It has, as ever, been an eventful two weeks since my last post. A lot to catch up on:

State of the Union. I didn’t see any of this year’s SOTU speech (which is probably good for my mental health), since on that evening I was taking a long-time coworker out to dinner to celebrate his impending retirement. At 1 hour and 47 minutes, it was the longest SOTU address in at least the past 60 years. From what I read, it was an address aimed largely at his base, while Democrats felt it was largely full of lies.

Iran. When I last wrote, there was a lot of saber-rattling going on about the possibility of war with Iran, with a noteworthy concentration of U.S. military might in that part of the world. Two days after the SOTU there were talks going on between the U.S. and Iran in Geneva. Apparently those talks did not go well, because two days after that – seven days ago today – the U.S. initiated a bombing campaign in Iran. Demonstrating the effectiveness of both our intelligence and our military might, on the first day the U.S. killed Iran’s supreme leader, the 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

So: Are we at war with Iran? Under whose authority? What are our aims? Do we have any allies in this effort, apart from Israel? How long is this expected to last? Will ground troops be involved? How do the American people feel about this?

These are good, and obvious, questions. The answers coming out of the administration to these questions are muddled and amorphous.

Certainly, Congress did not approve the attack in advance. This week, Democrats advanced War Powers Resolutions in both houses that called for an immediate end to hostilities, but they failed (47-53 in the Senate, with Sen. Paul joining the Democrats but Sen. Fetterman joining the Republicans; and 212-219 in the House, with Rep. Massie and one other Republican joining the Democrats but Rep. Golden and three other Democrats joining the Republicans). After the votes Speaker Johnson said “we’re not at war”, which feels like splitting hairs at best and disingenuous at worst.

A poll taken earlier this week, after the news of Khamenei’s death, indicates that Americans are opposed to military action in Iran by a margin of 44-56, and that only 36% of Americans approve of how Trump is dealing with Iran. That strikes me as remarkably low numbers for a poll taken within days of the start of military action, and with a major success on the first day and little in the way of U.S. casualties (there have been 6 soldiers reported dead so far). If Trump thought military action in Iran would bring him a polling bump – something he repeatedly accused Obama of considering when his poll numbers were low – it’s not happening so far.

One other thing we do know is that the price of oil went up 35% this week. In recent weeks Trump has talked frequently about how gasoline prices have been coming down, although his rhetoric on that subject – including in the SOTU – has been exaggerated; now gas prices are up 14% this week, and likely headed up further.

Unlike Venezuela – where after Maduro’s extraction the remainder of the government has seemingly decided to play ball with the U.S. to avoid further turmoil – the Iranian regime shows no signs of rolling over after its leader’s demise, and as a result we may be talking about Iran for a long time.

Epstein Transparency. I haven’t been talking much about the aftermath of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but information has been coming out in recent weeks and months, at perhaps a slightly slower pace than what the law literally required, and with many unexplained redactions and omissions. Both the corporate world and foreign governments have been taking actions against people as their presence in what many are now calling the “Epstein class” has been revealed more broadly. Most notably, the former Prince Andrew, now styled Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, has been arrested and may lose his place in the line of succession. It has become fashionable in certain circles to view everything Trump now does, including the attack in Iran, through the lens of “trying to distract from the Epstein files”.

The House saw fit to subpoena a former President and First Lady recently to discuss their ties to Epstein, but their targets were not the Trumps but rather the Clintons. Democratic members noted that at least this set a precedent under which the Trumps could be subpoenaed to provide similar testimony somewhere down the line.

It became apparent that the DOJ had withheld certain FBI files relating to their interviews with a woman who had claimed, during the first Trump term, that while a minor she had been sexually assaulted by Trump after being introduced to him by Epstein. Those files were belatedly released late this week.

DHS. Things remain at a standstill in Congress with respect to the partial government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. Two days again the Senate voted 51-45 to fund DHS, but 60 votes were required; Sen. Fetterman was the only Democrat to support the measure.

However, there was some important DHS-related news this week: Trump removed DHS Secretary Noem, shuffling her to a newly created position as Special Envoy to the Shield of the Americas, a brand new transnational organization involving the U.S. and selected Central and South American countries. His intended replacement as DHS Secretary is Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), who is cut from a similar political cloth as Noem.

What prompted Trump to finally fire a cabinet member? Pundit Charlie Sykes:

“Noem was not fired for (1) killing her puppy, (2) the cinematic brutality of ICE, (3) her cosplaying at migrant gulags, (4) the murder of two Americans in Minneapolis, or even for (5) her special assistant sidepiece, Corey Lewandowski. Nor was she fired because she lied so often and so easily — including about her victims, like Alex Pretti. As we know, lying is not a disqualification in the Era of Trump. Kristi’s problem that she lied badly and about the wrong things, and because she made Donald Trump look bad. During her incandescently awful Senate testimony, she said that Trump had approved her $200 million self-stroking ad campaign. Trump, reportedly, was displeased.”

ProPublica had done some reporting into the cronyism-cum-corruption behind this ad campaign 3 months ago, which did not go through normal government procurement efforts; but it was Sen. Kennedy (R-LA)’s questioning of Noem about it this week that reportedly was the final straw for Trump.

