The Authoritarianism Will Be Televised  

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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. 

Their attempt to villainize Good for her own murder gained little traction as contemporaneous video of the killing rocketed around social media, disproving the spin. The footage appears to show Good’s maroon Honda Pilot SUV attempting to exit the scene, and that Ross shot Good while she was turning her car away from him. 

In a new video from Ross’ point of view — published Friday by a right-wing website — Good can be heard saying “I’m not mad at you” seconds before Ross kills her.

Without the videos, we’d be entirely reliant on an administration that habitually lies about ICE’s use of unjustified force — a situation more akin to that in Portland, where Customs and Border Protection officers shot two people Thursday night. The administration claims that the passenger in the car was “a Venezuelan illegal alien affiliated with the transnational Tren de Aragua prostitution ring” (unclear what that is even supposed to mean), that the shooter, as usual, was fearful for his life. In the hours after the shooting, no footage was released. 

This, from the same administration that claimed that Silverio González (the man ICE agents killed in Chicago last September) was shot after trying to run over agents and dragging one to the point of “severe injuries.” In surveillance footage released later, González can be seen backing up to drive away while agents stood on either side of the car, and one agent can be heard describing his injuries as “nothing major.”  

The Department of Homeland Security also claimed that officers in Chicago had no choice but to shoot Marimar Martinez several times in October after, DHS claimed, she rammed their cars and threatened them with a semiautomatic weapon. Her lawyer said in court that he had footage of an agent ramming into Martinez’s car, that she had a permitted handgun in her purse that she never removed. In an extremely rare move, the Justice Department asked the judge to dismiss the indictment against her.

Living in the panopticon presents myriad threats of its own, and AI might make this kind of video proof harder to trust in the future. But over the past year, these recordings have been indispensable in fighting the furious torrent of lies and propaganda the administration spews every time its ill-trained agents hurt and kill people.

— Kate Riga

Trump Breaks Protocol, Shares BLS Jobs Numbers Early

In a flippant violation of clearly defined policy, President Donald Trump posted data from the unreleased Bureau of Labor Statistics December jobs report on social media the night before the report was published.

Trump posted a chart to Truth Social on Thursday night that included data for the number of private sector jobs added in 2025, which matched figures in the BLS jobs report released Friday morning, according to Bloomberg. He wasn’t supposed to do that. The president and his economic advisers would’ve been briefed on the jobs report a day early, Bloomberg reports, but a BLS policy directive states in black and white that neither the president nor any of his administration officials can comment on specific economic indicator reports until 30 minutes after the report is released.

Funny enough, Statistical Policy Directive No. 3 was created partly to address criticism about federal data and executive branch commentary coming out simultaneously, according to an Office of Management and Budget notice about the directive. In an era of social media and 24/7 broadcast news, the policy delay is supposed to improve and preserve public trust that the president and his administration aren’t meddling with the data.

Trump’s entire second term, however, has served to erode public trust in the independence of federal data — seemingly by design. 

Since he took office last January, his administration has removed and altered thousands of data sets with no proper notice or even information about which sets were altered and in what ways. He specifically attacked the BLS and politicized the jobs report last summer when he fired former BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer directly after a report showed a sluggish jobs market. And he has publicly sought to force the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates according to his whims, rather than economic data, even installing a member of his administration to the Board of Governors and trying to oust a sitting governor.

Trump in Thursday’s post may have thought he was touting a big gain in employment over the year, but Friday’s jobs report actually suggests the opposite. The U.S. added 584,000 jobs in 2025, compared to 2 million over the same period in 2024. December jobs numbers came in lower than analysts thought, jobs numbers were revised down in October and November, and a high Black unemployment rate, often a canary in a coal mine for impending economic crisis, remained sticky.

— Layla A. Jones

Morning Memo Live!

If you’re a fan of The Weekender and TPM’s other newsletters, then we have an event for you. My colleague David Kurtz, TPM’s editor-at-large who also authors Morning Memo each weekday, will host a Morning Memo Live event at the National Union Building in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 29 beginning at 6:30 p.m. ET.

David will lead a conversation on the politicization of the Justice Department, the campaign of retribution against prosecutors and investigators, and the undermining of DOJ norms and traditions. Guest speakers will include Stacey Young, a DOJ veteran who is the founder and executive director at Justice Connection; former assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Zelinsky, who served on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team; and Lawfare senior editor Anna Bower.

Join us!

— Nicole LaFond

After Helping Sink Trump’s Gerrymandering Dreams In Indiana, GOPer Rethinks Retirement

Indiana Republican state Sen. Greg Walker, who has consistently stood against the Trump administration’s redistricting pressure campaign in the state, announced that he will no longer retire from the Indiana legislature. 

“I felt like it was important for me to continue to stand for Indiana issues instead of Washington politics,” Walker told the Indiana Capital Chronicle. “We’ve seen just a small taste of what federalization of Indiana elections could look like, and may eventually look more like than they do today, and I’m greatly concerned when I see Hoosier politics play a surrogate to those national battles.”

The announcement comes after enough Republicans in the Indiana Senate voted against mid-cycle gerrymandering to sink the Trump administration’s efforts to redraw district lines there last month. Walker was one of many Republicans who voted against the proposal. The rejection represented a significant loss for the Trump administration’s larger gerrymandering nationwide assault. 

Walker has been consistently outspoken against the administration’s pressure on redistricting, saying last month that, despite threats, swatting attempts, and mounting pressure, he refused “to be intimidated” by the Trump administration. 

“I made a choice. I will not let Indiana or any state become subject to the threat of political violence in order to influence legislative product,” Walker said.  

— Khaya Himmelman

Momentum on Government Funding

The House passed three appropriations bills on Thursday in a largely bipartisan 397-28 vote. The three bills grouped into a minibus would fund the Departments of Energy, Commerce, Interior and Justice, the EPA, water programs and federal science initiatives through the end of the current fiscal year.

The House-passed spending package comes as Congress tries to pass the remaining nine appropriations bills or settle on a new continuing resolution before the Jan. 30 deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown.

The minibus will head to the Senate now for a floor vote. Majority Leader John Thune could bring up the package as early as next week though the exact timing is still unclear and other floor businesses could hold the minibus up.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-OK) said this week they are working on the release of a new spending package, which could come as early as this weekend.

House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) also said the negotiations over the remaining bills have been “productive” and that negotiations are “progressing at a pace that is very encouraging.”

“As of this evening, I am confident we will be able to complete our work and avoid any kind of continuing resolution prior to the Jan. 30 deadline,” DeLauro said Tuesday. 

— Emine Yücel