Career DOJers Resign Over Handling of Fatal ICE Shooting

Posted on January 13, 2026January 13, 2026 by David Kurtz

Programming Note

Join me for the first Morning Memo Live event on Jan. 29 in Washington, D.C. Find details and tickets here.

Civil Rights Division Sidelined

A least four top career officials in the criminal section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division have resigned in protest over the department’s handling of the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon decided not to investigate the shooting even though law enforcement shootings are the bread-and-butter work of that unit.

“The departures — including that of the chief of the section, as well as the principal deputy chief, deputy chief and acting deputy chief — represent the most significant mass resignation at the Justice Department since February,” MS Now reports. They reportedly had concerns about other Trump DOJ decisions too.

DOJ insisted that the officials in question had already decided to take early retirement before the ICE shooting.

RED ALERT

The DOJ resignations come as the NYT reports that the federal probe in the fatal ICE shooting is looking into Renee Good’s possible ties to activist groups protesting Trump’s mass deportation policies, opening a Pandora’s box of First Amendment concerns:

The decision by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department to scrutinize Ms. Good’s activities and her potential connections to local activists is in line with the White House’s strategy of deflecting blame for the shooting away from federal law enforcement and toward opponents they have described as domestic terrorists, often without providing evidence.

Justice Department officials under Mr. Trump have long maintained that investigating and punishing protesters who organized efforts to physically obstruct or disrupt immigration enforcement is a legitimate subject of federal inquiries. But casting a broad net over the activist community in Minneapolis, former department officials and critics of the administration said, raises the specter that forms of political protest traditionally protected by the First Amendment could be criminalized.

Minneapolis Mass Deportation Watch

Charges in Fatal ICE Shooting Unlikely: “It seems increasingly unlikely that the agent who fired three times at the unarmed woman, Renee Nicole Good, will face criminal charges, although that could change as investigators collect new evidence,” the NYT reports, citing people familiar with the situation.
Surging More Officers to MN: DHS is sending 1,000 more Customs and Border Patrol officers to Minnesota, joining 2,000 federal agents already in the blue state for the mass deportation operation.
Minnesota Sues: The state of Minnesota filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration seeking to end the surge of federal agents into the state for the mass deportation operation.
U.S. Citizens Detained: Immigrations enforcement agents detained two employees of a Minnesota-based Target while they were on the job in company stores, even though both were U.S. citizens.
Kavanaugh Stops: “On Monday, an NPR reporter witnessed multiple instances where immigration agents drove around Minneapolis and questioned people about their immigration status. Some took place in the parking lots of big box stores,” NPR reported.

Quote of the Day

“You’ve turned Montessori school teachers and stay-at-home moms into Timothy McVeigh in the minds of these agents, so of course their first reaction is to shoot.”—Christopher Parente, an attorney for a Chicago woman shot by CBP, commenting on the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good

Trump DOJ Watch

Pam Bondi: President Trump has repeatedly complained in private that Attorney General Pam Bondi is weak and ineffective in using the Justice Department to exact retribution against his political foes, the WSJ reports. But rather than being run-of-the-mill palace intrigue, the complaints are themselves part of Trump’s intense pressure campaign to force the DOJ to do his bidding, according to the newspaper.
Jack Smith: The former special counsel will testify publicly on Jan. 22 before the House Judiciary Committee, Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) announced.
Robert K. McBride: The first assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia was abruptly fired after only about two months on the job. McBride, who had been a federal prosecutor earlier in his career, was lured out of private practice to backstop interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan as she pursued the Trump-ordered prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James. Halligan was subsequently ruled invalidly appointed but has refused to step down, drawing the ire of federal judges. McBride was reportedly fired after “several disagreements with Halligan, including over how to proceed with the Comey case after the indictment against him was dismissed,” the WaPo reported.

Was Jeanine Pirro Freelancing in Powell Case?

