Outside the Beltway

Monday’s Forum

· Monday, January 12, 2026 · 17 comments

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FILED UNDER: Open Forum
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter and/or BlueSky.

Comments

  1. Scott says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 07:23

    Starting off the week with something trivial: a movie recommendation.

    We watched “The Life of Chuck” on Prime Saturday. Based on a Stephen King novella the movie is about the title describes. It starts with Act 3 and moves back in time. Engages in a bit of magical realism (I hope I’m using the term correctly). Small, not much action but life affirming. Just the kind of movie that we needed. Some critics loved it and gave it high marks and some hated it. Go figure.

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  2. Michael Reynolds says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 07:32

    Question: Should the Democratic Party vow, in the event that we take the White House in 2028, to undo whatever Trump has done regarding Greenland?

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  3. Scott says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 07:46

    @Michael Reynolds: That seems rather trivial compared to the project they need to undertake. That being the reconstruction of the foundations of our republic. The scrubbing of old laws (like the Insurrection Act, Alien Enemies Act, etc.) that are being dredged up and used to abuse our system. The hard work of writing laws that don’t leave discretion to the executive branch (yes, that will make us even more bureaucratic and creaky but you can’t leave it to norms or discretion anymore). Bottomline, I just don’t think Greenland will excite the population to rise up and ‘throw the bums out’.

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  4. Scott says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 08:13

    Capitol agenda: Trump tests GOP with Fed probe

    President Donald Trump is once again forcing a tough fealty test on GOP lawmakers — this time over the fate of the Federal Reserve and Chair Jerome Powell.

    The Fed chair’s Sunday night revelation of a DOJ probe into the central bank immediately rattled a number of Capitol Hill Republicans and raised serious doubts about the confirmation of Trump’s upcoming pick to succeed Powell.

    “Will they stop at nothing to force their way on everything?” one senior House Republican granted anonymity told POLITICO. “The administration is setting a standard they cannot achieve themselves and will haunt us all for a generation.”

    The answer is no, they will not stop at nothing and two, the problem is cowardly anonymity in Congress.

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  5. Neil Hudelson says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 08:27

    @Scott:

    The director, Mike Flanagan, has made a few Stephen King based series as well as some other horror-inspired projects. They are all quite good and thought provoking. I recommend ‘Midnight Mass,’ a reimagining of ‘Salems Lot.’

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  6. Scott says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 08:35

    @Scott: Sen Tom Tillis on same subject:

    If there were any remaining doubt whether advisers within the Trump Administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should now be none. It is now the independence and credibility of the Department of Justice that are in question.

    I will oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed—including the upcoming Fed Chair vacancy—until this legal matter is fully resolved.

    Only now is the independence and credibility of the Justice Dept in question? Do these Senators just go through life on drugs?

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  7. Sleeping Dog says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 08:35

    @Michael Reynolds:
    @Scott:

    They should promise to reverse any Greenland action, but Scott’s right it won’t move voters. But that and tearing down his ballroom and the proposed Arc de Trump will be visible indicators of moving on. Much of the stuff Scott mentions will take several administrations to complete.

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  8. Michael Reynolds says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 08:40

    @Scott:
    It’s not about throwing the bums out, and there is nothing any more consequential than the matter of whether we are going invade a NATO ally. Trump is threatening to start a war with a long-standing ally. If we state clearly that we will undo whatever he does, maybe we can head this off.

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  9. gVOR10 says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 08:57

    @Michael Reynolds: Threatening war on ally, yes, but the Fed has been kind of a third rail. The Roberts Court had been in a mode of allowing Trump to run amok through the bureaucracy, but not the Fed. Corporate types hate other regulators, but the Fed is the priesthood of the sacred markets. This may be an agency too far for Trump.

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  10. Kathy says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 09:26

    @Scott:

    I just don’t get it. his term ends in May this year, and then El Taco can nominate whatever ass-kissing sock puppet he wants. A criminal probe won’t land him in court sooner than that.

    I suppose it might be a means of pressuring him to resign, but that would be as damaging as if El Taco had Vance shoot Powell in the oval office.

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  11. gVOR10 says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 09:41

    @Kathy: It does seem odd. But Trump is big on performative hostility and short on planning. On the other hand, Powell is pretty popular with the corporate set and Trump may feel he needs this to support not reappointing Powell.

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  12. Sleeping Dog says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 09:41

    @gVOR10:

    Well the market is reacting. From the NYT

    Stocks, the dollar and U.S. government bonds all fell on Monday after federal prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve. Gold hit a fresh record high, usually a sign of anxiety among investors on Wall Street.

    The S&P 500 opened 0.3 percent lower. The dollar was weaker against most major currencies and the yield on Treasury bonds rose, approaching 4.2 percent for 10-year government debt.

