"There is a foreign manipulation of the information which has given rise to stupid and unacceptable comments from many people, including foreign leaders...."

"All the people who speak ill of our country at the moment, they are people who do not like France. Those people annoy me.... In these moments you see who likes France and who does not. All the people who speak badly of us now do not like our country."

Said French President Macron, quoted in "‘Stupid’ of Trump to blame immigration for riots, suggests Macron/French president singles out ‘those in campaign mode’ in swipe at Donald Trump and Binyamin Netanhayu’s comments on migrants and Muslims" (London Times).

What Trump said was: "France is burning. The immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country. Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!"

And, at a campaign rally, he said France is being “conquered, looted, and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists, and communists.”

Meanwhile, Netanyahu attributed the rioting to an “invasion of extremist Islam.”

"Federal agents search Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home as part of a criminal investigation, AP sources say."

AP reports.

The search was conducted by Homeland Security Investigations agents, said the people... More details about the investigation and its focus were not immediately clear, though Vice President JD Vance last May signaled that the Trump administration would investigate Omar for immigration fraud allegations, which she has denied...  The Justice Department said in a statement Monday that HSI agents executed a judicially authorized search warrant....

"The Tetris Company, the company that owns the rights to the classic video game, denounced a clone of the game produced by the Trump administration that has the player block space aliens and zombies from crossing the U.S.-Mexican border."

I'm reading "Tetris Owner Denounces Trump White House Clone of Game/Responding to Build the Wall, an apparent copy of the retro video game, the Tetris Company said 'we take copyright infringement very seriously'" (NYT gift link).

Here's the "arcade" page at whitehouse.gov and, clicking through, here is the "Build the Wall" game that is, basically, Tetris. 

"In 2022 he claimed credit for organizing a notorious dinner for Mr. Trump and Mr. West that also included the white supremacist Nick Fuentes."

"(Mr. Yiannopoulos claimed the meeting was an ambush, meant to 'make Trump’s life miserable.') Two years later, Mr. Yiannopoulos joined [Kanye] West’s exploratory campaign for president. Mr. Yiannopoulos, who was openly gay and often said he was attracted to Mr. Trump, announced in 2017 that he had been married to a man who is a U.S. citizen, but never revealed the full identity of that person. He later claimed that he was 'ex-gay,' and had 'demoted' his husband to the role of 'housemate.'"

From "Milo Yiannopoulos, a Right-Wing Provocateur, Is Arrested by ICE/Mr. Yiannopoulos, a prominent early supporter of President Trump, was detained at the New Orleans airport. The Trump administration publicized his arrest and shared a mug shot" (NYT gift link).

• Is there some kind of idea that if you're not sexually attracted to your spouse you're not married anymore?! Good luck in divorce court.

• Here's the 2022 NYT article about the "notorious dinner": "Trump’s Latest Dinner Guest: Nick Fuentes, White Supremacist/The former president’s table for four at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday also included Kanye West, whose antisemitic statements have made him an entertainment-industry outcast."

• Being a prankster may cause you to imagine that the rules don't apply to you, but no one really thinks they don't. 

"Critics say T.P.S. is a problem because it’s not really temporary. Look at the Salvadorans, they say."

"They first became eligible for T.P.S. in 1990 because of the violent civil war in their country. Another wave came after two devastating earthquakes in 2001. Decades on, there are about 190,000 of them here, living and working legally. (At least for now — their protected status is slated to end in September.)"

From "Protected No More" (NYT gift link).

"What Trump did NOT do was even purport to show a single ineligible voter voted in the 2020 election, or..."

"... that any voting machines were actually compromised, voting machines or voter registration databases breached, or election results inaccurately reported. Overall, this was an underwhelming announcement delivered with low energy that changes nothing about how state and local election administrators should run elections. If his government had actual evidence of noncitizen voting, there would be indictments; Trump has been hounding US attorneys to bring such cases, and the fact that he hasn’t shows that these claims likely have no legs.... He also did not offer anything new by way of policy proposals...."