A strange twist in the use of the weaponized Trump DOJ against Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell that strains the imagination: “Jeanine Pirro didn’t seek sign-off from her bosses at the Justice Department before subpoenaing the Federal Reserve,” Bloomberg reports.

Both President Trump and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte denied any involvement in the Federal Reserve subpoenas, but you could be forgiven for not taking those denials at face value. Still, the Bloomberg report suggests that Pirro may have been freelancing, though given the president’s open animosity toward Powell, it may be more likely that she thought she was currying favor with the White House by issuing the subpoenas.

If the Bloomberg report isn’t enough evidence for you, Pirro posted a strange defense of the subpoenas on X only 20 minutes before the Bloomberg story was first published:

The United States Attorney’s Office contacted the Federal Reserve on multiple occasions to discuss cost overruns and the chairman’s congressional testimony, but were ignored, necessitating the use of legal process—which is not a threat.

The word “indictment” has come out of Mr.…
— US Attorney Pirro (@USAttyPirro) January 13, 2026

The notion that this was just a friendly request for information and that the target of the subpoena is overreacting by referencing potential future indictments is comically disingenuous of Pirro.

Powell Blowback

Widespread opposition rose up to Trump’s attempt to neuter the Fed:

Former Fed chairs issued a joint statement calling it an “unprecedented attempt to use prosecutorial attacks to undermine” the Fed’s independence.
Central bankers worldwide issued a joint statement in support of Powell’s independence.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK): “After speaking with Chair Powell this morning, it’s clear the administration’s investigation is nothing more than an attempt at coercion. If the Department of Justice believes an investigation into Chair Powell is warranted based on project cost overruns—which are not unusual—then Congress needs to investigate the Department of Justice.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told President Trump in a call late Sunday that the federal investigation into the Federal Reserve chair “made a mess.” Another Trump adviser called the blowback from the investigation a “huge cluster.”

Trump Admin Stymies Judge in AEA Case

In a remarkable new filing late last night, the Trump administration told U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to, in essence, pound sand in the original Alien Enemies Act case.

Boasberg had ordered the Trump administration to come up with a proposal for how to provide due process after the fact to the Venezuelan men deported to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. Boasberg had offered examples of what the government might propose, like remote hearings from Venezuela, where the men were ultimately repatriated, or allowing the men to return to the United States for court proceedings.

After asking for and being granted an extension, the Trump administration refused to make any proposals to Boasberg, instead re-litigating his initial order and claiming that its own operation to remove President Maduro and his wife from the country now made it impossible to conduct remote hearings or negotiations for the men to come to the United States.

“In my considered judgment as the Nation’s chief diplomat, I assess that introducing the matter of the disposition of the 137 class members into these discussions at this time would risk material damage to U.S. foreign policy interests in Venezuela. This assessment holds true whether the proposal is to transport class members to a U.S. jurisdiction or to arrange remote hearings from Venezuela,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a new sworn declaration filed in the case.

Word of the Day: ‘Perfidy’

NYT:

The Pentagon used a secret aircraft painted to look like a civilian plane in its first attack on a boat that the Trump administration said was smuggling drugs, killing 11 people last September, according to officials briefed on the matter. The aircraft also carried its munitions inside the fuselage, rather than visibly under its wings, they said.

The nonmilitary appearance is significant, according to legal specialists, because the administration has argued its lethal boat attacks are lawful — not murders — because President Trump “determined” the United States is in an armed conflict with drug cartels.

But the laws of armed conflict prohibit combatants from feigning civilian status to fool adversaries into dropping their guard, then attacking and killing them. That is a war crime called “perfidy.”

The subtext to this important report (separately confirmed by the WaPo) is that the Trump administration keeps trying to avoid being consistently subject to any one legal regimen for its boat strikes. It insists that the boat strikes are not murder because they’re not law enforcement operations but rather part of an armed conflict with non-state actors; and yet it is not abiding by the rules of armed conflict either.

BREAKING: Synagogue Had ‘Jewish Ties’

We may not be dealing with the sharpest knife in the drawer here.

