DOMESTIC WARFARE: After a federal judge in Oregon blocked president Trump from deploying the National Guard to Portland, the President ordered 300 members of the California Guard already federalized to face northwest protesters angry over immigrant roundups.

  Trump claimed that; “Portland is burning to the ground. Insurrection is all over the place. It’s Antifa.”

  Trump also called up 300 members of the Illinois National Guard to protect ICE facilities in Chicago that have been surrounded by protesters.

  “The commander in chief is using the US military as a political weapon against American citizens,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom. “We will take this fight to court, but the public cannot stay silent in the face of such reckless and authoritarian conduct by the president of the United States.”

  A White House spokeswoman said that the governor “should stand on the side of law-abiding citizens instead of violent criminals destroying Portland and cities across the country.”

   Judge Karin Immergut in Oregon, a Trump appointee, had ruled that the state had provided “substantial evidence that the protests at the Portland ICE facility were not significantly violent or disruptive in the days — or even weeks — leading up to the President’s directive.” 

  Also over the weekend, agents in Chicago said they fired what they called “defensive shots” at a woman after she and the drivers of 10 other vehicles rammed and boxed in officers’ vehicles. The woman was slightly wounded and arrested with another driver, a man.

   These development follow weeks of protests in both cities and the massive immigration enforcement campaign in Chicago dubbed “The Midway Blitz Operation” by DHS. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem spent part of Friday on the rooftop of an ICE facility in Chicago, surrounded by armed agents and a local television crew.

  Trump and his lieutenants have framed the demonstrations in the two cities as “violent protests” carried out by “domestic terrorists,” arguing that military deployments are necessary to protect federal immigration personnel and property.

  Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said the Trump administration campaign is not rounding up criminals, as they claim, but “just picking up people who are brown and Black, and then checking their credentials.”

THE WAR ROOM: Trump in a text exchange over the weekend promised CNN’s Jake Tapper “Complete Obliteration” for Hamas militants in Gaza if the group insists on remaining in power. Of course, complete obliteration is what Israel has been trying to accomplish for two years.

  Tapper pressed the president on the Hamas response to his 20-point ceasefire proposal in which the group agreed to give up control of Gaza while still reserving a voice in the strip’s future. Citing Sen. Tapper referenced Lindsey Graham’s interpretation that Hamas had effectively rejected the plan by insisting on “no disarmament, keeping Gaza under Palestinian control and tying hostage release to negotiations.” Tapper asked, “Is he wrong?” 

“We will find out. Only time will tell!!!” Trump responded.

  Today is two years to the day since Hamas militants from Gaza invaded southern Israel, killed 1200 people, and took 250 hostages.

  Since that day Israel has pounded Gaza to rubble, killing more than 66,000 people. Some hostages have died and some have been released, leaving about 20 in Hamas custody and 25 bodies still being held. 

THE REGIME:

— Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem promised a podcaster last week that “ICE enforcement” will be “all over” the Super Bowl in February where Bad Bunny is the halftime entertainment.  She told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson that people should not attend the event unless they are “law-abiding Americans who love this country.”

  Bad Bunny, from Puerto Rico … which is American, remember … has previously said he has avoided performing in the states because he fears his fans would be targets of ICE. 

WATCHFUL EYE: Paramount/Skydance is close to closing a deal with conservative journalist Bari Weiss to buy her Free Press digital outlet for $150 million and install her as the editor in chief for all of CBS News with power over its broadcasts, including the Evening News and the revered 60 Minutes.

  Weiss would report directly to Paramount’s new owner David Ellison, parallel to the authority of CBS News’s recently appointed president, Tom Cibrowski. A former columnist for the NY Times, Weiss quit the paper saying she was subjected to the harassment of “woke” culture for views that did not align with the liberal culture of the paper.

  This is fallout from President Trump’s lawsuit against 60 Minutes, and the concessions Paramount made in order to be bought by Ellison’s Skydance. The old Paramount agreed to put a watchdog on CBS News, once the home of journalistic heroes Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.

  The conservatives are at war with the legacy press and media. Federal Communications Chairman Brendan Carr said he welcomes Skydance’s “commitment to make significant changes to the once storied CBS broadcast network.”

OFF THE GRID: Game-day analyst and Former NFL quarterback Mark Sanchez was arrested over the weekend following an incident in which he was stabbed and taken to a hospital. The 38-year-old Sanchez was in Indianapolis to work the FOX Sports broadcast of the Colts against the Las Vegas Raiders. 

  Indianapolis police said Sanchez was charged with misdemeanor counts of “battery with injury, unlawful entry of a motor vehicle and public intoxication.”  

  The other man in the fight was a 69-year-old truckdriver who ended up in the hospital in a neck brace with a four-inch gash on his left cheek.

  Sanchez was quarterback for USC and played 10 seasons in the NFL.

THE SPIN RACK: Two girls in New York City, ages 12 and 13, were killed over the weekend while “subway surfing” … riding on top of a atop a moving train. More than a dozen people, mostly young, have been killed in what has become a trendy thrill when they pass into a tunnel or hit a low-hanging object. 

BELOW THE FOLD: The federal government is still shut down.

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