☕️ EXTERNAL BLEEDING ☙ Thursday, January 15, 2026 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

NYT rediscovers Democrat drift; experts deny Trump tariffs’ role in boom; spotting propaganda; Maduro fallout hits China; visas yanked; Ukraine frays; ICE injury; SCOTUS boosts election integrity.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! Your jam-packed roundup today includes: Times returns to Democrat woes, criticizing the lack of policy proposals, the constant scolding, and the being-for-everything; economy may be booming, but economic experts insist it has nothing to do with Trump’s tariffs or policies; how to read critically and detect propoganda; Maduro ouster already working as Chinese begin pruning their South American plots and schemes; State Department revokes a record number of foreign visas and creates new vetting center to crack down on rabble rousers and malcontents; micro-update on the Proxy War’s status in three headlines, as things for Ukraine continue unraveling in slow motion; DHS reveals ICE agent who shot SUV activist was treated for internal injuries; and terrific election integrity news from the Supreme Court, right in time for midterm election season.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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After last summer’s hand-wringing, corporate media ixnayed the eggativenay articles about the collapse of the “Democrat brand” and took a Fall vacation, leaning instead into the focus group-approved theme of “affordability” to crush Republican midterm hopes. Yesterday, like a dog going back to its vomit, the Times returned to its frustrated theme. The political analysis article was headlined, “What Voters Told Democrats About ICE, Costs and Which Party Is ‘Judgy.’” The sub-headline was more informative: “In focus groups, swing voters gave Democratic politicians some tough feedback on the party.”

The story, which quoted only young, moderate Democrat officials, exuded a distinct impression that the Times is trying to slam the brakes on the progressive purity spiral. Representative “Sarah” McBride (D-Del.) (the first ‘trans’ congressman) reported that a November town hall revealed, “They want us to be fighters, but they don’t want us to be judgy.” McBride explained that calling everybody a bigot “left a lot of voters believing that we did not like them.”

Well, isn’t that true? Not according to moderates: “I don’t want everyone who loves me as a trans person to cut off everyone in their life who isn’t already, quote-unquote, ‘perfect,’” McBride added. It was a commendable sentiment.

Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) (currently under investigation for her ‘defy illegal orders’ video), made the same point in a different way. “Democrats still, I think, have an issue with being for everything. How do we boil down what we really care about to two or three things that actually impact people?”

Being “for everything” is just another way of saying members must agree on all points— the political purity test. Boiling it down to 2-3 points would theoretically leave room for disagreement, such as over women’s sports, bail policies with teeth, border enforcement, and whether 6’8” bearded men wearing sack-like dresses should be allowed to loiter in the women’s room at Target.

Revealing a slender crack in the party’s current political unity, Representative Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.) wondered about the effectiveness of the affordability program. “It’s a very consultant word. Nobody actually says that word sitting around the kitchen table.” He seemed frustrated that Democrats could only name the problem rather than present any solutions.

The obvious theme was moderation. Late in the article, almost offhand, the reporter offered an observation that pretty much summed up the problem: “When it comes to a grand, policy-specific vision of the future, Democrats don’t exactly have a plan.” That’s half right. Their problem is not that they don’t have any plans. They have lots of plans. The problem is they can’t say out loud what their plans are, because around 70% of people would instantly hate them.

And until Democrats can answer the simple question, “what is a woman?”, they’ll be stuck conducting focus groups until the cows come home. Focus grouping is weakness when it asks what do they want us to say? Strength is asking, how do we make our plan more persuasive? That’s where ‘affordability’ breaks down. They have a word— but no plan to address the problem the word represents.

Unless they get their act together, we can expect more Democrat angst as primary season proceeds.

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What would we do without economists? “Unexpected” good news about the economy is getting too obvious to ignore, so the next phase of denial has been unleashed. The Times ran a sneering story yesterday headlined, “Trump Credits ‘Mister Tariff’ for the Country’s Strength. Economists Beg to Differ.”

Why anyone listens to economists at this point is a mystery for the ages. But never mind.

According to the Times’ economic experts, the nation’s booming economy is just a coincidence and has nothing whatever to do with Trump’s policies. First, the good news: “The construction of vast data centers,” the Times admitted, “is boosting investment, while soaring A.I. stocks are making Americans who invested in the stock market richer, encouraging more spending on goods and services.”

Not just AI data center construction (which, of course, is a keystone Trump policy). “New tax deductions that were signed into law last year are also encouraging investment.” The bulbs are switching green across the board. “In recent months,” the article conceded, “the trade deficit has shrunk dramatically, in October hitting the lowest level since 2009. The drop in imports buoyed U.S. gross domestic product in the third quarter and has pushed up estimates for fourth-quarter GDP.”

But don’t start popping the champagne yet. The Times isn’t ready to concede any credit to President Trump.

