---

---

The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Little Johnny Taylor

---

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features blues and soul singer Little Johnny Taylor. Enjoy!

^{Little Johnny Taylor - If You Love Me (Like You Say)}

"But there will be no justice, there will be no government of the people, by the people, and for the people, as long as the government and its officials permit bribery in any form."

-- John Jay Hooker

---

News and Opinion

Zionist Billionaires Openly Acknowledge Manipulating The US Government

Speaking together at the Israeli-American Council Summit on Saturday, billionaire Zionist megadonors Miriam Adelson and Haim Saban strongly implied that they are engaged in some extremely shady activities to manipulate the US government in advancement of Israeli interests.

There’s a guy I follow on Twitter named Chris Menahan who’s always posting clips from Zionist events which might otherwise go unnoticed, frequently turning up jarring admissions from pro-Israel operatives who tend to loosen their lips a bit when addressing an audience of like-minded individuals. I recently cited a clip he spotted featuring former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz decrying the way social media has allowed the public to view evidence of Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

Menahan has spotlighted some very revealing moments from Adelson and Saban, both of whom are dual US-Israeli citizens, and both of whom have provided funding to the Israeli-American Council (IAC). In 2014, The Nation’s MJ Rosenberg wrote that Saban and Miriam Adelson’s late husband Sheldon were using influence operations like the IAC to become “the Koch brothers on Israel.”

Israeli-American Council to Zionist billionaire Miriam Adelson: How do you buy and exercise influence over politicians in the US?

Adelson: "Can you allow me not to answer? ... I want to be truthful and there are so many things I don't want to talk about." https://t.co/mbweqqPjBJ pic.twitter.com/o2S5WsHLEE

— Chris Menahan (@infolibnews) January 18, 2026

Here’s a transcript of a very revealing interaction between Adelson and event host Shawn Evenhaim:

Evenhaim: Miri, you and Sheldon created a lot of relationships over the years with politicians, at the state level, and especially at the federal level. I want you to share with everyone why is it so important and how you do it, and again, writing cheques is a part of it, but there is more than writing just cheques so, how do you do it?

Adelson: Shawn, can you allow me not to answer?

Evenhaim (shrugs): You choose!

Adelson: I want to be truthful and there are so many things that I don’t want to talk about.

Evenhaim: Yeah, I mean we don’t want specifics but that’s okay.

Miriam Adelson is here admitting that in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars that she and Sheldon are known to have poured into the political campaigns of Donald Trump and other Republican politicians, they have also been manipulating US politics behind the scenes in ways that she would prefer to keep secret from the public. Presumably because it would cause a significant scandal if the public ever found out.

Trump, for the record, has repeatedly admitted that he provided political favors to Israel at the urging of the Adelsons during his first term, saying he moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and legitimized the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights in order to please them.

And please them he did. He must have, because Miriam Adelson donated another $100 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign to help him become president again. And now he’s spent the first year of his administration bombing Iran and Yemen, working to take control of Gaza, and aggressively stomping out criticism of Israel in the United States.

Back in 2020, before all these blatant admissions, musician Roger Waters was smeared as an antisemite by the Anti-Defamation League and other Zionist groups for saying that Sheldon Adelson was using his wealth to exert influence over US politics.

Israeli-American Council to billionaire Haim Saban: How do you buy and exercise influence over politicians in the US?

Saban: "I wanna be cautious…We just play within the system…Those who give more have more access, and those who give less have less access—it's simple math." pic.twitter.com/DYIcUsIwPc

— Chris Menahan (@infolibnews) January 18, 2026

Saban was even more guarded about his political operations than Adelson in his response to the same question from Evenhaim:

“I want to be cautious how I’m saying… (Pause) It’s a system that we did not create. It’s a system that’s in place. It’s a legal system and we just play within the system. And that’s it! I mean it’s really quite simple. If you support a politician, you, under normal circumstances, should have access to be able to share opinions and try to help them see your point of view. That’s what access grants you, and the contribution and the financial support grants you the access, sooooo… I mean…. (shrugs) those that give more have more access and those that give less have less access. It’s a simple math. Trust me.”

Haim Saban, whose campaign donations focus on the other side of the aisle with Democratic Party funding, has famously said “I’m a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.” In 2022 AIPAC’s superpac cited Saban’s financial clout to argue that deviating from support for Israel would cost the Democrats critical funding, saying “Our activist donors, who include one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party, are focused on ensuring that we have a U.S. Congress that, like President Biden, supports a vibrant and robust relationship with our democratic ally, Israel.”

As with Adelson, we can surmise that Saban said he wanted to be “cautious” how he described his influence operations because it would cause a major scandal if the American people understood what he’s been up to.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, after being introduced by Miriam Adelson, tells the Israeli-American Council how the DOJ is working for them by suing anti-Israel protesters under the FACE Act for "the first time," and extracting giant "anti-Semitism" settlements out of universities. pic.twitter.com/lDipxBQiFX

— Chris Menahan (@infolibnews) January 18, 2026

Some people will look at these clips and claim it’s antisemitic to even share them. Others will look at them and cite them as evidence that the world is ruled by Jews. For me they’re just evidence that the world is ruled by wealthy sociopaths, and that western democracy is an illusion.

I mean, you really couldn’t ask for a better illustration of the sham of American democracy than this. Two billionaires from supposedly opposite political parties publicly admitting that they use their obscene wealth to manipulate US politics to advance the military and geopolitical agendas of a foreign state on the other side of the planet.

And as Saban said, it’s all legal. Corruption is legal in the United States of America. Plutocrats are allowed to leverage their fortunes to manipulate the US government using campaign funding and lobbying for the advancement of their personal, financial, and ideological agendas. If you have a few million dollars to spare you can use them to make criminal charges go away, to roll back environmental regulations or worker protections which hurt the profit margins of your business, or even to get military explosives shipped to a foreign government for use in an ongoing genocide.

And it’s all being done with complete disregard for the will of the electorate. The American people have no control over what their government does under the current political system. They vote for one oligarchic puppet, then they vote for the oligarchic puppet in the other party when that doesn’t work out, going back and forth without realizing that at no point are they changing the actual power structure under which they live.

That power structure is called plutocracy. That’s only real political system the United States has.

Zionist CBS News LIES About Iran Protester Death Toll (w/ Jeffrey Sachs)

Iran warns attack on Khamenei would be declaration of war

Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, warned on Sunday that any attack on the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would be a declaration of war. In an apparent response to speculation that Donald Trump is considering an attempt to assassinate or remove Khamenei, Pezeshkian said in a post on “An attack on the great leader of our country is tantamount to a full-scale war with the Iranian nation.”

The Iranian president also blamed the US for the protests that have rocked Iran over the last two weeks and led to thousands of deaths among demonstrators. “If there are hardship and constraints in the lives of the dear people of Iran, one of the main causes is the longstanding hostility and inhumane sanctions imposed by the US government and its allies,” Pezeshkian said.

Trump, in an interview with Politico on Saturday, called for an end to Khamenei’s nearly 40-year reign, calling him “a sick man who should run his country properly and stop killing people”.

Last Tuesday, Trump urged Iranians to keep protesting and to “take over your institutions”, telling them “help is on its way”, as reports grew that a strike on Iran was imminent. On Wednesday the US came close to launching military strikes on Iran but ultimately pulled back as Trump opted to pause amid mounting regional and diplomatic pressure.

The US news website Axios reported that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had warned Trump that Israel was not prepared for Iranian retaliation and questioned the effectiveness of a US strike. Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, had also urged restraint, according to Axios, citing the risks to regional stability. “It was really close,” a US official told Axios, adding that the order to strike never came.

Outstanding information, well worth a watch:

Alastair Crooke breaks down the IRAN WAR GAME

Trump: It’s Time to Look for New Leadership in Iran

President Donald Trump suggested that the US was still planning to conduct a regime change in Iran. “It’s time to look for new leadership in Iran,”

Trump told POLITICO on Saturday. The remarks came after the President decided not to attack Iran on Wednesday. Trump was considering strikes on Iran after the Islamic Republic cracked down on protesters.

The President made multiple statements encouraging the demonstrators and threatening the Iranian government. Trump has also said he would attack the Islamic Republic for rebuilding its nuclear program and missile facilities.

Israel Just Tested A Nuclear Bomb - Here’s The Evidence! w/ Max Blumenthal

Israel far-right ministers reject US-backed postwar Gaza panel

Far-right members of Israel’s governing coalition on Sunday rejected a US-backed plan for postwar governance in Gaza, criticising their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for failing to annex the Palestinian territory and establish new Israeli settlements in the territory.

After the announcement of the White House’s pick of world leaders who will join the so-called Gaza “board of peace”, which includes representatives of Turkey and Qatar, both of which have been critical of Israel’s war in the strip, Israeli far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, described Netanyahu’s “unwillingness to take responsibility for Gaza” as “the original sin”. According to Smotrich, himself a settler in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Israeli prime minister should instead “establish a military government there, to encourage immigration and settlement, and in this way to ensure Israel’s security for many years”.

The White House announced this week the setting up of the “Gaza executive board”, which will operate under a broader “board of peace” to be chaired by Donald Trump as part of his 20-point plan to end the war. The executive board, described as having an advisory role, includes the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, and a Qatari diplomat, Ali al-Thawadi, alongside other regional and international officials.

Presumably referring to Qatar and Turkey, Smotrich said on “The countries that inspired Hamas cannot be the ones that replace it. Those who support it and continue to host it even now will not be granted a foothold in Gaza. Period. “The prime minister must stand firm on this, even if it requires managing a dispute with our great friend and President Trump’s emissaries.”

On Sunday, in an apparent attempt to calm tensions and assess his next move, Netanyahu convened a meeting with coalition partners. The prime minister’s central challenge is containing his far-right allies, whose continued participation in the government is key to his political survival and who never agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire struck last October. Netanyahu himself objected to the plan on Saturday, citing how some of the appointments were “not coordinated with Israel and were contrary to its policy”, without specifying who. He told his foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, to contact the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio.

US reportedly considers granting asylum to Jewish people from UK

Discussions are reportedly under way within Donald Trump’s administration about the US possibly granting asylum to Jewish people from the UK, according to the Telegraph, citing the US president’s personal lawyer. Trump lawyer Robert Garson told the newspaper that he has held conversations with the US state department about offering refuge to British Jews who are leaving the UK citing rising antisemitism.

Garson, 49, said he felt the UK was “no longer a safe place for Jews”. He added that recent events – namely an Islamist attack on a synagogue in Manchester and what he described as widespread antisemitism following the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 – had led him to believe that British Jews should be given the option of sanctuary in the US.

Some supporters of Israel in the UK cast mass demonstrations there against the Israeli response to the 2023 attack, in which tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians were killed in Gaza, as motivated by antisemitism. In a US television interview in late 2023, Garson himself called protesters in New York and Los Angeles who opposed the Israeli response “marauding mobs” and accused them of “masquerading as protesters” to shout “antisemitic chants baying for Jewish blood”.

In the new interview with the Telegraph, Garson said he could see “no future” for Jews in the UK and placed much of the responsibility on to British prime minister Keir Starmer, accusing him of allowing antisemitism to grow. Garson, a former British barrister who practiced in London before relocating to the US in 2008, told the Telegraph: “The UK is no longer a safe place for Jews. I have spoken to the state department as to whether the president should be offering British Jews asylum in the US.”

Trump Mocks EU On Nobel Prize And Greenland; Invites Putin Gaza Board; Big Russian Offensive Coming

EU considers retaliatory measures over Trump Greenland tariff ‘blackmail’

The EU was weighing up retaliatory tariffs on American goods and even deploying its most serious economic sanctions against the US as European leaders lined up to criticise Donald Trump’s threat to levy new taxes on imports from eight nations who oppose his attempt to annex Greenland – which one minister called “blackmail”.

“Tariff threats undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral,” the leaders of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland said in a joint statement. “We are committed to upholding our sovereignty.”

The EU’s top diplomats met for crisis talks on Sunday and discussed reviving a plan to levy tariffs on €93bn of US goods, which was suspended after last summer’s trade deal with Trump. France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, called on fellow leaders to activate the EU’s powerful anti-coercion instrument – commonly known as the “big bazooka” – if Trump went ahead with his tariff threats, French media reported, citing his team.

After the talks broke up, the head of the European Council António Costa announced an emergency EU summit, which is likely to take place on Thursday. The EU, he said, showed “readiness to defend ourselves against any form of coercion”.

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said Trump’s tariffs would be a mistake, and the Dutch foreign minister, David van Weel, described the US president’s threats to allies as “blackmail”, as reaction from European leaders continued to pile up.

Larry Johnson : Trump’s Capacity to Lead — A Serious Question

Trump’s calls to seize Greenland ignite fresh criticism from Republican party

Donald Trump’s escalating calls for the United States to seize or otherwise obtain Greenland has ignited fresh criticism from the president’s own Republican party, with some saying it could hurt the US economically or strain the Nato military alliance. Such Republicans included US senators Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski, who were part of a bipartisan group to travel to Denmark to discuss concerns in Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory.

Both Tillis and Murkowski sharply criticized new tariffs threatened on Saturday by Trump on a slew of European countries – including Denmark, Germany, France and the UK – until the US is allowed to purchase Greenland. Murkowski wrote on X that the tariffs were “unnecessary, punitive, and a profound mistake”, coming after Nato allies deployed troops in Greenland on Thursday in response to Trump’s threats to forcefully take the Arctic island if needed.

“They will push our core European allies further away while doing nothing to advance US national security,” Murkowski maintained. “We are already seeing the consequences of these measures in real time: our Nato allies are being forced to divert attention and resources to Greenland, a dynamic that plays directly into [Russian leader Vladimir] Putin’s hands by threatening the stability of the strongest coalition of democracies the world has ever seen.” She urged Congress to exercise its authority over tariffs to ensure they are “not weaponized in ways that harm our alliances and undermine American leadership”.

Tillis, for his part, wrote on X: “This response to our own allies for sending a small number of troops to Greenland for training is bad for America, bad for American businesses, and bad for America’s allies. It’s great for Putin, [Chinese leader] Xi [Jiping] and other adversaries who want to see Nato divided.” Tillis added that “actively pushing for coercive action to seize territory of an ally is beyond stupid”.

‘Brazen’ political influence of rich laid bare as wealth of billionaires reaches $18.3tn, says Oxfam

The world saw a record number of billionaires created last year, with a collective wealth of $18.3tn (£13.7tn), while global efforts stalled in the fight against poverty and hunger. Oxfam’s annual survey of global inequality has revealed that the number of billionaires surpassed 3,000 for the first time during 2025. Since 2020, their collective wealth grew by 81%, or $8.2tn, which the charity claims would be enough to eradicate global poverty 26 times over. But the authors reported that most governments were failing ordinary people by capitulating to the increasingly blatant influence of the rich.

The past 12 months have seen youth-led uprisings against inequality across countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. But protests over corruption, austerity, unemployment and high living costs have routinely been ignored and instead harshly put down by governments, said Max Lawson, co-author of the report.

“Governments worldwide are making the wrong choice; choosing to defend wealth, not freedom. Choosing the rule of the rich. Choosing to repress their people’s anger at how life is becoming unaffordable and unbearable, rather than redistributing wealth from the richest to the rest,” said Lawson. “The economically rich are becoming politically rich the world over, able to shape and influence politics, societies and economies,” he said. “In the past, rich people were perhaps more coy about pulling the levers of power, but it’s becoming more and more brazen, this kind of marriage between money and politics.”

Trump DOJ toady Todd Blanche is right about one thing. The murder in cold blood of Renee Good has indeed been reviewed by millions of americans and there is no further investigation required - Jonathan Ross is guilty as sin and we can safely proceed directly to the execution phase.

Justice department ‘not investigating’ Renee Good killing in contrast to 2020 inquiry on George Floyd death

Six years after the US justice department launched an immediate criminal investigation of the video-recorded killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, deputy attorney general Todd Blanche confirmed on Sunday that the department is “not investigating” the fatal 7 January shooting of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in the same city.

The killing of Good, less than a mile from where Floyd was murdered in May 2020, was recorded on at least five phones, including one held by the ICE agent who shot her, Jonathan Ross.

Blanche, a former personal lawyer for Donald Trump before he won his second presidency, dismissed the need for any criminal investigation of Ross during an interview with Fox News. He suggested that the officer was cleared by the publicly available video evidence.

“Is the FBI conducting an investigation into that agent, into the shooting?” Blanche was asked, in response to criticism from Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz. “Look, what happened that day has been reviewed by millions and millions of Americans because it was recorded on phones,” Blanche said. “The department of justice, our civil rights unit, we don’t just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself against somebody putting his life in danger. We never do.”

“The department of justice doesn’t just stand up and investigate because some congressman thinks we should, because some governor thinks that we should,” Blanche said. “We investigate when it’s appropriate to investigate and that is not the case here. “We are not going to bow to pressure from the media, bow to pressure from politicians, and do something that we never do – not under this administration, not under the last administration. So no, we are not investigating.”

Oglala Sioux tribal members detained by ICE in MN

US federal forces blind two protesters shot in face with ‘less-lethal’ munitions

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”.

Pentagon Prepares 1500 TROOPS For Possible MINNESOTA DEPLOYMENT

Pentagon readies 1,500 troops for potential Minnesota deployment

The Pentagon has ordered about 1,500 active-duty soldiers in Alaska to prepare for a possible deployment to Minnesota, the site of large protests against the government’s deportation drive, two US officials told Reuters on Sunday. The US army placed the units on prepare-to-deploy orders in case violence in the midwestern state escalates, the officials said, though it is not clear whether any of them will be sent.

Donald Trump has threatened to use the Insurrection Act to deploy military forces if Democratic officials in the state do not stop protesters from impeding immigration officials after a surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Increasingly tense confrontations between residents and federal officers have erupted in Minneapolis since Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was fatally shot behind the wheel of her car by ICE officer Jonathan Ross on 7 January.

On Saturday, Jake Lang, an anti-Muslim, antisemitic, Christian nationalist who was pardoned by Trump for assaulting police officers during the Capitol riot in 2021, tried, and failed, to rally support for the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.

Just five people joined Lang’s anti-Muslim rally, two holding a banner that read “Americans Against Islamisation”, at which he had promised “to burn a Quran”. They were met by hundreds of counterprotesters, who covered Lang in aerosol string, doused him in water in freezing cold temperatures and chased him off to jeers. However, images of Lang and one of his five supporters bleeding after scuffles with demonstrators were eagerly shared online as evidence of violent chaos in Minneapolis.

The city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, said on Sunday that any military deployment would be “ridiculous” and only exacerbate tensions in Minnesota’s largest city, where the Trump administration has already sent 3,000 immigration and border patrol officers who have been confronted by largely peaceful protests. “That would be a shocking step,” Frey told NBC News. “We don’t need more federal agents to keep people safe. We are safe.”

Judge Rules ICE Cannot Retaliate Against Minnesota Protesters

Federal officers cannot retaliate against, detain, or attack people who are peacefully protesting and observing immigration enforcement operations in the Minneapolis area, a federal judge ruled on Friday.

The ruling comes a little more than a week after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed legal observer Renee Nicole Good, supercharging protests against an immigration enforcement operation in the Twin Cities that the Department of Homeland Security claims is its largest ever.

“This is an important preliminary win for all Minnesotans exercising their constitutional right to peaceful protest and witness,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison wrote on social media in response to the ruling. “Thanks and congratulations to the ACLU and the plaintiffs for standing strong for this bedrock principle.”

The ruling was issued by Biden appointee and US District Judge Kate Menendez, who is based in Minneapolis. It restricts federal officers involved in “Operation Metro Surge”—an immigration-enforcement blitz in the Minneapolis area—from retaliating against, arresting or detaining, or targeting with nonlethal munitions such as pepper spray anyone “engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity,” including observing ICE operations.

Menendez further stipulated that people could not be detained for following ICE and other immigration enforcers with their vehicles if they were not interfering with the agents.

“The act of safely following Covered Federal Agents at an appropriate distance does not, by itself, create reasonable suspicion to justify a vehicle stop,” Menendez said.

With this ruling, ICE agents are barred from: pic.twitter.com/8iTxG5DWcJ

— Attorney General Keith Ellison (@AGEllison) January 17, 2026

The ruling is a preliminary injunction in response to Tincher v. Noem et al., a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota (ACLU-MN) in December 2025 on behalf of six community members who said their constitutional rights were violated by ICE in response to their protests.

Plaintiff Susan Tincher, for example, wrote that she was arrested merely for driving to the place where an ICE operation was taking place.

“I was on a public street,” Tincher in a statement. “I did not cross any lines. I did not interfere with anything. I did not disobey an order. I asked a single question–'are you ICE?’–and almost immediately, officers rushed me, grabbed me, and slammed me face-first into the snow.”

Since the lawsuit was filed, ICE activity in the Twin Cities continued to escalate, culminating with an influx of 2,000 agents on January 6 and the shooting of Good the next day.

On January 8, the day after Good’s murder, the plaintiffs’ lawyers sent an emergency letter to the judge urging action.

“Thousands of peaceful observers and protesters turned out in the streets of the Twin Cities in the wake of Ms. Good’s murder,” the letter reads in part. “Peaceful observers and protesters turned out again today, they will turn out again tomorrow, and they will continue turning out every day until Operation Metro Surge is over. These Minnesotans who are peacefully exercising their core constitutional rights to speak and gather continue to be met with unconstitutional and terrifying violence at the hands of federal agents on a daily basis, including unwarranted pepper spraying and unfounded arrests... And things appear to be getting worse, not better: Even more federal agents are being deployed to Minnesota at this very moment.”

The ACLU-MN applauded the fact that Menendez had moved to restrain ICE.

“We are relieved that in Tincher v. Noem et al. the court has issued a preliminary injunction. The ACLU-MN is hopeful that it will prevent further First Amendment violations like the ones that have been harming Minnesotans since the start of ‘Operation Metro Surge,’” the group wrote on social media.

Beyond Good’s killing, the ruling follows several other high-profile incidents of ICE violence in Minnesota, including a nonlethal shooting of a man at a traffic stop and the hospitalization of three children after ICE tear-gassed the van they were driving in.

Menendez’s decision came the same day that news broke that President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice was investigating local leaders who had criticized ICE activity, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.

---

---

Trump inauguration anniversary walkouts

On 20 January, the anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration, grassroots organizers are calling on people across the United States to walk out of their offices, schools and businesses to protest the administration and call for “a free America”.

In the wake of escalating ICE raids, attacks on gender-affirming care, cuts to healthcare and the deployment of national guard troops in US cities, the organizers behind the Women’s March are asking Americans to participate in the “Free America Walkout”.

As opposed to the large-scale weekend rallies that the Women’s March became known for following Trump’s first inauguration, organizers have planned a weekday walkout this year. The group says its aim is to show the administration that as it escalates its attacks “on our rights, our bodies, and our livelihoods”, that Americans can escalate in response.

“We really felt like it was important for us to have a mobilization that tested some additional tools in the toolbox,” said Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of the Women’s March. “What will it look like if we do an action on a weekday? Where we are withdrawing our labor. Where we’re refusing no shopping, no working, no commerce.”

Although the Women’s March put out the call-to-action, local groups are organizing “walkout” events across their communities. So far, the group has tallied more than 600 events scheduled across the United States to take place at 2pm local time on 20 January.

The ‘Primary Fetterman’ Website Is Now Live

The Pennsylvania Working Families Party rolled out an online “hub” on Friday to support a primary challenger to the state’s US senator, John Fetterman.

