Issue: Environment

BRRR. The weather outside is cold (a near record low of 4 degrees early this morning in Washington, D.C.), and the weekend could be worse, with another major storm brewing for Saturday. Wow. And D.C. (allegedly) hasn’t yet properly addressed the first snowstorm. These 12 cities will be hit hardest.

Talking about things besides the weather, we’re expecting two important things today: a Senate vote that avoids a government shutdown and President Trump’s announcement of his choice to head the Federal Reserve.

In what is probably one of the most important calls of Trump’s second term, the Fed Chair nod is expected go to Kevin Warsh. The Wall Street Journal asks whether the former Fed governor would be “a hawk or a dove.” A Wall Street Journal editorial hails Warsh as the right man for the job. Axios weighs in on the pick. The position requires Senate confirmation.

The deal to avert a shutdown is not guaranteed to pass:

But the single biggest obstacle to a deal — how long the DHS funding patch should last — was hammered out by late afternoon between Democrats and the White House. Under the deal, Washington will have two additional weeks to negotiate a compromise over how to rein in the conduct of immigration agents, who killed Pretti and one other U.S. citizen in Minneapolis this month.

The Republicans would be advised to keep a wary eye on the minority party’s proposed reforms for ICE. One, a judicial warrant requirement is “backdoor amnesty“:

By insisting on judicial warrants for all immigration arrests, Senate Democrats aren’t reforming immigration enforcement; they are eliminating it. Mere unlawful presence, a civil violation, cannot trigger a judicial arrest warrant. The result would be de facto amnesty for millions living in the interior, leaving Border Patrol and ICE with authority only at the border. This isn’t due process — it is open-borders policy wrapped in legal procedure.

Reactions to the Fed nomination and Senate vote will probably be drowned out by Minneapolis. “Trump’s accomplishments on the economy are drowned out by the Minnesota drumbeat,” argues Kimberley Strassel in a column headlined “Trump’s Cowbell Moment“:

America craved a return to Trumpian border security, just as it looked hopefully to a redux of Mr. Trump’s even bigger first-term accomplishment: economic vitality. Yet the lesson White House adviser Stephen Miller seems to have taken from border success is akin to Christopher Walken’s in the famous SNL skit: “I gotta have more cowbell.” Until a tinnitus-deranged America finally rebelled. …

Republicans began voicing concerns to the White House last fall, as stories about immigration raids, Alligator Alcatraz, National Guard deployments and daily tariff threats crowded out all else. They were reassured that 2026 would bring new focus, as the start of the reconciliation tax cuts and midterms.

Border Czar Tom Homan is in Minneapolis trying to calm tensions there. “Just give us your criminals,” is the Trump administration’s plea to Minneapolis officials, and an editorial in the Wall Street Journal calls it a reasonable request:

What the feds say they need, however, is better coordination from Minnesota officials, so that Immigration and Customs Enforcement can pick up illegal migrants who are already under arrest.

“More agents in the jail,” Mr. Homan said, “means less agents in the street.” That’s safer for both ICE and Minneapolis residents, and it also means fewer “collateral arrests.”

If you read the editorial, you’ll be hit by the chilling notion that instead of calming down a fraught situation, activists might prefer exploiting for political gain the tragedies that already have occurred.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, meanwhile, will leave her Senate seat to run for governor of Minnesota. Anti-ICE activists have already made their demands known. Klobuchar said she won’t “sugarcoat” how difficult the Trump administration has made life in Minneapolis. Well, let me say something, without sugar coating: Your big challenge, Senator Klobuchar, will not be the Trump administration but the state’s massive welfare fraud that unfolded on the watch of the Democrats. Criminal complicity can’t be ruled out.

And what a challenge. “The Real Reason Immigration and Welfare States Don’t Mix,” by Theodore Dalrymple, shows that this is particularly applicable to Minnesota, with its large Somali population. It has a lot to do with imported cultural norms:

I first began to think about this 50 years ago in Rhodesia. It was clear to me that the regime as it then was could not last, irrespective of whether or not it deserved to do so. But it seemed to me unlikely that a Western parliamentary regime would take its place. On reflection, my puzzle over why I, on my salary as a junior doctor, could live like a king, while an African doctor in precisely the same financial position could not, provided an obvious explanation.