Primaries. Tuesday was primary night in Texas, which featured competitive and extremely expensive Senate primaries in both parties. Texas is one of the states where, should no candidate garner 50%+1 of the vote in the primary, there is a later runoff election with the top two candidates. Each party’s primary featured two leading candidates and potential spoilers.

On the Democratic side, the two main candidates were Jasmine Crockett, a 44-year-old Black woman in her second term in the U.S House after having served one term in the Texas House, and James Talarico, a 36-year-old white (non-Latino) man in his fourth term in the Texas House. (The third candidate was extremely minor and only garnered 1.3% of the vote.) The Crockett vs. Talarico matchup was an interesting litmus test for the Democratic party, even though both candidates are similar from a policy standpoint: Crockett was seen as a firebrand who could energize the base, while Talarico was seen as someone who might be able to appeal to a broader audience, particularly given his frequent references to his religious faith. Polling had been close but slightly favored Talarico, who won, 52.4 – 46.2.

On the Republican side, four-term incumbent John Cornyn faced two candidates to his right, controversial Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Congressman Wesley Hunt, one of four Black Republicans in the House. The Cornyn-Paxton race was the most expensive Senate primary in history, even though it seemed almost certain that Hunt would attract enough support to prevent either candidate from avoiding a runoff. And so it transpired, although contrary to most polling it was Cornyn who came out slightly on top, 41.9 – 40.7 – 13.5 (there were five other minor candidates splitting the rest of the vote).

With most of Hunt’s vote expected to more naturally flow to Paxton than Cornyn, Tuesday’s results raised the possibility of a Paxton v. Talarico general election matchup, albeit not until an expensive and bloody Republican runoff campaign. Of the four possible outcomes, Paxton v. Talarico is the one that many believe could actually put the Texas Senate seat in play this fall. Trump has stated this week that he intends to make an endorsement in the runoff soon – which most believe would be Cornyn – and that he expects the unendorsed candidate to drop out. Paxton’s willingness to play ball is unclear.

But perhaps the most interesting takeaway from the Texas primaries is the turnout. With extremely visible primaries in both parties, there were more votes cast in the Democratic Senate race than in the Republican Senate race, by a ratio of about 51.5-48.5. In Texas. Six years ago, when Cornyn faced only minimal primary opposition while there was a completely wide-open field on the Democratic side (with 5 candidates getting between 10% and 23% of the vote), the corresponding ratio was 49-51, and that was without a compelling Republican race. A major theme of the Biden era was the shift of Latino voters in the Texas border counties, who were previously reliably Democratic, to the Republicans. Hidalgo County, the 9th-largest county in Texas and one whose population is over 90% Latino, voted 70-29 for Obama in 2012, but went 51-48 for Trump in 2024; last week, the ratio of Democratic votes to Republican votes in the Senate primary in Hidalgo County was 77-23.

Tariffs. The recent SCOTUS decision in Learning Resources left unresolved the question of what actually happens next, with respect to the $166 billion or so of illegal IEEPA tariffs that have been collected. Judge Eaton of the Court of International Trade issued an order on Wednesday in a case called Atmus Filtration v. U.S. ruling that “all importers of record whose entries were subject to IEEPA duties are entitled to the benefit of the Learning Resources decision,” distinguishing this situation from the “no universal injunctions” concept from Trump v. CASA on the grounds that the CIT already has national geographic jurisdiction and exclusive subject matter jurisdiction on this matter.

As such, Eaton ordered CBP to stop collecting IEEPA tariffs and start refunding tariffs already collected, without importers needing to file suit. On Friday, CBP responded with a seemingly earnest explanation of why it couldn’t immediately do that, but committing to developing a new capability within 45 days to allow it to issue the refunds.

Meanwhile, Trump’s new post-Learning Resources tariffs, imposed under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, are the subject of a new lawsuit in the CIT brought by 24 states, with Oregon as the lead plaintiff. Oregon v. Trump makes the interesting argument that while the never-used Section 122 authorizes the temporary imposition of tariffs to combat “large and serious balance-of-payments deficits”, those balance-of-payment deficits were only possible under the fixed-rate exchange system that was in effect when the bill was passed but was ended in 1976. As a result, per plaintiffs’ theory, the tariff authority granted to the President in Section 122 is now illusory, because the precondition to use that authority can no longer be met in a world where the U.S. dollar is not pegged to the price of gold or other foreign currencies.

Finally, we end by staying in the legal world, on a somewhat more frivolous note:

The War on Big Law. Recall that last year, Trump had issued executive orders singling out several law firms, some of which caved in to the President’s extortive tactics, and others of which sued. Rulings in four different similar suits had all gone against the government at the lower court level and are being consolidated on appeal to the D.C. Circuit. The government’s opening brief in the appeals was due yesterday.

Four days earlier, on Monday, the government filed a notice that it was voluntarily dropping the appeals, with the consent of the four law firms. This seemed to reflect the widely held belief that the government really has no case here. However… the next day, the government filed another notice that it was withdrawing the previously day’s abandonment of the appeals and would be preceding with the case. (One imagines Trump heard about this and was not pleased.) The law firms’ response was, okay fine, but we oppose any delay in the deadline for filing the government’s opening brief. So far I haven’t heard whether the government got its brief filed yesterday or not.

