Revisiting things we already visited.

More progress than we knew.

Only 5 states have never had a woman serve as Governor or US Senator (VA, CO, ID, IN, PA). Virginia has now exited this list.

They want us dead.

First came the end of Roe v. Wade, June 22, 2022, overturned by Trump’s Supreme Court 6-3, as Trump and the Right cheered.

Abortion bans followed. Jessica Barnica died in Texas days after the state passed a six week abortion ban.

Doctors in the state denied her treatment again and again for a miscarriage because they detected a “fetal heartbeat.” Forty hours after her second hospital visit, she died of sepsis,leaving her bereft husband to raise their 4 year old daughter.

Then two Georgia women, Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, died after being unable to access legal abortions in their home state.

This happened this week and keeps happening. The coverage is minimal.

“In the wake of the overturn of Roe v. Wade, states with abortion bans have seen over 22,000 additional births, 478 excess infant deaths, and 59 excess pregnancy-associated deaths.”

These were among the findings shared at a June 9, 2025 symposium on the health impact of abortion bans, cosponsored by the Hopkins Population Center, State Innovation Exchange, PRB, and the William H. Gates Sr. Institute for Population and Reproductive Health.

This administration is led by 3 shamelessly misogynistic men:

1. Donald “grab ‘em by the pussy” Trump - a convicted felon found liable for sexual abuse who, this fall alone, renewed his reputation for women hating by disrespecting, insulting, and attacking female journalists. His attacks include attacks on the journalists’ intelligence and looks.

   On Nov. 14, 2025, aboard Air Force One, Trump snapped at Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucey during a question about the Epstein files, attacking her with “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.” 

   Later in the month, Nov. 26, 2025, Trump posted on social media about New York Times reporter Katie Rogers, calling her “ugly, both inside and out.”

   Around this same period, Trump called CBS’s Nancy Cordes “stupid” and denigrated Rogers and Lucey in the course of exchanges with the press. 

   But then again, this is a man who has often used derogatory language toward women (“horseface,” “fat,” “dog”).

2. The man currently known as J.D. Vance (born James Donald Bowman, then James David Hamel, then James David Vance before J. D. Vance) - best known for saying, “We are effectively run in this country by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.”

   He blamed feminism for divorce (“If you bring children into the world… you should stay married,” suggested that people in violent marriages should not divorce for the sake of children (“One of the great tricks of feminism…”), and declared that the sole role of a “postmenopausal female” is to help raise grandchildren,

   Not surprisingly, Vance advocates near-total abortion bans, including opposition to exceptions for rape/incest.

3. Pete Hegseth whose own mother sent him an email, saying she believed he routinely mistreated women and described him as “an abuser of women.” She said she had “no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego.”

As Secretary of Defense (though he and Trump embrace the more “masculine” War), Hegseth has made clear he is no friend to women, opposing women in combat roles, stating they weaken military effectiveness, arguing that feminism has “eroded masculinity” and harmed America’s troops, and repeatedly framing gender equality efforts as threats rather than progress.

All of that inevitably led to the death of Renee Good as well as this AWFUL thing.

After Renee Good Killing, Derisive Term for White Women Spreads on the Far Right

Vocal Trump supporters are demonizing Renee Good, her partner and their allies, with some even using an acronym: AWFUL, or Affluent White Female Urban Liberal.

A makeshift memorial near the site where Renee Good was shot and killed in Minneapolis.

In the days since a federal agent killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, Republican officials and conservative commentators have called the 37-year-old white woman “very violent,” a “deranged lunatic woman” and a “domestic terrorist.”

Some right-wing influencers have latched onto a different word — or rather an acronym: Ms. Good, they have said, was AWFUL.

“An AWFUL (Affluent White Female Urban Liberal) is dead after running her car into an ICE agent who opened fire on her,” the conservative commentator Erik Erickson posted on social media. “Progressive whites are turning violent. ICE agents have the right to defend themselves.”

From a co-host on an AM radio show in Orlando, Pierce Outlaw, to an army of internet trolls, the acronym has taken off. Mr. Outlaw called AWFULs “the scourge of polite society.” The term popped up on the internet Wiktionary this month as AWFL, without the “U.”

Beyond labels and name-calling, the death of Ms. Good and the protests and anger in its wake have sparked a response from many on the right that is particularly targeted at white women in the streets, even though men have been just as involved. A majority of college-educated women, including white women, have long been skeptical of President Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, and that skepticism has been growing, according to exit polls after the 2024 election. And for months now, such women are attracting the ire of the president’s supporters.

