“President Trump criticized a group of U.S. attorneys at a White House event last week, calling them weak and complaining they weren’t moving fast enough to prosecute his favored targets,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Dozens of U.S. attorneys, who lead prosecutors’ offices around the country, went to the White House Thursday for what was supposed to be a ceremonial photo shoot. After Attorney General Pam Bondi introduced the group of prosecutors, Trump criticized them as ineffective, saying the group was making it difficult for Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to do their jobs.”

Jon Stewart said last night it feels like the United States is on the “Donald Trump gravitron,” Variety reports.

Said Stewart: “We don’t know what up or down is. We just know it feels like we are all going to vomit.”

Jonathan Lemire: “Military success in Venezuela has emboldened the president to flex his power even more.”

“President Donald Trump’s campaign to criminally investigate his political adversaries keeps running into an intractable problem: his mouth,” Politico reports.

“The news Sunday that the Justice Department has been secretly weighing charges against Fed Chair Jerome Powell — a frequent target of Trump’s attacks — alarmed lawmakers, who called it an effort to weaponize the justice system to affect economic policy. But Trump’s freewheeling commentary has gotten in the way of past prosecutions he demanded — and could get in the way this time, too.”

“President Trump has complained to aides repeatedly in recent weeks about Attorney General Pam Bondi, describing her as weak and an ineffective enforcer of his agenda,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The criticisms appear to be part of an intense campaign by Trump to pressure the Justice Department to more aggressively pursue his priorities… Trump has previously criticized Bondi at times but his vocal concerns about his attorney general have grown more frequent in recent months.”

“This month, Trump has talked with allies about how he could appoint special counsels at the Justice Department because he is so frustrated with what he sees as the slow progress of its work.”

“The Justice Department has fired the No. 2 official in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia after he declined to lead the controversial prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey,” MS NOW reports.

“Trump is a master of flooding the zone. Now in the second year of his second presidency, his strategy is more focused on domination than distraction,” Axios reports.

“So much for that lame duck in the White House,” Stephen Collinson writes.

“President Donald Trump is doubling down on retribution, global domination and relentless domestic power.”

“The first full week of 2026 was a potentially defining one for Trump’s second presidency after the old year ended with predictions of his authority ebbing under the curse of term-limited commanders in chief.”

“But Trump was never going to sit by and watch his strongman’s aura erode.”

New data reveals that a staggering 335,000 federal workers left government work last year, with the vast majority quitting or retiring — only 11,000 were a result of layoffs from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the Washington Post reports.

“The first week of 2026 left little ambiguity about what President Trump thinks of power — or whether there are any limits on his,” Axios reports.

“That worldview manifested itself in one of the most frenetic, forceful starts to a year in recent memory. Through it all, the White House barreled forward with swagger, speed and open disdain for guardrails.”

“The National Portrait Gallery removed a swath of text that mentioned President Donald Trump’s two impeachments and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection as it swapped out a prominent photo of him this week,” the Washington Post reports.

“Trump and the White House posted on social media Friday and Saturday to highlight the updated portrait in the ‘America’s Presidents’ exhibition, which now features a framed black-and-white photo by White House photographer Daniel Torok. It shows Trump staring intensely, with his fists on the Resolute Desk — an image the president first shared on his Truth Social account last year.”

Aaron Blake: “The signs have been growing for a while now that Republicans are starting to grow a little more comfortable casting votes against Trump, most notably at the state level last month in Indiana. And this week such votes in Congress came fast.”

“Most or all of the votes are likely to be symbolic and don’t appear to have adjusted the president’s course – at least yet. And there remains plenty of evidence that fear of Trump is still an animating principle in the GOP.”

“But the rebukes were symbolic on some pretty significant issues. And they provide growing evidence that Trump, whose power relies on the domination of his party, is losing his iron grip on it.”

For members: It Must Be An Election Year

President Trump was asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins about why he leaked jobs data early on Truth Social:

COLLINS: People are saying you posted the jobs data early when you’re not supposed to share it until the next morning.

TRUMP: I said post them whenever you get a chance. I don’t know. They gave me some numbers. When people give me things, I post them.

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.”