Saturday Report 1/31/26 — Trump's New Grift: A $10 Billion Demand for “Reputational Harm” After his Income Tax Avoidance Was Exposed

The Best of the Rest of the News..

— Is this how a free press dies in America, with Don Lemon in handcuffs? What’s left of American democracy just hit another crisis with the arrest of independent journalist Don Lemon by federal agents yesterday in Los Angeles. This was for reporting on a protest at a Minnesota church, and it isn’t just a legal spat: this is intimidation aimed at the free press itself. As fascism expert Jason Stanley noted on Ali Velshi‘s show this morning, this is the moment of fascism when the fascists begin arresting members of the press. Federal officials are pursuing charges even after a magistrate judge refused to approve a complaint against Lemon, and his lawyer says Lemon was there doing what journalists have done forever — reporting the truth — and that’s exactly what the First Amendment protects. The message being sent is clear: “If you speak truth to power — particularly if you are Black or brown — you could end up in handcuffs.” This cannot stand. Call your elected officials (the number for Congress‘s switchboard is 202-224-3121) to support independent journalism and let them know that we need them to defend the Constitution, the First Amendment, and our tattered republic.

— New Trump act may lead to the takeover of elections. Trump has officially begun his corruption of the 2026 election, raiding the warehouse in Georgia where the 2020 election ballots were being stored by the state. He and his lickspittles know they’re facing an overwhelming defeat this November unless they can figure out multiple ways to rig the elections. Orbán and Putin have both used their equivalents of gerrymandering, destroying the free press, and voter purges to stay in power, and Trump has been following their examples (and even hung Putin’s picture in the White House this week). When conspiracy nut, former cult member, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard showed up in Atlanta to participate in the seizure of these materials, election integrity folks from across the country went on high alert. Something really dark is afoot; keep an eye on this…

— Trump’s New Grift: A $10 Billion Demand for “Reputational Harm” After his Income Tax Avoidance Was Exposed. Seriously. A man is now serving a 5-year prison sentence for leaking Trump’s tax returns to the press in 2018, and he wasn’t even a federal employee; he worked for a contractor. But Trump still thinks his embarrassment when we learned he’s been a tax cheat most of his life is, Trump says, so severe that the American government must give him and his two oldest boys a massive pile of cash. This family never saw a grift it couldn’t embrace…

— Trump building ‘white supremacist army’ inside government that will outlast him. “I’ve said some pretty harsh things in my time,” Ta-Nehisi Coates said on a podcast this week, “but I don’t know that I’ve seen before the President of the United States attempt to build what I can only call a white supremacist army that’ll outlast him. That is new. And I don’t know what else to call it! Given the propaganda and the recruiting.” I documented the white supremacist memes that Republicans and ICE are using for recruitment and general racist incitement, and it’s now so broad and pervasive it’s impossible to ignore. Good on Coates for calling this out.

— Is Minneapolis now a “papers please” city for non-whites? CBS News reports that people of color, including people whose families have been born here for generations, are now carrying their passports or birth certificates with them in Minnesota because ICE continues to defy the Fourth Amendment and federal and state law by randomly stopping people and demanding they show their proof of citizenship. If it’s not readily available, they often end up in ICE detention (which some reports suggest generates a bonus for the agent who nabs them, “undocumented immigrant” or not), something that’s already happened to multiple US citizens. Trump’s reign of terror is just getting underway; Minneapolis is widely regarded as a test case, with other Blue cities in Blue states up next. My congresswoman, Maxine Dexter, just warned Portlanders that we should all get whistles and be prepared for an invasion here, as most observers think Portland will be next (although, apparently they’ve decided to go after Black Somalis in Ohio first). It’s a sentiment echoed by an administration official who spoke with NBC News, saying: “The reality is, you can’t stop what you’re doing. This is the whole point of ICE existing in these cities, and Minnesota is not going to be the last state that ICE goes to. Oregon was next. We were not done. We need to keep going.” Trump is trying to create a situation where people in Red states feel “safe” and people in Blue states go to bed every night feeling like they are under siege. So far, it appears to be generating more backlash than fear, even after he’s murdered two people and inflicted violence and chemical weapons on thousands of others. Will America eventually back down and bow before him? Stay tuned…

— Mark Carney stood up for democracy, and Trump is pissed. Canadian Prime Minister Carney went to Davos and gave a great speech arguing that as Trump moves America closer and closer to Putin-style fascism it’s high time for the remaining democratic nations of the world to band together. That would include economic cooperation, military and defense collaborations, along with new alliances. It’ll be a massive undertaking and will probably produce a short-term hit to the Canadian economy, but Canada is now — perhaps correctly — viewing Trump and the US the way Poland was viewing Hitler and Germany in 1938. The damage our bone-spurs rapist fraudster felon president is inflicting on America and the world is mind-boggling.

— DOJ busted for removing Epstein files accusing Trump of child rape. Minutes after releasing an FBI document detailing reports to our government of Trump raping young girls, they pulled it off their server. Nonetheless, the FBI report is widely circulating on the web now, including text like this: “[Redacted] reported an unidentified female friend who was forced to perform oral sex on President Trump approximately 35 years ago in NJ. The friend told Alexis that she was approximately 13-14 years old when this occurred, and the friend allegedly bit President Trump while performing oral sex. The friend was allegedly hit in the face after she laughed about biting President Trump. The friend said she was also abused by Epstein.” That’s just one of a series of allegations against our president who’s already been found — twice — by a jury of his peers to have sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll. Only the best, right?