Last year, I covered the 2025 edition of the Ig Nobel prizes. Since 1991, a ceremony has been held annually in the Boston area, and I was lucky enough to attend in 2011. Sadly, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to repeat that in 2026, as the Ig Nobel ceremony is moving out of America.

The shift from the US to Europe is due to concerns about the political situation and attendees getting visas, organisers said on Monday.

“During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country [US],” Marc Abrahams, master of ceremonies and editor of the magazine, told the Associated Press in an email interview.

“We cannot, in good conscience, ask the new laureates, or the international journalists covering the event, to travel to the United States this year,” said Abrahams.

Who can blame them?

Speaking of ICE abuses, are ICE officers earning bonuses for unjustified arrests? I don’t know, but this is exactly what it would look like if so.

No one should be treated the way tourist Karen Newton was, and everyone should think twice about visiting America under the current regime.

She has a message for other tourists considering a trip to America: “Don’t go – not with Trump in charge. It’s totally out of control over there. There’s no accountability. They don’t seem to need a reason for detaining you.”

It’s difficult to argue with that.

Alex Pretti lived a life of service. He was an ICU nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs. His last act was helping a woman up after she’d been assaulted.

Now, Alex Pretti is dead, gunned down by poorly trained ICE thugs. It’s the second horrific killing in Minnesota this month, and I fear it won’t be the last. I don’t know what it will take to end this madness. But at the very least, let us refuse to accept the despicable smear campaigns being attempted by craven officials and bootlicking apologists.

Please believe me when I tell you that I detest writing about Donald Trump. During the wretched first year of his second term in office, in service to my mental health, I have made a real effort to not follow every single daily outrage. And yet, the man and his minions are everywhere, the news is unavoidable. They are a miasma over America, and indeed, the world. I live for the day I can retire the This Week in Trump category from this site, but today is not that day.

Instead, I am reproducing the letter Trump sent to the Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre, which displays enough stupidity to stun a team of oxen in its tracks.

Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a ‘right of ownership’ anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT

That anyone could read this twaddle and still believe the man is fit for the presidency beggars belief.

Update (January 20, 2026): My original post replicated the paragraph breaks shown in the Independent’s article. However, multiple other sources indicate this ridiculously poorly written letter consisted of just one lone paragraph. It has been edited to reflect that.

Alexandra Petri tried to be the government all by herself. It did not go well. It’s almost as though governments exist to improve society for everyone, in ways no individual possibly could on their own.

It is legal to film ICE. The EFF has more.

Recording government agents is one of the few tools citizens have to hold state power accountable. Any attempt to redefine observation as “violence” is not only unconstitutional—it’s authoritarian gaslighting. When a government fears cameras more than crimes, it isn’t protecting the rule of law. It’s protecting itself.

Without the citizen recordings of the killing of Renee Good, the administration’s outright lies would likely be all that we heard about this horrible incident. Recording the authorities is essential.

In Dedham, MA, one church’s nativity scene sits half-empty. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph replaced with a note stating ICE had been there. It’s a powerful message. Predictably, not everyone approves.

The Archdiocese of Boston on Friday called the sign and missing figures a “politically divisive display” and said the parish should restore the créche to its “proper sacred purpose.”

The Archidocese of Boston can pound sand, along with anyone offended by this display but not the reality of what’s going on in America under Donald Trump.

Years back, I visited the Haskell Free Library and Opera House in the village of Derby Line, Vermont. Derby Line is located right at the border of Canada, with the aforementioned building actually straddling the border itself, a deliberate design decision made back in 1904. The entrance is on the American side, but Canadians have long been able to access it without needing to pass through customs. It has never been an issue.

You will likely not be shocked to learn that this friendly arrangement has been ended by the Trump administration.