[Salon] Would your mama be proud of you right now?

A weekly dispatch written by Harper’s staff members taking aim at the relentless absurdity of the 24-hour news cycle.

The president of the United States ordered 1,500 active-duty soldiers to stand at the ready should he decide to deploy them to Minnesota, where some 2,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have rampaged through the streets, abducting residents and citizens, killing some, including at least one peaceable observer, and detaining others, among whose numbers was a 36-year-old man who has since died in uncertain circumstances while in ICE custody; the U.S. Department of Justice announced an investigation into the actions of the Minnesota governor and the Minneapolis mayor, each of whom is alleged to have obstructed ICE agents’ ability to carry out their functions; and ICE agents who patronized a Mexican restaurant in Minnesota returned shortly thereafter to detain its workers.¹ ² ³ ⁴ ⁵ “Would your mama be proud of you right now?” a bystander called out to the agents.⁶ In a recruitment post shared on one of its social-media accounts, the Department of Homeland Security used a neo-Nazi anthem, and the White House posted to X a political cartoon suggesting that Greenlanders could expect annexation by the United States or by China and Russia; the image presented the American capital as an idyll and its Russian counterpart as a nightmarish expanse through whose skies a bolt of lightning flashed.⁷ ⁸

Following a meeting at the White House, the American and Danish governments produced contradicting statements on the nature of their agreement regarding the former’s demands to own Greenland.⁹ In response to the U.S. president’s threats to acquire Greenland, member nations of NATO, including France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, dispatched defense troops to the island territory; and the U.S. president announced retaliatory tariffs on imports from those countries.¹⁰ ¹¹ ¹² In Davos, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum convened, and an Iranian foreign minister was disinvited from the summit owing to his country’s violent crackdown on protestors.¹³ ¹⁴ Gaza “is our show,” said a senior U.S. official, denying that the fate of the Palestinian territory should be determined by either its people or the Israeli government, whose army continues to bombard the region almost daily, violating ceasefire terms.¹⁵ ¹⁶ The Israel Defense Forces opened fire on Palestinian civilians across the Gaza Strip, including those seeking asylum in a refugee camp, wounding several; the U.S. president announced a $1 billion membership fee for states seeking permanent appointment to the Board of Peace, an ad hoc group aiming to establish itself as a “new International Organization and Transitional Governing Administration” in Palestine; the new group courted the right-wing leaders of Egypt, Turkey, Argentina, and Paraguay; and a White House statement named several appointees to the body’s executive board, among them a former prime minister of the United Kingdom, a billionaire venture capitalist, the U.S. secretary of state, and the president of the World Bank.¹⁷ ¹⁸ ¹⁹ ²⁰ ²¹ ²² ²³ ²⁴

In Minnesota, an ICE agent slipped on a sheet of ice; an expedition of the Canadian Coast Guard into the country’s northernmost fjords found that the Arctic’s last remaining floes crack easily; it was determined that Martian lakes may have survived their planet’s paleoclimate by freezing over in a thin seasonal layer; and the U.S. Figure Skating Championships concluded in St. Louis.²⁵ ²⁶ ²⁷ ²⁸ In the NFL playoffs, the Buffalo Bills were defeated by the Denver Broncos, whom oddsmakers pegged as a dark horse; the Chicago Bears lost their contest with the headbutting Rams, from Los Angeles; the Seattle Seahawks soared above their San Fransican opponents, the 49ers; and the New England Patriots made their part of the country proud, trouncing the Houston Texans.²⁹ ³⁰ ³¹ ³² ³³ An Italian tennis player’s defeat in the first round of the Australian Open was attributed to “gastrointestinal distress”; the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania announced his reelection bid, adopting the slogan “get shit done”; and the New York City mayor declared his intent to install bidets in the bathrooms of Gracie Mansion.³⁴ ³⁵ ³⁶ —Lake Micah