A Government Daring the Country, the World to Stop It

How allied trust collapsed, civil liberties eroded, and winter closed in at home and abroad

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Today’s roundup is sponsored by

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Good morning. We’ll start in Greenland, where European allies are now sending troops not to deter Russia or China, but to signal unity against the United States. Denmark and Greenland are openly acknowledging a “fundamental disagreement” with Donald Trump, who continues to treat the idea of seizing allied territory as a matter of deal-making rather than sovereignty. NATO countries are deploying soldiers to reassure one another that an American takeover of Greenland is, in fact, not normal behavior, a sentence that should have triggered a global pause, yet it barely registered.

Then pivot to Iran, where Trump abruptly declared himself satisfied that the regime had told him, trust him, very important sources, that “the killing has stopped” and executions of protesters are no longer planned. There was no evidence offered, just vibes. On that basis, U.S. forces were quietly stood down, markets relaxed, oil prices dipped, and the White House congratulated itself on restraint while Iranian families waited to see whether “postponed” meant “cancelled” or merely “not today.” Allies worry Trump can’t be trusted to respect borders; autocrats apparently can be trusted on their word.

Back home, the contrast is grotesque. In Minneapolis, Portland, Santa Ana, and beyond, federal immigration agents are shooting people, blinding protesters, and flooding cities with force levels that would be alarming in a foreign occupation. In Minneapolis alone, local officials say there are roughly 3,000 ICE and federal agents deployed in a city policed by about 600 local officers. That is a six-to-one imbalance the mayor calls intolerable. The governor has called it organized brutality. The Justice Department has called public outrage an “insurrection.”

Two ICE shootings in Minneapolis in a week. A man shot in Portland with no video footage to support federal claims. A 21-year-old college student in Santa Ana permanently blinded when a federal agent fired a projectile at close range. Each time, the same script appears: sweeping DHS allegations, claims of officer endangerment without evidence, immediate criminalization of the injured, and absolute confidence that “federal immunity” will take care of the rest.

Stephen Miller is on television warning governors and mayors that any attempt to interfere with ICE operations could result in prosecution. In other words, stand down or else. Cooperative federalism has been replaced with something closer to a loyalty test.

The White House itself is no longer bothering with subtlety. This week, the official account posted a cartoon asking, “Which way, Greenland man?”, language that extremism experts immediately recognized as a wink to neo-Nazi literature. That is not a metaphor. “Which Way Western Man” is foundational reading in white supremacist subcultures. Swap in Greenland, add a dash of manifest destiny, and you have ideological signaling served straight from the South Lawn.

If anyone doubts where that ecosystem leads, look no further than the neo-Nazi terror group the Base, which has openly declared its ambition to replicate what al-Qaida and ISIS achieved in Syria, this time in the United States. Its leader has said so plainly on tape, praising the conditions here: access to weapons, rugged terrain, and a government increasingly distracted from, or openly hostile to, confronting far-right extremism. While federal resources are redirected away from domestic terrorism, ICE agents are busy blinding protesters and calling it crowd control.

Underneath all of this chaos, the economic picture is quietly deteriorating. Trump promised tariffs would bring factories “roaring back.” Instead, manufacturing employment has fallen every single month since his Rose Garden announcement. Seventy-two thousand fewer factory jobs. Auto jobs down, semiconductor jobs down, and small manufacturers frozen by cost uncertainty. The “boom” exists almost entirely in Trump’s speeches.

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Healthcare is becoming unaffordable again. With enhanced ACA subsidies allowed to expire, 1.4 million fewer people have enrolled in marketplace plans compared to last year. Premiums for subsidized families are projected to more than double. Democrats passed a bill to fix it. Republicans stalled it. Millions of Americans are being quietly priced out of health insurance while being told the economy has never been better.

And while all of this unfolds, the troop movements, the shootings, the dog whistles, the economic spin, Ukraine is still at war. Still standing, but freezing.

This is the fourth winter since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, and Moscow’s strategy is no longer subtle. If it cannot defeat Ukraine on the battlefield, it will try to freeze it into submission. Missile strikes have intensified against energy infrastructure, and blackouts now stretch for days. Apartments in central Kyiv hover just above freezing.

