Trump Agriculture Sec. Has Demented Plan to Keep Food Costs Down

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins just made her viral “let them eat chicken” moment so much worse.

Rollins landed in hot water last week after she claimed that following the Trump administration’s new dietary guidelines wouldn’t force Americans to spend more on groceries. The secretary claimed that “over 1,000 simulations” found that it would cost consumers only “around $3” for a meal consisting of a “piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla, and one other thing.”

Setting aside Rollins’s eerie reference to “simulations” rather than grocery store aisles, pretty much the entire internet—including several Democratic lawmakers—started trolling the secretary for doling out such paltry rations for Trump’s so-called “Golden Age.”

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Rollins doubled down on her meager menu with an important caveat. “We had run almost 1,000 simulations and between $3 and $4 is a fair number—if you can have access to that food,” Rollins said.

She also rolled out a new and equally outrageous claim based on “new numbers.”

“A full day, meaning three full square meals and a snack, is about $15.64,” she claimed.

While $15.64 is perhaps a slightly more realistic number for the cost of a day of meals, it’s still incredibly low—and it isn’t even consistent with Rollins’s original claim. Let’s do some quick Trump Math: If every Rollins Meal only costs an average of $3.50, then three of them should only cost $10.50. So how much is left for a snack? Just over $5, which is more than the cost of any of the Rollins Meals! Does that make sense? No! But it doesn’t have to because it’s Trump Math!

The Trump administration has continued to claim that consumers can easily afford groceries, even as Americans struggle against a weakening job market and soaring prices spurred by Donald Trump’s outrageous tariff policies.

Meanwhile, the president’s family has raked in a whopping $1.4 billion since re-entering the White House one year ago, which is about 16,821 times the median U.S. household income.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is warning that the global order is in the middle of a “rupture.”

Carney made the remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, and without mentioning Donald Trump by name, declared that America’s policies were exposing the flaws in the financial system and causing it to fail.

“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically,” Carney said. “And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

“This fiction was useful, and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods. Open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes,” Carney continued. “We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”

Carney’s speech is significant not only because of Canada’s status as America’s largest trading partner but also because of his background in finance prior to entering politics. Carney served as governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013 and governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020, leading the British central bank through Brexit and the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited,” Carney added, making a pointed jab at the U.S. under Trump. “You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”

Carney is directly pointing out that Trump is attempting to weaponize the integrated economic system against those countries tied the most to it—in effect countries with strong economic relationships with the U.S. like Canada. This speech signifies that Canada, led by Carney, is eyeing a way out to protect itself from retribution from Trump.

Canada already faced down Trump’s ludicrous call to have Canada become America’s fifty-first state, and is now working together with its NATO allies to oppose Trump’s attempt to annex Greenland. It seems that Carney is hoping to end Canada’s dependence on trade with the U.S. so that it won’t be held hostage to Trump’s whims.

A giant replica of President Trump’s unsettling birthday letter to his former friend and sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein has been erected on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Sharpies lie in front of the statue, inviting passersby to sign the card.

This is at least the third piece of protest art placed by a group called The Secret Handshake, whose members choose to remain anonymous. They also placed a poop statue in critique of the January 6 insurrectionists, and more recently one of Trump and Epstein holding hands.

“Kudos to these Trump Deranged Liberals for constantly inventing new ways to light Democrat donor money on fire by spreading fake news,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told The Washington Post, in a Monday email.

“Looking forward to your jail sentence, DJT!” one message on the card read, according to the Post.

The original birthday message appeared in a book of compiled letters for Epstein’s fiftieth birthday, and is an imagined dialogue between Trump and Epstein. As Trump wrote, the two knowingly express awareness that there’s “more to life than having everything,” while not stating what that secret something is. “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey,” says Donald in the dialogue, to which Jeffrey replies, “Yes, we do, come to think of it.” Donald answers: “Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?” The dialogue is written in the sketch of a nude woman’s figure.

Trump ended the message by calling Epstein a “pal,” wishing him happy birthday, and writing, “May every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump has denied that he sent the note.

