🗞️Trump threatens Minnesota

January 15th, 2026

What happened today 🇺🇸,

• President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him to deploy U.S. military forces in Minnesota amid escalating protests against ICE operations in the state

• Senate Republicans are pledging to block any funding and legislation for any military effort by President Trump to seize Greenland

• Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner, met President Trump at the White House for a private lunch to discuss Venezuela's post-Maduro transition

• U.S. forces seized the sixth sanctioned oil tanker, the Veronica, that was linked to Venezuela, as part of Operation Southern Spear to control Venezuelan oil exports amid a U.S.-imposed quarantine

• ICE Deputy Director, Madison Sheahan, has resigned to launch a congressional campaign for Ohio's 9th District, challenging long-serving Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur

• Verizon said it will issue a $20 account credit to customers affected by the widespread wireless outage yesterday, which lasted about 7-10 hours and impacted over 1.5 million users

• Bitmine Immersion Technologies, chaired by Tom Lee, announced a $200 million equity investment in Beast Industries, the company founded by YouTube star MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson)

• Spotify announced a price hike for its U.S. Premium subscriptions, raising the Individual plan from $11.99 to $12.99 monthly, with similar increases for Student ($5.99 to $6.99), Duo ($16.99 to $18.99), and Family ($19.99 to $21.99) plans starting in February

• The benchmark 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.06% for the week ending January 15th, a drop from 6.16% the previous week

• U.S. initial jobless claims fell by 9,000 to 198,000 for the week ending January 10th, marking the lowest level since November and beating the estimates of around 215,000

• DOW up .60% / S&P up .26%

• President Trump received military advice indicating that a large-scale strike on Iran would unlikely topple its regime and risked broader conflict, leading him to position U.S. military assets in the Middle East as a precaution while monitoring Tehran's response to protests…the administration today also imposed sanctions on five key Iranian officials accused of directing a violent crackdown on protestors

But what can you actually DO about the proclaimed ‘AI bubble’? Billionaires know an alternative…

Sure, if you held your stocks since the dotcom bubble, you would’ve been up—eventually. But three years after the dot-com bust the S&P 500 was still far down from its peak. So, how else can you invest when almost every market is tied to stocks?

Lo and behold, billionaires have an alternative way to diversify: allocate to a physical asset class that outpaced the S&P by 15% from 1995 to 2025, with almost no correlation to equities. It’s part of a massive global market, long leveraged by the ultra-wealthy (Bezos, Gates, Rockefellers etc).

Contemporary and post-war art.

Masterworks lets you invest in multimillion-dollar artworks featuring legends like Banksy, Basquiat, and Picasso—without needing millions. Over 70,000 members have together invested more than $1.2 billion across over 500 artworks. So far, 25 sales have delivered net annualized returns like 14.6%, 17.6%, and 17.8%.*

Want access?

[Click here to skip the waitlist →]

_{Investing involves risk. Past performance not indicative of future returns. Reg A disclosures at masterworks.com/cd}

Plus: The Top 20 most expensive artworks sold at auction

Please follow The Simple American on X @TSimpleAmerican x.com/Tsimpleamerican

Follow us on TikTok @simpleamerican

Quote of the day: “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” - Dolly Parton

Have a great night!

P.S. We love connecting with our readers so…

Please reply to this newsletter for more info on any news points in the letter, feel free to give us any feedback you have, or let us know what you want more of!