Letters from an American - January 29, 2026

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

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January 29, 26. 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's shooting of VA intensive care nurse Alex Preti 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 30, 29, 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-Laworthy 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 6th, 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 Preti, former president's 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 is 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 the DNI is to coordinate information from various intelligence agencies to make sure the president has good intelligence for making national security decisions. But Josh Dossi, Dustin Volz, and Sadie Germann 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 Russiagate 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, 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 showed that Trump paid no income tax to the U.S. 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, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in.

in a false light and negatively affected President Trump. This lawsuit is different from the ones seeking $230 million from the government for the FBI search of his residents at Mara 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. 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.

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, Dead in Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.