Today we are two days away from the end of the Winter Olympics, which means that from my perspective we’re finally getting to the interesting part. Yesterday was the women’s hockey gold medal game and the men’s curling semifinals, while today we had the men’s hockey semifinals and the women’s curling semifinals. Add on the top of that the fact that annual actuarial opinions are due in a week, and I have a lot on my mind right now.

So, naturally, today was when SCOTUS finally released its opinions in the IEEPA tariffs cases…

Recall that two different cases from lower courts that were consolidated for argument at the Supreme Court. The case I had been following more was V.O.S. Selections v. Trump, which came through the Court of International Trade and then the Federal Circuit. In that case, the plaintiffs were arguing that two different families of tariffs that Trump promulgated by executive order in 2025, citing the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) as his source of statutory authority to do so, were not lawful under that act. Whereas in the other case on which the D.C. Circuit had yet to take action, Learning Resources v. Trump, plaintiffs argued that IEEPA does not provide the President with a source of authority to enact tariffs, period.

History will, somewhat randomly, refer to today’s SCOTUS holding as Learning Resources rather than V.O.S. Selections. This is both appropriate and ironic. The ironic part comes from the fact that SCOTUS actually ordered today for the original lawsuit filed by Learning Resources and its fellow plaintiffs to be dismissed, on the grounds that it was filed in the wrong jurisdiction. The appropriate part comes from the fact that, by a 6-3 margin, SCOTUS has adopted the argument advanced by the Learning Resources plaintiffs, as opposed to that advanced by the V.O.S. Selections plaintiffs: namely, IEEPA does not provide the President with any authority to enact tariffs.

The outcome and voting lineup were just as I (along with many others) had predicted coming out of November’s oral argument: 6-3 to strike down the tariffs, with the dissenters being Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh. Roberts had the main opinion, which is relatively brief at 21 pages, although the three liberals declined to join the portion of his opinion that invokes Roberts’ major questions doctrine. Kavanaugh’s principal dissent, joined by the two arch-conservatives, is three times as long, at 63 pages. There is also a 46-page Gorsuch concurrence whose main purpose appears to be to throw shade at the judgment of every other justice on the Court except for Roberts; a 4-page Barrett concurrence that seemingly exists solely to rebut what Gorsuch said about her in his concurrence; and a 7-page Kagan concurrence (joined by the other two liberals) explaining why there was no need to invoke the major questions doctrine to arrive at the majority’s result. Finally, at the ideological far ends of the Court, there is also an 18-page Thomas dissent articulating his view that it would not be unconstitutional (as many have argued) for Congress to delegate unfettered tariff authority to the President; and there is a 5-page Jackson concurrence pointing out that this is actually a very easy case to resolve, assuming that one is willing to place weight on legislative history from the enactment of IEEPA, which has become extremely unfashionable in the 21st century as a technique of statutory interpretation.

With all that, it has become more clear why it took three-and-a-half months for the Court to produce its opinions, even though the case was of the highest possible national interest.

Trump did not take the news well, referring to the justices who voted with the majority–two of whom he appointed–as “fools and lap dogs”, and saying specifically of his appointees Gorsuch and Barrett that they were “an embarrassment to their families.” This prompted retired Judge Luttig, once on the shortlist for the SCOTUS seats that went to Roberts and Alito, to say that today marked “the president’s most spectacular display yet of his utter disrespect for the Constitution and his contempt for the Supreme Court of the United States.”

So, what happens now?

It would appear that a whole host of tariffs already collected by the U.S. government are unlawful, and refunds are owed. This may be a long and complicated process. Per an article from September in Lawfare:

“If the IEEPA tariffs are ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court, importers will not receive refund checks automatically; they must affirmatively request refunds through the proper channels. The likely pathways are (a) [Post Summary Corrections] for unliquidated entries; (b) protests for liquidated entries; and, if necessary, (c) litigation at the [Court for International Trade] to enforce refund rights.”

And to the extent importers receive refunds, will those funds ultimately flow to the consumers who, per recent academic research, bore the brunt of the tariffs? Probably not, prompting the NYTimes to write tonight that “the lack of refunds for consumers is likely to be another political liability for the Trump administration”.

Looking forward rather than backwards, Trump remains unrepentant about his tariff-centric economic policies. Today he issued a new executive order, applying clear authority granted to the President (but never previously used) under the Trade Act of 1974, imposing a uniform 10% tariff on imports from all countries, with some exclusions (such as goods covered under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement). However, unlike his attempted IEEPA tariffs, Trade Act tariffs require explicit Congressional approval in order to persist beyond 150 days. This new global tariff will take effect on Tuesday, which is also the date of Trump’s State of the Union address; that should be an interesting evening.

What was it Ford said when Nixon resigned, “our long national nightmare is over”? Well, today “our long Minnesota nightmare” may be over: Tom Homan announced at a press conference the impending end of Operation Metro Surge.