I came from a culture in which my salary was mine to do with as I pleased; the African doctor came from a culture which imposed upon him inescapable social obligations, to his extended family, his village, his clan, obligations of which mere taxation at source did not relieve him.

This was not morally wrong; indeed, in some ways it was morally admirable; but a population of people with such inescapable obligations was not one from which a relatively honest and disinterested polity could easily emerge, especially once the worm of material envy and ambition had been introduced into it, as it had been by colonialism. A descent into a kleptocratic chaos was only to be expected.

It would not be at all surprising if Somali immigrants regarded funds for general welfare as a resource to be looted: in fact, it would be surprising if they did not. In 1994, the foremost scholar of Somali history, poetry and society, the late IM Lewis, wrote a book title Blood and Bone: The Call of Kinship in Somali Society. 

Well, I used a lot of space for that, but it’s illuminating on so many levels. But now I must economize. … Holy Smoke: Former CNN personality Don Lemon has been arrested for his part in a Minnesota church invasion by an anti-ICE mob. … Let’s Radicalize the Nurses: “Zohran Mamdani’s radical DSA group givea astonishing anti-cop and ICE lecture to striking nurses,” Kirsten Fleming writes in an exclusive for the New York Post. … Teach Your Children to Spy Day: “Loophole in Birthright Citizenship Lets Adversaries Build Undetectable Spy Networks” is a chilling Daily Caller expose. … USA Today’s conservative Ingrid Jaques says we need more Senator John Fettermans. … Don’t Fight the Last War: Douglas Murray says stop thinking like it’s 2003. Iran is not Iran. Murray writes:

[T]here are a lot of differences between 2003 and today.

Not least is that today it is the Iranian people who are out on the streets protesting their own government. It is the Iranian people who have had enough of their tyrannical rulers, with their Islamic extremism and insane anti-American foreign policy that has made the country such a pariah. The Iranian people have a memory of relative freedom before the Ayatollah took charge. And many of them would like that memory to be turned once again into reality.

Just as important is the fact that one of the main reasons why the post-2003 debacle in Iraq happened was precisely because of the Iranian regime. The regime which itself is now teetering.

I want to say a few words about First Lady Melania Trump’s movie premiere for her eponymous movie last night. It sounded like fun. USA TODAY’s coverage reminded me of the informative old party reports in the Washington Post’s old Style section. (I wish the Post would bring them back.) The New York Post gave it the glam treatment. Predictably, the film, encouragingly short by today’s standards, has the Left in a hissy fit. Congratulations, Mrs. Trump!

Bad News: In “Slouching Towards Fort Sumter,” Victor Davis Hanson sees us heading for Civil War. Good News. I’m taking this to mean VDH is back after his health crisis. Rejoice, VDH fans!

“Expansive Winter Storm Snarls the Central and Eastern U.S.,” the Wall Street Journal trumpets. “Land of the Freeze,” the New York Post cover announces.

The “monster” storm is leaving power outages, school closures, and subzero temperatures in its wake:  

A colossal winter storm barreled across an unusually large swath of the nation on Sunday, dumping snow and ice from Oklahoma to the Deep South to New England. The giant system knocked out power to more than a million customers, caused deaths in multiple states, prompted widespread school cancellations, ground travel to a halt and promised more uncertainty during the frigid days to come. …

Commies against Snow Days! Killjoy socialist New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani nixes a snow day for New York school kids, who will instead be cooped up with remote learning. An op-ed at the Wall Street Journal says New York kids were robbed. School Choice. Premiere charter school Success Academy is making a different choice. (More on school choice later.) The country was lucky to have coal for the last few days.  

The snow is calm and beautiful outside my window, so it is jarring to turn to Minneapolis. What a contrast (via the New York Post):

Anti-ICE protesters violently swarmed a Minneapolis hotel where they believed federal officers were staying, hurling items at people inside, smashing its windows, and graffitiing “F–K ICE” across the building’s facade Sunday.  

The large mob descended on the Home2 Suites by Hilton Hotel late Sunday night, as tensions gripped the Twin Cities just one day after Border Patrol agents shot and killed protester Alex Pretti, 37, in Minneapolis.

Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse at the VA, who was tragically killed Saturday, is the second protester to be killed in Minneapolis. “A situation that was already a tinder box now verges on an inferno,” writes National Review’s Andrew McCarthy. McCarthy urges the public not to rush to conclusions (oh sure) and criticizes the Trump administration officials for making “bold” statements prematurely. The Editors of The Free Press lambasted DHS Secretary for her incautious statements. Federal agents on the scene are also voicing “extreme frustration” about administration statements. (Hat tip to RCP for spotting this.)

USA TODAY’S Susan Page did not waste time waiting for a thorough investigation. “’Your eyes don’t lie.’ Trump, ICE, a death and a turning point” is her headline. “Facts, unlike opinions, are hard to come by in Minneapolis,” Ben Cherkin argues in the London Spectator:

Endless replays, as in the case of Renee Good who was shot dead in the city by an ICE officer she drove towards, aren’t helping to draw a consensus. Trump opponents post freeze-frames and selective snippets of the horrible video to hammer home their assertion of out-of-control ICE death squads. The media, eager for click-generating hysteria, fail to report on laws that protect officers when they shoot to kill in self-defense if a gun is sighted during an arrest. Trump supporters, meanwhile post red circles around Pretti’s hand to suggest he’s reaching for his gun.

“The Far-left Network that Helped Put Alex Pretti in Harm’s Way, then Made Him a Martyr” is a Fox Digital headline this morning. Asra Nomani describes “a coordinated web of encrypted chats, street alerts and tracking of ICE ‘Abductors’ in a sophisticated database reviewed by Fox News Digital shows that agitators were already mobilized at the scene where 37-year-old Alex Pretti was killed minutes before any shots were fired.” 

Who was Alex Pretti? For Joan Walsh, writing in the Nation, “Pretti was a good man at a time of great evil.” Miranda Devine sees him as “one more martyr for cynical Democrats.” It is interesting that Pretti had a gun—and WHAT a gun—at the protest. Strange, I haven’t heard any calls for more stringent gun control, even though Pretti’s gun may have accidentally fired.

How fortunate we are that disgraceful Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who is pouring gasoline on the powder keg that is Minneapolis, isn’t a heartbeat away from the presidency. An Unherd piece proposes that Minneapolis is becoming a dual state. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal suggests that it is time for ICE to pause in Minnesota. Simon Hankinston suggests a way for ICE to enforce the law without giving the Left talking points. The odds of a government shutdown suddenly increase due to ICE funding.  

“Is a Four-Year Degree Worth It?” asks an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal. Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock has five ideas to turn the reply to a “yes,” and here are a few of them:

Second, the return on investment matters. Affordability isn’t enough. A college education is one of the largest investments a family will ever make, and there must be an undeniable return. Institutions should be held accountable for student outcomes: Are our graduates getting jobs, pursuing meaningful work, and contributing to their communities? …

Third, re-center higher education on learning rather than political posturing. Too often, colleges and universities have participated in the culture wars. The result is an environment in which students and faculty feel they must toe an ideological line rather than explore ideas that fall outside prevailing norms.

Our institutions must reclaim a narrower, firmer sense of our role. That means embracing institutional neutrality—or restraint, as we call it at Dartmouth—on issues that don’t directly affect our mission or core functions. When we, as institutions, rush to issue statements every time there’s a national or global controversy, we signal there’s a “right” position and that opposing views are unwelcome. …

We must ensure that students can encounter the best arguments, assess evidence and reach their own conclusions. That requires a campus culture where controversial speakers are heard rather than canceled, where disagreement is expected rather than feared, and where people can explore ideas without being defined by them.

The infrastructure for this already exists—it’s the classroom.

While we’re on the subject of education: “Red States Have Many Wins to Celebrate for National School Choice Week”—which, by the way, is this week—is a City Journal headline.

This week marks the 16th year that families and educators across the country celebrate National School Choice Week, and it is an especially important one. After passage of the school choice program in Texas last year, a majority of American school children are eligible for school choice, by one count. Thirty states now run some form of school choice program, and 12 have passed universal school choice laws since 2024, including New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Idaho.