Liberal white women are only the latest group to be on the receiving end of right-wing animus. In late October and November, as Tucker Carlson offered a friendly interview to the Holocaust-denying white nationalist Nick Fuentes, the fear among some conservatives was that attacking Jews was inching toward the mainstream of the Republican Party. Last month, Vivek Ramaswamy, the wealthy entrepreneur who is a Republican candidate for governor in Ohio, was calling out a surge of bigotry directed at Indian Americans, like himself.

Trump administration officials say they are focused on immigration enforcement efforts in Minnesota, not the taunts of a few of their supporters.

“I’m more concerned with facts on the ground than I am about acronyms,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, wrote in a text message.

But for the broader core of Mr. Trump’s followers, the description of white, urban women as violent radicals obstructing mass deportations seems to reflect older anxieties around race, gender and immigration among the white, non-college educated men who make up the core of Mr. Trump’s movement and perceive their place in society slipping, said Dr. Shauna Shames, a political scientist at Rutgers and co-editor of the book “The Right Women: Republican Party Activists, Candidates, and Legislators.”

The notion of “white replacement” is not new. Far-right protesters in Charlottesville, Va., were chanting “Jews will not replace us” in 2017. But the president’s mass deportation effort has crystallized battle lines. And gender is rising in that divide, along with race and ethnicity.

“It’s all come to a head here,” Dr. Shames said of Ms. Good’s killing.

White, educated women may indeed be a threat to Mr. Trump, at least in the electorate. Seventeen percent of all voters last year were white women with college degrees, nearly matching the 18 percent who were non-college-educated white men.

And in an election in which Mr. Trump cut into Democratic advantages among Black, Latino and Asian American voters, Kamala Harris actually expanded the Democratic lead among college-educated white women, winning 58 percent of their vote compared with Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 54 percent in 2020, according to the Center for Women and American Politics at Rutgers University. Mr. Trump’s hold on non-college-educated white women held steady at 63 percent.

The term AWFUL is not the first derisive name targeting white women. People across the political spectrum once gleefully targeted so-called Karens, a term meant to denigrate women — usually white and middle-aged — caught using their privilege to bend the world in their direction.

And the use of AWFUL emerged well before Ms. Good was killed. Conservative critics began attaching it to female protesters at least as far back as last summer. Conservatives say there is good reason to key in on such women. Mr. Erickson, in a lengthy Substack post on Thursday, called Ms. Good’s death a “tragedy,” but one that Ms. Good and “her lesbian partner” had brought on themselves.

“Good had been harassing ICE agents much of the day,” he wrote, continuing, “Good had been involved in a progressive activist group called ICE Watch that encouraged not just obstruction of ICE, but also something they call ‘de-arrest,’ which means helping detained illegal immigrants escape.”

It is not clear how deeply Ms. Good or her partner were involved in the organized protests that have greeted immigration agents in Minnesota. And while administration officials have claimed that she was violent or mentally ill, that description bears no resemblance to the person relatives and neighbors said they knew.

Liberal academics have been diagnosing what they see as the problem. Laura K. Field, author of the book “Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right,” said social, demographic and economic changes had left men with a sense that they have lost status.

“Women are, for many of them, the place holder for their ‘stolen’ status,” she asserted.

If liberal academics have their theories, Naomi Wolf, who was once a liberal writer but moved rightward after the Covid pandemic, has hers. Writing on social media, Ms. Wolf said liberal men, “disproportionately estrogenized” and “physically passive,” had left liberal women sexually frustrated and eager for a fight.

“The smiles you see on their faces now say it all: white women long for all out combat with ICE — who tend to be strong, physically confident, masculine men — because the conflict is a form of physical release for them,” she wrote.

On Thursday, Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media site X, jumped in, amplifying a post to his 232 million followers that asserted, “Liberal women will divorce their husband and only let him see his children once a month, then cry about how ICE hurts families.”

White men have been prominent in Minneapolis streets as well. But critics of the onslaught of attacks on women say male protesters are not being singled out as a cohort.

To be sure, white women who fit a traditional mold do enjoy status in American society, Dr. Field said. But that mold is not what the Trump administration and its supporters are responding to in Minneapolis.

“Trump and this administration are heavily misogynist, and that’s always a big part of what he does,” said Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman from Virginia who is a fierce critic of the president.

Ms. Comstock pointed to polling that shows that strong majorities now disapprove of the president’s handling of immigration, but public opinion is not tempering the administration’s tactics or rhetoric.

“I think the problem is these guys all talk to themselves, and they are in their own bubble,” Ms. Comstock said.

