NEITHER THE HYSTERIA NOR THE CRISIS ARE ACCIDENTAL: Hysterical Democrats Are Talking Themselves Into a Constitutional Crisis.

STOP HELPING: Google won’t stop replacing our news headlines with terrible AI. “On December 26th, Google told me that ‘Steam Machine price & HDMI details emerge.’ They hadn’t. On January 11th, Google proclaimed that ‘ASUS ROG Ally X arrives.’ (It arrived in 2024; the new Xbox Ally arrived months ago.) On January 20th, it wrote that ‘Glasses-free 3D tech wows,’ introducing readers to ‘New 3D tech called Immensity from Leia’ — but linking to this TechRadar story about an entirely different company called Visual Semiconductor. I found another that claimed to be about a GPU maker commenting on the RAM shortage; it linked instead to a Digitimes story about a RAM maker.”

ATHENA THORNE: I’ve Waited 40 Years to Dunk on Phil Collins About This. “The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. In this case, it’s been forty years since British establishment-pop workhorse Phil Collins incurred a young Athena’s wrath with his band Genesis’s mockery of the greatest president (up until then, anyway) of modern times.”

REPORTING IN FROM TEXAS: Yes, We Have No Bananas (Or Winter Storm T-2).

I usually visit HEB Mondays and Fridays, but given the probability of an incoming ice storm (which now has the name Winter Storm Fern) I went this afternoon, when it was already very busy and the shelves were just starting to look picked for some items.

Except bananas. They were gone.

Stay warm, Texas. And don’t go… well, you know.

IT’S FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Except for the Arrest, That Was a Great First Date. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn how to impress a girl on the first date, where not to stick somebody else’s meat, and what they’re serving in Maine.”

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Trump Pulls the US Out of United Nations’ International Gun Registry Scheme.

In a major move for national sovereignty and Second Amendment freedom, the Trump administration has formally withdrawn the United States from the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms, a UN-run reporting system that gun rights advocates have warned for years is part of the international bureaucracy’s long game to pressure nations into “standardized” gun restrictions.

What Is the UN Register of Conventional Arms?

UNROCA is a so-called “voluntary” United Nations registry where participating countries report information about weapons transfers, including categories of conventional arms and, in many cases, small arms and light weapons.

Supporters claim it promotes “transparency.”

But gun owners know how this game works.

Transparency is always the excuse and control is always the goal. Because once international bureaucrats start collecting data, they don’t stop at tracking tanks and fighter jets.

The same institutions pushing global disarmament narratives always work their way down to the civilian level, using “international norms” as the wedge to attack private gun ownership.

Whatever utility the UN might — might — have once had, it’s long gone.

We should be gone from the UN.

“EQUITY”:

🚨UPDATE: Multiple sources confirm Chief Health Equity Officer and VP of Health Equity at Hennepin Healthcare have recently left the hospital. Today, its Chief Financial Officer also left…

Meanwhile, our sources are aware of an ongoing investigation into the possible use of… https://t.co/p0mGHiKcpw pic.twitter.com/E0GKLf57NB

— Liz Collin (@lizcollin) January 23, 2026

IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™ — Anti-ICE Attorneys General — Like This Guy — Met Secretly in Portland. ” If you want to see what the United States will be under a far-left political activist who hates you, and you can’t remember the actions of President Autopen, watch the leftists work in the states of Washington, Oregon, and California. The memories will come rushing back.”

THEY’RE JUST DOING THE JOBS LEFTY MOMS WON’T: ICE Went Above and Beyond to Comfort Abandoned 5-Year-Old After Mother Refused to Take Custody.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Blue Origin makes impressive strides with reuse — next launch will refly booster.

The second New Glenn mission launched on November 13, just 10 weeks ago. If the company makes the late-February target for the next mission—and Ars was told last week to expect the launch to slip into March—it will represent a remarkably short turnaround for an orbital booster.

By way of comparison, SpaceX did not attempt to refly the first Falcon 9 booster it landed in December 2015. Instead, initial tests revealed that the vehicle’s interior had been somewhat torn up. It was scrapped and inspected closely so that engineers could learn from the wear and tear.

SpaceX successfully landed its second Falcon 9 booster in April 2016, on the 23rd overall flight of the Falcon 9 fleet. This booster was refurbished and, after a lengthy series of inspections, it was reflown successfully in March 2017, nearly 11 months later.

With New Glenn, Blue Origin is seeking to refly a booster on just the third overall flight of the New Glenn fleet and turn the rocket around in less than four months. Even for a well-capitalized program with the benefit of learning from both Blue Origin’s own suborbital New Shepard rocket and the industry’s experience with the Falcon 9, this represents an impressive turnaround in first stage reuse.

Godspeed.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER LIST:

The most recent debunked anti-ICE hoaxes:

– Renee Good was merely turning her vehicle’s wheels to flee and posed no danger.

– ICE agents detained a naked, innocent 74-year-old U.S. citizen in freezing Minneapolis weather.

– ICE arrested a 5-year-old boy.

– A Somali woman with…

— Bad Hombre (@Badhombre) January 22, 2026

Related:

I see the old canard about the victim of a justified police shooting being classified as a "homicide" victim by the Medical Examiner with re to Renee Good.

"Homicide" is not a legal term — it is the description of the manner of death.

For medical examiners there are 5 options:…

— Shipwreckedcrew (@shipwreckedcrew) January 23, 2026

But try explaining that to your purple-haired Aunt Karen.

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: HHS announces US has completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization.

The Department of Health and Human Services and the State Department announced Thursday that the United States has completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

President Donald Trump signed the executive order that began the process of withdrawing from the global organization last year, on the first day of his second term.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also cited issues with the organization’s failure to adopt urgent reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the political influence of WHO member states.

“Today, the United States withdrew from the World Health Organization, freeing itself from its constraints, as President Trump promised on his first day in office,” the secretaries said in a joint statement. “This action responds to the WHO’s failures during the COVID-19 pandemic and seeks to rectify the harm from those failures inflicted on the American people.”

Like so many other organizations, WHO squandered decades of considerable public trust during COVID.

SLEEP TIGHT: Why the Operation to Capture Maduro Has Generated So Much Concern in Moscow and Beijing.

BIG MONEY: Trump sues Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase over alleged ‘political’ debanking. “Plaintiffs are confident that JPMC’s unilateral decision came about as a result of political and social motivations, and JPMC’s unsubstantiated, ‘woke’ beliefs that it needed to distance itself from President Trump and his conservative political views.”

THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS:

I love that you think your politics is enlightened and selfless. It makes this funny story even funnier.

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) January 23, 2026

People voting their self-interest? How dare they!

OH: Democrat Judge Calls New York City’s Only Republican-Held Congressional Seat Unconstitutional.

NICE: Murders plummeted more than 20% in U.S. in 2025, study shows.

Murders plummeted more than 20% in 2025 from the year before, the single-largest one-year drop on record — and it might be the lowest murder rate in the U.S. since 1900, a study released Thursday by the Council on Criminal Justice found.

The annual crime trends report analyzed data from 40 large cities across the United States for 13 different crime types, including murder, carjacking, theft and drug offenses.

Alongside homicides, which dropped 21% from 2024, carjackings have declined 61% since 2023, while shoplifting is down 10% since 2024. In general, the overall crime rate declined, with violent crimes at or below levels seen in 2019, the analysis found — drug offenses were the only category that rose during this period, while sexual assault remained even.

Researchers pointed toward multiple reasons for the large drop in homicides, but cautioned that “identifying decisive factors with certainty is challenging.”

Did they ignore the obvious factor?

Turns out that jailing or deporting repeat violent offenders greatly reduces the murder rate https://t.co/sXdT2eUVOO

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2026

NICE: Europe Fades As Latin America Rises. Milei Is Leading the Way.

MATTHEW SHOEMAKER: Russia’s 90-Day Warning.

For three years, the world has waited for the Russian economy to implode. Instead, we watched a “Kalashnikov economy” defy gravity, fueled by high oil prices and a “friendship without limits” with Beijing. But as of January 2026, the gravity of basic math has finally caught up with Vladimir Putin.

The catalyst isn’t just the stalemate on the front lines; it’s a legislative “kill shot” from Washington and a quiet betrayal from the East. Between the new Graham-Trump Sanctioning Russia Act and a mounting domestic liquidity crisis, the Kremlin isn’t just running out of options—it’s running out of time.