However, D.C. remains at loggerheads over DHS funding. Last week House Democrats prepared a 10-point list of demands, but it wasn’t until last night that the White House made an offer, which Democrats said was inadequate. Today the Senate took up a vote to pass the DHS funding bill that had previously passed the house, but Democrats remained united (save for Fetterman) and the bill failed. As such funding for the TSA, FEMA, and other arms of the DHS will expire on Saturday, although ICE and the CBP will continue thanks to funding previously provided within the OBBBA.

Earlier in the week Speaker Johnson found himself unable, with his reduced legislative margin, to continue playing fast and loose with House rules in order to prevent any votes on Trump’s IEEPA tariffs. As such, there was a House vote this week to cancel Trump’s 25% tariff on Canada, and it passed, 219-211, with six Republicans defecting. The Senate had previously passed a similar measure three months ago, but one imagines Trump will veto it. Still, it is a sign of a crack in the Republicans’ Trumpist unity.

This week the House passed an election reform bill known as the SAVE Act, along largely partisan lines (218-213). The bill would require proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote; based on experience from a similar law in Kansas, the number of U.S. citizens that would likely be prevented from voting under this requirement is orders of magnitude greater than the number of non-U.S. citizens currently on the voter rolls. The bill faces a likely filibuster in the Senate.

Turning to judicial news, this week a federal grand jury in D.C. refused to return an indictment against 6 sitting members of Congress, veterans all, who had released a video in November reminding military troops that they do not need to follow illegal orders. Trump had reacted very badly to the video, referring to it as “seditious behavior” potentially punishable by death. Separately, Defense Secretary Hegseth had sought to reduce the retirement rank and pay of the most prominent of the six, Senator Kelly (D-AZ), in reaction to the video; but today a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction to the senator in his lawsuit (Kelly v. Hegseth) to prevent Hegseth from taking these actions, on the grounds that they violated Kelly’s 1st Amendment rights.

This week Trump threatened to block the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, the new road connection between Detroit and Windsor paid for by the Canadian government. It turns out that shortly before making that threat, his Commerce Secretary was actively lobbied by the billionaire who owns the existing bridge linking the two cities, the Ambassador Bridge.

But believe it or not, that was neither the worst nor most corrupt Trump action of late in the world of transportation. Trump has frozen $16 billion in federal funding for the Hudson River train tunnel connecting New Jersey and New York; however, per reporting, he told Senator Schumer he would un-freeze the funds if both Dulles International Airport and New York’s Penn Station were to be renamed after Donald J. Trump. Last week a federal judge ordered that funding be restored, but stayed that ruling until today; and today the 2nd Circuit declined to issue an emergency stay, putting the court ruling into force.

On Saturday there was a by-election in Houston to fill the Congressional seat in the 18th, a safely Democratic district that once belonged to President Matt Santos. Thanks to first Texas Republican intransigence, and then a failure of any candidate to garner 50% of the vote in a jungle general, this seat had been vacant for about 11 months. This weekend’s runoff election involved two Democratic candidates, with the winner seated yesterday. That makes the House currently 218-214 Republican, with 3 open seats: Governor Sherrill’s old seat (to be filled in April), MTG’s old seat (to be filled in March), and a seemingly safe Republican seat (under the old map, not the post-Proposition 50 map) in the extreme NE corner of California (to be filled in August).

Today the latest, brief, government shutdown ended, a day later than originally expected. While Trump had endorsed the compromise passed last week by the Senate and urged its swift enactment, it took Speaker Johnson an extra day to get his ducks in a row. The bill passed, 217-214, which looks deceptively like the Republicans’ current House margin. However looks are a little misleading here: 21 Democrats, mostly moderates (e.g., the retiring Jared Golden) and appropriators (e.g., the retiring Steny Hoyer), supported the bill while 21 Republicans, mostly Freedom Caucus types (e.g., Biggs, Boebert, and Massie), opposed the bill. Now the hard work begins, of trying to negotiate a compromise on DHS funding in a post-Minneapolis world in which the Democratic base is increasingly supportive of the previously radical position of defunding ICE.

Returning to Saturday, there was a very interesting election result out of Texas, in a by-election for a State Senate seat in Tarrant County. Tarrant, home to Fort Worth, is a rare example of a county that is both urban and staunchly Republican. In 2022, this State Senate seat went 60-40 to the Republican incumbent. That incumbent resigned in 2025 to become the Acting Comptroller in Texas, so there was a by-election in November which attracted 2 Republican and 1 Democratic candidates. The 2 Republicans together outpolled the Democrat, 52.6 – 47.4; however, neither Republican garnered a majority, so a runoff was scheduled for this past weekend. In that runoff, the Democrat won 57.2 – 42.8, despite reportedly being out-spent 7 to 1 and despite Trump having thrice posted on social media in support of the Republican. I keep seeing reporting that Trump won this State Senate district by 17 points in 2024, so roughly 58-41, although I have not been able to verify that myself; Tarrant County as a whole went to Trump but by a much smaller margin. Quite a result for the Democrats.

Finally, today a federal lawsuit (AAUP vs. DHS) was filed, asserting that Trump’s Gold Card immigration visa program is illegal. What I didn’t realize until the reading the lawsuit is that the way the Trump administration has implemented his Gold Card concept is by “treating a payment to [the] Commerce Department as evidence of statutory eligibility for EB-1 [extraordinary ability] and EB-2 [exceptional ability] visas, and expediting consideration of applications from individuals who make the payment.” As such, plaintiffs argue that “the Gold Card program overrides Congress’s choices—both as to who qualifies for employment-based immigration and how and under what conditions agencies may collect revenue… [and] does so at the expense of qualified EB-1 and EB-2 applicants, who are effectively crowded out of limited annual visa allotments as visas are steered to Gold Card recipients.”

The actual temperature in Minneapolis has gotten slightly warmer from the weekend’s lows (with Friday having been the first sub-minus-20 Fahrenheit day here in almost 7 years), while the rhetorical temperature has cooled a little. Greg Bovino, the controversial Border Patrol executive who was leading Operation Metro Surge here in the Twin Cities after having led Operation Midway Blitz last fall in Chicago, has been replaced by Trump “border czar”, Tom Homan. Homan suggested today that ICE plans to draw down the number of agents deployed in the Twin Cities.

Yesterday Bruce Springsteen dropped a new single, “Streets of Minneapolis”, that he wrote on Saturday after the killing of Alex Pretti. The lyrics reference both Pretti and Renee Good by name, and also name drop “King Trump and his private army from the DHS” and “Miller and Noem’s dirty lies”.

Also yesterday, 7 Senate Republicans joined all of the Democrats to oppose the omnibus funding bill previously passed by the House, putting a government shutdown this weekend in play. Today a compromise has apparently been reached, under which all of the non-DHS components of the House Bill remain intact and DHS funding is provided for an additional 2 weeks only, thus allowing further opportunity for debate. The Senate is expected to vote on the compromise later tonight and Trump has urged its passage. The House may not return from its break early enough to prevent a technical government shutdown, but it will be back on Monday.

Today Senator Klobuchar officially announced her run for Minnesota Governor to replace Tim Walz, who said today that he is done with elective office, ending speculation that he might seek to appoint himself to the Senate to replace Klobuchar. Speaking of the gubernatorial race, earlier this week one of the announced Republican primary candidates, Chris Kabel, announced he was dropping out on the grounds he could no longer in good conscience support the Republican party in the wake of the ICE occupation of Minnesota.

Finally, today Trump filed a lawsuit against the IRS and the Treasury Department, seeking $10 billion as compensation for the fact that in 2020 a Treasury contractor obtained and leaked Trump’s tax returns. It will be interesting, and perhaps depressing, to see how the government responds to this lawsuit.

It continues to be a very long and difficult month, especially in Minnesota.

Last week was the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, a meeting that I suspect in time will be remembered primarily for a speech delivered by Canadian PM Carney about what lies ahead for middle powers in a world where the rules-based international order has been cast aside and “great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests.” Trump responded to the speech by rescinding Canada’s invitation to his newly established Board of Peace, and then later threatening Canada with more tariffs and referring on social media to Carney for the first time as “Governor Carney”, an epithet he used repeatedly with PM Trudeau.

Greenland was a major topic going into Davos. Trump had sent the Norwegian PM an unhinged text message that, after it leaked, was originally assumed by the right to be inauthentic until it was then confirmed that Trump had ordered copies of the text sent to all Western European leaders. After European leaders rallied behind Denmark, Trump then threatened a new 10% tariff on several Western European countries, which prompted EU threats to derail the trade deal agreed upon last year. Then, after things had gotten very tense, suddenly they weren’t: Trump announced he had reached a “framework of a future deal” on Greenland with the Secretary General of NATO. Was this another manifestation of TACO? At this point we don’t seem to know.

Nor do we know much more about the future of Venezuela than when I last wrote. Although we did have the farcical situation a week and a half ago where the reigning Nobel Peace Prize laureate, a female Venezuelan opposition leader, visited the White House and formally presented her medal to Trump. It remains completely unclear what, if anything, she got out of this piece of performance art. The glee with which Trump “accepted” the medal launched a thousand memes of Trump accepting awards that didn’t belong to him, of which perhaps my favorite was Rob & Fab from Milli Vanilli presenting Trump with their Grammy award.

We are now only several days away from another potential government shutdown, as the resolution to the previous shutdown required that certain spending bills be enacted by the end of January. The House reached bipartisan consensus on the necessary bills and then adjourned, leaving things in the hands of the Senate. Hold that thought.

Still no decision from SCOTUS on the IEEPA tariffs case. This week they did hold a very unusual oral argument in a shadow docket case, namely Trump v. Cook, arising out of Trump’s purported firing of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. The post-argument consensus is that Cook is unlikely to immediately lose her post; it is less clear as to whether the justices will simply allow the litigation to proceed in the lower courts, or instead make a ruling that would end the controversy in Cook’s favor now.

But the main story of the week remains the situation in Minnesota, where a federal surge of ICE personnel has been met by nonviolent resistance from residents and criticized by many as an unwelcome invasion. Friday was the coldest day in the Twin Cities in almost 7 years, with the temperature at sunrise being -22 F and the windchill making it feel like -40 F. Schools were cancelled, and many local groups had called for a general strike. There was a surprisingly well-attended anti-ICE rally in downtown Minneapolis Friday afternoon, given how cold it was. However, a potentially tense situation was holding steady.

And then, yesterday morning, ICE agents killed a 37-year-old man on the streets of Minneapolis. Alex Pretti was a white U.S. citizen, an ICU nurse at a VA hospital. He was standing on a sidewalk with a phone in one hand videoing events and his other empty hand raised in the air. ICE agents pepper-sprayed a protestor that he was videoing. He went to assist her, and the ICE agents first pepper-sprayed him, then threw him to the ground and started attacking him. While they were subduing him, they discovered he was carrying a firearm, for which he had the appropriate legal permits; however, he never brandished the firearm before it was confiscated by ICE agents. After his firearm was confiscated, ICE agents fired about 10 shots into him in a manner of seconds.

At least, that is the version of events as they appear to neutral observers from available videos. If you instead listen to DHS Secretary Noem and her minions, Pretti was an “assassin” who “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” And it is fascinating to see the Second Amendment crowd contort themselves over how this was somehow Pretti’s fault, for legally carrying a firearm that he never brandished.

Governor Walz and Mayor Frey and Minnesota AG Ellison were already upset over the entire situation here, but Pretti’s killing has pushed everything into high gear. And it may have some immediate national implications, as several Senate Democrats now indicate they are unwilling to pass the DHS appropriations bill that had just narrowly passed the House.

In more picayune political news, Trump has taken the unusual step of endorsing a primary challenger to a Senator from his own party, throwing his support behind Louisiana Rep. Julia Letlow in her challenge against Sen. Cassidy. This is the thanks the physician-Senator gets for, against what I assume was likely his better medical judgment, casting the deciding vote in favor of RFK Jr as HHS Secretary. Julia’s husband Luke died of COVID-19 shortly after winning election to the House in 2020 but before taking his seat; she won the special election to replace him.

It’s been a difficult week, especially here in Minnesota.

It seems like ages ago by now, but on Monday Governor Walz made a surprise announcement that he would not be running for re-election this fall. This comes in the wake of continuing concerns about fraud in the administration of COVID-era Minnesota state programs, concerns that were recently inflamed by MAGA wing “journalists”. It seems likely that Senator Klobuchar will run in place of Walz, which would soon create a second Senate opening here (with Tina Smith already having announced her retirement).

Jonathan Cohn had a balanced article about the Minnesota fraud scandal in the Bulwark this week, and made some important points about the broader context of the scandal:

“The assistance programs of Western and Northern Europe tend to be universal, meaning they offer help to everybody, while the programs in the United States tend to be targeted, meaning they serve narrow, carefully defined sectors of the population. That creates incentives to game the eligibility criteria. Another difference is that the European governments are more likely to provide housing or deliver services like childcare directly. The United States, by contrast, outsources more of that work to the private sector, which means there are more opportunities for organizations and businesses to raid the public treasury.

This system didn’t develop by accident. It’s the result, in part, of a decades-long campaign by conservatives to limit or shrink the size of government, and to privatize public services whenever possible. And while there are plenty of intellectually defensible arguments for this approach—like a philosophical preference for lower spending and taxes or belief the private sector will be more efficient and innovative—it does require more aggressive oversight.3

“As long as you don’t have government directly provide those services, then you either have to invest more in auditing and monitoring these service provisions—or you have to be willing to deal with some failures and some scandals that come up every now and again,” Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan and expert on how government actually works, told me.

The American system works best when there are safeguards in place to prevent fraud and abuse. In case you haven’t noticed, the Trump administration has adopted precisely the opposite approach since taking office—cutting personnel who guard against fraud rather than adding them, and weakening internal safeguards rather than strengthening them.

“Many of the cuts the Trump administration has made have been to reduce parts of the government that take on fraud,” Moynihan said.”

But the real news of the week here in Minnesota occurred on Wednesday, in Minneapolis, only a few blocks away from where George Floyd was killed a few years ago. In an incident witnessed by dozens and caught on cellphone videos, both by bystanders and by the assailant himself, an ICE agent (Jonathan Ross) killed a 37-year-old white female US citizen (Renee Good), shooting into her car at close range as she was attempting to drive away.

As with so many stories today, the narrative of this incident varies dramatically depending on which side of the political spectrum you inhabit. To hear DHS Secretary Noem and Vice President Vance tell it, Good was a “domestic terrorist” who was impeding a law enforcement operation and then attempted to flee, placing the ICE agent’s life in danger with her car and prompting him to fire in self-defense. Forensic video analysis performed by the NYTimes and other organizations paints a very different story, suggesting that the agent (who apparently had been run over by a car several months ago in a different operation) was not in any danger. Good’s motivations are also murky, as she appears to have been coming home from dropping her 6-year-old son off at school, rather than “engaging in domestic terrorism”. As such, many in Minnesota want to see Ross charged with murder, while the Trump administration characteristically remains unrepentant. Tensions are high here.

Speaker Johnson’s grip on his caucus appears to be continuing to slip, as this week 17 House Republicans crossed to floor to help pass a bill that would belatedly extend the Biden-era expanded premium subsidies for ACA individual medical insurance plans for an additional three years. The bill is not seen as having a chance to pass the Senate. Also, on Friday SCOTUS returned from its winter break and released one opinion, but it was not the eagerly anticipated opinion in the IEEPA tariffs case.

Speaking of tariffs, a working paper from two academics got some media attention this week. They argue that, due to various exemptions, the effective tariff rates observed in late 2025 are roughly half of the stated tariff rates, which helps explain why the higher tariff regime’s impact on the general economy has been muted so far. They also assert that virtually all of the higher tariffs are being borne by the U.S. rather than by exporters (via price reductions). Dan Drezner, reacting to the researchers’ findings:

“In a lot of ways, Trump’s trade policy is a synecdoche of the Trump administration’s overall policy shifts. There are horrible headlines, followed by policy that is only about 50 percent as horrible as the original pronouncement. Then Trump supporters exult in the fact that predictions of doom turned out to be false. Of course, the effect is like praising a doctor because he only injected half as much arsenic as was previously thought into a patient.”

Trump made three statements this week that I can hardly believe were uttered by a Republican President. First, he said that the U.S. should place limitations on the ability of certain corporations to own certain property (barring large institutional investors from owning single-family homes). Second, he said that the U.S. should place limitations on the ability of certain corporations (namely, defense contractors) to return capital to investors (through buybacks or dividends) and to compensate their senior executives. Finally, he said that the U.S. should place limitations on the interest rates charged to consumes on certain unsecured loans (credit card balances). These policies sound like they came out of Senator Warren’s mouth. Trump also stated this week that he wants to see a 50% increase in federal defense spending. At least that sounds like a Republican President’s position, even if it’s a batshit crazy thing to propose.

Finally, the wonderful world of foreign policy. I don’t think we have much more clarity about the future of Venezuela than we did when I last posted, other than Trump is clearly hot-to-trot to get American hands on Venezuelan oil, which always felt like the most likely root cause of his intervention. Yesterday he convened a White House meeting of the leaders of the U.S. oil industry, attempting to browbeat them into investing $100 billion in Venezuela, a country that on multiple previous occasions has expropriated American oil investments. So far they don’t seem to be biting.

And then there’s Greenland, about which the rhetoric keeps increasing. Yesterday Trump said, in reference to conversations he’s had with Danish officials, that “I would like to make a deal the easy way, but if we don’t do it the easy way we’re going to do it the hard way.” Something I just learned is that in 1916, when Denmark ceded the Danish Virgin Islands to the U.S., the U.S. Secretary of State made a formal declaration that “the Government of the United States of America will not object to the Danish Government extending their political and economic interests to the whole of Greenland.” In light of Venezuela and Greenland, tensions are once again rising in Canada about the possibility of threats, whether economic or military, from the southern neighbor.

In my last post a few days ago, wrapping up the first calendar year of the 2nd Trump Administration, early on in the post I wrote: “We are not yet at war with Venezuela, although events still seem to be trending in that direction.”

Yesterday morning the world woke up to the news that, overnight, the U.S. military had successfully executed a mission to forcibly extract Venezuelan President Maduro and his wife from their home in Caracas, and extradite them to New York City to await trial on various federal charges, mainly around narco-terrorism. In essence, an attempt at regime change via decapitation, wrapped in the guise of facilitating a criminal prosecution.

Thirty-six hours later, there is still a great deal of uncertainty around what this means for the future of Venezuela. I watched Trump’s news conference from Mar-A-Lago, which was uncharacteristic of me as I have a great deal of difficulty listening to the man speak. On this occasion, it was fascinating. He had no teleprompter, but there was clearly a written text that he was supposed to be reading, and hence much of the time he had his head down as he was reading verbatim from the prepared text. But then every couple of sentences he would get bored, and his head would go up and he would start riffing, before eventually putting his head down again and returning to the text. I would love to see a transcript of his speech that is aligned with his head movements, so that we can deduce which of his words were carefully planned and which weren’t. I strongly suspect that the unplanned words included the following quote, which quickly became the biggest piece of news from the press conference: “We will run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.”

It is also unclear what this foreshadows for the future of American foreign policy. In his speech Trump talked about the “Donroe Doctrine”, a term that I hadn’t heard before but was mentioned in a November 2025 NYTimes article as having originated in a January 2025 NYPost headline. Trump reiterated in a phone interview today that “we do need Greenland, absolutely.” He has also made comments over the past day that could foreshadow military action in Cuba, Mexico, and Colombia. It does, however, seem fairly clear that a U.S. who is willing to take this type of action against Venezuela is uninterested in taking a hard line against Chinese aggression towards Taiwan or Russian aggression towards Ukraine.

It’s been over a month since I’ve blogged, and with my busy season at work about to start in the next couple of days, I don’t imagine I will have much to say over the next several weeks either.