Writes Rick Hasen, in "Trump’s Underwhelming Announcement on Voting Does Not Even Purport to Show That Any Illegal Votes Were Cast in the 2020 Election or That Voting Machines Have Been Hacked or Vote Totals Inaccurate; He Also Made a Pitch to Pass the SAVE America Act But Offered No New Federal Mandates" (Election Law Blog).

See for yourself: 

He started off as if he really wanted to give a State of the Union speech:

"In its 6-to-3 ruling, the court said noncitizens must fully cross the border to gain the right to apply for asylum. The court’s conservative majority said migrants standing in Mexico do not 'arrive' by 'attempting, and failing, to set foot in this country.'"

From "Supreme Court Allows Trump to Block Asylum Seekers at Border/A policy of turning back asylum seekers at the border was rescinded in 2021, but the Trump administration wants the flexibility to reinstate it as a tool for border control" (NYT).

Here's the full opinion: Mullin v. El Otro Lado. Excerpt from the majority opinion, written by Justice Alito:

This case presents a straightforward question: whether an alien1 who seeks to enter the United States from Mexico “arrives in the United States” when he or she is still in Mexico. In the decision below, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit answered “yes.” That is wrong. In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person “arrives in” a place—for example, a house, a city, or a country—before the person enters that place. The context in which the phrase “arrives in the United States” is used in the immigration statutes at issue here supports an ordinary-meaning reading. So does the presumption against extraterritoriality. We therefore reverse.

 From Justice Sotomayor's dissenting opinion (joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson):

The Court’s illogical interpretation is driven almost entirely by a fixation on a single word: “in.” Words, however, must be read in context and with attention to how they fit into the statute as a whole. The majority ignores the statutory context and history, not to mention the longstanding position of the Executive Branch, all of which show that any noncitizen arriving at our doorstep and seeking admission must be inspected and allowed to apply for asylum, regardless of whether her foot has crossed the threshold....

"The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to end humanitarian protections that have permitted hundreds of thousands of people from Haiti and Syria..."

"... to live and work legally in the United States. President Trump has pushed to terminate the program, known as Temporary Protected Status, as part of his broader crack down on immigration. The program was created by Congress with bipartisan support in 1990 to provide temporary legal status to people whose home countries were deemed unsafe because of war, natural disasters or other crises."

The NYT reports in "Supreme Court Lets Trump End Deportation Protection for Haitians and Syrians/President Trump has pushed to rescind Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of people from countries convulsed by humanitarian crises."

Here's the full opinion: Mullin v. Doe. Excerpt from the majority opinion, written by Justice Alito:

None of the cited statements by either the President or the Secretary was overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications. For example, one may oppose TPS and favor tighter restrictions on immigration for economic or other reasons that have nothing to do with race. And a person without racial bias can provide a harshly unfavorable description of living conditions in some of the countries with TPS designations....Political discourse by prominent public figures is increasingly couched in terms that would have scandalized the public just a short time ago.... But whatever one may think of the cited statements, they are insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people....

From the dissenting opinion by Justice Kagan:

The evidence [the Haiti plaintiffs] have offered includes statements by the President so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print....

"At my direction, the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Niño Guerrero, the infamous leader of Tren De Aragua..."

"... one of the most bloodthirsty Terrorist Organizations on Planet Earth.... This action was coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela, with whom we are working very well. As a result, Tren de Aragua terrorists no longer have safe haven in Venezuela or anywhere else and, under my leadership, we will find these vicious murderers and drugs lords anytime, anyplace, and send them to the depths of hell where they belong. GOD BLESS AMERICA! President DONALD J. TRUMP"

Writes Trump, at Truth Social.

An intervention.

I'm reading, in the London Times, "Why JD Vance is so critical of Keir Starmer’s Britain/Having intervened on the murder of Henry Nowak, the US vice-president was accused of trying to ‘stir up division’ by the put-out prime minister."

Vance "intervened"? Vance published a statement. He said something. (We talked about it here, yesterday.)

The London Times piece is by David Charter. Excerpt:

"A Democratic House candidate in Texas who said she wanted to turn a local immigrant detention center into a facility to imprison and castrate 'American Zionists'..."

