by Rev. Angela Denker | Jan 26, 2026 | Opinion, Politics
When I watched a video of Nekima Levy Armstrong walk into Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, a week ago, I knew she was a prophet. She was not attacking the church, as Attorney General Pam Bondi would later claim. As a local pastor myself, I believe Armstrong was attempting to repair, to restore sanctuary and holiness to a congregation that needed to be reminded of a Jesus who calls us to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives and to let the oppressed go free.
When I watched a video of Nekima Levy Armstrong walk into Cities Church in St. Paul,I knew she was a prophet
Levy Armstrong and her fellow protesters were invited into the church for worship. They joined in praise and worship. Then, as the pastor offered a prayer that included a petition to get order in their church, Armstrong responded with a potent witness:
“David Easterwood is a pastor here. He is also the director of the field office for ICE in St. Paul.”
Levy Armstrong listed some of the recent outrages that ICE has committed in the Twin Cities, including killing Renee Good. And though Easterwood reportedly wasn’t present, she proclaimed:
“How dare you claim to be a pastor of God and you are involved in evil in our community?”
Cites Church on Jan. 22, 2026, in St. Paul, Minn. Stephen Maturen / Getty Images
Easterwood is listed as one of the pastors of the church on its website. While standing alongside Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at an October news conference he identified himself as “the acting field office director for enforcement and removal operations, ERO St.
by Michael Roth | Jan 26, 2026 | Opinion, Politics
U.S. District Judge William G. Young called President Donald Trump “authoritarian” this month and took his administration to task for trying to deport students who’ve engaged in speech the government opposes. Young, a Reagan appointee, described the federal government as engaging in an “unconstitutional conspiracy” to “twist the laws” and “pick off” well-known activists in order to intimidate all noncitizens across academia.
Imagine if my fellow university presidents had the backbone Judge Young displayed.
Imagine if my fellow university presidents had the backbone Judge Young displayed. When the administration was snatching students off the street for taking political stances the administration considers problematic, imagine if those higher education leaders had stood up to say publicly that the president’s charge of antisemitism was a smokescreen for his attempts to change how colleges and universities admit students and teach them.
Although the administration has a duty to enforce civil rights laws that protect all students from harassment and discrimination, it is also the case that the government failed to follow its own protocols of investigation and adjudication in these matters. Everyone at the schools that have made “deals” with the administration knows this, just as they know that the real issue was never about protecting Jewish students, women’s sports or objectivity in fields such as Near Eastern Studies.
But instead of saying clearly what they really knew, university leaders at so many schools made deals and paid fines while others peremptorily did away with programs that were not in line with the preferences of the president.
Play
Trump struggles with economy polling in early 2026 as DOJ probe into Jerome Powell kicks off
January 17, 2026 / 07:18
University presidents
by Steve Benen | Jan 23, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
When thinking about the major political issues of the day, banking policy probably doesn’t come to mind for most people, but it’s an issue that Donald Trump focuses on more than is generally appreciated.
Just three days into his second term, the president started accusing banking giants of deliberately discriminating against conservative customers. As is usually the case, he didn’t offer any evidence for his conspiracy theory, but in the months that followed, Trump narrowed the scope of his baseless claim: He thought banks had discriminated not against the right in general but against him personally.
In fact, last summer, the president appeared on CNBC and whined for a quite a while about how banks in general (and JP Morgan Chase in particular) had “discriminated against me very badly.” Around the same time, the Republican signed an executive order that directed federal regulators to investigate banks in search of evidence of political discrimination.
This week, he went even further. My MS NOW colleague Erum Salam reported:
President Donald Trump on Thursday sued JPMorgan Chase and its CEO, Jamie Dimon, for closing his accounts five years ago and allegedly putting him and his family on a ‘blacklist.’
The lawsuit centers on the banking giant’s closure of several accounts linked to Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of MAGA supporters. Trump is seeking at least $5 billion in damages.
In the complaint, filed in Miami-Dade County, Florida, the president alleged, among other things, that JPMorgan Chase engaged in “debanking” after Trump’s role in the assault on the Capitol, as part of the bank’s “woke” beliefs.
