by Steve Benen | Feb 5, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
Almost immediately after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, the Trump administration wasted little time settling on a narrative that it expected Americans to believe: The victim, a 37-year-old mom, was the villain of the story.
The American mainstream didn’t buy it. A national Economist/YouGov poll, for example, found the vast majority of Americans are familiar with what transpired in Minneapolis, and by a 20-point margin, people saw the shooting as unjustified (50% vs. 30%). The same poll also found that a 47% plurality said ICE is making Americans less safe, while a 46% plurality said ICE should be abolished altogether.
Around the same time, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 57% of Americans disapproved of the way ICE was enforcing immigration laws, while 40% approved.
Nearly two weeks later, federal immigration agents shot and killed a nurse named Alex Pretti, at which point Team Trump again tried to smear the victim. Again, most Americans appear unpersuaded by the White House’s line.
The latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, for example, found 65% of Americans agree that ICE agents are going “too far.”
The same national survey found Trump’s overall approval rating dipping to just 39%, with 56% disapproving. But just as notably, 51% of the public said they “strongly” disapprove of the president, which is the worst he’s ever fared in that poll, across both of his terms in the White House.
The results dovetailed with the latest Quinnipiac poll, which found the number of Americans disapproving of ICE’s actions climbing to 63%, while 61% do not believe ICE agents should be permitted to wear masks or other face coverings.
by Steve Benen | Feb 5, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
It wasn’t easy, but in 2010, Barack Obama and his team negotiated a landmark treaty with Russia called New START. The nuclear powers agreed to significantly reduce their nuclear stockpiles, capping the number of nuclear warheads in each country’s arsenal, limiting the number of nuclear missile launchers and expanding inspections.
The terms of the agreement lasted 10 years, though the policy included the option for a five-year extension, which Joe Biden embraced.
That kept the policy intact through Feb. 4, 2026. It’s now Feb. 5, 2026. The Washington Post reported:
For decades, the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals have been constrained by a series of treaties. But that changed Thursday, when the last remaining nuclear arms limitation treaty between the United States and Russia, known as New START, expired.
Russia said in September it is willing to continue adhering to the central limitations of the treaty for at least another year, if Washington does likewise — but the Trump administration has yet to officially respond to the offer.
This wasn’t inevitable. In fact, it was easy to predict the opposite outcome after Trump said last summer that New START is “not an agreement you want expiring,” adding that it would be “a big problem for the world.”
That was seven months ago. The Republican not only made little effort to rescue the policy before its expiration, he also hasn’t presented an alternative to replace it.
“If it expires, it expires. We’ll do a better agreement,” he told The New York Times last month.
That might sound vaguely encouraging, were it not for the fact that Trump has a history of showing humiliating weakness toward Vladimir Putin, coupled with
by Dana Barrett, Fulton County (Ga.) Commissioner | Feb 3, 2026 | Opinion, Politics
When Americans are being killed in broad daylight by immigration agents and the Department of Justice continues to withhold millions of records related to Jeffrey Epstein, the FBI raiding Fulton County, Georgia’s election hub, last week and seizing 700 boxes of documents related to the 2020 elections might seem like just a distraction. The reality is much scarier than that and it’s not about 2020.
As much as Trump obsesses about losing Georgia — and the presidency — to Joe Biden in 2020, and as much as he blames voters in Fulton County for his loss, Wednesday’s raid wasn’t about any past election in Georgia. It was about future elections in a critical swing state.
I was inside the elections hub when the second warrant arrived.
I serve as a Fulton County commissioner and was inside the elections hub Wednesday when the second warrant arrived. As I watched 25 FBI agents swarm the building as if geared up for a fight, it was abundantly clear what was going on; Trump and his cronies want you to believe there is some new evidence of foul play in the 2020 elections in Fulton County that would disqualify us from running our own elections in 2026 and beyond. There isn’t.
The 2020 election in Fulton County has been investigated over and over again — audits and hearings have confirmed that the correct results were certified. Any irregularities that occurred were minor, within the normal margins of error, and would not have changed the fact that Trump lost. And Biden, who won that election, has already served his term and moved on.
