ON PRINCIPLE: Six veteran prosecutors in Minneapolis resigned rather than follow orders from the Justice Department to investigate the politics of the widow of Renee Good, the woman shot dead by an ICE officer last week. 

  The most senior to resign is Joseph Thompson, the second in command at the US attorney’s office in Minneapolis who had been in charge of the sprawling social services fraud investigation. Thompson is also reported to have been unhappy about the justice Department refusing cooperation with state authorities investigating Good’s killing. 

  The surge of 2000 immigration agents into Minneapolis was spurred by the enormous fraud in childcare and other service based primarily in the Somali immigrant community. Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told The NY Times that, “When you lose the leader responsible for making the fraud cases, it tells you this isn’t really about prosecuting fraud.” 

  After Good was shot, the Justice Department decided against a civil rights investigation into whether the ICE officer’s use of deadly force was justified. That led to the resignations of several career prosecutors at the department’s civil rights division in Washington. Instead, the Justice Department chose to examine the connection between Good and her wife, Becca, and several groups that have been monitoring and protesting immigration actions. Before any investigation at all, Homeland Security Secretary  Kristi Noem, labelled Good  a “domestic terrorist.”

  President Trump posted on his Truth Social: “Do the people of Minnesota really want to live in a community in which there are thousands of already convicted murderers, drug dealers and addicts, rapists, violent released and escaped prisoners, dangerous people from foreign mental institutions and insane asylums, and other deadly criminals too dangerous to even mention.”

MASSACRE: The number of people killed during anti-government protests in Iran is in the thousands as the regime fires into crowds and now says it plans to execute arrested protesters. Videos leaked out of the country show people wandering among hundreds of bundled bodies trying to identify friends and relatives.

  The US State Department said that Iranian authorities plan to execute detained Iranian professor Erfan Soltani today, writing that: “More than 10,600 Iranians have been arrested by the Islamic Republic regime simply for demanding their basic rights. Erfan Soltani, 26, whose death sentence was issued for January 14, is among them.”

  Trump told CBS hadn’t heard reports about hangings, but warned it could prompt a forceful US response.

“We don’t want to see what’s happening in Iran happen. And you know, if they want to have protests, that’s one thing. When they start killing thousands of people, and now you’re telling me about hanging, we’ll see how that works out for them.” 

THE REGIME:

— President Trump said that “sanctuary” cities and states, the ones that refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement, will lose their federal funding as of February 1. The Justice Department identifies 12 states, including California, Illinois and New York, and five of the 10 largest cities  as sanctuary jurisdictions.

—  Trump doubled down on his demands for the US to own Greenland in advance of a meeting with representatives of Greenland and the US. Posting on his Truth Social Trump said; NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES. Anything less than that is unacceptable.”

— The President gave the middle finger to a heckler who called him a “pedophile protector” while touring a Ford factory in Dearborn, Michigan yesterday.

GRIDIRON BLUES: Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin resigned after his team was knocked out of the playoffs by Houston. In 19 years Tomlin has never had a losing season and won the Super Bowl in 2008, but his teams have not won a playoff match since 2017. 

THE OBIT PAGE: Scott Adams, the creator of the “Dilbert” cartoon who gave voice to the alienation and frustration of the cubicle worker until his racist remarks on a podcast resulted in the cancellation and disappearance of his strip, died of an aggressive prostate cancer at age 68. 

  For more than 30 years Dilbert skewered management and was published in 2,000 newspapers at its peak. Adams once told The NY Times; “I heard from all these people who thought that they were the only ones, that they were in this unique, absurd situation. That they couldn’t talk about their situation because no one would believe it.”

  It ended in 2023 when on his podcast he was discussing a poll that said 53 percent of Black Americans agreed with the statement, “It’s OK to be white,” a line that has been promoted by white supremacists. “If nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with white people — according to this poll, not according to me, according to the poll — that’s a hate group, and I don’t want to have anything to do with them,” Adams said on his podcast. “And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give white people is to get the hell away from Black people.”

THE SPIN RACK: Bill and Hillary Clinton have refused to testify before the House Oversight Committee looking into the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal, exposing themselves to contempt citations. — Actor Daniel Stern, 68, who starred in  “Home Alone” and “City Slickers” was charged with soliciting a prostitute at a motel in Camarillo, California, up the coast from Los Angeles.  

BELOW THE FOLD: CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil gave over a significant portion of his broadcast last night to an unedited “exclusive” interview with President Trump that was exclusive of news. Trump tagged all his usual bases … “I settled eight wars” … “We are the hottest country right now.” The interview is likely to feed criticism that CBS has been handed to the right wing.

  After a curiosity bump in the first week of  Dokoupil’s tenure, ratings for the Evening News were down compared to the same week last year when Norah O’Donnell was anchor.

-30-