This is C.I.'s "The Snapshot" for Monday:
Monday, January 12, 2026. Chump and his administration continue to smear the woman dead as a result of their actions, Chump's gunning for Powell yet again, The Epstein Scandal is so widely known that Nikki Glaser can joke about it on the Golden Globes (no, it's still not going away, Donald) and much more.
What won't Kristi Noem do?
I understand she'll do anything for Mardi Gras beads -- anything. But for the next four weeks, she's mainly going to keep attacking an American citizen shot dead by Chump's gestapo forces that she overseas.
Taking time away from both her husband and also her long alleged boyfriend, Homeland Security Tramp and Monster Kristi Noem appeared on CNN's STATE OF THE UNION. John Bowden (INDEPENDENT) reports:
Jake Tapper pressed DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on Sunday to explain how the administration was going to guarantee a fair investigation into Jonathan Ross, an ICE agent who was seen on video shooting a woman in her car in Minneapolis last week.
The shooting of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, prompted hundreds of thousands of Americans to protest across the country this weekend.
Ross can be heard on his own cell phone video calling Good a “f***ing b****” before firing into the vehicle as it appears to turn away from his direction. Whether the officer was struck by the side of the car is unclear.
The secretary attempted to blame Democrats and the media for prejudging the officer’s guilt, but had no response when the State of the Union host questioned whether the administration’s stalwart defense of the officer’s actions would harm future investigations.
The whore wants to set the standard for what's allowed. I don't take standard recommendations from 'family values' politicians who are married and have public allegations -- even published in THE NEW YORK POST -- that they are having an ongoing, years-plus affair with another man -- a man that they have brought in as their co-worker at Homeland Security. If I wanted to know a really good mattress, I'd take Kristi's opinion on that or even some really good lubricants. Maybe she's got something to share if you end up with a venereal disease? But I'm not interested in a tramp giving me lectures on standards and what's wrong.
As Mika noted in the MORNING JOE video protests took place around the country over the weekend as a result of the US government murdering Renee Nicole Good.
The US government murdered Renee Nicole Good on January 7th in Minneapolis, Minnesota. ICE agent Jonathan Ross, a man with years of training in using a firearm and who provided training to others ("a firearms instructor, an active shooter instructor"), shot and killed the mother of three who was unarmed. Ross, apparently needing to make social content while on the clock, filmed her and when the video was released, the world saw that her last words to him were, "I'm not mad at you." By contrast, he or one of his fellow agents immediately called Renee a "f**king bitch" after plugged her with three bullets. The federal government immediately began attacking Good -- even though they should be stating "I can't comment on an ongoing federal investigation."
Instead, as NPR's Martin Kaste observed on January 9th, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, "And I think what's not normal here is the way the federal officials have been publicly passing judgment on a case that's still being investigated. For instance, just today, the vice president posted a video that appears to have come from a device being held by the agent who shot Renee Good on Wednesday. It shows Good smiling and saying she's not mad at the officer. But Vance called the video evidence that the officer was in danger. So there seems to be a real disconnect right now on the basic level of what the evidence means." Fat and little Vice president JD Vance is a professional troll but his efforts this time are especially outrageous. John Grosso (NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER) observed:
Yesterday (Jan. 7), 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed in a residential Minneapolis neighborhood by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. Good was a mother of three and an U.S. citizen.
Today, JD Vance has taken to social media to justify the shooting and blame Good for her own death.
Though the full circumstances of the situation are still coming to light, widely available video evidence shows the horrific moments before, during and after shots were fired into Good's car. Videos of the shooting and the ensuing aftermath are graphic and disturbing. After Good was shot, her car accelerates, slamming into another car and a pole. In one video, a person can be heard identifying themselves as a physician and offering to help only to be angrily denied by an unidentified ICE agent saying: "I don't care."
The Trump administration was quick to demonize Good. Within hours of the event and before a formal investigation could even be launched, Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem labeled Good's actions as an "act of domestic terrorism." President Donald Trump on Jan. 7 labeled her as "disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer." Trump went on to say that the ICE officer was lucky to be alive and "is now recovering in the hospital."
