THE GREENLAND THREAT: President Trump yesterday ratcheted up his threat  absorb Greenland saying, “If we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland.” Trump diverted to the Greenland issue during a meeting of cabinet members and representatives of the oil industry to talk about Venezuelan oil. “I would like to make a deal the easy way, but if we don’t do it the easy way we’re going to do it the hard way,” he said about ownership of Greenland.

  Greenland is an independent territory of Denmark. Falsely claiming that the island territory is surround by Chinese and Russian naval ships, Trump said the US needs to own Greenland, not lease it from Denmark. “When we own it, we defend it,” Trump said as if it was an apartment building. “You don’t defend leases the same way. You have to own it.”

  He continued to speak about the use of force in foreign relations, specifically mentioning the operation to remove Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and control the country’s oil. “If we didn’t do this, China or Russia would have done it,” he said. He said it’s a good thing the remaining government is cooperating, “Because that whole place could have been obliterated with one more strike and we didn’t want to do that”

  Venezuela’s interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, said that she is looking into restoring diplomatic relations with the US.

THE OIL SPIGOT: On a day in which the US seized a fourth tanker involved in the Venezuelan oil trade, Trump declared that the US oil companies will invest heavily in refurbishing the country’s oil infrastructure, claiming they would “rapidly rebuild Venezuela’s dilapidated oil industry and bring millions of barrels of oil production to benefit the United States, the people of Venezuela and the entire world.”

  The oil executives did not give an immediate thumbs up. ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods said that Venezuela is currently “uninvestable.” The companies had their assets previously seized in Venezuela, and there seems to be no plan for protecting them. They are facing what may be a short term enthusiasm for fossil fuels the next three years under Trump while rebuilding the Venezuelan oil industry could be a matter of decades, not years.

SHOW STOPPER: The Washington National Opera decided to move its performances out of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts where it has played since 1971, joining the ranks of other shows and artists bailing out of the venue since its takeover and re-naming by Donald Trump.

  Opera leaders told The NY Times that the decision to leave was in response to the drop in attendance and a decline in donations of money during the current Trump regime, as well as the number of artists who hit the exits before them.

THE REGIME:

— President Trump renewed his threat to Iran as anti-government protests in that country grow and the internet was shut down to control communications. Although as many as 40 people have already been killed in Iran, Trump told reporters yesterday, “You better not start shooting because we’ll start shooting too.”

— A federal judge in New York temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s freeze of $10 billion in child-care funds for five Democrat-led states.

  The administration said it froze the money because of concerns of fraud in California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York. This was sparked by the massive fraud in childcare and other services in Minnesota.

— The National Park Service says it will block access to holders of annual passes who have placed stickers over the face of Donald Trump on the pass. The pass that usually has a picture of nature or wildlife this year features George Washington and Trump.

— Secretary of defense Pete Hegseth is taking a national “Arsenal of Freedom” tour promoting the power of the US Military.

— The FBI appointed a 22-year career agent to be Deputy Director, replacing the departing Dan Bongino who came to the job as a podcaster.

COLLEGE GRADUATION: Indiana trounced Oregon last night, 56-22, to set up the college football championship against Miami on Monday, the 19^th. 

THE OBIT PAGE:  Hessy Levinsons Taft, who as a baby appeared on the cover of a Nazi magazine presenting her as the ideal Aryan child even though she was Jewish and her picture had been submitted as a prank, died on January 1 at home in San Francisco. She was 91.

  The photographer who had taken the picture for Taft’s family submitted it to the magazine, along with other photos, and Hessy’s was personally chosen by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda.

  The photo ended up being used everywhere … on advertisements, on postcards, and displayed in people’s homes, unknown to the regime and exposing the absurdity of Nazi racial superiority.

  As German-born Jews, the family survived the war, moving to several countries before landing in New York.

  The Levinsons kept three copies of the magazine. Taft donated one to the Holocaust Memorial Museum and another to Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial center. Her children kept the last copy. 

THE SPIN RACK: Saks Global Enterprises, the luxury shopping giant that owns Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman, is planning to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as soon as tomorrow, according to news reports. — Actor Timothy Busfield, who was a regular in the television series “Thirtysomething” and “The West Wing,” faces criminal charges in Albuquerque stemming from his relationship with child actors in the series, “The Cleaning Lady,” filmed in 2024. 

BELOW THE FOLD: A 34-year-old Pennsylvania man has been arrested and charged with robbing historic gravesites and collecting 100 sets of human remains. After a surveillance operation at a cemetery, Jonathan Christ Gerlach, 34, was stopped in his car where officers found bones and skulls in the back seat. The local prosecutor called it “a horror movie come to life.”

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