Things continue to progress in what I view as a deeply negatively direction for this country, albeit not at a particularly rapid pace. We are not yet at war with Venezuela, although events still seem to be trending in that direction. Notwithstanding Trump’s apparent belief that drug smuggling is a major national security concern, he recently continued his war against the war on corruption by pardoning the former president of Honduras, who had recently started serving a 45-year federal sentence for cocaine trafficking. Trump has been trying harder in recent weeks to broker peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, but the endgame remains unclear. Trump continues to express his interest in annexing Greenland against the will of a NATO ally, having recently named Louisiana’s Republican governor as a “special envoy to Greenland,” a post the governor described as “a volunteer position to [help] make Greenland part of the U.S.” And the administration recently announced its intention to start de-naturalizing U.S. citizens (due to purported misrepresentations made during the naturalization process) at approximately a 100-fold increase over historical rates.

With SCOTUS yet to rule in the IEEPA tariffs cases, there have been no significant developments in trade policy as of late, nor have the impacts of Trump’s tariffs yet had much influence on the general economy. After official inflation figures were not published for October 2025 thanks to the government shutdown, the November 2025 figure was only 2.7%, down from September’s 3.0% and at the same level as in November 2024, albeit still higher than the Fed’s target of 2.0%. Unemployment ticked up to 4.6% in November 2025, up from 4.2% in November 2024. The S&P 500 is up 16.5% for calendar year 2025, thanks in some part to the OBBBA’s extension of the TCJA’s tax regime and in other part to a potential bubble in AI-related stocks. Trump recently rated the economy “A+++++” under his watch, although a recent poll has Trump significantly underwater on his handling of the economy, 36 – 57.

Last week we finally had a 6-3 SCOTUS shadow docket ruling that was against the administration instead of for it, in Trump v. Illinois. Recall that in this case the 7th Circuit ruled that Trump’s attempt to federalize the National Guard for deployment in Chicago was unlawful. As foreshadowed by the Court’s November request for supplemental briefing of the issue addressed in Marty Lederman’s amicus brief, a majority of the court believes that a stay of the ruling is not warranted on the grounds that the reference in the Milita Act to “regular forces” does indeed refer to the military and not to civilian law enforcement. So, that’s one. The ruling was extremely textual in nature, allowing the Court to weigh in without needing to get into thornier issues, which may not be a great sign of the Court’s willingness to address those issues in a situation where there wasn’t a clear alternative offramp.

Looking back on the year holistically, I feel pretty down about it. My major concern is that many of the changes that Trump has wrought to the country this year are things that in practice will be nearly impossible to reverse in the absence of constitutional reform, which in turn is nearly impossible to imagine.

Today is Black Friday. Especially if, like me, you immigrated here from somewhere else.

Late last night, Trump published a Truth Social post asserting that his administration would “permanently pause migration” from “Third World countries”. He also asserted that his administration would “end all federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens.” The exact meaning of either of these phrases is, of course, not clear at present. Earlier in the day, the USCIS Director tweeted that his agency would perform a “full scale, rigorous re-examination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern,” later clarifying that “country of concern” referred to the 19 countries for which Trump had previously issued a partial travel ban in an early June presidential proclamation.

The proximate cause of Trump’s latest anti-immigrant screed was an attack in D.C. this week on two West Virginia National Guard members, one of whom is now dead. The assailant is a 29-year-old Afghani national who had worked with the CIA in Afghanistan and was evacuated to the U.S. with his wife and children when the U.S. exited Afghanistan in 2021, and was formally granted asylum this spring (under the Trump administration). Afghanistan is, of course, one of the 19 “countries of concern.” The assailant’s motives are unclear, although he apparently drove all the way from Washington State to D.C. in order to carry out the attack.

Turning to political news, after the Massie-Khanna discharge petition received its 218th vote and it became clear that the House vote to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act would pass, Trump withdrew his opposition to the bill in order to avoid a vote that would splinter House Republicans. In the end the bill was passed into law with only 1 House Republican voting now, and with unanimous consent from the Senate. The bill gives the DOJ 30 days to make its records from the Epstein investigation public.

One of the key Republicans to have signed the discharge petition was controversial Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. In recent weeks, MTG and Trump publicly had a falling-out, followed shortly by MTG announcing she would resign from Congress on January 5th (rather than risk being primaried by a new Trump-endorsed candidate), delaying her resignation so that she will meet the 5-year cliff vesting for Congressional pensions.

Apparently Trump never implemented the additional 10% tariff on Canada that he announced spitefully during the World Series, in reaction to Ontario’s TV ad featuring Reagan’s anti-tariff comments from 1987. TACO, or tactics?

It’s been a relatively quiet couple of weeks in the courts. There was a surprising 2-1 5th Circuit decision overturning the recent Texas mid-decennial redistricting, on the grounds that it was a racially motivated gerrymander rather than a partisan gerrymander. Alito issued an administrative stay in Abbott vs. League of United Latin American Citizens a week ago, and both sides have submitted briefs; we’ll soon see what the shadow docket brings. This week SCOTUS re-listed the birthright citizenship cases, Trump v. Washington and Trump v. Barbara, for its next conference; this could indicate that a grant of certiorari is coming as soon as next week, but it could also indicate other outcomes.

Finally, last week the indictments against James Comey and Letitia James were dismissed, on the grounds that Lindsey Halligan was not properly appointed to her DOJ post. As Ben Wittes put it, “the government and Halligan here got off on a technicality.” Next steps in both cases remain unclear, although the odds against prosecuting Comey in particular seem very long.