Heating Up

Last night in Minneapolis, a Venezuelan immigrant who was evading arrest was shot in the leg by federal agents. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), immigration officials conducted a “targeted traffic stop” of a Venezuelan man believed to be here illegally just before 7 p.m. last night. The man reportedly fled the scene in his vehicle, crashed the car, then started to run away. Immigration enforcement pursued him, and while “the subject and law enforcement were in a struggle on the ground, two subjects came out of a nearby apartment and also attacked the law enforcement officer with a snow shovel and broom handle,” per the report from the DHS.

“Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired defensive shots to defend his life. The initial subject was hit in the leg,” added the DHS. The initial subject of the traffic stop is now in the hospital, along with the officer; the two other people who reportedly attacked the agent are in custody.

“City officials said the latest shooting occurred on the city’s north side, in the 600 block of 24th Avenue North,” reports The New York Times. “At a news conference, Brian O’Hara, the city’s police chief, said his understanding was that a 911 call appeared to have been made from a house. He said the caller reported that the man was running from immigration agents and was driving toward the residence. Neighbors said they saw federal agents ordering people inside the house to come out with their hands up, and that several people, including children, walked out.”

Protesters quickly showed up at the scene. They threw things—including fireworks—at both federal agents and Minneapolis police officers, which the agents met with flash bang grenades and pepper balls.

Tensions rise with Iran: Yesterday, U.S. military personnel were transferred away from Qatar’s Al Udeid air base, the biggest American base in the region, due to “current regional tensions,” reports Reuters. This, of course, refers to the possibility that President Donald Trump will order strikes on Iran, and it’s reminiscent of the actions taken by the U.S. in June of last year, prior to Israeli and American strikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure.

More than 2,000 Iranian protesters are now dead, possibly as many as 20,000 (estimates vary widely). What started on December 28 as a protest against massive inflation and economic turmoil has become a means of venting broader anger at the repressive regime. The regime has responded by killing protesters who foment any sort of political opposition and pose any sort of threat—most prominently, 26-year-old Erfan Soltani, who was scheduled to be executed this week and for whom Trump has advocated, saying there would be “strong action” (retribution) if Iran followed through on this execution and others like it.

“We have been informed by very important sources on the other side: The killing has stopped and the executions won’t take place,” Trump told reporters yesterday afternoon. “I hope it’s true. Who knows?” he added. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. and Iran will exchange strikes, or how Trump will continue to exert influence on the situation.

Scenes from New York: Mayor Zohran Mamdani just picked Kamar Samuels to be New York City’s schools chancellor. Samuels is passionate about “integration”—something Mamdani seems to believe is sorely needed. What exactly does this mean? Having the same rough percentages of different minority groups absolutely won’t happen if you continue to have schools that are somewhat tied to geography; different ethnic enclaves emerge, and school racial makeups correspond to this. But also, how strange to prioritize “integration” in the year 2026 over—oh, I don’t know—performance?

QUICK HITS

• “Bilt is unveiling three new credit cards with interest rates capped at 10%, days after President Donald Trump threatened lenders that failed to do so,” reports Bloomberg. “Bilt’s response to Trump’s jawboning contrasts with the pushback it has drawn from some of the biggest US banks. Citigroup Inc. doesn’t support the proposed cap, which ‘would likely result in a significant slowdown in the economy,’ Chief Financial Officer Mark Mason said Wednesday, while Bank of America Corp. CEO Brian Moynihan said it would curtail credit and warned of ‘unintended consequences.’ A day earlier, JPMorgan Chase & Co. CFO Jeremy Barnum decried ‘weakly supported directives to radically change our business.'”
• Trump really, really wants to take Greenland.
• Ridiculous (from a must-read Manhattan Institute report on school social justice indoctrination):

In 2022, 45% of high schoolers polled say they were taught that “America is built on stolen land” in class at school, and another 22% heard it from an adult there. pic.twitter.com/DfbzVAh9FP

— arctotherium (@arctotherium42) January 14, 2026

I’ve been watching this controversy unfold with some interest because what @xwanyex is saying here seems, at base, to be the same thing I was circling in this essay: that activists are misperceiving the stakes of these interactions in a way that made tragedy all but inevitable https://t.co/q4NOUyQlhC pic.twitter.com/HqDjwdFkzo

— Kat Rosenfield (@katrosenfield) January 14, 2026

• Many such cases, where the credential is useless or near-useless:

It would be reasonable if there were any evidence that education degrees made people better at teaching, but there isn’t, and the opposite may be true. https://t.co/ITgmpeDaO4

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) January 14, 2026