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Foreign. Hello, this is Michael Moss. Heather Cox Richardson is unable to read the letter today, so I will be reading it in her place. January 8, 2026 on Ms. Now today, columnist Philip Bump broke down when talking about the shooting of Renee Nicole Goode yesterday in Minneapolis. I have a six year old, he said, and seeing the image of the stuffed animals in the glove compartment of her car, really emotional for me. And what I take away from this is for me, that's the thing that stands out, that this was a family that could have been like mine. Bump went on to emphasize that there are a lot of situations, a lot of incidents that have involved ice, have involved the government over the course of the past 13 months in which there was a resonance for other families in similar ways. But what he hit on in his first reaction to Good's killing was the one the administration must fear most of all. Goode was a white suburban mother whose ex husband told reporters she was a Christian stay at home mom and Bump is a white man. President Donald J. Trump's people see that demographic as their base. If it turns on Trump, they are politically finished. As finished as elite Southern enslavers were when Harriet Beecher Stowe reminded American mothers of the fragility of their own children's lives. To condemn the sale of black children. As finished as the second Ku Klux Klan was when its leader kidnapped, rank, raped and murdered 28 year old Madge Oberholtzer. As finished as the white segregationists were when white supremacists murdered four little girls in church in 1963. Evidence that President Donald J. Trump has sexually abused children would likely be enough to crater his political support from this group, making it no accident that the administration is openly flouting the law that required the full release of the Epstein files by December 19, 2025. The Department of Justice has released less than 1% of those files, and many of them were so heavily redacted as to be useless. In a court filing on Monday, US Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that substantial work remains to be done before it can release them all. But there is no hiding the murder of Renee Good, captured on video by several witnesses as it was. And so the Trump administration is working desperately to smear Good and to convince the public that, contrary to widespread video evidence, the federal agent put in place by the Trump regime shot her in self defense. The Department of Homeland Security or DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and and Trump himself have all insisted that their false narrative is true. Media Matters for America compiled a timeline showing how the Fox News Channel first told viewers that Good had tried to ram officers whose vehicle was stuck in a snowbank, then moderated their language as video appeared, and then by the evening parroted the administration's talking points. Today, in a press conference on the shooting, Vice President J.D. vance made even more extreme statements claiming all evidence to the contrary that the woman shot in Minneapolis was part of a left wing network and that nobody debates that she aimed her car at a law enforcement officer and pressed on the accelerator. In fact, among those who debate Vance's version of events are the journalists at the New York Times who today published a slow motion analysis that demonstrated conclusively that the vehicle was turning away from the officer when he opened fire. White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt increased the attack on Good even more today, saying the deadly incident that took place in Minnesota yesterday occurred as a result of a larger, sinister left wing movement that has spread across our country, where our brave men and women of federal law enforcement are under organized attack. The administration appears to be trying to make sure their narrative will get an official stamp of approval by silencing a real investigation. Today, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a statewide criminal investigative bureau in the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI, has shut its officials out of the investigation into Good's death. The FBI will no longer allow the BCA to have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation. The BCA has, it said, reluctantly withdrawn from the investigation. Law professor Steve Vladek commented sarcastically, this is definitely how you behave when you're trying to bring every resource to bear rather than trying to cover up the unlawful behavior of your own personnel. The FBI is housed within the Department of Justice, or doj, which is run by Trump loyalists Bondi and Blanch, and as Vladek suggests, there is appropriate concern that it will not conduct a fair investigation. In an illustration of how Trump has tried to stack the DOJ today, U.S. district Judge Lorna Scofield ruled that John Sarcone, Trump's temporary nominee as Acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, does not hold that position lawfully for Sarcone. As for four other U.S. attorneys, Trump has ignored the law to keep his loyalists in control of key Department of Justice offices where they have targeted people Trump considers enemies. Although judges have said 5 of Trump appointed US attorneys are in office illegally, at least 3 have refused to step down. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty issued a statement saying that her office is exploring all options to ensure that a state level investigation of the shooting of Renee Nicole Goode continues. Today, Trump appeared to settle into his new role as an American dictator. He announced plans to make the ballroom for which he bulldozed the East Wing of the White House even bigger, despite a long standing norm that additions to the White House, the People's House, have a lower profile than the main building. Jonathan Edwards and Dan Dimon of the Washington Post reported today that Trump is now planning for his ballroom to be as tall as the White House house. Trump's architect also said they are considering adding a one story addition to the West Wing colonnade that runs alongside what used to be the Rose Garden. White House Director of Management and Administration Josh Fisher also said that administration officials plan to renovate Lafayette Square north of the White House. And Trump told New York Times reporters David E. Sanger that Tyler Pager, Katie Roberts and Zolan Kano Youngs that as commander in Chief he has only one limit on his my own morality, my own mind, it's the only thing that can stop me. He claims he gets to determine what is legal under international law and seems to stretch that authority to domestic affairs, too, saying that he was already considering getting around a possible decision by the Supreme Court that that his tariffs were unconstitutional by simply calling them licensing fees, and that he could invoke the Insurrection act to deploy troops in the US if he felt the need to do it. Meanwhile, Hamid Aliaziz and Madeline Ngo of the New York Times reported that the Trump administration is sending more than 100 customs and border Protection agents and officers from Chicago to Minneapolis. And after yesterday's shooting this afternoon, federal immigration agents shot and wounded two people in Portland, Oregon. According to Claire Rush and Jean Johnson of the Associated Press, the shooting took place outside a hospital where the two were in a car. Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and the City Council asked ICE to end operations in the city during a full investigation of the incident. Democrats have spoken out loudly against Trump's grab for dictatorial power since he took office, and today some Republicans began to push back as well. Representatives Ro Khanna, a Democrat of California, and Thomas Massie, a Republican of Kentucky, the leading sponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency act, asked US District Judge Paul Engelmeier to to appoint a special master and an independent monitor to compel the DOJ to produce the Epstein files as the law requires. Put simply, they wrote, the DOJ cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures under the act. We do not believe the DOJ will produce the records that are required by the act. Last month, House Democrats launched a discharge petition to force a vote to extend the Affordable Care act tax credits for three years. Frustrated that Speaker Johnson would not take up such a measure, four Republicans signed the petition to force it to the floor. Today, 17 Republicans joined the Democrats to pass the measure by a vote of 230 to 196. It now heads to the Senate. The Senate also pushed back today. Senators voted to advance a bill that would stop the Trump administration from additional attacks on Venezuela without congressional approval. The vote was 52 to 47, with five Republicans joining all the Democrats to move the measure forward. Republicans killed a similar measure in November, but Trump's enormously unpopular incursion into Venezuela and threats against Greenland prompted five Republicans to reassert congressional authority over military action. CNN called it a notable rebuke of the president. The five Republicans voting for the bill were Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Todd Young of Indiana. Immediately, Trump posted on social media that the five should never be elected to office again. By reasserting the power of Congress, he wrote, they were attempting to take away our powers to fight and defend the United States of America. The Senate also unanimously approved a resolution to hang a plaque honoring the police who protected the US Capitol on on January 6, 2021. In March 2022, Congress passed a law approving the plaque and requiring that it be installed. But House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, has refused, and the Department of Justice has complained that because the plaque lists departments and not individual officers, it does not comply with the law. On this year's fifth anniversary of the January 6th attack, the Trump administration blamed the police officers themselves for starting the insurrection, making the Senate's vote appear to be a pointed rebuke of the president. In response to Trump's calling the rioters patriotic protesters, retiring Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina, called the January 6 rioters thousands of thugs, according to reporter Scott McFarlane. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican of South Dakota, has agreed to let the plaque hang in the Senate until the architect of the Capitol, the federal agency that maintains, operates and preserves the U.S. capitol, determines its permanent location. Today, as there were yesterday, there were protests against ICE around the country. Tonight, as there were last night, there are vigils for Renee Good. Letters from an American was written by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions Dead in Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.