Cup of Coffee: January 8, 2026

Hey all – as I suspected, we missed our connection at Dulles last night and had to grab a rack at the airport Marriott before heading home this morning. So the already very small chance of me putting out a real newsletter today went up in smoke.

That being said:

• The Chicago Cubs acquired starter Edward Cabrera from the Marlins for outfielder Owen Caissie, infielder Cristian Hernández and infielder Edgardo De Leon. Cabrera, who will turn 28 early this coming season, posted a 3.53 ERA (125 ERA+) over 26 starts in 2025. The Cubs will have three years of control over him before he hits free agency. He'll join a Cubs rotation featuring Matthew Boyd, Shōta Imanaga, Jameson Taillon and Cade Horton, with Justin Steele returning sometime this summer. Cassie, who hit a combined .281/.380/.507 with 41 homers in 982 plate appearances for Triple-A Iowa over the last two years, is a good pickup for the Marlins. At the risk of cliche, this is a deal that helps both teams, really;
• The Colorado Rockies and Michael Lorenzen agreed to on a one-year, $8 million contract with a $9 million club option for 2027. Lorenzen posted a 4.64 ERA (89 ERA+) in 141.2 innings over 27 appearances for the Royals last season. That's not great, but neither are the Rockies, so, you know; and
• The House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena my billionaire ex-neighbor Les Wexner in connection with the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Couldn't happen to a nicer sexual predator.

The most important news from yesterday was obviously what happened in Minneapolis, where an ICE agent murdered a woman in cold blood.

DHS claims that Renee Nicole Good tried to run over the agents, but there is copious video footage and eyewitness testimony showing that to be a lie. Good was sitting in her stopped car. ICE officers screamed at her to move her car, she attempted to move, and they shot her multiple times through the windshield and the open driver side window. There were no warnings. There were no attempts to deescalate. Just an immediate resort to deadly force for the "crime" of blocking traffic.

This killing reminds me of how, in 2023, a suburban Columbus cop killed a pregnant woman named Ta’Kiya Young by shooting through her windshield in a grocery store parking lot. Young was suspected of shoplifting, nothing more. The cop was actually indicted for murder but he walked after claiming that Young tried to run him down. The cops have a playbook. They know if they simply say "she was coming right at me" that a lot of people will buy it because a lot of people want to believe cops regardless of what the reality on the ground happens to be. The authorities in this country have been killing people with impunity for centuries, sometimes even when there has been clear video of it. This is the latest example of it.

Good was 37. She was an award-winning poet. She had a six year-old daughter whose father died in 2023 and now her mother has been murdered by Donald Trump's masked secret police force, after which the United States government and its allies in the media spent the day telling outrageous lies about her. I agree with them that an act of terrorism occurred yesterday, but it was perpetrated by the United States government, not Good. Don't let the government tell you that you're wrong about what you see with your own two eyes.

America is lost. It's completely lost and it is marching deeper and deeper into darkness every day. We're past the point of mere elections fixing it. It's going to take the prosecution of scores if not hundreds of members of the current regime and the eradication of their evil and lawless works to even begin to put us on something resembling a path back into the light. Like, that's where we have to start to even have hope of a positive future.

We cannot go back. We must forge a new path forward and through. Anyone who promises, with clarity and conviction, to do that has my support. Anyone without the courage to do so does not.