There’s a FIFA World Cup trophy in the Oval Office. Trump has it, but he didn’t win it. He was given the FIFA Peace Prize, a prize for which there were no rules or conditions, no other potential recipients, and invented solely to stroke Trump’s wounded ego for not having been given the Nobel Peace Prize, which he has made clear he wants desperately.

The 2025 Prize was given to Venezuela opposition leader María Corina Machado, who didn’t refuse the prize in favor of Trump. According to people within Trump’s White House, this is why Machado isn’t president of Venezuela after Trump removed Maduro. But Machado is coming to the United States and wants to meet with Trump. Trump wants to meet with her too, because she has something he wants. And she can give it to him the easy way or the hard way. Continue reading →

Given that the president and his minions have already concluded that the shoot was good, the outcome of Ka$h Patel’s investigation of the ICE killing of Renee Good seems like a foregone conclusion. What are the chances that the FBI will tell Trump he’s full of shit wrong? Not good. Not good at all. And when Patel reversed course and decided to freeze out the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from the investigation into the killing, denying access to evidence, to witnesses, to the killer, there was little expectation that it would end with anything other than an endorsement of self-defense when he was “run over,” as Trump proclaimed.

But the shame of Yale Law School, J.D. Vance, wasn’t satisfied with that and felt compelled to take it further.

Speaking at the White House, Vance appeared to try to stymie any efforts by Minnesota prosecutors to pursue a criminal case against the agent. Continue reading →

Different people see the video of the unnamed ICE agent who shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good differently. Some see it as murder. Others as an agent defending himself from her Honda Pilot, even though his weapon was drawn before the car may have brushed against him and he fired into the driver’s side of the SUV as she was turning to leave and presented no threat. Others still care nothing about such nuance, and stop at FAFO. Had she complied, she wouldn’t have been killed, unconcerned that death isn’t the punishment for noncompliance.

But the official reactions, starting with DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, and moving to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, up to the president, reflect the Trump narrative that demonstrates no concern about facts or reality.

First came Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. Continue reading →

Venezuela? Cuba? Columbia? Greenland, for crying out loud? So many outrages happening at the same time that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of the laws in the process of being violated. No, it’s not about a plaque to remind people how little Trump cares about the Capitol Police beaten by his Day of Love pardonees, but about the second prong of the Epstein Files disclosure law.

There’s a second prong, you ask? Indeed, there is.

Looking to update the court on their progress, they told Judge Paul Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York that the 12,285 documents the department has already released contain roughly 125,575 pages. Continue reading →

Five years ago, this was expected to be a day that would live in infamy. On January 7, 2021, I called it an insurrection. Since then, Trump has called it a “day of love.” Certain of the Senators and Representatives who condemned the insurrection at the time have since pretended it never happened to appease Trump. Trump has pardoned those charged and convicted for their actions that day.

Trump has fired the federal agents and prosecutors who did their jobs by investigating and prosecuting those involved. The special counsel, Jack Smith, dismissed the indictment against Trump and has himself become the target of a House investigation. The law requiring a plaque to honor the police involved to be permanently installed on the western front of the Capitol has been ignored and no one knows what became of the plaque. Continue reading →

Forgetting, for the moment, that nobody is talking about the Epstein Files at the moment, Trump announced that he’s now “in charge” of Venezuela, under his new flavor of the Monroe Doctrine, which he’s decided to call the Donroe Doctrine because there are few things he loves more than his name attached to things.

For background, the Monroe Doctrine was that the western hemisphere, the Americas, should no longer be subject to European rule, but should be independent of their colonial overlords. There was the Roosevelt Corollary, in which President Theodore Roosevelt decided to build the Panama Canal, legal niceties notwithstanding,* and the banana republics which were literally for the sake of bananas. Continue reading →

The easy response from the unduly passionate Magats is that anyone who isn’t praising Trump’s exercise of presidential fiat by invading Venezuela and seizing its illegitimate dictator must love Maduro. These are not deep thinkers. Outside of the few nations with whom Trump holds dear feelings, nobody doesn’t think Maduro was a monster whose removal from power isn’t a good thing. That, however, doesn’t mean engaging in an unlawful invasion of a sovereign nation without authority is magically a good thing.

Ilya Somin sums it up well.

Maduro is getting what he deserves, even if for the wrong reasons. But the US attack is illegal, and it is far from clear whether it will really lead to a beneficial regime change in Venezuela. Continue reading →

Leo Garcia Venegas had a problem. He is a citizen of the United States of America. He is also a Latino working in construction. The Constitution says he has a right to be left alone. He also has no obligation to prove his citizenship, as Americans are under no duty to carry proof that they are Americans. ICE isn’t particularly concerned about such matters.

An Alabama construction worker is challenging the Trump administration’s warrantless construction site raids after he says he was arrested and detained by federal immigration agents—twice—despite being a U.S. citizen with a valid ID in his pocket.

In a federal civil rights lawsuit filed today in the Southern District of Alabama, Leo Garcia Venegas is seeking to stop “dragnet raids” that target Latinos like himself, without any probable cause besides their ethnicity.

Continue reading →

In the abandoned City Hall subway station, Zorhan Mamdani, his hand on two Qurans held by his wife, Rama Duwaji, was administered the oath of office by New York State Attorney General Letitia James. He then signed the leatherbound book kept by the Clerk of the City of New York of the signatures of mayors. Love him or hate him, he is now the Mayor of the City of New York.

What will happen next will be an experiment. It’s hard not to find him charming and charismatic. He is a damn likeable fellow, which can’t be said for a great many people who hold office. But he has promoted a litany of changes that are unlikely to work as they depend on a fantasy understanding of economics and human nature. Continue reading →

It’s been a long decade since New Year’s Eve 2025, but we’ve made it this far. Don’t give up now.

Thank you all for reading and thank all of you who have contributed to the upkeep of SJ and donated to FRAXA. I sincerely appreciate it. And a very special thank you to my editor, Beth, without whom I would be lost. Happy New Year to everyone.