has undergone another purge of seasoned FBI agents across several states, multiple sources familiar with the departures told CNN. Some of the people who are being pushed out were confronted after the bureau conducted a review of the FBI’s internal messaging system and discovered instances when they made negative comments about President Donald Trump, according to the people familiar.

Some of those comments go as far back as a decade, the sources said.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fbi-agent-initially-investigated-fatal-003658751.html

Trump administration concedes DOGE team may have misused Social Security data

“Two members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team working at the Social Security Administration were secretly in touch with an advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states,” and one signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to match state voter rolls, the Justice Department revealed in newly disclosed court papers.

Elizabeth Shapiro, a top Justice Department official, said SSA referred both DOGE employees for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from using their official positions for political purposes.

Also among the corrections: DOJ revealed that a DOGE team member was briefly granted access to private Social Security profiles even after a court prohibited it. Shapiro said the access was never “utilized.” And in another instance, a DOGE team member had access for two months to a “call center profile” that contained private information.

“It is unknown at this time whether any [private information] was accessed,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro also revealed that despite prior assertions in court, SSA’s DOGE team members “were using links to share data through the third-party server ‘Cloudflare.’”

“Cloudflare is not approved for storing SSA data and when used in this manner is outside SSA’s security protocols,” Shapiro indicated.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/20/trump-musk-doge-social-security-00737245

Questions About EVs? I Have Answers.

Even when comparing an electric vehicle getting electricity from a gas power plant to a gas vehicle, electric vehicles are still more carbon friendly because a car’s engine is less efficient at generating power than a gas power plant, and because a lot of carbon is used to transport gasoline. And, as electric grids use more and more low-carbon sources, the electric cars have an even greater carbon advantage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5KF2IhUtY

The Bible doesn’t take a position on abortion.

The Bible doesn’t take a position on abortion. Where it talks about the accidental killing of a fetus, it does so suggesting the fetus is property rather than having the value of a human life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9szhookaT8w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cq29jLEiHw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhLcD2PT8D4

It’s worse than we thought…

The 89% of fraud is committed by Somalis stat is misleading. 89% of the people convicted in a specific fraud scandal, the Feeding Our Future case, were of Somali descent. The ring leader was a white woman. So, this stat just refers to the percentage of convictions in one large fraud case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rarnyqVzKLk

Greenland Tariffs Are Off — Is There a Deal? | Prof G Markets

Trump says a lot of things, and a lot of it is nonsense. Some of it turns into serious policies with huge consequences. But even the things he says that don’t come true have large consequences because he is president. Investors, businesses, and consumers have to make decisions, and Trump’s actions can impact that, so they have to deal with his words and the potential consequences. Even dealing with just his words, costs companies tons of money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNhozAhtJLY