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Week of January 18, 2026

"This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement." Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino

Ginger

1/26/20267 min read

Here goes...

1. ICE is completely out of control. This agent pepper sprayed a 15 year old girl in her own home.

2. This Getty photojournalist (John Abernathy) - doing his job - was grabbed by ICE's masked goons and his last act was to throw his camera to another reporter before he is dragged away, so the images wouldn’t be seized. The people documenting these atrocities are some of the bravest, most important people right now. So much respect to this journalist. And what an incredible photo, from photojournalist Pierre Lavie . (as an aside, that is probably a $7,000 camera at least - a Leica.)

3. Donald Trump has invited Vladimir Putin to join his "Board of Peace" that will oversee the reconstruction of Gaza.

4. He’s an absolute idiot – a nonstop embarrassment. Also, not one word of this is true.

Norway's response. (It's not real but it is definitely funny.)

5. A new study shows what we predicted all along – BECAUSE THAT’S HOW TARRIFFS WORK: Americans absorbed nearly all of the burdens from Trump's tariffs. Foreigners absorbed 4% of the burden. Americans, the remaining 96%.

6. An elderly Hmong man was taken from his home in 10 degrees and not allowed to put on clothes. They broke down the door, ransacked the apartment, handcuffed him and pointed a gun at his daughters-in-law’s head. Turns out he is a US citizen with no criminal record.

7. Leigh McGowan showing the proper level of repulsion listening to Scott Jennings minimize the Epstein crimes and the illegal concealment of them by Trump’s DOJ.

8. A day in the ICE operation in Minneapolis.

9. A quick reminder that all of the corruption, violence, humiliation, destruction of alliances, removal of Black history, destruction of the very idea of objective truth, could all be stopped if congress would do its job. If a handful of Republicans would grow a spine. They could stop it all.

Journalist Garrett Graff: “We are watching one of the wildest things a nation-state has ever done, a superpower is dying by suicide because the Republican Congress is too cowardly to stand up to the mad king.”

10. Speaking of embarrassing, Trump said this in Davos, “Without us you’d all be speaking German”. Well guess what folks, German is the official language in Davos.

11. Slavery displays removed from Philadelphia historical site after Trump directive

12. Okay. There was another ICE murder, and I just cannot finish this list. I have loads of material (of course), but I ‘m finding I can’t focus on it.

An ICU nurse named Alex Pretti, documenting what was going on in his neighborhood with his phone (there was no protest going on), went to help two women after they were shoved and pepper-sprayed by an “officer”. The “officer” approached them again and sprayed them again. Then 5 “officers” beat him, disarmed him, and shot in him the back while he was down and both hands were visible. Look, watch all the videos you want and try to tell me I got it wrong. If you have a view from a reputable source that refutes this assessment please forward it to me.

Just as in the Renee Good case, the Administration raced to press conferences and social media to blame the deceased – before they knew anything. It’s become a pattern – “murder and slander” – as described very accurately by David Axelrod.

Net York Times: Timeline: A Moment-by-Moment Look at the Shooting of Alex Pretti

CBS: News: What videos reveal about Alex Pretti's killing

ABC local afilliate: Video analysis offers context on shooting of Alex Pretti by federal immigration officers

MSNow: Frame by frame analysis.

CNN video analysis sheds new light on killing of Alex Pretti

Wall Street Journal: Videos Contradict U.S. Account of Minneapolis Shooting by Federal Agents

NBC News: Video analysis of Pretti shooting contradicts government's account

One thing that is clear to me from all of the videos – (not just in this case) is that the “officers” are 1, relying way too heavily on chemical sprays. They are using them just because they are mad. This escalates situations very quickly. 2, Then they draw their weapons when there is no reason to. Anyone with any legit training (combat soldiers and actual law enforcement officers) will tell you both of these actions are escalatory and dangerous and contrary to proper training. 3. This will seem silly perhaps, but good cops don’t routinely just scream expletives at random citizens. American citizens don’t take well to being bullied. The aggressiveness of these guys toward citizens exercising their constitutional rights (or for just existing) speaks to a lack of training and a failure of effective recruiting (except that it seems like this is exactly the kind of guys Bovino and Noem want).

