It's Friday, January 30th, 2026. And looking
at the stack of reports for this week, the theme
isn't just chaos, though there's plenty of that.
Oh, there is. It feels more specific. It's like
we're watching this head on collision between,
you know, political theater, the performance
of governing and the actual mechanical reality
of of running a country. That is a perfect way
to put it. Because from the streets of Minneapolis
to the halls of the Federal Reserve, everyone
seems to be holding their breath. Just waiting
for that other shoe to drop. Exactly. We're seeing
mixed messages on law enforcement, a government
shutdown that looks absolutely inevitable this
weekend, and a huge shakeup at the top of the
financial world. It is a lot to get through.
So for this deep dive, our mission is to cut
through all of that noise. We've got legislative
updates, electoral analysis, and some breaking
news on the economy that's... Uh, honestly going
to affect everyone's wallet. And... We're going
to connect the dots. We want to move past the
headlines and really look at what's driving these
decisions. Why is the administration saying two
completely different things about the border?
Why is this Fed chair nomination happening right
now? OK, let's start in Minneapolis. This story
just will not go away. We've covered the Alex
Priddy shooting, the ICE fallout. But now the
administration has sent in Ham Homan, the border
czar, to clean up what they're calling the Gregory
Bovino mess. Right. And this is where that whole
mixed messages thing just kicks in immediately.
Homan gets to Minneapolis, and he announces a
plan to begin a drawdown of ICE agents. OK, so
that sounds like de -escalation. He's trying
to lower the temperature. You'd think so, but
then just hours later, you have Donald Trump
being asked about this drawdown, and his response
is, quote, no, no, not at all. So the fixer says
pull back, and the boss says full steam ahead.
It's a classic case of what you'd call a cleanup
confusopoly. The analysis suggests it's not a
mistake. It lets them play to two audiences at
once. Holman talks to the moderates and local
officials, and Trump talks to the base that wants
a hard line. And we're seeing this exact same
thing in New England with Senator Susan Collins,
aren't we? Exactly. This is such a fascinating
little subplot. Senator Collins announces that
the DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, told her that
ICE has ended its enhanced activities in Maine.
Enhanced activities? Okay, but what's the difference
between that and just regular activities? That
is the million dollar question, isn't it? The
sources we have point out that there is no standard
legal definition for that term. So by saying
they've ended, Collins gets to tell her constituents
she solved the problem. Which she needs to do
to survive politically. Of course. And meanwhile,
the administration can keep the operational tempo
exactly where it was, just under a different
name. A semantic game. But while they're playing
word games, the situation around privacy and
tech is getting very real. We have to talk about
the Signal app. This is a major deep dive moment.
If you have a smartphone, you should really pay
attention to this. The FBI director, Kash Patel,
has announced an investigation into activists
using the app Signal. That's the encrypted messaging
app, right? The one focused on privacy. That's
the one. And Patel is claiming that activists
using it to track ICE movements are, in his words,
breaking the law. He went on a podcast and basically
compared them to a terrorist network. That seems
extreme. What's the legal argument? It's based
on two things, intent and encryption. He claims
that because they have the intent to obstruct
federal agents and they're using encryption to
hide it, it becomes a criminal conspiracy. But
our legal sources are. Well, they're tearing
that apart. Completely. First off, the terrorism
laws he's citing usually apply to non -citizens.
These are Americans with First Amendment rights.
Right. It's not illegal for me to see an ICE
agent on a public street and text my friend,
hey, there's a Fed on Fifth Street. Precisely.
That is protected speech. You're tracking public
agents in a public space. And the encryption
part. The analysts just call that a red herring.
A legal act doesn't become illegal just because
you use a secure app. What about the obstruction
claim? That's the weakest part of his argument.
Legally, obstruction almost always requires you
to physically interfere. Stand in their way,
block a car. You can't physically obstruct someone
from a chat app. So it's not a legal case so
much as an intimidation tactic. That's the consensus,
yeah. It's about creating a chilling effect,
making people afraid to even have the app on
their phone. Speaking of chilling, let's talk
about the new video that came out about Alex
Preti, the shooting victim in Minneapolis. Yes.
