ONE BOVINO AFTER ANOTHER

The reckless barbarity in Minneapolis is enraging even other federal agents and contractors, as the political tide turns against Trump’s hardline anti-immigrant crackdown.

• President Donald Trump’s reign of terror in Minnesota is facing serious blowback after the killing of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old veterans’ nurse. A judge ordered ICE chief Todd Lyons to publicly testify in court on Friday, while threatening to hold him in contempt. More than 140 lawmakers want to impeach DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. And Greg Bovino — the Customs and Border Patrol chief who looks and acts way too much like Colonel Lockjaw from “One Battle After Another” — has been booted from Minneapolis, and reportedly locked out of his social media accounts.

• Lawmakers, judges and the general public aren’t the only ones outraged. The violence and the administration’s attempts to justify the Minnesota killings (with a bogus messaging campaign reportedly orchestrated by Trump aide Stephen Miller) have been so disastrous that even people who work for ICE are speaking out.

• “ICE can go fuck itself,” one ICE contractor told What A Day, who isn’t directly involved in the mess in Minneapolis. “I would say my contract coworkers feel the same way.”

• Over a half-dozen DHS officers expressed alarm over the situation to journalist Ken Klippenstein. “They all carry belts and vests with 9,000 pieces of equipment on them and the best they can do is shoot a guy in the back?” one asked. Another senior ICE officer was more blunt: “Fuck this.”

• Feds are even fuming to Fox News. The Trump administration’s response to the shooting is “a case study on how not to do crisis PR,” one federal law enforcement official told the right-wing news outlet. Another said they wish they could retire, because they’re so fed up. “We are losing the base and the narrative,” a third source told the outlet. “DHS is wrong.”

The United States now faces a profound “moral moment,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) told Crooked’s Jon Lovett in Minneapolis.

• “There’s no question that the Trump-Vance regime has unleashed evil onto our streets, and what we are facing in this moral moment in our country is so much bigger than the ordinary partisan fights that you see in Washington,” said Warnock, a reverend. “We need a reordering of values in this country.”

• On the city streets, protestors demonstrating in frigid temperatures vowed to keep pushing back on ICE — out of love for their community.

• “We all have an obligation to be protectors,” one protestor told Lovett, standing outside the donut shop where Pretti was killed. “ICE is making it very clear that everyone is at risk, and to do nothing is to be compliant.”

• Minnesotans are finding ways to look out for each other. Some are cooking food to keep protestors warm and energized, according to Gourmet, a recently re-launched food publication. “One group has been feeding me and my team with chili and cornbread — they ask preferred spice level! It’s Midwest cornbread which often has sugar in it (I’m Southern so there’s always the sugar vs no sugar debate and I’m no sugar, but try to get a Midwesterner to eat cornbread without it).”

One woman wearing a jacket with the words “Granny Against ICE” on the back spent hours telling ICE that “they’ve got tiny little winkies and small penises, because I’m assuming that’s why they hide their faces,” the granny told Lovett. That’s the spirit.

WHAT A DAY BOOK CLUB

Many of you wrote in to share your plans for making it through Winter Storm Fern — from baking shepherd’s pie, to the reader who sent in just one word: “Bourbon.” Personally, I curled up under a fluffy blanket with a book I couldn’t put down, about one of the most problematic figures in right-wing media.

That would be: “Hated by All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind,” by journalist Jason Zengerle, the latest book by Crooked Media Reads, published today. I promise this is not an advertisement; I found every page enthralling.

The biography is an incredibly well-reported deep dive into Carlson’s mind-boggling transformation over the past three decades. He started out as a confident yet troublesome college student before becoming a widely respected magazine writer. As the print journalism industry collapsed, Carlson pivoted to cable news, landing gigs at CNN and MSNBC. He then maneuvered his way to Fox News and seized on Donald Trump’s presidency to boost his own profile.