On Thursday night,
by Steve Benen | Jan 23, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
The details are still coming into focus, but there was a protest during Sunday services at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this week, and the disruption was reportedly driven by demonstrators’ belief that the church’s pastor works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Four days later, federal agents arrested three of those involved with the protest, including a civil rights attorney named Nekima Levy Armstrong.
That the White House celebrated Levy Armstrong’s arrest was not surprising. What mattered, however, is how the White House celebrated the development. The Associated Press reported:
On its official X page, the White House shared an image of Nekima Levy Armstrong that showed her in tears with her arms behind her back, standing in front of someone wearing a badge around their neck.
The problem? Levy Armstrong wasn’t actually crying. The image was manipulated to make the moment more dramatic than it actually was. … The original image, which shows Levy Armstrong with a neutral expression, was altered to make her appear emotional.
A related report in The New York Times noted that the newspaper ran the image through an artificial intelligence detection system that concluded the White House’s version of the photo “showed signs of manipulation.”
While Donald Trump and his White House team have promoted all kinds of AI-generated images and videos over the past year, it was obvious in earlier instances that the content wasn’t real. Rather, these were cartoonish and juvenile attempts at humor.
The image of Levy Armstrong was qualitatively different: It was designed to mislead. Don Moynihan, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, noted via Bluesky, “This is the first example I’ve seen
by Steve Benen | Jan 23, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
During Donald Trump’s lengthy White House press conference this week, he did something he usually does not do: The president responded to allegations that he’s weaponizing the federal government against his perceived political foes.
While reflecting on how impressed he is with his record from 2025, the Republican began by boasting that he “ended Joe Biden’s weaponization of our government” — a conspiracy theory rooted in baseless claims for which there is no evidence — before expressing incredulity about the frequency with which he’s been accused of doing the very thing he’s falsely accused his predecessor of doing.
“If I suggest that somebody may be guilty of a terrible crime, ‘Oh, he’s weaponizing government. Trump is weaponizing government. It’s terrible,’” the president said, referring to himself in third person. “Can you imagine? They say to me about ‘weaponize’ — I don’t weaponize anything. But what they did to me, nobody ever went through what I went through.”
Trump might find this difficult to believe, but what he “went through” was similar — and by most measures, vastly easier — to what countless accused felons go through in the U.S. criminal justice system every day.
Nevertheless, roughly 48 hours after making those comments, the president published an item to his social media platform in which he called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to go after former special counsel Jack Smith. After the prosecutor’s closely watched testimony on Capitol Hill wrapped up, Trump wrote a follow-up item:
Based on his testimony today, there is no question that Deranged Jack Smith should be prosecuted for his actions. He destroyed the lives of many innocent people, which has been
by Steve Benen | Jan 23, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
Donald Trump is no stranger to discouraging poll numbers. The president ended his first term with historically low support; he started his second term on a similar note; and on the anniversary of his second inaugural, the Republican’s public backing has plunged to embarrassing depths.
As a rule, when survey data tells Trump what he doesn’t want to hear, he responds by making up a generous new approval rating for himself, while asking the public to play along and pretend it’s real. But once in a while, when the president is especially frustrated by Americans’ attitudes, he reaches out to his lawyers.
In June 2020, for example, during Trump’s re-election bid, his operation sent a cease-and-desist letter to the president of CNN, demanding that the network retract and apologize for a poll that showed him trailing Joe Biden (who, roughly four months later, defeated the Republican incumbent). CNN ignored the demand, and Trump failed to follow through on his threat to sue.
Four years later, after winning a second term, Trump filed an unprecedented lawsuit against the Des Moines Register for publishing the results of a pre-election poll that he didn’t like. Five months after that, having returned to the White House, the president responded to a series of discouraging surveys by calling pollsters “criminals” and demanding that someone (he didn’t say who) launch an “investigation” into independent polling outlets for producing data he deemed “fake.”
As 2026 gets underway, Trump is taking further steps down the same ridiculous path. After The New York Times published the results of its latest national poll, which also showed horrible results for the White House, the president