The man charged with arson for setting fire to a synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi, allegedly confessed to the weekend attack, saying he was driven by the synagogue’s “Jewish ties.” The 19 year old was arrested at the hospital, where he was recovering from burns suffered during the attack, after being turned in by his father.

Related: In the aftermath of the attach, Anya Kamenetz reflects on the experience of southern Jews.

Trump Turbocharges Climate Change

Lisa Friedman: “In recent days his administration has slammed the door on every possible avenue of global cooperation on the environment. At the same time, it is sending the message that it wants the world to be awash in fossil fuels sold by America, no matter the consequences.”

Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.

How Redistricting and the Fate of the Voting Rights Act Might (Not) Impact the Midterms

Posted on January 13, 2026January 13, 2026 by Khaya Himmelman

The midterm elections are often treated by voters as a referendum on the current presidential administration’s performance. In recent history, that has translated to the party in the White House almost always losing — and losing big — in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.

But the second Trump administration has been far from typical, and, as we head into 2026, several factors make it considerably harder than usual to get a read on what to expect this November.

Continue reading →

Trump ‘Might’ Torpedo Any Chance of Fending Off Health Care Cost Crisis

Posted on January 12, 2026January 13, 2026 by Nicole LaFond

Seventeen House Republicans rebelled against their party leadership last week to help Democrats pass a bill that would revive the Obamacare subsidies that expired at the start of the year, and extend them for three years.

Continue reading →

Join Us as We Dig Into the Corruption of the Trump DOJ, the Belly of the Beast

Posted on January 12, 2026January 12, 2026 by Josh Marshall

If you’re in the Washington, D.C. area at the end of this month, I want to invite you to join us for our first-ever TPM Morning Memo event. As you know, Morning Memo, from TPM’s David Kurtz, is now our anchor daily summary and analysis of the inner workings of Donald Trump’s assault on the American republic. That centrality will only grow over the course of the the coming year. The Justice Department, as we’ve seen again just in the last 24 hours with the sham investigation into Jerome Powell, is at the center of the corruption. So on Jan. 29 we’ve hosting a Morning Memo discussion about the corruption and politicization of the Department of Justice under the second Trump administration. The panelists include:

Stacey Young, a former 18-year DOJ veteran who is the founder and executive director of Justice Connection, a network of DOJ alumni providing support to current and recent DOJ employees;
Aaron Zelinsky, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland who served on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, where he prosecuted Roger Stone, and who is now a partner at Zuckerman Spaeder in Baltimore; and
Anna Bower, a senior editor at Lawfare who covers rule of law issues and fields wacky Signal messages from Lindsey Halligan.

Attendees are encouraged to ask their own questions, and to join the panelists for a reception after. Tickets are free for TPM Inside members, who received a special discount code via email. If you’d like to purchase tickets, you can purchase them here. I’d love to see you there as we dig into this critical part of our present crisis.

Five Points on the Trump DOJ’s Attack on Fed Chair Jerome Powell

Posted on January 12, 2026January 12, 2026 by Layla A. Jones

On Sunday evening, the New York Times reported that the U.S. Department of Justice had launched a federal criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in a dramatic escalation of President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against the Fed.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia’s probe focuses on the cost and scope of ongoing renovations to the Federal Reserve building in Washington, D.C., which has been underway since Trump’s first term, unnamed officials told the Times. The probe began in November and was approved by Jeanine Pirro, former reality TV judge and MAGA conspiracy theorist turned U.S. Attorney for D.C.

Powell is the second Fed member to fall victim to a bogus legal attack from the administration. As Trump has made clear, he wants the Fed to cut interest rates more aggressively than economists at the central bank find prudent to uphold its dual mandate for maximum employment and controlled price inflation.

The unprecedented moves from the White House and Trump’s allies have yielded strong responses from Powell, key Republican senators, and a distinguished group of top U.S. economists.

Here are five points on how we got here and what Trump’s relentless attack on Fed independence could mean for the U.S.

