Trump Effect Continues: Democrats Land Historic Win in Key Red State

Democrats have won big in Iowa, as they’ll send Renee Hardman to the state Senate with 71.5 percent of the vote, a whopping 27 points more than Kamala Harris won in the state by last year.

Hardman’s Tuesday night win also prevents Republicans from gaining a supermajority in the chamber. Hardman is the first Black woman elected to the Iowa state Senate.

A Democratic victory that large in a red state mirrors recent historic results elsewhere, and may indicate that voters may be fatigued or are just outright rejecting anything to do with President Donald Trump. Those results include Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill’s gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey. But a victory in a small, downballot race such as Hardman’s shows that disapproval of Trump and his administration may be hitting closer to home as the government fails to end endless wars and make the country more affordable.

Earlier this year, Democrats also won big in Erie County, Pennsylvania, which narrowly supported Trump in the 2024 election, and defeated a 36-year Republican incumbent in Virginia’s 66th state House district. Democrats in Georgia managed to win two statewide races for public service commissioner, their first nonfederal statewide wins since 2006.

And even in the deep Southern state of Mississippi, Democrats were able to break the supermajority in the state Senate by flipping three seats after 13 years, taking away Republicans’ ability to override the governor’s veto and easily propose constitutional amendments.

All that is to say that these results should have Trump very worried about how negatively Americans are feeling about his second term, even those who voted for him in 2024. If this holds, it could be a major issue for the GOP come 2026 midterms.

Detritus from one of the Caribbean boat strikes has washed up on the Colombian peninsula, and it’s not what the White House claimed.

The boats apparently wrecked in a November 6 strike arrived on Colombia’s Indigenous-governed Guajira Peninsula two days later with two mangled bodies and torched jerrycans. But at least one of the vessels also carried evidence of the drugs it was smuggling onboard, reported The New York Times: emptied packets of marijuana.

The Trump administration has justified its unfettered air strike campaign on the basis that small watercraft in the Caribbean were funnelling fentanyl into the U.S. To further legitimize the militaristic response—which so far has killed at least 107 people since early September—the president purported that the boats were run by “narcoterrorists” from Venezuela, and designated fentanyl as a “weapon of mass destruction.”

But marijuana, a drug synonymous with the “peace and love” movement of the 1960s, is about as far from a tool of war as you can get. The substance is already legal in the vast majority of the U.S.: 40 states permit its use for medicinal purposes, while 24 states allow residents to get high for any reason whatsoever.

Earlier this month, Trump himself signed an executive order to expedite the process of reclassifying weed from a Schedule I drug—which are considered to have high abuse rates with little to no medical application—to a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act.

Overall, there seems to be little evidence that the boats have been headed toward the United States. In a classified meeting with U.S. lawmakers two weeks ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and State Secretary Marco Rubio revealed that the Trump administration was aware the boats were bound for Europe rather than America. They also disclosed that the administration had no intelligence indicating that fentanyl was coming out of Venezuela, but rather that some of the boats were believed to be carrying cocaine.

Paul Ingrassia, the failed Trump nominee with a self-described “Nazi streak,” has been making enemies at the General Services Administration—where he crash landed after even Senate Republicans rejected his bid to head the Office of Special Counsel due to his leaked countless racist, bigoted messages.

“I don’t know what he is or is not, but no one cares for him,” one anonymous GSA staffer told Politico in a story published Tuesday, adding that Ingrassia hasn’t been given anything “meaningful” to do because “[GSA] leadership doesn’t really want him.”

“What are we? A halfway house for bigots who can’t find jobs anywhere else in this administration?” another staffer said, going on to mention how incredibly unqualified Ingrassia was compared to his predecessor, Russell “Rusty” McGranahan. “Rusty was well qualified and served the administration well. I just want the government to be staffed with experienced people who are taken seriously.”

The Trump administration, however, seems to think Ingrassia is just the man for the job.

“Paul Ingrassia is a well-regarded attorney who has provided outstanding service to President Trump and will continue to do so as GSA’s acting general counsel,” GSA spokesperson Marianne Copenhaver said. “The GSA has complete confidence in his ability to further both its mission and the president’s priorities.”

For the uninitiated: Ingrassia made headlines back in October for a series of deeply hateful statements he made in a group chat.

“No moulignon holidays.… From kwanza [sic] to mlk jr day to black history month to Juneteenth,” he wrote in one text, using an Italian slur for Black people in the beginning of the message. “Every single one needs to be eviscerated.”

