• Winter storm leaves a mark: An unusually large and powerful winter storm has nearly finished dumping a colossal amount of snow and ice on the U.S. after it traveled from Arizona to Maine. Over three-quarters of a million Americans experienced power outages, with many regions warning that turning the lights back on will be a slow process. Making these long power outages even worse, reinforcing shots of bitterly cold Arctic air are forecast to move over the eastern half of the U.S. through at least next week. Nine deaths have been attributed to the storm so far — seven in the South, one in Kansas, and one in Massachusetts. Southern states saw freezing rain and ice that brought down trees and power lines, while northern states saw over 18 inches of snow.

• Comer suggests leaving Minnesota to its fate: With the shooting death of anti-ICE agitator Alex Pretti by ICE agents over the weekend in Minneapolis, which has served to fuel even more anti-ICE sentiments, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer suggested that the Trump administration pull back on immigration enforcement in Minnesota. “If I were President Trump, I would almost think about, OK, if the mayor and the governor are going to put our ICE officials in harm’s way and there’s a chance of losing more, you know, innocent lives or whatever, then maybe go to another city and let the people of Minneapolis decide, ‘Do we want to continue to have all of these illegals? Are we going to allow our governor, attorney general, and mayor to get away with this?’” A number of Republican lawmakers are also calling for a full investigation into Pretti’s death.

• Dems gear up for another shutdown over ICE: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is signaling that the budget will not be passed by the deadline this Friday, and another shutdown may be looming. Congress has been passing the budget in separate appropriations bills this month rather than via the titanic omnibus bills seen too often in recent years, but DHS funding is unlikely to make it past Senate Democrats. Senators Schumer, Catherine Cortez Masto, and Jack Reed have suggested dropping the DHS bill and passing the remaining five bills for other government departments. Others have suggested reworking the DHS bill, although time is limited for that with the deadline looming and the Senate out of session today due to inclement weather. Schumer’s grandstanding comes in response to the deaths of two leftist agitators who were killed as they impeded ongoing law enforcement operations.

• Don Lemon should be arrested: On Saturday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit declined the DOJ’s request to overturn a Minnesota magistrate judge’s refusal to approve arrest warrants for five anti-ICE agitators who stormed and disrupted a St. Paul, Minnesota, church’s worship service. Among the individuals the DOJ sought to arrest was former CNN personality Don Lemon. While the Eighth Circuit Court refused to overturn the judge, it concluded that the DOJ met the probable cause standard for charging Lemon and the other agitators. Lemon, meanwhile, sought to frame himself as completely innocent and insisted that the Trump administration would “go around a judge” in its efforts to prosecute him. Lemon continued to paint himself as not one of the agitators, despite participating in and defending the action as a legitimate protest.

• Virginia Dems push for highest income tax in nation: California currently imposes the highest income tax in the nation, but may not much longer if Democrats in Virginia get their way. Democrat legislators in the Commonwealth introduced legislation that would effectively increase Virginia’s top income tax rate to 13.8%. These lawmakers are couching the tax hike as making “millionaires pay their fair share of taxes.” They want to increase the state government’s annual revenue by $1 billion to fund a range of increases in welfare-related services, including education, housing, and public services. The irony is that new Democrat Gov. Abigail Spanberger focused her campaign on making Virginia affordable. This legislation would produce the exact opposite, but Spanberger has proven that her campaign messaging was intended to deceive, not inform voters of her intentions.

• Canada backs down on China deal: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visited China last week and said the country would embrace a partnership with that nation for the new world order. During Carney’s visit, the two countries proposed a deal to lower tariffs on Chinese EVs and Canadian agricultural products. Carney went so far as to blast the use of tariffs in a speech to the World Economic Forum, a comment that was likely directed at the U.S. president. Donald Trump said he would not allow Canada to serve as “a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China” to send products into the U.S. He then threatened to impose a 100% tariff on Canadian products if Canada signed the proposed deal with China. Since then, Carney has backed off the deal, saying his country has no plans to pursue it.

• Secret weapon against Venezuela? “The Discombobulator. I’m not allowed to talk about it,” said President Trump right before he revealed that it had been used in the extraction of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela. Both Trump and Venezuelan sources have attested to the use of a secret weapon that neutralized Venezuelan air defenses, communications, and command systems before U.S. helicopters entered Caracas. “They never got their rockets off. They pressed buttons, and nothing worked,” Trump remarked. The details of the weapon remain classified, but several Venezuelan witnesses on the ground confirmed that something “like a very intense sound wave” was launched that shut down all their foreign-supplied radar and defense systems, incapacitating their ability to respond. The Trump-dubbed “discombobulator” did its job to bring about the detention of Maduro, demonstrating American dominance.

• Orwellian “kill switch” speeds ahead: Sometimes when Congress is trying to accomplish big things, like fund the Departments of War, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Health and Human Services, smaller things can slip through the cracks. But when that “smaller thing” is a kill switch that will automatically shut off an American’s car, voters understandably get angry. Rep. Thomas Massie proposed an amendment to be added to the funding bill that would counter a Biden-era requirement to develop a kill switch in cars aimed at stopping drunk driving. Massie’s amendment failed when 76 Republicans voted with Democrats against it. Opponents of the kill switch have rightly called it Orwellian; the pressure will be on for Republicans to propose clean legislation to kill the kill switch.

• Mullahs have killed more than 30,000 protesters: The total number of Iranian protesters slain in the Islamic government’s crackdown on widespread protests across the country since December 28 has been difficult to ascertain. The official state media has put the total killed at just over 3,000, while the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has placed the estimate at just under 5,000. Data from Iranian doctors puts the total at 16,500. However, a recent report from two senior Iranian Ministry of Health officials estimates the number to be more than 30,000. And that number came in just two days — January 8 and 9. Those killed were primarily by gunshot wounds, which would be in line with the Iranian regime’s use of military forces to quell the protests. If these numbers are accurate, it would represent the single largest mass killing by a government’s forces against its own people in the modern era.

Headlines

• Trump sending border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota (NewsNation)

• DHS officials debunk viral claims ICE used five-year-old boy as “bait” (NY Post)

• IDF recovers body of final hostage Ran Gvili (Jerusalem Post)

• Columbia University picks new president after scrutiny over mishandling campus protests (NY Post)

The Executive News Summary is compiled daily by Jordan Candler, Thomas Gallatin, Sterling Henry, and Sophie Starkova. For the archive, click here.