"... has Democrats scrambling to distance the party from her and accusing Republicans of behind-the-scenes interference in the race. The contest is happening in a congressional district that Texas lawmakers redrew last year to favor Republicans but that Democrats think can still be won as President Donald Trump’s approval rating plunges. The candidate, Maureen Galindo, finished first among four in the March Democratic primary and is competing in Tuesday’s runoff.... In an Instagram post on Thursday, she said that she 'never said I want Jews in internment camps' but did want to imprison 'billionaire American Zionists' for 'funding genocidal prison systems.'... On May 13, Galindo wrote on Instagram that if elected to Congress, she would write a bill to declare that Zionism is antisemitic, and she would convert an ICE detention center located in her district into a prison with a 'castration processing center' for 'American Zionists' and former ICE officers. She has said she is not antisemitic...."

From "Texas runoff roiled by shadowy spending and a call to imprison 'American Zionists'/Incendiary comments by Maureen Galindo, a Democratic House candidate in Texas, prompted condemnation from Democrats, who accused the GOP of propping her up" (WaPo).

"We can fix this with Republican votes, and we will. Every Democrat has opposed money for the Border Patrol and ICE at a time of great peril."

Said Senator Lindsey Graham, quoted in "Senate Adopts G.O.P. Budget, Defeating Democrats’ Affordability Proposals/Republicans pushed through a budget plan with a $70 billion increase for immigration enforcement after an overnight session in which they beat back Democratic proposals aimed at lowering costs" (NYT).

On the other side, there's Senator Chuck Schumer: "This is what Republicans are fighting for. To maintain two unchecked rogue agencies that are dreaded in all corners of this country instead of reducing your health care costs, your housing costs, your grocery costs, your gas costs."

And as long as we're talking about ICE, there's this: "Tom Homan Invites Pope Leo on ICE Ride-Along: 'They’re Talking About Something They Don’t Understand'" (Mediaite). "I’m speaking for myself, a lifelong Catholic. I wish they’d stay out of immigration. They don’t know what they’re talking about. Because if they wore my shoes for 40 years and talked to a nine-year-old girl that got raped multiple times, or stood in the back of a tractor trailer with 19 dead aliens at my feet, including a five-year-old boy that baked to death."

"These proceedings improperly threaten an open-ended, freewheeling inquiry into executive branch decision-making on matters of national security..."

"... that implicate ongoing military and diplomatic initiatives. This judicial intrusion into the autonomy of a coequal department cannot be remedied by a later appeal from a contempt conviction."

Wrote Judge Neomi Rao, for the majority, quoted in "Appeals Court Ends Contempt Inquiry Into Deportation Flights/A federal judge’s nearly yearlong effort to investigate whether the Trump administration had violated his order had become a point of contention in the president’s battles with the courts" (NYT): 

Here's the opinion, from the District of Columbia court. The judge below was James E. Boasberg. 

"Attempting a coherent portrait of Groypers can feel a bit like trying to describe the plot of a Surrealist film, or a fantasy board game that takes place in its own universe."

"They greet each other with the salutation 'Christ is King'; they banter about their aspiration to re-create Agartha, a mythological Aryan kingdom supposedly situated somewhere in the earth’s core. Theirs is a would-be party of trolling, of 'discourse porn and conspiracy theories on Adderall,' as one adherent told me. But they see their movement as a gathering storm about to break over American politics. Liberals may think of the Trump era as a tragedy of democratic backsliding and authoritarian malignancy; Groypers view it as a cynical pantomime of a nationalist takeover that never went far enough. Fuentes has become the gleeful narrator of this dashed dream, building a career in part by insisting that Trump’s pledge to put America first has curdled into a lie. 'Nick said that Trump’s going to simp for Israel,' G. told me. 'He’s totally going to cozy up to the donors. He’s not going to give us mass deportations. He’s not actually going to advance any of our interests except performatively, to appease us. And, sure enough, that’s exactly what happened.'"

Writes Antonia Hitchens, in "How the Internet Fringe Infiltrated Republican Politics/Inside the battle for the post-maga G.O.P." (The New Yorker).

"President Donald Trump plans to sit in on Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing on birthright citizenship, making him the first sitting president to attend oral arguments at the nation’s highest court."

AP reports.

