January 22, 2026

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January 22, 2026.

Vice President JD Vance was in Minnesota for the administration today,

trying to regain control of the narrative about the violence perpetrated there

by agents from immigration and customs enforcement, or ICE,

and customs and border protection, or CBP.

A new poll out today from the New York Times and CNN University

shows that nearly two-thirds of Americans, 63%,

disapprove of how ICE is handling its job, while only 36% approve.

Even among white Americans, 57% disapprove, while only 42% approve.

61% of Americans, including 19% of Republicans,

think ICE agents have gone too far.

Just hours after ICE agent Jonathan Ross killed 37-year-old Renee Good

on January 7, and long before there was any official investigation of the shooting,

Vance was out in front of the news, blaming Good for her own death,

and claiming that the officer was clearly justified in shooting her.

But even mega-voters don't buy it.

Podcast Joe Rogan has compared ICE to the Gestapo,

and Greg Sargent of the New Republic noted that a majority of both young voters

and those without a college degree, those who tend to be easy for mega to reach,

disapprove of ICE enforcement.

Media Matters reported that the senior judicial analyst on Right Wing Channel

Newsmax, Andrew Napolitano, called the newly revealed secret ICE memo,

claiming the right to break down doors to arrest people in their homes.

A direct and profound violation of the Fourth Amendment,

which expressly says people are entitled to be secure in their homes,

and that security can only be invaded by a search warrant,

signed by a judge, based on probable cause of crime.

Today, a jury in Chicago acquitted a man charged with trying to hire a man

to kill U.S. Border Patrol commander, Greg Bavino.

The Department of Justice, claimed Juan Espinoza Martinez was a member of a street gang,

who had offered $10,000 to his brother and a friend to kill Bavino.

John Sidel of the Chicago Sun Times noted that 31 Chicagoans have been charged with non-immigration

crimes tied to the federal action there.

With Thursday's acquittal, Sidel notes, 15 of them have been cleared.

None of the cases have led to a conviction so far.

Today, Vance continued to defend ICE agents, but walked back some of his earlier belligerents.

He admitted that, of course, there have been mistakes made because you're always going to have

mistakes made in law enforcement. Although he added that 99% of our police officers,

probably more than that, are doing everything right.

The Vice President also denied his words from January 8th when he said of Ross at the White House,

you have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action.

That's a federal issue. That guy's protected by absolute immunity.

Moving the goalposts considerably today, after it turned out that Americans don't particularly

like the idea that masked agents can do whatever they want. He said,

I didn't say that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity. That's absurd.

What I did say is that when federal law enforcement officers violate the law,

that's typically something federal officials would look into. We don't want these guys to have kangaroo

courts. The New York Times, Siena Pol, had bad news for Trump more generally, too.

It showed that his approval rating has fallen to 40%, while 56% disapprove of the way he is

handling his job, and that 49% of registered voters think the country is worse off than it was a

year ago, while only 32% think it is better off. In fact, the poll showed him underwater on every

single issue, managing the government, Venezuela, immigration, the economy, relationships with other

countries, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the cost of living, Russia's war against Ukraine,

and the Epstein files on which only 22% of registered voters approve while 66% disapprove.

The only area where he is not underwater by double digits is on the issue of the border between

the U.S. and Mexico, where 50% of registered voters approve and only 46% disapprove.

After News of the poll dropped, Trump's social media account posted that fake and fraudulent polling

should be virtually a criminal offense. As an example, all of the anti-Trump media that covered

me during the 2020 election showed polls that were knowingly wrong. They knew what they were doing,

trying to influence the election, but I want in a landslide, including winning the popular vote,

all seven of the swing states, the Electoral College was a route, and 2,750 counties to 525.

You can't do much better than that, and yet if people examined the failing New York Times,

ABC fake news, NBC fake news, CBS fake news, low rating CNN, or the now defunct MSDNC, polls were

all fraudulent and bore nothing even close to the final results. Something has to be done about

fraudulent polling. Even the polls of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal have been over the years

terrible. There are great pollsters that called the election right, but the media does not want to

use them in any way, shape, or form. Isn't it sad what has happened to American journalism,

but I am going to do everything possible to keep this polling scam from moving forward.

