Letters from an American - January 21, 2026

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

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January 21st, 26. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this morning, a visibly exhausted president of the United States of America rambled in angry free association in a speech before the world's leaders. At one point, speaking of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, dignitaries, he told the audience, until the last few days when I told them about Iceland, they loved me. They called me daddy, right last time? Very smart man said, He's our daddy. He's running it.

He meant Greenland. The President of the United States went on to give a virulently racist, insulting, rambling speech in which he complained that people call him a dictator, but that sometimes you need a dictator. More than anything, though, the speech demonstrated his mental unfitness for his position. Tom Nichols of the Atlantic wrote,

No one can be watching this Davos speech and reach any conclusion but that the president of the United States is mentally disturbed and that something is deeply wrong with him. This is both embarrassing and extremely dangerous. Andrew Eger of the bulwark wrote of Trump's hostility to traditional U.S. allies today. As long as I live, I don't think I'll get over this pure, dumb fact. Trump told his fans he had to blow up the liberal order because it was the only way to secure the very benefits the liberal order

was already bringing us. Eger likened this to Aesop's fable about the greedy farmer who butchered the goose that laid golden eggs. Later, Trump backed off on the tariffs he had threatened to impose on the country standing against his seizure of Greenland, claiming he had just had a very productive meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Ruta and had formed the framework for a future deal with respect to Greenland and, in fact, the entire Arctic region. This solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America and all NATO nations. Because of that

framework, he said, he would not be imposing the tariffs he had threatened on those nations opposing his designs on NATO. As Ron Filipkowski of Midas News noted, this was not a new deal, but Trump's surrendering. The U.S. and NATO have always been free to do whatever they want in Greenland, but Trump had insisted he needed to own it for psychological reasons. Now he has reverted back to the original agreement. Amongst all of Trump's other lies and threats at his Davos speech, one stood out. Talking about Russia's war against Ukraine, he said, It's a war that should have never started, and it wouldn't have started if the 2020 U.S. presidential election weren't rigged.

It was a rigged election. Everybody knows that. They found out. This is Trump's big lie, and it has been thoroughly debunked. The 2020 presidential election won. stolen from him. But then Trump went on to say, people will soon be prosecuted for what they did. It's probably breaking news, but it should be. It was a rigged election. You can't have rigged elections. This is an astonishing threat. It says he intends to prosecute Department of Justice officials and others for refusing to help him steal the presidency. The timing of this particular threat is not accidental. Tomorrow, at 10 o'clock Eastern time, former special counsel Jack Smith, who

investigated Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, will testify publicly about the evidence that led a grand jury to indict Trump and led Smith himself to conclude a jury would convict Trump. Lately, Trump has been rehashing his grievances from that election, repeating debunked claims of rigged voting machines and so on. The issue is clearly on his mind. Jack Smith knows what happened. Trump knows that Smith knows what happened, and it appears Trump is eager to discredit him at the very least.

While Trump is in Davos, the violence from immigration and customs enforcement, or ICE, and other federal agents that has been obvious for a while, has ramped up in what appears to be an attempt to spark violence. Yesterday, Brooklyn Park, Minnesota police chief, Mark Bruley, told reporters that the police were getting repeated complaints about violations of civil rights by ICE and that ICE agents were stopping off-duty police officers of color. He recounted that ICE agents had stopped an off-duty police officer,

demanded her paperwork, she is a U.S. citizen, and then held her at gunpoint. When she tried to film the interaction, they knocked the phone out of her hand. Finally, when she identified herself as a police officer, they got in their vehicles and left. This isn't just important because it happened to off-duty police officers, Bruelly said,

but because our officers know what the Constitution is, they know what right and wrong is, and they know when people are being targeted, and that's what they were. If it is happening to our officers, it pains me to think of how many of our community members are falling victim to this every day. Yesterday, Del Cameron of Wired