The WFP, an independent party that often supports Democrats with a populist economic agenda, backed Fetterman’s 2022 Senate bid when he ran in the general election as a champion of many progressive causes. But the group now says he “sold out working Pennsylvanians” after pivoting hard to the right on key issues.

It launched the campaign to oust him in November after he voted with Republicans to reopen the government without an extension of Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, which is expected to spike health insurance premiums for over 22 million Americans this year.

“While Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) is supporting Trump’s use of American tax dollars to ‘run’ Venezuela or buy Greenland, 500,000 Pennsylvanians are about to see their healthcare premiums rise because of the Republican budget bill he supported,” said Nick Gavio, mid-Atlantic communications director for the Working Families Party and a former Fetterman staffer. “People across Pennsylvania did not put time, money, and energy into supporting his campaign just to elect a Democrat who votes against our interests time and time again. We need new leadership.”

Has John Fetterman disappointed you?

Us too.

We've launched https://t.co/ZEELvfyiHc to be the hub of our campaign to defeat him.

If you previously donated to any of Fetterman's campaigns, you can request a refund of your contributions on the site in just a few clicks.

— PA Working Families (@PAWorkFamilies) January 16, 2026

The website provides past Fetterman donors who feel betrayed by the senator with a form letter to “request a refund” of past contributions from the campaign. It also contains a “Sell-out Tracker,” which seeks to “track every bad position” he has taken.

In addition to his vote to reopen the government, the group notes that Fetterman has voted to confirm 50% of Trump’s Cabinet picks. He was the only Democrat who voted to confirm Attorney General Pam Bondi and Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and one of the very few to vote in favor of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

It also accuses him of “betraying vulnerable people” by supporting Republican legislation that eliminates due process for undocumented immigrants, cheering US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) amid its mass deportation crusade, and giving full-throated support to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and Trump’s strikes on Iran.

The site also highlights Fetterman’s tendency to neglect the basic duties of his job as a senator, which he has admitted he skips to spend more time with his family and because he finds them “overwhelmingly procedural.”

Fetterman has one of the worst attendance records in the Senate, having missed over 100 votes since April 2024 and skipped 44 out of 45 meetings for committees he was assigned to between January and May 2025.

He has also said he hosts very few town halls in order to avoid protesters, who have shown up to voice their discontent with his support for Israel, among other controversial positions.

As the site points out, while some other Democrats fought tooth and nail in a losing effort to stop Republicans from passing massive safety-net cuts in this summer’s budget reconciliation package, Fetterman told Politico, “I just want to go home” and complained that he’d missed his family’s trip to the beach.

Let’s do it. https://t.co/ZEELvfyiHc https://t.co/Et4ZtaFrhB

— PA Working Families (@PAWorkFamilies) January 16, 2026

So far, no prominent Pennsylvania Democrats have offered themselves up as potential primary challengers for Fetterman, who comes up for reelection in 2028.

Top names, including former Rep. Conor Lamb, who ran against Fetterman in the 2022 Democratic primary, and Philadelphia area Rep. Madeleine Dean have said they would not challenge Fetterman if he ran for another term.

Meanwhile, Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), who called Fetterman “Trump’s favorite Democrat” last year, told NOTUS he’d be open to running against him.

The Pennsylvania Working Families Party said it is collecting donations that it will use to help “identify, recruit, and elect a real working class champion to replace Fetterman in the US Senate.”

The group told NBC News that it has already amassed more than 425 people interested in either running against Fetterman themselves or volunteering their time or donating to help the effort to unseat him.

---

---

The fate of the planet’s coastlines depends on how fast Antarctica’s ice sheets melt. We don’t know what’s coming

For Antarctic scientists, getting a handle on what’s happening under the ice shelves is urgent because the fate of the planet’s coastlines will depend on how fast they melt. Antarctica has more than 70 ice shelves that extend the continent’s vast ice sheet out over the ocean.

Covering about 1.5m sq km, ice shelves float on the water and don’t by themselves push up global sea levels if they melt. But if global heating of the ocean melts them from underneath they could become unstable, allowing the ice sheet to slide faster into the ocean, pushing up global sea levels by several metres. The continent’s most vulnerable regions alone have enough ice to push up sea levels by about 15 metres if they all melt.