Donald Trump would like the world to know that he is absolutely not obsessed in any way with the Nobel Peace Prize that he didn’t win.

Speaking with reporters amid a Nobel Prize–fueled social media frenzy Monday evening, the president claimed that he no longer cared about the award.

“I don’t care about the Nobel Prize,” Trump said, on the tarmac beside Air Force One.

“First of all, a very fine woman felt that I deserved it and really wanted me to have the Nobel Prize, and I appreciate that,” he continued, referring to Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who gave Trump her award last week.

Despite Machado’s unnecessary kowtowing, Trump snubbed the peacemaker, opting to recognize Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez—kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro’s second-in-command—as the interim leader of America’s latest oil-rich acquisition.

But Trump obviously wasn’t over his loss, noting to the reporters around him that he was still suspicious of what he believes is Norway’s outsize influence on the prize’s outcome.

“If anybody thinks that Norway doesn’t control the Nobel Prize, they are just kidding,” Trump said. “They have a board, but it’s controlled by Norway, and I don’t care what Norway says.

“But I really don’t care about that,” he added before boasting that he had saved “tens of millions of lives.”

Norway, which hosts the Nobel Prize committee, is simply home to the prestigious award ceremony—its government has no involvement in deciding who wins.

It’s no secret that Trump has long pined for the international honor: The U.S. president phoned Norway’s Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg “out of the blue” back in July to inquire about the possibility of acquiring the prize, using tariffs as a cover for their discussion.

Trump has complained for years that his name has not yet been added to the ranks of prize 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 contention could be that Trump’s perceived 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.

“They gave it to Obama for absolutely destroying our country,” Trump said, during an Oval Office meeting with Finnish President Alexander Stubb in October. “My election was much more important.”

Trump’s long history of coveting the prize on its own undercuts his claim to suddenly no longer care, but his words carry even less weight following a Sunday revelation from Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

Støre told The Wall Street Journal he had texted Trump to argue against a series of tariffs the U.S. president plans to impose on NATO allies who sent troops to Greenland for a joint military exercise. Trump responded that the world wouldn’t be safe until the U.S. had “Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”

“Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS,” Trump wrote back, according to Støre, “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”

Meanwhile, Trump has gone out of his way to aggress U.S. relations with the European Union over the last several days, publishing private text exchanges with French President Emmanuel Macron and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, flaming Britain for returning an island within its overseas territories to its original nation, all while trudging forward with a preposterous and potentially violent scheme to annex Greenland from Danish control.

ICE agents believe they have the authority to interrogate anyone en route to a “target.”

That’s what a senior agency official, Marcos Charles, told Cecilia Vega on CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday. Vega had asked Charles about how ICE has been carrying out its stated goal of targeted enforcement, noting that the agency appeared to be stopping and detaining people simply because they looked Somali or Latino. 

“Our officers are—are conducting targeted enforcement looking for the worst of the worst. If they encounter anybody in the area of which they’re operating, they are OK to talk to those people. They’ve been authorized to talk to anybody that’s around there and establish  citizenship,” Charles said. Vega pointed out that this didn’t seem targeted. 

“If they were in that area looking for a target, and they were en route or coming from that target and encountered that individual, they are authorized to talk to somebody and speak to somebody—” Charles said, before Vega interrupted, confused.

“How do you define the area? Officers are walking down the street, driving down the street. The entire city of Minneapolis is everybody, potentially,” Vega asked, wondering if the entire city was under suspicion. 

“Nobody’s under suspicion, but we’re looking for those targets. And, again, if we walk—encounter somebody, as we’re walking up to a building, as we’re en route to that building, that’s still part of the operation as they proceed to that target,” Charles said. 

Charles, who is the acting associate director of enforcement and removal Operations for ICE,  basically confirmed that ICE operates under the assumption that nearly everyone is fair game for arrest if the agents on the scene think someone is an undocumented immigrant. This explains how ICE agents in Minnesota have been trying to get the state’s residents to racially profile their neighbors, asking them to point out their Asian neighbors. 