[. . .]
As a Catholic, Vance knows better than to peddle this brand of gaslighting and agitation. Vance knows that, by virtue of her humanity, Good was endowed with inherent dignity, made in the image and likeness of God. Vance knows that only God can take life. Vance knows that protesting, fleeing or even interfering in an ICE investigation (which there is no evidence that Good did) does not carry a death sentence. Vance knows that lying and killing are sins.
Vance knows. He doesn't care. Vance’s twisted and wrongheaded view of Christianity has been repudiated by two popes. His Catholicism seems to be little more than a political prop, a tool only for his career ambitions and desire for power.
The vice president's comments justifying the death of Renee Good are a moral stain on the collective witness of our Catholic faith. His repeated attempts to blame Good for her own death are fundamentally incompatible with the Gospel. Our only recourse is to pray for his conversion of heart.
Mike's response to Vance's outrageous lies, "As a Catholic, I'm sick of this little bitch distorting my religion. He needs to be excommunicated. I'm not joking. He is presenting as a Catholic -- he's been a Catholic for about five minutes -- and he is distorting our beliefs and our teaching. Two popes have repudiated him -- Pope Francis and now Pope Leo. Excommunicate Vance, don't let him speak for the Church or pose as a Catholic. Whatever crap he was raised before distorted his damn mind. We cannot allow him to pervert the Catholic faith."
At AMERICA: THE JESUIT REVIEW, James T. Keane writes:
After Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed in her minivan by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, Vice President JD Vance called her murder “a tragedy of her own making” and claimed that Ms. Good, a community activist and a mother of three, was “part of a broader left-wing network to attack, to dox, to assault and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their job.”
Mr. Vance claimed further that Ms. Good “viciously ran over the ICE officer” who shot and killed her, an assertion contradicted by video evidence taken from multiple angles.
Why the obvious lie? Because, similar to Ms. Kirkpatrick and Mr. Haig, Mr. Vance recognizes the potential for this atrocity to turn American public opinion against President Trump’s brutal campaign against undocumented immigrants, particularly because Ms. Good is an American citizen, was apparently denied medical assistance by ICE agents after the shooting and, according to the video evidence, posed no real threat to the shooter. Not even the most fervent supporter of the arrest and deportation of undocumented migrants, one assumes, would defend such Gestapo-like tactics.
The answer? Blame Ms. Good for her own murder.
Mr. Vance’s boss, President Trump, has engaged in further deceit and hyperbole in support of that same goal, claiming that Ms. Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense.” She made for an easy culprit for a man desperate to justify ICE’s actions. After all, she was already dead.
The murder of the churchwomen in El Salvador in 1980 was not an isolated incident; they shared the fate of tens of thousands of other Salvadorans, including Rutilio Grande, S.J., St. Oscar Romero, and the six Jesuits and two laywomen who were murdered by the Salvadoran military in 1989 in San Salvador. Eventually, the overwhelming evidence of these murders became too much for American politicians to justify, and U.S. funding for the Salvadoran military government dried up. It just became impossible to believe the lie anymore.
On the 40th anniversary of the martyrdom of the churchwomen of El Salvador, Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J., preached at a memorial Mass in Rome on the impact of their witness. “Theirs, mysteriously but without doubt, is the triumph because vigorous, courageous acts of solidarity and compassion persist in dreadful, risky conditions,” he said. “Brutal claims failed and fail to stop the evangelizing.”
Let us hope the same will happen in Minneapolis. Nothing can bring Renee Good back; her 6-year-old son is without his mother now, her partner a widow. The masked man who killed her simply drove away. Nor is her death an isolated incident: All over the country, we hear and see more and more examples of violent attacks by masked ICE agents who seem to face no accountability for their crimes. And we hear the brutal claims used after the fact to justify them.
How long before it simply becomes impossible to believe the lie anymore?