But while we have much to celebrate this week, more work remains to be done.

Oh, What Fun. AEI’s Danielle Pletka eviscerates the Davos crowd. Pletka writes:

Post-Davos, those of us who follow such things were inundated with hand-wringing, put-down-your-pinot-gris, pseudo-intellectual laments about The Rules Based Global Order. Trump, you see, is Threatening it. He is Endangering all that is good about the post-World War II world. Things were So Much Better PT (pre-Trump). America is At Risk. Russia Is Winning. Democracy is Done.

This is garbage, plain and simple. 

It’s a long but eminently worthy piece.

2028 Here We Come: Texas Senator Ted Cruz torched Vice President Vance and ridiculed President Trump’s tariff policy during private meetings with donors, according to tapes obtained by Axios:

The recordings — nearly 10 minutes in total — provide an unvarnished look at how Cruz is positioning himself as a traditional free trade, pro-interventionist Republican ahead of a possible 2028 primary campaign against the less hawkish Vance.

During his talks, Cruz cast Vance as a pawn of conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson. Cruz has accused Carlson of promoting antisemitism and an anti-Israel foreign policy in their well-publicized spats.

California, Here We Don’t Come. And don’t miss “The Great California Wealth Exodus” at The Free Press. The author spoke to 21 billionaires whose servants are packing their bags.

Is there an undercurrent in Iran about something that might happen in Iran? “The Countdown to Iran’s Liberation Has Begun” is the headline of Roger Kimball’s hopeful piece at American Greatness.

Bundle up.

People in the roughly half of the nation (and here) that is expected to be hit by a “historic” storm are desperately trying to get ready.  

Walmart shelves are stripped bare, and supermarkets are swamped as shoppers rush to stock up on emergency supplies:

The storm is forecast to bring heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain beginning Friday and lasting through Monday, raising concerns about widespread power outages, dangerous travel conditions and prolonged disruptions, according to National Weather Service Director Ken Graham.

“Prepare now,” Graham told FOX Weather Thursday. “If you think about power outages, you think about the cold, you need to be prepared to have what you need for a week.”

While you are cuddled up with TikTok during the snow (though Ms. Must hopes you’ll be reading good books instead!), you might be happy with the latest development concerning the controversial app:

TikTok said on Thursday that a deal to spin off its U.S. business to non-Chinese investors has been finalized, marking a new chapter for the popular short-form video app that has been a pawn for years in high-stakes U.S.-China negotiations.

The roster of investors in the deal to save TikTok for Americans is interesting. Hot Air has a post on the ins and outs of the deal. Not saved from the axe is the World Health Organization. President Trump has finalized the U.S. withdrawal from the WHO, and the AP is not pleased:

The withdrawal will hurt the global response to new outbreaks and will hobble the ability of U.S. scientists and pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines and medicines against new threats, said Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University.

“In my opinion, it’s the most ruinous presidential decision in my lifetime,” he said.

If I were a fact checker (an honest one, that is), I would label this claim false. WHO’s abysmal performance in the COVID crisis was cited as a reason to withdraw, according to a Jerusalem Post story, which quotes this from Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the National Institutes of Health:

“The Trump Admin is working to make sure that we have those bilateral agreements in place for that kind of health cooperation — but we don’t need the WHO as an intermediary essentially to push Chinese interests on the American people.”

Yes, I noticed that I had to find this in a paper halfway round the world. You know how the legacy media operates.

How zealous former Special Counsel Jack Smith operated in his quest to help then-candidate Trump add to his mugshot collection was the subject of a contentious hearing yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee. GOP Rep. Chip Roy was furious about phone records of Republican elected officials that piqued the former Special Counsel’s interest:

“Did you target my records and subpoena my phone?” Rep. Chip Roy fumed at Smith, brandishing a poster board behind him of at least 14 Republicans who also had their call logs subpoenaed.

“My understanding is your records were subpoenaed by prosecutors before I became special counsel,” Smith responded to Roy, while elsewhere in his testimony acknowledging that others, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), were targeted. 

Few new details emerged from the ex-special counsel’s testimony, but the venue provided an opportunity for Judiciary Republicans to interrogate Smith about his decision to obtain sitting lawmakers’ phone metadata without their knowledge.