Trump's social media account posted that he would add the time CNN a poll to his existing lawsuit

against the New York Times. Trump also threatened to sue JP Morgan Chase and Jamie Diamond,

its chief executive officer, claiming it had broken the law by closing his accounts in April 2021

after notice given just two months before, at the same time that many businesses were refusing

to work with Trump after the January 6th attack on the US Capitol. The bank has refused to do

further business with the Trump family, the lawsuit alleges, putting them on a blacklist.

The lawsuit claims the family was debanked because of political and social motivations,

and Trump wants at least $5 billion in damages, an award of attorney's fees and costs,

and any other relief this court deems proper.

JP Morgan Chase says the suit is meritless, and that while it does not close accounts for

political reasons, it does close accounts because they create legal or regulatory risk for the company.

The 2020 presidential election is clearly on Trump's mind, with former special counsel Jack Smith,

who investigated Trump's attempt to overturn the results of that election and delivered a

grand jury indictment of him on four counts, testifying today before the House Judiciary Committee.

Smith was sworn in and testified under oath. Unlike him,

representatives are not sworn in for such hearings and are covered by the speech and debate

clause of the Constitution that enables them to say virtually anything they want without legal

repercussions. That matters as Republicans showed no inclination to engage with the evidence Smith

uncovered that Trump conspired to defraud American voters of their right to choose their president

and fraudulently seize another term. Instead, they appeared eager to discredit Smith and to fall

back on Trump's narrative that former president Joe Biden and former attorney general Merrick Garland

weaponized the Department of Justice against Trump and MAGA Republicans.

Smith called the narrative spread about him and his team, false and misleading, and said,

Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal

activity. If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so,

regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.

That Republicans were not willing to engage with the actual evidence apparently frustrated the

president who openly threatened Smith, posting that deranged Jack Smith is being decimated before

Congress. It was over when they discussed his past failures and unfair prosecutions. He destroyed

many lives under the guise of legitimacy. Jack Smith is a deranged animal who shouldn't be allowed

to practice law. If he were a Republican, his license would be taken away from him and far worse.

Hopefully, the attorney general is looking at what he's done, including some of the crooked

and corrupt witnesses that he was attempting to use in his case against me. The whole thing was a

Democrat scam. A big price should be paid by them for what they have put our country through.

Meanwhile, the Democrats on the committee offered evidence from the events Smith had investigated.

Playing, for example, the recording of Trump demanding that Georgia Secretary of State Brad

Raffensberger find 11,780 votes to steal the state of Georgia, which had voted for Biden

for Trump instead. As the Guardian noted, when Brad Knot, a Republican of North Carolina,

observed that Smith had charged only Trump, suggesting that Smith had singled out Trump for

political reasons. Smith answered that he had been in the process of considering charging others

when Trump was elected president again and the case was then closed. He said that he and the lawyers

on the case believed they did have sufficient proof to charge other people.

This statement is likely to be uncomfortable for mega figures who were deeply involved in Trump's

efforts but who were not publicly investigated. In both the House and the Senate, members have

been furious at the information that the Department of Justice got the permission of a judge to

obtain toll records for Trump's calls on and around January 6. Many of them were on those calls.

Now they are falsely claiming they were wiretapped, although toll records simply record the

phones involved and the duration of the call. Meanwhile, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Steven

Miller suggested that he too is concerned about the law catching up to people on the Trump team.

On social media, Miller posted, everyone's serious understands that the justice system is rigged.

Far left, prosecutors, magistrates, judges and juries unhesitatingly shield their violent

activists and gleefully imprison their political opponents. On rigging the system is necessary

for the survival of the Republic. Billionaire Elon Musk, whose work with Trump led to the

government's dropping a number of investigations of his companies and lawsuits against them,

chimed in, absolutely. Today, the United States officially withdrew from the World Health

Organization, leaving behind $278 million in unpaid dues. We joined the organization in 1948.

Tomorrow, people across Minnesota will stay home from work, school and shopping areas in an

ice out day to protest the federal agents in the state. The General Strike has the support of

businesses, unions, faith organizations, democratic lawmakers and community activists.

Record numbers all over the place. Trump's social media account crowed tonight.

Should I try for a fourth term?

Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at

SoundScape Productions, dead in Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.