Whitney Curry Wimbish (TAP) notes of Kristi Noem, "Noem repeated the lie that the officer who shot Good to death had done nothing wrong and that officers had been “surrounded, assaulted, and blocked in by protesters,” something contradicted by video and eyewitness evidence. She also said that Good had been following officers all day prior to her murder, but would not say for how long or whether there had been earlier interactions, or how many, between Good and the officers."
HARPER'S BIZAAR runs a piece by poet Danez Smith entitled "An Elegy for My Neighbor, Renee Nicole Good." Renee was murdered January 7th and that night, in Chicago, Kelly Hayes spoke at a memorial for Renee:
I’m Kelly Hayes. I’ve been organizing for justice for years in this city, and I’ve had the honor of working and thinking alongside many of you in recent months as we’ve held our ground in defense of our neighbors. We are gathered here tonight in the cold, among people of conscience, among neighbors who see themselves in the person who was gunned down in Minneapolis today. She was 37 years old and her name was Renee Nicole Good. She was the mother of a six-year-old child. Her mother described her as “loving, forgiving and affectionate,” and called her “an amazing human being.”
We grieve for Renee, her family, and her community, but even before we knew anything about Renee — including her name — many of us were shaken by her violent death, because a moment that feels inevitable can still be shocking.
Even though we know ICE has killed before — and will again — even though they shot a woman in Chicago and told lies like the lies they are telling now, even though they are fascist purveyors of violence — their brutality has not hardened or corrupted us. We are still shaken and heartbroken by their violence. That is the cost of staying human in inhuman times — and it’s a cost we pay in defense of our neighbors and in defense of our own humanity. We feel what they would have us ignore, and we grieve the violence that their cultish followers applaud.
There is power in grief, because grief draws us together in moments when our enemies would tear us apart. Trump, Miller, Bovino, and DHS want us to believe their violence is inevitable. They want it to become the background noise of our lives — not something we respond to with love, tears, and action. They want us to give up on what the world could be, abandon our decency, and abandon each other. They want us to submit to their violence, and to accept that the cost of disrupting their attacks on our communities is death. And if we refuse to forget our neighbors — if we refuse to become dead inside — they want us to live in fear. They want us terrorized, afraid to show up for each other the way the people of Minneapolis have shown up — and the way Chicago has shown up.
And while this violence didn’t occur in our city, we know what it’s like to have their guns drawn on us. We understand the terror Minneapolis is facing, and we feel their loss deeply. A federal agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good. And with that shot, ICE took aim at every city where people have dared to organize against their violence, every place where neighbors have chosen each other over fear. But people of conscience will not be cowed. Today, I saw our siblings in struggle in Minneapolis chanting, “You can’t kill us all.”
I am grateful to the people of Minneapolis tonight. Their courage in the wake of this violence is a bright light for us to rally around. They have mobilized — just as we have mobilized — to protect one another, to love one another, and to tell ICE to get the fuck out of their communities. And what they have found together — what we have found together, what so many communities have found together through collective efforts to create as much safety and justice as possible — will not be destroyed by acts of violence and repression.
They want us to scatter in fear, to give up hope, and to give up on each other. But we will hold more tightly to one another, plan more strategically, and care even more deeply. We will resist the normalization of their violence, the immobilization of fear, and the sense of inevitability they would impose upon us. We will do what our courageous friends in Minneapolis have done today. We will be a light to all those who resist — to those forced to hide or live in fear, to those who want to love and practice care bravely. We will be a reminder of what people can do when they refuse to give up, and when they refuse to give up on each other.
Renee was not a terrorist. She is an American citizen who was murdered. And the liars in this administration took to the Sunday chat & chews to lie about a dead American who the government killed. Tom Holman and Kristi were among the liars who showed up on the Sunday chat & chews. Some truth tellers also showed up. On NBC's MEET THE PRESS this morning, Senator Chris Murphy called for ICE to stop breaking the law and return to pre-Kristi Noem policies:
We're simply talking about, you know, essentially going back to the way that ICE was operating when they cared about legality, right? Identification of officers, that's something that has been standard practice in every law enforcement agency all across the country. CBP, who are supposed to be at the border, protecting us at the border, operating in the interior with no training on how to deal with complex urban environments, that's brand new. So we just need to get back to a Department of Homeland Security that is prioritizing the law and prioritizing keeping people safe. And yes, I think it is reasonable for Democrats speaking on behalf of the majority of the American public who don't approve of what ICE is doing to say, "If you want to fund the Department of Homeland Security, I want to fund a Department of Homeland Security that is operating in a safe and legal manner."