Trump’s Pressure Campaign Against the Fed Has Been Mounting for Years

Trump nominated Powell to head the central bank in 2017 during his first administration. That didn’t stop the president from reportedly trying to oust Powell in 2018 for raising interest rates.

During this presidency, Trump has publicly pressured Powell to slash rates by 1%, and openly debated with the Fed Chair about the cost of renovations during a rare presidential visit to the Federal Reserve building. The president threatened to fire Powell last June over the Federal Reserve Board’s rate decisions.

Powell isn’t the only Fed member who has come under the microscope of Trump’s DOJ; Fed Governor Lisa Cook is under investigation for alleged mortgage fraud. In September, an appeals court ruled that Cook could not be fired while the case remains ongoing. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case next week.

Mortgage Fraud Scheme Orchestrator Bill Pulte Behind Powell Subpoena

The alleged orchestrator of the Powell investigation is a familiar name. Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is largely responsible for the administration’s subpoena of the Federal Reserve, according to a report from Bloomberg. Pulte claimed not to know anything about the Fed investigation in an interview with Bloomberg.

The Pulte Homes heir has turned the staid federal housing agency into a tool for presidential retribution. Pulte is behind the mortgage fraud investigations against both Fed Governor Cook and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a case which has yet to go before a grand jury.

It’s all part of Trump’s retribution machine against political opponents, which has also caught in its cogs former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both of whose cases were thrown out by a judge.

Fed Renovation Costs Have Jumped, But With Reason

In 2017, the Fed Board approved a renovation project of two of the Federal Reserve’s historic buildings, according to an explainer put out by the Fed in July. Initially pegged at $1.9 billion, the project, which will upgrade HVAC, electric and plumbing systems in the more than 90-year-old buildings, rose to $2.5 billion. The Fed attributed the cost spike to factors including increased material and labor costs, which spiked in 2021 and 2022 after pandemic-era inflation, and “unforeseen conditions” during construction, like findings of higher levels of asbestos than planned and toxic soil contamination.

During the unusual July visit to the Fed, Trump, wearing a hardhat at the construction site, said the project had ballooned to $3.1 billion, a claim Powell rejected.

Powell Fights Back, Joined by Bipartisan Chorus of Economists and Officials

On Sunday evening, Powell released a video characterizing the investigation as an attack on the independence of the Federal Reserve.

“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president,” Powell said in the video. “This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions — or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation,” he continued.

Powell was supported by the usual GOP suspects who have been most outspoken against Trump over the last year. Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said he would block Trump’s Fed nominees, including the nominee for Fed Chair, while the legal case against Powell is ongoing.

“If there were any remaining doubt whether advisers within the Trump Administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should now be none,” Tillis, who is a member of the Senate Banking Committee, said on X.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) called the administration’s investigation into Powell and the Fed “nothing more than an attempt at coercion,” in a post on X, and cosigned Tillis’ vow to block Trump’s Fed nominees.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, said in a statement the committee shouldn’t “move forward with any Trump nominee for the Fed, including Fed Chair,” in light of the investigation, also calling Trump a “wannabe dictator.”

And a bipartisan group of 13 of the nation’s top economists issued a joint statement condemning the administration’s “criminal inquiry” into Powell as “an unprecedented attempt to use prosecutorial attacks to undermine” Federal Reserve independence. Economists who signed the statement include: two-term Fed Chair and former President George W. Bush’s economic advisor Ben Bernanke, five-time Fed Chair Alan Greenspan, conservative economist and former Bush advisor Glenn Hubbard, Jared Bernstein, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President Joe Biden, and former Treasury Secretary and Fed Chair Janet Yellen.

Politicizing the Fed Could Decimate the U.S. Economy

The economists in their statement emphasized the danger of compromising the Federal Reserve’s independence.

“This is how monetary policy is made in emerging markets with weak institutions, with highly negative consequences for inflation and the functioning of their economies more broadly,” they wrote. “It has no place in the United States whose greatest strength is the rule of law, which is at the foundation of our economic success.”