In July, President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said that ICE agents have the right to detain anyone for any reason, brazenly admitting that the agency uses racial profiling. On Sunday, ICE agents dragged a half-naked man out of his Saint Paul home into the freezing cold, only to release him hours later once they realized he was a U.S. citizen with no criminal record. 

President Donald Trump has pocketed at least $1.4 billion since reentering the White House one year ago, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Without a doubt, Trump’s biggest moneymaker has been his family’s various cryptocurrency grifts, which have reportedly earned at least $867 million. Trump’s cryptocurrencies allow his family to essentially receive bribes outside of the public eye that can directly influence U.S. policies.

For example, just two weeks after a foreign investment firm backed by the United Arab Emirates promised $2 billion for Trump’s World Liberty Financial, the decentralized finance platform that is majority owned by a Trump business entity, the president greenlit the country’s access to hundreds of thousands of the world’s most advanced and scarce computer chips.

Trump has also raked in at least $90.5 million from major technology and media companies, as part of a rash of settlements from lawsuits waged from the Oval Office—in order to make good with a president now overseeing their industries.

Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to Trump to settle a lawsuit over the edit of an interview with Kamala Harris, and weeks later, the Federal Communications Commission greenlit Paramount’s merger to Skydance. Other companies also offered settlements as tithes to the new king. Meta agreed to pay $25 million, ABC News agreed to pay $16 million, X agreed to pay $10 million, and YouTube agreed to pay $25.4 million.

Even companies Trump didn’t sue ran at him with fists full of cash: Amazon paid the Trumps a whopping $28 million for Melania, the documentary about the first lady—far more than it’s ever paid for similar projects.

The Trump Organization has also raked in at least $23 million in licensing fees from its development projects around the world, which go hand-in-hand with the president’s diplomatic relations. As Trump has cozied up with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, his family’s company has projects going up in Jeddah, Riyadh, Diriyah, and the Maldives. In Vietnam, the Trump administration agreed to lower tariffs after Vietnamese officials illegally fast-tracked construction on a $1.5 billion Trump golf complex outside of Hanoi.

While Americans have been struggling against a weakening job market, soaring prices, and steadily increasing inflation, Trump has easily netted 16,822 times the median U.S. household income. Is it any surprise that a recent poll found that only 36 percent of Americans said Trump has the right priorities, down from 45 percent at the beginning of his term? Looking at these numbers, and the sweeping corruption they suggest, it should probably be zero.

Authorities are searching for a suspect in the shooting of Judge Stephen Meyer and his wife, Kimberly, who were targeted in their Indiana home on Sunday. Judge Meyer was wounded in the arm, and his wife in her hip. Both are in stable condition.

Lafayette police responded to reports of a shot fired at 2:17 p.m. on Sunday, and a caller notified the police that a man in disguise knocked on the Meyers’ door claiming to have found their dog, before shooting.

“I want to ensure the community that every available resource is being used to apprehend the individual(s) responsible for this senseless unacceptable act of violence,” Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski said in a press release. “I have tremendous confidence in the Lafayette Police Department and I want to thank all of the local, state and federal agencies who are assisting in this investigation.”

While no motive has been established, the shooting of Meyer—a Democratic Tippecanoe County Superior Court judge—would be one of many threats and acts of violence against officials that have marked the first year of President Trump’s second term. And it’s put other local judges on edge.

“I worry about the safety of all our judges,” Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Loretta Rush wrote in a letter on Sunday evening. “As you work to peacefully resolve more than 1 million cases a year, you must not only feel safe, you must also be safe. Any violence against a judge or a judge’s family is completely unacceptable. As public servants, you are dedicated to the rule of law.… I know you join me in praying for Steve and Kim and their speedy recovery.”

Donald Trump’s proposed “Board of Peace” is already a farce, with many of the invited members having been accused of war crimes. 

Among the world leaders invited are Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who each have arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, the former for Israel’s brutal massacre in Gaza and the latter for crimes committed during the ongoing Ukraine war. 