The most significant development of 2026 isn’t a new missile system; it’s a tariff. The Graham-Trump Bill, greenlit by the White House on January 7, has fundamentally rewritten the rules of economic warfare. By threatening a mandatory 500% tariff on any country—including China and India—that continues to purchase Russian petroleum or uranium, the U.S. has finally weaponized the one thing Russia’s allies value more than cheap crude: access to the American consumer.

The shockwaves were instantaneous. On January 15, reports emerged that China’s largest state banks, including ICBC and Bank of China, began halting Ruble-denominated settlements. They aren’t waiting for the bill to be signed into law; they are pre-emptively cutting Russia loose to save their own export margins. When Beijing chooses its $500 billion trade surplus with the U.S. over its “strategic partner” in Moscow, the Russian war machine loses its primary life support system.

Still, it’s almost impossible to think that Russia won’t find illicit buyers for discounted oil. Their shadow tanker fleet has done just that for years.

This doesn’t look great though: “While the external walls are closing in, the internal floor is rotting. On New Year’s Day, Russia’s VAT officially jumped to 22%. This isn’t a sign of strength; it’s an act of desperation. The Kremlin is cannibalizing its own middle class to plug a federal budget revenue gap that fell 20% short of targets in 2025.”

Ouch.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Good Week for Trump, Rough Week for Vestigial Eurotrash. “The world leaders who have good relationships with Trump are the ones who aren’t destroying freedom, like Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who can bring any leftist loudmouth male to tears with just her stare. Meloni’s boldness can save Italy from the kind of fate that the leaders of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are dooming their people to.”

HMM: Does SR-72 Hypersonic Dark Star Have Technical Challenges?

It’s hard to imagine a stealthy manned or unmanned 6th-gen or above jet capable of reaching hypersonic speeds in flight … could be cancelled. Seems unlikely, given the flurry of attention it received, speculation it inspired and capability it promised … yet the SR-72 Son of Blackbird aircraft seems to have vanished into a mysterious mist of uncertainty. Virtually “no” new information on the aircraft has emerged, and there has been very little speculation or hype about the “star” aircraft featured in the movie “Maverick” for quite some time.

The absence of emerging information could signal one of two opposite possibilities: the SR-72 has either become even more secret than it may have been previously, so Pentagon developers are simply leaving no room for new speculation, or the platform has not performed as promised and is simply cancelled or vanishing from existence. However, an effort to determine if the SR-72 is somewhat paradoxical as one must first affirm and verify that the platform, in fact … exists.

Technical complications?

Certainly the possibility of a highly maneuverable, manned hypersonic fighter jet has both Hollywood appeal and real-world tactical merit, yet establishing and sustaining stable hypersonic flight, in reality, remains challenging.

While very cool in theory, there are budgetary, performance, or necessity reasons could have led to the SR-72 (or whatever it’s called) being cancelled. Still, I’d like to think that the program turned out to be such a success that the Air Force put it under even tighter wraps.

PRIORITIES:

Most California thing ever: spending 3/4 of your fire prevention budget complying with regulations to ensure you are not damaging endangered plants etc only for them all to be obliterated in the wildfire you failed to prevent https://t.co/BG4yKihDQP

— Toby Muresianu 🇺🇦 (@tobyhardtospell) January 22, 2026

ICYMI: Things Are Actually Worse Now in Seattle Than During the COVID Lockdowns.

WATCH AS MINNESOTA GOES OUT OF THE FRYING PAN AND INTO THE FIRE: Klobuchar files campaign paperwork for Minnesota governor.

She is the first Democratic candidate to form a gubernatorial candidate committee since DFL Gov. Tim Walz announced earlier this month he would not seek reelection, according to Minnesota Campaign Finance Board records.

“This is a preliminary step necessary for any candidate considering a run,” a source close to Klobuchar told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS. “The senator will make an announcement of her plans in the coming days.”

A slew of Republican candidates — including House Speaker Lisa Demuth and Rep. Kristin Robbins, chair of the House fraud prevention committee — had harped on Walz for staggering fraud in state welfare programs during his time in office.

“Harped.”

LYING SNITCHES CAN BE HAD FOR NOT THAT MUCH: How Much Did Jack Smith Pay to ‘Confidential Human Sources’?