Trump and his administration officials have openly flouted and expressed their disdain for independence of federal statistical and economic policy agencies. In August, Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics chief for publishing jobs data he didn’t like. Later that month, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called the independence of federal statistics “nonsense” during a town hall for Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis employees. And throughout his second term, the Trump administration has so manipulated federal data of all sorts that one expert told TPM in October that anything coming from the federal government should be “treated with a certain amount of skepticism, if not suspicion.”

Countries around the world offer grave warnings about what happens when central banks become nothing more than political tools of the executive branch. In Argentina, politicized monetary policy led to a 4,923% inflation rate in 1989. More recently, Turkey saw inflation peak at 85% in 2022.

As for the Fed, Trump has already installed his top economic advisor Stephen Miran to the board while Miran remains a member of the administration, an unprecedented conflict of interest. Since joining the board, Miran has voted twice to cut rates more than what was the consensus among governors, in lockstep with policy pushed by the president.

Mark Kelly Sues Pete Hegseth in Federal Court for Vengefully Going After His Rank

Posted on January 12, 2026January 12, 2026 by Kate Riga

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) sued Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Monday for directing the U.S. Navy to “reconsider” his rank and pay grade.

Hegseth’s retribution followed Kelly’s participation in a video reminding members of the military that they cannot follow illegal orders. While other lawmakers were also featured, Kelly — with his possible presidential ambitions and military pension — became the administration’s target.

Continue reading →

Don’t Be So Literal About What Counts as a Military Occupation

Posted on January 12, 2026January 12, 2026 by Josh Marshall

I want to return to a topic I’ve alluded to in several recent posts. The U.S. Constitution, U.S. law and U.S. civic culture all have a deep resistance to the use of the military in civilian spaces, except under the most extreme circumstances. Even then, we rely almost exclusively on what are in effect state and part-time militias, which are incorporated into the federal U.S. military but still distinct from it, at least largely based in the communities in which they are occasionally deployed. This issue came to the fore early in the second Trump administration with federalized National Guard troops deploying in various blue states and even “hostile” red states at least offering to deploy their guards into blue states. But the real game is Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Board Patrol and other, increasingly super-sized federal policing forces within the Department of Homeland Security. And they’re not military.

Over time, I’ve realized I’m being too literal about this. As a legal and constitutional matter, these aren’t military forces. They’re civilian policing agencies. But the aversion to military deployments in civilian areas isn’t simply a matter of technical designations, the formal unfreedoms of military service, the different legal code, the focus on war-fighting. There is a substantive reality of the desire to menace and dominate civilian spaces as though they are enemy territory, conquered rather than governed.

Continue reading →

Powell Goes Public About Trump’s Unprecedented Attack on the Fed

Posted on January 12, 2026January 12, 2026 by David Kurtz

Programming note: Join me for the first Morning Memo Live event on Jan. 29 in Washington, D.C. Find details and tickets here.

Banana Republic Tactics

In what looked like a hostage video, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell announced Sunday evening that he is the target of a retaliatory criminal investigation by the Trump administration that resulted in subpoenas Friday to the Federal Reserve itself.

What made Powell’s announcement reminiscent of a hostage video wasn’t the quality of the recording or the failure of Powell to be a stalwart against Trump’s repeated attempts to bring the Fed under his thumb but the fact that Powell was put in the position at all: a central banker facing banana republic tactics and forced to make a direct appeal to the public (read: financial markets).

Powell, originally appointed as Fed chair by Trump, was unabashed in saying that the criminal investigation into his testimony to Congress about renovations to the Feds’ D.C. headquarters is pre-textual, a poorly veiled attempt to muscle the independent Federal Reserve into lowering interest rates in the short term, as Trump wants, and subordinating monetary policy to the political exigencies of the sitting president in the long term.

By going public, Powell put financial markets and central bankers around world on notice about Trump’s most extreme move yet to undermine Fed independence.