There are plenty of reasons to believe Wednesday’s
by Steve Benen | Feb 2, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
Throughout his political career, Donald Trump has fought tooth and nail to keep his tax returns hidden from the public, despite the post-Watergate norm for presidential candidates of both parties. Toward the end of his first term, however, some of the Republican’s private data reached Americans anyway — not because he came around on transparency, but because of a leak.
A former IRS contractor named Charles Littlejohn gained access to the relevant documents and shared them with The New York Times. His efforts were plainly illegal, and he ended up in prison.
More than five years later, Trump has decided that the criminal penalty wasn’t enough: The disclosure of the truth means he’s also entitled to a $10 billion payout from the federal tax agency, which the incumbent president sued in federal court on Thursday, claiming that the IRS should’ve done more to limit Littlejohn’s access.
During a brief Q&A with reporters on Air Force One on Saturday night, Trump publicly commented on the civil litigation for the first time.
Trump on his multiple suits against the federal government: “I’m supposed to work out a settlement with myself … We could make it a substantial amount, nobody would care, because it’s gonna go to numerous, very good charities.”— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-02-01T02:20:30.184Z
“It’s very interesting,” he said. “I have another one where I, you know, I’ve virtually won the Mar-a-Lago break-in suit. And, you know, I have to work out some kind of a settlement. I’m supposed to work out a settlement with myself.”
For the record, the FBI didn’t “break in” to Mar-a-Lago; it executed a court-approved search warrant after Trump allegedly committed a variety
by Steve Benen | Feb 2, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
While 2025 was ostensibly an off year for elections, the year proved to be filled with fascinating and important contests, marked by one unmistakable trend: Democratic candidates consistently overperformed, racking up several special-election victories that left Republicans feeling anxious about their electoral prospects.
The question hanging overhead was whether the trend would continue in 2026. That answer is already coming into focus.
Last week, Democrats won lopsided victories in two special elections in Minnesota, restoring the state’s House of Representatives to an even partisan split. The Democratic candidates, running in Democratic strongholds, prevailed by margins of 95% and 91%, respectively. The results didn’t generate a lot of attention, however, for good reasons: One of the candidates ran unopposed, and the other faced token opposition. Though turnout was rather strong, the races weren’t a credible test of the prevailing political winds.
There was far greater interest, however, in a state Senate special election in the suburbs of Fort Worth, Texas. A New York Times report noted last week that Republican officials worried “that even a narrow G.O.P. victory … could be a bad sign for their midterm prospects.”
The results were far from a narrow GOP victory. MS NOW reported:
Democrats flipped a seat in the Texas Senate on Saturday when Democrat Taylor Rehmet won 57% of the vote in a special election for state Senate District 9.
Rehmet, a union leader and Air Force veteran, won the seat for the Fort Worth-area district against Republican candidate Leigh Wambsganss.
On paper, this outcome seemed wholly implausible. Donald Trump won this district by 17 points in the 2024 elections; Wambsganss heavily outspent Rehmet; the district hasn’t been competitive in
by Paul Waldman | Feb 1, 2026 | Opinion, Politics
President Donald Trump did something so brazen, so shameless, so stunning this week that it will stand out in history even in a presidential term drowning in self-dealing. This latest act deploys Trump’s favorite financial weapon — the bogus lawsuit — but in a way no one even contemplated before.
Trump is demanding $10 billion in taxpayer money, paid directly to him and his sons, because a few years ago, the public got a look at the tax returns he should have let us see in the first place.
What’s outrageous is that Trump will probably get it.
Trump is also seeking millions in “compensation” for the investigations into his misconduct in his first term.
This is not his first such lawsuit; Trump is also seeking millions in “compensation” for the investigations into his misconduct in his first term, about which he said that because he’s president, “I’m paying myself.” But this new suit is on a different scale.
This story begins in 2020, when a federal contractor working with the Internal Revenue Service leaked Trump’s tax returns to The New York Times. Among the revelations was that Trump paid only $750 in federal taxes in 2020.
Making someone’s tax returns public is against the law, and the contractor was eventually sentenced to five years in prison. Now Trump is suing the government, claiming his reputation was harmed to the tune of $10 billion because the public saw where he makes his money and how much he pays in taxes. You may recall that he was the first presidential nominee in modern times to keep his tax returns secret, even though there has never been a