    The broad shift out of U.S. financial assets, though somewhat muted, revived a trend seen last year, called the “sell America” trade, when President Trump attacked Mr. Powell and challenged the independence of policymaking at the central bank. The Fed has been under relentless pressure from Mr. Trump and his allies to aggressively cut interest rates, as the administration seeks to promote affordability, most recently in the housing market.

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  13. CSK says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 10:00

    Trump has declared himself acting president of Venezuela.

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  14. Kathy says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 10:05

    @CSK:

    Is that necessary? Hasn’t Venezuela suffered enough?

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  15. CSK says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 10:18

    @Kathy:

    I’m not joking.

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  16. Kathy says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 10:26

    @CSK:

    Neither am I.

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  17. charontwo says:
    Monday, 12 January 2026 at 10:38

    “neo-Nazi’s & Minneapolis & ICE”

    Excerpts:

    Early on a Friday evening in July 1938, several hundred concerned Minneapolitans streamed into a rented auditorium for what had been promoted as a gathering of “Christian American Patriots.” In a formal letter of invitation, the meeting’s organizers had called for “united action” against “the alien forces that are seeking to undermine our constitutional government, take away our right of free speech, and deprive us of our liberty.” By way of providing more specific instruction, the featured orator, a “national field marshal” named Roy Zachary, devoted a portion of his two-hour diatribe to urging his audience to “combat the Jewish conspiracy…through the organization of vigilante groups in every community to take whatever action is necessary.”
    … Soon after Hitler’s consolidation of power in 1933, Pelley had established a homegrown fascist group called the Silver Legion. It was more commonly known as the Silver Shirts, a reference to the rank-and-file’s trademark apparel.

    Both the name and the attire purposely honored Pelley’s inspiration—the Brownshirts, a paramilitary force that Hitler had deployed over the dozen years leading to his seizure of dictatorial control. Hitler himself had modeled the Brownshirts (formal name Sturmabteilung, meaning “Assault Division”) on Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirts, the bully boys of his fascist insurgency in Italy. By whatever name or hue, the operating mode of all these groups was the same, assembling and deploying an armed unit under the sole control of the strongman that could intimidate political opponents, religious minorities, and the official military and law-enforcement bodies of a weakened state.

    …

    All of this history might appear irrelevant to the Minneapolis that most Americans have come to know. After Hubert Humphrey won the city’s mayoralty in 1945 on a civil rights platform and pushed through laws against employment and housing discrimination, Minneapolis became famous not as a hotbed of bigotry but as a beacon of progress against it. With a couple of brief exceptions in periods of conservative backlash, a straight line runs from Humphrey through liberal, inclusive successors like Arthur Naftalin, Don Fraser, Sharon Sayles Belton, R.T. Rybak, and the current occupant of City Hall, Jacob Frey.

    Tragically, however, a straight line also runs from William Pelley’s Silver Shirts and Gerald L.K. Smith’s America Firsters to the ICE forces unleashed on Minneapolis by Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, and Kristi Noem. Their version of ICE bears less resemblance to the federal agency formed under the George W. Bush administration than to exactly what Pelley yearned to produce: a paramilitary unit accountable only to a dictator. The exercise of ICE power in Minneapolis may have reached its ghastly apogee with Jonathan Ross’s murder of Renee Nicole Good, but that killing was foretold by the numerous examples in the preceding weeks and months of ICE agents brutalizing protesters and falsely arresting American citizens in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Los Angeles, among other cities.

    These actions gave the lie to ICE’s superhero propaganda about defending the homeland from pedophiles, drug dealers, and human traffickers. Rather, ICE intends to make Minneapolis the test case for what Pelley and Smith literally prayed for decades ago—an America purged of its demographically “impure” elements. The logical outcome of ICE’s siege is the fear that now grips Minneapolis immigrants, even those with U.S. citizenship, about sending their kids to school, going to work, buying groceries, or seeing a doctor when they’re sick.

    It is intolerable to a Pelley or Smith or Trump that a city that was once nearly entirely white, Protestant, and Northern European could transform into a polyglot hub with large Somali, Mexican, Hmong, and Vietnamese populations. It is intolerable to MAGA that liberals and progressives hold nearly every elected office of consequence in Minnesota, and that they have vociferously—sometimes profanely—rejected white solidarity to defend minority communities. It is intolerable to MAGA that civil society continues to thrive in Minneapolis through liberal religious congregations, vigorous labor unions, vibrant ward politics, and engaged neighborhood associations—the very groups that have mounted the sustained, nonviolent opposition to ICE’s invasion. It is intolerable to MAGA that Minneapolis never chose Pelley’s way or Smith’s way, and now rejects the MAGA way.

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