A new video was released, and it shows Preti
arguing with ICE agents. In the footage, he spits
in their direction and kicks a taillight on a
federal vehicle. And some people are pointing
to that and saying, see? He was aggressive. They're
using it to justify what happened later. But
the context here is absolutely everything. You
have to look at the timestamp. That video is
from 11 days before he was shot. 11 days. Exactly.
And one source pointed to what Willie Guy said
on MSNBC, which really nails it. The question
isn't, was Alex pretty a saint? The question
is, does kicking a tail light justify an execution
style shooting almost two weeks later? Especially
when On the day he was actually killed, the evidence
suggests he wasn't resisting. Correct. He wasn't
resisting that day. The existence of an old video
doesn't change the facts of what happened at
the moment the trigger was pulled. It's a heavy
situation, and that tension is now bleeding into
Washington and this looming government shutdown.
It's a total mess. The House bill failed in the
Senate, 45 to 55, and the House has already left
town, so a weekend shutdown is pretty much a
guarantee. So what's the plan? just kick the
can down the road. That seems to be the strategy.
But here's the twist. The deal they're floating
is to pass all the spending bills except for
the Department of Homeland Security. Ah, so they're
isolating DHS because it's too controversial
right now. Exactly. Nobody wants to touch it.
Yeah. So the idea is to give DHS a separate two
-week extension and figure it out later. But
even that plan is hitting roadblocks. It is.
You have Republican budget hawks like Rand Paul
and Mike Lee voting no. And Lindsey Graham is
objecting to unanimous consent. So the whole
sausage making process is just completely jammed
up. And while Congress is jammed, the White House
held a cabinet meeting that the sources are calling
vaudeville. That's putting it nicely. We know
that the DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and the Attorney
General Pam Bondi were there, but they weren't
allowed to speak. which is a huge tell. That's
the political timeout corner. They're taking
the heat for the Minnesota headlines so they
get silenced. The rest of the meeting was basically
a praise circle for Trump. So one detail that
just stood out, Energy Secretary Chris Wright
praising beautiful, clean coal for saving lives.
It's the perfect example of how performative
it all is. Because here's the irony you need
to know. The Department of Energy deals with
nuclear weapons. Right. Not coal. Coal is under
the Department of the Interior. So the energy
secretary is praising a resource he doesn't even
manage. It shows the meeting wasn't about policy.
It was about loyalty. A pep rally. Exactly. Trump's
approval is down to 37 percent, which is getting
close to what they call the Bush line. He needed
a pep rally. Facts be damned. Well, if that was
a pep rally, the financial market's just got
a bombshell. We have a new nominee for Fed chair.
This is the big one. Donald Trump has nominated
Kevin Warsh to replace Jerome Powell. And for
anyone listening, the Fed chair is arguably the
second most powerful person in the world. And
Trump's reasoning for picking him. He said Warsh
is central casting. Central casting. It tells
you everything about how he views these jobs.
So who is Kevin Warsh? What do we know about
him? He's a Wall Street insider. A former Fed
governor under George W. Bush worked at Morgan
Stanley. And crucially, he married into the Ron
Lauder family. They're huge Trump donors. So
he's got the connections. But what does he believe
about the economy? Because Powell and Trump have
been at war. Warsh is what you'd call a supply
side guy. He is a very specific theory. He thinks
inflation is caused by government spending, not
by wages going up. That's a huge distinction.
It is. And he's also incredibly bullish on AI.
He thinks artificial intelligence will boost
productivity so much that it'll naturally lower
inflation. And because of that, he thinks he
can cut interest rates. So, robots will save
us from inflation so we can lower interest rates
now. In a nutshell, yes. He believes the U .S.
is already in a housing recession and that rates
need to come down. But here's the key part that
aligns him with Trump. He sees tariffs as just
one -off price changes. Not as a long -term problem.
