We, the people of the USA, are deeply indebted to the stalwarts of Minneapolis for standing up to ICE. Looking at pictures from the struggle, I see love, solidarity, risk-taking, and clear thinking. Minnesotans are standing at the Bunker Hill of the 21st century. Out-numbered and out-gunned, but not out-whistled, they are showing that organized nonviolence can judo-like spin the aggressors out of control. The whole world is watching, and we see once again that the spirit of the people is greater than the Man’s technology.
Or so we hope. Certainly the stalwarts of Minneapolis have helped turn the tide of public opinion. We also applaud the political leaders of Minneapolis and St. Paul for standing with their people and standing up to ICE and to Trump. On Democracy Now! this week I was moved by the observations of St. Paul city council leader Hwa Jeong Kim: “We don’t want ICE in our neighborhoods. They are violent, they are creating chaos and terrorizing our immigrant neighbors, and they are not keeping anyone safe.” And she went on to comment on the city’s new lawsuit against the Trump administration, the loss of temporary protected status for thousands of Somali immigrants in the United States, plans for a general strike in Minneapolis and more.
As so often, the nuts & bolts of solidarity resistance lies in the day-to-day grassroots work of community organizations. Minnesota Public Radio had a feature last week about a Spanish-speaking church that had delivered 12,000 boxes of groceries to families in hiding; and another feature about parents and others patrolling schools to keep children and their parents safe from the ICE kidnappers. When it’s our turn in Westchester, the lessons learned about confrontation, solidarity, and support by the Minneapolis (and Chicago and Los Angeles and Charlotte, etc.) will be required reading for us.
Though I have highlighted resistance and solidarity, Trump and ICE are doubling down at every turn and grow increasingly crazed and dangerous. Today’s news is that Trump is considering invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. A useful article in today’s New Yorker describes this rarely used Act, which would allow the President to use military forces inside the USA, and outlines the arguments claiming using the Actt is illegal in the present circumstances. But this is the Age of Trump… More generally, Insurrection Act or not, the number of people in ICE detention has now reached 70,000, and plans are underway to build more detention centers, including the possibility that one will be built in Chester, NY.
Two weeks from now, we will see if the Democratic Party leadership considers the ICE invasion of our cities and the people’s tsunami against ICE merit a strong Democratic push back, for the next continuing budget Resolution must be passed by January 30, or the government will shut down. Is an impending fascist takeover of our cities sufficient reason to draw a line and stand and fight? If not, this may the straw that breaks the Democratic Party. And if the Democrats take a stand and stick to it, where will this go? Interesting times.
SOME ESSAYS ILLUMINATING THIS ICY WEEK
(Video) “Autocratic Power Grab”: Trump Threatens to Invoke Insurrection Act, Deploy Troops to Minnesota
From Democracy Now! [January 16, 2026]
---- Following Minneapolis protests in response to the ICE killing of Renee Good, President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act Thursday, a move that would allow him to send military forces to the city. Trump’s comments came after a second person was shot by ICE following a traffic stop. “Trump probably sees this as a civil war,” says Baher Azmy, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights. “This, as we all know, is being leveraged as part of an autocratic power grab.” [See the Program]
Renee Good’s Murder and Other Acts of Terror
An interview with Robin D. G. Kelley, Boston Review [January 17, 2026]
---- On January 7, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good, a thirty-seven-year-old woman who had been observing ICE raids from her car in her Minneapolis neighborhood. In videos of the incident, we can see Ross firing through Good’s windshield and open window as she begins to drive away. The horrific footage of the killing felt like a stark symbol of today’s authoritarian moment—but at the same time, I knew that anyone involved in the struggle against police violence would find it tragically familiar. To put Good’s killing in context, I spoke with historian and Boston Review contributing editor Robin D. G. Kelley, whose forthcoming book, Making a Killing: Capitalism, Cops, and the War on Black Life, covers the history of county, state, and municipal police violence—as well as the activism against it. In an email exchange, we discussed the pitfalls of the “perfect-victim narrative,” policing’s terror tactics, why agents don’t need more training, and where we go from here. [Read More]
“Abolish ICE” Is More Popular Than Ever. How Will Democrats Drop the Ball This Time?
By Mychal Denzel Smith, The Intercept [January 18 2026]
---- It’s no exaggeration to say that the city of Minneapolis is under federal occupation. Since the beginning of January, when the Trump administration sent 2,000 federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a racist crusade against the city’s Somali population, the people of Minneapolis have been under siege. People have been roughed up, children tear-gassed, and of course there was the heinous shooting and killing of Renee Good at the hands of ICE agent Jonathan Ross, captured on video. It has been entirely predictable, then, as more Americans have witnessed the ways in which ICE has operated as a violent, lawless force, that there would be renewed calls from people across the country to “Abolish ICE” — a much-maligned activist demand that gained some traction during the first Trump administration. It has also been entirely predictable that establishment Democrats have tried to distance themselves from the idea. [Read More]
NEWS NOTES
ICE seems to be planning a dozen large concentration camps for “detainees” across the USA. The camp for our area may be located in Chester, NY. This is not popular with the residents of Chester, who turned out in their hundreds to demand that the project be stopped. Here is some good video of the people of Chester speaking out. The Newsletter will follow this; let’s find ways to support the people in Chester who don’t want an ICE concentration camp in their neighborhood. And what will Chester congressional representative Mike Lawler do? Will he “demand answers”? Let’s help him make up his mind.
The NYC nurses’ strike is important for improving the condition of our healthcare, as well as for giving nurses better pay. The strike is now in its fifth day. It looks like it will be a long one. Let’s look for ways to help out. Here is a good presentation of the issues by one of the striking nurses. Here nurses at Montefiore in the Bronx speak out. And here are some good pictures.
A recent Newsletter described the hunger strikes of UK prisoners belonging to Palestine Action, who were now late into their hunger strike – striking against prison conditions as well as for Palestine – and who were nearing death. A news report from Friday says that the activists have begun taking food, and it is believed that the government made concessions to the hunger strikers’ demands. The news report describes one prisoner, Heba Muraisi, 31, who had refused food or 73 days. In the UK, the hunger strike evoked memories of the1981 hunger strike by Irish Republican Army prisoners, which resulted in the death of Bobby Sands and 9 others. More news when it is available.
CFOW NUTS & BOLTS
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) The Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter holds a Monday afternoon vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW newsletter can be read on Substack, and is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook group. Another Facebook group focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a CONTRIBUTION, please make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks.
REWARDS!
This week’s Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers bring back my recent Best Friends Elle and Toni. One of the things they do is cover songs they (and I) like. Perhaps you too will like “Octopus’s Garden” (The Beatles); “You Never Can Tell (C’est La Vie)” (Chuck Berry); and “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” (Randy Newman). Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
Social Strikes: Confronting ICE and Resisting Authoritarianism
An interview with Jeremy Brecher, Znet [January 16, 2026]
---- As authoritarian politics harden in the United States, familiar channels of resistance are proving dangerously inadequate. Elections are constrained, courts are under siege, and dissent is increasingly met with repression in the streets. In this moment, questions of power — who has it, how it is exercised, and how it can be withdrawn — are no longer abstract. They are immediate and practical. Labor historian and longtime organizer Jeremy Brecher has spent decades grappling with these questions, and in a recent series of reports, culminating in “Social Strikes: Can General Strikes, Mass Strikes, and People Power Uprisings Provide a Last Defense Against MAGA Tyranny?,” he argues that large-scale noncooperation may be one of the few strategies capable of halting an authoritarian slide. [Read More]
Last Remaining Nuclear Arms Control Treaty Between the US and Russia To Expire in Less Than a Month
By Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com [January 13, 2026]
---- The last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the US and Russia, the New START, is set to expire on February 5, which will leave the world’s largest nuclear powers with no limits on the deployment of their nuclear weapons. The New START caps the number of nuclear warheads either side can deploy at 1,550 and also limits the deployment of delivery systems. In 2023, Russia said it was suspending participation in New START, citing US support for Ukrainian attacks on Russian facilities housing nuclear weapons, but both Washington and Moscow said they would continue to abide by the limits set by the treaty. [Read More]
The Democratic Base Is Social Democratic
By Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect [January 16, 2026]
---- It took a profound transformation of Americans’ social and economic lives, at the hands of a deregulated and financialized capitalism, that pushed the Democrats left, and it’s time that the media reconsidered what constitutes the party’s new mainstream. The “party,” whatever that may be (the DNC? the Democratic campaign committees?) has issued no manifestos, and such big-money-beholden party entities will be the last to acknowledge this change. Rather, this is a transformation that began with the rank and file and required Bernie Sanders’s first presidential campaign to make it visible even to left activists. That, however, was a full decade ago. And whatever this social democratic force now may have become, it certainly shouldn’t be viewed as marginal—much less, invisible. Today, it is the base of the Democratic Party. [Read More]
THE WAR ON VENEZUELA
Trump Picked the Right Stage to Act Out His Imperial Ambitions
By Greg Grandin, The New York Times [January 15, 2026]
---- Roosevelt and Reagan differed sharply in politics, yet both grasped how depicting Latin America as aligned with the United States could convert partisan alliances into durable governing majorities. Turning foreign policy into a mirror of national identity, they renovated Americanism as humane and universal. Mr. Trump, in contrast, seems unconcerned with transforming dominance into hegemony or with broadening his base. He seeks only raw power in which the United States dominates the hemisphere because it can dominate the hemisphere — where it kills speedboat captains because it can kill speedboat captains. The reduction of Latin America to a sphere of coercion, extraction and threat reflects in an ugly way in domestic politics. The same rule by domination Mr. Trump showcases abroad is little different from what is being applied at home. Polarization is deepening, cities are under assault by federal forces, and the degrading, at times lethal treatment of citizens and noncitizens alike by government agents is now routine. [Read More]
Machado Agonistes [Venezuela]
By William Neuman, New York Review of Books [January 15, 2025]
---- The Venezuelan opposition leader courted US military intervention—but she did not get what she bargained for. She had called for the overthrow of the entire “criminal state”—meaning not just Maduro but also the other members of his Chavista power structure, most of whom have been in government with him since the era of his predecessor, Hugo Chávez. This would have cleared the way for her to occupy the Miraflores Palace in Caracas…. Instead the gringos left Maduro’s inner circle in place, including the vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who was later sworn in as acting president; her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, the head of the National Assembly; Diosdado Cabello, the minister of the interior; and Vladimir Padrino López, the minister of defense. Machado’s dilemma is rooted in the fact that her goals never meshed with those of her American sponsor. [Read More]
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
The U.S. has announced ‘Phase 2’ of the Gaza ceasefire. Here’s why it doesn’t matter for Palestinians.
By Qassam Muaddi, Mondoweiss [January 15, 2026]
---- Phase 2 of the tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has started, and it will involve “the full demilitarization and reconstruction of Gaza,” U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff declared on [last] Sunday. Israel has opposed advancing to a second phase, which would include a larger Israeli withdrawal from the Strip, the start of reconstruction, and the transfer of control over Gaza’s institutions from Hamas to a provisional authority of Palestinian technocrats. This technocratic committee, tasked with day-to-day governance, will answer to a U.S.-mandated “Board of Peace” as part of Trump’s 20-point “peace plan.”… But these developments don’t matter. Israel remains the key party capable of influencing the details and likely implementation of the ceasefire — and it will try to use that influence to define what Phase 2 actually looks like. [Read More]
Israel, From Genocide to Self-Destruction
An Interview with Avi Shlaim, Jacobin Magazine [January 13, 2026]
---- One of the first to speak openly of genocide was Avi Shlaim, an Israeli British historian of Iraqi Jewish origin. An emeritus professor of international relations at Oxford University, he is one of Israel’s new generation of historians who advocate a historiography beyond the official Zionist national myth. His latest book, Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestine, received an especially controversial reception in Germany last fall, around the time of the ceasefire. In an interview originally conducted for the German-language edition of Jacobin, Shlaim explains how far the recent war and genocide in Gaza represented a continuation of Israel’s historical policy. … “Even at the beginning of the war, it did not look to me as if Israel was committing genocide. The turning point for me was when Israel used starvation as a weapon of war on a massive scale. When Israel suspended all international aid to Gaza, deprived the people of Gaza of water and food and fuel and medical supplies, that convinced me that this is genocide.” [Read More]
WAR ON GREENLAND?
Greenland on the Chessboard of U.S. Imperialism
By Lotte Rørtoft-Madsen, Znet [January 17, 2026]
---- But the crisis continues, and its magnitude is huge. The reality is that for over a year, the nearly 57,000 Greenlanders and their vast island have been turned into a bargaining chip, a pawn to be moved at will on the great chessboard of U.S. imperialism. Trump has repeatedly stated that the U.S. seeks to control and own Greenland, by military means if necessary. The brutally effective aggression against Venezuela on January 3 and the kidnapping of the country’s head of state and his wife have erased any doubt that the White House administration is capable of putting Trump’s words into action. The threat is imminent, and it is felt acutely among the Greenlandic people. The population is stuck in a vice, and the country’s politicians must fight hour by hour simply to get a seat at the table and be heard., Not only by the U.S., but also by Denmark. [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST - “Greenland? Really?” by Bruce Altschuler, Znet [January 15, 2026] [Read More]
Trump Says US ‘Needs’ Greenland as Polling Shows the Idea Is Extremely Unpopular Among Americans
By Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com [January 14, 2026]
---- President Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday that the US “needs” Greenland, as polls released the same day show that the idea of a US takeover of the Arctic territory is extremely unpopular among American voters. A poll from Quinnipiac University found that 89% of respondents oppose the US attempting to take over the island by military force, with just 9% in favor. It also found that 55% of American voters oppose the US purchasing Greenland, which could cost the US $700 billion, according to estimates. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that just 17% of Americans support Trump’s efforts to acquire Greenland, and only 4% agreed that it would be a “good idea” for the US to use military force to seize the Arctic territory. The idea is also extremely unpopular in Greenland, as a poll from last year found that 85% of Greenlanders don’t want to join the US. [Read More]
WAR ON IRAN?
(Video) “This Regime Will Fall”: Director Jafar Panahi on Deadly Iran Protests & Filmmaking Under Censorship
From Democracy Now! [January 15, 2026]
---- With Iran gripped by nationwide protests that activists say have left at least 2,600 people dead, we recently spoke with renowned Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, whose latest film, It Was Just an Accident, was shot entirely in secret inside Iran and won the Palme d’Or at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. The film has since been shortlisted for an Oscar in the international feature category. Panahi dedicated a recent New York Film Critics Circle Award to Iranian protesters. It Was Just an Accident centers on a group of former prisoners who kidnap a man they believe was their interrogator and grapple with whether to exact revenge, and Panahi says the film drew directly from his own experience with state violence and repression. Panahi has been repeatedly arrested in Iran, served prison sentences, and was recently sentenced in absentia to an additional year in prison and a two-year travel ban. In an extended interview, Pahani discussed the protests in Iran, fighting against censorship, and the risk of prolonged cycles of violence. “I have always said this regime will fall. It is impossible for it to not fall, because it’s a failed state in every sense,” he said. [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST is “The Use of Military Force in Iran could Backfire on Trump,” by Bamo Nouri, The Conversation [January 14, 2026] [Link].
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
2025 was Earth’s 3rd-warmest year on record
By Jeff Masters Yale Climate Connections [January 14, 2026]
---- In 2025, the planet had its third-hottest year on record, NOAA, NASA, the European Copernicus Climate Change Service, Berkeley Earth, the Japan Meteorological Agency, and the UKMET Office reported. The year 2024 remains the hottest year on record, with 2023 in second place, but only slightly ahead of 2025. ... According to Berkeley Earth, 9.1% of the Earth’s surface had a record-warm year, including 10.6% of land areas and 8.3% of ocean areas. They estimated that 770 million people — 8.5% of Earth’s population — experienced a locally record warm annual average in 2025. The largest population centers affected by record warmth in 2025 were mostly in Asia, including about 450 million people in China. [Read More]
We’re Racing Down the Highway to a Mad Max World
By Stan Cox, Tom Dispatch [January 13, 2026]
---- Let me start by putting things bluntly: Don’t bother to tell Donald Trump, but with his distinct help, we’re doing nothing less than cooking ourselves. Thanks to the continued use of fossil fuels in a staggering fashion and the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, almost half of the world’s population now suffers through 30 additional days of extreme heat annually. Heatwaves roll in thicker and faster every year. On average, according to the medical journal The Lancet, 84% of the extremely hot days we’ve faced over the past five years would not have occurred without human-induced climate change that the American president seems intent on making so much worse. Heat-related deaths are already 63% more frequent than in the 1990s. That Lancet article also reported that heat- and drought-related hunger, as well as deaths from wildfire smoke and industrial air pollution, are breaking records globally almost yearly. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES
(Video) Palestinian Activist Mahmoud Khalil Speaks Out as New Ruling Could Lead to His Rearrest, Deportation
From Democracy Now! [January 16, 2026]
---- A federal appeals court on Thursday delivered the Trump administration a victory in its efforts to deport Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, opening the door for his rearrest. Khalil was a graduate student at Columbia University when he was arrested in March and detained for months. He missed the birth of his son, Deen, while in detention. … The appeals court did not weigh in on the constitutional merits, instead saying Khalil should have appealed his removal order in immigration court before going to a federal judge. “What people need to understand is the immigration courts are not real courts,” says Baher Azmy, a member of Khalil’s legal team. “They’re part of the executive branch.” [See the Program]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Trump’s Death Eaters Are Coming for Our Kids [RFK, Jr.]
By Gregg Gonsalves, The Nation [January 15, 2026]
---- Since his appointment, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been hell-bent on destroying the US childhood vaccine program. Last year, he purged the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, replacing its members with his cronies, which led to the withdrawal of the recommendations for the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, as well as for Covid vaccination for infants and pregnant mothers. None of this was based on science: It was based on RFK Jr.’s whims, his decades-long pathological crusade against vaccines. Then, last week, RFK did what would have seemed unthinkable even a year ago: He announced by fiat that the US will no longer recommend hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningococcal disease, rotavirus, influenza, or respiratory syncytial virus vaccinations for children except in certain circumstances, and then only after consultation with a healthcare provider. [Read More]
Why It’s Essential to Scrap the Cap – Social Security
By David McCall, Znet [January 17, 2026]
---- The federal government imposes Social Security taxes only on the first $184,500 in wages, no matter how much money a person makes in 2026. Because of this arbitrary and nonsensical cap, hundreds of the nation’s richest people paid their Social Security taxes within the first few minutes or hours of 2026. Now, despite the pressing need to shore up the Social Security trust funds, they’re sitting out the rest of the year. Nothing illustrates this rigged system better than the case of Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, who rakes in so much money at so great a speed that he effectively paid all of his required Social Security taxes on his wage earnings by 12:15 a.m. on January 1, 2026. On the other hand, more than 160 million ordinary working people—Americans who perform essential jobs but never come close to pocketing $184,500 a year—will keep contributing to Social Security through December 31. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
The life of civil rights hero Claudette Colvin should teach us this: resistance is collective, and it never stops
By Gary Younge, The Guardian [UK] [January 17, 2026]
---- Claudette Colvin, who died earlier this week in a hospice in Texas, did her job while she was here on the planet, although it was several decades before her physical and material sacrifice was acknowledged. On 2 March 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, aged just 15, Colvin took a stand and refused to give up her bus seat to a white woman. The driver called the police, who kicked her a few times and then, when she still stayed put, took her to City Hall and charged her. Fred Gray, her lawyer, thought she would make a strong test case to end segregation in the city. But levels of hierarchy in the deep south did not stop at black and white. The church-led, male-dominated leadership considered Colvin a liability – not only was she young, rebellious and outspoken, she was dark-skinned in a world where shade mattered, and poor. … When I interviewed her at her home in the Bronx 45 years later, she was working as a nurses’ aide in a care home in Manhattan, mostly unheard of and completely uncelebrated. [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST is this segment from 2013 Democracy Now! “The Other Rosa Parks: Now 73, Claudette Colvin Was First to Refuse Giving Up Seat on Montgomery Bus” [Link]
After Every Clue – [Film about Seymour Hersh]
By Adam Hochschild, The Nation [January 14, 2026]
---- If there has ever been a reporter who refused to practice herd behavior, it is the subject of Cover-Up, Seymour Hersh. … Cover-Up provides a vivid picture of Hersh at work. We learn how he tracks down every clue, whether by showing up at someone’s home unannounced, befriending an Army officer or a CIA agent with a guilty conscience, or taking notes on a document he’s viewing upside down, on a lawyer’s desk, while the lawyer thinks Hersh is jotting down what he’s saying. Skillfully leaping back and forth across decades, Cover-Up weaves together archival footage, interviews with an often reluctant Hersh, and shots of him in action, usually on the telephone. We also hear him discussed by others, including President Richard Nixon. [Read More]