Also invited is Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, who is accused of various human rights violations, including abuses against the country’s Uighur and Tibetan populations. Trump personally confirmed Putin’s invitation to reporters Monday night, and scoffed at news that France’s Emmanuel Macron will not join the board. 

“Well, nobody wants him because he’s going to be out of office very soon, so you know, that’s alright,” Trump said. “I’ll put a 200 percent tariff on his wines and champagnes, and he’ll join, but he doesn’t have to join.”

The whole board seems to be a joke designed to weaken the United Nations and fatten Trump’s wallet, with every member required to pay a $1 billion fee. (It’s unclear where this money will be held.) Some countries with far-right leaders, such as Argentina and Hungary, have already accepted Trump’s invitation, but other U.S. allies have been hesitant, wondering what the point is and how the body would actually resolve international conflicts.  

President Trump issued a flimsy, ill-defined proclamation on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at 8:15 p.m., after hours of silence—and criticism from the NAACP.

“Dr. King pioneered a movement that would go on to triumphantly reaffirm our national conviction that every man, woman, and child is endowed by their Creator with rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the statement read. “As President, I am steadfastly committed to ensuring that our country will always be guided by the same principles that Dr. King defended throughout his life and to upholding the timeless truth that our rights are not granted by government but endowed by Almighty God.” 

Trump went on to note that he had “proudly ordered the declassification of documents related to [King’s] assassination,” even as the family actively disapproved of how he went about releasing them at the time.  

Notably, the statement made no mention of racial justice or African Americans.

NAACP National President Derrick Johnson was unconvinced by the president’s proclamation, stating that “Donald Trump has zero interest in uniting this country or recognizing its history and diversity.”

“Instead, he wants to pit us against each other so that we don’t pay attention to the fact that his net worth has more than doubled while families lose their health care and access to essential services,” Johnson continued. 

Trump’s purposefully unspecific proclamation is yet another example of American politicians whitewashing, sanitizing, or outright denigrating the legacy of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., a man who was surveilled, slandered, and eventually killed for organizing against violent racial discrimination and economic inequality of African Americans.

“We renew our resolve to honor our heritage, reclaim our freedom, and recommit to the truth that America is, was, and forever will be a great Nation,” Trump wrote near the end of his proclamation, using verbiage that had nothing to do with MLK Day. “On this day, I encourage all Americans to recommit themselves to Dr. King’s dream by engaging in acts of service to others, to their community, and to our Nation.”

The president appears ready and willing to turn on some of America’s greatest allies in his quest to conquer Greenland.

In a frenetic string of posts to Truth Social late Sunday night, Donald Trump skewered Britain and France, and released private messages sent to him by French President Emmanuel Macron and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

Trump claimed that Britain was acting with “GREAT STUPIDITY” in its Chagos Islands deal, which would return the islands—a vestige of the empire’s colonies—to Mauritius. Despite previously supporting the exchange, Trump suddenly claimed that handing over the island of Diego Garcia, which hosts a U.S. military base, would appear weak to global forces such as China and Russia, and add to a “very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired.”

In another needless dig at America’s strategic partners, Trump also put Macron and Rutte on blast, publishing screenshots of private messages the European leaders sent to him in an attempt to redirect his energies away from annexing Greenland.

“I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland,” Macron wrote, according to Trump’s posts. “Let us try to build great things.”

That was, apparently, insulting enough to Trump to warrant a public callout that effectively calls into question the security of any exchange with the current U.S. leader.

Continuing his breathless digital rant, Trump shared a picture of himself in the Oval Office beside a poster board of the Western hemisphere—in which the U.S., Canada, Greenland, and Venezuela were colored in with the American flag. In another post, Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself planting a U.S. flag in rocky terrain next to a sign reading “Greenland: U.S. Territory, Est. 2026.”

Meanwhile, while speaking with reporters earlier the same night, Trump opened his arms to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, whom he invited to join his “Board of Peace,” an idea he floated in September as part of a 20-point peace plan to control Gaza.

“Yeah, he’s been invited,” Trump said.