The criminal investigation and the subpoenas it yielded were just the latest step in Trump’s year-long effort to bring the Fed to heel. He already attempted to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook on bogus claims of mortgage fraud. That case — which tests whether the Fed will remain truly independent — is pending before the Supreme Court, which will hear oral arguments next week. More broadly, the Federal Reserve is at risk from Trump’s wide-ranging attack on independent agencies, though the Roberts Court has already indicated that may be a bridge too far even for justices enthusiastic to extend their ahistorical unitary executive theory.

While Powell is the proximate target of this retaliatory criminal investigation, he may not be the ultimate target. Powell’s term as Federal Reserve chairman ends in May, and Trump says he’s already decided on a successor for Powell, though he hasn’t divulged yet whom it will be. As the Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip notes, the subpoenas are a message to new incoming chair and the other fed governors (Powell’s term as a governor doesn’t end until 2028) that the president has them on a short leash.

Among the details:

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte was a “driving force” behind the subpoena, Bloomberg reports. For his part, Pulte said, “I don’t know anything about it, and I would defer (sic) you to the DOJ.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Trump told NBC News, using an oft-repeated phrasing that has sometimes proven in the past to be patently false.
D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro “approved” on the investigation in November, the NYT reports, and prosecutors in her office have made “multiple” document requests of Powell’s staff regarding the renovation project.
“I will oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed—including the upcoming Fed Chair vacancy—until this legal matter is fully resolved,” Sen. Thom Tillis said on X.

Headline Whiff of the Day

If your headline on the bogus pre-textual “investigation” of the Federal Reserve is indistinguishable from what you would have used for a good old-fashioned political scandal, then you are 100% doing it wrong:

WSJ: U.S. Prosecutors Are Investigating Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
WaPo: Justice Department opens a criminal investigation of Fed chair
NYT: Federal Prosecutors Open Investigation Into Fed Chair Powell
CNN: Federal prosecutors open criminal investigation into the Fed and Jerome Powell

Chart of the Day

Quote of the Day

“The total capture of the DOJ, seemingly with very little pushback or resistance, is one of the most striking examples of the capitulation of American elites in the face of authoritarianism. It’s been less than a year, and federal prosecutions or investigations are already completely discredited.”–Filipe Campante, professor at Johns Hopkins University

DOJ Watch

Christopher G. Raia, the head of the FBI’s NYC office, is expected to become deputy FBI director, a return to having a career agent in that role following the departure of Dan Bongino.
Former Special Counsel Jack Smith has launched a new law firm with Tim Heaphy, the lead investigator on the House’s select Jan. 6 committee; Thomas Windom, a former member of Smith’s team investigating the Jan. 6 case; and David Harbach, who worked the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.

Trump Still Living in the Big Lie

President Trump told the NYT last week that he regretted not having the National Guard seize voting machines in swing states after the 2020 election.

Midterms Rat-fucking Watch

In a ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge John Chun of Seattle blocked the Trump administration from threatening to withhold federal election funding for states that refuse to alter their voter registration forms or voting systems to comply with a Trump executive order.
The WaPo has a rundown of the many unprecedented ways Trump is trying to manipulate the outcome of the 2026 midterms:

The administration has gutted the role of the nation’s cybersecurity agency in protecting elections; stocked the Justice Department, Homeland Security Department and FBI from top to bottom with officials who have denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election; given a White House audience to people who, like the president, promote the lie that he won the 2020 election; sued over state and local election policies that Trump opposes; and called for a new census that excludes noncitizens. The wide-ranging efforts seek to expand on some of the strategies he and his advisers and allies used to try to reverse the 2020 results that culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

2026 Ephemera

Former Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) will challenge incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), a big candidate recruitment win for Democrats trying to improve their long-shot chances of winning the Senate this year. Peltola lost her 2024 re-election bid to Republican Nick Begich III.

Racism Remains Trump’s Rosetta Stone

In a NYT interview, Trump said the civil rights movement resulted in white people being “very badly treated.”

