DL Open Thread: Saturday, January 24, 2026
Trump’s War Against DEI Officially Dead. Sorta:
Nearly a year ago, the Education Department sent universities and K-12 school districts scrambling with a sweeping but vague directive. The “Dear Colleague” letter said schools may be in violation of federal law if they consider race in virtually any way — hiring, discipline policy, scholarships and programming.
That means an August federal court order blocking the “Dear Colleague” letter will stand. The Trump administration had also demanded that schools certify that they are in compliance with the letter, and that demand is now dead, too.
Still, it is unclear how significant the impact will be. The Trump administration, which made sweeping changes to education over its first year, can still work to impose its view of the law on schools through enforcement actions and other pressure. For instance, in July, the Justice Department published a memo that included many of the same ideas that were in the Education Department’s letter.
The letter, issued by the department last February, laid out the agency’s interpretation of civil rights law and argued that schools at every level had embraced “pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination.”
George Washington Didn’t Keep Slaves. Well, he did, however:
The National Park Service has taken down an exhibit on slavery at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, the Interior Department said on Thursday, following President Trump’s directive to remove materials that promote “corrosive ideology.”
The outdoor exhibit, called “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation,” memorialized nine people enslaved by George Washington at the President’s House Site, where the first president once lived. The exhibit “examines the paradox between slavery and freedom in the founding of the nation,” according to a description on the Park Service website.
Well, the (First?) Greenland War was as needlessly destabilizing as it was unendurably embarrassing, but at least we lost.
I’ve never been so happy to see TACO Trump. TACO Trump is the best Trump by miles.
Drunk with Blood and Power, Convinced Regime Change is Fun n’ E-Z Trump has not been my favorite stop on this particular narcissist’s mental decline.
Regardless, our pants-shitting manchild president sent a threatening letter to the Prime Minister of Norway. AS YOU HAVE FAILED TO HONOR ME AS A MAN OF PEACE, NOW YOU SHALL FIND ME A MAN OF WAR, he furiously mashed out with those stunted baby hands.
Then came the tariff threats, naturally. They sure do enjoy threatening folks, have you noticed that? That’s a healthy leadership quality, right? GIMMIE GREENLAND OR I TARIFF YA. JOIN THE FAKE ALTERNATE UNITED NATIONS I JUST MADE UP OR I TARIFF YA.
I shouldn’t mock the Board of Peace, which is a very real organization that cares about peace a whole bunch. That billion-dollar membership fee totally won’t end up in a cave in Qatar alongside pirated Venezuelan oil. Nope, it’s for peace, or perhaps condos on the Gazan territory Jared Kushner has decided he owns.
Kash Patel Illegally Fires Agents–Again:
Dilanian and Carol Leonnig reported for MS NOW that Patel has carried out yet another purge of the bureau’s senior ranks. While the exact headcount isn’t clear, the former podcast personality has forced out field office leaders and other senior agents connected to the two criminal investigations of Donald Trump. From the report:
The special agent in charge in Atlanta has been removed, as has the acting assistant director in charge of the New York field office, two people familiar with the matter said. A former special agent in charge in New Orleans who had recently moved on to another job was also ousted.
As many as six agents in Miami were forced out over their connection to the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida resort where he stored classified documents, two people said. And other agents pushed out were involved in the ‘Arctic Frost’ investigation of Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
That kind of turnover, the report added, “is unheard of at the FBI.”
That’s clearly true, though it’s becoming a lot more common. We learned last month, for example, about a lawsuit filed by 12 FBI agents who were fired for having taken a knee during racial justice protests in 2020 as part of an effort to de-escalate a situation that threatened to intensify.
At about the same time, we learned of a lawsuit filed by a veteran FBI employee who was fired for displaying at his workspace an LGBTQ+ flag that had previously flown outside a field office.
What’s more, in August, Patel and his team ousted three experienced bureau leaders, including Brian Driscoll, a widely respected figure among rank-and-file agents who was removed after he helped prevent a mass firing of thousands of FBI officials who worked on Jan. 6 cases.
A month later, MS NOW reported on their federal lawsuit, which alleged that Patel “knowingly broke the law when he fired senior FBI executives at the behest of the White House and under pressure from Trump allies.”
100 Clergy Members Arrested In Minneapolis.
Police arrested about 100 clergy demonstrating against immigration enforcement at Minnesota’s largest airport Friday, and several thousand gathered in downtown Minneapolis despite Arctic temperatures to protest the Trump administration’s crackdown.
The protests are part of a broader movement against President Donald Trump’s increased immigration enforcement across the state, with labor unions, progressive organizations and clergy urging Minnesotans to stay away from work, school and even shops. The faith leaders gathered at the airport to protest deportation flights and urge airlines to call for an end to to what the Department of Homeland Security has called its largest-ever immigration enforcement operation.
The clergy were issued misdemeanor citations of trespassing and failure to comply with a peace officer and were then released, said Jeff Lea, a Metropolitan Airports Commission spokesman. They were arrested outside the main terminal at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport because they went beyond the reach of their permit for demonstrating and disrupted airline operations, he said.
Rev. Mariah Furness Tollgaard of Hamline Church in St. Paul said police ordered them to leave but she and others decided to stay and be arrested to show support for migrants, including members of her congregation who are afraid to leave their homes. She planned to go back to her church after her brief detention to hold a prayer vigil.
“We cannot abide living under this federal occupation of Minnesota,” Tollgaard said.
We owe the clergy and citizens of Minnapolis a great debt of thanks. They are the canaries in the coalmine of tyranny (I admit it, a terrible analogy, you can do better).
What do you want to talk about?
ICE Murders Yet One More In Minneapolis:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/01/24/us/minneapolis-shooting-ice
The victim has now been identified as an ICU nurse.