Welcome back to the Deep Dive. It is Thursday,
January 22, 2026. And if you've been glued to
your news feeds this week, you probably feel
like you're watching two different movies at
once. Yeah, one's a Cold War thriller set in
the Arctic. And the other is a high stakes courtroom
drama right here in D .C. And I don't think either
of them has a particularly happy ending just
yet. It's been a week where the map is being
redrawn figuratively, you know, with the Constitution,
but also literally. We have some new congressional
districts to talk about. We have a massive amount
to cover. We're going to unpack this whole Greenland
incident, which was, let's just call it unconventional
diplomacy. That's one word for it. Then we've
got a constitutional showdown between the White
House and the Federal Reserve that's getting
ugly very fast. And we need to look at the 2026
midterms. The machinery is really starting to
turn on. We've got fish gerrymandering in Maryland.
You have to explain that one. Oh, we will. And
a rebellion in the Rust Belt over AI data centers,
plus some really fascinating toss -up races that
are going to decide who controls Congress. The
through line here, it feels like it's friction.
You know, this tension between what the executive
branch wants to do, which seems to be everything,
and the institutional walls that are supposed
to stop it. That's the mission for this deep
dive to understand those walls. Are they holding?
Are they crumbling? And how does a fight over
water usage in Wisconsin connect to the balance
of power in Washington? OK, let's start at the
top. The story that just ate the news cycle alive,
Greenland, or as the Internet has now dubbed
it, Taco Wednesday. Taco, of course, being the
descriptor from Governor Gavin Newsom. It's shorthand
for threatening, aggressive, chaotic and over
the top and Looking at the transcript of President
Trump's speech at Davos, it is really hard to
argue with that label. I watched the speech.
It was an hour and a half long. But the part
that just stopped the world was his comments
on Greenland. He didn't just ask to buy it this
time. No. This was different. He said, we want
a piece of ice for world protection. You can
say yes, and we will be very appreciative. Or
you can say no, and we will remember. It's the
or we will remember part. That's what changes
it from a, you know, a real estate question to
a geopolitical threat. It's mob boss language.
Nice island you've got there. Be ashamed if something
happened to it. And alongside the threat, the
sources were buzzing about the specific proposal
he floated, this board of peace. He offered to
sell seats on this board for a billion dollars
each. which is just, I mean, it's breathtaking
if you really stop and think about the implications
of that. And you mentioned he'd run it himself
after his presidency. And that detail is actually
crucial for two reasons. One, it kind of signals
he probably isn't planning a third term, which
might calm some domestic fears. But two, it's
the commoditization of global diplomacy. Right.
He's suggesting a seat at the table of world
power is a luxury good. It's like buying a skybox
for the Super Bowl, but... You know, for war
and peace. It's effectively privatizing the United
Nations. But the international community didn't
exactly line up to buy tickets. Far from it.
This triggered what the Canadian prime minister,
Mark Carney, called a rupture. Carney did not
hold back. His speech on Tuesday was stark. He
basically said Canada is standing shoulder to
shoulder with Denmark and Greenland. He called
it a break in the fundamental order of things.
And Trump's reaction was, well. Classic retaliation.
He accused Canada of taking freebies and Carney
of being ungrateful. But while the politicians
were yelling, the real verdict came from the
stock market. Tuesday was a bloodbath. The Dow
Jones fell 870 points. And we have to explain
why, because it wasn't just investors don't like
yelling. Investors hate the idea of sovereign
land seizures. Of course. If the U .S. threatens
to take territory from a NATO ally, the entire
concept of property rights, of international
law, gets And if laws don't matter, contracts
don't matter. If contracts don't matter, stock
values are just imaginary. That's why it tanged.
But then, in typical fashion, it bounced right
back the next day, up 588 points. Because the
market realized the bark was much worse than
the bite. OK, before we get to the walk back,
we need to do a quick reality check on the speech
itself. The sources flagged a whole list of claims
that were just flat out wrong. Mm -hmm. He said
NATO paid nothing before him. He claimed he eliminated
taxes on Social Security, which, last I checked,
hasn't passed Congress. He also said China has
no wind farms, which is... it's laughable. They're
the world leader in wind energy capacity. And
he claimed to have settled eight wars and lowered
grocery prices. Yeah, both of which are pretty
easily disproven by looking at a map or, you
know, a receipt from Kroger. But let's look at
how this all ended. We had the threat, the market
crash, the Canadian pushback, and then what?
And then the retreats. Trump went on social media
posted a picture with NATO Secretary General
Mark Root and claimed they had a productive meeting
and a framework. The framework being the magic
word that means I'm not actually doing the tariffs.
Exactly. The tariffs that were scheduled for
February 1st, they were dropped. The invasion
talk just vanished. So why the U -turn? Was it
the Dow dropping 870 points? That was a huge
part of it. I mean, Trump views the stock market
as his personal scorecard. But sources also point
to the Pentagon. You have to imagine the general
sat him down and showed him the logistics. The
U .S. Army is not built for a ground war in the
Arctic Circle against European allies. We don't
have the icebreakers. We don't have the winterization
on that kind of scale. It was a logistical impossibility.