Ukrainian officials call it “weaponizing winter.” President Zelensky has declared a state of emergency in the energy sector. Russia’s message is blunt: your government can’t protect you; accept our terms; pressure your leaders to surrender. It is collective punishment delivered through cold, darkness, and exhaustion.

And damn, it isn’t working. Families are adapting with a kind of quiet ingenuity that feels almost unbearable to read. People seal windows with stuffed animals. They heat bricks on gas stoves and trap warmth under cast-iron pots. Dogs wear sweaters and sleep pressed between their owners for heat. Parents turn one room into a warm zone, hanging clothes in doorways, piling blankets, stuffing every gap with soft toys, while children ask if the next Avengers movie is still a long way off.

One mother wraps her daughters in layers and answers gently that the heated blanket won’t work, there is no power, but she will add another quilt. Another man sleeps elsewhere at night so his plants can survive the cold in his apartment. People joke about doing push-ups to stay warm, not because it is funny, but because humor is sometimes the last insulation left.

No one interviewed blames their own government or utters a word about surrender. If Russia’s strategy has had any emotional effect at all, Ukrainians say, it is anger, sharper, colder, more focused. This is the scrappy resolve Americans need right now to save our democracy.

This would be the perfect moment for old Sol to clear its throat, a well-timed grid disrupting solar flare, not to hit anything in particular, just enough cosmic interference to remind a few men drunk on power that even empires answer to forces they do not control.

While Ukrainians endure deliberate civilian targeting by an invading power, the United States, once the loudest champion of Ukraine’s defense, is busy blinding protesters, threatening governors, flirting with extremist aesthetics, and treating allied sovereignty like a real estate option. A neo-Nazi terror group openly cites Ukraine and the U.S. as ideal terrain for insurgency, inspired by al-Qaida. European allies quietly reposition troops. The White House posts cartoons that would not be out of place on far-right message boards.

Ukraine has not forgotten what it is fighting for. Americans and the rest of the democratic world must remember what they are supposed to be defending.

Allied countries are hedging against American instability. Autocrats are treated as trustworthy interlocutors. Federal agents outnumber local police in U.S. cities and operate with near-total impunity. Protesters are shot, killed, and maimed, branded terrorists, and extremist groups see opportunity. Jobs are not coming back, and healthcare is slipping out of reach.

President Trump has now taken an extraordinary step. He has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, a 19th-century law that allows a president to deploy the U.S. military on American soil, to suppress protests in Minnesota over the federal ICE surge. In a Truth Social post Thursday, he warned that if Minnesota’s leaders do not stop what he calls “professional agitators and insurrectionists” attacking ICE agents, he will “institute the INSURRECTION ACT.” The law has been used sparingly in U.S. history to quell rebellions and enforce federal authority, but its use in the context of domestic protests over immigration enforcement would be unprecedented.

The Insurrection Act allows the president to use military forces, including federal troops and a federalized National Guard, to suppress rebellion or “unlawful obstructions.” Invoking it under these circumstances would test constitutional boundaries and dramatically escalate the standoff between federal and state authority. Legal experts note that the conditions for its use are ambiguous and often subject to interpretation, but historically it has been reserved for genuine insurrections or civil rebellions, not protests against federal law enforcement.

Taken together with the shootings, the deployment of thousands of federal agents, and Trump’s rhetoric framing protesters as “insurrectionists,” this threat reflects a moment in U.S. governance where military force is being dangled as a tool of domestic political enforcement. This is a profound constitutional crisis in the making, and it is happening in real time.

This is the moment where passivity becomes a choice. Democracies do not collapse all at once. They erode while people wait for the next outrage, the next court ruling, the next election, the next someone else to fix it. What we are watching now is not inevitable. It is contingent. It depends on what ordinary people, institutions, states, journalists, lawyers, unions, voters, and allies decide to tolerate.

Authoritarianism feeds on exhaustion and confusion. It counts on people throwing up their hands and saying this is too much, too fast, too broken. The answer is not despair. The answer is clarity. Support those pushing back through lawful resistance, journalism, organizing, and mutual aid. Demand accountability even when it feels futile, especially when it feels futile.

Ukraine is not freezing because it forgot who it is. It survives because people refuse to surrender their agency, even when the cost is unbearable. That same resolve is required here, minus the missiles, minus the cold, minus the excuse that this is someone else’s fight.

History does not ask whether we were comfortable. It asks whether we showed up. Marz and I plan to show up.