Right. Most economists worry tariffs cause systemic
inflation. Warsh says, no, it's just a one -time
bump. That gives Trump perfect intellectual cover
for his trade wars. But getting him confirmed
might not be that easy. No. Senator Tom Tillis
has threatened to block any nominee until the
DOJ resolves its criminal investigation into
the current chair, Jerome Powell. Let's just
pause there. The DOJ is criminally investigating
the current Fed chair. Yes. And many see that
investigation as a political pressure tactic.
There's even talk that Powell might stay on the
board as a regular governor after his term as
chair ends, just to protect the institution.
Wow. He'd demote himself. To block a seat and
protect the Fed's independence, it would be a
historic move. So how did the markets react to
Warsh? Stocks ticked up a little. Wall Street
knows him. But gold plunged. The bigger picture,
though, is that the stock market just had its
worst first year for a president since 2005,
and the trade deficit just skyrocketed. Suggesting
the tariffs are backfiring. The data certainly
points that way. Speaking of policies that might
backfire, there's this new proposal about visas.
Oh, this is a classic case of security theater.
The proposal is to require visitors on 90 -day
visas to provide a list of their social media
accounts. So a tourist coming to Vegas has to
hand over their Instagram handle. Pretty much.
And the source we saw estimates this could cost
the U .S. 4 .7 million tourists and about 16
billion dollars in revenue. 16 billion dollars.
And I mean, let's be honest, a real bad guy isn't
going to list their real crime account on the
floor. Of course not. They'll just make a fake
one. So we lose the tourism money and we don't
actually get any safer. An expensive show. Which
brings us to another struggling institution.
The Washington Post. The source material describes
it as imploding. It's a really grim situation.
We know Jeff Bezos changed the editorial policy
to be more pro Trump and subscribers fled. Now
we're seeing the fallout. They're cutting coverage
of the Winter Olympics, local sports teams. I
even read they might cut the entire foreign desk.
That's the rumor. A paper in the nation's capital
with no foreign desk. It shows the Bezos model
is failing. He's not subsidizing the losses.
And it gets darker. The DOJ recently raided a
reporter's home and apparently got access to
the newsroom's internal Slack channels. That's
terrifying for a free press. It's a massive chilling
effect. If you can't talk about a story internally
without the DOJ reading along, you stop going
after the hard stories. You just can't. Before
we wrap, a couple of quick legal hits. Trump
is suing the IRS. For $10 billion over the 2020
tax leak. $10 billion? Does that have any chance?
Not really. The statute of limitations is likely
expired. The leaker is already in jail. And here's
the catch. To prove $10 billion in damages, Trump
would have to open his current financial boats
in discovery. The one thing he never wants to
do. Exactly. So it's probably just a distraction.
And finally, there's some math in the House of
Representatives that's about to get tricky. An
expulsion. Sheila Cherfilis McCormick, a Democrat
from Florida. She's likely facing expulsion after
a really damning ethics committee report. And
why does that matter to the average listener?
because Speaker Mike Johnson can only afford
to lose two votes on any given bill right now.
If she gets expelled, that margin shrinks. Every
single vote becomes a potential crisis and the
House becomes basically ungovernable. So I see
the Fed, the shutdown, the press. What's the
thread connecting all of this? I think the thread
is a shift away from expertise and towards performance.
You see it everywhere. The pep rally cabinet
meeting. the central casting Fed nominee, the
security theater visa rule. It's all about how
things look, not how they actually work. Precisely.
But the economy and the budget, they are mechanical
realities. They don't run on applause. And the
thought I want to leave you with is this. If
the Fed, the FBI, and the budget all become purely
performative tools for the executive, at what
point does that performance fail to manage the
actual mechanics of a global economy? You can't
spin your way out of a trade deficit forever.
The math eventually wins. The numbers don't lie,
even if the politicians do. That's a thought
that is definitely going to stick with me. We'll
be watching the markets react to Kevin Warsh
next week. That'll be the real scorecard. Thanks
for joining us on this deep dive. We will be
back next time. Stay curious.