“MLK Jr. was the 1960s George Floyd and his ‘holiday’ should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs,” he said in another text. He also mentioned that he had a “bit of a Nazi streak” and to “never trust a chinaman or Indian. NEVER.”

Ingrassia was also accused of sexually harassing a coworker at the Department of Homeland Security.

This is the man the Trump administration deemed to be “well-regarded”—although it’s clear that his peers think otherwise.

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles might have revealed more than she ought to about the Epstein files.

The Vanity Fair profile on the president’s famed “ice maiden” has continued to haunt the administration weeks after its publication, in large part thanks to Wiles’s candid responses. Now, Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Dick Durbin have demanded answers regarding a particularly lurid detail that came out of the article: Wiles’s apparent familiarity with the contents of the Epstein files.

In a joint letter made public Tuesday, Whitehouse and Durbin questioned which components of the investigation she had reviewed, how she obtained the sensitive material, and “under what authority” she gained access to it.

The lawmakers asked Wiles a series of questions, requesting her responses by January 5.

“Had material in the file you reviewed been presented to a grand jury? When did you first gain access to ‘the Epstein file’ and what was the schedule of your review of it? For what purpose did you gain access to this information?” they inquired.

The duo also questioned if she had shared any of the information with Donald Trump, and asked her to explain what role she had in “any process related to the review, redaction, withholding, or release of material in the ‘Epstein file,’ including any processes involving the Department of Justice or Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

The wide-ranging profile on Wiles’s first year atop the Trump administration sent shockwaves through the political establishment earlier this month, and offered many Americans their first intimate glimpse into the inner machinations of Trump’s White House. Over the course of “many on-the-record conversations,” several of which took place after church on Sundays, documentary filmmaker and author Chris Whipple depicted a Cabinet structure that could not exist without Wiles and her unparalleled knack for translating the president’s agenda.

But her loose lips about her Cabinet coworkers have stirred up quite a bit of trouble in the workplace. Some of those comments include claiming that Trump has “an alcoholic’s personality,” and flagging that Vice President JD Vance’s shift into MAGAworld was opportunistic and “sort of political.”

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detained more than a hundred people in their Chicago “Midway Blitz” operation in September. But as it turns out, at least half of those people were kidnapped for no reason, as their charges were dropped. Only nine arrests resulted in pending felony charges.

The administration has claimed countless times that ICE agents were harassed, stalked, attacked, and abused by the various protesters—many of them American citizens—they detained during the Midway Blitz. But a Chicago Tribune story published found that these claims were flimsy at best, as was reflected in the numerous failed prosecutions.

Some citizens claimed they were mistreated in detainment, experiencing excessive force, facing false charges, and being driven around for hours in the back of a van or SUV before eventually getting dropped off at some random location such as a gas station with their charges dropped.

One man spent four days in jail before all charges against him were dropped. A Montessori school teaching assistant who survived several gunshots from Border Patrol agents had the felony case against her dismissed.

One detainee, 27-year-old accountant Ian Sampson, told the Tribune he was documenting a protest with his camera when he was detained for not listening to orders from agents to move back. He claimed the instructions were warbled and hard to hear.

During the protest Sampson was documenting, which took place at the ICE processing center in the Chicago suburb of Broadview, agents emerged to move the perimeter farther away from the west suburban facility. Their commands to the crowd to move back were unintelligible, several protesters allege.

“All of a sudden they were there, in your face,” Sampson said. “So I stepped back on the grass.… I tried to move out of the way and then they just grabbed me by my backpack, pulled me down and … I had four or five guys on top of me, putting a knee in my back, smashing my head into the ground.”

It’s apparent that the Trump administration sent militant immigration agents into one of the biggest cities in America to kidnap, beat, and abuse immigrants, citizens, or anyone expressing any kind of opposition to Donald Trump’s “blitz.” And it was almost all for nothing.

“The system isn’t designed to move at a speed like a blitz,” said Christopher Parente, a former federal prosecutor and current lawyer for one of the detained protesters. “The whole point of federal prosecutions, and why they win so many cases, is because they do all the work before they charge and then once they charge a case, it’s rock solid. Here, they sort of flipped that on its head and they charge first, and investigate later. And I think that’s why you’ve seen all the problems you’re seeing.”

Israel is about to break tradition for its highest civilian honor with the 2026, non-Israeli recipient: Donald Trump.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Monday that the award would be given to the U.S. president, marking the second time that the prize has gone to a non-citizen for the first time in its 72-year history.

