The Authoritarianism Will Be Televised
Hello, it’s the weekend. It’s The Weekender ☕️
In the 48 hours since ICE officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis, the Trump administration has concocted a few justifications: She was trying to crush the agents, she’s a “domestic terrorist,” she’s part of a “crazy fringe,” and the poor, innocent agents were just trying to dig their car out of the snow.
Their attempt to vilify Good for his own murder had little success as contemporary video of the murder exploded on social media, disproving this thesis. The footage appears to show Good’s maroon Honda Pilot SUV attempting to leave the scene, and that Ross shot Good as she turned her car away from him.
In a new video from Ross’ point of view – released Friday by a right-wing website – Good can be heard saying “I’m not mad at you” seconds before Ross kills her.
Without the videos, we would be entirely dependent on an administration that habitually lies about ICE’s unjustified use of force — a situation closer to that in Portland, where Customs and Border Protection agents shot and killed two people Thursday night. The administration claims that the car’s passenger was “a Venezuelan illegal alien affiliated with the transnational prostitution ring Tren de Aragua” (it’s not even clear what that’s supposed to mean), and that the shooter, as usual, feared for his life. In the hours following the shooting, no footage was released.
This comes from the same administration that claimed that Silverio González (the man ICE agents killed in Chicago last September) was shot after trying to run over agents and dragging one to the point of being “seriously injured.” In surveillance footage released later, González can be seen backing up to leave while officers stood on either side of the car, and one officer can be heard describing his injuries as “nothing serious.”
The Department of Homeland Security also said Chicago officers had no choice but to shoot Marimar Martinez multiple times in October after, according to DHS, she rammed their cars and threatened them with a semi-automatic weapon. Her lawyer told the court he had footage of an officer ramming Martinez’s car and that she had a licensed handgun in her purse that she never removed. In an extremely rare move, the Justice Department asked the judge to dismiss the indictment against her.
Living in the panopticon presents myriad threats, and AI could make this type of video evidence harder to trust in the future. But over the past year, these recordings have been vital to combating the furious torrent of lies and propaganda that the administration spews every time its poorly trained agents injure or kill people.
-Kate Riga
Trump breaks protocol, shares BLS employment numbers early
In a casual violation of a clearly defined policy, President Donald Trump posted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ unpublished December employment report on social media, the day before the report was released.
Trump posted a chart Thursday evening on Truth Social that includes data on the number of private sector jobs created in 2025, which matches the numbers in the BLS jobs report released Friday morning, according to Bloomberg. He wasn’t supposed to do that. The president and his economic advisers would have been briefed on the jobs report a day earlier, Bloomberg reports, but a BLS policy directive states in black and white that neither the president nor any of his administration officials can comment on reports on specific economic indicators until 30 minutes after the report is released.
Funny enough, Statistical Policy Directive No. 3 was created in part to respond to criticism of federal data and executive branch comments issued simultaneously, according to an Office of Management and Budget advisory regarding the directive. In the age of social media and 24/7 news delivery, political reporting is supposed to improve and preserve public confidence that the president and his administration are not meddling with data.
However, Trump’s entire second term has served to erode public trust in the independence of federal data – seemingly by design.
Since he took office last January, his administration has deleted and changed thousands of data sets without notice or even information about which were changed and in what ways. He specifically attacked the BLS and politicized the jobs report last summer by directly firing former BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after a report showed a sluggish jobs market. And he has publicly sought to force the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates based on his whims, rather than economic data, even going so far as to appoint a member of his administration to the Board of Governors and attempt to oust a sitting governor.
In his Thursday message, Trump may have thought he was touting a big increase in employment over the year, but Friday’s jobs report actually suggests otherwise. The United States added 584,000 jobs in 2025, compared to 2 million over the same period in 2024. December employment figures were lower than analysts expected, employment figures were revised downward in October and November, and high black unemployment, often a canary in the coal mine when an economic crisis looms, remained persistent.
-Layla A. Jones
Morning memo live!
If you’re a fan of The Weekender and TPM’s other newsletters, then we have an event for you. My colleague David Kurtz, a TPM editor who also writes Morning Memo each weekday, will host a Morning Memo Live event at the National Union Building in Washington, DC on January 29 starting at 6:30 p.m. ET.
David will lead a conversation about the politicization of the Justice Department, the retaliatory campaign against prosecutors and investigators, and the weakening of DOJ standards and traditions. Guest speakers will include Stacey Young, a DOJ veteran who is the founder and executive director of Justice Connection; former Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Zelinsky, who served on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team; and Anna Bower, editor-in-chief of Lawfare.
Join us!
—Nicole LaFond
After Helping Dash Trump’s Indiana Dreams, GOPer Rethinks Retirement
Indiana Republican State Senator Greg Walker, who has consistently opposed the Trump administration’s redistricting push in the state, announced he will no longer retire from the Indiana Legislature.
“I felt like it was important for me to continue to advocate for Indiana issues rather than Washington politics,” Walker told the Indiana Capital Chronicle. “We have only seen a small taste of what federalizing elections in Indiana could look like, and could possibly look like more than it does today, and I am very concerned when I see Hoosier politics playing a role as a substitute for these national battles.”
The announcement comes after enough Republicans in the Indiana Senate voted against mid-cycle gerrymandering to defeat the Trump administration’s effort to redraw district lines there last month. Walker was one of several Republicans who voted against the proposal. The rejection represented a significant loss for the Trump administration’s broader assault domestically.
Walker has always openly opposed the administration’s pressure on redistricting, saying last month that, despite threats, attempts to suppress it and mounting pressure, he refused to “be intimidated” by the Trump administration.
“I have made a choice. I will not allow Indiana or any other state to be subjected to the threat of political violence in order to influence the legislative product,” Walker said.
—Khaya Himmelman
Dynamics of government funding
The House passed three appropriations bills Thursday in a largely bipartisan 397-28 vote. The three bills packaged into a minibus would fund the Departments of Energy, Commerce, Interior and Justice, the EPA, water programs and federal science initiatives through the end of the current fiscal year.
The House-passed spending package comes as Congress attempts to pass the remaining nine appropriations bills or agree on a new continuing resolution before a Jan. 30 deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown.
The minibus will now head to the Senate for a floor vote. Majority Leader John Thune could introduce the package as soon as next week, although the exact timeline is not yet clear and other companies could delay the minibus.
House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) said this week that he is working on releasing a new spending package, which could come as soon as this weekend.
House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) also said negotiations on the remaining bills have been “productive” and that negotiations are “progressing at a very encouraging pace.”
“As of tonight, I am confident that we will be able to complete our work and avoid any sort of continuing resolution before the Jan. 30 deadline,” DeLauro said Tuesday.
-Emine Yucel