"I think what we are seeing here is the federal government -- [Department of Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem, Vice President [JD] Vance, [President] Donald Trump -- attempting to cover up what happened here in the Twin Cities, and I don't think that people here and around the country are believing it," Senator Tina Smith declared to host Martha Raddatz on ABC THIS WEEK:
"You are saying the administration is trying to cover up this shooting. That's a pretty serious charge. What do you mean exactly," Raddatz asked.
"What I mean by that is that you can see everything that they are doing is trying to shape the narrative, to say what happened, without any investigation," Smith said.
Smith went on to criticize the administration for its response to the shooting.
"What I think is essential to keep in mind here is that if we're going to trust the federal government, how can we trust the federal government to do an objective, unbiassed investigation, without prejudice, when at the beginning of that investigation they have already announced exactly what they saw -- what they think happened."
US House Rep Ilhan Omar appeared on CBS' FACE THE NATION:
Rep. Ilhan Omar said Sunday that it is "not acceptable" for President Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to have issued public statements condemning the women shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis "without a full investigation."
"If they're saying we shouldn't believe our eyes, then let the investigation take place before you characterize this mother of three as a domestic terrorist," Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, said Sunday on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan." "Prove to us what documentation you have that one, she was paid and two, that she was agitating when you can hear saying she's not mad, she's not upset, she's clearly trying to waive cars to bypass her. And so it's just this level of rhetoric is unjustifiable to the American people."
This morning, Ben has a new MEIDASTOUCH NEWS video.
The Golden Globes were handed out last night. Host Nikki Glaser noted, "There's so many A-listers. And by A-listers, I do mean people who are on a list that has been heavily redacted. And the Golden Globe for Best Editing goes to: . . . the Justice Department." No, The Epstein Scandal is not forgotten, nor is it going away.
Joshua Wilburn (RADAR) reports:
Mark Epstein is again disputing the official finding that his brother, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, died by suicide, insisting new evidence will soon emerge that proves he was murdered, RadarOnline.com can report.
Jeffrey, a convicted sex trafficker awaiting trial on federal charges, was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York on Aug. 10, 2019. Authorities ruled his death a suicide by hanging and Mark, Jeffrey's younger brother, identified the body.
In the immediate aftermath, widespread public speculation surrounded the circumstances of Jeffrey's death.
Mark hired former New York City chief medical examiner Dr. Michael Baden, who said at the time that the "evidence points to homicide rather than suicide."
Despite years of investigations, the Department of Justice and the FBI concluded in a June 2023 report that there was no credible evidence of foul play. Officials reaffirmed that determination, saying systemic failures at the jail allowed Jeffrey to take his own life.
Mark has continued to challenge that conclusion. In a July 2025 interview with NBC News, he said, "More and more, I believe he was murdered."
He added, "And everyone who looks at all the information that's out there on facts comes to the same conclusion."
I wasn't there. Nor did I follow the coverage of his death. Chump wants it to go away now but he's the one who fostered conspiracy talk. Six months ago, Ali Swenson and Nicholas Riccardi (AP) observed:
His problem? That nothing-to-see-here approach doesn’t work for those who've learned from him they must not give up until the government’s deepest, darkest secrets are exposed.
Last week, the Justice Department and the FBI abruptly walked back the notion there's an Epstein client list of elites who participated in the wealthy New York financier’s trafficking of underage girls. Trump quickly defended Attorney General Pam Bondi and chided a reporter for daring to ask about the documents.
The online reaction was swift, with followers calling the Republican president “out of touch” and demanding transparency.
