News Summary:
* Yesterday, 37 year-old Renee Nicole Good, a poet, mother of three, and a United States citizen was murdered by an ICE officer identified as Jonathan Ross, a ten-year veteran of the service. Good was confronted by ICE vehicles, and for unknown reasons, Ross ordered Good to get out of the car, where she was accompanied by her wife and dog. As Good she attempted to leave the scene, Ross shot her three times. Trump and other administration officials have repeatedly lied about the events surrounding Good’s death. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem labeled the victim a “domestic terrorist” and falsely claimed that the ICE officer had been endangered; as of today, Democrat-sponsored articles of impeachment are circulating in the House to remove her from office.
* In the wake of an alleged multi-billion dollar scheme to divert federal dollars intended for Minnesota’s subsidized child care, Governor Tim Walz has dropped his bid for a third term. The state’s popular Democratic Senator, Amy Klobuchar, is said to be almost certain to run in 2026; if she wins, she or Walz will pick someone to fill her seat who could run in the special election to replace her. Will that person be from the Congressional delegation? Perhaps it will be the popular mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey? Or Keith Ellison, the former Representative from 05 and currently attorney general?
* Donald Trump added his own name to the Kennedy Center, not only outraging the ginormous Kennedy family, but causing numerous artists scheduled to perform there to cancel.
* In a 4-1 ruling, Wyoming’s Supreme Court has struck down two laws banning abortion in the state as unconstitutional, including the first law in the nation to ban chemical abortions. The court, all appointed by Republicans, cited a 2012 amendment approved by voters in the wake of the ACA empowering adults to make their own health decisions.
United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House in Washington DC, April 7, 2025. Photo credit: noamgalai/Shutterstock
News focus: Marco Rubio, Venezuela, and the “Donroe” Doctrine
* On the evening of Saturday, January 3, a special forces team from the United States supported from the air penetrated the compound in Caracas where Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores lived. After killing 31 members of a Cuban bodyguard, the team kidnapped Maduro and Flores. They were charged this week in New York with narco-terrorism.
* While the official justification for Maduro’s kidnapping is unclear, as is Trump’s plan for “running the country,” Vice President Delcy Rodriguez has been sworn in as president—but is she on the same page as Trump? Yesterday, the New York Times obtained a 90-day emergency order issued by the government commanding the police to take into custody anyone who supports the “armed attack” by the United States.
* Trump threatened attacks on two other sovereign nations in the hemisphere, Colombia and Cuba; and revived plans to annex Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. Marco Rubio has amended Trump’s statements to say that the plan, for now, would be to purchase Greenland.
* On Thursday, the Senate passed a bill invoking the War Powers Act with five Republicans voting aye: Rand Paul of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Todd Young of Indiana and Josh Hawley of Missouri.
* Who is Marco Rubio? The son of Cuban exiles, he is only 54: he rose swiftly in Florida politics, becoming speaker of the Florida House of Representatives at 35. He was elected to the Senate in 2010, replacing Republican Mel Martinez, the first Cuban American in the Senate, and became well-known on the Foreign Policy Committee as a centrist.
* But Rubio has always been a Cuba hard-liner. A challenger to Trump for the presidential nomination in 2015, he was once seen as the future of the GOP. But after Trump became president, as Secretary of State, Rubio has had to toggle between conservative principles and gaining influence in a now-populist and ideologically rudderless party.
* President Trump and Secretary Rubio are now directly threatening Cuba’s sovereignty. Trump has suggested that cutting off Venezuelan oil will cause a fragile regime to collapse on its own, whereas Rubio represents a return of an exile opposition community that has remained organized in the last 60 years in Miami and Madrid.
* Some see the pursuit of an aggressive foreign policy as a make-or-break moment for Rubio: insiders say he was responsible for pushing Trump to act aggressively on removing Maduro. There are implcations for the 2028 nomination: the heir apparent, Vice President JD Vance, has become almost invisible at a key moment; whereas Rubio, who was not very visible in Year 1, is everywhere, and seemingly in charge of Trump’s expansionism in the Western hemisphere.
Your hosts:
Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.
Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
What we want to go viral:
* Neil wants you to read Ruth Graham’s “Philip Yancey, Prominent Christian Author, Admits to Extramarital Affair” (New York Times, January 7, 2026) about a best-selling Christian author whose books in the 1990s compelled a general audience to think about grace and who has now fallen from grace.
* Claire wants you to think about Vivek Ramaswamy’s “Social Media is a Trap for Politicians,” in which Ramaswamy cautions about the fast and inaccurate information that is reflected back to politicians from a platform populated by extremes. (The Wall Street Journal, January 5, 2026.)
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Short takes:
* The Heritage Foundation has produced new proposals to incentivize marriage and childbearing, including state-funded marriage boot camps. This “represents a sharp pivot for the organization away from its tradition of small government and free-market conservatism toward an ideology that embraces government intervention in affairs as private as procreation,” Brianna Tucker and Jacob Bogage report at The Washington Post. “Some of the proposals in the family report are part of the upheaval that’s shaken Heritage, an august institution with offices on both sides of the U.S. Capitol. Policy experts clashed over ideas that some staffers felt eschewed traditional conservatism or ventured so far into new territory that they made others uncomfortable, according to three people familiar with the paper.” (January 8, 2025)
* MAGA’s latest obsession is that the United States can acquire Greenland through an arranged marriage between 19-year-old Barron Trump (who has taken to looking like a porcelain doll) and Denmark’s Princess Isabella, just turned 18. “While her post-graduation plans are unknown, it is unlikely the Nordic country is willing to barter its first princess in 60 years,” Laura Esposito writes at The Daily Beast. “For Barron’s part, this is hardly the first time MAGA has thirsted over his teenage love life. Last year, the New York University student made headlines for shutting down an entire floor of Trump Tower for a date.” (January 8, 2026)
* The Pentagon has begun a review of women in combat roles, framed as an effectiveness study, but probably a prelude to excluding them from front-line jobs that convey the highest prestige, pay, and possibility for promotion. “Hegseth, an Army National Guard veteran with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, opposed women in ground combat units while he was a Fox News host and author,” Tom Bowman writes at NPR. Hegseth withdrew these comments during his confirmation hearings. “Kris Fuhr, a West Point graduate who worked on gender integration for the Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., said an Army study between 2018 to 2023 found that women performed well in ground combat units and, in some cases, had higher scores than male soldiers,” Bowman reports. “She called the upcoming Pentagon study ‘a solution for a problem that doesn't exist.’” (January 7, 2026)
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