“It has nothing to do with trade,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, scoffed. Harvard economist and former IMF director Gita Gopinath sneered that economists predicting tariff doom were right all along, but that the A.I. boom had “basically offset the drag from tariffs.”

Wait. It has nothing to do with trade? Or maybe it’s that the “booming economy” has something to do with the fact that we have a president who is constantly encouraging investment, trade, and business? For example, Trump yesterday:

Or … nah? It’s all just AI data center construction? That silly excuse without evidence is what the Times’ cherry-picked experts would like us all to believe. Just trust us.

It needn’t be said, but the Times couldn’t find any pro-tariff experts to quote. Not a single one.

🔥 When reading this type of ‘news’ critically, balance is the first thing you should look for. Here’s the formula: the articles report a scrap of actual news (e.g., the economy is booming), and then round up several “experts” to tell readers what to think about the news.

If the “expert” portion of the story is unbalanced, then you are reading propaganda, not news. Corporate media uses experts to publish its own opinions —its bias— while hiding in the bushes behind the carefully curated people who all magically agree with its perspective. By publishing a totally lopsided group of voices, the reporter hopes to fool the reader into assuming expert “consensus” exists— without ever having to explicitly make that dubious argument.

Assuming you are masochistic enough to consume corporate media’s articles, when reading this type of piece, always first ask: “do all the quoted sources agree with each other, and varying expert opinions are conspicuously absent?” If so, you can safely ignore all the quotes and focus just on the factual reporting of what actually happened.

Believe it or not, this kind of reporting is what is most responsible for killing legacy media and driving people to social media for news. On social media, folks actually find the diversity of voices and opinions that is lacking in contemporary corporate media. Even allowing for all the noise of misinformation, outright lies, silliness, and unintelligent commentary, Twitter’s “town square” beats whatever the Times is serving up.

At least the bias is obvious on Twitter/X, which is all anybody asked for anyway.

It would be trivially easy for big news publishers like the Times to give readers right-click access to quoted experts’ biographies, previous comments, publication history, and political donation records. But they don’t. Think about that. And think about the claim that publications like the Times allegedly exist to “inform” us.

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It’s working! On Monday, the Wall Street Journal ran a fascinating story headlined, “U.S. Blows Up China’s Latin America Ambitions With Maduro Ouster.” Imagine that. It wasn’t “just about oil” after all. And it took less than a week to become clear.

“The U.S. ouster of the Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro,” the Journal reported, quoting anonymous Chinese officials, “is forcing Beijing into a high-stakes recalculation of its ambitions in a region that looks like America’s backyard again.”

This is multipolarity. “The discourse in China’s policymaking circles has shifted toward a potential trade-off,” the article said. “If the Western Hemisphere belongs to the Americans, then the Taiwan Strait belongs to the Chinese.” The best guess from up in the cheap seats is that Beijing’s analysts are exactly right. President Trump will let them have Taiwan, at least to some politically palatable extent. But China must get out of our backyard.

The Journal reported how, right after New Year’s, China’s President Xi sent a team of trade negotiators to Venezuela, to shore up a sagging relationship and choke down local holiday delicacies like baked gerbil. Talk about bad timing. A few hours after the Chinese met with President Maduro on January 3rd, U.S. special ops swooped into Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, and after a brief but intense firefight, departed with El Presidenté.

“With that,” the Journal noted, “China’s decadelong project to secure a geostrategic foothold in America’s backyard was suddenly upended.”

Meanwhile, in late December, Russia had already begun a quiet evacuation of its Venezuelan diplomats’ families. “Moscow, which publicly denied a news report on the evacuation,” the Journal said, “didn’t inform the Chinese of its plan.” It sounds like Putin enjoyed the benefit of a heads-up— and didn’t tell anyone. Weird!

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On Tuesday, Al Jazeera ran an encouraging story headlined, “US revokes more than 100,000 visas since Trump’s return to office.” Buh-bye!

The State Department announced the launch of a “Continuous Vetting Center,” to ensure foreigners with U.S. visas comply with all U.S. laws, and to swiftly revoke visas for foreigners who pose a threat to American citizens or hate us with a passion. The State Department also said it had yanked more than 100,000 visas since Trump was inaugurated— an all-time annual record number of visa revocations, and a +150% increase over 2024.

And where, you might ask, did the State Department make these dramatic announcements? On X, of course:

At some point, people will begin wondering why they need to follow corporate media at all, when corporate media just republishes what the Administration has already announced on social media. But I digress.

State’s new Continuous Vetting Center expands embassy rules for issuing visas to foreigners who wish to travel to the US. Embassies must now, for example, look up applicants’ social media history and deny visas to people expressing anti-American views. This rule seems outrageous to Democrats, but common sense to ordinary Americans. Keep the rabble-rousers out.