Trump will receive the award under its newly invented peace category.

“President Trump has broken so many conventions to the surprise of people, and then they figure out, ‘Oh, well—maybe, you know, he was right after all,’” Netanyahu told reporters. “So we decided to break a convention too or create a new one, and that is to award the Israel Prize.”

Trump remarked that the award was “really surprising and very much appreciated.”

The last non-Israeli to receive the honor was Indian conductor Zubin Mehta, who was named in 1991 for his work directing the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra over the span of five decades.

It’s the second instance in which a foreign entity has attempted to cozy up to Trump with a shiny medal masquerading as a respectable peace prize after Trump begged, pleaded, and failed to win the Nobel Peace Prize in October. Earlier this month, FIFA—the global soccer organization—named Trump as the inaugural recipient of their own newly minted FIFA Peace Prize.

Trump has coveted the Nobel Peace Prize for years, going so far as to lie about solving nonexistent international conflicts and phoning Norwegian officials this past summer in lame efforts to snag the title. (Norway’s government has no influence on decisions made by the committee.)

Trump has complained for years that his name has not yet been added to the ranks of the prize’s highly lauded recipients, who span some of the greatest figures of the last century, including Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa, and Malala Yousafzai.

Part of the reason for his desire could be that Trump’s supposed political nemesis, former President Barack Obama, received the award in 2009 for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Three other U.S. presidents have also won a Nobel Peace Prize.

Border Czar Tom Homan’s CAVA bag bribe investigation came as a pre-inaugration surprise to Donald Trump—due to the then-incoming president’s own refusal to allow the FBI to background check his nominees, MS NOW reported Tuesday.

Trump learned just days before taking office that the FBI had footage of Homan accepting $50,000 in a paper CAVA bag last year from two agents undercover as private contractors purportedly trying to get in with the new Trump administration.

Justice officials were initially worried that Homan wouldn’t be able to get a security clearance, but when he did, federal prosecution planned to monitor him during his time as border czar to see if he continued to move corruptly. But the probe was eventually dropped by Kash Patel’s FBI—even as Justice Department internal documents pointed to proof of Homan’s CAVA bag bribe.

This wouldn’t have happened if 1) Homan wasn’t so easy to bribe and 2) Trump had actually given the FBI a list of appointees to background check after his election victory in November, like nearly every president does. Trump didn’t agree to send that list until December 3, and when he did, it was incomplete. Now, the White House has been forced to fully defend Homan while ignoring the fact that the federal government was actively investigating him for bribery.

“This was a blatantly political investigation, that found no evidence of illegal activity, and was yet another example of how the Biden Department of Justice was using its resources to target President Trump’s allies rather than investigate real criminals and the millions of illegal aliens who flooded our country,” White House Spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “Tom Homan is a career law enforcement officer and lifelong public servant who is doing a phenomenal job on behalf of President Trump and the country.”

Washington has a lot more demolition on the menu if the Trump administration gets its way.

The president is eyeing another major project in the nation’s capital, planning to destroy some 13 historic buildings on the grounds of St. Elizabeths in order to expand facilities for the Department of Homeland Security, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

St. Elizabeths was the first government psychiatric hospital, erected in 1855 and formerly known as the “Government Hospital for the Insane.” It was designated a national landmark in 1990. But earlier this month, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sought emergency approval to destroy it, alleging that the site had become a safety hazard for her agency.

Some of the buildings currently at risk of facing a wrecking ball include the 1891 addition of Burroughs Cottage, which was constructed by a wealthy couple to house their daughter and her nursing staff. At St. Elizabeths’ height, the sprawling campus housed more than 8,000 patients and was also the location of a nursing college. But the vast acreage of St. Elizabeths has since been reclaimed for government purposes. Over the last 15 years, DHS has occupied a significant portion of St. Elizabeths’ West Campus, while the East Campus remains under the control of the District of Columbia Department of Mental Health.

In a December 19 memo to the General Services Administration, Noem claimed that the buildings warranted a complete demolition on the basis that they “constitute a present risk to life and property.” She argued that the vacant buildings could be utilized by a shooter attempting to attack Homeland Security agents.

“Demolition is the only permanent measure that resolves the emergency conditions,” Noem wrote.

Preservationist groups were given just three days to respond to Noem’s request, and respond they did. Organizations fighting for the buildings’ ongoing conservation argued that Noem’s filing was “problematic,” and that if the buildings on the campus were deemed unsafe, then it was the DHS’s fault for failing “to effectively secure them.”

