I Smell Victory: Time to Put the Foot on the Neck of This Regime
It begins and ends with the Trump-Epstein Files
As a glass-half-full guy, I’m happy to write this post today. It’s only a start, but I’ll take it.
The regime is freaking out. We are winning. People power is winning. Let me bullet point the ways:
Federal District Court judge Patrick J. Schiltz, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, this morning said, “The court’s patience is at an end,” and ordered the head of ICE to appear in court on Friday and explain why ICE has turned into a de facto Gestapo.
Border Patrol “Commander” Greg Bovino, kicked out of their cities by the people of Minneapolis and Chicago, is being sent to his old stomping grounds in El Centro, California, where, according to Atlantic Monthly, he will sunset himself into early retirement.1
According to CNN, Homeland Security cut off Bovino from accessing his social media accounts.
Trump is defanging Kristi Noem, at least for now, sending “border czar” Tom Homan to lead the crack (addicted) ICE team in Minnesota. Homan is a radical anti-immigrant, too, but is said by various news reports to disagree with the policy of shooting protesters in the head. Homan was previously accused of accepting a bag of money he shouldn’t have,2 but Pam Bondi’s corrupt DOJ shut that investigation down. Noem is too obstinate, obdurate, and malodorous to see the bus that Trump will likely throw her under as it heads her way, so she probably won’t resign, which means the kindly old man will need to fire her.
Her pal Corey Lewandowski, who has been sort of a constant, lurking, ghoulish presence around Trumplestan since 2016, is also rumored to be on the outs, but he somehow survives every Trump purge, so don’t hold your breath.
Congressional Democrats have begun the process of impeaching Kristi Noem, according to the Washington Post.3 First step: Investigations (let’s hope they don’t take seven years).
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt clutched her crucifix during a press conference without mentioning Stephen Miller or Kristi Noem’s claims that murdered ICU nurse Alex Pretti was a domestic terrorist. Instead, she claimed that Trump’s broken brain was mourning Pretti (laughable — Trump himself has never come close to using that word) and that a full investigation would be ordered (equally laughable, but I guess the tone change from the American Taliban Stepford Wife press secretary still matters).
Business tycoons are beginning to speak out about the excesses. Even OpenAI’s Sam Altman, while in the same breath calling a demented, 80-year-old, physically ill president a “strong leader,” said, “What’s happening with ICE is going too far.” Thanks, Sam, now go play with the other boys and keep quiet for a few years.4
Lost Senator John Fetterman threw off Kyrsten Sinema’s red dress for a day and issued a statement demanding Kristi Noem’s removal. Everybody’s getting into the act!
Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti are American heroes, and the Trump regime is now officially the devil’s lair. This is how history will record these moments, and because of their tragic sacrifices, there’s nothing the regime can do to turn it around.
Tom Jones from the Poynter Report (a journalism criticism journal) notes that it was citizen journalism that won this battle for Minnesota. He writes: “Yet, what stands out most of all from these horrifying events is that videos from bystanders at the scene show us what happened. Thanks to those citizen videos, as well as the detailed analysis of those videos from visual forensic reporters at places such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and CNN, we can see with our own eyes what happened. And what we see and what the Trump administration tells us we see are two very different things.”
Illustrating Jones’ observations: cities across the nation paid homage to Alex Pretti, much in the way they did Renée Nicole Good. For example: a pop-up memorial to Pretti at Chicago’s Jesse Brown Veteran Affairs Medical Center last night.5
Two Minneapolis protesters were accused of biting the fingers of patrol agents.6 I’m not into violence, but I’m not sure I can formally disapprove of this on a cold Minnesota day.
Pam Bondi tried to blackmail Minnesota governor Tim Walz in a voter rolls for mercy deal, whereby Bondi said (in effect) “We’ll stop killing your citizens if you hand over all your voter information.” Walz gave her the finger in an angry response that firmly said, “No.”
Speaking of Minnesota governors, Republican Chris Madel won’t be one. Citing the Trump regime’s insanity, he announced his withdrawal from the Minnesota gubernatorial race yesterday.7 His announcement reminded me of Frodo in “The Return of the King” saying, “I can’t do this, Sam.”
Ken Klippenstein is reporting that some veteran ICE officers have had enough, that morale is low, and they think everything just sucks right now. 🎻 8
In other good news, former special prosecutor Jack Smith kicked Gym Jordan’s ass all around the Capitol last week and reminded everyone in a congressional hearing that the current regime is an extension of the January 6 insurrection.
Aaron Parnas here on Substack today announced his podcast is outdrawing Joe Rogan’s. Pulling young viewers and listeners away from the likes of Rogan is a big deal, so congrats to Mr. Parnas.