Trump's comments to reporters Tuesday while returning to Washington from a brief Pittsburgh trip were just the latest in a days-long campaign to quell the uproar. He called the Epstein case “pretty boring” and said "the credible information has been given."
[. . .]
The political crisis is especially challenging for Trump because it’s one of his own making. The president has spent years stoking dark theories and embracing QAnon-tinged propaganda that casts him as the only savior who can demolish the “deep state."
Now that he's running the federal government, the community he helped build is coming back to haunt him. It's demanding answers he either isn’t able to or doesn't want to provide.
The credibility issue? It's not helped being unable to follow a Congressional order to release the information.
Convicted Felon Donald Chump was never fit to be in the White House and he's demonstrated it throughout his second term as he continues to abuse the power of the office of president by using them to seek retribution. For example, Miacel Spotted Elk (MOTHER JONES) reports:
On Thursday, Republicans in the House failed to override President Donald Trump’s first two vetoes in office: a pipeline project that would bring safe drinking water to rural Colorado, and another that would return land to the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians in Florida. Their inability to block the president’s move signals their commitment to the White House over their prior support for the measures.
The Miccosukee have always considered the Florida Everglades their home. So when Republicans in Congress voted to expand the tribe’s land base under the Miccosukee Reserved Area Act—legislation that would transfer 30 acres of land in the Everglades to tribal control—the Miccosukee were thrilled. After years of work, the move would have allowed the tribe to begin environmental restoration activities in the area and better protect it from climate change impacts as extreme flooding and tropical storms threaten the land.
“The measure reflected years of bipartisan work and was intended to clarify land status and support basic protections for tribal members who have lived in this area for generations,” wrote Chairman Cypress in a statement last week, “before the roads and canals were built, and before Everglades National Park was created.”
The act was passed on December 11, but on December 30, President Donald Trump vetoed it; one of only two vetoes made by the administration since he took office. In a statement, Trump explained that the tribe “actively sought to obstruct reasonable immigration policies that the American people decisively voted for when I was elected,” after the tribe’s July lawsuit challenging the construction of “Alligator Alcatraz,” an immigration detention center in the Everglades.
“It is rare for an administration to veto a bill for reasons wholly unrelated to the merits of the bill,” said Kevin Washburn, a law professor at University of California Berkeley Law and former assistant secretary of Indian affairs for the Department of the Interior. Washburn added that while denying land return to a tribe is a political act, Trump’s move is “highly unusual.”
Need another example? Glenn Thrush and Colby Smith (NEW YORK TIMES) report:
The U.S. attorney’s office in the District of Columbia has opened a criminal investigation into Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, over the central bank’s renovation of its Washington headquarters and whether Mr. Powell lied to Congress about the scope of the project, according to officials briefed on the situation.
The inquiry, which includes an analysis of Mr. Powell’s public statements and an examination of spending records, was approved in November by Jeanine Pirro, a longtime ally of President Trump who was appointed to run the office last year, the officials said.
The investigation escalates Mr. Trump’s long-running feud with Mr. Powell, whom the president has continually attacked for resisting his demands to slash interest rates significantly. The president has threatened to fire the Fed chair — even though he nominated Mr. Powell for the position in 2017 — and raised the prospect of a lawsuit against him related to the $2.5 billion renovation, citing “incompetence.”
[. . .]
Mr. Powell, in a rare video message released by the Fed, acknowledged on Sunday that the Justice Department had served the central bank with grand jury subpoenas days earlier. He described the investigation as “unprecedented” and questioned the motivation for the move, even as he affirmed that he carried out his duties as chair “without political fear or favor.”
The Fed chair warned that the investigation signaled a broader battle over the Fed’s independence. “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president,” Mr. Powell added. “This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions — or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.”
AP adds,
"The move represents an unprecedented escalation in President Donald
Trump's battle with the Fed, an independent agency he has repeatedly
attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as quickly as Trump
prefers. The subpoena relates to his testimony before the Senate Banking
Committee in June, Powell said, regarding the Fed's $2.5 billion
renovation of two office buildings, a project that Trump criticized as
excessive."
The following sites updated:
