On Vacation

 I have thins to do.

 

Democratic blueprint

‘Not backing down’: How the Minneapolis mayor’s response to ICE could become a Democratic blueprint

By Eric Bradner, Jeremy Herb

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey delivered a stern message one week ago to federal agents following the deadly shooting of a Minnesota woman who was protesting their efforts to round up immigrants in the state. “Get the f**k out of Minneapolis,” Frey said.

The remark immediately put Frey in the national spotlight and at the center of the fiercest battle yet over President Donald Trump’s federal crackdown in cities across the country.

Tensions between local protesters and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have only continued to boil over, after a federal agent shot and injured a man Wednesday night who had allegedly assaulted the agent. Seeking to deescalate the situation, Frey urged protesters to go home afterward.

“We cannot counter Donald Trump’s chaos with our own brand of chaos,” he said Wednesday night, after local police said protesters were shooting fireworks at officers. “For those that have peacefully protested, I applaud you. For those that are taking the bait, you are not helping, and you are not helping the undocumented immigrants of our city. You are not helping the people who call this place home.”

The city’s efforts over the past week to respond to the ICE crackdown — and the Trump administration’s decision to double down on its Minneapolis surge — demonstrates the difficult situation Frey and other state and local Democrats face. Standing up to the Trump administration bought Frey respect in his overwhelmingly Democratic city — but it also made him a target of the White House and its Republican allies.

Polls show that public opinion has shifted rapidly against the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement actions. A CNN poll conducted by SSRS found that 56% of Americans believe Renee Good’s killing was an inappropriate use of force, while just 26% of Americans say that they view the shooting as an appropriate use of force. Americans say, 51% to 31%, that ICE enforcement actions are making cities less safe rather than safer.

But Trump, who campaigned on pledges to lead a mass deportation effort, has dug in, placing a particular emphasis on Minnesota — a Democratic-led state that he wrongly said he believes he won in three consecutive presidential elections. His administration plans to send another 1,000 immigration agents to the state. And on Thursday he threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, a centuries-old law, to deploy American troops to Minnesota if local political leaders don’t “stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking” immigration agents.

Frey and other Minnesota leaders have responded with a lawsuit accusing federal agents of making warrantless arrests and using excessive force, while Frey has been a constant presence on national and state television.

“This is retribution-style politics,” Frey told CNN in an interview. “This is drama. This is performance politics at its worst, and it’s hurting people and it’s making us less safe.”

‘The more inflammatory action’

As the legal battle plays out behind the scenes, Frey has been at the forefront of the fight for public sentiment, appearing frequently on television.

He pushed back when facing an initial round of criticism from Republicans that his rhetoric was inflammatory.

“I’m so sorry if I offended their Disney princess ears,” Frey told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins last week. “If we’re talking about what’s inflammatory, on the one hand, you’ve got someone who dropped an f-bomb. On the other hand, you’ve got someone who killed somebody else. … I think the more inflammatory action is killing somebody.”

Frey has also gone onto conservative networks like Fox News to argue that the administration jumped to conclusions to immediately defend the agent and shouldn’t have blocked the state from investigating.

As Democrats look for potent ways to counter Trump’s federal crackdown on Democratic-leaning cities, Frey has emerged as a surprising antidote: a Midwestern mayor with an aggressive message of how to fight back against a president with three years left in his term.

“In a moment of crisis like this, in a moment where communities are being terrorized, you have to stand up with absolute clarity and a sense of moral rectitude and sense of purpose — not backing down,” said Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin, a former Minnesota state party chair and long-time friend of Frey.

The conflict with ICE is the latest in a long string of crises to face Minnesota in recent months. Last June, state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were assassinated in their home. In August, two children were killed and 30 people injured in a mass shooting at a church in Minneapolis. In recent weeks, the state has faced an onslaught of criticism over allegations of widespread fraud in federally-funded social programs — leading to Democratic Gov. Tim Walz forgoing reelection.

Video of ICE agent Jonathan Ross shooting and killing Good has sparked a partisan division, with Republican lawmakers and commentators arguing Ross was acting in self-defense and lambasting Frey’s outspokenness.

Rep. Tom Emmer, a Minnesota Republican and House majority whip, told CNN Frey was “an embarrassment” after his statement last week.

“Jacob Frey is a disgrace,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “Immediately after an ICE officer was attacked, he rushed to publicly lie and incite more violence against law enforcement. He must stop smearing law enforcement and apologize for his lies.”

‘What Frey said’

When Frey told ICE agents to “get the f**k out” at a news conference last week, councilwoman Linea Palmisano initially cringed. “Ooh, did he have to do that?” she thought.

But she quickly realized Frey was speaking for much of the city.

That evening, Palmisano asked her 14-year-old son if he’d seen the mayor on television. “Mom, it was perfect,” he told her. Over the weekend, moms in the bleachers at her son’s basketball game were buzzing about Frey’s comment — one texted her a t-shirt she’d mocked up with the mayor’s words on it, asking if she could get it to Frey.

The same day, a friend attending an anti-ICE rally texted her a photo of a protester holding a sign that simply read: “What Frey said.”

“He didn’t really realize it in the moment, but he really grabbed the megaphone,” Palmisano said of Frey. “In that moment in time, Kristi Noem and Donald Trump had already started laying down the narrative. And I think what he said jumped right up onto that level of the stage as a rebuttal.”

In the days that followed, Frey emerged as the face of the opposition to Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota — repeatedly lambasting the actions of more than 2,000 ICE agents deployed to his city and the surrounding area.

For Frey, the 44-year-old mayor who was narrowly elected to his third term this past November, the protests across Minneapolis are reminiscent of the first time he was thrust into the national spotlight in 2020, when civil unrest over the police killing of George Floyd took over Minneapolis and spread across the United States.

Frey faced criticism from both the left and the right in the aftermath of the protests and violence that followed: Progressives in the city loudly booed the mayor when he refused to support defunding the police, while Trump and conservatives pointed to protestors burning a police precinct as evidence of failed governance.

“I think we found ourselves in 2020 in a situation in which there just were no good options,” said Melvin Carter, who was mayor of neighboring St. Paul in 2020. “And we had to try to figure out how to navigate the best of the worst options. I think Mayor Frey did that very well, quite frankly.”

Frey told CNN he’s learned lessons from handling the Floyd protests that have prepared him for this moment.

“I’m not the same mayor or leader that I was in 2019,” Frey said. “Over time, you learn that there’s a long arc. And if you do the right thing‚ while you certainly might not gain love in the moment — in fact you might gain a whole lot of wrath — over time people respect it.”

Tangling with ‘bullies’ — and progressives

Frey and Palmisano were first elected to the city council together in 2013. The two are political allies, representing the more moderate wing of the Democratic Party, while progressives hold a council majority. She said she and Frey share a penchant for cursing, recalling when his 4-year-old daughter picked up the phrase “f**k ‘em.” But those were private conversations; Frey’s comment Thursday was on national television.

Still, she said, Frey’s confrontational approach to the Trump administration is consistent with his character.

She described the mayor as someone who “literally runs at bullies.” She said Frey — a distance runner who grew up in Northern Virginia, attended law school at Villanova University and moved to Minneapolis after graduation when he fell in love with the city in a 2009 visit for the Twin Cities Marathon — once chased after a man who had run off after heckling him in a park because Frey wanted to strike up a conversation.

“When people want to be trolls from what they think is a safe distance, they get Jacob Frey in their face,” she said. “So it doesn’t surprise me at all that without regard for himself or his own safety, he would run after Donald Trump.”

In 2020, Frey’s refusal to support the “defund the police” movement angered progressives and led to a fierce challenge in his 2021 reelection bid. He narrowly fended off a challenge from the left again in November 2025, winning a third term, 53% to 47%.

In 2021, Frey opposed a ballot measure to overhaul policing in the city in the wake of Floyd’s killing, which Minneapolis voters rejected. Frey and the city worked with the Justice Department to agree to police reforms in the final weeks of the Biden administration. When the Trump administration cancelled the agreement in May, Frey swiftly said the city would stand by the changes to policing.

“He juggled the interests of his constituents and the police department he leans on to keep the city safe,” said Kristen Clarke, the former head of the Civil Division at the Justice Department, which reached the agreement with the city.

How to be ‘a constant presence’

Minnesota has also turned to the courts to try to stop the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

This week, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and the Twin Cities sued Noem and the Trump administration to try to block the surge of ICE agents, alleging that the immigration operation amounted to “a federal invasion of the Twin Cities.”

A federal judge on Wednesday declined to issue a temporary restraining order as Minnesota officials sought, asking for more responses before issuing a ruling and noting that the lawsuit presents “somewhat frontier issues in constitutional law.”

Frey told CNN that Minnesota leaders were looking to all possible avenues try to fight back against the federal government. “You use the tools that you have, and especially you lean on the law and the Constitution, which is firmly on our side, because what we are experiencing right now does truly feel like an invasion,” he said.

Carter, who left office as St. Paul mayor this year, said one of the lessons that the city leaders learned from the aftermath of Floyd’s killing was the need to get their message out and be a “constant presence.”

“How do we keep on communicating — even if I don’t have anything different to say — in a way that at least helps people to feel some sense of security, so they can brace themselves for what’s ahead?” Carter said. “That’s something I see Mayor Frey doing is communicating very intentionally, very consistently.”

Even as Frey’s national profile has been elevated and Walz has ended his reelection campaign, Frey told CNN he is not interested in running for higher office.

“I’ve got a job to do here,” he said.

NGC 7023

These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus. Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this deep telescopic image shows off the Iris Nebula's range of colors and symmetries embedded in surrounding fields of interstellar dust. Within the Iris itself, dusty nebular material surrounds a hot, young star. The dominant color of the brighter reflection nebula is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting starlight. Central filaments of the reflection nebula glow with a faint reddish photoluminescence as some dust grains effectively convert the star's invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Infrared observations indicate that this nebula contains complex carbon molecules known as PAHs. The dusty blue petals of the Iris Nebula span about six light-years.

Let’s re-regulate fucking air travel again...........

Ryanair chief unloads on ‘liar’ Trump in rare corporate blast at US president

Airline boss Michael O’Leary also tells POLITICO what the EU’s top three achievements have been … and why “Parliament is a talking shop of idiots.”

By Tommaso Lecca

U.S. President Donald Trump is a "liar" who is "historically wrong" on many of the major geopolitical issues facing the world in 2026, fumed Ryanair chief Michael O'Leary in an interview with POLITICO.

The outspoken airline CEO's comments mark a rare broadside against Trump from the corporate world, where business titans usually aim to avoid offending the mercurial American leader.

O'Leary laid into Trump — whom he last talked to in 2016 — for not supporting Ukraine against Russia and for imposing tariffs that have upended global trade.

“I think Trump is historically wrong on Ukraine and on Russia, he’s historically wrong on tariffs,” said O’Leary, who did grant that the president was right in complaining that European countries aren't pulling their weight on defense.

O'Leary added that if he were an American, he would be “a natural Republican.” However, he would not sign up to a party led by Trump. “I don’t have any faith or trust in Trump, who has proven himself to be again and again a liar,” he said.

It's not the first time that O'Leary has lambasted Trump, making him a curio in the corporate world, which has been largely deferential to the U.S. president since he returned to office. However, O'Leary has long said that Ryanair has no intention of flying across the Atlantic. The airline is also one of Boeing's largest customers, insulating it from political blowback.

Defend freedoms

Discount airline boss O'Leary, who has long railed at what he considers excessive red tape he says is choking EU companies, added that the twin threats of Trump and Russia mean Europe should slash “stupid travel taxes” and regulations to regain its competitive mojo.

“There’s a war in Ukraine. You’ve [got] Trump at the White House. No, let’s re-regulate fucking air travel again,” he said.

Political and economic shifts mean that the EU should defend the single market — one of its greatest accomplishments, said O'Leary, who has often bashed the bloc's political leadership using salty language.

“I am a huge supporter of the single market in Europe, it has been the greatest success of certainly my lifetime,” O’Leary said Wednesday on the sidelines of a press conference in Brussels.

The Ryanair CEO listed what he feels are the top three achievements of the EU: “Low fare air travel, roaming charges and Erasmus, which has been one of the great ways of knitting young people … bringing Europe much closer together. But we’re going to have to start defending these freedoms.”

'Talking shop of idiots'

But O’Leary lashed out at efforts to increase taxes and regulation — from Belgium’s proposed higher aviation tax aimed at boosting more sustainable transportation, like rail, to the European Parliament’s proposal to increase passenger rights, including allowing them to bring more luggage aboard for free.

He called Parliament’s draft “a mad, illegal proposal,” and added: “The Parliament is a talking shop of idiots where all they do is invent, impose more costs and more regulation on European consumers and citizens.”

He also slammed Belgium’s aviation tax hike — which the country’s transport minister defended in an interview with POLITICO. 

In response to the tax proposal, Ryanair said it would cut 1 million seats at Brussels South Charleroi Airport in 2026.

Since the tax raise wasn’t scrapped, O’Leary announced Wednesday that Ryanair will reduce travel capacity in the country by an additional million seats in 2027 and cut its presence at the Charleroi base from 19 to 15 planes.

Rather than taxing passengers, O’Leary called for the bloc’s Emissions Trading System carbon pricing scheme to also apply to long-haul flights to destinations outside the EU. Currently, the ETS only applies to intra-EU flights and does not affect more polluting intercontinental routes.

“If you're really serious about the environmental taxes here in Belgium, put ETS on American flights, put ETS on Asian flights and put ETS on Gulf flights,” he said.

But that could spark a clash with the U.S., which has warned against climate efforts that affect its businesses. This is “never going to happen while Trump is at the White House,” O'Leary said.

Fucking dumpster fire.......

Americans give Trump low marks on handling of economy as midterms likely to center on affordability

Sixty-one percent of voters told a CNN poll released Friday that they disapprove of the way Trump is handling the economy.

By Gregory Svirnovskiy

Americans are increasingly holding Donald Trump responsible for an economy they give low marks. And with the midterms now just under 10 months away, they have less faith than ever in the president’s ability to make things better.

Sixty-one percent of Americans in a CNN poll released Friday said they disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, tied for the worst mark of the president’s career in the White House as he approaches the one-year mark of his second term. And just 42 percent of respondents think the economy will be very good or somewhat good in a year’s time, down from 56 percent of adults expressing that optimism when Trump returned to office in January 2025.

Americans overwhelmingly cast the economy and stubbornly high cost of living as the most important issue facing the country, standing at 20 points higher than the second-ranked issue, the state of American democracy.

The numbers come as Republicans work to recalibrate their political messaging around affordability ahead of the upcoming midterms, in which Trump has conceded the party in power may be hard-pressed to retain their governing trifecta.

In the last few weeks, Trump has proposed temporarily capping credit card interest rates — a move unpopular among GOP leadership — scrapped Biden-era fuel economy requirements and released a new health care framework calling for, among other things, greater pricing transparency from insurance companies.

And the White House got good news in this week’s inflation report, which showed prices climbing at a lower rate than expected in December. “LOW and UNDER CONTROL,” the White House proclaimed on X.

“President Trump is making America affordable again through his proven economic formula of powerful tariffs, fair trade deals, massive middle-class tax cuts, energy dominance and aggressive deregulation,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a White House briefing Thursday. “The overwhelmingly positive economic data released this week underscores the significant progress the president has already delivered.”

But Trump has struggled to stay on message, and even Republicans say he hasn’t necessarily delivered on the economy. Just roughly 4 in 10 GOP respondents in a January AP-NORC poll said he had improved the cost of living since returning to the White House.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The CNN poll was conducted by web and telephone survey Jan. 9-12, with a random sample of 1,209 adults. The margin of error for the poll is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard

‘Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard’: Republicans amp up their resistance to Trump’s Greenland push

GOP lawmakers are stepping up their warnings and engaging in diplomacy as the president's threats escalate.

By Jordain Carney

President Donald Trump is talking about taking over Greenland by any means necessary. Republicans in Congress are trying to scare him back to reality.

As Trump continually threatens to bring the Danish territory into the U.S. over the objections of key global allies and the island’s elected representatives, some GOP lawmakers are stepping up their warnings and engaging in diplomacy as Democrats prepare to put the other party on record opposing a military invasion.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) predicted members on both sides of the aisle would lock arms and require congressional signoff if it became clear Trump was preparing imminent military action.

“If there was any sort of action that looked like the goal was actually landing in Greenland and doing an illegal taking … there’d be sufficient numbers here to pass a war powers resolution and withstand a veto,” Tillis said.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) went further, predicting that it would lead to impeachment and calling Trump’s Greenland obsession “the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

The blunt public messaging comes as lawmakers try to reassure U.S. allies, including Denmark, in private. A bipartisan group of House and Senate lawmakers are in Copenhagen Friday to try to drive home in person the message that military action does not have support on Capitol Hill.

“Greenland needs to be viewed as our ally, not as an asset, and I think that’s what you’re hearing with this delegation,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said after meeting with Danish and Greenlandic leaders there.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune did not join the delegation but he largely endorsed the message the contingent is sending in comments to reporters Thursday, saying “there’s certainly not an appetite here for some of the options that have been talked about or considered” — an apparent reference to military action.

The pushback amounts to one of the most profound breaches yet seen between GOP lawmakers and the president in Trump’s second term. So far the Republican uneasiness over Trump’s brash foreign policy moves have not resulted in any successful steps to restrain him.

Following the operation to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month, five Republicans joined Democrats to advance a measure restraining Trump from future military incursions in the South American country. But on Wednesday, two of them reversed course and ended the threat after the administration made some commitments regarding future action.

Democrats believe Greenland — sovereign territory belonging to a NATO ally — could be different. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who co-authored the Venezuela measure and signaled a raft of new war-powers legislation, acknowledged to reporters Wednesday that prospects were dim that a veto-proof number of GOP senators would join Democrats’ efforts.

But “we might on Greenland,” Kaine added.

Thune’s predecessor as Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, spoke out in a floor speech where he said military action against Greenland would be “an unprecedented act of strategic self-harm” that risks “incinerating” NATO alliances.

Rep. Jeff Hurd (R-Colo.), meanwhile, said he was “deeply concerned” about the administration’s Greenland message.

“I don’t think it is productive, and I don’t think this is the way to treat an ally,” he said, adding that he “would be opposed to military action in Greenland.”

But even as more Republicans speak out about Trump’s Greenland ambitions, it’s not clear they could put preemptive guardrails on his actions in this Congress even if they wanted to. Instead, they appear to be hoping that Trump will read the writing on the wall and realize he doesn’t have support on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Democrats are vowing to introduce a spate of war powers resolutions, including on Greenland, in the coming weeks and months. Yet even Tillis, who predicted overwhelming support for such a resolution in the case of “imminent” military action, said he would not currently support a measure to stop Trump from using force in the region because it would “legitimize” a threat he doesn’t think is now real.

Instead, Tillis is using his megaphone as a retiring senator to launch broadsides against Trump’s top aides, whom he blames for some excesses of the administration. While a Greenland takeover might be supported by hard-line deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Tillis said, “it’s not the position of the U.S. government.”That, he said, is “another reason I’m going to Copenhagen.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who initially supported the Venezuela war powers resolution before backtracking, also said in an interview that he was not on board with a similar effort for Greenland.

“Not prospectively,” Hawley said, adding that any such measure “needs to respond to really particular facts.”

Any formal GOP pushback is certain to include Murkowski, a co-founder of the Senate Arctic Caucus, who introduced a nonbinding resolution Thursday with Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Bacon that would affirm the U.S. partnership with Greenland and Denmark. The resolution stresses the “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity” and that any military action would need congressional authorization.

Murkowski, who also met with Danish diplomats in Washington this week before traveling to Copenhagen, said she would support a Greenland war powers resolution if it came to that. She also introduced a bill with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) that would prohibit the administration from using funding to unilaterally blockade, occupy, annex or assert control over Greenland or any other territory belonging to a NATO country.

“We are operating in times where we’re having conversations about things that we never thought even possible,” Murkowski said. “To use the name Greenland in the context of a war powers resolution is absolutely stunning.”