Dr Ben Galton-Fenzi, a principal research scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division, led new research bringing together modelling work on this “basal melt rate” from nine groups around the world. “We need to know because the ocean-driven mass loss is one of the biggest uncertainties in Antarctica ice sheet projections and, therefore, in global sea level rise,” says Galton-Fenzi.

Taking the nine different models together, Galton-Fenzi and colleagues estimate that over recent decades the continent’s ice shelves lost about 843bn tonnes of mass every year from melting underneath. That is the equivalent of 843 giant ice cubes – each a kilometre long, wide and deep – all melting. It is about the same amount of water that flows from the Nile River into the ocean each year. The results of the analysis – which took a decade to pull together – will help refine future modelling.

Antarctica’s ice shelves lose mass when the edges calve into the ocean, but they also gain it from snowfall. Confusing matters even further, there is evidence global heating has caused higher snowfall over the continent. One comprehensive analysis of Antarctica’s entire ice sheet found that, on balance, satellite data suggested the continent lost 93bn tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2020.

Trump’s promise to slash energy bills in half has failed across the US

Donald Trump has comprehensively failed to meet a key election promise to slash Americans’ energy bills in half within the first year of his presidency, with power prices instead surging across the US. The average household electricity bill in the US was 6.7% more expensive in 2025 compared with the previous year, according to a Guardian analysis of data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the Department of Energy’s statistical arm. The increases meant that, on average, US households paid nearly $116 more across 2025 than they did in 2024.

The power bill increases have been extreme in many parts of the US, with residents of Washington DC experiencing the biggest increase, a 23% jump in electricity costs, followed by Indiana, with a 17% rise, and then Illinois, with a 15% increase, the EIA data shows. The midwest is the region of the US that has been hit by the steepest bill rises, which include utility costs laden on top of an underlying 4.9% average increase in the unit cost of the electricity itself.

On top of soaring electricity bills, US households have also been confronted by rising gas prices, which have jumped 5.2% on average in the past year, according to the EIA. As a result, there has been a spike in power disconnections for unpaid bills across many states – in New York the rate of disconnections rose fivefold from a year previous – with some households having to forgo other essentials in order to keep the lights on.

This all means that, with just days until the first anniversary of his inauguration, Trump has missed his self-imposed target of cutting bills in half in his first year. The president’s promise to slash power bills was, along with similar pledges to cut grocery costs and to reduce immigration to the US, a key pillar of his 2024 election triumph. “You have some states where the power bills are instead up 10% or 20%, which is why so many people are angry about this now,” said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA).

“Instead of reducing electric bills by 50%, the president’s actions have raised the cost of home energy for all Americans. It used to be the poorest Americans who struggled with their power bills, but now we are seeing more and more middle-income families who have to make sacrifices to avoid being shut off. But there’s a limit to how much people are able to sacrifice, which we are very concerned about.”

---

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Israel Fears It Can’t Defend Against Iran

Iran – The ‘Ragtag Network Of Activists’ Run By The State Department

Jonathan Cook: A UK Jury’s Right to Defy a Judge

Israel Declares Mission Accomplished in Southern Lebanon, Kills Two in Strikes

Dark Kiev

FAA Warns of Military Activity Over Mexico, South America

‘America first’? Trump financial products raise questions about potential presidential conflicts of interest

Trump Orders Emergency Power Auction for Big Tech AI Data Centers

AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

---

A Little Night Music

Little Johnny Taylor - You Gotta Go On

Little Johnny Taylor - Since I Found A New Love

Little Johnny Taylor - Everybody Knows About My Good Thing, Pt. 1 & 2

Little Johnny Taylor - Part Time Love

Little Johnny Taylor - You Win, I Lose

Little Johnny Taylor - Double Or Nothing

Little Johnny Taylor - My Love Is Real / All I Want Is You

Little Johnny Taylor - Zig Zag Lightning

Little Johnny Taylor - True Love

Little Johnny Taylor - Somewhere Down The Line

---