reported that internal ICE planning documents show that the agency is planning to spend up to $50 million on jail space and a privately run transfer hub in Minnesota for immigrant detainees from Minnesota and four neighboring states. Today, the El Paso County Office of the Medical Examiner ruled that the death of 55-year-old Cuban-born Haraldo Lunas Campos

detained in Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, was a homicide. Camp East Montana is a tent encampment where migrants have reported poor conditions and physical abuse. Lunas Campos died of exfixiation, after guards put pressure on his neck and chest during an altercation, during which Luna's compost asked for his medication. Two detainees testified that they saw guards choking Luna's Campos,

who repeatedly told them he couldn't breathe. The Trump administration has since tried to deport the two witnesses. Douglas McMillan of the Washington Post reported that at least 30 people died in detention last year, the highest number in 20 years. Six people, including Lunas Campos and another detainee at Camp East Montana, died in the first two weeks of 2026. Ice agents are hanging around schools threatening children.

Reg Chapman of CBS News in Minnesota reported today that ICE has detained a five-year-old preschooler after using him as bait to get someone in his house to open their door. Then ICE transferred him and his father from Minnesota to detention in Texas. His family has an active asylum case and it does not have an order of deportation, meaning they are in the U.S. legally. Video footage from Minneapolis also shows a federal agent spraying chemical irritants directly into the face of a man agents had pinned and held to the ground. Other video shows Customs and Border Protection Leader Greg Bevino throwing tear gas at peaceful protesters. This afternoon, Rebecca Santana of the Associated Press reported that ICE has been breaking into homes under the authority provided by a secret memo of May 12, 2025, signed by the acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, saying that federal agents do not need a judge's

warrant to force their way into people's homes. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, one of the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights, says, the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. As Joyce White-Vance of civil discourse notes, courts have always interpreted that amendment to mean that a judge must sign a warrant to allow law enforcement to break into a home.

Now, the Department of Homeland Security says it does not need such a judicial warrant. but can simply use an administrative warrant signed by an official at the Department of Homeland Security, DHS, or ICE, if immigrants believed to be inside a home have a final order of removal. The legal training manual for DHS itself quotes a 1984 Supreme Court decision that the physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.

Immigration Law Specialist Aaron Reiklin-Mellick noted that this memo is a big deal. It is the federal government conspiring in secret to subvert the Fourth Amendment. Two ice whistleblowers provided the memo to Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat of Connecticut, explaining that they were shown the memo. They suggested that ICE supervisors seemed to understand the order was unlawful, as the supervisors only told agents about the memo rather than sharing a hard copy with them, and that at least one long-time employee resigned rather than be forced to teach material they thought was illegal. Blumenthal wrote a scathing letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Christy Noem and ICE acting director Lyons,

noting that the new policy is based on a secret legal interpretation and is directly contrary to Fourth Amendment law and agency practice. He demanded to know how many DHS agents had been trained on the memo and where the training had taken place, how many homes had been broken into under the terms of the memo, the legal determination for the memo, and so on. Every American should be terrified by this secret ICE policy authorizing its agents to kick down your door and storm into your home, Blumenthal wrote on social media. It is an unlawful and morally repugnant policy that exemplifies the kind of dangerous, disgraceful abuses America is seeing in real time. In our democracy, with vanishingly rare exceptions, the government is barred from breaking into your home without approval from a real judge. Government agents have no right to ransack your bedroom or terrorize your kids on a whim or personal desire. I am deeply grateful to brave whistleblowers who have come forward and put the rights of their fellow Americans first, Blumenthal wrote.

My Republican colleagues who claim to value personal rights against government overreach now have an opportunity and obligation to prove that rhetoric is real. Senator Ruben Gallego, a Democrat of Arizona, who at the beginning of 2025 was considered a moderate on immigration, wrote, Yeah, I am not voting to give whatever ICE has become more taxpayer money. It's no longer an immigration. immigration enforcement arm of the U.S. government. Now ICE has landed in Portland and in

Lewiston-Auburn, Maine, where it claims to have 1,400 targets for arrest. 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.