Sign of the Times

A suspect has been arrested in an arson attack on a Jackson, Mississippi synagogue.

Mass Deportation Watch

After being shut out of the federal investigation, Minnesota has launched its own probe of last week’s fatal ICE shooting.
On Thursday, the day after the Minneapolis shooting, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem reinstated limits preventing lawmakers from making unannounced visits to immigration facilities. On Saturday, officials used the new guidance to block Minnesota Democratic Reps. Angie Craig, Ilhan Omar, and Kelly Morrison from accessing a detention facility in Minneapolis.
Since July, ICE has fired into or at vehicles 13 times leaving at least eight people shot with two confirmed dead, the WSJ reports.

Today in Population Trends

The U.S. population is projected to peak at 364 million people in 2056 and then begin to decline, according to a new Congressional Budget Office estimate that reduces the population peak from prior estimates and speeds up the date when the U.S. population begins to decline.

Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.

Adherents of Christian Reconstructionism Seek Authority Over Civil Society, Law and Culture

Posted on January 12, 2026January 12, 2026 by John Light

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published by The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Christian Reconstructionism is a theological and political movement within conservative Protestantism that argues society should be governed by biblical principles, including the application of biblical law to both personal and public life.

Taking shape in the late 1950s, Christian Reconstructionism developed into a more organized movement during the 1960s and 1970s.

It was born from the ideas of theologian R. J. Rushdoony, an influential Armenian-American Calvinist philosopher, theologian and author. In his 1973 book, “The Institutes of Biblical Law,” Rushdoony argued that Old Testament laws should still apply to modern society. He supported the death penalty not only for murder but also for offenses listed in the text such as adultery, blasphemy, homosexuality, witchcraft and idolatry.

As a scholar of political and religious extremism, I am familiar with this movement. Its following has been typically very small — never more than a few thousand committed adherents at its peak. But since the 1980s, its ideas have spread far beyond its limited numbers through books, churches and broader conservative Christian networks.

The movement helped knit together a network of theologians, activists and political thinkers who shared a belief that Christians are called to “take dominion” over society and exercise authority over civil society, law and culture.

These ideas continue to resonate across many areas of American religious and political life.

Origins of Christian Reconstructionism

Rushdoony’s ideas were born from a radical interpretation of Reformed Christianity — a branch of Protestant Christianity that follows the teachings of John Calvin and other reformers. It emphasizes God’s authority, the Bible as the ultimate guide and salvation through God’s grace rather than human effort.

Rushdoony’s ideas led him to found The Chalcedon Foundation in 1965, a think tank and publishing house promoting Christian Reconstructionism. It served as the movement’s main hub, producing books, position papers, articles and educational materials on applying biblical law to modern society.

It helped train Greg Bahnsen, an Orthodox Presbyterian theologian, and Gary North, a Christian reconstructionist writer and historian, both of whom went on to take key leadership roles in the movement.

At the heart of reconstructionism lies the conviction that politics, economics, education and culture are all arenas where divine authority should reign. Secular democracy, they argued, was inherently unstable, a system built on human opinion rather than divine truth.

These ideas were, and remain, deeply controversial. Many theologians, including conservatives within the Reformed tradition, rejected Rushdoony’s argument that ancient Israel’s civil laws should apply in modern states.

Christian dominionism and different networks

Nonetheless, reconstructionist ideas grew as people who more broadly believed in dominionism began to align with it. Dominionism is a broader ideology advocating Christian influence over culture and politics without requiring literal enforcement of biblical law.

Dominionism did not begin as a single, unified movement. Rather, it emerged in overlapping strands during the same period that Christian Reconstructionism was developing.

Between the 1960s and 1980s, Christian Reconstructionism helped turn dominionist beliefs into an explicit political project by grounding them in theology and outlining how biblical law should govern society. Religion historian Michael J. McVicar explains that Rushdoony’s work advocated applied biblical law as both a theological and political alternative to secular governance. This helped in influencing the trajectory of the Christian right.

