Key Findings

• The Trump administration is working with some of the world’s largest mining corporations — based in Australia, Canada, Chile and the United Kingdom — to ramp up mineral extraction on or near millions of acres of America’s public lands. This new gold and minerals rush gives away public lands, skirts environmental standards, overrides tribal interests, and confers massive benefits on Trump insiders and allied billionaires.

— These people are monsters. The Trump regime is now trying to deport little five-year-old Liam Ramos, the child they had used as bait in Minneapolis and then deported to Texas before a judge ordered them to take him back to his home in Minnesota. They’re apparently doing because this because his cuteness and innocence embarrassed them. I can think of no other word to describe these people than “monsters.”

No Kings Protest in Jamestown, NY Photo: Langellephoto.org (2025)

Friends,

Heartland Democracy Project is presenting a Healthcare Policy Forum on Sunday, Feb. 15 from 3:00 - 4:15 pm at the downtown branch of the Tippecanoe County Public Library.  Recent changes to healthcare policy at the state and national levels are likely to be impacting us or someone we know. Our excellent speakers and moderator will provide the information needed to advocate for more affordable and accessible healthcare policies.  Please feel free to share the attached flyer with your family, friends and neighbors. Thank you!

Barb

You will recall, I’m sure, the story of the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio, that arose during the most recent presidential campaign. It started in July 2024, when JD Vance—just days before Donald Trump tapped him as his vice presidential nominee—began railing against this community of about 15,000 people, saying Springfield had been “overwhelmed” by their arrival. The lies and calumnies escalated until September, when, on the basis of an unverified and untrue internet rumor, Vance charged that Haitians were stealing and eating people’s pets.

CAIRO (AP) — Desperate Palestinians at a garbage dump in a Gaza neighborhood dug with their bare hands for plastic items to burn to fend off the cold and damp winter in the enclave, battered by two years of the Israel-Hamas war.

WATCH: Trump unveils his vision to rebuild Gaza into a seaside metropolis

Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios

Indiana's governor would have command of a new military police force under a bill passed Wednesday by the Indiana House.

Why it matters: Uninvited and unwanted law enforcement forces have entered cities around the country, sometimes to devastating effect, most recently seen in Minneapolis, where President Trump sent an unprecedented surge of federal agents that was met with fierce opposition and turned deadly.

A US Border Patrol agent pulls the pin of a crowd control grenade before throwing it at assembled press and protesters outside a Minneapolis hotel where a demonstration was staged in the wake of the killing of a second local resident by US Border Patrol this month.Tom Hudson/ZUMA

A memorial "ID badge" for VA nurse Alex Pretti, who was fatally shot by U.S. Border Patrol officers earlier in the day, is displayed during a vigil on Jan. 24, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)

In response to the deadly shooting of nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents, the government and conservatives have rushed to defend the killing by questioning why the slain observer was carrying a weapon and suggesting protesters should not be armed.

U.S. President Donald Trump (C) sits in between Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan (L) and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev during a signing ceremony for the “Board of Peace” at the World Economic Forum (WEF) on January 22, 2026 in Davos, Switzerland. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The so-called Board of Peace that President Donald Trump officially launched in Davos, Switzerland last week is developing sweeping plans for a U.S.-backed administration to rule Gaza, according to a draft of the Board’s resolution.

As Trump’s violent dictatorial grip over America worsens, his violations of our Constitution, federal laws, and international treaties become more brazen. Only the organized people can stop this assault on our democracy by firing him through impeachment, the power exclusively accorded to Congress by our Founders.

The New York Times published a seven-day series of editorials (12/8/25–12/14/25) meant to examine, as the initial piece put it, “what’s gone wrong with the US military” and “how we can create a relevant and effective force that can deter wars whenever possible and win them wherever necessary.”

Corporate media have deployed a lexicon of legitimation in their coverage of the deadly US invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, along with his wife and fellow politician Cilia Flores.

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, January 20, 2026

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, January 20, 2026

This was a headline in the New York Times on Tuesday: “With Threats to Greenland, Trump Sets America on the Road to Conquest: After a century of defending other countries against foreign aggression, the United States is now positioned as an imperial power trying to seize another nation’s land.” Here is a sentence from the article that followed: “Never in the past century has America gone forth to seize other countries’ land and subjugate its citizens against their will.”

Late last night, Nick Schifrin of PBS NewsHour posted on social media that the staff of the U.S. National Security Council had sent to European ambassadors in Washington a message that President Donald J. Trump had already sent to Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre of Norway. The message read:

Indiana University Emeritus Professor, Department of History, James Madison

(Watching Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, January 14, 2026 reminded me of the US wars on people abroad and at home:  https://www.democracynow.org/2026/1/14/saint_paul_city_council_ice )

Federal agents forcefully push through a crowd of bystanders as they attempt to leave the scene where an agent killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, 2026. Photo by Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images

In the wake of an ICE agent’s grotesque shooting of an unarmed woman – a US citizen – in Minneapolis on Wednesday, it has become chillingly evident that no one is safe in America from President Donald Trump’s 21st-century Gestapo.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette building in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is slated to close in May 2026 after union workers went on the longest strike in the history of U.S. newspapers (Photo By Raymond Boyd/Getty Images).