The book is full of wild anecdotes that will make you laugh and cringe and scream into the void. One that stuck out to me characterizes Carlson’s period of heavy drinking, which he later quit:

“Three-martini lunches at the Palm were turning into four- or five-martini affairs. On one occasion Carlson got so loaded that he accidentally boarded a flight to Cleveland when he was supposed to be going to Dallas. He liked to joke that he’d know his drinking had gotten out of hand when he started adding Wild Turkey to his Cap’n Crunch. And yet he was starting more and more of his days with double screwdrivers for breakfast.”

Despite his character flaws, Carlson ascended to the top of the media elite, becoming more powerful than he ever imagined. Now, Washington’s political elite wonder if the guy will run for president one day.

WHAT ELSE? 👀

Iran killed many more protestors in recent weeks than activist groups originally believed, with some estimates now topping 10,000. “There is no doubt that the Islamic Republic has committed one of the largest mass killings of protesters of our time,” Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the head of Iran Human Rights, told the Wall Street Journal.

Is social media the new smoking? Bad for us, addictive and profitable? Tiktok just settled a lawsuit rather than face trial over that question. It’s the first in a series of trials the company, along with Snap, Meta and YouTube, are likely to face in state and federal courts this year.

Italians are panicking over the imminent arrival of ICE agents, who are helping with security for the Milan Winter Olympics. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani tried to quell anxieties, explaining that the agents are “not going to be those that are on the street in Minneapolis … It’s not like the SS are coming,” referencing the Nazi paramilitary organization.

Tax season is upon us, and Trump is hoping $100 billion in extra tax refunds will make everyone love him. It’s part of Republicans grand strategy to retain control of the House and Senate after this year’s midterms. “The tax-policy strategy is simple: Put money in voters’ wallets and get rewarded at the polls,” the Wall Street Journal writes. “In reality, it is a double-bank shot with little guarantee of success.”

The Trump administration is ordering national parks to take down signs they don’t like, including on environmental protection, climate change, and the mistreatment of Native Americans. The new order targets several popular parks, such as Grand Canyon, Glacier, Big Bend and Zion.

LIGHT AT THE END… ☀️

A GoFundMe for Alex Pretti’s family has raised more than $1.6 million.

Composer Philip Glass canceled the premiere of a symphony about former President Abraham Lincoln scheduled for the Kennedy Center in June. “Symphony No. 15 is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony,” Glass said in a statement, referencing Trump’s takeover of the performing arts center.

Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter called for fans to boycott the 2026 World Cup in the United States because of Trump’s actions. “Stay away from the USA! You’ll see it better on TV anyway,” Blatter told a Swiss newspaper. “And upon arrival, fans should expect that if they don’t please the officials, they’ll be put straight on the next flight home. If they’re lucky.”

Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest has become one of few outspoken business leaders pushing back on Trump’s fossil fuel ambitions. His reason? It’s all about the money. “No one cares what you think of climate change. No one cares if you’re passionately in love with oil and gas,” he told Axios. “Everyone cares what the economics are, and the economics are going straight to green energy.”

A Czech man is racing to document Holocaust survivors’ stories before they’re gone. So far, he has interviewed more than 700 survivors and war veterans, occasionally posting their stories online. He eventually wants to make all of them publicly available in museums or books. “They will be with us in the future, just not in person, but through the testimony they left for us,” the man said.

Do humanoid robots freak you out? One tech company is trying to fix that, with a cute, child-sized robot named “Sprout” that looks like something out of WALL-E. The $50,000 robot can dance, walk without bumping into things, climb onto a chair, and even take inventory of a refrigerator. The idea: It’s your buddy, not a robot coming to replace humankind.

Some fish create a skin pattern to dazzle potential partners — that are invisible to the human eye. New research about the phenomenon focuses on cuttlefish, which can create waves of light that move up and down, side to side, as they swim.

Folk legend Neil Young said that he plans to keep his music off Amazon, and make his entire catalogue free for Greenlanders. “I hope my music and music films will ease some of the unwarranted stress and threats you are experiencing from our unpopular and hopefully temporary government,” Young wrote in a recent blog post.

My neighbor, Kathlene, is a longtime What A Day reader who particularly enjoys memes about never-ending January. Fingers crossed, this month WILL eventually end… someday!