Losing My Perspicacity, January 9, 2026

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Good morning and Happy Friday. Thanks for starting your day with me.

What do you say when a government persists in shamelessly lying to its people? That’s what we’ve seen from the Trump administration in the last 24 hours — blatant lies from everyone, from the Commander in Chief down to lowly House representatives. They are lying about things that are independently and objectively verifiable with our own eyes from multiple different camera angles. As I often say, this is why our parents and teachers told us the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes — so that the bravest amongst us would call out the lies.

Before we get to the news, let me tell you a story. I used to live in the well-heeled City of Naperville, one town over from where I live now. Naperville is lovely, and not nearly as white as people like to pretend, though it was still pretty conservative when I lived there (it’s changed quite a bit since then). Downtown Naperville is the jewel of the town, with a gorgeous riverwalk, gardens, covered bridges, and stores like Pottery Barn, Williams-Sonoma, and Sur La Table in cute little brick storefronts. Everyone loves downtown Naperville.

When I was a public defender, the rumor was always that Naperville’s gorgeous downtown was paid for by “DUI (Driving Under the Influence) money.” You see, Naperville prosecuted its own DUIs rather than allowing the county state’s attorney to do so. Why did they do this? Because Naperville figured out early on that there was a lot of money in DUIs. For the right price (I think it was $2500 or something), you could get your first DUI reduced to a charge of ”reckless driving,” which doesn’t result in the loss of your license, and avoids a whole host of other problems that stem from being convicted of a DUI, like mandatory jail time. So every Friday, the Naperville prosecutor would come into court with a stack of DUI charges and plead the majority of them down to reckless driving for the low, low price of $2500 a head.

As the money rolled in, rumors swirled that Naperville cops had a “DUI quota” each month — that they had to charge so many people with DUIs or risk discipline. As a result, Naperville was notorious for questionable DUI charges. I once had a client who passed the infamous one-legged stand test (unheard of!) and got charged anyway. People would take the breathalyzer test (never do this), blow well below a .08, and still get charged. Cops would sit in their cars outside bars and follow people out, pulling them over for things like “weaving within their lane” and “pausing for too long at a stop sign.”

Without getting too off-track, there are two ways to charge a DUI in Illinois. One is that the person was dumb enough to take the breathalyzer test (you know your blood alcohol content goes up as you sober up, right?) and blow a blood alcohol of over .08. The other way is for the cop just to say that you seemed drunk. No, I’m not kidding. So even if you sit in your car, refuse to get out, insist you didn’t drink, and refuse any and all tests, the cops could (and would) still say, “Well, he seemed drunk to me!”

Obviously, in order to make a convincing case that someone “seems” drunk, the cops have to put details in their reports. They learn how to do this at the police academy and in various training sessions they attend. The public defenders in my county saw a lot of DUIs, and we began to notice that every single police report in a DUI case, especially in Naperville, included the same language. I mean, the exact same language. Specifically, this language: “Suspect had bloodshot, glassy eyes, slurred speech, and a strong odor of alcohol.” Every. Time. The guy could be coming from church, and he had glassy, bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, and a strong odor of alcohol.

Everyone knew it was bullshit. The lawyers knew, the cops knew, and the judges knew. Eventually, I think we discovered the exact same language in a state police training manual or something. It was clear that officers had been instructed to include that language in their report whenever arresting someone for a DUI, whether or not it was true.

That ubiquitous line was what kept popping up in my head today as the plethora of cars that allegedly “tried to ram” ICE and CBP officers kept coming up. The Trump administration used it to justify their assassination of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. They used it again in the shooting of two people in Portland last night. They used it in the shooting of Marimar Martinez in Chicago in October. Federal agents jumping in front of cars, and using the “they tried to ram us!” excuse became so common that Border Patrol agents were admonished by their leader, Michael Fisher, to stop doing it. IN 2014.

And last night, at a community hearing session in Chicago, one man recounted his experience with federal agents. Guess what they accused him of?

It’s about as flimsy a justification for federal agents as “bloodshot, glassy eyes, slurred speech, and a strong odor of alcohol” was for Naperville cops. At this point, “[Insert name] tried to ram me with their car” should just be ICE/CBP’s official slogan.

“ICE: Americans keep trying to ram us, so we have to shoot them.”

If you missed it, yesterday the New York Times published a frame-by-frame video of the shooting, proving what we all saw with our own eyes: Renee Good was in the process of steering her car around ICE agents, and ICE agent Jonathan Ross didn’t begin firing at Good until the front of the car was already past his body, and therefore not in dange of running him over. Hallelujah, this is the kind of work we’ve needed from legacy media all along.

NYT reporters also showed signs of life in an interview with Donald Trump, confronting him with video evidence of Kristi Noem’s big lie by forcing him to watch the video in front of them, though they certainly could have pushed more on the back end. Still, more of this kind of thing, please.

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One more note on the ICE/CBP tragedy in American cities. Yesterday, federal district court Judge Sara Ellis, who issued a preliminary injunction against ICE and CBP in Chicago in November, asked for more time to consider whether she’ll grant a motion by various Chicago media outlets, clergy, and protestors to dismiss the preliminary injunction. Ellis said she based her decision to ask for more time, in part, on Good’s murder in Minneapolis.

From the beginning, Judge Ellis has made it crystal clear that this case is not an intellectual exercise for her. She sees people being hurt by federal agents in the news, and she feels a deep responsibility to protect those in her district as best she can.

In other news: The Catholics have had enough of JD Vance; Democrats manage to get an ACA subsidies extension through the House; and The High Note.

Let’s get into it.

Everyone is sick of JD Vance, especially the Catholics

My husband and I, both raised Catholics (though his family is much more Catholic than mine), often discuss the fact that the group of “New Catholics,” like JD Vance, Candace Owens, and Newt Gingrich, converted solely for the dogma. They don’t care about Jesus or his purported teachings in any significant way. What they like is the severity, the rules, the personal deprivation. All the weird Opus Dei stuff.

I’ve heard similar murmurs from my Catholic friends, as well. And now it appears that many Catholics are well sick of their newfound convert. Sick enough that the National Catholic Reporter wrote an entire op-ed on Vance’s terribleness in the face of the murder of Renee Good:

“Repudiated by two popes”! One of whom hated him so much that he died shortly after seeing him. What a banger of a line.

I haven’t considered myself a Catholic for a long time, but I’m a total sucker for the “Catholics should be the first line of defense on social justice issues” stuff. Chicago pope! Chicago pope! Can you imagine if Vance had to unconvert and go crawling back to the Pentecostals? God, what fun.

(By the way, I got my kid a shirt that says “Popes from Chicago: 1, Popes from Green Bay: 0.” Go Bears.)

Dems push a three-year ACA subsidies extension through the House

Seventeen Republicans joined with House Democrats to pass a bill that guarantees a three-year extension for subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. Proving to me, more than ever, that Republicans are scared shitless of the 2026 midterms.

Here in IL-14, we are extremely proud of our rep, Lauren Underwood, a certified nurse, who introduced the bill, alongside Rep. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH). It’s clear to her constituents, and hopefully the country, that Underwood cares deeply about healthcare. Here she is celebrating the victory.

This win is largely ceremonial, as the Senate will almost certainly not vote on the bill. Senate Republicans are supposedly working on their own “compromise” bill, which I’m sure will be really good for regular Americans. But I do take heart in the fractures that seem to be forming between Mike Johnson and House Republicans.

The High Note

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

This week has already been a year, and I took some much-needed time off (it’s not even mid-January) to go to a yoga class and do some shopping yesterday morning, after a solid 24 hours in front of cable news stations. It changed my mood immensely. So please remember to take some time outside this weekend. Touch some grass, go for a walk, go see a movie. We’ll never survive 2026 without some serious self-care.

To that end, here’s a site called IWantMyMTV that allows you to play MTV blocks from any era, complete with commercials and VJ interludes. I’ve been sucked into 80s Heart videos for the last two days. YOU ARE WELCOME.

Finally, this song always restores my faith in humanity and the beauty we can create together. Something I’ve needed reminding of a lot this week.

Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Have a great weekend and be kind to each other.

Follow Julie on Bluesky and Instagram so she can get another book contract.