When Mr. Trump was told in an interview with CBS News that Ms. Good’s father was a supporter of his, the president responded, “I would bet you that she, under normal circumstances, was a very solid, wonderful person. But, you know, her actions were pretty tough.”

There are signs that the categorization of Ms. Good as a radical may not be taking hold among the broader public.

Joe Rogan, the influential podcaster who endorsed the president in 2024, said he was horrified watching video of Ms. Good’s killing. “It’s complicated, obviously, but it’s also very ugly to watch someone shoot a U.S. citizen, especially a woman, in the face,” Mr. Rogan said on his podcast, which has more than 20 million subscribers on YouTube.

In all of this, race is at play, for critics of the white women in the streets and for their sympathizers.

“The idea that you could lose your life, that you too are at risk in the way that Black people have been for centuries, I do think that’s different,” Dr. Shames said. (Clyde McGrady, New York Times)

What is happening in Minnesota.

A Civil War, in miniature. A Battle Zone.

What is happening in Minnesota is not funny but this is comic-tragic. ICE is terrifying to us all, but mocking them is one way to beat them.

One brave Viking does it his way.

Touch to watch.👇

What is happening about Greenland.

What is happening about Greenland is also not funny. Below are two European leaders’ comments.

Trump’s Greenland Threats Will Boomerang on America

President Trump is apparently serious about wanting Greenland for the United States. What once sounded like an opening gambit in a negotiation increasingly looks like a deeply held conviction, one that Mr. Trump has publicly underlined by refusing to rule out the use of force.

Europeans are serious about this too, however. Assuming that Europe would quietly accept a takeover of Greenland by the United States and then move on would be a mistake. The recent assertion by President Emmanuel Macron of France that his country would stand in solidarity with Denmark against an attack on Greenland’s sovereignty and for the deployment of European troops to the island are only the most recent indications of this growing resolve.

There is no need to speculate about worst-case scenarios from such a possible confrontation: the most likely outcome is bad enough. As Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has warned, an attack on Greenland would be the end of NATO. That would rob the United States of an unbeatable web of allies, offer rifts for our common enemies to exploit and eradicate the alliance’s collective moral high ground that has helped project American soft power across Europe and the world for decades. In short, it would make America weaker, not safer.

Greenland is not a marginal issue for Europeans. Threats against it cut to the heart of the idea of Europe, of sovereignty, international law and trust. Key European leaders recently stressed they are united in their position that it is up to Denmark and Greenland to decide their own fate — and no one else. The potential for a crisis is real, and what is most confounding is that this would be a crisis that is entirely unnecessary and easily avoidable.

Mr. Trump can credibly point to significant achievements in strengthening NATO. While not everyone may have liked his approach, it proved effective. He succeeded in pushing America’s allies to commit to a new spending target far beyond what anyone had thought possible. After more than a decade of struggling to meet the 2 percent dues benchmark, NATO members have now pledged to spend 5 percent of their gross domestic product on defense by 2035. Major European countries such as Germany have already begun to move quickly toward that target.

A stronger European pillar allows the United States to focus on other strategic challenges, most notably in the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific. By any fair assessment, NATO is on track to become militarily stronger because of President Trump’s pressure. Yet it is also because of President Trump that NATO’s very survival is now at risk.

Threatening to annex territory belonging to a NATO ally strikes at the very foundation of the alliance. NATO is not merely a military grouping; it is a community of liberal democracies that has endured precisely because its members trust — and do not threaten — one another. They consult, negotiate and resolve disputes peacefully. This shared political culture is not a luxury — it is NATO’s greatest strategic asset. It sets us apart from those that depend on threats and tricks to keep their “friends” together.

If allies begin to doubt that their sovereignty will be respected by their partners, why should adversaries believe that the alliance would defend our sovereignty against external threats? What is at stake here is not Greenland itself, but the future of the trans-Atlantic relationship.

That unique asset is now at risk. President Trump has suggested that he might have to choose between Greenland and NATO. For Europeans, that is a deeply unsettling statement. For Americans who value NATO, it should be equally alarming.

To be clear, there are legitimate concerns behind Trump’s focus on Arctic security. Trans-Atlantic allies have indeed been too slow in responding to growing Russian and Chinese activities in the High North. The region does deserve more attention, especially from NATO. The strategic importance of the Arctic is real, and it is growing.

But those challenges strengthen the case for NATO — not for unilateral action. They call for more allied presence, better coordination and sustained political consultation. America’s allies in the North are a huge asset to the United States; its adversaries don’t have that advantage. And NATO already provides a framework to collectively address Arctic security, pooling resources and legitimacy in a way no single country can match.

What is true in the High North is also true elsewhere in Europe, and around the world. NATO is a force not only for its collective security, but for the individual security of each of its members, including the United States. Remember: The only time Article 5 of the NATO treaty was ever invoked was to help defend America right after the 9/11 attack. From the Atlantic to North Africa and the Indo-Pacific, the United States’ interests are advanced by the power that the NATO alliance achieves.

The current moment demands strong voices of restraint and responsibility, especially in the United States. Americans who understand the strategic value of NATO to the United States — and there are many — should speak up now. They should remind their leaders that America’s strength has always been amplified, not constrained, by strong allies. And if you want allies, you must treat them as allies.

The Greenland issue does not have to become a rupture. Handled wisely, it could instead become another example of NATO’s enduring strengths: consultation, compromise and collective problem-solving. The alliance has survived other crises — precisely because members chose dialogue over confrontation. It is not too late to do so again. (Wolfgang Ischinger is a former German ambassador to Washington and is chairman of the Munich Security Conference, New York Times)

I’m the Secretary General of the Council of Europe. This Is Something I Thought I’d Never Have to Write.

When I took my post as secretary general of the Council of Europe just over a year ago, I did not think that I would ever have to write about the possibility of the United States taking military action against a member state.

Yet here we are.

President Trump has vowed to make Greenland — a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, which is a member of the Council of Europe and a founding member of NATO — part of the United States, and that he will do so “the easy way” or “the hard way.”

His statements about the territory have strained relations between states and called into question the rights, consent and democratic choices of Greenland’s people. For now, this remains talk. But recent events in Venezuela show how quickly words can harden into action.

Mr. Trump has also said that he is constrained only by his “own morality,” not international law, brushing aside the legal order established in the aftermath of World War II.

The Council of Europe, with its 46 member states, including non-E.U. countries like Britain and Turkey, was born out of that war. It was founded on the idea that law, not raw power, must guarantee the dignity and rights of individuals and the sovereign equality of states. When a major power central to the creation of the postwar legal order openly questions the necessity of international law, it shakes the foundations we’ve worked for decades to reinforce.

Democracy, multilateralism and accountability once defined the postwar order. These words are increasingly dismissed as elitist, woke or dead. We need to ask ourselves, on both sides of the Atlantic, if we want to live in a world where democracy is recast as weakness, truth as opinion and justice as an option.

Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland, accompanied by extensive Greenlandic self-government, is settled law. It rests on the inviolability of the territorial integrity of Denmark under international law. Its purpose is to guarantee stability and legality while preserving, not constraining, Greenland’s democratic right to shape its own future.

The Trump administration’s main argument for acquiring Greenland rests on legitimate national security concerns. But the United States already maintains military capabilities in Greenland at Pituffik Space Base and, under existing agreements, could expand cooperation significantly without threatening Danish sovereignty or seeking approval from either Copenhagen or Nuuk, and without any transfer of territory.

This suggests that something else is at work.

We are witnessing the return of an old strategic reflex: a Cold War mind-set in which geography is treated as destiny and influence as zero-sum, and independence is seen as a strategic risk rather than a democratic choice. The fear is that an independent Greenland might one day drift toward Russia’s or China’s orbit, placing their weapons at America’s doorstep. It would be an Arctic repeat of the Bay of Pigs.

This is the logic of spheres of influence, an echo of the Monroe Doctrine, now visible in legislation proposed last week by a member of Congress that frames Greenland’s annexation in national security terms tied to China and Russia. The same logic is reflected in the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy, released in December, which makes America’s sovereignty and strategic interests a priority over multilateral norms and collective security.

Europe must act to protect its legal framework, and the Council of Europe is ready to play its part. The right of peoples to determine their own future, the protection of international law, and accountability for violations of sovereign rights are the foundation of our security and our values.

In moments of crisis, Europe often speaks through national capitals rather than in a single political voice, as the recent joint statement by several E.U. member states on Greenland illustrates. This is a political reality that highlights why legal institutions with a collective mandate matter. The Council of Europe’s work on accountability mechanisms for Ukraine, including the Register of Damage and the International Claims Commission, shows that law can still structure international action at a time of political fragmentation.

The same approach applies in the Arctic. The Council of Europe stands ready to support Denmark and Greenland through concrete legal and institutional cooperation. If Europe fails to articulate a legal and political vision, others will fill the vacuum, shifting security from law to strategic leverage.

What’s at stake is not only Greenland’s sovereignty, but also trust. Alliances rest on predictability and on the expectation that power, especially allied power, remains bound by law. If international law can be set aside when it becomes inconvenient, trust is gone. If strategic calculations lead to a disregard for sovereignty in Greenland, how will Europe continue to believe in U.S. commitments elsewhere?

When Europe insists on sovereignty and accountability, it is not posturing. It is defending what makes both America and Europe strong. To ignore this is to set a dangerous precedent, one that could unravel the trans-Atlantic bond and weaken the foundations that keep us standing.

International law is either universal or meaningless. Greenland will show which one we choose. (Alain Berset is the secretary general of the Council of Europe. New York Times)

One more thing

Yesterday, Jonas Gahan Store, Norway’s prime minister , contacted Trump to discuss global security, signing his message “Alex and Jonas,” a reference to the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb.

The Norwegian prime minister’s office provided the full exchange to The New York Times. Read it below:

Text message from Mr. Store to Mr. Trump on Sunday, Jan. 18, 3:48 p.m.:

Dear Mr President, dear Donald – on the contact across the Atlantic – on Greenland, Gaza, Ukraine – and your tariff announcement yesterday. You know our position on these issues. But we believe we all should work to take this down and de-escalate – so much is happening around us where we need to stand together. We are proposing a call with you later today – with both of us or separately – give us a hint of what you prefer! Best – Alex and Jonas

Trump sent this 👇, not just to Norway’s Prime Minister and the Finish President, but also to multiple European ambassadors.

Ir makes clear the Secretary General of the Council of Europe has missed the point. Trump’s obsession and demands for Greenland are not based on fear of China or Russia, or, as he claims, his newly discovered responsibility to our country. He uses tariffs not to help the American economy but to force other countries to obey his demands.

Trump is a deranged, delusional man who seeks revenge to salve and inflate his own hyper-sensitive, easily bruised ego,

What drives his madness?

My list.

1. Money. Into Trump’s own bank account.

2. Power. Delight in bullying others and exerting his power. Trump’s primary use of tariffs is as force, not as an economic weapon.

3. Glory. Soon he will be selling his imperialism - Venezuela, Greenland - as the largest acquisitions of land mass for the United States EVER. He will show that Nobel Committee who’s boss.

As the Daily Beast says, Even by Trump’s standards, his latest letter is so dangerous and so delusional that there is no longer any question that the president is mentally “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” as laid out in the 25th Amendment.

Other countries are moving forward.👇

It is only appropriate that this one be a Scandinavian country.

Iceland approved the 4-day workweek in 2019 and nearly everything Gen Z predicted has come

In 2019, Iceland made history by becoming one of the first countries to approve a four-day work week. Nearly six years later, all of Generation Z’s predictions about its benefits have proven true — and the nation’s experiment has reshaped how people view work and life.

When Iceland first launched the idea, skepticism was high. Many feared that productivity would fall, businesses would face higher costs, or service quality would drop with fewer hours. These doubts weren’t unique to Iceland — they echoed around the world. Yet the pilot program, which began in 2015 with 2,500 workers (about 1% of the labor force), soon silenced those concerns. By 2019, nearly 90% of Icelandic employees had switched to shorter schedules — working just 36 hours a week instead of the usual 40 — without losing pay.

Productivity didn’t decline. In fact, in some sectors it improved. Employees reported lower stress levels and a stronger work-life balance — priorities that align perfectly with the values of Generation Z. The change also boosted mental health and overall happiness, suggesting that fewer hours may be the key to creating healthier, more satisfied workers.

Technology plays a key role in success

One standout feature of Iceland’s trial was its contribution to gender equality. The shorter work week encouraged men to participate more in family life. With fewer office hours, many spent more time with their children and shared household duties more equally, leading to a fairer balance of domestic and parenting responsibilities.

Unlike other countries, such as Belgium, where the four-day week involves lengthening remaining workdays, Iceland kept full pay without demanding longer hours elsewhere. This was made possible through massive investments in digital infrastructure. With some of the world’s fastest Internet connections — even in remote areas — Iceland enabled remote work that kept productivity steady while reducing office hours.

For digital natives in Generation Z, adapting to this flexible structure was easy. Their fluency in online communication and remote collaboration made the transition smooth and uninterrupted.

The results extended far beyond the workplace. Icelanders now enjoy a higher quality of life, with more time for leisure, family, and social engagement. The drop in stress from rigid schedules has led to greater happiness both professionally and personally.

Activist and teacher María Hjálmtýsdóttir summed it up best: “Reducing the work week has been a tremendous success in Iceland. For 90% of us, the 36-hour week means less stress, more job satisfaction, and more time to enjoy life.” (Futura-sciences.com)

Today! National Strike begins. Walkouts at 2 pm.

This is what we all should do today.

Hope you are joining. We need you there.