“ICE’s Aggression is Fracturing Republicans” reads a headline by Maryann Cousens and Julie Alderman Boudreau for Navigator Research. Support for ICE is falling precipitously, even among staunch anti-immigrant advocates, especially in the wake of the recent extrajudicial ICE killings.9 Find the poll here.
Celebrities are waking up, too. I won’t link to specifics here. Everyone loves celebrities, so Google it!
Right-wing insurrectionist Dan Bongino left the FBI two weeks ago.
The mad clown chicken-tacoed Greenland, unable to face down normal world leaders in Davos. European tariffs, yes, then no. Maybe yes again tomorrow. Who knows?!?! It’s a wackadoodle presidency in addition to being inherently cruel.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a speech for the ages in Davos that showed the wild difference in temperament and intelligence between Canada’s head of state and the American one. We knew he lost Trump voters the moment he said, “And this aphorism of Thucydides…”. Yikes!!!!! That’s like sonically blocking Maga.
Those strange words frightened Trumplekins, even though you’d think they’d cheer the preceding line, “…the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”Also at Davos, the lonely mad king walked the red carpet from his plane alone, where he was greeted only by a stiff Swiss wind. The reception of his rambling, nonsensical speech was tepid, at best, as multiple audience members walked out.
While at Davos, Herr TrumpEpstein gave the world a glimmer of hope as he brandished a new bruise the size of Greenland on his hand. This time, his minions claimed, it was because he hit it on a table. That’s because nobody would shake his hand, so they couldn’t use that excuse again.
The Jeff Bezos $30 million mega production of “Melania” is the biggest flop since that time I watched a sea lion do a belly flop from a construction ladder at San Francisco’s Pier 39.
These are victories in a larger battle. Keep at it. It all looks hopeless until it doesn’t.
The biggest battle awaits: the Trump-Epstein Files. The information in those files will take down this regime. I almost promise it.
There will be collateral damage. Some Democrats will go down, too. If they are involved in the Epstein scandal, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. It’s part of the necessary culling this country needs to right the ship.
Thanks for reading!
Footnotes
Miroff, Nick. “The Atlantic.” The Atlantic. theatlantic, January 26, 2026. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/01/greg-bovino-demoted-minneapolis-border-patrol/685770/.
Richer, Alanna Durkin, and Eric Tucker. “White House Backs ‘Border Czar’ after Reports He Accepted $50K in Undercover FBI Probe.” AP News, September 22, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/tom-homan-bribery-investigation-justice-department-461cc66955e2ba25445a9bf931250580.
Sotomayor, Marianna. “House Democrats to Investigate Kristi Noem with Eye on Impeachment Push.” The Washington Post, January 27, 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/01/26/house-democrats-noem-investigation-impeachment/
Nytimes.com. “DealBook: Sam Altman Weighs in on Minnesota,” 2026. https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/.
Hernandez, Francia Garcia. “Chicagoans Pay Tribute to Minneapolis Nurse Alex Pretti.” Block Club Chicago, January 27, 2026. https://blockclubchicago.org/2026/01/27/chicagoans-pay-tribute-to-minneapolis-nurse-alex-pretti/.
Zeleny, Jeff. “Chris Madel, a Republican Running for Minnesota Governor, Ends His Bid and Criticizes ICE.” CNN, January 26, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/26/politics/chris-madel-minnesota-governor.
Cousens, Maryann. “ICE’s Aggression Is Fracturing Republicans.” Navigator, January 27, 2026. https://navigatorresearch.org/ices-aggression-is-fracturing-republicans/?emci=0d409588-82fb-f011-8d4c-0022482d279b&emdi=a7fad9d8-90fb-f011-8d4c-0022482d279b&ceid=1562779.
Thank you for filling my glass. Very good!👏👏👏
This reads like the sound a façade makes when it starts to buckle, not all at once, but tile by tile.
What you’re documenting isn’t victory-as-confetti. It’s victory-as-friction: judges snapping, commanders disappearing, narratives cracking under the weight of phones held by ordinary people who refused to look away. Power hates witnesses. It especially hates witnesses who can rewind.
The most important throughline here is not any single resignation, reassignment, or polling dip. It’s the moment when the state loses the ability to tell a clean lie. Once the video exists, once the court record exists, once the memorial exists, the story no longer belongs to them. That’s when regimes start improvising, reshuffling, contradicting themselves, and eating their own.
You’re also right to insist that accountability isn’t selective. If the reckoning only lands on enemies and spares allies, it isn’t a reckoning, it’s theater. The country doesn’t need protecting from truth. It needs protecting from the absence of it.
“This is what it looks like when it starts to work” is a hard sentence for people to trust, because it’s ugly, slow, and nerve-racking. But history rarely arrives clean. It arrives coughing, overexposed, badly lit, and filmed by someone who didn’t mean to become a witness that day.
Keep going. Not because it’s over, but because this is the part where pressure matters more than hope.
Bravo! Brilliant piece.