While a war powers resolution can be fast-tracked to the floor, Greenland’s allies in the Senate can’t easily force a vote on the NATO measure or even the nonbinding resolution. And some Senate Republicans expressed skepticism that party leaders would let those latter measures go anywhere.

“I’m sure Thune will jump on it like a bad rash,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said.

Gutting GOP seats

Virginia inches closer to gutting GOP seats through redistricting

Democrats argue it’s crucial for lawmakers in Virginia to alter maps.

By Brakkton Booker

Virginia Democrats on Friday paved the way to aggressively gerrymander in the state — the latest step in a process they hope will hand them as many as four more congressional seats in this fall’s midterm elections.

The Democrat-dominated Virginia Senate passed a constitutional amendment along party lines that allows state lawmakers to begin redrawing congressional maps. The final decision will eventually go before voters in a spring special election. Earlier this week, the House of Delegates approved the measure by 62-33.

Virginia is the last opportunity for national Democrats in the pre-midterm redistricting wars. The party is seeking to keep pace with Republican-led states including Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina, which have all gerrymandered at the urging of President Donald Trump, to give Republicans an advantage this fall and help maintain GOP control of the House. California Democrats previously pushed through a major redistricting effort.

Democrats argue it’s crucial for lawmakers in Virginia to alter maps, arguing it helps the party keep pace with GOP-led states that have already enacted mid-decade changes to their congressional lines. Democrats won unified control of the state in last November’s elections; Democratic-Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger will be sworn in on Saturday.

Ahead of the amendment’s passage, Republican state Sen. Mark Peake accused Democratic of initiating a push to redraw maps to punish Trump.

“Because you hate the man that’s in the White House, and that’s really the only thing that’s behind this … you want to blunt his power, then [Democrats are] going to politically gerrymander and take away the rights of the people,” he said.

Virginia Republicans contend that state Democrats are conducting a blatant power grab — the same argument Democrats use in criticizing Trump’s redistricting push — and reneging on a voter-passed amendment approved a few years ago giving authority to draw congressional lines to a bipartisan commission of slate lawmakers and citizens.

“They didn’t imagine that we’re going to have a hyper-partisan, fascist ideologue telling state legislatures around the country to basically … redesign their districts to maximize his own personal political power,” Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, a Democrat, said of the president’s push to prolong control of the House.

Democrats currently hold six congressional seats in Virginia, while Republicans hold five. State lawmakers, including House Speaker Don Scott and state Senate President pro Tempore L. Louise Lucas, have said they support a new map that would give Democrats a 10-1 advantage.

Democratic party leaders this week suggested they would release a mock-up of their preferred map by the end of this month to give voters a sense of what they’d be voting for.

The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, the Democrat’s group running point on the party’s national redistricting push, presented two maps to Virginia lawmakers: One would render a 9-2 party advantage and shield Republican incumbents Reps. Ben Cline and Morgan Griffith. The second 10-1 map would leave Griffth’s seat as the lone Republican-held district.

Virginians for Fair Elections, a Democrat-affiliated group running the statewide campaign to urge voters in the Commonwealth to vote “yes” on the pending ballot measure, released a video ad Thursday laying out its case for redistricting. “Virginia, here we believe in fairness especially when it comes to our elections but right now fair elections are under unprecedented threat,” a narrator says over a still black and white image of Trump.

The campaign is being headed by Kéren Charles Dongo, a longtime political operative in the state who served as both campaign manager and state director for Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).

Virginia-based GOP strategist Michael Young has been tapped to lead the upcoming Republican campaign to urge voters to scuttle the ballot initiative, according to four GOP strategists who were granted anonymity to discuss the matter. While he would not confirm his role in leading the Republican’s “no” campaign, he blasted Democrats for usurping political norms.

“Virginia Democrats broke the law and violated the Virginia Constitution to get this far,” Young said via text. “We will fight them in any available venue if they continue to pursue this lawless power grab.”

Threatens to use congressional ‘tools’

US senator threatens to use congressional ‘tools’ to block Trump’s Greenland grab

Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski warns Trump U.S. Congress wields “power of the purse.”

By Seb Starcevic

U.S. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski threatened Friday to invoke congressional powers to stop U.S. President Donald Trump from following through on his threats to seize Greenland.

