President Trump posted a long Truth Social rant about his new ballroom — amid devastating winter storms and fallout from federal agents shooting a protester in Minneapolis.

He complained that his “gift to the American people” is not being properly appreciated.

— Political Wire

ICE agents killed a mother of three and emergency room nurse Despite blatant video evidence of the victims’ innocence, Trump, Vance and Noem smeared the victims with lies. Any of us could be next.

… the Trump administration is embracing Nazi propaganda, trying to convince Americans that the nation’s roots are not in human equality but in the hierarchical system of European fascism. Rejecting the idea of liberty and equality proposed in the Declaration of Independence and defended by people like Abraham Lincoln as the nation’s foundational principle, they are trying to define the United States of America in an entirely new way: one made up of white Protestants who, in their minds, “belong” to the land here. Rather than a nation based in ideals, they want a nation based in “blood and soil.”

In the 1770s, and again in the 1850s, everyday Americans recognized the radicalism of those extremists who were trying to erase the nation’s principles and the rule of law, ignoring the longstanding rights of the people to liberty and equality and instead trying to impose a despotism.

Today a protester in Minneapolis, one of those tens of thousands who filled the streets in below-zero weather to demand that ICE end its violent occupation of their city and its abuse of immigrants and people of color, made it clear that Americans in 2026 still believe in the nation’s founding principles of equality and the rule of law, and they utterly reject the right wing’s blood-and-soil radicalism.

— Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American, January 23, 2026

Hang on, there’s a Trump Phone Ultra coming too? Trump Mobile wants to build on the success of the nonexistent Trump Phone to ship an Ultra model, which users are clamoring for even though nobody’s ever heard of it before this minute.

“At the risk of sounding stupid, I just found out how long the stone age lasted. In my head it’s about as long as other historical time periods, a couple thousand years before ancient egypt, and conceptually looks like a bad car insurance commercial. Nope! Dead wrong! The stone age lasted for 3.4 MILLION YEARS."

Nerding out about the 1960s TV show “The Time Tunnel."

“That thing about how cats think humans are big kittens is a myth, y’know."

Facebook keeps showing me the same ad for a $60 sling bag, over and over. It’s a nice-looking bag, looks like a good alternative to cargo pants and shorts, which I am getting tired of wearing. And $60 isn’t a lot of money.

But $60 isn’t a small amount of money either. And I. Do. Not. Need. Another. Bag.

Quantum computing threatens to trash telecom security — get ready. Cybercriminals are already stealing encrypted data to decrypt once quantum computers arrive — here’s why telecoms need to start preparing now for “Q-Day.” My latest on @Fierce Network

For a moment there, Lotus Notes appeared to do everything a company needed

I bought a new strap for my computer bag the other day and now I’m on the luggage company’s mailing list. This could be one expensive luggage strap.

“While sailing the Mediterranean Sea in the 1960s, the American aircraft carrier USS Independence flashed the Amerigo Vespucci with the light signal asking ‘Who are you?’ The full-rigged ship answered: ‘Training ship Amerigo Vespucci, Italian Navy.’ The Independence replied: ‘You are the most beautiful ship in the world.'"

DHS memo declares the Fourth Amendment optional. “The DHS is acting as if the US Constitution, a document conservative wingnuts used to demand we revere in its original form, does not apply to them.”

I am on record as being skeptical of the notion that if you shop very carefully, you can make society better. “Conscious consumption” is not a tool for structural change, and any election that requires you to “vote with your wallet” is always won by the people with the thickest wallets (statistically speaking, that’s not you)

— The petty (but undeniable) delights of cultivating unoptimizability as a habit, by Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr

Here in brief is the method I’ve honed to optimize a two-week vacation: When you arrive in a new country, immediately proceed to the farthest, most remote, most distant place you intend to reach during the trip. If there is a small village, remote spa, a friend’s farm, or a wild place you plan on seeing on the trip, go there immediately. Do not stop near the airport. Do not rest overnight in the arrival city. Do not pause to acclimate. If at all possible proceed by plane, bus, jeep, car directly to the furthest point without interruption. Make it an overnight journey if you have to. Then once you reach your furthest point, unpack, explore, and work your way slowly back to the big city, wherever your international departure airport is."

— Kevin Kelly, 50 Years of Travel Tips

AI vs. AI is the new security battleground. AI-enabled attacks at machine speed are forcing organizations to deploy their own AI defenses or risk being overwhelmed. My latest on Fierce Network.

This afternoon, Rebecca Santana of the Associated Press reported that ICE has been breaking into homes under the authority provided by a secret memo of May 12, 2025, signed by the acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, saying that federal agents do not need a judge’s warrant to force their way into people’s homes.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, one of the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights, says: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

As Joyce White Vance of Civil Discourse notes, courts have always interpreted that amendment to mean that a judge must sign a warrant to allow law enforcement to break into a home. Now the Department of Homeland Security says it does not need such a judicial warrant, but can simply use an administrative warrant signed by an official at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or ICE if immigrants believed to be inside a home have a final order of removal.

The legal training manual for DHS itself quotes a 1984 Supreme Court decision that “the ‘physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.”

Immigration law specialist Aaron Reichlin-Melnick noted that this memo is a big deal: it is “the federal government conspiring in secret to subvert the Fourth Amendment.”

“Every American should be terrified by this secret ICE policy authorizing its agents to kick down your door & storm into your home,” [Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)], wrote on social media.

…

Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), who at the beginning of 2025 was considered a moderate on immigration, wrote: “Yeah I am not voting to give whatever ICE has become more taxpayer money. It’s no longer an immigration enforcement arm of the US government.”

— Heather Cox Richardson, January 21, 2026