“A unilateral declaration like this is problematic because it bypasses the procedural safeguards designed to ensure stability, legitimacy and fairness,” read a letter jointly signed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the D.C. Preservation League. The two groups, writing to the GSA, further argued that Noem’s concerns “imply a fundamental flaw” in her agency’s “security as a whole.”

But the Trump administration is no stranger to steamrolling historic sites, even without the proper approval. After promising Americans in July that his ballroom proposal would “be near but not touching” the White House East Wing, Donald Trump completely razed the FDR-era extension in October, plowing forward without prerequisite approval from the National Capital Planning Commission or the express permission of Congress. Conveniently, Trump started demolition during the government shutdown, when the commission was consequently closed.

The Kennedy Center has been forced to cancel their annual New Year’s Eve concert as more artists pull out to boycott President Donald Trump changing the historic venue’s name to the “Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” 

Jazz supergroup The Cookers announced Monday that they wouldn’t be performing on New Year’s Eve. 

“Jazz was born from struggle and from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression, and of the full human voice. Some of us have been making this music for many decades, and that history still shapes us,” the band said in a statement, refusing to name Trump but alluding to their reasoning for pulling out. “We are not turning away from our audience, and do want to make sure that when we do return to the bandstand, the room is able to celebrate the full presence of the music and everyone in it.”

One member of the group, saxophonist Billy Harper, had already made his feelings more clear. 

“I would never even consider performing in a venue bearing a name (and being controlled by the kind of board) that represents overt racism and deliberate destruction of African American music and culture. The same music I devoted my life to creating and advancing,” he said in a previous interview. “After all the years I spent working with some of the greatest heroes of the anti-racism fight like Max Roach and Randy Weston and Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Stanley Cowell, I know they would be turning in their graves to see me stand on a stage under such circumstances and betray all we fought for, and sacrificed for, but also betraying all the listeners that believed (and still do) in our cause and our music.”

Trump-appointed Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell dismissed The Cookers as “far left political activists.” 

The Cookers’ withdrawal comes just days after the Kennedy Center was forced to cancel its annual Christmas Eve Jazz Jam due to what Grenell described as “dismal ticket sales.” The concert was free.

The Kennedy Center has been in disarray since Trump’s hostile, anti-woke takeover earlier this year, as high profile creatives and performers from Issa Rae to Rhiannon Giddens cancel their performances. And ticket sales have suffered, too—pointing to even darker days ahead for a once highly regarded cultural institution.  

The president has repeatedly elevated posts made by a parody account mocking White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, suggesting that he either enjoys the hyperbolic messaging or that he isn’t aware of the difference between Leavitt’s real account and the one making fun of her.

Donald Trump has already shared several screenshots from the account, @WHLeavitt, to his Truth Social page, despite the fact that it’s named “Fan Karoline Leavitt.” The account bio also reads “parody account,” a designation flagged by X.

One of the account’s posts that the president recirculated read: “BREAKING: Fulton County admits 315K 2020 votes lacked required poll worker signatures—a major rule violation.”

“Republicans demand restitution for Rudy Giuliani, hit with charges & $148M fine for contesting GA election,” it continued. “Do you support giving his money back?”

Another post by the parody page claimed that “Afghan ‘refugees’ in Texas want to ban Americans from eating pork and drinking beer because Allah has decided so.”

It then asked its followers whether they supported “deporting all Somalis, all Afghans, all Islamic refugees and all illegals,” providing two voting options: “Big yes” or “no.”

One post that Trump did not reshare, but maybe should have tipped him off about the account’s nature, asked followers to rate Leavitt’s butt.

Trump does spend an obscene amount of time on social media. His habits are practically akin to American teens, who spend hours online to the detriment of their mental health, according to a 2024 report by the American Psychological Association.

But his inability—or perhaps, callous disregard—to fact-check whether the posts were actually made by Leavitt raises several concerns. Firstly, it raises the question as to just how extreme Trump officials’ rhetoric can be before their leader raises an eyebrow or tries to reel them in.

But it also highlights Trump’s thoughtless approach to navigating his primary communication platform with the American public, and sparks doubt as to whether or not Trump is actually aware of what he’s consuming.

The 79-year-old has repeatedly claimed that he is in pristine condition, brushing off public alarm over his deteriorating body. But his health has been a topic of concern since he was on the campaign trail, when reports circulated that he couldn’t remember the contents of cognitive exams he claimed to ace.