So reality won this round. But the damage is
done, I assume. That 15 percent tariff deal with
the EU is probably dead. Dead in the water. And
the long term cost is trust. You can only threaten
to seize a piece of ice so many times before
your allies stop treating you like a partner
and start treating you like a hazard to be managed.
Which brings us back to the U .S., where the
president is trying to manage or maybe dismantle
the Federal Reserve. This feels less like a hazard
and more like a demolition. This is the domestic
version of the Greenland story, right? It's an
attempt to exert total executive control over
a system that's designed to be independent. The
headline here is Lisa Cook. She's a governor
on the Federal Reserve Board. Trump is trying
to fire her. She's sued to stay. And now it's
at the Supreme Court. And the legal argument
is fascinating. The Federal Reserve Act says
governors can be removed for cause. Trump's team
is arguing that cause can just mean we disagree
on policy. Wow. If that argument holds, then
the Fed isn't independent anymore. Not at all.
It's just an arm of the White House. Yeah. I
mean, if a president can fire the people setting
interest rates just because they won't lower
them before an election, you get hyperinflation.
You get the Turkish economy. But the Supreme
Court, even this conservative court... They seem
pretty skeptical. They do. Justices Barrett,
Roberts, and Kavanaugh are all hesitant. Kavanaugh
specifically pointed out the slippery slope.
He said, look, if policy difference is a valid
reason, a president could just dig up dirt or
invent a reason to fire anyone. Which is pretty
ironic because Lisa Cook claims that's exactly
what's happening to her right now. Yeah. The
consensus is the court is just going to punt.
They'll likely deny the emergency stay Trump
wants, which keeps cooking her seat while the
whole case drags on in lower courts. By the time
it's decided, her term might be up anyway. But
the bigger fish here is Jerome Powell, the chair
of the Fed. And this story took a really wild
turn this week. It did. Trump reportedly sitch
the DOJ on Powell with some kind of fraud charge.
And most legal experts see this as completely
trumped up a pretext to force him to resign.
But then two Republican senators basically walked
into the room and locked the door. Lisa Murkowski
and Tom Tillis. Sources say they reinstalled
their spawns. They announced they will block
all Federal Reserve confirmations until the DOJ
drops this investigation into Powell. That is
a massive power play. It completely freezes the
president's ability to replace anyone on the
board. And the timing is critical. Powell's term
as chair. not as a board member, but as the chair.
It ends May 15th. Trump desperately wants his
own person in there. But if Murkowski and Tillis
hold the line, he can't get a new chair confirmed.
And Powell's term as a board member lasts until
2028, so he could just sit there. He could. It's
a complete stalemate. And it's creating these
really strange alliances. You've got Senator
Elizabeth Warren, who has spent years criticizing
Powell for being too soft on banks, now out there
defending him. Because the enemy of my enemy
is the independence of the monetary system. It
shows that for the Senate, this is about left
versus right. It's about the legislative branch
saying you cannot weaponize the Justice Department
to control the money supply. Period. While we're
on personnel, we should pour one out for Lindsey
Halligan. She was the U .S. attorney for the
Eastern District of Virginia. Was is the key
word there. She resigned this week after Judge
David Novak just absolutely incinerated her in
a ruling. He called out her vitriol and her lack
of experience and then effectively banned her
from signing documents in his court. When a federal
judge says your signature is no good here, I
guess you don't really have a job anymore. It's
another example of the institutions, in this
case, the judiciary, drawing a line on competence.
OK, let's zoom out. All of this chaos is setting
the stage for the 2026 midterms and the map is
changing. Let's talk about Maryland, because
I saw a map that looked less like a district
and more like a Rorschach test. Oh, yes, the
Chesapeake Bay special. Governor Westmore's commission
released this new map. The goal is very blunt.
One seat Republican, Andy Harris, is the chair
of the Freedom Caucus. And the way they did it
is by connecting Democratic areas on opposite
sides of the bay. Exactly. They literally put
the Chesapeake Bay inside the district. As the
sources put it, they're assuming the fish are
Democrats. It's classic gerrymandering. You dilute
that rural Republican vote by bridging a body
of water to grab some suburban Democratic voters.
It passed the Commission 3 -2. The state Senate
president hates it, but Democrats are desperate
to flip that seat to regain... the House. Speaking
of flipping the House, the Cook Political Report
dropped their new list of toss -up seats. There
are 18 of them, and this is the whole ballgame.
These 18 districts, they tell the story of American
politics right now. On the Democratic side, you
have people like Marcy Capture in Ohio's 9th.
Her district got redrawn to be whiter, redder.
She's the longest serving woman in House history,
and she is fighting for her political life in
a district that's just moving away from her.
And on the Republican side? It's the suburbs.