Speaking to reporters in Copenhagen after taking part in a bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers meeting with Danish and Greenlandic officials, Murkowski — an Alaskan who is a regular critic of the president — said it was “an important message for the people of the Kingdom of Denmark to understand” that the U.S. has three branches of government.

“In Congress, we have tools at our disposal under our constitutional authority that speaks specifically to the power of the purse through appropriations,” she said, referring to congressional control of federal spending. She added that Greenland, a self-ruling Danish territory, should be seen as an “ally” rather than an “asset.”

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, who also took part in the visit by House and Senate lawmakers, said he would push ahead with legislation to curb Trump’s power to act unilaterally.

A bipartisan group of American lawmakers introduced a bill this week to prevent Washington from invading a fellow NATO member. (Greenland, as a Danish territory, is part of the Atlantic alliance.) Congress can force votes on constraining presidential war powers, but recent efforts to rein in Trump have not succeeded. Even if it did pass, the White House has asserted any such measure would be unconstitutional.

Coons also undercut Trump’s arguments about Greenland from a national security perspective.

“Are there real, pressing threats to the security of Greenland from China and Russia?” Coons said. “No, not today.”

Trump has invoked the specter of Russian and Chinese warships in the Arctic as an argument for seizing control of Greenland. Conns said such claims were “rhetoric” rather than “reality.”

The president’s threats have sparked a full-blown diplomatic transatlantic crisis. Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt met with U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this week at the White House to discuss the matter as European nations rushed to deploy troops to the Arctic territory.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said after the Vance-Rubio summit that the president was still focused on acquiring Greenland.

Trump warned in remarks Friday he “may put a tariff on countries if they don’t go along with Greenland.”

The Kremlin’s chief spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Friday the situation in Greenland was highly unusual “from the point of view of international law,” adding Moscow would “watch together with the whole world” as events unfold.

Upholds California Congressional Map

Federal Court Upholds California Congressional Map, Bolstering Dems’ Chances of Retaking the House

Voters adopted Prop. 50 to counter gerrymandering in Texas, the court ruled.

Ari Berman

In a big win for Democrats, a federal court panel on Wednesday upheld a new voter-approved congressional map in California that was designed to give Democrats five new seats in the U.S. House, offsetting the mid-decade gerrymander passed by Texas Republicans over the summer.

Republicans challenged the map after voters overwhelmingly approved it last November, arguing that it was a racial gerrymander intended to benefit Hispanic voters. But Judge Josephine Staton, an appointee of President Barack Obama, and District Judge Wesley Hsu, an appointee of President Joe Biden, disagreed, finding that “the evidence of any racial motivation driving redistricting is exceptionally weak, while the evidence of partisan motivations is overwhelming.” They cited a 2019 opinion from the US Supreme Court ruling that partisan gerrymandering claims could not be challenged in federal court and concluded in this case that California “voters intended to adopt the Proposition 50 Map as a partisan counterweight to Texas’s redistricting.”

Judge Kenneth Lee, an appointee of President Donald Trump on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote a dissenting opinion, saying he would block the map because Democrats allegedly bolstered Hispanic voting strength in one district in the Central Valley, “as part of a racial spoils system to award a key constituency that may be drifting away from the Democratic party.”

Republicans will surely appeal to the Supreme Court, but may not have better luck there. When the Court upheld Texas’s congressional map in November after a lower court found that is discriminated against minority voters, Justice Samuel Alito wrote a concurring opinion maintaining that it was “indisputable that the impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California) was partisan advantage pure and simple.”

Though the Roberts Court has frequently sided with Republicans in election cases, it would be the height of hypocrisy for the Court to uphold Texas’s map, then strike down California’s.

The California map is a major reason why Democrats have unexpectedly pulled close to even with Republicans in the gerrymandering arms race started by Trump. But the Supreme Court could still give Republicans another way to massively rig the midterms if it invalidates the key remaining section of the Voting Rights Act in a redistricting case pending from Louisiana, which could shift up to 19 House seats in the GOP’s favor, making it very difficult, if not impossible, for Democrats to retake the House in 2026.