- Federal judge Amit Mehta dressing down Trump lackey Peter Navarro in court

Trump is planning to run his general election campaign on “securing the border” by engineering a border crisis. 
 

• Congress is currently in the midst of a painstaking process to hammer out a border deal to address Republican hysteria over security in the strip where Mexico meets the United States. Republican legislators would have you believe they would do anything to pass a border deal that they can tout in their home districts, but that’s not entirely true. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told his GOP colleagues on Wednesday that disgraced former president Donald Trump’s re-emergence as the likely nominee has thrown a wrench in their plans. McConnell has been a staunch supporter of the deal, but acknowledged privately that Trump (already) actively campaigning against it could sink the whole agreement. 
   

• So, does Trump have some strong ideological opposition to the deal? Of course not. He is (quite famously) a man without any coherent ideology other than self-enrichment and empowerment. No, he just doesn’t want the agreement to go through because he wants to be able to campaign on “chaos at the border” and then be able to take credit for any possible future deal. Trump encouraged Republican lawmakers to reject any potential border proposal “unless we get EVERYTHING” the party has demanded. (He knows this is impossible.) Still, GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson has cast doubt on whether he would even bring the proposal to the floor, as the unhinged, far-right loonies in the Freedom Caucus are vehemently opposed to anything but the most draconian border policies winning the day. The current bipartisan proposal would increase deportations and make it more difficult to claim asylum, among other measures. 
   

• Tensions regarding the border have reached a rolling boil between the two parties, especially as the Biden administration feuds with Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) over razor wire along the U.S.-Mexico border, which Texas officials installed. The Supreme Court sided with the federal government in seeking to remove the razor wire, with the administration arguing that it was impeding Border Patrol and other authorities from doing their jobs and posed a danger to both officers and migrants. Speaker Johnson expressed solidarity with Gov. Abott and said Thursday that he would “back him up.” Terrible guys tend to stick together. House Republicans are still pursuing a sham impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for “dereliction of duty.”

Whatever the outcome, it’s clear that GOP messaging on immigration is going to be even more unhinged than usual going into 2024. 
 

• A new Reuters poll shows that Trump leads Biden by six percentage points in the projected rematch coming this November. A draft resolution is circulating among the Republican National Committee that would formally declare Trump the presumptive 2024 nominee. I guess after two nominating contests they’re getting impatient to re-launch the nation’s most unhinged rich guy into the general election race. Trump would still have to reach the required number of delegates to clinch the nomination, but the resolution would give him access to the RNC’s entire political machine and the support of all its ground associations to give him a head start. It’s an unprecedented move in the party’s nominating process, but—as we’ve known for some time—it’s Donald Trump’s party now. 
   

• President Biden’s advisers and campaign staff are preparing for a more tumultuous time on the campaign trail than usual. Several of Biden’s events have already been interrupted by protesters angry about the president’s policy and conduct in the Israel-Hamas conflict. On Wednesday, pro-Palestinian protesters were forcibly dragged out of a United Auto Workers event in the middle of Biden’s speech, and a similar demonstration interrupted a campaign event the day before. Such protests highlight a central problem for the Biden campaign particularly among young voters and Arab-American voters: that the president is positioning himself as the candidate of stability in the face of Trump’s chaos, but Biden’s Israel policies have fueled unrest among Dems. 

President Biden went on the offensive against Trump in a campaign stop in Wisconsin on Thursday, a critical state he’ll need to win in November.

From debating the snubs and dubs, to rating the newly released albums - Keep It hosts Louis & Ira are giving you the hot takes that will make your jaw drop. New episodes of Keep it drop every Wednesday, make sure to follow them on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Non-consensual, sexually-explicit deepfake images of Taylor Swift went viral on X (Twitter) on Wednesday, gaining 27 million views in just 19 hours before the account that posted them was suspended. The AI-generated images depicted Swift nude and in sexual situations, and copies continue to proliferate on X. Under CEO Elon Musk, the company has laid off thousands of employees responsible for content moderation, and allowed more “incendiary speech” (hate speech) onto its platform. Earlier this month, 17-year-old Marvel actress Xochitl Gomez came forward and said that she found similar sexually-explicit deepfakes of herself on the platform but was not able to get the material taken down. There are currently no federal laws on the books addressing non-consensual sexually-explicit deepfake content, and only a few here and there at the state level. With the rise of AI-generated images, anyone can be depicted in sexual situations without their consent. A federal law prohibiting “revenge porn” currently only pertains to real images and videos, not deepfakes. Swift is reportedly considering taking legal action, and if she does, it could become a precedent-setting case to regulate AI-generated content, at which point I would vow to be a Swiftie for life.

In a strong rebuke of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated rejection of Palestinian statehood, 49 of 51 Senate Democrats signed on to an amendment of the national security package endorsing the creation of a Palestinian state. The measure was led by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), who is himself Jewish, and the only holdouts were Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and John Fetterman (D-PA). 

President Biden plans to send CIA Director William Burns to help broker a deal for a ceasefire and hostage exchange between Israel and Hamas in the coming days. 

Families of Israeli hostages protested at the border crossing on Wednesday and Thursday in an attempt to stop aid trucks from entering the enclave. Most of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million civilians are already facing extreme supply shortages and at risk of starvation because of increased Israeli policing of aid trucks in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack. 

The GOP-controlled Wisconsin state Assembly passed a bill on Thursday banning abortion after 14 weeks of pregnancy, setting up a statewide referendum for voters to approve or reject the measure in April. In arguing for the passage of the ban, State Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-WI) said he is an expert on human fetal development because of his previous career as…a veterinarian. Cool. Love that for women. 

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin signaled openness to reducing the number of U.S. troops in Iraq on Thursday in a statement released by the Pentagon. 

Former trade adviser to the Trump administration Peter Navarro was sentenced to four months in prison for contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House January 6 committee. Navarro was one of the architects of the plan to fraudulently keep Trump in office after he lost the 2020 election. 

Chairman of the Arizona Republican Party Jeff DeWit announced his resignation on Wednesday after an audio recording that seemed to show him attempting to dissuade MAGA psycho Kari Lake from running in the 2024 Senate election was leaked to the public. 

Ohio Pastor Chris Avell is suing his city after they charged him with 18 counts of zoning ordinance violations for housing homeless people in his church overnight. 

Big Pharma hates President Biden’s Medicare drug pricing plan that came with the Inflation Reduction Act, so they’re pouring millions of dollars into Republican candidates and organizations planning the next MAGA policy agenda. 

WWE boss Vince McMahon has been accused by a former employee of sex trafficking in a new lawsuit. The employee also accused him of paying her off to keep quiet. A spokesperson for McMahon said the lawsuit is filled with “lies” and that McMahon will “vigorously defend himself.”

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The IRS is launching its free filing system on January 29 for a limited-time trial run that’s set to expand in the coming years. Thank you, Dems who voted to fund the IRS!

A small study published on Wednesday shows that a new experimental gene therapy has allowed several children born with inherited deafness to hear.