January 29, 2026

January 29th, 2026.

Public outrage over the violence of federal agents from immigration and customs enforcement

and the U.S. Border Patrol has given Senate Democrats a powerful lever.

Tonight, they forced the Republican majority to split new funding for the Department of

Homeland Security, or DHS, off from five other spending bills that must pass by Friday

to keep the government funded.

The Department of Homeland Security will be funded separately for just two weeks, while

the Democrats and Republicans negotiate the conditions of funding DHS.

The funding measure passed the House before Saturday shooting a VA-intensive care nurse,

Alex Prety, in Minneapolis.

Seven Democrats joined the Republican majority in backing it to continue funding for other

important agencies, like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, and the Transportation

Security Administration, or TSA, reasoning that since the Republicans' one-big Beautiful

Bill Act had provided enough money to fund ICE and Border Patrol through September

30th, 2029, there was no point in taking a stand against renewed extra funding.

But popular anger over ICE shootings and the administration's lies about them made Democrats

in the Senate take a stand against the measure.

They demanded accountability and reforms to current ICE operations.

Republicans initially said they would not split DHS funding from the rest of the package.

Then proposed handling the excesses of ICE and Border Patrol through an executive order

or through a new, different piece of legislation.

Such a plan would avoid the necessity of taking the measure back to the House, which is out

of session until Monday.

Senate Democrats refused to pass the measure as it stood.

They demanded an end to roving patrols, with federal agents required to use warrants

and coordinate with local and state law enforcement officials.

They wanted a uniform code of conduct for agents and independent investigations to enforce

that code.

And they wanted agents to use body cameras and to stop wearing masks.

Senate Republicans wanted a longer period of time to consider these demands, but they

settled on two weeks.

The Senate did not vote on the measure tonight.

NBC News Senior Political Reporter Sahil Kapoor reported that, according to Senate Minority

Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat of New York, the hold-up is coming from Lindsey Graham,

a Republican of South Carolina.

Graham was one of those Republican lawmakers who worked to help Trump try to overturn the

results of the 2020 presidential election, calling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger,

for example, and suggesting that he should throw out some of Biden's ballots in the

state.

His phone records on and around January 6, 2021 were among those examined by special counsel

Jack Smith's team.

Now, according to Kapoor, he wants the Senate to add back into the funding package necessary

to prevent a government shutdown, a measure that would let senators, whose records were

seized, sue the government for $500,000.

The House is out of session until Monday, and the fate of the measure in that chamber

is not clear.

House Democrats have said they will not support the measure without significant concessions,

and will leave the Republicans to pass the measure on their own.

But the Republican majority has fallen to two seats, and is expected to fall by another

seat over the weekend, as a special election in Texas is expected to add another Democrat

to the House.

Meanwhile, footage circulated today of a woman in Minnesota who left her home to warm the

car for her kids and got taken by federal agents.

The video shows her calling someone to look after her children who were left alone in the

House.

In the last week, since federal agents shot pretty, former president Bill Clinton, Barack

Obama, and Joe Biden have all spoken out to condemn his killing and the violence of

federal agents, as well as the administration's lies.

They have warned that the nation's core values are under assault and urged Trump officials

to change course, while also calling on Americans to defend those core values.

The criticism of all the living Democratic presidents, along with his disastrous performance

in Davos Switzerland last week and his plummeting numbers, as well as the fact the American

people have not forgotten that the administration is continuing to break the law by refusing to

release the Epstein files.

Appears to have sent Trump back to the comfort of older grievances.

Today, he hit not only on his big lie, but also his complaints about the inquiry by the

federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, into the ties between his 2016 campaign and

Russian operatives.

Director of National Intelligence, or DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, who has been strangely invisible

now for months, resurfaced yesterday when the FBI seized ballots from the 2020 presidential

election from a warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia.

The role of the DNI is to coordinate information from various intelligence agencies to make

sure the president has good intelligence for making national security decisions.

Judge Josh Dawsey, Dustin Vols, and Sadie Gurman of the Wall Street Journal reported

today that Gabbard has been moved off of national security intelligence to chase down Trump's

allegations that the 2020 election was stolen from him, focusing on the idea that a foreign

government was involved in such a theft.

Two officials told the Wall Street Journal reporters that Gabbard's report is designed

to bolster executive orders about voting before the midterm elections.

White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt said, President Trump and his entire team are

committed to ensuring a U.S. election can never, ever be rigged again.

Director Gabbard is playing a key role in this important effort.

In reality, Trump's claims about the 2020 election have been thoroughly debunked, and dozens

of court cases his followers launched have been dismissed.

In contrast, a grand jury actually indicted Trump for trying to steal the 2020 election.

Yesterday, Trump's account amplified a post claiming that Italian officials used military

satellites to hack U.S. voting machines in an operation coordinated by China, all to

install Biden as a puppet.

Gabbard is also trying to prove that former President Barack Obama and his staff were behind

the accusation that Trump's campaign worked with Russian operatives in 2016.

Although this conspiracy theory has no evidence at all, and the Republican-led Senate Intelligence

Committee unanimously agreed that Russian operatives had meddled in the election to help Trump.

Trump's social media account posted, under emojis of flashing red lights, breaking.

Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has just released hundreds of bombshell

rush-a-gate documents proving that Barack Obama personally ordered CIA agents to manufacture

false intelligence on President Trump and was actively working with the enemy to undermine

and erode Americans' confidence in our democracy, and President Trump's landslide 2016 victory.

This was a coup attempt by Barack Hussein Obama and his cronies.

As Jesse Waters said, whatever happens to these guys is not revenge, it's accountability,

and it's time for people to pay the price.

Arrest Obama now.

Today, President Donald J. Trump, his son's Donald Jr. and Eric and the Trump Organization

sued the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion dollars, saying the government agency was

responsible for an IRS contractors having leaked some of Trump's tax documents to the press.

Presidential candidates and presidents routinely release their tax documents to the public,

but Trump has consistently refused to do so.

The leaked documents show that Trump paid no income tax to the US for 15 out of 20 years

while paying almost $200,000 in taxes to China.

The lawsuit says that the leak caused the Trump family reputational and financial harm,

like embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in

a false light, and negatively affected President Trump.

This lawsuit is different from the one seeking $230 million dollars from the government

for the FBI search of his residence at Mar-a-Lago to find retained classified documents,

and the investigation of the relationship between his 2016 campaign and Russian operatives.

Brad Heath, who covers crime, justice, and investigations for Reuters, explained,

President Trump has filed a lawsuit against the IRS, in which he demands that the IRS,

which he, as President, controls, pay him $10 billion dollars.

Blue Sky user Micah made the point more clearly.

The President of the United States should not be allowed to personally loot the treasury

to the sum of $10 billion dollars, and that this is not resulting in immediate unanimous

impeachment is a dramatic indictment of what has become of our political system.

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

It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Data Massachusetts, recorded with music composed

by Michael Moss.