Bring these guys back for actual training and insist they act like decent people when they are doing their jobs. Take off the damn masks. Stop using Gestapo tactics. Go after the worst of the violent criminals LIKE YOU SAID YOU WOULD DO. Leave the hotel maids alone. Oh, and maybe throw something in about trigger discipline (I honestly would not be surprised if the first shot on Pretti was actually an accident because of how the agent was handling his weapon)

The continual assault on people, on our democracy, our constitution, and our core values of a decent society is traumatic, is catastrophic. Most people understand this. But what I actually want to focus on for the rest of this is addition is the reaction from MAGA (and many less rabid Trump supporters) and why we can’t have nice things. Here are my observations:

1. They cling to the Administration’s interpretation of events like a life vest. They know that the Admin is making definitive pronouncements without any investigation, because they are immediate. But nevertheless they accept it.

2. They cling to that interpretation and then refuse to “believe their lyin’ eyes” when they see videos and photos and actual evidence. They say the photos and videos must be “doctored” even though they are being used in analysis by every news organization on the planet. One of those organizations would have figured it out if they were doctored.

3. They say they don’t trust the mainstream media. They have been convinced by Republican leaders for a generation the all of the major news organizations have a liberal bias and that – somehow – the implication is that they all coordinate their reporting – like they are a monolith – to report the same view. Of course this is ridiculous(!). Also, it is an absolute fact that most of the major news organizations are now owned by Trump supporting ultra-conservatives – CBS, CNN, ABC, WSJ, WaPo, etc. Saying “I don’t trust the MSM” is just an excuse to avoid information they don’t like. And what do they do next since they won’t consume stories from the MSM? They say…

4. “I’m doing my own research…”. Ugh. Discount all reports from ALL 100-year-old news organizations with Pulitzer Prize winning journalists because you “don’t trust the entire “MSM”. So doing their own research simply means…

a. Get all (and I mean ALL) of their news from Fox – a company that had to pay almost a billion dollars for lying to them – saying one thing on camera about the 2020 election while texting the exact opposite (actually joking) to each other. In other words, they KNEW the election was not stolen but told their viewers the opposite. This week Fox “anchors” and pundits literally repeated word for word the nonsense from Bondi, Noem, and Bovino. Fox News also just doesn’t tell their viewers everything. They feed them what they want to hear. Fox viewers have no idea how much they don’t know about – and it’s a lot.

b. Go to the fringes of the internet to find the podcasters or bloggers who will confirm what they want to believe.

c. Avoid news altogether so they don’t have to be confronted with information they don’t like, so they can believe what they want – regardless of whether there is actual evidence to support the view. Privilege folks, privilege.

5. If the video/photo evidence is really hard to refute, they will pivot to “well they should have complied….they shouldn’t have been there in the first place…they shouldn’t be protesting… it’s anti-American to protest…they shouldn’t have brought a (legal) gun (2nd amendmenters are actually saying this - Interestingly, the NRA came out today publicly disagreeing. At least they are consistent.) As if any of these actions warrant being shot and killed in the street. I’ll say that again - As if any of these actions warrant being shot and killed in the street.

6. They have to do this every time. One of the things that perplexes me most is the inability to just say “this was wrong. I support Trump and Border Patrol, but the agents, in this particular situation, did the wrong thing". Why? Why is this so hard? It’s like their identity is so wrapped up in ideology that if there are any cracks in the ideology they might just cease to exist.

When this many Americans are so willing to reject objective reality, literally choose not to believe their own eyes, to cling to what their leaders tell them instead of wanting to know the actual truth and they vote – well, this is why we can’t have nice things.

Well crap. The only doom-scrolling break for me this week was watching the Seahawks game (even though I almost stroked out during the last 6 minutes). Thanks goodness for sports.

Maybe you could send me a doom-scolling break this week!