Mon, Jan 12, 2026

Federal law enforcement sources confirm that an additional 1,000 agents are deploying to Minneapolis. They will join the 2,400 agents already on the ground, several times the number of local police officers in a city 1,500 miles from the border.

Agents are executing warrantless raids on private residences, pointing assault rifles at children in their living rooms, and detaining community organizers without charge.

It's an attempt to make an example of a city that dared to vote for empathetic leadership over capitalist efficiency. The penalty for rejecting the ruling class is having a federal agent standing in your kitchen.

In petty news, Fed Chair Jerome Powell has been served with a frivolous criminal indictment. The actual crime is refusing to cut rates as fast as the White House demands.

While the DOJ squeezes the Fed, Trump squeezes the lenders. He announced a desire for a 10% interest rate cap on credit cards for one year.

Capital One and Synchrony Financial cratered 8% in premarket trading.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 opened flat. The market has fully digested the authoritarian pivot. Investors don't care if democracy is dying in the Midwest as long as the supply lines for Amazon and Walmart remain open.

Stocks trending higher include General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, and Palantir (the latter of which ICE commissioned to create their AI system, ImmigrationOS). The militarization of domestic forces is shifting revenue streams home. The gear being used to terrorize Minneapolis families is a line item on a balance sheet in Virginia.

Security contractors are seeing record inflows. Investors are betting that the Minneapolis model – ramping up agents for interior pacification – will be franchised to Portland and other cities by Q3.

The logic of the siege is ruthless but clear: The regime views dissent as an inefficiency. The protests against authoritarianism are, in the eyes of the ruling class, a labor dispute. The agents' goal is to drive the fear index high enough that the protest premium becomes too expensive for the average citizen to pay.

The crackdown serves a secondary economic function – disciplining labor. A fearful population is less likely to unionize or demand higher wages. Workers will accept lower pay in exchange for physical safety.

Meanwhile, the East is blinking back at the West. After two weeks of violent protests and a crackdown that has failed to clear the streets, Iranian leadership has reached out to the US for talks.

Iran shows how bad authoritarianism can get. Minneapolis is a test case of it on US soil. The regime is betting that they can brutalize a major American city and the rest of the country will be too afraid to move. They believe that if they point enough guns at enough children, the people will stop demanding a world that values empathy.

The billionaire class is not worried about the optics in Minneapolis. They are worried about the contagion of hope.

And they are waiting for you to blink.