DEFUND THE POL-ICE?

Should Democrats refuse to fund ICE? A party debate is raging over the best way to rein in Trump’s rampaging goons.

• President Donald Trump’s masked immigration agents are running amok in Minneapolis. They’re clashing with residents, tossing tear gas grenades into busy streets, dragging protestors away, zapping locals with pepper spray, and getting filmed violently pulling a driver from his car. One week after a federal agent shot and killed Renee Good, a Minneapolis mother of three, a new poll shows a plurality of Americans now support abolishing ICE.

• The big question facing Democrats: What to do about it? A debate is now raging in the party over whether to launch a fight and oppose ICE’s $75 billion budget before a funding deadline on Jan. 30 — or approve the spending while trying to add more guardrails on federal agents (such as banning masks, requiring body cameras, and so on).

• Some moderates are locking arms with progressives on calls to defund ICE. “I think that we should not be tripling the funding of ICE because they’re completely above the law,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), who’s introducing a bill to reallocate ICE funding toward health care tax credits, told What A Day.

• Others aren’t convinced. “I don’t believe in defunding an entire law enforcement agency over the actions of a few of them,” Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) told Axios.

• I asked Moulton: Why are Dems wary of this fight? “The Democrats got in a lot of trouble several years ago for saying ‘defund the police,’” Moulton said. “You need law enforcement, but you need law enforcement to follow the law. And clearly, ICE is not following the law. So yes, I think we should not be increasing funding for ICE. I will not vote to fund ICE while they’re doing these things.”

• Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) thinks Dems should be careful about starting legislative battles if they haven’t got the numbers to win. “We don’t have the votes generally to insist on things like constraining ICE, so I want to be circumspect by how much I think we can realistically accomplish,” Schiff told What A Day.

Some Democrats fret that an all-out attack on ICE might make them look too radical ahead of this year’s midterms.

• Wonky think tanks in D.C. try to shape how politicians address controversial topics. That’s exactly what’s happening with defunding ICE.

• A memo is circulating among Democratic elites today, advising them to refrain from calling for defunding or abolishing ICE. Doing so could be as politically toxic as “defund the police,” according to the memo from Searchlight Institute, which was recently founded by Sen. John Fetterman’s (D-PA) former chief of staff. Instead, the memo argues that Democrats should call for reforming and retraining ICE.

• What about that poll on abolishing ICE? “The important thing to recognize is that polls are reflexive,” Ahmad Ali, Searchlight’s communications director, told What A Day. “What they really want is to rein in Trump’s version of ICE. They don’t want to abolish federal immigration enforcement.”

• Still, the prospect of handing ICE billions after Renee Good’s killing is… unappealing to many on the left, to say the least. Even if Democrats approve the budget and add guardrails, ICE agents might simply disregard them.

“If I were in Congress, I do not know how I could vote to fund this Department of Homeland Security, regardless of the political implications,” Crooked’s Jon Lovett said on Pod Save America.

WHAT ELSE? 👀

The FBI raided the home of Hannah Natanson, a Washington Post journalist who covers the Trump administration’s attacks on federal workforce. Natanson was “obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor. The leaker is currently behind bars,” Attorney General Pam Bondi tweeted. Investigators took the reporter’s personal laptop, Garmin watch, and phone, she told the Post. Marty Baron, the Post’s former editor, described the raid as “a clear and appalling sign that this administration will set no limits on its acts of aggression against an independent press.”

Related: Natanson recently wrote a first-person account of her reporting, with the tagline: “One reporter’s effort to show how Trump was transforming government brought her 1,169 new sources — and nearly broke her.”

The Trump administration and Denmark have a “fundamental disagreement” over the future of Greenland, the Danish foreign minister told reporters after meeting with VP JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio today. Trump posted an unhinged rant on social media this morning, calling “anything less” than U.S. control of Greenland “unacceptable.”

The U.S. withdrew troops from several bases in the Middle East, Reuters reports, after Iran threatened to target them if Trump strikes the country amid a wave of deadly anti-government protests.

The State Department will suspend visa processing for citizens from 75 nations, including scores of African and Middle Eastern countries. They’re even going after Barbados? I’d like to hear Rihanna’s take on this BS.

The second phase of Trump’s “peace plan” for the Gaza Strip went into effect. This stage involves the “demilitarization and reconstruction of Gaza, primarily the disarmament of all unauthorized personnel,” according to Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) said she’s being investigated by federal prosecutors over the video she and other lawmakers filmed urging service members to resist illegal orders. “Facts matter little, but the threat matters quite a bit,” Slotkin said. “The threat of legal action; the threat to your family; the threat to your staff; the threat to you.”

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appointed two vaccine critics, including a self-described “anti-vaxxer,” to a key vaccine advisory panel this week. “My grandchildren will not get any shots if I can help it,” one of those appointees said during a panel discussion two years ago.

House Republicans plan to hold both former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in contempt for skipping depositions on the Epstein files. A message to House Republicans: You do realize the current president is the one trying to bury all the Epstein evidence, right?

2025 was the third-hottest year on record, according to European Union scientists.

LIGHT AT THE END… ☀️

The Trump administration apologized for deporting a Massachusetts college student who was flying home to surprise her family for Thanksgiving, telling a judge that it was a “mistake.” But will this federal prosecutor get fired for showing some humanity? TBD.

A federal judge upheld California’s new congressional maps, an initiative spearheaded by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) after Texas Republicans moved to reshape their maps to help Donald Trump.

The Ford worker who Donald Trump flipped off after calling him a “pedophile protector” was suspended from his job — but he’s in good spirits. “As far as calling him out, definitely no regrets whatsoever,” TJ Sabula told the Washington Post. “I don’t feel as though fate looks upon you often, and when it does, you better be ready to seize the opportunity … I think I did that.”

Trump’s gesture was a blessing in disguise: Two GoFundMe’s for Sabula have raised over $700,000 in the past day.

Crooked’s own Jordan Silver and Nina Harris have been hosting a listening club (think a book club, but for podcasts and YouTube videos) to help progressives better understand the right-wing media ecosystem. Check out this profile on the group, called “Unfortunately Not a Sound Bath,” because our colleagues are the bomb. “There have been at least a dozen people who have told us that this club has given them hope in politics for the first time in a long time,” Jordan said. That was definitely not what we thought we were gonna achieve with this.” Check out the group’s Substack here!

Scientists in Antarctica are collecting mountain ice cores and preserving them in a repository, so future generations can study them as the climate warms. Think of them as atmospheric time capsules, which will make up a vast archive of the Earth’s geological history. Very cool.

One of the rarest (and fattest) parrots in the world is breeding again. Only 236 kākāpō birds — which weigh up to 8 pounds, live up to 90 years, are almost blind, and can’t fly — exist across New Zealand. But the berries they munch, which lead to mating, are plentiful this year, raising hopes that they’ll keep fighting off extinction.