I just have to share: The gas in our building has been out for months (don’t ask). So I have to learn how to use a slow cooker to sustain my family. Turns out I’m very bad at it. The slow-cooked beef stew I unveiled this morning is truly my worst yet—and I promise that’s saying something. Certain members of my family who shall remain nameless have started calling my meals “divorced dad dinner.” At least I make a good gin and tonic, which is basically all Bar needs for dinner these days anyway. The kids, though, are still getting accustomed to them. I guess it’s an acquired taste. Speaking of domestic life, our advice columnist and my dear friend Abigail Shrier is looking for more Tough Love letters. If you’re brave enough, ask Abigail a question by clicking here.
Also: We’re hosting a comedy night Sunday, February 1 at the Comedy Cellar in NYC! Judy Gold is hosting. Colin Quinn is headlining. It’s part of America’s 250th birthday, which we’re marking by stress-testing the joke. Get your tickets here. Now let’s turn to the news.
→ ICE killing: On Wednesday in Minneapolis, an ICE agent shot and killed a woman in her SUV. Video shows agents approaching her car and ordering her to get out; she then accelerates forward, and an agent in front of her fires three times, ultimately killing her. The woman was identified as 37-year-old poet and mother of three Renee Nicole Good. Given that this was a protest in 2026, there’s video of it from multiple angles, and I’ve watched them all. She did refuse to get out of the car; she did accelerate toward the officer. And yet. You can easily imagine her panicking at that moment, with loud-voiced officers reaching through her window and grabbing her door. I don’t mean to be gendered, but the impulse either to hide (stay in the nest) or run (spin wheels and get out of the situation fast) is sort of hardwired in my female brain. There’s truly nothing more dangerous than a mom in her SUV—we’re the grizzlies with cubs. If a man in a uniform is reaching at me through the window, I’m flooring it. Whether there’s criminal liability on the officer’s end, I have no idea, but it’s a real tragedy. In our seesaw politics, our options are either Biden completely opening the border and gaslighting us about it—or Trumpo sending the military to rappel out of helicopters to tackle two guys in line at Home Depot. Our life is now just endlessly swinging between these extremes every four years.
→ Venezuela: This past Saturday, American forces blasted their way into Venezuela’s capital and grabbed President Nicolás Maduro, who was whisked away wearing a gray Nike Tech tracksuit and transported to the U.S., where he wished onlookers at the Manhattan DEA office a happy new year in heavily accented English. That’s just Saturday night in America now—tucking other country’s dictators into a cell downtown.
The authoritarian leader and his allegedly complicit wife were then taken to New York’s hottest club, the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, which has recently hosted Luigi Mangione, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Ghislaine Maxwell. Maduro and his wife pleaded not guilty to federal drug trafficking and weapons charges in a Manhattan courthouse on Monday.
President Trump has said the United States will “run” the country, offloading the job to Marco Rubio, whose stack of to-dos from his three other jobs is already grazing the ceiling. Apparently (and this is real), Maduro’s on-air imitation of Trump’s signature bendy-elbow dance—performed to a techno remix of “No War, Yes Peace”—was the final provocation. This mockery could not go unanswered; an equal and opposite retaliation was in order, which, for Trump, means sending in the troops and putting a blindfold and headphones on that man. Deprive his senses completely. “He gets up there and he tries to imitate my dance a little bit. But he’s a violent guy,” Trump said. Worse still, Maduro adds a Latin flavor—some salsa, some bouncing—whereas Trump’s version is all stiff knees and hinged elbows, like a rusty gate.
In the same press conference, the president said—trying out some Dangerfield-esque stand-up—“My wife hates when I do this.” He continued: “She said, it’s so unpresidential. I said, ‘But I did become president.’ She hates when I dance! I said, ‘Everybody wants me to dance.’ . . . She actually said, ‘Could you imagine FDR dancing?’ ” It’s unclear whether Melania knows FDR was wheelchair-bound, but the message stands: All wives in this country want all husbands to please stop doing their little routine in front of the guests.