At the same time, parallel streams — especially within charismatic and Pentecostal circles — advanced similar claims about Christian authority over society using different theological language.

The broad network of those who believe in Christian dominionism includes several approaches: Rushdoony’s reconstructionism, which provides the theological foundation, and charismatic kingdom theology.

Charismatic kingdom theology, which emerged in Pentecostal and charismatic circles, teaches that believers — empowered by the Holy Spirit — should shape politics, culture and society before Christ’s return.

Unlike reconstructionism, it emphasizes prophecy and spiritual authority rather than formal biblical law; it seeks influence over institutions such as government, education and culture.

What unites them is the idea that Christian faith should be the basis of the nation’s moral and political order.

Taken together, I argue that these strands have reinforced one another, creating a larger movement of thinkers and activists than any single approach could achieve alone.

From reconstructionism to the New Apostolic Reformation

Christian reconstructionist and dominionist ideas gained wider popularity through C. Peter Wagner, a leading charismatic theologian who helped shape the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, by adapting elements of Christian Reconstructionism. NAR is a charismatic movement that builds on dominionist ideas by emphasizing the use of spiritual gifts and apostolic leadership to shape society.

Wagner emphasized spiritual warfare, prophecy and modern apostles taking control of seven key areas — family, church, government, education, media, business and the arts — to reshape society under biblical authority. This is known as the “Seven Mountains Mandate.”

Both revisionist and dominionist movements share the belief that Christians should lead cultural institutions.

Wagner’s dominion theology, however, adapts Christian Reconstructionism to a charismatic context, transforming the goal of a Christian society into a spiritually driven movement aimed at influencing culture and governments worldwide.

Doug Wilson and homeschooling

Another key bridge between reconstructionism and contemporary dominionist thought is Doug Wilson, a pastor and author in Moscow, Idaho.

Though Wilson distances himself from some of reconstructionism’s harsher edges, he draws heavily from Rushdoony’s intellectual framework. Wilson’s influence can be seen in publications such as “Reforming Marriage,” where he argues for applying biblical principles to law, education and family life.

A grey-haired man in a blue suit speaks into a microphone while gesturing with his finger. — Doug Wilson, a pastor and author in Idaho, Moscow. Liesbeth Powers/Moscow-Pullman Daily News, CC BY

He has promoted Christian schools, traditional family roles and living out a “Christian worldview” in everyday life, bringing reconstructionist ideas into new areas of society.

Through his writings, teaching and leadership within the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches — the CREC — network, Wilson encourages a vision of society shaped by Christian values, connecting reconstructionist thought to contemporary cultural engagement.

Wilson’s publishing house, Canon Press, and his classical school movement have brought these ideas into thousands of Christian homes and classrooms across the U.S. His local congregation — the Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho — numbers around 1,300.

The Christian homeschooling movement offers parents a curriculum steeped in reformed theology and resistance to secular education.

Enduring influence

Some critics warn that the fusion of dominionist and reconstructionist theology with political action can weaken pluralism and democratic norms by pressuring laws and policies to reflect a single religious worldview. They argue that even moderated forms of these visions challenge the separation of church and state. They risk undermining the rights of religious minorities, nonreligious citizens and others who do not share the movement’s beliefs.

Supporters frame their mission as the renewal of a moral society, one in which divine authority provides the foundation for human flourishing.

Today, Christian Reconstructionism operates through small but influential networks of churches, Christian homeschool associations and media outlets. Its reach extends far beyond its original movement.

Even among those unfamiliar with Rushdoony, the political and theological patterns he helped shape remain visible in modern evangelical activism and the ongoing debates over religion’s place in American public life.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Authoritarianism Will Be Televised

Posted on January 10, 2026January 9, 2026 by Kate Riga

Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️

In the 48 hours since ICE officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, the Trump administration has concocted a few justifications: she was trying to run the agents over, she’s a “domestic terrorist,” part of a “lunatic fringe,” that the poor, innocent agents were simply trying to free their car from the snow.

Continue reading →