The dreadful fortnight

In the first 15 days of 2026, Trump captured the president of Venezuela and is now targeting Greenland, while threatening the Islamic regime of Iran. We've heard him say that there's only one limit to his power, and that's his own morality, which international law doesn't need.

He knows that by shocking us, he gets attention and diverts it from the issues he doesn't want discussed (that's what Ayuso did by putting the women of Iran and Julio Iglesias in the same sentence), and that, at the same time, he's softening minds so that his intentions are digested and eventually accepted.

But of this fateful fortnight, the most horrifying thing is that his administration has labeled what Renee Good, the woman who was murdered in cold blood by border patrol agents deployed in Minneapolis, was doing as "domestic terrorism." It's horrifying because of the indecent lie that contradicts the images everyone has seen, and because it establishes a new normal: ICE can kill you on the street for no reason. American police have always been trigger-happy, but Good's death borders on a public execution. What orders must he have received, and what kind of police culture must a police officer live in to act this way? The American government's defense of murder emboldens the police and intimidates the public.

It's another step in the militarization of the streets and of American life, which is already quite violent in a country with more guns than people. The prognosis is appalling: the conditions are ripe for a Trump-loyal police officer to shoot not an unarmed citizen, but a police officer from some other agency. When a president says he doesn't need international law, it means he won't need domestic law either. Think about Trump's official photo. That menacing look is becoming the law.