The Federalist highlights nine key moments from the Smith hearing, while Fox Digital contented itself with five top moments. George Washington University law professor and Fox Contributor Jonathan Turley, meanwhile, told Harris Faulkner of the eponymous current events show that Mr. Smith had a career-long habit of “stretching the law beyond the breaking point in case after case.” I heard several pundits predict that Smith’s performance and yesterday’s hearing will lead to the end of the Special Prosecutor’s office. Channeling Edith Piaf, Smith “regrets nothing.”

The Five-Year-Old Boy: The latest anti-ICE horror tale revolves around a five-year-old child, who is alleged to have been “arrested” and “used as bait” to capture his father, an illegal alien. “5-year-old asylum seeker detained as ICE expands enforcement in Minnesota,” says ABC News. Vice President J.D. Vance responded in his Minnesota speech yesterday, summarized by Townhall this way:

Yeah, the father ran away and abandoned his child, so what’s ICE supposed to do, let the kid freeze to death—a point the Vice President Vance made when he was questioned about this incident. 

Powerline’s John Hinderaker characterizes the five-year-old boy story as an urban legend. There are so many reports of alleged transgressions by ICE agents that simply do not get fleshed out. My hunch is MSM reporters rely on the old “too good to check” rubric—they don’t want to see a story evaporate because of inconvenient facts. Meanwhile, “Minneapolis ICE Standoff Has Become the Political Issue CEOs Can’t Ignore,” a Wall Street Journal business story announces:

CEOs have tried their hardest to stay on the political sidelines since President Trump started his second term—and mostly succeeded. Now the pushback against the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis is pulling more of them in.

Some of the country’s biggest companies, including 3M, Medtronic, Ecolab, U.S. Bancorp and UnitedHealth, all have headquarters and thousands of employees in the Twin Cities. Though they have kept largely quiet in public, many of their leaders are trying to navigate the charged issue with employees and community members behind the scenes.

Target—Minneapolis’s best-known corporate brand—is a case in point. The hometown retailer hasn’t issued any public statements since the detention of two local store workers, both U.S. citizens, earlier this month. But its executives agreed to meet with a group of local clergy who protested in the lobby of the company’s headquarters last week.

The company also has circulated updated guidelines for how staff in stores and warehouses should respond to “unannounced immigration-related contacts,” according to documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. 

“How the Deep State Thwarted ICE Administrative Warrants” in the same publication is also recommended. “Bureaucrats falsely claimed the law didn’t allow officers into illegal aliens’ homes,” the piece argues:

Illegal aliens, however, don’t have the same rights as citizens. Under federal immigration law, officers may issue an administrative warrant, which means that the probable-cause finding is made by an executive-branch officer rather than a judicial officer. This is consistent with broad judicial recognition that illegal aliens aren’t entitled to the same Fourth Amendment protections as U.S. citizens. It is also consistent with the Supreme Court’s admonition that the touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is whether the search or seizure is “reasonable,” not whether it is supported by a judicial warrant.

We’ll Always Have Davos: For California Governor Gavin Newsom, the Examiner’s Byron York observes, trolling doesn’t stop at the water’s edge:

While this was going on, Newsom’s social media team in California — the governor’s official press office — was running in high gear. It posted at least 31 clips on X from his session with Smith alone. And other stuff, too. They posted a digitally manipulated photo that appeared to show Trump sitting with Nosferatu at the unveiling of Trump’s “Board of Peace.” It posted another manipulated photo that portrayed Newsom as the brilliant rising sun over the mountains at Davos. And an image that superimposed a golden toilet over the Board of Peace logo.

I see the sun outside my window, but there are still some things I wish to make sure you don’t miss: A National Education Association former employee blows the whistle, making the NEA sound more like a cult than a union. … Liberal Patriot Ruy Texeira says Dems can’t resist the siren song of culture denialism. … Some states play DOGE ball to fight waste, fraud, and abuse, says Steven Malanga. … Not the Babylon Bee: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass writes in Newsweek about leading the country on the issue of public safety. What’s next? How To Run a Fire Department. … Liberals with guns might be dangerous.

Be warm.