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It’s a black box. All we can do is watch from outside for the shifts in relative momentum. Here is a brief Proxy War update in three headlines. First, this morning, the Washington Post filed a chilling report from Ukraine’s capital city, Kiev:

Next, yesterday CNN reported that Ukraine’s military is shrinking faster than a puddle of water on the airport tarmac in Florida in August:

It sounds like a lot of Ukrainians don’t want to fight anymore.

The problem might seem obvious, but admitting the problem exists is brand new. “Rumors of low morale and high desertion rates have been swirling around for a long time,” CNN said, “but Fedorov’s comments mark the first time any Ukrainian official has disclosed the scale of the problem.” Defense chief Fedorov, 35, told Ukraine’s parliament that —I promise I am not making this up— Ukraine needs to replace its shrinking human army with robots.

Third and finally, Reuters ran an exclusive yesterday with this bold headline signaling a difficult audience for the former comedian:

I wish I had a bitcoin for every different spelling of Zelensky’s name. Why is it so hard? Does the man not have a birth certificate somewhere? Was he actually born in Kenya?

Anyway, President Trump seems sure who is to blame for the lack of a peace deal: the country that has no power in its capital and is running out of soldiers. “Asked why U.S.-led negotiations had not yet resolved Europe’s largest land conflict since World War Two,” Reuters said, “Trump responded: Zelenskiy.”

Why Zelensky? The article didn’t say, not directly, but it did end by observing that “Zelenskiy has publicly ruled out any territorial concessions to Moscow.” What cards does he have to play? Is this a comedian’s joke?

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In bad news for the narrative, yesterday CBS ran a story headlined, “ICE agent who shot Renee Good suffered internal bleeding, officials say.”

According to DHS officials, the ICE agent who fatally shot Renee Good last week in Minneapolis, Jonathan Ross, suffered internal bleeding after the incident, was treated at a hospital, released, and is now recovering.

The obvious point, which nobody is saying out loud, is that if the officer was treated for any injuries, mild or serious, then he was struck by something. Like Ms. Good’s SUV, for instance. Progressives are mostly in denial, with comments on BlueSky in disbelief that the agent was injured at all, and suggesting that DHS is making it all up. Of course, hospital records would prove one way or the other, so going with denial carries some risk.

If there was any contact between agent Ross and Ms. Good’s SUV, then most sane people will agree the shooting was justified. But the legal analysis of excessive force will turn on whether Ross reasonably feared ‘serious’ bodily injury, and whether he may have deliberately put himself in harm’s way, as some Democrats argue.

CBS mentioned that agent Ross is now receiving death threats. The story was very fair, especially by corporate media standards. Most other corporate media ignored the announcement of Ross’s injuries.

I have to say, I’m liking the looks of the “new” CBS.

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Yesterday brought more good election-integrity news from the nation’s highest court, and right on schedule to help improve the upcoming midterms. The New York Times reported the unintentionally encouraging story below the headline, “Supreme Court Sides With Conservative Congressman in Illinois Election Rules Challenge.”

It was a narrow legal issue with potentially huge effects. The lawsuit asked whether a candidate for office can challenge rules governing elections without having to first satisfy a nearly unprovable standard, which must be met within an equally impossible ten days after most elections: (1) that fraud or errors occurred, and (2) that the fraud or errors would have changed the outcome.

You remember how many Trump lawsuits were thrown out by courts in 2020 for “lack of standing”? The Supreme Court just changed how standing works, making it harder for trial courts to dismiss election challenges going forward. And they did it in two different ways, both of which are vast improvements.

First, SCOTUS essentially said that any candidate automatically has standing. “The plaintiff is a candidate for office,” the chief justice wrote. “And a candidate has a personal stake in the rules that govern the counting of votes in his election.” Second, candidates not only have standing, but now they needn’t wait until after the election when they can prove problems occurred. They can now file suit well in advance of elections, so long as they can explain that problematic rules pose a reasonable threat to their chances.

According to the Times, Democrats were hardest hit. “Election law experts warned that a favorable decision could clear the way for a host of lawsuits challenging all kinds of election rules in states throughout the country,” the Times explained, “particularly from Republicans, who have advanced a narrative that some state rules, especially involving mail-in ballots, unfairly favor Democrats.”

If Republicans know what they are doing, we should soon see the “host of lawsuits” blooming all across the country, like colorful wildflowers cropping up along Florida’s Turnpike in springtime. Just in time for the mid-term elections in November.

This wasn’t the only election case pending at the high court. Later this term, SCOTUS will also hear arguments in a Mississippi case, about whether counting mail-in ballots past the deadline (and only stopping when the desired result is reached) is illegal in federal elections. “A decision upending Mississippi’s rules could affect dozens of other states,” the Times gloomily predicted, “throwing election rules into chaos before the midterms.”

Everything is coming together, almost as though it had been planned this way. Stay optimistic.

Have a terrific Thursday! Be sure to circle back here tomorrow morning so you don’t miss a single day of C&C-style essential news and commentary. See you then.

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