You look at Arizona's first in Scottsdale or
New York's 17th in the Hudson Valley. These are
wealthy, educated areas. The so -called country
club Republicans. Precisely. These are people
who, you know, they like tax cuts, but they are
exhausted by the chaos. They don't like the Greenland
mob boss. rhetoric. If Democrats take the House,
it's because these voters decided they've had
enough of the noise. And there are some really
specific local anomalies, too. You've got Democrats
trying to hold Washington's third and Republicans
holding on to Wisconsin's third, where Derek
Van Orden is somehow winning despite the state
trending blue in other areas. It's just going
to be a trench war, seat by seat. And some of
the candidates are fascinating. We've got Mikel
Tafoya in Minnesota running for Senate. Yeah,
the former NBC sports reporter. Look at her branding.
She calls herself a pro -choice, libertarian
leaning conservative. That is definitely not
the Magier starter pack. No, it's the anti -Trump
Republican brand. She's betting that Minnesota
voters want conservatism without all the culture
war baggage. It's a huge test case. And then
there's Nancy La Cour in South Carolina. A retired
vice admiral. She was fired by Defense Secretary
Pete Hagseth during that purge of the military
leadership. Now she's running as a Democrat against
Nancy Mace. I mean, that narrative writes itself.
I serve my country. They fired me for politics.
Send me to Congress. It appeals directly to that
military tradition in South Carolina. It's a
powerful story. I want to shift to a story that
isn't really about red versus blue, but it's
about resources. We talk about AI all the time
as this digital cloud, but it turns out the cloud
needs an awful lot of water. This is the sleeper
issue of this election cycle. We're seeing this
massive physical build out. of AI infrastructure
data centers for OpenAI, Oracle, Microsoft, and
they are landing in communities that are starting
to fight back. Right. In Wisconsin, there's a
group called Great Lakes Neighbors United, and
they are trying to stop a $15 billion data center.
They're even trying to recall the mayor over
it. And it's not just not in my backyard complaining.
These centers guzzle electricity and water. If
you build one of these, local utility rates can
skyrocket because the whole grid needs upgrading.
Plus, they use millions of gallons of water for
cooling. Which drains the local aquifers. Exactly.
So now you have this really weird populist coalition.
You've got rural conservatives who don't want
their water drying up. And you have Bernie Sanders
in the Senate proposing a national moratorium.
Sanders wants a pause until the tech companies
pay for the infrastructure themselves. Right.
His argument is basically, why should your grandmother's
electric bill go up so OpenAI can train chat
GPT -6? It's a potent argument. It's a good reminder
that while we obsess over tweets, a lot of elections
can be decided by utility bills. It's the physical
reality crashing right into the digital dream.
Before we wrap up, let's look a little further
down the road. The sources brought up a really
interesting debate happening inside the Democratic
Party about 2028. Yeah, this is the what if game.
If the historical pattern holds, the White House
flipping every four or eight years. Democrats
have a decent shot in 2028, but the party is
completely split on what to do if they win. There
are three schools of thought, right? Three totally
distinct philosophies. The first is turn back
the clock. This is the restorationist view. You
repeal the emergency powers Trump used. You strengthen
the Posse Comitatus Act. And for those who don't
know, that's the law from the 1800s that forbids
using the military as a domestic police force.
Right. So this group wants to basically lock
down the presidency so no one can ever do what
Trump did again, reset all the norms to 2015.
OK. Then there's the second group, the use the
new powers group. The aggressive progressives.
Yeah. Their argument is the seal is broken. The
presidency is now an imperial office, so let's
use it. Fight fire with fire. Use tariffs to
protect unions. Use the power to fire civil servants
to clear out conservatives. Use the DOJ to go
after corporate monopolies. The sources mention
some really extreme examples here, like using
IC, which they called the president's personal
goon squad, to enforce gun control, or threatening
to nationalize Starlink if Musk doesn't play
ball. It's a tempting path for the base. He did
it, so why can't we? And the third option? The
egg price approach. Just ignore the constitutional
revenge. Ignore the structural changes. Just
focus on lowering the cost of eggs and housing.
Win on the economy and move on. That's the pragmatic
route, but it kind of leaves all those loaded
weapons just lying on the desk in the Oval Office.
That's the danger. So bringing it all back to
today, we have a president pushing the limits
on foreign soil and in domestic courts. We have
a Senate and a judiciary pushing back and we
have voters getting ready to have their say in
2026. The whole system is under immense stress.
But the fact that the Dow recovered, the fact
that the court is skeptical, the fact that Murkowski
and Tillis blocked the nominees. It shows the
friction is working. You know, the brakes are
screeching, but they haven't failed. Not yet.
I want to leave you with a provocative thought
that came out of that 2028 discussion. It's about
that use the new powers scenario. It is the most
chilling question in all the sources we read.
If a future president uses these authoritarian
tools, goon squads, firing judges, seizing assets,
but uses them for causes you like, do you cheer?
And if you do cheer? Do you realize that you've
just accepted living in a country where your
rights depend entirely on the mood of the person
in the big chair? At that point, does the party
label even matter, or have we just changed the
color of the boot? That is the question to ask
yourself as we watch these norms shift. On that
cheerful note, thank you for joining us on the
Deep Dariff. We'll be watching the map, the markets,
and the courts. Stay curious. See you next time.