Vance Goes to Minnesota

Plus: Nurses on strike, Florida is full, the consumer revolution, and more...

Vance goes to Minnesota: "The guys behind me are doing an incredible job, and frankly, a lot of the media is lying about the job they do every single day," said Vice President J.D. Vance yesterday in Minneapolis, Minnesota. "That doesn't mean that there aren't occasionally stories and videos out there that suggest they aren't doing everything right."

State and local politicians should "lower the temperature and lower the chaos" by cooperating with federal law enforcement, added Vance. "We don't need 3,000 ice agents in our streets—more than every local police department combined," countered Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, responding to the vice president's comments. "Take the show of force off the streets and partner with the state on targeted enforcement of violent offenders instead of random, aggressive confrontation."

If you can excuse the totally incompetent messenger, this is not altogether bad advice: Targeted enforcement of violent offenders first was, after all, what Vance had sold to voters on the campaign trail. "We gotta focus on the most hardened criminals," Vance said at a rally in Arizona back in 2024. "We've got 425,000 violent criminal illegal aliens in this country right now. We gotta get those people out of our country and we've gotta do it as quickly as humanly possible." Of course, the Trump administration sometimes enjoys creative accounting: They can do a lot of rhetorical twisting about what is encompassed by the term violent. (For example, do drug dealers count? Does anyone involved in the drug trade, no matter how low level, count?) But it's not wrong to say that the general public by and large supports deportation for those who menace and threaten the communities they've entered, but more leniency for those who are nonviolent; Vance, Walz, and the general public are actually all in agreement in terms of deportation prioritization.

The federal government's current approach is maximum showiness, not maximum efficacy. "Two men detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement appeared in federal court hearings Wednesday, including the Venezuelan national who was shot in the leg by ICE agents last week in north Minneapolis," reports CBS News. "Both were granted conditional release, but the decision has been stayed until noon Thursday. They do have ICE detainers, so they will likely end up in ICE custody again."

And since the federal government is doubling down on making a spectacle of it all, this provides ample opportunity for local police and politicians to serve as foils.

"Minneapolis Police Department's been called on several situations that they have not responded," said Border Patrol Commander at Large Greg Bovino. "The presence of protestors alone is not sufficient reason for MPD to respond where ICE activity is occurring," responded a Minneapolis Police Department spokesman.

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Scenes from New York: Now look, I'm gonna be very nice here because my second son is still in the neonatal intensive care unit, taken care of by wonderful (non-striking!) nurses every single day, but I will just say: This New York City nurses strike is going on mighty long, with contradictory narratives emerging as to whether the issue is pay or workplace safety.

"Since the start of the strike, nurses on the picket line and their union leaders have tended to minimize pay as a major reason for the labor action, instead highlighting other demands," reports The New York Times. (Of course they have! That's how this goes.)

The workplace safety issues they've flagged—incidents with violent and erratic patients, especially when working in emergency rooms—are valid concerns, but they're also most likely related to the fact that the city has allowed rampant mental illness to fester in public and the long-lingering effects of deinstitutionalization (which also came with plenty of problems). It's also not clear who exactly should be handling these types of patients. But keep this saga in mind the next time people on the left push for more city spending on social workers to intervene immediately after people commit acts of violence. How exactly will that go?

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QUICK HITS

• "Florida is full," says MAGA-coded gubernatorial candidate James Fishback. "We are not a refugee camp for New Yorkers." But isn't that exactly what states should be? Maybe not refugee camps—people should pay their own way—but competitors, able to attract people who feel poorly served by their current government, who seek a better life full of cortaditos and croquetas and cigars and never needing to get a mid-winter spray tan ever again? (Fishback also, uh, may not stand much of a chance, per The Washington Free Beacon.)

As Florida Governor, I'll slap a $50,000 "Mamdani Tax" on any out-of-state buyer purchasing a single-family home.

No more New Yorkers pushing Floridians out of their own neighborhoods. pic.twitter.com/w0mnnzthUq

— James Fishback (@j_fishback) January 22, 2026

• Contradictory information is emerging about President Donald Trump's comments earlier this week on Greenland:

New: Danish officials tell me there have been no direct discussions between Denmark and the US about the possibility of granting the US sovereign parcels of land, and a NATO spokesperson said Rutte did not discuss it with Trump on Wednesday. https://t.co/PXbG4zvXtg

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) January 22, 2026

• Maryland lawmakers are going after dynamic pricing.
• "Abigail Spanberger, the former congresswoman turned governor of Virginia, won office in November largely because of who she was not," write the editors of National Review. Spanberger positioned herself as a moderate, someone concerned with kitchen-table issues over culture warring. Voters are in for a rude awakening: "With her opening act in office, Spanberger rescinded Governor Youngkin's Executive Order No. 47, requiring heightened cooperation with federal immigration authorities," continue the editors. And Democrats in the legislature, now that they have the firm upper hand, are "pushing a constitutional amendment that would create a 'fundamental right' to abortion that would pave the way for abortions in the third trimester if a physician rules it necessary for not just the life but the 'mental health' of the mother; the creation of a government-run childcare program; and a return to the draconian regional effort to cap carbon emissions," as well as raising taxes and limiting gun ownership. TLDR; under Spanberger, Virginia is looking bluer than ever.
• "The US named two-time Ambassador Laura Dogu as its new chargé d'affaires for Venezuela, signaling a rapid push to reestablish a formal diplomatic presence in Caracas," reports Bloomberg.
• Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.) is trying to capitalize on her Minnesota connections during this ICE-y political moment, gearing up for a gubernatorial run (and possibly more?).
• Profoundly messed up:

These stories never fail to make my jaw drop. A CPS worker ruled this family neglected their son because they…let him ride his scooter a third of a mile away.

They're now living under a government "safety plan" for behavior that was normal just a few decades ago. https://t.co/7IKlMp2raJ

— Billy Binion (@billybinion) January 21, 2026

• Enough with the 3D-printed Starbucks eggs and the Soylent and the synthetic fibers and the living in the pods and the eating the bugs and the you'll-own-nothing-and-be-happy mindset. I've noticed more and more people craving a return to high-quality materials, good craftsmanship, repair over throwing away:

Little has been written about the consumer revolution of the post-COVID era. People want real fibers and real food, and companies are starting to pay attention. https://t.co/MBjP2Kie9p

— Maggie (@maggiemoda) January 22, 2026