The Kennedy Center will host the January 29 premiere of “Melania,” the eponymous documentary focused on First Lady Melania Trump, making it the latest event linked to the president’s interests to make its way to the newly Trump-branded performing arts center, The Wrap reports.

Garrett Graff: “One constant theme of conversations I’ve had over the last year has been the physical heaviness people feel in Trump’s America. I certainly felt it yesterday in the wake of that horrific murder — there’s nothing else to call it — of a mother by an out-of-control ICE officer in Minneapolis…”

“To me, there’s actually a simple explanation for that heaviness: It’s the weight of the shift from ‘zero to non-zero.’ There are so many aspects of our daily life that we’d never had to weigh before; so many new possible horrors that we have to carry in our minds each day. We forget how much of the basic fabric of our country has been altered in the space of just a year, how many of our freedoms have been impinged, and how many things we took for granted that now we can’t.”

The Dispatch: “The political result of Trump’s full populism in his second term appears to be largely the same as the political results of his first term: a president with an underwater approval rating and a drubbing in the off-year elections that portends a blue wave in the midterm elections.”

“So how exactly do congressional Republicans answer Trump’s question about why he and Republicans aren’t more popular in the mind of the public? Some Republicans contend the problem is simply one of messaging, while others claim the party needs to be even more populist. While polling shows Trump and the GOP faring poorly on the economy and affordability, few elected Republicans are willing to argue that Trump’s tariffs—at their highest level since the 1930s—are a source of the GOP’s political woes.”

“The core tenet of today’s Republican Party is that Trump cannot fail; he can only be failed. And according to Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley, congressional Republicans have failed Trump by not fully implementing a populist agenda.”

“The relationship between President Trump and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene grew so poisonous that the White House told the Secret Service that Greene may have tipped off Code Pink protesters about his surprise visit last fall to a D.C. restaurant she recommended,” Axios reports.

“That episode — which involved a chaotic confrontation between anti-war activists and Trump — embarrassed the president and intensified concerns in the White House about his safety, a year after he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt.”

“A cadre of congressional Republicans dealt President Donald Trump significant defeats Thursday — a series of rebukes that demonstrate how his iron grip on Capitol Hill has weakened at the start of a critical election year,” Politico reports.

“Defiance kicked off in the Senate with a stunning vote, backed by five GOP senators, to move ahead with a measure that would constrain Trump on a matter he has presented as a signature triumph — his military intervention in Venezuela. Later in the day, 17 House Republicans joined with Democrats to rescue Obamacare subsidies Trump has repeatedly railed against.”

“And in a surprise move, senators of both parties agreed unanimously to erect a plaque honoring the officers who fought the mob at the Capitol on Jan, 6, 2021 — breaking from Trump’s false narrative about that day.”

“Federal prosecutors are investigating financial transactions involving the New York attorney general, Letitia James, and her longtime hairdresser, opening a new front in their pursuit of one of President Trump’s perceived enemies,” the New York Times reports.

President Trump declared that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality,” brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world, the New York Times reports.

When asked if there was anything to limit him, Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

He added: “I don’t need international law. I’m not looking to hurt people.”

During a two-hour interview with the New York Times, President Trump used a laptop computer to play slow motion video of the ICE shooting in Minneapolis to justify his claim that the victim “behaved horribly” and “ran him over.”

The reporters said “this angle did not appear to show an ICE officer had been run over” and Trump responded: “Well… I — the way I look at it…”

Washington Post: “During his first term, Trump would often speak about outlandish things he would like to do as president, only to be mocked both domestically and internationally. While he has faced plenty of mockery in his second term, Trump’s musings this time around are being taken far more seriously. And that is in large part because of the actions he’s taken to make his ideas a reality.”

President Trump is expected to announce the Gaza Board of Peace next week as part of the second phase of the ceasefire agreement, Axios reports.

President Trump used “part of a meandering speech to House Republicans to beg photographers to make him look thin,” the Daily Beast reports.

Said Trump: “Make me look thin for once, you’re making me look a bit heavy. I’m not happy about it.”

The Atlantic profiles Stephen Miller:

“Stephen Miller runs his daily 10 a.m. conference calls—yes, even on Saturdays—less like a government adviser and more like a wartime general. His is the dominant voice, as he plays the role of browbeater, inquisitor, and bully. He accepts no excuses, entertains no dissent.”

“Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy ruthlessly pursues the president’s vision, especially when it comes to pushing immigrants out of the country, and he runs a tight, efficient meeting. Consensus is not the goal.”

“Federal Emergency Management Agency supervisors are advising their staff to prepare for the elimination of 1,000 jobs this month as part of changes that Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, is overseeing at the agency,” the New York Times reports.

“Stephen Miller has spent the bulk of his White House career furthering hard-right domestic policies that have resulted in mass deportations, family separations and the testing of the constitutional tenets that grant American citizenship,” the New York Times reports.

“Now, Mr. Miller, President Trump’s 40-year-old deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, is casting his hard-right gaze further abroad: toward Venezuela and the Danish territory of Greenland, specifically.”

“Mr. Miller is doing so, the president’s advisers say, in service of advancing Mr. Trump’s foreign policy ambitions, which so far resemble imperialistic designs to exploit less powerful, resource-rich countries and territories the world over and use those resources for America’s gain. According to Mr. Miller, using brute force is not only on the table but also the Trump administration’s preferred way to conduct itself on the world stage.”

For members: The Trump Doctrine

“The White House published a website Tuesday with a revised version of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, underscoring President Donald Trump’s years-long effort to reshape the narrative surrounding the day in which a mob of his supporters overran the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college victory,” the Washington Post reports.