- A new song by Bruce Springsteen about Minneapolis;
- Why GOP voters love ICE — because their support for the Bible and the Constitution is only totemic, and thus hypocritical;
- Ruben Bolling on the MAGAs: Trump is always right, and it’s all about getting “those filthy brown people out of our country”;
- With the example of Matt Walsh;
- And more…
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Do Trump and Miller and Noem truly have no clue why so many are upset by the results of their policies?
Salon, Chauncey DeVega, 27 Jan 2026: Why GOP voters still love ICE, subtitled “New PRRI polling still shows broad Republican support for some of Trump’s most extreme immigration policies”
With examples of how majorities of Republicans *don’t* agree that immigrants should have basic rights and protections; *do* agree that even immigrants with no criminal records should be arrested and detained, *do* agree that illegal immigrants should be held in internment camps, and then sent to foreign prisons without due process.
Ultimately, for Trump’s MAGA followers and the larger anti-democracy right-wing, the man screaming at the site of Alex Pretti’s killing is music to their ears. They see dystopia as a utopia. This warped vision of unlimited power, the silencing of critics and ability to impose their beliefs on those deemed to be the Other serves their goal of ending the country’s pluralistic democracy and replacing it with a White Christofascist plutocracy ruled by a very small number of powerful White men.
Because Trump and MAGA are hypocrites: they claim to venerate Jesus and the Constitution, but apparently don’t believe in any of their principles. They behave, rather, like xenophobic tribal white supremacists.
And so they are unphased by stories like theses:
Vox, Christian Paz, 28 Jan 2026: The White House’s shocking lies about Minneapolis, subtitled “Never forget how this administration misled you.”
The New Republic, 27 Jan 2025: “I Erase Your Voice”: ICE Agents Threaten People After Alex Pretti
An ICE agent issued a chilling warning to a legal observer Tuesday, informing them that if “you raise your voice, I will erase your voice.”
They’re just fine with that.
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Boing Boing, Ruben Bolling, 28 Jan 2026: Tom the Dancing Bug: It’s the Magas!
Squint harder! Trump is right, and he’s always right! Doing what it takes to get those filthy brown people out of our country!
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Similarly people like this guy.
JMG, 28 Jan 2026: Matt Walsh: Alex Pretti “Quite Literally Had It Coming”
(But remember Kyle Rittenhouse? Remember these folks? They became conservative heroes!)
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Another perspective.
AlterNet, Alex Henderson, 28 Jan 2026: MAGA moms urge followers not to let ‘compassion’ imperil Trump’s agenda
In an article published on January 28, The Guardian’s Alaina Demopoulos takes a look at some mothers who have become prominent MAGA influencers: Riley Gaines and Allie Beth Stuckey. And one of their talking points is that “compassion” and “empathy” detrimental to the MAGA movement and to fundamentalist evangelical Christianity.
Again, what Bible are they reading? See my hypocrisy comments above.
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How does this very simple-minded guy rationalize? Tony Perkins. For every problem, he has one answer.
JMG, 28 Jan 2026: Hate Group Blames ICE Protests On Lack Of Jesus
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And the current administration has no moral compass at all, apparently. Or principles. It’s all about them, vs everyone else. Primitive tribalistic thinking.
Washington Post, opinion by Ramesh Ponnuru, 28 Jan 2026: They don’t give an inch. Even when an American is killed., subtitled “For Trump officials, fighting the administration’s enemies is more important than being decent.”
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And then there’s this 2nd Amendment quandary. At least the 2nd Amendment folks claim principles. The current administration has none.
Slate, Shirin Ali, 28 Jan 2026: Are Gun Rights Activists Turning On Trump Over Alex Pretti’s Killing? Don’t Hold Your Breath.
And.
The Times [of London], 28 Jan 2026: Trump clashes with NRA and says Alex Pretti shouldn’t have carried gun
And NRA’s response.
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Is America resilient enough to fend off the terrorists? Um, I mean, the Trump administration?
Slate, Dahlia Lithwick, 27 Jan 2026: Minnesotans Showed Us What It Looks Like to Protect the Constitution, subtitled “What it takes to defend democracy from autocracy is suddenly crystal clear.”
I’ll just quote the last paragraph.
Now we can name the mission, which is no small thing. Focus on the mission and ignore spectacle and spin. Of the many, many things that Trump and MAGA have misunderstood, almost foremost among them was the belief that Americans would forever be more interested in consuming white-supremacist online content than in creating actual democratic freedom. From Chicago to Portland to Minneapolis to your town, when someone asks you what they should be doing, the answer must be: Protecting the Constitution.
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And this.
The Atlantic, George Packer, 27 Jan 2026: What Should Americans Do Now?, subtitled “We need a mass movement for basic decency.”
Authoritarianism doesn’t disappear with the news cycle. The administration’s automatic lies about the killings and slander of the victims are less a cover-up of facts than a display of utter contempt for them. Trump, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, FBI Director Kash Patel, and other top officials seem to invite incredulity as a way to flex their power: We say black is white. Agree or you’re a criminal. When Stephen Miller recently claimed that geopolitics is ruled by the “iron laws” of “strength” and “force,” he was expressing the administration’s approach to domestic governance as well. Those words are iron laws on American streets.
It seems to be the problem is that MAGA conservative evangelicals don’t want basic decency: they want to put themselves in charge and disappear everyone else. (And this is the problem with religion.)
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On this note, one more for today.
LGBTQNation, Greg Owen, 28 Jan 2026: Influential GOP think tank unveils new attack plan targeting gay families, subtitled “The Project 2025 authors want to punish and erase same-sex parents.”
As always, they want to restrict family relationships, and sex, to the most basic animalistic reproductive functions. Even as they think humans are exceptional, created in the image of God, they insist humans behave only just like animals. (Never mind the evidence of variant sexual behavior in many animals species… conservatives don’t do evidence, or want to understand why such behavior exists.)
Whereas the actual situation is that humans behave to bind together, build families however conceived, and build communities. The communities that exist and the Project 2025 folks want to disappear.