It’s not the first time Trump has considered showing up for a high court hearing. Last year, Trump said that he badly wanted to attend a hearing on whether he overstepped federal law with his sweeping tariffs, but he decided against it, saying it would have been a distraction....

“I’m going,” Trump said, when the upcoming arguments in the birthright citizenship case were mentioned. To a follow-up question clarifying that he planned to go in person, Trump said, “I think so, I do believe.”

He sat in court when they were trying him for those crimes they convicted him of. He knows how to sit in court.

From the transcript of the press conference:

"I am pleased to report that the United States of America, and the country of Iran, have had, over the last two days, very good and productive conversations..."

"... regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East. Based on the tenor and tone of these in-depth, detailed, and constructive conversations, which will continue throughout the week, I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five-day period, subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

Writes President Donald J. Trump at Truth Social. He's got it in all caps. He's shouting it from the rooftop, I guess. That doesn't make it true, but I hope it's true.

UPDATE: "Oil Prices Tumble and Stocks Rise as Trump Backs Off Threats to Iran Infrastructure" (NYT)("Despite Tehran responding to Mr. Trump by saying that no such talks were taking place, the gains in stocks and drop in oil mostly held").

"Legal observers exist to help vindicate the First Amendment rights of the assembled. According to the National Lawyers Guild, which formalized the practice..."

"... such observers 'create documentation during events which can later be use (sic) in defense cases, public statements, and litigation which aims to hold law enforcement agencies accountable for the actions of their officers.' The Guild notes that legal observation has its roots in the Black Panthers’ 'cop watch' activities of the late 1960s.... In 1968, in connection with anti-war and racial justice demonstrations in New York City, the Guild 'took components from this practice' of cop watch to develop its legal observer program – the self-described 'eyes and ears' of a larger infrastructure of 'arrest hotlines, jail support teams, community bail funds ... attorney referral networks, and more.' Those who have adopted the Guild’s practice, such as the Minnesota ICE Watch group with which Renee] Good was reportedly affiliated, have advocated for activities that blur the line between observation and participation in protests...."

Writes Benjamin Weingarten in "The Grey Zone: When Do Protest Observers Become Lawbreaking Participants?" (Real Clear Investigations).

"President Trump Gaggles with Press on Air Force One En Route Palm Beach, FL, Jan. 31, 2026."

I'm going to pick through the transcript and will update in about an hour. Meantime, you can pick over the text and pull out your favorite highlights

ADDED: From the YouTube transcript:

"The weekly gatherings of knitters at Needle & Skein, a yarn store in Minneapolis, are typically filled with giggles and storytelling."

"But, earlier this month, a heaviness hung in the air. 'It was just collective exhaustion,' said Paul Neary, a shop employee. 'Minnesotans — we're not going to say the big thing, but we often know what the big thing is just by looking at each other.'... They pulled out their knitting needles and got to work. Neary created the pattern that has now become the well-known 'Melt the ICE' hat, a red beanie-shaped cap topped with a braided tassel.... As a history buff, Neary chose the pattern based on a Norwegian hat used to protest the Nazi occupation of Norway in the 1940s. The hats were called 'nisselue,' which roughly translates to Santa hat...."

From "A red hat, inspired by a symbol of resistance to Nazi occupation, gains traction in Minnesota" (NPR).

"Peter Fritzsche, a history professor at the University of Illinois, said the Nazis were operating on 'obviously a very, very different scale,' but with ICE's presence in Minnesota, people can still feel 'occupied.'... Wendy Woloson, a history professor at Rutgers University at Camden and fellow knitter, said the red hats are a classic response of the crafting world. When knitters want to help in their community, they put their hands to work, she said.... She recalled the pink 'pussy hats' from the 2017 Women's March...."

It's poignant, this urge to do something that finds its release in knitting. It's something very calm indoor people can do when they want to feel they too are engaging in activism. 

ADDED: Speaking of hats in Minnesota, I just ran across this fascinating passage in a NYT article from April 2025:

"Um, the President of the United States called me Monday morning and asked me to deploy here. I got here Monday evening, and I'm staying until the problem's gone."

Said Tom Homan, in Minneapolis, just now. I'm quoting from the transcript at YouTube, here, along with video.

What follows is my edit of the high points from the 35-minute performance: