by Steve Benen | Jan 16, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
Donald Trump spent much of 2025 begging for a Nobel Peace Prize that he didn’t deserve and didn’t receive. The Norwegian Nobel Committee instead announced in October that it was honoring Venezuela’s María Corina Machado with the award. The president nevertheless suggested last week that he was prepared to meet with Machado, at which point he’d take possession of the honor she had been given.
This led the Norwegian Nobel Institute, which oversees the award, to issue a statement that had never been necessary before: Nobel Prizes, it said, are nontransferable.
On Thursday morning, as Machado prepared to visit the White House, the Nobel Peace Center issued a related statement to reiterate the underlying point: “A medal can change owners, but the title of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate cannot.”
Hours later, the Venezuelan opposition leader presented the American president with her medal during their White House meeting, and according to multiple accounts, Trump kept it.
“María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done,” the Republican boasted on his social media platform. “Such a wonderful gesture of mutual respect. Thank you María!” A day later, Machado, who’s eager to lead her home country and curry favor with the Republican administration, confirmed to Fox News that she’d given Trump her prize, saying he “deserves” it.
That reminded me of a story from almost a decade ago. Politico published this report in August 2016:
Without setting foot on a battlefield, Donald Trump said he received a Purple Heart medal on Tuesday at his rally in Ashburn, Virginia, from a retired lieutenant colonel and supporter.
‘I said to him, “Is that like the real
by Steve Benen | Jan 16, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
Donald Trump has talked about unveiling a health care plan of his own for about a decade, only to consistently miss self-imposed deadlines. The Republican famously assured the public in 2024 that he has “concepts of a plan,” but when it came to doing the hard work of crafting a policy blueprint, the president has never delivered.
After seeing the new proposal billed by the White House as “The Great Healthcare Plan,” it’s fair to say Trump and his team still haven’t delivered. The New York Times reported:
Under pressure to address affordability issues in the country, President Trump on Thursday released his long-awaited health care plan, urging Congress to pass measures that would codify steps his administration has already taken to try to lower drug costs and providing what a White House official called ‘broad direction’ to back health savings accounts.
The plan was short on specific details and left much of the direction for how to finalize it up to Congress. It amounted to a few paragraphs on a webpage.
To characterize the document the White House produced as a health care “plan” is overly generous. The entirety of the proposal — literally, from start to finish — is 386 words. For context, the blog post that you’re reading right now is roughly 650 words, and if your health care blueprint is quite a bit shorter than a blog post, then you don’t actually have a health care plan.
(An accompanying White House “fact sheet” is about 800 words, but a long-awaited presidential health care plan, a decade in the making, shouldn’t be the length of two blog posts, either.)
In a prerecorded video,
by Jarvis DeBerry | Jan 16, 2026 | Opinion, Politics
The federal government’s reported investigation into Minneapolis resident Renee Good’s activist ties suggests the Trump administration is headed in a direction that’s as unconstitutional as it is unsurprising. Although the First Amendment protects our freedom of association, there’s an awful history of federal and state governments using a person’s associations to prosecute them — or merely smear them in public.
Trump called Good and her wife “professional agitators” and said his administration would “find out who’s paying for” such protests.
Sometimes the government insists a protester must be associated with an activist organization, implying the person couldn’t have independently arrived at their position and become motivated enough to protest. And if there is, in fact, evidence that a particular protester is associated with an activist organization, then the government often pivots its argument to suggest the person’s protest is neither authentic nor heartfelt, but compelled — and perhaps even mercenary.
Federal government officials, including President Donald Trump, immediately labeled Good, a 37-year-old wife and mother, a “violent rioter” and a “domestic terrorist” after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross shot her dead on Wednesday, Jan. 7. Then, on Sunday, Trump called Good and her wife, Becca Good, “professional agitators.” He said his administration would “find out who’s paying for” such protests. On Monday, The New York Times, citing people familiar with the situation, reported that federal officials are looking into the Goods’ ties to activist groups.
On Tuesday, the Times reported that six federal prosecutors in Minnesota had resigned “over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent and the department’s reluctance to investigate the shooter,”
by Steve Benen | Jan 16, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
It’s been a few days since the public learned that the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair. There was no great mystery behind the motivation for the probe: Powell resisted Donald Trump’s demands on interest rates, and so the administration apparently has added him to the White House’s growing revenge list.
The pushback to the investigation was swift, broad and bipartisan, with several congressional Republicans agreeing that it’s a mistake to pursue the Fed chair with trumped-up charges.
But one GOP lawmaker offered a different kind of response to the developments. The Hill reported:
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) on Tuesday suggested Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell should resign to avoid indictment.
‘If you’re the attorney for Jay Powell and you want to avoid an indictment, how about you go to Jeanine Pirro and say, ‘I’ll make a deal. I’ll step down today, if you’ll drop the investigation today.’ To me, that would be a win-win for everybody,’ Cramer told Fox Business Network’s Larry Kudlow on his show.
A day later, the North Dakota Republican appeared on CNBC to reiterate his support for the proposed deal and said such an arrangement would be a “elegant” solution.
EISEN: Didn’t you admit what Trump is doing to Powell is coercion?CRAMER: It’s no secret he would like Powell out. So would I. This would be an elegant way outE: You think it’d be ‘elegant’ for Fed chair under threat of indictment to step down? That doesn’t sound elegantC: Ok. So you disagree— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-01-14T16:59:24.208Z
Cramer didn’t appear to be kidding.
Consider the proposal in the broader context: Trump wants Powell to resign,
by Steve Benen | Jan 15, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
On Christmas Eve, The Washington Post’s Hannah Natanson wrote a terrific report in which she described herself as the newspaper’s “federal government whisperer.” It was a worthy title: Natanson positioned herself as the go-to reporter covering federal employees struggling with Donald Trump and his team’s radical efforts to transform the government.
Three weeks later, the FBI showed up at her home. MS NOW reported:
The FBI searched the home of a Washington Post reporter early Wednesday in connection with a criminal case involving a leak of classified information.
Hannah Natanson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, was at her Virginia home when FBI agents executed a search warrant and seized her cellphone, two laptops and a Garmin watch, the Post said.
Officials confirmed that Natanson was not part of a criminal investigation and that she’s not facing any charges. Rather, the administration believes she received information from Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a systems engineer in Maryland who allegedly leaked classified information.
Indeed, the White House defended the developments by emphasizing Trump’s “zero tolerance” attitude on failing to protect classified information — a rather hilarious claim in light of the president’s track record of blurting out sensitive secrets and storing classified files in the bathroom of his glorified country club.
Time will tell what may come of the investigation, but the fact that the FBI showed up at a reporter’s home and took her devices is an extraordinary step in itself, and one that is very likely to have a chilling effect on journalists who cover the administration.
Given the nature and breadth of Natanson’s work, it’s easy to imagine the Trump administration could use her electronic devices to identify other former
by Steve Benen | Jan 15, 2026 | Maddowblog, Politics
Throughout 2025, Senate Democrats, led in large part by Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, repeatedly tried to advance war powers resolutions in the hope of curtailing Donald Trump’s international ambitions. In each instance, the Democratic minority fell short in the face of Republican opposition.
Last week, however, something unexpected happened: Five Senate Republicans broke ranks, voted with Democrats and advanced a war powers resolution aimed at reining in U.S. military action in Venezuela. The measure was specifically crafted to “direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Venezuela that have not been authorized by Congress.”
The bipartisan breakthrough was, however, on a procedural vote. There was still one more Senate vote necessary to approve the resolution. If the 53 members who backed the measure last week stuck together, it would move to the House for consideration.
That didn’t happen. MS NOW reported:
On Wednesday, Senate Republicans approved a procedural gambit to block the Venezuela war powers resolution from getting a final vote, stopping the bipartisan effort dead in its tracks after it appeared headed for success.
The vote was 51-50, after Vice President JD Vance arrived at the Capitol on Wednesday night to break a tie.
Three of the five GOP senators who voted with Democrats last week — Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky — stuck to their guns, but two did not.
Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri was the first to fold, announcing his reversal on Wednesday morning, and Indiana’s Todd Young soon followed suit.
It’s worth appreciating why.
Almost immediately after last week’s vote, the president made no effort to hide his disgust, publishing
